Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: A Tale of Pirates

billy's bad cannoning, some criminal lemons, a pedalo in space

Quinns: You’re looking at A Tale of Pirates. More specifically, you’re looking at a 3D pirate ship, a load of sand timers and an accompanying app. And before we get to how all of this fits together, let me add that you’re looking at a great little game.

Last year a lot of people got excited about Kitchen Rush, a real time game where players place sand timers to run a chaotic restaurant together. If Kitchen Rush was any more up our street it’d be banging on our front door, but actually, we found the video game Overcooked to be more entertaining and cheaper.

A Tale of Pirates is similar to Kitchen Rush, but instead of 2-4 players popping their sand timers down to go shopping or cook a bouillabaisse, 2-4 players are placing sand timers to load a cannon or climb the crow’s nest of their very own ship. But more importantly, they’re working together to unlock the next level in a very playful campaign.

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Games News! 05/02/18

handcuffs, I'll die in time, and my opponents will die as well, a pound of saliva

Paul: I shake the champagne bottle, pop the cork and what comes bursting forth? February! February everywhere, gushing and bubbling in all directions. I don’t know about you, but I have a distinctly good feeling about February as a games month.

Quinns: Is there anything finer than sharing a frosted glass of February with some good friends? And what a Games News it’s brought us! With everything from Aztecs to political intrigue to some strange new version of Monopoly that I might actually play.

Paul: You’re kidding.

Quinns: Drink up!

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Review: Hive Pocket

catnip for poindexters, wait until you see the outtakes from this one, monopoly comes for us all

Surprise, it’s a re-review of Hive! Fortunately the last review barely talked about the game and wasn’t filmed in a totally ancient ruin. In more ways than one, it’s wonderful to think how far we’ve come.

Gosh, we’ve had a lot of fun recently returning to older games. They’re all so good! What are some of the games in your collection that you feel have stood the test of time, readers?

SU&SD Play…. Dungeons & Dragons, Part 3

an actual magic sword, a locked door puzzle, the classics are genuinely the best

What follows Part 1 and Part 2? We’ve got some news for you: It’s the third part of our D&D adventure!

In this episode our team of a tory, a crank and a lizard descend into their very first dungeon, the very engine room of D&D. What monsters will they fight? What puzzles will they overcome? And what treasure will they find?

It’s easy to poke fun at D&D. It’s a lot harder to argue with the thrill of beating up a boss and taking his gold. Get ’em, Badger!

Review: Gaia Project

a bloated boxer, a wibbly purple, a wonky illustration, interstellar nutella

Quinns: Everybody, stand up from your chairs! Pull up your pants. Spit out that gum. An esteemed classic has returned.

We reviewed fantasy town-building game Terra Mystica back in 2013 and found ourselves submerged in strategic nirvana. Today 28,000 people have rated it on BoardGameGeek, awarding it in an average of 8.3 out of 10. That’s shockingly high considering just how complicated and odd Terra Mystica is, with its challenging puzzle squished in between ugly mermaids and magic bowls. But there you have it! It’s just that enjoyable.

This week we’re looking at the sequel, Gaia Project, which is a big deal in more ways than one. As well as swapping Terra Mystica’s musty fantasy for a sci-fi backdrop, it’s more expensive, more complicated and demands significantly more table space. All set up, you’re looking at an asteroid belt of iconography.

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Games News! 29/01/18

dates, do dates have wasps in, no that's just figs, phew, sea bears

Quinns: Good morning, my sweet creatures of the table. There’s only one story that could possibly kick us off this week: How a Random New Zealand Man Became a Character in Rising Sun.

To summarise, CMON’s ludicrously successful Kickstarter game, Rising Sun, was this month shipped to some 32,000 backers only for a few people to begin asking about this “Kotahi” stretch goal miniature. The backers couldn’t find any Japanese folklore by that name, but they did find a fake Wikipedia entry where someone put their friend, Kotahi-Manawa Bradford, in Wikipedia’s list of Japanese mythical creatures as a joke. In other words, research for Rising Sun was being done via Wikipedia and as a result a random Maori guy was immortalised in CMON’s biggest release of the year.

CMON have since stated that they were indeed “tricked”, and have sent a couple of copies of the game to Kotahi and his friend in a coy bit of PR, but I’m not sure they come out of this looking good.

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Review: Cockroach Poker Royal

hot ants, cool dogs, regal bats, and an average man

As our team continues playtesting and preparing for the first of the year’s Big Reviews, here’s a cheeky appetiser! While Quinns was on holiday this month he filmed a couple of lightweight reviews on his favourite travel games, starting with the ever-entertaining Cockroach Poker.

(Yes, we published an article about Cockroach Poker before, but in 2018 our written articles reach a fraction of the audience that our video reviews do. In other words, if a game’s absolutely awesome then us writing about it is basically the worst thing that could happen to it, so going forward you can expect us to occasionally re-visit a classic game in video format.)

(And no, you’re not wrong, Quinns mentions Galaxy Trucker in this video but forgot to film that bit of the script. His waterlogged English brain was probably struggling with all that sunshine.)

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SU&SD Play…. Dungeons & Dragons, Part 2

acquisition mode, the fabled swamptopus, man is literally the real monster

It’s time to rejoin the adventures of Badger Kennington, Mr. Balderk and Sean Dragonborn! Our group’s inevitable descent into “being the bad guys” continues apace.

If you missed part one, check it out right here. If you want to watch more from our sickeningly good guest dungeon master, Mark Hulmes’ own channel can be found here. Or were you looking for something a little… stronger? If so, all of SU&SD’s role-playing game coverage is here.

Tell you what, this “Dungeons & Dragons” thing is a lot of fun. Expect big things from this game. As cutting edge board game critics, we’d stake our reputation on it.

Review: Necromunda: Underhive

in memoriam lyv, an itchy brain, a timid lover, a beloved lasgun, a two-part head

[We once again welcome SU&SD miniatures correspondent Eric Tonjes for a report from some far-flung warzone. If you’ve not yet caught up on his work for us, do so on the double!]

Eric: A few years ago I had the chance to revisit the grade school I attended as a child. It was a jarring afternoon. The huge hallways were suddenly kind of small. I could see over the bookshelves in the library where I used to get lost. The teachers… several of them were younger than me. I walked in the door feeling nostalgic; I left a bit unsettled.

I found myself remembering that visit as I got ready to open Games Workshop’s new remake of Necromunda. A skirmish game set in the collapsing underbellies of hive cities in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, the original Necromunda one-upped the grim darkness of the 41^st millenia by adding gangs, drugs, slavery, abject poverty and child soldiers. To a 15-year-old me, it was a thing of glorious joy. Yet I wondered, would this turn out to be just another narrow-halled school with five-foot bookshelves?

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Games News! 22/01/18

this web site is pointless, sumsong, chris quilliams can you see this, you are so good

Quinns: Good morning everyone! I’m back from a holiday in India where I watched a lot of Kabaddi, ate a lot of dosas and explored a little bit of ancient Hampi.

Ack, I’ve only been back at my desk for a few minutes and I’m already playing havoc with the Games News brand. Not one of those links takes you to a rousing piece of honest-to-betsy board game news. Please, let me start your week with some links that do.

As always I like to give the top story to the game with the prettiest header image, and this week that means the glossy Kickstarter of “Ridley Scott’s Alien but Don’t Tell His Lawyers” board game Nemesis. As any Shut Up & Sit Down reader will know, you’ll struggle to find a bigger Kickstarter curmudgeon that ol’ Quintinius P. Smith, but Nemesis’ campaign is so assured, so dramatic and so generous that even I found my mouse finger twitching towards the “Back this Project” button.

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