Shut Up & Sit Down

The best games of SHUX 2017!

Pavlovian puppies, sightless stooge, sumptuously silly smorgasbord of stuff

Paul: It feels so very, very strange to be doing this. We’re always writing post-con roundups, flying home and tapping out our thoughts on the best new games we tried, but to do that after our own con? It feels a little peculiar, like the first time a doctor shone a light into my ear. But that’s a proper, sensible thing that doctors do, right? It’s not just for giggles?

Matt: At the time, it was straight-up stressful! We hadn’t accounted for the fact that people might be showing off things we really wanted to look at, so we frantically juggled schedules to try and check stuff out. There was still so much we missed, but we caught some REAL GOOD BITS.

Paul: For a start, Matagot only went and rolled up with an Inis expansion that they just casually announced IS A THING THAT EXISTS?

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Normal Service Will Be Resumed Shortly!

phew, sheesh, oh goodness, oh my, so many people clapped

Paul: Wow.

So SHUX happened. Our first ever convention collected together hundreds of wonderful people for a weekend so amazingly positive that I’m still trying to process everything. I’m sat here looking at a blank page, trying to work out how to express how it was so much more than I could even have imagined it would be. It’s not so much that I’m lost for words as I’ve almost entirely forgotten what words are.

Matt: I know what words are! They come out of a mouth and are sometimes good or bad. Normal service will resume shortly, but today we’d just like to share some words and pictures.

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Review: The Voyages of Marco Polo

embarrassing dads, a really good candy-based joke, bouncing bags of bananas

October 7, 2017 Reviews Conflict-Free Games, Games for Two, Heavy Games, The Voyages of Marco Polo Hot dog! At the time of writing The Voyages of Marco Polo is ranked as BoardGameGeek’s 39th best game ever. Our team has now comprehensively tested, teased and tutted over every aspect of its complicated machinery to bring you what we … Read more

Games News! 01/10/17

pester a picnic, dice urologists, Boarbatusk I choose you

Paul: Drop the sandbags, the Games News dirigible is aloft! Carried on cool currents and buoyed by the balmiest of gasses (their exact composition a closely-guarded secret), it carries up above the clouds to where the spriteliest gaming news flies, soaring across a sapphire sky. Are you ready for a spectacular trip, a voyage like no other, where we glimpse… oh! Look, it’s Dice Hospital! How wondrous!

Wait what? The dice are sick, you say?! THIS IS A DISASTER.

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Review: Modern Art

Machiavelli-maths, i've made a huge mistake, Rafael Silveira is rubbish though

Quinns: With CMON’s new edition of Modern Art, a game of blisteringly quick and dangerous art auctions, Shut Up & Sit Down continues its exploration of classic Knizia. Just who is Reiner Knizia? Where did he come from? What is he doing? We’ve interviewed him and I still don’t know. All I can tell you is that he’s responsible for more than 500 games, literally some of which are good.

But Modern Art isn’t just the oldest Knizia game we’ve ever reviewed. With the exception of 1981’s Consulting Detective, I think this is the oldest game we’ve reviewed, period. It came out way back in 1992, when Paul was celebrating his 30th birthday and Matt hadn’t even been born yet.

Can you feel it? This site is trembling with time right now. Slip inside my cardboard Tardis. Let’s see if the years have been kind.

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RPG Review: Unknown Armies

poisonous cat masks, erotic pastries, trains that literally go to hell, inhaling rules

Cynthia: The third edition of Unknown Armies appeared in May of this year and got my attention with this pitch: “An occult game about broken people conspiring to fix the world.”

Alright, I thought, I’m hungry for games set in the actual ~~dumpster fire~~ world we live in, and I enjoy creepy, occult things, and I always want to investigate characters with secrets, traumas, and unsolvable problems. So I gathered a small cabal and led them into a morally ambiguous underworld of deadly rituals, paramilitary organizations, ancient crypts that appear only at midnight, young women without tongues, and murder. I plunged them into an international struggle for the future of the TransCanada oil pipeline, of Vancouver real estate, of the White House, and the world.

If you’re ready for a game of of vast conspiracies and sleepless nights, a game in which your obsessions give you strength and great power comes with great corruption, in which you’ll be haunted by invisible demons with ten-inch claws and compelled to do bloody deeds, where heroes are less Captain America and much more Jessica Jones… then read on. Just be warned: in case you haven’t figured it out yet, this game is not family-friendly. Nor is it for the faint of heart.

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Games News! 25/09/2017

a gurgling relative, deadly dancers, a wobbly future, the star bean

Quinns: You know how we usually do silly intros for the Games News?

Paul: Absolutely. That’s classic Games News.

Quinns: Well, I dunno if we have to today. I think our top story already sounds like a Dr. Seuss story.

Board game designer Friedemann Friese, who likes to make games that begin with the letter ‘F’, has announced a series of sequels to his title Fabled Fruit. Fear, Fortress and Flee are his three new games in the Fast Forward line, all of which use the Fable system (see below). All of these games are green, because Friedemann likes green games (and has green hair).

Speaking of which, they’ve also announced the first expansion to Fabled Fruit, and you’ll never guess what it adds.

Paul: What does it add?

Quinns: Limes.

Paul: Limes?

Quinns: Limes.

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SU&SD Play… The Metagame!

speedos & cigarettes, quintin: fan of children, congratulations matt

In the words of Tom Jones, “What’s new pussycat?”

We’re so glad you asked, Tom! It’s a video of Shut Up & Sit Down and special guest Mark Hulmes playing The Metagame in honour of our Kickstarter for Metagame: The Game: The Games Expansion: Game Away. It’s hard to express exactly how good The Metagame is in words alone, so we decided that we’d make an actual play video that proves, once and for all, that this game is not messing around.

And if you think this game looks like pots of fun? We’ve got good news! We’ve just unlocked our stretch goal so any who backs the Kickstarter (where you can also get the base game) gets a free booster of board game-related cards.

As promised, this video isn’t replacing an ordinary SU&SD video. We’re sticking to our bi-weekly schedule, and Quinns will have a fresh’n’tasty new video review for you next week.

Enjoy, everybody!

Review: Rhino Hero Super Battle

the clambering proletariat, doomed societies, the duality of heroism, monkeys

Quinns: Leigh, thank you very much for agreeing to appear on Shut Up & Sit Down. I hope you won’t be expecting any special treatment as my wife.

Leigh: Not at all! It’s a pleasure to be invited to this forerunning venue for material game criticism.

Quinns: Do you think you’re up for the task?

Leigh: I certainly hope so!

Quinns: Glad to hear it. Today the text we’re looking at is Rhino Hero Super Battle, the outsize sequel to 2011 sleeper hit Rhino Hero. From the box – and I quote – “This time not only does the wobbly skyscraper need to be built & climbed, but there will also be fierce battles between the four superheroes Rhino Hero, Giraffe Boy, Big E. and Batguin.”

In more ways than one, Leigh, the world of Rhino Hero just got bigger.

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Games News! 18/09/2017

a battalion of artists, an en-drabbening, climbing (nggh) a beanstalk

Paul: Oh boy, do I feel excited about this week’s Games News! We have just SO MANY interesting and exciting stories. Where do we even begin? With the Huge Humble Bundle? The slew of Kickstarters? Or the new Netrunner core set?

Quinns: Ooh, I’d love to start with the Kickstarter for The Champion of the Wild.

SU&SD is often late to any kind of party, but TCotW is a fantastic game that we can recommend before everybody else. It’s a low-stakes, high-entertainment party game about pitching animals against each other in ridiculous tests of… well, everything from hide and seek to self-stacking. Do you think your animal would win in its category? Is a gorilla good at jousting? Maaaaaybeeee? Go on then, convince me! And enjoy the beautiful, hilarious art while you’re at it.

If you’d like to hear a little more, you can hear us playing it at the very end of podcast #60 and having a whale of a time.

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