RoboRally - Shut Up & Sit Down

Podcast #255 – Dragons & Demolitions

On this rambling, tangient-rich episode of the Shut Up & Sit Down Podcast, Tom and Pip chat Wings and Wyrms in a creature feature on Wyrmspan! Then, we take a break from the hotness to discuss an old classic that Tom was bored to tears by; Roborally.

Have a great weekend!

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With the release of The Quest for El Dorado, it seems that board gaming owes yet another debt to venerable designer Reiner Knizia. This game is a nail-biting race through a troublesome jungle, and we think it’s superb. A solid, simple, clean design.

…But what if you want a wobbly, complex, dirty design? Well, then you could pick up the Heroes & Hexes expansion, which Quinns also investigates in this video.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Pip: When living with a fellow board game enthusiast you have the benefit of a ready-made companion for cardboard adventures – HOORAY! – but you also start to realise that, for a lot of games that say they’re for 2-to-however-many-players on the side, there’s this disproportionately large leap in enjoyment between the two-player version and the three-or-more-player outings.

Robo Rally might be the ultimate illustration of this. With three people it’s a rambunctious clusterpickle of robots and conflicting agendas where your neatly programmed sequence of moves gets nudged hilariously and disastrously off course. With two we ended up trying to house-rule it so we could ginger up the experience and keep our momentum. Quinns informs me that SU&SD is all about reviewing board games in their favoured conditions, though, so consider this a review of Robo Rally the beloved 3-6 player omnishambles, and not Robo Rally the 2 player compromise-simulator.

Quinns: Please, everyone, take your places, fasten your seatbelts and keep your hands INSIDE THE VEHICLE AT ALL TIMES as we welcome you to a brand new year of board gaming, a year that promises to be a WILD RIDE.

Paul: Good morning! Good afternoon! Hello! Happy New Year! The Games News has been building up like snow over the holidays and we’ve been doing our very best to clear it, shoveling the path and salting the drive. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to avoid slipping on some exciting new gossip or falling face-first into a pile of previews. Let’s get right into things by talking about… oh no.

Robo Rally.

Quinns: Ladies and gentlemen, roll up! It’s time for a new series where we take a look a team SU&SD’s board game collections. Come and see! Be amazed. Be aghast. Be envious. Comment with thought-provoking assertions like “why do you have that game it is bad”.

You guys will have seen my collection in the background of loads of SU&SD videos, but I don’t think you’ve seen the work that goes into it. Come with me today as I perform… a CULL.

But before that, let me show you my collection as it stands. It’s both completely ridiculous and not as ridiculous as you might think.

Read more

Games News! 21/03/16

Quinns: My god! We just got back from running our board game lounge at the annual Game Developer’s Conference and it looks like someone left the news spigot flowing for the entire time.

Our biggest story is that Ra, one of Reiner Knizia’s old and therefore good games, is coming back in a pretty new print run! In a rare example of SU&SD being ahead of the curve (rather than about two months behind it) our entire team has actually played the original 1999 auction game and is in agreement that it’s well worth your money.

Quinns: This weekend was a Party Weekend for the Quinns household. The good news is that we got to try out both Cockroach Poker AND Spyfall, and you can expect some very funny, positive reviews of those later this week. The bad news is that I’m so hungover that I’m having trouble focusing my eyes. I offer my sincerest apologies for what might be a distinct lack of humour, accuracy, bravery, words, truth or news in this week’s news.

Don’t worry! It’s all good news, at least. We never played Gale Force Nine’s Firefly board game (that’d be the team behind the innovative but wanting Spurticus tie-in game), because we heard Firefly was still wanting but a little less innovative.

That hasn’t stopped the game gathering quite the following, though, with GFN this week announcing three expansions! Firefly: The Game – Kalidasa is a big box offering a new sector of space and a wad of new cards, and the two miniature expansions will add new Fireflies (Fireflii?).

Quinns: Here we go.

Warning: Contains opinions.

The Shut Up & Sit Down podcast has been sighted again! Quickly, catch it before it disappears back into the Thames in search of tasty nutrients. Ah, it’s a fine specimen this time! Paul and Quinns discuss Richard Garfield classic RoboRally, they’re playing Rex again, they’ve found time for Time ‘n’ Space, given a blood … Read more

The robots of the Robo Rally automobile factory spend their weekdays toiling at the assembly line. They put in hard hours building high-speed supercars they never get to see in action. But on Saturday nights, the factory becomes a world of mad machines and dangerous schemes as these robots engage in their own epic race.It takes speed, wits, and dirty tricks to become a racing legend!

Each player chooses a robot and directs its moves by playing cards. Chaos ensues as all players reveal the cards they’ve chosen. Players face obstacles like industrial lasers, gaping pits, and moving conveyer belts — but those can also be used to their advantage! Each player aims to make it to each of the checkpoints in numerical order. The first player to reach all of the checkpoints wins.

Podcast #255 – Dragons & Demolitions

Review: The Quest for El Dorado and the Heroes & Hexes expansion

Review: Robo Rally (2016 edition)

GAMES NEWS! 09/01/17

Feature: A Day in the Life of Quinns’ Game Collection!

Games News! 21/03/16

Games News! 29/06/15

SU&SD’s Top 25 Games Ever! #5 to the #1

Podcast #14: That Heart-Restarting Moment

Robo Rally

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