News 39 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Games News! 17/03/14

Quinns: It’s still Simplicity Week here at SU&SD! While I have no control over what the news is (such things are beyond the grasp of mere mortals, like the weather or burning oven pizzas), I will be rating each news story on how wonderfully simple it manages to be.

Our top story is the announcement of Lords of Xidit! Seen above, this is a re-invention of award-winning 2002 release Himalaya, set in the universe of Seasons. They are taking a game about managing yak caravans, and turning it into a game where you play an Idrakys in the realm of Xidit working together but also competing to fight The Black Southern Host while hiring bards and not forgetting to build sorcerer’s guilds.

SIMPLICITY RATING: An abomination, burn it with fire.

Quinns: Good morning, my mewling clutch of board-kittens! You look adorable! Alas, I know your secret. If you don’t get your weekly games news, you’ll become a snapping, thrashing pit of board-gators, keen to rend my body like so much gory blu-tac.

I’m quite attached to my body (specifically, by my skeleton) so let’s get you your news. It’s the 100th anniversary of the Panama Canal, and Stronghold Games has announced PANAMAX, a board game of managing shipping companies located in the Free Zone of Colon. An area I thought was to be found nnnnnnno apparently I have too much moral fortitude to make that particular joke about Paul’s mum.

Paul: Welcome, welcome to Games News. How many of you are there? Just the one, or you might be joined later? Very well, please follow me. Here, is this seat by the window acceptable? Excellent.

Today’s specials include a particularly unusual video, a wide selection of Kickstarters, some very special special editions and a veal with nut roast. Ah, I see you’re interested in the Space Cadets buffet, a smorgasbord of space chaos. Let me recommend you an excellent wine to go with that.

Quinns: Today’s Games News is brought to you by this endless remix of the BBC News 24 theme, which I’ll be listening to throughout. At the time of writing my friend Alex, who works at the Guardian, has been listening to it for about 40 minutes. “At 28:44 you may experience a feeling of oneness with journalism,” he warns me. “It is a lie.” Everyone who is similarly mad can join me by following that first link.

NOW, our first order of business is to bring “…and then we held hands…” to everyone’s attention. This is a print’n’play game jam project that imagines two players as a couple, struggling through a failing relationship. Imagine a heartbreaking Hanabi where instead of managing a firework display, you’re navigating the metaphorical fireworks of two lovers arguing in an apartment.

Quinns: I didn’t want to start with news that mediocrity-peddler Cryptozoic is now shipping the official Adventure Time Card Game, but it’s the only story with a decent image. The sacrifices we must make so that SU&SD doesn’t look like butt!

When I first heard that this was a real game based on the fictional Card Wars game they play in episode 92 of Adventure Time (potentially illegal video here), I thought this was an adorable idea. It’s only now I realise that’s like designing a game with one hand tied behind your back, while your other hand is tied to a game that doesn’t exist and looks rubbish. So let’s move on to some ACTUALLY EXCITING NEWS!

Quinns: A perk of this job is that I get to decide what qualifies as our top story each week. However, when you have an addiction as life-swallowing as mine, sometimes it isn’t really a choice.

This week Fantasy Flight announced it will be taking Android: Netrunner INTO SPACE, with a new “cycle” of card expansions known as the Lunar Cycle. Now, the moon is a pretty exciting place. This we can agree on. But what’s really exciting is that the Lunar Cycle’s express purpose to tip up the game’s gravity, to encourage new strategies, and produce cards that aren’t necessarily strong, but just weird.

When half the thrill of Netrunner is watching it evolve, and your friends inventing (and then slapping you with) freaky new decks, that’s the best news we could have possibly hoped for.

Quinns: Ooh, it’s nice to have dramatic news to lead off with. Fantasy Flight has done a grand reveal of the first “Huge Ship Expansion” for their excellent X-Wing Miniatures Game, the GR-75 Rebel transport. Just look at it! Imagine how many new players it’s going to bring to the game when they double-take at it in their local game shop.

We all knew that these huge ship packs would be an investment (the Rebel transport will cost $60), so it’s nice to see that they’ll be a mini-expansion in and of themselves, with new rules for damage, movement and energy, an x-tra X-wing, and a deluge of tokens and cards. And this is just the first of the two huge ships revealed at Gen Con last year, with the other being approx. 20% huger (and $90).

But wait, because I’ve got some expansion news that’s even more exciting!

Quinns: Morning, everyone! Are you WELL? Is your soul a-thrum with jazz and song? If not, have another coffee, we’ll get you there.

Our news begins with a Washington Post article, “In the world of war games, Volko Ruhnke has become a hero”. Mr. Ruhnke is a national security analyst for the CIA, as well as the gunpowder mind behind GMT’s fascinating COIN series (COunter INsurgency). It’s great to see table gaming treated with such glimmering professionalism. It’s even greater to see the conversation around the hobby elevated. Then you’ve got lines like this:

Quinns: I’ll just pre-empt this one before you all start shouting. Wretchedly-named German publisher ABACUSSPIELE has announced Limes! And it’s limes, but not as we know it.

A limes is actually the singular form of the Latin “limites”- a line deliniating the boundary of the Roman empire. The actual game of Limes will be a reimplementation of Cities, and that’s probably all you need to know about a game that looks monumentally mediocre!

Look at me, coaxed into an oxymoron not six hours into the week. Awful!

Quinns: Small announcement, everybody. Last week, a Mr. Keith Block saw fit to make fun of me in the comments of Games News, pointing out that some of the stories I was running were from 2013.

Now, I love jokes. I can take a joke. But Keith, I’d like to suggest you be a bit more like Ben Rubenstein, who in the same comments thread pointed me toward some news and didn’t feel the need to be a disrespectful twerp who also smells.

One such story was the Kickstarter for Fief, which looks absolutely fantastic. Most Kickstarters set off my internal effluvium klaxon, but this? This is a classic French board game, being updated and translated by the enormously talented Academy Games, who made 1812 and Freedom.

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