Blog Archives
Space-Cast! #47. Bun Bangers
Hot Streak! Off-brand mascots and gambling degeneracy have never been more in fashion. For today’s Space-Cast!, we’re joined by Jon Perry to discuss his mascot-racing board game, its connections to the digital collection UFO 50, and the particulars of adaptation and artistic medium. Now that’s a mouthful!
Listen here or download here. Timestamps can be found after the jump.
Skyblivionrockmarsh
Way back in 2011, Todd Howard let it slip that Skyrim would have “unlimited dragons,” dragging surprised reactions from the internet. Don’t believe me? Here’s pre-People Make Games, pre-Shut Up & Sit Down Quintin Smith’s press release on the matter. It’s pleasingly sarcastic. Because, you know, “unlimited nouns” has always been the Elder Scrolls’ whole thing. This is the fantasy series that made volume its defining metric. Depth? Nah. Enjoyment? Get outta here. Kelvins? Only if you’re talking about Lord Kelvyn, the Redguard Knight of the True Horn. No, really. Like I said, unlimited nouns.
Which brings us to The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era, Chip Theory’s adaptation of not only Skyrim, not only Oblivion, not only Morrowind, not only those other ones nobody talks about anymore, but the whole dang universe with its boundless recreations, provided your recreational interests are limited to hoofing across fantasy landscapes and murdering fantasy gobbos. It comes with a bazillion components, weighs so much that it should have a team lift warning on the box, and costs as much as twenty-five burritos from my favorite local burrito place.
You heard that right. Despite my policy on the matter, this thing is so pricey that I think it warrants some discussion. First, though, I want to walk you through the shape of an average TES:BOTSE campaign.
She’s a Grisly Monster, I Assure You
You know the story. Buncha monsters storm Mount Olympus. The pantheon is in a scramble. Who’s this coming to save the day — Hercules? More like Hunk-ules.
Reiner Knizia’s Ichor isn’t Disney’s Hercules, and thank the gods for that, although Tyler Miles Lockett’s illustrations do somewhat resemble the Gerald Scarfe amphorae look of the animated feature. When I previewed the thing a year back, I liked it somewhat less than its sibling title Iliad. Now that they’re both finished and on my table, though, I’ve been giving Ichor a second look. And while it’s still the zanier and less measured of the pair, there’s so much to appreciate about Knizia’s portrayal of this divine brawl that I can’t help but be charmed.
Let Me Not Then Die Ingloriously
You know that moment in every ancient battle scene, whether in film or video games, where the lines have collapsed and now the burly infantry boys are fighting one on one, everybody mixed together and slashing wildly? Bonus points when two rival heroes spot each other in the fray and start murdering their way toward one another, hellbent on a personal duel where nobody will happen to spear them through the backside.
Sorry to disappoint, but those scenes are pure invention. There simply weren’t enough suicidal soldiers in the ancient world for such an engagement. Still, it looks hella cool, and it’s significantly easier to stage than an actual line of infantry trying to scare their opposite number into freaking out and running away.
One of my favorite things about Reiner Knizia’s Iliad, which I previewed last year, is the way it evokes those haphazard murder-thons, Greek boys in blue and red squaring off in a checkers-grid melee. Sure, the game is smart and all that, providing a thinky two-player match of wits that emphasizes clever investments over brute strength. But I’m really here for the chaos.
Syke!
In 1916, at the height of WWI, two diplomats met in secret to outline the future partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. Those diplomats, the United Kingdom’s Mark Sykes and France’s François Georges-Picot, approached this undertaking with all due gravity and diligence.
Jokes! Nah, they more or less scribbled on a map with crayons, dividing the region between the U.K., France, Russia, and Italy. Their proposed boundaries split local polities — in some cases, they seem to have used the letters on their map as landmarks — and showed no intention of honoring their agreements with their Arab allies. Shrouded in secrecy, the agreement only came to light when post-revolution Bolsheviks published the whole thing, proving to the world that the Triple Entente had returned to their bad habit of cutting backroom deals.
This ignominious treaty is the topic of Sykes-Picot, the trick-taking, dry-erase, area control game by Brooks Barber and Hollandspiele. This one is angry, polemical, slapdash, and wholly on-point.
Gazing Up into Heaven
Last year, two designs by Tomáš Holek marveled at the stars. One of those games, SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has enraptured audiences with its thoughtful quest to discover life beyond our planet. The other title is Galileo Galilei, a boilerplate Euro with a few good ideas in its head and some profoundly spurious history in its belly.
This review is for the weaker of the two. Get ready to squint into the eyepiece.
Wet Behind the Gills
Over the past year or so, my eleven-year-old daughter Cate and I have tried a handful of campaign adventure games. By far her favorite — our favorite — has been Tidal Blades 2: Rise of the Unfolders by Tim and Ben Eisner.
Not that Tidal Blades 2 is without its peculiarities. It’s an odd duck, a sprawling cooperative campaign that’s also a sequel to a game that was not, apparently, itself a sprawling cooperative campaign, set in a far-future world where fish and crocodiles are sentient bipeds, axolotls live in hive-mind communion with trans-dimensional beings, and a big old time warp called the Fold sits over the flash-frozen husk of a nearby civilization. The Fold, by the way, is what your heroes will be unfolding. Not, say, their little sister’s origami.
Opera Is Danger
Last year’s The Battle of Versailles was a revelation, treating the world of high fashion as seriously as combat, and in the process teaching me something about an art form I’d always regarded as frivolous.
Here’s a piece of good news: apparently Versailles did so well that it’s now the basis for an entire series. For its first sequel, The Battle of the Divas by Albert Reyes, the topic is opera, a form I’ve never considered frivolous so much as impenetrable. But in Reyes’ hands, the lifelong feud between Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi becomes gripping, a tale of self-mastery, success and setback, and hitting those high notes.
Also cattiness. So much cattiness. It’s good that Divas is leaning into what made Versailles so playable.
That Wizard Came from the Moon
Fabio! Lopiano! Truly, he has the most pronounceable name in the entire hobby. I’m something of a provisional fan, after being impressed with Merv but mixed on Autobahn and Sankoré, both of which proved too overwrought for their own good. Shackleton Base, which Lopiano co-designed with Nestore Mangone, finds the pair back in stride. It’s complex but not too tangled, indulges in the occasional digression but never loses focus, and above all takes us to a semi-plausible moon colony that feels absolutely great to bang into working shape.
Into the Woodland(ers)
All I play anymore is trick-takers.
Okay, that isn’t wholly true anymore. It seems the trick-taking bubble has, if not burst, levitated a few meters off the ground. Still, another title from New Mill Industries, this one designed by proprietor Daniel Newman himself, is always a treat. This one’s veneer is about woodland creatures trying to shirk their turn as the warden of the forest. Not that you’ll think about the fluff for even two seconds while playing Woodlanders. Instead, the real draw is the excellent poison-pill gameplay, a truly deadly capsule that once again highlights how much ground this eldest of genres has yet to cover.
SPACE-BIFF! 