In which there are my most beautiful games

I've made a lot of posts in the past about Playmobil and Lego, but what about the other toys I own.

Since Andy and I met we've loved playing board games together. We used to take our scrabble set down to the beach or play canasta on a picnic table at the caste when we were at university. We also had a few more of the unusual board games: Killer Bunnies and Order of the Stick, for example. As time went on we've collected more and more games. Then when we moved here we became part of a board games club, increasing our collection all the more as we were introduced to everyone else's favourites.

So we do have a lot of games now. In fact our game collection looks something like this:

The drawers have smaller games, and packs of cards. The Lego bricks have Magic the Gathering cards. Oh and the left bottom draw of the set? That's just full of dice! 

What I really love though about the wider world of gaming is the detail in some of the pieces available.There are the most gorgeous playing pieces, beautifully painted boards, unusually faced dice and well designed cards, even amazing storage boxes. So even setting the game out feels like working with art. In this post I'd like to show you my favourite games, in terms of the pieces themselves.

1. Quarriors

As you may be able to see here the box that the game comes in is a patterned tin that matches the design on one of the dice you can use in the game. It wins hands down for best packaging. Then you play the game using some cards (not shown), velvety dice bags, and a fantastic mix of unusual dice. It has beautiful texture. The game is competitive, involving collecting dice from a central pool. Dice can be monsters, spells or the money to buy more dice. You then use your dice to collect points towards winning. There's a nice amount of strategy in it, but it's not overly complicated either.

2. Elder Sign 

Elder Sign is a Lovecraftian inspired co-operative game. You play together to go through a bizarre museum, defeating monsters within and gathering the tools necessary to ultimately defeat the beast from the other world who is trying to devour you all. It comes with a LOT of pieces. There's a clock, little footprint clue tokens, interesting dice and a weird set of monsters. This is one of my favourites games. I like having something less competitive for a change and I love the artwork.

3. Twenty Fives

This is no Fantasy Flight or boardgamegeek game. It's from Past Times, a British shop that sells fake antiques and is on the way to going bust. Despite that, I've had this game since I was a kid and I love it. The game will be far more familiar to you under the title of Ludo. It is very much the same, with the difference being that you play with shells rather than dice. This allows for some unusual bonuses. You count how many upturned shells land for your move, but if all land flat down, no mouths showing you get to move twenty-five. The shells just feel lovely in your hand and make a nice clackety noise as they tumble.

4. Carcassonne

This game is a little more well known than the others and for a very good reason. It's fantastic. If there is anything here I would recommend freely, it would be this one. So much so it has been a Christmas present for many people! The pieces are intricately drawn and the wooden figures are solid and friendly. The gameplay involves drawing pieces randomly and fitting them together to form a map, claiming bits of castle, road and land with your tiny people. It's a competitive game, but not aggressive. The game encourages you to help each other, and the beauty of a finished map of Carcassonne makes it always chilled out.

5. Descent

This game is a cheeky addition as I have only played it once since getting it. The game is huge and heavy. You may get some idea by looking at the size of the box. I only got out a tiny selection of the pieces. It is very basically the game of Dungeons and Dragons (or any other dungeon crawl type game) played out without the role-playing aspect. You have tiny warriors who move through dungeons built out of jigsaw pieces. You roll dice to fight monsters. It is co-operative, except one person has to control the monsters. The game hasn't thrilled us as much but I think it calls for a large group. It does however, have a fantastic dragon piece.

Also, we got all but one of the games listed here for our wedding, so thank you guys! You know who you are. We love our collections and all the evenings of fun it gives us.
Do you play board games? Do you have any favourites I should know about? Do you also treasure pretty playing pieces?

In which there are celebrations and spring

So soon after my Brighton anniversary, I have another post about the beach! Yes, at the weekend I had a small holiday to the moderately-sunny but ever-homelike Aberystwyth. It is the town I went to university in and where I met my beloved, learnt to fence and dance and learnt to love Heart of Darkness, where I discovered role-playing and cooking and saw the best sunsets in the world and where I made some amazing friendships. Friends who were back too! It was the 60th anniversary of 'Methsoc' aka the Methodist Society. I mention us once before on my blog in my theological rant about stumbling blocks. We were a close group who met in the minister's living room, ate cake and discussed things. We were/are all a little bit odd, but we were also a great group. And so it turns out were other Methsoc groups for sixty years!
So I saw lots of old friends, made a few new ones and (despite apparent Methodism) went to the pub every night for 3 in the row. Plus I ate the largest Sunday roast I have ever had where one full half of the plate was just a mountain of meat. I kid ye not. Found out some of my old friends have, like me, got into Magic (the card game) since graduating and so played a good bit of that, went to the castle, paddled in the cold cold sea and danced!

I was really busy and I didn't take a lot of photos of the town itself and the ones I did take were bloody awful so I can't share the beach with you. I did manage to sneak in an outfit photo session on the way to the barn dance.

This dress is 'new', in that I bought it from a charity shop last week. I absolutely love it to bits. If you've followed this for a while you'll know I love games and toys (and am even having a game themed-wedding in two months) so this seemed exactly right. It is even more appropriate because I had tried on a playing card print dress in New Look and felt torn not buying it, but the fabric was horrible. Then I saw this on the model in a local charity shop and went straight in to grab it! Plus it flares out when I dance.

 

I know my hair is going a bit crazy, I apologise for the general messiness but it was windy!

I bought some nail art pens recently and am pretty obsessed with them!

All the flower beds were so beautiful and colourful.

Outfit details
Dress: Charity shop, originally Topshop
Necklace: Stall in Brighton
Leather jacket: XXI in America a few years ago
Satchel: New Look

Also, I want to ask a question that might seem a bit silly for a blogger, but where do you get your blog designs? I don't really love mine and want something that looks a little more fresh but I don't have the skills to do it myself. Does anyone have a place they can recommend for templates or even a designer? I'm willing to pay but I can't afford hundreds sadly.

In which there are reflections on blogging, Disney and lipstick

I went a bit over board with these pictures but I really love them. All my pictures are taken by my other half so I don't always have the most control over how they turn out! We don't even own a tripod for taking them on my own, and the camera is a little digital one, so we don't have the resources that some other bloggers do. However, I think Andy is really getting better at them! I hope you think so too. He sometimes looks over my shoulder when I am blog reading for ideas and in a way I think I'm giving both of us hobbies.

I really think doing this fashion blog has done wonders for my confidence. Even though I still feel embarrassed when people stare at us doing it! Today though I felt pretty kick-ass in this outfit and would have been comfortable staring back. (It's the neighbours who just stand at the window and watch when we do it in the back yard that creep me out).

Oh, and after that last post about how much I love playing Kingdom Hearts? Andy and I just bought Epic Mickey for our Wii! Now we have even more Disney gaming to choose from. It's quite good so far, a little simple but we think it will get more complex. Just running round as Mickey with a magic paintbrush is a lot of fun. It's actually very odd how much I love these games because I wasn't really into Disney as a kid. We never had many Disney films and I genuinely enjoyed reading fairy tales more than watching the films. I used to feel that the films ruined them. To be honest, I still have no regard to The Little Mermaid which in my opinion take all the beauty and mystery out of the story. But I like a lot of what Disney have done and am learning to be less snobbish in general about adaptations of beloved books. Or I am just getting more childish as I get older! Plus Mickey, Donald and Goofy are Disney's own so they can't go ruining them!

One of my new year's resolution was to learn to wear lipstick. Now I wear it quite a lot, but bring out the bright colours at the weekend. It really does make me feel special. I want to splash out on buying some more but don't know where to start. Believe it or not, I only own three shades. All of which were presents so I didn't have to make the choice. I actually mentioned a few weeks ago my lack of make-up knowledge. With all those lipstick shades out there I really can't decide which to buy so I shall probably go with whichever brand has the best packaging and whichever colour looks the most delicious.

Standing on the log! Drawing attention to myself! What have I become?  I used to look for the quietest corner of the park for my photos.

Might sound weird but I feel like this shot looks a little like Midwest Muse's photography style. Don't quite know how that happened!

By the way, for the last month uploading pictures to Blogger has been a nightmare for me. My image upload function keeps crashing. In fact Firefox went down 4 times whilst doing this post. Anyone has this happen before & have a fix?

Outfit details
Spotty tights: H&M
Hat: Charity shop
Dress: Inlovewithfashion
Belt: H&M
Scarf: Andy's that I borrow. Think he got it from Topman
Blazer: H&M

In which I love Kingdom Hearts

Kingdom Hearts might not have the best plot of any game ever. It may not have the best graphics and it may be aimed at 12 year olds - but I love it with every bit of me. I have a deep sentimental attachment for Kingdom Hearts - and part of that is the memories. I have actually got three set of memories that go with KH. Once, when I watched my high school best friend play through it. Then when the deep love began, love for Andy and love for Kingdom Hearts. We each played a game of it when we were at uni, taking it in turns and watching each other's games. We used to go clubbing and then leave to play Kingdom Hearts at 3 in the morning. That's the kind of cool we are... And then recently we started all over again as the wedding planning happens. In fact we considered having a Kingdom Hearts themed wedding but then decided that was too narrow - there will be references though.

So what is Kingdom Hearts? 

 It's Final Fantasy style RPG set in the Disney Universe. It features some familiar faces from both brands, plus some new ones just for the world. I get so excited when we get to meet guys from Final Fantasy games I have actually played! You are Sora (usually) travelling alongside Donald and Goofy. You are usually looking for your friends and Mickey. That's Mickey Mouse, the King. Along the way you are saving the world, killing some 'heartless' and then later 'nobodies' with the infamous keyblade. That's exactly what it sounds like. Plus in KH2 you get to go to the Lion King world and be a little lion running round with a giant key between your teeth. I don't think you can want anything more from a computer game.

In honour of all this love for the game I have made a KH themed outfit. Obviously wearing a branded t-shirt - I love Mickey's Organisation XIII outfit! Wearing a pink skirt in the shade of Kairi's outfit. And then space printed tights again - for all the travelling on the gummi ship they do. I am even wearing a keyblade necklace, featuring the first ones you ever see duel wielded. 

Kairi. It's not actually a female empowerment game but I would still like to do a Kairi cosplay some day. Plus now I have the right colour hair!

My dual wielding keyblades.

Roxas duel wielding Oathkeeper and Oblivion. The ones featured in my necklace above.

 So we recently ordered this beautiful box of keyblades. It is even nicer than it looked on the internet, especially nicer than my photographs. They are all featured in the game and are highly detailed. It came with a chain and each one can be added to a necklace. They will in fact be part of the wedding centrepieces but more on that another time!

I'm currently using this one in the game of KH2 I am playing at the moment.

Presentation box.

 Outfit details
Tshirt: Hot Topic
Skirt: Mango
Tights: Camden market
Shoes: Blowfish
Hat: Hand crafted by Gypsy in Jasper for Craft it Forward (more to come on that soon)