HP Merchandise for Christmas

[Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer]

No: HPFGUIDX 7816

Hi --

I'm back from a brief Christmas respite (didn't even turn the computer
*on* yesterday -- wow!).  I hope everyone had a nice holiday, however
you celebrate it.

Scott detailed his HP Christmas goodies, so I thought I would chime in
too --

1.  Fat Lady bookends -- great!
2.  Box calendar & wall calendar -- also pretty cool, despite the
problems with some of the artwork
3.  A stuffed Hedwig attached by strings to a Hogwarts banner & holding
a parchment note in her claws.  When you move the banner, she flaps her
wings.  I hadn't seen her at all before, but my mother-in-law found her
at Hallmark.  She is *very* cool, although my husband is horrified by
her!
4.  Stationary set
5.  Beach towel -- way cool considering the climate where I live
6.  Picture frame with the four houses
7.  Hogwarts mug
8.  Gryffindor & Slytherin tumbler set
9.  HP Collectibles Value book
10.  Quidditch Board Game
11.  Various bookmarks & one of those silly storyscopes in my stocking

My sister & I played the Quidditch game twice yesterday & have the
following comments:

1.  The size of the board itself needs to be increased drastically.
There is simply not enough room for all the pieces to move easily.  You
end up accidentally turning over tokens as you move your players around
on the field.  We turned over the snitch once by accident (i.e., no
player had landed on it but as my sister moved on of her players, she
flipped it over) and had to get my husband to come randomly replace it
somewhere.

2.  It says you can play with 14 players -- 7 on each team.  But, the
keeper has a very *small* role in the board game & would be bored
silly.  12 players max is better.  We decided that the size of the field
itself would make it impossible to play easily though with more than 4
players, 2 being probably preferable.  It's necessary to stand up alot
in playing to move your pieces around due to the small size of the
playing board.

3.  It got easier with the 2nd game, but it's a bit challenging to
decipher all the rules.  It's hard, for example, to keep up with which
players are out for 2 full rounds, 1 full round or just in slow potion
play for any one turn.

4.  It's extremely difficult to use the launcher to shoot the quaffle --
the quaffle nearly ended up underneath the freezer at one point last
night.  My sister way overshot it, and it lodged between the broom
closet & the freezer.  As I was trying to extricate it with a broom, it
nearly rolled under the freezer.  The game should come with a few extra
quaffle balls I would think.

5.  The one thing that was pretty cool was that the snitch was quite
elusive in both our matches.  It wasn't found until there were only 5-10
tokens still uncovered in each game.  There is some measure of strategy
involved, although it's possible your seeker could land on the snitch
token on the first move out of the box & end the game immediately.

All in all, it's a good game but does need some improvements (and my
sister & I were baffled that the designers think this game is suitable
for 8 & up -- I don't know how 8 yr olds would keep track of the rules &
the people in play, but maybe I'm short-selling the kiddos again).

Penny