05/28/2012 – This episode was intended to go up last week, but Zach spent his weekend moving, so we never quite got around to it. The subject matter is about a week old now (or 55 years in internet time) but I still liked it, so I figured we’d run it anyway. – James

Of all the games I’ve loved, played, and lost, despite dalliances and affairs with other games and gaming platforms over the years, the one I keep coming back to, my one true love, was HeroScape. Milton Bradley/Hasbro/Wizard of the Coast’s late-lamented cult-hit “build-and-battle” minis game still holds a spot in my heart – and, it turns out, the heart of a lot of gamers. On my blog the most popular post of all time was a bit I wrote last year on rumors circulating around the possibility of a HeroScape reboot. To this day it still gets hits. Lots of them.

The funny thing was, it wasn’t love at first site between HeroScape and me. I passed it up the first time I saw it at a mall board game store in 2005, only to be re-introduced to it about a year later. From there, it was a lock.

Let me explain the game, for the uninitiated: HeroScape proceeds from the concept that generals of an inter-dimensional race called the Kyrie are, like Norse myth tells us, gathering the greatest heroes from time, space, and dimensions to battle in order to gain control of powerful magical sites called Wellsprings. When the game first started there were five of these generals, each roughly analogous to one of the five colours of Mana in Magic: The Gathering – There was Jandar, the good guy is associated with cold and the sky and valiant forces; Utgar, the villain is associated with flames and darkness; Ullar, associated with the forest and nature; Vydar, a shadowy fella associated with dark secrets and technology; and Einar, associated with battle and military might. Two other generals were added very late in the game’s run, of whom only one, Aquilla, had any really forces made – she was similar to Ullar.

Each of the generals had certain forces they specialized in, but overall, the game was a grand mish-mash of minis-gaming styles: you had robots, Revolutionary War soldiers, World War II soldiers, zombies, vampires, Men in Black, ninjas, samurai, Greeks, Romans, cowboys, indians, giant bugs, Elves, knights, dragons, orcs, and on and on and on… It was great.

The kicker, though, was the terrain. Instead of a traditional board, HeroScape counted on the players constructing their own battlefield from terrain pieces – sturdy, interlocking, stackable plastic hexes representing (in configurations of 1, 2, 3, and 7 hexes, plus big half-sheet sized portions) grass, sand, rock, snow, lava, swamp, water, roads, and so forth. There were also sets that had trees and bushes, glaciers, a bridge, and even a full-on customizable castle, complete with locking, detachable front gate.

The kinds of battlefields you could make up in this game were endless – with enough pieces you could create entire continents. Half the fun was just creating the board to play on. Different large expansion sets came with their own suggestions for boards, but those were middling at best.

Gameplay was simple: you had squads (made up of 3-4 pieces) or single heroes, each with their own Army Card listing Basic Game (i.e. for the kids) stats, and Advanced Game stats with their range, movement, and how many defense and attack dice you rolled. In turn order you moved and attacked with pieces, rolling the 6-sided dice which had 3 skulls (representing hits) and 2 shields (representing blocks). If you, as an attacker, rolled more skulls than your defending opponent rolled shields on any attack, you scored hits, meaning you either wounded a hero figure (who usually had multiple hit points) or killed a squad figure (who usually had just one hit point). And yes, the odds were skewed in favor of the attacker.

The game’s pluses were many. I’d always been interested in the Games Workshop Warhammer games, but never had the money, time or patience to buy the expensive, unpainted, unassembled metal figures, glue them and paint them, and then build my own terrain from scratch. My brothers and I did attempt this early on with a Star Wars minis game (before Wizards of the Coast – this was a metal minis fame from West End) but soon lost interest.

But with HeroScape you had already-painted, relatively inexpensive plastic pieces that were sturdy and ready to go. Unlike some other minis games, the packs weren’t randomized – sold in bubble packs, each expansion unit showed you exactly what you got, and were never supposed to go “out of print” during the life of the game.

I liked that the game wasn’t just a fantasy game. You had elements from all eras. You could conceivably play a battle game that was all Ancient History, or all Fantasy, or all Sci-Fi, or (as we always did) mix the genres. There was even a Marvel HeroScape which, while short-lived, rendered a number of very powerful hero characters that were fully compatible with the regular game. Indeed, those heroes were so tough that I set up a house rule allowing only one Marvel character per army. Thanos and the Hulk alone were essentially their own army.

The different characters were so constructed that each creature type had its own flavor.

For example: SoulBorgs (giant robots) often had immense power, but obvious weaknesses; Samurai units  had the ominous double strike, which used shields like skulls against opponents when rolled; Elvish heroes almost always had magical powers based on a d20 roll; and vampires could use abilities to heal their own wounds by injuring other creatures.

HeroScape also had a devoted fan community – Heroscapers.net, for instance, still thrives, and the online store HouseMouseGames specialized in HeroScape sets. There was even a podcast devoted to the game and there was a short-lived trade in fan-created figures for use in the game, though Hasbro reportedly put an end to that.

That isn’t to say that HeroScape wasn’t without its problems. While easy to learn, play, and set up, the game did take a long time to put away – the interlocking terrain often locked tight, and you had to work to pull the  sheets of plastic terrain you’d created apart. Set-up could be accomplished in a matter of 10 minutes, but take-down could take three times as long or longer.

It wasn’t easy to store the game – those who, like me, bought multiple Master Sets and terrain expansions (I ended up buying, I think, four of the Ticalla Jungle expansions alone – the one with the palm trees, bushes, and giant spiders) ended up with a lot of terrain and no place to put it: once taken out, the pieces never seemed to fit comfortably in their original boxes again. I ended up having to invest in a number of plastic storage bins to accommodate my collection. To this day, there is no space for it in my closet, and my HeroScape collection has had a nomadic existence in my house for years.

Additionally, support for HeroScape  wasn’t great. While customer service responded quickly to inquiries (indeed, they were kind enough to send me a copy of a convention-exclusive battle scenario I’d missed out on, for free!) the HeroScape official website was plagued by highly infrequent updates after the game was out for a couple of years. Attempts by Hasbro to put strategy and behind-the-scenes articles on the site stalled  after the second or third posting, and updates – in the form, eventually, of missives from Hasbor about which subsidiary would be taking the game over – were sparse.

Additionally, at least in my area, the game wasn’t easy to find. While I was able to locate a couple hard-to-find pieces at the nearest Toys ‘R’ Us (50 kilometres away), the local big-box stores rarely carried the game, and when they did it was usually the Marvel Master Set. The only reliable place I could find new HeroScape items was at a gaming store in Bloomington, Indiana  which I visited frequently while my brother went to college there. After that, online was my best bet.

Eventually, however, fatigue seemed to set in with the game. About two years prior to its ultimate demise, Wizards of the Coast was given the reins of the franchise, and they decided to turn it into a Dungeons and Dragons vehicle. Don’t get me wrong – I love and cherish D&D – but this move was not a great fit with the existing game. WotC created a new Master Set with new rules for creating a HeroScape-style D&D campaign (an intriguing notion, to be sure) but re-used figures from the D&D Miniature Game and just put them on HeroScape bases, obviously a cost-saving measure that any longtime gamer can sniff out a mile away as a mark of a dying franchise. A rumored second wave of Marvel HeroScape figures – glimpsed at a toy show – were also never released.

After a few expansions, WotC decided to fold the game in favor of concentrating on its core products, Magic and D&D – understandable, but regrettable. With that, HeroScape died its official death.

I still play it with my brothers, and we have plans to use the terrain pieces to use in other ways for other games as well. HeroScape will live on.

Anime North is around the corner, so I would like to talk to you about Sailor Moon, a show that’s part of every Otaku’s heritage.

Bleach. Naruto. Death Note. Popular series, cosplayers in the hundreds, maybe thousands, and you know what? They all bore me. For you see, I am old. Many of the sensations you experience when watching them are old feelings to me. The emotional whirlwind the Elric brothers put you through I already experienced it back in the 90s courtesy of a magical girl called Sailor Moon. And it was fabulous.

(I’ll be using American names for this article because they are the names I heard when I watched it on TV and if you take issue with that then you should stop worrying about it.)

Shortly before the coming of Pokemon and the era of shows which cashed in on the anime trend, anime existed on children’s TV primarily as Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon with maybe a bit of Samurai Pizza Cats (Oh yeah!). Every kid in class watched Sailor Moon every day on The Zone. All the boys would lie through  their teeth to deny it because the show has as many embarrassing qualities as endearing ones and at the time we were not so comfortable with men getting in touch with their shojo sides. Yet once it became a valid topic for discussion, the only subject was sharing mystic rumors about how different the show was in its native language. This one guy on the bus told me his brother knew a guy with some VHS of some subtitled version where the show has all kinds swearing a full-frontal nudity.

Typically episodes followed format as rigidly as Power Rangers and Scooby-Doo ever did. Serena’s teen girl squad would get enthusiastic about some new fashion thing or trend like a new disco or a fight club which it turns out is being used to suck energy for “The Negaverse”. With some dumb luck, Serena and friends would stumble upon this plot and proceed to murder the organizers, although I’m now questioning the legal ramifications of Serenca regularly executing sentient beings because they drained energy. Then Sailor Moon Says would explain the lesson we’re supposed to learn from the episode, like Stay In School or Don’t Do Cocaine or Regularly Update Your PC’s Programs.

So Sailor Moon (and her friends) big deal is that by dressing up as Sailors they become stronger and get powerful attacks to defend the universe, all because they’re space princesses. I’m not sure what the rationale behind Princess = Nautical Attire = Soldier is. That’s like proposing that if the aliens from Independence Day attacked London, the logical solution is for Prince Harry to put on an outfit like Popeye the Sailor and after some rehearsed posing he’ll be able to set things right.

The only time Sailor Moon actually involved any Sailing was in the pilot for the planned DiC series which would mix live action with animation. Check out the footage if you haven’t seen it; it’s really exactly why YouTube exists.

The cast started with Serena (also the title character), a rare blonde Asian with the metabolism of Shaggy from Scooby Doo. When she wasn’t trying to pick up boys or executing aliens in cold blood, she was eating or napping. Somehow she still managed to have no body fat because that’s how anime works for title characters. In the original Manga, she actually weighed less than her outfit.

Later she met her friends Amy, the Velma of the group and blue-haired softie before we knew it was a cliche. The next addition to the cast was Raye, who offsets Amy. Then to round out the core cast they brought back teen idol Sailor V from the preceding series (her background never really explored in detail enough to make an impact, so she was mostly the back-up blonde) and Lita. Lita was the hottest because she’s the tallest and most athletic and likes to cook. To give guidance and provide additional merchandise fodder was Sailor Moon’s talking cat, Luna, who despite being from the moon is not actually an evil pony.

Who is Tuxedo Mask, the mysterious dude who always shows up to save Serena at times when Darien happens to not be around? Well I made a chart and I’m pretty sure it’s either her long lost brother Rex or Polkaroo.

Eventually things got weird when they introduced the annoying Scrappy Doo that is Sailor Moon’s daughter from the future, Rini, and her boyfriend, a horse. You would think that since one of my favourite comic characters is “Cable” – also a main character’s time travelling child- that I would be endeared to Rini, but her high pitched voice and overall Seriously Creepy factor just made me lose interest. I guess if Rini is Cable, then Hotaru would be he show’s Deadpool? Fanfic writers, get on this.

Antagonizing the Sailor Scouts was Jedite, the boring one. After him came Neflite, who had one of the more intense impalements ever aired on YTV before 6 PM. (After he died, his teenage girlfriend Molly moved on to date The Melvin who was actually named Melvin. Not exactly trading up.)

Then Zoicite, the hot chick who totally was totally horning in on oblivious Malacite in a twisty relationship like something from Arrested Development. After Sailor Moon defeated Queen Beryl the next antagonists were Anne and Alan, a pair of affectionate siblings.

Later introduced: Sailor Neptune and Uranus. Dude. Lesbians are awesome! And another shy girl and a tall girl to complete the basic solar system. Further padding out the cast (and awakening all kinds of weird things in the underage audience) are a trio of transsexuals from space, which is a very Tim Curry sounding idea. I never really figured out what their deal was.

Let’s just pause for a moment here and address the recent developments with Pluto being downgraded from a full-on planet to one of several mini-planets out there: No. I will not believe in the current astronomical doctrine until new Sailor Moon chapters are written in compliance. Pluto is a planet, deal with it.

A few years ago I was downloading random files off of The Four Channel Website and downloaded “sailormoon.zip”. figuring that best case scenario, it would be the sound track, worst case scenario: Weird Japanese porn. I’m okay with either, but I lucked out and got to spend an hour listening to sappy heterosexual love ballads sung by the voice actresses. Most of the songs wouldn’t have been so bad if not for references to Sailor Scouts and magic crystals worked into the lyrics for branding purposes. Several of the songs have vocals from Sandy Howell who might be related to the Howells from Gilligan’s Island. But the real treat came in the final song in the album performed by Stan Bush.

Stan Bush’s most famous song is “The Touch” used for the 1986 flop “Transformers: The Movie.” He has since regularly milked that one song for all it’s worth and regularly vends CDs of his music at Transformers conventions.  Stan’s music actually is pretty good though. Recently he’s done a new Transformers song for the credits of “War For Cybertron” and a sad cover of “The Touch” in a weird attempt to get involved with the Michael Bay films. So stumbling across Stan Bush’s name on a Sailor Moon Album is like finding out that Sailor Mercury has made out with, let’s say… Prowl. Now every time I see Stan at Botcon, all I can think about is how at some point he was actually paid to rock out about Sailor Moon. Also, as it happens, his non-cartoon related music is actually pretty solid, check it out.

A few years ago, a live action Sailor Moon series was made for Japanese TV. At this point file sharing and fan-subs were common enough that we didn’t need to wait for YTV to pick up the series. And that’s okay because it really isn’t a show YTV should have spent money on. Somehow everything looked less realistic than the poorly animated show and the main cast looked less convincing than most cosplayers I’ve hung out with. It was a live action adaptation that made the Aquaman pilot look good.

In the past year, the Sailor Moon manga received a new translation for release in America by Kodansha Comics USA. I am really glad this exists but I am not going to buy it myself since I’m busy reading the upcoming Black Spider-man Meets White Spider-man miniseries from Marvel.

Sailor Moon exists as something of a cultural icon. A symbol of how the North American children’s animation industry, coming out of the the late 80s trend of making kid versions of other shows, needed some filler so some weird Japanese thing was imported and opened cultural floodgates to progressively worse written and/or more fetish-driven series. The magical girl genre lives on today in the form of Pretty Cure and Puella Magi Madoka Moogly Magica. And Sailor Moon will forever be remembered as the show that made enough teenage girls first consider “Man, maybe I should give kissing other girls a shot.”

Sailor Moon Sez:

It’s okay to be a moonie.

-Michael Ryan, March 24 2012

I’m just waiting for the Watchowskis to do what Sailor Moon what they did to Speed Racer.

I met Jeff Ellis at Fan Expo Vancouver & when he told me he would be visiting for TCAF I set up an interview on the spot. Not the best interview I’ve ever conducted, but definitely interesting subject matter. I have always been a fan of collaborative work & the Cloudscape anthologies are a really good example of awesome creators coming together to create great books.
Enjoy!

http://www.cloudscapecomics.com/
http://www.teachenglishinjapan.ca/
http://www.indiegogo.com/Giants-of-Main-Street

Alternate History Comics presents Titan: An Alternate History; the story of one man’s experience with a mysterious drug that causes him to hallucinate through three past lives.

After a brutal mugging, Peter Tytan wakes to realize that he can remember leading a Scythian army over the Himalayans on a quest to conquer all of Asia.  This is followed by memories of being a bodyguard of a Muslim during the First Crusade and single-handedly decimating the Christian army.

His last life is that of John Carnegie, richest man in the world during the industrial revolution.  His failure at becoming the 22^nd president of the United States leaves him with a distain for the common people that continue to his present self.  That, and a password entitling Tytan to trillions.

The story, from Michael Tymczyszyn, is an interesting look at a science fiction idea of remembering past lives.  The amazing thing about Titan is the titular character, Tytan.  He is a cold-hearted, ruthless megalomaniac but his strength and obvious confidence makes him a perfect protagonist that is born to lead.  His resolve and faith make you want to either follow his lead or stand up and take him down.

The side characters are designed to exemplify Tytan’s persona; they’re inconsequential. They exist only as tools for Tytan to use as he needs to accomplish his goal of ruling the world.

What stands out for Titan is the art of Andy Stanleigh.  Despite the flashbacks mixed into the current story, Stanleigh gives each time period a different style altogether.

The cool thing about that is that each style looks appropriate for the period; the panels taking place during the industrial revolution are done with the same style seen in Picasso’s The Old Guitarist.

This change in apt art style continues through the first crusade using a watercolour look that makes the focus of each panel stand out for the reader.   An interesting aspect of that series of panels is the speech bubble; each person speaking has a faded emblem representing their respective side of the battle.  Surprisingly, this doesn’t distract at all from the story or the art.

Titan: An Alternate History is well written piece of fiction that invokes thoughts on the course of history and how our world has developed.  It also makes for an appealing look into the mind of a megalomaniac and how many times you have to fail to actually accomplish your destiny.

Check me out, or give me a shout: @ryanburgess29 or see some of my earlier writing: burgessjournalism.tumblr.com/

Exhibiting at TCAF is not a matter of first come first served like other events. Artist are evaluated and compared, and discretion is used in the allotment of table space. The judges clearly have sound sensibilities since nowhere in the convention did I see any tables where the artist was clearly in his or her first year after art school.

Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward is as huge a draw as you would expect, Brian Lee O’Malley’s herd is huge, and Jeph Jacque had a line of post-rock fans all eager to meet him and get a sketch of their favourite characters kissing. And of course Adam Warren’s attendance was a considerable surprise. To save on the space, many of the panels that draw larger crowds are hosted off-site. There were also surprises there like Konami Kanata and other artists from around the world, it’s easy to sense the influence this event has had from the European comic festival Angoulême.

In the Beeton Auditorium, Ryan Dunlavey had an advance copy of Comic Book History Of Comics he couldn’t sell, but look out for it at your local store soon since it’s a great concept by a proven creative team.

Sharing the area was the Hand-Eye Society, a Toronto-based group of talented independent video-game developers that integrate a solid gaming experience with creative artwork to bring the gaming experience outside of the typical Halo-gamer crowd. One of the involved individuals, Christine Love, has recently launched Analogue: A Hate Story which you should look into. It is also available for purchase on Steam.

On the second floor, there were more Toronto regulars and exciting imports. A huge draw to TCAF are webcomic artists like Kate Beaton and Meredith Gran (who introduced me to the event years ago) and the rest of the Topatoco conglomerate. David McGuire wasn’t getting nearly enough attention selling more Gastrophobia. New to the neighbourhood is Andrew Hussie, who brought with him the fanbase of his popular webcomic, Homestuck. It’s annoying that Christopher Hastings didn’t have anything I could purchase from him since I make certain to buy everything he puts out the day it’s released through Diamond.

Also on the second floor of the library were Top Shelf Publishing, with Kagan McLoed. I picked up his “Infinite Kung-fu” at Wizard World Toronto a few weeks ago and figured it would be something good to read on the flight to Botcon. Despite the distance from Toronto to Dallas, I still had a chapter left by the time I disembarked.

Many of the exhibitors used the festival as a chance to debut new products, collections of comics which allow readers to take years of somebody’s hard work and passion and life experiences and absorb them in a few hours. My attention was drawn to  Teen Boat, a comic for kids that says “Hey kids, any idea, no mater how surreal or absurd, can be worked into fully developed storytelling.” Near his table was a small section for kids to colour, draw, socialize, and basically have their own TCAF for the grade school crowd. Sometimes Hipsters need a place to drop their kids off.

TCAF is one of the events that went from being the cool local thing held in cramped quarters, and then it skipped a stage and is now suddenly an international highlight. While I love the comic book conventions like Wizard provides, TCAF is a different monster; It’s a festival and the kind of event Toronto should be proud to host. I use the concept of “street credibility” a lot when writing up events. TCAF is the font from which all Street Cred emerges. The only drawback to TCAF is that by going on Saturday, I miss out on the Free Comic Book Day events at my local comic shop.

TdotComics took more pictures at TCAF 2012 on Facebook

To start off, I am going to try my best to not give out any spoilers, but I probably will. So SPOILER ALERT, kinda, sorta, maybe.

Diablo III is fucking amazing.

Everything you’ve been looking forward to is as mind-blowing as they say it will be.

The graphics have improved dramatically compared to Diablo II. The attacks are fancier and more colourful, and the mobs are gorier and a lot more creative in their attacks.

I’m not sure about you, but I was a little afraid that this game was slowly going to turn into World of Warcraft. Having played WoW for quite a few years as soon as they went from dragons to PANDAS I was done. I mean seriously, can you imagine those 12 year old players cybering now in trade chat? With furries? That’s what I thought.

But I digress. Back to Tyrael and the Horadric Cube and such.

There are a couple of new features in Diablo III.

The blacksmith, the jeweller, achievements, and the real money auction house. Out of those four, only the blacksmith is available in Beta, and he is bloody expensive. To get anything useful out of him, you have to upgrade his shop. Which the first time costs 8K gold, the second time 18K, and it only goes up from there. Not only that, but you have to let him beat to a shiny pulp, or “salvage”, items which you find.

His fancy ass doesn’t accept any greys or whites either, it’s blue items and up. One item equals one Subtle Essence (pretty much an ore).  Then you have to pay him and give him at least 4 subtle essences to make your item which, by the way, has completely random stats that you don’t get to predetermine. How you get leather gloves out of 5 smelted swords is completely lost on me. Hopefully this is something Blizzard will fix before the launch.

One thing that I wish Blizzard would integrate from WoW is the ability to customize your action bar, use macros and move your attacks around. Because so far, primary and secondary attacks are locked to the mouse buttons, and defence is locked to keys 1 and 2.

As for the characters, they’ve become a lot more vocal, and will have random conversations with companions if you happen to be travelling with one. Leveling now is super quick, at least to level 13 it is (which is all the Beta allows).

I won’t say anything more about the characters because there’s cinematics and tons of reviews already available about them.

I’ll see you guys in line for the launch on May 15th!