At The Table with The Dice Tower - Party Time, Excellent

26:35But your present to me is to put up with it.

26:43But it was a great time because I had, you know, I had party games for the people who are like, I'm not really a gamer, but I wanted to come hang out and say hi. And I had the more advanced games that I wanted to play. And, you know, the people who wanted to play those had kind of pre-signed up for which ones I wanted to play. And we all sat around and we had a lovely time. And I made sure that there was time in between each game so that the people that I wasn't playing games with, I could go say hi to while they were playing their games. And it was great, but I set a very, very specific expectation for it.

27:13Nice. I want to say that I would like to, in the future, talk more about running an open event, like at a church or at a school or wherever, because I feel like it's a very different set of parameters. But I do want to talk about a few things when you invite people over to your house. kids and or spouses who aren't interested in gaming. Not allowed. Well, again, you need to be clear as the host what that is. Are kids allowed to come? And if so, what are your expectations? Because I heard horror stories from parents who are gaming and their kids are meanwhile ripping up the house. And your kids, I know, are the best and never do any of that.

27:59But I think that expectation is good. Sometimes you will have kids maybe and other people can bring their kids and they can play together and stuff. That works fantastic. But again, I think there needs to be that expectation. On my Tuesday game nights, it is a no kids allowed situation. And that is just because it just solves a lot of different issues. I'm running a game night at my church this week and that is kids allowed. It's different. But you need to keep – I think you need to – if you can clarify this stuff ahead of time, you will save yourself a world of arguments. And hurt feelings and misunderstandings.

28:37Oh, yeah. All of that, yeah. For sure.

28:40Tom Vasel:Yeah, yeah. And if kids are allowed, make sure there are some non-game things to do. Don't just set up a bunch of Habba games and expect that they'll be playing as long as the group playing Earth. Just have them watch Lord of the Rings, the entire series. You'll be fine. There you go. The other thing is I want to talk about going to a game night because we're talking about hosting one. And as someone who likes to host game nights all the time, if I go to someone else's game night, I need to remember it's their game night. It's theirs. Yes. I know that sounds like a very obvious thing, but I'll be like, what, you do that?

29:18Yeah.

29:19Tom Vasel:That's not how I would do it. Reset your expectations. Don't just take over their night. Yes. Don't do it. Folks, I would love to hear from you all on your tips and things for game nights. We have Facebook forums or the Discord. Be great for you to go in there. Someone start a thread on the Dice Tower, and I'll pin it on Facebook because I would love people to go back and forth because I think we can all help each other make game nights really good. Tell your horror stories so we can avoid them. Tell your stories of success so we can emulate that. Yeah. That sounds great. I think expectations is probably the biggest lesson from all of this.

29:59Tom Vasel:Don't expect that the social group that wants to hang around the snacks is going to play Twilight Imperium. You need to cultivate the group that you want if you're getting games to the table. Indeed. Speaking of horror. Yes. And now, another tale of board gaming horror. Oh my, that's horrific. Gather round, children. Almost a decade ago, I was newly married and quickly getting into the hobby. My entrance into the hobby, like many others, was Catan. I played it throughout college and brought it with me when I moved across the world. I have many great memories of playing Catan there and even teaching some of my local friends.

30:50Tom Vasel:Sadly, we had to leave our home unexpectedly, never to go back. By that time, I had some of the other evergreen games like Dominion and Seven Wonders and decided to ship them back along with some of our other stuff. A friend kindly went through my games and packed them up for us. I waited impatiently for the box, worried that it would arrive in a thousand pieces. Finally, it arrived in fairly good shape, with only some wear and tear on the game boxes and some bent Seven Wonders Duel cards. As I looked through the box, I could tell something was missing. Where was my copy of Settlers of Catan? I glanced in the corner of the box, and what I saw made my heart sink.

31:37Tom Vasel:It was Settlers of Catan, the dice game. My helpful, non-board gaming friend had packed the wrong game. As has happened to many other gamers, my collection grew, and I found myself playing Catan less, but I still had a soft spot for my copy that had made so many memories for me and my friends. Last year, I was visiting another friend who had also moved back not long after me. When we started talking about our hobbies, he said, Hey, did you know that we ended up with your copy of Settlers? Do you want it back? I was happy to know that my game had found a good home, so I, of course, left the game with him.

32:23Tom Vasel:Still, sometimes I wonder what memories could have been made if I had my copy of Catan over all those years. Mwahahahaha! That's not that horrible. I mean, at the top, this person said, thanks for the... I don't know if this qualifies as a tale of horror, so... I think... Have you played Katana Dice Game? It's horrible. Okay. It's not great. It's the... I get it. Opening it up and say, please pack my copy of blank, and they packed the wrong one. The My Little Pony Uno or whatever, instead of... There's a My Little Pony Uno? No. Probably. Probably. I would wager yes. I just saw someone post online the other day that they said, I bought a copy of Pandemic Legacy secondhand, and then I read up about how the game works, and I'm wondering if I made a mistake.

33:21What?

33:25Tom Vasel:And that's not even one of the ones you can reset. Yeah. Someone else said, you know, in the thread, they're like, I'm kind of new to gaming. What is Legacy and why is this a problem? And I thought, huh, that's true. If you don't know, you might be like, that game sounds interesting. But boo to the person who sold it. Boo on you. This particular story may not be really so much a tale of horror for us, but for Robert, absolutely. Somebody who doesn't like to get rid of their games at all whatsoever. This is how his brain works. Yeah. The lost potential is devastating. i wonder like what's the most times either of you or any spouses of you have bought the same game oh uh there have been a handful it wasn't so much bought the same game although there have been you bought it you sold it and traded it then you're like i really want it yeah yeah uh no there was there's been a couple like where were we back the same crowdfunding without telling each other.

34:31There have been a couple of those.

34:32Tom Vasel:I received two copies of Muppets Monopoly the same Christmas. Oh, that's adorable. That was nice. Yep, yep. That's amazing. And I think I've purchased a small expansion more than once. I forgot I already had it and bought it again or gotten the same promo more than once. That's super easy. Yeah. Last year, I was going to, my delusions of grandeur, I thought I was going to catalog our entire inventory, as it were. Good. How far did you get? Yep. Nope. On DGG so that we'd have a place where we could both see wherever we were in the world, what games we had. Because that is definitely a challenge.

35:17I at least have my... He has his wish list and I have my wish list. So we know specifically if we see certain games that those are a definite yes. Either one of us can pick them up. But yeah, that happens. That happens sometimes. Not as much as it used to. We're pretty good now about checking in. Well, speaking of games, let's talk about them.

35:38Tom Vasel:Let's do it. All right.

35:45Tom Vasel:They say that every rose has its thorn. But not every Rose has a Hula Hoop. Both of you have things I want to hear about, so who wants to go first? Unless it's me. You should, since your stuff's boring, apparently. All right, my stuff's boring. I'm going to talk about a boring IP called Star Wars. So I had the opportunity to play the Star Wars deck building game at Gen Con. It was actually a special event. I got to sit with the designer, Caleb Grace, and play this game. I had played once before, but it was really cool getting to hear his thoughts on all of this. Star Wars, the deck-building game, is originally designed as a two-player, 1v1.

36:25Tom Vasel:One player playing the Rebels, one playing the Empire. It has a lot of deck-building things. You're generating currency to buy cards from the center row, and you're trying to attack the base of your opponent. But it has some really cool things that make it different. Like the cards are sort of split up in thirds. There is one third of the deck belongs to the Empire. One belongs to the the rebels and one are neutral. The third third is neutral cards. And they get oriented in that center row based on who owns it. And if you own that card, quote unquote, you can buy it, recruit it into your deck.

37:04Tom Vasel:But if it is the opposite team's card, you can bounty hunt them and use attack to knock them off the row and get some sort of reward. So I can say if I'm playing the Imperials, knock out Han Solo so that the rebel player doesn't get a chance to use him. Plus, I get a big reward for doing so. Very cool. I like how that works. So what's new about this, I'm talking about two expansions to the system. One is the Mandalorian faction pack, which obviously adds the Mandalorians its own set of cards and the way they interact. Grogu is in the deck, yes. But it can also turn it into a three-player game.

37:43Tom Vasel:So you like split up the deck into thirds and I'm only buying cards from, there's like a row in between each neighbor. And I can attack either player and buy cards from two separate rows neighboring each side, but I can't interact with the third row. So really neat how it all comes together. There's incentives for splitting up your attacks so that you're not just ganging up on one player. In fact, in order to win, you have to have taken out bases from both opponents. And then, you know, I think it's five bases, but two, at least two, have to come from each of your opponents. Neat how it uses the mechanisms of the game pretty, you know, seamlessly to split up those attacks.

38:28Tom Vasel:It was a very fun way to play and enjoyed that tremendously. But my favorite is this new expansion called the Rebel and Empire Reinforcements Pack, which adds a whole bunch more cards for the good guys and bad guys. But you don't just mix them into the deck. You have to complete missions to, say, get Yoda. So if you complete a mission, you're spending resources to add to this thing. You complete it. Now you get Yoda into your deck. And now you got a really cool card. That's great. When it's all done, there is a campaign mode where you then get to upgrade your starter deck. And hey, you unlocked Yoda this game.

39:08Tom Vasel:Do you want to put Yoda in the main deck? Yes, please. So then you decide which rebel card gets removed from the main deck so that Yoda is now in the main deck. But now Yoda's in the main deck for game number two, and it can be bounty hunted by the bad guys for a big reward. So I'm taking that risk. Will I get to recruit Yoda in the future or am I putting a juicy target out there for my opponent? This goes on for four games, building up and taking out bases. You play like, I think, three base games and upgrading the whole system. And then whoever wins the fifth game wins the whole thing. And all that whole slow motion deck building thing, really, you know, I really like that.

39:50Tom Vasel:That gets my gears going. really solid expansions the system is very good I did not think I would like it as much as I did I went in sort of thinking yeah this is a pretty standard deck builder just sort of themed nicely this was a hula hoop a glorious hula hoop a glittery hula hoop of Star Wars the deck building game especially the Mandalorian and the Rebel and Empire reinforcements nice the one I thought I would like This was definitely a rose as well, although we are just delving into Forbidden Legacy. This was one that I really wanted to see at Gen Con. I was really hoping to get a copy. This is the finale of the Forbidden series from Matt.

40:35Tom Vasel:That's what they say anyway. I played the last Dominion expansion six times, by the way. That is true. This feels final. So there have been four Forbidden games leading up to this. And this does plot-wise. You've been jumping from island to desert to the sky, the floating platform, and then to the jungle. And now you're trying to get home, and you have entered this mysterious land, and you're going to travel through time and interact with this land over the course of, I think, seven different games. Not going to get too far into what those changes are. One, because we haven't gotten that far. The kid left for college before we could finish anything.

41:19Tom Vasel:But also, I don't want to spoil anything. But I will talk about the first game, which is very much like Forbidden Island. You start out, you've got tiles in this grid in a pattern, and you are trying to collect various sigils, colored pieces, that go in what is absolutely the Stargate. You have this big plastic thing, and you're going to plug in these gems into the Stargate, And that is cool. It is slightly more complex than Forbidden Island. The cards are multi-use cards. They have both a color, but also other symbols, numbers, aspects to them. And this comes into the way the gameplay works, because you have to locate the gems.

42:04Tom Vasel:And that requires sort of figuring out coordinates. There's like a color, and there's a number, and there's a symbol on these cards. and you play a trio of them and that's where the gem shows up. You don't even need to be standing there. I have a red and a two and a square. Yep, that tile exists on the board. I'm going to play all these and that shows up. The red gem shows up there. And then you have to get clusters of colors to then acquire that gem and carry it to where it needs to go. And those multi-use, it really opens up the Forbidden Island system, which I found really cool. And just already, even from game one, makes this a more interesting game than many of the...

42:51Tom Vasel:I've always thought of Forbidden Island as sort of a simplistic pandemic. But it's already more interesting because of those multi-use cards. And then you're going to upgrade those. You're going to add some stickers to things. Of course, you unlock rewards at the end of the game. The way the storybook is presented is really cool. It's like a big, almost a board book. like a kid's board book with comics and stories and stuff, and you unlock or pop out the player aids for each individual game, which you will then be able to go back and play. I think when this is done, you can go back and play. Each of these different adventures has a standalone thing, which is pretty cool.

43:32Tom Vasel:Very, very happy with it so far. There's also some stuff that I don't even know what it does. You unlock things, you discover things, and you mark them on your player folio, and they'll do something, question mark. I don't know yet, but I got to wait for the kid to come back from college before we can play more, and I really want to. Forbidden Legacy. Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting. I think it's a good product. I find it interesting. It feels like you're getting a bunch of different games in the same box. I haven't. Yeah, we'll see. So far, I'm enjoying it. I'm curious to see where it ends up.

44:10Tom Vasel:Does it stick the landing, I guess, is the real question, the big question mark. But so far, I'm very, very happy with it. Fair enough. All right. Julie, what about you? Tell us about some multiplayer games you've been playing. No. I played games all by myself. I was trying to be like Mike.

44:31So let's talk about first Hercules and the Twelve Labors, which is a solo dice management and boss battler game. that you play with your lonesome. I said solo game dice, but just I feel like when I tried to explain Final Girl, I'd say it's a solo game and people would say, how many players is that? So I'm just reiterating. So to win, you have to successfully defeat all the 12 labors and also maximize your divinity tracker. So divinity is your victory points, but also if your spirit or health, which is your health tracker, goes all the way to the bottom, you died and you lose. So you have those two things that you have to factor in while you're playing.

45:24Don't worry, you can also die on any of the 12 lavers. So there's plenty of ways to lose, one way to win. You are, you have your, so you have your two tracks, you have a mood deck, deck, which is a help or hinder overall status per each of the labors. That's a randomized deck. And then you have your labor deck, which is not randomized. That is in number order because it has the 12 labors. So you start with, and you start with an item, the bow of Hercules. You also choose your difficulty level, which is how many dice you start with. And I'm going to tell you right now it's either three which is god four is hero five is human i'm only human i'm less than human because i can't even beat it with human yeah it yep it was tricky uh so on your on your turn first you're going to read the flavor they have lovingly given you the lore of the greek mythology of each of the 12 flavors then you're going to draw a mood card that sets the tone of what's going to help you or hinder you in addition to fighting or dealing with each of the labors.

46:41You're going to roll your dice, which is your active pool, and then you can use your items to manipulate said dice to figure out the dice puzzles that aren't each of the 12 labors. It starts much easier. It gets much harder. Sometimes you have two different types of things that you can do instead of just one track with your dice to defeat. Sometimes it's two different tracks that happen simultaneously. Sometimes they branch out. Fun little puzzles that you're trying to do while also maximizing your dice. If you defeat it, you flip them over and you get another item to add to your own personal stash of things for dice manipulation.

47:28Again, if you get through it and have maxed out your divinity track, you win, but you have to actually max out the divinity track. So one other challenge is while you're spending your dice to defeat each of the monsters, you're also spending them simultaneously to level up, which takes away time, which means you can hurt yourself over time. And those things that hurt you are maybe, you know, losing spirit. Sometimes it's losing dice. And it was a fun puzzle. I enjoyed it. I will say it was a hula hoop because I didn't realize, like, for me, there was a level of like it's it's one story over and over um i wanted a little bit more of a replayability aspect to it um which there is it's it's not a uh it's not a puzzle game per se but it felt more like a puzzle game than i thought it would so i did enjoy it i very much enjoy playing the game um i don't know if i would play it over and over and over so hula hoop for me uh but a fun hula hoop uh hercules and the 12 labors my rose uh which i you know and a surprise to no one let's let's be honest is another game by the a puzzle game um the pride pursuit the escape room game uh one of the escape room games from uh grand gamers guilds yeah uh new designer danielle reynolds new to them so danielle reynolds who did uh she's she's done a ton of games uh most recently i think you know uh caution signs is one that that's most early but she did the ebay game um a couple years ago uh her story so she's done a ton of games this is her first time doing one of the puzzle games for Grand Gamers Guild.

49:37It's a level one. So it should be super easy. I thought it was a harder one. And I felt really, really, really smart. But in fact, it is a level one. So it is an introductory one. We've talked about the 18 escape games here before, but super fast when you're playing, you're going to go through the cards. The first card will tell you, you know, where to start. And then from there, you go on their website, and it will tell you where to skip to. So you're jumping around in the deck. Each card will have one or maybe sometimes multiple of puzzles that you have to solve. You plug those in on your internets on the website, and it will tell you if you are correct or not to move forward.

50:23I loved it. It was a fun, light, you're you know you're trying to make it to the pride parade with your friends and you're trying to get ready and whether you make it or not is the story so it's a very light story with very light fun puzzles again i it was a rose for me because i enjoy puzzle games but it might have been affected by the fact that i thought it was going it was more difficult and it wasn't and i thought i was very clever um i'm still not very clever but i did manage to get through this one pretty easily and had a great time doing it. So those are my two games.

50:59Tom Vasel:I have played Pride Pursuit as well. Enjoyed it, but I agree. It is certainly on the simpler side. I sort of breezed through that one. Although I did appreciate some of the... Look at these braggarts. I appreciate some of the spatial puzzles. There's a couple of Japanese-influenced... Oh, what's it called? One is a Masu-style puzzle, and one is a nonogram puzzle that I really liked. I like solving that style of thing. And so I really enjoyed that one. But also, Daniela is most known for her lighter weight party games. So I shouldn't have been surprised that this was a lighter weight in the games.

51:41Tom Vasel:There we go. All right, Tom, I want to hear about yours. Okay. So first we'll start with Strange Slot Simulator. This is a, well, strange game in which you are trying to figure out which slot machine is which. So at the beginning of the game, you build six decks that have various cards in them from cherries and grapes to different bells. Very specifically build these decks. Then you all mix the decks up so you don't know which deck is which. The decks are given a random letter like A, B, C, D, E, F. And the goal of the game is to figure out which deck is which. you have these decks numbered on your sheets 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 so you have to figure out if deck A is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 and each deck has a different composition of cards in it and what you'll do is the game takes place over 4 rounds and in each round you'll grab a deck of cards and as fast as you can you'll draw 3 cards from that deck like a slot, ding, ding, ding you write down what you see on these slots you then shuffle those 3 cards back into the deck and repeat ad nauseum.

52:48Or at any point, you could switch your deck out for another deck. So you do that four times. Now, some cards give you bonuses, and you can check off these little bonuses on a bonus track at the bottom of your sheet. And if you get to certain spots on that bonus sheet, you can occasionally say, I'm going to do a bonus pool. And instead of doing three cards, you'll look at five cards. And if you get all the way to the end of the bonus track for the rest of the game, you draw four cards instead of three cards. so here's the thing if you draw three cards and you get let's say you get a grape a cherry and a bell great one deck has six grapes another one has five grapes another one has four grapes that didn't particularly help me there are a few cards in the decks they're like there's moons and suns and so some decks have one moon some decks have two moons if i ever draw two moons in three cards i'm like ah ha ha i now know that this is one of these three decks your chances of that happening though are pretty slim because every turn you shuffle these back in and i will start off by saying this if you hate shuffling you need to run as far as you can from this game because honestly whoever shuffles faster is going to do better but at the end of the day this is a deduction game based on statistical probabilities abilities i'll look and say well i drew three cards and once i drew two grapes and the other i drew a grape in you know eight other times so this might be the one that has six grapes in it but it could be the one that has four grapes in and i just drew them a lot so at the end of the day this is a thorn for me because here's the thing i enjoyed my one time playing of this, I'll never play it again.

54:37Because I saw everything that the game had to offer me, and it's just kind of, I mean, I got four out of six right. But that was also me just extrapolating and guessing on some points. I think once I pulled the thing where I got two suns, and I was like, ooh, nice. I can now say this deck is one of these three rather than one of these six. But other than that, you're just kind of guessing. It's as frustrating as playing a real slot machine. So kudos. But again, the shuffling part is really annoying. We were talking about ways to get around that, maybe bag building. So you pull three things from a bag and then you throw them back in and it's shuffled, right?

55:17You don't have to shuffle the cards. You don't want to do the innovative new bag cards inside the bag. Cards in the bag. Oh, no. But that's the thing. I mean because the book has like you need to shuffle at least two times because they have to be strict on that. because you have to shuffle the cards back in. But if you can shuffle fast, you have a leg up on everybody else, sort of. So it's really unique and interesting. I mean, this is one of the most unique games I've played this year, for sure. I just don't think I can recommend it. Eric's still going to play it.

55:53Tom Vasel:I picked up a copy at Gen Con because it just seems so interesting. And I do, I haven't played yet, but I do wonder if there is a path to figuring these things out. once you know how these decks are constructed, it is going to be easier for someone who knows what they're doing to figure it out. It feels like a game that can be solved, or at least get closer to solving for a given player once you know. Sort of, but you're still just guessing on probabilities. Yeah. If I see three cherries, I'm like, I guess there wasn't many cherries in this deck. But there might have been six, and I just never drew them.

56:29Anyway, it was interesting. I think you should try it once, at least, Eric. and then try to sell it before this podcast goes live.

56:35Tom Vasel:Gotcha. That's a timer. The next is Tea and Rum. This is an upcoming game. I think it's coming out of Spiel from Captain Games, who make all kinds of crazy games. You're never sure what you're going to get from them. Agreed. They have Duck and Cover, and then this one, which is a big Euro-style game. The interesting thing about this game is there's going to be probably two winners. At the end of the game, you're collecting points, pirate points and I forget the other ones are maybe captain points like the points and one person a governor I guess one person's gonna whoever has the most governor points is gonna be the governor and whoever has the most pirate points will be the pirate and they are the two winners it is possible I suppose if everyone's playing poorly that one person could win both in which case there's only one winner but it's that's kind of an interesting schtick to get into the game but the actual gameplay is really fun too because on your turn And there are four different spots, worker placement spots, that each one has four different actions that take place at that spot depending on the number of workers there.

57:41So if me, Julie, Eric, and Z all have a worker on this one spot, Z goes first. He's like, I'll pull that worker off. So he takes the action that's associated with four people being there. Oh, yeah. Then Eric is like, ooh, I want to take the one when there's only two there. That's the action I want. Well, someone else needs to take one off so I can do that. So you do that in round one. In round two, you place them back. So it's the opposite. So Eric will put one worker there and take the level one action. He might then later on, if no one else has put a worker there, put another worker there and take the level two action.

58:17Which means in round three, he's going to be pulling two workers off from that spot rather than one. So you're kind of trying to – there's a little bit of a chicken game. Yeah. I want to – there's sometimes I'm like I really want that third action. With the three workers, I don't want to be the first person to pull the worker off because the fourth – that action is just not one I'm interested in. And everyone else at the table is thinking that. They're like, well, someone is going to have to take a worker off. So that was fun. And you're getting these different resources and converting them and buying pirate captains and cannons that activate these captains.

58:49And it's very Euro style, lots of things going on. But it's not particularly complex. and I just found it to be engaging and different and enjoyable. I think some people might balk at the idea that if you're playing a four-player game, half the people win.

59:03Tom Vasel:Yeah. But I found that to be fun. Who cares? So that's tea and rum. You probably shouldn't mix the two. Probably not. I mean, maybe. I don't know. My morning drink. Morning and evening drink. It puts me to sleep. All righty. Well, that is that, folks. It is time now to continue to prepare for the rest of the year and go play more games. Do it. Some cool games out there. So host the game night. Don't forget, tell us about your game night tips. We'd love to hear them. And send us questions. Send us tales of horror. Send us juicy tales of horror that are written by human beings. Has that not happened?

59:47Tom Vasel:Have we gotten AI tales of horror? No, but I don't want people to put that idea in their head, even though I probably just did. You just did. That's true. Yeah. I catch this on Facebook. I'll read a really interesting story. Then I'm like, that was made up. I did. That didn't happen. Anyway, until next time, I'm Tom Vassell. I'm Julie Ahern. And I'm Eric Sommerer. And you've been listening to At The Table. Thanks for listening. At The Table is produced by Tom, Julie, and Eric with assistance from the team at Dice Tower Studios. You can find us online on Facebook or on BoardGameGeek in the Dicetower Guild.

1:00:21Tom Vasel:Promotional consideration has been provided by publishers in the form of review copies of games. Dave Culling arranged our theme based on themes by Timothy Pinkham, and the cry shouted when your roll is about to go off the table brought to you by, uh-oh, die, no! Until next time, from all of us at the table, have fun gaming.

1:00:45Tom Vasel:that was very dramatic reading of the i i i do i am a dramatic person you are i need another take give it some more spirit uh-oh die no did he die halfway through there it sounded like it yeah amazing