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Card Games That Don’t Suck: Fight the Landlord

Did you catch the first instalment of Card Games That Don’t Suck, Ricochet Poker? This week we’re travelling from America to China to tell you about a fantastic shedding game called Fight the Landlord.

Watching the video, you’ll notice that “2s” are valued higher than royals. It’s possible that this comes from the game’s communist roots, in much that same way that following the French revolution, it was considered distasteful to play games where kings and queens were desirable. The more you know!

Matt: Morning Quinns! How was your weeken–

Quinns: Matt I watched SO MUCH of The Expanse. I was thinking we could write the whole Games News in Belter Creole.

Matt: OK. I hear you, but I worry that might make it a bit hard to read. How about you write it while crossplaying as Chrisjen Avasarala?

Quinns: You’ve got yourself a deal, beltalowda. You cover the first story, I’ll see what earrings my wife has.

Oho, with the unexpected release of the Mother of Dragons expansion for the Game of Thrones board game, did Fantasy Flight think they were the only ones who could return to an old game?

They’ve got another thing coming. We reviewed this board game back in 2011, and now we’re reviewing it AGAIN. So stick that in your moon door and smoke it.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Matt: Good morning, Quintin! I awaken from a vivid dream in which the twist at the end of Return of the Jedi was that the whole thing was entirely being imagined by a man called Ryan who worked in Market Research, who was having a fantasy about what it might be like to be a smuggler called “Han Solo”.

And now – as if by space magic – I’m being thrown straight back into Star Wars again. Another game in the genre of Firefly, Merchant of Venus, or Xia: Legends of a Drift System – Star Wars: Outer Rim sees players competing to be the cream of the galaxy’s scum and villainy. Flying around space, smuggling goods, hiring recognisable crew members and reasonably frequently rolling some dice.

Quinns: Let us apply Occam’s Razor. Is the simplest possible explanation here that you, Matt Lees, created this game in a dream?

Matt: Yes

Quinns: Hey everybody! If you’ve not checked out our live Twitch streams yet, you’re officially missing out. They’re basically an extra-long, live Let’s Play, and I can now proudly say the channel has developed a frighteningly witty chat community. If you’ve been part of our chat over the last few months, thank you so, so much.

But here’s the thing- you don’t actually need to remember when we’re streaming. If you just go to our Twitch channel and click on the button that reads “Follow”, you’ll get an email every time we start the show, which is once every couple of weeks. Also, you’re adding follower count, which helps us out.

Tomorrow we’re going to be trying the Great Western Trail expansion, Rails to the North, and the show after that… well, let’s just say you won’t want to miss it, and we’ll be confirming more details shortly.

Oh, and did I mention our Twitch chat has a custom emote of the LADY ON THE CONCORDIA BOX? That’s right! The wonders never cease.

Thanks again, everybody!

Oh my GOODNESS! Today marks the start of a brand-new series for Shut Up & Sit Down.

Every two weeks, Card Games That Don’t Suck will teach you how to play a game that we love, that you can play with an ordinary deck of cards. In doing so, we hope to make table gaming more accessible and wide-ranging, and maybe even learn a little bit of history along the way.

But there’s no history in our first instalment! Ricochet Poker is, in fact, a brand new game by designer James Ernest, and we think it’s just superb.

Enjoy, everybody!

Quinns: How was your weekend, Matt? I got in some of our first playtests of Blood on the Clocktower. Adopting the role of a devious moderator, I cast a room full of players into a cutthroat logic puzzle that had them doubting not just their friends, but themselves. As I stalked back and forth with my grimoire that held all of the game’s secrets, men screamed, women died, and the forces of evil proliferated in the shadows.

Matt: I had IBS

Quinns: Oh no

Do you feel a faint stirring in your heart? That’ll probably be because of Quacks of Quedlinburg, a game about stirring, excitement, dread, capitalism, and even more stirring. It’s also the second game about managing your own personal gambling den we’ve reviewed recently, following on from the very good Space Base. But this is better.

Special thanks to Wizarding Harry of Wizarding Harry’s Child Wizarding School for Top Wizarding Harrys for being such a superb special guest.

Now Boarding is a real-time cooperative game in which you work together to fly a fleet of airplanes. You must deliver all the passengers to their destinations before they get too angry — and new passengers are constantly arriving! Upgrade your plane to fly faster and carry more passengers to handle the load. The twist: All players take all their turns at the same time! This allows for clever hand-offs of passengers. It’s a whole new level of pick-up-and-deliver game.

In Kingdomino, you are a lord seeking new lands in which to expand your kingdom. You must explore all the lands, including wheat fields, lakes, and mountains, in order to spot the best plots, while competing with other lords to acquire them first.

The game uses tiles with two sections, similar to Dominoes. Each turn, each player will select a new domino to connect to their existing kingdom, making sure at least one of its sides connects to a matching terrain type already in play. The order of who picks first depends on which tile was previously chosen, with better tiles forcing players to pick later in the next round. The game ends when each player has completed a 5×5 grid (or failed to do so), and points are counted based on number of connecting tiles and valuable crown symbols.

Card Games That Don’t Suck: Fight the Landlord

GAMES NEWS! 18/02/19

Review: Game of Thrones – Mother of Dragons

GAMES NEWS! 11/02/19

Reminder: Click “Follow” On Our Twitch Page!

Card Games That Don’t Suck: Ricochet Poker

GAMES NEWS! 04/02/19

Review: Quacks of Quedlinburg

Now Boarding

Kingdomino

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