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Stronghold (2nd edition)

Stronghold is a two-player game telling the story of a siege. Players take opposing sides: one has to defend the stronghold, and the other has to break into the castle as soon as possible. The game board represents the stronghold itself as well as the surrounding terrain, where enemy forces are placed and whence they proceed to the walls.

The defender has a small number of soldiers manning the walls, while the invader has an infinite legion of attacking creatures. A desperate fight takes place every single turn. The invaders build war machines, equip their soldiers, train them, and use black magic rituals to achieve victory. Meanwhile, defenders repair walls, build cannons, train soldiers, and do everything they can to hold the castle as long as possible.

If the invader manages to break into the castle before the end of seven rounds, they win; otherwise the defender wins.

This second edition of Stronghold features:

• Ten objective cards for the invader and ten hidden defense plan cards for the defender; each objective encourages the invader to consider a particular move, while each defense plan shows the defender different ways to surprise the invader • Shorter gameplay than the first edition, with attackers being placed on the board during set-up • Gameplay limited to two players only, replacing the team rules in the first edition • Streamlined rules and an enhanced rulebook • Improved components, such as a larger game board and new better artwork

Hey kids! It’s the SU&SD podcast, the perfect background noise when polishing, sharpening or simply admiring a knife. Paul’s back from BoardGameGeek Con with stories to tell! Quinns joins him for a discussion of the pleasing heft of The Gallerist, the 2nd edition of Stronghold, the mixed-up genres of Above and Below, and the gentle joy of Porta Nigra. There’s also Walk the Dogs, which sounds rubbish. Finally, the two discuss an email they received all about classic knife games. Is there anything cooler than a knife trick? You decide! This podcast brought to you by the United Kingdom Knife Lobby.

Paul: Hello everyone! Welcome to this exclusive tour of the Shut Up & Sit Down News Battery, where our News Hens squeeze out News Eggs for us every week. These are then rigorously inspected by our team of News Experts, so that only the very best News is served up for you in whatever form and fashion you prefer.

For example, take this delicious omelette courtesy of Fantasy Flight, who are releasing their first ever… wait a second… a trivia game? Game of Thrones: The Trivia Game seems an unusual release until you see that it’s a trivia game “of strategy” with alliances and resources and special powers.

Your last village was ransacked by barbarians. You barely had time to pick up the baby and your favorite fishing pole before they started the burning and pillaging. You wandered over a cruel desert, braved frozen peaks, and even paddled a log across a rough sea, kicking at the sharks whenever they got too close, the baby strapped tightly to your back.

Then you found it! The perfect place to make your new home. But as soon as you had the first hut built, you discovered a vast network of caverns underground, brimming with shiny treasures, rare resources, and untold adventure. How could you limit your new village to the surface? You immediately start organizing expeditions and building houses underground as well as on the surface.

With any luck, you’ll build a village even stronger than your last– strong enough, even, to turn away the barbarians the next time they come knocking.

Above and Below is a mashup of town-building and storytelling where you and up to three friends compete to build the best village above and below ground. In the game, you send your villagers to perform jobs like exploring the cave, harvesting resources, and constructing houses. Each villager has unique skills and abilities, and you must decide how to best use them. You have your own personal village board, and you slide the villagers on this board to various areas to indicate that they’ve been given jobs to do. Will you send Hanna along on the expedition to the cave? Or should she instead spend her time teaching important skills to one of the young villagers?

A great cavern lies below the surface, ready for you to explore– this is where the storytelling comes in. When you send a group of villagers to explore the depths, one of your friends reads what happens to you from a book of paragraphs. You’ll be given a choice of how to react, and a lot will depend on which villagers you brought on the expedition, and who you’re willing to sacrifice to succeed. The book of paragraphs is packed with encounters of amazing adventure, randomly chosen each time you visit the cavern.

At the end of the game, the player with the most well-developed village wins!

The largest Roman city north of the Alps in the late Roman Empire was Augusta Treverorum. Founded in the times of Caesar Augustus and built up by generations of Roman architects, this was the Emperor’s residence and a world city during this period. The remains of these most impressive structures can still be visited today. Foremost of these great achievements in the city is the massive “Porta Nigra”, a large Roman city gate located in Trier, Germany that dates to the 2nd century.

The game Porta Nigra (which translates as “black gate”) is set in that place and time with the players taking on the roles of Roman architects working on the city gate of Porta Nigra. Each player commands a master builder, who moves around a circular track on the game board, enabling you to buy or build only where this master builder is located. Moving the master builder to farther locations along the track is expensive, so players must plan their movements and builds carefully. The number and type of actions that may be performed on your turn comes from cards in your personal draw deck.

Buildings are erected physically at the various locations around the city using 3D building pieces.

Porta Nigra! It’s a new eurogame, all about the famous Nigras that live within the mossy depths of the Porta dimension.

…Ok, so maybe we’re not entirely clear on what a “Porta Nigra” is. But by god, that won’t stop us from reviewing this hype-filled new release.

And let’s have a big round of applause for our Gold Club members for letting Paul and Quinns work together again! Unlike Romans, those plane tickets don’t grow on trees.

Paul: I saw a curious mix of games at this year’s BGGCon, from hard euros to simple set collection games to the rising tensions of Win, Lose, Banana Legacy.† Of all the many things I saw while hiding from the baking Texas sun in the cavernous, subterranean depths of Dallas Fort Worth’s Hyatt Regency, Above and Below was my favourite. Appropriately, it was my underground adventure.

Also, it gave me a chance to try out a Pear Strategy. I went Full Pear, All Out Fruit, and didn’t do too badly for it, either. I quested, I recruited, I constructed and then I made all my money from Big Pear. Meanwhile, my friends hired adventurers, fought bandits and found the legendary Moss King. All in a day’s work.

Quinns: How was your weekend, everybody? I’m happy to say that more than four years since Paul and I started SU&SD, I was found myself thinking “Board games are awesome. I’m not playing enough board games. I’m going to play lots more.”

Good thing, then, that talented designers are making lots more. We kick off the news with Secret Hitler, which is bound to be one of the year’s biggest Kickstarters. This is an absolutely beautiful, heavily-playtested interpretation of Werewolf / The Resistance from a trio of designers that includes Max Temkin, co-creator of Cards Against Humanity.

As you probably know, we’re not the biggest fans of Cards Against Humanity. But Secret Hitler looks just great.

Havana, December 29, 1955: At the end of the meal offered at his “faithful” henchmen, Don Alessandro evokes the “business” in progress. Suddenly, the phone rang in the back room of the restaurant. The Godfather is convened to the office of President Batista. He entrusted his precious cigar box to his henchmen. It must be said that the cigar box has a false bottom, under the first layer of cigars, the box is filled with diamonds!

In Mafia de Cuba, each player will take the cigar box, open it and choose to:

Betray and steal some diamonds, Remain a faithful and “honest” mafioso, be a driver, or act as an undercover CIA agent. In the evening, the Godfather recovers his cigar box. He blows a fuse when he finds the disappearance of diamonds. He must find his treasure and punish offenders by providing them cement shoes before throwing them in the bay. After heated debates and perilous deductions, The Godfather, with the help of is faithful henchmen will try to find all his stolen diamonds.

Does he lose his honor by accusing wrongly? Do the most cunning thieves win? Or is it the CIA that will send these thugs behind bars?

“The Resistance” are sacred words around these parts, as in “Werewolf”. These games of lying and double-dealing have defined Shut Up & Sit Down. The thought of a brand new new hidden role game entering the genre is almost unthinkable!

Until today. Mafia de Cuba doesn’t just look good. It feels good. It sounds good. It smells tolerable. Of course we had to check it out.

Stronghold (2nd edition)

Podcast #36: Art vs. Knives

Games News! 30/11/15

Above and Below

Porta Nigra

Review: Porta Nigra

Paul’s Best Game of BGGCon2015: Above and Below

Games News! 23/11/15

Mafia de Cuba

Review: Mafia de Cuba

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