Shut Up & Sit Down

Quinns: Welcome to Games News, our new Monday morning feature. It’s now… 4pm, so it’s not morning anymore, but that’s OK, because this isn’t really news. Rather, it’s whatever hot reveals and dank announcements the SU&SD team have been excited by this week.

Don’t know what to be excited by in board gaming? Just follow our lead.

This week we’re blessed with all sorts of preview videos from the inestimably valuable Board Game Geek News Blog, who have been attending all kinds of conventions.

That’s where the image at the top of this post comes from, by the way. It’s their photo of a game called Bora Bora, which is apparently good? And the players build… huts in it? And… in the hut, you put some… fish? Look, it’s Stefan Feld, the mentat behind SU&SD favourite Castles of Burgundy, which was in itself as numerical and inscrutable as a water-damaged calculator. We’re honestly not going to try and decipher Bora Bora until we have the boxed copy right in front of us. Look at this!

Green man taking a poop = Two times man and woman plus bagel equals card of any colour being  eaten by a… no, let’s just stop.

Instead, let’s look at something chunky and obvious. Like some cubes!

Cube Quest looks great. You and another player, doing battle by flicking deceptively unruly little cubes at each other, trying to knock your opponent’s King Cube out of their castle. But don’t flick a cube off the map, or it’s gone forever!

Bliss.

I’ve seen some grumbling online that Cube Quest barely evolves the game it’s based on, a self-published title called KingBrick. But since KingBrick looks like something a murderer would want you to play after he drags you back to his house by your hair, I am entirely OK with this.

See what I mean?

I was similarly excited by BGG’s look at Masquerade, the new game from Bruno Faidutti. Remember us looking at Citadels? Remember how we said Mission Red Planet was Citadels, but chunkier? Masquerade looks like Citadels but WAY sharper. Sharp but delicious. Like licking the lid of a tin of beans.

Just listen to that. On your turn, you can claim to be a character and gain their power, allowing other players to call your bluff, OR take someone else’s character card, put both under the table, and give them back either them or yours, but without looking at either. Until nobody knows who anybody is, and you proudly flip your card to show you WEREN’T bluffing, only to realise you were, and you have no idea where or who anyone is anymore.

BLISS.

But so long as we’re talking card games, I spotted something great this week that you can actually buy.

I first played The Big Idea years ago, and have been patiently waiting for its swanky relaunch ever since. Then it came out without me noticing! TWO YEARS AGO! Dammit board gaming.

This is a game where the players all act as inventors, assembling miserable devices from the cards in their hand and pitching them at the other players. I’ve ordered my copy. You should yours. Mostly I just remember my friend trying to sell the rest of the table on his Sports-Utility Machine Shovel.

Back to BGG’s previews, this week they only went and covered the game I’m most excited about. It’s Ladies & Gentlemen!

There aren’t enough team games in board gaming. Re-read that sentence. Feel it’s stony weight. That’s because it’s a FACT.

There also aren’t enough games about dressing up like a nice lady, and Ladies & Gentlemen looks to address both of these pressing issues at once. It’s a game of warring couples where each day the Lady players fight to pick out the best outfit, while the Men do battle at the stockmarket to try, and fail, to afford what their wives find. Then after six days you all attend a ball, and whoever’s wife is the most glamorous wins the game.

If I was any more excited my body would start producing physical globdules of excitement. Oh god. I didn’t mean… no. Let’s move on.

This week also saw the announcement of the official Firefly board game! Which we could all safely assume will be rubbish and go back to de-scaling our kettles, except it’s by Gale Force Nine, the same design team that made the really quite great Spartacus game. So it might not be anything other than good!

No details as yet, but it looks an awful lot like Merchants & Marauders to me. Which could be problematic, since it’s hard to imagine a better game of salty smuggling that that beauty.

AND FINALLY, if anyone was keeping their eyes on the X-Wing Miniatures Game, which we were between hot and lukewarm about, the first wave of expansions has now arrived.

In addition to the TIE Fighters, X-Wings and Y-Wings available at launch, you can now buy the Millenium Falcon expansion, which adds a variety of birds to the game, Slave I, which adds politics and a criminal justice system, and the A-Wing pack, which adds tigers. Oh, and the TIE Interceptor pack! Which contrary to the name, adds a TIE Interceptor miniature.

Who knows? If you drop £100 on each and every one of those, you might end up with something that doesn’t feel like half a game.

Until next time, kids!