Category Archives: promo

promo

A Tale of Woe and Joy

lego minifigs, new arrivals, promo

While gaming last night I was expecting to get home to find that Neuroshima Hex 3.0 had been delivered.

Amazon had told me it was due for delivery yesterday, and was out and about, on its way to me. The courier doing the delivery was Amazon itself. So my expectations of it having been delivered were not unreasonable.

However Amazons own delivery service seems to be totally incompetent. Not only do they make the slow myHermes courier look speedy, they also make the Royal Mail look competent.

I don't think the Amazon service is capable of next day delivery. They seem to take longer so long to transport a package.

But they exceeded themselves this time.

When I got home, no package. So I logged in and saw that my game had been lost in transport!!!!

WTF! I was not happy.

Yep I was straight onto their customer support people. They apologised, gave me an extra month on my Prime account as compensation, refunded me the money, so I could reorder the game. But guess what the same company had upped the cost by a fiver, so I complained and was given a fiver promo code on my account to make up the difference.

The customer service of Amazon is brilliant, just a shame they are let down by a subpar service on the delivery front.

But lost in transit smacks of it was knicked by their staff.

This morning through my letter box a joyous surprise dropped through it.

There was no warning it was on its way, I had no idea. When I saw the package I thought who is this from and what is it?

I ripped open the packaging, to be greeted by the City Lego box, and an envelop. I opened the envelop to reveal a Christmas card from Duncan. Inside Duncan had written when he saw this he couldn't resist buying it because it reminded him of me! I'm assuming Duncan is referring to the bearded minifigs and in particular the one with the neck beard!

Wow! Duncan this is so amazingly generous, and kind of you. Thank you so much not just for your generosity, but for being such a great friend. Thank you.

Finally a couple of promos from the bgg store arrived…

Let's talk about the elephant in the room of the Police Precint promos. Yeah I don't own the game. It is on my wish list. So why buy them? I don't know, habit?

Somehow I thought the Alien Frontiers expansion would be bigger. So I was a little taken aback to see how small it is. I mainly got this one for the player reference cards. Once again this raises the question why aren't these in the base game?

 

Saturday Morning Goodies

expansions, new arrivals, promo

The English version of two issues of Spielbox arrived this morning. These were back issues that I ordered for particular promos that came with them.

So this is the Kebab Shop promo. It comes on thinner cardboard than the game uses for its tiles. It is suggested on bgg that one solution is to stick it to the German language side of the fountain tile. And I know Jonathan printed out this tile and did that. But there is a bit of me that just can't bring myself to do that. What if I want to play the game in German? Ok I don't speak German, and I don't know anyone who does (that I know of), I've always wanted to learn German (only held back by the fact I'm rubbish at languages, and find speaking them difficult), but who knows I may over come my barriers holding me back, and playing the German version would help with that learning.

As a separate promo from the issue it was given with is the Carcassonne Plague promo. I'm going to need to visit bgg to get the rules for this little promo/expansion.

Over on eBay the playmat for Colt Express is used as bait to separate the gullible from their coins. Yes this is another of those promos that goes for silly money. But it is also another of those promos that you can buy from the original source at its original cost!

My google skills are not some super ninja level, they are those of a mere mortal. So why am I finding these promos at the far more affordable level, while others seemingly aren't?

Any ways I think the game is going to look awesome set out on this playmat.

So I've made up the time machine promo ready to be used.

Now all I need is Amazon to get Colt Express to me in time for this afternoons gaming session. They let me down yesterday by not delivering it.

 

Magic Potions, Bounty Hunters and Time Machines

lego minifigs, new arrivals, promo

A new minifig arrived today, it's the uber cool looking Bobba Fett.

You have to be so careful when buying off eBay, there are a lot of keychain figures that are being sold on there that I don't like. Firstly the figures are not proper minifigs, their bodies are all one, meaning they don't come apart. Secondly the heads have holes in them where the keychain was.

These differences may not make a difference to you, however for me they are massive, and a deal breaker.

Sadly eBay is swamped by these bogus figures, and it does take time to filter out the wheat from the chaff. Which basically means reading the product descriptions carefully. But the effort is worth it.

From the promos I saw online from Essen this year, I think the coolest was for I game I didn't have, nor at that point played Colt Express. The promo they were giving away for this game was a Delorean car from the classic trilogy of movies Back to the Future.
The Delorean is cool. But the envelop had an even bigger cool factor for me. I love Asterix the Gaul. As a kid I saw the original animated movie at the cinema in St Albans when I was visiting my aunt and uncle who were living there at the time.
At secondary school there was a book club, where you could order books from a little colour leaflet that came round, so I ordered the only Asterix book they had which was the Twelve Tasks of Asterix. Up to this point I never knew there were Asterix books. It wasn't until I was at Brighton Poly that I bought anymore Asterix books to read.
Brighton was a costly revelation for me. Wisbech isn't the most cosmopolitan of towns. The local WH Smiths was and is still the main bookshop in town (although there have been others from time to time that never stayed in business for long). So moving to a town as big as Brighton, that not only had bookshops, but comic shops too, I was in geek heaven.
And it was here that I was able to find and buy more Asterix books. I also had a very good friend called Chris that was also into Asterix (and Rocky Horror) who enlightened me to the existence of all the books in the first place.
So yes when I saw the stamp below I was like blown away. That is such an amazingly epic stamp. You can bet I'm going to be keeping that stamp.