Games for Two 7 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: Patchwork

Paul: True story: I got in trouble for sewing once when I was six years old. I wasn’t supposed to be sewing because, apparently, sewing is not a thing that a man does. That seems a little strange since I have definitely met some tailors who were men and whose helpful craft meant I wasn’t instead stumbling naked through life. Anyway, being thus steered from sewing surely explains why I’m not as good as I should be at Patchwork.

And it’s such a shame because I want to be better at it. I’m sure I could. I’m certain I’m on the verge of some sort of needlework breakthrough, of a real understanding of petite, precise Patchwork. I cannot stop now. I must master this splendid, splendid challenge. This flat, unassuming and apparently drab affair is so much more than it seems. Do not underestimate its prosaic presentation.

Hold on to your womp rats! Quinns is here with one of the biggest reviews of the year. Star Wars: Rebellion is Fantasy Flight’s forthcoming Star Wars star war.

One side plays the Empire, another the Rebellion, in a vast conflict involving more than 150 plastic miniatures and countless twists, turns and heroics.

In other words it’s about the most exciting thing imaginable. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this early review.

Paul: Quinns I am so sorry that I blew up your space ship. I know you liked that space ship and you wanted to try out that space ship as part of Armada’s Second Wave of Expansions, so I apologise for shooting it until it exploded. It was only a small space ship and it did not take much shooting before the exploding happened, so you cannot accuse me of excess.

However, I hope this won’t colour your experience or your impressions of Wave 2, even though I, a completely inexperienced Armada player, blew up your space ship. And also a lot of your TIE fighters. Obviously I didn’t do great, being new to the game and a little overwhelmed, yet I still seem to have shot a lot of things. How do you feel?

Quinns: I feel like a man who’s been waiting six months for the Imperial Raider, and then you blew it up before it had fired a shot. So much for continuing our coverage of Star Wars Armada, which started with this written review and this fun Let’s Play.

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?

Does anyone remember our written review of the fabulous Star Wars: Armada? No? Of course not. You lot are visual creatures. You need to watch us nudging these tiny Star Destroyers and tinier X-Wings around the table before you’ll believe a word of it.

Today, we proudly present a full, 300 point game of Armada between Quinns and his friend Lovely Tim, bolstered with the first wave of expansions, including such vessels as the Star Potato and the Long Fellow(?).

Special Thanks to Youtube channel Mini War Gaming, whose handicam style we totally nicked.

Paul: Oh God, my head… Quinns? Quinns, why are you here? What did we do last night? Where are my pants?

Quinns: How much wine did you have? Oh, it was beautiful, Paul. We circled each other for hours, laughing, getting closer and ever closer. Finally, I got past your shields. It was wonderful.

Paul: Oh no.

Quinns: Then you activated your squadrons and managed to disable my turbolasers with your mighty TIE bombers.

Paul: Oh no. Wait. What?

Following on from XCOM, it’s time for our second big review of the year. Doomtown: Reloaded is a portable game with some big ideas. It’s a generous box with a golden future. It is, in fact, the first real competitor to the awesome Android: Netrunner.

Is this town big enough for the both of ’em?

You can read Quinns’ extended impressions on Doomtown’s combat system here, and get your own fancy Netrunner tokens right here.

(Images sourced from BoardGameGeek.)

Thrower: You’re a platoon sergeant, patrolling the Normandy hedgerows in 1944. Suddenly, a burst of automatic fire opens up from the treeline. You don’t know what it is: it could be a machine gun, or a tank. It could be a lone rifleman, or the forward elements of an enemy brigade. Each demands a different course of action, and your life, and those of your men, depend on your picking the right one. What do you do?

Replicating this is the central problem faced by tactical wargame designers. Good tactics start with determining who your enemy is and where they are. Yet for all the effort they put in to simulating weapons and doctrine, tactical board games fail to take this into account. Most of the time you can see exactly what you’re facing.

Two new designers have decided to tackle this intractable issue with their first release, War Stories. It comes in two flavours, Liberty Road for the Western front and Red Storm for the east. As if implementing hidden movement wasn’t ambition enough, it also seeks to be realistic, quick-playing and easily learned. That’s two of the wildest dragons in wargaming, slain by the same title. No wonder people flocked to support the kickstarter.

Battle Lore! Battle or…? Battle Lore!

This week, Paul seems to have found exactly the sort of game that would appeal to his twelve-year-old self, a game of magic and monsters, of hexes and strategy. Battle Lore is Fantasy Flight’s attempt at an easily-digestible miniatures wargame, the kind of thing where you slaughter an army in an afternoon and still have time for biscuits.

But is that going to be your sort of thing? The game, we mean, not the biscuits. After all, Battle Lore may have a bigger, bolder relative whose company you might well prefer…

Apologies for the lateness of this, everybody! Sometimes the internet is a very slow thing, but we don’t give up easy.

EDIT: It seems we have a problem with the right sound channel. An audio fix is on its way!

ANOTHER EDIT: The audio should be behaving better now. Sorry about that!

We’ve got some continuity to sort out after last week’s sci-fi special, but let’s sort out another bit of continuity first.

Almost two years ago Quinns sat down to write this review of the X-Wing Miniatures Game core set. Today, Paul joins him in the stifling cockpit of internet television for a review of the game proper.

HUGE thanks to our fans at Industrial Light & Magic for providing that intro sequence. We were skeptical at first when they asked for literally all of our donation money, but the results speak for themselves.

Enjoy, everybody!

Review: Patchwork

Review: Star Wars Rebellion

Review: Star Wars Armada, Wave 2

Review: 7 Wonders: Duel

SU&SD Play… Star Wars: Armada

Review: Star Wars: Armada

Review: Doomtown: Reloaded

Review: War Stories

Review: BattleLore

Review: The X-Wing Miniatures Game

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