Paul: It’s HOT today and it’s only going to get hotter as the week goes on, meaning the Shut Up & Sit Down News Room (at the very top of Pear Towers, 1 Pear Street, London, W1 1AA) is absolutely sweltering. Quinns and I can’t get too close in case we stick together like a pair of softening gummy bears.
Quinns: Do you know what the opposite of a softening gummy bear is?
Games Workshop’s new announcement, KILL TEAM.
Hot damn! We’ve got some smokin’ exclusives for you today. In this podcast we chat about our playtest of Reef, the next game in the series that brought us Azul. We gossip about Newspeak, a great-looking code-cracking game that will be arriving on Kickstarter imminently. We offer our thoughts on the fabulous labour of love Museum, which has yet to make its way to Kickstarter backers. Matt lays out his controversial verdict on Fantasy Flight’s Fallout board game! As temperatures continue to rise, the boys discuss their secret pastry playtest from Jenn Sandercock’s Edible Games Cookbook, and talk about what to do when busy board game conventions become too hot to handle. Finally, we approach a fiery finale where… oh dear. It seems the temperature of this podcast is reaching dangerous levels. Please, whatever you do, don’t click play! Podcast burns are NO JOKE
Read MoreQuinns: Hey everyone! We only like to remind people of this twice a year, but did you know that Shut Up & Sit Down is run mostly by donations from people like you?
If you’ve enjoyed the Monday news or our podcast, if you’ve got some use out of our ad-free reviews or bought a great game thanks to us, we’d like you to consider paying for the service we offer. Your money will go straight to our wages and expenses, and you’ll be helping us to help grow board gaming. ALSO, all donors receive our monthly behind-the-scenes newsletter, lettting you know what we’re working on, what games we’re excited about and what books and TV we’re enjoying.
ALSO, if you have Amazon Prime, you can now give us free money by creating a Twitch Prime account (free with Amazon Prime) and clicking subscribe on our new Twitch page. It’s only for one month, it doesn’t automatically roll month-to-month, but you can do it again for free every month if you’d like!
Thanks so much for your support, everybody. Giving you guys and girls content that you love continues to be the best job in the world.
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Paul: Another week begins, another Monday Tuesday dawns and another cockerel’s call echoes out across the Shut Up & Sit Down farm. The first task of this week, and of every week, is to milk the News Cows, and so we lead the braying brown beasts over to the sheds. That sound you hear is the noise of FRESH AND WHOLESOME STORIES filling the pail.
And what could be more wholesome than Mesozooic, by far the cutest game of the week?
Please don your protective safety goggles! It’s time for some board game mad science.
In a decision that some critics are calling “A fine move,” today SU&SD acts with unprecedented boldness to review three games in one video: 2017’s Century: Spice Road, 2018’s Century: Eastern Wonders and Century: From Sand to Sea, the game you can play if you own both previous games.
Has designer Emerson Matsuuchi pulled it off? Will the boys be anticipating the third game in the series that releases next year? And what does all of this have to do with the Spice Girls?
Click play, and find out.
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Quinns: Last week we wrote the news in a cider pub, tapping away at our keyboards to the merry belching of a few old men. Today, we thought we’d write the news in a fashionable local coffee shop.
Paul: This is a disaster. Why can’t people put their mugs into the saucers gently. Why are they all bashing them together like toddlers.
Quinns: There are at least two women within ten feet of me who think they’re Carrie Bradshaw. I’m friends with a lot of writers and none of them look this stylish or pleased with themselves as they write. They all put their hair up and enter a kind of sticky and hypnotised state.
Paul: I did like that yappy animal that was behind you though. The one that looked like a Normal Dog that a level 5 wizard had cast Reduce Dog on.
Quinns: I don’t want to ever come back here. Why would anyone come here instead of sitting snug in the shadowy confines of a quiet pub. I feel like I’m in an iPhone advert.
Who wants to play a game about manufacturing forks!
Anybody? No? What if we were to tell you that Arkwright turns the manufacturing of bread, forks and lamps into a bruising war. What if we were to say that this game puts the very machinery of the industrial revolution in your hands, and allows you to grind your friends in its very cogs.
What if we were to tell you that this game is a cheaper, rock-solid competitor to fascinating games like Food Chain Magnate and Panamax.
Would you want to play then?
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Oho, this episode of the award-winning Shut Up & Sit Down podcast has more scoops than sweet shop, and is just as sweet. We found out that learning geography CAN be fun in the tense game of Destination X. We learned that Lowlands is the best Uwe Rosenberg game since A Feast for Odin, and it isn’t even designed by Uwe Rosenberg. We learned that the amazing-looking Starship Samurai is, perhaps, not as good as we were hoping. And we learned that Quantified – an upcoming game you’ve definitely never heard of – is a thought-provoking co-op game about surveillance and big data. We also found out that the vikings that hang around outside the UK Games Expo are not to be trifled with, as Matt narrowly escapes being skewered by an actual spear. Finally, we implemented the OMEGA PROTOCOL: A quick-fire round of questions that were tweeted to us by the audience, right then and there. Huge thanks to everybody who came down and contributed to the veritable cyclone of questions that followed.
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Paul: WELCOME to our sunny June Games News, live from a Brighton pub. Quinns and I are, in fact, writing this together in a secret alcove in a cider pub. Yes, that’s right, we have suddenly both become forty-five years old.
Quinns: Paul, it’s time for you to get a round in.
Paul: You don’t need to type that, I’m sat right next to you. Also it’s not even 1pm.
Quinns: Don’t give me that you NARC
Quinns: There’s quite a bit of buzz around Santa Maria. “Buzz!” spake this box as it arrived in my flat like a gentle but hefty bumblebee, excited to alight on my table.
Paul: OH GOD WHERE’S THE SPRAY QUICK OPEN A WINDO-
Quinns: It’s fiiiine Paul! This is something we can safely let into our homes to flit happily about, to land on our tables or to watch us from the shelves with its compound eyes. Santa Maria is quite harmless!
Paul: Harmless and… perhaps toothless?
Popping open the almost cartoonishly cute box, which appears to depict Santa Claus as armoured as he is jolly, we’ve got dice! We’ve got charming wooden tokens! We’ve got wonky jungle tiles! We’ve got… is this the terrifying face of an inflated baby, about to burst?!