Month: September 2017

By The Numbers: Week 4, 2017

Izlain2 Comments

I was unable to watch football this past Sunday due to a prior engagement (I went to that Ixalan pre-release I recently wrote about) but despite that fact I was still following the game on the Packers app on my phone. I remember looking at the score from time to time and thinking that we were going to lose the game, particularly when I saw it was the 2 minute warning and we were still down. The next time I looked, it seemed we had won in overtime. I watched the highlights later that evening and though it was a rough start, that was a hell of a comeback and a hard fought win. I loved it, and wished I could have watched. Goes to show that it really isn’t over until it’s over. This week we host the Bears on Thursday night, so I’ll be getting to watch that game once I get home from work. It’s an important divisional matchup, but the all time series between the two teams is tied at 94 wins a piece, so it will be interesting to see if the Packers can take the all-time lead after this week. I’m betting they’ll do it. The Bears have only beaten the Pack with Rodgers under center four times, and one of those times was after they broke his collar bone and he missed most of the game. Here’s hoping something like that doesn’t happen again!

It was brought to my attention that I should probably go over the picks I made the week before in each week’s column, and actually that’s something I used to do. I think I ended up getting lazy about tabulating the results, and that’s why it’s just been picks for the last year or however long it’s been since I was doing that on the regular. I’m not going to worry about scores, just whether or not I picked the correct team to win. So let’s go over my picks from last week and see how I did:

Rams 24, 49ers 20 – Correct
Ravens 21, Jags 17 
Broncos 27, Bills 14
Panthers 30, Saints 27
Steelers 24, Bears 7
Lions 27, Falcons 23
Colts 31, Browns 20 – Correct
Buccs 27, Vikings 20
Patriots 28, Texans 21 – Correct
Dolphins 23, Jets 13
Eagles 24, Giants 7 – Correct
Titans 20, Seahawks 9 – Correct
Packers 30, Bengals 14 – Correct
Chiefs 28, Chargers 17 – Correct
Raiders 35, Redskins 20
Cardinals 27, Cowboys 19

So as you can see, I correctly predicted 7 games, and was wrong about 9. Not great, but not terrible. At least I got my game correct, and that’s what counts! So for week 4, here are my picks:

Packers 30, Bears 20
Saints 27, Dolphins 20
Titans 24, Texans 10
Jags 24, Jets 10
Patriots 30, Panthers 24
Lions 21, Vikings 13
Bills 27, Falcons 23
Steelers 24, Ravens 17
Bengals 20, Browns 6
Cowboys 28, Rams 21
Eagles 31, Chargers 17
Buccs 27, Giants 21
Cardinals 24, 49ers 14
Raiders 26, Broncos 24
Seahawks 19, Colts 13
Chiefs 32, Redskins 17

We’ll see how good I do next week. I’ll try to keep this up for the rest of the season and see how much of a sage I really am at the end of it all.

TWR: My First Pre-Release (Ixalan)

Izlain

This past weekend saw the Pre-Release events for Ixalan take place at LGS’s around the world. Despite having returned to the game about a year ago, and having played plenty in years past, I had never taken part in a single game at a store versus strangers, nor in a sanctioned event. It was something that had been on my mind since returning, but I just hadn’t managed to go yet. The guys in my playgroup have gone to a few that I know of, so they had filled me in on how things go and I was still intrigued. A while back we purchased pre-release kits off of Amazon when Amonkhet released, creating our own makeshift pre-release event. Finally, this weekend I made it to my first official event, and got to see how it works first hand.

Ixalan officially releases on Friday, but at a pre-release you get your hands on a few packs of the new set, get to build a 40 card deck and play several rounds (best of threes) against whoever happens to show up. My friends and I went to the 1 pm event on Sunday and it was pretty fun. I enjoyed having the experience, though I understand that I am more of a constructed player, so I wasn’t going into the thing expecting to win all of my games. I have kept up on spoilers so I knew some of the cards that I was looking for, and did end up getting a few (though none of the good vampires I want for my Edgar Markov deck, boo). Another special treat for attending is a sealed foil rare card that has the pre-release dates printed on it. Sort of a cool way to commemorate things, though it’s random so sometimes you get something less desirable. I ended up with this guy:

He’s not bad, though sort of expensive. I think he would have worked fairly well in an EDH dinosaur deck, but a bit expensive when it comes to a more standard-like format. I think I played him once in all of my games. When we arrived at the store, it was just about start time, so we paid for our kits and went about cracking packs and building our decks. I finished fairly quickly, because after I pulled my best cards from the packs, I had to clear build arounds:

Pirates don’t seem all that interesting to me, but again, I play from the standpoint of wanting to build new EDH decks or add cards to my existing ones. I’m not currently playing standard or modern, so if it isn’t going somewhere EDH related then I’m pretty much over it. It seems that there are more pirates from previous sets than there are dinosaurs (they technically didn’t exist until now, though they did some errata on a dozen or so cards to make them part of the tribe) but I don’t really like the theme. They tend to center around stealing stuff or creating treasure artifact tokens that can be sacrificed for mana. This is similar to the Clue mechanic, but those artifact tokens were sacrificed to draw cards. Regardless, these mechanics don’t seem all that great, and I just built a Grixis commander in Marchesa, so I didn’t want to do the same colors again. I feel like Gishath is a great commander idea, but unfortunately the tribe support isn’t really there just yet — trust me, I already tried to figure one out and it seems to fall flat. I think we’ll have to wait for the second block of Ixalan to get enough dinos to really make a deck. I assume by then there might be some better pirate options as well. But I’m getting off topic.

I pulled the cards above out of my packs and looked through the rest of my cards. I ended up feeling like I had a decent deck formed around Dinosaurs so of course I ran the Avatar as well. I only managed to play him once, and still lost that game, but he’s a fun card nonetheless and more exploitable in EDH. Can’t wait to see if he can be a thing someday. As our rounds started, I played through four separate opponents before the event was done. I didn’t have the best day, but I managed to get a win in the final round. My overall scoring went like so:

  • Round 1: Went 1-2 (loss)
  • Round 2: Went 0-2 (loss)
  • Round 3: Went 1-2 (loss)
  • Round 4: Went 2-1 (win)

Individually the only round that was attrocious was the second. I couldn’t get all three colors of mana out and ended up being killed quickly. In the first two rounds I played against mirror decks, though only one of those players had a Gishath in the deck, they were both playing 3-color dinos. The 3rd round was played against the only guy in the store that was clearly older than us, and he had an Orzhov vampire deck (exactly what I wanted to play but lacked the cards to do so). I managed to win the first game but then lost the second and in the third I should have won but a well timed land destruction spell kept me from being able to play Gishath for the win. In the final round I played against this gentleman’s daughter who had a rough day like myself. She surprised me with a mill strategy for the first win (this is the only game I played Gishath and still lost) but I managed to tie things up and we were amid our third game when the time for the round ran out. Officially there are only a few turns left after that, but since we were the last game still going, the shopkeep let us finish it up. I finally scored my win, and was given a participation pack, along with another pack for it being my first event.

Overall it was a fun experience but I really only was in it for the cards. I think perhaps another time I’ll try again but for now I’m cool with the limited format. What I’d like to do now is go to a random Commander night and see what other sorts of decks are out there. So it looks like Ixalan has some cool cards in it, but overall it’s another set where I’ll buy a few packs and then buy up the desired singles and call it a day.

Thoughts on Star Trek Online – PS4 Edition

Izlain

So as I mentioned recently in my post about Secret World Legends, I was sort of feeling like playing an MMO again. I’ve also been pretty clear about my love/hate relationship with the genre, so I won’t go deeper into that. Suffice it to say that I saw SWL and downloaded it on a whim. I have yet to play it again though, so just like most games, I wasn’t instantly hooked and playing it on the regular. This will probably be a thing for many years to come, because I am just short on time and sometimes attention span. Thankfully I have some of these more passive hobbies like blogging, where I can relax and not really worry about anything except putting the thoughts onto the page. But I digress.

I was browsing the Playstation Store the other day for something completely unrelated (which I can’t recall at the moment exactly what that was) and came upon some of the Free to Play MMO choices they have. I am constantly looking for free or low cost games I can play with my best friend who is now a couple of hours away — it helps keep us in each others’ loops so to speak. I’m responsible for finding games like SMITE, Paladins, and Killing Floor 2 for us to play (this guy doesn’t even check the free games section for his plus games every month). A while back Skyforge was put up on the store, and before that games like Marvel Heroes, Neverwinter and Star Trek Online made appearances as well. I had actually played every single one of those games on my PC long before they were ported over to the console, but my friend only has a PS4, no gaming PC to speak of, so here we are. I made him download Skyforge but he wasn’t into (that’s okay, I wasn’t really either) and we played Marvel Heroes a bit but it’s been a while. I thought something with a little depth might be fun and keep us playing together more often, without it being a PvP game where sometimes you get frustrated and end the night early. He’s also a big fan of Star Trek, so I thought this might work out well for us and downloaded it a few nights ago. Unfortunately he said he had already tried it and didn’t care for it either, but I remember feeling that way when I played it on PC as well.

For some reason though, it feels at home on a console. This isn’t DC Universe where it was created with a console port in mind, but it still was a well done port. The controls are fluid and easy to manage, and it’s not a chore sorting through menus. Granted, this isn’t the game that has a shit ton of inventory management or real use for a ton of menus, so that bodes well for a port. Still, it has MMO depth but translated well.

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I’ve enjoyed the away missions just fine, but the space combat is where things really shine. It reminds me of a cooler version of Pirates of the Burning Sea, which I played for a while when it launched (I don’t know if that’s an insult or a compliment). I mean, that game too had land missions that were wonky and stupid, but blowing shit up in your pirate ship was pretty cool. It did get boring after a while though. I’m hoping my love for Star Trek is enough to keep me interested here.

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I imagine you spend a pretty comparable amount of time in both space and on the ground, but I look forward to getting better ships and seeing more epic battles. I can’t imagine what raid or dungeon content would look like in space, though the ground stuff would be predictable enough. Hell, I’m not even sure how grouping and end-game stuff works at this point, but I’m sure I’ll find out sooner or later. This was downloaded on a whim, so I didn’t really look into it and wasn’t expecting to enjoy it more on the console than PC.

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Speaking of, I believe it’s the same company that made Neverwinter, and I remember not caring for that on PC either. Perhaps I’ll give it a whirl as well. It’s a shame having a gaming rig go to waste while you play shit on your 1/3 cost console, but I guess having fun is the most important part. So far I rather enjoy this MMO, and plan to play it some more — so we’ll have more on this later!

By The Numbers: Week 3, 2017

Izlain2 Comments

Week 2 most definitely didn’t go as I expected. Starting off slow again, the Packers went from a 7-7 tie vs. the Falcons, to a ten point deficit rather quickly. This wasn’t insurmountable though, and shouldn’t have been the end of the game but due to a TERRIBLE offensive pass interference call, we had a first down play called back and then a few snaps later, there was a forced throw that turned into an interception and points for the Falcons. We still had a chance after this to climb back into the game, but another poor throw while being hit was ruled a lateral and gave the Falcons even more points. Some valiant efforts late in the game made it appear to be closer than it was, but shitty officiating cost us that one. I don’t care about losing the 2nd game of the season though, plenty of teams are 1-1 at this point, and 1-1 is better than 0-2. It’s not the end of the world, but we can expect to see the Falcons again later in the playoffs, so hopefully next time things will be firing on all cylinders by then.

This week the Packers face off against the Bengals, whose arrow doesn’t really seem to be pointing up. I’d assume that we’ll be able to take them down and head into week four 2-1. Here are the rest of my picks:

Rams 24, 49ers 20
Ravens 21, Jags 17
Broncos 27, Bills 14
Panthers 30, Saints 27
Steelers 24, Bears 7
Lions 27, Falcons 23
Colts 31, Browns 20
Buccs 27, Vikings 20
Patriots 28, Texans 21
Dolphins 23, Jets 13
Eagles 24, Giants 7
Titans 20, Seahawks 9
Packers 30, Bengals 14
Chiefs 28, Chargers 17
Raiders 35, Redskins 20
Cardinals 27, Cowboys 19

Thoughts on Secret World Legends

Izlain2 Comments

This is one of those rare instances where I’ve had a post sitting in my drafts folder for a while and didn’t get around to finishing it up to post. I have a few spare moments now, so I thought I’d do just that.

So a while back I mentioned having downloaded Secret World Legends on a whim, as it is now a free to play title and it’s on Steam so it was easy to get it on my system and start it up. I didn’t spend a ton of time with it so far, and actually haven’t had the time to play it over the past couple of weeks, with having other games like FF15 and Diablo 3 taking up some of my time, and things like Football being back on means less time to game (but more time to drink brews!). I did manage to make it through the tutorial section of the game and I fully intend on getting back to it, but you know me… always wandering.

I was able to run the game on max settings with no problems. It’s not a bad looking game, though some of the early cut scenes are kind of shitty. Some of the animations are wonky. The combat is a bit on the wonky side too, but veterans say it’s actually more streamlined and better overall at this point. I’ll take their word for it, but it’s more action oriented than tab-targeting, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I liked the idea of Wildstar’s combat being more “twitchy” and this feels like a sort of middle ground between WS and more traditional auto-attacking while standing in place MMO combat.

The storyline is what drew me to the game, and that’s likely what will keep me playing it. Regular readers will know that I’m not huge on MMOs anymore, and honestly most of the time I’d rather dig into the past by playing old loves like Everquest than play something new where it’s more of the same but less familiar and thereby less desirable.

I’m intrigued by the way this is set in a more modern day setting and yet still manages to mix in Cthulhu-esque horror. The behind the scenes of the real world subplot has me wanting to find out more. Some more tedious bits see you having to solve puzzles, but many MMOs in the past have done this so it isn’t really a turnoff. It does feel more like a single player game that you can occasionally play with friends (think Destiny) but that isn’t a bad thing either, because I’m terrible and sticking to any sort of schedule when it comes to these games. That’s not to say that I don’t always come back around and want to play an MMO, it just seems I’m always doing it after that game is no longer popular or past it’s new expansion window so it ends up being a solo experience. That or I get sick of it after a few hours, never to return. Maybe some day I’ll actually play through the entirety of another MMO, but I’m not sure this will be the title to get me to do so. There’s another I’ve tried recently but am saving that for another post. So for now, here are some random screen caps, and we’ll call it a day:

As I said, I’ll be back to talk about this other MMO I’ve dabbled with, and perhaps one of these will actually see some regular playtime. If not, there’s always Diablo or the backlog. Until next time, happy gaming!