ch…ch…ch..changes!!!

this post is…10 months overdue! yes, i know i am supposed to update this frequently, but life (and mmorpgs get in the way).

to my devoted readers (all 2 of you) who are dying to know what’s new in The Magic Flunkies world, mel has a new gf and he has picked up warhammer 40k! being a rich fuck and a spoilt brat, he is now collecting (read: not playing) warhammer 40k, warmachine, hordes and magic: the gathering. as for me, under the influence of mel, i have been buying (read: not playing, not collecting) warhammer fantasy (dwarf), warmachine (menoth), hordes (circles of oboros), magic: the gathering, world of warcraft and the latest addition – warhammer online.

i’ll write an entire post dedicate to warhammer online in a while, but i just want to rant on magic’s new expansion – shards of alara. favourwise, i think bill rose and mark rosewater did an awesome job on it. 5 different planes co-existing without the knowledge of others, each plane deprived of 2 other colours. it’s amazing how the team can churn out shit (in a good way) like that when they are basically just rehashing the same concept. i’m not as hardcore as i used to be, but i make an effort to read about the new cards and buy the fatpack whenever a new expansion is launched.

Shards of Alara booster box

my gripe about this new set, no fucking novel! and that’s the only thing in the entire fatpack that makes buying a fatpack worthwhile. currently, the shards fatpack is retailing at $52.99 here in Singapore (about US$37). comes with 8 packs of boosters (total of S$36 or US$25). so basically i am paying S$17 extra for the player’s guide, a card box, a life counter, 40 basic lands and an excerpt of the planewalker’s guide to alara (which should not be considered as a replacement for a novel). i really don’t see a reason for me to buy fatpacks of future expansions anymore. to me, i can use that extra S$17 to buy a tournament deck or 4 packs of boosters.

 

as for the new rarity type (mythic rare), which is packed in 1 out of 8 boosters (or 15 mythic rares in a set of 249 cards), i’m not entirely impressed by them. they are supposed to be ‘epic-feeling legends or spells’, but so far they are pretty bahh to me. what wizards is doing right, i feel, is that dual lands are not in the rare slots for this expansion. considering that most of the rare level creatures/spells are tri-coloured, that is a very wise choice. at first glance, i also feel that with this set, wizards is making magic slower than before. everything costs more than previous sets and require more colours to cast. and i like that, being a blue player, i have always enjoyed taking my time to set out combos. Lich’s Mirror, for example, is an extremely good reset button for combo decks. i can see this card in my esper-themed deck. Anyone out there wants to trade? I have an Elspeth and Mayeal up for trade.

 

i’m curious to see how much will the mythic rares fetch in the market, and what sort of decks would run them.

thoughts and questions? leave a comment!!! i’m trying to get a wider reach out in the gaming community, so please help by linking to us!

-jar

 

 

A Look at…Future Sight

Before Future Sight was released, rumours of it being a set of ‘more than 50 keywords’, new card frames and textless cards seems to be more interesting than the cards itself. And even card previews in magicthegathering.com didn’t really interest anyone, well, except for Pact of Intervention, which i did rise an eyebrow at that.

Let’s take a look at the hits and misses of Future Sight:

Firstly, i must applaud WoTC for taking a risk on creating the new card frame and citing them to be ‘future-shifted’. We all know that WoTC is just testing the waters with something like this. In fact, i would think that Future Sight is all about testing the waters. First off, 50 (or less…or more..i don’t care) over keywords and most of them are pretty unimpressive. Being a player for almost 10 years, i miss the good old days of ‘can’t be affected by summoning sickness’ instead of haste. So i didn’t quite understand why they have to create an entirely new keyword (a very unimpressive Shroud, by the way) for ‘can’t be target of spells and abilities’ So what will the keyword for ‘can’t be target of spells and abilities opponent control’? Shroud Them? Or what about ‘can’t be the target of spells and abilities you control’? Shroud You? I was wondering why Imperial Mask didn’t have that Shroud keyword. Was it because they didn’t want it to be named as…Shroud Player? Or ‘You gain Shroud.’ Or ‘You are Shrouded’. Well, you get the drill.

While I do agree that keywords like Reach (can block creatures with flying) does clear up the rules a little, especially for newbies, they should really just implement it in the core sets. With other keywords that only appear in one or a few cards, like Transfigure, Delve, Fateseal, Absorb and a very uncreative Life Link, one can only imagine how bleak and unoriginal the future of Magic will be like.

What i do like about Future Sight…hmm, i do think that the Grandeur is a nice touch to the legends cycle, it encourages players to include 2 or more copies of the same card. I hope this is one ability that will be reappearing in the future. I’m also interested to see how the new cycle of rare lands will play out in block. It would be nice to see a separate cycle of the individual land in the upcoming expansions.

We all have our share of crap rares…Moonlace…Mudhole…But imagine this, you open your first pack of booster and excitedly reveal part of your last card. It’s a red rare! Could it be Tarox Bladewing?! And then you reveal the entire card and realised that it’s Steamflogger Boss. Oh man. That’s just a bad decision on WoTC’s part. It’s an unimpressive 3R for a 3/3 that grants what? Riggers? +1/+1 and what was that? Contracep…Contraptions? Simply useless. I’m not sure which is worse, Force of Savagery or Steamflogger Boss.

I’m not exactly giddy with the prospect of the future sets, but i’m glad that WoTC took a proactive

-Jar

Who the hell is Marit Lage?!

The official answer taken from Magicthegathering.com.

Hello! Is there a link that explains who/what Marit Lage is? I was under the impression that she was a powerful planeswalker. However, the token art makes “her” appear as a large Hypnox type of a creature? Thanks!
–Justin
Lancaster, OH

A: From Brady Dommermuth, Magic creative director:

The Argivian scholar Arkol thought Marit Lage was a planeswalker, but he was wrong. What’s known about Marit Lage is that she is a being of immense power, able to move across the planes but not by the same means planeswalkers can. She is not native to Dominaria, and could justifiably be called a demigod. She is mentioned in passing a couple of times in The Eternal Ice, a Magic novel by Jeff Grubb. It’s implied that she wreaked havoc on Dominaria at some point, and it’s clear that she had a human following (see the flavor text of Brine Shaman, Curse of Marit Lage, Wrath of Marit Lage, and Dehydration). One interesting footnote about Marit Lage is that the cards that bear her name penalize black’s allied colors rather than its enemy colors.

But we’re not convinced.

Some of our readers aruged that the Marit Lage token is just an avatar of herself, it might not even be Marit Lage herself! We got a little too curious and decided to put on our Jester…erm…Thinking Cap and search for the REAL MARIT LAGE.

Clue number 1: She’s not from Dominaria
Clue number 2: “she is a being of immense power”
Clue number 3: “she wreaked havoc on Dominaria at some point”

We managed to find a few suspects.

Suspect Name: Little Girl
Colour/s of Origin: White
Why she could be Marit Lage: That cutesy bunny ears, that ‘im so innocent’ eyes and that teletubby plushie, cos we all know teletubbies are EVIL!.
Why she couldn’t be Marit Lage: “cos these days all she could do is to pee the bed.”

Suspect Name: Miss Demeanor
Colour/s of Origin: White
Why she could be Marit Lage: She’s a Lady of Proper Etiquette (read: She’s a control bitch)
Why she couldn’t be Marit Lage: She looks waaaay too hot to be Marit Lage.

Suspect Name: Mother of Goon
Colour/s of Origin: Black
Why she could be Marit Lage: She has a human following.
Why she couldn’t be Marit Lage: The human following dresses in hip-hop fashion.

Suspect Name: Phyrexian Librarian
Colour/s of Origin: Black
Why she could be Marit Lage: Flying, Trample, Horror creature type and she loves to read.
Why she couldn’t be Marit Lage: Ah well, she’s a Phyrexian…

After hours and hours of searching, just when we’re about to give up we realised that we left out an important piece of clue. “Justifiably be called a demigod.” So let’s round up the clues. She’s not from Dominaria, she is a being of immense powers, she wrecked havoc on Dominaria at one point and she’s a demigod…Sounds too familar and…too close to home? Guys, Marit Lage has been right in front of us all along!

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She’s big, she’s fierce and she’s NASTY! while she doesn’t have a card to herself (we suspect she threatened the R&D department), we are positive that Marit Lage, is in fact Granny!

Ramblings

I thought of heading to bed. But a thought strike me after a phone conversation with Jar. Dun be mistaken, we’re not a couple and this is not a gay website. We’re lesbians, we love gals…. Well to be exact, I love girls and he love the he-girls…. It’s a complicated situation, and that’s why we dwell ourselves in the world of dominaria or Ravnica. Where Goblins and human can have relationships, see how Squee love to hang out with Sisay under the deck (you know what I mean), and how do you think the zombie goblins, and rat ninjas appear? Magic Characters, they have Orgy,… I mean “Mana” parties…. where all creature types just gather together and have fun…. It might not be their watches they dropped in a bowl, maybe their toes, maybe a scale or two, or even a small portion of their Brain.  However the point is, In that world… it doesn’t matter what you do. Nobody gives a shit. It’s either you’re winning the game or you end up in the graveyard…. and that’s how it is…. you go out there into combat tricks, you get busted…. No one is gonna insult or aggrevate your damaged self esteem, no one! But in reality, when you’re condemn as a homo sapien…. whichever choice you make, you need to consider other’s preception…. ya ya, the saying goes about never let other’s perception becomes your reality? But your reality is made of  other people’s perception and that is a fact for most human being live in the world of earth. So if anyone were to ask me what creature type and wat abilities would you like to have…. I would stand proudly and say:

I want to be a 1/1 human Player with 0:Phasing, indestructable, and protection from everything.

Fuck the World!……. erm sometimes I guess…….

Mel

random update #1

mel and i are gonna have a mini magic match, best of 3 rounds. the loser buys the winner either WoW tcg starter, Horror Clix starter or Dreamscape starter. and a meal on top of it.

mel’s probably gonna play a burn deck, im not too sure what i am playing yet. but im thinking of using the perilious research + hatching plan combo to draw 5 cards, with maro in play. a green/blue maro beatdown deck.

a rough idea

4 surveiling sprite
3 coiling oracle
4 birds of paradise
3 maro
4 hatching plan
4 perilious research
2 sky swallower
3 mana leak
3 remand
3 muddle the mixture
3 into the north

im considering adding plaxmanta as well, or maybe flight of fancy. im so annoyed.

Why Coldsnap is a flop….(or my experience at the prerelease)

Judging from the forum, Coldsnap seemed to be a flop not only here in Singapore, but around the way. Some blamed it on the summer vacation, some blamed it on the power of the set and some are just not interested in Coldsnap. But Mel and I went anyhow because we started playing Magic at the time around Ice Age was realised (about 10 years ago), and we had strong attachment for Ice Age and its snow-covered cards.

When WoTC promised to expand the snow-covered flavour, we were thrilled and we even started searching through our old cards for the snow-covered lands. So like happy tail-wagging puppies, Mel and I went for the prerelease event. It was pretty dismal when the room was half-filled (or half-emptied), and when we opened the packs, snow-covered lands were included in the 15 cards boosters and that meant that we couldn’t get any more snow-covered lands to form our decks.

Which was increasingly frustrating because you could form a green/red deck but you only get snow-covered islands. That would have sucked.

So anyway, i opened a ophran viper but i had to pass it away. My heart aches a little, but when i received my cards, i was fucking excited. I had Lightning Serpent, Rimewind Dragon as well as Panglacial Wurm. I knew instantly that i MUST play red and green.

I can’t remember exactly what cards i have got in my deck, but here’s a rough idea.

3 Boreal Druid
2 Surging Might
2 Skeld
3 Into the North
3 Frostweb Spider
2 Ohran Yeti
1 Martyr of Ashes
1 Surging Flame
1 Thermopod
2 Goblin Rimerunner
1 Rite of Flame
1 Rimewind Dragon
1 Lightning Serpent
1 Panglacial Wurm
2 Snow-covered Forest
1 Snow-covered Mountain
1 Mouth of Ronom

It was a good deck. Mouth of Ronom provides direct creature damage when my opponents least suspected. Lightning Serpent saves my ass so many times, especially when my opponents thought they almost have the game. In short, i won 3 out of 4 matches. I lost to the deck with 3 fucking Sound of the Call.

Oh well, you can’t have everything. Being a Magic Flunky, i didn’t expect to get 3 wins at all. Maybe i was lucky, or maybe i got really good cards for the deck. I hope i am just as lucky when Time Spiral comes around.

After the satisfactory game, i walked around whoring my Lightning Serpent and Rimewind Dragon. The prices were pretty low, one idiot offered $3 for the Rimewind Dragon. What…The…Fuck…So i decided to keep the cards and try to form a deck when Coldsnap is out in stores.

Let’s wait for Mel’s Coldsnap Prerelease experiences, can’t wait to hear how he lost (almost) all the games.

Until then, let’s all revere in the presence of Lightning Serpent.

-Jar-

Marit Lage is back!

The Wrath of Marit Lage

I never knew what Marit Lage is, or how she looks like. I imagined her to be a scornful bitch goddess like Lloth in Forgotten Realms. Hateful, powerful and basically how a woman behaves when she’s been dumped.

The Curse of Marit Lage

She’s definitely a pissed off chick.

And when Coldsnap’s spoiler was out and the preview of Dark Depths was shown…

She was described as an epic sorcerer frozen in a glacier’s heart. Her thundering steps havent been felt on Terisiare since she was locked in the glacier, but you already know that she waits, not dead, in those Dark Depths.

Little do we know that Marit Lage looks just like a dignified sotong.

Or rather, something that you might expect from the Pirates series.

-Jar-

Coldsnap Theme Decks

WoTC just released the deck list for Coldsnap’s theme decks. Alliances and Ice Age cards will be included with the new card format. Sadly though, Force of Will will not be printed. But Swords to Plowshares, Disenchant, Dark Ritual will be reprinted.

Deck list could be found here.

If i only have S$17 with me right now (cos that’s how much a deck costs in Singapore), i would most probably get Snowscape. It has most of the cards that i want to get – Rimewind Taskmaster, Rimewind Cyromancer, Heidar, Rimewind Master. And i could probably fit in 4 Glimpse to make a fully playable deck that doesn’t suck. Counting down 11 days to the release of Coldsnap!

-Jar-