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Friday Rules: 14.11.2014

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Game of the Week - King of New York"You're going to the Big Apple and you're gonna be a star, honey, a STAR!" said every casting agent ever. However in this case, your agent's correct! Tokyo's long gone - in this follow-up game by Richard Garfield, 2-6 players will fight to control each borough of NYC, ultimately aiming for Manhattan. You're also like every other poor sod in the city - you want fame and you want it NOW, for the celebrity status brings you Victory Points but alas, not for long! You can even mix and match your monsters from King of Tokyo, but remember, the power cards are specific to this game! It's exciting, it's fun, it's full of ragey monsters acting like spoilt brats - what's not to love?! For reviews, check out The Dice Tower, Board Game Brawl and this overview video from Gen Con '14!

 

'The Apprentice' Board Game Special! At last, my friends, the time has come! BBC's popular 'business reality' TV show The Apprentice tackled board games - tackled them and dragged them to the ground. If you were hoping to see the next Ticket to Ride, you were instead met with 'GeoKnow', a fairly pleasant game about geographical knowledge that stumbled closely alongside national stereotypes, and 'The Relationship Guru', a game that took gender stereotypes as we know them and twisted them around until they made no sense to man nor beast. 'What do men dislike the most?' asks one of the cards in play, giving you an option of 'vegetables, waxing or cricket', a terrible trio of answers and coincidentally the worst dinner menu for a wedding ever. While 'GeoKnow' stuck to being a successful copy-cat version of 'Articulate!', 'The Relationship Guru' drowned miserably in its own tears and came in second, leading to project manager Pamela Uddin leaving the show. 

So what did you think? On Facebook, Daniel Pass has been inspired to make his own board game - hopefully not one about relationships! Kieran Harwood thought it wise to just avoid the show completely, Andrew Harman, the man and monster behind Frankenstein's Bodies, 'anticipated idiocy on a grand scale', while Sean Rowlands kept it short and sweet, declaring 'that relationship game' to be 'the worst thing I've ever seen in my life'. On Twitter, Ian Boggs was keen to know when we'd have 'The Relationship Guru' in stock (thankfully they've offered us exclusivity for THE WHOLE OF WALES), while Pete Scuff paid us a lovely compliment and dissed the show at the same time - impressive! But we have an exclusive scoop on the whole story! Matt Lees, one member of the fab Shut Up and Sit Down, was actually in this episode as a voice of gaming reason in a focus group. We reached out to him for his expert opinion and review, and we're proud to say he told us it's a 'no/10'. A whole 'no' out of 10! You can't get that story anywhere else, folks! Hopefully you enjoyed this episode of The Apprentice as much as we did! Moral of the story? Best to leave it to the professionals! For a full review, click here.

 

A Game You've Never Heard Of. Here in Friday Rules we talk a fair bit about board games in TV, film and popular culture and today is clearly no different! An article has emerged online that lists a bunch of obscure board games that came from really popular films but didn't, well... live up to the hype. Wayne's World, The Goonies and the sexy Sin City have all inspired games that elicit mixed reviews. There's even a board game based on Free Willy, but according to the article's author it falls short because it 'lacks the build-up, whale bonding, and the Michael Jackson soundtrack that the movie provided.' A game about whales without whale bonding? I am furious. Check out the article here!

 

Family Games Day is back this Sunday at 12-4pm, for a Christmas special! Well, kinda. In the run up to Christmas, our free event is a great way to test out some games with your kids! Which ones do they love, and which ones do they throw violently across the room? We can show you the light!

 

Magic the Gathering: Tribal Wars is close on the horizon, arriving in store on Sunday November 30th, 11-4pm! Which tribe will you go home with?! 

 

New Releases / Restocks / Coming Soon!

 

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New In Store From Next Week - What a list we have! Play your cards right and get the presents you want in Letters to Santa, the newest edition of Love Letter; an intergalactic card game for 2 brave players in Star Wars: Empire vs Rebellion; sit down at the BEST table with YGO Noble Knights of the Round Table box set; scary-ish monsters in Rarrr!; Dixit 4 - Origins; Dixit 5 - Daydreams; Demonslayer - Siege of Mt. Kunlun; All that Remains Data Pack; Celebrimbor's Secret Adventure Pack; Noble Treachery; Walled City; Borderlands - Walled City expansion; Escape - Big Box; Viticulture (second print); Medina; Fields of Arle; aaaaand breathe! Phew!

 

New Releases Available Now - a Christmas present for the Magic player in your life with the Holiday Gift box; empires powered by rotating gears in Empire Engine; Gods and temples in Deus; architecture galore in Versailles; ships ahoy! in Black Fleet; Swing States 2012; more Sherlock with I Say, Holmes!; the crazy maze of time in Tragedy Looper; creepy Call of Cthulhu playing cards; a pinch of satirical money grabbing in Corporate America; a reprint of Lancaster; Pocket Battles: Confederacy Vs. Union; an RPG adventure with Time Travel Dinosaur; Savage Worlds: Interface Zero 2.0; D&D Bard Spell Deck; D&D Cleric Spell Deck; D&D Druid Spell Deck; Enemy Coast Ahead and fight against heavy odds in Bitter Woods - Designer Edition! Slavika Equinox, Orcs Orcs Orcs, Chinatown and Fresco Big Box all available to order with us too!

 

Arriving Soon - the final sibling of the D&D family with Dungeon Master's Guide; beautiful storytelling in The Witcher Adventure Game; 2 new Pandemic expansions, including dice-based quick co-op The Cure and the hotly anticipated Pandemic: Legacy; from a galaxy far far away comes new Star Wars miniatures games, fleet-based Armada and ground-based Imperial Assault; family-friendly bluffing and bribery in Sheriff of Nottingham, .... PRE-ORDERS FOR ALL THESE BEING TAKEN NOW!

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