Asparagus Kraj

I've been doing some spring cleaning of my commander decks recently.  Editing, making, or taking apart commander decks.  One such deck I feel that I have been neglecting and am considering dismantling is the Kraj deck.  Its a super durdley deck that takes a lot of skill and brain power to operate.  I never play it and its confusing as shit.  The thing is I haven't got the heart to take it apart.  I think its a cool commander and a powerful deck.  For these reasons, I suggest Phil take the deck to edit and play.  Kraj deserves a good home.

Let's look at Kraj and what he does.  First off, he puts 1/1 counters on any creature.  Seems good.  There's a lot of counter stuff going on these days so this card has aged well.  He's good with Persist, evolve, graft, and even spikes.  He makes creatures bigger too so even if those targets have no activated abilities they can still get a little boost.  The activated ability part cannot be overlooked either.  There's tons of stuff you can do with him with your own creatures as well as your opponents'.  Having strong activated abilities on the creatures in your deck is one thing but having everyone else's abilities is an added perk.  Needless to say there's always a lot of possibilities with this deck and every game is different.

Its all the different things Kraj can do that make this deck confusing.  Do I put a counter on something?  Use an activated ability?  Swing?  Its never entirely clear what to do with Kraj.  Put a Pemmin's Aura on him and things just get even crazier.  Kraj is confusing and as the deck has evolved, pun intended, it has just gotten harder to manage.  Much like my old wizard deck this deck has turned into something beyond my understanding and skill level.  I'm more aggro, Kraj is more controlling and requires deep analysis, pun intended.  Who do we know that can fully appreciate a deck like this?

I think this deck is more Phil's speed.  Phil plays Kikki Jikki, a deck which is fairly similar I feel.  Granted this deck is a little different than Kikki but I think Phil can handle it.  Besides I've always had a sneaking suspicion that Phil enjoyed this deck a little more than me as he was always thinking of cards that would be good in it.  So what I'm saying is I'm willing to give you the deck and all the cards in it for you to play and edit.  Otherwise Kraj will probably be taken apart.  Phil, will you accept an Oooze Muntant into your deck box?  Or should I start another petition?

Shandalar Speculation

So I know you have been intrigued by the cycle of rings in M13 that are said to come from the plane of Shandalar along with Onakkee Catacomb from the recent Planechase set . . . 

and the flavor text on Talrand's Invocation. 

Why would Wizards randomly be referencing Shandalar in one of its core sets? Surely Gleemax must have some sort of master plan for which this is a teaser. Why remind us of this plane from a nearly forgotten computer game of the late 90s without some kind of purpose? It isn't as if this world had many defining features or emotional resonance aside from being part of a fun game.

Over the months, my curiosity had faded from hearing all of these references last summer, but then I heard this question from a Q & A panel with R & D at PAX East. While they don't say anything specifically about Shandalar, the vision they have for making magic more accessible to those who aren't connected to other magic players seems like it would be fit perfectly with a remake of the original Microprose Magic the Gathering game from 1997.

Duels of the Planeswalkers is fun, but limited since you cannot do much in the way of deckbuilding, playing other humans, and are to a few cards. It has served it's purpose well of attracting former magic players back into the game by tantalizing them with Sengir Vampires, Serra Angels, and these crazy new planeswalker thingies, but it doesn't approach the level of fun and engagement that Shandalar had, where you are existing in a fleshed out world, free to explore collecting better cards for your deck along the way.

Creating a new Shandalar game would be an excellent way to attract other gamers into Magic who don't have the social network to suck them into the game. Maybe they will even make a paper set in the Shandalar world and then translate all of the cards over into the game world as well. Or they could continue to explore what a few of the cards in the original game did and focus on cards that can do things only possible with a computer. 

As evident by the pathetic AI and huge handicaps required, I'm sure one of the biggest challenges to such a game would be to program a wide variety of cards to work properly under the rules and have the computer understand how to use them properly and strategically. However, Wizards has been able to achieve this on a smaller scale with Duels of the Planeswalkers and who's to say that given the amount of money they could stand to make by expanding their player base as well as interesting most current magic players that they might be throwing a lot of resources into making this happen.

Pawsome!

Name: Undecided
Gender: Unknown
Stats: 18/00 Strength, 19 Agility, 9 Constitution, 5 Intelligence, 4 Wisdom, 24 Charisma
Class: Cat
Schooling: Leesville Rd High School Parking Lot Class of 2013
Interests: Hackie Sack, Eating Kibble, Attacking Shoes, Running Around In Circles For No Apparent Reason
Special Abilities: ADHD, Slash Attack, Bite Attack
Favorite Movie: Life of Pi

TŠIF - Thank Šamaš it's Friday

Here are some thoughts/experiences, which I've recently had:

Yesterday, while walking home Veronica and I passed a woman yelling into her phone, "When you die it's not all unicorns and rainbows..." Her volume was set to 11.

We should start a band that only plays in slow motion, at least in our rocking music videos.

I want to make a Minecraft scale model of the city of Ugarit, although maybe something like Carchemish or maybe a Neo-Assyrian palace. Whose up to join me in what will inevitably be hours and hours of hard, thankless labor for no real good reason?

By the way, new banner…now I'm hungry.

Here's something I was reading for my Akkadian class. It is a liver omen. So if you kill a sheep and look at it's liver and see the following, you'll know what to do.

BE IGI.BAR ki-ma BAD-ma u3 ši-lum i-na ŠA3-ša na-di aš-ša-at LU2 i-ni-a-ak-ma mu-sa3 i-ṣa-ba-as-si2-i-ma i-da-ak-ši
If the naplastum-mark is like the BAD sign and a perforation is situated at its heart, the wife of a man will have illicit intercourse and her husband will seize her and he will kill her.
By the way the BAD sign is the Sumerian name for the sign and represents the Sumerian pronunciation of the logogram, but it doesn't have any connection to the english word "bad."

Revisiting My Fearless Magic Predictions

Back three years ago, I made a series of magic-related predictions. Now let's check back in to see how many of them I correctly predicted to see if I am secretly Nostradamus in disguise (also you guys promised me a bucket of fried chicken if I got at least 4 correct).

1. Swords to Plowshares will be reprinted in the next three years. - INCORRECT
So it seems that Wizards feels that Path to Exile is about the high water mark of power for this level of effect. Maybe they have concerns about this and Path coexisting in modern or maybe they feel it would be too dominating in standard. I want to say I heard Mark Rosewater talk about the flavor of STP causing a creature to starting farming was out of the context of how wizards designed the way that white flavor-fully deals with creatures.

2. Control Magic will be reprinted in the next three years. - INCORRECT
This one I'm now pretty sure is not going to happen. Control Magic has a completely realistic power level for standard and is such a great simple cards with lots of complexity under the surface. However, someone at Wizards has stated that creature stealing effects without a downside are simply too powerful to show up at uncommon for drafting purposes. The control magic variants they have done in the last three years have all been significantly less powerful and Soul's Ransom might set a precident that the effect will be moved to higher rarities. If this is the case, Control Magic doesn't feel rare and would probably just disappoint many people if it was printed as a rare.

3. Stone Rain will not be reprinted within the next three years. - CORRECT
This one seems pretty obvious looking back now. Wizards has been trying to encourage new players to get hooked on magic by trying to create a better experience for more inexperienced players. Mechanics like discard, counterspells and land destruction all lead to players having few choices and less ability to interact with their opponents. What makes magic fun for most players are these complicated decisions and the interactions between cards. Stone rain, especially with the existence of mana dorks, is simply too powerful and inspires too many people to rage quit for it to be coming back any time soon.

4. Scars of Mirrodin will have little in common with Mirrodin Block. - CORRECT
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this one is correct, although I didn't really define it very well to begin with. Scars was much more about the Phyrexians and their infect ability than anything else. Sure the metalcraft and imprint mechanics had some powerful and interesting cards, but the block had no overpowered artifact synergies like affinity and ended up being more tangentially about artifacts as compared to the original Mirrodin block. Since Wizards starting using the story to drive the flavor of their sets more starting with this block, so flavorfully this block returned to a lot of the same elements in the first block to check in with how they had changed, the more nuanced answer might be that mechanically this statement is true but flavorfully this statement is false.

5. Dan will start playing magic again in the next three years. - INCORRECT
Dan, much like the legendary sasquash, has only been heard of through the eyewitness reports of those who think they might have seen him in the Food Lion parking lot or possibly driving past, but nothing has been confirmed. No one can really be certain what this giggly beast is up too, but one thing is for certain, he is probably high right now.

My You Make the Card Submission

"Zombie Outbreak"

Black Enchantment

Zombies you control have deathtouch.

Whenever a creature an opponent controls dies from damage dealt by a zombie you control, you may put that creature onto the battlefield under your control. It is a black zombie in addition to its other creature types.

Star Wars Episode VII

Brule's Rules

You (and by you I mean my fellow authors of this blog, celebrities, everyone who has ever looked at a webpage on the internet, the chickens pictured below, myself and especially Jared from the Subway commercials who is not a celebrity) are fat!!!! You need to loose some weight. You need to go on a diet. Here are some tips for you if you can spare a few seconds of shoving Doritos into your mouth with your fat sausage fingers to be able to wipe off the dust and click your mouse.

Also, you need to get some exercise fat-ass!!!! Might I suggest Estonia Werewolf Wrestling . . .



For your health!!!!!

I'm Thinking of Opening a KFC Pt. 2

The recession is upon us.  The farm was hit by hard times.  Thanks Obama!  It was especially hard to let the delicious chickens go.  I remember it like it was just yesterday that my inventory would immediately fill up with eggs when I walked in the chicken coop.  I would then have to machine gun throw the eggs against the wall and a baby chicken would hatch 1/8th of the time.  There's so much pixelated beauty in the world.

I'm Thinking of Opening a KFC

I have been farming in Minecraft.  Wheat, Cows, Sheep, and Chickens.  I tried pigs but couldn't find any carrots...  Its time to move on though.  Stay tuned for when I post the images of me letting out the animals!

 

 

Joey you could totally show up this little bitch

I Don't Think I've Done enough Drugs

This has been your weekly public service announcement, Please keep our street cleans kids.

Adults make sure to beat your children, plants, pets, and elders, if they do not uphold societal standards. I feel a Frank Zappa phase coming on...