I’ve mentioned it before, but I take part in what might be the nerdiest game ever created: fantasy professional wrestling. I say this as a disclaimer. If this isn’t your thing, then you’re probably not going to want to go beyond the break.
So, fantasy gives us elementals. We’ve got ‘em for Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. I want Life and Death elementals. I want opposing “master” elementals who encompass an aspect of each of the 4 standard elements. Flames versus embers, growth versus decay, etc.
And also we closed on the house on Friday, and started working on it over the weekend.
Went to my first FNM (Friday Night Magic) ever last night, nervous as all hell because as much of a goof as I am I don’t deal well with meeting new people. I think it’s part of that whole “negative self-image” thing. I had been meaning to go for a few weeks now, and even though I had finished construction of my green/black elf deck in time to play last Friday, it’s a fuck-awful drive from Lexington to Wakefield on Friday afternoons, and even if I take the back roads I have to leave my office at 4:00pm in order to get to Wakefield in time.
This being my first real foray into competitive constructed Magic (I’ve played sanctioned before, and have a whopping two limited matches under my belt… from 6 years ago), I played about as bad as could be expected.
I lost my first match to Faeries in two straight games against a really nice opponent named Nate (or Nathan, or Nathaniel, one of the three). Game one was ridiculous. I had back to back Colossus draws, and while the first one was countered, the second one hung around just long enough to see the game end to Mistbind Clique showing up on my upkeep for the next three turns. Game two I had all the removal in the world in my hand from the get go, including all three Terror’s in my deck, and then I drew into Colossus, Squall Line, and Cloudthresher. You’d think that a deck which runs 28 mana sources would be able to find two sources of green easy enough, but I stalled on 3 lands, only one of which produced green mana.
There was enough time at the end of the round so we played a few more for fun. Still being jittery and nervous I made a lot of mistakes, most of which I realized shortly after the fact but before I had a chance to do anything about them.
Round two I played against Bruce and one of the more interesting red decks I’ve seen, and couldn’t possibly have been prepared for. Game one ends when he casts Cragganwick Cremator with only one card in hand. That card ends up being a Krosan Cloudscraper (!!!!) and I get domed for 13. I have a special place in my heart for the ‘Scraper from when I started playing and had my “OMG HUGE CREATUR3Z!” phase (and even now I run him in my Sutured Ghoul reanimator deck), so I can honestly say that this is the coolest thing anyone has ever done against me in a game of Magic. I also had 2 Thoughtseize in my hand the whole game that I never played. No sense in helping the red deck kill me.
Game two I don’t draw any of the Kitchen Finks or Primal Commands that I’d boarded in, and an active Pyrohemia goes apeshit on my life total. Had I just been able to do one more damage to him this game things might have been different, since he was only up by 1 before I was Pyro’d into the stratosphere.
Match three I’m up against Steve, who’s running an interesting green/white elf deck that does very bad things with Lieges and Shield of the Oversoul. Game 1 I lose to a conspired Giantbaiting, as he has just enough damage on the table to do me in after blockers are declared.
Game 2 sees my first win of the evening as all the creature kill in the history of life makes an appearance to mow down his team so I can swing in for the win. Even though I won, I made a pretty silly mistake in not activating a Treetop Village during a late game attack when he was at two life and had just enough blockers to handle my creature threats. It allowed for a few more turns of stalling, and could have come back to bite me in the ass.
Game 3 I’m in again heavy with the creature kill, and am cracking in with a Vanquisher, Kitchen Finks, and Village for 9 on the 4th turn. He gets a small army in play but eventually gets stuck on land and scoops the turn before I would have used a Profane Command-fueled alpha strike.
Hooray, Matt finally wins one! 1-2 on the matches, 2-5 on the games. Not the best stats in the world, but for first time jitters coupled with some really questionable play on my part at times, I wouldn’t have expected to do any better. When the pairings for round 4 are announced, I get the bye, so technically I finish at 2-2 on the day.
This was a great experience. Got my nerves out of the way, had a bunch of fun, and played against some really cool people. Looking forward to next week, but hopefully this time around I’ll be a little bit smarter about how I play out my turns. This seems to be a pretty friendly group. There were about 10-12 people there last night, and I got the vibe that they were most, if not all, regulars.
I was going to go to the PTQ in Brighton today but ultimately decided against it. I’d have loved to play again today, but quite honestly last night showed me what happens when I go in nervous and unprepared (I had not tested the deck I built at all), so I need to start testing the format and build up a bit of confidence before I tackle something like that. Besides, it gives me some time to get my hands on 2 more Ajani Goldmane and 3 more Windbrisk Heights for the Kithkin deck.
Maybe next week I’ll try to drag someone with me.
I have many things that I need to do in the next 24 hours. Unfortunately, unlike Jack Bauer, none of them are interesting on the “international incident” level, but each one will hopefully get me a little further along than where I am. As it stands right now, I need to tweak my resume slightly to make myself more attractive for a certain position (and this is coming from the people who’re hiring to fill it; no idea how to take that). I also need to get some samples together for another potential gig. Finally, I need to give up a $14,000 bank cheque (yeah, I spell it like the English) as part of our P&S agreement.
If I had a fancy “9:49pm” graphic where the seconds ticked down with that cool “beep boop” noise, I’d insert that here. I don’t, so you’ll have to imagine your own.
And also, I’m incredibly happy that the only Faerie deck to make into the PT Hollywood top 8 was sent packing. 25% of the field. One guy in the top 8. Best deck in the format? Eh, not so much anymore. I’m debating whether I should take down that silly little page I have listing what I do and don’t have. Maybe focus my efforts on B/G elves instead (for all those FNM’s I never play in).
In completely unrelated news, I might be addicted to Vitamin Water. Vanessa and became Costco members over the weekend, and I had to indulge with a 20-pack. Great stuff, seriously. I’m not one for water normally, because I think it tastes like nothing, so this is nice way to convince myself to drink something better for me than soda.
I’m at home today instead of being at work. The reason? I’m blaming dehydration. See, ever since my grandfather passed away last October (the week before my wedding, no less), my dad and I have been spending more time together and communicating much more frequently than we used to. I’m not going to lie, I really like it and I’m pretty sure he does, too. The reason that I mention this is that he’s working on restoring his house, which was originally built in 1901, and as part of that he’s planning on added a 3-season sitting room to it. In order to build that room, we first have to tear down a part of the house that was added back when the previous owner had turned it into apartments. (He bought it in 93 or 94, and has spent the last 15 years converting the MASSIVE house back into it’s original condition)
We started yesterday and it was nothing like what I was expecting. First, let me get this off my chest, ripping up tongue-and-groove floor boards SUCKS. Especially ripping up the first few. After that, it’s not so bad, but still not fun. There’s also the whole “working out in the sun all day and not drinking any water until I was thirsty” thing. This was dumb. I was taking in fluids, but apparently not enough.
I’m paying for it today. My back is sore, my legs are sore, and somebody call a priest, because I’m more or less married to the bathroom. Not quite how I wanted my week to start.
Last week I was listening to the Opie and Anthony show on XM. It was getting close to 5pm, and they were replaying the morning show from that day. For those who don’t know, O&A broadcast in syndication on regular radio from 6-9am every weekday, then from 9-11am on XM Satellite Radio. If you’re listening on satellite, the FM broadcast is played there live also. The whole thing is then replayed at 3pm after Ron and Fez.
So yeah, the point of this is that they had William Shatner as a call-in guest during the FM show, and he was there to promote his new book, “Up Until Now”. I still need to go get my copy, but this past week has been overwhelming with new house prep so I haven’t had the chance yet. Now, in the nerd pantheon of cool celebs, Bill Shatner ranks somewhere up there near the top with Gary Gygax, Richard Garfield, Stan Lee, and Boba Fett. Why Shatner is so great is in no small part due to him knowing that he’s a god in the nerd subculture, but at the same time realizing how silly the whole thing is. That, and he does a pretty good rendition of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
Seriously, it’ll change your fucking life.
And as if this entry couldn’t get any stranger, I want to take a minute to get down my thoughts on something that seems to be running rampant in pro wrestling today: the heel general manager. WWE has three shows, one for each “brand”. On Monday night there’s RAW, on Tuesday night there is ECW, and on Friday night there is Smackdown. The thing is, each of these shows is treated like it’s own in-character sub-company, so each one has it’s own general manager calling the shots. The problem is that each one of these shows has a general manager that’s a heel (wrestling slang for “bad guy”), every single one. I can understand having maybe one or two, but all three? Not only is that boring and unoriginal, it’s also kind of lazy. I feel like the writers were farting on their keyboards one day, pushed a little too hard, and shit all over the script. Not exactly a recipe for quality television.
At least Smackdown used to have Teddy Long, one of the only face (wrestling slang for “good guy”) GM’s in the history of ever, but now he’s been usurped by Vicki “Only Here Because My Husband’s Dead” Guerrero, and as of last Friday Teddy has gone and quit (in character, of course).
Oh, and we got the house on Jeffrey street. 
For those who’re interested in this sort of thing, I’ve added my own “need list” of sorts for MTG-related nonsense. It’s available by clicking in the upper right, if you happen to be reading this on the blog itself, and for all you RSS junkies, enjoy a freshly baked link, hot and delicious right from the oven:
http://technomicon.wordpress.com/magic-the-gathering-deck-needs/
I suppose, in a vacuum, that title should not be shouted from the hills with glorious triumphant… err… ness…? That said, I’m proud to announce it because I somehow managed to get a card I designed into an article on starcitygames.com which happened to be about (you guessed it) bad rares in Magic: The Gathering. If you’re interested in reading it, The Ferret did a pretty bang-up job of writing a few “bad rare” articles over the past few weeks, and included his own contest to see who could design the worst.
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/15764.html
I submitted “Combustion Chamber”, along with two other contenders: a red/blue enchantment that let you sacrifice a land to bounce a land, and an artifact that let you prevent damage at the trade-off of your opponent drawing cards. I thought them all awful at the time, but then I realized that the blue/red enchantment is actually quite good. You could steal lands with cards like Annex, and then sac them to bounce an opponent’s land, effectively setting them back two land drops. Coupled with Stone Rain’s, Boomerang’s, and some Wasteland-like effects and you could really mana-fuck your opponent.
Combustion Chamber
1BR
Enchantment
Black and red spells you play cost 1 less.
Whenever an opponent plays a spell, Combustion Chamber does 2 damage to you.
I did not win, and I’m okay with that, because quite frankly I mark out hard for this game, and just having my name and my card idea mentioned in the article are awesome. I tried to keep the card in flavor for the two colors it represents, with both having a history of fast mana effects, and both normally colors tending to have drawbacks for being aggressive. The flavor and the name for the card comes from the idea of a broken-down furnace, where energy is generated (in the form of mana) at the expense of polluting the environment around it (thus the damage-based drawback).
The other two cards I submitted are below, for the enjoyment of the two people who might be reading this.
Temporal Terraforming
UURR
Enchantment
Sacrifice an untapped land you control: Return target land to its owner’s hand.
Physician’s Diary
4
Artifact
X, tap (X cannot be more than 3): Prevent the next X damage that would be dealt to you from a single source; that source’s controller draws X cards.
Terraforming did not first have the “untapped” restriction. I thought that allowing players to tap the land first would make this playable, but that was before I remembered the U/R Magnivore deck that people used to play in Type2 when Kamigawa block and Ravnica block were legal. And in multiplayer games, with cards like Blatant Thievery running around, you could screw over EVERYONE in one shot. It would be awesome. Then they would kill you.
So that’s the end of today’s Magic discussion. I have more thoughts, but they’re on other things, and before I write them up I really need to eat. Haven’t had anything in 10 hours.
Tomorrow marks the first day in two months that I will be resuming the job I was hired to do. This is not to say that I have not been working for the last 8 weeks, because I have been (save for this past week when I did take a vacation to my sofa). During that time I spent 6 weeks as an escalation engineer, including a full week on-call during which I experienced 27 hours of broken database synchronization between Toronto and Germany. It was awesome, but not really.
The swing week was something that I’d been looking forward to since the start of the year, as it was a week devoted to personal development. I’ve been working on a GUI wrapper for one of our products most convoluted command-line tools (some functions take up to 20 parameters – TWENTY!) since January of 2007, and it has languished in “development hell” for the better part of 16 months. I now have a (mostly) working version, and hope that when I return to work tomorrow that my testers will have actually done something with it.
If anyone who might be interested in my programming skills happens to be reading this (HA!), then you should know that I had my own project manager, have setup my own defect/enhancement database, and even invested in a source control server (Subversion for the win!).
But yeah, tomorrow is back to the world of customer support, and I’m not looking forward to it, mostly because the past few weeks, having had the chance to do something different, were much more fun than the usual day. At any rate, I digress.
I changed up the layout of ye olde bloggings today, and swapped out the Necronomicon joke for something from one of my most favorite hobbies in the world, Magic: The Gathering. The phrase at the top, “Wield you heart and the world will tremble,” came from the flavor text of a card that I own exactly zero copies of, but that doesn’t stop the sentence from being awesome. Seriously, I might get it tattooed on myself in the near future along with the blue and black mana symbols.
…
How the hell did I ever swindle a girl into marrying me?
I could probably go into a multi-page diatribe about our first foray into the real estate market as first-time potential home buyers, but that’s a story for another time. Right now I have some emails to write.
I had honestly thought that I could make a suicide black-style deck for the new MTG standard environment, and that it might actually not suck. I assembled a build that I thought looked like it might have some game against the other decks in the environment, if for no other reason that the surprise factor. It’s always been a fun strategy, even if it’s not terribly successful, but the thought of playing undercosted critters (even if many do come with a drawback) and smacking my opponent in the head with discard is just to obnoxious to pass up.
So the first thing I did was assemble a stack of cards that I have which fit the bill:
Nether Traitor
Hypnotic Specter
Deepcavern Imp
Nightshade Stinger (don’t laugh, a 1/1 flyer for B is perfect in this archetype, even if he can’t block)
Dauthi Slayer (but shadow is even better)
Sangrophage (which might get cut, but I’ll go into detail later)
I coupled that with some Bad Moons, a few Tendrils of Corruption, and a some Nameless Inversions and set out into the Casual Decks room in MTGO. I was promptly decimated in 4 turns by mono-green treefolk.
Fucking TREEFOLK!
I even started with a hand that had 3 swamps, and the following spells:
Mirri the Cursed, Nightshade Stinger, Bad Moon, Sangrophage
I thought this was a solid hand, since it had my first three land drops, and 11 damage worth of creatures (including the enchantment boost) over three turns, and could have ended the game in 4 had I found another swamp. Unfortunately for me, my opponent neutralized my Stinger, blew up my Bad Moon, killed my Sangy, and then RAN ME THE FUCK OVER with a 9/9 trampler and two other dudes.
I’m not giving up hope. I want to make this work, but there are some pieces missing from the puzzle. I still need to get my hands on a few more pieces, not the least of which is a set of Thoughtseize. They’re infinitely cheaper online (about $6 a whack), so I can get a playset of 4 for the price of ONE cardboard version, and of those I need 3 to round out the set. Let’s not even begin to discuss the ridiculousness that is Mutavaults, either. I pulled one from a physical Morningtide pack, and I think that’s the only one I’m going to have for a while, barring some miracle.
I think it’s also worth noting that the version I play online is strikingly different from the version I intend to start playing at FNM this week, and the reason for that is that with the exception of Thoughtseize and Vault (which are both going to have to wait), I have my pieces ready. Off the top of my head, I’m running…
1x Mutavault
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
20x Swamp
4x Nightshade Stinger
3x Nether Traitor (couldn’t get these online)
4x Hypnotic Specter
4x Sangrophage
4x Stromgald Crusader
4x Dauthi Slayer
2x Tombstalker
2x Korlash, Heir to Blackblade (only have 2 real ones; don’t have any online yet)
3x Bad Moon
4x Nameless Inversion
4x Tendrils of Corruption
And in the board…
3x Pithing Needle (which will always name Mirror Entity)
3x Deathmark
2x Extirpate
3x Mirri the Cursed (Faeries be damned!)
4x Slaughter Pact
I might be crazy in thinking that this idea won’t suck. I might be close to a decent build, with only a few bits missing. I might get rid of the Sangrophages, because he’s not nearly as good as Carnophage (that 1 extra mana, 1extra damage you take, and one extra turn you need to wait to start attacking is not justified by a 3/3 body).
Maybe this Friday will see some different results, but if getting croaked by random treefolk is any indicator, this could hurt. Badly.
There are some cards that this deck screams for that I just don’t have yet, in no particular order those are…
Thoughtseize
Profane Command
Pendelhaven
Mutavault
You could also make a strong case for Bitterblossom, which is like Sarcomancy, only infinitely better. Seriously. The deck is also in dire need of a drawing agent, but I’m not quite sure what that could be. Graveborn muse is appealing, but because the only other zombie the deck currently runs is Sangrophage, and that might get cut, I’m not sold on the idea. There’s also the problem of the Muse being a creature, and much easier to deal with, though Dark Confidant is also a creature, but that doesn’t stop people from running him. I’d really like something along the lines of Night’s Whisper, but since that isn’t happening anytime soon, we’ll have to make do with what we have.
This deck needs a lot of work, but design is always iterative, so I expect nothing less. I suppose I’ll just have to see how it actually plays out against actual opponents before going through the next iteration.
If there was ever any doubt as to the kind of a nerd I am, and how much pride I take in my nerdly exploits, allow me to share with you this story.
I, an avid Magic: The Gathering player, have a forum account on StarCityGames.com. I post there as “Violent Jesus”. In a recent response thread to an article about building up a solid collection of commons, uncommons, and even the occasional rare from preconstructed decks (precons). One of the forum respondents made a post concerning the price of some of the older precons, which include the phrase:
“Nope. That’s no typo. That’s exactly what I mean…”
I could not contain myself. I grabbed the “That’s no typo”, slammed it between a pair of [quote]…[/quote] tags, and crafted a simple, one-line response.
“It’s a space station.”
It’s scary how proud I am of this response. Seriously.
For those of you who weren’t immediately floored with riotous laughter, allow papa-bear to explain. In addition to being an MTG nerd, I grew up a raging Star Wars nerd. As such, I have committed the majority of original (as in before Lucas decided that we needed to digitally warp a classic) dialogue to memory. This includes a somewhat notable line spoken by Obi-Wan Kenobi shortly after having escaped from Mos Eisley on the Millennium Falcon. As they approach the Death Star for the first time, he corrects a statement made by Han Solo with the following:
“That’s no moon; it’s a space station.”
And now you truly understand the depths of my nerdiness. It’s amazing I convinced a girl to marry me.
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