SU&SD - Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: Evolution & the Flight Expansion

Matt: I’m a robust bird looking to nest who is terrified of fat carnivores, looking to meet someone with a GSOH and wait this isn’t OK Cupid

Quinns: No, you silly goose! It’s a review of Evolution, the new game from North Star Games that is about evolution.

Evolution starts with 2-6 players being given control of their very own bouncing baby bit of cardboard, tracking the only two features a parent should care about: POPULATION and BODY SIZE. Each turn players receive cards depicting new evolutionary traits, you all play one to contribute to the food on the Watering Hole, and you play the rest onto your species, either as the traits they depict or to increase that species’ population or size, or you can burn cards to create whole new species.

And that’s the entire game! With these wonderfully simple rules, you’re off to the races. Although at these races we’ll simultaneously be betting on horses and praying our favourite horse doesn’t get eaten by another horse.

Leigh & Quinns collaborated on Life Hacks last year, a very personal article about learning to play Netrunner. They return for this article about the 2015 UK Netrunner Nationals.

Quinns: I am slumped on the floor of the Birmingham Hilton. My head almost between my knees, I break into an orange by pressing my fingers into it until the skin splits. I begin eating. The flesh is both dry and watery in my mouth.

“I don’t know if I’ll make it,” I tell Leigh. Then a pause, weighing my next words with the pulp in my mouth. “And I don’t know if I want to play.”

Paul: Good morning, Quinns!

Quinns: Good morning, Paul!

Paul: You know what, I think it’s going to be an exciting Games News this week! Let’s get right into the Games News Forecast, beginning with a look at the satellite picture that shows a heavy cloud of zombies coming in from the north.

Quinns: That sounds like one of the all-time bad weeks.

Paul: Don’t worry! It’s just the forthcoming single-player campaign for Zombie 15’. If our review of that one slipped you by, you should know that we recorded it in a single 15 minute take.

Quinns: We’ve got a very special Games News for you today. Paul is quite literally in the Yukon, but coming to us live from a satellite phone!

Can you hear us, Paul?

Paul: Quinns? This isn’t a great time. I’m up a tree at 63.9946° N, 135.4902° W. There’s a bear after me, or I THINK it’s a bear–

Quinns: Paul, the first images have come through for Pandemic Legacy!

Paul: Seriously?

Quinns: Yes! There’s a whole video trailer.

Quinns: Morning, Paul! You ready for some Games News?

Paul: …

Quinns: See that image up top? It’s the first photo we have of The Prodigals Club (previously The Castaways Club), Czech Games’ pseudo-sequel to the wonderful Last Will. We now know that The Prodigals Club will once again see players racing to lose their vast Victorian fortunes, but this time simply because they think that poor people have more fun. Presumably they saw Titanic (the film) but are living in the decade before Titanic (the accident).

But here’s the really cool bit- The Prodigals Club will ship with three modules, which are “trying to lose an election”, “trying to get rid of all your possessions”, and “trying to offend the most influential people in high society”. You can play with any two modules or even all three, but the game will also allow you to bolt your copy of Last Will onto Prodigals Club to replace any one of the three modules. Isn’t that crazy?!

Paul: …

Quinns: I KNOW!

Quinns: Have you finished putting on your make up? The Games News is about to start!

Paul: No! You used up all the rouge, you rogue, I don’t know my lines and this leotard doesn’t fit me at all.

Quinns: That’s a bandanna. Listen, you’re gonna do great! You know the words to the first musical number, right? The one about the newly announced M.U.L.E. board game?

“There’s a game / There’s a new game / It’s about a roooobot donkey”

Paul: They come unseen.

Quinns: …what?

Paul: They come unseen!

Quinns: I’m a bit concerned.

Paul: They Come Unseen! It’s a new hidden movement game designed by an actual Royal Navy submariner! Andrew Benford was a real Commander, just like Commander Riker.

You can’t knock Royal Navy submarines, Quinns.

Quinns: I wasn–

Paul: While everyone else was posturing with their toys in the cold war, the RN was the only service that ever actually used a nuclear submarine to sink an enemy warship. This man comes from one heck of a pedigree, AND his game’s asymmetric! You like those.

Quinns: Wait a second. I’ve checked his profile on BoardGameGeek and he’s definitely not a Will Riker.

Paul: It’s Games News time! Welcome, everybody, welcome. Please, come into my Games News hovel, the tiny hut in which I construct all of our Games News by hand, painstakingly assembling each tiny cog, ratchet and spring, bent over my work from dawn to dusk.

Today’s Games News is a special, post GenCon Games News, with no loud noises or big names. Instead, we’ve worked hard to bring you a few what you might call artisanal news pieces. Some are funny, some are very serious, but they are all the choicest pieces of news. Nobody brings you better Games News than Shut Up & Sit Down.

Quinns: So let’s start with some candles.

Quinns: “The best four days in gaming” (or at least the most ludicrous) are just around the corner! Following our inaugral expedition last year, team SU&SD will once again be heading to Gen Con to meet strange new beverages, play some strangers and drink deeply of new games.

If you’re going too, we’ve got a couple of events for you to attend!

You can now buy tickets for our Second Ever Live Podcast! This time we’re expecting working microphones, although we’ve been downgraded from a 300 person room to 250 people. Next year we’ll get our heads around Gen Con’s arcane ticketing system, we promise, followed by a live breakdown in front of 1,000 people.

No tickets whatsoever are required for our PARTY, though! Tomlinson’s Tap Room (pictured above) is once again opening its doors to us and anyone who’d like to meet us from 7pm to 11pm on Friday 31st. Last year we ran Two Rooms and a Boom and then wandered around playing games people had brought. This year? Who knows! I’m threatening to run Still Life but the others will talk me out of it if they know what’s best.

We hope to see you there. x

Quinns: Paul, wake up. It’s time to do the Games News again! This week, we have all sorts of interesting things. There’s technology and Italians and convention news! Hurry up, we can’t dally!

Paul: Oh boy, was I sleeping? Why was I sleeping?

Quinns: I got excited about Flick ‘Em Up and threw a wooden chopping board at your head.

Paul: Flick ’em Up? The wild west dexterity game you spotted back at the Gathering of Friends (that we weren’t invited to)?

Quinns: The very same. Professional press photos have been released, and first time publishers Pretzel Games has already announced an expansion adding horses, lassos and ramps!

Review: Evolution & the Flight Expansion

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Hang with SU&SD at Gen Con ’15!

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