Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: Android: Netrunner – Terminal Directive

unsightly beans, matching tattoos, quinns are you crying

Quinns: Oof, reviews don’t get much tougher than this.

I’ve just finished playing an advance copy of Terminal Directive, the most dramatic expansion that Android: Netrunner has ever received. This big box introduces not just a campaign to the superlative cyberpunk card game, but the dramatic “Legacy” elements that you might remember from Pandemic: Legacy. As the story unfolds players open new packs of cards, but also destroy cards and cover them with stickers.

Best of all, Terminal Directive is a long-awaited stepping stone for new Netrunner players! Previously if you bought the core set and liked it, you then faced the intimidating proposition of simply starting to buy up Netrunner’s forty-two expansion packs. Now you can buy the core set, and then enjoy Terminal Directive’s campaign, and then – erm – begin buying forty-two expansion packs.

There’s just one problem. After being a zealous advocate for this game for years on end, today I don’t play Netrunner anymore. Let’s talk about why.

209 Comments

Games News! 03/04/2017

indigestion expansions, cardboard cloth, sad wolves of the 1990s

Paul: Oh my GOODNESS Red Scare looks very interesting indeed! This is officially Paul’s Most Exciting Game of the Week, without a doubt, with its fancy social deduction, special glasses and double agents. SPECIAL GLASSES, I hear you shout! In glee! In awe!

Y’see, everybody is playing a team of FBI agents who know that somewhere in their midst are communists that they absolutely have to rat out. Everybody sports a special pair of glasses and, depending upon which ones you wear, you can read certain secret text written on some of the game’s many cards, while remaining completely blind to other text. This is a wonderfully simple idea and I’m immediately thrilled at the idea of players trying to convince one another of what they can or can’t see, blusteringly bluffing and desperately trying to get someone else to confirm (or deny) that things are (or aren’t) what they seem.

Quinns: What a concept, indeed! I’m very excited to test this box from first time designer Benjamin Kanelos. If you were wondering about the box’s striking appearance, this is actually yet another work from Ian O’Toole, who does the layout and illustration for all the breathtakingly lovely new Vital Lacerda games like Vinhos Deluxe. What a guy.

Are we entering an age where artists get as much kudos as designers? Being an enormous fop, I hope so.

Review: Cry Havoc

a dead prince, a drifting stick, a strong spine, steve holt

Quinns: Oh my god. Where do we start?

Maybe just gaze into the above image. Try and take it all in. Crystals! Robots! Colours! Cards! Three dozen unique kinds of token, each with a different shape, as if they were all so scared of this primary-coloured scrum that they started to collapse in on themselves.

This is Cry Havoc, one of 2016’s most striking and well-received war games, and if you take anything from its Shakespearean name it shouldn’t be wry sophistication, but that this design is as wild and energetic as a pack of dogs.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!” Let me tell you what I think of this grand box.

That was another quote from Julius Caesar, you see. I might even do another before we’re done. Brace yourselves!

88 Comments

Feature: A Day in the Life of Matt Thrower’s Game Collection

reeking of solvents, bloated with hope, an early sumo, a vital box

[Our series on the collections of our writers continues! Today it’s the turn of long-time contributor Matt Thrower. If you missed our previous entries, you can now navigate to them using those buttons on the right. Enjoy, everybody!]

Thrower: Well hello there! Nice of you to stop by. Hope you had a good journey. It’s rare we get the chance to entertain adult visitors, with all the space the children take up. So, please, let me show you round the house.

The first thing you learn as a parent is that every other parent lives in a pristine house. Even when chasing after kids has left them looking like exhausted pandas, their houses are still clean and tidy. Naturally, ours has to be the same. We’d all be happier if everyone could drop this charade and wallow in their familial filth. Anyway, it’s nice to have someone here who might appreciate the results.

Hang your coat up over there…

48 Comments

Games News! 27/03/2017

soft English dough, i feel the need the need for rabbits, poisoned by a poison

Paul: All right, everyone, keep your heads low! The seas are choppy today and that doesn’t make it any easier for the headlines to land on Shut Up & Sit Down’s Games News carrier. This 100,000 tonne vessel carries the very latest in state-of-the-art news-projection technology and, oh boy, that sound you hear RIGHT NOW IS A BIG KICKSTARTER COMING IN OKAY I GOTTA GUIDE THIS BABY DOWN HOLD TIGHT PREPARE FOR 878 VIKINGS!!!

61 Comments

Review: Flamme Rouge

Spokey Poker, Bi-Men, I thought it would taste of cakes

Who among us can claim that they didn’t once dream of growing up to be a master of bicycles? Those debonair doctors of velocity. The zeal on wheels.

I have good news, friends. It turns out that in the game of Flamme Rouge (French for “Red Flam”) you can become a cycleman for no less than 30 to 45 minutes at a time. Clearly we had to give it the full review treatment, and you know what? It turns out that this game is an absolute delight.

Have a fantastic weekend, everybody!

UPDATE: Thanks to SU&SD fan Meeple101 for telling us about the official Flamme Rouge Companion for iOS and Android, which lets you link individual races into a grand tour! What fun.

1 Comment

Podcast #55: Teenage Monstrous Roman Soldiers

a police raid on heaven, quintin's sassy grapefruit, a sex mask, falsified speed chess

You guys love podcasts! We literally know how to do them! With episode #55 of the SU&SD podcast we’re committing to getting these bad babies out twice a month. If you like what you hear please do share it among your friends! So what’s in this one? Ooh, only Quinns discussing the electrifying yet accessible escape rooms of Unlock! (which has a free demo available online), the insanity of Magic Maze (which also has a free print-n-play version) and the challenging slumbers of When I Dream, while Paul outlines his pathetic enjoyment of Kingdomino and his struggling TV station in The Networks. We close with Quinns talking about Snakes & Ladders after discovering an astonishing article on its history, and finish with a Christian folk game that leaves the pair even more speechless than usual. Let’s just say that teenagers should never be given power, but especially not iron age judicial power. Enjoy, everybody!

Games News! 20/03/2017

a warrior bird, a drugged thief, flamingo milk, correct toiletry

Paul: Oh crikey, what a week it’s been. There’s been all sorts of news exploding out of GAMA, the Game Manufacturers Association trade show in Ohio, but probably the most significant of these was publisher CMON casually announcing that they’re kickstarting a tabletop miniatures game based on A Song of Ice & Fire. Yep, they’ve got a Game of Thrones wargame on the way. That’s quite the license to muscle in on and with the first box being a Stark vs. Lannister “Starter Set” there’s no doubt they have aspirations to grow this substantially.

Quinns: I might have just read too many Game of Thrones books, but this announcement seemed undercut with an amount of… intrigue.

Paul: What do you mean? MURDER?

Quinns: Oh god, no! No-one’s murdering one another.

It’s… EVEN WORSE.

77 Comments

Review: Diamant

Conversational sex act, Danny DeVito, No no no no no

Paul: QUINTIN. I know we want to tell people all about Diamant and how this cute-but-cruel game of pushing your luck can make you either rich or dead, but I’ve got to say one thing right thing right here, right now, right off the bat. Right?

Quinns: I’ll allow it!

Paul: Diamant is probably the most fun I’ve had for the least investment of time and energy SO FAR THIS YEAR. I’m so sorry. I just had to blurt that. It’s a petite wonder. PETITE. WONDER. Like… Danny DeVito. Or… a teabag?

Quinns: You’re arriving at this party a little late though, aren’t you? Last year I called Incan Gold the best little push-your-luck game I’d played in forever. Diamant is just a beautiful new edition of the same game! You can’t talk about it like you’ve just found a dead sea scroll in your back garden.

Paul: All right, all right, back that boulder up, snarkaeologist. Incan Gold? The 2006 game? And when did you come to it, exactly?

Quinns: Erm. 2016.

Paul: An entire decade of incompetence.

102 Comments

Update: Our Nonsense Box Kickstarter Just Got Sexier!

Make a sound effect using someone else's hand from another room

Quinns: Hey everybody! With just seven days left on our Kickstarter for the Monikers Nonsense Box – a standalone expansion for Monikers written entirely by SU&SD staff – all backers now get a free gift!

Basically we reached 2,500 backers and decided we’d like to improve the product you guys were getting. Think of it as a kind of thank you for helping us to stretch past our original goal. We’re calling this addition a “Girth Objective” and it’s my guess that by 2020 every Kickstarter will have one.

As of this week every backer of the Nonsense Box Kickstarter will get a free pack of Hopelessly Stupid Fourth Round Cards. You see, Monikers is a game that starts off very pedestrian in round 1 and becomes marginally more interesting in round 2 before going completely insane in round 3. But as old Monikers pros will tell you, you can keep playing and the game gets dumber and funnier with every additional round. “Charades but under a bedsheet” has to be played to be believed.

We have a tenative list already drawn up, but we’re well aware that you guys are often funnier and smarter than us in our comment threads. If you have an idea for a fourth round for Monikers, and would like to see it on a card with your name on it and a professional illustration, please leave a comment below!

Thanks so much, everyone. <3

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