I don't even know that I have enough cards of that variety to put together a balanced cube, given my tendency towards giving cards away that I won't use or that aren't in my flavor-of-the-month colors. Still, it sounds pretty neat.
Anyway, so today is Josh's and my 7th anniversary- and from here, only 7 and a half months until the wedding! I'm pretty excited, I've got pretty much all of our vendors lined up and gotten the ball rolling there- the only thing I still need to figure out is where to hire an ASL interpreter for the ceremony.
We're not able to celebrate our anniversary today, though- I just got off work, and we seriously need to do laundry and do some shopping before we do anything else. But we will be getting away for dinner and a movie this weekend. I think we may be heading into "old couple" territory, because the dinner and movie notion is like, waaay too exciting for me at this point. We never seem to be able to get much time with just the two of us anymore, and we just don't have the energy or interest in anything much wilder anymore. One night last week we actually went to bed at 8:30pm. It's pretty sad.
Anyway, don't have much else to contribute to the Cube conversation- except one thing- Alacar, you said you use some Un cards? Which sort of Un cards do you think are fair game for general play? Some are obviously too wacky or gimmicky to make for fair play outside a decidely Un game, but for regular casual play, what sort of Un cards are playable?
Which ones are even sort of good? And which ones can become problematic in a casual environment due to power levels? Just curious.
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[16:23] Alacar Leoricar: maybe if you do it'll make the porn more meaningful
Josh, thanks for filling me in, I figured it was one of those things where nothing is really clear at this point in the game I guess I'll have to see how it goes when I get ahold of Persona 4... Anybody know how much it's going for these days???
EDIT: Yay, 3,800th post!!
It will clear up. You actually have a good deal of game left, you are sort of entering the last stretch here and it will all be a lot clearer.
P4 was 40 dollars when it was new, so a year later, you should be able to find it used for ... not too bad. Hard to say how much, but I'm willing to bet you can pick it up for about 20 bucks in the right place. I really recommend it. I loved P3, but P4 is easily one of my favorite games of all time. It has so much charm. I get all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it.
Edit:
... the HELL, Stuff!?
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[16:23] Alacar Leoricar: maybe if you do it'll make the porn more meaningful
Ok that makes sense.. And another thing I was wondering.... obviously spoiler this too, but what the devil was the deal with the chairman? I know he was bad but what was he trying to do? Or was that not clear to anyone at this point in the game??
Yeah I enjoy those kind of routine based games... When you say P4 is more streamlined, what do you mean by that, exactly? Also, for games like this one, what are other games you'd recommend I try that have a similar "feel" ? Most RPGs end up frustrating me and making me drop them and I never end up picking them up again because of how annoying it was/is to remember where I was/what I was doing, and so on and so forth...
Also, how long is the second part of Persona 3? The Answer?
I can't say a whole lot without spoiling future events for you, but basically, he wants to bring about the end of the world because he basically thinks the world is sick. That's about all I can say at this point.
Persona 4 has a friendlier combat system, and a lot of the catches in P3's system are ironed out. Persona 4, mechanically, is like Persona 3 with all the annoying bits taken out. You can control your allies in combat, you have a relationship meter with all your allies, not just the girls you can date, your relationship meter actually impacts combat (people with high affection for you will save you from attacks that will kill you), the attack properties are better balanced and there are fewer of them, and it is easier to budget your time, since you can do dungeon exploration in the afternoon. There is very little dead time in P4, you can pretty much find something to do every day.
Furthermore, Persona 4 has more challenging battles, but at the same time is more forgiving- basically, it makes fights more dangerous, but gives you options and interface aspects that make it easier for you to deal with that difficulty. So basically, the difficulty kind of evens out, and you are left with battles that are rewarding and strategic without being aggravatingly difficult or overly punitive. P3 has battles that can be hard, but many of them are just ... well, they pull punches. And then, with most other Megaten games, they don't even care, the battles will crush you mercilessly, but you never feel a lack of challenge. So P4 kinda of gives you a happy medium.
As far as other RPGs that are like P3 and P4, I can't really think of any offhand. The Persona series on a whole is pretty unique, conceptually, but 3 and 4 are radically different not only from the rest of the series, but from most other games in their genre. They're pretty unique. Josh says that the Mana-Khemia games are supposed to be a bit like them, but having not played them, I don't really know how accurate that is.
As for how long The Answer is... honestly, I don't know! I've only played the original P3, I've never actually played through FES. It's supposed to be a good 20 hours, though, I believe. It's also pretty difficult, from what Josh tells me.
Yeah I'm really loving that game... I borrowed it from a friend, and I go for spiels of time where either I play nonstop, or I don't play it for ages... but it's the kind of game where you can kind of go "oh THAT's where I was...." even if you haven't played it in a while.. Sometimes I just got so frustrated I put it down for months at a time, but I'm freaking determined to finish it... One thing that annoys me is the (granted they're few) cutscenes that don't have captioning.. the ones that are kind of cartoony, like anime... Fortunately Brad was there with me when Shinji died, so I could kiiiinda catch what happened there.... Actually maybe you can explain, what exactly happened there? Who killed him?
Yeah, i've noticed that about the full moon shadows.. I was expecting a helluva lot of challenge from the 12th shadow, but I was like 'that's it? really?'
Choosing a group to go up to Tartarus with me can be fun and annoying/irritating at the same time... Now I've gotten to the point where I try to choose the people who seem more underpowered and bring them up with me, along with a couple people who are up to par, that way usually they can get up to par too... most of the time..
Dammit, talking about this makes me want to go home and play it... lol.
EDIT: Actually, Persona 3 is one of the first games that I've really felt motivated to finish all the way through, and that I actually feel like maybe i actually WILL accomplish that..
Oh and I forgot to mention, but I think you already knew, a while back when you were asking about your wedding, and who will be coming.. you can count on me and Brad to go, providing finances and everything else lines up at that point... jobwise shouldn't be a problem since it's on the weekend, but we'll see. At this point I'm still saying/thinking that we WILL be there.
Unlike a lot of RPGs, Megaten in particular, P3 and P4 are easy to pick up after putting them down for a bit, because of the way they play. You never end up stuck in a dungeon, you always know where you are because of the calendar, and you tend to have a routine, so it is a good game for that.
Most of the anime cutscenes don't have a ton of voice acting, fortunately, so you aren't missing too, too much- you do miss some, but they are used pretty sparingly.
Spoiling this, for obvious reasons- When Ken is trying to get his revenge on Shinjiro for killing his mother, Takaya shows up and tries to shoot Ken. Shinjiro jumps in the way and takes the bullet, and that's what kills him.
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[16:23] Alacar Leoricar: maybe if you do it'll make the porn more meaningful
Photon: Oh, just the whole "We beat the 12th Shadow.. now it's over... Oh wait, the chairman was evil..." bit
and that last boss was actually pretty easy, compared to the Wheel of Fortune one..
Oh, hahaha, yeah. Not to spoil, but prepare yourself for a lot more craziness after that.
Some of the full moon shadows are a joke, and then some are just outlandishly powerful if you go in unprepared. I can't remember which one it was, since I haven't played it for a good while, but one of them just absolutely trounced me. So I take it you are enjoying the game then?
You might really enjoy Persona 4 once you finish it- Persona 4 is a lot like 3, only more streamlined, with a very engaging story, a bit more variety, and (in my opinion) a more engaging cast.
Anyway, after 4 hours of recording with/for Blaine Woodturtle, my throat and mouth are completely trashed! My jaws ache, and my voice is all scratchy... voice acting is pretty exhausting work!
I just watched Star Trek III and IV today, that was fun, plus played some more Persona 3... thought maybe I could beat it today, but no, it threw me for a spin... *sigh*.
What was the problem?
Didn't really get to play EDH this weekend, couldn't get a decent game going, ended playing 1v1 with Josh, which really isn't the same. Still, I pulled a foil Warren Instigator from a random booster I picked up, which made my Ib deck happy.
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[16:23] Alacar Leoricar: maybe if you do it'll make the porn more meaningful
@Photon: cube is fun, but a real chore to put together and balance. Did you know if you have a sleeved cube, you have to also have sleeved basic lands? We didn't, and we were on our way to a cube debut, when we realized this and had to make a detour to the game store to buy 400 spankin new sleeves. In the same iridescent beetle-green as the cube sleeves. Yuck.
Ugh. That sounds awful. We've been avoiding sleeving in EDH just because no one wants to go out and buy a bunch of matching sleeves (it may just be me, but it seems like most of the time, the only sleeves they have come in packs of 40, and they don't have more than 1 or 2 of the same kind at the store at any one time, making it impossible to have a fully sleeved EDH deck that matches). Cube sounds like it is probably something to try eventually, but to be really honest, it sounds like a lot of work for one person, and I can't see anyone else I play with taking a lot of interest in doing one.
Today is Friday, and that means Planechase EDH with the broz.
Same for me! I'm looking forward to it, although I don't know that anyone else in the group is. I'm going to run by the game store later and pick up some boosters, I think, too. Last night I pulled a foil Hellkite Charger and a lot of crap, so I was kinda disappointed and was hoping my luck would be better today.
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[16:23] Alacar Leoricar: maybe if you do it'll make the porn more meaningful
Really? Photon and Crimson Avatar were not around that often lately too?
Yeah, I haven't been here in over a year, and prior to that, my posting was sporadic, a few posts every few months or so. I really haven't been around in some time.
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[16:23] Alacar Leoricar: maybe if you do it'll make the porn more meaningful
Honestly, I don't really know what you mean by "final destination, etc." But there are definitely some of the benefits you mention, like being able to remove the chaff from Limited and getting more mileage out of what you already own instead of buying new. There's also other things to it, such as there is usually only one copy of each card in the cube and the cube usually has 30+% more cards in it than actually get drafted, so every card is equally rare and the play experience varies widely because you never know what's going to show up.
I haven't had much experience with it, but if you want to build your own my piece of advice is to keep things like hard counters and removal at a premium. I've played multiplayer cube where nothing ever happens because every time someone plays something relevant, somebody at the table is holding removal or a counterspell.
It's a Smash Bros. meme, where very serious competitive players will often preface a match by stating they will only play as Fox in the stage Final Destination with items turned off. Fox is a very versatile character, typically considered to be one of the highest tier characters, and thus the best to display how skilled of a player you are. The stage Final Destination is small, basic, and gimmick free, leaving the focus on the match on the combat, and with no items, there is no random element to interfere with the match. Basically, it takes everything that is fun and unique about SSB (tons of different characters, low entry curve, unpredictable game play, unusual stages that can swing the tide of a match all over the place, a casual environment) and removes them. Shorthand- it means someone who considers a game to be very serious business, to the point where they end up tossing aside a good 75% or more of the game's features because they don't contribute to their desired environment for testing their skill.
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[16:23] Alacar Leoricar: maybe if you do it'll make the porn more meaningful
In a nutshell, it's a large stack of cards hand-picked from your entire collection to draft from. Generally every card included is at the top of the power curve, but you can make it any way you want to.
So it is sort of like drafting, but for people who are too cheap to buy boosters and/or people who want to draft but are too "FINAL DESTINATION, FOX ONLY, NO ITEMS" to run the risk of possibly drafting Moonlace?
That sounds kinda cool. Will have to try that sometime.
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[16:23] Alacar Leoricar: maybe if you do it'll make the porn more meaningful
Photon Eater: I'm sorry about not being more sure about coming yet. I want to. If I do, I'll bring my Wii and my party games. I know we'll have fun.
I'm told by Craig that if you do come, we have to opt for the strip club option. Don't worry about it too much, just make sure if you are coming you let me know with some advance- ideally a couple of months, but to be quite honest, in specific circumstances, even a couple of weeks is fine. I just don't want to set a precedent, but one or two people isn't a big deal. The only thing I worry about is accommodations, given that I have a lot of out of town guests coming, and it is prime wedding/graduation party season, and our little town only has so much available room- and I'm already putting up more people than I am really comfortable with, to be totally honest. But hopefully you can come, that would be fun.
Also, how about making a Cube, Photon Eater? That way you can play with your junk cards in a limited format.
I have no idea what a Cube is, and frankly, I'm too lazy to Google it.
By the way, guys... I'm writing to you from TOKYO. It's a cool place, I hear.
Thanks for taking five minutes away from your busy schedule of buying things out of every used pantie machine in Kabukicho to keep us in the loop, Ace.
This gave quite a lot of vivid imagery involving stopwatches, and celebratory exclamations of "Yeah! In your face!" being unusually literal.
There is also a trophy and an international leaderboard.
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[16:23] Alacar Leoricar: maybe if you do it'll make the porn more meaningful
*blinks in* Just came back from the Exiled zone. Crappy place to be but I'm back now. Well, whatever really counts as back.
What is this, Time Spiral?
Since I don't really know how it's being planned I think the safest thing for me to say is try to make it so that it speaks to who you most are (or at the very least who you want to be). Course... those choices would be hard to choose from anyway...
That's my problem: who I am is equal parts strip club and Saproling tokens.
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[16:23] Alacar Leoricar: maybe if you do it'll make the porn more meaningful
I've always loved the idea of building decks from crappy cards, like a reject rare draft or some such. Part of why I love playing Limited is just about any card can make the cut and you play with the whole set, not just the most powerful 25%.
I've never had the opportunity to play Limited, but it's always appealed to me for that reason. Call me crazy, but if I am going to spend money on a pack with 15 cards in it, I should be able to use at LEAST 12 of them on a theoretical level, you know? The closest experience I have had to Limited was running some Sealed for Academy on MWS, and that was a lot of fun.
* Yukora runs, jumps, flies, and glomps Mamelon to death
Welcome back. We missed you.
Oh, I see how it is. I come back, I get a nod of the head, a tip of the hat. Maybe next time I disappear and then return, I'll come back with hooters and see how you respond, mister.
I demand chaotic Planechase EDH as a pre-wedding activity. Now, if only there's a way to turn it into a strip format....
Okay, you want to know the sad thing- one of the first things I thought was "hey, we could do Magic as a game at the pre-wedding party!" Then I was filled with deep shame. I'm still trying to figure out just what to do with the pre-party. A lot of it depends on when the out of town guests get into town, and how much time I can get off of work. Part of me wants to do something safe and inclusive for everyone, part of me wants to do something tacky like hit a strip club as a group, part of me wants to do something really nerdy like MTG and D&D and Smash Bros. Also, part of me is really just trying to figure out which option is the cheapest and which group of guests I don't mind excluding from the fun to satisfy that part of myself.
Strip EDH is easy enough. Whenever you take General damage, you take something off. Obviously, that shifts the metagame towards small, cheap evasive Generals and means some perv will spend most of the time trying to figure out how to give Isamaru, Hound of Konda shadow.
My husband and I made up a 'sexual favors' version of Magic. He is bad at it for some reason, so each time we play that version of Magic he always loses, though I'm not sure he sees it that way.
That sounds like a horrible idea for me, as I am much more competitive at sex than I am at Magic.
Thanks, Craig.... I was wondering if any of y'all who see me on Facebook would say something... kinda glad you did, Tanth.
*sigh* So commences the bad news.. Yesterday I found out that I lost my job.. Well, I'm being able to stay here for the next month... Friday, November 6th will be my last day. They're encouraging me to look for a new job within the University, and they would understand if I have to go out for interviews and the like.. To be honest, I kind of knew this was coming at some point.. I wasn't really happy in this job, and people could tell that my heart was not in it, really... and so I just... but still, it's a shock that it happened yesterday... I had some weird dreams last night... and I'm just kind of mulling over what this means exactly... how much I should tell people... I'm the kind of person who wants people to know, so that I can, and they can, enjoy our time while it lasts... i don't know, it's just....a surprise, and at the same time not so much of one, for me... I mean.. i don't know, I just feel kind of... I'm reeling still.
I've got this Dialectical Behavior Therapy class this afternoon.. i'm trying to decide if I should still go to it or not.. i dunno, I guess it'll depend on how I feel.. I'm not sure... blehhh...... I feel like crap, really...
I haven't really been on Facebook a whole lot the past few days due to work, so I must have missed the update. I'm really sorry, I know that the job was a big deal for you, and obviously having a job in our current economy is very important. Plus, everything else that sucks about the situation. I hope everything works out okay. I'm sure you'll land on your feet, you seem to do that more often than not. Still, I am sorry to hear about this, and I hope you feel better about it soon.
Anyway, just killing time over lunch at work here. Looking forward to coming home, we're running D&D this weekend and hopefully playing EDH with some people on Friday. I've been trying to get other players I know turned onto the format, especially those that I know have sort of abandoned the game due to how ugly and competitive the local meta got right around the time I quit. I think I have at least 2 interested. I'm also trying to plan a party of some sort for an Operation Christmas Child event and being frustrated by a lack of available weekends. I hate planning crap with people I know. They always have something going on- someone always has work, or is going out of town, or has previous obligations, or has the swine flu, or some crap excuse. It really messes with my whole solipsist view of reality in which people do not exist unless I am giving them some sort of attention.
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[16:23] Alacar Leoricar: maybe if you do it'll make the porn more meaningful
I'm tired of having people steal my General and beat me down with it. Taking general damage from your own guy is just ......
So I've started playing Brooding Saurian instead of another fatty they can steal. So what happens? Someone Threatened it away and smacked me for 4 then sacced it to Predator Dragon. :/
I agree the goats are delicious.
Ugh! But you do have to admit, that is sort of funny, though. Dying to your own general is probably the sort of thing that is cute once, but then never again. Sort of like when someone casts Temporal Extortion in Izzet Steam Maze and everyone's life totals go to hell. I have no idea if the card actually works in that situation or not, but we decided to run it that way. Made me laugh, but never again.
The goats are awesome, everyone cheers when we get into Goldmeadow. Last night, Josh send a creature to the graveyard with Grave Pact out, and so my sister had to sac something. She wasn't sure what to do, so since I was already dead and out of the game, I just nudged her and said "just sacrifice one of your goats." She just looked at me and says:
"My friends at church were right, this game is Satanic!"
You are the active player, so you get to choose the order in which the akki ability, plane triggered ability, and the Furnace triggered ability stack.
It's not cheating if you apply the triggers in the optimal order to max your damage when you have priority to do so.
I think playing with you would be hilarious fun. EDH players are generally (pun intended) a more laid-back crowd with better social instincts than the average type 2 gunner. And playing with mostly Fallen Empires cards gives you a lot of ironman street cred in the "Hey Look I can have Fun with Crappy Cards Too" department.
It takes a fair bit of maturity and a decent collection to put together a highlander deck. It takes balls to the wall and a bit of insanity to enjoy fielding a mono-red EDH led by Norin the Wary.
I don't have a lot of my Fallen Empires anymore, though, which makes me really sad. You know, say what you will about it, but I loved that set as a kid. Especially all the thallids. I was ALL about them, even though I think I only marginally understood how they worked at age 12. God, what I wouldn't give to go back to a time when Thorn Thallid was awesome.
Having fun with crappy cards is the heart of the game, if you ask me. It's fine to play with good cards- good cards are good, after all, hence the term "good cards", but there is something very satisfying about dropping a completely mediocre piece of binder chaff to the table and doing fun things with it, you know? Beating someone down with a Darksteel Colossus you Tinkered into play? That's effective, and can be pretty cool, but beating someone down with a Combat Medic equipped with a Loxodon Warhammer and Tatsumasa the Dragon's Fang is something of beauty.
Haha, I actually spent some time trying to figure out how one could effectively use Norin as a general. I failed, obviously, but I would love to see someone do it.
Last night, I played 4 player Planechase EDH, and it was really a lot of fun. Josh and M played with us, too, and it seems like everyone liked it. Josh ran Lyzolda, I ran Ib again, M ran Experiment Kraj, and the fourth player was our 16 year old sister who has played all of two games of Magic in her entire life- once when she was at a laundromat with us and was bored, and once when she found a copy of Autocthon Wurm and was like "Can I make a deck with this? It looks fun!" She ran Tolsimir Wolfsblood, and she actually ended up coming in first at the end of the night. It was crazy.
The planar aspect really seemed to break up the tension and add a lot of swing. The first round of the game, we started in Skybreen, and ended up getting two chaos effects in a row, making everyone but the first two players take 14 damage (the first two players, having made land drops, ate only 12 damage). We then spent the next two rounds frantically attempting to shift away. It seems like getting into planes like Sokenzan and Undercity Reaches really makes the game move very quickly and makes people much more aggressive, even with slower decks, which was a lot of fun. We ended the game in Goldmeadow, which everyone loved. Endless chump blocking and lots of reasons for people to make stupid jokes and bleat like sheep is a good thing! All in all, a lot of fun!
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Anyway, so today is Josh's and my 7th anniversary- and from here, only 7 and a half months until the wedding! I'm pretty excited, I've got pretty much all of our vendors lined up and gotten the ball rolling there- the only thing I still need to figure out is where to hire an ASL interpreter for the ceremony.
We're not able to celebrate our anniversary today, though- I just got off work, and we seriously need to do laundry and do some shopping before we do anything else. But we will be getting away for dinner and a movie this weekend. I think we may be heading into "old couple" territory, because the dinner and movie notion is like, waaay too exciting for me at this point. We never seem to be able to get much time with just the two of us anymore, and we just don't have the energy or interest in anything much wilder anymore. One night last week we actually went to bed at 8:30pm. It's pretty sad.
Anyway, don't have much else to contribute to the Cube conversation- except one thing- Alacar, you said you use some Un cards? Which sort of Un cards do you think are fair game for general play? Some are obviously too wacky or gimmicky to make for fair play outside a decidely Un game, but for regular casual play, what sort of Un cards are playable?
Which ones are even sort of good? And which ones can become problematic in a casual environment due to power levels? Just curious.
It will clear up. You actually have a good deal of game left, you are sort of entering the last stretch here and it will all be a lot clearer.
P4 was 40 dollars when it was new, so a year later, you should be able to find it used for ... not too bad. Hard to say how much, but I'm willing to bet you can pick it up for about 20 bucks in the right place. I really recommend it. I loved P3, but P4 is easily one of my favorite games of all time. It has so much charm. I get all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it.
Edit:
... the HELL, Stuff!?
Persona 4 has a friendlier combat system, and a lot of the catches in P3's system are ironed out. Persona 4, mechanically, is like Persona 3 with all the annoying bits taken out. You can control your allies in combat, you have a relationship meter with all your allies, not just the girls you can date, your relationship meter actually impacts combat (people with high affection for you will save you from attacks that will kill you), the attack properties are better balanced and there are fewer of them, and it is easier to budget your time, since you can do dungeon exploration in the afternoon. There is very little dead time in P4, you can pretty much find something to do every day.
Furthermore, Persona 4 has more challenging battles, but at the same time is more forgiving- basically, it makes fights more dangerous, but gives you options and interface aspects that make it easier for you to deal with that difficulty. So basically, the difficulty kind of evens out, and you are left with battles that are rewarding and strategic without being aggravatingly difficult or overly punitive. P3 has battles that can be hard, but many of them are just ... well, they pull punches. And then, with most other Megaten games, they don't even care, the battles will crush you mercilessly, but you never feel a lack of challenge. So P4 kinda of gives you a happy medium.
As far as other RPGs that are like P3 and P4, I can't really think of any offhand. The Persona series on a whole is pretty unique, conceptually, but 3 and 4 are radically different not only from the rest of the series, but from most other games in their genre. They're pretty unique. Josh says that the Mana-Khemia games are supposed to be a bit like them, but having not played them, I don't really know how accurate that is.
As for how long The Answer is... honestly, I don't know! I've only played the original P3, I've never actually played through FES. It's supposed to be a good 20 hours, though, I believe. It's also pretty difficult, from what Josh tells me.
Unlike a lot of RPGs, Megaten in particular, P3 and P4 are easy to pick up after putting them down for a bit, because of the way they play. You never end up stuck in a dungeon, you always know where you are because of the calendar, and you tend to have a routine, so it is a good game for that.
Most of the anime cutscenes don't have a ton of voice acting, fortunately, so you aren't missing too, too much- you do miss some, but they are used pretty sparingly.
Oh, hahaha, yeah. Not to spoil, but prepare yourself for a lot more craziness after that.
Some of the full moon shadows are a joke, and then some are just outlandishly powerful if you go in unprepared. I can't remember which one it was, since I haven't played it for a good while, but one of them just absolutely trounced me. So I take it you are enjoying the game then?
You might really enjoy Persona 4 once you finish it- Persona 4 is a lot like 3, only more streamlined, with a very engaging story, a bit more variety, and (in my opinion) a more engaging cast.
Anyway, after 4 hours of recording with/for Blaine Woodturtle, my throat and mouth are completely trashed! My jaws ache, and my voice is all scratchy... voice acting is pretty exhausting work!
What was the problem?
Didn't really get to play EDH this weekend, couldn't get a decent game going, ended playing 1v1 with Josh, which really isn't the same.
Ugh. That sounds awful. We've been avoiding sleeving in EDH just because no one wants to go out and buy a bunch of matching sleeves (it may just be me, but it seems like most of the time, the only sleeves they have come in packs of 40, and they don't have more than 1 or 2 of the same kind at the store at any one time, making it impossible to have a fully sleeved EDH deck that matches). Cube sounds like it is probably something to try eventually, but to be really honest, it sounds like a lot of work for one person, and I can't see anyone else I play with taking a lot of interest in doing one.
Same for me! I'm looking forward to it, although I don't know that anyone else in the group is.
Yeah, I haven't been here in over a year, and prior to that, my posting was sporadic, a few posts every few months or so. I really haven't been around in some time.
It's a Smash Bros. meme, where very serious competitive players will often preface a match by stating they will only play as Fox in the stage Final Destination with items turned off. Fox is a very versatile character, typically considered to be one of the highest tier characters, and thus the best to display how skilled of a player you are. The stage Final Destination is small, basic, and gimmick free, leaving the focus on the match on the combat, and with no items, there is no random element to interfere with the match. Basically, it takes everything that is fun and unique about SSB (tons of different characters, low entry curve, unpredictable game play, unusual stages that can swing the tide of a match all over the place, a casual environment) and removes them. Shorthand- it means someone who considers a game to be very serious business, to the point where they end up tossing aside a good 75% or more of the game's features because they don't contribute to their desired environment for testing their skill.
So it is sort of like drafting, but for people who are too cheap to buy boosters and/or people who want to draft but are too "FINAL DESTINATION, FOX ONLY, NO ITEMS" to run the risk of possibly drafting Moonlace?
That sounds kinda cool. Will have to try that sometime.
I'm told by Craig that if you do come, we have to opt for the strip club option. Don't worry about it too much, just make sure if you are coming you let me know with some advance- ideally a couple of months, but to be quite honest, in specific circumstances, even a couple of weeks is fine. I just don't want to set a precedent, but one or two people isn't a big deal. The only thing I worry about is accommodations, given that I have a lot of out of town guests coming, and it is prime wedding/graduation party season, and our little town only has so much available room- and I'm already putting up more people than I am really comfortable with, to be totally honest. But hopefully you can come, that would be fun.
I have no idea what a Cube is, and frankly, I'm too lazy to Google it.
Thanks for taking five minutes away from your busy schedule of buying things out of every used pantie machine in Kabukicho to keep us in the loop, Ace.
There is also a trophy and an international leaderboard.
What is this, Time Spiral?
That's my problem: who I am is equal parts strip club and Saproling tokens.
I've never had the opportunity to play Limited, but it's always appealed to me for that reason. Call me crazy, but if I am going to spend money on a pack with 15 cards in it, I should be able to use at LEAST 12 of them on a theoretical level, you know? The closest experience I have had to Limited was running some Sealed for Academy on MWS, and that was a lot of fun.
Oh, I see how it is. I come back, I get a nod of the head, a tip of the hat. Maybe next time I disappear and then return, I'll come back with hooters and see how you respond, mister.
Okay, you want to know the sad thing- one of the first things I thought was "hey, we could do Magic as a game at the pre-wedding party!" Then I was filled with deep shame. I'm still trying to figure out just what to do with the pre-party. A lot of it depends on when the out of town guests get into town, and how much time I can get off of work. Part of me wants to do something safe and inclusive for everyone, part of me wants to do something tacky like hit a strip club as a group, part of me wants to do something really nerdy like MTG and D&D and Smash Bros. Also, part of me is really just trying to figure out which option is the cheapest and which group of guests I don't mind excluding from the fun to satisfy that part of myself.
Strip EDH is easy enough. Whenever you take General damage, you take something off. Obviously, that shifts the metagame towards small, cheap evasive Generals and means some perv will spend most of the time trying to figure out how to give Isamaru, Hound of Konda shadow.
That sounds like a horrible idea for me, as I am much more competitive at sex than I am at Magic.
I haven't really been on Facebook a whole lot the past few days due to work, so I must have missed the update. I'm really sorry, I know that the job was a big deal for you, and obviously having a job in our current economy is very important. Plus, everything else that sucks about the situation.
Anyway, just killing time over lunch at work here. Looking forward to coming home, we're running D&D this weekend and hopefully playing EDH with some people on Friday. I've been trying to get other players I know turned onto the format, especially those that I know have sort of abandoned the game due to how ugly and competitive the local meta got right around the time I quit. I think I have at least 2 interested. I'm also trying to plan a party of some sort for an Operation Christmas Child event and being frustrated by a lack of available weekends. I hate planning crap with people I know. They always have something going on- someone always has work, or is going out of town, or has previous obligations, or has the swine flu, or some crap excuse. It really messes with my whole solipsist view of reality in which people do not exist unless I am giving them some sort of attention.
Ugh! But you do have to admit, that is sort of funny, though. Dying to your own general is probably the sort of thing that is cute once, but then never again. Sort of like when someone casts Temporal Extortion in Izzet Steam Maze and everyone's life totals go to hell. I have no idea if the card actually works in that situation or not, but we decided to run it that way. Made me laugh, but never again.
The goats are awesome, everyone cheers when we get into Goldmeadow. Last night, Josh send a creature to the graveyard with Grave Pact out, and so my sister had to sac something. She wasn't sure what to do, so since I was already dead and out of the game, I just nudged her and said "just sacrifice one of your goats." She just looked at me and says:
"My friends at church were right, this game is Satanic!"
I don't have a lot of my Fallen Empires anymore, though, which makes me really sad. You know, say what you will about it, but I loved that set as a kid. Especially all the thallids. I was ALL about them, even though I think I only marginally understood how they worked at age 12. God, what I wouldn't give to go back to a time when Thorn Thallid was awesome.
Having fun with crappy cards is the heart of the game, if you ask me. It's fine to play with good cards- good cards are good, after all, hence the term "good cards", but there is something very satisfying about dropping a completely mediocre piece of binder chaff to the table and doing fun things with it, you know? Beating someone down with a Darksteel Colossus you Tinkered into play? That's effective, and can be pretty cool, but beating someone down with a Combat Medic equipped with a Loxodon Warhammer and Tatsumasa the Dragon's Fang is something of beauty.
Haha, I actually spent some time trying to figure out how one could effectively use Norin as a general. I failed, obviously, but I would love to see someone do it.
Last night, I played 4 player Planechase EDH, and it was really a lot of fun. Josh and M played with us, too, and it seems like everyone liked it. Josh ran Lyzolda, I ran Ib again, M ran Experiment Kraj, and the fourth player was our 16 year old sister who has played all of two games of Magic in her entire life- once when she was at a laundromat with us and was bored, and once when she found a copy of Autocthon Wurm and was like "Can I make a deck with this? It looks fun!" She ran Tolsimir Wolfsblood, and she actually ended up coming in first at the end of the night. It was crazy.
The planar aspect really seemed to break up the tension and add a lot of swing. The first round of the game, we started in Skybreen, and ended up getting two chaos effects in a row, making everyone but the first two players take 14 damage (the first two players, having made land drops, ate only 12 damage). We then spent the next two rounds frantically attempting to shift away. It seems like getting into planes like Sokenzan and Undercity Reaches really makes the game move very quickly and makes people much more aggressive, even with slower decks, which was a lot of fun. We ended the game in Goldmeadow, which everyone loved. Endless chump blocking and lots of reasons for people to make stupid jokes and bleat like sheep is a good thing! All in all, a lot of fun!