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Backhoe Loader

Saturday, July 14th, 2012

Time for yet another Lego kit! This one was a birthday gift, and I built it over several days this past week.

Here’s the content of the box:

You can tell how big the finished product is from the size of the tire.

The kit contains numerous intricate gear systems connected to several different moving parts. Of particular note are the actuators used to raise and lower both digging arms:

It’s a complex build that took many hours over three days. It was particularly interesting seeing all the gears and systems piecing together in seemingly random order:

Luckily I had assistance for most of the build…

Here’s the finished product:

Everything about this set was fun. If you like Lego technic at all, this set is highly recommended.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Otaku, Tech, Toys | Comments Closed

Yesterday I went to the prerelease of the latest MTG core set, Magic 2013. The format was the same as all the others I have attended: you get 6 boosters, and have to form a minimum 40-card deck from them using land provided at the store. Four rounds would then be played (each round is best of 3), and the top 8 of the 32 entrants would enter a series of final rounds for prizes.

I hadn’t looked much at the set prior to attending, but expected I’d end up playing a green/white deck since that’s usually what I do at such events. However when I started opening my boosters I just kept seeing good red and black cards. In fact once I’d opened and sorted everything, not only where the red and black piles slightly larger than the other colours, but the cards themselves were better as well. It was therefore an easy solution to play a black/red deck.

My deck contained the following (notable in brackets):
– 9 black creatures (Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis), Duty-Bound Dead)
– 4 red creatures (Goblin Arsonist x3)
– 4 black spells (Murder)
– 4 red spells (Reverberate)
– 2 artifacts (Ring of Xathrid)
– 2 dual lands (Dragonskull Summit)
– 9 swamps
– 6 mountains

2013 introduces the exalted keyword to black cards, and there are quite a few of them containing it. Exalted proved to be popular with many players at the prerelease, and in fact every single one of the 6 decks I played against utilized exalted cards (ie. contained black or white colours).

The design intent behind my deck was speed coupled with buffed single attackers via exalted. I also through in a bit of direct damage and graveyard love (Rise From The Dead, Disentomb). It only took me a few minutes to put it together, and a few test-deals I made before starting seemed promising. Happily, the deck ended up working quite well, and here are the results of the qualifying rounds:

Round 1: My opponent was playing white/red soldiers token deck with a bit of exalted. His deck couldn’t hope to match the speed of mine and I easily defeated him 2-0 without ever losing a single point of life:

Round 2: A face-off against a very similar (red/black) deck to mine. I had more creatures, he had more spells, including 3 Murder’s (to my 1) and 2 Disentomb’s. My best play was to Reverberate one of his Murder’s to kill his irritating Xathrid Gorgon after he’d buffed it with several enchants and was about to kill me with it. Although I won 2-1 overall, the battle was hard fought.

Round 3: A battle against another green/white deck, full of weenie creatures that he was trying to buff. My 3 Goblin Arsonist’s really came into their own during this round, since I often used them as blockers to kill 2 toughness guys or to kill two 1 toughness guys each. Also, in every single of the three games against this guy I Reverberated his Captain’s Call, much to his amusement. I won overall 2-1, and was chuffed when – to the surprise of my opponent who didn’t know it was possible – I used the ability on the Ring of Xathrid to regenerate my Nefarox after he cast Planar Cleansing (note to MTG nerds: this action is why Wrath of God will never be reprinted; it’s too powerful). When I did this, he said “That’s why you deserved to win” 🙂

Round 4: My final qualifying opponent used red/black as well, and his deck was the strongest of the 6 I played against. Not only did he have astonishingly lucky rare draws (2 Nefarox’s, 1 Xathrid Gorgon) but he also had 2 mythic’s (Chandra the Fireblaze, Vampire Nocturnus). 2013 reprints Gilded Lotus, and of course he had that as well. It was quite astonishing to play two games against him where he had close-to-perfect draws and got his big guys out quickly and beat me 0-2 in the same way I had beat my first opponent! He was a nice guy though, so even in defeat the games were fun.

After the qualifiers I was 6-4-0, and made it into the top 8! This meant I was guaranteed booster packs as prizes, I just didn’t know how many yet. The win-loss ratio’s are wiped in the finals, so even though I had lost one qualifier round I still (theoretically) had a chance. I was realistic though: that last guy’s deck was a monster and I knew he’d beat me again if we faced up.

But it was not to be. The first round of finals paired me against a black/green deck heavy on removal (again 3 Murder’s!) and exalted creatures (note to Florence: this was ‘viking’). The first two rounds were traded 1-1, and it was down to the third. This proved to be an epic game, where he had a Xathrid Gorgon out and kept petrifying my creatures as I cast them. However he couldn’t attack, since I had more blockers than him and kept drawing creatures. Furthermore, he had a Ring of Xathrid on his Gorgon, and I had one on my Liliana’s Shade, and both had over 15 tokens! It was a classic standoff; we were both top-decked and alternated inactive turns until the 30th (!) draw when he drew the guy above, cast it, and put 18 1/1 Saprolings into play. I was doomed, and he won 2 turns later with only 1 card left in each of our libraries. I got the impression this opponent was not used to defeat (he had gone into the finals 8-0), since he became increasingly more serious and attentive as the rounds went on, to the point of being fixated during the last game which could have gone either way.

The finals were single-elimination and I was knocked out in round 1. My eventual standing was tie 6th, which netted me 3 booster packs as prizes. In one of them I found the reprint of one of my favourite cards of all time, with brand new art by my favourite MTG artist of all time. Happy day!

What’s that you ask? I mentioned 6 opponents?

Good catch! The store owner had cancelled one of the four prerelease events due to low signups, and therefore had extra boxes of boosters he had to distributes. So he was running a side-contest “Beat me for booster packs!”. He made his own deck, and played any challenger and gave them a free booster if he won. I accepted his challenge after I was knocked out of the finals, and actually lost! But since it was a good game and we had a good chat (I discovered he worked for Wizards Of The Coast for a year about 10 years ago), he gave me a booster anyway 🙂

Posted in Games, MTG, Otaku | Comments Closed

Machine Brain

Sunday, July 1st, 2012

Remember those commander MTG decks I made before my last Australia trip? If not, they are described here. Note the last comment, where I describe how I replaced the monogreen deck with a Green/Black tokens deck. In Australia the six decks were played in 3 or 4 player games an average of 10 times each. The results (wins-losses) were as follows:

– Darien, King of Kjeldor (W soldiers): 6-3
– Mayael The Anima (RGW fatties): 6-5
– Skullbriar, The Walking Grave (GB tokens): 6-5
– Olivia Voldaren (RB vampires): 5-4
– Grand Arbiter Augustine IV (UW control): 4-5
– Wrexial, The Risen Deep (UB mill): 2-7

Yep, Wrexial bombed hard! The other decks, as you can see, were very closely matched. I believe Grand Arbiter was a bit stronger than it’s wins suggest, but tended to be a bigger target in the multiplayer games so ended up losing more than it won.

I have another trip coming up in about a month, and the decks are coming with me! I’ve made slight adjustments to five of them to include cards released since last December, and I scrapped Wrexial entirely in favour of a brand new deck. This was done not because it was the weakest, but because in 2-player games (which I will be playing in NM and CA) I reckon it would just be tedious to play against.

So the question arose, what would the new deck be?

The above card is from one of the recently released new Planechase 2012 decks. His particular deck is the strongest of the four (at least in my playtesting), and focuses on enchantments. I greatly enjoyed the deck, since I like enchantment cards and they are often underutilized. My first idea for a new deck would use this guy as commander, and include all and every enchantment boosting card I could find in white and green. It would have been a slightly defensive deck, heavy on lifegain, that relied on building up 2 or 3 creatures to shockingly powerful levels before finishing the game in as few attacks (ideally, only one!) as possible. I still think it’s a good idea, and that it may have been well balanced against the other five decks, but after some brainstorming realized I couldn’t actually build the deck without heavily changing some of the other five (specifically the Skullbriar and Augustine IV decks). So I scrapped this idea, or rather put it on the back burner for a while.

So… what next?

I wanted something I could build without cannibalizing the other decks. Furthermore, I wanted something quite different from them as well. With Wrexial gone I was left with only one blue deck, so ideally the new deck would use blue, and hopefully avoid the other colours since each were represented twice in other decks. Also – and this was a big one – I wanted to feature artifacts since they hadn’t been a large component of any of the other five decks.

A few minutes of research led to me finding this guy, and as soon as I saw him I knew I had my new commander:

He’s one of those cards that you occasionally find with an ability that just seems too good to be true. There are any number of game-winning artifact cards that could be pulled from the deck right into play, and all I needed to do this was an artifact creature already in play. Here’s an obvious combo:

Use the turbine to create Myr tokens, which can then be sacrificed using Arcum to put things like the Forge into play. This could happen very quickly given a perfect hand. For instance:

Turn 1: Seat Of The Synod, Sol Ring, Mox Opal, Palladium Myr
Turn 2: Arcum
Turn 3: Myr Turbine, sac token to put Forge into play

And that scenario even has some flexibility!

But a commander deck contains 100 cards, and this combo requires some sort of artifact creature or token generator to start. Happily, being blue there are any number of ways (Treasure Mage, Fabricate) to get specific cards into your hand (the deck contains other token generators aside from the Turbine) or to speed up card draw entirely. So what about the rest of the deck? What is the ‘gimmick’ to the remainder of the cards?

Here’s a hint:

Yep, it’s a ‘charge counter’ deck! Over the years I had coincidentally amassed almost every good charge counter card in existence, and it was finally time to collect them all into a deck. So about 20% of the entire deck is cards that utilize or manipulate charge counters, often to hilarious results:

So the deck is a control-based artifact deck (about 90% of the non land cards are artifacts) that utilize Arcum Dagsson’s ability to ‘tutor’ up broken cards to make the player invulnerable while he bases a win around fun-to-play charge counter cards. I’ve done some test deals to make sure it seems to work in principle, but it should be fun to see how it actually works against another one of the (mostly successful) other five decks 🙂

Posted in Games, Otaku | Comments Closed

Krull

Wednesday, June 27th, 2012

I was 11 in 1983. At that age my mania for SF and Fantasy had long since developed and was strengthening day by day. This was constantly being fed by all manner of media, including books, games and television. But for a boy of that age, in that era, nothing seemed as important as motion pictures.

Everything was of course compared to Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. In the summer of 1983 a strange madness would have overcome me for months on end, since Return Of The Jedi was soon to be released and would be, undoubtedly, the most important movie ever. I’m not sure how I was able to sleep at night!

In waiting we occupy ourselves as best we can, so the years between Star Wars films had to be filled with other movies. The Dark Crystal had been one such film; Raiders Of The Lost Ark another and naturally I had absolutely loved both. My sci-fi/fantasy fandom was such that even ‘lesser’ files like Conan The Barbarian or unquestionable trash like Metalstorm: The Destruction Of Jared Sin were anticipated by young me with fervour. But from the moment I first saw the preview trailer one film jumped to the top of my ‘I can’t wait’ list, and made me positively giddy with anticipation.

That film was Krull.

Something about this film hit a chord with me. It had lasers and spaceships but also monsters and magic! The hero wielded a crazy weapon and even the name of the film was powerful and mysterious! How could it not be amazing? I wanted to see it so badly, and in the months before it would be released I was always looking for information! As an 11-year old in Australia in 1983 though, my options were decidedly limited.

One day I went into a bookstore and discovered that my then-favourite author – Alan Dean Foster – had written a Krull novelization! I bought it (which means begged dad to buy it for me) and read it cover to cover immediately (spoilers be damned!). Oh, and it had pictures from the movie! I was in heaven.

I recall being particularly enamoured of the ‘Glaive’ weapon. I expect this was also during my ‘ninja star’ period, and the only thing better to an 11-year old mind than a shuriken would of course be a bigger shuriken with spring loaded blades! I made one out of cardboard – I remember this very clearly – by cutting up a cereal box and gluing aluminium foil to the ends for the blades. It would have no doubt been a piece of garbage, but I bet I loved it.

Marvel put out a comic adaptation of the movie. I couldn’t afford comics at that age – I expect my allowance was only about $2 per week or thereabouts (although we used to occasionally be able to buy books, most of which in my case were gamebooks or movie novelizations by my then-favourite author). But even though I didn’t buy the comic, I remember looking through one issue in the newsagent (I did this a lot) and completely spoiling a large section of the story. That I had of course already spoiled via the novel 🙂

The newsagent was a popular lurk of mine then. I used to save up and buy the game magazines from England, as well as the occasional issue of Smash Hits, but would just hang out in the newsagent (particularly the ones at Charlestown Square or Garden City) and read the Sci-Fi movie magazines from America. It was a bittersweet experience for a young fantasy-obsessed lad, since many of the (incredible looking to an 11 year old) featured movies would never see an Australian release. For those that did, these magazine articles were fuel for my burning anticipation!

Eventually, after months of waiting, the movie came out in Australia in late 1983. I would have seen it with my brother and my dad, being too young to see a film unsupervised. Looking back on it now, I bet dad was bemused. I absolutely loved it!

During the opening credits, the glaive flies across the screen and reveals the logo. As a child I would have found this to be unspeakably awesome, since I had ‘a thing’ for logos (I used to spend hours drawing them). The combination of an awesome weapon with an awesome logo! It was like they had a direct feed into my dreams!

So the film had been seen and had been loved. It was everything I had hoped for! I expect I read the novel again, probably through around my crappy homemade glaive, and even quoted the film in the playground: “Short in stature, tall in power, narrow of purpose and wide of vision!” For a brief period, Krull was the best movie ever made!

A scant few weeks later (48 days, to be precise) things would change, since Return Of The Jedi was released and my life (as a fan!) would rise to a new level.

The flame of Krull had burned only briefly in my heart, but it had burned brightly indeed!

Last week I purchased the Krull DVD (for only $5) and we watched it again. This was KLS’s first time ever seeing the film, and my first time in almost 30 (thirty!) years. And I have to be honest: it holds up quite well.

A titanic flop when it was released, due mostly to a bloated budget, the film has surprisingly good special effects that still hold up today. Furthermore, the massive and impressive set design has barely been equalled, and the abstract interiors of the ‘Black Fortress’ are alien enough to not suffer from the sort of dated design common to many films from those days. Yes the story is weak, the villain has an anticlimatic ending and (let’s face it) the glaive weapon is criminally underused. But, most importantly, the film is still fun.

I’m in no way surprised that I had such an enthusiasm for this film back when I was a little sprout, and honestly look back on those days with an uncommon (for me) sweet nostalgia.

Posted in Books & Comics, Family, Movies, Otaku, Time, Toys | 2 Comments »

The Most Legendary Of Items

Sunday, June 17th, 2012

Over the years both VFD games and Game & Watches have featured several times on this blog. I have a nostalgic fascination for both types of handheld game since both were an important element of my early gaming years.

Since I have often joked about BS seeking out and buying me a VFD game, and have many times bored KLS with stories of long-lost Game & Watches, you can imagine my surprise – no, astonishment – when on a recent trip to Rochester, a long-forgotten box of stuff from KLS’s childhood was unearthed and yielded one of each. And now I proudly present the latest two additions to my collection of Legendary Items:

Caveman

As found, the game was dirty (even a bit sticky) and hadn’t been used in aeons. This is the 1983 Tandy version of a game manufactured by Tomy Japan in 1982, and was amongst the first wave of VFD games ever made (this predated Scramble). Over the years I’ve read quite a bit about these things (I even have a book on handhelds…) and knowing that the VFD displays are unreliable I had great concern that this guy wouldn’t work. So I started by cleaning it:

Then plugging in a 6V AC power supply. No luck – nothing happened. Unlike seemingly everything manufactured these days, these games use ‘C’ batteries, and we had none in the house. So a trip to the store later, I trepidatously put the batteries in and…

It worked!

The display, sound, controls. Everything works perfectly. I was elated!

This game seems to be quite rare today, possibly for reasons stated above. A brief search online found virtually none for sale, with the exception of one boxed example on ebay for $150. I’m going to treasure mine 🙂

Mario’s Cement Factory

Of the two, this one gave me the biggest start when I saw it. Nintendo manufactured 59 different Game & Watch games between 1980 and 1990 and four of them were also made in a special colour ‘tabletop’ model. Only two of those four were ever sold outside of Japan, and Mario’s Cement Factory was the rarest of the two. It’s always been floating around somewhere in my brain as an ‘item I’d love to have’ because many, many years ago I saw a few of these being sold at clearance at a K-Mart in Australia and I never bought one (shades of the story behind this, wouldn’t you say?).

At any rate I now had my own Mario’s Cement Factory! But it was very dirty, especially the screen and the LCD panel. But I had high hopes for this guy, since the solid-state technology in Game & Watches is very robust (they can survive going through washing machines, for instance) and the mirror and panels in this example were intact. So once again, I sat down and gave it a careful and thorough cleaning!

The technology is simple but clever. You play by looking at the reflection in a mirror of an LCD mounted (in reverse) just under the white transparent plastic panel on the top. Light passes through this panel (and through the LCD) and is reflected off the mirror. Images are formed via the LCD blocking light and a plastic coloured film which makes the LCD itself appear coloured. Back in 1983 when this game out the technology seemed magical, since every other Game & Watch was black and white. Even today it is a very impressive bit of trickery created by Nintendo many years before actual colour LCDs became a reality.

Oh, and it works! Here’s a shot of the full LCD panel after I put the batteries in:

Click on it and have a look at it in high resolution. You can see the ‘bleeding’ of the colour at the edges of the film, which would be due mostly to optical (refractive) events. They are tiny enough to not be visible when solid lines separate the elements (such as the concrete tanks) but easily visible on the Mario ‘sprites’. I wonder if the 11-year-old me would have noticed this if I got this back in 1983?

Here’s a video of the gameplay:

And a photo:

This is a real treasure! It cleaned up beautifully, is in near-mint condition, and works perfectly. It will occupy a place of great pride in my collection! Since I knew these were pretty rare (one source I checked estimated only about 30k were made for export) I checked the prices online. I couldn’t find any boxed examples, but there are a few on ebay that seem to be in worse shape than mine going for $130+. The Game & Watch name really helps, but it’s amazing how these things have gained value isn’t it?

I feel as if I have out-legendaried any other possible additions to my collection in obtaining these two. Could this be the last ever ‘legendary item’ post? Time will tell 🙂

Posted in Games, Otaku, Tech, Toys | 1 Comment »

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