SU&SD is host to a grand old game today! Fief is a negotiation-heavy wargame that’s been around since 1981, and a fancy new edition titled Fief: France 1429 has just arrived. What will the boys make of it?
This review features a special segment on WHEN BOARD GAMES GO BAD. It’s a tear-jerker.
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Pip: I hadn’t really thought of what I did to my copy of travel Guess Who as modding – it was just a fun project which saved me from a gift-giving conundrum. But Quinns thought other people might fancy doing something similar so he asked me to share the instructions. First, though, some backstory:
Sometimes there are people in your life who are impossible to buy presents for. These people are terrible jerks. They often have a single big main interest or hobby. “Hooray,” you think. “I will buy them a thing from this interest or hobby and all will be well. This is genius!”
Then you realise that actually they buy everything they value from that hobby the second it comes out and if they don’t own it it’s because it’s not worth having or is beyond the reach of a mortal wallet.
“Don’t worry,” they say magnanimously. “I’m sure I will love whatever you get me.”
These are the words of a terrible jerk.
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Quinns: “The best four days in gaming” (or at least the most ludicrous) are just around the corner! Following our inaugral expedition last year, team SU&SD will once again be heading to Gen Con to meet strange new beverages, play some strangers and drink deeply of new games.
If you’re going too, we’ve got a couple of events for you to attend!
You can now buy tickets for our Second Ever Live Podcast! This time we’re expecting working microphones, although we’ve been downgraded from a 300 person room to 250 people. Next year we’ll get our heads around Gen Con’s arcane ticketing system, we promise, followed by a live breakdown in front of 1,000 people.
No tickets whatsoever are required for our PARTY, though! Tomlinson’s Tap Room (pictured above) is once again opening its doors to us and anyone who’d like to meet us from 7pm to 11pm on Friday 31st. Last year we ran Two Rooms and a Boom and then wandered around playing games people had brought. This year? Who knows! I’m threatening to run Still Life but the others will talk me out of it if they know what’s best.
We hope to see you there. x
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Quinns: Paul, wake up. It’s time to do the Games News again! This week, we have all sorts of interesting things. There’s technology and Italians and convention news! Hurry up, we can’t dally!
Paul: Oh boy, was I sleeping? Why was I sleeping?
Quinns: I got excited about Flick ‘Em Up and threw a wooden chopping board at your head.
Paul: Flick ’em Up? The wild west dexterity game you spotted back at the Gathering of Friends (that we weren’t invited to)?
Quinns: The very same. Professional press photos have been released, and first time publishers Pretzel Games has already announced an expansion adding horses, lassos and ramps!
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After failing to steal a miniature AT-ST in last year’s Gen Con special, Matt, Paul and Quinns have come together to deliver the definitive, official verdict on Star Wars: Imperial Assault.
Is it better than its predecessor, Descent 2nd Edition? Why is Paul grunting at the camera? And why does Quinns look so sad? You’ll have your answers to all this, AND MORE.
WARNING: We’re currently having our copyright for this video reviewed! This is not a joke. If the link goes down, we’ll repair it ASAP. Parody is fair use!
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[We’re thrilled to welcome back Eric Tonjes, SU&SD company Nebraskan and miniatures gaming expert, for a second review! If you missed his first column click here, and if you missed why a review of Warmachine is topical this week have a peek at the news.]
Eric: Welcome back to our survey of the world of miniatures wargames. This week, our game is Warmachine and Hordes. “But wait,” you might be thinking. “Eric, aren’t those two games?”
Well, my imaginary interlocutor, sort of. Warmachine is a game about steam powered robots with smokestacks bigger than their legs, where wizards shoot spells out of pistols and your “warcaster” channels their willpower to bend the battlefield to their plans. Hordes, by contrast, is a game about lumbering monsters with fists bigger than their heads, where wizards shoot spells out of staffs and your “warlock” channels their rage to bend the battlefield to their plans.
Other than their different resource systems and specific units, they use exactly the same rules and setting and can be played against each other. Indeed, Hordes is often referred to under the umbrella of “Warmachine” (a convention I will continue here), or the grammatically monstrous “Warmahordes” (which I will hopefully never type again).
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Quinns: Good MORNING everybody! What do you get up to this weekend? Answers in the comments below. Keep ’em short, sweet and tell me what your favourite component was.
The big story this week is the arrival of Games Workshop’s divisive, eccentric reboot of Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. The new ruleset scraps point values for miniatures, leaving players to guess at what a fair fight might look like. It also adds a ton of bonuses that players can earn by acting a certain way while they play. Own a stuck-up High Elf dragon rider? You can re-roll your dice if you don’t smile for the entire hero phase.
A lot of Warhammer fans are confused. Some are upset. Some are really upset. And then you have the guy who uploaded a video where he sets fire to his army.
I’ve been watching the fallout for a week. It’s nuts!
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Buckle up, boardkids! It’s time for Team SU&SD to tackle the Official 38th Best Board Game of All Time: Trajan. A game of thrashing as many victory points as you can out of Ancient Rome.
Don’t believe what you’ve heard. Shut Up & Sit Down can still handle heavy eurogames.
…or can they?
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You ever eat Nerd Rope? Just an endlessly long, glutinous tongue, speckled with sour little gobbets? That’s basically the 30th ever SU&SD podcast. On this lengthy journey of no less than one hour and one minute, we discuss the absence of bitterness in the magnificent Forbidden Stars. We chat about the sheer joy of Funemployed … Read more
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Thrower: Do you find numbers scary? Do you dread the pointy 1, the razor-sharp 7, the misery of an unsolved sum? If you do, you’ve probably realised that most board games are just fearsome equations wearing friendly grins.
Designers, however, understand this, and more. They welcome it, glory in it, roll in it like pigs in mathematical mud. Because it’s what they use to build the foundations of something fun, yet something real.
Take Volko Ruhnke, designer of contemporary wargames Labyrinth and the Counter-Insurgency (or COIN) series. “Most board games and video games that are about something are models,” he told me. “Trading games, railroad building games, shooting games, strategic war games. They all communicate the game designers’ model of certain aspects of human affairs.”
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