News 29 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Games News! 25/07/16

Paul: Oh my word. This week’s Games News is a BUMPER CROP. It seems that, as harvest season approaches, the industry is just so damn fertile. The boughs are heavy with games. The fields are thick with gossip. The vineyards are ripe with new releases. Let’s get our scythes out and SWING AWAY.

First up, though, let’s pluck and bite right into the biggest piece of industry news in some time: Board games titan Asmodee has moved to acquire F2Z Entertainment, no small fry in their own right. With each passing year, Asmodee grow ever stronger…

Paul: Oh God! It’s Games News! Surfacing from the incalculable depths of the most primeval ocean of our aged and weary world, Games News thrusts forth, it’s horrid, gnarled body made entirely from board game stories. It reaches toward a tiny fishing tug, crushing the terrified sailors within with a single blow from a throbbing tentacle ten fathoms long…

But let’s just take a closer look at that tentacle. It’s made entirely out of an announcement for the forthcoming 4 Gods, a new game from the designer of the excellent Archipelago! Hooray!

Quinns: Paul, you’re just in time! I was about to test my state-of-the-art news flying machine. Climb aboard! We’ll see the whole board game hobby at a glance.

Paul: Oh god what is that it looks like an egg carton had sex with a ceiling fan

Quinns: AND WE’RE OFF

Paul: Hello and welcome to a very fresh and very exciting Games News! Today I shall bungee from the precipice of journalism deep into the chasm of news, bouncing back upward with only the most thrilling of scoops, the choicest tidbits of board game gossip, the tastiest morsels for your so very particular palate. Does latter suggest that I’m actually dropping out of the sky to snatch at food, like a snickering seagull? Well, I suppose that would be the killjoy’s way of putting it.

Anyway! Let’s kick off with some good old-fashioned wooden chunks.

Quinns: Exhausted from the UK Games Expo, I have slithered up to my desk with a biscuit and a cup of tea to write the news. Huge thanks to everyone who came along to our live shows, played a part in our live review or witnessed our epic game of Question Wood Toy Folds High. If you weren’t there, not to worry! All will be posted on this site in good time.

As for the spicy slivers of news I’ll be dishing up like a powerful dad, we begin with the announcement of 2016’s Spiel des Jahres nominations! A shadowy council of German board gamers has once again met to hand out board gaming’s most prestigious award, and the only one that can multiply a game’s sales 100 times over. But this year we’ve played all the nominees!

I wonder what we shall think…

Quinns: Good morning board-babies! Pour yourself a mug of something hot and let me pop the very finest board gaming announcements off of the internet for you, like tokens from high-quality punchboard. It’s the Games News.

For want of anything else with a nice header image, our top story is the reveal of Pandemic: Iberia. Hot on the heels of the Pandemic: Reign of Cthulu announcement, Z-Man Games has sent word of yet another spin-off.

Pandemic: Iberia will transport the co-operative disease-battling game to 1848, with a host of changes to the game itself, including the chance distribute fresh water and build railways during your battle malaria and yellow fever. Because of course, you no longer have the option of chartering flights!

Quinns: What’s the world coming to? It’s Expansionanuary in May!

This week we’ve got news that all sorts of SU&SD favourites are getting improved and expanded, starting with Widow’s Walk, an expansion for bizarro horror movie simulator Betrayal at the House on the Hill. The spooktacular new box will add 50 new haunts, 20 new rooms and lots more.

And that’s not even the best bit. Let me walk you through why this announcement totally blindsided me.

Paul: Quinns, what’s going on? Why is there a spotlight? Why’s there a leather chair? What happened to our usual set?

Quinns: Paul, ask me some questions entirely at random!

Paul: Oh God what now.

Quinns: Also I’ve set up a countdown clock and buzzer!

Games News! 04/04/16

Quinns: Oh, wow. Making the news bi-weekly in 2016 was a fantastic decision. We always have so many stories to choose from! Admittedly they’re less new, so technically we’re working with less news, but if it’s new news to you then whoops can somebody get me a tissue I just got a nosebleed FIRST UP, board games once again crept into the peripheral vision of the public eye this month as Russia banned the Polish board game Queue for its depiction of the dismal experience of shopping in USSR-era Poland, with its lengthy queues, poor stock availability and rife black market trading.

Quinns: My god! We just got back from running our board game lounge at the annual Game Developer’s Conference and it looks like someone left the news spigot flowing for the entire time.

Our biggest story is that Ra, one of Reiner Knizia’s old and therefore good games, is coming back in a pretty new print run! In a rare example of SU&SD being ahead of the curve (rather than about two months behind it) our entire team has actually played the original 1999 auction game and is in agreement that it’s well worth your money.

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