Recent Posts
It’s an odd time in the Magic world, the gap between the release of the last set and the beginning of previews for the next one. Some people are busy making new competitive decks, or still getting around to sorting the last of their Zendikar cards (guilty as charged). Some people are keeping an eye on new trademarks to see when Wizards of the Coast files new ones.
Yes, really. A few weeks ago a keen-eyed observer noticed two new Magic-related names: Mirrodin Pure and New Phyrexia. Usually when you uncover the name of a Magic set in development, you have to try and guess what it’s going to be about. In this case, though, both Mirrodin and Phyrexia are settings that the game has visited in the past, and people already have sort of an idea of what they involve.
When you add the fact that they have already announced an upcoming installment of the Duel Decks series entitled Phyrexia vs. the Coalition, themed as a throwback to the Invasion block, it seems like we’re heading into another nostalgia year. Is it a good idea to reuse things in this manner? It could well be. The Time Spiral block proved that Magic’s past was a viable source of inspiration. The game’s history may have been different in some ways from its present, but it was in no way less interesting or cool. People still have fun playing with old cards (Vintage, anyone?) and collecting old artwork.
Besides, Mirrodin’s metal world was a very cool concept, and after the fiasco that Standard became during its time, it really deserves something other than a list of broken cards for people to remember it by.
Believe it or not, there were more cards in the Mirrodin block than just this.
“We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president.”
-- Michael Moore
"He said we must be fair today,
Equal work means equal pay.
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama!"
-- As sung by students at B. Bernice Young Elementary School, Burlington, NJ
I wonder how all those members of Congress who voted for the Lilly Ledbetter Act feel about President Obama getting credit for it now, even in a supposedly silly song taught to schoolkids? Actually, I wonder how Ledbetter herself feels about it? Are some of those kids going to pick up the message that she didn’t need to waste her time and money on lawsuits or defending her rights, since President Obama was on the job?
And what would the people who lobbied for and drafted and voted for the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which Ledbetter is an expansion of, say now? What would Lyndon Johnson, whose signature is on that original bill, say? Did they contribute nothing?
Or maybe none of that effort – the money spent, the lobbying done, the violence endured at Occoquan Workhouse – mattered until now, because none of the people involved had the, um, individual transformative potential of Barack Obama, as identified by the mainstream media? (A gestalt group which of late has, ironically, given us fewer portrayals of well-adjusted female professionals than porn directors have.) And what is wrong with America right now that you’re not likely to hear these questions asked off the internet?
“Mr. Burns was rushed to Springfield Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was then transferred to a better hospital, where doctors upgraded his condition to alive.”
-- Kent Brockman
“We will bury you!”
-- Nikita Khrushchev
If you’ve been around the other sections of Orble, you know that I like Magic: the Gathering, a game which has been declared dead almost as many times as the United States of America has. There’s even an article on one of those other Magic sites that aren’t as good as mine (just kidding. Or am I?) called “The Game that Wouldn’t Die.” There are things like that for America, but more often you’ll find comparisons to the author’s favorite fallen empire, usually Rome, and particularly its supposed cultural decadence. Lots of soap operas on TV? That means we’re weak and effete. Lots of contact sports on TV? That means we’re debauched and obsessed with violence. You can't lose.
(Sometimes I think these speculations and comparisons, and their gleeful and anticipatory undertone, might say more about the people making them than the actual situation. Who, I wonder, would rather be part of a dying empire than a thriving one?)
There’s an obscure piece of flavor text on an old Magic card that says “Never believe they’re dead until you see the body.” Yes, America has social problems, other countries have ambitions, and Obama’s Nobel Prize will be a punchline for many years to come. Nothing unusual about that, though; Roman legions clashed with Carthaginian and Parthian armies, and Caligula’s horse, the senator, is still a joke now after only about 2,000 years. And all that happened well before the height of Rome as defined by classicists. Will our current problems look like that in a hundred years?
Developer interviews are a lot like the director’s commentary on a DVD, and equally variable. Sometimes they actually have something to say, and sometimes they’re the ones for Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s sixth season (“So, in this scene Buffy and Spike are sitting on the steps. This is the second-last scene of the episode”). There is precious little to learn in the one for Zendikar; I for one don’t care about what isn’t in the set, and I simply don’t agree that Time Spiral was “too cutesy-complicated” or whatever other Pittsburgh slang Aaron Forsythe uses to describe it. But I thought it was interesting that their only answer to the question about the old-school cards randomly inserted in Zendikar boosters was, and I quote
“Some combination of ‘I don't know’ and ‘We don't discuss collation
[ Click here to read more ]
To every thing there is a season, and for every new Magic expansion, there is the card assessment article series, at an average of 1.5 per website. Depending on your perspective, these are either an opportunity to find out what the game’s sharpest minds think about the new product, or the time when the internet’s biggest know-it-alls decide what you should be playing with.
No prizes for guessing which one I think it is.
[ Click here to read more ]
September 29th 2009 01:09
Early last week, Jon Stewart devoted the entirety of the second segment on one of his shows to sardonic jokes about how one cable news channel sometimes runs a poll where 93% of respondents favor one thing, and another channel’s poll shows 93% of respondents favoring the exact opposite thing. “It’s almost,” he burst, “as though they have completely different audiences!” Thanks for the lesson in TV economics, Jon. I never would have guessed that different news channels have different editorial positions, or that a lot of people decide which one to watch based on which one’s position is most appealing to them.
[ Click here to read more ]
September 23rd 2009 02:47
I’ve often been asked why I hate Highlander or singleton formats so much. A fair question, when you can actually make an argument that they should actually have some aesthetic appeal to anyone. First of all, they have nostalgic value, being close in practice to how almost everyone started playing. Look at the decklists for a preconstructed deck from any set, say Alara Reborn. These are the products that are recommended for players just learning to play the game, and they rarely include more than two copies of any one card. Playing with preconstructed decks is intended to expose new players to a good range of the cards available, and gives you a chance to see cards in action that you would never play in more focused decks. Second of all, Magic incorporates many elements of randomness, from shuffling your deck at the beginning of games to cards that force your opponent to shuffle their deck during a game to cards whose rules text actually uses the card “random.” I myself have been in matches where my opponent played the exact same cards in two consecutive games, so if you like Highlander because this is less likely, I understand completely. Considering that there’s a Fourth Edition starter deck box on my desk that promises on its back “you’ll never play the same game twice,” wanting this puts you in company of the caliber of Richard Garfield himself.
[ Click here to read more ]
September 19th 2009 01:40
September 12th 2009 03:57
“It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.”
-- President Gerald Ford, announcing his decision to pardon President Richard Nixon
[ Click here to read more ]
|
|
|
Add Comments
Read More
Comments (1)
Comment by Jose
on Halo 3 ODST female character quandary
Orb of Insight
Political Writing