Magic the Gathering Archives - Page 2 of 3

Regularly Playing: July 2019 Edition

July 3, 2019 by Belghast

For those who have been reading this blog for some time you will know that I have a semi-monthly series that I call “regularly playing” where I attempt to update the sidebar on my blog. This is the second month where I am trying to do this at the beginning of the month rather than remembering to do it towards the end of a month. June was a pretty stable month as far as game playing, and effectively there is really nothing much changing in the mix. However I am still going to go through the actions of this post to keep myself in the habit.

To Those Remaining

I am completely in love with this game. I’ve written so much about it recently, but effectively this is as thought you had sat down immediately after creating Symphony of the Night and just kept going on and adding in all of the features you ever wanted in the game. The experience is flawless, and while I am hearing there are issues with the Switch port, I am too busy making my way through the PC experience to care. They have all the time in the world to fix that. I have gotten the “bad” ending, and now am trying to work on better endings.

I went on a brief binge of playing this game and then once again got distracted by something else. I want to return to playing on a more regular basis, but I am going to have to burn down some of the other games I am working on to free up the mental bandwidth. Bungie is doing a great job of stewarding the game into this new era and I am looking forward to some of the changes that are coming with the new expansion. The game is in a great place, so well worth checking out.

This is still very much in the rotation because I have more objectives to accomplish during this season. I’ve completed one conquest which can be seen in the above screenshot, involving collecting a 50 million gold streak. The next up is going to be doing a bunch of GR55s as multiple classes. I still have yet to master any set dungeons so I should probably knock that out soon as well. Essentially I got distracted but I still very much want the penultimate reward this season.

This game is effectively my night cap. I crawl into bed and spend 10-15 minutes playing this on my tablet before eventually closing the lid and going to sleep. Dragalia Lost lives in this weird place where it is just engaging enough to keep me playing on a regular basis… and not engaging enough to keep me playing it constantly to the point of burning out. In part the later part is in thanks to its mobile mechanics which favor short bursts of play rather than extended play cycles. Whatever the case going on two years I am still doing this thing.

I am playing nowhere near as much as this game deserves but I am still periodically logging in to move the needle forward. Right now I am deeply distracted by all of the other games that are on the market and calling my attention. I will return to you at some point when a lull happens to continue adventures in Morrowind proper.

I am completely back on my bullshit folks… and loving it. Just prior to the launch of Shadowbringers I found a way to get re-engaged and as a result I think the expansion thus far has been all the more meaningful. I am not sure what else I can really say about this that I have not already said in a bunch of recent blog posts. Final Fantasy XIV is a lovingly curated game experience, and I am enjoying the hell out of the ride.

This month I have not spent an awful lot of time playing, but it is still on the list of things that I dive into when I want something more quiet and contemplative. I am not entirely certain this one is ever really going to leave the proper rotation, at least not for the time being. The pace of magic sets being released really reinforces the need to keep popping ones head back into the game every so often. Yesterday Core 20 was released, so I need to pop in and check it out.

To the New and Returning

For the very first time in the history of this column of sorts… I don’t have any new games being added to the mix. I reached a point of stasis this month and for the time being it is a pretty great mix of titles to be engaged in.

To Those Departing

Once again… nothing to see here. I didn’t out and out stop playing anything this month but continued largely playing the same things.

Honorable Mentions

This one is sliding in as an honorable mention and not something new… because quite frankly I don’t think I will be spending any more time with the game. Wizards Unite released for mobile platforms and represents an attempt to capture the same magic as Pokemon Go… but with the Harry Potter IP. I feel like they have failed to do that, and as a result have created a fairly cumbersome and often times unfun experience. It is worth mentioning, but only just.

A lot of my bandwidth was taken up by watching the E3 coverage unfurl, and as a result I am giving it an honorable mention as well. It was not a great show, but there were several gems. The new Commander Keen game is not really ones of them, but I am just in part happy see ANYTHING to do with that IP. It was probably a toss up between Microsoft and Square for who had the best showing, and then everything else falls down significantly after that.

Mythic Invitational

April 2, 2019 by Belghast

My wife spent the weekend sick and I think has passed whatever she had onto me. So the end result was last night both of us came home from work completely dead and ready to go to sleep. We managed to last until around 8 pm before hitting the sack, and then slept the entire night through without interruptions. This is not exactly normal for us and as a result I feel a little weird after getting all of that sleep. As far as gaming went I managed to complete the daily key challenge in Anthem before logging out… thankful that you can bank keys for a later time. Shortly after that I attempted to play some more Breath of the Wild and managed to get the outfit needed to sneak into Gerudo Town… but could not stay conscious long enough to actually do that thing. It was around this time that my wife showed visible signs of succumbing to sleep… when in truth I had been quietly nodding off the entire time we were sitting in the living room. Basically I had a very unproductive night gaming wise, but I hope the sleep helps because she sounds miserable… and I am starting to feel that way.

This weekend I got wrapped up in the Magic the Gathering Mythical Invitational happening at Pax East, which is weird considering I generally bounce off of all e-sports streams. However I watched most of the finals on Sunday strangely compelled and finding myself actually rooting for one of the players. What was interesting about this specific format is that it all happened inside of MTG Arena, meaning there was no need for a judge and limited stalling tactics… the end result being very rapid matches given that most of the mechanical stuff was being taken care of by the game. What was also interesting about the roster specifically is it was a mix of Magic Pro League players, 8 Qualifiers that came up from the ladder play on Arena, and a mixture of notable streamer types. So this could have played out a bunch of ways, but if you were a gambler you probably would have bet on one of the battle hardened MPL players to take hope the trophy. However what happened in truth was something slightly more interesting. The final ranking looked a little bit like this…

Andrea Mengucci – MPL member
Piotr Głogowski – MPL member
Janne “Savjz” Mikkonen – Challenger – Mostly known as a Hearthstone Streamer
Ondřej Stráský – Challenger – Top 8 MTG Arena Qualifier

So yes at the end of the day Magic Pro League players took the first two slots… however they absolutely gave them a run for their money. Savjz especially played some matches that could have gone either way and like so many Magic matches it wound up coming down to card draw and top decking. I think this even more than probably anything was a chance for WotC to show that Arena players could in fact compete in the MPL and I wonder if at some point in the future we will see all MPL matches played out using the Arena client. The difference in speed was noticeable as well as the match being way easier to follow for the viewers at home. When watching a normal Magic match, things are happening so fast that you are largely entirely reliant upon the announcers to tell you what is actually happening. Here you can see both sides and the what the players have in their hands as well… and as a result it leads to way more tension as you know what the other player has as an answer to the play that the active player is about to make.

The other cool thing about the tourney is it gave them an opportunity to show off the cosmetic changes to the client including the introduction of special full art skins that you can get for various cards. The game also launched without card sleeve art that is so popular in games like Hearthstone. Throughout the game play they announced redeemable codes over Twitch that allows the players watching at home to pick up some of the things. Here is what I believe is a full list of the codes that are redeemable.

StarterStyles – The Pack Shown in Screenshot
SparkleDruid – Druid of the Cowl
SuperScry – Opt
ParallaxPotion – Revitalize
FoilFungus – Deathbloom Thalid
ShinyGoblinPirate – Fanatical Firebrand

Additionally they are starting to add the cosmetic rewards to various events. Now the interesting thing about a cosmetic is that if you don’t already have the card… you seem to also get the card when you collect its appearance. During one of the various redeems I did not actually have a copy of whatever card it was granting me and the game made a note that I was getting one of that specific card. I fully expect that there to be more cosmetics surrounding the release of the War of the Spark. That is probably a whole other topic however and I am running out of time this morning so going to wrap this post up. I really think Wizards of the Coast finally understands what it takes to make a viable product for the internet age, and I look forward to seeing what happens surrounding the Arena client and future tournaments. This was probably quite literally the first time I cared about anything e-sports related, so good on them.

Charm Maintenance

October 4, 2018 by Belghast

Last night I had to do some World of Warcraft maintenance, in that I had allowed my Emissary quest to stack up for three days and was about to start losing them. I fairly joylessly burned through those, then decided to take a chance at a 370 piece of loot from the Warfront that is now open to Horde players. I still find those pretty fun but ultimately wound up with disappointment in that I got a 370 item in a slot I already had one. You would think they could factor in the gear that the player has when they give those extremely limited time rewards like that… because since it is ultimately a shot at loot every three weeks… please give us something we can use.

From there I popped into Monster Hunter World where I largely did some maintenance there as well. I spent most of the night farming up zenny so that I could buy the Power Charm, which is an item that takes up a bag slot but gives you a pretty potent damage boost. I had already purchased the Armor Charm which does the same thing, but for your defense stat. These apparently open up once you have fought the Zorah Magdaros final form and cost 24,000 zenny for the Armor Charm and 36,000 zenny for the Power Charm. Later through the magic of crafting you will be able to turn these into Talons… and then re-buy the Charms again… but for now I should be set for the early High Rank content. I’m up to the Tickled Pink quest which is to hunt a High Rank Anjanath, which I simply was not ready to deal with mentally last night and wound up wandering off to do other things.

Instead I popped over to burn through some quests in MTG Arena, where I seemed to have a ton that wanted me to cast White spells. I had picked up the Eternal Thirst deck as one of my freebies, and I decided to start playing around with it. I have to say… for a weird Cats and Vampires concept I am really digging it. Unless you are also playing against a deck with stupid life gain powers… you can do some come from behind nonsense with this one. I feel like I need to tune it a bit and swap some cards, and could ultimately make a super powerful deck out of it. For the purpose of questing though… it had plenty of white cards so it allowed me to whittle that down in a few turns. This morning I noticed I had another freebie deck available and unlocked the Blue/Green Merfolk deck… which included a single copy of one of my favorite cards… Jadelight Ranger. I am hoping that one of the decks they end up throwing my way is the Explore matters deck that we originally had in Alpha. Mostly I don’t want to spend the proxies on rebuilding it if they are going to give me like 90% of the cards in a few weeks as we keep rotating through unlocking free decks.

Luck and Mini Bosses

July 16, 2018 by Belghast

At this point we are up to 41 blogs signed up for Blaugust in one form or another, with a significant number of folks hanging out in the Discord just for the sake of fun that we may be able to sway one way or another. I am super happy with this early participation, and in side conversations there are a bunch of folks on the fence trying to determine just how much they can afford to participate themselves this year. In that always be plugging style of conversation… if you are at all interested in starting up a blog now is the time to do it. Pop on by the sign up form and let us know your information and we will do our best to support you through that early blogging experience. This is of course also an open offer as well to folks who are currently blogging and just want to up their frequency of posting… or really want to help mentor the next crew of bloggers.

Since I last posted updates there have been a few new entries and you can see the entire list in an easy to use google sheet that I have been maintaining.

New Mentors

Izlain – Me vs Myself and I

New Participants

Rambling Redshirt – Beyond Tannhauser Gate
Ashgar – Ash’s Adventures
Neschria – Municipal City

The official pre-week starts on July 25th so there is still plenty of time to get a blog up and running before the official August 1st start.

There are times where I have the sort of luck that pisses my friends off. For example I have pulled a couple of those ultra rare chase cards from Battle for Zenndikar and Kaladesh, just buying random single packs here and there. Magic the Gathering just released its return to core sets with M19 and there are a bunch of interesting cards in it… namely a much needed reprint of Crucible of Worlds and brand new version of the classic legends era dragons. Ultimately I would like to have a copy of each for eventual EDH brewing purposes, and as a result I picked up a fat pack on Friday in my post funeral travels. Now a fat pack has 10 packs and seems to be for lack of a better term a partial piece of what would have normally been a full box.

They tend to be feast or famine, either you get the good end of the rare/mythic sheet or you don’t. In this case I managed to pull 4 mythics out of those ten packs. I took the above photo to show off everything that came out of that box, with the last two on the left side being just a couple of cool looking common foils. I found it weird that I got a duplicate rare out of the batch so maybe they are doing the fat packs different than they have done before. I was extremely excited that I managed to pull a Crucible of Worlds and at least two of the three color dragons. Unfortunately I did not pull the big daddy of them all… Nicol Bolas, the Ravager. I still consider this an insanely lucky box, and walked away mighty happy with it.

As far as the rest of the weekend… it was largely spent hanging out and playing some Elder Scrolls Online. I have now officially finished the Orsinium content and wow… I am exceedingly impressed with the quality. If that is at all representative of what I have to expect from the follow up releases, then I am going to be a very happy boy. I’ve since started on the Thieves Guild which is the next content release in order… having largely skipped Imperial City due to its PvEvP nature. I did however spent a chunk of last night running around and collecting Skyshards out in Cyrodil.. I am sure frustrating someone who was there to try and take keeps and mile forts. The only actual PVP I got into was being found by a roaming murderball of Ebonheart Pact players… at which point my screen froze and I crashed out of the game only to come back very dead.

The most fun however was prior to that when I was roaming around in Coldharbor with Ashgar and Tamrielo doing the public dungeon there. It all started simple enough… the three of us on Voice Chat when Ash mentioned mostly to himself that he was going to ignore the Public Dungeon for now until he could come back with a group. I said that I had not done the public dungeon there for the same reason and Tam chimed in that he had largely been avoiding any group content. Before long the three of us were converging upon Ash’s location and doing the public dungeon which had two quests inside of it. Additionally we realized that there were a bunch of optional bosses in various corners of the place and we set forth to take each and every one down earning us a conqueror achievement.

I kinda love that this game does not care at all about where a player is in the progression, and that you can pretty much just group in for whatever happens to be going on. I abused this power to help Void get some crafting materials by porting myself to Windhelm and then letting him piggy back in on that to get the shrine there. I love that this game has decided that horizontal progression is the way to go because it has allowed me to invest resources in a really nice set of gear knowing I won’t be upgrading it anytime soon. I love that I can just do whatever happens to cross my path and still feel like I am moving towards a goal in the form of Champion points… knowing that I am also adding progression to every single character as I go. I am very happy with the current state of Elder Scrolls Online.