New to Games? 4 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: Azul

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.

This week’s video is a playthrough of the outrageously silly and frustrating Meeple Circus -a game so hot and squeaky-fresh that it isn’t actually available yet. Sorry. (If you want to read more, Paul recently tried and enjoyed it at SHUX). But if you’ll just put that goat and plank down for a moment – look at who we’ve got with us in this flipping video?

Assembling an incredible sort of UK board game supergroup/cabal, this video features guest appearances from Jon Purkis (aka Actualol) as well as Efka and Elaine! (No Pun Included). For the inititated, we’d love to point you towards Jon’s song about Pandemic Legacy, and NoPunIncluded’s review of Great Western Trail – if only for the shocking revelation that cows are no longer required for fresh milk.

But do go and poke around! Both channels do great stuff, and it’s worth noting that just last month Actualol popped onto Patreon. Finally, special apologies to Efka – Matt got a bit too involved in the game and literally wasn’t a proficient cameraman. Everyone else: enjoy!

(This review contains gifs. Viewing it on a mobile device may use a lot of roaming data. If your usage is metered, consider reading this at home!)

Paul: The aliens are coming. Aggressively advancing, ever encroaching, nothing seems to stop their dreadful descent. The sunlight shines off their silver spacecraft as they pierce the heavens and prepare to bring down so much death and destruction onto the city below.

You and your friends are all that stand in their way. Together, you will use a small flight of fighters and the most precise cardboard-flipping skills the galaxy has ever seen to win the hour. You will flip them round the moons. You will flip them in low orbit. You will flip them in the atmosphere. You will never surrender.

Or you’ll flick a state-of-the-art starfighter straight across the room and lose it behind the sofa. Who’s to say?

Paul: Sometimes you gotta go fast.

And in a world where that speed comes from pounding alloy pistons, feels like warm, rubber-scarred asphalt, stinks of fetid fumes and fury, the Pit Crew are the kingmakers. They, and thus you, decide the monarchs of motorsport, with deft hands of restoration and renewal.

Collectively you wrench home a new wheel, working as well together as the finely-tuned machine you maintain. Nobody is screaming for petrol, nobody has broken the engine, nobody has just dropped a card. It’s fine. It’s okay. You’re the pit crew.

August 19, 2017 Reviews barenpark, bears, SU&SD Recommends, Quick Games, New to Games? It was bound to happen sooner or later. Even if we’d tried, if we’d deployed all the forces at our command, we’d never have been able to keep Paul away from reviewing Bärenpark. It’s a tile-laying game and it features bears. The best … Read more

Quinns: Career Shut Up & Sit Down fans might remember our 2013 Halloween Special, where we reviewed a game called Letters from Whitechapel. This was a beautiful, heinously tense game where one player controls Jack the Ripper, facing off against a team of police players who hunt him through the streets of London like a wild animal. It would be in ill taste to say that we were charmed by that box, but Paul and I would both have to admit to being seduced. What a puzzle. What a board! What fabulous pressure.

Fast-forward to 2017, and it was only a couple of months ago that I was arching my eyebrow at the announcement of a spin-off titled Whitehall Mystery. I read the preview articles and couldn’t for the life of me figure out what I was supposed to be excited about.

This week review copies of Whitehall Mystery stepped out from the foggy alleyways of publisher Fantasy Flight, and I gave it a play. And you know what? There’s now egg on my (blood-flecked, murderer’s) face.

I think this is the best hidden movement game ever made.

What’s the new hidden role game that’s got SU&SD buzzing? That’s full of laughs and surprises whether you play it with 4 players, all the way to 8? That has the single nicest components that Quinns has EVER TOUCHED?

We couldn’t possibly say. Those are Secrets, you see.

Please note that Secrets isn’t out yet, and arrives in shops in August. If you’re interested, we recommend contacting your friendly local game shop and asking to place a pre-order.

Paul: Help me out here. I’m in a bit of a dilemma.

I keep telling people that I’m not especially enamoured with Sagrada, that it’s just my latest diversion, but then I say they should still try a game with me. Then it hits the table again. Then I’m playing it once more. Then we have a good time and I think about the next person I want to try it with. Then it goes back into my bag and I bring it to someone new.

Am I in denial about just how much I like this?

July 8, 2017 Reviews Near and Far, New to Games? Paul has been hankering to try Ryan Laukat’s Near and Far for over a year now, but being a Kickstarter release, all the world’s copies only went out to backers, right? Wrong! Hearing that this game of epic adventure and dangerous expeditions was now out in … Read more

BOLD TRAVELLER! Dare you enter the land of Ethnos? There live creatures the likes of which you cannot imagine. Trolls! Orcs! And what’s that, hiding over there in that bush? Why, it’s a wizard, laying a wizard egg. It is spring here, after all.

Alright, so the “land” of Ethnos is a bit rubbish. But this is a new game from Paolo Mori, who gifted us with Libertalia in 2013 and Dogs of War the year after that. Surely he has earned a moment of your time? Sit a while, traveller, and listen to Matt and Quinns rave about his latest design.

Review: Azul

Meeple Circus with NoPunIncluded and Actualol

Review: Flipships

(This review contains gifs. Viewing it on a mobile device may use a lot of roaming data. If your usage is metered, consider reading this at home!)

Review: Pit Crew

Review: Bärenpark

Review: Whitehall Mystery

Review: Secrets

Review: Sagrada

Review: Near and Far

Review: Ethnos

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