Category: Otaku

Busy Day

July 30, 2014

Wendy’s serves the full menu all day did you know? That’s how I had a spicy chicken sandwich at 7:30 am! This was my breakfast of course, and we had woken early since we had a busy day planned. On our way to our second Vegas hotel we had two stops to make. The first was this place, about an hour from the Grand Canyon:

Bearizona is a wildlife park with a three mile drive-through section and a more traditional zoo for smaller beasts. The focus is on wildlife of Arizona and it’s a very impressive park.

That’s a goat and a white bison. They also had buffalo, wolves, burros and other goats. The star attraction of course is these guys:

Look at that show off bear being cute in the water tub! The large bears roam free in 14 acres, not caring at all about the cars and people within! There are many of them wandering around, and in the zoo portion of the park there are many more in two enclosures divided by age. Here’s a shot of the cubs:

They look peaceful enough there, but 99% of the time they were play-fighting with each other like little fuzzy wrestlers! The little buggers were so cute!

In addition to bears the zoo has foxes, porcupines, otters, an American badger and a few other beasts. It’s laid out very well and we both enjoyed Bearizona quite a bit. If you’re ever in the area, it’s worth a visit 🙂

A few hours later and we were back in Vegas. Only a few blocks from our next hotel was today’s second attraction: the Pinball Hall of Fame.

This is essentially a warehouse containing hundreds of pinball machines, almost all working and playable. They range from old EM games from the 1950s through to the last pinball made (so far) from 2013. They also have retro arcade games and a few other odds and ends.

It’s a pinball fans dreamworld, and I scurried around playing as many as I could. This included some landmark games like Black Knight, Fireball, Haunted House and Pinbot.

One of the appeals of pinball for me is the art. Many of the games on display were beautiful, especially restored as they are and lit up like they would have been when manufactured.

All the games had historical information on them. Impacto (look at that art!) was an oddity since the guy that owns the museum in 40 years of looking has found no info on the game or the (Spanish) company that created it.

Needless to say I loved this place. If I lived nearby I’d visit all the time 🙂

And then we arrived at our second Vegas hotel, Caesar’s Palace. It’s a bit posh and a bit expensive and a bit luxurious. Should be fun!

Magic 2015

July 12, 2014

Today, for the first time in about 18 months, I went to a Magic prerelease event. It was for the new core set, Magic 2015.

I was surprised to see that turnout was relatively low compared to the last event I attended: only 22 people turned up. I was the oldest in the room, and there were no familiar faces from the events I attended a couple of years back. I also seemed like the only person that was there on my own…

We had to choose a colour and were given a box with a booster of that colour (including a promo) as well as five more boosters and a few other goodies. Here is the box contents:

I chose white but amusingly ended up with more red and blue cards than white. I stubbornly committed to white anyway, and out together a 40 card white/black deck containing:
– 14 creatures (11 white, 3 black, 2 artifact)
– 10 spells (8 white enchantments, 2 black removal)
– 16 lands (9 white, 2 black)

I didn’t have a lot of confidence in the deck, but had a “what the hell” attitude and went with it.

My expectations were realized as I faced my first two opponents, both of which utterly defeated me 0-2. My deck seemed very weak, particularly against evasion, and my ‘bombs’ were hiding in the bottom. After 2 rounds, I was dead last of 22 players!

But then things started to look up, mostly because these three finally made an appearance:

My third opponent (a sweet girl who’d only been playing a few months) was destroyed by the mythic creature above, and I ended up handily beating her 2-0. It seems my luck had turned, since I then easily defeated opponents 4 and 5 2-0 as well. Every time I cast Soul of New Phyrexia I won the game. That ‘make permanents indestructible’ ability is crazy!

After five rounds I had 9 points total, but missed out on top 8 (and therefore a prize) by a mere point. Not a bad showing considering how badly i lost the first two rounds!

Magic 2015 seems like a fun set, and it was fun to see the cards interact. However I left with mixed feelings about the event itself. It was fun to make the deck and see how it turned out, but the truth is I don’t have as much fun at the prereleases as I used to back when I went with SFL. For me, magic is more fun when you’re playing with friends, and it may be a while before I attend another prerelease.

Liger Zero!

July 8, 2014

Over a month ago, I started building this:

It’s my first ‘ZOIDS’ model kit, and was easily the most expensive kit I have ever bought. I knew getting into it that this was no toy, and that assembly may prove challenging, but then I’ve made challenging kits before and looked forward to it.

Here’s what the contents looked like before I started putting it together:

That’s a lot of pieces! In total there were 28 sprues in 6 colours. Much like the advanced Gundam kits, some of the plastic was flexible (mostly used for joints) and the kit is designed to be assembled without glue. There are 13 pages of instructions with 77 unique steps, and the kit is assembled in 4 distinct sections (head, body, legs, tail).

I started with the head and immediately noted a problem: the instructions are printed quite small. My eyesight is changing, and I’m finding I don’t need my glasses anymore for near vision. However I’m stubborn and don’t want to take them off so I struggled with working on this since I found it quickly hurt my eyes. (Many of you now I know are saying “Why didn’t he just remove his glasses???“)

So construction was completed in many steps of perhaps 2 hours each, spread over an entire month. It was challenging, but a lot of fun.

First to be completed was the head:

The complexity of this kit is staggering. The head alone has 38 pieces in it, and 5 points of articulation. The mouth and cockpit open, and the jets on the side and frill on the top can be positioned. By the time I had finished this piece it was clear I was building a kit with an incredible level of detail.

The two tools you see above were indispensable. The cutters to remove pieces from the plastic, and the file to smooth them down. Such is the precision in this kit that even submillimeter bumps are significant. If you make a Zoid, be sure to have the right tools.

For a month or so my work table looked like this:

You can see by the above point I had also finished the body:

That’s not a rigid piece. It can bend and elongate, and all the joints are articulated as well. Many dozens of pieces went into it, including the smallest one in the entire kit:

That’s just absurd!

The legs took the most time of all the sections:

Each leg contains a whopping 78 pieces! They are even more articulated than the rest of the kit and there are significant differences between the front and rear legs. Compared to all this the tail was simple, and then it was time to put it all together:

Or, in a rather more dramatic pose:

Looks great doesn’t he? The finished kit is about 20 cm long and stands 12 cm at the shoulder. According to the instructions, the actual Liger Zero is a mighty 84 meters in length and weighs 85 tonnes!

Such is the engineering of this model that painting is hardly required, and in fact the instructions seem to mention it only as an afterthought (they give the paint codes for the plastic used, rather than show a repainted version). However the armor is detachable and Kotobukiya actually sells (not inexpensive!) armor upgrade kits if you want to convert your Liger Zero into Liger Zero Panzer (green, with a back-mounted cannon) or other variants. Fascinating.

My next kit will be another Musha Gundam that I purchased in Japan last year. It will be another time consuming and precise build that may wait until next Summer. After that, who knows?

Robot Claw