Colt Express

Our Shopping Guide to the Best Cheap Board Games!

Paul: Hot summer strawberries! It’s the middle of August, the sun is (sometimes) in the sky (here it’s mostly just windy) and this is the season that you finally get into board games. It’s an intimidating prospect: you’ve eyed those enormous boxes on the shelves with price tags that would make a banker blush, but this really doesn’t have to be a hobby that destroys your wallet.

Wait! What’s that noise? An approaching siren? An… ice cream van?! It’s me pedalling furiously toward you in the Shut Up & Sit Down Budget Bus, adding a host of surprising prices in this sequel to our indispensable article, How To Build an Amazing Board Game Collection for $10. GET ON BOARD.

We don’t want to tell you how to live your life but you might want to put on a tie or a string of pearls or BOTH before listening to this very classy podcast. The results of the inaugral Pearple’s Choice Awards are in and noteworthy hosts Paul Dean and Quintin Smith discuss the games that won Best Expansion of 2016, Best Reprint and (of course) Best Game. They chat about some old classics they’ve played over the festive season, like City of Remnants and Galaxy Trucker. Finally, they want to tell you about a folk game that’s come all the way from Peru. 2016 has been a spectacular year for board games and once again, next year looks even more exciting. This can’t be sustainable. Or can it?

Quinns: Ladies and gentlemen! Take a seat. Get comfy. Buy some ice-cream from the attendant I had sent to your place of work (yes, YOUR place of work, so keep an eye out for her). It’s time for Quinns’ Corner Awards ‘16.

In other words we’re one year on from 2015’s Corner Awards and I still haven’t figured out a better solution for review copies than letting them pile up in the corner of my flat. I bet Tom Vasel doesn’t have this problem. Not to worry! Once again I’m dispensing awards to all those games that didn’t suit a full review, but were too weird to eject from the corner.

I’ve heard the rumours. “Quinns is getting too old to review seven games in one article! They already use CG for any scenes where he has to bend his knees.”

To which I say: Ha! Watch and learn, kids.

Long and spicy like a hot dog, the 43rd EVER SU&SD podcast is HERE! Quickly, consume the whole thing before it starts disintegrating and leaking board game mustard into your lap.

In this cast Matt, Paul, Pip and Quinns met up with 300 fans in a sweaty room at the UK Games Expo to discuss what they’d been playing. That meant The Ravens of Thri Sahashri, Ice Cool, Treasure Hunter, the Horses & Stagecoach expansion for Colt Express, Codenames: Pictures, Czech Games’ new game Adrenaline and more besides! Finally, we end with an electrifying game of Question Wood Toy Folds High. Can Matt fix his losing streak?

If you’d prefer to enjoy this video on the move, it’s available as a humble podcast right here. The comments are separate on each post, though, so CHOOSE WISELY. Are you team podcast, or team video?

Long and spicy like a hot dog, the 43rd EVER SU&SD podcast is HERE! Quickly, consume the whole thing before it starts disintegrating and leaking board game mustard into your lap. In this cast Matt, Paul, Pip and Quinns met up with 300 fans in a sweaty room at the UK Games Expo to discuss what they’d been playing. That meant The Ravens of Thri Sahashri, Ice Cool, Treasure Hunter, the Horses & Stagecoach expansion for Colt Express, Codenames: Pictures, Czech Games’ new game Adrenaline and more besides! Finally, we end with an electrifying game of Question Wood Toy Folds High. Can Matt fix his losing streak? If you’d prefer to watch this podcast as a video (and to be fair, the bit where the audience boos Quinns is priceless), you can do so right here. But the comments are separate on each post, so CHOOSE WISELY. Are you team podcast, or team video?

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.

Paul: This is a disaster. How much food do we have left? How many days can we go? Will we even get rescued out here?

Quinns: I’m sure it’ll be fine, just keep sending up the flares and don’t put any limbs in the water. Look, I managed to salvage a few of the more intact parts of Matt, which we can probably cook, and then there’s the…

Paul: What?

Quinns: The Games News. I’m really sorry, Paul. We’re going to have to eat the Games News.

Silas: Yeeee-hawww! Hello, pardners. My name is Silas McCoy and I’m here to tell y’all about Colt Express, a game of action, danger and the free life of a train-robbing outlaw. Yeeee-haw!

Brendan [exhausted]: Ah. Ho. Ho boy. Hi, everybody. I hope this man didn’t frighten you. This is Silas, a fictional character I invented when I realised I was going to be late for the review. I sent him ahead with his horse, which I also created. Such is the power of the board game journalist. Phew. But now that I have arrived, I can-

Silas: Stick ’em up.

Brendan: What? Hey, that’s my wallet! No, Silas! Come back here, or I swear I’ll… Hey! Stop riding around on that thing. And stop firing your gun in the air, it’s irresponsible. Don’t make me invent a sheriff, Goddamn you!

In Colt Express, you play a bandit robbing a train at the same time as other bandits, and your goal is to become the richest outlaw of the Old West.

The game takes place in a 3D train in which the bandits can move from one car to another, run on the roof, punch the other bandits, shoot them, rob the passengers, or draw the Marshal out of position. The train has as many cars as the number of players, and each car is seeded with gems, bags of loot or suitcases at the start of play.

Quinns: Morning everybody! Can you feel it? Halloween has officially begun. Yesterday Paul and I recorded a spooky podcast announcing the game we’ll review at the end of the month, and in the evening I went to see long-running London play Ghost Stories. Which, if you’ve got a free evening in our city and felt like peeing yourself a little bit, I can’t recommend highly enough.

So naturally we begin our news with forthcoming board game Planes! Scariest of all the modes of transport. Imagine opening your bedroom curtains at night and seeing a plane right there, staring in at you! It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Our Shopping Guide to the Best Cheap Board Games!

Podcast #51: The Pearple’s Choice Awards

Presenting QUINNS’ CORNER AWARDS, 2016!

Podcast #43: The video!

Podcast #43: Deciding Where The Bullets Go

Games News! 30/11/15

Games News! 06/07/15

Review: Colt Express

Games News! 13/10/14

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