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<p>Does <a href="https://amzn.to/2DC5bl8"><i>The Networks</i></a> live up to the hype? Is it a prestige game, worth six seasons and a movie? Or will it fade into daytime syndication obscurity? The Dice Section binges this quirky crowdfunded board game about building a television empire.</p>

The Dice Section crew hit up their friendly local game store, Atomic Empire, for the Guilds of Ravnica prerelease event. Is now a good time for board gamers to get into Magic: The Gathering? Was Dave undefeated during the sealed deck tournament, or... was that Michael? And what the hell is a mana curve anyway? All of these answers and more in this month's episode!

Geoff and Michael hit up the Southern Fried Gaming Expo in Atlanta earlier this summer and tell Dave about all the fun games they played, and everyone recounts the other awesome stuff they've played over the past couple months. Join us for a larger-than-average, shallower-than-usual catchup episode, as we discuss: Alien Frontiers with (drunken) color commentary (10:36) Viticulture: Essential Edition (17:00) Roll Player: Monsters & Minions (28:55) Galaxy Trucker (39:22) Junk Orbit (56:41) Magic: The Gathering (1:03:55) Magic: The Gathering Arena (1:17:23) KeyForge (1:22:37) Arkham Horror: The Card Game (1:25:18)

We dominate steampunk Europe with giant mechs and the power of the proletariat in 2016's Scythe from designer Jamey Stegmaier and Stonemaier Games. We'll also be at the

We put together fantasy libraries in 2017's Ex Libris from designer Adam McIver and Renegade Game Studios. And we return to the very first game we ever played for the podcast, Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age, and realize that we never really gave it the proper Dice Section treatment. Also: Arkham Horror: The Card Game and the Dunwich Legacy expansion has us firmly back in its slimy tentacled grasp! Oh no! (Oh yesssss.)

We chucked a bunch of dice and quantified Michael's analysis paralysis down to the minute with 2014's Roll for the Galaxy. We also pour one out for our homie Mayfair Games (and speculate a bit about their financials).

We got together during the holidays to revisit and re-play some of the games we played for the show in 2017: Roll Player, Terraforming Mars, Fate of the Elder Gods, Quadropolis, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Colt Express, and Arkham Horror: The Card Game. Some of our fun was shared live on the internet, including a Twitch stream with questionable audio/video quality and some Periscopes during our chilly game day in Geoff's garage. So join us as we take a look back at auld lang syne, pick our favorite games of the year, and look forward to what's in store for 2018. Thanks to Upper Deck Entertainment for sponsoring the show. Check out their new game, Marvel Contest of Champions: Battlerealms, available for pre-order through your local game store.

Who doesn't love games about building things? And what's better than building a planet hospitable to human habitation? In Terraforming Mars, you play as corporations vying to make the red planet a hot travel destination for mankind. Literally hot. The dumb rock is freezing, so go ahead and throw some asteroids at it, and pump it full of greenhouse gases, because nobody's coming until that thermometer says it's ready. The game was designed by Jacob Fryxelius with art by Isaac Fryxelius, and is published in the United States by Stronghold Games. We also got a chance to check out Greater Than Games' Legends of Sleepy Hollow, so we talk a little about the wild and crazy pastime of backing games on Kickstarter.

It's no secret that we dig games set in H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, but usually we're trying to save the world from the evil schemes of otherworldly deities. In Fate of the Elder Gods, though, we get to play as the cultists, and we're trying to summon our eldritch masters, or die trying. The game was designed by Richard Launius, Darrell Louder, and Chris Kirkman, funded on Kickstarter in 2016, and published by Greater Than Games' Fabled Nexus imprint this year. Did the game drive us mad with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, or did we complete the task at hand, summon Azathoth into being, and get home in time for dinner? You'll have to listen to the podcast to see if the stars are right.

This month, we give the ol' Consulting Detective biz a try and find out that it's not elementary, really. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders & Other Cases is the game, and the game... is afoot. Designed by Raymond Edwards, Suzanne Goldberg, and Gary Grady back in 1981, this hobby gaming classic won the Spiel des Jahres in '85, had an awesome FMV digital release on CD-ROM systems like the FM Towns and Sega CD, and is currently published by (who else) Asmodee through their Space Cowboys imprint. So, how did we stack up against the world's greatest detective? It's a mystery! And the clues can be found... in the podcast. Timestamps: 1:26 - All three of us have been playing Failbetter Games' Sunless Sea 20:26 - Our attempt at a Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective publishing history 32:07 - What even is Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective? In spoiler-free fashion, talk about the game and how it's played. 57:23 - We raise some concerns about the game, and give our verdict. 1:14:22 - SPOILER WARNING! We dig into specifics for cases 1-5.

In this episode, the guys head back to prehistoric times with Stone Age from Hans Im Glück. Theme aside (cavemen, huts, etc.), this game isn't exactly bleeding edge. Published nearly a decade ago when the hobby board game market was a very different place, somehow it escaped both Dave and Michael's attentions. Advantage: Geoff. Stone Age was designed by Bernd Brunnhofer (a.k.a., Michael Tummelhofer) with art by Michael Menzel. Lesson of the week? If this hut's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'.

For this episode, the guys played Keith Matejka's Roll Player into the double digits. This game, published by Thunderworks Games in the United States, with art by John Ariosa and Luis Francisco, is a dice-based game all about creating the perfect tabletop RPG character. Enjoy!

Dave, Michael, and Geoff revisit cooperative card games, which, as a rule, they've despised, and give Sentinels of the Multiverse and the Arkham Horror LCG a chance.

We hitch a ride on the Colt Express, the 3D movement programming game that took the world by storm back 2014, won the Spiel des Jahres in 2015, and finally made its way into Michael's stocking for Christmas 2016. We also go back to Mansions of Madness, The Castles of Mad King Ludwig, and Splendor.

For this episode, we ask: would you rather visit a mansion haunted by eldritch monsters, or a castle commissioned by an insane Bavarian monarch? It's a tough choice. We'll help you decide, as we talk about Mansions of Madness and The Castles of Mad King Ludwig.

In this episode, we revisit New Bedford, because it's our new favorite worker-placin' city-buildin' whale-huntin' game. We can't stop thinking about it, we want to play it every time we hang out, and we're basically in love with it and want to marry it. We also played Bad Detectives, the winner of 2015's Tabletop Deathmatch competition. It's a tile placement game all about terrible cops solving a murder in the worst possible way. We discuss why it really didn't work for us, how a reality show may not be the best way to develop a good board game, and chasing that mysterious and elusive game component called "fun".

Sometimes I run into interesting people in the games community and I have questions for them. Mainly for my own edification. I'm a dad, I work a nine-to-five job, and I often feel like I barely have time to play games, much less make them, so my first question is usually about how they've managed to turn their passion for games into something approaching a career. When I saw the Kickstarter for Grand Gamers Guild's Unreal Estate, I wanted to know a bit more about how the game came to life. When the founder of the company, Marc Specter, reached out to me on Twitter and suggested joining me on the show, I thought it was a good chance to try something new. Unreal Estate was designed by Jason Slingerland, with art by Corinne Roberts and graphic design by Chris Kirkman. For more info on Grand Gamers Guild, check out their website and the Unreal Estate Kickstarter campaign. It ends on Friday, October 21st, so plan accordingly.

What happened to all those episodes between now and last October!? Well, either way, we’re back, joined by our old buddy, Geoff, and we’re talking about New Bedford, Sheriff of Nottingham, and Shadowrun: Crossfire.

In this episode, our first after a long summer vacation, we discuss those moments in role-playing games—video and tabletop—that made us stop and think. As young players, the idea of character dilemmas and a satisfying story were the stuff of gaming legend. Now that we're all growed up, we realize that it can happen, but it takes a special group and a GM willing to let go of a little control. We also joke a lot about how many dice you roll in Shadowrun. As you do.

Haircuts. Boxing. Sword and sorcery and dungeon crawls, including a revolutionary occurrence in our 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign and a review of the new Temple of Elemental Evil board game from Wizards of the Coast and WizKids. We reminisce about childhood games like Hero Quest and Dragon Strike, and (spoiler alert) decide that we could all do a lot worse than Temple of Elemental Evil as an introduction to the dungeon crawl genre.