Paul: Something very strange is happening in board games.
You may be in danger. We may be in danger. Of course, everyone here at Shut Up & Sit Down takes all necessary precautions in the course of their duties, but nevertheless I don’t believe any of us could’ve foreseen Raxxon, Plaid Hat’s latest game, which is slowly spreading.
Is anyone safe?
Paul: Quinns help me I have Kickstarters coming out of my-
Quinns: OH MY GOD WE NEED TO GET YOU TO A DOCTOR.
Paul: Yep. Maybe that doctor could help me with Star Realms Frontiers. This beloved tiny card game that you first wrote about in your 2015 Corner Awards has grown so large! Perhaps it needs to be lanced? It’s up to nearly five hundred thousand dollars. Half a million!
That’s a lot of money, but then this is no small deal, is it? No sir, this Kickstarter is offering a whole new wave of Star Realms products, from a new standalone expansion that can be combined with the original game or Colony Wars, to a whole load of other, smaller card sets, all of which can be freely intermingled to create a (wait for it) STAR GALAXY of cards. This is an absolutely colossal edition to a game that’s already a) not small and b) ever-growing in both scope and popularity.
Quinns: Paul, I understand you enjoy placing illustrated tiles on a grid.
Paul: I hope this is alluding to the Kickstarter for Founders of Gloomhaven, and not my rare sex fetish.
Quinns: Exactly that! Wait, what?
Paul: You haven’t heard? Founders of Gloomhaven is board gaming’s latest Kickstarter smash hit. Remember Kickstarter fantasy co-op adventure Gloomhaven? Well, Founders of Gloomhaven is a second game from designer Isaac Childres set in the same world, but this time he’s offering a competitive game of building a city featuring “a unique mix of tile placement, action selection, hand management, worker placement, and blind bidding.”
Quinns: It sounded like you said “rare sex fetish.”
Paul: Founders of Gloomhaven has already raised almost $300,000, and it still has twenty-four more days to soar past its funding goal.
Quinns: Paul have you had enough of game of thrones yet
Paul: The honest, complex and difficult answer to that question is both yes and no.
Quinns: Paul would you like another game of thrones board game
Paul: no
Quinns: Terrific because here comes A Game of Thrones Catan Brotherhood of the Watch!
Paul: I’m glad they picked a name that rolls off the tongue.
Paul: For the 90% of the Earth’s population that lives in the Northern Hemisphere, we are now well into HOT SUMMER FUN. Maybe. Probably. Unless you’re somewhere that doesn’t tend to have so much HOT SUMMER FUN, like maybe Greenland or a part of Russia where there is just a yak.
Quinns: Yaks can be pretty important, you know. When I was backpacking in Tibet they were a cornerstone of agriculture. Yak dumplings. Yak-stuffed bread. Yak butter tea.
Paul: Yak butter tea. What was that like?
Quinns: Well, try to imagine what something called “yak butter tea” might taste like.
Paul: OK.
Quinns: It tasted exactly like that.
Paul: Is this yak anecdote going anywhere?
Quinns: No, I think I just slept funny
Paul: Should I get on with the news?
Quinns: NEWWWS
Paul: Right then. That’s another whole heap of stories loaded into the Games News trebuchet and ready to be launched into the world. What do we have this time? Seems like Vikings, rampant global sickness, gem hoarding and…?
Quinns: Murder.
Paul: Oh yes. Murder. Seems there’s always a lot of murder in board games.
Quinns: Gotta give the public what they want. Shall we fire this thing, then? We should let loose the news that Fantasy Flight Games are releasing the new Whitehall Mystery, a standalone cousin to SU&SD hidden movement favourite Letters from Whitechapel.
Quinns: Morning everybody! We’ve got good news and bad news for you. The good news is that during last week’s “Stream of Annihilation” where Wizards of the Coast announced a whole load of new Dungeons & Dragons products via Twitch, we found out that dinosaurs are coming to the D&D world!
The bad news is that they seem to have zero interest in renaming the brand “Dungeons, Dragons & Dinosaurs”, or DD&D. Imagine! After a few more years of announcements they could be selling Dungeons, Dragons, Dinosaurs, Diplomats, Dinghies, Derby’s and Dancers, or DDDDDD&D.
Paul: A couple of board games came out of this announcement. We’re getting the Dungeons & Dragons: Tomb of Annihilation Board Game, which can be combined with all those D&D board games that came out in 2011, and we’re also getting Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate. Which is–
Quinns: Oh no
Paul: Which is a Dungeons & Dragons-themed version of fabled box of nonsense Betrayal at the House on the Hill.
Quinns: Oh, no.
Paul: Quinns. QUINNS.
Quinns: PAUL WHAT IS IT.
Paul: I HAD A NIGHTMARE.
Quinns: WHAT HAPPENED.
Paul: I dreamt that you agreed to get the new Zombicide Kickstarter and play it even though it’s $120. And you certainly wouldn’t be alone in doing so! At the time of writing this Kickstarter has raised almost $2 million from more than 16,000 backers.
Quinns: Well, like Zombicide: Green Horde’s setting, your dream remains very much in the realm of fantasy. But for once, this site has a very good reason for throwing shade on Zombicide.
Paul: At last, summer is coming, at least to the Northern Hemisphere, and with it the promise of board games outside in the sunshine, games that you spill your juice on, games covered in ants. BUT WHICH board games are we most looking forward to covering in ants in the near future?
Quinns: Well Paul, do you remember when we said that Funemployed was the best game ever and our audience refused to buy it because they were terrified, en masse, by the prospect of having to be funny?
Paul: Oh yes.
Quinns: Do you want to try and sell a funny experience ONE MORE TIME?
Paul: DOUBLE OR QUITS, BABY.
Paul: Quinns! The oven timer has gone off! What have you got in there, exactly? It looks like… bread.
Quinns: No, that’s not bread that’s rising. It’s THE EMPIRE.
Paul: Is it going to take long? I wanted to put a pizza in.