Stuff and Nonsense First Impressions
Stuff and Nonsense involve telling tales and lies about travels untravelled.
A good game. A dead game.
In Stuff and Nonsense: The Inevitable Aftermath of Professor Elemental’s Imaginary Polar Expedition! players are Victorian adventurers who set out from London to go absolutely nowhere. You’ll spin tales of high adventure in the far reaches of the globe, but in reality you’re just hiding in London, collecting antiques, and trying to avoid being caught by Professor Elemental!
This is from Cheapass Games and has the same art and humour as Get Lucky which is art and humour I enjoy.
Gameplay
The game is… untidy? It’s simple enough but the play area just has cards all over the place. They’re constantly being picked up, replaced and rotated so it’s hard to keep them straight. I decided for once to let it go and play in a messy area. This is probably what brought on my headache 30 minutes later!
Check this out…
So I said gameplay in Stuff and Nonsense is very simple. You’re spinning tales of places you’ve been by moving to the different locations around London to collect cards of different types. These cards will help you tell the lie about your travels when you stop off at the Adventurers Club.
Maybe you stop off at the Antique shop for an antique? or maybe the Cafe for a story? Each location will allow you to collect a card which has a matching colour for its type and different ratings for the 5 locations you can score.
Movement
The movement to these locations is restricted to moving either clockwise or anti-clockwise one space around the 5 locations that surround the two central ones. You can move to those in the middle (Adventurers Club and Market) and then back out anywhere on your next turn but you MUST perform the action on those cards if you do. That’s quite difficult because even the market, which just lets you discard a card and draw a card, is tough to visit as you rarely have cards in your hand you don’t need
You cash in cards of different types that have scores for a location on them at the Adventurers Club. You score points equal to the value on the card, plus the value the location is currently at. I say ‘currently at’ because it changes a lot.
So you move, take a card, replace that card, next player.
Professor Elemental
When you replace a card, if it has an arrow in the bottom right-hand corner and a value equal to or higher than the number of players, Professor Elemental moves around the board. One space in clockwise order.
If he lands on your space you’re rumbled. Your travels are known to be a lie and you have to pay a penalty. You either have to discard a card or lose points equal to the number of cards in your hand. This really makes you think twice about building up large numbers of cards to go for big scores for those higher-value locations.
If you do cash in some cards for points, you score the points, rotate the card of that location down in value and roll a D6 to increase the value of another location. This ever-changing points value is great, or frustrating depending on what you have in your hand.
Stuff and Nonsense Summary
So the game is OK. The theme is great and the card and fluff are fantastic.
I especially like Fluffy the Cat, who was loved by her crew despite doing nothing all day.
“A Good Cat. A Dead Cat.”
Jesta ThaRogue
