Shut Up & Sit Down

Spoiler-Free Review – Pandemic Legacy: Season 2

is it still "cosplay" if it's this bad, leaving numbers behind, rose-tinted goggles

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.

Review – Star Wars: Rebellion: Rise of the Empire

quinns' toothy heart, a sad birthday, 8 more complexity

Quinns: Matt, are you ready to review the Rise of the Empire expansion for Star Wars™: Rebellion? To bring everyone up to speed, Rebellion is a grand 2-4 player game set in the Star Wars universe. I reviewed it and said it was fun, but I couldn’t quite recommend it. The review did have a really nice hologram effect, though. You should check it out.

What does the expansion add? Well, let me just quote the press materials: “Rise of the Empire isn’t just inspired by Rogue One; it follows the movie’s example, adding new depth and story to the Rebellion game experience just as seamlessly as Rogue One provided new insight into the Galactic Civil War presented in the original Star Wars trilogy.”

Matt: I just did a big vomit out of a window. In Real-World Terms™ it’s an expansion that adds quite a bunch of stuff: new leader characters, new cards, a whole new combat system, more unit types and plastic figures, and a brand new planet: EWOK-HOTH, HOME OF THE CHILLYBEARS.

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Games News! 30/10/17

sweet sweet kluntje, eclipsing eclipse, they make games on computers now?

Paul: This week’s Games News speeds toward us with all the speed and power of a hovercraft. You know why a hovercraft is the most powerful of vehicles? Because it can cross both land AND water. Like a frog. But much bigger. A giant frog. Once again HUMANITY TRUMPS NATURE.

Quinns: OK, first off, a hovercraft is just a poor man’s ekranoplan. But speaking of plans, can we talk a bit about Vital Lacerda’s Escape Plan, which has been confirmed as a 2018 release?

Paul: Ooh, ok! Heist games have been doing rather well at Shut Up & Sit Down this year (we’ve all become big fans of Burgle Bros and Blades in the Dark), so it’s easy to see why you’d be so excited about Lacerda’s latest, which is all about a team of bank robbers trying to get out of town. What’s the best way to get out of town? Put the police on someone else’s tail.

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Podcast #66: The Post-SHUX Yingisode

pip can't wink, quinns can't identify clipart, matt can't go to the edge of darkness

Our 66th ever podcast has been removed, hot & crispy, from the aging oven of our minds! In this instalment Matt, Paul and Quinns try and unpick all of the games they played at SHUX 2017. That means chat about Shifty Eyed Spies, Bargain Quest, Hanamikoji, Edge of Darkness, Space Base, When I Dream and Quinns getting a bit aggressive about Meeple Circus (again). We also preview the upcoming expansions for Inis and Lords of Vegas, which we had literally no idea were going to be playable at our own event. Finally, we can’t resist closing the podcast with a tease of the gigantic reviews we’re all working on right now. Quinns is playing Pandemic Legacy: Season 2, Matt’s enjoying Gloomhaven, and Paul’s about to crack open his copy of Charterstone. It’s going to be a fun end to the year, everybody!

Games News! 23/10/17

luke's skywalker, beware the squirrel, puddle pastries

Paul: Matt! Welcome to the Games News Office! I can’t believe it’s your first time here!

Matt: Paul, this is just a bin with a laptop and-

Paul: Uh, what’s that? You’re also excited about the Pandemic Legacy Season 2 trailer? And it’s official release date being so near?

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Meeple Circus with NoPunIncluded and Actualol

what's the point of elephants, genuine fury, goat on a plank

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.

But do go and poke around! Both channels do great stuff, and it’s worth noting that just last month Actualol popped onto Patreon. Finally, special apologies to Efka – Matt got a bit too involved in the game and literally wasn’t a proficient cameraman. Everyone else: enjoy!

Review: Flipships

Hoth on highballs, subtle seasoning, flicked to the full

(This review contains gifs. Viewing it on a mobile device may use a lot of roaming data. If your usage is metered, consider reading this at home!)

Paul: The aliens are coming. Aggressively advancing, ever encroaching, nothing seems to stop their dreadful descent. The sunlight shines off their silver spacecraft as they pierce the heavens and prepare to bring down so much death and destruction onto the city below.

You and your friends are all that stand in their way. Together, you will use a small flight of fighters and the most precise cardboard-flipping skills the galaxy has ever seen to win the hour. You will flip them round the moons. You will flip them in low orbit. You will flip them in the atmosphere. You will never surrender.

Or you’ll flick a state-of-the-art starfighter straight across the room and lose it behind the sofa. Who’s to say?

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Games News! 16/10/17

earnestly inflating, Gene Squeakmons, I’m not lion to you

Paul: Phew! What a week it’s been, eh? Did you catch those sports? The local news about the animal that did the thing? Gee whiz! Or the town gossip about Ol’ Uncle Bobbins and his brand new motor-car? Life sure moves fast these days!

Me? Oh, I don’t have much to share. Just this lil wee board game called Cosmogenesis, where you get to be a star.

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The best games of SHUX 2017!

Pavlovian puppies, sightless stooge, sumptuously silly smorgasbord of stuff

Paul: It feels so very, very strange to be doing this. We’re always writing post-con roundups, flying home and tapping out our thoughts on the best new games we tried, but to do that after our own con? It feels a little peculiar, like the first time a doctor shone a light into my ear. But that’s a proper, sensible thing that doctors do, right? It’s not just for giggles?

Matt: At the time, it was straight-up stressful! We hadn’t accounted for the fact that people might be showing off things we really wanted to look at, so we frantically juggled schedules to try and check stuff out. There was still so much we missed, but we caught some REAL GOOD BITS.

Paul: For a start, Matagot only went and rolled up with an Inis expansion that they just casually announced IS A THING THAT EXISTS?

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Normal Service Will Be Resumed Shortly!

phew, sheesh, oh goodness, oh my, so many people clapped

Paul: Wow.

So SHUX happened. Our first ever convention collected together hundreds of wonderful people for a weekend so amazingly positive that I’m still trying to process everything. I’m sat here looking at a blank page, trying to work out how to express how it was so much more than I could even have imagined it would be. It’s not so much that I’m lost for words as I’ve almost entirely forgotten what words are.

Matt: I know what words are! They come out of a mouth and are sometimes good or bad. Normal service will resume shortly, but today we’d just like to share some words and pictures.

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(This review contains gifs. Viewing it on a mobile device may use a lot of roaming data. If your usage is metered, consider reading this at home!)

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