A NEW CHANNEL-ENGER APPROACHES: SU&SD Newsletter #41 (January 2020)

Matt: Cor blimminy up a reet big chimminy, we’ve  got an exciting nugget of news for you today… I’m thrilled to formally  introduce you to the newest official member of Shut Up & Sit Down -  it’s Mr Thomas Brewster!

Matt: You  may have seen him in some of our recent videos, and despite the  brilliant qualities and skills of all of the interns we’ve worked with  this year, it’s Tom that immediately blew us away with his eye for  detail, lovely personality, and a seemingly endless quantity of  ridiculous ideas. He’s been helping out behind the scenes a ton already,  but you’ll definitely be seeing and hearing a lot from him in the  future. I won’t expect Tom to now awkwardly follow on from these  statements, but will instead now briefly pretend to be him and use his  fictional voice to simply type “hello”.

Tom: Hello!

Matt: Thanks Tom! We’ll invite him back to talk a  chunk more in next month’s newsletter, at which point the powerful aura  of embarrassment should have faded down to a gentle glow. We’ll be on  the lookout for new talent and new voices in the future, but after a  couple of years of hard work and spreading ourselves thin, I can’t tell  you how excited we are to be back at full energy and hyped for what’s  ahead. It's going to be an amazing year - thank you so much for choosing  to be a part of the backbone that supports it!

Quinns: Like some frostbitten iron age hamlet,  Shut Up & Sit Down has times of plenty and times of hunger. February  and March are often when scarcity bites the hardest, after we’ve done  all of our big Christmas reviews but before publishers have begun  releasing the next year’s games. At this time of year we sometimes find  ourselves in a bit of a rut where we start foraging further and further  for great games and just can’t seem to find them. Whereas normally we  show up at board game nights like Santa Claus with bulging funsack, in  lean times we arrive wincing with a bag of longshots.

But this year, it’s the exact opposite. These are fat times, my  friend. Not only do I have my next three video reviews planned (and I’m  excited to release each and every one of them), I’ve now got an overflow  stack of games that I don’t yet know what to do with.

Here’s where I’m at - in a slow month, the Copenhagen Roll &  Write, Tournament at Camelot, Deep Blue, Aerion, Similo, Stellar and  Sausage Party would be games that I’d happily do a video on. Lord knows  this site has reviewed worse games. But trying to squeeze them into the  review schedule now is like trying to get a 14 year old into a  nightclub. It’s just not going to happen.

Matt: I know plenty of people who got into nightclubs age 14! Anything is possible, dear Quinns - ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

Quinns: Anyway - right now my brain is mostly just  daydreaming about this Sunday, when my group is trying Ettin and then  The King’s Dilemma in a hot double feature.

Speaking of Ettin, I want to share an observation from the  SU&SD slack channel. Just a few years ago Wizkids’ aging board game  division was a bad joke told by a impoverished drunk. This year, they’re  taking chances of fascinating designs AND wrapping them up in  first-rate art design. I’d even go as far as to say that they’re one of  my favourite publishers. How’s that for turning a ship around?

Matt: I'd had them pegged as being Titanic - let's raise a glass to the beauty of being horribly wrong. Huzzah!

What are we watching? 📺

Matt: I can’t believe Watchmen nailed the ending! Easily one of the best  things I’ve seen in years, adored it. Last night I also treated myself  to a watch of John Wick 3, having skipped the second film entirely. Such  a ridiculous, brilliant thing.

Quinns: After Netflix recommending it to me 99999 times, I finally caved and watched Norsemen. And I love it! There’s something about the incredibly flat delivery of  Norwegians speaking English that cracks me up every single time. The  show is actually recorded in both Norwegian and English, with the actors  shooting each scene twice.

Also, I’m now watching Chef & My Fridge. My descent into a hallyu quagmire continues apace.

What are we reading? 📙

Quinns: I have a tradition of reading a lot of fantasy and sci-fi during  Winter. Ordinarily I do this “During Christmas” but this year I’ve  extended my stretch of dweeby reading because I’ve had an incredible run  of books.

Rosewater was  an absolute rollercoaster, and a great example of the more diverse and  interesting sci-fi we’ve been seeing recently from authors of colour.  After an underwhelming second book, the third book in the Books of Babel  series - The Hod King - is a gorgeous return to form. I’m currently under the spell of The Bear and the Nightingale,  not just because it’s beautifully written but because I’m a sucker for  well-researched medieval books. But I’m rushing through that because I  can’t wait to start Children of Ruin, the sequel to the breathtaking Children of Time. I’ve heard it’s every bit as good!

Matt: Ooh, I think I’ll order a copy of Children  of Time this weekend! I really enjoyed Senlin Ascends - despite having  to mentally hold my nose during the bits that - without any meaningful  examination - detailed the main character’s marriage to a much younger,  very beautiful student. Yikes aside, some really wonderful  world-building, but gosh if it wasn’t a whole barrel of YIKES.

What are we video games!  🎮

Quinns: I’m actually playing a videogame that’s a  bit like a board game. Fancy that! It’s called Unity of Command II and  it came to my attention when people started talking about it being a  near-perfect wargame.

I don’t know enough about the genre to agree or disagree, but I can  say that it’s a detailed enough simulation that you end up wrestling  with the real problems of World War 2. Plenty of wargames will have  phrases like “Supply trains”, “River crossings” and “Feints” written on  event cards, but this game actually bakes those problems into the  strategy itself, making railroads, rivers and mountains exactly as  important as they were in real life. I thoroughly recommend it, even if  my learning it involved losing a couple of missions and angry-watching  some YouTube videos to find out why.

Matt: I’ve been plodding through The Witcher 3, a  game I started years ago and then wandered off from. Mainly because  watching the TV show just felt like watching someone do cosplay about a  videogame that wouldn’t allow me to make any of the choices. Mainly  though, I’ve been blown away by the Nintendo Switch version of Divinity:  Original Sin 2. There’s no way that a huge ambitious PC-style RPG  should work as a pick up and play handheld experience, and yet  it...does? More than that, actually - it positively shines? Just a  stunning magic trick, all in all - highly recommended.

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