Go to the right Marketplace!

OK, so it's been like a week. I've posted this info on a couple of different forums already but every day I still see new posts everywhere from people asking why their codes are "expired!"

The deal is this: certain retailers gave you promotional codes when you buy Dawn of War 2 (no, you didn't miss anything, I didn't blog the retail release). Anyhow, for the uninitiated, the game is networked via Games for Windows Live. And if you use Windows Live Messenger (or MSN Messenger for those who aren't calling it by its official name), then basically you're already a member anyway.

To get set up you do need to choose a Gamertag - which also happens to serve as an Xbox Live Gamertag. You can tell because when you play around with GFWL pop-up, it'll also invoke your web browser for account management... but the site you get to looks suspiciously like an Xbox site. But other than fooling around with your Gamertag stuff, it's pretty much unrelated to GFWL. Confused enough? Don't worry, what you need to know is: do not enter your PC game's promo code at the Xbox Live Marketplace.

What you DO need is to go to GFWL and get the stand-alone client. Once you install and run the client, then you can click the "Marketplace" tab and there you will be able to enter any promotional codes that come with Games for Windows products.

Gurren Lagann Parallel Works Video 1

This has nothing to do with anything... but is cool. Everything's better in alternate universe format. :)

Duel Decks: Jace vs. Chandra

I'm one of those personalities with the insatiable desire to know "what's inside?" Sometimes it backfires on me - like tonight: I spent the entire evening after work driving around most of Ottawa looking for the Collector's Edition of Street Fighter IV... and failing to acquire it. The last time I asked about pre-ordering it, there still hadn't been any info available about it so I decided not to reserve it at the time. Then later, when it was too late, I remembered to ask about it again and by then they had stopped taking orders.

Anyway, Jace Beleren was a character who debuted in the worlds of Magic the Gathering a little while back and figures greatly in a new novel recently published called "Agents of Artifice." But interestingly enough, a few months back, he also figured in his very own 2-player game: an all-in-one Duel Deck pitting him against Chandra Nalaar another Planeswalker mage who appeared back in the Lorwyn set.
Naturally, I looked at the box and said, "oooh shiny!"
...yes, that's a M:TG in-joke along the lines of Weirdguy seeing my copy of Agents of Artifice in its metallic dust-jacket and exclaiming, "oh, it's a foil book!" [insert rim-shot here]

The set comes with the two decks - 60 cards each and it apparently completely tournament legal to play. Each of course, is made up of cards reflecting the strategies those characters use. But the main draw is the alternate art on the reprinted Planeswalkers cards themselves. These are foil cards and represent the awesome power at hand if they show up in to help you.
Jace himself has very little loyalty to start (only 3 before he will quit on the player) but his super-power is to cycle 20 cards from the enemy deck into the graveyard - this could be a killer move if played late in the match. Chandra is a little more forgiving coming in with 6 loyalty points. But her super-move deals 10 damage to the target player and all their creatures - meaning any weaklings such as typical tokens will likely get wiped out. Insanity ensues.

The set also comes with a pair of utterly useless deck boxes. They look like typical starter deck boxes you usually throw away because... well, honestly, the cards won't fit if you put them in plastic sleeves. And of course, the set also come with a pair of inserts: the intro rules sheet (of which in my very short M:TG career already have 3 copies of), and an insert specific to this set listing the deck-lists and explaining how the Planeswalker cards work.

I can't wait to try playing either deck but I'm also keen on slipping Chandra into my usual Alara deck since I already play Jund - the red plane in that storyline.

Kenichi's Masters (mistresses?)

Not long ago before I had decided I would join my friends going to G-Anime, I had explained to them that a big part of the convention experience was "finding stuff." You know, an exhibitor was bringing something to sell, or people showing off bragging rights. Sadly, that aspect of con-going has been lost amidst the advent of e-commerce where anything you could possibly want, not matter how rare, can be had if you are willing to pay the price.

G-Anime's only real failure, in my view, was the dealer's room where everyone was there for one reason: to unload unwanted stock. Time was when I remember going to cons where dealers were there to ring up business by showing off just a taste of what they offered in their stores. You got something at a discount and also get their business card so that one day you could look them up for more. Everyone wins.
For a con centered around anime, there was a surprisingly little amount of anime for sale. The Anime Stop crew brought lots of clearance manga and a selection of figures, but no DVDs. One store selling me some French translated manga... turned out to have very little manga in their brick-and-mortar location when I checked them out the following weekend.

Anyway back to life, I had come down a manga high from reading several volumes of Kenichi Ultimate Disciple. It's about a kid who rises up against local bullies after he joins a strange dojo populated by an eccentric cast of martial arts masters... and also happens to be the home of the cute school-mate he met.

Too bad I downloaded only part of it before it got licensed by Funimation (due out in the next few months as 13-episode DVD sets).

But being that I was under the influence of a manga high, I also decided to order the rest of the manga series from Kurokawa by way of Archambault.ca (a large retail chain in Quebec serving up French media). Saves me my provincial taxes anyway. And of course, when I stumbled on these figures at HLJ.com in the clearance section...
Turns out they ship as a set anyway (when the box arrived, the two were shrink-wrapped together, which thankfully means with minimal packing, the figures survived the half-planet transit.As you can see, even the packaging is meant to fit together. The figures stand on a display base that snaps together forming the ying-yang sign that Kenichi is fond of wearing on his colar throughout the series.Miu and Shigure come several option parts and accessories like weapons. Miu is the simpler of the two - the figure comes with optional arms so she can be displayed without her jacket on. Curiously, her optional arms are in the same pose as when she's wearing the jacket. Opportunity lost, if you ask me. And Shigure has a shorter "skirt" (no, she's not naked under there) but frustratingly, does not come with any hints (photos on the box or otherwise) on how she's meant to hold the optional weapons. That is, besides the baton and sword, she also comes with a set of nunchuku, a blade on a chain, a wakizashi, etc... none of which seem to fit properly in her pose. Hmm...

Real Life Rhino

Used to be that I would say, "if I had the time and money I would..." Well, that is no longer feasible. In this video, I find proof that a new qualifier should be added.

That is, if I had time, money, and a lot of room for parking (which is nowhere to be found in this city; although won't be a problem anymore if I were driving around Gatineau in this thing), then I would do this...

Spot the damage?

Can you see? You must be blind if you can't. :)

But seriously, this Baal Golgoth arrived to me in no less than 8 separate pieces. Sheesh. I paid a bargain to add this to my AT-43 collection but sheesh. Thankfully I have a fully equipped toolkit because of my Warhammer hobby. And even more thankfully, all I needed was a few drops of super-glue as all the broken pieces had clean breaks.

Now if only the glue will hold the feet to the base (that's a problem with the Therian model sculpts - they all have pointy claw feet! Not a lot of surface area to glue on).

lazy con report: G-Anime 2009

As far as upstart conventions go, G-Anime had some really good ideas. I was there for both days spanning February 7 and 8 2009.

Some great ideas included a "command center" where programming was monitored by the crew. So whenever something went wrong, help was sent on the way. The location was great too (the Palais de Congress in Gatineau). There was a lot more parking than I anticipated (the city hall next door happens to offer free underground parking if you can find it... and it's connected so you can leave you coat in the car and walk indoors all the way over). Too bad the food court was mostly closed (those who were open seriously cashed in as the con ran pretty much all day both days).

Other great ideas included the fact that a lot of screening rooms were fully automated - each projector was an HTPC with timers set to show whatever was on the schedule for an hour at a time.

The down-sides... well, it felt a lot like being at an upstart. Many times I thought they were biting off more than they deserved (as well as they could chew). For instance, my friends and I missed pre-registration by about... 5 months. That is, we didn't know about it. I didn't even notice a poster at the local comics shop (who, btw, also turned out to have the single largest booth in the dealer's room). So they really needed to raise awareness.

Because we registered at the door, tickets were $40CAD. That's only $5 shy of a basic pass to FanExpo in Toronto! I mean, that's pretty arrogant considering its their first year. Pre-registration was $30... so a 25% jump is pretty hard to swallow.

Secondly, live events took an aweful long time to get running. Because the tickets line was so well-organized, we got in pretty quickly (compared to other cons I've been to). We had time to stop at the openning ceremonies... which, in the end, we lost patience and didn't see. We sat in the room for nearly 20 minutes (enough time to have watched a full episode in one of the screening rooms).
The same happened later that day. Since we weren't terribly hungry yet, we thought we'd grab a seat at the masquerade contest for half and hour or so... well, that 30 minutes grew into well over 35 minutes (the crowd grew restless and start bouncing a balloon around to each other)... we decided to get some supper over on St.Joseph.

Lastly, technical glitches were non-stop. I spent a lot of time in the screening rooms trying to absorb as much anime as possible. But it seemed that the setups weren't fully tested. Sometimes the anti-virus on those HTPCs would kick in and slow down playback. Other times, the glitch delayed the play-time of the show and the timer on the HTPC either cut off the playback mid-episode. Other times the cut-off did not occur and the next show started up overriding the video (but making a mess of the audio). It also probably did not help that all those HTPCs were running the Windows 7 beta. Sure it's free and you avoid the licensing fees. But goodness... sometimes you draw the line somewhere.

Need to give the staff a big big kudos however. Whenever glitches occured, they were there. Security was provided by folks cosplaying as members of the RCPD and Umbrella corporation and despite their reputations from the source material, were all friendly and always helpful.

Fat Pack: Conflux

It's quickly become obvious to me why Wizard's of the Coast is able to constantly push product out the door and have people gobble it up and come back for more. A few days back, Weirdguy and I decided to put a hold on buying up the new old stock at our local comics shop and save up a bit of cash for the next expansion set coming out today. When we saw the new Fat Packs for only $35CAD, it was a no-brainer.The Fat Pack is basically a bundle of 8 booster packs. But the fact that it retails around the $40 mark (depending where you get one) means that you're paying for the 8 boosters (@15 cards ea.) and getting a whole bunch of "other stuff."

The box is a weird size until you open it and realize that it's propped up like that in order to fit the Player's Guide book (it measures about 6 inches tall and contains all sorts of goodies like articles on suggested combos, the fluff behind the current Alara storyline, and even a card encyclopedia of the current set) under the slip-cover. But when you remove all the cardboard spacers, you end up with a pretty nice card-box for your set. Since the slip cover becomes redundant after you remove the spacers, you can unfold it into a mini poster.

Inside the box is your 8 booster packs along with a D20 (to use as a Life Counter, of course!), an excerpt booklet from this month's Magic novel about Planeswalkers, and small stack of Basic Lands to give your deck some filler if you need it to upgrade from Shards of Alara to Conflux.
A side note, that play-mat you see in the photos is was a freebie. I got it today at the local shop for buying into Conflux on launch day. Of course, I chose a dragon motif to suit my previous Primordial Jund deck.

another unboxing (pod pack)

Let it not be said that in order to participate in the activities I choose that one MUST invest a lot of money. I have several friends who play paintball with me who still after all these years have not purchased a single piece of equipment. Not even a mask. I have others who decided the Canadian Tire special was good enough for them (Kingman Spiders and JT masks).

But despite my own track record of acting like an idiot with too much disposable income (see my posts about starting up Magic: The Gathering), up until now I owned pretty much a complete set of essential gear for speedball except one thing: a pod pack.And that changed today when I opened a UPS delivery box when I got home.

I only got it because I felt silly ordering a baseball cap alone. Partially because I felt it was an extraneous piece of equipement for recreational speedball (you're in and out of a 5-minute match of semi-automatic fire; so I never need to refill while on the field). Partially because, I was never sure if it was worth the effort to find a pack that would fit my Dye Locklids. (I forgot to mention, those pods did not come with the pack, of course; they're unusually sized pods and I'm hoping that by stuffing them in and leaving them there for a while, the pleather pack will eventually stretch a bit). But unfortunately, it's nigh-impossible to find a pod-pack that will fit the Dye LLP and still have funtional elastic ejection. This one's a Smart Parts "sprint pack" in 3+2 configuration (that 3 in the proper ejection sleeves and 2 more in hidden straps between the first 3).

I have no idea when I'll be wearing this (if ever). But at least I can wear the hat. :)

The Sad State of the USPS

It's no secret - everybody loves to trash-talk their local postal service... But lately I've learned that the USPS tracking system is just primitive compared to Canada's! I mean, what kind of use is a tracking system that updates less than once every few days?

My order of T-shirts from Jeph Jacques' QuestionableContent.net arrived in the mail today... and the tracking system message still hasn't changed since the first day about 5 calendar days ago (it says the sender notified them electronically of the shipment but not that the postal service has received it).

Just to put this into some context, I regularly receive packages here in Canada and when the tracked package arrives, I start using the domestic tracker instead. Canadians get moment-by-moment updates. When the item arrives at the border for processing, we're told when it leaves the customs office, when it's in transit between sorting facilities, and even when it's "out for delivery."