Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Not Dead In My Heart

When it was announced that Magi-Nation was being taken off gatlingEngine, I was very saddened. I may not have gotten in a game in while, but I was hoping to. Now it has been a little while and I sit here reflecting on all the games I got to play. Ultradoug, Malovis, Novelty, and many others. I got started posting on this blog after Novelty invited me to. My contribution was to write game reports. Not just my tournament games, or playtesting, but any game I got in online. Now my only games of Magi-Nation will be with my own card decks it seems. And yes, I did play Magi-Nation before I found the CCG Workshop.

When I first started playing Magi-Nation, I read strategy tips, deck building, and all sorts of stuff online. Never writing anything in return. Then, I decided I needed to give back to the community. I submitted decks, articles, and game reports to a few of the internet resources I frequented. Not much at first. As time passed I became more active.

Some time ago Magi-Nation disappeared at the local cardshops and I turned to playing online, I met new players. New decks. New strategies. I saw an attempt or two at Grahnna and Pyder combination that I would end up building my own deck around. It was almost a perfect fit my own Bograth decks. I remember using a Furok to beat a Cawh in a single turn, on another occasion it was solitary Giant Carillion that did in a Cawh. And when I played Cald against a Cawh deck,... well that was just a total miscalculation on my part because I was guessing at the rest of the deck's mechanics and ended up overpowering the Cawh deck far, far in excess of what I had anticipated (I had been hoping for a more "even" game). Novelty showed me a mechanic in Sands of d'Resh that I didn't know existed or that it even worked so overwhelmingly (I got crushed). Even a few multiplayer battles.

There is one positive in this. It is easier to focus on job searching with Magi-Nation taken off the list. The only thing still bothering me was what to write as a sort of final blog pending an announcement of good news. Great news would be that Magi-Nation has returned to CCG Workshop. Better news (for me) would be that Magi-Nation is intact as I knew it and has returned to cardshops. The best news would be both, the game is back online and off. I am not holding my breath. I am expecting the game to undergo revisions before being released publicly again, and I have no clue if the property rights owner will consider letting us play the original game online again.