" " - Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear

Thrower: Why don’t you play wargames? Why, after all I’ve forced SU&SD to publish about them at gunpoint, have you not pressed the nuclear button on this this amazing corner of our hobby? There’s lots of reasons I can think of. Possibly it’s their rumoured rules complexity. Maybe the focus on simulating men being sad in some mud. Or perhaps it’s the drab art and thin components?

WELL, I’ve got a game for you with none of that! It’s called Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear (a series you might remember from my primer on wargames or my article on the best introductory wargames) and Academy Games made it just for you. Yes, you. The publisher even said so on its sister game, Storms of Steel. “The historical wargame that Eurogamers love to play,” was the actual marketing copy!

You can smell the difference between CoH and typical wargames the second you open the lid. It’s the faint scent of solvents from the decadent, multi-coloured printing used on the mounted boards and fat counters. Oddly-named German tanks rumble around in the box. You can even see a flamethrower doing what flamethrowers do in slightly more detail than you probably want. Alas, in spite of the name, there are no actual bears.

Quinns: Exhausted from the UK Games Expo, I have slithered up to my desk with a biscuit and a cup of tea to write the news. Huge thanks to everyone who came along to our live shows, played a part in our live review or witnessed our epic game of Question Wood Toy Folds High. If you weren’t there, not to worry! All will be posted on this site in good time.

As for the spicy slivers of news I’ll be dishing up like a powerful dad, we begin with the announcement of 2016’s Spiel des Jahres nominations! A shadowy council of German board gamers has once again met to hand out board gaming’s most prestigious award, and the only one that can multiply a game’s sales 100 times over. But this year we’ve played all the nominees!

I wonder what we shall think…

June 3, 2016 Reviews Quadropolis, SU&SD Recommends, New to Games?, Conflict-Free Games, Quick Games, Games for Two HOT TAMALE-BEANS! It’s Quinns with a Shut Up & Sit Down review of Quadropolis! Who could have guessed I am writing this from the UK Games Expo we just did a live podcast and I’ve got no energy … Read more

Dare your opponents to tackle the dungeon with less-and-less equipment to fend off the increasing horde of monsters.

This push-your-luck dungeon delve tests your courage and shrewd choices.

Beat the dungeon twice or be the last warrior standing to win the game.

In Quadropolis™ you enact the role of the Mayor of a modern city. You will need to define a global strategy to build your city according to your Inhabitants’ needs and outmatch your opponents, sending your Architects to have various buildings erected in your city. Each building allows you to score victory points. There are various types of buildings with different scoring patterns; many of them may be combined for better effect.

Will you be able to meet the challenge and become the most prestigious Mayor in history?

Psst! Down here! Climb into this cramped cave of chat with us. There’s room for one more person. In what could well be our most feature-filled podcast ever, Matt, Paul and Quinns discuss Torchbearer, Merchant of Venus, Dragon Farkle, The Red Dragon Inn and the concept of playing board games in virtual reality, before getting down to (yet another) peculiarly erotic folk game. But wait! There’s more! Quinns snagged video game designer Soren Johnson of Offworld Trading Company to discuss civilisation-building and trading board games. Enjoy, everybody.

Based on the award-winning Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game, Torchbearer is a riff on the early model of fantasy roleplaying games. In it, you take on the role of a fortune-seeking adventurer. To earn that fortune, you must delve into forlorn ruins, brave terrible monsters and retrieve forgotten treasures. However, make no mistake, this game is not about being a hero or about fighting for what you believe.

This game is about exploration and survival. You may become a hero. You might have to fight for your ideals. But to do either of those things, you must prove yourself in the wilds. Because there are no jobs, no inheritance, no other opportunities for your deadbeat adventurers. This life is your only hope to prosper in this world.

Monsterhearts lets you and your friends create stories about sexy monsters, teenage angst, personal horror, and secret love triangles. When you play, you explore the terror and confusion that comes both with growing up and feeling like a monster.

Based on the Apocalypse World engine, this is a game with emergent story, messy relationships, a structured MC role, and a focus on hard choices. Monsterhearts draws on source material like Twilight, True Blood, Ginger Snaps, Jennifer’s Body, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Misfits, The Vampire Diaries, An American Werewolf in London, Cursed, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

If you like supernatural romances, or stories of monstrosity and personal horror, or if you just like watching sexy people ruin their lives, then you’ll love this game.

Hilary: Torchbearer is a dungeon-crawling role-playing game.

So what? There are a lot of dungeon exploration games in tabletop roleplaying. It’s the genesis of the genre, and most of the big tabletop RPGs people are familiar with are of this style. One of the things that differentiates Torchbearer is its heavy emphasis on the crawl. While other games are focused on getting loot, fighting monsters, and generally being completely badass adventurers, Torchbearer is about attempting to get loot and deal with monsters, while being completely worn down by the dungeon experience.

It turns out exploring dangerous unknown environments while lugging a bunch of heavy gear and trying to stay hydrated and rested and fed is really, really hard! It turns out there’s only so much space in your backpack and your habit of checking over every room you enter sometimes gets you into trouble and it’s hard to avoid getting cranky as all hell when you’ve been stuck wandering around dank passageways for hours without any snacks.

Ever since our review, Lords of Vegas is the economic warfare game that we find ourselves recommending the most. Why pay for flights to Las Vegas when this game lets you gamble, drink heavily, invest unwisely and come to loathe your friends, all from the comfort of your own home?

For other entry-level economic slugfests, do check out Chinatown, or dip way back into the SU&SD archives for a peek at our Black Gold review. It’s one of our earliest ever bits of criticism, and a game we still have a soft (and oily) spot for.

(And yes, this IS our first video to use our YouTube channel instead of Vimeo! We’ll slowly be moving the back catalogue over, as well as putting all future videos on YouTube, but it’s still worth popping over now to check out Matt’s completely dope header image.)

Review: Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear

Games News! 06/06/16

Review: Quadropolis

Welcome to the Dungeon

Quadropolis

Podcast #41: Misery, farkles and Soren Johnson

Torchbearer

Monsterhearts

RPG Review: Torchbearer

How to Play Lords of Vegas!

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