The Playstation Challenge: part 11 of 12

We're almost at the line now in this epic duel, as only december remains in this battle of battles of two geeks, forcing their families into it, and their epic struggle to prove who takes home the title of no-life gamer geek.

And truth to be told, I'm about to welcome it, as for more then 330 days now I have been updating every morning the Challenge page, having to switch between 'trackers' as YGN crashed down to PSNProfiles to keep puzzling out which trophies each of the participants gained during the day before.

After this, only two more posts remain to be done, being on the morning of the 31st the final month result and then a few days after the overal yearly gained oversight.  Then, after 365 days of gaming, it will be known.  Okay, I guess it is known already who is going to win the Challenge, but we always have to keep in mind that as I pulled of an 8000 points gapper in june, it is always possible the opponent does the same in the ultimate straight line.

Considering Andy won this month solid making up almost 2000 points, it isn't something to be ruled after all in the end...

Deciding the winner:

Less then a gap of 8400 is a victory for me, more then 9000 points gap is a victory for Andy, and in between those two extremes it becomes a draw


The oversight of gained spoils, updated after every monthly update post.

Last update: 30st of November 2013

Yokai_Tomsche

Points: 64.230 +2.070 points
Level: 18 - 2% +25%, +1 level

Platinum Trophies: 21 + 1
Gold Trophies: 171 + 3
Silver Trophies: 477 + 9
Bronze Trophies: 2050 + 90

Games played: 352 + 3
Games Beaten: 47 + 1

AnRoDr

Points: 61.680 + 3.855 points
Level: 17 - 71% + 49%

Platinum Trophies: 18 + 2
Gold Trophies: 169 + 17
Silver Trophies: 453 +22
Bronze Trophies: 1976 + 87

Games played: 241 + 7
Games Beaten: 36 + 2

This means Andy starts the year with a lead of 8670 points, currently the gap is - 2550 (WIN TOMSCHE)


As you can see, team AnRoDr managed to take back 1765 points this month, and observing his tracker is on the verge for a certain burst of about 1000 points in the comming week alone as he nears some platinums on top to bump the two he got in november. 

I myself have one platinum goal 'set' and all the rest must go to the side, being Saint Seiya Brave Soldiers.  On top of that, it seems the GF has been pondering to play a bit more, so if she could either run Rango through it's storyline or score some of the golds on The Smurfs 2, perhaps even platting one of the two, that would be a great help.
A help?  Yes, I'm pretty confident I'll win this, but that doesn't mean that my geeky pride doesn't want to end in the final tally on a positive difference with Andy, as that would mean I haven't only caught up from the huge negative margin, but overtook him.  Bragging rights you know...

As you can see above, my main source of 'income' this month where bronze trophies, in huge aided by the fact I started playing SS 2 days ago upon arrival and am nearly through the storyline collecting a heap of bronzes along the way.  During december the slow grind will begin taking along the silvers and golds hopefully though, but that won't be going as smoothly as there are trophies in it containing you have to win all 5 variants of 10 rounds, 3 matches each for a single silver trophy... that's 150 games for 30 points minimum.

On the positive side, I only played 3 new games, being Saint Seiya and both versions of the Marvel Lego game, for the rest I've been DL'ing the PS+ freebies, but haven't touched them yet.  A shrill contrast for once to Andy's half a level scored in points, mainly due to the huge amount of golds he got more then me this month.  And Silvers.  And almost equalling on Bronzes... yeah; he outscored on each line this month, even 'new games' bar 4 lonely bronze trophies.

Luckily I still have a wide margin, as according to the calculation table I talked about a few weeks ago, the gap should now have been only 7.750 points to end up on the 'perfect 0' draw, and currently it still is 11.250 points.  Andy has to make up 250 points a day as a base + the trophies he scores - the trophies I score for a result of 365 points a day, each and every day of december.  But like I said, he has the time, he has the motivated (more or less) team... if I could do it alone in june when I had a month off, he can definitly do it still in december and make me still having to break a lot of sweat in the end.
 If it ain't needed, I'll be strolling lazily along various lego bricks after my exam, but if needed I guess I'll have to open my archives and start gaming for real again for the final two weeks of december.
 Or look puppy eyed to the GF to finish her games... and score some more points for the cause ;-)

But enough ramblings for this month, Athena needs her Saints so off I go!

Age of Mitgardia MoC`s; a lot of phase one builds

Well, I`ve been a busy little bee the past week, but only got around taking pictures this afternoon, so here is a whole load of MoCs for the Mitgardia community build.  

The general plan is to first build almost all the phase one sets, then gradually expand to phase two on a one by one basis, only to end with a complete set of phase 3s, the best to be preserved afterwards.

As a sort of `running theme` I`m going to be using the same `main character` minifig for the central piece of each phase, as to tie the buildphases together more then just a title and start from scratch each time, and try to include where possible the previous phase build, or elements of it, into the next one.  Not quite sure how exactly to do it for a few of them, but ideas are broiling in the maelstrom of my brain.

Walls Phase One

In the south of Mitgardia, the temperatures are a bit more lush then in the far northern regions.  Unfortunatly, this comes with the drawback that it borders on Nocturnus, so brave Spearwives keep watch on any potentially nefast activities.

The first phase of the walls, this was to be a fence.  Inspired by the idea of linking Star Wars droid arms together, I build this small section to give it a go, only to transfer the actual armed fence to the later stage of another build, namely the farm 3 one.

Farm Phase One
 
Arme Joe had had enough of the adventuring life.  His service for the clans and countless battles had cost him a marriage and a leg, and in the end the money he made out of it wasn`t worth the risk of endangering his life day after day.

No, today the most risky thing he was going to do was to cut down some Iceblossom Weeds that had sprouted between his Rosalia Flowers, and daydream further about that large animal farm he hoped to one day possess.

But until that day came, those flowers needed tending...

Phase One of the farm is a villager with just a garden, so I went to build just that.  I also included a part of his toolshed, and with the back open to allow access to the things inside.  Now, for later builds, I`m going to enclose the buildings, but at these small scale mocs, putting down a brick block house seems like a sort of waste to me for now.

Stables

Damn it`s cold...

In this build, I wanted to try some icing on water, modest though to make it still look like a running stream for the horse to drink out.

Later on, this is to evolve at first into a normal stable, then to evolve in a large one with walled emplacements and all, so I`m thinking now of a way to include both a river / stream running through it (hmmm, maybe I should look to Helm`s Deep to make it run under the walls) and the campfire.

Archery Phase One

"Sis, sis, are you sure about talking dady`s crossbow?"

"Don`t worry beetroot, I have seen him use it an awful lot of times.  I even heard him tell once how someone he knew had a nephew whom`s brother saw a friend shoot an apple of the head of young man."

"Wow, that sounds so cool, can we try that?  Can we sis?  Please?  Please?"

"Sure, but we don`t have an apple... oh wait, here, take that carrot and hold it in front of you, then I`ll shoot the leaves from it.  How hard can that be no, it is bigger then an apple after all."

The final build so far, I just wanted to depict a simple archery target, nothing to fancy or special or advanced.   Though I have an idea for a minifig going to end up either in archery school, or in jail...


So that makes 6 in total now of the 12 to do phase ones.  next up on the list are the Market (which I`m going to add a very special twist to), the House range (again, not going the regular way in that build) and the one I dread the most, being the mill, as I am going to have to think of a way to make the horse go in a circle with feet suited for squares....

PSN Level 18 woop woop

Saint Seiya Brave Soldiers... it has arrived.  

The GF was doing a beauty nap, and so I thundered in the game and already solved the online part.  Currently I'm on the two thirds of the first Chapter, Sanctuary, and some specials have been popping left and right as well, the bronze trophy:

No Saint falls for the same move twice! You succeeded at a total of ten lightspeed moves.

caused the level to turn over to 18, 2 days before the month closure.  I might even get some more points pushed in tomorrow evening as I have the whole place to myself, so even though this month will be won by Andy, I guess it will be enough to not only win the challenge, but also end on a positive difference.

Inspirational Lego: the Olympic Swimming Pool

I like watching swimming during the olympics. 

I have no clue to the why that is, but for some reason I like to watch it more then for example athletics and cycling.  Okay, maybe female tennis and beachvolley for women is more intresting, but that's because boys will be boys.

Though I wouldn't want Sharapova scream in my bedroom though... that is just so over the top.

But I get distracted, this is the inspirational build I came across recently.  The Olympic swimming pool of the past Games, I think it is pretty awesome, with the water, the crowd and even down to the window details of the 'bird's nest'.

Age of Mitgardia: Accidents Happen

OOOPS...

... was the last thing Falco, hence known as `the not so Swift`, heard.  Sparring is a dangerous game, and even more so when the fierce warriors of Midgardia take arms to train and hone their skills.  No wooden training weapons for these hardened warriors, no holding back of blows... and if you don`t keep your head cool, you won`t keep your head at all!

This small MoC is the first step on the road to building the Barracks tree line, and to be honest I found this quite a difficult task.  Sparring itself is simple enough, pose two minifigs battlign it out, but what does one do to make a duel just that little bit more intresting?

I opted for the not so common theme of an `accident` happening between a warrior carrying a light weapon for swift attacks, facing off a brute with a huge weapon that you pray that it just wouldn`t connetc.

As it did here...

A Saint-ly Morning

The postman, my best friend!

Arrived over the course of the past two days, I got myself a nice lot of goodies for my collection, one happy camper here.

First off is this awesome set of a Dramatic Cosmo Figure gashapon, detailing the fight between Seiya and Aiolia as he unleashes a Ryu Sei ken on the Gold Saint.  This is a great series of models, and I`m still looking out for the Camus vs Hyoga and the Ikki vs Nachi ones to add for sure to my display cabinets.
Second great goodie are these Thai bankbills, detailing saints on both sides.

The next thing I got was the Pope Arles starter deck from the italian Saint Seiya cardgame.  Both Athena and Arles are `fixes` sets of 45 + 1 cosmo card that you get complete in a deck box, and then there is a third series, the base set box, which I *think* is complete as well, the traductions are still progressing on the list details for this, my italian being a bit rusty.

Finally I received another lot of 10 boosters from the Italian series trading cards, making me cross off my missing `regulars` of the searching for list, as well as being able to replace some of the normal characters with holo editions, AND get two more of the gold saints, Aries and Pisces.

Not a bad haul at all for a total of, excluding shipping costs for the various sellers, 20 euros.

Inspirational Lego 7: USS Enterprise NCC1701-D

Back from the weekend (well, actually already yesterday, but I was knackered) with a knee seriously playing up - yes, I finally am going to give in, have it checked up during the easter holidays to get surgery beginning of july 2014.  

Which means I can be inspired a lot the comming months, as that would mean a 6 week revalidation (been there, done that, more then once) adn PRAY there will be no heat wave like past summer when I have a cast covering 2/3ths of my leg... but it's the only moment I can have it done with the school hours in mind again come september.

But on to today's inspirational thingie: this darn cool looking Enterprise always puts a smile on a trekkie's face.  It's kind of pity the franchise is with Kre-O as those bricks and builds are far inferior to the well known big brother, though the price still makes it tempting though.

So people MoC'ed their own, like this one here:

For my own moccing, I'm currently 'in wait' for half a dozen small orders from BrickLink, as I've been shopping around bits and pieces to do some builds (like star wars droid arms, 50 for 0.02 cents each.  I need about 20 for sure, but it never hurts to have 'some' spares at that price).

Once those arrive, I can continue with some of my Guild of Historica ideas, being at first stages one for the market cart (I'm going to bend the rules a little in a good way, you'll see), the Fencing entry from the wall category (droid arms...) and see if I can work my head around something for the stables and barracks tree lines.

Talking trees, I still need to study the Smurf's Harry Potter forbidden forest plan for ideas on how to build gnarled old trees I just remembered.

Age of Mitgardia: the first MoC

Alright, I`ll post it before leaving in half an hour then ;-)


Over on the Eurobricks forum, there is a running project called Guilds of Historica, it was featured on Brickmania as well, and basically you get to chose one of the four guilds, make a `sigfig` aka your character, and then participate in various `My Own Creation` build projects.  

These can be either `guild challenges`, storyline depictions, or various free builds run by each seperate guild.

The setting is a medieval fanatsy, and through the MOCcing you get sort of an interactive story, where you can earn titles or tags for display on your profile.  Nothing fancy, just good spirited building to keep people motivated.

The four guilds are as follows:

Nocturnus: doom, gloom, desolate wastes, orcs, goblins, evil wizards... you know, the traditional bad guys / oppressed ones / enslavers etc

Avalonia: think your classic mystical fantasy setting, with lush forests and rolling plains

Midgardia: the norse, with tundra plains, mountainous regions, yetis

Kaliphlin: the desert guild, with mummies, arab styles and even the orient.

Even though I was in doubt between the last two, I eventually picked Midgardia because I have a ton of white bricks compared to the tan ones, and I have a love for Ice Saints.  Okay, point 1 was the reason but heck.

Here is my character that will be doing `my affairs` in the frozen lands, Hagen of the village of Merak, born under the Beta star of Ursa Majoris and protected by the constellation Steed Sleipnir.

Old meets new, as that is still a helmet I have from my `Yellow Castle`... released in 1978, while the face for example is from the A-Wing Han Solo of... 2013.  A minifig spanning 35 years of bricks hehehe.


In guild, Midgardia is running an Age of Midgardia project, basically being like Age of Empires wherein your builds `evolve` to bigger and better versions.  You can sign up for any tree, each one containing three phases, and completing it (and passing review) you`ll get a title for that tree line.  For each three trees there is a theme, so having all 9 spots filled in grants an overall title.
Totalling all this there are 4 categories, so if you complete all 12 lines, being 36 MoC builds, you get a tag line for display on your profile.  Now tags is quite a feat, as there are only spaces for 4 when you are a regular member.

The categories are:

Military: completed all subcategories, earned title: Rigr(commander of 100 men)

Archery: 1st Phase; field  with archery target. 2nd Phase; archery range. 3rd Phase; school of archers, maybe barrack style. Earned title: Eagle Eyed Danger
Barrack: 1st Phase; sparring. 2nd Phase; training grounds. 3rd Phase; full barrack. Earned title: Frost Berserker
Stables:  1st Phase; horse rider. 2nd Phase; stable. 3rd Phase; fortified stables. Earned title: Shadow Rider

Agriculture: completed all subcategories, earned title: Agrarian

Mills: 1st Phase; horse mill. 2nd Phase, water mill. 3rd Phase windmill.  Earned title: Miller
Farm: 1st Phase; villager with just a garden. 2nd Phase; field with crops. 3rd Phase; farm with field, animals etc. Earned title: Farmer
Storehouse:  1st Phase; simple cabin. 2nd Phase; medium storehouse. 3rd phase, large storehouse. Earned title: Manager

Town: completed all subcategories, earned title: Lord Mayor

House: 1st Phase; hut. 2nd Phase, small house. 3rd Phase, large house. Earned titles: Gentlefolk
Inn: 1st Phase; ale seller. 2nd Phase: beer garden. 3rd Phase; completed inn. Earned title: Innkeeper
Store: 1st Phase; market cart. 2nd Phase; market stall. 3rd Phase; store. Earned title: Vendour

Defenses: completed all subcategories: Strategic Heavy Weight

Tower: 1st Phase, outpost. 2nd Phase, wooden tower. 3rd Phase stone tower. Erned title: Watchmen
Walls: 1st Phase, fencing. 2nd Phase, wooden wall. 3rd Ptone wall:  Earned title: Protector
Gatehouse: 1st Phase, simple gate. 2nd Phase, defended gate. 3rd Phase Gatehouse(with oil, archers etc.) Erned title: Gatekeeper



My first MoC attempt is a small cabin for the Storehouse category, as no-one seems to have already begun in that line, most picking apparently Military (heck, they are Vikings after all...).

Store, Farm ad Barracks are also on my `picking` list, but I`m going to try and build focussed more or less and not get twenty odd projects halfway done.  And so I can also attend guild challenge builds after all.

So here it is, together with the bit of fluff I wrote for it.

Catarina didn`t like this a bit.  A job as a manager she had been promised.  Lots of traffic and food to be stored to help the people of Mitgardia during the harshest of winters.  It all sounded so noble and so good, but reality was a cruel lover.
She found herself managing a small cabin, barely big enough to store all the food for a small hamlet, let alone a village.  The winds raged through the cabin by the poles used as a back wall, it was small, moist and dark, at least the smoked fish would feel at home in there...
"More then I" she thought as she poured herself another cup of wine.

These pictures show the `hows` I went to work.  Not to bad for a very first real build in like 20 years I think, picture two shows how the pole backside was done, while picture 3 shows the elevation angle.  The idea is for phase 2 to use the `core` of the cabin as the entrance for the medium storehouse, and build on a 16 by 16 plate or so.  More of that in due time, if this one gets the pass and build can continue.

Now to get my hands on a lot of brown bricks, I got still some 15 euro of credit on my VIP card which will start to `dissipate` around february, so I think I`m up for a trip to the P-a-B wall now in the Lego store Antwerp.

But now, off I go on a holiday weekend, until monday, may all your bricks be falling rightly

One more night of sleep!

Be sure not to miss it, for tomorrow HE will regenerate!

Even though I'll be only able to watch it probably on tuesday, as I'm leaving on a weekend with the parents, the kid and the girlfriend this afternoon to a subtropical swimming paradise near the Delta Works in The Netherlands.

You'll notice when I'll be back, as I have some cool Lego thingie I've pledged for to yabble about based around MoC medieval fantasy 'world building', but for now I'm going to do the test and go on holiday without internet connection x-D

Playing Your (Parental) Role...

... a tale about tobacco, coffee and mayonnaise.

I have three bad habbits I admit.  I drink a few litres of black coffee (of the not decaf variety) a day, smoke near to a pack of 30s on a daily basis, and I dip my food in spoons of mayonnaise.
And for 2014, one of those is going to get cut down on.  It will be the mayonnaise.

Now what has all that got to do with my usual ramblings?  Building further on my rants and reflections posts of the past weeks (*SPOILER* and comming weeks, building up to the new year resolution post), I would rank those habbits on an equal foot as my hobbies like this:
Where coffee is my Saint Seiya collection, tobacco is equalling my love for those small plastic bricks called Lego, and gaming in general (be it Playstation, miniatures, Magic, etc) would be the mayonnaise.

And it is the mayonnaise that will be severly lessened...

My Magic has been burning low already for a few months due to time constraints, my miniature gaming has essentially been reduced to painting only and with the Playstation Challenge about to enter it's final month, I'm playing rather occassionally these past weeks and only games I love the setting off (anime mecha, Lego and from next month, a lot of Saints).  Most of my other games have either been deleted to save up hard disc space, traded in at the local game store or placed in the Munchkin's shelves.

That all accumulated of course in the choice been made a lot easier.  And by quitting mayonnaise as well, I might even loose a few dozen pounds on top as well as an additional benefit ;-)
Funnily, or ironically, enough, this will result in an actual increase of time spend painting come january, as with a combination of factors, including increased postage rates and school in september, I will have to fund my other hobbies greatly with the models I'm quitting with.

But that doesn't mean  I won't be gaming at all anymore!  I'll just be looking to other ways and manners to do it, like back to basics role playing.  With the internet and forums, it is now perfectly feasible for those things to be PBEM'd, or more accuratelly, Played By Forum Post.  I'm currently studying everything in an existing Lego Medieval Fantasy game (same as normal, but with Lego characters to depict the scenes instead of more classic known ones like the old Ral Partha TSR range and such).  Heck, who knows I'll become a dungeon master one day, sick ideas enough in this brain to torture parties with ;-)

Another option I had been thinking over is the side of wargaming called solo gaming.  I have been reading about this on various sources like Counterfett's excellent blog, and the ideas I saw there (solo Lego based and other clickables games for one) together with the above RP I described, has caused inspiration to hit me like a train.
MAYBE I can get the Munchkin and the GF involved in some Lego roleplaying as that would be, I think, a great idea for the little guy.  It can help him further in learning some social interaction skills, as well as learning to imagine things 'outside the boxed set' and more imporatantly, express them better on what he wants to build.  The GF's role will be mainly being the sidekick to the heroic 8 year old, so that he doesn't have to play alone.  Bit of a guiding light helping the hero out where to start thinking to solve a puzzle or such.

I'm going to look into creating, both storywise and minifig wise, a small adventure of about 30 minutes to an hour, and to give it a try during the christmas school holidays. 

Kind of like Heroica, but not like it.

I'll just have to make sure to focus more on interaction and logical thinking then pure hack and slash dungeon crawling...  You see, the Munchkin is easily distracted and afraid to take on challenges, as he scares to fail.  So if I can trick him into countering those two things by using a tool he loves playing with, that is a good form of trickery in my book.

And again that brings up the issue of funding and trading...

This means I'm going to be looking through my collections to see for suitable figures and trade for other minifigs from various series and sets with some of the wargame figures I have.  I should have enough villagers and all thanks to my Castle and Pirates series I had as a kid, but for the flashier minifigs released in more recent years, I guess it'll be Miniature Trading forums and the likes.
But first I need to convince the GF of the merits of the idea and to get her on board, and fresh up my voice and storytelling skills.

And find a way to explain an 8 year old that Gandalf and Harry Potter can easily run around in the same village...

That is it for this week though, but over the next weeks I'm going to look into concrete plans of how to cut down that 'mayonnaise', the building up of other parts of someones niched, linked hobbies, and the benefits and drawbacks this can cause in one's mental state of mind.

But until then, EXCELSIOR!!!

Inspirational Lego 6 - Gundam

This thing is huge!

I like Lego, I like Gundams (and I still have to start building that ZAKU I have a plan for...) and when I found this one scrolling around, I thought wow.  Then I saw how big it was (it's almost as tall as the kid before him, but he is kneeling, so I estimate he'll be around a meter and a half) and went WOW.

Spending money on that many bricks is one thing, having the talent, skill and patience to actually build it is something I'll never have.

Bricking my own mini-diorama`s

One of the things I always said to myself was that once my bricks where all sorted out (which, admittedly, isn`t fully done actually) I would start building again.

Now, inspired by Brickmania, the idea I always had to use some existing sets and build them in some small scene dioramas, has been kindled up and today I received two small baseplates of 16x16 studs to complete two planned ideas... and while at it I completed a third I had started on.

Now, these aren`t by far large MoC builds or such, just simple scenery pieces making use of smaller sets, in this case for all three scenes a total of 2 promo sets and 3 of the smaller sets from a range.

And they where a suitable `training` to slowly get back into it and build some more ambitious pieces in the future... within the confines of the available space for baseplates.

A Dead Man`s Chest

This set makes use of the small Jack Sparrow promotional set, and an island I had from God-knows-which pirates set from my youth.  Sailing the seas to raise funds for a crew, Captain Sparrow comes upon a true Dead Man`s Chest.

The Riddle of the Ring

From the recent Hobbit range, I have this small set when Bilbo finds the Ring and encounters Gollum.  I wanted to incorporate it one a small base in which the boat comes near the shore of the rock formation.

Camp Attack

When waiting for his courier by air to extract a mysterious golden crystal, an unlucky adventurer comes under attack by a giant scarab.  This set uses the Pharaoh`s Quest promotional small plane, which I tried to build airborne using a transparant mounting, as well as the Scarab Attack set.  On top of that, it uses the rock formation from the smaller Prince of Persia set I picked up two weeks ago at Brickmania.

Next project vaguely forming in my mind is something with the Dol Guldur promo set, together with a more build up formation on a smaller plate, before trying to tackle something bigger in the trend of a wizards tower.

Ciao Ciao

Inspirational Lego 5 - Stargate Atlantis

Wow... just wow...

This piece contains not only a great looking Atlantis and her skyline, as well as a very fantastic looking starship Daedalus in one of the (many recycled) scenes where the ship takes off on a mission in front of the city.

I really loved Atlantis more then the other Stargate franchise series, pity Destiny never got the chance to blossom, they have released, and McKay in particular, and this is a truly great piece of work!

Inspirational Lego 4

Sometimes less is more...

It doesn't need to be big and impressive to be a cool piece of building, as this old 'intern joke' proves, now immortalised in the famous plastic bricks.

Inspirational Lego 3 - Aliens Chestburster

Roight, not much to say bar pure awesomeness for this one.

It still remains one of the most iconic scenes in the franchise "kill me... killlll meeee.... KI *crack splosh raaarwr*"

And then people wonder why I have the scares of spidery thingies.

What is all this...?

Yes, I'm totally in the dark and clueless.  I can't really point a finger on it, and that is kind of driving me crazy...

Okay, I admit, I would have a clue what to do if Alicia stood on my doorstep...

Since half of October I am painting again, and I bloody well enjoy it an awful lot again.  Hence having done almost 75 models in a month, including a scale model that was time intensive.

I went to the Crisis wargame show, and had a lot of nice talks.  And I enjoyed it for every moment.

I updated the library to make my armies in the making once more 'current edition' where applicable.

And then I needed to start making the army lists...

... and everything came crashing down faster then a sumo wrestler jumping out of a plane without a parachute.

It's odd, I used to be a dice chucker, I loved the clacking sound of the dice in my hands before rolling certain doom (I can't say for whom, I like to think for my opponent before those all 1s turned up...), the anticipation of hoping my 'master plan' would come together without my opponent noticing what is going on. 
I just can't say what it is what is happening to me.  I've been reading my rulebooks, I have been imagining how my completed armies will look like... and I can't get the slightest spark anymore in my core of actually packing the models up and go to a convention or a tournament, not even a club night, to play a game with them.

At first, pre-Crisis, I tended to think that it was because it had been so long.  But half a month after the convention and the eye candy, I still can't force myself to paint 'targeted' to complete armies. I can imagine myself painting through all of Lead Mountain more and more, but I have the happy view of the Journey, but the road seems to be going in a direction far beyond the horizon.

Is it truly all over?  Well, I think the honest answer is yes and no.  I still love reading and talking wargames and conventions, but I just can't focus anymore on playing actual wargames.  I feel like the only hobby that keeps firing me up, now for the 26th year running, is my obsession with all Saints and their likes.  I completed a regiment of ACW last week and stared at it, putting it on some shelf, shrugged and closed the cabinet.  I received some old Italian trading cards, and I did a happy dance in front of my GF and... my mother.  Yes, that is sad, yet I was happy to get those cards (which I showed yesterday) and the quest for getting the missing cards has me more 'in her grip' then finishing the next Yayoi battlegroup.

I can even get more excitement from my plastic bricks (as it 'binds' me with the Smurf in a way, as well as with Humpty and Dumpty) and can even envision myself helping out on the next year big build project.

It is time to face the music I fear, and really get over the fact I have reached a wargame 'dead end'.  I might as well keep painting and then try to trade the models off, and enjoy the building of my scale models of Saints.  Never the less, I'm not burrying the hobby totally, I'll be showing off the regiments and models I try to massacre with paint and brush, but I just can't say they will ever see the fields of battle.

I'm going to have a long think over all of these 'mixed hobby feelings' and have some more chats with the GF and the Nemesis, going to grab a pint over at TSA one of the weeks and have it all a look, but if the 'holy flame' doesn't roar up by the end of the year...

It will be all over, and I'll become a hobbyist painter instead of a hobbyist gamer in sabbatical...

Inspirational Lego 2 - ECTO 1

In the new daily series of finding cool Lego builds over the net and sharing them with the world:

I must admit, if they released this (Cuscoo program?) I'd be off to the local Lego store like a bolt of lightning!  Which reminds me I must save up some sidebudget smallchange to get that Back to the Future set one of these weeks (hello, big silent hint for Christmas list idea)...

House of Cards: I Cavallieri Dello Zodiaco - Italian

Today I received 10 boosters of the classic Trading Cards series, numbering 52 cards in the whole series.

Hard to find, these italian boosters went for a sale of 1.42 euros for a booster pack on eBay, and as the shipping was cheap AND fast (both not always certain when trading with Italy) I ordered his final 10 packs as well after opening my parcel.  They are hard enough to find, especcially the twelve gold `Chase` cards (about 7/8 on a whole booster box, good luck finding those...) so I wasn`t going to let this deal slip by.

The 10 packs, each containing 6 regular cards, a checklist card and a holograhic card (the equivalent of a foil in Magic and the likes) have been openend and put in a binder now, and this are the cards I`m still missing for now.

If you have some of them in an EX- or better state preferably, let me know and we will definitly be able to work something out!!!

I Cavallieri Dello Zodiaco - Italian

20/52 - Serpente di Mare
22/52 - Guilty
26/52 - Pegasus contro Gerky dell'Orsa Minore
41/52 - Mur dell'Ariete
42/52 - Toro
43/52 - Arles di Gemini
44/52 - Cancer
45/52 - Ioria di Leo
46/52 - Virgo
47/52 - Libra
48/52 - Scorpio
49/52 - Micene di Sagitter
50/52 - Capricorn
52/52 - Fish