Here’s one of the MTG cards from the new set:
A guy at my table pulled it from a booster at the prerelease, and I had a good look at it.
I noticed something interesting. Take a look at the card yourself. Can you see it?
Maybe a larger version of the art would help (click to enlarge)?
Could that be who I think it is?
I just got home from playing in the pre-release of the new MTG expansion named Avacyn Restored. As is usually my wont, here’s a summary of events.
I was very lucky, and pulled thee mythic rares from my six boosters. One is a mind-bendingly unusual card that has no place in prerelease decks (Descent Into Madness) but the other two, shown above, looked like fun. Happily my best colours seemed to be red and white, so I eagerly assembled a two-colour deck tribal deck heavily based around Humans that include both of these mythics.
The deck would be called Advent Of Homosuperior. With a name like that, how could it lose?
At this point I will say that the event was long – 6+ hours in total! – and some of the details are a bit foggy. This includes details of my opponents, so I can say that although my recollections may at this point be a bit foggy, I’m going to try to describe the events as accurately as possible. I apologize in advance if the details are a bit dry. MTG is a game for the mind, some may say, not the eyes!
So let the games begin!
Round One (2-1)
My first opponent looked a bit like this…
…and I think his name was Martin. He was relatively new to magic, this was his first prerelease, and he was visibly nervous. I could sense fear in him as I shook his hand. To rankle him I bellowed “Behold the advent of the homosuperior!” as I shuffled my deck. Or something like that, at least.
His deck was green and red and, if I’m honest, a bit crap. I beat him handily in round 1 but in round 2 fell victim to an evil (and, let’s be frank here, unsporting since it wasn’t me doing it) combination of a +6/+6 miracle and +x/+0 instant that led to him hitting me for 18 with a 3/3 creature! It was with unrestrained glee that I bonfired his snivelling Degvillean arse in round 3 for the win.
Round Two (2-0)
Round two was against a swarthy bear-like man playing a deck almost identical to mine. The brute looked a bit like this…
…and introduced himself as Brian. I could tell he was the serious type, and perhaps a bit cocksure. His lung capacity seemed prodigious.
At any rate he won the roll and went first, and played a mountain and then a Somberwald Vigilante. I followed with an identical play, which surely threw him off! I forget his next, next and next cards because they didn’t matter since – KABOOM – bonfire for the quick win! Suck on that, Vultan!
Excuse me.
I won both games handily. He may have had the bigger lungs, but I triumphed in the brain department!
Round Three (0-2)
It was here, good folks, that things started to go astray. I will not concede my talents were lacking, or I played poorly. No devoted readers, the source of my downfall was something else indeed.
My third opponent looked almost exactly like this:
Did she introduce herself? I’m not sure. Let’s call her Sara. Now I’ve never seen a person like this before, especially not even in a photo in an email from AW that I had read on my phone just minutes before the round, so I was unprepared. She shuffled and dealt, and I was distracted by her Lum-ness. My thoughts clouded, my brain addled. I was smitten.
In accordance with her garb, she played a green and yellow (by which I mean white) deck heavy on fliers and really bad cards that hurt me badly. In a bad way.
What particular cards did she win with (this one and this one)? Did I even mount a valiant defense (nope)? Was my loss due to her skill (yes) or my bad playing (maybe)? The answers to all of these questions are unknown. She had boots on as well.
But what was konwn is I had met my match, and been knocked down a peg. The tall poppy – as they say – had been cut. The goose had been cooked, and even perhaps the horse had been led to water. Sara had given me a fish and most definitely not taught me how to fish. My loss (0-2) was absolute.
Round Four (0-2)
My resolve was stronger even that it had ever been the morning after it had been weakest! Never, I said, would the fairer-sexed player charm me into a loss! I would be immune to wiles, regroup, and once again herald the Advent Of Homosuperior.
My next opponent looked like this:
I lost 0 – 2.
Round Five (2-1)
Things had gotten iffy about this point. If I didn’t win another game I was out of the running for a prize. So I decided to stick around for one more round on the off chance I may win. Because of the way things work my next opponent was in the same boat. He looked a bit like this:
I sensed a kindred spirit in this fellow. Was he also a professor? Had he also, perhaps, once played Gauntlet on his C64 for 24 hours straight? Could he have even been a supertaster? I would never know, since of course I’d never presume to intrude on anyone’s privacy. His name was King Henry VIII.
His Majesty played an interesting blue/red deck with a smattering of control and a trifling amount of mill cards. Which he seemed to draw all in his opening hand. And then play. Against me. Effectively.
It was only when the Dreadwaters resolved and I had zero cards in my library did I realize the magnitude of my loss.
But I would not concede! The great game was afoot, since five losses in a row was too much! What the hell had happened to my homosuperiors! They weren’t even close to adventing. I changed tack (which means I did nothing differently, actually) and started the next round.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Lots of cards were played by me alone! Damage was done by me alone! I won quickly and easily. Only a cynic would argue it was because my opponent was mana-screwed, since only half-men use such excuses. If – for instance – I ever lost due to a mana screw I’d never ever admit it. In fact I’d more likely make up some ludicrous story about being charmed by a lovely cosplaying opponent than losing due to mana screw against a guy who looks like he stocks shelves at K-Mart. So if my victory here was by the skin of my teeth and only due to mana-screw on King Henry’s behalf, then I’ll leave that for him to admit.
It was down to the third of our three games. Back and forth, tit and tat, little victory here, little victory there. It was like World War 1 in trading card form and our table was The Somme. But then the opponent unveiled what he no doubt thought would be his Big Bertha – I speak of Reforge The Soul – which drew him a bunch of whatever cards but drew me Avacyn herself. Which I then played. My victory was absolute.
I was back in the running for top 8 and a prize. But I absolutely had to win my sixth round 2-0. The pressure was on.
Round Six (0-2)
Last and – let’s face it – least round. Two opponents, each at 2 wins and 2 losses. Each clawing for the others throats, since a 2-0 win in this round would enable a miniscule chance at the top 8. There would be no quarter – none at all! My opponent looked like this…
…and went by the name 6.
6 won the role, and went first. He was playing red and green, and was earnest. He wanted to win. I wanted to go home. He was a young man. Me old. He had the soul of a boy. I had the soul of a man. His deck was called Apogee Of Terror. Mine was called Advent Of Homosuperior.
I’ve been trying to keep this summary short, so I’ll cut to the chase. He won. I lost.
Summary
I played 14 games in total today using the same deck, which I never adjusted between rounds. I won only 6 of those games or, as some may say, half a dozen.
In retrospect I perhaps should have called my deck Nadir Of Homosapien which would have resulted in a thematic win somewhere in this loss. But in reality this would be nothing but a sham. I lost, and I lost utterly. My downfall was absolute, dreadful and soul-destroying. I wiped tears from my eyes as I drove away from the game store.
Never again, by which I mean about three months, would I flop another MTG card.
But the next time I do…
…well let’s just say that I’m not going to be the player who writes on his blog afterwards that he wasn’t the guy who didn’t lose 🙂
Over two years ago, on our last trip to Japan, I went menerk and purchased on our penultimate day a suitcase full of Gundam kits. You can glimpse some of them in the photo of loot from that trip shown in this entry. Some of those kits have since been assembled, some have been gifted and others sit on the shelf waiting for their day.
And for one particular kit – the biggest, best and most daunting, that day had arrived.
It’s the Master Grade 1/100 Shin Musha Gundam kit. This is an imagining of Gundam as if they were designed in medieval Japan. I fell in love with it when I saw it in a store, and despite the large box had to get it. I recall even now the effort getting that suitcase packed (I didn’t joke above; one suitcase was literally packed with just Gundam kits) but I’m glad I did.
Years of just admiring the box however had to eventually end, and two weeks ago when I decided to finally assemble it here’s what I found inside:
Lots of plastic! Lots and lots of pieces! Dozens of pages of instructions! A lot of time ahead of me…
The instructions are (obviously) all in Japanese. But the crafting of the kit is of the highest order, with every piece immaculately molded and labeled. Furthermore this is a snap-together kit (as are all Gundams) with multicoloured plastic, so paint and glue is unnecessary.
The first shot shows the different coloured plastic even on the same sprue, and the second shows the rubberized plastic used for joint pieces. Model kits have come a long way…
Assembly, while not difficult, was time consuming to say the least. The only tools I were using was a small pair of scissors (to remove the pieces) and an emery board (to file down edges), but after several hours work I ditched the scissors and purchased a pair of pliers to make the job easier. The kit contains many, many small pieces with pointy edges, so I found myself working in small batches (< 2 hours) because of sore hands and sore eyes.
In total, I estimate somewhere in the vicinity of 12-15 hours total assembly time.
The kit is assembled in stages. Head, arms, legs etc., and then everything is put together at the end. I’ve made a few Gundams over the years, but never a Master Grade kit, and I was constantly amazed (and showing a mostly disinterested KLS) by the detail. For instance, the almost-complete right leg shown above contains forty individual pieces, a large portion of which are so that when the joints bend moving pistons are visible. Given that 99.999% of these assembled kits will be sitting motionless on a shelf and these inner parts are therefore mostly invisible one can’t help but be bemused by the level of detail 🙂
The above shot shows the weapons, which are the last pieces assembled. Yes the sword has a working scabbard! Happily, the kit has articulated fingers (!) so he can hold any of these weapons as he sees fit. But I’m content to leave them stored for possible future use.
Here’s a close up of my kit after I had finished:
Not the best photo I know, but the best one I took that shows how his hand is resting on his sword hilt. I’m quite proud overall of how he turned out, especially given I won’t be painting (or ‘Gundam-markering’) him. Even so, a photo in the instructions show’s the potential of a professionally assembled version of this kit:
Here’s a last shot of mine, showing scale versus Lego Sherlock Holmes.
He looks quite impressive, don’t you agree?
The kit cost me Y3600, which was about $40 when I bought it. These days it seems to retail for US$60-100 (depending on the seller), and even for that price I’d say it’s worth it as (by far) the best and most fun Gundam I have ever assembled. I can virtually guarantee that making this guy has shorted the remaining time my other kits will remain unassembled on the shelf!
One last bonus shot! I found a photograph of a custom assembly made by a Gunpla Übermensch. I can barely believe this is the same kit:
Everyone, please meet Saucy, The Doctor’s brand new companion!
Never heard of her you say? That’s because I just created Saucy! She’s my character in the new Doctor Who: Worlds In Time web-based MMO game.
The premise is that The Doctor recruits an army of assistants to help him fight off alien threats on different worlds and in different times. Although I’ve unlocked only two worlds, there seems to be quite a lot based on the galactic map. Here’s the starter world – London in the present day. Which has been invaded by Autons!
Playing the (flash-based) game consists of going on very simplistic ‘missions’ and overcoming obstacles by playing very simplistic minigames. For instance you may need to unlock a door by playing a variant of Bust-A-Move, or charm someone by playing a ‘match 3 game’ or defeat an enemy via a Tetris ripoff:
The other characters you see in the above shot are AI players. It is possible to team up with others to solve missions (even randomly), but I haven’t bothered yet. The missions are very, very easy and take only a few minutes to solve. At the end you get money and items (for crafting, it seems) and a shard:
What is the shard for? Well it can be opened using a device in the Tardis, and inside you will find an item that can be used to decorate your characters room (again, in the Tardis). These items are purely cosmetic, and the ‘goal’ of the game – aside from seeing all the worlds and stories – seems to be to populate your room Animal Crossing style using items harvested from shards. You can see Saucy’s underwhelmingly decorated room in the first screenshot above.
The shards can also contain clothes, with which you can change your characters appearance. This can also be done via the shop (from which you may also buy stuff for your room):
And herein lies the catch. DW:WiT is a free-to-play game. But they monetize it via a currency called Chronons. Take a look at the screenshot above, see how my total would come to 3450 gold and 324 Chronons? If I play long enough I’ll get the gold in the game, but the Chronons are another matter. Each player starts with 50, and they are used for many things within the game (including opening shards and even playing missions). These 50 regenerate at the rate of 2 per hour, but will never regenerate beyond the maximum of 50. To get more you need to buy them from a cash shop.
“No worries”, I thought, “I don’t need the premium stuff!”
And then I completed a mission and got a ‘Large Temporal Shard’. Which cost 60 Chronons to open. I rage-quit immediately.
The game is fun in a simple way, and has a lot of cute little DW touches (including many references to classic Who). The graphics are cute as well. But the Chronon requirements give me pause, and I have a feeling the free element will eventually hit a wall, and unlocking missions and even planets may eventually require the cash shop. I’ll continue to play for a while, but if that wall exists and I do hit it then I’ll be waving goodbye to Saucy forever.
The new Llamasoft iOS is out. It’s called Five A Day and according to Mr Minter it’s a “fruit-em-up”…
Using single touch control, you navigate your (auto firing) ship around killing baddies and collecting fruit. Things start off easy enough…
But quickly get hectic!
Oldies amongst us will recognize this as a Time Pilot variant, albeit with the usual Minteresque additions such as minotaur, trippy visuals and weird quotes. Something different about this one is that the music is not frantic or even poppy, but very new-agey. I think this is supposed to be a relaxing game.
Another no brainer purchase for your iOS device, especially since its only $2 🙂