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Diamant

Diamant is a quick, fun game of push-your-luck. Players venture down mine shafts by turning up cards from a deck, sharing the gems they find on the way down. Before the next card is turned up, you have the chance to leave the mine and stash your finds, including any gems you get on the way out. Why would you leave? Because the deck also contains hazards: scorpions, snakes, poison gases, explosions and rockfalls. When a duplicate hazard turns up (such as a second scorpion), anyone left in the shaft has to flee for safety and loses all the gems they got this turn. The trick is, the more players that leave, the bigger your share in the next card will be.

Paul: QUINTIN. I know we want to tell people all about Diamant and how this cute-but-cruel game of pushing your luck can make you either rich or dead, but I’ve got to say one thing right thing right here, right now, right off the bat. Right?

Quinns: I’ll allow it!

Paul: Diamant is probably the most fun I’ve had for the least investment of time and energy SO FAR THIS YEAR. I’m so sorry. I just had to blurt that. It’s a petite wonder. PETITE. WONDER. Like… Danny DeVito. Or… a teabag?

Quinns: You’re arriving at this party a little late though, aren’t you? Last year I called Incan Gold the best little push-your-luck game I’d played in forever. Diamant is just a beautiful new edition of the same game! You can’t talk about it like you’ve just found a dead sea scroll in your back garden.

Paul: All right, all right, back that boulder up, snarkaeologist. Incan Gold? The 2006 game? And when did you come to it, exactly?

Quinns: Erm. 2016.

Paul: An entire decade of incompetence.

Quinns: Hey everybody! With just seven days left on our Kickstarter for the Monikers Nonsense Box – a standalone expansion for Monikers written entirely by SU&SD staff – all backers now get a free gift!

Basically we reached 2,500 backers and decided we’d like to improve the product you guys were getting. Think of it as a kind of thank you for helping us to stretch past our original goal. We’re calling this addition a “Girth Objective” and it’s my guess that by 2020 every Kickstarter will have one.

As of this week every backer of the Nonsense Box Kickstarter will get a free pack of Hopelessly Stupid Fourth Round Cards. You see, Monikers is a game that starts off very pedestrian in round 1 and becomes marginally more interesting in round 2 before going completely insane in round 3. But as old Monikers pros will tell you, you can keep playing and the game gets dumber and funnier with every additional round. “Charades but under a bedsheet” has to be played to be believed.

We have a tenative list already drawn up, but we’re well aware that you guys are often funnier and smarter than us in our comment threads. If you have an idea for a fourth round for Monikers, and would like to see it on a card with your name on it and a professional illustration, please leave a comment below!

Thanks so much, everyone. <3

Set in a far, far distant future, the Numenera RPG puts a new spin on traditional fantasy, creating something unique to reinvigorate the imagination of gamers everywhere. Player characters explore a world of mystery and danger to find leftover artifacts of the past: bits of nanotechnology, the datasphere threaded among still-orbiting satellites, bio-engineered creatures, and myriad strange and wondrous devices that defy understanding. Numenera is about discovering the wonders of the worlds that came before, not for their own sake, but as the means to improve the present and build a future.

Each world stretched across vast millennia of time. Each played host to a race whose civilizations rose to supremacy but eventually died or scattered, disappeared or transcended. During the time each world flourished, those that ruled it spoke to the stars, reengineered their physical bodies, and mastered form and essence, all in their own unique ways.

Each left behind remnants.

The people of the new world—the Ninth World—sometimes call these remnants magic, and who are we to say they’re wrong? But most give a unique name to the legacies of the nigh-unimaginable past. They call them…

Cynthia: Imagine rising to the top of a valley and discovering the above vista: green hills, snowcapped mountains, seemingly pristine waters, and an obelisk, tens of thousands of years old, humming with magical (or mechanical?) power. You could be the first to learn all of its secrets, or simply find out how it works, and harness its power. And that could be just the beginning of your earthly adventures.

For this uncanny place is our Earth, far, far, far into the future, after our civilization and seven others have climbed, peaked, fallen, and been rusted over. More than one alien invasion has occurred, and more than one alien species has mingled genes with humanity. A new civilization has arisen, but hasn’t really gotten past the middle ages. The perplexing debris of past civilizations, from humming obelisks and transdimensional portals to enchanted amulets and portable CD players, is everywhere. The people of earth call these weird objects “filled-with-power-things”: numenera.

Welcome to the Ninth World, the setting of Monte Cook’s Numenera. I would say, “come on in, the water’s fine,” but it’s probably filled with flesh-eating microdroids or laced with bubble-gum flavored psychotropic drugs or something. But forget the water, there’s so much here. This place is so ancient, and vast, and tremendous. Let’s explore!

Quinns: OH MY GOD YOU’RE BACK. Paul: OH MY GOD I’M BACK. Quinns: OH MY GOD. Paul: Did I miss anything while I was aw- Quinns: ONLY THE GIGANTIC RISING SUN KICKSTARTER, THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE GRIZZLED, THE BIG NEWS ABOUT RUNE WARS AND THIS CRAZY NEW MUSIC MIXING GAME. Paul: …Were you eating properly … Read more

A mere thirty-six years after the release of the amazing Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, the board game industry has leapt into action! This month sees the release of the West End Adventures standalone expansion, and… we’re not reviewing it.

That’s because this month we’re also getting a new English-language edition of Watson & Holmes, and that’s EVEN MORE EXCITING. This game takes the original, superlative co-op experience that is Consulting Detective and makes it… competitive. Is this a work of evil genius to rival Moriarty? Or simply an error in deductive reasoning? Let’s find out.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Enter the gaslit world of Sherlock Holmes in Jack the Ripper & West End Adventures! A brand new standalone game (you don’t need another box in order to play this one) in the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective series of games, Jack the Ripper & West End Adventures will throw ten entirely new cases cases your way. Six of these cases are one-off adventures, while four others form a linked campaign that challenges you to stop the murders of the notorious Jack the Ripper! With a new map of Whitechapel, newspapers hot-off-the-press for every case, and ten unique casebooks, it’s time to put your mind to the test!

Sharpen your mind, for the dark mysteries that once stood before the great Sherlock Holmes are now yours to solve!

In Watson & Holmes, two to seven players are presented with one of thirteen cases, each accompanied by a series of questions. Players must travel from location to location in order to obtain clues and information, competing to reach the most coveted destinations first and sabotaging their opponents along the way.

Once a player feels they have successfully uncovered the truth, they may approach Watson and Holmes with their conclusion. If their answers are correct, they win the game, but if they miss the mark, the other investigators must continue the search until the case is solved.

In this temporarily-educated instalment of the SU&SD podcast, Matt, Pip and Paul gathered at a hotel during the 2017 Game Developer’s Conference. Their mission? To discuss the hot questions of the day. Should liches be banned? Are humans secretly terrible at games? Why can’t I have my raven back? When is an asteroid frustrating? Should SU&SD be on Pinterest? And most importantly, why do the world’s best board game designers think the future is great for players? We also reach into the mailbag to answer a question on trivia games, and discuss some deeply unprofessional games that are played by actors, on stage. Commenters, what do you think? Should trivia games continue their slow death, or should we be huffing and puffing into their lungs like someone who kind of remembers CPR (but not really)?

Diamant

Review: Diamant

Update: Our Nonsense Box Kickstarter Just Got Sexier!

Numenera

RPG Review: Numenera

Games News! 13/03/2017

Review: Watson & Holmes

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: Jack the Ripper & West End Adventures

Watson & Holmes

Podcast #54: In A Bedroom With A Nasty Lich

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