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Space Base

In Space Base, players assume the roles of Commodores of a small fleet of ships. Ships begin docked at their stations and are then deployed to sectors as new ships are commissioned under your command. Use cargo vessels to engage in trade and commerce; mining vessels to build reoccurring base income; and carriers to spread your influence. Establish new colonies for a new Commodore in a sector to gain even more influence. Gain enough influence and you can be promoted to Admiral!

Space Base is a quick-to-learn, quick-to-play dice game using the core “I roll, everyone gets stuff” mechanism seen in other games. It’s also a strategic engine builder using a player board (your space base) and tableaus of ship cards you can buy and add to your board. The cards you buy and the order you buy them in have interesting implications on your engine beyond just the ability on the card you buy, making for a different type of engine construction than seen in similar games. Players can take their engine in a number of directions: long odds and explosive gains, low luck and steady income, big end-game combos to launch from last to first, or a mix-and-match approach. Ultimately, Space Base is a game you can just start playing and teach everyone how to play in the first round or two and has a satisfying blend of dice-chucking luck and challenging strategic choices.

Paul: All right, everyone, stand back. We’ve had reports of some unexploded Games News here and so our team of experts are stepping in to carefully, cautiously and capably dismantle and defuse this thing. This is a complex process and meticulous work. Quinns: Is it? Nah, let’s dive straight in with the story that’s impossible … Read more

HONK! After a long journey, the latest Shut Up & Sit Down podcast is now docking with your ears. The pinnacle of opinion-container technology, it’s 400 metres long bow to stern (but you shouldn’t feel a thing since it’s largely metaphorical). The thing is, the boys have finally played Container, a ridiculous economic game that’ll be enjoying a similarly ridiculous new “Jumbo” edition in July. This podcast also contains chat about Decrypto (see Paul’s recent review) and Medici, each of which deliver big experiences in small containers. Finally, we spend a whopping 25 minutes discussing two games: Brass: Lancashire, which is the new edition of classic game Brass, and Brass: Birmingham, the hot new “sequel”. We’ve now played both of these much-anticipated games, and you know what? Going against Quinns’ Brass video review, Shut Up & Sit Down can finally recommend Brass. But you’ll have to listen to find out why… Enjoy, everybody!

Paul: I have never, in my life, seen so much frantic, last-minute lying. I’ve never seen so many misunderstandings over cake. I’ve never thought I’d have to explain to someone how oil is obviously, indisputably associated with Texas. And I never thought a tiny misunderstanding over a simple word like “heat” could, and would, ruin everything.

But that’s Decrypto for you, a game of discord and deception that somehow ends up fraught, funny and absolutely fantastic. It sets you the simplest of challenges and creates the most convoluted complications as you and your friends try to tell secrets out in the open, right in front of each other.

Quinns: To look at the box of Crystal Clans, the new 2 player card game from publisher Plaid Hat, is to hear the soaring soundtrack of Saturday morning cartoons. The bracing breeze of GI Joe! The salty spray of the Thundercats-

Matt: Quinns this is a family show.

Quinns: It sure is, Matthew, and so is Crystal Clans! This box is a bat-signal that immediately summoned my childhood fascination with not just “fantasy” but the fantastical.

Contained within this game’s deliciously diverse clans are knights that ride bees into battle, necromancers who pursue a romantic Dia de los Muertos aesthetic, time-travelling twins and one massive crocodile. This feels like a world for everybody, and the manual doubles-down on that by using the feminine “She” to refer to the player.

Everything in Crystal Clans has a touch of the revolutionary about it, and that extends to the actual game. This is like no other box we’ve ever reviewed.

Choose your clan, prepare for battle, and fight for control of powerful crystals in Crystal Clans, a battle card game for two players.

In every game of Crystal Clans, you go to battle with unique armies, seeking to outmaneuver your opponent and lead your squad to victory. Six clans stand ready to battle for dominance, including the adaptable Water Clan, the peaceful Flower Clan, the relentless Skull Clan, the innumerable Blood Clan, the wise Meteor Clan, and the unyielding Stone Clan. Each clan’s cards can be used in multiple ways, giving you more options and adding surprise to each battle. The first clan to claim four crystals wins the game and fulfills their destiny to dominate the world.

It’s been a while since the last podcast, but we’ve not been idle! Like a board game version of Nintendo’s Kirby, over the last month the team has been sucking in experiences and now we’re going to expel them at you in a 90 minute special episode. Boomf! In order of appearance, Matt, Quinns and Paul discuss The Mind, Cardline: Animals, Bye-Bye Black Sheep, Kemet: Set (which is so new it doesn’t even have a Board Game Geek page!), Treasure Island, Fireball Island (which has just 8 days left on that Kickstarter) and Bunny Kingdom. That might be more games than we’ve ever had on a podcast before, and you know what else? They’re ALL GOOD. Finally, we soothe our aching jaws with a gentle chat about what makes kingmaking (one player causing another player to win) enjoyable in a game, and what makes it frustrating. Lovely stuff. New podcast feeds (if you’re missing episodes 71 onwards, try these): iTunes Google Play RSS for your favourite player

Paul: Do you like games? And do you like news? If so, you’re in EXACTLY the right place. Even as I type these words, news about games is forming out of the very air itself. It speckles and shines like morning dew, so here we are collecting only the freshest of drops-

Quinns: paul there has been another SCANDAL

After acquiring the license for the Alien franchise, publisher Wonderdice announced the forthcoming USCSS Nostromo, a co-operative survival horror game about trying to escape from the film’s famous shiny space monster. So far, so promising. However, soon after the announcement, French designer François Bachelart stepped forward to say that the game was a copy of a design he’d already pitched to Wonderdice, four years back.

Are you ready for what might well be the silliest and most manic game of the year? This week, Matt and Quinns try out the ridiculous Magic Maze and then immediately lose themselves in the expansion, Maximum Security, which has a worryingly serious name for something that looks so bright and barmy.

Can they survive the stress of the Magic Maze? Can they escape with their loot? Why are we asking so many questions today? Are you all right? Have you had a good week? Would you like a muffin?

After being stripped of all their possessions, a mage, a warrior, an elf, and a dwarf are forced to go rob the local Magic Maze shopping mall for all the equipment necessary for their next adventure. They agree to map out the labyrinth in its entirety first, then find each individual’s favorite store, and then locate the exit. In order to evade the surveillance of the guards who eyed their arrival suspiciously, all four will pull off their heists simultaneously, then dash to the exit. That’s the plan anyway…but can they pull it off?

Magic Maze is a real-time, cooperative game. Each player can control any hero in order to make that hero perform a very specific action, to which the other players do not have access: Move north, explore a new area, ride an escalator… All this requires rigorous cooperation between the players in order to succeed at moving the heroes prudently. However, you are allowed to communicate only for short periods during the game; the rest of the time, you must play without giving any visual or audio cues to each other. If all of the heroes succeed in leaving the shopping mall in the limited time allotted for the game, each having stolen a very specific item, then everyone wins together.

At the start of the game, you have only three minutes in which to take actions. Hourglass spaces you encounter along the way give you more time. If the sand timer ever completely runs out, all players lose the game: Your loitering has aroused suspicion, and the mall security guards nab you!

Space Base

Games News! 07/05/18

Podcast #77: Shipping & Deceiving

Review: Decrypto

Review: Crystal Clans

Crystal Clans

Podcast #76: Long John’s Bad Mind

GAMES NEWS! 23/04/18

Review: Magic Maze & Maximum Security

Magic Maze

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