Shut Up & Sit Down

Last donations on Dec 21st!

will my wife be annoyed if I buy tiny sniper teams instead of potatoes this Christmas

Update: If you donated after the 21st deadline drop us a note and we’ll hook you up anyway (it’s Christmas after all)!

Quinns: Hi everyone! I’ve come down with a festive Christmas flu, but I found a block in my busy schedule of sneezing and fingering spicy soup between my lips to post about our 2017 pledge drive, which ends this Thursday. Donating any time between now and then will get you access to a profoundly jolly Christmas newsletter, packed full of the following:

Have your say on our plans for 2018!
Early thoughts on our next reviews!
An outtake reel!
Access to all previous newsletters, totalling 20,000 words!
A warm fuzzy feeling that next year’s content is paid for by you!
And more!!

The last day for donations is the 21st of December, and the newsletter itself will go out on the 22nd.

Please donate! This weekend I played my first game of Dropzone Commander and now in addition to everything mentioned in our pledge drive video I also need a United Colonial Marines AC2 “Phoenix” class Heavy Command Gunship.

Thanks for your time, everybody!

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Review: Gloomhaven

gloomhavin a good time, mind-belts, i love you, no i love you

Sentient trebuchets rejoice! With just hours to go until the end of the board gaming year, we’ve snuck in our review of 2017’s biggest game. The fantasy hack-and-slash epic that is Gloomhaven weighs in at a preposterous 22lbs, it takes hundreds of hours to finish, and it raised more than four million dollars on Kickstarter.

It will be enjoying a global retail release just next month, but should you buy it?

Let’s take a look.

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Our Xmas Pledge Drive is Now Open!

poor little hydras, the opposite of vomiting, there's safety in sage

Quinns: Oh my goodness! With just Matt’s Gloomhaven review and a year-end podcast to go, that’s almost it for us this year.

“But wait!” you cry. “I haven’t had nearly enough Shut Up & Sit Down!”

Then please, consider thanking us for the service we’ve been providing for more than six years with a donation. Anyone who signs up to donate in a given month will enter the prestigious SU&SD Gold Club, and members receive a monthly behind-the-scenes newsletter, discounts on merchandise and early access to ticket sales for SHUX, the SU&SD convention.

Paul: This December’s newsletter goes out in a week’s time and it’ll be a holiday special, containing our plans for 2018, a blooper reel and access to ALL previous newsletters!

Thanks, everybody. We’ve had a great time putting together a year’s worth of board game coverage for you guys. Who fancies another year?

Merry Christmas from Team SU&SD.

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Games News! 12/12/17

Star Munchkin: Hidernament Hothpek of Bazaday, Blood Bout!, Puzzle Spoin

Paul: Good morning, Quintin!

Quinns: Good morning, Paul. How are you on this brisk winter’s morning?

Paul: I am so refreshed and wholesome.

Quinns: I slept curled up, and a draft in my bedroom froze me into a parenthesis.

Paul: What does that look like?

Quinns: )

But nevermind my failing body. Paul, voting has begun for the annual Pearple’s Choice awards on the SU&SD forum! Everybody reading this should go and vote for their games of 2017, and we’ll be discussing the results on our year-end podcast. Vote now to replace disappointment with frustration! Isn’t democracy fun!

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Podcast #69: An Erotic Scottish Village

paul's billage, um bongo: legacy, library gnomes, tired biclists

Oh my goodness! Apologies if anyone was looking for a board game, we seem to have them all here. In this 69th instalment of the SU&SD podcast Paul chats about Charterstone and explains Ex Libris. Matt is fascinated by Fabled Fruit, Fast Forward: Fortress and Fast Forward: Flee. Quinns catalogues Clans of Caledonia and flaps his lips about the Flamme Rouge: Peloton expansion as well as the free Flamme Rouge app, which contains all-new game mechanics. Importantly, we also have our new podcast feed set up and working. If you’re not seeing episodes 68 or 69 in your podcast feed then you’re subscribed to the wrong feed. Search for “Shut Up & Sit Down” in your podcast player until you find this new, improved feed that has the latest episodes, and delete the old feed (which you can see here). Thanks for listening, everybody!

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Megagame Report: Bring Them Home

quintin "matt damon" smith, the sweetest soviets, industrial gum-flapping

[Special thanks to photographer Ben Broomfield. His other photos of the event are available here.]

Quinns: I’ve never been so excited by the sound of a printer.

Inside the cramped confines of my spacecraft, the machine’s senile clunking makes my heart skip a beat. I drop to my knees, lowering myself before the machine in sweaty supplication. By positioning my head beneath my desk and rotating it 90 degrees, I’m able to start reading the paper before it’s ejected.

The printer is my only lifeline to the three competing space agencies outside my ship – the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese – who are trying to bring me home. Only they have the power to scan the space around me, providing the information that I need to navigate a deadly hellscape of black holes, stars and asteroids. Using their messages, I might just make it back to Earth.

I recognise the Russian insignia on the printed sheet. They’re my most helpful allies. This will be helpful! The printing finishes and I lift it closer to my lamp, banging my head on the desk on the way up. It reads:

“QUESTION FROM RUSSIA: WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FLAVOUR OF ICE CREAM?”

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Introducing Cool Ghosts, Episode 1

a nude cat, a charming professor, four dead pokémon

Quinns: Instead of this week’s Games News we’ve got something substantially more awesome to put in front of you guys. Remember the old episodic format that SU&SD used to have? Long, TV-style videos that were a mix of skits, reviews and plotting?

Well, today Matt and I have returned to that format on Cool Ghosts, our videogame site. If you like games, jokes or weirdness then you should absolutely make it part of your day. The first people to watch it are already describing it as “Early Shut Up & Sit Down, but instead of the excitement of board games it’s the romance of videogames”.

Sure, romance. Plus a slightly higher budget, and just a touch of anger.

Joining me today to discuss this new direction is Matthew Lees. Hi Matt.

Matt: Great to be here, Quinns. I’ve been a fan of Shut Up & Sit Down for years, it’s a pleasure to be featured.

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Review: Azul

peppering of porcelain, choke down ceramics, flapping fleshy fingers

The holiday season is upon us and Paul has discovered a very special gift has come his way! But does it really suit? Azul is an abstract game, nothing like the sort of thing he usually enjoys, so was this a present poorly chosen? Has someone made a terrible mistake? Are the holidays ruined?

There’s only one way to find out! Sit back, get comfortable and enjoy our special, seasonal, candlelit review.

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Our Holiday Gift Guide, 2017!

big or small, wood or plastic, candle or no candle

Quinns: Christmas is almost upon us, everyone! That sweet stretch of the calendar where board games take center stage, or at the very least share the stage with potatoes and Jesus Christ.

Are you thinking about buying a new game to play with your relatives? Or are you wondering which game to buy for the stalwart board game collector in your life?

Either way, we’ve got you covered with the below holiday game guide. Enjoy, everyone!

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Games News! 27/11/17

get petty, a metric yonk, World War 2 but totally nude, the gifs you give

Quinns: Hello everyone! Did our American readers have a nice Thanksgiving? I’m happy to say that I tried pecan pie for the very first time. The sugar is still bouncing around my body like a pinball.

But today I’m handing out slices of something even sweeter. I am, of course, talking about The Games News. We kick things off with the announcement of Decrypto, a team game of announcing coded messages to your team while racing to decypher the other team’s cypher.

…And I have only this second realised that “cypher” is the root word of “decypher”. That’s probably an indication that I’m going to suck at this game.

One thing I have deduced, however, is that Decrypto is almost certainly inspired by Codenames. Not only does it – like Codenames – play up to 8 players on two teams and feature a mechanic whereby a wrong move could instantly lose you the game, you are sending literal codenames to one another.

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