Vampifan's Views 64 - Monthly Musings 42

Miss Vampirella May 2015 - Julie Strain

This month's Vampirella model is Julie Strain, model, actress and just about anything else you can think of. Julie Strain is a one woman industry! From the age of 28 she has been merchandised on everything from a Zippo lighter to an interactive CD-ROM. Carefully orchestrated and planned, originally by Julie, but now by Julie in tandem with her husband, publisher, producer and co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Kevin Eastman. Together, they have made Julie the "Queen of All Media".
As a genuine cult heroine, her series of action/adventure and fantasy films have earned her a huge fan base. Julie has been featured on television, in music videos and she is found on calendars, posters, greeting cards, coffee mugs, dolls, watches and countless trading cards.
Her various skills include baseball, basketball, bodybuilding, cycling, horsemanship, jet skiing,  martial arts, modern dance, motorcycling, racing cars, roller skating, singing, track and field events, volleyball, water skiing and weaponry. All in all, an impressive career for a woman who had to sleep in her truck when she first arrived in Hollywood and who admits to being a "painfully thin, ugly duckling" in high school. It is a wonder that she has time to fit everything in!
One thing she did fit in, though, were quite a few covers for the Vampirella Monthly series.
Harris Publishing knew they were on to a hot item with Julie, and they even gave her her own Julie Strain Special comic book, featured her heavily on the Vampirella website and modeled a Vampirella Action Figure on her! And, yes, I do have that action figure in my collection of Vampirella memorabilia.
She is wearing the same costume that Arban Ornelas (Miss February) wore, so my criticisms of it still apply. The waistband is far too high on her hips, which means the gold bat logo is too high. It should be at crotch level. I must admit, I do admire her pluck for wearing such a revealing costume.

The big hobby news for me this month was the arrival of The Forgotten King expansion set for Super Dungeon Explore. YAY! It seems like I have been waiting ages for this but that's not true. It was delivered a couple of days ago so I haven't had time to fully assess it but first impressions are highly favourable. The first thing I noticed was that the box is smaller than the Super Dungeon Explore box and it opens normally with a lid, unlike SDE, which had a hinged opening. However, upon opening the box I discovered that it contains a lot more than the basic set did. Whoopee!

Unlike SDE, which came with one rulebook, TFK comes with five books. In the top row from left to right is a 4 page catalogue of Soda Pop games, with Ninja All Stars featuring prominently on the front cover. In the centre is the Explorer's Handbook, a 24 page book of background info on the world of Crystalia. I can't wait to read this book as I love background fluff. At the far right is a set of Quick Start Rules, designed to teach newcomers the basic rules of the game.
In the bottom row are the two main rulebooks. SDE can now be played two ways - in Arcade Mode or in Classic Mode. Arcade Mode is something new and this 44 page rulebook allows players to play the game solo or collectively against the Consul whose actions are determined by cards. Heroes still use their Classic Mode stat cards but all monsters have different stat cards to their Classic Mode counterparts. Effectively they have fewer stats and they do not roll dice. Their stats are a fixed value to make game-play run smoother.
The Classic Mode rulebook runs to 36 pages and will be most familiar to those of you who have already played SDE with the first edition rules. New rules have been added and a few things have changed but if you are at all familiar with old-style SDE then you should find Classic Mode very easy to grasp.

Here are the various decks of cards included in the game and a set of 16 dice. The dice have not changed from first edition. Red dice are better than blue dice and green dice are the best of all.

Two sheets of counters printed on thick card come with the game. Most are spell effects and not that many will be used in a typical game.

The game comes with six double-sided gaming tiles. On the side shown in the photo above are the tiles for the Fae Woods, which are the realm of the Forgotten King. The thick black lines are walls that block movement and line of sight.

On the reverse of the Fae Woods tiles are the tiles for an Overgrown Castle. TFK tiles are slightly smaller than the old SDE tiles but they still measure 12 squares by 12 but have less of a border. They also have more features on them. Note that the Adventure Tracker from the basic SDE set has now been relegated to the dustbin.

And finally, here are the set's 58 miniatures, with the heroes, pets and treasure chests moulded in grey plastic and the monsters, creeps and spawn points in green plastic. Incidentally, the Forgotten King himself is the third figure from the left in the back row. The figures do come pre-assembled and the level of detail and sculpting has improved over the earlier SDE figures.
I'll be spending a lot of time reading and re-reading the new rulebooks and playing some practice games to familiarise myself with the new rules and rule changes. However, much as I want to get the figures painted as soon as possible, they will be taking a back seat because I want to concentrate on reducing my mountain of unpainted Zombicide figures. It may be quite a while before I review any TFK figures.

Speaking of Zombicide, I have finished painting my second batch of 20 Toxic Zombies. I am well on the way to finishing another 14 Toxic Zombies as well as 6 Season 3 Survivors and Zombivors (three of each). Next month sees the launch of the Zombicide: Black Plague project. This project has me drooling at the mouth in anticipation. I'll be backing it big time. It takes Zombicide back to medieval times where magic exists and brave heroes do battle against evil necromancers, zombies (of course) and an assortment of fantasy creatures and monsters. There is already an expansion set in the works called Wulfsburg. This set introduces, werewolves, wolves and zombie wolves to the game. Oh, yes! Bring it on!
Whilst on the subject of Zombicide, let me tell you that I'll be devoting all of June to it on my blog. Expect to see more reviews of my Toxic Zombies as well as the biggest batrep I have ever published, as I go back to the very start of the zombie apocalypse and discover how the original six Zombicide Survivors from Season 1 meet for the first time. It is truly epic. It took me 16 hours to play over a period of three days and I took over 360 photos of the action. What fun it was. Zombicide rocks!