A Hot, Gloomy Marathon: SU&SD Newsletter #36

Quinns: I awake, as if from a dream... I have been  napping in a cocoon of manuals. Tokens are gummed to the corner of my  eye. Cards are stuck fast between the fingers of my cramped hand.

Dear donors, this month we’ve been playing so many games.  Last week was the hottest day in Brighton since 1976. Outside my window  hundreds of people lay comatose on the beach, enjoying a rare blast of  British sun. Me? I’ve been indoors, playing games. But I’ve never been  happier with my life choices.

You might not know this, but the board game industry has seasons,  too, and right now we’re in the very best one: From July through to  October is when publishers try and release their most spectacular boxes  to coincide with the UK Games Expo, Origins, Gen Con and Essen. This is  when Shut Up & Sit Down is spoilt for choice as to what to cover. No  word of a lie, on Tuesday of this week I played nine games, and then  the next day I received exactly ten more in the mail. I am a modern,  low-stakes Sisyphus.

So let’s talk about some highlights! Ragusa was a nice treat this week. Another gorgeous production from Capstone  Games, this is a eurogame about speckling a Mediterranean city with  houses of your colour. Each time you place a house you’ll be tucking it  between three hexes, each of which give you an action, but potentially  also give that action to other nearby players.

Essentially, it’s something like a permanent worker placement game-  you take a space, and you never pick that house up, ever, and instead  the board becomes denser and more three-dimensional over the course of  the game. And we had fun! I doubt it’s a strong enough euro to receive  the illustrious SU&SD review treatment, but it’s nice to have a  eurogame set in the Mediterranean that actually makes me want to go  there, with lush illustrations of blue water and olive groves. It also  left me excited to try the upcoming Venice, which the publishers are  illustrating in a similar manner to Ragusa, tying the games together  with visual motifs.

Continuing my card game kick, I was very happy to get in a half-dozen plays of Air, Land & Sea.  You can ignore the generic World War 2 theme, because this is up there  with other rock-solid 2 player card games like Jaipur and The Fox in the  Forest. The more obvious comparison would be Schotten Totten, but  (whisper it!) I didn’t like Schotten Totten very much. What I  love about Air, Land & Sea is that it’s all about when you should  “Withdraw”, conceding the round to your opponent, because the earlier  you do that, the less points they get. It’s a delightful dilemma. You  might worry that you’ve lost, but it’s hard to resist sticking around  for just a little longer to make sure... maybe just one more turn... and  then another... and then, oh no, oh no, now you're in real trouble...

We also tried Hats,  another card game that people are buzzing about. It’s short, cute and  nightmarishly tricky, but it’s hard not to compare it to Parade, another  short, cute, tricky game with an Alice in Wonderland theme that we reviewed here.  Both games even see you swapping cards in and out of a shared row!  Frankly, I prefer Parade, and I prefer that it comes in a smaller box.  Here’s hoping Z-Man reprint it soon.

But playing games isn’t just fun and games. If I shoot a  panicked look at the teetering stack of “To-be-played games” to my left,  I can see a couple of intimidating propositions. The first is Captain Sonar: Operation Dragon,  the new campaign expansion for Captain Sonar that’s fully compatible  with the extra rules introduced in Upgrade Pack One. I’ve had a thumb  through the rules and the campaign sounds fantastic, but as anyone who’s  played Captain Sonar will know, playing it three times in a row is  exhausting, let alone trying to play a whole campaign! I’ll have to choose my players very carefully for that one. Another game that I’ve been putting off is Aerion, which would be the first time that SU&SD’s covered a 1 player game since our 2011 Christmas Special. Ah, memories!

One thing that’s made all of this playtesting easier is the  company's new "GeekOn! Ultimate Board Game Backpack”. It’s not normal  for us to recommend a gaming accessory, but then, it’s not normal for us  to *like* a gaming accessory. But this backpack has made it easier for  me to carry a dozen board games from place to place, with good enough  back support that I don’t ache the next day. (The backpack also makes me  look like I’m delivering a server or perhaps some kind of enormous  dialysis machine, but as you’ll know from watching our videos, I gave up  my dignity some time ago.)

If you too could use a backpack like this, I believe that you can save yourself 15% by using the coupon code GETINTHEGAME, and you can make us some money by shopping using this link.

Matt: That backpack is honestly ridiculous, but I  must say the back support is terribly impressive - cementing myself  quite firmly today as 2019’s most boring human. The highlight of my  month has been getting to play board games with my brother, who I hadn’t  seen for TWO WHOLE YEARS. He was desperate to have a go at Gloomhaven,  and we basically shut the curtains and played it for what must have been  50 hours but felt like 5. Consider this a public reminder that  Gloomhaven is very, very good - I’m really excited that Isaac Childres  is coming to SHUX, and looking forward to doing A Big Chat On A Stage. A  copy of the new expansion, Gloomhaven: Forgotten Circles, is currently on the way to my house, and I can't wait to give it a full SU&SD once-over.

What are we watching? 📺

Matt: I Am Mother is a Netflix sci-fi gem for anyone who adores brilliant design - as a  film it’s pretty decent on every front, but the WETA workshop absolutely  knocked it out of the park when it came to the visual effects, set  design, and the robot that acts as one of the film’s main characters. If  like me you just love to bathe in aesthetically cool stuff, it’s an  absolute treat of a spectacle. Oh! Last night I went to the cinema to  see Booksmart - another teen comedy film from the excellent mould of  “awful kids being genuinely really kind to each other”. I didn’t love it  as much as Blockers - a film way better than it had any right to be -  but it’s a solid, sweet, and very funny little thing.

Quinns: This month I watched all three seasons of Documental that are on Amazon, so it's safe to say that I liked it a lot. This is a Japanese game show where ten comedians are locked in a room  together, are eliminated if they laugh, and the last contestant standing  wins a fat cash prize. It's 98% male and frequently filthy, but it  captivated me all the same. Seeing what professional comedians find  funny, and what they disapprove of, I found absolutely fascinating.

What are we reading? 📙

Quinns: Entirely by accident, I’ve got a couple of books on the go at the minute. The first is The Feather Thief,  a real-life account of an amateur heist of a natural history museum. If  you like stories of either (a) daring Victorian zoology or (b) bumbling  true crime, it’s a treat. The most easy-reading non-fiction book I’ve  read in ages. For crying out loud, the thief was a flautist who dashed off to rob the museum after he was done with rehearsals at his orchestra.

My fiction for the month is Lanny,  which I bought because the Max Porter’s previous book, Grief is a Thing  With Feathers, made my cry on almost every single page. It was absurd. I  was like a tap that the author had forgotten to turn off. In any case,  I’m thrilled that I picked up Lanny, which is an extraordinarily  beautiful book of an eccentric kid becoming friends with an artist, but  Things Get Weird Fast. If any Americans reading this would like to learn  a tiny bit about English paganism... well, I’ll say no more.

What are we videogames! 🎮

Matt: The Outer Wilds is the only thing I’ve played in the last month, really - and that’s  fine because it’s easily one of the best things ever. If you’ve ever  fancied being an archaeologist in space, don’t miss it - it’s one of  those rare things that reminds me that videogames are worth it.

Quinns: I slipped back into Sunless Skies this week, which was, as always, as comfortable and unsettling as slipping into a dead man’s suit.

Completely as odds with Sunless Skies’ tone, I’ve also been playing  Fire Emblem: Three Houses on Switch. If Sunless Skies is brooding,  intelligent and fantastical, Fire Emblem is cheery, dim and tropey.  After playing it for about 15 hours, I can bring you this exclusive,  four word review: It’s certainly addictive.

Thanks so much for donating, everybody. Remember, if you have any feedback on how the site is run, you can reach me at quinns@shutupandsitdown.com. I can't promise to reply to your email, but I read everything that comes my way.

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