Mince Pie Fest 2025: Tesco Finest*

Tee. Ee. Ess. Cee. Oh.

(But fancy!)

The pastry has a nice bite, perhaps a teeny tiny touch too soft, but generally good, and with a nice, not too sweet, taste. The chunky filling has a pleasant mix of fruit and spices and a touch of alcohol, but the overall flavour is a bit meek and tentative; I prefer something a bit bolder, with more punch. 3 out of 5. (No palm oil)

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Mince Pie Fest 2025: Tesco

Tee. Ee. Ess. Cee. Oh.

The pastry has a pleasant firmness and, aside from the sugar on top, is not too sweet. It is a bit dry though, and the filling is bland, with some very hard fruit pieces. Watch your teeth! 2 out of 5. (Palm oil)

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Mince Pie Fest 2025: Greggs

They are not a supermarket, but they are a national chain, and I was in there for a vegan sausage roll anyway.

The pastry has a nice crumbly texture, maaaaaaaaybe a bit on the soft side, but the worst failing is that it's oh so terribly bland. The filling, on the other hand, is lovely, with a rich flavour; alas, as you can probably see, there's barely any of it. 2 out of 5. (Palm oil? Not sure...)

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Not Bad Four

First Steps is pretty good, better than I was expecting. The retro-future-but-it's-the-present looks amazing and all the performances are good. The film nails the essential likeability of the Four, and it even makes Reed sympathetic while keeping true to the character, although one wonders how much of that is down to Pedro Pascal having charm to spare. Wisely, they skip the origin, Doom is not the villain, and they even give Johnny something "clever" to do while maintaining his position as the silly one.

The final battle against Galactus is a bit of a disappointment as it does come down to a physical fight in the end and that doesn't feel right at all. And while not a short film, it also feels like there's about 30 minutes of missing material; Ben gets a whiff of a subplot that hangs around throughout but never goes anywhere, and the film never really explains what Galactus is and what he wants, or rather the why of it. We do get a spectacular visual Galactus stomping around New York, but as an active agent in the story he's barely more present than the killer cloud of the 2007 film.

All that said, the film gets more right than it gets wrong, and I'd be happy to see more of this version of the Four.

Don't Lose Your Head(s)

The other day Stuart asked me for some ideas on tracking damage in fights in RuneQuest. Well, I think it might have been OpenQuest rather than RQ proper. Some fantasy variant of Chaosium's d100 system, anyway. Here's what fell out of my brain after about five minutes. Completely untested, as per.

This assumes RQ style damage output and average hit points of about 11 for humanoid enemies.

The basic idea is using coins as markers. At full health the coin will be heads up, but when they take more than 5 points of damage from a single attack, they flip over to tails. If they take another 6+ hit then the coin is removed. Or you could give it to the player that struck the killing blow, as a monetary reward.

The idea is that we're not tracking the exact damage, just if it beats the 6+ threshold.

Here we have the idea illustrated by Shotgun Cultist Guy I Found in a Box, and his shiny friends.

SCGIFB faces four uninjured opponents.

BLAM! BLAM! Two of the opponents have taken 8 and 9 damage, so are flipped over to their tails side.

BLAM! One blast for 4 damage is not enough to take out one of the enemies. BLAM! But the second is for 12 and takes out the second closest opponent, so that coin is removed.

You could use stacks of coins to represent tougher foes with more health, I suppose, but this was designed for tracking low level cannon fodder, a step up from 1HP mooks. I would probably run bigger, tougher, foes as normal. Or maybe not. As I said above, untested.

Give it a try! See what you think!

Mince Pie Fest 2025: Morrisons the Best

These have a lovely filling, all booze and spices, and the pastry has a pleasant, biscuity, crumbly firmness to it. Alas the pastry is a bit too sweet and overwhelms the flavours in the filling. 3 out of 5. (Palm oil)

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Mince Pie Fest 2025: Morrisons

Well.

These have a lovely firm but crumbly pastry and a filling that tastes of... nothing. Not bad, not good, just literally tasteless. I'd give them one point for the pastry but 1 would imply that they're bad. But they're not bad, they just are. ? out of 5. (Palm oil)

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Mince Pie Fest 2025: Lidl Deluxe

Crikey, it looks like a footballer's coffee table.

These have a nice firm pastry and I'm fairly certain there's a good, flavourful filling in there somewhere, but there is so much sugar piled on these that I can only detect the barest hints of festive spices. 3 out of 5. (No palm oil)

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Mince Pie Fest 2025: Iceland

These have a firm pastry, just on the right side of the dreaded crispy, a bit sweet for me but not unpleasant. The filling is... unusual. It's lacking in the flavours you'd expect from a mince pie -- there's no spice, and no alcohol -- but instead there's a syrupy richness, verging on umami, that reminds me of, more than anything else, cola. It's weird, but I quite like it. 3 out of 5. (No palm oil)

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Mince Pie Fest 2025: Favorina (Lidl)

These have a soft pastry, a bit too soft, and a bit sweeter than I like too. The filling has a good initial hit of spicy flavour, but it's alas overwhelmed by that overly sweet pastry. 2.5 out of 5. (Palm oil)

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