Review – Summoner Wars 2nd Edition

When was the last time you had a good summon? It’s been too long, hasn’t it?

In that case, may we recommend the brand-spanking new edition of Summoner Wars, which is also now playable online? It’s got goblins. It’s got magic spells. It’s got plenty of charming fantasy art. And most importantly, it has a swanky, simple little ruleset that’s easy to learn and hard to master.

In fact, we like this game so much we’ve now reviewed it twice. I’m not going to go back and watch our original 2011 review because I would die instantly, but if you want to do so then that is a choice that you can make.

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Review – Wingspan

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a bird. In fact, it’s all of the birds.

At long last, after a preposterous 7 print runs in 14 months, Shut Up & Sit Down has published a review of Wingspan. It’s the biggest success story that the tabletop scene has seen in a long time. But is it a success story on our tables? Or in our hearts?

Click play, and find out.

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Our 5 Favourite Brand-New Card Games

April 2, 2020 Reviews Card Games, New to Games?, Air Land & Sea, The Crew: The Quest for Planet 9, Tournament at Camelot, Mandala, Bruxelles 1897 It’s gonna take more than the ‘rona to infect THIS website! In this video Quinns tackles no less than five of the greatest card games to come out in … Read more

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Review: Detective Club

Ben: Picture the scene: you are in an art gallery. The curator asks you to pick two paintings that match a specific word. They won’t, however, tell you what that word is. You run off and pick two different paintings; one of a horse, the other of an apple in a window. The curator then tells you the word they were thinking of was “escape”, and asks you why on earth you picked those two paintings.

Welcome to the most unusual club in the world!

Detective Club is a party game that sees 4-8 players trying to match fabulous picture cards to different words. Each round, a different player will choose a word, write it on all but one of the adorable tiny notebooks the game comes with, shuffles them, and deals them out. Can you see where this is going?

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Review: Combo Fighter

As anyone who’s seen us at conventions will know, it’s hard for team SU&SD to spend a day out and about without getting into a punching fight or muscle demonstration.

As such, it was only natural that we’d review Combo Fighter. An expandable, simple card game about kicking bottom, and a glorious team effort between designer Asger Johansen and artist Snorre Krogh. If you like the sound of a lightning-fast 1 vs 1 game that’s more intelligent than it has any right to be, do take a closer look.

(And if you’d like to see more of this kind of thing, check out our impressions of Critical Mass on podcast #84.)

Have a great weekend, everybody!

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Review – Inuit: The Snow Folk

Kylie: Inuit: The Snow Folk is a deeply alluring card-drafting strategy game that sees 2-4 players vying for the title of the greatest leader of the Snow Folk. 

First up, let me take you on a tour of the rules. Inuit is a breath of fresh air as far as rules go – it’s incredibly simple. On your turn you’re going to draw a card from the deck and place it face up in the middle of the table. This communal area is known as the Great White.

You can then optionally turn over some more cards before finally choosing to take one or more of the face up cards and putting them in the relevant space on your player board. The game ends when the polar nightfall card is drawn from the deck and whoever scores the most points wins.

That’s it. Rules tour is done. Phew!

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Card Games That Don’t Suck: Egyptian Ratscrew

This week, our series on the best games that you can play with a 52 card deck gets violent.

Egyptian Ratscrew plays a lot like Jungle Speed, except with more fire. Literally. This is the first game that SU&SD has covered with a greater than zero chance of ending in flames. Also, huge thanks to Gnalistair on YouTube for pointing out that the game gets even better if you require players to first slap their forehead before slapping the table.

If you like the look of the Carte Rouge puzzle deck in this video, the Kickstarter is right here.

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Review: Piepmatz

Quinns: Piepmatz is a profoundly beige card game for 2-4 players about songbirds fighting over a bird feeder. Now, I should be up front- this game is not a best-in-show card game, as I talked about in my recent 6 Nimmt review.

But you know what? I think it comes very close indeed. I’ve loved my time with it, and it’s now nesting in my game collection.

Let me tell you how it works. This design’s a little fussy, so bear with me. “Pretty rough teach on this one,” as I learned never to say on podcast #89.

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