Into the Mouth of Hell All By Myself

March 18, 2015 Noob of All Trades Leave a comment

(Editor’s Note: Ever been so sure of something only to be proven completely wrong? Enjoy watching me eat a nice helping of crow.)

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of World of Warcraft. I have not enjoyed this latest expansion as much as I thought and I might even be in the twilight of my WoW playing days. I start with this statement to immediately clear up any misconception right away. I like Wow, which immediately brands me as a Blizzard fanboy. As with most generalizations, this one is simply not true. I enjoy Heroes of the storm and occasionally tolerate Hearthstone when I can, but I have never even played any Starcraft game and only played Diablo III completely by chance.

I knew of the Diablo games, but only came upon Diablo III as a result of a WoW promotion. Unlike many players in the game, I never even played Diablo II. I know that is considered a sin because DII is widely thought to be one of the best games made and possibly Blizzard’s greatest game. I just wasn’t much of a PC gamer at the time. By the time I started gaming on my computer, WoW became my loot filled addiction. As tends to happen, that addiction became a potential gateway into others.

Blizzard ran a promotion that got you access to Diablo III if you signed up for their WoW annual pass testing. I had nothing to lose and another game to gain, so I joined the test. True to their word, I received a code for Diablo II and downloaded it using their Battle.Net app. Having never played DII might have worked to my advantage. All I kept hearing from other players was how much DIII sucked mainly because it wasn’t DII. I came into the game without that baggage and could decide for myself. Unfortunately, whether or not you played the previous game, DIII was not that great of a game. I played it for a couple of weeks or maybe a month, off and on, and then stopped in favor of other games. It wasn’t terrible. It just was not very fun. Blizzard pats themselves on the back for making fun games. They really missed on this one.

More recently, Scott Johnson from The Instance podcast mentioned how much he liked the console version of the game as a couch coop game. He is an admitted Blizzard fan boy, so I considered the source. Nevertheless, always on the lookout for new games for the web page and podcast, I ordered the game from Gamefly. When Chris and I got too busy over the holidays to play or record, the game sat at the bottom of my gaming bag. We started recording again and I suggested DIII during our most recent game night as a topic for the digital playground.

Part of the problem with the game is that it starts off slow. Really slow. I know that games are supposed to start off with training wheels to give you time to find your footing (sorry for the mixed metaphor), but DIII’s beginning is annoyingly slow. There is entirely too much talking and not nearly enough action. I know that Blizzard prides itself on story (mostly ripped off from other sources) and those stories are sometimes actually very good, but there has to be a balance. Diablo III, in my opinion, goes too far in the direction of story at first. That certainly led to my less than favorable first impression of the game. It nearly made me just say forget it and go back to the drawing board for the podcast.

Luckily, it didn’t take too long for the action to increase. We were soon up to our eyeballs in zombies, demons, skeletons, and other supernatural foes. Once that happened, the game was really fun. We played through until our tired brains wouldn’t allow us to focus well enough to progress anymore. After we played, Chris wrote in an article that he enjoyed himself and I finally did, too. For me, Diablo III is much better as a multiplayer game. Heck, it might even only be fun on consoles as a couch coop like Scott Johnson mentioned. I do know that i wasn’t fun to play by myself. But, I’m going to try it again. Hey, you can’t say that I didn’t give it a chance.

Maybe I’m stubborn. Maybe I’m just trying to figure it out. Like most gamers, when there’s a game that I don’t like but probably should, I want to know why. For what it is, DIII is a good game. Other gamers who play it really like it. I play the game by myself and I don’t like it and I’m not sure why.

Maybe it just isn’t my style of game. That’s often where you start when trying to assess a game. I always thought that I didn’t like MOBAs until I started playing Heroes of the Storm. Turns out that I jus tdidn’t like playing with the jerks who normally play those games. Heroes of the Storm is less competitive (offers less competitive game modes, at least) so you can avoid much of the toxicity of the MOBA community. That’s not the case with DIII, either. I have played other ARPGs extensively and they are fun. Another game that had a dubious launch was Marvel Heroes. People hated that game. Initially, so did I. The roster of heroes (and especially free starter heroes) was horribly small. The story was strong, but the gameplay was repetitive with little payoff. However, the the developers took feedback seriously, tuned the game, released more heroes, and the game became the most improved MMO of last year. The gameplay is still repetitive, but now there are more ways to play the game to keep it fresh. I play Marvel Heroes daily and have leveled two characters to max level with a third almost there. Even though the game is free to play, I even bough a character to support the developers and encourage them to keep improving the game.

The other game that I really like from this genre is Torchlight II. Around the time that I abandoned DIII for the first time, I learned of the Torchlight series. Several people called it “the game that DIII should have been.” It wasn’t F2P, but it was only 20 dollars on Steam. Even though I wondered how such a cheap game could compete with one that cost 60 dollars, I bought it. That was when I learned that my life long pursuit of being a cheap gamer would finally pay off in a big way.

(Before I proceed, let me explain. Skip ahead if you want. It won’t hurt my feelings. Once upon a time, I paid full price for a Playstation. Not a Playstation 2 or 3, but an original Playstation. That tells you how long ago this happened. As these stories generally go, a couple of months (or weeks, I remember it as weeks) later the price dropped. I vowed after that to never pay full price for a game again. Other than a couple of games (ironically, mostly when I was unemployed), I have stuck to that vow. One of the side effects of this is that I rarely get to play a game when it is new. Usually that isn’t a problem because I’m not much of an online gamer. Lately, it has been even less of a problem because of the proliferation of F2P.)

Thankfully, I was wrong. Torchlight II is amazingly full featured for such an inexpensive game. Everyone who suggested it as a substitute was right. It played nearly identical to Diablo III at one-third the price. Furthermore, I played the game both by myself and with my friend Kevin. I had fun playing both modes, but I actually played the hell out of the game by myself. Like Marvel Heroes, I played all the way to the end. i haven’t gotten a character to max level yet. I have done some end game and started another to play through again. What about those games makes them more fun than DIII? Let’s explore.

Diablo is much darker than the other two games. I don’t mean the story. While that might be true, the colors of DIII are very dingy. It reminds me of Batman from The Lego Movie if he added brown to his palette. Kevin and I both talked about this in Episode 2 of the podcast that got lost in the murky nether realm of dead hard drives. Even with a less than happy tale, Torchlight II still manages to use many shades of all the colors of the spectrum. Marvel Heroes, of course, inhabits the colorful comic book world. Granted, color scheme can’t be the only reason, but it can make for a dull play experience.

There is also the slow story ramp of Diablo. I don’t think that I can overstate that. Not knowing much about the story of Diablo might have hurt me in this regard, too, because I didn’t care too much about the characters or what was happening to them. The thing that got me through the Marvel Heroes introduction was my connection to the characters and stories. Like Diablo, I knew nothing about the Torchlight story, but the Outlander class kept me interested in the game until I got interested in the story. Perhaps that is my problem with Diablo III.

Let’s try something else. I’ve got the new video capture card for the computer. Maybe I can test it out with Diablo and try again. Up until this point, I’ve picked a Witch Doctor. Maybe that is the problem. Maybe I just don’t like class of Witch Doctor. I thought that it might be cool with the description and the spells available, but let’s try something else. I really liked Outlander in Torchlight II. Is there anything like that in Diablo? Turns out that the Demon Hunter looks similar to the Outlander. I’ll pick that. Also, as I was setting up the video capture card, the introduction of the story played through. I had skipped through it every other time playing the game.

Both the introduction and the new selection of class seems to have worked. It changed my mind about the game. I love hearing the *bang, bang* of the Demon Hunter’s gun as I blow stuff up. Not literally, yet. I don’t know if enemies explode when you kill them like they sometimes do in Torchlight II. If not, add that to the list of things that make TII better. In either case, I was wrong about Diablo III. The game is a fun game as long as you find the right class to play. My final piece of advice. Witch Doctor might not be the right class. Get out there and kick some demon butt.

On the Tabletop

Overdose on Cardboard Crack

March 12, 2015 Noob of All Trades Leave a comment

(Editor’s Note: I know that I’ve been heavy on the Magic articles lately, but this is an exciting time for the game right now. I will do something on Diablo III on Friday to prepare for the podcast next week.)

As most of you already know, Pax East was this past weekend in Boston. Since it is the most “local” of these conventions, I made a vow last year to go this year. Coincidentally, I made the same vow this year for next year. I broke that vow and the gaming gods punished me accordingly. Among the constant stream of Twitter and Facebook updates (that I checked in between rounds of the Star City Games GP in Miami), was news of a new Orcs Must Die game, a Hearthstone adventure mode with more cards, and many new spoilers from the latest Magic the Gathering expansion set. They’ve never done a dragon themed expansion before and we quickly learned that they weren’t lying when they said that “Here there be dragons (of Tarkir).”

The block started with a plane on which all of the dragons had been hunted to extinction. Having relatively recently lost big time to Chris’s dragon deck, I thought that this was a great idea. I love my dragons and all of their destructive power, but this loss was especially devastating for some reason. Usually, I take the losses in stride, but I immediately started to plan ways to exterminate that dragon deck. I still haven’t quite finished the planning stages of my “Dragons Be Gone” deck and I’m afraid that it might be too late now.

The second set, Fate Reforged, saw one of the characters travel back in time and reverse the events that led to the deaths of the dragons. It is this set that introduced the dragons, obviously, and started to turn the plane topsy turvy. Five powerful beasts rise from the fray to destroy the puny human clans and take their rightful places as the rulers of Tarkir. Several prominent characters saw their fates changed as a result of what happened. I suppose that’s where the name of the set came from. While somewhat underwhelming to me and Chris, Fate Reforged provided a perfect bridge between past present, and future or alternate past and present…or whatever actually happened.

Truth be told, I lost interest in Magic to such a degree that I had no idea the new set was imminent and that spoilers were about to happen. I remarked to Chris that it felt really early, but then they were happening. A couple of dragonlords, command cards (that let you choose two of four options), new mechanics (like Megamorph, which always makes me think of Power Rangers), and a set that looks to blow the roof off, as I thought it might. Both Chris and I found a renewed interest and excitement for the game as the days passed and new cards were added to the web pages.

Enter Pax East. By the end, we met all of the dragonlords. We witnessed the final destruction of the clans and a refocus on ally 2-color magic instead of the 3-color wedges of the clans. We saw Sarkhan changed by his successful alteration of the timeline, or creation of a new timeline….or whatever happened. Other than the lords, we got new dragons. Lots of dragons. Dragons that breathe fire and those that breathe acid. Dragons that morph, dragons that clear the board. Dragons that buff others, dragons that draw cards, dragons that alter the effects of spells, dragons that don’t really do much…okay, that one so far is a lie. Almost all of these dragons look impressive and no matter which ones I end up pulling from my fat pack and booster box, I will put them into at least one of my decks. I’ve already started. I have a dragon in my Mardu deck and I’m thinking of putting one in my new Abzan deck. As I said to Chris, it is at the point of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

Crazy as it is, that wasn’t even the best Magic news to come out of Pax East this weekend. They also announced the theme of the last core set in the form of a double sided Liliana card. On one side is a legendary form and the other side is a planeswalker form. More information reveals that the set will focus on five different planeswalkers and tell the stories of how and when their sparks ignited. As somebody who simultaneously liked and hated the core sets, this is exciting and interesting news. I am a fan of the two sided cards even if I haven’t found a way to use them in my decks. The main thing that I don’t like about the core sets is the amount and quality of reprints. Since it is the last core set, they can go one of two ways. They can either go crazy with the reprints to give players one last chance to get some of the cards from the past that are very expensive on the secondary market or they can have one last core set where they showcase their imagination and originality.

Personally, I think that they will lean towards the latter. They might reprint some cards as they always do because they are also taking the occasion to relaunch their Duels of the Planeswalkers series with the same Origins branding. They are making the game free to play to draw in that audience. They also have brought back some of the more popular games modes that they removed in the last version of the game. Making new players feel like they have a chance is key to getting those players to enjoy playing your game, so giving those new players cards to play in a card game seems legitimate. Hearthstone does a terrible job of this, in my opinion, but they report huge numbers of players, so what do I know?

This article isn’t about Hearthstone. It is about Magic and there is still plenty to discuss. There may be reprints in Origins for the reasons outlined in the previous paragraph, but I don’t think that there will be a large number of reprints. My main reasoning is that Wizards also (I know, right?!) announced their new Modern Masters set. I remember the first Modern Masters as an overpriced set of reprints. This appears to be the same, but one of the cards spoiled has me excited beyond reason. Upon seeing the card, I wrote a message to Chris telling him that I was considering an order of a box of the set at $350+. Thankfully, he talked me off the ledge, but that card still speaks to me on a deep level and I’m not sure why. Modern Masters 2015 contains reprints of Tarmogoyf. Widely considered to be one of the best cards for many modern decks, fewer copies of the card exist than maybe should because at the time of printing, not many considered it to be that good of a card. While not on the price level of Alpha cards, it still costs quite a bit. None of that matters to me, though. I just think that it has the most fun name of any Magic card ever created. As I said in my recap of the Star City Games modern tournament, I defy you to find a card that is more fun to say than Tarmogoyf. $300 for a chance at bragging rights on a card that is fun to say? Shut up and take my money! Totally worth!

Are you all newsed out after announcements of Dragons, two sided planeswalkers, a relaunched digital game, and reprinted tree zombies? Well, prepare to be severely disappointed because there’s more. After learning of the origins of five of the planeswalkers, Magic is bringing us back to Zendikar. They haven’t announced any more than the name of the first set, but just that one word was enough to send players into either a near orgasmic state of joy (me, for one) or spastic fits of rage (many of the standard players) in a fight that some are calling the “Battle over the Battle for Zendikar”. Not really. I’m almost sure that I just made that up.

So, what (aside from nearly everything) could divide the player base into warring camps? We don’t know how the events on Tarkir have affected other planes, but when we last left Zendikar Eldrazi were devouring it. If you think that a set full of dragons is going to make for powerful decks, wait until the mana consuming Eldrazi make their comeback. Sure, they have huge casting costs, but (and they have big butts, too) the costs are always colorless, they swing (usually at your face) for massive amounts of damage, and they have annihilator to destroy any board that you might have built to try to counter them. I’m not a competitive player and only got to play the Eldrazi in an old version of Duels of the Planeswalkers, so I’m excited for the possibilities of being able to annihilate (haha, get it?) my opponents. Oh, and from a purely Magic nerd point of view, Zendikar was the set of full of art lands. So, that possibility exists. If you give me a chance at full art lands again, I welcome our new Eldrazi overlords.

Wizards of the Coast absolutely crushed it with these announcements. I don’t know if anybody else had the same reaction as Chris and I did. We both considered finding another hobby because we were both so unimpressed by the set. Fickle? Perhaps, but Magic can be an expensive hobby and if it isn’t returning that expense in terms of enjoyment, I can think of many other ways to spend that money. I, for one, am interested in Magic again in a big way. Well played, Wizards. I might not be your white whale, but you will continue to get my hard earned money for at least the next year.

On the Tabletop

Majorly Modern Magic

March 6, 2015 Noob of All Trades 1 Comment

(Editor’s Note: I challenge you to find a Magic card that is more fun to say out loud than “Tarmogoyf”.)

StarCityGames.com held their first Modern Open Tournament this past weekend in Baltimore. I watched nearly every (maybe every) featured match on their Twitch stream. I kept chat open. For the most part, I’m glad that I did. The Magic audience seems to be closer to my demographic than the normal Twitch chat.

That’s not to say that chat was a completely positive experience. This is still Twitch, after all. Some players generated intense hate from viewers because of slights (perceived or real), board states (angled graveyards and land in the front as illustrated in the comic), and seemingly no reason once or twice. That has to be the single thing about competitive gaming that bothers me most. It is the same thing about other sports that I don’t like.

Instead of just being able to enjoy the games, there is so much baggage. We attach all of these perceived offenses to “our” team perpetrated by the “other” team. Very seldom are fans able to congratulate that “other” team on a well fought victory. Adding to their ability to suck any and all fun from the games, every minor detail of the game gets analyze, overanalyzed, and then criticized. Due to the mostly younger demographic, the video games community skips right to the criticism. There is no resolution or nuance in the conversations. Just a constant drone back and forth. What ever happened to simply watching and enjoying the games.

Okay, rant over, now to the event itself. Part of the reason for the outrage in chat is that like many competitive card game tournaments, players brought decks that were a variation on a theme. Maybe part of the reason that it didn’t bother me as much is because I don’t play modern, so I wasn’t as familiar wit the decks and haven’t experienced the frustration of playing against them. Still, I came into this event with no baggage or expectations.

I learned quickly about the intense hatred for the so called “Twins” decks and the card Blood Moon. Many are calling for it to be banned while others defend it to their last breath. It’s the typical conversation that surrounds controversial cards or combos. I made my usual joke on the topic.

“x needs to be banned.” –Every player who ever lost a single game to x.

“x is fine.” –Every payer who has ever abused x‘s broken mechanic to their benefit.

Honestly, though, as a completely neutral party, I didn’t see a problem with Blood Moon. Sure, it can be frustrating to encounter, but it also seems easy to deal with. By my understanding, the decks that run it do so because of an abundance of nonbasic lands being played in Modern. Seems to me that modern players just need to adjust. I don’t know much about the competitive Magic scene as a participant, but isn’t that a part o it? Players adjust to one another, decks, cards, and combos. While one of the blood moon decks was in the final round, they didn’t dominate to a point where it felt unfair. Let’s take a look at the standings to see if this is on the level of Treasure Cruise or Pod.

Two of the top four decks of the open used Blood Moon either in their main deck or sideboard. Four of the top 8 represented a “Twin” deck, the archetype mentioned that led to this discussion of Blood Moon. Only three of them ran the card, but people were calling for the heads of these players all the same. Those calling for a ban are just full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. While the decks might be mostly unoriginal and a pain to face, that is just the nature of competitive card games from what I can tell. All of the tournaments that I watch feature the same decks. If you want innovation, then you need to innovate.

Witness the the other decks played at the tournament. Twenty seven different archetypes were identified in day two of play from Abzan to good old zoo. Even if we look only at the four other top eight decks, we get a Jund with Chandra and Liliana, White/Black tokens with Soren and Liliana, and four color control built around Snapcaster Mage as the only creature. I have simulated a few games with each of these decks and they are fun to play for a player like me who enjoys the control aspect of Magic. So far, I have watched Vintage and Modern and both formats heavily favor control, making me wonder why I haven’t followed these formats more closely before. My main reason, as is usually the case in these types of situations, was ignorance. I heard, and believed without evidence, that the games were dominated by the same decks and boring to watch. While that might be true in Standard, which is a format limited to the last few sets for its card pool, both Modern and Vintage have proven to be interesting and fun to watch.

Though certain decks are favored, as I discussed, the formats are not stagnant. Different types of the same deck play differently. With 60 cards, instead of 30 like Hearthstone, to use to build decks, even the same deck will look different from game to game. The same cannot be said for Hearthstone. Most games can be predicted by even the most novice viewer after only a few games. I admit that I was wrong. Competitive Magic is great to watch and I’m going to follow more closely.

You may have noticed that I’ve only focused on 7 of the top 8 decks at the event. The reason for this is that the deck that took the top spot in Baltimore deserves more than a mere mention. During the event, I jokingly called the deck “Sultai cards that I found in my couch cushions” since SCG only could only identify it as “Sultai”. The decks creator, Gerard Fabiano, ensured that they would not be able to be more specific in their classification. The story behind the deck is that he held an internet pull to choose his deck and “Sultai cards I own” won. I immediately fell in love with the idea, watched all of his matches closely, coined my own pet name for the deck, and kept writing Chris with updates that I’m sure he didn’t care all that much about.

The deck (found here and an absolute blast to play and watch) inspired me to make plans to go to Star City Games events in Providence and Worcester, so look for my in person reports from them in April and May. It has also helped to contribute (along with my discovery of Vintage Super League) to my renewed interest in Magic. I felt underwhelmed by Fate Reforged, but I’m back in and looking forward to Dragons. I might even sign up for a prerelease again.

You may sat that is quite a lot to attribute to one deck. I tend to agree and it might not be completely because of the deck, but have you seen that deck? I’ll give you time to click the link. Back? Not only does it have many Modern staples, but it has cards like Feed the Clan, too. It has everything; counter spells, creature removal, forced discard, peeks at the opponents hand, graveyard manipulation, life gain, the ability to steal creatures that you don’t remove/have already removed, and Tarmogoyf. The entire deck list is like something snatched right out of my fevered Magic dreams after passing out from too many whiskey shots. It is an absolute work of art from top to bottom and Mr. Fabiano has a new fan boy for life.

If you haven’t had a chance to watch the finals match of him playing the deck, you can find it here. It is a thing of beauty. You can actually watch all of the matches on the playlist there, but the finals match was some of the most fun I’ve had with Magic. Hell, I even found myself searching prices for Tarmogoyf and coming away disappointed that I will never own one. Nevertheless, this event looking forward to checking out the events in person in April and May.