Secret Satan 2012 Pics! Post 'Em Here!

moofrank wrote: Oooh. Submarine. That is actually a really good game. It is really not all that complex and falls about on the same complexity level as the MB Gamemaster series. If not just a bit simpler.

I agree. And the solo rules published in an issue of The General make it a really solid solo game. As a solitaire sub game, it easily beats SPI's solo flatpack game (Wolfpack? I forget the title now) and is more fun than Compass Games' Silent War series [which I have had fun with but kind of feels like it's a sort of Strat-o-Matic/Statis-Pro game.]

I have a link around here somewhere to a fan website [in glorious HTML 2.0] that has all the Submarine-related articles and variants from The General, Fire & Movement, and a couple of other long-defunct wargaming mags. I seem to remember that Grognard.com didn't have them all, though they do have some good stuff there, too. I'll see if I can dig it up and post it...

Edit: Pete's posted it below.

doniphann.net/tsculler/index_files/onpatrol.pdf
I'll save you the trouble~ ^^^

This site is the "grail" for all things Submarine:
doniphann.net/tsculler/

Yep, that's it. I think he also did a B-17 QotS site with a shit-ton of variants on it. (It wasn't until I picked up a couple on ebay that I realized that some schmucks were just lifting his stuff (along with the stuff from The General, but the source was at least readily apparent in that case) and packaging it as if it were their own work.)

I have that site bookmarked and the rules printed in my copy of Submarine. Luckily, nobody knows (except you, Frank, and I) about how truly awesome that one is, so I got a copy for 10$ on an GeekAuction. Sadly, I just bought another copy, unpunched, but it was NOT 10$.

I feel like there should be more photos in here. How many people participated this year?

QPCloudy wrote: I feel like there should be more photos in here. How many people participated this year?

Apparently, two: you and Secret Satan

Has anyone NOT received a SS package? Let me know if you're still waiting. I know there were a couple of late senders an probably at least one address fumble.

I'll let you know tomorrow, when I get home from holidays

Secret Satan wrote: Whose parcel (*) is on the way courtesy of more than one F:ATtie in more than one country?
Whose parcel is a small package but big on fun?
Who is fond (IIRC) of plastic dudes?
Who?




Come on down . . . BillyZ!!!!


(*) Not to be opened in front of the sensitive!

Patience.

Got my package on Friday! And now I know why it took so long - it was coming from a land far away, where no one in their right mind would live - Canada.

Here's the customs declaration. I assume no one from customs actually looked at this thing. God help them if they actually opened it.



Let's see what we have here...

OK - first up - Crap.



and more crap



Wait - is that a Death Star Pez dispenser? Yes it is! Score one for the good guys.

Sadly my pez-based euphoria is dashed by these:



I tried wearing them as hats, but it did not work out that well. I will spare you the photos of the aborted attempt.

Hmm... Must be more.



Ah! Lotto scratch-offs! Surely at least one of these will amount to something!



Alas, they are all pre-scratched losers. Much like Lenny Dykstra.

OK - now we're getting into the good stuff. Games!



Hmm... crap card game.



Not bad - prone to AP though



Historical artifacts from the Korean War, apparently.

Ooh... is that a Star Wars game?



Yes it is! But what fiend would bend the complete game - with board inside! - in half? Who is this monster?

Wiping tears aside I move on to the last games. Clash of Cultures, perhaps?



Ah, cruel fate! It is An Enchanted Evening and a bottle of Axe body spray! I am doubly cursed because (honest) I already own this.

One box remains. And it is... Sensations? Apparently Satan thinks I need to get laid.



I gingerly open the cover and find, on top, a Print & Play Dune conversion. More work for me to get it ready to play! Nice artwork on the shields though.



Digging deeper I realize that the contents of Sensations, sadly, are included.

I select a card at random:



The "Be Strategic" almost makes this worth the price of admission.

I dig into the carton one last time and find this emblem of all that is unholy in the world. I decide to adopt him and name him "Barnes".

engelstein wrote:

Ah! Lotto scratch-offs! Surely at least one of these will amount to something!

Alas, they are all pre-scratched losers. Much like Lenny Dykstra.

Dirty! Hopefully he lifted a nail scratching them.

engelstein wrote:
Ah! Lotto scratch-offs! Surely at least one of these will amount to something!
[...]
Alas, they are all pre-scratched losers.

I think the pre-scratched loser lottos are my favourite act of evil this season (so far). That is truly inspired.

After my inaugural gift exchange last year I was bracing myself for the worst from my Secret Satan. Maybe a box of incomplete euros that are so bad that I wouldn’t even want to bother completing them, or perhaps my SS would just avoid all pretense and send me a box of cat turds (still preferable to Foreplay or A Hot Affair, for the record). Despite my Secret Satan’s threats in the shipping thread, however, they were, ultimately, in a benevolent mood.

So this is what I saw upon opening the box:
No games in sight, so I just dove in. That white thing in the lower right was a broken light fixture, and the bobber was a UPS freebie that had a rubber band threaded through it before said rubber band was wrapped around a rolled up fork truck manual. Next to the manual was the manual and quick start guide for a two-line office phone. Under that was a ton of miscellany: an old solar-powered calculator (still works!), a Sarpino’s menu, a Lipton tea bag, a Refraze sample pack, 5 small biohazard stickers, a diecast car, a bunch of rubber bands, one paperclip, a Green Lantern: First Flight ring, and 33 Buca di Beppo coupons (32 of which expired on my wedding anniversary last year! ZOMG!).

Next was a French Bella Sara magazine (perfect for any of my nieces who are too young to read), a board game magazine called Spielbox (more on that in a bit), a copy of the Director’s Cut of Watchman (I actually like Watchman, so we’ll call that a push in the battle between me and my SS) in a cardboard CD/DVD mailer, and a Star Wars Mad Libs.

Underneath all that was a stapled printout (in an appropriately elegant font, you can see scans of it here ) of what looked like someone’s forum post on BGG. I had to read it twice (and fight off a few bouts of narcolepsy) before I realized it was several responses from people trying to help the OP pick an “elegant” game. My SS highlighted selected letters that spelled out the following message: I am your Secret Satan, Lord of the Gifters. Best to you and your family this holiday season. Yikes! Stil (sic) a few pages left, tops.

As for Spielbox, it’s immediately clear that it’s not just a board game magazine, it’s a euro board game magazine. That fact, along with the $74 annual subscription price (for 7 issues), made it no surprise that I’d never heard of it. So, naturally, I read it cover to cover. After the Kickstarter editorial (it’s useful for “mid-range” game publishers, blah blah blah), Spielbox unequivocally identifies their target audience with this warning that’s printed in bold before their review of the twee family game Takenoko: Warning: The following is a positive review of a family game in a gaming specialist’s magazine. The game in question is full of luck, and a player only has a little bit of control over his moves. Therefore, this text may not meet your expectations, but you’ll just have to bear it. After all, Takenoko was the Game of the Year in France in 2012 – winning the As d’Or.

Sadly, that’s as much as Spielbox ever challenges their readers. The tone of the magazine is bone dry and their reviews are 85% (or higher) rules regurgitation with a smattering of opinion and analysis sprinkled here and there. There were bits of unintentional hilarity to be had, I just had to really dig for them.

For example, in their review of the dice game Vegas, they provided the following example of “trash talk”: And everybody howls out loud: maybe you’re forced to place a fifth die in a pool where it really isn’t needed (“Better safe than sorry!” the others say to mock you). Or maybe you have to waste your last die on a house that you lost long ago (“Never say die!” they cackle). Or maybe because you’ve kicked yourself up the table from second place, so now you’re level pegging with the high roller – and the pot goes to the third-placed players (“Ooooh!” they say in chorus, just to rub salt in the wound).

That’s the sort of thing that just makes me sad and embarrassed. Well-played, Satan.

And how does one explain this non sequitur in their Olympus review?

The land and sea areas are rather arbitrarily divided up into regions we may as well call spaces.

So arbitrary spaces to park your cubes are okay (or even victory points, for god’s sake), but you can’t mess around with abstractions when it comes to geography? I not only do not get it, but it makes my brain hurt if I try to figure it out. (And don’t get even get me started on their review of the game Waka Waka that has absolutely nothing to do with Fozzie.)

But I think my favorite hidden gem is their positively loony review of the children’s card game Drecksau (where the object is to make your pig dirty): The pig has a dirty imagination. To the hog, the blissful feeling of wallowing in the mud seems the highest level and proper purpose of any existence on earth. An ideological comparison with the farmer, however, reveals a remarkable contrast: the farmer has no imagination at all. A brought-into-line clean farm is at the very top of his hierarchy of values. With oppressive washing actions, he tries to enforce his anti-individualistic principles. In this situation, “Renunciation of instincts or protest behavior?” is the question that the pig community is confronted with. And Drecksau gives the answer: protest! … The object of the game is to be the first to lead all your animals to inner enlightenment via outer impurity.

Never mind. I think I understand this magazine now. And then, from the same review, is this obvious sop to their readership: Everybody knows the basic instinct of avoiding hygiene.

THANK YOU SATAN THIS MAGAZINE IS AWESOME.

But that’s not all. On top of the (what I presumed to be a) game at the bottom was a big, jumbled mess of…

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of them when they were all jumbled up. You’ll have to use your imagination. My OCD compels me to immediately count and organize when I’m gifted something like this.

Amongst the miscellaneous d6’s and random poker chips there were: 7 Fury of Dracula train dice, 2 Runebound traveling dice, 1 blue Doom die, 1 blank white die/cube, and 11 dice I can’t identify (their faces are 1, 2, and a 3 with subscript “x”).

In addition to those were 103 round ¾” clear plastic bases, 82 – 15/16” dia. x 5/16” thick wood disks in 5 colors (14 yellow, 13 black, 14 green, 13 blue, 14 white, and 14 red), 59 plastic gold coins from Talisman, and 240 cones from Talisman (16 large and 64 small in red, blue, and green).

And last but not least, there were 619 – 3/8” dia. x 9/16” tall wooden cylinders (157 red, 154 blue, 154 green, and 154 yellow). Having been inspired by Spielbox, I think I shall call them Gentleman’s Cubes. After all, they require more refined manipulations lest they topple, unlike the common cube (insert sneer here) which remains upright despite being subjected to all manner of vulgarities and crudity of motion.

So, finally, we come to the game at the bottom and, oh great, it’s the old crappy-game-inside-the-good-game-box gambit…wait, it’s in shrink! It’s…

I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but I thank you, Secret Satan, for sending me a truly awesome game from my wishlist.

You get an A+ for inventiveness and misdirection, even if you did take it easy on me in the end. You have set the bar high and, if I am unwilling to match your altruism and mercy next year, I shall aspire to match your creativity.

THANK YOU SECRET SATAN!!!

Oh boy, was I glad my package turned up late for Christmas…

This meant I would be on holiday when it arrived and I wouldn’t have to touch it for some time. Who knows what hand Lucifer would’ve dealt me?

So when I got back today, I picked it up at my neighbour’s. There was a bit of a wait at the door, but my apprehension was soon soothed when the old men appeared and happily handed me the package. He seemed in fine feather.

Much relieved I returned home, but decided to take precautions anyway. The box was sealed pretty tightly and I consulted a friend of mine who’s in waste disposal about the best approach. I improvised a hazmat suit. Better safe than sorry, let´s move this MoFo outdoors
Then on to dissecting the box of doom.

This time Satan had not been beating about the bush. The hate was in my face as I stared at the behind of Reiner Knizia’s Modern Art in a dilapidated version. Many a time have I lamented my knowledge of this game and Satan throws it right back at me and my suboptimal talent for In Die Faust bidding. I left the box there to whither for some time and to let the foul stench wear off.
As I returned I decided to dig deeper and removed Knizia´s Bane from the box, revealing a stunning edition of Jodorowsky’s Weapons of the Metabaron, a classic French comic. Of course Satan wouldn’t spare me a treacherous trick, as I lapsed on the series some time ago and have no clue where all this fits in the greater story line.
And still deeper down the box, I found this accursed amulet. Taunting me, Satan obviously despises me for my lack of needling skills. In fact, this proves to be the badge of the Colonial Marines in Aliens! That is awesomely cool! I will become a seamster, no matter how and sew this badge of honour on some fitting sleeve!

And then to top it all off: a kick in the shins on what first appears a friendly Christmas card…
It proves no such thing
Well, I guess I had that coming….


But then... much later, when I sat down to write this post, I thought of actually opening that box of Pandora, and found that apart from containing the accoutrements to the accursed Modern Art, it also held Mission; Red Planet! It looks almost complete, only missing the rules. But that can be fixed. That makes this year´s haul actually kind of awesome. And Satan rather like a big ol´ soft puss...

engelstein wrote: Got my package on Friday! And now I know why it took so long - it was coming from a land far away, where no one in their right mind would live - Canada.

We don't actually live in Canada, it's all some kind of undeath.

Here's the customs declaration. I assume no one from customs actually looked at this thing. God help them if they actually opened it.

Love that the customs declaration actually says Junk and Evil.

Jur wrote: As I returned I decided to dig deeper and removed Knizia´s Bane from the box, revealing a stunning edition of Jodorowsky’s Weapons of the Metabaron, a classic French comic. Of course Satan wouldn’t spare me a treacherous trick, as I lapsed on the series some time ago and have no clue where all this fits in the greater story line.

This is basically a sequel to the main series and follows the continuing adventures of the current Metabaron (Nameless?).