Shut Up & Sit Down

Quinns: Another week, another round up of games news! Give us your brain for a moment. We’re going to roll it down the carpeted staircase of what happened in board games this week. Starting with some Kickstarters you might want to get involved in!

Shut Up & Sit Down’s criteria for backing board game Kickstarters is simple. If, within seconds of opening your page, we say “…what?” at our monitors, as was the case with last year’s Salmon Run, you’re onto a winner.

Triassic Terror is one such winner. A game where players compete to spread their dinosaurs across a continent full of hungry raptors, with volcanoes popping like prehistoric blisters. The designer’s last game, Wars of the Roses, was apparently pretty great, but it was also thoughtful wargame. That makes Triassic Terror a bit of an unknown quantity. Plus plastic pterodactyls.

Perhaps you’re after something more traditional? That noise you hear is SU&SD scoffing, collectively. For reference, that sounds a bit like a sneezing vaccuum cleaner. In any case, you’d best take a peek at Dungeon Roll.

This was brought to our attention though a preview on the Wired Geekdad blog. Basically, players each get three chances at exploring the dungeon. You roll your hero dice. Someone else rolls the dungeon dice. You get slapped about, or you find some treasure.

BUT, but, you then decide whether to move onto the next level of the dungeon, rolling two more fistfuls of fretful dice, or end your turn. Which excites us, because games that turn your luck into some tangible that you can push around like a grumpy sibling are better.

Discussion of Dungeon Roll appears to centre around the box, which is shaped like a tiny treasure chest. “Which is awesome!” cry the geeks of the world.

NO. A non-standard box means it won’t tesselate into shelves. Meaning the designer might as well be shipping this game to cities with a polaroid of themselves giving the camera a middle finger.

This is the Londoners of SU&SD giving you a middle finger RIGHT BACK, Mr. Dungeon Roll Man. If that is your real name.

This week also saw the launch of the second Zombicide Kickstarter, or “Zombicide: Season 2”. What you’re paying for here is either an expansion for co-op zombie-fighting game Zombicide set in a shopping mall, a stand-alone expansion set in a prison, or both.

Go and look at how much money it’s raised in just a few days. Then come back here.

So, here’s the thing. Kickstarters are sold by artwork, miniatures and theme, something best evidenced by Kingdom Death: Monster. A two million dollar-funded board game Kickstarter powered by distinctly human urges to (a) peer into the abyss and (b) see tits.

I haven’t played Zombicide, but I’ve heard it’s a perfectly passable D&D-alike. I do want to play it, though, because it offers a campaign - allowing you to string together your evening’s gaming with the same characters - without anyone having to play the bad guys.

Sounds good to me! A bit intense, though. A bit murdery.

Maybe we should have a nice game next. With roses and children gumdrops and working together to make something.

Something like The Little Prince: Make me a planet!

This comes to us from the firm, guiding, and slightly hairy hand of the BGG News Blog. Based on Le Petit Prince, the most translated book in the French language, here’s a game of trying to piece together a planet from a stack of tiles, but with only what you want on it.

So, fabulously, the player serving The King wants a single rose on the planet. Just one. The more roses there are, the less points you get, because each rose becomes less special. Mostly though, this just makes me want to read the book. From Wikipedia:

‘Though ostensibly a children’s book, The Little Prince makes several profound and idealistic observations about life and human nature. For example, Saint-Exupéry tells of a fox meeting the young prince during his travels on Earth.

The story’s essence is contained in the lines uttered by the fox to the little prince: On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux. (“One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”)’

Where was I? Right, board games.

Terra Mystica’s been spinning up Board Game Geek’s byzantine hype dynamos recently, and a release date of April was just announced.

I’m excited about this one. Each player controls one of 14 different fantastical peoples, from Mermaids to Cultists, all of whom are trying to spread across one of the game’s 7 landscapes. These are Desert, Plains, Swamp, Lake, Forest, Mountain and “SOLITUDE”. So that’s awesome.

In a contest with almost no luck, players can construct buildings, bridges, terraform the world, and even progress down four different religious cults, in something that looks as intense and tricky as an oiled armwrestling match.

And FINALLY, a game’s started appearing in shops that I’m very confused about.

I am Vlad, Prince of Wallachia is a game from the esteemed developers of Let’s Pumpkin(?) about “the real life of Vlad the Imapler, and about the habits, mysteries and actual facts of Wallachia and Transylvania.”

That sounds pretty interesting! Do you have anything el—

“Gameplay takes place on two boards: the Game Map and the Underworld Map.”

Right.

“I Am Vlad: Prince Of Wallachia has two types of battles: against enemy units and against neutral units; for both types, players use battle cards, magic cards, tokens, and an eight-sided die. Other tactical actions are made through tokens, gold coins, outposts, and so on.”

Hmm. Possibly don’t buy I Am Vlad, everybody. Got a bad feeling about this one.

And DOUBLE FINALLY,

After being snarky in last week’s news about the new X-Wing Minatures Game expansions, I had the chance to play with them. The Millenium Falcon and Slave 1 are HUGE. Pictures don’t do them justice. They’re the size of your fist. This changes everything, obviously. Buy them immediately.

And finally AGAIN, in aesthetically-pleasing news, we also played String Railway.

Review coming soon. But probably buy String Railway.

Until next week!