Ektris

Well that would be mine now. Was a bit annoyed when the first auction ended right as I figured out the reserve price. But was the only bidder this time. Hadn't heard of this site before, so just might not have garnered much attention.. Leaves only the pearl gold Kraahkan to get to "complete" my collection of G1 and G2 non-single-or-double-digit-in-existence exceptionally rare masks.

Haha wow. I got nostalgic thanks to the GWP and thought to check things out here. Can't believe I saw this revived. I can't remember exactly why to be honest. My gut feeling is it's because those have variants that include a code printed on them and those that did not.

I sometimes really miss this community. And others I used to be involved in as part of the larger BIONICLE/LEGO fandom. So I occasionally peak in, see how things are going... Generally without comment, and usually leaving a little more saddened by not feeling connected to it anymore and that things in general are really rather... quiet. Which I suppose makes sense when the focal point and passion of the fandom is dead again. But man, what passion... I dedicated so much of my formative years to this, as did so many others. They're great memories. And I am glad to see some still chugging away at it and newer folks still somehow discovering it. I'm not sure what made this visit different. Anywhere I'm present online now, I more often than not just lurk and not contribute. Quite the contrast to how I used to be. Just don't have the time and energy to. So a mix of nostalgia, boredom, sorrow, and maybe a touch of hope. Reflecting a lot, I suppose. I know it's not going to change anything and I'm not really back - not even sure I'll respond to anything here. I just really, really wanted to say... Hi. And I miss you all. Those who will read this and those who have long since moved on before I did. And thank you for all those memories. ~|ET|~

This is pretty incredible. Think I'll have to download them later for when I'm feeling nostalgic. Thanks for doing this. ~|ET|~

Oh. I actually meant to get a lot of BIONICLE too thanks to TRU's sale. But I procrastinated ordering until Quake Beast was out of stock and then I couldn't find one in store so... Just didn't do it. A lot of stuff's getting slashed on Amazon though. Might still try and finish the set just for the heck of it... I dunno..

A Song of Ice and Fire: A Dance with Dragons Transformers Titans Return Blurr Transformers Titans Return Skullsmasher Really don't know how much longer I'm going to keep this up. Just whenever I post elsewhere I feel the need to here as well since I've never missed a month... Kept me coming back to this place every once in a while at the very least. Anyway, didn't get much. Wanted more but just couldn't find many TR in stores. ~|ET|~

Now hear me out guys... There's a very obvious answer here. With this announcement they've officially recognized it as Capital G Generation 2. That means there's really only one thing appropriate enough to come next. And it's called... Beast Wars. ~|ET|~

Even though I was never its biggest fan, this still makes me very sad to see happen so soon. ~|ET|~

I am in love with Kuwaganon.

S.H. Figuarts Super Mario Diorama Playset E S.H. Figuarts Lord Baron Transformers Unite Warriors Bruticus Transformers Masterpiece Wheeljack More Mario enemies. Meh. Wish they weren't static, there's really no excuse for it. Yet still somehow better than the Bowser they released alongside of, which I'm just not getting unless at a huge discount. So terribly limited in articulation and too small, that one is... But anywho, at least this pack is all new enemies. Do hope we see more at SDCC this year and preferably an actual character. Bow down to your lord and rightful ruler of Helheim, Baron! At long last my Gaim SHF collection is more or less complete! (Because I'd still totally take a Shin Zangetsu if cheap... hahahahaha...) I love him. Beautiful figure and rather well articulated. I have not a single complaint about him. Bruticus is the big ticket item this month. I have very mixed feelings about him as a whole and the various components, but on the whole I'm pretty happy I sprung for the Takara version over the Hasbro. Shuttle Blast Off is cool (and since I'm getting the Takara Computron I'll have it twice yayyy). What is so very not cool was the shipping price for him. The exchange rate for the yen has worsened and couple that with postage going up in general in Japan, particularly EMS which I may have to cut back on using, and I and many others forked out over $50 to ship the big guy. That stung a bit and is certainly souring my opinion of him. Much like Tracks before him, I got Wheeljack because he was cheap. He got reissued this month so I figured I might as well throw him in with my Bruticus order on AmiAmi because of their significant. He's alright. But does rank probably as my least favorite Masterpiece I own (really tied with Tracks), though still is an excellent figure. ~|ET|~

Hi I'm alive. Oh and also a Horned Serpent.

You'll still be essentially getting the mold from that though. I must say I do like it and am lookin forward to Afterburner now.

Shhhh.... Lots of shelves.. in a second bedroom rarely used so that helps.

S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Ghost Ore Damashii (w/first run bonus Yurusen) S.H. Figuarts Pikachu Just Cause 3 LEGO Disney minifigure collection Genie LEGO Disney minifigure collection Aladdin Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire Transformers Combiner Wars Deluxe Groove S.H. Figuarts Mace Windu S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Specter Ore Damashii (w/first run bonus Specter, Edison, Nobunaga, Tutankhamen, and Kanon Eyecons) Had everything ready to go to post at the end of the month despite all the traveling I did, but then got back home today and had a few packages waiting for me. So I retook things and still screwed up and left things out lol. Didn't feel like setting up again at that point, sooo three pics it is. Pikachu kinda just sucks. Ghost and Specter are another two solid Kamen Rider Figuarts. Nothing too outlandish about them, but how they accomplished the hoods (should've done one with the hood up part) is cool. Mace looks fantastic. Finally we can affordably get deluxe Groove, yes! Looks cool. Just Cause 3 has been fun but feels like it's missing something from the last game. It's a bit too structured in its approach to chaos, if that makes any sense. And now Aladdin and Genie... My first blind bagged minifigs. I quickly learned I'm simply horrible at feeling for these. Fortunately an incredibly nice couple helped me feel bags and their picks were spot on. Think some of my back ups might have been close, but oh well. Thanks you guys! Very pleased with these. As is my wife (wait what?) so that's good haha. Looking forward to a possible series two with hopefully more characters tickling my fancy. ~|ET|~

Transformers Masterpiece Shockwave Star Wars Black Series Kanan Jarrus Transformers Masterpiece Tracks Star Wars Black Series Ahsoka Tano BIONICLE Protector of Stone BIONICLE Ikir Creature of Fire BIONICLE Tahu Uniter of Fire BIONICLE Umarak The Hunter Star Wars: Dark Disciple Star Wars: Heir to the Jedi Star Wars: Aftermath Star Wars: Maul: Lockdown Don't really feel like writing up too much today. Put as short as I can: love everything I got this month (some I didn't expect to or even planned on at all getting as always), but the effort put forth in getting some was way, way too much; this should be so much easier than it is sometimes. ~|ET|~

I totally understand where you're coming from. Heck I'm hardly ever here anymore. Probably, it seems, for pretty similar reasons. Tis a shame all the same. Hope you enjoy things whatever you do though.

S.H. Figuarts Shinkocchou Seihou Kamen Rider Decade S.H. Figuarts Captain Phasma Nendoroid Kirby Nintendo Amiibo Wolf Link The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD BIONICLE Lord of Skull Spiders BIONICLE Skull Warrior BIONICLE Skull Slicer BIONICLE Skull Scorpio BIONICLE Mask Maker vs. Skull Grinder Nintendo Amiibo Ryu Rise of the Tomb Raider Season Pass (digital download) Halo 5: Guardians - The Master Chief Xbox One Controller Nintendo Amiibo Roy S.H. Figuarts Minato Namikaze S.H. Figuarts Omegamon (Our War Game) All the things I was expecting last month finally came in, albeit some still much later than expected. I've already shown off Kirby. He's perfect. Decade is your average Rider release really, even with the Shinkocchou label. Comes with a lot of itty bitty cards I'll never remove from their baggy. Phasma is nice enough, though I did learn of an annoying issue with her leg not being assembled properly last night after taking this picture (that I've since corrected thanks to a handy hairdryer). Minato and Omegamon were the ones I really wanted here though and I love them. This Omegamon is such an improvement over the last - my only complaint is the too thin cape so that the red bleeds through the white. And Minato marks more continued improvements in their anime figure department. I did it, guys! I ended the BIONICLE draught! Yeahhhh... Kinda get why I put them off for so long heh. They're not all as bad as I feared, but the two-pack is still the obvious winner here. Ekimu looks great. Sure do wish that stand for the Mask of Creation was better though haha. Mayhaps I'll start the '16 guys next month. Speaking of things I took my sweet time on - the Master Chief controller! I'd actually been really wanting this since it was unveiled. I was a big fan of the special controllers on the 360 (used one as my primary controller since I first got one) and have been disappointed with how few there are for the One so far, and this is the first one to even interest me anyway. Just needed a new one too. Twilight Princess I'm already probably a third of the way through, but have put it on the back burner to keep at Rise of the Tomb Raider. It's been fun, and I'll be sure to share my thoughts on it once I'm done. The one item I'd been banking on arriving this month is ironically the only one to not arrive. Will be here soon and end another dry spell of sorts. ~|ET|~

Bought the DLC this morning and probably going to do the Baba Yaga story first.

This is the one thing in every game I've never bothered to complete. Just always found them too frustrating (and challenging) and would get too mad to really give it a good go. :/ So that said, congratulations on doing this! I can only imagine the amount of patience it must have taken.

I just want to start off by saying that I really do feel that this was quite a fun game. I finished the campaign for Rise of the Tomb Raider around 2 AM yesterday (it was the weekend, okay...), but do still have plenty of content to get through before I shelf this title. I want to go collect everything, and I'm very nearly there now... but have suffered from a known widespread glitch not counting some things so I fear I may need to play again 100% to get the achievements to pop. Plus I've not even looked at any of the Twitch-integrated features, which actually means I may try my hand at streaming soon! Not required, but might be fun. And I plan to buy the DLC. But I beat the story, so that's "game complete" for most and good enough to write this heh. My favorite part was definitely the exploration of tombs and crypts. The puzzles were fun, the environments fun to explore, and the worldbuilding involved with most was great. I listened to every single audio log. The history imparted by them was fascinating. In contrast, I couldn't get that invested in the main story's characters. Jacob was interesting - pegged his identity instantly thanks to a clue from an audio log I picked up not too long beforehand - but the others... Meh. I had no attachment to Ana. If they had maybe introduced her in 2013's Tomb Raider, I'd care more about her betrayel... But I just didn't. I disliked her for it, and her sickness made me a little sympathetic, but none of those were strong feelings. While writing this I just performed a quick search and apparently there is a running comic book title filling the gaps between the games?? I imagine those would've helped some... But don't feel it should be necessary. Oh and Konstantin just screamed generic angry bad guy the whole time. Poor misguided fool. I didn't really mind any of that though. Except when stuck in the proper levels where my explorative urges were restricted. I still had fun and never felt stuck for long. Even playing on savior mode where you don't regenerate health and supplies are more scarce, not many combat encounters really took me too long. Mostly because that wonderful bow is still ridiculously overpowered. If you want to play this game, stop first. Next, go play its predecessor. That was an amazing game. Then play this one. Rise of the Tomb Raider is great as well, although I did feel less invested. Just want to recommend this rebooted series as a whole, since I feel it's much stronger that way. ~|ET|~

Shinichi Izumi vs. Lara Croft I'm going to give this one to Ms. Croft because this is walking armory Lara and despite how willing Migi probably would be, of course Shinichi wouldn't want to kill a poor innocent normal human.

Adventure Time, eh? Pretty sure that failed once before... So that's kind of neat to see succeed now. Curious about it being brick-built characters and whether or not we'll ever see minifigures of the characters. Might consider getting this one depending on what the final set looks like. ~|ET|~

I am so excited for this.

It is! That's why he's awesome! (Not sure if I've got this backwards, or both have the magnets, but either way..) The body has magnets in it and the limbs have some metal in them so you just slide them around the adorable little puffball. Toon Link is another I think looks okay.

I watched the prologue episode last week as soon as I could. I immediately stepped away to try and re-approach The Journey to One more levelheaded, because by then I had read too many negative things and the prologue rather rubbed me the wrong way. Finally this morning I watched the next two episodes. I definitely like that they acknowledged and explained last year's story, but did not like reusing the animations to do so. Using a different animation style to signify flashbacks is not a new concept, but literally reusing things we've already seen.. Eh, it just wasn't able to make me interested. And as the start of the series, it was a turn off. Plus I don't think it did a good job at all at introducing us to the Toa; Narmoto's tale just gave the facts. Which leads us to episode 1... Where immediately I felt things were rushing too quickly. The Toa are just off on a new mission, a "mission" that ends far too quickly and easily. Except for poor Lewa... I do agree with the sentiment that there wasn't a sense of conflict (barring a brief fight with Umarak that I did enjoy, which only impacted at the time one of our progatonists). Some Toa disagreed with their Creatures, but in seconds they were the best of friends. I might not even find anything necessarily wrong with that if I didn't take issue with their ultimate goal. Both the end of the prologue and the beginning of thie episode bring attention to the fact that the Toa have new masks, weapons, and armor... So let's send them on a quest to get a new mask?? A quest that they did not have any issues fulfilling, making their old new mask rather superfluous. Recruiting the Creatures should have been the real task, and I guess it was, but the attention felted placed on the masks instead with the guardians just being an obstalce in the way. Episode 2's conflict felt petty. So terribly petty. Pohatu doesn't like scorpions, so he jeapardizes the fate of the entire island... Really? Just made me mad at him instead of worrying about whether the Toa will be able to succeed now. Once again, though, not much stood in their way. They magically knew how to get through the entire labyrinth. Granted, this alluded to some potential future story with their lost memories and time displacement that is a little intriguing , but in the here and now it just comes across as a cop out. Given what it held, that thing should have been much harder to get into. I do not hate everything about The Journey to One. I liked that Lewa and Pohatu got the spotlight (even if I very much dislike the execution for the latter). In fact, it makes me wish that this miniseries was 6 episodes long so that each episode could have a portion of it highlighting the strenghts of each Toa and actually let their characters grow. The voice acting wasn't that bad. Even Umarak grew on me the more I heard him. I initially found it offputting because of my own internal voice for him, but worked in the end. This show is also simply beautiful. I adore the art, both backgrounds and character models, so I can say I enjoyed watching it to see those visuals in motion. I just can't say I enjoyed the story it was trying to tell. I can't shake the feeling that I know it could have been better. The story left me wanting more out of it. I was getting excited for this show up to its release. I want to be invested in it, but it's not doing it for me. So for me, it was in the end a little disappointing. ~|ET|~