Marvel Now! - New #1's

Marvel is relaunching a significant number of their titles with new #1's over the next 5 months. Here's a list of what's available on Comixology, for your perusal.

October

Uncanny Avengers #1 -Half X-men, Half Avengers, by Rick Remender.
A Plus X #1 - 2 stories, one comic!
Minimum Carnage #1 - Carnage, Venom & Scarlet Spider come together.
AVX Consequences #1 - the 5-issue mini-series that trails the fallout from AvX!
Punisher War Zone #1 - The 5-issue mini-series that wraps up Greg Rucka's recent Punisher Run.
Daredevil End of Days #1 - Bendis and David Mack team up with Klaus Janson to write an epic, 8-part story about "how it all [would] end" for DD.
Wolverine Max #1 - The Max line puts out some terrific mature stories. This looks gritty.

November

Deadpool #1 - A new relaunch for the hooded'n'crazy one!
Fantastic Four #1 - Matt Fraction takes the FF on a wild ride outside time and space.
FF #1 - And then there's this.. Mike Allred returns to Marvel for a new FF series. His work on X-Statix 10 years ago is considered a cult classic. This might be a surprise hit.
X-Men Legacy #1 - This is different, a book about Xavier's crazy/powerful son, Legion.
Captain America #1 - By the Allmighty Rick Remender of Uncanny X-force.
Thor God of Thunder #1 - One of two Thor titles, this one written by Jason Aaron
Iron Man #1 - Kieron Gillen and Greg Land take over the adventures of Tony Stark.
Indestructible Hulk #1 - Mark Waid (DAREDEVIL) joins Lenil Francis Yu for a new volume of Big Green.
All New X-Men #1 - Bendis brings the original 5 X-Men to the future, to see the havoc brought on by the events of Avengers vs. X-Men.

December

Cable and X-Force #1 - 1 of 2 X-Force books, this is Cable and his team... on the run.
Avengers Arena #1 - Battle Royale meets the Runaways/Young Avengers/Avengers Academy & more.!
Avengers #1 - Jonathan Hickman, fresh off his epic Fantastic Four run, takes over Avengers!
Thunderbolts #1 - This is a team of dangerous misfits, led by Red Hulk Thunderbolt Ross.

January

Dexter #1 - Written by the creator of Showtime's hit show!
Uncanny X-Force #1 - The return of Mohawk Storm makes this awesome on it's own.
New Avengers #1 - A book featuring the team of the Illuminati. 
Superior Spider-Man #1 - Who is the new Spider-Man? What happened to Peter Parker?
Savage Wolverine #1 - Frank Cho writing AND drawing? This should be interesting.
Young Avengers #1 - A strange mix of heroes, including Loki. Looking forward to this.
Morbius Living Vampire #1 - The famous vampire gets his own series!

February

Guardians of the Galaxy #0.1 - The cosmic heroes return!
Nova #1 - A new Nova, a new Series.
Uncanny X-men #1 - Cyclops' team is together, and so is his school.
Fearless Defenders #1 - Misty Knight and Valkyrie together? Awesome mix.
Secret Avengers #1 - Nick Fury leads a new covert team.. including Phil Coulson?

(Now I want one of those Coulson Lives t-shirts)

March

Age of Ultron #1- The next great Marvel event starts here!
Wolverine #1 - Logan gets his own ongoing, yet again.

Kaijudo Review Part Two

As promised, this is the second part of my Kaijudo review. Today I will talk about how to play the game, and discuss the different aspects of the cards themselves. As before, please feel free to ask questions or make comments!

Kaijudo Review Part One

Kaijudo. You may have heard this word recently, and wondered exactly what it was. Perhaps you saw an episode on the HUB channel, or your children have asked you for the cards, or you listened to a commercial for it online. Or, just maybe, you're one of the many gamers who are eagerly awaiting an opportunity to prove your skills at one of our tournaments starting in September.

Regardless of which category you fit into, I'm sure that this review will help to answer some questions about this exciting new CCG from Wizards of the Coast. I'll divide it into two parts; Part One will detail all the current releases for Kaijudo, whereas Part Two will be about the gameplay, and card types.

When You Play The Game of Dice, You Crit or You Die

"Geek Chic" is everywhere these days.  From t-shirts to movies, "geeky" stuff has taken the world by storm.  From zombies to comics to swords and sorcery, it's what people are talking about...and most, if not all, of it has either a direct root in gaming or has been turned into a popular game of its own.

Take a look at "Game of Thrones".  Here's a wildly popular TV show, based on some award-winning books written by George R.R. Martin.  One of his early books in 1977 contained the inspiration for the classic D&D monster known as the githyanki. Now, Game of Thrones has a Living Card Game, a board game (now in its second edition), two different roleplaying games, and a video game of its very own.

As he relates in this podcast interview, Martin got his start in the 50's playing chess and monopoly. After he got out of college, he made his living as a chess tournament director.  In the 80's, he started playing Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia, the Morrow Project, and other RPGs...and then he ran Superworld, a superhero RPG.  He'd play with them 'til 4AM, getting hugely addicted to the game--and then, with the people he played with, he went on to write the Wild Cards superhero series of novels based on the characters and stories in his game.

So, the next time you run into someone who looks down on gamers, let them know that without them, we wouldn't have a Game of Thrones.  Do you know any other famous folks who are gamers?  Let us know!

Dragon's Den Player of the Year for Magic Update

Now that we have made it half way through the year, I thought we should post a quick summary of the top 8 players in each of the four different categories, as well as some statistics about the number of players we have seen for the different events we have run.  Also, this Friday I'll be giving small gift to the Top player for each category. 

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Just as a side note, I've been asked about why we run so many different events so I thought I would throw a quick answer here.  I like to run a Free and a Paid event at the same time on Friday nights so that the competitive players can play the tougher decks and the casual players don't feel like they are getting crushed all the time.  It is a work in progress as we still get many players in the Free event that could play in the Paid, but the hope is that the new players and more casual players can build up to playing more competitive over time.

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Free Standard has seen 235 unique players.

FREE Standard			7/4/2012
Rank	Name	Points	Matches
1	Evan Odden	267	167
2	Dave Oppenheimer	221	100
3	Carl Naumann	204	109
4	John Franczak	199	105
5	Mike Cox	198	111
6	Scott Fish	183	105
7	Will Shost	163	67
8	Niko Peone	152	73

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Legacy has seen 58 unique players.

Legacy			7/4/2012
Rank	Name	Points	Matches
1	Paul Lake	123	52
2	Rich Cali	105	56
3	James Rynkiewicz	98	42
4	Casey Madrick	89	50
5	Steve Carpenter	88	40
6	Frank Kick	88	57
7	Janene Andersen	76	53
8	Darryl Moss	64	49

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Competitive Standard has seen 82 unique players.

Competitive Standard			7/4/2012
Rank	Name	Points	Matches
1	Doug Kimball	70	34
2	Chris Brellochs	58	31
3	Kevin Jones	51	25
4	Steve Carpenter	51	25
5	Alex Sherman	51	31
6	Lyon Kressner	44	25
7	Alex Kobes	40	19
8	Mica Buchanan	36	30

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Limited has seen 227 unique players.

Limited			7/4/2012
Rank	Name	Points	Matches
1	Paul Lake	85	34
2	Will Shost	61	32
3	Mike Cox	53	28
4	Alex Sherman	51	23
5	Doug Kimball	49	20
6	James Rynkiewicz	48	23
7	Jonah Acosta	39	19
8	Mica Buchanan	36	22

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We are excited to see how the rest of the year plays out as many of the Top 8 players have changed in the past several months.  We will be posting some more information about what the players are getting for winning as well as changes to the Top 8 as the year goes on.  If you have not played yet, don't despair We have had several player climb the ranks by playing every week in the different events.  If you want to see what we have to offer each week check out our calendar of events!

Sean "Striderlotr" Banks