Category: Otaku

Game Stuff

September 23, 2010

This weekend I’m playing in the pre-release tournament for the new MTG expansion Scars Of Mirrodin. It’s on Saturday, and should hopefully be as much fun as the last one I played in. Or perhaps even more so, since I like artifact decks and Mirrodin promises a scad of them.

Here are a couple of cards from the set:

The one on the left is the promo we’ll get for competing in the pre-release. The one on the right is everything I love about Magic. I hope I get one of them (and I have a good chance I reckon, since I’m buying a box of boosters) and can’t wait to use it in a game. Does that make me a Johnny I wonder?

Anyway I’ll be tweeting during the tourney and blogging the results, so stay tuned.

In other game news I’m still hopelessly addicted to Dragon Quest IX, which is probably the best DS game ever made. I’ve been focusing again recently on killing some of these guys:

To get my character up to a ‘Sage +4’. If you have a DS, then you simply need to own this game (you know who I’m talking to don’t you?)

School has been extremely busy. Much more than ever in fact, and it rarely leaves me with time to just sit down and relax. As such I haven’t been playing many non-portable games recently but when I can, I’ve put time into Infamous on the PS3:

This is a game I’ve had my eye on for some time. It’s a sandbox game that tells the story of a man that gains super powers (related to electricity) and battles against a mysterious group that evil intent. The graphics, gameplay and story are all top-notch, and I can honestly say had I paid full price I would definitely be happy with the purchase. Given I got the game for a mere $18 in the Target budget bin means I got an absolute bargain!

It really is an excellent game, and if you have a PS3 I think you could play a lot worse.

In other news I’ve become strangely addicted to ancient issues of Dragon magazine. I’m reading them cover-to-cover regardless of the content and in the last week alone have learned some fascinating information like how to run court cases in the Top Secret game (a spy RPG that no one ever bought or played…) or what % of hits on a flumph hit the top and what % hit the bottom. Thank god for 27-year-old magazines, else I’d never know such info.

What’s a flumph you ask?

This is a flumph:

Basic

September 7, 2010

I’ve always been enamoured of the basic land cards in MTG. I used to sort my lands so I kept a copy of each unique card separate from the bulk that I used in decks. I valued the more exotic examples, and considered them an important part of my collection.

< Unhinged

So is it any wonder that a few months back I decided to start putting the basic lands – and just the basic lands – together in a binder. I was then bitten by the collecting bug and went out and purchased basic lands (at the price of $0.10 each) to fill the empty spots in the collection. The binder grew, the pages filled. And eventually my ‘land binder’ had become a fairly complete collection of MTG basic land.

< Mirrodin

How many cards is this you ask? The answer is… about 600 cards.

I have every land for each expansion from Tempest onwards, excluding all of the non-full-art Zendikar lands (that were only in premades). I have most of the Ice Age land, except some examples are from Cold Snap. And I have a motley collection of Unlimited lands. As for core sets, my collection of land from 8th Edition onwards is complete. I also have all of 6th Edition but (amusingly) am missing quite a bit of 7th Edition.

< Zendikar

Harder (in some cases much) to obtain are the lands that were packed into the non basic products Wizards has sold over the years. And even then I have a great deal of these. I’m speaking of such things as Beat Down, Portal, Duel Decks or the Un-sets. That said the biggest gaps in my collection are definitely in this area. For instance I have zero Battle Royale lands, and only 2 examples from Portal: Three Kingdoms (not surprising, since it was the expansion with the smallest print run in English).

Speaking of language, I only have 2 foreign language lands (both Japanese). One of these days I’ll make a better effort to obtain lands in each of the 9 languages MTG is printed.

< Lorwyn

Obtaining lands is a bit tricky because few people seem to value them. As such, checking retailers online is rarely successful since they will treat all swamps as the same card irrelevant of expansion. Isolating the gaps in the collecting in the pre-numbered days is also proving to be tricky, and my research has even revealed a few errors on Gatherer. I shall continue though – after all a collection is started to be completed!

< Kamigawa

A benefit of my land-interest is that when a new product or expansion is announced I find myself as interested in the land as anything else! Although I’ve only been back ‘into’ MTG for about a year I have to say the most exciting post on their website in that time was when they showed the Eldrazi lands. Not only did they form a mural, but the fact they even existed at all (new lands for the third in a block?) was something unexpected and delightful.

Scars Of Mirrodin will be out in a few weeks. I haven’t seen the lands yet but since it is a sequel to Mirrodin and that set had some of the most unique and striking land art in the history of MTG I am optimistic that we’re in for a treat 🙂

Boxes Of Fun

September 2, 2010

I just finished reading this book:

It is a book written by Steve Sansweet all about his collection of Star Wars merchandise and memorabilia. Sansweet is a legend in the world of collecting (note: not just Star Wars collecting) and over the years since 1977 he has managed to amass a warehouse-busting collection totalling over 110,000 items.

He started with toys but quickly moved into other items (such as clothes or licensed food), feverishly buying anything at all that had a Star Wars license. He set up a large network of dealers and friends all over the world so during the eighties his collecting expanded to contain international licensed items as well. The collection grew and grew, and Steve became an expert on all things Star Wars. Eventually (in 1996) he accepted a position working for Lucasfilm and is still with them today.

The book doesn’t even attempt to showcase the entire collection, instead highlighting a subset (< 1%) of notable items. The photography is superb, but even better are the anecdotes and asides Sansweet has included about many of the inclusions. I particularly liked the chapter on food packaging, since he relates tales of spending day after day in an Australian hotel room stuffing large quantities of potato chips into the tiny hotel garbage as he was emptying the bags for the packaging. Or doing something similar in France, this time disposing of more than 80 different types of chicken product so he could collect the packaging. And so on and so on…

The scope of the collection is truly mind-boggling. This is a man that doesn’t just have all the action figures, but he also has prototypes, point-of-sale displays and every single variant including the ones you’ve never heard of (like the Bib Fortuna figure packed with Spanish toothpaste). Virtually every type of item imaginable is represented in the book, and there are so many times he states that his may be the only complete collection of that type that I lost count.

For instance, in 1983, Harper’s Pet Chow in Australia packaged tiny Return Of The Jedi stickers only inside their 4kg (~9 lb) bags of dog food. There were 12 stickers in total, packed randomly. Given the size of the bag and the random distribution, what is the chances anyone actually completed the set? Yep, Steve has it (and he thinks it is the only complete set in the world).

Many such stories exist in the book. One can only imagine the difficulty of collecting such items pre-internet but he somehow managed to do it. And he continues to this day. I may have imagined that his Lucasfilm job may have made the collecting much easier since he could just get the licensees to send him items but that is not the case, and he seems to have spent a great deal of time during the years the prequel films came out flying around the world amassing Star Wars stuff 🙂

A highlight of the book for me was being reminded of items from my Star Wars past, such as these Australian iceblocks:

I remember eating lots of those back in the day. He also had pictures of ancient Australian lollipops and the Kellogg’s Corn Flakes boxes from 1980 with cut-out Star Wars masks on the back (I can vividly recall cutting out and wearing a C3PO mask around).

It’s a great book, and I say that not only as a Star Wars collector myself. I think most of you would find it quite interesting.

Now… one of these days I need to do a post about my strange SW collection…

(The image comes from toltoys.com, a nifty site dedicated to vintage Australia toys… it’s worth a look if you’re Australian!)

Robot Claw