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!

Gloomhaven: First Loss

We took one on the chin. 

In our first scenario loss, we struggled through the first room, which required us to not only kill respawning Black Sludges but also waste precious time taking out 'generators' that couldn't harm us, but we couldn't proceed further until they were gone. 

There was a little bit of bad luck, too so by the time I burst into the second room I was promptly kicked in the face by the enemies and downed. 

Kim didn't think she could manage it with the resources she had left so we set it aside for another day. 

That other day came and we were successful! We got a little unlucky with the Black Sludge cards-that monster regenerates and is very difficult to kill. But we also knew to make better choices with our resources and leave behind certain treasure to keep pushing forward. 

We talked about the experience later, because I wanted to know how she felt after the first real loss of the game. I'm paraphrasing because we had a conversation and I didn't take notes.

But: what it came down to was that Kim felt there was some bad luck involved. We still got to make choices and we're still learning how to make the most of the options given. 

Plus, because we were in it together, and because neither of us was giving the moment a ton of weight, the impact of the loss didn't hit as hard. Gloomhaven is still a game and our attitude about having fun still held reign over how we chose to engage with it. 

And I want to talk about that for a second. Because that attitude has been really important! 

We live in an era where games are probably more culturally relevant than ever, but also have some massive barriers to entry. For those of us already in the hobby, it's important to take a healthy attitude towards gaming so that people don't get alienated or discouraged. 

Taking things too seriously would've made Kim miserable: there would have been no room to experiment or fail--no room to play and that kinda defeats the purpose. 

Free Pizza-Spider Season

This is probably the fastest I've hit Free Pizza in Marvel Snap. I won't say it was easy, but the idea was remarkably effective.

The deck idea from Reddit user wu11 and is showcased here. I wasn't seeing enough Arishem decks to keep Cassandra Nova in there; Rogue and Killmonger both did stints in the deck before I settled on Killmonger being more useful.

The use of Symbiote Spider-Man into Black Panther then Zola was the real win condition, but if Negative hit, a flipped Iron Man that got Zola'd backed up by Mystique, with a Knull to offer some extra power? The possibility for extra lines to win was extremely flexible and made for a deck that offered me a lot of opportunities. 

I've gone back to a Cassandra Nova/Darkhawk deck, as apparently my meta has now flipped TO Arishem decks and suddenly messing with them is Very Important. 

Still, I enjoyed this take on Mr Negative, the excellent use of Symbiote and getting to chill for the rest of the season. 

Free Pizza-Young Avengers Season

 This season was a bear. I felt like I just couldn't find a good deck or a rhythm with the ones I knew well. The meta game felt all over the place, and sometimes I just had RNGesus tell me to get screwed. 

I did have some very memorable moments, like this:

Full kudos to my opponent there. I love it. Plus I continued robbing Tribunal players of cubes with a turn six Enchantress. 

But damn, do my decks always seem to need Enchantress. 

I did earn my free pizza though on the last weekend and I did it after the Attuma tweak. Something about that deck hummed. 

Is this good? Will I keep it?? No idea. This deck doesn't have a name yet and this would be my third destroy deck. I'd almost rather incorporate something into a deck I already have--but I had a bounty on getting wins with Armor and Attuma in the same deck. 

I got that bounty and suddenly found myself hitting rank 90 after languishing in the 80s most of the season. 

Destroy is still a pretty good deck and Killmonger has become pretty important against the Marvel Boy decks. 

Which is a little bit of a shame: I think the Marvel Boy decks are pretty neat! But they seemed to lead to a metagame that I couldn't get my head around. I had a lot of fun with Ultron decks though-they did a bunch of work for me...until they didn't. 

Similarly, I had some success with a deck using Cassandra Nova and Ajax or Darkhawk: for a hot minute my meta seemed to shift to all Arishem all the time. 

You can mess a Arishem player UP with a Cassandra Nova played on turn 3. 

But I made it, and I'm glad I did. Whew!