Games News! 30/11/15

war frittata, super boots, tywin is a good one too
Adventurer’s Kit

Paul: Hello everyone! Welcome to this exclusive tour of the Shut Up & Sit Down News Battery, where our News Hens squeeze out News Eggs for us every week. These are then rigorously inspected by our team of News Experts, so that only the very best News is served up for you in whatever form and fashion you prefer.

For example, take this delicious omelette courtesy of Fantasy Flight, who are releasing their first ever… wait a second… a trivia game? Game of Thrones: The Trivia Game seems an unusual release until you see that it’s a trivia game “of strategy” with alliances and resources and special powers.

Read More
67 Comments

Review: Porta Nigra

feathering pedals, nichole loves bricks, the world's crappest carousel

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.

And let’s have a big round of applause for our Gold Club members for letting Paul and Quinns work together again! Unlike Romans, those plane tickets don’t grow on trees.

Read More
Leave a comment

Paul’s Best Game of BGGCon2015: Above and Below

be nice to the witch, get your own bed, big pear
One Night Werewolf

Paul: I saw a curious mix of games at this year’s BGGCon, from hard euros to simple set collection games to the rising tensions of Win, Lose, Banana Legacy.† Of all the many things I saw while hiding from the baking Texas sun in the cavernous, subterranean depths of Dallas Fort Worth’s Hyatt Regency, Above and Below was my favourite. Appropriately, it was my underground adventure.

Also, it gave me a chance to try out a Pear Strategy. I went Full Pear, All Out Fruit, and didn’t do too badly for it, either. I quested, I recruited, I constructed and then I made all my money from Big Pear. Meanwhile, my friends hired adventurers, fought bandits and found the legendary Moss King. All in a day’s work.

Read More
46 Comments

Games News! 23/11/15

ancient chinese dice, yellow submarines, wooden pizzas, fascist snakes
Secret Hitler 3

Quinns: How was your weekend, everybody? I’m happy to say that more than four years since Paul and I started SU&SD, I was found myself thinking “Board games are awesome. I’m not playing enough board games. I’m going to play lots more.”

Good thing, then, that talented designers are making lots more. We kick off the news with Secret Hitler, which is bound to be one of the year’s biggest Kickstarters. This is an absolutely beautiful, heavily-playtested interpretation of Werewolf / The Resistance from a trio of designers that includes Max Temkin, co-creator of Cards Against Humanity.

As you probably know, we’re not the biggest fans of Cards Against Humanity. But Secret Hitler looks just great.

Read More
100 Comments

Review: Mafia de Cuba

bursting potatoes, cardamom seeds, hot pinks, recidivist criminal syndicates
Mafia de Cuba

“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.

Read More
Leave a comment

Games News! 16/11/15

the power of stains, the secrets of jenga, the folly of goblins
One Night Werewolf

Quinns: Hello everybody! Shut Up & Sit Down is still four sheets to the wind this week. Paul’s off to Board Game Geek Con, Matt’s recovering from Fantasy Flight’s World Championships and I’m just back from New York University’s Practice gaming summit. These are important trips! If you don’t check up on Americans they’ll be marrying cobwebs and getting stuck behind radiators before you know it.

Fun fact! At Practice I saw a talk by Leslie Scott, inventor of Jenga. Did you know that as Jenga is manufactured, they make sure the bricks are all of varying sizes and weights to make the game work better?

Ah, but you’ve been waiting so long for your Games News! Not to worry. I may have spent five hours asleep in a cold corner of LAX this morning, but I’ve fetched some black coffee and classic rock (won’t you do the same?) and I’m ready to get to work.

Read More
Leave a comment

SU&SD on the spot: Two lovely interviews from FFG’s 2015 World Championships

everyone who interviewed us was so charming and even when we were silly
SU&SD on the spot

Paul: We’re back from Minneapolis! And what a trip it was. We had a terrific time at Worlds, Fantasy Flight Games’ annual championships, watching hundreds of skilled players compete to for the title of the best of the best in games like Netrunner, Imperial Assault and X-Wing. It was also our chance to get first-hand experience with Star Wars: Rebellion, Wave 2 of Armada and the latest editions of both Runebound and Fury of Dracula.

BUT ALSO it was a chance for other people to make videos about us (for a change!) and this week we want to link you to two interviews we gave.

Read More
124 Comments

Podcast #35: Rebellion in an Airport

I'm sure you understand, sorry for blowing up kashyyyk but it had too many ys

Oh god. Sit down. The new podcast is out, and we’ve peaked. We’ll never have a lineup like this again. Last week we enjoyed exclusive access to scalding-hot 2016 Fantasy Flight epic Star Wars: Rebellion, and on this podcast we want to tell you all about the fun we had with it. But that’s not all! We also discuss our time with the wonderful new edition of Fury of Dracula, return to Star Wars: Armada and Quinns has sat down with Jeff Cannata of the DLC Podcast for a (well signposted) spoiler-ridden chat about Pandemic Legacy. That’s more amazing board games than is wholly decent. But you deserve it.

Read More
Leave a comment

Review: Star Wars Armada, Wave 2

a really angry slice of pizza, gently crushing an exposed butt, sexy fingernails
Review: Star Wars Armada, Wave 2

Paul: Quinns I am so sorry that I blew up your space ship. I know you liked that space ship and you wanted to try out that space ship as part of Armada’s Second Wave of Expansions, so I apologise for shooting it until it exploded. It was only a small space ship and it did not take much shooting before the exploding happened, so you cannot accuse me of excess.

However, I hope this won’t colour your experience or your impressions of Wave 2, even though I, a completely inexperienced Armada player, blew up your space ship. And also a lot of your TIE fighters. Obviously I didn’t do great, being new to the game and a little overwhelmed, yet I still seem to have shot a lot of things. How do you feel?

Quinns: I feel like a man who’s been waiting six months for the Imperial Raider, and then you blew it up before it had fired a shot. So much for continuing our coverage of Star Wars Armada, which started with this written review and this fun Let’s Play.

Read More
74 Comments

Impressions: Fury of Dracula 3rd Ed.

I mesmerise you, no I mesmerise you, no I punch you
Impressions: Fury of Dracula 3rd edition

Paul : I’m a doctor. I’m not the Doctor, but I have dogs and garlic and a knife and a gun, along with train tickets that take me all over Europe. That’s better than anything Colin Baker ran around with. The dogs are particularly useful because they saved me from an ambush. This was just one of all sorts of unpleasant surprises that Dracula had left in his wake, like horrid slime behind a slug, as he slipped his way across Europe. In this case, he’d left a nasty surprise in Edinburgh, one of my very favourite cities. Damn you, Dracula, for ruining such a fine town.

Quinns: Paul, are you excited about the new edition of Fury of Dracula? Fantasy Flight’s gothic hidden movement game, originally from Games Workshop back in the distant past, has been out of print for so long now that it’s almost passed into legend. Now and then, copies surface online with ridiculous three-figure price tags, but they’re as rare as hen’s teeth.

Paul: As rare as vampire fangs! Except those fangs aren’t rare any more. Dracula’s back! He’s back in style, too, with a glossier cape, a smoother style and even an improved map of Europe. I’m glad to see Dracula back because the boy done good.

Read More
143 Comments