Tabletop, ten years later

Boardgames
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Continuing the discussion from Topic of the Week: 1990-2005:

Tabletop started in 2012 and ended in 2017. Games covered:

Series 1

  • Small World
  • Settlers of Catan
  • Zombie Dice
  • Get Bit
  • Tsuro
  • Ticket to Ride
  • Munchkin
  • Castle Panic
  • Gloom
  • Fiasco [rpg]
  • Say Anything
  • Elder Sign
  • Dixit
  • Wits and Wagers
  • Pandemic
  • Last Night on Earth
  • Star Fluxx
  • Alhambra
  • Chez Geek
  • Dragon Age [rpg]

Series 2

  • Formula D
  • The Resistance
  • Once Upon a Time
  • King of Tokyo
  • Forbidden Island
  • Smash Up
  • Star Trek Catan
  • Star Wars X-Wing
  • Lords of Waterdeep
  • Shadows Over Camelot
  • Betrayal at House on the Hill
  • Takenoko
  • Unspeakable Words
  • Qwirkle
  • 12 Days
  • Carcassone
  • Tsuro of the Seas
  • Ticket to Ride Europe
  • Fortune and Glory
  • Lords of Vegas

Series 3

  • Tokaido
  • Forbidden Desert
  • Catan Junior
  • Hare and Tortoise
  • Council of Verona
  • Stone Age
  • Geek Out
  • Sheriff of Nottingham
  • Dead of Winter
  • Epic Spell Wars
  • Cards Against Humanity
  • Five Tribes
  • Concept
  • Dread [rpg]
  • Libertalia
  • Love Letter
  • Coup
  • Kingdom Builder
  • Legendary
  • Sushi Go
  • Roll For It
  • Mice & Mystics

Series 4

  • Lanterns
  • Champions of Midgard
  • Monarch
  • Tiny Epic Galaxies
  • Fury of Dracula
  • Harbour
  • Dragon Farkle
  • Star Realms
  • Fate Core [rpg]
  • Star Trek Five Year Mission
  • Mysterium
  • Steam Park
  • Misspent Youth [rpg]
  • Flash Point
  • Codenames
  • Welcome to the Dungeon
  • Eldritch Horror
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Big thanks to Wil Wheaton. He got me into this hobby

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Some of these were games I already knew, and have stood up well (Flash Point, The Resistance, Tsuro, Coup, Mysterium, are all still in my collection). Some seemed like blatant paid promotion (I’ve never heard of Monarch anywhere else, before or since). Very few were games I got into because of this—perhaps Star Realms?—but I was already a self-identifying hobby gamer so arguably I wasn’t the sort of person they were really making the show for; I was meeting new games face to face, generally before I met them here.

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Between about 1991 and the mid 2010s, I hardly played any board games - and no rpgs of any sort - and my gaming was almost all done through the PC and PS1/2. Tabletop is one of the two key sparks that reignited and reinvigorated my interest in board gaming. It was great while it lasted, even though I knew I would never really be interested in most of the games which they played.

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TableTop, Seasons 1, 2, 3, & 4:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0Y9n5uBJuXxjSe6lJEHRZICCHym3e-aS

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Yeh, Tabletop was instrumental in getting me into games and introducing me to lots of the games featured. I don’t remember why I started watching, as I was never a fan of Wil.

I dropped off with season 4 as they started messing around with how easy it was to watch the episodes and by that time I’d discovered SU&SD.

It’s wild to look at the list of games and I see how many I’ve played/owned.

Played/Own(ed)
  • Small World
  • Settlers of Catan (well, half a game …)
  • Zombie Dice
  • Get Bit
  • Tsuro
  • Ticket to Ride
  • Munchkin*
  • Castle Panic
  • Gloom*
  • Fiasco** (though I’ve yet to play it)
  • Elder Sign
  • Dixit
  • Pandemic** (I only own the superior Fall of Rome)
  • Star Fluxx (don’t think I ever played Star Fluxx, but I played various others)
  • Dragon Age** (again, yet to play it)
  • The Resistance** (I own Avalon)
  • Once Upon a Time**
  • King of Tokyo
  • Forbidden Island
  • Smash Up
  • Betrayal at House on the Hill
  • Takenoko
  • Carcassone**
  • Tsuro of the Seas (worst sequel ever)
  • Ticket to Ride Europe
  • Tokaido
  • Forbidden Desert
  • Geek Out**
  • Sheriff of Nottingham
  • Epic Spell Wars
  • Cards Against Humanity*
  • Concept**
  • Libertalia** (well, the new version)
  • Love Letter**
  • Coup**
  • Sushi Go**
  • Star Realms
  • Fate Core** (I’ve only played Spirt of the Century aka 3rd edition)
  • Mysterium**
  • Codenames** (I got rid of original Codenames, but kept Codenames Marvel)
  • Welcome to the Dungeon

*Own
**Still own

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Notables that I associate with me watching the show:

  • Series 1:
    • Elder Sign–I played this to death on the app, on the table it just never worked out. The “real” dice were just always unlucky. The app was pretty great though because no setup meant you can just repeat the failed game until you get through it. This game is one of the reasons though I am so sick of the whole Arkham universe and so possible also the reason we never got on with Arkham:TCG
    • Wits and Wagers–there is no German edition, I recently checked again
  • Series 2:
    • The Resistance-- we had a few very great games of this until people declared it was too stressful to play. Have since switched to Avalon edition because SUSD and never played anymore,
    • King of Tokyo–nephew has my copy, hoped to replace “fancy yatzee” with Marvel Dice Throne and failed–at least I didn’t fail again and managed to not back the recent Kickstarter… I think King of Tokyo is the far better yatzee replacement. I am not sure that I first saw it on the show or at SPIEL though…
    • Smash Up–my favorite but had to be sold. See notes below.
  • Series 3:
    • Five Tribes–hunted it, it came back in print years later, now I have it and nobody wants to play, duh I just remembered I did not decide I wanted it then, that came later after watching some Dice Tower Top 100s. So much later.
    • Coup–my gaming friends just doesn’t grok these types of games where game expects you to fill the void between the rules with something of your own, we barely manage The Resistance. I am annoyed at this failure to make this game stick and almost bought another copy last week.

Smashup was the single best game for me from the show. And I miss it in my collection. But it was never going to see the table again and it is not really suited to solo–although I did 2-hand a bunch of games in my desperation. My partner hated playing it in any and all configurations after realizing he would never get to the “level of play” all the former MtG players around him had down instinctively from years of combo-ing. Apparently some older expansions are collectibles, so there is no chance of me ever rebuying this unless someone does an “everything in tidy box” edition.

I had played a bunch of games before seeing them on the show: Dixit, Last Night on Earth, Alhambra, Chez Geek, Pandemic, Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Concept, Love Letter, Mice & Mystics, Sushi Go, Kingdom Builder, Star Realms, Fury of Dracula, Flash Point, Codenames but a lot of those are “classics” and overall the selection was really good and I loved watching boardgames being played and discovering some new ones. Also it was just so new to me. I had never seen boardgame reviews on youtube before.

I got annoyed towards the end because there seemed to be some backstabbing between the creators going on and I just shy away from such conflicts.

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Own now
  • Zombie Dice
  • Tsuro
  • Chez Geek (but trying to sell)
  • The Resistance
  • Concept
  • Love Letter
  • Coup
  • Star Realms
  • Mysterium
  • Flash Point
  • Welcome to the Dungeon
Formerly owned
  • Munchkin
  • Castle Panic [I had the Munchkin version but the gameplay is basically the same]
  • Gloom [I had Cthulhu Gloom]
  • Pandemic
  • Last Night on Earth
  • Star Wars X-Wing
  • Dead of Winter
Have played but not owned
  • Small World
  • Settlers of Catan
  • Ticket to Ride
  • Elder Sign
  • Dixit
  • Alhambra
  • Once Upon a Time
  • King of Tokyo
  • Forbidden Island
  • Takenoko
  • Carcassone
  • Tsuro of the Seas
  • Fortune and Glory
  • Lords of Vegas
  • Tokaido
  • Forbidden Desert
  • Stone Age
  • Epic Spell Wars
  • Legendary
  • Sushi Go
  • Lanterns
  • Champions of Midgard
  • Tiny Epic Galaxies
  • Fury of Dracula
  • Codenames
  • Eldritch Horror
  • Libertalia
Have never played
  • Get Bit
  • Say Anything
  • Wits and Wagers
  • Star Fluxx
  • Formula D
  • Smash Up
  • Star Trek Catan
  • Lords of Waterdeep
  • Shadows Over Camelot
  • Betrayal at House on the Hill (I’d like to try it)
  • Unspeakable Words
  • Qwirkle
  • 12 Days
  • Ticket to Ride Europe
  • Catan Junior
  • Hare and Tortoise
  • Council of Verona
  • Geek Out
  • Sheriff of Nottingham
  • Cards Against Humanity
  • Five Tribes
  • Kingdom Builder
  • Roll For It
  • Mice & Mystics
  • Monarch
  • Harbour
  • Dragon Farkle
  • Star Trek Five Year Mission
  • Steam Park
RPGs
  • Fiasco “it’s complicated”, I’ve enjoyed it with people who know what they’re doing but there’s something fundamental I don’t really get.
  • Dragon Age not so much interested in this (genre fantasy) but I’ve done a bit more with Modern Age and Cthulhu Awakens
  • Dread not a game I could run but I’ve played it with a good GM and it was excellent.
  • Fate Core the run of it here convinced me that it wasn’t just me not getting it, it’s a game that doesn’t do the things I want a game to do.
  • Misspent Youth not for me but at least I can see what it’s doing.
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I increasingly found Wil’s manner personally annoying, which is my problem and not his but certainly lowered my enthusiasm for the show.

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As a quick side note, although I know I’ve said this before:

Truly great app, this one.

Tabletop made Fortune and Glory and Fury of Dracula look MUCH more fun than I would have suspected otherwise.

Not sure if it influenced me to want specific games more than just generally making getting 4 friends together for boardgames look like a lot of fun, but the show was SO EXTRAORDINARILY IMPACTFUL and effective, I’m struggling to see why no-one has replicated it on a big streaming channel. The things it did to sales of a featured game are incredible.

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This is exactly true for me, as well. I mentioned it in the Topic of the Week: 1990-2005 thread because Tabletop was directly responsible for introducing me to the modern boardgaming hobby across two different prongs of attack, even.

What wasn’t mentioned was that later that summer I would binge-watch all of the available Tabletop episodes and actually subscribe to the channel (back when I didn’t subscribe to any YouTube channels, because it made it feel like work).

Only when the drizzle of Tabletop content dried up did I seek out other boardgaming media – and that’s how I ended up following SUSD by way of their “webisodes” format on Vimeo. Of course, by then, I think they had already transitioned out of that format, but I binge-watched those to catch up.

Eventually TableTop put a paywall in front of some of its content? Or something? I don’t remember specifics, but I do sort of remember wanting to keep up with the content but not being able to.

Own now
  • Small World – it’s fun. I lose
  • Settlers of Catan – recently mentioned: I keep it as a conversation starter with people just outside of the hobby boardgame sphere
  • Ticket to Ride – we have the 10th Anniversary edition and most of the series
  • Dixit – haven’t played it in a long while; but this is the first game shown to me that gave me an a-ha! momment
  • Wits and Wagers – it’s okay with the right group
  • Pandemic – never going to be my favorite; I’ve played it a few times with a few different groups and we always lose because we’re not willing to live on the edge when it comes to outbreaks
  • Star Fluxx – one of the better Fluxxs
  • Alhambra – I quite like this one; I should return to it soon. I love the exact change mechanism and the different currencies
  • Formula D – the classic beer & pretzel game; who’s winning? Doesn’t matter; roll your die!
  • Once Upon a Time – a very flimsy game design; can be fun with the right group, but not fun with people who just want to win
  • King of Tokyo – on my outgoing trade pile
  • Lords of Waterdeep – a classic and still worth visiting (which I haven’t in a while)
  • Betrayal at House on the Hill – flimsy and dated, but pretty thematic if you want to have a spooky chaotic game night
  • Takenoko – a fun game that will probably be played a lot soon with my kids as they get a bit older
  • Carcassone – it’s fine. We can play a game and have a nice chat. How’s it been going? Yeah, what are the kids up to? Did you watch the latest episode of… what, no, that’s my field.
  • Ticket to Ride Europe – see Ticket to Ride above… we now have the 15th Anniversary of this, too, and it’s categorically more interesting to play than TtR’
  • Forbidden Desert – one of the first games I actually bought. It’s fine.
  • Stone Age – I remember really liking this one but struggling to get others to play it. Probably because of undue amount of yellow and beige in the box art?
  • Sheriff of Nottingham – Sheriff has been a bit of a marmite/licorice game in my experience. I think it’s great but there are some degenerate types of group-think that can spoil the game
  • Cards Against Humanity – I should probably just throw this away. I’m never going to play it again. An artifact of an earlier time
  • Libertalia – I have the new Winds of Galecrest edition with all the seedy pirate theme painted over in pastel anthropomorphic sky pirates
  • Love Letter – I have brought this out exactly once and it was not a hit. It’s fine in theory, I guess. Too light in execution
  • Coup – It’s surprisingly low-stakes for a “hidden role” game, which makes it worth keeping.
  • Sushi Go – one of my favorites. It’s rare to find games that are so elegant; two-ish mechanisms married perfectly.
  • Lanterns – I’ve played this one with my partner, but it’s been probably 7 years at this point and I don’t remember much about it
  • Champions of Midgard – I remember really enjoying this one. I’ve been meaning to check out the solo modes available on BGG to see if it holds up after not playing it for several years
  • Star Realms – Nice, tight game designed by a MtG champion, and it shows.
  • Mysterium – perhaps my partner’s favorite game; it’s fun but we play by some seriously modified houserules to make it fully co-op.
  • Flash Point – One of the better (if not the best?) “crisis management” games, as I call them. The dog token is removed from the pool and placed on the fire truck. The cat token is removed from the pool and placed in the box top (a well documented best practice for cat naps)
  • Codenames – this one hit hard when it was released, just like everywhere else in the hobby. At this point, I might be codenamesed-out, but I would probably still join or even run a game for a group of non-gamers and/or on-the-cusp-gamers.
Own but unplayed
  • Say Anything
  • Elder Sign
  • The Resistance
  • Hare and Tortoise
  • Lords of Vegas
  • Tokaido
  • Legendary
  • Harbour
  • Star Trek Five Year Mission
  • Welcome to the Dungeon
  • Eldritch Horror
Have played but not owned
  • Munchkin – blech
  • Forbidden Island – I bought Desert instead. Island may actually be better though?
  • Smash Up – thought I would love it. Hated it instead. Too much luck-of-the-draw and not enough tactical horizons
  • Tsuro of the Seas – I’ve been looking to pick up a copy of this or the original for a while; bought Indigo because of the similar vibe.
Have never played
  • Zombie Dice
  • Get Bit
  • Tsuro
  • Castle Panic
  • Gloom
  • Last Night on Earth
  • Chez Geek
  • Star Trek Catan
  • Star Wars X-Wing
  • Shadows Over Camelot
  • Unspeakable Words
  • Qwirkle
  • 12 Days
  • Fortune and Glory
  • Catan Junior
  • Council of Verona
  • Geek Out
  • Dead of Winter
  • Epic Spell Wars
  • Five Tribes
  • Concept
  • Kingdom Builder
  • Roll For It
  • Mice & Mystics
  • Monarch
  • Tiny Epic Galaxies
  • Fury of Dracula
  • Dragon Farkle
  • Steam Park
RPGs
  • Fiasco – I’ve eyed this one for a long time. But the episode made me realize that the person who cares the most about the story will “lose”. A fitting fatal flaw.
  • Dragon Age – tried to watch the first episode. Something about it felt uncomfortable, so I skipped the rest
  • Dread – skipped watching this one
  • Fate Core – did this one come out when they were putting some content behind a paywall or whatever? I can’t recall why I never watched this (or maybe I did, and I just can’t remember!?)
  • Misspent Youth – definitely wasn’t aware of these episodes
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Working theory: (a) there’s a lot more boardgaming content in general, including recorded sessions, and (b) it takes both competent actors and very aggressive editing, neither of which is cheap, to make every game seem lively in a 50-minute format. The TT crew made both of these things look easy, but that’s a testament to how well they were doing it.

(Wil and others tried quite hard by omission to give the impression it wasn’t pay-for-play, then suddenly said oh yeah it always was why are you so upset about that. I think you might actually need some sort of publisher-pays model to get people with the right skill sets.)

The best thing about …of the Seas is that you can remove the extra pieces and rules and play the original game with it.

I think it was something like “watch on release day on our super sexy subscription platform, or watch two weeks later on YouTube”. (There may have been more extras on the subscription service too.)

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If I remember right, the new-ish owners of Geek & Sundry (Legendary) put it on “Alpha”, a pay subscription service, then also youtube some weeks later. This killed the show dead pretty much instantly, as paywalls to anything smaller than Netflix or Prime always do.

Edit: Should clarify, Legendary were the owners for a while but then got bought by the Dalian Wanda group (Chinese conglomerate) who made the commercial changes. Pre-that, Legendary didn’t clash with anyone.

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Man, I didn’t realize they did Mysterium on Tabletop! Just watched it, and is still entertaining.

Yeah, as G&S started kind of paywalling their content, I drifted away, and missed some of the last episodes. I definitely remember Star Trek Five Year Mission and Misspent Youth, but nothing between or past those in the list of season 4.

I would say there are a number games I own due to Tabletop. Some games featured I either already owned or would have bought anyway. And there are others that had I had the money and been given the opportunity, I would have bought at the time, but feel the time for them has passed.

Own (bold = due to TT)

Settlers of Catan
Small World
Tsuro
Ticket to Ride
Munchkin
Pandemic
The Resistance
Once Upon a Time
King of Tokyo
X-Wing
Lords of Waterdeep
Shadows Over Camelot
Betrayal at House on the Hill
Takenoko
Carcassonne
Lords of Vegas (also SU&SD)
Tokaido
Sheriff of Nottingham (also SU&SD)
Dead of Winter
Five Tribes
Libertalia (own the new version)
Love Letter (Batman version)
Coup
Legendary (Marvel)
Sushi Go
Mice & Mystics
Fury of Dracula
Mysterium
Codenames
Welcome to the Dungeon

Would have bought at one time

Zombie Dice
Castle Panic
Elder Sign (though I do own the digital version)
Alhambra
Formula D
Forbidden Island
Unspeakable Words
12 Days
Forbidden Desert
Stone Age
Kingdom Builder
Champions of Midgard
Tiny Epic Galaxies

I am still tempted by Flash Point now and then, but so far I have not picked it up. I already have a bunch of co-op games, many of which have not been or are rarely played, so feel I should work through those more before getting another.

For the show itself, I found it entertaining, though there was some major drama going on after season 2 or 3, as I guess there was someone who was supposed to check and verify the rules to the games and they weren’t. Fortune and Glory and Mice & Mystics were the two big ones that were played very incorrectly, from what I remember, and since they were in different seasons, I don’t remember when exactly the drama occurred. In any event, someone got fired, Wil called them out and got a bit jeered for that and later admitted as a showrunner he was also responsible and that it would get better.

But the whole thing just ruined the idea that these were all games that he played for his own enjoyment and were instead just advertising.

As for Wil himself, for the most part I found him entertaining, occasionally annoying. I had no particular attachment to him from his acting, but have found various videos over the years with him that make me feel he’s a decent human being, and he has had some great advice for people in regards to bullying and such. Knowing he had a pretty messed up childhood, it’s good that he was able to rise above that.

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Yeah. I find that when he’s trying to be funny, he’s actually just annoying. I’ve just chalked it up to his unusual childhood.

I think, overall, he’s been an asset to gaming but there were some dark days for certain when, for whatever reason, he didn’t realize that transparency is basically the only thing you can avail yourself to when you’ve been caught in a blunder, especially on the internet.

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I need to tell my partner. He’ll agree with you wholeheartedly and say something like “see, I told you!”

And how can you not have played Kingdom Builder?

(Yeah, I know we all have our Bildungslücke… I just had to pick on that one, so @lalunaverde doesn’t have to :wink: )

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There’s a BBC series (radio and later TV) called I’ve Never Seen Star Wars, in which the celebrity guest tries various things that are quite common but they’ve never done before.

Coming soon, “I’ve Never Played Kingdom Builder”…

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It’s one of those weird timing things, really.

Way back in the early days of my boardgaming journey, it looked too themeless and hexagonal for my tastes. As we can see now, themeless and hexagonal is right up my alley.

But a lot of my hexagonal themelessness came around in the last few years, during which I’ve had limited opportunities to play games, especially those I don’t own.

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Bah, the internet has failed me. This reminds me of a little newspaper comic from back in the day that had two old men sitting across from each other. One says, “We must be the last two people who have never seen Star Wars.” He then pulls out a pistol and shoots the other man. “Now I’m the only one,” he says, smiling.

Yay, murder! :smiley:

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This, without the murder, is my partner and I re: The Titanic

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