Paul: Hello and welcome again to another pumping, vibrant edition of Shut Up & Sit Down’s Games News. As the introductory sting fades away, let me swivel my chair to face camera two and sternly address you all with our lead story. Please duck to make way for the swooshing infographic, which gives thanks to both Meople’s Magazine and BoardGameGeek’s News Blog who, along with many publisher announcements, help to keep us informed.
As I settle myself upon the News Bellows, the first blast of gas that bursts forth announces Fireteam Zero, a co-op game for two to four players set in a gruesome vision of the 1940s which has been populated by all sorts of monstrous horrors. You and your friends take control of a squad of specialist US Army Rangers and must fight your way through three act missions full of… things. Bad things
It has quite the pedigree behind it: Christian Leonhard, co-designer of such well-loved games as 1960: The Making of the President and Founding Fathers is joined by author Michael Langlois and artist Gary Simpson, who beautified SUSD favourite Summoner Wars. Its designers describe it as a game of “heroic badassery” and “a mix of miniature-based combat like Descent, Mansions of Madness, or Mice and Mystics, but it also uses a deck of cards for each hero’s actions.” This looks like one to keep an eye on.
As a transitional sting bleats, I shuffle my papers and stare down the camera, right into your soul, moving on to the latest on Shadowrun Crossfire, a near-future deck-building game of hackers and megacorps and… wait a second. Wait a second. Is this someone trying to muscle in on Netrunner’s territory? Quinns is going to be so mad.
At first, I was a little confused because we looked at a Shadowrun game back in July and I don’t remember it being this. Then I remembered that we are, in fact, in The Year of Shadowrun (no kidding) and a bunch of different things are happening. We’d only nodded our news noggins towards Shadowrun Returns, a hugely successful Kickstarter that exploded (not literally, thankfully) in April but, independent of that, publisher Catalyst Games also have Big Plans.
They want to release Crossfire, their deck-builder, Hostile Takeover, a “euro-style board game,” and Sprawl Gangers, a skirmish miniatures game. Unfortunately, the release date for Crossfire has been slipping like a camisole on a carousing countess and we may not see it this year. Still, all this Shadowrun stuff is also worth keeping an eye on, and not simply because of the camisole metaphor.
In the world of board games news it’s impossible to ignore the titan that is Kickstarter and, as the sun swivels about the sky, it once again casts its broad, dollar-shaped shadow across us. First to scuttle across our news ticker today is Keyflower: The Farmers. We first looked at this Keyflower expansion back in August and we’re delighted to see it Kickstarted so very, very fast. It adds a bunch of animals, wheat and some zip storage bags.
When I was five years old I wanted to be a farmer, mostly because I thought it would be a job with a lot of variety and not a job where I got up at five in the morning to attach a pump to a cow’s mammaries or put a metal bolt through a pig’s head. Fortunately, it looks like none of this happens in The Farmers and instead you get to enjoy some more boats.
Now to Paul, who is on location with this special Kickstarter report.
Paul: Thanks, Paul. I’m here in Warwickshire, Eng-er-lund, to ask if miniatures games are now a license to print money. It certainly seems so for local heroes Prodos Games, whose Aliens vs Predator adaptation is the latest hugely successful Kickstarter. With ten days still to go, the team have already raised five times their goal.
As well as a box of miniatures and modular room and corridor tiles, the AvP miniatures game also includes solo rules, should you want to selfishly hoard all your things yourself.
Paul: Thank you, Paul. The gently throbbing soundtrack you hear running under my words means it’s just about time to wrap up here. A quick look at tomorrow’s papers gives us the headlines Fifth Formula D Expansion In Gear (thanks, BGG), Legend of the Five Rings Love Letter Lands and Fantasy Flight CEO in Glass Mustache Trance Terror. More on that story at ten. For now, that’s all from the news sphincter.
