RespondCreate

Sometimes boredom does pay off. I was web surfing earlier today, I started off with the links from this blog and somehow ended up on a site called RespondCreate which is mainly a design site (I think, I was just browsing/surfing). I liked the design elements on the site though, particularly the neo-Baravian influence.

One of the few things there that caught my eye was a marvelous picture of a blizzard ... or well, the picture of the countryside after a blizzard, in the sun. That prompted me to enquire if I can use the image as part of the background in the remaining Nar cards I'm (still) templating for TW and much to my surprise the owner of the image provided permission for it.

Here's the templated image ready for gEngine (sans text):

Art Credits:
Korul by Werner/Gillette/Holmberg
Background by Jon Ellenberger

I'm happy with the final image. And yeah, head over to RespondCreate too... you never know what it might inspire in you... and if you wish to hire someone with website graphic design skills, I think that site has a resume there too. Who knows what undiscovered talent is hidden there.

Bombarded

I had quite a long month as for as the challange thing went.

I dropped i think 3 maybe 4 series. This illuminated that the difference in power between my orathans deck and most of my other ones is astronomical. I played capap recently and beat him in about 5 turns. Orathans is hardto play but its fun. Normally i wouldnt use it, but ive been dropping so many games i felt like i needed a little steam.

Creatureless nar is fun, but the advantage isnt quite enough for upper level decks.

Surprise (orothe free creature) is also fun, but against people who know what their doing, they usually jsut out draw me and i cant keep up. Also, its really awful versus hand discard.

Also, my chur lock deck is fun, but i'm so green when it comes to core, again, older players usually jsut wait out the various locks and kill me.

So in conclusion, most of my awesomeness comes from cawh and orathans.

my other decks are good, but not against old pros.

I kindof wish more newbies had played me, so i could really go to regions i'm unfamiliar with and still have a chance.

But it's cool. Now i know i have to play my best against all of you in future tournaments. heh.

ANyways, thanks for all the game everyone. I think i have one token left. I can buy a cople more to finish off whatever series we have left, but i m not sure about starting ltos a new ones. Either way, drop me a note in ccgworkshop if you want to play.

Meeting the Malovis Challenge

Game three!

I missed a chance to play LegendLowe with one of my more normal decks today. I was sort of busy doing other things while I was on gatlingEngine at first. While I do somewhat regret the lost opportunity, I really don't know if they had the free time or inclination to play. I just happened to see that they were logged in.

After LegendLowe logged out, I finished up my browsing around and had the opportunity to play malovis for our third game since the challenge began. I am sort of jealous that malovis gets to play all these games, but I am certain that I don't have the free time to get that many games in either.

This time I specified non-Underneath. I took my deck called "Under It All," a twisted burrow deck, and faced off against a Chur deck. Getting four of my six relics in the deck within just as many turns was a bit frustrating. I was wondering where all my good spells were. Chur took out Myka. It was frustrating. I've usually done very well with this deck and Myka has frequently gone all the way against three magi. However, even though this deck only has six relics total, it uses those relics very well and Chur was a real damper in the program. That's why not getting my spells was so frustrating. Since the relics were so few, the rest of the deck should've been able to build some steam against Chur. Emaal managed to squeak by Chur. Once he left, she tossed down a Kier and two of the four relics I had in hand, Strag's Ring and Tunnelers Boots. Choosing the Kier for purity, Emaal was ready to go onto face Harror, Nightstalker. While Vaporize ended the relics real fast, Emaal was still ready to toss down three relics at this point, Gogor's Spade, Digging Goggles, and Strag's Claws. Although the Kier was only burrowed until the end of the turn with the ring now gone, it did make a strong strike. This also the time that my nice spells began to show. Oh, how I love Crushing Fungus.... Emaal took out Harror and faced T'lok, Traitor. While this would shutoff any of my burrow and invulnerability in attacks, it was still fun to have a self-burrowed Kier against the power of a Gorath Cub. As for how the game ended, you'll have to read anything malovis might post about it. It was fun.

Thank you, malovis. The games were fun. I hope you are having fun with all of this too.

Core Choking

I was reorganizing some of my decks tonight when LegendLowe appeared and asked if I wanted to play a game. They had a deck they wanted to test, so I chose one of my untested decks, a Tainted Glimpses deck based on choking energize rates. I will write a summary here on the game and create an actual analysis of the cards I was using on the custom card forums soon. Hopefully, you will see why from the game that some sort of official feedback be given on the cards I chose to put in my deck.

Warrada started off as my first magi. She tossed out fairly well with two creatures and her ring. LegendLowe then flipped over Scyalla and declared that the arbolls they played were now Weave. Scyalla actually got a good start and Warrada had to fight a steady battle. I am not sure where they got the idea to use arbolls, but it was somewhat refreshing to see something not tried often. With card draw from the ring, I started an early choke on Scyalla with both Nightmare Channel and the Collar of Despair. They attacked my creature with the spell attached to eliminate Nightmare Channel, but I had another copy available to keep things choked. Warrada did get the upper hand, but I chose to leave her spent near the end. The deck was built to test Fug and I didn't want to go all the way with Warrada whether I could or not, so it ended up being a battle between Fug and Kesia. They began some impressive energy tricks by using the Rock Yajo to give arbolls or the Uwamar the power from a Cragnoc. Kesia had massive energy to work with quickly. I turned the Cragnoc and used its power. Not a very good roll though, so Fug was still behind with this beginning. I did toss out the Collar of Despair and a Nightmare Channel, this time choosing their Uwamar and Fug for the spell's targets. Fug had a massive energy disadvantage to overcome. It took a number of turns, and surviving a couple Weave Winds, but Fug managed to hold on and turn the Grass Hyren. With a good defense, stolen from Weave, Fug was doing alright. A Wudge proved to be an excellent distraction while he was still tried to come from behind in the battle against Kesia. To his advantage, although the arbolls were now Weave, they didn't have the effect weave to go with. Warrada's Ring was making huge leaps and bounds in card draw and saving energy. After losing a Grim Pyder earlier to attacks by LegendLowe, Fug managed to have a situation where playing a couple more was possible and good, one for himself and one for Kesia. Shortly after, he tossed down a second Nightmare Channel choosing Kesia this time and the same Uwamar. Kesia was totally choked by this, having finally worked through the massive energy she had started the battle with. Fug was making good use of Wudge and a couple Raveled Drush in play. Vile prevented Kesia from sacrificing her Grim Pyder in a suicidal attack, and so LegendLowe maintained the destruction of Grim Pyder by attacking Fug's copy using a two energy Cragnoc. With little or no energy and no remaining energize rate, Kesia had nothing to do except draw cards. I didn't make LegendLowe suffer too many turns like that, only two, or three if you count my turn between them. So, things were looking real nice for one of my turns and then I attacked on the next. This cost me the copies of Nightmare Channel, so I had to play out another Grim Pyder since LegendLowe had made it good practice to attack the ones I had in play on my side of the field. Kesia was defeated by the attacks. In addition to a Grim Pyder, Fug also attached a Corrupt to himself, leaving Quirle was in a tight spot. They played a Speag first. This was followed by a Cragnoc, another Speag, and Rock Yajo. Quirle resumed the energy tricks. This time the spell Heal entered the mix. The first copy was used on the Speag and they crossed the power of the Cragnoc like before. After using the powers of both the Speag and the Cragnoc, they played another Heal. This time I silently crossed my fingers that they would heal the Cragnoc with all of it. Anything less than the full heal and it would be ripe for Turn. Since they didn't fully heal the Cragnoc and devoted some to the Speag, I used Warrada's Ring to reduce the cost of my Core cards so my twelve energy was barely enough to steal the Cragnoc from Quirle. At this point LegendLowe declared "gg" and then we spent some length of time chatting in the game still about the status of Magi-Nation.

I got the strong impression that LegendLowe didn't really like the custom cards and didn't feel they were properly balanced. This is probably triggered in part due to having Kesia totally shutdown and I realize that this is the condition and problem that got Nightmare Channel changed so that only one could effect a magi at a time. Because of this, I really do need to write a report in the custom card forums. I may have skipped this for the Arderial deck since so much of that game really didn't test the cards much.... although that was fun and humorous to have the only Aurora Xyx that I played used against me. As for this game with LegendLowe, I do hope that they return to play some more on gatlingEngine. I have plenty of open and restricted decks without custom cards in them too.

Not Underneath

In the special event for September, part of the rules is that we choose a region and malovis has to play within those specifications. Well, I have sort of been a little more open in my suggestions.

In the first game, I specified for him not to use Orothe. An Orothe deck would probably have Orothe relics and purity from Orlon's Ring would not discard any that I happened to capture. As it was malovis played their Trug deck. A good deck that makes surprisingly good use of Trug. So, pitting my "fun" Orothe deck against the Trug deck was fun and quite the challenge. Despite Orothe's inherit strengths, my "fun" deck sort of plays the region in a bit of a twisted manner and has a weakness there against burrow that may not be quite so readily apparent.

Tonight, I managed to get in what should be game two for me. This time I specified non-Underneath. So, I got to face creatureless Nar. Malovis got off to a bad start while Delia is almost guaranteed a good start no matter what with the swarming vellups. Delia went a good distance and it was up to the Arderian Adept to do as much as possible. So many of my cards were useless since there was no opposing creatures to discard or reduce to one energy. All in all, it was a fun game.

Maybe sometime in the not too distant future I can see what malovis has done with their orathan deck. Apparently that deck is one that they are not allowed to play with this month. Oh well.

If I can get the third game before the month is up, I am tempted to either specify Naroom or keep it more open like I have and leave it at non-Arderial. I believe that I am fairly good with Naroom so it might be interesting to see what malovis might do for that region, while non-Arderial might make for an interesting matchup against a deck I have in mind.

Tainted Arderial

I need to make this report quick and get myself to bed. However, I had the opportunity to test my Arderial deck against something BobbyDoc2 had put together tonight.

Delia went first and vellup swarmed as usual fetching a Sandstorm Orshaa on the end for the adept. BobbyDoc2 flipped over Dub. A Zungg started into the vellups along with a large and nasty Dark Cragnoc summoned by the Grubble, one Grubble came from the starting hand while the other was summoned using Dub's power. I had both surviving three energy Vellups finish off the Dark Cragnoc which had already used its power to get the Elder Vellup. The remaining Vellup went after the five energy Core creature to make it death for that creature should Dub use his power. In short order Dub took out Delia using a couple Raveled Drush, one played from the hand and the other summoned by Dub's power. Dub is looking like quite a powerful magi. Aderian Adept flipped and tossed down big. However, one of the creatures she played and left in play was the illusionary Sandstorm Orshaa. Normally, I would undream the orshaa at the end of the turn after processing the Storm Shield. However, seeing the potential of Dub's power, I chose to undream the Raveled Drush to reduce the total number of potential attacking creatures during BobbyDoc2's turn in an effort to save both the Xyx Minor I had in play. With some good play, Bobby Doc managed to attack and have it set so that all my creatures had only four energy, not counting the illusion. Two Core Grag later and Dub had taken out both Delia and the adept. This was not going good for my Arderial Deck. Ora flipped and tossed out several creatures and the other Storm Shield. This was my last ditch effort. BobbyDoc2 chose to play Secrets of the Book and draw cards. A wise choice. Ora took Dub out with little effort, however I was fighting the uphill battle at this point. One magi down and two to go. Spirit of the Core ended up taking the Xyx Minor, denying me the vast energy this little critter had built up. Agram placed out a small swarm and sacrificed the plaything to reduce my forces substantially. An Aurora Xyx snagged from me and beefed up by the Xyx Minor used its power and took out one of my two Brannix. I forgot about Agram's Armor on my turn when I attacked with the surviving Brannix against the Shadow Hyren. With a Shattershards, I corrected that mistake, and crushing spell early in the turn had barely claimed the Wudge. This left Agram with no energy and only a ROUS in play. The creature was without companionship and discarded itself, thus defeating Agram. While Ora did have two creatures in play at the end of the turn, she had no energy and no Storm Shield at this point to boost them back up. Ogar flipped as BobbyDoc2's last magi. As soon as she played a ROUS and a Dark Cragnoc, I knew it was game although the one energy Brannix actually was lost to Ogar's own effect instead. In after thought, I realize I should've done at least one or two things differently with Shimmer/adept. I should've either sacrificed one Xyx Minor to make the other big enough to go nuts on just its own power instead of trying to keep both in play to bounce off of each other, or I should've played a non-illusionary creature instead of the Sandstorm Orshaa. Either way, it's sort of a moot point right now and the game was still very enjoyable. I had fun. That's what is most important, right?

Well, I've spent more time typing this than I had in mind. I'll post it as is for now.

Mountainous Cawh

Or, should I say the lack thereof.

It seems ultradoug was somewhat driven by something malovis had said to create a deck that turned Cawh into a Kybar's Teeth creature using a rather interesting setup with Aula Mindseeker and Niffer. After playing a game with someone else and a couple independent tests, I agreed to play a game against the deck. Granted, at the time I agreed I had no idea what his deck was to do except that it took two magi to setup. Knowing that my restricted Weave deck started with Ahdar and his effect could be fed by many massive card draw techniques, I went ahead made sure that I got the deck and the magi pile in the correct slots this time.

Aula Mindseeker went first. This gave a good start on their card draw, and one turn that Ahdar couldn't tap into it. After that, Ahdar went nuts. I actually had a Drowl show up in my starting hand, and with another to follow it up while still playing creatures, Ahdar actually was netting a good number of cards himself. By the end of Aula's next turn and several card draw spells and powers later, I had half my deck in my hand. Yes, twenty cards. No Warrior's Boots, but that was unnecessary. Ahdar had plenty to take on Aula. Niffer flipped and declared Weave for Allies. After placing Abwyn's Quill, a Weave Mind defeated her and placed Kazm out front. Apparently, this is where the combo was supposed to unfold. Cleansing had made Corrupt a Kybar's Teeth spell much earlier in the game. However, with no Cawh in hand, ultradoug played out a Sea Barl and attached Dream Channel as well Overgrowth to it. They also played Transmogrification (I probably spelled that wrong) to put Jasker's Mask into play. A Flood of Energy later, and things were looking a little better for Kazm. They were also looking better for Ahdar. On my turn, I started by playing the Weave Seed forgetting all about the quill. Ultradoug renamed the region and the barl ended up gaining the energy instead. Both the Drowl wove off the Uwamar and still got rid of the barl. Bungaloo got in a free hit and then I tossed out big. Lots of Weave creatures. Kazm failed to draw the Cawh until the end of the next turn. By this time, it was too late. Unless I didn't attack, Kazm couldn't survive the swarm of critters.

Once Kazm was considered defeated, ultradoug then revealed to us (there was an observer) that the deck would rewrite Corrupt so it made the Cawh a Kybar's Teeth creature instead of Core using the quill. This would allow the Cawh to trigger Kazm's effect since it refers to Kybar's Teeth specifically. Overgrowth and Flood of Energy would be used to grow the Cawh and to do massive damage that way.

I still had fun seeing an otherwise unusual and interesting game, even if the combo of the other deck was never revealed in actual gameplay. I think that's the most I've had Ahdar go nuts on card draw too.

Beginner's Orothe

I had some fun this weekend. While I still haven't got in my second game with malovis yet, I did get in another beginner's game today. This time, it was their second game and their first with a deck of their own creation. While I am working on building my own personalized selection of decks built from commons and uncommons to play against beginners, I haven't finished much of that yet. So, I went with my restricted Paradwyn deck.

The game started with me going through the tedious process of discarding one by one all the cards in my magi pile. I made a mistake and had assigned the piles in reverse. Once that tedious process was complete, it actually wasn't too hard to get my deck and magi pile where they needed to be and the game then began after my apologies for my mistake.

Arawan flipped first and used warp driven to get the Fog Hyren, a standard opening for this deck. With the Robe of Petals and two other creatures to compliment it, Arawan made a great opening move. The new player then flipped over Orlon and fetched the ring. Now that I actually played against this deck, so this given analysis afterwards, he probably should've only drawn the Sea Barl the magi starts with and then hoped to get another or a Deep Barl in his opening hand. As it was, Arawan fetched another Fog Hyren since the first had been properly crushed and the Robe of Petals stolen. With Arawan fetching a steady supply of creatures, the Paradwyn magi took down Orlon. When the Brother's of Vengeance flipped, they played out their entire hand including the ring they had left there. This could've given the brothers massive energy advantages, but the shortage of choices and cards in the hand probably was a root cause in their eventual doom. While they got Arawan, they had very little in the way of creatures and a single Spell Pulse had left them without relics. Ookami flipped and I had a great hand going into this part of the game. So, while they were practically down to playing whatever they drew, Ookami had tons of options. Two Hardshell Weebo and two Lahalou later, combined with a Tropical Plith to replenish my hand, Ookami was set to take on the brothers in their weakened state. An Iceberg Hyren did slow things down a little, but Ookami squeaked out the win.

After the game, I offered to give them some pointers. For the most part, their brothers deck actually shared a bunch of key similarities to my own. So, I think they've done quite well with their first deck construction. A good number of relics. Almost ideal number of creatures. And, some good choices on the spells. A little more balance in their deck, better strategy, and I look forward to seeing how they'll be doing in the very near future. Great player. I think I should've written down their name for this blog. Oh, well.... It is good to play new players of late.

September MND events on gEngine

The month of September is shaping up to be rather interesting. Here are some of the gEngine events for the month.

The Malovis Challenge
Challenge Malovis to play 3 games and if you win at least 2, you get tokens for more games on gEngine. More details are available on the gEngine MND Forums.

Double Jeopardy #3
This is the third round of the card design competition for Double Jeopardy. Create the text for the dual magi "Bash Brothers" and the winner possibly gets their designed text onto the card for play on gEngine. Entries should be posted at the MND Custom Card Forum thread.

Tainted Glimpses and Keeper's Quest Playtesting
Playtesting for the fan made sets Tainted Glimpses and Keeper's Quest are still ongoing on gEngine. Post a full playtest report and earn copper tokens. For more details, check out the Tainted Glimpses Rewards Program.

Twilight War artwork
Novelty is still looking for more artwork, particularly d'Resh, Nar and Universal, for Twilight War. He'll give out 15 copper tokens or 5 silver tokens for any artwork that is accepted for Twilight War. Anyone interested should ask Novelty for more details.

Exodus Flight magi
Insiider RPers with artwork of their magi or NPCs and who wishes these to be used in the gEngine set Exodus Flight can now submit them to Novelty. More infomation about which regions still require magi can be found in the Exodus Flight post.