Venture

Arc #1665, "Ant Attack"

The arc does not have any Them! references (or at least it didn't when I reviewed it) but it is about ant-men attacking Paragon City.

It hasn't?

Denial: it's not just a river in Egypt.

Personally I always thought the in game cut scenes in the first Kalinda and Burke arcs were wonderful and would make a great addition to the MA.


Gods no. Imagine the cutscenes in the Mary Sue arcs....

"Two Households Alike" (#126582) is a level 20-29 arc that should meet your qualifications. My other four current arcs are all targeted for higher levels.

That's not the battles. Boss spawns are borked right now, and show up even on CL2 solo.

No, it's the battles. The same thing happens with Large battles in "Blowback" and "Splintered Shields". I left the battles at that size in those because those are 41+ and 45+ respectively; at that level a player should be able to handle a few extra Bosses here and there. (I also squishy-tested both with characters way under the designated minimum successfully.)

I am aware of the change (or bug, they still haven't said) that allows Bosses to show up at party size 2 now (which is what CLs 2 and 4 simulate), but that's a completely different spawn pattern. One of these "superfluous" Bosses will appear with exactly one Minion for a guard.

LMAO you're like a caricature, venture. I'd love to know if there's anything on TV that you like that comes in a goodly number of episodes.


Currently, The Closer, Saving Grace (on probation; it has the same problem as Lost just not quite as bad), and In Plain Sight.

Older stuff would include B5, Firefly, Joan of Arcadia, Rome...probably more I'm not thinking of, that's just what I have DVDs of.

Lost is very well-made television.

Which most of the time is like being valedictorian at summer school.

I am far from the only human being on the planet who thinks Lost is pretentious crap. Its developers long ago admitted they were making it up as they went along. In fact, in the DVD commentary for the season 1 finale of Saving Grace, its show runner Nancy Miller admits the same thing, and says "this is exactly how Lost is written", as if that was a defense, which it is not. Saving Grace lost a lot of its momentum in its second season precisely because Miller and her other writers didn't know what they were doing. It is just possible, looking at the early third-season episodes, that they might have learned their lesson.

TVTropes calls this a Kudzu Plot; see also The Chris Carter Effect. I think it could be summed up a lot simpler by saying soap opera. Once a continuity-based series (as opposed to an episodic one) has crossed into soap opera territory, it is finished. All you're watching is hack writing intended only to keep the paychecks coming.

Arc # 106553, "Trollbane"
tl;dr: 3 stars. Offenses: plot issues, overpowered mobs

Reviewed on: 7/11/2009
Level Range: 5-14
Character used: Iphigenia/Protector

This is a re-review. The original review is pasted below. I'm only going to go over changes from the original.

For starters, the level range is now an even 5-14 throughout.

The briefing in act III is slightly altered so that Numina's discovery of Circle magic appears before acceptance. It's still not really clear why you're acting in advance of her full findings. The Baron's clues attempt to handwave why his counterspells aren't useful, which is not entirely convincing. Act V is even more annoying than the last time I played this, since I was CL2 and had to deal with three +1 Elites and a +1 Bone Daddy. Also, it appears Act V is now a defeat-all, something I don't remember from the last version and which doesn't appear in my earlier review. Since the battle details are large enough to spawn Bosses on CL2 this moved the tedium level up to "kicking dead whales down the beach". To add insult to injury, after killing everything the mission still didn't terminate. There were no objectives left in the nav bar so I don't know if there was a mob that fell outside the map or an objective didn't trigger, or what. The briefing did imply that Back Alley Brawler was going to come with you but I never found him. In any case, after three extra passes through an empty map I gave up as I simply wasn't going to go through killing those Elites again.

I don't see any reason to change my rating. None of the balance issues have been addressed and the changes to the plot didn't really close the holes.

* * * * * *
Arc # 106553, "Trollbane"
tl;dr: 3 stars. Offenses: plot issues, overpowered mobs

Reviewed on: 5/17/2009
Level Range: 5-14/5-14/10-14/5-14/5-14
Character used: Amy Sunflower/Virtue
Back Alley Brawler calls upon you to help deal with a surge in Troll violence. Something is killing them off and they're lashing out at random, this time at a Skull 'dyne lab. On entering the burning Skulls lair you sense something mystic nearby.... As soon as you enter you come across Trolls and Skulls slugging it out. I didn't have to bother with Seeds of Confusion until the pack thinned down a bit. During the fighting you can hear some of the Skulls say "that ectoplasmic idiot got loose and attacked the Trolls!", which dovetails nicely with the remains of a necromantic ritual found after the shooting stops. It looks like the Skulls have whipped up something they couldn't quite control.

The carnage continues in Act II as one of the Trolls managed to grab a list of addresses at the last fight. He'd already passed it on before being arrested, but Brawler "convinces" him (with a stern look) to blab about the ones he remembers. You're sent to the first one on the list, which is almost certainly where the Trolls will go first. Brawler also gives you a "superball" from Numina that will lead you to anything mystical at the site. Once again, Skulls and Trolls are duking it out...but I also heard a bark from "The Crimson Fist". He turned out to be a Boss (on Heroic, meaning he should "really" be an EB), Energy Blast/Mental Manipulation from the looks of it. His info points out he was a Midnighter who died during the Rikti war and really shouldn't be walking around now. The ectoplasmic residue the Fist was composed of dissolved upon its defeat, and a little farther in there was a coffin with the Fist's real name, John Knox, on it. Brawler has to think about what you've found.

What you found was actually enough to scare Numina. She won't talk about it until she's sure of her findings. For some reason that isn't really clear waiting for that isn't an option. Brawler sends you to Oranbega, saying that if he goes personally it would trigger a massive reprisal from the Circle. There just doesn't seem to be any reason for you to go either, but, it's in the script, so.... After you accept Brawler tells you that Numina thinks there might be answers there, which is still kind of vague and probably should get moved up front anyway. He also fills you in a bit on Knox's history which is a matter of canon. Oranbega offers the usual Circle smackdown, along with a "Baron Schwarzeherr", Necromancy/Dark Miasma Boss and self-proclaimed elite necromancer. He won the first match thanks to a lag spike. After a retaliatory beatdown, he gave up a list of rituals the Skulls stole from him, spells intended to summon spirits of anger. This explains why whatever they've called up, using Crimson Fist's remains as a focus, hates the Trolls.

For Act IV the Skulls are out to summon another ghost, this time from a graveyard in Kings Row. Brawler wants you to take care of it while he deals with Troll reprisals in Skyway. He also tells you Numina put the scrolls you were given in the "please steal me" section of the MAGI vaults, booby-trapped with incantations that will destroy every zombie within half a mile. When you hit the streets in Kings Row, the Trolls are on the warpath...and so is the Illustrated Woman's ghost as an Illusion Control/Pain Domination Boss. I might have taken the first fall if I hadn't gotten shot in the back by an ambush wave. On her defeat you get a Clue saying you took a photo of her to show Brawler, presumably assuming your character doesn't know who she is from history (which most should, IMO), and another saying one of the Skulls gave up the name of the one in charge of this project, "the Bonemason". Brawler's response to the photo is to go beat more information out of the Baron. Um, yeah.

The result of his extreme rendition is a massive Circle offensive in Founders, leaving you to deal with the real problem: the Bonemason is leading the Skulls and more of the ghosts in an attack on the Hollows. It turns out he doesn't care about the Trolls in particular, he just needs lots of deaths to turn the Hollows into New Dark Astoria. Brawler and the Phalanx have to face the Circle, leaving the city's fate in the hands of a hero under security level 14...OK.... You get a bring-friends warning after accepting. Once again, the map is full of Skull-Troll battles. Your objective: four Skull leaders, the first of which is the Crimson Fist again. He inconveniently spawned at +1 too, but I dropped him in one try. The Illustrated Woman took three, and a full tray each time. This mob is way overpowered. Illusion and Mind Control need to be avoided until the Confuse powers can be dropped...at a +1 spawn she was able to keep my Controller permanently unable to attack as soon as the BFs ran out with Deceive alone. Next up was the Bonemason himself, who also spawned as a +1 Boss. This one was Necromancy/Dark Blast, meaning he has Dark Blast, Gloom and (probably) Siphon Life twice each -- think about what that means for his attack chain. It took about half a dozen tries, a full tray of insps each time, to take him down. The last of the Skull leaders was Tombstone, a regular Bone Daddy. The briefing is a typical congratulations from the Brawler, and a note from the author about the in-game monuments for John Knox and Mina "Illustrated Woman" Horne.

The arc has a good story up until the end, when Brawler decides to go street hunting in Founders' instead of dealing with a potential city-destroying threat. If the Contact is going to be someone so prestigious then either the threat has to be dialed down or its magnitude needs to be sprung on the player during the mission so there's no opportunity to call in the big guns. The trip to Oranbega in Act III is kind of wedged in as well. Finally the arc really has too many Elites for one that caps at 14...as in, any. There are only a few Elites at that level in the stock missions and they're pretty vanilla mobs. Custom Elites are way, way more nasty. On the plus side the mission does work well with the canon.

It is a known fact that the Rikti apparently have lost the ability (or choose not) to sexually reproduce and as such reproduce in an entirely artificial fashion.

Bwha? Where does that come from? What I get from B'Nadek and Dark Watcher's material is that the mutation process begins in utero and is continued after birth. I don't see anything that conclusively states Rikit use artificial reproduction....

He probably thinks Lost woukd be better if it was edited down to a single 90-minute movie.


Based on what I've heard about the show, I doubt it has enough actual plot to fill a 90-minute movie.

Edit: For those of you daunted by the number of missions, remember that we've only been able to post more than three arcs for just a few days.

Allow me to clarify my position.

There is no way in heaven, earth or hell that your character is interesting enough to carry 32 missions. Hamlet, who is generally considered to be one of the most complex characters ever created in English literature (if not the most), was only good for five acts, and two of those were pretty short.

I don't need to look at this to know that it's a train wreck, the MA equivalent of Ishtar or Waterworld. It's also exactly what I expected to see once extra slots became available (people were already doing it, just not in such a grandiose fashion). I suggest that you a) play some of the arcs I and other reviewers have given 4-5 stars to, and b) scrap this and try writing about things that don't involve your character.

Um, hate to break it to you, but if I'm reading the text files right the system "grabs" the critter description for a Boss detail by repeating it. It's not saving you any space by recycling the existing description.

So, while it may be annoying that you have to fill in the Contact info by hand, it's not going to save you any space to wait for the system to do it for you.

28 missions?

No.

Thanks for the feedback and high rating!

I wanted the RDF units to have more of an upscale/hi-tech look to them than stock Malta. I think Malta's troops should look more futuristic and less like they ransacked a military surplus store.

Thanks for the feedback and high rating!

My intent with the Redeemers was to give them a bit of a more primitive look, as they're resorting to "blood magic", which strikes me as being a more primal form of the art. Thus the bare skin and tattoo.

I don't see any reason for them not to look healthy. I assume the Circle only steals bodies worth stealing.

Even if it's OK thanks to supervillains and whatnot - they use them on decidedly non-powered individuals. The Skulls have... what, bone daddies? The Hellions, their Damned. Everyone else is really just a gang member. The Warriors, as well...

All members of these groups are superhuman. Skulls have resistance to dark attacks. Hellions are resistant to fire and vulnerable to cold. Members of all three are stronger and tougher than any normal human. The PPD is out buying armor suits that probably cost tens or hundreds of thousands per unit just to have a chance at fighting Paragon's gangs because if you shoot a Skull (or gods forbid, a Troll) you'll only make him mad.

This IMO is one of the game's big failures -- it should be absolutely clear that anything you fight over Underling rank has bona fide superhuman powers. The devs were going the right way with low-level Outcasts and Trolls in the original version of the Hollows but got shouted down.

Since I couldn't sleep I did the one thing I hadn't done yet with this arc...squishy-tested it. I used Ms. Gale/Virtue, a level 30 Storm/Electric. She did take a few deaths, almost all of which were due to high spawn density caused by playing on CL2, but I was able to clear the arc with her.

Thanks to the extra Bosses spawning on CL2 (and 4), she even downed a Zeus.

Brachaesnethar pointed out something that had occurred to me while I was writing this: it could be seen as an origin arc for a rogue SoA (or other villain). It isn't; Kobushi is not one of my PCs or an Expy of one. Still, something to think about.

Here's an update on the queue. Now that the lowbie queues are clear, I have closed them; I am no longer giving priority to those arcs. I'm still separating by faction since I get so many more Heroic arcs.

---

Hero: 137705, 171149, 161797, 179354, 59147, 15988, 1036, 55715, 37636, 17006, 174368, 60280, 178774, 100306, 181244, 91644, 167493, 149765, 191775, 4824, 171031, 242442, 227331, 41646, 77311, 81043, 67087

Villain:

Neutral: 177826, 67356, 1296, 176180, 215257, 207827

+++Rerun: 106553

Arc #185895, "Battle for Mercy Island"
tl;dr: 2 stars. Offenses: "just a bunch of stuff that happened", poor dialog, plot and gameplay issues

Reviewed on: 7/8/2009
Level Range: 1-14/5-15/1-14/5-15/5-14
Architect's Keywords: Solo Friendly, Canon Related, Drama
My Keywords: Same
Character used: Amy Sunflower/Virtue

First off, there's just no excuse for that level range. The entire arc could be set to 5-14 or 15.

Longbow agent Major Anderson is recruiting heroes for a big operation. On acceptance you're told the operation is to liberate the people of Mercy Island. This looks like a job for a level 15 character! Your first mission is to help secure the LZ. This is a defeat-all with a Boss (named Damned) but it's on the ultra-tiny Mercy Docks map so it's very short. On return you're told Longbow troops with hero support have taken key locations all around Mercy. Anderson tells you to "grab some chow" before your next run.

When he calls you later, things have taken a turn for the worse. They've run into heavy resistance and the troops that were supposed to take out the Fort Darwin airstrip were delayed. You're getting that job. This is another defeat-all with a Boss on the Arachnos Flier map used in Burke's first mission. The boss, "Anika Francis", is ranting about how "It was not Kalinda, it was the mystical threads of cosmic everythingness that brought me to rescue you from the snakes who would likely have devoured you by now." Um, yeah. Her powers were GotHeld/AndDied, though she ranted about lightning and thunder so maybe she was some kind of Stormie. She does call a wave of Red Hands as she's beaten down. The Clues and debriefing narrate troops pouring into Mercy, with a mention of a possible Positron sighting.

Anderson next wants your help because...no, I'm not making this up...the Skulls are going to back up the Arachnos troops, and that's a big problem.

Yeah.

On acceptance you're told to hit a warehouse the local Skull leadership is meeting at. There will be five leaders to take down and "there will be lots of Skulls in the warehouse, maybe more than any one hero or small team of heroes can handle." Right. When you get in the map, there are 3 leaders to defeat, per the nav bar ("1...2...5!"), plus a "Widow Princess". There are also some optional glowies and captives to release; completing either set triggers an ambush. Widow Princess turned out to be an Archery/Devices Boss/LT (I missed with the first hold, she got a shot off, and she had Targeting Drone up) with some fairly inane dialog (typo: "you're" for "your"; typo in her clue: "unit" for "unite"). On that note, the Skulls are voiced entirely wrong, they sound like Trolls: " Ima gunna collect me some cape bounty fro the spidaz! Git the guns boyz it open sezon on capes!" On your return Anderson tells you they're getting hammered; the debriefing narrates you seeing another hero (author insert) come in cursing Ghost Widow and carrying an unconsious Valkyrie (!) and someone else you can't identify.

For your next assignment Anderson wants you to hit an Arachnos base to raid their computers for any useful intelligence. There's a surprise (optional) Boss in this one "General of the Dead", who might have been a Necromancy/Dark Miasma Mastermind (typo in his clue: "it's" for "its"). You just have to find the right computer (I found one fake, might be more). The files you recover include data on Arachnos operations around the world, including Paragon City. Just the thing they'd leave unencrypted in a low-security base in a war zone....In the debriefing, all hell breaks loose as Recluse, Statesman and other heroes start duking it out in the skies over Fort Cerberus.

The last mission is a withdrawal from Mercy as the Arachnos counterattack is too strong. The Freedom Phalanx is said to be buying time for the Longbow troops and heroes to escape. You're asked to secure an Arachnos submarine base so some troops that have been surrounded can use it to escape. This is a defeat-all on the submarine base map, which is odious enough, but throws in a Ninjitsu Boss (Two-Blades Tommy) and then when you find the required glowie another Boss spawns back near the entrance just in case you haven't run around enough (Wulf the Viking, looked like War Mace/Shield). The last debriefing is a typical thanks along with a mention that Positron and Synapse both want you to run their TFs. As if.

This arc made me think of a Monty Python sketch, which is never a good thing unless the Architect was going for comedy...Mr. Neutron. The skit goes on and on about how dangerous Mr. Neutron is and how the world's militaries are bombing everyplace he could possibly be and the ending is supposed to be this huge special effects extravaganza...that we don't get to see. We don't see any of it. This arc has the same problem. The arc writes checks it can't cash, trying for too grand of a scale. In addition, the arc has no real theme -- I suppose you could make a case for "fighting against hopeless odds" but I don't buy it. It strains credibility past the breaking point to suppose that such low level heroes are having success in the operation when the big guns are getting nowhere or falling in battle. Typos abound (I tried to list them), the dialog needs work at best and the plot has some serious issues in places (Arachnos is going to get help from the Skulls? And we care?) This one needs work, badly.

Arc #143017, "Digital Transition"
tl;dr: 2 stars. Offenses: "just a bunch of stuff that happened", almost no plot, no characters to speak of

Reviewed on: 7/8/2009
Level Range: 40-54
Author's Keywords: none
My Keywords: Save the World, Sci-Fi
Character used: Agent Cerulean/Justice

The arc opens up with an email from "TheComputer@dev.null", telling you Television is taking over the Rogue Isles and Paragon City, and listing reasons why you would want to stop this whether you are a hero or villain. This is a very brute-force opening. If you "Click Here To Learn How" to stop Televsion, you're told to salvage what's left of Radio. You're sent to an abandoned office to find 2 parts, talk to "Lieutenant Nielsen" (who turned out to be a PPD robot ally) and defeat "BoomBoxx", a Noise Tank with at least one ambush wave. When you bring the parts back to your laptop, the Computer access them and brings Radio Free Opportunity back to life.

In the followup, Radio sends you to Psychic Clockwork Earth to retrieve a psychic transmitter from a Clockwork Prince. This will protect you from Television's mind control, it says here. This is the usual ruined-city map, there's one named Boss to find (small nit: there were lots of other Princes, no reason given why I had to take down this one in particular), and there's an optional "freedom fighter" to speak to, which turned out to be a Longbow SpecOps Ally. I didn't find it until after I'd already completed the mission by taking out the named Prince. I can't imagine why I'd want to drag a Minion-level Ally all over this map.

The briefing for the next mission says I'm partially protected from Television's mind control now, but Television is preparing to make some new broadcast that will cement its control and I have to stop it. Accepting gives you a 30 minute timed mission (no warning) on a tech map using PPD and Vanguard (who see through stealth). Fortunately there were only a few Vanguard spawns and a patrol near the entrance. Deeper in there were three transmitters to destroy, one glowie and the "Avatar of Television" to defeat, a Mind Control/NotSure Elite Boss. You do that, get a very perfunctory final debriefing, the end. The souvenir is a brief blurb saying one or your Contacts traced the emails to somewhere in Brickstown. That could mean...well, practically anything.

The one good thing I can say about this is the author did a decent -- not terrific, but decent -- job with Radio's dialog. That's it. The rest of it has almost no writing of any kind, no plot to speak of, no real characters or dialog, etc. There are a few lines that I think were supposed to be funny, which weren't. The PPD and (particularly) Vanguard have no real place in this and appear to have been used because they have cool costumes. The arc looks like someone did maybe the first 20% of the work in making an arc and stopped.

Big maps with few objectives and a ton of enemies you have to slog through to get to the joke.

Actually, except for the outdoor map in Act I, those are all small maps.

Yes, the designers have very strange ideas on what constitutes "small". Even in the cases where "tiny" maps exist they don't have enough detail points.

Thanks for the feedback!

Thing is, I get that it's a parody of propoganda... but I've never ever seen Recluse pretend to be anything other than an evil archvillain (even if he does paint the Freedom Phalanx an their ilk as oppressive).

There are examples of Recluse using "spin" in the canon, such as plaques 3 and 4 in the Arachnos Rising series:

[ QUOTE ]

Warburg is a symbol of Arachnos' strength. The city is dedicated to the many faceless soldiers who have given their lives to the cause of our benevolent dictator during the Arachnos Revolution of 1964. Warburg was once protected by a ring of nuclear-tipped rockets capable of striking both North America and Europe, but those were removed under an extortive 'treaty' with Paragon City in 1982.


[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]

The vigilante known as Statesman crept into the Rogue Isles one cold night in 1986 under the pretense of some manufactured disaster in Paragon City. He ambushed the valiant Lord Recluse while he was busy working in his Watchtower on the betterment of mankind and attempted to assassinate him. The Master of Spiders was not so easily slain, however, and quickly turned the tables on his would-be murderer. Statesman, beaten and bloody, limped off into the night to lick his wounds and plot further mayhem on our benevolent Lord Recluse.


[/ QUOTE ]

I gave it 4 stars; like i said, if i hadn't known you did this arc and that it was intended to be humorous, the first two missions would have been complete wall-bangers.

Well, it does say it's a satire in the browser entry. I'm not sure I can make it clearer than that....

If I can indulge in a little self-promotion, I was interviewed for this week's edition of the City Scoop.

The level range on the first mission is now locked at level 29. That should keep lowbies from being ganked by the ambushes.

Replies to various points:

Lots of talk about science and cleverness and so forth, yes, but you left out something that's key to Lord Recluse's propaganda: any reference to strength. Go listen to the "Strength to Take What You Desire" speech again.

I agree that strength is part of the package, but there's enough going on in here already. Besides, I see this as being aimed more towards the proles and less ambitious villains, the ones that need to be kept down.

Brilliant satire, but I wanted to kill you when I entered the mission and saw what the last objective was. Fortunately, it was a head fake.

I know that's a possibility, but anyone with any brains at all should see there is no system warning for AVs or even EBs (there is nothing bigger than a Boss in the entire arc).

Mission three: Funny, but I can not believe that you went there. (Are we to assume that Black Scorpion had a major influence over this simulation?) People with high offensensitivity may end up Reporting For Content, for both sexism and copyright or trademark infringement.

The IP issues are well within the satirical exclusion principle, though I suppose PS/NC may disagree. As for the content I'm prepared to defend it if necessary.

Without spoiling it, there's nothing even vaguely plausible about the custom mobs in this mission, not even as Arachnos propaganda.

They were the most ridiculous thing I could think of. Either they'll work for you or they won't.

There's also a bug in the final fight: the ambushes spawned friendly to me instead of hostile.

That's not a bug, it's a feature. As the dialog says, they're following the wrong plans.

Of course, the real horror is in the Big Bad's speech. Differential equations...*shudder* (I so need him to be doing the Calculate emote from the Science pack....)

P.S. "Get your parking validated?" Silly humanoid, only tourists drive in the Rogue Isles.

I assume the civilians have cars, even though we never see them, and the program isn't flexible enough to know that you probably flew or teleported or whatever. And yes, the souvenir is the validated parking ticket even if you did fly (etc.)...you got it validated anyway because you're evil.

I think you should do something about that level range, but now I'm convinced that you should make the entire arc 30+ instead.

Obviously the system is not working as advertised. Best I can do, I think, is to lock the first mission to level 29. I'll do that ASAP.

Those ambushes, by the way, are set to Rogue so there's a good chance of them getting stuck on the mutants.

I never saw any Nemesis in this mission, but the debriefing says I did.

There is an ambush when you destroy the last cyber-zombie chamber. You should have heard their bark even if they didn't reach you.

There is some good writing here but it's wasted on this dubiously humorous drivel. You should make a real Arachnos propaganda arc instead. By the end I wasn't sure who I was supposed to be laughing at - but I wasn't laughing so it's a moot point.

I'm sorry it didn't work for you. It would be very unusual to have a humor arc that everyone thought was funny, especially a fairly-complex satire. In my own defense, though, I will say that if you just didn't like it but thought there were no major technical problems a three-star rating might have been more appropriate.

I kind of looked at the presence of these ridiculous custom mobs as making a point about the absurdity of Nemesis plots.

There actually is a point to the Nemesis content. The purpose of propaganda is to get people to believe false things are true or true things are false. The program shows Nemesis as being a bumbling meddler who can't even keep his own plans straight because that's how they want the proles to see him. The truth is that Recluse probably doesn't understand Nemesis any better than anyone else. Regardless of what level of threat Nemesis actually represents, Recluse is going to be afraid of him because Recluse is essentially a coward (all bullies are cowards) and will fear what he doesn't understand or can't control.

Got my five slots and have two of them filled already!