Wargaming

This is an absolutely fascinating video that a friend sent me on the games that governments are using to iterate on warfare. 

I can't say it's the most soothing video. But it is engaging and thought provoking. 

I think it's particularly important to talk about now, while the influence of gamers can be felt, while boardgames are possibly their most popular state ever in the popular culture. As with any media, being aware of how we might be manipulated helps us determine the messages that we are being sent-and the appropriateness of them. Who is behind these ideas? Deciding how serious gaming can be used-as the tool that it has clearly become-feels important.

At the very least, we should give these ideas some attention.

Free Pizza:: Venom Season

 

Sometimes, you gotta play dirty.

Hela is certainly making a run for 'best deck in the format' right now so to hell with it, let's play. 

Why? Because I couldn't find anything interesting or fun to do. That's a drag but when that's a drag, fuck it, let's just win.

My little note of cleverness was to sub out Moon Knight (which was getting me more often than it should) with Sword Master and add in Spider-Woman as a target specifically for it. I'm sure someone else did that--or maybe I read someone else doing it. Either way; the deck carried me well from low 80's into the 90th rank.

Now I'm fucking around and the meta seems very screwy but not in a fun way. We'll see what we see in the coming weeks. 

Break it down

I cut nearly 1/3 of this deck-19 cards- right off the bat. 

Because this was a Cataclysm deck, at the end of the day. But times have changed a LOT. What good are Battlemages or Volvers when you can cast Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath?

Cataclysm means I need to be able to wreck someone after I cast that, but creature spells have become so cheap and so powerful Cataclysm doesn't have the impact it did in Weapon of Choice.

Options: Trostani, Three Whispers, Shakedown Heavy, Prowling Serpopard, the Adversary cycle from Midnight Hunt, Anafenza the Foremost, Garruk's Harbinger, Scrapshooter, and Laughing Jasper Flint. 

And these are all really interesting cards, but I have to admit that I'm definitely mired in the stylings of a very old deck. 

Yes, I know there are combo finishers in certain versions of Aluren; Acererak the Archlich is a one card finisher and using Cavern Harpy + Parasitic Strix can do it too. But I never really liked those. 

The latter because it represents an easy way out. I'm not saying I shouldn't have the combo in there as one-ofs. Sometimes you just need to win. But I don't like it, because it doesn't feel like any real setup was done, no work. Aluren is out: Do you have the combo? Then the game is over. 

I realize it's ego, but winning that way doesn't feel worthy of my efforts. 

Acererak is even worse: I hate what dungeons did to Magic and don't like this method either. 

So why even run the deck at all, right? 

Because fuck it, that's why. 

Fortunately, there are some good choices for me that I hadn't thought of--and I found those by doing some research at Moxfield.

Nah.

The Kickstarter for a new game from Wise Wizard has gone up and the base concept seems neat. I like the notion of laying tiles, and building a deck from them...then I got to the art section and noped right out.

Because it doesn't matter that they are trying to justify AI "used as an artist tool, NOT an artist replacement". By default, what AI does right now is plagiarism. Any work made with AI is scraping the work made by actual people and spitting it out without crediting them. 

And hey, I've seen some neat stuff that people have done using AI prompts. But they weren't making money from it, nor were they trying to pass it off as their own. That isn't what WW is doing here. It's even worse-it's plagiarizing other artists and THEN running it through their artist to make the claim that they are paying an artist!

So no.

It Was Only A Matter Of Time

Anyone who has a sense of the history of things would tell you that Commander being a format that was shepherded by the community was never going to last. At the very least, Hasbro was never going to allow the most popular format to be managed by people who (ostensibly) had the players' best interests at the foremost, instead of the company's. Sooner or later, the corporation was going to take it away from the players.

And now it is done. It happened for the most epically shitty reasons I can think of-the "community" freaking out to the point of sending threats to the Rules Committee. That was never OK, it isn't OK and I don't want people who react like that to be part of my game. 

I also think this bodes ill for the format at large. WotC had a shield from their design mistakes by having the community police the format, and the existence of the Rules Committee meant that the community had a real voice in how that format played out. That's all gone now and I don't think things are going to be the same.

It'll start off slow, of course. These things always do. But eventually Commander will change in ways that are going to surprise the community and I don't think it'll be in a good way. However, if it means that the people making decisions are shielded from the absolute bullshit of community members who think death threats are a good thing regarding a card game then fine. 

Y'all made your bed. Sleep in it.

Weapon Of Choice

This is one of my favorites:

3 Sword of Light and Shadow
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Necravolver
3 Rakavolver
3 Shivan Emissary
1 Sunscape Battlemage
3 Thunderscape Battlemage
3 Thornscape Battlemage
2 Sylvan Caryatid

1 Sterling Grove
4 Aluren

4 Eladamri's Call

4 City of Brass
1 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Bayou
3 Savannah
3 Reflecting Pool
4 Thran Quarry
4 Gemstone Mine

4 Cataclysm

While I named this after the Fatboy Slim song I also named it after the toolbox effect that we were going for when we built this deck.

That's right! So let me set the stage: it is Summer, 2001 and I am living alone in a small apartment on 50th. 

That fact alone is almost mythological to today's people. Sigh.

ANYWAY: Jason calls me and asks a simple question: Can you pay Kicker costs under an Aluren?

No, I tell him. Of course you can't! That's an extra cost and you're not paying for that.

Are you sure? Because the card says...

And we go round and round on this for about ten minutes before I have a small revelation:

You should help your friend, because you're kinda being a dick right now. 

So at a break in the argument I tell him: Let's find out if it works, first. Because if it does, there's a whole host of possibilities. 

(If you clicked that link then I want you to pretend that half those cards don't exist yet.)

And, as it turns out I am wrong, Jason is right and you absolutely can pay additional costs while under an Aluren.

Well. THAT is a thing, ennit?

So, in addition to this being one of the oldest decks I have ever made, Aluren also became the keystone of another deck by itself! One that has evolved using cards from the D&D set, to enter the dungeon and combo the opponent out.

That isn't what I want to do. However, what is clear is that there have been a bunch of cards printed and this deck deserves an upgrade! So let's go.

Set Review: Duskmourn: House of Horror

The easy link for review. Official link because official. A link to the mechanics of the set for anyone needing a refresher. 

Sigh...look the first thing we need to talk about is Baseball Bat. More than any other card, I feel like this one symbolizes what's wrong with the set. 

Duskmourn doesn't have a consistent feel, and that is a problem. While I understand that the notion is to pull from 80's horror and haunted house films, and that the underlying premise for the set is one where the plane opens doors to other dimensions to lure unsuspecting entities in the feeling of this set is, in my opinion, not only inconsistent but at odds with Magic at large. 

As a game evoking fantasy realms, I am actually perfectly fine with the art deco and noir stylings of New Capenna, and I thought the reimagining of Kamigawa into Neon Destiny was inspired, the steampunk leaning Kaladesh set didn't give me any pause at all. Magic is a very big game, and reimagining things is what keeps it vital thirty years on. 

Unfortunately, Duskmourn feels like it took some shortcuts. Because a baseball bat is a very specific, very iconic thing. It represents a game born in America, utterly disconnected from any fantasy realm at all. It shouldn't exist in Magic, because Earth is not a place in the game. There are no wizards here, no ogres to fight, no rat ninjas to speak of. 

And there is, quite simply, no way for me to get away from the fact that now the fantasy realms of Magic have been diminished by the real world. 

It feels lazy, which is possibly the worst things about it. That item could have been reimagined as any number of things, with flavor text to help illustrate it's importance. An item used by survivors to help them navigate the mansion--think of the Lobo from World War Z (the book). It could have been cool. 

Instead a baseball bat has made Duskmourn, and even Magic itself more mundane. And it comes alongside cards like Chainsaw-which doesn't appear to have been transformed by the multiverse at all- and Fear of Abduction and Unidentified Hovership which pull from the Gray Aliens trope of the X-Files (among other sci-fi references).

I want to be clear: I am not objecting to a card like Break Down The Door; or Bear Trap (bears have long been in the Magic universe), clowns, dolls, or even Saw, as blades of all sorts are part of every universe I can think of-fantasy or otherwise. 

I am disappointed in what feels like a lack of creativity in the name of fan service, or worse, playing it safe so that the audience 'gets it'. 

Whew. That was a lot, wasn't it!

So let me talk about what I like.

I particularly like the enchantment creatures as nightmares but the enchantment creatures as a whole are cool. This feels like SUCH a flavor win, from the ethereal eeriness of the nightmares to the Enduring cycle. Well done there. 

I think the choice to have Manifest expand to the top two cards of your library is a great one, offering players interesting decisions to make. 

I dig on the Rooms: once again Wizards is finding new and interesting things to do with the Enchantment type and I'm all for it. The rooms feel like they are evoking games like Betrayal in the House on the Hill which is a very cool nod.

When Duskmourn leans into the haunted house stuff, I dig the art and concepts there. Meathook Massacre II, Midnight Mayhem, The Rollercrusher Ride--these cards suggest to me an infinite space of unsettlement, where you just never know how large or small it is going to be. I'm reminded of the mansion in the first Resident Evil from 1996, where it somehow contained a frankly bizarre number of horrors-which was the point. 

And at the end of it all, I'm interested in how the set plays. Do I wish the artistic direction had been more creative? I absolutely do.

Do I think the mechanics work? I do, and I am looking forward to messing around with it!

Edit: I'm out of town soon, so the next post will be on Thursday the 26th!