Quinns: We’re awake! And alive! Shut Up & Sit Down is officially back in action, ready to spend another 12 months covering amazing board games. What new designs await us this year? What never-before-seen ideas will spring out and delight us?
Matt: What hellscape have you interrupted my slumber for? It’s 9am on a Monday morning and I’m looking at one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.
Quinns: Those are the goat entrails that I was reading, trying to divine what awaits us this year… Oh, no, sorry, that’s just Monopoly: Pizza edition.
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Quinns: Good morning everybody! How are we all? Are we feeling Christmassy yet?
On second thoughts, perhaps we shouldn’t waste our energy on chit-chat. We have a dense and fibrous stack of news to get through, you and I. We’re going to be bloated with announcements by the end of this. Stuffed with stats. Packed with press releases.
Let’s start with the smallest announcement and see how we fare, eh? I’m talking about the tiny towns of Tiny Towns.
Matt: It’s a snappy news roundup this week, as Quinns and I are both prepping and packing for a journey to Philadelphia’s PAX Unplugged! And once again we’re stuck with an impossible question- how many games do you bring to a gaming convention?
Quinns: URGH. Bring too many and there’s no room in your bag for more games, bring too few I am reduced to a grumpy banshee, stalking the halls of my hotel and wondering why I have naught to plaaaay!!
Matt: One of the games I’m definitely bringing is Keyforge, which Quinns and I are currently playtesting for our big, end-of-year blowout review.
And actually, that game made headlines this month…
Matt: After being firmly informed by readers last week that it is “never too early for ice-cream”, I have been scavenging in a safe radius around the news desk, seizing control of Viennetta factories, busting Cornetto bunkers wide, wide open – and generally taking control of all dairy choke-points. My mastery of breakfast sugar knows no bounds, and I am now fully prepared to dance upon the news desk.
Quinns: I just woke up and WHY IS THERE CREAM EVERYWHERE
…Cream, but also news. Let’s get stuck in.
Quinns: If I’m, honest, Matt, when I wrote these with Paul he’d let me sleep in a bit longer.
Matt: The news waits for nobody, Quinns. How many stories did we miss while you were unconscious?
Quinns: I don’t know? It’s hard to think while you’re in my bedroom and kneeling on my chest
Matt: This is your fault! You’ve awakened a craving in me, Quinns. An insatiable hunger for scoops. And it’s too early for ice-cream, so let’s get to work.
Quinns: Today I’d like to welcome a relative newcomer to the news, it’s SU&SD’s own Matt Lees. Matt, please climb up from under the news desk.
Matt: I’d really rather stay under here, Quinns – it’s cold up there and I’m ever so toasty in my nest of chewed-up Netrunner cards.
Quinns: If you won’t come to the news, then the news will COME TO YOU
Matt: Please stop inserting stories into my mouth and face, I’ll do the news I’ll do it I will
Thanks to Meeple Mountain for our header image.
Quinns: Like a blogging Mary Poppins, today I’m floating down from the sky to add a little magic to your life. (Don’t look up my skirt and we can both retain our dignity.)
This week’s Games News offers not one, not two, but six(!) unique Kickstarters from established designers. Some people are saying that the ever-swelling bubble of board game Kickstarters will have to pop at some point. Me? I don’t know about that, but I will say that I’ve never before seen a month where Kickstarter board games have managed to make press releases from more established companies seem repetitious and dull.
I thought that deserved a bit of a celebration. Let’s take a tour!
Paul: Hello everyone! SHUX 2018 is now just four days away, looming like a mountain in the mist, so we won’t be putting any new or posts up on the site this week. Instead, the whole team is sat around a table as I write this to do last minute prep, which includes everything from rolling up characters for live RPGs to making sure the compass arrow on the convention map really is pointing North. Is it? FIND OUT ON FRIDAY.
Paul: Once again, the Games News Helicopter touches down on the top of SU&SD corporate headquarters and I burst out the side, doing that hold-your-head-down-slightly thing that people do and clutching a fistful of papers that describe today’s top stories.
But, oh no! The downwash from the propellers blows them out of my hands and they scatter across the city! Some people end up finding the news about a Food Chain Magnate expansion, others the sequel to Shadespire, others still the exciting and resplendent Ragusa. That was the first story returned to us, so let’s start there!
Paul: Oof, sometimes you instantly know what must surely be the best Games News announcement of the week. It’s Men At Work, the debut design from Rita Modl, illustrated by the magnificent Chris Quilliams and coming from dexterity experts (aka “dexperts”) Pretzel Games.
Flick ‘em Up was flickin’ fabulous. The co-op Flick ’em Up: Dead of Winter was supposedly excellent. Junk Art was just great. Can they do… what’s the equivalent of a hat trick but for four things?
Quinns: I think it’s a phat trick.
Paul: You just made that up.
Quinns: Yes.