Dice Tower News - April 23rd, 2026

0:59 Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Dice Tower. I'm Tom Vassal.

1:02 I'm Zee Garcia.

1:03 I'm Joy Evans. Hey, you get double news today. Uh because today we're we're going to be going through the Dice Tower news and in an hour at 10:00, we're going to be announcing the Dice Tower Award nominations for the year 2025. The best games of 2025 according to I was about to say us, but according to them and other people.

1:22 Mhm. So uh come back and join us for that. But for now, we're going to jump into our news. Uh we're getting ready April is not over yet. We got another week of April. We do. But then 1/3 of the year is over. 1/3 of the year is over. So if you're making plans for this year, which you could, I just talked to someone yesterday and they said, "I heard that you were at a convention in Orlando." I was like, "We do indeed." And you should come. So yes, Dice Tower East. Check it out. Come. We just We got some more games adding to the library. We're reviewing a couple games this weekend that are going in the library. Yeah, hot games, tables, big dexterity games. You're going to have a good old time. Yeah. Okay, well, let's get started with the news. And unfortunately, our news is sad once again this week. Lou Zocchi has passed away.

2:10 Uh he looks a little bit like that one movie actor in this uh picture here. The uh I forget the guy's name. Uh the villain from the Muppet movies and stuff. Dabney, maybe? He is a dapper was a dapper man, though. Yeah, so he actually he's well known. I met him personally at um Origins many years. If I ever stopped by his booth cuz I stopped by his booth cuz he made dice. Yeah. And if I ever talked about dice, I was not getting out of there for the next half hour.

2:36 He talked to me about dice and how these dice are better. He's credited with inventing the 100-sided die. Oh, cool. That's a great He designed several games, you know, older different games, but he made a company called [clears throat] Game Science. And they were the first company that really made polyhedral dice by themselves. He was back when I went to his booth for dice, that was the dice booth. That's cool.

2:59 I kind of wish we were still there sometimes. Yeah. Maybe two or three dice booths. Uh he also started Zocchi Distribution. He invented the D3, the D5, the D7. Yes. Really?

3:10 Yeah, I told you I bought one. It's already around.

3:13 Uh but he would tell me all about it. Uh and then he invented the D-total, which I don't know if I love that die. It was a 24-sided die, which had all these different numbers on it. I have one up there somewhere where when you roll it, you go like, "I'm rolling a D4." And you need to look at a certain number on the die. Really? Yeah, that's cool, but then you have to there's some visual. You have to pay attention to where it is, right?

3:34 Wow. Yeah.

3:35 Pretty cool. It's all the dice in there.

3:37 to see that die, though, after we're done here. That sounds fascinating.

3:40 yeah, I'm going to have to go find it. I'm going to go find it. Vassal, yes, that's what I'm saying.

3:44 one of the original editors of the General, which was Avalon Hill's magazine that they posted for a while. And so very involved in the industry. He was 91 years old. So if you like polyhedral dice, he is one of the the the fathers of that, for sure.

4:00 Yeah, play a dice game tonight, folks. All right, the Golden Geek Award nominations have been

4:07 Goodness. What is happening? Vote for what you want. We're not promoting anything. Who are those people? Anyway, there's lists of them. You can go find them at their website. Uh these are voted on by the people, so anyone can go and vote for them. And they have best board game podcast, of which Sporadically Board was nominated. But I must give the caveat that Board Game Geek does not allow any podcast that has won in the past. And since this award has been given out for 88 years, um basically they're at at best Actually, no, but it has been given out for at least 15 years. Wow. So So it's not so much that they're going to win, it's that they've lost 15 times. That's not true, of course.

4:48 Some of us don't need to enter any longer.

4:54 I just I'm sure more people listen to Sporadically Board than my podcast at this point. Anyhow, go check out the nominations and you can vote on the winners at the website. More awards being announced. The Mensa Select winners were announced. I mean, we mentioned this. You got to be smart to go in and they have their Mind Games competition where they play these games four days nonstop from 400 members. Now, of course, the game has to be there. No. You know what I mean? So if the game wasn't sent in, Right. Fair. So companies that kind of put their games there are going to be more more involved. So we have you can see the winners right here. A Place for All My Books, Critter Kitchen, Fromage, Galileo Galilei, Got Five, Things in Rings, and Twinkle Twinkle.

5:39 Which is a little weird because these are so across the board. Got Five is straight up a kids game pretty much.

5:47 And then we got Twinkle Twinkle and Things in Rings and Place for All My Books, which are fairly not light games, but oh well, they're Yeah, they're somewhat light, sure. Galileo Galilei is a heavier game than the rest of them. They didn't come out last year. It might have, or maybe they don't do this every single year. I'm not sure. I will say this, I've seen in the past at big box stores and places like that uh Mensa Select winners that have this logo that I thought I was very unimpressed by. This is a great slate of games.

6:19 gotten much better as the years go

6:21 happy to recommend any of these games to anybody. Anybody who is smart.

6:27 Yeah, it's just that Galileo Galilei just is such so different from the other six games on that list. But but at the same time, it's a it's kind of a nice slate of games across the board. All righty, Dead Channels. A new trick-taking game from Daniel Newman, New Mill Industries. So you have to win exactly two tricks with four players and exactly three tricks with three. They're also dual indexed. So they have different values what depending on whether you splay them left or right. Okay. Oh, okay. That's hard to do. It's the same thing as like the card you flip over to be fair, right? Is Dead Channels is that talking about like a channel that goes dead at night? Maybe. I don't know what that means. I know that that's that used to be a thing. Maybe it still is that does happen in in small towns where at night there's no programming, so it's just static, right?

7:18 anthem and then it's like they'd go off.

7:19 And then they're done. Yeah, for the evening. Yeah.

7:21 Do you remember I I I that's like a strong memory for me of falling asleep on the couch and waking up to static. Though I'd wake up to Nick at Night. Like that's how Mr. Night see all those. Really? Yeah, Nickelodeon would just turn to like, we have old crap to play right now. Yeah. Yeah. Dead TV channel, it says. Yes, thanks. That's You only added one word. Oh, Dead TV channel. Yeah, we knew that. Thanks. All right. What did he think we meant

7:47 I'm trying to figure out though, is this like a hard cuz that dead looks like a horror font. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's supposed to be spooky. The theme's spooky. I'm sure the theme's also not from

7:57 Oh Mine is a reprint of uh Say it. Schotten. Which I have played, I believe. Um that came out in 2014. Hm. It's from Z-Man. This is the Yeah, you're deciding what color you think you'll win the most cards in and the color you'll be least present in. Mhm. And you score well on the predictions. It's a good little trick-taking game. I used to own it. Uh that hot pepper one. And um I like the old look a little bit more than this new look, but I but obviously I haven't seen the cards. I'm I'm curious what the cards will look like. I remember it being a a good trick-taking game ahead of the deluge of trick-taking games. This was before that.

8:38 anything I I know about that cover, though, that dwarf does not care one whit about those gems. He's there to eat that mushroom. He seems to have partaken of other mushrooms recently. He's there for more mushrooms. He's not a stranger to the mushrooms.

8:52 This is a surprise to me. Guillotine is coming back.

8:56 Guillotine's back, baby. So Guillotine is It's been gone for so long. Guillotine was invented in 1998. Cuz you own a copy. You live in your house. It's Dead TV channel.

9:06 This was uh this was designed in 1998, so it's 28 years old uh from Paul Peterson, who for a while this was what he was known for until he invented Smash Up. Mhm. Which was a follow-up. But Guillotine is a game about, well, beheading people. There's a line of people there and you can behead and and what you would do on your turn is you play a card that manipulates the order of the line and then the front person gets their head chopped off. There was a game that completely ripped this off on Kickstarter a few years ago. There's been a few. There's probably been a few. This did very well when it came out.

9:38 It's a very macabre theme. It is. Um but also it's you know, 500 years old, so I don't know. Depends. It's it's not a particularly strategic game. You play a card and you move people around. I remember this game cuz this is the first game I ever played that had had royal guards in it that were worth one if you had one, two if you had two, three if you had three and I was like, this is insanely cool. Now that's in every scoring game, but this is the first one I remember seeing it in. As a magician, this is one thing that's gone away from stage shows. I know I have I have like two guillotines in my storage unit and like no one does these anymore. It's pretty funny. Is it because it's Bring it back. I I don't know. Why is it out, do you think? I guess why was it ever there?

10:19 That's a very good question, but it's very macabre. I do cuz I'm like everyone's doing the guillotine, I'm like I'll do it. I'll tell you what, I am not a big believer of magic acts that make the audience nervous. I don't like them. I agree with that.

10:32 slap the balloon, slap the balloon that might or might not have a knife in it, not a fan. Nail gun tricks, not a fan. I they pull me right out of the show.

10:42 So Brian Brian Drake, you're not a I don't like Yeah, he does that one, yeah. What about the jugglers that juggle knives? Do you like that stuff? Cuz you That's a little that's borderline and I still don't like it, but the other ones are like propulsive. There's something like

10:56 Yeah, you're like I don't know. Like this could go badly very you know, yeah. And But they're like completely safe those tricks, I'm assuming.

11:02 Not anymore, have you seen Don't YouTube it.

11:04 Yeah, anyway, I don't like it. Um, guillotine is back. I think this is a this is a good time for this game to come back.

11:12 Hill. Avalon Hill has made actually several announcements. The last week we talked about Fury of Dracula and guillotine. There's also another game they have and I don't remember what it is. Everything old is new again, y'all. Marco Polo a deluxe version of Marco Polo Marco Polo. Marco Polo is coming This was just played on Tuesday. You played this. You Elena played this with She taught Marco Polo II, which is essentially the same game. Hopefully

11:35 Played around a pool? I do notice that they have Yeah, hilarious. I do notice that they uh put the voyages in really small print. Is it one of those games where we're like Is it under V or under M? Well, it's going to matter when we get to the letter V cuz I I might need this one.

11:52 You do you, boo. You can put it in there. Anyway, this particular picture that I'm showing you previous in deluxe I really kind of think they should have showed something else because that is a an upgrade, right? But that doesn't make me think deluxe, it's just like, oh, that's the new edition. The cover though is great. I really like that cover. So anyway, this is coming on Game Found this year. Next week we'll talk about a lot more projects on Game Found. Recall is coming to America from This one kind of blew my mind, Mayfair. That is so interesting. Well, Mayfair is owned by Rio Grande. I I'm just Rio Grande owned by Rio Grande, sorry. Mayfair is owned by Asmodee. Asmodee bought Mayfair and we know they bought Mayfair specifically so they could get Catan. Yeah. And then they spun it off. They just bought Catan.

12:43 That's what I thought. Oh, wait, maybe Mayfair is not owned by Asmodee. Yeah, I think Mayfair was not purchased by Asmodee. I think they just bought Catan and they were like, you can keep the rest. And that was it. So Mayfair is still around and I guess still reprinting things, which is good to see, but but without Catan, they were suddenly a much smaller company, yeah. I am a little interested in this because the last game these guys did was brought over by um um Arno's company um Oh uh Colossal slash uh This is the moment. Remember, guys? Oh yes, you're right.

13:19 I don't want to I don't want to get to a hot take here.

13:22 that guy. Yeah, Colossal. All right. La Chocolat. This is from All Play coming out from their small little card games. Uh you're going to have a bar of 36 chocolate tiles and you're going to break it by splitting it on a straight line.

13:36 animal who did that right there. That break it They make those to break.

13:40 did that by accident.

13:42 By accident, yeah. Sometimes you break it, you're like, how did this happen? There's a perfectly good line there and it breaks off. What Who broke what? What are you talking about?

13:49 You didn't break the bars. Oh, the top corner is missing. I thought that was more wrapper. Yeah. Sorry, I thought it was a strip of wrapper missing. You know I I understand. I guess I'm not I'm not I'm not processing that's negative space.

14:02 Okay, so if you get a Hershey chocolate bar Yes. which I think is the only company that Well, no, there's other companies do it. Caramello does it. Do Do you break them into pieces and eat it or do you just do this? I break them into pieces. I don't know why it's more of an activity. I can't remember last time I ate a Hershey chocolate bar.

14:16 No, I agree. There's so much chocolate in there.

14:18 wasn't a the mini bars. No, yeah, yeah, those Those like crush. Yeah.

14:23 What What's the first mini bar you grab?

14:26 [sighs]

14:27 A Twix, that counts, right? No. The little mini bars from Hershey's, they have the Hershey's, they have the the Krackel, they have the dark chocolate

14:33 and cream? Cookies and cream, that's the one I grab. That's that's the one. Or Krackel. I do like the Krackel or the yeah, the rice puffs things. I'm probably dark, but Krackels are really close second. Dark? Yeah, like dark.

14:43 You're a dark chocolate person? Well, Put the pinky out. Put the pinky out. I'm dark Hershey's chocolate.

14:48 Dubai chocolate?

14:48 I do not like those.

14:49 Have you had Dubai chocolate? Has anybody tried it yet? It looks gross. It looks good. It's got pistachio. I think it's pistachio. Oh, okay. I love pistachios, but I don't like it that much. Ain't nobody paying no $10 for that much chocolate, okay? Welcome to our talk chocolate talk. All right. Choco taco. Falling. Now we saw this a while ago. This was on Kickstarter, I believe or This was Capstone picked this up. It's coming out in May. So it's about this giant tower that fell from the sky and so now you are trying to mine and get all this stuff from this tower.

15:25 Where did it come from? Where did it go?

15:31 Sorry, man.

15:33 Uh okay, that's a cool cool looking game, yeah. It looks like there's a lot happening. Yeah, so it's originally from Japan. The the company Sunny Bird. So Michael be reviewing it this summer. All right. I like that cover. Uh so Luma So Luma is a distributor and they've been doing a few small They've been They've been growing their portfolio. Yeah. Um they've been doing some CCGs. They did that cookie CCG and they did a few other games. Well, now they're going to be distributing Queen Games, which is a pretty big get. You know, whatever your opinion on Queen Games and their Kickstarters and oddities that they do, they have a lot of popular games as shown here. Um and so these are these the ones that are shown here are the ones that are coming to the North American retail market on June 19th.

16:20 So we have Chicken Itza Chicken? Chicken Itza, sorry. Chicken Itza. Uh Propeller Island That's an older game, isn't it?

16:26 No, Propeller Island is pretty new. It's a remake of Old West Empresario. Oh, oh. I'm excited for that one. That's the one I'm excited for.

16:34 West Empresario? I like it a decent amount. This is a reworking of it that that looks better. Side note and in no way related Join us at 2:00 today for our top 10 games start with the letter O. O like Old West Empresario DON'T. OH.

16:48 [screaming]

16:48 ANYHOW, IT'S ALL O'S. Kingdom Builder family and friends. Is that the name of it? The full name? Yeah, that's Now it no longer um sucks.

16:58 Wait, Kingdom Builder family and friends? That's what it says here in the presser. That makes me sad.

17:02 Kingdom Alhambra family and friends. It no longer

17:07 Oh, it's in the top corner. That's where it is. The family and friends is at [clears throat] top.

17:09 I don't know what that means exactly.

17:11 I guess?

17:12 It must be a Oh, you know what? I bet it doesn't even mean anything. I bet it doesn't change the game. I bet they're just saying this is a lighter game. They're They're trying to They're I think they're trying to differentiate it from their city line. Maybe, but Alhambra is a city I know, that's what I'm saying. It's not part of that line. Oh, no. Okay. Five families, that's Freedom in Friese game and Fast Out, which wow, could you pick a more boring cover? Goodness. Tell me Tell me about that game.

17:41 say Dirk Henn on there?

17:42 a It is a Dirk No, Dirk Roose. Oh, okay. Okay. Couldn't tell from here. Um Dirk Henn is the designer of Alhambra. All right. So this is an interesting thing. So Layers Layers uh Layers. Layers came out

17:58 I get crap for the way I pronounce pronounce pistachios. Yeah, I How do you How do you guys I know I'm now I'm like terrified of saying it. I thought it was pistachio, but I might be wrong. Say it. Pistachio. Pistachio? And what do you say? I guess I'm saying pistah. Pistachio? I don't care. Say it the way you want. Say it the way you want. I'm I'm a man of I'm a man of Who cares? I don't want pronunciation advice from you, I'm sorry.

18:22 No offense, but take all the offense you can. I guess pistachio. I'm supposed to go eh eh. I'll try that. So So Layers is a two-player dungeon crawl game sort of It's like Battleship where you build your own dungeon and the other person goes through it. They made a If you got the Kickstarter, it came with this tons of extra content

18:45 Okay. based on the base game. So a lot of people if you bought just the base game, people thought, wow, this is really low-key. And it was very low-key. There's not a lot of There's no variety in it. I like the base game, I give it a seven. I gave the expansion a nine though. That's all that content makes Layers amazing.

19:01 Cool. So they're adding this box zero into every base game now to give a little variety.

19:06 Oh, that's that's brilliant. It gets you a little gets you a little jazzed up. So this will be packaged with their new base game 1.2 or you can buy it on its own a little small back. And it just adds two more So the game comes with one monster. You have three copies of the monster, it's a blob. And and uh one trap. This adds two more monsters and two traps so you have one of each. So instead of having three of the same monster, you have three different monsters, which is the way the game plays. That's great. Yeah. And I do like the new It's smart for them cuz if you like this You can get All right, so go buy the other one. Here's a little bit the little first bit's free. Um I do like the new KTBG logo as well. A little better than the old one. Yeah. Changed it subtly, but they changed it. Extra toppings. What's this?

19:50 This is for Unmatched Adventures.

19:52 that. They they This was the This was a crowdfunding extra. Had miniatures and stuff.

19:59 Yeah. But this is coming Oh, you're right. This is the extras that This is coming to retail. Ho! So, 16 detailed and washed miniatures of the characters. You can swap them out. The main reason I would want this is because it has better It's miniatures for the tokens. It has right right right. There's plastic. I believe the cardboard tokens are plastic in here. And the ninjas, which were just little tokens, are now actual the Foot Clan. I I will say it it's it's a little expensive. 70 bucks. Lots of stuff. That's deluxe. That's definitely a luxury item. You don't need it. But I got to say the fact that they're making this available is Thank you. The more companies need to do this and I'll have their back 1,000%. Get rid of exclusives. And you know what? Later, put it on retail. This is the perfect way to do it.

20:46 Yeah. I mean, I don't like let let let's make everybody else miss out and let's miss out on money and profitability and the ability to be here longer. You fired up right now. I'm kind of fired up a little bit. I actually have this. So, it's like it's good. Oh, really? So, you're not even one of the people who wants it. But other people will have it, Joey. Something you have other people will have access See, I'm okay with that. That doesn't bother you?

21:08 It doesn't at all. Do you know why? Because I'm I'm a normal human being. Well, let's not push the luck there. All right.

21:16 And our last piece of news, Fin Span has a new expansion that you can pre-order well, in 4 days, April 27th. And you'll get it very shortly cuz that's how he works. It's a Sharks and Reefs. You're never going to guess what's in it. Those two things. A lot more sharks. And then there's a little overlay board that you can see right there in the middle that adds reefs to it. Like halfway down? See where the little reefs are? The the the little people things. That's a overlay board that goes on top of the other board.

21:45 Okay. Okay. Can I say I thought that yellow fish was a belly pack on the shark for a moment until I realized it was a fanny

21:52 pack or a fanny pack or a belly pack. What do you call those belly packs? A fanny pack, I guess. Well, that that makes more sense. Cuz that's where people wear them. Right. Right. So I kind of miss that the guy wearing the neon cap with the fanny pack

22:06 shorts with the sunglasses at an amusement park and a big fanny pack and proud as all get out.

22:11 That guy was happy. He was.

22:13 He did not care what was going on.

22:15 on vacation at Disneyland.

22:17 Yes. Ah. Welcome to the '90s.

22:21 All righty. Anyway, Fin Span coming out. We'll review this next week, actually.

22:25 Oh, wow. So

22:27 Okay. That's it for the regular news. Join us in 38 minutes where we'll be announcing the Dice Tower Award nominations. And then we'll tell you who won those nominations in Gen Con. But more about that in a bit. Until then, I'm Tom. I'm Zee. I'm Joey. See you all later.

22:50 Hey everybody. Thanks for watching this video. If you like this review or whatever you just watched, wasn't it amazing? Uh check out our channel, Dice Tower. Uh we have all kinds of things. We review games. We do top 10s. We play games live. It's all about board games, but especially the people who play them. Check out Dice Tower YouTube channel.