How Long Does A Joke Last

 It's a legitimate question. 

Marvel Snap introduced "Arena Grande", a limited time game mode inspired by Deadpool's comic antics. With "wacky" pre-made decks to play, it became clear rapidly that the destroy deck (the one highlighting Deadpool) was the best deck to play. 

Ha-ha. You think you have options but it's really just Deadpool doin' Deadpool stuff.

Very droll, yes? 

But it isn't fun.

So I said so on Reddit. And was soundly rebuked for my take because I was "complaining about a gag game mode".  

Yes. A gag game mode they expect people to play for two days, with a reward track, in an environment that is deliberately skewed and unfun.

So: I don't care if it's supposed to just be a joke. The joke goes too long.

I don't care if it's free. Free means that it doesn't eat my time.

I don't care if it's easy. Easy doesn't equal good. 

I don't care that other people don't like my take. 

I care that they fucked up the one thing this game is supposed to do before all other things: Be fun. 

Jokes only last until the punchline. No punchline lasts 48 hours. 

Late To The Party: Psychonauts 2

Sure, I'm 5 years behind but the game was free...

Is Pyschonauts 2 good? Yes.

Is it worth your time? No.

Because there are two things that make Psychonauts feel very out of date: first is the story, which is far more haphazard than it should be. Raz, the main character, is mocked and beat up by his classmates who, mysteriously, all show up to bail him out in the final scene. 

There's no setup for that; Raz's interactions are almost entirely with the adults who have created a mess. That story is pretty solid! There's an interesting progression of showing how well meaning adults have their plans go bad and how that inevitably impacts the future-and how trying to bury that history always leads to someone trying to exploit it.

However, the game is just too damn long. EVERY single level is going to require three things; three librarians, three seeds, three whatevers. The repetition gets pretty dull, and there's no reason for things to go this long. The player isn't rewarded with extra story content, and Raz doesn't get notably stronger. Once he has all his abilities I didn't feel like I was able to use them in new ways to do odd things, nor become a powerhouse that made the game easy. 

It was fine. Really! I enjoyed much of my time with Psychonauts 2. 

But it wore out its welcome and I don't ever want to pick it up again. 

The Diversion

It started, as these things often do: hey that's neat!

And it turned into a project.

Because as it turns out, people have made actual versions of this format in paper. Some of them going all out, with a cabinet that has every card, but others with a more manageable idea. 

Which is what I did! The results of which turned into a 17 page document. My guideposts for my Momir Vig Basic format? For mana values 1-6, I kept the format Pioneer legal, after that in order to fill things out I needed to make things Legacy legal. But who doesn't want to see a Bringer at 9 mana??? Energy, pirates, and minotaurs, cards with activated abilities, with the occasional 'does nothing' card. I mostly avoided cards that added mana or drew cards and I included a little recursion-the online format creates tokens but here I wanted the occasional Gravedigger to be useful.

And that got all messed up when I saw this video and was informed that unless players were willing to skip activations of Momir, anything above the 7 mana value slot would be out of reach!

Still, I'm going to get this sleeved up soon and see what happens. I'm psyched for this one!

Swim With The Fishes

 Last year I started working on the merfolk deck I had, only to realize that there would probably be some cool new merfolk released in Lorwyn Eclipsed. That suggested I should table Piranacon until that set came out and then see what I could do with iit.

Now that Lorwyn Eclipsed is out....the merfolk are a whole lot of meh. 

I've tried some different configurations of the deck and the big problem is none of them feel good. I'm just goldfishing and the deck doesn't do anything. 

And it has me wondering if there's something I can do to change that.

2 Lord of Atlantis
3 Tidal Courier
2 Galina's Knight
3 Merrow Reejerey
1 True-Name Nemesis
2 Svyelun of Sea and Sky
3 Sygg, Wanderwine Wisdom
3 Deepchannel Duelist
1 Deepway Navigator

4 Plumes of Peace

4 Counterspell
2 Emergency Eject
2 Opt
3 Shelter

3 Plains
3 Wanderwine Hub
4 Tundra
13 Island

2 Sygg's Command

I'm considering just retiring the idea. In part because as a person who's been playing this game for thirty years, I feel like I should have a merfolk deck instead of enjoying the play patterns. 

Which is a pretty silly way to go about it, isn't it? 

Maybe this would be an excellent deck to translate into Commander: I could make it WUG and have access to a lot more shenanigans without having to feel 'serious'. 

The cards I'm thinking of for that commander would be Brenard, Amareth or Morska.

Late To The Party: Dispatch

 After reading some VERY hype posts about Dispatch, I gave it a go.

It's pretty good. Game of the year? Not quite sure about that.

The story is solid, the voice acting and animation is good and I thought there was a game there too. It wasn't just a story with prompts. 

The gameplay breaks down into the following columns; dialog/action choices, sending heroes on missions, and hacking.

Of these, one and a third of them are given the short shift-and it has impacts on the rest of the game. 

Obviously, you have plenty of time with dialog choices; the player has those in every chapter. However, when the action prompts appear, they only do so in the beginning and the end of the game, so I didn't have much experience with it and ended up missing prompts I felt I would have gotten otherwise. 

The hacking game is both on a timer and has a fail state, so there are two ways to blow it. But I never felt like I was given enough information to succeed at the task at hand. There were multiple times where I just hit the fail state and felt like there was nothing I could have done about that. 

In addition, I wasn't made aware of the consequences of that failure from a gameplay point of view. 

Finally, when sending heroes on missions I felt like I didn't have all the information I needed to send the right hero for the job. There would be keywords associated with the missions, but the corroborating info via the heroes wasn't so easily seen. 

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the experience! I'm not sure I'd play it again, but I'm glad I gave it a shot. 

Late To The Party: Resident Evil: Requiem

I just finished the latest Resident Evil game and I have to say: they do a lot right. 

There's a good balance of scary parts to action parts-Clare and Leon's sections respectively. Clare's gameplay is full of tension and trying to make smart choices about your limited resources. Leon's is about maxing out the damage output in fun ways. 

I especially enjoyed how the stories would overlap and there were a few-albeit small-opportunities for one character to help another. 

The gameplay is solid too, each character behaving in a manner that befits their skills. 

However. 

There are two very disagreeable things about Requiem. 

The first is the voice acting for Clare. I want to be clear: I'm not blaming the actress. She sounds very scared. But the choice to have her stammer 95% of her dialog is bad. It works for the opening section where the player is learning the game mechanics, conveying how frightened she is. Then it becomes increasingly grating as the game goes on.

My first playthrough was a little over 14 hours. I hated hearing that actress speak by the time it was done.

Now I need to talk about the ending and that is going to involve ALL THE SPOILERS. You have been warned.

OK here we go. 

At the very last moment, the player is given a choice, one that has a meaningful impact on the ending. That's right; there are two endings: A gloomy one that is disastrously anti-climatic, or a triumphant one using Leon's gameplay for an action-oriented finale. 

The action oriented one feels OK but even then the fight isn't terribly interesting. It is at least against the correct character; the one who has been plaguing the player for most of the game. Emotionally; that is fulfilling. But it doesn't play very well as an action piece. 

Which ending should you chose? The game doesn't give you any context, there's no buildup for this, no layering of information to help the player make a choice. There aren't any signals that the player WILL have to make a choice. So it feels like a trick that's pulled on the player, as opposed to a meaningful decision. 

Then, as soon as the credits roll the player is asked if they'd like to start at the last save and just play the other ending. Now I agree with this, since it's what I was going to do anyway and this saves me the trouble of having to go to the loading screen. 

But doing this cuts anything out at the knees because neither of the endings matter! I felt cheated and irate.

However, the ending aside, I found the game to be a lot of fun and will likely give it another go! (If I have time).

Treeless Cul-de-sac

Well....this went a lot better than I had planned. I'm not upset about it! 

I don't know who approved Risky Shortcut but...how is this just not better than any other Black spell doing the same thing? I draw two cards and YOU lose two life? (Yes I lose two life too but I was going to lose it anyway).

Decode Transmissions comes close but I'd have to jump through hoops. 

Still, I think I like this:

4 Jet Medallion
1 Nightmare

2 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
1 Ihsan's Shade
1 Reiver Demon
1 Visara the Dreadful
2 Magus of the Coffers
1 Maga, Traitor to Mortals
3 Twisted Abomination
1 Phyrexian Obliterator
1 Griselbrand
2 Black Cat

4 Heartless Act

21 Swamp
2 Cabal Coffers

3 Forced March
3 Drain Life
3 Hymn to Tourach
4 Risky Shortcut

Reiver Demon is probably the weakest creature in the bunch, actually. When it works it's pretty great, but the successful targets for it just aren't what they used to be. Still, this has been a fun deck to play. Is it great? No-I'd probably give it a B-. It can do a lot but there are times when the deck gives me a handful of nothing to do. Still quite enjoyable overall though.

A Hostile Climate

Let's get back on track.

With ten cards to add, I took a look at the deck and made some decisions. 

First; I needed a way to disrupt my opponent. Second, I needed a way to draw cards. 

Which lead me to the following additions: 3 Hymn to Tourach 2 Black Cat, 1 Griselbrand and 4 Risky Shortcut.

Of those, only Griselbrand is more than 3 mana and as a beatstick you'd be hard pressed to do better. 

The rest all keep my costs low so that I have something to do in the early game, either to set me up, or stalling until I make it to the point where I can cast my haymakers. 

Free Pizza: Guardians Vol 2

 I used last month's tech to beat this month's tech.

Ghost is the flex slot, but this is what I ran when the new Proscenium location was hot. I am not above taking advantage of a good thing.

The other thing I'm not above is finding ways to double up on Shang-Chi. With so many players utilizing the new Star Lord and Fang Foom, being able to take out 2 or 3 characters can really change the game. Absorbing Man can also repeat Shou-Lao's ability, which is not to be overlooked!

However, right now the meta is adapting with a TON of Stardust, so be careful about adding Scarlet Spider. 

TMNT Analysis

While I'm not going to dive into the TMNT set-and no shade to anyone who is-I think there's a few things to talk about.

First; there's the Professor's video on the set design. I highly recommend it, as he's very good at breaking down what the problems are, drawing from experience and the game's history. 

Second, I said back in September that the small sets were being floated as a way for WotC to introduce a new set every month. I feel like the Prof's video supports this idea-because he thinks this is just the way things are going to be, going forward. At least 4 of the 7 sets are UB this year and TMNT and I guess The Hobbit are small ones? 

That's not great for the game. 

Third, all of this product is having an impact on the card quality. I don't know if you've ripped any Lorwyn Eclipsed boosters, but I have and it is clear to me that multiple cards have been miscut. It isn't much and you might not notice at all if you just automatically sleeve every card you get before paying it. But it's something I've noticed and it's diminished my optimism about things going forward. 

Boarders

 Just a neat post about how the iconic boarders were created for Magic cards.

Lurker 2-Son of Night

 But we're just gonna shorten this to Lurker 2. 

4 Jet Medallion

1 Nightmare
1 Myojin of Night's Reach
1 Bringer of the Black Dawn
2 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
1 Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
1 Ihsan's Shade
1 Reiver Demon
1 Visara the Dreadful
2 Magus of the Coffers
1 Maga, Traitor to Mortals
3 Twisted Abomination
1 Stronghold Overseer
4 Scion of Darkness
1 Phyrexian Obliterator

4 Dark Ritual

21 Swamp
2 Cabal Coffers

3 Forced March
3 Drain Life
2 Corrupt

The premise behind this one was to make a big mana/Black legends deck. Obviously, there's a whole lot that can be updated from here, but I'd like to try and keep the premise going-including keeping the Jet Medallions if I can. 

My first thought: cut Stronghold Overseer (shadow OR flying, I do not need both), Bring of the Black Dawn, Myojin of Night's Reach (I can do better for 8 mana now), Ob Nixilis (there really isn't enough land to make this worth my time), Corrupt (same problem), and Scion of Darkness.

That's ten cards that I can replace to make a better deck. Let's go.

Late To The Party: Othercide

I've played through the first fifth of Othercide and feel like I can talk about it. 

Othercide is an interesting, turn-based tactics game that wants to do a lot with a little. I can respect that: making something very lean asks players to really focus on the things that matter. 

And focus is what it asks for: this is not a game where the player gets to have three teams that can rotate through missions. Characters don't heal: they are regenerated if you sacrifice a character of greater or equal power. 

So you use your high level characters until they are nearly dead and then sacrifice them to boost an up and coming character. 

If that sounds bleak, it's because it is: in Othercide's Victorian-era influenced apocalyptic setting, it goes out of its way to remind you that there are horrors all around you. Children are possessed and need to be sacrificed to stop a plague-or worse. 

Unfortunately for me, the game cut too far down. With only three classes, there isn't a lot of diversity between your characters, nor many choices that feel meaningful to make within those classes. 

In addition, the visual style starts to work against Othercide as well. Black, white and red is a striking color scheme, but those are the ONLY colors in the game and red is used as a highlight. After awhile, it just gets dreary to look at. 

I'm glad I checked it out but I'm not sure it has the lure to keep me playing. 

Late To The Party: Clair Obscur-Expedition 33

I finished Clair Obscur recently-not long after it was announced as a game of the year. Pretty nice timing, for once!

Is it the game of the year? Not sure about that. It's quite good though. 

First, and most importantly, there is a great gameplay loop. Giving players something to stay engaged during turn-based combat seems like such a gimme idea I cannot believe I haven't seen it before. You can't just ignore what the enemy does, you have a chance to impact what happens! The rewards for dodging or parrying are immense and feel very good. 

Next; the game is realistic in it's gameplay scope. That is: I don't have to invest 100+ hours if I don't want to. I actually completed the game in a reasonable amount of time! Are there more quests to do? Yes, but I don't feel as though I missed something important by opting out of them. I could just play them-get this- for fun. 

There are some drawbacks though. For example: You can get lost. The dungeons aren't huge, but they do have an unfortunate lack of markers to help players find their way. It's not just knowing where the main path is-although the game doesn't tell you, it's the one lit by lamps-it's knowing which of the side paths you have taken without having going down it again, or knowing that you are headed back to the entrance instead of the exit. 

The next criticism I have is that the story mostly holds, but there are two points that don't make sense. Unfortunately they are spoiler related so I will try to keep it as vague as I can but: there are two points where specific characters are unaffected by the machinations of the boss and the game doesn't tell you why they are immune. 

Which is a pretty big deal. Especially since if they had explained it, then you'd have a pretty tight story all in all, in my opinion.

Finally, Clair Obscur doesn't do a great job informing you how it's systems work. I was about 2/3 of the way through the game when I realized I had to assign Luminos points, they didn't just get automatically allocated. Now, I may have been told this early on-before I even had Luminos points to assign-but the game didn't make a point of it when I DID have points to assign and so I didn't go through the act of assigning points. 

Well, in games you learn by doing. That's a pretty big oversight and one that allowed me to actually play the game better, once I implemented it.

That said, this game felt like a breath of fresh air, after playing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. It is very enjoyable and worth your time.

You Can't Control Me

Stingerback Terror is a challenge. They can do a lot of damage, but they rely on me casting stuff.  Still, I don't think I remove them: they don't need a ton of time to do their work. 

The indestructible creatures though have been champs. Thrun in particular as a late game uncounterable threat is VERY good but even Bark-Knuckle Boxer has been creating a little problem.

I'm pretty happy with where this one ended up. 

4 Talisman of Impulse

4 Rukh Egg

4 Brindle Shoat

3 Fanatic of Rhonas

2 Incubation Druid

3 Stingerback Terror

2 Bark-Knuckle Boxer

2 Thrun, Breaker of Silence

4 Stomping Ground

2 Mountain Valley

6 Mountain

6 Forest

1 Gruul Turf

4 Cragcrown Pathway

3 Jaya, Fiery Negotiator

3 Obliterate

3 Jokulhaups

2 Harmonize

2 Explore

Back Off Baby

It struck me; what if more of my creatures were indestructible? 

I love Elephant Guide, but it is an aura and those are weak cards, especially in the era the Guide comes from. So maybe those get replaced.

2 Bark-Knuckle Boxer

2 Thrun, Breaker of Silence

The initial runs were positive, though those were mostly goldfishes. Still, good sign is good. It made me wonder about killing my darlings. 

I really love Predator Ooze, but it has always been awkward in this deck. Triple Green is a difficult ask for a two color deck without a lot of mana fixing. 

And I lose games where I do not draw or successfully cast an Obliterate. So let's go further. Elephant Guide is a good card, and on brand for what this deck wants to do, but it's dead in hand if I don't have a creature. 

What about this:

4 Talisman of Impulse

4 Rukh Egg

4 Brindle Shoat

3 Fanatic of Rhonas

2 Incubation Druid

3 Stingerback Terror

2 Bark-Knuckle Boxer

2 Thrun, Breaker of Silence

4 Stomping Ground

2 Mountain Valley

6 Mountain

6 Forest

1 Gruul Turf

4 Cragcrown Pathway

3 Jaya, Fiery Negotiator

3 Obliterate

3 Jokulhaups

2 Harmonize

2 Explore

Pixleated

After some tweaking, this is what I landed on:

4 Rukh Egg

4 Predator Ooze

4 Brindle Shoat

3 Fanatic of Rhonas

2 Incubation Druid

3 Stingerback Terror

4 Elephant Guide

4 Stomping Ground

2 Mountain Valley

6 Mountain

6 Forest

1 Gruul Turf

4 Cragcrown Pathway

3 Jaya, Fiery Negotiator

3 Obliterate

3 Jokulhaups

At first I tried adding in some cheap removal, like Incinerate and realized that it just didn't matter. I also wanted to find ways to win after nuking the board, hence Stingerback Terror. I also had more Incubation Druids than Fanatic of Rhonas, and flipped that when I realized the Fanatic could fend off more creatures in the early game and return in the late game. 

It's a good place to end up at; mana ramp with a bit of recursion, something to cast after I've destroyed the entire board, and something to help stall the game out if I don't have access to a reset. 

Jaya is doing what I hoped: creating board stalls until I can cast one of my resets. The Fanatic is a great way to ramp my mana. 

Still, I'm finding myself out muscled by other control decks and not quite fast enough to hold off ago decks. So something is still amiss. 

Marvel Snap: Dragon Season-High Voltage

I was hating this version of High Voltage. It seemed TOO high variance, but I believe I have found a cure:

The odd thing is, I haven't changed this deck much in a year. I think Armor is now Mad Thinker but aside from that, this is what made High Voltage bearable for me.

I also got my Free Pizza, grinding it out with a High Evolutionary deck. Nothing special there: I was mostly trying to stay ahead of any Shou-Lao The Undying decks. Once I did that, I crashed hard on ranking, messing around trying to do dailies. 

I know, I know: I should've been in Conquest mode but eh. It's just a game!

Your Head Asplode

 Another deck I've been putting off for awhile because of the reset. Because Your Head Asplode, baby. 

4 Talisman of Impulse
4 Rukh Egg
2 Seedguide Ash
1 Greater Gargadon
4 Viridian Joiner
4 Predator Ooze
4 Brindle Shoat

4 Elephant Guide

4 Rootgrapple

4 Stomping Ground
2 Mountain Valley
6 Mountain
6 Forest
1 Gruul Turf
4 Cragcrown Pathway

3 Obliterate
3 Jokulhaups

Obviously, there's a LOT that can be done now. Hell, Thraben U has a whole thing about using Jokulhaups and winning games, so even if it is just for fun (and it is) I should be able to improve this deck considerably. 

Lorwyn Eclipsed Prerelease 1-2

A slightly auspicious start to our Two-Headed Giant experience, as I got a paper cut while I was opening my box! Fortunately for me, Rebecca had a narwhal band-aid for me, so no blood hit the floor. 

I built a RW deck using blight counters and heavy on removal-I had a ton of spells to remove or incapacitate creatures. 

We also opened 3 copies of Maralen, Fae Ascendant so why not try an elves and faeries deck with lots of flash creatures? Rebecca took that one. 

Round 1 vs. Brian and Brian

They were running UW merfolk & RG elementals. And I'm pleased to say that our decks did things in the early game...but Brian (no, the other one) cast 3 Run Away Together  on consecutive turns. That's right; every turn we cast creatures, they got bounced. 

That took our creatures out of the action long enough for them to build tempo & use the Champion of the Path to take us out. I drew one removal spell that game, and I was reluctant for Rebecca to run out a flash blocker. Lesson definitely learned: flash creatures can sub as removal. 

Round 2 vs. Steven & Eli

They had a cheap UW fliers deck with a BR goblins that worked together well to overwhelm us. We had some removal, and the Lasting Tarfire I cast did some WORK but we couldn’t get enough creatures onto the board to hold off the creatures coming at us. Lasting Tarfire did all our damage, while at one point, they swung for NINE in the air. 

Round 3 Jacob & Harold

Jacob had a BG elves deck, and Harold a UWR Elementals deck.

Unfortunately for them, after a Keep Out on Jacob’s Shimmerwilds Growth, he had to spend time getting his colors fixed, slowing him down considerably. Harold had some Summit Sentinels, but apparently drew dead when he blocked with them, while Rebecca sent fliers over to swiftly end the game.

Despite the record, we both came away from the prerelease with very positive impressions of the set! I am looking forward to playing this set and seeing what decks it has to offer. 

Thanks as always to Red Castle Games for a well run event. 

Preview Season

The Lorwyn Eclipsed pre-release was this weekend--and do you know what WotC did all weekend?

If you said: preview cards from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set, then collect your prize!

Sigh. Why are they ignoring the product I'm about to give them money for, product that I had in my hands this weekend to play, for product that doesn't even exist yet?

I don't know; maybe a mistake was made and the cards were leaked early but it just seems like WotC doesn't care to allow us to enjoy things.

Set Review: Lorwyn Eclipsed

Mechanics article. 

Set list here. 

Added bonus; the behind the scenes creation of the Lorwyn Eclipsed trailer!

Let's get cracking with the mechanics.

I'm not sure Vivid is a mechanic, but it's a very intuitive thing to understand and that's always good. 

Hybrid mana feels less like a mechanic and more like a feature. Cards don't do something because of hybrid mana, they just become a little more versatile to cast. Still; good feature to have in any set, and it is a good signal boost for Shadowmoor.

Blight is something I'm definitely interested in, as "drawback" mechanics provide inspiration to do something unusual. -1 counters let WotC turn some different knobs on creature abilities, and they wisely did not include +1 counters to avoid confusion. Dig it.

Changeling & Kindred: Kindred is something I think players have been hoping for since the original Lorwyn, so it's nice to see that codified. Changeling has been around long enough that I don't feel like it's adding anything new to the game but it still finds a good home here.

Finally, double-faced cards offer a pretty neat way to illustrate Lorwyn/Shadowmoor's duality. Do I wish there were solutions beyond DFCs? Yes, but the game is this way now. Might as well howl at the moon. 

However, in the I don't like it column, we have Behold. There are a couple reasons for this. 

First; to do what they did for Lorwyn Eclipsed, the templating on the mechanic changed. The mechanic in Dragonstorm provided you with a bonus if you did it and was a "may" effect. One card in Lorwyn Eclipsed mirrors this: Celestial Reunion. None of the other cards have that conditional on them. Why do that? Now they aren't even consistent within the set. 

Second: with the other new cards, you cannot chose not to pay the Behold cost: either you pay it or in the case of 5 spells (6 if you include Flashback on one), you cannot play the card, in the case of 5 spells you pay an additional 2.

The mechanic is a drawback one and now it feels different: again, I think this inconsistency is a bad thing.  

Set thoughts overall:

This time, I'm finding hard to do color breakdowns. The cards feel "flatter" from a power stance, and not interconnected in the way Bloomburrow cards were-another typal set. Likely this is because Lorwyn Elipsed has a lot more heavy lifting to do, to represent two different blocks. The blatant interactions are just that, but there isn't anything that feels unusual here. Little that catches my eye to do something new or different. 

I'm not saying the set is bad, more that it may take some time to reveal itself for what it is, providing a lot of possible options for players to make decks work in Limited environments. Certainly there's a soft nudge towards making three-color decks, with Vivid and hybrid mana, and at least a couple possible 'go wide' options in goblins and kithkin. 

How it interacts with the larger ecosystem of Magic is harder to predict but my guess is that it doesn't overthrow any old decks or create new ones. Instead, it offers options and gives newer players cards that are good, but might be overlooked by more established ones.

All in all Lorwyn Eclipsed seems like something that doesn't have an immediate right answer or obviously powerful thing to do. There's some cool cards, and the opportunity for a lot of interactions and that feels great. The more the set can reveal itself through play, the more engaging it is. 

Late To The Party: Arranger

I had Arranger on my list of games to try for quite some time due to a review I read on the Escapist, before that website had a break and now just looks like blue Kotaku. 

Speaking of; does anyone know of a good gaming review site? With written reviews? I don't mind the occasionally playthrough but I do not need 10 fucking minutes of a game review that isn't done by Yatzhee Croshaw. Three minutes is about what is needed for a video review that isn't a discussion between people.

Anyway; Arranger has some really great upsides; a charming story and presentation and a puzzle system that is almost too intuitive it's so easy to grasp. I feel like you could set anyone in front of this game and they would grasp the basics almost immediately. 

Unfortunately, it also has one really big drawback; the lack of a map. So if I took a break between games, even if it was just a week, I would come back to the game and have no idea where I was or where I needed to go. This lead to me inadvertently backtracking, then getting to a new spot with no idea what I should do next. 

It also meant that there were some puzzles that just baffled me and I had to go online to get help with. This sort of frustration put a kibosh on any fun I was having, which felt like a shame. There was so much going for Arranger, yet I just felt too stymied to continue. 

However, maybe it is for you! There is a lot to like so it's at least worth trying. 

Off With His Head

 

I think I've got it, and am happy to settle here.

4 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Cranial Ram

3 Junk Diver
3 Myr Retriever
4 Broadside Bombardiers
2 Rottenmouth Viper
2 Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender
3 Hullcarver

4 Weapons Manufacturing

3 Shrapnel Blast
3 Deadly Dispute
2 Demand Answers

4 Glimmervoid
3 Great Furnace
2 Swamp
3 Mountain
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Drossforge Bridge

3 Tezzeret, Cruel Captain

It needs a sideboard and I'm not sure what that would consist of. I'm also strongly considering removing Syr Ginger (who I dig) for Syndicate Tracker. I'm also considering Lotus Petal, but for now: this deck is in a completed state.

The real 'aha' moment came with Tezzeret, Cruel Captain. It isn't a sacrifice outlet the way Claws of Gix is but it can turn Munitions tokens into robots that explode. That seems like a pretty neat idea. 

The Legend

 John Avon is retiring from Magic art and I just think y'all should take a moment to appreciate the man's work. 

As great as so many of the early artists were, I'm fairly certain that without Avon's majestic landscapes, many of which set the standard for people, Magic wouldn't be the same game. Not to overlook his other contributions! The man clearly works hard to bring exceptional art to us. 

So for that a moment of gratitude.