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You may or may not be familiar with Shut Up and Sit Down. Founded a number of years ago this is a place for intelligent and thoughtful discussion on board games but also one that takes the time and effort to relay information in a fun and engaging way. Silly jokes are common and the community built around the site is a warm and welcoming place because of this tonal choice. Their videos and reviews are one of the major contributing factors in me getting more heavily invested in this hobby, so I’d advise you view them at your own financial peril.
Earlier this year they announced they would be hosting and throwing their first board game convention called SHUX in October, so obviously as a long time fan I was very interested. They made the choice to host it in Vancouver, a city it’s safe to say is less than local to my own hometown of Nottingham. All that said, I’ve never been one to turn down an excuse to go abroad and after looking behind my couch (and many other people's) I cobbled together the funds for the trip.
This first SHUX was a much smaller event than the main ones that make up the board game expo calendar (eg: Essen, UK Board Games Expo) with only around 700 attendees. What this gave it, however, was a close-knit community feel. During my time there I had the pleasure of playing with and sitting next to a variety of board game reviewers, designers, artists and actors, all in an incredibly comfortable and friendly environment that let us all enjoy the main focus of this event, the games.
So let’s talk about them! I was lucky enough to play a wide variety, some from my wishlist and some currently in prototype form or as yet unreleased. I won’t go through everything I’ve played but I will pick out some personal highlights.
Hardback
Firstly, let’s start with Hardback, a Kickstarter game from Tim Fowers (designer of Burgle Bros, Fugitive, and this game's prequel Paperback) who also taught me how to play. This is a game for both deck building and word game lovers, which sees you drawing five cards from your deck and taking it in turns to create words, earn money to buy new letters, hopefully starting to generate points so you can win the game.
Each player starts with the same limited deck of cards and by spelling out words they’ll gain access to a common market of new letters they can buy. These letters are usually color coded and often have additional powers. By using two letters of the same color in a word you may earn more money, more points or additional bonuses. One nice aspect of this game is that it doesn’t punish you too harshly (I’m looking at you scrabble) when you don’t have all the letters you need.
Any card in Hardback can be used as a wild to form any letter by flipping it over onto its rear side. This means you’ll be able to create words easier and much longer ones sooner than you’d think, but there is a downside, you can’t score from these upturned cards. There’s much more to the game than this but that’s a general overview and despite being absolutely terrible at it on the day I can’t wait to play it some more when my copy shows up later in the year.
Princess Jing
Second, I’d like to talk to you about Princess Jing, a surprisingly tense two-player game of hidden movement and bluffing. In this game, you are controlling opposing princesses each trying to reach a specific guard on the opposite side of the player board.
The board itself is made up of 25 little two-sided screen boxes. These boxes all contain slots on either side of them, for the character's pieces. At the start of the game you’ll be placing your princess, two animals and two mirror men into the slot on your side of the first row of these boxes.
Gameplay involves swapping one box in the grid with another, either diagonal or orthogonal from its current position, and you’ll want to not only move your princess across the board undetected but you’ll need to discover which animals your opponent has as sidekicks to know which guard is safe to approach. Approach the wrong guard or have your princesses' location discovered at any time and you’ll be forced back to the starting line.
Finding the animals or your opponent's princess will involve the use of your mirror men, characters who actually hold tiny circular mirrors in their hands. This novel touch means you will be able to see the reflection of your opponent's side of a box as you search and hunt each other down. By getting you to lean closer to the board you become even more engaged with the puzzle and the visual surprise, delight or disappointment of your opponent when you move a mirror to spot a character elevates things. You’ll both play the cat and the mouse during these games, afraid of being discovered but also worried your opponent has passed you by.
This is where a lot of bluffing comes into play, with you swapping boxes that are empty or moving things back and forth to keep your opponent guessing. I genuinely found this game surprisingly tense and I can’t wait to get my hands on this for another play-through. If you love two-player logic games this could be one to keep your eyes on.
Tiny Epic Quest
Next is a game that’s been on my watch list for some time, the charming and 16-bit era Zelda inspired Tiny Epic Quest. In this dice-based adventure game you control three heroes and are traveling across a surprisingly spacious board that is made up of cards, each card split into two sections.
These cards may contain temples you’ll need to overcome, goblins you can fight or locations where you can learn new spells. The temples triggered plenty of nostalgia in me with water, ice, fire, and woodland making me think of old-school RPGs. By completing the temples you’ll also gain new equipment and a wonderful little item is that full of these tiny pieces meaning you get to take the sword you just gained and clip it to your meeple as a visual and actual upgrade.
I will say the game ran a bit too long for my tastes and there were quite a few rules to get your head around for such a small box game. I’d love to give it another try and those of you who are tempted to scratch that 16-bit era RPG itch in a game are recommended in giving it a closer look.
Tournament at Camelot
Tournament at Camelot was a game I was absolutely terrible at. Like so terrible I reduced one of the players at the table to tears of laughter, twice. I did, however, have an amazing time playing it so let me try to tell you why.
This is a trick-taking card game that casts you as medieval knights in combat, using swords, archery, deception, sorcery or alchemy to take down your opponents. You start the game with a big stack of health, 400 units to be exact but trust me when I say this won’t necessarily last long.
Each round players start with a hand full of cards and you’ll be playing them in turn order trying not to have the lowest in the starting suit played on that turn. If you do you’ll pick up the cards from the table putting them to one side. The loser of that turn goes first on the next (allowing them to pick a card and suit) and at the end of each round (when you’ve run out of cards), you’ll go through the ones you claimed and count out how much damage you’ll take on. Cards run from 1-15 in 5 suits with alchemy being able to be played as any suit when you’ve run out of that particular one. So far so simple.
The game makes things more interesting by each player having their own character. These characters have their own special powers and this can greatly affect how the game is played. After each round, the player currently in last place will also gain a Godsend card. These cards grant special abilities that you’ll retain for that round. It might allow you to discard any sword damage you’ve taken on, flip the values of played cards meaning lower cards now win the hand or a variety of other changes. This will keep people changing tactics each round plus works as an excellent balancing mechanic for those trailing the pack.
Additionally there are also special cards in the deck such as Merlin, who is a wildcard who deals catastrophic damage. This wasn’t a game I’d even heard of however the combination of the fantastic medieval artwork and fun fast gameplay have meant that this is a game I will definitely be adding to my collection.
Captain Sonar
Another highlight of the convention was Captain Sonar, a team-based game where you are controlling state of the art submarines in real-time combat. Each team has four different roles which are all important in their own particular way:
- The Captain - Charters your submarine's movement around a grid and has final say in plans.
- Radio Operator - Listens to the opposing team movement, tracking it on an overlay of the map, desperately trying to figure out where they might be so weapons can be deployed.
- Chief Mate - Powers up the different systems and decides if the sub will be able to do different things such as fire missiles, drop mines or activate silence moving unseen by your opponent.
- Engineer - Primary job seems to be breaking a piece of equipment in the sub every time it moves (I’m not kidding).
Without going into too much detail, all these systems link together and somehow work, giving you a feeling of anxiety and pressure as you scramble to keep your sub-operational as well as track down your opponents to finish them off. I played two games back to back and they were some of the most interesting and exciting I’ve seen from a board game to date. F
or me this is a must-have for any collection when you need a team-based party game and is both easy to learn and scalable with player numbers.
Lovecraft Letter
Finally, I had a bit of a look at Lovecraft Letter, the latest in a series of spin-offs and re-themes of the original classic deduction card game Love Letter. This latest version expands the player count from a maximum of four up to six and also increases the number of cards in the deck by having insanity versions of cards with slightly differing powers.
Using an insanity card may give short-term benefits however on each subsequent turn you’ll need to draw an insanity check at the start of your go, flipping the top card of the deck over. If this is another insanity card, you’re immediately out of the round, if not you continue to play as normal. The more insanity cards you play, the more checks you need to conduct greatly increasing your risk. The increased card count and new cards will make for more varied play but at this stage I can’t tell if this will dilute things meaning it\'s a more luck based experience.
Without more plays it’s hard to say if this is the best version of Love Letter yet, or a slightly diluted version for larger player counts, either way, my interest was peaked and if you've always found Love Letters player count restrictive this could well be the game for you.
Closing Thoughts on SHUX
I played countless games at SHUX but mainly I would like to say this was all greatly elevated by the attendees, some of the friendliest I’ve ever encountered. The whole experience has left me with a renewed enthusiasm for playing with strangers and hope you too will go out, check out your local game store, groups and meetups for new players of your own.