May 31, 2019 – Me Vs. Myself and I

I already posted once today, but I thought I should get one more in today due to the fact that I haven’t been writing much of anything lately and want to get my post count for the month up just a bit. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write, I still feel the urge quite often as a matter of fact, but I haven’t been gaming as much either lately, so that makes it harder to have things to share with you. Sometimes these sorts of posts are therapeutic and allow me to gather my thoughts and thereby come to a decision.

So why am I not gaming as much lately? I want to place most of the blame on my work schedule, but I know that’s not entirely true. It is a fact that I work graveyard/early morning hours, so things like sleep have to be done during the day. We also get released at different times each day, though the average is about 10 am. On days when I’m off early, I think about all of the games I could be playing and therefore writing about, but once I’m home and settled I’m usually no longer in the mood. There are days when errands need ran and/or family obligations take up my free time. Sometimes I have visitors and other times I go to little social gatherings. My social life has improved since moving back out here, but that does detract from hobby time. I’m good with a fairly even split, but lately it feels like real life has taken more of a toll and I’m tired and grumpy most of the time, which is probably a drag for those around me. I’m coming to grip with different parts of my life and the changes that have come along with them, and these things take time.

Another part that makes me sad is the lack of frequency in which I play Magic: The Gathering. A couple of years ago I had a regular play group of 3/4 guys and we played once a week, rarely missing — this went on for at least a year or thereabouts. Then one of the guys moved and we were down to two regulars including myself. 1v1 MTG is fine, but it’s not the format we prefer so this meant going to local game stores to try and find more people to play with. We did that for a while and then it too tapered off to the point where we played maybe once a month. We had our third player out a couple of times and went to Vegas last year, but overall my time with the game is down when it comes to actually playing. I do still find the time to make new brews, keep up on news and new sets, and of course write about it — but it’s just not the same. Thankfully my sister and her boyfriend come to visit on occasion so I do still end up playing here and there, and I did make one trip out to play with my old roommate this year; Vegas is also upcoming again this summer. But outside of these rare gatherings I’m not playing much and I want that to change. I’m seriously considering finding an LGS that I can go to more often. Fingers crossed for me.

I think one reason I’m not gaming as much is because I’m not hooked on anything right now. All of the games I own aren’t doing anything for me at present. I know I have a backlog that I have made some progress through but it’s still a tall task. I was playing Destiny 2 pretty regularly but I’ve gotten bored of it, shy of completing Forsaken. There’s already rumors of a Destiny 3 in the works, so there’s the whole prospect of starting all over again by next year and I’m not sure I even want to. I wanted to grab RAGE 2 so I had something new to play on my PC which has been collecting dust lately, but then it ended up with some bad reviews and I just don’t know if it’s worth my $60. Thinking I’ll wait for a sale there. On the horizon are the Crash Team Racing Remake, DOOM Eternal, and Borderlands 3 that I’m definitely into, but they aren’t out yet so that doesn’t help. I’ve been paying attention to my wish list and Steam, we know the Summer Sale is coming soon, and I see that I could grab Battletech or XCOM2’s expansion on the cheap, but I’m not sure I want to do that either. The Steamworld series just got a new entry as well with Steamworld Quest, and that looks pretty good too for the money, but again, my malaise has been sticking for a while.

Perhaps another purge is in order. Just delete the games I’ll never feasibly see the end of and pretend they don’t exist. I’ve done it before and I can do it again. Then perhaps a shorter list will provide some answers. Or maybe I just have to buy my happiness. Whatever the case, thanks for hanging out and listening to me ramble.

Although it’s not a normal set, it’s not quite a masters set either. It’s not standard legal, instead skipping right to Modern legality (but this also means it’s great for EDH). Like Battlebond last year, we’re getting a late spring alternate set that comes with a variety of things you just couldn’t jam into a standard legal set. This one comes out in June, and is called Modern Horizons. It was advertised to have all new cards to Modern, so any of the reprints would have to be legacy cards, but we still managed to get a nice mixture of reprints that are nice and new cards that will work in Modern, EDH, and Limited formats. I’d even think Pauper got a thing or two, but I’m not really up on its meta. As usual, there is a Buy-A-Box promo card, this time being one I’m not thrilled about but I’m sure there are people out there that will want it.

Buy-A-Box:

It’s Flusterstorm! It’s a one mana counterspell that forces an opponent to pay one mana or the spell they cast will be countered. The reason people actually want it is that it has Storm, so if someone starts to “storm off” (playing with a storm deck that specializes is casting many spells quickly) you can use this to stop them in their tracks. As counterspells go, it’s fine, but it’s not a good enough incentive to buy a box. Though I think the set itself does have that sort of value — it’s unfortunate that they cost so much more than a normal box ($250 as opposed to $100). This set brings with it some interesting cards, and as usual I won’t be able to comment on them all, but I thought I would highlight some of the new cycles, new legendary creatures (aka new commanders) and EDH playables.

Force Cycle:

The first new cycle we saw spoilers for was the “force cycle” which includes a new force spell for each of the game’s five colors. They are modeled after the excellent Force of Will, which allows you to discard a blue card to cast it rather than paying its mana cost. It’s great for competitive and casual decks alike. The new blue force spell is to Negate what Force of Will is to Counterspell. Still pretty good but not amazing. The green force is pretty good artifact/enchantment removal for free, so you can blow up that Chain Veil that’s about to go off. The black force is good to slow down an aggro or token deck that puts a lot of creatures down in one turn. Outside of that, the white and red versions are pretty terrible but I wanted to include them nonetheless.

Talisman Cycle Now Complete:

Talismans have been around for a long time, and they are basically Pain Lands on an artifact. For 2 CMC you get an untapped colorless rock, or you can take a damage and get one of two colors. Five of the color combinations existed until now, so the cycle is finally complete. Great for most decks that are running multiple colors, they are damn good rocks and auto includes.

New Legendary Creatures:

Next up, new Legendary creatures. I was really impressed with these, and we got one of each color along with a WUBRG and Colorless option. Technically our White and Colorless options count as WUBRG commanders as well, but for all intents and purposes they’ve spread the love around pretty well. I was most interested in Morophon initially, as he looks like a cool commander for changelings and shapeshifters but he also can slam right into Jodah and between the two of them you’re casting spells for free — this makes the creature another omnipotence, which I’ve already got in the deck. Then The First Sliver was spoiled and holy shit! Slivers already looked like a pretty strong tribe, and then this guy comes out with Cascade and gives all of his homies cascade too! What the actual fuck? Too bad he’s already speculated to cost $40 and the older legendary Slivers are more than that. I’m so-so on Sisay… seems good but I’m just not into that style of commander, the same goes for Bear tribal, Urza and Yawgmoth. It’s cool that they got legendary cards finally, but I don’t really care. Now when it comes to Pashalik Mons on the other had, I completely approve! I have a Krenko goblin deck already, and I threw the recently released new version of Krenko in the deck, but this guy also deserves a slot. I still think that Krenko is the better commander, but you essentially only infinite mana to win the game in combination with this card. So another tool for the goblin deck is coming, and I can’t wait to use it!

EDH Playables:

These cards are all the best ones I saw while spoilers rolled out for the last couple of weeks. Honestly there are only a few here that I really can’t wait to get my hands on, but I can see that some of these are great additions to decks that I don’t play but I know people who do. There are two new swords that are part of a cycle that is also not yet complete, but they didn’t end up putting all 5 that were needed in the set. Out of these two, the Sword of Truth and Justice is really good… Sinew and Steel is less so but could be good in certain decks. Winds of Abandon is a new Cyclonic Rift in white, but it will ramp the shit out of your opponents so you’ll want to be carefull how you use it… Perhaps an Armageddon is in order afterwards. The Ninja at the top is pretty amazing, and there were a handful of others in this set, which means Yuriko just got some new toys and Ninjas are a more viable tribe now. There are some other great cards here, so take a look. Remember, reading the card explains the card!

Lands:

Finally, we have lands. For whatever reason WotC decided it was a good time to bring Snow-Covered lands back, which haven’t seen printing since the Ice Age set. This means there are other cards in the set that reference “snow permanents” and some mana costs or ability costs require snow covered lands to activate/play. Another new cycle are these dual lands that allow you to use them immediately but cost you life. They seem okay for EDH but not so great otherwise. However, you can sacrifice them for card draw so that’s okay. Otherwise we have a fetch land that fetches basics, which is weird but could be effective if you can bring it back from the graveyard and you run enough basics to make it worthwhile. And then we have The Hall of Heliod’s Generosity, which will allow you to return enchantments from the graveyard but you have to be playing white to use it. Enchantment recursion is a bit limited so this is great for enchantress decks. That’s about it for this set preview, I’m looking forward to getting some new tools soon!