Robot Claw – Page 428 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Oh, Oh, Oh It’s Magic!

May 4, 2014

It’s been a while since an MTG post, so it’s time to give my reviews of two recent releases.

The first is Commander 2013, which was released back in November of last year:

This product remains a bit controversial since one of the five decks (Mind Sieze) was – and remains – much more difficult to find than the other four. Despite herculean attempts I never saw it in any store myself, and ended up paying probably too much to get it at a convention. Wizards would eventually reprint the series with a disproportionate amount of Mind Sieze decks and yet it still remains hard to find. This is all (as is usually the case in these products) due to one single card in this deck only being in great demand for players of legacy MTG. This is the card:

Dedicated MTG players buy four copies of the Mind Sieze deck just to get four copies of this card for their decks, making it much harder to find for everyone 🙂

At any rate I eventually got all four, and over several weeks played 20 games in total, matching each deck against the others. Here’s the score breakdown:

Evasive Maneuvers (W/U/G): 3 wins, 1 loss
Eternal Bargain (W/U/B): 3 wins, 1 loss
Power Hungry (B/R/G): 3 wins, 1 loss
Nature Of The Beast (W/R/G): 1 win, 3 losses
Mind Sieze (U/B/R): 0 wins, 4 losses

In essence, it was a tie since EM beat EB beat PH beat EM! Three of the decks seem well matched with the other two being poor competition. Mind Sieze in particular failed to deliver, but my feeling playing it was that it was much better suited to multi play than 1 vs 1 (as is natural for a Commander deck).

In terms of individual decks, I like Eternal Bargain the most. The commander in particular is fun to play, and makes me want to build a lifegain deck around him (shame he isn’t W/G/B instead though). Most of the time, this deck won a game with massive amounts of health remaining.

I’ll soon split the decks up picking out individual cards for self-designed decks and absorbing them into my larger collection. At $30 each for 100 cards, these are well worth it and every bit as good as the first commander series in my opinion.

The second new product I have recently played is the new duel deck: Jace vs Vraska

I really enjoyed the last duel deck, and thought they were the best matched yet in the series. Sadly, this one takes a step back in playability.

Of the five games I played, Jace won all five and usually won them quite handily. His mono-blue deck is a weird mix of cards, dipping its fingers in many pots (illusions, counters, mill) without seeming to commit to any. It takes only a moment to look at the decklist and theorize ways to improve it, and yet ill-focused as it is it had no trouble shutting down Vraska in every game. Her deck has a green/black removal focus, with most spells and creatures dedicated to killing other creatures or removing life. While on paper her deck seems more cohesive than Jaces (and therefore I assumed it would win more often), in practice – at least in the five games I played – it was always just a bit too slow to get the upper hand. Jace’s illusions in particular were extremely effective once on the board, and one thing I took away from this duel deck was the potential of an all-illusion deck.

So a shutout in terms of gameplay, with Jace winning every time. Even with his (new) bad art, he’s still a badass 😉

Himeji Castle

April 27, 2014

This is Himeji Castle in Japan:

It’s a world heritage site, considered the best example of a feudal-era Japanese castle still standing.

Here it is in metal:

This was the largest and most difficult metal miniature model I’ve assembled yet. Taking about 6 hours in total, this was an exercise in patience even with the correct tools. Don’t even think about making this without fine needle nose pliers! It also suffers from the common problem of less-than-stellar instructions.

Sadly, as with most Japanese structures, Himeji is vulnerable to the occasional attack from an oversized monster…

Drawing From Memory

April 24, 2014

I have recently read various articles about psychological drawing tests and drawing contests on various websites that have inspired me to test my own from-memory drawing skills. Since he was the topic of several of the drawing challenges that went around the internet, and since he is a well-known character recognizable by almost anyone, my first topic was Homer Simpson.

I had to draw him from memory, and here is my version compared to the original:

I’ll have to be very honest and say there is something very ‘off’ about my version of Homer. It’s as if the beloved character mated with Donald Duck to produce a hybrid creature, since even the fact I nailed (?) the eyes (only!) hardly compensates for the beak, degenerate ear and horsetails growing out of the top of his head.

It would seem my from-memory skills were not as good as they could be. How would I do with other, perhaps more well-known (by me) characters? To find out, KLS gave me three challenges, which I’ll now present in order.

The first was Keroro from Keroro Gunso, unquestionable one of my favourite characters. I love the design of this little frog, which is simple, clean and unforgettable, especially to a great fan like myself. Here’s how I did:

Oh my! The assembly of dozens of Keroro model kits seem to have ingrained his chest emblem into my mind, but when it came to drawing him from memory I seriously struggled to remember what his head looked like! I can hardly believe I forgot the hat and the chin, not to mention the way I destroyed his eyes. Let’s face it, I drew a light-bulb! Across from my desk I have hung a Keroro mask on my wall for many years now. To not remember what it looked like is shameful.

What about another manga character? Someone even more iconic than Keroro, known and beloved by virtually every manga fan in the world? Dear readers, I present to you – from Dragonball Z – Goku himself:

Goodness gracious! While the more generous critics may point to the fact that I somewhat captured the spirit of the character in (very) broad strokes, the more honest would say that even the hair is a pale shadow of Goku’s actual hair and no other aspect of the drawing resembles the famous character. This is a disaster, through and through.

Now at this point you’re thinking: “He’s just having us on!” And I assure you I am not. I really tried to draw these characters as closely as possible to how I remembered them. But as history has shown time and time again, I can’t draw.

So I assure you that when I sat down to sketch Mickey Mouse I tried my hardest to produce a work that closely resembled the character beloved by everyone:

It’s those teeth that will likely cause the most nightmares 😉