Shut Up & Sit Down

GAMES NEWS! 06/02/17

rustling with relish, Formula D for Death, Not just for Hobbits

Quinns: Paul, I need an ambulance!

Paul: Are you dying?

Quinns: Even better! Remember my positive review of Quadropolis (pictured above)? Days of Wonder has just announced the first expansion for it. Quadropolis: Public Services will see a selection of buildings laid out between rounds like a concrete chocolate box, and whether you select a fire station or get stuck with a convention centre, it’ll change how you score.

Paul: Quinns, I’m just going to stop you there. We’re going to go LIVE to this site’s resident Quadropolis expert for some analysis.

Review: Honshu

horror-fallow, delicious finland, a lego boondoggle

Quinns: Alright. You see Honshu, pictured above? You’re looking at one of the most desirable boxes on the planet.

The best thing to come out of Finland since karjalanpiirakat, Honshu made a name for itself during the American convention circuit last year. Contained in its small, peach-tone box are some cards and cubes, and contained within them is a simple card game, and contained within that are gorgeous little Japanese towns that are going to be springing to life right on your table. Players draft cards and tuck them under and over one another in a gentle jigsaw, probing and pondering different arrangements, searching for a high score.

This site’s own Paul Dean was convinced after a quick play. So many people were convinced, in fact, that a publisher is finally bringing a shipment of Honshu to America next month.

But should you buy it? Ah, let me help you with that as a European, from the land where copies of this game are considered weeds, and I often have to throw away four or five mouldering copies of Honshu before my breakfast of limppu and kissel.

Honshu is good, but is it “SU&SD Recommends” good? Let’s find out.

75 Comments

Podcast #52: A Deception, a Dove and a Dungeon

putting down the guitar, picking on the children, when is a dove not a dove

Get your pod-plates ready! We’re serving up another steaming hot pot of chat. Matt, Paul and Quinns discuss deck-building burgle box that is Clank!, they return once again to the irritatingly more-ish Black Stories, Quinns chats a bit about Deception: Murder in Hong Kong and they discuss the standalone expansion for Welcome to the Dungeon. We hope you left room for seconds, because there’s also a reader mail that asks what games Matt and Quinns organised at their respective weddings last year, and we unseal the Pandora’s Box of folk games played by school teachers. Maybe don’t eat that last bit, it’s profoundly poisonous.

65 Comments

GAMES NEWS! 30/01/17

hyperscience, dehydrated celebrities, criminal animals, a lover with a tiny miniature

Quinns: Oh my god, Paul, it’s awful. Did you seen the news over the weekend?

Paul: I did. What’s the world coming to?

Quinns: I don’t know, but I know we can’t stand for it.

Paul: You think so? I had no idea you felt so strongly about Reiner Knizia’s Ingenious being renamed AXIO Hexagonal.

Quinns: …Paul, did you turn on the TV over the weekend?

Paul: No, I got the weirdest feeling that it would be rather like blasting a jet of pure sadness square at my own face.

Quinns: Right. Yes.

99 Comments

Review: A Feast for Odin

stuff stuff stuff, rocks rocks rocks, we're going to need a better boat

This week, Paul’s gone all viking on us, getting so, so enthusiastic about A Feast for Odin with this very in-depth review of a truly enormous game. Then again, wouldn’t you be at least a little bit excited? This is one of the biggest boxes we’ve seen in some time and, with hundreds of cardboard components, scores of wooden pieces and even a moose as a first player token, we really can’t blame him.

Can it deliver joy and happiness proportional to its tremendous size? And how does it compare to its ancestors, other games by the same designer such as Agricola, Caverna and Patchwork? And why does Paul think Patchwork has a French accent? It’s been a strange week.

Review: Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

give me your badge and your gun and that rock you keep in a plastic bag

Quinns: After playing co-operative social deduction game Deception, the proof is insurmountable. The 21st century police force is the greatest board game theme of all time, not because it works so well but because it doesn’t work at all.

Back in our eighth ever podcast we talked about Police Precinct, and while we had a terrible time with that game we were endlessly amused because we seemed to be playing the cast of Reno 911 on the set of The Purge. Then last year I finally got to try Good Cop Bad Cop, where in one memorable turn I confiscated my colleague’s coffee as evidence, downed it in one gulp, then shot them.

But with a name like “Deception: Murder in Hong Kong” and brooding, maroon box that includes a handful of plastic bullets, you might assume that this, at last, is a serious game about law enforcement.

You couldn’t be more wrong. I’m thrilled to say that Deception is every bit as silly as those others, and it’s also the best game of the three. Come for a ridealong with me! You’re statistically unlikely to be shot.

123 Comments

GAMES NEWS! 23/01/17

diceberts, batguins, laxatives, venmo for the human condition

Quinns: Good morning, Paul! Ready for Games News? How are you feeling today? Rambunctious? Meticulous? Corrugated?

Paul: No, no. Dispirited. Crenelated. Crepuscular. My prandicle is absquatulate.

Quinns: Good God, that’s our SEO ruined, for sure. Perhaps you’ll be emboldened by THIS wonderful news. SHERLOCK HOLMES CONSULTING DETECTIVE IS GETTING SWOLE because the first(?!) standalone expansion is ALMOST HERE

Paul: OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO EXPLODE

Quinns: HAVE YOU FINISHED THE ORIGINAL TEN CASES YET

Paul: NO

Quinns: ME EITHER

75 Comments

Review: Tyrants of the Underdark

Tyrants of the Underpants, That's Drow for Now, shoving a dragon

Paul: I have a confession to make. I have a profound prejudice toward purple and it very much affected my first impression of Tyrants of the Underdark. When my review copy arrived, I was a man with plenty to do. I opened the box that evening, saw the almost monochrome palette of so much grey, black and violet, flipped through the manual and then put this in a cupboard.

Sure, it’s game set in the murky bowels of the Forgotten Realms, Dungeons & Dragons’ most famous setting, but did it really need to be so drab? I was squinting at the card art, groaning at the board and then, suddenly, some long-sealed vault in my mind was opened and a memory of the most monstrous mediocrity suddenly burst forth: Defenders of the Realm. Oh God. This is why I don’t play D&D board games. They lack all the spirit that the RPG inspires. “Tyrants of the Underpants,” I thought.

I was so wrong about Tyrants of the Underdark.

130 Comments

Review: Ten Candles

these things are true: the world is dark, and we are alive

[Introducing RPG columnist Cynthia Hornbeck! As a former Utahn, temporary Minnesotan, PhD dropout and current public school teacher she is radically overqualified for a job with SU&SD. Please, nobody tell her.]

Cynthia: Hello, dear readers! I’d like to invite you all to accompany me to the end of the world, and to your death. Don’t worry! I assure you that you’re perfectly capable and prepared for the end – as it manifests in the phenomenal indie storytelling game Ten Candles, that is.

Ten Candles is a flexible, firelit game of “tragic horror” designed by Stephen Dewey and published by Cavalry Games. And I’m so totally in love with it. It’s many scenarios take place in a variety of apocalypses where thick darkness blankets the earth and an evil force known as “Them” threatens humanity. Oh I know, there are plenty of post-apocalyptic games out there, and I imagine you’re all raising your hands to ask what’s so special about this one. Well, let me show you. Because what’s special about Ten Candles is pretty much everything.

95 Comments

GAMES NEWS! 16/01/17

la première super méga extension, jingly bells, from the creator of mascarade: sex

Quinns: Huddle up, friends. Here we are in the depths of winter with nothing more to burn than the castoff cardboard frames from which we punch our tokens. It is cold and it is dark.

Paul: Yet the warm heart of Shut Up & Sit Down beats strong, emboldened by the news of games to come. This week we’re going to tell you about PRINCESSES and SPICES and AN EXPANSION FOR CAPTAIN SONAR. 2017 is already up to speed and it’s looking glorious. Which one thing are you most excited about?

Quinns: Yes! Do leave a comment below. Share your youth and vigor with us old men.

70 Comments

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