Advent 2025 – Day One
Lets Annoy some people who for some reason hate daily updates!
This year was Oakbound’s second Advent Calendar, and while I got a bit behind on last years, I wanna try to keep on top of this one, which should be a bit easier..
As of posting this, I believe there are a few copies still left you can pick up like at: Oakbound’s website
This years was a more mm.. roleplay? maybe, officially they call it a ’tile exploration game’ which is a Solo game where you have 24 lead-pewter miniatures, three dice, five stat cards, reference card, and other stuff. Each day you have a little parcel to open which has the miniature, the box for that day becomes that days tile on the gaming board and then the rules for that day.
The first two and last two days are numbered and are meant to be opened in that order, but all the day between are random! so your adventure is completely randomised.
Basic plot? you control a girl Tuatha (human) girl as she goings through the deep dark woods to grandma’s house to deliver a loaf of bread to her, but the woods aren’t always friendly and you will find many things on your trip. There are five girls (represented by one miniature and the five stat cards, each slightly different) so when one dies, another can carry on the trip.
In Oakbound’s own newsletter, there were even rules to allow up to 5 players, each a different daughter, but it’s original design was solo, which is best for advent calendars where you might not really have people around each day.
Okay, so what do you have before the first day? well, the 5 stat cards, each colour coded So I’ll call them Miss Red, Miss Blue, Miss White, Miss Yellow and Miss Green. The ‘Stuff’ card to hold your inventory, and a quick reference card. There is also a QR code card which takes you to a landing page with the initial story brief and basic info.
Anyway, that’s enough of the advert, I mostly just wanted to get people up to speed with what this is about, lets see what’s in Box number one of “Once Upon a Time in The Woods”!
Well.. maybe not enough of the advert.. taking off the sticker seal from the first box, I’m pretty happy that they hold fairly okay (not perfect) and the card is good that it hasn’t damaged the tile outside when taking it off. Not that it would make TOO much difference to the out side but still.
We have our first tile which shows their cottage, and a path going forward. We also have our first Minis, a Solid based girl, which is our sister (with the base labelled ‘Sister’, and a loaf of bread, neat.
Yeah, the Camera on this phone isn’t great But I’ll take better photos when Minis are painted up ^_^
So today we also have the first bit of rules, which are pretty simple and mostly outlining the point of the game. We need to take one item of food to Grandma. Does it need to be that loaf of bread? nope. Grandma doesn’t know what food you will take her and you might need to eat the food to restore your endurance. So far, we are now carrying the Loaf of Bread and I’ll randomly deal which of the five sisters I’m starting with and.. Oh.. Miss Red!… One in five chance of that. So Miss Red is carrying the Loaf of Bread. Probably singing a happy little tune as she is pretty close to the house and feels safe right now… Maybe ‘Monster’ by Pink Lady, the great 70s Disco Idol duo from Japan (they had minor hit in the USA where they did there best to ruin any chance the pair had at success there.. and kinda worked)
And lets track the stats:
Miss Red:-
Endurance: 6
Stuff: Loaf of Bread
Tile: 1
