News 27 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Games News! 11/01/2016

Quinns: Like bears waking up from hibernation, Team SU&SD is rousing from its slumber!

Paul’s crawling out from beneath a pile of board games and Matt’s almost finished dislodging his life-saving fecal plug made from digested Pandemic Legacy cards. We’ll be mailing it to one lucky SU&SD reader!

We’ve got a hell of a year coming up for you, ladies & gents. This month we’re planning reviews of Flick ‘em Up, Blood Rage, Food Chain Magnate and Concordia, we haven’t forgotten about Expansionanuary, there’s a brand-new regular feature soon to be revealed and we already have plans for the site’s 5th birthday.

Paul: Hello everyone! Welcome to this exclusive tour of the Shut Up & Sit Down News Battery, where our News Hens squeeze out News Eggs for us every week. These are then rigorously inspected by our team of News Experts, so that only the very best News is served up for you in whatever form and fashion you prefer.

For example, take this delicious omelette courtesy of Fantasy Flight, who are releasing their first ever… wait a second… a trivia game? Game of Thrones: The Trivia Game seems an unusual release until you see that it’s a trivia game “of strategy” with alliances and resources and special powers.

Quinns: How was your weekend, everybody? I’m happy to say that more than four years since Paul and I started SU&SD, I was found myself thinking “Board games are awesome. I’m not playing enough board games. I’m going to play lots more.”

Good thing, then, that talented designers are making lots more. We kick off the news with Secret Hitler, which is bound to be one of the year’s biggest Kickstarters. This is an absolutely beautiful, heavily-playtested interpretation of Werewolf / The Resistance from a trio of designers that includes Max Temkin, co-creator of Cards Against Humanity.

As you probably know, we’re not the biggest fans of Cards Against Humanity. But Secret Hitler looks just great.

Quinns: Hello everybody! Shut Up & Sit Down is still four sheets to the wind this week. Paul’s off to Board Game Geek Con, Matt’s recovering from Fantasy Flight’s World Championships and I’m just back from New York University’s Practice gaming summit. These are important trips! If you don’t check up on Americans they’ll be marrying cobwebs and getting stuck behind radiators before you know it.

Fun fact! At Practice I saw a talk by Leslie Scott, inventor of Jenga. Did you know that as Jenga is manufactured, they make sure the bricks are all of varying sizes and weights to make the game work better?

Ah, but you’ve been waiting so long for your Games News! Not to worry. I may have spent five hours asleep in a cold corner of LAX this morning, but I’ve fetched some black coffee and classic rock (won’t you do the same?) and I’m ready to get to work.

Quinns: I write to you, toothbrush in mouth, suitcase open, packing for the trip of a lifetime.

Tomorrow Team SU&SD will fly to Fantasy Flight’s 2015 World Championships. We’ll be interviewing folks, previewing new releases and generally luxuriating at the world’s best publisher of licensed games. We are also going to steal so much stationary.

We’ll have lots of content up on the site for the next week, but probably in unusual shapes. In the meantime, here’s a quick Games News! A gasp of normalcy before Paul and myself climb onto a jetplane, bound for five days of board gaming. Ah, Roseville, Minnesota! Truly, a field of dreams…

Paul: QUINNS IT’S AWFUL.

Quinns: paul wha-

Paul: QUINNS IT’S AWFUL. HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEWS. IT’S AWFUL.

Quinns: paul of course i have not heard the news nor any other news this is games news this is where i hear the news pau-

Paul: QUINNS THE BUNNIES ARE GETTING DIVORCED.

Quinns: We proceed directly to the big news of the week, do not pass “Go”, definitely do not collect £200. Put it back!

Stonemaier Games has launched their Scythe Kickstarter upon the waiting world. At the time of writing it’s received a million dollars in just six days, and I’ve never found it so easy to see why.

You have Jakub Rozalski’s art and worldbuilding, pairing mechs with a rich tapestry of 19th century Eastern Europe. You have a timely design, offering the economic engine-building of Eurogames with the conflict and theme and tiny mechs that are going to get players excited. You’ve got a selection of editions to choose from, each of them generous, there’s friendly shipping to Europe, Canada and Australia, and you have Stonemaier Games’ money back guarantee. Don’t like the game after you’ve played it once? They’ll pay for return shipping and refund you completely.

Quinns: Good morning everybody! News: I’ve got it, you want it. Let’s conduct this transaction like a couple of consenting adults. Stop looking at the door! News is entirely legal in the UK.

Board Game Geek News has a Big Book of Madness designer diary up, and goodness me this game looks like a treat. It’s a deeply co-operative, Harry Potter-style deckbuilder, but with a more flexible interpretation of deckbuilding that I find very welcome.

Players are attempting to close an evil book and defeat all the monsters spilling out of it, but you’re not simply slowly improving your deck as the game goes on. You can improve your deck, or spend your turn putting good cards in your friend’s deck, or trying to expunge horrible Madness cards that you’ll slowly amass as the game goes on, or actually closing the damn book.

Paul: Quinns hello Quinns good morning Quinns have you seen? There’s a few interesting things that came in the Games News Sack this morning.

Quinns: That’s not the “Games News Sack”, Paul, that’s the postman’s bag.

Paul: Well he won’t be needing it any more. The important thing is that we’ve got the Games News today. As well as everyone else’s mail. And a few spare, loose limbs.

Quinns: Okay then. I guess now is as good a time as any to start telling people about Tail Feathers! A new skirmish game from Plaid Hat arriving in just a few months that combines Mice & Mystics with the X-Wing Miniatures game.

Quinns: Welcome to the NEWS!

Never mind the jokes and reviews. The NEWS is what you come to this site for for, isn’t it? A great sluice-tube of consumer information, poking through your window and filling your life with piping hot knowledge. Praise be to NEWS.

Today’s first NEWS is that the latest map pack for Ticket to Ride is now available for pre-order, and will add new United Kingdom and Pennsylvania boards to the train-placement smash hit. As always with Ticket to Ride map packs, the new boards each boast new rules. The UK will feature technology upgrades, while Pennsylvania gets stocks and shares.

“This is boll****,” UK Prime Minister David Cameron was heard to have said upon hearing the news. “We waited 11 years to be included in Ticket to Ride, and we’re bundled with Pennsylvania? I don’t even know where that is. Nobody does.”

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