SU&SD
Paul: Today’s Games News comes bursting through your front door like a SWAT team seizing all your pirate DVDs. Why DO you have quite so many pirate DVDs? Why haven’t you moved on to Blu-ray? These are questions we’ve all been asking and I guess you’ll have plenty of time to ponder them in the COUNTY JAIL.
ANYWAY, Pandemic: Fall of Rome is on the way from Z-Man Games, it puts a new spin on the the classic cube-busting series and… I can also reveal that I’ve already tried it.
Paul: I specifically told American punk rockers Green Day to wake me up when September came* and they have done with an absolute earful of games news. We’ve got everything from castles to fish to Lara Croft this week, so let’s get this season rolling…
Quinns: …with WARHAMMER.
Wait, hang on. Warhammer… in schools?
Paul: Hot summer strawberries! It’s the middle of August, the sun is (sometimes) in the sky (here it’s mostly just windy) and this is the season that you finally get into board games. It’s an intimidating prospect: you’ve eyed those enormous boxes on the shelves with price tags that would make a banker blush, but this really doesn’t have to be a hobby that destroys your wallet.
Wait! What’s that noise? An approaching siren? An… ice cream van?! It’s me pedalling furiously toward you in the Shut Up & Sit Down Budget Bus, adding a host of surprising prices in this sequel to our indispensable article, How To Build an Amazing Board Game Collection for $10. GET ON BOARD.
Paul: What’s that in the sky, soaring above us?! Is it a bird? A plane? Is it the GAMES NEWS, descending down upon us to… No, it is a bird. Oh no. It’s dead. Quinns, the bird is dead.
Quinns: That’s OK, I was just on my way to bury this copy of Risk. We’ll pop the bird in the box.
Paul: OK, but hurry back! There’s a news story in the Games News’ news about the Dune games that will soon be news?
Paul: Welcome back once again, dear readers, to the Games News lab, where fresh Games News stories are grown in special hydroponic vats and tended carefully until, at last, they are ready to be released to-
Quinns: ANOTHER ONE’S ESCAPED.
Paul: QUARANTINE PROTOCOL GAMMA. ENGAGE DEFENSE TURRETS. EVACUATE THE BIODOME. THE WORLD ISN’T READY FOR THE NEWS OF GEN7.
Good grief, this is two weeks in a row that Plaid Hat games are leading our Games News, but Gen7 is none other than the second “Crossroads” game. In other words, it’s the long-awaited spiritual sequel to Dead of Winter.
Paul: Quinns, what is it that you have there, under one of your many board gaming arms?
Quinns: What, this? This little thing under my tertiary limb? Why, it’s only the latest announcement from Plaid Hat games, their fancy new Neon Gods. Doesn’t it look pretty, Paul? Doesn’t it look like an imaginative cross between roller derby, cyberpunk and Adventure Time? Doesn’t it also look… CURIOUSLY FAMILIAR?
Paul: …!!
Quinns: Ha, you’ve figured it out, haven’t you? Yes, I believe that Neon Gods is nothing less than the mutant child of early Plaid Hat classic City of Remnants, a game we were delighted by all the way back in 2013.
Paul: Once again, deep behind enemy lines, we light the fires and wave our torches into the cloudy night sky in the hope that our signals will be seen by our brave allies and that they will parachute in the latest drop of vital Games New supplies. The distant drone of an engine, a dark shape in the air. Suddenly, it’s here! Quinns, open the crate! What’s inside?
Quinns: IT’S ONLY THE SEQUEL TO AZUL.
Paul: It’s HOT today and it’s only going to get hotter as the week goes on, meaning the Shut Up & Sit Down News Room (at the very top of Pear Towers, 1 Pear Street, London, W1 1AA) is absolutely sweltering. Quinns and I can’t get too close in case we stick together like a pair of softening gummy bears.
Quinns: Do you know what the opposite of a softening gummy bear is?
Games Workshop’s new announcement, KILL TEAM.
Quinns: Last week we wrote the news in a cider pub, tapping away at our keyboards to the merry belching of a few old men. Today, we thought we’d write the news in a fashionable local coffee shop.
Paul: This is a disaster. Why can’t people put their mugs into the saucers gently. Why are they all bashing them together like toddlers.
Quinns: There are at least two women within ten feet of me who think they’re Carrie Bradshaw. I’m friends with a lot of writers and none of them look this stylish or pleased with themselves as they write. They all put their hair up and enter a kind of sticky and hypnotised state.
Paul: I did like that yappy animal that was behind you though. The one that looked like a Normal Dog that a level 5 wizard had cast Reduce Dog on.
Quinns: I don’t want to ever come back here. Why would anyone come here instead of sitting snug in the shadowy confines of a quiet pub. I feel like I’m in an iPhone advert.
Paul: WELCOME to our sunny June Games News, live from a Brighton pub. Quinns and I are, in fact, writing this together in a secret alcove in a cider pub. Yes, that’s right, we have suddenly both become forty-five years old.
Quinns: Paul, it’s time for you to get a round in.
Paul: You don’t need to type that, I’m sat right next to you. Also it’s not even 1pm.
Quinns: Don’t give me that you NARC