Author: paz

  • Privileged Magic Players Okay with Expensive Singles

    Complaints about the skyrocketing shop prices of chase rares were dismissed today at a gathering of avid Magic: The Gathering players who are concerned about the rising level of concern expressed by other Magic: The Gathering players.

    “My concern is that these concerns will disrupt WOTC’s self-correcting economic systems,” said Reginald Q. Farnsworth III, a concerned, middle-aged Magic player who lives comfortably on his generous salary. “And that concerns me.”

    According to some players, various chase rares have become prohibitively expensive to purchase as singles, with prices unprecedented in the history of the Standard format.

    “These players are socialists,” said Sebastian M. Tennison VII, one of the rally’s lively young coordinators. “They are the lazy and the jobless, expecting free rides and handouts at every turn.”

    “$280 for a set of Jace, the Mind Sculptors? Big deal!” he continued. “I spent more than that on a Mai Thai in the cabana bar out front.”

    Tennison believes that if people don’t want to pay, they don’t have to play. “No one’s forcing them to play Magic,” Tennison argued in his afternoon keynote speech. “That’s the freedom we’re fighting for here: their freedom not to play!”

    Tennison’s words were met with thunderous applause from the audience of entirely white people, which included both upper class people, and lower class people who believe that a better life will osmose to them by pitifully barning the upper class.

    Initially, Wizards had stated that their then-upcoming “Mythic Rares” wouldn’t be tournament staples for the “Spike” players, but rather large, unplayable dragons for the “Timmy” players.

    But they changed their mind.

    “Frankly, capitalism doesn’t work by ‘being nice’ and ‘honoring promises,’” said pundit Edmund Winthorpe, who is given money under the table by Hasbro, Inc. “Nor does it concern itself with ‘equality,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘fairness,’ ‘honesty,’ ‘inclusivity,’ ‘civility,’ et cetera, et cetera. Rather, these are the natural emergent products of pushing customers toward their breaking points.”

    “Works every time,” he added, nodding confidently.

  • The Call of Kozilek

    Whoever you are, reader, I hope you have good reason for reading this. This memoir was written solely out of necessity, but if the time has come for it to be read, I fear it is already too late. I have here transcribed as best I can secrets that no man should have ever learned, secrets that have claimed countless lives; I write them in the hope that they will save yours, but I fear that will not the be the case.

    Like you, I lived the majority of my life in ignorant bliss, but that turn ended on the 28th of February 2010, with the news of my uncle’s death. My uncle had been a Magic player of no small repute, and not without his share of enemies, but the police had recorded his death as accidental – he had, allegedly, slipped on a loose card, to his death. I could not help but suspect that the card in question was a vendetta. As my uncle’s next of kin, his collection had been delivered to me, and along with it a diary whose unsettling contents I will now relate.

    My uncle’s last draft before an abrupt retirement had been during Time Spiral block. He had been joined at the table by a stranger with dark hair and wild eyes, and carrying a walking stick described fancifully as ‘braided with the teeth of dragons’. Although others in the store had dismissed him as an eccentric aficionado, his presence had an inexplicable effect on my uncle. That night, he took every copy of Ghostfire passed his way – apparently choosing it first pick over a Tarmogoyf – and stored them cryptically in his deckbox. When paired against the mysterious newcomer, my uncle sided in every copy of the card, but the stranger merely laughed and put five 4/4 red Dragon creature tokens with flying onto the battlefield. No-one was quite sure what had happened, but the significance was clear.

    My uncle became a recluse after that confrontation, and even his diary is largely devoid of entries during this period. The next event of note was the announcement of Zendikar on the 25th of March 2009, which apparently prompted my uncle to flee the country altogether – a scribbled note under this date read ‘it will begin in Washington’. My uncle took up residence in Rome – it was, perhaps, the furthest place he could think of – and he lived in relative peace for months before November’s world championships brought Zendikar rudely to him. The majority of holidaymakers were either drunk or otherwise caught in a Lethargy Trap, but my uncle eventually found a coherent drafter and received the information he had been dreading: the next set would be Rise of the Eldrazi.

    My uncle’s hurried return to America was well-received by his old team, but rather than indulge their ill-fated tinkers with Lotus Cobra, my uncle had each player report to him on any untoward visions or dreams that might trouble them. This line of investigation must have seemed desperate even to my uncle, but it eventually bore fruit: one meek rookie by the name of Bobert had, after a particularly intensive block constructed session, experienced some night-terror he could barely articulate. The only coherent references were to Ugin’s eye and the dragon’s servant, corroboration to my uncle’s greatest fears.

    My uncle died apparently in the middle of his investigations, but the fact that Wizards of the Coast publicly unveiled the first Eldrazi the very next day seems beyond coincidence. I had the task of continuing my uncle’s work quite unexpectedly thrust on me when, in my his absence, I was delivered Bobert’s last testament: a journal of his experience at the pre-release.

    Bobert had arrived at his pre-release under a cover of dark clouds. The forecasters attributed it to a freak gust blowing the Icelandic ash over the Atlantic, but Bobert had had reason to suspect otherwise. My uncle had apparently warned him against attending the pre-release, but he had felt it a matter of duty to gather whatever information he could about the events beginning to unfold. It was immediately clear that his darkest fears had been confirmed: instead of the expected vista of exuberant gamers, there was a palpable fear present throughout the hall, seeming to emanate from a singular figure seated calmly behind a peculiar oaken table. Bobert’s account of him was identical to my uncle’s own from years ago: he was shaggy and fearsome, and he carried that draconic cane that suggested a power not of this world.

    Surrounding the stranger’s table was a smattering of catatonic players, who clutched maternally to them their carefully constructed sealed decks as one might hold a recently deceased relative: desperately and with ineffable grief. The man paid them no heed, for he had his final opponent seated before him, an unfortunate local player whose name I was unable to track down. Bobert recorded their match from a safe distance with a morbid fascination, and although at the time I could not accept his account, I present it now as some indication of the Eldrazi’s subtlety. The stranger apparently won the die roll and lead with a basic forest and a Joraga Treespeaker(5C). His opponent, possibly reassured by the normalcy of this, played his own forest and passed the turn. It became immediately apparent that something far from normal was transpiring, however, because the stranger proceeded to play an island and a Training Grounds, level up his Elf, and tap it to cast Nest Invader(3C). Bobert took particular interest in the tokens the man produced to mark his level counters; their geometry, he claimed, was all wrong. Where one would expect a convex, they were instead greeted by a concavity, and at times they beads appeared to resemble eyes, though not the eyes of a human.

    The stranger’s opponent, whose bravery or stubbornness must have been deserving of some note to continue unfazed, played a plains and a Wall of Omens with his turn, little realising the inadequacy of his defence. The man used his to turn to play an island, an Echo Mage, and a Growth Spasm fetching a further island, requiring the sacrifice of his lone spawn (1C)– the symbolism in this sequence seems unlikely to have occurred without artistic embellishment, but I can only conclude it is factual. Bobert’s account at this point degrades somewhat into incoherency, and loses track of the opponent’s futile actions, but he can hardly be blamed for this: the transcription suggests an air of sheer insanity descending as the match continued, until ultimately the bizarre game being played out before him was the only remnant of his own familiar world.

    What is known is that the next turn brought a fourth island followed by four counters for the Echo Mage, catapulting it to a potency quite unlike anything that should rightly be seen at a pre-release. The stranger laid down his last card as a Prophetic Prism, then used it to cast the Mortician Beetle he had drawn (0C). Even despite the abject horror the man projected into Bobert, it must have been difficult to fathom what nefarious machinations he could execute with the pieces he had assembled. The answer came next turn when the man cast See Beyond and copied it twice – all the while muttering, Bobert noted, obscene and unfamiliar phrases relating to the same visions of sheer fire that had plagued Bobert’s dreams only weeks before. Once he had finished constructing his new hand the stranger cast Brood Birthing to multiply his blasphemous spawn’s presence. (2C)

    It was after this point that Bobert’s account truly left the realms of human plausibility and entered that darker sphere that now has inexorably overlaid our own. On his next turn the stranger drew all the power he could from his lands, his elf, and even the fragile lives of his spawn, and triggered a Reality Spasm that Bobert insisted could be felt physically shuddering through the hall. The Echo Mage of course copied it, and an infinity of dread vibrations threaded from the building, producing tremors that propagated psychically across the globe, producing intense nightmares in sensitive individuals like Bobert. When eventually the shaking subsided and Bobert was able to take stock of his surroundings, a sight far beyond sight presented itself to him; his every sense was filled by the monstrous presence whose cardname read Spawnsire of Ulamog. Although it is the least herald of the least Eldrazi, the force of its existence was so profound as to drive any remaining sanity from its witnesses – Bobert, indeed, died a quite mute lunatic some days after the event.

    The stranger reportedly spent some time phasing spawn in and out of existence with the dread creature, their meaningless sacrifices feeding the strength of the Beetle, which had already accrued some strength from the lesser rituals. When it was suitably bloated, and he began to bore of the affairs of mortal creatures, the stranger finally called upon his dark gods – I shall not begin to attempt a description of their coming, for I am sure no mortal tongue yet has come close to accuracy in that respect. Unwilling to have any lesser creature rival his masters’ own powers, the stranger cast a Momentous Fall for his beetle, drawing as a result every card in his library. Bobert reported that the cards spilt from his hand as the great ones began their unstoppable motions – and every one appeared to be Not of This World.

    Although your continued existence and my ability to write this journal may indicate to you that some chance intervention prevented the spread of the Eldrazi, I am afraid to say that this is not the case. Although I do not know the fate of the mad servant, isolated accounts from across the world indicate the subtle presence of the three infinite monstrosities he summoned. What cosmic alignments do they wait for? What unknowable plans motivate their gelatinous intelligences? If you are reading this, perhaps the time of their action has come, and if this is the case I can only hope that their disregard for human life is such that the end will come quickly. I do not know if my life will end as my uncle’s did, at the blade of some spy, but I have no intention of surviving to see the black dawn that must surely follow humanity’s long dusk.

  • Kozilek ‘Offput’ by Zendikari Media

    Good Gamery recently had a rare chance to speak to Kozilek, the dread flayer of minds whose return to Zendikar has been described as “The End of All That Is.” But when Kozilek’s slithering thought-tendrils pierced directly into our minds, it was to tell a different story — the story of an innocent entity that has been cruelly misrepresented.

    The figure of Kozilek certainly felt imposing as its physical manifestation sat in our office, seeming at times to fill the entire room, and at others not to take up any space at all. Mind-wrenchingly terrifying though it was, its infinite obscene limbs clearly shifted in a way that suggested nervousness. We saw that Kozilek was both concerned and anxious to correct what it saw as an unjustified blemish upon its reputation.

    “I just don’t know where the Zendikari get this stuff about us,” Kozilek’s mind-screech resonated. “I mean, the last time a mage summoned me, I let them draw four cards! How is that butchering the truth?”

    “I’m actually pretty interested in physics, so I was really upset when I first heard that title,” it added.

    But what of the untold devastation Kozilek is reported to have wreaked across this and all other planes? “Well, we all have our red mist moments, don’t we?” Kozilek’s communication seemed to approximate laughter, with a sensation like a childhood memory spoiling.

    “But seriously, usually when I step out, people just kill themselves. I don’t really think that’s my fault. That’s what happened to the master of that escaped null – and he’s using me as a scapegoat for his murders!”

    “The worst part is that the storytellers are dragging my family into this,” Kozilek conveyed. “Have you seen this stuff? ‘Death by death, Kozilek’s lineage spread.’ Dragging my kids through the mud? That’s just low.”

    “Poor little tykes. They shouldn’t have to grow up hearing that their spawnsire is a criminal,” it continued.

    And how were the other Eldrazi were reacting to the bad publicity?

    “Well, to be honest, Emmy and Mog haven’t had it so bad,” Kozilek replied. “Emmy doesn’t understand language in the same way that you use it, so most of this stuff doesn’t even register. Mog says it has no idea what the Infinite Gyre means, but thinks it sounds pretty cool. I guess it’s only me that gets offended by this stuff…”

    Good Gamery was also given a first-hand account of how the whole situation came about in the first place.

    “All this started,” Kozilek recalled, appearing to have told the story many times, “when Mog initiated a soul-wager with Emmy that it couldn’t court a humanoid. The first pandimensional biped to wander past was the elf female, Revane. So Emmy drifts up to her, the sky shearing in its blasphemous wake, and she basically tells it to — can I say this? — to go fhtagn itself.”

    “Emmy got pretty upset and flipped the tentacle at Revane,” Kozilek continued, “and all of a sudden these guys show up and activate some seal or whatever. Mog thought this was hilarious, of course, and Emmy hasn’t spoken to it since. Like, multi-millennial snubbing.”

    “Anyway, we weren’t gonna swear vengeance or anything — I mean, the passage of infinity is like waiting for a bus for us — but when we did get out, everyone just assumed we were these horribly aggressive guys. What made these folks automatically assume that we were going to lay waste to their homes and devour their minds? It’s called racism.”

    Before Kozilek departed from our level of existence, I asked it what its plans for the future were. “Well, after I clear up this mess I’ll probably spend some time physically, spiritually, and in all other ways raping the innocents of a thousand suns. Oh man, I’m just kidding! Haha, the look on your face!”

  • Pro MTG Online #236

    Pro MTG Online #236

  • NJ’s Rise of the Eldrazi Capsule Review

    Rise of the Eldrazi? NicotineJones has wounded them that they were not able to rise: they are fallen under his feet! NJ has applied his prophetic foresight to the cards of ROE. Do yourself a favor and get the scoop on the hidden gems and overhyped junk therein!




    NJ’s Capsule Review of ROE is located here.

  • ‘Spawnsire of Ulamog’ Card Pieces

    On Friday, we hosted a ROE spoiler hunt on Good Gamery to reveal the card “Spawnsire of Ulamog” in a fun and irritating way!



    The card was broken up into pieces that each had some value on their own, so that each discovery would prompt some excitement and speculation.



    SECTION A (the card’s given name)

    This piece was hidden inside the introductory cut scene movie. If you let the movie idle and go do something else, you’d notice that 4 minutes after the “end,” PMO guy discovers another piece.



    SECTION B (the card’s surname and mana cost)

    This piece was inserted as an MTGcom Decoder item. The MTGcom Decoder is a way to quickly access key areas of MagicTheGathering.com without having to wade through the heavy graphical content.

    You can always get to the decoder by hitting mtg.goodgamery.com, by clicking on the icon on the top, or by using the pop-up decoder built into the top of the forums.



    SECTION C (the card’s type, first ability, and appendage)

    This piece was provided immediately in the introductory cut scene movie.



    SECTION D (the card’s face)

    This 128×128 piece was the avatar of our (then) newest forum member, the Eldrazi Drone!

    You can always get to the forum quickly through lol.goodgamery.com (and see the latest posts using latest.goodgamery.com).



    SECTION E (the card’s rarity and arm)

    This piece was found in the Good Gamery front page sidebar.



    SECTION F (the card’s ability costs)

    The introductory movie contained a clue — a 40 oz malt liquor bottle with the number “211” on it. What could “211” mean? Savvy readers quickly realized that this referred to Pro MTG Online comic #211, where the next piece was hidden!

    You can always get to the latest PMO comic by visiting pmo.goodgamery.com or by clicking the icon in the upper-right of the page.



    SECTION G (the card’s ability texts)

    We have a lively game development scene here at Good Gamery, and one product of that scene is a game called Block Rogue. Block Rogue is a Sokoban-like adventure/puzzle game where each level is procedurally generated.

    The goal of Block Rogue is to find the locations of 25 missing pages of the Book of Lore by making multiple passes through a vast dungeon. In the special ROE spoiler edition of Block Rogue (found in a link on the front page sidebar), a single pass through the dungeon granted the secret piece.

    Block Rogue is currently in development for iPhone and iPad. Beware!



    SECTION H (the card’s power/toughness)

    You’ve long had the power to purchase up to 9 different Good Gamery pmoticon shirts. But only recently did our pmoticon shirt shop contain a secret card piece!



    We hope you enjoyed our scavenger hunt spoiler, and that you’ll stick around for decades to come.

  • Exclusive ROE Spoiler Hunt

    (Refresh in a non-Chrome browser to reload the following cut scene.)


    (The above is not a game! The game is on the GoodGamery.com site itself.

    Good hunting, soldier.)

  • The Bigger Picture: What the ‘Monday 6’ Tell Us About ROE

    This article is part of the Rise of the Eldrazi Alliance. Wizards of the Coast is working with Good Gamery, among other fan web sites, to help drum up excitement for the upcoming set. Take a look at the humorous and/or strategic content generated so far, and stay tuned for more new ROE-related articles and ‘chops!



    The rest of the staff has done a great job at the difficult task of attempting to evaluate the six preview cards in a vacuum. Of course, the true test of their utility, especially in limited, will be how they perform in the context of the rest of the set. To that end, we’re here to take a look at how Rise of the Eldrazi might play out, based entirely on these 6 cards.




    (click for the large version)

    Above all else, the format will be extremely slow for a myriad of reasons. There are also some color pie and balance issues, and finally some unorthodox choices that may upset the casual and collector markets.

    First and foremost, it seems the average spell will cost 5.3333333333… mana. You’ll often have to keep hands with no action for the first several turns, and it will be very difficult to cast multiple spells in one turn. This will make ROE’s 41.5 spells similar to Prey’s Vengeance that can gain tempo very important. This dynamic will also mean you want to value highly the set’s 41.5 or so cards like Corpsehatch that create tokens which can be sacrificed for additional mana.

    Just as important, though, is how common ground stalls will be. With no evasion except for about 41.5 instances of “can’t be blocked except by three or more creatures,” a lot of people are going to be holding their 1/7s back.

    This will be further compounded by the fact that dozens of instants will be creating pairs of 0/1 chumpblockers, that a full third of the set’s creatures will have Defender, and that each of those Defender creatures will be capable of returning those instants from your graveyard to your hand.

    Forcing colors is clearly going to be a highly effective drafting tactic, enjoying perhaps the highest relevance since OTJ. Black, for instance, will make a powerful support color, with an unprecedented level of removal that can target any creature in the set. It will, however, be difficult to build a balanced deck around Black due to its complete lack of creatures.

    Apparently there’s no mana-fixing in ROE, so splashing for off-color bombs will be difficult. Thankfully, all of the bombs are colorless.

    Finally, both drafters and casual players alike will need to be aware of the change in rarity distribution. There are no rares in ROE, and 5 times as many uncommons as commons.