Shut Up & Sit Down

Back once again like a renegade podcast, the Shut Up & Sit Down podcast is back in action and ready to wrestle with your ears and your brain. Let’s not bury the lede - we’ve got a formal introduction to make this week, with the official addition of Mr Tom Brewster to the team. He’s lovely, and you’ll be hearing and seeing a bunch more of him in the months to come.

In this episode of the podcast we dive back into Suburbia, explore The King’s Dilemma, and dabble with Abomination and Finger Guns at High Noon as well as plenty of others. We also have a rather lovely reading of Tactics and Tactility by Ava Foxfort as a break from all of this ghastly pod-wrestling.

Due to exciting new technological discoveries, you can now expect a new episode to drop on Friday every other week! Thanks to the patience of those who love the podcast and have missed it over the last few months, you’re the best.

Ringing in the new year with a podcast recorded *checks notes* ... last year, Matt and Quinns are coming right at you from PAX Unplugged, with a plethora of exciting games to chat about. If you'd rather watch this episode and pretend you were there, we've got you covered with a lovely "YouTube Video". It'll never catch on.

If you've been missing the podcast over the last few months, don't be alarmed - we'll be back in regular action very soon. Thanks all!

Congratulations all, you’ve made it! It’s the very 100th Shut Up and Sit Down podcast! Gosh, the podcast hill is so high up here that I’m pretty sure I can see episode 43, fumbling around in that bush with a sandwich.

Matt and Quinns are briefly joined by Pip for an sleep-deprived natter about some interesting games. Obscurio (16:14) sounds like Wizard-Dixit with traitors, and incredibly summoned a cheer from the crowd simply for use of the word “acetate”. Tumblin’ Dice (21:05) got a little love, but probably deserves more than anyone can give it, before Matt then went on to talk about playing the award-winning RPG Mothership (24:50) - a sci-fi horror system that conveys the relatable experience of waking up after a very long time and immediately being attacked by stress.

We were thrilled to find that many of those who’d managed to check it out at SHUX finally understood the hype from our review of Blood on the Clocktower (35:13) - a beautiful beast that is more than the sum of its frankly dastardly parts.

Delving into Vast: the Mysterious Manor (39:58) - an asymmetrical game in which you can literally play as the mysterious manor - left us with mixed feelings about pacing but strong feelings towards skeletons, before we finally talked about food and/or animals with Yum Yum Island (45:36) and Nickelodeon Splat Attack! (50:06).

Apologies for the quality of the audio in this episode - we had some issues with the room that we weren’t able to resolve. If you’d like to listen to this episode with “moving pictures”, you can also watch it here, on Youtube!

100 episodes is truly "big potatoes" - thank you so much for listening!

In what is still definitely *not* our 100th episode, Quinns and intern Ben are grappling with some truly epic boxes. As is the SU&SD motto, "We grap so you don't have to."

For starters, these two summon the energy to discuss their 12 hour(!) game of Western Empires (02:32). Then there's chat about the byzantine challenges of hit Kickstarter games Cloudspire (18:05) and Skulk Hollow (29:38). Quinns reveals he can't pronounce cacao in a segment on sprawling eurogame Teotihuacan: City of Gods (37:05), before the two round things off with some lighter games, namely Yokai (43:06), Detective Club (46:57), and Combo Fighter (53:06).

In this episode, Matt, Quinns and Ben report live from a secret hideout. Matt's been breaking the rules of Gloomhaven (discussed at 26:54) while Quinns has been ignoring the laws of new, superb expansion Bunny Kingdom: In the Sky (50:12), and the cops could bust them at any moment.

The group also discuss the bizarre Undo games (02:56), the video game-inspired Super Motherload (10:05), the delightfully three-dimensional ShipShape (20:42), the wild grasping of Lords of Hellas (36:20) and the disappointment of Cerberus (48:02).

Matt, Quinns and Ben are circling podcast #100 like talkative nerds circling a numerical drain. Quickly! Before they slip away, why not listen to them talk about the games?

On this podcast there's chat about party game We're Doomed! (02:23), classic card game For Sale (10:00), 2010 smash hit Alien Frontiers (15:40), the enigmatic Wooly Wars (23:26), hot new box Air, Land & Sea (30:03) and Kickstarter behemoth Cerebria: The Inside World (40:11). There's also a lovely reader mail this week asking which games have the best Endgame Energy

Also, if you're a geologist who would like to contribute to our discussion of sand, please do leave a comment. We're clearly idiots, and we need all the facts that we can get.

Having just arrived back from Belgium's fantastic Zomerspel tabletop convention, Matt and Quinns were inspired by Belgian chips to create this episode of our award-winning podcast. It's long, crunchy, filling and if you eat nothing except this podcast then you will probably die?

Games discussed in this episode include the fascinating Taverns of Tiefan Thal (01:51), the taut little Feld game Carpe Diem (13:48), the simple-yet-delightful Luxor (26:47), the gross-yet-charming Silk (33:13) and the simply superb Rail Pass (49:37). Matt and Quinns also discuss some of the video reviews they've been working on, including Pipeline (1:00:58) and Too Many Bones (1:06:54).

Enjoy, everybody!

Fans of our award-winning board game podcast should know that the pod-apult is armed and ready.

Contained in today's payload are impressions of the party game Stay Cool (02:45), the excellent Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid (09:01), the frighteningly intense Letter Jam (21:42), the adorable Welcome to Dino World (29:22), the heavy roll'n'write Rome and Roll (38:19) and the world's first "boxed megagame", Vampire: The Masquerade – Blood Feud (43:28).

Finally, following on from team SU&SD having recently discovered the joy of using pencils to write on paper, we've just now learned about BOOKS! Specifically, the book Top 10 Games You Can Play In Your Head, By Yourself (49:35).

Enjoy, everybody.

Just who are druids? What are they doing? And is it safe to "dip" with them?

We can't be sure, but we can tell you that the following games are discussed in this podcast: tableau-builder Res Arcana (02:38), cuboid contest Dice Throne (11:50), hidden role game Insider (20:10), cult hit Three Kingdoms Redux (26:56), new expansion Isle of Skye: Druids (37:21) and the staggering in scale Batman: Gotham City Chronicles (42:47).

At last, we close out the podcast with a tempting question from our mailbag (55:54). If we could force board game fans the world over play one thing, what would we choose?

In this special episode of our award-winning podcast, Matt and Quinns talk about their trip to Danish board game convention Fastaval.

Games discussed include the superb Hansa Teutonica (02:56), the as-yet unannounced Deep Blue (12:02), the also-unannounced Auto (15:50), Flamme Rouge’s unnamed campaign expansion (24:05), That’s Not Lemonade (35:43) and Mid-Life Crisis (45:23).

Finally, we close with a discussion of Fastaval itself, and what makes it so magical (59:18). Is it the terrifying, viking-like cleaning crew? Is it the black tie award ceremony? Is it the unparalleled gender equality, or the world-class roleplaying games?

It's all of these things, and more. Huge thanks to the organisers for choosing us as this year's guests of honour.