Misc 4 - Shut Up & Sit Down

The SU&SD Merch Shop is live!

Quinns: That’s right, after little more than five and a half years the SHUT UP SHOP is open for business!

Would you like a Reference Pear t-shirt? Do you want to nobly swagger about the house with our logo across your chest, or remind people of that time we inexplicably came to represent the nation of Japan? I hope you do because those are the only options right now.

That said, we’re hoping to expand our merch in the near future. We know you guys want SU&SD mugs, posters, buttons, road-legal vehicles and more, and we want them too!

In the meantime, thanks so much for your support, everybody. It’s thanks to you that we’re where we are today.

xox

Quinns: Right! Some of you might have heard that I got married this weekend. It was a blissful day and went entirely as planned, except for my Mum providing inexplicable amounts of cream at the picnic which I suspect will be a running joke among my friends for the next four or five decades.

But something I had no idea was happening was a surprise stag party organised by my best man, Paul Dean. Because I love birds, he took us to do falconry, and Matt Lees brought his fancy lenses along.

So while I was totally unable to upload last Friday’s podcast, please enjoy this replacement gallery of myself, Matt and Paul meeting a load of beautiful birds.

Lots of love, everybody. SU&SD will be getting back up to speed this Wednesday.

Paul: Phew, the votes are in! First of all, let me extend our enormous thanks to all of you for taking the time to fill out our polls and to vote for your favourite designs.

The three winners pulled away from the pack with a full quarter of the votes all to themselves, but with over 10,000 votes cast on Facebook, Twitter and Disqus, there was a lot of love for all the designs and it was a tight race. What’s more, the five that came in from fifth to eighth place had a difference of just forty votes between them. At times, it was a tight contest where every vote counted. Are you ready for the final result?

Paul: It’s with more than a little pride (and quite a lot of excitement!) that I announce the next phase of our t-shirt design competition!

Like the evolution of a fearsome and beautiful Pokémon, it’s transforming from its pitching stage into its selection stage. We’ve put together a curated list of our favourite popular designs (mixing older hits alongside some of the strongest last-minute entries) and now we’re asking our lovely fans to help us select which to produce.

I’d also like to thank everyone, really absolutely everyone, who submitted designs and contributed.

Quinns: Good news, everyone! This summer’s going to be SU&SD’s 5th anniversary and as part of the festivities we’re FINALLY going to be offering merchandise. I know! You’d be forgiven for thinking this was literally never going to happen.

Anyway, to make our initial offering a little more special we’ll be letting you guys choose the shirts that you want the most. After all, we have almost five years of catch-phrases, stupid jokes and board games to pull from. Nobody knows what you guys want better than you!

The details are all in this forum thread, but very simply any one of you can (and should!) link a design of your very own in that thread, then at the start of August we’re going to run a poll featuring every single design, and the three that get the highest votes will (a) be made available for sale, and (b) the creators will all receive one of each shirt AND a board game of their choice, purchased from a retailer of their choice.

(Unless Matt’s designs win! If they win then we’ll send the prize to fourth place. Sorry, Matt.)

It’s as simple as that! And if you don’t have a lick of artistic talent, why not drop your idea for a shirt in the comment thread in this post, or better yet in the forum thread itself. Help artists help us to help you to your dream design.

Good luck, everyone!

Quinns: Matt, what is that incredible noise? Ooh, I bet you’re hard at work assembling our next video review!

Matt: No I was just banging these two bits of wood together. Hey, on Monday you said that on Friday we’d tell everyone about the cool projects we’re doing in the near future!

Quinns: Ah. Right. The thing is, I’ve realised that we have to put that in volume #1 of our Hot New Newletter!

Paul: Alright, where do you want me? Gimme the A-1.

Quinns: What? Put the saxophone away, Paul. For day 4 of Golden Week we’re doing something a little different. Five months ago I asked our SU&SD donors to tell us why they donate. Today, we’re going to let them do the talking.

Paul: Quinns. This is my dad’s saxophone. You can’t tell me to go and get it and then have me put it away without busting loose at least one hot splank. That’s just funk-a-logical.

Quinns: I never told you to go get it

Paul: B♭ E♭ ♫ A♯

Quinns: STOP IT

Quinns: First things first, a huge thanks (and warm hello) to all of our new donors! There are no words for how understanding you guys are. There is, however, a dance, and Matt is doing it right now! He won’t stop. Oh god.

Anyway, today we want to tell you about a way to support us that takes no time and costs nothing. Do you use Amazon? The web site, not the river.

You might have noticed that there are all sorts of links to Amazon on this site. If you travel through one of those links before navigating to any items you want to buy on Amazon, whether that means batteries or bananas, then add them to your shopping cart, we can get around 7% of their retail value on checkout.

Yes. You heard that right. Simply by bookmarking one of the links below and clicking on it before you go shopping, you give us a small chunk of your checkout costs. All of these little payments add up! So please, bookmark away and don’t forget to click!

United States!    Y’all are alright, I reckon’.
United Kingdom!    You are a marvellous fellow.
Germany!    Vielen Dank, baby!
France!    Je vous remercie pour l’accueil de cette radis dans votre maison.
Spain!    Nosotros nunca, ni sus axilas olvidaremos.
Italy!    Dimenticate gli spagnoli, siete il nostro vero amore.
Canada!    [language unknown]

Please note that we’re not suggesting that anyone change their shopping habits! We’re well aware that some of our audience have ethical reasons for not supporting Amazon. All we’re saying is that if you’re planning on using their services already, you can effortlessly ensure that your shopping helps keep this site running. Nothing could be simpler.

Quinns: Hi everybody. This week we’re asking for new Shut Up & Sit Down donations for 2016. I’ll keep this brief in case you have an important job, like mending street lights or selling ice cream. If you’d like more details, you’ll find them all after the cut.

Shut Up & Sit Down is kept alive through donations

Have you noticed that SU&SD has no adverts? There’s more – unlike many commercial board game review sites, Shut Up & Sit Down doesn’t accept money from publishers or designers in exchange for content (though we still get emailed about it every week). Instead, this site is kept running by our Gold Club members, the fans of SU&SD who pay for it to keep running.

This week, we’re asking you to sign up!

“Why now?” A better question is why it’s been so long! Our last donation drive was actually in 2014(!), but we wanted to make good on our promises before we asked for money again. Now Quinns has fallen in a canal and we’ve launched the new site, we’re ready to plan the next leg of our trip up Mt. Nonsense.

Fabulous rewards on offer for donors!

98% of your money is going right back into this site, BUT ALSO anyone who donates or signs up for a subscription in a given month will receive our new, monthly behind-the-scenes newsletter, explaining what we’re working on, what games we’re planning on recommending and mystery extra bits.

The first edition of this newsletter will be sent out on May 31st.

More info on donating awaits, after the jump!

Quinns: At long last, we’d like to announce some live podcasts we’ll be recording in 2016! For a glimpse of how mad we get when we’re in front of hundreds of people, check out last year’s Gen Con recording. We hope to see lots of you guys there!

If you’re attending the UK Games Expo in two weeks on 3rd-5th June, we’re recording one live podcast at 5pm on the Friday, and another at 5pm on the Saturday. Yes! Two of ’em. The UK Games Expo has been swelling like a big, friendly zepplin for the last few years, and in 2016 it’s going to explode out of the Hilton NEC and into the nearby convention hall. It should be a really fun con. These podcasts will each host 200 people but they won’t be ticketed, so maybe get there a little early to be guaranteed a seat?

We’re hosting two more podcasts at Gen Con as well! We’ll have an intimate, late-nite podcast at 9pm on Friday 5th August with 250 tickets (because they couldn’t find another time slot for us), and a GIGANTO-CAST at noon on Saturday 6th of August in the “Grand Ballroom” with 400 tickets (oh god that’s too many people). Tickets are on sale now, here and here!

The timing of the Friday podcast is going to get in the way of our traditional Friday party at Tomlinson’s Tap Room, though it is happening again this year! We’ll just be cabbing over there after the podcast is over like the world’s most inappropriately dressed rockstars. It’s always full of a wonderful collection of folks, though, so do head over there early and make some friends!

The SU&SD Merch Shop is live!

A wedding! And some birds

Announcing: The Shirt my Feelings contest winners!

Shirt My Feelings, PART TWO

Announcing the SU&SD T-Shirt Design Contest!

Golden Week, Day 5: The Hot New Newsletter

Golden Week, Day 4: Why You Guys Donate

Golden Week, Day 2: Helping via Amazon!

Announcing our 2016 donation drive! It’s Golden Week

Announcing 2016’s Live Podcasts!

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