Magic: The Gathering – Page 28

I’m Thankful for All of You Readers

Hunting Moa — What I'm having for Thanksgiving

This week in the United States, there is a Federal Holiday called “Thanksgiving.” And on this holiday, you gather with your family and “give thanks” to all the blessing you have in your life. Due to this holiday, there will be much more eating of turkey and being with family. It also means some time off and being awesome.

I’ve been really busy with life lately and I haven’t been keeping up regularly with the posts. In case you haven’t noticed here on this blog, I don’t have any ads, and I don’t have premium content (Thanks Star City!), so everything I put into this blog is my own free time and my own effort. So, while I love to read and write and design Magic, paying the bills and spending time with my wife comes first (those without a wife, I guess you don’t understand). Most of the blog posts that go up tend to be written within a day or two of being published. If I’ve been busy at work, or sick, I don’t have anything in reserve. This is not really professional nor smart if I want to keep putting out content for you to enjoy (and looking at my numbers, quite a few of you do read my work rather then google a word and get here by accident).

So, what does this mean? Does this mean I’m leaving? No, not at all. It’s because of feedback from you and your support (moral, not financial) that I continue to write this blog. My blog niche is not something that is highly sought after; reading about the newest Type 2 tech is in more demand then reading why Legends have gotten better in the past few years. The EDH Blog (I Got 99 Problems But a General Ain’t One), is getting tons of EDH traffic, and in due time I suspect it to get more traffic then this one. But here I do my jokes and talk about Magic design, something that my friends and other Magic players know I’m passionate about. Continue reading “I’m Thankful for All of You Readers”

Magic Cinema – Aarongarry Aaron Ross

Welcome to the next in the Magic Cinema series. Tonight’s feature will include the movie scene that a majority of you might have seen on YouTube, but haven’t even seen the whole movie. That’s ok, we live in a world where all you need to see about a movie can be summed up in one scene.

This movie is a little closer to my heart since in a round about way, this is kinda what I do for a living (you know, when I’m not writing Magic blogs): real estate. When I tell people I work in real estate, they always ask about this movie and ask if it’s like that. I say “Oh yes, exactly like that, especially now with the economy the way it is,” except I swear every other word because everyone does that in real estate according to writer David Mamet. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, this is a NSFW post for language. Some people get offended by it, but this is too good of a scene not to parody.

If you can’t see the actor’s names on the poster, let me tell them to you: Al Pachino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey. If you’ve heard of any of those actors, you need to see this movie. This all when they were in their prime, and some have said this has been Alec Baldwin’s best performance (Though I’ve always loved his comedic performances). If you haven’t seen this movie, it’s worth a shot.

Anyway, let’s get to it.

Aarongarry Aaron Ross

A little known fact about Wizards of the Coast is that not all of their card designs come from “The Pit” (A collection of Magic R&D, Design, and other Magic related employees), but are outsourced to various design houses in the Seattle area. Within these offices, people sit at decks like a normal job and try and create cards on commission to be released in the new sets. Most of the time it’s older men who used to be in gaming, such as the guy who created Boggle and invented the joystick, who do the designing.

At one of the offices, the cards have been slowly trickling down both in quality and quantity (the only card of theirs that made it into Zendikar was Mindless Null). This has been happening for the past few sets so Wizards decided to send someone down to talk to them: Aaron Forsythe, Director of R&D (@mtgaaron). So on a regular rainy night in Seattle, the office manager, Randy Buehler (@rbuehler) calls a staff meeting so that Aaron can speak to them.

INT – DESIGN OFFICE – NIGHT

The rain slams against the windows as the employees shake off their umbrellas and rain coats. AARON is standing at the front of the office wearing a nice suit and tie talking to RANDY. The old men, BEN, BLAKE and JASON start to get comfortable in their seats. AARON stands up and opens his suitcase towards him and walks over to the blackboard on the side of the room. During his speech, he wonders back and forth across the front of the room with his hands in his pockets.

AARON
Let me have your attention for a moment! So you’re talking about what? You’re talking about…
(beat)
…bitching about that card you shot, somebody that doesn’t want what you’re creating, some broad you’re trying to screw and so forth. Let’s talk about something important.
(To Randy)
Are they all here?

RANDY
All but one.

AARON
(To Randy)
Well, I’m going anyway.

BEN stands up from his desk and walks to the back of the room to the coffee maker. He starts to pour himself some of the leftover “rocket fuel” coffee that was brewed this morning.

AARON
(continuing)
Let’s talk about something important!
(To Ben, sternly)
Put that coffee down!

BEN stops mid-pour and looks at AARON confused. AARON strolls between the desks toward BEN.

AARON
(continuing)
Coffee’s for designers only. Continue reading “Magic Cinema – Aarongarry Aaron Ross”

Monthly Mailbag – Leave MaRo Alone!

You are lucky he even designs cards for you!

Not only am I launching a new blog about EDH (I’ve Got 99 Problems But a General Isn’t One), but it’s mailbag time! That’s right, I sometimes get real questions from real people and give you real answers. I ask my twitter followers for questions about Magic and they sometimes deliver. Let’s get to them.

Why do you hate MaRo so much? It seems like every few posts that you talk about him, you’re always bashing him and making fun of him or things like that. What did he ever do to you?

Short answer: I do not hate Mark Rosewater.

Long answer: It’s funny when you read online and assume that everyone hates each other. Like the tabloids do every day, they photoshop and make stuff up to sell magazines. Let me hip you guys on a little secret: people love conflict. That’s why they watch Lord of the Rings, or Grey’s Anatomy, or other movies/shows/stories (Honestly, the only time you’ll see Grey’s Anatomy on this site). People don’t read X-Men because Magneto and Professor X get along, they read it because of the struggles and the fights they get to. See: Family Guy’s parody of “The Even Couple” (Good luck finding it, I wasn’t able to).

So, while it seems like I’m hating on him, that’s not the case. By “fighting” when I’m trying to make a point, makes for a much more interested read. Do I worship the ground he walks on? No, because he levitates. There are things that I don’t like WotC doing from time to time but, and here’s the thing you have to remember, I understand it. I understand why Lotus Cobra is Mythic, I understand why Allies are the way they are, I understand why online has PTQ’s. Do I like any of those choices? No, but I get why they do it. Continue reading “Monthly Mailbag – Leave MaRo Alone!”

I’ll Never Let Go, Jack – Saying Goodbye to a Format

Frozen Solid — A Titanic reference, always relevant

Half of you reading the title and seeing the card to the right has a terrible song stuck in their head and for that I really, really apologize. But what bothered me from this movie is that while he was being a gentlemen and letting her stay “dry,” body heat helps both of them keep warm and it would’ve helped them both to be on the door together. I guess I’m still just upset that my mom ruined the movie when I told her I was going to see it. “And the end, the boat sinks,” she said. Oh, Spoiler alert. Sorry.

What I’m talking about today is something that at sometime or another we have experienced at one time or another: people stop playing what you like to play. Some of you used to play the old Decipher Star Wars TCG (or even WotC’s version), or Lord of the Rings, or Heroclix; those games have died out, but if your friends have the cards/clix, you can still play them. What I’m talking about is a little different as it deals strictly with Magic.

Since I’m starting my new EDH blog (I Got 99 Problems But a General Ain’t One) next week, I looked at my EDH decks to give me ideas what I could talk about. While going through my cards, I found my 150 Highlander deck. It was a deck that I used to carry around with me everywhere I went, people were playing 150 at pre-releases, and I was trying to get players at my store to play it. Heck, I even wrote an article on MTGSalvation on the format (you think I use alot of links now?). Problem was, I hadn’t used that deck in over a year. I kept getting cool foils for it, but there was no one around playing 150 Highlander. After I started playing EDH, it seemed like most people wanted to play that instead.

So, what happened? Honestly, nothing. And that’s the problem. Continue reading “I’ll Never Let Go, Jack – Saying Goodbye to a Format”

Design Class – Lonely Legends

http://wp.me/p5VSx-pf

If I’m such a legend, then why am I so lonely? Let me tell you, legends are all very well if you’ve got somebody around who loves you.
– Judy Garland

One of the largest growing formats in Magic is the much loved (Especially by me) Elder Dragon Highlander. If you haven’t played this format, I would highly suggest it. Not only does it reward deck building skills and creativity, I have met very few people who dislike it (and most of them are Spikes who play the usual 40/60 card decks).

If you’ve only heard about EDH and want to know how to build a deck, read this article here from the creator of the format, Sheldon Menery. He talks about some of the things you should look for when creating your deck. My advice? Well, sometime we’ll get around to that. Today, instead let’s look at the most important piece in EDH, your General.

If you don’t know, you start with a Legendary creature (General) in the Command Zone (a zone created in Planechase just for this) that you can play at any time you normally could. Your 100 card deck (including General) can only have one copy of a card (excluding basic land); hence Highlander (There can be only one!). The cards in your deck can only be the same color as your General, you lands can only produce mana of your general and text boxes can’t have off-color mana symbols as well (A deck with Rafiq of the Many as the General cannot have Ethersworn Adjudicator because of the Black mana symbol).

All of this is very flavorful and makes perfect sense; if you have a legendary creature (One who is named and supposedly powerful) leading your army (hence the General), they would only want to have their support be by cards with the same philosophies in the Color Pie. It’s a very flavorful format and with all of the things you can do with it, very customizable as well.

Back to the Legendary creatures themselves. If you didn’t notice recently, Wizards has officially adopted EDH as a format, but let the Banned list still be effected by the “Elder Dragons.” In the most recent developer’s chat I even asked the question if Wizards designs Legendary creatures with EDH in mind. Guess what, they do (At least Ken Nagle (@norrYtt) does). But that doesn’t always seem to have been the case. Continue reading “Design Class – Lonely Legends”