Pip Talks to New Studio Restoration Games!

Papal Dragon Conversions, Crime-Scanners, Disappointing Mice

Pip: After writing about my infatuation with Exploration as an artefact from another time in board gaming (and reading through your equivalents!) I found out about Restoration Games – a project to dig out and polish up older games in order to give them a new audience. Their tagline is cute: “Because every game deserves another turn.”

Restoration Games is actually a trio right now: attorney, Justin Jacobson; designer, Rob Daviau (of Risk Legacy and Pandemic Legacy fame); and graphic designer, Jason Taylor. They’ve also just announced their initial slate of games to restore – Dragonmaster, Top Race and Stop Thief! I caught up with Justin Jacobson to find out more about the project – particularly what “restoration” even means when it comes to board games and why these three made the cut…

Justin, as I mentioned above, is an attorney. He’s based in South Florida and had the kind of family I definitely didn’t – one which was into board games. “My father and uncle were always regular game players, and we lived nearby growing up,” he says. “So, unsurprisingly, my cousins and I played games constantly. We played a lot of D&D and a lot of video games, but mostly we played board games. Tons of them. All kinds. I guess I’ve always been around games and so I’ve always had a passion for them.”

Read more

60 Comments

Please Donate to Our Internet Web Site?

matt gets quinns a present, wow quinns also gets matt a christmas present, nice

Hey you!

You might have noticed that a lot of work goes into Shut Up & Sit Down. This month we’re asking for you to become one of the donors who make that possible.

Never mind “digging deep”- if every person reading this had a just a paddle in their pockets that would more than suffice for Team SU&SD to keep the lights on for another 6 months. If you donate by December 18th you’ll receive our donor newsletter telling you everything we’re planning for 2017, and you’ll also have supported us in our quest to make play better.

We talk a little about inclusivity in the above video, which always results in some people asking why we keep banging on about it. This month we found we had one more reason why: It turns out that while women are only a fraction of our viewership, they’re disproportionately more likely to make a donation to SU&SD.

Finally, if you have any questions regarding donations, please email [email protected].

Thank you all for another incredible, loved-up six months. And do look forward to the next two weeks on the site! We have one or two very exciting slabs of calorific Christmas content coming your way.

– Team SU&SD

Read More
160 Comments

Presenting QUINNS’ CORNER AWARDS, 2016!

Quinns: Ladies and gentlemen! Take a seat. Get comfy. Buy some ice-cream from the attendant I had sent to your place of work (yes, YOUR place of work, so keep an eye out for her). It’s time for Quinns’ Corner Awards ‘16.

In other words we’re one year on from 2015’s Corner Awards and I still haven’t figured out a better solution for review copies than letting them pile up in the corner of my flat. I bet Tom Vasel doesn’t have this problem. Not to worry! Once again I’m dispensing awards to all those games that didn’t suit a full review, but were too weird to eject from the corner.

I’ve heard the rumours. “Quinns is getting too old to review seven games in one article! They already use CG for any scenes where he has to bend his knees.”

To which I say: Ha! Watch and learn, kids.

Read more

48 Comments

Review: Not Alone

misleading parties, friendly predators, marmalade skies, home

Quinns: You and I need to talk about Not Alone. There are more exciting card games out there, and funnier ones, and ones that are sharp as a tack, but Not Alone is the most deliciously playable little game we’ve encountered since Crossing. This box might as well be full of popcorn.

Between 1 and 6 players are the survivors of a crash-landing on a wild alien world. This team (possibly made up of just one nervy player) is opposed by one final player controlling the beast that lives there. A long, thin board measures the progress of each team: The humans win if they can survive until help arrives, the beast wins if it can wear down the humans and absorb them into the ecosystem like beer into a shag carpet.

Each turn, each human player plays a card face-down showing where they’re going, and the beast has to second-guess their movements and slap fat poker chips onto those locations, invalidating your turn or worse. If the beast itself catches you then it devours a precious “Will” cube.

Do I have your interest? Of course I do. You’re a weak-willed human, and this game is a seductive new land. Let’s go exploring.

Read more

104 Comments

GAMES NEWS! 28/11/16

rippling breasts, skirts made of dicks, and the absence thereof

Paul: Quinns. Quinns I have a strange comment from you here in the Games News notes. It just says-

Quinns: DO NOT READ THAT OUT.

Paul: “Where did the boobs and swinging dicks go”?

Quinns: Ok, I can explain.

Paul: There’s no need! It’s a question all men must eventually ask themselves.

Quinns: I don’t doubt that, but that note actually refers to the Kickstarter for Kingdom Death: Monster, version 1.5. Not only has Kickstarter’s most ambitious board game made a comeback, it seems to have been de-sexed.

Read more

171 Comments

Triple Review: H.M.S. Dolores, Millions of Dollars AND Gentleman’s Deal!

cool crimes, greasy opossums, rubbery kigurumis, dammit linkedin

Who wants to get extravagant! Inspired by his own Chinatown review, Quinns has published a negotiation triple-bill. Three new smallbox games, each one telling the story of dividing up loot after a cool crime, but each with a radically different approach.

At the time of writing H.M.S. Dolores looks like it has some European stock availability, but Millions of Dollars and Gentleman’s Deal aren’t yet broadly available for purchase. If you want these games and can’t find them, simply call your friendly local game shop (or your friendly regional game shop) and put in an order.

Read More
81 Comments

A Hot Time in Texas: Paul’s very particular picks of BGGCon

i'm a rock! et! man!, sweaty french cyclists, taking a lichen to mars

Paul: Oh my word. I have had A Hot Time in Texas and, boy oh boy, I can’t wait to tell you all about it. Do you want to know all about BoardGameGeek Con 2016? Are you settled and ready? Are you prepar- I DON’T CARE LET’S GO. The starter pistol has fired so LET’S TALK ABOUT FLAMME ROUGE.

Read more

137 Comments

GAMES NEWS! 20/11/16

high finance, dusty teams, stranglin' lando, shadow muses

Quinns: GOOD MORNING everybody! Who’s excited about board games? All of you? Not yet you’re not. Soak up the below news like an high-end paper towel and then we’ll talk.

Fantasy Flight has announced the next big box expansion for the superb Android: Netrunner, and it’s Netrunner Legacy.

The copywriting on the announcement page for Netrunner: Terminal Directive is a bit of a nightmare, but basically anyone who owns a Netrunner core set and the Terminal Directive expansion will be able to play through a narrative campaign of runners vs. corporations. Sealed packs of never-before-seen cards will be opened one after another as a cyberpunk murder mystery plays out, and players will apply new stickers to their faction’s sheet as they win or lose games.

Going into this expansion blind sounds like a delight. Not only do you get the surprise of adding brand new cards to your deck, you then get to surprise your opponent as you unleash them mid-game!

Read more

Leave a comment

Review: Vinhos Deluxe Edition

poison ribena, delicious "wine drink", two-bit grape grabbers, dismay

Quinns: Alright ladies and gents. Today we’re tackling a box of unparallelled size and charisma. The publishers tell me that there are less than 3500 copies of Vinhos Deluxe Edition (the Kickstarted re-imaging of 2010 wine-making classic Vinhos) left, and I want to make sure that you guys have the chance to buy one.

It takes a lot to excite me these days, but Vinhos Deluxe Edition managed it. Contained in this box is nothing less than a torrent of beautifully-illustrated tokens, a board that’s positively threatening in scale, and a fat, clean manual written with wit. It even has nice fonts! In a board game!

But it takes very little to make me nervous, and Vinhos Deluxe did that too. The rules that make sense, like buying vineyards or aging wines, contrast fiercely with the more arcane regions of the board, where players claim score multipliers or manoeuvre their action-selectors.

Any inference you want to draw from the header image of this article is correct. This game’s a beast to play, it’s tougher to teach, and it’s even harder to review.

Obviously, I couldn’t be more excited.

Read more

92 Comments

Podcast #49: A Dream Home and an Ill Moon

tender feet, boisterous deities, sequential toilets, gravesend, cauliflower

In what’s surely our most mathematically pleasing podcast ever, today Paul and Quinns discuss 6 games (2 of which they’d recommend) before answering 4 emails and examining 2 folk games. What’s next in this sequence? Why, your enjoyment of course! Games discussed in this cast include the bucolic visions of Dream Home and Cottage Garden. We’ve got two spritely deck-building games, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle and Aeon’s End. We’ve also got two interesting spins on existing classics, 4 Gods being a wild interpretation of Carcassonne, and Mythos Tales as a Lovecraftian sequel to Consulting Detective. Enjoy, everybody. And credit to Peter Dringautzki for the podcast image, with his beautiful photo of Cottage Garden!

Read More
81 Comments