Interview with Ghave.

Posted on January 25, 2012 by scimon

“Hi there sports fans, this is Dan Kretinsky here on Commander beat. We’re all waiting for the new recruits from the plane of Innistrad to join up for this seasons Commander games and today we have a special interview with that fan favourite Ghave known as the ‘Guru of Spores’”

“Ommmmm”

“Ghave? It’s Dan Kretinsky here, I was hoping you could give us a few words on Innistrad”

“Ommmmm…. Sorry Daniel, I did not see you there. I was busy meditating on the nature of Fecundity.” *Plop*

“Arrgh! Your arm just dropped off! And it grown eyes! And it’s waving at me!”

“Oh yes, they do that. It’s a Saproling, I think I will call it Bob. Say ‘Hello’ Bob.”

“Hi everybody!” *Chomp*

“You just ate him!”

“Yes? They are very tasty. Anyway, I told him to say ‘Hello’, you just cannot get the help these days. So, Innistrad? Hmmmm. Yes, there are a few things I hope to recruit from that benighted plane.”

“It is rather overrun with the Undead yes…”

“Undead? It is covered in Humans, pesky creatures, always chopping down trees and such like. No sense of balance with nature that is there problem. Come to think of it you look a bit human Dan.”

*Gulp* “Well moving on… you had some recruits in mind.”

“Oh yes. Well I think the Requiem Angel will suit my squad quite well. You may have noticed we get through Saprolings rather quickly. And I am a big fan of recycling, so being able to bring them back after I have eaten them will be very useful.”

“You do seem a little low on flying squad members.”

“Well yes, though the Aquastrand Spider is still doing a wonderful job. So who else? Ah yes, that scamp Geralf has done me two good turns. Not only did he kill that annoying human Mikaeus, who is much more useful as a zombie, but his messenger will make a wonderful addition to the squad.”

“Aren’t you worried he’s going to be a bit hard to get on side.”

“Not particularly, I find if you have a big enough wall of Saprolings you have time to do anything. Now, let it not be said that I am speciesist. I may find space in my team for a Human. There is one in particular, a guard who works at midnight. I have high hopes for him.”

“So all in all you think you’ll get some good things from the recent turmoil in Innistrad?”

“Oh yes, of course the biggest problem is going to be deciding who to cut from the team. Though I am rather hungry so I am sure it will be easy to make some room. Are you sure you are not Human Dan?”

“Arrrrgh!”

*Chomp*

Curses!

Posted on January 24, 2012 by scimon

Wait I said what? That I’d write more here? Wow. Ok well how’s this for an idea, I’ll start writing stuff about my rekindled playing of Magic? No? Well that’s alright my imaginary reader, was you’re real anyway it’s all good. As for my other imaginary reader who thinks reading deck design ideas from a gibbering moron is great, you go right ahead.

Curse of MisfortuneAnyway, Dark Ascension is almost upon us and the whole spoiler list is out. As is my wont I took a look over it to see what improbable deck ideas I could tease out of it. I am (I think, ah self knowledge where are though) what in magic terms you’d call a Johnny, I like taking the weirder cards and pushing the envelope with them.

When I saw Curse of Misfortune I thought, “That looks interesting” combined with Curse of Thirst and you have damage per turn. Those two together and you’re doing 2 damage a turn, but what if you add some more? With the addition of Dark Ascension you have 11 curses altogether including the quite fun Curse of Bloodletting that doubles the damage from your Curse of Thirst. So that was my first thought, put at least one copy of each Curse into the deck. My second thought was to not put Curse of the Nightly Hunt in the last thing you want is to force people to hit you. This does make the deck 4 colour but actually you’re only really interested in Black, if you draw any of the other curses you really want some way of getting them back into your deck. Plus you want to be able to stay alive long enough to start the cursing.

Well my first thought for this was Elixir of Immortality combining life gain with deck cycling to hold off your opponents while you get ready. Of course you have to get the Curses in the graveyard and blockers would always be good. Zombie Infestation lets you discard your Curses to get Zombie blockers so that seems like a good plan. Bloodline Keeper helps with blocking too by covering the air with lots of little Vampire. A few One-Eyed Scarecrow’s pull double duty blocking on the ground and shrinking flyers.

Now I could have gone with a mono black deck but a bit of targeted removal seemed nice and two of the curses (Curse of the Pierced Heart and Curse of Bloodletting) fit the theme of the deck by using Curses to kill people and red does have some fun removal available. So add a bit of red and pop in some Brimstone Volleys and Bob is you proverbial Uncle. Top this off with some tutoring and card draw and we have the first draft of the deck idea. Now to build it and see how it does….. dying horribly seems likely.

  • 4 Curse of Misfortunes
  • 2 Curse of Thirst
  • 1 Curse of Exhaustion
  • 1 Curse of Echoes
  • 2 Curse of Bloodletting
  • 1 Curse of Death’s Hold
  • 1 Curse of Oblivion
  • 1 Curse of Stalked Prey
  • 1 Curse of the Bloody Tome
  • 1 Curse of the Nightly Hunt
  • 2 Curse of the Pierced Heart
  • 4 Elixir of Immortality
  • 2 Zombie Infestation
  • 2 Diabolic Tutor
  • 2 Bloodline Keeper
  • 3 One-Eyed Scarecrow
  • 2 Bloodgift Demon
  • 4 Brimstone Volley
  • 4 Dragonskull Summit
  • 11 Swamp
  • 7 Mountain
  • 2 Shimmering Grotto

Here comes the new year

Posted on December 24, 2011 by scimon

It’s Christmas eve and then it’s the new year. A new year where I resolve to write more often. I used to very much enjoy writing my thoughts and feelings here and in all the varied versions of this blog. But it annoyed my wife and so I stopped.

But as many of you (who am I kidding about people reading this) know we split up and I am now trying to reassess and turn over new leaves and all that.

And so one of these will be to get back into regular writing. And so here as I sit watching Christmas TV I say that I shall write more this year. Keep your eye out and all that.

Now I return you to your scheduled programming. Have a great holiday, see you soon.

Magic : Why I don’t use proxies

Posted on November 16, 2011 by scimon

Hey look. A blog post. I’m in shock. How about you?

Over the years I’ve played a number of CCG’s. I enjoy the whole deck creation and then see what other people come up with aspects of it. I started with Magic and since then have been into Legend of the Five Rings, Deadlands Doomtown, Dredd the CCG, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft and back again to Magic. In all that time I’ve stuck to a few rules when building decks.

  • Make it as small as possible.
  • Themes are fun and synegry is great.
  • Don’t use proxies

The first rule is simple, if you break it then you might as well play all your cards in a huge pile and randomly pick from it. Sure it’s only 61 cards because you really need that one extra card and there’s nothing you can cut. Next thing you know it’s an 80 card deck that never works. Sure it’s got fun combos buried in it but you’ll never pull them off.

The second is more a personal thing, I’d prefer to play and lose with a deck I came up with than win with a deck I copied off the internet. I’ve broken at least one card game doing that which was a shame but there you go. Seriously, if you played City of Heroes and you couldn’t beat Rochefort you were in serious trouble.

And then there are proxies, I understand why people use them but I don’t. And this morning I think I realized why. You put proxies in a deck for two reasons, either you have the card but it’s in another deck (this I might do, I’d be more likely to put in a reminder on what deck it’s in), or because you don’t have the card and you’re testing a new deck. The thing is, in this case to card may well be rather expensive. Like, Snapcaster Mage this chap sells for £30 (or £60 if it’s foil…). So lets say I make a deck with 4 snapcasters in and it does well and I decide I’m going to try using it in the big leagues. Of course when I was testing the deck 3 of them were foils so now I have this perfect jewel that’s only going to cost me £90 to build (yes I have 1, no you can’t have it). And I know what I’ll be like, I’ll give in and spend the money.

Which right now I can’t afford. Ho hum.

And also, constraints are good. Without constraints designs get stale or impossible. If you’ve only got one of a card you need to work round this, or come up with a new plan.

So there you go, why I don’t use proxies. Feel free to use them yourself when playing games with me, but one thing I do ask. Can you please make them legible? Pretty please with sugar on top?

Story : Tattoo

Posted on July 22, 2011 by scimon

For your delectation

Did I ever tell you about my tattoo?
You’ve got a tattoo? Where? I mean, I thought I’d seen all of you.
Heh. Yeah… well it was a few years ago. While I was in Chile.
Right, I remember you were gone for months.
What can I say? Work sucks sometimes. Anyway I thought I’d get a tattoo.
Where?
I’m coming to that. See I wanted something different.
Right.
So I thought, I’ll get my head shaved an have a tattoo of an X put on top saying ‘In case of emergency drill here’
… On the top of your head?
Yup.
But you’d have to keep your head shaved and it’s almost shoulder length.
I didn’t want people to see it.
Has anyone ever told you you’re nuts?
That’s why you love me.
Good point. Ok so you got that tattooed on your head then?
Ah well, this is where is gets weird.
Weirder than getting your head tattooed under your hair?
Yup. See I shaved me head in preparation…
And?
It was already there.
What?
The exact tattoo, it was already on my head. And it’s not stretched so it must have been put there when I was an adult.
But you don’t remember it being done?
Nope.
Ok… more beer?
Please.

Blocked

Posted on July 7, 2011 by scimon

So, what with one thing or another I’ve not written here in a while. This is partly because I tend to randomly spew a lot of my mind onto Twitter and from there to Facebook, and at some point to Google+ (very possibly getting rid of the other two.

I do plan on doing some more writing soon though and some of it will be at Ficly the successor to Ficlets, where I wrote a load of stuff a few years ago. stuff that can be perused here. I seemed to have a whole genetically enhanced animals thing going on. And the Googe? I think I had a plan there, wish I could remember it.

Enjoy. Have fun and all that.

Short pimpage post

Posted on July 1, 2011 by scimon

More soon but here’s a quick post Iain Lowson who’s a great chap recently released Dark Harvest : The Legacy of Frankenstian and has been running a couple of Competions, one to win a signed copy of the book (which is great) and another to design a character to win a signed sketch of them.

Both competitions are ending soon so if you want free stuff now is the time to get entries in. I’m always a fan of free stuff.

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Short sharp shock

Posted on June 11, 2011 by scimon

Ok. I’m a bit hungover, and I’ve been hinting at stuff for a week now. For those of you who don’t know, Polli and I have split up. She’s in the process of moving stuff to her new flat.

Not much more to say really.

Thoughts on ID Cards

Posted on June 1, 2011 by scimon

Last week this article about the new Coalition ID Card scheme was pointed out to me. I went to read it in a rage that calmed down somewhat. As it was mentioned again on Twitter this morning, along with jibes at the Lib Dems I’m going to quickly note down my thoughts and why I’m less angry about it. First reason is this new scheme is aimed at online logins, it’s not an ID card you have to carry. Also the idea is that you sign up with an ID provider who verifies your ID and passed this verification to various websites, there isn’t a single point of verification but a selection to choose from. And chances are you’ve already signed up with one one of them as they are punting this to banks and credit card providers who have a vested interest in verifying your ID. Final point of difference, there is no central government database holding all your identity details. This was the main thing about the previous scheme that annoyed me, from both a civil liberties and technical perspective. Even if this was a full ID card scheme if it didn’t include said database I’d be less resistant to it.

Hope that helps.

On forums

Posted on May 11, 2011 by scimon

Here’s a little thought, I was going to tweet it but it’s a bit too big for that. See here’s the thing, I understand when you’re on a chat system or IM you type fast and don’t worry too much about grammar and stuff. And again, when you’re using Twitter or texting you’re constrained for space and need to shorten things.

But why, oh why, do people write so god damm badly when posting on web forums or comments or such like? There’s really no need. It just makes you look like a gibbering moron.

Oh wait….