Cheer and Applaus!!!!!  Cheers and Applaus???? Well, mostly applause. 4Kids sent out an email with a pdf that included an OverWorld and UnderWorld deck, playmats and a rule book.  The email was supposed to be sent out to those that became Chaotic Explorers on the www.ChaoticGame.com website.  Just an FYI, not all Explorers seemed to have recieved the email. For those of you that have not received the email, I have copied it for you below:

Dear Chaotic Explorer,

To kick-off our highly anticipated launch of the Chaotic® Trading Card Game and the ChaoticGame.com website online game experience, we are excited to announce your exclusive sneak peak into the world of Chaotic.

Soon, local comic and hobby stores will have their first shipments of limited edition starter decks and booster packs. To show our appreciation for being a Chaotic fan, we want you to be one of the first to experience the Chaotic game. We invite you to download your free demo deck, learn about the Creatures, Battlegear, Locations, Attacks and Mugic and start playing!

To download your own demo deck and rulebook, go to http://www.chaoticcode.com/dawnofperim and enter this code: EX26TBDCD9. You will be one of the first to view the Creatures of the OverWorld and the UnderWorld, as well as cool Battlegear and magical Mugic spells. Plus, you will get to journey through the many locations of Perim to see where your Creatures live and battle for control of Perim.

Don't forget to check out the Chaotic animated television series this Fall on Fox Network. (Saturday mornings at 10:00am and 10:30am EST. Check out http://www.4Kids.TV/chaotic to find out what time it airs on your Fox Network.) By watching the animated television series, you can learn valuable game tips and strategies for playing the Chaotic Trading Card Game like a Chaotic Master.

So what are you waiting for? Log onto http://www.chaoticcode.com/dawnofperim, download your demo decks, read the rule book and start battling with other Chaotic players!

Stay tuned for Chaotic game updates at http://www.ChaoticGame.com Enter the Code and enter the World of Chaotic!

Your Friends at Chaotic

What is really cool is is the fact that they have sent these cards to us.  They are allowing us to play the game almost two months (hopefully less) before it is really being released.  I do not know if this is their way of saying "I'm Sorry" for the delayed launch, to keep up our interest over the long summer, or just a really keen marketting play.  For whatever the reason, I do not care, I've got a set of cards to play.  The awsome thing is that it also comes with the rules.  No more guessing about what the rules will be, we have an actual rule book to look at.  As an FYI, I have copied the entire rule book onto a webpage on the How To Play Chaotic page.  This way you can have an easy to view rule book online.  Yeah, I also included links to the PDFs in case you want to see the original as well.  The art on the cards are really cool, as we already know, and I have taken each card and placed then on the site as well. They are in thumbnails, but you can see the enlarged version by clicking on them.  I have separated them by the UnderWorld deck and the OverWorld deck.

 However, there were some kinks in their distribution (which either I experienced or have read about in the forums)

• Color printer suggested - to really get the full effect of these cards, you really need a color printer, but I guess it is okay without it
• Color intensive - even if you have a color printer, some of the images, especially the playmats took a lot of ink to print out. If you have not aleady tried printing these out, I would suggest turning off your color option for the mats.
• "Demo" watermark - yeah, it kind of sucks having the word "DEMO" written across all of the cards.  But I guess it was necessary for them to do this to stop anyone from copying the full images.
• Every Explorer Did Not Get Email - It is very interesting that not all of those that signed up for becoming an Explorer were sent emails.  I do not know if they were being selective, or if there was a kink in the system.  I have emailed them to try to find out what happened or if this was intentional.
• Typos - I noticed a couple of typos (as did some of you.  I am also wondering if "Canon of Casualty" is supposed to be "Cannon," but by chance there is a musical definition for "canon - A composition or passage in which a melody is imitated by one or more voices at fixed intervals of pitch and time" and they just lucked out.
• Too much math - This is an issue with the game itself.  This is a comment that came up in the forums. When I played the game at the licensing show a few weeks back, I did not think that the math was too bad.  The numbers were all divisible by 5 and there was the slide bar that allowed you to move up and down 5 at a time.  If that is the case, the online version will calculate all of the math for you.

Well, this summer has been very, very busy for me and I have not had the time to write too many blog entries and I think I need some help. Just to give you a heads up, I am looking for one or possible two co-bloggers to write for this site. I think that I might be having a contest in order to pick the best person(s) for the job (unpaid).  Basically I am looking for people to write about Chaotic (duh, what else would I want you to write about).  I'll put a post up on the forum about it tomorrow after I figure out what I am looking for.  Instead of a contest, I may have you guys nominate a few people, then have you guys vote for who you would like to see write a blog (if they are interested in writing it).

On a personal note, I have been busy enjoying the summer and I am more than 3/4s of the way through the new Harry Potter book (although I have tried to avoid it, someone already kind of slipped and told me the ending).  On that subject, I saw the latest Harry Potter movie last week and was not impressed - the book was much better.  I am really into Oblivion right now - I am a 22nd level Nord and have already closed a whole bunch of gates (and I have not really had that much time to play).

I also want to send a shout out to you guys that have been answering a lot of the questions that have come up in the forums - you have been doing an awsome job.  Everyone appreciates it.