Paul: Our exhaustive look at the games jostling their way about BoardGameGeek’s Top 100 continues! Today, we have everything from international illness to urban development to mischievous academics. Oh, and opinions. Always with the sassy opinions. ONWARD.
SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 101-81
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!
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.
Read MorePreview: Jenn Sandercock’s Edible Games
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.
Games News! 15/05/2017
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.
Podcast #58: A Field of Marbles
Here’s a question for you. What contains Fields of Arle, Spoils of War, Conflict of Heroes and Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs? That’s right! The answer is “A fistfight over an archaeological dig site in Northern Germany.” But another valid answer would be the 58th ever SU&SD podcast, wherein Paul and Quinns discuss all of these games. What’s more, Quinns reveals the results of his months-long experiment using the BG Stats app. After all of that excitement the boys relax by dipping into the mailbag for a question on why board games seem to be getting more expensive, and close the podcast by talking about the noble art of marble racing. Enjoy, everybody! (Thanks to BGG User Steph Hodge for this podcast’s header image!)
Read MoreReview- EXIT: The Game vs. Unlock!
Quinns: As “escape rooms” continue to spread across the world like an architectural venereal disease (but a nice one!), you may or may not know that there are now lots of escape room board games. Yes! You can have (almost) all the fun of escaping a real room, but at a tidy fraction of the price.
For the last few weeks I’ve been fretting and sweating against these games’ arbitrary countdowns, searching for the best simulation of being locked in a room. And do you know what? I had a consistently happy time of it.
But the time for happiness is over. Two series emerged as front-runners during my trials, and it’s only right that I pit them against one another in cardboard combat. From Germany, in the blue corner, we have the prestigious series of EXIT: The Game. And from France, in the red corner, we have the flashy contender known as Unlock!
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE PUZZLE!
Review: Great Western Trail
Hoo baby! The profoundly beefy 2016 game of Great Western Trail is finally back in stock the world over. We’ve had ample time to test its systems, prodding its many rules from every conceivable angle, and today want to tell you that it lives up to the hype.
And thank goodness for that! When was the last time your evenings contained a dose of cowboy magic? It was too long, wasn’t it?
Read MoreTickets Now On Sale for The First SU&SD Convention!
Quinns: This is one of those times where you wish our headlines didn’t already use capital letters, so we could SHOUT!
Our team has been working ludicrously hard for the last five months putting together the first ever SU&SD convention. It’ll be in Vancouver, Canada on October 6th, 7th and 8th of this year, and tickets, details and hotel rooms are available through THIS LINK.
You can expect a board game lending library, tons of tables to play games, no less than three Megagames(!), a full track of talks and loads of special guests including every single member of the SU&SD team. It’s going to be ludicrously good fun. Practical info can be found on the above SHUX ’17 page, but I’ll pop a small F.A.Q. after the cut.
Review: Burgle Bros.
Matt: Chucking Pandemic Legacy in the bin proved to be an uncomfortable day for my board game collection, causing a cardboard-flavoured existential wobble. As much as I love – had loved – Pandemic, experiencing the full-fat campaign spin-off had left me wondering if I’d ever bring myself to go back to the standard co-op game that had been such a household staple.
I’ve spent a while poking my nose around for a worthy replacement, and – for me – I think it might be Burgle Bros.
Dropping two to four players into a classic bank heist, Tim Fowers’ has squeezed an almost comical amount of theme and bits and ideas into a box that – being generous – might hold a small shoe. Our intrepid / idiotic thieves have failed to case the joint ahead of the job, so it’s up to you and your Colleagues-In-Crime to first find the safes, then crack them, grab the loot, and get out.