Derp

Sorry guys. Been busy with school and this one kind of got away from me. Believe it or not, I'm working on a respectable queue so this doesn't happen again.

Standard Tour of San-Antonio: Friday Night Magic at Cards & Crafts

While the internet is full of ways to find game stores in your area, it does very little to tell you about the real character of those stores: their atmosphere, their product, their staff, or anything else a curious gamer might want to know. To help others out, I've started a week-by-week tour of the stores in my area, playing a Friday Night Magic at each one and sharing the results with you.

This week I went to Cards & Crafts, located at 8104 Tezel Road, right by the Little Caesar's. In a breach of tradition, I'm covering the Friday Night Magic before giving an overview of the store. 

As with my last FNM, I'm playing white and blue deck based around staying alive. I earlier mischaracterized it as a deck designed for trolling, but that's not accurate. "Strategema" is designed to let my opponent's deck play out. This gives me a better feel for the player, see the local metagame, and hone my skills as a player. It can be frustrating to play against, but that's not always the case.

Round 1 put me up against another blue and white deck, played by Tim. We chatted politely through several quiet, early turns before he tried to kill me with a host of angels and all manner of double-striking guys. 

Specifically, these manners.

Weekend Music: Goodbye My Lover

I'm sorry guys, this video is legitimately terrible.

Blog in 4000 Words: Gone Fishing

Question and Rant: Here and Back Again

I sound smart when I speak to people, a skill I honed in lieu of any other skills. I did this primarily because I like the sound of my own voice, which is a pity because I'll never have an audience inside of my own head to appreciate the light, yet solid qualities my skull lends it. Despite sounding a bit like a stereotypical mentally challenged person, my sounding-smart skills encourage people who barely know me to ask me about my thoughts on current events. People who really know me skip this in favor of letting me daydream about Magic, comic books, or emo guys, mostly because they know I'll be thinking about those things anyway and don't want to put me to the trouble of pretending that I'm listening to them.

Now because I've had the money to stay away from strangers for the past few years, this hasn't really been something that's happened much. However, if I did still have to meet new people and interact with them, I'm sure these are the questions I'd imagine them asking me while they said boring things.

What do you think about this secret service prostitute thing?

Secret service agents fucking prostitutes in South America is no more connected to Obama than Abu Ghraib is to Rumsfeld.

Enjoy Darkplace

Still recovering from mid-terms. Please enjoy the best in brilliantly bad television.

Blog in Exactly 1000 Words: Fantastic

Image is by a talented guy named Rawlsy. Click the image, or here, to go to his deviantart.

Still doing mid-terms.

Double Magic Wednesday

I wanted to point out how stupid the latest convoluted crossover, Avengers Versus X-Men, but because its idiocy exists in a great disproportion to the actual number of issues released, I'm holding off until I can pick and choose just the best parts to ridicule. In light of this being my week for mid-terms, I'm spending this time  to explore the Magic campaign system I've been working on. 

The Magic: the Gathering: the Campaign System is based on a simple desire; I want to play a game of Magic with a larger scope and different victory conditions. Last weekend, Terry and I play-tested the first edition of Magic: Clash Across Planes (Hereafter, CAP).      

It's the Magic: Standard Tour of San Antonio: Gamelot Friday Night Magic

While the internet is full of ways to find game stores in your area, it does very little to tell you about the real character of those stores: their atmosphere, their product, their staff, or anything else a curious gamer might want to know. To help others out, I've started a week-by-week tour of the stores in my area, playing a Friday Night Magic at each one and sharing the results with you.

Last week I went to Gamelot, located at 7007 Bandera Road, on the corner where Bandera meets Huebner.  As is tradition, last week I covered the store in general, saving the results of the Friday Night Magic for today.

The actual event was better than expected. It was a standard constructed affair and I brought a White/Blue Venser/Karn deck that was--well, to be honest, it was designed to troll competitive decks by not dying via Venser and Stonehorn dignitary, then restarting the game via Karn.

For your opponent, it starts like "Cause and Effect," but ends like "Remember Me."

The Avengers, Part Two

Wednesday, I put up the first part of my response to the thoroughly enjoyable and quite popular The Avengers film. It was too big to finish in one post (a good argument could have been made for three), so today's the conclusion.

Blah, blah, spoilers after the cut.

The Avengers, Part One

The Avengers is fucking awesome. You know it. I know it. A few million people know it.

Mainly because of stuff like this.
Image taken from here.

Spoilers below:

It's the Magic: Standard Tour of San Antonio: Gamelot

While the internet is full of ways to find game stores in your area, it does very little to tell you about the real character of those stores: their atmosphere, their product, their staff, or anything else a curious gamer might want to know. To help others out, I've started a week-by-week survey of the stores in my area, playing a Friday Night Magic at each one as a way of familiarizing myself with it.

This week I went to Gamelot, located at 7007 Bandera Road, on the corner where Bandera meets Huebner.

Gamelot says it's San Antonio's gaming megastore. That's very true. While I could quibble square footage with Heroes & Fantasies, one is a comics and collectibles store with an impressive gaming apparatus while the other is a massive store pulsating with games. Even packed with the traffic from the Friday night of a new set release for Magic, the play environment for the whole event was comfortable.

Of course, like all of the other places I've visited, Gamelot does more than just Magic. Magic was actually in a separate play area while a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament occupied the main floor, between the miniatures games and LAN center. All of those areas were buzzing with players. I'll confess to some ignorance of the LAN facilities, but I've seen League of Legends, World of Warcraft, DC Universe Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic being played there.

 

WM: "Angry People" by BNL

That's a Common Thing, Right?

You ever search your hard drive for an innocuous word and find it in half the erotic fiction you've written?

Yeah, like that.

News News: Crime and Punishment

Most mornings, I sit down with my cup of coffee and open up a long list of news sites. The news doesn't always affect my daily life or educate me about the world, but it does reliably fuel a daily two minutes of cathartic hate. In an ongoing effort to entertain inform my readers, I thought I'd highlight some of this week's past stories.

Also, the images are designed for display on the blog. If you're reading on an RSS feed, you can set your background color to #222222 and/or your radio frequency to 104.15 to view it properly. 

In The Hauge, former Liberian President and alleged Lord of War, Charles Taylor was finally found guilty by an international court on 11 counts of aiding war crimes, including charges of rape, torture, using child soldiers, and murder. 

In 1989, he began a rebellion in Liberia, taking control of most of the country within an year, and supporting a rebellion in neighboring Sierra Leone within the next. His services to the Sierra Leone rebels by supplying them with fighters and trafficking Sierra Leone diamonds. The court found his aid was rendered with knowledge of their war crimes, despite his claims that he tried to lead the rebels to a peace deal.

When shitbags like Slobodan Milosevic and Kenneth Lay dodge an open trial because even their hearts don't want to be near them any longer than necessary. When there's no trial that would expose their crimes and publicly label them as the criminals, then others see that there are no consequences for men of power who let their greed and ambition hurt others. Even Muammar Gaddafi and Osama Bin Laden got off easy with bullets to the face. The only development close to this one was the trial and hanging of Saddam Hussein, but I guess here in the States, we don't often equate hangings with justice.

Still though, awful lot of assholes going down these past ten years.