Gen Con Vlog Day 4: Homeward Bound 2026

0:09 There she is all packed up and ready to go. Let's leave. Let's go home now and surprise Tom by not showing up at the booth this morning. What do you think?

0:16 Yeah, I mean that'll be a great gag. End of the end of the con gag.

0:21 RF lol. Kenny, let's go. Sunday morning, 9:00 a.m., an hour before the hall opens for the final day of Gen Con. And you uh today, this is kind of a um multi-purpose kind of day when it comes to the publishers. Obviously, they want to make uh their final day of sales. And you know, this is typically thought of as the family day. So, there'll be probably quite a bit more children here today. Um, so they're not only getting ready for their final day of sales, hopefully ending on a high note, but they're also actively preparing for the end of the con, tearing down. Because let me tell you, as soon as the last customer leaves the hall, this carpet comes up almost immediately and there's tear down and you've got different pieces of machinery beeping and whirling and moving. I'm here at the Leader Games booth. They've sold quite uh quite well for a lot of different things here. And we have in here, look at that. Mr.

1:21 Leader himself uh cutting boxes, stocking the shelves. Uh this is

1:26 stock in the floor.

1:27 Stock in the floor. Yeah, this is I don't know if this is the best way to display your games, but it is certainly a choice here. Coming soon to Kickstarter. Cart downhill racing. Crashing, bashing, and racing we go. So, uh yeah. Yeah. uh coming to Kickstarter this year. That looks awesome. Here we are at one of the uh coolest looking booths of the whole convention. This is the booth for Hellbreak, a new trading card game that's I guess they're showing off here for the first time. And it's going to be uh a a card game based on Universal Monsters. The starting or demo deck, I should say. It features, if I'm not mistaken, Dracula versus Jaws.

2:13 That's right. Dracula versus Jaws. And of course, we've got Jason right there. And we've got different categories of monsters over there.

2:20 Sunday morning Dice Tower booth. About uh oh, how long do we have here? We got about 15 minutes before we open up for the last day. And this is what's left of the dwarves [snorts] of Aqualon. The last thing, the last stock we have. I'm looking at uh oh, I'm going to guess around 30-ish,

2:39 maybe a little less. Here's a closer up, less frantic look at hell of a deal. Uh this is all standard of what's going to come in the box here. Multiple playmats. Uh nice weighted poker chips and souls. I heard from Kurt here that this has sold 1,000 units here at Gen Con, which is an unbelievable amount. they had to express freight ship more stuff in. And so, yeah, they've they've definitely been having a good time here at the Smirk and Dagger booth.

3:10 All right, I just played Azul Kid. It has two sides to the board. It has like an easy side and a more advanced side. Um, and this one's really kind because whenever the pieces fall to the floor, you actually pass them along. So, if you take too many, you're helping everybody out. So, it's a very like positive interaction game. I have a couple friends over here that I got to play with. Silus and Matthew. Say hi.

3:32 Do you guys have fun?

3:33 Yeah.

3:35 Things have picked up considerably. Um, probably not quite as busy as maybe Friday or Saturday, but it's been sold out, so theoretically it should be the same. But I feel like I've got a little bit more room to walk around this time of day than I normally would. You could tell we're going through Artist Alley here. And this has been consistently very very busy, which is really cool because there's some pretty interesting stuff on display here. And uh it's great that these artists have um the opportunity to get their work in front of so many eyes.

4:10 This is open gaming here. I've never been in a spot actually in all the years of JW Marriott. A lot of people gaming, but it's neat to see people here who are gaming.

4:19 The flocks of people are coming in. It is family day. Brian is bothering people. It's everything that you want out of Gengon.

4:27 Lots of people going at this point. You can see people are leaving. They're finished, but also people still coming in to go around. And look over here. We have our charities and giving blood here. Past the the Lord of the Rings portal into the Lord of the Rings room. We see first off the giant dice tower uh from Fate of the Fellowship. We see the tiny [gasps] Hey, fella. Okay. But the thing I'm most excited about is that over here, tucked away in the corner, we have Elaine, the artist from the Lord of the Rings, the tricktaking game.

4:58 Over here, some cosplay straight ahead. And yeah, you can see people are still going in the exhibit hall, but it's definitely starting to die down. We're starting to see the end of it.

5:08 So, here's a little bit of what Elaine's doing. She's doing speed sketches. So, we've got Gabriel right here,

5:15 and here is Gabriel right here. I'd call that a 10 out of 10.

5:32 We have just finished playing the Star Wars deck building game. Not only do we play with this base box, which is the good guys versus the bad guys, Darth Vader versus Luke Skywalker, the classic battle. Oh no, we've added the new expansion, the Rebel and Empire Reinforcements, where we get to upgrade our deck by completing missions, which then add extra special cool cards to our deck, which then allow me to defeat the Empire once and for all. Because that's exactly what happened. The Emperor was doing all sorts of nasty stuff, but then the Emperor got food poisoning. No, that's not what actually happened. What happened is that Yoda came along and he destroyed everything in a good way. A great It was fantastic. If there a booth that would win for best set design, it's certainly uh Upper Deck over here showing off the new enemies of Gotham City.

6:25 Very, very neat looking game. Nostalgia is always big here at Gen Con, but I really didn't think they'd have something that I remember from TV from the as a kid. Um, I can't believe they still have HR puffing stuff here. Uh, that's really impressive. Look at HR never looking better.

6:42 Everyone at the Flamecraft cardboard alchemy booth has shrunk. Shrunk, I tell you, because there's giant chips and giant dragons around. So, it's too bad that everyone has gotten tiny. That is a super cool model. I'm just not sure I want to deal with all the sprews. These look beautiful. And this thing is awesome. Good thing they don't have it for sale. I'd be tempted to buy it. Let me take this out of free play with it. Touch it. All that.

7:09 You got it. Okay.

7:18 Love this booth over here. Salt and pepper games. Uh they have a lot of titles that I really enjoy. You see several uh Daar seals of excellence been given out here. New games I'm really stoked to try. The Queen of Spies, the co-design between Liz Davidson and David Thompson. Glasgow train robbery co-designed between Ferandalas and Noi Puchales. You can see Glasgow set up over there. A lot of gaming a small box. So yeah, Salt and Pepper always doing really good stuff.

7:46 All right, just played Trial of the Forest here. Um I did not pass said trial, but I had a ton of fun. This is the Gen Con release here, and you can get it anywhere. Think like open world, do whatever you want ever. It's got some great multi-use cards, got some exploration, got a little bit of fighting, of course. So, didn't win this one, but had a great time. Be sure to check it out. Trials of the Forest,

8:08 the JW Marriott third floor now has got this going. This is the Indie Game Market. Indiana game market, something like that. Uh, it is hosted by Luigi over there next to his friend Mario. And so this is all Taylor Riner is doing. Indie creators and designers uh showing off the games. Who's that? Who's that? You're not indie. You're big. You're big business. You don't belong in the indie sphere. This

8:36 I'm counting to 22. Don't distract me.

8:40 So this one here is daytime minutes. Do you remember having to worry about this? Oh no. Don't text me a bunch of different lines. So anyway, really cool to see just indie designers, indie developers, indie publishers kind of showing off their stuff. If you've seen some of our Dice Tower events, you might recognize Tommy from Texas and he's got a river crossing here. You know the parable of the uh the the chicken that wants to eat the corn, the fox that wants to eat the chicken, the man that wants to eat the fox or something like that. Tommy from Texas. How many rivers have you crossed?

9:09 I would say 18.

9:11 So you're a subject matter expert. I trust you on river crossing. Here's the new company, Eerie Idol Games or Berry Giant Studios/ Eerie Idol Games with Arcs and Old King's Crown. Sorry. It's the two combined into one. The uh looks like a lot of people are buying buying Slam Throne. Their supplies are very low. So, here I am checking out some uh cards, trading cards. They got some wild prices on these. Look at this. 180. But then on this side,

9:45 I'll take it. So, it's died down a little bit more. It's been a good uh a little over an hour or so. And so, it's fun to see, but there's Yeah, definitely crowds around. And I gave Brian Bourne meer some grief here. I'm calling him a big corpo and everything like that just because he's actively repping the Asthma Day badge here.

10:02 No, no, no. This is my indie market hall.

10:04 Oh, look at you, man.

10:06 Yeah. No, no. Like I'm very excited for throughine. through line.

10:09 It's a 3second drawing game. Like I got to play this earlier this year. This is Grandma's bag and your kid uh is hungry and so you need to find a piece of candy in your purse, but you just got back from the casino. So, everyone shakes them up and you have to be the first one to be able to dig through and pull out the bottle opener just by feel. I mean, the stuff that's in here is crazy, right? There's a key card, some chapstick,

10:34 like a fake M&M, and a

10:37 It's a very funny Gumdrop.

10:38 Yeah. There's a poker chip, a hair tie.

10:41 It's It's amazing. I can tell all those apart by feel. No, you can't.

10:45 And And you have to be the fastest.

10:47 Yeah.

10:47 Yeah. Yeah.

10:48 Hi. Today we're playing Citadel Duel.

10:54 Citadel Duel, which is the two-player version of Citadels. Now, some people might may have had bad experiences playing the original game. Maybe this guy hit them one too many times. Yes, there's an assassin in this new two-player version, but it's much more targeted. I know because I've handed certain cards to my opponent who I might want to target. And that actually works out pretty well when I manage to take out their player power. Huh. There's also a whole board element. I'm building buildings. I'm taking control of stuff. I'm protecting things with my king's guard. I'm having a good time playing Citadel's Duel.

11:42 I I think what I was trying to say is Brian's Brian's a good guy. He came here to support local like indie stuff. It was good. We're going to head out cuz I have not eaten or slept in it feels like 12 days. So, here's yet another trading card game. I hadn't seen any advertising for Echo of Omen's trading card game. It's got some great looking artwork. I don't know anything about it, obviously. Uh, and they've got it a little bit here on the table.

12:09 Yeah, it's it's a looker. I am intrigued. Either the icy bear's hand is installed on the wrong side or he is about to turn that over like a Dairy Queen blizzard and let it spill all over.

12:19 A testament to the continued popularity of the Beatles is this gigantic statue they have of Ringo Star. Look at this. Ringo Star. Peace and love, everyone. peace and love.

12:32 I mean, I love the touch where they made Eric play Citadel Duels, but my other favorite touch of the Oreos right there. Oh,

12:39 I may have spoke too early about it not being crowded because it is packed back here near the art. People are rushing to buy art. It's a busy Sunday.

12:48 I just played the new shot in Fredera here with the fantastic, fantastic art from Weber Santiago. Uh, I was so close, so close to having the second most points, though. I did get to watch two people plummet to the death. Uh, going over the 40point track. Very gratifying. This is a new printing here coming from Office Dog. Uh, a hard to find game for a long time. So, I'm really happy to see it's coming to this nice form factor and everything. I've liked this one for a long time and I think the production now matches just how good the game is. So, had fun playing this one here at the Dice Star.

13:37 I agree. Finally, someone who stands for what I believe in.

13:45 All right, we're at the booth and I just won shot and freed. Yes, baby.

13:50 shot in Florida. I won. I I won. I won. Yeah.

14:00 So, we just finished up John here. W Thank you for coming down from Office Dog. From the parent company. What is it?

14:07 Studio Big.

14:08 Studio Big.

14:09 Yep.

14:09 So, you work with Office Dog and Zman and Unexpected.

14:13 Unexpected. That's awesome. Hey, thanks for teaching. I had a ton of fun and I got to meet at the same time royalty. We got to get the princess of Arendelle.

14:24 No, that would be Elsa.

14:27 Subsaharan Africa.

14:29 No,

14:30 Atlantis.

14:31 Oh, you're getting so much closer.

14:32 Final 20 minutes of the convention and pure insanity, exhaustion has settled in. Looks like about 12 copies of Dwarves that we have left. The promos are well picked at 13 13. No,

14:48 it is near the end of Sunday. We are starting to shut down things. We still have uh 22 minutes left. You see Brian working hard. Mike Howard working hard. Mike's supervising. This is it. This is goodbye, coach.

15:06 It's been great. I love Gen Con every year and just going to miss the people.

15:09 Put me in, coach. I'll put you in any of them. If

15:12 you look at the door, there are people going out and not coming in really at this point. Oh, someone just came in to prove me wrong. Uh, but yes, it's closing down. We almost got rid of all the dwarves. I think there's 12 copies left out of 230. So, that's pretty good.

15:29 It's closed. Everybody, as you say, everybody, please carry this one thought home with you. Gen Con, just like this world, is so much better simply because you are in it. We can't wait to see you next year.

15:52 That is a wrap. We're on the way home in the van. By on the way home, we've gone uh a total of uh

16:02 point4 miles. Yeah. Drive faster, Mike. What's the hold up? I

16:07 know.

16:08 Faster. I said

16:10 maybe I'm not laying on the forest.

16:12 Once we get clear the Gen Con traffic, then it's we're there. Sailing.

16:17 15 hours and a half to go.

16:21 We're passing by Mammoth Cave. Tom, are you tempted?

16:25 No. I've lost weight, but I haven't gotten shorter.

16:29 We're staying at a cheap Hampton Inn outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee. And I have no idea what's going on here. Every once in a while, it's nice to remember to just take in how beautiful what the heck is getting me wet. Stupid sprinklers nature can be. And look at those amazing misty mountains over there in the distance. Has it stupid 5 in the morning and we're leaving in the sprinklers getting me wet. Stupid freaking This is why we come to Gen Con. I tell you folks, I feel like I'm in an artist alley all over again.

17:07 We're all good. None of us are tired after Gen Con.

17:10 Get that camera on my face. Pictures.

17:13 Sorry, sir. They have all this at Love's gas station. Why do we even go to Gen Con?

17:19 Hey, we made it back to Florida. Hey, we made it back to Florida.

17:24 Hey, we made it back to Florida.

17:26 You can tell we're in Florida. Look at the rain. only highass establishments for us like the Arco Burger King, home of the Whopper. Little grub, a little chow, drop off my color, and then we're practically hours from home.

17:44 Mike, I think we could park here.

17:47 You Well, maybe. No. Hold on.

17:49 Okay. How about here?

17:51 No.

17:52 Here?

17:53 No. Surely.

17:54 Okay. Yes. Classic stop on every Gen Con road trip is the Ace bathroom cuz it's better than the gas station bathroom nearby. It's a single occupant restroom based off of Mike Heller's reference. So, I'm just out here learning learning about all sorts of things here. Look, here's the typical machine implementation colors. You want to learn the difference between international red and safety red. I don't understand why everyone has insisted that American measurements are weird. Here's one quart, 2 and 1/2 quarts, and five quarts. It just makes sense. Here's the contents of the van, mostly strewn out across the table. Uh, we're back. We're so back, Tom. We're back.

18:37 We're done.

18:38 We're done. I had this horrible dream that we were at Gen Con and you were there. And you were there. Oh, no.

19:06 Hey folks, I'm Tom Vassel. Thanks for watching this video. Check out our channel. We have a lot of videos on our channel. We have live videos that go up each week from live Q&As's to videos where we take a look at the newest stuff on Kickstarter crowd serving to top 10 lists and more. There's lots of stuff on this channel. We encourage you to explore it. You can find out more at our website dicetowwer.com. I'm Tom Bassel. Thanks for watching another video on the Dice Tower.