MTG Color Pie

Inside a Johnny’s Mind – Sygg EDH

Sygg-Guest — Your work is like poetry...

Whenever someone asks me to explain Magic I tell them it’s like Chess with cards, but like Mousetrap, where it’s a puzzle and not everyone has the same pieces as you. After I show them a couple of cards and how they work off of each other, then they understand it.

But not everyone’s mind works the same way as mine, the world would be really scary. Everyone’s mind works differently at the game of Magic, which is why it’s so many thing to so many people. I am a Johnny/Spike/Melvin meaning I like opened ended good cards that make sense flavorly. Cards I like are: Undead Gladiator, Eternal Witness, Oblivion Ring, etc.

How does that relate to designing cards? Imagine what most of my card designs are: Opened ended good cards that make sense flavorly. People design what they know and love. You get a player who is a Timmy profile and they’ll design Timmy type cards. Keep this in mind when you’re designing a set, not everyone loves big creatures and not everyone loves proficient spells, you need to have a wide variety to make it a really good set (which is why I personally believe that once person can’t design a whole set and make it work beautifully. But that’s another topic for another post).

So, while putting together a new EDH deck, I noticed that most of the parts were interconnected in one way or another. Does that mean that every deck should have such synergies? No, but it amazed me how alot of the deck works together. This is just to give you non-Johnny’s what someone with this frame of mind thinks when they put together a deck. If you don’t know how EDH works, then please read this and come back. Continue reading “Inside a Johnny’s Mind – Sygg EDH”

Follow Me at PAX, The Day After

The pic that changed the world — The pic that changed the Magic world

My experiment was a success for the most part. See the pic to the right? I took that from my phone (hence the quality of the pic (there was a light right below it shining up)) and twitpiced it. People who were following me on Twitter, found out first besides the party participants, that there would be Enemy Duel Sac Lands in Zendikar. Evan Erwin (The Magic Show) took the photo and put it on the “rumor site” and the place went nuts from what I saw in the aftermath. Lesson?

Follow me on Twitter.

I don’t want to bore you with some of the details when I was at PAX (played some cards, won and lost some games) but I do want to say a couple things about my experience that Wizards did, good and bad.

The “Planeswalker Challenge”
This is what you had to do to get into the party. Five challenges for five colors. Get a stamp of each color to get in.

Red – A mat that looked like fire and you had to put your hands on it where warm stones would reveal a word. The password is “FLASH”

Black – You were handed a card that says a mythical creature and supposed to dig through a chest and find the pieces to make that creature. Mine was Vampire! (Bat+Human).

White – Four jumbled words with art of them. Unjumble 3 out of the 4 pictures to get your stamp. All were angels. (The arts were Angel of Mercy (Xth), Angel of Retribution, Angel of Salvation, and one I couldn’t identify and can’t find online. Does that mean new angel, I don’t know. I didn’t unscramble the name so I couldn’t tell you that.)

Blue – In an actual pool, identify two toy sharks that were exactly the same (out of 50), including the way the sharks floated. I really don’t remember the answer.

Green – On a wall of 9 arts with P/T, switch three P/T to make the sum of each row the same power and the sum of all columns the same toughness. This was the longest one for me as somehow adding didn’t work for me that day.

Good – It got gamers to walk around the convention center. Walking is good. Though, I didn’t have a map with me so I got lost in the beginning (That place is huge). Apparently the organizers didn’t realize that players would naturally work together so they encouraged it after it started happening. See, gaming does make you want to help out other players (I can’t believe I’m linking to a Cracked.com article for support).

Bad – Not on this exercise. Some of the challenges were easy (Black) and some were hard (Green/Blue). But in all, it was a good time. Continue reading “Follow Me at PAX, The Day After”

Follow Me at PAX, Twitter Style

I’m going to PAX on Saturday. There, hopefully, I’ll find get all five quests to get into the Magic Party that night and get some spoilers that they will be releasing there. All good, right?

Right (What, no trick question there).

Here’s what I’m planning to happen. I’ll have my phone with me, but it isn’t one of those smart iphones (I’m with Verizon), and I’m not paying for a new phone until hopefully the Storm 2 comes out (My brother says it’s going to be awesome). So I can send text messages, and the camera on it isn’t exactly the best so I can’t upload good pics (I know, I’m living in 1990 with my Zach Morris phone).

So I can tweet from my phone, but I can’t exactly follow everyone on my phone and Twitter doesn’t have it set up where you send me an @mtgcolorpie, I can’t get it. But, I do have it set up to have it text me if you send me a Direct Message, I get it (But if you abuse the power it will be taken away i.e. don’t PM me constantly; be smart, not the internet.) I’ll tweet from PAX and sometimes ask questions if I run into some from WotC (I played against Aaron Forsythe last year (@mtgaaron)) and if I do that this year, I’ll tweet it and see if he’s up for a question or two.

When I get to the party and find the spoilers, I’ll be tweeting what I’m seeing as well including pics taken by my camera (which will go up later that night on this website.) If you want to tell your friends (or rumor websites) about what I’m doing, please do.

Good stuff. So, follow my twitter feed (twitter.com/mtgcolorpie) and about 10:30ish AM Pacific time, I’ll open it up and we’ll go from there.

First I want to do the scavanger hunt go get into the party, then hit the Wizards booth (I don’t have a Xbox 360, but I’ll see what I can tell you about the new Planeswalker game), then card time (Thumbs up).

If you’re at PAX as well and what to meet up, just send me a Direct Message (duh). I’ll also have name tages to give out as well.

Questions welcome and hopefully everything will go smoothly (and I have no reason why it should).

Magic Celebrity Commercial – If Someone Ever Tries to Kill You, You Try and Kill ’em Right Back

http://wp.me/p5VSx-gm

INT – WIZARDS OF THE COAST MEETING ROOM – MORNING

TIM and CARL are setting up their projector and laptop when three Wizards employees enter the room: PAUL, MARK ROSEWATER and RICHARD GARFIELD. Paul looks in amazement at the two men setting up.

PAUL
What in the world are you two guys doing here. I thought I kicked you out!

TIM
You did, but we were given another chance by Mr. Rosewater over there.

Paul and Richard look at Mark confused. Mark shrugs his shoulders.

MARK
What?

CUT TO:

INT – THE PIT – AFTERNOON

Mark is sitting at his desk in the pit on the phone with his feet on the desk.

MARK
You want to hear about that time I worked Roseanne? Alright, I can do that…

TITLE CARD
2 Hours Later

MARK
(cont’d)
To make a long story short, that’s when I discovered I should leave Hollywood and do something greater with my life. Say, you guys seem like a nice bunch and listening to me, why don’t you come in with a different pitch.

CUT TO:

INT – WIZARDS OF THE COAST MEETING ROOM – MORNING

The two men are finishing up their set up as the three men from Wizards sit at the opposite end.

PAUL
(Sighing)
Alright, what do you got?

TIM
I know that last commercial we showed you was a little too risky for American audiences.

CARL
But it test markets great over in Europe. Don’t ask me, it’s different standards about having violence and whatnot on their TV.

MARK
But we don’t want to have that commercial at all…

TIM
(Cutting him off)
Exactly, which is why we went ahead and filmed another commercial with another actor with tons and tons of Geek cred.

RICHARD
Why are you guys filming the commercials before we even approve them? That doesn’t make any sense, you’re throwing money out the window.

CARL
(Sarcastically)
Well, excuse me. What are you, some kind of doctor?

RICHARD
Why yes, I have a P.h.D. in Mathematics…

TIM
(Cutting him off)
Fascinating. Listen, you don’t understand how Hollywood works.

Mark raises his hand and smiles.

MARK
I do! Why, I even…

TIM
(Rolling his eyes)
We know we know. I mean, people make movies without approval or even scripts all the time. Look at G.I. Joe.

PAUL
G.I. Joe is owned by Hasbro.

CARL
You’re point being?

MARK
We’re owned by Hasbro.

TIM
Still not following you…

CARL
We’re getting off track. Anyway, this guy is a real geek icon and I think it would suit the Magic brand well if we had him on board. Without further ado, our new commercial.

Tim picks up the remote and hits play. Continue reading “Magic Celebrity Commercial – If Someone Ever Tries to Kill You, You Try and Kill ’em Right Back”

Monthly Mailbag – The Rotation is Here! Repent!

At least he's not worried about the sky falling...

Digging into my mailbag, I find two questions of interest. That’s just enough of what I have time for; how convenient.

Oh man, I’m scared of the rotation. We’re going to lose the Vivid Lands, Reflecting Pool, Cryptic Command, Figure of Destiny. All the decks are going to suck now. What in the world should I do?

I’m assuming this is the first time you’ve experienced a rotation since you started playing Magic more competitively. If not, shame on you, it always happens this time of year. There’s no need to run around with your head cut off.

Will the new decks suck because we’re losing so many staple cards from the sets? Most likely not. Remember, for something to rotate out, something gets to rotate in. Even though we finally lose that mega block LorMoor, doesn’t mean the game is going to suck. Magic is a fluid game where cards come and go, as they should be.

If you pick up a regular deck of playing cards, you know it never changes (you know, unless you lose a card and use the joker for something). Everyone expects the cards to be the same. Likewise in Chess or almost any other game out there. But what make Magic so different is the constant changing of the available pieces you have to play with. This is why Limited is so popular; you don’t know what you could open and get passed to you, making each time you sit down and play a different experience. Continue reading “Monthly Mailbag – The Rotation is Here! Repent!”