How to Play Imperial Assault’s Campaign!

Today we’re teaching one of the big boys! Imperial Assault (see our review here) is an epic box containing your very own Star Wars adventure. One person plays the dastardly forces of the Imperium and is given control of a never-ending hosepipe of henchmen, while up to four more players steer a pack of heroes through a fantastic campaign.

It’s not the simplest thing to play, though, so we put together this primer video for the hero team. Step one, invite heroes over. Step two, tell them to watch this. Step three, sit ’em down and start playing!

(Oh, and if anyone want’s to replace the Bothan Sniper with something a little more Matt Lees-y, they can do so using this fan art from game designer Jonathan Ying!)

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Review: Mystic Vale & bonus Mystic Crumble

mystic vale thumbnail

Ahh, is there anything more beautiful than that most classic of English summers? What about the so very gorgeous cards of Mystic Vale, cards you don’t just play, but cards you can build, piece by piece?

Intrigued? You bet you are! We took our two most experienced druids, Quinns and Matt (Paul is a bard), and we put them in a room with cards and crystals and radiant peaks. We asked them not only how it compares with our two very favourite card games, Trains and Arctic Scavengers, but if it’s capable of being as beautifully magical as the luscious Seasons.

Unfortunately, there was too much conjuration energy in that room.

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Review: Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear

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.

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Review: Quadropolis

June 3, 2016 Reviews Quadropolis, SU&SD Recommends, New to Games?, Conflict-Free Games, Quick Games, Games for Two HOT TAMALE-BEANS! It’s Quinns with a Shut Up & Sit Down review of Quadropolis! Who could have guessed I am writing this from the UK Games Expo we just did a live podcast and I’ve got no energy … Read more

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Review: Isle of Skye

Review: Isle of Skye

May 14, 2016 Reviews Isle of Skye, SU&SD Recommends Paul has been making the most of the sunny days of spring, including all those ever-growing evenings, with Isle of Skye, which he says is the most twee thing he’s played in a while. He went outside, too. Was this wise? Has it affected his mind? … Read more

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How to Play Mysterium!

Mysterium

April 25, 2016 Learn to Play Mysterium, SU&SD Recommends, New to Games?, Creative Games, Card Games We reviewed Mysterium so early (and so breathlessly) that we never got to do a video on it. Gaw bless these rules explanations for letting us fix that! Mysterium didn’t so much replace Dixit as murder it in the … Read more

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How To Play Memoir ‘44!

How to Play Memoir '44

In some ways, Memoir ’44 is the game that birthed SU&SD. Paul and Quinns were playing a long campaign of this definitive game of toy soldiers when they decided to create a board game web series. Historians can find our ye olde review of Memoir right here (timestamp 15:01), filmed on a borrowed camcorder on a sweltering summer’s evening.

A more recent Memoir video we did is our Operation Overlord Let’s Play. While Memoir’s campaign books make it a longer game and the Breakthrough rules are there if you want to make it more tactical, Overlord is what you get if you want an epic experience.

If only all games could be tailored to the same extent! What a world that would be.

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Review: X-Wing’s Eighth Wave of Expansions!

X-Wing's Eighth Wave of Expansions

[Oh my goodness, so many words! Following on from writer Chris Thursten’s awesome article about his first X-Wing tournament, he’s back with seven separate, hilarious reviews of X-Wing’s newest ships.

Chris: As of March, the latest round of expansions for Fantasy Flight’s enormously popular spaceship miniatures game, X-Wing, is finally and fully here. The first – er – wave of Wave 8 arrived in December, so a few of these ships and cards have had longer to bed in than others. Even so, it’s time to round the lot of them up and force them to answer hard questions, like: WHAT DO YOU BRING TO THE GAME? WHY ARE YOU NICE? WHY DO I FEEL COMPELLED TO OWN YOU? And: IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE FOR THE SAME WAVE TO ARRIVE TWICE? WOULD THAT NOT MAKE IT TWO SEPARATE WAVES, LIKE, IN BOTH A MARITIME AND A PHILOSOPHICAL SENSE?

The answer to that last one is evidently ‘yes’, by the way. Haha! Eat it, Heraclitus!

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How to Play Skull!

How to Play Skull

If you ask us what our favourite game is, it changes with the weather. If it’s a sunny day, Cosmic Encounter. If it’s wet and windswept, Consulting Detective. If it’s a sleepy autumn night, Memoir ’44. And so on, forever and ever, until we get tired and go to sleep.

But if you ask our team which game they’ve played the most, you’ll only get one answer: Skull*. Arguably the best bluffing game ever made, and a glittering showcase of just how much game you can get out of a minimum of rules.

If you’re still not sold, check out Matt’s review and a recipe! Skull with Fresh Pizza.

*Though Quinns’ Netrunner habit and Paul’s Carcassonne addiction do offer some competition.

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How to play Galaxy Trucker!

How to Play Galaxy Trucker!

These “How to Play” videos are giving us a great chance to dust off some of our all-time favourite boxes. Of course we were going to do Galaxy Trucker. We’ll climb back into its rickety cabs any chance we get.

If you want to see more of this absolutely hilarious game your next port of call should be our Let’s Play, which we swear to god was not “rigged” despite what you might have read. The game is just that ridiculous.

After that, you should just buy the darn thing. It looks like the Anniversary Edition in this video has now sold out, but the base game is ready and waiting for you.

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