Ava: Boy! Boy! You there!
Quinns: Boy? I’m 33 years old.
Ava: Tell me boy, is it still Chronicles Month?
Quinns: Oh, absolutely it is.
Ava: Wonderful! Then there’s still time. Head over to Shut Up & Sit Down and fetch me the plumpest, ripest news in the window.
Quinns: Ava, you have to help me! Following our reviews of Chronicles of Crime and Batman: Gotham City Chronicles, SU&SD fans are desperate to know what the third and final review of Chronicles Month will be. I can’t have a moment’s peace.
You have to hide me in the games news!
Ava: Never fear, noble Quintin. Follow me, and come below the “Read More” button.
Quinns: They’ll never find me!
Ava: Quick, hide under these hats.
Ava: Welcome back to our weekly dive into the pages of the Shut Up & Sit Down Chronicle. Only the hottest news makes the pages of your most finger-smudging paper, guaranteed.
Quinns: In hindsight, I really don’t know why chose that as our promise.
Ava: It’s only natural to want to leave a mark.
Quinns: Groan.
Ava: This week we’re taking a deeper dive than usual into the opinions section, as well as some of those grubby adverts in the back.
Which is to say, today’s news is mostly think-pieces and kickstarters, and we think that’s okay.
Ava: Welcome all, to the Chronicles of Newsia. It’s chronicles month this Majune at Shut Up and Sit Down, and we’re here to bring you the newest, most ancient tales bound in the thickest volumes of web-based e-vellum. Inside this dusty tome you’ll find tales of winners, losers, sickness, war, dragons, castles, birds and Belgium.
Sit down, young acolyte, and let me tell you the okay news.
Quinns: Wow. I think this is going to be SU&SD’s best Chronicles Month *ever*.
Ava: Hello lovely news-lovers. It’s another Monday, and I’m a bit worn out. I’ve had a wobbly weekend of overwhelm.
Board games can be a playful, joyful anchor when the seas of your mind are rough, a set of routines and actions you can fall into that pulls you together, brings you back in touch with the people you care about. I’m so grateful to games and the people that make them and the friends that play them. That’s why I keep coming back to dig through the newsiest jungles of the internet, bringing you select morsels of upcoming play possibilities.
Here’s the news.
Ava: After a week playing the fun game ‘moving all the objects I own from one building to another and then slowly finding new places for them to sit’, I’m mostly on my own for this week’s Games News. I’m cosily nested in an incredibly tall house on a slightly different hill in my gorgeous little valley. The sky is blue, the trees are green, the garden is gravelly and the game table is flat.
What a perfect time to roast up some news.
Kickstarting its way into orbit this week is Space Race, a follow up to a card game of the same name that looks to take up a little more of your table. The art direction is the star here, all blueprints and sharply inked illustrations. Players will build rival agencies sending astronauts into the void with a some literal and metaphorical engine building and what looks like a bit of orbital area control.
Quinns: Good morning, Ava! I understand that you just mainlined the latest episode of Game of Thrones before coming to work.
Ava (they/them): I’m definitely trying to squeeze so much into to today that I’m genuinely offended they tagged on an extra twenty minutes to this episode. I’ve got a game of Twilight Imperium set up downstairs, and by the end of the day someone is going to rule the galaxy.
But more important than the galactic throne, the iron throne, or even just the throne throne? It’s the news throne, baby, and someone’s got to sit in it.
Quinns: Let’s take turns? So nobody has to die?
Ava (they/them): Oh dear. The bosses took a break to get rotten in the state of Denmark. Specifically, they’re attending the Fastaval gaming convention, and only dropping the occasional cryptic photo (see above) into the company Slack.
That means I’m on my own for this week’s games news. They shouldn’t have left me alone. I don’t know enough of the news-ropes to not pick a random sentence, append the word news to random bits of it and pretend it’s an intro.
I guess it must be time to news-sail the news-seas and news-harpoon some news-whales.
Quinns: Good morning. Our top story this week? Shut Up & Sit Down has a new staff writer! Everybody, please give the warmest of welcomes to Ava Foxfort. Ava, will you please step in front of the class and introduce yourself?
Ava Foxfort (they/them): Hi everybody! You may have seen me in the comments or the forums, and I have to say I’m utterly thrilled to be here. Shut Up & Sit Down has been one of my favourite imaginary places for a very long time, and I’m delighted to be part of it.
Quinns: Ava, please kneel. I dub thee… a News Knight of the Realm.
Ava: I guess I’d better go slay some news.
Matt: Unlucky Matt this week! I’ve got a cold! And worse than that, it’s not even a rare cold or an illustrious purple EPIC cold, but merely a plain green chunk of common head-gunk. As the coffee and paracetamol begin to wear off, I’m switching over to rooibos tea and lashings of toast with off-brand nutella. I’m not sure “lashings of toast” makes 100% sense, but what I get up to in my house is my business.
And on that note – it looks like Fantasy Flight Games has certainly been putting the BUSY into BUSI(Y)NESS!