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Announcing our 2017 Summer pledge drive!

Hello everybody! It’s been 17 videos, 14 podcasts and 55 articles since we asked our audience for donations in (who could forget?) our Christmas advert.

Today, we’re once again asking you to give as much or as little as you can afford. Please, click here (or if you’d prefer, click the seductive, golden button in the upper-right) to join the thousands of people who’ve donated to SU&SD in the past, paying us to keep working, and to keep finding great games.

The above video says it all, but two things bear repeating. First off, we’re putting up two videos in the next two weeks to make up for starting the pledge drive today. And second, we really are confident that the next six months will be the greatest in the site’s history. There is so much cool stuff coming up.

We hope you’re having a great summer, and thanks for sticking with us for just over six years of Shut Up & Sit Down.

Who wants another six?

There is no time for peace. No forgiveness. No respite. There is only war.

After more than forty thousand years of war and strife among the stars, Humanity stands on the brink of extinction. Beset on all sides by hostile aliens and threatened from within by traitors, Humanity’s only chance for survival rests with the continuation of the cruel and bloody regime known as the Imperium. Yet few among Mankind’s untold population realise the full truth of their situation. If there is any future at all, it is a grim one…

This is a 280-page hardback, this is the essential book for any fan of Warhammer 40,000 – everything you need to know to collect, build, paint and play with Citadel miniatures.

Eric: For any of what follows to make sense, I need to take you to a place in my past. Imagine the house where I grew up. Follow me down into the basement, past the unfinished walls and pantry shelving and washing machine. Back here, hidden under the stairs. Do you see it?

That was my desk.

It isn’t much to look at – an austere, industrial thing. The kind of desk I now imagine factory workers flipping over in some proletarian revolution. But I spent huge amounts of my late childhood and early teenage years here. Pouring through those roleplaying manuals stacked in one corner, drawing elaborate maps on that graph paper, and – as the spackling of color attests – painting the little figurines that line the shelf above.

Those were my first space marines.

About a month ago, Games Workshop released their 8^th edition of the Warhammer 40,000 rules. Back when I was painting at that desk, it was 3^rd edition I played. As much as those iterations between then and now can be seen as cynical cash grabs – partly because some of them were – there is something noteworthy about this new one. But more on that in a minute.

Quinns: Paul, I understand you enjoy placing illustrated tiles on a grid.

Paul: I hope this is alluding to the Kickstarter for Founders of Gloomhaven, and not my rare sex fetish.

Quinns: Exactly that! Wait, what?

Paul: You haven’t heard? Founders of Gloomhaven is board gaming’s latest Kickstarter smash hit. Remember Kickstarter fantasy co-op adventure Gloomhaven? Well, Founders of Gloomhaven is a second game from designer Isaac Childres set in the same world, but this time he’s offering a competitive game of building a city featuring “a unique mix of tile placement, action selection, hand management, worker placement, and blind bidding.”

Quinns: It sounded like you said “rare sex fetish.”

Paul: Founders of Gloomhaven has already raised almost $300,000, and it still has twenty-four more days to soar past its funding goal.

You know what doesn’t get enough kudos? Bags. Big ones, small ones, soft ones, leathery ones. Where would we be without bags? Walking home from the shops, clutching cucumbers to our chest with onions in our armpits, that’s where. Our 63rd podcast is all about great games with some great bags. Paul’s been building (and cursing at) stained glass windows in Sagrada, Quinns has been carelessly eroding his car in the amazing Automobiles (see our review of that one here), and this time we remember to have the chat about Orleans that was meant to go the previous episode. Inspired by these three titles, Shut Up & Sit Down’s campaign for More Bags In Games begins next week. Please send money now. Could you give two figs about bags? Are they “Not your bag”? Not a problem! Paul and Quinns also provide some early impressions of the ludicrously pretty Wasteland Express Delivery Service, and answer a reader mail about why long games lead to a special kind of exhaustion.

Quinns: Ladies, gentlemen, non-binary folks, and anyone else who’s left a comment over the last six years along the lines of “ARRRGH STOP MAKING ME SPEND MONEY.” Today, SU&SD amends for its capitalist crimes.

We talk a lot on this site about how we want board games to be “for everyone”, but to an awful lot of people the games we recommend are prohibitively expensive. That said, putting together an amazing board game collection can be cheap. Below, we’ve assembled a list of the very best games that could collectively cost you less than ten bucks, depending on your situation.

This isn’t some unsatisfying sampler platter. What lurks below is a moveable feast of some of the greatest games ever made. Were you to gather all of these games, I’d prefer your collection to ones I’ve seen costing $1000.

If you approve of this feature, please do share it far and wide! It represents a lot of work for both Team SU&SD and our donors, who we bothered about cheap games we might have missed (special thanks to subscribers Amanda and Jeff, who were especially great).

Let’s get started.

Quinns: Paul have you had enough of game of thrones yet

Paul: The honest, complex and difficult answer to that question is both yes and no.

Quinns: Paul would you like another game of thrones board game

Paul: no

Quinns: Terrific because here comes A Game of Thrones Catan Brotherhood of the Watch!

Paul: I’m glad they picked a name that rolls off the tongue.

Near and Far is Ryan Laukat’s sequel to his game of wistful adventure, Above and Below, focusing this time on travellers exploring strange and distant lands.

Recruit your party members, set out on perilous quests, discover rare treasures and meet the strangest of characters! Near and Far features a host of worlds to explore and a huge book full of adventures and encounters, just waiting for you to find them.

July 8, 2017 Reviews Near and Far, New to Games? Paul has been hankering to try Ryan Laukat’s Near and Far for over a year now, but being a Kickstarter release, all the world’s copies only went out to backers, right? Wrong! Hearing that this game of epic adventure and dangerous expeditions was now out in … Read more

http://www.onesevendesign.com/ladyblackbird/ Lady Blackbird is on the run from an arranged marriage to Count Carlowe. She hired a smuggler skyship, The Owl, to take her from her palace on the Imperial world of Ilysium to the far reaches of the Remnants, so she could be with her once secret lover: the pirate king Uriah Flint. HOWEVER, … Read more

Announcing our 2017 Summer pledge drive!

Warhammer 40,000 (8th edition)

Review: Warhammer 40,000 (8th edition)

Games News! 17/07/2017

Podcast #63: A Bag of Glass and Cheese

How to build an amazing board game collection for $10!

Games News! 10/07/2017

Near and Far

Review: Near and Far

Lady Blackbird

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