Board games, battle stories, and table wisdom.
The Dice Tower gathers recurring voices around the practical, funny, and occasionally painful realities of board gaming. Episodes move from convention reports and mailbag questions to roses, thorns, hula hoops, and hard-earned advice about games, shelves, shipping, rules, and reprints.
PRESS PLAY
The Dice Tower is board-game talk from inside the life of the hobby. It is not just about what is new. The show spends as much time on how games travel, teach, break, reprint, weigh down shelves, and behave in public spaces as it does on which titles hit the table. The panel format keeps the pace moving. A small joke can turn into a practical warning, and a convention anecdote can become a broader point about publishers, players, or collector habits. Recent episodes move through Dice Tower West, Dice Tower East, the Dice Tower cruise, game libraries, live Q&A, mailbag questions, and recurring roses, thorns, and hula hoops. The result is friendly but usefully opinionated. It can admire the magic of a great convention game while still questioning whether a famously expensive out-of-print title is worth chasing. It can laugh about a lopsided win and then talk seriously about why losing gracefully matters. Manufacturing mistakes get treated with sympathy for both players and publishers. Heavy games become a real-world discussion about shipping, storage, fulfillment, and the difference between wanting a giant box and paying to move it. There is plenty of hobby shorthand, but the conversation stays plainspoken. Listeners hear the texture of board gaming as a social ecosystem: demo zones, play-to-win sections, rule corrections, replacement parts, classroom games, old favorites, and the strange pride of a well-run convention library. The show works best when it is circling an ordinary tabletop problem until the hidden lesson appears. It is funny, specific, and grounded in actual play.
Made for: For board-game players who care about conventions, collections, teaching games, publisher decisions, and the social rituals around the table. It suits listeners who enjoy hobby talk with jokes, specifics, and practical takeaways.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart by treating board gaming as an ecosystem, not just a release calendar. Its strongest moments connect concrete table stories to wider lessons about collecting, logistics, live events, and player expectations.
Tom Vasel and Eric Summerer take a look at board games, card games, and the people who design, publish, and play them.Top ten lists, Q&A, tales of horror, and more await you!
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
The Dice Tower pairs practical board-game judgment with candid stories about collecting, conventions, production problems, and life around the table.
The Dice Tower turns board gaming into a conversation about what happens around the table as much as what happens on it. Tom Vassell, Julie Ahern, and Eric Sommerer move between convention experiences, games they have revisited, and the social complications of teaching,…
That $400 out-of-print game can wait; Tom Vassell has questions about why you want it.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Dice Tower episode that moves from slight travel delays to Vassal's Law and a cautionary board-game story.
Episode 68 brings together slight travel delays from Dice Tower West, Vassal's Law, and Julie Ahern's board-gaming horror story, then turns that mix into a practical warning about how expensive, out-of-print games can seem more appealing than they really are.
A live convention hour of library browsing, blackjack chatter, and retired rematches.
Live from Dice Tower West 2026, At the Table stays breezy as Eric Sommerer, Julie Ahern, and Tom Vassell work the room in Vegas, field audience questions, compare blackjack strategies, and wrap with roses, thorns, and hula hoops.
A curling stone joke opens the door to a loose, useful chat about board-game weight and shipping.
The Dice Tower uses board-game weight as a way into the hobby's more physical side: boxes, shelves, shipping, travel, and what actually happens when games move through the world.
A practical roundtable on what players can expect when board-game production mistakes reach the table.
Manufacturing mistakes become a practical test of what publishers can still make right after flawed components reach players. Eric Sommerer, Julie Ahern, and Tom Vassell sort through what buyers can reasonably request, including photo verification, replacement parts, and the…
A 2006 rewind where classroom games, app play, and a Bananagrams pouch all stay in the conversation.
The Dice Tower's 2006 rewind is strongest when hobby history brushes up against ordinary memory. The hosts move through Bananagrams, Cranio, Qwirkle, Hive, Through the Ages, and Ticket to Ride variants, weighing old affection against what still makes it back to the table.
A practical, shelf-level conversation about why board-game cover art has to be both memorable and readable.
Episode 47 treats a board game's cover as the pitch a shopper sees first, then keeps the question grounded: who is this box trying to stop? The panel talks through covers that resemble too many others, art that can feel too cute or too severe for the game inside, busy layouts,…
A loose Dice Tower East recap whose strongest moments come from the games and mishaps around the tables.
The Dice Tower's 50th At the Table episode treats Dice Tower East less as a formal report than as a friendly convention afterglow, shaped by brief run-ins, missed crossings, and the sense that everyone was pulled in different directions.
Wrestling toy talk with full collector brain.
The hosts discuss their 2024 superlatives for board games and share experiences from PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia.
Tom Vasel, Eric Summerer, and Julie Ahern recap Dice Tower East 2025, held in Orlando with 2000-2200 attendees.
Tom Vasel, Eric Summerer, and Julie Ahern discuss the Spiel des Jahres awards and their nominees, including Bomb Busters, Flip 7, and Crackle.
This episode discusses table talk in board games, exploring what communication is acceptable versus game-breaking, along with segments on gaming horror stories, listener mail, and personal anecdotes.
This episode discusses discovering game collections in unexpected places while blending personal stories about seasonal changes and family dynamics.
The hosts of At the Table with the Dice Tower record from the Dice Tower Cruise 2025, discussing their holiday gaming experiences and vacation plans while enjoying breakfast on the ship.
This episode explores what happens when board games involve stakes beyond bragging rights, featuring discussions on competitions, prizes, a horror story, listener questions, and event announcements.
Eric Summerer, Julie Ahern and Tom Vassal extend their game-night discussion to larger community events, covering venues like libraries, churches and game stores.
The panel comes back from Dice Tower West with travel stories still hanging around.
Eric Sommerer, Julie Ahern, and Tom Vassell go live from Dice Tower West 2026 in Vegas.
The Dice Tower’s “Dude, that’s heavy” spends a long stretch on the physical weight of board games, from books in Tales of Arabian Nights and Vantage to chip-heavy boxes like Elder Scrolls.
This episode discusses the challenges and strategies of turning board games into live events at conventions, with hosts Eric Sommerer and Tom Vassell sharing insights and previewing upcoming Dice Tower West.
Tom and Eric discuss their experiences from the Dicetower cruise and promote upcoming Dicetower West and East events, including board game comedy shows, a trick-taking minicon, and sponsor partnerships.
At The Table with The Dice Tower, Episode 63, focuses on what happens when board-game manufacturing errors make it into published copies, using Slay the Spire sleeves and Forbidden Stars as concrete examples.
The hosts open with January updates, then turn back to the games of 2006.