Naughty or Nice?

Last year, Santa was having trouble finding coal for the kids stockings. We came across a place this weekend that has coal for sale pretty cheap that we didn't even think of - the Prairie Dog Central. They have souvenir bags of coal in their gift shop.

We had taken the kids on a train ride last night. It was pretty cool. They thought it was going to go much faster. They had put plastic over the train windows to keep in the heat but it obscured the view a bit. There was a Christmas party out in Grosse Isle. We even sang carols on the way back.

All-in-all, it was a fun time on the train.

Hammer of Thor - thoughts

I got my brick of the new Neca/Wizkids Hammer of Thor on Friday. It was nice in that the buy-the-brick figure, Surtur, was given to me right at that point and I didn’t have to mail away for it. We opened the lot on Saturday. The set looks nice – the figures are nicely sculpted. I do have a bit of an issue with the new click base – there’s not much to turn the base with without stressing on the figures legs. I found a lot of the stickers weren’t nicely lined up with the base window – but as the adhesive is still fresh, it’s a simple matter of opening up the base and repositioning it.

There were none of the Battlefield Conditions, Bystanders, Objects, or Feat cards in my set. Personally, I was never a big fan of the feats – I didn’t mind the Bystanders or Objects. The distribution seems fine – I got a brick of 10 boosters, each with 5 figures. Out of a 60 figure set I ended up with 41 figures and 8 duplicates. I also got one of the chase figures – in a booster with the 4 super-rares from the brick. I don’t know if this is how they are normally distributed or if they are normally apportioned through the boosters instead.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with this set. The Thorbuster Iron Man chase figure is certainly a pleasant surprise. The figures are nice and the mix of figures in the set seems to cover a bunch of new faces – the Runaways, the Warriors Three, Starlord, and even Bug (from the Micronauts). I’m not impressed with the new bases but I can work with that. Since this one was already in the planning from last year, before Wizkids being sold, Neca probably didn't have too much influence on it's design. We’ll have to see how the next two sets pan out.

Also – they’ve finally got around to updating the WizKids site with the new gallery from the new set.

It's Hammer Time!

The new Heroclix set is finally being released - after about a year. Check out the flyer. It's called Hammer of Thor so it's mostly Thor and Runaways. The Surtur Brick figure is supposed to be at the stores instead of being a mail-away. I'm hoping to get a brick this weekend so I'll let you know my thoughts.

Chores done

We had nice enough weather for this time of the year so we finally got some yard work done. The pool has been folded up - not nicely but enough for this winter.

We also managed to rake the leaves from the front yard - 22 bags full. I can only use so many in my compost piles. I even have a leaf compost going from last year.

Yesterday Shan started the Christmas baking. She got a good bunch done and we helped with icing until late in the night. Tomorrow we put up the tree.

Halloween wrapup

We did manage to get the skeletons in the tree after all. Even with our lack of extra cool decorations, we still managed to lure in 37 trick-or-treaters. I was impressed that we were able to achieve even this as while taking D3 on his meager rounds we were quite often the only people on the street.

The pumpkins have now been hacked up and added to the compost for the winter. Hopefully we'll rake up the leaves and finally fold up the pool this weekend.