SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 10-1

How to Play Pandemic Legacy!

Paul: Gawd, I love BGG. It’s one of my favourite gaming places on the internet and this has been a fascinating journey.

Quinns: It’s an astonishingly rigorous database. As if IMDB was combined with a… an educated mosh pit, but with a set of scales in the corner that told you how much every actor weighed.

As we close out this feature, I’m simply left wanting to play more board games. Which is surely the best possible result.

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Feature: A Day in the Life of Paul’s Game Collection!

Paul: Welcome! Welcome to a very particular corner of my home. While apartment life in Vancouver doesn’t afford me the sort of cavernous attic that we peeped into when Quinns talked about his game collection, I do have a very particular place where I keep mine, all safe and warm and pristine. Welcome to my Games Closet. Welcome to the home of my fun. Please, take my hand as I invite you into a midnight tour of a very snug, very intimate space in my life. Don’t worry! You’re quite safe. Now, walk this way with me. Walk this way. Just around here. Toward the light…

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Review: 7 Wonders: Duel

Review: 7 Wonders: Duel

Classical cock-blocking simulator 7 Wonders was one of the first boxes we ever recommended on SU&SD. We couldn’t believe it. How could a game could be so clever, so beautiful, and support 2 to 7 players with no downtime?

Today, Paul and Quinns have reunited to review 7 Wonders: Duel. A brand-new 2 player game of the same old ancient conflicts.

Have the boys still got what it takes? Or will history… forget them?

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7 Wonders: Duel

7 Wonders: Duel

In many ways 7 Wonders: Duel resembles its parent game 7 Wonders as over three ages players acquire cards that provide resources or advance their military or scientific development in order to develop a civilization and complete wonders.

What’s different about 7 Wonders: Duel is that, as the title suggests, the game is solely for two players, with the players not drafting card simultaneously from hands of cards, but from a display of face-down and face-up cards arranged at the start of a round. A player can take a card only if it’s not covered by any others, so timing comes into play as well as bonus moves that allow you to take a second card immediately. As in the original game, each card that you acquire can be built, discarded for three coins, or used to construct a wonder.

Each player starts with four wonder cards, and the construction of a wonder provides its owner with a special ability. Only seven wonders can be built, though, so one player will end up short.

Players can purchase resources at any time from the bank, or they can gain cards during the game that provide them with resources for future building; as you acquire resources, the cost for those particular resources increases for your opponent, representing your dominance in this area.

A player can win 7 Wonders: Duel in one of three ways. Each time that you acquire a military card, you advance the military marker toward your opponent’s capital, giving you a bonus at certain positions. If you reach the opponent’s capital, you win the game immediately. Similarly, if you acquire all six different scientific symbols, you achieve scientific dominance and win immediately. If neither of these situations occurs, then the player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

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Games News! 23/03/15

7 Wonders

Quinns: Good morning, kiddos! Please form an orderly queue and allow me to vaccinate you against the most deadly disease of all: Ignorance.

No, wait, sorry. I had the wrong tab open. It’s ebola. Pandemic: Legacy will be arriving late this year, turning the fantastic game of disease-battling (see our review here) into a single, apocalyptic, simulated year at the Centre for Disease Control. Excited? You’re not the only one. Z-Man has already received a preposterous 50,000 pre-orders.

This week, Shut Up & Sit Down was invited to play a finished prototype of the game. An event we were wholly unable to make because Brendan got his arm stuck behind a radiator again. Instead, we left that job to the data hounds of Board Game Geek news, who’ve posted a blog on the inner-workings of this box, though you’ll find a summary below.

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