The first episode of the smash internet series Shut Up & Sit Down is bristling with the very best in board games. In their debut, The Boys review Citadels and Memoir ’44, give playing tips for Ghost Stories and meet some ducks. Lots and lots of ducks. If you’re new to board and card gaming, or just sick of Monopoly, then man, do we have some surprises for you. (EDIT: We apologise about the ducks thing. We realise they’re mostly not ducks.)
It’s arrived. The second episode of what the cool kids are calling SU&SD is devoted almost entirely to one enormous game and its expansions. Almost. As well as Descent, we also take a look at DungeonQuest and keep you up to date with not-quite-so-breaking board game news. Are you ready? Are you sitting comfortably? Then press play...
Episode 3, Civil Surface, sees everything turn serious. Has the government really banned board games? Quite what is going on amongst the SU&SD team? And how many audio glitches and microphone problems can you possibly have in one episode? Really, we’re sorry there are some minor microphone problems. We blame it on the radiation.
In this episode, a failed attempt at Car-cassonne leads us to look exclusively at card games, including the new Nightfall, and the established classics 7 Wonders and Dominion. We also interview a world-famous games developer and enjoy a night out on the town. Fancy that!
The Science Fiction Special sees the boys reviewing enormous games, exciting games and extraterrestrial games! Is this really wise, and quite where will this gaming journey take our hosts?
Our first ever Halloween Special sees the boys making a terrible discovery in their very own flat, before commencing their most ill-advised review to date! WARNING: PROBABLY NOT FOR KIDS OF A SMALL OR MEDIUM SIZE.
It’s back! This sixth episode of the board games review show is entirely dedicated to just one very special person. But which person? Well, you’ll just have to press play to find out. Or read the tags. Yeah, you could probably just read the tags. Though if you did, you’d miss out on the most extraordinary board game reviews you’ve ever seen. That’s a fact.
Merry happy holiday Christmas! In this festive half-hour we look at everything from a solitaire game, to print and play games, to one of our favourite games ever. What’s that? You want specifics? Well then, you’ll see reviews of Quarriors!, Phantom Leader, The D6 Shooters, TimeLine and… ah! We can’t tell you everything. That’d just spoil it.
The board game review show is back! And the boys are having trouble keeping cool about their new celebrity status. They’re launching new features and reviewing games about… being better than everyone else? Oh, this won’t end well.
THE FINEST (and only) board game review show going has, for episode two of season two, turned its wet, wide, child-like eyes towards two player games! Four of them! And that’s /not even all!/ They’re also trying to be adults! Witness their HOT REPORT from London’s Toy & Games Fair 2012, and listen in awe as they try to make it as professional commentators. Amazing.
Thabwam! That’s the noise of another half-hour of board game review goodness landing in your world like a bit of glittering space junk. You’re very welcome. In this episode, the boys are going to be on REAL LIFE TELEVISION! They’re just having a bit of trouble getting home in time for the programme. Possibly because they can’t stop dropping amazing board game reviews. Good luck, boys. And god speed.
WIZARDS! What are they? What do they do? No, seriously, we don’t know. But ignorance is for cowards! We’ve created a Wizard Special our board game review show, where we review Wiz-War, Epic Spell Wars and Mage Knight. Tuck your bib, lick your lips, and get stuck in.
The hot boys of Shut Up & Sit Down review the finest presidential campaign simulator around. WARNING: Contains gunfire, hard talk and harder drinking.
The summer of 2012 is over! It’s disappearing, like a boiled egg into the hungry belly of time. But don’t be sad! The Summer Special, the biggest episode of board game review show Shut Up & Sit Down ever, is here to help. We’re reviewing games that are that much more relaxing! …which isn’t to say we don’t get a bit worked up. About all of them.
Paul’s away! And while Paul’s away, Quinns can review Fantasy Flight’s re-imagining of Warrior Knights! But that’s just for starters. Medieval Strategy Week is just getting started. It’s starting. Here we go.
It’s not all fun and games at SU&SD towers. Sometimes, a misery occurs.
Have you heard of a board game called Twilight Imperium? It’s only the biggest, most colourful boardgame in existence today. Would you like to watch two board game celebrities play an entire, EIGHT HOUR game of it? No? Screw you, then.
The newest recruit to team Shut Up & Sit Down takes a look at King of Tokyo. A game of throwing handfuls of heavy dice at your friends, as hard as you can. I might have got that wrong. Is that wrong, Matt?
We can’t get enough of The Resistance. We’d mainline it if we could. It’s a perfect game that cuts a table full of people into ignorant heroes and traitorous spies. All the good guys need to do is send three teams on three succesful missions, which is tricky… because the spies know who one another are. It’s a game better seen than explained. Only then will you suffocating weight of the lies this game spawns. Here, we’re playing The Resistance: Avalon, a standalone sequel with an Arthurian theme.
FIRE! What is it? We don’t really know. Except that it’s excellent. Fire? It’s pretty great. In this inaugral episode of The Opener, Matt looks at opening your game night with a fiery game of Flash Point: Fire Rescue and a cocktail that’s literally on fire. Because you can never have too much fire, and that’s a fact. EDIT: OK so we just got a call from Paul screaming that he tried to make the cocktail and now has “Too much fire,” so we may have to temporarily redact that.
Splash! Splutter. Cough. You’ve just washed up on the shores of the best game we’ve looked at in ages. Friends, newcomers, children of all ages, please enjoy this review of the ethically dubious Archipelago. It’s early days, this might end up being our game of 2013. Who knows? If Archipelago teaches us anything, it’s to plan for the future. The future, and also for what you’re going to do with all those sodding pineapples. Enjoy, guys.
Introducing the rare SU&SD DOUBLE FEATURE! Commence rejoicing, and insert babies and hats into your triumphant tossing machines. First up, we’ve got Quinns reviewing Japanese-designed String Railway. Oooh, it’s an irritatingly clever one that we’re big fans of. THEN you’ll all be able to enjoy the inaugral Board Gaming with Brendan. Which is… it… it’s something you can watch. Enjoy, people!
August, 1942. The Germans begin their deadly assault of the Russian city of Stalingrad. April, 2013. Team SU&SD assemble to recreate that fateful battle. But with more food. And arguably, more swearing. The 2-8 player Overlord scenarios for featherweight wargame Memoir ’44 are unbelievable fun. To recreate them, you’ll need EITHER two copies of Memoir ’44, or, as seen here, ONE copy of Memoir ’44, ONE copy of the Operation Overlord expansion, and ONE of the official Battle Maps. Got that? Great. WARNING: No amount of preparation will actually prepare you.
Quickly! Watch this video! We don’t know how long it’ll be until (REDACTED) bring down the feed. This is our review of City of Remnants, a wonderful new release that lets you and your friends duke it out over a fallen city. It’s a veritable ball pen full of drugs, robots, guns and grenades. We’re not going to lie. The most remarkable thing in the video is Quinns claiming he grew up “on the streets”. AGAIN. What’s wrong with him?
Get ready to GET EXTRAVAGANT! The Opener is a search for the perfect way to start your board game night. Already, in the second ever episode, Matt might have found it. Ladies & Gentlemen is a team game about Victorian women shopping furiously for a glamorous ball, as well as the husbands they command like so many nervous ponies. How angry could you get about an imaginary dress? You’re wrong. You’re so wrong. Matt also suggests you make scones, which are apparently the adorable training wheels of the baking world. We wouldn’t know. Our oven’s been broken since Paul baked Talisman that one time.
We’re HUGE Star Wars fans here at SU&SD. Phasers! Klingons. The holodeck. We just can’t get enough! So what will Quinns make of Star Wars: The Card Game? How will it compare to the new X-Wing Miniatures Game (our old review of which is here)? Who’s this Dark Side Quinns? And hang on what HELL is going on with THAT ENDING QUINNS. WE NEED TO HAVE WORDS.
This time around, we look at the sexy, sweaty, sword-wielding game of gladiatorial combat that is Spartacus: A Game of Blood & Treachery! Last year, Spartacus’ gory magnetism earned it a huge following. Designers Gale Force Nine thought they’d slipped SU&SD by, but this was NOT THE CASE. We’re here now, and we’re finally answering all the important questions. Is it as good as the TV series? Have any of us actually seen the TV series? And who is Spartacus?
Oh my goodness! The Anniversary Edition of Galaxy Trucker is here! It’s huge! And it weighs in at 8.82lbs, which is MORE THAN MOST BABIES. Galaxy Trucker has been one of SU&SD’s favourite babies since we reviewed it in our sixth ever episode, the Vlaada Chvátil Special. It’s a game of building spaceships out of sewage pipes, launching them on “profitable” adventures, then crying as they fall apart like lego in a tumble drier. It’s just so inventive, and so, so funny. If you haven’t got it yet, the Anniversary Edition is an absurd quantity of game. You get Galaxy Trucker itself, BOTH expansions (“The Big Expansion” and “Another Big Expansion”), AND some extra bits. Just watch. Watch, and see how much you need this box in your life.
Last year we reviewed a very special game called A Few Acres of Snow. Now, it’s hard to say what’s weirder. That we’ve reviewed YET ANOTHER simulation of a Canadian war, or that a game called 1812: The Invasion of Canada is secretly great fun. But that’s not all! This video comes packed with a tiny little Let’s Play of Jazz: The Singing Card Game, as well as the second ever instalment of Board Games With Brendan and a tiny cameo from Guts of Glory. Hot beans. How’s everyone finding the videos-every-Friday thing? We’re having fun with it. It just feels correct, somehow. Oh, and for everyone who misses our full episodes, you’ll have something to be very happy about at the end of the month. …What could it be, do you think?
A review special! Not just one game review, but a hatful! Now this is something a bit different. Fueled entirely by sugar and caffeine, we typed and shot this review in just half a day. Our mission? To review half a dozen games with two minutes allotted to each. Approximately. Thereabouts. Oh God. But we met with a success of sorts and here, for your viewing pleasure, is the result. We look at games old and new, including D-Day Dice, Ingenious, Samurai Sword, Goblins, Inc., Shadow Hunters and Betrayal at the House on the Hill, but NOT IN THAT ORDER. Several days after filming, the sugar may not have entirely worn off. Still, this was a good experience for us and training of sorts. Preparation for… something greater.
Oh my goodness! Terra Mystica is a fantasy building that boasts two achievements: It’s the heaviest box we’ve ever reviewed, and the one to sell out fastest. Scientists are at a loss to explain this heinous corruption of the laws of physics. Tell you who’s not at a loss, though! The hot boys of Shut Up & Sit Down. After just few plays of this beast, we’re ready to tell you whether we think it lives up to the hype. (It does.) (CREDIT CARDS AT THE READY, PEOPLE.)
Get ready to GET EXTRAVAGANT! Matt Lees’ The Opener is back with another game to kick off your evening, and a perfect accompanying snack. This week Matt picks over the crashed zepplin of ideas that is Level 99 Games’ Minigame Library, and finds something interesting but it goes a bit wrong. He also applies his trademark culinary expertise to an English delicacy known as “vodka jelly”, which seems quite interesting but it goes a bit wrong. We blame the heat. Englishmen react about as well to heat as chocolate does. When will it end? It must be 20°C in here.
Quarantine, an adorable little game of running a hospital, has launched! Seems like only yesterday that Quinns was squeaking about its design diaries over in the games news, and now it’s on shelves worldwide. They grow up so fast! This one’s a game that Quinns really wants to like. But he’s also the owner of a degree in Tough Love from Newcastle University. Will it meet his ever-soaring standards? Or will he toss it aside like so much medical waste?
Also in celebration of our 2nd anniversary, we’ve done something a bit different. And hopefully, a bit useful. It’s a short video about board gaming that’s not for you, but any friends, family or colleagues who don’t yet know about your hobby. A glimmering, electric antidote, if you will, for anyone who hears “Board games” and thinks “Monopoly”. There aren’t any swears at all, and only a smidge of dressing up, so please: Share away. Let’s tell the world about this glorious hobby of ours. Happy anniversary, everybody. We love you.
Disclaimer: Since this video was published, SU&SD has been made aware of a striking quantity of homophobic and transphobic content in this board game. The game’s tone was first established by the first edition in 1985, and today, it’s definitely showing its age. When was the last time you had some friends over, one of you got abducted by an elephant, one captained a war fleet and another had eight babies*? It was NEVER, wasn’t it? Admit it! Tales of the Arabian Nights can fix that. You might not know it, but there’s a gaping hole in your board game collection. A hole that begs to be filled. And you must fill it. You must fill it with this. The finest storytelling board game in existence. Have a great weekend, everybody! Ideally, make sure it’s great by playing this. *And was then abducted by an elephant.
Reviewers? ASSEMBLE! It’s time to do battle with the increasingly popular Sentinels of the Multiverse! A co-operative, customisable, and increasingly collectible game of excitingly litigious superheroes fighting stinky villains. This game’s getting more and more popular, so it’s only natural we should see if you guys should get in on the action. (Besides, it’s the best excuse we’ve had to dress up in AGES.)
Like the tomb robbers of old, Quinns has cracked the seal on our copy of Kemet, heedless of all those snakes, scorpions and ancient Egyptian curses to bring you our definitive review. But there’s a problem! This game is the spiritual sequel to Cyclades, yet another svelete, gorgeous game of warring gods from the same publisher. Who will come out on top, in this divine duel? Should you buy this is you already have the other? And why is the SU&SD supercomputer so rubbish?
Matt’s only gone and looked at a new way to open your game night! Isn’t he an great? Holding his ground on the very frontlines of play like a big ol’ play… man. This month he’s encouraging us to don the masks of the fabulous Mascarade by Bruno Faidutti, one of our favourite designers. This game is pretty. It’s funny. It’s simple. Most of it even occurs underneath the table. But most excitingly of all, Matt’s baking again! Today is a good day.
Have you heard of Escape: The Curse of the Temple? Rumoured to be greatest family game of all time, they say it can be found in the Temple to the God of Luck, in the world’s most unfun jungle. Wait. No, hang on, that’s wrong. It’s in Quinns’ flat. In this review, we answer the question of whether you should buy Escape, we take a look at the Illusions expansion, AND we compare the whole thing to Space Alert. Now, only one question remains: How did Quinns get so dirty?
Once we heard about all the love and awards Village was earning we just had to dispatch Paul and Quinns, SU&SD’s softest city boys, to take a look. This one’s a true simulation the simple life, perfect for anybody who wants to breed horses, dedicate themselves to the church or murder their relatives when nobody’s looking. Village has an expansion, Village Inn, but Quinns has been a very good boy and not bought it. …Right, Quinns? Oh, and if you don’t recognise that intro, go and acquire all 17 episodes of The Prisoner immediately. You can thank us later.
This week Quinns looks at The Cave! A game about caves and the people who love them and sometimes get stuck in them. Which might sound rubbish, but did you ever consider that caves are basically nature’s dungeons? We’re also very proud to present the segment that you lot have been begging for: Quinns’ Netrunner Tips!
We like to think of SU&SD as one big family. Sadly, according to GOV.UK that’s wrong, and a family needs at least 2 children, 1 drinking problem and (at least) 1 farting dog. But that wasn’t going to stop us from reviewing the year’s hottest new family board game! Augustus is a simulation of dispatching Roman legions to different corners of the earth that recently got nominated for a very prestigious German award. Also, Quinns is back with another hot Netrunner tip. Have you heard of Netrunner? It’s really good. You should play it.
We love stories here at SU&SD, and if there’s one thing we like better than telling stories to our parents or the police, it’s storytelling games! Enter Winter Tales, stage right. A game where players control familiar fairytale characters viewed through a dark, oil-streaked lens. In this video we also find the time for a quick peek at gaming institution Once Upon a Time, which just recently received a gorgeous 3rd edition! Which will win? The classic, or the newcomer? Or NEITHER? Or both! Such terrible tension! We’d click play and find out as soon as possible, if we were you.
It’s come to this. After a phenomenally successful first year, in which the British press described us as “the sound of the summer” and “London’s two most eligible bachelors”, team SU&SD are now cold, alone, and reviewing a board game about trains. It’s called Trains. This is us at our lowest, surely. On frosty Autumn nights like these, we’re glad for the company of the SU&SD supercomputer. She’s our one true friend. …Right?
With Halloween just around the corner (or, as we call it here in England, “All Hallow’s Ween”), we’re very proud to present part 1 of our spooktacular gaming suggestions! Neatly reviewed in time for you to place and receive your order in time for the sexiest night of the year. Or was that Pancake Tuesday? Anyway, to begin with, what could be simpler, safer or spookier than an evening of Ultimate Werewolf? Just you, a big pot of chilli, and between 4 and 60 of your closest friends.
Halloween is close, now. Can you feel it? The sticky breath on the back of your neck? The bony hand on your thigh when all the lights are out? Getting higher… and higher… Following on from Matt’s suggestion of Werewolf last week, Paul and Quinns are offering a couple more creepy gaming suggestions. Including one board game of a real life monster. Happy Halloween, everybody. Stay safe.
Apologies for all the murder that’s been going on this week. It’s very inconvenient. Can Seasons, a game of great wizardy, set things right, or is there only worse to come? We’re also proud to present the return of Boardgaming with Brendan, and our long-awaited concept review of Dominant Species! Maybe not having Quinns around isn’t so bad after all.
Look what we found! The unaired SU&SD pilot from 1974! And reviewing such contemporary board games! Crazy. Watch as the boys take their first halting steps through the gorgeous Legends of Andor, and stick it to the man with a look at two titles from Victory Point Games’ catalogue: Darkest Night and Moonbase Alpha. You might remember VPG as the small publisher Quinns talked about earlier in the year, whose games come with a complimentary napkin. Keep on rocking, guys.
When you think SU&SD, we know you think “co-ordinated,” “graceful,” probably even “lithe.” So this was a long time coming- a video featuring three of our favourite dexterity games on the market today. The noble Oss, the exotic Toc Toc Woodman and the farcical Cube Quest, all showcased lovingly by us in time for Christmas! One more word, from Brendan: “I’ve put an end to all this sodding continuity, too.” What on earth is he talking about?
Once again, purely for your amusement, we suffer yet more pain and indignity in deep space. This time, Pip, Matt, Brendan, Quinns and Paul are all playing Space Cadets, a co-operative game of spaceship piloting where everything can and will go wrong. Repeatedly. Forever. It’s okay! Quinns has played it before and knows what he’s doing, though he’s not actually in charge. Space Cadets is one big game made up of many, many minigames, which means that, if it goes to hell, it’s one big disaster made up of many smaller ones. But that’s not going to happen, is it? Is it?
It’s Friday once again! This week, Paul takes us on a historical tangent and, in a video a little more serious than some of our others, investigates Freedom: The Underground Railroad. It’s a game about freeing slaves, about subverting and ultimately abolishing the slave trade, and it’s a co-operative challenge that you can also try solo. It’s also monstrously difficult. Too difficult?
Would you like to come on an ADVENTURE? Get some treasure, some glory, back home in time for tea? So you’ll come? …What’s that? Oh, nowhere special. Just the Cutthroat Caverns. No! Come back! It’s only a name! What about you, dear reader? Will you join us? If you’re brave enough, you’ll see there’s an awful lot of fun to be had in those dingy, treacherous caverns. Assuming you’re just a bit of a jerk.
It’s that most wonderful time of the year! The holiday when families come together and induldge in colourful capitalism. That’s right, I’m talking about Economic Hex-Based Tile Laying Game Fest: 2013. In this year’s hex fest we review the moreish Suburbia, the quaint Keyflower, remember the daring Archipelago, and in doing so unearth our Game of the Year. Pour yourself a glass of hexnog, dear viewer. Tis’ the season!
Paul’s gotten into hides over the Holiday break, Quinns has a flowchart he wants to show you and Reference Pear’s relatives have gone missing. Anyone expecting anything new from SU&SD in 2014 will be disappointed. Oh, wait! We also reviewed New Amsterdam, a highly-respected game of trading furs and takin’ names, and we have another instalment of Quinns’ supremely valuable Netrunner Tips. Perhaps we have some worth after all!
SHOUTING! It’s one of the best things in life. Imagine! you, some friends, a few drinks and SHOUTING AT EACH OTHER FOR HOURS. iF YOU’RE LIKE– oops, excuse me. If you’re like Paul and didn’t get your fix of shouting from Escape The Curse of the Temple, we’ve got you covered! This mini-special reviews not only the mighty, shouty Space Cadets: Dice Duel, but the still-shoutier Panic on Wall Street!.
It is written, and so it came to pass. The house of Fantasy Flight hath released Eldritch Horror, a sequel to their venerable “gaime” Arkham Horror, and we have… opened the box. And guess what! It’s pretty good! Anyone expecting us to give this a bad review might be pleasantly surprised.
Last year we posted a video of us playing co-op board game Space Cadets, and it was an amazing disaster. But what happens when team SU&SD pretend to go into space… for real? The L.H.S. Bikeshed is a roleplaying game, in a spaceship, in a caravan, built by a team of industrious men working out of the London Hackspace. Naturally, it was our duty to show these guys what their ship could do in the hands of a real crew. As you might guess, the above video contains a lot of swearing, comprehensively beeped.
If you’re driving a car, pull over. If you’re holding a baby, please place it on the nearest flat surface. There’s a new game from our favourite designer, Vlaada Chvátil, and it’s time to put it to the test. Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends looks nothing like anything Vlaada’s made before. No surprise there. But it also looks a bit rubbish. Will SU&SD have to liquidise the Church of Vlaada once and for all?
The sequel to Agricola is here, and it’s the heaviest and most expensive game we’ve ever reviewed. A titan of the table. There’s no question. Caverna: The Cave Farmers is the most fun you’re going to have managing animals, minerals and vegetables. But should you buy it? Paul and Quinns stand… divided.
The more we play it, the more we feel that Living Card Game Android: Netrunner is one of the greatest things happening in table gaming right now. A deadly, tense game that evolves every single month, with players around the world panicking and giggling over new data packs. Following on from Quinns’ review, we thought we’d finish our coverage with a Let’s Play. But not just any Let’s Play. Here, Quinns walks Matt through his very first game, which we hope (together with the hypnotising official tutorial) should give you all the encouragement you need to get started.
Like vinyl records or the world’s most cheerful case of herpes, The Opener is BACK! Once again, Matt wants to guide you through the perfect game + recipe to open either your game night, your friends’ minds or your own board game collection. This time it’s Coup, a teeny little game of being a disgraceful liar.
Arriving like a shimmering meteorite of steely ludic logic, Quantum is landing in shops now! It’s got dice. It’s got spaceships (which are dice). It has scientific research (which is another die). It even models the psychological size of your galactic race as you scream and smash your way around deep space (using, yep, another die). Is Quantum pushing the boundaries of what dice can do? Or is it just like my one gross uncle who has pickles for every meal? It’s time… for the review.
Today’s the beginning of Simplicity Week here at SU&SD! Aren’t games a little too complex? Isn’t life a little too complex, with all these mobly phones and dark webs and human rights? We think so, so from today through next Friday we’ll be turning our simple brains to some simple games, inarguably the most beautiful games of all. Quinns kicks us off with a look at Going, Going, GONE! A bargain-hunting game that could be the savviest and funniest purchase you’ve made this year.
We end Simplicity Week with a bang, and the bang in question comes from you executing your friends, one after another. Skull & Roses is the game Matt’s reviewing here, although throughout the review he calls it Skulls and Roses, and actually, the new, gorgeous edition is just called “Skull”. But never mind our charming incompetence! This isn’t just one of the simplest games we’ve ever played. It’s one of our favourite games, period. And just to make sure your friends come over and get involved, Matt’s also going to teach you the single darkest secret known to SU&SD. How to “make” “pizza”. But what if I were to tell you that for the next Opener, we’re planning something even better? Ah, it’s a good time to be a board gamer. A very good time.
You there! Browsing the internet without a care in the world. Don’t you know there’s a war on?! …It was a Wiz-War, technically, and it took place this week in Quinns’ flat, but still! Show some respect. This venerable old game was originally released in the 1980s, and the new, eighth edition is a cardboard monument to EVERYTHING that was wrong, and right, with game design at the time. It’s complex, yet stupid. Competitive, yet unfair. But with the right people? There’s a very real magic to it, and that’s why we had to film this video. Plus, it was a chance to test the new expansion, Wiz-War: Malefic Curses. WARNING: This is unquestionably the most swearing we’ve ever had in a video. Sensitive viewers? You may want to wear ear muffs.
It’s the end of the world. Survivors huddle together, sheltering in rags and silence. There are bad men outside. And you’re one of them. Arctic Scavengers is a card game for 2-5 players, and this week the updated edition first fell into our laps, then entered our hearts, like cardboard frostbite. Better yet, it’s Quinns’ favourite of all the games we’ve reviewed this year! Oh dear. Wallets at the ready, people.
So many games feature dice, but so few capture the thrill of gambling. Why is that? The answer is, of course, to just buy Machi Koro and shout “WHO CARES!” right in your friend’s face while buying a fourth bakery. Though if you’re looking for a dazzling little economic card game for 2-4 players, we’ve also taken a look at Splendor… and a look back over our shoulder at Mundus Novus. Wow! On reflection, we really do make your lives difficult, don’t we?
What’s the ultimate test of any board game night? No, it’s not your friend getting their arm trapped down the back of a radiator while recovering a lost meeple. That had us scared, but a little olive oil sorted Brendan right out. We’re talking about rules explanations. We get a ton of questions about the best way to teach rules, so we’ve put together the above video. Teaching rules is going to be most people’s first ever exposure to this hobby. And exposing your friends is, of course, serious business.
The Opener is back with another perfect game to start your board game night, your collection, or set your friends down the Cardboard Path. It’s Pandemic and penicillin! Meaning a whiskey cocktail called a penicillin. Going to your friends’ house and eating their mold colonies is not only unpalatable, it’s quite rude. It might sound less attractive than Skull & Roses with fresh pizza, but you haven’t lived until you’ve had a great game of Pandemic. Catching that redeye flight to Seoul, praying you can prevent an outbreak? Driving around Africa, crates of your precious cure rattling around in the back of your jeep? That’s the good stuff, and it gets even better with Pandemic: On the Brink, and even more nightmarish with Pandemic: In the Lab. G’wan! Treat yourself and pick up a copy. No other game is this tense and rich, and yet this accessible.
What’s this? Looks like your donations weren’t enough, everybody. Paul and Quinns are now moonlighting as space marines. No way this could go wrong! Especially not in the spooky space-lanes of Theseus: The Dark Orbit. This was one of the trickiest reviews we’ve done in some time. If we have any designers reading this, do you think you could make your games a little less distinctive, nuanced, rich and basically a bit worse? As critics, we’d really appreciate it.
For literally our entire lives, Paul and I hadn’t played Mice and Mystics. Then we played Mice and Mystics. Then it was out of stock! But this month will see a new printing of the much-discussed game scurrying onto shop shelves the world over. A game of daring-do and wild adventure! A story of tiny heroes with huge hearts. A tale… of cheese. And so it was written that Shut Up & Sit Down would perform “The Review”, and take a quick peek at Mice and Mystics: Heart of Glorm, too.
Are you ready for the most half-arsed impersonation of explorers Lewis & Clark the internet has ever seen? We’ve got you covered. We’ve also got a lengthy review of much-hyped board game Lewis & Clark, on the off chance you come here for the board game reviews. It’s an interesting game, though. In a year when fantastic eurogames are coming thick and fast, like hail in the Great Plains, this one looks pretty enough to make a name for itself. But does it have that frontier spirit? Quinns will let you know. Probably. Assuming he doesn’t get distracted and start talking about sodding Timeline again.
Last weekend team SU&SD defended the world from aliens, had an international incident with the USA and almost dissolved the United Nations, all from the safety of a town hall in South London. This experience came courtesy of the Megagame Makers, an English society of game designers who specialise in the supermassive. It was an astonishing day, and so of course we had to make this supermassive video in tribute (WARNING: it also contains megaswears, so keep megakids away).
It’s not hard to catch SU&SD’s eye. An award on your box will do it. Or a panda! Or the colour pink. Or three-dimensional components. Or an inlay with phallic slots. In offering all five at once, though, Takenoko could have been made for us. Is it a good Opener, though? The perfect game to open a friend’s mind to the wonders of board gaming like you were opening a cheap tin of brain-beans? Tell us, Matt! We have to know.
Today Quinns takes Warhammer: Diskwars out for a spin, the thinnest miniatures wargame a round. But will it be flippin’ great? Or wheely bad? Or just worth giving a quick whirl? We have to know! The world revolves around board games, after all.
Industriousness! Caution! Precision! Forethought! Patience! All skills vital to construction work that we don’t have. Surely then, an architecture game that we like must have done something wrong? Or maybe not. Blueprints is a clean design, constructed by professionals. Does your collection have space for a small game of building tiny little structures, out of dice? Let’s be honest, now. How could it not?
So Mars is under attack from Reiner Knizia, right, and Team SU&SD are the only ones who can stop him. We also welcome back Susie Pumfsk, and Brendan is an alien! Look, don’t ask questions. Basically we had too much sugar and when we regained our senses we’d filmed this extra-special episode, featuring reviews of Infamy, Time’n’Space AND Rex: Final Days of an Empire, with time to spare for a re-review of Netrunner (original review here). Huge thanks to Rachel Leipacher for her vocal stylings and to Team Covenant for their sexy Netrunner footage. And everybody, beware of Knizia. Even if some of his games are suspiciously good, he’s still out there. Watching. Waiting. Mathsing. Thanks so much, everybody!
We’ve got some continuity to sort out after last week’s sci-fi special, but let’s sort out another bit of continuity first. Almost two years ago Quinns sat down to write this review of the X-Wing Miniatures Game core set. Today, Paul joins him in the stifling cockpit of internet television for a review of the game proper. HUGE thanks to our fans at Industrial Light & Magic for providing that intro sequence. We were skeptical at first when they asked for literally all of our donation money, but the results speak for themselves. Enjoy, everybody!
It’s an Opener! With Quinns! Has the world gone mad? No, but Gravwell definitely has. It’s a racing game set in the ninth dimension with no gravity except that created by your friends. And weirdest of all, it actually works! And finally, two years after we first mentioned it, you guys are receiving the recipe for Quinns’ Wicked Beans. Enjoy, everybody!
Battle Lore! Battle or…? Battle Lore! This week, Paul seems to have found exactly the sort of game that would appeal to his twelve-year-old self, a game of magic and monsters, of hexes and strategy. Battle Lore is Fantasy Flight’s attempt at an easily-digestible miniatures wargame, the kind of thing where you slaughter an army in an afternoon and still have time for biscuits. But is that going to be your sort of thing? The game, we mean, not the biscuits. After all, Battle Lore may have a bigger, bolder relative whose company you might well prefer… Apologies for the lateness of this, everybody! Sometimes the internet is a very slow thing, but we don’t give up easy.
It’s been a weird week. Heck, it’s been a weird few years. Let’s stop for a second, take a breath, and remember what this is all about. Everyone! If you feel like it, post your favourite gaming memory in the comments. Normal service will be resumed next week.
We’ve got a rare trio of reviews for you today! Paul and Quinns pop their collective collars to examine the bright dice and the big cities of Lords of Vegas, Las Vegas and Roll For It!. One of which they’re wholeheartedly recommending, and the other two they’re being very mean to. Phew! The boys’ living room hasn’t seen this much sin since they ordered extra-cheese pizza back in ’09. They couldn’t finish the thing and had to throw half of it away! Ah, to be young again.
Hold on to your wallets! Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is now available. Contained within its box is the pinnacle of puzzle technology, the supreme solo game, an astonishing coup for couples’ gaming! Hmm? What’s that? It actually came out in 1981? But that’s impossible. There must be some mistake.
Sun! Sea! Sand! And the growing threat of murder from an indigenous populace. Before we jetted off for the Lake Geneva Gen Con Convention we snuck in a cheeky game of Archipelago with the War & Peace expansion. If you haven’t heard of this one, definitely think about watching our review, even if it’s just for the reference pineapple. This is a magnificent, strange, colourful game, but not an easy one. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Oh, and we know about the many and varied rules we got wrong. But it wouldn’t be a SU&SD Let’s Play without it, eh? Enjoy, everybody!
Matt’s definitive series on getting your friends and family into gaming, The Opener, has made its delicious return! This week Matt looks at the brand-spanking new edition of Cash ‘n Guns, a game of criminals dividing the “take” after a “heist” by “shooting one another”, before ending the video with a lovely recipe for bangers’n’mash. It’s basically the closet we’ll come to filming Snatch.
In one of our most anticipated reviews of the year, Paul and Quinns have hunkered down in their rubbish-strew hideaway for a spoiler-free analysis of Dead of Winter. Like SU&SD favourite City of Horror, here’s a zombie game that isn’t about zombies. Rather, Dead of Winter wants to tell you a story of a freezing cold colony where men and women are exiled over a lost tin of beans, and the degree to which you trust your friends could save you as easily as get you killed. Did we mention it’s the first board game we’ve reviewed with a sex scene? Oh, yes.
One of the first reviews we ever wrote was of Antoine Bauza’s Ghost Stories, back when SU&SD was little more than a twinkle on our camcorder’s four gig SD card. Clearly we’re getting old. This year will soon see the release of Samurai Spirit, an all-new Bauza game of protecting an all-new village. What will Quinns make of it? More importantly, what will he make of that box? Have you heard about the box? Oh dear. We have some bad news. Are you sitting down?
Ooh, it’s an exciting day. Not only is Five Tribes one of the year’s prettiest and most anticipated boxes, it’s also the most Paul and Quinns have disagreed on anything. EVER. Sit back, relax, and watch the sparks fly. Or just hit play to watch Matt furtively cover his nips. You… you’ll understand in a minute, ok.
Now for a very special “Retro” edition of SU&SD! …because we accidentally filmed it in 640×480! Trust us to make this mistake for one of the loveliest boxes of the year, too. Steam Park is a game about building theme parks for hard-working robots. A game of teeny-tiny three-dimensional information kiosks, roller coasters and haunted houses. That said, it’s also a game where you can build a Tunnel of Love that seats just one, and once you put a robot in there he’ll never leave and begin vomiting uncontrollably. Probably just buy it and figure out for yourself whether this is the nicest or darkest game ever.
Quinns is planning for his future this week, and for some reason two very wet games are involved. The dastardly Black Fleet, together with venerable 1982 release Survive: Escape From Atlantis. Who knew such an old game was still treading water! Rumours that we develop our specials using a random word generator have been MODERATELY EXAGGERATED. Drunken bets are also involved.
The Opener returns with another game to get your friends into board gaming! This time it’s Sheriff of Nottingham. Would you like to see your mum smuggle five barrels of mead past your dad? Or watch your girlfriend get busted with a “cheese cart” full of crossbows? Of course you would. This game’s got a history, actually. Originally a 2006 Brazilian release titled Jogo da Fronteira, it had little tin suitcases with players trying to smuggle cigars, tequila and ancient relics around South America. In 2011 it was rethemed as Robin Hood, before finally receiving yet another overhaul in this year’s Sheriff of Nottingham. The more you know!
Roll over, Zombie Dice. Zombicide? It’s history. Zombie 15′ is our game for Halloween in 2014! A real-time, co-operative 15 minute game of 15 year-olds fighting their way past restless dead across 15 missions. The question isn’t whether Paul and Quinns like it. It’s whether they can succeed at reviewing it in a single 15 minute take. Enjoy, everybody!
Oh my goodness, you’re looking sharp! Yes you, the one reading this! I don’t suppose you came here looking to buy some kind of board game, did you? Well it just so happens we’ve got one for you. It’s called Chinatown, an absolute classic that just got reprinted. A classic, I tell you. A game all about the art of the deal set in 1960s New York. But you probably knew that already, didn’t you? A savvy shopper like you. You’ll take two? Fantastic, fantastic. You’ve made the right choice. Who’s next?
This week’s review must be one of the most colourful games we’ve tried this year. It certainly has more purple wizards than anything else we’ve ever played. The vibrant Lords of Xidit Lords of Xidit is a game of fantasy questing, of bard songs, of wizard towers and of programming your way in front of everyone else. Does that sound like a rather strange mix of ideas? Just wait until you see what Quinns and Paul come up with when they try to put their spin on things. This review is presented with profound apologies to David Bowie.
This week, Paul looks at the notorious Tammany Hall, a game all about the not-entirely-pleasant, not-completely-wholesome New York political machine that was cranking its way through the second half of the 19th Century. Is it a cynical game for cynical times? Perhaps, but the reprint was certainly a terrific Kickstarter success. The much more important question is… just how good is Tammany Hall? Here’s your answer!
At last, we give the video treatment to one of Shut Up & Sit Down’s favourite games, Love Letter! On this Opener, Matt explains why this petite, elegant and excellent game is both an essential and a great way to introduce new people to the hobby. It’s not just an excuse to dress up, not at all, and Matt actually has a very interesting story related to that. It is an excuse to show you how to make gingerbread pears, perfect for any holiday season.
It’s big, it’s as colourful as a bag of sweets and it wants YOU to become a space-faring superstar. Xia: Legends of a Drift System was one of the Kickstarter success stories of 2013, and a retail version is finally upon us, complete with pre-painted ships and metal space-coins. Quinns has buckled himself into the driver’s seat of this board-behemoth to deliver the official SU&SD verdict.
First off, be warned that there is an unexpected disco interlude starting at 06:46. Brendan spilled some raw beats on our editing PC and the resulting funk has gotten into the motherboard, but we’re uploading a fix (with slightly better overall audio) now. It should be up by midnight GMT. Second off, allow us to present the crown jewel in our Expansionanuary festivities! A ginormous Let’s Play of us finishing a full-size game of Cosmic Encounter, proving once and for all in a controlled, scientific environment just how much fun this game can be. Enjoy, everybody!
This week, Matt and Quinns peek into the paperwork of Last Will, a game that challenges you to declare bankruptcy faster than your friends. A game of champagne, boat cruises, fabulous mansions, horses and you in the middle, trying to get rid of all of it. But wait! There’s more! We’ve also played the expansion Last Will: Getting Sacked, which sees you having to do away with that beastly job of yours that insists on paying you every turn. A fabulously expensive marriage might be just the thing.
It’s here! XCOM: The Board Game is now in shops the world over, with its computerised component, its little plastic snipers and its starched lil’ navy blue box. Oooh. You want it. OR DO YOU? Let Quinns and Paul cut a path for you through the jungle of hype around this game, all the way to the UFO crash site of truth. “Welcome to Earth,” indeed.
With spring’s sunshine is still weeks away, Paul decides to review the classic card game San Juan, packing sugar and indigo off to make money. Sent abroad to set up SU&SD’s (North) American office, with a rather unclear remit he also laments the limited nature of board game printings and distribution.
Following on from XCOM, it’s time for our second big review of the year. Doomtown: Reloaded is a portable game with some big ideas. It’s a generous box with a golden future. It is, in fact, the first real competitor to the awesome Android: Netrunner. Is this town big enough for the both of ’em?
First, there was nothing. For our evenings were without form, and void. Then there was Cyclades, which let us fill them with a really lovely, accessible war game. Then came the expansion of Cyclades: Hades, and there was a great sadness because we thought it was rubbish, and said as much. And then there was a great rejoicing, as Cyclades: Titans graced the shelves of our shops, and brought joy to our hearts. Finally came this Cyclades: Titans review, so the people could sit, and listen, and see if it was shit or not. So it is written, and so it shall forever be.
Remember when we told you that Skull was the game that’ll make you and your friends shout the loudest? Monikers might be the funniest game we’ve ever reviewed. Weirder still, it might be more than 100 years old. We’ve always suspected that old things were the best, but now we know. Time to cancel those forthcoming reviews of Armada and Dragon’s Gold. Next week, we’ll be reviewing whist, football and tuberculosis.
Last year, we were invited by the UK Society of Megagame Makers to save the world from aliens in a colossal 60 person game titled “Watch the Skies”. You can see our floundering, corruption and “charm offensives” as the nation of Japan in this video. This year the Society invited us back for the sequel. With over three hundred players, this would be the most mega megagame ever staged. A game so big that the Pope was not only a player, he had his own team. Could we save the world from aliens for a second time? Get yourself a hot drink, a comfy chair and find out. Enjoy, everybody!
OH MY GOD, it’s the thrilling conclusion to our Let’s Play of the largest game anyone’s ever played, ever. Confused? Find part one here, and find our video of the original Watch the Skies here. Palpitations of excitement? Find sedatives here. And find the actual URL of the music we used here, as we misspelled it in the edit. If these videos look like they were a whole load of work from a whole lot of people, they were. And we did it for you, personally. Enjoy.
So it turns out that Paul has actually always had something of a fascination for big ships. It also turns out that Panamax mixes big ships with big business and (very) big bucks. After all these years, could this be the way that Paul finally makes his millions? Of course not. It’s a board game. Still, it could be good, right? Let’s see what Shut Up & Sit Down’s North American Correspondent thinks in a video made in the style of some of our very first reviews.
Imperial Settlers is a civilization-building game with the best art we’ve ever seen in almost five years of running Shut Up & Sit Down. Nations, on the other hand, looks like a Soviet spreadsheet. Don’t make your purchase just yet, though. Let Quinns take you by the hand and lead you through one or two shocking twists, down to a stream of cleansing consumer wisdom. You need to know the truth about both of these boxes.
We’ve got a HUGE game for you this week! Witness might look like a pre-schooler up-ended their homework over your table, but it’s actually an inventive, sexy game of solving mysteries from the publishers of Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. But while Sherlock is a game of wild theories and sweet sherries, Witness is no less than a game of swearing, sweating and whispering. Come take a look. You won’t regret it.
Does anyone remember our written review of the fabulous Star Wars: Armada? No? Of course not. You lot are visual creatures. You need to watch us nudging these tiny Star Destroyers and tinier X-Wings around the table before you’ll believe a word of it. Today, we proudly present a full, 300 point game of Armada between Quinns and his friend Lovely Tim, bolstered with the first wave of expansions, including such vessels as the Star Potato and the Long Fellow(?).
Who doesn’t enjoy a little bit of empire-building now and then? Paul certainly does, which is why he was excited to look at Deus this week, something he did entirely of his own choosing and under no sort of godly compulsion. With a modular board, lots of little wooden pieces to arrange and a huge deck of cards representing everything from legions to laboratories, could this be a new favourite game of centurions and conquest?
Oh snap! Welcome to the Dungeon is the best Japanese game since Love Letter, the best bluffing game since Skull, Iello’s new edition is gorgeous and it’s on shop shelves right now! Nobody’s saying you have to buy this. We wouldn’t dream of it. Just don’t come tweetin’ to us when it’s sold out in a month’s time.
What’s this, sneaking into Friday’s schedule? Why, it’s a review of Plaid Hat’s hotly anticipated Specter Ops, a hidden movement game from one of the industry’s most renowned publishers. Paul takes a long, hard look at the game and… well, has anyone taken a long hard look for Paul recently? Actually, it’s probably best not to. He appears to have both gone missing and gone a little… mournfully malfunctional. This is the first time that’s happened since last time. Do let us know if you spot him, or even any part of him. Probably don’t approach him, mind. Best not dwell on that. Have a lovely weekend!
The English language version of Spyfall is finally available! …And stock has immediately drained out shops the world over like a vodka martini through a sieve. Don’t worry, friends! Operating in a dangerous web of international intrigue, and with a little help from Starlit Citadel, Team SU&SD has secured a review copy. At last, we’re here to tell you if this party game live up to the hype.
Buckle up, boardkids! It’s time for Team SU&SD to tackle the Official 38th Best Board Game of All Time: Trajan. A game of thrashing as many victory points as you can out of Ancient Rome. Don’t believe what you’ve heard. Shut Up & Sit Down can still handle heavy eurogames. …or can they?
After failing to steal a miniature AT-ST in last year’s Gen Con special, Matt, Paul and Quinns have come together to deliver the definitive, official verdict on Star Wars: Imperial Assault. Is it better than its predecessor, Descent 2nd Edition? Why is Paul grunting at the camera? And why does Quinns look so sad? You’ll have your answers to all this, AND MORE.
SU&SD is host to a grand old game today! Fief is a negotiation-heavy wargame that’s been around since 1981, and a fancy new edition titled Fief: France 1429 has just arrived. What will the boys make of it? This review features a special segment on WHEN BOARD GAMES GO BAD. It’s a tear-jerker.
While the rest of team SU&SD is away at GenCon, engaging in all sorts of cardboard debauchery, Paul takes the opportunity to sneakily make a video about an old classic and personal favourite, explaining why he thinks Carcassonne deserves the video treatment. He also cooks himself.
Following our review of the beautiful Samurai on Wednesday, Quinns is reviewing classic game Shogun! Which means it’s retroactively Japan week and you should all act accordingly. It’s worth watching this review just for the fabulous [REDACTED]. How does it work? Where did it come from? We just don’t know! Ha! Please stop asking such silly questions.
Oh no. Just as our Let’s Play of Resistance: Avalon forever branded Matt as a sneaky bastard, so this Let’s Play of Two Rooms and a Boom is going to designate Quinns as a ruthless brute. If we keep this up no member of SU&SD will be respectable. If you’re not sure how to play Two Rooms and a Boom, definitely go check out the publisher’s fantastic, tiny teaching video right here. Or just jump straight in like some kind of mad video-ferret! It’s up to you.
Recently we tweeted asking which “problem players” you struggle with on a game night, and we’ve never seen a response like it. Our grumpometer actually shattered and we had to send Matt out for a new one. Clearly you guys could do with a helping hand, so to go along with our Tips for Rules Explanations and An Intro to Board Gaming For Your Friends, we now have this! With a little help from us you’ll be cool as a cucumber.
This week, Paul takes a trip to the clinic, as a result of looking at another new title from Plaid Hat Games. To everyone’s surprise, he finds himself deckbuilding with Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn. Deckbuilding! Whatever will happen next? Seriously, what will happen next? Paul’s been unable to get hold of Quinns since setting up the North American office and now he’s acting a little out of character.
“The Resistance” are sacred words around these parts, as in “Werewolf”. These games of lying and double-dealing have defined Shut Up & Sit Down. The thought of a brand new new hidden role game entering the genre is almost unthinkable! Until today. Mafia de Cuba doesn’t just look good. It feels good. It sounds good. It smells tolerable. Of course we had to check it out.
Porta Nigra! It’s a new eurogame, all about the famous Nigras that live within the mossy depths of the Porta dimension. …Ok, so maybe we’re not entirely clear on what a “Porta Nigra” is. But by god, that won’t stop us from reviewing this hype-filled new release.
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.
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!
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.
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: 1. Divide into two teams of two. 2. Play to a two minute turn limit. 3. Choose the card (though not the exact concept) the other team must play. 4. Play the game on the middle of its three difficulty levels. That should be fine, right? This is what happened.
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!
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).
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.
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.
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…
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!
Hold on to your womp rats! Quinns is here with one of the biggest reviews of the year. Star Wars: Rebellion is Fantasy Flight’s forthcoming Star Wars star war. One side plays the Empire, another the Rebellion, in a vast conflict involving more than 150 plastic miniatures and countless twists, turns and heroics. In other words it’s about the most exciting thing imaginable. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this early review.
These “How to Play” videos are giving us a great chance to dust off some of our all-time favourite boxes. Of course we were going to do Galaxy Trucker. We’ll climb back into its rickety cabs any chance we get. If you want to see more of this absolutely hilarious game your next port of call should be our Let’s Play, which we swear to god was not “rigged” despite what you might have read. The game is just that ridiculous. After that, you should just buy the darn thing. It looks like the Anniversary Edition in this video has now sold out, but the base game is ready and waiting for you.
Quinns and Matt want you to come on holiday with them! Come along to the ancient city of Tenochtitlan. Don’t worry, it’ll be demolished again once we’re done with it. Mexica was a bit of a surprise for us. We hadn’t heard anything about it, but this city’s as simple, beautiful and solid as the stone temples that dominate it. Ooh, and the Aztec clubbing scene is killer. Tell ’em Crash Bandicoot sent you.
If you ask us what our favourite game is, it changes with the weather. If it’s a sunny day, Cosmic Encounter. If it’s wet and windswept, Consulting Detective. If it’s a sleepy autumn night, Memoir ’44. And so on, forever and ever, until we get tired and go to sleep. But if you ask our team which game they’ve played the most, you’ll only get one answer: Skull*. Arguably the best bluffing game ever made, and a glittering showcase of just how much game you can get out of a minimum of rules. If you’re still not sold, check out Matt’s review and a recipe! Skull with Fresh Pizza. *Though Quinns’ Netrunner habit and Paul’s Carcassonne addiction do offer some competition.
Steady your socks, folks, this week’s review is a bumper one! Paul has been looking at Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization, the latest version of Through the Ages. To many, this is new iteration of a modern classic, yet another fine work by talented game designer Vlaada Chvátil. What did Shut Up & Sit Down make of it? And is everybody feeling okay? We should warn you that, as well as Paul, this video also contains some slight flashing or strobing at a particular point.
In some ways, Memoir ’44 is the game that birthed SU&SD. Paul and Quinns were playing a long campaign of this definitive game of toy soldiers when they decided to create a board game web series. Historians can find our ye olde review of Memoir right here (timestamp 15:01), filmed on a borrowed camcorder on a sweltering summer’s evening. A more recent Memoir video we did is our Operation Overlord Let’s Play. While Memoir’s campaign books make it a longer game and the Breakthrough rules are there if you want to make it more tactical, Overlord is what you get if you want an epic experience. If only all games could be tailored to the same extent! What a world that would be.
OH MY GOODNESS! Just one week on from Paul tackling Through the Ages, Quinns is cracking open another board game classic. Brass is an incredibly nuanced game of carving out the industries of England’s industrial revolution that dates all the way back to 2007, when Elvis Presley was on the radio and Vietnam was all anyone could talk about. Will we recommend this game? Will Quinns have anything informative to say about England? Click play, and find out.
Inspired by Lovecraft’s impossible dimensions, we’ve attempted to squeeze a game of Eldritch Horror, one of the most epic board games of all time, into a single Let’s Play video! And to make our lives even harder, we squeezed in both the Forsaken Lore and the Under the Pyramids expansions. Anyone who missed Quinns’ review of this disasterpiece can find it right here. In short, this is an absolutely bizarre game. Alternately epic and personal, scary and silly, too generous or too unfair, it’s a tremendously hard thing to review. But it’s also fascinating to watch. So pull up a pew, get yourself a beverage, and see if this slimy, tentacular box has a place on your shelf.
We reviewed Mysterium so early (and so breathlessly) that we never got to do a video on it. Gaw bless these rules explanations for letting us fix that! Mysterium didn’t so much replace Dixit as murder it in the attic with the mantelpiece clock, and Asmodee’s new edition is just gorgeous. In fact, we’re planning a full Let’s Play as soon as the Hidden Signs expansion arrives, which could be as early as next month!
It’s time once again for you to place your evening in our large, spindly hands. Following on from Arboretum and Pasta With Trees, why not invite your friends over for a game of Celestia and a fluffy frittata? Lovely push-your-luck mechanics? Check! Little cardboard boat? Check! Vegetables? Check! We’re not sure who’d have a checklist like that, but if you do, we should hang out. Get in touch!
It’s here. Doctor Panic, the first co-op game to ever feature a whoopie cushion, or a hairnet, or a needle and thread, is now available in shops. Best of all, it’s every bit as dumb as advertised! There’s never been a game that demanded SU&SD’s attention more. Time for us to turn on the bright lights, disinfect our mouths and begin the delicate operation… of the review.
Would you like to play the thoroughly excellent Resistance: Avalon? Sit back, relax and let Quinns teach you how to play! After all, you’ll soon be sat forward, distinctly un-relaxed and disbelieving everything said by anyone. But wait! There’s more! A few years ago we filmed ourselves playing an entire game of The Resistance. If you’d like to see how this game works in more detail, definitely go and watch our younger, cherubic faces spout some terrible lies.
Paul has been making the most of the sunny days of spring, including all those ever-growing evenings, with Isle of Skye, which he says is the most twee thing he’s played in a while. He went outside, too. Was this wise? Has it affected his mind? Can he be trusted outdoors in North America? Is he even safe in this wild and untamed wilderness? Watch this video to answer that most burning of questions: Was Paul Dean killed by a fern?
Ever since our review, Lords of Vegas is the economic warfare game that we find ourselves recommending the most. Why pay for flights to Las Vegas when this game lets you gamble, drink heavily, invest unwisely and come to loathe your friends, all from the comfort of your own home? For other entry-level economic slugfests, do check out Chinatown, or dip way back into the SU&SD archives for a peek at our Black Gold review. It’s one of our earliest ever bits of criticism, and a game we still have a soft (and oily) spot for.
HOT TAMALE-BEANS! It’s Quinns with a Shut Up & Sit Down review of Quadropolis! Who could have guessed I am writing this from the UK Games Expo we just did a live podcast and I’ve got no energy left at all. Does anyone even read these text descriptions? There’s no way we can know. Unless you guys were to tell us somehow? I don’t know how you could do that though We’re all going to go and eat some food now, and drink a beer. Beer is real good. Shut Up & Sit Down Recommends: Beer
Ahh, is there anything more beautiful than that most classic of English summers? What about the so very gorgeous cards of Mystic Vale, cards you don’t just play, but cards you can build, piece by piece? Intrigued? You bet you are! We took our two most experienced druids, Quinns and Matt (Paul is a bard), and we put them in a room with cards and crystals and radiant peaks. We asked them not only how it compares with our two very favourite card games, Trains and Arctic Scavengers, but if it’s capable of being as beautifully magical as the luscious Seasons. Unfortunately, there was too much conjuration energy in that room. Quinns got carried away with animal facts and got on a plane for a holiday and left Paul to write this text (QUINNS COME BACK I miss you) and then Matt ran off to perform experiments with rhubarb. Neither have been seen since.
Hold onto your hardhats! Power Grid was one of the first reviews SU&SD ever did (archivists will find that ancient episode here), and now Quinns has returned with yet more hot air, desperate to expunge his thoughts as if he were a dirty old steam turbine. This time around we’re reviewing the “deluxe” 10th anniversary edition, as well as the new The Stock Companies expansion that’s compatible with either edition of the game. Has this classic still got what it takes, or is it fossil fuel?
Public service announcement: 2009’s Arctic Scavengers isn’t simply still a great game. It might still be the greatest game to ever let players slip cards into their personal deck and go “Ooh, this feels a bit nice.” And if you’re new here, you should know that that’s a hotly contested genre. If you missed our extensive coverage of this frosty classic you’ll find Quinns’ original video review here and his investigation of 2015’s Recon expansion here. And remember, you can now get the base game and the Recon expansion in a single box! You scream, I scream, we all scream for icy warfare.
Did you find the excellent Imperial Settlers a little cold and unforgiving? Do you trust them bones? Would you risk your city’s fate on a the roll of the dice!? Paul seems pretty happy to, over and over, as he looks at cute newcomer Dice City. It’s got cemeteries and catapults, mines and militia, which is just about everything an ambitious mayor could need, right? Take a seat and break out the popcorn for a video that’s both a review and… a little something extra, courtesy of a very special guest. Have a terrific weekend!
We can only apologise. After five years of assuming we didn’t know anything about reviewing kids games, it turns out that we’re amazing at it. How embarrassing! But Libellud’s Loony Quest is more than just a great kid’s game. This is the a drawing game that’s up there with Pictomania and A Fake Artist Goes to New York. Think you can snipe a eight rocket penguins in under 30 seconds? Then it’s time to put your tiny child’s felt-tip pen where your mouth is. Oh god don’t actually do it now you’ve got pen on your teeth jesus we can’t take you ANYWHERE
Today we’re teaching one of the big boys! Imperial Assault (see our review here) is an epic box containing your very own Star Wars adventure. One person plays the dastardly forces of the Imperium and is given control of a never-ending hosepipe of henchmen, while up to four more players steer a pack of heroes through a fantastic campaign. It’s not the simplest thing to play, though, so we put together this primer video for the hero team. Step one, invite heroes over. Step two, tell them to watch this. Step three, sit ’em down and start playing!
Following on from our early review of Mysterium and our video that teaches you the rules, today we’re rounding off our coverage with something a bit special. It’s our most ambitious Let’s Play EVER, featuring both more cameras and more dressing up than ever before. We’re also playing exclusively with the new characters, locations and weapons found in the new expansion, Mysterium: Hidden Signs!
Here’s something a little different! During a live podcast at the UK Games Expo we finally had an opportunity to play Cat On Yer Head, a game designed entirely for crowds. So we thought, why not film it? And why not do Shut Up & Sit Down’s first ever collaborative review, with Paul and Quinns presenting, Matt and Pip doing some panicked camerawork and 200 SU&SD fans lending a hand? Because you know what they say. You can never have too many cooks.
We delight in throwing curveballs, so here’s a video you’d never have expected. A fat Let’s Play of fantastic miniatures game Infinity, with scenery provided by the excellent people at Battle Systems! The truth is that ever since our spirited review of this game last year, Matt and Quinns have been collecting Infinity together with a few of their friends, and anything we’re interested in, we want to show you why. So we ended up making the above heartfelt half-hour, demonstrating just how tense and dangerous this game is. Enjoy, everybody.
Dr. Reiner Knizia returns to SU&SD with a new edition of Ra, one of his most-loved designs ever. What will Quinns make of this 1999 classic in the blessed light of 2016? Why isn’t Paul at Quinns’ party? And what the shit is Quinns wearing? One thing’s for sure. Auction games will never be the same again. “Oh no”, indeed.
In honour of the Rio Olympics Games, Quinns has done a review about diving! Just like in the Olympic Games, Captain Sonar is a contest where two teams dive beneath the seas and try and destroy one another with high explosives, drawing one another’s movements on sheets of acetate. If you regularly play games with a group of six-plus feisty men and women then you’ve got to watch this video. Captain Sonar isn’t just fun, it’s like nothing else you’ve ever played. And even if you can’t get those numbers together, Captain Sonar will do backflips to accommodate you. Literally. Have a fantastic weekend, everybody.
Gather close to the fire pit, everybody. Paul and Quinns want to tell you about the last of our favourite games from Gen Con 2016. This one’s called Inis, it’s the third game in the series that brought us Cyclades and Kemet and, frankly, it’s a little bit perfect. Not only is Inis the best game of plastic soldiers running around a map that we’ve played all year, it manages that with a 5 minute rules explanation and – look ma! – no dice. The only problem is that Inis isn’t out yet. English-language distributors don’t always get a lot of Matagot’s stock in, either, so pre-order at your local retailer to avoid disappointment. And have a fantastic weekend!
Joy of joys! The latest SU&SD review has arrived at port, having completed its grand tour of Seafall. Ah, see how it’s sitting low in the water? It must be carrying a tremendous cargo of opinions and insight. That, or it’s leaking. If you haven’t heard the hype around this game, all you need to know is that it’s designer Rob Daviau’s third legacy game following on from the amazing Risk Legacy and Pandemic Legacy. But while those two games were fairly straightforward, Seafall is an ambitious epic. In other words, it’s the most exciting box we’re expecting to review all year. So what are you waiting for? Click play! Watch. And be amazed.
This week, Paul springs into action and plays against type as he looks at not one, but two games of the more physical variety. First up, he takes on the chunky and junky Junk Art, before going on to wrestle with (and shoot at) the penguins of Pingo Pingo. It’s all guns and blocks and dashing and crashing. Good heavens, I’m getting a headache. Why this strange change of interest? What’s with Paul’s new, more active lifestyle? And what is the meaning of Quinns’ unusual delivery? That’s a lot of questions for a Friday. Let’s all go and have a lie down.
It was two years ago that Paul and Quinns ordered you guys to buy Dead of Winter. Today, we’ve got fantastic news for everyone who disobeyed us! Dead of Winter: The Long Night is a new, standalone expansion for Dead of Winter that’s bigger and sexier than the original game. But since it’s mostly the same game again, we figured that instead of a review we’d do a rules explanation for both games with a teeny buyer’s guide on the end. And yes, we’re aware of the irony that our filming date for this frosty game fell on the hottest day of the year. At least semi-nude Quinns is fittingly horrific.
What happens when immovable critics meet unstoppable sales figures? Find out in our long-awaited review of Ticket to Ride, followed by our review of new, giant box Ticket to Ride: Rails and Sails! Which is basically Ticket to Ride².
Today Quinns and Matt have joined forces to teach El Grande, one of the grand old girls of board gaming. This box is every bit as charming and dangerous as she was back in 1995, and with stock availability of the new “Big Box” still excellent, she remains a very smart purchase.
Who cares if the pound has reached a 168 year low? Why, BOARD GAMES will let us travel the world from the comfort of our own homes! For example, Istanbul lets us explore the smoky souks of the Ottoman empire, and lots of fun they are too. But are they as fun as the noble Concordia? And what about Caverna, or Terra Mystica? Hmm. There’s nothing for it but to play all of them again. Have a fantastic weekend, everybody!
Happy Halloween y’all! To celebrate this most fiendish of holidays Paul’s brought a game back from the dead. SU&SD first covered Werewolf with Matt’s candlelit review. Since then we’ve fallen in love with One Night Ultimate Werewolf and its standalone sequel, Daybreak. Today Paul investigates the next game in this undying chain. One Night Ultimate Vampire significantly en-complicates the series we know and love. Can it possibly survive?
Like an irrepressible wall of pecs and steel, Conan arrives next week (in Europe) and the week after (in America) to bounce all other miniatures games off your table. Standing in his way is Shut Up & Sit Down, a noble bulwark of common sense, here to tell you if this burly box is worth the money. If you will it, we now have a selection of associated retailers who are more than happy to take your pre-order! And huge thanks to Vancouver’s Valkyrie Western Martial Arts gym for their support. If you’re in Vancouver why not try a free class? And if you’re further afield, you may be able to find something near you here! Have a great weekend, everybody. Do it for Crom.
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.
It could be the voices that whisper ceaselessly inside our skull, but it seems everyone is talking about Arkham Horror: The Card Game! We’re only going to review it after a lot more plays and a few more expansions, but for now why not watch Matt and Quinns play the first chapter of the first campaign? For reference, here’s that Garth Marenghi thing they keep referencing. If you haven’t yet seen it, do get the DVD. You’re in for a treat.
While we don’t usually review Kickstarter titles, we’ve made a very particular exception for this seasonal special, with Paul taking a long and very hard look at at the “boutique horror” of Kingdom Death: Monster. Why this? Why now? A new version of Kingdom Death is back on Kickstarter and generating astounding amounts of interest (and cash). It was all the excuse we needed to plunge into this enormous beast and tear at its innards. Have a terrific weekend, everyone. If you decide to spend it out in some snow, or fighting monsters, or even just rolling particularly large handfuls of dice, do remember to stay safe!
To usher in 2017 as a year of good fortune, we’re trying all sorts of superstitions. Paul wrote “FLUXX” on a bit of wood and threw it in a river, while Matt and Quinns have chosen a classic for their first review. Troyes is a beloved 2010 game that’s enjoying a well-deserved restocking this month. But last year we were spoiled for choice when it came to lightweight eurogames! Will Troyes triumph over Orléans, Concordia and Istanbul? Thanks for your patience, everybody. It feels great to be back.
This week, Paul’s gone all viking on us, getting so, so enthusiastic about A Feast for Odin with this very in-depth review of a truly enormous game. Then again, wouldn’t you be at least a little bit excited? This is one of the biggest boxes we’ve seen in some time and, with hundreds of cardboard components, scores of wooden pieces and even a moose as a first player token, we really can’t blame him. Can it deliver joy and happiness proportional to its tremendous size? And how does it compare to its ancestors, other games by the same designer such as Agricola, Caverna and Patchwork? And why does Paul think Patchwork has a French accent? It’s been a strange week.
My goodness! After we were a little dismissive at Gen Con last year, it turns out that Arkham Horror is the best card game to come out of Fantasy Flight since Netrunner. Pour yourself a glass of interdimensional phlegm, ensure you’re sitting uncomfortably, and let Matt and Quinns tell you why in this spoiler-free review. If you’re the sort of devil-may-care investigator who doesn’t care about forbidden secrets, don’t forget that you can watch Matt and Quinns play the whole first scenario in this video. Though actually, in hindsight we’ve now realised that it’s a tutorial mission and actually comparatively simple. You should know that far greater twists and terrors await in the full game!
Things turn very bad indeed when Paul goes outdoors in an attempt to review the Kickstarter megahit Scythe. What does he make of this tremendously successful title, with its giant mechs, slaving peasants and very helpful bear? Can it live up to its tremendous reputation? And what happens to us when we die? That’s nothing to do with the video. Just asking. Have a lovely weekend!
A mere thirty-six years after the release of the amazing Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, the board game industry has leapt into action! This month sees the release of the West End Adventures standalone expansion, and… we’re not reviewing it. That’s because this month we’re also getting a new English-language edition of Watson & Holmes, and that’s EVEN MORE EXCITING. This game takes the original, superlative co-op experience that is Consulting Detective and makes it… competitive. Is this a work of evil genius to rival Moriarty? Or simply an error in deductive reasoning? Let’s find out. Have a great weekend, everybody.
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!
It looks like Watson & Holmes isn’t the only game that wants to offer something different from Consulting Detective! Introducing Mythos Tales, a game of solving occult mysteries where if you’re not careful, you might become a victim yourself. Will Paul Dean crack the case of whether Mythos Tales is a worthy consumer product, or will this be his final review? We wish him luck.
Hoo baby! The profoundly beefy 2016 game of Great Western Trail is finally back in stock the world over. We’ve had ample time to test its systems, prodding its many rules from every conceivable angle, and today want to tell you that it lives up to the hype. And thank goodness for that! When was the last time your evenings contained a dose of cowboy magic? It was too long, wasn’t it?
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.
Money! Money makes the world go round. Money also makes factories, fleets and armies that around that world and bash each other to bits, at least that’s according to Imperial 2030! But is it really all about war? Just because it looks like Risk and even smells like Risk, that doesn’t mean you should make risky assumptions. Paul has been learning the ever-twisting dance of the supercapitalist, twirling his way in and out of continental conflicts just as long as it’s profitable. In between buying various generous chunks of the globe, he’s discovered that war is only sometimes good for your bank balance.
Everybody, it’s the most wonderful time of the year! We of course refer to the Annual Summer Goodtime Tile-Based Reinerstravaganza, and this year the star of the show is the new Windrider edition of Reiner’s 1997 classic, Tigris & Euphrates. Don’t know who Reiner is? Don’t like tigers? Allergic to tiles? Well frankly, that’s just not good enough. This box is a bulwark against boredom, a titan of the table, and the new edition deserves just a little more love.
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 the wild, you can bet that Paul unwrapped his copy faster than you can say “You can have a dog in your party.” He’s been journeying high and low ever since. So what does he think?
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.
For many board gamers, Matt Damon wasn’t the biggest imaginary thing to happen on Mars in 2016. That honour belongs to Terraforming Mars, a game so popular that the publishers have already announced four expansions! But what will we make of this smash hit? As Matt Damon said so aptly last year, “Wrap your face flaps around this! Mine’s a lumpy one.”
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 we can do is hope he doesn’t overdose on pure pleasure. That said, Paul is a consummate professional and it’ll take more than a boxful of bruins to win him over. Can Bärenpark deliver or, at heart, is it just too simple?
OH MY GOODNESS! It’s time for a fantastically exciting box. First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet is a game of surviving as the very first colonists on the Solar Satsuma, and keeping your wits about you as your home crumbles like a dunked biscuit. It’s also the sequel to 2012 release Robinson Crusoe, which Quinns didn’t get on with very well. What’s changed in five years? A lot, we can tell you.
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.
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 think. That said, our viewers should note that as Englishmen, we still have no bloody idea about that American folk game where someone yells “Marco!” and someone else yells “Polo!”, and we’re not Googling it on principal.
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.
A mere 700 days later and IT’S HERE! Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 is the sequel to our game of 2015, Pandemic Legacy, and it’s even more ambitious than the first game. Not only is this box heavier and more expensive, it tells a far more complicated story. But what do we think? Has the lightning of genius smote this particular property once again? Or does Season 2 feel like a difficult second album? If we were you, we’d take a deep breath, click play and find out.
At last. A full six years after we rugby-tackled one of the most glorious and gargantuan board games ever made, we once again take on Twilight Imperium. Sleeker and shinier than ever, just how does the refined fourth edition compare with its previous incarnation? Look no further, for we offer you the definitive review of this epic space opera. And yes, we really do mean definitive. After Matt and Paul prodded the game so much at Fantasy Flight’s headquarters for Matt’s in-depth documentary, Quinns took on the brave (some would say Herculean) task of looking at this new edition both as a standalone game, but also alongside its predecessor, which is now widely discounted. Which one deserves your money?
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.
Sentient trebuchets rejoice! With just hours to go until the end of the board gaming year, we’ve snuck in our review of 2017’s biggest game. The fantasy hack-and-slash epic that is Gloomhaven weighs in at a preposterous 22lbs, it takes hundreds of hours to finish, and it raised more than four million dollars on Kickstarter. It will be enjoying a global retail release just next month, but should you buy it? Let’s take a look.
Joined by friend of the show Pip Warr, we delved into a world of monsters, fine wine, and terrifying levels of socioeconomic privilege. Quintin squeezes into the boots of a tired and possibly dangerous Dwarf, Pip is a Druid Dragonthing who doesn’t entirely understand humans, and Matt is just a terrible man who also unfortunately seems to have acquired a gun.
It’s time to rejoin the adventures of Badger Kennington, Mr. Balderk and Sean Dragonborn! Our group’s inevitable descent into “being the bad guys” continues apace.
As our team continues playtesting and preparing for the first of the year’s Big Reviews, here’s a cheeky appetiser! While Quinns was on holiday this month he filmed a couple of lightweight reviews on his favourite travel games, starting with the ever-entertaining Cockroach Poker. (Yes, we published an article about Cockroach Poker before, but in 2018 our written articles reach a fraction of the audience that our video reviews do. In other words, if a game’s absolutely awesome then us writing about it is basically the worst thing that could happen to it, so going forward you can expect us to occasionally re-visit a classic game in video format.) (And no, you’re not wrong, Quinns mentions Galaxy Trucker in this video but forgot to film that bit of the script. His waterlogged English brain was probably struggling with all that sunshine.)
In this episode our team of a tory, a crank and a lizard descend into their very first dungeon, the very engine room of D&D. What monsters will they fight? What puzzles will they overcome? And what treasure will they find? It’s easy to poke fun at D&D. It’s a lot harder to argue with the thrill of beating up a boss and taking his gold. Get ’em, Badger!
Surprise, it’s a re-review of Hive! Fortunately the last review barely talked about the game and wasn’t filmed in a totally ancient ruin. In more ways than one, it’s wonderful to think how far we’ve come.
This rather different D&D module is based around the hugely successful comic Rat Queens and was authored by its creator, the ineffable Kurtis Wiebe, so who better to ask to run this remarkable roleplaying event than the man himself? Yes, that’s right, Kurtis took the helm while Pip, Cynthia, Quinns and Matt went wild with his characters. Don’t worry, no canon interpretations were harmed during the making of this video. Our huge thanks again to Kurtis for flying in to make this happen, for doing a Q&A after and for being such a terrific convention guest. This is also a personal point of pride for me, as I assembled and organised most of this session, and it was a pleasure to bring some live roleplaying to SHUX.
Think you’ve seen it all? THINK AGAIN. Sidereal Confluence: Trading and Negotiation in the Elysian Quadrant might have a silly name, but this hybrid sci-fi/negotiation/economic game is no joke. Whether you’re playing space-wasps, space-squids or space-school teachers, it’s going to demand every ounce of intelligence you can muster. Have you got what it takes? There’s actually a good chance you don’t.
Paul has been on the road of late and, since it’s never a bad idea to travel fast and light, he’s made sure to pack a few smaller games. Among them is the book-sized marvel that is Fugitive, but can a game so small stand out in a world of big boxes and flashy components? Can it compete with its big brothers? Here’s our definitive opinion.
As if it were needed, Jacob Jaskov’s Fog of Love is definitive proof that board games can be sexy, and it’s finally in shops the world over. But there’s more to this box than just sex! For example, there’s sometimes a troubling absence of sex. Sometimes there’s heartbreak. And sometimes, just sometimes, there’s true love.
This week, bookworm Paul wiggles his way into Ex Libris, the library-building game of hardbacks and homunculi, of novels and necromancy. What sort of collection will he build, what strange and wonderful assistants will employ and is he really as well-read as he claims to be?
Anyone who’s been following our RPG reviews will know that there’s a lot more to these games than D&D, and today we’re showing off an absolute belter: The World Wide Wrestling RPG. Contained in this one hour video is a one hour Wrestling TV special, and only one of our contestants can come out on top.
Are you ready for what might well be the silliest and most manic game of the year? This week, Matt and Quinns try out the ridiculous Magic Maze and then immediately lose themselves in the expansion, Maximum Security, which has a worryingly serious name for something that looks so bright and barmy.
Who remembers Quinns’ anciente video reviewe of 1812: The Invasion of Canada? Well, today we’ve got a redux for you! It’s our review of the latest game in that series, 878 Vikings, as well as the Viking Age expansion.
Who’s ready to make a sale? Bargain Quest is a game about running a shop in a fantasy world, and figuring out the best way to empty the pockets of doomed heroes. Though if they actually manage to slay the dragon? Well, that’s just free marketing.
If you were looking for one game to rule them all, War of the Ring might be it. This magical game has more than 200 plastic miniatures, 40 pages of rules and a depth that most board games could only dream of. But what will Matt and Quinns make of it? For one thing, this wouldn’t be the first time that Lord of the Rings was accused of being too long.
Who wants to play a game about manufacturing forks! Anybody? No? What if we were to tell you that Arkwright turns the manufacturing of bread, forks and lamps into a bruising war. What if we were to say that this game puts the very machinery of the industrial revolution in your hands, and allows you to grind your friends in its very cogs.
Please don your protective safety goggles! It’s time for some board game mad science. In a decision that some critics are calling “A fine move,” today SU&SD acts with unprecedented boldness to review three games in one video: 2017’s Century: Spice Road, 2018’s Century: Eastern Wonders and Century: From Sand to Sea, the game you can play if you own both previous games. Has designer Emerson Matsuuchi pulled it off? Will the boys be anticipating the third game in the series that releases next year? And what does all of this have to do with the Spice Girls?
GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT! Container, the legendary contest of international shipping, has finally been reprinted. Inside this box are seven-inch resin container ships, it features a new module titled “The investment bank”, and we’ve finally discovered that this game is an utter car crash. What’s that you say? None of those sound like “good things”!? Pah, our viewers are philistines.
You know what’s rad? Radiation. You know what’s also rad? Adventures! Fallout: The Board Game has both, which might make it the best game ever made. If only there was some way to be sure… Wait, of course! We can use the ancient art of “the review”.
This week Paul and Quinns are excited to examine Lowlands, a svelte and confident sheep farming game in the style of venerable designer Uwe Rosenberg, BUT WITH A TWIST. At the end of the game your herds might wash away in a dreadful storm.
Did you think SU&SD only scoured new releases for the very best games? Oh goodness no. This week Paul examines Champions of Midgard, a 2015 game of running around a town, assembling a posse of dice and launching them at the biggest monster who's currently available. But wait! There's more! Paul's also spent some time with the Dark Mountain and Valhalla expansions. He's been high, and he's been low. And we'll tell you what else- he's had a very good time.
Are you a sharp enough architect to assemble three streets, speckle them with swimming pools, dab them with parkland and negotiate with real estate agents and contractors? You’re probably not, no. But you’ll have a great time trying.
Fill your camelbak with wine and dust of your helmet, we’re GOING FOR A RIDE! Please enjoy Paul, Matt and Quinns racing one another in Flamme Rouge, with a few features from the Peloton expansion.
A long time ago in a forest far, far away… This week we’re proud to present our review of Root, which is surely the board game industry’s new beau. A grand, inventive game of cat and mouse, as well fox and bird, and – should you buy the Riverfolk expansion – beaver and lizard. As Quinns says in the review, everybody involved in this production needs to take a bow.
Oh no! Someone (Matt) has been leaving body parts all around London town, and it’s up to “the police” (Quinns and Paul) to BUST HIS CHOPS. We did a video review of Letters from Whitechapel, but the superior sequel, Whitehall Mystery, only got a written review. Since it’s our favourite hidden movement game, we leapt at the chance to show it off on our new Twitch channel. And what fun we had!
More than two years ago Quinns reviewed the classic game of Brass, but ultimately came away disappointed (and wet, and riding high on sugar). Today, it’s time for round 2! Introducing Brass: Birmingham, a collaboration between Roxley Games and original designer Martin Wallace, this is the sequel to Brass. Will this industrial revolution bring progress, or once again grind our reviewers’ gears?
This was one of our favourite shows from SHUX 2018. Quinns ran a game of the Star Trek Adventures RPG, something we’ve wanted to do ever since our review. “These are the adventures of the Star Ship Canada. It’s continuing mission: For crew-members Paul, Matt and Pip not to embarrass the Federation.” Is the resulting story the worst Star Trek episode ever made? You be the judge.
t’s no secret that Memoir ’44 is one of our favourite games. 5 years ago we even made a video showcasing its amazing 4 vs 4 Operation Overlord expansion. Well, this week we tried 1 vs 100, as Quinns took on the wobbly hivemind of Twitch chat! Huge thanks to everyone who took part, and for Efka of No Pun Included for acting as Twitch’s supreme commander.
The Champion of the Wild is the most fun we’ve had all month. How will an ibex fare versus a shed? How far can a beetle travel down a slip-n-slide? Literally nobody knows, but it’s up to your friends to guess, and your fate is in their hands.
In yesterday’s Twitch stream, masculinity was stretched to its very limits. Bandanas? Check. Beer? Check. Punching a warehouse full of bad dudes right in the mouth? Check.
Remember Roland Wright from our review of Welcome To? Well, he’s only done it again. Railroad Ink should be arriving in shops any week now, and that’s cause for celebration. This game of rails, roads and mounting desperation makes its competitors look like amateur hour. The only questions remaining are (a) should you buy the Red or Blue edition, and (b) when can we expect an expansion?
This time last year, Matt published his review of the enormous, decadent game of Gloomhaven. But since (a) it remains a superb game, (b) Quinns hadn’t played it, and (c) it was the only way Matt could make progress in his campaign, this week we decided to break it out on our Twitch channel.
What are the very best card and board games to play with coworkers and family this holiday? Games that are actually FUN – that you could bring to a party as a great gift for cheap, or tuck in the stocking for Christmas Eve? it’s time to mildly panic as you realise that family will soon descend upon you like a flock of seagulls to a discarded ice-cream. Rather than trying to explain your job to relatives to the point that you might have a mental breakdown, we’d recommend playing board games instead. These are the 15 best big-family games: all play with at least 6 people, and most can handle 8. In no particular order, let’s go!
The choice of which game of play on our Twitch channel this week was a no-brainer. Which is to say, we knew we’d have no brains remaining after flying back from PAX Unplugged, so we chose a game that could be enjoyed by eight-year-olds. Men at Work is the next beautiful box coming out of Pretzel Games, makers of Flick ‘Em Up and Junk Art, and we love the heck out of it. And like those previous games, it functions as a lovely object, as well as a silly challenge, and – if you so choose – an arena where actual tactics can be deployed.
It seems this pair can’t quite agree on Keyforge. Is it fun, or not-fun? Is the business model good or bad? Is the universe a joke or a failure?
“Start as you mean to go on,” as they say. That’s why for our first review of 2019 we picked a fantastic game, put on the loudest shirts that Matt owned, broke out the eyeliner, and squeezed in an homage to The Muppets. Don’t get distracted by all of those lovely colours, though. Featuring a bit of bluffing, a bit of logic, a bit of deduction and a lot of laughter, Treasure Island is a game that deserves some serious consideration.
Remember our review of party game The Champion of the Wild? Well, we had so much fun with it that we decided to turn it into a live show at PAX Unplugged, featuring Jonathan Ying, Alan Gerding, and multiple facts about manta ray sex.
Do you feel a faint stirring in your heart? That’ll probably be because of Quacks of Quedlinburg, a game about stirring, excitement, dread, capitalism, and even more stirring. It’s also the second game about managing your own personal gambling den we’ve reviewed recently, following on from the very good Space Base. But this is better. Special thanks to Wizarding Harry of Wizarding Harry’s Child Wizarding School for Top Wizarding Harrys for being such a superb special guest.
Every two weeks, Card Games That Don’t Suck will teach you how to play a game that we love, that you can play with an ordinary deck of cards. In doing so, we hope to make table gaming more accessible and wide-ranging, and maybe even learn a little bit of history along the way. But there’s no history in our first instalment! Ricochet Poker is, in fact, a brand new game by designer James Ernest, and we think it’s just superb.
Oho, with the unexpected release of the Mother of Dragons expansion for the Game of Thrones board game, did Fantasy Flight think they were the only ones who could return to an old game? They’ve got another thing coming. We reviewed this board game back in 2011, and now we’re reviewing it AGAIN. So stick that in your moon door and smoke it.
Did you catch the first instalment of Card Games That Don’t Suck, Ricochet Poker? This week we’re travelling from America to China to tell you about a fantastic shedding game called Fight the Landlord. Watching the video, you’ll notice that “2s” are valued higher than royals. It’s possible that this comes from the game’s communist roots, in much that same way that following the French revolution, it was considered distasteful to play games where kings and queens were desirable. The more you know!
Slowly but surely, SU&SD is learning what makes a good board game stream. “Two and a half hours of Matt and Quinns playing a complicated resource management game” might not be the answer, but one thing’s for certain- that’s what we’ve uploaded to YouTube this week. This video also documents Matt and Quinns playing the new expansion for the terrific Great Western Trail, Rails to the North, for the very first time. To be charitable, it’s not what they expect. To be candid, they play the worst game of Great Western Trail of their adult lives.
With the release of The Quest for El Dorado, it seems that board gaming owes yet another debt to venerable designer Reiner Knizia. This game is a nail-biting race through a troublesome jungle, and we think it’s superb. A solid, simple, clean design. …But what if you want a wobbly, complex, dirty design? Well, then you could pick up the Heroes & Hexes expansion, which Quinns also investigates in this video.
For the third instalment of Card Games that Don’t Suck, Quinns has dug up a game that’s fun even if you don’t gamble. That’s right, everybody! Those card game scientists finally cracked it. Oh Hell is a trick-taking game for 3-7 players that might be the ultimate idle time waster. It’s a short, simple game that somehow expands to fill a whole hour, like a wad of dough rising in the oven of your minds.
Since a quick’n’shifty discussion on podcast #68, there hasn’t been much discussion on this site of Andean carpet-crafter & bag-builder Altiplano… until TODAY! This game has recently been gifted with The Traveller expansion, which Matt is convinced turns a good game into a great one by… adding a strange man who wanders around in circles? Can that be right?
Everyone remembers the 10 plagues of Egypt. Blood, frogs, flies, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, fire, darkness, and mediocre card games. Today, we’re doing our bit to rebuild society. Gin Rummy is most certainly a card game that doesn’t suck. This is a tense, tight little race for 2 players that plays a lot like an affordable version of Arboretum.
Brace yourselves, because Quinns (maybe) has a new favourite board game of all time. Blood on the Clocktower is live on Kickstarter right now, and for the first time in Shut Up & Sit Down history we’ve published our review to coincide with that Kickstarter to help to get this game into the hands of as many people as possible. What makes it so special? Is it the haunted gerrymandering? The frightening complexity? The fact that, under all of the lying and murder, it’s a feelgood experience?
In 2015, we posted our Top 50 Games Ever. In 2017, we lost our minds examining every game in the Board Game Geek Top 100. This year, we’re doing something a little more personal: A series of videos on the team’s board game collections, starting with Quinns. After working on SU&SD for seven years, games slipping between his fingers like grains of sand, these are the 136 (plus) games that he’s chosen to keep (and a few that are in his flat despite his best efforts).
Get out the ice packs! It’s time for board gaming’s most bruising real-estate showdown. But then, to simply call The Estates “bruising” is probably unfair. This game isn’t just cruel, it’s beautiful, and beautifully simple, and very funny indeed. Take a look at our Let’s Play and see what we’re talking about. Could this be the greatest auction game ever made? Is it better than Ra and Cyclades? Maybe, maybe…
Fab negotiation game Chinatown has finally received a new print run! To celebrate, Quinns dusted off the copy he used in his 2014 review for a playthrough on our Twitch page. Can Chinatown newcomers Matt and Kylie make a fool of him in his own streets? Yes, of course they can. Ooh, and while you’re watching, don’t forget to quote the famous movie line! “Forget it, Jake. It’s prawns.”
For as long as SU&SD has been around, Skull has been our constant companion. Do we need something to play at 1am at a board game convention? It’s Skull. Do we need to improvise a game out of almost no components at all? It’s Skull. Do we need to show off to people how great this hobby is with a minimum of rules overhead? It’s Skull. Of course we had to do it for Cards Games That Don’t Suck. Thanks so much for supporting this series, everybody! I’m having an incredible time with it. And oh boy, do I have an amazing find for you next episode…
Oof! When was the last time a game let you get jade, AND sail boat, AND great wall? Gùgōng is the new game from venerable designer Andreas Steding, and we think it may well be worth your time. This game is a teasing web of tricky economies and corrupt cardplay, and we absolutely can't wait for the expansion to be revealed later this year.
Warning: This game contains choking hazards, fireballs, bees, snakes, rockfalls and a vengeful god. Do not operate while under the influence. Or was that “Only operate while under the influence”? We can’t remember.
Oh boy, have we got an exciting announcement! Today marks the start of Chronicles Month on Shut Up & Sit Down, where we’ll be celebrating all things chronicled (as well as the general art of chronicling). To kick off proceedings, we’re reviewing Chronicles of Crime together with the brand-new Noir expansion. Is it a better crime-busting game than Consulting Detective? Or a better disposable game than Unlock? Did Matt write this whole review just to play with noir grading? Click play, and follow the money.
It’s time for the second review of Chronicles month, and oh boy, have we got a chronicle for you. With a price point of $130, Batman: Gotham City Chronicles is the second most expensive game we’ve ever reviewed. If there’s a bat-thing you love, you’re bound to find it sequestered in one (one!) of this game’s many, many boxes. But could some boxes of fictitious bats ever be worth that much money?
For as long as SU&SD has been around, we’ve been fans of Space Alert. Even today, it might well be the most ridiculous, challenging and inventive co-operative game ever… erm, invented.
Today, we're proud to present the finale of Chronicles Month, as we poke our flag into a most elusive game in the BoardGameGeek Top 100. Crokinole is big, it's bold, it's 150 years old, and a good board will cost you $300. Those are some very frightening numbers. Could this ever be a reasonable consumer purchase? Click play, and find out.
Briscola Chiamata is bound to be a real highlight of this series. An incredibly simple trick-taking with hidden roles, this 5 player game sees a team of 4 players facing off against a 5th player... but someone in their ranks is working for the other side.
Last summer, Quinns put out an excitable review of 878 Vikings, the latest instalment in a series he calls “The mac & cheese of wargaming.” This summer, we’ve uploaded a clash of the (online) titans! Matt and Quinns taking on the streaming team of Creative Assembly, makers of the Total War videogames. And frankly, in the face of total war, we think our team did quite well.
Today we’re very proud to present our review of Capstone Games’ Pipeline. A game of pipes, lines, and… erm… the stuff that goes inside of pipes? You mustn’t let Pipeline’s lack of theme bother you. Where we’re going we don’t need theme. Playing Pipeline, you’re going to feel the rush of seed money, the thrill of turning a profit, the rollercoaster of handling each new round at greater and greater speeds. In fact, this could be the year’s single best economic board game.
If you’re in the mood for some Fantasy adventure, Too Many Bones is big, beautiful and… waterproof? But don’t let a little plastic scare you away! Not since Matt’s Gloomhaven review have we been so enamoured of a co-op game of monster-thwomping. This game is brave, bizarre, and absolutely worth your attention.
Our series on the best games that you can play with a 52 card deck has dealt out a wild card! Cribbage is a great game for 2 players (though you can enjoy it with 3 or 4) that people are still playing after four hundred years. And yes, that means it’s a profoundly weird thing to learn, but it also means that there’s an undeniable magic to it.
It’s been a while since we reviewed a classic of a card game, but holy cow! 6 Nimmt isn’t just great. It’s up there with Arboretum, Jaipur, Condottiere and The Fox in the Forest. In fact, there’s more flow tucked into this tidy, tiny box than we’ve seen since Love Letter.
What’s great? Killing your friends in the desert. What’s better? Doing it with robust publisher support. In this review Matt tackles not one, but TWO expansions for magical wargame Kemet. There’s Kemet: Ta-Seti, which adds a range of exotic Egyptian modules, and Kemet: Seth, which transforms Kemet into an imbalanced, all-versus-one tale of Evil vs. Much Bigger Evil.
In a clash of two titans (and two troublesome assistants), Kylie and Matt took on Ava and Quinns at Concordia: Venus, the team-based expansion for SU&SD favourite Concordia. “A team-based management game?” you might be asking. “How does that work?” Well, as we found out, in some ways it doesn’t work, but that’s precisely the point.
This week, our series on the best games that you can play with a 52 card deck gets EPIC. Eleusis might end up being the most thematic game in this series. This game has God, scientists, experiments, prophets, even false prophets. Bizarre setting aside, it’s also a pretty great game that asks 4-8 players how much they’re willing to stake on their own deductive powers.
At long last, Shut Up & Sit Down’s campaign for “More Worms in Games!” has borne fruit. Disgusting, wriggling, glistening fruit. Silk is the first published work from designer Luis Ranedo, as well the first game from artist Roc Espinet. Considering that this this is their first effort, here at SU&SD we can’t wait to see what beautiful, nasty business they get up to next.
t long last, the final instalment of SU&SD’s “Worm Series” is here. Today, what began with Matt’s Silk review now reaches its dramatic conclusion. In other, less important news of people waiting a long time, after a wait of 30 years the legendary Dune board game is again being made available. But have the years been kind to this game? Is it still a classic? And how long will Quinns be able to go before recommending Jodorowsky’s Dune?
This week, our series on the best games that you can play with a 52 card deck gets violent. Egyptian Ratscrew plays a lot like Jungle Speed, except with more fire. Literally. This is the first game that SU&SD has covered with a greater than zero chance of ending in flames. Also, huge thanks to Gnalistair on YouTube for pointing out that the game gets even better if you require players to first slap their forehead before slapping the table.
As anyone who’s seen us at conventions will know, it’s hard for team SU&SD to spend a day out and about without getting into a punching fight or muscle demonstration. As such, it was only natural that we’d review Combo Fighter. An expandable, simple card game about kicking bottom, and a glorious team effort between designer Asger Johansen and artist Snorre Krogh. If you like the sound of a lightning-fast 1 vs 1 game that’s more intelligent than it has any right to be, do take a closer look.
Who’s a fan of Greece’s Pieces? This week, Matt’s strapped on his cyber-sandals for a jaunt through Lords of Hellas. This is an enormous, Kickstarted “dudes on a map” game of slaying cyber-monsters, building cyber-statues, amassing cyber-hoplites and going on cyber-adventures. Will this game triumph, like Homer? Or fall out of the sky like a big Icarus idiot?
This week, our series on the best games that you can play with a 52 card deck gets WILD. Bourré is the most outrageous gambling game that you’ve never heard of. It has heaps of suave cardplay, and features not just the lure of winning money, but the striking threat of losing it. It’s smart, silly, and barely in control of itself, and we love it to pieces. (Shut Up & Sit Down does not condone irresponsible gambling. As we always say: If you’re not having fun when you’re losing, it’s definitely time to stop.)
While Quintin takes a couple of weeks off, Matt dives into a world of BEARYTALE IMAGINATION. There’s no-one else here to keep an eye on things, so the gloves are fully off when it comes to awful puns. Expanding upon the legacy of Barenpark with bigger, badder bears and beautiful 3D monorails – this expansion certainly fills a box that’s almost the same size as the basic game, but can The Bad News Bears fill the same size in our massive, empty hearts?
This week Matt truly takes one for the team, with the team being humanity – and everyone within it. That’s right, he’s reviewed a fiddly eurogame that doesn’t have an especially useful manual. Cerebria is one hell of a thing, it’s just not remarkably likely that this thing will be for you. Find out, today, via the medium of Internet Opinion Video.
Bending the very essence of TIME to our wills, this week we’re proud to announce that we’ve managed to compress 21 minutes and 11 seconds into ten minutes of human time. How did we do it? We’ll never tell. 10 Oink games, reviewed in just 10 minutes. Have we missed one of your favourites? Do let us know – there are plenty more Oink games in the sea, and we’ll soon be perfectly positioned to try them after the internet drowns us for the things we’ve said about Deep Sea Adventure.
Who wants to feel nervous and paranoid? Yes, more nervous and paranoid than normal. Don’t Get Got is a party game that runs in the background of your normal life, able to turn a party or ordinary day at work into a nightmarish playground of the mind. It’s cheap, sweet, utterly unique, and gets people dancing for joy more frequently than we’ve seen in eight years as board game reviewers. Don’t understand? You will! Just click play on the video.
This week on Shut Up & Sit Down, Matt is joined by new chap Tom for a review of a game that’s had many afroth’d – it’s the pubtastic Boozer Simulator: The Taverns of Tiefenthal.
KLASK. Earlier in the year Quintin reviewed the undeniably classic Crokinole, and now Matt is back with a look at KLASK: the whipper-snapper bad-boy of the dexterity scene.
Gawd bless us every one! Quinns has cracked the lid from Cthulhu Wars‘ enormous box, and he’s stunned at what he’s found. This is the sort of game that SU&SD usually steers people away from. It’s too big, too expensive, and much too silly. And yet Quinns is here today to rave about it. It’s a Christmas miracle!
We’re kicking off the year with a much-requested video! Today Matt will be talking you through his relatively trimmed-down collection of board games, taking you by the hand and walking you through a mental corridor of joy, shame, and occasional warmth. We actually recorded this after PAX Unplugged this year, which explains a handful of references that don’t quite make sense, and why Matt looks a bit like a semi-retired yeti. If you missed Quinns’ collection video from last year, go and take a peek!
Do you like GUNS? Do you like CARDS? Do you like GRIEF? If the answer to any of those questions is “Kind of?”, you’ve got to check out Undaunted: Normandy. Not only is it the greatest World War 2 game to come out in forever, it’s deliciously cheap. What else is there to say? Except, of course, that we could not be more excited for Undaunted: North Africa later this year.
Greetings, Warfans! If you love military sabotage and/or ASMR, then we’ve got some fairly mixed news for you. A War of Whispers features almost nobody speaking very, very quietly – but might be the Game of Thrones Game that Matt has always dreamed of. This is a simple, small box that does a great deal with very little – and is one of the most immediately exciting designs we’ve seen in years. Enjoy!
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s yet another collectable card game from Fantasy Flight, launched from the giant collectable game cannon that sits on top of their headquarters. After being blown away by Arkham Horror: The Card Game and stunned by Keyforge, what will our team make of Marvel Champions: The Card Game? Will this game make it a hat trick? Or will it bring with it the sequel fatigue of Marvel movies?
Somebody help us, they’ve only gone and made more. Azul: Summer Pavilion is the latest (and perhaps greatest) in the Azul expanded universe, and reviewing its wonderfully smooth and bevelled edges has driven Matt insane. Watch, in abject horror, as he talks at length with our latest Bintern, Big Bin Barry.
Hot off the back of Mr Matthew “Stab u in the back” Lees declaring A War of Whispers as being the Game of Thrones game he’d always wanted? Mr Quintin Smith bounds onto the stage, saying almost exactly the same thing about The King’s Dilemma – but for very different reasons! What a fantastic year for people who want to pretend they own a cloak whilst being a detestable self-serving dingus.
In this week’s review, Matt goes on a voyage of discovery into the wonderful world of Bunny Kingdom, and takes a quick detour through its expansion – Bunny Kingdom: In The Sky. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it somewhere in-between? Boy, does this review have at least one of these opinions to share with you. To say that Matt got lost in the world of Bunny Kingdom would be an understatement – he was last seen eating fistfuls of carrot near an industrial estate in Milton Keynes. “It’s for my art” he reportedly yelled at a shocked elderly couple investigating the commotion, who were slightly disturbed by how much he really did look just like a real rabbit. If anyone has information as to Matt’s current whereabouts, please do let us know. Our HR department almost entirely has his best interests at heart.
This week Matt begged Quinns to revisit a topic he’s talked about a little before: what tips could he impart for mastering “The Teach”? It’s the hurdle that stops so many from getting into the hobby – the stumbling block that has seen a many an evening of potential jolly cardboard fun veer off-course into a scene of pure disaster. Whether you’re a seasoned somelier of analog fun or someone who needs the confidence boost to go for it and host, we don’t think there’s any better source of knowledge for teaching people how to teach a board game.
This week’s review puts the EXTRA into extraterrestrial, as Matt and Tom dive into the murky cupboard of Awaken Realm’s Nemesis. Please do note that this video contains scenes that younger viewers may find either awesome or mildly distressing, and finally – should you spot any of the hidden wires used during the special animated sequence, we’d ask that you don’t spoil the wonder of cinema by pointing them out to other viewers. Have a lovely week… IN SPACE.
Unmatched is a bewitchingly sexy game to collect, it’s a fab little fighting game, and it takes just 20 minutes to finish a whole game. Unless you include the rules explanation, then it takes just 22 minutes.
How much do you love your mum, Harry? This week we’ve got the timely review of a party game that involves everyone taking it in turns to touch the same hard plastic surfaces over and over again. Wavelength is an absolute joy, and potentially the perfect fit for Party Game Playable Over a Webcam? Just make sure your uncle promises to close his eyes when it isn’t his turn to look.
In this video Quinns tackles no less than five of the greatest card games to come out in years. In order of appearance, we’ve got Mandala, Bruxelles 1897, Air, Land & Sea, Tournament at Camelot and The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine.
After years of ragging on 1 player board games, it’s time for SU&SD to eat crow. It turns out that solitaire games can be fun, if they’re consumed in a rational and safe fashion. We’d wholeheartedly recommend Aerion, Kosmos’ new Adventure Game series, and then also in this video there is The Hunted: Twilight of the U-Boats.
Tom’s been dealing with isolation in the only way that anyone reasonably can: inventing ludicrous stories of wizards and tentacles, and then drawing them onto a fictional map and pretending that everything is totally fine. Find out why 2020 might be the perfect time to revisit The Quiet Year. Oh! And this is Tom’s first solo video – hasn’t he done well? What a nice young man, here’s 50 pence – don’t spend it all in once place.
It’s time for us to apologise the only way we know how. By smearing raw egg on Quinns. If you caught the first instalment of our Solo Special, you’ll remember we didn’t always find 1 player games easy to recommend. But since then, Quinns has disappeared into the wild thicket that is absolutely free print’n’play solitaire games, and we’re not sure he’s coming out.
This will come as no surprise to anyone who saw the child-like glint in Quinns’ eye during last month’s 1 player print’n’play roundup, but this week, we’d like to present even more nearly-free games for anyone to enjoy during self-isolation. Included in this roundup are are spritely Agent Decker, the cleanly The Cleaner, the sprawling Sprawlopolis and the startlingly compact Under Falling Skies.
What’s that sound? Oh, it’s just Richard Nixon hurtling towards you at breakneck pace, making sure that you never say another word about his precious Watergates. Don’t trust the press, kids; those things are providing high-quality clean energy to all of America and the stories of ‘walls made of cardboard’ and ‘the electricity just powering a big slush puppy machine’ are completely false. And the boardgame of the same name? Don’t make me laugh. Look, what I’m trying to get at is that I’ve gone and done a review of Watergate. My brain is unbelievably smooth right now and this is all I’ve got, folks. This video failed to render 22 times today, and now I’m going to eat a yogurt and fall asleep.
Gird your tabletops! Western Empires is the biggest game we’ve ever reviewed in both length and girth. A 9 player, 12 hour game? What could be bigger than that? We’ll tell you what else. The combined game of Mega Empires, which you’ll be able to play when Eastern Empires releases in the near future. A game that the United Kingdom Department of Bigness and Sizeitude has gone on record as calling “Too Big”. Also in the video is our new table from Geeknson! In fact, this exact table is on Kickstarter right now. You’ll find Quinns’ thoughts on that (and gaming tables in general) at the 18:04 mark of this video.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a bird. In fact, it’s all of the birds. At long last, after a preposterous 7 print runs in 14 months, Shut Up & Sit Down has published a review of Wingspan. It’s the biggest success story that the tabletop scene has seen in a long time. But is it a success story on our tables? Or in our hearts?
After talking about it on the podcast a bunch, Tom decided to make himself a nice little video review of Thousand Year Old Vampire, as a treat. Along the way, he learned the challenges of Adobe After Effects (never again) and filming a compelling outro in a room with no discernible features. Sit back, relax, and be dazzled once again by the tale of Kenneth – a vampire who gives the sound of boiling mud horrifying connotations.
It’s the 8th of July baby, you know what THAT means! It’s time for Shut Up & Sit Down’s inaugural Chess Month – a season dedicated to the joy of fantastic two-player games, literally none of which are going to be chess. To kick us off with an introduction and a little look at a game called Ice Team, here’s Matt with a video for your ears and your eyes.
It takes two to tango! But it also takes two to Targi. Our second review of chess month is a snug little box, and a welcome reminder that eurogames don’t have to be big to be clever.
Our celebration of head-to-head games continues! This week Matt stacks up his opinions about the fabulous Cairn. Blue druids in hats versus brown druids with sticks – it’s a tale as old as time, but what new magic have they cooked up with this natty new formula?
Oh dear. SU&SD is trying to review a 4,000 year old cultural institution? There are days where we struggle to review dexterity games aimed at drunks. This can’t end well. In all seriousness, Go is easily among the most magnificent works of design that we’ve ever review. The only question that remains is… is it fun?
Let me tell you a bit of a story behind this stream. When team SU&SD was out on our annual fishing trip last year, bobbing around on the Great British Lakes just outside Upton Snodsbury, Matt caught himself half a dozen beautiful fish. As he packed his catch into the cooler to take home and microwave, one particular fish caught his eye – a fish with a pencil tucked behind its gills and game design in its heart. That fish was Dominic Crapuchettes. Fast forward a year, and Dominic has fully matured into a real human male, capable of making rather comprehensive board game designs. We sat down on Twitch to play his latest, Oceans, a game about being your truest, fishiest self in an ocean full of haters.
Ah, Paris. A beautiful city to be portrayed by a beautiful garage. Sorry about the general scuzziness of this one, it was a hot day and very scented candles didn’t help. My copy of Paris: La Cite De La Lumiere now smells like vanilla and oranges – which might sound pleasant, but it is absolutely not. This week on Shut Up and Sit Down, the real Tom Brewster reviews Paris: La Cite De La Lumiere – an exclusive to Chess Month; a month of games that are rapidly approaching ‘absolutely not chess at all officer’
We played some Wingspan! So that we could impress designer Elizabeth Hargrave with all of our cool bird knowledge, Tom and Matt spent WEEKS in a bird blind; method-acting as birds. Things got ‘not-very-social-distancey’ awful quickly, what with all the regurgitative feeding. Sorry, that was disgusting. Matt shouldn’t have trusted me to write actual copy for the website – especially when it’s relatively low-stakes content and I’ve had several strong coffees – each one propelling my tiny bird self through the day’s workload like a bird that has had several strong coffees. Enjoy!
Matt and Tom literally did this whole stream in a zero oxygen, zero gravity environment and NOBODY is talking about it. We didn’t want to mention it on stream for fear of looking a bit glib, but felt like you all should probably know about what is likely a world record. Where’s our big pint of Mr Guiness’ Brown Drink. Galaxy Trucker! A powerful game of slowly eroding spaceships. Grab yourself a space beverage, a space seat, and prepare your space eyes for SPAENTERTAINMENTCE. This one was an awful lot of fun.
My oh my oh my. We made it episode 2 of Mothership, and it’s only just over one month late! Apologies for the delay on getting this one to YouTube, Tom got a little too into character as ol’ juiceboy – chugging endless amounts of “medicine” instead of doing his job. In this episode, the gang explore the ship they’ve found themselves on, teeth themselves on green orbs and faff around a lot before reaching a dramatic conclusion.
Oh my goodness! It’s time for our review of what Quinns is calling “The best game in perhaps the most entertaining series in board games.” It’s Pandemic Legacy: Season 0.
They say the past is a foreign country, but this week we’ve popped on the ferry regardless, going back to revisit a game we’ve already reviewed and recommended – on the sole basis that Matt didn’t feel like we’d recommended it strongly enough? Find out why we’ve come to feel that Decrypto is a modern classic – with a special report on the Laser Drive expansion from Tom, who isn’t actually here.
Following last week’s review of Decrypto, this week we’re revisiting another brilliant game that had previously been wasting away in the dungeons of Shut Up & Sit Down in a written review. Anomia might not be the funniest game we’ve ever covered if you were to judge it in terms of decibels, but it is the game we’ve reviewed that gets the most people laughing the hardest the fastest. Does that sentence make sense? We’re not sure. We just know that this game is ace.
War! HUH!? What is it good for!? According to David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin, it’s good for business. They literally said that. I promise. Live from a bedroom, Tom tackles this square brown box of War Chest in just under 10 square brown minutes, with each one more salient than the last. Marvel at the hastily-strung-together introduction! Guffaw at the complete lack of pacing! Be thrilled by the knowledge that yes, he did have to clean up that dirt/those poker chips/this whole edit with only a handful of hours to spare! He even makes time to (not) review the Nobility expansion!
Like backaches and questionable political opinions, Chess sets seem to be one of those things that people just acquire as they get older. But is it possible to have fun with them? We put our top board game scientists on the case, and they said “Yes. Yes. We think so.” In this video we’d like to present the games of Peasants’ Revolt, Horde Chess, Monster Chess, Atomic Chess, Alice Chess, Demi Chess, Bughouse Chess, Synchronistic Chess and much, much more.
Don’t call it a comeback! Hot on the heels of our 5 Favourite New Card Games video, today we’re covering 5 (nearly new) roll’n’write games that could (loosely) be described as our favourites (kind of). In order of appearance, this video stars the excellent Copenhagen: Roll’n’Write, Super Skill Pinball 4Cade, Rome & Roll, Cartographers, Kingdomino Duel and Metro X, as well as a cheeky little cameo from Qwinto (not to be confused with Quintin). The video is also MASSIVE. A real five course meal of probability management. Loosen your belts, everybody!
SPACE. Where did it come from? What’s it doing? And why is it so MUCH? We have no idea, but board game publisher Renegade Game Studios is here to help, offering two great games that will teach us all about outer space- The Search for Planet X and a cute card game called Stellar. On the one hand, we’re not sure what space did to deserve such generous treatment. On the other hand, space seems awfully dangerous, so perhaps it’s wise for people to stay on it’s good side.
Crikey! It’s a review! At this hour? On a WEDNESDAY? For this scintillating mixture of performance art and review, Tom got lost in the woods for an entire week reviewing Renature – only bringing a camera and some boardgame pieces into the ordeal. On the 7th day, he emerges from amidst the leaves, and bestows upon us his completed work. Oh no. Witness the fear in his eyes as he spies someone walking a dog straight towards him mid-take! Wince at the reverb-addled alternative vocal takes added in post because wind: it sucks! Fear the lines that were cut for a mixture of brevity and inability to watch oneself on camera. Why are you still here?! Press on, and you may find answers…
OH BABY! It seems like only yesterday that Twilight Imperium 4th Edition was Quinns’ favourite wargame. Not anymore! Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy is a 2nd edition of 2011 smash hit Eclipse. It’s also too big, too expensive, and arguably too dry. And apparently, according to Quinns, it’s still absolutely worth it.
And now we’re back! In outer space! This game with aliens might put a smile upon your face. Delving into the dusty mines of Serious Alone-Time, Matt reviews Under Falling Skies – the Print’n’Play Star turned fully-boxed product. Is it worth selling your Deskjet 3720 for the purposes of picking it up? Tune in right now, and why not FIND OUT.
As we approach the festive season, what better says ‘the festive season approaches’ more than a game about accusing those near and dear to you of being cold heartless androids. Inhuman Conditions! It’s a unique oblong box that we’ve unleashed our keenest reporter on – to dissect its mechanical innards and make a big ‘ol video about it. What does he find in the entrails? Mostly oil and cogs, but also a rather good game!
Welcome one, welcome all! It is officially the most December-est time of the year, and that might mean you’re on the lookout for the perfect gift for the board gamer in your life? The board gamer in OUR life wants “an egg timer”, so there’s really no knowing if you’re barking up the right tree – but the whole SU&SD team is on-hand this week to give you great suggestions for great games that are currently in stock! Enjoy!
With 2020 finally, improbably, coming to an end, we’re onto our final two video reviews of the year. And the first is a BIG ONE. Following a terrifically successful Kickstarter campaign, Etherfields has been delivered to backers the world over. This massive box offers 1-4 players a surreal quest in a world of dreams, letting people go and beat up Mr. Sandman once and for all. But does this box succeed? Or is it a bit of a nightmare? Click play, and find out.
As the year draws to a close, we’ve saved something small but rather special until last: Curious Cargo, a dedicated head-to-head game by the designer of Pipeline. How fiendish and deep can you possibly go when faced with a box this cute and tiny? Tune in to find out.
For this week’s Wednesday video, we wanted to offer something a little different. At SHUX last year Quinns gave a talk on the history of board games. A quick’n’dirty tour of the games of ancient prehistory, all the way through to the invention of cardboard in the 19th century. We present it today as a reminder that while today’s tabletop scene is overwhelming white, this is a blip in the 8000 year history of the hobby. The earliest known board games are found in Africa. Dice were invented in the Middle East. The first games that tell stories are found in Egypt. Playing cards were conceived in China. Chess came from India, by way of an Islamic Caliphate. This hobby owes a debt to people of colour that it could never possibly repay. At the very least, we can make sure we don’t forget it.
This might come as a surprise due to the time-warping effects of Covid-19, but it’s that time of year again! Today, we’d like to give you a quick behind-the-scenes message from Shut Up & Sit Down. If you’re new to this community, you might not yet know that Shut Up & Sit Down is kept alive by donations from people who love what we do. So if you think you can afford it, please consider giving us a dollar or two this summer. That’s all! We promise to only bother you about this in another six months. Have a great weekend, everybody.
This week we’ve got an exciting announcement! It’s Worm Month! We’ll see you all on October 16th to the 18th for AwSHUX. Be good!
It’s that time of year again, folks! This year has obviously been a shocker for so many, but we’re continually thankful and incredibly privileged to be given the support to do what we do. Here’s a bit of silly fluff with a sprinkling of details about what we’ve got planned for 2021. If you can comfortably afford to support our team we really, really appreciate it!
Goodness gracious, we’re starting our 2021 video reviews with a… well, not a bang, exactly. A bang would be gauche. Rococo Deluxe is a swanky new edition of hit 2013 board game Rococo that also plays host to the old game’s Jewellery Box expansion and all sorts of little extras. Seven years later, will we still find Rococo to be elegant and classy? Or will it have become dusty and old-fashioned?
Initially the pitch for this video was 10 reviews overlapping one-another all at the same time, providing a sort of ‘dreamscape’ where the viewer doesn’t know exactly what they just watched; but instead have a strong sense-memory of really enjoying about half the games. Instead, this. It’s probably more confusing, and it put me (Tom) into a slight frenzy. I’m now going to have a very long lie-down. Good luck!
Splish splosh, splish splish splosh. It’s time to get SALTY! This week’s review sees Matt diving into Oceans – sadly not in real life as he lives in central London. Wrong time of year, too – frankly. Enjoy!
Drop everything (unless you’re holding a baby)! My City doesn’t look like much. It also doesn’t sound< like much. But what we’ve got here is master board game designer Reiner Knizia’s take on the genre of legacy games. Remember how The Quest for El Dorado saw Reiner Knizia quietly mastering the genre of deckbuilding games? Well, without wanting to spoil this review entirely, he’s basically done it again. What an absolute legend.
For this hot HOT review, Tom went back in time to 1992 and stole the design documents for a game that he’s sure will one day be a classic. Who did he steal them from? What was the game? One can only dream. In the second of a double-Reiner-february-feature; a review of Modern Art, just for you. It’s an absolute classic in the auction game genre, and maybe one of Tom’s favourite games of all time? Watch him squirm as he grapples with the burden of encompassing that which cannot be encompassed.
What’s historical, great fun, set in medieval Germany and has two thumbs? THIS GUY! Wait, that can’t be right Look, the point is we’ve done a review of a marvellous new edition of perhaps the greatest eurogame ever made. The new Hansa Teutonica Big Box isn’t actually any bigger than the old edition, but it’s not any more expensive, either, which is a truly fantastic thing. We implore you to take a look.
This week on the website Matt discovers that you *can’t* just stuff things inside of a jacket in order to recreate David Byrne’s signature look. We also made two new friends, one of whom is most definitely not alive – the other one? We’ll leave you to decide. Find out why City of the Big Shoulders, this caramel rainbow of brown and beige pieces, has captured a tiny piece of our heart.
In this week’s review, Tom takes a look at Kitchen Rush – a decision that was entirely made by his family. ‘You’ve got to review it, we like it!’ they said. They were… Right, I suppose? I did have fun making the video. And speaking of fun… That’s right folks, in this video you can say hello to the newest month in the Shut Up & Sit Down calendar – fun month! From now on, that’s what March is. We got approval from the man behind the counter at WHSmith, who said he’d get it sorted with the bigwigs as soon as possible. He charged us very reasonably, considering the hassle.
CAVES! FORESTS! MAMMOTHS! What do all of these things have in common? That’s right! You can die inside them. Today Quinns is looking at new co-operative game Paleo, and do you know what? This is one of the better co-op games to land on our desk in recent years. It’s also – you’ll never guess – kind of problematic. Apologies in advance if this video means you can never enjoy Bonk’s Adventure the same way again.
Cubes! Everyone’s favourite three dimensional solid. Tom incorrectly refers to the components in this game as ‘dice’ over and over again, when in reality the game makes it explicitly clear that these are in fact Cubitos; borne of the mother cube, emissaries to the world of… other… shapes… Listen, Cubitos is a game so full of wackiness that it becomes hard to write jokes about, which is why I outsourced all the humour in this video to a tub of green face paint. Watch at your peril, the J-cuts are all wrong and the green still hasn’t quite come out of my beard!
After the year we’ve had, who among us isn’t dreaming of moving to the country? Well, now you can give the rural life a test-drive with Stardew Valley: The Board Game, a board game adapation of the wildly successful videogame. It’s fair to say that SU&SD hasn’t had the easiest time recommending video game adapations, but hey! There’s a first time for everything, right? …right?
In this week’s video review, Tom is blasting off into SPACE to find the spreadsheet of his dreams in a game packed to the gills with iconography. Is one large icon better than two, smaller icons? Find out right here! As dry as Beyond The Sun most certainly is, it is also maybe my true game of last year – a total joy to play every single time. This review most certainly doesn’t do it justice (I even forgot to put the recommends badge!). Give it a spin on Board Game Arena if you’re curious, and grab copies whilst they’re fresh off the press.
This week you’ll find an unusually restrained version of Matt Lees reviewing another small-box stonker from publisher Devir. We enjoyed Silk quite a bit a few years ago, but this crunchy little number, The Red Cathedral, is the real, real deal.
A banquet on a sinking ship can’t last forever, but there’s just enough time to prove yourself the most fabulous rat aboard! Each round you’ll be scavenging for supplies and competing with your honorable host in a most delightful competition of dishes and decorations – all the while forgetting that the ship is sinking beneath you! RATS: High Tea at Sea is a print & play, roll & write boardgame for 2-6 players that’s playable over the internet, in the same room, or a combination of the two! It is preposterously easy to learn and teach, but has sneaky twists and turns that will reveal themselves every time you play – a lovely little treat for whoever fancies climbing aboard.
When was the last time you had a good summon? It’s been too long, hasn’t it? In that case, may we recommend the brand-spanking new edition of Summoner Wars, which is also now playable online? It’s got goblins. It’s got magic spells. It’s got plenty of charming fantasy art. And most importantly, it has a swanky, simple little ruleset that’s easy to learn and hard to master. In fact, we like this game so much we’ve now reviewed it twice. I’m not going to go back and watch our original 2011 review because I would die instantly, but if you want to do so then that is a choice that you can make.
Knock knock, who is there, it is crime – and it has come to take all of your things away from you and use them to buy other, different things. So it goes. In this week’s video review, Tom takes a look at the ‘very large detective’ simulator MicroMacro: Crime City. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it somewhere in-between?! Hopefully this video review will do the detective work for you! Expect ‘at least one joke’, some seriously dry b-roll, and one rare instance of good timekeeping.
“It’s time to GUSH… about your CRUSH!” It’s challenging to imagine a more nauseating line of marketing copy, and yet that’s exactly what Dream Crush expects you to do. I won’t stand for it. Wait, Quinns thinks this game is good? He thinks this game is good? He thinks this game is good? I’m uncertain about all of this, but I’m going to press play all the same.
Oats! The latest, biggest, four-letter-iest board game from Leder Games! It is not to be confused, mind, with Oath. That game SUCKS. In this week’s review, Tom is spending a sweet half of an hour talking you through the ins and outs of this year’s most anticipated, most perplexing title. How good is it? Short answer: very – but click play for a whole bundle of words that are slightly more nuanced than that…
Another much-requested video lands on the site this week – it’s Prophecy of Kings! But can the excitement of this massive box pry Matt away from the beloved, basic version of Twilight Imperium? Only time will tell! Approximately 20 minutes of your time, if you’ve got it.
The person who actually received the review copy for Railroad Ink: Deluxe Edition (Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green, Railroad Ink Challenge: Shining Yellow and all the dice expansions) was Quinns. I (Tom) had to persuade Mr Quintin to relinquish his grasp on the box because, of course, I was the bigger, better fan of Railroad Ink – I play it on my own, for goodness sake. Little did I know that the box was a Monkey’s Paw. Little did I know that within a few short months, I would be rattling on about ‘The Rainbow Die’, ‘The Eldritch Expansion’ and drawing up the tier list from (and starring) hell. The words and behaviour of the utterly deranged. Enjoy!
Matt stumbles into outer space, providing you with an exclusive tour of Dune: The Dessert Planet.
This month Quinns was afraid to restart his regular board game nights until he’d been double-vaccinated, so not for the first time this year, he broke out a solo game. Hostage Negotiator by Van Ryder Games. And OH BABY! What a FIND! The base games of Hostage Negotiator and Hostage Negotiator: Crime Wave are plenty of fun, but it’s Hostage Negotiator: Career that inspired this video. Have you ever wanted to star in your own questionable series of airport novels? Then this is the game for you.
Badabing Badacrew! It’s a review of The Crew, 1 and 2! In this video, Tom spends far too long burying the lede before chomping down on what makes The Crew: The Quest For Planet Nine and The Crew: Mission Deep Sea some of the best card games on the market, and maybe even some of the best co-op games of all time. Have fun and stay safe, in the sea and in space!
Everybody in the club gettin’ fuzzled! This week Matt investigates, The Fuzzies, the reality-defying tower of balls that’s surprisingly… relaxing?
Go on then, what’s yer favourite card? I’m partial to a 4 of diamonds myself – but I’m also partial to the hundreds of individual cards featured in this very video. That’s right, we’re once again counting down the very best that cards have to offer right now, covering a dizzying array of games big and small! In this video, you can catch Tom and Quinns reviewing The Crew again, creating a Fantasy Realm in Fantasy Realms, moseying over to a monarch in Royal Visit, and enjoying what sounds like a big french dessert in Oriflamme. We also make time to talk about the crown prince of cards; Regicide – as well as dipping our critical toes into a bunch of different boxes in a not-quite-review-roundup. It’s a big one, and you’re invited!
Quinns and Paolo Mori / Sittin’ in a tree / E-N-J-O-Y-I-N-G-D-E-SI-G-N The man behind Libertalia, Dogs of War, Ethnos and one of the most well-received Pandemic spinoffs is back again with two new releases. Blitzkrieg! and Caesar! are both fabulously quick games, and to do their speediness justice we’ve reviewed them both at the same time. What will we think of next?
The choice of a green morphsuit was a mistake, I know. I’ve thought about this many times during the editing process, and ‘tight green’ is certainly not the look for me. The game however? It’s… probably not for me either. But that’s okay! Let me explain… Today on the site, feast your eyes on a video review of The Adventures of Robin Hood – another review that you have my family to thank for – who swarmed around this box like wasps to a jar. This isn’t a game that’ll receive the oldest-young-brewster seal of approval, but it does get it from every other size of Brewster you can think of. Enjoy!
Descent is BACK, BABY! The game that inspired Shut Up & Sit Down’s second ever episode has returned in an eye-popping new edition with a wallet-clutching pricetag. In the new Descent: Legends of the Dark, gone is the opportunity to play a callous and maleficent (and frequently out-gunned) dungeon master. This time around, every player at the table will control a hero, and you’ll all be steered through the campaign using an app. It’s a bracing innovation, but what will Quinns make of it? Click play, and find out.
In my head, I can’t help but call this game ‘Burger Bros’, and then have a little fantasy about a co-operative game where you play as two incredibly buff burger chefs as they blaze across a post-apocalyptic world, making absolutely ripping burgers for the survivors. I don’t know how it’d work, I just have the box art crystal-clear in my head. Anyway, here’s a review of Burgle Bros 2 – a game that actually exists, and is fantastic. Enjoy!
This week’s review was assembled so rapidly that I thought I’d burned my fingers from yanking out that hot hot SD card straight from the camera mere seconds after stopping the record. Mmmm… the smell of burned data. Speaking of hot things – Kabuto Sumo is piquing everyone’s interest now as a real corker of a dexterity game. Is it good? Is it great? Find out here in this Shut Up & Sit Down Video Review™.
CRIMES! Where do they come from? What are they made of? Scientists still don’t know, but one thing’s for sure. If you like solving crimes, Detective: City of Angels might find refuge in your board game collection. In this video review Quinns says the difference between Detective and games like Consulting Detective and Watson & Holmes is that Detective is “actually fun”. He can’t mean that, can he? Click play, and find out.
One of the hottest games of the year, Matt digs his teeth into Furnace. Just how much game have they packed into this box? Click Play, and find out!
This video is surely proof of SU&SD’s dedication to board game review technology. In the above video we’ve managed to compress no less than three reviewers and three reviews of Flatout Games’ Calico, Cascadia and Verdant. But that’s not all! You’ve heard her on the pod, you’ve partaken of her written words, but this video represents the team’s own Ava Foxfort’s very first video review. Everybody, please join me in wishing her a the warmest of SU&SD welcomes. Ava, if you’re reading this? You’re a gem. A gem we’ve socketed into our crown, and you know what? We don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about it.
Today, we’re pleased to be announcing AwSHUX Spring: a digital event that squeezes a few aspects of a physical convention into a special DIGITAL world that’s 100% free for attendees! https://awshux.show will go live on Friday April 23 at 8am PDT | 4pm GMT | 11am EDT.
More details over on the SHUX page!
This summer the site turned TEN YEARS OLD! If it was a child it would have no legal rights to speak of, but it would be, erm, tall? It might be tall. Today we’re launching our ten year anniversary donation drive and teasing a brand-new feature that we’re hoping to launch. What do you say, everybody? How does another ten years sound?
The Kickstarter for our MonsDRAWsity expansion is LIVE, featuring monsters directly from the minds of our team of highly-trained idiots. Take a look!
As the team grows and we grow alongside them, we couldn’t be more excited about 2022 – but rather than a video explaining what we’ve got planned for the year ahead, we wanted to offer up a tiny confession: we still haven’t made good on our promise from the summer! We’ve yet to nail down the specific plans and details, but we’re hoping to spend a good chunk of time this Friday streaming with some of the team on Twitch – if you fancy joining for some low-key festive silliness, we’ll see you then!???? If you can comfortably afford to support our team we massively appreciate it – it makes a huge difference. When the skeleton fruits finally fall from the tree? Be warmed by the knowledge that you helped to grow it.
Tom: NO THANKS!
This week Matt’s here to spill the beans on a Reiner Knizia bidding game, Equinox, filled with mystical creatures and oversized cards. But does this gorgeous purple box manage to cut the mustard?
Who fancies a bit of spy-vs-spy in 1980s Zanzibar? Oh, there’s just one catch: Everybody is psychic. And four characters are immortal. And one of the teams has a dolphin. And the game has 14 expansions. This is Mind MGMT, and it’s an absolutely terrific board game.
This week’s video features Matt and Tom wrestling with a co-operative campaign of cyphers and code-cracking with The Initiative. Well, it’s mostly Matt reviewing this one if we’re honest, although Tom does a stellar job of wearing a coat and behaving like an idiot. We’re starting to creep our way back out of isolation, and you’ll be seeing more two-human videos in the future! Have a lovely week.
In this week’s video review, Tom and Matt are taking a look at Ark Nova – a game rammed to the gills with elephants, stuffed with porcupines and just barely containing a kangaroo. We had a lot of fun playing the game and making the video – and I hope that energy translates well into a ‘nice experience for you; the viewer’. But listen; I know what isn’t a ‘nice experience for you; the viewer’ and it’s the noise. It was too gross not to include – and if I’ve had to listen to it basically on loop during the editing process, you can probably manage one little slurp, right?
Ava has been a key part of the Shut Up & Sit Down podcast for quite a while now, but today is the first time you’ll have seen her in HER VERY OWN VIDEO about Songbirds! Very exciting stuff, and a lovely continuation of the story arc for those of you who remember the days in which Ava was simply someone popping up in the website comments below. Give her a hearty round of applause, and stay away from any suspicious-looking birds.
Quickly, grease your horses! Laminate your betting slips! Remove the jockeys from the steam cupboard!Look, if we’re totally honest, team Shut Up & Sit Down doesn’t know the first thing about horse racing. Fortunately, you don’t have to know the first thing about it to enjoy Long Shot: The Dice Game, which is now up there with our favourite ever roll’n’writes. This game is pretty, it’s silly, and it’s embarrassingly exciting.
In this week’s video, Tom is firing you through several different games at high speed like a dolphin-shaped bullet with a penchant for perusin’. It’s a roundup! Science said it wasn’t possible, and yet here it is – four (technically six) games stuffed into one short video. We’re getting to grips with gears in Corrosion and understanding udders in Great Western Trail: 2nd Edition! We’re rooting around in the bushes for berries and beasts in Rustling Leaves! And we’re Moving Pictures, Roving… Rove… and… Death(ing) Valley(ing) with some… wacky… wallet…(w)experiences? I lost all my energy by the end there, I’m sorry. Enjoy!
Collection Tour! Take a peek at 92ish games that Tom treasures enough to place within the waxen wooden walls of his favourite piece of furniture! We’ve got games big and small, men tall and short, and mistakes big and bigger. Enjoy!
This week Matt takes a look at the chunkier expansion of The Alchemists for one of his all-time favourites – Quacks! But do these additions sweeten or sour the cauldron? Also, how many more times is he going to use that footage of him and Quinns being hit in the face with a paint cannon? Truly, NOBODY COULD KNOW. How did you folks get on with the expansions?
In this double feature, we pay homage to humanity’s oldest art form: the board game review. Also, the art of drawing something and your friends having no idea what it is. Better yet, Quinns claims that both of the games in this video – Doodle Dash and Pictomania – are better than the classic game of Pictionary. Although the question of which one you should buy is a little bit trickier.
If you’re a fan of red and blue plastics then GOSH do we have a treat for you today – Matt has a review of a – still very large – SMALLER cousin of the behemoth that is War of the Ring, The Battle of Five Armies. Can this Hobbit-based wargame tickle the same sensations as the esoteric giant we reviewed a few years ago? Are games getting bigger generally, or are our tables shrinking? How many orcs could a wood-orc orc if a wood-orc could-orc orc? None of this, and more!
Well look at that! It’s an Ava video. This cathedral of content has been in preparation for several generations now, and it’s finally here. Biblios: Quill and Parchment is a recent release from Dr Finn’s games that I was able to pick up and try at PAX Unplugged. It was the perfect excuse to talk about one of my top card games of all time, the original Biblios! So here is a double review that definitely shows no signs of me biting off more than I can chew. A whole world of monk tracks and illuminations are right there waiting for you. Except Biblios might not entirely be in print right now, sorry! There’s suggestions for games to keep you going at the end though, I promise. Also, I realised while writing this script that I can just say ‘Matt make me a trailer for an imaginary cinematic universe’ and he just HAS to do it. And because he’s Matt he’ll also put approximately ten thousand times the required effort into it. Brilliant. Even when I’m still learning the ropes, this job is love
What’s this?! Could it be? They said it couldn’t be done… Yes, today SU&SD has released none other than a ginormous video review of a role-playing game. The award-winning game of Spire casts a party of players as members of an underground resistance cell, making small acts of rebellion in a society that will almost certainly kill them. This book is imaginative, evocative and has a marvelous sense of humour… but it turns out Quinns had a bit of a problem with it, too. Enjoy, everybody.
This week Matt discovers a latent love for trains, as he stumbles onto a lightweight co-op gem! Collisions and co-ordination aplenty in Switch & Signal. What’s your favourite flavour of train?
It’s a big one! In this lengthy videofilm, Tom takes a look at the work of Project NISEI and their version of Android: Netrunner! Is it good? Is it GREAT? Does it stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the original? Find out the answers to some of these questions for the low low cost of just 32 minutes of your life. This one was a bit of beast, took me forever, and I don’t know what to do with myself now. Enjoy!
This week, Tom takes on the chips in a review of burncycle – the big-box heist-em-up from Chip Theory games! Robots, Corporations, and Stealth; ‘Oh My!’. This is a big one; with more components than a thousand-piece jigsaw (false) and more neoprene than most board games (true)! But is it… any good? Find out in this video! Right here!
This week’s video has Tom evolving into his final form: BAD WIZARD. It also features a sentient vegetable, and murders with a hammer – so there’s a chance that broadly speaking, things “started to get away from us” a little. This All-vs-1 game of Real-Time Rollin’ game Rush Out! is a treat that surprised us, and it might surprise you!
Here’s a brain-teaser for you. What do the games Imperial Steam, Space Station Phoenix, Air, Land & Sea: Spies, Lies & Supplies, Akropolis, Guild of Merchant Explorers, Wormholes and Village Rails have in common? They were all too boring for us to review on their own Why, they’re all reviewed in this video, of course! Enjoy, everybody.
It’s taken us SO LONG to make a Spirit Island video that it’s only appropriate that somebody is PUNISHED. It’s true that back in the day we covered it a bit, but it’s fair to say that this co-op classic had yet to get the love from us that it deserved. But is all well on our precious little island, or do we detect the vile tendrils of HATRED? Does someone HATE this game?? Oh my!
Root has gathered an impressive number of expansions over the years, so we sent our resident woodland expert, Tom, out to investigate. Surely this piece will feature critical rigour, copious research and an easily understandable format? What’s that? He made another Tier List? Oh dear. The Marauder Expansion The Riverfolk Expansion The Underworld Expansion The Clockwork Expansion
What’s that hiding in the undergrowth? Why it’s another Ava review! She’s been working on this so long that Living Forest has gone from under-rated gem to Kennerspiel Des Jahres, and I’m so miffed I didn’t beat the German jury to the punch. This lovely deckbuilding push your luck ecosystem has magic, woods, cute art and an appealing pricetag. Do you want to get lost in the woods with me? Don’t answer that, just watch the video.
This week on Shut Up & Sit Down, Matt is providing everyone with a public service – reviewing maybe the driest game we have received this year. An absolutely delirious mix of currency, tracks, and ‘playing cards’, Khora: Rise of an Empire seems a typical eurogame on the surface, but what lies… underneath?! Enjoy!
Well, here’s a first! The first ever Shut Up & Sit Down segment inspired by a letter from a medical doctor. Huge thanks to Chicago’s “Dr. Randall” for giving Quinns the nudge to create this video, which is a lengthy guide to getting into RPGs. Are you intimidated? Lost? Confused? We’re here to make you marginally less of all of those things.
What’s up YouTube – Thomas Boardgames has made another video! It’s about SCOUT – a card game! (with tokens!). Excuse the extremely hungover energy in this one; I was, in fact, hungover. Enjoy!
Quinns and Tom have made a huge mistake. Somehow, the two of them both unanimously decided that they were excited about the new City Series from Queen Games and decided to cover FOUR COMPLICATED GAMES in ONE VIDEO. What is the City Series, you ask? Why, it’s none other than two beloved games, one adequate game and one /new/ game, all by legendary German designer Stefan Feld. And why have they all been returned around cities? Well, as you’ll soon see, we have absolutely no idea.
This is a review of Turncoats! Is this the first presenter-less episode of Shut Up & Sit Down? Who knows? But it’s a fun little experiment and I hope you enjoy it. Turncoats is just cracking – a sumptuous little puzzle in a pouch, and one of the most gorgeous games I’ve played all year. It’s the kind of game that has people at the pub stopping by to ask about the weird little tablecloth you’re all poking, and simple enough that those people could probably come and poke it too. Enjoy!
It’s the medical special! Tom is taking a look at two odd dexterity games that have temporarily captured his heart, Rush M.D and For Science! Both involve doing things very fast, often with some jazz fusion in the background (not provided with either game) This episode also has Meat Boy. Enjoy!
Dark times await for the board game hobby. Is that because Undaunted: Stalingrad wants to transport us all to the ugliest battle of the ugliest front of one of the ugliest wars in human history? No, it’s because some of the scenario design made Quinns REAL mad and he’s going to make that ALL of our problem. It’s time for our Undaunted: Stalingrad review.
Matt: Hello! Merry Christmas slash Holidays slash December internet folks and gentle folks! Today we’ve got a little treat for you! It’s our wrap-up of Christmas gifts that you might consider buying for people in your life, of the board game variety. We’ve got a whole bunch of different categories here, and the whole team giving their recommendations of the things that they think are going to be absolutely cracking gifts. Without further ado, “games that you’ll play with a family” – maybe your family, maybe not. It’s not for us to judge.
This week’s review is a very special game indeed. Heat: Pedal to the Metal is one of those rare boxes that just sings from the moment you open it – a snappy, kinetic racing game that I am just absolutely in love with. I hope the motion of this video does a lot to sell the speed of the game, and doesn’t just make you feel violently ill. Enjoy!
Join us for SHUX’22! https://shux.show September 30 – October 2, 2022
Gosh, what a normal week we’re having! Another normal week in this wholly normal year. And what could be more normal than our bi-annual reminder that we are actually just humans with gas and electric bills! We do hope you enjoy this silly bit of video, regardless of whether or not you’re currently cushioned enough to allow you to chuck us a couple of quid. We love doing this, we love making you smile each week, and we hope that we can continue to do both for the foreseeable future. Thank you for watching, from the whole team!
Tom: “SHUX! HUH?! What does it stand for?!” We don’t really know. But we do know that it’s Canada’s biggest (and best!) board game convention. It’s happening in less than a month, and you should absolutely come along! As Matt (who is in your garden, right now) attests in the video above, SHUX is our annual board game get-together in the beautiful city of Vancouver. This year we’ve got GAMES, GUESTS, AND RIGOROUS COVID PRECAUTIONS! That last one is less exciting, but it’s certainly important – for your whole bod! We take pride in SHUX being a safe space – and not just in a covid-cautious sense – we truly do want everyone to feel as welcome as possible to sit themselves down at any table they like, and start playing some molten hot board games. We’ve got a great set of special guests running all kinds of shows, a fabulously stocked library of games, and the whole team running around trying to say hello to literally everyone. I can’t wait. Tickets are available right here, as well as ev
Tom: Happy Holidays, Humans! It’s that time of year again, where we thank you for your donations, let you know where the site is at, and rally a little more support to keep us going in the new year. This is the first time I’ve done one of these, and I wanted to speak earnestly about what I want the site to be, and what the site has been for me. I feel so much about this odd cardboard endeavor, and want to keep it in good shape in the years to come. I know we’ve had a slippery year, but I’m convinced that we can find new ways to get people into the hobby in 2023, and I’m excited. Not just for that, but to also push new features and videos that’ll complete our transition out of the ‘cursed years’ so we’re back on fighting form. It’ll be quite something, I’m sure. We need your support. And if you already support the channel – thank you so, so much. I have this job because of you, and it’s vitally important to me that I make a bountiful return on that investment of not just finances, but
It’s the first video of the year, and Tom is blowing off the cobwebs with a quick ramble about Rummikub – the classic family tile-laying game that he’s been playing for years! Sorry about the crisis at the start. It happens this time of year. Enjoy!
No horses in this game, no sir. Just car. Big horse made of metal. Kind of like a cow made of metal if we’re being real. Cowless Carriage isn’t as good a name though, plus it doesn’t make any sense. I really like the name of this game, y’know? Horseless Carriage. It’s maybe my favourite name of any tabletop game. I didn’t say that in the review because I couldn’t find a place for it, but I think it’s a true fact. Oath is pretty close behind, swiftly followed by Hey That’s My Fish. Enjoy!
After a hat trick of videos from Tom, Quinns is back with a fashionably late review of award-winning RPG Alice is Missing!
New video! Tom is talking us through a trio of word games that he’s been playing recently – NONE of which would fit the traditional definition of ‘board game’! What a freakish new twist for the channel. Hope you enjoy!
In this CHUNKY video review, Tom and Quinns are appraising ten (ten!) unique small-box games and telling YOU where the gems are at. All of these games are fabulous, we had a blast playing them, and we hope you enjoy this frankly rather silly little video. Spots For Sale Yokai Septet Hungry Monkey Twilight Inscription Worldbreakers: Advent of the Khanate Voyages & Aquamarine Trek 12 Trailblazers For The Queen
It’s longer and colder than an arctic vacation, but we’re proud to finally release into the wilds our gigantic video review of Frosthaven: can the world’s biggest game get bigger AND better? How much blue cardboard is too much blue? What’s the best way to climb a slippery mountain? Find the answers to some of these questions in today’s hot hot bit of internet media.
Oh my goodness, Tom played Dota 2 again and now he can’t stop. In this hot hot episode of the Shut Up & Sit Down Boardgame Video Review Show, Tom and Matt took a big dip into Guards of Atlantis II – the much hyped MOBA-‘Em-Up for your tabletop! What a fascinating, strange game! You can find all of our relevant opinions on it… right here! Enjoy!
This week on the show, we’ve got something a little different! In this short ramble, Ava’s going to tell you all about Hamlet – a game about wonky villages and the strange incentives that build them. Although, she’s not really going to tell you all about Hamlet – this is not a review! Instead, we’re testing the waters on something of a new format – the pilot of ‘Ava Thinks Too Much About…’ where we’ll take a short journey through whatever topic is bouncing around her brain. Enjoy!
Beast is an electric and unusual hidden movement game that we just loved playing. That’s it! That’s all you need to know! Enjoy!
Matt continues his decade-long love-letter to War of the Ring – the game he hated, then loved, and still doesn’t own a copy of. It’s a chunky box for something that maybe only gets brought out twice in a decade? But oho! What is THIS? Can this retooled cards-only version of the strategy epic serve as a decent replacement? Can CARDS ALONE do justice? Maybe one simply CAN wander into Mordor, for a laugh? Just for the fun of it? Some of this and MORE, in today’s Lord of the Rings extravaganazaza, War of the Ring: The Card Game.
Iki! Today on the show, Tom (and a tiny, tiny bit of Matt) are taking a look at a 2015 competitive shopping game where you compete to be the best merchant in all of “one particular street in Japan”. Is it good? How’s the expansion? Find out right here!
ELEPHUN-TIMES AHOY! This week’s video is about Stomp The Plank, a dexterity game that’s arguably for children but has stolen our hearts regardless. Mixing horrible push-your-luck mechanics with a truly adorable selection of plastic elephant pirate-things, this magnetic wonder is a delight for all ages and an easy recommendation. ENJ(AH)OY!
It’s My Gold Mine! It’s quite good. It’s fifteen pounds. It’s a game and this week on the show, we are reviewing it
LACUNA! Another hot tube to add to your collection of hot tubes! This delightful game might be the ultimate choice to put on your coffee table. Or maybe even prop your coffee table up, if you buy four? Although we really wouldn’t recommend it. A pensive puzzler for two players, check it out!
Golem is a eurogame! More than that; it’s the eurogame – something of a symbol for how Tom’s feeling these days. Is it good? Does it tackle its subject matter well? Does it shunt something else from the collection? Find out in just 12 of your remaining minutes…
Tom is taking a look at Five Three Five this week – a charming little imported game that’s got a lovely bit of shine hidden underneath its meteorological exterior. Similar in nature to recent world-dominating favourite SCOUT – has this slim little box got what it takes to dethrone the king? Have a little watch… to find out…
In her debut review, new hire Emily has rounded up FIVE of the best solo-gaming experiences you can have RIGHT NOW. Grove – a petite 9 card puzzle to grow the most citrus, Resist! – a highly thematic hand-management game of Spanish resistance, Next Station: London – a flip-and-write of messy railway network construction, and For Northwood! – a lovely little trick-taker where making friends has never felt so helpless. She even finds time to squeak in a review of Dorfromantik: the board game – a peaceful campaign tile layer about building your own sweet little village. So many games for a debut! How will Emily handle the pressure?? Remarkably well, actually – she’s put us all to shame. Enjoy!
It’s the beans game – and a review that’s something of a cursed chalice for team SU&SD – a filming session where seemingly everything went wrong based on half a script excavated from a Google Drive. Bohnanza (and Bohnanza:25th) is a game near and dear to Tom’s heart, and hopefully this fully unhinged first half and ponderous second makes for a compelling case as to why this horrible yellow box deserves a spot in your collection.
This week on the show, Tom and Quinns take on the first in a double-bill of Reiner Knizia classics reprinted by modern publishers! It’s Amun-Re this time – the 2003 Nile-Em’-Up that features “Pyramids”, “Points”, and “Peculiarly Long Acrostic Poems”! The boys also take a minute to talk about the expansions provided by Alley Cat Games in this new 20th Anniversary Edition, as well casting their critical eye over the recent 25th Century Games reprint of Ra. It’s a good one! Enjoy!
Review time! Matt is UNWELL and enters a fever-dream realm, loosely tackling a review of EARTH aka SOIL aka MUDTIMES FOR FUN.
Emily’s SECOND video is a review of Bamboo – the game that asks: ‘Can you make your family happy, with but a rock to your name’?
This week we review everyone’s fave local space-orb: MOON. But what is the moon? What does it taste like? Is it better with two or three players? Can a Clanger ever truly know love? None of this and more in today’s vid.
Tom and Quinns are BACK with the second part of their double-bill of Reiner Knizia reprints! This week, Bitewing’s re-imagining of Quo Vadis, Zoo Vadis, is up for questioning by our daring duo. Is this the absolute belter of a box it’s cracked up to be? Will the site finally agree on a negotiation game?! And, most importantly, should you buy this… or a game from 1992…
This week, Emily gets in the spooky spirit with her review of Phantom Ink. Does this ghostly game of word communication have what it takes to be your next favourite party game? Let’s find out!
Matt: Hello! My name is Matt from Shut Up & Sit Down, and maybe you want to play a game with your family in the not too distant future. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Today we’re going to go through a bunch of games, most of which are available almost all of the time, because we appreciate it’s a pain in the *** when we say “hey, we love these games” and then you go on the internet and they’ve all gone. Not only that, we are going to be giving you two options for each of our suggestions – we’re going to go with like “Yes! This is a great suggestion, everyone will love this. You cannot go wrong.” And we’re also going to give you a side suggestion for each game that’s a dash more spicy! And what do we mean by that? The second options will be the sort of thing where you start playing with your dad and then halfway through he says “I don’t understand the rules. I don’t like this. I want to go home.” “Dad, you can’t go home. This is your home. We’ve talked about this. And secondly,
Hello and welcome to The Shut Up & Sit Down 2023 Gift Guide Extravaganza-wham-o-palooza-video! We have got an entire pile of games for you, in a variety of different categories.
Holy moly, it’s the big one. In this nearly 50 minute monster, Tom is taking a thorough dive into John Company: Second Edition – a frightfully expansive game with lofty ambitions in both its mechanics and themes. Touching on some truly horrifying, very real history; this game pushes the limits of what can be comfortably represented on your kitchen table. For this reason, we’ve pulled out all the stops to comprehensively cover this beast of a box. Thank you to so many folks for helping this review come together. My friends who came with me to film at Powis, Matt for his extensive colour-grading work (doesn’t it look lush!), HotCyder for help on these absolutely cracking thumbnails, and the countless people who watched, rewatched, and gave advice on how to put this video together. Thank you also to Cole and Drew, for making such a fascinating and complete work of art that created such complex feelings in most everyone I played it with. This video has given me a huge amount of professio
Today’s video is a sequel! Quinns’ Crokinole review just hit 1 million views, which is twice as many people as live in the whole of Canada. In honour of those Canadians (or possibly disrespecting them?), we set out to answer a question: Is there another expensive wooden game out there that’s just as good? Carrom: $$$ // $$ Sling PitchCar Tumblin’ Dice Flick ‘Em Up Enjoy, everybody.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK3ROyjJdUQ
From the bottom of all of our hearts, thank you.
Welcome to 2024! We’re kicking off the year with a bit of a dreary video on a much-hyped legacy game that’s left Tom a little cold. Fitting for January, eh? Ticket to Ride: Legends of the West sure plays it safe, in a move that’s perhaps a little disappointing.
It’s finally here! After an embarrassing wait, we’re embarking on a ridiculous journey to meticulously document the 100 best board games of all time! This project involved us creating an entirely new workflow, a whole studio setup, and, of course, the most glorious prop ever seen on Shut Up & Sit Down. It’s quite something. Thank you so much for sticking around as we got this thing cooking. We’re so excited to expand the format, tweaking and changing as we go! We’re aware there’s a few technical scuffs on this one – but nothing that we can’t smooth out over a series of ever more silly episodes. Agricola, though, what a game! And what a fantastic way to start this series. We really hope you enjoy!
A BIG AND RICH video for you folks this week – a labour of love for a game that frankly blew us away. Earthborne Rangers might look familiar, but it is WEIRD. Cooperative adventure fans take note – this one is unmissable.
Sometimes, we get things wrong. Well, Tom does. In this absolutely massive video, Tom and Matt dive into the design of Dune: Imperium – and how it’s grown and evolved since we last covered it in 2021. We also review the latest (and perhaps greatest) version of the game to date; Dune: Imperium – Uprising.
Our adventure through the Top 100 Board Games of All Time continues, with The Quest for El Dorado! And unfortunately, these boys have been CURSED. Due to technical errors part of this video had to be re-recorded (technically, we didn’t record it). Also, the audio in certain sections is a little bit rough and weird – we did our best to recover what we could, and in the future we won’t get cursed by a board game.
In previous years, debate has raged over what size games should be. Quinns advocated for ‘too big, or too small’. Everyone else argued normal things. Today, though? The perfect size of game is the one that fits that little gap. That one, right there. You know the one. We’ve found the perfect solution to your problem. Why don’t you go ahead and shove it full of Spectral? Absolutely cram it with Sky Team? Fill it with Ito and Dro Polter and Big Top until the shelves creak and split. There. Perfect.
We’re back with yet another episode of Shut Up & Sit Down’s very own self-imposed sisyphean task: The Top 100! This time, Tom and Matt are chatting about Galaxy Trucker, gimmick games, and ‘having a bad time in space’. It’s been too long since we’ve sat down to this game, and we had a great time – so great, in fact, that we’ll likely make our very daft playthrough available to donors in the near future.
Slay the Spire has long been one of Shut Up & Sit Down’s very favourite deckbuilders, so we were immediately intrigued by its new cardboard iteration – Slay The Spire: The Board Game. Will it work? Will it be fun? Will it be as good as the video game? Tom’s got the answers. Well, he’s got his answers.
This week Matt is back to doing whatever it is that Matt seems to do best? Thunder Road: Vendetta is one of the more recent releases from Restoration Games, and we were honestly surprised by how much we liked it – packing chunky silly fun into a slim and lovely box, and with game design that actually makes the most out of its plastic components. Strap in, nitro up, and be aware that Matt won’t be partially naked for more than the first few seconds of the video. It’s an ancient SU&SD tradition, OK?
RA RA RASPUTIN, LOVER OF THE RUSSIAN QUEEN! This week’s video hopefully won’t feature *any* witchcraft from oversized gentlemen, as we’re returning for a look at the auction classic RA. It’s the only auction game that Matt likes – but where will it land on the Top 100 board?
Tom’s dipped his toes into the 18XX genre with Shikoku 1889 – a game about doing trains, making money, and… soft roleplaying? We tried a new approach with this one – a more quick and silly look at something that we might not usually play, and hopefully? It paid… dividends…
Arcs is really something special, and I hope this chunky ol’ review reflects that. This video is the first in a two-part review of Leder’s freak spin on the “Space Game” genre, and despite the extravagant length of this video, its conclusions are very simple; this kind of game is a rarity, and should be cherished. Rarely does something manage to be so boldly innovative as well as so sharply considered – a risky gambit of a game that pays off beautifully.
Arcs is really something special, and I hope this chunky ol’ review reflects that. This video is the first in a two-part review of Leder’s freak spin on the “Space Game” genre, and despite the extravagant length of this video, its conclusions are very simple; this kind of game is a rarity, and should be cherished. Rarely does something manage to be so boldly innovative as well as so sharply considered – a risky gambit of a game that pays off beautifully.
Sometimes a great game knocks us off our feet and has us scrambling to immediately script & film a video – other times it’s a slow burn, with our love for a box growing a little more slowly! Forest Shuffle is a game that we just kept coming back to, and it’s about time we gave it the time – and the spotlight – it deserves!
Last year Quinns gave a 40 minute talk at UK video game festival GameCity, designed to teach people about what’s happening in board games and why gamers the world over MUST get involved. Hear Quinns’ caramel baritone as he provides evidence of why board game sales are rocketing up, three deadly arguments for why video gamers need to be playing board games, and even some jokes. Yes, JOKES.
And with that donation video, Shut Up & Sit Down is closing its doors for the winter break. We’d like to offer a gigantic, Christmassy “Thank you!” to everyone who watched, supported and shared our content in 2019. But since we can’t do that, we’re going to settle down with our families to eat 9999 brussel sprouts.
Are you interested in coming to the fourth Shut Up & Sit Down convention this October? Because tickets are now on sale on the official event page! If you’re one of our amazing attendees from previous years, you’ll know what to expect- a world-class buffet of published and experimental games, plenty of goofy stage shows, and all sorts of opportunities to make new friends.
Hello all! It probably goes without saying, but we just wanted to let you know that the work we do might be a little disrupted or different in the coming months. Thanks for your patience, and we hope you enjoy!
