Heavy Games 5 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: Alchemists

Quinns: Paul, I did a crime.

Paul: Quinns, it’s okay. You can confess and be absolved. Our world is one that still has room for forgiveness. Come and tell-

Quinns: I might have accidentally fed my student a pint of poison.

Paul: Ah. It’s all right. You’re not the first person-

Quinns: Also I misled an adventurer and sold them a flask of soup instead of a healing potion, then I published an academic theory that I knew was a lie.

Paul: Right yes well. The thing is-

Quinns: But worst of all, I forgot how funny Czech Games’ board games can be.

Paul: Quinns, I am so excited to write this review that I have got cracker crumbs all over my keyboard. Let’s go.

Disclaimer: Quinns, of this site, was a paid consultant on this game. Originally we weren’t planning to cover it, but ultimately decided to send it to Pip for an impartial review.

Pip: Summary for the super spoiler-conscious: League of Legends – a videogame with a frankly enormous player base – has made a first foray into board gaming with Mechs vs Minions.

Mechs vs Minions is REALLY good! The developers bill it as Robo Rally meets Descent to give you an idea of how it plays. I’ve been playing through the campaign with Chris Thursten. We’re having a blast and I’ll get into the more detailed explanations in a moment BUT!

I wanted to say how much we’re enjoying it up here because the game is an episodic campaign with each mission coming in its own envelope so as to deliver a few surprises as you play. With that in mind I figured it would be best to say “It’s so good!” up front in case you wanted to go in with as close to zero knowledge of the contents of the game.

Everybody else? Come stomping this way.

Quinns: One leathery fruit borne from the article on my board game collection was a lot of people telling me to finally play Lancaster. “It’s a classic,” they said. “I’d never turn down a game of Lancaster,” they said.

We’ll get to what I thought of it, but first I owe this game an apology. I realise now that I’d mentally compartmentalised Lancaster in the same place as Alhambra- a weird box that was continually being printed by Queen Games long before Shut Up & Sit Down began, that would be printed long after we’re gone.

I remember finding a copy of Alhambra Big Box in my friendly local game store in 2013. “What is that game?” I asked a staff member, and we both gawped at it as if it were the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

September 19, 2016 Learn to Play Dead of Winter: The Long Night, Heavy Games, SU&SD Recommends, Bluffing Games, Cooperative Games It was two years ago that Paul and Quinns ordered you guys to buy Dead of Winter. Today, we’ve got fantastic news for everyone who disobeyed us! Dead of Winter: The Long Night is a … Read more

Joy of joys! The latest SU&SD review has arrived at port, having completed its grand tour of Seafall. Ah, see how it’s sitting low in the water? It must be carrying a tremendous cargo of opinions and insight. That, or it’s leaking.

If you haven’t heard the hype around this game, all you need to know is that it’s designer Rob Daviau’s third legacy game following on from the amazing Risk Legacy and Pandemic Legacy. But while those two games were fairly straightforward, Seafall is an ambitious epic. In other words, it’s the most exciting box we’re expecting to review all year. So what are you waiting for? Click play! Watch. And be amazed.

We delight in throwing curveballs, so here’s a video you’d never have expected. A fat Let’s Play of fantastic miniatures game Infinity, with scenery provided by the excellent people at Battle Systems!

The truth is that ever since our spirited review of this game last year, Matt and Quinns have been collecting Infinity together with a few of their friends, and anything we’re interested in, we want to show you why. So we ended up making the above heartfelt half-hour, demonstrating just how tense and dangerous this game is. Enjoy, everybody.

NOTE: There’s about 45 seconds of insane strobing in this video, especially during the final interview segment. Rest assured that Quinns is working on a fix.

[Team SU&SD grows ever-stronger! Please give a warm welcome to game writer Jon Bolding, who comes bearing gifs. Enjoy, everybody.]

Bolds: Welcome! Welcome to Medieval France’s fabulous Loire valley, and its jewel, its shining, brocaded, wine-and-cheese-filled capital city of Orléans.

Orléans has a lot in common with those ever-popular “deck-building” games, in that you’re still accruing little somethings to go in your something, but each something is different, and has a different purpose – and your something, certainly, is different from everyone else’s something. In Orléans these somethings aren’t cards, but are little circular people, and you stuff them in your personal bag like a kind of hungry giant saving them for later, never quite sure what delicious treat you’ll pull forth when you go plunging in for a snack.

Ugh, peasants again? Why don’t we ever have Boatmen? Love Boatmen. The little crunchy paddles and rafts. The delicate waterlogged texture.

And speaking of crunch, Orleans is a good deal heavier than most deck-building games. Really, what we’ve got here is a fabulous fusion of a “building” game and a heavy eurogame, and it’s almost entirely delicious.

Thrower: Why don’t you play wargames? Why, after all I’ve forced SU&SD to publish about them at gunpoint, have you not pressed the nuclear button on this this amazing corner of our hobby? There’s lots of reasons I can think of. Possibly it’s their rumoured rules complexity. Maybe the focus on simulating men being sad in some mud. Or perhaps it’s the drab art and thin components?

WELL, I’ve got a game for you with none of that! It’s called Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear (a series you might remember from my primer on wargames or my article on the best introductory wargames) and Academy Games made it just for you. Yes, you. The publisher even said so on its sister game, Storms of Steel. “The historical wargame that Eurogamers love to play,” was the actual marketing copy.

You can smell the difference between CoH and typical wargames the second you open the lid. It’s the faint scent of solvents from the decadent, multi-coloured printing used on the mounted boards and fat counters. Oddly-named German tanks rumble around in the box. You can even see a flamethrower doing what flamethrowers do in slightly more detail than you probably want. Alas, in spite of the name, there are no actual bears.

April 15, 2016 Reviews Brass, Heavy Games, Brass: Lancashire OH MY GOODNESS! Just one week on from Paul tackling Through the Ages, Quinns is cracking open another board game classic. Brass is an incredibly nuanced game of carving out the industries of England’s industrial revolution that dates all the way back to 2007, when Elvis … Read more

April 8, 2016 Reviews Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization, Heavy Games Steady your socks, folks, this week’s review is a bumper one! Paul has been looking at Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization, the latest version of Through the Ages. To many, this is new iteration of a modern classic, yet … Read more

Review: Alchemists

Review: Mechs vs. Minions

Almost a Review: Lancaster

How to Play Dead of Winter (and The Long Night)!

Review: Seafall

SU&SD Play… Infinity!

Review: Orléans

Review: Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear

Review: Brass

Review: Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization

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