Mince Pie Fest 2025: Sainbos in a Tin

I got these as a Chrimble present, so although the main scoring is finished, the reviews continue!

The pastry is a little crispy and the filling is quite dry, but otherwise these are quite tasty. The pastry has a pleasant sweetness to it and the filling is full of mixed flavours; there's a bit of booze, nice fruit, and plenty of festive spices. The tin is quite nice too. 3 out of 5. (Palm oil)

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Are You Hoping That the Snow Will Start to Fall?

However you celebrate the end of the year, I hope you have a good one. See you in a few days.

Mince Pie Fest 2025: Cornish Pasty Shop

"The best mince pies in the world" according to the shop's owner. The owner who also told me that they don't like mince pies.

Quite the paradox.

These are BIG! And unlike Asda's similarly sized efforts, they are packed full of filling. The pastry has a lovely flavour, semi-savoury, semi-sweet, and is firm and thick, with a pleasant crumble. The bountiful filling is chunky and tasty, but lacks anything special; there's no booze and not a lot of spice.

It should probably be noted at this stage that these are £4.50 each, and even if they were indeed the best mince pies in the world, I'm not sure I could recommend them at that price. 3 out of 5. (Palm oil? Unknown!)

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RPG: 2025

Last night we convened in person to complete Stuart's West Country Vaesen campaign, and also eat festive treats.

According to my records -- yes, I'm that sort of nerd -- I have played the following role-playing games in 2025:

• Alien in February (Stuart's Space: 1999 hack), March (the "Chariots of the Gods" campaign; I don't recall this!), and Stuart's Expanse-style custom campaign in September. I've enjoyed Stuart's games more as, while I like the Alien system, the setting does nothing for me.
• Cthulhu Hack in October and November. I'm not sure about this game. It's fiiiiiiiiiiiine, but nothing about it convinced me to use it instead of Call of Cthulhu. Stuart is thinking of running it, but I'm not sure I will again. I'm glad I tried it though.
• Old School Essentials from May to June. I converted the Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign "The Chained Coffin", and it worked fine. It was enjoyable enough, but the pacing and setup of the campaign is a bit wonky; it's full of fun and evocative encounters, but the inbuilt time limit forces the players to rush straight to the climax, so they miss out on a lot of the fun. OSE is a solid system and very easy to run, and it was fun to play classic D&D again, for the first time since the 1990s.
• The Quiet Year in February. I'm not sure if this is an rpg or not, but it's close enough. Interesting to play, and I would like to have another go at it someday.
• Shadowdark in March and April. This was requested by Ben and I wrote about my thoughts here. I like Shadowdark but there's something that's not quite right about it for me.
• Star Wars d6 in June and August. This was the first time that I'd played SWD6 since about 1997 and it reminded me of how much I like the game. I'm planning on running it myself in early 2026.
• Vaesen from August until, well, yesterday. I very much enjoyed this campaign. This variant of the Free League Year Zero system is a bit loose and wonky -- I was rolling 15d6 for a lot of things towards the end -- and doesn't feel as robust as Alien, for example, but not so much that it ruined the game. We all enjoyed how it's a less despairing and nihilistic approach to investigative horror than other games, even my beloved Call of Cthulhu, and the emphasis on folk and local horror, rather than eldritch aliens from beyond space and time, is another nice change. Of everything we've played in 2025, I'm most keen to play Vaesen again; I have insidiously made Stuart aware of a Japanese campaign setting for the game, so we'll see what happens there...

In 2026 I'm hoping to run some Star Wars d6 -- as noted above -- and I would of course like to cross something else off my unplayed list. There are quite a few games I'd like to play, including Coriolis (the new one), Dragonbane, and Forbidden Lands. Stuart may have been bullied into convinced to run his long-promised Ars Magica campaign, and Ben should be running some Pendragon in the new year.

What was your favourite rpg played in 2025? What do you have planned for 2026?

Mince Pie Fest 2025: The Bastard Kipling (Sort Of)

Bonus round!

I haven't tried the Bastard Kipling's actual pies yet -- I'm still trying to work up the courage -- but I can never turn down mince pie ice cream.

Well, it doesn't taste much like the Bastard Kipling mince pies -- but they don't taste of much except disappointment anyway, ha ha -- but it does taste quite nice! I'm not sure I'd describe it as "mince pie flavour" to be honest; it's basically rum and raisin, with a slightly cakey backdrop that I imagine is supposed to evoke the pastry. Still, glorified rum and raisin is still rum and raisin, and I like rum and raisin, so 4 out of 5. (No palm oil)

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Mince Pie Fest 2025: Infinity Foods

A Brighton institution! Sorry, you won't be able to get these where you are.

Unless you're near Brighton. Obviously.

Right, so they are £2.50 each, which is absurd, or £6.95 for three, which is 55p less absurd but still in the general vicinity of chuffing bonkers.

Anyway.

The filling is excellent as ever. Rich, spicy, and tangy with a pleasant sourness. The pastry is nice and thick, but is less biscuity and more crispy, and I don't like crispy. Maybe I got a rough batch. Given the slightly dodgy pastry and the very dodgy price I can't in all good conscience give these more than 3 out of 5. I expect to be deported from Brighton upon the morn. (Palm oil? No idea, but given Infinity Foods' ethos, I'd guess not.)

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Mince Pie Fest 2025: The Winner!

Okay then, I'm ready to call it. I've tested almost every nationally-available mince pie -- not the Bastard Kipling; I will, but they are never much good -- and so I can say with confidence that the best mince pie is...

Oh crap, it's a three way tie.

Time for a second round!

Iceland's filling is lovely and warming, with a citrusy punch, but both Asda and COOP have more complex and interesting flavours. COOP has stronger flavours, but one of those flavours is cherries, and I've never much liked cherries. Asda, on the other hand, has more spices and a better overall balance.

Asda's pastry is the better of the three. It's perhaps a bit sweeter than I'd normally like, but it works well with the filling, and the crumbly but firm texture is beautiful.

In truth, you can't go far wrong with any of these mince pies, but if I have to pick -- and this whole exercise rather suggests that I do -- I pick Asda as the winner.

(Cheers, applause, etc)

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(If you'd like to support this absurd but apparently popular exercise in increasing the size of my waistline then donations are gratefully accepted at Ko-fi.)

Mince Pie Fest 2025: Waitrose

These look impressively chunky!

Both pastry and filling are quite bland, even tasteless, were it not for a welcome but far too late aftertaste of festive spice. These aren't bad as such, but they have very little going for them. 2 out of 5. (No palm oil)

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Mince Pie Fest 2025: Waitrose No 1 Brown Butter

These are much smaller than they were in previous years. Yet somehow around the same price.

The pastry has a nice texture, almost biscuity, but is alas a bit bland. The filling is very tasty; it's mostly booze with a bit of citrus, and it's maybe a little disappointing that any festive spices get overwhelmed, but it's certainly full of flavour. Like the Asda bakery pies, the amount of filling is a bit miserly, especially for such pricey pies. 2 out of 5, 3 out of 5 if you don't mind taking out a second mortgage. ("Certified sustainable" palm oil)

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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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Mince Pie Fest 2025: COOP Irresistible

The winners in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. How do they get on in 2025?

These have a gorgeous texture, with a firm bite and a pleasant chewiness. The filling is a warming blend of fruit, spice, and a hint of alcohol. Lots of lovely flavours.

But alas!

The pastry is far too sweet and the sugar overpowers the filling, making the overall taste a bit cakey. Now of course these are a sweet treat, I am under no delusions there, but one of the things I love about mince pies -- and that apparently 87% of the population hates -- is that the sweetness is balanced by the other, almost savoury, flavours, and here the balance is a bit wonky. 4 out of 5. (Palm oil; COOP claims to only use sustainable palm oil, for what it's worth.)

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