Quinns: Goodness gracious, I’m beat! I’ve just finished moving house from London to Brighton and it turns out my grasshopper-like body is nowhere near as good at lifting boxes as it is at reviewing them. On the subject, believe the hype: the Kallax shelving unit is the prettiest, cheapest board game storage made by anyone, anywhere.
But enough about my new flat*! This is the Games News, not the Quinns News, and I’ve got some smokin’ hot stories to get my journalistic tongs around.
Uwe Rosenberg could be the most consistently excellent designer working today, and this explanatory post on his next game, Reykholt, just shot it to the top of my most-wanted list.
It turns out that this game of Icelandic greenhouses will be a “boiled-down re-engineered and crunchy reworking” of Rosenberg’s 2009 game At the Gates of Loyang (pictured above). In both games players sow and sell cute wooden vegetables and develop their cottage industry using cards, though Reykholt will speed the experience up so it takes just one hour instead of two hours.
I’m loving Reykholt’s theme and art, I love the touted features in the above blog post, and I absolutely adore it when great old games are used as a foundation for new ones. It’s one of the times in this hobby I feel permission to get really excited.
Ahh, I can see myself playing this game already. “Look at my carrots, Matt!” I’ll say.
“LOOK AT THEM.”
Speaking of reworked designs, this week Z-Man Games announced Fae, a beautiful new version of 2002 game Clans where players try and control areas of the map while keeping it a secret what colour they’re actually playing. The new art design looks great and I am absolutely loving the slim little box you can see in the above link.
That said, I’m no conspiracy theorist, but you’ll notice that the above press shot shows the little druid miniatures from above, an angle that means you can’t even tell that they’re druids. Could this be because when you look at them from the side, as Z-Man showed on Twitter a few months back, they kiiiiiiiiinda look like the heads of little penises?
To be clear, I’ve got nothing against penises. I have a penis. It’s fine! A game with penises in, that is, not my penis specifically (although it is also fine). I look forward to pushing these little penii around Fae’s mystical Celtic setting.
It’s not just me, right? They do look like penises? Everyone agreed with me that the king piece in El Grande looks like a butt plug and this is way more obvious.
Fantasy Flight announced some new expansions for Star Wars Legion this week. There’s a cool Rebel strike team you might have seen before in the popular movie “Star Wars”, as well as a Han Solo pack with a sculpt that really tickles me. Click on the above image for a close-up. He looks like 60 year-old Harrison Ford being forced to perform after a heavy chicken dinner.
Don’t miss our review of Star Wars Legion, wherein we were absolutely delighted by Fantasy Flight’s ability to bring Star Wars firefights to your kitchen table. But be warned, it’s a much more substantial investment of time and money than either the X-Wing Miniatures Game or Star Wars: Armada from the same publisher.
Couple of Kickstarters for your attention this week, starting with Architects of the West Kingdom.
Following on from the well-liked North Sea Trilogy of games by designer Shem Phillips and artist Mihajlo Dimitrievski, Architects represents the start of a second trilogy, this time set in the “West Kingdom” of the Carolingian Empire. Architects is another medium-weight worker placement game from the designer, this time seeing players competing to erect lovely buildings in honour of their Carolingian king.
The North Sea trilogy always occupied an unfortunate position in terms of SU&SD coverage, being not quite light, heavy or innovative enough for us to personally get excited by it. The West Kingdom trilogy doesn’t look like it’s going to change that, but it’s surely a very exciting announcement for fans of the first series. Three more games from your favourite artist/designer combo! What a treat.
Another fun-looking Kickstarter is Imperius from Grant Rodiek, designer of the almost-excellent Cry Havoc. Imperius sets out to recreate the unusual sci-fi and arch intrigue of the Dune novels in a card drafting game, and early impressions from reviewers have been very positive indeed.
There’s some lovely art on the Kickstarter page, and I’m a big fan of the pre-worn 1970s sci-fi novel look that the expansions have. We’ll be bringing you some impressions as soon as possible.
Finally, this Wikipedia link was sent in by reader Tyler Brown approximately a million years ago, but I’m glad I finally got around to posting it because it’s just great.
Children’s Games is an oil painting by Dutch master Pieter Bruegel the Elder that depicts more than 80 games played by children in the Netherlands in the 16th century. Be sure not to miss “the penalty of bumbouncing” or “raisinbread man”.
You can click on the above image for a preview, but really, you want to go to Wikipedia and examine the full hi-res image. The whole thing is both charming and unsettling. I want a framed print for my office.
*It has a standing desk! I’ve wanted one for ages, although about five minutes into using it I found that it gives me frighteningly sweaty pits. 🙁
