The CF Miniature Secret Santa - SUMMER EDITION!Please note that some of the rules have changed in order to make the event more accommodating. Make sure you read them!
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Miniature?
By miniature I do not refer to the size of the event, which I hope will be fairly large. I am, instead, referring to the theme of the gifts being given. Warhammer, Warmachine, Hordes, Confrontation, hell,
even Heroclix. I'm talking the miniatures that many of us know and love.
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Awesome! What are the rules?
Glad you asked!
Names will be taken until
April 1st, at which point no further names will be accepted. In the week following April 1st, names will be picked at random and assigned to individuals, one name per entrant. The name you receive will be the person you will be gifting - and the point of this event is that you are a
secret santa, so it makes no sense to go blab about it to everyone. Based on miniatures preferences that your recipient will post when they register to be a part of the event, you will then be prompted buy/convert/paint/whatever you deem suitable for a gift.
You will have the following months to collect or work on whatever is being sent. The deadline for your recipient to get his gift is going to be
July 1st - that leaves you with plenty of time to put together whatever it is and get it sent out.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN TO START THINKING ABOUT MAYBE BUYING A GIFT BY JULY 20th, YOU LAZY FUCKS.
If anyone puts it off this badly, they will be summarily barred from the next event. The Summer event went fairly well, but people put it off far too long. Order
sooner rather than later so you don't get screwed by some store/shipping/natural disasters.
In order to encourage people not to procrastinate, there is a new incentive:
When your recipient posts that they have received their gift, you may PM me and I will disclose the identity of
your santa. This means that if you get your stuff sent out and done early, you get to know who is sending
you a gift. Some of you may not want to take advantage of this option and ruin the surprise, which is completely understandable, but it may help motivate a little bit.
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What would constitute a suitable gift?
This is where we unfortunately get subjective. I'd like to think we all have the good common sense to pick good gifts in this regard. For guidelines, I'd suggest something like $10 (or 15'ish with shipping) as a
minimum.
Some of you may note that this is less than the last event - this is because a number of people complained about not being able to get enough money together for a gift. The minimum price on the gift is there to mostly prevent someone from sending like a single
arm from a miniature. I do encourage you all to go above and beyond the $10 mark if you care to, and it'd be awesome to see that sort of thing on the whole. Our current record, I think, is Gabriel_Pitt who sent someone an entire fucking tyranid army. You will basically be held to the honor system to ensure that the person who you are gifting does not feel cheated.
My recommendation is to gift based on what you're capable of. Even if you aren't that good with models, you can definitely still participate - nobody's ever said no to a boxed set, and it's a nice and simple gift. If you're good at converting? Well, I can't think of a better gift somebody could receive than a converted mini - unless you are good at painting, in which case painted gifts would be really superior.
Single miniatures are more than welcome and might actually be preferred in some senses, so long as they meet the $10 minimum requirement.
Examples of what might constitute a good gift:
Examples of what might constitute a bad gift:
Do not let your ambition exceed your means - that totally awesome idea you have in your head is worth nothing if you never actually get it done.
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I live in ______. Can I participate?
Yes! Ideally, we would get a few people from all over - the U.S., the U.K., perhaps other parts of Europe to participate. To make sending the gifts easier, I will probably be organizing people into categories based on location while drawing the names to try and keep international mailing to a minimum to make sure that everybody can participate.
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How do I sign up?Entries are not considered official until I (CF SANTA) receive a PM from you containing the following:
- Your name
- Your address - PLEASE MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE COUNTRY SO I DON'T HAVE TO GUESS
- What games you collect/play/would like a gift from
If you do not send this PM, you will not be entered in the event
I require this information to make sure that you won't all have to pay an arm and a leg in shipping to make sure these minis arrive safely and intact. Still,
some of you may have to make the sacrifice and drop a couple extra dollars on international shipping. I will try to avoid this, but it may become necessary if I can't organize people close enough to each other.DO NOT SEND ME A PM JUST SAYING "I'M IN"
Even if you participated in the last event, I did not save your personal information after the last event. I also need to explain something - when your santa gets your information, they receive it in the form of THE SAME MESSAGE YOU SEND ME. I literally forward your contact information and model preferences to the person giving you your gift, so the reason to make you all jump through the hoops of filling the information out is so that I have something to supply to your santa. I also want to make sure I have up-to-date information, as I remember a couple people were moving during the winter event that made things a bit more difficult.
When you sign up, please put some money aside for the gift right then. If you do not have said funds, do not sign up. The overwhelming majority of excuses from the last event were people not having enough money to actually purchase a gift for their Santa, so I want to nip this in the bud. I realize most of you won't know at the time of sign-up who you're getting or what you're going to be gifting, but it's not unreasonable to put twenty (ish) dollars aside for the event beforehand.
After you've sent the PM, I'd recommend you post the miniatures you collect or are interested in in this thread, as well. Too specific makes the gifting process a bit silly. List the games you wouldn't mind receiving minis from, as well as what you might already collect, so your gifter might have some starting point.
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How do you assign santas?
Utilizing super-secret scientific method and a crack team of genetically modified super-monkeys, we assemble the
Santa Master Listâ„¢ at a classified military installation two miles underneath the desert somewhere in the American midwest.
Operation 'NAUGHTY LIST' operates under the cover of a number of randomly-drawn names from a hat for national security reasons.
It's all done in one completely random shot. I don't tamper with it in any way, though I do take some requests into consideration in setting the names in the hat up (location, for example - I do a separate draw for the UK).
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What do I do when I send/receive my gift?
A few suggestions for
sending the gift:
- Include your name (forum name) so people have some idea of who is sending them this mystery box! It really shouldn't be all that hard to just write your handle on a piece of paper and throw it in.
- Consider using Delivery Confirmation (With USPS it's like 75 cents, I think) so you can track your package and make sure it gets there.
- Check in with your recipient via PM a few days after sending to confirm receipt if you don't hear anything.
Also, some guidelines for
receiving the gift:
- Let your santa know it arrived! One less thing they have to worry about.
- IMPORTANT: Post in the thread that the package arrived, and show off what you got!
- Take some fucking pictures, for fuck's sake! Your santa probably worked very hard on the gift, and we're all dying to see what's being exchanged.
One last final point: While lurkers are welcome to participate, I reserve the right to use discretion in ruling people out of entry. If you have absolutely
zero posts and you register on the boards to try and take part in this, I probably won't let you participate. Miniatures tend to be surprisingly expensive, and I really do not want somebody to try and take advantage of this whole event to just get free shit.
And, well, if you try to rob the system, you do so at the cost of providing me your address.
:winky:
The List Of People Who Smell Funny And Failed To Participate Last Event:
Katchem_Ash
Fibretip
If your name is on this list, I probably won't let you sign up. If your name is here in
error, please contact me so that we can get it resolved.
The Big List of Santas:
JamSessionEin
Wildcat
Timspork's Ghost
Philodox
The Count of Midget Fisto
Wulf
Dayspring
Mortal Sky
Gabriel_Pitt
J
Mad Jazz
Cynic Jester
Regicid3
Shamuuu
TheLawinator
Gahmrious
Posts
I'm in. Though don't except anything like my previous gift. If something comes to mind I'll do it, otherwise my gift will be simple.
Nice to hear you might be coming back, Gabe. Makes postage less of a pain across the board.
Anyways, I'd like to sign up. I've been involved with the PA forums for a bit now.
Just a reminder, if you do actually intend to sign up, you need to send that all-important PM.
Can I have your job?
Sorry, but no. St Patricks today, then 2 weeks off. We can arrange something after that. You are fluent in Norwegian, right?
Sent.
8-)
Hopefuly I'll have things under control for the autumn though.
*is so happy*
=D
I'm with Technicality on this one. I need to do some of my own stuff now :P
In a related note - Shogun, your gift from last year's Summer Santa event is nearing completion and should be in the mail in the next couple of weeks.
The list will be created in the next few days. I will post when I start sending assignment PMs out.
Wow... haha. Yeah...
The master list's been formed and I'm sending PMs to people presently.
If anyone DOES NOT have this PM who IS on that list, I need to know immediately.
Good luck, godspeed, post pics, and if you need to send messages anonymously PM them to me and I'll forward 'em along.
Time to get thinkin'