The Dice Tower Awards Nominees for 2011 have been released.

The Dice Tower is one of the granddaddies of the board game podcasts. Tom Vasel, Eric Summerer and a revolving cast of contributors do a really good job of exploring the board game hobby with a variety show type of feel. It is funny, informative, poignant, interesting and all around fun. It's a good show, you should check it out.

Over the past few years, the Dice Tower has been attempting to leverage the experience of its various contributors in order to create a set of board gaming awards that relevant to the majority of hobby gamers. Think of it as an American Spiel Des Jahres.

This year's list of award nominees has just been released. After looking over the list, I am sure that at the very least I'd like to try every game that is nominated as every game on the list that I have already tried is really good. Without experience with the others (yet!), I'd say that you owe it to yourself to check out your local game groups and friendly local game stores to see if you can try them out.

Good luck to the nominees and thank you to the Dice Tower crew for creating and going through the work of playing and deciding on awards for these great games. You're helping the board game hobby and we, at the Great Big Table podcast, appreciate.

For those that listen to the show, we'll definitely be discussing games from the list that we have played, like Forbidden Island, Rallyman, Bears!, and Train of Thought in future episodes. At some point, we'll also discuss the impact that awards have on the board game hobby.


***Great Big Table is a late-night conversation between two Midwestern geeks with dreams of world domination through board games. It's not a great plan, but it's our plan and we're sticking to it. Join as we plot to put a meeple in every pot- or at least on every table. We slipped the bonds of our robot masters, so the only opinions represented here are our own. We are however in league with Amazon, so a percentage of every purchase made through our links goes into our onshore accounts (thanks!). You should be proud of yourself for reading all this small print- we are!

Great Big Table podcast - Episode 000 - Introductions

It's Episode 0 of the Great Big Table podcast! It'll knock the cardboard out of you!

The Great Big Table podcast is finally off and running. Show hosts, Jim and Adrienne Jones introduce themselves and talk about what their planning to do with the podcast (pretty standard fair really).

Find out why Adrienne needed Therapy and how Jim found the most amazing sandwich shop (twice!). Learn about the Evansville game (Jim swears) of Clabber, why you should be playing Wise and Otherwise if you're single and looking to get hitched, and why hitting a front desk bell with tyrannosaurus arms makes it hard to be Spock.

Some of the games mentioned in this episode include:

Apples to Apples 
Buckaroo
Call of Cthulhu Role Playing Game
Carcassonne
Car Wars
Crack the Case
Curses (or, as we like to call it, "A Plague of Curses)
Dungeons and Dragons
Ghosts! by Milton Bradley
Kill Doctor Lucky 
Mille Bornes 
Mousetrap
Monopoly
Pitchcar
Qwirkle Cubes
Say Anything
Scattergories 
Taboo
Talisman
Therapy
Things: Humor in a Box (aka The Game of Things)
The Ungame
Wise and Otherwise 
Wits and Wagers

Download the episode:  GBT-EP000-Introductions-final.mp3

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This episode of the Great Big Table is released under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives 3.0 License.

The song used in this episode is The Music of You by Jim's Big Ego and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike 3.0 License and is used with permission of the artist. Hear more of their music at bigego.com and if you buy something, tell them that the Great Big Table podcast sent you. Jim’s Big Ego is kind enough to share their music and we’d like to return that kindness.

The My favorite game console is a table and chairs image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike by Daniel Solis. If you like the image, head over to Daniel's blog, danielsolis.com, and buy the t-shirt. If you buy a t-shirt, tell Daniel that the Great Big Table podcast sent you. Daniel has an amazing blog with many interesting thoughts about gaming. Check it out.


***Great Big Table is a late-night conversation between two Midwestern geeks with dreams of world domination through board games. Join as we plot to put a meeple in every pot- or at least on every table. We slipped the bonds of our robot masters, so the only opinions represented here are our own.  None of the titles mentioned in this episode were provided by the manufacturers, but we will note such relationships where they exist.  You should be proud of yourself for reading all this small print- we are!