Tom Vasel, Zee Garcia, and Mike DiLisio take a look at their top 10 games that they love, cherish, and happily teach to folks but which have absolutely bombed at some tables. Why would they go over so poorly? Surely Mike can’t be that bad of a game teacher. Surely Zee’s beard wasn’t too distracting. Surely Tom’s bright clothing didn’t blind the other players at the table so they couldn’t plan moves properly. What could cause these games to go over so poorly? Let’s find out!
Intro – 00:00
Mike 10 – 5:06
Zee 10 – 8:15
Tom 10 – 11:18
Mike 9 – 14:56
Zee 9 – 19:16
Tom 9 – 21:36
Mike 8 – 23:44
Zee 8 – 26:45
Tom 8 – 29:23
Mike 7 – 31:38
Zee 7 – 34:32
Tom 7 – 37:27
Mike 6 – 39:56
Zee 6 – 43:38
Tom 6 – 46:45
Mike 5 – 49:00
Zee 5 – 53:38
Tom 5 – 56:10
Mike 4 – 58:24
Zee 4 – 1:01:14
Tom 4 – 1:03:51
Mike 3 – 1:07:29
Zee 3 – 1:10:29
Tom 3 – 1:12:57
Mike 2 – 1:15:41
Zee 2 – 1:19:19
Tom 2 – 1:21:51
Mike 1 – 1:24:17
Zee 1 – 1:29:22
Tom1 – 1:32:21
Outro – 1:36:12
Support The Dice Tower at http://www.dicetowerkickstarter.com
Support the channel by becoming a member!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiwBbXQlljGjKtKhcdMliRA/join
Subscribe to our newsletter, “The Dice Tower Digest”: http://dicetowerdigest.com
Buy great games at http://www.GameNerdz.com
Check out the friendliest conventions on Earth!
Dice Tower Cruise – http://www.dicetowercruise.com (January 15-21, 2023)
Dice Tower West – http://www.dicetowerwest.com (March 8 – 12, 2023)
Dice Tower East – http://www.dicetowereast.com (July 5-9, 2023)
Find more reviews and videos at http://www.dicetower.com
Get a great game table here! https://www.rathskellers.com/
BGG Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/37589/tom-vasel
source
@10:47 regarding handicaps and deduction games, The Search for Planet X has a great way of building handicaps smoothly into the game setup with letting players choose how many starting clues everyone will get. The app helps a bunch with this, of course.
Had so much fun watching this list, thanx guys 🙌🏽
I miss the old countdown.
What is "mooning"?
Never heard this term.
Can NOT take 90 minutes of Tom. Bailing now.
40:33 I totally agree! That is exactly why I despise that game. It was the game which made me realize that I do not like multiplayer (more than 2 player) games which are so tactical that you CANNOT plan for your turn in any way.
49:50 That happened in a game which I had played once, called Tortuga 1667. The neutral Dutch player realized he couldn’t win, so he decided to randomly help one of the other sides (in a meta-way in no way related to the game). I was on the French side, but the British were winning. However, the Dutch layer decided to help us (the French) – and as a result, the French ended up winning – purely because of the assist from the Dutch player!
This list reminds me of me playing Caverna with my mother on Christmas(my brother got it and we were very eager to play it, so we asked her if maaaaybe she want to play with us). It ended up very badly, she was asking me every friggin turn 'what she should do'. Like every turn. My brother went berserk after couple of rounds… 😂😂😂
53:47 What?! I thought you liked that game, Zee!
Mike's story and rationale for his #2 is exactly my experience for Everdell!
1:01:34 Well, for me, it is because the one time I played that game (Citadels) it took like an hour when we expected it to take 20 minutes. That is my story of that game.
Great list. Ostensibly a list of games, but actually a list of experiences. This felt less mechanical than other lists and more like friends hanging at a pub.
It's funny, my favourite Nemesis experience was the time I spent time teaching a group of friends how to play and how to die, only to spawn the Queen turn 1 and die before the end of the first round, leaving me to sit and watch for the next three hours. It was amazingly hilarious.
This is one of the best Dice Tower episodes ever. We’ve all had these experiences and it’s great to see the guys talk about them. When good games fall flat, you are not alone! It happens!
The "can't lie" people like "Doug" (Mr. H) drive me crazy. To me it's no different than the kid Zee described who intentionally broke the game by making irrational decisions, only they then try to justify it by hiding behind a phony virtue. "I can't help but to break the game with my unflinching moral veracity!"
Alpha gamers wil ruin every co-op "game" because they are simply puzzles at the end of the day and the worst experience you can give to new players. I only play Pandemic with the bio-terrorist.
“I was mooned during the game”, I did not see that coming! 🤣
The table flip, full moon story…I laughed out loud. Thanks for sharing your game experiences. I can relate so well to many of the game flattening moments. I stopped watching a particular channel after MANY attempts to watch game play because of agonizing internal dialog being expressed vocally. When people want to watch a game played, most people don't want to hear every thought you have on what your next move will be.
Mike, I had a similar experience with another Stonemaier game, also unintentionally. My 2nd ever playthrough of Viticulture was with with…Doug…and it went well. My 2nd, his 1st play. We both left feeling awesome.
6 months later we played again. I had played 10+ times in that span and Doug 0. Lol, you don't realize how much fine-tuning the engine happens in Viticuture until you look up and see a path to victory in a couple of turns and they are still trying to make their first wine.
It was so bad. I started playing bad of purpose, but once you get the engine turning in Viticulture it's hard to subtly self sabotage.
Ah, Citadels. I love Citadels and will still play it whenever, but one mean and lucky player can make it painful. I had taught it to my sons and the "Nicer" one (yes, I rank my children in various categories) grabs Assassin on 5 straight turns and names my character on all 5 turns, even when I started taking ones that really didn't help me just to try to play. If he's playing, I'm subbing in one of the expansion cards!
Mile is absolutely correct, you can get really good at Scythe. I have played a lot online. Also the game is way imbalanced. When you can close out a base game in 12 turns with the right combo, you have to go go bidding coins or only allow certain combos to play against each other.
Okay, so I'll tell my Werewolf story too (One Night Ultimate, actually). Same players as Citadels in the first attempt and this time the "Nicer" son decides he can't tell a lie, so he tanks the game quickly. Then we got him on board and tried to teach it to the older brother's girlfriend. After the night phase she immediately says, "I'm the werewolf," very proud that she "caught the werewolf". I KNOW we explained the game well enough, but I did not count on her level of lack of attention to our teaching. My older son and I decided we just can't play this game at our house and moved on.
I could probably spend all day on other bad game stories, but I'll leave it at those two.
holy cow the moon story was so funny. Glad it taught Tom to not be so anal….!
Game of Thrones for me. Joined an experienced group of friends, and as soon as we started the game the two players closest to me left the table and basically discussed how they were going to take me out of the game. I actually like the game.
Completely agree with Warhammer, though I'm an AoS player, not 40k. I try not to get angry at games anymore but AoS, at its worst, makes me so angry, mostly at the dice haha. Love the big bombastic feeling of it and the asymmetry and the building and painting of the minis and army customization…. hate how random it can be!
I would suggest …The Crew….this was attempted to be played in a games group I attended. I said I wasnt keen on playing it because I had played online before and got abuse from more experienced players and I think it is VERY group dependant. The host ignored my concerns and the game proceeded a bit then just fizzled out after 2 rounds. I think the host simply didnt like playing with newcomers and EVERY other person was new or new-ish to the game and didnt really grasp the game at all. Ironically it was down to the group not gel-ing and not me. I honestly think most games need to be played 3 or 4 times simply to grasp the rules and have an idea on tactics
Mike's 10 reminds me of the only time I played Yamatai XD
For Mike's #4 – Photosynthesis, in other words, "Don't be a treehole"
The sourpuss that wasn't enjoying Dead of Winter…you should have just exiled that player and they would have a new objective.
Star realms
One deck dungeon
Binding of issac for souls
Mtg commander
Catan
Hive
And im sure others
One game that recently soured on me on its own was Talisman Batman. The characters are too similar and sometimes its too difficult to make it to the second level.
My spouse is a teacher, and has freely admitted to me a few times that teachers are usually TERRIBLE students. Fortunately we still find plenty of games to play, but I do often have to check that she's not accidentally cheating by misinterpreting a rule somewhere.
In Nemesis, so what if you pull the queen as the first alien? You can easily run away and there is a chance she will run away through the event phase movement later on.. It's not a big deal, and certainly not a game ending event xD
I definitely blame Zee's luscious beard… mere mortals cannot help but be blinded by such earth-shatteringly beautiful face foliage.
This made me smile and laugh so much my face hurt!
Spot on Rhado impressions, that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t watched a video of his in 3 years.
Oh god, Zendo…
I haven’t had the issues mentioned, but I had one player who, when it was her turn to be the moderator, could get her head around how to disprove a guess. She kept making things which didn’t follow her rule and didn’t follow the guess, which doesn’t disprove anything. She refused to ever play the game again.
The next time I played with a different group, I had one player not want to be the moderator, and I was totally fine with that. Lesson learned by me there.
Marvel United for us. There are a couple of villains in the Kickstarter box (Rhino, Mojo) who aren’t really balanced that well, which means it’s possible for each of the players to only get one or two turns at most and then everyone loses. Having Rhino just pummel the team from location to location is more like the game is playing us then we are playing the game. CMON even created a rule in hindsight to “help” balance Rhino, but he’s still nearly impossible. I think games where irs possible for everyone to lose before the first turn is over are pretty much broken. Marvel United is a great game, but it has the potential to bomb big time.