Tom: I need to kick-back, relax, play on some slide guitar, drink a bit too much too cheap whiskey and sing a song about my problems.
Ava: It’s 11am on a Monday. Where is this going?
Tom: We’ve done the heavy lifting here, they can put the pieces together this time. Let’s crack on-
Ava: -WITH THE GAMES BLUES!!
Tom: …and with a flourish of scarlet ‘twixt the layers of briny blue, a beautiful painting I shall perform into existence: With palette in hand, brush outstretched – and a open expanse of canvas still to tame, all that is left is for me to fetch…
Ava: No. Tom. Don’t do it.
Tom: … The Games… Hues?
Ava: There aren’t enough sighs in the world. There’s a short report on Digital Spiel, the un-physical version of what would normally be Europe’s biggest games convention/market/noisy-warehouse. The headline figures are Tabletopia doubling its user base, 148,000 people checking out the website, and 400 companies from 41 different countries showing off their bits.
Matt: ALTHOUGH I feel I’d be remiss not to mention that little old AwSHUX was just a week before Essen, and considering it was a tiny thing we’ve heard Behind The Scenes that it had a pretty remarkable impact across the board! Some of those Essen Kudos-Coins are ours, basically, Ava – and I’ll fight to the death for a handful of those beauties. Quick, say something positive about somebody else before I crush us all beneath the weight of my ego.
Tom: Once on a November dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, On a quaint and curious piece of tasty board game lore..
Ava: Tom, it’s well past morning, please just get up and do the games news, will you?
Tom: “’Tis the games news,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door… Only this and nothing more.”
Ava: Yes, so let’s bloody get on with it.
Tom: … nevermore!
Ava: Ooh, ooh. We’re going to bump a kickstarter to the top of the news purely because we really like Omari Akil and the work he’s doing to improve representation in the industry. So there.
Hoop Godz is Board Game Brothas’ follow up to Rap Godz, and is about basketball hoops, rather than hula hoops, surprising nobody.
A Distant Tom: What?!
Tom: Welcome to the news, this just in: Ava is the best and Tom smells. Hey, That’s rude – get back in your own voice!
Ava: How’s that? Better?
Tom: YES. Now please never do that again. You’ll confuse the readers and unsettle my breakfast.
Ava: I promise. Only if it’s convenient for the purposes of a joke, or I don’t want to be held responsible for one of my opinions.
Tom: Fine. Wait, what?
Ava: I didn’t manage to spend much time at Spiel Digital, it taking place while I was still hungover from our very own online convention. But I’ll be spending the coming weeks poring through what I can to see if I can dig out any exciting announcements. Please drop by the comments if there’s anything you saw that you’re excited about that we haven’t yet newsed-up. The one thing I did catch was a little bit of a preview of the previously teased new Descent box, and it looks like we finally have enough details to give it a news item.
Descent: Legends in the Dark, aims to mark a break from its predecessor, with Fantasy Flight keen to state that this isn’t Descent: Journeys in the Dark: Third edition, but instead the start of a new line within the same universe. The new Descent will be a fully co-operative, app-addled experience of dungeon crawling adventure, boasting an utter boatload of fancy toys to play with. There’s a 16 episode campaign called Blood and Flame, and multilayered 3D terrain and even miniature furniture: clearly attempting (and succeeding, I think) to out-do Heroquest’s recently announced adventure-dollhouse.
Ava: Worms, worms, worms! We’re looking for a good worms!
Tom: Are we really just going to make the intro about worms again? Is worm month just an excuse for lazy news introductions?
Ava: Not at all. It’s also a way to devalue the literally phenomenal amount of work going on behind the scenes to make an actual online convention happen, by pretending that we’re not putting out videos because we’re worms, rather than because Matt is now surrounded by so much tech that he’s starting to look like the robot lady from Metropolis.
Tom: Ah…. Worms.
Ava: Tom, Tom, What’s a good two-syllable word to come after ‘wet news…’ in a song pun for today’s intro?
Tom: …
Ava: Oh dear. I’ve been left on my own and we may never find out what happened to my “wet news quizzy”, which is what I call questions now. I guess it’s time to leap atop of the tremendous pile of crowdfunders that are clogging up the news-pipes. Give me a sec, I’ll need a run up.
Kicking off outside of Kickstarter, we’ve got literally the biggest name in board games purporting to need a crowdfunding pre-order system in order to be able to publish one of the biggest nostalgia kicks in the world. Yes. It’s Heroquest.
Ava: Tom, Tom, wake up, I’m really sad about disco again.
Tom: Whabuhhuh?
Ava: Turns out the first line of that song is ‘do you remember the twenty first night of september’, but we already used that joke already earlier this month even though we were due to do the games news on the actual 21st of September. We wasted the joke! It wasn’t the right time!
Tom: At least you aren’t calling me Ronald, like last week.
Ava: Go back to bed Ronald. It’s time for a games news disco.
Tom: Ahhhh. Don’t you love the fresh air, the rolling hills, the dry stone walls, the tiny paddocks? The babbling brook, the adorable bleats, the bark of the collie hard at work? ‘Tis a fine day to work the fields.
Ava: I don’t know why you’ve brought me here, but I’m pretty sure there’s a terrible joke coming.
Tom: It’s time to round up the Games Ewes.
Ava: Yup. There we go.
Ava: I wasn’t particularly gripped by the pitch for Disney Shadowed Kingdom in the press release, but at the last minute it said that this was going to be followed up by new bits for Unmatched, and realising Mondo was the same publisher almost made me curious. After all, Quinns recently gave Unmatched a pretty glowing review.
Tom: Do you re-mem-ber!
Ava: No.
Tom: The fact that it is now September!
Ava: No.
Tom: Onwards to Newsville!
Quinns: Morning Ava! I am wearing my Tom suit and Tom hat and am happy to help you with the news today
Ava: Quinns, have you just glued a rat to your face and stapled bacon to your clothes? I don’t even understand why you would think that was a Tom Suit.
Quinns: Wait, no. The suit and hat was just a bit of the theatre of the mind. You would just pretend I was dressed like Tom and we could start the news after some light banter.
Ava: So what’s the deal with the bacon and the rat?
Quinns: Let’s roast us some news!
Ava: Sit Down games just never shut up with their constant weird ideas, and I’m into it.
Dive features an unusual blend of see-through cards and diving for treasure. Players build a stack of these clear plastic cards, then peer down into them and try to judge how far down certain obstacles and treasures are. You’ll use oxygen to program a safe route down, hoarding valuable tokens on the levels where they think there’s something particularly tasty. Once everyone’s built their route, you’ll be removing cards to see how far everybody got. Get the furthest with the most treasure and you’ve won the dive. I can think of several ways this might be really boring or awful, but if it works, it could be a really lovely unique game.