Holy cats it's SECRET SANTA 2017 (11th ANNUAL)

From my secret santa whose identity I do not know:

Much thanks!

Reading these posts is my own personal David Aldridge moment!

I AM A GOLDEN GOD!

My stalking skills are fairly limited, but it wasn’t hard to see that you were a Game of Thrones fan, so I went with that. That little card game is a fun one that my gaming buddies and I have been playing for years, glad you liked it. And as for the picture, it wasn’t really GoT-related, more a nice mountain image to remind you Iowa folks that there are such places. But feel free to imagine it’s filled with white walkers if you like!

I’m sure that visiting all those local breweries was a great personal sacrifice. That’s real Secret Santa dedication!

Hey, sorry, that was me. You are welcome. Man you were hard to shop for! Every time a new thing or game was mentioned in a thread you expressed interest and I was like “yeah!”, Then you’d be like “I picked this up”, and I’d be like … “Darn”! A bit of stalking told me you like PAX and the Squirrel Girl thing was based on one comment.

Stalking is fun!

Definitely got a lot of play out of the card game this weekend with all the relatives and everything around. Appreciate the back story on the mountain landscape picture, it is kinda flat and dreary around here.

Thank you again!

Crippled by flu, pics soom

On behalf of everyone, thanks for running everything again, @fire! Looking forward to watching Dave’s next Santa hire a professional puzzlemaker to keep the progressions going.

I have been traveling, and while I opened my gifts before leaving, I forgot to take photos (it was a typical frantic pre-holiday packing and wee hours of Northern Darkness departure).

My Nordic Santa (yay!) was super generous, with what looks to be an amazing set of books, including a hardcover version of The Book of Dust, and a truly terrific letter that made my day when I finally read it this morning.

Thank you, Secret Santa! A belated Merry Christmas, and heartfelt best wishes for the New Year :-)

-Michael

Hey!!!

So this was a, let’s say… eventful Christmas season, with some family crises and unexpected traveling. So while I opened my Santa’s gift on the 26th, I was not able to take proper pictures up until now.

That said, my Santa did pretty good stalking, for what I found when I opened the (originally delayed due to DHL fuckup) package was nothing less that an amazing Blade Runner 2049 art book.

I have some pictures here, but sadly I do not think they make the book justice:

This thing is just amazingly beautiful. I have gone through it all, but have not yet read it. The layout and printing is top notch, and I do not say that lightly (my wife is professional layout artist and visual researcher, and she was equally smitten).

I am looking forward for the craziness of this Christmas season to die down, so I can read this beauty slowly.

This is going into my living room. Well played, Santa!!!

Glad you like it! Was a bit worried there when DHL got confused with the address (what happened?) This book was rather tough to nail down as its only just getting released here in Europe and is basically not available. I lucked out when one shop had some stock for about half a day, so if the delivery hadn’t worked out I was afraid it’d be ages before I could get a hold of another copy. Figured you’d appreciate it based on a bit of stalking and seeing as its pretty new, I assumed you didn’t have a copy yet!

Enjoy the read and I hope you can relax a bit now that the christmas season is over.

The address got messed up between your ordering and DHL getting it. Could have been the Web shop or DHL (although they have delivered here before, so who knows?). Fortunately their customer service was.indeed top notch and they resolved the issue immediately.

Thanks for the book, Santa!!!

You home yet, @claybob???

Dear @kristina,

Your Secret Santa wants to verify that you received your gift. Are you home and have you gotten anything?

Best,
fire

Nothing here! I’ve been home since 27th. I do know that customs have been pretty tardy lately, a friend of mine ordered clothes from an online store that took 1,5 month to arrive because they were stuck in customs… not sure where this is shipping from but that might be an explanation? :)

My Secret Santa was @Galadin, who nailed an awesome trifecta of gifts:

First, there was the really cool book Soonish, co-written by the guy who does the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal webcomic, which I found out about through Quarter To Three years and years ago. It reads like I’m talking to a smart friend and it has relevant comics pasted in.

Second, there was this board game called First Martians:

@Brooski immediately recognized Ignacy Trzewiczek’s name and was impressed. I actually haven’t seen this game in a few weeks because @tomchick absconded with it (with my blessing, of course) because, as you may know, he loves new board games. I stopped by the ChristienMurawski/TomChick house to pick up the game before going on vacation but found that Tom had taken it to bed with him. HMMMM!

Finally, this awesome board game:

(aside: Thanks to @ChristienMurawski for the mid-blink photo)

My kid and I have played this game at least a half-dozen times in the first few days of winter break. It’s a cool set-building mechanic in which you’re trying to build a rocket with enough delta-V to get your payload to its destination. There’s four types of rockets: the mid-grade Atlas, the weak but plentiful Delta, the reusable Falcon, and the powerful but elusive SLS.

My kid (he’s 8, about to turn 9) and I played it as a 4-player game (he was yellow and red, and I was blue and green) when we found that, as a 2-player game, there just weren’t enough rockets being built and fired.

Afterwards, he drew this picture of the Falcon rocket, from the parts of the rocket he assembled in-game:

Thank you Santa! These were very thoughtful and well-stalked gifts!

This one was a bit of a challenge, I think this is the third time in four years or something I have had you. I even pinged Tom to see if he had any ideas to help.

Finally, I just went to the game store, and then saw First Martians. I read about it, it has some mixed reviews, but the parts that people like looked right up my alley and an idea from Tom was to get you stuff I might like as well. I actually bought two copies so I could play it. I think it is great, the thematic element makes it look like you are staring at a bank of LED indicators. The gameplay is a lot of shuffling and crisis management that I just fell in love with. My wife tried it with me for the first game, and it isn’t something up her alley. Also, while it says co-op, I found it to definitely be more solitaire style game. It has become a fave of mine, so hope you like it.

The book was just something I was reading currently and with the right amount of geekiness and humor.

Finally, the last game was my attempt to find something that you could play with your son and that had a nice science bend to it as well.

Oh wow, that’s totally true. I’m gonna be more careful next year. Sorry about that, Galadin, but I loved having you as my Santa three out of the last four years!

Well, I’m bummed that I’m apparently the worst Secret Santa here because I failed at the one thing a Secret Santa is supposed to do. :(

@kristina, I was super psyched to get you stuff that I thought you’d appreciate. It was sent out on the 15th of December, and I can’t imagine there’s any reason it would take a full month to reach you, even if there were customs issues. It all fit into a book-sized envelope, and it had my return address on it. I hate to think it just all went missing.

-Tom

Fwiw, customs, at least here in Spain and specially on holiday season, can take more than a month to resolve, if they hold on to the package (some go through unimpeded, some do not).