News

Game of the Week - Suburbia. The anticipation of Machi Koro has got us thinking about the first big-hitter in the whole 'run-your-own-metropolis-and-control-a-bunch-of-people' scenario - Ted Alspach's Suburbia! This 1-4 player game - also the 2013 Mensa Select winner - is a tile-laying game that sees players presiding over the growth of the industrial, commercial and residential areas of their city, and it's a roller coaster ride of thrills n' spills, evidently. I'm joking! Players rave about it, and it's the board game equivalent to all those computer games we played as power-hungry kids with Messiah complexes: Zoo Tycoon, The Sims, Theme Hospital. Like them, Suburbia allows us to grow and develop our own creations until the winner has the biggest population at the end. It's classy, fun and plays differently each time, keeping things fresh! Check out this review with The Dice Tower for more info.

Worst. Game. Ever. I forgot to hire The Simpsons' 'Comic Book Guy' to say that for me, but you catch my drift. Jimmy Fallon, the host of America's The Tonight Show and an ex-Saturday Night Live cast member, set himself the task of finding the world's worst board games. What he comes up with is 'Ring Around the Nosy', a game featuring plastic elephant trunks and little hoops, and the Vanilla Ice 'Electronic Rap Game', a board game I've actually written about but never seen played properly in real life, so what a treat that was. Click here to see the article and watch the video! There's also a game about Bigfoot. All I'll say is: there should not be a game about Bigfoot.

A man named Dan with a plan. Dan O'Donnell, the founder of www.positiveatmosphere.com, has created a Kickstarter for his new board game, 'Better Me', a game intended to help you grow as a person and improve your life. Call me a cold, cynical Brit, but doesn't it always seem like you're never far away from someone jabbering on about spirituality and finding the meaning of life? It's pizza and Leonardo Dicaprio movies. There, you can stop looking. In all fairness, the game looks interesting and I'd like to see whether you really do reach the finish line and feel an urge to dramatically improve yourself. Not you though, dear reader. You're faaaaabulous, dahling! 

This year, I'll be a mummified meeple. Meadville, in Pennsylvania, will be the coolest town to live in this Halloween, as they have declared the theme of this year's annual Halloween parade as: board games! Costumes based on the traditionals - a 'Monopoly' top hat, a doctor's scrubs for 'Operation' - are expected, but what would you attempt, if you could go? A Viking hat and blood-spattered Converse, in a nod to Munchkin? A suit of armour and a real life horse in an ode to Carcassonne? Tricky. Click here to read the article - an American parade means nothing to us, but it'll make you laugh to see the writer's attempt to fit as many gaming puns in as possible, whilst having a cripplingly limited knowledge of board games. Yikes.

Our LCG day hits the Rules of Play store this Sunday! Take the opportunity to play your hand as a Conquest warlord, a maverick shooter in Doomtown and a crafty bugger in Netrunner! Click here for the Facebook event.

Launch party ahoy! To celebrate us bringing you the UK's first board game bar at the uber-awesome Urban Tap House, we're holding an official launch party on Monday October 20th, with nibbles, drinks, mates, more drinks, and a few games scattered into the mix! Click here to see the Facebook event, and here for a more detailed page on our website.