At The Table with The Dice Tower - To Go Order

13:36Tom Vasel:I went and looked. I have my bag with me. And I think I have six Buttonshy titles in the bottom of the bag, which I didn't realize I had that many in the bottom of the bag. And I think I have even more solo games. I just didn't dig far enough. You know, they're small and portable. It makes sense.

13:51Eric Summerer:why button shy it's good to have a couple do you do you feel like that's the reason i'm asking is because there are some button shy games i think are absolutely fantastic i think most of them are fine or not great but there are some amazing ones so don't i'm not putting them down but do you feel like when traveling you can get caught up in taking more you're like oh i'll tell i could take 10 button shy games like but you could also take five card games or one board game you're like yes, but I want more. Do you feel like that's an issue? I think it's...

14:25Tom Vasel:I feel like... I mean, that's a little bit the case, but especially with the wallet games, I like that they can get tucked into an area of the suitcase or the bag that doesn't normally hold a game. If you have something in its box, you need a box-shaped space, but the wallet can slip in between things. And I apparently just keep slipping games into the bag and then forget to take them out. So I just have acquired a whole stack of them. But it allows me to use the bag for its intended purpose with all of the other travel stuff in it. But also I've got this sly little pocket of games that I can pull out and, you know, have a full game experience with a small little package.

15:06See, but here's the thing. If you keep forgetting that they're in there, then they're not getting played. which means I'd rather have one like I'd rather have a I don't know a wine cellar or a mountain goats uh size game that I know I'm gonna play because I know who I'm going out with and I know it's gonna be well received and I've played it recently so I can immediately pull it out and do the teach, which you can for any of the button shy games, but still, versus having a whole bunch of them, like, or even like an oink size game, where, like, if they're not going to get played, so it's funny, because I have a bunch of them, but I always go back to Deep Sea Adventure and Trika.

15:53Those are the two that I enjoy the most. So teaching them is effortless. And I whether I think people will like it or not, people like not having to do the teach. If you can do the teach, they're going to be willing to go along with the game a lot more likely regardless.

16:11Tom Vasel:Well, I think that's part of if you are trying to bring these games out into areas that don't normally have them, I think making it as seamless as possible to jump into a game when you're standing around and like, hey, we got 15 minutes till our food arrives at a restaurant. Do you want to play a game, if you have to pull out a whole stack of wallet games and go, all right, which I have these three, these are sort of like civilization building, but this one's a little bit like a tile link. No, you want to say, hey, you want to play a game? Boom, we're going to do this. You said you've had success with that, Julie.

16:43Tom Vasel:I think when we were discussing this as a - I don't ask, do you want to play a game? I just pull it out and I start opening it up.

16:47Eric Summerer:You just start teaching. And I start teaching because Teacher Julie is a real thing. The Teacher Julie persona lives on, despite having not been Teacher Julia for a while. You only need one person to say yes.

16:59Tom Vasel:Yeah. I guess that's true. If you just have the moment, you know you've got the time, you start dealing out cards. Here, are you in? Good. All right. And here's how you play. Yeah. So there's very little chance to say, I don't know if we want to pull out a game right now. Okay. Okay. I have a game plan. I like it. The reason I'm asking is that we're about to go on a school field trip. My wife and I are on a shadow tour to go with the children's music department. We're going to Barcelona next week. And there are families along, like, on this shadow tour. And I kind of want to, you know, make some friends and maybe play a couple games.

17:36Tom Vasel:So I'm trying to be ready to pounce when the opportunity presents itself. Like, we're on the bus or we're waiting for the bus. Or we have some time in the lobby of the hotel before the bus shows up. I would like to be able to say hey you want to play something and have it be somewhat successful and maybe make some friends

17:56Eric Summerer:sure but I think if you're going to do that then you want to make sure that all the games you have are bangers you don't want you don't want more okay games you want every game to be absolutely amazing so why not bring fewer but better

18:13Tom Vasel:yes you make an element of sense

18:17Eric Summerer:I mean, I wouldn't follow my own advice there. I would bring games I never tried before and be like, hey, it could be good, could be bad. My wife's like, why do you just bring games?

18:25Tom Vasel:I mean, that's my usual MO.

18:26Eric Summerer:It's a terrible, I don't follow my own advice. I do not. Not in those situations. Which is because that's what led us in Greece last year to play Ito every single night. Because every other game that I brought, people were like, hmm, because I was trying new things. And they were like, let's go back to Ito. And we played, you know, for almost two weeks straight every evening, which was great. But also, it would have been nice if I had thought about that and maybe brought a couple other things that I knew were going to hit. Yeah.

19:01Tom Vasel:I mean, I guess I need to find the mix. Maybe bring a couple that I don't quite know about that I would like to get played for, you know, testing out purposes. But I need to bring, as Tom says, the bangers to make sure there's always something to fall back on. Oh, this isn't working. Let's play Mountain Goats. Yeah.

19:20Eric Summerer:Yeah. But so are you concerned, Traveler, with your group of stalker parents? I don't know if you've seen the movies, Eric, but these are the people who show up in the bus at the beginning of the movie. And then all the hijinks happen. And then they show up at the end of the movie. They're like not there for 90 % of the movie. So during that 90 % where you're off screen, is the size of the game an issue? I mean, as in playing space.

19:47Tom Vasel:Oh, yeah. I mean, certainly. Because you're going to be playing in spaces that aren't designed for playing games. A cocktail table, a lounge table in a hotel lobby, something like that. So, yeah, you want stuff with small footprints, which is one of the reasons why the wallet games work well or the Paco Games games work well. because they're designed to have a very small footprint. Yeah. But there's so many. We've already talked. I mean, so Allplay does a great job of it. Arcane Wonders does a great job of it. 25th Century, a lot of their smaller games don't take an oink. There's plenty of choices, I feel like, out there.

20:28There are. It's picking the... Having a deck of cards. You know, there's plenty of options. Uh, it's just finding the ones that, that bring you joy. I think that's real for me. That's really the trick. It's not what is the best one. It's what ones do you play that you really like? And so therefore you can teach and have enthusiasm. And then also if nobody else is feeling it, pick it up really quickly and move on.

21:00Tom Vasel:That's true. You have to always be able to bail. I mean, for me, what is it? But the – obviously Mountain Goats, but it only – it doesn't have the – like if you have a lot of people, that's a harder thing. So I think Bonanza is my oldest old school go-to. Oh. And Guillotine. But you can – how many people can you accommodate? But then they all – they're cards. So you can pick them up, put them away really fast, move on with your life.

21:27Eric Summerer:Also remember, every game you take, Eric, you have less room for souvenirs to bring back.

21:31Tom Vasel:That is true. And maybe that's a plus. to say at this point in our lives? Probably good. I don't know if we have room for that on the way back. Sorry we can't get that. You'll be fine. Trink it. Yeah, yeah, that's a good plan. Have you ever lost any games in these to-go bags? We sort of touched on that. They go in and they don't come out. Well, that's you. And have you forgotten where they were?

21:52Eric Summerer:To me, one of the comebacks is to open that up and put the games back where they go. But I will say, if you move stuff, particularly if you're like, I'm going to take the rules out and read them or put them in a different spot, which is why I'm not a big fan, again, of the quiver because it requires you to dismantle games often. And then I feel like it's easy to miss pieces when putting them back or put the wrong rules in the wrong box, which is the worst. Like, where are these rules? Well, I'm never going to find them, so let's just burn the whole collection down. We can't do anything about it.

22:25Tom Vasel:Well, the stuff that went in my quiver, the boxes are gone. They just live in the quiver. It wasn't a temporary living situation. That's where they go now.

22:35Eric Summerer:So how do you switch them out then, Eric?

22:37Tom Vasel:I can't. I have to buy another quiver.

22:39Eric Summerer:There was a design flaw. Wait a minute.

22:42Tom Vasel:At the time, I was trying to consolidate, and I was like, everything can go in this quiver.

22:45Eric Summerer:Well, to be fair, this is what we do for the Dice Tower. We have those card cases, and we put the games in them. And if I ever get rid of a game, I then have to sell it in a Ziploc bag.

22:56Tom Vasel:Right. We touched on this last time. You go to Michael's, you get yourself some photo boxes, you transfer them to the photo boxes at home.

23:04Eric Summerer:Yeah, but then it can go in and out of the quiver. Yep. I'm just saying, what if a new game comes out and you really want to put in a quiver? There's no space. What do you do?

23:13Tom Vasel:I need another quiver.

23:14Eric Summerer:No, that's not the solution. You're like the person who gets another storage unit. Don't.

23:21Tom Vasel:Help us help you. I realize mistakes were made. I don't have a solution right now.

23:27Eric Summerer:I'll tell you the solution here.

23:32Tom Vasel:So the thing is, the Quiver is a storage device for me. It's a storage container. It is not a travel bag because I've never taken it anywhere.

23:40Eric Summerer:Wait, what?

23:41Tom Vasel:That's the whole point of it. It really is. I know.

23:44Eric Summerer:You can buy a cardboard box to hold stuff.

23:48Tom Vasel:Yeah, but that doesn't look as nice.

23:50Eric Summerer:You can buy a nice cardboard box. You can wrap it up with wrapping paper. you can bedazzle it alright well folks

23:59Tom Vasel:this is a totally different thing as Eric needs help that's what we've learned today also while you're on your trip Eric

24:06Eric Summerer:tell us what games you bought

24:08Tom Vasel:yes I will there are game stores in Barcelona I've already found them in a google doc excellent and now another tale of board gaming horror oh my that's horrific Gather round, children. There's a local group of gamers I know through another hobby, and we've gamed a bunch of times. I have the largest collection of the group by far, so I usually end up bringing some games to play, though I strongly encourage playing games they own, which I don't own or haven't played. One evening, we were set to get together and play. One couple hosted, and we were to be five players in total. Then one half of the couple, we'll call him Todd, said he had a prior engagement and would not arrive home until 10 p.m.

25:02Tom Vasel:Our start time was 7 p.m., so we figured we'd play a four-player first, then a five-player later. First, we played Artistry, owned by the hosting couple. We had a great time, and when we finished up, we felt there wasn't enough time to start another game before Todd returned, so we hung out for a bit. Time passed, and after 10 p.m. we messaged Todd with no response. At 10.58 p.m., Todd walks in, and the loss of an hour was a bit irksome, as we could have played another game while we waited. I figured, no worries, we can still play Ra, the 25th century Pharaoh edition, since it's pretty quick and simple to teach.

25:43Tom Vasel:I was about three quarters of the way through the teach, something I enjoy doing, when I looked up at Todd and froze. He was in the process of opening a new bag of cheese puffs and started offering them to others at the table. I locked eyes with him and blurted out, dude, really? He asked, what was wrong? I said, are you really going to eat Cheetos right now when we're about to play? He responded with a, sure, why, what's the issue? I flat out said, those things are just as bad and messy as Doritos, so if you're going to eat those while we play a game, I'm just going to pack this up and we can play something else.

26:22Tom Vasel:I don't want that stuff getting all over my game. He seemed taken aback by this and asked if I was serious. I was. He agreed to wash his hands before he sat at the table. We played the game without any food-related incidents. However, I was the subject of a few jokes and jabs about being protective over my games. I left later on a bit upset about it all, since these are all seasoned gamers and absolutely should know better. It's never been an issue before, but the way they reacted made me think perhaps they feel I was overreacting. I didn't raise my voice at all, but I was firm in my tone. Am I the jerk here?

27:05Tom Vasel:I honestly don't think I am. I want to preserve the things I love and spend hard-earned money on, but who knows? Maybe I'm just too overprotective or something. thoughts

27:21Tom Vasel:I don't know whether I should laugh at that this seems more like a cry for help than a tale of horror an ask for validation

27:30Eric Summerer:a couple things here I mean before we get into what happened here I definitely think that you need to set some standards about the about the coming on time thing if Todd is I don't know if this is the only time that Todd has come late but I just say we're going to start a game at this time if you're not there I don't know what else we can do because if you make everyone else wait here Todd made everyone wait an hour right that's super rude and I would have just started a game and been like well you said 10 and you weren't here at 10 and you can't even be like I was at

28:07Tom Vasel:10.05 and also they were done at like 9 and they waited for Todd to arrive at 10 and then he didn't arrive. So they really lost like two hours.

28:16Eric Summerer:Yeah. And so, and again, I mean, not the end of the world, but that would be a one-time occurrence for me. I'd be like, well, next time we're starting games up, you come when you come. And I feel bad, but even at our game night, we start a game, someone shows up, and I'm not like, well, we have to restart. No, like, you're just going to have to hang out till more people show up or till we start the next game.

28:36Tom Vasel:Also, 10 p.m. arrival? What? Don't these people sleep?

28:40Eric Summerer:I was going to mention. I was like, he's like, well, we started a game at 1058. I'm like, wait, what? At 930, I'm like, well. It's time for everybody to go now. No more games. Look at that time. Right. I agree. There was a lot of. So what's interesting is clearly Todd is doing what Todd enjoys and not worrying about everybody else. So that's, you know, that's indicative of you do what you're comfortable with. I think for me, yes, I think that not wanting food on your games is completely understandable. But setting a boundary, how you set a boundary. So you said you didn't yell. But from the, now again, this is just what we've been given, saying, dude, really, as your start, and are you going to, is attacking.

29:39And attacking is still going to put somebody on the defensive, and then you're going to have bad feelings. Setting a boundary is, hey, I see that you're eating Cheetos, Doritos, some other food that's going to get smooch all over my, whatever it is. I am not comfortable playing my game and having people get food on it. So if you would like to eat that, I'm going to put this away and we can play something else. That is a non-confrontational way of saying the same thing, but setting a boundary that lets people know. So then it's, you know, it's on them to say, well, I don't want to, I'm going to keep eating.

30:17That's fine. And you just pack it up. It's not a big deal. Anything that sets up a, why are you doing that? is going to open the invitation to put somebody on the defensive. And then you get the other people jumping in and making jokes. Also, if they're staying up this late, I'm assuming they're younger.

30:38Tom Vasel:Maybe. They must be. And so maybe they're experienced gamers, but maybe not. You know, we're all old and grizzled and stuff. And we've had these, have dealt with these confrontations now, I think for some time and I think you just you just know like you're you can be super comfortable with the hey I I don't I don't want that with my game it's cool just I'm gonna pack it up yeah you do what you want and and not a big deal as someone who has the same issue here Todd with

31:13Eric Summerer:you as you with the the thing Todd says you know I didn't raise my voice but I was firm in my tone But I bet, because I'm the same way, that I feel I was nicer and people are like, you weren't. Fair enough. You know, you're like, I was just, you know, being firm and saying my opinion. People are like, you yelled at me. I'm like, I didn't yell. But depending on who you are, and I'm a big guy and people will be like, oh, you really, you know, you scared me a bit. I was like, what? I was just saying I didn't like it. So you have to take that into account. Now, I also, I think I wouldn't have made it a either or.

31:52Eric Summerer:I'd have been like, hey, you're going to eat those. Could you eat them over there away from the game while I'm setting up? And then, sorry, I wouldn't have said I'm putting the game away. I would have just been like, could we eat those and not have them around the game? I feel like that would have been, everyone's happy. Stand over there and eat the Cheetos. You could stand in the Cheeto quarantine zone. Right. And also, if everyone else is making a joke about it, I think at this point, You want to get in good with the group, you laugh about it and join in a bit.

32:20Tom Vasel:I think a little bit of self-effacingness can be helpful here. If you are setting these boundaries, you can be like, I know, I'm a little picky about the game. This is like a deluxe edition. I'm kind of picky about it. Is it possible for you to eat over there? Because I just don't want the Cheeto dust gets everywhere. That's funny. I don't do that. I don't do any of that at all. I'm very like I'm like look we don't have to play it I'm so happy to play somebody else's game and eat Doritos with you there and see how you feel at the end of it we can play also as a side note don't be

32:58Eric Summerer:eating cheese puffs at a board game thing come on I agree it's I feel like enough there are videos out there there's you know I'm starting to think though that the real culprit of board gaming isn't cheese puffs and Doritos and whatever because they're so obvious. I think it is grease. Grease is a thing people don't notice. And you won't notice it until later sometimes. You'll be like, wait, what's this on my board? Aw.

33:30Tom Vasel:Yeah, we were eating pizza and yeah. I know it's that card because there's a thumbprint smudge on the back of it.

33:38Eric Summerer:also uh everyone at the end of tonight we'll be taking fingerprints

33:45that'll go over well

33:48Tom Vasel:yeah that that's a good tone to set for everyone you you can join the group but you have to be cataloged first so i think the at the end of the day we don't think you're being overprotective we are suggesting you think about your approach in that kind of situation so that you're right ready for next time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

34:10Eric Summerer:Yeah, you don't want to end up with pristine games and nobody to play them with. Ooh. Very true.

34:17Tom Vasel:I like it. That was sage. That was very sage. We should move on before we mess up. That's a fortune cookie. It was.

34:27Tom Vasel:They say that every rose has its thorn. But not every rose has a hula hoop. All right. Who wants to go first talking about games? I do. Woo! Cool. Do it.

34:38Eric Summerer:All righty. So the first game I want to talk about is one I did not know much about. It showed up in the mail and it's called Bare Bones, which is kind of a weird name for a game. It's from West Coast Bias Games, which automatically I'm like, no, East Coast is better. But I don't even know it. Although now I live on the West Coast of Florida, so that could mean anything.

35:03Tom Vasel:Yeah, sure.

35:04Eric Summerer:But anyhow, this is a game that looks like, if you remember the old days, Eric, of going to a supermarket in the no frills aisle.

35:13Tom Vasel:Did you ever see one of those when you were a kid? Are these like the generic brands?

35:17Eric Summerer:Yeah. Well, it was before generic. You would go into the aisle and everything was just white labeled and it was just like corn. Whoa. And peas. So, yeah, this was a thing. And it was like, oh, this is where the cheap people shop. I knew that because we were in that aisle. Okay. Wow. But anyway, this game looks very much like that. It's called Bare Bones, and it shows seven dice on the cover, not even with pips on them. The game is a game that has a bunch of dice in it, and the dice have different numbers on them. So, for example, the blue die, the sides might be 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, something like that, while the black die is 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6.

36:02Eric Summerer:So each of these dice comes with some cards, and the cards show you the six faces of the dice. There's also a white die that has numbers on it that I believe go from two to five, like two, three, three, four, four, five. And they have a circle around them. And this matters. You get a deck of cards. So you'll get four white cards, I think, and three blue cards, and then you get a few other cards. You shuffle them together, and it's like a deck-building game. You draw five cards. And on each turn of the game, and there is a set number of terms, I want to say it's like 14 turns or something. You play all the cards from your hand.

36:35Eric Summerer:Each card that gives you a die, you take those dice and you will then roll those dice. The numbered dice is how many points you get. You marked it down on the score sheet. The white dice, because they have a circle around them, is money that you get that you can buy other cards with. And so just like a typical deck building game, there are action cards out there that you can buy to stick in your deck that might give you re-rolls. Or might say if you roll two of the same color, you can double those points or what have you. So that's the game. It really is a bare bones deck builder with dice. And I'm amused by it.

37:12Eric Summerer:It's a bit lucky, obviously, but there are ways to mitigate that with things. It does have a couple strange rules. One strange rule is if Eric on his turn plays two blue cards, for example, I give him two blue dice. exactly two no more no less then on my turn i can play a blue card for free and draw another card to take its place okay i don't i don't know the reasoning behind that rule like oh i saw eric buy a lot of blue cards i guess i'll buy one so that if he ever to place two and i have my hand free card but it just seems a little odd right it's just an odd rule another odd rule is all the action cards have dots, orange dots on them, one, two, or three orange dots on them.

37:58Eric Summerer:And the rule is you can play as many action cards in your turn as you want, but you can't play more than five dots worth.

38:04Tom Vasel:Ah, so the more powerful actions are more expensive? Sure, but it feels clunky, right?

38:11Eric Summerer:It just doesn't feel smooth that way that plays. but i still was amused by it uh this is a hula hoop for me i was uh i was interested in it i i bare bones sometimes is fine there's no theme there's no theme at all here just dice and cards but i like chucking dice and it's fun to be like oh i want to buy the green die because the green die has an automatic re-roll if you want or i want the red dice because it says if you have two or more red dice you get to draw a card and then you know i want to save enough money to get the black days because 555-666 is the best you can get for points.

38:48Tom Vasel:Yeah. Get points. Yeah.

38:51Eric Summerer:So it's an enjoyable game. It has some issues and stuff, but I liked it a lot. Neat.

38:58Tom Vasel:Bare bones.

38:59Eric Summerer:Now, on the flip side, Coming of Age is a game that I was looking forward to considerably because it's one of those themes that always attracts me in a game. This whole live your life. and coming of age is going from a child to an adult and you're like at the beginning you you like you need help from your parents but at the end your parents no longer help you which by the way is not true i just paid off a car bill for my adult anyway that's at the point

39:34Eric Summerer:um she was so sad she's like oh how was i supposed to know i was like i'll get you the money Anyway, so this is from Danny Garcia and Ludanova Games, and it was at Essen, but it sold out very quickly. Did you get a copy, Eric?

39:52Tom Vasel:I did. I got in line and got one of those copies, yes.

39:55Eric Summerer:Did you already review this on the show?

39:57Tom Vasel:I don't know if I've talked about it here, but yeah, I played it at E West just a few weeks ago. Taught it a lot, actually. But yes, continue.

40:07Eric Summerer:Well, then you can jump in here. So this game is a game about growing up from elementary school to high school, and it is a game in which you are placing workers, which are dice, and unfortunately, the game's rulebook is not particularly good. It's overly verbose. Sometimes that can hurt a rulebook, and I think it does in this case. Someone printed out on the internet, I want the board to get it. Here's a summary of what you can do, and I was like, holy cow, that's so much easier to understand. Also, the game really leans into the theme, which is both very good, but sometimes tricky because it's using these words for things.

40:47Eric Summerer:And you're like, wait, what?

40:48Tom Vasel:Yeah.

40:49Eric Summerer:How does that work? But I do love the theming of this game because at the beginning of the game, there's four locations you can go to school, your home, the pizzeria and the arcade, I think are the four spots you can go to. And then as you get older, more and more locations open up because you're allowed to go farther away from home. Well, it's obviously not set in the 80s because when you were eight, you could go – you have a 10-mile radius. Facts. So you go to these bots and then you will take actions and you become friends with other kids in the neighborhood or deepen your friendship with them, which basically means moving them down tracks to get points and things.

41:25Eric Summerer:And also your moods are going to be swinging up and back and forth. And you get more and more moods as time goes by. At the beginning of the game, you don't care about popularity. That's not a thing in elementary school. But when you get to high school, that's something that matters more. Or maybe it doesn't. You can go the other end of the track. You have frustrations you have to deal with and get rid of. And I'm talking a lot in terms of theme because I think the theme in this game is fantastic. I think it's a fun theme. The artwork is cool. Your board is a giant head. Everything is happening in your head space.

42:00Eric Summerer:You can become friends with other players. and the main reason you want to become friends with other players is because you can then mimic their personality traits. Eric's an optimist all the time. I hang out with Eric a lot, so I'm an optimist too. And I think all that stuff works good. Game-wise, it's also very good, although I will say the game where I said I become friends with Eric can copy his traits. That's the main way of player interaction. There's not a ton of player interaction other than that. you are just kind of doing your own thing, moving around the board, collecting cubes, moving up tracks, moving back and forth.

42:36Eric Summerer:There's a little bit of fiddliness to all the different pieces, and it's a bit cerebral because there is a ton of iconography. I think once you understand the iconography, get past the rules, there's a very deep, cool game in there. I don't believe I would play it with more than three, because I don't think the fourth player adds anything other than time it's also one of those kind of games where most of the actions are simultaneous so everyone's doing stuff at the same time but that also i don't know how you guys feel about that every once in a while i'm playing a simultaneous game with someone i'm like oh you're you're winning oh okay and i don't really know how you're winning or what you've done to win and i'm just assuming you've scored and done stuff correctly you know what i mean that happens in these simultaneous games sometimes and and you're not like accusing your friends of cheating or anything like that, but you're just like, I wish I knew.

43:28Tom Vasel:You don't have a sense of what they're doing. Yeah.

43:30Eric Summerer:Yeah. You could take turns doing stuff, but that would also dramatically lengthen the game. But to your point, there's so much iconography that it's not even necessarily an intentional cheating. It's also not being able to clarify, you know, whether you're doing this, doing things correctly or they are.

43:49Tom Vasel:Right. You can't catch any mistakes if everybody's doing the same thing. Correct.

43:54Eric Summerer:sure and also sometimes you're like okay i get two points here oh wait did i take those two points right i don't remember that happens a lot that being said i really like i think the production is great i think the the theme is really strong at least for me it was i read some people said there's no theme but i thought the theme really matched what you were doing and it's kind of like a nice engine builder of sorts. So other than the max of three people for me, I think, I thought it was a lot of fun. This is a rose for me. What did you think of it, Eric?

44:28Tom Vasel:So I was a little worried as you were leading in and giving a lot of positives, but hedging your bets. I'm glad you liked it. I agree that there are elements of this where the theme is really cool. I like where you can spend frustration to do things. You get these little tokens that are like this. I'm mad about this, but it allows me more flexibility on the board. But then I have to overcome that frustration by like sliding one of those sliders all the way to the right and then all the way to the left again to get points. And I can't spend more frustration until I've cleared that. So there's a lot of mechanical goings on in order to make these thematic elements work.

45:07Tom Vasel:But I do like the flow of it. I like the expansion of the board. I like how it becomes more complex as you go. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I'm glad I grabbed it. That's coming of age. Julie, we've been talking a lot. What have you been playing? Well, I'm sticking with my small portable games theme because I'm gearing up for a lot of heavier games in the next couple weeks. But I'm going to talk about games that I would still throw in my bag and bring out to play in small groups. The first one is Jewel Box. it was a game both of these were still from Dice Tower West when I played them so Jewel Box is from Lovemore Games which is a small new company it's for one to four players and it's very light it's very so it's it's one for bringing in people more of a gateway game Very simple.

46:09You are rolling a die and then you're collecting the beetle that is on the corresponding space. One through five, six is a wild. The beetles that are out, you're placing them randomly. And then there's six different suits or types of beetles and they score in different ways. The thing is, you're in front of you, you're building a 4x4 grid, and you must place each beetle orthogonal to a previously placed beetle, except for the first, of course. So that's it. That's the whole game. It's light. It's pretty. Thematically, apparently beetles are the new mushrooms. Because I've seen several now, but it's beautiful art.

46:58and then you have three tools that you can use. The magnifying glass lets you look at a face down one or take one of the ones from the board and the forceps let you swap two beetles already in your grid to maximize. Or if not, you gain points for those if you don't use them at the end of the game. And once everybody has their four by four grid, you score based on those six suits. It's clean, it's light. I was not at all looking for it, but walking through the vendor hall, the pretty, the pretty caught my eye. It's very pretty. But also playing it, it's like for, again, for a very light, bringing people in, playing it, it was fantastic.

47:48It's for one to four players, but there is a five and six player expansion as well. So that is Jewel Box. and the other one was what did i what did i write cinnabelle oh that's right uh which i played with tom and he did a lovely teach uh so that was it's a designed by elizabeth hargrave and has a funny enough uh very similar vibes but a little bit more uh complexity to the game you're walking along the beach and collecting seashells to put in your bag um your bag being the grid inside a board and how you're placing them again i believe there's six different suits yes the snails the echidnoderms bivalves seroths coquinas and shark's teeth and based on how you place them is how you score.

48:48But in that one, you're also walking along the beach. So it almost has a very long-term, what do I want to say? It reminded me of Craft Wagon, where you can jump ahead to get what you want because you know if you don't, somebody else might take the things that you want. But the further out you jump ahead, the longer it is until your turn because whoever is last in the line order is the person who plays next. So, you know, if you're really lucky, there's some very greedy people who want to jump ahead and get their thing, and then you get two turns in a row, potentially. But then you have to take whatever is left right now on the board.

49:33Every once in a while, a wave comes. I very much enjoyed making sound effects. I don't think Tom enjoyed it as much.

49:41Eric Summerer:No, no, no. I'm actually, I'm a big fan of that. the wave sound effects. Great. Yeah. Where more items wash up on the beach and that's how you replace in each of the different sections. As you get to like one end of the board and then you walk along the other end of the beach, there's also some other mechanics of placement. But that's it again. On the lighter side, excellent for welcoming people into the board game world and beautiful and fun and light and very delightful and we had great conversation while we were playing but there was also enough puzzling trying to fit things into your place that there's strategy and uh thematically very

50:32Tom Vasel:enjoyable so those were my two games yeah yeah uh where did sanibel fall on your rose thorn I'm assuming a rose. Oh, Sanabella was a rose. Yeah, yeah. For sure. I really like how each of the zones on the beach have multiple spaces. And not only can you jump ahead to claim something, but the farther forward you go, the more tiles you get to grab. And so you can choose to move ahead but only grab a couple of tiles and then be farther back in the turn order as people claim the farther forward spaces. Those are some interesting new choices that you don't usually see in these styles of games. Correct.

51:07Tom Vasel:Neat, neat. All right. So the first game I want to talk about is For Northwood with an exclamation point. This is a solo exact bid trick taking game.

51:21Eric Summerer:That's impossible.

51:22Tom Vasel:That's impossible. How could you do that? The theme is that you are trying to have conversations with various forest leaders. These are all adorable animals. The basic deck is one through eight in four suits. Those are the conversation cards. And then the face cards, but it's more than just Jack, Queen, King. There's actually a whole bunch in here, and they all have special abilities. There's a basic setup that you can do, but in the main game, you're going to get four of these rulers in front of you as helpers. And then others, eight of them, are going to be placed along the top of your play space on slots.

52:00Tom Vasel:And those slots have specific numbers on them. Zero through seven. That is the number of tricks you need to win in order to, or number, yeah, number of tricks you need to win. Or conversations, not conversations, points. Statements you need to win. This is one of those that has a bunch of names for what everything is, kind of like coming of age. But it kind of works here because you're having these conversations with these rulers. That is one interaction, multiple tricks that you're going to be doing. So you look at your hand. You will choose one of these rulers to interact with. And so you're saying, I'm going to win five tricks in this interaction.

52:38Tom Vasel:And then you flip up a card. That is the statement that the ruler has made to you. And you have to follow suit if you can. But if not, you can play anything you want. And the rulers have a suit as well. So you either make a better point, a higher number, in the lead suit and thereby win the trick. Or you change the subject to the subject that is the favored subject of the ruler, which is the trump suit, and make a point there, and you'll score that one. Or you just slough off a card, and you're not going to win that argument. And there are all of these rulers you have in front of you. You have four active.

53:14Tom Vasel:You can use before any one trick. You can activate one of these rulers, which has you swapping cards, drawing cards, doing manipulation. You can even move which ruler you're talking to with some of these. That was a fun one to play with. But you can trigger one of these before you see what the card is. But then once a card's flipped up, you have to interact with it. And you see if you get exactly the number. It's not just meet the bid. It's get exactly that number of tricks. So there are times that I've got my five tricks. Now I need to figure out how to get out and get rid of my cards. Because the round doesn't end until you are either out of cards or the deck is empty.

53:52Tom Vasel:And so there's manipulations. You can draw more cards with some of these abilities. You can swap stuff. You can get rid of all the cards in the ruler's suit with some of these abilities. But you have to trigger them in the right time and make sure that somebody runs out of cards when you have the exact number of tricks. And if you manage to get that, you can now use that ruler in future rounds as a one-time substitute ally. You get to use them for one round, and then they go away. And you'll score a certain number of points based on where they are in the line, and the goal is to reach a certain point threshold.

54:26Tom Vasel:There are scenarios in there. There's other ways to play, or you can just play randomly. I was surprised at how well it worked. It's an interesting puzzle. My only complaint is that often the rounds come down to the last card that gets flipped. And if you aren't able to manipulate into knowing that you're going to win or lose that trick, like maybe I know I only have a one in the non-Trump suit in my hand, so I know I'm going to lose this one. So that's good, if that's what I was going for. or I have a really good trump card in my hand, I should be able to win the next card. But if I'm anywhere in the middle, there's a big question mark as to whether I'm winning that next trick or not.

55:05Tom Vasel:And that's not good when you're trying to exact bid something. So it can get a little hairy at the end of rounds. But I do enjoy the puzzle, and I'm surprised that they were able to make a solo exact bid trick-taking game in For Northwood. This was a hula hoop for me. Huh. Yeah. And it's cute. It's adorable. And it comes in a tuck box that works. It's actually a slidable tuck box where the lid like lifts off vertically. So it feels solid. You don't have to split the cards into multiple piles. You just stick the whole thing in there. And it's like, it's better than a clamshell box. It slides together.

55:41Tom Vasel:I really like it. Okay.

55:43Eric Summerer:And they're plastic cards as well. I'm going to have to beat this at some point. It was good. Yeah. I'm going to have to play it. Same.

55:50Tom Vasel:Second is a game I got to try at Dicetower West. Capstone Games was showing this off. I don't think this is quite out yet, but it's very close. The game is called Rising Cultures. This is a two-player civilization game. It was published with another publisher at first, I think last year, and Capstone is bringing it over. Two players, you play a faction. So you have a specific faction deck that you'll be working with, with some special powers and stuff. So I think I was the Persians and my opponent was the Romans when we played this. You have a little player mat. The cards can be used in multiple ways.

56:28Tom Vasel:Lots of ways. I think they have like little icons. You can turn them on. You can flip them upside down. They have different icons. They can be used as a building, but you're going to have to pay resources for that building. They can be used as resources. They have icons at the top. You can sort of slot that in and you'll have access to those resources for future building opportunities. opportunities. You can use it as a civilization. There's an icon on, I think, the right side of the card, and it docks onto the left side of your card. So icons sort of line up and get you some powers for upgrading your civilization.

57:02Tom Vasel:You can also use it as military. You flip the thing over, and it's got a military icon, and it docks onto the right side of your board. So each round of the game, you're going to have four cards in your hand, and you're going to get to interact with three of them. So you can do any of those things. It's a little Seven Wonders-like. What do you do with these cards? It can be used in lots of different ways. And so I might dock the first card as resources, and then it's my opponent's turn. And then I will build this building because I have enough resources to build it. So I put that up there. That gives me some sort of bonuses or scoring opportunities.

57:36Tom Vasel:And then the third one I'm going to use as a military because we're fighting over some provinces over on the side of the board. And then the last card gets put on the bottom of my deck. And I might see it by the end of the game, maybe not. And then we fight over the provinces. They're looking for a certain number of sword icons or shield icons, and somebody wins that province, but they have to discard a military card. If every time I build a building, I have an opportunity to dock, take one of my resource cards and turn it into a civilization upgrade card, which gets me more abilities and maybe lets me flip my board over and offer more powers and stuff and make things better.

58:15Tom Vasel:And then you work your way through multiple rounds of play. It's like seven, six or seven rounds, which has you working most of the way through it. Seven rounds. And has you working most of the way through the deck. Tom's like, get over with. I'm ready. I did enjoy this game. This was a rose for me. This does a lot of the things I enjoy about games. It's that engine building, tough decisions about what to do with your cards. The one restriction is that you've got this faction, and so you have a strength for that faction, and you sort of need to play toward that strength of the faction, because your opponent is going to be doing the strength of their faction.

58:52Tom Vasel:But if you want to try and stop them being strong, like the Romans were really good at military, if I wanted to win anything in military, I had to push really hard, because it was easy for the Roman player to do so. So I have to make that decision of do I push really hard against what my strength is in order to rob the other player of points? But it is a two-player game, so maybe robbing them of a couple of provinces over the course of the game is a good idea and prevents them from running away with it. I liked the choices. Would enjoy trying out more factions in rising cultures.

59:28Eric Summerer:Yeah, I don't actually have a strong opinion on this game yet. I've only played it once. and I feel like once is not enough to even get a grasp on this because the game has a lot of iconography that, I mean, every card you have, you have your own reference guide for all your stuff and that's fine but you also don't know what your opponent has. Right. And you kind of need to know what's in your deck. So, for example, I was playing the Persians and I got to an ability. I'm like, I can play as many leaders as I want. Or one of each color anyway. Yeah, one of each color. That's awesome. But I had already used all my leaders for other things.

1:00:08Eric Summerer:Yeah, or they're on the bottom of your deck. So, I mean, knowing that I think I would like to go back in and play it again, I wasn't overly wowed by it, but I didn't dislike it either. I think it's one of those games definitely you need to know more. Yeah, sort of, right? it's interesting, which is, I know Eric Summer has trademarked that word.

1:00:33Tom Vasel:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll send you a bill later. I don't know. You mentioned that summary card. Each faction has that, and it's almost like it opens up, and you can see every card you've got and explains everything that those cards can do for your faction specifically. But you're right. It doesn't tell you what the other player can do.

1:00:52Eric Summerer:Well, and not to mention, you literally You won't really need that. You won't have – and in fact, I think there's even a rule on that sheet that I didn't find in the rule book, which drove me nuts. I forget what the rule was, but there was some rule that was there. Oh, how to upgrade to the golden age.

1:01:10Tom Vasel:Ah, yes.

1:01:11Eric Summerer:I did not find that in the rule book, but it was on that sheet. So it's interesting. I don't know, man. I think it's one, though, that if you're better at it, you'll like it more.

1:01:24Tom Vasel:Sure. Okay. You got to get good.

1:01:26Eric Summerer:Well, not every game is like that. I mean, there's many games I've played. I'm like, ooh, I can't wait to see more. This one's like, I feel like I have to see more. Yeah. And play the different, especially, I've only played the two base factions. I know that the Egyptians had this whole Nile River thing. And there's a lot more going on. So, we'll see.

1:01:47Tom Vasel:It's worth exploring, I think.

1:01:48Eric Summerer:Well, that is it, folks. Game talk to end the episode. Eric's about to go on a trip. Woo! The rest of us are not. Well, I'm sure there's trips coming up. I got a graduation on my horizon I got to go to. Me too. Nice. So, that's true. I'm going to be starting a new job. Yeah!

1:02:06Tom Vasel:All sorts of new horizons.

1:02:09Eric Summerer:Well, folks, until next time, I'm Tom Vassel. I'm Julie Ahern.

1:02:14Tom Vasel:And I'm Eric Sommerer. And we'll see you on our next show. Thanks for listening. at the table is produced by Tom, Julie, and Eric with assistance from the team at Dicetower Studios. You can find us online on Facebook or on BoardGameGeek in the Dicetower Guild. 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 mild disappointment at unsubstantiated claims that Taylor Swift wore a mink coat brought to you by Darn Taze in Fur, no? Until next time, from all of us at the table, have fun gaming.

1:02:53Eric Summerer:Do you sleep at night? Like when you do these puns? Do you not feel like some guilt in your soul?

1:02:58Tom Vasel:I sleep like a baby. You know what would help if you don't, though, is some nice, you know, sounds of waves. Yes. In the ocean. What was the sound you made, Julie? All right. I like it. I like it. Very subtle. Yep.