Shut Up & Sit Down

Games News, 01/08/16: The Asmodee Edition

conan what is best in life, to eat some companies, and see the rest driven before you

Quinns: OK. Wow. Who wants to play a game of real-life Monopoly! None of you? Well, you’re out of luck. Put on this top hat and climb into my weird, narrow car.

News emerged last week that Asmodee, the largest conglomerate of designer board games publishers in the world, was acquiring F2Z Entertainment, the second largest publisher. This will make them such a big company that their rivals will realistically be Hasbro and Mattel.

Does this sound like inside baseball? It’s not. You’re about to personally feel the impact on your wallet.

After this merger goes ahead, Asmodee will be in control of the following designer board game companies: Asmodee, Fantasy Flight, Days of Wonder, Z-Man Games, Plaid Hat, Catan Studio, Windrider Games, Space Cowboys, Pretzel Games and Filosofia Éditions. Asmodee and F2Z’s combined publishing rights for tons of other games (including those of Bombyx, Repos Productions, Matagot, Carcassonne and Spot It!) will also be brought together under one roof.

That’s some 75% of the companies SU&SD regularly deals with, the others being Stronghold Games, Portal Games, AEG, Iello and Czech Games Edition. But of course, Asmodee isn’t done acquiring board game publishers yet.

Until this week I’d have said that Asmodee’s corporate game of Hungry Hungry Hippos wasn’t detrimental to the hobby. With this latest merger, though, I think Asmodee are going to be a lot more comfortable dictating the price of designer board games, starting… oh god it’s already happening

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Review: Ra

croc bait, tripping balls, thoth, seth, quins

July 29, 2016 Reviews Ra Dr. Reiner Knizia returns to SU&SD with a new edition of Ra, one of his most-loved designs ever. What will Quinns make of this 1999 classic in the blessed light of 2016? Why isn’t Paul at Quinns’ party? And what the shit is Quinns wearing? One thing’s for sure. Auction … Read more

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Review: Haru Ichiban

junior senior, frog eyes, simple plan, savage garden

Pip: Last night I went to see Star Trek Beyond while surfing the edges of an anxiety attack. I think I cried three times, nearly threw up once and laughed for a full minute during one sequence. I’m bringing this up because Haru Ichiban is the exact opposite of that experience.

Haru Ichiban is a game about water lilies which I picked up entirely based on the cover art at the UK Games Expo and then covertly Googled because I have a habit of finding games that look adorable and then find out that that’s where their positive qualities begin and end. Lovely box art, shame about the… everything that isn’t the box art.

Thankfully this seemed to be at least non-terrible and was designed by Bruno Cathala of Cyclades and Five Tribes fame. Cyclades! I liked Cyclades! PLEASE TAKE MY CREDIT CARD, MADAM.

Haru Ichiban turned out to be a two-player game of logic and planting. You take it in turns to place coloured water lilies on pads and push them round a pond until one player has an arrangement that will net them some points. The best way I can think to describe it is that it’s floral connect four but fancied up a bit and you can pretend you are Very Serious Gardeners Doing Grown-Up Employment Business.

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Games News! 25/07/16

bleating in the barn, i wonder if judi dench is a half-elf, who’s been holding up the damn elevator

Paul: Oh my word. This week’s Games News is a BUMPER CROP. It seems that, as harvest season approaches, the industry is just so damn fertile. The boughs are heavy with games. The fields are thick with gossip. The vineyards are ripe with new releases. Let’s get our scythes out and SWING AWAY.

First up, though, let’s pluck and bite right into the biggest piece of industry news in some time: Board games titan Asmodee has moved to acquire F2Z Entertainment, no small fry in their own right. With each passing year, Asmodee grow ever stronger…

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SU&SD Play… Infinity!

sexy lady apes, Robot and the Holograms, Dr. Worm, back on the shelf

We delight in throwing curveballs, so here’s a video you’d never have expected. A fat Let’s Play of fantastic miniatures game Infinity, with scenery provided by the excellent people at Battle Systems!

The truth is that ever since our spirited review of this game last year, Matt and Quinns have been collecting Infinity together with a few of their friends, and anything we’re interested in, we want to show you why. So we ended up making the above heartfelt half-hour, demonstrating just how tense and dangerous this game is. Enjoy, everybody.

NOTE: There’s about 45 seconds of insane strobing in this video, especially during the final interview segment. Rest assured that Quinns is working on a fix.

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Review: Orléans

crunchy boatmen, hot jests, herb gardens, winning beer

[Team SU&SD grows ever-stronger! Please give a warm welcome to game writer Jon Bolding, who comes bearing gifs. Enjoy, everybody.]

Bolds: Welcome! Welcome to Medieval France’s fabulous Loire valley, and its jewel, its shining, brocaded, wine-and-cheese-filled capital city of Orléans.

Orléans has a lot in common with those ever-popular “deck-building” games, in that you’re still accruing little somethings to go in your something, but each something is different, and has a different purpose – and your something, certainly, is different from everyone else’s something. In Orléans these somethings aren’t cards, but are little circular people, and you stuff them in your personal bag like a kind of hungry giant saving them for later, never quite sure what delicious treat you’ll pull forth when you go plunging in for a snack.

Ugh, peasants again? Why don’t we ever have Boatmen? Love Boatmen. The little crunchy paddles and rafts. The delicate waterlogged texture.

And speaking of crunch, Orleans is a good deal heavier than most deck-building games. Really, what we’ve got here is a fabulous fusion of a “building” game and a heavy eurogame, and it’s almost entirely delicious.

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Review: Cat On Yer Head with 200 Players!

are you winning or losing, who wants to be a hole, alcoholic mice

Here’s something a little different! During a live podcast at the UK Games Expo we finally had an opportunity to play Cat On Yer Head, a game designed entirely for crowds. So we thought, why not film it? And why not do Shut Up & Sit Down’s first ever collaborative review, with Paul and Quinns presenting, Matt and Pip doing some panicked camerawork and 200 SU&SD fans lending a hand?

Because you know what they say. You can never have too many cooks.

Enjoy, everybody! If you’d like to buy Cat On Yer Head either digitally or as a physical book, you can do so via the above link.

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Podcast #44: Mausoleums of Birmingham

swanseas, "families", yetis, dad's mausoleum, fun with rope

Hot diggity and a lack of dignity! It’s the second podcast we recorded live at the 2016 UK Games Expo. This time we offer definitive feels on Spiel des Jahres-nominated games Karuba and Imhotep, as well as chatting about Beyond Baker Street, Yeti, Coup: Rebellion G54 and a game jam winner called Lantern. We also ask an important question: Have you started building your mausoleum? If you’d rather watch this podcast as a high-tech video, you can do so right here.

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Podcast #44: The video!

yetis, swansea, fun with rope, dad's mausoleum, "families"

Hot diggity and a lack of dignity! It’s the second podcast we recorded live at the 2016 UK Games Expo. This time we offer definitive feels on Spiel des Jahres-nominted games Karuba and Imhotep, as well as chatting about Beyond Baker Street, Yeti, Coup: Rebellion G54 and a game jam winner called Lantern. We also ask an important question: Have you started building your mausoleum?

If you’d rather listen to this as a slim-fit podcast, you can do so right here. But you’ll miss Matt and Pip having some trouble with their stools…

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GAMES NEWS! 12/07/16

a carnival of crap, digestive enzymes, dragonlance, bouncy missiles

Paul: Oh God! It’s Games News! Surfacing from the incalculable depths of the most primeval ocean of our aged and weary world, Games News thrusts forth, it’s horrid, gnarled body made entirely from board game stories. It reaches toward a tiny fishing tug, crushing the terrified sailors within with a single blow from a throbbing tentacle ten fathoms long…

But let’s just take a closer look at that tentacle. It’s made entirely out of an announcement for the forthcoming 4 Gods, a new game from the designer of the excellent Archipelago! Hooray!

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