Weekly Waffle # 390 – The boy who tried to fly
16th August 2025
This week for the Weekly Waffle I have been juggling work, hobby and web site projects. I’ve been travelling quite a bit so I’ve tried to use that time to carry on doing the maintenance on the site. It’s not as easy as it sounds because everything is on line. So I’ve been very dependent on having a good signal to get things done. But it’s all progressing, it just takes a little longer than it does when I’m working from home.
All the travelling has been allowing to start to listen to a new book. I’ve recently finished the The Three Body Problem trilogy. Which I can’t recommend highly enough. It’s a bit awkward at first but you need to remember it was originally written in Chinese and translated to English. So some of the constructs seem a little odd. But it’s really worth the time to get used to them. A fantastic set of books.
Anyway back to what I’m reading/listening to now. I saw a recommendation for ‘The Lies of Lock Lamora’ which is a fantasy hist book. Once again it took a little bit of time to get into it but it’s really good. And there are a couple more books in the series so I know what I will be reading next.
So with the web site work going well, I’ve managed to get a perfect SEO score for my home page. I’ve also been working on more of Falconers team. And looking at something I started with some of my Infinity posts. That’s trying to bring some of these minis to life.
I didn’t do this last week, simply because I hadn’t thought of it. But I’ve been trawling the interwebs to bring this week’s mini to life. I’ve not changed anything up on the painting front so I will let you have a Ikaros and then I will try and bring him to life.
You can see more Guild Ball miniatures at my gallery here
I’m going to start this section by diving headlong into the high-risk, high-reward lunacy that is Ikaros, the Falconers’ most reckless striker, and quite possibly the spiritual successor to every tragic mythological bird-boy ever committed to legend.
Let’s not kid ourselves: Ikaros isn’t here to play safe. He’s here to prove something—and that “something” changes depending on whether he’s dodging a Mallet to the chin or skydiving over a scrum to nick the ball. He’s part of the narrative baked into a model: raw ambition, sizzling with desperation, stitched together with equal parts foolish courage and kinetic flair. There are players who belong on the team sheet. And then there’s Ikaros—the lad who makes the team sheet catch fire.
Before he was launching himself around the pitch like an angry comet, Ikaros was just another street kid, eking out a living under the soot-choked skies of who-knows-where. But then along came Minerva—cold, composed, clever Minerva—who saw in this wiry guttersnipe something more than just fast fingers and faster feet. She took him in, gave him a place among the Falconers. But make no mistake: this wasn’t some fairy-tale adoption. This was a test. A challenge. Earn your place or lose your wings.
See, unlike the rest of his feathery friends, Ikaros doesn’t share that eerie communion with raptors. No whispered bird-speak, no soul-bond with a hunting hawk. For him, it’s all a performance. The feathers, the dive, the theatrics, they’re borrowed, mimicked, faked until they become something real. A paper mask in a nest.
Now, if you’ve ever seen Ikaros in action, and I mean really seen him, you’ll know he moves like he’s allergic to being still. His signature move, Wings of Air, isn’t just a flashy name. It’s a license to defy the table itself. With it, he soars, well, sort of glides, over models, terrain, and any obstacle between him and his target. An enemy striker holding the ball? Not for long. Goal open on the far side of the pitch? Give him a second, and maybe a prayer.
But let’s be crystal clear. This isn’t just mobility. It’s a psychological weapon. Ikaros doesn’t threaten the goal, he haunts it. Even when he’s out of range, he’s never really out of range. A single lapse in your opponent’s concentration and bam, he’s there, grinning, the ball already past your goalie, feathers fluttering like confetti in the wind.
Of course, there’s a catch. There’s always a catch.
For all his aerial bravado, Ikaros is fragile. Not “needs-a-hug” fragile—more like “catches-a-breeze-and-falls-over” fragile. He’s not winning any brawls, and if someone sneezes in his direction too aggressively, he’s down. You don’t play Ikaros because you want safety. You play him because you want chaos. Controlled, gorgeous chaos.
Playing him well means dancing the razor’s edge. Push too far and you’ll lose him before he gets a kick. Hold back and he’s just a very excitable mascot with better boots. The secret? Read the board like a hawk. Position him smart, strike fast, and never, never, assume he’ll survive the next activation.
What makes Ikaros so compelling, beyond the death-defying leaps and sheer cinematic flair, is how utterly human he is. He’s not a true Falconer. He doesn’t belong among the raptors and the blood rituals. But he wants to. Desperately. That longing to fit in, to earn his wings, not through mysticism but sheer bloody, minded determination, that’s the heart of him.
And that’s the tragedy, isn’t it? Like his namesake from myth, Ikaros flies higher than he should. Every sprint, every leap, every risk, it’s him daring the sun to burn him down. And yet we root for him. Because we’ve all felt that way at some point. Out of place. Trying too hard. Desperate to matter.
On the table, he’s a missile with ambition. Off the table, he’s a story we’ve heard a thousand times, only with more feathers and the occasional midfield faceplant.
So, should you field Ikaros?
Absolutely, if you’ve got the nerve. If your heart’s not in your throat when he takes flight, you’re doing it wrong. But play him smart, and he’ll reward you with moments that turn matches into memories.
He’s not just a striker. He’s a story waiting to unfold, one glorious, reckless goal at a time.
That’s all I have for you this week. I really hope you enjoy the change of phase as much as enjoyed writing it. It also gives me lots of potential to do more of this style of article and then group them together in one place.
And that is all that have for you this week. I hope you enjoyed this break down of the mini I’ve painted and I’m going to try and do this for the whole of the team. So you can guess what I have planned for next week. Although I have made another purchase this week that may interrupt my painting schedule when it arrives.
But for now at least It’s going to be more guild ball over the next few weeks. Until next week I hope you all keep safe, have lots of fun with whatever you have planned and most of all keep safe.
