TAYLOR: Wait, what is that? Plasma beam.
ANDREW: Damnit. You have to be very precise.
DAIN: There were board games, there are card games, there were board games with cards,t here are video games of board games. But we got the chance to play with something that combines all of them.
ANDREW: Good luck.
TAYLOR: Good luck.
ANDREW: Thank you. Who do you want to be?
TAYLOR: The dragon.
ANDREW: I'm going to go with the wizard now.
DAIN: PlayTable is a tabletop gaming system that uses a large touchscreen to display a gameboard that you can play on with your friends and family. Since it's a screen, you can load all sorts of game boards, like Settlers of Catan, poker, or Battle Grid, which is a game that they developed just for this system.
TAYLOR: Let's see what a plasma people will do.
ANDREW: Oh, wow. That actually went in my direction. I just didn't take any damage. And I'm going to play frost nova. One off. One off.
DAIN: PlayTable uses radio frequency identification, or RFID, which is basically a system of sensors and tags that can communicate with each other. That allows sensors under the screen to recognize a card or a game piece when it's played on the board.
ANDREW: I was the president of trading card club at my school, and this was the one time I can brag about that on camera.
TAYLOR: Plasma beam round two.
ANDREW: Nice. I think that I'm taking suppressed damage because I'm behind the tree. Am I right in assuming that? Nice. President of trading cards.
DAIN: And you can put RFID tags on literally any object and turn it into your personal game piece. You just touch it to the board and the board interacts with it.
TAYLOR: I'm on fire. Wait, but that's my thing.
ANDREW: I know that's all that's from your total, Like I think that it's your dragon rage.
TAYLOR: Yeah, Ok. I'm going to try Armageddon again. Let's see if I'm in good range now.
ANDREW: Oh, I died. I died. Wow. That was a game.
TAYLOR: Good game.
ANDREW: Want to replay it? Want to go again?
TAYLOR: Yeah, let's play.
DAIN: It also uses the Etherium blockchain to keep track of your game stats, safely transfer data from one place to another, or purchase upgrades.
ANDREW: Round two of Battle Grid. Let's do a tree right here. And a tree right here.
DAIN: Needless to say this was super fun, but at a price point of $600, it might be a bit out of reach for many. Board games usually run around $30 to $40, and you can buy a brand new PlayStation Pro for over $400. But if you're comparing it to a normal videogame systems, PlayTable can be a lot more physically and socially interactive, which is something that me and my team really loved about.
TAYLOR: Plasma beam. Let's do it.
ANDREW: So yeah, you can block plasma beams with your fingers. Thanks, Jimmy.
TAYLOR: Lesson learned.
ANDREW: I'm going to Ice Beam. You hate to see it. 31 00:02:45,956 --> 00:02:45,955 TAYLOR: Didn't work. Wait, what?
ANDREW: Damnit. You have to be very precise. That's embarrasing.
DAIN: The board that we tested was just a demo board, so the one that is for purchase is going to be a little bit more polished, and will have sturdier hardware and software. But honestly, if that was the product that was delivered to me as the final product, I would not be disappointed.
ANDREW: Impassable wall on the left and right of me.
TAYLOR: Let's do some lightning. I thought it was only a beam thing.
ANDREW: In this game, the strongest piece is your finger.
TAYLOR: I can do a Wall Breaker. Why is it going the other way. Ok, I think we have to be playing this way, not this way. I'm going to try my luck again with Armageddon.
BOTH: Wow.
ANDREW: Literally, if I was anywhere else, I would have got lit up. Oh no, Frost Nova.
TAYLOR: Can I block that?
ANDREW: I don't know. It lights up the whole block.
TAYLOR: Looks like a 'no,' and it looks like probably game over.
ANDREW: Yes.
TAYLOR: Ugh, I had my Dragon Breath to play next, too.
ANDREW: I felt the fingers a little unfair.
DAIN: Play table games will sell for between $10 and $40. That's compared to the $60 games you can buy for PS4, which could balance out in the long term. But unlike the big companies like Nintendo and Sony, PlayTable is built by a startup. An incredibly impressive startup at that. So it might take a little bit of time for the prices to drop, but still, for a hardcore gamer, both have video games and board games, it's sort of a perfect option.
ANDREW: It's a lot of fun for somebody who just likes games, period.
TAYLOR: I haven't played anything like this before, but I'm the big board game person, so it appealed to me. I like it.
ANDREW: Video games to kind of take that tangibility away from a person. So being able to have something physical to interact with is really, really nice. And it works smoothly.
DAIN: I gotta say, I think that they hit this one out of the park. Everyone had such a blast playing with it. And I think that if you're an avid multiplayer gamer, whether it be with board games, or card games, or video games, or card games that are video games, or board games that have card elements. This is a product you'll have a great time using.
DAIN: Did you just smell the cards?
ANDREW: I did. They smell like playing cards. Like, when you open up a pack of Pokemon cards. Delicious smell.