30?  Oh, ****.  Game over man.  All down hill from here, so good luck Travis.  You're gonna need it...

Oh yeah, Happy Birthday too. 

- M

Man, this thread has fallen by the wayside this year.  What they hell?  Just 'cause Tommy's no longer around doesn't mean you jackholes can't inform me that Pavarotti's now croaked, among others...  I have to go into the Indiana Jones movie thread to find such things out. 

And if there was a section for famous people that I didn't see in our building but am working on things for, you'd have to put Ricky Jay, Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Jason Bateman, and Brad Garrett in there.  How's that for some name dropping?

Hell, I had way more than that at my prior auditing gig: Beatles, Guns n Roses, Snoop Dogg, Cher, Weird Al, and pretty much every major (and minor) music artist in between (past and present). 

Actually, in sticking with the topic of this thread, it was really sad to see that Brad Delp (of Boston) committed suiced a number of months ago.  I was firing off royalty money to that guy for 7 years, and met him a couple times as well.  Unfortunate to see Owen Wilson attempt to join him... 

Matt, do you know the contents of that Hoth pack? I can't tell from the pic what may be behind the left packaging window(Imp's side). They would have been smart to include the HTF snowtrooper w/E-Webb blaster; I hope it's in there.

Well, it says that there's 17 pieces included in it, and we can only see 13 of them by my count (including the AT-ST and Snowspeeder), so that means that there should be another 4 Imperials hidden in that front left corner still, one of which is supposedly a Holographic Veers.  I've got to assume the E-web Tripod Cannon thingamabob has got to be in there too, since it's already been made and would be needed to offset that Rebel Laser Cannon there.  Probably that, the Holo Veers, and a couple more Snowtroopers hidden in there to round things out, I'd imagine.  Or perhaps an AT-AT Driver?  I can't even recall right now if they've ever made one of those before...  Have they?

No idea where it'll be available yet.  Hopefully retail though, like the AT-ST was.  Much easier (and usually cheaper) that way.

Oden Lost for the Season

Yeah, that was pretty shocking and very sad to see that story this morning.  Damn, the Trailblazers just have some seriously bad luck.  Of course, everyone's already pointing out the similarity between this issue (and not choosing Durant first), and the Sam Bowie issue way back in 1984, being picked before Jordon, and pretty much being a total injury-prone bust.  Apparently the Blazers had even expressed some serious concerns over Oden's knees prior to the draft, but ultimately blew them off, partly in favor of Oden's sterling personality (in trying to reshape the team's "Jail Blazers" image).  Man, they're gonna suck this year, especially after having traded away Zach Randolph.

Durant, on the other hand has made a far more impressive showing in the Summer Leagues and for Team USA than Oden did (who actually quit the USA team due to fatigue, IIRC).  Talk about some serious regret for the Blazers staff.  Oy.

Now this thing is cool!  (hopefully the Speeder's windows look better though)



Almost makes me want to grab a couple, one to open, and one to keep sealed.  Of course, that would entail me having to go back and do the same with the prior AT-AT and AT-ST, which I'm not too overly keen on doing.

I'm still in dire need of catching up on the BH and COTF sets, since I pretty much just skipped those releases out of sheer laziness.  Doing better on the Alliance and Empire set though, and may even be up for some minis trading again soon (I know I've got an extra VR Boba Fett from that set for sure).  Here's the Force Unleashed boosters from RS too:



Interesting.  I thought all 60 of these might just come from the game, but fortunately it looks like they're going to mix in some regular movie stuff too, based on the Dagobah Luke picture there.  Anyone keeping tabs on what's coming (rumored) from this one?

Case anyone's reading ...this year at the Con a 'promo' Battle droid was passed out at the SW miniature table in the Hasbro booth. I don't believe it's a 'true' promo though, as it has no identification as such on the underside of the base as they usually do.

Pretty sure that was one of the older monthly league tournament Promos, as it did have the "Promo" logo on it, just nothing about it being specific to SDCC.  I'm so far behind on all the promos now that I may ditch all the ones I have so far.  Just way to hard to get when you don't actually "play" the game, but just collect the minis, like me.

I was stoked to see R3-A2 sneak back into the mix, after being pretty disappointed that the HTF astromech didn't make the initial cut.  That definitely gets one of my votes.  It sucks to see the black Bespin Guard get nixed, though it technically never should've been in there in the first place since it wasn't going to be a straight re-pack.  That POTJ Bespin Guard kinda sucked though, so hopefully we get the black dude (and a couple other ethnic variants) in a more ESB screen accurate format later on.  What's absolutely lame is that Hasbro left that old POTJ Bespin Guard in their list of finalists, since I'm quite sure no one wants more of that piece of crap, and it's going to finish dead last in the voting.  Wasted a good spot in the list that should've gone to another candidate.  Sad to see all those Spacetrooper votes go to waste as well, since that figure probably finished first in the voting overall.  All that said, here's my final Top 5 list, in order of preference:

Zutton (Blue Snaggletooth)
R3-A2 (Battle of Hoth multi-pack)
Zev Senesca (Snowspeeder Pilot)
Chewbacca (Early Bird kit)
Colonel Wulf Yalaren (Death Star Briefing)

While I'd love to see the VOTC Stormie dumped back into regular (basic figure) rotation sooner than later (I still expect later at some point), I've got plenty of loose ones already, plus he was already offered on a card.  For this poll, I'm mostly interested in seeing OT figures offered on a card for the first time ever, hence my selections above.  It'll be interesting to see what happens...  Not much time left to vote though, so get your butts over to Hasbro and vote for my selections before it's over! 

This wave surprisingly hit a few SoCal Walmarts tonight.  No rest for the weary.  Oy.