Shut Up & Sit Down

SU&SD’s Top 50 Games Ever, 2015! #50 to #41

the paint on your mouth, the crab on your chest, the noblest of dogs

Quinns: RETRIEVE YOUR OFFICIAL SU&SD-BRANDED MOIST TOWELETTES! It’s about to get hot in here.

Last year we presented something never-before-seen in board games. Our Top 25 Board Games, Ever was a list of our most favourite games ordered from least-most favourite to most-most favourite. Ever since then, the SU&SD Supercomputer has been calculating a method by which we could possibly top this. Last week, it provided a schematic for something… incredible.

The science behind the following Top 50 is complicated, but in layman’s terms we’ll be “publishing” “instalments” every day this week, and beyond(!).

Enjoy, everybody.

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Review: Thunderbirds

tragic space exile, sweating plastic, private islands, pompous puppets, martinis

Quinns: Leigh! Thank you for joining us for this review of the Thunderbirds board game, although as you’ve never seen an episode of 1960s TV series you won’t be allowed to talk. You can nod along, though, and say things like “Wow!”.

Leigh: What? You told me you wanted me here as a counterpoint, reviewing this game as someone with no interest in the show.

Quinns: Yes, but I’ve changed my mind. Some things in life are sacred. God, for example, and tea, and the exploits of the Tracy brothers and International Rescue.

Leigh: I mean, I actually have learned a lot about Thunderbirds from playing this game. It’s about boys moving boats and planes around the world and swapping a pink woman among the different vehicles. And then one of them is a tragic space exile. It’s really monstrous.

Quinns: There will be time for me to explain the many and varied ways you are wrong. For now, let’s review!

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

GO!

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Podcast #36: Art vs. Knives

fun memories™, dances with cubes, knives, isis, casseroles

Hey kids! It’s the SU&SD podcast, the perfect background noise when polishing, sharpening or simply admiring a knife. Paul’s back from BoardGameGeek Con with stories to tell! Quinns joins him for a discussion of the pleasing heft of The Gallerist, the 2nd edition of Stronghold, the mixed-up genres of Above and Below, and the gentle joy of Porta Nigra. There’s also Walk the Dogs, which sounds rubbish. Finally, the two discuss an email they received all about classic knife games. Is there anything cooler than a knife trick? You decide! This podcast brought to you by the United Kingdom Knife Lobby.

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Games News! 30/11/15

war frittata, super boots, tywin is a good one too

Paul: Hello everyone! Welcome to this exclusive tour of the Shut Up & Sit Down News Battery, where our News Hens squeeze out News Eggs for us every week. These are then rigorously inspected by our team of News Experts, so that only the very best News is served up for you in whatever form and fashion you prefer.

For example, take this delicious omelette courtesy of Fantasy Flight, who are releasing their first ever… wait a second… a trivia game? Game of Thrones: The Trivia Game seems an unusual release until you see that it’s a trivia game “of strategy” with alliances and resources and special powers.

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Review: Porta Nigra

feathering pedals, nichole loves bricks, the world's crappest carousel

Porta Nigra! It’s a new eurogame, all about the famous Nigras that live within the mossy depths of the Porta dimension.

…Ok, so maybe we’re not entirely clear on what a “Porta Nigra” is. But by god, that won’t stop us from reviewing this hype-filled new release.

And let’s have a big round of applause for our Gold Club members for letting Paul and Quinns work together again! Unlike Romans, those plane tickets don’t grow on trees.

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Paul’s Best Game of BGGCon2015: Above and Below

be nice to the witch, get your own bed, big pear

Paul: I saw a curious mix of games at this year’s BGGCon, from hard euros to simple set collection games to the rising tensions of Win, Lose, Banana Legacy.† Of all the many things I saw while hiding from the baking Texas sun in the cavernous, subterranean depths of Dallas Fort Worth’s Hyatt Regency, Above and Below was my favourite. Appropriately, it was my underground adventure.

Also, it gave me a chance to try out a Pear Strategy. I went Full Pear, All Out Fruit, and didn’t do too badly for it, either. I quested, I recruited, I constructed and then I made all my money from Big Pear. Meanwhile, my friends hired adventurers, fought bandits and found the legendary Moss King. All in a day’s work.

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Games News! 23/11/15

ancient chinese dice, yellow submarines, wooden pizzas, fascist snakes

Quinns: How was your weekend, everybody? I’m happy to say that more than four years since Paul and I started SU&SD, I was found myself thinking “Board games are awesome. I’m not playing enough board games. I’m going to play lots more.”

Good thing, then, that talented designers are making lots more. We kick off the news with Secret Hitler, which is bound to be one of the year’s biggest Kickstarters. This is an absolutely beautiful, heavily-playtested interpretation of Werewolf / The Resistance from a trio of designers that includes Max Temkin, co-creator of Cards Against Humanity.

As you probably know, we’re not the biggest fans of Cards Against Humanity. But Secret Hitler looks just great.

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Review: Mafia de Cuba

bursting potatoes, cardamom seeds, hot pinks, recidivist criminal syndicates

“The Resistance” are sacred words around these parts, as in “Werewolf”. These games of lying and double-dealing have defined Shut Up & Sit Down. The thought of a brand new new hidden role game entering the genre is almost unthinkable!

Until today. Mafia de Cuba doesn’t just look good. It feels good. It sounds good. It smells tolerable. Of course we had to check it out.

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Games News! 16/11/15

the power of stains, the secrets of jenga, the folly of goblins

Quinns: Hello everybody! Shut Up & Sit Down is still four sheets to the wind this week. Paul’s off to Board Game Geek Con, Matt’s recovering from Fantasy Flight’s World Championships and I’m just back from New York University’s Practice gaming summit. These are important trips! If you don’t check up on Americans they’ll be marrying cobwebs and getting stuck behind radiators before you know it.

Fun fact! At Practice I saw a talk by Leslie Scott, inventor of Jenga. Did you know that as Jenga is manufactured, they make sure the bricks are all of varying sizes and weights to make the game work better?

Ah, but you’ve been waiting so long for your Games News! Not to worry. I may have spent five hours asleep in a cold corner of LAX this morning, but I’ve fetched some black coffee and classic rock (won’t you do the same?) and I’m ready to get to work.

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SU&SD on the spot: Two lovely interviews from FFG’s 2015 World Championships

everyone who interviewed us was so charming and even when we were silly

Paul: We’re back from Minneapolis! And what a trip it was. We had a terrific time at Worlds, Fantasy Flight Games’ annual championships, watching hundreds of skilled players compete to for the title of the best of the best in games like Netrunner, Imperial Assault and X-Wing. It was also our chance to get first-hand experience with Star Wars: Rebellion, Wave 2 of Armada and the latest editions of both Runebound and Fury of Dracula.

BUT ALSO it was a chance for other people to make videos about us (for a change!) and this week we want to link you to two interviews we gave.

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