MND on gEngine

Not Dead In My Heart

2008-03-04T10:33:00.000-08:00

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.

Kybar's vs Core vs Bograth

2007-10-08T15:50:00.000-07:00

It has been some time since I last played a game of Magi-Nation. Now, I was hoping in the meantime that I wouldn't have to personally test the Naroom cards from Exodus Flight. Maybe they've been played and tested. However, there has been no such posts on Novelty's Custom Card forums, so I haven't been able to read about it. While I am not looking for feedback on each and every card, I am hoping to find out if a few of them work and what others might think of them in actual play. I started drafting a couple decks last night to give a few of the cards a spin when I had the opportunity to play Soulara and Frosty Ninja. When I saw them chatting online, I didn't know who Soulara was. So when Soulara described having a super Tony deck, it took a hint that they were the same person I had played against back then. I guess they forgot their original account's password.

Anyways, we would start a three-way game last night with Soulara going first. They flipped over Amara, played Inhibitor Band and drew their cards. Frosty Ninja went second with Evil Evu, a Dark Furok, and a Chaos Plith. With a great setup to draw cards, it would be a tough rumble between Evil Evu and Eryss for a few turns. Yes, I decided to go with one of my older Bograth decks for this game. Eryss was able to compliment her early card draw with Great Throne Mushrooms. Eryss would be the first Magi defeated. With Evil Evu taking down Eryss, Amara was left untouched to simply draw cards and gain energy. Olabra would flip as my second Magi, and she went nuts. Crushing Stench placed out a Swamp Hyren and the insanity would begin, including a couple Jile and one Torpar. I don't think I captured any screenshots of that first turn by Olabra. However, you can see here when Olabra took down Evil Evu.

While a healthily growing Torpar would take a few hits on Amara, Frosty Ninja got the final blow on the Kybar's Magi. With Spirit of the Teeth setting things up, we would face a nearly invulnerable Kyg'n Impervious. By the time all the spells and effects stacked up, you would've had to hit for more than seven energy to make the Magi even feel it. With two Pygmy Balamants, it looked like attacks would be far from effective here. As it was, I managed to crush the Floral Weebo and put out my one copy of Poison Baloo Root. I was on my second time through my deck. I totally forgot that I had Vard Stampede in my deck, or Kyg'n might not have been so impervious that first round of strikes.

Now Fiend of Furoks was really quite powerful. Having played two Wudge, then using her effect combined with some Baby Furoks and annoying Firds, she was really making a stand. The only thing that saved Olabra from the worst of it was attaching a Tar Hyren to one of the Wudge. Unable to attack, and gaining energy from all the Bograth and Core Creatures being played, that Wudge wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. A Muck Vinoc finally got the other Wudge and allowed Olabra to escape the pressure. And once Olabra escaped the Wudge assault, Olabra began to rebuild her steam. Of course, a few Rabid Wasperines allowed the Fiend of Furoks to finish off a few important pieces to the Bograth swarm. With another Great Throne Mushroom in play, Olabra was netting plenty of replacement cards. In the end, Olabra would take down Kyg'n and Fiend of Furoks. Frosty Ninja essentially sacrificed Jalex with a couple Warrior's Boots and Shadow Bones. While Jalex survived with creatures in play, Olabra was quite out of hand and fairly easily finished Jalex off with the final blow coming from a Muck Vinoc to prevent any Spirit of Rayje from being used should they be there. Ullig would take a hefty blow being left creatureless right after she appeared. Olabra just couldn't swing the final blow on the same turn as finishing off Jalex. I tried my math this way and that and just couldn't find that one more energy. Without creatures and short on energy even though another Spirit spell had prevented Ullig from taking critical damage, Ullig would end the game by spending her energy on spells so that only Olabra remained.

Cartoon

2007-08-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

Frequently Asked Questions - Cartoon General

Will there really be a Magi-Nation Duel cartoon?
Yes. The title has been shortened to "Magi Nation".

Who is in charge of producing it?
A Canadian company called Cookie Jar Group (producers of Spider Riders and Johnny Test). It will be drawn by a South Korean firm called Daiwon.

When will it be shown?
In Canada, it will be shown on the CBC at 10:30am with a premier date of 10th September 2007. See CBC schedule. In the US it will be shown on the WB network, in the block of programming called KidsWB. See Press Release. The premier will be on September 22nd. The cartoon will also be shown in South Korea.

Why is this not in the same style as the 3D-animation trailer that was shown on YouTube?
The 3D-animation trailer was done by Paule Neale for Elliot Animation. Elliot Animation were not successful in obtaining the rights to produce the cartoon.

Who is the star of the show?
The show is going to focus on Tony Jones. He will be assisted by Edyn, a Naroom magi and Strag, an Underneath magi. Their opponents will be the Core magi lead by Agram.

Why is Tony's hair brown in colour? Isn't it supposed to be blonde?
Stupid blonde jokes aside, it has been speculated that Tony's hair colour was changed to a darker shade so that he could be more acceptable in South Korea.

Why does Edyn look like Tryn?
It has been speculated that Edyn is a renamed Tryn. No reasons have been given for the renaming of Tryn.

Who is Zed?
Zed is a Shadow magi and one half of Korg and Zed according to the official site. Based on that fact, it has been speculated that Zed is a renamed Zet. No reasons have been given for the renaming of Zet.

Why are Agram, Korg and Zed all shadow magi now? Aren't they supposed to be Core magi?
It seems that all "evil" magi are now called shadow magi instead of Core magi. No reason have been given for this.

Why is the Furok blue in colour?
Tony's Furok has always been different. In the Game Boy Color RPG, Tony was able to summon the Dream Creature from a piece of Animite just lying on the ground, apparently the same crystal he'd found back on Earth. Pruitt later mentions that this is a "good Furok" and to represent this Tony's Furok is far more powerful than any other of the same level.

Later on, when Interactive Imagination wrote a short story concerning Tony's arrival in the Moonlands, we first learn that Tony's Furok is blue. Eidon explains that Tony had 'magined' the Furok to be a different color, an ability that has not been seen in ages. Tony's Furok is also blue in the original (and unsuccessful) Magi-Nation trailer made in 2002.

In the upcoming cartoon series, Tony's Furok is now not only blue, but can apparently change colors based on it's mood based on the infomation at the official site.

Where can I get more information?
The website www.magi-nation.com contains quite a lot of information. There are also downloads and webgames on the site.

What is going to happen to the card game? Are we getting a brand new game? Will our old cards be compatible?
There is currently no infomation about the card game.

2007-07-15T08:33:00.000-07:00

After long struggles with sysAdmins, with php and sql, and with a whole lot of other things, well, the old forum is lost and gone. There's a few things I salvaged and with those, I have put together a new forum at http://novcustoms.forum5.com/index.php . Please come back, everyone. Let's keep the ball rolling. A rolling baldar gathers no moss quidos!

Custom Card Forums are moving

2007-07-11T09:51:00.000-07:00

Well, the thing with free forums is that sometimes they stop providing the service. Never fear, the forums for the custom cards are moving to a new host/site. Once everything else has been moved over and set up, the link will be provided on this blog. Until then, keep on dreaming.

Delayed Reporting

2007-05-31T16:34:00.000-07:00

These next two games actually took place April 30th. I managed to get in the games, take screen shots, and write these entries on them. Yet for whatever reasons, I would not post them online until now.

When Crymzon mentioned that we were testing a new deck, I thought I would choose one of my decks that can vary wildly in its strength. Going with my Storm of Fishes deck, I would face off against Warrada first. It was a good choice. What surprised me was the application of Warrada. It just came off as weak. Aula Mindseeker would take out Warrada without even giving up a creature to Corrupt. Mostly because Aula had enough creatures in play to swing the defeat using an Undertow to setup the condition right for it. Apparently Crymzon lost connection to gatlingEngine while Aula took the battle forward into Togoth, who's purpose seemed to be to play the Naroom Shadow Geyser to grant extra energy for those Core creatures.

While Crymzon was still logged out, I found Levriat in the chat room looking for a game. About the time I was going to start a game with them, Crymzon logged back in and suggested we play a three-way battle. I guess Crymzon is used to playing three-ways were each person is designated a specific person to attack and a specific person to defend themselves from. We just did a free-for-all. Why? Simple, when I tossed down with Bograth, I knew I was going to draw attention if I pulled off my Grahnna-Oyder combination. Which I did. Baa went down easily enough after drawing at least the Pyder. While I would have loved the Swamp Hyren too at this point. It was a good start. Crymzon played the same Core deck, but they chose to start with Lanyx. Against Bograth, not a good choice. A simple use of the Poison Baloo Roots I had made sure the Core Grag couldn't fire off its power quite so easily. On the other hand, Levriat was playing Arderial. Aula started off some powerful card draw with Cloud Sceptre and her power, after playing a few cards of course. With Trade Winds in there, we saw the opening hints of a powerful Xyx combo around the corner.

After suffering from the combined efforts of Crymzon and Levriat, Grahnna would slip away and it would be up to Brog to make my final stand in the group match. At this point, Crymzon was the strongest position on the field. Having stolen two Xyx from Levriat's forces, the Xyx Elder wasn't quite the threat for Crymzon. I would focus my efforts into Crymzon to restore some balance. In the end, the dual efforts of Levriat and myself would do far more than just balance the scales back out. Crymzon would be the first player defeated despite their having had two magi left when Levriat and I were both down to our final magi already. Togoth had been the second magi again. The screen shot above is from shortly before Crymzon was defeated.

After Crymzon was defeated, my only hope was drawing more creatures. While I did draw a couple creatures, it was too little and too late. Brog just couldn't hold out long enough for any sort of comeback.

What's your background?

2007-05-29T06:03:00.000-07:00

What's the importance of a background? Very much it seems. OK, I'm not art guru, I just want to note down a few observations (aka points).

A while ago, I posted a picture of Jaylisa in the sky with... not diamonds and although it wowed Joe, it didn't really do much for me. One of the main reasons was the clash between Jaylisa's green dress and the blue sky. Somehow it just didn't match for me. I finally redid the image with a background of trees and a foreground of grass and elicited this response from Joe:

"Wow Nov, this is amazing. You make me leap for joy. (I am leaping for joy). now I want to cry.
(I am crying now.) Tear,... cry,... sob. which cards is the background from."

That's a tad dramatic me thinks. Here are the images - pencils by Joe, colours with blue sky by me, final colours with trees and grass.

A quick glance will show that the eye is more drawn to the final image (with the trees and grass) because it's more pleasing to the eye and probably is soothing as well. So point number one: The background colour scheme is essential and in some cases is critical when trying to make a image look more attractive, eye-catching.

A while back as well, I did an image of a sword in a beam of light. I couldn't seem get the colouring right and at the end of the day, it just seemed very weird to me. Today as I was colouring Nazeri, I played with bands of colours for the background just for the fun of it so that I didn't have to show a blank white background and I realised why the sword didn't work for me.

Shown above is the sword on the left (pencils by Joe, colours by me) and the mid-way point coloured Nazeri on the right (pencils by Joe, colours by me). Notice any similarities between the two? Let's take the sword - the sword is pointing up, and the beam of light is pointing down. The eye gets confused as it tries to make out where to look. The image doesn't say - look at the sword, it seems instead to say - look post the edge of the image. That is why the sword fails for me.

Likewise with the Nazeri image, the horizontal bands of blue and white seems to beg the to look beyond the left and right side of the image, while Nazeri herself seems like an arrow pointing either to the top or to the bottom. In short, the eye does not know where to look and the effect of the image is lost.

So I went back and played with beam of lights and finally finished colouring Nazeri as shown below (pencils by Joe and me, colours by me):

What's different here? Well the horizontal bands are gone, and it's been replaced with a vertical band immediately behind Nazeri. The contrast of colours, with black on the side and white behind the magi draws the eye to the figure instead of away from the page. But what about the top and bottom? Well, lighting is always from the top, so it would seem natural to the eye, but it has to be stopped from leading the eye to the bottom of the page. That's where the rock shelf comes in. It stops the beam of light and brings the eye to focus on the magi instead. And that's point number two: Use the background colours and design to point to the object of the image. Try not to use it to lead the eye away to the edge of the image.

A less subtle reason of why Jaylisa in the sky didn't work so well was the fact that the sky background was too neutral, and instead it forced the eye to use the branch as a reference point which seems to also look weird in the sky. Now the forest setting did two things to the image - the background tree trunks and the foreground grass both pointed to the trunk and of course, the trunk doesn't look out of place in a field of grass in front of trees. So point number three: Make sure your background is suitable for the subject at hand. In other words, don't draw a background that would seem out of place with the subject.

So, what's your background on your image? How did you use it to enhance your image? Is it suitable or relevant? Does the colour scheme match with the object of the image? Does it direct the eye towards the centre of the image? A good background will do all of the above, and not stand out at the end of the day.

On Different Ground

2007-04-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

I actually wrote this the next day. Because of a number of reasons I have forgotten anyways, I never got around to posting it with the picture.

For our second game, we would both play some less serious decks. Mine was a d'Resh-Kybars-Core-Universal mix of sorts. I don't have many mixed regions decks. Not knowing what sort of fun deck I was going up against, I thought it might be my best bet on a non-serious deck. SilverRaine would go first again, this time with Evil Evu. With a single Chaos Plith in play, I would use two copies of Forgotten Dreams to build a discard pile for Nahara. This would allow me to copy a Karkik in my discard pile before playing two Szhar. This took away Evil Evu's good starting position. Nahara would mix it up with Evil Evu for a bit and then face off against Korg and Zet. I had to smile. This promised to make for a fun game. With such a massive energize, stealing my creatures with Turn would be a good move. The exception to this would be stealing an illusionary creature. Since my illusionary creature could not attack magi by its very nature, Nahara would be safe from the severe danger it was to leave just the weak Sandstorm Orshaa in play. After Korg and Zet stole his illusion, Nahara answered with a simple Sand Hyren and Maelstrom combo to finish off the opposition. By my estimates, I had actually drawn too many cards at this point in our battle. My gut feeling was that if Nahara had been defeated that Nashiq might have run out of discard pile tricks because I had too much in my hand.

Frigid Opposition

2007-04-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

Last night I played two games with SilverRaine. When I logged in, I saw a reference to replacing parkas with warmer clothes and such. It didn't show the whole conversation that I had missed, but I did catch a reference to a deck that just needed some minor touches to be real good. So, taking a chance with the parka reference, I decided to play Nar. I really like the Warrior's Boots in my Restricted Nar deck, so that was choice. Turns out that SilverRaine would play Nar too. It was a very humorous game. Thin Ice followed by an opposing Thin Ice. Aegris being attacked and destroyed by an opposing Aegris. The opening game lasted a long time. Velouria went first for SilverRaine. This meant that I would keep the energy left on Balachron at one or less as much as possible to reduce any potential opposing energy gains. Balachron would suffer from all three opposing Crystallize. Real annoying. Still, Balachron managed to sneak past Velouria to face Odavast. Oh, I had to laugh. After some battling, the reason for my laughter was revealed when we ended up with Odavast facing off against Odavast. They struggled against each other for a bit. When Odavast beat Odavast, I saw one of the few differences between our decks for the second time. Spirit of Nar prevented my surviving Odavast from swarming then and there. He would have to wait until after Balachron appeared for the opposition to toss down a mass number of frozen creatures.

A Little Glitch

2007-04-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

It was nice to see 420Taco use something else in the next game. They even played under the usual rules of regional penalties on their own. Once again, they started. This time with Ashgar and single Arbolit. When Ashgar didn't play anything else, I wasn't sure what the point of the Arbolit was. Anyways, Ahdar would start things off for me and my deck full of Weave creatures. Yep, knowing that they were playing Cald, I chose a region because they are known for being weak against Cald. To top it off, my deck didn't have any spells or relics, so I should be a tad bit weaker on top of that. Ahdar would spend all his energy on all five cards in my opening hand. That was one healthy Uwamar. Ashgar would not last, but it is not often that I experience the pressure of the Heat Lens in a game either. Now this is where we experienced some form of glitch. When I revealed my hand, they did something that put the chosen creature into play. Normally I don't click on the option to allow my opponent to do anything to my hand, so I didn't expect what would happen next in this turn of events. 420Taco would turn control of the creature to me, but when I went to discard it the creature ended up in 420Taco's discard pile. A most unusual experience.

Barak would flip and begin some thinning of my meager hand resources using Heat Lens. Ormagon would finish off my swarm with ease, and yes eleven energy was paid for the Ormagon. As impressive as that might sound, Ahdar still survived Barak and would face Amanax just after I mentioned how the Flame Geyser they had just recently used was so much better with a Cald Magi whose name I could not recall at first. Amanax would play Scroll of Fire, Heat Lens (must I suffer again?), and Brushfire just once. This sort of surprised me because a second application of Brushfire would've eliminated both my creatures. Anyways, after a few rounds, I would start saving my cards instead of playing one out and then suffering as I would draw two and lose one to Heat Lens and thus only have one card on my turn again. Eventually, Amanax found Abraxin's Crown and would start using Ambush and other spells to bring Ahdar back down in the raw energy race. In the end, Storm Cloud would make Ahdar easy to finish off. Kesia got lucky on the flip. Since Amanax had not used Heat Lens on that last turn, she would still have a Drowl available. Drowl would net two cards, one of which was my last Uwamar. Starting with Uwamar, she would continue by playing three Pagajack, her Grass Hyren, and Aritex. The idea was to have something capable of at least surviving one Flame Geyser. Aritex would use its power, and I sacrificed the first of the Pagajacks, to restore Kesia to her starting energy. This was probably the best hope my Weave had for a comeback at this point. Now, the endgame got confusing. First Amanax was trying to use Vim and Vigor to eliminate energy from Kesia. Then it was the Uwamar with Amanax gaining an extra ten although upon reading for clarification I realized that it specified Cald spells and powers. Anyways, 420Taco mentioned they were getting tired of this game, and so was I. Yes, I would have attacked and used weave to gain energy as much as I could have. It seems that they had finally drawn back into an Ormagon too, so that would've been nasty if Amanax could've survived Kesia's assault. But, could he have done more damage than he did on that previous turn? I don't know. The upside-down Drowl you see in the picture is actually the Drowl 420Taco had drawn after getting it shuffled into their deck. They put in play in another attempt to give it to me. Since I had another Drowl in my hand and was going to play it, I simply discarded the Drowl in my hand and paid six energy off Kesia as if that particular one had been in my hand instead.

Rayje Fails To Swim

2007-04-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

Today I played two games against 420Taco. They mentioned a lack of wins, so I look through my decks for something that has decent strength but I can “throw” the game without being too obvious—I hope. I opt to go with my interchange deck. Rayje goes first for 420Taco. They choose defense. Not what I would have expected. Usually you draw with the first and then add the other effects later. With a simple opening turn of Staff of Hyren and Monarch Hyren, I am not too impressed. At this point, I am thinking it will take patience to throw this game. O'qua starts with Submerge and Orthean Belt, so when I pulled a second Submerge in the opening hand, I thought I would put a lot of resources into one Abaquist which O'qua would summon with her power. I took the single hyren. Not exactly a move for throwing the game, but I was so severely tempted by the rare occurance. Apparently her power confused my opponent a bit, so the game was a little slow for that. When they would use Hyren's Call with Rayje to get an Iceberg Hyren, I chose not to call them on that. I just simply changed plans. Instead of kindly throwing the game, I would try and win. O'qua would summon a Giant Parathin using her power and interchange away. Shaper's Apprentice then used Crushing Surf to eliminate the Iceberg Hyren and take the staff. This wouldn't immediately spell doom for Rayje, but it wasn't something he would survive easily either. When Rayje's would continue to play non-Universal spells and creatures without penalty, I just simply witnessed it and went on. It didn't save Rayje, or the next Rayje. Now, the next Rayje would use Beam of Light on my Orthean Belt and Deep Barl. Deep Barl had six, so I refused that. So, Rayje would use a Tidal Wave as well to just get rid of it. With Monarch Hyren rounding out the turn, I smiled to myself and used Undertow on the single creature. Now this would've finished off Rayje, except the regional penalty had been skipped again. On their next turn, Rayje would use Hyren's Call to summon a Night Hyren. With a Baloo Root and Arderial's Crown also played, I was thinking that I wasn't dealing with a very skilled player. Another Undertow would finish off this Rayje and 420Taco would concede the game.

After the game, I tried to tell 420Taco that Regional Penalties and Restrictions isn't exactly universal in its application to Universal as a region. Non-Universal might avoid them for playing Universal, but not so for the Universal Magi when playing non-Universal. I can only hope that this sinks in eventually.

A Minor Miscalculation?

2007-04-27T13:17:00.000-07:00

I really lost my notes this time. At first I was waiting for Ultradoug to post about our game since it took place just a bit before this one. That wasn't too long. Then, I could not find my notes. Did they end up in the paper shredder by mistake? Garbage? Did a seventeen-month-old little helper find them? I have no idea. What I can tell you is that Levriat told me that they hadn't played Magi-Nation in some time. They had been pleasantly surprised to find an online community still playing. Figuring that I shouldn't go with one of my power decks, I had to think for a bit. Since they were just out of practice and not a total newbie, I figured that my Restricted Weave deck would be a good deck to use. While they did get past Ahdar, Kesia is still a powerhouse. So while I miss my dear, beloved Aritex (didn't make the cut on the Restricted list), Kesia went to town. Even with weave Belted, the Sagaweaves would help her net some extra creature energy by moving it around. In the end, Kesia would finish things off as you can see here.

I am glad that they got past Ahdar. That would've been awful if they hadn't as I didn't want to scare them off from playing us online. While I haven't seen Levriat since, I can only hope that others may have had the chance to play them.

I Miscalculated

2007-04-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

Yes, this game happened some time ago. This is the only screenshot I saved from it. I figured Ultradoug would cover the game quite well in the blog he's been recording the series of games he's played with Cawh across the regions. So why do I label this, "I miscalculated?" Simple. I figured that if Cawh was in Bograth, there would lots of Bograth creatures from time to time to oppose me. Thinking of shifty and swarms, I thought my Cald deck might have some difficulty. In other words, I guessed that the supporting deck within which Cawh would make its appearance would do well against my Cald deck.... Oh was I ever wrong! Sure, Eryss started off with all those starting Bograth creatures, so I thought at first that I had guessed right. But, I was so terribly, terribly wrong. Read Ultradoug's blog for the details.

Face Off | ffO ecaF

2007-04-10T06:56:00.000-07:00

Just a few pictures. Since a picture speaks a thousand words, I'll let them speak.

Kybar's Sword by Douglas Brown (aka Ultradoug):

Kybar's Sword by Joe Araiza (aka joethemexican):

Defender of the Sky by Douglas Brown (aka Ultradoug):

Jaylisa by Joe Araiza (aka joethemexican):

Magum by Douglas Brown (aka Ultradoug):

A helm by Anthony Bode (aka actionbill):

We sure do have some really nice artists coming up. I can't wait to see more stuff from these people.

Mud In The Sea

2007-04-02T13:46:00.000-07:00

We would actually start a second game that same night. However, it would end up taking so very long on just our first two Magi that Pylofuf Boy would have to retire to bed in order to catch their class in the morning. So, although my notes only really cover the opening of the game, what you see in the screen shot is the results of two Magi who just are struggling to eliminate each other. I started again, this time with Baa. With four creatures in my opening hand, including her starting Slarnath and a Trulb, it was a very good start for Baa. Lots of card draw. Now, you would think that with Riptide played in the last game, I would take a deck that wasn't so vulnerable to it. Then again, Baa isn't supposed to last that long and I can play the majority of it out with my second Magi. Unfortunately, Blu would flip for Orothe. With Orlon's Ring, Corf Pearl, Karak Necklace, Crushing Surf, and Surf Diel, he wasn't strong enough to eliminate Baa quickly. Nor was he weak enough for Baa to finish off either. With a roll on the Corf Pearl to add energy to the Surf Diel it would signal a long fierce battle with Baa pushing with all her might. At least once, Riptide cut down the card resources. While Baa could recoup the loss easily enough, there was the issue of getting off Baa to my next Magi. It wasn't happening. Only just before this screen shot did I finally get a Spirit Drain. I wanted to rejoice. I could choose Baa as my target, except Blu's position wasn't strong enough to eliminate all my creatures. Attack with them all I could, but it seemed that I always had at least one creature with at least one energy left afterwards. As it is, I am not sure we'll get a chance to finish this game....

Water In Caves

2007-04-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

My apologies on not posting this shortly after the game. With the discussion at the time on Rayje's Belt and Rayje's Sword, I thought it might be fun to use my Underneath deck although I was seriously tempted to go with Bograth instead. With Pylofuf Boy online, I was happy to play a game. It would be ironic that my opening hand would net me not one creature. Four spells and the Tunneler's Boots. A far cry from an ideal opening. With Myka opening up the game, I simply drew my two cards and waited to see what would happen. Pylofuf Boy revealed Brothers of Vengeance to start things off for Orothe. With a Phrup, Barqua's Bubble, and Hubdra's Chest, it was certainly a far better start then my own. Myka would fight hard, however it would a Tidal Wave that would get her creatures and eliminate her. Emaal would be up next. With a Resonate, she eliminated the one energy Orpus in play and played out a Trogovo and Kier. Normally, this draw would setup my Underneath deck quite well. While Emaal would get the Brothers, thus making it nearly Magi for Magi since the Brothers count as two. Quilla flipped and played another Tidal Wave, Corf Pearl, Vault of Knowledge, two Surf Diel, and Riptide. It is not often that I see Riptide played. I had to sort through and choose four cards to keep. It was tough. In the end, I made sure that I had Crushing Fungus and a Resonate at least. Why? Simple. I planned on losing Emaal. Her defeat would eliminate energy from Quilla, and if I had used the crushing spell, there would be no energize either. The screen shot you see is from the following sequence. Without energy, Celebrated Hero merely had to eliminate the surviving Surf Diel and the game ended.

Colouring 101

2007-03-05T20:26:00.000-08:00

Practise makes perfect. At least that's what I've discovered out there. When I first started colouring, it seemed such a difficult task but yesterday, when I was doing the Sarazen Relic, I was almost doing it in my sleep. Practise! Practise! Do a whole lot more colouring... and you'll get good at it.

There are a large number of tutorials out there... but here is a step by step process of my own to encourage people who want to colour images with a computer to try and colour. Obviously, the first thing you'd need is a computer (duh!). Install your graphics program of choice, I use Adobe Photoshop (abbreviated as APS in this blog), but you can also download and use Paint Shop Pro for 30 days or something like that (or so I've been told).

Of course, you need to find a good monitor and a mouse. A good mousepad helps too. Some people prefer styluses and drawing boards, but I think that's way too much an investment if you are starting out. These tools do help, but just like the fact that the best Nike shoes can't help a lame man run any better, fancy computer drawing software and hardware can't help anyone draw/colour better as well if they can't draw/colour.

Let's start with the tutorial. The first thing to do would be to draw the image. This is known as pencilling. You may do so with a pencil on white paper (please use white paper to make life easier!) and then scan it into the computer. Or you may use the pencil tool in your computer graphics program of choice. Sometimes I do the latter. Most of the times I get someone to sketch/pencil me something. For the purpose of this tutorial, here's the image that JoetheMexican did for me.

Step 1 Draw image with pencil

Let's check whether it's suitable. Pencils. Check. White Paper. Check. Scanned into computer. Check. All's good to proceed to the next step.

Step 2 Delete defects

If you look closely at that image, you'd notice some areas were Joe has used an eraser to remove some lines while drawing. Unfortunately, these show up on the image still and they need to be cleaned up before you can proceed. So use the magic wand tool, select non-contiguous (or uncheck it in APS), make sure that the tolerance is set to a rather high number (I used 66 in this case) and then click on the white area. This should select all the white areas and the undesired "off white areas". Make sure your background colour (in the colour palette is white) and then you can hit the delete key on the keyboard to delete all the unwanted stuff on the image.

Unselect everything to see how much of the pencils got deleted. If too much of the pencils (the good stuff) got deleted, decrease the tolerance. If the defects aren't deleted, you might either have to increase the tolerance or to delete it manually.

I don't have a picture of the image at this stage, but basically it looks like the one above without all the almost-white grey bits.

Step 3 Layer the Pencils

After you've gotten rid of all the unwanted parts, select the white area again with the magic toolbrush and then inverse the selection so that the pencils are selected. Layer via cut to create a new transparent layer with the pencils.

This will still look like the original image above except that now you have the background white layer and the pencils layer on top of it. Feel free to rename the pencils layer to "Pencils" or something similar so that it is easy to navigate.

Step 4 Give it a constrasting background

This is an easy step. Figure out what colours your image is going to be and then pick a colour that is opposite to those colours. The Sarazen is mainly going to be blue and green, so I chose red as the background. Select the background layer, and fill it with the contrasting colour. This would make colouring a lot more easier. If there are too many colours and it's difficult to pick a contrasting colour, use 100% Magenta instead (#FF00FF).

Now there are two layers, a layer that's completely of the chosen colour and the pencils layer.

Step 5 Fill in the block colours

This is the easy step. For each colour, create a layer underneath the pencils layer but above the background. Then using the paintbrush, colour the area where you want that colour. Forget about what you were taught in Kindergarten about colouring within the lines. At this stage it doesn't matter.

Some people do that for each shape in the drawing at this stage, but I find that to be hard work. Anyways, for the Sarazen image there are 5 additional layers - the stand's rock brown, the sarazen's underbelly brown, the sarazen's body green and the sarazen's body highlights and white for the claws, tooth and eyes. Notice in the image below how ugly it looks at this stage.

Step 6 Delete outside the lines

This is another easy step. Select the Magic Wand again, and select contiguous this time. Select the pencils layer and click on the part of the image outside of the object that is being coloured (the red area in my sarazen picture, but not on the background layer, on the pencils layer which is transparent). If Steps 2 and 3 were done correctly it would only select the outer area. If not, not to worry. Unselect everything and using the pencil tool, fill in the gaps on the pencil layer so that the outline of the image is clearly defined.

Once you have selected only the outside area, go through each of the colour layers and delete away the extraneous parts of it. For my image, I had to do it 5 times. Then select each of the internal areas, invert the selection and delete that - for example, for the white layers, I used the magic brush to select the claws, tooth and eyes (using the lasso where necessary), inverted the selection and deleted away all the unwanted part.

When that is done, all the colours should be in the correct areas as shown below.

Step 7 Shade to make the object look 3D

This is the hardest part. "Real" artists would use different shades of paint to paint in the drawing which is a lot of work. False artists like me use all the tools that my graphics program gives me. Burn and Dodge are two very useful tools to do shading. Blur (including Gaussian Blur) is great to cover up mistakes. There's also Smudge and the Eraser tool if that's needed. Remember Undo sometimes helps a lot more than trying to fix what is done.

Basically, pick a layer, duplicate it if you're afraid of mistakes and then work with it. I started with the body highlights above (mainly blur) and then moved on to the barrel and the eyes (below). Note, you don't usually have to do anything to a white layer (like those for the tooth and claws).

It was also while I was doing the barrel that I decided the pencils were too grey. Now I should have darkened them immediately after I did the block colours in Step 5, but I forgot, so I did them here. The best thing to do to darken the pencils would be to adjust the brightness by making it darker. It really does make the lines stand out (compare the 2 pictures above to see what I mean).

The underbelly was next (shown below), using burn and dodge to define the curvature and to provide highlights and shadows.

And then the body. For the body though, I selected the blank area for the head on the pencils layer, then the green body layer, and then layered it via Cut. I did it for each of the heads to give me 4 different body layers. Some people do this earlier with the block colours, but I find it easier to do it at this stage. Each layer then got shaded separately (mainly burn and dodge) to give the image below.

Step 8 Background, Foreground and Shadow

Once that is completed, the rest of the picture can get filled in. Pick a good custom background, to paste into the image, or if that cannot be found, create a new one. Since this is going to be a relic, it doesn't need such a great background, so I just used Photoshop to render some clouds in the background in the green of the Sarazen's body colour.

The whole thing looks weird floating in the air though so some sort of foreground is needed. For a flying/floating object/creature, a foreground can be omitted. Photoshop gives me good texturing ability and a quick skew gives it the required perspective. Note that the foreground probably won't even show up on the relic card as it might get cropped by the card border, so I'm not too worried about it being too icky.

If it still does look a bit weird, a shadow can be added to make it more 3D. I didn't think it was required here so I left it at that. And that's the finished product.

Post-production work

However if you're making images for cards, a further step is required - the image needs to be sized such that it fits within the card borders. For MND, that's 300 pixels by 250 for a magi or creature or 300 pixels square for a relic and a spell (or multiples of thereof). The original of this image is 800 pixels by about 535, which is out of shape for my requirements. I need it square (and bigger than 300 pixels), so I opted to make it 800 square. I had to resize the background slightly, but that's easy to do. Here's the image that has been posted to the forums and to deviantart.

This is the size format that images for all MND custom art is required. I hope that people making their own cards will take note that I expect images to be of the correct size (and obviously of a good enough quality) if they expect me to template their cards and/or adapt their custom cards onto gEngine.

That's all it is to colouring. 8 easy steps. Remember, practice makes perfect!

Flood Overwhelmed

2007-03-01T12:07:00.000-08:00

The second game I played today was with GinsuBlender. They were playing a solitaire game when Freigabe was dropped. Looked like they were trying to make sure their Flood of Energy deck worked. Anyways, I went with my Flood of Energy deck again, so it would be Flood versus Flood. GinsuBlender went first with Tiller (I just peeked and found that my TW version of the deck starts with Tiller too). Anyways, they would play Vortex of Knowledge, Weebo, Eebit, Wasperine, Rabbage, Yaki's Gauntlets, and Flood of Energy. A big start for Tiller. Chayla would start with a meager Eebit, Rabbage, two Crushing Roots, and Relic Stalker. With two crushing spells in her opening turn, it sort of evened the field of play. This would last several turns, but Tiller would slowly gain an edge over Chayla. Next it would up to Salafy. Tiller was gaining steam, but Salafy didn't have a good setup. She was short on cards to use and I was really wishing for another Relic Stalker to get rid of the opposing Orwin's Ring. Anyways, Salafy would toss down strong with Wasperine to setup the elimination of an opposing Tree Hinko. Two Rabbage and a Furok would make her wall of defenders. With Tap Roots and then Flood of Energy, Salafy would have enough energy to play Overgrowth and another Flood of Energy to make her creatures somewhat impressive. This also made Tiller very strong. With a copy of Warrior's Boots, Tiller would tip the scales and defeat Salafy. While my final Magi was up against a virtually impossible wall since Tiller did some Flood of Energy tricks while Salafy was defeated, I still flipped him and took the screen shot after that. Tiller was running low on cards, so I suspect that if I could've got past him, the next Magi would've been in a similar boat that Salafy and Woot found themselves in against the opposing Flood of Energy.

Partial Flood

2007-03-01T11:54:00.000-08:00

I haven't played any games of Magi-Nation lately, so when I got a chance to play Freigabe, I was thrilled. After having seen Freigabe overwhelm a Flood of Energy deck, I thought I would try my own against them. Instead of using my version with any Twilight War cards, I opted to go with the deck it was built after instead, which has no custom cards. Anyways, I would go first with Chayla who played an Eebit, Rabbage, and a Glade Hyren to use up all her energy. I figured that if it was the same Bograth deck I had just seen Freigabe play, I would want as many potential attackers in play as I could. Eryss would flip and play two Fog Hyrens, Gremble, Poison Baloo Root, and N'kala. It was an impressive swarm to be facing this early. While I began tearing into it as best I could figure to do it, Freigabe would end up getting dropped from gEngine. After waiting for a bit, I would end up starting another game. It would be a bit into that game when I would receive a page from Freigabe. I guess they finally managed to get back on. By the time I finished the second game, Freigabe had already logged out.

Novelty's Custom Cards 101

2007-02-18T07:17:00.000-08:00

I'm sure I must have written about this somewhere, but I can't for the life of me find where I actually filed it. So this is just a cheap reproduction of how I make custom cards.

January: Review the expansion from 2 years ago (let's just call that TW) to get it final. Review the comments from the expansion last year (let's call this EF) to get it ready for playtesting. Continue collecting images for the expansion this year (let's call it AoD) to get it ready for design.

February - April: Start getting TW cards ready for being "custom legal" - get the final push for people to playtest, correct text, rules, etc. Add EF cards to gEngine for playtest. Also any promos going with EF is to be added to the engine at this time. Template images onto MND cards for AoD. Templated cards will contain the name of the card as well as its energy in the top left hand corner of the card.

May: TW gets finalised and become "custom legal". EF continues being playtested. Final push for templating AoD cards.

June - August: Start getting TW promos ready for being "custom legal" - get the final push for people to playtest, correct text, rules, etc. EF continues being playtested. Get the designers to start giving text for the AoD cards. The basic process goes something like this - the get the cards, with the images, names and starting costs. Then they write lots of text which usually gets thrown out by me at the first pass and I usually tell them to redo to either fit the theme of the expansion, the theme of the region, the things that needs support for that region or just because I feel that the card isn't going to represent its full potential. People like Ultradoug get really upset and frustrated at this stage and they start calling me "Simon Powell evil twin" or something like that. Start thinking about next year's expansion (let's call that FH).

August - November: TW promo expansion becomes "custom legal". EF continues being playtested. Post the AoD cards out for comments rolling them out region by region slowly. Start collecting images for FH.

December: Start getting EF cards ready for being "custom legal" - get the final push for people to playtest, correct text, rules, etc. Finish getting comments for AoD to get them ready for playtesting. Continue collecting images for FH - start to think about the promo theme for FH.

And the next year repeat again (with EF replacing TW, AoD replacing EF and FH replacing AoD and new expansion ZZ replacing FH). Custom cards takes almost 3 years to design from start to finish as custom legal cards. Most people will see it about halfway through the cycle and expect it to be custom legal in a short while but it does take a lot longer than that to make a proper card in my books.

Wizards of the Coast uses a rather similar schedule as well for the game which I shouldn't mention in case they send me a nasty letter, except that they do it for blocks instead of expansions and they take time out to tweak the 2nd and 3rd expansion in the block about a month before release based on the feedback of the release of the previous expansion(s) in the block.

As this shows, at any point in time, I'm two expansions ahead and even if I stop everything right now, I still have 2 expansions in development and the next one being thought out. To bring those 2 expansions to fruitation would still take at least 2 years to complete. Oh and have I mentioned that I don't get paid to do this?

Ninja Style

2007-02-02T05:51:00.000-08:00

I blogged a while ago about the Creature Card Maker, and invited bored people who wanted to play around with it to creature creatures that could be made into Custom cards. Well, to date, only one person has attempted to do such a thing and Frosty Ninja has posted all his creations on the Custom Card Forum.

There's quite a lot there to have a look at and when looking through the thread again, one can see his progress from the grainy webcam capture near the beginning of the thread to those neat screen captures that he has been doing as of late.

That was one of his Nar dogs. I thought the head was a bit lopsided though so I had to recreate it somewhat to make it less... I dunno, anatomically correct? It's

I might reuse that original Nar creature to create a Bograth Furok instead.

The other cards that caught my eye was his arderial fird:

It looks more like a fird though. So expanding on it a little bit and making sure the colour matches and everything...

It's been changed to Nar because the 2 creature slots in Arderial has been taken up in AoD.

And while making that though, I saw the Bograth wings and couldn't resist making a bograth fird as well...

And the reason for needing a bograth furok becomes clear!

There's still lots of parts and lots of things that can still be done with the creature card maker and I would still like to encourage people to have fun there. Post your creations on the custom card Fan Art page and who knows, it might end up as a custom card!

The greatest plans... were meant to be broken?

2007-01-29T16:41:00.000-08:00

It's January. A new year. Time for some new plans perhaps since the old one was really out of date anyways. So this is what can be expected for the first 6 months of this year and beyond. Of course, the disclaimer is that everything is subject to change though.

January - Weave and Universal cards gets rolled out for comments on the Custom Card Forums
I just realised that I still haven't finished the custom card designs for those 2 regions. These have to be done ASAP to ensure that they get added for playtesting at the same time with the other cards as well. I'll do Universal today and Weave hopefully by tomorrow.

February - Exodus Flight gears up for playtesting
Arderial will be the first region added for playtesting. If there's time in February, Bograth and Cald would also be added. I realised that I haven't exactly setup the code to accept Exodus Flight cards so I would have to do that first before adding any cards. Playtesting is only available to people who have signed up on the CCGW Forums though.

March - A Cure for All Seasons gears up for playtesting
I think there's some excitement about this series of 4 magi and these will get added in March, together with EF's Core, KT, Nar and Naroom, all for playtesting.

I'm still looking for images for Ancient of Days though, so that will be done in between adding all the cards for playtesting. Remember that images made using the 2i Card maker website that are posted in the Custom Card forums might get added to AoD.

May - Twilight War moves off playtesting and becomes custom legal
I decided to make May the month that new sets are made custom legal, so TW will join the ranks of EL and TG (and SP and KQ). DJ still has a while to go yet though.

2nd half 2007 - DJ becomes custom legal
No idea when this will happen or if it'll even change. I haven't seen too much complaints about the cards since they entered playtesting. I expected people to say they were underpowered, but that hasn't surfaced yet. This might still change, but I think the cards would fit in the custom legal environment.

Remember, originally, these cards weren't even supposed to be custom legal. They were supposed to be created and banned for tournaments, making them useless most of the time. I think it's with the collective effort of everyone who has been involved with the custom cards that has got the cards suitable for the custom legal environment, and I thank everyone involved in the making of the cards.

Sometime 2007 - AoD design begins
I still haven't finished collecting the art for AoD yet, and yes, it's difficult to get the art now. I think this set will go ahead, eventhough I still haven't gotten the 50 images needed for half the set. I will get there, I think sometime this year. After that though, the remaining 50 images needs to be created/collected, before it gets passed on to the card designers to do their magic.

Other Plans:

The invaders will probably NOT make an appearance due to the fact that I couldn't get enough images to justify a separate region. That would mean removing all references to them in EF onwards.

Project Second Chance - Awakenings would probably get kicked off sometime this year if there's interest. I'm sure Doug or someone would start a thread on it soon to see how many people are interested in that.

As usual, I'm still looking for artwork. Anything is welcomed. Dartax's sister has been going crazy with great new art stuff. If you know anyone who can draw and colour on a computer, see if you can get them to do something for the custom cards.

And of course, the MND cartoon will be shown on WB (in the US) and CBC (in Canada) sometime this year, probably in fall/autumn. That might mean the end of the Custom cards... or it might not.

Not a lot to look forward in 2007.

Dark Twins Battle Orothe

2007-01-29T06:21:00.000-08:00

I am sorry that I lost my notes for this game. I was hoping and waiting for them to resurface in the clutter I had. But now that it has been cleaned up, I can only guess that these notes found their way to the garbage without my catching it. I can tell you that this was a fun game that used one of my first Arderial/Orothe decks. My first Magi was Aula Mindseeker, followed by Voice of the Storm. Those two Magi did their job and took out the Dark Twins. However, a couple low rolls on Typhoon sort of ended any chance of a comeback for my final Magi. Oh well. A fun loss to Pylofuf Boy. If I had my notes, I am sure I could've told you a little more even this late after the game (March 1).

I don't go down to Eidon

2007-01-28T07:33:00.000-08:00

I am really out of practise with regards to what cards do. So today I threw together the Paradwyn version of the weenie swarm deck - my second on this machine - and when I was done poor Frosty Ninja logged in. I asked him for a game, and he didn't realise he was going to be my guinea pig for the just created deck.

I got to go first and revealed Pok. I don't have any of his starting (look out for the circlet in AoD though!) and drew 5 random cards. I got a bunch of cards I can't even play including TR's Jungle Riddle and EL's Second Shadow. I plopped down 2 relics - Scarletsong Banner was going to be a loss if I got hit by anything that removes energy from Pok, and a Robes of Petal. Immediately though I realised that I really should have Rayje's Shield in this deck, but oh well. Drew 3, discarded one and ended the turn with 5 cards in hand, 2 relics and no creatures in play.

Frosty went next and revealed Delia and did the usual Vellup swarm playing out a string of Vellups. Thankfully, nothing to damage my magi and the Banner was safe. During my turn, the Jungle Riddle was played gaining me a net gain of 3e. I laid out a string of weenies and shockwaved the 6e Elder Vellup... and well, that went on for a while as Delia recovered Vellups while I made sure that I always had more creatures in play (with less energy) to make sure that my magi could not be attacked. I was getting the free energy from the robes of ages, Lahalou and Hardshell Weebo, while Delia had Strenghten.

By Turn 10 though, Frosty had got all the cards in hand (it was more than 15 at that point) and decided to just draw cards without playing any creatures. Delia went down on turn 11 thanks to one Scarletsong Hwit and I played out more creatures knowing fully well that a swarm was coming next.

Eidon wasn't a surprise on turn 12, with a Staff to gain massive amounts of energy and 3 Flutter Yups and 3 Flying Hinkos. A K'teeb and then Nocturn pulled up a Forest Hyren. Poad's Secret Sauce would make things saucier. Let's just say he ended the turn with a 10e Flutter Yup, a 19e Forest Hyren, 3 4e Flying Hinkos and the K'teeb and 2 Flutter Yups at 2e. Eidon was at 3e.

What do I have against that? Well, not much I could do against the 10e Yup and the 19e Hyren, this is the unlucky Turn 13 after all, but a Beam of Light took out the 2 smaller Yups, and 3 attacks took out the Hinkos. A huge Lahalou bumped into the Hyren making it lose 8e (thanks again to the Hwit) while sacrificing itself. Then I laid out 2 K'teeb Thumpers which made the Forest Hyren lose 6 more. A Second Shadow and the Forest Staff got rid of Eidon's energy while the first Power of the Staff made sure the Forest Hyren could either attack or use its power, but not both. Staff of Vines was used to reduce all my creatures above 3e (remember this is a weenie deck, so 4e is my largest creature) down to 3e so that it would threathen the Yup. And that was the end of my turn, 8 creatures - 4 at 3e and 4 at 2e and no energy on Pok.

Turn 14 was interesting. I expected the Yup to attack and the Hyren to use energy transfer. Instead, 4 of Eidon's 6e was spent on a crushing, boosting the Hyren up to 10e and taking out a Thumper. The other Thumper went down to the Hyren's attack and then Frosty drew 2 signalling the end of his turn. Wait a minute... he did not attack with the Yup? And he left a Hwit alive? Would it make any difference?

I started the next turn with 6e on Pok (thanks to the Banner). Bagala Fangs Upped Yup to a starting energy of 10 (at which point, I could see Frosty was probably wondering what I was doing, since I was so confused with the Fangs after such a long time of not playing). Ambush took out the 10e Yup easily, and the Hyren and Eidon went down thanks to a couple of attacks each (By this point my solitaire Hwit has gained me more energy than I used to play it). I ended the turn with 1e left on my magi and over half a dozen creatures.

Frosty's last magi was Niffer which appeared in Turn 16. A cataclysm with Core overwritten to Naroom meant my swarm was gone and a Wasperine finished off Pok. He ended the turn with a 3e Wasperine and 4e left on Niffer.

Next up for me on Turn 17 was Arawan and I got back the Robes (free energy) and the Hwit (yay!), Spirit Drain took Niffer down to nothing as Frosty had 6 cards in hand by that point. But wait, I couldn't take out a 3e creature. I only had a Beam of Light in hand. Blegh. Guess Niffer will live for another turn... But wait! I haven't used Warp Driven yet. Let's see what I can pull up... oooh... what's this a Poison Baloo Root! Well, I played out a string of creatures as usual, but Wither on the Root and the Beam of Light took out the Wasperine! Wow, goes to show how some thinking is needed to win the game. A screenshot of the game at the end follows:

I enjoyed the game - taking out Eidon was almost as satisfying as taking out Super Tony. Swarms seem to rule, or at least when I'm playing them. I think the next deck that I will be making will probably be a creatureless one to throw people off balance...

I tested 3 cards in the deck - Radiant Spring and Commander's Knife both didn't even get to see play, so I can't comment on that. One of the key combos of the deck was Second Shadow - Jungle Staff. 3e to take off 3e. Not a big energy gain. The trick is that Second Shadow can be played way way before hand and most people will usually ignore it since, well, what's the chance of throwing a 6? It wasn't as annoying for Frosty in this game, but it did one thing that I wanted it to do - it stalked the opposing magi. That enabled the Staff to be played just at the right moment for me to take off 3e. I liked that.

Now why use that over Spirit Drain, for example? I don't really know. It's weird to magi stalk when the deck is based around Dreamwarp - I really need to test it out with a real magi stalking deck and Loaded Dice. The one thing the combo does is annoy with Second Shadow and provided that neither that spell or the Staff is discarded, a repeatable 3e loss every turn for the cost of 1e after the first try from the opposing magi. Oh and I guess that's the other purpose. It protects my other relics by being discarded in preference first - and I have quite a number of them in play. I don't know. It's not such a great card in a dreamwarp deck after all, but I'll leave it as it is.

The card that saved my bacon this game? Hmm... I was going to go for the Jungle Riddle which gained me 8e this game, but my Robes of Petals actually gained me more. Either Bahza's Pendant or Ambush might qualify, I like the way it took out a Yup which would have taken me ages to defeat with attacks, but that's a combo everyone else uses anyways. No, the one card that made victory possible again and again was the tiny Scarletsong Hwit and I'll call that the card of the match.

Arderian Adept Swarms

2007-01-25T18:24:00.000-08:00

It was nice to see a few people online playing recently. I haven't had much time to play this week, so when Frosty Ninja had some time to play Wednesday I took the opportunity to play. Delia would start things off for me and for the game. Just a standard Vellup swarm with three Vellup and an Elder Vellup. With Aerial Flist put in the hand, it was a good start. Chur would flip and play a Borgor and Nightmare Hyren opposite Delia. With the Nightmare Hyren giving my Elder Vellup some bad dreams, it looked like a good opening for Frosty Ninja. I had a tough choice to make. If I attacked with the Elder Vellup into a big enough Core creature, I would be rid of Toss and Turn, but I had the right setup to get through Chur's creatures despite appearances and hit Chur with the energy of the Elder Vellup. I ended up choosing to hit Chur with the Elder Vellup, so I would have to deal with Toss and Turn for several turns. In the end, Delia beat Chur. Zet would steal my biggest Elder Vellup and play a Drush. While this would foretell Delia's defeat, I managed a great setup going into Arderian Adept. I think I had over half my deck in my hand at one point. That is, until I revealed Arderian Adept as my second Magi. She would use Sandswirl for two to prevent any immediate creature theft and played out two Orathan Flyers, two Aerial Flists, and a Vellup. With a Storm Ring and Storm Shield to round things off, she had a good start. Shimmer would use her effect to undream a Drush and net a bunch of energy on all her creatures. After the Adept defeated Zet, Morag would flip and play Vaporize, Szalak, Koil, and Zungg. With the effect of the Koil and power of Zungg, Morag setup an Orathan Flyer for Turn. With a loaded dice, he spent his last energy to help the Szalak gain five energy. The screen shot here is from the turn immediately after this. With a single Storm Cloud, I ensured that the energy advantage in creatures belonged to Shimmer once again. Frosty Ninja declared it a "gg." Unfortunately, although I took notes, I did not write this report until half a week later.

How the Super has fallen!

2007-01-23T07:09:00.000-08:00

New computer, no decks.

The only deck I can easily throw together is my LE-Weave deck. So I did that and as I finished Doug popped in and asked me for a game. So why not... I figured... it'd be fun to lose to Super Tony.

I went first and got my Uwamar as usual. The other 4 cards were all creatures which I played with ease. Doug flipped Eryss and proceeded to draw massive amounts of cards leaving a 6e Fog Hyren, a 4e Poison Baloo Root and a 4e N'kala. During my next turn (Turn 3), I could have got rid of Eryss since I had a Brushfire and a Beam of Light in hand, but it would mean sacrificing all the creatures I have in play that could attack, clogging up my hands with creatures I couldn't play since I played the spells and drawing close to nothing. Instead, I chose to play it safe and keep Eryss for an extra turn while I laid out my creatures and drew more cards.

Eryss did close to nothing on the next turn (Turn 4) which lead me to suspect she was being used as a draw magi. She went down fast in Turn 5 and I had 2 massive Uwamars out at this point of over 20e. Aula, Minseeker was revealed in Turn 6 with her starting cards and Doug drew another 4 cards without playing any creatures. Bad choice of 2nd draw magi IMO, and she went down fast in Turn 7, at which point Doug taunted me if I was ready for his next magi.

My heart fell when indeed Tony Jones was revealed during Turn 8, but hey, it was only a fun game right? I started the turn with 5 cards in hand and about 14 creatures in play, one of them a Frusk and 1e on my magi. Doug proceeded to play his relics and spells and 2 constructs and did all sorts of crazy things including massive draw and massive energy gain with FoE, Jasker's and Bog Pit. An Ormagon took out my swarm. Major Ouch! But it also took out his Constructs as well as he did not have the Quill in play then. Thanks to all those cards he played, I ended the turn with 21e on LE, 21 cards in hand, but no creatures in play and no cards in my deck because I drew them all. Oh well. Doug had a whole bunch of relics, but no creatures and 8e left on Tony Jones.

During my go in Turn 9, I booted in a Zassyfer and if I had a Weave Seed in hand it would be game, but I didn't. I scratched Tony for 3e with the Zassyfer, then played an Uwamar and a Grass Etiki. Thanks to the Grass Etiki, I warped down all my weave creatures to play all 21 cards in my hand including another Frusk, Uwamar Beads and Weave Hut. The latter 2 was to be my saviour.

Turn 10 saw more crazy relics being played by Doug, including the Alaban Gloves and Abraxin's Crown and Abwyn's Quill. Book of Life + Book of Ages means a 15 energy gain for him with a FoE, but that gave me 10 as well. He discarded Uwamar Beads with the newly played construct's Pound and did a few other things. At one point during this turn he was on 40 with a 5e construct, I was on 36, and he attempted a Syphon Vortex on my magi. I triggered the Weave Hut to make it do nothing and he behaved rather cordial at accepting this major mistake. I offered him the chance to take it back at which point he gleefully typed in "Cancel" and then used the vortex on my 25e Uwamar. Oh well, the Uwamar couldn't attack anyways, and thanks to the cards he was playing, I had drawn 11 cards to make it 16 in hand and 36 on my Magi. He ended the turn with a 5e Construct and a 30e Tony Jones in play while I had my swarm of a dozen creatures in play, most of them with 1e or 2e. Would that be enough?

A Weave Path brought back an Uwamar, the only creature in my discard pile at that point, making it 13 creatures in play. Uh Oh? Kesia's Flute did a quick weave to give me a gain of 5e, but is that enough? A quick count revealed that I had more energy on my side of the table, but 4 of those were on creatures that could not attack. The creatures that could attack though had less than 35 energy. Will Tony Jones live another day?

A 4e bungaloo attacked the 5e construct, weaving itself so that it was at 5e and then going out, giving it's additional 2e to another Bungaloo. Had I been thinking though, I would have attacked with all 3 of my bungaloos, weaving them down so that I would gain 6e on my creatures thanks to Flee. But that was not to be. The remaining creatures attacked Tony Jones weaving energy away from the creatures that could not attack and removed - get this - exactly 30 energy. Had Doug had a Spirit of Rayje in play, he would have lived for another turn thanks to my mistake with the Bungaloos. He only had 3 cards in hand and Spirit of Rayje wasn't one of them so I won.

Wow. And I mean wow. A deck quickly thrown together in 2 minutes took out one of the most powerful decks currently online. There's a screenshot on the CCGW forums of the endgame.

I suggested 2 cards to Doug - Orwin's Gaze to get back the Ormagon and the Orothe relic that allows powers on relics to be used twice. He said the Orothe relic won't work, and since I don't really remember that relic, I guess he's right. I think he's gonna add the Orwin's Gaze though... The other card he could have added is the universal relic that copies relics... but I don't exactly remember that card as well.

I had Pineneedles and Photosynthesis in the deck, but never got to use the properly. Photosynthesis was just discarded for Channeler's gloves for energy gain instead. I was also testing out Speag Sprouts, but since Doug never attacked, I didn't get a feel for that card.

Doug thanked me for the text on Bog Pit at the beginning of the game which made me wonder what he's got up his sleeve. I found out during the game though. Bog Pit is getting an errata perhaps soonish with the addition of just one word to the text.

I enjoyed the game, it was a Challenge taking out Tony Jones, after Doug gave up on 2 attempts trying to take out my first magi. Had he played the Ormagon first thing when he flipped Tony, he might have got the win, but somehow, I don't think he started the turn with the Ormagon in hand. Had he an Orwin's Gaze in hand during his next turn, the game would have gone on longer. I think he wasn't trying really hard to defeat me somehow. The reverse was not true though, because I really wanted to give him a good game and defeat the (almost) Tony Jones. I did it, without the use of Weave Seed, which I never drew when facing Tony Jones. The only customs that I used of any consequence were Weave Path, but that played such a minor role that even if it was substituted for a non-Custom card, the outcome of the game would still be the same.

And I was playing the weakest of the 5 swarms. Imagine what a Naroom or Arderial or Bograth or Paradwyn swarm would do to Tony Jones. I'd like to see that happen!

Forest Hyren Conspires With K'teeb

2007-01-22T19:49:00.000-08:00

For my second game tonight, I thought I would honor Crust357's play of the Flying Hinko and those three Magi by playing my own Flying Hinko deck, although I use those same three Magi in the opposite order. I would go first again, this time starting with Tryn and a random set of five cards. Tryn would get lucky with a K'teeb and Forest Hyren in the opening hand. This would not bode well for Crust357. She played out the powerful opening with the K'teeb dreamcrossing the Forest Hyren. Pruitt would make a decent showing herself by playing a Glade Hyren, Flying Hinko, and Poad's Secret Sauce. With a good roll on Grow and using Pruitt's Power, that would become one large hyren. I would later end up telling Crust357 that putting a little of that grow into the Flying Hinko would've made things a little more difficult for me. At three energy still, it was easy to use Crushing Roots and begin overwhelming Pruitt with the K'teeb-Forest Hyren energy combo. By the time Poad faced off against Tryn, it wasn't looking to good for the little cook. Poad would toss down real good with Weebo, Leaf Hyren, Flying Hinko, and Tree Hinko. A real good lineup. The only problem was that Tryn was already in a strong position. While Crushing Roots would make the Forest Hyren too small to use its own power, the K'teeb would remedy the situation by using its copy. After the attack step and eliminating the much healthier Flying Hinko, Tryn would add a Weebo and Tree Hinko to her side of the field. This allowed the K'teeb to gain more powers by dreamcrossing with the Weebo and later with the Tree Hinko as well. With the Forest Hyren still in play and plenty of add energy or revitalizing powers to go around, Tryn was certainly in control. When Poad would play out his own copy of Forest Hyren, it looked like he would have a comeback until Tryn cut it short with a Giant Carillion. While it would come down to Tryn versus Tryn, Crust357 chose not to play anything out against the Naroom swarm already in play. Afterwards, I think Crust357 was going to take out the Glade Hyren and put in some K'teeb after learning that dreamcrossing would keep the powers of the other creatures as long as the other creatures it got its powers from stayed in play. While these were both crushing losses for Crust357, they showed great sportsmanship in these games. I was impressed.

Forest Wudge Goes Nuts

2007-01-22T19:42:00.000-08:00

My games tonight were with Crust357. Since I last saw them playing a Dark Twins deck, I thought I might give my early anti-Core Naroom deck a spin. I would go first with Tiller, so this was my first clue that something was up. Still, my anti-Core Naroom has done alright against plenty of non-Core decks. Tiller would have a fairly standard opening drawing cards with his powers and Vortex of Knowledge. He would play out a Forest Wudge, Bhatar, and a Weebo. Weebo would be returned to the hand to make that one very large Forest Wudge. When Crust357 revealed Pruitt, I had a feeling that the Forest Wudge was going to get out of hand. Although Pruitt would only play a Tree Hinko on her opening turn, she would use Crushing Roots twice, once from research using the Tomes of the Great Library. The second relic she played was Orwin's Ring. Since both Crushing Roots had been used to shrink the Forest Wudge, I responded by using another copy of Bythan's Gift to make that one really large Bhatar, attack, and played the Forest Wudge back out to draw a card this time. Pruitt would fight well, but the Forest Wudge really was causing trouble in the energy scales. Having two out at one point was devastating. Poad would use Crushing Roots to eliminate my Wasperine in play before playing a creature out. While Tiller had lost one of his two Forest Wudge, one was still plenty. Sadly, Poad wouldn't last long. It would then be up to Tryn. While she got some good rolls for two copies of grow on a Flying Hinko, all it took was a copy of Warrior's Boots and a Giant Carillion for Tiller to deal with such a large threat. It was nice to see Crust357 playing something non-Core. When they asked for a rematch, I decided to change decks.

Newbie Rules?

2007-01-18T07:12:00.001-08:00

I played a game at the beginning of this week that I haven't been sure how I should write about it. My opponent showed some skills that led me to believe they were a beginner, yet quoted the rule book to defend their actions. It was frustrating for me. I went first with Chayla. My Flood of Energy deck is decent, but I certainly don't consider it my strongest deck. I did the standard opening with Rabbage and Eebit. When they flipped Dark Twins and retrieved a Naroom Shadow Geyser, I wondered if they were playing some interesting and skilled Shadow Geyser deck. Matching it with a Gia Pet seemed an interesting choice. While they got my Eebit with a spell, I already got a lucky draw on my second Eebit. When I played this second Eebit on my next turn, they asked how I was drawing more than one card in my turn. I pointed out Chayla's effects. When I would later play two Flood of Energy with Chayla, they tried telling me that Gia Pet would gain energy too. My argument was that my spells don't stay in play. While they didn't actually add energy to Gia Pet then, it would be later when I tried to using Crushing Roots on Gia Pet that would call out the “Effect – Power Syphon” again. It was frustrating, to have some rules lawyering going on. I was fairly certain that it was a typo on Gia Pet. Everything else in the wording of that “effect” had to do with a spell in play, and not with a spell being played. Anyways, while it canceled the crushing spell since the spell would now remove the same four energy the Gia Pet gained, it didn't save Gia Pet, or the Dark Twins in the end. Yes, I wasn't being too nice by this point. I think that by the end of the game they may have finally realized that the effects of both the Dark Furok and Orok don't actually allow those two creatures to take half damage in attacks.

By the way, eventually I would dig up my one copy of Gia Pet. Magi-Nation seems to have ended up as my bottom box of cards in the closet, it has been that long since I've done anything with my physical collection. And yes, Gia Pet has one effect and one power, “Power – Power Syphon.”

No screen capture.

Tony Jones Rules

2007-01-12T20:06:00.000-08:00

This is the first time I am trying to post two pics. It is an exception of sorts. The first pic seen above is from the middle of the game, near the end. This is when the largest amount of energy was had on both sides of the field. Shortly after this, it will become vastly one-sided. There should be a clue to what happened in the relics seen under the control of Tony Jones.

Now, I have known for a while that Ultradoug wanted to play me with their super Tony deck. While this had not happened yet, I was of course a bit curious. From the pics I had seen online, I was guessing that I might want to take my best swarm deck. I was wrong, but I'll leave it up to you to guess what I should have played instead. Ultradoug would start the game with Eryss. Eryss played a fairly standard opening, playing all four of her starting cards and drawing up what she could. Baa would be my first Magi. I decided to setup my second Magi instead of playing rough with Baa, and she would play out Slarnath, Trulb, N'kala, and Muck Vinoc. After using Trulb to play Ooze Arboll and setup more card draw, Baa would end her turn drawing five extra cards. After a little struggle, Baa was defeated by an Ormagon. This was my first hint on the deck I was playing, even though I did not quite know it yet. Grahnna would simply play Spirit Drain on her turn to defeat Eryss. When Aula Mindseeker first flipped as the next opposing Magi, she would only use her power of windsight. Keeping things light for a possible Ormagon, I played a Ruid, Treepsh, and two Trulb. Aula would not leave herself wide open. She played Rayje's Construct, Book of Ages, three copies of Vortex of Knowledge and two Tradewinds. Lots of card draw, and Aula was down enough energy that I need not fear an Ormagon in the immediate future. I figured this was my best opportunity to “go nuts.” And, played big I did, holding enough back to repeat what I just did if necessary. First a Pyder, then a Swamp Hyren, or in this case two hyren, and then a whole lot of virtually free creatures. After defeating Aula, Grahnna would play some more creatures yet. There was plenty of card draw to go with this so it wasn't a real danger for me at this point. Now, it was time to see Tony Jones rule the end game. Tony would flip and start laying out all those relics you see in the first screen shot. Each copy of Rayje's Construct you see was played using Warrior's Boots. It was a rather intricate pattern with Flood of Energy and the constructs copying Tony's power and drawing cards. This allowed all this to take place without getting to the play creature step. Tony ended up with plenty of energy to play an Ormagon and rewrite it to non-Universal using Abwyn's Quill. Having used a spell to eliminate the energy on my Magi, this devastation defeated Grahnna. The first screen shot is from before the devastation. Next, it would be up to Brog. He would play out a Swamp Hyren. A couple Treepsh, Trulb, Jile, Ruid, N'kala, and Muck Vinoc were among the creatures Brog played. Trulb would net me an Ooze Arboll which I was hoping for. This got me one of the Rayje's Constructs. Vard Stampede reset the opposing relics and it was just a matter of waiting and seeing what Tony Jones could do with all that energy. A lot more card that managed to net Tony Jones at least two Warrior's Boots with which to play two Ormagons. One blew up my creatures along with the remaining construct, and the other was sufficient to attack and ensure the defeat of Brog. Very impressive.

Frozen Swamp

2007-01-10T10:28:00.000-08:00

I played a game with BobbyDoc2 a couple days ago. While I failed to get a screenshot, I still have my notes. BobbyDoc would go first using the Secret Lovers. Using their power, they revealed a very good card but not one the power would put in the hand. With just a Zyavu played, it didn't look like a powerful start for the dual Magi. Eryss would flip as my first Magi. She would play out a Swamp Hyren, Fog Hyren, Gremble, and Poison Baloo Root. Not a bad start at all for Eryss. When the Secret Lovers tossed down some more creatures, I opted to sacrifice Eryss. Quite possible with this deck. Olabra would be next to battle for Bograth. Now, I would forget her own effect and make some choices later that could've been different for perhaps a better result. Oh, well. Anyways, Olabra flips and plays a Deadwood Staff, Swamp Hyren, Jile, Treepsh, and Ruid. Using the Deadwood Staff, she placed a second Swamp Hyren in play. Adding in a Moss Pendant made for a nice opening swarm. With two Swamp Hyren, she had a power position for building a vast swarm. As I wasn't playing against Underneath or Arderial, I probably should've played a few more creatures out earlier rather than hold them for my next Magi. It still looked overwhelmingly in Olabra's favor when Odavast flipped after the Secret Lovers were defeated. He would play a Yaromant, three Mombak, and Ice Lens. A great opening. Olabra would attack then use the power of her surviving Muck Vinoc to eliminate the Yaromant which had grown in size. With the help of Ice Lens, his protection in attacks, and a constant freeze, Odavast would slowly comeback from his desperate situation. When he defeated Olabra, it would up to Brog to try for the Bograth comeback. He would play out a Tar Hyren, Fog Hyren, Torpar, and an N'kala. Having seen all three Crushing Ice in gameplay, I felt it safe to leave some creatures at four energy. Odavast would defeat Brog by using Warrior's Boots to bring in an Aegris. This would allow him to take out the Tar Hyren cheaply and without harm to his creatures or magi for future play. Although Brog would survive, he didn't have the creatures in hand or energy left anymore to oppose Odavast's growing swarm. I declared it a “gg” and enjoyed the impressive comeback by Nar after suffering some terrible card draw in the early game with the Secret Lovers.

We'll all be burnt to a cinder!

2007-01-06T12:29:00.000-08:00

With the previous game being somewhat short, CapAp and I would play another. For this one, I would go with the last of those old decks that I have recently loaded into gEngine. Liriel would go first for CapAp. With two Bagala Cub in play, this promised to start some thinning of the Paradwyn deck. This also meant the two creatures were a bit smaller than I usually like to use the Boomstick for. However, when I flipped Good Ol' Ashgar as my first Magi, I still grabbed his Boomstick. Ashgar would play out a Quor and Magma Hyren. He would battle Liriel several turns, including putting out his Boomstick to do some burn. In the end, she would beat him. Barak the Red would reveal as my next Magi. His purpose is to use his power to thin the creatures from the deck. Besides, the right combination of creatures allows him to great. Barak would play Brushfire, Crushing Heat, and Thermal Blast to do massive damage to Liriel. He would then play two Flame Rudwot and grow them before ending his turn. When Arawan flipped as the next Paradwyn Magi, I had thoughts that something nasty would be setup for that last Magi. He would play a Scarletsong Banner, Bagala Hunter, and Froxfire. With only the one creature, Cald would burn through quickly. Now it would be up to Squik. She would return the Scarletsong Banner to play, use Relic Stalker on Gorgle's Glasses, and then she tossed out the Jungle Riddle. Crushing Vines would do some damage, and Bagala Hunter would create her defense. I had to do some serious thinking to sacrifice Barak. I didn't want him to have to face Squik if she got out of hand. By using Fireball as part of the effort, Scarletsong Banner went away quietly on its own. Valkan would flip as my last Magi. With another copy of Gorgle's Glasses, he was ready to battle it out. Valkan has a low energize, so he would play Robe of the Ages before using Brushfire to finish off Squik's single creature in play. Then he would take a change and play just one creature, a Greater Vaal. When the first die roll was a five, he didn't need a real high roll on the second die to finish off Squik. I cannot remember when I last played that deck. It has been a while.

This finishes off all those old decks that I have entered into gEngine so far this year.

Weave Creature Feature

2007-01-06T12:10:00.000-08:00

For those of you who might not know, during the Cald Season of the Magi-Nation League they had a special path one could earn stamps on for playing a deck with all creatures. No relics. No spells. Now, originally, I built an Orothe deck out of all creatures. It was doing well until it went against another deck which was all creatures. When it was exposed that my creature feature had a severe weakness against creature features, I chose to build another one instead. Unfortunately, I never wrote down the list of that Orothe deck. I wish I had. However, I did keep a record of my newer creature feature, including some mods I made after Voice of the Storms to keep it somewhat competitive.

When CapAp offered to play a game, I decided to go with my creature feature deck. Since it has only creatures, and all those from one region, I knew it has some inherit flaws. So, the question would be if CapAp's deck would be able to exploit them. I would end up going first with Ahdar. Yes, a Weave creature feature. Ahdar would play Uwamar, Grass Etiki, Drowl, and Sagaweave. Being a creature feature, I would never run out of creatures for my Uwamars. Well, CapAp would reveal Emlob as his first Magi. I would end up reminding CapAp of some effects going on with his Magi and creatures. It sort of showed that he doesn't have much practice with Bograth yet. Emlob would end up playing a Quido Swarm, Zungg, Treepsh, and Mist Hyren on that first turn. While I would make a full range of attacks whenever I could, my first clue that I wasn't facing another creature feature was a Dream Balm that restored the Mist Hyren a couple turns into the game. Of course, I lost my first Uwamar early on, but when I played another and started using some of the Aritex combo, CapAp declared it a good game. Apparently, these energy tricks I was using to help keep my creature feature competitive were more than his deck could handle and he knew it. I had been snapping screen shots, except my last screen capture happened to be just as CapAp was logging out of the game. Oh well. Too slow on my key strokes and I chose not to save the pic of only myself in the game.

P.S. If you want to play against this creature feature I have, just let me know.

O'qua Battles Dark Twins

2007-01-06T11:46:00.000-08:00

My next game would be against Crust357. I had just witnessed them playing a Dark Twins deck against another player and knew that this has been their deck of choice for a little while now. One of the older decks I had yet to play was an O'qua deck which I was sure had one Hunter Jile in there. The Dark Twins would go first, as was their right. They played out a Corathan, Core Grag, Raveled Drush, and Corrupt. This was a bit more on the opposing creatures than I was hoping to face on an opening turn. If it wasn't for the Corrupt, I would've summoned an Abaquist and stole that Core Grag. Instead, I would flip O'qua and summon the Hunter Jile to break the opening Corathan and Corrupt combo. With two of my Giant Parathin in my opening hand, I almost wanted to cry then and there. It presented two problems. One, if I didn't play one out, then I only had one creature to defend O'qua. I guess I am just too fond of that little magi. So, taking a chance, I had O'qua summon one of them normally and used its power. Now, afterward, I wonder if I should have just left it in play and taken the chance that way. Anyways, O'qua slipped away undefeated to have Shaper's Apprentice take the field in her place. He would play out Will of Orothe and end the turn. I would have Corathan attack. This opened up an opportunity for the Dark Twins to use Crushing Roots on the Hunter Jile. Ouch! That changed things, however I was feeling somewhat good about my choices since I had drawn that third Giant Parathin with Shaper's Apprentice already. Yes, all three Giant Parathin in the opening game. Of course, Shaper's Apprentice didn't survive and get a chance to slip away. While that hurt a little, it did mean that I could get Arosa's starting cards. Arosa would play a Giant Parathin, River Abaquist, and an Abaquist. She would put Karak Necklace and Karak Band into play too. River Abaquist would steal the one energy Zungg while Submerge would allow Abaquist to take another creature away from the Twins. While Arosa would make trouble for the Twins, she would not last either. It would now be back to O'qua. She would summon a Coral Hyren and play a Hurricane Orish. After tossing down the Orothean Belt once again, O'qua would use Submerge and Crushing Surf. The Tomes of the Great Library discarded themselves from play when O'qua gained control of them. O'qua would continue to make trouble for the Twins until they were defeated. When Warrada flipped, I thought of the Tomes of the Great Library. O'qua had no energy and only one creature in play. Although it was a healthy sized creature, I had just used Undertow to defeat the Dark Twins. Ignoring my discard pile, Warrada would play a Crushing Roots from the hand and research another copy from their deck to finish off O'qua's creature and O'qua herself in the process.

Drawing With Underneath Geyser

2007-01-05T15:13:00.000-08:00

I've played a few games in the past few days. Lets see if I can get caught up in sharing them in this blog. As you can see from the pic I posted right after the game, I played ManiacMadMax again. I opted to go with another of my older decks. ManiacMadMax would have the first turn and flipped over League Elder as their first Magi. I was figuring that I might be seeing Gia so it was a pleasant surprise. League Elder would become a Bograth Magi and played out the full hand. With Rayje's Belt, Fog Hyren, N'kala, Ainjer, and Umbu in play, it would take the card draw of the Fog Hyren to get a Moss Pendant in play on that same turn. An awesome start for a Bograth deck, especially after League Elder repleneshed the hand. On my turn, I would reveal Togoth as my first Magi. Keeping consistent with the strategy I can remember for my deck, I pulled the Underneath Shadow Geyser and played it after energizing per his effect. I would also play Warrada's Ring, Wudge, Shadow Vinoc, and Raveled Drush. While none of my creatures would survive past League Elder's next round, Togoth would hold out and eventually do massive damage with a Core Grag. Togoth's next challenge would be Baa. Baa would start by playing Rayje's Shield, and then played out eight creatures. While my Wudges in play would gain a bunch of energy, the card draw at the end of Baa's turn would start the swarm into some healthy growth. Phlouk's Lantern would also be part of Baa's turn. Both the Wudge would attack the two Treepsh in play. This would prevent the Treepsh from canceling the power from the Core Grag I would then play. After such a massive blow, ManiacMadMax would declare it a “good game.” It seems that every time they've played this particular deck against Core, there has always been a Core Grag or three to destroy the swarm.

A Beginning That Looks Like Another

2007-01-03T11:45:00.000-08:00

Last night, CapAp had the chance to play the above game. CapAp would start with Delia and the standard swarm of Vellups. When he had the Elder Vellup pull a Xyx Minor into the hand, I began to suspect another Flying Hinko and Xyx Minor combo similar to the Arderial deck I used recently. I was wrong in my guess. In addition to the Vellup madness, Delia would shield her creatures with the Arderian-Guard Wings. Suddenly, I felt like I had lost the game from the beginning. To my surprise, I revealed Empress Gia as my first Magi. After checking the deck, I confirmed that although I had the wrong Magi pile, the deck was a matching mistake and I had the correct deck for the Magi pile in front of me. Because of the naming of all my decks to help me sort them, I had grabbed the set of decks I call Core 3 instead of Cald 3. So, with Delia facing Nagsis once again, it looked like the start of the game I had just played earlier in the day. After shuffling my deck, Nagsis would play just two Vuryip. When the Vellups began attacking, that was a lot of card draw. With Weave Seed, Nagsis would gain even more cards for me as Empress Gia struck out at Arderial. After several turns going back and forth, the Aritex combo began to hit. This allowed Nagsis to build a strong Weave swarm. Now, there was one moment when Empress Gia could've defeated Delia one turn earlier, but I held off attacking with Tropical Jumbor to build up energy against a possible threat of Xyx Elders. How fitting that I forgot to add the two energy to the Tropical Jumbor anyways. Delia would sacrifice herself on her next turn. When Defender of the Sky flipped, she played a Relic Stalker to eliminate Weave Hut. Tradewinds would net some more cards for CapAp. He then had Ora play Channeler's Gloves, a Xyx Elder, two Xyx Minor, a Xyx, and another copy of Arderian-Guard Wings. While the Shock Ring would help Ora in her energy struggles, it would not help CapAp in his efforts to roll a two for the Xyx Elder's power. After demonstrating a powerful opening turn for the Xyx deck, CapAp would declare "gg" on my next turn when I tossed down Agram's Staff and a Weave Seed. Look at the pic included to get an idea of the Weave swarm threatening the Xyx. And, in case you might be wondering, the idea behind playing Agram's Staff with Empress Gia is in Nagsis's second effect which would allow those Uwamar's to attack.

Eidon Stumbles Against Corrupted Weave

2007-01-02T10:49:00.000-08:00

It was fun to play another of these older decks I had. Frosty Ninja was online and asked if I would like to play a game. Empress Gia would go first. While I had a far from ideal starting hand, I went ahead and played a Tropical Jumbor in the hopes of starting some card draw for this corrupted Weave deck. Sure, the corruption isn't that big. Anyways, Delia would flip for Arderial. This spelled swarm. Three Vellup and an Elder Vellup later, Delia was beginning to setup things for Frosty Ninja by putting a Flying Hinko in the hand. Nagsis (Empress Gia) and Delia would continue to battle it out for several turns. Delia would stick to her Vellups and managed to get in the final blow on Nagsis. Although, I made sure on my previous turn that Nagsis sent his one energy creature over in an attack to prevent him surviving by his defensive effect. Spending all his energy on a single creature to be left in play meant that Delia could beat him with just the two Elder Vellup in play being used. Taisa would flip over next. He would play out a Grass Etiki, Uwamar, two Drowl, and Tropical Jumbor all dreamwarped down where possible. This would be followed with an Aritex and Weave Hut. After using the power of the Aritex, Taisa had plenty of creatures and plenty of energy for the next turn. By the time Taisa defeated Delia, he was building up quite a swarm of Weave creatures. Although, Delia actually sacrificed herself by using her power and using Warrior's Boots to put an Elder Vellup into play and attacked to eliminate all her energy and all her creatures. On Taisa's next turn, he would just play a copy of Drought. This would prevent Eidon from starting with his energize. With a healthy swarm across the table, Eidon needed that energy to swarm himself. It would be later that I learned another issue facing Eidon was that Delia lasted too long and drew too many cards creating a unique problem for Eidon that way as well. Eidon would play nothing and it would be defeated easily. Niffer would have to make the last stand for the Naroom/Arderial deck. She would level Taisa's swarm easily with Cataclysm, using her effect to save all those Naroom cards in her hand. With a follow up attack using a Wasperine, Taisa was defeated. Niffer would toss down a Flutter Yup for good measure. Ashio would play a copy of Agram's Staff first before beginning the rest of his opening turn. With Brushfire in the discard pile, Ashio eliminated the Flutter Yup and then used Sawgrass from the hand to eliminate the Wasperine. A Tropical Jumbor, Grass Etiki, Aritex, and Weave Hut would round out his cards for the turn. Ashio would sacrifice the Grass Etiki to the power of the Aritex and hope to survive the next turn. Having run out of deck, it was helpful to have another copy of Brushfire in the hand. While a Galiant gained a fair bit of energy because of the Tropical Jumbor, Weave Seed and Brushfire would end the game by eliminating the fresh Flutter Yup as well.

Stealing More Than Core

2007-01-01T16:29:00.000-08:00

With the first game being so quick, we went ahead and played a second game. ManiacMadMax was trying to fine tune their deck, so I just switched to one of those two Orothe decks. Aula Mindseeker would start the game for me simply using her power on her starting Typhoon and playing only a Phrup. Warrada would look so much better with her dark blooming. She would play her Ring, an Orok, and Raveled Drush. Unfortunately, the turn ended without it using at least Ravel. This meant that Aula could play a Karak Necklace and use Crushing Surf to steal the Ring, eliminate the Raveled Drush, and net two cards for the theft. She wouldn't be seeing the effect of Warrada's Ring anytime soon as Aula's own power would stop the card draw for the rest of the turn. Warrada would try a couple time to play Tomes of the Great Library, only to suffer from Time Lapse each time which would account for both my Phrup in the deck. Aula would get a Reef Hyren, Hurricane Orish, and Wellisk into play. She also pulled off a Pharan and Spray Narth combo for extra energy. By the time Zet took the field, Aula had gained some steam. It seems that ManiacMadMax doesn't have much experience with Karak Necklace, and so Zet learned a hard lesson as Aula would take her creature back and then play a River Abaquist to steal the Zungg too, since Aula now controlled three relics. Zet wouldn't last long. Morag would take the last stand again. First order of business was to steal away the Karak Necklace so Aula couldn't keep taking her creatures back. Morag begin stealing Aula's creatures and played one of his own, which Aula rebuked with her Reef Hyren. As you can see in the pic, Aula had another Karak Necklace in the hand which would allow her to take her stuff back anyways and essentially ended the game. It seems ManiacMadMax is going to go back to their staple Gia deck. It was a good Gia deck, but I have enjoyed seeing all these fresh decks recently from ManiacMadMax.

Sorreah Crashes Warrada

2007-01-01T16:23:00.000-08:00

It is now 2007. With a new year starting, I debated adding some old decks from my days playing in card shops in Utah. So, I pulled up the wordprocessor file where I recorded the deck lists and started choosing some decks to import. So far, I have added one for Arderial, two I call Core decks (one is actually Weave with two Core Magi and a few Core cards in the deck), a Cald deck, and two Orothe decks. While I was doing this, ManiacMadMax showed up oline. After chatting for a bit, we played a couple games.

In this first game, I chose to go with that old Arderial deck. Sorreah would go first for Arderial. I didn't draw any starters and got lucky with an Elder Vellup in the opening hand. So, taking a chance, that is all I played, using its effect to put a Xyx Minor in my hand. Warrada would not appreciate Sorreah cutting off her effect. However, Warrada would go all out with a Raveled Drush, Orok, Zungg, Tomes of the Great Library, and her Ring. Tomes of the Great Library researched Corrupt and spent the last of her energy. This would spell her doom. Especially when the Raveled Drush used both of its powers so that Sorreah only had two creatures to deal with. Crushing Winds took the Zungg and luckily netted Sorreah a Storm Ring, allowing the Elder Vellup to attack and gain the one energy it had lost to the Zungg. After eliminating the energy that Orok would've take off Sorreah, Warrada was defeated and Sorreah nearly so. Zet would flip next for Core and Nagsis's Sigil would finish off Sorreah. That was all for that turn. Well, Sorreah did his job and upset Warrada's start. Ora would go next. She would play out two Xyx Minor, a Flying Hinko, Hurricane Orish, a Xyx, and Shooting Star. After a few add energy powers, she had some energy to spare on Beam of Light to get the only valid target, Nagsis's Sigil. Zet would steal the Flying Hinko, but that was easily countered using Alaban Gloves. Zet went down in the following series of attacks. Morag would play Dream Rift, steal the Alaban Gloves, and return my fresh Flying Hinko back to my hand. Robes of the Ages, Nagsis's Sigil, two Raveled Drush, and Maelstrom would round out the turn. However, Morag was still facing a strong force waiting to pummel him and ManiacMadMax declared "gg." It was a quick game.

Burning The Shadows

2006-12-31T18:56:00.000-08:00

Just in case you hadn't noticed, there are two different computers I play on. This might help explain the differences in the screen shots taken. Most of the decks are the same on both computers. As you may have noticed, I got to play CapAp again. This time I went with a Cald deck I haven't played in a while. Magam Flamesmith would start off the game with only a Coal Ergar. Lanyx Reaper would toss down a Shadow Dryte, Core Grag, Gweag, and Warrada's Ring. A lot of cards on that opening turn. He would end up drawing lots of cards before Magam burned her way through his defenses. Once she managed to start burning stuff, she started netting me cards with Gorgle's Glasses. When Lanyx was defeated, he played a Spirit of the Core. I had to read the spell some, and then decided that I could leave no creatures in play by simply having the Giant Arboll dump all its six energy onto Magam who only had two herself. Warrada would flip, play her ring, Tomes of the Great Library, Orok, Chaos Jile, and Shadow Dryte. Magam's effect was taking its toll. Now she would toss in a Scroll of Fire to turn up the heat. Warrada would only have one creature survive with one energy. Having had one of the other creatures blasted by a Crushing Heat, Warrada couldn't even access her relics. It was curtains for Warrada and she would also play a Spirit spell. With two creatures in play, I chose to limit the choices and had this Giant Arboll follow in the footsteps of its predecessor. Togoth would inherit the Ergar. He played out the Cald Shadow Geyser, Awakening, a Chaos Sphere, Shadow Vinoc, and a Gweag. Normally, my answer to the Cald Shadow Geyser is Beam of Light, but that had been Entombed earlier. However, I looked at my hand and hatched a plan. Magam would toss down a Greater Vaal to gain enough energy to use its power from her effect. Not stopping there, Magam would play all three of my Flambits. All three Flambits used their powers and moved three energy from Togoth to the Greater Vaal. It was devastating for Core. Greater Vaal would incinerate one creature and stand tall there reminding Core that Cald had found a way around the Shadow Geyser this game. Magam Flamesmith went all the way. I remember when I had played a Shadow Geyser deck and it had shutdown my Cald deck so completely that I switched my relic discard from the Raxis to Beam of Light. Wow, it has been so long that I had to look up the Raxis. Anyways, it was fun playing with CapAp. It is fun to see the variety of decks he uses. Though, I gather he's growing tired of his current set and might be making some new ones soon.

Wind Whipping Through Tunnels

2006-12-30T21:30:00.000-08:00

After shopping with my wife, I logged back in that evening and would end up playing another game with ManiacMadMax. It seems that while I was gone, they had learned a harsh lesson that effects don't count against burrow and the nice Dark Cragnoc combo had been trimmed down quickly by a couple Bulabantu. Well, for our second game this day, I chose to go with my "burrow" deck in honor of the Underneath deck they had used against me earlier. Delia would go first for Arderial, tossing down the standard three Vellups and an Elder Vellup, which put a Warlum in the hand. Myka goes first my Underneath deck with none of her starting cards. I happened to pull two copies of Hidden Door in my opening hand. Those two spells would clear two-thirds of relics out of my deck. Akkar, Gorgle's Curse, and Strag's Ring would finish off my cards. Gorgle's Curse would ensnare the Elder Vellup while purity would burrow one of the other Vellups. With the nice invulnerability of the Akkar, the two Vellups that could attack would do little to it. The Akkar would attack after Strag's Ring and Gogor's Spade were in play. Tossing out an Urigant, I "dug up" the Vellup I kept burrowing. Delia saved up some energy and tried to eliminate Myka using Cataclysm and using Jetstream to put a Warlum into play. Fortunately for Myka, the Warlum could only attack once and a Crushing Fungus would finish off Delia. Sorreah would repeat the Jetstream. Having lost her defensive Burrow, the Flying Darbok played this way would finish off Myka. FlutterYup, Wyle, and Ayebaw would finish off Sorreah's creatures for the turn. Emaal would play two Pylofuf and a Trogovo. Flying Darbok would use its power on the Ayebaw to get a hit on Emaal and then Sorreah played Cataclysm. ManiacMadMax released that this could've been a bad choice and thought perhaps they should've wasted the last of Sorreah's energy to play a Flutter Yup first to make it fresh Magi versus fresh Magi instead. Anyways, Celebrated Hero would flip for Underneath and play a Trogovo and an Akkar against a spent Sorreah. Sorreah didn't last. Kalius would go last. First he used Cataclysm to clean the field before playing Storm Wings and Storm Ring. Then, Kalius used his power to summon an Ayebaw. Multiple strikes that could gain energy (unlike Jetstream), and removing twice the energy, the game ended with Kalius the victor. Not the sort of Arderial I am used to seeing. It was refreshing.

Dirty Jungle Drums

2006-12-30T20:13:00.000-08:00

I logged in hoping to get in a quick game of Magi-Nation. It was actually quite nice to that a few were online and playing games. I would end up playing two games with ManiacMadMax. This first one was started before my wife had in mind to go shopping so I didn't have too much time to hang out afterwards. Trug would go first for ManiacMadMax using Hidden Door to net a nice combo of relics. Amulet of Ombor would get the matching Gate to the Ombor from the deck while Strag's Ring would burrow the Giant Parmalag fetched by the Gate. I didn't even think about the fact that I was once again using a Restriced deck. This time Paradwyn. Arawan would go first me by searching for and playing a Fog Hyren. An N'kala would round out the creatures for the turn. Robe of Petals was played first, of course, and Spell Pulse was a lucky draw on the first turn to wipe out at least two of the Underneath relics. While Arawan would constantly slam at least one small creature into the Giant Parmalag to try and press his way through, he would end up being defeated by an Ormagon with Impact flinging the Giant Parmalag into him to finish Arawan off. This left Trug still in play. While sacrificing Ookami isn't what I like to do with Paradwyn, I went nuts with Ookami in the hopes of drawing off the Cataclysm. As it was, I didn't draw a Spell Pulse before Trug gained the energy to use Cataclysm. With Ookami going out of control with his Hardshell Weebos and Lahalou, Cataclysm was a great choice. Now it would be up to Kiersta to somehow deal with two Underneath Magi. Kiersta tossed down a Robe of Vines, a Vine Hyren, two Tropical Plith, and then dreamwarped a Fog Hyren and Lahalou. Of course, I had used her effect at the start of the turn. Sorrowing Ogar would flig to use Cleansing on Dark Cragnoc, though none would be played at this time. Gloves of Crystal would add some energy to an Agovo played, while a Thunderquake for nine energy would get the Fog Hyren and one of the Tropical Plith. Crushing Fungus would get the other Tropical Plith. I don't think Sorrowing Ogar was going to go for all that card draw. Fortunately for Keirsta, Sorrowing Ogar was not the key Magi of the Underneath deck and she bowed out. Gruk would take the final stand for Underneath. Gloves of Crystal, Strag's Ring, and a Dark Cragnoc would make for a powerful opening move. One massive burrowed creature. So, of course, I rejoiced to have my Spell Pulse by then. ManiacMadMax would reveal that they had a copy of Warrior's Boots and an Ormagon that would've won the game. So, with Gruk winning the game, we discussed for a little bit the combo of the deck which dealt with forcing the opponent to smash into a large burrowed creature turn after turn after turn using Gruk's unique power. As I stated earlier, I couldn't hang out long to discuss things.

Weaving In The Jungle

2006-12-28T20:06:00.000-08:00

In this game against CapAp, I went first with Ahdar using my Restricted Weave deck. In short, no Aritex to try and create massive energy that way. Anyways, Ahdar went first playing his Uwamar and a Seaweed Lascinth. Liriel would flip for Paradwyn and play a Bagala Hunter and Bulabantu. Bulabantu would take three off the Seaweed Lascinth while the Bagala Hunter would stalk the Uwamar, followed by Froxfire to get rid off it. It wasn't looking good for Ahdar at all. Liriel would play a Jungle Riddle on her next turn, setting up massive energy to overwhelm the poor Weave Magi. It would be up to Kesia next to deal with Liriel. She would play out her flute, a Drowl, two Sagaweave, and two Bungaloo. While I was hoping for an Uwamar in the draw from the Drowl, this number of creatures would setup Kesia to start the energy games with her flute. Kesia's Flute would be meet a Relic Stalker real fast. Fortunately, I had another copy in the hand. After Kesia got past Liriel, Iain would flip. Iain would use his power, play Ambush, and another Jungle Riddle. Remember, this isn't my Weave deck with Aritex, so it was common for my Magi to have no energy to discard to the riddle. Iain would continue his efforts against Weave that opening turn by playing a Poison Baloo Root, T'kanzam, and Crushing Vines. After crushing a five energy Weave creature, the Poison Baloo Root would use wither. While a good opening for Iain, Kesia would push through to Squik. Squik would open up with the Scarletsong Banner, another Ambush, Bagala Hunter, and an N'kala. Kesia would respond with a Weave Seed, doing as much damage as she could. When Squik played a Jungle Riddle, I would choose to discard some energy from Kesia to defeat herself. This would allow a fresh Bo'Ahsa to take the field before Squik could get out of hand. Bo'Ahsa would get lucky and net the last two Uwamar in the deck when she played a Drowl. The Drowl would be followed by both Uwamar, a Tropical Jumbor, and a Sagaweave. The goal was to try and snatch the initiative away from Squik, and with the ability to redirect one attack per turn in defense, Bo'Ahsa would prove a great nuisance to Paradwyn. Squik would gain a bunch of energy before going down using a Scarletsong trik. Also, Squik often attached a Scarletsong spell to my creatures that could've removed energy from my Magi while my creatures attacked or defended, except I made it a point to always spend Bo'Ahsa's five energy before my attack step. The first time was with Sawgrass to eliminate something big that I had forced to attack my smallest creature. One time I used Weave Seed. Another time I used Warrior's Boot to put in a four energy creature and played The Hunt. In the end, Bo'Ahsa demonstrated that her balance of defense could turn the offensive in her favor. It was a fun game.

Rocks Lost In The Grass

2006-12-22T19:58:00.000-08:00

According to the file name I saved this screen image, this game was played back on the tenth. This will bring me current on blogging my online games. It also indicates that I haven't had a game of Magi-Nation in nearly two weeks too. Ah, well.

ManiacMadMax would go first with Gia. While Book of Ages was played, it was simply sacrificed to Gia's power to fetch a Junjertrug Horn. Weave Powder, Uwamar, a Junjertrug, and a Tweave (during the draw step) would round out Gia's opening turn. Targ'n would oppose her as my first magi. He tossed down a Sagawal, Agrilla, Thoughtful Baldar, Feet of Stone on the Junjertrug, and Kybar's Echo. Playing all five cards on my first turn isn't a common play outside of Bograth. Targ'n would do quite well against Gia. That extra invulnerability being key to his strength. Kesia would face Targ'n next. Brushfire would finish off one Targ'n's creatures, while Sawgrass would get the Urigant. Relic Stalker would take Climbing Staff. Kesia would also play Weave Powder, Uwamar, two Stumbling Junjertrug, and an Aritex that starting turn. She would survive Targ'n's counterstrike by only the Aritex. Kesia would retaliate to his tactics using Weave Seed and The Hunt to gain a solid offensive. Throwing in Brushfire again, Targ'n and Kesia would end her turn with each only have one creature with just one energy. And, yes, Targ'n defeated Kesia. This is where Kybar's Teeth would lose momentum. Ninx would play out that Weave Powder again, Brushfire the Moga to eliminate it, Aritex, two Frusk, and a Junjertrug. She would stare down Targ'n to defeat him at last and then used the healing power of the Aritex. Celebrated Hero would go next. He used Feet of Stone on one of the Frusk to trim down the card draw I was going to grant Ninx by a fraction. Warrior's Boots and Gogor's Spade would make for a good offensive. With a good sized Cragnoc to attack with, the Junjertrug was a short lived threat. However, I forgot that Ninx's stare when ending Gogor's opening turn. He wouldn't last long at all. Now it would be up to Traveling Healer. It was nice to get his grudge effect for once. He would spend it all on a Cragnoc and two Galiant. I would forget that his Galiant would only add energy according to the smallest opposing creature in play. Dang! Fortunately, the smallest opposing creature had three energy so I didn't lose any. Ninx was running strong. While I figured the impact would hurt the Traveling Healer, Ninx managed to find a way to tip the scales so none of his creatures would survive the Weave assault.

Second Best?

2006-12-19T06:36:00.000-08:00

I was just thinking the other day about something that perplexes me somewhat. There seems to be an invisible line that custom-card players won't wanna cross for some reason and I wonder why that line is thus drawn. Lemme illustrate this.

Suppose I was to design a new Brub in a new set. I add in some power or effect that is similar to the original Brub. Obviously it'll be a bit powerful. People will use it right? Well, if it works for them they will try it out. Now let me add "Alternate Brub" to the subtitle, will it still be used? I think so because alternate creatures really isn't a big deal particularly if they are better than their original Parent. How about if I reuse the picture from the original card somewhat, will people still use it? I guess so, I mean people use Grim Pyder in their decks eventhough that's just a recoloured Pyder.

What happens though when I name this new Brub as "Brub" - P2C as in to put it into Project Second Chance custom set? Suddenly it seems people shy away from using the card. Why? It's a custom card. The only difference between "Brub" - P2C and a "Custom Brub" is name is slightly different and the "Custom Brub" will probably use a recoloured image. That is what is perplexing me. I guess each player probably have their own reasons for not wishing to change and play with a P2C card.

I really wanted P2C to work because I'm running out of images for future card expansions and reusing existing card images as part of P2C is a new way of making new custom cards without having to worry about the images. Due to the lackluster response on the Custom Card Forums though, it makes me wonder if it's even viable to go this route. A review of Awakenings is up next, but I think I might scratch that unless there is at least 6 people who post their interest or something.

Nevertheless, as promised previously, all the 9 P2C cards have been added to gEngine for play. The usual rules apply - make sure you ask your opponents if it's OK with them if you played with these cards before you actually play with them and get people steamed and everything. Please try not to drive away the new players however much they may complain or act high-and-mighty. Unlike what I posted previously, I'll only make these cards custom legal early next year so there's a 2 week period for people to actually play with them and stuff - they won't be boosted in power though as I'm rather comfortable with the power-ups that was given to them as part of P2C.

Wymitch

2006-12-14T01:55:00.000-08:00

So I was playing around with the Creature Card Maker today in the hopes that I could make some creatures for Ancient of Days. Well, I did about half a dozen creatures - they are really easy to do once you get the hang of it. Here's one of them:

Cute furry cold fella isn't he. I like the fact that it has the furok's nose and fangs too. Well, naming things are a bit difficult, but I decided to call this creature Wymitch after Malovis who sadly has gone on to other things. Oh well. Guess his legacy will still live on.

Now, a creature like that though won't be able to go onto a card without a background. The CCM has some stock background but those are low quality and only the first 5 regions are available. So I would have to draw in backgrounds for every creature I'm making. Not so easy. The Wymitch is Nar though, and since it looks like a koala, I might as well make it a climbing creature... but what is there to climb in Nar? Staglatites of course.

Here's the deal to all prospective creature makers out there. Make a creature (not from the first 5 original regions and not Universal) and if I like it, I'll draw in a background and use the image on AoD. Creatures should be posted to the fan-art section of the custom card forum. Have fun!

Iceberg

2006-12-08T23:44:00.000-08:00

ThemRockinBones and I played another game the same day. While I posted both these pics shortly after we played (here's hoping this pic holds as I type this since it seemed to want to disappear from the edit window), it would be a while before I took my notes and converted them into the story to go with. Since ThemRockinBones mentioned that they were thinking of making a Nar deck since they rarely saw any play Nar, I thought I could swing out my own Nar deck for the second game. As such, I managed to go first with Balachron. He played out two Mombak and an Ice Arboll to get an initial freeze going. Borse would flip as the first Magi for ThemRockinBones. Borse played Orlon's Ring, Hubdra's Cube and two Orathan. With the offensive from going first, Balachron would punch his two big Mombak into Borse's creatures. It would take a few turns, but it would then be up to Quilla. Quilla would make the stand for Orothe next using Undertow. She played out three relics, one of which was another Orlon's Ring. Orathan and Wellisk would create her defenses. As you might notice in the picture, Balachron had been gaining steam and would end up facing Bria when it was apparent that Quilla lacked the creatures to defend herself. That picture wasn't captured. In essence, Balachron was like an iceberg cutting through the waters of Orothe.

Tidal Wave

2006-12-08T23:39:00.000-08:00

About time I write a little something to go with this pic. I played ThemRockinBones, I think for the first time. I opted to go with one of my restricted decks. In theory, they should be a bit weaker. Of course, theory and reality can be two different stories. Well, Orlon would go first for me, drawing a couple cards with his Sea Barl and healing it back up a little with Submerge. Trygar would play a full spectrum of cards including Tunneler's Boots, Ghost Bwisp, Pylofuf, and Syre. Not a bad start. However, I actually wanted Orlon to go down and attempt to go nuts with the Brothers of Vengeance. And so it would be. Brothers of Vengeance would toss down a Karak Band (Necklace is banned in restricted), Hubdra's Cube, five creatures (maybe even these five?), and they played an Undertow. So why does the Cube pictured have nothing on it when I would've stolen a relic? Simple. I discarded it to the power of the brothers and this is not the same cube pictured. Trygar would use his effect Avenger to play a Ghost Bwisp. Strag would be next. While Strag's Claws would be played, you can see that Strag didn't survive against the Brothers. The Wellisk by this point is getting big at seven energy. Although, this Wellisk does give me some protection against an Ormagon and the game is conceded to Orothe.

Failing To Test Summon

2006-12-04T10:20:00.000-08:00

This Sunday I got in a game with CapAp. This brings me back to my eighth deck for Twilight War. With such a variety, I don't think I've got any real playtesting in, but it has been lots of fun and interesting for me. Well, I would end up going first with Tiller. I drew cards like usual and only played a Balamant that first turn. CapAp would reveal Jaim, play the Orothean Goggles, a Monsoon Hyren, and a Sea Barl. A great opening of drawing cards for both of us. However, I would use Tap Roots to shrink the Monsoon Hyren and attack to eliminate it. A Weebo would be the beneficiary of Bythan's Gift, eliminating the Balamant from play. However, toss in a Nocturne for a Forest Hyren and that should give you an idea just how the game would go for a while. In fact, it wasn't long before I managed a Nocturne for the second Forest Hyren in the deck and Tiller was facing off against Mobis. Mobis would use Warrior's Boots to place a Wellisk into play. With a Submerge on top of that, the Wellisk attacked the Weebo and survived with one energy. Mobis would play a second Wellisk and a Bwill. Obviously, attacking the Bwill was not a good choice with either of the large Forest Hyren. They would attack to eliminate the two Wellisk, making it safe to play something small to attack the Bwill later. In the end, Tiller would work past Mobis and face off against Quilla. The single Coral Pyder played by Quilla wouldn't last long, but she had plenty of energy to spare. As you can see, I had placed another Balamant into play and was probably going to use a Remember Ring to get a Forest Hyren back (Tidal Wave for ten energy got both of those monsters). However, CapAp had run out of time and had to leave. I was taking too long taking my turns. I don't if I was going slower than usual or not. Anyways, once again I fail to test Summon. If you look at the picture, you might just see all three copies in my hand. While I continue to fail to test Summon, I really have enjoyed the spell as it has taught me a new way of playing Naroom. It really makes me wish that Traitor's Reach had been released. I doubt I would've ever come up with this variant on Naroom without a spell like Summon, yet I have grown to love how fresh it feels to play Naroom outside of my normal routine. The funny part about this, all the mechanics that are making this deck work come from cards created by Interactive Imagination. Now, I wonder if I could make this deck work starting with another magi. Though, I think I'll try and hold off on that thought for a little while. I already have a vast number of decks to choose from on gEngine and few that I don't for non-Naroom decks that I would like to create online and try first.

Tough Defenses Needs Ormy

2006-11-27T12:24:00.000-08:00

Last night I got in another game of Magi-Nation, this time with Trentonx. They started with Kolte and played a Reef Hyren. That starting Reef Hyren looked quite scary as the opponent. With the threat of Reef Hyren, I skipped pulling Keelie's starting cards. As it turned out, I got an Alpine Xamf and Giant Carillion that Keelie would toss down and Stomp out the Reef Hyren. After a long battle, Keelie defeated Kolte. Next she would face off against Kesia after Trentonx decided to take a chance with their bad hand. Kesia would toss down the defensive Grass Hyren and a Speag. For a while, Kesia would end up commanding two Speag, making that Weave defense very annoying since I didn't have any of my crushing spells for a period. By the time Keelie managed to get the second Speag, it was one very large Speag and required the special attention of a Giant Carillion. Keelie was having troubles with Weave's defenses so she was building up her forces to maximize the energy she gained from a copy of Orwin's Ring. With only her Grass Hyren defending Kesia, Keelie would save up a little energy to place a Garan to prevent it from using that defense. The screenshot included in this blog is from the end of that turn. Kesia would spend all her energy to play an Ormagon and an Underneath hyren. The Ormagon destroyed all my creatures, so Keelie would put a Bhatar into play. Kesia would attack before I could get the energy gain from the Bhatar attacking the hyren. After some more struggles, Keelie would make her way past Kesia. It would now be up to Yerthe to oppose Keelie. Yerthe started off with Harmony to shrink my single creature in play, then played another Grass Hyren and Iceberg Hyren. The defensive battle began all over again. Yerthe would get a Monarch Hyren into play, and Keelie would be fighting an uphill battle again. Fortunately, the Crushing Roots was making its showing. Keelie would fight her uphill battle over many turns. At the very end, Yerthe had lost that Grass Hyren and had a Reef Hyren in play. Playing out another Grass Hyren would use up his energy and created a unique opening. With no energy on the magi, I was able to safely use Nocturne to get one of my Garan from the deck and put it into play. Sure it only had one energy, but with the protection of the Grass Hyren canceled out, my other two creatures in play were adequate to finish off Yerthe. While this description doesn't give much of the details, the game lasted so long my wife had started a movie after I started the game and had finished the movie before I was done.

Bane Of All High King Korg

2006-11-24T12:04:00.000-08:00

With the news that Double Jeopardy is now available on gEngine for playtesting, I dropped online to see what was happening for Magi-Nation and start building the one or two new decks for playtesting. Freigabe logged in and asked if anyone wanted to play. I checked with my wife first, she wants to go to the store for a wreath later, and then I was ready to play. Freigabe went first with Eryss. The first thing that went through my mind was that I didn't know if my Naroom deck could handle Bograth. Eryss would play out her whole hand, her four starting creatures plus a Jile. Tiller would go first. You may have noticed that a lot of my Naroom test decks for Twilight War start off with Tiller. Well, they are test decks, so I want them to be as good as I can think to make them to see what sort of negative or positive feedback can be generated. Anyways, Tiller would start with Vortex of Knowledge. After sacrificing the Weeblit to Scrounge, Tiller finally had two creatures in hand. Playing both the Weebo he started with and the Lumber Hyren, he played Crushing Roots on the Jile and Tap Roots for what was left of the Fog Hyren. With the Lumber Hyren and Weebo both using their powers, he was doing good despite the lack of creatures in my hand. Eryss would fold to Tiller and Golthub would make a strong showing. Two Swamp Hyren, a N'kala, Moob, Gremble, Glablit, and Double Jeopardy later, things were looking bad for Naroom. Tiller did what he could and even played a Flood of Energy so he could squeeze out a Giant Carillion with a Warrior's Boots. The series of attacks left him spent but did take that initial swarm down to more managable levels. Next it would be up to Keelie to battle Golthub. She tossed down two Wasperines to create a more creature friendly environment for herself. Giant Carillion, Weebo, and Stagadan rounded out her creatures. Giant Carillion stomped a Mist Hyren in play and then Keelie sacrificed the Weebo by using its power. Orwin's Ring rounded off her turn and ensured that Golthub would not get her in a single shot of creature attacks. In the end, Keelie would be defeated by Golthub's power of Mire while she had no energy left. Now it would be last Magi versus last Magi with Woot going first for me. He got his starting Wasperine and Wasperine Stalker but only played an Alpine Xamf. With Warrior's Boots in hand, I figured it best to wait and see. All High King Korg would make the final stand for Bograth. He played out his starting Pyder as well as two Muck Vinoc and a Gwaeg. Quietly, I had been saying to myself, not the Pyder unless an N'kala and Glablit setup for the Double Jeopardy spell. Because of the Pyder, All High King Korg would end his turn with only one energy. While it would only take one Wasperine Stalker, I played both I had in hand plus a Wasperine just in case. This defeated Korg, which is the screenshot you see in this blog. For those of you that have been tracking things, this was another of my Naroom test decks for Twilight War.

Eidon Hits The Wall

2006-11-13T20:20:00.000-08:00

CapAp offered a second game. The crushing of Core was a little mismatched with such a Core hungry creature in play. So, keeping in line with what I had been doing thus far, I moved on to my next deck. This time a mild Furok deck with Tiller starting it off. Again, I managed to go first. I would flip over Tiller, use Vortex of Knowledge, both of his powers, and then Tiller would play out an Alpine Xamf and a Bhatar. When CapAp revealed Tiller as their magi, I declared, "rofl." It was almost too funny. Tiller would use both his powers, just like my Tiller had done. With an Eebit and a Plith to defend himself, this double Tiller ended the turn. Tiller versus Tiller would last a while. A couple Baby Furoks would buy the opposing Tiller some time. However, I put a couple Baby Furoks of my own into play. With Bythan's Gift and Orlon's Ring, my little swarm was beginning to swarm. When Tiller defeated Tiller, CapAp would reveal Evu as their next magi. Evu would play Vortex of Knowledge, Robe of Vines and Orwin's Rings. With three Plith, an Eebit and a Furok to defend himself, Evu was doing alright. Tiller was left with a tough choice. Hold off and try and get those Pliths with spells and powers or steam on ahead. I chose to take my chances and steam ahead with my swarm. Evu would end up netting lots of cards, but Tiller had quite a swarm still. Eidon would go next after Evu. With a strong toss down of Robe of Vines, Yaki's Guantlets, and Orwin's Ring, Eidon was ready to move in with force. He used three Warrior's Boots in a row to play all three Leaf Chogo. With three Wasperine and a Wasperine Stalker, Eidon had used up most of his energy. In the end, Eidon was unable to make a finishing blow against Tiller because of those two Baby Furoks. Tiller would fight hard against Eidon, getting both the Robe of Vines and Orwin's Ring using my only two copies of Relic Stalker. While Tiller would last against Eidon only a few turns, he had cost Eidon his opening momentum. Salafy would have to fight Eidon next. This was good. She would use her effect with an Alpine Xamf, leaving a copy of it in my hand. With a Giant Carillion and Weebo added to the mix, she would Stomp one creature and restore the Giant Carillion. We had both cycled through our decks by this point, so I had the Weeblit in my hand and used that to sacrifice the Weebo and add energy to the Alpine Xamf. In the end, Salafy would punch through Eidon's defenses as seen here.

Tillant Likes Core!

2006-11-13T20:18:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in my hotel wondering what I could do. Writing hurt my head too much. Maybe I could've read my books some more and learned something to improve myself towards a better and brighter future. Instead, I thought that I might log onto gatlingEngine and see about a game before bed.

As it turns out, CapAp was online and offered to play. I had started back through my sequence of Twilight War test decks back when I had last played, so why not play the next deck. So, I would go first with Keelie. I debated a first turn Tillant for the fun of it, but I chose to go with the way the deck was designed to play. Tillant for Core, otherwise start with Alpine Xamf. Not knowing what CapAp was playing yet, I used Nocturne for an Alpine Xamf, played a Weebo and Ember Hyren, then healed the Alpine Xamf. CapAp would flip over Lanyx, Reaper. With the power first, Lanyx would then Turn the Ember Hyren and played out a Shadow Hyren to get a taste for Naroom. This would foretell Keelie's doom. She would do what she could, but it was best to attack then using Crushing Roots to eliminate the hyren. Yaki would have to challenge Core next. With Giant Carillion, Yaki would Stomp out the one creature that could threaten his fresh Tillant. After using Weebo, the Giant Carillion would be safe for a little while. In the end, Tillant would do massive damage to Lanyx and Spirit of the Core would threaten to take the Giant Carillion. To pad his odds, Yaki placed a second Tillant right after defeating Lanyx. Togoth would take the Giant Carillion since those annoying Tillants were immune to the Core spell. With a Naroom Shadow Geyser, he promised doom upon Naroom. Koil would eliminate the beatup Tillant. To top off his selection, Togoth would mix in a Shadow Vinoc. Yaki tossed down his gauntlets to increase the strikes of his Tillant to three and wiped out the whole spectrum. When Togoth repeated the three creature challenge, Yaki would setup another repeat play by using Tap Roots first to ensure the Tillant would survive. This is when CapAp declared "gg" and announced that they had nothing to get rid of the Tillant in play.

Custom Card happenings

2006-11-07T23:59:00.000-08:00

It's the end of the year. Time to hand out Christmas presents?

Just a quick notice for those who are interested what will be happening over the next few months for the custom cards on gEngine:

November: Double Jeopardy gets added to gEngine for playtesting.

This is the last chance for people to comment on the Double Jeopardy cards on the Custom Card forums. Please take the time to see where you can improve on the cards there, including the grammar. All help will be appreciated. It's up to you to shape some of the most powerful cards ever.

December: Project Second Chance Base sets gets added to be immediately custom legal.

I think I'll just go ahead with the cards already listed and based on the list of cards that people have posted. I'm going to do away with the voting. The cards will be immediately custom legal when added, but I have no idea if anyone will be playing with them.

January: Twilight War moves off playtesting and becomes custom legal.

This gives us 2 more months to playtest the cards. After January though, the'll be custom legal online on gEngine. There'll be launch events for these cards and stuff between January and May which is the official date that they'll be off playtesting offline. Anyone with strong opinions on any of the cards from the set better get ready their last chance to voice out their objections on the Custom Card forums.

February onwards: Exodus Flight gets added to gEngine for playtesting.

Nine regions are alreadya available for comments on the Custom Card forums. The remaining 4 will be added in December (Paradwyn and Underneath) and January (Weave and Universal). Post your comments in the respective threads on the Custom Card forums. Things are still fluid at this point. Designers are reminded to respond to the comments for their regions as well (yes, that includes you Doug).

March: Cure for All Seasons gets added to gEngine for playtesting

Cure for All Seasons is the custom promo set to go along with Exodus Flight. It's only a 4 card set and will feature 1 Naroom magi. Dartax and I will be working on the cards over the next few months. Oh and a preview?

May onwards: Ancient of Days starts getting designed.

The images are slowly getting added, the designers are being co-opted to make sure they get what they want. Design will officially start after May, but it may start earlier for some regions. Ancient of Days is a 100 card set with the same breakdown as Twilight War. The set will (and supposedly) focus on early Moonlands, particularly Agram, Une and Rayje. There will be two other sets associated with AoD. Ancient Enemy, 50 cards, details of which are still sketchy at this point so I won't say anything until things are more firm and Guardians Promo custom set, which will probably feature all 12 guardians. The latter will not be based on the playtest cards for the guardians.

Future Plans

The 2nd custom expansion based on the Insiider RP material will be next - the current title for the expansion is titled Fallen Hour. There'll be machine cards in this expansion, but it'll also include leftover cards from the development of Exodus Flight. The set will be the same in terms of numbers as Exodus Flight: 12 cards for each region and 6 from Universal. There'll probably only be one magi for Fallen Hour, but the spell count will be upped to two and there'll be 9 relics/creatures.

The promo set that goes along with Fallen Hour hasn't yet been determined yet... obviously I've got to source the artwork and stuff which will probably determine the set after that. This will be done closer to the time of the development of Fallen Hour.

The final custom set that we will be doing is probably High Noon, which as the name suggests involves mainly shootouts and reacts. Burn spells will predominate with Cald and Nar taking to the fore for this expansion. It is uncertain if this set will be a full 100 card set, or just a promo set of less than 50 cards. The thing that limits this set will be the amount of art I would be able to source for this. We are talking about 2009 here though... and the game might be fully dead by then so who knows what will happen?

Art Request

Since I'm on the topic of art requests, anyone who wants to submit art for the custom cards is more than welcome to do so. Thanks goes to SuperRyoga, Essense, Whyrl and Dartax's sister who has been providing a large number of good stuff so far. I'm still currently collecting images for AoD/AE and need to colour the guardians. Anyone willing to offer any help in either of these is more than welcome.

Non-Nar Snowball

2006-10-21T20:26:00.000-07:00

My second game today was against GinsuBlender. I moved from the second Twilight War test deck to my third one. Tiller would go first this time. Yes, same starting magi. With the Forest Well being a relic, he seemed to be a good choice to try and setup the next two magi. Tiller wasn't doing too great on creatures in the opening hand, keeping his Weebo in hand, he would play a Forest Jile. Odavast would toss down big with Ice Arboll, Zyavu, Aegris, and Mombak. It was an awesome start for the Nar Magi, but it would cost most of the card resources. Tiller had a hand full of relics, so I opted to run the Robe of Vines and Orwin's Ring combo to combat the fact that the Nar creatures would lose two less in attacks by coming up with two extra energy per creature. In the end, Odavast would overrun Tiller. With Salafy, I had another copy each of Orwin's Ring and Robe of Vines in my hand. With a second Forest Jile in hand, protoge would mean an unlimited supply of creatures. Granted, I did toss down big by this point. A Furok, Forest Jile, Rabbage, and Fird does make for a big toss down, especially with each of them gaining two energy by the end of the turn. Tap Roots would take one of Odavast's creatures and make that one big Fird. I wish I had captured a picture of that five energy Fird. Anyways, Salafy would begin to build steam. After attacking to defeat Odavast on her next turn, she would use the power of the Forest Jile. Salafy was getting out of hand. Erisa would toss down a Blizzard Hyren, Mombak, and Djarmander which made me glad that my relics were all driving my energy gains by effects instead of powers. Salafy would steam her way through Erisa and GinsuBlender would concede the game because they didn't have anything to “stop things from snowballing. No pun intended.” When we got back to the chat room, I told GinsuBlender that although no pun was intended, it did make a great pun. And as I told my wife and sister, to have Nar suffering from a non-Nar snowball, it was a great pun indeed.

Oh yeah, the deck I was using is a Flood of Energy deck, and it was tempting to use the copies of the spell I had in hand just after defeating Odavast but I figured that would just be overkill. Again no pic, but mostly because I didn't get a screen capture before my opponent left the game after they conceded (I was more in a chatting mood...).

Fiends In The Tall Grass

2006-10-21T20:25:00.000-07:00

My first game today was with Mafioso. Empress Gia would tear into my stuff without mercy. When I built a Weave/Core deck, I used Empress Gia myself so I have seen the potential. Just run without playing the Core stuff and that one extra card each turn can make a world of difference. Empress Gia would go first with Stumbling Junjertrug and Seaweed Lascinth. Tiller went next, or first for me. He starts off my second Twilight War test deck. He did his usual start, including the Vortex of Knowledge. For creatures, he played a Giant Carillion, Leaf Hyren, Weebo, and Flame Rudwot. Things were looking good for me. Except, Warrior's Boots with Weave Seed would show me no mercy. In some ways, it was like facing a variety of my own Weave decks mixed together, the might of an open deck with the Warrior's Boots I started using in my restricted Weave deck. Their deck would remain in top form. Tiller didn't last more than just a couple turns. While I only do the Vortex trick once, the loss of his power would be painful. A Frusk would mean that all my relics being played would just be more cards for Weave. When Tryn played Crushing Roots on her opening turn, I went after the Seaweed Lascinth, forgetting all about the Weave Hut in play. Dang, it survived with one energy and would continue to be my bane. In the end Tryn wouldn't last long. My last hopes would be pinned on Pruitt. With eleven relics in the deck, I was drawing a number of these and really didn't want to play them with the Frusk out there. Pruitt was also suffering for creatures to play. All she had in hand was a Forest Hyren. One big nasty Forest Hyren after she used her power upon it. While she would end up dreamcrossing the power using a K'teeb on her next turn, the fact she had attacked with the Forest Hyren would allow Sawgrass to eliminate the big threat I had finally managed to field. The rest of Weave would crash into the massive K'teeb. Pruitt would play a Flame Rudwot, burn the Frusk although it would live with one energy. Then, all it took was a Warrior's Boots and playing the Seaweed Lascinth from under the Tomes of the Great Library. Combined with The Hunt, Pruitt would not survive the assault of Weave either. It was a terrible loss for me, but I have to admit that I loved the play of Weave I saw in that game. From that point of view, it was an awesome game. I almost wish I had used one of my own Weave deck(s) to have had the chance to see how that matchup would've worked out. I have a pic from the end of the game, but cannot seem to post it on the blog at the moment.

The swamps just got faster

2006-10-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

Saw this today and went wow! So I thought I'd share.

Swamp Hyren by Annette Burke (dartax's sister).

Ending Swarm

2006-09-27T13:07:00.000-07:00

This game happened so long ago that I embarrassed to realize that I had lost my notes on it in my tool bag for work. So sad. Fortunately, I took reasonably good notes. I posted the screen capture shortly after the game but not the story to go with it.
Well, I played SilverRaine that day. They had stated that they were not that good. So, I chose to go with one of my Bograth decks. Now, I knew the one deck was absolutely insane, so I steered clear of it. However, I had forgotten which deck I had for my second deck and made the mistake of thinking it was the same deck I had posted on DeckTech some time ago. It wasn't the deck I thought it was although my starting Magi wasn't my tipoff. I traditionally started most of my Bograth decks with Eryss, so when I went first I played the Fog Hyren, N'kala, Gremble, and Poison Baloo Root like usual. A full turn of card draw and then it was time for Naroom to show for the opposition. Pruitt would start things off for the opposition with Carillion, Vinoc, Crushing Roots, Pruitt's Robe, and Grow. I would choose to sacrifice Eryss by spending much of her energy on Great Throne Mushrooms. Olabra would go next for me. It was an impressive toss down starting with the Swamp Hyren. Now the challenge would be to play such that my opponent might eventually overcome this swarm. No, I didn't record all the creatures I played, just that it was insane. Olabra would end up facing off against Keelie. Keelie would toss down an Eebit, Balamant, Weebo, Arboll, Forest Dew, and use Nocturne for another Eebit. Excellent choice on the Eebits. Anyways, the Balamant used Hunt and a battle ensued. It would come down to Yaki versus Olabra. Yaki would toss down big as well with an Arboll, Weebo, Weebo, Leaf Hyren, Balamant Pup, and Grow. Yaki would use the Arboll's power and then play Nocturne for a copy of Eebit Twins. By this time Olabra had become weak enough that I could lose her defending creatures and sacrifice her to my own Spirit Drain. This was intentional as I wasn't sure that my opponent would get past her without the assist and just leaving my magi wide open for attacks just didn't seem right. Anyways, Yaki would take the reprieve to play out a little more before Brog would toss down like the picture shows. I suppose I could've toned it down a bit. Truth be told, although Olabra tossed down big it wasn't quite this big because I did want SilverRaine to have a reasonable chance of beating Olabra. However, I guess I felt the game had dragged on long enough at this point and must've had some evil voice in the back of my head saying that I should do this. In case you wondering, Crushing Stench is what put both of those Swamp Hyren into play first. Additionally, I can tell you that there is only one Poison Baloo Root in this deck, so Olabra had been wasting a lot of her energy drawing cards instead of using it to overpower my opponent despite how it might sound since she took out two magi and battled Yaki for a moment or two.

Burnt Weave

2006-09-18T10:25:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I played Badtothebone. I debated my Arderial and Underneath decks, even Naroom, but I settled for Weave in the end. Magam Flamesmith would start off things by playing a Ithapher, Diomant, and an Arbolit. This promised ill times for a creature dependant deck. As it was, I started with Taisa, so that first turn of pain would be absorbed by the Uwamar he starts with. With two Drowl, Tropical Jumbor, and a Three Leaf Clover to go with the Uwamar, Taisa was off to a good start. Magam Flamesmith didn't last long at all. Now, it would up to Good Ol' Ashgar. With Gorgle's Glasses left in the hand from the Flamesmith, Boomstick and Scroll of Fire would setup a good thing for Cald. Brushfire, Quor, and Arbolit would round out his opening turn. Taisa put up the good fight, but Cald was gaining steam. However, I do admit to at least one probable mistake at this point. I drew all my Uwamars early on and used them up instead of saving them for Kesia and Gia yet to come. Well, Kesia would face Ashgar next. She would use Brushfire from the discard pile to combo with Pody to finish off a Cald creature. Vuryip and Lascinth would round off the creatures for the turn. With her flute and a Three Leaf Clover, she wasn't doing too bad at all. Kesia even got to the point she could/should have finished off Good Ol' Ashgar. However, her attacking creature was blasted by his effect using Smoke Trap. Now, I argued that it was too late to stop the attack, and they felt it would. Anyways, we settled the debate for the time being by going with the judgement that was not in my favor, or that Smoke Trap would cancel the attack (see note at end of this blog). Perhaps my next mistake was sacking the creature to an Aritex at this point. However, my Weave deck is an aggressive Weave deck and I couldn't stand the thought that I had a non-Uwamar in play that just couldn't attack like I wanted. Oh well, I should've remembered Kesia's Flute and started transferring the energy away. I didn't do that. Anyways, the Aritex combo at this point wasn't a total waste anyways. The Three Leaf Clover made sure of that. As Ashgar continued to build a strong number of beneficial relics, it would be up to Gia to take a try at things. Taking a gamble, I figured that the Ergar in play depicted above was the only creature that could attack me. Sawgrass could get it, only if it attacked. With my third Aritex in the hand, I figured that the gamble was worth it. While I took a little more damage than I had anticipated, I did have enough to use the Aritex combo even after the Sawgrass. While this left me creatureless another turn, I wasn't too worried. Despite all the relics you see in the picture, a lot of Cald's work was being done by creatures with some spells up to this point. So, I was thinking that the Ergar was my deadliest threat out there. Oh well. Live and learn. Good Ol' Ashgar would show that he had a number of spells in hand that could work on Gia using Abraxin's Crown in play. Gia went down in a somewhat embarrasing loss. I was tempted for just a moment to build a Weave deck that was up-to-date with stuff like Weave Path and so forth, but I chose in the end to stick to my original Weave. The deck has certain sentimental value. Plus, it's fine with me if my Weave deck isn't the best thing out there. Quite a change at the end of the game from the beginning. See, I had used my first Aritex with Taisa while Taisa had a good build of creatures. I had actually told my wife that since Weave was traditionally weak against Cald, it would be bad indeed if Taisa took the game by storm. So, with a good comeback by Good Ol' Ashgar, I do believe Badtothebone deserved this win.

Note: Badtothebone would post the question of the Smoke Trap with Good Ol' Ashgar's effect on the CCG Workshop forums. The answer they got actually stated that since the attack was already begun in order to trigger Ashgar's effect, Smoke Trap would NOT stop the attack already in progress. So, if the creatures survived like mine had, it would still hit Ashgar for the attack in question.

Evil Firagon aka Evilagon

2006-09-13T22:40:00.000-07:00

Super Ryoga aka Nick Szankovics IM-ed me out of the blue today and was showing me his art. So I asked him to draw another Firagon since I really do like them. Here's just something for the fun of it:

Pencil Sketch (with a mouse on a computer)

Preliminary draft - I told him to change the sky to nighttime.

Final Image

Cool, huh?

Surviving Fire... Forest Style

2006-09-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

I played Birdie21 just a bit later that same day. Having had a nice break from Naroom, I opted to go back to the first of my test decks for Twilight War. Magam Flamesmith would start things for Birdie21, playing a Braggle and Arbolit. It was one massive Braggle and would be devastating to my Naroom deck. Tryn would help against the pressure of Magam's effect. She would play out a Flying Hinko, Leaf Hyren, Flame Rudwot, and then went nuts on the add energy powers for a little. After that, she used Bythan's Gift to return the Flying Hinko to my hand. It would be a hard fought battle between Tryn and Magam Flamesmith for many turns. Magam would burn some and do devastating damage with the Braggle, she even healed it up more at one point with a Giant Arboll. Unable to do much against the Braggle, I had to play enough creatures and create enough energy to not only counter the effect of Magam, but to allow for a total creature lost to the Braggle. Really, I was quite pleased that Tryn held out until I finally netted a Giant Carillion. Goodbye Braggle. While Magam did make sure that the Weebo wouldn't survive, and immediately destroyed Tryn's Flute as soon as it was her turn, Tryn would defeat Magam with the Giant Carillion as a massive beast, crushing Magam's creature with Poad's Secret Sauce in play, in addition to her own power and Energy Band. Barak Leader would use his power to attack the Giant Carillion right off the block. This reduced it from twelve to six energy. With a Granas, Arbolit, and Lava Balamant, Barak put out a decent creature shield. Arbolit used its power for the Granas. With Brushfire from the discard pile, Barak burnt the Giant Carillion some more in addition to playing out Barak's Ring. However, Barak Leader had also spent all his energy in the process of the turn. Tryn powered up the Giant Carillion between her power and the Energy Band. With the "Sauce" still in play, this gave enough energy to stomp the Granas. Back down to three energy, it wasn't big enough to get the Lava Balamant, so I opted to use Crushing Roots to bring it down to one energy. Barak didn't survive. Raega would take up the final spot for Cald. I wasn't looking forward to Braggle again. Scroll of Fire and Brushfire took out the Giant Carillion without leaving any doubt. Braggle, two Arbolits, and an Ergar looked like a good toss down for Cald. Thermal Blast would finish off Tryn. Now, it would up to Pruitt to survive the Braggle tactics. With another large Braggle in play, Pruitt would follow Tryn's early example and tossed down big. Flying Hinko, two Balamant Pups, and two Leaf Hyren. A good source of add energy powers. One Leaf Hyren was dumped into the Flying Hinko, as well as Pruitt's own power. It would take several turns, but she would find another Giant Carillion. Of course, this time, Cald would choose to eliminate the Carillion instead of the Flying Hinko. The screen shot here is the beginning of the final turn. Raega had tossed down a Giant Arboll the turn before and moved two of its energy back to herself. While this was a good move to try and buy some time, the fact that I had a Lumber Hyren in hand would negate it. Flying Hinko would attack to take out the creature and Lumber Hyren ended the game.

Swift Jungle Snowball

2006-09-10T15:11:00.000-07:00

I played a quick game with Martainia this past week. Going into the game, I knew we probably wouldn't finish it. They just wanted to test their deck a little. Arawan started the game for me by using Warp Driven and playing a Tropical Plith and a Tropical Hyren. Between the search and extra card draw, Arawan was off to a great start. Aurora started off a Nar freeze tactic for Martainia by playing Mombak, Ice Arboll, Polar Eebit, Furok Protector and Whiteout. At first, I spent a bunch of time chatting, but this wasn't progressing the game very fast. So, with a little prompting, I stopped chatting and drove my turns forwarded as quick as I could. As you can see in the picture, Aurora had plenty of energy while Arawan was setting up Ookami nicely. Plus, with the final move before Martainia had to leave being a Spell Pulse, the freeze was going to ease up for a bit by getting rid of the Essence of Frost. This also took away the benefits of an Ice Lens, already discarded. If I just had an Equilibrate or crushing spell, that Polar Eebit could've been dealt with. Oh yeah, just simply thawing it would eliminate the annoying effect. It was really annoying. The Mombak and Furok Protector had been eliminated already....

Another Newbie

2006-09-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

Well, I played another game against a newbie recently. Cesar69 and I ended up playing Core versus Core. It was unplanned. I just figured that I am not too good at Core, so why not? I started the game with Evil Evu playing a Choas Plith and Dagok. Warrada would make for a good start opposite Evu with her Chaos Jile and Orok. The game was off to a slow start as I explained how to use the various menus and where to find them. Anyways, Evil Evu would answer with two copies of Heal and began quite the offensive on Warrada. When Evu used Dark Portents, I chose to have the Dream Channel Discarded. At this point in the game, I figured it was the least useful card there. This left all three creatures available to Warrada, and later for Qwade. Yes, Evil Evu defeated Warrada after a little struggle and a Raveled Drush. Qwade would play two copies of Storm of the Fishes, eliminating all our spells and relics in hand. Since I had a Dagok in play, Qwade avoided growing my creature and just played out a Tragan and Trask. Evil Evu would put in some more good battles. In the end, he would be left playing out a Severos to eliminate all his energy. Although Qwade didn't take this chance to defeat Evu, Qwade did place a Nightmare and Dream Channel into play. Since there was a lightning storm in Cesar69's area, the game was saved and ended at this point. Not sure if we'll have a chance to finish the game before it expires. Anyways, here's a screen shot from the end of the game.

A Miscalculated Endgame

2006-08-30T16:53:00.000-07:00

It has been week since I played the following game. I was a bit embarrassed. No, I didn't lose. However, that had been my goal and I failed to pull it off like I planned. Let me see if I can explain the how and why of it.

Jing-Jack offered to play me a game. They asked me to go easy on them as a new player. That was fine by me. I contemplated my Restricted Weave deck, but decided the Uwamar was too much of a problem. Last time I recall playing it against a newbie, I spent a good bit of the game trying to get rid of my own Uwamar just so they could get past my first Magi. I didn't want to repeat that for now. So, I chose my Storm of Fishes deck. Jing-Jack started off with Agram. Agram tossed down a Wudge, Zungg, and Corathan. A good opening, I think. Aula Mindseeker started off my side of things with Tradewinds and then used her windsight, discarding Cataclysm. With a Wudge in play, I chose to actually play her starting Typhoon. A roll of four eliminated the Wudge. For a single creature, Aula played out a Rayalon. Agram would answer with a Raveled Drush and Warrada's Ring. Rayalon would defeat the creature and fetch me the Tradewinds back. While a good move, it didn't make for overpowered play thus far. With a Hurricane Orish played, Aula would follow up with that Tradewinds and using her power again to draw cards. Agram would attack with the Corathan finally. Agram would play a Severos and then stole the Hurricane Orish. This defeated Aula Mindseeker. That was a good move. Voice of the Storm was in a good spot with all the card drawing I had been doing. However, it would be up to me to play the deck out a little incorrectly. Orothean Goggles and Tradewinds would make things a little better still. I actually tossed out big at this point to be sure Voice of the Storm got through Agram. Hurricane Orish, Wellisk, Pharan, Spray Narth, and Reef Hyren made for a strong creature showing. I debated using the power of the Spray Narth targeting one of my creatures, but figured that using it for my magi would still net me a solid energy gain to use without putting it into the field where it could be most devastating. So, with extra energy now on my Magi and two creatures down, I Sandswirled Agram to keep him from using his power to upset my efforts by stealing one of my creatures during his next turn. Voice of the Storm would use rebuke from Reef Hyren to destroy a Grim Pyder Agram played out. Abwyn's Gift on the Wellisk on my next turn would leave Agram wide open for defeat. Instead of playing back out the Wellisk, my Magi played out a Rayalon. Morag would stand in for Core next. Borgor, Core Grag, and an Rous would make a decent creature stand. I skipped rebuking any of them on purpose. Normally, I would've at least rebuked the Core Grag. After using all the powers, Morag used his 'Gift' to return the Rous to hand. Now, this next part is where I did some stuff that I am not sure how it really would've worked. I will have to check the Rules Digests some time. See, I played Hand of the Sky and used to play Corrupt. The problem I wonder is whether the Corrupt would've been shuffled back into the deck when the power of Hand of the Sky resolved or if it would when Corrupt would've discarded itself later when the next creature was played. In other words, did I totally was the energy to play the spell? Don't know. I chose to play things out as if I had. The only other spell in their hand was Vaporize, and they didn't have any relics in play. Morag then played an ROUS. Now, this made for a number of new questions. If the Corrupt was still in play, would it have triggered and saved the ROUS from discarding itself because I had creatures in play? Or, would the ROUS just discard itself first before I managed to gain control of it? Granted, I wasn't even sure the Corrupt would've been in play. So, we decided to play it out to Morag's advantage. ROUS gone. Corrupt used up and/or gone. I attacked with my one energy Rayalon, so I wasn't doing too great either. That is fine. Remember, my goal wasn't to overpower my opponent. Morag would answer by playing a Gorath Cub and Crushing Darkness would take away the Rayalon. I played out another Hand of the Sky, peeked at Jing-Jack's hand, then sacrificed Voice of the Storm by eating up a bunch of energy with Sandswirl and using Storm of Fishes for relics. Why? To deny Morag any benefits from Morag's Gift. Morag answered with a Tar Hyren while waiting for Niffer to appear. Niffer would toss down big. Probably too big. Phrup, Orathan Flyer, two Spray Narth, and two Pharan played in one turn, with an assist from the Orathan Flyer. I used the Spray Narth power to gain some energy and then used Abwyn's Gift to get rid of the Tar Hyren. Even still, this left me with an impressive bit of creatures and Morag would play no creatures. I began to fear that I had panicked the Jing-Jack with that power play. Though, Morag did attack some, getting rid of the Wellisk and Phrup. Niffer would play Tradewinds, Sandswirl, and then attacked. It wasn't enough to get Morag this turn. I dumped another Spray Narth and Pharan combo into the Hurricane Orish, plus I played out a Wellisk. On the next go around, she did get Morag. I also spent all the energy of the Orathan Flyer on a Rayalon and dumped the energy from my surviving Pharan into the Wellisk to make it more of an energy waste to actually use its effect. Lanyx Reaper would stand in for Core under what appeared to be desperate straights. I was thinking that I would just reset the mess I had by using Cataclysm. However, it wasn't to be. Morag's Gift was played first, a mistake really, but I let it slide at this point. Rayje's Belt would look down the Wellisk, so I couldn't waste energy that way. Borgor would do some damage to my massive creatures. Mind Blank would deny me of all my spells, so that Cataclysm idea was out the door. Chaos Sphere and Agram's Plaything would also appear. After using Lanyx's power, I would have to say that is a fair play considering the situation. However, I still heavily outweighed the opposition. So, it would be painfully obvious if I completely threw the game at this point. I would've had to stop playing.... Niffer had the Wellisk wipe out the two energy Borgor and Lanyx Reaper would be defeated by a one energy Rayalon.

I know this entry is rather long. I was surprised by the number of notes I had taken on the game. It has been suggested that I do a screen capture in the future and include it in this blog to make it more exciting. Hmmm, I guess I will have to write shorter descriptions of the game. They've been getting long enough as it is.

Reach Of Weave

2006-08-13T17:18:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I played against Goo. Goo started the game off with Tiller. Tiller went through the usual draw card routine, but didn't play any creatures. Now, I've had a Traitor's Reach deck on gEngine for some time that I don't recall ever playing. So, I gave my TR Weave deck a trial run. Keru started off with card draw for Weave. I happened to open the game with another Drowl in addition to my starting one. So, Keru went nuts on the card draw too by playing both Drowl and a Tropical Jumbor. Tiller would answer with Warrior's Boots and Rayje's Belt. The belt locked down weave, and Warrior's Boots brought a Flame Rudwot into play. Tap Roots and an attack made for a good creature play. Ember Hyren was played after the attack step, along with a Weebo and Beam of Light. Keru took a lot of damage in that one turn. However, Weave Seed would return the favor, raking over Naroom. Wasperine and Wasperine Stalker would hit Keru back. Backhanding the Wasperine Stalker with a Pody brought into play was a cheap way to get Naroom back this time. It also meant the end of Tiller. Woot would step onto the field next. Again, Keru got the Wasperine and Wasperine Stalker combo hit. However, with the belt gone, weave saved the Pody from immediate defeat. Balamant and Crushing Roots would come next. With a very impressive Wasperine Stalker in play, I was almost dissappointed when Woot used Heal on both creatures. I almost wanted to cry. This is Weave we're talking about. While Weave has to splash to get Shockwave, it does have Sawgrass and that Wasperine Stalker had attacked. A five energy Wasperine Stalker is impressive enough, but the energy gains dumped into, I just couldn't skip using the Sawgrass I had drawn earlier. So much energy went away for a cost of five. With the spell eating up Keru's energy, the surviving Weave creature attacked the Balamant so Keru could officially step down. Woot would just draw two while waiting for the next Weave magi. Ah, it was time for Kesia to step up and show just why Weave is so fearsome. While I dreamed of an Uwamar, Kesia played out four Weave creatures anyways. A Vuryip, Aritex, Pody, and Sagaweave would make for a decent start. With her flute bending around the energy a bit, Kesia would have enough energy left for Brushfire. She sacrificed the Sagaweave at two energy to the Aritex, which survived by two energy itself. With Kesia starting into some mad energy gains, the Balamant used the hunt to trim her back by four energy. Tap Roots twice and Yaki's Gauntlets would allow Woot to pressure Kesia a bit. However, her creatures began to weave and gain energy. Woot would play out a Leaf Chogo after a somewhat depressing attack step. Kesia would attack with her Vuryip. With plenty of energy still left, she played out an Uwamar, Aritex (to replace the one lost), and a Seaweed Lascinth. Hmm, another Aritex. Can you see an energy pattern here? Well, Kesia was going full speed ahead with Weave. Now, it would be up to Yaki, Core Stalker, to stand up for Naroom. Wasperine Stalker would shave some energy off Kesia, and then Yaki place out Tillant and Furok for extra defense. With The Hunt at her disposal, Yaki was fortunate to keep a two energy Tillant in play. However, upon further reflection, Kesia opted to finish it off with Brushfire from the discard pile. After another Drowl and two Tropical Jumbor, I think Kesia was officially out of control. Yaki was determined to do his best. He played out a Flame Rudwot and crushed what was left of the Seaweed Lascinth. However, Kesia had quite sufficient force to simply attack and finish off Yaki without using spells or powers. It felt good to play something other than Naroom after playing it so much lately.

Spit and Polish, Glue and sticky tape

2006-08-10T08:43:00.000-07:00

Not really anything online related (except for gEngine in the background) but Doug's videos actually got me to make this:

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Printed on a HP 2600n, glued to commons from the base set. Liriel is shown on the right of the screen for comparison purposes.

Naroom Remembrance

2006-08-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

On Monday, I played BobbyDoc2 with the eighth and final of my TW test decks. Tiller started things off with the usual card draw. He used exchange to put a Forest Hyren in the discard pile. Remember Ring would dredge that one back up. To top it off, Tiller tossed out the second Forest Hyren and a Weebo. It was massive energy mechanics on the first turn. Gia would start off things for the opposing Weave deck. Book of Ages would draw one card before Gia would sacrifice it for Reyhla's Scythe. With her own Tome and Weave Powder, Gia would toss down a Drowl, Frusk, Bungaloo, and Savanah Hyren. A massive Weave swarm in just one turn. With big plays starting off Naroom and Weave, Tiller would go into more massive energy tricks after using Relic Stalker on Rayje's Belt to open up energy transfer from his hyren. Tap Roots would make a good work of one small Weave creature, and the attacks Tiller conducted would put the three others under Gia's Tome. Brushfire from Gia twice would eliminate the smaller Forest Hyren. Weave Powder would fetch Weave Mat. Another Frusk and Bungaloo later, Gia was ready to defend herself again. Another Remember Ring would bring the Forest Hyren back from the discard pile. While it couldn't attack, it did make for some nice energy games for Tiller. After attacking, Gia was now up to four creatures under the Tomes. She played a Drowl and Brushfired the Weebo. TIller would respond by playing Tomes of the Great Library and researching for Bythan's Gift. Now, he had too big Forest Hyren in play. He finally finished off Gia. Kesia would make her stand next. She is one tough Weave Magi, and very good at what she does. She used Sawgrass on the larger Forest Hyren, wiping out twelve energy for a cost of three. Uwamar would start off her creature swarm, followed by Grass Etiki, Grass Hyren, Bungaloo, and Pody. It was nice to see that I am not the only one who uses Grass Etiki. Kesia's Flute played her energy tune, along with a number of other Weave relics. Rayje's Belt would reappear to haunt Tiller again. He researched Tap Roots this time to take out the Bungaloo. Kesia would defeat Tiller rather easily with Weave Seed. Now, it was up to Keelie to try and do something. She would use Nocturne to fetch a Giant Carillion. It was big move for her to play all three Weebo and another Giant Carillion. First she restored the first Carillion, stomped twice, and finished off the turn with using the last two Weebo to restore both the Carillions. Weave Seed and Brushfire would be the end of Keelie. It was a valiant effort, but the seeds were not in Keelie's favor. Sive would be my final magi. She would play a Lumber Hyren, Eebit, and a Furok. Remember Ring would fetch back one of the Forest Hyren, and Tap Roots would restore it some. Kesia would brushfire the Eebit and attack the Forest Hyren. She then played another Uwamar. Although Rayje's Belt locked down rebuild from the Lumber Hyren, Sive had a Relic Stalker handy. Sive would use Rebuild to try and begin a minor energy lock on Kesia and actually attacked with her rather healthy Furok. This gave her enough energy despite losses from an Everburning Wick to play another Lumber Hyren. Kesia would use Brushfire upon a Lumber Hyren and backhanded the Furok with a fresh Pody. Sive would use Bythan's Gift on her Lumber Hyren to make one big Furok. Figuring that the only way Naroom would make a comeback against Kesia's impressive energy mechanics was to use their own massive energy gains, Sive played out another Furok. However, the game would end here. Although Sive had been making an effort to destroy anything of Kesia's that could attack, a fresh copy of Rayje's Belt locked down wait on the Uwamars. And just to make sure they could do the job too, Kesia cast another Weave Seed. I had to concede it was a "gg."

Water And Trees Collide

2006-07-31T12:59:00.000-07:00

Again, I played CapAp and went first. This time Keelie would use her Nocturne to fetch an Alpine Xamf. With a Weebo and Eebit, she had a good start. Bria would face off against her, fetching a Cloud Sceptre and Orathan Amulet. She played out two Orathans and a Weethan opposite Keelie's forces. Alpine Xamf would attack the Weethan. I certainly didn't want to suffer from impede. This isn't one of my Tiller decks that draws enough to handle it. The Eebit would soften up one of the Orathans. Keelie would play the Eebit back out with a Giant Carillion to stomp the larger Orathan. Orwin's Ring would get the Eebit and the Giant Carillion out of easy target range for the Orathan in play. Orathan would attack the Alpine Xamf. This setup a steal by an Abaquist grown with Submerge. Not wanting to miss out on the benefits of the Alpine Xamf, I would attack it and use Remember Ring to restore it to my side of the field. In the process, Bria was defeated. Blu would take the field next. He would play out an Orathan and Orathan Flyer, along with Orpus and Submerge. Now Keelie would resort to Bythan's Gift and sacrificing her Giant Carillion. However, she got both Orathans and played out a Furok. Undertow would send her Furok away. Keelie answered this with her Eebit and Tap Roots to defeat Blu. Not exactly a power move, but it did the job. Now Quilla would take to the field. She played out Barqua's Bubble and the Orathan Amulet. With another Orathan and Orathan Flyer, things weren't looking to keen for a spent Keelie. However, she would take her best shot with the Eebit and play it back out once again. Submerge would do wonders for Orothe, and Crushing Surf would end the Eebit games. Quilla essentially tapped Keelie. She would play out a Weethan and await the next Naroom Magi. Salafy would stand up next. She put in a valiant effort to prepare to battle Quilla. A Relic Stalker would take out Barqua's Bubble. Alpine Xamf and Furok would become her defenses, and Tap Roots would eliminate the Weethan. Barqua's Bubble would appear again, apparently Quilla had one in reserve, and Quilla demostrated the power of her high energize rate by play Tidal Wave for ten energy. Salafy was defeated. Now, it was up to T'dek. He would have to be cunning to deal with Quilla. He played two Giant Carillion to stomp at the Orathans. His efforts to use Crushing Roots was stopped by the Bubble, but he did get both Orathans by using those two Giant Carillions. Since he had used Remember Ring and his power for one of them, T'dek ended the turn with just five energy in play. One on himself and two on each of his creatures. Quilla would play out a Weethan to defend herself. With another crushing spell in hand, the Weethan was eliminated and CapAp declared "gg." It seems CapAp was trying to build their own Orathan deck. Probably not up to par with another person's deck that I can think of, it was still nice to see someone else giving that creature theme a go. I wonder if CapAp will getting it working to the point that they "shelf" the deck as well because it is just too strong.

Wasperine Blitzed

2006-07-31T12:46:00.000-07:00

I played CapAp this past Saturday. I went first with Tiller who drew cards like normal and played a single Balamant. Evu took the field opposite Tiller and it became a battle of Naroom versus Naroom. Evu played a Furok, Plith, and used Grow. Tiller would crush the Plith, play both a Wasperine and Wasperine Stalker so that Evu survived with just two energy. Evu would play a Robe of Vines and a Leaf Chogo for defense. Tiller would finish off Evu and the Chogo on his next pass. To this end, Tiller also played a Weebo and Lumber Hyren. With Orwin's Ring added to the mix, I realized I had made a mistake in my deck construction. Orwin's Ring and Nightmare Channel are not exactly compatible. Ouch! The deck list here reflects the change I made after the game. I swapped out the Nightmare Channels and put in Flood of Energy instead. However, back to the game we were playing. Realizing my deck construction error, I held the Nightmare Channel in my hand were it wouldn't get in the way. Wence took over from Evu and used his power. Then, Wence played a Vortex of Knowledge. He crushed my Weebo after playing out an Arboll. Grow would top it off, giving Wence a good shield. Tiller would use Warrior's Boots to push the offensive. His Lumber Hyren survived by one energy. Wence would return the favor Tiller had shown Evu earlier. A Wasperine and Wasperine Stalker would finish off Tiller. Playing out a Twee, Wence prepared to face Keelie. Keelie would play an Alpine Xamf followed by two Stagadan. Wence would crush one of her Stagadans and attack to eliminate the other. Keelie would use Tap Roots in frustration to eliminate the Twee and attacked to defeat Wence. This is when Eidon would reveal the surprise in store for my forces. Eidon would play two copies of Flood of Energy. With a massive amount of energy now at his disposal, Eidon would play Robe of Vines and use Warrior's Boots to play a Leaf Chogo and a Furok before the attack step. Yes, two creatures summoned with two copies of the Boots. Grow gave plenty of energy with a roll of five, and Yaki's Gauntlets ensured plenty of attacks to come. So far, not too bad. Keelie was looking to be in a bad spot, but she had energized right along Eidon. However, he played out a Wasperine and Wasperine Stalker. With enough attacks to spare from Yaki's Guantlets, Keelie didn't stand a chance. Forest Jile would be icing on the cake for Eidon and make Woot's position very tenous. Woot would take his chances with two Wasperine Stalkers for their free energy. A Wasperine would assist, but the even tossing down a Giant Carillion to use its stomp wouldn't be enough. Vim and Vigor would shrink one of the Wasperine Stalkers down to where it could be crushed. Once it was crushed, Eidon would have the strength to push through Woot in just one turn. I was quite impressed. That was the first time I have seen Naroom played like that. It certainly steamrolled right over me.

By the Ancients!

2006-07-29T22:14:00.000-07:00

First off, a few random comments:

Doug must be really enjoying his stint as the Arderial card designer for Exodus Flight. He's already finished his first draft of his cards while some others haven't yet started. Here's a preview:

Conscript Vemment
Arderial Dream Creature
[4]
Power - Pull Down: Discard 1 energy from Conscript Vemment to discard 2 energy from all opposing creatures with less energy then the number of Vemments you have in play.
"Come on down!" - Koriko
Art by: Vega/Nov
Card by: Brown/Nov

It's an OK card I think. Somewhere along the way though, I realised that working with Doug was just way too much hassle than was worth it and at the end of the day, I don't think I will be using him to design cards for future expansions, even if he gets his spell-checker to work!

Secondly, I still haven't received a reply from nightlight as to whether I could use his image for the custom cards, so rather than waiting, I think I'll have to change the image. I found one of Whyrl's earlier artwork (shown below) and will be using that instead of the really cool one that she did for nightlight.

So once that is templated, it would mean that all 150 cards have been templated for Exodus Flight.

Third, I have been so caught up with the card design process for Exodus Flight that I'm semi out of the hiatus and have been designing cards alongside the rest of the designers. I've completed one region, but there's still many more for me to go. It has been enjoyable designing the cards though and they should be going up for public review in a couple of month's time.

Fourth, Project Second Chance is still ongoing. Not many people have been posting though. We've already moved through Cald and Arderial. There isn't going to be a third chance for the cards. The first card will probably be going up on gEngine in a month's time (or thereabouts) for the monthly winner of the summer league.

Yes the summer league is still ongoing... the winner this month gets to pick a DJ magi for inclusion on gEngine for "Advance Playtesting". At the moment, it seems bpd9383 will be the winner, but there's still 24 more hours to go, so I guess anything can happen.

And back to the topic of this post - whew there's just so much happening, I could take another hiatus even before I've ended my last one - the expansion after Exodus Flight would be Ancient of Days/Ancient Enemy. Why such a long and weird name? The short form explaination for the name is that AoD/AE will really be two expansion combined into one.

AoD will be a 100 card expansion with the following breakdown:

Arderial/Cald/Core/Naroom/Orothe/Underneath/Universal - 6 cards each
Kybar's Teeth/Weave - 8 cards each
Bograth/Paradwyn - 9 cards each
d'Resh/Nar - 11 cards each

Unlike EF, no new stuff will be introduced in this set, but it will continue to support existing themes and ideas. The power level of the cards will escalate slightly as EF isn't suppose to raise power levels. I have no idea will be in there yet, because the set is just an idea at this point, but that's the rough gist of the expansion.

Now AE will be a different beast altogether. It will not have any of the usual regions, but will instead comprise of one region - Invader. Yes, you heard right, the Invaders are coming! I have no idea how many cards will be going into this set or what the cards will do or even if I'm going to introduce new rules for it as of yet. Those decisions will ultimately have to be made, but not at this point in time. I have already displayed one of the Invader cards a long while back, but here it is again...

Wow, the card was done in August 2005, almost a year back...

I have no idea how the fans will take this idea, but should this concept prove successful, I don't see why future sets shouldn't have more Invader cards... and maybe other new regions? Conversely, should the idea prove unpopular, AE can easily be removed without damaging AoD in any form. Hence the reason why it's named separately from AoD.

All this could be pure speculation though. At the rate things are going 2i might put out official Invader cards before I can get this set online, which would be a good thing. I think...

Overlooking The Mountains

2006-07-29T11:28:00.000-07:00

Today I played Cole R with my Kybar's Teeth deck. Yes, that deck I've had on gEngine for a year or more but never played it against anyone. Of course, it is the region that I frequently state that I am not very good at. Oh well, I hope you still believe me on that.

Cole R started off with Trygar. Trygar fetched the Tunneler's Boots and the Pylofuf he starts with. Playing both cards, he was off to a good start. I opted to skip my starting cards altogether. The only starting card I have for Kazm is the Baldar, but I wanted better odds on getting Rockslide. Kazm got what I hoped for. Rockslide took out the Pylofuf before Kazm played some of his own creatures, a Vopok and an Agrilla. Trygar would just draw two cards and left himself wide open for Kazm. Sacrificing a Climbing Staff to the Vopok, Kazm took the opening. The defeated Trygar used his parting effect to leave behind a Freep. Suspecting what was in store, Kazm still took the free energy available from his own effect. He held his own hand. Freep would use its effect to give Trug enough energy to use his cataclysm to defeat himself and Kazm in one quick blow. This effectively ended Trug's turn, so Celebrated Hero would stand up as the next champion for the Teeth. He played out another Agrilla and Vopok. So far, I wasn't seeing much variety in the creatures I was drawing. Gogor would then flip over as the anchor Magi for Underneath. His Gravel Storm rolled a two, so it was up to Thunderquake to eliminate the Vopok the expensive way. At a full ten energy, he also reduced my Agrilla to two energy. Gogor used two of his last four energy to play a Crystal Arboll. This could've bought him a turn of protection from his alternate self, except a simple Jagged Rocks would eliminate the Crystal Arboll and leave Gogor wide open for an attack by the Agrilla. Although the game ended at this point, I still wasn't seeing much of my other creatures in my card draw. In my hand was my third copy of Vopok and no other creatures. Just some spells and relics. That ended up being a quick game. Cole R was suffering from a bad hand it seems. Crystal Arboll was the only creature they had in their hand. Since most of my decks are over half creatures, I would probably be moaning over the lack of creatures if the Pylofuf, Freep, and Crystal Arboll were my only creatures for the game by the time my third magi was facing defeat.

Well, now that I've had a break from Naroom, maybe I'll get to playtesting some more of the TW decks I made. Let me see, I have three more to go. I know that I am so tempted to draft up some more, but I think I really ought to start cycling back through the decks I already have soon and test them some more.

A Small Fascination With Furoks

2006-07-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

The game I played with BobbyDoc2 with this deck was actually done on the same day as the previous two. We were both cycling through a good number of different decks we had. This time, BobbyDoc2 would start the game with Kazm and his two Baldars. While I was now using my Furok deck, it is fortunate for me that my personal version of a Furok deck only uses the Baby Furok, Furok, and the Firds. This meant that the rest of my creatures were something else. So, Tiller started off with his Vortex of Knowledge and sacrificed the Weeblit to draw plenty of cards. Alpine Xamf would go first, being the same size as the Baldar, it would trigger no energy for Kazm. The Giant Carillion would then have a little extra energy. After Stomping the Giant Baldar and using Tap Roots to shrink the Baldar and grow the Giant Carillion, it looked good for Tiller. Kazm would crush the Alpine Xamf and attack it for free with the Baldar. A very good move. The energy gains of the Xamf does wonders for my decks, which is why I love to use it with the Furoks. Tiller had enough relics in hand to not only use his power to draw cards, but he placed a Robe of Vines into play. Giant Carillion would attack, just barely surviving. With a Furok and Weebo put into play, Tiller went ahead and used the power of the Weebo to restore the Giant Carillion. Kazm would use Warrior's Boots to eliminate the Furok. Again, a very good call. The energy gains of a Furok on the offensive can really fuel a Naroom Magi. This is often how I get Tiller to go so far against opposing decks. Tiller would essentially nudge Kazm with the Weebo after this to defeat him. Ullig came in strong with Warrior's Boots and a Motad. This new Kybar's Teeth creature gained energy fast as Ullig played out Gogor's Spade and several other Kybar's Teeth relics. It was frightening. Tiller would use Bythan's Gift on his next turn to handle the pressure. By the end of his turn, all he had in play to defend himself was a Baby Furok. His other creatures had been lost to attacks. Whether it had been Ulligs impressive offensive, or his own attacks upon her creatures. Vertigo and Ullig's Ring left him in a real energy crunch to play any creatures, which is probably what Tiller would've prefered. Anyways, Ullig would ease off the pressure just a little when the Vertigo expired. So, on his next turn, Tiller would pay the extra for a Giant Carillion to stomp some nasty Kybar's giant. Darge would attack the Giant Carillion as Ullig wasn't going to let Naroom just heal the enemy of Kybar's Teeth. After playing out a Vopok, it was back to Tiller again who was holding on by that same Baby Furok. Tap Roots would make it a little bigger, and opposition just a little smaller. Ullig would find the opening she needed to get through the defense of the Baby Furok and took it. Vopok finished off the Baby Furok and Darge got Tiller. Now, somewhere in there, Tiller had used a Curious Fird. Now, I didn't put that little bit in my notes, so I am not sure where or when that happened. Now, it was time for Salafy to try out some Naroom insanity, or never-ending supply of creatures. The idea was to test just how bad it could be with her effect recurring the Curious Fird and let the Curious Fird salvage the Furoks instead. Well, I would never test that in this game. Something else that had made it into this deck was the Remember Ring. The first Remember Ring would bring back an Alpine Xamf. The second copy would bring back a Gian Carillion, enemy of the Teeth. Salafy would play a number of creatures including one Weebo. I believe she used her effect to get the Weebo from the discard pile back into the hand. As soon as the Giant Carillion was restored, it would stomp out one opposing creature. Ullig responded with Show of Force to eliminate both the Alpine Xamf and the Giant Carillion. Salafy answered with Crushing Roots and was able to attack an undefended Ullig. Krue, Helper, would once again take up the anchor spot for the Teeth. Krue played out another Motad as well as a Stubborn Chogus. Rolling a six on the Chogulith not only boosted the Chogus in play substantially, it also provided a nice way for the Motad to gain some more energy. Bythan's Gift would give Salafy a partial answer to the really big Kybar's Teeth creatures. And from the retrieval of the Furok she had made so big, she found enough energy to play out a Giant Carillion. Stomp was her friend and essentially ended the game.

Anti-Core Versus The Teeth

2006-07-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

This is the second game I played against BobbyDoc2 in the same day. I have been going through my Twilight War playtest decks in order so far, so my next choice was my anti-Core deck. I even told BobbyDoc2 so. The idea of this deck was to test Keelie in a starting magi as well with her starting combo of Nocturne and Weebo. For anti-Core, this could be a guaranteed Tillant. For anything else, sicne my anti-Core deck is an Alpine Xamf deck, it would fetch this creature instead to start the energy gains early.

BobbyDoc2 went first with Rayje. Rayje played out his construct. For his other starters, it was Elemental Shield and Warrior's Boots. With lore drawing an extra card, Rayje was off to a good start. As planned, Keelie would start off by fetching the Alpine Xamf with Nocturne. She played a Weebo and a Giant Carillion. Giant Carillion would stomp the construct and Weebo restored the Alpine Xamf. Rayje was quick to eliminate the Alpine Xamf by using Warrior's Boots with an Agrilla. Tap Roots would finish off the Agrilla and make it so the Weebo could use its power again. A restored Giant Carillion would take out Rayje. Keelie would now attempt energy gains with Orwin's Ring although she had lost the Alpine Xamf. Kazm was up next, and he would have none of that. He used Shattershards on the ring and eliminated the Weebo. He used his Cleansing on Zungg, then played a Giant Baldar and a Baldar. Topple would take out the Giant Carillion by sacrificing the other giant in play. With Elemental Shield to protect the Baldar, Kazm was looking fairly good. To deny Kazm extra energy, Keelie would play out a Tillant although it offered her no advantages. Kazm would sacrifice his Baldar to the mutual defeat of both creatures. With a Vopok now in play, Keelie would crush it before playing out a Lumber Hyren. She seemed to be hard pressed to keep Kazm from gaining extra energy. Kazm opted to go ahead and play some small creatures to take advantage of the power of a Zungg. With a Sagawal for support, he was looking good. After gnawing at the Lumber Hyren, Topple took out the Lumber Hyren by sacrificing the Vopok. Keelie would smile upon Kazm as she played an Ember Hyren to singe the Zungg. Sagawal would defeat the hyren in an attack, and Kazm would play another Vopok plus a Rock Yajo. Keelie answered with a Leaf Chogo. A weak response, but it was the best choice at the time. The Rock Yajos would attack to eliminate Leaf Chogo. Keelie survived, and so she played out a Robe of Vines and Lumber Hyren to consume all her energy. Kazm would discard a card so his mighty Vopok could attack. In the end, Keelie would be defeated. Yaki would crush the Vopok first to keep Kazm from gaining energy. Once that threat was resolved, Yaki used Nocturne to fetch another Alpine Xamf. During his creature step, he played out his starting Weebo and two Furoks. Kazm had no creatures in play, and apparently couldn't play what he did have in his hand. So, with Yaki's effect allowing two strikes each, Kazm went down in defeat despite all the energy he had stored up. Yaki would add an Ember Hyren to his swarm before Krue appeared. Krue, Helper, would play another cleansing to allow the Chaos Plith in hand to stand up and represent Kybar's Teeth. Krue also tossed out two Zungg, a Rock Yajo, and an Agrilla. Rayje's Belt would lock retrieve from the Furoks. Relic Stalker would fix that back up for Yaki by eliminating the belt. After the hyren singed the opposition and Bythan's Gift returned it to hand, BobbyDoc2 declared "gg." Apparently, BobbyDoc2 had suffered from a severe case of Core cards in hand with no Cleansing to fix it.

Ormagons Beat The Flood

2006-07-22T09:38:00.000-07:00

I went first against BobbyDoc2 on Thursday with Tiller playing out just a Furok. Myka flipped over for BobbyDoc2 and played Resonate and then drew her two cards. A Furok and Wasperine Stalker didn't her too hard, but it was a start. Tiller tossed down two more creatures to try and begin some good pressure on Myka. Myka would have none of it and Thunderquaked for ten. This wiped out Tiller's swarm. Playing an Akkar and Crystal Arboll gave Myka something big. Tiller's response was to play a Lumber Hyren and Tap Roots. Topping it with Orwin's Ring would give Tiller something big to match. Myka played out a Crystal Lascinth and the Crystal Goblet. Tiller would Tap Roots again and send his Lumber Hyren crashing into the Akkar. With an Overgrowth attached to the Lumber Hyren, he was hoping to up the pressure a little. Resonate and an attack by the Crystal Lascinth would defeat Tiller. Salafy would take the field next. She played out a Wasperine Stalker before the attack step, then played out a Forest Wudge, Furok, Fird, and Rabbage. She attached Overgrowth to the Furok and tossed down Forest Dew for herself. Crushing Fungus on the Furok would hurt, but the Rabbage still energized on Salafy's next turn. Salafy would attack to defeat Myka. Kistae would represent Underneath next. Ormagon with Crystal Arboll combined to destroy Salafy's swarm. Crystal Saris had a Dream Channel attached to it while Salafy survived by one energy. Salafy's choice at this point was to play another Forest Wudge and use her protege effect. Tap Roots to balance things out a little, and it was time to hope for some luck. Fortune smiled upon Kristae, and Thunderquake eliminated the Forest Wudge and Salafy was sent packing. It would be up to Warrada Simulacrum. Another Wasperine Stalker would slam into the opposing magi. Lumber Hyren, two Forest Wudge, and Forest Jile later, Warrada was set to make her stand. Kristae tore into the Forest Wudge mightily and without mercy. Urhail would enter play and finish the turn. Warrada sacrificed her Lumber Hyren and then played a Weebo and Forest Jile. With the powers of the Forest Jiles, Warrada would try building up some steam. The surviving Urhail would attack the fresh Forest Jile. This left it small enough that an Ormalet would eliminate it. Warrada would press the offensive again. She played her third Forest Jile. With Kristae defeated, Warrada would play first one Flood of Energy to give herself enough energy to play a Forest Well. Then, another Flood of Energy would allow to grow in prep for the third and final Underneath magi. Ulmi would have none of that and demonstrated the Ormagon and Crystal Arboll trick from Kristae once more. In addition, she played a Granas and gave it Dream Channel. Warrada would play out a Lumber Hyren and Furok to defend herself. A Thunderquake for seven energy would open Warrada wide up for defeat. It was a good game. As I told BobbyDoc2 at the end, I had wanted to do the Flood of Energy stuff earlier, but there just wasn't what I felt was a good opening. With Underneath and their Ormagons, I just couldn't find it in myself to risk giving an Underneath magi the energy resources to do the big critter so easily.

Disconcerting Naroom

2006-07-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I played against YT Sno and their Twilight War Disconcert Deck. I went first with Tryn and didn't realize that Tryn's Flute wasn't a starting card for her. After shuffling my hand back into my deck, I didn't get any copy of the flute. Oh, well. Tryn started off with playing a Flame Rudwot and Leaf Hyren. After bouncing and their powers and Tryn's, both were five energy or greater. YT Sno started off with O'Qua and summoned a Sea Barl with conjure. With two Wellisks in play, O'Qua was in modest shape. Except Crushing Roots and Burning Branches from Flame Rudwot setup O'Qua for a quick defeat. Playing a Flying Hinko before using any of the powers to add energy started Tryn into some extra energy gains. Woot rushed in with 2 Wasperine Stalkers and a Wasperine. He struck at Tryn and one of her creatures. The extra two energy on the stalkers required Tryn to pay a heavy price to do some serious damage. Playing a Lumber Hyren helped Tryn in her energy mechanics going on. The Flying Hinko was netting some good energy. Woot played out nothing on his next turn, so it was an easy sweep for Tryn, and she added a Energy Band to my mix of stuff. After Woot went down in defeat, it was up to Keelie to pull off the Disconcert tactics of YT Sno's deck. With a Lumber Hyren and other creatures, Keelie was looking quite good. Unable to add energy to my creatures, it hurt. So, Keelie survived by a one energy Lumber Hyren. Crushing Roots on my Flying Hinko was over due at this point, but it didn't save Keelie. That one energy Lumber Hyren was now a four energy creature just perfect for me to crush in return. It was my first taste of Disconcert. I never did get Tryn's Flute into my hand before the game was over.

A little bit later yesterday, YT Sno and I had a rematch. They had made some changes to their deck, and I chose to go with my second playtest deck. A similar deck, but with some alterations to test some of the same Twilight Cards in a little different way. With Tryn's Flute being a relic, I thought it appropriate to also test it in a Tiller deck, a magi already known for good card draw.

Again, I went first. YT Sno thought this was bad luck. When I put Vortex of Knowledge into my hand, it was not just bad luck. It was double bad luck. Granted, a hand full of relics and spells isn't ideal for Naroom. By the time Tiller used Vortex of Knowledge and scrounged one of the relics, I only had two creatures in my hand. The starting Weebo and a Forest Hyren. A powerful combo to start with. In the hopes of correcting what I considered a bad hand, I put Tryn's Flute into play as well. It left Tiller with two big creatures and little energy on himself. Rayje would start off with his construct and a Nightmare Construct. Rayje's Construct would pound out Tryn's Flute and draw a card. Weebo and Forest Hyren would bounce their powes off each other a second time and then attack to eliminate the opposing creatures. Lumber Hyren would finish off Rayje. So, once again Woot is up quickly. YT Sno stated that the lack of an Ormagon leaves Woot a bit short in what he's supposed to be doing. However, Disconcert would unsettle things for me again. With only a five energy Forest Hyren still in play, and not energizing until the end of the turn, it was easy to sacrifice Tiller. After using his power to scrounge for more cards, the Forest Hyren went away by attacking a Wasperine Stalker. Using the Tomes of the Great Library, Woot played another Disconcert. Tryn flipped over and played out two Flying Hinkos and a Giant Carillion with her starting energy. Giant Carillion stomped the only creature Woot still had. Woot would crush one of the Flying Hinkos and add energy to his fresh new creature. Without another Disconcert hanging over her head, Tryn would use Bythan's Gift to make her surviving Flying Hinko good sized by adding in her own power as well. After attacking and defeating Woot, she played out the rest of her energy into two Flame Rudwot. They bounced their powers to one to each and two energy to Tryn from the hinko. Keelie would use Relic Stalker on Tryn's Flute, play a Book of Life, two Lumber Hyren, a Stagadan, and a Weebo. There was a Robe of the Ages as well. While the Book of Life wasn't used, it was nice to see how the Disconcert lock could be pulled off between that and the Tomes of the Great Library. Lumber Hyren and Weebo would use their powers to net some energy gains for Keelie between her own effect and the basic fact that the combo ends with a three energy Weebo, which is one up from where it started. While the Lumber Hyren did remove the two energy that Tryn had, these Naroom powers triggered the Flying Hinko and restored the lost energy. Two copies of Crushing Roots by Tryn eliminated the Weebo and the Stagadan. With Tryn's creatures using powers and getting very big, it was called as a good game at that point. YT Sno apologized that I didn't get to see the power of the Disconcert lock. And while I did have the flute in play twice this game, it never saw more than one turn each time.

This makes for testing on two of my eight TW Naroom decks. Yes, I went a little nuts.

Three Forgotten Games

2006-07-20T20:06:00.000-07:00

I was just looking at my notes and I realized that there are three games that I haven't written about. The first one was a game with CapAp.

CapAp went first with Evu. Evu tossed out a Furok and Plith from his starters. Arawan started things off for my Paradwyn deck. Arawan crushed the Furok and searched for a Fog Hyren. After playing a Vine Hyren, Tropical Plith, and that Fog Hyren, the Paradwyn deck was off to a good start. However, Evu had some tricks up his old sleeves. He crushed, used Grow, and attacked in a surprisingly swift blow to Arawan. Arawan would fall to Evu. Ookami would play out five creatures, but skip vitalize on his Hardshell Weebo. This would save it from the crushing blow of the K'teeb Thumper which Evu had used to finish off Arawan. Again, Vine Hyren had started things off, with two Lahalou, another Fog Hyren, and the aforementioned Hardshell Weebo. Evu would direct the K'teeb Thumper to hit one of the Lahalou, crushed the Hardshell Weebo and attacked. Fortunately, Ookami was in good condition and counter attacked with his surviving creatures. I did forgot to make that attack which would've defeated Evu. CapAp and I decided to play it out as if I had, so Wence made his appearance. Another K'teeb Thumper would cause some trouble, accompanied by an Arboll and Forest Jile. This would finish off the Lahalous. A Fog Hyren would net Ookami Scarletsong Trill to enable a fierce attack upon Wence's creatures. Eidon was the final Naroom magi. Unfortunately, this is where my notes end. I don't know if the game ended in a loss or a victory. Or, did one of us have to leave? I suppose it could be any number of things to something as simple as failing to take notes after that.

The next game I have notes on is short bit with Cliff_Burton again. This time he started with Magam, Flamesmith, one of my favorite starting Cald magi... except when I am sitting across the field as her opponent. She played Charge and Arbolit. So, she ended up with one large Charge. Tiller would start off as usual for me. I chose to take the hit from her effect on a Wasperine Stalker. Sure, it only hit her for one energy, but it was now "safe" for me to play my Alpine Xamf, Giant Carillion and Weebo. Giant Carillion stomped the Charge and Weebo restored. However, this is where the game ended. Cliff_Burton had to go and saved the game. It has been long enough since then that I am not sure the saved game is still available.

For the third game I failed to write about it like I try to, it was played against Juno. It looks like this may have been another incomplete game. I wasn't doing too good though from what I saw in my notes. Again, I was playing Paradwyn, but I went first with Arawan. I only played out a Tropical Hyren, so this would've been with my other Paradwyn dreamwarp deck. I have two of them. The differences between them is rather small. One has Fog Hyren, and the other has Staff of Vines. However, I didn't play this particular relic yet. Juno flipped over Marella, Savant, as their first magi. With two Stumbling Junjertrug in play to start off their energy mechanics, I responded by attacking after using Tropical Rain. Then, I dreamwarped down two Taglat and copied the surviving Stumbling Junjertrug. Weave Path and Weave Seed would leave Arawan hurting. A Junjertrug took out Arawan so it would be up to Ookami to hold off Weave. Ookami tossed down a K'teeb, two Lahalou, three Hardshell Weebo, and a Staff of Vines. It was a turn of insane energy gains. However, another Weave Seed really tore into Ookami. Fortunately, Ookami held out with enough creatures and energy to survive the blow. He finally got to take the offensive for Paradwyn. Marella only survived by one energy. And, this is where my notes end. So, I don't know who their next two magi were, and Kiersta was my third magi. Whether the game ever got to any of them, I don't recall.

Taking off?

2006-07-18T17:42:00.000-07:00

This may not be news to all, but I thought I'd best mention it.

Exodus Flight design has started.

No, I'm still on a hiatus, I'm not doing much, but the regulars who have been designing cards have been so charged up with card design and was rearing to go, so I gave them the go ahead to go crazy with the cards.

The designers and the regions they are designing are as follows:

Douglas Brown - Arderial
Christoph Prenner - Bograth
Robert Doktorow - Kybar's Teeth
Mitchell Wyatt - Nar and Orothe
Daniel Burke - Naroom
Tim Kouba - Underneath

I guess I best get ready for the madness that is sure to follow from the antics of the card designs. And I like pretty pictures when I blog here, it makes this place looks less... nerdy. So here's the image I'm trying to get permission to make a card of...

Art by Alison Strom/Whyrl. Image was comissioned for Nightlight.

A revitalised Summer League

2006-07-04T05:23:00.000-07:00

First off, if you haven't already downloaded the Desktop calendar for July, you can do so at Novelty's Custom Cards under Calendar. A thumbnail is shown below.

I seem to be on the MND phase of the hiatus, so I might as well roll with it. I've updated the prizes for the MND Summer League on gEngine. Monthly winners now get to pick which custom card to be added to the engine. This month's winner will pick a Double Jeopardy card, while next month's winner gets to decide the first card for Project Second Chance. The overall winner gets a custom card with art drawn by myself. Well, that isn't such great a prize since my art is horrible, like the card below:

That's what I drew yesterday... the background is by Essence though, which is great. I wish I could draw like that. OK, back to adding the rest of the TW cards to the engine!

Hiding under a shell?

2006-07-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

I did this yesterday actually, immediately after Spore Xyx, but didn't feel like posting it then. Well, it's only here so that I can show it off.

Art, including background, by myself, although having said that I did trace part of the shell from somewhere else. So that's 148 out of 150 cards for Exodus Flight. I feel a bit guilty getting cards done for EF when not all of TW has been added to gEngine. I'll get all TW cards added as soon as possible.

I also want to take the opportunity to point out that the final text for Double Jeopardy is available for comment. I hope everyone would support the promotion set by providing their comments there. I'm also waiting for Malovis to provide me the text for the Shapers. Those are the two things holding up the text for those cards being added to gEngine. Comments everyone can easily do, but as for the latter, only Mitch can provide it so bug him about it!

Remember I'm still on a hiatus and I think people are getting used to the idea that things are gonna move slower since I'm not dedicating every waking minute of my free time devoted to designing the cards. I did say the hiatus only covers EF and onwards, so there's still the following to do:

1. Add Naroom and Weave to gEngine.
2. Finalise the text of Double Jeopardy and add them to gEngine.
3. Hold a Double Jeopardy tournament to select the winner to design the Double Jeopardy card.

And than beyond that there's the following expansions (or promos):

1. Exodus Flight (150 cards)
2. A Cure for all Seasons (4 cards, Promo)
*. Second Chance Base (MRP of Base Set cards)
3. Ancient of Days (100 cards)
4. Ancient Enemy (?? cards, Promo)
*. Second Chance Awake (MRP of Awakening Set cards)
5. Fallen Hour (150 cards)
*. Second Chance DE (MRP of Dream's End Set cards)

* More info about Second Chance can be found on the forums under Second Chance.

When will I start Exodus Flight? That's a good question of which I don't have an answer. I'm on a hiatus though, so I doubt that it would be soon. People have come up to me to ask/beg/request/whatever about scripting text for a region... as I said when we were doing Twilight War, I'll only be recruiting people, and not the other way round. So I hope people won't be coming up to me asking to "help out" with a region.

What should someone do if they do want to "help out" by designing cards? Well, here's a list of the qualities that I'm looking for:

1. Active in the gEngine community. Well, this should be obvious, they show up and play games online on gEngine.
2. Takes part in card design contests. The card design constests are on the forum and they provide me with a good gauge of card design abilities.
3. Write up playtest reports. I find playtest reports interesting as it gives me insight to that person's mind regarding the type of cards he's (or she's) likely to script and produce. Playtest reports also allow me to gauge someone's skill with the game, particularly with combos.
4. Interact with others on the forums and/or blog. This has nothing to do with one's MND skill. It's just an indication for me to take into consideration if I think that person can work well with me, can take criticism, etc.

And just to end, I'm going to list the designers for TW, and if they don't turn me down, the same people will be designing the same regions for EF.

Bograth - Freigabe/Christoph
KT - BobbyDoc/Robert
Naroom - Dartax/Daniel
Nar - Malovis/Mitch
Orothe - Malovis/Mitch
Underneath - godofchoas/Tim

Is xyx?

2006-06-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

I wasn't really happy when I posted in Dreams of Flying that there will be no Xyx for Exodus Flight. That of course got me working on overtime to ponder if I could sneak in a Xyx into the set. The sad thing though, was that other than Underneath, I've collected all the images for the creatures and I would loathe to replace any of the images with a Xyx.

So Underneath it had to be. But what is there in Underneath that is vapourous? Sulphurous smoke Xyx? Stench of Fungus Xyx? Mist of Darkness Xyx? Nope, nope and nope. Way too long for one and well, two and three as well. Dust Xyx sounds way to d'Resh and Stone Xyx just felt wrong. Mushroom Xyx? Heh, there's no way I'm going to be able to draw that and make it look cool. I just can't picture a group of mushroom flying around together. Crystal Xyx would be as weird - a bunch of crystals flying around looking like... what exactly? I have no idea...

So I went through the old cards. Tunnel Xyx? Hmm... nope. Glowing Xyx? Sounds way too Arderial. Giant Xyx? Again it's a bit Arderial. Spore Xyx. Hey, that might work. A group of sentient spores floating around like a cloud. Well, I'm not a great artist anyways, but I think the image below is good enough for Exodus Flight.

Art by Nov, background by Strom/Whyrl.

That's the 147 card out of 150 cards for the expansion. I'm on a hiatus though, so things are moving slowing with all things MND-related. But at the very least, there is a Xyx in every custom expansion that I've made.

Delia Glimpses A Whark

2006-06-29T14:23:00.000-07:00

After I had that incomplete game with Cliff_Burton, I played a game with Frosty Ninja. I guess I wanted to play a game from beginning to end since I had wetted my appetite.

I happened to start the off with Delia. Frosty Ninja was testing a recent deck of theirs centered around the Whark and the Lahalou Construct. Tiller started things off for them. Tiller just drew cards. Delia found this a little frustrating. Her swarm was good, but the extra energy she had granted the Vellups just wasn't enough to get Tiller in a single pass. So, after Tiller drew some more cards and Delia got another swing at him, Delia spent all her energy and tossed down the Storm Shield. This presented T'dek with a serious problem. This now made the smallest Vellup a four energy beast that Delia needn't fear sacrificing ramming them into the opposition. T'dek played Rayje's Construct, Collosit, and a Nightmare Construct. Between T'dek's power and all the powers of the construct, it was a good start. However, a simple Abwyn's Gift took out the biggest block and Delia swooped in on the offensive to out T'dek in that one turn. Nahara would have to attempt the recovery. A Whark and Nightmare Construct might not have seemed that great, but Nahara had a Weebo in the discard pile available to copy. So, it was another power start, and Delia would hit hard in response to keep it from getting out of hand. Nahara survived and played out another Whark. Except this time, he would end the turn with no energy. Although Delia was getting a little stretched by now, it was within her grasp to get Nahara if her creatures could just do a little exra damage. Storm Ring and Sandswirl solved that problem for her. Delia ended up winning the game. And, a quick game it was too.

TW Cald Test Incomplete

2006-06-24T19:57:00.000-07:00

My next battle was with Cliff_Burton. I was in the process of guiding my brother over the phone as he downloaded the gatlingEngine for the first time. I had seen that Cliff_Burton was playtesting Twilight War Cald, so I actually opted to go with one of my Naroom decks.

Barak, Leader would start off by tossing down three creatures. Tiller would answer with Vortex of Knowledge, then sacrificing a creature and relic to draw some more cards. Weebo and Giant Carillion would end up taking out two of those Cald creatures, aided by Tap Roots and Crushing Roots. They would end up being attacked by a Krawg summoned by command before I would end losing my internet connection suddenly. I wonder how the game would've progressed if that hadn't happened.

Cliff_Burton had asked that the playtest be posted on their behalf, but the game didn't really get that far. Up to that point, Naroom didn't seem to be doing so far though. I did play another two games today, but I think I will use my notes to report them later. I am getting a bit tired right now.

Two Hours of Weave Versus Cald

2006-06-24T19:49:00.000-07:00

Wow! I got a few games in today. I think I'll break this up into a few entries. My first game of the day was with Juno about the time my wife was leaving to take a friend and neighbor into work. The whole process usually takes two hours for the two women with children. I was thinking I would play the game and then take the nap I needed. That wasn't to be. You see, the game ended up taking the entire two hour period I had available.

I started off with Taisa for my Weave deck. With only the Uwamar for a starting card, I played out the Uwamar and two other Weave creatures. Barak the Red would start off for Juno and played Granas and two copies of Tradewinds. Boomstick and Gorgle's Glasses would take my Uwamar and net a card for Cald. I attacked and sacrificed the Vuryip I had in play to net a card myself. Barak would burn all my creatures but Taisa managed to survive. Taisa would follow this up with another Uwamar and a Drowl. Barak continued the burn. So, Taisa answered with an Aritex combo. Abraxin's Crown and Inferno Xyx would counter that and return the playing field to where it was. With the Uwamars dying to the Cald heat, Taisa would answer the pressure with my third Uwamar, Grass Etiki, and a Tropical Jumbor. Firefly Amulet would end up proving annoying by making it so that the Tropical Jumbor could not attack. I know this rather simplifies the game up to this point. Taisa had quite a bit in creatures and energy when Barak used Cataclysm to defeat Taisa. Barak ended up losing all but a Tradewinds and drew two cards for the end of the turn. Things were looking good for Kesia. With Cald short on cards, Kesia quickly played out four creature and used her flute to get the energy gains rolling. Barak wisely made the choice to prepare for the next magi. Tradewinds and command made great choices. Kesia would finish Barak off while making an impressive wall of creatures. Good Ol' Ashgar would be her next challenger. I did warn that Flame Geyser really would be less effective unless something was done about the Three Leaf Clover in play first. This saved Ashgar some serious embarrasment. Another Granas would toss down to buy time, supported by Fire Grag and Krawg. Kesia answered with Weave Seed to get the two non-burrowed creatures. Another Aritex would keep the energy gains solid while Brushfire became the weapon of choice for dealing with Granas. Inferno Xyx would wipe out one of my monsters. Kesia answered with two Seaweed Lascinth to bring her count up to five creatures. Ashgar would finally be undefended on Kesia's next turn. Weave Seed on a Seaweed Lascinth was useful when Ashgar responded with combat reflexes and spent his last energy on Crushing Heat. Amanax would take up the anchor position for Cald. Boomstick would net Amanax a couple free energy and destroy one of my creatures. Syphon Vortex would then eliminate my largest creature. Amanax would finish off his first turn in play by playing Granas and a Core Grag. I attacked with a Vuryip and sacrificed what was left of it to another Aritex. Relic Stalker would destroy the Boomstick. Amanax would answer that with another Boomstick. Kesia wasn't going to put up with Amanax hitting her creatures so simply and used my other Relic Stalker to get that one too. Gorgle's Gift would allow Amanax to play out a fresh Granas and get another of my creatures in the process. The fact that Gorgle's Glasses was in play again wouldn't help my cause much. Amanax would finally get his own copy of Brushfire into play. So, Kesia answered with her own copy to keep her steady efforts to eliminate the annoying Granas. Gorgle's Gift would hit my creatures again and allow Amanax to play the Granas out fresh again. That Granas was getting to be a little annoying. Just when I thought I had it gone, it was snatched from my grasp and played anew. With a Lascinth in play, it had to attack and so it did. I had almost forgot that part of Lascinth, and it cost me some energy on one turn when I had attacked with another creature already first on that ever annoying Granas. Aritex would appear again. With a fresh supply of energy, Kesia would toss down another Drowl and two Tropical Jumbor. Eventually, I got the Granas and used Weave Seed on a creature that wasn't stopped by the Firefly Amulet which had reappeared. I wonder if Juno could've stalled even longer with another Granas. However, they had vowed not to stall anymore at the end there. The whole game took about two hours. My wife came home with our son and the neighbor's boy about the time we finished. In the discussion afterwards, I told Juno that they really hadn't done that bad. They had taken on one of my tournament decks from after Voice of the Storm. With the Aritex combo, they had battled roughly the energy of roughly six magi or so. Or was it just five? I lost count of the Aritex, really. I had been through my deck once already and so I was starting to see the Aritex a second time through.

Project Second Chance

2006-06-24T00:27:00.000-07:00

Project Second Chance is a MRP project. MRP stands for Most Recent Printing. This project seeks to "upgrade" the underpowered cards, especially creatures, from the earlier sets with an MRP (custom) version. Additional text (no text will be removed) will be added as part of the project.

The project will focus by expansion and then by region within the expansion in a systemic and orderly fashion. The cards to receive MRP will be determined by the general public. First a list of underpowered cards will be produced by the public. These are then approved or eliminated, by a vote.

There is no "closing date" for this project. It is always ongoing. However, wait for Novelty to start discussion on the expansion and the regions for this project.

Will everyone playing online be forced to use these cards when they are added to gEngine? No, the PSC cards will be clearly marked as such and, like all custom cards, players can have a choice to either use them or ignore them. Some CCGW tournaments though, will mandate that PSC cards be used instead of the official versions.

When will we get to see PSC cards on the engine? Each individual PSC card will be added as soon as it is completed - the process is list (get listed on the forums), vote (majority voted to be in the project), design (new text), add (to gEngine).

Your participation is welcomed. Start having your say in your game.

A Long Read With Two Games

2006-06-23T20:27:00.000-07:00

I am the Naroom player on gEngine, eh? Oh, I don't mind. It just seems strange. I have decks for all twelve basic regions, not counting Universal. The first region I "mastered" was Cald. Would you believe that? I remember trying to learn Weave so much and failing that the next set was almost out when I found my own style of Weave—which did win me some games at that time. Nar I recall having trouble with until I finally traded for just enough arctic cards to get my creatures to actually freeze half of the time. Sands of d'Resh, um, that's a region not many see me play. I haven't built many decks for that region.... But, I do have one Sands of d'Resh deck and one mixed deck for d'Resh (Kybar's and Core, though mostly Kybar's).

Now, I do admit that I've been playing a lot of Naroom lately. I had the privilege and opportunity to design the Naroom cards for Twilight War. I know I am one of those card designers that was probably giving Novelty a headache. Very soft war theme. Card ideas that needed help. And, so forth. As such, I feel obligated to build some test decks and test out what I did once they are available on gEngine. That means I will be building anti-Underneath and anti-Core decks. In the process, I will also be building a Flood of Energy deck and Forest Hyren-Flying Hinko deck. So, I chose to play my Naroom decks a bit to establish a base on which to compare the new decks against. I have an anti-Core, Flood of Energy, and Flying Hinko-Forest Hyren deck. You can search this blog to see how the tests of those decks has gone so far.

Before I get into a late report on some games I played, I thought I would let others know that someone with the handle of "rizenagain," if I spelled that right, may be showing up on gEngine. I told my youngest brother that I played Magi-Nation online and gave him a link to the CCG Workshop. He said he registered, but I don't know whether he just signed into the forums or downloaded the gatlingEngine. He lives in Spokane, Washington, a few states away from myself.

On June 12, I played a partial game with Juno. I got dropped from the game and couldn't log back in. I posted my problem on the forums. What I didn't do was report on the game. Juno was playing a new deck that they had built. They had asked that I not use a broken deck. While I don't consider many of my decks as broken, I sort of figured that I would stay away from Arderial and Underneath. In the end, I actually chose my Arderial-Orothe "Storm Of Fishes" deck. It uses some of the strengths of such a mixed deck while being weak against decks with lots of creatures. We had gone several turns with just our first two magi. I was just running into my Cataclysms for card draw with Aula Mindseeker. So, yes, Aula was standing her ground. Assisting her was an Orathan Flyer. I wonder how the game would've turned out. Up to that point, the decks had seemed fairly evenly matched. I just wish I could find my note(s) so I could tell what magi and type of deck Juno had played. So, this game story is left lacking.... I'll try and make it up to you with this next one.

This past Sunday, I played another game. This time I played Frosty Ninja. There is at least one region I often forget that I have a deck for it. So, I chose Sands of d'Resh to go against their Naroom-Arderial deck.

Nahara started off the game for me. I played the two starters I pulled and ended the first turn. This gave me three cards in the discard pile and a Szhar in play. Delia tossed down a vellup swarm like I could hardly believe. Nahara put in a good fight, but all those vellups would be the doom of him. Nahara didn't last long, but he had done his job. There was a discard pile for me to work with and a couple extra cards in my hand. With a Sand Hyren and Darbok in my hand, Nashiq was looking good. Fetching her starting cards allowed her to use an Uban, and the Sand Hyren made the Darbok real cheap. This put into play one of my favorite burn combos for d'Resh. The Uban burned, a Darbok bounced that, and the other Darbok bounced the first Darbok. This would allow me to repeatedly do a cheap burn by simply swapping which Darbok got bounced back to the hand. The burn didn't get Delia on the first pass, but it certainly started turning up some serious heat. Once the burn had a second turns to get Delia solidly on the defense, it could be combined with attacks to finish off the Arderial magi. Now, Delia had been bouncing the Elder Vellups up to this point so they had searched well for the Arderial creatures Eidon would use. So, after Delia folded to the desert magi's burn, Eidon would toss down the Staff of Keepers. With Arderial creatures now gaining one extra energy and not costing him any extra, Eidon tossed down three Flying Hinkos, three Flutter Yups, and one Forest Hyren. With his own effect gaining him some energy, this alone was fairly impressive. Forest Hyren would beef up one of the Flutter Yups. It was quickly one very large Flutter Yup. For just having come into play, it was perhaps the biggest Flutter Yup I've seen given the circumstances. With the three Flying Hinko, Eidon found himself with enough energy to use Sorreah's Dream. This was used on the Forest Hyren. This should've made the hyren big enough to survive several turns to use its own power. With the Flying Hinkos triggering again, he ended the turn with the three energy they netted him. I had to look at my discard pile first. I used Nashiq's power to shuffle a copy of Crushing Sands into the deck. Now, I had to do something about the two monster creatures. I used Deceptive Dreams on the Flutter Yup. I actually chose to play the yup back out. Now that it was small, I wanted to "kill" it. I didn't think Deceptive Dreams would trigger either Eidon's effect or the Staff of Keepers since I think that although Frosty Ninja would control it, I think the spell sort of makes it so I am playing it out for them instead. Playing Crushing Sands for one energy is certainly a bargain in itself. This took the edge off the other yups and destroyed both a Flying Hinko directly and the replayed yup indirectly. Sand Hyren would attack to take out another Flying Hinko while a partially spent Darbok would attack to eliminate a Flutter Yup. Playing out another Darbok and an Uban would allow me to trigger a whole bunch of burn. This would eliminate the surviving Flying Hinko and Flutter Yup. Dessicate would destroy the Forest Hyren as a part of the burn, so Nashiq destroyed it all. This, however, only left Nashiq would six energy in creatures. Eidon energizes for six. So, when Eidon didn't play out any more creatures on the next turn, Nashiq would play out her Warrior Olum. Now she had enough energy in creatures to get Eidon. After my next turn, Niffer would flip over as the final magi in this Naroom-Arderial powerhouse. This time I saw a Weebo-Forest Hyren combo. It was soon very nasty again. Two large Naroom creatures that combine for repeated massive energy gains. So, how did I handle this small scale repeat of the mad energy combos I had been introduced to here? I used Nashiq's power to put Deceptive Dreams into the deck. Then, I used two copies from the hand to really mess things up. I could've played the Weebo back out with a Wasperine to leave things really desperate. However, I wanted to stretch just a little more than that. So, I chose both the K'teeb. How long did they last? Well, I burned one with creature powers and the other with Dessicate. This basically defeated Niffer in one turn. I told Frosty Ninja that they had played quite an impressive combo there with Eidon. It was quite amazing. The fact that I burned it all in one turn doesn't make it any less impressive.

There is a reason I forget that I have this deck. I rarely play it. Long ago now, as in shortly after d'Resh was released in Voice of the Storms, this deck was created in as a result of a colaboration with one of the top ten Magi-Nation players in Utah. And, no, I am not referring to myself. He still lives there. I don't. But when I did, I just made the mistake of telling my friend that Nashiq has so much potential but wouldn't it be great if I could just find a magi that started with Forgotten Tales. He found Nahara and told me about it. We both built our own versions of the deck. We tweaked our two decks a little, but found that we couldn't pick up any games in the local card shop unless we stated specifically that we were playing something else. I actually took my version apart but kept the decklist. I built from the basic mechanic a Kybar's-Core-d'Resh mixed deck. And while I told Frosty Ninja that I loved the d'Resh-Kybars mix, I don't think I mentioned that I used Nahara and Nashiq just like they had witnessed. The key was Kybar's creatures with the right mix of powers to go into the discard pile.... Whether to use the power with Nahara or to make cheap to play despite regional penalties with Nashiq.

Dreams of Flying

2006-06-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

I'm on a hiatus. A hiatus. Hi-a-tus. OK, I just have to get that point out first and out of the way before I can continue the article. I am getting tired of people asking "Are you really on hiatus?" Yes, I'm on a hiatus, a break, a time off making MND custom cards so that I can do other things. I hope that is clear.

So what about Exodus Flight and the next few custom sets? When I end the hiatus, whenever that may be, I will continue working on the custom cards. When I choose to work on them. Below are my thoughts regarding the direction that Exodus Flight will be taking...

Arderial - It needs to expand on its telepathy ability - i.e. to look through an opponent's hand to do something. The other thing I'd like to explore in Arderial would be the Resistance effect, and variations thereof, i.e. This relic can only be affected by Arderial Spells, This Creature can only be affected by Arderial powers, etc. Oh and EF will probably be the first expansion ever not to have a Xyx! I'll probably let someone design the region for a change. Yes, Arderial is powerful so it has to be someone who knows the ins and outs of the other regions, particularly Orothe so as not to design broken cards. If one can be found...

Bograth - Christoph did a good job the last time around, and I see no reason why he shouldn't do it here again. Bograth needs help for its shifty deck (still!), but support for Stuff will take a backseat in this set. Hopefully the Transformers, particularly Ninibom going 4th, will see something to help them along. I also wonder if a magi or a relic with the ability "As an opposing card discards all your creature from play, choose a creature - that creature is not discarded" or something like that. A Volcanic bograth creature might also be interesting.

Cald - Oh boy, I get more than 6 cards in EF to play around with in Cald. Support naturally goes to creatureful Cald and defensive Cald, both hopefully with a bigger bite. Volcanic creatures will probably get a boost. More importantly though, I want to take the mechanism introduced in TR where creatures are removed from the discard (shuffled back to deck) to discard energy. That seems an interesting way to go.

Core - Another region that I'd like to let someone else design, but Core is one of the hardest region to design for because of the special rules. Core in EF will probably be setting up for AoD/AE (yes, those are the initials of that set at this point in time) and I don't want to reveal too much there. The other thing with Core is that the original RP cards has something similar to the Oracles in the form of the 7 deadly sins, so this might get incorporated.

d'Resh - The power level in d'Resh has been rising fast over the last few expansions, so I think I should limit it a bit by designing it on my own, although I would rather someone else take over the design chores for this region. Recurring decks need to get a bit more nastier and more useful, Oracles need some support, but otherwise, it'll be pretty much low key.

Kybar's Teeth - This is Bobby's region mainly and I know he's looking for small creatures with invulnerability, well, this expansion will probably feature that. Perpetual Motion still needs a lot of support so I hope he'll design cards with that in mind to make the decktype better. I'd also like to see something to support a Baldar deck, and a KT magi who can play rainbow cards, pretty much like T'Dek and Travelling Healer.

Nar - Mitch was rather excited someone was playing his Puddle Arboll the other day. Nar is his 2nd region and he usually have fun with it. His Kintor decktype still does need some support, and I would like to see Nar making life difficult if an opposing magi was from Orothe. Hopefully he remembers that creatureless Nar players would like some great spells as well. Other than that though, it's a good chance to build up Nar's creature type menagarie.

Naroom - "D", the other regular poster on this blog, pretty much is the Naroom player on gEngine and although I would say he's the weakest of the current batch of people who I've got designing cards, he's also one of the best once he gets some direction. I hope this time he realises that Forest cards (if any) are for the Forest decktype, for example. There was a huge hue and cry about Hoctne, so perhaps this would be a good time to play up her strength by creating creatures that do something extra if played during the Play Creatures stage... and there are a lot of creatures to work with this time.

Orothe - Mitch's other region, and his main one. I have no idea what he has in mind for this though. What I'd like to see is more dice action with Orothe cards going back to the theme established in EL. Perhaps also, something to go against overgrowth and Naroom in general... now that would be interesting to see. One thing I'm tired about is the relic support. I know it'll probably get some, but I hope not to see too much of this in EF, especially after Xarien/Burkey/Orlon's Ring. I guess Doug has got me turned off by relics for Orothe after all.

Paradwyn - Scarletsong probably won't get too much this expansion, and Dreamwarp is the norm. I really need to see if Stalking, both creatures and magi could be made more efficient. I want to create a creature that stalks a magi for starters and something that would make attacking stalked creatures at a disadvantage. Hmm... why just attacking... could extend it to powers as well I guess, or maybe not.

Underneath - I haven't even finished collecting the artwork for Underneath at the moment so that will have to be done after the hiatus. Tim though is the man for Underneath and I liked his designs so far. People are clamouring for more Crystal support so I hope that will make the cut. Korrits too need something to go for them in this expansion. Creatureless too. Hopefully all that will be catered for.

Weave - I need to play a few games with the Weave TW cards before I decide what Weaves needs in EF. Perhaps something that would make a creature that can't attack actually attack by shuffling a card from discard back to deck. That would be interesting. Some more attached spells would also be helpful for Weave, but there aren't that many spells in this set, so that's out of the picture. More support for the Weave mechanic is a definate given, but what about a other-Weave, where you get to move or remove an energy from an opposing creature that you're attacking? It could be interesting...

So, that's what I have in mind now... but a lot can change between now and when I end my hiatus, whenever that may be. If anyone wants to ask me "Can I design region X?", don't even bother, the answer is "No". It has been my policy for a while now that anyone who asks me to let them design a region usually get declined because of perceived lack of humility.

If you do want to design cards though, show an interest - write up playtest reports for the cards being playtested, join in the card designing contests on the Custom Card forums, write up 101s for a region or two. If I notice the interest and I think you are good enough, I might even ask you to design a region when I end my hiatus... if ever!

A Weak Rolling Surf

2006-06-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

Last night I got in another game for the Magi-Nation Summer League. I was originally going to play ultradoug, but my copy of gatlingEngine apparently crashed. I got a constant stream of error logs. As soon as I would fill out and submit one, the next would appear. After a while, it became apparent that I wouldn't get past them and into the game. I had to use the task manager to close gEngine to get out of there. I posted this on the forums so that hopefully ultradoug will get their lost credit back. So, I ended up playing YT Sno. I went with a deck that I thought should either lead to a quick victory or a quick defeat. Or, so I hoped. Dinner was beginning to smell good....

I went first with Aula, Mindseeker. As usual, I started with just the Typhoon. With no other card draw in the opening hand, I used her power. This net me a Sea Barl and Deep Barl for later use. Having one set of Hubdra's Cube and Orlon's Ring in my opening bit left me the chance to start some extra energy gains for Aula, except I forgot to use purity at the end of my first turn. Oh, well. I would resolve to not forget for the rest of the game. I had played a Reef Hyren, so when Delia popped up, I would use Rebuke heavily. Delia ignored the Reef Hyren at first to blast the seven energy Sea Barl into oblivion. Ouch! I was hoping that the Reef Hyren would grab the attention of Shockwaves to preserve my card draw a bit. Aula would last a few turns and fall to Delia's swarming madness. What bothered me was getting two copies each of the cube and ring in my first few turns. Quilla starts with any two Orothe relics, and with only nine or so in the deck altogether, I needed card draw more than I needed my energy combo. Quilla would take advantage of this though. I debated just grabbing more of my Orothe relics from the deck, but I know some would claim that if there are any relics in the discard pile, then I need to choose from those whether they are the ones I want to choose or not. YT Sno never said anything like this, but I decided to go ahead and grab the one ring and cube from the discard. Quilla would end up going back and forth with Delia a little. However, Quilla was putting a number of relics quickly. At one point, after energizing, Quilla had twenty energy on her, almost as much as she started off with. This massive energy gain was worrying. Good for me. Potentially bad for my opponent. Koriko would end up facing off against Quilla. When the vemments began to lay down, I was really wishing I had drawn the Phrup one turn earlier. In my hand, it did me no good. Three Barreling Vemments was sure trouble, and the normal Vemment has some Orothe hostility built in. I had forgotten that bit. Anyways, I figured my best chance at this point was a Typhoon. I didn't need a big roll to wipe them all out. I just needed to hurt them real bad. So, what do I roll? A one. The only dice roll that was too small to do me any good. Koriko would toss down a Storm Ring and defeated Quilla while adding back that one energy to three of the four vemments. This put Bhrubi in a bad spot. With the Barreling Vemments all still in play, she didn't stand much of a chance. I did calculate out that I could have played my turn a little differently to buy another turn. I chose instead to just do as much damage as I could. Why? Because that one extra turn would only leave Bhrubi in an unrecoverable position. There was nothing in my hand to deal with the problem I faced, and she wouldn't have enough energy on my next turn to implement anything that could turn potentially turn things around. So, I played out my turn, even to the point of using purity once more (remember I had two copies of the ring in my hand from early on in the game), and then I declared "gg." YT Sno commented about the relic hate of my deck and stated that there was one thing they had forgotten when putting together their deck. Relic destruction. Yes, I stole and discarded all three relics YT Sno played do to the cube and ring combo. It also explained why YT Sno never disrupted that combo either. Well, it was fun to play my messed up Orothe deck with its Tainted Glimpses modifications. It was also interesting to see the final form the Speag Strangler.

Winds Versus Flooding

2006-06-05T20:11:00.000-07:00

My second game today was with firejewl. Firejewl had one request, that I don't use a creatureless deck. Apparently they've lost terribly to a number of such decks and are getting tired of it. I got another chuckle in today. I only have one deck that even comes close to creatureless. I was sorely tempted to play one of my normal Cald decks. To go real easy on the burn, I even debated the Restricted Cald deck I have. In the end, I chose to go with my Flood of Energy Naroom deck. While I wait for the Twilight War Naroom cards to go up for playtesting, I figured I could play with the deck that I will be using as the inspiration for one of the test decks I am planning to build. It also probably one of my weaker Naroom decks currently.

Firejewl went first with Sorreah. This would completely effect what starting cards I would pull. None. Sorreah drew cards with Tradewinds and played a Bwill and Alaban Kit. During this, I shuffled my deck knowing that Chayla's best chance would be with five random starting cards as opposed to her little Eebit and Rabbage, especially when I wouldn't be drawing any cards for playing the Eebit. Chayla would end up with a Rabbage anyways. And, some good spells. I played the Rabbage and Glade Hyren without using its effect. I needed those cards. Crushing Roots would be overkill on the Alaban Kit. I was hoping that Arderial wouldn't pull some nasty surprise on me and held Tap Roots in my hand. Sorreah tossed down a Night Hyren. Suddenly, a Giant Carillion was looking rather nice, but I don't recall whether I have any of these beautiful Naroom creatures in my Flood of Energy deck. Anyways, Tap Roots finished off the Bwill, and a couple attacks did a nasty number on Sorreah. Arderian Adept appeared next. Shrink would cut a Glade Hyren down to size, while the Alaban Gloves would cut the aggression level of my Naroom deck back. A really interesting combo was using the Alaban Gloves with the Wyle in play. The idea is to trigger the Wyle's effect because my magi gained energy outside the energize step. This meant war on the Wyle. A Wasperine, in combination with my sole surviving creature, whalloped the Wyle before it could get out of hand. Placing out a Rabbage and Overgrowth on my Wasperine, I played my first copy of Flood of Energy. When the adept dealt with Chayla on the next turn, Chayla survived because the Sandstorm Orshaa is illusionary and couldn't attack her. Chayla played out an Eebit and a few other Naroom creatures. I had a copy of Orwin's Ring in play now. It was about this time that firejewl had to leave and saved the game. Too bad. If we can get back and finish this game before the save game expires, perhaps you'll find out how this will end. Until then, we'll have to just guess how the Flood of Energy deck would've done.

Jungle Growth In The Tunnels

2006-06-05T20:09:00.000-07:00

I took an hour break from work today to play Cliff_Burton as a part of the Summer League. My little son, Dillon, was playing with his daddy. So I didn't take any notes on the game until my wife liberated my lap. It also meant that I speant some of the time during the game trying to keep little fingers away from the keyboard. If he could've, I am sure he would've pushed any key he could and pulled the keyboard toward us. Fortunately, the keyboard is certainly too heavy for him to pickup yet and put in his mouth. Still, he stayed happy for the most part just being in his dad's arms.

I believe I went first, starting off with Romura and using Hidden Door to get a copy each of Strag's Claws and Digging Goggles. With Strag's Ring already in my hand, I played a Trogovo and used purity to burrow it. When Arawan tossed down a Fog Hyren, I recall thinking things like, "Use dreamwarp," and, "Don't use its power." Why? Because I had Crushing Fungus in my hand. Yes. On my next turn, I crushed the four energy Fog Hyren and then placed out Digging Goggles to attack an undefended Arawan. While this didn't defeat Arawan, it would fortell his doom. He had two energy to spare, so he searched again on his next turn. While defeating Arawan quick before he can really setup another magi is almost always a good choice. It was still too late. Ookami tossed down big. Inyx, several small creatures, K'teeb, and Mushroom Hyren used up all his energy. Fortunately, a copy of the Robe of Petals made this a little easier to pull off. K'teeb dreamcrossed the Inyx and it was a mad rush of energy for Ookami's creatures. Using the Mushroom Hyren to undream the Inyx, Ookami now had some energy with which to Shockwave my Trogovo. So much for a plan to use burrow and the claws to try and crack that massive energy barrier. I chose then to use all of Romura's energy on my next turn. Gorgle's Curse reduced the Mushroom Hyren to one, and Crushing Fungus took it out. I figured that key to the bounce had to go first. I think I spent the last of Romura's energy on Attekia's Gift with a Crystal Arboll. Or, was it Impact? Anyways, I did it both ways during the game. Emaal didn't last long. Rayje's Belt popped out and locked down burrow on a Granas. So, it was curtains for Emaal rather quickly. On her second turn, I had Emaal use up all her energy, playing two Crystal Arboll and the power of one on the other to give her a decent creature to block with. I was trying to get what I could along the way. Celebrated Hero also made a short appearance, basically, I played out my turn and declared "gg." There was only one Paradwyn creature left at the end of my turn. So, I was pleased in general, but without Strag's Ring to burrow it, I couldn't stop it from attacking and wiping me out. A technique I've used often enough to stall an opponent and even drawn victory from the jaws of defeat. This is why Urigant is a key part of my deck. Oh well, it was a "good game." To make such a comeback against such incredible odds really isn't that bad. I did get a chuckle from a comment from Cliff_Burton when I sacrificed Romura. They foresaw an Ormagon coming. I replied that they didn't know me very well then. Romura had had plenty of energy to toss down an Ormagon herself if I remember correctly. It probably wouldn't have the best choice if I had. However, there have been no Ormagons in my Underneath decks for years now. I try to do without them.

On the other hand, I was wishing I had my Ookami deck instead. Why? Because I use Equilibrate in my Ookami deck. However, none of my Ookami decks currently have any Tainted Glimpses magi in them, so none of them qualify for the Summer League anyways. For now, I plan to keep it that way too. I never did play with these Tainted Glimpses decks I had built very much. A couple tests here and there is all.

Tall Grass In The Mountains

2006-06-03T12:49:00.000-07:00

Last night I was online before bed hoping to get in a game of Magi-Nation.

I had been on earlier, but there was a bunch to do around the place and my wife wanted the phone to make some calls. Ah, the joys of dialup. Fortunately, dialup seems to work just fine for playing Magi-Nation online with the gatlingEngine.

Anyways, there was a number of people online concurrently. Birdie21 was among them. We chose to play a game towards the Summer League. Birdie21 had just finished another game previously. I chose to go with my Weave deck. It was unaltered from way back when it seems when I had done some playtesting of the magi, Rabid Sagaweave, and Photosynthesis. By the time our game was done, I realized that the final version of Crasz no longer belongs in my deck.

As for our game, birdie21 went first with Kyg'n, Impervious. Kyg'n played out an Akkar and drew cards. Ahdar starts off my Weave playtest deck. I debated pulling the Lascinth only, or maybe the Uwamar and Lascinth. In the end, I just pulled the Uwamar for his starting cards. Ahdar would end up playing two Uwamar, a Drowl, Vuryip, and a Brushfire on that first turn. While this did give Kyg'n a boost with the Akkar, the two Uwamar would help Ahdar put in a good fight on energy gains. Kyg'n held his ground and played an Urigant. Two very invulnerable creatures stood waiting for my Weave deck to unwind. And, unwind it did. Weave Seed on the Vuryip made for some heavy hitting. Kyg'n would last a few turns, but my Weave deck was attacking like it was built to do. The Drowl didn't last long, but the Vuryip managed to net a good many cards over several turns. After Kyg'n, Ahdar would face off against Kazm. The Oranragan and Giant Baldar would come out, wiping out Kesia's Flute shortly after I had played it. Kazm and Ahdar would battle for a few turns. What was really annoying was the Stand and Take It placed upon the Giant Baldar. I would end up sacrificing a one energy Tropical Jumbor to eliminate the spell. Although, I would end up going after all the other Kybar's Teeth creatures first until I had that small creature to sacrifice. The deadlock between the two magi would continue for several turns. When it looked like I could get the Giant Baldar with Sawgrass, Kazm put a Sagawal into play. Ahdar would play out a Lascinth to put a cramp into Kazm's offense. On my next turn, Ahdar played Weave Seed on the Lascinth to do some serious damage and keep it alive enough to threaten Kazm. A Warrior's Boots later with a Seaweed Lascinth would keep Ahdar going a bit longer. In the end, Kazm got Ahdar byattacking and then sacrificing the one energy creature to Topple. The Uwamars had already been eliminated. Gravity wasn't exactly their friend. Now it was time for Crasz. I hadn't played with this deck since before Tainted Glimpses was finalized, so I found myself playing with a magi with nothing to do with the deck. There was not one Zassyfer in my deck. Crasz would put in the good fight though. It was a challenge to play with the energize of four in a deck built primarily for an energize of five. Crasz did make it past Kazm and faced off against Groll the Fallen. Birdie21 revealed a powerful combo at this point that I had never seen before. Groll played Kybar's Fang and used his power to go after my creatures. This is when weave would be very useful. By weaving away my creature's energy, I was able to reduce what Groll gained just a little. From here on out, I would be forced to play with a creature count no greater than Groll's. This made things real tough for Crasz. On the positive side, Weave was borrowing a spell from Nar for relic destruction. While the Fang was impervious to the discard, the next sentence in Shattershards made a Vopok pay the price. While the Vopok had received a blessing from a Galiant in play, this heavy hit allowed Crasz to finish it off. In the end, Crushing Stones defeated a thrashed Crasz. Halla would find little resistance from a thoroughly exhausted Groll. It was a good game. Kybar's Fang really prevented me from swarming when I really wanted to go all out. Oh, I suppose I could've done a nasty swarm anyways, but that would've opened up a massive energy floodgate for Groll. And Kazm? Oh my. It was a tough battle to not give him any extra energy either. These two Kybar's Teeth magi helped keep Weave in check.

No Brushfire Left Behind

2006-05-30T06:37:00.000-07:00

I know the expression "flying by the seat of your pants" is American (at least I think it is), but it seems some people have begun taking established cards and making up the rules for the card as they go along.

Take this question that was posted on the CCGW forums just today:

"Do the rules prevent the playing of multiple brushfires from the discard?

About half of the people I play say that 'any one brushfire' means that I can play more than one and the other half says it means I can only play one."

Let's have a look at the card:

The card is a dual region card - the Cald version is shown above. The region is not the issue here, and since it is a spell, the usual regional restriction and regional penalties apply.

The text of the card in question here is:

"Once per turn, you may play any one Brushfire from your discard pile as if it were in your hand."

So what does it mean? Let's break it down:

You may play: This simply means you may pay the cost and use the effect of the card
any one Brushfire: One and only one and not two or three, but any one of it, either the cald one or the weave one
from your discard pile: Go look through your discard pile and only your discard pile. Not your deck, not your hand, not your opponent's deck or discard pile or hand. Just your discard pile.
as if it were in your hand: so that any effects that triggers when you play a spell from your hand will trigger

Put it all together: Go look through your discard pile, grab your favourite copy of Brushfire, be it the one that was defaced by Holmberg at GenCon 2002 or the one you improved upon the art by painting the rabbit creature bright yellow, pay the cost for it from your magi - usually two, but you might have cost reduction cards in play like a Rayje's Construct, or alternatively, you might have to pay the regional penalty of 1e, while remembering that the regional restriction applies, so if your magi is core, unless you have some way of playing a cald or weave card, you can't play it - then do what the card says, choose a creature and remove two energy from it, effects and interruptive spells trigger at the appropriate times as a spell is played as if from hand - so remove an extra one energy if you have a scroll of fire in play and one less energy if the chosen creature's magi has a weave hut in play, for example - and when all is done discard the card from play - i.e. it goes into your discard pile.

With me so far? Good. So how many times can you play the card? Well, the first part of the special text says "Once per turn". Now, usually "once" means one time and "once per turn" would mean "one time every turn". Can you do the same thing next turn with the same copy of Brushfire? What does the card say? "Once per turn..." How many times every turn? "Once per turn..."

I have no idea how else to explain that phrase which would make the meaning of the card easier to understand. Texas used to have a "No Child Left Behind" policy. I wonder if it should be applied to the rest of the world...

Tropical Mountain Battle

2006-05-29T20:40:00.000-07:00

I was mostly online to check on how the tournament had been going so far. Since I had read in the forums about the Tainted Glimpses event for the summer, I was also curious if that was listed and how many might have signed up for that. When I noticed the listed special tournament with Novelty, I quickly looked over my list of decks for ones with ten custom cards in them. I didn't have any. Oh, well. But, I do think I have a few that qualify for the Summer / Tainted Glimpses (TG) League. I would have to look over the rules again, but I only recall that I had to have at least one TG magi in my magi stack. Most of my TG test decks had at least one magi and one or two creatures or a spell in it. So, I shouldn't have to actually build a new deck to qualify. Just sign up. I think I'll do that. I don't expect to do too well, but it should be fun.

Anyways, CapAp was online as I was checking out my decks, the tournament scene, and checking out things in general for Magi-Nation online. CapAp pointed that they needed to play me to tie for first place. Actually, looking at the standings, what CapAp needed was a win. While playing one more person and winning will now place CapAp ahead perhaps, I didn't choose to hand CapAp a win. You'll have to read to the end to find out how our game ended. It took me some time to choose between a couple decks I had. In the end, I chose to run the tropical deck again.

Arawan started things off for the game and for my tropical deck. He played out the Robe of Petals and searched for a Fog Hyren with warp driven. Dreamwarped up, the Fog Hyren used its power to draw me some cards. With some more cards for the end of the turn, Arawan was already setting up Ookami nicely with some Hardshell Weebos and Lahalous. Kazm would start off things for CapAp with a Rockslide. Five energy spent to remove my five energy creature. Not too bad. Kazm would continue with playing a Giant Baldar and Baldar. Ambush took out Giant Baldar. Warp driven fetched another Fog Hyren. I played it out with all of Arawan's remaining energy and did not trigger Kazm's effect. Again, I drew more cards from the Fog Hyren. Of course, this left a beatup Fog Hyren that the Baldar could attack for free, and attack it did. This defeated Arawan. Ookami came next. With all three copies of both the Hardshell Weebos and Lahalous in hand, he would be destined to give a whole lot of free energy. I would've loved an Ambush for that single Baldar, though. Anways, Ookami started by dreaming down a Vine Hyren. Since all the rest of his creatures were guaranteed to trigger Kazm's energy gains, I went ahead and dreamwarped down the Lahalous and dreamwarped up the Hardshell Weebos. Throwing in a N'kala made for seven creatures to give Kazm a whole ton of energy to work with. With the energy gains amplified by Ookami's effect, I was hoping to overcome this advantage I had just handed Kazm. Rockslide would get the Vine Hyren, and Gravity would bring my biggest Hardshell Weebo back down to size. Baldar attacked my biggest Lahalou for free, which is actually why I had boosted it with one of the weebos too—to draw attention to it. Rolling Baldar was played out and sacrificed to a spell that I forget the name of. Basically, he sacrificed his creature to discard an equal amount of energy from my creatures divided in a manner of his choosing. This would wipe things out a little more for me. However, when I saw that their hand was now greatly reduced, I had hope that I could turn things around. Kazm had lots of energy, but apparently a lack of ability to use it. On my next turn, I played out Stalker's Boots and attacked. Got in a couple free attacks on Ookami, but he still had quite a cushion from all that free energy. I had two surviving Lahalou and a Hardshell Weebo. I played out another Vine Hyren to increase my creatures a bit. Kazm followed with a Rolling Baldar and a Baldar Amulet. It took me a moment to realize that using Stalker's Boots would allow my weaker Lahalou to take out the Baldar without really costing me a creature from retalation of the amulet. With the unopposed attacks taking out Kazm, I played out a Tropical Jumbor and remembered to add the two energy at the end of my turn. Groll the Fallen would stand up to Ookami next. Gravity would do some damage again. Baldar and Darge were played out. The Baldar was sacrificed to the same spell I had seen earlier. What made things interesting, was that energy leftover was taken from the Tropical Jumbor, restoring it to its starting energy. With Groll's power used for the surviving Darge, things were looking fair for Groll. This is when I rejoiced. With the jumbor at its starting energy, I tossed down both a Staff of Vines and Ookami's Drums. With its new power, the Jumbor not only started the energy games again, it was ripe for the drums to hit it because this power put it below its starting energy just long enough for Ookami to smile upon. Groll would survive by one energy. Stalking helped reduce the energy that Darge removed from Vine Hyren, but he still gained energy from his power's effect upon the Darge to survive the free hit by the Tropical Jumbor by just that one energy. I played out an N'kala to keep Ookami strong on the creature front and going after all my energy gain mechanics. Groll wouldn't play anything on the next turn and merely drew two cards at the end of turn. This would allow a better setup for Ullig. I used the power strengthen around the board, attacked to eliminate Groll, and played out a Tropical Hyren. I figured it was that or the Tropical Vinoc I kept in my hand to roll forward with the tropical theme of the deck. Ullig would play out four relics, two Thoughtful Baldar, Darge, and Vertigo. I didn't really pay attention to the relics. Now, I should've used the strengthen first, while it was still in effect. However, in my haste, I paid the penalty for Spell Pulse and wiped all our relics first. It was really nice to get Ullig's Slingshot out of the way. After a massive wave of attacks that cost me some creatures, I played out Ookami's Drums from my hand. This allowed me to heal one of my somewhat toasted creatures and hit the surviving Kybar's Teeth creature for one energy. Ullig wouldn't do much to worry me on the next turn. Another strike with the drums would finish off the creature and grant Ullig some energy, but some free attacks from my creatures were just enough, barely to do the job. It was a good game. To go against Kazm with so many small creatures was certainly quite a sight to see.

Jore Cub

2006-05-18T21:26:00.000-07:00

I got a surprise visit from the one-time Shadowsfall Promo artist Essence online yesterday. He was asking about a number of things and we chatted for a while. One of the things he asked for was a list of cards still requiring art. Since I'm on hiatus (sorta) and all that, there aren't that many cards that's still looking for art, but I did give him the list of cards in Exodus Flight that I have not yet done. Less than a day later, I got an image from him and well, here's the templated image. Enjoy.

Art by Essence.

The templated EF cards done so far can be found at Novelty's Custom Cards.

Glimpses of Legality

2006-05-18T20:59:00.001-07:00

Tainted Glimpses and Keeper's Quest recently moved out of playtesting into Custom set proper and that has got a few people a bit miffed about the status of everything else (as usual). It's going to get even crazier defining what's "gEngine tournament legal" in the future with more sets so here's the start of something simpler.

"Custom legal"

Here's the proposal for something called "custom legal". What is "custom legal"? Custom Legal will be the list of legal cards for online tournaments on CCGW's gEngine. So instead of defining the expansions and the cards that are legal for each tournament, all anyone has to define is "custom legal" and it would automatically imply the list of cards below.

Custom Legal cards as of May 2006:
All printed English cards excluding Power of the Creators and Tony at a Con. (i.e. all black cards on gEngine)
All spoilt Traitor's Reach cards, including promos. (i.e. all purple cards on gEngine)
Custom sets Elder's Legacy and Tainted Glimpses. (blue cards on gEngine)
Custom promo sets Shadowsfall Promo and Keeper's Quest Promo. (blue cards on gEngine)
All Japanese promo cards. (i.e. all green cards on gEngine)
Custom promo cards - Glimpses, Dion, Elder's Legacy, Ploomb. (blue cards on gEngine)

Cards that are not Custom Legal as of May 2006:
Power of the Creators and Tony at a Con (red background on gEngine)
Double Jeopardy (custom promo) cards (red background on gEngine)
All cards in playtest (grey cards on gEngine)

This list will reside on the CCGW MND forums and will be updated if there is any further changes.

Note that the Novelty Tainted Glimpses Tournament uses Custom Legal cards.

Moving Into The Tropics

2006-05-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

Waiting for parts from work, I logged on once again to check out the online Magi-Nation scene. There was four other people online. Considering the time of day, I was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps a number of them were in quite different time zones than myself, where it was approaching lunch time. Birdie21 was among them and offered to play a tournament game. I had to search a bit for a pen and paper first. I take notes as much as I can to write these blogs. It helps me remember. Now if I could just remember what I did with three note pads that used to be by the computer yesterday.

Anyways, birdie21 went first with Harresh. I was having flashbacks to my game the other day. When the only creature played was Xala, I was seriously debating not playing any creatures for a while and just using warp driven. Oh, yeah. I decided that if I had created a tropical deck as well, I might as well use it. Unlike my crystal creature deck, my tropical deck has the minimum of one quarter of the deck in tropical creatures, or 10 of my 40 cards. Arawan would start off with a Fog Hyren in the hand, so I used warp driven to get a second copy. I dream warped them both down. I was expecting Unmake and an attacking illusion, so I wanted to minimize my energy losses at first. So, my first turn was all about massive card draw. It was my best shot of matching Harresh in setting things up. The next turn went almost as anticipated. An Olum Digger would bring back further images of my matchup versus olums before. With the digger in play, I decided that ending my next turn with no energy on Arawan would be best. I would use warp driven for my last Fog Hyren and dreamwarp it up. Combined with a Tropical Jumbor and Tropical Plith, Arawan was left without energy. The idea was to make it so that for maximum damage that the digger would have to attack my creature directly. Ookami's Drums added an energy back to the Fog Hyren and beat down the Xala. I just forgot to add two energy to Tropical Jumbor at the end of my turn (just like I forgot when posting on the CCG Workshops forums that I had the jumbor too). If I had remembered, it might have changed things a little. Anyways, Arawan was defeated on the next turn by Harresh. The only surviving creature was the Xala by two energy, and it was the Xala that had attack the jumbor. Chill of Night had taken out the Fog Hyren, so that should give an idea of the cards I had been desperately drawing. When Ookami flipped over, I went nuts. First I dreamwarped down a Vine Hyren and then played out six more creatures, including three copies of Lahalou. I dreamwarped up and down all of them except the Tropical Vinoc, which doesn't dreamwarp. This made for a rather large hyren. As a side note, my deck almost qualifies as a hyren deck too, but I didn't want to drop any other cards to do it. The icing on the cake was Staff of Vines. Ookami's Drums would hit the Xala again and restore the Hardshell Weebo, after the weebo used the power from the Staff of Vines. Oh, it was nice that dreamwarp applies until the end of turn. After that, the weebo would've had a starting energy of one. With Ookami's effect, it was simply insane amounts of energy. Harresh would attack with the Xala, play a Szhar, and use Relic Stalkers on both my relics. So, it was back to Ookami, who continued to grow his creatures and attacked to wipe out Harresh. He did try to better my hand with the Tropical Vinoc and sacrificing an Equilibrate from my hand to use Stalk. At this point, Equilibrate was probably going to hurt me far more than be helpful at any point. Drajan flipped over next. He used Warrior's Boots to attack with a Warrior Olum. This wiped out my Hardshell Weebo. Than Uban took out what was left of the Tropical Vinoc and Chill of Night got one of the Lahalou. Drajan wouldn't last long. Ookami attacked, wiped out Drajan, and played out another Vine Hyren and a replacement Hardshell Weebo. Combined with my second copy of Staff of Vines, that was a massive swarm once again, and I made the Hardshell Weebo very big at about twelve energy. Dey was next. Another Warrior's Boots, but with Olum Digger this time, setup a nice move to remove energy from my magi and get the N'kala into crushing range. Then, the Olum swarm began. It was too little, too late. Still, Dey did some damage with Crushing Sands before Ookami took some very big little creatures and overwhelmed Dey in a single turn of attacks. However, if birdie21 had gotten past Ookami, my last magi would've been in a world of hurt. I ended the game with Tropical Hyren as the only creature in my hand.

Twilight Warring with the Hiatus

2006-05-11T09:15:00.000-07:00

I wonder how many people picked up the nuance that the hiatus doesn't apply to Twilight War. Not many perhaps, but it's stated very clearly in Flight Cancelled that it only applies to Exodus Flight and later. Twilight War is definately before Exodus Flight (see this list) which means that work is still on-going on that set.

I have finally finished fleshing out the Weave cards earlier in the week on Twilight War, and it's there for the players to comment on at the moment. Links to a page for each region with all the proposed cards are at the CCGW forums, although the pages for KT, Underneath and Arderial have already been superceded by their current versions on the engine. It's still fair game to comment on any one of the cards though, although I hope people will follow the rules.

I see people making comments like "I like Card X a lot." and although that's good for my ego (heh!), it's not good from a Card design point of view. It's got nothing I can use because I have no idea why that person likes that particular card. Is it because of the colour? the art? the FT? the name? What exactly about it do they like? I wish they would state their reasons so that I can incorporate them into future versions of the cards.

What I do like are the negative constructive criticism as I mentioned in passing in the previous blog entry. No, I'm not a sadist. Constructive criticism, even if they are negative tells me what a player doesn't like about the card, what I should try to avoid, and what doesn't work with the cards. However, it seems not many people are adept at giving constructive criticism; they often miss out the "why" part. Standalone statements like "I don't like Card Y." or "Card Z is useless." is worthless to me because they don't say why said person doesn't like Card Y or think Card Z is useless. There's nothing there I can use to improve the card and that frustrates me more than the negativity itself. I just wish people would mention "why" for every comment.

The other thing to remember is that I'm not designing to please just one person or one group of person. Ever set has to try to please everyone. Yes, I will repeat it again, every set, even a custom set, has to try to please everyone. But that's impossible? Well, not really though. I didn't say that every CARD has to please everyone. It means that in any likely given set, if a player like a least a small fraction, say 5% of the cards, or even 1 card in the entire set, then I have done my job in delivering the set. Those are the cards designed for the said players. The other cards are designed for different other demographics/players.

Let me illustrate. As a mainly Creatureless player (sometimes, if I get the time to play), I have no interest in creatures, and that's probably a quarter or more of a set that I would have no interest in. Now not all spells and relics are created equal... naroom spells and relics are more likely to add energy to creatures, which would be useless to me as a Creatureless player, so there's more cards out of the window. However, if I find that cool Nar spell that I can use in my Creatureless paradwyn deck, or the great KT spell that combos nicely with the final magi in my creatureless Core deck, then I'd be happy... for eventhough most of the set is useless to my play style, there are at least 2 spells on cursory inspection that I would be excited about as a player. Now, these 2 spells might be worthless to a Naroom creature player, but it doesn't matter. The spells are not designed for the Naroom creature player in mind, and in an ideal set, the Naroom creature player should get excited about some other cards in the set, probably a number of Naroom creature cards, which will be of no interest to a creatureless player.

Some people intuitively understood all that. When I got the designed cards back from Tim for Underneath, I didn't even change a word that he submitted on those cards, nor made any comments, because he captured the feel of the Underneath set of cards just right. There was something for everyone, be it Korrits or Burrow or even Creatureless underneath.

By contrast, when I got the list of cards from Daniel, I was aghast and ... well, bored. All the cards looked and felt the same and all of them seemed to be designed for one deck and one type of player in mind. While it might find use outside of that one deck, it would probably be very unlikely that it would be used so, and I wrote a rather gentle email back telling him that the card designed were technically perfect, but were boring and lacking. Credit should be given to Daniel as he took the comments away and worked on the cards after about 4 or 5 edits later, laced with all my comments (and some of those were negative yet constructive), he produced a series of cards that were, well, almost there. I edited a couple of the cards and posted them for comments and there were a number of people praising Daniel in that thread. Good for him.

The thing was, he took his designs away, and together with my comments, redesigned the cards. He didn't let the negative (yet constructive) criticism get him down, but he persevered and rewrote and rewrote as many times as possible to end up with a result that both he as the region designer and I as the overall set designer can be comfortable with. I think only one idea out of the original 6 was retained for the second draft which I got, and eventually, even that one idea was thrown out the window for something more robust and interesting and... divergent. I like the end result of the 6 cards. Each one of them cater to a different type of player and the cards now have a distinct personality to them. Perhaps one of these days, I'll post an example here on this blog.

(And I'm rambling, but some days, it surprises me to see someone using all the custom cards from one region in a single deck and calling it a playtest. The cards were not designed for a single deck, and I think a single playtest with all the cards from one region cheapens the cards somewhat.)

So, it's the final stretch before playtest begins in earnest. Sometime by the middle of May, I'll begin coding the remainder of the 10 regions onto gEngine so that the playtest can begin in ernest. And then after that, of course, there's still Double Jeopardy (which according to the same list is before Exodus Flight). Exodus Flight and Cure for All Seasons will probably take a leisurely stroll down the adaptation road, but look out for the announcement for Cure after Double Jeopardy goes onto the engine!

Crystals In Mud

2006-05-08T18:14:00.001-07:00

Today, I was online while waiting for some news back from work. All dressed up and nowhere to go. I figured I would log into gatlingEngine for a bit while I was doing a whole lot of nothing. As luck would have it, YT Sno was online and looking for another tournament game. There was also a new player online anxious for a game. So, when the new player backed out of the game creation lobby, the turn order was apparently rerandomized, and I ended up going first.

Going with the crystal deck again, Ulmi tossed down her two starting cards. I had two Crushing Fungus and one Gorgle's Curse in my hand. And, since YT Sno said they read this blog, now they will know how long I had Gorgle's Curse and a second Crushing Fungus. So, yes, I could've beat Eryss a turn sooner, but I held on to the Crushing Fungus for a time when it would be more, um, useful. Okay, that's getting ahead of things.... Back to the game: Eryss came next with a full opening swarm. Standard stuff for Eryss. Lots of card draw between Gremble and Fog Hyren. Poison Baloo Root used wither, so one energy spent and one energy discarded from my one Crystal Jile. I went ahead and crushed the Poison Baloo Root on my next turn. With a steady flow of crystal creatures, I played some more out. What was interesting was to see Eryss still get out a Black Stuff with her two energy despite the lack of energize. It was somewhere around this time that I got a work related call, so YT Sno took the opportunity to tell the new player who was observing our game what was going on while I took notes for work. YT Sno was still describing gameplay when we resumed our game. If I had crushed one of Eryss's creatures on my next turn, I could've followed up with enough attacks to get Eryss, but this probably would've canceled the nice energy denial since Eryss would no longer be the opposing magi. So, I made my attacks and kept the Crushing Spell in my hand. Eryss survived that turn by one energy. However, she was on the ropes and wouldn't hold out much longer. Ulmi was gaining momentum with her constant supply of crystal creatures. And, I was playing them to use up her energy every turn, since an Umbu had been attached to Crystal Goblet. With no energy to lose at the beginning of YT Sno's turn, it didn't hurt quite so bad. When Whilp was flipped over, I was thinking that his ability was just going to rip into my crystal swarm. With only one non-crystal creature, it would've been two energy to a lot of creatures. However, there was something far more devastating coming. YT Sno tossed down three Muck Vinoc and several other creatures, in addition to having that Black Stuff come back from the discard pile at the beginning of the turn. Yog's Maul would sacrifice Black Stuff and destroy Akkar. It would've been nice to have the extra energize, but I was already trying to figure out how to sacrifice Ulmi at this point. This is when Whilp whipped the creatures up with Frenzy. Not only did this give those Muck Vinocs enough energy to use their powers, it also provided some valid targets for those powers. So, instead of just hitting my creatures hard, YT Sno did one better and actually totally gutted three of my crystal creatures from play. By the time time Whilp had played a Moss Pendant, used its power, and used his own power, there was no energy left on Whilp. This would totally change my turn. I chose instead to take advantage of Ulmi's energy savings on crystal creatures and combined that with Crushing Fungus. With Crystal Twinklet and a Crystal Arboll, plus sacrificing my surviving creature to pull off a surprising comeback, Whilp would be left with no energy, no energize and insufficient creature strength to finish off Ulmi. Novelty was observing the game at this point and asked YT Sno if they were going to sacrifice their magi. All they would've had to do was attack and Whilp would've been defeated. Since Whilp didn't make the sacrifice, I ended up making the finishing blow on my turn. Grahnna would face off against Ulmi next. This is when my copy of gatlingEngine locked up. Fortunately, YT Sno saved the game. So, after waiting a bit for the server to acknowledge that I had logged off (I tried right away but it said I was already logged on), I was able to resume and finish the game with YT Sno. It started us back at the point where Whilp had no energize, just before he was defeated. We played that turn out the same and continued on to Grahnna. Grahnna tossed down big. Another Fog Hyren would appear and the stuff creature theme would begin to reveal itself, something that hadn't really happened up to this point. Grahnna would take down Ulmi. With two Treepsh in play, I gambled with Fossik Ringsmith on my two Gorgle's Curse. With a nice bit of invulnerability on an Akkar in addition to his other creature in play, I calculated it out that Grahnna didn't have anything in attacks that could get Fossik. What I failed to count on was another Yog's Maul. While it didn't destroy the Akkar outright, it did make it small enough that a creature with three energy could take it. So, with five creatures in play, and two Treepsh that couldn't attack until Fossik was defeated, Grahnna still got the Ringsmith in one pass. And, as for the Treepsh being cursed, a lot of Grahnna's effect had been fed into those two so they were some of the biggest stuff. So, with Fossik down, it was down to the Celebrated Hero to try and turn things around. The first thing Gogor did was use the leftover Bottomless Pit from Fossik. With only one relic in play, Umbu had to attach to the much hated Yog's Maul. The real advantage for me was that it took away the threat while leaving Grahnna unable to play a fresh one out. Considering that Umbu had been used on my relics earlier, this was a nice return on the pain. Well, now the Umbu bit the maul and I was happy. With two Urigant to play and his spade, Gogor was feeling pretty good. I had already seen all three Muck Vinoc, so even Frenzy wasn't looking quite so bad when looking at my survival odds. On Gogor's next turn, he would make a couple attacks with Strag's Claws in play. So, not only did those two Urigant get bigger eliminating the Treepsh, but Gogor was looking to be in a good spot. Crystal Arboll would make a great target for Impact on Grahnna while the third and final copy of Crushing Fungus would prevent the little titan from energizing. This would decide the game. I believe Grahnna's effect could've overcome Gogor's high energize, but being denied the maul and unable to energize for a turn turned things completely in the Hero's favor. We called it a good game at this point and chatted for some time about Magi-Nation, this blog, and other CCGs we've played. We both have seen deck types online that we had never encountered in our local arenas. And, I think we both really had fun today with this game.

Desert Underground Unsafe

2006-05-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

Today was game two of the tournament for me. Pass me some sugar to held the medicine go down. *smiles*

I don't think I've ever played Cliff_Burton before. They went first with Harresh and a her wonderful bit of card draw. My guess was that I needed to take her out quickly or risk suffering a terrible defeat. A quick defeat of Harresh was not to be. With Bottled City, Harresh stole one of my Crystal Lascinth. Not a terrible loss for me. Still, it could be a problem. With a full count of crystal creatures by Ulmi, I thought to hold Harresh off a bit. However, Dessicate took out my biggest creature and rendered my use of Crystal Arboll on my previous turn useless. After the subsequent attacks, Ulmi was on the ropes. She would hold out for a few turns, but Harresh definitely had the offensive at this point. Fossik tossed down fast and furious. He crushed one creature and cursed another. Combined with Bottomless Pit, he only had enough energy for a single Akkar. Although Dreamcatcher would steal some energy for the cursed d'Resh creature, I was banking on the Akkar for its invulnerability and energy gains for the Ringsmith's chance to make a comeback against the next d'Resh magi. When Harresh spent her last energy to draw cards, it made it so that an attacking Akkar would take her out her only creature and defeat Harresh. I tossed down Gogor's Spade and Strag's Claws first. One for card draw, and the other for some energy gains for the Akkar. Dey wouldn't let the Ringsmith think of a uphill battle. Warrior's Boots and Unmake opened Fossik wide up for a Warrior Olum to take him out. With several other d'Resh creatures fielded, Celebrated Hero gambled everything he had. With Crushing Fungus to keep Dey tight on energy for the next turn, Gogor spent all the rest of his energy on creatures. This time, it would an Urigant providing some invulnerability. I knew that Dey couldn't get all of Gogor's creatures just in attacks. What got me though was an Uban. Dey made just the attacks needed so that though the Urigant was the Hero's only surviving creature, it was just beaten enough for the Uban to burn. With Dey's only two energy, one Uban finished off the game. Ouch! I am not sure if Celebrated Hero could've come from behind, but that's a moot point now. Great game by Cliff Burton. I loved to see a deck do so well without all the mad energy gains that the xyx deck usually employs.

The Sky Falls Upon Crystals

2006-05-03T17:04:00.000-07:00

I suppose that if I scrolled through my posts, I could find the last time I played a tournament game. It feels like it has been a while. Today, I put together a crystal creature type deck for May tournament. In the end, I think the deck only has six creatures that don't have crystal in their name, three each of Akkar and Urigant. A lot of the crystal creatures seem appropriate for defense. While that isn't really my style, I was hoping that I could still get some good use out of them with Strag's Claws and a mix of Underneath spells that I seem to have grown rather fond of.

Shortly after getting the deck put together, I played Frosty Ninja. I went first with Ulmi, only selecting the Crystal Goblet and Crystal Jile. It was a dream start of crystal creatures and tossed down something that looked good. Frosty Ninja flipped over Lady of the Sky and played out her Cyclone Xyx plus a Xyx Elder. Xyx Elder almost wiped me out in a single shot. It took a couple turns, but Lady of the Sky would defeat Ulmi. Fossik, Ringsmith would finish off Lady of the Sky. She was practically left wide open for Fossik's single Akkar. He used his power to make it big enough. Defender of the Sky came next. Suddenly, it was a massive swarm of mighty xyx. It was hard to choose what needed to go. There was at least four xyx, with one being the impressive Xyx Minor. That little beast had to go before it got too big and destroyed my deck one creature at a time. Fossik fought well, but in the end, he fell beneath the xyx onslaught. Fortunately, he had paid the price. Celebrated Hero was going to aim for some serious card draw with his spade. Plus, he got lucky with a Crushing Fungus. This really cramped the Defender's style. This would be very deciding for the Hero. With Strag's Claws, he would crush the Defender's creatures. He did have to waste a Gorgle's Curse on a Xyx Minor. It was huge. Sorreah's Dream combined with its own power had made it huge. Attacking the minor quickly made sure another spell didn't fix the curse. With Defender hurting, Celebrated Hero would finish her off to face Sorreah. He had placed out my second copy of Crystal Goblet, so getting my creatures crushed or Shockwaved at this point didn't really hurt too much. Sorreah did eliminate all his creatures. However, I knew I had the cards to finish off Sorreah on my next turn. I just had to think it out so I didn't mess up. I played out a Crystal Jile, Crystal Arboll and one more creature. Crystal Jile used its power and then I bounced the jile and Sorreah's single creature using Attekia's Gift. I should've used Impact on the bigger creature, but we had forgotten about Sorreah's increased energize from the Lady of the Sky. An Impacted Crystal Arboll would've finished off Sorreah if not for that. Frosty Ninja remembered the increased energize and added the one energy to the magi to reflect it. Impact fell short by one. So, a quick check of my hand revealed that I still had a Resonate available. All in all, a good game. While this blog might not reflect it, the xyx swarm looked like it should have had me as a goner. I may have won, but I have a healthy respect for xyx decks. It is a powerful creature type. I got hit by the Xyx Elder at least twice in this game, and it wrecked me something terrible. Part of the reason I went after the Xyx Minors with such vengeance was so that they couldn't be used at some point on the Xyx Elder for repeated thrashings on my non-xyx creatures.

Burning Naroom

2006-05-02T19:11:00.000-07:00

I am debating a creature type to build a deck around to go with this month's tournament. Not sure if I'll get any tournament games in, but I thought it might be good to be prepared to do so. Anyways, CapAp was online and asked if I wanted to play a game. Not ready for the tournament yet, I opted to accept the chance to play a game for the fun of it.

CapAp was going to play with one of their not so good decks. So, I opted to take a chance and play my “unusual” Cald deck. Maybe not unusual in the grand scheme of things. However, it is the only nearly creatureless Cald deck I've ever built and played. It isn't my style and I find it a bit nerve wrecking to play. Without all the experience of a seasoned creatureless Calder, I thought it fitting to give it a run when playing for fun.

CapAp went first with Tiller. With Naroom digging in deep and fast on the card draw, it wasn't really surprising to see Tiller beat Vorga. However, Vorga did toast everything on her first turn. Tiller had tossed down two four-energy creatures and the Weebo. Vorga would Shatter the Weebo and burned the two others with Brushfire and finished them off with Beam of Light. A real lucky opening for Vorga. That Brushfire in the discard pile would remain the majority of my burn for a while. Tiller retaliated by using Warrior's Boots on a Giant Carillion. A wide open Vorga took a major hit, so the best choice was to sacrifice her on my next by spending all her energy to destroy the giant with Boomstick. Barak would have to expend a lot of my card resources, but he took advantage of Abraxin's Crown to bend the Brushfire and Firefly Amulet to go after Tiller's energy. Topped off with a Fireball, it was soon second magi versus second magi. Evu used Relic Stalker on the crown before going after my limited card resources with the dark ones from Evu's Jellybeans. I had never tried to sort the order of my cards like this before, so CapAp's simple instructions on how simple it was key to using Barak's power. This meant Barak not only had a Wildfire and the Scroll of Fire left over from Vorga, but I was able to setup my hand with another Abraxin's Crown after Barak toasted all the Naroom creatures in that one turn. I was gambling that with only three cards in my hand, CapAp would try the black jellybeans again. Evu fell to the crown since this all took place during the first spells-powers-relics step and no creatures were in play on either side of the field. While I was trying to manage my cards with Barak's power, a small hand like I had isn't the greatest. It was my guess that unless I cost CapAp their hand with retaliation from the crown, Narooom would take the game just from sheer card advantage. With CapAp set back to the two cards they drew at the end of the turn, T'dek was left in a world of hurt. I now had three of the five creatures from my deck in my hand. An Inferno Xyx would toast the fresh Giant Carillion, allowing the two Giant Arboll I had just played with it to grow a bit too. Brushfire with Blast Gloves on the five energy K'teeb Thumper would make for one small critter. So, it was two six-energy arbolls versus the thumper. T'dek would use his power on the thumper, crushed one of the arbolls (which lived), and the thumper hit my magi in retaliation for using Barak's ability on previous turn. But, it was still worth it for me. Barak had what he needed. Although the Scroll of fire had been stalked previously (or the thumper wouldn't have survived the Brushfire), Brushfire softened up the thumper and the Firefly Amulet finished it off. This left at least one very healthy arboll with which to attack an undefended T'dek.