"megagame" - Shut Up & Sit Down

Announcing: The Shirt my Feelings contest winners!

Paul: Phew, the votes are in! First of all, let me extend our enormous thanks to all of you for taking the time to fill out our polls and to vote for your favourite designs.

The three winners pulled away from the pack with a full quarter of the votes all to themselves, but with over 10,000 votes cast on Facebook, Twitter and Disqus, there was a lot of love for all the designs and it was a tight race. What’s more, the five that came in from fifth to eighth place had a difference of just forty votes between them. At times, it was a tight contest where every vote counted. Are you ready for the final result?

Quinns: Hi everybody. This week we’re asking for new Shut Up & Sit Down donations for 2016. I’ll keep this brief in case you have an important job, like mending street lights or selling ice cream. If you’d like more details, you’ll find them all after the cut.

Shut Up & Sit Down is kept alive through donations

Have you noticed that SU&SD has no adverts? There’s more – unlike many commercial board game review sites, Shut Up & Sit Down doesn’t accept money from publishers or designers in exchange for content (though we still get emailed about it every week). Instead, this site is kept running by our Gold Club members, the fans of SU&SD who pay for it to keep running.

This week, we’re asking you to sign up!

“Why now?” A better question is why it’s been so long! Our last donation drive was actually in 2014(!), but we wanted to make good on our promises before we asked for money again. Now Quinns has fallen in a canal and we’ve launched the new site, we’re ready to plan the next leg of our trip up Mt. Nonsense.

Fabulous rewards on offer for donors!

98% of your money is going right back into this site, BUT ALSO anyone who donates or signs up for a subscription in a given month will receive our new, monthly behind-the-scenes newsletter, explaining what we’re working on, what games we’re planning on recommending and mystery extra bits.

The first edition of this newsletter will be sent out on May 31st.

More info on donating awaits, after the jump!

Quinns: It’s that time again! With a magnanimous gesture to the orchestra pit and deep bow to our incredible Gold Club members sat in the balconies, SU&SD exits stage left, pursued by a pear.

If you enjoyed literally anything we did this year, don’t thank us. Thank the people who support SU&SD’s ad-free status with donations and make our work possible. Or better yet, join the Gold Club yourself with that big button on the right! Every dollar makes a difference, and guarantees a uniquely British encounter if you meet us at a convention as we thank you profusely without managing any eye contact.

Following in the tradition of 2014’s roundup, after the jump you can enjoy a look back on the best, brightest and silliest work we did this year. Also, a tease of what to look forward to in 2016!

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.

NOTE: If you’re worried about spoilers, probably don’t read the comments first.

STOP! This is the police. You’re under arrest for being in possession of 27th Shut up & Sit Down podcast. I’m afraid it’s very illegal indeed. First there was that scaremongering at the beginning about ghosts in Mysterium. Then they openly discussed how they were underqualified for their work as politicians in the recent Megagame, … Read more

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! And when you’re done, go and watch part 2 right here.

Quinns: HELLO everybody! I’m back from running the board game lounge of San Francisco’s Game Developer’s Conference and am now 90% tacos and 10% flu germs. I think my skeleton was confiscated by customs on the way home.

We’ll get to the news in a second, I just have to tell you what we’ve got coming in the next two weeks, because I couldn’t be more excited.

Just to start, we’re playing the biggest UK Megagame EVER this weekend, controlling Japan in a game with no less than 47 game masters. We’ll be bringing that to you guys as a two-part documentary. Paul’s back in the UK this weekend to play it so we’ll be recording two (TWO) podcasts. Then we’ve got reviews of Mysterium, Star Wars: Armada, Imperial Assault and Alchemists all lined up.

My goodness. But let’s start, as always, with the humble Games News.

Quinns: And so, like the sun disappearing over the horizon or a Christmas pudding slipping down your uncle’s gullet, Shut Up & Sit Down enters it’s holiday hibernation. I’ll abandon the Christmas pudding analogy when I say that we’ll be returning to the world on January 5th. Eat some fibre, Uncle.

It’s been a fantastic year, thanks entirely to the donors who’ve allowed us not just to survive, but grow and plan for the future. Don’t just take my word for it. Behold! A list of the content in 2014 that we’re proudest of, some of which may have slipped you by.

Quinns: Morning everybody! Can you feel it? Halloween has officially begun. Yesterday Paul and I recorded a spooky podcast announcing the game we’ll review at the end of the month, and in the evening I went to see long-running London play Ghost Stories. Which, if you’ve got a free evening in our city and felt like peeing yourself a little bit, I can’t recommend highly enough.

So naturally we begin our news with forthcoming board game Planes! Scariest of all the modes of transport. Imagine opening your bedroom curtains at night and seeing a plane right there, staring in at you! It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Quinns: Hold onto your unmentionables! Fantasy Flight have apparently decided they had too much to announce at Gen Con later this week, and have revealed a couple of massive new games early. Very wise of them. The SU&SD supercomputer warns us that a press conference of sufficient magnitude might just reduce Indianapolis to a smouldering, game-shaped crater.

Appearing one miserable month after our glowing re-review of the X-Wing Miniatures Game, Star Wars: Armada will offer some strikingly similar 2 player space battles, but EMBIGGENED. The profoundly personal pilot management of X-Wing replaced with cumbersome capital ships and whole, abstracted squads of fighter craft.

Announcing: The Shirt my Feelings contest winners!

Announcing our 2016 donation drive! It’s Golden Week

…And That’s it for 2015!

SU&SD Play… Watch the Skies 2 (Pt. 2)

Podcast #27: Japanese Ghost Welfare

SU&SD Play… Watch the Skies 2 (Pt. 1)

Games News! 16/03/15

…And that’s it for 2014!

Games News! 13/10/14

Games News! 11/08/14

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