Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Longships on the Horizon




            As many of you may know, the Old Gods was released for Crusader Kings II yesterday. As an avid fan of CKII, myself and many others have been anticipating this DLC for a while now. A much needed technology system overhaul? I can go raiding and sacrifice people for piety? Sign me up! I’ve been especially eager because it promises a chance to explore some of my own Scandinavian heritage, albeit in one of the alternate histories that arise on any given playthrough. That being said, I haven’t bought it yet and was actually wondering what everyone’s impressions of the new Pagan system are. No matter how excited I am for new features, I never like to make a purchase until I hear some reviews. So tell me: What do you like most about the Old Gods? What do you think Paradox could have done better, if anything? Worth the price to buy now, or should I wait for the inevitable and ever-anticipated Steam sale?

            I’ve been thinking of doing a Crusader Kings AAR, so if I do decide to pick up the DLC, I’ll leave a poll on the main page where you can vote and tell me if you’d like to see one involving a Pagan playthrough or one based in Westeros with the Song of Ice and Fire mod (once it updates for the latest patch). The ASOIAF mod is my favorite (and admittedly only) mod for CKII, and I would be more than happy to share the tale of another adventure in the Sunset Kingdoms or, once the developers add it, Essos. As always, comment below and thanks for reading!

-Arcthos

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Madness, You Say?


For this blog's inaugural post, I am going to talk about a subject that has grown on me throughout my years in college: Magic: The Gathering. I was introduced to this game during my sophmore year of college and have been playing ever since. I should follow this statement with a disclaimer; I am no tournament player. I much prefer casual play amongst my friends where cards from many different Magic sets can combine in unique, fun, and sometimes, as I will demonstrate later in this post, ridiculous ways. I am a big fan of EDH, or Commander, since it allows many cards that don't normally see a lot of play their chance to shine, and have created four of my own decks following this format, with a fifth in the works. My latest creation, featuring Melek, Izzet Paragon as its illustrious commander, is the focus of the rest of this post.

While hitting random on the Gatherer website one night (a wonderful way to find interesting cards), I came across a card from the original Ravnica set called Eye of the Storm. For those who aren’t familiar with the blue enchantment, the exact wording of the card is as follows: “Whenever a player plays an instant or sorcery card, remove it from the game. Then that player copies each instant or sorcery card removed from the game with Eye of the Storm. For each copy, the player may play the copy without paying its mana cost”. I had also recently picked up a card called Hive Mind, another blue enchantment that says, “Whenever a player casts an instant or sorcery spell, each other player copies that spell. Each of those players may choose new targets for his or her copy”. Since the Izzet are one of my favorite guilds from Ravnica, I immediately began thinking of a spell-focused blue/red deck where my objective wasn’t necessarily to win, but to give everyone the opportunity to “have fun”. Upon doing an advanced search for cards containing spell randomizing effects, I finally ended up with the following build for my “Chaos Deck”: