“Start as you mean to go on,” as they say. That’s why for our first review of 2019 we picked a fantastic game, put on the loudest shirts that Matt owned, broke out the eyeliner, and squeezed in an homage to The Muppets. Don’t get distracted by all of those lovely colours, though. Featuring a bit of bluffing, a bit of logic, a bit of deduction and a lot of laughter, Treasure Island is a game that deserves some serious consideration.

Remember our review of party game The Champion of the Wild? Well, we had so much fun with it that we decided to turn it into a live show at PAX Unplugged, featuring Jonathan Ying, Alan Gerding, and multiple facts about manta ray sex.

Do you feel a faint stirring in your heart? That’ll probably be because of Quacks of Quedlinburg, a game about stirring, excitement, dread, capitalism, and even more stirring. It’s also the second game about managing your own personal gambling den we’ve reviewed recently, following on from the very good Space Base. But this is better. Special thanks to Wizarding Harry of Wizarding Harry’s Child Wizarding School for Top Wizarding Harrys for being such a superb special guest.

Every two weeks, Card Games That Don’t Suck will teach you how to play a game that we love, that you can play with an ordinary deck of cards. In doing so, we hope to make table gaming more accessible and wide-ranging, and maybe even learn a little bit of history along the way. But there’s no history in our first instalment! Ricochet Poker is, in fact, a brand new game by designer James Ernest, and we think it’s just superb.

Oho, with the unexpected release of the Mother of Dragons expansion for the Game of Thrones board game, did Fantasy Flight think they were the only ones who could return to an old game? They’ve got another thing coming. We reviewed this board game back in 2011, and now we’re reviewing it AGAIN. So stick that in your moon door and smoke it.

Did you catch the first instalment of Card Games That Don’t Suck, Ricochet Poker? This week we’re travelling from America to China to tell you about a fantastic shedding game called Fight the Landlord. Watching the video, you’ll notice that “2s” are valued higher than royals. It’s possible that this comes from the game’s communist roots, in much that same way that following the French revolution, it was considered distasteful to play games where kings and queens were desirable. The more you know!

Slowly but surely, SU&SD is learning what makes a good board game stream. “Two and a half hours of Matt and Quinns playing a complicated resource management game” might not be the answer, but one thing’s for certain- that’s what we’ve uploaded to YouTube this week. This video also documents Matt and Quinns playing the new expansion for the terrific Great Western Trail, Rails to the North, for the very first time. To be charitable, it’s not what they expect. To be candid, they play the worst game of Great Western Trail of their adult lives.

With the release of The Quest for El Dorado, it seems that board gaming owes yet another debt to venerable designer Reiner Knizia. This game is a nail-biting race through a troublesome jungle, and we think it’s superb. A solid, simple, clean design. …But what if you want a wobbly, complex, dirty design? Well, then you could pick up the Heroes & Hexes expansion, which Quinns also investigates in this video.

For the third instalment of Card Games that Don’t Suck, Quinns has dug up a game that’s fun even if you don’t gamble. That’s right, everybody! Those card game scientists finally cracked it. Oh Hell is a trick-taking game for 3-7 players that might be the ultimate idle time waster. It’s a short, simple game that somehow expands to fill a whole hour, like a wad of dough rising in the oven of your minds.

Since a quick’n’shifty discussion on podcast #68, there hasn’t been much discussion on this site of Andean carpet-crafter & bag-builder Altiplano… until TODAY! This game has recently been gifted with The Traveller expansion, which Matt is convinced turns a good game into a great one by… adding a strange man who wanders around in circles? Can that be right?

Everyone remembers the 10 plagues of Egypt. Blood, frogs, flies, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, fire, darkness, and mediocre card games. Today, we’re doing our bit to rebuild society. Gin Rummy is most certainly a card game that doesn’t suck. This is a tense, tight little race for 2 players that plays a lot like an affordable version of Arboretum.

Brace yourselves, because Quinns (maybe) has a new favourite board game of all time. Blood on the Clocktower is live on Kickstarter right now, and for the first time in Shut Up & Sit Down history we’ve published our review to coincide with that Kickstarter to help to get this game into the hands of as many people as possible. What makes it so special? Is it the haunted gerrymandering? The frightening complexity? The fact that, under all of the lying and murder, it’s a feelgood experience?

In 2015, we posted our Top 50 Games Ever. In 2017, we lost our minds examining every game in the Board Game Geek Top 100. This year, we’re doing something a little more personal: A series of videos on the team’s board game collections, starting with Quinns. After working on SU&SD for seven years, games slipping between his fingers like grains of sand, these are the 136 (plus) games that he’s chosen to keep (and a few that are in his flat despite his best efforts).

Get out the ice packs! It’s time for board gaming’s most bruising real-estate showdown. But then, to simply call The Estates “bruising” is probably unfair. This game isn’t just cruel, it’s beautiful, and beautifully simple, and very funny indeed. Take a look at our Let’s Play and see what we’re talking about. Could this be the greatest auction game ever made? Is it better than Ra and Cyclades? Maybe, maybe…

Fab negotiation game Chinatown has finally received a new print run! To celebrate, Quinns dusted off the copy he used in his 2014 review for a playthrough on our Twitch page. Can Chinatown newcomers Matt and Kylie make a fool of him in his own streets? Yes, of course they can. Ooh, and while you’re watching, don’t forget to quote the famous movie line! “Forget it, Jake. It’s prawns.”

For as long as SU&SD has been around, Skull has been our constant companion. Do we need something to play at 1am at a board game convention? It’s Skull. Do we need to improvise a game out of almost no components at all? It’s Skull. Do we need to show off to people how great this hobby is with a minimum of rules overhead? It’s Skull. Of course we had to do it for Cards Games That Don’t Suck. Thanks so much for supporting this series, everybody! I’m having an incredible time with it. And oh boy, do I have an amazing find for you next episode…

Oof! When was the last time a game let you get jade, AND sail boat, AND great wall? Gùgōng is the new game from venerable designer Andreas Steding, and we think it may well be worth your time. This game is a teasing web of tricky economies and corrupt cardplay, and we absolutely can't wait for the expansion to be revealed later this year.

Warning: This game contains choking hazards, fireballs, bees, snakes, rockfalls and a vengeful god. Do not operate while under the influence. Or was that “Only operate while under the influence”? We can’t remember.

Oh boy, have we got an exciting announcement! Today marks the start of Chronicles Month on Shut Up & Sit Down, where we’ll be celebrating all things chronicled (as well as the general art of chronicling). To kick off proceedings, we’re reviewing Chronicles of Crime together with the brand-new Noir expansion. Is it a better crime-busting game than Consulting Detective? Or a better disposable game than Unlock? Did Matt write this whole review just to play with noir grading? Click play, and follow the money.

It’s time for the second review of Chronicles month, and oh boy, have we got a chronicle for you. With a price point of $130, Batman: Gotham City Chronicles is the second most expensive game we’ve ever reviewed. If there’s a bat-thing you love, you’re bound to find it sequestered in one (one!) of this game’s many, many boxes. But could some boxes of fictitious bats ever be worth that much money?

For as long as SU&SD has been around, we’ve been fans of Space Alert. Even today, it might well be the most ridiculous, challenging and inventive co-operative game ever… erm, invented.

Today, we're proud to present the finale of Chronicles Month, as we poke our flag into a most elusive game in the BoardGameGeek Top 100. Crokinole is big, it's bold, it's 150 years old, and a good board will cost you $300. Those are some very frightening numbers. Could this ever be a reasonable consumer purchase? Click play, and find out.

Briscola Chiamata is bound to be a real highlight of this series. An incredibly simple trick-taking with hidden roles, this 5 player game sees a team of 4 players facing off against a 5th player... but someone in their ranks is working for the other side.

Last summer, Quinns put out an excitable review of 878 Vikings, the latest instalment in a series he calls “The mac & cheese of wargaming.” This summer, we’ve uploaded a clash of the (online) titans! Matt and Quinns taking on the streaming team of Creative Assembly, makers of the Total War videogames. And frankly, in the face of total war, we think our team did quite well.

Today we’re very proud to present our review of Capstone Games’ Pipeline. A game of pipes, lines, and… erm… the stuff that goes inside of pipes? You mustn’t let Pipeline’s lack of theme bother you. Where we’re going we don’t need theme. Playing Pipeline, you’re going to feel the rush of seed money, the thrill of turning a profit, the rollercoaster of handling each new round at greater and greater speeds. In fact, this could be the year’s single best economic board game.

If you’re in the mood for some Fantasy adventure, Too Many Bones is big, beautiful and… waterproof? But don’t let a little plastic scare you away! Not since Matt’s Gloomhaven review have we been so enamoured of a co-op game of monster-thwomping. This game is brave, bizarre, and absolutely worth your attention.

Our series on the best games that you can play with a 52 card deck has dealt out a wild card! Cribbage is a great game for 2 players (though you can enjoy it with 3 or 4) that people are still playing after four hundred years. And yes, that means it’s a profoundly weird thing to learn, but it also means that there’s an undeniable magic to it.

It’s been a while since we reviewed a classic of a card game, but holy cow! 6 Nimmt isn’t just great. It’s up there with Arboretum, Jaipur, Condottiere and The Fox in the Forest. In fact, there’s more flow tucked into this tidy, tiny box than we’ve seen since Love Letter.

What’s great? Killing your friends in the desert. What’s better? Doing it with robust publisher support. In this review Matt tackles not one, but TWO expansions for magical wargame Kemet. There’s Kemet: Ta-Seti, which adds a range of exotic Egyptian modules, and Kemet: Seth, which transforms Kemet into an imbalanced, all-versus-one tale of Evil vs. Much Bigger Evil.

In a clash of two titans (and two troublesome assistants), Kylie and Matt took on Ava and Quinns at Concordia: Venus, the team-based expansion for SU&SD favourite Concordia. “A team-based management game?” you might be asking. “How does that work?” Well, as we found out, in some ways it doesn’t work, but that’s precisely the point.

This week, our series on the best games that you can play with a 52 card deck gets EPIC. Eleusis might end up being the most thematic game in this series. This game has God, scientists, experiments, prophets, even false prophets. Bizarre setting aside, it’s also a pretty great game that asks 4-8 players how much they’re willing to stake on their own deductive powers.

At long last, Shut Up & Sit Down’s campaign for “More Worms in Games!” has borne fruit. Disgusting, wriggling, glistening fruit. Silk is the first published work from designer Luis Ranedo, as well the first game from artist Roc Espinet. Considering that this this is their first effort, here at SU&SD we can’t wait to see what beautiful, nasty business they get up to next.

t long last, the final instalment of SU&SD’s “Worm Series” is here. Today, what began with Matt’s Silk review now reaches its dramatic conclusion. In other, less important news of people waiting a long time, after a wait of 30 years the legendary Dune board game is again being made available. But have the years been kind to this game? Is it still a classic? And how long will Quinns be able to go before recommending Jodorowsky’s Dune?

This week, our series on the best games that you can play with a 52 card deck gets violent. Egyptian Ratscrew plays a lot like Jungle Speed, except with more fire. Literally. This is the first game that SU&SD has covered with a greater than zero chance of ending in flames. Also, huge thanks to Gnalistair on YouTube for pointing out that the game gets even better if you require players to first slap their forehead before slapping the table.

As anyone who’s seen us at conventions will know, it’s hard for team SU&SD to spend a day out and about without getting into a punching fight or muscle demonstration. As such, it was only natural that we’d review Combo Fighter. An expandable, simple card game about kicking bottom, and a glorious team effort between designer Asger Johansen and artist Snorre Krogh. If you like the sound of a lightning-fast 1 vs 1 game that’s more intelligent than it has any right to be, do take a closer look.

Who’s a fan of Greece’s Pieces? This week, Matt’s strapped on his cyber-sandals for a jaunt through Lords of Hellas. This is an enormous, Kickstarted “dudes on a map” game of slaying cyber-monsters, building cyber-statues, amassing cyber-hoplites and going on cyber-adventures. Will this game triumph, like Homer? Or fall out of the sky like a big Icarus idiot?

This week, our series on the best games that you can play with a 52 card deck gets WILD. Bourré is the most outrageous gambling game that you’ve never heard of. It has heaps of suave cardplay, and features not just the lure of winning money, but the striking threat of losing it. It’s smart, silly, and barely in control of itself, and we love it to pieces. (Shut Up & Sit Down does not condone irresponsible gambling. As we always say: If you’re not having fun when you’re losing, it’s definitely time to stop.)

While Quintin takes a couple of weeks off, Matt dives into a world of BEARYTALE IMAGINATION. There’s no-one else here to keep an eye on things, so the gloves are fully off when it comes to awful puns. Expanding upon the legacy of Barenpark with bigger, badder bears and beautiful 3D monorails – this expansion certainly fills a box that’s almost the same size as the basic game, but can The Bad News Bears fill the same size in our massive, empty hearts?