TCG trouble

5 COLOUR TOO EASY

2009-05-28T05:52:00.000-07:00

I was just thinking that non-basic lands are too powerful. The point is that when you use more than one colours, you're taking a change. Using more colours gives you more possibilities...but with all these dualdoublelands - it's becoming even easier to play 5cc, as it's called.

JUST TAKE A LOOK AT THE NEW DOUBLE LANDS:
http://mtgsalvation.com/magic-2010-m10-core-set-spoiler.html#3350
Given you already control a plains, this kind of dual land will produce both white and blue mana.

But maybe even worse: why the devil are these new duals rare? Is it because they're so good, so strong? So by putting them in the rare slot, their power will be limited? If they are so strong, they should never have been printed. Moneyspending and serious players will get four of these even though they are rare...

On the other hand, there won't be more than four of any of these in a deck. And because of the set rotation in standard, I suppose there are not enough dual lands to fill a deck...Maybe it is just good for the game, making it easier to taste the colour cake.

A two-headed dragon mini-tournament

2009-05-06T04:52:00.000-07:00

I attended such one only yesterday. It was a constructed event. We were eleven people, so one guy decided to take up the task of playing two decks, making us 12 people, and three games every round. We only played one round, with three matches, though. I was teamed up with a guy with a pretty decent deck, saving me loads of times, still, half the games I was the one sending them down. In fact, we won the tournament, I would never have guessed from my usually highlander bad decks.

Sometimes I hate constructed. If we had played single player, I wouldn't stand a chance against people with decks filled with 4 of any powered rare/uncommon in their deck. Because they'd spent much more on the game than I do.

That's why I prefer multiplayer magic, as in 2HG. We two really cooperated and looked at eachother hands to make the best out of it. Limited is great too, except that it gets costly and that I don't really need all those cards. No one where I live wants to do build drafts or build sealed. I want to play with ALL OF THE cARDS I ALREADY OWN.

Hmm...more about that in CARD WASTE post later, I guess

Buying all those new cards

2009-05-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

I know some magic players. Some of them have collections of over two thousands cards, one of them just started "playing", etc. buying, less than half a year ago.

What sickens me, almost, is the fact that most of all those cards are never put into play. They are not good enough, they bad. When you spend so much money, you will always end up with a lot of grizzly bear that will never see play. Even cards I myself would find good wouldn't be used, because there are more effective alternatives. And they go on to buy new cards when new sets are released and old sets rotate out, even if they have lots of cards already to play with. Change is good.

One of them is playing this Shards of alara block esper tribal artifact creatures deck. Hmhm, netdecking, anyone? Of course he's doing it thoroughly with multiple rares, with Master Transmuter, entering high-costed artifacts for nothing, and the other staple cards; such as Sphinx summoner, Tidehollow sculler blah blah. Firstly, it is boring to play with; I have tried myeself; everything is already set up and makes the game pretty similar every time. Secondly, it's tribal. That's what it really is: Wizards simply put colours on a lot of artifacts and gave them abilities that would work with them, cause, er, after all, they are artifacts too.

Back drafting - a shards of alara card

2009-05-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

Viashino is one of the best cards I have seen for back draft.

That is because: Viashino skeleton is a card that will mostly never see play, outside of limited. EDIT: It will never see play ever.

See, how did they come to this? I know that red creatures never are 2/2 for one red and one colourless mana, unlike green Grizzly Elves, but they might be 2/1, like Viashino. In addition, Viashino has this regenerate ability. And for an activation cost of two AND discarding a card, this cards ends up with a CMC of four? This was intended to be a bad card. In fact, I think the guys at Wizards wrote an article on Why there has to be bad cards.

btw...the card types is the same as the name of the card!

Planeswalkers

2009-05-01T02:01:00.000-07:00

A new card type, what! (yes, I know it was introduced in Lorwyn, still...). It is no creature, nor an enchantment, but another kind of permanent that lets you do something that either adds or removes a certain amount of loyalty counters. Each planeswalker enters game with a fixed amount of loyalty counters.

Planeswalkers are the manifestation of us, players, in a way. Cause in the magic flavourlogy, players are wizards (or from now on: planeswalkers) summoning monsters and Lightning bolts to kill the other wizards. Despite random mana screw and mana flood. Just the fact they are such a new thing makes a large segment of old palyers opposed to it. By Nature. And nonetheless, they are mythic. Rarity power creep money scheme. So for the people who care for constructed, they will have to get hold of these expensive cards that win you the game.

Maybe I'm just complaining for nothing. They can be dealt with, and whenever a planeswalker shows up in a multiplayer game, the others team up against that player. Therefore planeswalkers are justified, or balanced, I feel, in multiplayer games, because you have to make that choice whether it's worth to play it, and if you play it, everyone will be on your watch.

Alara reborn prerelease

2009-04-29T09:27:00.000-07:00

The Alara Reborn prerelease in the end of May was my first prerelease ever. I had to travel to Kristiansand, a journey of an hour.

At first I was disgusted, because in order to enter the event, I would have to pay more than if I had bought the same boosters one week later. I thought that playing in events you would get a discount. They said you payed extra for the experience. Yet, I don't care for buying new cards, I think it is stupid to buy new cards that cost the half two years later, because of the rotation scam. Why do people pay so much for a bunch of random cards...Only because they are new. And because they are bitten by the buy-rush.

But alas, I was a girl, the only girl in the tournament, therefore, they gave me a discount.

I liked opening the boosters, but after the third, there was too much to keep track of! After piling colours and creatures and instans, I settled for forests, mountains and plains, splashing a island/mountain mythic rare dragon card I never got to use. I noticed Mind funeral is so bad!! I thought...I got two of them! What an overpowered card, I thought, in limited, it could very well take down half a deck.

Before going to this event, I thought that this lovely vanilla Woolly thoctar was overpowered, but seriously, when you only have basic lands, its properly balanced, it is really hard to play. It seems everyone manascrewed at least once this tourney. On the other hand, the non-basic lands are what really is overpowered. They destroy: it is supposed to be hard to play many colours!

And I didnt include proper mana base in my deck...when I chose to play white, green and red, and most cards had white in their costs, still i had like 7 forests, 6 plains and 3 mountains. I remember counting all mana symbols, thinking I was smart, and concluding that there were most forests, so I needed most forests.

Furthermore, there are these overpowered mythic rares..in sealed they aren't that overpowered, because most have high mana costs, hard to hardcast, but in constructed people will break them. That's what's magic seems to be about: breaking the rules - as opposed to V:tes, where it is MORE about playing wellest.

In my third or first match, a guy played this lord of extinction, me gasped, but I managed to remove him with something. That card is overpowered. It seems to me like wizards is tring to go over the top, always growing, always trying to outdo themselves. Bad. I hate power creep. It's like the economy, mortgages and inflation blah blah blah.

Out of all cards, mostly I got only one copy. That inspired my to the idea of sealed singleton: You construct your deck from whatever pool you like, but you can only use one copy. Furthermore, there's another restrcition, on rarity, simply because boosters are made that way. If you get six boosters you would have 6 rares and 12 uncommons. But remember, you wont ever use all your uncommons or rares, so lets say: 3 rares, 6 uncommons. Seriously, it's so much more fun when you actually get to play those cards in your deck. The deck size helps too, 40 cards.
- > so the format is: deck of 40 cards, singleton, 3 rares, 6 uncommons.

After my second match, I just got all the "junk" cards from my opponent, because he's only after the BEST cards, the vintage playable..he's only after the power...the power...I like that, because it gets me cards, he gets rid of things he wont use, and I don't care about power. There's so much waste in this game...people should be baddrafting a lot more.
_

Well, how did I fare? I was winning due to mana screw and losing due to mana screw, because of the block's implicated mana screw effect of the MULTICOLOURED. There was a guy that manascrewed both rounds we played, for like, unbelievable eight turns...

Eventually, I actually got fourth place of like thirteen or something, that's pretty good, I think, and would have gone to the finals, had it not been for a guy with walkover. I think I got so far due to the guy manascrewing, a good pool of cards of which I chose some good cards, and me not playing completely brainlessly. There were these times where my brain would boil and the nervous system was working at overload, trying to decide what to do. That's what I like about playing this game, heh.

AND:
Now I want to point nose of Viashino skeleton, that is ONE pointless card. WASUP WITH THAT HIGH MANA COST? USELESS CARD?

Foiled? FOILS?

2009-04-28T06:37:00.000-07:00

I used to collect pokemon cards, and tried to play the game, too. Everyonce in a while, there were foils. With stars in them. But they were real foils cards, holographic foils, they were resistant to ANYTHING. Once my Ditto foil went through the washing machine. I was devastated..or...just a little, only to finf that: The blue back of the card was a bit damaged, and the front and the back parted, but the front went unscathed! That's quality printing!

And if you scratched the surface of the front of a foil card, you would see the metal shining through from under.

On my first Magic draft, a timespiral draft, I found this weird card, it was kinda darker and shone...and I asked...what the..Is that a foli? How funny..it isn't like the pokemon ones, it's not real..And at the end, we got our promo cards, all foil, them too...And I played with them...

But...they rip in the ends! You can peel of the foil tissue! OH NOES!!!

Foils sucks, they are more easily destroyed. Especially when one doesn't care for sleeving and unsleeving all the time. And especially when one doesn't care for collecting rare cards...foils are only a money making scheme.

What about the changes following the Shards of alara block? And the new core set?

2009-04-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

The changes were:

Land in booster pack
Wizards now added land in booster pack, effectively reduzing their size to 14 - to make noobs easily obtain lands: Now, getting hold of land was never really a problem. You can get heaps of lands from some older players. SERIOUSLY, I KNOW SOME GUYS that have like 500 lands. And that is few. The only time it is a problem is for totally new players without a playgroup or community...

Secondly, originally there were lands in boosters, and then players complained about TOO MANY lands, urging Wizard to change this. It was changed. And now it's changed back. Urges me to say: this will be changed back sometime.

Thirdly............you can play without lands LOL

New rarity - MYTHIC RARE
Magic rarity got steeper: now there are four. I don't know the mathematics, but this wil replace the normal rare you pull in a booster pack. Meh, I don't care because I'm no collector or the kind of person seeking multiples, but I think it is not good for the game if they are made broken/overpowered, filled with abilities just to be or just because they are sooo mythic rare. Stupid. And market price just got higher. It reminds me of a similar situation that happened to another, now dead, CCG (Doomtown): how players complained and were alienated when the game changed to a less flat rarity (there were two originally). Why? Now you had buy three boxes to get playset of all cards.

Intro pack thing
I don't know what was before. Anyway, this starter pack will be called intro pack and serve as an introduction into the current sets, with some liner notes about set and game mechanics. BUT: they will only contain 41 cards - illegal as decks. And a third of those cards are lands. Why?

Links to news: Changes as of Shards of Alara

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Changes brought with the new core set that will be released in june:

Decreased set size
Isn't this a good thing? Less cards to collect, less bad/redundant card ideas. Will this earn Wizards less money? Smaller sets will also lead less variety, as common cards make up most of a set's size. BUT: with the introduction of a new rarity, this in practice means that collecting all cards will be harder: booster peasant will have to crack open more boosters to get the cards they want. That equals more money to Wizards. YaY.

Core set change
There will be new cards, and not only reprints, making it desirable even for older players. And there will be a new core set every year, as if it was a good thing wizards even call it 'refreshing the core set'. The core set will not have the same cards every year, and there will be new cards - that sounds like an expansion to me. Wasn't a core set supposed to just be there, as a stable supply of staple cards that could always be used?

What is a good thing is card borders be black. That's good on the eye. All that remains now it that I finish painting the old ones.

Set rotation thing
The core set will rotate out with the preceeding block. So all noobs that buy core set cards can't use them in tourneys and games the following autumn (that is, standard games).

New names for old concepts
When cards are in play, they will be on the battlefield. Personally I liked them being in play better, I just think it sounds and looks nicer.
When a spell is played - it is now casted.

Change? Change is SCARY! I welcome CHANGE.

Link to news: Recapturing the magic with Magic 2010

LackeyCCG

2009-04-25T06:50:00.000-07:00

LackeyCCG is one of several applications that let you play CCG online against other people. It is a shareware program, it is free, and currently working on Windows, Mac and Linux. There is no rules enforcement, like in the Magic Project one and some others, but I think that does not matter. It makes the program more versatile, as it is not limited to magic only, and the programmer don't have to put all his effort into implementing the rules, which becomes more and more intricate with every Mtg expansion. And when it is not limited to magic only, Wizard can't sue it either.

On Lackey, you can download plugins for many, even dead CCGs. Sadly, most people dont play more than one CCG. Sadly I say, because there are many fun games out there. The crowds are playing Magic (like, 38 out of 43 players), followed by WoW, pokemon, V:tes and YuGiOh, but occasionally you might find a single or two players of other games.

You can download the program here: http://lackeyccg.com/index.html. If you have any questions or suggestions, there's a lively community at the LackeyCCG-forum

A screenshot from a three player vtes game ^

To be able to do anything, you first need a plugin. When you start lackey for the first time, it automatically loads into the plugin window. Download the plugin list from the URL. Then choose your plugin from the plugin list, click download and restart lackey when it has finished downloading.

btw, whenever something is grayed out, it cannot be done.

To make a deck, find cards in the deck editor and save your deck. To load a deck, right-click just right to your avatar and name, in the left sidebar.

To play with others, click server and download/refresh serverlists. You can either join a game or host a game. To host a game, just click host a game when on the server, but remember to check for proxy, many users can only join proxy servers.

You can customize the FX-buttons and the tabs above your hand (in the game window, showing things like "PoP" and /draw) to do and write things faster.

Some expressions often used:
go - your turn (go!)
np - no problem
nvm - never mind
g2 - another game? or, the second game in a match
gg - good game
ty - thank you

Note: If anyone is suddenly disconnected from the game, this is MOSTLY DUE to either a) Lackey crashing, or b) server crashing

enjoy your games!

How to get rid of mana screw (from the game)

2009-04-23T06:51:00.000-07:00

Mana screw is one of the most boring aspects in magic. Myself, I do not think there's any fun in losing, or winning, due to mana scre. Mana screw comes in different variants: no lands, or not the colours you need. People usually answer to this by saying that you have to improve your land rate, mana base, but thing is, you still are perferctly able to get mana screwed. Except for the fact that real life shuffling isn't that random, not getting lands the first 20 cards is just as random as the opposite. They might also say you should just add that and that manafix and do so and so blabla, ever forgetting that maybe you dont have the cards, and most probably dont care to buy special play sets (on LackeyCCG this is no problem, though). OR THERE ARE EVEN PEOPLE who think mana screw is good for the game.

Bl4cK 70t()5 - The ultimate unscrew card

Still, this can be done with by playing the game and building your decks another way. No flood, no screw.:

1. Infinite mana - No lands, play as big a card you want, limited to one spell a turn. Another variant is that all of your cards converted mana cost cannot override 200. That forces your average con cost to be 4 mana.

2. No land magic - you build your deck without lands, and any card can be played as a land of the types in its mana cost. A 3WG card will be a dual land of forest and plains, artifacts tap for colourless mana. No land magic page. This makes more cards viable for your deck, when you have more places. Cards that you dont need can be used as land, and you wont get mana flooded either.

3. Land channeling - you build your deck without lands and remove a card of a specific colour from your hand in order to get a land in the corresponding symbol. Just as in no land magic, you got to think what cards to enland Site

4. Two piles - you have one pile for lands and another one for spells, and gets to chose which one to draw from. For example, when you draw your starting hand. Some argue that this makes certain decks too powerful, but you get rid of mana screw and mana flood. You still can get colour screwed, though.

5. Bump magic - you have lands in your deck, but any cards can be played as a land. A 5W can be played as a plains, and when you have a plains, you can bump the card back to your hand and play the plains instead. One land per turn. I think this is the most fun variant, as you might your big cost cards back when you don't need any more mana.

And here's a wizards post about mana fixing;
Fixing the environment
when all you really need is just another way of playing the game. Even worse, all those mana fix cards only aplly for some years, and then you need new cards, if you want to keep up with standard.

A multicolored set is linear

2009-04-23T01:45:00.000-07:00

because you are forced into a colour. IT'S BORING. You want to use this card? Okay, then you will have to use these cards, and not these. Do you see this pattern? The cards in that colour have synergy! The only reason why you'd use this is because....there's no choice...

and furthermore, I'm not particulary fond of the tribal/affinity of using 5+ powered creatures, and the artifact affinity currently found in esper. But I already knew I don't like tribal.

SO much anger...over something sooo incredibly trivial...

Starting this site

2009-04-21T12:11:00.000-07:00

Finally I got up a site where I could moan about all that's wrong with CCGs, especially Magic, that I restarted playing this autumn. I decided not to create a blog, even though blogs looks so much better: because I don't like the time aspect of blogs. Or maybe I'll redecide within one week and move to a blog.
* * *
And I did. Now what a surprise.

BTW, this will also be the blog where I write in English, as I already sport a Norwegian speaking blogue. There will be OFF TOPiC!

Let's see if anyone discovers it. Moa.