Special Features 9 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Hive Mind: How To Win At Hive Like a Master

Paul: Hello. You may not think it to look at him but Brendan is a Hive Grandmaster of a hyper-unbeatable calibre. It’s the truth. To bring this insectoid chess-alike closer to everyone’s hearts and deeper into their viscous, nutrient-rich brains, Shut Up & Sit Down has asked Brendan to guide our readers through the more complex and obscure manipulations of this brain-breaking game.

Here then, is a set of problems for you to ponder. Can you discover the correct move(s)? Or maybe even better Brendan’s efforts? There is only one way to find out. Read on for the problems! (Note: If the only problem you see is a mess of abstract shapes untied to rules or regulations, please check out our review of Hive, which is a lovely game about creepy crawlies.)

Quinns: At the end of last year Kotaku asked me for my top table games of the year, and I pulled this article from my bottom with the grace of a magician plucking a dove from his jacket. It starts like this…

As I’ve talked about before, board games aren’t simply enjoying a resurgence right now. They’re in a glittering golden age with fabulous releases every single week, the entire hobby evolving and adapting with Borg-like ease. There’s no easier way to prove it than with my favourite releases from 2013.

Included on this list are a real-time Star Trek simulator, a uniquely dark game of managing a sunny colony, and a card game… with just 15 cards. But each one of these is a classic.

And proceeds to list my three favourite releases from 2013, plus one runner up. Does that sound like something that might interest you guys? If so, please, go read!

Paul: Like a snowman at the door, having a wank through your letterbox, Christmas is coming fast. Everyone and their dog is going to be asking for board games and hoping to unwrap something special but, but not everything that you ask for is going to be suited to families.

Does your brother want to play Twilight Imperium for eight hours? Does your dad understand how the Ambush card works in Memoir ‘44? Will your mum flip the table again if she loses another game of Space Hulk?

Here, then, are Shut Up & Sit Down’s recommendations for games your family can play at Christmas. These are all games with rules you can learn in just a few minutes, and won’t keep you returning to the manual. Some are simple, some are smart, some are physical and some are outright dangerous. But they’re all terribly, terribly good fun.

Quinns: Good news, everybody! This month I was flown to America to talk at NYU’s unparallelled Practice conference, which meant it was only a cheap flight to Texas’s BoardGameGeek convention. I’d never been to a real-life American board game con, and it was full of surprises!

I picked up my badge and gun at the registration desk on the Thursday. As a first timer, I was only entitled to a Colt Single Action Army, but I wasn’t looking for trouble. I was looking for the best board games that were available to play here in the USA for the very first time. Stepping through the revolving doors, I tipped my hat at a table of strangers, and sat down for a game of Rampage.

[Good news, everyone! We were clearing out Quinns’ stuff and we found something he was apparently too scared to publish. By way of showing respect, we’ve published it here in full.]

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really want to write about this event. In the words of one of the people I ate with, I come out looking like a “c*nt.”

Last month SU&SD was invited to the Betrayers’ Banquet, another London-based installation, perhaps a little sexier than Pip’s recent adventures of being locked in a room for an hour. It is, essentially, Satan’s dinner party. At one end of the table you’re served course after course of wonderful food. Down at the bottom, you get inedible slop. But you can improve (or potentially ruin) your position by engaging in the prisoner’s dilemma with the diner sat opposite you.

As a pro boardgamer, surely this would go well for me. Surely.

Kotaku Article: Top 5 Friendships-Ruiners

Quinns: This month I gave Kotaku a powerful gift. The top 5 board games to play if you want to leave your friendships as cold and laced with poison as old scorpion shells. It starts like this…

“One piece of trivia orbits modern board gaming like a dark, sexy star. Someone who doesn’t really play them will always have heard from their friend, who heard it from another friend, that something like Game of Thrones or Battlestar Galactica is mean it ruins friendships.

“But Game of Thrones? Battlestar Galactica? These are games where the backstabbing and twists of the knife are expected. If you really want to test your friendships, these are the games you should be playing.”

…and rapidly moves on to the five games I think should be handled with care. I’d recommend you all go and peruse my warnings, before it’s too late.

[Is everyone aware of the swelling “escape the room” genre of videogames? When we heard about a London-based installation offering the opportunity to escape a real-life room, we were intrigued. So much so we activated Pip, freshly-internet famous from our Let’s Plays of The Resistance, Memoir ’44 and Twilight Imperium, to go and see if it was any good.]

“What if someone needed the toilet?”

My friend Simon has been on the receiving end of a “what I would have done differently” monologue for the last few minutes and has decided to leap in with a question. The monologue revolves around HintHunt — a real-life room escape game in the vein of Crimson Room.

Except is it a room escape game, Simon? IS IT A ROOM ESCAPE GAME?

HintHunt gives you exactly one hour to get out of the locked room in which you find yourself. The solution can only be found by discovering clues scattered hither and yon and using them to solve a chain of puzzles. You could also just break the door down and leave but they ask you not to do that before you start. There is backstory for the scenario but it’s just there to offer an excuse for you clambering around a room shouting words and numbers at each other and glaring suspiciously at all surfaces within reach.

Lord Smingleigh On... House Rules, Pt. 2

[Did you all catch Lord Smingleigh’s Introduction to House Rules last week? Naturally, an exploration on making games simpler should be followed with notes on making them trickier…]

No time for a long introduction! Grab your hat, coat, and thrashing-stick and come with me. This time I maunder about some house rules the Gaming Chums use to ratchet up the tension and increase the complexity of games, and possibly to increase the conflict and turn the finest of friends turn into slavering killbeasts*.

[Everybody likes Colby Dauch. After starting Plaid Hat Games at the ripe age of 27 with a game of his own design, he’s managed to publish one very interesting game a year (from different designers) in each of the four years since, and has grown from Heroscape fanboy to capable and committed entrepreneur — a transition that many designers-turned-publishers make with far less aplomb.

With the publication of BioShock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia, Dauch’s young company is suddenly much higher — brighter? — on many more radar screens. We sent Actual Journalist Mark Wallace to find out what makes Colby such a nice guy. Instead, he came back with this interview.]

Mark: I want to jump right in by mentioning BioShock. You’ve just released the board game of the hit video game. It looks like you’re sitting on the edge of what could be a huge mainstream success. How does that feel, to go from being an unknown publisher four years ago, to shepherding one of the coolest, most high-profile game franchises into cardboard?

Colby: It’s pretty shocking. The interesting story there is that they approached me. That they sought out a board game rather than being pitched on it means that they know about this world, and they’re into it. Video gamers is a growing market for board games, so a project like this is right there in the sweet spot of growth for the industry. To be a growing company and be right where we feel the cusp of that growth is of course immensely exciting.

Lord Smingleigh On... House Rules, Pt. 1

[Following the tremendous success of Lord Smingleigh’s inaugral column on the nature of play, we invited gaming’s most storied gentleman to stick around! And then culled “The Ludological Investigation Society” as a title because it broke our headline box. Nobody tell him. I’m serious. He won’t shut up about it.]

It is a fact universally acknowledged that all board games are perfect. Who are we to stick our fallible thumbs in the board game pie? We have come for the experience the chef has planned through years of experience and talent, not the thrown-together improvisations of short-order cooks.

Except, no. This view is to disregard the most vital of components in board gaming: Humans. Sometimes it is necessary to change the game to suit the players. It is my honour to present to you an excerpt from an early draft of my life’s work and legacy: A Treatise on the Taxonomy of House Rules.

Hive Mind: How To Win At Hive Like a Master

Quinns’ Top 3 Games of 2013

SU&SD’s Best Games For Your Family

The Top 3 Games From BoardGameGeek Con

Review: Betrayer’s Banquet

Kotaku Article: Top 5 Friendships-Ruiners

Pip Escapes A Room

Lord Smingleigh On… House Rules, Pt. 2

Interview: Plaid Hat Games

Lord Smingleigh On… House Rules, Pt. 1

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