Games News! 29/05/2017

stuck in a vent, killing a crow, eating a glass, swordfighting a cat

Paul: At last, summer is coming, at least to the Northern Hemisphere, and with it the promise of board games outside in the sunshine, games that you spill your juice on, games covered in ants. BUT WHICH board games are we most looking forward to covering in ants in the near future?

Quinns: Well Paul, do you remember when we said that Funemployed was the best game ever and our audience refused to buy it because they were terrified, en masse, by the prospect of having to be funny?

Paul: Oh yes.

Quinns: Do you want to try and sell a funny experience ONE MORE TIME?

Paul: DOUBLE OR QUITS, BABY.

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SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 10-1

Rose flavours, scandalous mermaids, bee kerplunk, pip’s pandemic
How to Play Pandemic Legacy!

Paul: Gawd, I love BGG. It’s one of my favourite gaming places on the internet and this has been a fascinating journey.

Quinns: It’s an astonishingly rigorous database. As if IMDB was combined with a… an educated mosh pit, but with a set of scales in the corner that told you how much every actor weighed.

As we close out this feature, I’m simply left wanting to play more board games. Which is surely the best possible result.

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SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 20-11

Blast Doors, The Management Cupboard, Night Magick, A Watching Swan
Imperial Assault: Joining the Dark Sidekick

Quinns: Matt, we have to abort this feature! Reddit’s disapproval is reaching critical levels.

Matt: That’s not the Reddit alarm, that’s my egg timer. I’m making everybody lunchtime eggs to keep up our strength.

Quinns: Wow! I could kiss you.

Matt: Don’t kiss on me, daddy-oats, kiss on these great games.

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SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 101-81

Oh God okay we're doing this everybody hold tight I'm pressing the button
Istanbul

Paul: BoardGameGeek is a titan of the board game scene, one of the most comprehensive and consulted sites the hobby has, as well as a place to which we owe a huge debt of inspiration. It’s also home to the absolute Board Game Geekiest among us, namely those with a monthly allowance for small zip-lock baggies. While we undoubtedly fall into that category too, we appreciate that not everyone does and it’s inevitable that our opinions will diverge, right?

Just what do we make of those most esteemed of titles that are forever locked in an eternal battle for a place in BGG’s Top 100 rankings? This week, we’ll be giving an extensive, nay, exhaustive breakdown of that list, telling you what we’ve covered, what we thought and even admitting what we’ve missed out on. So come with us as we count down the games in a whole week’s worth of analysis and adventure!

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Review: Ethnos

BOLD TRAVELLER! Dare you enter the land of Ethnos? There live creatures the likes of which you cannot imagine. Trolls! Orcs! And what’s that, hiding over there in that bush? Why, it’s a wizard, laying a wizard egg. It is spring here, after all.

Alright, so the “land” of Ethnos is a bit rubbish. But this is a new game from Paolo Mori, who gifted us with Libertalia in 2013 and Dogs of War the year after that. Surely he has earned a moment of your time? Sit a while, traveller, and listen to Matt and Quinns rave about his latest design.

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Preview: Jenn Sandercock’s Edible Games

cookie-cutter design, a wobbly foundation for a game, an aussie lolly

Pip: In the time it takes my companion/opponent to move his knight to a new square I have broken off a piece of the game board and stuffed it into my mouth, crumbs on my T-shirt volunteering the specifics of my crime.

On the plus side, I am road testing one of Jenn Sandercock’s edible games – The Order Of The Oven Mitt – and thus I have a mouthful of gingerbread rather than cardboard. On the less plus side you aren’t supposed to eat the board yet and I’ve just remembered I don’t like gingerbread.

The gingerbread debacle happens every year around Christmas. Faced with the dramatic potential of pretending to be a giant devouring a village I will tuck into any number of gingerbread houses and gingerbread folk, trying to ignore my tastebuds. I mention this to make it clear that the gingerbread problem is my own cross to bear rather than anything to do with Jenn. BUT gingerbread is a really useful building material so it’s working really well as the substrate for the game.

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Games News! 15/05/2017

a sticky heist, a brief and wondrous life, two detective

Paul: Quinns! The oven timer has gone off! What have you got in there, exactly? It looks like… bread.

Quinns: No, that’s not bread that’s rising. It’s THE EMPIRE.

Paul: Is it going to take long? I wanted to put a pizza in.

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