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Review: The Champion of the Wild

The Champion of the Wild is the most fun we’ve had all month. How will an ibex fare versus a shed? How far can a beetle travel down a slip-n-slide? Literally nobody knows, but it’s up to your friends to guess, and your fate is in their hands.

Fair warning: This is a small-press indie game, and stocks are low! You can order the game direct from the above link (which should have the best international shipping rates), as well as from these UK retailers.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Available direct from https://championofthewild.com/

The Champion of the Wild, formerly known as The Animal Games, is a light-hearted card-based social game for 3-8 players based on the following theme:

Players have attained super-stardom and handsome riches over many years due to their innate ability to communicate with and to coach animals of all different species. Now the greatest animal coaches from around the world (the participating players) have gathered for the ultimate test of their training prowess to see who will become The Champion of the Wild.

Three events are first selected – one from each of five different categories (speed, power, endurance, technical and team). These events can be any measurable activity, examples including the 100m sprint, high jump, ballroom dancing and hide-and-seek. Players are then dealt a hand of animal cards to choose from and must select one single animal to represent them across all three events, competing against the animals selected by the other players. These events are then played out by way of animated discussion and players then vote according to their opinion on the likely rankings (excluding their own animal when voting). Votes score points for the appropriate players and the player with the most points after three events wins.

The Champion of the Wild combines the fun and laughter of a conversation-driven social game with the challenge of strategic thinking required for animal selection and event tactics.

Who will be your champion?

Betrayal Legacy marries the concept of Betrayal at House on the Hill — exploring a haunted mansion — with the permanency and multi-game storytelling exhibited by Daviau’s Risk Legacy and other legacy games that followed. Betrayal Legacy consists of a prologue and a thirteen-chapter story that takes place over decades. Players represent families, with specific members of a family participating in one story, then perhaps an older version of those characters (assuming they lived) or their descendants showing up in later stories.

Why would people keep exploring a haunted mansion for decade after decade, especially when horrible things happen there? Curiosity, I suppose, or perhaps an ignorant boldness that comes from the belief that we know better than those who have come before. Look at all that we’ve learned, marvel at the tools we have at hand! Surely we’ll all exit safely this time…

As with other Betrayal titles, the game is narratively-driven, with elements that record the history of your specific games. The tools mentioned earlier, for example, become attached to specific families. This isn’t just a bucket; it’s my bucket, the one my grandpappy used to feed his family’s pigs when he was a boy, and while you can certainly use that bucket, I know how to wield it best from the time he spent teaching me how to slop. Yes, it’s an heirloom bucket, and when kept in the family, I get a bonus for using it.

[Hello everybody! Please welcome back Jon Bolding, the rogue who offered us reviews of Orléans and the World Wide Wrestling RPG. As a special Halloween treat, today we’re shoving him towards the campaign-powered sequel to Betrayal at the House on the Hill. Bwa-ha-ha…]

Bolds: Moving to live in a new place is stressful, nigh on terrifying. A place where the faucets turn differently, the light switches are in odd places, and your bed faces a wholly new wall.

Well, GET READY, because Betrayal Legacy is a game about moving into a new house over and over, forever, without end. A new house where the portraits leak blood, the attic is infested with gremlins, and even the ghosts have skeletons in their spectral closets.

Thanks to Meeple Mountain for our header image.

Quinns: Like a blogging Mary Poppins, today I’m floating down from the sky to add a little magic to your life. (Don’t look up my skirt and we can both retain our dignity.)

This week’s Games News offers not one, not two, but six(!) unique Kickstarters from established designers. Some people are saying that the ever-swelling bubble of board game Kickstarters will have to pop at some point. Me? I don’t know about that, but I will say that I’ve never before seen a month where Kickstarter board games have managed to make press releases from more established companies seem repetitious and dull.

I thought that deserved a bit of a celebration. Let’s take a tour!

This week our Twitch page was the site of a grand experiment. It’s no secret that Memoir ’44 is one of our favourite games. 5 years ago we even made a video showcasing its amazing 4 vs 4 Operation Overlord expansion. Well, this week we tried 1 vs 100, as Quinns took on the wobbly hivemind of Twitch chat!

Huge thanks to everyone who took part, and for Efka of No Pun Included for acting as Twitch’s supreme commander. Our live stream will be back in a couple of weeks on the 8th of November, with Matt and Quinns whupping some punks in a game of Street Masters. See some of you there!

Quinns: Our next Twitch stream is tonight, and I am expecting to get the bejeezus whipped out of me.

At 7pm UK time, 2pm EDT, I’m going to be playing Memoir ’44 against our viewers. We’re going to set up the cameras so that you can see your hand of cards, and every space will have a grid reference. Then, everyone can suggest moves in Twitch chat, Efka from No Pun Included will then pick the most popular suggestion, and stream director Chris Bratt will make the move and roll the dice. It’s a bit like a Rube Goldberg machine specifically designed to cause me pain?

If you’re not sure what Memoir ’44 is, be sure to check out our review in the first ever episode of SU&SD, you can watch our playthrough of the superb, supermassive Memoir ’44: Overlord, or there’s this video where I can teach you how to play.

And as always, don’t worry if you miss the stream! We’ll be putting the video up on YouTube tomorrow.

Eric: As a teenager, one summer I decided I wanted to learn all of the trick taking card games, a genre that I found strangely fascinating. (I suppose this tells you a lot about me as a teenager and the rural midwestern world of the United States where I grew up.) I learned the rules for Spades, Pinochle, and Pitch. I sort of learned how to play Bridge. I at least read the rules for Whist and Euchre. At the end of the process, though, I found myself feeling confused. In theory, I knew the variations between these games should excite and engage me. In practice, I was at a loss to differentiate one from the other. None of them could really hold my interest.

That is probably a strange place to start my review of Games Workshop’s newest offering, Kill Team! A re-release of a variant of Warhammer 40,000, the game’s big selling point is its size. Unlike the sell-your-car-budget armies of its larger cousin, in Kill Team each player uses a small band of 5-20 miniatures to do battle in a space designed to fit on a kitchen table. As I’ve played around with it, though, I find myself at a loss as to what to say.

Kill Team is, at the same time, an exhausting incremental iteration on a tired system… and the best thing Games Workshop has released in years.

Kill Team is the game of skirmish combat in the 41st Millennium.

Set in the same universe and using the same miniatures ranges as Warhammer 40,000 but with a different rules set, it allows you to play a game of fast-paced tactical skirmish combat in games of 2-4 players, in less time and with a fraction of the models you’d need to play a full game of Warhammer 40,000.

This was one of our favourite shows from SHUX 2018. Quinns ran a game of the Star Trek Adventures RPG, something we’ve wanted to do ever since our review.

“These are the adventures of the Star Ship Canada. It’s continuing mission: For crew-members Paul, Matt and Pip not to embarrass the Federation.”

Is the resulting story the worst Star Trek episode ever made? You be the judge.

Review: The Champion of the Wild

The Champion of the Wild

Betrayal Legacy

Review: Betrayal Legacy

Games News! 29/10/18

SU&SD Play… Memoir ’44 vs. Twitch!

Today it’s Quinns vs. Twitch in Memoir ’44!

Review – Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team

Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team

SU&SD Play… the Star Trek Adventures RPG!

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