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.

I got my pledge for the Hellboy RPG Kickstarter today. To put it shortly, I'm not impressed. The fulfilment company that was used was bottom-barrel stuff - my box had an open end covered with tape, the books loose inside. It was missing my dice, too - whether because they fell out or were just never put in I don't know. Finally, the book itself is chintzy - the cover's a bit flimsy-feeling, the binding doesn't feel solid, and one of the pages of my copy was pre-creased.

I've emailed Mantic support, but considering it's Friday and they're 5 hours ahead I will not hear back until Monday at the earliest. Hopefully I can get those dice, or maybe even a replacement core book, but honestly I'm not expecting much. Might even just box these up and call it a day. So disappointing.

Update 2022.06.02: A couple days ago I got a shipment directly from Mantic with replacement dice and a new copy of the core book. I wish I hadn't had to ask for them, but that's good CS and I'm much happier with the campaign as a result. I still think the game and especially its layout work was half-baked - the stat blocks are horribly ugly and not very table-friendly, for example - but it'll be a good browsing book and Hellboy reference at the least.

Hellboy model for the Hellboy board game.

The target priority bust for Hellboy in the Hellboy Board Game.

The Investigation Marker for the Hellboy Board Game. Pretty light but fun. Real happy with the freehand, particularly the illuminated "T".