Tales of the Aggronaut

Fail Drafting with Bel

May 7, 2018 by Belghast

The first I learned this weekend are that the Quick Draft format in Magic the Gathering Arena is extremely enjoyable. The second thing I learned this weekend… is that I am pretty horrifically bad at drafting a set I didn’t spend much time playing at all. The third thing I learned is that even if you suck at drafting… it is still a pretty reasonable way to pick up cards for doing other interesting things with. If I am doing my math correctly… I walked away with 45 cards that I picked out during the draft and at least 8 cards that I got from the pack that I won just from participating in the draft. Especially if you are trying to work towards something in particular this seems like a very efficient spending of your gems. Ultimately you are getting over 1200 gems worth of cards for 750 gems if you want to think of it in those terms when you are talking about total number of cards gained through the process.

Granted by drafting you are not putting any points towards your next vault opening and there is no chance of getting wildcards other than through any of the 8 card normal packs you win in the process. I drafted a grand total of three times this weekend and failed miserably in all of them with the best I managed to do ending up with a 3 and 3 before finally washing out. There was one where I did not manage to win a single match but even then I walked away with a handful of gems and all of the cards that I managed to draft in the process. The event however sadly ends in roughly three hours as of the time of making this post. I am hoping that they might do this as a weekly thing and offer up a new set each week for drafting. Surely they have enough information on Ixalan to make this work, or it would be a truly great way to introduce Kaladesh as they have already stated they are going to soon.

Ultimately Arena scratches the Magic itch for me especially if I can ever get reasonable at formats like Draft and be able to craft decent decks. A large part of the issue I have is that I am not really playing a lot of magic, and have been more of a collector for the last several years than someone who actually sits down and plays on a regular basis. I am trying to stoke a bit of a Magic culture at work, but it is really difficult for me to find a time or a place to sit down and play. Sure there are shops I could go to Friday Night Magic at… but I don’t even have a deck that I would feel really comfortable playing in such a location because it feels like I have been out of the game so long. There was a time where I could look at a card and immediately think of all of the possible combos for it… and that time has passed. Largely I need to build back up that muscle memory and the only viable way for me to do it… is by playing lots and lots of Arena. On the positive side… each time I sit down to play it I seem to get completely engrossed in the game and completely lose track of how many matches I have ended up playing.

Watch Fail Drafting Hour of Devastation with Belghast! from Belghast on www.twitch.tv

If you are curious and want to see me fail-drafting you can check out the VOD over on Twitch as I streamed most of it. I accidentally cut off towards the end… but I had honestly forgot I was streaming at that point so you are not getting much in the way of commentary as the progression continued on. Chestnut hung out with me for a bit but that was really the only person I had in the stream and even then I think she was mostly afk cleaning house as she said. When I don’t have people interacting with me I sometimes forget I am actually streaming and you end up with me falling back into silence. Anyways… if you want to see what the format is all about you can at least watch how the draft part works at the beginning. I need to sort out why none of the music I had playing was coming through on the stream. If you want to see someone significantly better at drafting… you should also check out Kodra who was my inspiration to stream the draft (because he did it earlier in the day).

Watch Magic the Gathering: ARENA from Kodra22 on www.twitch.tv

Rudderless

May 4, 2018 by Belghast

Last night was largely spent cleaning up quests that I have had in my log for a long while over in Monster Hunter World. Since the Kulve event is over… I feel like I don’t have as much of a pressing goal as I previously did. I could of course just farm things like Nergigante for parts that I need to make awesome weapons, but the Kulve event sorta robbed me of a bit of the drive there. Apart from the bow… I have a reasonable weapon option of every type right now. Sure there are things I want to make but the need isn’t there in the same way that it once was given that I have a box full of decent options. At this point I am hunter rank 70 and the meter is climbing extremely slowly on doing normal stuff. In theory I should be engaging in a bunch of tempered fights but I really don’t like soloing in Monster Hunter World that much, and I also didn’t much feel like SOS Roulette last night… so was stuck just wandering around and knocking out things that have been sitting in my log for awhile.

Monster Hunter World has more or less become my MMO of choice right now, and as a result it is making every other MMO feel really weird to play. I’ve largely been checked out of Final Fantasy XIV for awhile now, and the Battle for Azeroth changes are making me not that keen on World of Warcraft. I have the desire to play Elder Scrolls Online… but I find myself lacking the focus since that is a game that requires all of my attention. I realize this is an odd thing to say given that Monster Hunter World is way more reactionary than ESO is… but I also have to play MHW upstairs and with Elder Scrolls I can chill out downstairs with the laptop while watching television. I find my mind wandering or paying too close attention to something that is on television and end up in a horrible spot in Tamriel. The other game that is sorta calling my name at this very moment is Star Wars the Old Republic because I really would love to play through the rest of the content I have missed. I have not done any of Knights of the Eternal Throne, in fact the first quest of that expansion is sitting waiting there on my Jedi Knight for me to pick up and start playing.

Lately I have been trying to ease my way back into Destiny 2 given that the new expansion lands on Tuesday. The moment to moment PVE gameplay is still every bit as fun as it ever was… but my current problem with this game is actually a silly one. I have been out of inventory space for a very long time and the pain of having to juggle items between characters or dismantle things immediately upon getting them wears me out. When I have an MMO and my bags are a mess or I am lacking enough bag space in general… I find myself extremely demotivated to play it. This is in part what is going wrong with Project Gorgon at this very moment… I have next to no bag space and as a result I am constantly having to play the inventory management game which is the exact opposite of fun. The expansion is adding another 100 slots and supposedly some of the kiosks we used to have back in Destiny 1 so we will see how this improves my opinion of the game by not having to care quite so closely about what was in each inventory slot. In theory I would love to push my Warlock and Hunter through Curse of Osiris… because that is a sign of just how hard I stalled out on this game. The expansion landed and I only managed to get one character through before legitimately giving up and moving on to other things.

I’m in a really weird space with gaming in general right now and it seems like I spend more time getting ready to play a game… than actually sitting down and playing a game. There is an intangible wanderlust that has effected me and I am not sure what the cure is. It is almost as though I am too stressed on a daily basis to actually sit down and enjoy the things I am supposed to enjoy. I’ve been through these periods in the past and sadly it has also cut off any desire I had to stream or be engaged with other people in any way. It has been a rough several weeks and I have a feeling that at some point it has to let up… and the clouds will part once more and I will feel like a human being. Apologies to anyone who is attempting to interact with me right now because I am sure the experience is lacking.

More Things Going Wrong

May 3, 2018 by Belghast

Today I have a riveting tale from our long running compendium of things not going as planned, soon to be made into a major motion picture. The sequence of events that I was expecting yesterday was to go to work and then around noon head home to wait for the air conditioning folks to come service our unit. When we upgraded to the nonsense thing as tall as I am… one of its quirks is that instead of a small filter it has a mega HEPA filter and a light that is supposed to kill bacteria as it circulates through. This apparatus is supposed to be replaced every year, but for the last three visits they have not had the correct part on the truck so we are going on two years with the same bits. I made certain that I asked ahead this time when we scheduled the maintenance that they bring the correct part so that it could be changed. In theory the serviceman was supposed to arrive around 1 pm and my thought was originally that I could have a relaxing afternoon as soon as he left.

What actually happened was that the guy showed up between 2 and 2:30 and immediately stated that he did not have the correct parts because for whatever reason they had us down with the wrong unit in their system. He called around to try and get one of the other trucks to bring him a filter… and when that failed he decided to do all of the bits he could do without the filter and then would have to go back to the shop and get it himself. I had every indication that this was a thing he was going to do when he left my home and come right back to finish the job. So I attempted to patiently wait… and not really get into anything I could not drop immediately if the doorbell were to ring.

It was around 5:30 that I called into the business who stated that he was still scheduled to finish the job, but that he had gotten diverted to another site temporarily. They assured me that we were next on the list and that he would be there shortly. When my wife got home around 7:30 she was also perturbed and called in again after two hours had passed since the previous call. She got the after hours on call service, and someone got back to us extremely quickly… at that time they seemed to have no clue what was going on. It was around 8:45 that he finally showed up with this nonsense filter and uv light in hand… wrapped up the job and paid.

The problem with all of this is the fact that I felt like I couldn’t actually do anything because I had to be available for someone to swing by and deal with our stuff. So what could have been a leisurely afternoon of gaming silliness turned into an anxiety riddled one where I was afraid to put on my headphones for fear I would miss the knocking on my door. Hell there was an interlude in there where I ordered a pizza but was too afraid to actually sit down and eat for fear the guy would show up while I was attempting to chow down. I am annoyed with the service company because I expected more from them. Usually their estimates are pretty accurate for when someone will be showing up, but the whole not having this part on the trucks is frustrating. If you are actively selling this system then you should be actively prepared to support it.

Anyways… so you my readers get another “non-post” because I didn’t really get to sit down and do anything involved until around 9 pm last night… at which time I logged into Monster Hunter World and got one more Kulve run in before we say farewell to that event for an unknown period of time. I managed to get another orange Hammer and another purple Light Bowgun… but even then I was more than happy to say goodbye knowing how much I have managed to get from it. Still kinda annoyed that I never got a decent bow from the event, which only means that I now need to research what bow to craft so I can fill that gap in myself.

Too Soon

May 2, 2018 by Belghast

I really do not have a lot to say this morning because I did next to zero gaming last night, nor do I really have a huge back log of topics that I feel like I need to talk about. Instead of gaming I saw Avengers Infinity War and I have plenty of words to say about that. However I also feel like maybe it is just too damned soon to really be digging into that movie as of yet. When there is a huge spoiler laden experience out in the wild I try really hard not to be part of ruining someone else’s experience. I used to be one of those folks that thought so long as you were quiet during opening weekend you were perfectly fine.

Then life happened and I have turned into one of those people who so very rarely actually goes to see a film on opening weekend. Like as it stands right now the only absolutely guaranteed movies for me are the Star Wars films. Even then I largely feel like I am going only to insulate myself from any possibility of having the experience completely ruined. The truth is I don’t much enjoy the theater experience because above all I don’t like having to deal with the people. I also don’t like having to deal with either paying a lot more for a ticket to get reserved seating… or getting there a massive amount of time ahead of the film just to sit there twiddling my fingers while someone makes bad jokes and shows me advertisements.

In my perfect world I would be able to stream a film on opening night in the comfort of my own living room and much like the “millennials” supposedly killing things like diamonds… I would love for them to kill the theater going experience. Then again I also sorta want to just pay one licencing fee and have access to whatever I choose to consume at any given moment. I also would love to stop having to pay the ESPN tax to get the other channels I want in a cable package… but now I am just talking nonsense and mentioning a bunch of shit that won’t actually happen. The movie industry is predicated on the concept of a limited experience and making all of its money in a very short up front burst to fund the next project, and the theaters are the drug pushers distributing the product for them. It will take a thermonuclear shift to dislodge that bond, but I think it is also something that is going to happen inevitably.

With Infinity War I would love to be cool and quote Morgan from Walking Dead and say “It is not gonna work out how you think”… but it might… I honestly don’t know. There are a lot of theories that have circulated around, some of them are more right than others. Additionally I think it all depends on your ability to cherry pick things from the comic book source material. If you read comics heavily back during the early 90s you have very specific expectations as to what is going to happen. As someone who did this thing… I went into it with a lot of thoughts on my own and while some things did in fact play out just like my expectations… there was an awful lot that didn’t.

In the grand scheme of things it was a good film and a film that needed to happen to make this long slide to this moment make any sense at all. I highly suggest you check it out and get to the theater before major plot points are spoiled. What has annoyed me the most however is the flood of YouTube videos that were up and available by Friday night… that were so blissful to dig into the minutiae of every single bit of the film. I realize they are trying to get that early money from people exiting the theater and feeling they need to talk about it… but can’t talk about it with anyone. However even the titles of said videos and thumbnails are often spoilers in themselves. I can at least go into a huddle room at work now and talk to the folks at work who have been dying to talk about the events.