Reviews 14 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: Colt Express

Silas: Yeeee-hawww! Hello, pardners. My name is Silas McCoy and I’m here to tell y’all about Colt Express, a game of action, danger and the free life of a train-robbing outlaw. Yeeee-haw!

Brendan [exhausted]: Ah. Ho. Ho boy. Hi, everybody. I hope this man didn’t frighten you. This is Silas, a fictional character I invented when I realised I was going to be late for the review. I sent him ahead with his horse, which I also created. Such is the power of the board game journalist. Phew. But now that I have arrived, I can-

Silas: Stick ’em up.

Brendan: What? Hey, that’s my wallet! No, Silas! Come back here, or I swear I’ll… Hey! Stop riding around on that thing. And stop firing your gun in the air, it’s irresponsible. Don’t make me invent a sheriff, Goddamn you!

Thrower: Vietnam. Sex, drugs and terror lurking in the tropical night. If even half of what you read about it is true, then this was the war to end all wars: the war of America against itself. The Viet Cong were just along for the ride.

This was my generation’s World War 2, the conflict from which 80’s society forged martial myths of heroism. Yet, hard as it tried, pop culture couldn’t quite scrub the filth away. Always there were undertones of dirty warfare, of eventual failure. It wasn’t ideal hero material, but it was all we had. For me, that complexity made it all the more compelling.

Then I read Dispatches. This account of a journalist’s experience in the conflict is the finest book on war I have ever read. As well as the history, there is an important lesson. Dispatches taught me that war can be both beautiful and terrible at the same time. That it was okay to hate war and love militaria. To be a pacifist and to play wargames. Reading it made a piece of distant history into a personal thing, a hot piece of literary shrapnel lodged close to my heart.

Brendan: Dog Eat Dog is one of those rare games we come across that do not necessarily have ‘fun’ as the end goal but, like Freedom: The Underground Railroad, try to impart some wisdom on their way through your life. It is thoughtful and intelligent and just a little uncomfortable. It’s a game with a point to make and it makes it worryingly well. If I were to describe it using SUSD’s internal style guide, “Rulez, Regulationz and Ztuff” I would call it an indie RPG about the colonisation of an island and the resultant back ‘n’ forth between ‘native’ and ‘occupier’. But since I already burned my style guide when it suggested I use ‘paragraphz’, I will have to settle for this description:

Dog Eat Dog should be taught in schools.

Quinns: Pip, can I tell you about my favourite moment in our game of Illegal?

Pip: Go on then.

Quinns: It was when I crossed the living room to see you and Paul conducting the worst drug deal ever. “Do you want a drug?” he asked, in the embarrassed tones of someone asking if you needed the toilet. “It’s a good drug. It’s good! Do you want a drug, or maybe two?” I was laughing so hard that I ruined your transaction from across the room.

Pip: Maybe that would be a really good strategy if you were a real drug dealer – being so awkward and middle class about it all that the police think it’s a double bluff and don’t bother arresting you.

Quinns: Hang on. Was Paul actually dealing drugs in my house?

Pip: So! Tell us more about Illegal [RUN PAUL, RUN]

Quinns: Paul, you’re tracking water on the carpet and you’ve got a starfish on your forehead.

Paul: Oh! Sorry. I’ve been running around the undersea realm of Bruno Cathala’s Abyss. Don’t worry, though. Written reviews are rarely canonical so the carpet will probably be fine.

Quinns: What?

Paul: Well, it’ll be fine in the canonical universe. After this review finishes our story will return to the SU&SD godhead and this reality will, in all likelihood, be erased.

Quinns: What?!

Paul: You know, like how I killed you in our review of Descent 2nd edition.

Quinns: WHAT? But I’ve still got so much to live for! I wanted a wedding-

Paul: Life is full of surprises, and so is Abyss! Let me get these barnacles out of my ears and I’ll explain.

Kotaku Article: Thoughts on D&D 5th Edition

Quinns: While SU&SD’s Star Wars RPG campaign will continue unabated like some grimy, stuttering starship, I’ve also been playing the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Did you know how good it is? It’s Chaotic Good. Good like a +3 Long Sword of Goodness and Being Clever.

This week I filed a Kotaku column all about just how smart and timely it is. The words include, but aren’t limited to, these ones…

“You know how when movies or sitcoms depict D&D, people sit down and within 60 seconds they’re being ambushed by goblins, panickedly figuring out who they are and what they’re carrying? That’s what the beginner box offers. Printed on the back of each character sheet are instructions on how to level up, especially relevant in this version because (again, just like video games) the many and varied power trees of your character class open up gradually. Only once you’ve been playing for two evenings will you be asked whether your Rogue wants to be a Thief, Assassin or Arcane Trickster. And if you decide to pick up the Player’s Handbook for the full rules, you’ll find funny, witty charts to help players down the unsettling path of roleplaying.”

But I also manage to squeeze some sex and glassblowing in there. Go read!

(Images courtesy of BoardGameGeek.)

Thrower: General Patton chewed his cigar and look East, over the Rhine, into Germany. He’d done it. By loading his divisions down with fuel, he’d stolen a coup on the other Allied commanders and made it to the river first.

Now, only the 155th Panzer Brigade stood between him and the history books. Disorganised and demoralised, they were no match for his crack US corps.

Suddenly the field telephone crackled into life. “Sir? Sir! We can’t action that advance order. The troops have no ammunition. Montgomery requisitioned the lot.”

“WHAT?” bellowed Patton, spraying out a mouthful of cheesy wotsits. “That British f*** took EVERYTHING? Jesus!”

Quinns: As you’d imagine, we take our time with the games we review. There are tea breaks. Pee breaks. We’ll pass around a bit of cardboard, saying things like “Feel how thick that is!” and “That’s quite thick actually”. But yesterday? Yesterday, we were in a hurry.

“PUT YOUR FINGER HERE,” I ordered. Matt cautiously slipped a forefinger into the recess of my toy pyramid, letting me wrestle a rubber band around its neck.

“OK,” I began. “We’re going to bet on some camels now. It’s going to be fun, OK? This game won an award. Now everybody sit down and listen to the rules because we only have half an hour oh jesus is that the time let’s go let’s go”

Matt: I don’t know if this is by far the silliest thing we’ve ever reviewed…

Paul: …and I don’t even know if that matters or not. Is PitchCar silly? Is it also possibly the simplest game to ever grace our (web)pages? Is it even a board game?

Matt: Do we even care?

Paul: Will we ever stop using the word “even”?

Quinns: At the end of last year the rumbling around Russian Railroads became unignorable. Once a day I’d notice my mug of tea trembling as this game’s engine sped across the internet with a roar of hype. I decided to let it pass, though, knowing that if the rumours were true then this train, then progress itself would soon arrive at my sleepy flat.

Sure enough, Z-Man Games recently sent it over. Russian Railroads is a proud, barrel-chested member of a category called “Hard Euros”, and while that sounds like a DVD you’d find in the bargain bin of a sex shop* these are among the least sexy of games. Rather than forcing players to battle directly (which is RUDE), Eurogames offer a proxy-puzzle for players to simultaneously sweat over.

You might remember our review of T’Zolkin: The Mayan Calendar, with its dizzying, rotating gears, or our awe at the piglet maths of Castles of Burgundy, or our more recent video reviews of Caverna or Terra Mystica, each one an impressive eurogame. Today the industry is choked with these hale, rubust puzzles. Stepping inside the creaky carriage of Russian Railroads I had one question lurking at the bottom of my brain like cerebral sediment. “This game’s going to be clever and all, but do we need it?”

Review: Colt Express

Review: Fire in the Lake

Review: Dog Eat Dog

Review: Illegal

Review: Abyss

Kotaku Article: Thoughts on D&D 5th Edition

Review: 1944: Race to the Rhine

Review: Camel Up

Review: PitchCar

Review: Russian Railroads

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