Long and spicy like a hot dog, the 43rd EVER SU&SD podcast is HERE! Quickly, consume the whole thing before it starts disintegrating and leaking board game mustard into your lap.
In this cast Matt, Paul, Pip and Quinns met up with 300 fans in a sweaty room at the UK Games Expo to discuss what they’d been playing. That meant The Ravens of Thri Sahashri, Ice Cool, Treasure Hunter, the Horses & Stagecoach expansion for Colt Express, Codenames: Pictures, Czech Games’ new game Adrenaline and more besides! Finally, we end with an electrifying game of Question Wood Toy Folds High. Can Matt fix his losing streak?
If you’d prefer to enjoy this video on the move, it’s available as a humble podcast right here. The comments are separate on each post, though, so CHOOSE WISELY. Are you team podcast, or team video?
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Quinns: Paul, you’re just in time! I was about to test my state-of-the-art news flying machine. Climb aboard! We’ll see the whole board game hobby at a glance.
Paul: Oh god what is that it looks like an egg carton had sex with a ceiling fan
Quinns: AND WE’RE OFF
Did you find the excellent Imperial Settlers a little cold and unforgiving? Do you trust them bones? Would you risk your city’s fate on a the roll of the dice!? Paul seems pretty happy to, over and over, as he looks at cute newcomer Dice City. It’s got cemeteries and catapults, mines and militia, which is just about everything an ambitious mayor could need, right?
Take a seat and break out the popcorn for a video that’s both a review and… a little something extra, courtesy of a very special guest. Have a terrific weekend!
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Good news, everyone! Supremely talented game reviewers and SU&SD contributors Philippa Warr and Chris Thursten are going to be working together on SU&SD reviews. Like butter and mushrooms, we’re sure you’ll all agree that this is a tasty combination and (probably?) not at all poisonous.
Pip: CHRIS! You know how I’ve always wanted to go mushrooming but was afraid I would kill us all by accident? Well, GOOD NEWS! With Fungi we can now do this from the safety of the living room table and no-one needs to die at all.
Chris: Nobody needs to die, but somebody needs to win. This is because mushrooming is an intensely passive-aggressive competitive exercise, obviously.
Pip: Only when someone decides to take all of the frying pans. Well, the joke’s on you this time because I brought my own frying pan which I found in the kitchen. There is literally nothing in the rules that says I can’t.
Chris: This is because everybody starts with a pan. One pan. On a card. You can sub in your (my, actually) real pan if you like, but that would be purely an act of roleplay. And this is no time for roleplay, Pip. This is time for passive-aggressive competitive mushroom maths.
Public service announcement: 2009’s Arctic Scavengers isn’t simply still a great game. It might still be the greatest game to ever let players slip cards into their personal deck and go “Ooh, this feels a bit nice.” And if you’re new here, you should know that that’s a hotly contested genre.
If you missed our extensive coverage of this frosty classic you’ll find Quinns’ original video review here and his investigation of 2015’s Recon expansion here. And remember, you can now get the base game and the Recon expansion in a single box!
Hold onto your hardhats! Power Grid was one of the first reviews SU&SD ever did (archivists will find that ancient episode here), and now Quinns has returned with yet more hot air, desperate to expunge his thoughts as if he were a dirty old steam turbine.
This time around we’re reviewing the “deluxe” 10th anniversary edition, as well as the new The Stock Companies expansion that’s compatible with either edition of the game. Has this classic still got what it takes, or is it fossil fuel?
(That blast of dance music half-way through the video is Showdown by F.O.O.L.)
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Strap on your jackboots! It’s time for a veritable military parade of a podcast, impressive and pacy but nonetheless going on for slightly too long. Games covered include A Feast to Die For, Quadropolis, Fairy Tale, Pandemic: Contagion and Dear Leader, as well as the long-awaited second half of our spoiler-filled Pandemic Legacy chat! Don’t worry about that particular minefield. It’s very clearly signposted at the end of the podcast. Following a startlingly unprofessional link from Paul, we eventually manage to produce a folk game and some fan mail, too. Enjoy, everybody!
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Paul: Hello and welcome to a very fresh and very exciting Games News! Today I shall bungee from the precipice of journalism deep into the chasm of news, bouncing back upward with only the most thrilling of scoops, the choicest tidbits of board game gossip, the tastiest morsels for your so very particular palate. Does latter suggest that I’m actually dropping out of the sky to snatch at food, like a snickering seagull? Well, I suppose that would be the killjoy’s way of putting it.
Anyway! Let’s kick off with some good old-fashioned wooden chunks.
Ahh, is there anything more beautiful than that most classic of English summers? What about the so very gorgeous cards of Mystic Vale, cards you don’t just play, but cards you can build, piece by piece?
Intrigued? You bet you are! We took our two most experienced druids, Quinns and Matt (Paul is a bard), and we put them in a room with cards and crystals and radiant peaks. We asked them not only how it compares with our two very favourite card games, Trains and Arctic Scavengers, but if it’s capable of being as beautifully magical as the luscious Seasons.
Unfortunately, there was too much conjuration energy in that room.
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Thrower: Why don’t you play wargames? Why, after all I’ve forced SU&SD to publish about them at gunpoint, have you not pressed the nuclear button on this this amazing corner of our hobby? There’s lots of reasons I can think of. Possibly it’s their rumoured rules complexity. Maybe the focus on simulating men being sad in some mud. Or perhaps it’s the drab art and thin components?
WELL, I’ve got a game for you with none of that! It’s called Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear (a series you might remember from my primer on wargames or my article on the best introductory wargames) and Academy Games made it just for you. Yes, you. The publisher even said so on its sister game, Storms of Steel. “The historical wargame that Eurogamers love to play,” was the actual marketing copy.
You can smell the difference between CoH and typical wargames the second you open the lid. It’s the faint scent of solvents from the decadent, multi-coloured printing used on the mounted boards and fat counters. Oddly-named German tanks rumble around in the box. You can even see a flamethrower doing what flamethrowers do in slightly more detail than you probably want. Alas, in spite of the name, there are no actual bears.