News 9 - Shut Up & Sit Down

This week on Shut Up & Sit Down…

Tom: It’s beige week, baby! This week on the site, we’re rattling through the Taupe of the Pops, journeying down umber, and a third beige-based joke. Hold onto your trousers, because each and every game featured this week will have some element that’s distinctly beige – be it colour, theme, or feeling.

Take this week’s Tuesday stream, for example. Red Cathedral isn’t a beige game, in many ways – just look at that lovely cover! Feast your peepers on that sweet, segmented season board! You’re practically drowning in colour! And yet, your eyes must only drift a little to spy the distinctly sepia edges of the board and stunning tagline; ‘Lead a construction team to build Saint Basil’s Cathedral under the Tsar’s reign’. Now THAT’s what I call Beige Week.

What about this week’s video review? Well, my clues so far have led you people to guess the game with worrying accuracy – so I’ll let this week’s theme do all the talking. How’s that for a clue!? It’ll be like finding hay in a haystack.

Finally, in podtown; a sienna subversion to our tripartite of tan. On Friday, we’re going to have ourselves a lovely chat about Faiyum – the most technicolour beige game ever to exist – not just in its actual colour (it’s actually quite colourful!) but also in mechanics. So it’s not really beige at all; and maybe that’s what’s so thrilling about beige week.

But one question remains. What have you been up to, everybody?

Quinns: Greetings from frosty Brighton, everybody! I wish I could say “snowy Brighton”, but alas, today the sky produced about three sneezes’ worth of snow and then gave up. But while I can’t offer you snow, this week I can offer you a pile of fresh, cool, crunchy board games. On Tuesday Matt and Tom will be streaming what at least some people are calling the game of 2020, Beyond the Sun. Would you like to see what the fuss is about? Was the discussion on podcast #124 not enough for you? Or are you just monstrously impatient for our video review, which will only be published when the game is back in stock? If you answered “Yes”, “No,” and “That’s right”, you won’t want to miss this one. On Wednesday Tom will be publishing a video review of one of board gaming’s stone cold classics, a game that is, in fact, older than he is. But not much older. I can say no more. And then Friday will see the emergence of the very 130th Shut Up & Sit Down podcast. Remember how episode #119 was called “The Big Reiner Beefcast”, in which we all argued about legendary designer Reiner Knizia? We’re tentatively calling episode #130 “The Big Reiner Lovecast”. Look forward to further chat about My City, The Quest for El Dorado, and more besides.

Tom: Hello! HELLO?! Is this the games news? I think I might have gotten lost somewhere on the route from Videoville to Stream-On-Thames and ended up here, of all places. The void betwixt the content. The great unknown. The endless woods of anticipation. What’s to be found in this unhinged time-limbo? I’ve just caught a glimpse of the video from Quinns that we’ll be publishing on Wednesday, a review of an excellent game whose title can be sung to the tune of the very best ‘Track 9’ on my 3rd favourite Parquet Courts record? Have fun decoding that one, SUCKERS. We’re not sharing our video secrets THAT easily. And what’s that? In the distance? A crowd of lost souls chanting ‘RAISE’? ‘YOUR’? ‘LAWYERS’? The people have demanded it, and we must provide it – on Tuesday we’ll have a full-length technicolour stream of legal simulation Lawyer Up. It’ll be confusing and amusing! I’m excited to play it, and equally scared that I have to teach it. Last, but not least, please feel free to take a seat inside the Podcastle this Friday for an exhaustive (exhausting?) ramble about Carnegie – a game that contains nary a trace of Union-Busting. Just like the man himself would have wanted. Whew. That’s ‘this week’ over here sorted. I’m knackered already.

Ava: Greetings humans and gentleworms! Welcome to a whole new week at Shut Up and Sit Down, the website where humans turn board games into thoughts that we blast directly into your ears and eyes. This week is the last week in January, objectively the worst month of the year, and we’re nearly through it! Well done folks, we did it together. Try not to look directly into the eyes of February, a month that would technically be worse if it wasn’t a whole three days shorter. How are we going to get you through the final Jan-stretch? Well, on Tuesday, we’re going to be streaming our porkiest stream yet, a game of City of the Big Shoulders, an economic cube pushing game with some of the stock market shenanigans of the baffling board game sub-genre known as 18xx. I have no idea how it works so I’m likely going to be thrashed by Matt and Tom, what a treat! Wednesday is review day, and I’m permitted to tell you that it’s likely to be the wettest review of the year so far. Matt will be serving up a platter of opinions that shouldn’t actually make you wet, but you do you. Finally, we’ll wrap up the week with our traditional podcast, our tentpole discussion this week is Vampire: The Masquerade – Vendetta, a game we tried on stream and I quite liked but was worried it might be a little unbalanced. What will Quinns, Matt and Tom think? I’ll find out when I start editing the podbeast, but you’ll have to wait until Friday. What lovely bit of anticipation for you. Aren’t you lucky! So everybody, tell me, what’s been getting you through the chilliest, toughest time of the year? Or if you’re in the southern hemisphere, what can you tell me about summer? Is it really real?

Matt: Hello and welcome to MONDAY! Gosh, what a peach! It’s grey outside my window but the inside of my heart is a vibrant orange. Honestly, I should see a doctor! This week will kick off properly tomorrow: in reaction to last friday’s podcast celebrating the work of Uwe Rosenberg, we’re hopping onto Twitch to play a game of Excalibohn: the delightfully arthurian-themed twist on the bean-based card game Bohnanza. If you’re in the mood for chilling with us while we’re undoubtedly silly, tune in. On Wednesday you can look forward to a video from Tom that features more tiny games than you can wobble a huge stick at, before finally this Friday you can look forward to an episode of the podcast that’s entirely about Dune Imperium. I believe the podcast is tentatively titled “Matt Lees vs The People”, but I refuse to spill the beans any further than that. That’s double-beans so far, so let’s go for the triple: what kind of beans are your favourite beans?

Quinns: Hello everybody! Welcome to our new look Monday post. Today, with a heavy heart I must announce that after many years of faithful service, the Games News is being retired. This will be sad news for its regular readers, but the Games News demanded a tremendous amount of work from our team while outright refusing – and you’ve got to hand it to the ol’ Games News here – to ever grow in popularity. So this year, instead of doing the Monday news our team will be redoubling its efforts to make more of the stuff you like, as well as taking the time to come up with brand new features. Instead, on Monday we’re going to be doing these nifty little posts checking in with our community and teasing what we’ve got coming up that week. For example: On Tuesday of this week (tomorrow!) head over to our Twitch page to watch us play the new and pleasingly mauve-coloured card game Vampire: The Masquerade – Vendetta. On Wednesday I’ll be presenting our first video review of the year, a eurogame that Shut Up & Sit Down donors will already have heard me squeaking about in our behind-the-scenes newsletter. Then on Friday you can look forward to podcast #126, which was a LOT of fun to record- Tom, Ava and myself discussed the new Uwe Rosenberg game Hallertau, and then spent the whole rest of the podcast discussing which Rosenberg games Tom should play. But enough about us! What did you get up to this weekend, everybody?

Tom: Ava, I have placed the news under arrest. I found it stealing lollipops from toddlers and pelting old people with bricks.

Ava: One of those crimes definitely seems worse than the other.

Tom: How about stealing bricks from toddlers and pelting old people with lollipops? Either way, the news has been thoroughly cancelled and we’re going to have to manage this week without it. I hope you’ve brought all your best ‘News?’ to the table.

Ava: Erm. We’ll see?

Tom: Games CHOOSE… your own adventure!

Ava: Ooh I love these. I head North.

Tom: Turn to page 1333. There is no news to the North, you have been eaten.

Ava: Oh wait, yes. I hate these. Let’s just news some news.

Ava: Okay. There’s a a surfeit of nostalgic RPGs and boardgames latching onto the 80s teen-horror stylings of Stranger Things and that ilk. I could just and move on from this one, but for one thing! My most particular weakness is a ridiculous name and a bisexual colour scheme.

The Snallygaster Situation is coming soon, and promises a co-operative mystery-machine in the world of Renegade’s ‘Kids on Bikes’ RPG system. Kids on Bikes wins a point for the most communicative three syllables in the role-playing scene. In the Snallygasting spinoff, one player will play ‘the lost kid’ (sound familiar), offering a series of clues to the rest of the team, but facing tough trade-offs between giving the best clue and the other side of the card, which controls and the monsters and cops move around the board. Once the team is reunited, they join forces to face down the titular snallygaster, or some other monster with a less delightful name.

Tom: G! A! M E S! This games news – is the best! Tom and Ava write some words! Something else that rhymes with words! GOOooOOOoo GAMES NEWS!

Ava: If you read that in any other way than exactly how it sounds in your head then it all just falls apart.

Tom: K-I-L-L-J-O-Y! Ava you’re so nasty, why? I just want to make a rhyme! Something else that rhymes with rhyme! GoOOoOoo A WAY!

Ava, frowning and ignoring Tom: Oh my word look at the donkeys!

Ava: I don’t think you’re ready, for this jelly.

Tom: I don’t think i can handle this.

Ava: It’s just jelly Tom. It’s all just jelly.

Tom: And news, right?

Ava: Yeah, sure, you can call it that if you want!

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…

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