2024-11-28T19:53:13Z
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our fave cockroach game is salad by the way. we have had it for years. good fun for all.
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While a number of games on this list sounded good to me, I have no one to play them with so would be limited to solo plays, which removes most of them from a purchase list.
However, the idea of a customed deck of playing cards is very appealling and would make for a nice gift for a friend. Has anyone had any recent experiences of ordering such a deck, or can recommend any online sellers/printers for them?
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Not customised, but when I was writing a book about playing cards a few years ago I got heavily into browsing websites to see what was out there, and there are an almost infinite number of existing decks to buy. So if you can’t get it customised with their name etc, you can almost certainly find one on precisely their favourite theme / hobby.
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The Firefly community on BGG has been getting custom cards made for fan expansions, and they seem to favour makeplayingcards. But most of them are in the USA.
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I don’t know anything about custom cards… I must say that I have bought a few very pretty decks over the past few years. The one they are showing in the video is the Beth Sobel one she had on Kickstarter a few years ago.
Most of the cards I have I bought from some UK online shop someone here recommended. Something Allakazam or other.
The deck I currently use for playing “patience” like games every 3 months or so came with Wonderlands War.
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I think someone posted King of Cards here a while back, which has lots of options for fancy decks.
Speaking of gifts, I’m struggling with ideas for friends this year. Anyone got any interesting UK-based online shops they’d recommend? Open to pretty much any suggestions.
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I am making photo calendars for our friends as every year… I am making the same one for the whole group. And one from our trips for the family. It’s not cheap but reliable and not as much work as one might think.
Other than that only presents for kids. My nephew gets a boardgame. He’s almost 13 so the choices are easier. Have to think about it. The other two are still very young. They seemed quite happy with the Louping Louie last week-end, which we gave them last year.
A friend recently gave me a little notebook for no reason other than she thought it was a good fit. (it has a swearing beaver on it and the German name is almost a pun on my last name and I tend swear when things go wrong or I have to drive a car) It’s cute and I am using it. On top of it the brand is a pun on her pre-married name–which she didn’t even notice.
I think nice card decks are nice. Not super-cheap but nice.
Homemade stuff? Baked goods? Nice chocolates. Stuff that gets used up. I am fan of that.
Be sure though your friends like it and used it. F.e. we sometimes get nice coffee beans because we have a fancy coffee machine. But we never switch beans, we always use the same coffee. So getting different beans is not exciting but a hassle and on top of that it makes me feel bad because I am failing to appreciate a gift.
There is totally a reason we have reduced gift giving for adults to the calendars and some nice chocolates to share around.
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A friend of mine used to do a photo calendar of beautiful landscape photos she’d taken that year, with the unusual feature that every photo included her dog pooping, usually discreetly enough that it wasn’t immediately noticeable . I have no idea how this tradition started 
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I have a couple of projects on the back-burner (for a sadly long period of time) needing custom card decks, and after quite a while looking I ended up settling on thegamecrafter.com as the place I would get them printed. It wasn’t the cheapest option, but one thing or another always put me off the other services I explored at the time. I can’t remember specifics, but I’d say that you should just make sure you can find some reliable reviews/reports from customers suggesting the the product will meet your own expectations (and not too many that suggest otherwise).
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