The Witcher season 4

 Season 4 of the The Witcher, and in a way, a new start with the forced recasting of Geralt of Rivia.

 

And let's drop in with the elephant in the room: nope, just nope.

 

Now don't get me wrong, should Liam Helmsworth had been the witcher since day 1, it might have worked, but after the gruff look of Henry Cavill, this version just looks to polished and, well, "pretty boy" compared to what we have been used to in the first three seasons.

 

The story continues with the three arcs implemented in the previous season: Ciri finds herself in a far away land, becoming a member of a rogues group called The Rats and taking the monicker Falka to hide her identity.  Geralt and his growing band of companions still try to get to Nilfgaard to prevent the marriage between Emhyr and (the imposter) Ciri, and Yennefer decides to gather surviving mages to confront Vilgefortz.

 

Now, like in the books (and face it, they should have been called "Chronicles of Ciri" or something instead of the Witcher), the heaviest part of the story goes around the missing princess, and it is also by far the most intresting and intense of the arcs, especially when The Rats are defeated by Leo Bonhart.  Yennefer discovers the truth about the marriage, and sends Geralt on his new way right after he finally had gotten into Nilfgaard, meeting and parting with other companions.  And the mages are soundly beaten by Vilgefortz, though they do cripple his plan for an unforseen amount of time, but at the cost of many lives...

 

Now, while the season has it's highs and lows as such, it does bring us with two awesome characters.  Regis makes his appearance (and Laurance Fishburn plays him well, despite online critique), and the epic, epic, EPIC portrayal of Leo Bonhart (awesome portrayal by Sharlto Copley).  Then there are some great sidecharacter arcs, like Skellen (my favorite character of both book and series btw) and Dijkstra.

 

In the end, you have a good series of enjoyable fantasy, with the only downside for me really being, well, the titular character... 

Babylon 5 ACTA: Omega Destroyer

 The first spaceship of the year, and it is subtle as a brick!

 

Well, it actually also can serve as a brick considering it's weight and shape...

 

But the Omega Destroyer is perhaps the most iconic looking vessel from Babylon 5, bar perhaps the station, but definitly more so then even the White Star.  And it ain't to shabby at all in the game either, packing some serious firepower, high armour and defences, and heaps of hit and crew points.

 

Basically, a brick in the middle of your fleet...

 

An added bonus to the vessel is that it comes with no less then 4 flights of Starfuries, for which I went with Thunderbolts this time, a tat less a dogfighter compared to the Aurora, but with increased firepower to make those strafing runs on enemy vessels.

 

Colourscheme wise, I find these difficult vessels.  If you see them on screen, they are towards the black / very dark grey spectrum, yet in official manuals they look a lighter grey / metallic shade.  I never the less went for the first colouring, going from Dark Rubber as a base colour to Hardened Carapace for the final layer.

 

The Thunderbolts on the other hand have been painted the same grey as my other fighters and vessels, except with red instead of blue details.  It's easy to recognise a Thunderbolt from an Aurora at Fleet Scale, but it becomes a different story between a Thunderbolt and a Firebolt, so I'll be "colourcoding" my fighter stands as such.  Just for easy of play and identification, because the Earth Alliance loves variations on excisting designs after all. 

 

Now to round out this years Third Age fleet with painting up a final Hyperion (yes, a variant), so check back in a few weeks for that one! 

Troll 2

 Troll was a bit of a surprise hit in the past years on Netflix, the norwegian fantasy movie being great fun and a really good film.

 

And in december, the sequel hit, so me and Noshi sat down and gave it a look recently.

 

Unfortunatly, Isaksen provides a prophecy early in the movie, as he states "a sequel never lives up to the original".  Granted, somethimes this isn't true (Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, etc...) but more often than not it is indeed so.

 

We come back to our heroine of the first movie, Nora, now living remotely in the wilds three years after her encounter with the Troll king.  But she is recruited by her friend to come to a goverment facility for a new discovery: another troll is being held there!  She accidentally awakens him, and where the first movie was about a troll just wanting to get home, this one wants to level Norway.  Soon a second troll appears, as Nora had contact with the son of the Troll King and had hid him, and the army must try to stop the monster that seems impervious to all weapons and countermeasures.

 

Add in a crazy old coot... I mean archeologist, and a mystical water source of King Olaf, who was held responsible for removing the trolls in the middle ages from Norway.  And then a document shows up, and it was all a misunderstanding in that the trolls didn't needed to be killed but given a home, but the chruch opposed this.  Epic battle with huge trolls take 2, magical water and finally a sacrifice of one of the leads and the big one is brought down...  

 

Yeah, that's a lot going on compared to the mysterious monster movie that was the original Troll.  They had a big budget (so far the biggest ever in Norwegian cinema) and wanted to go big.  Unfortunatly, it doesn't deliver, and feels more like a copy of King Kong vs Godzilla, but just, well, not that good.

 

A missed chance for sure, seeing how great the original was and what they served us in this second course... 

The Haul Report 429: about that new years resolution...

 "I'm not buying figures this year unless I will actually play the game during 2026!"

 

How good of a new years resolution is that!

 

Well, it lasted until... the 1st of january at 20.00 hrs, when I received the mail from Fantasy Welt with their new year sales, and went in to see if anything intresting was about.

 

I also ordered the Blood Bowl new edition rulebook, which I had held off until I was certain it didn't rested under the Chirstmas tree. 

 

 

As the resolution mentioned above was done for anyways, I did some shopping on Vinted, and found a Mindstealer Sphiranx.  Because another game, why not, maybe I get that RoR completed this year. 

 

So, the year kicked off good, though in the meantime I have been hit with a bit of paintblock, so wargame shopping will slip a bit to the back as a result.  Guess I'll be working on some other collections mostly this year.

Lord Ipsqueeck's Adventures: A wintery day at the Antwerp Zoo

 Past sunday it was cold, very cold... but dry!

 

So we dressed up nice and warm, hopped on the tram and went for an afternoon at the Antwerp Zoo.

 

Which was ooooh so calm with this cold weather! So we started in the small monkey building, because there it was nice and warm inside, excellent to start the day after the cold trip to the zoo itself.

 

To give an idea, just go look at my pictures of the Flemish garden all the way back in august, compared to the lovely snowy landscape it has now...

 

One thing one can admire while it is so calm though, is the architecture of the zoo buildings, some which are over 100 years old, while some like the birdhouse are modernised, but you can still see the walls of the original old building at the back of the cages.

 

 

The Zoo also has an artificially recreated cave system that can be explored behind the valley of the great apes, and which has a slide hidden in the dark.  Which I of course needed to try out once I found it.

 

This cavesystem brings you to the buffalo savannah, where there are also a lot of big birds, including a section they roam freely, so better watch out not to get any poo-poo on your clothes!

 

 

 

Our next stop was the Egyptian Temple, home to the inside eating and sleeping space for both the elephants and the giraffes.  And as it was so calm, we could get really, really close to the elephants who where having a snack! 

 

The newest inhabitants of the zoo, the pigmy hippotamus'ses, where relaxing in the water in their residence as well.

 

While the beaver rats didn't care as much at all about the temperatures, happily strolling outside. 

 

And it still was nice and cold...

 

In the reptile house I found myself eye-to-eye with a fascinating lizard.  Well, it required some bending to get to eye level, but you catch my drift!

 

After passing some more lizards, including the Komodo dragon, we went to the next section of the building.

 

And that is an open area of giant tortoises and lizards, and they can be found really close at times for sure!

 

There was also a single lion that apparently had drewn the short straw, as she was outside while all the others lounged in their building.

  

And I got to meet an actual flemish television celebrity, Jos de Koffervis.  He became popular due to a documentary series detailing the life of the animals behind the screens here on television, and he was enjoying his big aquarium for sure. 

 

 

The last remnants of the Magical Oceans light festival could still be seen in the Zoo, the event had ended the weekend before and was still in the process of deconstruction.  Next year we'll visit this, but due to circumstances hadn't made it for the 2025 edition. 

  

 

 

And then it was time to round off with a quick snack to get the temperatures up again, some french fries for me, and onion soup for mommy and daddy. 

 

And thus a stroll to get a fresh nose came to an end, enjoyable if chilly but it is great fun to have the place nearly completely to ourselves though!

 

Until next time and the next adventure! 

White Dwarf 480

 

 Time to have another look at an issue of the Games Workshop in home magazine, White Dwarf.

 

At the beginning of the year, at the Aalst Underworlds tournament, I obtained a nice stack of older magazines for nought, and been flicking through them on and off.

 

Now, let's have a look through it after reading them, and have some opinions.  I do say, I am not into the whole 40k universe thing for years, so those won't be getting to much attention on my part for the reading, but the things that caught my intrest I read of course. 

 

Now, this edition looks very promising, as the cover says it's all about skirmish games: Warcry and Kill Team, the former picking my intrest!

 

So after the usual community stuff and an article about the fact if there are uberhaubt good guys in 40k, we dive in at first with the 40k setting articles.  The first is for Flashpoint Nephilim, bringing the Rising Tomb campaign for bringing the battles to dormant Necron cities.  Kill Team engage kicks off a series of five players and their journey into the 40k skirmish games.  More Kill Team is included with articles about scenario's and how to assemble your operatives teams, including a paint guide.

 

And then we move to the Mortal Realms, with Flashpoint Clash as the Stormcasts take on the Orruk Warclans.  Flashpoint Rondhol also begins as a Waagh is setting out, bringing background material.  Rules of Engagement looks into the pitched battle general versus casual commander state of a player.  We then dive into the Gnarlwood as we come to the Warcry articles, and what can be expected. A big painting gallery of Underworlds warbands is also in this magazine, before we get painting tips on Teclis himself.  

The battle report this issue is for Horus Heresy, as a colossal battle between the Dark Angels and the Death Guard is shown, as well as some Black Library material featuring none other then the White Dwarf himself.

 

Surely an intresting issue, and I loved the Warcry and Underworlds contents in this one.

 

 

 

 

Ahsoka

 One of the things I'm trying to do this year is finally catch up on all the Marvel and Star Wars series I skipped the past years, in no particular order.

 

And as such, the first journey to a galaxy far, far away brings me to Ahsoka, a series based on Anakin Skywalker's padawan from the Rebels series (of which I only got to season 2 btw, so guess I'll need to catch up on those as well).

 

Now, that is one of the issues I want to adress immediately for this series.  If you rolled into it after seeing her appear in The Mandalorian, you might want to know more about her.  But the series draws heavily on the Clone Wars series, as it is an actual continuation on that storyline.

 

What I can say though, the thread of Grand Admiral Thrawn returning is one that has been a long time in the Star Wars now "extended" canon of pre-Disney novels.  If you haven't, go read the Heir to the Empire series, and you will see a figure even more intimidating then the one depicted in this series.  

 

Central to the series is on the one hand the rumoured return of the admiral, as well as finding back Ezra Bridger, the padawan turned Jedi from the above named animated series.  Sabine Wren still isn't over his disappearance, and goes out to search for him, together with Ahsoka who wants to prevent Morgan Elsbeth, assisted by Baylan Skoll and his apprentice Shin Hati.  Old Imperial agents are trying to adapt to the new Galactic Republic, but not all agree and want to bring back Thrawn.

 

What follows is first a journey to discover where the grand admiral, and by extension Ezra, went, and once they reached that destination by spacewhale taxi services, the story to try and stop Thrawn returning to the galaxy.  Needless to say, they fail on both accounts, the series ending with Thrawn on the way back and Ahsoka and her friends stranded on a far away planet.

 

It was an enjoyable series, with some nice lightsaber duelling, which is after all what Star Wars is all about.  The arcs for the characters have started to bloom, both from the "light" and the "dark" side, but it will be needed to see the second season come to fruition on how those pan out.  Though sadly, that will be with a recasted Baylan, as Ray Stevenson left us in 2023 unfortunatly.

 

But surely worth the watch, even though some episodes are really on the short side (like more Marvel and Star Wars shows tend to have, not having the fixed runtime of most series of around 45 minutes), so a nice calm weekend day should be enough to binge through the series as such. 

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

 Time to work some more on catching up all the missed MCU and Star Wars expanded series and occassional movies, and time it's She-Hulk.

 

As well as some movies, and I ain't be watching them in release sequence, just as I feel like. 

 

But first off, most of the episodes are short, barely hitting the 30 minute mark... but as I had holidays in the final week of last year and the first of this year, some serious binging has been done while recuperating from just to much holiday seasonal food...

 

Now, what we have here is a great fun series, with an excellent Tatiana Maslany in the lead role of lawyer Jennifer Walters aka She-Hulk, who turned a member of the "green powerhouse family" by an accidental blood transfer from her cousin Bruce Banner.  Except she has better control over her powers.  And Hulk isn't the only character to make the cross-over into this series, as Abomination, Wong, and even Daredevil (nicely tying the Netflix series more into the MCU) also make their appearances.

 

The series also breaks the fourth wall often in a Deadpool style, as Jen comments to the viewers on that this is "her" show, and not a thing to bring back various other characters, even going as far in the finale that she meets an AI called K.E.V.I.N. to discuss how it is written and played out (a wink to MCU head honcho Kevin Feige).  To be honest, this was perhaps just a bit taking it to far to take the series "serious", in how you of course can do so for a bunch of superpowered people smashing each other around.

 

We get a nine episode series as such with a lot of politics as someone called the "Hulkking" is out to bring She-Hulk down, a romance between Jennifer and Matt Murdock in her hopeless dating life, and some hilarious courtroom action as well.  And a great appearance by the most awesome villains of all, The Wrecking Crew!

 

This is definitly one of the funnier Marvel MCU series that they produced, and it might still be that a second season will be made, though no greenlight (no pun inteded) on that one so far.

 

But we sure hope so!