/'wɪdʒ.ɪt/

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…

Still waiting on a promo Yolei and a pair of MagnaAgnemon Aces, but aside from that my BT14 slush is all in. Importantly, I have everything for the new decks I wanted to build: I'm going to make Loogamon and possibly Commandramon, on top of modifications to other decks.

I have a backlog of household chores to get through, but hopefully sometime this week I can work on some of my projects. Priorities are the aforementioned Digimon deck work, Foundry prep, work on my Iron Gods campaign, and collection of Hellboy artwork for target priority. We'll see how successful I am; our Wednesday sitter isn't coming this week so I'm not super hopeful, but who knows.

I had a little extra cash from Christmas, which I used to buy a TCGPlayer gift card; there was a 20% back deal going on, so that translated to enough to fill out BT14 and a good chunk of the movie promos. A ton of those are skyrocketing in price now, though; hopefully they're rereleased or interest wanes, because $90 for a playset of one promo card is ridiculous. On the good news end, our BBs of BT14 were excellent - we pulled the Gold Imperialdramon Paladin Mode and an Alt Art Secret Rare, which I've already sold and will together bankroll a box or two of EX5.

I now have all the models I wanted for Hellboy, but two things about it are giving me mild hobby anxiety. First, I have extra large models (Giant Frog Monster and Kriegaffe) which I have not found a satisfactory storage method for. I'm sure I'll think of something but it's been bothering me. Second is the game's target priority system; options include color-coded base clips, busts of the characters, and portrait tokens. Each has issues: I don't really like the look of the color-coded bits; there aren't busts for all of the characters; and portrait tokens requires me to locate high-enough quality images of each character. I briefly considered using duplicate character models for those that don't have busts, but there are several for which I don't have that and sourcing them would be difficult as they're largely KS exclusives. I'll probably do the portrait option but it'll take some work, so I suppose for now I'm defaulting to the base clips and/or busts if available.

Other than that, I have my endless litany of hanging personal projects occupying my mind: RPG game prep, both for solo and group, including preparation of a Foundry instance; Digimon deck updates; collectibles sales; heartbreaker manuscript writing; solo board and video games; hobbycrafting; and comic-reading. Doesn't seem like so much when I list it out in general terms like that, but time never seems to be on my side.

Well, I went ahead and ordered that second Box of Doom. Should be here soonish. I'm keeping two of each non-unique minion, and I'll need to review some of the cards to see if keeping a second Hammerhead is worth it. For the rest I'm going to part it out, maybe give a couple pieces to one of my brothers.

I really need to get my spending under control now, though, so I'm going to cut one of my cards from digital payment services and set a personal allowance. I can probably afford a couple hundred a month toward that stuff, and that should be plenty to save for Digimon sets and get the occasional FMA or Hellboy graphic novel; those are the hanging collections I really want to focus on.

Honestly I'm spending so much for two reasons; first, I'm finally in a position in my life to close out various collections that once felt so out of reach, things I felt I missed the boat on due to being a teenager with limited finances. It's been nice, although in most of those cases I don't really have anyone to enjoy it with me. The second is that I'm absolutely blasted for personal time, and collection doesn't actually take a bunch of that - the most time-consuming part is collation on receipt, which is an evening's work at most usually. Hopefully with the boys growing and me collecting a bit less I can focus on that list of projects from my last post. Between various acquisitions I have a lot of unused entertainment value I could extract.

Another personal project I'm considering is some furniture shuffling. Joc and I are considering moving our bed into the boys' room - one of us sleeps in there most nights to begin with, and that could make extra space in what is currently our bedroom so Jocelyn can have an office. And I'd benefit by having slightly more elbow room in my basement office. I need to think about where to hang my art, though, and I anticipate maybe needing more frames or shelving for display pieces…

Cutting back on purchases has turned out to be a bit of a pipe dream - I have several new board games, got RB1 completely collected, and even went after BT14's box topper promos. Currently watching BT14 booster box prices, because I have some TCGPlayer store credit that will be good for offsetting the cost a bit, but I still have a price ceiling I've set for myself. I anticipate struggling with EX5 too, because it has a lot of pieces I'm going to want for new or modified decks. At least EX sets tend to fall off pricewise pretty quickly.

I managed to finally find some decent artwork of Goldramon's attacks, Amon and Umon. Once I can get a decent Gyukimon picture - maybe the official art on a blurred background, or a still from Ghost Game - I'll make some tokens.

I am also considering a second copy of the Hellboy Big Box of Doom, but I won't go higher than $100 for it. Primarily want extra copies of a handful of models, and Mantic seems unlikely to release those in their own kit. Haven't had luck with part sellers or BGG trades, either. Probably just gotta stick this one out until I can find a deal.

Outside of the above collection stuff, what's been eating up most of my personal brainspace is projects. Off the top of my head, I want to:

• Get my Foundry web server set up for 5e and Scum and Villainy
• Install Celestia on my personal computer
• Finish drafting my Heartbreaker's core rules
• Playtest a standalone card game I've written
• Work on some hobbycrafts, including model painting, Zoids building, and Lego assembly
• Finish Iron Gods prep work and play that and several other solo RPG campaigns I want to run
• Play about two-dozen video games and solo board games

Long and short there'd be a lot on my plate if I were a bachelor-hermit, and I am not one of those - I have a wife, kids, and a job.

Speaking of which, this autumn has been weird. On-and-off minor illnesses, Joc busy with classwork, difficulty focusing on my job, and very high-maintenance children have combined to make it hard to focus on housecleaning, let alone all the above hobby nonsense. The boys in particular have been a drain, as they're right in the danger zone, able to get themselves into trouble but not out of it, cognizent of the idea of potty training without having nailed it in, able to sleep on their own but also capable of getting out of bed if they wake and realize I'm not there. I know that I'm going to be dealing with childcare responsibilities for a long, long time, but I will be glad when that's mostly cleaning up after them, making them clean up after themselves, and feeding them, not spending every available second following them around.

Who am I kidding, I won't be productive then either, but at least I won't also be exhausted.

Jocelyn and I are hoping to try to get a house again next year, but that means we're going to need to tighten our belts - the mixture of rising food prices and rent, a hot summer, and childcare have not been kind to our bottom line, and we've both been a bit profligate with our personal spending. I'm thinking I'm going to have to cut out at-release Digimon purchases, as they're easily my largest recurring leisure purchase. Maybe we'll do RB-01 - That seems like a reasonable break point - but either way, at least year-old DTCG product isn't absolutely impossible to find for reasonable prices.

Honestly, I've already been trying to cut down on hobby purchases, to varying degrees of success. I certainly have enough I could spend time on instead of focusing on collecting. Collecting is just so much easier on a constricted time budget, and with the twins constricted is a bit of an understatement.

I've been considering moving my Gaiomon deck from a Red base to a Black one, but I just am not a fan of that bottom end. The BT8 Agumon is great, especially the alt-art version, but I prefer the DP+ red Koromon, the black Agumon X is too costly to hardplay, and I just prefer the ST1 Greymon which is an obligate Red digivolve. Wish there were a Red/Black SA+ Greymon, or one with a "2 from Agumon" evolve line.

I've started a small vinyl collection, and I quite enjoy it. Unfortunately one of the albums I'd purchased had an off-center press and the audio was very badly distorted. I had to buy a replacement for it, but this one's thankfully good.

UPDATE: I spoke too soon; this is off-center, but only on the B-side. Luckily, on further investigation, my original copy is only off-center on the A-side. So, lucky break, I guess, in that between the two I have one properly-centered album.

For Digimon, we’re up through BT13. Thankfully prices in general have been falling, so individual sets are moderately more affordable and I’ve been able to close on some stragglers from my collection. Favorite decks lately have been Blue Flare and Gaiomon, but there’s a lot of fun variety.

I disassembled Angels and rebuilt Myotismon, but I’m not sold on it. Gotta do some testing but I might want to try a different build instead.

I made some status-tracking cards, for effects that last long enough into a turn you’d want a reminder. These are an update and refocus of a slightly earlier project. I just noticed some of these cards have a drop shadow and others don’t; I’ll fix that in my graphics files and keep it in my back pocket for if I want to have cards printed for another reason.