Shut Up & Sit Down

Games News! 12/08/13

Choking hazards, sexy sleds, turtle burglary, alligator attacks, Mr. Thrower

Quinns: Happy Monday, everybody! Are we well? What games are we playing? Hopefully the lovely ones made from cardstock, and not the troubling mind games that emerge from failing relationships. That would be awful.

The big news this week is that comedy board gaming series Board With Life released their first episode! We feel a profound kinship with these guys. Like us, they’re working with no money, an awful lot of heart and they’re all startlingly handsome. In fact, I like it so much I’ve embedded it after the jump.

Leave a comment

Review: Kemet

hot cats, nubile slaves, big beetles, I'm gonna eat you also your children

Like the tomb robbers of old, Quinns has cracked the seal on our copy of Kemet, heedless of all those snakes, scorpions and ancient Egyptian curses to bring you our definitive review.

But there’s a problem! This game is the spiritual sequel to Cyclades, yet another svelete, gorgeous game of warring gods from the same publisher. Who will come out on top, in this divine duel? Should you buy this is you already have the other? And why is the SU&SD supercomputer so rubbish?

Leave a comment

Podcast #8: Pointy Masks & Huge Beetles

sting, king quest, brick king, king cube, I like my beetle, megatanks of the outback

The SU&SD podcast has once again arrived like a great big board gaming burrito: Fiery, fresh and surprisingly dense*. In our eighth instalment Paul and Quinns are joined by Matt Lees as they thoroughly deconstruct Egypt simulator Kemet, senile dementia simulator Mascarade, and Police Precinct! Which simulates literally no policemen or women who have ever … Read more

106 Comments

Review: The Guns of Gettysburg

delicious weevils, fabulous bodhrans, oh Mr. Simmons, SO MANY LIMBS

[As of 2018 we’ve updated this article to include Rachel “Bowen” Simmons’ correct pronoun.]

Brendan: Hi Matt! So nice of you to invite me to your summer garden party! You know, I literally can’t remember the last time we saw each other– OH GOD WHAT’S THAT ON YOUR FACE

Thrower: Ow. Ouch! Unhand me, you oaf! That’s my authentic American Civil War facial hair.

Brendan: Sorry, I thought it was a badger.

Thrower: This month sees the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, often cited as the turning point of the civil war. To celebrate, I’m participating in an ultrarealistic re-enactment, playing the part of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. You missed the first two days. I’m whiling away this third morning while my troops assemble playing this new wargame on the battle, The Guns of Gettysburg.

33 Comments

Games News! 05/08/13

Skirmish: Ostrich, svelte like your mother, tat-mongers, vomiting libraries

Quinns: A few months ago we caught word that Fantasy Flight had a Lovecraft board game coming later this year. Something big that they were expecting to do VERY well. So Paul boiled the kettle and we held an emergency council of team SU&SD, where we all swore that it had to be a new edition of Arkham Horror, an immensely popular co-op game of struggle against Lovecraftian horrors.

It isn’t. It’s something much more evil.

Eldritch Horror is a new game “inspired” by Arkham Horror, allowing Fantasy Flight to sell the two games side-by-side. Arkham Horror, that hardcore horror with its nine (count ’em!) expansions, will soon be joined by Eldritch Horror, a more accessible game of otherworldly apocalypses.

Leave a comment

Review: Sentinels of the Multiverse

Fabulous Boy, ladyrangs, The Remarkable Off-Screen Time Machine, dogs or crisps?

Reviewers? ASSEMBLE!

It’s time to do battle with the increasingly popular Sentinels of the Multiverse! A co-operative, customisable, and increasingly collectible game of excitingly litigious superheroes fighting stinky villains. This game’s getting more and more popular, so it’s only natural we should see if you guys should get in on the action.

(Besides, it’s the best excuse we’ve had to dress up in AGES.)

121 Comments

Review: Netrunner – Creation and Control

cyber chairs, Man Vs. Speedboat, Alix T4LB07, a good debugging

Quinns: It’s no secret that we think Android: Netrunner is the collectible game right now. When I started playing it, I was seduced by the asymmetrical concept- one player as the glittering corporation, the other as a tiny hacker with cards as mundane as energy drinks and quality time with your partner. Since then, it’s the comedic tension of the game that’s kept me involved. Each new datapack of cards is filled not just with possibility, but comedy. I laugh as I leaf through these things. “Oh no,” I whisper, grinning. “Oh, no.“

So you can imagine how excited I was yesterday! The release of the first “deluxe” expansion, Creation and Control, containing 3 copies each of 55 new cards. The same evening I ended up taking two sets to the safehouse of my Netrunner nemesis for a good debugging. Here’s what we found out.

Leave a comment

Games News! 29/07/13

Quinns: No questioning what the big story is this week. Board game and erstwhile Kickstarter success story The Doom That Came To Atlantic City! has imploded like a great tower block made of dreams and balsa wood. Following 13 months and $122,874 of investment (less Kickstarter’s fee), Forking Path Co. has declared the project is now cancelled due to “Every possible mistake [being] made.”

It only gets sadder from here. In the same update project founder Erik Chevalier states that, despite having quit his job for the game, will now do his best to seek employment and steadily repay the project’s 1,246 backers. Not that this was enough to stop many of the backers from creating a bubbling lake of fury and vitriol in the comments.

Leave a comment

Review: Tales of the Arabian Nights

the Hindenburg, genies, sultans, jewels, princes, ladies, elephants, lions

Disclaimer: Since this video was published, SU&SD has been made aware of a striking quantity of homophobic and transphobic content in this board game. The game’s tone was first established by the first edition in 1985, and today, it’s definitely showing its age. More information is available here, courtesy of Meeple Like Us.

When was the last time you had some friends over, one of you got abducted by an elephant, one captained a war fleet and another had eight babies*? It was NEVER, wasn’t it? Admit it!

Tales of the Arabian Nights can fix that. You might not know it, but there’s a gaping hole in your board game collection. A hole that begs to be filled. And you must fill it. You must fill it with this. The finest storytelling board game in existence.

Have a great weekend, everybody! Ideally, make sure it’s great by playing this.

*And was then abducted by an elephant.

1 Comment

Review: Gearworld: The Borderlands

apocalyptic shoulders, precious ponies, cajoling worms, scrapwater

Mark: Logistics! Three lovelier-sounding syllables were never spoke. Ah, what a dream, to play a strategically deep game about the beautiful, balletic, and somewhat subtle dance of getting much-needed materiel from one place to another — and then using it to blow stuff up. And how much dreamier were it a game that didn’t involve hundreds of cardboard counters sliding delicately around a hex grid to the tune of one in an endless string of historically accurate six-hour scenarios featuring Russian truck breakdowns and German trains running on time. (Though actually, I’d play that one too.)

Gearworld: The Borderlands is the latest in Fantasy Flight’s series of resurrected “classics” of yesteryear — i.e., games you wish you’d heard of when they’d first been released, if you were even alive back then — and just may be the game of which I dreamed a paragraph ago.

Leave a comment

Feeds