SU&SD
Paul: Quinns, could you keep the noise down- oh my God, who are all these games?
Quinns: Did we wake you up? Sorry! I just thought I’d invite a few of our favourite board games round for a nightcap and a cigar.
Paul: This is nuts. I hardly recognise any of them. It’s as if this week there have been exciting developments exclusively regarding games we like, and this party is an elaborate premise for a roundup of the week’s news.
Quinns: Yes
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Paul: Quinns, what is this place?
Quinns: Paul, this is the place I come to every weekend to prepare for Games News. Here they provide only the choicest cuts of gaming information, the freshest servings.
Paul: Quinns, I’m not sure all this stuff is ethically sourced. Look at the menu. There’s a platter of unattributed and speculative announcements, a buffet of Kickstarter links that looks long since spoiled and the soup of the day is just another expansion that nobody’s actually provided any photographs for.
Quinns: But we’re not eating from the regular selection. We’re going into The Back Room, where we can choose our still-squirming news, watch as it’s slain before us and prepared to exactly our parameters.
Paul: That’s horrific! What sort of a place would do such a thing?! Except I guess any seafood restaurant, which is all the proof you’ll ever need that seafood is disgusting and that everyone who enjoys it is bad.
Quinns: Come quickly. They’ve got a table for us.
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Paul: Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday.
Quinns: Paul! I hear that you have recently been playing the Friedemann Friese one player card game called Friday.
Paul: We, we, we so excited.
Quinns: I know it well and actually I thought you’d have some interesting-
Paul: Which seat do I TAAAAKE?
Quinns: DON’T MAKE ME BLOWDART YOU.
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Quinns: Hello and welcome, I hope you’re all ready for another piping hot serving of Games News. Today, we have a double news, in which I’m joined by Paul and we’ll be firing off the news together, manning the News Cannons. Rotating the News Turrets.
Paul: I had to get up very early for this.
Quinns: So shall we dive right in?
Paul: Because of the time difference, it’s 4am in Shut Up & Sit Down’s North American Office and also 1986…
Quinns: Let’s go!
Paul: …I’m using a dial-up modem.
Quinns: First up!
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Paul: One of the reasons we started Shut Up & Sit Down, arguably the biggest reason we did so,* was to get more people into board and tabletop gaming. We wanted to share something that we enjoyed. Board and tabletop gaming was (and largely still is) ignored by a lot of people who had preconceptions, even prejudices, about how boring, weird or bizarre it was. We don’t like that sort of thing and hopefully we’ve helped change that. Hopefully our invitation to the hobby has also been inclusive and reached out to all sorts of people.
You can imagine, then, how impressed we were to hear about the work being done by Different Play, a collective of experienced mentors reaching out to actively support diversity and inclusion in analog game design, both in terms of the kinds of games being made and also the kinds of people making them. The games industry, even the tabletop games industry, has a diversity problem and this can make it (among other things) intimidating and even outright unfriendly. Different Play wants to make sure that new and different designers are heard, published and paid. We asked them more about their work and their plans.
(Due to the complications of our job/our innate impressiveness,** it was Quinns who got in touch with the brains behind Different Play and talked to them about their aims and philosophy, but it’s me who’s collating and writing up their answers here. So, while it’s my byline, Smith did the legwork on this.)
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(Some images courtesy of BoardGameGeek.com)
Pip: Shut Up and Sit down – despite the confrontational name – is almost always a hive of lovely cardboardy activity. That’s why I started playing games with them and that’s why I’m working with them now.
Almost always.
But sometimes in gaming there are acts of betrayal, of contrarian buttheadedness, so large they cannot be forgotten. Instead they lurk in your mental back pocket, ready to be drawn out at a moments notice – reminders that these glorious friends and colleague care as much about boardgames as you do and will do almost anything for a few victory points. Or a cheap laugh.
I’m not talking about the lower level stuff here. This isn’t about how Quinns will fail to tell you a rule until partway through the game (“Oh! Did I tell you about [rule which suddenly advantages what Quinns has been doing and nullifies any and all Pip-strats]?”). No. This is about Brendan and this is about City of Horror.
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Matt: Remember those hot hot nights when we wore those masks, and danced as if our legs might melt any moment? I don’t remember that time either – just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page. Mascarade was a fun game with sexy art that forcibly entered my heart last year when I covered it for The Opener. The premise is simple: nobody knows what’s going on, it’ll only get worse as things go on, and you’re almost definitely not the queen but nobody else seems to have clocked that.
There are tons of hidden identity thingers to choose from these days, but what sets Mascarade apart from the crowd is the fact that you’re often not sure of who YOU are, let alone who everyone else might be. Taking a look at your card takes your whole turn so I’M THE BLOODY KING becomes I’M THE BLOODY KING, PROBABLY.
The general gist of all this chaotic magic is probably best expressed in my aforementioned video, so if you’re totally clueless seep that into your face and then come back to absorb my thoughts on the new, first expansion – because for reasons I’ll make clear shortly this may be a good time to go all-in and buy both.
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Matt: What a wonderful world of Cosmic Encounters! If we only had spaceships and SPACE (in our hearts) then we might be able to build a better society on the fringes of our fragile galaxy.
Quinns: What are you doing Matt, this is a board games thing.
Matt: I’m getting everyone in that feel-good 1970’s vibe, when peace and hope and good-vibes ruled the planet and Cosmic Encounter first came out. A decade when man first stepped upon the moon, a famous rock band called Beatles was formed, and everyone had a nice time with flowers.
Quinns: I haven’t got time to fix you, Mattt, so let’s move on. Cosmic Encounter is a brilliant thing. Possibly THE BEST thing, as concluded in our gargantuan Top 25 list at the end of last year, and people who haven’t heard of it should check out this review. But the time for twenty-fives and tops is behind us, and we’re deep into the fog of a cruel Expansionanuary.
Matt: That’s true! I can’t even feel my fingers and fear that my extremities may soon be gone. But that darkness is being somewhat tempered by the fact that we now get to write a HOT ARTICLE about every single Cosmic expansion that’s been released to date. Five different boxes of madness that add a total of 115 (that’s one hundred and fifteen) new aliens to the base game – a staggering increase of 230% to the base game’s already ludicrous wad of 50 aliens.
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Quinns: GOOOOD MORNING TABLE GAMERS!
Welcome to the official start of SU&SD’s year! We’ve been up to all kinds of unofficial business while you’ve been away, of course. Yesterday I had some friends over to try the print’n’play version of Spyfall, and the week before Matt experienced Fluxx for the first time. He didn’t have to tell us. When we saw him he had tears streaking his face, and kept asking “Why?” over and over, looking for meaning in his shattered life. It was Pirate Fluxx, too. Do leave him some kind words in the comments.
But you’re not here for news about us, are you? About us and our lives and the inescapable entropy afflicting our corporeal forms? You’re here for the hottest scoops in board gaming news and I, for one, wouldn’t dare to waste your time.
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Quinns: Morning everybody! Our cover photo today is of L’Auberge Rouge (“the Red Inn”), a gorgeous-looking game coming next year from venerable Belgian publisher Pearl Games. It looks like you’ll all be running incredibly creepy pubs.
Brendan: oh god what day is it
Quinns: Brendan?! What are you doing under the desk? The Top 25 wrap party is over. You should be at home.
Brendan: i had the worst dream. i reviewed board games for a living
Quinns: Hey, I’ve got a great idea. You can help me do the weekly Games News! Here, pull up a chair.
Brendan: oh no
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