Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: Dead of Winter

cleaning poop again, finding medicine, killing zombies, cleaning poop, exiling kids

In one of our most anticipated reviews of the year, Paul and Quinns have hunkered down in their rubbish-strew hideaway for a spoiler-free analysis of Dead of Winter.

Like SU&SD favourite City of Horror, here’s a zombie game that isn’t about zombies. Rather, Dead of Winter wants to tell you a story of a freezing cold colony where men and women are exiled over a lost tin of beans, and the degree to which you trust your friends could save you as easily as get you killed.

Did we mention it’s the first board game we’ve reviewed with a sex scene? Oh, yes.

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Review: Camel Up

relinquishing control, a lacing of terror, dead stars, humping

Quinns: As you’d imagine, we take our time with the games we review. There are tea breaks. Pee breaks. We’ll pass around a bit of cardboard, saying things like “Feel how thick that is!” and “That’s quite thick actually”. But yesterday? Yesterday, we were in a hurry.

“PUT YOUR FINGER HERE,” I ordered. Matt cautiously slipped a forefinger into the recess of my toy pyramid, letting me wrestle a rubber band around its neck.

“OK,” I began. “We’re going to bet on some camels now. It’s going to be fun, OK? This game won an award. Now everybody sit down and listen to the rules because we only have half an hour oh jesus is that the time let’s go let’s go”

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Games News! 08/09/14

paul dean vs. the killer roberts, crab production, berm squerd, who is jessica hyde

Quinns: Morning, everyone. The bad news is, you’re all going to die because the end of the world is coming. The good news is, you can pick your flavour of ragnarok.

I’m referring to Fantasy Flight’s new range of pen and paper role-playing games! From left to right they’ll cover zombies, angry gods, aliens and murderous machines. In a great little twist, though, all the players control themselves. So, Paul Dean and Matt Lees having to use their real-life skills to survive when their fridges and lawnmowers start wanting them dead.

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The Opener: Cash ‘n Guns and Sausages and Mash and Onions and Gravy

adventures in onionland, laughing in the money, pedro, potatoes

Matt’s definitive series on getting your friends and family into gaming, The Opener, has made its delicious return!

This week Matt looks at the brand-spanking new edition of Cash ‘n Guns, a game of criminals dividing the “take” after a “heist” by “shooting one another”, before ending the video with a lovely recipe for bangers’n’mash. It’s basically the closet we’ll come to filming Snatch.

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Paul’s Thank You for Gen Con

belittlings, embiggenings, deadly tans, paper planes

Paul posted this on his blog a few days back and we thought we’d share it here. It’s a personal thanks to everyone who made our GenCon such a blast, as well as our absolutely brilliant community, but it’s also something a little bit reflective.

We can’t thank you enough. Your support has been fantastic. We must have one of the kindest, smartest and funniest communities on the internet. We want you to know we appreciate that very much.

Paul: Thank you for Gen Con, everyone.

What I thought would happen when I got back from Indianapolis would be my sitting down at this desk to collect my thoughts together and then write some words of appreciation. What actually happened was that I slept for twelve hours, peered at the world for about four and then slept for another eight. My first Monday back is a day that I will never know anything about. After, I had the worst (still ongoing) case of writer’s block in a year and I found collecting my thoughts on everything that happened was actually a lot like trying to separate salt from sugar.

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Games News! 02/09/14

needless dazzle, neoclassical car warfare, hello snow guy, cheeky quinns

Quinns: It’s the games news! It’s a slow news day, though, where even our top stories are trundling like treacle down a sandy slope, so we’re letting loose a blast of our own news.

Our FORUM (hence the header image, do you see) is now just around the corner. While we’re expecting it to be every bit as kind and respectful as our comments, if the movies of Bruce Willis have taught us one thing, it’s that sometimes polite society needs tough dudes to walk around with no shoes on.

If being a forum moderator is something you think you’d be good at, you’ll find the application email address after the break.

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The Very Professonal Gen Con Special!

we sell towels, a place for eggs, egg place, hot justice

In August 2014 we traveled to the magical realm of Indianapolis, for the lake Geneva Gen Con Convention of games. Sporadically, between the games, beef dinners and amazing people we’d remember to turn our camera on. PRESENTING: The Very Professonal Gen Con Special!

Watch us try our luck in a True Dungeon! Hear what Risk Legacy creator Rob Daviau has to say for himself in a hungover interview! See the hottest games sweat under our studio lighting! And make sure your nan’s not around for the Hot Cosplay segment. Enjoy, everybody.

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Review: PitchCar

real-life micro machines, hot flicks, irradiated wastelands, nerr nerr nerr

Matt: I don’t know if this is by far the silliest thing we’ve ever reviewed…

Paul: …and I don’t even know if that matters or not. Is PitchCar silly? Is it also possibly the simplest game to ever grace our (web)pages? Is it even a board game?

Matt: Do we even care?

Paul: Will we ever stop using the word “even”?

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Podcast #21: The Cardcast

rubbish seahorses, secret passages, kid with knife, prismatic pandas, james cameron

Our very 21st podcast is a magical journey into the realm of card games. We start in our Lifeboat, fall into Bruno Cathala’s undersea Abyss, and wash up in the exotic Eastern home of Samurai Spirit, Panda Poker and Seiji Kanai’s Say Bye to the Villains. Matt, Quinns and Paul have played all of these … Read more

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Games News! 25/08/14

erotic mysteries, melty brain, bucket kings, snugly builders, cool cats

Quinns: Morning, everybody! I’m not 100% sure what happened to me this weekend, but this vine exists so I suppose it was pretty awesome.

Once again our top story is the one with the prettiest image, again proving that SU&SD is as shallow and corrupt as a dwarven bidet. What you see above is Realm of Wonder, an upcoming Finnish game that’s caught the attention of indefatigable outlet BoardGameGeek News. Each player controls a fantasy character trying to complete a secret objective, then return to the king’s castle.

But there are problems! The two innermost continents of the board can be physically rotated, locking new paths in place and (hopefully) leaving your friends stranded in some faerie bog. And while Realm of Wonder can be played with young children, advanced rules add bluffing, the claiming of resource pools, magic spells, monstrous combat and the fantasy equivalent of road blocks.

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