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Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game
Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game
2012 | Card Game, Comic Book / Strip
Teamwork makes the dream work! That’s how the saying goes, right? And in Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game, it is certainly the truth! When I say it’s a team-building game, I mean that both literally and figuratively – you must recruit heroes and work semi-cooperatively with your fellow gamers to defeat the evil Mastermind before they take over the city!

In an era where superheroes are the norm, the days of petty crime are over. As the protectors of our world have grown in power, so too have those who would see it fall to chaos. Out of the shadows comes a nefarious Mastermind who has engineered the most wicked evil scheme the world has ever seen. With an ever-growing band of followers and henchmen to carry out the plot, the future looks dismal. But do not fear – the supers are here! This job is way too big for only one single hero to handle, but if they all band together, then maybe, juuuust maybe, they might be able to pull it off…

DISCLAIMER: There are several expansions to this game, but we are not reviewing them at this time. Should we review them in the future we will either update this review or post a link to the new material here. -T

Set in the world of Marvel comics and, recently, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Legendary: Marvel is a cooperative deck building game. Players take turns drafting and playing cards to recruit heroes to their team and to fight off the villains trying to carry out the sinister scheme. You have to strategize how you want to build your deck to best complete the mission – do you recruit heroes that give you special abilities (like drawing additional cards), or do you recruit strong heroes that give you lots of attack points? The choice is entirely up to you! Although all players are building their own individual decks, you must also devise a team strategy because all players either win or lose together as a team. That being said, there is a small competitive aspect to this game – the player with the most Victory Points (earned by defeating villains and rescuing bystanders) is deemed the most legendary hero of the game! Exactly how competitive the game gets is up to the players. I personally prefer a more cooperative approach and usually don’t tally up VPs at the end of the game – either the team won or we lost.

The beauty of this game is that it can be played with any combination of Marvel characters – you are not limited to only using specific teams. Selecting which heroes/villains/Mastermind/etc. to use is at the discretion of the players. Want Iron Man to team up with Deadpool and Wolverine to fight off Kingpin? Go for it! You have basically the entire Marvel universe from which to choose, so the sky is the limit! With so many options, though, it can be a little overwhelming, so I usually use a randomizer app to create a setup for me. Sometimes the setup itself will determine how the entire game will play out – certain combinations of Mastermind/villains/scheme can be BRUTAL to play and difficult to win. But the cool thing about this game is that you cannot just look at a setup and tell if it will be difficult or not – that realization only will come once you start playing!

I love playing this game because of its immense variability – the base game alone has 500 cards! The ability to choose your own heroes, villains, Masterminds, and Schemes means that you will probably never play the same game twice. And on top of that, Legendary: Marvel currently has like 19 expansions! The possibilities are truly endless, and that is the Holy Grail for me when it comes to gaming. I know that I will never get bored of this game because it is a different experience every game.

On the flip side, my main grievance with Legendary: Marvel is with the physical setup and teardown. Every play uses SO MANY cards that it does take a decent amount of time to get setup or put away. Every individual hero/villain/Mastermind/etc. must be sorted and stored separately, and with 500+ cards, that time adds up. When deciding on a game to play, sometimes I skip Legendary: Marvel because of the time it takes to set up. I LOVE to play it, but sometimes I do not feel like taking that much time to set up – I just want to play! My other grievance deals with certain hero superpowers/special card text. Some hero cards have special text, and the definitions are outlined in the rule book but not on the cards themselves. Until I learned/memorized what that special text meant, I was constantly referring back to the rule book nearly every turn to make sure I was using the cards correctly. There is a bit of a learning curve with some of the hero text, but it does get better the more you play!

Don’t let the simplicity of the mechanics fool you – this game requires more strategy than meets the eye! You must not only decide on a strategy for building your individual deck, but you and your teammates must also collectively choose a group strategy to defeat the Mastermind. Cooperation is key, and it really helps the theme of the game come to life. Definitely a winner for Purple Phoenix Games with a butt-kicking 24 / 24 and a well-earned Golden Feather Award!
  
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Dana (24 KP) rated Empire of Storms in Books

Mar 23, 2018  
Empire of Storms
Empire of Storms
Sarah J. Maas | 2016 | Children
8
9.4 (22 Ratings)
Book Rating
This review will have a lot of spoilers for the books, so if you haven't read it, I suggest you turn away now. This is going to be a long review!

Let's start off with a character analysis section:

The Little Folk: I loved how they gave Aelin little gifts. I want more interaction with them in the next book!!

Elide Lochan: Elide doesn't see her own strength. She has been through hell, but still knows kindness and love. She has so much hope and is loyal to a fault. She loves Lorcan, but is constantly stopped by this idiocy. She has three freaking guardian angels: Aelin, Manon, and Aedion. She is a half-witch, which is cool! She was able to withstand the torment of the wyrdkey with little side effects! She is protected by the God of Death's consort which is cool because the God of Death is Lorcan's protector. She learns from and is strengthened by her crappy past. She can STILL LOVE AFTER EVERYTHING! Also, she is such a tricky schemer and a great liar!

Lorcan Salvaterre: He is a dummy and is too fixated on Maeve to see that he can have real love with Elide. He is death-protected by Hellas-and is a great hunter. He has a heart of gold underneath all that grime. He freaking makes Elide a brace for her ankle for goodness sake! Lorcan is vengeful as f, especially when Elide is threatened. I feel like he's going to be a big help to Aelin's course!

Aedion Ashryver: He's Bisexual!!! He is so in Love with Lysandra and is a flirtatious bastard. He doubts Aelin too much and questions her all the time. I get it, but it gets disheartening. He has a bad ass shot (that sea wyvern shot though!!) and is obviously a skilled warrior. He has an interestingly complicated relationship with his father. I love the the White Wolf of the North! I love his tattoo: the knot made of the courts' names!

Lysandra: Oh my goodness, she is so freaking strong! I love her powers! She is so protective of her girls, especially Evangeline. Her Snow Leopard and Sea Dragon forms are my favorite! She can and will conquer as many men as need be (mainly in killing, not sex). She loves Aedion and is so loyal to Aelin that she would literally become her.

Evangeline: She is the innocence of the group. When she goes, the group is harder and lacks the absolute faith that everything will be alright.

Fleetfoot: I love her, that is all.

Dorian Havillard: A king without a kingdom. He is a boy with powers he has no idea how to control. A boy whose friends left him. He has to learn his powers alone like he has all his life. He is trusting but questions things-he knows when he should hold back. He loves Manon and oh my sweet goodness, that cabinet scene. He is great at riddles too!

Mannon Blackbeak: OUR QUEEN!!!! She protects her own and can let go of prejudices when she needs to do the best for her people. She is so savage! She is a great leader willing to die for her thirteen. I can't wait until she kills her grandmother. SHE WILL BRING PEACE FOR HER PEOPLE!!!!! She obviously has feelings for Dorian.

Abraxos: He is the best damned wyvern ever. Even though Manon tells him to "go hide," he finds a freaking army and saves the day!

Gavriel: He's not the best dad, but he's working on it! He is too loyal to Maeve, but he cares about people. He is a lot more emotional than I would have guessed. Lol, Uncle Kitty-Cat.

Fenrys: He is such a sarcastic little ass, but a great warrior (both in the battlefield and in bed ;D). He kinda reminds me of Cassian. His situation sucks with Maeve because both he and his brother are basically prisoners and sex objects for the queen. I hope he will find a way to break the blood bond for him and his brother to help Aelin. Also, WINNOWING!!!

Queen Maeve: She is a witch with a capital B and I hate her.

Erawan: Power hungry as hell.

Elena: She is so dumb. I get it, she made a mistake, but she was still dumb. She acts before thinking and doesn't understand sacrifice or strategy. She pushed a war onto a group of children for goodness sake!

Rowan Whitethorn: He has come such a long way since Heir of Fire. He is so emotional and a freaking worry wart, loyal and trusting as hell, but he is still bad ass. He lets his woman fight when she needs to. He embraces the past mistakes of his friends and family. He is a horny little hawk. HE IS AELIN'S MATE AND HUSBAND!!! And he is the KING OF TERRASAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Strategic as hell-the thing with the Whitethorn cousins-hell yes! When he gets his hands on Maeve, shit will go down! VENGEANCE WILL BE HIS and Maeve will die horribly!! His reaction when he found out Aelin was captured was gut wrenching! Also, I loved it when he called Aelin Milady. Freaking great!

Aelin Ashryver Galanthys: She is always 500 steps ahead of everyone else. She shuts everyone down with her witty comebacks. She lets Aedion think the worst of her because she doesn't want to get their hopes up. She is not too trusting but is willing to sacrifice herself for everyone else. "But your faces are so wonderful when I get to reveal them." WOW AELIN!! When Deanna took over Aelins super power moment-I was terrified. I hate that she has to sacrifice herself. I just want her to be happy!! I loved how she pulled all of the characters from The Assassin's Blade into this! She's bloody brilliant! Using all of those Life Debts!! Her reaction to Elide is heartbreaking. Killing all of the Valg was great! When she slipped into the Celeana person, I go so freaking excited!! She was so close to settling and Maeve had to freaking ruined it all! She could have lived forever and been so happy!

Now onto some plot analysis:

So this book had a pretty awesome start since we got a flashback to the first war with Elena and Erawan. I love the little history throughout the book! The flashbacks with Elena and Nehemia were so freaking sad. I cried when they talked about Nehemia and Aelin's respective sacrifices. I feel like we get to go deeper into the history even though this is the second to last book!

Nicknames in all of Sarah J Maas' books are so cute! I love how Aelin and Rowan call each other Fireheart and Buzzard.

Family (especially chosen and made family) is so important in all of Sarah J Maas' books. Characters are willing to die to protect those they love and I think that's something important to put into books. The fact that you can always find a home in your people is very nice to see.

Women are the ones to be truly feared in this series because they have the most power. They are all so badass and never take shit from the male characters!

The multiple PoVs were very well done. As you may have realized from my other reviews, I am not a fan on multiple PoV novels much, so the fact I loved this one is great!

I think it was really cool how each character is being guided by at least one God. I have a crackpot theory about this that connects this series to the ACOTAR series. So it is stated multiple times that the Gods want to "go home" because they are trapped, right? So what if they are our Night Court Crew? Some of the descriptions of the powers fit!

I loved how SJM described the process of the magic weilding.

There was a great plot structure and pacing.

The Mycenians are so interesting! I called it that Rolfe was a Mycenian before I got to that part!
I want to know what Rowan said to Rolfe back at Skull's Bay.

All the ships got to have fun time together. Well, except for Elide and Lorcan.

I wish we could have had Choal and Nesryn in this book, but I understand why we didn't.

One thing I didn't like was how similar some of the plot points and characters were to ACOTAR and ACOMAF. Even thought they're both by SJM, I wish there wasnt' as much overlap.

Overall, I loved this book--a few thinggs could have been changed to keep it more significantly different from ACOTAR but it was still great.

Some Quotes I loved:

"Because destroying a symbol can break the spirits of men as much as bloodshed." (44)

"To call in old debts and promises. To raise an army of assassins and thieves and exiles and commoners. To finish what was started long, long ago." (72)

"One does not deal with Celeana Sardothian. One survives her." (241)

"Even when this world is a forgotten whisper if dust between the stars, I will love you." (350)
  
Witches Gone Wicked
Witches Gone Wicked
Sabrina Doyle | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry, Paranormal, Young Adult (YA)
All Clarissa wants to do is become a powerful witch, learn about her mother, and find her high school sweetheart, Derrick.

But it’s not that simple when she’s all but banned from using her volatile magic, her mother was apparently an evil dictator, and her high school sweetheart was swept away in a tornado. Oh, and she caused the tornado.

But, now that she’s a teacher at Womby’s School for Wayward Witches, she might have a chance to actually become part of the Witchkin community and achieve her goals.

Despite everyone despising her because of her mother, she’s making new friends like Josie, a video-gaming witch who loves all life, and Khaba, a Djinn with a kilt fetish. She’s also getting attention from the very sexy Julien Thistledown.

If only that jerk Felix Thatch would stop patronizing her and let her learn about her mother.

Witches Gone Wicked is essentially Harry Potter fanfiction,which had me skeptical at first, but it was really entertaining at the same time.

Womby’s is the Title I version of Hogwarts. It’s for witchkin too poor to afford other schools as well as ones who were kicked out of other schools. Clarissa, being an art teacher, feels the strain of this with an annual budget of $20. The previous art teacher apparently had the students make mud pie art because of lack of supplies. I really liked the idea of a Title I Hogwarts and found the entire school and the staff really interesting.

Josie and Khaba are really funny and entertaining. Khaba is a bit of a stereotype, but I didn’t mind it that much. Josie was fantastic. Gotta love someone who loves all life and has the guts to treat spiders like puppies.

My favorite character is perhaps Felix Thatch. He’s very sexy and funny and I love almost every scene including him. He’s definitely not a people person by any stretch, but he has a lot of integrity as a teacher and a person that Clarissa just refuses to see.

Clarissa is actually one of my least favorite characters. Her dislike and suspicion of Thatch is near identical to Harry Potter’s dislike of Snape. The only problem is she’s a full-grown woman!

Clarissa has a tendency to blindly trust everyone nice to her, not thinking for a second that anyone has ulterior motives. And she despises Thatch for being brutally honest with her despite proving time and time again that he has integrity as a person and a teacher.

Felix Thatch does the following:

Trains Clarissa to use her magic (granted, the principal ordered him to)
Emphasizes the importance of people wanting to take advantage of her
Makes students write apology letters to her
Lets one of his students read in his classroom during lunchtime
Expresses concern over said student’s habit of hugging male teachers because someone might try to take advantage of her friendly nature.

Meanwhile, Clarissa thinks Thatch:

is secretly trying to kill her
might be trying to enslave her using sex magic
condones student and teacher relationships
It’s completely insane! Hey, who’s the most likely to take advantage of you? Maybe not the guy who keeps warning you about people taking advantage of you.

Clarissa is sometimes funny and relatable. I like how much she cares about her students and her patience with the troublemakers in her class. That’s actually really admirable.

But half the time she’s juvenile and irrational and I just want to shake some sense into her.

She’s the daughter of a powerful witch who apparently terrorized the Witchkin community with evil and forbidden magic. Clarissa never knew her birth mother personally, but she’s treated with suspicion and fear because her mother killed and ruined the lives of basically everyone.

Because of her lineage and her volatile magic, Clarissa is under constant threat of being fired from Womby’s, drained of her magic, and turned into a Morty (Muggle).

So you think she would be really careful, right?

Lol no.

Clarissa goes around saying she wants to be the most powerful witch ever, uses magic when she’s not supposed to, and makes plans to break into the library’s restricted section. It’s a freaking miracle that she didn’t get drained and turned into a Morty.

Here’s another thing: why doesn’t she want to be drained? I really don’t get it. Because of her magic and her mother:

everyone hates her
her sister died
her high school sweetheart blew away in a tornado
Womby’s almost burned down
anyone can turn her into a sex slave
As far as I can tell, there are very few benefits to her having magic and a staggering amount of drawbacks. Call me a defeatist, but if I was Clarissa I would be begging to be drained. Her conviction that magic is her true identity isn’t good enough for me.

All in all, this book is definitely three out of five stars. I enjoyed the worldbuilding and really like Thatch. Some of the magic concepts are surprisingly sexy, which I definitely enjoyed. I just don’t like Clarissa.
  
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Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) created a post

May 18, 2018 (Updated Jun 12, 2018)  
E3 2018 Predictions


Don’t know how many fellow hardcore gaming fans are on here, but I normally have a podcast to do my predictions for my favourite event of the year, (yes even better than Christmas,) but since my podcast has been on an extended hiatus, it means that you guys are getting my predictions for 2018’s Electronic Entertainment Expo on here.

I have chosen to go with seven predictions for each conference, as I feel that 10 is too many and five just isn’t enough. There are obviously going to be more than seven announcements from each conference, but I’ve tried to keep it to things that people actually care about and that will get gamers excited, rather than playing it safe by ‘predicting,’ obvious shit, like Sony bringing up the Medievil remake or a trailer being shown for the next COD game. The predictions are in no particular order either, just as I thought of them. I am not cocky enough to start predicting when each prediction will happen in their respective conferences.

I have also included a total shot in the dark prediction for each conference. This is something that has a small sliver of hope of coming true, but realistically it is more something that I want to happen rather than something I actually think is going to happen.

Also, I am in no way a professional video game writer. This is a list of predictions written by a video game fan based on information I’ve heard on gaming podcasts and various gaming subreddits. This is just a bit of fun for me, don’t take anything that I’ve written below as gospel.

Enough rambling, my predictions for E3 2018 are as follows…


EA:
1. Fifa and other sports games will be announced with release dates.
2. Trailer shown for Battlefield V, WWII setting
3. SSX reboot, sequel or remake will be announced
4. Bioware will announce updates for Anthem and maybe announce some sort of Mass Effect DLC
5. Dice will promote Solo update & DLC for Battlefront 2
6. Some sort of new Star Wars game will be announced to replace the cancelled Amy Henning Star Wars game
7. Respawn will announce the title of their Star Wars game and announce Titanfall 3

Total shot in the dark prediction – New Burnout or Dead Space game announced


Microsoft:
1. Crackdown 3 gameplay demo will be shown and 2018 release date will be announced
2. New Halo game announced
3. New Gears Of War game announced
4. Borderlands 3 officially announced with gameplay trailer and release date for late 2018/early 2019
5. Cuphead DLC announced
6. Cyberpunk 2077 trailer shown
7. Some mention of PUBG, Sea Of Thieves and Forza

Total shot in the dark prediction – A new Fable game announced


Bethesda:
1. New IP announced, probably Starfield with fall 2018 release date
2. Doom sequel announced with trailer and 2019 release window
3. Standalone DLC announced for Wolfenstein 2, possibly Prey as well?
4. Rage 2 shown and release window given
5. Some sort of Dishonored follow up teased
6. Updates about ESO and Quake
7. We are teased with the other game that Bethesda game studios has been working on

Total shot in the dark prediction – a new Fallout or Elder Scrolls spinoff announced, something similar to New Vegas


Square Enix:
1. Just Cause 4 announced with trailer and release window
2. New Shadow Of The Tomb Raider gameplay trailer
3. Hitman Season 2 announced with trailer and release window
4. Final Fantasy 7 gameplay trailer shown and announced for multiple consoles with release date given
5. Kingdom Hearts 3 shown with new trailer and release date
6. New IP announced from People Can Fly
7. Trailer shown for Avengers game

Total shot in the dark prediction – New Deus Ex game announced


Ubisoft:
1. New Assassin’s Creed revealed, hopefully with a 2019 release date
2. The Division 2 announced with cinematic and gameplay trailers
3. Skull and Bones trailer shown and release date given
4. New Splinter Cell announced with Michael Ironside returning
5. Sequel to Rainbow 6: Siege announced
6. New trailer for Beyond Good & Evil 2
7. Maybe Watch Dogs 3 announced?

Total shot in the dark prediction – A new Prince of Persia, Driver, Brothers In Arms or Call of Juarez game announced. I doubt we’ll see any of them, but I would be buzzing if any of the above were even teased.


Sony:
1. Gameplay trailer given for Death Stranding
2. The Last Of Us 2 gameplay shown
3. New Spiderman gameplay trailer
4. New Ghost of Tsuhima, Dreams and Days gone trailers
5. Rocksteady announce new Superman game and show trailer
6. Shadows Die Twice revealed to be Tenchu game and new trailer is shown
7. Devil May Cry 5 officially announced and trailer shown

Total shot in the dark prediction – Bluepoint announce MGS trilogy remastered


Nintendo:
1. New Pokemon game for the Switch
2. New Smash gameplay trailer
3. New trailer shown for Bayonetta 3
4. New trailer shown for Fire Emblem
5. New trailer shown for Yoshi
6. New trailer shown for Metroid
7. New Mario Maker game announced

Total shot in the dark prediction – Fallout 4 announced for Switch


Comment below and let me know if you agree with my predictions or if you think I am talking a load of nonsense. One of the reasons I love e3 so much is because of the discussion and speculation around it, so let’s get a discussion going.

Also check back here on Wednesday the 13th of June once e3 has finished where I’ll go through my predictions in a comment below to see how many (if any) I actually got right.


Cheers,
- Dan
     
Show all 6 comments.
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Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) Jun 12, 2018 (Updated Jun 12, 2018)

Ubisoft's conference was next up and it was pretty disappointing in my opinion. Let's see how well I did with my predictions for the show:

1. New Assassin’s Creed revealed, hopefully with a 2019 release date. - Assassin's Creed Odyssey was announced just prior tp the conference, (following a leak beforehand,) but unfortunately it got a 2018 release date. This means that the franchise is reverting back to yearly releases, which will undoubtedly lead to a decline in quality for the series. 0.5 point.

2. The Division 2 announced with cinematic and gameplay trailers. - The Division 2 was announced and we got both cinematic and gameplay trailers for the game. 1 point.

3. Skull and Bones trailer shown and release date given. - We saw a trailer for Skull and Bones and were told that we'd see the game release in 2019. 1 point.

4. New Splinter Cell announced with Michael Ironside returning. - The rumours turned out to be false and we saw no mention of a new Splinter Cell game. 0 points.

5. Sequel to Rainbow 6: Siege announced. - A Siege developer did take to the stage to give some updates, but no new game was announced. 0.5 point.

6. New trailer for Beyond Good & Evil 2. - We saw a new cinematic trailer for Beyond Good & Evil 2. 1 point.

7. Maybe Watch Dogs 3 announced? - There was no new Watch Dogs announced at the conference. 0 points.


Sadly there was no mention of a new Prince of Persia, Driver, Brothers In Arms or Call of Juarez game as I suggested in my fantasy prediction.


4/7 points for Ubisoft's conference, I did slightly better here than I did for Square's presentation.

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Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) Jun 12, 2018 (Updated Jun 12, 2018)

Sony's was the penultimate keynote of the expo and they showed exactly what everyone expected them to and nothing more. As a Playstation-centric gamer, this should have been my favourite conference, but honestly I feel like Microsoft had me excited more often this year. Below is a list of my predictions and whether I got them right or wrong.

1. Gameplay trailer given for Death Stranding. - Yes, we finally saw gameplay for Kojima's intriguing new story. 1 point.

2. The Last Of Us 2 gameplay shown. - We also saw gameplay for TLoU2. 1 point.

3. New Spiderman gameplay trailer. - We saw more of Spidey's new game and more gameplay during the conference too. 1 point.

4. New Ghost of Tsuhima, Dreams and Days gone trailers. - While we did get an extensive look at Ghost of Tsuhima and Dreams was featured in a couple of sizzle reels, I don't recall seeing anything for Days Gone during the showcase. 0.5 point.

5. Rocksteady announce new Superman game and show trailer. - We saw absolutely nothing from Rocksteady at any of the E3 press conferences. 0 points.

6. Shadows Die Twice revealed to be Tenchu game and new trailer is shown. - A trailer was shown for this game and while I was right that it wasn't Bloodborne 2, it sadly isn't a new Tenchu game either. 0.5 points.

7. Devil May Cry 5 officially announced and trailer shown. We did get DMC5 announced with a trailer, but it was at Microsft's conference rather than Sony's. 0.5 point.

And unfortunately it doesn't look like Bluepoint well be announcing a remastered MGS trilogy any time soon as per my bonus prediction.


4.5/7 points for the Sony conference. Quite happy with that result, but I really wish that the conference was better.