Magic: The Gathering - Duel Decks: BLESSED vs. CURSED review

This review can be found on the product listing on Amazon. I am re-posting it here with minor modifications.


The BLESSED vs. CURSED duel decks pit two opposite motifs against eachother: the holy and righteous defenders of the light against hordes of undead and their sadistic masters. The decks succeed in fulfilling the "fantasy" of these themes and create relatively even games with compelling decisions for maximizing the strengths of each deck. They also feature a few cards from the upcoming new set, "Shadows Over Innistrad."

However, they fail to provide longtime players and collectors with compelling and valuable reprints. The only card in here that has any chance of being worth more than $1 after this duel deck printing is Geist of Saint Traft, and that simply isn't enough secondary market value for the frugal MTG player. There were opportunities for eagerly desired reprints here that went ignored in favor of playing it safe. History has shown that "duel deck" pairings lacking in value find themselves closer to $10 given a few months. We shall see if Mindwrack Demon (a card from the next set) sees enough Standard play to prop up the value, but I would not get your hopes up.

On to the deck analyses!

BLESSED: This deck is BLUE - WHITE, with a theme of spirits, ghosts, and devoted townsfolk defending themselves from the encroaching darkness. The primary game plan is to stall out the game, letting your undead opponent get in some free early hits in exchange for a solid board position, then following through with some flying creatures to chip your opponent down to nothing. It is also capable of some fast starts with the right draw of cards like Champion of the Parish and Topplegeist, although more than likely the aggressor will be the CURSED deck.

CURSED: This deck is BLACK - BLUE, with a theme of undead ghouls, their necromancers, and demons. The plan is to grind down the opponent via creatures that can come back from the dead, forcing the BLESSED player low enough on health that they have no choice but to defend themselves by trading blows with creatures that they know will simply return. Inevitably, the forces of good will lose if they are forced to make 1-for-1 trades.

Overall, these decks are a great thematic battle and a way to ease players into the themes and gothic atmosphere of Innistrad. The problems are really in the details here: the contents of the decks struggle to justify the price tag on the product. While past entries in this product line have included "money cards" like Remand, there's simply not enough here, not even planeswalker cards (which have a notoriously high price floor). And as usual, the Spindown D20 life counters don't have a corresponding set symbol on them, and the flimsy cardboard deckboxes struggle to *actually hold the full decks*. The product barely squeaks by with 4-stars on Amazon due to the good follow-through on the fantasy of BLESSED vs. CURSED. . . but in reality, I'd give this more of a 3.5 because there are problems with this product that just aren't that hard to fix.

Mobile games, Skinner boxes, and finding the fun in setting egg timers

Fig. 1: The foundation of an addictive mobile game

I recently needed a surgery that left me mostly immobile for two weeks. I invested in a Nintendo 2DS ahead of time in order to spend some of my recovery period playing the newest Pokemon game, but in reality a large chunk of my bed-bound time went toward trying out the many mobile games out there on Android devices.

Among the games I tried were:

• Monument Valley
• Pokemon Shuffle
• Alphabear
• Crashlands 
• Magic the Gathering Puzzle Quest
• Commute

I'll put the Electronic Arts lineup of mobile offerings in a separate category:

Fig. 2: Pokemon Shuffle is not free,
and neither is anything else on mobile

• Tetris Blitz
• Tetris
• Bejeweled Blitz
• Bejeweled
• Peggle Blast
• Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes
  SimCity BuildIt

The only games in these lists that have an up-front cost are Monument Valley and Crashlands, both around $5. I don't think it's a coincidence that these games feel much more complete and focused on providing a great game than the "free" alternatives.

Fig. 3: After every single game,
Tetris Blitz prompts you to spend
money for more points
if you didn't at the start.

That said, the task of beating down on mobile games for being deceptively un-free is not a new one. Most gamers and non-gamers alike understand that free* games come with many asterisks. 

Why would any developer create a game that doesn't make money? The real challenge for the gamer comes down to finding games that strike a good balance between asking for money and providing a game. 

To find an example of how NOT to do this, just download Tetris Blitz and try playing it more than a few games. If you want to play with the power-ups that far outstrip player skill in score importance, you will use up $20 of power-ups in a matter of a half hour. The game encourages you to do head-to-head score comparison "battles" that mostly exist to take advantage of people's competitive drive in a game where points are purchasable. The lottery-board that offers free game currency is enough to maybe play a single maxed out game every few days, if you remember to play the lottery several times a day, then close the game. Don't forget the ads between everything you do!

Fig. 4: Finishers are where you can
easily double your score. You get
3 games worth of finishers here.
Great value! Only $20!

It's an abusive garbage business model layered on top of a great game, ruining the game but probably making the creators good money.

You can't even play the older standard Tetris app without it prompting you, regularly, to go download Tetris Blitz instead. Perhaps that's because the old Tetris app didn't sell points.

Fig. 5: an actual Skinner box

The fairer of these mobile games rely heavily on setting digital egg timers. For everything. Particularly timers for your lives and timers for dispensing free in-game money, which is typically separate from paid in-game money. It all comes down to a simple concept that many college graduates learn about in an introductory Psychology class: the Skinner Box.

It's easy to think you're having fun with these set-ups, but realize that they're only a source of stress after you've spent enough time away from them. Some games are almost entirely a complex web of operant conditioning, with dazzling lights and "unlockable" items and currencies feeding into new ways to make a number go up. Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes is the most blatant offender in this regard; your input during battles matters very little compared to "how high your number is", and you will spend a huge amount of your time feeding currencies and items into systems that unlock new ways to acquire currencies and items, all to make that number higher. From my understanding, this is true of a large number of popular mobile games, like Clash of Clans and Boom Beach, compounded by the utter impossibility of remaining competitive without spending money.

Despite all this, I still have fun with some of these games. The key is not to get caught up in an abusive relationship with a game that is just waiting patiently for you to crack and throw $20, even $50 at it. It would be nice if more game developers would spend time in the middle ground. When a game is worth playing without spending money, I'm a lot more inclined to feel good about chipping in a few bucks.

Trigger Warning: Learning to live with Landfall

Fig. 1: A great card, if you remember it's there

When I first put Jaddi Offshoot into my Eldrazi Ramp standard deck (similar to this list), I knew, deep down, exactly what would happen. Unfortunately, it happened almost immediately upon bringing the deck to the Oath of the Gatewatch Game Day. . .

I missed a single Landfall trigger, and it cost me the game.

Staring down my opponent's board of angry dudes, I realized that he had precisely lethal damage on me, no matter what I did to defend myself. Sitting there with two copies of Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger in hand and more than enough mana to cast one the following turn to stabilize, I had no choice but to concede the win to my opponent.

Fig. 2: A great card, if actually played before dying

Counting up my mana sources after the game compared to the number of times I gained 1 life, it became clear that I had missed at least 1 landfall trigger. The difference between gaining 10 life and gaining 11 life had cost me the chance to climb my way back into the game.

And this was entirely my fault.

There are limitations of a physical card game like Magic that aren't immediately apparent. Casual players of Magic will breeze right past rules violations, and if a player remembers something they missed after the moment has passed, there's always "Takebacksies", "rewindsies", and "I -forgot-that-card-was-in-playsies". In a digital card game, you literally cannot break the rules, so you don't have to worry about forgetting a triggered effect. Your Knife Juggler in Hearthstone will always remember to throw a knife when a minion enters play under your control.

In a competitive environment in a physical card game, an opponent has no obligation to respect your take-backs or slips of memory. In fact, the rules in most cases explicitly state that its your job to remember effects under your control (which may sometimes include things that don't even benefit you!). This is a generalization, but useful to remember.

The moral of the story is that if you go "oh, and I gained two life from my landfall triggers" any time besides directly after playing those lands, your opponent is fully within the rules to say "no, you missed your triggers. Tough luck." Hopefully, they're a bit friendlier about the phrasing.

That's why when I took that exact lethal damage to the face, I was thoroughly dead.

At first, coming from a mostly casual CCG (collectible card game) background and spending many of my formative years playing Magic Online, I felt something next to a grudge toward opponents that made my life difficult over missing a trigger.

Now, I recognize them as another opportunity for a player to express their total awareness of the game state and the elements of the board that work in their favor. When you leave room for player error in a game, that raises the skill ceiling and gives experienced players more ways to earn the win over less seasoned opponents.

Losing this way can be frustrating. Then again, so can losing a game to the opponent's 1-cost healing plant-wall, but I don't hear any complaints from my opponents about that. The solution to my problem was simply to be more attentive and focused the next time I play competitive Magic.

#22: The Beginner's Guide - Some post-play thoughts

I just wrapped up a play-through of The Beginner's Guide, so it seemed reasonable to resuscitate my blog and put some of my thoughts out there while the gears are still turning in my head.

The Beginner's Guide is the type of game that loses value if you know ahead of time what it is about, in a storytelling sense. It's from the creator of The Stanley Parable, but in many ways it is not, ways that become immediately apparent through the introduction of the game. I believe that the structure of TBG is flawed. Despite that, the ideas it plays with are novel to me as far as gaming themes are concerned, and should ring true to anyone doing creative work, for show or for themselves. It is a game exploring art, audience, privacy, depression, and validation from the perspective of one artist relating to another artist.

Because I cannot describe the sequence of events in TBG without reducing its value to the reader, the rest of this post will explore some of the thoughts it gave me, bubbling and churning in my mind in the hour after my play. This language is a bit more academic than I'd typically use to engage with a game, but I suppose it's not a good indie game unless it takes longer to discuss it than it does to beat it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Most of us assume that art is created with intent to share. No one besides the creator sees art that goes un-shared; how can one even point to an example besides one's own? This only reinforces the notion that audience and art are intrinsically related.

Where many of us go wrong, I think, is in assuming that the art is designed to illuminate something about the artist. I could point to the public-image focused society of our current moment, where flattering photos are social currency and fame is a goal in and of itself. 

A question I'm left pondering is whether an audience member for a work of art has any right to raise his or her voice above that of the work's creator, particularly if the creator elects to not use their voice. Must there be a voice? If the creator doesn't choose to ascribe a public-yet-personal meaning to the work for others to consume, is the only other option letting the audience do it instead? If that is the case, are there situations wherein the creator is better off never showing an audience at all?

The question only becomes more interesting when you consider games as an artistic medium, compared to, for example, a novel or a movie. Games are unquestionably defined by their relationship to a player. What that player does within the confines of the game are part of the art, but the key is that a player is acting within the game world. Anything beyond that, from a consistent game mechanic or even an objective of any kind, is an extension of decisions that the creator, the artist, made.

- - - - - - - -

So what happens when a game is designed with no intent to appeal to hordes of players, yet is still playable? To a creator who is unmotivated by public validation in the spheres of novel writing, filming a movie, sculpting, etc., the exchange with the reader or viewer is not coded into the definition of the medium, though it is often assumed. In fact, what with all this "unmotivated by public validation" talk, I'd say that Ayn Rand would be a great reference point for this train of thought if she didn't also have a pretty strict view of what we can even call art.

There are famous examples of writers whose work went unpublished, or artists whose paintings went undiscovered until their deaths. Do you suppose that, on their deathbeds, they did not see their work as legitimate because they did not share it? I see this as unlikely.

Do you think they did not share it because of a fear of the public's ascribed meanings and the burden of having the public misunderstand the purpose of their work? Or perhaps a fear of presenting work for public validation only to find none?

The idea of an artist creating a specifically a game entirely for themselves as a creative outlet seems to defy reasoning. We assume that games are about us, the user. Without us pressing the buttons, nothing even happens, after all.

- - - - - - - -

Let's return to that idea I started with: the notion that art is for sharing, because any artist who creates without sharing is not visible as the counterpoint. What if an artist made games only as an outlet for themselves? If these were shared against their will, is it the artist's job to justify their work's existence and give it a discernible meaning?

When J. K. Rowling uses a pseudonym to seek public validation in an honest light, that is understandable to the world. It's quite possible this would be seen differently if she stopped releasing new writing to the world altogether, or if this work were shown off without the choice to do so as part of the art.

I don't have an answer to these hypothetical questions because, as many #LiberalArtsDegree discussions end, there is no clear answer. What's more important is that I think I have a clearer understanding of the complexities between art, artist, audience, and privacy. 

An artist is not a product, nor are they, necessarily, the art.

Book Review: 33 and 1/3 - "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy"

I’m living in the future so the present is my past

my presence is a present kiss my ass

Our culture is already bored with meta-commentary about the potential effects of the digital revolution. It’s here, it’s everywhere, it’s the water flowing over the gills of the millennial and nourishing an isolated global community of social mavens, prepared to Google-as-a-verb the meaning of the word “maven” at a moment’s notice from a smartphone, tablet, netbook, and eyeglasses. It is no surprise, then, that possibly the most influential musician of the 21^st century personifies and embraces the identity-crafting realm of the real-time and connected. It's important that any book about this musician understands the world we live in.

Kirk Walker Graves, author of the 33 1/3 entry for Kanye West’s album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”, assumed the burden of dissecting the eponymous album for this very reason. Why focus an intellectual analysis on an album only four years old, nearly devoid of historical context? The author sends the message that MBDTF is the first album that wraps its tendrils directly into the psyche of a society that treats socializing as preparation for personal celebrity, desiring all things immediately not just due to impatience, but because soon now will be irrelevant. Much like the album and our pop culture, the importance of Graves’ analysis cannot be understated, or delayed.

Graves shows a level of enthusiasm for his work comparable to a toddler with a leaf blower in a realm of endless cotton candy. The book begins by giving one of the best explanations of Kanye, the artist and the human, that I have yet read. It helps the reader place him within the digital culture now pervading the world that I previously mentioned. At times, Graves’ ardor lends the book a zest for cultural context that informs the reader of even the most implacable song-sample or lyrical choice. There is a clear appreciation for sociological an anthropological meaning here as well; the many aspects of Kanye and the individual works within MBDTF are frequently described in terms of America’s love-hate response to His ego and ambitions. If you’ve ever felt there’s a fiendishly clever quality to the production of pop-friendly or nearly-pop-friendly songs like “All of the Lights” or “Runaway”, Graves is more than happy to validate you. In most cases, I found myself a convert.

That is not to say that this issue of the 33 1/3 series is without its faults. It feels that on occasion, Graves digs too deep to strike oil on analyses; it’s important that you agree with Graves on the conclusion that Kanye is intractably intertwined with the music he produces, or else all the talk of Kanye’s narcissism and aplomb in the text can become frustratingly psychoanalytical. However, to Graves’ credit, he generally avoids jargon and thesaurus-bombs in favor of flowery and just-short-of-excessive description, leaving it accessible to most learners interested in all the hoopla about Mr. West.

“My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” (the book) is a superb look at how our society is feeding the Kanye machine, producing great works of maximalist conglomeration (as well as Yeezus, which even the author admits lacked the initial vitality of MBDTF). When Graves then opens up the machine to give the readers a look at the parts, he proves his credentials. In homage to his imagery-thick writing style, I offer my personal interpretation of his thesis, for you to decide whether or not to read his book:

Kanye is a pop-culture golem accumulating the discarded love and scorn of the public eye, screaming from the mountaintop of public consciousness, Wi-Fi enabled, spotlights overhead, clutching a fistful of forgotten hooks and blistering verse, daring the cameras to look away. He is a one-man 24-hour news cycle channeling the ferocity of a boundless ego, repressed by men in suits in corner offices and sitting at talk-show desks. He’s producer, pariah, artist, child, deity, caricature and soon-to-be-king of pop all in one, and MBDTF is the promise.

#21: Loadout - Loads of Fun, Like 2001

Loadout has come out of nowhere to become one of the most popular free-to-play games available on Steam. What's it about? What's the draw of another free shooter?


Simple. Over-the-top, Quentin Tarentino-level violence combined with an addictive weapon building system and combat that rewards the bloodthirsty instead of punishing them for leaving cover.


When considering the appeal of Loadout, remember that gaming has changed in the last decade or two. Loadout reminds those of us that can remember 1 gigabyte hard drives of how drastically first person shooters have changed. Games like Quake, Tribes and Unreal Tournament focused on ultra-fast movement, precision aiming and adrenaline-fueled deathmatches. Since then, the FPS genre has leaned toward Call of Duty and Battlefield style gameplay: fast deaths and a gritty sensibility grounded in reality. Loadout flips the table by combining ideas from both styles into a delicious 4v4 layer-cake of guns and more guns while pulling the camera back to a 3rd-person perspective.


The first thing a Loadout player must do is craft their starter weapons. Though you won't be able to do anything too over-the-top yet, you'll have access to options almost as good as anything a longer-time player can craft, if not the same in function.


For example, you can see in the screenshot below that I've crafted a bizarre rocket launcher named via Zoolander reference. Let me break down the most important parts for you:

Six is better than one, ask anybody!

• Scope: Laser Guidance System - While zoomed in, I project a laser that steers my rockets.
• Barrel: Hexabarrel - I have six rockets.
• Damage Type: Pyro - Instead of dealing all of the damage upfront, these rockets have a damage boost in exchange for dealing a large portion of it as damage over time.
• Ammo Type: Scuttle - The rockets crawl along the ground toward their target, a la Legend of Zelda bombchus.
• Shell: Bouncy - If they hit a surface that isn't a player, they will bounce in a new direction.

I could easily have made this gun even wackier by having a Salvo trigger that lets me load all six rockets at once, or a flak-cloud dispersal on detonation. Here's the fundamental question: is this gun better than a basic SMG or sniper rifle anyone can craft with little effort?


Absolutely not. In fact, this gun is quite difficult to kill anyone with. Every time you add some zany attribute to your gun, its stats adjust accordingly. And that's one aspect of Loadout: experimenting with weaponcrafting and realizing that you will make a lot of stupid guns. 

Hmmm. . . My scalp feels. . . hot. 

Once you're in game, you've got three movement options: run, dodge-roll, and jump, all of which are highly advised. Jumping after a roll gives you an extra high jump. The landscapes in Loadout seem intentionally designed with high-jumpable elevations and a sticky quality that lets skilled players climb or chain jumps in ways that reward mastery of the maps. 

Each player's gunplay experience will be different based on their weaponcrafting preferences. That said, riddling opponents with bullets, rockets, cannonballs, or lasers is universally satisfying, with a high pitched hit-confirm sound that you will learn to love hearing. Whether you're adjusting for recoil on your Heavy-style minigun or trying to line up the crosshairs on your bolt-action sniper, it just feels right. 

 The modes in Loadout already put some other FPS selections to shame. There's Blitz, where players rush from point to point trying to claim control. Deathsnatch requires the players to pick up a vial left behind by dead players to count the kill, allowing teammates to deny eachother. Jackhammer tasks the teams of 4 with playing capture the flag, except the flag can be slammed into the ground for a massive radius that kills opponents instantly up to 5 times. Think Gravity Hammer from Halo, except better. This twist finally makes grabbing the flag in Capture the Flag fun, and the flag runner dangerous. 

Sometimes, you just gotta stand your ground.

Annihilation, the "competitive mode" (though ranked matchmaking has not yet been enabled), combines all three of the above with an overall point system, a stat-buffing system that accumulates a stat of your choice across the game session, and a final relay-race with the jackhammer that is about as intense as it gets. A+ for creativity.

Excavation places several carts around the map and litters the terrain with blue chunks of crystal; the role of "Excavator" is rotated among team members on each team. This person must run around collecting these crystals and returning them to carts. While carrying, they cannot fire a gun. These chunks of crystals are volatile, and will explode 2 seconds after a few shots, even while being carried. This mode really rewards mastery of the map.

They also recently added Domination, which is a simple 3-hill King of the Hill mode. You've probably seen it before, but it's still fun.

Gruesome death animations are frequent.

One aspect of Loadout I am particularly impressed by is the attention to detail. When you get hit, your character is visibly, disgustingly maimed. But this detail stretches to tiny gameplay quirks: while on fire, rolling puts it out faster. Tesla damage drains shields quicker. Taunting while capturing a point captures it 10% faster, but leaves you vulnerable. Players can shoot down rockets, making slow propulsion but high damage rockets a risky move. The list goes on.

The game is funded by cosmetic purchases for one of three base characters. You can buy boosts that allow you to gain points faster like in many games, but you cannot directly purchase any points for building weapons.

I'm not all praise, though: it can be a disappointment when you realize that certain gun parts or wacky combinations are simply not as good as more tried-and-true arrangements, which stifles diversity. I rarely see anyone using shotgun-style weapons because the melee attack is so strong. Some of the more interesting equipment in the game requires a hefty investment of earned in-game currency to access, leaving fresh players out in the cold against tricks such as disguises or portable spawn points. The game is also limited to 4v4, and certain modes are abysmal on certain maps (Jackhammer on Shattered, for example). And lastly, if you're a fan of military shooters in which a few bullets results in death, you may take issue with the hardiness of the players in Loadout. 

Still, I find that Loadout is one of the most enjoyable shooters I have played in the last several years. With sessions that last fifteen minutes or less and a focus on casual modes that maximize fun, it's the perfect antidote for the gamer who just cannot handle another high-stakes game of Call of Duty or Counter-Strike. It's a free-to-play game that I can recommend to almost any gamer familiar with shooters.

4/5

#20: Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 1 - DLC Worth Digging Up

Downloadable content rarely receives the same scrutiny as its parent game. It’s not quite taken for granted that DLC is a bad value, but it is certainly a creeping suspicion of the informed consumer. It’s refreshing, then, that Burial at Sea – Episode 1 offers a bite size portion of the main course instead of the tasteless imitation some have come to expect.

Burial at Sea drops the player into Rapture, the underwater objectivist utopia from the first two Bioshock games, right as society seems to be a powder keg ready to blow. You’re still Booker DeWitt, but this time you work as a private detective hired by Elizabeth to . . . well, I’ll stop there. In such a story driven game, the less I share, the better.

The game offers fans of the first two Bioshocks an illuminating glimpse into the day-to-day life inside Rapture before its collapse. Citizens discuss the pressing issues of the day as you walk by, generously heaping story fodder for series vets and setting the stage for those who started with Bioshock: Infinite. Rapture looks noticeably more pleasant when the lights are on, the water stays outside, and hulks in diving suits aren’t trying to skewer you with their drill-fists. Of course, the ugliness is still there, underneath.

The environments are astonishingly detailed.

The gunplay remains benign, with a minor selection of firearms that behave more or less as you’d expect. Luckily, plasmids (or vigors, for those who have never been to Rapture) make a return, giving players a way to ignite, freeze, electrocute, and in general channel their inner Avatar. While many sing Bioshock: Infinite’s praises, I have never found the combat terribly satisfying, especially compared to earlier entries in the series. In a concession to players like me, the “weapon wheel” returns. This simple device allows players to hold all of their weapons at once and switch between them easily on the fly, to my relief. I’m of the opinion that only being able to hold two guns makes sense in some FPS games, but much like it felt anti-fun in Duke Nukem Forever, I felt the same in Infinite.

This scene? Hidden and totally optional.

Burial at Sea – Episode 1 is a campaign that I’ve heard others claim they completed in less than two hours. While I can certainly understand a “point A to point B” playthrough being so thoroughly abbreviated, that is a blistering pace compared to my own. I stopped to absorb every conversation, every environmental detail, every secret. I ended up taking four hours. I imagine the length of a playthrough will vary drastically based on whether one is just playing a shooter or exploring Rapture.

Featuring a fan favorite setting, tried-and-true combat, and even a cool battle with a Big Daddy, Burial at Sea – Episode 1 also sneaks in exposition as far as the eye can “sea” (get it? Sea? Rapture’s at the bottom of the sea. I’ll see myself out). It’s well polished and worthy of the Bioshock name, but could be a bit short for some players’ tastes. To mitigate that, one thing is certain: you’re much better off splurging on the season pass containing all DLC for $20 than paying $15 a la carte for part 1 of Burial at Sea. Now go get it, and try and wrap your head around that ending.