Shut Up & Sit Down

Quinns: Fwsshh! It’s the weekly Games News, soaring into your life like a coment made of… news? Unlike a comet, though, Games News probably won’t kill you. It’ll just make you stronger. 

This week was good news for fans of ships, starting with Gunship: First Strike!, pictured above. Successfully Kickstarted last year, it looks like this intimidating orgy of ships, cards and custom dice is now shipping!

It’s got fighter squadrons. It’s got a free campaign mode where losing a carrier feels like a punch to the soul. It’s got cards you put on top of other cards(?). It’s got so much I think I need a lie down but we’re just getting started.

It was last Winter that Fantasy Flight smilingly borrowed WW2 air combat game Wings of War’s “FlightPath” rules to craft the X-Wing Miniatures Game.

FlightPath is where everyone selects the little maneuvers for their little vehicles in secret, then they’re all revealed at once and you say things like “Oh crap, I meant to turn left, can I take that back,” and the other guy says “Hahaha no.” This week, it’s turned out Fantasy Flight aren’t alone!

Pictured above is Sails of Glory, which was just Kickstarted faster than a generator in a cathouse(??). Same pre-painted miniatures, same FlightPath rules, but with 18th century ships instead of ships in a galaxy far, far away.

In the same hot minute, WizKids announced Star Trek: Attack Wing. The same thing, but with Star Trek boats. Ships. I meant ships.

Is this interesting? I’m not sure I’m interested anymore. How many pre-painted ships do we need in our lives? Five, probably.

I’m much more excited by MACHINE OF DEATH.

In this week’s recommendation for something you should actually Kickstart, Machine of Death looks absolutely swank. A party game where players have to co-operatively or competitively come up with assassination plots against the clock. I could try and be funny here, but I’ll leave it to the designers.

“The GAME is about flinging SHARKS from CATAPULTS in order to kill imaginary people. It’s basically a game of Mousetrap or a Road Runner cartoon, except that it’s TOTALLY WITHIN THE RULES to create a QUICKSAND GENERATOR in a TREEHOUSE in order to DROWN A CHILD. (That was a real game we played.)”

Need! Neeed! There are still 8 days left on the Kickstarter, in case you also decide you need it (you need it).

Alternatively, you could aggressively fling your pennies at Deadwood Studios USA. A fancified, updated version of the Cheapass game, Deadwood is a dice game with an almost perfect theme. All the players are bit-part actors working or trying to work in a film lot that exclusively makes crap westerns.

On your turn you can rehearse for your role as Startled Bartender #2, or just give it a try, delivering the line to the table as you roll a dice to see how your performance was received.

I’ve not played it but does sound very funny, and if the game’s been updated then it could even be GOOD.

“But Quinns,” you howl, causing some pennies to vibrate and fall off your desk. “Both of these games are funny! I don’t want to Kickstart anything funny! I’m a serious guy! I have a car!”

That’s OK, because we’re about to look at the least funny game in existence.

Well. It might be quite funny. I can’t make up my mind.

The Emperor’s New Clothes is a board game on Kickstarter right now based on the fable of the same name, where the Emperor is sold clothes that only wise men can see, pretends he can see them, and walks naked through his city.

…except all footage and images of the game in question show blank cards and dice, a blank board, even a blank manual. Weirder still, the Kickstarter’s already hit its goal of $5,000, and is still spinning upwards.

So, it’s a hoax? Well. Apparently not? Despite the name of the company being “Hoke’s Games”, the designer’s emailed the BoardGameGeek news blog saying this:

“[Y]ou’re right – it IS a crazy art project, but it is also something that you can actually play, and backers actually WILL get a copy of the game.

There’s a bunch of other stuff behind the project, and the obvious “hoax” is only the first layer, the one that weeds out those who aren’t interested in thinking more deeply about it. I’m hoping that backers will find the experience richly rewarding by the end.”

If I were a real journalist I’d throw on my trenchcoat and run out of my house, in search of THE TRUTH! But I’m not. I ate breakfast at 2pm today. You want a hero, go break into your local fire station.

Or your local hospital! Quarantine is also about to hit the shelves, and it looks straight-up clever. Theme and elegance stacked expertly in a layered drink of medicine(???).

Building their hospital outwards, players have to contend with a queue of coloured cubes outside the entrance that represent patients. Patients go into your hospital, and when they go out again, those cubes are the currency used to buy more tiles. Except those cubes are also your victory points! Don’t spend them! Which will be easy, as the price of the tiles you’re all bidding for is set by the other players.

I’m excited about this one. Sometimes, after reviewing some monsterpiece with 800 components and a 40 page manual, games like these are just like real hospitals. They’re where I rest, recuperate, and occasionally poop myself.

This week also saw the announcement of Pick Me, a game which really simulates being a real rockstar by allowing you to flick tiddlywinks into a plastic cup full of hands.

And FINALLY:

I got my copy of Ladies & Gentlemen, which is arriving in shops around the world right now!

I’ve been shouting about it on the SU&SD Twitter, but I just can’t stop. This game was exciting enough when I knew it was simultaneous team play, with gentlemen struggling to make money in their own game while their ladies gossip insidiously and race to assemble outfits for a function happening in 6 days time. At the end of the game, the couple with the most glamourous lady wins.

Turns out, though, that there’s a variant for odd-numbered groups of players.

The final player is a courtesan, sat on the side of the ladies. At the end of each day she can approach any gentleman and ask them to buy her the same stuff- hats, jewels, dresses, fans. If the courtesan is the best-dressed lady at the end, her and the gentleman that bought her the most win the game together. If she’s the worst dressed, she scandalises the gentleman that bought her the least, losing the game for him and her wife.

Best. Game. Ever.

…probably. More on this one as we play it.

Until next week, news kitties!