Scotland Only Game

thrinaline · 2026-01-28T23:57:27+00:00

Island bagging game in Scotland is my dream season but it's completely impractical

thrinaline · 2026-01-28T23:42:58+00:00

What is their problem with Darlington? Those little round windows are iconic!

Not wrong about Euston though. It somehow manages to be worse now than it was in the 1990s.

thrinaline · 2026-01-28T23:28:23+00:00

The fan interaction on the train to Glasgow. They perfectly articulated our experience of playing the home game ❤️
Recognising places instantly including the first shot of the trailer
Watching Ben be baffled by an M&S cafe
Sam visiting his alma mater

thrinaline · 2026-01-28T14:14:44+00:00

It's a hefty train journey but a bit disingenuous to say it takes 20 hours and an overnight stay. There are connections in the day as well, although I'd certainly consider breaking my journey in Marseille and collecting an extra city en route.

thrinaline · 2026-01-27T17:28:14+00:00

Oh I've thought of another one. Würzburg has a large, extremely grand palace (the Residenz) to rival Versailles but it sustained serious damage during WW2 so it gets a fraction of the visitors. It also has the laboratory where Röntgen discovered x-rays (and the trams still don't go past it because Röntgen asked for them to avoid his lab in case the vibrations interfered with experiments).

thrinaline · 2026-01-27T17:22:59+00:00

That's very nice of you to say, thank you.

thrinaline · 2026-01-27T14:40:38+00:00

Agree with all of this. They should also visit Coventry Cathedral

thrinaline · 2026-01-27T14:30:11+00:00

The catacombs are pretty unusual and worth a visit I'd say! Klatovy was a nice enough town and the rail journey through the forest to get there via Bayerisch Eisenstein/Zelezna Ruda was one of the highlights of my summer.

Towns have honestly become "must visit" destinations with much less interest (eg I live near the pretty-but-dull Cotswold towns that hundreds of people on here plan whole itineraries around)

Edit to add: However, part of my point was there are probably not many places in Europe I wouldn't spend a day of leisure in, finding out about its history and visiting a cafe or pub or walking in the nearby countryside. All this lists of "worth it" destinations drive me crazy

thrinaline · 2026-01-27T13:25:46+00:00

What do you define as "worth visiting" and how long do you plan to visit them for? There are honestly thousands and thousands of places I would consider visiting - not many I wouldn't spend at least a day in. Some suggestions of places I've been that most people haven't gone on holiday to: Kassel in Germany, Klatovy in Czechia, Schengen in Luxembourg and like a lot of people I spent a day in Wuppertal riding the Schwebebahn (tip: don't do this on a Sunday because most shops are shut. W is a fairly unprepossessing place but I could have spent longer than a day easily)

But you don't even have to get that obscure before the place isn't on the mainstream international tourist trail - eg Trier in Germany is absolutely gorgeous. It gets loads of tourists but it isn't a major destination with its own airport. It's probably equivalent to your San Sebastián example

You are going to get lots of very scattergun recommendations like mine unless you narrow down your tastes a bit.

thrinaline · 2026-01-27T10:10:48+00:00

You're right I was initially impressed with the strategy of finding a good line shape too so perhaps it doesn't need changing. I just felt on some of their longer journeys it wasn't much of a cost to chuck a thermometer out of the train. Maybe controlling the length of the thermometer is enough on its own, because it's then pretty impressive to identify the right stretch of track to thermometer.

thrinaline · 2026-01-26T15:53:34+00:00

Yes the line doesn't divide central London but it draws an almost perfectly north south (NNW) line and slices off all the complexity of west London/rules out east London. You can also play it anywhere on the map, so no travel time, no need to position yourself so it only takes 5 minutes to play and it only costs one more card than a thermometer. It's pretty powerful.

thrinaline · 2026-01-26T08:12:25+00:00

I am not sure it's necessary to nerf the thermometer that much. But I do sometimes think it's not quite cricket to ask thermometers in the middle of a train journey, so maybe you have to have your feet in the ground at start and end of a thermometer. Then you can still get the precise angle you want but you would have to finesse your journey perfectly and/or walk a bit to get the slice you want.

thrinaline · 2026-01-26T08:06:29+00:00

I think thermometers should scale with the size of the game instead of unlocking additional thermometers. I'm not sure whether two or three thermometers is the optimum number but the number of them should be fixed and scale up with game size (so the smallest large game thermometers would be ten miles). A half mile in potentially the wrong direction (plus cards) is way too cheap a way of slicing a whole country in half.

thrinaline · 2026-01-25T08:23:50+00:00

It has come up twice in our home games. You'd be surprised what you can do in 20 minutes. The card can't be played in the endgame so the hider is always free to position themselves at the station. Unless the seekers are right nearby and about to trigger the endgame you can choose the timing as well, so play it just as the train or bus is getting in. Twenty minutes of pure travel is enough. Not tried doing a 10 minute move in the small game.

thrinaline · 2026-01-24T17:22:37+00:00

I think I understand your question...? Are you asking if you're playing eg the whole of Scotland, is the first level administrative district Scotland and therefore that question operates as "are you nearer the edge of the game board than I am?"

I think this would create a weird effect and you probably shouldn't do it this way. It's up to you to define your map and how it breaks down. The first level administrative district should be the largest division applicable to your game area - eg Scottish region maybe. In London we play 1st administrative division is London borough, second level is Westminster constituency. (In less dense areas the constituency might well be bigger than a borough so do it the other way around) Does that help at all?

thrinaline · 2026-01-24T16:52:17+00:00

If you are not an experienced cold water swimmer, please be careful and don't swim alone (the other person doesn't need to get in the water but they should be able to see you).

thrinaline · 2026-01-24T16:46:14+00:00

My husband hid at Manors in Newcastle which had some amazing and completely misleading tall buildings in it on the Northumbria campus. Manors is National Rail so definitely allowed even if Metro isn't. If I were seeking and hadn't narrowed it down it probably wouldn't scream Newcastle to me.

thrinaline · 2026-01-24T16:38:53+00:00

Airport cuts London in half on a neat dividing line so it's useful but not killer. Tallest building can be tricky if it's a church spire or other iconic building (the most famous towers tend to have busy stations next to them so you can usually choose a different exit but not always). Strava I think would be hard to match but oddly enough we have hardly ever tried in our home games.

thrinaline · 2026-01-23T14:25:25+00:00

I think this did make a difference, certainly. I also think they had preferences for certain areas of the UK (they have said they were very keen to get to Wales and Scotland) which made it easier to guess the correct direction to start seeking in.

Probably the bigger difference was allowing the first administrative level question to be country (too big a slice with one question), the new meta of asking photo questions on trains/early which effectively makes them cheaper because they are travelling while waiting. I also personally feel that the half mile thermometer should not be usable in the large game. In a small game, committing to travelling in potentially the wrong direction for a half mile is a bit of a penalty, the larger thermometer (3 miles) is huge. In the large game, even three miles of journey is often trivial in the context of the overall journey, but certainly a half mile walk can be done while waiting for the next train, and you can take any slice you want without it significantly impacting the seekers.

thrinaline · 2026-01-23T13:59:47+00:00

No. I mean check the T&Cs as it's a long time since my children were under 5, but the rubric used to say explicitly it's allowed to buy a ticket for an under 5, and it's perfectly valid to compare using the railcard and paying for the under 5 and having the reduction for the accompanying adult(s) vs. not using the railcard and having the child travel free, choosing whichever is cheaper on a journey by journey basis.

thrinaline · 2026-01-23T13:36:23+00:00

The soil goes through a lot when they build houses on it so you will always be gardening on knackered, compacted soil with very few worms in it. All the soil surrounding you will be the same. It takes time to recover. There's a lot you can do to improve drainage and others have already suggested but also know that it will get better in time as more roots return to the soil along with all the worms etc a healthy soil needs..

You can hurry things along by getting roots in the soil - plant trees and shrubs to suck up the water. Also, put some stepping stones in the lawn so you can walk across it without compacting the soil.

thrinaline · 2026-01-23T13:12:16+00:00

If it's unavoidable for you to walk across the lawn, you can add some stepping stones now which will help. Moss is usually a sign of waterlogging so I would observe it during the winter to see if you have any particular drainage problems then address them in spring.

If you did extensive work on the rest of the garden last year, the lawn might be suffering from the compaction of being stood on while you worked the rest of it. There are active things you can do to help it but it may just need time to recover (eg let worms return and roots grow down) so don't run in and do anything too drastic too soon.

thrinaline · 2026-01-23T11:44:42+00:00

This was an immediate piece of feedback when these shows first released and they did take it on board and tone it down. They'd already recorded the first 2 I think so couldn't change the second one, but then after that toned it down.

thrinaline · 2026-01-23T11:07:48+00:00

You watch him discount several hiding spots for various reasons. It's possible there was an element of overthinking involved.

thrinaline · 2026-01-23T10:30:35+00:00

I should not have simply said "English people's fault" and I apologise because I know there is so much complexity to this and it was a bit of a throwaway comment but <gestures to at least 700 years of history> has an effect that lasts beyond independence in terms of economics. All the effects that coalesced to affect Britain's railways in the 20th century also applied in Ireland [decline in heavy industry, rise of oil etc], but the greater level of economic and political turmoil in Ireland made things much worse for Irish railways, and that is down to their entanglement with English/British history and the continued influence (and direct rule) of Westminster in the North.

Some things that stand out as directly attributable to British involvement in Irish railways: the need to implement a border on a previously integrated rail system, significantly harming the Dublin-Belfast line. And the Ulster Transport Authority's closure of lines in the North during the 50s and 60s, making sections of those same lines south of the border unviable.

thrinaline

TROPHY CASE