Have You Played… Battlestar Galactica?
Battlestar Galactica is, at its core, a cooperative game. You and your fellow players take to the table as crewmembers of the aforementioned spaceship, and the few hours you spend at the board chronicles your ongoing journey through space, and the crises that occur during it.
And boy, are there crises. A whole deck of them, in fact, and it’s these crisis cards that create the chewy centre that the crunchy, sugary, sci-fi-enhanced shell surrounds.
What kind of Board Gamer are you?
(Written by Abi)
I’ve asked myself this question over and over. Fumbled with board games whose names I’ve forgotten. Found myself on specialist websites ogling their wares. I’ve consulted experts, witch doctors, and cornered close friends for a session of intimate over-sharing in an effort to discover the answer. Yet it still seems to elude me.
Well, it did – I think. I had a bit of an epiphany, if you can call a self-indulgent rant such a thing. This moment happened to me when fellow ‘bot Chris and I were leaving the UK Games Expo in Birmingham. We were laden down with games and expansion packs, trekking through the heat towards the car, which unbeknownst to either of us would soon belch horrifyingly hot air at us as we attempted to enter it. We were still reeling from the Expo, high on stacks of cards and dizzy from too many multi-coloured dice, our minds ruffled with a thousand new rules applied to a hundred new worlds. The sweet nectar of new board games was simply dripping from our skin. And suddenly I knew.
Suddenly, I just knew what board games, upon being offered to me, I would tell to fuck off. Such moments of clarity, of epiphany, rarely occur and thus Chris spent the entirety of our arduous journey back to the car having his ear bent about which types of board games made me want to rend the flesh from my own face and which made me do one of my many little happy dances.
Have You Played… Quarriors?
Quarriors.
Quarriors.
Quirriors.
Yeah. Quarriors is, to put it bluntly… A thing.
Stay with me.
It’s a sort of competitive deck-building strategy and economy management game, except you don’t build a deck and there’s hardly any economy and there’s an awful lot of luck involved in winning. So it isn’t that at all.
So. Quarriors is a thing, because it’s definitely something, but it isn’t any of the things that it looks like it is.
We’re good at this, aren’t we?
What’s In The Shops This Week? (28/05/12)
Hello, what is in the shops this week? Let’s all grab a copy of Esdevium’s release sheet and take a look together. I’ll tell you what I think is interesting on there, like a spooky voice that only you can hear.
Oh god, this is difficult. I haven’t played any of this stuff. Ummm… Let me see…
CHATSPLOSION: Quinns and Paul (Shut Up and Sit Down)
Shut Up and Sit Down is the entire reason that Exploding Robot exists.
Straight up. Quinns and Paul’s enthusiasm and passion for boardgaming is infectious, and those two lovely men are the reason that there’s a huge pile of expensive cardboard boxes in the corner of Exploding Robot towers.
As such, we’re very excited to say that our second CHATSPLOSION guests are the effervescent, erudite and handsome hosts of Shut Up and Sit Down, Paul Dean and Quintin Smith.
What’s In The Shops This Week? 21/05/12
This week (from 21st May 2012) there’s a whole heap of new board game, card game, role playing game releases – check them out at Esdevium. Below, I have picked out some interesting items and given you my usual ill formed opinions on them.
JUST GIVE ME THE GOD DAMN GAME: Mice and Mystics
Welcome to Exploding Robot’s newest (and most blasphemous) feature, the cleverly titled JUST GIVE ME THE GOD DAMN GAME.
This series of posts is going to be about games that aren’t out yet. As in, games that we can’t play yet.
But, dear reader, these are games that we desperately want.
Why? Well those reasons will likely change from game to game, so you’ll have to just hang around and read the posts won’t you? Won’t you!? Stop being so bloody impatient. You’re only embarrassing yourself with your petulance.
Anyway, say hello to Exploding Robot’s first JGMTGDG (Catchy, huh?): Mice and Mystics, by Plaid Hat.
Chatsplosion: Colby Dauch, Plaid Hat Games
When we started Exploding Robot, I wondered how well the site would do. I was concerened it would just be another gaming site, lost amongst the noise made by the bigger boys as they kicked me when I was down and took my money.
But… that was then. That was before I SUMMONED up the courage to send an email to our very first Chatsplosion guest, asking for a few minutes of his time.
I was amazed when he very quickly replied, putting up no WALLS whatsoever, and didn’t put me through the WARS when it came to answering my questions.
Terrible jokes aside, we’re honoured to have Colby Dauch from Plaid Hat games as our first interviewee. For those who don’t know, he designed this game:
Which is a favourite in the Exploding Robot household, if only for the day it made Abi (our as-yet-unrevealed third writer (she’s being kept in a giant glass tube, having Lady Mechanika and Too Much Sex and Violence fed to her via injection)) say “If I was playing as the Elves, I would have set fire to the table by now”. AND NOT JUST BECAUSE THEY’RE PHOENIX ELVES.
Have You Played… Zombies!!!?
Zombies.
Zombies, zombies, bloody zombies.
If you’re into comics, or video games, or films, or having your eyes open and being in any way, shape or form aware of the world in which we live, you will be aware of the huge amount of undead based… stuff out there at the moment.
Whether it’s the Walking Dead, Highschool of the Dead, Left 4 Dead or… Well, you get the picture, the Zombie Apocalypse is “in” right now. In fact, at the moment, it’s so popular, it’s getting to the point where complaining about how popular it is has become passée. We’ve reached the singularity.
So of course, gaming has got in on the act as well, although to be fair to Zombies!!!, the game we are looking at today is more than ten years old. However, it’s only recently that you’ve been able to pick this title up from places like Waterstones (Where Exploding Robot sourced its copy of the base game; we were as confused as you), and as such the game seems to be having somewhat of a revival at the moment.
What’s in the Shops This Week? - 15/05/12
Hello, this is the first What’s In The Shops This Week - or WITSTW if you prefer.
This week (from 14th May 2012) will see the release of a few items in the UK and I’ve checked out the release schedule at Esdevium. You can play along too by visiting the release sheet here.
