Special Features 2 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Our Holiday Gift Guide, 2017!

Quinns: Christmas is almost upon us, everyone! That sweet stretch of the calendar where board games take center stage, or at the very least share the stage with potatoes and Jesus Christ.

Are you thinking about buying a new game to play with your relatives? Or are you wondering which game to buy for the stalwart board game collector in your life?

Either way, we’ve got you covered with the below holiday game guide. Enjoy, everyone!

Paul: It feels so very, very strange to be doing this. We’re always writing post-con roundups, flying home and tapping out our thoughts on the best new games we tried, but to do that after our own con? It feels a little peculiar, like the first time a doctor shone a light into my ear. But that’s a proper, sensible thing that doctors do, right? It’s not just for giggles?

Matt: At the time, it was straight-up stressful! We hadn’t accounted for the fact that people might be showing off things we really wanted to look at, so we frantically juggled schedules to try and check stuff out. There was still so much we missed, but we caught some REAL GOOD BITS.

Paul: For a start, Matagot only went and rolled up with an Inis expansion that they just casually announced IS A THING THAT EXISTS?

Quinns: Ladies, gentlemen, non-binary folks, and anyone else who’s left a comment over the last six years along the lines of “ARRRGH STOP MAKING ME SPEND MONEY.” Today, SU&SD amends for its capitalist crimes.

We talk a lot on this site about how we want board games to be “for everyone”, but to an awful lot of people the games we recommend are prohibitively expensive. That said, putting together an amazing board game collection can be cheap. Below, we’ve assembled a list of the very best games that could collectively cost you less than ten bucks, depending on your situation.

This isn’t some unsatisfying sampler platter. What lurks below is a moveable feast of some of the greatest games ever made. Were you to gather all of these games, I’d prefer your collection to ones I’ve seen costing $1000.

If you approve of this feature, please do share it far and wide! It represents a lot of work for both Team SU&SD and our donors, who we bothered about cheap games we might have missed (special thanks to subscribers Amanda and Jeff, who were especially great).

Let’s get started.

Paul: Gawd, I love BGG. It’s one of my favourite gaming places on the internet and this has been a fascinating journey.

Quinns: It’s an astonishingly rigorous database. As if IMDB was combined with a… an educated mosh pit, but with a set of scales in the corner that told you how much every actor weighed.

As we close out this feature, I’m simply left wanting to play more board games. Which is surely the best possible result.

Imperial Assault: Joining the Dark Sidekick

Quinns: Matt, we have to abort this feature! Reddit’s disapproval is reaching critical levels.

Matt: That’s not the Reddit alarm, that’s my egg timer. I’m making everybody lunchtime eggs to keep up our strength.

Quinns: Wow! I could kiss you.

Matt: Don’t kiss on me, daddy-oats, kiss on these great games.

Paul: Matt it’s nearly Friday, how are we only now poking our way into the top 40? Why did we take on this challenge?

Matt: Trains.

Quinns: He’s a goner, Paul. There’s nothing we can do for him now. PRESS FORWARD.

Quinns: As we continue our marathon-like jog through Board Game Geek’s top 100 games ever, today I can reveal that we’re out of the weeds. We’ve played every single board game in the 60-41 slot!

Which isn’t to say that we always enjoyed ourselves…

Paul: Our exhaustive look at the games jostling their way about BoardGameGeek’s Top 100 continues! Today, we have everything from international illness to urban development to mischievous academics. Oh, and opinions. Always with the sassy opinions. ONWARD.

Paul: BoardGameGeek is a titan of the board game scene, one of the most comprehensive and consulted sites the hobby has, as well as a place to which we owe a huge debt of inspiration. It’s also home to the absolute Board Game Geekiest among us, namely those with a monthly allowance for small zip-lock baggies. While we undoubtedly fall into that category too, we appreciate that not everyone does and it’s inevitable that our opinions will diverge, right?

Just what do we make of those most esteemed of titles that are forever locked in an eternal battle for a place in BGG’s Top 100 rankings? This week, we’ll be giving an extensive, nay, exhaustive breakdown of that list, telling you what we’ve covered, what we thought and even admitting what we’ve missed out on. So come with us as we count down the games in a whole week’s worth of analysis and adventure!

Pip: In the time it takes my companion/opponent to move his knight to a new square I have broken off a piece of the game board and stuffed it into my mouth, crumbs on my T-shirt volunteering the specifics of my crime.

On the plus side, I am road testing one of Jenn Sandercock’s edible games – The Order Of The Oven Mitt – and thus I have a mouthful of gingerbread rather than cardboard. On the less plus side you aren’t supposed to eat the board yet and I’ve just remembered I don’t like gingerbread.

The gingerbread debacle happens every year around Christmas. Faced with the dramatic potential of pretending to be a giant devouring a village I will tuck into any number of gingerbread houses and gingerbread folk, trying to ignore my tastebuds. I mention this to make it clear that the gingerbread problem is my own cross to bear rather than anything to do with Jenn. BUT gingerbread is a really useful building material so it’s working really well as the substrate for the game.

Our Holiday Gift Guide, 2017!

The best games of SHUX 2017!

How to build an amazing board game collection for $10!

SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 10-1

SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 20-11

SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 40-21

SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 60-41

SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 80-61

SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 101-81

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