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Review: Anomia

Brendan: Oh man, since Paul and Quinns left at the end of the sci-fi special I have nobody to play board games with. Hey, Supercomputer, do you want to play Anomia with me? It’s a quick-fire party game about blurting out words under pressure and beating your friends to the punch. You’ll like it!

Supercomputer: Anomia. Latin origin. Meaning “without name”. Would you like me to run a simulation of the universe without names, nouns, pronouns, designa—

Brendan: No! I mean, no Supercomputer, but thank you. I just want to play this simple card game with someone. I’m sad that my friends left. You remember what we talked about? Sad? It’s an emotion.

Supercomputer: Runtime error. Do you mean when those called Paul Dean and Quintin Smith inexplicably abandoned you to become an accountant and a low cost assassin respectively? Reducing the number of your human friendship circle from 2 to 0?

Brendan: It’s not zero! Matt is still my friend.

Supercomputer: Initial and ongoing analysis of his facial expressions indicates that the one called Matt Lees regards you as subhuman and without merit. Would you like me to run a simulation of some friends?

Brendan: …

Paul: Hey Matt! Sorry to call unannounced. How are you? You’re looking well!

Thrower: What do you want?

Paul: Oh. I did kind of stop by to ask you a .. favour?

Thrower: I told you I could attach the beaks, I couldn’t take them off again.

Paul: NO! It’s that, well, you and I have been playing a lot of these wargames, and I …

Thrower: You’re enjoying them?

Paul: Is that it? Yes! I’m enjoying them. The strategy’s so absorbing, the theme so transporting. I was hoping you might be able to perhaps suggest a few I could try with people who aren’t … you?

[Our own Leigh Alexander has been learning Netrunner, which we reviewed here. She found the experience pretty important, and we arrived at this. A long collaborative feature, with comments from Quinns and art from Jesse Turner. Enjoy, everybody.]

Leigh: “I can’t,” I say, and my voice sounds small and far away.

“Yes, you can,” says Quinns across the table. “Just think. You just have to stay calm.”

I have to stay calm, I think, but my body revolts. My guts secede, and warm fingers of shame crawl up my cheeks. Panic knocks gently but insistently at my breastbone. “I can’t,” I say, and it feels true. “I just can’t.”

“Look,” he says, gently. “You can get through this.”

“How,” I say, and there is a genuine tremor, an unhinged note I hear in my own voice and it makes me even angrier.

[This is the story of Earth #00001941. It comes to us from American journalist and fan of SU&SD Jacob Tierney, and holds the honour of being the first retrospective to almost make Quinns cry.

The following is spoiler-free. Images courtesy of BoardGameGeek.]

“NOTE: What’s done can never be undone.”

The statement is emblazoned on the sticker that seals every copy of Risk Legacy, forcing you to acknowledge it before you even open the box. It’s a warning, but also a promise. This game will be something completely different.

It was the last week of 2011. My friends and I had chipped in for one of the most-discussed games of recent memory, and we planned to complete it before I returned to college for my final semester the following month.

Completion is a weird concept in board games, which are usually meant to be infinitely replayable. But then, Risk Legacy is all about weird concepts.

Quinns: Welcome to the second of our indie RPG reviews! Last time we looked at Shooting the Moon, a lovely game of love. So what could be more suitable for our second game than Monsterhearts, the darkest game Shut Up & Sit Down has ever looked at.

Monsterhearts is a game of “the messy lives of teenage monsters,” where 2-4 players play a coterie of youthsome witches, vampires, fairies and so forth, who go to the same school. A final player’s job is simply to “make their lives interesting.” Which, as we found out, is the easiest job in gaming.

Leigh: Saying we “play as” monsters is only part of the story, isn’t it? The monster identity of each teenage character is as much allegorical as anything else. Or, rather, the particular traits, strengths, failings of these creatures as they’re prescribed by folklore have quite a lot in common with the stuff of growing-up drama. The Ghost who lurks at the edges, feeling invisible. The Werewolf afraid of the power in her dark side, the Vampire who can’t stop using others.

Quinns: Yes. It’s a metaphor! Except it’s… not?

Quinns: Hey! You’re up late. Come here, I want to show you something. Isn’t she becautiful? She’s called… “El Grande.”

What? She looks old?! Could you have some respect? Yes, she’s old. She was released in 1995, but she’s still for sale today because she’s a classic. She’s also one of my favourite games, and you’re going to listen as I tell you why. No, you can’t go to bed. Sit down. You might learn a thing or two. No you can’t have a glass of water. You screwed that up.

The thing is, we’re covering a lot of flashy games these days. Games of neon dice, plastic warriors, of mechanics so thick and layered as to resemble some glutinous design lasagne.

I like El Grande because it knows you don’t need any of that to be grand. It has almost royal quality you won’t find in any of this cardboard pomp.

Paul: Now Quinns, I know you’re still obsessed with Mage Wars-

Quinns: WIZARD! Oh my God did you read the part where your spells-

Paul: But if you don’t mind, I want to INTERJECT with an alternative game people could buy this week. Something sleeker and easier, that I think anyone can play, not just the people who wanted to be manticores when they grew up.

Quinns: I don’t understand. Are you still coming over tonight? I wove you a beard to wear out of my armp-

Paul: I’m SAYING I’m coming over, but I’m bringing Libertalia instead. I want to recommend this one to everyone. I think it’s really quite special.

[Introducing friend of SU&SD and games journalist Leigh Alexander.]

Quinns: So here’s what happened.

Leigh: OK.

Quinns: A while back some SU&SD readers joked that we should review Tease: The Liberating Game for Couples and Groups. I got in touch with the PR

Leigh: Oh, I’ll bet you did.

Quinns: I GOT IN TOUCH WITH THE PR, who said she wasn’t sure they
should send a game to a site that would probably just make fun of it. Which was a fair cop. I just wanted to do a video where four men play Tease and are forced to give one another massages.

Except then they sent me the game anyway! And… it’s… pretty good!

Quinns: Listen up, ladies. Fiasco: A Game of Powerful Ambition & Poor Impulse Control (which you can buy from that same link) is very much outside the realm of what we usually cover. It’s a two hour table game, but it has no cards, cardboard, winners or losers. It has almost no rules. But despite that, it’s perhaps the best game you’ve never even conceived of.

All you’re paying for here is a very thin, very affordable book. And with this book, you and some of your friends are going to roleplay your evening away. And you’ll laugh like garbage disposal units doing it.

Paul: Draw Christmas, without drawing a Christmas tree. How would you do it? The clock is ticking. Tick tock, tick tock. Tick. Tock. Maybe you’d draw a Christmas dinner! Of course! Wait, no, what you’ve drawn looks like the Last Supper fix it QUICKLY NOW oh dear too late everyone’s finished and you didn’t even bother trying to guess what they were drawing-

Quinns: Don’t be difficult. You’re being difficult-

Paul: DRAW “DIFFICULT.”

Review: Anomia

The Very Best Introductory Wargames!

Life Hacks: A Netrunner Story

Retrospective: Risk Legacy

RPG Review: Monsterhearts

Review: El Grande

Review: Libertalia

Review: Tease

RPG Review: Fiasco

Review: Pictomania

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