I was surprised to get an email from Greater Than Games informing me the New Bedford errata tiles I requested last spring are being shipped right now. I will get them on Monday.
New Bedford is a great, underrated worker placement game that unfortunately suffers from quite a bit of errata and rulebook ambiguities where the AI captains are concerned. I’ve been meaning to DIY the tiles, because I just assumed I would never get replacements, so I’m glad I kept putting that off. I based the AI app on the tiles I have, so I will be able to update that as well.
There are so many nieces and nephews in my family the adults stopped giving each other gifts and now only gift to the kids. I was a major proponent of this. One, toy shopping is way more fun, and far easier in a lot of respects, than trying to divine what adults with financial autonomy would truly enjoy receiving as a gift. Two, I like giving people things, especially helpful or useful things they truly want, but I have always hated mandatory gifting that does not involve a registry of some type. Three, I still have mixed feelings about receiving gifts myself. I am anti-materialist and temperate by nature, and sensitive to what I perceive as the inherent violence of capitalism. It took me years to reach a place where I could comfortably buy new things for myself rather than just cobble solutions together from thrift finds and duct tape.
All this to say, the errata tiles were something useful that I wanted, they will save time and improve a nice thing I already own, and I did not at all expect to get them so that’s a recipe for a nice holiday surprise.