Thursday, January 31, 2019

Time Changes

While this article takes a little bit of time to get going-you really want to start paying attention around paragraph 4-the resulting elaboration on the subject of tempo and the Transformers game is a good one.

I like the concept it wants to introduce of "flip intensity", which needs a better name but for now will do. However, it does address something that I think is very important to understand in order to get an edge in the game: how frequently can you access the abilities of your characters?

This is on top of important principles from other card games, like card filtering/drawing, or resource management of your characters (being able to untap a character-any character-is a way to gain some massive advantages) and I think it's one of the structures holding the gameplay up.

What I like about the article at Heroic Nonsense, though, is how it outlines the case for defensive stats and promoting the synergies between cards in order to maximize your team. Check it out.

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

RE2 & RE2RE

Resident Evil 2 is one of my all time favorite games. The dual stories, the slight campiness, the use of camera angles to create tension, music; so much came together correctly in a troubled production, in order to create what is rightly considered a classic of the genre.

And now, there's the Resident Evil 2 remake.

I still own my copy of the original Resident Evil 2, so I thought it might be fun to play both games concurrently and give some impressions! To save my fingers a bunch of trouble, I'll be abbreviating RE2 and RE2RE to separate one game from the other. There will be some spoilers and I am presuming that you know something about a game that is twenty years old. I mean c'mon. There's even a drink.

Plus, I started last night, so thunderbirds are go!

Resident Evil 2; nothing is wrong
RE2 is more difficult than I recall, and yet as I am running through the city to the police station, my hands remember the controls, remember that I need to press the action button to ascend or descend stairs. I don't have to review the control scheme and the tank controls don't bother me much; I'm used to it, somehow, even though it's been years since I really sat down to do a playthrough of the game.

What is bothersome is the ergonomics of it: muscles I haven't had to use in a long, long time are getting a little sore as I press the d-pad to move around, instead of the much more friendly thumbsticks.

But I haven't even solved one puzzle and I've already died three times. Worse, I am out of ammo. I've cleared out some of the police station but have to go back through at least two zombie hordes in order to get some critical upgrades and I'm not sure what to do. I don't remember the game being this stingy on ammo before! THAT is a bigger problem and one I'm not sure how I'm going to resolve.

This speaks to how they wanted to create tension: use strange camera angles, low supplies, eerie music and, for the first time, a character that reacted to damage. I remember knowing I was in trouble when Claire started limping after an attack. You moved even slower than you usually do and that felt shocking and worrisome. In 1999, this was as big deal! Even now, the effects still work to create a sense of unease.

There's something distinctly off about everything in RE2, frequently comically so-as when you are in a room with a giant bloodstain on the floor, but checking the scenery around you provides a "Nothing is wrong" message. The booming "Resident Evil...2" voice that comes up when you boot up the game, trying to use bombast to startle all of us.

It's still got a lot of charm...but I am still out of ammo and worried.

In RE2RE...I am also out of ammo. The sprint to the police station is much shorter and easier but I ran out of ammo after my first encounter with a zombie and now I don't know what I'm going to do. The foyer of the police station feels more daunting, because I have so little. In RE2, I arrived with a handgun and 25 bullets, and believe me, you start counting those bullets fast when surrounded.

Here, I have no bullets at all and it's having a similar effect on me as it did in RE2, except I haven't taken a single step past the foyer and I have a sense of what's waiting for me.

But only a sense; the entire scene has been remixed, not just for modern audiences and graphics but for a sense of tension, too. Zombies weave drunkenly now, making it more difficult to get a bead on them to accurately fire.

Lighting is different as well; in many spaces, you only have a flashlight to guide you by and this radically changes how I move through environments. Where in RE2, the character-avatar would look at something of interest in order to help the player discover things in lower-resolution environments, now you're expected to see the objects in question.

There are more than a few old school nods though to help players: the map now highlights objects of interest so players can find them without onscreen prompts and then there's this:
You Are Dead screen
That's a direct callback to the RE2 death screen and I am here for it.

Thursday, January 24, 2019

The Data Revolution

Here's a really interesting view on Modern and how the author believes data has and will change the way players metagame for Magic.

Instead of tweaking sideboards, we will tweak decks. That's...pretty bold!

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

The Delight

Most of the time, I test things (you test things, we all muck about with decklists, right?) and the results are less than awesome.

That's the nature of brewing, hell, even of playing. Lots of stuff doesn't work out. You lose more than you win and hopefully the lessons are more fun than frustrating.

Sometimes, though, you get lucky and things work out really, really nicely. In this particular case, I didn't even know how nicely until it happened!

Readers may recall I had some concerns about Treacherous Pit-Dweller being used against me. And in a game against Matt, this is exactly what happened: after a few attacks, the Dweller was killed and poof, came into play under Matt's control.

By then though, I had enough mana to cast a Gutwrencher Oni, so I would have a demon in play, and the turn after, cast Mark of the Oni, taking back my Dweller.

And that's when I saw it: the solution. Mark of the Oni wants me to have a demon under my control.

Treacherous Pit-Dweller is a demon. I didn't have to wait for the Gutwrencher at all! Once I control the Dweller, the Oni's condition is fulfilled.

This was so exciting for me, because it meant that I could really push Dirge hard into an aggressive role. It might even be worth cutting Deathrender and adding in a third copy of both the Dweller and the Mark. Matt pointed out that I'm spending five mana to get a 5/4, but what he missed is that I'm spending five mana to get a 4/3 and a 5/4.

More testing will tell if this is good. 



Thursday, January 17, 2019

Predaking!

OK, so...how cool is THIS?

Don't know? Let me tell you:

It is incredibly cool.

I want to talk about the downsides, first; let's just get them out of the way, alright?

1) Who is Torox? I mean..is Tantrum that difficult? The name scheme breaks up the pattern of the other Predacons...

2) Tapping this character will be a challenge. I don't care that they made a video about it; the game is for people 8 and up and not everyone has big hands. While it's all well and good to say; "so long as your opponent knows" c'mon, people. Just admit it's a challenge but the important thing is that the character is clearly in a "tapped" (or used or something) state for all players to recognize.

Other than that, this is a very, very cool thing. The fact that you can create Predaking even if your characters have been KO'd is a great ruling. The stats are on par with Metroplex, and the themes for this set look awesome to explore.

One question I have is: Does Predaking only have five weapons slots, or does it have five weapon slots plus an upgrade and armor slot? I asked them on Twitter but didn't get an answer.

Windblade, the other preview card, is also savage. While one side has an ability only good against combiners, the stats are very good and the bot mode has a lot of potential, especially with the new keyword ability coming, Plan, which you can see on...ugh...Torox.

The other previewed keyword, Brave (seen on Headstrong), allows for some tactics for defensive play and I dig it. A great opportunity to dictate tempo to your opponent in a way we haven't seen yet.

The spoiler list so far can be seen here, and it helps resolve one other mystery: what's with the green pips?

For those not wanting to go there; cards with green pips in the graveyard can be retrieved in the post-combat step by discarding a card.

I think this is a cool idea with the upside of allowing players to utilize their graveyards, a resource that fills pretty quickly in this game.

I just hope they're careful about how this gets used, because utilizing the graveyard as your deck removes the variance that makes a card game intriguing. The explanation for the mechanic was good, though and I agree that this helps cement over some other difficulties in the game.

There have been near daily updates, so I can't get to them all right now...but holy crap isn't Predaking cooooool!?

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Ravnica Allegiance Overview

Alright! The new set list is up. Let's talk about it.

First, the mechanical stuff.

UW's Addendum is something I'm not really high on, yet. Getting a bonus during your turn means that players will generally try to do just that-the surprise element of the instant is, from what I've seen, not something that outweighs the benefit of playing it during your main.

Now, I know it's a limited trick and that's fine but even there, I'm not sure there's enough tension between holding back or just being aggressive. Which makes UW play more aggressively than it does traditionally, and that does mean something more interesting. How interesting I can't tell yet but it's clear to me, from Addendum to Dovin, Grand Arbiter's +1 ability that WotC might be pushing a more midrange than control UW this time.

The Afterlife mechanic of BW though, I'm all for. I think this will easily slide into Constructed formats, because any non-exile removal means that your opponent is spinning their wheels.

There's also a taxation element running through BW, but it's a light touch. I'm glad to see it, since I liked that aspect of BW on Ravnica.

Adapt, the UG mechanic is, as everyone predicted, one based on counters. I'm a little disgruntled to see the ability only work once and only work if it doesn't have any +1 counters on it. I don't appreciate an ability that opponents can turn off with an Afiya Grove. I do appreciate that it's an ability that can be activated as an instant. But again, this is a limited trick and as always, it's cool to see everyone getting excited about bonkers creature types.

Next, we have Spectacle, the RB mechanic which is just Raid, but flavorful for the Ravnica guild. It's fine.

Finally, there is Riot, the RG mechanic and this is the one I have the most questions about. I think I'll need to see how it plays to really make a decision on it, since properly using each mode is situational. However, I don't know if it just looks situational, or if there is a clear choice, 98% of the time.

In White, the most interesting card to me is Smothering Tithe. The art is good, the effect is interesting, the name of the card spot on. I like it, though I don't know how far it will go.

Best art here is Twilight Panther, though. Whoa.

Blue is getting in on the 'run as many copies as you want' craze with Persistent Petitioners, which I like. (Also, there are a lot more Advisor creature types than I thought!) This is in addition to some neat enchantments, like Eyes Everywhere and Verity Circle, the card that I think helps push the UW aggressive side, Windstorm Drake, and the best Dimir card not explicitly associated with the guild, Mass Manipulation (which is probably my favorite art in the color, too). There's some interesting effects, along with what appears to be strong tempo manipulation.

My favorite card though is likely Sphinx of Foresight. It's both really interesting mechanically and quite strong.

Black looks to have a lot of low-to-the-ground things going on; solid role players at common and uncommon with weird build arounds like Font of Agonies, Priest of Forgotten Gods, or Awaken the Erstwhile. But with cards like Carrion Imp, Clear the Stage, Noxious Groodion, even Plague Wright, the tools are there to keep you in the game, I think.

Pestilent Spirit is a weird one and I'm not sure I'll know how to best use that.

I dig both Ill-Gotten Inheritance and Bloodmist Infilitrator for their art...can't really pick a side! They both tell interesting stories.

The Red stuff looks like it's pushing the aggressive creatures hard. Spells...not so much.

And Skarrgan Hellkite has to be one of the most disappointing mythics I've seen in awhile. Five mana for a 4/4 haste flyer is not a mythic. Five mana for a 5/5 flyer is not a mythic. The ability (which only works if it has a counter on it) is not a mythical one. Just because you smoosh them all together doesn't make that mythical.

I do like the art on the Rakdos cards though: really pushing the lethal carnival party makes for a cool visual theme.

As we get to Green; Guardian Project is the Commander gimmie in this set. I could almost see this as an argument for a ban: if you run green in Commander why wouldn't you run this? There's no reason to run other cards of a similar type, like Elemental Bond, since every creature you cast will give you a benefit. Wilderness Reclamation is the 'we really want to break this but we don't know how' card for me.

This is also where a lot of the flavor text pops, for me. In Simic, green tends to be just a little goofier.

The multicolored stuff- the first thing I'm noting is that there are some crazy enchantments here: Captive Audience and Ethereal Absolution are ways to flip losing gamestates to winning ones.

Domiri is a pretty awful planeswalker. That +1 is going to do nothing for you the turn you play it, and that sucks. I submit that there has not been a good GR planeswalker yet.

The new Kaya planeswalker isn't being talked about and I think it might be better than people let on.

But again; lots of solid cards, just not interesting or amazing.

Artifacts are remarkably restrained here, similarly lands also don't have a lot new to offer.

There's nothing wrong with any of this, I just find the set to be a little more interesting than Guilds. Not by much, admittedly but more interesting nevertheless. My overall impressions are that this is a competent set that is settling further into the expectations set by previous Ravnica sets but nothing here is going to shake the tree.

However, that's OK if this is laying that baseline for a really crazy War of the Spark.

Thursday, January 10, 2019

Axis of Interaction

Dirge vs Mono G and things look bad.
It's starting to looking like I can win games where I have the ability to a) operate on my curve and b) useful ways to do things to my opponent's stuff.

Games I lose are ones against mill decks, which don't care about creatures, or odd combo decks like Fuz's UR Howling Mine deck that wants to kill me via Runeflare Trap and Sudden Impact.

Now, it didn't help that I had some terrible opening draws in that matchup; in one game I went down to three cards, because my hands were so bad.

The fact remains, when I had things to do on turns one or two, either because I had removal or a creature to play, my position in the game was much stronger. If I could interact with my opponent's strategy, I had a higher chance at winning.

So, what to do?

Well, I'm going to lean into what the deck does well. Why worry about bad matchups? Especially with a mono-black deck, I've already created a limited scope for this deck's field of play. Why not zoom in?

Unfortunately, there really isn't much to do at the lower end-there are no Ogres at the 1 CMC spot in black and I am reluctant to run Treacherous Pit-Dweller in a deck that is a little light on unconditional removal, but perhaps this is what's required, given my vision for Dirge.

The more I think about it, the less risky this becomes. Sure, it sucks if my opponent is playing red removal, but most white removal exiles which means the drawback isn't a problem. Black removal is usually more expensive for black creatures (Fatal Push aside) and really isn't run to often in my circles anyway. So it should be neat to give this a go!

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Huh

I'm doing a little research to see what demons might fit at the four or five mana slots because while Scourge of Numai and Gutwrencher Oni aren't bad cards, they do not strike fear into the hearts of opponents in the way I would like.

But I'm ALSO keeping an eye on the Ravnica Allegiance spoilers because it's spoiler season and isn't that what we're all doing?

Which means you, too, might've seen this little slice of utter bonkers: Spawn of Mayhem.

And while I don't have any objections to beaters like Demonlord of Ashmouth or even Demon of Catastrophes (which plays nice with other sacrifice themes in Dirge), and lord knows I should be investing in Doom Whisperer just because the name works nicely with this deck's title, Spawn of Mayhem is a different caliber of nasty.

Because one of the biggest threats I can put down on turn three is often Ogre Marauder. I know it doesn't seem like much but every time I play that card, it draws removal while my opponent decides to take 3 from the Raving Oni-Slave.

Turn three threats are a pretty sweet deal and if I can push that threat level further, then that just might help move this deck to the next level of threat.

Thursday, January 3, 2019

Alignments

"Did you add in Deathrender?"

I'd been describing to Matt and Caitlin about the issues I'd been having with Dirge, which they'd seen played in the paper but not electronic realm, and they asked if I had added in what they suggested.

I had not. I had even written it down! But the discrepancy between decks had thrown me, so I had forgotten their suggestion.

Now I can make changes.

One thing I noticed was that there was a lot of potential death there-sacrifice of Blood Speaker, Xathrid Demon's upkeep, gameplay attrition- meant that Deathrender was a great suggestion. While that was going on, I was noticing that I was losing games where Mark of the Oni was in my hand because I had no demons in play to make that card useful.

I don't want to cut Mark entirely: it's a niche card but it's damn useful in the midgame. However, this is a weird little deck and so I cannot afford to run too many niche cards like this. Similarly, Kagemaro, First to Suffer is something I don't need multiples of because I can search for it with Blood Speaker.

Deathrender is useful whenever I can get it.

So a few cuts to add two Deathrender, and a few spicy notes, too! Two Merciless Resolve, in order to help keep the deck flowing/play into themes, a Demon of Dark Schemes in order to give the deck some inevitability and a reset button, and an Indulgent Tormentor because that card looks mean.

Let's get to work!

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

2019

Ravnica Allegiance previews start tomorrow!

Today, I'm just going to rest. It's been challenging to get games in over the holidays...but that's OK. I'll be back at it in no time.

Hope everyone had a happy new year!