Board Game Breakfast: Episode 95 - Grand Con 2015

Tom Vasel takes a look at the news for the week, joined by a host of friends

Show Notes:
Intro
Board Game News
Whitleypedia
Gamers to Avoid
Dice Tower Productions
Q & A with Tom and Jason (or just Jason)
Head in the Clouds with Chaz Marler
Week in Review
Miniatures Painting
Things that Tick me Off
Board Game Social
Board Game Theater
Tom Thinks (Grand Con 2015)
Snakes and Lattes
Closing Thoughts

[mjsmith]

Thank you Tom and Zee for coming up to Grand Con! Enjoyed meeting you and saying hi.

[cjimmortalify]

It was great to meet you and Zee, Tom. We hope you can make it back next year. Also, don't forget to tip your pizza delivery man!

[tactical_cardboard]

Great to see how much Jason has improved on his video commentary. Keep it up Jason!

[eVanDiesel]

great meeting tom and zee at Grandcon this past weekend!

[Noonycurt]

@Chaz: You can play the game any way you want. It does not matter if the rules are correct, as long as everyone agrees to them and everyone is having fun. (That's basically the idea behind house rules.)

That being said: By changing rules - even minor ones - the game is much more likely to produce unfun experiences. So in a way you were lucky.

[Atariese]

Chaz: the reason for the game is entertainment. as long as you have fun you were successful... you just cant count that as a win.

Forbidden island was a game i played with my friends a few times and we thought we had the hang of it... so with a few drinks in us we attempted the legendary difficulty with just the 3 of us. The trials we faced were crazy, and every card flip the tension was mounting and mounting. We were shouting out ideas and working together but the island was strong. In the end it came down to one more turn and we could win... we could do it... but we had to draw from the orange deck... there was only 3 cards left... and one was the waters rise that would doom us all.

Flipped the first card, cup... SMOKE BREAK.... letting our excitement calm down a bit. taking a minute to breathe and letting our hearts get a rest before it burst from our chest. But 5 minutes later we were gathered around the table... 50/50 chance here of winning this very well deserved win...

waters rise

it was mabie 45 minutes before we calmed down enough to even be able to put the game away. The laughing and excitement overtook us. And the next day i was going over and over in my head... that it was really close... that it came to the waters rise card that killed us... and that in legendary that's pretty much the only thing to kill you... right?

Turns out for the month i had the game i was teaching it wrong and failed to notice a very key part, when a tile is removed, the matching card from the blue deck is removed as well. So yeah we were a coin flip away from winning... the wrong way. But for weeks that story was brought up and the fun of the night will be remembered for probably the rest of our lives. Heck i just shared the tale of this experience to you guys. We enjoyed the heck out of it. and thats what we were trying to do. We just would not be able to call that a win if we did win.

I wouldn't be surprised if this happens more often. I know ive gotten some rules things wrong in the past... but ill try to bring up our mistakes if we had fun the other way... Really its just me and my frends, getting together and hanging out. That is what its all about. ^.^

[Stephen-Fox]

Chaz: Me and my parents managed to get two rules wrong when we started playing Ticket to Ride: Europe - one of our gateways. We played it so that stations just needed a single card, rather than the 1, then 2, then 3 (making it easier), and discarding failed attempts to make tunnels (making it harder). I suspect playing rules wrong the first time you play a game - or the first ten or twenty times you play a game before returning to it a year later and need to refresh your memory on the details, as in TtR:E for us - is common. There's still an asterisk on your win, but it's nothing to worry about in the slightest - I've seen that sort of thing referred to as 'accidental house rules' before now.

Tom: ...Your comment about thin cardboard did remind me of my frustrations with Global Mogul, yes...

[ejae]

Lol at Tom's editorial notes at 11:53 - plus I love your pool Jason. Nick - I thought of my friend when you mentioned gloomhaven as he mentioned at the weekend that he was sad you hadn't mentioned it yet :p

[Nubbins]

I'm really enjoying all the attention to mini painting. More expertise is always nice to have.

[boardgamesbowties]

Is anyone else wondering where the "dice tower's favorite unboxing video of the week" came from??

[princeofmoskova]

Flaming Urethra ... HAHAHAHAHA ... great job!

[Mackerachi]

@Chaz - I played Small World incorrectly for probably about a year, only allowing players to take back their troops at the end of their turn, as I must have missed being able to take them back at the beginning as well. This made the game a lot harder, and a lot more strategic, as you had to think ahead for your next turn and what you wanted to play, but still leave enough on the board to defend. When someone finally pointed out the rule to me (someone that wasn't with the people I had been playing the game with) and I played a game of it with it's printed rules, I actually found the game a lot less fun. Now that I know the printed rule, I find it hard to play it with the rules I was playing wrong, because that's not how it's written, but I really want to play it that way because I found it more enjoyable.

[prufrock]

Woohoo! For Trickerion. I can't wait for my Kickstarter copy to come in!

[EclecticCamel]

Jason is a lot more watchable without Tom bowling over him. lol Best segment of the week, Jason, good top 5 choices.

[ABevs]

Nice Rick and Morty shirt, Nick. Great show!

[mikelegustamusica]

Rum and bones rob!!! Oh and love your new addition!!!

[dhrdogterom]

the dice tower favorit unboxing video where was it?

[evaiastate]

@Chaz Alls I can say to this idea is Mage Knight 10 games in and not sure i have every gotten it fully right. Lots of fun every time though.

[mrdrock]

@Chaz - Case in point for playing a game technically wrong, while still having a good time because everyone was playing incorrectly together. Phase 10. Yes, yes, I know Phase 10 is a curse word in the house of Vasel, but I came to the game back in high school at a youth retreat. We had like 6-10 people playing. I know what you are thinking, "That is nuts!", but it actually worked out well. Why? Because everyone was under the impression that you could build sets of cards with the same color. Yes, we were playing that you could make a set with either the same numbers OR the same colors of cards. Obviously that really sped up the game for us. It wasn't until I was married and we bought a new set of Phase 10 that we saw in the rules that we were playing set incorrectly. (To be fair, why have colored cards when they only count for one phase? "7 of one color.")
Anyway, we had an amazing time then playing Phase 10 with our unintentional house rules. Although now I understand the pain of playing with the original rules in groups larger than 3. You live and learn.

[dustinbschwartz]

I liked the cheesiness of the Board Game Theatre segment! The sound was slightly out of synchronization, though.