We Love Drafties!

 As Julie talked about last time, we all agreed for once on which Noriker we wanted to take home. For the record, the black leopard was the runner-up: we love its bold spots and had a great name on deck. That color variation might have won if our one and only Appaloosa-spotted herd member, Eveningecho, wasn't also black and white.

That means, yes, we chose more subtle bay tobiano! We knew we wanted it to be a mare because that gorgeous star meant we could finally haul out a star-themed name for a Star Stable horse. (Believe it or not, this is our first horse with only a star on its face. Brightbeam, our APH, does have one, but she also has a large snip, so it would've seemed wrong to focus only on the star.) Of our shortlist of star-themed names, "Starboard" eventually came out on top. The winning vote actually came from our grandma. =)

Does she have a preference for turning right? Sure, let's go with that. XD 

The name seemed extra appropriate to Julie and me because we're in the middle of reading a fantasy book involving lots of sailing. 

Both of them look so happy in this girl-meets horse screenshot!

We actually bought her out at the Noriker's current home location of Silverglade Manor rather than at the bazaar itself, since the discounted price applied either place. (It gave us the opportunity to get up-close-and-personal with the Noriker one last time before committing to a specific color and name.)

the first ride!

Absolutely no regrets! <3

The first sparkle

We were in the middle of using a weekly stable care ticket when we had to commit, so Starboard actually spent a few days chilling in the stable after that original first ride. Our goldeny champagne Willowwind was Clara's lucky mount on Mom's birthday. As her birthday was on busy Monday this year, we didn't have much time to play on her big day. More on that to come!

Starboard is now getting our full attention. She's getting quite familiar with Valedale, since we've been spending most of our limited playing time there, either gardening or making progress on the Paths. Once we hit a less busy stretch in real life, we're eager to get back to Marchenghast, but we don't want to do that at a time where we only have a spare 20 minutes here and there to play.

Starboard leading one of Valedale's magic horses to a runestone

We're in a lull between time-consuming special events on Star Stable. As much as we enjoy such events, we are vey grateful for the lull. The most recent exciting game news is the addition of a new draft breed, the Brabant!

Our first glimpse at a Brabant!

These gentle giants are a Belgian breed somewhat related to the Ardennes. Consequently, they look similar to the Ardennes and come in similar colors. We're by no means horse experts, but we think Star Stable did quite well with making them look true to the breed yet still distinct from the Ardennes. 

They make Star look petite. <3

As much as I love roans, there is something quite refreshing about this solid bay.

I wonder if their hooves really do thunder in faster gaits? How cute would that be!

Probably my favorite aspect of these guys: their feathers actually floof when they move!

Their "special move" is more a human special move than a horse special move, but whatever. 

I'd take this over bucking any day.

It wouldn't be right not to recap Mom's birthday a bit, even if she did spend the majority of it working, going to the dentist, and then working some more. 

Ugh, Monday birthdays.

At least the dog on her page-a-day calendar was a cute one!

Mom's fam did a great job making the fleeting three evening hours of her birthday special. There were even balloons! This was round 2 of balloons originally purchased for her sister, but still, balloons!

Grandma made spaghetti, one of Mom's favorites, for supper, and a delicious funfetti cake for dessert. 

After everybody was stuffed, it was on to the generous pile of gifts!

Here's the "after!" =)

Yay for more cross stitch kits, a horsey coloring book, and super fun classic-sized Breyer stuff! Just for some background on the front and center gift, Mom absolutely loves her Kindle Paperwhite circa 2013 (AKA "Brighty"), and it is still going strong. She had no intention of replacing it until Amazon decided to discontinue support. As of two days after her birthday, she could no longer put checked-out e-books from the local library onto it. Hence, Kindle Paperwhite: newest model was the very generous gift from Grandma! We hope this one - we're calling her "Jade" for now - lasts as long as the first! <3

Noriker Names, Anyone?

Welcome to the beautiful month of May!

lilacs, my favorite spring flower <3

After the Equestrian Festival concluded, Star Stable immediately launched a new Trailblazer Track and released more Marchenghast content. 

Yay, more free stuff! We're especially happy for the free stable care tickets.

We've been hanging out in Valedale doing 12 daily tasks to get our trailblazer points and occasionally planting/harvesting our garden, but other than that, we've been taking it pretty easy.

It's not that we're not excited for the new Marchenghast content, we've just wanted a breather, as much effort as we devoted to the festival.

This week, Star Stable surprised us with another horse bazaar! 

From left to right, we have the Noriker (540 star coins), the Gotland Pony (375 star coins), and two magical horses, Calder and Ephyra (570 star coins).

We love the Gotland Ponies - they're such cuties - but one is enough.

If the chestnut splash hadn't been an option (love, you Vanillavalley!), we'd probably have chosen this one.

Calder and Ephyra are gorgeous, but we're quite content with our more subtle Paso Fino, Riverrock. Here are their non-magic coats, for the record:

I don't think this jives that well with his purple magical form, but he's still very handsome.

Ephyra's grulla coat is more harmonious with her magical blue form and equally lovely, if you ask me.

We're thrilled that the Noriker came back on sale again, since we passed them over the when they first were discounted back in December. We're not passing them over this time!

Of the 9 we had to choose from, these ones were our favorites:

flaxen chestnut

black leopard

bay near leopard

bay tobiano

light dapple gray

We've already all agreed on which one we'll pick, believe it or not! Now to choose a name... that's going to be a while. More to come in our next post!

Since this post is on the short side (for us, anyway), I will leave you with a few photos of Mom's recent visit to the Lantern Festival at our local zoo. Enjoy!

tunnel of lanterns

tiger

Yay for the year of the horse!

entering the magical forest section

it was home to rabbits and snails...

...and a herd of unicorns!

entering the under the sea section

my favorite: the happy manatee

the dolphins were great too

a whale and his starfish buddy

Mom visits the zoo frequently and had seen the lanterns by daylight multiple times, but it took it to another level to see them all after dark! What a magical night! <3

Purple Pony Pal

Well, here we are almost at the end of the Equestrian Festival without any new horse to show for it. Am I a little sad? Yes. I think we all are. However, every single equine in the herd had its own day to experience the festival, which was really cool. It's the last year we'll be able to say that, since the herd will for sure continue to grow.

Jolly's day in the spotlight

Artie and Panda got to be Clara's mounts for the final stages of the Sabine quest line. 

 

They weren't exactly well camouflaged, but somehow they made it past the GED guards with the box of "decorations" on the first attempt this go-around.

Panda made a valiant effort, but we had to redo the "escape from Sabine with the box" race several times. 

my favorite line of the whole quest

It's been fun, Sabine. 

Even after the quest line was finished, we could do the "chase Sabine" race daily. Fortunately, we had no issues with sinking into the stone ramp this year.

We went all out on "dress like Sabine" day.

Group races with a fellow black and white spotted Appaloosa! =)

It took us until almost the end of week 3 to finish our championship ranks: after competing fairly hardcore the first two Saturdays, we relaxed into doing just one or two a day. 

Note the beautiful palomino Hanoverian taunting us. It seemed to be a more popular choice than the dapple gray festival-exclusive Hanoverian.

Here is that rather underwhelming final ribbon and our much more exciting final festival reward, a purple bouncy pony pet!

He either shrinks down to fit in the saddle bag (similar to the yeti) or bounces along at your side in full size. 

We love him so much! <3

The final weeks of the festival brought even more new activities! 

A new showjumping course with pretty, spring-themed fences:

A race where we chased a chaotically-running HorseyMcHorse around the festival grounds:

They were amazingly fast!

A 4-question horse knowledge quiz, complete with horse models for each question:

Brief riding lessons, which reminded me of dressage but more chill:

It's too bad the actual dressage on the game hasn't taken off more. I steer clear because it is so off-puttingly difficult on the mastery level (circles without guiding arrows? No thank you!), and the shillings reward at the training level isn't worth the effort. I so wish we could do lots of different routines, but WITH the guiding arrows, and make decent shillings doing it. Also, how cool would it be if we could do extended vs collected gaits, leg yields, etc. by pushing specific key combinations? That kind of stuff has been so entertaining in other horse games we've played in the past.

One final new activity: following a trail of fruit carnage to find George the Fjord, who then makes his own merry way back to Ferdinand.

Whew, all that sure has been keeping us busy! We've had a blast at the festival and will miss the celebratory atmosphere. Got to say, as fun as all of the new stuff was this year, I think the ridiculous bouncy ponies were my favorite addition.  

Until next time!