Shut Up & Sit Down

Triple Review: H.M.S. Dolores, Millions of Dollars AND Gentleman’s Deal!

cool crimes, greasy opossums, rubbery kigurumis, dammit linkedin

Who wants to get extravagant! Inspired by his own Chinatown review, Quinns has published a negotiation triple-bill. Three new smallbox games, each one telling the story of dividing up loot after a cool crime, but each with a radically different approach.

At the time of writing H.M.S. Dolores looks like it has some European stock availability, but Millions of Dollars and Gentleman’s Deal aren’t yet broadly available for purchase. If you want these games and can’t find them, simply call your friendly local game shop (or your friendly regional game shop) and put in an order.

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A Hot Time in Texas: Paul’s very particular picks of BGGCon

i'm a rock! et! man!, sweaty french cyclists, taking a lichen to mars

Paul: Oh my word. I have had A Hot Time in Texas and, boy oh boy, I can’t wait to tell you all about it. Do you want to know all about BoardGameGeek Con 2016? Are you settled and ready? Are you prepar- I DON’T CARE LET’S GO. The starter pistol has fired so LET’S TALK ABOUT FLAMME ROUGE.

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GAMES NEWS! 20/11/16

high finance, dusty teams, stranglin' lando, shadow muses

Quinns: GOOD MORNING everybody! Who’s excited about board games? All of you? Not yet you’re not. Soak up the below news like an high-end paper towel and then we’ll talk.

Fantasy Flight has announced the next big box expansion for the superb Android: Netrunner, and it’s Netrunner Legacy.

The copywriting on the announcement page for Netrunner: Terminal Directive is a bit of a nightmare, but basically anyone who owns a Netrunner core set and the Terminal Directive expansion will be able to play through a narrative campaign of runners vs. corporations. Sealed packs of never-before-seen cards will be opened one after another as a cyberpunk murder mystery plays out, and players will apply new stickers to their faction’s sheet as they win or lose games.

Going into this expansion blind sounds like a delight. Not only do you get the surprise of adding brand new cards to your deck, you then get to surprise your opponent as you unleash them mid-game!

Review: Vinhos Deluxe Edition

poison ribena, delicious "wine drink", two-bit grape grabbers, dismay

Quinns: Alright ladies and gents. Today we’re tackling a box of unparallelled size and charisma. The publishers tell me that there are less than 3500 copies of Vinhos Deluxe Edition (the Kickstarted re-imaging of 2010 wine-making classic Vinhos) left, and I want to make sure that you guys have the chance to buy one.

It takes a lot to excite me these days, but Vinhos Deluxe Edition managed it. Contained in this box is nothing less than a torrent of beautifully-illustrated tokens, a board that’s positively threatening in scale, and a fat, clean manual written with wit. It even has nice fonts! In a board game!

But it takes very little to make me nervous, and Vinhos Deluxe did that too. The rules that make sense, like buying vineyards or aging wines, contrast fiercely with the more arcane regions of the board, where players claim score multipliers or manoeuvre their action-selectors.

Any inference you want to draw from the header image of this article is correct. This game’s a beast to play, it’s tougher to teach, and it’s even harder to review.

Obviously, I couldn’t be more excited.

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Podcast #49: A Dream Home and an Ill Moon

tender feet, boisterous deities, sequential toilets, gravesend, cauliflower

In what’s surely our most mathematically pleasing podcast ever, today Paul and Quinns discuss 6 games (2 of which they’d recommend) before answering 4 emails and examining 2 folk games. What’s next in this sequence? Why, your enjoyment of course! Games discussed in this cast include the bucolic visions of Dream Home and Cottage Garden. We’ve got two spritely deck-building games, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle and Aeon’s End. We’ve also got two interesting spins on existing classics, 4 Gods being a wild interpretation of Carcassonne, and Mythos Tales as a Lovecraftian sequel to Consulting Detective. Enjoy, everybody. And credit to Peter Dringautzki for the podcast image, with his beautiful photo of Cottage Garden!

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GAMES NEWS! 14/11/16

sniffing, swinging, dicing, feuding, googling, bogling

Paul: Hello hello hello Quinns, what is new with YOU this week? What is new with me is that my phone broke. But then I fixed it again. So it’s fine. It’s like those sitcoms where nothing fundamental ever changes.

ALSO I guess I found a scratch and sniff board game and now I feel funny. Let me tell you about The Perfumer.

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Review: Conan

Conan i have never reviewed you before, i have no tongue for it

Like an irrepressible wall of pecs and steel, Conan arrives next week (in Europe) and the week after (in America) to bounce all other miniatures games off your table. Standing in his way is Shut Up & Sit Down, a noble bulwark of common sense, here to tell you if this burly box is worth the money.

If you will it, we now have a selection of associated retailers who are more than happy to take your pre-order! And huge thanks to Vancouver’s Valkyrie Western Martial Arts gym for their support. If you’re in Vancouver why not try a class?

Have a great weekend, everybody. Do it for Crom.

Review: Both of Cash ‘n Guns’ expansions!

more rules, more friends, more guns, more cash, less fun?

Pip: In order to assess the two Cash ‘n Guns expansions I’ve spent a couple of evenings luring friends to my house with the promise of nachos, homemade chilli and foam guns. One time there was even banana bread. That was the tastiest heist. ANYWAY! I am now in a position to tell you all of my opinions on More Cash ‘n More Guns, and Cash ‘n Guns: Team Spirit. Also I have a terrifying foam arsenal which makes me look like I’ve joined the foamy NRA.

And so! Here’s a brief explanation of the base game in case you’re unfamiliar: Cash ‘n Guns is a party game about dividing the loot from a heist. You all play one of the ne’er-do-wells involved in the heist, each armed with a foam weapon, and you’re trying to end up with the most loot. Every round loot cards are dealt onto the table, the players pick a live or fake bullet which they play face down, and then point their foam gun at another player. They then have the choice to duck out of the round, avoiding injury but missing out on loot or staying in and risking injury but also potentially being part of the loot-sharing. There’s also a godfather role which can move around between players and does things like giving that player the ability to tell someone to shoot at someone else.

You can imagine that the foam guns help with the role-play and people get really into the theatricality, pretending they’re in Reservoir Dogs or attempting accents. (I don’t do accents because I know my limits. Cockney ends up somewhere in the West Country, Welsh is somewhere between Indian and Northern Irish, and Russian is some kind of pan-European road trip as the sentence goes along.)

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GAMES NEWS! 07/11/16

ghost court that is, i find you in contempt of court, happy halloween

Paul: Hello and welcome to this week’s Games News!

Quinns: paul why are you welcoming me i am always here-

Paul: I was welcoming them! Our readers! Quick, let’s get going, I’m writing my parts of this in a café that’s playing weird dance music at 1pm. I don’t know why it wants to be a club, but also a place that serves French toast. Anyway MONSTERHEARTS 2.

Quinns: HERE COMES MONSTERHEARTS 2!

Let’s have awkward sex again, like we did last summer

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Review: Alchemists

millicent again, a pint-sized tardis, a quizzical diving board, righteous royalty

Quinns: Paul, I did a crime.

Paul: Quinns, it’s okay. You can confess and be absolved. Our world is one that still has room for forgiveness. Come and tell-

Quinns: I might have accidentally fed my student a pint of poison.

Paul: Ah. It’s all right. You’re not the first person-

Quinns: Also I misled an adventurer and sold them a flask of soup instead of a healing potion, then I published an academic theory that I knew was a lie.

Paul: Right yes well. The thing is-

Quinns: But worst of all, I forgot how funny Czech Games’ board games can be.

Paul: Quinns, I am so excited to write this review that I have got cracker crumbs all over my keyboard. Let’s go.

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