Team Land

Aww man, I should have written this entry earlier; better late than never because MTG is always a work in progress, always new blocks in the makings and new concepts/mechanics to be dreamed of. Basically, there was a vote for which type of Legendary card Wizards should create: Enchantment or Land. There was surprisingly a very close vote, nearly 50/50 split. At first I was very for Team Enchantment b/c if I was to be categorized as a certain type of planeswalker, I would be an enchanter; one that used totems, mind controls, and ones that would not only disable, but hurt my opponents in the process.

 I enjoy using enchantments that relied on luck and what was in my deck, such as Lurking Predators (many big expensive creatures)or Where Ancients Tread, that could do burst damage. I love to use enchantments than could change the tide of the game, such as Dragon Crucible, Gravitational Shift, or Collective Blessing.

 When I thought about the game itself though, I think I would have voted Team Land though instead. Why? For the meta game; I have rarely seen anyone use special lands in my casual group. Players infrequently use lands that give dual mana at the price of coming in tapped, and no one uses shock lands. Because of this, no one utilize spells or abilites that destroy lands and we are equally crippled when someone does use a powerful land such as Gavony Township.

  Lands that make a difference though are typically rare and in my group of friends, some of us don't have the funds (or luck via boosters) to get them. Hence, our decks always have spells such as naturalize to remove the countless enchantments, but no one has spells to destroy lands. 

By having a better stable of lands, it creates a reason to have special lands other than the reason of a mana source, which slowly becomes less important in longer games (of course, depending on the way the deck is built). I've seen countless games where players are begging their deck to give them something they can play and instead get a basic land. I personally can think of only a few special lands i'd even consider using.

Going with Team Land (or atleast greater variety in better lands), will create better MTG variety in deck building, increase the use of destroy land cards and make MTG better overall.

I hope for a day (or block) that we return to a plane like Zendikar, where there was a mechanic based on land. Land was important (see: Emeria, the Sky Ruin). It was equally important to have land removal cards. There were those enchantments that made lands into creatures.. or creatures that turned them into monsters. More variety, more strategies.

Guild Wars 2: Bounties

Ok!

So I had my first taste of the Guild Bounty System in Guild Wars 2 on Tuesday night and i'm reporting in. I won't drone on about it and just say:

- basically, you find 1-6 npcs out of 15, all over Tyria that wanders the whole map (although in a set path). You'll be able to distinguish them as they'll have a unique name and have a sheriff's badge symbol over their head

- the best thing to do is have 15 guild members (preferably more), run in the opposite direction of the path to find the npc, THEN start the mission. This is the best course of action (at this point) b/c this mission only lasts 15 minutes and even with a full guild, it can take atleast 5 minutes to kill each bounty (champion lvl).

- if you're one of the unlucky (?) people to have found one of the bounties, no worry, by still tagging your bounty, you'll still get rewards. That was my case and I still got 2 commendations, 2 rares (both surprisingly for my class) and 50 silver.

- be aware, you can halt the npc from moving by interacting them ("F'ing them"), BUT when the guild leader/officer turns on the mission DO NOT interact with them, otherwise they will turn hostile on you!

All in all, I like the rewards, but it took far too long to setup this mission. We started looking for our npcs at 8EST, and started the actual mission at 9:20.. and finished in less than the 15 allowable minutes. I wouldn't exactly call it fun either.. reminding me of the Rifting (from, duh, Rift), where its a zerg of people smacking on one boss. 

- it obviously requires a TON of guild members to do: 1) to have enough guild influence (gained from active players) to purchase the mission and 2) to actually find the bounty in a timely manner.

I want to see in the future, some sort of king of the hill type of guild mission, where you defend a certain spot from unlimited (maybe limited) waves of enemies. Or one where you have to defend your camp, reach the enemy npc camp, escort some npcs back all the while fighting endless waves.

Back on Track

Its been a LONG time since i've written an entry, but i'm mostly moved in now and I figure I better get writing again before I lose the habit. Its harder than normal because i've been working, unpacking and been extremely busy with RL duties, encountering internet, then pc issues which restricted gametime. 

My main distraction these days, pc-wise is still Guild Wars 2. I've tried making a *gasp* Norn Necromancer, and just like each new character i've ever made, the initial gameplay was extremely fun.. but I always seem to hit an 'unfun' zone/threshold by where your character is doing everything (hearts, gathering, crafting, events, etc) possible, but still ends up underleveled for the next progression-able area. This requires you to either keep farming lower level areas, events, die from higher lvl areas, or go to another starting zone to level up there. I hit that area with my necro and I understand (again) what my cousin said about the limited ways to play the class. The limited ways to play a class is boring to me which helps my alt-o-holism and will allow me to play with my much more enjoyable Warrior.

 I've touched upon the topic before, but a guild (in mmo's particular) can really enrich a player's experience in a game. The drawback is that it can be easily corrupted though by negative, vocal players. That happened last week while struggling to get a good connection and preventing my pc from overheating. While soloing and testing my connection, I saw in guild chat how one officer was fed up with 'begging' people to join in World vs World and called us 'carebears.' For those that don't know, that is derogatory language to describe a person that likes PvE and doesn't like PvP. While I respect the person's leadership abilities and understand the hardships of leadership on an online mmo game, berating your guildmates and calling them names doesn't make for a healthy guild. It totally turned me off, making WvW the LAST thing i'd want to do; I would do WvW because I want to, and not to please the person that was name-calling. If WvW (or certain aspects of a game) is so important to you, as a leader, it is your responsibility to entice people into participating. Make sure people are aware of the event, making it fun to participate, easy to participate and accessible. In this case, unfortunately, the person didn't want to put forth that effort (totally their decision) and joined another guild. Guilds are a flowing and ever-changing entity and while our guild may have been considered a WvW or PvP guild before, with new membership, it has changed to a PvX guild. A PvX guild is one that does everything ("solve for X"), questing, dungeons, crafting, pvp, everything. Be aware of what guild you're in or what you're thinking of joining so that their culture meshes with the way you play.

My alternate distraction these days has been our old love: Magic The Gathering. The newest expansion of Gatecrash, coupled with my friends wanting to play it again (thanks to the end of their fantasy football league) has renewed my interest, before that, it was gathering dust. One thing that always makes it exciting is opening a set of booster packs to find you're extremely lucky and get a high percentage of mythic rares (the most rare type of cards). This happened in a recent purchase and will hopefully be incorporated into some new decks.

I wanted youuuu!

What if wild animals ate fast food