What would you like to see us play on Tabletop Season Three?

Posted on By Wil

Anonymous asked:

Second Season of Wil Wheaton Project. Yes or No? I hope SyFy channel has the foresight to keep it going.

So for those of you who don’t know, earlier this summer, I did 12 episodes of a silly comedy show on Syfy called The Wil Wheaton Project. It was basically The Soup for people like me who enjoy sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, as well as jokes about those things. If you’d like to see a bunch of clips from the show, they’re right here on my YouTube thing.

We’re officially on hiatus right now, and we don’t know if the network will order more episodes. I know that they liked us in a creative sense, but the ratings weren’t very good (ratings are generally not very good in summer, and while I don’t believe that ratings are as important as they once were, my opinion on the matter isn’t particularly important to the decision makers), but the people who did watch us really liked us. So I won’t know for a few more weeks, but until then, I’m on hiatus, which means I get to write more, play more games, and prep for season three of Tabletop, which goes into production in October.

Part of that preparation includes finding 20 games to play on the show, and as of today, I have eight (maybe nine) that are strong contenders.

What do you want us to play on the show next year? Would you tell me the game, the publisher, and why you like it?

Keep in mind the criteria for Tabletop game selection:

  1. Plays well with 4 people.

  2. Plays in under 90 minutes.

  3. Can be generally explained in about 5 minutes.

  4. Has a high ration of luck to strategy, so everyone has a chance to win the game.

  5. Looks great, has clear graphical design and photographs well.

  6. Is not something we’ve played before.

I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.

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Comments (2,070)

  2. Jamaica. You play a bunch of pirates trying to race around the island. It is kind of like a simplified Mario Cart board game. Bonus, it is an absolutely beautiful game with the high ratio of luck to strategy you’re looking for in Tabletop Games.

  4. Dead of Winter from Plaid Hat Games would be amazing on Tabletop, even though it will likely go over your preferred time limit.

    Coup is excellent, and highly recommended as a part of a small game episode, but too short for a regular one.

    Libertalia would make for an excellent episode – lots of great art to showcase, and the game isn’t super complicated, but there are rewards for careful thought.

    Kemet could be good. The hardest part of showing it is all of the technology options players have, and it does favor strategy over luck, there isn’t much luck at all in the game.

    Evolution is great, and would fit all of your requirements. It plays in just over an hour, and has lots of great artwork, a fantastic concept, and just enough player interaction (by someone’s carnivore eating someone else’s creature) to keep it lively.

  5. Discworld, visually appealing, strategy, cards, simple concept, random events and good old fashioned sabotaging your opponents plans!

  7. Lots of great games that fit that bill.

    Sentinels of the Multiverse (co-op superhero game, seems like your demo),
    Roll Through the Ages (dice rolling, civ building in under 30 minutes),
    Lords of Vegas (4 people, dice, vegas),
    Archer: Danger Zone (I hear it’s a crappy game, but that could make the episode MORE fun),
    Flash Point Fire Rescue (another great 4 player co-op)
    Escape: Curse of the Temple (15 minute real time, madness ensues, might be a challenge to shoot)
    Red Dragon Inn (very fun card game that works great with 4 player, great D&D style theme)
    Formula D (car race game that is a little skill and a lot of luck based on dice rolls)

    Just a few ideas. 🙂

  8. Dead of Winter (Plaid Hat Games)

    Sheriff of Nottingham (Arcane Wonders)

    Eminent Domain (Tasty Minstrel Games)

  10. Exalted! Quite possibly the most over the top tabletop role playing game in all of history. A first tier ability set is to grab the great world serpent flying around creation and to use it to mow your lawn.

    Published by White Wolf Publishing.

  11. One game that works well with 4 is Boss Monster (http://brotherwisegames.com/) and doesn’t take that long to play and another favourite is the Discworld game Ankh Morpork which is at it’s best with four. It would be great to see either of there played in TableTop season 3!

  13. Heroes Wanted : easy, fun semi co op super hero game.. Has quirks that would fit right in your show.

  14. Less a specific request than a suggestion – I’d love a new game compatible with long-distance gameplay.

    A good portion of my game-playing is done over Skype, usually with a webcam pointed at the playing surface & players on either end. As such, we’ve found a few general requirements for video-conferenced gameplay:
    1) Pieces/board have to be visible at the other end of a webcam link!
    2) Either:
    a) the game cannot have secret knowledge (that is, knowledge, often in the form of a hand of cards, that is visible to one player but not the others); or
    b) the collection of secret knowledge can’t be drawn-without-replacement.
    3) The game generally works best if it can be “mirrored” on either end (so usually both sides need to have a copy).

    A few examples:
    I. Cooperative games like Pandemic, Forbidden Island/Desert, or even Arkham Horror work (though AH has an awfully large board). Betrayal at House on the Hill is a favorite (though I have the version 1 orange box, while our usual partners have the version 2 green box).
    II. Games where not everyone has to draw from the same deck can work, too: deck-building games (so long as one side is the “master” side & responsible for any drawing from the main deck), Munchkin (particularly when each end is using a different variant, e.g., Munchkin Cthulhu here, Star Munchkin over there), Red Dragon Inn, Sentinels of the Multiverse.

    It’d be great to see if there are other games or other approaches that would work.

  16. ALIEN UPRISING
    Mr. B Games
    Your ship has crashed and you’re surrounded by hostile aliens. Work together to repair your vessel or hold off the hostiles long enough for the rescue ship to arrive. Great co-op with a ticking clock.

    WIZ-WAR
    Fantasy Flight Games
    Loads of direct conflict and chaotic, wizardly fun! Strange creatures and stranger spell effects. Two points wins!

    COSMIC ENCOUNTER
    Fantasy Flight Games
    Negotiate and zap your way to the top. You liked Munchkin, right?

    INFILTRATION
    I don’t hear a lot about this game, but it’s a personal favorite of mine. Break into a heavily-secure facility, grab as much data as you can, and, most importantly, get out before the muscle arrives. Another great ticking clock game.

    ROADS & BOATS
    Just kidding.

  18. ° Dominion (Rio Grande) – Began the deck building craze. Would be fun to show dofferent strategies and massive action engines on the show.

    ° Kingsburg (Fantasy Flight) – Great balance between luck and strategy. Great artwork and colorful dice great for viewers to see.

    ° Desperados of Dicetown (Matagot) – Very light, very fun. Again, colorful game that’s great for gamers and none gamers. Dice, pocker chips and cards = win.

    ° Family Business (Mayfair) – Most interactive game I own! Tons of fun, easy to learn and you get to be gangsters!

    ° 7 Wonders (Repos Productions) – Innovative, drafting and colorful. This game is a blast!

  19. I’d like to recommend Lift Off! Get me off this Planet!
    This is a semi-cooperative game where you need to get your little Aliens off the planet before it explodes. Delightful custom meeples.

    You can see the funded Kickstarter here: bit.ly/LOKSFB .
    This game will be hot off the presses in March, but I’d be more than willing to provide a prototype to consider early.

    Yep, game is 2-5 players and works great with 4.
    Clocks in around 45 minutes
    Simple to play, but the moon phases and modular board make for dynamic play
    The entire desire behind the design was to make a game where everyone is “in it” until the end.
    Vibrant and fresh look.
    No way you’ve played it 🙂

    Cheers,
    ~Ed

  20. Coup (Indie Boards and Cards) – Very quick bluffing game. It might need to be paired with some other quick games.

    Dead of Winter (Plaid Hat Games) – Very thematic survival co-op with a possible traitor mechanic. It would make for a really great story.

    King’s Forge (Game Salute) – Lots of dice! A fun crafting/gathering game with some good possible one-up manship.

    Tuscany (Stonemaier Games) – Blends the theme of building your vineyard in well with the worker placement mechanics. I think it has good room for table talk.

    Eldritch Horror (Fantasy Flight Games) – Creates a lot of room for storytelling which works well with the right group.

    Letters From Whitechapel (Fantasy Flight Games) – Tends to create a really good dialogue between the investigators while the player controlling Jack is either laughing to himself or getting really nervous as he gets pinched. Probably runs over your time limit though…

    Eldritch Horror and Letters from Whitechapel both are probably a bit longer but I think you could “fast forward” through the middle without throwing too many people off.

  21. Can you guys do Cosmic Encounter? It is one of the greatest games I have ever played, and pretty simple in its base rules. I really hope to see this game on the show some day!

  22. I would say Dead of Winter – Such a high intensity game, especially if there is a betrayer in the ranks.

    Also, Agricola – I know it seems like a lame theme, but watching Wil get screwed out of getting a resource he needs could be fun. The real problem with this would be the amount of planning that goes on in people’s heads.

    Flashpoint Fire Rescue – fun co-op.

    Risk Legacy – all 3rd season long. Just kidding.

  24. (Apologies for not reading the first 1400 comments)

    I’ve recently been playing Suburbia from Bezir Games and I think it meets your criteria quite well. It’s a tile laying game with a sort of an old school Sim City feel to it. You (more or less) draw and place hex-shaped tiles representing Residential/Commercial/Industrial and Government buildings to generate income and attract population (victory points). It’s simple to learn but has a fair amount of depth.

    While I’m here, you should totally have Jackie Kashian (and possibly her husband) on an episode.

  25. Agricola would take too long to explain. Second for Flash Point. Zooloretto would be great as well as Stone Age and Bruges,

    Peaches ya’ll

  27. I would love to see Battlestar Galactica by Fantasy Flight played. It’s one of my favorite backstabbing games. Also, Dice Town by Asmodee Editions is a lot of fun and a quick play. Deck builders are a lot of fun. Dominion is popular, but I really like Thunderstone (has a D&D style theme to it) by Alderac Entertainment Group and Nightfall (vampires and werewolves) also by Alderac Entertainment Group. Finally, Alien Frontiers by Clever Mojo Games is a lot of fun with four players. Build ships (dice) and colonize for points.

  29. Dominion, as others are saying, it has plenty of expansions and plenty of replay fun for 3 or more.

  30. Tunnels and Trolls, the world’s second oldest role playing game. The new edition should be released in the next couple of months. Next year is the 40th anniversary of the game.

  32. Red Dragon Inn from Slugfest Games sounds perfect for you guys. It’s a game for 2-4 players (plays best with 4) where everyone has a deck that represents the character they play. You’ve just finished adventuring, and you seek to blow off some steam at the local inn. The objective is to be the last to pass out or run out of money.

  35. I suggest Cosmic Wimpout which my friend and we use this game to settle who was dose the dishes in camp. Apples to Apples, Taboo, Cosmic Encounters, Cribbage. That’s my input.

  36. I would vote for Heroes Wanted! A new release that is fairly quick with TONS of super hero humor (playing with the Quirks).

    As a second rounds of votes: Kaosball (lots of cool minis here), Ghost Stories (very tough cooperative), Sentinels of the Multiverse (cooperative super-hero game), Stone Age (worker placement), 7 Wonders.

  37. Please excuse me if these were already mentioned, but reading through 1,400 comments would be to much right now.

    I would argue for one or all of the following:

    Pathfinder: Adventure Card Game. 4 PlayerCo-op, can be easily explained and photographs well. Easily explained, depends on dice so luck is an important component of the game.

    Chaos in the Old World: 4 Players, great looking game, not as complicated as it seems, luck of the draw can influence matches, as well as luck of the dice. Interesting because of asymmetrical gameplay.

    Eldritch Horror: Streamlined Arkham Horror. Nough said.

    Maybe a three vs. one dungeon crawl (Descent 2. Edition) would work with the right crowd. Three vs. Wheaton would make for a great show in my opinion.

  39. I believe you may be entertaining this option already (I know some people), but Dwarven Miner from Rather Dashing Games. One of the creators is a minor celebrity (Grant Wilson of Ghost Hunters) and the entire paradigm behing Rather Dashing is, Can be learned in 5 minutes, Can be played in under an hour.

  40. I’ve got 2 recommendations for your kids episode, and one for adults. Though, at least one of the kids ones could be played with adults.

    For Kids:

    Sleeping Queens (Gamewright), 2-5 players, time 15+ mins

    It was designed by a six year old, so there’s something awesome right there.

    You lay out the Queen cards face down on the table, and the goal is to get the most points in Queen cards. They have different values from 5 to 20 points.

    In your hand you get Kings, which you trade in for Queens; Knights which steal other players Queens; Dragons, which stop Knights; Potions which put Queens back to sleep; Magic Wands which block Potions; and number cards. You discard number cards in pairs, or sets of three that make a math sentence (ie 2 + 3 = 5, discard 2,3,5)

    The only drawback for you might be that it’s a shorter game -more 15-20 than 30+.

    For Kids or Adults:

    Sushi GO! (Gamewright) 2-5 players, 20+ mins

    I picked this up because of sushi & the adorable tin! My 8 year old loves this game, but I’ve played it with adults, too. It’s quick to pick up the basics, but there’s a decent amount of strategy & luck, too. One thing I’ve noticed – the player with the most puddings usually wins.

    Basics are: you get a hand of cards. Four 4 players, you’d get 8 cards. You pick one, put it face down in front of you, and then pass your hand to the left.

    Mostly you’re trying to make sets – sets of 2 Tempura, sets of 3 Sashimi. Dumplings are unspecific, but the more you have, the more points you get. Maki only gets points for the player with the most & second most. Nigiri are single items.

    There are special cards, too. Wasabi makes the next Nigiri X3 point value. Chopsticks let you trade them in for 2 cards later on. Puddings are put aside & scored at the end. The most Puddings gets a bonus, the least a penalty.

    You score points. After 3 rounds, you count up Puddings. The one with the most points wins. 😉

    For Adults:

    Citadels (Fantasy Flight Games) 2-7 players, 20-60 mins

    This one’s more complicated to explain, though not that difficult when you actually play it.

    You’re trying to build a city. Your city will consist of 8 parts/cards (hopefully). Whomever plays their 8th city piece triggers the last round.

    Each city piece has a different cost, and therefore different point value at the end. Usually these are the same. There are 5 types/colours for your city pieces. If you get one of each, you get bonus points. Also, the different colours tie in with the different character cards.

    Each round you pick a different character. The oldest player starts first, but if you choose the King, you get to pick first in the next round. Each character has different abilities, which is where the strategy comes in. Which abilities will help you most right now? Some of them get bonuses if you have a colour in your city that matches them.

    Each turn you get Gold OR draw cards, then you use your character’s ability. Once someone has 8 parts to their city, the last round happens. Then you count the points in your city, and any bonus points – from all 5 colours, from having a complete city, from finishing first.

    The one with the most points wins. 😉

  41. Livestock uprising, heros wanted, Istanbul, camel up, flashpoint, Legendary villians

  42. Coup is a good title – similar in some ways to Love Letter – but there aren’t a whole lot of components, so it may not film too well. The card art in the Indie Boards & Cards edition is quite nice, though; especially in the Kickstarter copies, which allow you to play with unique art for each copy of card.

    Puzzle Strike is a lot of fun, and unique in its presentation (a deckbuilder played with chips instead of cards), and its notion of players starting with three unique chips injects a degree of variety into the early game, but most of the chips aren’t much to look at. It may help if you have the playmats, which lend a sort of tetris-ish feel to each player’s gem pile.

    Ascension is another deckbuilder, with an unusual art style – some like it, some dislike it. It has a lot more randomness and variety than, say, Dominion, because instead of selecting a static bank of cards which are all that are ever available in a given game, Ascension’s card bank cycles – as cards are acquired, their slots are filled from a shuffled deck.

    1. Seconding pretty much everything said here. My only stipulations are I don’t think the kickstarter version of Coup is as good for Tabletop; the unique art for each copy of the card makes it shift the game to where paying attention to the art on each card you may see is too powerful of a strategy, which takes away from the luck-skill ratio.

      Otherwise, I think Puzzle Strike is probably the best Deck building game for Tabletop, since it has a lot of interaction between players, and it doesn’t fall into some of the normal traps of other deck building games which make them less interesting tow watch.

      Otherwise, if it’d be possible to do BSG, I’d really like to see that done on tabletop, but I understand some of the issues that would make it harder to do.

  43. How about a classic? Mille Bornes. Cards are easy to read and it’s a lot of fun to screw over an opponent with a flat tire.

  44. I’d love to see Sheriff of Nottingham. Simple rules, lots of room for hilarious banter, short play time, cute bags to hand to each other.

    Obviously Machi Koro would be great too :). Plenty of laughs to be had there & it’s very accessible with a great look.

  45. Dead of Winter – A Crossroads Game. Tense and exciting, with lots of story and difficult decisions. I’d love to see it on the show!

  46. This might sound ridiculous, but if you have yet to try out the game “Monopoly Deal”, you should stop resisting and give it a go. It is one of the most fun, quick and cutthroat card games I’ve ever played. Even though it’s a derivative of one of the least entertaining board games still in print, it’s familiar themes make it quick for the layperson to pick up. While there is quite a bit of “luck of the draw” built into the game, there is a strategy that can develop, if you learn the game well enough.

    Here is a link to the game and key details: http://www.hasbro.com/monopoly/en_US/shop/details.cfm?R=F3854DAA-728A-1014-B188-F10137905FA8:en_US

  48. I would love to see any of the following:

    Splendor
    Libertalia
    Biblios
    Abluxxen
    Guildhall
    Trains
    Fleet
    Gravwell
    Council of Verona

    Can’t wait for the new season of Tabletop!

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