Gameplans

I really like pro football, so I enjoyed this dive into coach Dan Quinn's recent tenure in Washington. I've been a fan of Quinn since his Seattle days, and was bummed that his time in Atlanta didn't work out-though I understood why.  

Since football is one of, if not the most popular sport in America, for me there's always a fun microcosm of America in football. 

Teams are owned by billionaires, 99% of whom are unfeeling dickbags who fell into their lot in life, pursuing wins as a measure of status, who think they know how to do it all and don't want to spend money to improve things or listen to qualified folks in order to achieve their goals. Especially if they somehow went on a massive winning streak--those owners feel as though they are responsible for those wins, and not just the money managers. 

In most cases, that attitude trickles down and you get mediocre at best teams. Coaches who are yes-men, players who are squandered, all because the owners don't really care about winning; they care about the money. The Cowboys are pretty much the poster child for this form of disfunction, but you can see it recently in the Patriots, the Jets, and the Jaguars. It's all over, honestly: billionaires fucking over people because money and their ego matters more than results. 

Then you get the opposite story: New ownership in Washington, displacing someone widely reviled in the league for his awful treatment of people and skinflint attitude enables the hiring a person who lead the team that suffered the biggest comeback loss in the Superbowl and maybe one of the greatest chokes of all time. 

That person-Quinn-proceeded to hire someone to do interviews with his former team to find out what went wrong  when they lost that Superbowl. The aftermath of that loss, as well as the mistakes made leading to it. He did this while keeping up his chops, working for (ironically) the Dallas Cowboys. 

And now Quinn is getting another chance at a head coaching position, one where he emphasizes getting to know players as human beings, creating a team, and building trust. One where the players themselves are invested and have a voice in things. 

And it reminds me of another profile of the current Lion's head coach, Dan Campbell, when he took over the team. 

Hired, again, by someone who was new enough to football that she didn't know what she didn't know-and understood that. Having dumped her previous hire after a disastrous season and a half, went for someone who, again, brought in a culture of caring about the players as people, helping wherever he could. 

Which reminds me of a book: Turn this Ship Around; an insight about how one submarine captain's leadership style-one that empowered the people beneath him, instead of dominating them-took the worst performing ship in the fleet into one of the consistently top performing ships that sailors now vied to get on and prove their mettle. 

The Lions are en route to going to the Superbowl for the first time in the modern era. 

And they're going to play Washington this weekend. 

Maybe the moneyrunners should just be regarded as the moneyrunners and not bestowed by gods to be our superiors. Maybe. 

The Retired: Hun-Gurrr

I get the idea here: this is another in the line of B/W reanimate decks that I seem to be so fond of. 

3 Whispersilk Cloak

1 Helm of Kaldra

4 Greater Harvester

4 Welkin Hawk

2 Butcher Ghoul

4 Doomed Traveler

3 Ashling, the Extinguisher

4 Smother

2 Wing Shards

10 Swamp

8 Plains

2 Vault of the Archangel

3 Salt Flats

2 Orzhov Guildgate

4 Lingering Souls

2 Steelshaper's Gift

2 Repentance

It's not terrible-and it used to have cards like Oath of Ghouls and Promise of Bunrei in there. The concept is an interesting one. But the fact of the matter is: the power level just isn't high enough. Greater Harvester is a brutal card if it connects, but that happens at best on turn six. 

The other thing is that getting Greater Harvester to work means splitting this deck into a reincarnation theme, and an unblockable one. I've been doing this long enough to know that if I'm going to step out on a weird or underpowered idea, I can't spend resources that are not dedicated to that idea. 

Time to let this one go.

Sorry

 I thought I had something ready for today and I didn't! Still getting back into the swing of things for 2025. 

Land Drops

How much mana do you need to play a deck successfully? 

This video does a fantastic job illustrating what the math says, and it's not very long. Kudos to them! 

The bigger picture for me is this: how do I re-evaluate the mana bases for my decks? If the number for midrange is 24-25, WHOA. That feels like it puts a crimp on things but the math is the math. So I need to consider how I'm going to make decks work with this new knowledge. 

I'm definitely interested in how to play it out!

Rebirth

 I've been playing plenty of Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth and I'm fairly torn about it. 

The game is clearly reaching for the stars; it's weird and the main characters are well drawn. The storyline feels both true to the original and wildly outrageous. 

But I hate the combat system. It feels so repetitive! And why, why, WHY are the mechanics all kept behind the obtuse menus and...hell why does it feel so complicated?

There so many different combat effects it might as well be a fighting game, and it's all layered under menus that leave me doing something I hate: not playing a game, but instead reading about it. 

Why do I even have to worry about aerial combat???

And none of my teammates seem to build ATB: I have to actively control them to get that to happen. 

This all feels like systems that are impediments to play, instead of flavor enhancers. 

Going to be taking the rest of the year off to play games & catch up. See y'all in 2025!

If I Had My Little Way

So...look at this absurdity. 

That's 23 human tokens and eight Kaito tokens. What this tells me is that Peaches has a tempo issue, and I need to make sure I'm getting ahead of it. 

While it is true that four Soul Wardens in play will make for something very dumb, when I am attacking for 30 a turn and losing, something is still wrong. 

Basically: I need a way to establish tempo or take it from my opponent. Establishing tempo should be easy enough, because I think the curve is solid so I shouldn't have a lot of difficulties. But if for some reason I can't or don't, say because the game is just random or I come up against a aggressive deck then I need a way to make sure can climb back into the game. 

Which means taking a look at what kind of resources I have early on.

Currently, I'm thinking of cutting my copies of Prosperous Thief and Thousand-Faced Shadow but this leaves me with a very particular problem: I need two more cards and there isn't an obvious fit. Because with two slots, those cards need to be useful in nearly any situation I draw them in-let's say from turn three on. I can't be sad that I've got a card in hand that there aren't may duplicates of. 

The Long Goodbye makes a strong case for running four copies of (I currently have 3) but now I have one slot left!

I think that I've got the right amount of planes walkers (3) and creatures (24) so I really am in need of something to help me with tempo. Chain of Vapor effects come to mind but I'm feeling a little stymied!

And that's it for this week! I'm on vacation, and will have another post next week folks. Cheers!

In A Factory Downtown

So, after a major overhaul of the deck, Peaches definitely had some trouble. I played this against a MUD deck with Metalworkers but found myself really throttled by Lodestone Golem. In both games Noah was able to resolve one fairly early and that just made the rest of the game cost too much for me. 

At the same time, the fact that I was being pinned down by one card suggests to me that it may be possible that there's something to this deck. Or at least I'm doing something right, because most decks won't be running Lodestone Golem.

So I dialed it up again, this time in a three player game. The mana issues weren't prevalent and the deck functioned very smoothly! I even won out, being able to utilize the ninja abilities, coupled especially with the ability to replay my cheapest evasive creature, Will-o-the-Wisp. It was especially good when I could hold up regeneration mana. 

I'm on to something, which is great!