Stargate Atlantis Puddle Jumpers

 Next out of spacedock here, are some nice little Puddle Jumpers from Stargate Atlantis.

 

Produced by Studio Bergstrom, these little  shuttles are cast in metal, and about 1.5cm in length.

 

In the series, these are their main forms of space and air transport, and they are armed with a type of highly destructive drone missiles.  And they actually looked quite cool, but have this very difficult to paint colour. 

 

Is it gold, is it green?   Sometimes it even looked differently in a single episode, so I opted for a bit of both.  I painted up the vessels in a golden colour, and then to add a bronzish look to them, used a green wash over the metallic hull to give it that "this or this" look.

 

In games, I'll be using them as bigger types of shuttles, like bomber squadrons in Warfleets by One Page Rules for example, and as such based them in single numbers on a 25mm round base, my favorite base size to create fighter stands with.

 

Time to add some capital vessels and F302's to make that T'auri / Lantean fleet ready for action! 

The Haul Report 438: piling up on Age of Sigmar

 Another period has graced by, and so it is time for another small overview of obtained loot.

 

And we start of with some bases...

 

These 3D printed resin ones where obtained at Crypts of Halle, where Nico had a bunch of them brought along to take along.  When the venue was cleaned up and everyone had left, I took along the remainder of what was donated for free take-along as such.

 

For the Frostgrave table, some boars arrived as well this week, so that means I have nearly all the models now at hand to fill it out, I "just" need to paint them up.

 

Now of course, that title has to come from somewhere, so here we go.  The first to arrive was my preorder from Age of Sigmer, with the new General's Handbook as well as the playpack for the new Spearhead edition.  And a Daemonsmith added for good measure.

 

But a few days later, Mini Gamers did a stock sale with discounts at -45%, so I snatched up whatever Helsmiths of Hashut boxes where in there, to boost the collection some more. 

 

Through a little sale add, I picked up a pile of Reaper Bones blisters for dead cheap, and these are always handy for things like Frostgrave or to paint up in my Chaos Dwarf trophy unit where eligible. 

 

But the shinies also arrived, with both of the two customised packs of sleeves for my Underworlds deck, because Hashut demanded it!  Now, due to my logo being square, the letters didn't crop perfectly without stretching out the lord himself, but they still look mighty cool. 

 

And that's it for this round, next episode will be the traditional birthday one, so expect some cool loot as well as a heap of themepark merchandise! 

Fantasy Anime League Spring 2026: the results

 The spring season of FAL has gone by, so let's see how we fared!

 

My goal?  Aim for the top 20% of the ranking, something I have been consistenly managing in the previous editions.

 

The tools?  I took the gamble of putting nearly all my eggs in the fantasy basket bar a single series.

 

So how did the series perform, and did they live up to my expectations?

 

Dr Stone Science Future: 2nd place

Tsugai of the Underworld: 1st place

Ascendence of the Bookworm: 10th place

Welcome to Demon School: 9th place

Farming Life in Another World: 14th place

Wistoria's Wand and Sword: 3rd place

Barbarian's Bride: 21st place

Liar Game: 28th place

 

All those amassed to the following results on the 13 week basis:

 

Week 1: 929 th place, 114840 pts, succesfully aced Dr Stone

Week 2: 961 th place, 289294 pts, swapped Farming Life for Liar Game, succesfully aced Tsugai

Week 3: 767 th place, 577836 pts, swapped Liar Game for Wistoria

Week 4: 1470 th place, 685140 pts 

Week 5: 870 th place, 922161 pts, succesfully aced Wistoria

Week 6: 671 th place, 1123277 pts succesfully aced Demon School

Week 7: 857 th place, 1464048 pts

Week 8: 959 th place, 1589360 pts 

Week 9: 728 th place, 1872831 pts, swapped Demon school for Barbarian, succesfully aced Barbabrian

Week 10: 608 th place, 2248901 pts, succesfully aced Bookworm

Week 11: 421 th place, 2478850 pts, swapped Bookworm for Farming Life succesfully aced Farming Life

Week 12: 380 th place, 2740964 pts, swapped Barbarian for Liar, succesfully aced Liar

Week 13  763 th place, 313950 pts

 

So, a nice finish in the end, even though some series seriously where mispicks.  But as with some decent swapping taking place, I actually managed to ace 7 out of my 8 anime series picks, only Liar Game never coming near.  

This made up big time for the selection mistakes like said Liar Game, which seriously fell short of my expectations, and still manage to get in those top regions for the season! But in the heavy "double points" final week, it scored barely 4k points, and that really killed mu ranking in the end.  I had no chance to swap it out or so, as week 12 was the final chance by acing it to get some points out of it, and get a marginal bonus over Barbarian in the end should I not have swapped it out.  But considering I had no anime picked that ended on spots 4 to 8, I did some good swapping and ace-ing to remain in the top ranks.

 

But once again, it was good fun and I must say I keep running within those 5% top region pretty consistently the latest seasons, so yay me...

 

See you all back for the fall edition in all probability, as there is not a summer league running this year. 

 

The 2026 Goals: the halfway mark

 Aaaah, June has gone by, and that means reflecting on how the goals have gone after the second quarter...

 

And the moment you realise you really will need to focus a bit more to get things actually done!

 

While I have been making serious progress and painted up quite a lot, watched and read... it also shows there is still a long way to go to get everything I had aimed for finished.  While I had already completed two goals pretty fast in the first quarter of the year, with the obtainment of a Golden Ticket and the completion of a 5 points Raid force for A Call to Arms, some have been pushed close to obtaining in this second quarter as well.  So that's the good thing for sure, but on the other hand, some aren't proceeding as well... or not at all.

 

The first goal we obtained in this quarter is the viewings of at least 20 series, which now stands at 21 completed ones, so good going there.  But that is the only goal effectively obtained in this second quarter of the year, making it 3 finished of the 23 I had set out in january.  Or not, but for that, read on below, as things happened!  Now, some are getting close to completing as well, so okay for that: the Play 50 games of Warhammer Underworlds are now at 45, so that will be certainly obtained, and the movies to watch are also over the halfway mark at 13.

 

But that's the current status of soon to obtain goals, for the other ones, more effort will be required and as I keep being sidetracked by for example trying to get 2k of Halsmiths painted up for a tournament at the club the 22nd of november, or the whole Frostgrave Random Encounter project.  Because butterfly...

 

Painting all my remaining Underworlds warbands is completed, but for reasons, with all 3 out of 3 finished.  Now what happened here is that I finally finished my Chaos Dwarf warband, and as I will take them to Worlds in december will be playing them and them only in the remainder of the year until then.  But as with all my Chaos Dwarf games, if I win something, I'll be adding a model of that range, painted in a copy of my opponents colourscheme, to the "trophy unit", so all the unpainted warbands went into my "just for that purpose" box.  If they are succesful, I might be forced more to buy more warbands for the bits, but we'll see first if I get their engine running.

 

No idea though when I'll get round to both painting the 500th Anniversary White Dwarf or Thorin's Company though, which is still at 2 out of 15 members painted at the moment.  One thing I can say for sure is that I won't finish that 2500 points Idoneth army, as I keep painting my beloved Chaos Dwarfs instead for Age of Sigmar and they are on the verge of surpassing my painted Idoneth already, because motivations. 

 

Having a look at the other Underworlds goals, I'm at 1 out of 3 event wins, and haven't yet manage to win something with Hrothgorn, who just doesn't cut it with his to weak gnoblars.  Getting to the World Championships itself is a goal only obtainable in december, so that's fine, as is trying to retain first place on T3. 

 

Now, there are two paint goals that still don't look spectacular, but will in all probability still be obtained, as I expect a serious surge for them in the coming second half of the year paint line: painting 50 spaceships, currently at 17 out of 50, but we got that train rolling again at the club thanks to OPR, and get my Lothlorien army done before october which now stands at 99 / 500 points. 

 

Another set of goals that will get a serious surge traditionally in the second half of the year, especially with the summer vacation coming up, are firstly visiting 10 parks on Coaster Cloud, at the moment at 6 out of 10 but even as soon as in 2 weeks the park trips commence with the little man.  Which will also mean that 't Smidje collection of pins will get some additions to their curren 10 out of 36 completion.  And warm weather means cold beer, so that rate of 27 out of 50 will definitly go up as well!  As might the frituurs when we are out on holidays...

 

But there are also goals that will require serious focussing if I want to hit the marks!  The first of those being to finish 50 anime which is now at 15, or read 10 manga or 10 books, things that due to circumstances have been lingering.  Then again, once we hit the holiday period, these traditionally get boosted as well, but I can't say if it will be enough to break the goal targets! 

 

There we have it, an oversight as how the goals are going right now, and what still needs to be done.  Bottomline is that we didn't hit ANY targets in this second quarter, and can be certain of dropping one for sure as it won't materialise at all.  Never the less, we will keep going at it, and hopefully next time, quite a few "green markers" will have materialised on the list...

 

See you in september! 

Avatar: Fire and Ash

 So, the third instalment in the Avatar movie franchise, and bigger then before...

 

... which is why I didn't like it.

 

You see, I find these movies all carbon copies of one another, except the setting always gets bigger, but the story and story sequence remains identical.  Calm life is disturbed, natives gather and infiltrate, humans get revenge.  Then they gather a bigger force to withstand the humans, are pushed back with some personal loss of a side character, and the world awakens to bring all the wildlife to battle and beat the humans.  

 

The difference is that going from movie to movie we had a skrimish with a raiding force, a battle around a ship and now confronting a whole fleet.  But you can put the above over each of them, and it clicks solid into place like an overlay.  The first movie was awesome, because all new and stuff, but the two that came after, meh.   

 

 The story is basically the mourning Sully family, after losing their son in the second film, and Spider who stays with them but is bound to wearing masks to breathe.  He must return to the humans to survive, even though he doesn't want to.  Add in an aggressive fire clan, the Mangkwan led by Varang, and an attack leads to Kiri infusing Spider with fungi, resulting in him to be able to breath Pandora air... and making him a prime research target.

 

Jake on the other hand is captured and scheduled for execution while the RDA wants to find out what causes Spider to breathe exactly.  As they escape, the RDA mobilises en masse, resulting in the Na'Vi gathering their forces as well and a huge battle ensues.

 

In the end, the Na'Vi are succesfull, Quaritch sacrificing himself to save Spider and leaving him in the custody of Jake, as Spider is inducted in the Na'Vi spirit tree world.

 

So yeah, big blockbuster, fantastic special effects, but as I said above, nothing new.  Just bigger, and for that not necessarily better.  There is talks there are more parts still to come, but give it a few years time to create a new hype, because like so many theatre franchises it is suffering from the streaming competition.

 

It was fun, but for me, the stress in that sentence is on "was"... 

The trophies of Crypts of Halle V

 A while ago, I joined in the Crypts of Halle V tournament for Warhammer Underworlds, debuting the Blood of the Bull warband of Dawi'Zharr.

 

And that also meant that for every game I would win, a model would be painted up in my opponents colour scheme to go into the trophy unit of slaves from my collection.

 

Now during the event, I came third, managing to win 3 out of the 5 games I played.  The result was that I needed to scrummage through my bits boxes for three suitable models (I'm NOT buying a gazillion Underworlds bands for this!) to represent the races that where defeated by the sons and daughters of the Dark Father,   And that meant a grot, a nighthaunt and a skeleton.

 

The first victory came against Thibaud's and his Looncourt, which is a force of grots and where painted in a yellow colourscheme.  I dug up as such a gitz snuffler from the Age of Sigmar range to represent this as such, with a squig to also copy that scheme.

 

The second victory came across The Headsmen's Curse of Johan, who are a group of nighthaunt, sporting a spookly green skintone and dirty grey white "clothing".  The model as such is a chainrasp from the Nighthaunt range.

 

The final addition to the conquered where the Sons of Velmorn of Wouter, and these armoured skeletons had a purple and blue clothing on a dark metal and a skeleton complexion.  To represent this, I took a Reaper Bones model, a Barrow Warden.

 

So there we have them, some models to represent the thunderous march of the Chaos Dwarfs into the fields of Underworlds.

 

May many join the enslaved ranks for Hashut! 

Babylon 5 Thetys Cutter

 The tiny Thetys Cutter, mainstay of my Babylon 5 (Early) Earth Alliance fleets ever since Mongoose Publishing released A Call to Arms decades ago.

 

Is it because it was so good?  No, not at all, fragile, tiny and slow like most of the EA "flying bricks in space".

 

But it is such a nice and elegant model (as far as said bricks go) and I always caught a fancy for them.  Gamewise they had their uses as an initiative sink and usually a one shot gun (slowloading beam or missile rack to the front) before going down in a ball of fire, but if you brought enough missiles, they might actually take something along with them.

 

So I (re)painted another one of them I came across in my heaps, the 5th so far (ideally though, you pair them in two's for a single Patrol point, so some more digging up soon is required, I should have about 12 of these ships) of the refreshed Babylon 5 fleet.

 

Guess next thing on the menu is tackling the heaps of fighters the EA always has around, so off we go to the paint desk again! 

Star Trek Federation Type F shuttlecraft

 The latest vessels to leave my drydock, it's a wing of three shuttlecraft.

 

The Type F, which became famous for the Gallileo in TOS...

 

These shuttles, produced by Studio Bergstrom and cast in metal, are about 1.5cm in length.  I based them on standard 25mm round bases, to represent a wing of bombers of the other heavier fighter types to be used in rulesets like Warfleets by One Page Rules.

 

Cleanly cast, these where quit fun to paint up actually, not taking hours or such, though the fine windows and buzzard collectors where a bit more of a tussle, but I think they worked out in the end.

 

Now to get some capital ships lined up for painting... 

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: Freedom

 Finally I could watch the newest Gundam movie that came out end of january, and went to break some anime related box office records in Japan.

So time to sit back and enjoy more Kira, Athrun, the Freedom gundam and of course, LUNAMARIA HAWKE.

Taking place a few years after the events of SEED Destiny, Lacus has founded COMPASS, an organisation tasked with opposing independant resistance groups, Blue Cosmos, and other threats.  Kira and his friends intervene on their behalf as the armed force of the organisation, with updated Gundams and mobile suits at their disposal.  

And it immediatly begins with an intervention against Blue Cosmos, showing that Shinn and Kira now work together.  And Shinn now pilots the Justice of Athrun btw.  Now, while they try desperatly to stop all fighting, a new faction Foundation, is coming to the fore.  Originally followers of the Destiny plan, they want to open to the world but secretly plot to still impose the plan.  Genetically enhanced even beyond Coordinators, they reveal Lacus is actually one of them, and set a plan in motion to frame Kira for starting a war.  

 

COMPASS is soundly beaten, losing the Archangel and their mobile suits in the process, only to be saved at the last minute by Athrun and Orb.  They start forming a plan to stop Foundation, whom use Requiem, a giant orbital cannon, to annihilate Moscow, capital of Eurasia as a so called revenge for the faked nuclear attack they orchestrated to start the war.  Kira and his friends receive a gift from Orb, new and updated versions of the Strike Freedom, Destiny and Impulse for him, Shinn and LunaMaria.  They head into space aboard the Millenium, as their former friends and allies start to gather and the plan to liberate the world is set in motion.

 

In a gigantic (and awesome!!!) space battle, the heroes manage to break through the lines and Shinn destroys the Requiem array moments before it can fire on Orb, as Kira and Lacus confront the enemy and overcome them thanks to the newly formed Mighty Strike Freedom, an evolution of the Strike Freedom and a utility pack piloted by Lacus herself.

 

The movie is a great continuation of the Seed Destiny series, tying up a lot of loose ends while setting the stage for the next instalment (SEED Destiny Freedom).  It pays both hommage to the series with a lot of returning characters and mobile suits (even the Buster woohoo) while moving the story along with new equipment like the Millenium, whom replaces the destroyed Archangel as the main vessel they operate from.

 

I really enjoyed the whole film from the first to the final second, and considering it runs for 2 hours, that's a very, very good thing, even though I might have a bit of a personal bias as for me Seed has always been my favorite entry in the franchise...