Cardboard - Love Letter: Batman card game giveaway

With Valentine's day fast approaching it seems like a great time to talk about Seiji Kanai's tiny-but-awesome card game Love Letter. Not the most original of links, I know, but I'd forgotten how much I loved this game until I got the Batman version at Christmas and we've played it lots of times since! I like it so much, in fact, that I thought I'd share the fun with everyone by running another giveaway.

Cardboard - Carcassonne: Over Hill and Dale board game review

If you're not familiar with Klaus-Jürgen Wrede's classic game Carcassonne, it's a tile-laying game where players build up the landscape of southern France, making cities, roads and fields to try and score the most points along the way. Released way back in 2000, Carcassonne has been a staple of many gamers' collections for a long time now, famed for simple, engaging gameplay that makes it a great introductory game for new players.

There have been numerous expansions over the years which can be added to the base game to change things up a bit, from adding different types of tiles and meeples to an actual physical catapault that flings tokens across the board. I've bought a few of these expansions in the past but these days I've separated them all out again so that we can easily play plain old vanilla Carcassonne without spending ages picking out expansion tiles and pieces.

More recently, publishers Z-Man seem to have come up with an alternative expansion method. Rather than selling smaller expansion packs that can be added to the base game, they've started releasing spin-off standalone versions with alternative rules: the same Carcassonne experience we know and love but with an added twist and no need to spend time muddling about with components.

One of the latest entries to the family is Carcassonne: Over Hill and Dale, a farming themed version of the original game where you're making fields and growing crops instead of fortifying cities.

Making - January 2016

My plan to do a crafting post each month appears to have fallen slightly behind, with the last one being in September! I'll have another go this year, starting with yet another catch-up post.

I picked out my first ever cross-stitch pattern at the Handmade Fair back in September. It's a cute glow-in-the-dark rocket for my baby's room from Bobo Stitch and I'm quite pleased that I managed to finish and frame it before he's old enough to leave home!

Here's the finished product, with his name removed at the bottom to protect the innocent; conveniently this also hides a spacing error I made that still makes me want to unpick and redo the whole word!

I'm told that doing this would be considered crazy, so it'll have to stay as it is! I love the glow-in-the-dark thread, the whole thing looks really great when the lights go out.

For my second ever cross-stitch pattern I picked this cute Christmas themed stamp from the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery:

They make all sorts of adorable patterns, from little stamp sized patterns like this to big year-long stitch-along patterns where you get a new piece each month to complete. This particular one was published in Just CrossStitch Magazine's Christmas ornament issue. I made the completed stamp into a little pillow-shaped decoration the Christmas tree:

I had big plans to make for lots of similar decorations, but only managed one in the end.  Maybe more for next year!

I also started this larger pattern - 'Christmas on Gingerbread Lane' - from the same designers in November, optimistically thinking it would be ready for Christmas:

There's quite a lot still to go on this one, but hopefully I can get it done for *next* Christmas!

Moving on from Christmas themed things, I finally put all the pieces together for the baby's mobile after months of looking at the pile of finished crochet bits. Ta daaah!

It's a bit of a mash-up of three patterns and goes from space through to sky. Random, I know, but I think it turned out pretty nicely!

I found a pattern for Amy Gaines' Happy Day Mobile on Ravelry for free and fell in love with it straight away, but at the same time I really wanted a space-y theme in there somewhere. I bought a pattern for the rockets, planets and moon from One & Two Company but didn't really like the stars it used, so I found a free pattern on the Mohu blog for some smaller ones.

On the way I made a few modifications. The clouds in the Happy Day pattern were all flat circles, which I thought looked a bit odd against all the other puffy bits - so I gritted my teeth and made double the amount so I could stuff them like the other elements. I had to make a bit of a modification for (what seems to be) an error in the planet pattern, which was a bit disappointing in the only pattern I'd had to pay for!

I finished off the planets and moon little kawaii faces to so that they matched with the sun, rainbow and raindrops. Oh and I also added rattles and chimes when I was stuffing the parts so that when the mobile turns it makes a nice noise!

Here are a couple of closer pictures of some of the parts:

Slightly wonky rainbow:

Happy sun - I love this bit:

So that's pretty much it for what I've been making since my last post! I've now starting working on the Frosted Pumpkin stitch-along for 2016 - the Pumpkin Passport, a travel themed pattern where you get a new section each month with a different international city, but more on that later!

Cardboard - Zombie Tower 3D (Kickstarter preview)

Bad news, I'm afraid - a mysterious object has fallen from outer space, triggering zombie outbreaks throughout the world! You and your friends are trapped in a zombie-filled tower and have been completely cut off from each other as it begins to collapse. You can still talk to each other, but you can't see what everyone is doing and can only pass items through little gaps in the rubble. The situation isn't looking too positive! Oh, and more zombies are appearing all the time. And I forgot to mention the survivors that need saving. And you all need to escape...

Cardboard - Patchwork board game review

Patchwork was released back in 2014, but for some reason I've been seeing it *everywhere* for the past couple of months. Everyone on Instagram seemed to have a copy except me and since it combines board games and crafting, two of my favourite things to do, it had to go onto my Christmas list. Not that I've ever actually done any real quilting; my sewing is a bit rubbish and I value my fingers too much to go near a sewing machine on a regular basis... Even so, I was lucky enough to find a copy of the game under our Christmas tree courtesy of my lovely husband.

Kickstarter - The Dice Tower 2016

Ever-improving technology and internet connectivity have given us access to huge amounts of information and entertainment on demand. It's all too easy to start expecting whatever media you want, when you want, and often for free.

I've been guilty myself of watching content without really considering the effort that someone else is putting in on the other side. And fair enough, it's their choice to put their content up for everyone to use for free - but I think that sometimes it's nice to give something back! Luckily for me, the more choice we get in how we consume media, the more ways that emerge to help us support creators. Crowdfunding sites can sometimes be a little bit controversial, but personally I love the chance to support projects and people that matter to me - like The Dice Tower Kickstarter campaign for 2016.

If you like board games and gaming in general, you'd be hard pressed to find a better repository of news, discussion and reviews than The Dice Tower and its associated network of gaming podcasts. In 2015, Tom Vasel and the team put out over 1,500 videos along with 50 podcast episodes, providing a really valuable resource for the board gaming community.

Their reviews are top of my list to check when thinking about buying a new game. As with all reviews occasionally my opinion of a game differs, but Dice Tower reviews can always be relied on to give a great overview of gameplay with loads of objective information to help make up your mind.

They've kept me entertained through many sleepless hours of pregnancy and the first year of a small baby, so it seems only fair to give something in return (although now I think about it, they've cost me a lot of money in board games over the years!) 

I also know that most of the money is going towards making more and better content that I can watch in 2016, so that's super exciting! Stretch goals will help bring more members into the team, help with convention attendance and add some more fun one-off videos.

There are tons of cool rewards on offer for all the different levels of support, from little dice to game promos - if I had $250 spare I could even join the guys for dinner when they come to UK Games Expo in June (a little out of my price range, sadly!)

Check out the Kickstarter campaign here.

If you want to find out more about The Dice Tower, head over to their website and check out the podcasts and videos. Tom also does important charitable work, having established the Jack Vasel memorial fund to help gamers in their hour of need - you can read more here.

Cardboard - The Game card game review

Happy new year, everyone! I hope it's full of happiness and fun things for you all.  I've had a bit of a Christmas blog-break, but I'm back with new year's resolutions and all sorts of good intentions - starting with a new review!

Another exciting box arrived before Christmas from Esdevium, this time containing The Game, a co-operative card game designed by Steffen Benndorf and published by IDW Games.