I’ll just present this here:
I think this is the third game – after Animal Crossing (GameCube) and World of Warcraft (Mac) I’ve played for over a year. And since I’m enjoying it as much as ever, I reckon there’s life left in PazuDora yet 🙂
Archive for the ‘Otaku’ Category
One Year Later
Thursday, June 5th, 2014Another Lego Crane
Wednesday, May 21st, 2014Over the last week, I assembled this Lego kit:
As far as these kits go, this one is seriously lacking originality, being almost identical in design and construction to other cranes I have made before.
As it turns out my familiarity with the basic design would almost be my downfall! This kit has 108 pages of assembly instructions, with over 250 individual steps. And on the 19th page, less than 20% into the construction, I made an error. This isn’t the end of the world – everyone makes mistakes with complex Lego kits here and there. But this tiny mistake became massive indeed since I didn’t notice it until over 70 pages later!
Here it is:
See that circled piece? We’ll call than an ‘eleven-er’. It should have been 2 tabs shorter, a ‘nine-er’. But it’s so embedded into the construction of the crane that removal at this point would require essentially dismantling 50% of the build and redoing it – losing many hours of work. What was I to do? I was so close to the finish at this point that my options were few, and I really, really didn’t want to dismantle and start again. So I had a brainwave:
Can’t see the fix can you? The curved piece on the side of the crane is attached using the 9 piece that I should have used 70 pages earlier. I had to attach it differently (the original instructions required the 11 piece and it was attached at the bottom not at the top as I did). But it’s very clean and it’s only visible in profile that there is an error:
Notice how on the left side the side panel is not flush with the body of the crane? Not perfect perhaps, but good enough 🙂
Here’s the final product compared to a very large animal so you can see how big it is:
It’s a very nice kit. The crane can be raised and lowered, and the claw at the end opens and closes using a fascinating mechanism. The kit can also be fitted with the technic motor and be battery driven, but my motor is still in my other crane so I didn’t do that. All things considered this is a great kit and while derivative of the other cranes I’m glad I own it 🙂
Hidden Treasure
Sunday, May 18th, 2014Over a year ago I purchased this:
It’s the original AD&D Forgotten Realms box set from 1987. It’s in great condition, and all the elements are included:
I didn’t open it until the other day, and imagine my surprise when I saw this on the title page of the main book:
It’s autographed! Here’s a close up of Jeff Grubb and Ed Greenwood’s:
With a bit of effort I was able to find images of both online and these certainly look genuine.
I wonder where and when they signed this 27-year-old box set? And I wonder if the seller who sold this to me for under $20 realizes it’s easily worth up to $10k due to the signatures 😉
Oh, Oh, Oh It’s Magic!
Sunday, May 4th, 2014It’s been a while since an MTG post, so it’s time to give my reviews of two recent releases.
The first is Commander 2013, which was released back in November of last year:
This product remains a bit controversial since one of the five decks (Mind Sieze) was – and remains – much more difficult to find than the other four. Despite herculean attempts I never saw it in any store myself, and ended up paying probably too much to get it at a convention. Wizards would eventually reprint the series with a disproportionate amount of Mind Sieze decks and yet it still remains hard to find. This is all (as is usually the case in these products) due to one single card in this deck only being in great demand for players of legacy MTG. This is the card:
Dedicated MTG players buy four copies of the Mind Sieze deck just to get four copies of this card for their decks, making it much harder to find for everyone 🙂
At any rate I eventually got all four, and over several weeks played 20 games in total, matching each deck against the others. Here’s the score breakdown:
Evasive Maneuvers (W/U/G): 3 wins, 1 loss
Eternal Bargain (W/U/B): 3 wins, 1 loss
Power Hungry (B/R/G): 3 wins, 1 loss
Nature Of The Beast (W/R/G): 1 win, 3 losses
Mind Sieze (U/B/R): 0 wins, 4 losses
In essence, it was a tie since EM beat EB beat PH beat EM! Three of the decks seem well matched with the other two being poor competition. Mind Sieze in particular failed to deliver, but my feeling playing it was that it was much better suited to multi play than 1 vs 1 (as is natural for a Commander deck).
In terms of individual decks, I like Eternal Bargain the most. The commander in particular is fun to play, and makes me want to build a lifegain deck around him (shame he isn’t W/G/B instead though). Most of the time, this deck won a game with massive amounts of health remaining.
I’ll soon split the decks up picking out individual cards for self-designed decks and absorbing them into my larger collection. At $30 each for 100 cards, these are well worth it and every bit as good as the first commander series in my opinion.
The second new product I have recently played is the new duel deck: Jace vs Vraska
I really enjoyed the last duel deck, and thought they were the best matched yet in the series. Sadly, this one takes a step back in playability.
Of the five games I played, Jace won all five and usually won them quite handily. His mono-blue deck is a weird mix of cards, dipping its fingers in many pots (illusions, counters, mill) without seeming to commit to any. It takes only a moment to look at the decklist and theorize ways to improve it, and yet ill-focused as it is it had no trouble shutting down Vraska in every game. Her deck has a green/black removal focus, with most spells and creatures dedicated to killing other creatures or removing life. While on paper her deck seems more cohesive than Jaces (and therefore I assumed it would win more often), in practice – at least in the five games I played – it was always just a bit too slow to get the upper hand. Jace’s illusions in particular were extremely effective once on the board, and one thing I took away from this duel deck was the potential of an all-illusion deck.
So a shutout in terms of gameplay, with Jace winning every time. Even with his (new) bad art, he’s still a badass 😉
Himeji Castle
Sunday, April 27th, 2014This is Himeji Castle in Japan:
It’s a world heritage site, considered the best example of a feudal-era Japanese castle still standing.
Here it is in metal:
This was the largest and most difficult metal miniature model I’ve assembled yet. Taking about 6 hours in total, this was an exercise in patience even with the correct tools. Don’t even think about making this without fine needle nose pliers! It also suffers from the common problem of less-than-stellar instructions.
Sadly, as with most Japanese structures, Himeji is vulnerable to the occasional attack from an oversized monster…
