Please note that some of the rules have changed in order to make the event more accommodating. Make sure you read them!
>Miniature?
By miniature I do not refer to the size of the event, which I hope will be fairly large. I am, instead, referring to the theme of the gifts being given. I'm talking the miniatures that many of us know and love. This is a Warhammer themed event, meaning Warhammer Fantasy, 40k, Epic, and maybe some others of the games by GW.
>Awesome! What are the rules?
Glad you asked!
Names will be taken until October 1st, at which point no further names will be accepted. In the week following October 1st, names will be picked at random and assigned to individuals, one name per entrant. The name you receive will be the person you will be gifting - and the point of this event is that you are a secret santa, so it makes no sense to go blab about it to everyone. Based on miniatures preferences that your recipient will post when they register to be a part of the event, you will then be prompted buy/convert/paint/whatever you deem suitable for a gift.
You will have the following months to collect or work on whatever is being sent. The deadline for your recipient to get his gift is going to be January 1st - that leaves you with plenty of time to put together whatever it is and get it sent out. Seriously.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN TO START THINKING ABOUT MAYBE BUYING A GIFT BY DECEMBER 25th, YOU LAZY GITZ.
If anyone puts it off this badly, they will be summarily barred from the next event. Order sooner rather than later so you don't get screwed by some store/shipping/natural disasters.
In order to encourage people not to procrastinate, there is an incentive:
When your recipient posts that they have received their gift, you may PM me with a request and I will disclose the identity of your santa. This means that if you get your stuff sent out and done early, you get to know who is sending you a gift. Some of you may not want to take advantage of this option and ruin the surprise, which is completely understandable, but it may help motivate a little bit.
>What would constitute a suitable gift?
This is where we unfortunately get subjective. I'd like to think we all have the good common sense to pick good gifts in this regard. For guidelines, I'd suggest something like $10 (or 15'ish with shipping) as a minimum. The minimum price on the gift is there to mostly prevent someone from sending like a single arm from a miniature. I do encourage you all to go above and beyond the $10 mark if you care to, and it'd be awesome to see that sort of thing on the whole. You will basically be held to the honor system to ensure that the person who you are gifting does not feel cheated.
My recommendation is to gift based on what you're capable of. Even if you aren't that good with models, you can definitely still participate - nobody's ever said no to a boxed set, and it's a nice and simple gift. If you're good at converting? Well, I can't think of a better gift somebody could receive than a converted mini - unless you are good at painting, in which case painted gifts would be really superior.
Single miniatures are more than welcome and might actually be preferred in some senses, so long as they meet the $10 minimum requirement.
Examples of what might constitute a good gift:
A boxed set?
A converted significant miniature?
A nice painted character?
Examples of what might constitute a bad gift:
What in the name of gork is this?
Do not let your ambition exceed your means - that totally awesome idea you have in your head is worth nothing if you never actually get it done.
>I live in ______. Can I participate?
Yes! Ideally, we would get a few people from all over - the U.S., the U.K., perhaps other parts of Europe to participate. To make sending the gifts easier, I will probably be organizing people into categories based on location while drawing the names to try and keep international mailing to a minimum to make sure that everybody can participate.
>How do I sign up?
Entries are not considered official until I (SANTA KLAWZ) receive a PM from you containing the following:
Your name
Your address - PLEASE MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE COUNTRY SO I DON'T HAVE TO GUESS
What kind of miniatures you collect/play/would like as a gift from (such as: Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Fantasy, Epic, etc.. Basically clues for your santa)
If you do not send this PM, you will not be entered in the event
I require this information to make sure that you won't all have to pay an arm and a leg in shipping to make sure these minis arrive safely and intact. Still, some of you may have to make the sacrifice and drop a couple extra dollars on international shipping. I will try to avoid this, but it may become necessary if I can't organize people close enough to each other.
]DO NOT SEND ME A PM JUST SAYING "I'M IN"
I also need to explain something - when your santa gets your information, they receive it in the form of THE SAME MESSAGE YOU SEND ME. I literally forward your contact information and model preferences to the person giving you your gift, so the reason to make you all jump through the hoops of filling the information out is so that I have something to supply to your santa. I also want to make sure I have up-to-date information, as I remember a couple people were moving during the winter event that made things a bit more difficult.
When you sign up, please put some money aside for the gift right then. If you do not have said funds, do not sign up. The overwhelming majority of excuses from the last event were people not having enough money to actually purchase a gift for their Santa, so I want to n** this in the bud. I realize most of you won't know at the time of sign-up who you're getting or what you're going to be gifting, but it's not unreasonable to put twenty (ish) dollars aside for the event beforehand.
After you've sent the PM, I'd recommend you post the miniatures you collect or are interested in in this thread, as well. Too specific makes the gifting process a bit silly. List the games you wouldn't mind receiving minis from, as well as what you might already collect, so your gifter might have some starting point.
>How do you assign santas?
Utilizing super-secret scientific method and a crack team of genetically modified supermonkeys, we assemble the Santa Master List™ at a classified military installation two miles underneath the desert somewhere in Sweden (and I don't know how we just got a desert, but we did).
Operation 'PICK DA SANTA' operates under the cover of a number of randomly-drawn names from a hat for national security reasons.
It's all done in one completely random shot. I don't tamper with it in any way, though I do take some requests into consideration in setting the names in the hat up (location, for example).
>What do I do when I send/receive my gift?
A few suggestions for sending the gift:
Include your name (forum name) so people have some idea of who is sending them this mystery box! It really shouldn't be all that hard to just write your handle on a piece of paper and throw it in.
Consider using Delivery Confirmation (With USPS it's like 75 cents, I think) so you can track your package and make sure it gets there.
Check in with your recipient via PM a few days after sending to confirm receipt if you don't hear anything.
Let your santa know it arrived! One less thing they have to worry about.
IMPORTANT: Post in the thread that the package arrived, and show off what you got!
Take some zoggin' pictures, for gork's sake! Your santa probably worked very hard on the gift, and we're all dying to see what's being exchanged.
And, well, if you try to rob the system, you do so at the cost of providing me your address.
