Shut Up & Sit Down

Presenting QUINNS’ CORNER AWARDS, 2016!

Quinns: Ladies and gentlemen! Take a seat. Get comfy. Buy some ice-cream from the attendant I had sent to your place of work (yes, YOUR place of work, so keep an eye out for her). It’s time for Quinns’ Corner Awards ‘16.

In other words we’re one year on from 2015’s Corner Awards and I still haven’t figured out a better solution for review copies than letting them pile up in the corner of my flat. I bet Tom Vasel doesn’t have this problem. Not to worry! Once again I’m dispensing awards to all those games that didn’t suit a full review, but were too weird to eject from the corner.

I’ve heard the rumours. “Quinns is getting too old to review seven games in one article! They already use CG for any scenes where he has to bend his knees.”

To which I say: Ha! Watch and learn, kids.

48 Comments

Review: Not Alone

misleading parties, friendly predators, marmalade skies, home

Quinns: You and I need to talk about Not Alone. There are more exciting card games out there, and funnier ones, and ones that are sharp as a tack, but Not Alone is the most deliciously playable little game we’ve encountered since Crossing. This box might as well be full of popcorn.

Between 1 and 6 players are the survivors of a crash-landing on a wild alien world. This team (possibly made up of just one nervy player) is opposed by one final player controlling the beast that lives there. A long, thin board measures the progress of each team: The humans win if they can survive until help arrives, the beast wins if it can wear down the humans and absorb them into the ecosystem like beer into a shag carpet.

Each turn, each human player plays a card face-down showing where they’re going, and the beast has to second-guess their movements and slap fat poker chips onto those locations, invalidating your turn or worse. If the beast itself catches you then it devours a precious “Will” cube.

Do I have your interest? Of course I do. You’re a weak-willed human, and this game is a seductive new land. Let’s go exploring.

104 Comments

GAMES NEWS! 28/11/16

rippling breasts, skirts made of dicks, and the absence thereof

Paul: Quinns. Quinns I have a strange comment from you here in the Games News notes. It just says-

Quinns: DO NOT READ THAT OUT.

Paul: “Where did the boobs and swinging dicks go”?

Quinns: Ok, I can explain.

Paul: There’s no need! It’s a question all men must eventually ask themselves.

Quinns: I don’t doubt that, but that note actually refers to the Kickstarter for Kingdom Death: Monster, version 1.5. Not only has Kickstarter’s most ambitious board game made a comeback, it seems to have been de-sexed.

171 Comments

Triple Review: H.M.S. Dolores, Millions of Dollars AND Gentleman’s Deal!

cool crimes, greasy opossums, rubbery kigurumis, dammit linkedin

Who wants to get extravagant! Inspired by his own Chinatown review, Quinns has published a negotiation triple-bill. Three new smallbox games, each one telling the story of dividing up loot after a cool crime, but each with a radically different approach.

At the time of writing H.M.S. Dolores looks like it has some European stock availability, but Millions of Dollars and Gentleman’s Deal aren’t yet broadly available for purchase. If you want these games and can’t find them, simply call your friendly local game shop (or your friendly regional game shop) and put in an order.

81 Comments

A Hot Time in Texas: Paul’s very particular picks of BGGCon

i'm a rock! et! man!, sweaty french cyclists, taking a lichen to mars

Paul: Oh my word. I have had A Hot Time in Texas and, boy oh boy, I can’t wait to tell you all about it. Do you want to know all about BoardGameGeek Con 2016? Are you settled and ready? Are you prepar- I DON’T CARE LET’S GO. The starter pistol has fired so LET’S TALK ABOUT FLAMME ROUGE.

137 Comments

GAMES NEWS! 20/11/16

high finance, dusty teams, stranglin' lando, shadow muses

Quinns: GOOD MORNING everybody! Who’s excited about board games? All of you? Not yet you’re not. Soak up the below news like an high-end paper towel and then we’ll talk.

Fantasy Flight has announced the next big box expansion for the superb Android: Netrunner, and it’s Netrunner Legacy.

The copywriting on the announcement page for Netrunner: Terminal Directive is a bit of a nightmare, but basically anyone who owns a Netrunner core set and the Terminal Directive expansion will be able to play through a narrative campaign of runners vs. corporations. Sealed packs of never-before-seen cards will be opened one after another as a cyberpunk murder mystery plays out, and players will apply new stickers to their faction’s sheet as they win or lose games.

Going into this expansion blind sounds like a delight. Not only do you get the surprise of adding brand new cards to your deck, you then get to surprise your opponent as you unleash them mid-game!

Review: Vinhos Deluxe Edition

poison ribena, delicious "wine drink", two-bit grape grabbers, dismay

Quinns: Alright ladies and gents. Today we’re tackling a box of unparallelled size and charisma. The publishers tell me that there are less than 3500 copies of Vinhos Deluxe Edition (the Kickstarted re-imaging of 2010 wine-making classic Vinhos) left, and I want to make sure that you guys have the chance to buy one.

It takes a lot to excite me these days, but Vinhos Deluxe Edition managed it. Contained in this box is nothing less than a torrent of beautifully-illustrated tokens, a board that’s positively threatening in scale, and a fat, clean manual written with wit. It even has nice fonts! In a board game!

But it takes very little to make me nervous, and Vinhos Deluxe did that too. The rules that make sense, like buying vineyards or aging wines, contrast fiercely with the more arcane regions of the board, where players claim score multipliers or manoeuvre their action-selectors.

Any inference you want to draw from the header image of this article is correct. This game’s a beast to play, it’s tougher to teach, and it’s even harder to review.

Obviously, I couldn’t be more excited.

92 Comments

Podcast #49: A Dream Home and an Ill Moon

tender feet, boisterous deities, sequential toilets, gravesend, cauliflower

In what’s surely our most mathematically pleasing podcast ever, today Paul and Quinns discuss 6 games (2 of which they’d recommend) before answering 4 emails and examining 2 folk games. What’s next in this sequence? Why, your enjoyment of course! Games discussed in this cast include the bucolic visions of Dream Home and Cottage Garden. We’ve got two spritely deck-building games, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle and Aeon’s End. We’ve also got two interesting spins on existing classics, 4 Gods being a wild interpretation of Carcassonne, and Mythos Tales as a Lovecraftian sequel to Consulting Detective. Enjoy, everybody. And credit to Peter Dringautzki for the podcast image, with his beautiful photo of Cottage Garden!

81 Comments

GAMES NEWS! 14/11/16

sniffing, swinging, dicing, feuding, googling, bogling

Paul: Hello hello hello Quinns, what is new with YOU this week? What is new with me is that my phone broke. But then I fixed it again. So it’s fine. It’s like those sitcoms where nothing fundamental ever changes.

ALSO I guess I found a scratch and sniff board game and now I feel funny. Let me tell you about The Perfumer.

72 Comments

Review: Conan

Conan i have never reviewed you before, i have no tongue for it

Like an irrepressible wall of pecs and steel, Conan arrives next week (in Europe) and the week after (in America) to bounce all other miniatures games off your table. Standing in his way is Shut Up & Sit Down, a noble bulwark of common sense, here to tell you if this burly box is worth the money.

If you will it, we now have a selection of associated retailers who are more than happy to take your pre-order! And huge thanks to Vancouver’s Valkyrie Western Martial Arts gym for their support. If you’re in Vancouver why not try a class?

Have a great weekend, everybody. Do it for Crom.

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