Robot turtles

[Dominic Thoreau]

And if you want an adult take (ie with more violence) try Richard
Garfield[1]'s excellent Robo Rally.



Dominic

[1] Who of course went on to design one of the crack of gaming, in the form
of Magic: The Gathering. But don't let that put you off.


On 23 September 2013 12:39, Nicholas Clark <nick at ccl4.org> wrote:

> So, there is this kickstarter for "Robot Turtles":
>
>     Robot Turtles is a board game you play with your favorite 3-8 year
>     old. It sneakily teaches programming fundamentals.
>
>
> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danshapiro/robot-turtles-the-board-game-for-little-programmer
>
>
> The kickstarter closes on Friday. We are attempting to organise a group
> purchase of this in Vienna, and given the level of interest there, I
> thought
> I'd like to point it out to the denizens of london.pm in case there is
> similar enthusiasm.
>
>
> So, to purchase one, with the international shipping, it's not very cost
> effective (ie $60)
>
> There is a "3-pack", which is $120 including shipping, and a "Deca-pack",
> which is $340. These look viable, as they bring the unit cost down to
> something like the price of a regular new board game (eg Settlers of Catan
> or Monopoly ship from amazon.de for about 30 EUR)
>
>
> So, I'm *not* going to organise this for London, but if anyone wants to,
> here's my homework I've already done for Vienna, but converted to real
> money:
>
>
> $34 is £21.18, but I'm suspicious that the delivery price isn't going to be
> that. gov.uk takes lots of pages to say that tax and import duty are both
> payable. It's 20% VAT on anything over £15, and "phone us up, because we
> make it way too complicated with 14000 categories"% (typically 5-9%) import
> duty for anything over £135
>
>
> If I assume that VAT is unavoidably going to be charged, at 20%, but only
> on the games, not the shipping, then the price actually isn't terrible:
>
>    3-pack:  $80 * 1.2 + $40    = $136 = £84.70  =   £28.23 each
>    10-pack: $240 * 1.2 + $100  = $388 = £241.65 =   £24.16 each
>
>
> I don't know the UK duty rate, but they work out that (I think) duty has to
> reach 23% before the 10-pack is more expensive than the below-threshold
> 3-pack.
>
>
> I also don't know if there's an extra sting thanks to a charge that gets
> made
> by the delivery firm for collecting the duty.
>
>
> So, if you're interested, you have about 96 hours to JFDI.
>
> Nicholas Clark
>
> PS I'm not kidding about the 14000 categories.
>



-- 
And a big "Hiya" goes out to the fun crew from GCHQ.