Eye of the Vortex - May 2009 by CV Newton Publishing Limited

EDITORIAL I

need to apologize the RPG fans out there as you open this months issue of Eye of the Vortex. We are going heavy on cards and light on the books this issue. Both Magic and Vampire have new expansion releases, and so it made sense to go with them.

On a different front, I have decided that I am going to push the writing staff to provide more editorial style articles in the future. I think that there is a place for intelligent conversation regarding our gaming world, and that simply writing reviews and interviewing people does not begin to offer such a conversation. So starting with the next issue, you can expect some thought provoking articles that touch on the inner thoughts of the writing staff. In addition to this, we are starting to move away from the traditional journalistic format of linear articles and block images and trying to get more freestyle. In essence, I was handcuffing Jason with my need for order, and not allowing him to completely impress us with his work. Moving forward, it is my goal to do more editorial style articles and include articles, art and other submissions by our readers as well. We need to do what we initially set out to do: Promote the Gaming Industry. We can do that in several different ways, but one way that we have been neglecting is to promote our reader base. Do you have something that you want to share publicly? Are you trying to get noticed in the gaming industry? Do you simply want to become a writer and need a place to start? Then let EoV help promote your works and give you the start that you need. Comics, articles, game reviews, or maybe just your attempt at illustrating a game; we want to help get everyone together and on one page. Contact me about any of this that interests you. You can also head to our forums and leave us some feedback. The more you tell us what you like or donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like, the more you help mold EOV into the publication that you want to be a part of.

Chris Newton President â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Eye of the Vortex email: c.newton@eyeofthevortexonline.com Check us out on Facebook! Follow me on Twitter!

EDITORIAL

— Eye of the Vortex (EoV) is a publication intended to promote the gaming industry as a whole by bringing into the spotlight gaming products, personalities, concepts, events, etc. The intent of this publication is not to show favoritism towards any individual game or gaming genre, rather to provide fresh material, education, entertainment, and in general, inform the gaming public of new products and where they can find the product. EoV is not a vendor, nor does it claim to sell any product. EoV only provides an entertainment and informational service to its reader-base as well as a promotional service for its affiliates and sponsors. Images used in this publication are intended for the purpose of promoting the product relative to its use. Unless noted otherwise, all images used henceforth are the sole property of the promoted product’s owner. EoV asks that you help keep us in business by keeping an active interest in our affiliates and sponsors product lines. Our service to you is funded by their generous advertisement payments. Without your interest in their products, our services cannot be maintained. Please do your part in our community by keeping yourself informed and up to date on the newest products that our network has to offer. — May Cover: The Privateer Press; Monsterpocalypse: I Chomp NY

QUOTAGe Chris Newton

Alex Hoffman

Editor-in-Chief Email

Writer Email

So who’s available for a meeting on January 12th, 2010?

I‘m drowning in card games! Someone call a lifeguard!

Jason Ford

Brian Ross

Illustrator Email

Writer Email

Horror movies are so unrealistic. I like plausible movies, like ones with robot armies!

If it wasn’t for me, ‘shit’ would be censored. That’s right—Shit.

Mark Manning

Justin Mohon

Writer Email

Editor Email

Justin doesn’t like resting and believes sleep is for the weak. He also believes Red Bull should be purchased in cases.

“Out to lunch, be back in June!”

www.eyeofthevortexonline.com

WHAT LIeS WITHIN.. Runes of Magic VTES: The Ebony Kingdom Preview Alara Reborn: The Review Summer Movie Preview Inside Haridama: Magic Cram School Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire

10 15 20 31 51 52

MAY NewS

Wizards of the Coast Ceases PDF Publishing— Other RPG Pubs React • Wizards announced early April that it would cutting PDF support for its current RPGs, including the intensely popular D&D 4.0, due to increasing internet piracy through .torrent downloads on sites like The Pirate Bay. Other publishers like White Wolf, Paizo, and Green Ronin released statements to express strong support for the PDF market, and backed up their sentiments with sales and PDF giveaways for loyal PDF RPG customers.

Negotiations for WizKids Assets Fails to Close—HeroClix Still In Limbo • Topps closed the WizKids portion of its business in late November last year, closing down the popular HeroClix product line with it. However, HeroClix has still remained on of the top collectible miniatures games, and multiple companies have vied for purchasing rights. The purchaser’s deal with Topps came to an end when financing issues came to light.

Catalyst Gives You Two Copies For One! • April was the month of PDFs for the RPG industry. Catalyst Game Labs, the minds behind the Shadowrun cyberpunk RPG and other key hobby properties announced at the GAMA Trade Show that beginning in the summer of 2009, customers who purchase a hardcopy of one of their RPG books in a hobby location will also receive a digital copy of the same book for their use on their PC or laptop.

Monsterpocalypse Announces Voltron License • The Privateer Press published collectible minis game will feature Voltron as a separate game pack that feaures Voltron and an opposing force. Tentative street date is early 2010. 2009 marks the 25th anniversary of Voltron being published.

Bleach TCG Cancelled—Score Entertainment Abandoned • In early March Donruss Playoff, LP’s Sports Trading Card assets were acquired by Panini America, Inc. Score Entertainment, the TCG division of Donruss Playoff,was not part of the business purchased by Panini America, Inc. As a result, future Bleach TCG releases have been cancelled by Score Entertainment. Tough news for the Bleach TCG crowd. Arcane Tinman Revives The Spoils TCG With New 2-Player Starter • Players rejoiced when Arcane Tinman purchased the rights to The Spoils TCG from the now defunct Tenacious Games earlier this year. The game has been restarted with The Spoils • “A Dastardly Game of Villainy and Greed” 2-player Starter Kit, which hit stores at the beginning of April. Free Realms TCG Launches • Free Realms, a kid-oriented MMO released by Sony Online Entertainment, has �concurrently released a trading card game that can be played both online and in real life. Booster packs of Free Realms TCG cards can be purchased at mass retailers soon, and contain “loot cards” similar to those that can be found in the World of Warcraft TCG produced by Upper Deck Entertainment. Magic: the Gathering on a Plane • Wizards of the Coast announces Planechase, a multiplayer dedicated format that uses oversized planes cards to change the backdrop of your planeswalker vs. planeswalker battle. Reminiscent of the over-sized Vanguard cards that were available in the late 90’s, Planechase will have four different decks, each retailing at $19.99 at the beginning of September. This package will have one 60 card deck, 10 plane cards, and a planar dice, as well as rules for the new format. The pricing format follows that of the “From the Vault” and “Duel Decks” promotional expansions that started printing in 2007.

Courtesy of: Wizards of the Coast LLC

Duke Nukem Forever Finally Hangs Up the Hat • The greatest example of vaporware ever has finally given up materializing. Despite new screenshots from the game being released late last year, nothing was able to save it when 3D Realms shut down on May 6, 2009. 3D Realms was one of the top computing companies of the 90’s producing iconic hits such as Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein 3D, and Commander Keen. Take-Two Interactive retains the rights to Duke Nukem Forever, but have issued no plans to continue its development. Everquest II: The Shadow Odyssey Released By Sony • This is the best time ever play Everquest II. The Shadow Odyssey reintroduces numerous famous locations to the world of Norrath including Innothule Swamp, Guk, Befallen, Najena, and Mistmoore. Best yet, purchasing Shadow Odyssey contains every single expansion and adventure pack released to date meaning it is the perfect time to finally check it out, if you’ve been wavering on the edge of buying it or not. PS3 Outsells Wii in Japan • Nintendo’s Reign Slipping? With Final Fantasy XIII on the horizon, sales of the PS3 have slowly been increasing in the Land of the Rising Sun, and that’s not really a surprise, given that a demo of the franchise was recently released. E3 also promises hardware updates from Sony and Microsoft that emulate the key features of the Wii package. Without promising software for the Wii, it looks like this onetime champion may drop out of the leader race. DSi Released, Reaction Mixed • While some have said the new update to the DS Lite is worth the buy, others have complained that the new features, including camera and music playback, are gimmicky and unnecessary. With the loss of GBA backwards compatibility in exchange for an SD slot and the new DSiWare, the DSi is trending more towards the Wii side of the Nintendo business model, with various degrees of success. Truth about the long-term success of the handheld console shall break when we see numbers for sales in the following months.

Eisner Nominees Announced • The Will Eisner award nominees were released, and comic professionals have until June 15th to cast their vote for this year’s prestigious award. Manga had an unusually low showing this year, with only 8 total nominations, 5 of which were from Viz Media (Naoki Urasawa’s Monster received a double nomination). Dark Horse received the highest number of nominations, followed by DC/Vertigo. Drawn and Quarterly Releases A Drifting Life • The autobiographical work of one of the giants of manga, Yoshihior Tatsumi, it chronicles his life as a pioneer manga writer who eventually broke from the cartoonish visions of Osamu Tezuka and began the underground manga movement of geigeka, a more realistic and bleak look at comics. Drawn & Quarterly has previously released compilations of his comics, The Pushman and Other Stories, and Abandon The Old In Tokyo.

Michael Crichton Releases Posthumous Novels • Attack of the zombie books! Michael Crichton who died in November of 2008 from cancer at 66 has two books set for posthumous release. The first novel Pirate Latitudes will be released in November ‘09 and is a story about a 17th century buccaneer. The second novel is unfinished standing currently at two thirds completion. His estate and publishing firm are still looking for a writer and not much is known about it at this time, but it will tentatively be released in Fall of 2010.

Author of Inuyasha, Ranma 1/2 Releases New Manga Simultaneously in Japan and USA • Rumiko Takahashi, the celebrated author of such popular manga and anime series like Inuyasha and the quirky Ranma 1/2 began weekly installments of her new manga Rin-Ne, in English on her website April 22nd, which coincide with Japanese language releases in Weekly Shonen Sunday.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Rough Cut Leaked, Over 1 Million Downloads • The newest branch of the Marvel movie madness, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, is a story that features Hugh Jackman as the scrappy mutant with ‘tude. A rough cut of the film without final score and other visual effects was released to downloading sites early April. As of April 8th, six days after the rough cut was released, downloads on popular torrent sites reached over 1 million.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Opens Strong But To Mixed Review • The film featuring the scrappy mutant released to sold numbers at $85.1M on the opening weekend, however had mixed reviews from critics citing too much fluff and non-relevant plot devices. A direct sequel set in Japan was confirmed on May 5, 2009, but that is not the only rumor of sequel. Currently studio heads are in early talks to bring either one or both of Deadpool and Gambit to their own stand alone films. Early speculation favored a Deadpool movie coming first with Ryan Reynolds already confirming he would continue to play Wade Wilson/Deadpool. However, the fan reaction to Gambit has been much stronger indicating nothing is set in stone and no word has been released if Taylor Kitsch would continue portraying the character. Star Trek Makes a Splash in Competitive Summer Blockbuster Scene • Star Trek had a $76.5 million opening weekend haul, but more impressively got a 96% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes. To put that into perspective, the Wolverine flick only got 37% and last year’s stellar film The Dark Knight only checked in with 94%. That’s right folks, an odd number Star Trek film finally didn’t suck.

Bioshock A Bit Pricey, Takes Backseat • Gore Verbinski’s video game movie BioShock has been put on hold after a predicted budget of $160 million dollars caused investors to back out. Producers are currently looking for ways to cut costs including moving production overseas to take advantage of tax credits.

BRIAN ROSS

Negatives Role Playing Games

• A lot of the cool stuff costs real money • Constant drain on real money features • Laggy at certain times of the day • Only one race • Quests are very staple fare • Poor class balance (1 tank, 1 healer, 4 dps) • Spam, spam, spam • Poor client/patch distribution • Bad decisions in terms of real money items • Crafting seems pointless

Runes of Magic A review of the free to play MMORPG

unes of Magic is the newest MMORPG to throw its hat into the ring. While, I could go through this step-by-step and give you a run down of my experience of the game, I would rather handle this one like a greatest hits album. Runes of Magic is an excellent free game that is fair to be called a WoW clone in both style and spirit. The game runs smoothly on any machine, uses cartoony graphics, and offers streamlined systems adopted from almost every other game. It also happens to look a lot like WoW and offers classes that play very much like WoW, however it is not a fully a WoW-clone. The game is remarkably deep with an extreme level of customization to both gear and class, with a well-developed world, social, and class system. The main problems the game suffers from is a lack of class balance, extreme lack of creativity, and a fair amount of lag. All of that weighed out by the fact that the game is heavily updated, still in its infancy, and most of all FREE TO PLAY!

Positives • Free to play • Major updates are free and often • Interesting housing system and concepts • Very cool dual class system • Vibrant graphics despite being simple • Dynamic dungeon instances • Actually having the features they advertised • Curse gaming client enabled • Heavy amount of customization • Generally positive player base

Software Issues

One problem that the development team needs to focus on is issues with the software. Players generally hate software updates, but they are necessary and this game will definitely need them soon. There is a significant amount of lag and some reworking of the code may be needed as well as additional servers. More people playing it will ultimately make these changes happen faster. The other problem is that their official client and patch distributions are very slow and crappy. The client distribution is an utter failure and even with a strong connection will takes weeks to actually download the game. Balancing all that out is the fact that Curse Gaming has already incorporated the game into their auto-update client allowing support from Curse to provide stability to downloads and quick easy access to user mods. Some of the user mods are godsends such as pbInfo which drastically improves the GUI, fixes numerous bugs, and provides a lot of useful information in game. Three other great mods are Shut Up! which helps reduce spam, Advanced Auction House which improves a rather dull AH interface, and QuestWiz which auto updates your map with locations relevant to quests you are on. The inclusion of Curse Gaming into the mix drastically improves this game’s chances of long-term success.

The Cash Shop

The cash shop has a bevy of items from expected staples like experience

potions to mounts and furniture. One innovative cool features they have added are training manuals that allow your character to gradually increase their skills if you log off inside your house. Other items include jewels which amplify the level of your items unlocking extra stats and bolstering current ones and an item called the Aggregator which will rip the stats off one item and combine them with another item’s appearance allowing you to customize how you want your gear to look. Runewaker Entertainment made bold steps in a yet to be unseen outcome by allowing their real world currency to be exchanged for in game currency. This essentially allows ANY player to buy gold in game and sell it at the market rate. By doing this, they have placed themselves in direct competition with gold sellers meaning one or the other is going to eventually lose out. My biggest qualm though is that they tend to focus on rental features for a lot of things such as extra storage meaning you’ll constantly have to influx cash if you want to keep it. On the plus side for $20 (USD) I purchased the fastest mount in game, an armor mannequin that stores and displays armor in my house, and some Aggregator to play around with. They of course offer specials constantly meaning you can really get a good value for your dollar, however some of the items value seems like a waste of cash. As it turns out at the end game, to make some advancement into the instances you will have to invest heavily in the gear upgraders to create powerful gear capable of withstanding the vicious blows the monsters dish out. Fortunately, a lot of the gear upgraders are worth every penny adding massive amounts of needed stats to gear or allowing you to fully trick a piece of gear out into a monstrous form.

Gameplay

Runes of Magic plays very similar to almost any other MMORPG out there, especially WoW. You get a quest, you go kill stuff, you turn it in, you level and get new skills. The quests are extremely boring and very uncreative. Even the underlying epic quest that tells the story of the game feels boring. Every quest is a variation of grind this, gather that, deliver this. The quests are also haphazardly laid out in a way that quest givers will send you time and time again to kill the same mobs. You’ll also have to learn how to tell which quests need groups as they don’t indicate it in the quest log often. You might spend twenty minutes gather parts to make a potion to summon a demon only to find out that this particular demon hits for more than half your life. Crafting for the most part seems rather lame at this point allowing you to

make items from a mass amount of ingredients. You can also only level up a set amount of crafting skills and that amount includes your harvesting skills as well. Since all the crafting skills are reliant on at least two of the gathering skills, most players that choose to craft aren’t going to make a lot or any money at all. The other competing factor is that guilds need resources to level and build their castles, while players need to turn in harvested items to learn certain skills. This of course means resources are in high demand, and you actually make more money gathering than crafting. Early in the game there is a rather difficult instance (that you can farm easily at 50) that drops stuff to make awesome level 15 gear. Unfortunately, you only need level 3 crafting to make all that gear, and there aren’t any higher level equivalents of it yet. Basically crafting is pointless after level 3. On the plus side, there is a lot of customization. You can use items to improve the level of your gear, you can transmute the gear into pure stats then apply the stats to other items creating super gear, and you can attach runes to your items improving stats. This is all balanced between cash items and non-cash items, with the cash items being far more effective. Players who want can also play real cash to alter the color of their gear or even use the cash shop Aggregator to put the stats from one piece of gear into another. You can dye your mount, you can change your look, and you can pretty much do whatever you want with furniture in your house. The PvP is rather uninspired at this point being a fairly standard “Welcome to Level 15! These nice people with shiny knives want to congratulate for being fair game now.” There is a form of guild war PvP implemented, but no one is really doing it as it requires an extensive amount of resources to enable. From what I can tell so far it’ll be survival of the zerg—which isn’t good at all. There are rumors of increased PvP support in the future, but that doesn’t necessarily seem like it will be anytime soon. The instances and bosses are unforgiving! If you walk in with a bad group or a player without good gear trying to front line you will be annihilated. The endgame needs a massive overhaul to allow players who have decent gear to participate as well. Non-raid monsters should not hit for double the HP a warrior has in any level 50 gear, yet alone decent level 50 gear. Even level 22 boss monsters create challenges for level 50’s dealing out massive damage unless in the absolute best gear.

Characters

While you can only play as the human race (an Elf race is in the works for

Help Wanted: Gamers Who Like to Write! Eye of the Vortex (EoV) is looking for a crew of Gamers who have an urge to write about their favorite games for our website. The desired articles will be talking about game strategy, game results, or even your own game review. Our goal is to establish a writing community that is diverse enough to capture the entire environment of the Gamer. What this means is that we are looking for articles about games, events, comics, anime, movies, etc. that would be of interest to a typical Gamer. These articles are intended to be entertaining, educational, and interesting. They should also be in good humor and of clean language. EoV is not interested in anything less than a final draft for your article. You should check your article for spelling, grammar, and be factually correct in your article. We are reserving the right to reject any article that does not follow those rules and if we find it not in the proper context of what we are trying to accomplish. If you feel that you have a writer’s spirit and an urge to share your words and experiences, please contact me with your unpublished article.

Chris Newton email: c.newton@eyeofthevortexonline.com

June), there is a ton of variation in classes which is odd considering you have six staple choices: Mage, Priest, Rogue, Scout, Warrior, Knight (think Paladin). The key is that you can have two classes (and only two at this point) and each combination grants you unique skills. Warrior/Rogues are adept at dealing damage and dual wielding weapons, while Warrior/Mages embed magic into their swords. Oh, and Warrior/Rogues are not the same as Rogue/Warriors, each combination each way is different! This means there are a total of thirty different unique class combinations at this point. Druid and Tarot Dancer are two more classes in the work which would bring the total up to fifty-six. On the downside, the class balancing is not very good. If you look at the current class list you’ll see there is one tank class, one healer class, and four damage classes. Which means you’ll always be looking for healers and tanks (even more so than usual!) The most viable classes are Knight/Warrior, Knight/Priest, Priest/Mage and Mage/Priest, with Warriors doing fairly well, but Scouts and Rogues still struggling to find how they fit into the game. In the end, this is the number one problem with the game and until some class balance hits the grouping situation may end up very frustrating for a lot of players who try off the wall combinations like Warrior/Mage or less desirable classes like Rogue and Scout.

Game Scorecard PvE: BPvP: CCrafting: D Travel: B- Housing: A Graphics: B+ Enjoyability: A+ Social Aspects: A

I imagine that with some work and end game balancing this game is quite capable of being one of the top MMORPGs out there able to rival the level of content many pay to play games offer. I played the game for a month and saw weekly patches that balanced game play and introduced new instances. The game is growing and fast, its just a matter of it growing in the right direction.

OVeRALL: B

Screenshots

Wallpapers

Courtesy of: Whie Wolf; VTES: The Ebony Kingdom速

ALEX HOFFMAN

Represented in the game as vampire “modifiers,” these cards increase the strength of a vampire who has multiple copies of them, but punishes a vampire who goes against their tenants. Maintaining a high Orun count for Luanda Magere is important, because he can easily get into combat with an unsuspecting foe and wreck them with his increased strength, or use the power of the Orun to give him more votes during political actions. With a capacity of 8, he’s bound for action, and putting him into torpor is going to be no easy feat.

Cards

VTES: The Ebony Kingdom Preview V

ampire: the Eternal Struggle (commonly abbreviated as VTES) is one of the original trading card games. Designed by Richard Garfield, after he developed Magic: the Gathering, VTES was intended to be a completely different game, a game intended for many people, a social game. Set in The World of Darkness , each player becomes a Methuselah, an ancient and powerful vampire. From the shadows, you manipulate younger vampires and politics in order to oust your prey (the player to your left) while simultaneously trying to defend yourself from the attacks of your predator (the player to your right). In this simple setup, players sit down to play a trading card game and find themselves immersed in alliances, political backlash, and other interactions not seen in other card games. Abandoned in 1996 by Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf Entertainment revived it in 2000, and has been going strong with its production ever since.

But, you say, Orun and Aye are cards that were printed a while ago; I don’t have any! Well, my guess is that we’ll see a reprint in this set, but if you’re in a sealed tournament or a draft event, you’ve got other options. Let’s take a look at our second spoiler card; A common action card called Despiral. In a regular game, Despiral is a great card for decks using their Stealth to get quick and efficient bleeds in on their prey. Its cheap blood cost makes it affordable for most vampires, and it’s stealth makes it hard to deal with. You have to use it on an Ishtarri vampire though, but with a set focused on the Laibon, we’ll get plenty of good Ishtarri to work with. As an action with +1 stealth, it sneaks by opposing blocks, and makes your key vampire ready to do some serious bleeding against your opponent.

The Ebony Kingdom is the first new VTES set for 2009, following off the back of an impressive lineup of sets in 2008. The Ebony Kingdom hits shelves May 27th and follows the workings of the Laibon, ancient African Vampires that have, for the most part, stayed away from the Struggle. Now, they’ve come to claim their stake in the fate of all vampires, and join the Jyhad, the vampire war. So, let’s get down to the previews, and show off exactly what a Laibon vampire is like! Our first card is an Uncommon, a powerful vampire named Luanda Magere. With superior level Protean, Presence and Celerity, as well as basic Fortitude, Luanda can fit into many different deck types, including voting decks. What makes him special though is his card text—for each Orun he has, his strength increases by 1. For those not in the know, Laibon vampires connect to the world of the living and the dead in a very special way; through Orun and Aye.

In draft or sealed, though, this card takes on a whole different light. Suddenly, it becomes an Aye and an Orun for any Laibon vampire, which is a pretty amazing ability. Now, you don’t get the bonuses that Aye and Orun give to a vampire, but Luanda, who I just showed you, is still getting +1 strength from this card, and if you do happen to have an Orun in play, it’s still going to count Despiral as an Orun to give its equipped vampire a vote during political actions.

Orun definitely are a large portion of the mechanics of The Ebony Kingdom. Taking a look at the political action Unholy Radiance, we can see that having Orun on your vampires allows you to do some pretty amazing things. In regular play, three Orun will get you 4 additional votes on a tapped vampire! That means you can tap the Laibon to start the referendum, and if it passes, you can use that same vampire to gain 4 votes! That kind of power in the political realm can be ridiculously good, especially if you’ve got a deck set up to win with political victories. In draft and sealed formats it’s even better since you only need two Orun. Watch out for blocks on this card, though; your opponents are, without a doubt, going try and stop you from gaining an edge with Unholy Radiance. Aye also gets its share of the fun, in the form of an interesting common combat action Jua Vema. While, on the surface, it’s a fairly average card, if you use it with a vampire who has Master Fortitude, you suddenly have a vampire who can’t be brought down with aggravated damage. Aggravated damage is one of the easiest ways to put an opposing vampire into torpor, so if your group of friends likes to keep you down with aggravated damage, Jua Vema might be just the thing your Aye based deck needs. In draft, it also lets you prevent damage with basic Fortitude, which, while simple, can be the difference between acting next turn and going to the ash heap.

your prey has on the plate to keep you at bay is going to be an advantage you really don’t want to give up. Finally, the most perfect preview card also happens to be…perfect! An uncommon, Lucian, the Perfect is a master at everything he does. Each of his six abilities is a superior ability, and he’s got some pretty good stats too. He bleeds at +3, making quick work of your opponent’s blood pool, and deals extra damage to anyone who would dare face him in combat. With all his abilities set to max, action cards are going to be top notch when playing with Lucian; well, actually, every card that has an ability that Lucian has is going to be great with him. His only major issue is the 11 blood cost. That’s a significant portion of your pool when he can be so easily sent to torpor with aggravated damage, or be pushed around with blocking abilities, you’ll have to make sure you take care of him with stealth actions if you want him to do something amazing. Now, if anything I said about this card game has your head spinning, don’t worry, you aren’t alone. Vampire: the Eternal Struggle is a complicated game, but it’s a lot of fun. If you’re interested in getting started, check out preconstructed decks (3rd Edition Player’s Kit) built by White Wolf and have a sit down with the online rule book . It’s easy enough to figure out once you’ve got the basics down, and you’ll have a hell of a good time playing with the great new cards in The Ebony Kingdom, set to hit stores May 27th.

Everything in The Ebony Kingdom isn’t about Aye and Orun though; players who like Ally cards are going to love Tunnel Runner, a werewolf ally that heals itself when it takes damage and can bleed itself to do things with +1 stealth. If that wasn’t good enough, when it bleeds your opponent, you can take a look at the cards in their hand, letting you keep track of what’s going to happen and when. Information is especially useful in VTES, so knowing what

ChRIS NEWTON

Cards

Storming the CCG Scene Review of Planetstorm

hile going through my email one fine afternoon, I came across a press release from Challenge Games announcing an expansion to “Planetstorm®, the online trading card game science fiction saga”. “Woah! I hadn’t even heard of Planetstorm or even its owner Challenge Games. I must investigate!” I quickly took flight to the Planetstorm website to read anything that my eyes could get a hold of that would give me some insight into the game. What I came across was that it’s an online trading card game that allows you to accumulate free cards through the completion of missions. Free cards are a good way to market your product, so I signed up for an account and launched into a mission. During the sign up step, the registration program asked if I wanted to link to my Facebook account, which could be a security nightmare, but it sounded like something that I could potentially beat my chest about later if I found that I was good at the game, so I trashed that thought of warning and allowed the hook up to take place. I received enough cards from the initial registration, plus a couple of extras to create my first deck, called a Squad. A Squad consists of a leader card and six other cards that represent troops, places, equipment, or tactic cards. You begin the game at level 1 and can command one Squad in a game. However as you play more games, you will increase in level and will be able to control more squads, which essentially means that you will add another Squad (or seven cards) to your deck.

Game play is very simple. To be precise, once you launch the game, you’re already done. You have zero control over the outcome of the game. The point of the entire game is that you are a commander; you set up your Squads and decide to ‘attack’ or ‘flee’. The computer will play out the actual game for you, which is both good and horrible at the same time. It is horrible because if you are a control freak like me, then you want to make more than zero in-game decisions. Instead, you get to sit and literally watch the computer ‘gold-fish’ out the entire game while you hope you win. The good part about it is that you can get some stuff accomplished while this is going on. You can do some laundry, cook dinner, cut the grass, write a blog, heck… I am playing a game right now as I compose this article. The other good thing is that they have provided you with speed options, which means I can kick it up to 8x speed and fly through a game, making it feel more like an old-school Ultima Online session of macroing than actually playing a collectible card game. Why would I want to macro a collectible card game? There are two reasons:

First, you need to increase your level so you can command more Squads. This increases your hit points (your hit points are dictated by the number of Squads you have included in your deck) as well as increases the number of troops you can potentially deploy in combat. Second, I really can’t get into a game that I can’t play. I might as well make it feel like I am cheating by playing a huge number of games a day at high speed in order to collect as many free cards through the rewards that are assigned as a result of completing missions and winning ladder matches. Obviously, since the game is set up to allow for such a thing to occur, it is not really cheating, but at least I can feel like I have some semblance of control by controlling the pace of the game as well as the rate in which I gain cards. The cards themselves feel fairly balanced as long as you are playing cards powered at the same level as your own. When you play against someone who has purchased cards from different sets other than the basic set, you begin to see the strength of those cards and how inferior yours are. This in itself lends to what if you want to become highly ranked in the games community? You will either put a ton of time into it to get the coins needed to purchase new cards

or you’ll be swiping your credit card to get access at the better cards. There is a bonus to this though as there are differing card rarities for each individual card. Those rarer cards of the same name will have better stats, which will urge you to continue collecting cards in order to get the better version of the same cards in order to be more competitive in the ladder matches. Speaking of being competitive in ladder matches… I would really like to do that, but with a growing family, a tough economy, and just not enough money to go around, I can’t bring myself to pay money to buy cards from an established game like Magic: the Gathering, let alone a game that I don’t know if they will be strong enough to last many more years. So in saying such, I end my review of Planetstorm by saying that it is well worth the try and I had fun with the deck creation steps so long as I was able to do the single player missions, but once they were finished and I was forced to either pony up and buy cards or get owned by other players who have already invested into the game, I have to part ways with the game and search for another to try.

Courtesy of: Wizards of the Coast LLC; Alara Reborn速

ALEX HOFFMAN

Constructed Watchlist Cards

Alara Reborn: The Review

etting to look at cards before they are released is one of the few great joys of collectible card games. You can imagine what they will do to certain formats, how they will fit in all of your decks, and what you would like to do with all of them once you get your hands on them. The fun of looking at new cards is always surpassed, however, by playing with them. This is why I love release events and prereleases. It is your first chance to play with new cards, test out new strategies, and most importantly, to have a good time.

In the Magic universe though, things are not going so well; I doubt that anyone besides Nicol Bolas is having a good time. All five shards have gone to war, and now the planes have crashed together and formed a giant Maelstrom of magical energy, which Bolas intends to harvest for his own nefarious schemes. Standing in his way are the planeswalkers of Alara. How this conflict ends out will be revealed in Alara Unbroken by Doug Beyer, released earlier this month—May 5th. So, how does this whole setting influence the cards? The triple-colored shards collide and find things in common, and what we get is a set that is 100% multicolored. This is huge. Multicolored cards are normally much more powerful because they are harder to cast than their monocolored counterparts. With the amazing lands that we’ve been getting out of the past few sets, Alara Reborn is going to be a set prime with material for Constructed formats. On the other foot, a set that is completely multicolored makes it hard to play in Sealed and Draft formats. Wizards has done a few things to combat these problems, and we will get to them in a few seconds. For now though, let’s take a look at some obvious powerhouses.

1. Maelstrom Pulse • A lot of players are excited about this card, and for good reason; it’s an almost functional reprint of the amazing Vindicate, from back in Apocalypse, and everyone likes to cast Vindicate. What’s even better about the spell is that while it can destroy just about anything in play, it also destroys any permanents with the same name, so it takes care of pesky Bitterblossom, Spectral Possession, and Elspeth tokens that might be mucking up the board. I expect that it will be played quite heavily in Standard, and it looks to have its place alongside other removal in Extended. All in all, it’s a truly powerful card, and a great card for Constructed formats. 2. Meddling Mage • If destroying anything in play is a great effect, making sure they never play it to begin with is an even better one, and Meddling Mage does exactly that. It prevents other players from casting their key spells, anything from Cryptic Command to Wrath of God, and makes both Control and Aggro players squirm as they try to take care of it. Meddling Mage has always been an amazing card, and now that it’s back both in Standard and Extended, players will be scrambling to get their hands on a playset for their latest deck. 3. Qasali Pridemage • White/Green decks that appear to be shooting out of the woodwork in Standard and Block are going to love this card. Qasali Pridmage gives you that 3/3 attacker just like Watchwolf from back in Ravnica, but it also has the utility of taking down some very troublesome cards, like Bitterblossom and Oblivion Ring. Its sheer utility is what makes it such a stellar card.

Courtesy of: Wizards of the Coast LLC; Alara Reborn速

4. Anathemancer • A tool for the Black/Red Blightning decks, Anathemancer deals hefty damage to decks like 5 Color Control, which subsists on non-basic lands to get its tricky mana requirements taken care of. This guy is a beating against most Standard decks right now, and I expect that it’ll find its place in Block as well. Against 5 Color Control, playing this can land you anywhere from three to ten damage. That seems like quite a good deal for a three mana 2/2.

7. Thought Hemorrhage • Cranial Extraction from Kamigawa was a huge part of control matchups. The ability to remove all of your opponent’s best creatures, counterspells, or other gamebreaking cards was indispensable. Thought Hemorrhage looks to be much of the same card, except this time, you can get a little damage in along with it, if you get lucky. Thought Hemorrhage may be a little harder to cast, but in this environment, it’s definitely worth a look.

5. Terminate • When Apocalypse was released, this was heralded as one of the best pieces of creature removal ever printed. Now, even eight years later, things haven’t changed that much. Terminate is still one of the best pieces of creature removal. Its raw, efficient power is going to change the way decks play in Standard; and Extended will be glad to see an old familiar face back in play.

8. Spellbreaker Behemoth • Green and Red have always had uncounterable cards, but Spellbreaker Behemoth is a powerful extension of the old trend. As a 5/5 for four mana with no drawback it’s already good enough to play, but it really puts the hurt on Blue decks. Not being able to deal with one of your opponent’s threats can be game over for control archetypes, and this card makes that a bit more likely.

6. Dauntless Escort • One of the more hyped cards of Alara Reborn, this creature can sacrifice itself to save your entire team from Wrath of God and other major effects. It’s an extremely powerful card, and its 3/3 body that goes along with its 1GW mana cost makes it into a decently efficient beater as well. Its strength in aggressive decks will be key as Alara Reborn becomes tournament legal, and I expect it to definitely put the hurt on decks like WB Tokens in the coming months.

9. Cascade Spells • While this mechanic is intrinsically good (playing cards for free is amazing, last time I heard) and I believe that we’ll see it in Standard and Block, no format is looking forward to having Cascade more than Extended. Extended is going to have an easy time breaking it. Casting early cards like Bloodbraid Elf allows you to play amazing cards with low mana costs for free. The most prominent of these is Ancestral Visions, but also on the list is Hypergenesis, which can allow a player to dump a hand full of Akromas, Progenituses, and other nasty beaters as early as turn two, and attack for the win on turn three.

Courtesy of: Wizards of the Coast LLC; Alara Reborn速

10. Jenara, Asura of War • Bant decks have already started postulating how to best use this three mana wonder, and it is no surprise to see why. Although it is three colors, it joins the ranks of cards like Rhox War Monk in Standard, where with Noble Hierarch and Birds of Paradise, it is relatively simple to be able to play a card like Jenara on turn two. Its ability to get bigger and bigger over time will make it hard to destroy by damage, and it’s a pure offensive threat for Bant decks.

3. Behemoth Sledge • The child of Loxodon Warhammer and Armadillo Cloak, Behemoth Sledge is about as good as it gets. Its two toughness boost sets it apart from Loxodon Warhammer, and it’s most certainly just as good as good ol’ old Armadillo Cloak, because you don’t lose it when the creature it’s attached to dies. I’ve seen games end when Loxodon Warhammer hits the table, and I suspect that Behemoth Sledge is about the same. It’s powerful, and really quite a bit of fun to play with.

Commons/Uncommons

Honorable Mentions

You Need a Playset Of... 1. Zealous Persecution • Back in Ravnica, Orzhov Pontiff was a heralded card for a variety of reasons; it made combat extremely favorable for you, it was able to bring down opposing weenies, and it made life very difficult for the opposing player. The spirit of the Pontiff is still alive and well in Zealous Persecution. As an instant, it gives all your creatures a two power and toughness edge on the competition, which can change a bad board state into an amazing one. 1. Mayael’s Aria • Use this with Mossbridge Troll for great effect! 2. Lorescale Coatl • When I first opened this at the Alara Reborn prerelease, my only thought was, “How is this an Uncommon?” In a format where it’s easy to cycle cards, cantrip, and get a few extra cards here and there, it can be quite stellar. In casual decks running things like Brainstorm, this card can be ridiculous. It’s a fun beater for Green/Blue decks that begs to be built around.

2. Sen Triplets • Getting to play your opponent’s cards is always amazing. Elder Dragon Highlander found itself a great new General. 3. Aven Mimeomancer • Turning tokens into 3/1 fliers sounds like a good time. I’m sure this card has a deck waiting for it somewhere. As far as a set goes, I have never seen this much power and goodness, but at the same time, I’m glad that this is now done and out of the way. Multicolor has been a prominent theme of the past two blocks, and I’ll be ready and waiting for the release of M10 and Zendikar later this year. Until then, I’ll be casting some of the amazing spells from Alara Reborn, and enjoying the multicolor madness. Whether you’re a tournament pro, casual kitchen-table player, or somewhere in between, there are plenty of great things for you in Alara Reborn.

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www.PrivateerPress.com

Printed in the USA.

ALEX HOFFMAN

office’s talents, while appealing to a different crowd. The idea to do a kaiju-based game came from a meeting between Matt and Jason where Jason commented that he would like to play a game with giant monsters—and the rest is history.

Tabletop / Miniatures

[AH] Using action dice as an intrinsic currency in the game is, in my mind, a great game design. How did that system evolve as you developed the game?

Monsterpocalypse Interview A

s a relative newcomer to the collectible miniatures field, Monsterpocalypse has breathed a bit of new life into the market. With HeroClix gone by the wayside and miniatures players looking for a new game, it appears that Monsterpocalypse is stepping up to be that game. With excellent store support, a good online tournament tracking system, and promo figures and prizes, it’s a game that’s collecting a lot of steam. To talk about the future of Monsterpocalypse (and feed my curiosity about the design of such an interesting miniatures game), we turned to designer ErikJason Yaple to give us some perspective on what’s coming down the pipe from Privateer Press. [Alex Hoffman] First of all, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to answer my questions – I’ve had a lot of fun with the game, and I think you’ve done a great job designing it.

[EJY] When you are playing a minis game with only two figures, the game has to be about “something.” If you just ran one monster up on another monster and rolled their Brawl or Blast stat, it would not be that thrilling. By having the dice tied to the main resource of the game, players are forced to calculate their attacks and actions a bit more. The idea of spending action dice to move your monster is just an extension of the core idea that if you want a better position on the board, it should cost your attack some dice. Back when I joined the company in April of 2008, the game was at a place where your units had a separate set of dice from your monster. Which meant you had 20 action dice to use during a turn and you could use monsters and units in the same turn. Games back then were more like a game of chicken in seeing who could slow play the most to get the last turn to attack with their monster. It wasn’t that bad, but it had some issues. One day, Matt had a “Eureka!” moment and came up with the idea of two dice pools and one set of dice. This made the game play a lot better and made the game more monster-centric. [AH] You mentioned in another interview that power creep (where the game pieces get more powerful over time) wasn’t an issue because the game can have new abilities and options. New abilities and options normally mean additional new rules. Are you worried as designers about the rules complexity for new players?

[Erik-Jason Yaple]Thanks for playing, man—it means the world to us to see people enjoying the fruits of our labor!

[EJY] We are working on ways to ensure that doesn’t happen and to make ability referencing as easy as possible. Really, though, the complexity of the game itself will not change. Series 3: All Your Base has a couple of new figure types, but after that, there will be no other core rules additions that need to be made. Extra abilities do not raise the complexity of the game; they really just add in new options for players, just like a collectible card game. The comment above was really directed toward the idea that if a strategy or ability gets out

[AH] My first question is fairly standard. Privateer Press is known for its non-collectible miniatures games. How did you decide to do a collectible miniatures game, especially one based on Godzilla-style game play? [EJY] We wanted to do something that was different from Warmachine and Hordes, and we wanted a product that would appeal to an entirely new audience. So doing a CMG seemed like a nice way to utilize our

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www.PrivateerPress.com

Printed in the USA.

of control, we have the option to make other abilities that can give that strategy a hard time. In fact, there are some forthcoming abilities that make things a little more challenging for players who may be relying on the same strategy over and over again. By adding in some key abilities now and then we can give players options to include in their forces that push back against those overused strategies. But to be honest, we have not really seen any terrible abuses in the play environment. Seems the game system is actually pretty stable.

[AH] I’d like to take a look at I Chomp NY for a second. A prominent addition to the expansion was the recognizable New York buildings. The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, to be precise. How did you come up with a design for these legendary buildings? [EJY] We knew we wanted to use the Crystalline Building to impale monsters on, thus the Spire ability was born. Everything else just sort of fell into place via trial and error. For a while the monuments were a different building type that either player could use, but that didn’t work out. I knew we wanted to provide a reason to protect them and to destroy them—thus what was a different type of structure became just an ability. I prefer to keep things simple when I can, and this was a case where it just made more sense to have them be limited buildings with a special skill instead of a whole new building type.

[AH] Each of the different factions has an influence. Where the Martian invaders and the Lords of Cthul are perhaps a little easier to place (H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and Lovecraft fiction, respectively), some are a little harder to pin down. Where did you get the ideas for each of the different factions? [EJY] Well, Matt loves giant robots. So the G.U.A.R.D. draw their inspiration from dozens of giant robot movies and cartoons. The Shadow Sun draw upon the movies where the normal-sized martial arts expert grows into the large kaiju-sized warrior to defend the city. The Terrasaurs and the Planet Eaters both draw their inspiration from the entire genre of kaiju movies. The thing that sets Monsterpocalypse apart from other kaiju-based properties is the culmination of six factions, including those H.G. Wells and Lovecraft themes. It’s the amalgamation of those ideas plus the ideas behind the factions coming in Series 4 that makes Monsterpocalypse a truly unique property.

[AH] Now, onward to the future. You stated in the GamingReport.com interview that every cycle will have a new city for your monster forces to invade and trash. Have you decided on your next city? What will your focus be for that city? [EJY] We have chosen a city for the fifth series, but as far as what’s in that series, you’ll have to stay tuned and wait like everyone else. We still have yet to release All Your Base and the fourth series! I will tell you that it is the city that everyone will expect to see. [AH] Series 3: All Your Base comes out this July with “metamorph” monsters. Can you describe this concept for us?

[AH] Monsterpocalypse seems to have a really campy sense of humor. With series names like I Chomp NY and All Your Base and unit names like Explodohawk, it’s really easy to get a good laugh out of Monsterpocalypse. Was that intentional?

[EJY] The metamorphs in All Your Base are monsters that are each made up of four morphers. Basically, morphers are unit-sized monsters that all share a health tracker and can’t power attack. They use abilities like normal monsters, but they interact with terrain like units. In hyper form, they create their metamorph monster, which acts just like every other monster in the game. An example of this concept you might recognize is Voltron, which is essentially a metamorph made up of five morphers. [AH] How do you pull something like that off for factions like the Terrasaurs and Planet Eaters?

[EJY] Yeah. Monsterpocalypse is supposed to be fun. And to be honest, it’s a little hard for me to take the world of Monsterpocalypse seriously when looking at Gorghadra’s jolly belly. If you think about the movie Cloverfield, there are some pretty dark conclusions that one can draw when a giant monster is destroying a city. We want to stay away from those dark themes and focus on the fun part of monsters knocking over skyscrapers and giant monsters stomping on tanks. We will leave the drama to Hollywood and keep the good times in our game.

[EJY] The Planet Eaters play off of a symbiotic organism theme—sort

of. The Lords of Cthul morphers are actually four tentacles burrowing through the city and then the monster emerges from under the ground as the metamorph. The Terrasaurs are just too cool for school and if I told you, it would not be as cool as when you see them for yourself— the Terrasaurs stumped us for quite a while and then our in-house concept artist, Chris Walton, came up with an idea that was purely awesome. You will love the story behind it!

[AH] The word is a Monsterpocalypse Voltron release in early 2010. What is going to differentiate Voltron from some of the factions we’ve seen thus far, especially since the new metamorph monsters in All Your Base seem to emulate one of the characteristics of Voltron? [EJY] Voltron will be a two-player stand-alone game. All the Monsterpocalypse components in the Voltron game will be 100% compatible and competitive with everything else that is Monsterpocalypse. The different sides will even have agendas.

[AH] Speaking of Voltron, it was recently announced that Privateer Press had come to an agreement to use Voltron in an upcoming release. I’m sure plenty of fans are excited about the addition of such a stellar property to the game. What was your thought process behind acquiring rights to Voltron? [EJY] I think it went like this: “Man, Voltron is cool. We are doing these morpher guys; do you think we could get the Voltron license?”

[AH] In your GamingReport.com interview, you stated that new factions would be released in a three-set cycle. Does that mean that once the final part of this first cycle is over, you’ll no longer support the current factions with new monsters and units? [EJY] New factions will be introduced for the fourth, fifth, and sixth series. These new factions will have the same agendas as the factions from the first three series. Since they have the same agenda, you will be able to use the granted abilities and spawn units without extra cost if the agendas match. We may do additional figures for the debut factions, but there are no plans on the table yet. But effectively, every faction is always “supported” by virtue of being part of an agenda. For example, we may not be doing a G.U.A.R.D. figure in Series 4, but the faction representing the Protectors agenda will work perfectly alongside your G.U.A.R.D. force, even offering some crazy new options.

World Event Productions, or

the “Voltron guys” as I call them, has been one of the best licensors I have ever dealt with (and I have worked with quite a few). They were excited to work with us, and we are stoked to be working with them. [AH] Are you going to try to acquire rights to other properties?

[AH] One final question: Which of the monsters do you think is the most fun to play? [EJY] Gorghadra. When I look at him, I smile. He looks so happy to be doing what he is doing. And I am happy that he is doing what he is doing, because that helps pay the bills!

[EJY] That’s the plan. Monsterpocalypse was designed to be able to integrate strategically licensed “guest stars” into the game. Obviously, we’re great fans of the genre, and there are a number of characters we’d love to see show up in the future.

[AH] Thank you for your time. We’re looking forward to Series 3: All Your Base coming out this summer! [EJY] Thank you for playing and letting me do what I do!

Check It Out...

BRIAN ROSS

Summer Movie Preview

Movies / TV

X-Men Origins: Wolverine to see how Gambit (Taylor Kitsch) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) come on screen as they were always two of my favorite Marvel characters of all time. Yes, the movie has been leaked, but I can’t stand watching pirated low quality movies, although I was relieved to hear generally favoruable reviews. This is my absolute must see action film of the summer, hell I already have plans to see it.

Director: Gavin Hood Stars: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Ryan Reynolds (Full Cast) Studio: Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation Release Date: 1st May 2009 Hype: 5/5

Chris: I am very tired of Wolverine shoved down my throat and

having Cyclopse being able to shoot lasers from his eyes and still losing every fight to everyone. I won’t be in a hurry to see this one.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine tells the story of how Marvel’s favorite anti-hero came to be the surly son of a bitch he is. The story focuses primarily on the relationships between his half-brother Victor Creed/Sabertooth (Schreiber) and Colonel William Stryker (Danny Huston) who leads the Weapon X program. The film features a bevy of mutant cameos, and takes place about twenty-three years before the X-Men films. By the time this article has landed, Wolverine will have torn through the audiences and proved just how viable the comic book movies still are. I’m a mere two days from actually seeing it at the time of this writing, and can’t wait

Alex: X3 left my faith in a proper X-Men movie fairly battered. I’ll give this a shot, but if it’s a stinker, I don’t expect I’ll see another X-Men movie again.

Jason: Saw it, was very disappointed. Why is everyone obsessed with Cyclops? Dude has not been done justice in any of the X-men movies.

Summer Movie Preview Star Trek a series of movies and shows I have never liked. It is that good. I dare say I’ll be in theaters for this one, alongside all the Trekkies and other converts who just want to see if this film can live up to the hype. Considering early screenings were met with rave reviews and standing ovations, I think the film is set to deliver and as many put it—be the best prequel of all time.

Director: J.J. Abrams Stars: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg (Full Cast) Studio: Paramount Pictures Release Date: 8th May 2009 Hype: 5/5

Chris: Woah! I watched the trailer and I am very impressed!

Star Trek is the theatrical verision of the origins of the star ship Enterprise and her crew. It explores the backstories of Spock (Quinto) and Kirk (Pine), as well as introducing the world again to all of the crew. As the Enterprise’s crew embarks on its maiden voyage they are beset by a Romulan from the future intent on destroying the United Federation of Planets. I don’t like Star Trek. That is absolutely important to note, because the first time I saw that trailer I was blown away. It was one of the greatest trailers I’ve ever seen second maybe to the Watchmen’s “The End is the Beginning is the End” trailer. Moody, powerful, evocative. I actually want to see a movie from

Alex: This is a must see. I’m not the biggest Trekkie (or is it Trekker?), but I can’t help but wonder how this is going to be.

Jason: Hookey physics turns me off, but I’ll see it. I swear, if there’s a phaser showdown in a corridor with both sides being five feet from each other and still missing, I’ll scream.

Summer Movie Preview Terminator: Salvation Now he gives us Terminator’s third attempt to reboot after T2: Judgement Day rocketed the sci-fi action horror genre into super stardom. Aside from McG and the infamous Christian Bale rant, it will be interesting to see if this film can catch a spark and ignite after Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles spent two years dissappointing fans. Early trailers show promise that the film will at least be fun action-wise and a guaranteed blockbuster.

Director: McG Stars: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin (Full Cast) Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Release Date: 21st May 2009 Hype: 4/5

Chris: Terminator scares the Be-Jesus out of me. I will definitely

be seeing this as soon as I get $90 saved up so I can by a matinée ticket at the local theater.

Terminator Salvation is a prequel of sorts in that it shows the origins of the Terminators. However, being a prequelis confusing as it is set in the future after Judgement Day when Skynet has control of the world’s machines, meaning its a prequel from the future that takes place years after the original movies, which is just kinda confusing to say let alone think about. The film documents the rise of John Connor (Bale) from mere soldier to leader of the human resistance. On a personal note: God, not McG. I can’t think of anyone else who has so obviously sold their soul to the devil for success. Regardless of his god awful music videos and the entire Charlie’s Angel thing, at least the man gave us Chuck.

Alex: Christian Bale, despite his offstage antics, has consistently put up an amazing piece of work in every movie I’ve seen him in. I have no doubt that this will be something of the same.

Jason: Yay for continuity destruction?! It still looks like a badass movie. I’ll definitely see it. Robot army? Yes please!

Summer Movie Preview Drag Me to Hell the Spiderman series. Now, he’s back where he started doing a straight up horror film, and boy does this look like a fun one. Personally I can’t wait to see if he weaves the same ridiculous humor of the Evil Dead series into this gem.

Director: Sam Raimi Stars: Alison Lohman, Justin Long Studio: Universal Pictures Release Date: 29th May 2009 Hype: 2/5

Chris: Not if you paid for my ticket.

Drag Me to Hell is the story of the adorable Christine (Lohman) who is cursed after evicting an old woman from her house. Not your average run of the mill curse mind you, Christine has a mere three days to live before demons drag her screaming to Hell. As demons and Hell itself rises up around her, she must find a way to save herself from an eternity of damnation. Not many people besides horror film lovers have heard of this one, but you should take note of it for one simple reason—Sam Raimi returning to his roots. Raimi who was well known for his Evil Dead series (and getting Katie Holmes to show her boobs in The Gift), really came to fame after successfully helming

Alex: While I’m a sometime fan of horror, especially of “The Ring” and “Dark Water” variety, I can definitely say that this is a no for me.

Jason: Horror movies just aren’t my thing. They fail to scare me since they also fail to create that suspension of disbelief.

Summer Movie Preview Land of the Lost Director: Brad Silberling Stars: Will Ferrell, Danny McBride, Anna Friel (Full Cast) Studio: Universal Pictures Release Date: 5th June 2009 Hype: 3/5

Chris: I really don’t like Will Ferrell, and in saying that, I think

this movie will stink. I won’t be seeing it.

Land of the Lost is based on the campy television series of the same name. A disgraced palentologist (Ferrell), his assistant (Friel) and a tour guide (McBride) set off to discover something capable of recognition and fame, when they stumble into a valley full of dinosaurs, monkey men, and Sleestaks. Random hilarity ensues. Will Ferrell movies are going downhill, while Danny McBride’s star is just on the rise. The two did make a potent pair in HBO’s Eastbound & Down, but it’s questionable at best if this film’s premise could ever really work. I don’t have high hopes, but if anyone can pull it off it is Will Ferrell, or maybe Tracy Morgan.

Alex: Will Ferrell hasn’t had a truly good movie since Blades of Glory (some would say since Anchorman). I’m up for giving it a shot, but I’ll wait for the reviews first.

Jason: Will Ferrell? I’ll rent it—it’s not really worth the theater ticket.

Summer Movie Preview Død snø Director: Tommy Wirkola Stars: Jeppe Laursen, Charlotte Frogner, Jenny Skavlan (Full Cast) Studio: IFC Films Release Date: 12th June 2009 Hype: 1/5

Chris: Wha...?

Dead Snow (for us English speakers) is a film about a ski vacation that goes horribly wrong. By horribly wrong I mean a group of students find themselves confronted by Nazi zombies. That’s right—Nazi zombies. A classic combination that can’t go wrong. A throwback to old horror films, Dead Snow is touted as one of those outrageous horror films that is purposefully bad for all the right reasons. Critics have been comparing it to a modernized take on Return on the Living Dead, which is both good and bad. Good if you’re looking for something ridiculous to watch and a fan of the genre, bad if you want a serious flick. Pretty much set to be this year’s Black Sheep.

Alex: Not on your life.

Jason: *shakes head*

Summer Movie Preview Year One to modern expectations. Black seemingly delivers, along with the understated sad sack comedy of Cera, and for those wondering if McLovin was a one hit wonder never to make it onto the screen again, Christopher Mintz-Plasse is back as Isaac. The cast is there, the premise allots for tons of free play, the question is can Harold Ramis deliver more of his comic genius, or create another dud like Multiplicity.

Director: Harold Ramis Stars: Jack Black, Michael Cera, Olivia Wilde (Full Cast) Studio: Columbia Pictures Release Date: 19th June 2009 Hype: 3/5

Chris: No interest. Even reading Brian’s preview gave me no

indication that I would want to see this.

Two hunter-gatherers (Black & Cera) are banished from their village and set off on an epic journey through the ancient world to discover the meaning of their lives. As the wander the earth they encounter a host of early biblical characters including Adam (Ramis) & Eve (Rhoda Griffs), Cain (David Cross) & Abel (Paul Rudd), and Abraham (Hank Azaria) as shenanigans ensue. Obviously, this is not your typical comedy as it plays fast and heavy with historical accuracy as the cavemen encounter a greatest hits version of the Bible. Not quite a screwball comedy it is more of a jolly good time reminscent of Monty Python’s Life of Brian or Mel Brooks’ History of the World. tuned up

Alex: It may be irreverent, stupid comedy, but I’m a fan of Jack Black and the up and coming Micheal Cera. I’ll give it a whirl.

Jason: Definately rentable. Looks like it’ll be good for a couple laughs with friends.

Summer Movie Preview Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Director: Michael Bay Stars: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel (Full Cast) Studio: DreamWorks SKGR Release Date: 26th June 2009 Hype: 5/5

Chris: Megan Fox is in it and she is my dream girl...

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen picks up where the original left off. Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) learns the truth about the transformers origins on Earth. The Decepticons return to Earth openly striking against all of humanity’s defenses in an effort to catch Sam and overpower the Autobots. Joining the Decepticons are a group of transformers called the Constructicons who are vastly larger and capable of serious damage. The action is tight. The robots look bigger and better. Even a mindless story couldn’t really ruin the experience of giant robots smashing through air craft carriers and through cityscapes. This is by and large one of the major releases this summer and should demolish most of its competition.

Alex: Sorry, this is a no go. Am I the only one who didn’t like the first one?

Jason: God I’ve had withdrawn symptoms since the first one came out. Will watch—repeatedly; possibly drooling. As much as the plot is weak, it’s giant fucking robots beating the shit out of everything around them. What’s not to like about that?

Summer Movie Preview Public Enemies Director: Michael Mann Stars: Christian Bale, Johnny Depp (Full Cast) Studio: Universal Pictures Release Date: 1st July 2009 Hype: 5/5

Chris: ‘Star power’ here. I was about to skip from Transformers

to Harry Potter when I saw ‘Depp’ and decided to read it. I will give a Depp movie a chance every time.

Public Enemies chronicles the rise and fall of American gangsters John Dillinger (Depp), Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) and Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) during the crime ridden 30’s. The FBI lead by Melvin Purvis (Bale) and Edgar Hoover (Crudup) seek to quell the violent outbursts of crime that are sweeping the nation. Doesn’t quite seem like the best pick for a summer hit movie, but the cast is there, and trailers seem to show more than enough action. If you’re a fan of gangster/mob movies this is a must see flick and if Mann can deliver again like he did with Heat it’ll soon be a crime genre classic. The pairing of Bale and Depp more than anything almost assures this movie will be solid gold.

Alex: Johny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cottilard? That’s some powerful talent you got there. I’ll catch this opening night, if you please.

Jason: If someone drags me to it, sure, I’ll see it. It just hasn’t compelled me to see it ASAP. It’ll probably be one of those movies where I’ll see it two years later on TV late one night and realize that it was really good.

Summer Movie Preview Brüno Director: Larry Charles Stars: Sacha Baron Cohen (Full Cast) Studio: Universal Pictures Release Date: 10th July 2009 Hype: 4/5

Chris: No interest what-so-ever.

Alex: Borat was hilarious, but I can only take so much of Cohen’s antics. I’ll check this out once it hits DVD, maybe. Bruno (Cohen) brings another Da Ali G Show character to life in this “sequel” to Borat. While not featuring the titular character it is done in much the style as the gay Austrian fashionista makes his way across America surprising celebrities, politicians, and everyday Americans. The plot really isn’t of consequence and despite an early X-rating, drunken frat boys will be flocking to this film in droves. Early screenings and releases have all been reported to be nothing short of hilarious, which some touting it as superior to Borat in everyway.

Jason: As much as the trailer screams ludicrous hilarity, I think it goes over my threshold of comedy into the plain stupid. I never saw Borat, yet I feel like I have with all the references made to it by people. I’m sure Brüno will create a similar effect.

Summer Movie Preview Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince some reason, much of July seems devoid of true blockbusters and the entire summer is full of kid-friendly films. I’m not sure if I can stomach the change though as when I think of Harry Potter I really do think of the dreary cold months of November and December, it somehow blends naturally. Regardless, this to me is the no brainer hit of the summer.

Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint (Full Cast) Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Release Date: 15th July 2009 Hype: 5/5

Chris: I have seen the first and third Harry Potter and it will

most likely remain that way unless I happen to have insomnia one night and it is on at 3:00 a.m. and Good Times is my only other option.

The sixth entry into the Harry Potter series features the usual suspects in a much darker mystery. Harry (Radcliffe) discovers a journal that belongs to a person going by the name the Half-Blood Prince. As he uses the recipes and spells inside to make his way through an extremely dark year he begins to learn more about Voldermorte and the mysterious Half-Blood Prince. The course of events is twistier than ever leading to the darkest ending in the series (which is no small feat). The first time Harry Potter has ventured from its normal Thanksgiving release time to the summer, and undeniably it couldn’t have picked a better year. For

Alex: Yes please. Next!

Jason: Looks enjoyable. Little disappointed in the PG rating, but the trailers at least show that it’s shot with a really grim atmosphere. That should make up for the non-gruesomeness that became of the flesh eating zombies...

Summer Movie Preview All the Boys Love Mandy Lane have ranked it as one of the greatest horror films of the decade reaching levels of true fright similar to Descent with an original take on an overdone genre. Amber Heard is by and large quickly becoming one of the most prolific rising stars after appearing in last year’s Pineapple Express.

Director: Jonathan Levine Stars: Amber Heard, Anson Mount (Full Cast) Studio: Senator Distribution Release Date: 15th July 2009 Hype: 2/5

Chris: I didn’t even read Brian’s preview and I can tell you this

movie will suck.

Ah the joys of high school and puberty! Mandy Lane (Heard) comes back from summer break with a killer bod and freshly grown rack that makes all the boys go “goo.” With the new found respect of the opposite sex, the popular kids invite her to a weekend party at a ranch that serves as the backdrop for the classic adolescent race to snatch up the V-Card of the hot girl. Course this happens to be a horror movie, so all that drug using, fornicating, and underage drinking has only one foreseeable outcome—gruesome death. This film has actually been around since 2006 and has seen several international releases and tours, but is finally seeing a release in the United States. Many

Alex: What kind of crap is this?

Jason: How about no? Not even if I was drunk and drugged. That’d probably make it better though.

Summer Movie Preview Funny People times. The only real question I have is if people will actualy want to go see this to find out, as it is a little heavier than most summer films.

Director: Judd Apatow Stars: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann (Full Cast) Studio: Universal Pictures Release Date: 31st July 2009 Hype: 3/5

Chris: Adam Sandler has money in the bank with me. I will still

stop and watch his movies.

George (Sandler) is a successful stand up comic who learns that he has less than a year to live. One night he meets Ira (Rogen), a struggling comic, who works at a deli and has yet to figure out who he is on stage. Taking George under his wing he hires him as his assistant and opening act in an attempt to pass down some aspect of his legacy to the comic. Nothing spells uncertainity like a dramedy. Sandler has become a staple of the dramas with films like Spanglish and Punch Drunk Love, while Rogen gave the genre a light hearted glance with Knocked Up. The film has a trifecta of comic genius minds leading it, although all have had their relative misses at

Alex: Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler teaming up is like a dream come true for me. I’m definitely going to be the first one in line for this one.

Jason: One of those movies that I’ll never see, but everyone will say really good things about it. I think I need to get out more...

Summer Movie Preview The Cove Stars: Richard O’Barry (Full Cast) Studio: Lionsgate Release Date: 31st July 2009 Hype: 1/5

Chris: Probably not for me. Sorry, if the violence is not a

weapon aimed at a dude, I am not interested.

Alex: I’m not big on dying dolphins, but this documentary has definitely sparked my interest. A group of activists, led by renown dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry, infiltrate a cove near Taijii, Japan to expose animal abuse and possible illegal activity. This is a documentary, and it is definitely not March of the Penguins. It won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival and many have described it as disturbingly powerful. Just a warning, probably not the best film to watch if you’re a dolphin lover and can’t stand to see them hurt. (Hint: very bad things happen to them)

Jason: Animal cruelty? I can’t even bring myself to watch those dog shelter commercials on TV without feeling like shit for the rest of the day for not doing something. I don’t think my steely resolve will be able to handle this documentary.

Summer Movie Preview G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra Director: Stephen Sommers Stars: Dennis Quaid, Channing Tatum, Marlon Wayans (Full Cast) Studio: Paramount Pictures Release Date: 7th August 2009 Hype: 4/5

Chris: I watched this cartoon as a little boy. I am definitely

looking forward to being disappointed by this movie.

How such a big name and potentially blockbuster movie got pushed back to an August release is beyond me. Not much is known about GI Joe at this point with trailers being limited and scarce. Paramount will be fools to not step up their advertising of this film as even a mediocre film could be sold by a fanatastic trailer with this property. The only really known thing is this film will depict the formation and rise of both the Joes and Cobra in the year 2020. A lot of the casting looks really good, although I’m a little perplexed about how Joseph Gordon-Levitt is going to be the Cobra Commander.

Alex: If this is any good, I’ll give it a shot. But I’ll wait for reviews and see what everyone else thinks before I buy my ticket.

Jason: Nice. Actually looks decent. G.I Joe was my brother’s thing and not mine, so I’m not a buff on G.I Joe trivia, but this movie looks like it’ll kick ass.

Summer Movie Preview A Perfect Getaway Stars: Richard O’Barry (Full Cast) Studio: Lionsgate Release Date: 31st July 2009 Hype: 1/5

Chris: What the hell is ‘nihilistic’?

Two couples (Zahn & Jovovich, Olyphant & Kiele Sanchez) go on a Hawaiian vacation only to discover that killers are stalking and murdering tourists on the islands. What exactly is in store is pretty much unknown, but if it is true to Twohy’s style it will be dark, nihilistic, and extremely thrilling to watch. Stay tuned for more on this sleeper thriller as the summer continues on.

Alex: Seriously? Nope. Not if you paid me.

You know what’s a great Horror flic? The News.

Summer Movie Preview Inglourious Basterds for his muse Uma Thurman. A WWII film, a spaghetti Western, and probably something distinctly Tarantino. The trailer depicts Brad Pitt demanding 100 Nazi scalps from each of his eight men and depicts some pretty ridiculous things like a guy running full speed with a gatling gun firing and feeding it himself, but somehow that just intrigues me all the more.

Director: Quentin Tarantino Stars: Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth (Full Cast) Studio: Weinstein Company, The Release Date: 21st August 2009 Hype: 5/5

Chris: I can’t get the whole Bragelina escapade out of my head

enough to take his or her movies seriously anymore. I’ll just be content to shake my head in the grocery store every time I see their newest tabloid.

During World War II a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as “The Basterds” are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. Their Lt. Aldo Raine (Pitt) has demanded 100 scalps from each of his men and is deadset on collecting them. The Basterds soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is getting ready to screen a Nazi propaganda film. Only a blood bath can logically follow. Any fan of Tarantino has been hearing about this film for the last ten years. It is the epic war film he started out making before the Kill Bill films became an epic

Alex: Pulp Fiction is one of my favorite movies. Tarantino’s back at it, and I’m thinking about giving this one a go. I haven’t really liked any of his films since Kill Bill, but you can always expect the same thing from his films. Paying to see a new spin on the old game depends on how much you like the spin.

Jason: I don’t know if I’ll see this. Probably will with friends or something—they seem to be into mindless violence. At least it’ll be a history lesson...of sorts...?

Summer Movie Preview H2: Halloween 2 the killer, which may make the difference between fans finally accepting his remakes.

Director: Rob Zombie Stars: Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane, Malcolm McDowell (Full Cast) Studio: Dimension Films Release Date: 28th August 2009 Hype: 2/5

Chris: I hate Halloween. I wish Jason would cut this pansy’s

head off and mail it to his mother’s house.

H2 picks up exactly where Rob Zombie’s remake left off showing Laurie Strode (Taylor-Compton) and the town of Haddonfield in the direct wake of Michael Myers’ (Mane) killing spree. While it seemingly starts just as the original Halloween 2, it soon deviates as the film goes two years into the future focusing on Strode’s mental stability after the attacks. Zombie apparently will try to weave a parallel between Strode’s and Myers’ mental conditions in an effort to explore what drives Micheal to kill. Early trailers look interesting with a fresh take on the Myers persona and shows all the major cast returning. Halloween gatekeeper Moustapha Akkad gave Zombie carte blanche to do what he pleases with the series allowing him to realize his own true vision of

Alex: No thanks.

Jason: I respect Myers as a horror icon, but seriously, let it go. His time has passed. Is it so hard to create new horror icons nowadays? I mean, look at Pyramid Head; I don’t even play the game and I love that guy.

Summer Movie Preview Final Destination: Death Trip 3D Director: David R. Ellis Stars: Nick Zano, Krista Allen, Andrew Fiscella (Full Cast) Studio: New Line Cinema Release Date: 28th August 2009 Hype: 2/5 Competeing in the same weekend as H2 is another entry in the Final Destination series (and it will be in 3D). Like all the Final Destination films an unsuspecting teenager will witness death’s design and then prevent it. As always Death doesn’t apprecaite this and in very unfair ways kills the victims righting the wrong they created by living. This time the event in question is a race car accident that involves the fans — fun! The perfect film for people who have always wanted to see a snuff film in 3D.

Chris: I would say that this movie is so played out, but then

again... it is 3D. I only hope that I get a spear driven into my chest in 3D.

Alex: Which one of the Final Destination movies didn’t suck?

Oh right, none of them.

Jason: A bunch of people die in wacky unexpected ways— again. Now in 3D! Hmmmm...never saw any of the flicks, never going to. Pass.

Summer Movie Preview Other Flics to Watch Out For... Ghosts of Girlfriends Past — Romantic Comedy Next Day Air — Black Comedy Angels & Demons — Yuck fest The Brothers Bloom — Not really sure Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian — Kid movie Dance Flick — UGH, Scary Movie style movie The Girlfriend Experience — Not really sure Up — Pixar kid film, didn’t look of note, critics are questioning the move Away We Go — Romantic Comedy (Smart one at that) The Hangover — Stoner/Drinking Comedy (might actually be really

I Love You, Beth Cooper — High School Romantic Comedy with—

yuck—Hayden Panti. The Hurt Locker — Actually looks very cool. (500) Days of Summer — Drama. Only reason I’d watch is to stare at Zooey Deschanel. G-Force — Guinea Pig strike team. Need I say more? All Good Things — Wrong season for Oscars. Orphan — I’ve seen one too many scary kid movies. The Ugly Truth — Romantic Comedy Aliens in the Attic — Kid Movie about um...guess? Adam — Quirky Romantic Comedy Julie & Julia — Oscar season, still all wrong. Shorts — Kid Film District 9 — Kind of intrigued by this, but I know absoultey nothing about it besides aliens in South Africa Bandslam — Teen Dance/Musical Taking Woodstock — Demetri Martin is hilarious, unfortunately most people won’t be able to find this film in theaters. The Time Traveler’s Wife — Romantic Drama The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard — Ugh, another formula comedy from the Farrell team. Paper Heart — Annoying documentary hybrid thing Post Grad — Gilmore Girl Chick Flick! The Boat That Rocked — Off beat Comedy

funny or really not funny) My Life in Ruins — Big Fat Greek Wedding Clone The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 — I probably should have included this Moon — Indie thinkpiece film Imagine That — Eddie Murphy isn’t funny any more. Whatever Works — Who actually watches Woody Allen films? The Proposal — Romantic Comedy Food, Inc. — Vegetarian propoganda Sister’s Keeper — Ugh Family Drama Chéri — Triple Ugh, Pierod Piece Romantic Comedy Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs — I thought the first two were bleh, and I enjoy good animated kid films I Hate Valentine’s Day — Why in the summer? Why another Big Fat Greek Wedding Clone?

ALEX HOFFMAN

Haridama: Magic Cram School Comics / Mangas

Inside Haridama: Magic Cram School

Produced By:

Price:

Del Ray Manga

CAN: $12.50 US: $10.95

Written By:

Atsushi Suzumi

henever I think of sorcery and magic, my mind constantly springs to the D&D-like fantasy realm, where magicians summon arcane power through knowledge of spells written in musty tomes, or by calling on pacts with infernal and wild powers. Magic is something otherworldly, something strange, and something to be feared. In the world of Haridama: Magic Cram School, magic is not otherworldly, but rather, a worldly source of strength and power. Sorcerers are people who have the ability to manipulate the world’s opposing forces, yin and yang, to create spells. These spells channel the spirit of the world within you. This is very atypical compared to the Western idea of magic. It’s a very different mindset than what I’m used to, and this is why manga is sometimes so appealing; It allows me to look at things from a much different cultural perspective. Hardama: Magic Cram School is a one-volume adventure staring the two sorcerers in training, Kokuyo and Harika. It focuses on them, and their studies in the Haridama magic cram school. What is a cram school, you ask? Cram schools in Japan are school after school, set up to help Japanese students pass the extremely difficult entrance tests for Japanese universities like Tokyo U. Why would a sorcerer have a cram school though? The reason is actually quite simple; sorcery is no cake walk. Sorcerers must practice and learn, slowly growing in power until they can pass a standardized test which allows them to gain ranks in their sorcery. For this reason, magic cram schools have come into existence, where students can go and learn to be better sorcerers. Not all sorcery students are equal, however. Some have it easier than others, and some have it pretty hard. Kokuyo and Harika are a special subtype of the “got it hard” sorcerers, called obsidians. As obsidians, both Kokuyo and Harika only have half of the world’s forces (either yin or yang, but not both, like other sorcerers), and need a special stone made of obsidian in order to channel their powers into spells. This makes them weaker than normal sorcerers, and this tension between their abilities and the abilities of normal sorcerers comes into play quite a bit throughout this book.

Illustrated By:

Atsushi Suzumi

Rating:

T for Teen

Pages:

193

Despite the short length of the manga, Suzumi has done a good job explaining the magic system that all of the characters in the manga use through classroom scenes. Things never seem rushed, and the characters are likable and, remarkably, equal as hero and heroine. Unfortunately, because the manga is only one book long, the characters never really get fleshed out, and the end of the novel leaves a few questions that will probably never be answered. Another problem I had with the manga was that it had fairly generic plot points. All of the chapters have the same general themes, like working together, always do your best, find the strength in your heart, and don’t skip class...well, that last one isn’t as common as the others, but you get the idea. Although the author has cooked up a really cool, interesting premise to base a comic on, we never see it get to come to full fruition. We don’t see development of the world, and we don’t see Haridama: Magic Cram School ever break out from the standard cliches that fill up manga comics. On the upside, the art looks fantastic and is probably the reason I picked up the book to begin with. Throughout the novel, the art does not disappoint. Beautiful crisp lines and good work of toning make the characters shine, and the action scenese never get complicated or messy. Publishing wise, Del Rey has done a good job with this book as it has no apparent lettering or printing problems. The cover is a really attractive, and the paper quality is top notch. Haridama is a good novel for anyone who liked Harry Potter and is looking for a quick read, but if you really liked the book and want more, it is unfortunately all you’re going to get. The book is simple, quick fun, but doesn’t have the staying power to be a truly recommended read. If the author had decided to stray from the lines a bit and really develop the world more, I would definitely suggest this to everyone. But, for those fantasy fans out there, Haridama was a nice diversion that was fairly entertaining. To be honest though, I ended the manga wanting more from it. It’s a shame that it didn’t grow.

BRIAN ROSS

able to stomach raunchy humor if you’re going to even make an attempt at this show even if it is limited from going completely over the top by basic cable standards.

Movies / TV

Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire A less than scorching review.

omedy Central, for last two months, has been hyping its new fantasy TV show Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire. The show is a thirty minute comedy based in a high fantasy setting similar to Xena or Hercules with skimpy clothes and mystical creatures. It chronicles the tales of Kröd Mändoon on his quest to achieve his destiny and defeat the evil Chancellor Dongalor before he can destroy the world. Kröd is accompanied by a beautiful pagan warrioress who loves the cock, a charlatan sorcerer, a dim-witted mawg (half man, half-dog—think Spaceballs), and his dead mentor’s flaming gay lover. The show is being co-developed by BBC Two in Britain and Comedy Central in America featuring a handful of relatively unknowns from both countries. The premise definitely has potential, treading into territory proven comedy gold by films such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Army of Darkness, and Robin Hood Men in Tights. Unfortunately, for every good joke there are ten lame ones. This was disappointing as I had high hopes attached to the series, especially with Matt Lucas (Chancellor Dongalor) in a lead role. For those not familiar, he is half of the British comedy duo of the raunchy show, Little Britain. While his performance in Kröd Mändoon isn’t necessarily bad, it just feels a little bit off. Then again Little Britain wasn’t always funny either and generally speaking I found David Walliams the funnier of the comic duo, although I’m often told I’m in the minority on that one. The series as you can tell from the redudant title alone is going to be played over the top. It will be ridiculous, it will be shameless, it will hopefully be funny. What the title doesn’t tell you is that the entire series is a long drawn out sex joke that seems more at home on HBO or Showtime than Comedy Central. Some of the jokes are funny like a creature called the Bi-Clops (a bisexual cyclops), while others will be lucky to get a chuckle. You must be

Sean Maguire plays the titular Kröd Mändoon convincingly enough, channeling the campiness of Bruce Campbell, but totally missing the stoic smugness and physical comedy that Bruce is adept at. His portrayal by no means is a wash as his normal acting is fairly solid and I can’t help but picture Rob McElhenney (Mac from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) every time I look at him. For the show to become a success, it is going to require Maguire to get a little more comfortable as Kröd and learn how do some physical comedy. The supporting characters are all over the top. Relative newcomer India de Beaufort (Run Fatboy, Run) plays Aneka, a pagan warrioress who fights capably, but possesses even stronger bedroom skills. From the start of the show they abuse her amazingly exotic good looks for constant jabs at promiscuity that strays quickly into the outlandish. In only the second episode, Aneka must engage in the annual Dance of the 300 Raccoons which is pretty much the World’s Biggest Gang Bang. I have to give Beaufort kudos though because her acting is solid and she sells her role. I confess that I was ready to get in line and be #301 and I imagine many a horny nerd will tune in just to see how close to nude she gets each week.

Kevin Hart, however, pretty much sucks in his role as the charlatan black sorcerer, Zezelryck. Quite simply, he really isn’t that funny and the writing for his character doesn’t help. Granted, I don’t expect much from a person that has starred in some of the worst comedies ever (Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4, Extreme Movie, and Disaster Movie). I had enough of his character the first time I saw it in Mystery Men as the Invisible Boy. I don’t think I can stomach an entire season of him pretending to cast magic spells and explaining why they didn’t work. The writing and character direction on this one need a massive overhaul.

Mändoon’s dead mentor. The two lovers had shared a passionate two week affair in the Chancellor’s dungeon and apparently the premise is just thick enough to make him a regular in the show. It is no surprise that Aneka and Brucie quickly vie for who is the bigger whore. Marques Ray plays the part extremely well, despite being an utter cliche thus far. All in all, the show is watchable at best, it needs to improve a lot, and improve fast, and it seems to be doing that with every episode so far. The actors for the most part don’t seem to have fully captured their characters yet, and the writing just isn’t that funny so there is plenty of room for improvement. I suggest lowering your expectations and having at least two beers to increase your enjoyment level. The premise is there, the talent in some cases is questionable, but like every Internet post about the show seems to state—at least the girl is hot. Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire plays regularly on BBC Two and Comedy Central (Thursday 10pm).

Steve Speirs plays Loquasto, a mawg that is loyal, but horrible at pretty much everything. Speirs does an excellent job with very little (if any dialogue) and has the dim-witted “oopsieface” down pact. He is obviously a strong physical comedian, but the writers will have to get more creative than having him accidentally shoot Kröd Mändoon with a crossbow every episode—hell every scene. Finally, there is Marques Ray who plays Bruce or more accurately Brucie. Brucie is the effeminately gay, flaming homosexual, love partner of Kröd