So buy those, I guess.

New Jace and Halimar depths both looked interesting to me, but nothing showstopping. Filtering draws is great, but without a quality draw spell to take advantage of that filter, it’s just lost tempo while you get bashed away on.

In my boredom, you see, I had somehow missed Treasure Hunt.

Treasure Hunt- Sorcery 1U- Reveal Cards from the top of your library until you reveal a non-land card. Put all cards revealed this way into your hand.

Holy bananas. And it’s common. Of course, Jace isn’t, and the two are really a package, but more on that in a moment.

Okay, so treasure hunt. Worst case scenario first, since this is magic and thing always go wrong. The spell as is at least replaces itself, that is, if you reveal a spell right away. Okay. So it’s a cantrip, but it’s a cantrip that is GUARANTEED to draw a business card. That is interesting. Now if you’re digging looking for lands, obviously that’s a rough tickle, but most of the time you are happy to draw spells, especially late game when you really need your draw spells to deliver.
If it’s a land on top, then you’ve at the very least just cast divination for one mana less. You miser.
If it’s two lands on top, you’re paying two mana for three cards. That’s some good.
If it’s three or more lands on top, you’re basically cheating.

Now, keep in mind that treasure hunt will never draw you multiple spells. Ever. Of course, when your lands are magic spooky zenidkar lands that do stuff, you might be pretty happy to draw just lands. The implications for legacy where people can play 40+ land combo decks are staggering. Just draw 17 cards first turn. I’m assuming you can assemble your voltron off of that, ya? And I mulled to five! LoLz

In standard (and probably in extended, although there are a few other ways to abuse the card in that larger card pool) Treasure Hunt is most often going to be high fiving with the new Jace, Jace the Mindsculptor, and his brainstorm-esque 0 ability. Draw three with jace, then put two lands on top of your deck. Treasure Hunt. Oh goodness, you just drew at least 7 cards this turn, with a net of 4 cards up (3 if you cast Jace this turn as well). Next turn you can do the same if Jace finds you another Treasure Hunt (pretty likely when you’re digging through your deck at a rate of 7 cards a turn). That’s the kind of card draw people had back in sets with “Urza” in the name.

Yes, it requires the investment of a planeswalker and a sorcery to really get that kind of draw going, but the engine produces so much raw card advantage that if you plan to play with Islands in the next little bit and you have the space, you should really be starting your decklists with 3-4x Treasure Hunt and 2-4x Jace.

Islands? Bah. Forget Islands. What about Halimar Depths, the “boring” blue land from this set? Set up a draw 3 for 2 mana on turn two. For free. Just by playing lands like you were going to do anyway. Seems fine.

Yes, noticing my error and noticing Treasure Hunt has turned me around on this set a bit. It is still by and large a pretty boring set, but there are definately some high points for me now. And I’ll certainly buy a box now to get playsets of the exciting commons/uncommons. Maybe I’ll pull a Jace. That’ll be one less to buy online. I don’t generally play a lot of blue, but I haven’t seen draw this good since like…fact or fiction? Nuts.

Special Bonus Section: Tuning Bant.

Okay so Bant Fish has been pretty successful so far, testing very well against Jund, Boros, and Junk. It even matched favourably against Adam’s U/W control, which I expected to be a dog in. Negate was KEY against him though, and it’s less good against most everything else, so I’m not sure what that testing means.

Here is the deck

4x Misty Rainforest
4x Glacial Fortress
4x Sunpetal Grove
3x Seaside Citadel
3x Forest
3x Island
3x Plains

4x Noble Hierarch
4x Elvish Visionary
4x Rhox Warmonk
3x Nulltread Gargantuan
4x Baneslayer Angel
2x Sphinx of Jwar Isle
1x Sphinx of Lost Truths

4x Path to Exile
4x Bant Charm
2x Negate
3x Vines of Vastwood
1x Mind Spring

The make dudes, protect dudes, smash plan seems good. All the lifelink and speed off of hierarchs, etc gives the deck crazy staying power. In one game Bret had taken an early lead and bashed me down to 7. I went on to win the game with a life total over 30, and was just cards and cards on top of him from Mind Spring and Sphinx.
Nulltread was good, but did provide one awkward situation where I had two in hand and no other creature. Oops! I want to cut one to make this less likely, but I don’t want to suffer from a derth of threats. Enter Rafiq. I really want to run two Rafiq. When you take him away from that crappy finest hour deck and play him with Baneslayers and Vines of Vastwood like you’re supposed to, I really think Rafiq has legs. Plus, I want to live the dream at least once and attack for 20 with Baneslayer, since (5+1+4)2= 20. Oooooh tingly. He helps keep pressure on, and serves the roll of four drop that the deck is otherwise missing.
Now, since we’re just about there, I also want to update the deck to worldwake. Since I have blue in the deck, that means I want to run the Treasure Hunt engine.

The deck is tight on space, though, so hard decisions have to be made. Most notably, negate starts looking bad. Yes, it can be a random out to a planeswalker or wrath or something, but it can also be a do nothing card. The prospect of running disgusting draw that just lets me get ahead on pure cards while I have huge monsters I’m able to protect is just too appealling. So I’m thinking this;

4x Misty Rainforest
4x Sunpetal Grove
4x Glacial Fortress
2x Halimar Depths
1x Celestial Canonade
1x Stirring Brush (miser copies instead of doubling up to protect against random pithing needle? this seems right)
2x Island
3x Forest
3x Plains

4x Noble Hierarch
3x Elvish Visionary
4x Rhox Warmonk
2x Nulltread Gargantuan
2x Rafiq of the Many
4x Baneslayer Angel
2x Sphinx of Jwar Isle

4x Path to Exile
4x Bant Charm
3x Vines of Vastwood
3x Treasure Hunt
2x Jace, the Mind-Sculptor

61 cards (secret tech). I feel that this deck is, in theory, much stronger. The beats are still present, with the addition of Rafiq for a Gargantuan and one of his pet Elves (these are less important with fewer Gargantuans, and even less imporant with treasure hunt as the superior two mana cantrip, but they still have legs, can block, or wear a vines and crash). The thing is I can’t just cut creatures for card draw, since Vines of Vastwood gets much much worse the fewer creatures I have. At that point I have to cut my early drops and vines, and then I’m just playing a Bant-flavoured control deck. Neat, but not what I’m interested in. Also, not as well positioned to rock, in my opinion. People rely very heavily on creature beats and spot removal in this standard format, and this deck is pretty cute in that it will win creature wars like 9 times out of ten, and can protect very well with suprise bant charm or vines. The loss of negate stings and I’d love to fit it back in, as it does help the protec the dude from removal strategy, as well as being a random mise against a Day of Judgement, Planeswalkers, (or soon) treasure hunt. There are only so many slots to go around, though.

Give me your thoughts, nerds. Help me out, how would you build it?

-Jonny!

Today’s topic is MMORPGs. Because I need More Motherfucking Online Role Playing Games. Lately I’ve been gagging for it rpg style, and Star Wars: The Old Republic is still a long way off. I’m not quite sure what to do with myself. I’ve been going back and rocking a lot of console RPGs. My lust has been momentarily sated both by newer games like Dragon Age: Origins (highest possible recommendation), and by going back and finally putting the finishing boots to Jeanne d’Arc, Dungeons and Dragons: Tactics, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Suikoden Tierkries, and a few sundries. I do love me some single player RPG, after all, but goddamn is there ever just something special about the MMORPG. Logging into a persistent world, being part of a huge community, interacting with or ignoring your fellow players depending on your mood and situation. An economy. A guild. A chance to stab someone minding their own damn business or take revenge upon someone for stabbing you whilst you were minding your own damn business. It’s just a thing.

So; preliminaries. My pedigree and my preferences, since I suppose the only thing I’m qualified to write about here is my own MMORPG play experience. I’m certainly not in the know as far as development or testing of these things go, and I don’t claim to be. I am happy to serve as end-user only, and I don’t concern myself with specs, except where they can be manipulated to increase my dps. Which, I suppose, brings us to the first point in profiling myself in MMORPGs.

I am a powergamer.

This is by and large true in everything I play. From whittling stacks of Magic cards into the most efficient sixty I can manage to scoring critical hits if the DM so much as sneezes in table-top gaming, I want to get there, and I want to get there as efficiently as possible. I do love me some lore, and my characters generally have backstories of some sort, but they’re never role-played (I have shame, and I fear the hardcore RP community). Likewise, while I prefer to have my armor look good, I will not wear less efficient gear simply for aesthetic value if something statistically better is available. I am over the damn moon when my gear is both efficient and attractive, but I will sacrifice looks for utility.

I am the beatdown.

Most often, my attempt to “get there” is via the beats. In Magic I prefer aggro, and in games I prefer DPS (damage per second, but if you’re reading this you probably should already know that). More specifically, I gravitate towards melee classes. Even more specifically, I prefer melee classes who dual-wield. Rationalizing one’s fantasy-based preferences is generally best left unattempted (Adam has a thing with redheads and bears, generally at the same time, for example) but I think mostly I just like to see my in-game avatar kicking as much ass as possible at any given moment. You’ve got two hands, misewell have a death machine in each. Plus, depending on the game engine, this is often also a powergaming issue. Weapons give stat bonuses. Twice as many weapons often means twice as many bonuses, or the ability to buff twice as many areas. In WoW I played a Rogue, in DDO I played a two weapon based Fighter, in LotRO I played a two weapon based champion, and so on. In Star Wars I fully plan on rocking a Jedi Knight with a glowbat clenched in each sweaty paw. This is my particular idiom and I embrace it.

I do enjoy the occasional sidetrack, of course. In DDO I had a maxed out Wizard I frequently raided with, and I almost always have a tank alt of some sort. Which reminds me.

I love alts.

I will generally roll three or four characters within the first few hours of playing a new MMORPG. I love alts. I like trying out different races, genders, classes, specs, etc. Although two weapon melee dps is generally the horse I decide to ride towards the end game, I love trying out all different types of characters, and generally enjoy playing most types…except healers.

I am not a healer.

Fuck you, that’s why. Some people like to heal, but it’s not for me. I love healers and I’ve always been good to the healers I’ve been guilded with, especially in DDO where I was a pretty serious raider. I know they have to be on their game. But I loathe that kind of gameplay. Watching red bars tick up and down and hotkeying the same heal spells over and over. Getting blamed when the terrible party wipes. Blech. I’m lucky to be friends with nerds like Adam and Dave, who enjoy healing and are good at it, because I simply refuse to play one beyond the first few levels in any given game. The unsolicited tells and group invites are enough to sour me. Everyone needs heals, and it is sometimes a good way to get loot and money, but I won’t do it. It’s not fun to me, and if you’re not having fun when you’re playing videogames…well. You’re not doing it right.

I like to solo.

This is perhaps another reason I don’t like healers. They generally don’t solo very well. Soloing generally boils down to damage racing mobs, and healers don’t really do damage so well. They’re very survivable, of course, but who cares. If it takes ten minutes to bleed down random trash mobs, it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I have battled with insomnia off and on through most of my adult life, and being able to simply set out and solo as a way to kill time when no one else on the freaking planet is awake is great for me.

I also like to group.

For the hours when non-vampires are online, I do enjoy grouping. A few games I got to dungeon and raid smashing, and I loved it. It would seem, then, that I want a game that can be solo’d, and also grouped. I’m only asking for everything. This, more than anything (okay, and having a lightsaber) is why I am excited for SWTOR. The game has been hyped for it’s story-driven solo play, and that’s an amazing feature for someone like me. On the other hand, I have tremendous faith in Bioware, and they are obviously aware of the importance of group play in MMORPGs. If they are able to marry these two gameplay types well, the possibilities are endless.

Balls to PvP

I enjoy a bit of PvP, but largely, if I want to test my reflexes against another person, I’ll crack into Street Fighter. PvP in MMORPGs is often a gear-based ePeen measuring contest, and even when it’s not, it’s generally not something that will hold my interest. That said, a bit of open world PvP is interesting. A boring sidetrip or farming run quickly gets dramatic when someone drops out of the sky after you. But then, there’s another side to that drama. Griefing is pretty annoying, and yet another reason PvP is largely balls.

I am not afraid to jump ship.

I am not one to suffer fools gladly, and if a game isn’t living up to my expectations, I will drop it. I do not subscribe to the mindset of many of today’s consumers, who assume their role as customer somehow gives them ownership over the game they are playing. The customer, my friends, is not always right, and whether you have a tremendous sense of self-entitlement or not, the world could give two shits.

I cannot stand those who find something they don’t like about a game and harp about it endlessly (generally on forums). People who spend so much time complaining about the game they play that you have to wonder why they play it at all. This is not me. Message board petitions and cursing out devs already overworked by their bottom-line conscious bosses is the stuff of morons.

If the negatives outweigh the fun I’m having, I leave. No drama, no idiocy, and ultimately, no further revenue to be gleaned from me. I played DDO for over 4 years, had multiple maxed out toons, was a regular in both guild and PUG raiding circles, was constantly being invited to other raid guilds (i.e. poached from my guild), and had most of the end game sewn up. What happened? Well, a lot of things, as I’ll discuss later in the DDO section, but largely, the game stagnated. Turbine did nothing with the game for long stretches of time, and worse, they did very little communicating during those droughts. I had reached end game, I was as geared up as I could want to be, there was nothing else for me to do. Well, nothing I cared to do, to be fair. PvP is a thing, I suppose. Or running a millionth toon up or something. But the hell on it. They were giving us nothing, and they were telling us nothing, so I bounced. All that time invested, and I had no problem leaving. I am not fickle, but I also refuse to be strung along. It seems fair to me.

So, because I am not afraid to jump ship, I’ve played six different MMORPGS at varying times. A small number compared to some, of course, but as many people never get outside of WoW, I feel it’s a fair venture into the genre. Here is a brief rundown of the MMORPGs I’ve played, in the order that I played them, and some thoughts on each. Bear in mind that when I’m talking about these games, I’m talking about them as of the time I stopped playing them. For example, if I complain that City of Villains had no real “loot” system in place, and they’ve since installed one, that is irrelevant. It wasn’t there at the time, and although it could feasibly have bearing on a future decision to return to a game, it cannot retroactively effect my thoughts about the game at the time I departed it.

City of Villains

My virgin essay into the world of MMORPGs was CoV. The character creator in the CoX games has been lauded by many, and rightly so. There’s a lot you can do to create a unique looking character in this game. Moreover, carrots dangled before you in the form of capes or glowing auras, etc. at certain levels are excellent ways to drive progression and further customize your character. Well, their look, anyway. The City of Whatever games don’t do a lot to actually let you customize what your character does. The enhancements you collect or purchase with CoV’s feeble monetary system provide incredibly small bonuses to your abilities, and are even further encumbered by having a system of harshly diminishing returns handicapping any further bonus. Good plan. The end result is that for the myriad colourful characters swooping around the city, there was an incredibly small pool of things they could actually do, and things became very cookie-cutter, very quickly. I played a character to cap and quit shortly thereafter. The game is old, and is hampered by that, but I simply couldn’t get over having endless costuming options that all did the same things as everyone else.

Dungeons and Dragons Online

The next game I picked up was DDO. Oh DDO. By far the game that I sunk the most time and money into, I love and loved DDO, and although I’m now pretty much completely unwilling to go back and play it, I rank it among the best games I’ve ever played, console, PC, online, offline, whatever.
I love Dungeons & Dragons, and I was especially fond of building characters under the D&D 3.5 rules system. This is, of course, the system that DDO uses, and no doubt contributed a large amount of fanboy tilt to my enjoyment of the game. Building online characters with stat spreads and feats that I was accustomed to enjoying in other D&D based tabletop and computer games made jumping into DDO easy for me, and I had the relatively rare experience (in that game) of having the first character I rolled end up being my primary end-game raiding character. With endless flavour of the month class specs being all the rage in raiding based MMORPG games, my good old-fashioned damage based fighter was always good enough, and I never felt “gimped”. The strength of understanding how to powergame the 3.5 ruleset at work, and while this was a positive for me, this very same reliance on the 3.5 ruleset was no doubt a huge hindrance to enjoyment for some who played the game without the background that I had. An interesting problem. Make the game truly enjoyable for the DnD hardcores and risk leaving newbies befuddled and uninterested, or “dumb it down” to get wider appeal and risk alienating the core? Turbine had this question on their hands from the start, and ultimately, they didn’t do enough to answer it. The new player experience they instituted last year is a fair balance between the two, but it came far too late. By the time the game was relaunched, most of the servers were ghost towns, and since DDO is extremely group based once you pass the early levels, those who weren’t already established and guilded were facing a pretty impossible entry barrier.
So, with a low revenue stream from a small player base, obviously Turbine wasn’t going to knock themselves out providing new content…but damn. I have never seen a game left to stagnate the way DDO was. Other games have had less content, sure, but I’ve never seen such a dedication to not providing their customers with information as Turbine provided.

Now the game has been relaunched with an attempt to bring lapsed dungeon delvers into the fold- one that promises a subscription-free play experience (with reduced accessibility, of course), with the option to “upgrade” to a premium account (basically the default subscription we were all paying before anyway).

Oh, and no new content with this relaunch. Still. That’s…coming.

No thanks. I’ll keep my good memories and leave Turbine to whatever bizarre strategy they’re going for. I love the game, but what seems like annual service in exchange for a monthly fee does not seem to be value for money to me. Moving on.

The Lord of the Rings Online

Oh boy was I excited for this game. Fantasy based? Check. Swords and sorcery fantasy based, though? Check. Heroes and monsters? Check. Okay, I’ll just come out and ask. Can I be a dude hacking monsters with a sword in each hand? Check. In fact we have a class based on it. Set in a franchise universe I like? Check. In fact, pretty much the biggest check possible. I mean…Tolkein! Everything comes from this.

Man oh man oh badgers. Get there get there. I’m not normally as motivated by exploration as some players, but in this game I was RABID to go find things. I want to see the Shire. I want to climb Weathertop, etc. And man does the early game ever deliver. The atmosphere is brilliantly foreboding, and you really see yourself as a minor cog in the much bigger war against the ever encroaching darkness.

But then you leave the starting areas. And the game explodes.

The problem with having all these amazing and beautiful locations (and although I’m not much of a graphics junky, the game is pretty breathtaking), is that it’s a goddamn chore to get anywhere. Travel is uniquely annoying in this game, because of the often awkward topography, and the fact that “elite” mobs are FREAKING EVERYWHERE. Their placement is troubling, and puzzling. Why is this bear an elite? I can understand why some goblin chieftain surrounded by warcamps of lesser goblins is a tougher opponent, but why is this random turkey vulture pecking me to damn death? AND WHY DOES IT HAVE A MILLION HEALTH. Some games are not very solo friendly, and that’s to be expected in a genre that places so much emphasis on group play, but when simply exploring the overmap is one of the bigger challenges in the game, there’s a problem.

Now, Tolkein’s Middle-Earth is a pretty foreboding place, after all, and if you’re going to venture off the beaten path into the wilderness, perhaps we should expect the going to get rough. Okay. Granted. But come on. Pretty random mobs having 50 times the hp of a player character for no discernable reason other than to make exploration difficult? The answer, of course, is to get a group together when you want to ramble around, but if you’ve played grouped in MMORPGs, you know that speed and reward are the name of the game. Exploration for exploration’s sake and stopping to smell the roses doesn’t exactly cut it when you’ve got 5 people Darth Vader breathing over their mics at you.

This is only one beef, mind you, but it’s a huge one. It basically ruined the game for me. Exploration is by no means impossible, but it’s difficult enough that’s it’s not fun to do. When added to other minor complaints I had with the game (lack of customization, poorly balanced group mechanics, still a Turbine game with poor communication,etc) it was enough to chase me off. I got my champ to cap, explored all I could by myself, and then headed to greener pastures.

Note: I’ve been told by the friends I left behind in this game that it is MUCH improved now, esp. the elite issue. This intrigues that balls off of me, as I really WANT to like this game. If any of the nerds are itching for MMORPG times, I will venture back into Middle-Earth with you, to give it another chance. It might take a bit to impress, however.

Guild Wars

This was a fun one player RPG. Then I finished it and I was done. Wait…this is a MMORPG?

Coulda fooled me.

The World of Warcraft

And here it is. The big papa. I played 4 other MMORPGs and just kept on hearing about how each of them compared to WoW. WoW this and WoW that. Around the time I had started DDO I had tried to WoW trial and was hugely unimpressed.

Apparently, rolling Horde made all the difference.

When I finally signed up with WoW and gave it a serious shot, I rolled Horde with Adam. Between the refer-a-friend xp adding a breakneck pacing to our grouping, horde doing more to capture my interest than Alliance, and me pulling my head out of my ass and rolling a Rogue like I should have done in the first place, the experience was night and day. I was completely uninterested in my Human Warrior, but my Orc Rogue? Oh man. I bulldozed that sucker up to level 80. I bought the expansions. I loved the balance between being able to solo and the group options available.

And then I got over it.

I don’t know if I just leveled too fast and burnt out (usually not a problem, given my love of alts) or what, but I just lost interest in the game after I hit level 80 with my main. Honestly, I think WoW may simply be too big, or that I came into something so big so late. The gap between hitting 80 and being unable to progress any further on my own and the actual endgame of raiding and high-end PvP was simply too large to be something I’d be interested in tackling. I love raiding, and I love getting to see new bosses and crazy dungeons, but slogging it out endlessly to get gear simply to be able to get invited to places where I could get the gear I’d need to get invited to the places where I’d get the gear to…etc. to get to the raids simply didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t have enough in-game friends, and I didn’t have much else I could do on my own, so I hit the wall.

One more complaint: The story sucks. I understand that everyone likes different things, and some people are seriously digged on Blizzard’s storytelling, but to me it is bizarre and ham-handed overcomplications. The races that comprise the horde and the alliance are a crazy strong source of archetypal struggle and material, and yet Blizzard seems completely unwilling to mine this source of storytelling. It’s aliens. And uh gods. And Demons. And plagues. And uh…demon plauges? Burning blood or something? Or something. Whatever. I’m over it. Great game, poor story.

And it is a great game. Ultimately, though, I accomplished pretty much everything that I cared to in it, and what else it offers is too little, or far, far too much. This is another game that I could see myself going back to, but I don’t think the return trip to Azeroth would be a long one. You have to want something out of games, and WoW doesn’t offer me anything sustainable.

Champions Online

I don’t even know what happened here. My friend told me about this game, which I had never even heard thing one about (no surprise, considering how new and small this community is) and the next day I was making superheroes again. The character creator rivals or perhaps even exceeds the CoX games, and that’s freaking awesome. Even more awesome is the fact that you can ACTUALLY CUSTOMIZE YOUR CHARACTER. You can pick powers from any power pool, and although you do have to meet some prerequisites for higher tier powers, everything is very attainable.
The storyline is a bit wonky. And then it’s pretty wonky. And then it’s very wonky. And then it’s so wonky you are completely wonked out.
Here’s the thing: if you enjoy the more clear-cut Silver Age era of comic storytelling, you’re more likely to enjoy Champs. If you like your storytelling to involve anything other than clearly insane, clearly evil villains who like to utilize good old-fashioned death beams, giant robots, and world domination for the sake of world domination, you’re going to be disappointed.
The game is pretty good, and to be honest I may have let a newly busy schedule dictate my decision to leave the game more than anything, but the game does have a few problems that helped to exit me. It’s a grind. All MMORPGs have grinding as an element to them, of course, but here it’s formulaic, repetitive, and stupid grinding. Your mind just turns off. To compensate for the ability to have very fast travel facilitated by things like flight, teleportation, etc, the maps in Champs are fittingly huge. The problem then, becomes do we allow these huge maps to be sparse, or do we pack them full of trash? The devs of Champs opted for the later. The place is crawling with evil, and after a bit you have to start wondering how no one has clued into this secret organization that you’ve just killed your 639th member of. It gets tedious.

The story, as I mentioned, leaves something to be desired for those who like to live outside of 1960s Fantastic Four comics (there is only one Dr. Doom, and you, Dr. Destroyer, are no Dr. Doom). It really doesn’t do a lot to pull you along, you move from area to area for little other reason than that’s the area where the enemies are now the same level as you. Not terribly immersive. Between this lack of a thematic reason to move forward and the tedium of grinding not providing a mechanical motivation to move forward, you’re left with pretty much only the promise of unlocking new powers as a motivation for continuing to play the game. The thing is, you end up not really needing any more powers. When you can throw fire for ranged damage, the ability to throw ice for ranged damage is kind of redundant. Sure, it’s nice to have variety, and redundant powers can fit your hero’s design thematically, but…eventually there’s no real point to it. Once you reach a certain plateau your hero is able to do more or less everything you want him to do, and he’s still getting his ass kicked by regular gangsters and secret service guys.

The shine comes off the apple, is all I’m saying.

Conclusion

Alright, I’ve written over 4000 words here, which is a bit insane, so I’m going to end this rant for now. I’ve played a fair number of games, and there are a number more that I probably should try playing. I’m extremely excited for Star Wars: The Old Republic, but by all indicators it will still be quite some time before I’m able to tuck into that. It is very likely I will have to make a return to Eberron or Middle-Earth or Azaroth or…something. MMORPGs are ridiculous as an immersive escapist tool, and as a gamer they are a source of simultaneous reward and frustration that isn’t easy to match. I’m curious to hear any other nerd’s thoughts on either the genre or specific games. Also, is anyone else feeling the itch to get back into a gameworld the way I am? Maybe I can talk someone into some Lord of the Rings or Warcraft.

-JONNY!

So then. Jund is clearly “the deck” and we’re all pretty Greco on that one. Boros and Naya Lightsaber are the next major culprits, with Jacerator, WUR control, and Eldrazi monument behind that rounding out what I consider the tier one decks. To clarify, I don’t think Eldrazi is tier one in terms of quality…it’s pretty terrible compared to any of the other 5 I’ve mentioned, but people play it, so it should be prepared for. My first round opponent at regionals played it, and even though he had some fair raw skill as a player, he just seemed handicapped all match. My Nacatls and Thoctars were just overwhelming to his little dudes, even if he did have a constant steam of them. He was pretty much just always blocking to stay alive, and couldn’t keep a planeswalker on the board. He even drew the monument every game…didn’t matter. He had no answers to Baneslayer, and his creatures were too far behind. By the time he got to the point where he was saccing them off to his own spells, he was behind the 8 ball. But I digress. People play the deck, so be aware.

Bant, Vampires, White Weenie, Green/White/X Junk, Red Deck Wins, and a few other decks are all pretty fair, and see play, so be aware of them, too. The thing with this “shards” meta is that hate cards give you a lot of splash damage against multiple archetypes. Deathmark kills Baneslayers in one deck, thoctars in another, Rhox Warmonks in a third, and Steppe Lynx in a fourth. Preparing for this meta is actually pretty easy, compared to the batshit diceroll meta prep that goes into extended.

So, like, um. What to play. Jund bores me because I played it far too much in block, plus by this point I’m so behind in best decking that I would lose mirror match after mirror match to guys who’ve simply played more standard Jund on Jund. Plus, no matter how good it is, I’m always itchy about bringing the deck that everyone in the room is gunning for. Boros is good, and I do like bashing and burning as a strategy, but I’ve lent most of the cards I’d need for it out to Bob, and honestly, if I’m going to play red and white, I’d rather just add green and rock Naya. Naya. Ah, you beautiful bitch. Aggressive, but with card advantage. Quality one drops and burn, but with Baneslayer Angels. I love this deck. It was very good at provincials, and my loses seemed mostly due to variance. I never felt outclassed or outpowered, and even after a bevy of removal spells I came back and dealt 24 damage in one turn to an opponent. The bit of tech I’ve been using has been a single Goblin Bushwhacker, which makes Ranger of Xzibit even more threatening, as against Bant or Naya or anything that you can count on to path you to 7 mana (or just naturally in the late game) you can rip a Ranger off the top and come across for 10 haste damage just with the Ranger and the dudes he fetches. Naya matches up well against all the other top decks, and if I’m going to play a top deck, I’m sure I’ll stay here. I haven’t gotten sick of this deck yet, although the nerds may be sick of testing against it.

Aside from the top decks, there is always the brew option. The problem, though, is that people can basically hate you out without trying to with the great sideboards in this standard, so brewing is pretty risky in a situation like this. You probably lose some card quality by playing off the beaten path, and whatever surprise factor you get by coming in rogue can be undone by incidental good cards in the board. Red/Green beats isn’t played much, and it would be fairly “rogue” (despite the obviousness of the strategy) to just brawl with Bloodbraid Elves and Ball Lightnings, but it’s not like you’re really going to catch anyone by surprise. Celestial Purge is still your mother, and Flashfreeze remains your father.

Plus, y’know…Baneslayer Angel. Peppa Jack’s best ‘ho. Turns out people play 5/5s with 5 abilities for accessible 5 mana.

That said, here are some decklists. The first is my Naya deck as it stands right now, and the second two are a little bit off the beaten track. For the bant list, I point you in particular towards Nulltread Gargantuan’s interaction with Elvish Visionary, Kor Hookmaster, and Sphinx of Lost Truths, plus the fact that he’s RIDICULOUSLY HUGE and wins fights against Baneslayer, Jwar Jwar Sphinx, Andy, and pretty much anything else, and he’s only three mana. He may have been the bit of tech I needed to make me finally break down and play the Warmonks and Bant Charms I’ve been bitching about, as his drawback can be fairly minor if planned for. Plus I have a crush on Kor Hookmaster.

Naya Beats V. 47873.4

4 Arid Mesa
4 Rootbound Crag
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Plains
3 Mountain
4 Forest
1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood

4 Wild Nacatl
1 Scute Mob
1 Goblin Bushwhacker
3 Great Sable Stag
4 Woolly Thoctar
3 Ranger of Eos
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Baneslayer Angel

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile
2 Naya Charm
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Ajani Vengeant

sideboard
4 Celestial Purge
3 Vines of Vastwood
2 Oblivion Ring
2 Ajani Vengeant
1 Great Sable Stag
3 Unstable Footing

***

Fat Camp V. 2.0

4 Graypelt Refuge
4 Sunpetal Grove
2 Island
1 Swamp
7 Plains
7 Forest

4 Rampant Growth
4 Trace of Abundance
4 Harrow
2 Rise from the Grave
4 Summoning Trap
2 Trapmaker’s Snare

3 Merfolk Looter
4 Iona, Shield of Emeria
4 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Sphinx of Lost Truths
2 Empyrial Archangel
2 Baneslayer Angel

sideboard
3 Negate
3 Flashfreeze
2 Rise from the Grave
4 Path to Exile
3 Captured Sunlight

***

An Excuse to Play Bant Charm V. 1.0

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Plains
3 Island
4 Forest

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Rhox Warmonk
4 Baneslayer Angel
3 Nulltread Gargantuan
3 Kor Hookmaster
2 Sphinx of Lost Truths

4 Vines of Vastwood
4 Bant Charm
4 Path to Exile
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

sideboard
3 Flashfreeze
3 Celestial Purge
3 Great Sable Stag
2 Oblivion Ring
4 Negate

More to come as they develop. With any luck Worldwake will give us some cards that fit nicely into one of the decks I want to play anyway. God help us if they give Jund more weapons.

-Jonny!

Jay is playing fairly vanilla Jund because…mise well. It’s kind of good. He has Caldera Hellions in the sideboard, which I think are awesome tech in this meta that have been largely overlooked. Otherwise it’s pretty standard. Ruinblasters in the board, and Stags main and I think another in the board. Seems fine. More than Adam or I, I think his day tomorrow will be decided simply by variance. What is his hand and what is his opponent’s hand? Does he have better blightnings?

Adam is rocking his Vampires. His deck is more aggressive than most of the vamp lists out there, and honestly, I think that’s the right call. Jund can just be so awkward with their mana that beating face with quick men seems better than having versatility in the midgame. You’re not going to beat Jund for midgame power, really, so I like that he’s running a few turns faster than most. He’s only running like one mind sludge, though, which makes me nervous. The raw power of that card is ridiculous. Still, it’s a concession to speed that he’s made, and it could pay off huge for him. If he has a lacerator and bloodghasty draw against Jund that stumbles and has awkward mana until like turn four, he looks great.

Me? I’m playing Naya. My daliance with control ended poorly, and I’ve gone back to what I love. Beats and spells that make beats good. I’m a bit pissed that the cat is out of the bag and probably everyone will be ready for me, but really…so what. It’s not like there’s a ton you can do to plan for the deck. Either you kill the Baneslayers or you don’t. Either Ranger of Eos fills my hand with beaters or it doesn’t. I’m playing Vines of Vastwood in the sideboard, which is a card that conventional wisdom has deemed bad, as it cascades poorly off of Bloodbraid Elf. And it does. But it’s bonkers when you can shut down Jund’s creature control for one mana…or smash for more with two mana.

Anyway, it’s about 1 in the morning and I’m four beers deep. Testing looks good but who knows what will happen tomorrow. Time to drink a little and sleep a little and hope to lucksack one time.

Go us!

-Jonny!

The Naya deck I’ve been boring the nerds with over and over of late is basically the deck he won with, although his ran an extra copy of some of the more expensive spells (Baneslayer Angel, Ranger of Eos) and ran Noble Hierarchs to support the inflated mana, but otherwise our lists are very similar. On the one hand it’s validating to have a deck very close to the one you scratch built win worlds, and on the other hand I’m going to be accused of playing the deck that won worlds for the rest of this season. So it’s bittersweet. I don’t like the Hierarch, as it’s pretty terrible off a Bloodbraid Elf, but after this weekend Jund will hopefully finally be somewhat dialed down, making choices over Hierarch such as maindeck Valeron Outlanders or whatever less attractive. I will likely have to start testing the Hierarchs again, if only because there won’t be a clear better choice in the meta.

We’ll see where we end up for Provincials. Adam is brewing control (Greco!) and Jay is probably playing Jund. As of now. Like me, they may always audible last minute, I’ve been known to do that.

Also, I guess the rumor is that Baneslayer is to be reprinted. This is pretty much scuttlebutt at this point, but she is a fair way to ensure Magic 2011 sells. Turns out she’s half decent, I guess.

Yes, yes. I know that the point, of course, is not to suprise us as obviously Jedi would be present, but rather to give us our first look at them. And here it is.

In other news, I spent a buttload of money to get my Naya deck updated online (baneslayers ouch) and I do, indeed, crush jund. Unfortunately Jund seems to be on the decline online, even if it’s dominating paper play. So I randomly lost to some weird decks that wouldn’t have beat me if I didn’t have maindeck blank celestial purges and things. Awkward.

Oh well. Means I’ll just move some of the hate to the board online. Naya Charm and Ajani Vengeant are good enough main.

Now then, back to obsessing over DAO.

-Jonny!

It makes me think that they are really awesome guys, maybe who live charmed lives or that they are just humungous jerks, who live charmed lives and are cocksips about it. Brian Kibler just won Pro Tour: Austin with my favourite Extended Archetype, which is zoo. He also did it with some technology that I find delicious, including a recursion combo with Punishing Fire, a card I picked as a “card to watch” when Zendikar was spoiled, and which I was generally shouted down for on the internet.

Up yours, the internet.

Way to go, Kibler. I hope you are not a jerk. We should eat some Doritos and be reasonable at one another for a period of time so I can definitively prove you not a jerk.

In other news, I have not slept in some number of days, which explains many things. I have designed new decks and am convinced they are amazing. More probably, they are not. I will attempt to sleep now.

-JONNY!

PS nerds are we doing FNM and if so what are people playing? Moderate bonkers has been tweaked and I think I am happy with it. It has less card draw now which troubles me (I really want to run a single Mind Spring for some reason and this idea is HAUNTING me) but overall the deck seems tighter, especially against Jund, which, y’know, I expect will happen. Apparently I’m not good at drawing a mix of land and spells with this deck, though, so I mostly have to hope that probability isn’t completely pissed at me all the time. Up yours, probability.

I’ve been purposely avoiding looking at anything concerning Dragon Age Origins, as I figured frenzy would set in and I’d simply sidetrack my life with yet another obsession.

I broke down today and devoured information about the game. Goddammit. I realize I’m behind the times for getting excited about this game as now it’s almost upon us, but Jesus Christ wearing a Fedora, this looks amazing.

Dear Bioware and Wizards of the Coast,
Why do you hate the idea of me having any money or time ever?
Love Forever,
-JONNY!

As our little in-meme, it is generally used to “reveal” something obvious.

Oh, and since I’m referencing random things, feel my German Love. I will give it to you.

Anyway, back to obvious surprises. The Jose Greco in question is the list of decks that topped the standings at the Philly 5k last weekend. Here are the decklists. I’m talking about the standard results here, but I guess Trinistax is hardly news either at this point. Oh Legacy. You ridiculous bitch.

So, the magic community was all a titter waiting to discover what the new standard would look like, and what suprises were in store for us. None, it turns out.

The standings are full of Jund and Naya. The top Jund lists don’t even play Zendikar cards barring some crack lands. This is hardly surprising, as established decks generally can do well in an uncertain meta while everyone else is busy learning how their shiny new decks actually work.

Still though. You could have experimented a little, fellas. What, were you unsure if burst lightning was good? Have you read it? It’s something like this:

Burst Lightning R
instant
Is good.
Kicker 4.
If kicked, is better.

Seriously. The first place list played Resounding Thunder, and while I guess one shouldn’t argue with results (he did win, after all), that card is clearly terrible. I played the hell out of it in block, sure, but block didn’t have motherloving lightning bolts. We’re used to burn that is almost as good as lightning bolt, and burst lightning certainly serves that role, but it’s also actually better than bolts sometimes, which is y’know, pretty fine. Sure, resounding thunder can be better for bolt, too, if you cycle it, and if you like paying 8 mana for your burn spells, you go the hell on. Me? I’ll play the spell that murders cobras and elves just as efficiently as lightning bolt, and that can also answer a Woolly Thoctar or Malakir Bloodwitch.

So a few goofy choices aside (the luminarch ascension deck in particular troubles me…it’s like he had the idea for the best deck in the format and then just failed to put the right cards in, and the right numbers) the results were pretty Greco. Blightning and Bloodbraid Elf are good cards? You’re kidding. Obvious tribal pre-assembled deck was present in Vampires. Thanks for putting that list together for us, devs. Really saves some time when you put together these tribal strategies for us. OMGWTFBBQ Lotus Cobra? LOL I CAN HAZ BAENSLAYER? Yeah those decks were there, too. The Boros Bushwhacker deck is mildly exciting, simply because he proved Goblin Bushwhacker to be an excellent card, and Steppe Lynx worth playing…for the moment.

This is only one tournament, and these are some batshit weird results. There’s no control present. Some will argue Jund’s strength is such that it plays the early and late game equally well, but some are also fairly retarded. Jund is a midrange deck, and while it’s a damn good one, it’s not a dedicated control deck, and unless it gets lucky on blightnings it doesn’t do all that well when a dedicated control deck is able to outshine the card advantage offered by the Jund spells. I point towards 5cc’s utter bitchslapping of the format towards the end of Lorwyn legal standard, where Jund was forced to adopt weird and sometimes awkward (although often quite powerful) strategies like Mannequin in order to start to compete. Most just played Jund with cryptic commands.

Well, there’s no more cryptic commands, and 5cc is sleeping deeply, if not outright dead. Until the control deck of choice is “found” aggro decks will run ramshod. This should make me happy, as I like turning creatures sideways, but honestly I think this was just a weird tourney, and not terribly indicative of where standard will end up. Look at all the dorks! How is that Boros Deck even viable? The entire deck packs to a single sweeper and…oh.

People weren’t playing nearly enough sweepers. Right. Control decks weren’t in force, and the aggro decks mainly had them in board, if at all. Makes little men and lots of burn some good when people do that.

Oh well. After a long control summer maybe people can enjoy a little bit of beatdown in the fall. I think that once the format stabilizes and we get a few interesting surprises developed instead of simply an “I bash you, you bash me” metagame, it will be a great standard environment. I like the Alara sets (even if Cascade is a bit of a dirty sister), I love M10, and I like Zendikar quite a bit. I’m excited to see everything that is going to come out of it.

I mean, I have the Jund deck built, and Bloodbraid into Blightning is awesome and all, but I want more. Magic nerds always want more.

My cards came in the mail today and I am currently working on: Jund aggro/control, Naya beats, Luminarch Planeswalkers, and Red Deck Wins.

-JONNY!

PS- Adam built the worst deck in history and I gave it my German Love a million games straight. Just thought I’d rub that one in, buddy. You have a nice day, now.