News 37 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Games News! 04/08/14

Quinns: Hello, everybody! How are we all? I spent my morning sweating my way around the warren of central London with all the purpose and grace of a Hex Bug, visiting five shops with nothing to show for my brave capitalist efforts. And now there’s not much news on the internet, either! What a day.

We’ll start with the reveal of the above image, which is the box contents for undersea power struggle Abyss. This game looked exquisite before I knew that it included pearls as a currency, or that the stunning cover is only one of five different boxes. I love what the publishers are doing here so, so much. If this design was any more arresting I’d be in fish prison.

Quinns: Morning, everyone! How was your weekend? I woke up today with my friend Olly sprawled across my sofa after some hot, late-nite Pictomania. Such a tragedy that that game didn’t sell! It’s Vlaada Chvátil’s secret best work. If you ever see a copy in the wild, pounce on it instantly and without doubt, like a tiger upon a juicy gazelle.

Oh man, I’m going to get some juice. Be right back.

Our first story is that well-respected 2009 release Hansa Teutonica (seen above) is receiving a reprint this year as well as an expansion, Hansa Teutonica: Britannia, adding an optional new board to play on and revised 2 player rules.

I’ve never played it, but I can tell you that the fancy Latin name isn’t hiding much in the way of theme. Hansa Teutonica is a game about building offices and trading routes in the middle ages, immediately putting me in mind of the comedic-sounding yet actually pretty great Thurn & Taxis. A game where players run a 17th century German postal service. I know! Just like you always dreamed.

Quinns: Strings! My arch nemesis. First they annoyed the heck out of me during our review of String Railway, now they’re worryingly close to drawing a pentagram at the top of this lovely site. What have strings ever done for us, eh?

The game you can see above is a prototype of Coven, an award-winning Canadian design that’ll be arriving on Kickstarter later this year. Ordinarily I’d only report on a game that’s only planning a Kickstarter if there weren’t any more dramatic stories, for example a new edition of Monopoly or if Paul succeeded at trapping a fart in a jar. Coven, though, really does sound rather special.

Quinns: Morning, everybody! It’s a very special edition of the Games News today as we’re joined by SU&SD accomplice Leigh Alexander, former news director of Gamasutra!

Now Leigh, that’s an impressive resume, but don’t worry if you can’t keep up with the salsa-like tempo of the Games News.

Leigh: Thanks, Quinns. I’m really looking forward to this unique and challenging opportunity and I hope to learn a lot as well as have a great time doing it.

Quinns: That’s a great attitude.

Leigh: A positive attitude is the first step to a successful career.

Quinns: Fantastic. Let’s keep that mindset as we move forward in this space.

Quinns: Good morning, my playful pickles! Before we start, realise what a marvelous audience you are. You want for nothing more than a glimpse of the fun you’ll be having with your friends in the future. You’re beautiful, all of you.

If you’re anything like me, Hand Made Wonders (pictured above) will be the source at least one evening of boozy giggling. This is an upcoming Taiwanese game where players build monuments out of their hands, but where your left AND right hand will need 3 points each to win, and everyone’s hand is part of a different team (determined by the two different-coloured bracelets you’re wearing).

Quinns: How is everybody? Like something out of Nathan Barley, I spent my Saturday night queuing for an hour to get into a dancefloor that was literally a room with no lights. It was well weapon.

Board game news! Forthcoming Antoine Bauza co-operative stress-fest Samurai Spirit takes the top slot with a publisher image of the finished game (seen above).

It’s only now that I realise Samurai Spirit sounds an awful lot like a mashup of Antoine Bauza’s two other co-operative games, Ghost Stories, where you defend a village of a firehose-like stream of ghosts, and Hanabi, ostensibly a game of fireworks displays where players all hold their cards backwards, in practice a game where you win by following additional rules which the smartest player invents between games.

We didn’t like Hanabi very much. Heresy, I know.

Quinns: Hello Quintin’s kittens, or my quiddens! Is that a good intro? It’s the worst, isn’t it. Let’s never do that again.

Our big news this week is that Days of Wonder has unveiled the box and artwork for Five Tribes, and you can see it above! We covered this classy collaboration with Bruno Cathala, designer of such unapproachably perfect games as Shadows Over Camelot and Cyclades, back in February. And as you can see above…

(The turn order tokens look like penises. Don’t say that. But what else can you say? It’s the elephant in the room, except it’s a neat row of penises pointing RIGHT AT ME)

…the board is, um… ah…

(DON’T SAY IT, QUINNS. YOU’RE BETTER THAN THAT)

Quinns: Wow. 14 days in and Team SU&SD is out of the running in our month-long watergun hitman tournament. That was… an unexpected ending. Expect a video in a few weeks, featuring nature documentary-like footage of Paul executing his prey.

We kick off the news today with the unveiling of the “Premium” edition of Doomtown: Reloaded. Look at it up there! Originally a collectible card game of Lovecraftian cowboys which ran from 1998 to 2000, Doomtown will come back from the dead this Summer in a new, “expandable” format.

In other words, publishers Alderac are aping what Fantasy Flight have done with their collectible card games, where randomised booster packs are ignored in favour of healthier fixed expansion packs.

“Have you felt the weight of this thing?” Alderac CEO Perk Bojangles did not say yesterday to the assembled press. “I killed an intern with one of them. One blow! Back of the head! Pow.”

Quinns: Hey everyone! I come to you brimming with tea and delightfully alive. It’s now week two in my Streetwars water gun assassination game and my team is not only still in the running, we’ve got a kill. That’s right. We straight-up soaked a sucker, drenched his dreams, wet his whistle*. At the time of writing only 62 of our game’s 96 players are still alive, and I’ll tell you what else. We’re making quite the video of our exploits.

Big news this week is that King of New York, sequel to Richard Garfield’s much-loved dice game King of Tokyo, has come stomping into the limelight. You can read about it right here, but in short, your massive monsters are now hungry for fame as well as delicious humans. Oh, and the board will have different districts for you to run around! Except the army will be running around it too!

In other words, the definitive game of monster mayhem is getting some actual mayhem.

Quinns: Morning, everyone! How’s your day going? Stuck at work? At least you don’t have a contract killer walking around with your personal details. Today is the first day of my Street Wars game, a four week, one-hit kill watergun fight. You can track our game here. Oh god, somebody’s already died. This is just like the Hunger Games. Except I’m only hungry because I’m too scared to go to the shops.

Gloom, seen above, is another popular game of pitiful situations, and this week we learned a 2nd edition is on the way. Unusually for a game about being trapped down wells and murdered by squids, the new edition will be a fairly undramatic thing. The best part is that Gloom’s three out-of-print expansions – Unwelcome Guests, Unhappy Homes and Unfortunate Expeditions – are all being reprinted! And we’ll get a host of “minor improvements to gameplay and card design”, but all still be compatible with your existing Gloom cards.

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