Week In Review - May 18, 2026

0:12 Why hello everybody. Welcome to We can review. This is on The Dice Tower. I'm Tom Vasel and we're going to talk about all the videos that we did this past week. We do a lot of videos per week. People think we do too many videos, but we do a lot so that you can hear about a lot of different games. And I get that there's a lot out there. So we do this video, which is an index of all those videos we did and that way you can learn more about them and then you click the link in the video description so you can learn more if you want to know more about that specific game. With that in mind, let us begin. Hey everybody, Zee Garcia here. So last week I reviewed three small expansions in one single video and here they are. I did an expansion for Ancient Knowledge called Heritage. I gave that one a seven out of 10. It's a nice little expansion. It's very small. It gives you about 30 new cards so you can just shuffle into the game and they give you nice new abilities. And then the rest of the expansion is focused on solitaire play.

1:04 And so I find it to be a little bit of a uh it's trying to catch a lot of different audiences. The if you don't care for solitaire, you're getting a bunch of stuff you're not going to use. If you do like solitaire, then this is certainly more for you, but the original game never had solitaire. So you might not think of it as a solitaire game. Uh I like it all right, but it is very it's it's a small amount of content you're really getting and it's sort of for different people in some ways. Uh I reviewed a tiny expansion for Harvest called Fall Festival and this one I gave an eight out of 10 to. I think it's good. It adds a little sideboard.

1:38 [snorts]

1:38 It gives you a new place to go with a new worker that they give you and then some cards that basically lead to either rules bending moments or set collecting. And I enjoyed it. It's pretty. It's attractive. It's a small amount of extra stuff you're getting and it is it lets the game breathe a little bit more cuz I find the game very very tight, but it also will extend the game length a little bit because you have an extra worker you deploy every round now, and there's more to think about. So, if you play the game a lot or you or it feels a little cramped for you, then I think this is a good expansion. And then lastly, Evergreen Cherry Trees and Bamboo expansion, which I gave a nine out of 10 to it, is a fantastic addition to Evergreen.

2:24 The two new pieces you may modularly put into the game, the cherry trees and the bamboo, both look really distinct, which I appreciate that, and they have neat abilities. The cherry trees increase your scoring in very interesting ways, and then the bamboo might help you end game scoring, but they sort of choke up your forest during the game. You want to be careful with that. Really like it, very very well done. Probably the best of the little expansions that has come out. If not best, tied for best, for sure. And that's it for me. Let's keep on going. Hey folks, welcome back to Chris Time. This week I took a look at a few things. First of the expansion to The Networks: Megacorp. This is a reprint of various older expansions for The Networks. I didn't actually like it that much. I give this one a six. There's a one module in there I enjoy more than the others, the variable player powers. The other two modules didn't care for too much. Next up, Cat Between Us. I give this one a seven. Very simple little card game where you're kind of doing commodity speculation type stuff. Cute, nice theme, nice little built-in not catch-up mechanism, but more or less something like that. I think it's well done. Druids of Adora. This is Stefan Feld's newest game from Alea. Has a lot of issues. It's also a very fun game, despite those issues, and so I would love to have recommended this one higher than even a seven out of 10, but I absolutely could not with the amount of flubs and stuff that has in it, issues, need to print your own player aids, that type of stuff. But a very fun, interesting dice placement area control game. Coming of Age is 7.5. This is nice

3:57 uh Danny Garcia kind of a life simulator child early childhood into adolescence. I love the theming in this. I love the theme that comes through in this another kind of dice placement-ish type of a game uh and I I do like this one a lot 7.5. 52 Duels uh 7.5 as well from Postmark Games a print and play you print out your own sheet. No need to laminate it or no need to print out multiple copies or anything. You just have characters ready to go. Bring a deck of cards and duel with each other or a very solid solo mode as well. So, watch the review for for you know, just discussion of both those parts. Last thing I did was a vlog of Tom and I took a trip up to IV Studio to check out Altered Era uh and there'll be more Altered Era coverage in the future and everything, but it's just kind of a fun look around Nashville and see what the IV Studio building looks like. But, that folks has been my week. Hey everybody, here's what I reviewed this week. Uh first off was 52 Duels. This is similar to the print and play game 52 Realms, but it's kind of one v one and it's pretty cool. I it has a very cool variation of using playing cards to use your character. Every every character is asymmetric. It's pretty cool, so check this out. I gave that a 7.5. And then I also reviewed something a bit unique D&D Adventure Club. This I did not give a number to, but I did give a high recommendation. This is a monthly subscription thing that you can get D&D kind of campaigns and scenarios in the mail that you can do with your family.

5:24 It's very interesting. I've been doing it for 6 months, so if you're looking for something like that to stick your toe into D&D, you have a group of friends, or your family wants to try it out, this is a great place to start or even to continue something you have. So, check that out. So, anyway, those are the videos that I was in this week. Hi, I'm Wendy Yee and this week I have two reviews I was in. The first is The Druids of Idara, which I gave a seven. Um and this one there are quite a few production frustrations, but once I get past that production frustration, I really enjoy the game and I like of what a lot of what's going on. So, it's one of those like seven with an asterisk because if it didn't have production issues, it would be higher. But also, ah, production issues. All right, the next game on my list is The Networks the Megacorp Expansion. This has three modules to it. Um and I like a couple of them more than I like the third one. Uh but really good. It's got a ton of like extra stuff you get to put in. However, it all fits in the base game box. It also includes a lot of the expansion elements to what had come out before in 2018. Uh so, check out that review if you're interested. That one I gave a 7.5 to. So, I very much enjoyed that one.

6:38 Hey there, everybody. It's Mike Delisio and this week I reviewed two games. First up is Rattlesnake, a two-player dueling game from Osprey Games. This is a really clever game. I gave an eight out of 10. You are essentially playing cards from your hand um head-to-head against another player and then you're going to be also playing cards to kind of manipulate and mitigate and influence these kind of totals that you're trying to get to knock the other player out. Um it's not the most unique game, but what it does it does very well. Very fast game. Very clever design and that is Rattlesnake. And then finally, I reviewed the solo mode for Eternal Decks, which I gave an 8.5, seal of excellent uh excellence. The whole game is excellent. Um but the solo mode is really a robust, full-fledged solo experience where you can play on the basic mode and play any of the stages that you like just using this kind of golem system or golem, sorry, it's probably Golem, um where you basically are kind of controlling three hands and and trying to complete the puzzle that way, or you could play through a full story mode, which includes a whole bunch of customization of these golems, and uh you can kind of tailor what special powers they might have. It's a really, really generous amount of content for the solo player, and it's such a fantastic game anyway.

8:06 It's really nice that the solo mode uh is as uh spectacular as the game, although I still slightly prefer it as a multiplayer game. All right, well, there you have it. That's my week. It's Mike Delisio. Let's keep it moving. I reviewed World Wonders: Europa. This is an expansion for World Wonders, the second one. It adds more wonders. That's it, but they're great wonders. 8.5. I also took a look at Cat between Us. This is a game in which you are playing cards and changing the value of different lures for cats. It works pretty well. It's a silly little fun game from the Op. 7 out of 10. Oh, some wonderful Heroscape stuff. I love Heroscape and the new stuff. This is There's pirate ship stuff. And some really cool guys. 10 out of 10. Fantastic.

8:52 We did our top 10 games that start with the letter P, which was fun. Uh I reviewed Coming of Age. What an interesting game here as you are going through your life, your childhood life. It's a It's a strong Euro style game with a strong theme, a little abstract at parts, but it's pretty strong that I found to be very enjoyable. 8 out of 10. Uh also Chang'an. Uh this is from Arcane Wonders. It's an engine building game. There's some interesting ideas, but it's hard to pass around this player aid sheet to remember what everything does, and it looks old, which keeps you from loving it more than I I would normally. 6 out of 10. And Rattlesnake. What a fantastic game. It's two-player back and forth, nice filler style. Really enjoyed it. 8.5. And I pile of mid games where I go through games on BoardGameGeek and I tell you what I think of them. And then Druids of Adora, this is a really cool game from Stefan Feld that has a few issues with it which keeps me from loving it. A six out of 10 I gave it.

9:53 Uh the Again, no player aids at all in this one. And the it's a lot of the iconography is hard to see. And some of the game is too focused on getting supplies to play the rest of the game. But the rest of the game was pretty fun. So there's kind of a mix in there of all that. So that's all the stuff we did over this past week, folks. Of course we did our typical shows. We did a Q&A. We did a crowd crowd surfing. Lots of fun things and more coming this week. Thanks for watching. I'm Tom Vasel. And if you like our stuff and you're watching this, why don't you give us a like and subscribe? Until next time though, I'm Tom Vasel. See you.

10:34 Hey folks, thanks for watching another one of our videos. If you like our videos, if you like our channel, if 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 adventures 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. Hey kids, let's read some Brad spell together. Here we go. Uh this page looks good.

11:17 I've come to realize this is not English. I'm going to guess Icelandic. I do really like this though. There's two categories of board gaming, Ameritrash and Euro crap.