Friendship is Card Games: Kenbucky Roller Derby #4 & #5 · 11:40am Sunday
Time for the last laps of what has been a thoroughly baffling event.
To review:
• Equestria has a semiprofessional roller derby league.
• Equestria has more than three cities that can host teams for aforementioned roller derby league.
• Random ponies off the street have a better understanding of basic roller derby maneuvers than Sunny Starscout, a mare who skates on a daily basis and has to perform precise maneuvers while hauling a smoothie delivery cart.
• One of those ponies, already on the team before Sunny’s disastrous tryout, is Misty.
• To get vengeance on these random jerks who called the Alicorn herself a filthy casual, Sunny decides to challenge them with a team she doesn’t actually have at time of said challenge.
• After all other candidates were poached out from under Sunny, said team consists of her, her friends, and a bunch of pegasnails piled onto a single roller skate.
• This team is coached by a disgraced roller derby star seeking redemption through mentorship, with hair like a Yu-Gi-Oh protagonist.
The storyline might work if it didn’t rest on a foundation that G5 has never built… or if it were explicitly tied to My Little Pony Tales rather than Friendship is Magic. Still, let’s see how they bring this mess home.
Issue #4
We open with Izzy creating plays that are only possible for a pile of pegasnails, and she’s apparently concocted thirty-eight of them. “Something about the smell of wheel grease, Gait-Aide, and disco balls” gets her creative juices flowing… though I have to wonder what disco balls smell like. (Also, that’s a genuinely great Equestrian name for a sports drink. Indeed, they have a fountain of the orange flavor.)
While most things are going well, there is the small matter of the derby entrance fee. And by “small,” I mean “the only number the team can compare it to is Pipp’s follower count.” Sunny immediately begins wallowing in despair over messing up something so simple… which is resolved in the space of three panels.
I appreciate Sunny getting some degree of characterization beyond “paragon of Harmony” after the movie, but she’s been borderline unrecognizable in these comics.
In any case (and after an anecdote from Zipp about how feeding Sparky the wrong candy nearly burned down the Maretime Bay cineplex,) Sunny invites the team to brainstorm fundraising ideas. (They do have a fallback solution in Pipp paying for it by way of the royal treasury, but I can’t blame Sunny wanting to rectify the situation on her own terms.)
Sunny proposes a bake sale or special charity smoothie. Zipp wants to do gladiatorial combat on roller skates, or at least a roller-skating private eye business. Izzy’s ideas are either selling paintings made by skating or community lessons/roller rink parties. And Pipp, of course, wants to do a concert.
Sunny manages to combine all of the ideas into a “Disco Derby.” Even more impressive, Izzy manages to fit it all into one poster.
… and as they get the local sporting goods store to put up some of the fliers, we learn that the team—the Maretime Bay Brawlers—has in fact been playing some matches. They’re 3-1-1 and we have never seen any of this. I feel like that should have taken precedence over Tracy Tailspin’s tragic backstory.
Also, the Slammers, the team who rejected Sunny, overhears this and are even more deeply shocked than I am, since the last time they checked on the Brawlers, it was to laugh at how incompetent they were.
After a brief but delightful interlude with Izzy’s tabletop RPG, we cut to the next practice session, where she applies the principles of Dumpster Mastering to roller derby training in a quest “of stealth, dexterity, and hydration.” Which is to say, they need to navigate a maze of glasses of Gait-Aide using the hoof-stop technique Tracy was showing them on the previous page (despite them having a 60% win rate without even knowing it existed.) We get a two-page spread of a training montage… and the Slammers watching from outside the rink, evaluating the Brawlers as “annoying but not alarming.” They decide to “watch ‘em lose” the next day.
That match is against the Zephyr Knights, so at least we’re not adding another city that had always been there the whole time to the G5 atlas. (I’d love to do so if the three cities weren’t so central to the whole conflict.) The Slammers at least have a semblance of disguises (read: hats and sunglasses) and find the victorious Brawlers’ threat levels rapidly rising.
After a page-turn scene transition, the fundraiser setup is good to go… and the Slammers are once again making plans to sabotage it. An idea which apparently only occurred to one of them. (And again, there is a very viable Plan B of having the throne pay for it. And the sabotage plan is proposed by a pegasus. I’d expect the slightest bit of hesitation in acting against both crown princesses… but that presupposes that Zephyr Heights is the only pegasus settlement on the map.)
However, this time it isn’t tearing down or vandalizing the posters. Instead, the Slammers manage to empty out the entire gym of all of the party supplies completely unnoticed, leaving Sunny and company with a few minutes to salvage the impending disaster.
The answer? DM Izzy to the rescue with The Vanishing Fundraiser, an adventure for character levels 5-8. Amazingly, the crowd goes along with this… up until the Slammers show up and start ragging on the organizers for false advertising. Sunny confronts them, saying that unlike with the Brawlers, “no pony on the Slammers seems to have any fun, except when they’re being mean.”
The brilliant riposte? “We had a great time stealing your fundraising supplies!” This prompts a hasty retreat, and if this storyline had any faint semblance of continuity with the rest of G5, Hitch should have arrested the whole team there and then.
I also feel the need to note that Misty hasn’t shown up once in this whole issue. Sunny may have hit the nail on the head in terms of internal tension in the Slammers.
In any case, in true 80’s movie fashion, the underdogs’ fundraiser was just enough for them to save the community center pay their way to Kenbucky. And so we turn to the next issue.
Issue #5
Special shout-out to IDW for still not having this issue available on their store more than a week after it was published. I had to get the Kindle version.
The first page is our first look at Kenbucky proper, and the first impression is more convention hall than sporting event. Tracy is struck by just how much it’s grown since she last competed. (There’s also a lovely bit on the first panel with a paraplegic player assuring a similarly wheel-harnessed fan that they can still tear up the track.
Tracy meets up with her old captain, who’s also coaching a team, the Baltimare Bolts. (Never mind that Baltimare is one of the best candidates for the city the eventually became Maretime Bay, because this is clearly taking place in an alternate universe. I half-expect to spot Twilight in the crowd for the finals.)
Sunny’s nervous as she hears that the Bolts are four-time veterans of the Derby, and the captain, Kirby Klash, made MVP the first time. Fortunately, they’re much nicer than the Slammers, even taking Sunny’s catastrophizing in good humor. (“What if they’re judging us and what if we embarrass Tracy and what if they’re mean and spray us off the track with a giant fire hose and—”) For what it’s worth, Kirby is terrified of looking bad in front of Tracy, one of her skating idols.
However, the Slammers aren’t far behind, disgusted to see that the amateurs are trading tips with the league leaders… until the captain has the brilliant idea to create a pegaslime-based “accident” to eliminate at least one member of the competition. They dope Hitch’s wheels even as Kirby assures Sunny that they’re “boneheads who don’t get what roller derby is about.”
Is “bonehead” offensive to unicorns? This is one earth mare talking to another.
In any case, Hitch has a sprained hip and is out for a few weeks. (He also calls Zipp “Zippy,” which one could read a lot into if one were so inclined.) There’s also a bit where Hitch laments the restrictive nature of the rules keeping him from skating on three legs and Sunny insisting on safety first, because the characterization here is the writer bouncing pony figurines up and down as they say the lines that move the plot forward.
Still, the Brawlers aren’t out of the running yet, because Misty chooses that moment to remind everypony that she exists. She quit the Slammers after the saboteurs bragged about taking out the competition. Interestingly, while the rest of the team thought it was hilarious, the coach still suspended them, so there’s some integrity in that team. I wonder where it’s been for the rest of the storyline.
After another training session with the Bolts to help Misty find her stride on the team and Kirby waxing rhapsodic on the virtues of teamwork, the tournament officially begins, and we get several more cities added to the atlas anyway: Las Pegasus, Fillydelphia, and somehow Cloudsdale still exist, as does the town of “Meadowbend.”
The semifinals lead to a Brawler-Slammer grudge match, with the Slammer captain warning Sunny that the saboteurs can be brought back in should anything happen to the rest of the team. Sunny assures him that, contrary to his experience, it is possible to win without cheating.
The same announcers are here as in the flashback issue, and they've been doing this for thirty-three years, apparently. (According to Poppy-Jane Fritterling, Colt Coleburn’s mustache has been doing it for forty-two. Given that it visibly grows from panel to panel, I can believe that.)
In a lovely bit of karma, one effort by the Slammers to pass Zipp and start scoring gets thwarted by the very same slime that got Hitch off the active squad. (Also, there’s apparently no rule against biologically secreted track hazards even at the highest levels of play.)
In any case… well, the Brawlers win. After several more dynamic panel arrangements, they do so on an evenly spaced 3x3 page like Watchmen had a commercial break for Discovery Family, and the overall impact for thwarting the antagonists who have tormented Sunny feels utterly weightless. In a way, it’s appropriate when the central lesson is that competition is meant to be a form of fun, not a way to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their fanbase. But the central conflict of the story is unceremoniously resolved and shooed out to make room for the next story beat.
The finals are, of course, Brawlers vs. Bolts, held the next day. The Slammers have already hightailed it, and while I can commend Sunny for not gloating overmuch at her victory, it still would’ve been nice.
Also, Colt Coleburn’s mustache is beginning to overflow the announcers’ booth.
There are two pages of careful maneuvering and aggressive slams that are hard to properly convey in text—look, sports manga have never been one of my major interests 
—the Bolts manage a come-from-behind victory. And honestly, I appreciate it when the plucky underdogs don’t make it all the way to the big time in their first year. And as Kirby acknowledges, it was a close, hard-fought battle.
And so the story ends, with much interteam hugging and promises of coming back next year even better than ever… and honestly, the whole thing falls flat. The antagonists of the entire storyline get one last trick in, then are disposed of with five pages left so we can have a denouement featuring characters who were introduced in this final issue. Between that and the foundational continuity issues, I just couldn’t get into this storyline.
Also, while one of Duskmourne’s mechanics has been previewed, I’m holding off on using impending until the previews begin in earnest (or there’s a card where it’s too perfect not to use,) especially since there’s still a whole other set between now and then. Bloomburrow deserves its time in the sun.
Case of the Abandoned Gym 1W
Enchantment — Case
When this Case enters the battlefield, destroy up to one target artifact or enchantment.
To solve — There are four or more artifact and/or enchantment cards in your graveyard. (If unsolved, solve at the beginning of your end step.)
Solved — 1W, Sacrifice this Case: Return target noncreature, non-Case permanent card from your graveyard to the battlefield.
Cloudsdale Survivor 1W
Creature — Pegasus Survivor
Morbid — When Cloudsdale Survivor enters the battlefield, if a creature died this turn, destroy up to one target enchantment.
The Ebb of Magic hit the cloud cities hardest. Only a lucky few managed to glide to the surface.
2/1
Derby Detective 2W
Creature — Pony Detective
Flash
Whenever a creature deals combat damage to you, investigate. (Create a Clue token. It’s an artifact with “2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.”)
Response times are up, but so is collateral damage.
1/4
Virtue of Cooperation 3WW
Enchantment
At the beginning of your end step, create a white Avatar creature token with “This creature’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of creatures you control.”
United Effort 1W
Instant — Adventure
Creatures you control get +1/+1 until end of turn. (Then exile this card. You may cast the enchantment later from exile.)
Baltimare Survivor 1U
Creature — Pony Survivor
Morbid — When Baltimare Survivor enters the battlefield, if a creature died this turn, any number of target players each mill four cards.
After the dust settled, some disenchanted ponies spent the rest of their lives staring out at the bay and watching the crabs.
2/1
Scent of Inspiration 1U
Instant
Reveal any number of blue cards from your hand. You get that many E (energy counters).
Draw a card.
All of Izzy’s senses are highly attuned to potential crafting ideas.
Uphill Both Ways 3U
Enchantment
Players can’t untap more than two nonhistoric permanents during their untap steps. (Artifacts, legendaries, and Sagas are historic.)
“I used to joke about the old days, but Hitch believed every word I said. Still does, probably.”
—Figgy Pudding, retiree
Slime Stack 3UU
Creature — Pegasus Snail Warrior
Ward 2
Whenever Slime Stack attacks, tap target untapped creature defending player controls and put a stun counter on it. (If a creature with a stun counter on it would untap, remove a stun counter from it instead.)
The fastest things on one skate.
3/5
Las Pegasus Survivor 1B
Creature — Pegasus Survivor
Morbid — When Las Pegasus Survivor enters the battlefield, if a creature died this turn, each opponent loses 2 life and you gain 2 life.
The city’s evacuation drills worked fine. The biggest loss was the undercloud blackjack tables.
2/1
Threat Assessment 1BB
Sorcery
An opponent of your choice with the most life among your opponents loses 3 life. An opponent of your choice with the most cards in hand among those players discards a card. An opponent of your choice who controls the most creatures among those players sacrifices a creature.
Accidents Happen 2B
Sorcery
Casualty 2 (As you cast this spell, you may sacrifice a creature with power 2 or greater. When you do, copy this spell.)
Each opponent sacrifices a creature.
Anypony who crosses the royal family is listed as dying of natural causes.
Disgusted Defection 5B
Instant
This spell costs 3 less to cast if it targets a card with the same name as a creature that died this turn.
Return target creature card from an opponent’s graveyard to the battlefield under your control.
Once again, Misty abandoned a vile cause.
Grudge Match R
Sorcery
You may cast this spell as though it had flash if a creature died under your control this turn.
Target creature you control fights target creature you don’t control.
It was only the semifinals, but it was still the game both teams had been waiting for.
Fillydelphia Survivor 1R
Creature — Pony Survivor
Morbid — When Fillydelphia Survivor enters the battlefield, if a creature died this turn, destroy up to one target artifact.
The riots after the Ebb were only slightly more destructive than those following the last buckball championship.
2/1
Rolling Bladesmare 1R
Creature — Pegasus Warrior
Haste
Rolling Bladesmare has first strike as long as it’s attacking.
Everypony told her it was a terrible idea, which only made her want to do it more.
2/1
Autocharioteer 3R
Artifact Creature — Pony Warrior
Haste
Autocharioteer’s power is equal to the number of artifacts you control.
“I don’t think of them as prosthetics. This is just my body.”
*/4
Everfree Survivor 1G
Creature — Unicorn Survivor
Morbid — When Everfree Survivor enters the battlefield, if a creature died this turn, create a 1/1 blue Unicorn creature token.
The Bridlewood Separatists had prepared for a disaster for years, though they never imagined how bad the Ebb would be.
2/1
Ever-Growing Symbiote 1G
Enchantment Creature — Horror
Bestow 1G (If you cast this card for its bestow cost, it’s an Aura spell with enchant creature. It becomes a creature again if it’s not attached.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on Ever-Growing Symbiote.
Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 for each +1/+1 counter on Ever-Growing Symbiote.
1/1
Group Training 1G
Sorcery
Demonstrate (When you cast this spell, you may copy it. If you do, choose an opponent to also copy it.)
Put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.
The Baltimare Bolts showed Sunny that most teams were far kinder than the Slammers.
Dumpster Druid 2G
Creature — Raccoon Unicorn Druid
When Dumpster Druid enters the battlefield, choose one —
• Target player shuffles up to four target cards from their graveyard into their library.
• Search your library for a basic land card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.
2/1
Champion’s Podium 3
Artifact
Whenever one or more creatures deal combat damage to one of your opponents, those creature’s controllers each create a Gold token. (It’s an artifact with “Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color.”)
Winning isn’t everything, but it still counts for something.
Sword of Sparkling Stealth 3
Artifact — Equipment
As Sword of Sparkling Stealth enters the battlefield, choose a color.
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has protection from the last chosen color.
2: Choose a color.
Equip 2
You can’t hide, but you can blind.
Keeper of the Playbook 1RW
Creature — Unicorn Advisor
At the beginning of each combat, choose target creature you don’t control. You choose whether, who, and how that creature attacks or blocks this combat.
“Okay, on the next lap I’ll need you to skate backwards for a bit…”
3/2
Junkyard Wrecker 2RG
Creature — Raccoon Unicorn Barbarian
First strike, trample
Sacrifice an artifact: Junkyard Wrecker loses first strike until end of turn. Any player may activate this ability.
Sacrifice an enchantment: Junkyard Wrecker loses trample until end of turn. Any player may activate this ability.
5/4
Fundraiser Saboteur 3BR
Creature — Pony Rogue
Lifelink
When Fundraiser Saboteur enters the battlefield, it deals X damage to target opponent, where X is the number of artifacts that player controls plus the number of artifacts that player has sacrificed this turn.
“I’m just keeping them honest.”
3/3
Kenbucky Arena
Land
Kenbucky Arena enters the battlefield tapped.
T: Add R.
1RWW, T, Sacrifice Kenbucky Arena: Target creature gains double strike and trample until end of turn.
Yeah, pretty much full agreement here. Characterisation is subtly but repulsively all over the place, and a lot of that final issue is a big middle finger to this thing called "story structure", what with sidelining the beating of the bully team for the friendly competition with the new one, whatever it's a better thematic fit with MLP. I can think of tons of ways this could have been better had the actual event been given two issues to breathe, but there are so many other and better ways this could have been done.
Oh, and I would really like to know what the hell was going on with the Misty plot line in all of this. Was this written when the writer only had access to Misty having swapped sides but being undercover? Not like the show didn't produce a wet fart with that, but otherwise, I can only fathom this was put it via mandate or confusion about the source material, and that plot aspect was otherwise delved into as little as possible because they realised how asinine it was. Most of everything else, I can see why someone might do it that way, even if it's emphatically wrong, but this… this is the kind of boneheaded that's more effort to make.
As our only "long form" G5 media, these are honestly screeching to be put out of their misery. Though I suspect they'll continue for this year and the next one, long as TYT is running on fumes for the same time period.
I'm increasingly feeling like G5 is written by post-modernist (which it probably is). Things happen, but they seem entirely disconnected from cause and effect, relies entirely on tropes, and is entirely inconsequential. Oh well.
Supporting cast, but close enough. (Yes, I used this joke the last time you made this comparison. I provided a link this time though.)
Inside Baseball Alert: The Survivor type did exist prior to Duskmourne... on tokens given to your opponent, so FoME's Exact Words shenanigans aren't fooling anyone.
Stupid Complicated Game Alert: Slime Stack will indeed tap down things at exactly the right time to stop them from being declared as blockers (we don't talk about Masako). The stun counter means they won't be able to block you next turn, either.
I haven't looked at any of the comics in quite a while, but it seem that the art is nice enough. So why does the writing have to be so bad? It's hard not to become depressed by this. All the time, money, and effort put into producing these comics, and for what? Echoing a fad sport with a hinky version of the tired old Win the Big Game/Race/Contest story? Even if the writers can't come up with anything original and good, there's a ton of excellent children's stories out there that could be
*Facepalms in Classics Reimagined*
stolenhonoredadaptedgiven a loving homage to by being ponified.Okay... Maybe not. Enid Blyton rolls in her grave.
Don't be sad that it happened, be glad that it's over.
An upcoming storyline will bring back Jeremy Whitley and Andy Price to G5. I do look forward to that. Hope they've still got it.
5789421
Got my fingers crossed!
Just a quick heads-up: as of today, you've reached the end of my first comic release date roundup, so here are all the comic release dates from next week through the end of September:
7/10: Maretime Mysteries #2
7/31: Set Your Sail #4
8/14: Maretime Mysteries #3
8/28: Set Your Sail #5
9/11: Maretime Mysteries #4
9/25: The Storm of Zephyr Heights #1
That's about it for now. Happy Fourth of July!
P.S. Do you think that Turnabout Storm/Elements of Justice will get its day(s) in the limelight soon? I'd hoped to see the batches for Turnabout Storm synced with Ponyville Mysteries, but better late than never.