Long title, average-length album, shorter-than-usual review, as it's quarter-past midnight, and I need to be up before midday tomorrow. So, without further ado:

Does It Offend You, Yeah? - You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into...

There's no album picture to make fun of :(

Does It Offend You, Yeah? are an electronic-based band from Reading in the UK, with the focus being primarily on the music rather than the vocals, with hard-hitting synths left, right, and centre, along with a coupel of guitar-led tracks dotted around, which admittedly, are some of the poorer tracks on the album. It all kicks off with three fantastic tracks in a row, Battle Royale, With a Heavy Heart, and We Are Rockstars. Each song revolving around a frentic beat of pulsating bass and riff lines, and minimalist vocals.

Unfortunately, the album then takes a turn for the worse with Dawn of The Dead, which sounds like almost any other band you could expect to find on the NME Channel on Sky. It takes another song or two until things return to normal with Let's Make Out, followed by yet another generic-song, Being Bad Feels Pretty Good. The final song, Epic Last Song also feels a little underwhelming given the title, and not in an ironic sense unfortunately.

Overall, the album is rather a mixed bag. There's enough highlights to save it from being relegated to the 'listen to it sometimes' pile, but the band need to focus more heavily on the crunching beats to avoid being washed away in the post-Klaxons climate. Though, to be fair, you can't say much wrong with a band that has song titled Attack of The 60ft Lesbian Octopus.

Song To Download: Battle Royale

Song To Skip Past: Dawn of The Dead

Overall: 6/10

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This was supposed to be posted on Wednesday, and the Wednesday before that...and the Wednesday before that. Unfortunately, Wednesday seems to be a darn-awful day to try and get anything done. Plus, I've had to start getting down to business with my revision for a couple of exams next week. So, I finally present; the deck I won't be taking to the World Championships, but would love to:

Horse Patrol (Modern)

Characters

4x Elasti-Girl, Rita Farr
4x The Infinites, AoA
4x Sugar Man, AoA
4x Mento, Steve Dayton
4x Negative Man, Larry Trainor
4x Dark Beast, AoA
3x Robotman, Cliff Steele
3x Apocalypse, AoA (5-drop)
2x Beast Boy, Freak of Nature
1x Mikhail Rasputin, AoA
1x Apocalypse, AoA (8-drop)

Plot Twists

4x Freak Out
4x Heroic Effort
3x Marvel Crossover
4x Misfits
3x Pathetic Attempt
2x Omnipotence
2x Strange Days

Locations

2x Dayton Manor
2x Breeding Pens

It's a standard Doom Patrol/Horsemen of Apocalypse team-up, with the aim of surviving through until Turn 5, and then dumping as many +1/+1 counters onto the 5-drop Apocalypse as possible. I had a version of this deck floating around back when DC Legends first came out, but this is the first time I've updated it to include The Infinites and Breeding Pens. Unfortunately, the deck tends to not hold it's weight against some of the bigger decks out there, which is why the Pathetic Attempts and Omnipotences are included. As it's not quite as competitive a deck as my Brotherhood one is, I'll not be considering using this for the World Championships in June, but it's one that sees play online from time to time. Also, I'm still awaiting many of the cards from the UDE Points Store, so this deck can't be created by me in real-life just yet anyhow.

I've also had to skimp on my views on the new Marvel Universe Hulk cards previewed this week, thanks to the revision again. So, whilst I can't fit them all into this one post, I'll place up the one that's most intriguing for me.

The Hulk's shouted that man's hair off!

So, you may simply be thinking; "It's a Hulk-stamped ungodly +8 ATK card. Aside from making me go and cry in the corner, what's the big deal?" Well, the deal is Mystique, Shapely Shifter. From Turn 4, she can go "Hello, I'm now called Hulk. Give me the +8 ATK goodness please." A rather nice addition to my Brotherhood deck, and if I can get a playset of this card, Sabretooth may have to make way for the shape-shifting lady.

And in addendum, I finally get my loans/grants for this term at University tomorrow, so I can go and pre-order my boxes of Marvel Universe, and buy the singles I need to finish off my Modern Brotherhood deck. If I can find copies of Random that is.

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The new Hulk preview is up, and it's an extremely potent Plot-Twist:

Forget the SHIELD Heli-Carrier, I just want to know why Hulk's grown Cable's left arm.

This card works in a similar fashion to Caiera from yesterday, allowing at a basic level, the opportunity for your Hulk to swing twice in one round, which coupled with the inevitable +ATK effects we're likely to see, is going to be some serious damage to your opponent's endurance. The difference with this card is the fact that the effect is usable two whole turns earlier, and without the cost of removing some of your board presence. It comes at the price of stunning the Hulk you want to use the effect on, and losing the card's cost in endurance, but between 3 and 8 endurance is a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.

Now, with what very little we've seen so far, Hulk is going to be one seriously tough character to put down, and keep down. The question is; how do we do that? Before today, it seemed that an out-of-combat stun, and a Finishing Move would very likely clear the board for your own characters to hit straight-to-the-face, with Hulk's apparent strategy of having only one character in play each turn. Now, with this card, all manner of 'Target' effects are rendered useless as of Turn 4, provided they have this card, and more than likely some copies of Pathetic Attempt. So how do we try and sort this situation out?

My answer right now? Alternate win condition.

Of course, it's a Brotherhood way of dealing with things, as the X-Men don't appear to have anything that can deal with Hulk efficiently until Turn 7, with Professor X, World's Most Powerful Telepath. This card used against Hulk, Savage Hulk is potentially a game winner, until it gets negated with today's previewed card thanks to the Professor's 'Target' effect. Thus, the answer lies with the Brotherhood, and an odd concept for them; stalling. Why, I hear you ask?

Simple, this card: Xorn's Takeover.

Provided you can get the card out on Turn 4, then a Turn 6 win is possible. Against normal decks, this card suffers from Brotherhood decks ideally wanting to keep characters in play to cause damage, and get the game over with as quick as possible. In this case, we only need to potentially stun/remove one opposing character each turn, due to Hulk's lone-character play. There are two ways I can see of doing this:

1.) Deliberately sending non-beefed up characters into Hulk without any help, to ensure they get stunned whilst attacking, and Hulk doesn't, before sending in one character with enough +ATK to stun Hulk, and a low enough DEF to get stunned back. The board is all stunned, and Xorn's Takeover gets one of it's counters added.

2.) Getting to the Recovery phase with a lone Magneto in play, then playing Metallic Assault to get rid of Hulk and Magneto, leaving the board empty.

There's also the option of using the Target-based effect of Finishing Move, but it's risky with Righteous Anger and Pathetic Attempt being around.

So, the question remains; what can you think of that'll defeat Hulk....or is he simply unstoppable?

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Blimey, slightly info-packed today it seems. Over at VSsystem.com, there's not one, but two previews of new Hulk cards from the forthcoming Marvel Universe set.

The Jolly Green Giant, and his not so jolly dog.

If she really is that small compared to Hulk behind her, I dread to think of how things go in bed.

Looking at the 4-drop Hulk, the usage of a 'gamma counter' indicates a number of similar effects will be in play for Hulk, and possibly the Warbound team as a whole. Obviously, it takes it's influence from the 'Cosmic' ability, whilst ensuring that a team-up with Cosmic teams such as Heralds of Galactus doesn't result in Hulk being given a godly amount of counters to result in a broken card. I notice that his ability to stun 2-drop characters in play doesn't specify just opposing characters, which means some tactical consideration is probably needed as to whether getting rid of the enemy's 2-drops is worth the cost of your own as well. However, with "The" Ben Seck's description of a 'lone-character' system for the Warbound team, mostly focusing on Hulk, it seems likely you won't have a 2-drop in play at Turn 4 anyway, which mitigates the effect the ability will have on yourself.

The second card, Caiera, initially seems a little weak for a 6-drop ability, until you notice that the text Hulk gains doesn't include the phrase 'cannot cause breakthrough', meaning that, for instance, you can use Hulk, Savage Hulk twice in a row, so that if somehow you didn't win the game on your first swing with the character, your newly-found second attack is going to cause even more serious damage. A very effective tactic if the opponent manages to reinforce the first time round, and also another potential game-ender in a Coming of Galactus game.

That's the only cards that were previewed for today, with more coming up during the week, the links to which can be found in the article on VSsystem.com

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The newest VS event I can't take place in due to no local Hobby League is here, and it's a Modern: Bring Your Own Set (building teams only from one of the four most recently released sets) tournament. Details can be found HERE. The main reason that yet another event that's passing me by has caught my attention, is this:

It's a goddamn Mr Freeze playmat!

Whilst it's partially ruined by the horrible "Chill Out!" phrase, there's not much that can compare with Mr Freeze for sheer awesomeness, and it's definitely my favourite playmat since the X-Men one from the Elite Series last year. I'm not sure how many there's been since the X-Men one, but even so, still awesome.

Just a shame I'm probably never going to own one.

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As you may have guessed by the title, the album up for review today is:

The Sisters of Mercy - Floodland

Little known fact: Andrew Eldritch did stand-ins for Holly in Red Dwarf.

November 1987, two years since the debut album by the band, and they had already split up by the release of this album. Confused? It's all actually relatively simple. The Sisters of Mercy; originally a four-and-a-half piece rock band (their drummer was a drum machine) with gothic overtones, full of jangly guitars, moody lyrics, and wearing sunglasses at night. After the release of the first album First and Last and Always, internal tensions caused the band to split up during writing for their follow-up, with Andrew Eldritch eventually taking the Sisters of Mercy name, and the remaining members forming The Mission.

Working effectively as a solo artist, Eldritch wrote the entirety of the second album himself, and made a marked departure from the guitar-led format of the former album. Instead, we were treated to synthesised landscapes, clunking basses, and songs of en epic nature. The major success sotry of this album was the single This Corrosion, which made it to No.7 in the UK singles chart. The song itself is grandiose affair, incorporating the New York Choral Society into a straight-out rock song, that manages to pack more energy into 11 minutes than many bands can pack into a whole album. But whereas this song, Dominion/Mother Russia and Lucretia My Reflection (with its killer bass-line, and industrious drum beat) provide the rock side of the album, it's in the other songs in which we find the album's real highlights.

Where Dominion/Mother Russia sets the scene for the album, allowing for fans of the band's earlier output to adjust, Flood I is where the album really kicks off, with's it's disassociated drumbeats and strained guitars crashing into a synth-led dirge with an eastern tinge that shows the direction the album is going to follow. The real highlight of the album though, comes with Driven Like The Snow, a true landscape track, with haunting synths overlying Eldritch's tortured vocals.

The vinyl version of the album finished with the minimalist Never Land (a fragment), but the CD version included two extra tracks, Torch and Colours. Originally B-sides for This Corrosion, they now provide a perfect close for the album, again adopting the heavily synth-laden approach, with Colours featuring just one repeated verse, the song instead focusing on the building layers of music throughout.

There's not a single track on this album I don't enjoy listening to, and whilst it's not a Sunday afternoon style of album to listen to, there's a lot to be explored in the dark corners Eldritch touches upon here. If you can, pick up the recent re-issue of the album, as there's an expanded version of Never Land, as well as a surprisingly good cover of Hot Choclate's Emma.

Song To Download: Driven Like The Snow

Song To Skip Past: At a very big push, 1959. You still shouldn't really skip any of the album though.

Overall: 10/10

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Yes, I know it's a day late, but I had a headache, and couldn't be doing with trying to think enough to write a review. But anyhows, enough of that, here's this week's game:

No More Heroes - Nintendo Wii

From the moment you get past the minimal starting screen, the game lets you know that it's, well...a game. The main character, Travis Touchdown, breezes through the intro, as he proclaims; "I know you gamers have short attention spans", and this is the first step of stylised madness that Grasshopper, the developers, have become renowned for after Killer 7 on the Gamecube/PS2.

The main character...charging his beam katana. Honest.

After this brief introduction, you gain control, and the rather intuitive control system comes into play. Travis wields a 'beam katana', a weapon that looks like a cheap home-made lightsaber, and is one of a number of Star-Wars riffs throughout the game. Rather than going for a Twilight Princess style of combat, with Wii Remote swings being copied on screen, combat relies on a judicious use of the A, B and Z buttons. The former two being used for attacks and grappling, the latter for targeting and blocking. The Wii-Remote's motion controls are used to affect your combat stance (High and Low), and to perform wrestling moves and Deathblows, which either finish off a minor enemy, or cause large amounts of damage to the tougher types and bosses.

This was the least confusing shot I could find of combat. It gets pretty hectic.

After the initial fight with minions, one thing you'll notice is that the main levels are very linear, though this works in the game's favour, as it keeps the combat fast and frantic, with very little of the wandering about and getting lost that's present in a number of modern 'action' titles. This changes once you reach the city of Santa Destroy, the hub that serves as a means of training, buying new clothes and weapons, and working through missions to gain enough money for the entry fee to the next mission. In a satirical take on Grand Theft Auto's numerous sub-missions, the Job Centre sends you out on exciting tasks such as mowing lawns, finding lost cats, and cleaning up graffiti. Once one of these is completed, you're given a 'ticket' to obtain Assassination Missions, which are more combat orientated, and range from defeating 100 enemies in a time limit, or defeating a group of enemies without taking any damage.

One thing that you shouldn't expect is Grand Theft Auto with lightsabers though. The in-between mission sections are deliberately dull, remember, the game knows it's a game that's satirising games with free-roaming cities and the ludicrous things you're able to do in those. That's not to say it's not fun to play, but the real meat of the game comes in the more linear ranking matches, especially the continuously challenging boss battles against ranked assassins. There's one at the end of each ranking mission, and each one requires vastly different tactics to defeat, in a similar style to the variety in bosses with the Metal Gear Solid series.

Between missions, you get to ride on the bike of over-compensation.

I've deliberately left the plot and characters alone thus far, for fear of spoiling parts that reviews I read managed to. Be assured though, it's less complicated than Killer 7, though still just as downright crazy in parts, with not one, not two, but three major plot twists that turn things on their heads towards the end of the game, especially if you obtain the 'Real Ending', which provides access to the real final boss.

There's still so much that can be said about this game, but to do so would require another review-size text, so I'll head to the summary, and just implore you to buy it:

Pros: Intuitive and easy-to-master combat, crazily-inspired characters and story.

Cons: Deliberately dull out-of-mission city, steep learning curve for beginners with bosses.

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I've just come from a game on MWS, playing a Modern Brotherhood against a Gotham Knights/Doom Patrol/Horsemen of Apocalypse deck, and by goodness I've never had such an exhilirating match. There was never a clear point where you could say one or the other was going to win, and we both pulled out all the stops to try and win.

The game managed to reach Turn 9, with me having hit a perfect curve throughout, with a Magneto in play, Sentinel Mark VII, Juggernaut on 7, and Xorn on Turn 8. The opposing player built up his 5-drop Apocalypse to the 20/20 counter stage, and recruited his 8-drop Apocalypse on Turn 8. It was at this point I felt my heart sank, as I had forgotten to use Juggernaut's ability to KO the two resources the turn before, which would have meant he'd be stuck with lower drops, which could have won me the game at that point, having Sentinel Mark VII, Juggernaut, Magneto 4-drop and Pyro in play. However, using Apocalypse's KO ability, it came down to a one-on-one showdown between Apocalypse and Xorn, a true clash of the titans.

With a pesky single +1/+1 counter, His 21/21 meant my 20/20 couldn't stun back, and I was down 9 endurance, leaving myself and him at 4 and 5 endurance respectively. Praying for a miracle, we went to turn 9, and I managed to pull Random, and a Big Leagues. I stuck the Big Leagues down in resource, recruited Random, and instantly used his -3 DEF ability. Combat came around, and Random was KO'd to Apocalypse's ability. For the first time with this deck, I was glad I had the odd initiative, and swung into Apocalypse, at his -3 DEF, and played the Big Leagues to take the game.

I was so darn sure that I was going to lose the game when he was able to recruit the 8-drop Apocalypse due to my oversight on turn 7 with Juggernaut's resource KO, so I'm thrilled I managed to win that by the skin of my teeth. To TreeHug, whomever you might be, thank you for a truly fantastic game of VS, which has relighted the spark for me after being a bit down in the dumps after the UK Nationals.

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Now that I've had a few days to calm down, compose myself, and bear to look at my Brotherhood deck again, a quick posting of what it is I actually played:

Characters

4x Pyro, St. John Allerdyce
4x Quicksilver, Mercurial Speedster
4x Juggernaut, Champion of Cyttorak
4x Magneto, Mutant Terrorist
4x Sabretooth, Feral Rage
4x Magneto, Mutant Supreme
2x Quicksilver, Speed Demon
2x Juggernaut, Walking Disaster
2x Sentinel Mark VII, Repurposed
2x Mystique, Shape-Changing Assassin
1x Magneto, Master of Magnetism

Plot Twists

3x Avalanched!
3x Insignificant Threat
3x Sibling Support
4x Devastating Blow
4x Savage Beatdown
2x Crushing Blow
3x Mobilize

Locations

2x Asteroid M

Equipment

2x Juggernaut's Helmet

The primary focus of the deck is to create as much chance if breakthrough as possible, by playing higher-statted characters who cause it naturally, 2-drop Quicksilver who removes reinforcement altogether when attacking, or Avalanched! which negates the possibility of reinforcement in most cases by exhausting support row characters. After the breakthrough is established, the majority of the plot twists are attack pumps to boost the damage done, with the intention of stacking up attack pumps until about turn 4/5, then creating one super-breakthrough amount in the hope of reducing the opponent's endurance total enough that they decide to scoop.

The deck is (normally) also consistent enough to work as a simple curve-attack deck, until you can recruit the 7-drop Juggernaut, which is generally a game winner, due to two resources being knocked off of an opponent each turn from that point onwards, meaning they'll be having to underdrop continuously, whilst you're able to recruit both 7-drops and other characters if the game somehow manages to last that long. This is also a very nice tactic against deck like Heralds of Galactus, as their game will normally revolve around making sure the game gets to turn 9 to recruit Galactus. However, if they haven't the resources to pay for him, then it's game over.

It's not just the high-end game that the deck works against. 'Weenie' rush decks also suffer from the likes of Insignificant Threat, which prevents from attacks up the curve from working against you, Asteroid M, which gives an added +4 ATK against characters with a lesser cost, where you'll already have a higher ATK->DEF ratio as it is, and the two lower-drop Magnetos, who stun 1-drops, and the lowest costs cards in play.

The only thing I would say, looking back, that the deck is missing is card-draw/deck-cycling, which can be achieved with Underground Resistance, at the cost of a discarded Brotherhood card. I would probably replace the two Crushing Blows with this card if I played again, as the additional +3/+3 against an exhausted defender is something that can be traded away with the number of attack pumps already present in the deck.

Don't let my poor performance at the UK Nationals put you off the same or a similar deck. 90% of the time, this deck puts up a bloody good fight, and has won against MKKO, Secret Society and the newer JLA cards. I just happened to have that really awful 10% of bad luck/draws during the entirety of the tournament itself, which it's going to take a week or two to stop being slightly bitter at. I'm now working on a Modern Age variant, to broaden my horizons with plot-twists, especially Big Leagues for +4 ATK, and Blind Sided, to remove reinforcement completely for a character for a turn.

Adios.

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...where I managed to crash and burn almost completely. After a couple of months of deck-testing Brotherhood, and coming up tops a large amount of the time, the deck itself failed horribly on the day, due to some magnificently bad card-draws. Much under-dropping, and lack of needed plot twists occurred, and no Mobilizes etc. being drawn to go and get the characters.

The most consistent thing about the deck, was that Avalanched! would be drawn the turn after I needed it without fail. That was rather a kick in the teeth five times in a row. I have no doubt when I go back to playing the deck 'normally' it'll perform perfectly fine again, but that's not going to help me secure a place at the World Championships. It seems that there'll need to be one more Elite Series before June for me to secure 7 or more PC points in time, or some Last Chance Qualifiers in the days before the big event itself.

However I manage it, I'm making it to those World Championships.

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