On EDH

In most senses, I’ve known how to play Magic the Gathering since I was in middle school. I never had any cards of my own (I had Pokemon cards when those were new) but I knew the rules somewhat and I could play at a very basic level. Most of my Magic experience remained theoretical until I got Duels of the Planeswalkers (the first one, in 2009) on a whim and really enjoyed it. At the same time, I never really got into “competitive” Magic. I was (and still am) uninterested in putting in the time and money it would take to get “good” at any of the constructed formats. Draft is also a skill I just never picked up.

On EDH
Fast forward several years, and I find out about the Commander format. For those unfamiliar, this is a format usually played with more than two people, using decks containing 100 cards where you can have no more than one of anything other than basic lands, and using a legendary creature as your “Commander”. This is a card you have access to at all times that also determines what colors of cards you can include in your deck. (The original Commanders were the Elder Dragons from way back in Legends, so that’s where the original name “Elder Dragon Highlander” comes from.) Commander games tend to be quite a bit longer and crazy things can happen that are unlikely to ever see any use in a normal game. The multiplayer aspect is also relevant, because it encourages playing politics if someone is getting ahead.

On EDH
I started with the pre-constructed deck featuring Atraxa, the rather ridiculous card pictured above. I’ve since tried building my own decks, some of which have been more successful than others. It’s definitely re-kindled my interest in the game, and this more casual approach has helped other podcast members get into it as well.

AggroChat #215 – Accidentally a Success

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Tamrielo and Thalen

aggrochat_720

Tonight we have as show that goes way off course, but often times those are some of our better shows because we follow the passion.  Bel talks a bit about Blaugust Reborn and the successes so far. All of the talk about World of Warcraft has lead Tam to go back and play Warcraft 3.  We talk about where all of the story beats come from and where World of Warcraft maybe went south around Cataclysm. We also talk about maybe that there should have been a World of Warcraft 2.  We talk a bit about the new Richard Garfield game Keyforge and how Magic the Gathering is not actually the game he intended to design. Bel talks a bit about the concept of a Destiny Pen and Paper game which leads into a discussion about Modern Tabletop gaming…  and how we need the gaming version of a Country Club.

Topics Discussed:

  • Blaugust Reborn
    • 88 Participating Blogs So Far
  • Warcraft 3
    • Where the story comes from
    • World of Warcraft
    • Storytelling Issues
    • Things Went South After Cataclysm
    • We Needed World of Warcraft 2
  • Keyforge
    • Everyone likes random decks right?
  • Magic the Gathering
    • Not the game Garfield actually wanted
    • Magic Shifted Over Time
    • Rebalancing Magic
  • Destiny Pen and Paper
    • Fan Built in spite of what Bel thought
  • Modern Tabletop Explosion
  • Need for Gaming Country Clubs
    • We come up with a business model
    • Someone else make this a thing

AggroChat #214 – Bribed to be Content

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Thalen

aggrochat214

Tonight we sit down and talk through our feelings about Battle For Azeroth and its fairly tone deaf ad campaign.  We dig into the “It Matters” videos and how it feels fairly irresponsible at a time when our country and world is pulled apart already by some fairly serious points of division.  We talk about how playing World of Warcraft should be a thing to bring people together rather than pull them apart.  We also talk about the Warbringers video series and how we are afraid it is setting up Jaina, Sylvannas and Azshara to be the next set of raid bosses.  Finally we talk briefly about the novel and event that are leading up to this expansion.  At the tail end of the show we talk a bit about drafting M19 in Magic Arena and Bel’s nonsensical luck at pulling cards.

Topics Discussed

  • Battle For Azeroth
    • The “It Matters” Ad Campaign
    • The “Warbringers” video series
    • The “Before the Storm” novelization
    • The “War of the Thorns” quest event
  • Magic Arena
    • Drafting M19
    • Nonsensical Pulls
    • Golgari Pride

 

Luck and Mini Bosses

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

New Participants

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.

Luck and Mini Bosses

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.

Luck and Mini Bosses

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.