Reviews 20 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: Fortress America

Quinns: Think to get flickering lasers and evil Empires you’d have to play the X-Wing Miniatures Game? Think again, mister! Or miss. Sorry miss.

Paul: No, it’s me, I am a mist-

Quinns: Say hello to Fortress: America (and imagine it responding to your greeting with an excitable 21 gun salute).The ENTIRE WORLD (made up of three players) is invading near-future America (controlled by one player). I’m talking bombers over Boston. Hovertanks in Houston. APCs in… in, uh…

Paul: In Annapolis! This may well be the ultimate in what we call Ameritrash, big flashy board games with lots of components.

Quinns: The first edition of Innovation, a card game ranked in Board Game Geek’s top 150 games of ALL TIME, looks – as you can see – supernaturally boring.

The tiny box looks like it should contain soviet suppositories, and inside it you’ll find 110 cards in the same hospitalised colour (Lung? Nicotine?). The deathly manual informs you that every one of these cards is an “innovation”, from archery to automobiles, and 2-4 players will use them to race from one end of history to the other.

Let’s say you agree to play Innovation, even though it’s clearly not your thing. That experience can be compared to going to drink a tall glass of dirty water, and discovering it’s neat whisky.

Quinns: Oh god. OK.

Because board games age so goddamn well, running a board game site can be a bit like running a daycare centre. Those guys can’t rest because it might mean a kid getting stuck behind a radiator or someone eating a rock. We can’t rest because even if we stay on top of new games, we’re writing under the weight of every awesome game we’ve never played.

Shadows over Camelot is one such older game we need to tell you about. One of HUNDREDS. It never ends, but all the same we’re going to talk about it with the good humour of men throwing a shiny penny into a wishing well.

Quinns: What are you doing RIGHT NOW? Swallow that food! Drop that baby! We’ve found a board game you should buy. It’s kind of what we do around here.

Mission: Red Planet is a game of racing to colonise Mars in a congenial, steampunk fashion.
3-5 players jostle to load their tiny astronauts into ships on the launchpad board, these land them on the planet board, and you all try and dominate regions and fulfill secret objectives in a game of area
control.

Paul: It’s Hallowe’en! Well, it was Hallowe’en last night. Do you go in for Hallowe’en? I don’t, really. I don’t know if that’s because I’m from Hampshire or not. It’s just, you know, a time associated with throwaway seasonal tat and twenty drunk people all dressed as the same Heath Ledger Joker being sick on public transport—

Quinns: PAUL. THE GAME.

Paul: Right! As is proper, we played a board game for Hallowe’en. Something a bit different. A game that’s both a trick and a treat.

Quinns: A shiny new game called City of Horror. This game made our Hallowe’en. And it’s going to make every Hallowe’en after that.

Quinns: TWO games based on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books have come out recently. Don’t worry, though. We’re here to guide you through this difficult time. There’s Guards! Guards! which we’ve heard is about as much fun as actually being arrested, but there’s also Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, which we heard is quite good! So we got it and played it. Isn’t that right, Paul?

Paul: That’s right Quinns, and-

Quinns: That’s right!

Paul: …so the best thing we can say about Discworld: Ankh-Morpork is that it’s equal parts family friendly and utter chaos, so it’s perfect for a Discworld game. Two to four players are trying to gain control of the 12 districts of the city of Ankh-Morpork, clutching at power with their clumsily, pudgy hands as if they’re all trying to model clay on the same pottery wheel.

Quinns: Fingers slipping over oily fingers, all of you swearing, someone’s got clay in their eye, until finally the thing comes to a stop and all you’ve made is a mess.

Review: Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game

Quinns: BAAAA! Ba-da-baa! Ba-ba-da-ba (ba-ba-ba-ba) ba-ba-da-ba (ba-ba-ba-ba) ba-ba-da-ba (ba-ba-ba-ba) ba-ba-da-ba ba baaaaaa… BA BA BA BAAAA. BAAA! Ba ba ba BAAA ba! Ba ba ba BAAAA ba! Ba-bam-ba-baaaa…

That is me singing the STAR WARS theme. I am singing it for you. It is a special treat.

Fantasy Flight’s owned the Star Wars license for more than a year now,
but all that’s meant for us is one passable card game. Until today. The X-Wing Miniatures Game is THE release this month. Tiny, pre-painted spaceships, jinking past lasers that could reduce them to a sneeze in less time than it takes an extra to scream “I’M HIT”.

But SHOULD YOU BUY IT? Short answer: “Yes.” Long answer: “Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaah,” followed by a thoughtful pause and a speech like this…

Paul: What is Hive? That sounds like some horrid illness, some terrible disease. “I’ve got Hive Pocket!”
you shout down the telephone to your GP, sweaty hand gripping the receiver.

Quinns: Paul, telephones are all mobile nowadays, and your GP will just tell you that Hive is a two player board game without a board.

Paul: And then I would faint.

Paul: Cyclades! We turned SU&SD’s unblinking, cyclopic eye to look at it back in Episode 3 of this season. It’s a deadly, brilliant wargame where everybody plays different coloured Greeks trying to build two cities. Just two.

Quinns: We’ll recommend it to anyone. Spartan rules envelope a design where everything anyone does is tragic, comic or heroic. The self-contained islands you duel across means any attack will wrest control of a territory from someone else (exciting!), or see the aggressor getting kicked back into the water (EXCITING!). But doing anything means bidding for the affection one of the game’s four Gods, an auction that’s every bit as vicious as the main board.

Review: Fortress America

Review: Innovation

Review: Shadows over Camelot

Review: Mission- Red Planet

Review: City of Horror

Review: Discworld – Ankh Morpork

Review: Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game

Review: Hive

Review: Cyclades – Hades

Review: Cyclades – Hades

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