News 27 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Games News! 19/08/13

Quinns: It was GenCon this weekend! The most sleep-deprived four days in gaming. Here’s hoping somebody spotted Mike, our tech guru, because the last message I got from him said he was going to try and carry this stack of review copies back to his hotel, followed by radio silence.

So, yeah, he might be dead, but on the bright side gloss-house Fantasy Flight had a ton of stuff to announce, causing the biggest stir with BattleLore 2nd edition, seen above. If you’re a regular reader you’ll probably have seen us review or play Memoir ’44, a phenomenal, approachable World War 2 strategy game. BattleLore is based on the same systems, but takes place in a colourful fantasy world. So, less horrors of war, more bipedal horrors who want to eat your face.

Quinns: Happy Monday, everybody! Are we well? What games are we playing? Hopefully the lovely ones made from cardstock, and not the troubling mind games that emerge from failing relationships. That would be awful.

The big news this week is that comedy board gaming series Board With Life released their first episode! We feel a profound kinship with these guys. Like us, they’re working with no money, an awful lot of heart and they’re all startlingly handsome. In fact, I like it so much I’ve embedded it after the jump.

Quinns: A few months ago we caught word that Fantasy Flight had a Lovecraft board game coming later this year. Something big that they were expecting to do VERY well. So Paul boiled the kettle and we held an emergency council of team SU&SD, where we all swore that it had to be a new edition of Arkham Horror, an immensely popular co-op game of struggle against Lovecraftian horrors.

It isn’t. It’s something much more evil.

Eldritch Horror is a new game “inspired” by Arkham Horror, allowing Fantasy Flight to sell the two games side-by-side. Arkham Horror, that hardcore horror with its nine (count ’em!) expansions, will soon be joined by Eldritch Horror, a more accessible game of otherworldly apocalypses.

Quinns: No questioning what the big story is this week. Board game and erstwhile Kickstarter success story The Doom That Came To Atlantic City! has imploded like a great tower block made of dreams and balsa wood. Following 13 months and $122,874 of investment (less Kickstarter’s fee), Forking Path Co. has declared the project is now cancelled due to “Every possible mistake [being] made.”

It only gets sadder from here. In the same update project founder Erik Chevalier states that, despite having quit his job for the game, will now do his best to seek employment and steadily repay the project’s 1,246 backers. Not that this was enough to stop many of the backers from creating a bubbling lake of fury and vitriol in the comments.

Quinns: Have you heard? Kate Middleton’s Royal Baby™ arrives today! Time to get the news done sharpish so I can attend the ceremony of Gilded Silver where we find out if it’s a changeling.

Fantasy Flight have published the most audacious preview yet of Netrunner’s first deluxe expansion, Creation and Control. The 55 new cards are going to slip into our decks as professionally and powerfully as acupuncture needles, making us fitter. Stronger. Deadlier. Or possibly it’ll just cost a bunch of money and we’ll feel exactly the same, except we’ll get really bad gas, which happened to my friend Alex. When he tried acupuncture, that is. Not when he played Netrunner.

Quinns: Good afternoon you pretty people! Did you have a nice weekend?

Mine was mostly spent questing for the One Beverage that would make me feel better in this heat, but I perked up on Sunday when I spotted Fantasy Flight’s announcement of Blood Bound. Like Mayday! Mayday!, which I looked at in the news a few weeks back, this looks to be part of the post-Resistance wave of games. An incredibly tight game of hidden roles, negotiation and lying, but with more… game.

Quinns: Summer is here! That magical time of year when we move from playing board games indoors to playing them outdoors. As a result the entire SU&SD crew now look like boiled lobsters. Bright red, but with a hint of decadence.

Today’s games news will be arranged from stuff that excites Quinns the most to least, starting with THIS: Neuroshima Hex 3.0 has been announced by Z-Man games. You can read our impressions of 2.0 here, but basically it’s a tricky, colourful, inventive strategy game that’s so lightweight as to practically float off the table. Better yet, 3.0 sounds even better.

Quinns: Glass making! That’s something we all have a passion for, right? I’m sure there isn’t a child reading this who doesn’t dream of growing up to make glass. Ah, the heat of the furnace! The otherworldy, suggestive nothingness of the… the glass. Where would we be without glass? We’d be sat in the dark counting our armpits, that’s where.

Which is, of course, why the noble Uwe Rosenberg, designer of such crushing hits as Agricola and Le Havre, has announced his next game will be Glass Road: A game of supervising a glass workshop in 14th century Bavaria.

Now, I’ll admit there’s a small chance that you might not be excited by medieval glasswork. If that’s the case, don’t worry! Theme aside, this looks like a lovely game.

Quinns: Crack! Boom! Patter patter patter. It’s monday, and this is your board game weather report, predominantly plucked from the dark skies of the Board Game Geek News Blog.

Big news first. Days of Wonder, publisher of such incomparably plush releases as Small World and Memoir ’44, have announced their new game: Relic Runners, seen above. Releasing this September, it sounds and looks absolutely luxurious. Players will explore a dark jungle, building bridges, forging pathways and nosing through forgotten ruins, all in a quest for priceless relics. Which, for the first time in the history of board gaming, are represented by objects you’d actually want to own. Images after the jump.

Quinns: IT’S HERE. Actually literally drop everything. Wok Star, the co-operative, real time game of running a Chinese fast food kitchen is now on Kickstarter. I heard about this game two years ago, and a reprint containing such dramatic extras as “Fridge Failure cards” and an electronic timer (instead of a sand timer) is finally upon us.

Just imagine. You and another 1 to 3 of your friends rolling dice together, racing to complete recipes against the clock. Spending money between “days” to buy new recipes. Arguing as Paul fails to collect enough tips. Again. If you have a friend called Paul.

“Warning,” the Kickstarter quips. “Wok Star may well result in high fives.” Well, that’s me sold. You’d better believe we’ll be bringing you the earliest possible review.

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