Noble Knight has twice gotten restocks of MWA Forcemaster and Warlord in the last week, kits which I have only seen there a handful of times. I missed both times, but hopefully there are more. I really need a copy of the Warlord so I can close out a playset.

Guild Ball errata 4.7 dropped yesterday, and overall I'm pretty pleased with it. I still think True Replication on Hoist is a mistake, but it's less of one. Though it can still hit mascots so Mother wasn't un-nerfed. One other thing that annoyed me: new CP that makes a Forest AOE. I've reached out to Art of War to see if he can make something for that, but I have to imagine shipping to the US is going to be expensive and that's assuming this doesn't require a bunch of custom work.

Between Guild Ball, Monsterpocalypse, and Digimon I think I'm going to be doing another BGM run. Just need to assemble the tokens I want for Digimon, wait for the Monpoc downloads to drop, and download the errataed GB cards. Since Monpoc uses big cards for the Monsters and there are only two of them in this first drop, I'm considering redoing all my GB stat cards as one-sided. I'm not 100% on that - need to see how many large sleeves I have spare - but this may be the right opportunity.

I'm working on preparing a new game group - we're going to play Agon as an icebreaker, then switch to either Girl by Moonlight or Avatar Legends. I've been entertaining myself with Foundry prep, but so far that's just been "troubleshooting why I can't remote to my Oracle instance" and listing the modules I may want to download.

Once I'm through with the Foundry work, I may finally buckle down for that Pathfinder 1e third-party collation project I've been sitting on. It's just a lot of text formatting to get through. I won't be able to finish it until later this year regardless - waiting on the release of a PF1e Warlock class - but I could at least have the bulk of it in manuscript format by then I bet. Just need to start making myself use evenings.

I've been thinking a lot about the Ladder, and what draws me to it as a solution for a combat system, and I think a little detour into Guild Ball may be illustrative.

So Guild Ball uses free movement. This means that a model doesn't have to be aligned to any grid; distances are given in inches and are generally tool-measured to ensure choices made are valid. This is very common on the wargames side; it works better with the hobbycraft focus most of them have.

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Zoids! I finally got my Konig Wolf in. I have a couple other sets I'd like to finish before I hit this one, but I'm glad I finally have it in hand.

I'd also like to get my hands on a few more Liger Zeros - preferably Marking Pluses - so I can put together the CAS armor packs I have and actually display them. MPs are out of stock and currently running about twice what I'd feel safe spending on 'em.

Legos! I bought myself the Atreides ornithopter, along with some pieces to make a display board for the set's minifigs. There's a mouse piece I want to add to that, pretending it's a kangaroo rat, but it's only in one minifig blind box and on the secondary it's a little too expensive for now. Oh, and I got a couple pieces to add to my Dinosaur Skeletons ideas set, display stands for a dinosaur statue and an egg.

Digimon! I finished out BT15, but for a single card that came slightly but noticably bent. Now I'm waiting on ST17 pieces - they're all shipped, should be here soonish. Only "concern" I have about these is that one of the cards will be replaced with a low-pull-rate gold version. I use air-quotes because that would be a good problem to have - on eBay they're floating around $350 - but it would be marginally more work for me.

The Diaboromon kit came in, and I'm really pleased with it. Luke is excited about it too, can't wait to get him his copy. Joc and I also found a second copy of the old Kuramon toy I've been using as a memory marker - Luke has been wanting one, but it's $30 on ebay, so I'm glad we found a spare.

Also need to make a token order; hopefully I can get to that tonight, around the boys.

Good news, for now anyways, is that there isn't another release until late May. Hopefully I can use the intervening time to save up for these upcoming sets. Late this year and early next are going to be tough in terms of collecting; BT18, 19, and 20 are going to be distributed between two English releases to bring them up-to-date with Japan. On the one hand that'll be nice, but on the other pull rates are going to suck unless they replace a C slot with a R/S/E slot. Unlikely.

Of even bigger concern to me right now though is the state of promo cards. Prices are ridiculous - particularly for Beginning ver 2.0 and anything that was a box-topper in EX5. Individual promos should not be $15, let alone the $50 Raremon is pushing. I hope they start doing store distributions to flood the market, but at this point I'm pretty much waiting on Bandai's magnanimity. And more promos keep being published.

Magi-Nation! Against all odds, there's a kickstarter for new stuff for this game for the first time in over two decades. I'm really happy to see it. I'm only backing for brand-new promos - considering I have a full proxy playset of everything we knew about through TR, I can't really justify more - but hopefully I can keep up with future releases.

As a result of this I'm looking into filling out my peripherals collection a little more too - fliers, posters, magazines, playmats, that sort of thing. I need to clean up my haves/wants and start pestering folks on the discord.

Another major-ish project of mine related to this is an Unlimited and MRP re-do. It's just so much work assembling that in MSE.

Guild Ball! I haven't managed to get around to painting, but I did at least prime some stuff. Currently waiting on next week's errata post. Once that hits I'll make a card order, along with probably a handful of MND cards that were off-center when I ordered them however long ago.

Miscellany! Speaking on cleaning up haves/wants, I need to list a bunch of stuff on ebay, too. Hellboy board game pieces, a spare Zoid model, that sort of thing.

I am waiting on two more Kickstarters to launch soon: one for an expansion to Starforged, and another for the Dinogenics reprint/expansion.

The idea to start getting up early never took off, and with DST starting soon that'll be even harder. I would still like to work on it though - time to spend on my projects is so rare, and at the very least I'd like to get some movement on my RPG work and model painting.

Seems like a good time to do one of my periodic updates.

Guild Ball is back! Or at least, models are available again, this time in the form of POD. Hopefully that means SFG will avoid the supply-and-warehousing woes that did the game in back in 2020. I had already collected the whole range, less some LEs, so I haven't purchased anything yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops. Meantime, I have some painting to do - I have some general-use tokens and widgets I never got around to painting, and I'm going to finish up some Falconers pieces, and maybe some Cooks terrain for games with a friend. After that I think I'm aiming for Fish and Cogs.

Hellboy's almost done! I'd like to make some different target priority tokens for a few characters, as I found better artwork, but for the most part it's complete. Now I just need to paint it…

Other Collections! I got in the last Mage Wars item I needed for a playset - one final copy of Academy Forcemaster. Now, technically, it's not a complete playset, as I have fewer copies of Equipment and Legendary/Unique cards, though those are rarely played to full. I need to put together a list of what I'd want to get a hold of if I were aiming for literal complete. There are a couple things I might get extras of anyways, too - it'd be nice to have extra game pieces or rulebooks from a few of the sets. I also preordered some games and books for various collections, and I'm considering getting another volume or two for my Hellboy TPB run.

More Digimon! I bought EX5 and I'm still waiting on some of its slush, bankrolled by some sold Magic cards. I ordered a pair of BT15 boxes too, should be shipping out tomorrow. This one blessedly has fewer box-topper promos, so hopefully filling the slush is much less costly. I want to do a token card refesh too, we'll see how it shakes out.

Kickstarters! My Loreweaver GM screen and backpack arrived last weekend. I'm pretty happy with 'em. Don't know when I'll get to put the screen to use.

RPGs! Speaking of, I still need to knuckle down and get Iron Gods prepped to where I can start playing it again. I've been thinking of getting up extra early, to fit in an hour or two of painting or writing before starting my mornings, and this would be the first dragon I'd want to slay. I am decidedly not a morning person though…

Got me some custom dice to go with the Shepherd's Guild.