Tag: Seasons of Spam 2022

Our annual tradition moves along, another batch of Advent Calendars. Ace handling Star Wars (again), Eric handling Harry Potter (again), and Nick handling Marvel (again). We’re adding a little twist to this and doing our own bonus calendars of silly things, so Ace is waiting on Amazon, Eric is sampling Hot Sauces that may kill him, and Nick is enjoying indulging his stupid amount of knowledge of the world of Warhammer 40k through little chibi Space Marines.

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We’re in the thick of it now. So far, Star Wars is pulling ahead with three wins, while Harry Potter and Marvel are lagging behind. Don’t worry folks, if there’s anything we’ve learned over the past years of doing this, it’s that the quality can – and always does – rapidly change.

• Star Wars: 3 Hits / 1 Misses
• Harry Potter: 2 Hits / 2 Misses
• Marvel: 2 Hits / 2 Misses

LEGO Star Wars / ??? (Ace)

Ah well, after yesterday’s thumbs down (though, admittedly, it’s probably not that bad), I wasn’t sure what to expect today but a battle droid? Should be a MEH droid, right? I mean, I know LEGO has to fill the days with stuff but this is the laziest of the lazies. I could not be more disappointed.

LEGO Harry Potter  / Hot Sauces (Eric)

Quick recap here: I have 24 sample hot sauces. I down a tablespoon, then open and build the day. Oh, and I record it all.

Day 5 is here, which means I’m a fifth of the way done. It already feels like I’ve been doing this forever.

Two good builds in a row? I’m not sure what to do with myself.

This is the Chamber of Secrets, and the more I look at it, the more I like it. Every piece is used extremely purposefully, to make up the giant stone face of Salazar Slytherin. Compared to the Whomping Willow from yesterday, which felt more like “just build a tiny tree”, today’s vignette is on a whole ‘nother level. My one critique is that I wish the snake was green. The piece actually has come in green before, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility. It also would have given some nice contrast between the gray of the face, to make it even more distinctive.

And if you like horseradish, you’d probably love today’s hot sauce – SMOKEY HORSERADISH SAUCE. I don’t know about smokey. I’d change the name to NASTY HORSERADISH SAUCE. I mean, it wasn’t even hot.

LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy / Warhammer 40k Chibi (Nick)

I’m fairly certain that Rocket Raccoon hasn’t actually changed since he was first introduced outside of printing, but somehow I like this minifig less and less each time I see it. Maybe it’s because I look at too many kids books these days and he reminds me of a fox in this form, or maybe because the googles make him look like he’s just doing some World War 2 Cosplay for some reason.

The lack of anything to make this feel Advent-y means that I unfortunately wasted all of my charity “ups” on Star Lord, so I can’t really give it here. It’s also not helped by, spoilers, the fact that the rest of his build is in future days based on the box art. We have two of our Guardians so far, and they’re just regular members shoved in the advent. I know there are better versions coming, but I wish this was feeling more festive. So it’s a miss.

Another one of the founding legions is up today, and this is highlighting one of the tiny touches of the calendar that’s just a very meta touch that more hardcore 40k fans into the lore are going to notice and love. I mentioned yesterday that the origin of the Space Marines were around the legions, twenty of them (but really eighteen – two are erased from any records or mention and a total mystery). Each legion was organized around a number, not just a name, so the Dark Angels were the 1st Legion. Well, I legion, because the motif of 30k was very much a neo-roman thing (40k is neo-gothic).

So, the Dark Angels were on December 1st, and here we are on December 5th, getting our 5th Legion White Scar. The Scars were another founding legion, unique and a wee bit problematic in their lore in that pseudo cultural appropriative way. Their whole shtick is basically “what if we took some Mongolian stuff and some far eastern stuff, threw it in a blender, and then put them on jetbikes.”

I’ll be honest, White Scars are probably the legion that I’m least interested in doing anything with. Their 30k models are really cool, all jetbikes and speaders, but amazingly expensive to build. Painting white is the absolute worst – white is an awful pigment to work with, and it never looks right. Pure white on a miniature just looks wrong, you really want really light gray or some other color combination. Lore-wise, I’ve never really read through their books like I have some of the other chapters or legions. We’re not getting to my legion of choice for a few days, but I’ve read plenty on the Dark Angels and enjoy trolling their fans – all 40k fans do, they’re like the AFOL that gets unreasonably angry when you mix fleshy and yellow faces so you always do it and pretend like nothing is off just to bug them. White Scars, though, basically just exist and love to ride their jetbikes, which, you know, I can respect.

Check Out the Previous Days

FBTB’s LEGO Advent Season of EXTRA Spam 2022:

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4

Our annual tradition moves along, another batch of Advent Calendars. Ace handling Star Wars (again), Eric handling Harry Potter (again), and Nick handling Marvel (again). We’re adding a little twist to this and doing our own bonus calendars of silly things, so Ace is doing <something>, Eric is sampling Hot Sauces that may kill him, and Nick is enjoying indulging his stupid amount of knowledge of the world of Warhammer 40k through little chibi Space Marines.

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We’re seeing a little uneven start to the calendars, with Harry Potter firmly stuck in the realm of “phoning it in” and Marvel and Star Wars doing okay things wrapped in frustrating instructions. Hopefully they can turn the corner and pick things up.

• Star Wars: 3 Hits / 0 Misses
• Harry Potter: 1 Hit / 2 Misses
• Marvel: 2 Hits / 1 Miss

LEGO Star Wars / ??? (Ace)

Yeah. Don’t know what this is. Based on its color palette, I’m gonna guess it’s an Imperial vessel of some kind. It seems so familiar to me, my first guess was Gideon’s light cruiser from The Mandalorian but that just doesn’t look right. So then my brain thinks, “Welp, since I don’t recognize it, it must come from either the Prequel or Sequel Trilogy or Solo because they suck and I try not to remember anything from them.” I could be wrong though, it could be from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, you know, the GOAT Star Wars movie ever and I would be ashamed for not remembering it. So huge thumbs down for including some ship that can’t be easily googled.

LEGO Harry Potter / Hot Sauces (Eric)

Quick recap here: I have 24 sample hot sauces. I down a tablespoon, then open and build the day. Oh, and I record it all.

Guess how relieved I was to pull out my second Ghost Pepper hot sauce in four days? Not relieved at all? Good guess.

If you thought my hiccuping in the video was annoying, how do you think I felt? I couldn’t stop for 15 minutes after I stopped recording.

But man THIS? THIS is how you do a vignette. Not only is it instantly recognizeable as the Whomping Willow, but it’s even got a bit of action, thanks to a 3-piece Ford Angela. I do wish there was a little more verticality to the tree, maybe by sticking one of the branches upwards, but I really can’t complain.

This is the new standard I’m holding all of these vignettes to.

LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy / Warhammer 40k Chibi (Nick)

Remember that iconic thing in Guardians of the Galaxy when, I don’t know, Drax or someone, slapped some tools on a small fence and then put some dynamite next to it? Such a classic. This isn’t even half-assed, it’s quarter-assed at best, and there aren’t enough thumbs down or misses to give it.

We’re getting into a fun chapter, the Blood Ravens, probably best known for the part they play in the Dawn of War video game series. They’re an early successor chapter, much like the Black Templars. But unlike the Black Templar, the legion or chapter they were formed from is unknown… or perhaps permanently erased

This has led to all sorts of fan speculation and theories. It’s doubtful it’ll ever be answered, which is part of the fun of Warhammer 40k – one of the main features of the setting is everything is being relayed by unreliable narrators. The “story” of 40k is effectively being told as if retelling history for records of the whole galaxy… and it’s based around the events of the Horus Heresy in the year 30k. Fun little aside is that there’s a game for Horus Heresy, which is effectively the Historical Wargame version of Warhammer 40k.

I suppose some of the terms should be explained… Legion is how Space Marines organized prior to the Horus Heresy as part of the Great Crusade – to unify humanity and basically form the Imperium of Man by force. Turns out that a galactic-wide civil war didn’t make the Imperium awful, they were bad before incase there was doubt. There were 18 original legions – 9 stayed loyal, 9 turned traitor. So far, we’ve only met the 1st Legion, the Dark Angels. To keep any chapter from being too powerful once the war was over, they were broken up into smaller chapters that were ostensibly limited to 1000 Space Marines at max (or so), renamed, and reorganized. So The Black Templars were spun out of the Imperial fist and then promptly didn’t follow the maximum rule, as did several other chapters.

Yet the origin of the Blood Ravens goes back to almost around the Heresy, if not to it, and there’s no record as to who their Primarch (basically, the demigod that served as the genetic template for them) was, or what legion they came from. That’d inform their traits, what they were like, culture, etc. Usually, you can guess… except the Blood Ravens are most well known for having a lot of powerful Psykers… basically space wizards… and having a strong connection to the Warp (a place where magic, and daemons, come from).

There was a legion that was well known for having a connection like that, the Thousand Sons. Except there’s a problem… they were traitors during the Heresy, and the Imperium of Man is not known for things like mercy, forgiveness, or compromise. It’s never really been called out in game, most of it is fan speculation, but that’s the fun of Warhammer 40k and the unreliable narrator… as well as the fact that there are just hundreds of books and stories out there for it. Likely there won’t be an answer, but it’s fun to wonder.

Check Out the Previous Days

FBTB’s LEGO Advent Season of EXTRA Spam 2022:

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

Our annual tradition moves along, another batch of Advent Calendars. Ace handling Star Wars (again), Eric handling Harry Potter (again), and Nick handling Marvel (again). We’re adding a little twist to this and doing our own bonus calendars of silly things, so Ace has fallen for our peer-pressure, Eric is sampling Hot Sauces that may kill him, and Nick is enjoying indulging his stupid amount of knowledge of the world of Warhammer 40k through little chibi Space Marines.

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I like to say Day 2 is really where things start averaging out. If LEGO pushes out a cool build for Day 1, it’s never cool on Day 2. Ace got a clone minifig, so at least he can add it to his army. Nick got a fake Walkman that doesn’t even fit in the box that comes with it. And Eric got something that he could build easily even while fighting back the effects of a ghost pepper. So he’s happy, at least.

• Star Wars: 2 Hits / 0 Misses
• Harry Potter: 1 Hit / 1 Miss
• Marvel: 1 Hit / 1 Misses

LEGO Star Wars / ??? (Ace)

A Droid Tri-fighter! I haven’t done all of the LEGO Advent Calendars in the history of mankind so I don’t know if this was ever done in the past, but today’s model is a really nice rendition. The use of the cheese slope to lock in the angle of plate calms my OCD. It’s really just a neat build. Day 3 and not a stinker so far. We’re due up for some major let downs.

My other themed calendar hasn’t shown up yet. Maybe today or tomorrow. And once they show I’ll go back and edit the previous days’ posts.

LEGO Harry Potter / Hot Sauces (Eric)

Quick recap here: I have 24 sample hot sauces. I down a tablespoon, then open and build the day. Oh, and I record it all.

Yesterday was bad. Like, really bad. Unfortunately, I looked at the ingredients of some of the other hot sauces I have, and it will get worse. Possibly a lot worse.

Not today, though.

Both the hot sauce and the LEGO today have one thing in common – I don’t want either of them.

This is the fourth year I’ve done the Harry Potter Calendar, so at this point I’m just completely tired of seeing Harry Potter. Like, I get that we have to have him – that goes without saying. I just wish there was more creativity put in other than just “Hogwarts Robes”. So far, this calendar has completely abandoned any sort of Christmas theme, which means there’s no rules. Give me pajamas Harry Potter. Or cursed fish man Harry Potter. Anything but Hogwarts Robes again!

For the hot sauce – ASS KICKIN’ WASABI – the best thing I can say is that Wasabi never last very long. The heat was gone around the time I finished recording, though the nasty wasabi taste still lingered.

Two thumbs down for these two.

LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy / Warhammer 40k Chibi (Nick)

First things first, I know that the Prison Drone is upside down and backwards here in my picture. Going to be honest, didn’t care enough to flip him the right way, because this is how he was pictured on the nominal amount of instructions that LEGO provided and they couldn’t be bothered to show the orientation of how the drone was supposed to look.

It is the right color, though, which is a nice touch. I honestly couldn’t remember, since they were in the movie so briefly. So, yeah. Here’s an upside down drone. It’s not a bad little representation, which could have done with a way to prop it up a bit, but I’ll still give the little micro-ish build a nice hit.

Ah, the Black Templars. There’s a common little saying among 40k fans… “there are no good guys in 40k” – and it’s true, there really aren’t. There are only a whole lot of shades of very, very, dark gray (or grey, since this is a game from the UK), and black. Well, except, the Orks, they’re just innocent and silly, only want a good fight, and their technology works basically through a magic because they believe it will.

The Imperium of Man aren’t good, they’re an oppressive tyrannical and totalitarian regime built around a religious cult that worships a corpse demi-god Emperor trapped on a golden throne. It’s built around genocide, intolerance that could easily be called fascism (though that’s a whole bigger debate), and the whole universe is the epitome of “grimdark” where war isn’t just constant, it’s the only option for survival for everyone. The Space Marines don’t exist to protect the Imperium, that’s a happy biproduct… they exist to enforce the Empeoror’s Will (and in truth, the whim and will of the bureaucracy of the Imperium) on whatever they decide is a danger.

What does this have to do with the Black Templars? Well, they take that whole idea and turn it up to 11. They were formed out of fanatical devotion as one of the first chapters after the heresy, by a particularly devote member of the Imperial Fists (more on them later) who was one of the first converts to the “Imperial Cult” – belief that the Emperor of Man (actual name) was in fact a god. Then they built a whole army to kill anyone that didn’t believe or dared challenge it. And any Xenos (aliens), Pskers (wizards), or generally undesirable things (anything they felt like) along the way.

Basically, they’re a bit touchy, is what I’m saying. I have to ding this little Chibi guy, though, because he lacks a devotion chain, and all Black Templars chain their weapon to their wrist and will not remove it until all enemies have been slain and victory has been achieved. Normally, I’d make a joke about how that’d make it hard to use the bathroom during a prolong engagement, but the lore of 40k has that covered with the space-marine implant called the Black Carapace.

Check Out the Previous Days

FBTB’s LEGO Advent Season of EXTRA Spam 2022:

• Day 1
• Day 2

Our annual tradition moves along, another batch of Advent Calendars. Ace handling Star Wars (again), Eric handling Harry Potter (again), and Nick handling Marvel (again). We’re adding a little twist to this and doing our own bonus calendars of silly things, so Ace is being peer-pressured by the rest of us to go do something, Eric is sampling Hot Sauces that may kill him, and Nick is enjoying indulging his stupid amount of knowledge of the world of Warhammer 40k through little chibi Space Marines.

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Yesterday seemed like a decent start, and this isn’t the US Congress so we don’t allow for “present” votes, only hits and misses. We ran the whole range yesterday, with Star Wars starting out strong, Marvel kind of sitting in the middle, and Harry Potter coming in like a less than healthy wet F.A.R.T.

• Star Wars: 1 Hits / 0 Misses
• Harry Potter: 0 Hits / 1 Misses
• Marvel: 1 Hits / 0 Misses

LEGO Star Wars / ??? (Ace)

I’m not a Clone guy but I do have enough of a familiarity of the named clones to know that this guy is… (checks Google)… Commander Cody! Yeah that’s the guy! Not quite holiday related but doing a quick check on Bricklink shows that any version of him is gonna cost at least $20 bucks before any fees and shipping so getting this one on just the second day of the calendar is pretty awesome for just the economics of it. Christmas can come early indeed.

I went out to two Target stores near me and couldn’t find squat on fun non-LEGO calendar. Either they were all sold out or Target pulled them off the floor. But I must be getting old because not once while I was traipsing around the stores buying stuff I didn’t need did it ever occur to me to check out their app. But seeing as to how I’m already a couple of days late on this, I found something on Amazon which should be here tomorrow.

LEGO Harry Potter  / Hot Sauces (Eric)

Quick recap here: I have 24 sample hot sauces. I down a tablespoon, then open and build the day. Oh, and I record it all.

I thought Day 2 certainly couldn’t be worse than Day 1. Then I pulled out a ghost pepper sauce.

This one’s obviously a Quidditch Pitch, as I said about five different times in a hot sauce-infused stupor. This year’s calendar foregoes more traditional LEGO Advent Calendar builds for these vignette. I can’t dock it for experimenting, at least. We’ll see how it holds up over the next 22 days.

As for the model itself, it’s simple to build (which, this particular year, is especially important), but still distinctive and clear. Unlike, say, yesterday. Good thing we didn’t have the ghost pepper sauce then.

I really hope the hot sauce doesn’t get worse than today’s – ALL NATURAL ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE SAUCE. Because if it does, I’m not sure I’ll make it.

Unless I get lucky, and that’s the day the elusive Harry Potter minifig appears.

LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy / Warhammer 40k Chibi (Nick)

Okay, headphones and a Walkman that LEGO clearly couldn’t get the license to (or didn’t bother to) for the calendar so it just looks like a bland cassette tape player instead of product placement. We always get a present or three in these calendars, so it’s interesting to get them so early and have them clustered up right around Peter.

This is such a conflicting little day, because the gift is nice and actually opens, rather than being brick-built, but only fits the headphones. It comes with a 1×1 round tile that’s supposed to… hold, something? The inside picture on the advent doesn’t explain it and it doesn’t fit anywhere unless you stick it to something. You can’t clip the headphones, the headphones don’t open, and they only fit around like a neck piece. As an accent part it’s nice but we have different headphones that wrap around the head or hair and might have worked better.

The cassette player, too, is a great tile but stuck on something that makes it very thick. This whole calendar based on the look is more comics than the movies, but this design is either original Guardians (since it got replaced by Zune at the end of two) or… not the comics since the whole music thing was very much from the movies. I want to like all of this a bit more. After letting Starlord squeak through yesterday, I’m feeling a little less charitable here, so I’m not going to give this one a pass. This just ends up feeling less than the gift slot from previous years, and I’m going to go with a miss.

As for the Grimdark Cuteness…

Ah, the Howling Griffons, a strict Codex Astartes following Ultramarines successor (which is a whole big of lore that yes, I’m going to expound upon) formed in the 33rd millennium. Or, as they’re better known, the chapter you create when you want to hate yourself with a paint scheme and just cry every night.

Split colors aren’t really the biggest problem, that’s something you can solve with a practiced brush and some careful masking. It’s more annoying than anything. It’s working with yellow. There’s a hierarchy of terrible colors to work with in miniature paints, and at there are two colors at the very top of that list: yellow and white.

They’ve been a background player in some of the bigger books Games Workshop’s fiction arm, Black Library, has produced in recent years, like Dark Imperium, and were instrumental in the Badab War, which is one of the more bonkers lore settings that isn’t the Horus Heresy – which is the foundation for everything that led to 40k being what 40k is.

Check Out the Previous Days

FBTB’s LEGO Advent Season of EXTRA Spam 2022:

• Day 1

So it’s come to this, another year and we are scrambling because we knew that December was coming and yet still, somehow, managed to procrastinate until the last minute and just barely got this done so we could get the posts going. We’re adding an extra little twist this year, inspired by a stupid thing Nick read about a dumb Warhammer 40k knock-off advent calendar, and each one of us is grabbing a bonus advent calendar to mix in with what we’re doing.

We’re not really mixing it up… Ace is doing Star Wars (again), Eric is doing Harry Potter (again), and Nick is doing Guardians of the Galaxy (… again?). But for our bonus stuff, Eric is doing a Hot Sauce selection that may actually kill him before this is all done, and Nick is doing Warhammer 40k Chibis that are adorable and give him the opportunity to bore you all with an absurd amount of lore and nerd knowledge.

We will keep a running tally at the top, like we always do, and update and link back to the previous ones as we go along.

LEGO Star Wars (Ace)

First things first, this photo sucks. I need to get back to my little mini photo booth for some better lighting.

The second thing though? This thing rocks! One of the most recognizable ships from the PT era, this micro Republic Gunship has a neat approach that involves a pane-less window on its side to start the building process. It’s not from my favorites series of Star Wars films, and it’s not one of my favorite Star Wars vehicles, but I can recognize a good build when I see one, and this, my friends, is a great one. Nice start to the month-long advent-ure. Ha! See what I did there?

The third thing is I failed to pick up a second calendar. Maybe if I’m feeling up for it I’ll venture out to Target or something later today and then add to this post.

LEGO Harry Potter / Hot Sauces (Eric)

So here’s the deal – I decided to take hot sauce before I built and reviewed each day. Bad idea? Certainly. Funny? Maybe. Going to cause gastro-intestinal problems? Definitely and/or already has.

I have 24 sample hot sauces. I’m downing a tablespoon, opening, and building the set. Oh, and I’m recording each day. In case you want to literally see me breaking down.

So yeah – Day One. Still not sure what this thing is if not Grimmauld Place. That’s a bad sign for a build first off the bad. Also, I’m docking points for it not being Harry Potter. This was a rough hot sauce, and I needed a really easy build. I had a whole bit planned for how I’d bemoan getting Harry Potter in ever set ever. Oh well. Spoiler, I guess, for whenever HP shows up.

The build is too complicated for a hot sauce-addled brain. And it’s unclear. That’s a thumbs down. Bad start, HP Calendar.

As for the hot sauce – HOT SAUCE FROM HELL – it is definitely as advertised. Very hot. I only started feeling normal about 30 minutes after. I do not recommend drinking a tablespoon of it.

Also, the videos will be shorter moving forward – I just wanted to give a bit of intro in this first one.

Great start to the Christmas season!

LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy / Warhammer 40k Chibi (Nick)

I guess they sort of had to start with Peter, didn’t they, and give us the exact sort of effort that we’d expect out of Mr. Space Middle Management. I would really hope to see so much more here in making this feel more like an Advent or holiday feel, which we know is coming up based on the box art. As a figure, it’s fine, even if his boots are way too boxy and a huge step back from the custom foot-pads that used to be an accessory on the original figure.

I don’t want to call it a miss on day one, so I guess the most “meh”-ist of hits.

For bonus calendar, and our very first figure, we get a cute little heretic from the Dark Angels chapter of the Space Marines. Never say the word “Fallen” in any sort around this guy, or things will go badly. I’m a Blood Angels guy myself, but I guess one of the lads from Caliban is okay, even if they are secretly traitors, can’t find their own Primarch even though they’ve been driving around the galaxy with him in the trunk of their flying space rock for ten thousand years, and story an armory worth of forbidden weapons that would likely give Rocket Raccoon a heart attack out of envy.