Videos 37 - Shut Up & Sit Down

How to Play Condottiere!

Condottiere is a card game with a little bit of everything. A bit of area control, a bit of bluffing, a bit of hand management, a bit of negotiation and a bit of luck. It’s like a delicious sampler platter of everything board games have to offer, and it’s a perfect game to start your collection with.

Shut Up & Sit Down has talked up this classic since the site began. Check out this review from back in 2011! It turns out this game is still available in shops and still excellent, so it’s time to do it again!

It’s been styled as an experiment, but is it more of an extravagance or perhaps even some crazed meddling with the forces of nature themselves? 504 is no simple board game, but instead a… gigantic collection of cards and components and pieces and possibilities.

Is this a revolution? This this hubris? Is this madness? This week, Paul faced down one of his greatest challenges ever…

Almost since SU&SD began we’ve been banging on about Catacombs, the dungeon-delving dexterity game. A team of heroes (who are discs) battling an evil villain (who’s a disc) with spells, slings and arrows (which are – you guessed it – discs).

Availability of Catacombs is a little thin right now, though, so we figured we’d do a video that lets you enjoy it through us! Pull up a stinky dungeon pew, and watch as Matt and Quinns break out a copy of Catacombs, a bottle of absinthe, and a camera that does cooool slo-mo.

Review and a Recipe: Arboretum and Pasta with Trees

The Opener returns! Everyone’s favourite series featuring a straightforward game paired with a sexy recipe. Except we’re not calling it The Opener any more, it’s just “review and a recipe”. Nice and simple! Just like the game. And the recipe. And Matt.

Don’t be deceived by that svelte little box, though. Not unlike the trees it depicts,Arboretum is beautiful, tough, and all about hidden depths.

Do you want the good news, or the bad news?

The good news is that Food Chain Magnate is an absolute barn stormer of a game. A delicious puzzle patty rolled in thematic batter, deep fried across years of playtesting(?).

The bad news is that it became almost entirely sold out between us receiving this game and publishing the review. Your best bet is to pre-order straight from Splotter, or reserve a copy at your friendly local game shop (where it should be cheaper).

You ask, and we provide! Our second ever How to Play video walks you through your first game of the sublime 3rd edition of Fury of Dracula.

Once again, this isn’t a COMPLETE rules explanation (we forgot to mention that Dracula can’t be found in sea spaces and doesn’t place encounter cards, for a start), but it should certainly give everyone a ruddy good grasp of the game before you get stuck into the dirty business of questions and manuals.

Enjoy, everybody!

What would it be like to live in a world without words? How difficult might it be to communicate the idea of a person, an object or a work of art through nothing but a collection of slightly ambiguous icons? How would that even go?

If you think the answers to those questions, in turn, are “Pretty awkward!” “Very difficult!” and “It would be a disaster!” then you’re already primed for our first playthrough video of 2016. Paul sat down with some of his friends, a copy of Concept and some very simple rules:

Divide into two teams of two.
Play to a two minute turn limit.
Choose the card (though not the exact concept) the other team must play.
Play the game on the middle of its three difficulty levels. That should be fine, right?

This is what happened.

Could this be the end for Shut Up & Sit Down? The year has barely started and yet it already seems that Quinns is… is leaving us? For a board game?

Face it, this was inevitable. We all knew the day would come. But why, of all games, was it Concordia? What’s so special about it? And how will Matt and Paul cope with the news?

That’s a lot of questions, but fear not. All these and more are answered in this video. Probably. Maybe.

Whether you’d rather someone else teach your friends to play, you want people to know the rules before they come over, or simply want a closer look at this incredible game, our How to Play videos are there for you.

Not heard of Pandemic Legacy, our game of 2015? You should correct that immediately!

Matt and Quinns are ready to flick one another up! Won’t somebody stop them? Seriously we’re not insured

This week we’re looking at Flick ’em Up!, a beautiful new French game of flicking bullets at one another. But could anything replace SU&SD’s favourite dexterity game, Catacombs? Only one thing’s for sure. This town ain’t big enough for both of ’em.

How to Play Condottiere!

Review: 504

SU&SD Play… Catacombs

Review and a Recipe: Arboretum and Pasta with Trees

Review: Food Chain Magnate

How to Play Fury of Dracula!

SU&SD Play… Concept

Review: Concordia

How to Play Pandemic Legacy!

Review: Flick ’em up

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