Ava: I don’t think you’re ready, for this jelly.
Tom: I don’t think i can handle this.
Ava: It’s just jelly Tom. It’s all just jelly.
Tom: And news, right?
Ava: Yeah, sure, you can call it that if you want!
Ava: I don’t think you’re ready, for this jelly.
Tom: I don’t think i can handle this.
Ava: It’s just jelly Tom. It’s all just jelly.
Tom: And news, right?
Ava: Yeah, sure, you can call it that if you want!
My god! 32 podcasts in and we’re finally approaching “professional”.
Paul, Matt and Quinns discuss the bold new Game of Thrones card game and think back on classic lie-athon Battlestar Galactica, before clearing the floor for an interview with veteran designer Eric Lang (Quarriors, XCOM: The Board Game, Chaos in the Old World). We close with a quick trip to the SU&SD mailbag and an impromptu game show(!).
We’ve done it, ladies and gents. It’s all downhill from here.
Read MoreQuinns: In a couple of weeks the 2nd edition of Fantasy Flight’s Game of Thrones: The Card Game, with its direwolves, chunky coins and endless pictures of sultry nobles, will be released. A lot of people are very excited, and with good reason- the 1st edition amassed a cult following, and the 2nd edition looks incredibly sharp.
You won’t be getting our review just yet. As a Living Card Game, this box encourages players to collect monthly expansions and build their own decks, and we want to have conviction when we suggest you get involved (or not). But I can offer some early impressions and comparisons to the LCGs that this site has gone on the record as recommending, namely the bizarre Doomtown and the sublime Netrunner (on the subject, Paul will have a review of Plaid Hat’s new card game Ashes in the next few weeks).
So let’s begin. How do you win the Game of Thrones?
I’m thrilled to say that it’s by being an appropriately sneaky f***.
Read MoreQuinns: Wow. 14 days in and Team SU&SD is out of the running in our month-long watergun hitman tournament. That was… an unexpected ending. Expect a video in a few weeks, featuring nature documentary-like footage of Paul executing his prey.
We kick off the news today with the unveiling of the “Premium” edition of Doomtown: Reloaded. Look at it up there! Originally a collectible card game of Lovecraftian cowboys which ran from 1998 to 2000, Doomtown will come back from the dead this Summer in a new, “expandable” format.
In other words, publishers Alderac are aping what Fantasy Flight have done with their collectible card games, where randomised booster packs are ignored in favour of healthier fixed expansion packs.
“Have you felt the weight of this thing?” Alderac CEO Perk Bojangles did not say yesterday to the assembled press. “I killed an intern with one of them. One blow! Back of the head! Pow.”
Read MoreQuinns: *yaaawn*
Oh, good morning! What are you doing in my house? This is weird. It’d be rude to bother the police this early, though. Why don’t you just tuck up in bed next to me and we’ll look at the games news together?
So far, the best news of 2014 is that this talk by Rob Daviau, designer of Risk Legacy (and the upcoming SeaFall: A Legacy Game), is now online. Delivered at New York University’s Practice game design conference last year, it’s a fascinating, unexpectedly hilarious hour of insight, and doubles as a preview of SeaFall.
I’ve embedded it beneath the jump, too. Do make time for it! You’ll be glad you did.
Read MorePaul: Hacking my way through the games news jungle this month, I’ve parted the thick, oily leaves to reveal great swathes of forgotten expansions, many of them lost beneath the undergrowth. As birds of paradise call out, as creatures of the wild scream to one another from the treetops, I see that the sun is setting. Come, time is short. We’ll have to make camp here.
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