Season 2 – Episode 5

S02E05

September 9, 2012 Reviews, Specials Mundus Novus, Kingdom Builder, String Railway, Space Cadets, Spartacus: A Game of Blood & Treachery, Defenders of the Realm, Pandemic, Ghost Stories, Space Alert, Middle-Earth Quest, Catan The summer of 2012 is over! It’s disappearing, like a boiled egg into the hungry belly of time. But don’t be sad! The … Read more

Read More

Impressions: August

Flash Point: Fire Rescue

Quinns: London’s enduring an apocalyptic heatwave right now. I’m typing this with ice cubes taped to my neck, and Paul is lying face-down on the floor. We’re trying to stay hydrated, but liquid just comes flying out of us with the velocity of a water pistol.

Paul: I feel like a massive armpit. BUT it has been the perfect time to enjoy games in the sunshine. And then get bitten by everything, ever.

Quinns: Trust us when we say we’re in no state to review anything right now. Instead, enjoy a summery summary of what we’ve been playing this month. No less than THREE hot new board games, each hotter than the last.

Read More

Review: Hive

Review: Hive

Paul: What is Hive? That sounds like some horrid illness, some terrible disease. “I’ve got Hive Pocket!”
you shout down the telephone to your GP, sweaty hand gripping the receiver.

Quinns: Paul, telephones are all mobile nowadays, and your GP will just tell you that Hive is a two player board game without a board.

Paul: And then I would faint.

Read More

The Second Shut Up & Sit Down Podcast

Paul: Yep, that’s right, your eyes do not deceive you and nor do your ears. Shut Up & Sit Down is back and tightly, trimly encoded into a 64kbps podcast, streamlined for your pleasure. Just like your lunch break, it’s almost but not quite an hour long, far too fattening and ultimately nothing more than … Read more

Read More

The We Are Back! Podcast, Because We Are Back

The We Are Back! Podcast, Because We Are Back

(Look, I tried to find pictures of us holding microphones, okay? OKAY?!)

Paul: Yep, that’s right, your eyes do not deceive you and nor do your ears. Shut Up & Sit Down is back and tightly, trimly encoded into a 64kbps podcast, streamlined for your pleasure and available for download right here. Just like your lunch break, it’s almost but not quite an hour long, far too fattening and ultimately nothing more than the briefest respite from the black and tentacled horrors of reality.

In this second podcast, between sips of tea, we talk about games we’ve played this summer, games we’re going to try and review in the coming months and even two particularly wicked games that we hold nothing but hatred for. That’s right, hatred! Can you guess which games those are?

Well, here’s the roll call. Step forward Dominant Species, El Grande, Dungeon Petz,Hive, Mag Blast, Munchkin, Labyrinth, Glen More, Citadels, Pictomania, 7 Wonders, Baron Munchausen, Virgin Queen, Warriors & Traders, The Resistance: Avalon (for which we don’t have a link yet!) and, for the briefest of mentions Flash Point: Fire Rescue, where we don’t talk enough about the excitement of driving the ambulance or taking control of the water cannon.

Also, anyone interested in finding out more about Henry, Lord Darnley should read this.

From here on, it’s full steam ahead, and we’ll be vigorously pumping out all sorts of exciting content in the weeks and months to come. Are you ready? Don’t kid yourself, you’re not remotely ready.

Read More

Review: Cyclades – Hades

Review: Cyclades - Hades

Paul: Cyclades! We turned SU&SD’s unblinking, cyclopic eye to look at it back in Episode 3 of this season. It’s a deadly, brilliant wargame where everybody plays different coloured Greeks trying to build two cities. Just two.

Quinns: We’ll recommend it to anyone. Spartan rules envelope a design where everything anyone does is tragic, comic or heroic. The self-contained islands you duel across means any attack will wrest control of a territory from someone else (exciting!), or see the aggressor getting kicked back into the water (EXCITING!). But doing anything means bidding for the affection one of the game’s four Gods, an auction that’s every bit as vicious as the main board.

Read More

Review: Cyclades – Hades

Review: Cyclades - Hades

Paul: Cyclades! We turned SU&SD’s unblinking, cyclopic eye to look at it back in Episode 3 of this season. It’s a deadly, brilliant wargame where everybody plays different coloured Greeks trying to build two cities. Just two.

Quinns: We’ll recommend it to anyone. Spartan rules envelope a design where everything anyone does is tragic, comic or heroic. The self-contained islands you duel across means any attack will wrest control of a territory from someone else (exciting!), or see the aggressor getting kicked back into the water (EXCITING!). But doing anything means bidding for the affection one of the game’s four Gods, an auction that’s every bit as vicious as the main board.

Read More

Season 2 – Episode 4

SUSDS02E04

June 4, 2012 Reviews, Specials Wiz-War, Epic Spell Wars, Mage Knight Board Game WIZARDS! What are they? What do they do? No, seriously, we don’t know. But ignorance is for cowards! We’ve created a Wizard Special our board game review show, where we review Wiz-War, Epic Spell Wars and Mage Knight.

Read More

The Castles of Burgundy

The Castles of Burgundy

The game is set in the Burgundy region of High Medieval France. Each player takes on the role of an aristocrat, originally controlling a small princedom. While playing they aim to build settlements and powerful castles, practice trade along the river, exploit silver mines, and use the knowledge of travelers.

The game is about players taking settlement tiles from the game board and placing them into their princedom which is represented by the player board. Every tile has a function that starts when the tile is placed in the princedom. The princedom itself consists of several regions, each of which demands its own type of settlement tile.

The game is played in five phases, each consisting of five rounds. Each phase begins with the game board stocked with settlement tiles and goods tiles. At the beginning of each round all players roll their two dice, and the player who is currently first in turn order rolls a goods placement die. A goods tile is made available on the game board according to the roll of the goods die. During each round players take their turns in the current turn order. During his turn, a player may perform any two of the four possible types of actions: 1) take a settlement tile from the numbered depot on the game board corresponding to one of his dice and place it in the staging area on his player board, 2) take a settlement tile from the staging area of his player board to a space on his player board with a number matching one of his dice in the corresponding region for the type of tile and adjacent to a previously placed settlement tile, 3) deliver goods with a number matching one of his dice, or 4) take worker tokens which allow the player to adjust the roll of his dice. In addition to these actions a player may buy a settlement tile from the central depot on the game board and place it in the staging area on his player board. If an action triggers the award of victory points, those points are immediately recorded. Each settlement tile offers a benefit, additional actions, additional money, advancement on the turn order track, more goods tiles, die roll adjustment or victory points. Bonus victory points are awarded for filling a region with settlement tiles.

The game ends when the last player finishes his turn of the fifth round of the fifth phase. Victory points are awarded for unused money and workers, and undelivered goods. Bonus victory points from certain settlement tiles are awarded at the end of the game.

Read More

Review: The Castles of Burgundy

Review: The Castles of Burgundy

Paul: Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, Jesus! That looks like the lovechild of a maths textbook and hotel room art. I’m not having that in my house.”

Hold on. The Castles of Burgundy, which casts 2-4 players as the holders of estates in medieval France, has the whole board game community bleating with quiet joy. We absolutely had to get hold of a copy and try it out. You know what? I actually think it’s quite special, too, although I appreciate it’s such a placid, thoughtful, deeply European game that it won’t be Quinns’s kind of thing. Still-

Quinns: No, no, I really like it.

Paul: You do?

Quinns: Yeah, it’s excellent.

Paul: But-

Quinns: And here’s why!

Read More