Advent 2025 – Round Up
Well, Got some more painting done and looks like it’s possible to get it all done this year, but I can’t 100% be sure.. have to see ^_^
So I’m not going do a group photo right now but lets do the round up!
What have we gotten with this years Advent Calendar? well, we got a very nice magnetic lock box for the set to store in. The box is a bit generic but personally, I’m more then fine with that. the Labelling is nice without spoiling what the contents are (specially for advent calendars which aren’t just chocolate, you will often find they have to list EVERYTHING you get inside. Kinda great if you want to know if it’s worth it, but also partly defeats the point of it being an advent calendar.
24 Card Dungeon Tiles, again, this are very nice and good quality, the only problem of note I have with the card is on one day the laminate slightly started to come off the outside when I took off the sticker but that’s very minor and doesn’t really mean much and I’m not even sure if I could find that tile again as I just stopped when I noticed, was a bit more careful and pressed it back. You get the separation sometimes anyway. Only way to stop it is to NOT laminate the card which means it’s much less strong and protected. So better this minor issue then not to have it at all. I’m not 100% sure on how easy the ‘shuffle it like a deck’ method for game replaying would be. mixing them up sure, but I’ll need to really flatten them in a press or something to get them so I can really shuffle but, again, this isn’t a problem. They are good quality and no problem with the designs. The idea of doing them like a little box was a great idea. It does limit the size of what’s inside but again, that’s not a problem as the size is about right.
The Cards are nicely done too, basic but nice design and clear to use. The five clearly coloured sisters (I have seen some things where they think it’s smart to use ‘white’ as a colour along with ‘off-white’, or two subtle shades of blue which just makes it maddening to tell the colours apart. Hell, I have this big produced game where there is a Blue and a green but with the printing in the rule book where it makes a note where to put various item tiles of them colours, it is EXTREMLY hard to tell the difference. They print way too dark and only give a small border of that colour due to the scale of printing. The Sisters have very rich coloured borders with clear shades. I could do the standard ‘but what about the colour blind’ but in that case, the colours don’t matter. The only real time they would matter was if you have multiple players with colour coded pieces and they can’t remember who is who without that colour, but I’m sad to say that is a problem with being colour blind with any game. I’m not colour blind though so I can’t really comment too much. Other then the sisters, there are three other cards. The knapsack card which isn’t needed but makes it useful as a place to keep what you are carrying and show your default endurance. If you play multiplayer, then the fact of only one card just means only one player uses it, or none of you do. Again, it’s not important but something which can be nice and useful. There is also the quick play turn summary card which just reminds of you the basic things of what a test is, what an opposed test is, what movement does etc. I always find such things useful in a game, even if you don’t need to use them half the time. The other card is the URL/QR link. As such things are, this is only useful as long as the site is running but while it is running, it’s fine to use to take you to the website.
The dice you got on Day 2 are nice ones, I think the painting is a little iffy on some of the pits but no more so then you would get on many an old die after a few turns of play. Well, depends on the type of die for how many turns but I’m sure many people have gotten new die which have slight marks on the pits, or old die which have worn off alot of the paint. So no problems there. Besides, have you seen the price of some of them stupid die? liquid metal cores and stuff where you pay £40+ for one D6 and it really doesn’t roll much better or anything. Or what about them Light up ones? okay, fun but often you really need it dark to see them lights.. Anyway.. Miniatures time!
Yep, you got 24 Miniatures. While that is enough for one each day, you didn’t get one each day. Second day you got the 3 dice ^_^ But you did get 24 nice minis as you got two on day one. But I can imagine some people not being happy. The nature of many things is you can’t have a full person piece each day and be a decent price here, also For a full game, you need more stuff. And instead of cheapy rubbish ‘card token’ for items like food, you get a nice mini! I would prefer the Mini myself. Hell, I think alot of people would which is why many games have ‘add-on packs’ which replace tokens with nice plastic or metal miniatures.
We got the Sister player piece, and I’m gonna say 12 figure miniatures (Ghost, Robin, Troll, Wolf, Witch, Rat King, Goblin Trio, Knight, Tweedles, Fairy, Baron, Grandma Beast) and the other 11 miniatures were Items (Bread, Horn, Harp, Apple, Cheese, Pie, Key, Crown, Axe, Money Bag, Potion Bottle). I have no problem with these smaller token miniatures as you have something nice more then the card, like I said above, Though I’ll point out another minor issue if you want to play multiplayer. You only have 1 loaf of Bread and 1 Pie, where if you play multiplayer, each sister should start with a loaf of Bread and the pies keep being re-baked so.. maybe only one pie is allowed at once.. up to the player that, but I think if it came with 5 loafs of bread, 5 player pieces etc, It would have been much worse for the main aim which is Solo play.
Now.. One elephant in the room I have briefly mention before but .. it’s not a major thing. Website goes down, you lose the game rules and stuff. Personally, I make a copy of each day’s digital content to print off a small rule book copy. Last years calendar content is up as a PDF for download, and this years probably will be too at some point, but if you don’t download it yourself, playing offline (or more, just without a connection at the time) is pretty tricky. But having a rule book with the game would increase the price (and mean less content in the box) and it’s not like it’s hard for someone to Print off a copy, or save a local copy of the rules and they are quite open with the fact of needing the internet connection in the first place. And it’s much better then the one board game which looked interesting to me but it’s soo digital based that without a phone with Internet connection (yep, has to be a mobile phone.. or maybe tablet) you just cannot play the game. That has turned me completely off that board game. Where as this is something that is very easy to get around the internet requirement with only a minor bit of work.
Now the only thing to come to is Price vs what you get. Lets see how that works out.
This years was £40. That’s a little high BUT that is only my personal view from someone who remembers when you could buy a board game with some miniatures for £10. They can’t even produce that these days. So with the modern day price in mind for the £40 you get 24 Metal Miniatures, 3 Dice, the hard card box, 24 card tiles and 7 ‘playing cards’. Well… if you only talk about the miniatures, that’s about £1.70 a figure. I kinda dare you to find new (as in not second hand) metal miniatures of a 25-28mm scale for £1.70 each. If you factor in the price for the box and card stock, This is more then acceptable for the price, specially when you think you have probably seen the same level of content, but with Plastic minis, sold for much more by a big name company who have much cheaper unit costs.
Oh that’s something I forgot, Reply value. Well, once you have gone through the whole advent calendar part and you know what there is to find.. It doesn’t really take too much away. Some bits where you don’t quite know if something is worth doing can be kinda ‘spoiled’ but that is very minor. I mean, you play Hero Quest. You find out a Chest is a trap. Next time you play that mission, you don’t open that chest.. doesn’t mean the mission is unplayable. It’s like those people that only ever watch a movie or tv show once cause once you know the ending, it’s not worth watching it again… Don’t quite get that idea.. Unless it’s just not very good… I often tend to avoid that stuff but that’s only cause I stick with what I know or what I’ve seen before.
Anyway.. All in all, fun, worth the price, Can’t wait till next year ^_^ now, can I get these minis all finished by 1st Jan?…