Christmas is approaching rapidly and today is the first of the Advent Sundays. This year I feature the most popular (of the many) Christmas gift-bringers – Father Christmas, or Santa Claus. I use these names to identify the same character though, technically, that have different origins: Santa Claus – a Christian saint; Father Christmas – a pagan winter god. Father Christmas is a much older character than Santa Claus, who developed in Dutch colonial America. The characters have now become synonymous.
Which of the four characters pictured above is Santa Claus? Actually they all are, but who are you most likely to meet (in the English-speaking world at least) in the Christmas grotto of your local shopping centre/mall? Its number 4 of course. The others are: 1) a traditional early Victorian Father Christmas, 2) a Scandinavian Father Christmas gnome from the same period, and 3) Sire Christmas, the earliest depiction of Father Christmas from England in the 1600s.
Did you know that those first three Father Christmas’s are not recognisable to children as Santa today because of the art produced by a gay man a hundred years ago? It was the illustrations in The Saturday Evening Post by J. C. Leyendecker (1874-1951) that finally established forever the look of our present-day Santa Claus.
The way that Father Christmas, Santa Claus and his many other incarnations (which include St Nicholas of Myra and Sinterklaas) have been portrayed over the centuries is worthy of a massive encyclopaedia (I think one must have been published). Until Leyendecker artists had portrayed Father Christmas and Santa Claus in a variety of colours and styles. He could be tall or elf-like, fat or thin, with a beard or without. There was no definitive image, not even on Victorian Christmas cards. Leyendecker didn’t invent the red-coated, white bearded version we instantly recognise as Santa Claus today but his portraits were so powerful that Leyendecker is the reason we don’t see Santa dressed in green, blue, yellow or in any other of his earlier manifestations.
J. C. Leyendecker was from a German immigrant family and studied art and engraving in Chicago and Paris. In 1899 he was approached by the Saturday Evening Post to produce a cover, the first of over 300 he produced for the magazine over a period of 44 years.
Most of Leyendecker’s covers were not Christmas orientated but many were seasonal – Thanksgiving, Easter, Mother’s Day and New Year. Most of the work for the Post and others often featured the same male model. He was Leyendecker’s lover Charles Beach. In fact Leyendecker’s artwork turned Beach into a something of a minor celebrity. People would stop Beach in the street because they recognised him from Leyendecker’s work, mainly from advertising material for shirts and socks. Charles Beach became Leyendecker’s manager and agent and pushed the artist’s work to a stage where Leyendecker was earning the equivalent of a million dollars and more a year. The couple built a huge mansion for themselves and held lavish parties to rival those of Elsa Maxwell.
It is Leyendecker’s Santa Claus illustrations which fixed our image of the loveable Christmas gift-bringer forever. So much so that the work of his contemporary and fellow Saturday Evening Post artist Norman Rockwell, and the famous 1930s Coca Cola advertising campaign featuring a Leyendecker Santa, mean that thousands of men every year dress in identical costume to recreate the Santa popularised by Leyendecker.
The first of Leyendecker’s Santas for the Saturday Evening Post, however, was a little different. It featured on the cover of the Christmas 1912 edition and showed an old, thin man dressed as Santa in a long, grubby red coat. This was an example of topical references he often incorporated into his illustrations. This 1912 Santa actually depicts one of the many Salvation Army volunteers who used to stand on streets and ring a bell and collect donations from passers-by. In August that year the founder of the Salvation Army, Gen. William Booth, died and Leyendecker’s illustration was a tribute to him. (I’m actually writing this in the café bar of the Broadway Cinema in Nottingham, my daily writing location. The building was originally the Methodist chapel that Nottingham-boy William Booth worshipped in before founding the Salvation Army. A plaque in entrance foyer commemorates this fact.)
In the USA the Saturday Evening Post cover illustrations have achieved iconic status and have come to symbolise an ideal Americanised way of life. Its influence is seen in many other American publications, not to mention Coca Cola adverts, and in something which I find particularly appropriate and can’t live without at Christmas. I’ve always been a fan of the Carpenters, Richard and Karen (I’m related to them through their English father), and I have all of their studio albums on vinyl. In 1978 they released their first Christmas album. Little did I know at the time that the album cover was a direct tribute to the Santa covers of the Saturday Evening Post (compared side by side below). Their Santa owes more to the work of Norman Rockwell in depicting him without his famous red coat and in a more informal setting, but Rockwell greatly admired Leyendecker and continued his Santa tradition. Today, no-one thinks of Santa in any other way.
I have noticed a small lump on the left side of my testicle? – Ask A Doctor Free – Doctors Online – Your Medical Question Answered
over the past for days i have noticed a small lump on the left side of my testicle. Its not on the testicle but just to the side. Sometimes it is hard to find when lieing down but can be felt when standing up.
I have also noticed a small ache/ pain in my left side of the groin on the same side of the testicle with the lump. I’m not sure what to do.
Hello. Most lumps on scrotum or adjacent to it are benign and quite harmless. However you do need to consult if you experience or come to experience an enlarged testicle, pain in the groin or testicle or if lump becomes more pronounced or creates a bulge. Regards.
I’ve increased many of the points costs, and shuffled around a few of the abilities. That makes the nasty combos much more expensive. However, that’s probably not enough.
To balance out the flexibility somewhat, the team is not allowed to purchase CD: they simply don’t work well as a team in that way.
Finally, the limitations of small workshops mean that they can’t focus exclusively on the specialists (which take lots more time to develop and finesse). The contracts with the DGB require them to field teams rather than single cool players, so, they must take at least as many Jacks as they have Guards and Strikers. That change should also help in league play.
I’ve not included a minimum number of players as a requirement as several people suggested because I think this is more properly a global rule if it’s needed at all.
I don’t think the rule about having a number of Jacks equal to the number of Strikers and Guards is a problem, nor do I think it will help that much with cutting down on the power-level of this team. At least on paper, the higher costs are more in-line with sanity, but losing the Coaching Die is excessive. With the Zees (the only other team who cannot have them), they have a mechanism for some of the time getting temporary bonuses, even though they are banned from the best upgrades in League play due to the dice restriction. The Mechanites, as a team, lose too much with the loss of the dice.
I don’t know if I’ll have time to take these for a test-drive before you need to hand in the final version, but I suspect the Jack limit won’t matter, and the CD will. It will be fun to make a team, at least.
Does the “no coaching dice rule” apply only at inception though? I understand the fluff, but as other have said, no access to CD at all is pretty harsh… while just not allowing them to buy any at the start is in line with other teams that don’t start with CD.
It’s permanent. Harsh, yes. But they must have some fairly dramatic restrictions to counter tight many benefits.
the annoying thing is that they purchase skill 4 on the body and then have to pay 4 points for 2 arms which also give skill 4.
* if you buy an upgrade that doesn’t actually improve your stat or give you an ability you didn’t already have you don’t pay for it… that is why there is redundancy in the arm category.
wait didn’t see the line about only paying for a prat if it improves the player my mistake, still i think you need to condense claw and hand if they don’t do anything different.
They’re listed separately simply because they are different models in the sprue. It’s only one line, and I think it’s clearer being separate.
How will rolling “keeper” for a guard upgrade work? Is there a way to create one from the beginning? I would imagine you could since Mechs are boiled down to code and parts.
I’m sure you will have plenty of parts to add Striker or Jack arms to a suitable Guard/Keeper Frame… just pick your bulkiest bitz but give them the Dreadball Glove… I may actually steal some Mechanite Arms and use them on my Plague to represent “Upgrades” and XP gain =p
My initial thoughts were that the changes were far too harsh, but looking deeper that doesn’t seem to be the case
Firstly, here are a few interesting player builds, stuff in brackets is to illustrate how pimped out you can make each role, I don’t really think it’s worth doing though:
These can combine to offer various powerful teams especially with a couple of cards. Note that you’re paying 13mc for a Striker with Judwan stats, that’s pretty good imho. The 7mc Jack is now balanced and very interesting as he may be required to enable specialists. The 24mc Jack proved a nightmare in our tests, Run Interference with Gotcha and Alert meant he just threw threat hexes everywhere and 3+ strength is always nice.
The changes mean that good guards are now very expensive, which is as it should be when the team can have such effective strikers. Making Jacks necessary works really well. These are still pretty strong, but not imbalanced.
Quick recovery is not an ability I want to see often in this team, hence its expense. If it was only 1 or 2 points then you’d stick it on everything, and then it would quickly become an issue. Even if your opponent fluked getting one of the 20+mc monsters off, it could come straight back on, and that’s too good for cheap. I don’t think 4mc is excessive.
Still living in a building site. Yesterday someone managed to break part of the lighting, so now we need an electrician. Today one of the key builders is off sick. No wonder nothing has been built on time or in budget since the pyramids (Sorry Mr Khufu, can’t be done, mate… ).
Of course, me being me, I’ve started designing the game of the awfulness, as something to take my mind off things. Or, at least to see the lighter side (I’m sure there is one). Actually, I think this makes the perfect topic for a take that! style game. Certainly it feels like someone’s playing crappy cards on me all the time…
Based on my experience of moving house last year, I think someone already made the game of having work done on your house.
Find yourself a plot, get planning permission and build your perfect home… Or not, as you contend with local councils, unreliable builders, planning regulations and, worst of all, your unscrupulous, devious, back-stabbing neighbours!
I always thought the Money Pit idea was a plausible one. This is slightly different. Need a catchy title though…
For Self-Build game, you also need a ‘Round Tuit’ object that only one player or NPC can have at a time, is easily misplaced or incorrectly identified. Plus plenty of Distraction tokens representing pretty much every excuse under the sun, which are nullified by whoever has the Round Tuit at the moment.
Every player thus takes a different role, as Carpenter, Gibber, Mixer etc, and the Event Deck is full of all manner of pitfalls from ‘Can’t lay the cement today, weather’s turned to crap.’ to ‘But that’s a supporting wall, you can’t do that!’ and ‘No pay? No way.’ cards.
The Contractors are trying to pad the price, cut cost, and stay on time (ish) so they can move on to the next job.
The Subbies are trying to increase the cost through extra work and want to drag things on to pad the hourly rate, and don’t care if it never gets finished so long as they get paid.
That would work. It sounds like you’d be stuck needing exactly 3 players though. Who else could we add? Planning department? Building Inspectors?
In France we have a formulation : “Inspecteur des travaux finis”, someone that arrives when all is already done and the guy comes to tell what should have been done… and of course he doesn’t feel ashamed ^^
What about two different home owners (mr and mrs) who want slightly different things? Still want it within budget and on time, but both want to sway the project one way or another.
Have you ever seen a film called (I think) Mr Blandings Builds HIs Dream House? That’s got some amusing ideas in.