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Review: Honshu

Quinns: Alright. You see Honshu, pictured above? You’re looking at one of the most desirable boxes on the planet.

The best thing to come out of Finland since karjalanpiirakat, Honshu made a name for itself during the American convention circuit last year. Contained in its small, peach-tone box are some cards and cubes, and contained within them is a simple card game, and contained within that are Japanese towns of your own design. Players draft cards and tuck them under and over one another in a gentle jigsaw, probing and pondering different arrangements, searching for a high score.

This site’s own Paul Dean was convinced after a quick play. So many people were convinced, in fact, that a publisher is finally bringing a shipment of Honshu to America next month.

But should you buy it? Ah, let me help you with that as a European, from the land where copies of this game are considered weeds, and I often have to throw away four or five mouldering copies of Honshu before my breakfast of limppu and kissel.

Honshu is good, but is it “SU&SD Recommends” good? Let’s find out.

50 black stories, 31 crimes, 49 corpses, 11 murders, 12 suicides and one deadly meal. How could that have happened? Black Stories are fiddly, morbid and mysterious riddles for teenagers and adults. The players try to reconstruct the crime by asking, guessing and fiddling about. A spooky card game just right for any party.

Burgle your way to adventure in Clank!, the new deck-building board game.

Sneak into an angry dragon’s mountain lair to steal precious artifacts. Delve deeper to find more valuable loot. Acquire cards for your deck and watch your thievish abilities grow.

Be quick and be quiet. One false-step and — CLANK! Each careless sound draws the attention of the dragon, and each artifact stolen increases its rage. You can only enjoy your plunder if you make it out of the depths alive!

Get your pod-plates ready! We’re serving up another steaming hot pot of chat. Matt, Paul and Quinns discuss deck-building burgle box that is Clank!, they return once again to the irritatingly more-ish Black Stories, Quinns chats a bit about Deception: Murder in Hong Kong and they discuss the standalone expansion for Welcome to the Dungeon. We hope you left room for seconds, because there’s also a reader mail that asks what games Matt and Quinns organised at their respective weddings last year, and we unseal the Pandora’s Box of folk games played by school teachers. Maybe don’t eat that last bit, it’s profoundly poisonous.

Quinns: Oh my god, Paul, it’s awful. Did you seen the news over the weekend?

Paul: I did. What’s the world coming to?

Quinns: I don’t know, but I know we can’t stand for it.

Paul: You think so? I had no idea you felt so strongly about Reiner Knizia’s Ingenious being renamed AXIO Hexagonal.

Quinns: …Paul, did you turn on the TV over the weekend?

Paul: No, I got the weirdest feeling that it would be rather like blasting a jet of pure sadness square at my own face.

Quinns: Right. Yes.

This week, Paul’s gone all viking on us, getting so, so enthusiastic about A Feast for Odin with this very in-depth review of a truly enormous game. Then again, wouldn’t you be at least a little bit excited? This is one of the biggest boxes we’ve seen in some time and, with hundreds of cardboard components, scores of wooden pieces and even a moose as a first player token, we really can’t blame him.

Can it deliver joy and happiness proportional to its tremendous size? And how does it compare to its ancestors, other games by the same designer such as Agricola, Caverna and Patchwork? And why does Paul think Patchwork has a French accent? It’s been a strange week.

A social game of deduction and deception. Who among you can see through the lies? Who is capable of getting away with murder?

In Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, players find themselves in a scenario of intrigue and murder, deduction and deception. One player is the Murderer, secretly choosing their weapon and the evidence they leave behind. Another is the Forensic Scientist who holds the key to convicting the criminal but is only able to express their knowledge through analysis of the scene. The rest are investigators, interpreting the clues to solve the crime – and the killer is among them. Investigators must collaborate and use their wits, their hunches, and their keen deductive insight to correctly identify the means of murder and the key evidence to convict the killer. The murderer must mislead and confuse the investigators to save themselves.

Do you have what it takes to see through the lies and catch the criminal in your ranks or will they muddy the waters long enough to get away with murder?

Quinns: After playing co-operative social deduction game Deception, the proof is insurmountable. The 21st century police force is the greatest board game theme of all time, not because it works so well but because it doesn’t work at all.

Back in our eighth ever podcast we talked about Police Precinct, and while we had a terrible time with that game we were endlessly amused because we seemed to be playing the cast of Reno 911 on the set of The Purge. Then last year I finally got to try Good Cop Bad Cop, where in one memorable turn I confiscated my colleague’s coffee as evidence, downed it in one gulp, then shot them.

But with a name like “Deception: Murder in Hong Kong” and brooding, maroon box that includes a handful of plastic bullets, you might assume that this, at last, is a serious game about law enforcement.

You couldn’t be more wrong. I’m thrilled to say that Deception is every bit as silly as those others, and it’s also the best game of the three. Come for a ridealong with me! You’re statistically unlikely to be shot.

Quinns: Good morning, Paul! Ready for Games News? How are you feeling today? Rambunctious? Meticulous? Corrugated?

Paul: No, no. Dispirited. Crenelated. Crepuscular. My prandicle is absquatulate.

Quinns: Good God, that’s our SEO ruined, for sure. Perhaps you’ll be emboldened by THIS wonderful news. SHERLOCK HOLMES CONSULTING DETECTIVE IS GETTING SWOLE because the first(?!) standalone expansion is ALMOST HERE

Paul: OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO EXPLODE

Quinns: HAVE YOU FINISHED THE ORIGINAL TEN CASES YET

Paul: NO

Quinns: ME EITHER

Tyrants of the Underdark pits 2 to 4 players against each other to take over territory in the tumultuous Underdark, mashing up deck-building mechanics with board control.

Designed by Peter Lee, Rodney Thompson, and Andrew Veen, and produced by Gale Force Nine, Tyrants of the Underdark is a competitive board game in which you play as a drow house recruiting monsters, cultists and demons to aid you in controlling locations such as Menzoberranzan and Blingdenstone. Using power and influence as resources, Tyrants of the Underdark features multiple strategies you can use in crafting your deck of minions. Be the spymaster infiltrating your enemy’s strongholds or the deadly war-leader concentrating on assassinating enemy troops. No matter how you decide to play, whoever controls most of the Underdark at the end of the game wins, unless there’s some hidden strategy in play.

Review: Honshu

Black Stories

Clank!

Podcast #52: A Deception, a Dove and a Dungeon

GAMES NEWS! 30/01/17

Review: A Feast for Odin

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

Review: Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

GAMES NEWS! 23/01/17

Tyrants of the Underdark

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