I no longer think it is too early to talk about Christmas. Wishlists, what are you giving and any other Christmas/ Winter chat

Lets open it up to under £20 in case they feel generous

I was going to say Parade, but BGP has it at £20.62. Which seems a bit daft, frankly; it’s just 66 cards! Coup should be available, though, and if you have scope for 3-person gaming well worth considering.

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Innovation is the answer, but it isn’t best for everyone. Some people are wrong.

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Arboretum - really tight 2 player card game with great art.
Blue Lagoon
Cockroach Poker
Decrypto
The Resistance

Although, I agree with @Benkyo Innovation, but I don’t think it’s in stock anywhere in the UK

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Coloretto
Just One
Deep Sea Adventures
Crossing
The Mind
For Sale
The Crew
6Nimmt
Happy Salmon
Spot It

I think Matthew Lees made a video specifically about this :stuck_out_tongue:

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There’s also https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/our-shopping-guide-to-the-best-cheap-board-games/ (including a comments thread with many other suggestions).

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Oh, while I don’t do personal presents among the adults, I have continuously since 2005 made a photo calender for the family with photos from our traveling. This is going to be difficult this year I didn’t travel a lot before Covid hit and during… few photos.

Anyway, for the past 2 years I also made a photo calender for our circle of friends with pictures of everyone. Usually, I used only my own photos for that from all the fun things we did together. This year I had to ask for photos from everyone. And because we have seen so little of each other, every one is quite excited to be getting a calendar with all our friends in it.

This one took me about one hour (in portions) to get everyone to send me a few pictures and another hour to sort them a bit and about 90 minutes to put together the calendar. So for about ~3 hours of work and a reasonable amount of money (reasonable to me, it’s about 1 Gloomhaven box, a cheap one) I am making all my friends and all their kids happy. Highly recommend doing it.

Also it will give me an excuse to distribute the calendars, snagging a few coffees or outdoor meetings along the way :slight_smile:

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The only thing I want for Christmas this year is a new vacuum cleaner. My old vacuum, or “Hoover” if you are ensconced across the pond, crapped out a week ago. :face_with_raised_eyebrow: :christmas_tree:

As for giving gifts, SWMBO’s birthday was this past weekend, and I got her a new iPhone as a present. While we were waiting for everything to transfer from old to new, we left the shop and headed over to the game store to browse and kill some time. Unbelievably, I found nothing there that interested me! She, however, found a copy of Potion Explosion (a game she really enjoys but doesn’t own) and informed me that she would be happy with that as a Christmas present. Rather than wait, I just bought it right then and there, and there was much rejoicing. I scored a great many “relationship points” this weekend! :laughing: :+1:t3:

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My sister doesn’t know what she wants for Christmas, and my fallback is yet another set of fancy dice. Suggestions (for dice) welcome!

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Dakota Irish do some really nice sets. Also, I know Valkyrie RPG are about to have a big sale starting on the 27th.

And my dice hoarding friend has actually put together a directory of good dice sellers (as there are so many sites that just resell cheap/crap dice): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XnUyQ8VTeW6vtlIPL82_5TODQrQfHRCUkuU1n_VjcLE/edit?usp=sharing

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Thats quite a list!

Don’t know if you have them over your side of the water, but I can thoroughly recommend a Shark. Loads of Black Friday deals as well

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That’s a great list, thanks!

I went for these fancy dice, plus a dice tray so she doesn’t dent the table:

I also marvelled at these but they’re a bit out of my Christmas budget!

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Speaking of those, I may be buying one of these for someone:

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Speaking of RPG-related gifts, I took advantage of my vague ability to do graphic design and the fact many companies will now print whatever you want onto whatever you want for quite cheap. Resulting in this mug for a friend who runs one of the campaigns I play in:

(This is the same friend for whom I created the Facebook Emoji Beholder, hence its appearance on the mug.)

I did something similar last year where I made coasters featuring imaginary beers from the brewery owned by the family of the dwarven fighter in the game I run.

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Christmas season officially starts in our household on the day after Thanksgiving which my oldest calls Christmas tree day. If we didn’t make it a holiday of sorts then he would want it up year round.
We put up the Christmas tree. Then I spend the next month trying to keep my kids from breaking it.

My oldest is starting to understand Santa being happy or sad depending on his levels of destruction that has occurred.
Youngest is 100% there for the food, and the “Kung Fu Panda Holiday Special”. Which he would watch year round had Netflix not taken it off.

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The metal dice have arrived, and I’m extremely tempted to get my own set because of how nice they are to roll…

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I had the corresponding effect of buying some for myself, and then feeling bad that my friends had such sad dice that I’m buying them some too. They are like hard drugs, though; once you’ve used them, you can’t be satisfied with anything else. :scream: :nerd_face:

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For the great many of you out there who simply COULD NOT wait to find out how this positively gripping story ended (HA!), I received a package at work yesterday containing a new Dyson V8 Stick Vac! SWMBO ordered it for me as a Christmas gift. :smiley:

Combined with the copy of Europe Engulfed that I “gifted” to myself, and the fact that my mother is still healthy and recuperating nicely from her accident (I know she fell just over a year ago, but she’s 87 and these things take time), the last bit of this accursed year isn’t as bad as it could be. :grimacing:

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