This week, Matt, Paul and Quinns reunited in a hotel! We didn't record them all crying with joy for five minutes straight, but we did record them sitting down afterwards to discuss some board games.

First off, the team discuss stress-testing some of their favourite games from the last year at the 2018 Game Developer's Convention in San Francisco. Did Ethnos, Fog of Love, Azul or Barenpark buckle under pressure?

But wait, there's are new games too! Matt has thoughts on the as-yet unpublished Puzzlegami, Leigh joins the team to describe the as-yet unfinished Four Empires, and Paul provides some thoughts on Star Wars: Legion and Age of Steam.

Enjoy, everybody!

Everybody, please remain in your seats with your seatbelts securely fastened. We're expecting some turbulence.

Some turbulent discussions of board games, that is!

In this one and only 74th episode of the SU&SD podcast, Matt and Quinns discuss their weird wooden mates in the Journeyman expansion for Isle of Skye. They chat about stabbing nightmares with pencils in Stuffed Fables, which might be best described as "Toy Story directed by Tim Burton". There's a discussion of the grand game of War of the Ring (second edition), and the real-life backache it gave Quinns. Finally, the two offer their smokin' hot first impressions of Rising Sun, a beautiful game about Japan (but not) where you fight wars (but you don't) and negotiate alliances (but not really).

Enjoy, everybody!

Who's this, arriving fashionably late in a limousine? Why, it's only a new podcast discussing the winners of the 2017 Pearple's Choice Awards!

Quickly, cinch up your black tie or crawl into the nearest dress before joining us on a discussion of the best games of last year. There's reflection on Gloomhaven, Sagrada, Inis, Captain Sonar, Fog of Love, Azul, Consulting Detective, Twilight Imperium 4th edition and so, so much more.

You also get to hear the team collapse in on themselves like a dying star when exposed to the madness of the Best Expansion category. Just what is an expansion for?!

Huge thanks to forum user clg9000 for organising such a fun event.

IS THIS THE END FOR OUR HEROES?!

Matt, Paul and Quinns were last seen launching an expedition to get to the top of the Shut Up & Sit Down review stack. They talked about wanting to scale games like Mountaineers, A Tale of Pirates, The Climbers, the second edition of London and the Munchkin Collectible Card Game (which actually sounded... quite good?).

They were also talking about getting to the bottom of a thought-provoking reader mail. It's rumoured that it questioned whether pirating board games became an ethical grey area in some countries.

Today we found this recording. It's the only evidence we could find that they're still alive. Come home safe, boys.

Matt and Paul regroup for a post-festive ramble through the wilderness of sentient cardboard. Paul shares some thoughts on Legacy of Dragonholt and Celestia - which Matt is comedically unable to recall too clearly. Meanwhile, Matt has been toying with the free co-op app for Imperial Assault - and compares his experiences with this to the recently-reviewed Gloomhaven, for your pleasure / horror.

We then talk a little about the shocking phenomenon of fake board games, as covered by Paul in this week's news, and finally cap off the first pod of the year by addressing the hard-hitting issue of S.N.A.C.K.S. Basically, Paul is mildly interrogated about cookies.

Who - in truth - is the real cookie monster? Only the cold hands of time will decide. Thanks for listening!

Who's feeling cosy? In this final, festive podcast of 2017 Matt and Quinns tuck themselves beneath the Christmas tree before cutting it down for victory points.

That was an oblique reference to the first game the pair discuss, the noble Photosynthesis. The boys then get far too excited about cubes and the possibilities thereof in the absurd game Sidereal Confluence: Trading and Negotiation in the Elysian Quadrant. They then discuss Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire, the new Games Workshop board game showcasing beefy people hitting one another with hammers.

Finally, we read out a heartwarming love letter to the Play By Forum section of the SU&SD forum, and read out our last ever Folk Game of the Month, with a little discussion about depictions of mental health in fiction. Best wishes to everyone who has trouble at this time of year.

Oh my goodness! Apologies if anyone was looking for a board game, we seem to have them all here.

In this 69th installment of the SU&SD podcast Paul chats about Charterstone and explains Ex Libris. Matt is fascinated by Fabled Fruit, Fast Forward: Fortress and Fast Forward: Flee. Quinns catalogues Clans of Caledonia and flaps his lips about the Flamme Rouge: Peloton expansion as well as the free Flamme Rouge app, which contains all-new game mechanics.

Importantly, we also have our new podcast feed set up and working. If you're not seeing episodes 68 or 69 in your podcast feed then you're subscribed to the wrong feed. Search for "Shut Up & Sit Down" in your podcast player until you find this new, improved feed that has the latest episodes, and delete the old feed (which you can see here).

Thanks for listening, everybody!

Matt and Quinns took to the stage at PAX Unplugged for this Very Special Phillysode! The first segment, "Card games that made us feel bad", includes chat about Capital Lux, Hanamikoji and Plums. Then there's "Eurogames that are actually quite good", featuring Pie Town and Altiplano. Finally, the boys move onto their game of the show, and possibly the year: Jacob Jaskov's Fog of Love. Surprising no-one, Matt and Quinns' first simulated relationship had chemistry but was horrible for everyone involved.

This podcast was followed by an extensive audience Q&A which can be found here in our video of the event. The boys were asked to recommend an out-of-print game, how they pick games during a game night, which video they most enjoyed putting together, whether Matt's hair is affected by the tides and more!

The answers may surprise you.

Sixty six podcasts. Can you imagine such a thing? Try and picture sixty six podcasts lying jumbled-up in a big pile. You can't, can you?

Well, today we've made things even stranger by releasing the 67th SU&SD podcast, a spoooOOOoooky Halloween special in which we forgot to do any Halloween-related content of any kind. Instead we talk about how Matt's been groovin' on Gloomhaven, Paul "actually really quite likes" Azul, Quinns did his Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 review and there's even talk of the blue beast that is Lisboa. Lovely stuff!

(It all goes downhill towards the end, though, with Quinns trying to coin the word "handfeel" and begging Paul to review Sidereal Confluence instead of Charterstone. When will that boy get it together?)

Our 66th ever podcast has been removed, hot & crispy, from the aging oven of our minds!

In this instalment Matt, Paul and Quinns try and unpick all of the games they played at SHUX 2017. That means chat about Shifty Eyed Spies, Bargain Quest, Hanamikoji, Edge of Darkness, Space Base, When I Dream and Quinns getting a bit aggressive about Meeple Circus (again). We also preview the upcoming expansions for Inis and Lords of Vegas, which we had literally no idea were going to be playable at our own event.

Finally, we can't resist closing the podcast with a tease of the gigantic reviews we're all working on right now. Quinns is playing Pandemic Legacy: Season 2, Matt's enjoying Gloomhaven, and Paul's about to crack open his copy of Charterstone. It's going to be a fun end to the year, everybody!

Drop everything! Our 65th ever podcast is live, Paul is talking about A Dog's Life and Quinns is on about something called Yummy Yummy Pancake. These are the releases you've been waiting for, right?

...No? Not to worry. We've also got Quinns' exclusive thoughts on the new Netrunner core set and Paul's advance review of Unearth, as well as chatter about Legend of the Five Rings, Donner Dinner Party and Cities of Splendor. Also, Quinns has finally played the game that Paul called Uwe Rosenberg's greatest work ever, A Feast for Odin. Will the pair agree, or will this be Caverna all over again?

Enjoy, everybody!

Buckle up, everybody! The 64th ever Shut Up & Sit Down podcast is here, and it's something of a round the world special.

It's Quinns and Paul in the driver's seat once again as they discuss their journey Between Two Cities with the new Capitals expansion. Paul's desperate to discuss the weird creatures he met during Train Heist. The pair examine the fast cars and small components of Pit Crew. Quinns abruptly remembers that he has the first expansion for Captain Sonar, and talks about that a bit. Finally, Paul recalls his time in parts unknown, playing World Championship Russian Roulette.

But our automotive notions don't stop there! This week we have a particularly extravagant folk game played by the employees of a car rental business. What's going on behind that plain-looking desk? More than you could imagine.

Enjoy, everybody.

You know what doesn't get enough kudos? Bags. Big ones, small ones, soft ones, leathery ones. Where would we be without bags? Walking home from the shops, clutching cucumbers to our chest with onions in our armpits, that's where.

Our 63rd podcast is all about great games with some great bags. Paul's been building (and cursing at) stained glass windows in Sagrada, Quinns has been carelessly eroding his car in the amazing Automobiles (see our review of that one here), and this time we remember to have the chat about Orleans that was meant to go the previous episode. Inspired by these three titles, Shut Up & Sit Down's campaign for More Bags In Games begins next week. Please send money now.

Could you give two figs about bags? Are they "Not your bag"? Not a problem! Paul and Quinns also provide some early impressions of the ludicrously pretty Wasteland Express Delivery Service, and answer a reader mail about why long games lead to a special kind of exhaustion.

OH MY GOODNESS our 62nd podcast ever is here! This episode is all about older games, so why not join Paul, Matt and Quinns as they creep across the board game scene like a pack of daring botanists through primeval jungle, jealously cataloguing and scrutinising all that they find.

Paul's been inspecting the darling buds of Bruges, a Stefan Feld classic that we're expecting a reprint of any day now. After that, Matt and Quinns continue their analysis of the bloomin' brilliant Tigris & Euphrates, chat about their time with the somewhat-toxic Zombicide: Black Plague and run through a field of Railways of the World.

Returning home after this educational hike, the boys read an email about ghosts and answer another email asking why we haven't reviewed the excellent Game of Thrones: The Card Game (second edition). Finally, we discuss a folk game sent in anonymously by an ambulance crew. What could possibly go wrong?

Who's hungry? The 61st ever SU&SD podcast is here, and it's an uncomplicated buffet of board games. Do you like it when we talk about board games? Then this is the podcast for you!

You can start by letting Matt, Pip and Quinns whet your appetite with talk of the questionable New York Slice and the evocative chaos of Kitchen Rush, and afterwards they can spill the beans on the excellent Secrets, the spicy NMBR 9, and the first expansion for Not Alone. For the cheese course, you can listen to them discuss the beauty of Lazer Ryderz and the silliness of Four Elements.

But I hope you left room for dessert, because the gang also played the new game from Vlaada Chvátil. It's called That's a Question, and (dare we say it?) it's his most divisive game yet, and not always in a good way...

You told us the three games that you were most excited about at the UK Games Expo, and we listened. Now it's time for you to listen as Matt, Pip and Quinns discuss their early impressions of all three: The Godfather: Corleone's Empire, First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet and Barenpark.

But that's not all! Straining the very limits of what can be squeezed into 60 minutes of chat such that this podcast threatens to split open like an overstuffed sausage, you'll also find discussions of Catch the Moon and Costa Rica, as well as the world's first "actual play" of The Champion of the Wild. If you too would like to joust on the back of a kangaroo or nudge an otter up Mt. Everest, that game will be coming to Kickstarter later this year.

Sorry about the imperfect audio quality on this one! By way of apology, we're uploading our 61st podcast in just a few hours. It's an audiostravaganza!

In this shellshocked edition of the SU&SD podcast, Matt, Paul and Quinns crawl out from their writing-trenches to discuss the mammoth feature we published this week: SU&SD Take On The BoardGameGeek Top 100. As a postscript, they discuss the dozens of phenomenal games that are cruelly, criminally absent from BGG's fabled list.

Are you disinterested in crimes against arbitrary inventories? Not to worry. Matt also chats about his tiny dice in Star Wars: Dice-Tiny, Paul discusses the impractical politics of Imperial 2030, Quinns has finally rolled around in Roll for the Galaxy and, for some reason, there's also there's a discussion of Ghostbusters: The Board Game II and whether ghosts can move through other ghosts. Ugh.

Do you have any thoughts on ghosts you'd like to share? Please, leave a comment and feed Paul's growing mania.

Here's a question for you. What contains Fields of Arle, Spoils of War, Conflict of Heroes and Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs?

That's right! The answer is "A fistfight over an archaeological dig site in Northern Germany." But another valid answer would be the 58th ever SU&SD podcast, wherein Paul and Quinns discuss all of these games. What's more, Quinns reveals the results of his months-long experiment using the BG Stats app.

After all of that excitement the boys relax by dipping into the mailbag for a question on why board games seem to be getting more expensive, and close the podcast by talking about the noble art of marble racing. Enjoy, everybody!

(Thanks to BGG User Steph Hodge for this podcast's header image!)

Spoils of War, Fields of Arle, Conflict of Heroes, Conflict of Heroes: Guadalcanal, marbles

Quickly, man the battlements! The podcastle is under attack from deadly waves of silence. Secure the chat parapets, and brace the gates of opinion!

In episode 57 of our award-winning podcast Quinns offers thoughts on I'm the Boss!, the first Sid Sackson game that this site has ever covered, while Paul takes a look at the new edition of Citadels, the first game to ever appear on SU&SD. Quinns has also played an advance copy of the much-hyped Century: Spice Road, while Paul rounds off this week's Fresco review by talking about that game's expansions.

There's combat juggling in the folk game section and the boys chat about why Virgin Queen was Quinns' lowest point, but perhaps the biggest surprise comes during our mailbag segment. We've received a reader mail that's made us question our entire attitude towards not just box inlays, but board games in general. Listen in horror as one listener's expensive opinion spreads across the very fabric of SU&SD, like a spilled glass of wine.

Century: Spice Road, century, I’m the Boss!, fresco, Citadels

The stakes have never been higher! In this, the one and only 56th episode of the SU&SD podcast, renowned street warriors Matt, Paul and Quinns take a break from their usual areas of discussion (inner-city brawls, knife fights, how to stare down a local tough from sixty yards) to chat about board games, of all things!

Quinns has played new Days of Wonder beautypiece Yamatai, the group chat some more about the excellent Flamme Rouge, and inspired by Paul's Mythos Tales review there's a discussion on the future of mystery-solving games. We also answer the question on everyone's lips: Is Lego crap? Finally, we answer a reader mail about how to get the most out of a convention. Basically just make sure you have a friend to drag you out of the fight if you get knocked unconscious.

In other words, we're going mad. How many more episodes of this can we possibly do?

The answer: AS MANY AS IT TAKES.

Yamatai, flamme rouge, Mythos Tales, Lego