Exploding Robot

The cover, provided by 2000AD artist, Greg Staples is bold and striking in the best tradition of the Fighting Fantasy series. The book also has a variation on the traditional green spine of the Fighting Fantasy line, a familiar and comforting site to the adults who spent their childhoods hunting through libraries and book shops for the next gaming hit.

I love the Fighting Fantasy series, and I've already banged on at length about what a huge influence and comfort FF was for me. So Blood of the Zombies was a day one purchase for me. I love any excuse to dip into the warm folds of nostalgia and flick back and forth through a book, hoping to defeat whichever wizard/supervillain/alien/cyborg/space lizard is causing trouble this time.

So yeah, I had lots of warm fuzzy feelings about this book going into it, but how does it play?

Well, Mr Livingstone wasn't kidding when he said he'd made this book extra tough. Damn.

Full disclosure - I attempted to play through this book five times without cheating. That means no fudging of dice rolls, no checking outcomes and then undoing the choice via carefully placed fingers, no claiming that I have an item when I haven't got it. Basically, this is the way the game should be played and it's also the way no sane person ever played Fighting Fantasy. Sorry Ian and Steve, we were all cheating. ALL OF US. Ahem.

Five attempts. Five deaths. I noted everything down in each play through, items, codes, tips, and much like in console darling, Dark Souls, I learned something each time. I gained new knowledge, found new routes through the castle, found new items or realised which items were junk. I progressed further each time until I inevitably died and then I sighed, noted the paragraph that killed me, and turned to a fresh page in my notepad and flipped to paragraph 1. I left scribbled notes to myself in much the same way the unseen players of Dark Souls leave messages to other players. Warnings, tips, the last words of a dead man.

I'm jumping ahead though, I should explain the scenario of Blood of the Zombies so you can get a feel for it. Blood of the Zombies contains zombies, LOTS of zombies. You are an idiot a student of Mythology and you have travelled the modern world searching for evidence of monsters but without success. That is until you decide to try and find vampires in Romania which leads you to being thrown in a cell within an old castle owned by a mad scientist. He is not a vampire but he is a madman intent on creating his own zombie army TO DESTROY THE WORLD. Yes, the B-movie plotting is back in full force for this book, much like in House of Hell (a game I was too scared to finish as a child but now seems to be very silly to me as a cynical adult). The adventure follows your desperate attempts to escape the castle and kill every last zombie to prevent them from destroying the world!

It's a shame that the setting is a bit muddled. Livingstone considered using a fantasy setting (the sword and sorcery world of Allansia is the traditional FF world) but he eventually decided to join in the rotting zombie zeitgeist and base it in the modern day. In a remote castle. Hmm. It's a case of trying to muddle two genres together that never really convinces. I think a setting of a ruined town or army base or amusement park may have helped to lend the story a little more atmosphere. As it is, I found the castle setting brought forth images of poorly made B-movies shot in strange locations and I never really found myself immersed in the book. But then, I guess it IS a literary B-movie so maybe the setting is just the right side of odd for the tone.

The mechanics of the game have been simplified, I guess to appeal to time starved adults and young children. Gone are the old stats of SKILL and LUCK, you now only have to worry about STAMINA. STAMINA is your health, and your fighting prowess is determined by what weapon you are wielding. Zombies are easy to kill, you automatically kill them in combat, but the problem is that there are hordes of them waiting to devour you. Your fist does 1D6-3 damage (a six-sided dice minus 3 from the total, for those who don't know the secrets of dice shorthand) whereas a machine gun does 2D6+5, if you fail to kill all of the zombies in one roll then the remaining dead heads will inflict damage for each surviving member. Clearly it pays to be well armed. Every time you fight a zombie horde you face a race against time to kill them before they damage your STAMINA. You know you're doomed if you encounter a horde of 17 zombies and you have nothing but a pen knife (1D6-2).

So combat is simple and easy to administer. It's also a COMPLETE BASTARD. The amount of times uncle Ian ambushed me with a horde of zombies, while I was still recovering from an earlier beating, were numerous. This book is merciless, in fact at some points you know you're doomed because you're down to your last couple of STAMINA points and you just know you won't survive another fight. You still press on though because you know that you'll learn something new, something that may give you extra equipment next time or a new route to another encounter.

I'm going to be bold here, I'm going to say that, while theoretically possible, it is almost impossible to complete this game without cheating. Sure, you could draw a map, mark out the optimum path to find all of the zombies and the best weapons, but you're always at the mercy of the brutal combat encounters and the dice. A bad series of rolls will ruin your playthrough. Lose too much STAMINA between fights and you're doomed. Done. This book requires precision knowledge of its layout and all the blessings of Lady Luck to win through.

I'm not saying it's not fun to attempt to win but I'm warning you that there's next to no chance of successfully playing through. This game is 80s arcade game tough. BANG YOU'RE DEAD. GAME OVER. INSERT 10P (or sharpen your pencil).

Also, you have to keep a tally of every zombie you kill. EVERY. LAST. ONE. Because well, you know how Warlock of Firetop Mountain ends? Same thing. You gotta know the right number to win. There are also at least two required items to win. Without one you will die, without another you will miss an easter egg zombie and lose the game. I hate instant lose scenarios. Gah.

Crises take a number of forms; they can involve enemy ships appearing around you and attacking, shortages of resources, double agents in your crew... basically, imagine anything that you wouldn't want to happen to you while you're flying through the endless never, and chances are, there's a card to that effect.

Each of these events require a certain number of skill points to beat, and the whole team has to contribute to the pile in order to successfully get away with them unscathed - but that's where the game's sting lies.

The cooperative nature of Battlestar Galactica may be the chewy centre of this particular treat, but within it lies a peanut, primed and ready to leap down the unsuspecting oesophagus of your peanut allergic team. See, at some point in the game at least one player will find out that they are, in fact, a duplicitous Cylon robot; a mechanical menace who wants to see the other players fail, armed with a frankly incredible array of tricks available them to make sure that happens.

Initially, a smart Cylon player will sabotage skill checks by putting in cards that don't help very much (or at all!), and then begin spreading distrust about their fellow players. In the first game I played, the person who turned out to be the traitor spent a good portion of the game deliberately spreading mistruths about one particular player, then did a very good job of blaming a faulty memory when the fact that she was incorrect was proven. It's more paranoid than a room full of stoned Daily Mail readers, and that's what makes it such a great games. Turns will become secondary to power struggles and bickering, and the moment the Cylon player identifies themselves as such the events of the entire game will suddenly be projected on the cinema screen in your mind's eye, the traitor's tells in glorious, technicolour hindsight-o-vision.

Seriously, If you have ever wanted to actively distrust your friends, harbour an intense dislike for your loved ones or demand that your own blessed mother be thrown in jail, then Battlestar Galactica is the game for you. Battlestar is a game of suspicious alliances, taciturn plotting and beleagured desperation; and it's a game that thinks nothing of demolishing the bonds of friendship with a ten pound brass hammer.

Once they have revealed themselves, the Cylon player will then dedicate the rest of their game to, to put it bluntly, wrecking your shit: They move to a separate part of the board and start firing various different massive problems at the remaining crewmembers, who are already sprinting around the bowels of the ship, fire extinguisher in one hand and first aid kit in the other as they attempt to deal with crises that happen so often you start to wonder whether the ship is under some kind of gypsy curse.

Other than the Cylon players (who often turn into complete dicks once they learn that they win be basically RUINING THE GAME for everyone else) it's a game that stresses out the whole table, and the various skills and penalties that each character has means that you will never be able to do everything that you need. Your President can use one of his abilities to try and replenish some of the resources that your ship is constantly spewing like a bulimic emetophile (and you're going to be demanding he do so pretty much constantly) but if he's doing that then he can't repair your ships, or man the interceptor drones - and he also needs to do that because there's a huge swarm of enemy ships approaching - except the last wave destroyed the FTL drive, and that needs to be fixed so you can jump - but what happens if turns out to be a Cylon as well... You get the picture. It's an exercise in stress and logistics, made all the more difficult by the constant niggle in the back of your mind that reminds you that you might be rabidly exchanging strategies with someone who wants you dead. 

Battlestar really is great. Sticking a license on a game often feels like a way of making a not-very-good system sell a few more copies, but according to BG watching friends of mine who have also played the game Fantasy Flight have fairly faithfully captured the tone of the show - and while I know nothing about the programme, I can vouch for the quality of the game. My character could have been called Farty Bumknuckle as far as I cared - I knew his strengths and his weaknesses, I knew who I thought was a traitor, and I knew that we couldn't afford to lose any more fuel.

Unfortunately, as great as any game is, there are very few without problems - and this one is no different. So far as I see it, there are two (and a half) problems with Battlestar Galactica, and they are thus:

First off, downtime between turns can be fairly lengthy. If a person's turn involves a lot of space combat, then there are dice rolls, miniatures being moved, and heroic acts pinging from the table like tiny fireworks - but equally, your go could involve leaving sickbay, fixing drawing a card, then simply performing one of the "add up the cards" tests mentioned above.

Secondly (and point-fivedly), the game can be a bit long. Our first game lasted five hours (despite being told that it would take no more than three), and by the end of it the game felt like it had given all that it was going to offer. We were doomed, and we knew it; it was just a matter of waiting for the last of the fuel to finally trickle through our Faster Than Light drive, and passing cards to each other to fill the gaps between Cylon invasions. The Crises had lost their crisis.

That said, I would very happily play the game again; there's enough in the box to make every game different, and bellowing "traitor!" at your friends simply never gets old. Play someone else's copy before you buy it, I'd say (it is quite a long game, and playing it is a bloody stressful experience), but I really honestly feel that you definitely need to experience Battlestar Galactica at some point in your life. You deserve it.

You do.

MAGIC

TerryPratchettAnkh-MorporkDiscworld The Board Game - Do you like the Discworld? Well here's a reprint of a board game set in that universe MAGIC. There is some witty flavour text about the game not using the number 8. I don't get that joke because I last read a Discworld book in 1996 just before I met a load of people who loved the books that put me off them forever. Sorry Terry. MAGIC.

Chupacabra: Survive The Night - This sounds great, you play animals that are desperately trying not to be eaten by a chupacabra. MAGIC. Great theme, I think. Reminds me of Brock Samson's method of handling chupacabras.

MAGIC.

Joan of Arc's Victory - Recreate the battle of Orleans in 1429 with this war game. Joan of Arc is one of my spirit neighbours but we don't talk much because she only speaks 15th Century French and I only managed to get a D in GCSE French. Still, she seems nice. MAGIC.

Something is trying to get through. MAGIC. It's forcing it's way in.

I can't hold on any longer.

MAGIC THE GATHERING 2013 (what? It's still 2012.) - Yes, Magic is unleashing next year's set NOW. In 2012. Like a Fifa game would. Magic is the biggest card game of all and it cannot be stopped. It will last long after we are all dead. Even now it reaches into the spirit realm with its cardboard tendrils...

MAGIC

MAGICCCC

Small World Realms - Oh look, an expansion for Small World. I like Small World, it's a merchant game pretending to be a fantasy warfare game. Don't let the theme fool you, Small World is all about investing in a property until it has dried out and then jumping onto the next hot commodity. Don't get attached to your flying hobbits or aquatic elves - drop 'em and move on as soon as they become unprofitable. Anyway, Realms contains loads of new terrain bits and scenarios to freshen up the game. I don't think the original game needs expanding but if you've played it to death then I can see the value in prolonging it with some new widgets.

The Koronus Bestiary (Rogue Trader) - It's a monster sourcebook for one of the Warhammer 40,000 RPGs, Rogue Trader. You know what to expect here - grimdark monsters and villains with lots of skulls, spikes, and sadism.

Sky Traders - You too can play members of the Murdoch family as you bluff your way into creating a media empire! Just remember to 'forget' about those pesky meetings with those shady people the government keep asking you about! Sorry, no wait, bad Ben Elton routine aside, this is another trading commodities game but it's set in the sky so it's fun or something. I dunno. Sorry.

Is that a weird thing to say? Probably; but it's how I felt after reading the first entry in this new series from Image (helpfully delivered over a week after it was released by my less than stellar comic book shop).

The story opens with a man called Silas crash landing on an unknown Planetoid (not just a cool name, huh?) in a seriously bad space neighbourhood. As he arrives he discovers that the planet seems to be some sort of giant industrial graveyard, the entire landscape consisting of girders, machinery and walkways, twisted and tilted at monstrous angles like a contortionist falling down a set of stairs while wearing a suit of armour.

And it looks good. Like, really good. Have a look at the image above if you don't believe me; if you're a sucker for depressive, smoke clogged vistas that look like one of Geiger's castoffs, you're in for a treat. The Planetoid is a mess of metal, with a population of both biological and mechanical beasties that you don't want to spend too much time around.

So, there's the scene set; a big tick in the box for Planetoid.

The issue does contain its own start, middle and end:- I don't want to go too deeply into spoilers but Silas ends the issue with his initial questions answered, so that's a tick in that box too.

Introducing characters? Well, there's only one really, and that's done (but in somewhat of a clunky way that seems rather forced. It's not quite the videogame trope of "So, remind me what we're here to do again?", but it ain't far off), so there's another tick, and as the first major threat to Silas' wellbeing uncoils itself in all its metallic, petrol soaked glory, you will find yourself thinking "Oh man, I can't wait to find out what Silas does next issue!"

Except you find out on the next page, leaving the pacing's inaugural attempt to fly  to crash quicker than Silas did at the start of the comic, and leaving the issue to hobble to a conclusion, dragging itself wearily over the enormous wooden packing crate of exposition that we discussed before.

It's an odd criticism to aim at a comic, but it feels like if the content of this episode was shifted around a little bit, the story would flow far better - as well as allowing the narrative to slowly gain its wings throughout the duration of this first issue - rather than the debut issue just sort of... stopping, with little more than a mention of a new place for Silas to head towards next issue.

There is quite a lot to be positive about in these pages, however: As mentioned before the art is fantastic, and both the setting and Silas seem as harsh and inhospitable as each other. The story (currently) doesn't seem to be anything mind blowing, but there was enough there to make me want to pick up issue 2, at least (especially after having a nose at this preview) - but it's gonna have to pull out all the stops to get me to hang around after that. This is a one man operation, and Ken Garing is certainly doing an admirable job here, I just hope he manages to find his stride and properly nail it.

Survive 30th Anniversary Edition - This board game used to be known as Escape From Atlantis, and it's almost as old as I am. Good grief. Survive sees you flee a sinking island whilst avoiding the attentions of whirlpools and sharks and trying to find a space on the escape boats. Rab Florence really enjoyed Survive. This is a spiffy new edition with new, higher quality components. It costs about £30 and it sounds like a bargain.

Lord of the Rings: Nazgul - Play as the bumbling undead baddies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy! Judging by the blurb it sounds like the game is a version of The Apprentice where the winner works for a slightly lesser evil than Alan Sugar.

Arkham Horror Dice - LOOK, EXPENSIVE DICE. Yes, another board game has decided to knock out some nice looking six-sided dice (D6 as the cool people call them) and charge top dollar for them because they're vaguely themed. Five dice for £8. HMMMMM.

Blood Moon (Talisman) - An expansion for Talisman. I played Talisman once many years ago. I had dim memories of enjoying the game so I bought the new edition. It turns out that I don't like Talisman. BUT, if you like Talisman then there's a new expansion that adds yet more stuff that will cause the game to go forever as you dance round and round in circles until you all die of boredom or someone manages to roll their way victory. This expansion adds "Gothic Horror" and probably shitloads of werewolves and junk.

+6 Bag o' Munchkin Level Counters Set 2 - Oh god, the Munchkin pointlessness continues with six score counters for the price of £8. You could use pen and paper instead, or a D20 or something less expensive. GRUMP GRUMP.

Wacht am Rhein - I wanted to mention that this game is listed on the sheet as costing £130. Goodness me. Infinity Games are selling it at £110 though. Still, over £100? That's a lot but to be fair you get over 2380 counters for your money. COUNTERS. ENDLESS COUNTERS. COUNTERS UNENDING UNTIL THE HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE.

And there I will leave you with dreams of a future filled with cardboard counters. Chits.

“So, what did you realise?!”, I hear you impatiently yell at the screen. My realisation comes down to this simple idea:

Board games are social.

I shit you not – that is what sent me into a tizzy. There’s more than that though - I’m not here to tell you what you already know. In fact, if you’re expecting deep insights and exciting board gaming revelations then you may as well pack up and go now. This is subjective. As long as you can keep that in mind we’ll get along, and hopefully if you didn’t know what it was about board games that turned you on before, maybe you will after this.

What I love about playing games with friends is the tension, the swearing, the laughter, the joy and the hatred that comes with every game. But it most certainly depends on which game. I love Epic Spell Battles, and Zombies (with any number of expansions); I adore Flux (the Monty Python version), and Quarriors. All these games get me metaphorically wet because they require people, interaction, and a sense of humour. These games ask you to be ready to have fun or to stress over who is going to kill you and how horrible it will be - and that's what makes them great. It’s all about cause and effect because the people playing matter to you and to the game – and you’re all linked and invested in this mix of cards, dice, and rules as well. This, for me, is what board games are about. It sounds simple but many games miss this and replace it with repetition and gameplay that doesn't know when to stop – that’s why Monopoly and Risk, for example, can fuck right off.

What? You think I can’t deal with strategy? Try ‘Summoner Wars’, it’s like monster chess with a side of deck building thrown in. On that note, give ‘On the Ruins of Chaos’ a whirl – it’s got a similar feel to ‘Summoner Wars’ with a bigger world and more complexities. It can even be played as co-op with two-against-two, battling for survival in a post-apocalyptic world. Despite my relative newness to the world of co-op games (and aided by my intense love for Forbidden Island), I can say that I truly enjoy them.

Not only are these games more often strategic, they require a lot of teamwork which means I get to talk and generally be a bit bossy if the occasion arises. I find all these games worth playing because they have the ability to challenge, yet still manage to keep me engaged and actually giving a crap about whether I win or not.

And I suppose now is the time to address the type of gaming that leaves me feeling not so good - I shall do this by recounting an event that had happened during the Expo...

It was later, after the initial feeling of being overwhelmed had quieted and we had meandered from room to room for long enough. We gathered ourselves over coffee and planned our attacks. We made it to the first three stalls, got in and out. It was going well.

Until Thunderstone.

Chris had wanted to play Thunderstone, and had mentioned to the fine fellows of Shut Up and Sit Down his interest in it, but alas, a demo was already in progress (and had been for a damned long time too, if memory serves) when we reached Alderac's stand. Chris shortly became embroiled with a game involving Ninjas (as is his wont) and so I was at a lose end. I watched and dutifully recorded for the blog, meaning that at the fateful moment I was the one forced to demo ‘Thunderstone’.

“Forced” is a strong word, but what else could it have been when I, the only female within a 10 –foot radius, was challenged by the Demo-Master? I stepped forth, but we needed another challenger – I looked to Chris - He was gone. And this, dear friends, is how I found myself mixed up in a dungeon battle with an eight-year-old in a Deer-Stalker and a bright orange T-Shirt. He was a regular according to the Demo-Master; a seasoned warrior who had survived many journeys into the dark depths. I felt relieved to know my first steps into this world were with such knowledgeable patrons of the game and so I proceeded to play a deck-building game with two people who probably wished I were someone else but were too polite to make me leave. What a mistake, if only they knew what I would come to say of their beloved Thunderstone.

Well it was boring, if you must know. The only interaction there truly seemed to be was my companions informing me as to what my next move should be. Deck building came across as insular, repetitive, and - in the case of Thunderstone - longwinded. This is the kind of game that makes me long for the silence and tension of an exam hall because the game felt like it had no end other than “get all the cards”, which I do believe is how you win – by battling through the dungeon, using your kills to buy better cards. The main reason I hated this game is because it is the antithesis to all of the things I like about board games – there was no laughter; no tension; no joy in the win; no pain in the loss. If I had to recommend Thunderstone or any other game that is primarily about deck building to a certain type of person, I would suggest it to those with difficulty socialising because the design of the game would allow you to never speak a word to any other players.

(An aside: Here's another thing I dislike about gaming – measuring (I mean the games that literally require a measuring tape, not the inventive ways of keeping score). I find the landscapes created fascinating and the time put into modelling and painting armies and weaponry startling, but once a game starts cold, hard logic is the only thing present, other than a few dice rolls here and there . I get that they’re mostly about strategy, but when grown men argue over where their opponent measures from and disputes a player’s position in centimetres, I find myself very put off. I’d play if it was a bit more like, well, playing I guess – like kids do - not to imply I’m childish or anything...)

And perhaps that point sums up a chunk of gaming I don’t like – games that live and die on complexity of rules. Describe a game as being a “gamers game” (as SU&SD called Mage Knight) and I will find your copy and try and burn it. I don’t want to play something because it’s hard: if that’s all a game is aiming for then oddly, I think I’d just call it lazy.

To stop trying to be a poor man's Shut Up and Sit Down for a second, Quarriors is, quite simply, a big box full of dice. Each of those dice represent a monster, a spell or one of a couple of other things, and each turn you'll roll a handful of them in order to attack your opponents and also buy new minions to summon in future turns. That's it. It's a war in which your troops are brightly coloured dice you hurl from a bag.

How those monsters come to live in your bag is another question though, and it's one that's answered with Quiddity, the game's currency and what the entire mechanic hangs on (The pretentious tosser in me wants to say that's some sort of satire; a low shot at capitalism, perhaps - but it definitely isn't). Luckily, you start with quite a few of these dice in your bag (along with some really weak creatures), and from turn one you'll use them to swipe dice from the table and scurry them away in your bag.

What dice to pick up, however, is a good question - especially in the early game, when the bottom of everyone's bag is barely covered in a thin crust of weaklings and coins. Do you pick up Portals, which allow you to roll more dice, or do you pluck one of the big-hitters off the table instead, denying you a chance to ready monsters this turn? Maybe you should rush your opponent with hordes of cheap, flimsy Assistants because you know early on they don't have much to counter with, and as such you'll still have plenty to score with when your go rolls back around? 

This brings me quite nicely onto one of my favourite mechanics in Quarriors: You gain points based on how many monsters you have left in your ready area at the start of your turn. So in a four player game, for instance, the cutesy collection of cut-throat creatures you have assembled in front of you will have weathered a world of pain, and will likely gladly be moved into your "used" pile, ready to rest up before they come a-tumbling from your bag once more, axes sharp and teeth pointed - but they'll pay for their entry in glory points, each fat, glutinous point taking you one tiny step closer to victory.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Sounds like an epic war of duelling monsters and their summoner masters, duking it out over a war-torn battlefield while the music from Doom plays in the background, right?

Well, unfortunately, that's where Quarriors falls a little bit flat. Combat is a little bit wonky in this game and, well, the way it works is a little bit naff. Basically, you summon monsters, each of whom have an attack and a defence value. If the sum of your attack value is higher than the defence value of another player's monster(s), they die, and that player doesn't get to add them to his or her score at the start of their next go.

That's it. Yes, there are a few monsters who bend those rules, but if that isn't "it", it's a bloody large percentage of "it", I can assure you.

What's even crazier is there's no way of multiple players wearing down a strong creature: each person's mob attacks their opponents as if they're as fresh out the bag as candyfloss at a fair - and the player BEING attacked decides which of their creatures takes the damage, which suggests the attacking monsters calling ahead and asking who they should be belching their magic fart rainbows at when they arrive: the puny goblin with a tin can as a weapon, or the dragon that's eating a block of flats for its breakfast. It doesn't make much sense to me.

And of course, that's assuming you actually manage to summon anything. Even the monster dice have Quiddity values on them, so you could delve into your bag and pull out a whole pile of monster dice... and find out all you really had was a pocket full of spare change. The big box full of dice is certainly a nice thing to look at, but having the entire game based it is a tiny bit... Egh.

Here's the thing. (And yes, I'm aware that Exploding Robot has brought you a vast number of "the thing"s in its short life; shut up)

Quarriors isn't Summoner Wars. It isn't Stronghold. It isn't Warhammer 40,000. It never pretends to be strategical, or serious, or even fair. It's just an opportunity to roll some dice and marvel at the frankly awesome production values inside and out (other than a few badly printed dice, which seems to have been fixed in the first expansion). It takes 20 minutes to play a game, and it's so quick to set back up you can blitz through a few sessions in no time. It's also pretty simple to teach to people, and you're guaranteed a few laughs every time you open the box. Yeah, every so often you'll have a runaway winner because they got luckier than everyone else, but in the next game you might pound him into the dirt because he rolls nothing but Quiddity all game. It's just the way Quarriors is.

Quarriors is like a puppy in riot gear: It has an outer coating that makes you think (if only for a second) that it's something serious and grand, but the moment you engage with it, you realise it's actually just a ball of fun and energy that wants to pin you to the floor and lick your face.

If you're a hardcore strategy gamer, if you're the sort of person who isn't interested in a game unless it comes down to you using your superior wit and intellect to systematically demolish the man or woman sat across the table from you over three hours and causing irreparable mental scarring, then don't even think about buying Quarriors. It'll leave a taste in your mouth worse than sucking a jellyfish covered in shoe polish will, and you won't be able to jettison it from your life quick enough.

However, if you have a soul, and like to smile, buy it. The idea and the mechanics are fun enough, and it's a quick game that can offer a wide variety of madness in every game (you never have all the monsters in play each game, you see). It's unusual and fun, like a puppy in a top hat (and who doesn't love that?) - and you'll probably always find at least one person who wants a second game.

So, in conclusion: Quarriors is a thing that isn't like the things it looks like it is, but it is, in fact, a puppy.

The Hunger Games – Mini figures booster packs. Do these figures do anything? At all? The solicitation says that they come in “gravity feed boosters”. I have no idea what that means. Collect them all and put them in a shrine or something because they’re no good as miniatures.

Quarmageddon – I haven’t played Quarriors but it looks good. *Someone* hasn’t told us about Quarriors yet despite teasing us with a picture of the dice. Don’t worry though because the mighty Shut Up & Sit Down have played it and judged it. Quarmageddon adds more dice to the game. MORE DICE.

Infiltration – Sci-fi thieve ‘em up by the mind behind Citadels. It’s probably good. Is it good? I DON’T KNOW. I’d like to find out though…

Fortress America – The long awaited return of the classic ‘Ameritrash’ game. I haven’t played it. Umm… It’s got 300 figures. 300! You can invade other board games with your army. Memoir ’44 would be conquered by your 300 strong army men.

Deathwing Space Marine Pack – An expansion for Death Angel, the Space Hulk-lite card game. This expansion will let you play as the Dark Angel marines from the eponymous Deathwing. Death Angel is a good game, it’s hard and you die screaming in glorious battle. A lot. Deathwing will probably give you the delusion that you’ve got a chance. You haven’t.

Warhammer RPG Expansion-palooza – There are three card expansion for FFG’s bizarre Warhammer RPG. I think the game is bizarre because it replaces all numbers on dice with symbols. This confuses and troubles me. I have played it as a Bright Wizard but stopped when I found the spells to be woefully weak in comparison to the rest of the party’s abilities. I became a meathead Troll Slayer instead and had much more fun. But those feelings of wizard inadequacy could be squashed by the Bright Wizard expansion set. SPELLS. WIZARD. Dreadfleet Captains seems to be a cash-in on Games Workshop’s Dreadfleet game but if you want strange boat captains in your campaign, you can go buy ‘em. Finally, Faith of Sigmar adds some more prayer based smiting for your priest of Sigmar.

Dave at Accent was kind enough to send me a copy of Issue 1 of WesterNoir, and I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't get the opportunity to read it for at least a fortnight - and it's taken me even longer to put pen to paper (or rather finger to key) to write something about it.

At this point in this little writeup I'm going to make a deal with you, my sexy, sexy reader. If the rest of this review sounds vague, I apologise:- but please understand, I'm only doing it because I don't want to spoil WesterNoir's gooey, squidgy centre for you.

You see WesterNoir isn't what you think it is. I mean, it is; but it also really, really isn't. The first issue introduces us to a man named Josiah Black - a man who it quickly becomes apparent isn't afraid of using a gun - before slowly and methodically lifting the story's skirt to give you a glimpse of calf so tantalising you'll be dying to poke your head up it's petticoat.

Black has been hired to investigate a man who it is feared is going to kill the family of his new employer, and he wastes no time in tracking the seemingly deranged would be murderer down. What follows next is too good to spoil, but rest assure it is far better than I'm making it sound, and by the end of issue one you'll be gagging for the next installment.

The art in the book is pretty good, all things considered; it's all black and white (which in truth I'm not the biggest fan of), but each panel is still has plenty of energy and life in it. I've got to say that the front cover (seen above) makes me yearn for a full cover version of this, but this is the Small Press we are dealing with (where costs have to be kept down wherever possible), and while the art is nothing to write home about it does a perfectly good job of pushing the story along, which I'm absolutely fine with.

One thing I'm a huge fan of, however, is the binding of the book. It's presented as a kind of mini TPB, with cardstock covers and thicker pages than you'd necessarily expect, and I hope the rest of the series is produced in the same way.

Overall, Accent have produced something that they should definitely be very proud of. It's a compelling opening to a series that looks to have some novel ideas behind it, and I'm already looking forward to the next one (although due to the way Small Press works, I have no idea when it will see the light of day). I was sent this copy to review by Accent, but I will happily part with my own cash for the next instalment in the series if I need to, and I think that is about the heftiest recommendation I can bestow upon this title.

Fiasco is a nod to films like Fargo, Pineapple Express and Big Nothing - films in which a group of characters desperately try to achieve a goal while the world (and their plan) falls apart around them. It's a very light set of roleplay rules that allows you to build stumbling, manic stories that grow and contort uncontrollably as the story progresses, and it's as unpredictable as a bushfire.

Take the game we played last night for example. Exploding Robot's esteemed colleague Mark had picked the setting for us; he'd chosen Manna Hotel, a scenario based around a Motel that allows for any number of creepy things to feature in the story. There are photos of torture, Mafia Members, sacrificial blades and a whole host of other sinister stuff that can turn up in your game - so of course, what we ended up with was a parent and child with some dubious magical abilities (A secretly gay man with a love for underpants, father to a Badger thief who believes the Brunette race should be in charge, both of whom can make jam slightly chunkier with their minds and not a great deal else), another member of the Brunette Sisterhood and her friend, the previously mentioned father's toyboy - and that's before the story even begins.

If it sounds insane, it is; you'll end up with a table full of post-its with relationships written on them (the details of which are chosen by a load of dice), as well as a load of needs, places and objects that link those people. Each player takes it in turn to take the spotlight, and then decides whether they want to Establish or Resolve their scene.

Establishing allows you to set the start of the scene, while resolving allows you to choose how it ends for your character - but beware, because whichever one you do, the other is done by the group. You might decide your character is going to try to seduce his high-school sweetheart - but your friends might decide that things just ain't going your way this time, and you and the person you're working with are going to have to engineer that on the fly, and it's that quick fire decision making which leads to all manner of baffling twists and turns.

By the end of the first act, your characters will have been through a lot. They will have smiled and laughed as their plans began to take shape, and cried as things from their past come to light, people let them down, or they lose something dear to them.

So at this point, you take a break, work out how everyone's getting on, and get ready for act two.

Which is fine, but then it's time for The Tilt.

The Tilt is that moment in those films we mentioned before where everything goes wrong. You can choose from a number of different horrific things to happen to your band of weirdos with calamitously enticing descriptions such as "confusion, followed by pain", and you'll often struggle to decide which Tilt elements you want to include in your plot because they're all so horribly delicious, like chocolate ham.

Then act two begins, and everything continues to turn to shit, just worse than before. If people hadn't died before, they might well do here; our Hotel Manna story ended up with one man dead, a girl half blind, another cast member in prison, and a man almost drowning in a swimming pool full of underwear and fabric softener; that's the sort of awful situations this fantastic game can engineer (with your help, of course).

You might really like the sound of Fiasco - and if you have a soul, you should - but before you rush over to the Bully Pulpit site and download the pdf, take a minute to consider this:

Fiasco isn't for everyone. It requires a group of people who aren't afraid to do a bit of acting, and the better they know each other, the better (you are, after all, building a story together). Also, if you look at the video and picture included in this post, you might notice they both feature the demon drink - and I can't deny that booze is a good lubricant for this particular fun engine.

The One Ring – Dice Set: In this box you get 6D6 (or six six-sided dice for those of you who don’t speak RPG) and a D12. It costs £7.99 for seven dice. I haven’t bought dice for a while but this doesn’t sound like a great deal. Maybe the dice are infused with the power of Gandalf’s mighty whiskers? They are “packaged in a sturdy plastic box” so there’s some of the cost. A box. A box you almost certainly not use because you have a special dice bag that houses all of your polyhedral forces and NO ONE MUST TOUCH IT EVER. NO, STEVE, YOU CANNOT JUST “BORROW” SOME DICE. THESE DICE HAVE BEEN FORGED IN BATTLE, IN SORROW AND JOY, THEY CHANNEL MY VERY ESSENCE. BUY YOUR OWN.

Lost Island Map Pack – It’s a pirate treasure island, not a disappointing island full of nonsensical plot twists that lead to a maddening conclusion. I have used GameMastery’s map packs and they are good, perfect for RPGs with miniature based combat. They are not laminated though so don’t spill coke on them, STEVE.

Virgin Queen – I believe that Mr Paul of Shut Up and Sit Down was excited about this game. Yes, it was the third most exciting game on the list. I’m sure the Shut Up duo will tell us all about it soon (if Paul convinces Quinns to play it). You can pick it up for yourself and play it now. We’re in the future, the games of tomorrow are here NOW.

Breaker of Limits – This is an expansion for a card game I haven’t heard of before – Cardfight Vanguard. I mention this release because the sales blurb paints a terrifying future dystopia: “In the not so distant future, a new era has dawned. Once a form of casual entertainment, card games have become a necessary part of our lives and culture with billions of players across the globe.” I think the Hunger Games would have been improved if Katniss et al, had been forced to play Cardfight Vanguard TO THE DEATH.

Magic The Gathering: The Game That Will Never Die Edition – Yet another Magic booster series. More Magic cards for you. Magic. MAGIC. Of course I played Magic alpha when it first came out and back then we didn’t even have card sleeves. GASP.

There’s also a board game called Shrimp. You look at crustaceans and hit a jar of mayonnaise. Or something. It sounds weird.

Please introduce yourself to anyone who doesn't know you.

P: Hello, I’m Paul Dean. I’m thirty-two years old and I was born on the edge of Surrey and Hampshire and Berkshire. I like dogs and books and old films where James Mason’s voice is warm and cuddly, like a teddy bear. To avoid being unemployed, I write about video games, but I also adore board games and that’s why I want to write about them too- Q: YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG. I’m Quinns. I have climbed mountains. Metaphorically, I am a horse.

Shut Up and Sit Down got most of the Exploding Robot crew in to boardgaming. Without having Shut Up and Sit Down to get you into boardgaming, how on earth did you manage it?

Q: Haha. I actually lucked into it by myself, which is a kind of miserable indictment on the state of the hobby. As a kid I kept going to this one shop for roleplaying supplies, and they had all these board games there. I was curious, and I was lucky, and I took one of the good ones home. Everyone should know a guy, who knows a guy, who wants to introduce you to board games.  SU&SD is both trying to be that guy and produce more of those guys, like some kind of guy factory. P: Like an aging veteran, I have but one story I tell here: HeroQuest. MB games brought it out around 1989 or somesuch, and some of my friends and I really got into it. I totally understood it right away, the concept that a board game could be about heroes fighting monsters, just as it could be about making money (Monopoly) or going to a disastrous house party (Cluedo). A board game could be as clever and exciting and original as you wanted it to be, it didn’t have to be a plodding affair. HeroQuest had a gargoyle and trapped treasure chests and a deck of spells. In Monopoly, one of you can be a boot. I mean, come on.

How did Shut Up and Sit Down come to be, and how much did Quinns' relationship with Rockpapershotgun help in the early days of the site?

P: As I see it, the tale stretches back quite far... Both Quinns and I had played board games (and tabletop roleplaying) when we were young, though we actually met because we were both into videogames. A little while back Quinns started buying more and more (and more!) board games, I’d started playing a few more with friends, and we both fell back into it mostly accidentally, like two men simultaneously falling up the stairs. /Then/ we saw that board game journalism failed to match the intelligence and the enthusiasm that the hobby deserved, and I think it was Quinns who came to me to suggest we follow Consolevania’s attitude: We might not have a budget, but we would have the knowledge and the excitement. I think he said something flattering about my VERY limited screenwriting experience and I said that, sure, we should absolutely do this, and make a damn good go of it. I have to admit, I wasn’t sure how serious he was at the time, but I definitely believed we could create something good if we both dived in. We did. Headlong. Is that about right? Q: Yeah. RPS’s linking us was (and still is) nice, but I think having our combined experience in journalism helped us more. Simply creating good content saw us getting linked of BoardGameGeek and Reddit, and our work in the Twittersphere and Facebook Realm helped too.

How long do episodes of SU&SD take to film, and how many of the games you review are things you own compared to titles you get sent?

Q: In the last year I have essentially bankrupted myself buying games. Which really bugs us, actually. In our day jobs, publishers are desperate for outlets to cover their video game. And here we are with the most popular board gaming site in the UK (I believe), and I’m having to fund us myself. The culture of interaction with the press doesn’t exist. This is where I have to give a shout-out to the guys that have supported us. Esdevium Games here in the UK, Czech Games, Plaid Hat Games and NSKN Games have all been wonderful. P: It’s lovely when we’re sent games, because it tends to be more timely: We’re asked to review something because it’s current or recent. Finding time (or making time) for the episodes is always a challenge, but one way or another we find a way to get things done. When we started our timetable was we’d give ourselves a week to write an episode, a week to film it and a week to edit it, which, over four months, broke us utterly. Q: Time is elastic, so finding the hours to create our episodes isn’t difficult, but what we were noticing was a slight drop in... not quality, but passion. By the end of season 1 the groove of writing and filming reviews had become a rut wherein we didn’t analyze what we were doing, we just went tumbling through the motions. Hence our Christmas Special where we end up reviewing solo games alone. We were trying to mix things up.

Is it boardgaming or board gaming?

P: Is it videogaming or video gaming? I can’t really claim to understand morphology and what does or doesn’t make a compound word official. Given that the Germans absolutely love welding words together to make larger ones, and they also love board gaming, I think calling it boardgaming would be appropriate. Though I haven’t been doing that- Q: It’s video gaming and it’s board gaming. SORRY.

This is something you've touched on numerous times in SU&SD, but why would you recommend an evening of board gaming over the same time spent playing a multiplayer videogame?

P: For me, it’s very much the ability to do things you just can’t do in a video game. The kinds of games we play often feature rules or concepts that an computer would collapse trying to model. AI is bad at bluffing, it’s bad at understanding context, it’s bad at extrapolating. We do all these things all the time, often without even realising, which is why so many of us settle into games of lying and cheating one another so easily. So many of the best board games make us, as people, do our people things at each other. Q: “People things?” P: And then this just reinforces the social aspect of our situation. We’re sat down together anyway, but now we’re engaging even more, through systems in a game that deliberately encourage us to do so, in a way that’d never happen across the internet. Q: Yeah. Paul’s got it. If you consider yourself a gamer, you should explore all aspects of gaming. I wouldn’t recommend an evening of board gaming over an evening of videogaming, I’d recommend knowing what both offer. I’d love to see an evolution of the term “gamer” where the person in question is as comfortable rolling dice and lying to strangers as they are with a pad in their hand.

Do you feel that at times boardgaming can be somewhat of a labour of love - especially when you consider the cost, time involved in setting up, learning and playing a game, combined with the physical space the game takes up and the risk that you're gaming buddies might not like the title (assuming that you've already found gaming friends)?

P: Yeah, somewhat. Board games aren’t cheap, but then neither are video games or consoles or PCs. 3.5m people just forked out $60 or £45 for Diablo III, many of them without blinking, so it’s not like these things are unaffordable. You can expect to get a good board game for £30-45. What many video gamers are spoiled by, though, are tutorials and hand-holding. Opening a board game requires opening the instructions and taking some time to digest it. It might be no more complicated than looking at the manual for your boiler, but it’ll put some people off. All we need to do is show those people that, actually, it’s no big deal, and the best games don’t ask you to refer to the instructions much at all. Q: Mm. And yeah, like you say, there’s also the awesome risk that your friends might not enjoy the game. But videogames only solve that by putting you with like-minded strangers. I’m not sure that’s any better than potentially having a boring time with your friends.

What game(s) would you use to get people into boardgaming?

P: It would probably depend who that was and what I knew appealed to them. I might try The Resistance for people who like to bicker or pick at each other, Dominion for the simplicity of its basic rules, or Memoir ‘44 for people who want to blow stuff up and who are looking for a game about combat. Q: How many people am I introducing? How old are they? Are they gamers? Is there sexual tension? Are we drunk? Am /I/ drunk? I need context. You know, a problem with board gaming is that it fails to even capitalise on the two awesome board games that everyone’s played. Twister and poker. In a sense, people have already been introduced to board gaming. We just need to tell them it’s broader than they think.

A few people we know have suggested that boardgaming simply isn't for them: - they claim they take up too much space and cards will just get lost or damaged - How would you respond to people who say that board gaming isn't for them because of these reasons? 

Q: MAN UP. Or LADY UP. P: Actually, I don’t know. The space, fair enough, is an issue, but only if you have lots. You don’t need to own lots, you just need to own the ones you like most and people always, always want to buy second-hand games. Unless, I suppose you’ve lost or damaged your cards, but why would you do that? Don’t you take care of your things? Do you wake up in the night and chew all your possessions? Do you feel compelled, each week, to burn one item in your house? Do you just LOVE water-damaging things at random? Do you live with a poltergeist? I would probably continue asking a person questions like these until I was arrested.

House rules: The devil or a-ok?

Q: I have a rule in my house that nobody’s allowed to wear bras. I think that’s an OK rule. P: Sometimes essential. Otherwise, often a useful thing to have. Q: We’re talking about the same thing, right?

What's the key to a genuinely brilliant game? Rules, art, interplay between players, or something completely else?

P: A game is like a horse. Q: I am a horse. P: Fundamentally, it must run well and it must be finely-honed. But horses are notoriously fair creatures and a game should reward those who play it with skill and thought, without punishing those who are too unlucky. Much like a horse, you don’t just want it to be a naked system of perfectly interconnected muscle and sinew; a glossy skin and charming theme needs to be stretched over all this. Q: I AM A HORSE

Do you prefer competitive or co-operative games? Is the sense of accomplishment you get from helping your friends achieve something huge better than the buzz you get as you crush your best friend's plans with a single card played at the right time?

P: I misread this as “if you get a crush on your best friend.” I like both. The thing I’ve found with board games is quite a few of them are great at modelling something that’s not just co-operative, but something where you feel your role is unique to the team, where you have your own special task to perform. They often do this better than many video games and I really love this. But I don’t mind competitive games at all. Q: I’d say that you’ve accidentally stumbled on the reason Space Alert is so good, there. It’s a ferocious buzz while also providing a sense of accomplishment. God, I love Space Alert.

What are your hopes for boardgaming as a hobby? Do you feel like it'll ever be seen as a respectable way for grownups to spend an evening, or does the industry limit itself by sticking to the usual sci-fi and fantasy tropes?

P: I think in many places it’s already a respectable hobby, but I certainly hope it continues to grow and grow. Aside from it just being a brilliant thing, there’s all kinds of arguments for board gaming being a way to make new friends, a way to excercise your brain, to be educational, to be a great family activity. And, of course, sci-fi and fantasy are no less respectable than any other genres, there’s nothing wrong with stimulating the imagination, cause that’s what it’s there for. Q: I don’t know if I have any hopes for boardgaming as a hobby. We’re in a board gaming golden age right now, and I’m very happy watching the designers do their thing. My hopes are mostly for individuals. My hopes are that, slowly but surely, people are waking up across the world. Pauline from Newcastle is watching our show and buying Citadels to play with her family. Shams from Sweden sees our Galaxy Trucker review and plays it with his non-board gamer friends every month for years. Board games are about spending time with people you love, as we say back in S1E5. That’s the most beautiful kind of gaming, maybe. I’d love to see a bit more of that.

What would Shut Up and Sit Down: The Show: The Boardgame be like?

P: You enter a darkened room. Immediately, one player is heard screaming in the blackness, but never again respond to your calls. You fumble for the felt die. You roll. You may move up to three spaces or collect two elements from the periodic table. Then, the kaziquizzles begin to attack. Q: Yes. It definitely wouldn’t be about making an episode, or something. It would be an abstract interpretation of the experience of playing a game. There would definitely be a rule where somebody must go and sit in the toilet with the lights off for a while.

So, Settlers of Catan?

Q: Why do people keep asking us about this? We think Settlers of Catan is a bizarre bit of design. Not because it’s intrinsically strange, but because a happy selection of mechanics have caused it to catapult into the public eye as if it was a rocket~

*STATIC*