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Captain Sonar

The year is 2048. A new economic war has erupted. Rare earth has become a key element for building new machines, leading private companies to arm next-gen submarine prototypes to protect their underwater mines. Beneath the quiet waves, a silent war is taking place, and these new, unstable submarines are your weapon. Prepare to dive in Captain Sonar, a game of dueling submarines for two to eight players!

Captain Sonar is an innovative real-time game that challenges two teams to take their submarines head-to-head in a thrilling battle. Your ultimate goal is to find and destroy your opponent’s submarine, but this task is far more difficult that it may first appear. Your entire crew must work together to chart a course, charge systems, locate the enemy, and keep your own submarine fully operational. Communication and teamwork can lead you to victory, but if you fail to cooperate, you’ll be sunk to the bottom of the ocean!

In honour of the Rio Olympics Games, Quinns has done a review about diving! Just like in the Olympic Games, Captain Sonar is a contest where two teams dive beneath the seas and try and destroy one another with high explosives, drawing one another’s movements on sheets of acetate.

If you regularly play games with a group of six-plus feisty men and women then you’ve got to watch this video. Captain Sonar isn’t just fun, it’s like nothing else you’ve ever played. And even if you can’t get those numbers together, Captain Sonar will do backflips to accommodate you. Literally.

Have a fantastic weekend, everybody.

Captain Sonar should be arriving in shops any day now. Pre-order at your local retailer to avoid disappointment!

[The following impressions are entirely spoiler-free.]

Leigh: Quinns? Why is the front door locked

Quinns: Leigh! So glad you could make it. I know being on Shut Up & Sit Down is a bit intimidating, but I’m sure you’ll do fine.

Leigh: Honey I have to be on the TV news in an hour-

Quinns: Not a problem! Just tell them you had to share your impressions on Seafall, the new Legacy game from Rob Daviau, designer of Risk Legacy and co-designer of Pandemic Legacy.

Besides, TV’s a dying medium! I bet they don’t have an email and a Facebook. Did I show you our email?

Leigh: QUINTIN

Quinns: I’ll unlock the front door in five minutes I promise

So, you and I and some friends of ours started our Seafall campaign last night, pushing it to the MAX with a full five players. By now most of the board gaming world knows a few things about Seafall – it’s Daviau’s first game that’s designed from the ground up for the box-opening, card-ripping Legacy format, it’s more complex than past Legacy titles and it looks insanely exciting. Boats! Intrigue! Exploring misty islands and sticking them on the map!

But by the end of our first evening we all agreed that a post on SU&SD explaining what Seafall isn’t would probably be very helpful.

The Tontine. An ages-old investment scheme, where you just buy a ticket and could potentially make millions – if you are the last living member. But there’s a reason Tontines are illegal. They have a tendency to lead to murder. That doesn’t mean they don’t still exist. In fact, you hold a ticket to a quickly collapsing Tontine. With only a few dozen members left, it is now kill or be killed. It could mean a fortune, if you’re DEAD LAST.

DEAD LAST is a ‘social collusion’ game of shifting alliances, betrayals and murder for profit. There is no hidden traitor, as each of you is equally an ally and a betrayer at any given moment. Each round, you will conspire and then vote upon whom to kill, in an effort to be the last player standing and collect gold. You MUST vote with the larger group, just to stay alive, so alliances and gaining agreement on who will die is critical. Subtle communication, a glance, a nod, pointing a finger, flashing their targeting card, anything at all is completely legal. But don’t tip off your target – or they will ambush you instead.

A boisterous, party game of .45 caliber diplomacy for 6 to 12 players.

Quinns: Phew! Paul and I are back from Gen Con and I’m $200 poorer after being charged by United Airlines for my overweight bag, stuffed as it was with board games and gifted bourbon. I know! Your heart bleeds, right?

Huge thanks to everyone who came to our extra-ridiculous live shows. They’ll be up on the site in the coming weeks. Huger thanks still to the rest of you for being patient during this site’s quiet time, and we’re going make it up to you with a whole series of dramatic reviews showcasing the best games we found at Gen Con, including Captain Sonar, Seafall and Inis, but we’re starting right this second with Smirk & Dagger’s Dead Last. That’s a link to Amazon US. For purchase in Europe simply contact your local shops and sites.

So Dead Last is basically Ca$h ‘n Guns meets Diplomacy, it’s the best new party game I’ve played all year and it’s the first game this site’s covered that will play completely differently depending on the size and shape of your table.

Do I have your interest? Come with me! I promise I won’t shoot you.

Oh god, it’s too much. Asmodee has announced a new edition of Citadels – the first game SU&SD ever reviewed – and Quinns has a hangover that’s lasted all day. Is our end near?! Not yet, it’s not. In this episode Quinns proves he’s young by playing the Pokémon Trading Card Game, Happy Pigs and Via Nebula, while Paul proves he’s not by playing Meuterer, Mission: Red Planet and the profoundly apt Great Dinosaur Rush. We receive correspondence from our Antarctic SU&SD fan, and end with an interview with a proper board game veteran: Dr. Reiner Knizia. Also there is this vine of a man eating a banana. Thanks to BGG user Hexanauta for our podcast image of Via Nebula!

Paul: It’s with more than a little pride (and quite a lot of excitement!) that I announce the next phase of our t-shirt design competition!

Like the evolution of a fearsome and beautiful Pokémon, it’s transforming from its pitching stage into its selection stage. We’ve put together a curated list of our favourite popular designs (mixing older hits alongside some of the strongest last-minute entries) and now we’re asking our lovely fans to help us select which to produce.

I’d also like to thank everyone, really absolutely everyone, who submitted designs and contributed.

Quinns: OK. Wow. Who wants to play a game of real-life Monopoly! None of you? Well, you’re out of luck. Put on this top hat and climb into my weird, narrow car.

News emerged last week that Asmodee, the largest conglomerate of designer board games publishers in the world, was acquiring F2Z Entertainment, the second largest publisher. This will make them such a big company that their rivals will realistically be Hasbro and Mattel.

Does this sound like inside baseball? It’s not. You’re about to personally feel the impact on your wallet.

After this merger goes ahead, Asmodee will be in control of the following designer board game companies: Asmodee, Fantasy Flight, Days of Wonder, Z-Man Games, Plaid Hat, Catan Studio, Windrider Games, Space Cowboys, Pretzel Games and Filosofia Éditions. Asmodee and F2Z’s combined publishing rights for tons of other games (including those of Bombyx, Repos Productions, Matagot, Carcassonne and Spot It!) will also be brought together under one roof.

That’s some 75% of the companies SU&SD regularly deals with, the others being Stronghold Games, Portal Games, AEG, Iello and Czech Games Edition. But of course, Asmodee isn’t done acquiring board game publishers yet.

Until this week I’d have said that Asmodee’s corporate game of Hungry Hungry Hippos wasn’t detrimental to the hobby. With this latest merger, though, I think Asmodee are going to be a lot more comfortable dictating the price of designer board games, starting… oh god it’s already happening

July 29, 2016 Reviews Ra Dr. Reiner Knizia returns to SU&SD with a new edition of Ra, one of his most-loved designs ever. What will Quinns make of this 1999 classic in the blessed light of 2016? Why isn’t Paul at Quinns’ party? And what the shit is Quinns wearing? One thing’s for sure. Auction … Read more

In Haru Ichiban, or “The Wind of Spring”, two apprentice gardeners compete to use this wind to their advantage to create harmonious patterns of their blossoms upon the lilypads.

Each gardener has eight flower buds numbered 1-8, with three of those buds being in hand at the start of a round. Sixteen lilypads are placed in the 5×5 pond, with one of them turned to its dark side.

Each gardener simultaneously chooses a reveals a bud, with the player with the lower number becoming the Little Gardener and the other becoming the Grand Gardener. In order:

The Little Gardener places one of his colored blossoms on the dark lilypad.
The Grand Gardener places one of his colored blossoms on the lilypad of his choice.
The Little Gardener moves one lilypad to an adjacent space, possibly moving other lilypads at the same time.
The Grand Gardener flips one unoccupied lilypad to its dark side.
Each gardener takes a new bud.

As soon as a gardener creates a specific pattern with blossoms of his color, he scores points: 1 point for a 2×2 square, 2 points for a horizontal or vertical row of four blossoms, 3 points for a diagonal row of four blossoms, and 5 points for a row of five blossoms. If the gardener has fewer than five points, the gardeners reset the board and start a new round with three buds of their eight; if the gardener has five or more points, the game ends and he wins!

Captain Sonar

Review: Captain Sonar

Impressions: Seafall

Dead Last

Review: Dead Last

Podcast #45: A Nebulous Boneyard

Shirt My Feelings, PART TWO

Games News, 01/08/16: The Asmodee Edition

Review: Ra

Haru Ichiban

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