Category: Miscellaneous

Rogue Friday

September 30, 2016

Today was ‘Rogue Friday‘, which is the day that merchandise for the new upcoming Star Wars film Rogue One hit stores. Obviously I had to go and check things out.

Apparently Toys’R’Us opened at midnight! Of the five stores I went to, they were the most disappointing so I suspect anyone that did arrive at midnight may have regretted it…

Target seems to have made a bigger deal out of it, with signs on the doors, this display just inside the entrance and…

…a whopping big (cardboard) AT-AT towering over the toy aisle endcap! They had the most new stuff by far, with all sorts of toys, costumes, models and Lego kits.

I don’t know much at all about the film, having only seen the trailers. It’s my intention – as I did The Force Awakens – to go into it as spoiler free as possible. Even so, these toys give a little glimpse at what’s to come 🙂

That’s the Walmart display, or at least some of it since they were still setting up! Happily I found the new Rogue One trading cards there, which made me a happy nerd 🙂

My last stop was probably the best, and that was (surprisingly!) the Disney Store. They had oodles of exclusive stuff including some very nice diecast figures. I bought the hell out of this one:

No I don’t know this character, who appears to be an R2 unit but is called C2-B5. He looks like a baddie with his dark paint, but then almost everyone does in this film. My guess he’s a lovable rogue of a droid 🙂

So it was a pretty good day of Star Wars toy shopping; certainly better than I had expected. In addition to C2-B5 I bought a couple of figures, a bunch of trading cards, some kitchenware (!) and a few other things that may end up as gifts.

Now the hype can really start for the film!

Kaladesh

September 28, 2016

I went to the prerelease for the latest MTG set Kaladesh this past weekend. I’ve been to dozens of these over the last eight years and have blogged many so you know the drill.

Kaladesh is an artifact-heavy set that takes place in a sort of ‘Indian steampunk’ world. It’s a wonderful set both in design and the way it plays, with oodles of fun cards that work well with each other.

There were many players (about 40) and there were four rounds of play. As has been the trend the last year or so, the tourney was very casual and you won boosters according to your games won. In the end I won two and placed somewhere in the top third.

My deck was green and white, and when it won did so mostly due to this pair of cards:

The artifact is seriously powerful, and generated me tokens every round while pumping up my other creatures. If I got it out with a +1/+1 on a card, I usually won.

The set includes a new vehicle artifact type, but I included none in my deck. They are powerful though, and were difficult to deal with when played against me. The guy that ultimately won the tournament was lucky with his card pool and played a deck based around vehicles.

For me the measure of an MTG card – and an expansion – is in the answer to “do I want to build decks around this”? This is why Kaladesh succeeds, because it has many such cards. These two for instance…

That first one seems made for my life gain deck, and the second just cries out to be abused 🙂

So my verdict is: a great set with cards that are fun to play. Doing just that this past weekend may have been the most fun I’ve ever had at a prerelease.

In Brighton

August 27, 2016

A few weeks ago, when we were in Brighton, I visited a stamp shop. As in stamp collecting, a hobby so nerdy that even I hesitate to discuss my ‘collection’.

I bought these first day covers:

Several animal-themed ones and one each commemorating the marriages of Charles and Andrew.

The guy that ran the tiny hole-in-the-wall store was very friendly, almost a bit too much so, and went out of his way try to find stuff I wanted. Since I was there on a lark, and only purchasing decades-old 50p first-day covers I was bemused by this.

Once I decided what I wanted he told me to take them for free! This was a bit weird so I insisted he take at least £1 – which he did – before he then went into a tale.

He said when he was young someone did something nice for him without expectation of repayment or any other obligation and he wanted to do the same for us. He then gave us these:

They are (so-called) Cinderella stamps, issued by St Moritz in 1940 to commemorate the Helsinki Olympics. Cinderella means they’re not real stamps (never authorized or used for postage) but they are still of interest to collectors. There were four colours in total; he gave us two each of three of them.

He was proud of them, and gave the gift sincerely. We waited for the catch that never came, until we realized he was simply a friendly old man that probably was cheered up by us stopping in that day. He didn’t claim the stamps were worth much (on eBay right now the 6 are maybe $15 total) but said if we sold them when we are his age we may make some money 🙂

Of course I’ll keep them forever. And for just as long I’ll remember that friendly old guy in Brighton that gave me these curious 75+ year old ‘stamps’!

Robot Claw