The Dice Tower Board Gaming YouTube Has Another Woke Problem With Recent Hire By Tom Vasel

The Dice Tower YouTube Channel and podcast network was once a powerhouse in board gaming. Tom Vasel built an empire with over 300,000 subscribers, leading to conventions and cruises. At one point, his reviews could make or break games, though, in recent years, the reviews have been more of a company product shill than anything useful for gamers. A lot of this changed because of woke politics infesting the network, which was made worse with a recent hire. 

The problems of bowing to the woke mob aren’t new for The Dice Tower. Several years ago, when conservative board game creator Robert Burke asked to have his board game reviewed by the Dice Tower, Vasel refused, citing him as too controversial of a figure to give attention to. He further warned Burke that if he went public with the reasoning for the lack of a review, The Dice Tower would “blackball” him from any future reviews, even if his reputation improved in their eyes. 

This is fairly standard practice for the board gaming industry. Politically blacklisted creators are the norm which comes from a small, vocal cancel mob that operates within organizations like GAMA, the Game Manufacturers Association, which has its fingers into major expos like Origins Game Fair and GenCon. The Dice Tower is a large enough review group to overcome that, but they refuse to do anything except keep these cancel culture leaders in place.

This was exemplified early when Tom Vasel hired Suzanne Sheldon to do videos for the Dice Tower. Suzanne is one of the worst woke gossipers in the industry, torpedoing many careers. Her influence and whisper network are part of why Jeff Bergen, publisher of the game Tournament Fishing, was canceled for simply having a frog on his rulebook. Her influence at the Dice Tower hurt the network severely.

During Suzanne’s reign of terror, Eric Lang joined Tom Vasel to rant about extremist left-wing politics on the channel (which, after shaming them for this interview, Vasel has made the video private so it can’t be found).

Tom Vasel even took to Board Game Geek to virtue signal, saying, “Let me be plain and clear: We believe in diversity and inclusion for everyone. For the last several years, I have sought to create a diverse cast of contributors and gamers in The Dice Tower, from the video reviewers to convention runners to folks behind the scenes. But this doesn’t exempt us from doing more, doing better. So it’s time to say something.” Much like the Eric Lang interview, the Board Game Geek post is now deleted, though Redditors saved the text.

The woke mob clearly got to him as he spiraled the channel into irrelevancy by “saying something” when he was trusted before for his reviews and views on Board Games—a traditional family hobby. Now, it was clear he’d say anything and do anything for clout. 

In 2022, Tom Vasel took another step, banning Jeff Bergen and myself (Jon Del Arroz) from the Dice Tower West convention after we bought tickets. He did so simply on the basis of who we were as vocal Christians and conservatives, cementing that The Dice Tower hates anyone who espouses such views. 

It’s gotten worse this year with their new hire of Emory Harris, a woke cancel pig on the level of Suzanne Sheldon or worse. Emory has a history of siccing mobs on conservative content creators to try to cancel them, and he’s had some success doing so. 

Emory targeted the channel All Aboard Games, a channel much like the Dice Tower in that it’s dedicated to reviewing board games. While the channel is excellent and sticks completely to game mechanics, the purveyor is known to be a conservative, and so he must be targeted and destroyed by the bigoted, intolerant left in board gaming. 

Emory went into All Aboard Games’ discord server and started causing trouble, ranting about LGBTQ issues in a space that was supposed to be about board games. He got into fights with several of the channel’s fans and friends and eventually was banned for being out of control. 

The Dice Tower advertising manager took to Twitter to tag every creator he knew that was being reviewed by AAG. He accused All Aboard Games of harassing other content creators as well as being “anti gay and anti trans” to do so. He tagged other content creators and urged them to leave the AAG Discord server. He also tagged sponsors of the channel to try to destroy All Aboard Games’ reputation and business.

The cancel culture tactics were effective, as All Aboard Games started losing interviews with content creators. Luke Laurie, designer of Dwellings of Eldervale, Whistle Mountain, and other games, canceled his interview with the channel because of Emory’s antics. 

Emory Harris is also a male feminist who has been pushing discrimination against men in gaming. In 2023, he posted, “Do better publishers. There are women with passion and ideas. Stop patting yourself on the back for making them a bare minimum metric.”

The Dice Tower’s woke problems will never end until they stop validating and attacking Christians and conservatives in gaming by rewarding cancel pigs like Emory Harris and Suzanne Sheldon by giving them platforms. That said, The Dice Tower has been losing its influence. They canceled their main non-YouTube podcast last year, and views on the channel are not nearly what they used to be. Get woke, go broke may be an expensive lesson for this media network to learn.