Podcast #56: Three Tough Guys and a Yamatai

walnut whips, buddy systems, cadfael, a folky tease

The stakes have never been higher! In this, the one and only 56th episode of the SU&SD podcast, renowned street warriors Matt, Paul and Quinns take a break from their usual areas of discussion (inner-city brawls, knife fights, how to stare down a local tough from sixty yards) to chat about board games, of all things! Quinns has played new Days of Wonder beautypiece Yamatai, the group chat some more about the excellent Flamme Rouge, and inspired by Paul’s Mythos Tales review there’s a discussion on the future of mystery-solving games. We also answer the question on everyone’s lips: Is Lego crap? Finally, we answer a reader mail about how to get the most out of a convention. Basically just make sure you have a friend to drag you out of the fight if you get knocked unconscious. In other words, we’re going mad. How many more episodes of this can we possibly do? The answer: AS MANY AS IT TAKES.

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RPG Review: The Firefly Role-Playing Game

Befuddled with love, a leaf on the wind, feminine wiles, stabbed!

Cynthia: The television show Firefly, one of Joss Whedon’s series, has wriggled deep into the shared geek consciousness since it aired in 2002-3. Phrases such as “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal”, “I can kill you with my brain”, and “Yessir Captain Tightpants” now serve as entry passwords into secret geek spaces, flashes of color that we use to recognize each other in the wild. As much spaghetti western as science fiction, full of Chinese swear words and sexually-charged tea ceremonies, Firefly had Buffy’s wit and black humor, Dollhouse’s dark maturity, and something else that characterised neither: freedom. Five stars’ worth of planets, moons, frontiers, and open skies.

In other words, if you haven’t yet watched Firefly, you need to get on it.

But enough of that! The real question here is whether the Firefly roleplaying game is any good.

Readers, friends: yes. Yes it is.

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Review: Mythos Tales

never work with animals or triangles, paul's precious intestines, an actual cameo

It looks like Watson & Holmes isn’t the only game that wants to offer something different from Consulting Detective!

Introducing Mythos Tales, a game of solving occult mysteries where if you’re not careful, you might become a victim yourself. Will Paul Dean crack the case of whether Mythos Tales is a worthy consumer product, or will this be his final review?

We wish him luck.

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Review: Android: Netrunner – Terminal Directive

unsightly beans, matching tattoos, quinns are you crying

Quinns: Oof, reviews don’t get much tougher than this.

I’ve just finished playing an advance copy of Terminal Directive, the most dramatic expansion that Android: Netrunner has ever received. This big box introduces not just a campaign to the superlative cyberpunk card game, but the dramatic “Legacy” elements that you might remember from Pandemic: Legacy. As the story unfolds players open new packs of cards, but also destroy cards and cover them with stickers.

Best of all, Terminal Directive is a long-awaited stepping stone for new Netrunner players! Previously if you bought the core set and liked it, you then faced the intimidating proposition of simply starting to buy up Netrunner’s forty-two expansion packs. Now you can buy the core set, and then enjoy Terminal Directive’s campaign, and then – erm – begin buying forty-two expansion packs.

There’s just one problem. After being a zealous advocate for this game for years on end, today I don’t play Netrunner anymore. Let’s talk about why.

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Games News! 03/04/2017

indigestion expansions, cardboard cloth, sad wolves of the 1990s

Paul: Oh my GOODNESS Red Scare looks very interesting indeed! This is officially Paul’s Most Exciting Game of the Week, without a doubt, with its fancy social deduction, special glasses and double agents. SPECIAL GLASSES, I hear you shout! In glee! In awe!

Y’see, everybody is playing a team of FBI agents who know that somewhere in their midst are communists that they absolutely have to rat out. Everybody sports a special pair of glasses and, depending upon which ones you wear, you can read certain secret text written on some of the game’s many cards, while remaining completely blind to other text. This is a wonderfully simple idea and I’m immediately thrilled at the idea of players trying to convince one another of what they can or can’t see, blusteringly bluffing and desperately trying to get someone else to confirm (or deny) that things are (or aren’t) what they seem.

Quinns: What a concept, indeed! I’m very excited to test this box from first time designer Benjamin Kanelos. If you were wondering about the box’s striking appearance, this is actually yet another work from Ian O’Toole, who does the layout and illustration for all the breathtakingly lovely new Vital Lacerda games like Vinhos Deluxe. What a guy.

Are we entering an age where artists get as much kudos as designers? Being an enormous fop, I hope so.

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Review: Cry Havoc

a dead prince, a drifting stick, a strong spine, steve holt

Quinns: Oh my god. Where do we start?

Maybe just gaze into the above image. Try and take it all in. Crystals! Robots! Colours! Cards! Three dozen unique kinds of token, each with a different shape, as if they were all so scared of this primary-coloured scrum that they started to collapse in on themselves.

This is Cry Havoc, one of 2016’s most striking and well-received war games, and if you take anything from its Shakespearean name it shouldn’t be wry sophistication, but that this design is as wild and energetic as a pack of dogs.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!” Let me tell you what I think of this grand box.

That was another quote from Julius Caesar, you see. I might even do another before we’re done. Brace yourselves!

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Feature: A Day in the Life of Matt Thrower’s Game Collection

reeking of solvents, bloated with hope, an early sumo, a vital box

[Our series on the collections of our writers continues! Today it’s the turn of long-time contributor Matt Thrower. If you missed our previous entries, you can now navigate to them using those buttons on the right. Enjoy, everybody!]

Thrower: Well hello there! Nice of you to stop by. Hope you had a good journey. It’s rare we get the chance to entertain adult visitors, with all the space the children take up. So, please, let me show you round the house.

The first thing you learn as a parent is that every other parent lives in a pristine house. Even when chasing after kids has left them looking like exhausted pandas, their houses are still clean and tidy. Naturally, ours has to be the same. We’d all be happier if everyone could drop this charade and wallow in their familial filth. Anyway, it’s nice to have someone here who might appreciate the results.

Hang your coat up over there…

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Games News! 27/03/2017

soft English dough, i feel the need the need for rabbits, poisoned by a poison

Paul: All right, everyone, keep your heads low! The seas are choppy today and that doesn’t make it any easier for the headlines to land on Shut Up & Sit Down’s Games News carrier. This 100,000 tonne vessel carries the very latest in state-of-the-art news-projection technology and, oh boy, that sound you hear RIGHT NOW IS A BIG KICKSTARTER COMING IN OKAY I GOTTA GUIDE THIS BABY DOWN HOLD TIGHT PREPARE FOR 878 VIKINGS!!!

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Review: Flamme Rouge

Spokey Poker, Bi-Men, I thought it would taste of cakes

Who among us can claim that they didn’t once dream of growing up to be a master of bicycles? Those debonair doctors of velocity. The zeal on wheels.

I have good news, friends. It turns out that in the game of Flamme Rouge (French for “Red Flam”) you can become a cycleman for no less than 30 to 45 minutes at a time. Clearly we had to give it the full review treatment, and you know what? It turns out that this game is an absolute delight.

Have a fantastic weekend, everybody!

UPDATE: Thanks to SU&SD fan Meeple101 for telling us about the official Flamme Rouge Companion for iOS and Android, which lets you link individual races into a grand tour! What fun.

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Podcast #55: Teenage Monstrous Roman Soldiers

a police raid on heaven, quintin's sassy grapefruit, a sex mask, falsified speed chess

You guys love podcasts! We literally know how to do them! With episode #55 of the SU&SD podcast we’re committing to getting these bad babies out twice a month. If you like what you hear please do share it among your friends! So what’s in this one? Ooh, only Quinns discussing the electrifying yet accessible escape rooms of Unlock! (which has a free demo available online), the insanity of Magic Maze (which also has a free print-n-play version) and the challenging slumbers of When I Dream, while Paul outlines his pathetic enjoyment of Kingdomino and his struggling TV station in The Networks. We close with Quinns talking about Snakes & Ladders after discovering an astonishing article on its history, and finish with a Christian folk game that leaves the pair even more speechless than usual. Let’s just say that teenagers should never be given power, but especially not iron age judicial power. Enjoy, everybody!

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