Lowbie Arc Reviews by an Altaholic Couple
By
airhead,
Posted on: 2009-07-12 16:40 in Mission Architect
"Two Households Alike" (#126582) is a level 20-29 arc that should meet your qualifications. My other four current arcs are all targeted for higher levels.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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"Two Households Alike" (#126582) is a level 20-29 arc that should meet your qualifications. My other four current arcs are all targeted for higher levels.
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We'd love to. We should have time to run it tonight even. Thanks for the quick response! 
Also, here are our own lowbie arcs. I'm not claiming they're perfect by any means, but we'd love feedback from folks who's arcs we're reviewing.
If you play one of our arcs and give some feedback, we'll give you priority in terms of reviewing yours.
The Next War on Drugs
Arc ID: 245042
Levels: AutoSK to 18-20 but completely playable by lower
Length: 5 missions (most are short). 45 min
Description: Street crime and drug trafficking are on the rise in Paragon City, and Back Alley Brawler wants your help to fight back. Learn about the history of the War on Drugs and investigate new threats. (More story than XP. Short quick missions, for lowbie/teen heroes. AutoSK)
Notes: For those who don't mind a lot of story in their story arcs. It's admittedly text heavy, but I hope I've somewhat made up for it by making the missions quick.
Tailor Made
Arc ID: 258291
Levels: 20-29
Length: 2 missions, 10-30+ minutes (depending on optional objectives)
Description: The Facemaker has serious problems due to the terrible economy, threats from The Family, and alarming new competition. (quick arc for lowbies or 20s villains who like to smash things)
Note: Was trying to replicate a mayhem mission-esque feel, with a bit of humor. Works well solo or teamed.
The Liquefactionist Manifesto
Arc ID: 191029
Levels: 1-20
Length: 5 missions, 45 minutes
Description: The Liquefactionist political party wants your help with a variety of loathsome deeds, in order to further their bizarre agenda. (For low level villains, custom mobs are easy, most maps are small, grotesque, weird, horror themed)
Note: Created in part due to a dare from a friend, to make something "disgusting". Has inspired such comments as "Ew ew ew... I need to take a shower" and "Do I have some kind of [censored] space herpes now?"
Poi, Demonology, and Everything I Learned From Hellions
Arc ID: 164235
Levels: 1-14
Length: 2 missions, 20 minutes
Description: A mysterious party invitation, strange markings, and a burning suspicion are all that is needed to conclude that the Hellions are up to no good once again. It's up to you to investigate and save Paragon from these Satanic Pyromaniacs. Simplistic and quick.
Note: Simple arc intended for brand new heroes. Play tested on a level 2 fresh out of the tutorial. Also, I15 introduced a bug that caused problems for mission 2. The mission is un-timed for now.
Feel free to try 13986 - Save the Spiderlings.
It's only one mission and designed for low levels. Lowest level that I know of that did it was lvl 2. It's best with one person, but a duo can certainly do it. Just a bit more chaotic.
Edit - I15 added a bug that makes your "friends' act a bit wonky. Don't worry about that too much.
This arc is 4 missions; might run a little over your 60 minute limit as a result. It should be soloable or duoable for anyone 15+.
Arc Name: Teen Phalanx Forever!
Arc ID: 67335
Keywords: Solo friendly, Complex Mechanics, Comedy
Synopsis: The Teen Phalanx is on a recruitment drive, and they've extended an invitation to a teen version of your hero to try out! Do you have what it takes to join Paragon City's most prestigious teen superhero team?
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 15-20, 20, 20-25, 29-30 (mission levels gradually increase to "level" you up)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
I'm the other half of this reviewing duo. I'm more of a seat of the pants kinda reviewer. I will look at the overall feel of the arc. Any nit picky little things will NOT effect how I rate but if it appears that there was little effort put into proof reading then I will mark down.
Example: I won't mark down if you don't have a souvenir but I will mark down if your arc has "3 find 3 ninjas" or just "ninjas" when it should say "3 ninjas to save" or "Find the last ninja."
I will also point out, on the side of rating, anything that might need improvement as more of a suggestion. And if I do rate down for lack of proofreading or anything that can easily be fixed, I will be more than happy to re-rate if changes are made to the arc. Just let me know when you've made those changes.
tl:dr I'm mostly looking at, did I have fun playing your arc and did you put effort into it.
This way you can have two different perspectives from two different people for your arc.
EDIT: My hellions arc is currently bugged. Stupid i15. Last mission is supposed to be timed but it fails when you rescue the hostage so that's no fun. I noted in the arc with (bug!) note and will update once the devs fix it.
Check out my Halloween Night Arc:
Arc Id #227436
Arc Name: Halloween Night
Faction: Neutral
Difficulty: Middle level depending on what happens in it
Levels:1-30
Synopsis:
On a dark and stormy Halloween night, you decided to knock on the door of that scary house down the street. How were you to know that a real witch lived there, and wouldn't be happy with you bothering her. Oh well, maybe some good candy will come of this. [HFMA]
1 Mission. Lots of Trick and Treat items (Glowies)
Take Care,
BinkDeBook
Virtue: CaptainMayhem-50 Inv/SS Tank; NaomiArmitage-50 DM/Inv Scrap; Captn Randomizer-50 MC/Kin Cntrller; Murky Thecat-50 Claws/SR Scrap; Professor Junk-50 Bots/Traps MM; +Others Arc Id #77311, #227436
Wow, I guess I should have read faster. Had this up meaning to post, and all five spots filled already. Next time then.
edit: okie dokie.
Arc Name: Ctrl + Alt + Reset!
Arc ID: #137561
Level Range: 15-30
Missions: 4, fairly small maps
Description: Foreshadow didn't see this coming. He sent you to retrieve a temporal artifact and now you're stuck in a time loop and have to figure out how to stop it.
Go ahead and put up your number.
As I think about it, the OP may have already played my mission. I'm not sure, but it's triggering something in my old brain.
I have a 20-30 arc that might fit the bill. It needs some feedback for the i15 changes.
Info here
A Guide to Champion Drama
My Videos
Ashcraft been published.
Feel free to try my arc, the Arc ID is in my signature, it's level 1-14 story arc.
All feedback welcome 
We're actually working on Venture's arc right now, and will probably get another in tonight. Go ahead and continue to add your arcs. I just don't want to guarantee that we'll get to everything right away. We're planning a trip to San Diego for Comic Con soon, and I don't want to overpromise before we leave.
Well here are a couple for your next batch. I don't see any of these taking over an hour to complete.
* "All Consuming" (#261148) is levels 20-25 and heavily features the Banished Pantheon.
* "The Amulet of J'gara" (#1709) is levels 25-33 and is split between Circle of Thorns, Tautha de Dannan, Fir Bolg, and a custom group of my design.
All my other arcs are level 35+.
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"Two Households Alike" (#126582) is a level 20-29 arc that should meet your qualifications. My other four current arcs are all targeted for higher levels.
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We just played this on my level 12 Shield/Fire Tank and his 10 Eng/Eng Blaster, AutoSKed to 20 by the arc. Probably not the ideal level or team makeup but it actually went very well. Even the EB at the end posed no issue with the right strategy (repeated knockback into the wall).
I really enjoyed this arc. The story was tight and very engaging. It had me actually wondering what was going to happen to the characters at the end. I also liked the fact that the missions were fairly short and some of the objectives were optional. The custom mobs were well done, with good descriptions, and they posed no real problem for us even as underleveled as we were.
I will say there were several spots where we noticed the writing seemed awkward. It's probably not something you'd notice reading through to yourself, but when we're duoing I usually read the text out loud, and there were several spots where felt I was stumbling and had to reread it. I'd give examples but I don't want to spoiler your arc. I believe the clue on the last mission was one of them though.
Overall, excellent arc and I would recommend it to friends.
Rating: 5 stars
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"Two Households Alike" (#126582) is a level 20-29 arc that should meet your qualifications. My other four current arcs are all targeted for higher levels.
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5 stars!
Played a level 10 enrgy/enrgy blaster teamed with a level 12 shield/fire tank set on the easiest diff setting. This brought us up to 20 but was not an issue (we would have switched to more appropriate level if it was).
This was a lot of fun to play. I personally like when stories unfold in the way that this one did. I don't want to spoiler it, but I was a little surprised by the custom mobs in the last mission! And the epic clashes were nicely done (I'm working on an arc that needs epic battles but I'm having a hard time with it, maybe I could ask your advice). The custom mobs were not hard and the elite boss was beatable, which is good because we can set up our own diff if we wanted too, which gives the player more control.
Layout has a nice flow to it and only got a little complicated with the addition of characters but was not hard to follow. Maps were short, sweet, and fun to play.
The only complaint I have is minor and does not affect how I rated (probably the same thing anachro found); some of the sentences are a little awkward (namely the intro dialog and last clue in arc). If you know what you are trying to say, they sound fine, but if you try to read them straight, one might have to stop and restart the sentence for it to make sense. And the bosses in the second mission almost got killed by patrols. But that was kinda funny. Minor stuff, I don't think it has any real effect on the overall gameplay.
Good job! 
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This arc is 4 missions; might run a little over your 60 minute limit as a result. It should be soloable or duoable for anyone 15+.
Arc Name: Teen Phalanx Forever!
Arc ID: 67335
Keywords: Solo friendly, Complex Mechanics, Comedy
Synopsis: The Teen Phalanx is on a recruitment drive, and they've extended an invitation to a teen version of your hero to try out! Do you have what it takes to join Paragon City's most prestigious teen superhero team?
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 15-20, 20, 20-25, 29-30 (mission levels gradually increase to "level" you up)
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Not rated.
Sorry, this arc was lots of fun but it was obvious early on that it was going to take over an hour so we stopped half way through. We want to be able to rate more arcs and this one is just a little bit too long to squeeze in with all the other arcs.
We'll try it another day when we have more time.
Might I suggest a little bit of fun?
City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon
Arc ID: 18775
Levels: 5-20
Length: 3 missions. Timing may vary; they're on small maps.
Description: Experience the origin story of Tubbius Claus of Paragon City, a hero claiming to be old Santa himself, on vacation from his duties in the North Pole!
I'll see what I can do about playing one of your arcs tomorrow (today, whatever, as it's after midnight already!) as time permits.
I'm out of signature space! Arcs by Tubbius of Justice are HERE: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=218177
You might try 190069 from my sig, I'm especially curious whether the humor and story work played as a team. It's "Medium" length, 3 missions. Thanks!
Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
Arc: Coming Soon: The Incarnate Shadow Shard of Fire and Ice Mender Rednem needs you!
Massively.com opinion poll: Please Help Save CoH!
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Feel free to try 13986 - Save the Spiderlings.
It's only one mission and designed for low levels. Lowest level that I know of that did it was lvl 2. It's best with one person, but a duo can certainly do it. Just a bit more chaotic.
Edit - I15 added a bug that makes your "friends' act a bit wonky. Don't worry about that too much.
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2 stars.
Played on level 10ish enrgy/enrgy blaster teamed with 12ish shield/fire tank on easiest diff setting.
I hate giving bad ratings. But I feel that this arc could be filled in a lot more. Single mission arcs are very difficult to get right because you only have a limited amount of space to work with which is why I feel strongly about this. The intro is very brief, albeit humorous, but it doesn't give me a good solid reason to save the spiderlings. What am I doing this for? I also think that you can utilize clues more to make this single mission more interesting, or drive the player on to do more.
I also noticed that the last spiderling just says "spiderling" something (mk II?) when it should say something that gives direction, like "save the last spiderling." This is a common error and can easily be fixed.
I thought the matlock joke was pretty funny but it's not enough to carry a single mission arc.
tl:dr
1. Fill in some more background into the story. Make use of clues if possible to help with this. It's only one mission, give me as much meat on the bones as you can utilize.
2. Give me a good reason to save the spiderlings.
3. Fix the nav for last spiderling.
4. I will be more than happy to re-rate if changes have been made to the arc.
This single mission arc has promise, give it some more and I think it'll be among the best.
EDIT: Going to bed but next up on the list (maybe tomorrow night):
Halloween Night, arc ID #227436
Ctrl + Alt + Reset!, arc ID #137561
Wings of Deception, arc ID #101926
If we have time, later this week:
A Proper Heist, arc ID: 82059
City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon, arc ID: 18775
Captain Dynamic, the Great, Faces the Great Face, arc ID: 190069
Teen Phalanx Forever!, arc ID: 67335
And sometime this week (maybe weekend) I will personally make time for:
All Consuming, arc ID: #261148
The Amulet of J'gara, arc ID: #1709
(I've been wanting to try Lazarus' arcs)
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Feel free to try 13986 - Save the Spiderlings.
It's only one mission and designed for low levels. Lowest level that I know of that did it was lvl 2. It's best with one person, but a duo can certainly do it. Just a bit more chaotic.
Edit - I15 added a bug that makes your "friends' act a bit wonky. Don't worry about that too much.
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It's really hard to judge story on a one mission arc, but I think this one is pretty thin. There really is a lot of room to provide more motivation in the intro text. For example, I'd like to know why I'm saving the spiderlings. Were Arachnos going to do some kind of heinous thing to them? Am I saving them from a terrible (possibly humorous) fate? Whatever the motivation is, it could be built up via clues in the mission to add more momentum, basically interest to keep going. As things were, I found myself loosing interest after the first few spiderlings.
I also thought some of the spiderling dialog was kind of flat. It could have been more silly, or slapstick, or ironic, or even cynical. I think you've got a lot of potential, because spiderlings are rather unusual, so you've really got room to ramp up their personalities a bit and surprise people.
I also want to say that I liked the souvenir.
Rating: 3 Stars
Arc# 250142 - Lockdown
Should be easily completable in an hour since a lot of content can be skipped, or rather avoided. The final mission actually includes 4 different EBs but I don't believe any of them are overpowered.
At this point however I actually have absolutely zero clue how difficult it is in actuality since only one person has played it and they gave it 5 stars.
Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!
Whenever you can get around to it. I'll try to give at least one of yours a run sometime this week.
Arc Name: BE Prologue: Gangs United
Arc ID: 250480
Author: @Ozzie Arcane
Morality: Heroic
Length: 4 Missions
Level Range: 10-20
Enemy Groups: Hellions, Trolls, Vahzilok, Custom
Description: An evil organization plots to bring several gangs together under their banner. Introduces a villain group I intend to use in future story arcs.
Should be able to solo or duo it with most ATs. I soloed it with my level 15 Trick Arrow Defender and went through it with a scrapper, defender, controller trio around level 19. If you do encounter any absurd difficulty problems let me know as I'd like to rectify them.
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Check out my Halloween Night Arc:
Arc Id #227436
Arc Name: Halloween Night
Faction: Neutral
Difficulty: Middle level depending on what happens in it
Levels:1-30
Synopsis:
On a dark and stormy Halloween night, you decided to knock on the door of that scary house down the street. How were you to know that a real witch lived there, and wouldn't be happy with you bothering her. Oh well, maybe some good candy will come of this. [HFMA]
1 Mission. Lots of Trick and Treat items (Glowies)
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I didn't feel we could rate this one. There's either an issue with the objectives or it's bugged, and I wanted to give you a chance to sort it out. Basically, we looked for the dentist for about 20 minutes (I even made a target_custom_next macro for "dentist") and we never found him. Didn't see any dialog from him either. We eventually just decided to quit out and let you know.
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Arc Name: Ctrl + Alt + Reset!
Arc ID: #137561
Level Range: 15-30
Missions: 4, fairly small maps
Description: Foreshadow didn't see this coming. He sent you to retrieve a temporal artifact and now you're stuck in a time loop and have to figure out how to stop it.
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Duoed on my Shield/Fire tank (now level 14 due to the arcs we've run) and his Eng/Eng Blaster. It was a good solid arc, and very well suited to lowbies. I have to admit I think you've got kind of an uphill challenge with a story like this because it's repetitive by its very nature, and that has a tendency toward boredom. I think you did pretty well with the small mission sizes, and varied things up as much as you could. I have to admit though that I stopped paying close attention to the contact's dialog pretty early on... until the very end when I paid closer attention to it again.
Some things I noticed:
The kill boss objectives seemed to be set on boss group instead of boss. This caused some confusion, because I was really expecting the clues on defeating the bosses themselves. For example, if you need to get the artifact from a single guy, it doesn't make sense to be required to kill his friends.
I also noticed in the last bit of contact dialog, you seem to be referring to Time Shifter alternately by "it" and "he", making that a bit hard to follow.
Overall, I liked it and it was well suited to our characters. It had a lot of detail, and the ending was pretty neat with some unexpected mobs. That being said, I'm not sure I want to fight more Wyvern in warehouse missions for a while. Basically I think it's very well put together, and very well executed, though it might be limited a bit by the nature of the plot.
Rating: 5 Stars (I was really torn between 4 and 5, so I think this would really be around 4.5, but I decided to round up)
UPDATE: Londer and I are taking a break from duoing MA arcs, in favor normal teaming (thank you devs for SSK), and playing other games this Fall/Winter. We'll get back to this thread after that.
--- Original first post below ---
My husband and I are really enjoying the MA for its entertainment and story potential. We really feel like it's added a new dimension to the game (no I'm not talking about power leveling, silly) and it's renewed our interest in a lot of ways.
We also love making alts. Especially since the advent of level pacting, we have tons and tons of alts. I think we've got eight duos below level 20.
I'd considered doing a review thread for a while, because I find that do really enjoy trying out other folks' arcs. So I figured the best way to do this would be to focus on stuff that's tailored for lowbies, and maybe level some of my alts along the way.
Here's what I'm looking for:
All arcs will be soloed or duoed by me and/or my husband (@londerwost). We don't play every day, but we do our best to keep up with the thread, and set expectations, etc...
Here is my own subjective rating criteria (I can't speak for my husband, though we do tend to discuss things as we go and often come to similar conclusions):
- One Star - Minimal story. Really obvious problems. A lot of details missing. Doesn't look like it's been play tested. Gameplay is cumbersome and frustrating. Author is being a ****.
- Two Stars - Maybe minimal story again, or story is abrasive towards the player, or it's self-insertion to the point that the player might as well not be there. Missions are playable, but there may still be some frustrations.
- Three Stars - Effort was put into the story, though there may still be inconsistencies or plot issues, or story is strung together thinly (just stuff that happens). Missions are playable, objectives are clear, and has decent overall momentum.
- Four Stars - Story has overall consistency, flows well (note, doesn't have to be perfect). Missions are playable and fun, objectives are clear, and some care has been taken with details.
- Five Stars - Story is solid and makes "sense" in its own context. Story is interesting and engaging. Humor is humorous. Missions are fun, map choices fit the context, show a lot of attention to detail. Something I would recommend to a friend. I'm not looking for perfection, I'm mostly looking for something very engaging and entertaining that looks like the author has taken a lot of care with it.
There is one thing I'd like to point out here, and that is that I know the star ratings are the most visible form of feedback, but honestly I feel like they're the least useful. When I do reviews, I do them with the intention of giving useful feedback first, and the star rating is really a secondary concern. Most likely, all of our arcs will probably maintain a four star average regardless of what I, or any other reviewer, rate them. So let's focus on constructive feedback first.Edit: Realistically we only play a few arcs a week, but feel free to keep adding to our queue. We'll get to them all eventually. If you play our arcs and give feedback (listed in a post below), we'll bump you up in the queue as well. At this point I have a ton of alts in the early and mid-20s, so arcs at the higher end of "lowbie" are most welcome.
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Reviewed Arcs:
"Mercytown" (#6017) by Tangler
anachrodragon rated: 5 stars
"The Boneyard" (#253542) by Captain_Zero
anachrodragon rated: 4 stars
"Trollbane" (#12669) by TeChameleon
anachrodragon rated: 4 stars
londerwost rated: 4 stars
"Gang War" (#311187) by Psychoti
anachrodragon rated: 3 stars
londerwost rated: 3 stars
"In Pursuit of Liberty" (#221702) by ArrowRose
anachrodragon rated: 4 stars
"ZAGMUK Act One: The Herald" (#266123) by Sumericon
anachrodragon rated: 5 stars
londerwost rated: 5 stars
"Matchstick Women" (#3369) by Bubbawheat
anachrodragon rated: 4 stars
londerwost rated: 4 stars
"Strike" (#18401) by Geekboy
anachrodragon rated: 5 stars Highly Recommended!
londerwost rated: 5 stars Highly Recommended!
"Defying Fate" (#110866) by A_Fallen_Angel
anachrodragon rated: 3 stars
londerwost rated: 4 stars
"The Superadine Revolution" (#262739) by SpaceNut
anachrodragon rated: 4stars
londerwost rated: 4 stars
"Teen Phalanx Forever!" (#67335) by PoliceWoman
anachrodragon rated: 5 stars
"Big Trouble King's Row Style" (#259924) by RiverOcean
anachrodragon rated: 3 stars
"Captain Dynamic, the Great, Faces The Great Face" (#190069) by airhead
anachrodragon rated: 5 stars
londerwost rated: 5 stars Updated!
"City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon" (#18775) by Tubbius
londerwost rated: 3 stars
"A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings" (#61866) by TheDeepBlue
anachrodragon rated: 5 stars
"Future Skulls" (#4727) by Justice Blues
anachrodragon rated: 4 stars
"BE Prologue: Gangs United" (#250480) by OzzieArcane
UPDATED 5 stars
londerwost rated: 3 stars UPDATED 5 stars
"In The Shadow of the Towers" (#1402) by TheDeepBlue
anachrodragon rated: 4 stars
londerwost rated: 4 stars
"A Proper Heist" (#82059) by Dr_Mechano
anachrodragon rated: 4 stars
"All Consuming" (#261148) by Lazarus
londerwost rated: 4 stars
"Mecha Mutiny: Quatrexin's Quandary" (#246604) by Feizel
anachrodragon rated: 3 stars
londerwost rated: Not Rated. Needs improvement.
"Amulet of J'gara" (#1709) by Lazarus
londerwost rated: 5 stars
"Wings of Deception" (#101926) by Ashcraft
anachrodragon rated: 3 stars
londerwost rated: 3 stars Part 2
"Halloween Night" (#227436) by BinkDeBook
anachrodragon rated: 3 stars
londerwost rated: 3 stars
"Ctrl + Alt + Reset!" (#137561) by Bubbawheat
anachrodragon rated: 5 stars
londerwost rated: 5 stars
"Save the Spiderlings." (#13986) by Jetpack
anachrodragon rated: 3 stars
londerwost rated: 2 stars Needs improvement.
"Two Households Alike" (#126582) by Venture
anachrodragon rated: 5 stars
londerwost rated: 5 stars
"Dream Paper" (#1874)
"Bricked Electronics" (#2180)
"The Bravuran Jobs" (#5073) by GlaziusF
Both Rated: 5 stars, Highly Recommended!
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The Queue (Updated 09/27/09)
Here is the current queue. Note that we are taking a break from the MA for the next few months, but we'll take a look at these when we get back.