" " - Shut Up & Sit Down

Lancaster

From the designer of Glen More comes a new title published by Queen Games: Lancaster. In 1413, the new king of England, Henry V of Lancaster, has ambitious plans: The unification of England and the conquest of the French crown. Each player takes the role of an ambitious aristocratic family. Who will be the best supporter of this young king, and the most powerful Lord of his time? In Lancaster the players want to proceed from simply being a Lord to the most powerful ally of the king. They may achieve this by developing their own knighthood as well as by clever deployment of individual knights in the counties of England, at their own castle, and to conflicts with France. In parliament, they try to push laws from which they will benefit themselves most. The player with the most power points at the end of the game is the winner.

Quinns: One leathery fruit borne from the article on my board game collection was a lot of people telling me to finally play Lancaster. “It’s a classic,” they said. “I’d never turn down a game of Lancaster,” they said.

We’ll get to what I thought of it, but first I owe this game an apology. I realise now that I’d mentally compartmentalised Lancaster in the same place as Alhambra- a weird box that was continually being printed by Queen Games long before Shut Up & Sit Down began, that would be printed long after we’re gone.

I remember finding a copy of Alhambra Big Box in my friendly local game store in 2013. “What is that game?” I asked a staff member, and we both gawped at it as if it were the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Today Quinns and Matt have joined forces to teach El Grande, one of the grand old girls of board gaming. This box is every bit as charming and dangerous as she was back in 1995, and with stock availability of the new “Big Box” still excellent, she remains a very smart purchase.

Any requests for what game we should teach next? Please first check that someone else hasn’t requested the same game as you, in which case you should just upvote their comment!

What happens when immovable critics meet unstoppable sales figures? Find out in our long-awaited review of Ticket to Ride, followed by our review of new, giant box Ticket to Ride: Rails and Sails! Which is basically Ticket to Ride².

Do you have a favourite Ticket to Ride memory? A favourite board? A favourite train? Let us know in the comments! If there’s any justice in the world, these comments will be a veritable hotbed of Train Chat before the day is through.

Ticket to Ride is a cross-country train adventure in which players collect and play matching train cards to claim railway routes connecting cities throughout North America.

The longer the routes, the more points they earn.

Additional points come to those who can fulfill their Destination Tickets by connecting two distant cities, and to the player who builds the longest continuous railway.

The world is changing fast. All over the world, railroad tracks bridge countries and continents, and journeys that would take weeks can now be completed in a matter of days. Seas are no longer obstacles: huge steamers carrying hundreds of passengers sail across the oceans. From Los Angeles to Sydney, from Murmansk to Dar Es Salaam, Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails takes you on a railroad adventure across the entire globe. All aboard, and get ready for an unforgettable journey!

Ticket to Ride Rails & Sails is the new installment in this best-selling train adventure series. Players collect cards of various types (trains and ships) that enable them to claim railway and sea routes on a nicely illustrated double-sided board, featuring the world map on one side and the great lakes of North America on the other. Elegantly simple and fast to learn, it takes the Ticket to Ride series to the next level! Veteran railroaders as well as family and friends will be delighted to set sail to the new horizons of Ticket to Ride…

Quinns: Paul, do you remember in the last Games News when I accidentally broke the embargo for Mechs Vs. Minions (the new League of Legends board game) and had to scrub all trace of it from this site in a terrified panic?

Paul: Do you know, I don’t remember that.

Quinns: Neither do I.

Moving swiftly on, the embargo on this gigantic box has now been lifted. If people would like to learn more they can head to the official site or read this lovely Polygon article on how it came about. Mechs vs. Minions will be available to order direct from Riot on the 13th of October and will cost $75 plus shipping, a price that means – purely in terms of components – this box is the best value for money that the board game scene has ever seen.

Quinns: Ladies and gentlemen, roll up! It’s time for a new series where we take a look a team SU&SD’s board game collections. Come and see! Be amazed. Be aghast. Be envious. Comment with thought-provoking assertions like “why do you have that game it is bad”.

You guys will have seen my collection in the background of loads of SU&SD videos, but I don’t think you’ve seen the work that goes into it. Come with me today as I perform… a CULL.

Like a Jaguar (the car) or a jaguar (the cat), our 47th ever podcast is an absolute classic. Paul and Quinns discuss board games ranging from Vast: The Crystal Caverns, to Twilight Struggle, to Aquarium and The Dragon & Flagon. They answer reader mails! They review three idiotic folk games. They discuss their love of vegetables and their problems with jam. It’s everything you want in a single, mid-sized audio file. Do you agree with Paul and Quinns on these folk games? Do you own a real-life Aquarium? Have you eaten World War 2 jam? Let us know in the comments!

Dead of Winter: The Long Night is the new stand-alone expansion for Dead of Winter: A Crossroads game.

Obtain more of everything that made Dead of Winter an epic struggle for power and survival! Experience a new colony full of new survivors and new gameplay elements, each of which is introduced to players through its own game scenario. Fight off bandits from another colony, build improvements to your colony, and most intriguingly, unravel the mysteries of the new Raxxon Pharmaceutical location. It is full of powerful items, but also full of Raxxon’s twisted human experiments that show up in the game as disturbing new enemies.

Dead of Winter: The Long Night can be bought alone and is a fully-realized Dead of Winter experience by itself. You can also combine everything – characters, items, objectives, crossroad cards, etc – between The Long Night and the original Dead of Winter.

Lancaster

Almost a Review: Lancaster

How to Play El Grande!

Review: Ticket to Ride AND Rails & Sails

Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride: Rails and Sails

GAMES NEWS! 26/09/16

Feature: A Day in the Life of Quinns’ Game Collection!

Podcast #47: Struggling in a Vast Aquarium

Dead of Winter: The Long Night

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