Ava: Welcome to Board Game Celebrity Squares! The quiz where all the biggest names in board games have games coming out soon, and they’ll probably mostly be coming out in boxes that are square shaped. Hence the squares.
Tom: Ava, I don’t think that sounds much like a game show.
Ava: What’s a game show?
Ava: There’s a fair bit of buzz around Alexander Pfister’s next big box game, as the designer of Great Western Trail, Oh My Goods and Maracaibo reaches for the future, and the skies.
Matt: Monday humans! Hello! I am temporarily kidnapping the news with a little SU&SD Official Announcement: famously shuffling around like a dad on a wedding dancefloor, our Twitch streaming has now settling on “Tuesday Evenings”. Starting tomorrow – where you can tune in to see me dabble with Warp’s Edge – a solo space adventure! As we mentioned super-briefly in our recent video about how people can support Shut Up & Sit Down, the easiest way by far for those who have Amazon Prime is to link their account with Twitch Prime, and press a button once a month that creates *free money*. It’s a faff, though so we really appreciate it! Either way, we’ve been having a lot of fun hanging out with some of you on the internet – in a year without conventions, it fills a fun space! Anyway, I hope to see some of you tomorrow…. IN SPACE.
Ava: Oh dear. Aside from that pre-baked chunk of text from the bosses, it seems that this week I’ve been left on my own for the news. That means there’s nobody to stop me from shoehorning increasingly tenuous musical references into, well, everything.
I mean, there is. Matt’s the editor, and he gets to delete whatever the hell he likes. But if I leave him with an intro that directly references it, he’s stuck with it, right? That’s how this works? Right?
Ava: Expelled? From board game school? But I played by all the rules! And you’re not even the head of board game school, you’re just a janitor! Surely you can’t have expulsion privileges?!
Tom: Ava, everyone has expulsion privileges at board game school. It’s a loophole in the rules – the only way to get back in is to write a compelling 2,000 word essay on this week’s hot games news. Either that, or eat a whole copy of Roads and Boats.
Ava: Hmm, I had Bus for breakfast. I guess it’ll have to be the news.
Ava: Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn took quite a few by storm back in 2015, and wrapped up with a big finale after a successful run of expansions. Now it’s all happening again, like a groundhog-flavoured phoenix.
Ava: It’s getting news in here, so take off all your news. I am, getting so news, I’m gonna take my news off.
Tom: Whoa, nelly! Cool your news boots. That’s just a bit too news.
Ava: I know Tom, I know. But GenCon Online has given us so much news, that I think we are literally going to take our news off, saving some for next week. As is semi traditional, this week focuses mostly on the big players (who get their details online the quickest), as it takes a week or so for the more interesting oddities to start shining through. And oh my word, the biggest game is getting bigger. I nearly put my hype-drive into ludicrous mode for this one.
Tom: Hello Ava! How is your day so far? I indulged in having a rare THREE slices of toast this morning, 33% more than my usual breakfast.
Ava: Oh dear. Returning to the homestead has lowered your standards for excitement?
Tom: I’m gearing up to film a review in a garage, Ava. It’s all downhill from here.
Ava: I got a bit dazzled last Monday when I found myself accidentally watching Reiner Knizia wearing a hard hat and matching bow tie. He was there to not win the biggest award in board games, the Spiel Des Jahres. I’m a bit sad he dressed up for nothing, but he also looked like he was having a whale of a time.
Tom: He also looks like a rogue trader pretending to be a magician.
Ava: The winners were in fact Daniela and Christian Stöhr designers of Pictures, a game of drawing things without pens. Instead you’re recreating photos using building blocks, pixelated cubes and bits of shoelace. I’ve not found myself particularly intrigued, if I’m honest, but often the details are what makes a party game sing and I’d like to give it a pop.
Tom: I’m doing it! I’m finally piloting the newscopter! I can see so many games from my perch in the sky! I’ve dialed down the whimsy-ometer, and the daftosphere has been calibrated. All the news is trickling out the newspipes – I can see my NEWS from here!
Matt: OK Tom, gosh. Fine – you can keep flying the newscopter for a COUPLE OF MINUTES, but for heaven’s sake – crank the Reprint-Rotor before we have a terrible accident?
Tom: Yessir!
Queen Games’ delirious Twitter teasing has finally led us to its natural conclusion. The cities have been revealed, the mystery is gone, you can all go home now thank you very much that’s quite enough. The first of the City Collection is Hamburg, a reimplementation of 2013’s Bruges – which, as you can tell, is not Hamburg. It’s Bruges.
Matt: Yeah, switching from Bruges to Hamburg isn’t exactly the most enthralling re-theme?
Tom: Fictional scenario with humorous implications!
Ava: Harmless pre-amble with light twists of jokery!
Tom: Slight pun, sensible query?
Ava: Query resolved, questionable segue into the news!
Ava: I can’t not talk about that teaser trailer for Pandemic Legacy Season 0. My understanding is that if I’d tuned into the stream last tuesday, I would’ve been able to watch Matt complete a teaser jigsaw with a secret code on the back. I’m really hoping Tom was watching and knows if we’ve gleaned any exciting spoilers.
Tom: I was not present for the assembly, though I did pop in to quickly clip Matt looking his daftest.
Matt: In my defence, I am incredibly daft. It turns out I’d vastly underestimated both the time and energy required to ‘Do A Jigsaw’ – five hours of live-streaming a muddy brown puzzle left me shamefully too wiped out to actually solve the mystery behind the clues I’d uncovered. I still don’t know exactly what I missed, but I gather I missed *something* quite vital – the next day I even went so far as to heat up the accompanying note in a wok in the hope that a heat-sensitive message would reveal itself. You can’t mark me down for effort, I guess?
Tom: “HIKING UP THE NEWSTRAIL / SINGIN’ MY NEWSTRAIL SOOONG! / GONNA FIND SOME NEWSES / OH WON’T YOU SING ALONG?”
Ava: No. Today’s news will be presented in a bland monotone with absolutely no musical interludes whatsoever.
Tom: Sad.
Ava:. Don’t be sad Tom, I’m obviously lying. Have you met Shut Up and Sit Down? Pretty much everything we say ends up sung to the tune of some soft rock classic or another.
Tom: We did a musical count in last week too, didn’t we.
Ava: There’s a pandemic and a climate crisis going on, we’re allowed to recycle. One! Two! Many! Lots!
Stonemaier games haven’t quite landed a perfect hit with the review squad here at Shut Up and Sit Down, but they’ve knocked out some beautiful shots, and it’s hard to ignore when they announce something new. Their latest game evolved out of one of their open design days, apparently their highest ever rating prototype, and is now getting the full Stonemaier treatment.
Tom: Tickets are now available to purchase for the first Games News Gig. Our genre is cardboard and our instruments are words. Join us for a little ditty we like to call ‘The Games News This Week, On The 22nd of June 2020’. It’s going to be OUT THERE.
Ava: Give me a second, I need to look up a very, very, very, niche reference.
Tom: I’ll do a sound check. Let’s play that old classic – ‘The Stream Schedule For The Next Two Weeks Starting On The 22nd of June 2020, Also’.
And a one, and a two, and a one two three four TUUUUESDAY!! PLAYIN’ GLOOMHAYyYY(ven jaws of the lion) THEN THURSDAYYYY!! PLAYIN’ (an rpg called Mothership episode two, catch up on the first episode live on youtube today) TAKE IT AWAY, AVA!
Ava: I’ve lost the words!!
Tom: Huh. I guess we’ll just have to improvise when we get there.
Ava: This one’s for Brian Jones and all the other dinosaurs that got kicked out of the band! 1-2-3-4!
Tom: NEEEEEEEWWWWSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
