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Games News! 05/02/18

Paul: I shake the champagne bottle, pop the cork and what comes bursting forth? February! February everywhere, gushing and bubbling in all directions. I don’t know about you, but I have a distinctly good feeling about February as a games month.

Quinns: Is there anything finer than sharing a frosted glass of February with some good friends? And what a Games News it’s brought us! With everything from Aztecs to political intrigue to some strange new version of Monopoly that I might actually play.

Paul: You’re kidding.

Quinns: Drink up!

Quinns: Hello everyone! Shut Up & Sit Down will return on January 15th. In the meantime, continuing on from our roundups of our favourite features from 2014 and 2015, here’s a hefty list of our very best work from 2016 and 2017. You know the phrase “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket”? Well, this article is basically a basket containing all of our eggs. Take that, Plato. You’re not the boss of us.

Paul: I don’t think that’s what Plato sai-

Quinns: Did we miss your favourite video or article? If so, leave a comment!

Paul: Good morning, Quintin!

Quinns: Good morning, Paul. How are you on this brisk winter’s morning?

Paul: I am so refreshed and wholesome.

Quinns: I slept curled up, and a draft in my bedroom froze me into a parenthesis.

Paul: What does that look like?

Quinns: )

But nevermind my failing body. Paul, voting has begun for the annual Pearple’s Choice awards on the SU&SD forum! Everybody reading this should go and vote for their games of 2017, and we’ll be discussing the results on our year-end podcast. Vote now to replace disappointment with frustration! Isn’t democracy fun!

Quinns: Christmas is almost upon us, everyone! That sweet stretch of the calendar where board games take center stage, or at the very least share the stage with potatoes and Jesus Christ.

Are you thinking about buying a new game to play with your relatives? Or are you wondering which game to buy for the stalwart board game collector in your life?

Either way, we’ve got you covered with the below holiday game guide. Enjoy, everyone!

Quinns: Hello everyone! Did our American readers have a nice Thanksgiving? I’m happy to say that I tried pecan pie for the very first time. The sugar is still bouncing around my body like a pinball.

But today I’m handing out slices of something even sweeter. I am, of course, talking about The Games News. We kick things off with the announcement of Decrypto, a team game of announcing coded messages to your team while racing to decypher the other team’s cypher.

…And I have only this second realised that “cypher” is the root word of “decypher”. That’s probably an indication that I’m going to suck at this game.

One thing I have deduced, however, is that Decrypto is almost certainly inspired by Codenames. Not only does it – like Codenames – play up to 8 players on two teams and feature a mechanic whereby a wrong move could instantly lose you the game, you are sending literal codenames to one another.

Paul: This week’s Games News speeds toward us with all the speed and power of a hovercraft. You know why a hovercraft is the most powerful of vehicles? Because it can cross both land AND water. Like a frog. But much bigger. A giant frog. Once again HUMANITY TRUMPS NATURE.

Quinns: OK, first off, a hovercraft is just a poor man’s ekranoplan. But speaking of plans, can we talk a bit about Vital Lacerda’s Escape Plan, which has been confirmed as a 2018 release?

Paul: Ooh, ok! Heist games have been doing rather well at Shut Up & Sit Down this year (we’ve all become big fans of Burgle Bros and Blades in the Dark), so it’s easy to see why you’d be so excited about Lacerda’s latest, which is all about a team of bank robbers trying to get out of town. What’s the best way to get out of town? Put the police on someone else’s tail.

Paul: Oh boy, do I feel excited about this week’s Games News! We have just SO MANY interesting and exciting stories. Where do we even begin? With the Huge Humble Bundle? The slew of Kickstarters? Or the new Netrunner core set?

Quinns: Ooh, I’d love to start with the Kickstarter for The Champion of the Wild.

SU&SD is often late to any kind of party, but TCotW is a fantastic game that we can recommend before everybody else. It’s a low-stakes, high-entertainment party game about pitching animals against each other in ridiculous tests of… well, everything from hide and seek to self-stacking. Do you think your animal would win in its category? Is a gorilla good at jousting? Maaaaaybeeee? Go on then, convince me! And enjoy the beautiful, hilarious art while you’re at it.

If you’d like to hear a little more, you can hear us playing it at the very end of podcast #60 and having a whale of a time.

Paul: It was a case of bad timing when Z-Man Games announced Pandemic: Rising Tide, as their scheduling couldn’t possibly have foreseen simultaneously flooding in eastern Texas and eastern India, and they very quickly issued an apology. That could’ve been the end of it, but Z-Man are also donating five dollars from every pre-order to Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.

It’s a difficult time for a lot of people in the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast right now. Our thoughts are also with the Dice Tower team members who have been forced to evacuate their homes. We hope they can return to enjoying the board games we all love very soon.

Paul: Quinns help me I have Kickstarters coming out of my-

Quinns: OH MY GOD WE NEED TO GET YOU TO A DOCTOR.

Paul: Yep. Maybe that doctor could help me with Star Realms Frontiers. This beloved tiny card game that you first wrote about in your 2015 Corner Awards has grown so large! Perhaps it needs to be lanced? It’s up to nearly five hundred thousand dollars. Half a million!

That’s a lot of money, but then this is no small deal, is it? No sir, this Kickstarter is offering a whole new wave of Star Realms products, from a new standalone expansion that can be combined with the original game or Colony Wars, to a whole load of other, smaller card sets, all of which can be freely intermingled to create a (wait for it) STAR GALAXY of cards. This is an absolutely colossal edition to a game that’s already a) not small and b) ever-growing in both scope and popularity.

Quinns: Paul have you had enough of game of thrones yet

Paul: The honest, complex and difficult answer to that question is both yes and no.

Quinns: Paul would you like another game of thrones board game

Paul: no

Quinns: Terrific because here comes A Game of Thrones Catan Brotherhood of the Watch!

Paul: I’m glad they picked a name that rolls off the tongue.

Games News! 05/02/18

…And that was it for 2017… and 2016!

Games News! 12/12/17

Our Holiday Gift Guide, 2017!

Games News! 27/11/17

Games News! 30/10/17

Games News! 18/09/2017

Games News! 11/09/2017

Games News! 24/07/2017

Games News! 10/07/2017

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