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Review: Twilight Struggle

[Last month saw an argument between Quinns and Matt Thrower, our resident wargamer, over Here I Stand, a game of reformation-era revolution. It might be the nerdiest thing we’ve ever published. This month, we present the debate’s thrilling conclusion! All images in this article are courtesy of BoardGameGeek.]

Quinns: Matt, slow down! I’d never have guessed that a militaristic, paranoid, survivalist maniac would have a house riddled with secret passageways!

Thrower: Don’t forget the booby traps. Have you been treading where I tread?

Quinns: What?

Thrower: Ah, here we are! The heart of my house.

Quinns: It looks like a panic room. Except with a map of the world and… a big, red button?

Thrower: Naturally! It’s a room dedicated to my favourite game. Doesn’t every gamer have one? In my case, the game is Twilight Struggle, a card-driven recreation of the cold war and nuclear Armageddon. And, much as I hate to stand with the mainstream, it’s not just me that feels that way. It’s currently the number one ranked game on the global graveyard of game statistics, BoardGameGeek.

Quinns: Forget the new game announcements from famous designers! Let’s start with the big news, which is, of course, GAME BOARD.

The last-ever episode of excellent UK sitcom The IT Crowd aired on Friday, and you can watch it online right here. It was a brilliant double-length special, but much more importantly, it featured a scene making fun of online board game review shows.

It’s the best thing we’ve seen all month, and not just because we’ve heard from the writer himself that he likes Shut Up & Sit Down, and is explicitly not making fun of us. Which is at once a relief and kind of a shame?

Winter Tales is a narrative board game of storytelling and fairy tale adventures for three to seven players, set in the grim chill of Wintertown. Players control the lives of their favorite fairy tale characters as they seek to complete quests, creating a new fable. In the course of the tale, players tell the story of soldiers battling in the streets and plazas, and rebels laying cunning traps. Can Spring return, or will Winter reign eternally? Craft a new story in Winter Tales!

Once Upon a Time is the award-winning storytelling card game that encourages creativity and collaborative play. One player is the Storyteller, and begins telling a story using the fairytale elements on her Story cards, guiding the plot toward her Ending Card. The other players use their own cards to interrupt her and become the new Storyteller. The winner is the first player to use all her Story Cards and play her Ending Card. The object of the game, though, isn’t just to win, but to have fun telling a story together.

Mage Wars, the entirely straight-faced “Customisable Game of Dueling Mages”, was one of the most exciting releases of last year. We were never going to be finished with it following our quick impressions article. Quinns has done the right thing and published a full, red-blooded review over on Eurogamer, and it goes like this:

“Make no mistake. This isn’t just a great card game. It’s one of the best two-player games I’ve ever played. It’s at once a puzzle strong enough to leave you thinking about it when you go to sleep, and also profoundly human. Mage Wars gets the most out of the human opponent, because of its emphasis on surprise, countering and predicting.”

It also features a very good joke about a staff meeting. Go read! WIZARD! Ahem.

We love stories here at SU&SD, and if there’s one thing we like better than telling stories to our parents or the police, it’s storytelling games! Enter Winter Tales, stage right. A game where players control familiar fairytale characters viewed through a dark, oil-streaked lens.

In this video we also find the time for a quick peek at gaming institution Once Upon a Time, which just recently received a gorgeous 3rd edition!

Which will win? The classic, or the newcomer? Or NEITHER? Or both! Such terrible tension! We’d click play and find out as soon as possible, if we were you.

Lord Smingleigh On... House Rules, Pt. 2

[Did you all catch Lord Smingleigh’s Introduction to House Rules last week? Naturally, an exploration on making games simpler should be followed with notes on making them trickier…]

No time for a long introduction! Grab your hat, coat, and thrashing-stick and come with me. This time I maunder about some house rules the Gaming Chums use to ratchet up the tension and increase the complexity of games, and possibly to increase the conflict and turn the finest of friends turn into slavering killbeasts*.

Quinns: What a news segment we have for you this week! Disasters! Pillaging! A game made of bones! Another game made of SKULLS! It’s all a bit much. I’m going to start off with a nice cup of tea, and a nice game of tea.

Yunnan will be arriving later this year, and it’s a game of controlling a Chinese TEA DYNASTY. That distant, jangling noise you heard was the noise of our entire English readership simultaneously reaching for their wallets.

SU&SD Needs You! Donations are now open.

Quinns: Today we’d like to present a Very Special Episode of Shut Up & Sit Down, meant to raise awareness of the issues. Well, one issue. Which is that the amount of money that we have is… or rather, it doesn’t… this amount, it doesn’t really exist.

Paul: Right. After two years of you guys asking how you can give money to SU&SD, we’re finally letting you. Please, go check out our fancy new donations section, our new video, and all of the fabulous rewards on offer.

Quinns: We’re so proud of everything we’ve achieved since we began Shut Up & Sit Down, and we’re stupidly excited about how we’ll grow next. With your help, we’ll be able to find out.

Paul: Thank you all very much.

Paul: We’ve got some exciting news for you!

Quinns: But you’ve already put the news in the title.

Paul: Well-

Quinns: So there’s not really anything to share now. I mean, there’s not much point in us writing any more. I guess we could get onto the details?

Paul: That’s not very exciting.

Quinns: Don’t get mad at me because you ruined it.

Review: Twilight Struggle

Games News! 30/09/13

Winter Tales

Once Upon a Time

Review: Mage Wars

Review: Winter Tales

Lord Smingleigh On… House Rules, Pt. 2

Games News! 23/09/13

SU&SD Needs You! Donations are now open.

SU&SD Will Be At Eurogamer Expo 2013!

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