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This week on Shut Up & Sit Down…

Tom: Welcome to the 15th Annual ‘This week on Shut Up & Sit Down’ weekly post! What joyous little treats have we got in our selection box this week? Just three meagre morsels? To be honest, I’d be disappointed too if my selection box only came with three chocolates/cheeses/’adventuremeats’, but what else can I tell you buddy; that’s just Brexit. Tuesday night? Myself and Matt ‘The Lees’ Lees will be going tea-to-tea in Chai: Toe for 2! Wait, no! It’s Chai Tea for Toe! Wait, no! Tea for 2! You can catch that on our Twitch channel, and you can be thankful for that untainted hyperlink after I decided that a portmanteau of Tea and Twitch into “Tweatch” didn’t deserve a regal blue glow. I’m an asset to the team, I promise. Wednesday? I can only promise that there will be a video review! Expect talk of cards, dice, and violence – all under one roof. Quinns will be delivering a barrage of white-hot content directly into your eyeballs… if you dare! Friday? Oh boy, it’s a big one. Ava and I are going to be chatting all things Oath in a podtastrophe of opinions and lingo. I’ve only gone and done 4 entire pages of notes for this one, so keen am I to get across my [opinions] on this [adjective] game! Hoooo boy, what an exciting week of good good content. What’s exciting in your week, everybody?

Ava: Ooh, look, this week’s this week is going to be as compact as I can manage, because I’m rewriting the intro after noticing that everything’s got some kind of ‘small’ in it. Squeeze yourself into your tightest pants and squash straight into this most minuscule message…. That’s because Tuesday night I’m going to be on our Twitch channel with Matt and Tom, playing Tiny Turbo Cars from Horrible Guild. This is a recently-kickstarted game from the publishers of King’s Dilemma and Railroad Ink. Tiny Turbo Cars has you fiddling with a sliding puzzle and using it to pre-program the moves of the titularly teensy conveyances as they race around the kitchen floor. It sounds neat! I’m excited to find out how neat. Wednesday is review day, and Matt is building a colourful edifice of a review for you, which I’m excited for, because I already own it, and it’s a surprisingly full-but-small box. I shall say no more. Then Friday we’ll be podding our hearts away. Me and Matt are ready to record what I’m tentatively titling the ‘cosycore’ podcast, with a look at some gentle games with nice things in. Gardens and cupboards. Ooooh, lovely (and a bit of a break after last week’s sprawling massivenesses). So that’s the pint-sized line-up for this week! Any of that float your cosy? What’s the smallest lovely thing you did this weekend? What’s your favourite cupboard?

Quinns: Oh gosh! British society is slowly opening up again like a grouchy flower, which means team SU&SD was so busy planning board game meetups yesterday we plum forgot to tell you what’s coming up on the site. That must be fixed, because let me tell you- this is gonna be a strong week. Tonight you can look forward to an eldritch battle over on our Twitch channel, with Tom and Matt bashing their brains against one another in a live match of Cthulhu Wars: Duel. This is the new, cheaper, 2 player-only edition of Cthulhu Wars, which I covered in a special Christmas review back in 2019. I barely knew Tom back then, but that didn’t stop me from (a) dressing him up as a ghost and (b) making him sprint around outside my building. What a good lad. Tomorrow our video reviews return with a bang, with Tom covering an early contender of our game of the year. I shall say no more. Finally, on Friday we’re releasing a podcast that I can’t wait to record- it’s a double feature talking about two very ambitious games, the shockingly-asymmetric Merchant’s Cove and the shocking-looking Coffee Traders. Although I guess both are games are about being “Stressed traders”, which would make this.. the stressed trader-cast? Have a lovely week, everyone!

Quinns: We have awoken from the post-AwSHUX slumber! Well, I’ve awoken. Well, I’m half-awake. Well, my right eyelid is gummed shut and I’m still wearing my pyjamas- the point is that I’m here, and I’m ready to tell you what’s coming up Shut Up & Sit Down.

On Tuesday we’re streaming Keystone: North America, a game of developing an ecosystem and the first release from hot new publisher Rose Gauntlet! Then on Friday you can look forward to episode #139 of the podcast, which will be (get ready) a special episode all about manuals. Basically, Matt had a near-death experience laying out the manual for RATS: High Tea at Sea, and will be telling us what he learned as a springboard to discuss manuals in general.

No video review this week, although we do have our next five(!) reviews planned. You can look forward to our video reviews starting up again from Wednesday the 12th of May.

Finally, let’s have a little peek at the games topping the BGG Hotness and see what we think, eh?

Evil scientist simulator My Father’s Work tops the hotness this week, with its Kickstarter campaign at a hefty $445,000 and counting! For a closer look you should absolutely check out Tom explaining the game in our AwSHUX preview videos. We’re learning to expect zesty games like this from Renegade Game Studios, who often pair innovative games with very strong art design.
Matt Eklund’s Stationfall takes the #2 spot. It’s my first time seeing it and it reminds me of a tabletop Space Station 13? A highly thematic, highly chaotic game of hidden objectives and strong theming. Or maybe you could describe it as Nemesis without the aliens and with more of a sense of humour?
Next up is Lost Ruins of Arnak by CGE. Released last year, this game is turning out to have some real staying power! Not only is it still in the hotness, it’s currently listed as BGG’s 7th best family game and 103rd best game of all time.
Fourth is Dune: Imperium. Our team was broadly pretty cool on this box, and you can hear why in podcast #127. Like Arnak, this game combines deckbuilding with worker placement, and we felt it was no more and no less than the sum of its parts. (Except Matt, who thought it was not “Bad” but “Good”.)
And riding unexpectedly high in the hotness is Vivid Memories by Floodgate Games! Could this be a result of Tom explaining it so masterfully in his AwSHUX preview, and then again on podcast #138? Probably, yes.

Greetings, humans! I’ve been lovingly treated with some blue skies today, as I dive into the exciting world of pre-planning and tech for AwSHUX Spring! I’ve got less than a month to ensure that Technically Difficult moments don’t spoil three days of live broadcast – a stretch of time that is simultaneously CLEARLY ENOUGH whilst also: ARRGH. But this week on the website, things trundle on as usual! Tomorrow we’ll be live-streaming Oriflamme: a game of cunning, malice, and people wearing cloaks. On Wednesday you’ll be graced with a review from Mr Quintin Smith that I cannot personally wait to have a peek at – I suspect it may be a real hot potato! What does that mean, exactly? Honestly I’ve got no idea, but it certainly feels right. This Friday’s podcast features Tom and Quinns chatting about two games: Cascadia and Nidavellir, and over the weekend I’ve plans to help remove rubble from a garden and potentially bake a dozen chocolate muffins. 2021: it is all go.

Ava: Today in Ava’s seasonally-inspired attempts to leverage better moods for everyone, we’ve made it past the equinox! The halfway mark between the solstices, the light finally outweighing the dark (in the northern hemisphere) and the official end of that there winter (sorry southern hemisphere). Let’s get vernal! I’m deeply excited about this week on Shut Up & Sit Down, and I’m here to see if I can make you be the same. This Tuesday, me, Matt and Tom are taking a(n imaginary) trip to the Rockies with a game of Cascadia! This follow up (of sorts) to Calico promises a whole biosphere of tile-laying trickery, so you’ll probably get an intriguing array of grunts from your beloved stream-hosts. We might even be building streams, on stream! How deep does this rabbit-hole go? That depends how many points it’s worth. On Wednesday Tom has a review for you about a game that is hitting my own doormat sometime this week and I’m SO excited for the review and the game, because it’s probably the game I’ve had the most fun with this whoooole year. All I can tell you is that we’ve been in the company slack discussing the correct number of dice to roll in a game. Finally, on Friday, we’re going to be digging into two hefty historical games we’ve had time to try out online in the last few weeks. This week’s podcast is about Stroganov, recently departed from Kickstarter (but still available for pre-order) and Anno 1800, currently only available in German, but coming soon to a shore near you. One’s pretty, and the other’s problematic. One’s solid, the other we’re not so sure of. But I’m not going to spoil the conversation, partly because.. well.. we haven’t had it yet! Wooo. What a week to bring the season in with! How have you been heralding the spring or preparing for autumn, folks?

Tom: Good morning everybody, and a happy… THURSDAY? Oh no. I have overslept terribly. Listen, I can explain my tardiness. Each limb of Shut Up & Sit Down digitally assembled earlier in the week to chat about what exciting content we’re putting out, and all we had to show for it was a big collective moan. Well, that and the productive decision to not put out a video this week; sliding our schedule back a notch to make sure everything’s looking less exhausted. It’s ‘the year’, what else can we say? You can still expect a podcast on Friday – Quinns and I are going to have a little ramble about a smattering of solo RPGs that I’ve been playing over the past couple days and weeks. I think it’ll be a lot of fun, so keep your ears open so that one can crawl in and have itself a home. Normal video service will resume next week – and until then, stay hydrated! xx

Tom: Hello there, readers, listeners, viewers and just-passing-through-ers! Make yourself comfortable in the schedule-tent, where everything happens to the motoric percussion of the ticking clock. On your marks, get set… SCHEDULE!

Matt: Contrary to the lies of Orange Cat Propaganda, it is possible to love both lasagne and Mondays – and I’ll tell you for free, I’ve got a hunger for both. As the frosty-grim weather in the UK eases up a touch in favour of something bright and very chilly, I’m finally feeling like it’s … Read more

Ava: Hey there peoplefolks, welcome to another bright, shining week on Shut Up & Sit Down. We’re nearly at the end of the wintery void, and right now there’s sun falling on me and it feels like hope. Wahey! What are we hoping for this week? We’re hoping for a stream, a review and a podcast, and you know what, it’s all actually going to happen. (Terms and conditions may apply) On Tuesday we’re streaming the potion-popping extravaganza that is Quacks of Quedlinberg, and we’re even going to chuck in the currently German-only Alchemists expansion. We promise it won’t be as chaotic as when we tried to do this with Excalibohn. We’ll be slightly more prepared for those explosive potion notions. Wednesday is review day, and all I am permitted to say is that Matt will be talking about a game that got him so excited he dressed up all fancy, and may have an appearance from the newest, least-living member of the team. Finally, on Friday we’ve got a lovely little podcast special, with Tom, Quinns and myself having a chat about what we’re planning and dreaming of for our first, perfect game night once all this *gestures vaguely* is a bit less diseasey. Without wanting to get too serious, what hopes are you hoping right now, folks?

This week on Shut Up & Sit Down…

This week on Shut Up & Sit Down…

This week on Shut Up & Sit Down…

This week on Shut Up & Sit Down…

This week on Shut Up & Sit Down…

This week on Shut Up & Sit Down…

No video review this week!

This week on Shut Up & Sit Down…

This week on Shut Up & Sit Down…

This week on Shut Up & Sit Down…

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