Spoils of War

With the weekend's Grand Prix in Las Vegas over and our mental wounds licked clean, I gotta say it was a pretty awesome experience. Not only in the competitive sense but being a part the biggest event that Magic's ever had is something we'll have forever. 

But that's enough jibber jabber on that topic. I'm here to talk about how it went. Clearly I made day 2 and won the entire thing. I'm on my way to the pro tour, practicing with all the greats as I type this. I'm just that awesome.

In a world where I had all the free time of a bum and all the money of a working stiff, then maybe this could be the case. But seeing as how this is more reality than anything, I, in fact, did not make day 2 and actually dropped after 4 rounds. Sad I know. You could even say I was robbed! But let's not dwell. I've learned so much from this experience and had a fun time along the ride. Here are some shots of the event over the 3ish days I was there.

Imagine this scene multiplied by 20. That's how crazy the venue and turn-out ended up being. The event totaled at 4500 for the actual event plus whoever else just showed up to do side events. The lines for everything were crazy. My group ended up getting there at 7 AM on Friday to check in and get our prereg card and playmat. Even at 7 AM, we were around #600 in line. Ridiculous.

A few artists were there like Daarken, Steve Argyle, and Chris Rahn. Like I've mentioned before, I really enjoy the art of magic and it's awesome how they can come out to these events for fans to meet them. One day I'll be able to meet Raymond Swanland and Todd Lockwood. One day...

They had a pretty cool setup near the artists to showcase some of the art used in Modern Masters. I kind of wish they had it out in an area with more traffic but even still, people swung by to check it out.

And now for the spoils. While I may not have come away with the grand prize of $3000 (?), I did come out on top with the cards I did pick up. Combined with my girlfriend's pool, we definitely made our entry fee back. Most notable and profitable was the Tarmogoyf I pulled during the free mini-masters side event. We also got a foil Arcbound Ravager and foil Kira, Great Glass Spinner plus some nice commons and uncommons that are worth a few dollars. In the end, we didn't walk away empty handed and had fun in the process. I can't wait for the next event to roll around in my area because I'll be damn sure to sign up for it.

Brave New World

So a week's gone by and now that all the dust has settled, what do we have to show for it? Maybe a winner or loser? I don't know, but we definitely have some pretty fucking awesome games!

So I was lucky enough to attend E3 this year. The stars aligned and I was able to take a few days off to trek up to LA with my girlfriend and see what the industry had to offer for the coming year. The big deals this year, of course, were the next-gen consoles that Sony and Microsoft had announced earlier this year. Snarky comments and memes aside, both had very impressive line-ups and at least one thing that I was interested in. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of negatives to go around but we can get into that later. Onward to the sweet pictures!

I know E3 is normally about games and I just implied I would be talking about games so starting with action figures is definitely a bait and switch, but these prototypes are so awesome that I had to start with them. Play Arts, a Square Enix brand, has really upped their game with the quality of figures recently. They've done high detail figures for common Square IPs like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts but they also design products for other companies like Konami. They were showing off some new designs for Raiden (MGS2 version) and Liquid Snake (MGS1). And If they end up anywhere near the quality of the recent figures, I'm really looking forward to picking up some more junk to clutter my desk T_T.

I initially ventured over to the Sony booth because I wanted to try out their PS Vita games but got distracted by a little game called Transistor. Holy crap Supergiant Games is a crazy talented group of people. These are guys behind Bastion and with the success of that title, they've begun and seem to be pretty far along on their next game Transistor.

On the surface, it looks similar to Bastion. Isometric, action RPG. Ok, cool. I guess you guys have found your calling. But after playing it, you realize just how different the game is. While you can just go around smacking enemies like any other 3rd person action game, the real game is how you strategically set up your enemies so that you can pause the gameplay and then queue up actions. A seemingly beat'em up game suddenly becomes a strategy and tactical game. I'm really excited to see how this game turns out and will probably be supporting them when it does.

Initially, I hadn't felt very compelled to look into or care about Destiny. I haven't been big on shooters in the last few years and the last shooter that I really got into was probably Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on the PS3. As I write this out, I'm realizing I still don't really care about the usual shooter and what actually gets me going about this game are the RPG and multiplayer elements. I love picking a class at the start of a game and being able to customize them so they feel like they're mine. And then what makes almost any game infinitely better? Making it multiplayer. The demo they had at the Sony Press conference was crazy. Even though it started out a bit slow and felt like we had just been blind sided by a tech demo, once the world boss came into the picture and other parties started pouring in, I was hooked. You can check out the video here.

I'll be honest, video gaming hasn't been that interesting to me in a while. As we crept towards the end of the generation, I felt everything was becoming more and more stale. It didn't help that I had become so preoccupied with Magic but, big picture level, I don't know if actually made that big of difference. With these two new systems slated for this year and the sheer potential they both have, I'm super pumped to get back into console gaming.

This weekend, a few co-workers and I will be heading to Las Vegas for the Grand Prix. It's going to be so disgusting how much card playing is going to happen this weekend. I'll be back next week with musings and pretty pictures to accompany them. See ya :D

Nerdy Events

Can't say I don't enjoy my life. Being in the gaming industry definitely has its perks. Not only do I get to attend industry events like E3 but my company is full of people as nerdy as myself :D

Drafting really is a great thing. It can be a fun and social or strategic and cutthroat format depending on who you play with. Myself, I prefer the fun, social side of things. Why? Well if I already play standard and modern, I only have so much brain power to go around for all that complex thinking. I need my breaks too and choose to play some draft or EDH to get all the jitters out.

Most recently I've been drafting the new set, Modern Masters, just released this weekend. It consists of modern staples so you'll see cards like Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant. Check out the full spoiler here on Wizard's site: Spoiler

From the two drafts I have played so far and the one sealed event, it's increasingly impressive that Wizards was able to add in so many well defined archetypes into one set. You can go U/B Faeries, G/W Tokens, B/W Rebels, U/R Storm, U/W Affinity, and the list just goes on. And even with such a limited set of cards, each of these archetypes feel and play like they should.

But onto the actual games! My first draft was pretty abysmal. I attempted to go Esper Faeires but I made such a noob mistake. I could see what was being passed to me and I knew I should have gone those colors but I really didn't want to go red and forced the U/B/W instead. Well....that led to a 0-3 record. So I'm off to a rocky start but that doesn't shake me.

A few of us head out to a local shop the next day to draft some more. Since we kept what we pulled and I wanted to somewhat break even on a $30 draft, I opted to pull the rares if they were worth anything and not in my colors. Yes, I'm a terrible person but can you really blame me for wanting to get my value out of it?

Anyway, pack 1 was fairly easy for me. The rare was Sarkhan Vol. Pretty playable if you ask me since right out the gate he can buff all your tokens or steal your opponent's giant for some beats. Based off the previous night's draft and what I had been reading online, people aren't really fans of the GR beatdown so it was fairly easy for me to get some solid creatures and tricks. My deck went 3-1 that night and I think I ended in 4th place. Not too shabby.

The sealed that a few friends and I did was much different. We were practicing for the upcoming GP in Vegas so we were playing and giving out opinions very constructively. I LOVE playing this way where everyone is trying to learn rather than win at any cost. I attempted to go for the dredge and retrace deck but just couldn't get the engine going. I was missing key cards and was definitely trying to get the combo going too early, costing me plenty of games. I ended up switching to U/W Affinity and went undefeated with the deck. By the way, Cryptic Command is a pretty good card.....just saying.

I'll be drafting more in the coming days leading up to the GP. I'm not saying I'll be cracking day 2 but I definitely want to give it my all so I can come back and share the deets!

ALSO, I'll be going to E3 this week so for sure I'll be uploading some pictures and talking about my experiences.