Secret Satan 2015 Results! Post them here!

(post 2 continued)

Digging further, with the help of my son, like Abraham I'm willing to sacrifice him to the Gods... Devils.... whatever they may be.





51st State! Now I don't know how many states you guys got down there but this seems like a declaration of war. I'm watching the border from where I live. I've got binoculars and nunchakus (guns are hard to get).

Further still, deeper still






Very cool. I love Summoner Wars, don't own a copy, and I haven't tried these particular armies. Satan's not so bad... and to top it all off he also sent a very cool hat (I love hats) and a bottle cap. You never have enough bottle caps.




This whole process was a blast. Merry Christmas SS and the rest of you dorks!

A very large but relatively light box was dropped off on my front step on Monday. I knew it was light because it had been carried inside by the smallest of my child laborers. It had been sent from Jersey, the Land 'o Satan.


After sufficiently girding myself...



I opened the box.


A shitload of packing peanuts - Satan's chosen shipping material (guaranteed to cling to everything when you want to be free of it and scatter in the wind on trash day when you want it to stay contained). What mysteries does this cesspool of foam hold?

Ah, an "open first" box.


And inside a letter.


Putting down the letter, I saw it.


The eyes.


The EYES!


Why, yes, I'll squeeze you … "By the way, if you see your mom this weekend, well be sure to tell her, SATAN, SATAN, SATAN!"

Oh, God, Satan is a Butthole Surfers fan. (Note, I’m not making this up, ya squeeze the cat and get a Sweat Loaf snippet.)

To be continued...

Part 2 ...

As for the minions…straight from Satan's sweat shop in China.


Hey, wait a minute…what's this?


BLACK BARNEY!!! Surely, it must be just a coincidence.

Well, so much for the flotsam, let’s dig a little deeper and see the jetsam.



Hmmm, Satan is an Avengers man. And inside...


Dragon Dice!

Digging a little deeper ... I find two more superhero wrapped packages.

The first contains...


The GW version of Dungeonquest!

And finally...


Fortress America.

Wow, some classic AT stuff! Satan has been too kind. Although, I do now have that creepy cat...

DRAGON DICE!!?! You've been a good boy this year!

Black Barney! laughing my ass off in the office

On her way out of town with the kids - just for the night, sadly – my wife called to tell me that she spotted a loathsome abomination leaving a package on our stoop before staggering away, clutching its back and cursing in ancient Assyrian. When I got home I lugged this inside:





Holy shit, Satan, I think this has got to be a Secret Satan record for package weight. What, did you fill the box with bricks?



Nope, sand. An interesting thing about sand is that it’s 50-60% of the weight in a standard brick, and when the brick is fired the sand turns to glass which works in concert with the sintering process to… oh, right, the package. Anyway, I started with the message in the bottle:



The bottle’s pretty cool in and of itself so I plan to reuse it for something. You never know when you’re going to dig to the bottom of a Secret Satan package and end up with some soul-destroying garbage heap of a game, so it pays to find joy in the little things in a package. Also, as much as I’d like to “earn” the beads I’ll probably just give them to my daughter. Thanks, though, they’re quite stylish in an alcohol-poisoning-in-New-Orleans sort of way, and yes, I did paw through all that sand to make sure I got all of them:



The parachute-looking thing turned out to be this:



I do have some Welsh ancestry, so close enough. This is definitely going in my future game room and when someone asks about it I can look at them condescendingly, shake my head and say, “Even if I explained it you wouldn’t understand.” Anyone know how to wash this?

So now I was at the bottom of the package and in true cinematic fashion the publisher’s logo was barely visible:



I was excited because it’s a Z-Man game and a little nervous because I’m not intimately familiar with their catalog and I didn’t know if I was going to get something great or a game with a grumpy burgermeister on the cover.

Thankfully, my worries were unfounded:



Yes, it’s actually Robinson Crusoe and not just the box. I love co-ops and this is one that I could never justify buying for myself but have always wanted to play. I did have to clean some sand out of it after the box came partway off when I was trying to lift it out; let’s just say that I don’t have a lot of practice lifting board games out of 45 pounds of sand.

The sand and the message in the bottle now make sense and I’m impressed with how thematic (or is it the setting?) my package was. Thank you, Secret Satan!

P.S. Satan overlooked an old shipping label on one of the box flaps and even though the item he purchased was probably for his significant other or relative, I prefer to think that he bought it for himself and uses it for taking his X-Wing fleets to tournaments:

I want to hear more about the sintering of bricks!

Satan has brought his game up this year. There's some great things in this thread.

A box full of sand! I love it. 52 lbs had to be pricey to ship. Commitment to a gag knows no financial limits.

Not Sure wrote: I want to hear more about the sintering of bricks!

Sintering is a solid state diffusion process where a granular mixture is heated to a high temperature that is still below its melting point. The individual molecules in adjacent grains of the material then cross the grain boundaries resulting in the grains fusing with each other and the mixture becoming a cohesive solid, more or less. In the case of ceramics, the small amount of glass that's formed aids in cohesion at the grain boundaries, IIRC.

Yes! After 17 years I finally got to use my Materials Science degree!

Also, while the previous Secret Satan exchanges have had their high points, I can't remember a year that's been as good as this one. The depth and breadth of the Satan creativity is the best I've ever seen and the gift sharing has been top notch as well. It's a Christmas miracle!

O hotseatgames... your ... "offerings" are all set aside and waiting to be posted. I must apologize for my tardiness, I have been so busy with the infesting and muttering and so forth.

It will wing to you soon, fear not ...or, maybe, you know, a little.

I'd post my results...But alas...My stoop is barren...
Some great, great Statans though!

After trying several fucking times to unsuccessfully upload photos, you'll have to do without.

On a blustery Christmas Eve, I returned home to see a large box seated outside my door. I wondered what it could be, as I thought my wife and I had finished all our online shopping. As I approached, the wafting smell of brimstone assaulted my nostrils. Checking the address listing, it came from Pittsburgh, PA. I didn’t know that Pittsburgh had a portal to mephitic pits of Hades, but now I knew better.

Fortunately, I was able to hold back the evil tide by placing a Holy Bible and a rosary on the box, as I had to be elsewhere for a few days. The wards held, as I came home to a house that was not on fire. Placing the box on the table, I began the soul wrenching exercise of laying eyes on Games Man Was Not Meant to Know.

The first game was a HORRIBLE anti-drug propaganda piece called Drugs are a Losing Game. Imagine a Monopoly board where instead of properties, you have drugs. If the start card you have at the beginning of the game says you have a drug habit, you have to pay the amount listed if you land on a drug. The game is truly from Hell, as you can arbitrarily gain said drug habit one turn and then die of a drug overdose the next. Oh, and the artwork is done by an emo 14 year old. *shudder* Makes Blood Feud in New York’s art look like it was done by Monet.

The next one sent up to me by Jack Scratch was STAMPIN! Yay! A game like Masterpiece, only not as fun! And it’s approved by Satan’s messenger service, the United States Post Office! I think I lost the first layer of skin taking that out of the box.

The third game was another Monopoly-esque turd known as Assassin! The Final Game. Here, the object is to move around the board, buying and selling illegal commodities to generate monies, and using said monies to eliminate opponents. What makes this game painful, aside from the 1980 photographs of the assassins, is the convoluted way assassinations take place. You have to jump through various hoops just to get to that point, and then the assassin may very well fail due to incompatibilities with location, weapon, and/or non-familiarity with weapons allowed. Even if all ducks are in a row, it’s down to chance, as the die ranges make it next to impossible to kill someone. This game makes Avalon Hill’s game of Assassin look like it was made by Reiner Knizia.

The next two games from Satan’s anus were GruftMeister and Daemonibus. The first being neigh unplayable with either the German or English ruleset. A sign it’s a bad game? THE PIECES ARE UNPUNCHED! The other game was technically playable, but the artwork was bad CGI. That alone was enough for me to fling it across the room in horror.

The last game was a palliative release from the horror and mayhem of the previous five. And it was on my wish list, no less – Heroes Incorporated. From what little I played, I actually enjoyed it. I don’t know if it was from being so thoroughly violated by the other games, the fact that this one caused less suffering seemed like a welcome breeze from the infernal flames being generated by the others.

Final Result?
PAIN!!!! LOTS AND LOTS OF PAIN!!!!






I think this is karma for all the previous Secret Satans that I either a) dodged a bullet or b) got some really good stuff. This ambush will be long remembered, and payback will be trebled!!!

VonTush wrote: I'd post my results...But alas...My stoop is barren...
Some great, great Statans though!

Do not despair yet, Von Tush -- wait until your package arrives. While apologies aren't really my style, I will note that the hell carriage has been having difficulty getting dispatched -- fucking imps.

Prepare thyself.

Why did my loins suddenly clench?

I got home from my parents to find a package at my door. I had geared up and prepared myself for Satan's missive. I then opened the package to remember I had bought a copy of Eastfront of Ebay. Oh well.