I'm Saddened... (Board Games)

I’ve ignored pretty much all board game media. There are basically none that actually care about the actual game. They’re always just talking about the thickness of the cardboard or the detail on the minis.

1 Like

Dice tower: making content that is still relevant in 2003. They have their audience , and are not looking to do anything from that. It’s the big fish,small pond scenario with BGG which makes anything they do not worth watching.

Recommended items, The rules girl, Shut up and sit down, game boy geek, Chris Bryan games, and the party game cast.

I like the Dice Tower because their channel feels the most earnest with the stuff they put out, and the moderate level of ineptitude with which they do it is a constant source of amusement.

Stuff like Shut Up and Sit Down feels way too much like nerds trying to be funny, and I hate that shit.

Zee is Cuban.

2 Likes

Oh, I remember I did try to watch that Tabletop show on Youtube back when it was new. It’s dead now, right? It had high production values, so it was decent in that regard. The problem was that they made egregious rules mistakes every episode, so I couldn’t take them seriously. Seemed like they cared more about making YouTube videos than about the actual game.

The only name I knew was Tom/Tim V or whatever. This is how much I know about the BGG YouTube world.

I could do more research, but I’m honestly fine with reading BGG about the game and if I’m really interested, I will watch a game play video whatever BGG recommends.

Another good thing about the Dice Tower is that they use their large viewer base well and give a pretty diverse range of people a platform to speak about games. The main three are all middle-aged guys, yeah, but a lot of their contributors are women, and their flagship podcast has split hosting duties with two POC women. I can’t think of another highly popular gaming channel that would have something like this on their feed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpM0vJDRERg

1 Like

Thank you for that info, I will look into that. That’s good to hear. Will definitely check out the other contributors. It’s just that video was just so bad. Watching 3 guys read from clipboards was not the best.

I’m pretty sure it’s dead.

I don’t know if it died, I just know I lost some respect for Will Wheaton shortly before I stopped watching after a few episodes way back.

He got bofa’d off of Mastodon and that was the funniest thing that he ever did.

1 Like

Also 18xx with Ambie.

I agree with Demo that SUSD is a complete miss for me, and I never quite understood the appeal. I’ve also given up on a lot (a lot) of really unlistenable podcasts full of crosstalk and laughter.

Personally:
Board Game Blitz (Ambie and Crystal also appear on The Dice Tower)
Heavy Cardboard (really upped their game with streaming, and I kind of know the community - aka all of the PAX First Look enforcers)
Space-Biff (written reviews)
Ludology (Geoff and Gil are good hosts and I’ve been listening to Geoff for years)
The Dice Tower (especially when they started switching off with Suzanne and Mandi every other week)

1 Like

There is just something about Tom Vassel, and Dice Tower reviews in general, that I just don’t like. Tom Vassel himself just kind of annoys me, and just rubs me the wrong way, but I find his site’s reviews to be superficial and not very helpful when I’m making a decision as to whether to buy a game or not.

Different people are going to like different reviewers, but I tend to prefer Rahdo’s reviews, because he seems to have similar tastes in games as I do, but more importantly, when I watch a Rahdo review, I get a pretty good sense how the game plays, which I don’t get from Dice Tower reviews.

I forget what game it was, but I remember watching a Dice Tower Tom Vassel review where Tom didn’t like the game, which was fine, we all have different tastes, but watching the review, I still had no idea how the game played to see if I would like it.

Also, I find that because the Dice Tower guys review so many games, that they churn out reviews as quickly as possible, and as a result, they don’t really take the time to really learn the game. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think you can give an adequate review that’s not just surface-level, without playing a game a couple of times and really sinking your teeth into it.

Rahdo fucks up way too many rules and his rambling style just kind of gives me a headache.

1 Like

Rahdo Never Edits.

1 Like

True, but at least he admits he makes mistakes. Plus, if you watch his videos with the Klingon subtitles turned on, which he himself recommends, they spot check him as he plays through the game.

I actually like that. Sometimes it can get annoying, but at the same time, it’s helpful to me to see his decision making process while he plays through a game, because most likely, if I play that game, I’ll probably be thinking about those same decisions.

My biggest complaint with Rahdo is that he mostly reviews games from a 2-player perspective, because that’s how he primarily plays them. He tries to give his opinion as to how a game would play with higher player counts, but unless you actually play the game that way, it’s sometimes hard to do that.

1 Like

After Tabletop died, Geek and Sundry replaced it with “Game the Game” with Becca Scott. Se does one video where she goes over the rules and then another video where she and assorted personalities play the game.

FWIW it’s trying to get away from the default cishet/white/male demographic.

The reason I don’t consume any media is simply that I play the games myself. No one teaches me the rules better than me, and I’ve never seen anyone review tabletop games to the depth that I would myself actually want.

1 Like

High Frontier deep dive when? :rocket:

MAGfest?

/15Characters