All posts by Blond

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Retro Rant Rampage

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As the title suggests, this article will be focused on a couple of things that really grind my gears (crappy Family Guy reference). Ok, first off all, let’s go for the low hanging fruit of Gamestop. I’m fairly sure that I’ve complained about them before but hey, what the hell? They do a few things that really leave a bad taste in my mouth and just irritate the crap outta me. First of all, the upselling at the register. Yes, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but in my experience, checkout time seems to be at an all-time high. I just want to buy the frickin’ game in my hand, not listen to a sales pitch. No, I don’t want to pre-order. Dammit! I’m cheap! I’ll never buy a brand new $60 game! I wouldn’t sleep at night knowing that the same game that I just bought, will be $40 cheaper in a few months. Yeah. That’s a hard pass on the pre-order. I also don’t want to insure my disc for a $1. How about you just check and clean the frickin’ disc when it’s traded in?! Speaking of trading in games, seriously people, you are getting robbed. Stop. Ebay your game. Put it on Amazon. Don’t trade it in for a few bucks in store credit, just so you can see your game marked up $10-$15. Holy hell, I know they’re running a business but the trade in program is so screwy and one-sided. I stop in from time to time and always cringe when I see the next victim bringing their stack of games up to the counter hoping for a decent payday. Last weekend, I bought a preowned game and the employee, after going through the motions of unsuccessfully trying to sell me extra crap, stuck a coupon in the bag. $5 trade in credit. How generous. Listen, I know that it’s absolutely not the employees’ fault, they are doing what they are supposed to. I think we have all heard about the reformed quota policy that corporate Gamestop enforces.

Okay, final Gamestop complaint. Did you all know that they “sell” retro games and systems online now? Notice how I used quotations around “sell”? Because if you go to actually order something, most of the time it’s out of stock. “Why is that?”, you maybe asking. Well let me just slap on this tin foil frickin’ hat and I’ll tell you why. They never had stock to begin with. So why would they offer the item online and for a reasonable price? Well friends, it’s used as a reference point for trade ins. Think about it, you walk in with an old Dreamcast looking to make some space in your nerd cave. Well they will offer you $15-$20 for it, which is about a third of what they are asking for it online. You think the two thirds profit margin would be enough but no, they wait until they get a predetermined number of systems and then they will suddenly not be out of stock and suddenly the price of the Dreamcast increases on their site. They run out, the price lowers, rinse and repeat. It’s actually brilliant. It makes bartering impossible. They can claim that they are only asking $45-$50 for the system and it has to be tested, cleaned, etc so the piddly offer is actually a decent deal. Which if it was actually 50% of what they flip it for, would actually be fair. But it isn’t, it’s a third at best. It’s not just limited to consoles either, a majority of the retro games are out of stock but still have their low price listed. Strangely enough it’s all the best selling classics like Contra, Punch-Out, etc. It’s the same strategy. Again, brilliant. They realized that there is a growing demand for older games and not wanting to miss out on the cash grab, they hatched a solid plan to get product on the cheap. As a guy who works as an analyst for a big ol’ company, I understand the strategy, but as a retro collector, I find it shady as hell.

Ok, whew, congratulations! You made it through that block of text! It’s almost over people! So a few months ago, I, like many others, saw the announcement for SNES classic system and immediately decided that I had to have it. I signed up for email notifications from all of the major retailers,(Best Buy, Amazon, Target..), so the minute it would be available for preorder, I’d know and could quickly log in and get my order in. Solid plan right? I thought so too. Until for some frickin’ reason, Best Buy and Amazon decided to take preorders at 4 frickin’ A.M! Oh! And those bastards didn’t send out the notification email!! Are you kidding me?! Why the hell would you start to sell them at 4 in the godamn morning?! Not sure why but dammit I blame Nintendo. They know that it’s going to fly off the shelves so what do they do? Did they decide that they would produce more so everyone would get a shot at owning one and playing some great games? Oh no, grasshopper! They tell everyone that it’s going to be extremely limited and that they will not produce more. Nice. Needless to say, it’s sold out everywhere today and I will not be getting one. The only thing I hope is that they limited it to one per customer just to screw over those bastard scalpers out there that bought up the NES classics last year.

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Rapid Fire! Random Thoughts 6/1

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Welcome to another edition of Rapid Fire! Let’s get right into it, shall we?

-I saw Diamond’s sales numbers for last month. While Marvel had the best selling book, Amazing Spider-Man #25, their other books just aren’t selling that well, no matter what they try. Meanwhile DC is doing pretty well with the Rebirth titles. I’m sure the cheaper cover price helps. My theory: New readers are coming straight from the movie theater and finding that Iron Man isn’t Tony Stark, Thor is a woman, Captain America might be part of Hydra, but not really, alternate universes up the wazoo, etc..It makes it hard for new readers to jump onboard no matter how many reboots they do. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t try new things but maybe it’s time to rein the writers in a bit.

-The first Hour of Devastation spoilers appeared today (accidentally?), we finally got our look at Nicol Bolas, who looks impressive. Steep casting cost but I have a rampy super friends deck, with a set of Oath of Nissa, some mana dorks and a set of Deploy the Gatewatch that might be the perfect home for him. Once I do some testing I’ll post the deck list if it’s any good. Nothing but the best for you guys!

-Wonder Woman looks really good. According to the reviews that I’ve read, DC might have a winner here. I’m looking forward to seeing it soon.

-I’ve been building up my PS4 collection lately. Hidden Gem alert: Earth Defense Force 4.1. Buy it. Now. Go ahead, I’ll wait………….

It feels like a mix between Starship Troopers and 50’s cheesy sci fi flick. You choose between four soldier classes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses and shoot the bajeezus out of giant insects, giant mechs,and huge spaceships. It’s as nutty as it sounds.

-Since I’m on the subject of my PS4 collection, I also bought King of Fighters 14, which comes with a nice steelbook and is unplayable out of the box. C’mon! A 5gb download?! To be fair, once you suffer through the download the game is really enjoyable. Not quite as good as 13 but still decent in its own right.

-Despite your preconceived notions that we sit around all day playing games, we also both love to read (Shawn is a writer actually, look him up on Amazon. Do it. I’ll wait…….). Anyways, I’m a fantasy/sci fi kind of guy and I recently just finished Brandon Sanderson’s Way of the Kings, which is the first book in his Stormlight Archive series. It was ridiculously good. I highly recommend that you give it a shot. Shawn recommended it to me and when I was at Barnes and Noble heading to the register with it, an employee stopped me to let me know that she absolutely loved it. It’s the kind of book that immediately grabs ahold of you and the hours just melt away.

-I picked up a couple issues of the Batman/Flash crossover event,”The Button”. Usually I’m not a fan of alternate universe storylines, but this one works and is really decent.

-Sadly, last Sunday was the final episode of River Monsters on Animal Planet. After 10 years of scaring people out of freshwater, Jeremy Wade is hanging up his fishing pole. I will miss the Monday morning River Monsters email thread at work which was mainly comprised of “What the hell did he catch?!” and “Why do people swim in anything other than a swimming pool?!?”. The show was educational, entertaining, terrifying and fascinating.

-I bought a box Amonkhet and was lucky enough to pull a masterpiece (I believe they are called invocations in this set). I got a Consecrated Sphinx, which books for $55. While I’m happy that I got one, I’m disappointed in the overall look of the Invocations. It doesn’t even look like a MTG card and the font is ridiculously hard to read. I ended up trading it for a Blood Moon and a Misty Rainforest.

-Finally, we are talking about possibly getting the 2 Guys Gaming podcast going again. We will keep you up to date as far as that goes.

On the Tabletop

Star Wars X-Wing: A New Hope…(that I get better at this game..)

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A month or so ago I was chatting with Shawn through text and he mentioned that he had purchased a new game for him and the Gamer Bros to try, Star Wars: X-Wing. At the time I wasn’t too intrigued as I knew it was a miniature game and our first foray into the genre wasn’t exactly a rousing success. Heroclix had proven to be rather slow-paced due to our inexperience with the rules and all of the different powers. Relax, all you Heroclix fans out there, I do think the game is probably really, really good once you get a feel for the rules, and opening up booster bricks is a blast. Maybe one day we will revisit the game and give it another go. We had also talked about trying Warmachine/Hordes but the price point is nuttier than squirrel crap and the rules seem a bit..intricate, yeah, we’ll go with that. I do believe Shawn bought a starter set however so that’s something we will try as well. So many games, so little time.

Where was I? Ah, yes, X-Wing. Well, Shawn had told me that the games were essentially quick for the most part and that him and his boys really enjoyed it. At the point my interest peaked and I made the comment that he should bring his starter set over the next time we had a nerd night. I watched a couple tutorial videos on the game and was surprised at how much strategy was involved and yet the game mechanics were fairly simple. Last Friday, Shawn stopped over and true to his word, brought the game with him. I had honestly forgot about it and had my bag of Dicemasters rarin’ to go. Once I saw the little Tie Fighters I was sold. The detail on the ships is amazing and with Dicemasters now a distant memory, we quickly got a game underway. I chose the Tie Fighters because, well, they’re frigging’ Tie Fighters and he took the X-wing. Since it had been a week since I had watched videos on the game, my head was still jammed full of budgets and accruals from work and I remembered a fraction of the information. After a few turns I had the hang of it and was feeling pretty confident, until Shawn started referencing the rule book and we realized that we were playing with maybe half of the actual rules and were ignoring special abilities and maneuvers. Which would explain why it took so long for us to really get into any sort of meaningful combat. I mean if I had known about Barrel Roll, I would have absolutely…still lost the game. But to be fair it would have went faster. We had basically flown past each other the first 4-5 turns with little to no action, but this would have been remedied by using all of the rules.

After he creamed me and left to go home, I hopped in my car to run an errand (ah, adulting, so much fun) and thought about the game on the way. Truthfully, I wasn’t all that impressed with the game. Then I found myself reflecting on some of the maneuvers I had made and realized the misplays I made. It was at that point that I realized the potential the game had. It was actual pretty entertaining and something I wanted to try again. I ended up spending some time on Youtube polishing up on the advanced rules and then went on EBay to see if I could get any decent deals on some pieces for it. Unfortunately, while it doesn’t have the price point of games like Warhammer and Warmachine/Hordes, it’s still on the pricey side. I’m still eyeballing the Slave-1, but it’s $30 for a little model; a very cool, detailed little model, but that’s quite a bit to drop on one piece. I’ve told myself, as well as my bank account, that I’m going to wait to play a few games using all of the rules before I decided to buy in. So will X-Wing make it into our regular rotation? Well only time will tell, with so many good games out there and not a ton of time during our nerd nights, it takes a really solid game to make a repeat appearance. However, from my time with it, X-Wing is a contender for a spot.

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The Itch

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Ah, comics…just the word brings back happy memories of sifting through bargain bins at a nearby sports card shop and of trudging every week to an office supply store in the center of town that inexplicably carried Marvel Comics. Ah, early 90’s, how I miss your $1.00 cover prices.

As I mentioned way back, maybe a couple of years ago, I had grown tired of my comic collection and decided to part ways with it via Craigslist. It seemed like digital comics were taking over and my comics were just sitting in boxes with just a few key Silver age issues on display in my man cave. To this day, it was one of the dumbest things I’ve done. It’s one thing to sell a collection of Modern age books, but it’s another thing to sell a collection of Silver age. Those, well..you don’t sell those. A few months ago, seemingly out of nowhere I got the itch. You know what I’m talking about; that itch so deeply rooted in your brain that the only way to scratch it is by running out of your house screaming like a lunatic and buying that game, comic, miniature, ..etc that you just have to have. For me, that itch was Tales of Suspense #81. It was my favorite cover from my old collection and I just had to own it again.

I figured that if I immersed myself in MTG and built some new decks, the comic bug would fade away. It did not however, instead it intensified becoming a nerdy tornado of materialism..I couldn’t stop thinking about comics. When I was at work, I was reading CBR.com and Newsarama.com articles. At night I would spend hours traveling through page after page at collectors-society.com, (You want to get hooked on comics? Go there. You’ve been warned.). Finally, in an effort to regain my sanity I logged onto eBay and found a copy of TOS #81 for $12 and bought it. No auction or “make an offer” bullcrap for me, I just bought that sucker. It was mine again.. that’s all I needed just that one issue…wait, what’s that? Tales to Astonish #91 with only a few seconds left?! Mine! House of Mystery #219?! For $6.00?! Mine! Oh man! I loved the McFarlane run on Amazing Spider-Man! Issue #318! Mine! It was a long night that night. I was exhausted the next morning at work but not as exhausted as my bank account.

A couple of days later, I found myself standing in Newbury comics with my better half, Caitlyn, eyeballing the newest issues on the shelf. I wasn’t sure I wanted to jump back into collecting new books just yet, but she convinced me to do so. She said that it makes me happy so it’s worth the inflated cover prices. She also made me proud by buying herself a Thor infinity scarf. It didn’t take much convincing for me to jump back in head first. After only a few minutes I had accrued about $40 worth of comics. Thankfully, it was a Monday evening and they have a BOGO sale on Mondays (you’re welcome, corporate guy at Newbury..could we get some swag?), so my wallet didn’t take a beating. Honestly, it was fun to buy comics again, I had never stopped reading them, but there is something about the hunt for that one issue, the interactions you have with fellow collectors, and of course the feeling of holding that book in your hand and not just viewing it on an iPad (iPad plug, Apple, send a couple our way). I also noticed that there is more of a diverse audience for them. Just by being in Newbury for 30 minutes, I saw men, women, kids, all flipping through comics. This is probably due to the emergence of comics in mainstream media via movies and tv shows. I think it’s fantastic that people are finally understanding that comics are not just for kids. Now if the publishers could just stop the reboot nonsense, we would be golden. As for me, I’m proud to say that I’m a collector again. My goal is to regain most of the Silver age issues I sold and build from there, maybe it’ll happen and maybe it won’t but regardless it’ll be fun to try.

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Amonkhet Prerelease

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A couple of weeks ago, a buddy of mine asked if I wanted to attend the Amonkhet prerelease with him. To be perfectly honest, my first reaction was “Nope”, but lately I have been guilty of being anti-social so I agreed. It was my first prerelease so I didn’t know what to expect exactly. I figured that it was just a handful of players cracking five or six packs, eating some free pizza and playing some casual games. I had no idea that it was a tournament and also that there was going to be a fairly large turnout. I assumed that most people are like me and choose to spend their Sunday afternoon silently crying about having to go to the office the next morning.

I was floored when I walked into my LGS,(that’s local game store for all of you not in the “know”), and every table was full of players waiting for the signal to crack their packs. I grabbed my prerelease box, spotted my friend, who had saved me a seat, and sat down with a confused look. He then filled me in on how a prerelease actually goes, which was essentially that it was slightly more competitive than I had thought. I had been doing sealed drafts with Shawn lately (we actually had done one the week before), so I was feeling pretty good about it. We were given the signal to start building our decks and the place went quiet except for the frenzied tearing of wrappers.

My first pack made the choice for me, I pulled a Glorybringer, which had been my personal pick of the set during the Amonkhet spoilers. A 4/4 flyer with haste AND a Mizzium Mortars built in one is a limited bomb and, spoiler alert, it served me well the entire tournament. The other packs were decent, as I also pulled a Hazoret, as well as some other green and red cards that solidified my choice of RG aggro. I decided to splash white for some defense, which was actually a poor choice as I barely played one white card the entire tournament except when I was discarding them to play Bloodrage Brawler (1R, 4/3, Discard a card when it comes into play).

I won’t give a game by game play by play, but I’m proud to say that I represented 2 Generations Gaming the best I could. I lost one game out of the 4 matches, and that was to a mirror-match. I reached the finals and my opponent and I agreed to split the grand prize as it was late and we both didn’t want to sit through another 2-3 games. We then decided to play one game after claiming our prizes (10 packs of Amonkhet), in order to see who was the actual winner. After several turns of us both being flooded, I drew a Glorybringer, broke the stalemate, and on my next turn, played a Scaled Behemoth, pumped it up and used Fling to end the game.

After it was all said and done, I sent Shawn a text letting him know that I had won. He had always said that we could really make some noise in competitive play so it was nice to prove him right. Regardless of winning or losing , I would do a prerelease again, it was fun, and the fact that everyone was on equal footing made the games interesting. With that said, there were some things that could have been improved on. The 50 minutes given to us to construct our decks felt a little excessive. Shawn and I usually construct our sealed decks in 20 minutes so I basically sat around, waiting for people to finish building. The time between rounds waiting for the next brackets to be posted also felt slightly long. I think with slightly decreased wait times, I would try to make every one, but I just don’t have the free time to sit around for 5 hours. To be fair, I did use the wait times to peruse the X-wing miniatures, since I had been talking about the game the night before with Shawn…but more on that later…

On the Tabletop, Uncategorized

Lessons From The Kitchen Table: A Fond Adieu

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It wasn’t that long ago (about a month) when I was singing the praises of Modern MTG. Since then real life has stepped in and the time I had to go to Modern on Monday nights has stepped out. Admittedly, this “cooling off” period happens this time every year. It’s usually driven by work and Shawn’s family obligations and prevents our nerdy nerd nights from happening, which in turn causes my decks to collect dust. This year is different however. I’m actually not upset about my decks collecting dust.

So what happened? Well I won’t recycle Shawn’s thoughts in his article “I’m on a Boat”, but his assessment of Modern is essentially spot-on. It is basically a format of unoriginal ideas and mechanic abuse. I play against Tier One decks like Jund, Grixis, Dredge, ..etc, where I see the same cards over and over again. Your opponent splashed white? Path to Exile is coming. Multiple times. First turn Swamp? Thoughtseize or Inquisition of Kozilek will make an appearance in a second. Blue? Remand. Baby Jace or worse, JTMS. You get the point. The games are predictable. The guys in my group tend to stick with Tier One decks, so there isn’t much that catches me by surprise anymore. It has slowly turned me to other formats that offer a more intriguing experience. As Shawn pointed out in the aforementioned article, we have drafted a couple of times and it is now my format of choice. Standard, once considered a money pit to me, has me actually reading daily articles about deck strategies. Although, it does seem like a slight waste of time as no one in my group plays standard. They are firmly embedded in their modern world. To each their own, and who am I to say what format is better or worse? I just know that my Modern days are behind me at this point. Drafting puts Shawn and I on equal footing, instead of him trying to deal with Modern decks, or more accurately, not wanting to play at all. It makes every game more interesting and even more strategic.

It hit me a few weeks ago. After writing my “Modern Night” article, I said “eff this” and decided that my losing days were over. It was time to brew a broken deck. After going back and forth between building Infect or Mill (both of which are in the shallow end of the proverbial strategy pool) I decided that I was going to build a B/U mill deck. I had gone to the dark side. Suddenly I was very focused on having a strong showing at the next Modern Night. This wasn’t about a game. Or even about having fun. I wanted to win. I was tired of losing to my friends. I bounced my deck list off of one of my friends and he took the deck to task, not because it essentially craps on the spirit of the game but because he felt like it wasn’t built right. It wasn’t a top 8 deck essentially. I had added my own creative twist to the deck which made him believe that it was no good. After going back and forth on it via text, I realized that the debate had gone from if my deck was competitive or not to me saying that I didn’t care if it was a Mill deck, I just wanted it to be fun and my idea, not a net deck. And that’s when I realized that it’s tough to build a creative deck in modern and hope to be competitive.

So, where does that leave me? The bimonthly drafts as well as the collecting aspect of the hobby are what keep me going. I often find myself watching videos of drafts and of Standard games in general. I’m also a big fan of Tiny Leaders. So, even though my Modern days are over with for the foreseeable future, the game is not over for me. I do not regret my time dabbling in competitive Modern tournaments. I met some really cool people, built up a huge collection, improved my game and well, that’s good enough for me.

On the Tabletop, Uncategorized

MTG Modern Night

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Hey guys and gals! Recently I took the time to attend a Modern Night at my LGS and I wanted to share not only the results of my matches but my experience as a whole. So what did I play? After some last minute hmm’in and haww’in combined with texts to Noob to get his last minute words of wisdom, I went with Tron, which is always a solid performer in competitive tournaments. I was going to go with Bushwacker Zoo as I’ve played in a few modern nights at this store and know that the regular participants usually run Aggro or Control decks, but I decided to go with giant colorless beatsticks instead.

Match 1: Tron vs Bogles

The guy I played kind of froze the minute I dropped an Urza’s Mine. “Yeah, I don’t do well against Tron”, he laughed. The minute “Tron” came out of his mouth, heads turned. I was enemy #1. Another player told his opponent that he hoped he got matched up with me in the next round because he wanted to see how his deck would do against Tron. I tried to ease my opponent’s nerves a bit by reassuring him that it was MY Tron deck, not the RG scourge of the tournament scene. By turn 3, I wished I had the RG version as I was staring at two Urza lands and an Eldrazi temple on my side with a wimpy Eldrazi Mimic as my only form of defense, and on my opponent’s side, a couple of Slippery Bogles each pumped up to Eldrazi-esque proportions with Ethereal Armor, Daybreak Coronet and Rancor. I quickly conceded. Game 2 went exactly like game 1, I wasn’t able to get the correct cards in hand to loot for the Urza Tron pieces and was dispatched of with ease. We shook hands and he gave me some tips for tweaking my deck to make it slightly faster. We still had another 18 minutes left before the next round began so we played a couple more casual games to pass the time. The first one went like the last 2 “real” games as he blew me out, although I sensed that he gave me an extra turn or two to get something going on my side. The 2nd casual game went my way as I took a chance and aggressively mulliganed to get an opening hand that I could work with. This tactic stuck in my head and I realized that I was playing my deck wrong. Always mulligan (well down to 5 cards if necessary) til you get an Urza land or two, a green mana source and Sylvan Scrying or forgo the hunt for the green mana source and have either the aforementioned 2 Urza lands (or 1 Urza land and 1 colorless source) with Expedition Map in your opening hand.

End of Round 1: 0-1

Round 2: Tron vs Infect

I hate infect. Just absolutely hate it. Infect is such a garbage mechanic. It’s basically the equivalent of you starting with 10 life. So yeah, I lost in 2 straight games. Hate the deck but liked my opponent as he was a really friendly guy that offered me some good advice on making my deck run better. Notice the theme? Since he won the match fairly quickly he wanted to play a couple of casual games. He suggested that I play against his Burn deck as it would be good practice for my deck. We played two really close games, he won the first and I won the second with Kozilek, the Great Distortion and basically used it’s ability to counter his spells. Seriously, how does Kozilek not get more love? He is basically a 12/12 counter engine that also lets you fill up your hand with cards. Total late game nightmare.

End of Round 2: 0-2

Round 3: Tron vs Grixis Control

I felt good going into this one. My friend has a Grixis deck that he likes to play often, so there wasn’t any surprises here. I mulliganed down to 5 to start the game and ended up with Tron in my opening hand. Unfortunately my opponent was mana screwed and only was able to put down a couple of lands. Even being screwed, Grixis isn’t a joke and he was able to fend me off for a few turns, countering everything I did, including using Remand on Kozilek back to my hand. Unfortunately Kozilek’s ability triggers when it’s cast and I was able to fill my hand with the necessary weapons to seal the game. On my next turn I dropped 2 Reality Smashers with an Eldrazi Mimic already in play and ended it. Game 2 was all him. Classic Grixis control game. He had an answer for everything I tried, and was able to use a devastating mix of burn spells, Snapcaster Mage and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet to take me out. Game 3 lasted quite a few turns as I had a hard time drawing a creature that could do some real damage. Game 1 repeated itself as my opponent was unable to hit his land drops and when he did, it seemed like I was drawing Ulamog, Ceaseless Hunger on the next turn. Even though it was being countered, his ability to exile permanents still triggered and I would exile his lands, keeping him at only 2 lands again. I ended up winning by playing Kozilek,and ironically, using its ability to control the control deck.

End of Round 3: 1-2

Well, I was happy that I was at least able to get into the win column, even though I knew that I wasn’t going to be a finalist as the tournament is 4 rounds and I had lost 2. I didn’t expect to make it to the finals even before I played the first game so I wasn’t terribly disappointed. I did regret not playing my Bushwacker Zoo as I think I could have started the tournament stronger but it is what it is. One more round to go..I was hoping to bat .500.

Round 4: Tron vs Esper Mill

My opponent was really friendly as we both knew that this was essentially a casual game as I was 1-2 and he was 0-3. I was battling to just finish in the middle of the pack and he was attempting to avoid being last. We chatted for a while even after the final round had started, sifting through each other’s deck and making observations. He told me that I should ditch blue in my deck and just stick with Green and colorless and include copies of World Breaker. I offered my opinion that although impressive, 4 copies of Liliana of the Veil didn’t fit with his deck and that there should be more Mill cards. Game 1 started with him casting Gitaxian Probe and looking at my hand. He laughed out loud because I had all the pieces of Tron in it. Nonetheless, he put up a good fight and was able to counter a lot of what I was trying to do but a Thoughtknot Seer removed a Path To Exile from his hand and a Reality Smasher ended the game as besides some Snapcaster Mages, he didn’t have much for creatures in his deck. Game 2 went his way as he milled me out after about 10-12 turns in which I had accumulated over 26 mana but had no creatures as he had milled or countered then all. Game 3 was all me as he had mana issues and I was able to use Ulamog to exile the few lands he had and then used Kozilek to counter whatever he tried to play.

End of Round 4: 2-2

Well I achieved my goal of at least breaking even. To be honest, even with not having the strongest showing I had an enjoyable time. I learned a lot about my deck thanks to everyone wanting to help me out between rounds. I used to be turned off of competitive Magic because of all of the horror stories of poor nerdsmanship I had heard over the last few years..but I can honestly say that I have participated in a few tournaments so far and haven’t experienced anything but good natured Magic players who are more than willing to offer advice. Now I can’t guarantee that it’s the same wherever you go to play, but I’m willing to bet that a majority of the players you run into are good people. And if they’re not, well, a throat punch solves everything.

On the Tabletop

Rapid Fire: Random Thoughts Vol.6 Kaladesh Edition

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-Tomorrow’s the day, folks. MTG’s Kaladesh will finally be released to the nerdy masses. I, for one, absolutely can’t wait. The power level of this set seems to be slightly above average and is already drawing comparisons to the Kamigawa block.

-The Masterpiece subset is amazing looking. I’m already having copper foil dreams of Masterpieces, although with my luck, a dream is as close as I’m going to get to one of these. The odds of pulling one of these babies? 1 in every 4 boxes. Zoinks.

-So if my luck is just so awful, then why am I excited about them? Well because it adds excitement to opening a box. Also, I’m cheap and with all the MTG financiers opening box after box hunting for the elusive Masterpieces, the value of the mythics and rares in Kaladesh will take a hit, making it easier for budget-minded people like myself to load up on the best cards in the set. Sucks for the people looking to turn a profit on their box(es) but great for the players.

-The general consensus is that Chandra (the red Mind Sculptor) is the best card in the set. I agree but still wanted to give you my other top picks. Fleetwood Cruiser is fantastic and one of my favorite vehicles. 4 colorless gives you a 5/3 runaway car with Trample and Haste and requires no Crew on the turn it enters the battlefield. Skysovereign, Consul Flagship and Smuggler’s Copter are my other two favorites. Both of which are extremely powerful. Verdurous Gearhulk and Cataclysmic Gearhulk are the two of the best creatures in the set. Verdurous can essentially become an 8/8 trampler for 5 mana if you use its ability on itself. Cataclysmic is a walking boardwipe and the best part of all is that it’s an artifact creature so it can be your artifact pick and you can save another one of your creature when it’s ability triggers. Finally, my favorite card in the set is….Kambal, Consul of Allocation. This guy is pure burn hate and I love it. Although he isn’t an Eidolon of the Great Revel, he doesn’t bite his owner like Eidolon does, and gives life while stinging your opponent. This guy will see a lot of play in Tiny Leaders and also other Commander decks. I expect him to see some play in Standard if Black-White control becomes a thing like I think it will.

Alright, that’s another Rapid Fire in the books..good luck with your Kaladesh boxes, I hope all of you get what you’re looking for. As always, thanks for reading!

Digital Playground

Currently Playing…Vol.17

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Street Fighter V (PS4): First things first; I have always been a Capcom guy. Yeah, yeah, I know that I have been slightly (highly) critical of their policy of releasing the same game over and over with a few tweaks and calling it “Super”, “Ultra”, or “Arcade” but that never stopped me from picking up one of their titles and greatly enjoying it. Whether it was playing and getting destroyed by Shawn or waiting until he went home and showing the CPU that I was still the boss, I’ve always put hours into each Street Fighter title. Which is why this is a tough review. Let’s get right to it:

Grade: F

Yes. An “F”. Why? It’s simple. Capcom released a very bare bones, incomplete version of a Street Fighter game. No single player arcade mode, no single player “VS” mode, the graphics are polished but not all that different from last gen’s SF titles, and, well, as Shawn so eloquently put it “Damn, eSports kids”, in reference to this game clearly being designed with online gaming in mind. I suppose it’s my own fault as I could have read the reviews and most likely saw that this game was poorly made, but I prefer to stay away from other reviews so I can give an unbiased one of my own for you guys.

The good news is that Capcom just released an update (9 gb?!!!) that adds the ability to fight CPU characters in VS mode. However still no Arcade mode unfortunately..I guess me and the rest of the suckers who bought this crap version of Street Fighter will have to wait for Super or Ultra Street Fighter V. Avoid this game, you’ll thank me.

Digital Playground

Currently Playing…Vol.16

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God of War 3 Remastered (PS4): Usually I skip any “remastered” version of a game (which is ironic because the other game I’m going to talk about is remastered as well. HAH!), but since I don’t currently own a PS3 and never played GOW3, I figured I’d give into the cash grab. I’m a huge GOW fan (I own every one in the series, besides the PS3 version), and from what I’d heard this game was amazing. I strolled into Gamestop (I go once or twice a week), and grabbed a preowned copy off the shelf. While I was mulling over if a used copy was worth $25, another customer walked up to me holding GOW3. He was about to trade it in (re: get lowballed) and wanted to know if I was interested. $10 later we both walked away happy. I saved myself $15 and he probably got about $5 more than what they would have offered. Ok, great story, but what about the game? Well right away the graphics jump out at you..the game is gorgeous. It’s essentially the same gameplay though, solve puzzles, kill things, fight giant bosses, upgrade weapons and Magic,..etc. I think some people were turned off that not much changed, but to me, this series has been gaming perfection, so if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. The story has the same general premise as the others; kill Zeus. The boss fights last longer than the older GOW titles in my opinion and feel more epic. My only complaint is the QTE’s (quick time events). There seems to be more of them, and while not especially challenging, they can be annoying after awhile and take away from the fast paced combat. All in all, it’s a typical God of War game which means that it’s pretty close to perfect. Now would I run out and buy it if I already owned the PS3 version? No, I’ve seen the side by side graphics comparison and while the remastered edition is slightly more polished, I don’t think it’s worth spending the extra cash on a remastered edition…unless you can get it for $1 0.

Grade: A-

Ducktales Remastered (360): I actually used to own the original NES version of this game. It was a childhood favorite of mine, and to be honest, ranked right up there with Mario as far as platforms go. The remastered edition still holds its own and is just as fun as the original. The levels and bosses have been redesigned so it feels like a new game even if you played the original. The graphics make you feel like you are in an episode of Ducktales, and are obviously a vast improvement over the original. You control Scrooge McDuck as he travels the globe in search of artifacts and treasure, while attempting to stop Magica DeSpell from taking Scrooge’s #1 dime and hatching her evil plan. Some reviewers have said that this game doesn’t hold against newer Mario titles, and while I agree for the most part, I feel that the only things that held this game back are the massive amount of cut scenes that the developer added to make the story flow, and the overall length of the game. While there are hidden areas to find and explore it feels like Ducktales can be beaten in a night and the cut scenes are really, really annoying after awhile (even if you can skip them, which you will find yourself doing A LOT). To be honest, Ducktales Remastered would have been graded higher without the cutscenes. Still, this title is worth picking up if you get a chance and are looking for something light hearted to play or just looking for something to play with your kids.

Grade: C+