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Topics - hunnymonster

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1
Anything Else / There I was in Waitrose...
« on: May 16, 2016, 06:24:45 AM »



2
The Marketplace / Knight-Meeple for sale in base colours
« on: April 20, 2016, 04:47:20 AM »
They're not actually abbots - but quite close and definitely different to the standard meeples...

They came from Spiele Material - basically to meet the minimum order value I had to buy 8 sets, one of which was for myself...

Spiele Material don't sell them in black - so I have spray painted a grey one (yes, I ordered an extra set of grey ones) black using satin paint.

If anyone is interested - let me know. Selling at cost (plus any paypal fees, postage).

Cost to me - each meeple €0.10, postage to get the order to me €7.00, round numbers - €12 for 8 sets - so €1.50 / £1.20 per set plus postage & fees

UK postage (large letter) - 96p first class, 75p second class
Europe (large letter) - £2.45
ROTW (large letter) - £3.15/£3.30

Payment methods acceptable - Paypal (you pay the fees), UK bank transfer

3
Anything Else / The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference
« on: April 20, 2016, 01:45:54 AM »
Split from this topic

Surely it should be in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign "Beware of the Leopard" on the door in a cellar with no working lights and missing stairs?

4
All - I thought I'd post this here - something that came up a while back personally and may be of help to others (especially in the UK) who want to make a bank transfer to a "sensible" country - ie. EU, EEA, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,...

I had to pay for something in the Netherlands a while back and the seller (a physical but very small niche shop) didn't take PayPal nor had they credit card facilities... Not a huge sum involved (€50). Bank transfer not an issue though. I was almost at the stage of posting €50 in cash...

I asked my banks (I have 3) and apart from the fastest taking 5+ days to process a simple transfer, wanting fees of £10-£25 for the transaction and giving crappy exchange rates they made it hard work (come to branch, fill in these forms, leave an imprint of your left testicle here,...)

Bit of googlage later and I settled upon XETrade - they do exactly what I needed - ie. I can send €x to person Y in country Z without paying stupidly inflated fees, taking days or acres of form-filling.

The first time you go to use it, you need to sign up for an account (this is by far the longest part and involved an actual person calling back to conduct some verification - took nearly a whole day for it to happen or me) and once you have signed up and have completed verification, then you can simply go online book your transaction (where you enter the amount you wish to send, the recipients details etc)... It offers you a price which you can decline (obviously they don't send the money then) or accept.

You then send the required amount with the reference they give to the domestic (to you) bank account they tell you (for me it's always been the same branch of Barclay's on Baker Street in London) with the deal reference by a (free) domestic transfer.

Then the next day they issue the payment to the recipient. All of which you can see within your XETrade account (and optionally get email notifications for)

Yes the exchange rate is a little degraded (something like 0.5-1.0%) from mid-market rates - but nothing like the 4-5% degradation that my own banks tried to apply and no monstrous fees unless I wanted it überfast transfer at the remote end as opposed to regular (2-5 day) EFT service (EFT has always happened within 24 hours from my payment being sent to the domestic bank).

They offer "free" service to/from these currencies/destinations:

AUD to Australia
CAD to Canada
EUR to Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom
DKK to Denmark
GBP to The United Kingdom
HUF to Hungary
MXN to Mexico
NOK to Norway
NZD to New Zealand
SEK to Sweden
USD to The United States or Canada

They do offer transfers to other places - but always chargeable.

No connection with them other than using them several times now to successfully acquire things that would have had prohibitively high bank charges otherwise. Your own risk if you use them and it all goes horribly wrong. Happy to find out about other similar services - but so far XETrade have done everything I require.

Obviously don't send your hard-earned cash to Nigeria :)

5
Anything Else / Just back from Dublin... board game shop report...
« on: March 01, 2016, 03:34:50 AM »
First thing I have to say is that there aren't many... but here's what I found (there may be others):

1. Gamers World - http://www.gamersworlddublin.com/ - 1 Jervis Street (if using the Luas red line, Stop: Abbey) busy shop, plenty of choices - not much in the way of Carcassonne (only base game 2.0 that I could see) but they did have all the usual suspects (Catan, TTR,...) and a few dozen that I hadn't seen before "in the flesh" - by far the best of what I found for choice - must have been easily 100 "main" games. Prices what you'd expect for retail in a city centre location - RRP or just below.

2. Eason - O'Connell Street Lower (just down from the GPO, when it's open it'll be on the Luas green line headed north, stop O'Connell GPO (southbound will follow a parallel street) - Up on the first floor is Eason's game department. Well my game department has more in it than Eason's has and mine's only been open since December 2015...

3. Cogs the Brain - http://cogsthebrainshop.ie/ - St Stephens Green Shopping Centre  (Luas green line, stop St Stephens (current terminus)) a very small shop split down the middle between games for children (up to about age 7) and adults - again there were a sprinkling of things like Carcassonne (only base game, only version 2.0).

4. Boardgamer.ie - http://boardgamer.ie - not really a shop but you can click and collect (if you register with an address in Ireland) - it's located in an industrial estate in North Dublin (Charlestown/Finglas) miles from anywhere so unless you have a hire car this one isn't for you at all... Usual range of stuff - but beware the prices when presented in currencies other than €uro - they're using ancient exchange rates. When you go to pick up, there is no name on the building to suggest that it's Boardgamer.ie - it's actually a shared warehouse complex - the door you need to go in is the one on the "front" of the building (facing the road) - order was ready within 20 minutes of ordering and payment and pickup took less than 5 minutes.

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Official Rules / De Kloosters/Klöster in Deutschland clarification
« on: January 25, 2016, 11:26:17 AM »
When using the alternative "end of game" scoring (ie. Laid down meeple in the Cloister) how does the scoring get resolved if there are two such cloisters on the same file (thinking like a chessboard if they are at say E2 & E7 and the tiles are contiguous from E1 to E8) do both score the full length of the run of tiles that they share or only up to the other Cloister or only half way?

7
General / Anyone confirm what expansion this is?
« on: January 24, 2016, 09:13:28 AM »
Or even if it is legit (best picture of it I have - sorry)



Looks to me like a combination of a Siege/Cathar/Besieger & Cult - but I could be talking out of my hat (I often do)

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