Coming very soon to a browser window near you, the second episode of our second season is all about… the number two. We’re devoting the whole episode to two-player games or, as we like to call them, dueling games, and we’ll be looking at some of the finest face-offs that board gaming has to offer.
Prepare yourself…
(The music this trailer features is Temecula Sunrise, by The Dirty Projectors.)
Paul: So, you know that Merchants & Marauders game we looked at a couple of weeks back? Well, we didn’t. I was desperate to get my pirate paws on it and Quinns went ahead and played it without me. You know why? His excuse was that I was ill.
That’s not an excuse, that’s just exploiting a good man’s sickness. I could’ve been dying, and there he was, laughing over a game that I could only grasp at in my most moribund of visions.
Kingsburg, then! Here’s a review of both my first and my favourite dice-placement game, and Quinns isn’t allowed anywhere near it. Come with me, readers, as I take you on a right regal journey around its royal court.
Quinns: Myself and Paul don’t talk much about how Shut Up & Sit Down’s episodes are made, for much the same reason that we don’t talk about times when we’ve fallen over while trying to climb stairs two at a time. We have, in the past, spent whole afternoons thinking we were turning the camera on when we were really it off, resulting in hours of captivating footage of our crotches floating around rooms with the alien purpose of jellyfish.
So we find a kindred spirit in Red November, a little co-operative game about Stuff Going Wrong. Up to eight players act as the Gnome crew of a submarine so fantastically broken that you won’t see a problem with downing entire bottles of grog, because it grants the courage you need to put out fires. You won’t see a problem with swimming outside to battle a squid, because the oxygen pumps were failing anyway. And you won’t see a problem with flooding the ship, because it puts out fires.
Wait. Why did you start drinking again?
Quinns: Rum! Guns! Thievery and corruption! Broadsides and boarding actions, executed by daring captains, their magnificent ships reeking of fragrant spices and tobacco. A glittering sea, taken to foul moods and murderous storms. Sharks! MONEY!
Ain’t no backdrop like the 18th century Caribbean. If only there was a board game set amongst all this.
Oh wait!
We’re BACK! What’s changed? Not much! We’re still straining like weightlifters to bring you the best board game reviews this side of the moon, and you should still relax, grab a glass of your favourite beverage and enjoy. This episode we’ve got a huge game, a brilliant game AND a party game! Come see.
02:37 - Fortune & Glory review
11:08 - K2 review
15:57 - Pipe Down & Take a Chair: Gaming During the Blitz
19:33 - Bang! review
24:40 - SU&SD’s Quaint Foreign Gamers From Afar
Quinns: We’re always squealing about smart games here at SU&SD. I’m guessing actually reading our site is a bit like untying the knot of a balloon with IMTELLIGENCE written on the side and having it noisily exhale into your face for hours on end. Which is misleading, because we love stupid games too.
“WHICH ONES,” you cry, anxious to get to the bottom of this unsettling admission.
Well, The Adventurers: The Pyramid of Horus is pretty perfect, for what it is. Let us tell you about it.
Imagine Paul sat by a crackling fire, speaking calmly to you in his warm, academic, almost mahogany voice…
In fifty years time I shall be a very wrinkly and very old man, but all the stats suggest I’ll still be very much alive and, I imagine, probably still playing board games too. I imagine myself sat with the odd youngster now and then, perhaps grandchildren, great nephews, or just the odd whippersnapper who has tossed a coin in my cup and told me to get a job, but whoever it is I’m sure they’ll ask me what board games were like in my day.
“Board games?” I’ll ask, with a Santa-like twinkle in my eye, a Twainish bounce in my crazy-old-dude hair, “Oh, well it was all very different back then. They didn’t self-assemble, for a start. In fact, it was all something like this…”
“Why is everything going wobbly?!” the Dickensian sprog would cry. “I am afeared!”
“Worry not, tis but a flashback! A flashback to… TORPEDO RUN.”
Paul: If 2011 didn’t spoil us enough with board games, it looks like 2012 will. Below we present our top ten games coming this year. Ten whole games! That’s a towering collection, a veritable Cleopatra’s needle, so you lot had better start commissioning specially-constructed barges to ferry those needles home to you. Games barges. For these towering games needles. Yes.
One thing’s for sure, though. The most exciting games in the coming year are definitely something Quinns and I will both agreed on. Definitely.
Quinns: Oh, god. Let’s get this over with.
Quinns: The idea behind Dungeon Run is as sharp and alluring as a crescent moon. Up to six players control heroes running (of course!) through a monster-packed dungeon (yep!) on a breakneck quest to locate a huge dungeon boss, break its neck and snatch the all-powerful relic known as the Summoning Stone from its still-twitching claws.
…which is where the action takes off, because Dungeon Run isn’t actually a cooperative game. Only one hero can leave with the stone, you see. This isn’t some gameshow where everyone goes home with a pat on the ass and a consolation prize.
So what follows is a cruel, Cheeto-fueled re-dreaming of American football where everyone’s goal is to grab that stone, which will then give them full control of all the monsters in the dungeon, and escape through a last line of defense made of their former friends. Or, as the Dungeon Run box proclaims it, “YOU are the end boss!” A sentence so exquisite that if you repeat it to yourself over and over in a dark room you get an actual contact high off the game’s designer.
That’s Dungeon Run’s concept, anyway. The reality is… well, look, nobody said designing a board game was easy.
Come all ye gentlemen. Come ye ladies, too! The boys have released their Christmas Special, a frantic fumble with the quirky lady of board games. We’ve got dice games, solitaire games, print’n’play games, classics and MORE!
02:12 - Quarriors review
09:44 - Christmas… is… ruined?!
10:52 - Phantom Leader review
13:57 - Print’n’Play reviews
26:29 - Cosmic Encounter review
