Quinns: Good MORNING everybody! What do you get up to this weekend? Answers in the comments below. Keep 'em short, sweet and tell me what your favourite component was.

The big story this week is the arrival of Games Workshop's divisive, eccentric reboot of Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. The new ruleset scraps point values for miniatures, leaving players to guess at what a fair fight might look like. It also adds a ton of bonuses that players can earn by acting a certain way while they play. Own a stuck-up High Elf dragon rider? You can re-roll your dice if you don't smile for the entire hero phase.

A lot of Warhammer fans are confused. Some are upset. Some are really upset. And then you have the guy who uploaded a video where he sets fire to his army.

I've been watching the fallout for a week. It's nuts!

Read More

Buckle up, boardkids! It's time for Team SU&SD to tackle the Official 38th Best Board Game of All Time: Trajan. A game of thrashing as many victory points as you can out of Ancient Rome.

Don't believe what you've heard. Shut Up & Sit Down can still handle heavy eurogames.

...or can they?

(Header image courtesy of Schlawiner over on Board Game Geek!)

You ever eat Nerd Rope? Just an endlessly long, glutinous tongue, speckled with sour little gobbets?

That's basically the 30th ever SU&SD podcast, which is now live in our podcast section and in all reputable pod-feeds. On this lengthy journey of no less than one hour and one minute, we discuss the absence of bitterness in the magnificent Forbidden Stars. We chat about the sheer joy of Funemployed (alas, we're still waiting on the European release), and the sweet coloured pebbles of Trajan. The Saturday morning cartoon-looking reimagining of Catacombs (complete with jelly cube!) has reached us, too, and it's incredible! And of course, Spyfall snuck into the mix.

WARNING: Your RDA of SU&SD podcasts is 0.2 a day.

Thrower: Do you find numbers scary? Do you dread the pointy 1, the razor-sharp 7, the misery of an unsolved sum? If you do, you've probably realised that most board games are just fearsome equations wearing friendly grins.

Designers, however, understand this, and more. They welcome it, glory in it, roll in it like pigs in mathematical mud. Because it's what they use to build the foundations of something fun, yet something real.

Take Volko Ruhnke, designer of contemporary wargames Labyrinth and the Counter-Insurgency(or COIN) series. "Most board games and video games that are about something are models," he told me. "Trading games, railroad building games, shooting games, strategic war games. They all communicate the game designers’ model of certain aspects of human affairs."

Read More

Paul: This is a disaster. How much food do we have left? How many days can we go? Will we even get rescued out here?

Quinns: I’m sure it’ll be fine, just keep sending up the flares and don’t put any limbs in the water. Look, I managed to salvage a few of the more intact parts of Matt, which we can probably cook, and then there’s the…

Paul: What?

Quinns: The Games News. I’m really sorry, Paul. We’re going to have to eat the Games News.

Read More

The English language version of Spyfall is finally available! ...And stock has immediately drained out shops the world over like a vodka martini through a sieve.

Don't worry, friends! Operating in a dangerous web of international intrigue, and with a little help from Starlit Citadel, Team SU&SD has secured a review copy. At last, we're here to tell you if this party game live up to the hype.

Quinns: Catch Team SU&SD at our most tired and soul-blasted, when we’re done walking the halls of a giant convention, and there’s a single game we'll always still be able to play. It’s Skull.

It's the arsenic-laced wafer thin mint of board gaming, and there’s always room for its lies and laughter. The one thing more impressive than Asmodee daring to call Skull "the very quintessence of bluffing” is that actually, I don’t think they’re wrong.

Two months ago I was in a pub with a friend who I trust completely. “If you like Skull,” he said, “Then write this down. ‘Cockroach Poker’. Best £10 you’ll ever spend.”

Today I’m the proud owner of one “Cockroach Poker Royal”, the en-complicated 2012 sequel to 2004’s Cockroach Poker. And I’ll tell you what! It’s not just a great game of lying to your friends. It’s a great game of lying with your friends.

Read More

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?).

Read More