Warhammer 40k - 7th edition Allies

A friend of mine (@beahealthygeek) tweeted this out earlier

A First Look at the New Warhammer 40K 7th Edition Allies Chart http://t.co/UpW5sIaS1z
— Sweetman (@beahealthygeek) May 21, 2014

and it actually got me a little excited for the game again (my interest in 40k has waned a lot over the past few years but some releases have changed that).  The biggest thing is that all Imperial Armies are now considered battle brothers.  Imperial armies encompass basically all Space Marine chapters, Imperial Guard forces and Inquisition forces.

Why is this important?  Well I've always wanted to do a joint Dark Angels and Space Wolves army as the two marine chapters have so much rich history with each other.  Despite what current Wolf and Angels players say now, I am a firm believer that their rivalry is one of mutual respect and not one of malice or hatred.

This new alliance matrix means this pipe dream army of mine can actually come true without having a significant disadvantage in the actual game (the non-scoring Troops from 6th are a big hindrance I think). To be honest I'm not sure if I will add anything to my collection but things like this will encourage me to try and pick up the hobby again.

Now to decide what Space Wolf units will go best with my Deathwing forces.

MTG - Journey into Nyx Cube Update 1

Big update this time.  With the full set of temples available I've found a way to include them.  I have a large gold section so having the proper mana fixing is important.  The temples are a great addition while not breaking the bank.  Drafting 5 colour good stuff will now be more feasible in my cube!

I also removed the following mechanics as they were kind of confusing to my friends who don't play MTG outside our cube nights or conflicted with other mechanics in my cube or I just felt were under performing.

• Bestow - A very cool mechanic and gives so many options.  You could have cheap aggro creatures that had late-game impact and they trigger Heroic as well.  However, the rules behind it were very complicated and the intricacies of the mechanic are beyond my playgroup.  I did keep Chromanticore though as it is just a fun and powerful card.
• -1/-1 counters - Goes counter to all the +1/+1 counters that are present.  Again the interactions between the two types can be confusing so I chose to remove them.
• Scavenge - The timing of this ability caused a lot of confusion in my group so I removed it.  I did keep Varolz, the Scar-Striped as it is a fairly strong card and with only one instance of Scavenge it would be easier to explain.
• Detain - Fairly lack-luster and I wanted to try new things in the UW slot.

So on to the actual changes!

MTG - Journey into Nyx Pre-Release Report

Found time to play in the Journey into Nyx Pre-Release on Sunday.  I originally wanted to play white because the promo (Dawnbringer Charioteers) had pretty cool art, was a good beater in sealed and goes well in my cube.  Unfortunately I registered late so all the white was taken and I ended going blue (the promo was Scourge of Fleets which has cool art and I figured was a pretty bomby card when played).

The pool I opened was ok but nothing spectacular.  I did not have many of the powerful blue commons and uncommons (no Hour of Need, no Voyage's End, no Griptide, no Sea God's Revenge) and no removal from any colour (aside from some enchantment removal in green).  I had a lot of good 5-drops but no acceleration of any sort to ramp into them, so the deck I built ended up being some weird mid-range aggro/control style deck with a bunch of powerful 5-drops and some cheap tricks/filler creatures at the lower casting costs.

My deck consisted of

• Scourge of Fleets
• Thassa's Devourer
• War-Wing Siren
• Riptide Chimera
• Nyxborn Triton
• Font of Fortunes
• Stratus Walk
• Hubris
• Aerial Formation
• Polymorphous Rush
• Prescient Chimera
• Nullify
• Humbler of Mortals
• Cloaked Siren
• Pin to the Earth
• Pheres-Band Thunderhoof
• Nyxborn Wolf
• Artisan's Sorrow
• Desecration Plague
• Mischief and Mayhem
• Leafcrown Dryad
• Oakheart Dryads
• Fleetfeather Cockatrice

With a relevant sideboard of

• Pheres-Band Thunderhoof
• Hubris
• Desecration Plague
• Triton Cavalry
• Kiora's Dismissal
• Desecration Plague

Not the greatest deck but considering the cards I got, it was the best one I could come up with in my opinion.  My full card pool can be found after the report.

Game 1 - Won 2-0

Faced off against a GW deck that had no real synergy.  My opponent must have had a bad pool as I don't recall any real bomb card and I was able to play my flyers and win that way.  He did have an Athreos, God of Passage out early on game 2 but I managed to play around it.

Game 2 - Lost 1-2

Played a GW deck packing a fair amount of removal.  2x Time to Feed, Deicide, Banishing Light and some good creatures (Mistcutter Hydra absolutely wrecked me in game 2 and 3).  I managed to take the first game as I was able to hold off his early rush until I got a Humbler of Mortals followed by my Scourge of Fleets and then shortly after that I was able to drop an enchantment and play Mischief and Mayhem on both of my fatties to trample over for the win.  The 2nd and 3rd games though I couldn't find my fat creatures fast enough to overcome the early removal and Mistcutter Hydra.

Game 3 - Lost 0-2

Another GW deck but this one was super fast.  Not a lot of removal but just a lot of fast aggressive creatures like Golden Hind, Eagle of the Watch, Oreskos Swiftclaw all backed up by a Dictate of Heliod and other auras.  Both games I could not keep up with the early beats.

Game 4 - Lost 0-2

A fast aggressive RG deck.  Lots of 1 and 2 drops backed up by auras and combat tricks.  At this point I didn't really care too much if I won or lost so I played pretty badly and made some horrible plays.

First time since Scars of Mirrodin  that I didn't Top 8 a pre-release event but oh well, that's the nature of sealed sometimes.  Hopefully at the next event (M15 release I think) I'll get a better pool.  In the meanwhile I'm already thinking about what cards from Journey into Nyx I want to add to my cube and what they will replace.

Travel - Civilization 5 World Wonder Tour

While planning our summer vacation this year my wife asked me if there was anywhere I would want to visit in the world.  I thought about it for a brief moment and told her that there wasn't anywhere in the world I really wanted to visit for the sole purpose of just visiting.  I mean I like travelling, but if all I am doing is just sight seeing, it's not that great for me.

I like attending events so a lot of my previous travel plans were centered around events, whether it be family reunions, funerals (these are unplanned by the way in case anyone was wondering), gaming tournaments or whatever.  Case in point, for the past few years I've tried to plan a summer trip to Edmonton because of a big annual Warhammer 40k/Fantasy tournament (It Came From Out of the Basement) arranged by some former Prince George gamers (hasn't worked out yet though as things always seem to get in the way) and late last year I thought about going to Seattle just to attend PAX Prime 2014 or to see We Will Rock You.  This year I was even considering trying to go to Cologne because Gamescom (and coincidentally the League of Legends EU LCS Summer Playoffs!) happens to happen after our week in Paris is done (though not sure if the rest of my family would share my enthusiasm about the event)

A few moments after my wife asked the question it dawned on me that I could relate our travel plans to some of the games we play and I suggested we do a Civ 5 World Wonder Tour - basically visit every World Wonder in Civ 5 that still exists.  This would help us plan future vacations and for me it wouldn't just be sight seeing; we could actually visit the wonders we build in our games of Civ 5  (we play Civ 5 together a fair amount)

It's going to take a very long time though to hit all the Civ 5 wonders (here's a list of all of them http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_wonders_in_Civ5) but it's an interesting family goal to have.

This summer we'll be heading to London and Paris for two weeks so we'll hopefully be able to cross off the following:

• Oxford University
• Stonehenge
• Big Ben
• Globe Theatre (though the original doesn't exist they did reconstruct a new one not too far from the original location)
• Eiffel Tower
• The Louvre
• Notre Dame

Penny probably won't understand any of our plans but she'll have fun regardless (she's only 3 at the moment and she likes going places outside her house).  As she gets older she might have a better understanding/appreciation of why we our vacation plans are the way they are.

Video Games - Adventures in Disney Infinity (Wii version)

This week Walmart had a big sale on all the Disney Infinity starter sets (normally $75 but this week was only $49).  So we made a fairly impulse buy and picked up the Wii starter set (and Rapunzel and Woody as Futureshop was selling them 2 for $15).  This was mostly because my wife realized I like to game and wanted a game that the entire family could enjoy.

A little more background about our gaming environment at my house.  I am a big gamer and no matter what my wife tries, she cannot stop me from gaming.  I've tried to get her to game with me with mixed results.  Tabletop wargames were totally ineffective and MMORPGs too.  We did find some common ground in Age of Empires 3 (and Age of Mythology before that) and the Civilization games (when Civ 5 went on sale a few weeks ago on Humble that was a godsend!)  Unfortunately Penny couldn't really join us when we played as she just didn't understand and couldn't really participate in any way.

One thing Penny did like was Disney movies though and she knows many of the characters that are available in Infinity.  We figured Infinity would be a good way that we could play something that Penny could relate to.  Unfortunately the Wii version is kind of limited as there is no online capability but we could still build stuff in the Toy Box mode and at Penny's age (she's only 3.5 years old) she won't know any better.

The game plays very much like any 3d platformer just with Disney characters.  My favourite aspect of the game so far has been the world building in the Toy Box.  Penny watched me play as Rapunzel as I worked through the Mastery challenges and really wanted to play but the Mastery challenges were out of her league.  So I fired up a toy box and built her a simple cave complex (we managed to land the Cave of Wonders entrance so it looked pretty cool) with a room full of smashable crates at the end.  I told her she had to get through the cave and then smash the crates (she liked watching me smash stuff while I played through the Mastery challenges).

She was quite frustrated at first as she wasn't holding the controller properly and couldn't maneuver Rapunzel the way she wanted to.  I showed her how to hold the controller properly and how to use the analog stick to move Rapunzel and what button to press to smash things and before long she was able to move through the cave to the room of crates and start smashing.  When she cleared the room she asked to do it all over again.

Her video game skills are still developing but seeing how quickly she learned to move Rapunzel around was encouraging.  As I play with the Infinity Toy Box I'm excited to make more challenges for her.  Penny on the other hand is more excited about getting Anna and Elsa after I ordered them online as no stores in town had any.

MTG - MBC Pauper

I wrote about two decks I wanted to take, a UG infect deck and an Izzet Blitz deck.  I couldn't find the cards for the Izzet Blitz deck and although I had the cards for the UG infect deck I decided not to bring it.  Instead I put together a Mono-Black Control deck (MBC) as I was more familiar with that style of deck than the UG Infect deck.

So I brought the following based on what I could cobble together the night before from my boxes of cards

• 3 Mind Rot
• 3 Grasp of Darkness
• 2 Victim of Night
• 4 Geth's Verdict
• 3 Liliana's Specter
• 2 Ravenous Rats
• 4 Disciple of Phenax
• 4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 3 Corrupt
• 4 Sign in Blood
• 4 Phyrexian Rager
• 2 Viper's Kiss
• 2 Bojuka Bog
• 20 Swamp
• Sideboard
• 1 Grasp of Darkness
• 4 Doom Blade
• 2 Shrivel
• 4 Duress
• 2 Viper's Kiss
• 2 Morbid Plunder

The deck is a little sub-par as it is missing some staples like Chittering Rats and Hymn to Tourach so I kind of had to make do with similar but not quite as powerful cards that I had in my collection.  I did start playing back in the Revised days so I knew the cards well but I periodically liquidate my collection so never have that many cards in the house.  In that respect I prefer MTGO as I don't have to physically store anything.  MTGO has a lot of other advantages for me but I can write about that later.

Unfortunately not enough people showed up to play.  Still I managed to play a few pauper games with people to see how my deck fared.  The people who did show up though only brought aggressive infect decks which my control deck kind of rolled over.  I just had too much removal for them to handle and although they came close to beating me several times, I was able to stabilize with all my removal and smart chump blocking to allow me to win.  I was really hoping to play against more people but I guess that will have to be another time.  In the meanwhile I guess I have MTGO if I want to play Pauper.

MTG - Local Pauper Tournament

Busy spring break for gaming events as I found out recently one of the local gaming stores is hosting an MTG Pauper tournament.  For those who don't know MTG Pauper is a format where only commons are allowed in your deck.  Lots of people online have come up with different types of Pauper formats like Modern Pauper or Standard Pauper but generally Pauper is a legacy format so commons from all sets are allowed.  As long as the card was common in one set it is allowed (so Rancor is allowed as it was common at one point)

I've played Pauper a lot on MTGO but never in a live event.  Most people here play either random legacy fun decks or standard.  Myself I've moved away from competitive MTG and mostly just cube with friends and the occasional pre-release tournament.  Seeing a Pauper tournament is kind of cool and I'm going to try and play in it.  The only problem is my live Pauper collection isn't nearly as big as my MTGO Pauper collection when it comes to having cards that will make an actual competitive deck.  I mean I have lots of commons (who doesn't, especially after having played for so long) but whether those commons can make a good deck is another matter.

There are two decks I want to try and bring.  One of them I have the cards for but isn't as fun to play in my opinion, while the other is super fun to play but I'm missing a fair amount of the key cards.