Pro MTG Online #236
Blog
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Still I Rise
You may lock me up in Zendikar
With hedrons and Ugin’s Eyes
You may have your land-themed block,
But when all is dust, I rise.Does my casting cost upset you,
Clutching blades or seals of doom?
‘Cause I walk with the girth and heft
Of every fatty boom-boom?Just like auto insurance premiums
When car with car collides,
Like a credit card’s annual fee,
Still I rise.Did you want me unplayable?
In a shoebox, hid from human eyes?
With day eaters and wurms autochthon
To hear my soulful cries?Does my ETB scare you?
Are you pained to hear the talk,
Of four cards drawn, a 187
Or a fifteen power time walk?You may tap your collared sparkmage,
You may cut me from your 60,
You may kill me with the legend rule,
But still, like bread, I rise.Does my sexiness upset you?
Do my tentacles surprise?
‘Cause I get tapped like a pin-up girl
By a million Japanese guys?Up from a polymorphed plant token,
I rise,
Up from Makeshift Mannequin in response,
I rise,
I’m a late game control mirror topdeck,
Cast hard — improbable, like a clear-skied thunderclap,
Crashing MODO with a torrent of redacted f-bombs.
I rise,
To an environment tailored to make me plausible,
I rise,
Like a heaping cone of mispronounced gelati,
I am the dream and the hope of the fatty.
I rise,
I rise,
I rise. And Still I rise. -
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.
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Eldrazi Infant Mortality Rate Alarmingly High
A study published in this month’s issue of The Journal Dominarian Alchemy finds that 97.6% of eldrazi spawn do not survive infancy. Here to explain this shocking statistic is lead researcher Figdab Bibblebob.
The greatest obstacle to a new eldrazi’s survival is his species’ peculiar choice of spawning grounds. While the fossil record indicates that in ages past they were allowed some time to develop their skills in play, they are now birthed directly onto a battlefield.
This practice has proved sustainable for groups with hardier young, such as the kraken genus. Eldrazi young however have almost no combat capabilities and no way to evade or shroud themselves from more dangerous creatures.
Most of the deaths we recorded weren’t even from intentional attacks on the spawn though. They have a dreadful lack of situational awareness, and were often seen wandering in front of all manner of beasts, knights, and demons that were charging at someone else entirely. It was such a common occurrence that my team started joking that the safest place to be in a fight was directly behind the nearest eldrazi cub.
We didn’t just learn that they were helpless and oblivious though. They are also incredibly nutritious and tasty, based on the numbers we saw devoured. Their blood is also considered a delicacy in vampire high society, and some of this group was poached to satisfy that lucrative market.
Perhaps the most ironic factor though is that several primitive cultures surrounding their native habitat have taken to sacrificing them in intricate rituals designed to summon the adult eldrazi to their side to hopefully do their bidding. When the unfortunate spawn in question’s progenitors show up to kill everyone involved, it just reinforces that the ritual works.
Despite all this, I still hold out some hope for this majestic and horrible race. Some activist artificers have laid out plans to provide the spawn with armor, gliders, and most importantly maps to help them survive long enough to get somewhere less lethal to stay until they’ve grown self-sufficient. Also, while this particular survey is dire, there may be some comfort in its 2.5% margin of error.
