Category: Magic: The Gathering

Design Class – Gene Simmons Hates to Be Ignored

When he unmorphs, he parties all day

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Well, it finally happened.

If you’ve been paying attention to the GDS2, you’ll see that today Jonathon Loucks was eliminated. I’ve been pulling for the guy to succeed, but to tell you the truth, it wasn’t really a surprise that he was let go.

No, I haven’t done one of these goodbyes for each of the members of the Top 8, but I felt that when Jonathon was released I’d talk about the impact he’s hopefully made on budding designers.

I’ve met Jonathon a couple of times, so this is no way a bashing of him. He’s a nice, smart player, which is why he got this far. If he and I played Magic, he’d most likely beat me 9 out of 10 times (this isn’t to highlight how bad I am, just how good he is). And you can see that in his cards; it seems like everything he’s designed it’s taken to the next level. What Jonathon was doing was designing cards that he enjoys.

And that’s a bad thing.

Continue reading “Design Class – Gene Simmons Hates to Be Ignored”

Weekend Fun – Mark Rosewater Has Apparently Gone Insane

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Here’s the only GIF you ever need when talking about Magic. Just in time for the Mirrodin Besieged spoilers (as well as GDS2 fun as well)!

Save it, use it in forums, add it to your e-mails, or watch it anytime you need a pick me up. Quick access to the gif is right here: http://bit.ly/MaroInsane.

If you don’t know where this is from, enjoy!

Yes, the video is quite a bit cheesy, and they’re trying to bring back the puppet again. Oh, you don’t know the puppet WUBRG?

By no means are these spots that I’m saying everyone will laugh at; more groans then anything else and sometimes “I know people like that.” It’s an idea, and one that I hope continues to grow. They do show seeds of something’s there, but not there quite yet.

Yes, they’re meant to be educational about FNM’s and what they want to do with Mirrodin Besieged, but it doesn’t have the correct mixture of info and entertainment. The Puppet is not throwback/retro enough if he’s not being a typical MTG player (And that Puppet/Human relationship reference is just a little creepy).

Hopefully, I’ll get a little time and add in my 2 cents about a whole campaign about this in a future post.

In the mean time, enjoy the GIF. I’m sure Mr. Rosewater is going to hate me for this one for unleashing this animated goodness onto the internet (Good job on the acting, sir).

In a World Where Words Can Get You Killed…

There's a passage I got memorized: Ezekiel 25:17.

In a World Where Words Can Get You Killed…

I like to consider myself a writer. And, as a writer, I choose which words exit my fingers. Sometimes my brain thinks I’ve written the word that I thought of using there, but not all the time. I like to think of it as my fingers are stumbling to try and catch up to my thoughts. But most of the time, I believe that people tend to get the general idea of what I’m trying to say.

That leads us to the announcement from Monday: Wizards is printing Magic 2012. Shocking, I know (unless you haven’t played in a while, in which case Core Sets come out every year now). The biggest issue that people found interesting was the tagline:

Gather Your Allies

Now, if you have been paying attention to The Great Designer Search 2, you’ve noticed that all of the contestants have been forced to write loglines for their world. This is important, because it seems either the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing or it knows excatly.

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Design Class – All of These Things Are Just Like Each Other

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I have an unhealthy obsession with card cycles.

Like really, really bad.

For my GDS2 entry, four of the ten cards I submitted were part of cycles:


And since this week’s GDS2 contest dealt with cycles, I’d thought I’d talk about them. Seems logical, right?

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Ain’t No Sunshine

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Editor’s Note: While not my favorite version of this song, it’s close (Video here). If you’re going to perform a song like this, get emotional. If you’re singing about pain, show pain and make me feel it. I get goosebumps when an artist gets it right.

I know that some of you just read my blog, and while I’m appreciate, this isn’t the only thing I’ve been working on. Even though the last date on this blog has been a while ago, I haven’t abandoned it. In fact, I’ve been spreading out. Just a quick update of everything that’s been going on.

If you haven’t heard, I’m writing weekly on ManaNation.com about EDH, er Commander. You can find my work here. That partially explains why 99EDHProblems hasn’t been updated much recently (though it will be, some content is being generated there). If you haven’t read the news announcement of EDH a few weeks ago, you can read my analysis on ManaNation (here).

I also have started to write for the new Quiet Speculation as well. Over there hopefully I’ll be writing more than once a month, but currently that’s the schedule. I’ve been asked to write about more of the casual side of Magic, kind of what I do here from time to time in my culture pieces, so I’ll be focusing that type of writing over there. However, I’ve got an awesome idea for a project that I have to get cleared to write about on QS. If you’re curious about my first piece, it’s here: Gamers of a Certain Age (it fits along the mold of Middle Children of Magic).

Where do we go from here?

Continue reading “Ain’t No Sunshine”