I tried to make it so you could read the folder names but you can’t. They are really funny though.
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I tried to make it so you could read the folder names but you can’t. They are really funny though.
This is an instructional guide on how to get into MODO on my computer.
Pro MTG Online #176
In a news conference today, Nintendo unveiled an exciting new Nintendogs crossover, bringing the company that makes the popular Magic: The Gathering (MTG) card game back into the video game genre (WoTC’s other computer-based game, Magic: The Gathering Online, or MODO, has suffered recently from its lack of compatibility with the internet). The new game will work several beloved MTG canines into the established Nintendogs model. The available dogs include the popular Wild Mongrel and Jackal Pup.
I was given an opportunity to play a beta version of the new game, tentatively titled “Nintendogs: Tap to Cuddle”. After turning on the game, I was prompted to choose the dog I wished to control, and I chose Wild Mongrel (seen pictured here).
The first thing I noticed about my mongrel, that I’d named Bad Newz Bob, was that he wasn’t all that responsive to my commands. In fact, I sometimes felt like I was being controlled by him. One thing I learned quickly was that my mongrel likes to eat, and in a brilliant move by Wizards, he only eats Magic cards (thankfully they only cost about as much as a cup of coffee a day, so it’s no t a big deal). I have to point my DS at a trash can and show Bob that I am throwing away a brand new, unopened pack of cards before he will let me use the stylus. Also, it may be a bug in the game, but on several occasions, I have received a pop-up asking me (though it refers to me as Jeff Cunningham?? – this is not the name I gave the game which makes me think it’s a glitch) if I’ve broken the format yet.
Another thing I found odd about the Wild Mongrel was that I swear I’ve caught it watching me. I woke up after dozing off while trying in vain to get Bob to play fetch to see him staring at me and growling. Fortunately, I hadn’t fully opened my eyes, and I quickly shut them again. Much to my relief, after I did so, along with controlling my breathing and rapidly beating heart, the game quieted down.
After the strange experiences with the Wild Mongrel, I decided to try one of the other, possibly nicer, dogs and so I chose Jackal Pup (it just looks so cute in the picture). I immediately ran into problems. When I tried to shut my DS off, I received a mild electric shock. When I turned the DS back on, I received another mild shock, and was horrified to learn, and see, that my Jackal Pup (whose name was Fido) had been torn to shreds by my old Wild Mongrel, who was now staring straight at me and growling enough that my DS shook! After feeding him a box worth of Legions packs, I was able to calm him down enough to leave the game and call Nintendo. They told me I could send them back the game, which I did.
A few days later, I sat down to play Pokemon and discovered that the Wild Mongrel had stayed in my DS and destroyed nearly all of the Pokemon I’d caught to that point. Long story short, I was able to find a Sudden Shock and wedge it into my DS to kill the Mongrel, but not before he was able to completely disable the lower screen. I called both Nintendo and Wizards to tell them about what I’d observed, and while Nintendo was somewhat sympathetic (they offered to sell me a new DS), Wizards was only interested in hearing how many packs of cards I had bought to feed the Mongrel. When they asked me if I would still consider feeding it if booster packs cost $4.49 each, I hung up on them.
With Lorwyn’s tribal theme proving popular to the masses, the end of the Morningtide pre-release left many players eager for more. Excitement is building among playgroups everywhere, and many player I’ve spoken to are already searching for places from which to preorder theme deck boxes from set three of Lorwyn Block.
Alvin Rizell, self proclaimed “kind of pro, maybe if I had more time” player, says that his treefolk deck is already dominating his play group. “I can’t wait for the next set. I already have almost enough treefolk for this deck to be awesome, so one more set full of good treefolk like the ones in Morningtide should give me the best deck in the format, no doubt about it.”
Local player Jason Bartholomew Tiggs, a longtime veteran of the prerelease and FNM 0-X brackets, also showed enthusiasm for the upcoming set. “With all the fun tribal interactions, it’s easy to not play any stupid instants or sorceries. I bet in the last set of this block we’ll have tribal creatures so that we don’t have to play dumb noncreature spells to give Tarmogoyf that extra +1/+1.”
Bobby Limner, age 11, was overheard to say, between sips of Mountain Dew: “Playing with all these creature cards is great! I bet the next set in Lorwyn block will be all creatures, that would be cool, since it’s all tribal themed and stuff. I wonder why they’ve never done that before.”
Yes, enthusiasm for the next set of magic is at a level nearly unheard of this early before it’s release. Only time will tell what surprise twist the end of the Lorwyn-Morningtide-???? trilogy holds, but the anticipation of it’s arrival is certainly infectious!
Pro MTG Online #175
Doping with Dolphins II: The Terrible Trinket
These days, it seems like sensei’s divining top is an auto-include in a lot of decks, and sometimes it makes sense. You want it in Aggro Red for shrapnel blast, and in TEPS because of its amazing interaction with mind’s desire. However, I am constantly stunned by its inclusion in 4, 5, or more-colour concoctions which attempt to combine it with counterbalance.
Let’s take a look at one of these decks:
Do not go gentle into that good night, as suggested by Remi Fortier
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Now I’m not going to claim that there aren’t worse decks to put SDT into, and this deck actually has some good synergies with the card. Let’s look at some of them:
1. Can be fetched by trinket mage
2. Can be shuffled away by trinket mage
3. Can be shuffled away by a fetchland
4. Can find you a fetchland or trinket mage with which to shuffle it away
5. Artifact in graveyard for tarmogoyf if you destroy it with your engineered explosives
6. Allows stifle to cantrip by countering the put on top of library ability
7. Fills in the crucial 3-drop in the number of words in each card name curve
8. Easy to take out for sideboard bullets
That said, these are far outweighed by its detriments. The lesser offenses first:
1. Pumps other player’s tarmogoyfs if in graveyard
2. Low CC-card makes you less likely to cut to higher converted mana cost in a format where going first is crucial
3. You play kataki, retard
4. Risk of being shut down by your own pithing needle, especially under mindslaver (more problematic on modo, where you often need to turn off sensei golden-tail when you get paired against the first round random, and when you get paired against the guys in the 0-x bracket in later rounds).
5. Burning-tree shaman
6. Can’t be copied by vesuvan shapeshifter
Far and away though, the problem is tempo. The ablative singular form of the latin noun tempus, English for storm (tempest, temper, and New Orleans through French), tempo plays a crucial role in Magic: The Gathering as a mechanic from OLS block. Some decks can use tempo to kill you as soon as turn two with a flurry of rituals, artifacts, and then a large mind’s desire or tendrils of corruption.
Now this deck is seeking to not create tempo, as it can be used by your opponent to kill you, and yet tempo is the exact thing that SDT creates. With a low mana cost, SDT threatens to create one storm as early as your first turn, and considering that you can put it on top of your library to play it again the next turn, pretty quickly you can wind up with rains washing out the first day of the pro tour due to excessive testing, as happened in Valencia.
In contrast, you could be playing another threat in SDT’s place. One of the deck’s weaknesses is the difficulty it has in finding a win condition, and if SDT was simply replaced with Sundering Titan this problem would surely be averted.
When in doubt during deck building, just remember the rhyme: if it begins with Sensei, you’d rather have plenty. Of cabbage.
DUBLIN, IRELAND (Reuters) – If you play Magic in the UK, you could be in trouble.
Last Friday, hundreds of picketers from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and even as far away as the Breton coast took to the streets outside Hasbro UK and game stores to demonstrate against what they perceive as mass market bigotry.
“This is an insulting and inaccurate portrayal of people of Irish descent as squat, pugnacious men and women with beady eyes and dish faces,” said Conall Murphy, a grad student in Irish studies at Trinity College and leader of the movement, from behind a placard bearing a blown-up version of Brigid’s boobs. “‘Fight one, fight them all’ is a barely-veiled rehash of an old slur against Irish immigrants everywhere.” Pulling a bent and laundered copy of Militia’s Pride from his back pocket, he waved it under my nose truculently amid a cloud of stale alcoholic sweat. “I would have thought they knew better than this, after pulling off Arabian Nights and even Kamigawa Block without visibly abusing those ethnic groups.”
Other protesters focused on different aspects of the set which they found particularly insulting. A similar demonstration in front of a card shop in Cardiff became violent when players trapped inside the store were attacked by angry picketers as they tried to leave. The reason? “Elves are gay,” said Rhys Owens-Corning, under his own placard showing Immaculate Magistrate in all of its …florid gaiety.
“Elves are all named after Welsh guys from legend, but in reality they are more representative of the homo culture. They are fixated on youth and beauty, starve themselves to look a certain way, and maim each other out of spite. Like queers, they revel in the drug culture they have built their society around. Moonglove is just another word for cocaine. It’s a slap in the face,” lisped Rhys, who just happens to be tall, thin, and wear a lot of green clothes.
Craig Jones and Lyle Lovett, who were severely beaten after being trapped inside the comic store in Cardiff for 2 days, declined to comment from their hospital beds. However, Madog Teeg, who was watching them play, said “Jones tapped his [Imperious] Perfect and made a swishing sound, and Lovett said, ‘So which ones are now fabulous?’ and Jones started laughing, and then this guy came in and told us to stay put because other we would get curbstomped.” Teeg was allowed out of the store unharmed, because he had a copy of Y Gwawd (The Troubadour) Welsh-language arts weekly unfolded over his face to hide his earrings, and flashed a copy of Engineered Plague as he ducked past. “I just muttered, ‘I don’t play Elves…I don’t play Elves’ as I went through the picket lines, and they left me alone. I don’t really get it.”
Mass bloodshed was averted when police were able to reroute the Glamorgan Gay Pride March away from the comic store just in time. “Not that we were afraid they would be hurt…Cardiff has more than its share of ‘bears’ in the gay community, large hairy men on choppers with bullwhips and handcuffs. Not a pretty prospect,” said police spokeswoman Tina Gaffney (yes, you saw that coming.)
Scotland was also troubled by minor violence over the weekend as the Glasgow Curling Team protested WOTC for misportraying Giants as filthy, unkempt, and socially aversive. “Rarrgh wrarrrrgh rawr,” said team leader Jecht Murray. “Grrrrrrrrgh.”
A planned march on the Isle of Man to protest inherent racism in Merrow Reejerey was cancelled due to low attendance.
This week Las Vegas was host to the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show, which wrapped up yesterday. There were some great new technologies and products revealed, as well as Bill Gate's great retirement speech/video. We here have made a few additions to next years' Christmas wish list – TVs, Monitors, Cars. Ok, so they're BIG WISHES, but hey we could always win the lottery, right?
So while there's a laundry list of great stuff to be shown at the show, here's our Top 6 picks for best of the best, coolest of the coolest, and stuff that we wish was hanging from our wall, or plugged into our sockets. Sure they'll put a dent in your wallet, but the latest and greatest toy on the market is worth it!
Alienware Curved Monitor
The Good: Holy crap! It looks like a monitor out of a sci-fi movie, and what else would you expect from Alienware? This 2880×900, LED screen is comprised of 4 (nearly) seamless screens for a gaming experience that is ALMOST 180 degrees! Imagine what all that porn you watch will look like on it.
The Bad: Well you'll almost have to devote a room to this mammoth monitor. Good luck finding a desk that can support it's weight, or decorating a room around it. Turn that computer room into the deck of the Starship Enterprise (assuming you haven't already turned your parents' basement into a replica).
The Ugly: The price is yet to be determined, but you can rest easy knowing this will set you back a pretty penny. Nowhere near as expensive as some of the other items on our list, but the luxury of a gaming experience like this won't come cheap.
Pioneer 9mm Ultra-Thin Plasma TV
The Good: Ok, so it's just a concept right now, but wow is that ever slim! It balloons out to a *whopping* 18mm in the center, which still leaves it thinner that your boss's hair, or the lies you tell your wife.
The Bad: It's ulta-slim, and ulta-light, so at worse it'll make you look fatter than you already are. You girlfriend or wife might get jealous and ask if you want her to be that thin. And you might lose it in a stack of papers.
The Ugly: Sure, LCDs and Plasmas are coming down in price lately, but you can be sure that the thinner your TV gets, the more expensive it'll get. Expect it to take more than a chunk out of your spending money.
Panasonic 150" TV
The Good: Well, it's WAYYYY bigger than the puny 103" TV Panasonic debuted last year. Hell, this is bigger than most of the walls in your apartment we'll assume. The first step to virtual reality, and exactly what Wile E. Coyote would have needed to trick the roadrunner into running into that Fake Tunnel. It's 4096×2160 resolution will have you trying to reach into the screen.
The Bad: Good luck getting this monster INTO your house. It'll require knocking out a wall or removing a portion of your roof. And if you thought Rosie O'Donnel looked huge on a regular TV…
The Ugly: Well we already mentioned Rosie, so it comes down to price. You WON'T be able to afford this, unless you're Bill Gates or NASA. So if you wipe your ass with $100 bills, this will continue to be a dream. A WET dream.
Whirlpool Plug-and-Play Refridgerator
The Good: With an iPod dock, TV, Laptop Dock, Picture fram, speaker system, and food storage (duh) all you're missing is a comfy chair and a toilet and you've got an all-in-one system for lazyness. Watch the game with a supply of beer an arm's length away, have your laptop and iPod ready to go, and if you're missing them from your hours and hours of seclusion, digital photo-frame dock for pictures of your family and other people you've alienated by living against your fridge.
The Bad: Having a fully-stocked fridge inches away from you is definately a downside. Snacks, drinks, and everything that'll balloon you to a lardass so close you can smell them. With no need to leave the fridge for your media needs, you'll be installing a toilet in the kitchen in the future.
The Ugly: Showering with the water dispenser.
Mitsubishi Laser TV
The Good: This 65" Rear Projection set debuted with a cavalcade of hot dancing girls demonstrating how PURE the color can be when using 'frickin' lasers'. The darkest blacks and brightest primary colors ever seen will all be available on this amazing piece of tech. Expect it and a special 3D version (requiring glasses!) to hit the market later this year.
The Bad: The constant fear of the lasers breaking through the screen and boring a hole in your forehead. Sharks getting a hold of said lasers. End of the world ensues. Colors so bright the rest of the world seems dull.
The Ugly: Let's face it, this TV will always be brighter than you. The resulting inferiority complex will probably lead you to sell the TV you just spent several thousand dollars on.
Chevy Volt Hydrogen Car
The Good: So while the concepts for the volt were released months ago, CES-goers got the first look at the Hydrogen engine GM is using in this eco-friendly vehicle. We aren't tree-huggers around here, but anything that allows us to stop paying for gas is, in our books, AMAZING. Plus it looks like something out of a mad scientist's lab.
The Bad: Will it sound like the purr we all love from our precious vehicles? What's the fuel efficiency like? How much will it cost? All these questions and more… can't be answered yet. Oh well, at least we got to look at something pretty (like going to the strippers).
The Ugly: Being the invention touted as what will end our dependancy on oil, you've got imagine it's not going to be cheap. Selling your first born for this puppy sounds like a fair trade. Also, you risk being called a hippy for driving an eco-friendly car.