alecaustin, posts by tag: magic - LiveJournal

It is probably indicative of where my head is at re: games right now that I'm super-excited about the prospect of playing Magic on XBLA via Duels of the Planeswalkers, which is released in 2 weeks. I mean, I like Magic Online well enough, and drafting in person is pretty sweet, but having an actual decent AI opponent and being able to play Magic with distant friends without them having to invest a significant amount of money sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

Also: Donaldson. I know you're reading this. We will be playing this online once I get back from 4th street.

So I liked Five Hundred Years Later a lot more than I remembered - I think that's how I react to it every time I re-read it, actually. While I always enjoy the Viscount of Adrilankha books, I'm not currently convinced that their structure and prose are as well-wrought as those of Five Hundred Years. I guess I'll just have to continue re-reading them to find out; I'm already halfway through The Paths of the Dead.

I also picked up Shadow of the Colossus and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance from the despised EB/Gamestop (the chain is abominated, not the individual store) at the Howard Hughes Center. I've been looking for both for a while, as I played through most of each on copies owned by friends, and I'll hold my nose and buy used games from Gamestop if they're sufficiently rare (like Path of Radiance is - I think less than 100K were printed).

Played a bit of Shadow tonight, and while it's as great as I remembered, the control scheme took quite a bit of getting used to - I was getting really frustrated on the Fourth Colossus until I realized that I was hitting the "focus camera on Colossus" button while trying to grab onto things. Once I started using R1 (the actual grab button), things became a lot easier.

I also seem to have persuaded a bunch of people at work to start playing Magic: the Gathering again - some of them even drafted with me last Thursday, though I had to provide the product. I've been mucking about on Magic Online a fair amount since they created Swiss draft queues (where you can actually keep playing and win packs even if you lose in the first round), but there's something about the tactile sensation of flipping through a pack and bantering with friends that makes the experience of live drafting much more entertaining. Hopefully I'll be able to get more than 4 people (the functional minimum) at work into drafting over time.

I just had someone concede to me out of (based on his comments prior to said concession) spite on M:tGO. I guess he just wanted to stop playing me and get his 3 packs, but it was still a very odd experience.

Also, copies of Scott Lynch's Red Skies over Red Seas have been spotted in the wild, more than a week in advance of its theoretical release date. I recommend it without reservation - and said recommendation counts double if you like dashing rogues, caper stories, and/or pirates.

I have no comment on the new Harry Potter book, as I haven't borrowed someone else's copy yet. After buying the last one in hardcover as airplane reading, I've decided that reading other people's copies is the discriminating Alec's preferred mode of reading Harry Potter.

So none of the players I game with at Your Move or Pandemonium made it to day 2 of the Grand Prix. My team and the other team that had any shot at making it to day 2 lost in round 7 on the first day, making our records 4-3 and sticking us in 119th (them) and 120th place (us) - far enough out of top 64 contention that our breakers might have kept us out even if we'd won. One team among our local players actually went 5-2, but they took a match point penalty for mis-registering their decks and got paired down all day as a result, leaving them in 83rd place with miserable tiebreakers. The MA state champs did worst of all, dropping from the tournament after going 2-2-1 and ending in 198th place out of 345 teams. It should be noted that these rankings are almost a direct inversion of where these people place when we draft together.

Overall, I think that while working with a teammate can be enjoyable, two-headed giant is a miserable competitive format. Your card pool has a huge impact on whether you can win or not, the matches are swingy, consist of a single game and don't allow for sideboarding (and given how long they take, it's far too easy for cheaters to stall a game into a draw if they're losing), and those games are often are won and lost on the mulligan. Two of our opponents mulliganed badly and got crushed as a result of having one of their heads mana- or color-screwed for the entire game. While this obviously benefitted us, I prefer formats that allow players at least a chance to recover from mana screw or flood.

Anyway, props to my 2HG partner, Kevin, who kept us in several games when I was tired and on tilt, and was definitely an asset to the team. Slops to the facility owners who wouldn't rent any place in Boston to the Grand Prix's organizers for less than $25k, and forced us to go all the way out to Fitchburg to play. More moderate slops to the people at WotC who thought competitive 2HG was a good idea - we've tried it now, and it's not fun. It'd be nice if we could go back to three-person team formats from now on.

I'm leaving for GP: MA to play Magic this afternoon, so there will be radio silence from me for most of the weekend. Which most of you won't mind, since any posts would probably just be me talking about my thesis.

I've also been meaning to write a long post re: the Khaavren Romances (which I've been re-reading) in light of my recent reading of Dumas' Twenty Years After and The Vicomte de Bragelonne, but that too will have to wait until my return from scenic Fitchburg, MA.

I should note that I view this primarily as a research trip, since the swinginess of the play format and the comparative lack of experience playing together on the part of myself and my partner means that I don't think it's terribly likely that I'm going to make day 2.

So the Magic Online server is down again, in the middle of a draft in which I'd just made round 2. In the interest of amusing myself while I wait for the server to reboot, I've pasted the full draft report after the cut. Note that I opened bombs (Firemaw Kavu + Lightning Angel), the second of which was in my colors, and got passed a ton of cards I probably shouldn't have gotten (e.g. Griffin Guide, 2x Lightning Axe, 2x Empty the Warrens, 10th pick Castle Raptors, 5th Pick Pyrohemia). If the server ever goes up again, I like my chances.

Update: Server is up. Now for the interminable wait for round 2 to start...

Update 2.5: Victory!

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I've never really cared about sports or game standings or sports commentators or any of that rot. So when I find myself fascinated by the Magic: the Gathering Pro Tour that's going on in Geneva, which is presented by WotC exactly as if it was a (rather slow-paced) sporting event, it's an odd sensation.

On the other hand, the level of discourse which the Magic Pro Tour commentators engage in generally seems to be higher and more relevant than most of the sports commentary that I've heard or watched, which often seems to focus on second-guessing coaches, players, and quarterbacks. The discussions which Randy Buehler and Brian David-Marshall engage in re: draft picks and the like are not only informed by their considerable knowledge of the game, but they're also relevant to many listeners because they can pursue the same kinds of draft and play strategies in their own, non-Pro Tour games.

What's most fascinating about my interest in competitive Magic is that I'm not actually that enamored of Magic as a game. Its initial design was fundamentally flawed - it's just that the design and promotion policies which WotC has pursued since then have turned what could have been a fatal flaw (the imbalances between cards) into one of the game's main draws for competitive players. In many ways, it's the intellectual process involved in drafting and limited play (card evaluation, signalling, and the like) that fascinates me, as much as the game itself.

So I read the commentary, listen to podcasts, and watch the coverage on YouTube. Partly I'm looking for any insights that might help my drafting tonight, and partly I'm just... acting like any other sports fan. Except I don't even have a team or player that I'm cheering for; it's the process and presentation that fascinates me. And I have to ask myself - do people other than me see competitive Magic play as a sport?

Apparently they do. And I find that weirdly cool.

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