Shut Up & Sit Down

Podcast #60: The Godfather’s Animal Champion

blood and viscera, squirrels and duct tape, fun and malaria

You told us the three games that you were most excited about at the UK Games Expo, and we listened. Now it’s time for you to listen as Matt, Pip and Quinns discuss their early impressions of all three: The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire, First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet and Barenpark. But that’s not all! Straining the very limits of what can be squeezed into 60 minutes of chat such that this podcast threatens to split open like an overstuffed sausage, you’ll also find discussions of Catch the Moon and Costa Rica, as well as the world’s first “actual play” of The Champion of the Wild. If you too would like to joust on the back of a kangaroo or nudge an otter up Mt. Everest, that game will be coming to Kickstarter later this year. Sorry about the imperfect audio quality on this one! By way of apology, we’re uploading our 61st podcast in just a few hours. It’s an audiostravaganza!

Miniatures Game Review: Bushido

mount your turtles, biting risks, bloated samurai, tasty details

Eric: I’m standing here, what feels like a katana in my chest, the bodies of my soldiers piled around me. I’m standing here defeated and absolutely delighted, a big grin on my face, trying to figure out what it’s doing there.

That was the end of my second play of Bushido by GCT Games – the actual impaling being only metaphorical, if you’re the queasy sort, but the defeat and delight being real. From my first encounter, what intrigued me about Bushido was that I found it immensely pleasurable even when I lost horribly. Let me try to explain why.

If the name and picture don’t make it apparent, Bushido is a tabletop skirmish game set in a world inspired by Japanese folklore, or at least a western, Tolkein-filtered riff on Japanese folklore. Elves and Dwarves are replaced by Tengu and Oni, the heroes include snake-people and warrior pandas, and the outfits look like the result of a raid on a Kurosawa film’s prop closet. All in the best possible way.

93 Comments

Games News! 12/06/2017

pasta money, architectural aluminium, from horses to robots, why

Quinns: Morning everybody! We’ve got good news and bad news for you. The good news is that during last week’s “Stream of Annihilation” where Wizards of the Coast announced a whole load of new Dungeons & Dragons products via Twitch, we found out that dinosaurs are coming to the D&D world!

The bad news is that they seem to have zero interest in renaming the brand “Dungeons, Dragons & Dinosaurs”, or DD&D. Imagine! After a few more years of announcements they could be selling Dungeons, Dragons, Dinosaurs, Diplomats, Dinghies, Derby’s and Dancers, or DDDDDD&D.

Paul: A couple of board games came out of this announcement. We’re getting the Dungeons & Dragons: Tomb of Annihilation Board Game, which can be combined with all those D&D board games that came out in 2011, and we’re also getting Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate. Which is–

Quinns: Oh no

Paul: Which is a Dungeons & Dragons-themed version of fabled box of nonsense Betrayal at the House on the Hill.

Quinns: Oh, no.

Review: Imperial 2030

June 9, 2017 Reviews Imperial 2030, Heavy Games, SU&SD Recommends 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 … Read more

Review: Millennium Blades

sweat washes off, john lemon, millennium dollars

Thrower: The table is a wreck of cards, tokens and wads of cash. One player has collapsed on the sofa, eyes closed, exhausted. Another feverishly sorts their deck, cards held close to face, unable to understand what went wrong. Someone else has walked out, professing a desire for space and calm.

I’m wondering where the last two hours went and how I didn’t notice we now have an audience of a new visitor and a cat. I realise, suddenly, that on this cool spring evening I’m bathed in sweat. This is the aftermath of Millennium Blades.

We’ve spent the time pretending to be players of a fictional collectible card game in an anime universe. Millennium Blades is, then, a game about playing games. This sounds like a recipe for a design that disappears up its own backside. Instead, this game is interesting, intense and ingenious. Stuffed with self-referential satire, it sits, winking at its players from the comfort of its oversize box. If you can unpick all the parodies from a card called “I’ll Form the Head” from the “Obari as Hell” card set, you’re a higher voltage gamer than me.

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Games News! 05/06/2017

bumble cavalry, the splendid earth, ogling the trails, Mr. Quilliams

Paul: Quinns. QUINNS.

Quinns: PAUL WHAT IS IT.

Paul: I HAD A NIGHTMARE.

Quinns: WHAT HAPPENED.

Paul: I dreamt that you agreed to get the new Zombicide Kickstarter and play it even though it’s $120. And you certainly wouldn’t be alone in doing so! At the time of writing this Kickstarter has raised almost $2 million from more than 16,000 backers.

Quinns: Well, like Zombicide: Green Horde’s setting, your dream remains very much in the realm of fantasy. But for once, this site has a very good reason for throwing shade on Zombicide.

120 Comments

Podcast #59: The Ghost of BoardGameGeek’s Top 100

crashing india into the ground, bustin' makes me feel tired, hey buddy, buddy

In this shellshocked edition of the SU&SD podcast, Matt, Paul and Quinns crawl out from their writing-trenches to discuss the mammoth feature we published this week: SU&SD Take On The BoardGameGeek Top 100. As a postscript, they discuss the dozens of phenomenal games that are cruelly, criminally absent from BGG’s fabled list. Are you disinterested in crimes against arbitrary inventories? Not to worry. Matt also chats about his tiny dice in Star Wars: Dice-Tiny, Paul discusses the impractical politics of Imperial 2030, Quinns has finally rolled around in Roll for the Galaxy and, for some reason, there’s also there’s a discussion of Ghostbusters: The Board Game II and whether ghosts can move through other ghosts. Ugh.

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RPG Review: Trail of Cthulhu

a cardboard graveyard, nipping terrors, scary geometry, a fulfilling ravaging

Cynthia: It is a little known fact I accompanied Paul Dean during his fearless investigations into the horrific Mythos Tales affair earlier this spring. I witnessed some of those same horrors, unearthed dark revelations couched in official documents, grappled with non-euclidean maps, and ventured alongside him into spaces where our accustomed rules of time and space seemed to break down.

None of that prepared me for the bizarre investigations that I commenced upon my return to Minneapolis –– investigations that continue as I write. Therefore, while I still retain enough of my mind to write, I find it imperative to tell you all this:

There is no Lovecraftian mystery game as engrosssing, as well-crafted, or as much sheer fun as Pelgrane’s roleplaying game, Trail of Cthulhu.

91 Comments

Games News! 29/05/2017

stuck in a vent, killing a crow, eating a glass, swordfighting a cat

Paul: At last, summer is coming, at least to the Northern Hemisphere, and with it the promise of board games outside in the sunshine, games that you spill your juice on, games covered in ants. BUT WHICH board games are we most looking forward to covering in ants in the near future?

Quinns: Well Paul, do you remember when we said that Funemployed was the best game ever and our audience refused to buy it because they were terrified, en masse, by the prospect of having to be funny?

Paul: Oh yes.

Quinns: Do you want to try and sell a funny experience ONE MORE TIME?

Paul: DOUBLE OR QUITS, BABY.

130 Comments

SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 10-1

Rose flavours, scandalous mermaids, bee kerplunk, pip’s pandemic

Paul: Gawd, I love BGG. It’s one of my favourite gaming places on the internet and this has been a fascinating journey.

Quinns: It’s an astonishingly rigorous database. As if IMDB was combined with a… an educated mosh pit, but with a set of scales in the corner that told you how much every actor weighed.

As we close out this feature, I’m simply left wanting to play more board games. Which is surely the best possible result.

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