Shut Up & Sit Down

Games News! 02/06/14

playing the cabbage, playing the dragon, sordid loops, unwelcome guests

Quinns: Morning, everyone! How’s your day going? Stuck at work? At least you don’t have a contract killer walking around with your personal details. Today is the first day of my Street Wars game, a four week, one-hit kill watergun fight. You can track our game here. Oh god, somebody’s already died. This is just like the Hunger Games. Except I’m only hungry because I’m too scared to go to the shops.

Gloom, seen above, is another popular game of pitiful situations, and this week we learned a 2nd edition is on the way. Unusually for a game about being trapped down wells and murdered by squids, the new edition will be a fairly undramatic thing. The best part is that Gloom’s three out-of-print expansions – Unwelcome Guests, Unhappy Homes and Unfortunate Expeditions – are all being reprinted! And we’ll get a host of “minor improvements to gameplay and card design”, but all still be compatible with your existing Gloom cards.

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The Opener: Takenoko and a Hot Toddy

you're all a panda, frightful charm, keep calm and do a thing ahhahahaah

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.

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Podcast #17: The Megacast

Hopefully by now you’ve all enjoyed the majestic clusterbump that is our video report of Watch the Skies. This was a “Megagame” that featured dozens of players posing as world leaders, scientists and dastardly aliens, in something like a model U.N. turned up to 11 until the tables start exploding. While videos of Matt accidentally … Read more

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Games News! 26/05/14

still more octopus, most noble murder, the colour milk, the secret of spiel des jahres

Quinns: Hello! Or as they say in Germany, das hallo! It’s a special Mostly-German edition of the games news today, because a lot of our news is from Germany and I am very creative.

Uwe Rosenberg, designer behind such pastoral heavyweights as Agricola, Le Havre and Caverna has revealed his next project! What bold new setting are we getting this time, Uwe? What magical new mechanics have you birthed from the recesses of your labyrinthine mind?

“In the worker placement game Arler Erde, set in the German region of East Frisia, players develop an estate and expand their territory by cutting peat and building dikes.”

Ah. More of the same, then. That’s a shame! In the very same week, similarly prolific German mentat Stefan Feld has announced that his next game is about scientists that hang out with octopuses and crystals at the bottom of the ocean. Is “Team Feld” a thing? We should make it a thing. SU&SD hereby announces it is TEAM FELD!

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SU&SD Play… A Goddamn Megagame

anger, passion, drama, I can't believe you don't have your foreign minister's number

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).

We’re hugely proud of this one. Enjoy, everybody. And our overwhelming thanks to the association of Megagamers to hosting us for the day.

(Donor note! This is the first of our super-videos, promised in the stretch goals of our first donation season. We know some of you wanted videos in the old SU&SD style. Don’t worry! We’ve got those coming too. 😀 — Team SU&SD)

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Donations have been re-opened!

secret things, limited stuff, a sense of well-being, our rarest jokes

An astonishing thing has happened! We’ve again succeeded at dispatching literally thousands of Gold Club packs around the world, full of limited edition jokes, swag, downloads and behind-the-scenes tidbits. If you’ve not received yours yet, you will soon.

If you feel like supporting the work we do and getting some swag mailed to your doorstep, donations are now open for next season, which will close June 30th! That’s last season’s bag you can see up there. Doesn’t it look nice? Go on. Treat yourself, and help us spread the good word about board gaming!

ALSO, we’ve a question for you. Quinns, Paul, Matt, Mike and Brendan will be attending Gen Con ’14 in America’s fashionable state of Indiana. To help cover the flights we’re considering selling a very limited number of seats at a sit-down dinner with us at the convention, as well as an intimate gaming session. If you’re breathtakingly wealthy and this excites you, please say so using the forms stuck right there in the pledge levels.

Thanks again, everybody.

— Team SU&SD

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Review: Babel

happy hittites, persian power, paul has assyrians coming out of his assyria

Matt Lees: Paul, do you like temples?

Paul Dean: I don’t really know much about temples and I don’t come across them much in Lewisham. The last templeish thing I saw was the Grand Lodge of the Freemasons in San Francisco. It had some pretty unusual sculptures outside and I was too scared to go in, so I took some photos really quickly and then scurried off.

Matt: How many points do you think it was worth?

Paul: Pardon?

Matt: How many points? How many levels was it? Are they winning?

Paul: Oh I get it, this is a Babel review.

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Games News! 19/05/14

quinn's soul, your dead uncle's treasure, the most baller of spaceships

Quinns: This week’s news is brought to you by Poolside.fm, whose smooth jams have had my soul vibrating like a sex toy since I got up. Try not to watch the accompanying video feed, though. Not because it’s bad, but because it will kneecap your productivity.

Hmm. I wanted to start with our smoothest story, but when you’re writing about board games that’s like trying to pick the straightest banana from the bunch. Let’s go with Board Game Geek’s preview (almost a review, really) of upcoming game Istanbul, seen above. A game of making money and being a boss under a sweltering sun.

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Review: Lewis & Clark

lewis & clark, Lickety Bojang & Halibut, cwoissants, happycopters

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.

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Eurogamer Review: Cosmic Encounter

chapped bellies, greasy species, bent noses, breaking your galaxy's back

Depending on the weather, what we’ve had for breakfast and whether Quinns has won a game of it recently, Cosmic Encounter will sometimes be SU&SD’s official favourite game. We’ve reviewed it before, chatted about it endlessly and played it even more than that. So of course now it’s back in stock Quinns had to spread the love to the mighty Eurogamer, who published his review this morning.

It starts well:

“I want you to imagine poker. It’s not untrue to call poker a perfect game. It’s also not untrue to call it occasionally boring and exhausting, and to disapprove of its chapped mathematical underbelly.

“Now, imagine if poker was made for gamers. Imagine if it was wildly inventive, with a mean streak and a wicked sense of humour. Best of all, imagine if it was a different, surprising game every single time you sat down to play. Or don’t imagine, and pay £40 for this set of linen-finished cards, plastic UFOs that stack like poker chips and gorgeously illustrated aliens. Odds are, you’ll be very glad you did.”

…But then quickly descends into him getting overexcited and just listing aliens. Do you have your copy yet, readers?

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