Month: July 2017

Bizarre Obsession

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This weekend we recorded somewhat of a mega show of AggroChat.  We originally sat down thinking we might not have a complete show…  and then recorded for two hours and wound up dropping a few topics to try and manage the show length.  There were a whole slew of topics but one of which is one that I did not expect to blow up to the level at which it did.  Kodra has been talking magic for a year or so in his adventures in doing drafts through Magic Online for each of the expansion releases that have happened.  Lately however I have found myself obsessing about the game even though I have not regularly played it since the tempest cycle.  Magic the Gathering will always have this nostalgic characteristic for me because I have had a lot of really good times playing it.  The problem is…  once I entered the adult world I stopped having a regular stream people to play with.  I’ve never really gotten involved with a local shop doing the Friday night magic thing, because in truth people just don’t play Magic the Gathering the way I want to play it.  The prevalence of NetDecking and combo magic turned things into a weird cold war…  where you either needed to be playing whatever the new hotness needed to be…  or at least come up with a way to counteract that new hotness.  When I last stopped playing… the format of choice was called “Type II” and I believe this translates to the “Standard” in the current naming of formats.  So when I left during the Tempest cycle it was all about the combo to beat… and either scrambling to get the cards…  or scrambling to get something to beat it.

The style of Magic the Gathering I enjoyed was back when you never quite knew what you might be encountering in a players deck.  Maybe it just took my area while to get super competitive, but in early tournament play I only ever once encountered the “power nine” but instead came up against a lot of seemingly fun to play themed decks.  For me a lot of my decks centered around some card that I wanted to play with… and then blunting the negative effects of that card.  So say I wanted to play with the Lord of the Pitt, I would run some token creatures that I could just keep churning out to feed to it rather than pay the 7 life upkeep.  If I wanted to play with Leviathan I would run Icy Manipulator and Twiddle to keep from having to pay the two island tax to untap it each round, then figure out some way to retrieve islands from the graveyard every so often.  It was fun trying to figure out a way to counteract what was not good about the cards and then figure out how to make them work well enough to be playable.  Some of the most fun I ever had was in college the magic store I used to hang out in had a deep common bin… and we would end up building these $5 decks out of the archives and then pit them against each other.  I guess the modern equivalent to this would be pauper, but even then…  that format takes itself way more seriously than I wish I could when it comes to MTG.  I’ve been trying to sort out a way to play the game how I want to play it…  but also find some people to play with.

The biggest problem right now is availability of people.  There are enough folks who have played MTG at one point in their lives to maybe create a lunch time group at work.  The problem there I am not not sure what sort of format would work best.  I am leaning towards something janky along the lines of Pauper Commander…  without the commanders.  Where you functionally construct a deck of common cards without the ability to repeat any cards.  I would functionally need to probably fund a lot of the commons given that there are simply not enough in any one set to make up a deck of entirely common cards.  I think a format like that however might bring back the random weirdness that I miss from playing Magic.  There were moments where you would sit down and encounter something you never expected to see…  and it would be interesting to figure out how to adjust to that and find a way to either defeat it or work around it.  In truth I love common cards,  because they tend to be the unappreciated workhorses of magic.  It always bugs me a bit when people just dismiss them and toss them aside like garbage…  when you cannot really make ANY deck without relying on a whole slew of them to serve as the glue between those higher dollar cards.  I have no clue how this will end but thusfar it has simply been a case of be re-familiarizing myself with Magic the Gathering and trying to figure out if this is really something I want to jump back into.

AggroChat #165 – Bribery Still Works

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Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, Thalen

aggrochat165_720

This is one of the weirder shows we have recorded in a while in part because we went into it somewhat tentative as to whether or not we really had a full show.  Instead we wound up recording for over two hours.  We go through a lengthy discussion of Magic the Gathering in both the paper and online varieties.  This includes some talk about the new expansion Hour of Devastation, but also some general discussion about the history of Magic as a whole.  We get into another long discussion about Warframe and the upcoming “open world” area.  Ashgar has been playing some Final Fantasy XII and we talk a bit about our experiences with the game.  From there we travel into Final Fantasy XIV and talk about how we are experiencing this early drop off from Stormblood.  Finally we wrap things up with a discussion about Warhammer 40,000 and how they seem to have finally decided to move the story forward.

Topics Discussed

  • Sealed Hour of Devastation
  • Magic the Gathering
  • Open World Warframe
  • Final Fantasy XII
  • Final Fantasy XIV
  • 40k Moving the Story Forward

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Week with Axon

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Week with Axon

I have now now been using my new phone for a week and thought I would talk a bit about some of my impressions this morning.  Firstly I feel like I need to explain my decision process a bit and how I ended up with a non-AAA manufacturer phone.  For some time I have balked at the price of cell phones.  Yes I am old enough to remember a time when you just walked into the cellular carrier and they gave you whatever phone you wanted along with your one year contract.  After a point that became a two year contract, and eventually a discounted rate on the phone…  and now they just charge you a monthly fee as part of a rent to own style scheme to dilute the cost of your insanely expensive hardware.  I’ve not swapped phones nearly as often as the manufacturers would really like me to…  my first “smartphone” being a Samsung Blackjack 2 which upgraded into an iPhone 3gs which caused me to venture into android land… where I have had a Samsung s2 and a Samsung s5.  My natural upgrade path would then probably be the Samsung Galaxy s8 but those are around $800… and I didn’t want to spend that amount of money on a phone.

As a result I started looking at a handful of other phones, the less popular brands looking for what is essentially the best bang for the buck.  I looked at the product offering from OnePlus, Moto, HTC, Huawei and ultimately ZTE.  The finally decision point came down a duel between the ZTE Axon 7 and the Huawei Honor 8…  and after reading a whole slew of reviews I finally pulled the trigger and ordered my Axon 7 for around $350 from Amazon carrier unlocked.  For sake of reference in the marketing image above… I have the dark grey model on the far right.  I was honestly expecting to get what felt like a second rate phone, but what I got instead was something that seems almost indistinguishable from the traditional quality of the flagship phones I have owned.  The phone arrived in this weird white leather texture box that was extremely thick that slid apart to reveal a whole bunch of pack in items.  Firstly there was the phone, that came out of the box with a screen protector installed.  Secondly it came with a rubbery phone case for you to use if that is your thing… until you likely went out and got your own case later.  It would probably provide a bit of shock proofing, but more importantly some grip which I will get into later.  There was the ubiquitous charging brick with a fairly long usb type c cable, but what I was not expecting was a little adapter that let you use a micro usb cable and convert it to type c.  Finally there was a pack in SIM removal tool on a rubber keychain, allowing you to in theory take it with you…  though any straight pin or paperclip will do the trick to eject the SIM card tray.

Relevant Specs

  • Operating System: Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow (upgraded easily to 7.1.1)
  • Display: 5.5-inch, 2560×1440 AMOLED Gorilla Glass 4
  • Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Quad-core 2.15GHz
  • GPU: Adreno 430 GPU
  • RAM: 4GB
  • Onboard Storage: 64GB
  • Expandable: microSD up to 2TB
  • Rear Camera: 20MP f/1.8, PDAF, OIS, 4K/30 video
  • Front Camera: 8MP f/2.2, 1080p/30 video
  • Battery: 3250 mAh
  • Charging: Quick Charge 3.0, USB Type-C
  • Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11ac dual-band, Bluetooth 4.2 LE, NFC, GPS, GLONASS
  • Networks: Both GSM and CDMA supported
  • Dimensions: 151.7 x 75 x 7.9mm
  • Weight: 175 g

The phone was released a year ago so in theory to compete with the Samsung Galaxy S7, but for sake of reference the specs are pretty comparable to the S8.  It shipped with a ZTE android distribution called MiFavor which I have opted to simply go with because it seems to have really solid patching support via a software updater.  It shipped with Android 6.0.1 but through the course of a handful of patches I was able to take it to Android 7.1.1 and it performs really solidly.  One of the weird things going on with this phone is that like many international focused devices it comes with dual SIM card slots.  What makes it interesting is that the second SIM card slot also serves as you micro SD card, which means the device only has the one card tray and everything fits neatly in it.  So far the battery life is excellent and for reference I wound up playing Final Fantasy Record Keeper from bed last night for about two hours and only used 15% of the battery.  The graphics are and screen are beautiful and everything seems to run so much better than it did on my Galaxy S5…  but granted that was a really aging phone at this point.

The only gotchas I have run into thus far is a combination of two things.  Firstly this is a really heavy phone…  like if I got into trouble I legitimately feel like I could chuck the phone at someones head and potentially knock them out… or maybe give them a concussion.  The second part… is that the full Aluminum body is slick…  like insanely slick which is magnified by the fact that it is heavy.  In theory that flimsy rubber case that they give you in the box is probably to help counteract this.  However there have been multiple times I have had the phone damned near slip out of my hand while pulling it in and out of my pocket or just while holding it and using it.  I purchased an aftermarket case that I liked to try and negate this so it isn’t a deal breaker but just something you need to be aware of.  The size of the phone is fine for my giant sized hands… but for most people this is probably going to feel like more a “phablet” and less like a phone.  So far I am loving it and I have zero buyers remorse.  The only problem that I can see with this product is that the pricing seems to be extremely volatile.  I purchased mine for around $350… and yesterday when I went to link it to a friend it was selling for closer to $450.  If you can find one for the right price though I think its an amazing flagship replacement, and very worthy of going up against the more well known phones.  As I continue to use it I will probably do follow ups to this quick review as the device ages.

Monk Set Mastery

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Monk is probably the class I have played the least in D3. I mean I don’t love the barbarian, but I had at least leveled one to 70. Not so with Monk. That made a bit of extra challenge, since I had to spend a lot of time leveling and farming to get reasonable gear for this project. After having done these dungeons, I still don’t really enjoy monk, but I’m not as intimidated and annoyed at playing melee.

Monk Set Mastery

The first monk dungeon I tried was the Inna’s Mantra one, entirely because that’s the first full set I found via my farming. That might have been a mistake. Inna’s is one of the dungeons where too much power is a terrible thing. The objectives are to avoid getting frozen, which is incredibly easy, and to unleash mystic allies on 10 enemies within 10 yards (x5). Unfortunately my allies were a bit too helpful and kept killing the enemies well before I could round up a group of 10. I had to play a game of stripping off my legendary gems and swapping out gear until I got to a point where I could meet this objective even once in the dungeon, much less 5 times. I finally got it thanks to a combination of moving gear around and getting extremely lucky with spawns of enemies. In the end I had to remove one of my rings entirely, which seems questionable. Definitely a frustrating start to this group of dungeons.

Next up was the Dungeon of the Raiment of a Thousand Storms. The two objectives are very straightforward, reach the golden chest in under 2 minutes and do not get hit by a single succubus projectile. This took a couple tries, since you have to find a good balance between clearing the early parts of the dungeon and getting to the middle of the maze to hit the chest in time. The first few times through I could either hit the chest or clear enough enemies but not both. Eventually I found that clearing most of the straight outside path, rushing to the chest, then backtracking through the maze seemed to work pretty well. Even though it took a few attempts, this one felt more like a fun challenge than an annoyance. I liked it!

Third on the list was Uliana’s Stratagem. The first time through I didn’t complete either of the objectives, I’m not sure whether that is the fault of the dungeon or my unfamiliarity with monk. The requirements are to simultaneously explode 15 enemies marked with exploding palm (x4), and to take no fire damage at all. Only the elites have fire attacks, but unfortunately the dungeon itself has various fire traps in the floor you have to watch out for. This dungeon is also quite large and sprawling, so it pays to either look up a map or run it a couple times to get used to the layout. On my second attempt I got both objectives but was still missing around 50 enemies, simply because I hadn’t cleared fast enough. I ended up “cheating” the fire damage with the Star of Azkaranth, and got it on my 4th try.

Last but not least was the Sunwuko (Monkey King) set dungeon. The objectives are to maintain sweeping wind for the duration of the dungeon, and use decoys to hit 20 different enemies in 6 seconds (x5). On my first try of the dungeon, I both failed to keep up sweeping wind and also died because I was dumb. I got the mastery on the second attempt. I’d say this was definitely one of the easier dungeons to master. The map is big but manageable with dashing strike, and there were plenty of enemy groups to hit for the decoy objective. I think there’s a legendary belt that might have helped me keep up sweeping wind more easily, but I didn’t have it and I managed fine without it.

This group of set dungeons was a very mixed bag. They ranged from incredibly annoying (Inna’s), to very easy (Sunwuko’s). They also included one with a gimmick that I suspect some people probably hate but I thought was actually pretty fun (the golden chest in Thousand Storms). I was afraid at the outset that I was going to struggle more than usual with these since I had never played monk before, but it turned out not to be much worse than any of my other set dungeon struggles. Now only the barbarian stands between me and two pairs of awesome wings!


Monk Set Mastery