For our 23rd podcast Paul and Quinns discuss board games past, present and future. That sounds more hifalutin than it probably is. We begin by discussing the consenting tentacle sex of Consentacle, and how our next live podcast will be an excuse to review Cat on Yer Head. We fret about Prophecy, chat about Tammany … Read more
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Quinns: Morning everybody! Our cover star today is Boom Bokken, which sounds and looks just lovely.
This is a hand management game with the theme of ninjas throwing a bomb back and forth where you’re trying to play gentle cards to at your team mate (“play a card higher than this 4, Paul!”) and hardball your opponents (“play a card lower than this 2, Brendan.”).
Blue cards can also be played that intercept a card being played between to other players, and there are a few clutch “emergency stop” cards in the deck. Best of all, players who fail to play the card expected of them are blown up, leading to dramatic dodgeball-like finishes where the one member of your team still standing takes on a whole team of three. In other words, it’s a game where every play could literally blow up in your face with plenty of room for heroism. Doesn’t that sound like our kind of thing?
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Oh my goodness, you’re looking sharp! Yes you, the one reading this! I don’t suppose you came here looking to buy some kind of board game, did you?
Well it just so happens we’ve got one for you. It’s called Chinatown, an absolute classic that just got reprinted. A classic, I tell you. A game all about the art of the deal set in 1960s New York. But you probably knew that already, didn’t you? A savvy shopper like you.
You’ll take two? Fantastic, fantastic. You’ve made the right choice. Who’s next?
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Vietnam, 1964. The most wrenching US engagement of the Cold War would be far more than GI versus Charlie. The conflict had set tribesman against nationalist, Buddhist against Catholic, mandarin against villager, and of course Northerner against Southerner—even among the communists. As revolutionary change burned through that ancient civilization, Washington would apply its armament and its operations research. To get out, the US counterinsurgency would have to motor deeper and deeper in. In the end, culture and will would overcome technology and math and signal the end of the primacy of industrial might in modern warfare.
Volume IV in GMT’s COIN Series dives headlong into the momentous and complex battle for South Vietnam. A unique multi-faction treatment of the Vietnam War, Fire in the Lake will take 1 to 4 players on US heliborne sweeps of the jungle and Communist infiltration of the South, and into inter-allied conferences, Saigon politics, interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, air defense of Northern infrastructure, graduated escalation, and media war.
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Thrower: Vietnam. Sex, drugs and terror lurking in the tropical night. If even half of what you read about it is true, then this was the war to end all wars: the war of America against itself. The Viet Cong were just along for the ride.
This was my generation’s World War 2, the conflict from which 80’s society forged martial myths of heroism. Yet, hard as it tried, pop culture couldn’t quite scrub the filth away. Always there were undertones of dirty warfare, of eventual failure. It wasn’t ideal hero material, but it was all we had. For me, that complexity made it all the more compelling.
Then I read Dispatches. This account of a journalist’s experience in the conflict is the finest book on war I have ever read. As well as the history, there is an important lesson. Dispatches taught me that war can be both beautiful and terrible at the same time. That it was okay to hate war and love militaria. To be a pacifist and to play wargames. Reading it made a piece of distant history into a personal thing, a hot piece of literary shrapnel lodged close to my heart.
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Quinns: A lot of people come up to me and ask “Quinns, what’s the secret? How do you always have amazing stories for the Games News?” And I swing my Armani shoes up onto the desk, light a cigar, and I tell ’em “Well, I start by checking blogs. Basically you… you check some blogs. Is that coffee ready yet?”
Our cover game (seen above) is the absolutely beautiful The Ancient World, which might reach shops just before Christmas. Remember 8 Minute Empire, that lovely little area control game we reviewed? The Ancient World is designer Ryan Laukat’s next game. It tasks you with developing a pretty little civilisation, while finding time to slay the terrible titans striding the earth.
Dare you to take one look at what a completed city looks like and not be 100% sold on this game.
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Roll over, Zombie Dice. Zombicide? It’s history. Zombie 15′ is our game for Halloween in 2014! A real-time, co-operative 15 minute game of 15 year-olds fighting their way past restless dead across 15 missions.
The question isn’t whether Paul and Quinns like it. It’s whether they can succeed at reviewing it in a single 15 minute take. Enjoy, everybody!
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Goblin Quest is a roleplaying game. As you play, you’ll tell stories about goblins trying to achieve basic tasks and meeting fatal misadventure as they do it. You’ll play the goblins, and you’ll steer them through (or, more commonly, directly into) adversity, and you’ll have a fun time doing it.
It’s not a game about winning; there are no points for surviving the longest, or achieving the most goals. The aim of the game is to have fun with your friends. Even if all the goblins fail in their quest, if you’ve had fun losing, that still counts.
Goblin Quest is designed to be played from start to finish in a single sitting – it should take around 2 hours to complete a story. The more players you have, the longer the game will take to play.
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Last month Grant Howitt Kickstarted a silly RPG called Goblin Quest. A game where players take the role of a steady stream of goblins trying to compete banal tasks, but mostly just dying along the way. This week Grant sent us a preview of one of the variants in the back of the book, titled … Read more
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Quinns: Morning everyone! How are we all? It’s a lovely sunny day in London, with Autumn air crisp enough that you could take a bite out of it. Just the thing to chase away my memories of being a cutthroat bastard in a game of Chinatown at the weekend. I’ll tell you what else- I can’t remember the last time I played a game and immediately had so much to talk about. Expect a review as soon as we can manage.
There’s only one thing to say about the imminent “Designer Edition” of classic area control game Small World, and that is oh my god, oh my GOD, MOTHER, COME HERE AND LOOK AT THIS IMMEDIATELY. That’s it up top, if you hadn’t guessed.
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