Thursday, March 14, 2024

I Carry Tokens Now

 For the longest time, I never bothered with token cards. I was happy to use little glass beads as all purpose things- counters of every sort, be they plus, minus or charge, or as creature representatives, from elves to birds, it didn't matter.

Why scut up my collection or my deck with token cards? The cards are there to remind me what the token does. 

But in the past few months, as I've been playing with my friend Rebecca, who's re-learning the game she knew from the Mirage era of Magic, one thing has become very clear to me.

Magic is fucking hard. 

I already knew it was a complicated game and long time players sometimes have fun with the notion that Magic is the world's most complicated game. I certainly do. 

However teaching someone in 2024 a game that I picked up in 1995 is a very different task. It has demonstrated that if anything, Wizards has decided to lean into the complexity and make more cards that do more things. I don't know if there is a textless card that has been printed since Yargle and Multani, and the stat line on that card shows how far things have come. If you pay six mana then getting six power minimum is expected now. Those cards all come with a significant amount of text!

I've realized that I cannot just insist that new players "just remember" what a glass bead on a card or out in the field of play is. The game is just too damn complex to ask people to remember these things, when Wizards has been producing tokens to actually represent what they are, as a way to help new players.

It's unfair of me to have that expectation and I do not want to be an unfair person. It's a game. Let's have fun!

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Waiting For Tomorrow When It's Here Today

RB Hybrid test deck vs BW aggro
Another evening of testing It Sucks To Suck and a similar result as last time-it was good but it never seemed like enough. Not enough removal or not enough pressure, the deck could occasionally put together strong games, but I rarely felt like I was doing so often. 

I could see it, but I couldn't get the pieces together. That's when Matt said: "Don't you have another deck that does stuff like this. Maybe you should put them together?"

I mean...fine. I don't have any excuses since I can mock it up online, right? I am trying to improve my decks, and streamline the number of decks I own-this does both. Should be a win win!

So I did that, and my first attempt at playing it resulted in a Burning Inquiry where I had a hand full of lands to start...and discarded every fresh card I drew. 

Four lands and one Stalactite Stalker is not going to win me games. 

The initial look isn't good. But maybe it's just the initial look?

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Late to the Party: Spider-Man 2

When Spider-Man 2 came out last year, people were crowing it as a game of the year within a day of release. I, as an adult with things to do, just finished it.

It's good! It isn't great.

The gameplay is as good as ever: traversal around NYC is still as fun as it ever was, and the fighting mechanics remain the same. The switch between Miles and Peter is easy and I understand why they kept things so similar. 

The camera occasionally gave me trouble, especially when dealing with uncounterable attacks. If you need to see the color of the attack to know if you should evade or counterpunch, then the attack can't come from behind you. However, this was mostly a little thing and more often than not I enjoyed the way the game played.

The story, however, is where Spider-Man 2 really falters. Spoilers ahead.

If the big bad is Kraven in his "last hunt" scenario then just make that the game. There's more than enough there and it is a story that could easily lead to the ending that Insomniac wanted: for Peter to retire and Miles to take up the mantel by himself. Venom being a b-story that they rev up for the final game-one that is obviously coming. 

Or, and this is really the better idea, make Venom the big bad and at the end of it, the emotional toll is what causes Peter to pass the mantel on. They storyline rolls easily into it emotionally. That's where all the actual beats are. 

Watching Peter go bad and Miles have to save him, then Peter have to save Harry? That is a storyline that leaves Peter tired and maybe ready to do something else for a little while. It puts Miles in a position to take the role, having saved his mentor. 

Then in the third game you bring in Kraven, one who becomes outraged that the Spider-Man he came to fight isn't the one he wanted at all. He instead starts to pursue the "real" Spider-Man, bringing in Electro and Vulture as extra mooks, enlisting Doc Ock and now you are two-thirds of the way towards a Sinister Six! Don't tell me you can't find two more villains, just because Mysterio and Sandman are reformed in the game. Maybe Sandman and Mysterio are fighting under duress, and you have Miles desperately trying to keep all these people away from Peter, or throw them off the trail. Or not tell Peter at all, afraid that contacting him might expose Peter!

Instead it feels like there is half of a Kraven game and half of a Venom game. But Kraven isn't fleshed out very well and there's a surprise c-story appearance adding to that storyline when 90% of the game is over! Kraven isn't even there anymore!

Venom isn't served well either, which is unfortunate. While I really like the story direction that was taken (which has the symbiote becoming the source of Harry's 'cure'), I was never clear if the symbiote coveted Peter, or was motivated by Harry. Does it want revenge or does it want everyone to join it? 

Plus, the peppering in of Peter's regular life isn't strong enough to get me to see why he'd want to hang up the suit. Everything about Peter in the game is about how sorry he is he hasn't done right by his loved ones and he will do better.

By...quitting the thing that partially defines him? It just doesn't track, emotionally and that's a problem for me.

However, a good game is still good. Playing it feels great, and that counts for a lot. 

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Free Pizza-Black Order Season

I honestly didn't think I was going to make my goal of hitting level 90. I'd barely gotten to level 85 when I went on a spiral, and dropped to level 68. Minus 17 levels in two days? Woof.

Then I saw someone on the Marvel Snap subreddit talk about how they were beaten in Conquest mode by someone running a basic Taskmaster deck. 

Well shit. I got one of those. 

Zero Sum Marvel Snap deck-Zero, Ebony Maw, Armor, Lizard, Luke Cage, Spider-Man, Shuri, Enchantress, Typhoid Mary, Red Skull, Taksmaster

Thing is; this puppy got me from 68 back to level 84, and I did it in about two days. It seems a bit shocking how few decks are prepared for two 28 power characters, until you realize what the meta is and then it makes sense. 

Enchantress has been the key card for this season. Taking out Morbius (a heavy hitter in the discard decks) and Living Tribunal, she's been an absolute rockstar. 

But the meta is very much based around Hela decks that want to use their turn six to resurrect the biggest characters in the game: The Infinaut, Giganto, Magneto, things like this-after discarding them to Modok. 

I didn't have a Modok and countering the Hela deck is rough. Apparently one of the best players in the world was using the Black Knight deck to rank up and this was what I used to get to level 90. 
I Dub Thee deck-Sunspot, Black Knight, Blade, Zabu, Armor, Lady Sif, Ghost Rider, Enchantress, Sera, She-Hulk, Magneto, infinaut

This is doing something similar to the Hela deck yes, but has the flexibility of creating a Black Sword that effectively cannot be interacted with. It means that locations that would reduce or destroy it, just don't and as a turn 4 play or even as a 3 cost play-well if you can put 10, 12 or 20 power in play for that? You're doing pretty well. 

I get why it's such a good deck, and though I'm not sure it's better than the current Hela meta (which is getting a bit tiresome, in my opinion, because there isn't much to interact with) I enjoy playing it more. 

However, this month was the month where I realized that the insistence that I make level 90 to "make my money back" was eating at my enjoyment of the game. I give them $10 a month because I'm having a good time, not to try and take it back from them. Why am I making things unfun by forcing myself to achieve an external goal (level 90) rather than an internal one (play well & have fun!)? I have little control over the first, but significant control over the second. 

Because there's a reason why, as soon as I hit level 90, I went to reddit and asked for spicy lists. And when I didn't get much, (someone suggested Agatha which is just...not spice) I leaned into two ideas I've been messing around with: destroy your stuff and move your stuff. 

It's been more fun than I thought and hey, sometimes I even pull wins.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Everybody Hates The World In A Special Way

It Sucks To Suck vs walls

I was testing this deck at the same time Fuz was testing his new Pride of Hull Clade deck. 

I got beat the hell up. 

In fairness; I think that the matchup is a bad one for me. With a sideboard that could change the match but his creatures were just too cheap for me to remove with what I had. Fury, as great as it is, doesn't do as much as I would like when confronted with Wall of Junk and Wall of Blossoms.

Did I make an Avatar of Discord on turn two? 

You bet I did. 

Did I win that game? I did not, because there are 0/8 flying walls

There was also another hitch in the gitalong: Avatar of Discord is an unreasonable target for Animate Dead

So maybe the Carnage Interpreters really are necessary?

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

It Sucks To Suck

The name took me longer than I thought it would, but eventually I was hooked by this masterpiece from the latest Striker album.

3 Currency Converter
4 Mox Diamond

3 Hazoret the Fervent
4 Fury
4 Stalactite Stalker
2 Rix Maadi Reveler
3 Troll of Khazad-dûm
3 Blood Scrivener
3 Avatar of Discord

4 Animate Dead
1 Seal of Fire

3 Dangerous Wager

8 Swamp
8 Mountain
4 Raucous Theater

3 Molten Collapse

So what's up with this? Why is it so different from the first list?

My first discovery was that Grief was in a BW deck and I wanted to keep it there. Similarly, Resurrection is elsewhere and the next cheapest thing was Animate Dead. But as options go, that isn't bad!

The Blood Scrivener has been a nice card. It isn't perfect, but as a solid turn two drop that then helps feed me do what this deck wants to do, I'm pleased with it so far. 

Avatar of Discord is there because at the last time of writing, I didn't have Carnage Interpreters. Apparently that card gets released tomorrow and I have no idea if it's good. It seems good but so does a 5/3 flier on turn 2, which is something this deck can do.

Molten Collapse doesn't have an excuse. That card should almost certainly be Terminate or Kolaghan's CommandBedevil might also fit, and I probably have copies of all of these cards somewhere.

While searching Moxfield.com for ideas, I saw someone using Seal of Fire to contribute to their Stalkers and I thought one wouldn't be a bad idea.

So that's why I'm with this list for now and I'm looking forward to seeing how it does!

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Distractions

After testing these two decks against each other, the one that had obvious problems is the one I took interest in. That was the Mavinda deck. 

For a few days, that's what I worked on. Trying to find the key to unlocking the combo-like potential of this deck. I got some advice from a buddy, had some tweaks to make, like adding in Abeyance or Charge Through

Then another friend dismantled the GW deck with a solid mono-W tokens build. That is when it struck me: if I cannot get past a basic, solid concept then is it really worth putting energy towards this? Building an entire deck, sleeving it up, only to slam my head against decks that are just stronger? 

Is that how I want to spend my time?

I decided that no, it wasn't. There's a reason I am starting to prototype decks and this is it! So I don't find myself overwhelmed with decks I don't even want to play. 

That BR deck though, that had some legs. Yes, it's absolutely using some Scam architecture but so what? Great artists steal*.

*I am not a great artist.

So I built it in paper, sans Grief but using Blood Scrivener and with Molten Collapse instead of Terminate because they were right there in the binder near the Stalactite Stalkers. I still need the Raucous Theaters, but I can give it a whirl. 

I got a couple matches against Caitlin, won one, lost one, and she took a look at the deck. 

"The tokens from the Raven Man aren't that strong; if you want to use that ability, maybe you should partner it with Green or White, to buff them."

And a lightbulb went off. There's already a good tokens deck using white & black. 

So I sketched out a new deck.

4 Staff of the Storyteller

3 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
3 The Raven Man
3 Adeline, Resplendent Cathar
3 Timeless Dragon
2 Undead Gladiator
3 Devouring Sugarmaw // Have for Dinner

4 Intangible Virtue
2 Bastion of Remembrance

3 Bitter Triumph

10 Swamp
12 Plains

4 Lingering Souls
4 Hymn to Tourach

No, I am not going to start playing this deck-yet. It's a protoype too, and I want to actually finish what I start. For now, this means the RB deck, and that deck needs possibly two things:

Carnage Interpreter, and a name.