Quinns and Tom Vasel Decide Who is More Wrong - AwSHUX Presents

hello everybody and welcome my name is quinn's i'm quentin smith from shut up sit down and i am joined by none other than mr tom vassell of the dice tower tom it is an enormous honor thank you so much for joining us i'm glad to be here i'm from the home studio since the uh power went out at the main dice tower studio uh but we resisted your virtual attack and this is our backup plan i was gonna say so the storm that i sent to derail this panel didn't work that's what i'm hearing from you it came close to okay so um tom and i have been talking about this and i'm i'm so uh i really owe tom one for uh for joining us because i published an article uh about basically if you missed it i was sent um some data analysis by a fan of the dice tower who oh yeah by accident it was honestly like this poor person has caused so much drama on the internet but supposedly by accident he accidentally compared tom and my bgg rankings to find out um which of us like where we deviate the most and that's fine but you know bgg rankings like we might have made those rankings a long time ago we might have you know not we might not feel the same way um so what tom and i did before this call is we thought well let's do this properly let's sit down and have a brief meeting to discuss some areas where we think we actually definitely disagree with each other the most so what we've got for this panel for probably about the next hour or a little under uh tom and i are going to be taking turns going back and forth each of us have brought five things that we want to talk to the other person about um tom how are you feeling at the minute today and i don't have live stuff going on tomorrow so i'm great i am uh yeah i i've just i've allowed i'm i told myself i'm not going to drink during this show because the last thing i would want is to embarrass myself uh in front of i should say the person who um honestly shut up and sit down i'm not sure would exist without the dice tower um when i first started getting back into board games when i was 22 or 23 it was watching your videos and listening to the dystop podcast that really kind of ignited my passion helped me to find games and in fact the whole first year of shut up and sit down um i think we were pretty much just playing stuff that you told us to so i just wanted to thank you and um on behalf of me back for that you know though you got flag no flack four people said when i i started the hobby i played everything that you said was good tom and then as time went by i realized more and more how wrong you were well just to tease uh because we took our cues from you for a long time and we agreed for a while that cosmic encounter was the greatest board game ever made five or six years of shut up sit down top hundred lists were where we would always say cosmic counter is the best game i have finally now sort of like grown up and left your metaphorical house to the point that cosmic encounter is now my third favorite board game i believe it's my number three at this point too what no i'm trying to i'm trying to distinguish myself here and that's the problem that we had when we were actually getting together to talk about this unfortunately we're more like than i would prefer yes yes uh but nonetheless we uh have discovered uh no less than five things each that we definitely do disagree on so uh without further ado or further flattery although i will thank you one more time for uh number two sorry so you're one off okay what do you want to do you want to tell the good people what your number one is and not keep them in suspense as of january because it might change but lahav really the hop is an amazingly it's an elegant game of i don't know it's sheer joy but don't worry juve rosenberg's making another version in five days it's called something something something and it's about something something farming and it's just like all those other games oh sure right right yes uh is that the brewery one that uh i can't believe it lahav wow this is wild i would tell the people what my uh they know that my number one is blood on the clock tower and without luck they'll be able to play that oh i only picked published games okay yeah well okay fine in which case we're playing with that rule my number one game not cosmic is something we will be talking about later in this very panel uh so that's not in the clock tower um so shall we get this show on the road what do you think all right all right all right i'm ready okay hello everybody glad you're here and wasting your fridays but i've seen what's available on netflix and you're in a good space i'm like it's i think you're at least wasting your friday afternoon i'm wasting my friday night so this is that's true it's worse for you it's significantly more tragic yes and with that we will begin with uh i would like to first off number five on my list i would like to pick your brain about a little game i need to check oh no this is so i'd literally just okay yes a little game called ladies and gentlemen okay so let me give the little preamble on this first um i today just to head off whatever whatever you're about to say tom i don't think ladies and gentlemen is a great game i don't but i will stand by uh a few things we said at the time i think this is a high quality well no i think this is an interesting team game and those are two things that i don't think the board game industry has enough of i don't think it frankly has enough games that i think are genuinely different or interesting because if it did then my job would be a lot easier and we wouldn't be playing stuff that felt like other things all the time um so it's interesting and two i don't think the board game scene has enough team games and with that i will just leave that and ask you what do you think of ladies and gentlemen this is like one of the first times i watched one of your reviews and thought did they play the same game um i'm not normally one to pick on theming in games this one felt more misogynistic than normal and and normally i'm told that i'm blinder to that sort of thing and when i played this i thought i like teen games but i don't know that i like a team game where one person kind of yells at the other person yeah i it felt odd to me and it felt i don't know yeah your review kind of brought me around a little bit and then i thought about it and then i realized that was right but um should we uh should we mention um for people who haven't played this game because it was not enormously popular at the time it's definitely is yeah exactly no way it's in print now you'd be lucky to even find a secondhand coffee maybe but it it's a team game where half of the table represent the oh this is going to sound super misogynistic when i describe it but this is your court okay just remember i know i know well look i don't even i think all i'll say is i think this is better than you and i've already said why and now i'm just digging myself a hole basically this is a game where one half of each team represents the husband who plays by all accounts a pretty poor quality real-time stock acquisition game which is just grabbing tiles but you make money and then you have to give that money to your spouse who is the other member of your team and they play this kind of action selection game to go to shops to buy costumes because there's a ball coming up in seven days and at the end of six rounds you go to the ball whichever woman has the nicer costume uh wins the game for their team now what i describe probably definitely sounds misogynistic but what we said in the piece i've realized now for my opening gambit for this panel i'm just already defending myself i'm already on the back foot this is horrible i'm going to be moving us on as fast as possible basically for us we felt at the time that it wasn't misogynistic because it was skewering these gender roles it was forcing players to inhabit very toxic roles um very toxic traditional victorian gender roles um in a way that didn't flatter them necessarily like the men in the game we thought were kind of like groveling and nervous as they had money hoovered out by their wife and the wives only cared about you know they didn't care how much money the husband actually had because that money was used by the husband to reinvest in their game they just knew they needed a dress today i i just i remember laughing a lot and i don't think that it was presenting these gender roles as like who you should how anyone should act it was just trying to be silly agree and in fact i remember the first time i played this i said i'm gonna play the female side of things you know just because i want to and then i played it and i was really uncomfortable because i thought i could lean into this but how do i do so without being rude to women in general and i think that just threw me and then when i took all that away the game sucks [Laughter] it's look here's what i'm gonna say tom two bad halves of a game sometimes make an interesting experience i mean look at i was i almost said look at root there but that would be rude um but i do think that some simple low lower quality games can come together in a kind of weird asymmetric let's move on let's move on i don't basically sure i think so so we talked about misogyny let's do avarice now okay okay great so we'll jump to the the city of joy las vegas um which is also a game and this one there's actually several games with this title but this is the uh kenitsia one i believe isn't that who designed it i i think no way it's not stefan dorn i believe you know what maybe i'm just making it up let's i i will find out for sure because yeah that that was my first choice as well now this is one actually that i initially thought was okay partially because it was nominated for the spieler's yards partially because you know whenever i hear something's amazing and then i play it and i was like wow this is too simple but the more i played it the more i realized this gave me the thrill of gambling without the sadness of losing all your money and having your wife leave you over it which i think she would be more inclined to do instead of the game of ladies and gentlemen but maybe we could play these back to back i could play las vegas and then go to my wife and say i don't have any money i think that las vegas so las vegas we skewered on the site and it's quite a well-liked game and it's certainly just been republished right so i think where yes in a deluxe version yeah yes which i think i actually did quite want i looked at it and thought it looked a bit sexy but uh i can't it's not okay cool um so this is a very straightforward very simple dice game and i'm definitely and what you're saying here is that this is good and you found it rated on my bgg ratings very very low and we skewered it in our review um here's the thing tom i'm immediately gonna throw my hands up in the air and say you're right and i'm wrong on this because since we published that review in 2012 i think it's probably fair to say that a lot of people when they start their board game careers they um they want big stuff complicated stuff heavy stuff they're blown away by all the things you can do in board games um but eventually when you sort of mellow out a bit you realize that simple games straightforward and card and dice games even trick-taking games that kind of thing um can be yeah i don't know absolutely thrilling and i think the sheer simplicity of las vegas turned me off in a way that was not fair to the game is this an apology video because i'm starting to feel like we're basically i am gonna i'm hoping that i'm going to play harder ball later um because currently or let's just say i'm giving you these points because my article didn't give you the opportunity to reply initially and so now i'm seeding some ground and being like you know what las vegas you wrote an article i'll have to read that later you know what you should but you shouldn't read the comments or uh any of the social media around it that would be my advice uh sorry about that um let's move on no no no don't just uh just you know what just skip the whole thing let's okay okay let's move on to something you and i wait no i was gonna say agree on but this this is it's not that long video okay my next game is ticket to ride and here's where here's where i think you're wrong tom where i think you're wrong is that ticket to ride is a g i think tickets are as a good game that's the end of that sentence how good a game do you think ticket ride is i think ticket to ride is one of the greatest games designed in the last 50 years yeah so we're close [Laughter] okay um here's my problem with tickets to write i can't argue with its success i think it's beautifully simple well i'm not ever going to use success as a barometer of good okay this is just something happily so you given all of the games that exist in the world an evening spent with ticket to ride you would be like that's swell that's that's a great evening well i'm never evening with any game is not good let me look at my list here i believe i have this as 28 best game of all time well as of january of course things will change but i sometimes you need a comfort food and you know for a lot of people that's been some sort of card game whether it be bridge or hearts or things that's been that way ticket to ride is essentially rummy fleshed out into a board game yeah and i like it because it works there's there's three reasons i think one is that newcomers are really really enamored by it and i and two i think on a high level it works well and if you don't believe me i'll whoop you at it three my wife and i have had such a good time with it and it's hard and that's a good argument for me to make because it's hard for you to argue against the joy and nostalgia of my marriage and wonderfulness i wouldn't dream of arguing uh that your marriage is anything other than blissful time what i would say is wouldn't those evenings with your wife be better if you rather if you wanted to just play that relaxing card because like i i get it and i was with you and still kind of am but if you want to have that evening where you just sit down with someone and and play cards wouldn't it be better if you and your wife could sit closer because there wasn't a huge board full of plastic trains in between you wouldn't you rather play one of the world's best card games as opposed to a solid card game with just this big distracting thing oh well that's because while it's relaxing we also need some space in between us because the knives come out okay okay ticket to ride is both peaceful and i will stab you if you put your trains there one more time tickets i think ticket to ride's too mean to be that relaxing i find ticket to ride quite stressful if i'm we have a tumultuous relationship okay perfect uh on that we we get along swimmingly and that's because ticket to ride is where we take it out wow i think what i'm discovering is you use board games to work out your threshing whereas i use board games as a romantic kind of aid to get me closer to my partner now now i don't even know what that means okay well in fact i'm always amazed when i read on the internet people said we invited this couple over and they were helping each other in the board game and i'm confused because i was under the impression that spouses were supposed to just ruthlessly attack their spouse at everything right right like if oh god i yeah no the the my wife and i are the most well i'm not going to win but i will absolutely take you down with me can you imagine helping your spouse in a board game no i saved that for real life okay do you want to move on to your i feel like i'm really getting close to the cliff here so all right my number four is uh arcadia quest now i here we go i know i already know where you're gonna go with this you're gonna say take the miniatures away there's no game and i feel like there is a little bit of truth to that okay to say that miniatures don't add anything to a game is being dis disingenuous because aesthetics certainly help a game i like this game anyway i'm not a big fan of chibis i'm still confused how a head can be one third of a body mass it confuses me every time i look at them and then people say they're cute and i just think if i saw that in real life it'd be grotesque and probably it'd be terrifying can you imagine yeah so and i would feel really bad for the person but they're like cute anyhow they would be dragging their head behind their body you know because they couldn't so they'd be walking but the head would be being dragged it would be distressing for everything many many heart attacks but i like this game because of the interaction between the players it's there's a lot of dungeon crawlers out there there's a lot of games you stab other people this seems to bring out such a balance between each i can tell stories and stories of this game i i remember rodney smith stabbing me in the back in this game the nice randy smith from watch it played who everyone likes and is just dead wrong on he's an evil man um and i remember when that happened and that was a great time and i remember each of these games i remember playing with my daughter and just having this back and forth interaction and this game evokes a story in me the miniatures certainly helped that uh and it has fun chucking of dice but it also has some interesting decisions to make yeah i guess i i i'm gonna use my family i think in every things to to to defang you i mean yeah i just it's not going to be totally successful because what i'd say is like yeah okay i'm sure there are at some point in arcadia quest interesting decisions i'll be honest i kind of want interesting decisions that's like the baseline for what i want pretty much every single turn from a board game if i start my turn and there is not an interesting decision to be had which i do remember because i only played this game once easily in like 2013 or something or 2014 or i played several games a bit of an evening and i just remember so many turns which were that kind of the scenario had forced me to be like well there's only one thing i can do in this circumstance move forward and hit a monster and this is really testing my memory because it was a long long time ago but i i don't remember being faced with it with choices and with puzzles i just remember the game kind of happening to me does this sound familiar sure um that's new new players will often think that um but once you get better oh is that better okay okay i'm just not good enough i i didn't realize that was an argument we could use i'm going to use it uh immediately now in my next game which is flam rouge okay now right i've been i've been being polite up to this point but listen flam rouge which if you're not aware is a race game designed by azkaba krannert which is a name i still can't pronounce despite practicing for literally 15 minutes um at a convention in denmark a couple of years ago flame roots is a simple card game with uh rate with a board basically similar to ticket to ride it's primarily a card game um but now i think and working in tom's favor here is most of the internet i believe agree that flam route is good not great um but ev but team shut up it's down believe it's i think it's our favorite race game full stop i think it's in my personal top 10 games ever made i think for me it's like ticket to ride is to you where it's just the flow of it feels magnificent i love every turn in flam rouge and i find it so exciting when it's so simple and it's one of those family games that i can teach anybody and still have a great time talk to me tom what what's wrong with flam rouge well i'm just gonna look on my top numbered list here to see where it was but we only have an hour so now time to scroll down that far but um now this is one that i am willing to concede that it's me uh which hopefully bonogor doesn't hear uh when i played it i said you're just switching positions which i do realize is pretty much all any race is and this abstracts it out more blatantly than other ones do i think for a racing game i need a bit of a thrill this doesn't have the thrill for me uh and yes that throw could be rolling dice flipping a card whatever it might be top racing game really okay here tom listen listen here's what it is um people don't realize this about flam rouge but you we have been lucky enough to play with the designer which allowed us to confirm our theories it is so much meaner than you think it is because the penalties for screwing up in flam rouge which is you know taking an exhaustion card into your deck or slip streaming so everyone else behind you gets pulled up one space and gets a free move basically but the game is so tightly balanced that you wouldn't notice it unless you're really looking for it but whether you have enough cards in your deck to push you over the line before or after someone else one two or three spaces that you've given up or taken during the race will make the difference between you coming first or fourth or fifth and as soon as you know that or if i don't know for me i guess i was just intelligent enough to notice it like immediately um the whole game from turn one is tense and terrifying because you're right you are using the same argument i did in arcadia quest just sneaking it in there but seriously it every time the flam roost is tense for me because if i lose or gain one space that brings the the end that much closer or further away to me and i'll just continue rambling for one more thing there was a weather expansion for flam rouge which i was disappointed by when i first read by read about it because it's its effect on the race is so minimal but when i actually played with it and there was like there was some rain that was like halfway through the race which meant we all wanted to get into the rain first because you can fall over but what that meant is that having rain on one tile of like a 14 tile race meant we were all playing differently from the beginning because that was like a checkpoint that we all knew we wanted to be at the front of the pack for so one tiny tweak can change the play of the whole thing reminds me of like trick taking games or something where it's just sort of okay only actually in the if you it seems so minimal that the game just almost doesn't exist but if you kind of congrac the strategy of if you can grok how finely balanced it is you realize that the decisions are a lot more interesting than they seem you can see this it's been a while since i've played it i would say i would try it again but we all know that that's probably not true with the many games that are out in the market but you never know that's the really sad thing about this list is you know given infinite time you and i would be able to go back and uh play these things that one another big up i definitely am going to find the time to play las vegas again because this is what i recommend if all publishers could stop making games for two years we could all catch up and get of course then we would probably both be out of jobs i have a better idea what if there was a year where the publishers kept making games but where you and i really struggled to meet up with people and play them how would that year go oh wait that's did you say this earlier this year because if so i have a problem should we move on to your next yeah all right okay oh all right here we go let me let me bring the people in here [Laughter] how dare you um wingspan wingspan the game that shook the world that told people zombies and trading in the mediterranean were not the most important things that we can look at the beauty of birds and build an engine and take a female designer to the top spot of not just board game geek but every convention um yeah i don't know what else to say oh if your dog could uh my dog's with me if your dog could come into frame i don't know if uh if that can happen but i think that would twitch maybe i'll bring her i don't know she disappeared i keep telling my daughter to come in and get the dog oh okay okay the dog loves me for some reason okay wingspan uh the fact that uh what was it two years ago or whatever um the fact that the board game geek hotness was filled with this beautiful game uh female designer about birds was amazing it continues to be amazing it's it's like it's such a restorative moment that like really it didn't i think it made a lot of people in the board game industry feel proud of the industry again you know like there's there can be so much toxicity and so much unpleasant masculinity and and like uh men's like boys club be-ness of the industry so it was just it was exactly what we needed and i i'm sure elizabeth hargrave is awesome uh i think mariposa is with matt at the minute so i'm excited to see what her next game is like none of this means i have to enjoy wingspan it is required there is a there's a checklist behind the scenes for all board game personalities i mean it feels that way a little bit like i honestly feel guilty that like i especially because never mind the fact that i want more women designers in the industry i love birds you know people know this but my stag party before i got married was a trip to see some birds yeah we went hawking and that makes me feel worse i was at a pizza parlor really like i i ordered one with every topping they possibly had including anchovy since i had never had them before i said well i'm just gonna do this yeah you know that's all i remember matt matt likes to feed me anchovies in his cooking um but he knows that i'm a fussy about fish so he'll cook him really small then they dissolve and then they just added like a salty so bird watching did you see any birds well we uh i'm sure no it's pretty difficult or was that code for something else i promise it was not code for despite the fact that birds means catwalk can mean women in england no we just looked at some nice birds we saw some desert hawks it was um it was hawking we're getting distracted the point is i don't have to like wingspan um actually this kind of ties into um let's kick this conversation down the road a little bit because i think what i would say about wingspan is also what i would say about your number one kind of problem um with me like your number one thing that we disagree on that you will bring up at the end of this i'll i'll choose to defend my feelings on wingspan then if that makes sense okay fair enough okay well then i will bring up my next game which i think is great it's one of the games that really just it felt like it ticked every possible box for me i love it and that game is mysterium uh now how do you feel about mysterium tom you know i wanted to like it and i i i don't know so it would cast your mind back to whenever it was and it first came out and it was that weird ukrainian i think game poland poland was it polish i think i had i think it who were the designers from not poland i don't think oh well i thought it was a polish company i thought portal was the first to put it out and it was almost like this badge of honor like look we found this old game that no one else has and that you can't get anywhere else names i'm looking for them alternate names i don't remember what it was first called but it was called something else yep oh yes it reimplements catchments oh mysterium was initially published as m-i-c-m-e-p-i-y-m in ukraine i stand corrected i would be proud but that's an incredibly dorky thing to uh no that's that's a board gamer man thank you thank you it's only because um i have i actually have this personal theory tom um i don't know if i've told it to you but i think the best board games in the world are designed by every country that shares a border with germany but not germany itself my favorite board games i mean this isn't quite that does cut out half the world so i'm not sure i mean it also doesn't i don't think germany and italy share a direct border but i bet basically i think you know italy poland ukraine france sweden denmark you know just like if you draw a ring around you like those french games those french games are good uh but we're sticking with ukraine so mysterium you wanted to like mysterium so what i was saying is like what because what was that we just had dixit and then mysterium was the next game in that oof and like it just felt like some even then you weren't impressed i think and this is going to come as a surprise to a lot of people who know me but i i like to talk occasionally um and this game is about not talking and i'm not necessarily always a huge fan of this melding of the minds as the mind also i found to be okay i wouldn't mind the card game yeah then that's kind of the way mysterium is it's like here's a card you know what i want i'm not gonna tell you i would rather be clever with even just even if it's a few words like code names yeah or again dixit i love the idea of a clever phrase in dixit that someone else at the table knows exactly what you're saying and no one else does but me just giving you a card and looking into your eyes and soulfully i don't know yeah yeah that's fair and there are problems with mysterium there are ways to like if your group gets into a meta where it's like you predominantly use colors that kind of thing which i think is why there's less colors in mysterium park but you know weirdly i'll admit this one of the things i really like about mysterio when you talk about talking i like getting people around my house i love teaching games obviously and i love talking about them but for me i also get a lot of social anxiety so mysterium i kind of represents my perfect game night and then i want to bring people over i want to be the host i want to teach them the game i want them to sit down and then i want to be not talk yeah yeah but just yes literally but then just be surrounded by that like board gamey feeling my friends are talking they're having fun and i don't have any responsibility to do anything except hand people a card i also love the theme i think um you know how many horror games are there how many like you know zombie games and ghost related games there i guess there aren't tons of ghost related games but mysterium for me is like horror done with like so much love i i really really love the art of both versions of the mysterium the french and um the original i like the art for sure that i won't argue with it's great well uh yeah so that's i think that that's that's a fair amount of stuff to say about mysterium uh do you want to move on to your game number i do but i like to to stand a far distance way and and just poke at this from from a distance okay so this particular one is because of you because you all talked about this game so much i never played it and that's sherlock holmes consulting detective i'd never even touched the game um it just never crossed my radar it was already out of print blah blah blah and um so you all said this was an amazing fantastic game i take your word as gospel of you had your mistake i i got a copy of this and we played it and then i also played the follow-up cthulhu version of it but oh that was bad yeah we reviewed that i think but the there's a few problems i have with the game the the first which is a retrospective thing is i believe there are so many games that do the same thing better now specifically chronicles of crime um and also escape room games give me that same kind of feel but going back to sherlock holmes i i love the concept i love unfolding the map trying to figure things out finding the clues talking to people the ancient technology of flipping through the book and going back and forth wears on me a bit this is one of the times where i think modern tech just does a little bit better and also doesn't let me see a picture on a page i didn't mean to see but i promise you the number one thing is the insufferable arrogant pain in the neck liar sherlock holmes himself who no matter what you do shows up at the end of the game and it's like oh that's what you did well that's fine for an amateur this is what i did and then gives you some random way he solved it which i just guessed you know and he's like well you should have gone to 43. oh okay and i knew that how i don't know do you mind if i do exactly one swear on this panel well it's your show okay well i'm gonna tell you right now i agree sherlock holmes in the consultant detective games is full of [ __ ] like like there's absolutely no way he like when you i think some of the some and not all of the puzzles in consulting detective are bad good or bad whatever they're a mixed bag but i think i've never finished one and when it's gone that done that sherlock holmes parlor room scene of like well how did you solve it sherlock you asked um when he says how he did it i know that maybe i've said something similar uh yeah i've i've never said like i've never said oh that's clever i just go what you know and i say that in the review in my original review of console detective i say like it lets you feel like the police do when sherlock solves something and says it was elementary and you're like no it's not oh god but the writing of so much love goes into the case and the puzzle construction of consultant detective and they do not put nearly enough love into how sherlock solved it you know and i think it is a game with underwhelming endings i actually think i like the tv show less now because when i see it i'm like there's that guy i hate him but but i think that's that's just part of it and that's almost a joke in a sense but i still felt like it feels dated and that's my biggest problem i think chronicles of crime feels more rich and story-inducing yeah and i was really ready for detective a modern crime board game to offer what consultant detective did but um [Music] but better you know but updating it because consultant detective is one of those games like a rape tales from the arabian nights where it came out in the 80s and it's like it's so incredible how much effort went into that thing and it's so unique and weird um but yeah it's the question of when does a classic in the 80s that you've been holding up for well the i mean in shut up the dance case that you've been holding up for ages you sort of when do you look at it with new eyes and go ah actually it's kind of it's aged a little bit now it's dated a little bit now um i would i do think if i had played it 20 years ago my feelings might be very different i think it could possibly be one of my favorite games yeah i think you know mysterium for me and sherlock holmes can sell detective do have something in common where i just i find the theme kind of transporting like i'm i'm definitely guilty on shut up as a down of being really arch about people who like themes to do with you know generic sci-fi or fantasy and you know we find that so boring but for me like i if i'm really honest you know being a ghost in mysterium in that spooky manner i love that and unfurling the newspaper and sherlock holmes consult detective i l i like i only ever play that game with like either tea or whiskey or something you know just to sip while i'm looking at my newspaper if charlotte comes to the detective didn't have the newspaper i don't know how quick i would be to recommend it i think that newspaper does a lot of heavy lifting the newspaper is the best part of the game except that it drives me crazy because i will look through that newspaper and wonder if every article has anything to do with what i'm talking about oh it's maddening the first time you do a constant detective case and realize that one of the clues was in a previous newspaper did you know that like yes i but that that i find that more problematic than not realizing that because i'm looking at it and i think at the end of the day the guy said we have this inch left put an advertisement there for a new men's suit and i'm looking at that saying i know they're going to use that somewhere that's got to be important it's like it's definitely a uh it's a maddening game it's a weird game and i think and shut up sit down likes chronicles of crime um you know we are like the cases in that like can self-detective are hit and miss but i think chronicles of crime is great um so does matt who did our review for this who did a review um it's yeah it's great it's unexpected have you played any of the fan made cases for chronicles of crime well like no i have not but i'm currently working on one really well that's because we got some characters we're in the game so i plan to to kill myself somehow some way or to get killed we'll see maybe i want uh speaking of people plotting to kill you i think it might be time for me to reveal my number one thing that i think you're the most wrong at uh wrong about he's about to say reviewing before we move on to the number one games that we disagree on i will just say your format of doing reviews of just like walking you through the components with the front and then talking about the game afterwards i find so useful i i mean like like maybe the twitch should tell you like they agree i think your format is probably more useful for just quickly getting what you like or don't like about a game and understanding the game then ours is because obviously ours means all over the place and has mid-review turnarounds and all this stuff and we try to do reviews of a piece i think your reviews are great and i really appreciate them and i still use them well i appreciate that so i will say in kind that the first time i showed my wife one of your videos she said if your stuff looked like that i would watch it wow uh what's your wife's name none of your business okay uh the number one thing that i think you are the most wrong about is something i teased earlier because it's now outside of god in the cocktail my number one game of all time besides cosmic encounter and that is tigris and euphrates by the great orionic nitzia um i don't know if you've heard about this game tom it came out in the 90s uh it was pretty popular then um it's had a bunch of new additions um as the day can't seem to decide what they want to publish it under now um but you and i disagree on this because um i think obviously i think this is one of the greatest board games ever made and when you and i were talking before this uh panel about where we disagreed you told me what were your exact words that you think it it's a game of its time well no it's a game i'm i'm very rollercoastery on this one i believe when i first played it i hated it and then a year later it was i rated it an eight and then a year later back down to a four and i kept going up and down on it uh part of that was it was one of the first online games i played board game geek i don't know if you remember that they implemented it way long ago where you could play other people in it i then learned to play on board game geek yeah it was a was it this was over like 15 years ago now and i also learned that playing at two players was a incredibly different experience than playing at four [Music] i think the more i play it the more i like it until i attack you the game is on the line and i have four blue tiles and you have five for no inexplicable reason you just happen to have them and at that point i want to throw the game into the bin and i i say you know what i hate this game so here's the thing though i mean now we're just getting into a whole conversation about um the joy of well the purpose of randomness and excitement because yeah i like i this year i've done videos on chess and go you know both obviously games without a random element except if you include whether you do or don't things do what don't see certain plays but i think that what you're describing is actually something that ronnie knits here is really good at and shut up sit down is so guilty for the first five years of just like looking at his work i mean looking at his work and sort of making fun of it because in our defense the man has made like 700 games of which not all are good to put it lightly and we just saw him putting out games that we didn't like and then eventually we got to his classics um because they were all republished which is um lucky for us and then we found out they were amazing but what ronnie glitzer is so good at is he makes games that are so intelligent like you know if you do or don't like his games you know the skill ceiling is certainly really high for how simple the rules are um yes yes and he also makes some of the dumbest games ever published um but but that's that's the joy of the man is that he he can exist on that spectrum but what i was going to say is that he makes games which is so hard and such a high skill ceiling but he doesn't make them like um games of perfect information he adds exactly what you're describing that random like on the randomness you know what i mean and i think for me that like if it weren't for if it wasn't for that randomness if it wasn't for that grit in the system ryan connicio would be a great intelligent superb designer but i think in making perfect games and adding grit i think he's a genius do you like randomness i'm telling you i don't know what it is it's just those moments in that game they feel we because we just played this again recently because we wanted to um show um uh time on you higher um but those moments you're describing feel horrible when you plan a good attack and you're like okay 75 chance i'll do this and it just doesn't work and you lose so many points and i think the reason it's okay is that that those you tend to have several of those battles in a game you tend to have enough of those battles that the randomness comes out in the wash maybe maybe here's the thing i i would fight to the death this is one of the best design games ever i think it belongs in a hall of fame i think there's no other game like it not counting yellow and yancy which is the follow-up um it's completely unique and it's probably his greatest achievement yeah but that doesn't mean i have to like it oh yes good no i res i absolutely respect that 100 percent i'm really looking forward to the final discussion we have to have so do you want to here we go my number one is dominion clank under stone um or deck building genre as a whole which started with dominion of course in uh 2008 i believe has taken well took the board gaming world by storm it's calmed down now now a couple come out a year but for a while there if you weren't making a deck builder you weren't trying uh there's something about this that as soon as i start playing one of these my brain clicks into motion i start collecting things and building things when i'm done i have a beautiful deck that did not cost me eighteen hundred dollars in singles tell us why you dislike this i love dac building i love to build decks in games such as dominion and i don't know other deck builders what do i like i like trains by hisashi hayashi um yeah that's just dominion with the board yeah i need the board i need that i need okay so i need the body to be in service of something i mean flam rouge is kind of a deck deconstructor same thing of just but you're not putting cards into your deck you're taking them out i like deck builders i the games that i specifically wanted to bring up clank and thunder amazing okay fine those are the and this this this this is remember i kicked wingspan down the road and wanted to bring that into this as well from because wingspan for me the reason i don't like wingspan is the same reason that not all deck builders click for me because the way you get birds in wingspan and the way you build a deck in clank to me sometimes feels like those games are leaning on the psychological like the dopamine hit of getting cards of getting an engine of getting stuff you know and clanky oh i got that cool car during wingspan i got albatross um but and i think those games can lean on that stuff so much that sometimes there isn't even that much of a game there like and i i felt this so acutely when playing clank for the first time because how many times do you actually cycle your deck in clank how much does the deck you built really feel like something that's like around your neck that you're stuck with because i think it's barely at all i think clank uses and thunderstone as well to a lesser extent but i just feel this way about so many deck builders except for the very very best ones that they can the deck building is so satisfying that designers can just use it to prop up a really underwhelming game i don't see i thought clank added a really fun game to deck building and made it more of a game i maybe you don't like the push your luck aspect of it i like push your luck okay you know i yeah i don't i think on paper i really like clank's design in general uh wait you didn't like las vegas i see gambling that's what i meant you you think i don't like gambling i like i like okay okay you know here's what it is tom here's what it is i like gambling i i'm let me think let me let me let me i just did a series on like called card games that don't suck on shout outs are down in which i was looking at all card games you can play with the 52 card deck i i bought rhino kanitsy's book on dice games i love stupid gambling i love inking gold um what i don't like what i don't like is gambling combined with game mechanics that make me feel like i should have a sense of control like okay so i love the idea of clank of get into a dungeon and then get out push your luck what i don't like is the idea that whoever gets out first did that because they somehow built a good deck when actually all the deck building in that game is just like chrome and fluff like wingspan has a ton of luck but it sort of gets framed as this engine build this you know enormously intelligent engine building game when the reason i published a negative review of wingspan is i had too many games of it where what i wanted to do felt i felt denied that opportunity so i think do you like race for the galaxy i love rest of the galaxy's easily in my top 10 games ever but i think a good race for the galaxy player is able to overcome a bad deal no that i agree on and i think people who aren't good at race for the galaxy miss that sometimes if we can get back to our snooty ways i think i don't think you're wrong about clank and wingspan in that regard i think though i have fun anyway i know that in wingspan i might pick a type of bird that just you know i'm gonna collect these kind of birds and i never see one because that's just the way it worked out or in clank i put this really cool two cards that if i draw them together it'll be amazing and it never happens yeah but i enjoy the game anyway yeah okay you know what it is i can't switch my brain off um sometimes and matt he's just too smart everybody no no no no it's the uh it's almost like a a spectrum thing i think like matt likes to joke about the time yeah have you played a game called mini rails it's like a super yes it's kind it's not anything it's just a very it's a small box forgettable train game with a lot of randomness we played that at a con once and there's not much game to it but i was stressing so much about looking for the game because it was designed in a way that meant like i couldn't quite see that there wasn't a game and i thought there was and i was crunching and crunching like you would with a heavy euro and at the end i was exhausted by this tiny 30 minute game called mini rails because i just worked it's pointlessly hard and i've made myself miserable i don't know i just said it was garbage it went on yeah five out of ten right so i think when it comes to clank and wingspan when it comes to what i'm putting up a fight against with deck builders is when you have like oh which card do you want from a shop and there's all these cards with all these effects and all this text that implies that i have to read all that text same with wingspan you should look at everything all the birds do and what i hate and i think this is really my why we disagree on this what i don't like is having to learn and absorb and process information if the game is random in the way that it is with clank and wingspan and that and if that's a problem that i have but it makes me resent the game like a disproportional amount when it should just be a bit of fun i can't argue with that i mean i can't argue with that but i but i i don't disagree i think that's happened to me with games too i don't know i mean each of us has something that maybe annoys us whether it be sherlock holmes or no i mean there's just those hang-ups that you have in the game yeah and i was just talking someone about to see our day we like i like to argue about this i really do it's fun to argue about games but in real life i don't find there to be any use to try to make somebody like a game i like yeah when i can easily find a game that we both like oh yeah yeah it's fun to it's yeah it's fun to disagree when the stakes are low which they are when you're talking about games that are in the past i guess it would be do you find ever that how do you feel when you're at a table and people disagree with if they think a game is good or bad and you think it's bad or good while you're while you're in the moment how do you deal with that well i'm usually just trying to feel everybody out because i like to take everyone's opinions but let's say it's not a game i'm reviewing so i bring one of my favorite games and people hate it i just inside i'm feeling that they're just not very good at enjoying games but you know i just you move on but it is disappointing or any other way sometimes i'll feel i'm playing a game and other people are enjoying it and i'm thinking this what what are they seeing in this but that only lasts a little a short time when it's over i i get over it people like different movies tv shows and i do i i don't really mind i think it's it's okay i think it's fun when you're ready i disagree yeah i i actually this is i think why it was it's it's so nice to have this chat as opposed to how like gnarly some of um our comments got when i published the article before because i wanted to show people that like i know disagreements can be they're not bad disagreements are interesting and like actually i think they're they're more if if we all said a game was great it would be a boring game to talk about i'd like pandemic legacy more because i didn't have the best experience with season two because then it gives the whole like if all of the game has been like good good good it's like okay fine but the fact that season two i'm like no i don't like this let's talk it gives me some i don't know it roots it in my mind more yeah i guess it is interesting it is interesting i i i'm fascinated by this games in general i'm fascinated by people's likes and dislikes um i don't understand my kids the music they listen to at all do you understand the games they like ah they're euro gamers what can i do really oh no ah do they when they say euro gamers do they like not wanting to you know pillory your kids live on twitch but your kids don't like vito lucerda do they should well yes my oldest daughter she thinks his stuff is great and so that's why she's no longer at home i can't believe it i do i can't believe it i can't believe it tom this has been absolutely great uh thank you so so much for joining us and for uh for helping me i would i would say show me where i'm wrong but in reality just giving me a really nice perspective on a whole bunch of great games so thank you so much return to favor here in the sense of i think the show is great chevy sedan has done an amazing job i remember when we first had you on our podcast a decade ago and you were like well are we allowed to come on and now and now i'm like am i allowed to show up on the shut up and sit down well i'm gonna you know nice for me you're gonna have me on on one of your top tens right you don't know which one that's right well we gotta figure that out there's so many so many we need we need i but then i have i always guess i have my backup but i'm pretty sure my people skewer me more than you all ever do oh no no i'll i'll i'll be sure to get them on site i just need to figure out uh how uh tom this has been absolutely awesome uh thank you so much for joining us and if you feel like poking around or sharks and uh seeing all the stuff we've got demoed on our youtube channel then uh that would be cool well i mean you've no that's a stupid thing to say you've seen it all you know everything i do not know everything i told you just before you go tom do you want to tell the people how many games you have reviewed on you have ranked and rated on board game geek well i didn't i need to add the ones from this year i was just that was going to be something i did today so i'm about 400 games out but there's 67.88 so probably it's going to be 7100 7100 games ranked and on that note i think uh we can i just think that's so impressive that's so cool uh tom thank you so much thank you had a great time

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 125,573

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, SU&SD, Board Game Review, Review, Board Games, Board Gaming, Boardgame, Board Game, Gaming, Tabletop, Fun Games, Quintin Smith, Tom Vasel, The Dice Tower, livestream, panel, expo, convention, awshux, shux

Id: i6xZoJCZalI

Length: 55min 13sec (3313 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Tranquili5]

Best moment by Tom towards the end -

Tom: You know what my wife said when I showed her one of your videos for the first time? “If you made videos like these, I would actually watch them”

Massive respect.

[u/Notfaye]

Can confirm after playing flamme rouge with the designer, it’s terrifyingly cutthroat at high levels of play.

[u/cormacaroni]

‘You wrote an article?!’ - absolutely devastating

[u/Tranquili5]

Sad Food Chain Magnate didn’t make the cut. Gotta keep some stuff for the second season I guess.

[u/lesslucid]

"Don't read the comments or any of the social media around the whole thing..."
lol
Very, very good advice from Quinns.

[u/Cowtippa1]

I'm so happy this comment section is less of a dumpster fire.

[u/pizzapizzamesohungry]

I may be asking too much, but if these two could get together once a month to discuss 2 games they disagree about and 1 they agree on I would donate monthly to both of their companies. This was amazing. I don’t see how it would do anything but expand their already large audiences.

[u/mynameisdis]

My favorite part of the video. Obviously tongue in cheek but this exchange was hilarious to me.

Tom: I don't understand my kids -the music they listen to, at all.

Quinns: Do you understand the games they like?

T: Ehh... they're eurogamers... what can I do?

Q: Really? Oh no... thats-

T: Ehh...

Q: D-do they -when they say eurogamers, do they like goo- ...Not wanting to, you know... pillory your kids live on twitch.

Your kids don't like Vital Lacerda do they?

T: ...Well yes, my oldest daughter, she thinks this stuff is great. And that's why she's no longer at home.

Q: I can't believe it... x3

[u/suthersm]

This was a real highlight. So much fun to hear about the way they think about games. Also great to see two titans with such respect for one another.