The Cursed: Chaos Court

[Part of the Cursed story line]

With Wyldfene's lies exposed, the barbarians begin fighting each other - basically the loyalist Wyrm tribe against all the others, including the six outsiders. Reise almost dies but once the Wyrmers are down the remaining barbarians call off the invasion and treat the adventurers as heroes - asking them to pursue the dragon spirit to the sea of moving ice and slay it there once and for all.

The team decide to think about it first and return to Lonelywood to sell loot - only to deal with an assassin (and a bunch of mercs taken out by the wizard innkeep). Unfortunately a halfling agent manages to kidnap them using his magic ring, taking them far away to a castle courtyard in the Aranaoch desert!

Invisibility is handy!

After an initial ambush from harpies and wyverns, Reise decides she's had enough of getting blindsided and so makes use of her new mass invisibility spell to quickly hide the party and scout the entire courtyard area avoiding more conflict.

Insight: Mass invisibility is not as good a singular invisibility. The duration is shorter and monsters can sometimes still "sense" you and follow you around. The only upside is that it's more convenient to cast.

The Cursed: Planar Sphere

[Part of the Cursed story line]

With the Umar Hills safe, the team returns to the city and Jaheira is again accosted by Harpers. While violence is avoided once more, she does take the drastic step of quitting that organization! The group proceed to the Planar Sphere which Valygar does open. Inside they find misplaced Knights of Solamnia (from Dragonlance) who warn that this place (it's a space ship) is very dangerous.

Iron golems are dangerous even without weapons.

This is true, not so much for the cannibal halflings on board but for the numerous golems guarding the place. The large iron ones in particular are very tough as they are both weapon and magic resistant.

Insight: Iron Golems are towering menaces, but that also means they can't fit through man-sized doors. Use that to your advantage!

Eador: Annoying Invaders

[Part of the Masters of Eador story.]

The wizard Phiruno competes against Oinor on the next small shard, and is almost defeated when Oinor's warrior champion Tharmun and his lizardman force manage to snake their way to Nesturs stronghold! Fortunately the adventurers hired to defend the place are worth their salt, driving Tharmun away.

Phiruno then makes use of the integrated Holy Lands to bypass Oinor's defenses and destroy his castle, achieving victory. His task isn't complete though, for as soon as the shard is captured, Doh-Gor attacks Nesturs mainland! On the defense, Oinor has the advantage of seeing through the fog of war but still needs to build up the capital and recapture territories again. Annoying.

Scout Faeris is recruited to help manage the populace (and even manages to ally with the rich halflings) while Phiruno learns a great AoE spell called Stone Rain. They once again leverage the Holy Inquisition for passage, and both manage to smash Doh-Gor's centaurs and arrow tower guarded castle, driving him off Nestur's mainland.

A better example of OP magic.

Double Cosplay: Dragon Crusaders and Dragons of Camelot

Dragons of Camelot

What happens -after- King Arthur dies.

The death of Camelot's king (and that most of his knights have been disbanded) provides Morgana the prime opportunity to summon dragons and take the place by force. While the dragons are pretty cool CGI wise and the locations for filming are pretty great there are a lot of things that bring this movie down, and for me the number one reason being the quality of props. Yes, that hurts more than the subpar acting!

In short, it looks like a cosplayer fair with mismatching armor and all too clean attire and both the "knights" of Camelot (very loosely used here) and Morgana's troops have no uniforms what-so-ever. Also, if you have an archer type character it might pay to actually have that person know at least some archery - like, oh I don't know... being able to properly draw the bowstring back to at least their chin?

No one is impressed by your archery.

I was also mildly amused by a clear stand in for Morgana in one of the opening scenes where the editor did everything to not show her face, splicing her (solo) closeup footage in later which is ridiculous because she's in a completely different room. My favorite character is one of her evil captains though, who gets the pranciest white horse of all time. He is tasked with pursuing the good guys but is very careful to not actually catch up with them at any point. Alas, as good (I'm being generous) as the dragons are there's not much reason to watch this and I can only give it one cosplayer out of five.

~~~

Dragon Crusaders

Featuring dragons, crusaders, gargoyles and pirates!

If you watched Dragons of Camelot then you will notice right away a lot of the cool locations reused here. Also, while it is still possibly the same cosplayer group used in this picture they are more believable with the dirty attire and better acting. The bow guy in particular is pretty cool though some of his archery is questionable (not as bad as archer in the previous movie). There's also a short, kick-ass chick who definitely brings the fight choreo up a notch and is perhaps a good example of a standard D&D halfling fighter. Some fight scenes make use of oddly cut segments though, which doesn't do this film any favours.

Dirt = Authenticity.

The CGI is not as good as the other movie, but it is passable enough and props to them for using gargoyles too. Where this film falls over bad is the story itself. A band of knights being chased by an unseen army (seriously) decide to try help some random people being attacked by pirates. In the process they get cursed by a peasant (LOL) and can only be freed by some bad wizard who happens to control a bunch of dragons, and possibly is one of the dragons himself. He also is a pretty decent swordsman, archer and cavalier. What? Also the pirate speak in this film comprises entirely of grunts and yelling incomprehensibly. Awesome.

Pity, it's like if you took the good aspects of the two films you might actually get something more worth while, but ultimately this too has nothing much going for it and I give it one cosplayer out of five.