Thursday 26 November 2015

Christmas stocking fillers #4: Star Wars Timeline card game review and giveaway

It's less than a month until Star Wars: The Force Awakens is released, so I may be getting *slightly* over-excited. To help feed the Star Wars frenzy, Esdevium have sent me a copy of Timeline: Star Wars to try out and I thought it would fit nicely into the Christmas stocking fillers series.

My knowledge of history is pretty horrendous, so what better to shame me into learning than Timeline, a game of putting events into chronological order more accurately than everyone else. Asmodee publish the game in various educational sounding flavours: Science & Discoveries, Inventions, Music & Cinema and Historical Events.

But wait! There's a Star Wars version, you say? I know about this already - I can't possibly lose...

Star Wars Timeline box


Tuesday 24 November 2015

Cardboard - Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game (with Portal 2 Steam giveaway)

I'm making a note here: 'huge success'...

Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game

(Okay, it's a bit cheesy and obvious, and sort of gives away what I think of the game before you've read the post, but I had to use the song lyrics in here somewhere!)

Thursday 19 November 2015

Christmas stocking filler #3: Smart Egg review and giveaway

Smart Eggs
Distributor: Esdevium Games
Players: 1
Age: 8+
Cost: RRP £5.99, available from Waterstones on the high street

Five weeks to go until Christmas - have you sorted out any of your gift shopping yet? I might be starting to panic slightly...

Anyway, returning to the post I'm writing (when I should be shopping), Esdevium Games have sent me some Smart Eggs to review as part of my Christmas stocking filler series - hurrah!

Smart Eggs - Esdevium Games


Tuesday 17 November 2015

Christmas stocking filler #2: Dobble card game review

Dobble
Publisher: Asmodee
Players: 2 - 8
Age: 6+
Cost: Around £10

Continuing the Christmas stocking filler series, this time I've picked Dobble, another great observation-based card game.



Friday 13 November 2015

Christmas stocking fillers #1: Jungle Speed card game review

With Christmas just around the corner my mind is already turning to Christmas shopping, so I thought a series on stocking filler suggestions might be helpful (especially to those trying to sneakily convert friends or relatives to cardboard addiction!)

For the first in the series, I've picked something that I can see fitting in really well on Christmas evening, once people start to recover from lunch and are looking for something fun to do together: Jungle Speed, a dexterity-based party card game.



Thursday 12 November 2015

New Facebook page!

Hello!

Just a quick post to let everyone know I've set up a new Facebook page for the blog, so I'd really appreciate a couple of likes to make it look a little less tragic and unloved!

If you'd like even more things to follow I've also set up a separate Twitter feed, or you could follow my usual Instagram ramblings.

Coming up soon, I have some fun Christmas stocking-filler ideas and possibly a couple of cool giveaways, so make sure to follow and check back soon!
Random Nerdery Facebook page

Friday 6 November 2015

Podcast Love - No Such Thing As A Fish (QI podcast)


No Such Thing As A Fish podcast review

Hosted by one of my favourite humans, Stephen Fry, the brilliant BBC TV comedy panel show QI (standing for 'Quite Interesting') has been a must-watch of mine for many years. If you haven't seen it, the guests battle it out to win points for producing the most interesting answers to difficult questions about little known facts.  Each series is themed around a letter in the alphabet and at time of writing they've reached 'M' - yikes, I hadn't realised that it's been on for 13 years!

Earlier this year, I was super-excited to hear from a friend that some of the researchers (or 'elves', as they refer to themselves) behind the show had put together a spin-off podcast - titled No Such Thing As A Fish.  The podcast gathers some of the QI Elves around a table to relate their four favourite facts uncovered in the past week. Each fact meanders off into a discussion of various related Quite Interesting topics and amusing conversations.

I think in my head I'd created an image of the show's fact-gatherers as pale, shut-in folks chained between a laptop and a reference library, but these guys and gal are brilliant researchers and really, really funny. So much so that they now tour a No Such Thing As A Fish live show that I'd really love to go and see, although anywhere remotely near me is sold out for the foreseeable future. Their job sounds amazing (I'm extremely jealous) but I don't think my research skills are up to the challenge of becoming an elf!

If you like to learn and be entertained at the same time, check out the podcast website here.  There's a huge back catalogue for you to catch up on, as this is a weekly podcast and has been going for almost two years.  Trust me, though, you won't get bored. And no, I'm not telling you why there's no such thing as a fish - you'll have to listen!

If you still want more to listen to, take a look through my other podcast reviews.