Category: card

  • Unstable Ford Expedition

    Unstable Ford Expedition

    Once you’ve accumulated 4 quest counters, click here.

  • Ryusei, the Falling Star

    ryusei-the-falling-star

    Oracle Rulings

    10/4/2004: It must flip like a coin and not like a Frisbee.

  • Oyakodon Tournament Report

    Recently, my living situation has aligned itself in just such a way that I have developed an interest in cooking. I’m coasting along on what money remains until I return to America in a couple months, want to learn Japanese dishes while in the little time I have left, and want to supplement my newfound exercise habits with healthy meals.

    I am a dude with a Jewish mom, so I have quite literally never had to fix anything more ambitious than a sandwich or an omelet. Cooking can be daunting at first! Luckily, most Japanese staples are incredibly simple to make, healthy, and cheap. Tonight, I made:

    Oyakodon – steamed white rice, topped with chicken, egg and onions served in traditional Japanese dashi broth.

    For the unfamiliar, donburi is a dish made from rice, broth or water mixed with soy sauce and rice vinegar, and various toppings. Donburi is as filling as it is delicious, and generally requires less than 30 minutes to prepare.

    ROUGH LIST, SERVES 1

    1 cup of Japanese white rice

    1/2 onion

    1.5 tbsp dark (regular) soy sauce

    1 tbsp mirin (Japanese rice vinegar)

    1/2 cup water

    1 tbsp sugar

    1 tsp dashi (powdered soup stock made from kelp and skipjack tuna, a fundamental ingredient for Japanese cooking, including miso soup)

    ~1/4 cup chicken thigh; enough for about 6 bite-sized chunks

    1 egg

    egg

    STRATEGY

    RICE: Wash your rice a few times until the water isn’t cloudy, but don’t worry too much, as cloudier rice is just stickier rice.
    Combine one and a bit cups of water for each cup of rice you make in a pot.
    Cover the pot with a lid, and bring the rice to a boil on high heat.
    Then, cook it on low for about 15-20 minutes, until the water is mostly gone.
    Remove the pot from the fire, and let it steam with the lid on for another 10-15 minutes.

    Or, use a rice cooker. Seriously.

    ONION: cut off the narrow ends of the onions. Place it flat on the cutting board, slice it in half, and remove the skin. Wrap one half in aluminum foil and put it back in the fridge, because you are poor. place the other half on its broad, flat side, and cut it widthwise into ~5mm strips.

    CHICKEN: remove any bones and skin from your thigh meat, rinse it, and cut it into bite-size portions.

    EGG: beat an egg.

    BROTH: combine the dashi, soy sauce, water, rice vinegar, and sugar in a pan.
    Mix the ingredients, cover the pan, bring the heat to medium, and leave the mixture for a minute or two.

    When the broth is hot and uniform, remove the lid and stir in the onion before replacing the lid again.

    After another couple minutes, stir in the chicken and put the lid back on.

    Wait a couple minutes to turn over the chicken, and when it’s cooked on both sides, stir in the egg; make sure it doesn’t stay together enough to form any large pieces.

    Pour the mixture over your bowl of rice. Congratulations! Enjoy your delicious donburi with chopsticks and a spoon.

    Without further ado, here is how the tournament went.

    Round 1 opponent: WGr Beef Yakisoba

    He opens with a pile of steaming broiled noodles topped with rare beef and oblique cut green onions. I lay an egg and pass the turn. He picks up his chopsticks and swings with a slice of beef and a hank of noodles, spraying beef juice over my board for -1/-1. I crack the egg and fetch a chicken equipped with makotobashi. I lay a scoop of white rice and top it with a drizzle of soy and vinegar. He draws 4 noodles in a row and scoops his lunch.

    Second game much like the first, except now I’ve found my onions and my onions trample over his onions and take his beef.

    1-0

    noodle

    Round 2: BW Futomaki

    This is a variant on the popular Japanese deck substituting G avocado for R snapper. Basically he rolls over me as I try to find a protein source and fail.

    1-1

    Round 3: Texas Toast

    I am quite surprised that this is still seeing play. I’m having trouble getting past the cheese and garlic but eventually rice proves a more stable mana base than rye. First game I lose horribly to garlic. Second game I side out onions and chicken and throw in 4x pickled egg and 3x wasabi. Even though he has slathered the red zone with butter and garlic cheese, the wasabi comes down hard and fast, and burns his sinuses right out. Game 3 I go rice, egg, 2x wasabi and he offers the handkerchief.

    2-1

    Round 4: E. Honda playing 5c Torinabe

    This is Swiss final round and I’m tired, thirsty, and have a runny nose. E. Honda entered the tournament with a 2050 rating and 1 point shy of a 3-bye invite to GP Bangkok. He is piloting a new, unscouted version of his trademark midrange toolbox Nabe deck, and is an impeccably technically precise player despite his quirky tournament attire of bath towel and geta. He clomps over to the table, settles his 270 kg frame into the tiny folding chair, and smiles.

    Game 1 saw me get a good start with Rice, egg, 2 chickens and a dash of vinegar. He seems to have trouble finding a black mana but manages a turn 3 norimaki and starts laying out some serious fat. I am pinging in the air thinking this will be a long but inevitable game. Then he sacs potato, norimaki, crab, tuna, and mushroom to get Mothra. I try to distract the giant with Wasabi but remember as Honda untaps that moths can’t smell.

    Game 2 I side out 4x mirin and side in 4x Kirin.

    We are both getting drunk but I am secretly taking pings from my own Wasabi and it keeps me alert enough to outmaneuver Honda, who is by this time sleepy drunk and has to get up to pee. He has taken 3x Kirin to the face and looks like he is about to pass out as the judges watch him lurch for the washroom. After several minutes he returns, red in the face and somewhat more alert. But it has cost him momentum and he fails to deal with 100 stings from wasabi + raw onion.

    Game 3 I start out with Kirin. Rough on the stomach this early in the game, I am getting low on life and it seems he has developed a tolerance. I keep at it though, and finally he is so drunk he can’t remember whether he has untapped this turn and forgets a bunch of may effects during his upkeep. I go all-in with a sick chicken and he folds. Literally. His folding chair finally collapses, he goes down, tries to get back up, and is down for the count as the judges wander by to keep him from falling asleep in the aisle.

    3-1

    I gotta go pee so bad, I miss the final standings but hear later on I was just shy of top 8.

  • Unbelievable News

    Author Image

    Making Magic Archive
    Mark Rosewater Archive

    Mark Rosewater
    Monday, June 1, 2009


    The letter F! olks, I have a special treat to announce today. But first, a little background. Those of you that play Magic Online know two things: Magic Online is a terrific product; and it doesn’t always work as well as we’d like. We believe that, like the economy, Magic Online is fundamentally strong. Sure, it’s had hiccups. Sure, it’s had ups and downs. But at the core is an incredible play experience that brings together players from all over the world from a variety of backgrounds, and lets them duel as though they are sitting in the same room. We decided we wanted to thank the players that have stuck with us through the tough times, and now have a front row seat for V3, the most stable Magic Online platform ever. Now that we’ve worked out the kinks, I think we can all look back with a sense of humor and have a laugh.

    I’m proud to announce the third Un-expansion: Unavailable.

    Unavailable is the first product exclusive to Magic Online. That’s right: it will not be sold in stores, and will not be redeemable. Unhinged, after all, was only available in cardboard, and this is the same principle. Much like the Astral set from Microprose, we will take advantage of the unique features of online play and translate them to Magic in ways that simply can’t be duplicated in cardboard.

    Team Rocket

    The design began nearly two years ago. Justin Ziran (Gamer Zer0), was at the time the Brand Manager, and he approached me with the idea of putting together a set to try and lighten the mood online, since he felt like the feedback he was getting from the community was somewhat negative. We went with an approach that felt like a winner, a one-two punch of top Magic designers, and experts in Magic Online.

    Here’s the team:

    MaRO Mark Rosewater – I was Lead Designer for the set.

    This shouldn’t come as a great surprise. I was also Lead Designer of Unglued and Unhinged. Having written for Roseanne, I know funny. And any time someone has a good idea, I’m pretty quick to take credit. I may not have ever played Magic Online, but I’m pretty sure the skills translate.

    Gamerzer0 Justin Ziran – Justin was the Brand Manager and Community Liaison, and as such, knew the feelings of the Magic Online community better than anyone. I have always been impressed with Justin’s ability to create just the right tone with players, and to strike a balance between the needs of the community and the needs of the company. I really don’t know what we would do without him.

    SloggerSucks Devin Low – An all-star Magic Designer. Devin is the kind of guy who instinctively knows what players want, even if they don’t quite realize it themselves. With his finger on the pulse of the Magic community, he is utterly irreplaceable.

    GTFO Jenna Helland – Jenna is a flavor guru, but more importantly, Jenna was the lead designer for the User Interface for Magic Online V3. As such, she was uniquely qualified to recreate the classic look and feel of the Magic Online experience. We wanted the cards themselves to reflect the intuitive familiarity of online play.

    On With The Show

    Unavailable features several new mechanics that reflect the nature of online play. One of the most fun is Ban. Any time a card is Banned, it will be, well, banned. That means it will instantly disappear from play, your hand, your library, your graveyard, in fact from all zones. This will affect every player in the game, and will last for the rest of the match. That’s right, it will carry over into the next game.

    (Amusing aside: during the beta testing, Banning was coded to prevent wishing for the card later in the game, which required removing the Banned card from your collection temporarily. The code to replace it didn’t quite work, however. Randy Buehler cast Radiate in a FFA game and eradicated every card on the test server. Permanently. That pushed us back a few days of testing. Don’t worry, though, we’re pretty sure that’s fixed.)

    buffer-overrun

    Another powerful new addition to your arsenal is Edit. Mages have long been able to change certain words on card, typically related to color or land type. Now, Edit allows you to change the text of a given card is all-new ways, such as swapping abilities, doubling, them or removing them outright.

    strconst-dat-out-of-date

    Not all new cards focus on a new mechanic. Some harken back to the old days and poke a little fun at some problems that you may have forgotten ever happened.

    wrath-of-marit-lag
          
    temporary-isolation

    Finally, there is a subtheme that players have been clamoring for ever since we hinted at it in Future Sight. Many people had guesses about what it would mean, but now you know for sure: The Magic Online game servers have been nicknamed Contraptions for years now!

    server-machinations

    You’re Such A Tease

    You’ve gotten a taste of what’s to come, but I’d like to leave you with some hints. You won’t believe what we’ve held back.

    • A 13/13 creature for 2 mana. Hint: its creature type is “Crasher”.
    • A way to make your opponent’s cards non foil – permanently!
    • The first ever “rating matters” card.

    I think all of you are going to get a real kick out of this set. I know it’s been a long road, but we’re finally a place of stability and consistency, and all of you are a big part of why that came to be. Without your positive feedback and steadfast loyalty, I don’t even want to think about where we’d be. Hopefully, giving you this set will let you know just how much we listen to you.

    Until then, may your client be stable, your packs be winners, and your rares be cool.

  • Encrypted Command



    It’s just sitting there, begging to be solved. Will you accept the challenge?

  • Oil // Emulsion // Water

    OEW

    It’s sideways, but if you click the discuss link, it will be readable!