Art by Kev Walker

It seems that lately I’ve been rediscovering old habits. First, it was World of Warcraft. Now, my father has me playing Magic: The Gathering again.

I first started playing back in high school. This was around the time the expansion Legends came out. I collected cards steadily until after my years at Bloomsburg. Then, in a moment which I still don’t quite comprehend, I gave them away to someone I haven’t seen in years.

Can’t even remember their name, honestly.

Anyway, a few years ago when I moved down to Philly, Paul Bagosy lured me back in. The Time Spiral block had just begun, and along with promising new and interesting ways to play with time, the set also brought back old favorites in a “timeshifted” form. We’d meet at the Roundtable down in Conshohoken to buy boosters, trade cards, even play in tournaments. Those were good times.

The Roundtable has since closed, an event that still makes me sad. I now live in Lansdale, quite a bit away from Paul. But I’ve held on to my cards. And my father has been teaching my niece some of the nuances of the game and invited me to come play as well.

Now, I’m not buying more boosters. I simply don’t have the extraneous cash. And if I did, I’d be buying Starcraft 2 and putting down pre-orders for Cataclysm. No, I have to build decks just with the cards I have. Thankfully, that year or so of binging on the game has left me some powerful and interesting alternatives. It’s something of a challenge, actually, to go through my “vault” of cards and put something together that’s both fun to play and stands a chance of winning a duel.

Here are the three decks I’ve assembled, or re-assembled, so far.

Reanimator: This is a deck built around Teneb, the Harvester. The idea is to have big creature cards that I discard from my hand, only to have the big dragon, Dread Return or Resurrection bring them into play. Creatures in this deck, quite simply, don’t stay dead. Greenseekers keep the mana flowing while Undertakers do some of the other reanimating cards’ heavy lifting, and both put fodder for the big three feature cards into the graveyard from my hand. It’s needed a couple tweaks to streamline its performance, but so far it’s doing okay. It’s always nice to not only have the option of casting a big creature for less than its normal casting cost, but also to snag an opponent’s creature from their graveyard.

Sliver Legion: Exactly what it says on the tin. There are no creatures but slivers in this deck. Rainbow decks can be difficult to manage, but Gemhide Slivers help fix any mana problems and Homing Slivers fetch anything I need from my library – my Sedge Sliver for example – for a mere 3 mana. Give it a few turns, and suddenly every creature I field is flying, regenerating, gives me life when it deals damage and has double-strike. It’s pretty fast, to boot, which is good considering how much my dad likes burn decks.

Chronomancy: I’ve dreamed of this deck since I first got into Time Spiral. My girl there, Jhoira of the Ghitu, is something of an inspiration, since the deck is built around controlling the game through suspended cards – Arc Blade, Chronomantic Escape and Reality Strobe. A couple Paradox Hazes to give me extra upkeeps, Timebugs and Rift Elementals for counter control, and a few different answers to creatures and spells allow me to keep an opponent off-guard before I break out the big guns. And if said guns are too expensive for me to bring out because of their mana cost (“hardcasting”)? Jhoira’s ability gives them suspension, and puts them in the dugout eager to come into play, for 2 mana. I think this one’s really going to annoy some people. And I slipped Walk the Aeons in there for good measure.

I also recently came across the synergy between Magus of the Future and Momir Vig, Simic Visionary and it’s got me thinking of yet another deck. This one probably featuring Vorosh, the Hunter in a starring role. A creature feature, if you will.

Who else out there is playing Magic? Where do you play and what sort of decks do you run? Has it been a while for you since you’ve played? And if you want me to post the actual lists for any of these decks, let me know. No secrets between you and me, Internets.

It’s been some time since I’ve discussed upcoming MMOs other than World of Warcraft. Since then, Star Trek Online revealed itself to be rather dull, other bloggers have gotten into the FFXIV beta, and there hasn’t been anything more said about the Twilight thing. Thank the Maker. So let’s see what developments have come along lately, shall we?

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Not sure if want.

It was recently announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic will include space combat. This reminded me of the announcement BioWare made about the sex in Mass Effect. It’s aimed to drum up interest. In this case, those of us with fond memories of X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (if not TIE Fighter itself, one of the best space combat sims EVER) can imagine ourselves enjoying that sort of gameplay in an MMO setting. Some might already be blowing the dust off of their HOTAS setup in anticipation.

However, BioWare’s previous attempts at space combat were somewhat lackluster. The elements of it in the KOTOR titles were a bit dull. I’d love to think that, if they borrowed anything form Star Wars Galaxies, it’d be at least the skeleton of space combat, because it was pretty good in SWG. But I, for one, will be waiting to see the end result.

Warhammer 40,000

Definitely kinda want.

So THQ and Games Workshop have issued a trailer along with some bits of info about the setting for Dark Millenium, their Warhammer 40k MMORPG. I still like the idea of playing around in this universe, but the fact that the trailer shows gameplay as a Space Marine makes me a bit leery. I’m afraid that Space Marines will become the blood elf death knights of Dark Millenium – everybody will be playing one, and they’ll all think they’re the most badass mofo with the best RP story EVAR. I want to know more about the other races and classes available before I render a final opinion, but for now, it seems to be going in an okay direction. More diversity and information, please!

World of Darkness

DO WANT.

In a word: Yes.

In two words: Fuck yes.

Fan boy wank aside, this prospect excites me for a variety of reasons. The World of Darkness is a rich, deep IP, that does supernaturals pretty damn well (especially in comparison to Twilight or Underworld) and contains plenty of basis for both PvE and PvP content. With every type of supernatural their own faction, and some being played by NPCs, there should be something for everybody there.

Beyond that, there’s the fact that the World of Darkness comes to us from White Wolf. Other than employing some extremely cool men and women, White Wolf is owned by CCP. Yes, that CCP. As in “creators of EVE Online.” These cats not only know how to make a decent and well-received MMORPG, they know how to keep it going and make things interesting for those who don’t even play the game. Like having six years of real world revenue get destroyed by a pirate raid. This boosts my confidence in the notion of this project not only launching successfully, but being worth playing and maybe even paying money to play.

For the time being, I’m still playing WoW. But I’ll be keeping my eye on these titles, and as soon as I know more, so will you.

I’m getting old.

There used to be a time when I let things slide. Mediocrity would slip right by me and I wouldn’t even notice. Or maybe I’d wave at it. My point is, I didn’t have standards. What I did was good, regardless of how good it actually was.

Looking back, I shouldn’t have been surprised that my first attempt at a novel got so many rejections. For one, I now know that rejections are good. They show you’re doing something. But more importantly, it was crap. It was predictable. It wasn’t written all that well and I didn’t go to the pains I go to now to revise and edit things. I had help in the second go-round, sure, but it still wasn’t all that great.

I know, now, that the problem might be that I spend too much time revising. Trying to get my work to be perfect could consume all of my time. It’s not going to be perfect. It’ll never be perfect. The idea will be to get it to a point of “good enough to not suck.”

I approach role-playing in games the same way. I used to let myself get away with things like “my character is the son of a god” or “ye olde powerful dragons blessed me with immortality.” I realize now how silly, unnecessary and downright juvenile those ideas are, and I’ve ranted about it at length.

Like my manuscripts, I’m worried about my characters being good enough to not suck. This pertains to both their backstories and how I play the game. It’s a lot easier to avoid cognitive dissonance when the tank of the party messes up a pull and wipes the group, when their character’s description has them being a beautiful, all-powerful, liked by everyone and lust object of all NPCs Mary Sue. “So you’ve seduced the Queen of the Dragons and kicked the Lich King’s ass in single combat, but can’t keep the aggro in the first pull of this dungeon. Right.”

Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe this is coming off as me being a bit of a dick. I know this is stuff some people don’t want to hear. They don’t like the notion of somebody disliking their special little snowflake of an on-line avatar. And I might get told that not sharing my knowledge with others who don’t have as much experience as I do with this sort of thing is rude, even mean.

But sitting down across from a struggling writer and helping them get a better idea of how to frame their narrative, breathe life into their characters and have the plot make sense is one thing. Dealing with strangers who can’t be bothered to use proper fucking punctuation is another.

Maybe it’s pretentious to have standards. Maybe I’m a mean-spirited puppy-kicking old man for not wanting to waste my time being forced to role-play with people who fail at it. Maybe I’m going to while away the rest of my life mumbling to myself as I pore over the 137th draft of my manuscript because I don’t feel it’s good enough, yet, and I assume everything I do sucks.

At least those damn kids will get off my lawn.

I’ve touched on this briefly in this post and must once again point you fine folks in the direction of Warcraft Sues to give you an idea of what the hell I’m talking about. I’m going to rant a bit, and that means there’ll be some naughty words. Consider the cut below the metaphorical covering of your delicate ears if you are so inclined. If you think you can handle a couple curses directed at people who really deserve it, read on.

Also, this rant is not directed at anybody in particular. I will not be naming names or showing descriptions. This is just me, in general, pissed off at what I feel is bad role-playing.

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