Matt and Quinns are ready to flick one another up! Won’t somebody stop them? Seriously we’re not insured This week we’re looking at Flick ’em Up!, a beautiful new French game of flicking bullets at one another. But could anything replace SU&SD’s favourite dexterity game, Catacombs? Only one thing’s for sure. This town ain’t big enough for both of ’em.

Whether you’d rather someone else teach your friends to play, you want people to know the rules before they come over, or simply want a closer look at this incredible game, our How to Play videos are there for you. Not heard of Pandemic Legacy, our game of 2015? You should correct that immediately!

Could this be the end for Shut Up & Sit Down? The year has barely started and yet it already seems that Quinns is… is leaving us? For a board game? Face it, this was inevitable. We all knew the day would come. But why, of all games, was it Concordia? What’s so special about it? And how will Matt and Paul cope with the news? That’s a lot of questions, but fear not. All these and more are answered in this video. Probably. Maybe.

Do you want the good news, or the bad news? The good news is that Food Chain Magnate is an absolute barn stormer of a game. A delicious puzzle patty rolled in thematic batter, deep fried across years of playtesting(?). The bad news is that it became almost entirely sold out between us receiving this game and publishing the review. Your best bet is to pre-order straight from Splotter, or reserve a copy at your friendly local game shop (where it should be cheaper).

What would it be like to live in a world without words? How difficult might it be to communicate the idea of a person, an object or a work of art through nothing but a collection of slightly ambiguous icons? How would that even go? If you think the answers to those questions, in turn, are “Pretty awkward!” “Very difficult!” and “It would be a disaster!” then you’re already primed for our first playthrough video of 2016. Paul sat down with some of his friends, a copy of Concept and some very simple rules: 1. Divide into two teams of two. 2. Play to a two minute turn limit. 3. Choose the card (though not the exact concept) the other team must play. 4. Play the game on the middle of its three difficulty levels. That should be fine, right? This is what happened.

You ask, and we provide! Our second ever How to Play video walks you through your first game of the sublime 3rd edition of Fury of Dracula. Once again, this isn’t a COMPLETE rules explanation (we forgot to mention that Dracula can’t be found in sea spaces and doesn’t place encounter cards, for a start), but it should certainly give everyone a ruddy good grasp of the game before you get stuck into the dirty business of questions and manuals. Enjoy, everybody!

The Opener returns! Everyone’s favourite series featuring a straightforward game paired with a sexy recipe. Except we’re not calling it The Opener any more, it’s just “review and a recipe”. Nice and simple! Just like the game. And the recipe. And Matt. Don’t be deceived by that svelte little box, though. Not unlike the trees it depicts, Arboretum is beautiful, tough, and all about hidden depths.

Almost since SU&SD began we’ve been banging on about Catacombs, the dungeon-delving dexterity game. A team of heroes (who are discs) battling an evil villain (who’s a disc) with spells, slings and arrows (which are – you guessed it – discs). Availability of Catacombs is a little thin right now, though, so we figured we’d do a video that lets you enjoy it through us! Pull up a stinky dungeon pew, and watch as Matt and Quinns break out a copy of Catacombs, a bottle of absinthe, and a camera that does cooool slo-mo.

It’s been styled as an experiment, but is it more of an extravagance or perhaps even some crazed meddling with the forces of nature themselves? 504 is no simple board game, but instead a… gigantic collection of cards and components and pieces and possibilities. Is this a revolution? This this hubris? Is this madness? This week, Paul faced down one of his greatest challenges ever…

Condottiere is a card game with a little bit of everything. A bit of area control, a bit of bluffing, a bit of hand management, a bit of negotiation and a bit of luck. It’s like a delicious sampler platter of everything board games have to offer, and it’s a perfect game to start your collection with. Shut Up & Sit Down has talked up this classic since the site began. Check out this review from back in 2011! It turns out this game is still available in shops and still excellent, so it’s time to do it again!

Hold on to your womp rats! Quinns is here with one of the biggest reviews of the year. Star Wars: Rebellion is Fantasy Flight’s forthcoming Star Wars star war. One side plays the Empire, another the Rebellion, in a vast conflict involving more than 150 plastic miniatures and countless twists, turns and heroics. In other words it’s about the most exciting thing imaginable. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this early review.

These “How to Play” videos are giving us a great chance to dust off some of our all-time favourite boxes. Of course we were going to do Galaxy Trucker. We’ll climb back into its rickety cabs any chance we get. If you want to see more of this absolutely hilarious game your next port of call should be our Let’s Play, which we swear to god was not “rigged” despite what you might have read. The game is just that ridiculous. After that, you should just buy the darn thing. It looks like the Anniversary Edition in this video has now sold out, but the base game is ready and waiting for you.

Quinns and Matt want you to come on holiday with them! Come along to the ancient city of Tenochtitlan. Don’t worry, it’ll be demolished again once we’re done with it. Mexica was a bit of a surprise for us. We hadn’t heard anything about it, but this city’s as simple, beautiful and solid as the stone temples that dominate it. Ooh, and the Aztec clubbing scene is killer. Tell ’em Crash Bandicoot sent you.

If you ask us what our favourite game is, it changes with the weather. If it’s a sunny day, Cosmic Encounter. If it’s wet and windswept, Consulting Detective. If it’s a sleepy autumn night, Memoir ’44. And so on, forever and ever, until we get tired and go to sleep. But if you ask our team which game they’ve played the most, you’ll only get one answer: Skull*. Arguably the best bluffing game ever made, and a glittering showcase of just how much game you can get out of a minimum of rules. If you’re still not sold, check out Matt’s review and a recipe! Skull with Fresh Pizza. *Though Quinns’ Netrunner habit and Paul’s Carcassonne addiction do offer some competition.

Steady your socks, folks, this week’s review is a bumper one! Paul has been looking at Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization, the latest version of Through the Ages. To many, this is new iteration of a modern classic, yet another fine work by talented game designer Vlaada Chvátil. What did Shut Up & Sit Down make of it? And is everybody feeling okay? We should warn you that, as well as Paul, this video also contains some slight flashing or strobing at a particular point.

In some ways, Memoir ’44 is the game that birthed SU&SD. Paul and Quinns were playing a long campaign of this definitive game of toy soldiers when they decided to create a board game web series. Historians can find our ye olde review of Memoir right here (timestamp 15:01), filmed on a borrowed camcorder on a sweltering summer’s evening. A more recent Memoir video we did is our Operation Overlord Let’s Play. While Memoir’s campaign books make it a longer game and the Breakthrough rules are there if you want to make it more tactical, Overlord is what you get if you want an epic experience. If only all games could be tailored to the same extent! What a world that would be.

OH MY GOODNESS! Just one week on from Paul tackling Through the Ages, Quinns is cracking open another board game classic. Brass is an incredibly nuanced game of carving out the industries of England’s industrial revolution that dates all the way back to 2007, when Elvis Presley was on the radio and Vietnam was all anyone could talk about. Will we recommend this game? Will Quinns have anything informative to say about England? Click play, and find out.

Inspired by Lovecraft’s impossible dimensions, we’ve attempted to squeeze a game of Eldritch Horror, one of the most epic board games of all time, into a single Let’s Play video! And to make our lives even harder, we squeezed in both the Forsaken Lore and the Under the Pyramids expansions. Anyone who missed Quinns’ review of this disasterpiece can find it right here. In short, this is an absolutely bizarre game. Alternately epic and personal, scary and silly, too generous or too unfair, it’s a tremendously hard thing to review. But it’s also fascinating to watch. So pull up a pew, get yourself a beverage, and see if this slimy, tentacular box has a place on your shelf.

We reviewed Mysterium so early (and so breathlessly) that we never got to do a video on it. Gaw bless these rules explanations for letting us fix that! Mysterium didn’t so much replace Dixit as murder it in the attic with the mantelpiece clock, and Asmodee’s new edition is just gorgeous. In fact, we’re planning a full Let’s Play as soon as the Hidden Signs expansion arrives, which could be as early as next month!

It’s time once again for you to place your evening in our large, spindly hands. Following on from Arboretum and Pasta With Trees, why not invite your friends over for a game of Celestia and a fluffy frittata? Lovely push-your-luck mechanics? Check! Little cardboard boat? Check! Vegetables? Check! We’re not sure who’d have a checklist like that, but if you do, we should hang out. Get in touch!

It’s here. Doctor Panic, the first co-op game to ever feature a whoopie cushion, or a hairnet, or a needle and thread, is now available in shops. Best of all, it’s every bit as dumb as advertised! There’s never been a game that demanded SU&SD’s attention more. Time for us to turn on the bright lights, disinfect our mouths and begin the delicate operation… of the review.

Would you like to play the thoroughly excellent Resistance: Avalon? Sit back, relax and let Quinns teach you how to play! After all, you’ll soon be sat forward, distinctly un-relaxed and disbelieving everything said by anyone. But wait! There’s more! A few years ago we filmed ourselves playing an entire game of The Resistance. If you’d like to see how this game works in more detail, definitely go and watch our younger, cherubic faces spout some terrible lies.

Paul has been making the most of the sunny days of spring, including all those ever-growing evenings, with Isle of Skye, which he says is the most twee thing he’s played in a while. He went outside, too. Was this wise? Has it affected his mind? Can he be trusted outdoors in North America? Is he even safe in this wild and untamed wilderness? Watch this video to answer that most burning of questions: Was Paul Dean killed by a fern?

Ever since our review, Lords of Vegas is the economic warfare game that we find ourselves recommending the most. Why pay for flights to Las Vegas when this game lets you gamble, drink heavily, invest unwisely and come to loathe your friends, all from the comfort of your own home? For other entry-level economic slugfests, do check out Chinatown, or dip way back into the SU&SD archives for a peek at our Black Gold review. It’s one of our earliest ever bits of criticism, and a game we still have a soft (and oily) spot for.

HOT TAMALE-BEANS! It’s Quinns with a Shut Up & Sit Down review of Quadropolis! Who could have guessed I am writing this from the UK Games Expo we just did a live podcast and I’ve got no energy left at all. Does anyone even read these text descriptions? There’s no way we can know. Unless you guys were to tell us somehow? I don’t know how you could do that though We’re all going to go and eat some food now, and drink a beer. Beer is real good. Shut Up & Sit Down Recommends: Beer

Ahh, is there anything more beautiful than that most classic of English summers? What about the so very gorgeous cards of Mystic Vale, cards you don’t just play, but cards you can build, piece by piece? Intrigued? You bet you are! We took our two most experienced druids, Quinns and Matt (Paul is a bard), and we put them in a room with cards and crystals and radiant peaks. We asked them not only how it compares with our two very favourite card games, Trains and Arctic Scavengers, but if it’s capable of being as beautifully magical as the luscious Seasons. Unfortunately, there was too much conjuration energy in that room. Quinns got carried away with animal facts and got on a plane for a holiday and left Paul to write this text (QUINNS COME BACK I miss you) and then Matt ran off to perform experiments with rhubarb. Neither have been seen since.

Hold onto your hardhats! Power Grid was one of the first reviews SU&SD ever did (archivists will find that ancient episode here), and now Quinns has returned with yet more hot air, desperate to expunge his thoughts as if he were a dirty old steam turbine. This time around we’re reviewing the “deluxe” 10th anniversary edition, as well as the new The Stock Companies expansion that’s compatible with either edition of the game. Has this classic still got what it takes, or is it fossil fuel?

Public service announcement: 2009’s Arctic Scavengers isn’t simply still a great game. It might still be the greatest game to ever let players slip cards into their personal deck and go “Ooh, this feels a bit nice.” And if you’re new here, you should know that that’s a hotly contested genre. If you missed our extensive coverage of this frosty classic you’ll find Quinns’ original video review here and his investigation of 2015’s Recon expansion here. And remember, you can now get the base game and the Recon expansion in a single box! You scream, I scream, we all scream for icy warfare.

Did you find the excellent Imperial Settlers a little cold and unforgiving? Do you trust them bones? Would you risk your city’s fate on a the roll of the dice!? Paul seems pretty happy to, over and over, as he looks at cute newcomer Dice City. It’s got cemeteries and catapults, mines and militia, which is just about everything an ambitious mayor could need, right? Take a seat and break out the popcorn for a video that’s both a review and… a little something extra, courtesy of a very special guest. Have a terrific weekend!

We can only apologise. After five years of assuming we didn’t know anything about reviewing kids games, it turns out that we’re amazing at it. How embarrassing! But Libellud’s Loony Quest is more than just a great kid’s game. This is the a drawing game that’s up there with Pictomania and A Fake Artist Goes to New York. Think you can snipe a eight rocket penguins in under 30 seconds? Then it’s time to put your tiny child’s felt-tip pen where your mouth is. Oh god don’t actually do it now you’ve got pen on your teeth jesus we can’t take you ANYWHERE

Today we’re teaching one of the big boys! Imperial Assault (see our review here) is an epic box containing your very own Star Wars adventure. One person plays the dastardly forces of the Imperium and is given control of a never-ending hosepipe of henchmen, while up to four more players steer a pack of heroes through a fantastic campaign. It’s not the simplest thing to play, though, so we put together this primer video for the hero team. Step one, invite heroes over. Step two, tell them to watch this. Step three, sit ’em down and start playing!

Following on from our early review of Mysterium and our video that teaches you the rules, today we’re rounding off our coverage with something a bit special. It’s our most ambitious Let’s Play EVER, featuring both more cameras and more dressing up than ever before. We’re also playing exclusively with the new characters, locations and weapons found in the new expansion, Mysterium: Hidden Signs!

Here’s something a little different! During a live podcast at the UK Games Expo we finally had an opportunity to play Cat On Yer Head, a game designed entirely for crowds. So we thought, why not film it? And why not do Shut Up & Sit Down’s first ever collaborative review, with Paul and Quinns presenting, Matt and Pip doing some panicked camerawork and 200 SU&SD fans lending a hand? Because you know what they say. You can never have too many cooks.

We delight in throwing curveballs, so here’s a video you’d never have expected. A fat Let’s Play of fantastic miniatures game Infinity, with scenery provided by the excellent people at Battle Systems! The truth is that ever since our spirited review of this game last year, Matt and Quinns have been collecting Infinity together with a few of their friends, and anything we’re interested in, we want to show you why. So we ended up making the above heartfelt half-hour, demonstrating just how tense and dangerous this game is. Enjoy, everybody.

Dr. Reiner Knizia returns to SU&SD with a new edition of Ra, one of his most-loved designs ever. What will Quinns make of this 1999 classic in the blessed light of 2016? Why isn’t Paul at Quinns’ party? And what the shit is Quinns wearing? One thing’s for sure. Auction games will never be the same again. “Oh no”, indeed.

In honour of the Rio Olympics Games, Quinns has done a review about diving! Just like in the Olympic Games, Captain Sonar is a contest where two teams dive beneath the seas and try and destroy one another with high explosives, drawing one another’s movements on sheets of acetate. If you regularly play games with a group of six-plus feisty men and women then you’ve got to watch this video. Captain Sonar isn’t just fun, it’s like nothing else you’ve ever played. And even if you can’t get those numbers together, Captain Sonar will do backflips to accommodate you. Literally. Have a fantastic weekend, everybody.

Gather close to the fire pit, everybody. Paul and Quinns want to tell you about the last of our favourite games from Gen Con 2016. This one’s called Inis, it’s the third game in the series that brought us Cyclades and Kemet and, frankly, it’s a little bit perfect. Not only is Inis the best game of plastic soldiers running around a map that we’ve played all year, it manages that with a 5 minute rules explanation and – look ma! – no dice. The only problem is that Inis isn’t out yet. English-language distributors don’t always get a lot of Matagot’s stock in, either, so pre-order at your local retailer to avoid disappointment. And have a fantastic weekend!

Joy of joys! The latest SU&SD review has arrived at port, having completed its grand tour of Seafall. Ah, see how it’s sitting low in the water? It must be carrying a tremendous cargo of opinions and insight. That, or it’s leaking. If you haven’t heard the hype around this game, all you need to know is that it’s designer Rob Daviau’s third legacy game following on from the amazing Risk Legacy and Pandemic Legacy. But while those two games were fairly straightforward, Seafall is an ambitious epic. In other words, it’s the most exciting box we’re expecting to review all year. So what are you waiting for? Click play! Watch. And be amazed.

This week, Paul springs into action and plays against type as he looks at not one, but two games of the more physical variety. First up, he takes on the chunky and junky Junk Art, before going on to wrestle with (and shoot at) the penguins of Pingo Pingo. It’s all guns and blocks and dashing and crashing. Good heavens, I’m getting a headache. Why this strange change of interest? What’s with Paul’s new, more active lifestyle? And what is the meaning of Quinns’ unusual delivery? That’s a lot of questions for a Friday. Let’s all go and have a lie down.

It was two years ago that Paul and Quinns ordered you guys to buy Dead of Winter. Today, we’ve got fantastic news for everyone who disobeyed us! Dead of Winter: The Long Night is a new, standalone expansion for Dead of Winter that’s bigger and sexier than the original game. But since it’s mostly the same game again, we figured that instead of a review we’d do a rules explanation for both games with a teeny buyer’s guide on the end. And yes, we’re aware of the irony that our filming date for this frosty game fell on the hottest day of the year. At least semi-nude Quinns is fittingly horrific.

What happens when immovable critics meet unstoppable sales figures? Find out in our long-awaited review of Ticket to Ride, followed by our review of new, giant box Ticket to Ride: Rails and Sails! Which is basically Ticket to Ride².

Today Quinns and Matt have joined forces to teach El Grande, one of the grand old girls of board gaming. This box is every bit as charming and dangerous as she was back in 1995, and with stock availability of the new “Big Box” still excellent, she remains a very smart purchase.

Who cares if the pound has reached a 168 year low? Why, BOARD GAMES will let us travel the world from the comfort of our own homes! For example, Istanbul lets us explore the smoky souks of the Ottoman empire, and lots of fun they are too. But are they as fun as the noble Concordia? And what about Caverna, or Terra Mystica? Hmm. There’s nothing for it but to play all of them again. Have a fantastic weekend, everybody!

Happy Halloween y’all! To celebrate this most fiendish of holidays Paul’s brought a game back from the dead. SU&SD first covered Werewolf with Matt’s candlelit review. Since then we’ve fallen in love with One Night Ultimate Werewolf and its standalone sequel, Daybreak. Today Paul investigates the next game in this undying chain. One Night Ultimate Vampire significantly en-complicates the series we know and love. Can it possibly survive?

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 free class? And if you’re further afield, you may be able to find something near you here! Have a great weekend, everybody. Do it for Crom.

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.

It could be the voices that whisper ceaselessly inside our skull, but it seems everyone is talking about Arkham Horror: The Card Game! We’re only going to review it after a lot more plays and a few more expansions, but for now why not watch Matt and Quinns play the first chapter of the first campaign? For reference, here’s that Garth Marenghi thing they keep referencing. If you haven’t yet seen it, do get the DVD. You’re in for a treat.

While we don’t usually review Kickstarter titles, we’ve made a very particular exception for this seasonal special, with Paul taking a long and very hard look at at the “boutique horror” of Kingdom Death: Monster. Why this? Why now? A new version of Kingdom Death is back on Kickstarter and generating astounding amounts of interest (and cash). It was all the excuse we needed to plunge into this enormous beast and tear at its innards. Have a terrific weekend, everyone. If you decide to spend it out in some snow, or fighting monsters, or even just rolling particularly large handfuls of dice, do remember to stay safe!