Podcast #132 – Dreamin’ of a Game Night

In this mysterious 132nd episode of the Shut Up & Sit Down podcast, Tom, Quinns and Ava clamber aboard a raft of games that’s gently sailing down a river made of…dreams… Do not get into the water, the dreams are also full of plague.

We’re going to be rambling about an absolute bunch of games that, when combined, would make up our perfect post-covid boardgame night. If you want to be surprised by each addition to our lists then click play! Or if there’s anything in particular you’d like to hear about, we’ve got all the games timestamped below.

Have a lovely weekend, everybody!

Tap below for full timestamps and more info!

Read more

Cosmic Encounter

Cosmic Encounter

In Cosmic Encounter, each player is the leader of an alien race. The object of the game is to establish colonies in other players’ planetary systems. Players take turns trying to establish colonies. The winner(s) are the first player(s) to have five colonies on any planets outside his or her home system. A player does not need to have colonies in all of the systems, just colonies on five planets outside his or her home system. These colonies may all be in one system or scattered over multiple systems. The players must use force, cunning, and diplomacy to ensure their victory.

Read More

Tactics & Tactility #6 – Caverna’s tiny architectures

[Tactics and Tactility is our column about the feelings, details and pleasures of tabletop gaming. This week Ava is looking at Caverna, and the gentle joys of piling up rocks.]

In front of me is a little board. Half of it is forest, half of it is mountain.

I do not understand the intricacies of the game I’m playing, Caverna, but I do understand that this tiny cardboard fiefdom is mine. Within the context of the rules, I can do what I want with it.

The game in Caverna comes from competition for the best spaces, picking the right order to do things in, making sure you can be as efficient as possible, and always having a back up plan. There’s a load of clever decisions to be made on the central board, and a few on your player board. Where you put things matters, but not as much as how quickly you got there, and just the simple binary question of whether you have enough space or not.

That’s the game. That’s the puzzle. That’s the beating heart of the design.

But that’s not what makes me love my time with it.

Caverna is a treasure trove of little wooden objects. Animals and resources all come in tiny wooden images. Rooms and fields are little cardboard tiles. You lay the tiles out, you find the right spaces for things, and then you’ve built a thing.

A home.

Read more

Our Shopping Guide to the Best Cheap Board Games!

Paul: Hot summer strawberries! It’s the middle of August, the sun is (sometimes) in the sky (here it’s mostly just windy) and this is the season that you finally get into board games. It’s an intimidating prospect: you’ve eyed those enormous boxes on the shelves with price tags that would make a banker blush, but this really doesn’t have to be a hobby that destroys your wallet.

Wait! What’s that noise? An approaching siren? An… ice cream van?! It’s me pedalling furiously toward you in the Shut Up & Sit Down Budget Bus, adding a host of surprising prices in this sequel to our indispensable article, How To Build an Amazing Board Game Collection for $10. GET ON BOARD.

Read more

SU&SD Take on The Board Game Geek Top 100: 101-81

Istanbul

Paul: BoardGameGeek is a titan of the board game scene, one of the most comprehensive and consulted sites the hobby has, as well as a place to which we owe a huge debt of inspiration. It’s also home to the absolute Board Game Geekiest among us, namely those with a monthly allowance for small zip-lock baggies. While we undoubtedly fall into that category too, we appreciate that not everyone does and it’s inevitable that our opinions will diverge, right?

Just what do we make of those most esteemed of titles that are forever locked in an eternal battle for a place in BGG’s Top 100 rankings? This week, we’ll be giving an extensive, nay, exhaustive breakdown of that list, telling you what we’ve covered, what we thought and even admitting what we’ve missed out on. So come with us as we count down the games in a whole week’s worth of analysis and adventure!

Read more

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

[Following on from our expedition into Quinns’ board game collection and the polite visit to Paul’s, it’s now Matt’s turn. Enjoy, everybody!]

Matt: Contrary to popular belief, I am not a man of infinite luxury. Paul has an entire cupboard just for games – Quintin has a cavernous loft to explore. Many have climbed that ladder and never been seen alive again, fading away to become a new addition to the dark and dusty collage of cardboard and bones. Basically those boys have space to play with. I however, have a shelf.

But it’s a big shelf! Oh my. There’s plenty of room in the rest of my flat, but my wife is a bit of a cheery dictator when it comes to interior design – so the sins of the husband must be tidied away. It’s occasionally annoying, but it does mean I get to live in a genuinely beautiful, tidy place? Swings and roundabouts, life is compromise.

Read more

Feature: A Day in the Life of Quinns’ Game Collection!

Quinns: Ladies and gentlemen, roll up! It’s time for a new series where we take a look a team SU&SD’s board game collections. Come and see! Be amazed. Be aghast. Be envious. Comment with thought-provoking assertions like “why do you have that game it is bad”.

You guys will have seen my collection in the background of loads of SU&SD videos, but I don’t think you’ve seen the work that goes into it. Come with me today as I perform… a CULL.

But before that, let me show you my collection as it stands. It’s both completely ridiculous and not as ridiculous as you might think.

Read more

Games News! 15/08/16

Paul: You know what they call the city that never sleeps?

Quinns: New Yo-

Paul: That’s right! The city of Games News! Even while we and half of the rest of the industry were away at GenCon, the games news just came coming. It flowed like liquid, a wave rushing across the internet, a great deal of it gushing straight out of a valve left open by Fantasy Flight. The peak of that tsunami was surely Runewars, their tremendous miniatures game announcement.

And make no mistake, this is a big deal. Runewars (not to be confused with the board game of the same name) is Fantasy Flight striding boldly into the fantasy miniatures battleground, building on their experience with smaller scale games like X-Wing and Armada. There will be similar movement templates and command dials, but this time combined with the regiments and magic of, well, of Warhammer.

Read more

SU&SD Play… Cosmic Encounter

SU&SD Play... Cosmic Encounter

First off, be warned that there is an unexpected disco interlude starting at 06:46. Brendan spilled some raw beats on our editing PC and the resulting funk has gotten into the motherboard, but we’re uploading a fix (with slightly better overall audio) now. It should be up by midnight GMT.

Second off, allow us to present the crown jewel in our Expansionanuary festivities! A ginormous Let’s Play of us finishing a full-size game of Cosmic Encounter, proving once and for all in a controlled, scientific environment just how much fun this game can be.

Enjoy, everybody!

Read More