Summer has been and gone, and the Aberdeen Scale Model Show took place in August, earlier this year. I attended with a band of fellow TartanLUG builders, and meant to write a post about it, but I feel far too much time has now passed.
That said, it would be entirely remiss of me not to post this one photo.
Lego animals from my display invading the carefully built flowerbeds of another builder’s MOC, definitely NOT making ice cream
Following my attendance at Brickmania 2022 earlier this summer, this weekend I attended a Members Day for my Lego Users Group in Perth, Scotland. I had previously missed one in November last year due to a weather storm, and one earlier this year due to Covid. Third time’s the charm!
The day was more of a catch-up and meeting rather than a full show and display of MOCs, but I and plenty of others still brought lots to share. Alongside built MOCs there were a number of vintage and rare sets that i’d never seen in person before, and this was surprisingly rewarding. A raffle was also hosted, along with a quiz, food, and numerous fans were there looking to sell or swap pieces. I met lots of great people, and left full of inspiration, ideas, and again, even more bought Lego than what I’ll ever really need. Once again, the whole day was just incredibly validating to know that other people got just as excited about Lego!
I have one more event scheduled for this summer, and then i’m off to Oban in November. Next year -between weddings, birthdays, and life- i’ll looking to attend and buld plenty more.
After several years of being an AFOL followed by, oh yeah, a global pandemic, last month I finally got to attend and display at my first Lego show!
Brickmania 2022 was organised and hosted by my dear TartanLUG, and was a great weekend of Lego builds, shops, and fans situated in the Buchan Braes hotel just outside of Peterhead, Scotland. This was an incredibly cathartic two days for me- after building and sharing Lego creations alone for years uploading them online, it was great displaying for real fans, and definitely provided some validation to a hobby that I hold so dear to my heart. THIS IS A THING THAT OTHER PEOPLE DO AS WELL!
Very emotional, honestly. I’ve got lots more words -and potentially video- to share, but for now, some photo highlights from the weekend. I’ve left off my own MOCs- what I displayed will be revealed later. I’ll be looking to attend next year -as well as all the other Lego shows inbetween!- but what I saw that weekend was really inspiring. I’ll be going back even better!
For her birthday last month I asked my partner how she wanted to celebrate, and without much thought, she enthusiastically replied “Murder Mystery”. Right. I asked her for a guestlist, and then told her to leave the rest to me. The weeks that followed was a frenzy of writing, planning, and sleuthing all the secrets.
I’ve never fully written a script, or DM’ed an RPG, so I sought guidance online straight away. Numerous guides -both free and paid- on how to create or host murder mysteries were found, but the common denominator for the majority of them were preset characters. From the start, with her guestlist, this seemed like a big no-go: I wanted it to be as roleplay as possible with guests devising their own characters instead of being given one they had to play. I created a narrative for the event, Madame of the Manor’s Birthday Soiree, inviting the guests as possible staff or rich, classy, socialite friends. This was a little Downton Abbey, a little Midsomer Murders, but ultimately very Agatha Christie, all reliable familiar tropes. I wrote a bit of general world-building for the guests, then sent character promps out; in character myself as Madame’s trusted aide who was organising the party.
Mechanically, I still wasn’t sure how this was going to work, BUT I knew the kind of things I would require from each guest, for each character. They has to devise a name for themselves, their likes and dislikes, their relation to the host, and then a secret about their character. These seemed like easy enough whims, and from there they were free to dress however they wanted on the night, but again, under the framework of a birthday party set in a village manor.
The characters I got back over the month were something else. There was a private physician, an author cousin, a prvate secretary, a mistress, a local pub landlord, and an art dealer. With the smallest of prompts I was amazed how wild things got, and how imaginative guests were with their secrets. One was actually a witch, there was a master thief, a con-man, a drug dealer, a failed inventor, a half sister to the host, the list went on. Everyone had created a really fun, interesting, sneaky character, and any of them could have been a murderer on the night.
With boxed kits, the murderer is always pre-determined and heavily written into the story, and a victim can be a guest on the night, or a pretend stuffed guy that has been dead from the start of the game. Guests thematically dropping at the party sounded brilliant, and I wanted one of them to be the murderer pulling the strings and poisoning the drinks. Mechanically, I didn’t want to write entire scripts and arcs for the guests to perform, but neither did I want guests to have free reign and be uncomfortable with full improv. In the end I came up with a system of handing out prompts on small cards over two acts, VERY similar to the social challenges of Dont Get Got. Each player had specifically crafted decks based off both the info they had given me and their confidence as an individual, with cards either being an ACTION they had to perform in character, or a SECRET which related to another guest. Both progressed a narrative forward, and some “found evidence” was provided as well to further immerse.
From the secrets and relationships, a motive came together almost accidentally. The private physician’s secret was that he didn’t actually have a medical license, while the mistress had a dodgy past where she had poisoned her uncle. A narrative emerged really quickly, and the doctor character was given authority to kill any guest they were worried about revealing their secret. Some people actually solved the mystery! I set up smaller challenges too about deducing who was the thief, and who was the half sister- I think every guest managed to deduce at least one of the secret identities.
The weeks planning it were pretty bloody stressful, but I think it ultimately landed pretty well! There will be other, easier, quicker ways to plan a murder mystery, but I greatly enjoyed getting to write something, and everyone really did give their characters such fun personalities. It is something I want to run again, perhaps more complicated or extravagant, and with entirely new characters, but it was definitely a great start. Hopefully the above will be useful to anyone planning something similar!
This year i’ve already remade Lego 6075 Wolfpack Tower in a big way, it’s one of my favourite childhood sets! Afterwards, I tried a few further variations of the set, one, as a minifigure habitat, and two as a microscale effort. Both are huge trends in AFOL building, so I thought i’d apply the base set again to both of them.
The former is as part of a Lego contest, the latter is just for fun. An excellent builder on instagram had already beat me to a microscale version- I added a small wartable scene to mine to punch up the effort.
Next year, I promise I wont be building any Lego Wolfpack MOCs…!
This year, one of my passive resolutions is to really make a dent in my gaming backlog…and it’s May already, so this might not land!
My backlog exists simply because I am notorious at buying games and not actually playing them. Playing videogames as an adult is having more money than spare time; the complete reverse problem of having more time than spare money as a youngster. And on that note, embarassingly, I still have purchases from 2008, the Playstation 2 era, yet to play.
I’ve been using Letterboxd for a few years now to track all the films i’ve watched (2021 wrap up here), and a poorly updated Goodreads account for similar logging with books. Now i’m giving GG a shot for games.
Last year I only completed five games in total, so i’m looking to make a lot more progress this time around. I made a list for tracking everything i’ve completed as I go, as well as a list of everything i’ve played. Some games are only multiplayer, service-based, or there just for dipping in and out of, so this list will catch the rest of the games that aren’t necessarily completeable. My “completed this year” list is here.
This year already, Sonic Mania and Streets of Rage 2 are obvious redos, but Horizon: Zero Dawn and it’s DLC are first plays. I’ve had both of the latter since launch, five years ago. I greatly enjoyed both, giving them a proper chance outside of release hype, rushed launches, and the competition of other games, but it frustrates me too that I basically left something awesome like that on the shelf for as long as I did. It was really fun hunting and shooting arrows at Robot Dinosaurs in a lush techpocalype vastness, probably to the surprise of no-one at all. I planned to write a bigger post about Horizon earlier this year, but hopefully this is something I can actually do with the other titles when I start digging into the backlog.
There’s already a few things that i’ve really got circled on that backlog. Pikmin 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Persona 4…lots…more. Catching up on everything I already own but missed, and just playing more outright, that’s the objective. Hopefully by the end of the year i’ll have some good news to report!
Spending the morning hunting robo dinosaurs in Horizon- what a final shot! #HorizonZeroDawn #PS5Share, #PS5 pic.twitter.com/DENz7Q1sVw
— richardam (@richardam) January 3, 2022
With my previous Lego project being so Forestmen heavy, the next thing I wanted to do was make similar big forts and dioramas for many of the other Lego Castle factions. Next up, was the Wolfpack.
The Wolfpack faction subtheme of Lego Castle released in 1992, a perfect year for a VERY six year old me, admittedly, but regrettably a theme with only the three sets. These minifigs were pretty kickass while I was younger, and while, sure, the Wolfpack are on the surface very much a reskin of the Forestmen faction before them, I like to think they’re probably the more crass and less charming rivals of their tree-swinging Robin Hood-esque counterparts. With so few sets released and no big appearances I feel they’ve been somewhat sidelined as a faction, but worse, not really given their own identity.
For my MOC I wanted to remedy that a little. I wanted to build a crumbly ruined inaccessable base away from prying eyes, on an island in the middle of a swampy marsh. The forests belong to the Forestmen, the Wolfpack, I guessed, would take whatever they could get. The end result is something that accidentally became a remake of 6075 Wolfpack Tower. This was lots of fun to do, but also good practice for me in a lot of ways.! First, i’ve never tried tiled water, but I think all the trans light blue tiles here look superb. Secondly, i’ve not really dabbled in angled building like this before either, but I think it actually came out alright! As a third deviation, the island is elevated on a DUPLO footprint to build height- this was a bit tricker than I had anticipated. Overall it’s a bit different from it’s source material set, but hopefully it still looks recognisable enough too.
The Lion King’s chief enforcer, Ser Galien, The Warden, has been tasked with ‘cleansing’ the kingdom. His current quest finds him at a long forgotten derelict tall black tower, on a small island in a swamp. The band of hoodlums he finds there call themselves The Wolfpack…
I watched 121 films in 2021! Year on year i’ve gotten into film in a big way, and where previously entire years would consist of just a handful of trips to the cinema for the latest superhero releases, i’m now trying to branch out, watching older things, more diverse offerings, and going out of my comfort zone. This is still a work in progress! Every film I watched in 2021 and full statistics are here, but nonetheless I thought I would do a personal, more reflective wrap up as well.
One of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2021 was to watch more cultural, ethnic, and gender diverse films. This started off with good intentions, but i’ll be honest, i’m not entirely sure I succeeded here. Early into the year I watched the entirety of Steve McQueen’s excellent Small Axe anthology series, I watched more “chick flicks” than usual, and several film picks were just random whims, but I still don’t think I gave this resolution as much of a push as I had intended. A problem that arose early on from my film habits were the same actors reappearing, so, in the case of Marvel Cinematic Universe rewatches, heroes and villains reoccur, while watching Wes Anderson films throughout the year, as a director he also has a repeat band of actors that he works with. Both, exmples above, being predominantly white. So while this is definitely part of a wider Hollywood problem -i’m reading Helen O Hara’s excellent Women vs Hollywood atm- it is still a bit of a rut I need to get out of myself as well.
This year, my most watched director was Wes Anderson (with 6 films), and Willem Dafoe (with 9 films) as my most watched actor. The former was catching up on a film works backlog, while the latter was more accidental: of the nine films, three were Spider-Man titles, and four were from works by Wes Anderson. An easy self-fulfilling victory. Bill Murray and Owen Wilson were second tied for actors, with eight films each. Mostly the same problem problem again. Elsewhere for directors, four films were by Steve McQueen, and three by M Night Shyamalan, but ultimately out of the 13 directors -with more than one film watched- the majority were white and male. There’s room for improvement here- in 2022 I want a radically different line-up here, with lots more female directors if possible.
I made a list of my favourite films of 2021 (that I saw), but ultimately the year comes down to two faves in particular.
After watching a lot of his past works, The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson goes completely in on the director’s “house style”, with narrative whimsy at 100% the whole time. But more than that, the film has an excellent, often mind baffling technical craft to it, with a space and set design completely unparalleled to anything I’ve ever seen before. It is three separate story vignette’s that come together, and ultimately it’s a bold exploration of storytelling through different mediums and techniques in each of those stories. Lots of fun! Two people left the cinema halfway through the film, perhaps because of that whimsy, but I loved it,
My other big fave was Dune, by Denis Villeneuve. I am, ashamedly, not familiar with the Frank Herbert novel source material, but seeing this on screen -twice- was an event. As a film it is unapologetically epic with a swagger throughout it’s proceedings, with huge spacecrafts descending on planets into even bigger, vaster, deserts. I love that it never diluted what it was trying to do. There are no quips, no dumbing down, no simplification, everything here is so solid and uncompromised it it’s vision from it’s narrative, to it’s visual design, to the incredible soundtrack by Hans Zimmer, a man finally firing on all cylinders once more. As a film it lives and breathes, and pulsates, and moves, and the night ater seeing it I was having incredibly mad dreams about what I had watched. The film was a complete surprise for me.
Going forward, i’ve already mentioned above I want to try a lot harder to watch a more diverse selection of films from a more varied list of creators. As far as 2022 film goals go, that’s probably it. Additionally, I want to promote that resolution more, so discussing things here, and reviewing more. Keeping my goal in check and alive, instead of buried! I’m more interested in watching films because of word-of-mouth recommendations as well, instead of watching things because I “should” or simply because of hype. Less superheroes. So, reflective updates on this blog will hopefully be more frequent, but week to week, again, everything will be getting tracked on my Letterboxd profile. You can keep tabs on me there to make sure i’m staying on track!
With the reveal of the Lego Collectable Minifigs Series 22 late last year came also the exciting debut of a new Forestman cap, this time in blue! As readers and friends know, I am a big fan of the Lego Forestmen minifigs. These sets and minifigs originally came out in 1987 when I was too young to even comprehend Lego, but seeing them floods me with nostalgia.
I got the majority of the new Series 22 minifigs pretty early after release, and posted the below image of the now matching four Forestmen on my social media channels. The response was great, but from there were a number of questions about piece availability and rarity. This post is for additional links and piece history, in case anyone out there needs some definitive, comprehensive answers!
The BROWN and GREEN caps (775) are the original minifig caps, debuting back in the Forestmen subtheme in 1987 onwards. The brown caps appeared in ten sets total, while the green was in thirteen. Despite their age, I feel these are pretty common. It should be noted this is both the “classic” brown and green colours; these have, I believe, since been phased out and updated by Lego as a company.
The LIGHT BLUISH GREY (88489) cap is fairly recent, and incredibly rare, only appearing in a Lego City set from 2020 of all places; 60271 Main Square. Here it was used as part of a statue rather than a hat for a minifig. This is a reissue of the original headpiece, and I have a few of these.
The BLUE cap (88489), the newest colour, was released this year -2022- and is the headgear of one of the 71032 Series 22 minifigs, the troubador or bard. For me, he was the most desirable minifig of the series, and again, i’ve already amassed a few spares.
Not Pictured in the photo above is the DARK GREEN (88489) cap. This only appeared in two sets to two minifigs: the Lederhosen Guy in the 8833 Collectable Minifigures Series 8 line-up in 2012, and DC’s Green Arrow from the Justice League Anniversary Party set in 2018. Nowhere else since. I don’t have a Dark Green torso i’m happy enough with to match the hat to, so this has been omitted from the photo.
Something I haven’t seen but suspect exists is a RED cap. This is incredibly desirable to me as a piece -Red Archers, cool as fuck- but there’s a precedent for it as well: The Lego Group prototype many of their moulds in Red first before any other colour. These pieces are usually incredibly rare and never appear in sets but still nonetheless exist. I would love to have confirmation if this exists, and more importantly, how to acquire one. Google “Lego Red Prototypes” for more examples.
Torso-wise, things get a little bit trickier.
The GREEN torso (973p46c01) is the classic Forestman minifig. This debuted in 1987 and came in 10 sets total, the most recent being 6024 Bandit Ambush and 6079 Dark Forest Fortress, in 1996. These sets were limited release; I don’t believe they were released in the UK though I may be mistaken. Other torsos were also available for the Forestmen in these sets with red, blue, or black additional print details and frills, but none as simple as this.
The LIGHT GREY torso (973p46c02), appeared initially in the 6010 Supply Wagon set in 1984, before appearing in another five, it’s last appearance in 6060 Knight’s Challenge in 1989. I think this is interesting in that it is the first of the torsos: the green Forestman torso is a variation of it. It should be noted that the torso only ever came with blue arms n the sets above- i’ve cheated with the image above somewhat, these are Light Grey arms supplemented and swapped from the rest of my collection. I’ve added Dark Bluish Grey hands too- I think they look cool for the “Silver Archer”.
The BLUE torso (973p46c02, again) is exclusive to the Majisto -or Merlin- minifig, the first canon Lego wizard. This torso appeared in 7 sets, all within the Dragon Knights subtheme in 1993 and 1994 respectively. The potential to build a Blue Forestman has been there since then, with the blue cap this year finally completing the minifig.
The BROWN torso (973pb0093c01) is a bit of a cheat. It doesn’t match quite as well as the three above but still counts as an official Forestman torso- this only appeared in two sets 6079 Dark Forest Fortress and 6046 Hemlock Stronghold as part of the Dark Forest subtheme, in 1996. Again, these were limited release. This isn’t as 1:1 a fit with the other torsos above but i’m happy to count it as one all the same.
The legs for all the minifigures above are VERY common. Most of the plumes (4502a) in the caps are too, though when I uploaded the above image to Reddit a commenter informed me of the black plume availability. This only appeared in one set, belonging to one minifig, and appears in 6066 Camouflaged Outpost. I acquired this set last year. This piece goes for a starting price of £10.26, upwards to £37.45. I had no idea!
Hopefully this post helps anyone googling or asking about piece availability. I’ll update if anything new releases, but 35 years on, I’m incredibly excited to now have four different colours of Lego Forestmen. Lets see more!
Between government and professional incompetence, along with a few mental health bumps as a result, I found 2021 a lot harder than 2020. Restrictions, lockdowns, and social distancing continued to hurt quite a bit, but I continued on with my 1 Second Everyday project all the same. 2021 is now complete! Here’s the video!
There were a few points where I wanted to stop doing this, but looking back at the quick cuts along the year i’m incredibly thankful that I continued with it. I enjoy watching these immensely and it’s always rewarding rediscovering those smaller, happier, close-up moments of the year at large.
Work on the 2022 video starts today!
