Opening Day at All aBOARD Expo: Tom in the Philippines Day 3

0:09 Hey everybody, Tom Vasel here and we are going to the opening day of a board convention here uh in the Philippines and this is the first day. It's a beautiful hot day, of course, outside and all the publishers, and designers, and people involved are here in the bus. And we're heading there. We'll get there in a few minutes and let's see what happens.

0:30 All right, here we are. That's Quezon City Hall. That's the city that we're in and then here is the MIC Center and you can see there's like a little food court there and we're all getting ready to go in. So, good morning. Guess we should get going. Oh, we're taking a picture. Of course.

0:53 Hans is the ultimate host here. Here is a lot of the different publishers and people who will sponsor and big big names here. Lots of stuff. Neat. Okay, so the game buying area is finished. Uh first you saw yesterday, lots of games here, obviously. Um there's Campania, very hot game. You'll see that DiceTower East. And um all sorts of cool games and some look at these dice. These dice look pretty cool here. So, lots of stuff.

1:43 Very cool. So, as always with all conventions, we have last-minute preparations being made. People setting up games, looking for dice. Um that's uh Summoner Wars we played yesterday with out the Summoner Wars dice, but looks like they have them now. Um, over here. We have PI, which I think is a remake of a game from Martin Wallace. Here's a big giant game. Morning. And Plate, of course. A wrap of mine, a great game. Over here we see some stuff from Portal and Cmon and And here's the big stage where this morning's They'll have a presentation this morning.

2:32 Uh, where the mayor herself will be showing up and welcoming everybody. And this space doesn't look necessarily gigantic, but there's going to be a lot of people coming in and out throughout it and there's a lot of people coming who are not like heavy into board games. So, this is a great way to introduce people to games.

3:00 Here's one of these from Table Toys, one of the Spiel des Jahres nominees. This is Jinx. An upcoming game from Brothers Ming. Here's The Artist. Let's take a look at the art. This is Chef. Doesn't fool around, throws food at you, I think. Oh, come on, watch this. Watch this. So satisfying.

3:30 There's Magazine. If you've not played Magazine, you should check it out. It's a a nice little unique style game. All play stuff, of course, with the new container. Yellow, showing off King of Tokyo Godzilla for the first time here. Then over here we have Devir showing off Cities and Covenant. And then, uh like uh nice big area to interview people. Oh, that's Emerson Matsuuchi. Here we have the three games that are exclusive here as Filipino versions. Kalikasan, this is the Cascadia Philippine version with animals. It's It's the same game, so don't feel like you're missing out. You know, you're not missing but with animals that are specific to that.

4:17 A modern art with all modern Philippine artwork. And then, Sinigang, which is based on a delicious soup. If you've been watching my vlog, I had this the other day. Um and this is, I believe, a solo game, a button shy game. So, all these are going to be available here. Here's all the volunteers. They're going to be letting the VIPs in in 20 minutes.

4:52 That was the kind of a safari theme this year. So, that's why everyone's wearing those. Makes it easy to find the volunteers.

5:39 All righty, everyone, the meeting is over. It's time to go. Let's get ready. The music starts. Here we go. Hey, look at this. This is brand new. It's a mini Jotto, Jago, sorry. Destiny's Bounty. That's interesting. This is the first time we've seen coming out with a new second Lego game in a long time. This is the view from the stage. You can see kind of the whole thing. They're expecting 20,000 guests, at least 10,000, 15,000. It's going to be a packed thing. You know, a lot of people are just going to come in and go and stuff, but it's very bright and colorful and very welcoming. There's an upstairs spot, which I'll go by and show you later. Um so, there's some more This is not the only place to be.

6:28 But, yeah, the energy here is pretty high. I told you we'd find the second floor and here we are. Board game madness. As you can see, there's more areas up here. So, people to local groups and more room to play games or just hang out, I guess. Ah. Magic the Gathering. Well, not surprised to see that here. There's actually a lot more stuff up here. I didn't This almost This more than doubles the size of the all the play space. I'm going to guess this is more magic than not. Well, let's go through and see what else we have here.

7:13 We have painting with Citadel paints. Oh, and there's a whole other section downstairs, too. Man, I'm just not paying attention. There's stuff everywhere.

7:39 The ultimate play for fun, board card game. Got some decks of cards here, bicycle decks. Some art. Ooh, some very pretty dice.

7:54 Edible dice.

7:55 Edible dice. All right. I got to learn about edible dice. More games and Pokémon. And then look how beautiful it is outside there. Over here it looks like we have some miniatures and models. I just think it's kind of neat, you know, you have all this and then you can just go outside and see sort of a jungle-esque nature here. All right, let's go back. Here's an above shot of the gaming area. You can see people already going through looking at games, the VIPers. It's time to buy games. All right, well some people are coming in now, the government officials, VIPers.

8:44 It's 9:30, the convention really opens at 10:00. There will be more people showing in later, but we have the volunteers and everyone is getting ready to go.

8:52 Your host this morning

9:13 [screaming]

9:15 We are beyond excited to see all of you and gentlemen, let us all

9:19 welcome the city mayor of Quezon City, Mayor Joy Belmonte.

9:38 To um our city administrator, the reason why we have this convention here in Quezon City, Mr. Michael Victor Ali Moro. To our Quezon City Tourism Department, Miss Cathy with the consequences of your choices. And these are lessons no machine can teach us. With all the attractions and offerings we have here, sigurado there will be something for everyone, something for all ages, something for all interests. And sana sa mga first timers, wag kayong ma-intimidate because we want to welcome you warmly here. We have coaches, we have people who will make you feel right at home. And before you know it, I matutuklasan mo ikaw ikaw ay isang natural na gamer ka na or board gamer. We appreciate how welcoming and inclusive the board gaming community is. Whether you are a long-time enthusiast or someone trying a board game for the very first time, there is a space for you here. I am also happy to see Filipino creativity taking center stage this year with more Filipino inspired games like Modern Art Philippine Edition, Sinigang, and Kalye Kasaysayan.

10:57 Look at all these photographers who are taking a picture of us. But I'm first, haha.

11:05 May we request everyone

11:06 Put the camera away. So here's a room where they have workshops. They're going to do a design workshop. And here you can see they're setting up the sound system. It's a nice little area, very comfortable and cool in here. Here's the media interview room. That's not a hat. You're right. This is a hat. Um And then down there you can see the busy streets outside.

11:40 Oh, this is the uh Filipino version of Coup. It's very nice. I have Flip 7. I don't need the interviews right now. I'll probably end up here at some point. We'll see. As we approach the middle of the day, you can see there's people here playing games beside various games. Have besides space to eat. Uh let's get back down to the main gaming hall. All right, at this point the hall is very crowded. And this is still not even the weekend. This is still Thursday. Lots of people playing games. You can see Cities being played here. I just did a whole podcast right here with the Random Vanilla Geek Podcast.

12:24 So, lots of games being played. This is really neat. Look at these 3D kits here. Smell them. Really cool. It's another podcast going on right now. Lots of people still playing games. I just played Things in Rings a couple times. I like teaching that game. So, unfortunately, the internet went out here, which is making the the for sale line very slow and long. It doesn't stop people from buying games. You can see the piles of games are still here, but there's lots of people getting games. Lots of people I've seen get taught a game and then they instantly want to come in and then buy that exact game. It especially works for games that are short and simple to play.

13:14 So, you're going to imagine a lot of stuff is going to get played. Here's a channel you can check out, and I know this because he's about to interview me.

13:22 So, Corda. 600,000 TikTok followers. I don't even have that. What's that all about? All right, now we're talking Beyblade. This is some serious side action Beyblade stuff going on here. So, there's people playing games, and then you guys are having

14:01 All right, I ran into some people buying Ready Set Bet. And I had to teach it to them and run a game of it, because that is the law of the world of the world. So, now that I've done that, now I have to uh I'm going to go run Metro Bingo, which is um sort of a bingo ask game. It's based on an older game called Streams. Anyway, I'm going to do that now. So, we'll be seeing you there. All right, looks like we'll be playing Metro Bingo. Oh, inception.

14:42 WHAT'S HE TALKING ABOUT?

14:48 ALL RIGHT, WELL, THAT IS THE END FOR THE END OF THE DAY BASICALLY HERE. We're There's still a little bit more going on. But, they shut down the stage. We did our bingo game, our Metro Bingo, which was a lot of fun. It sets. And someone scored very highly in it. And so, now there's just a few minutes left, about a half hour left before the whole convention closes down. It's pouring rain outside. But, they they said today was the least busy day. So, we'll see. I'm sure it's going to be another good day tomorrow. We'll find out. The con is closing in 5 minutes and you would never know it from the con shop. The line is almost all the way out the door.

15:34 There, that's the line of people waiting to buy stuff cuz they wait till the last second, but this is not bad for the convention for people to buy this many games. Well, that was a long day. We missed the bus on the way back, but we got a taxi and we're able to get back to the hotel here. Uh it is almost 9:00, which isn't that late, honestly, but I'm going to go rest my voice for a while and just because there's a lot of talking and stuff done for today, but I had a good first day. A great time, a lot of people. I saw a lot of a lot and a lot of you took pictures of me and talked to me and I really appreciate that if you were there. I saw tons of games being played and bought. It was a really great time. Thank you everybody for joining me.

16:20 We'll come back to you for more. There's still three more days of the convention to go. Until next time now, I'm Tom Vasel and this is The Dice Tower.

16:33 Hey folks, thanks for watching another one of our videos. If you like our videos, if you like our channel, you would love to game with us at one of our conventions. Check out Dice Tower Cruise, Dice Tower East and Dice Tower West. Fantastic conventions where we play games with wonderful people, a humongous library and lots of other events and stuff. Also, don't forget to check out our channel, like and subscribe. I'm Tom Vasel.