Cross stitch pattern of Mario and Princess Peach. Thanks to Nai255 for the sprite. Download the PDF here: Peach and Mario Pattern

Grid Size: 145W x 112H
Design Area: 10.21″ x 7.86″ (143 x 110 stitches)
Colors: 10

Support me on Patreon to unlock exclusive patterns.

I got to play some new board games today: Twist of Fate, 7 Wonders, and Merlin. Twist of Fate is a pretty simple card game that has a surprising amount of strategy involved. You are trying to accumulate either four luck or four money to earn a victory point. Eight points wins the game. The two player variant has a fun mechanic where there is a ghost player, however if you make the ghost earn a point then you lose a point. The strategy comes from forcing your opponent into helping the ghost while leaving your own options open. It’s a fun little game that’s easy to learn and comes in a cool box that looks like a book.

I played 7 Wonders with a group of four other people who had all played it before, so I didn’t quite get the full tutorial, but even so I ended up not in last place which is nice. It’s a card based game with different goals and starting resources for each player. The goal is to gain more victory points than your opponents, but you can get those from doing just about everything. I focused on military which probably wasn’t the best choice, but I figured it was the most straightforward tactic. The draw of the game for me is the fact that everyone plays their turns at once so no matter how many people are playing, the game will still take about the same amount of time to play. It’s fun and I’d like to play it again perhaps with a better strategy.

Merlin is a complex game. It takes a good twenty minutes to learn the basics. The box says ninety minutes playtime, but mine took three hours. There are so many pieces and ways to earn points. It was fun, but I think the game lacks focus. There’s a lot of strategy involved with picking up and using different flags, but there’s also influence and shields to fight off enemies and the apple power and Excalibur and soooo many markers and tokens. I didn’t even end up using everything I had because they’re either really situational or I just forgot I had them. There’s a whole side bit about building castles to claim land that could have been entirely excluded and the game would have been better for it. I did enjoy playing it, but I wonder if all the cube related things would have been better as an expansion than as part of the base game.