Today we’d like to introduce you to Dalia Manalo, Jhed Manalo
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’ve always liked board games, like Monopoly or Life, but getting Jhed to play them would be tough. Jhed’s played the generic games too like: Jenga, Scrabble, and Checkers. Except he’s been playing video games since he was five so getting him to play what he thought was an “inferior” product was dififcult. In early March of this year, Jhed came in with a tiny box game called Sail. It’s a trick-taking game where the core concept is you’re trying to advance your ship by matching colors and having the right numbers come out simultaneously. We played it for hours. After that, we were hooked. We’ve rapidly expanded our collection since then to try to have a range of all of the mechanics available (deck building, worker placement, Dudes on a Map (DoaM), etc.) Fast forward, family members have been asking if we’re going to try some social media. Initially, Jhed was cold on it at first because he thought it may take the enjoyment out of the game. We were initially expecting to have a small account with twenty followers, but it’s blown up a little bit more than in a month. We’ve learned how tight-knit the board game community is.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
We’re about to hit a month of content creation soon and we’ve learned we need to weather the storm. A lot of people will follow, just to get a follow back so the “follower” ticker goes up and down. The common guidance is to not look at it and just enjoy the ride. It’s very hard not to look at. We initially wanted to do YouTube in addition to Instagram, but those videos take hours to film and edit. YouTube is still in the works though! We are balancing that against school because we are both in class most of the day. Realistically we only have Friday and Saturday to create content. We’ve promised to only do it as long as it remains fun, when it starts feeling like a hassle we will stop.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We specialize in reviews, unboxing, and some humor reels. What’s different about us is you get two reviews in one. My tastes are a little different than Jhed’s, so our scores reflect that. He loves abstract themes like building a distillery or spirits haunting an island, while I love the simplicity of outer space. We give a very practical analysis of games we think people would and wouldn’t like. We love interacting and introducing people to the hobby and if you DM or email us for an opinion we will give you a recommendation based on your taste!
Board games are beautiful because you can be unplugged (phone or computer-less) for hours and those hours will feel like minutes. We do it for the social aspect. Board games have come quite a long way. We always get the “You guys play board games? Like Monopoly?” We have to explain to them that we play games with probably twice the strategy and nuance. We try to package that question and answer into a quick 3 pros and 3 cons so that if people don’t want to read our whole review they can get in and get out.
I am proud to announce Dice & Gavel got our first review copy of a game coming out in May called Rummathon Royale (@rummathonroyale on Instagram). We are extremely grateful to them for taking a chance on small creators. I wasn’t expecting a review copy of anything until about a year of doing this. This is because we thought it would be just friends and family following us. It turns out only 30% of our audience is US based, and maybe just 2-3% is friends or family. Board games are huge in Europe and we are trying to get people to unplug for a while and expand board gaming’s reach in the United States too!
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success for us is getting better every day. We don’t take our initial success for granted. We try to get better at one thing every week. This past week we worked on thumbnails and studied how different businesses market themselves. Success is enjoying the process and seeing the studies pay off!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/dicegavel
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dicegavel
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dicegavel?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@dicegavel
