Impressions: April

postal snakebite simulator, Liar Training, Bedsheet-tugging
Thurn & Taxis

We’re trying a new format! Sometimes Paul and I don’t have time to assemble a true, riotous review, but we are always playing new games, our bodies like a pair of unreliable steam engines powered by a smouldering pile of cardstock. So how about this: a quick’n’dirty roundup of the best games we tried last month.

Click on through, then, for some impressions of Star Trek: Fleet Captains, German hit Thurn & Taxis and the talking-tastic Baron Munchhausen. But were we actually impressed? Well!

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Season 2 – Episode 3

SUSDS02E03

April 20, 2012 Reviews, Specials The Walking Dead: The Board Game, Catacombs, Belfort, Cyclades Thabwam! That’s the noise of another half-hour of board game review goodness landing in your world like a bit of glittering space junk. You’re very welcome. In this episode, the boys are going to be on REAL LIFE TELEVISION! They’re just … Read more

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RPG Review: Fiasco

review, Fiasco, I'm going to kill you with electricity, We have to burn the zoo
RPG Review: Fiasco

Quinns: Listen up, ladies. Fiasco: A Game of Powerful Ambition & Poor Impulse Control (which you can buy from that same link) is very much outside the realm of what we usually cover. It’s a two hour table game, but it has no cards, cardboard, winners or losers. It has almost no rules. But despite that, it’s perhaps the best game you’ve never even conceived of.

All you’re paying for here is a very thin, very affordable book. And with this book, you and some of your friends are going to roleplay your evening away. And you’ll laugh like garbage disposal units doing it.

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Review: The Mines of Zavandor

review, The Mines of Zavandor, blood and bluster, halcyon cue balls
Review: The Mines of Zavandor

Quinns: CAPITALISM! It’s what’s for dinner.

Paul: It’s what’s for dessert, surely, especially if it’s about excess. The Mines of Zavandor is just the kind of cash-clutching economy management we can put all of our pasty weight behind. That’s because it treats running a business
with the same giddy lack of dignity as J.K. Rowling gave to the arcane.

The Dwarf king is dead. Two to four players control Dwarf clans attending his interminable funeral procession, winding through an entire mountain. Yet what you’re doing isn’t mourning, but receiving gems from back home and using them to buy, buy, BUY at the many auctions of useful or decorative tat you’re passing by. That’s because at the end of the procession (game) the richest clan is the new king (winner)!

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Season 2 – Episode 2

SUSDS02E02

March 19, 2012 Reviews, Specials Cold War: CIA vs KGB, Chess, Stronghold, A Few Acres of Snow, Memoir ’44, Jungle Speed, Memoir ’44: Operation Overlord THE FINEST (and only) board game review show going has, for episode two of season two, turned its wet, wide, child-like eyes towards two player games! Four of them! And … Read more

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Review: Kingsburg

review, LAMENTATIONS, Plumping, Most moribund, Most loveliest
Review: Kingsburg

Paul: So, you know that Merchants & Marauders game we looked at a couple of weeks back? Well, we didn’t. I was desperate to get my pirate paws on it and Quinns went ahead and played it without me. You know why? His excuse was that I was ill.

That’s not an excuse, that’s just exploiting a good man’s sickness. I could’ve been dying, and there he was, laughing over a game that I could only grasp at in my most moribund of visions.

Kingsburg, then!
Here’s a review of both my first and my favourite dice-placement game, and Quinns isn’t allowed anywhere near it. Come with me, readers, as I take you on a right regal journey around its royal court.

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Review: Red November

review, Guzzling rum, Thick Sparks, The Kraken Nibbles, I can fix it!
Review: Red November

Quinns: Myself and Paul don’t talk much about how Shut Up & Sit Down’s episodes are made, for much the same reason that we don’t talk about times when we’ve fallen over while trying to climb stairs two at a time. We have, in the past, spent whole afternoons thinking we were turning the camera on when we were really it off, resulting in hours of captivating footage of our crotches floating around rooms with the alien purpose of jellyfish. 
So we find a kindred spirit in Red November, a little co-operative game about Stuff Going Wrong. Up to eight players act as the Gnome crew of a submarine so fantastically broken that you won’t see a problem with downing entire bottles of grog, because it grants the courage you need to put out fires. You won’t see a problem with swimming outside to battle a squid, because the oxygen pumps were failing anyway. And you won’t see a problem with flooding the ship, because it puts out fires.

Wait. Why did you start drinking again?

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Review: Merchants & Marauders

sharks, review, Guzzling rum, Thick Sparks, Cheeky dolphins, stars, voodoo
Review: Merchants & Marauders

Quinns: Rum! Guns! Thievery and corruption! Broadsides and boarding actions, executed by daring captains, their magnificent ships reeking of fragrant spices and tobacco. A glittering sea, taken to foul moods and murderous storms. Sharks! MONEY!
 
Ain’t no backdrop like the 18th century Caribbean. If only there was a board game set amongst all this.

Oh wait!

In our last episode we said we thought Fortune & Glory was a poor example of Ameritrash, Ameritrash being board games that, generally, focus on conflict, cheap thrills and on smothering your table with components rather than being a fair and nuanced game. We’re covering Merchants & Marauders, then, to show you a beautiful example of Ameritrash. This game is a parade of unexpected happenings, satisfying rewards and crushing defeats that all mix together in a foul voodoo potion which brings the Caribbean, shuddering, to life.

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Season 2 – Episode 1

S02E01

February 9, 2012 Reviews, Specials Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game, K2, BANG!, Ticket to Ride The board game review show is back! And the boys are having trouble keeping cool about their new celebrity status. They’re launching new features and reviewing games about… being better than everyone else? Oh, this won’t end well.

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Review: The Pyramid of Horus

review, bath time, hustlers, A ginger probing, IMTELLIGENCE
Review: The Pyramid of Horus

Quinns: We’re always squealing about smart games here at SU&SD. I’m guessing actually reading our site is a bit like untying the knot of a balloon with IMTELLIGENCE written on the side and having it noisily exhale into your face for hours on end. Which is misleading, because we love stupid games too.

“WHICH ONES,” you cry, anxious to get to the bottom of this unsettling
admission.

Well, The Adventurers: The Pyramid of Horus is pretty perfect, for what it is. Let us tell you about it.

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