sarroth - Tumblr blog

[sarroth]

Gotta spread the love for my first favorite MtG legendary character.

[sarroth]

Watching Lego Ninjago with my son and realize maybe all the detectives of Ravnica have watched it too?

[sarroth]

This one is way too close. Alolan Marowak is one of the coolest alternate takes on an original 151.

★This is part of a larger poll! Matchups are chosen at random. Choose your favorite to move on to the next round!★

[sarroth]

Commander Night April 2024

Last weekend I had the pleasure of being invited to a friend’s house for Magic. I’ve only played occasionally outside of Spellslingers and then it’s been the same group so it was nice to shake things up.

We unfortunately couldn’t get started until 8:30/9pm and it was one of the first games for two if the players and my deck was slow as hell for a while so the game went last night 11pm, maybe until midnight now that I think about it.

It was on odd game, with three players doing precons: Fallout’s mutant radiation deck, Lord of the Rings’ hobbits & food, and the Doctor Who suspend deck. Since there’s a lot of complaints on Tumblr about Universes Beyond, I actually encouraged the last player to go Doctor Who over whatever MtG universe deck they had also brought, I just thought it would be funny. I don’t have any UB products and went traditional Magic with my Glissa, the Traitor Artifacts of Life and Death deck.

To be fair, I prefer the lore of a Magic prime vs Magic prime experience, but Fallout and LotR is part of what got those players into / back into Magic, so I’ll take what I can get.

As I said, my deck was slow at first, hitting its lane drops and some fixing but no acceleration of mana or card draw and recursion creatures that weren’t helpful with nothing to recur. At one point I threw down a centerpiece of the deck, Grave Pact, not to control the board but to disencentivize the attacks that I was getting.

Without a sacrifice outlet, I couldn’t actively do anything with the pact. I even lost an artifact land to a removal spell from Doctor Who. So it was about 10:30 that I was telling my wife that my son and I (he was getting to stay up late playing video games as I card gamed) would be on our way back home soon as the game looked like it was wrapping up on my end at least. But as I was running slow in my deck’s designs, that also meant my Grave Pact didn’t look as scary to everyone as my friend’s Mothman, which had gotten big enough to take out players in just two hits with commander damage. Instead of the Grave Pact, the LotR player removed the Mothman, which had already hit him once for somewhere between 12 and 18 damage.

Eventually it wasn’t my Arcbound Ravager, or even my Attrition, that finally got the deck going with the Grave Pact: it was Arcbound Reclaimer, a card that I had almost removed recently!

The milling from Mothman’s radiation had set me up with just enough artifacts in my graveyard to keep activating its recursion ability twice, making Reclaimer a 0/0 that would go to the graveyard and trigger Grave Pact, which then triggers Glissa to bring back Reclaimer to my hand. It was no Krark-Clan Ironworks combo but it did the trick. By that time two of the players had been knocked out by the Sanguine Bond shenanigans of the Hobbit food deck, and I was able to stay alive - and add to the graveyard for Reclaimer - using Trading Post, Lee the board clear with Reclaimer + Pact + Glissa, and slowly damage the opponent for just 8 a turn until I finally won.

[sarroth]

This is very sad. I’m very lucky that some of my friends are getting back into MtG. It’s up to us to make casual a thing, not really the creators. But it’s not easy.

All of my favorite card games are making themselves even more inaccessible to casual players like myself, and in quick succession.

It's devastating in a way, I've spent a majority of my life playing some of these games.

To watch them, by their actions, spurn players that aren't going to invest their time and money primarily in that space, feels like the original vision of their creators has been strangled, mangled, and is now being dangled from strings held by ringed fingers, and they're charging triple the old admission.

[sarroth]

The trick is to make sure your mana base looks bad ass as well! Get some fancy fullarts or some Bob Ross lands in there.

Magic the Gathering tip: don’t worry about your mana base as long as your cards look cool u should be fine

[sarroth]

[sarroth]

Maybe I’ll actually post again on this second blog since I’m arguably more into Pokémon than I was when I made it.

For starters, my Pokémon journey:

Right around the time it got huge in the United States, my mother enrolled me in a summer camp. A kid there introduced me to Sandshrew, and he was so cute that I wanted to know more about this game.

So somehow I convinced my parents to buy me the Machamp starter deck. I didn’t recall there being any fire type cards in the deck, but Im sure I’d remember having learned how to edit decks so early, so it must have had them and just only the holo Machamp stands out in my memory.

Bringing your cards to school to show off or trade was a thing, so I did that, but my backpack wouldn’t fit in the lockers for gym class and so it was left out and some jerk stole my cards. (sidebar, you’d think I learned my lesson but someone got into my unlocked drawer at one of my desks at work this year and stole some Matchbox cars I had in there that I’d take out to decorate the desk; unfortunately I hadn’t been issued a key to lock them - and work stuff - up and this location).

I was dejected enough that I lost interest in Pokémon, and it was pretty quick that it seemed everyone else at my school did too, or at least they stopped being vocal about it. I don’t think I ever heard if my friend Matt got his Charizard he wanted.

Years later, Pokemon Go comes out. I wasn’t going to try it out, but my wife wanted to and so that was my getaway free card to nerd out. Our son wasn’t born yet so we had lots of time to hit up the parks, drive slowly through cemeteries, and follow the online postings of where to find Snorlax and Blissey and the Dratini family.

When my son was born, taking him for stroller-supported strolls through pretty parks with pokestops, gyms, and Magnemite and other nests became a weekly occurrence and was my preferred way to spend the days I’d take off every year for my birthday. Though my wife eventually stopped liking the game, he became old enough to understand and start catching for himself (though unfortunately that was a gateway to all sorts of other videogames and for a while it seemed absolutely nothing interested him other than screens, so introducing PoGo to him had downsides). As he learned to ride a bike, having that with me during those times was an extra plus. I even got the Pokémon Plus or whatever that first edition was called, to discretely fill up my inventory on pokeballs at museums without getting distracted by a desire to catch every Sandshrew, Magnemite, etc. I could find despite not caring whether I got a better one and not needing any more candy.

Some time in the last two years, I realized that the battles were less fun than they had been for me when they first came out and I found multiple types of teams for each league. Battling to win stardust to further power up Pokémon to hopefully win more battles so I could get stardust to… That cycle just wasn’t as fun anymore. It wasn’t long after that that I was rarely opening the game except for trips, to send Postcards to friends. Around this time I had also learned of the mobile game for Wizards of the Coast’s Magic: The Gathering called Magic: Spellslingers. I had never got into Arena and here comes what I found to be a more approachable mode of playing. The matches were more intellectually stimulating than I had found the PoGo battles to be, which is what I was missing from that.

I really liked that game but it didn’t last: Earlier this year, WotC announced that the app - which had little meaningful updates since like fall 2022 - was shutting down in July 2024. The Kotaku article that I read mentioned other similar games that have come to an end but also games that are still going, including Pokémon TCG Live. So: A free-to-play all of the card game, so an even more one-to-one upgrade in the planning and strategy I missed from PoGo, but still with the characters that I know and love, than Spellslingers had been?

So I started into that, and just hit Master League level in my second season. I highly doubt I will get to Arceus and won’t even try, but I’m glad to have gotten this far. I’m the meantime, I remembered that my friend Red had gotten me a Galarian Darumaka theme deck years ago for some reason. We had never played the TCG together - though he was one of my PoGo buddies for raids and we did remote battles occasionally - so even he forgot he bought it for me. Around that time I had come up with some ideas if I were to ever make a second deck, and now here I am planning to get my son the Pokémon Battle Academy from 2020 for his birthday and myself an Ampharos EX Battle Deck. I don’t be going to no Friday Night Pokémon or whatever they call that sort of thing on this side of the TCG aisle but I look forward to teaching my son this weekend and finally getting some matches in with Red.

I’m hoping there are some other Pokémon TCG Live fans out there among my MtG followers and maybe I can hear about your decks or favorite cards. I plan to share my two favorite homemade brews, as In not sure my minor tweaks to the game-provided intro decks would be that interesting to anyone since my win percentage is sub-50% (and in anticipation of that, my chosen slogan in the game is ‘The most important thing is to have fun. Winning just happens to be fun!’ Or something like that). Maybe you’ll be interested. If not, we’ll, I probably don’t need another blog time sink like my Magic one was at first!

[sarroth]

But what about the rights of states and businesses to leave dangerous things lying around and twiddle their thumbs instead of helping anyone because doing something costs money? Please think of them!

[sarroth]

every set they print a new contender for “funniest removal spell ever”

[sarroth]

Omg Animorphs

people going through omenpaths to thunder junction be like

[sarroth]

Random thought because of this card and watching Captain America: The First Avenger yesterday, which has Tommy Lee Jones which had reminded me of one of my favorite movies growing up: The Fugitive:

I wouldn’t mind a fan remake of The Fugitive with Magic: The Gathering characters now. Orzhov or Selesnya healer or Simic scientist arrested for killing their partner, but they claim someone with a mechanical arm really did it. Maybe it takes place before the Omenpaths are known so it turns out to be someone from Esper disguised but no one would believe there was anyone with a mechanical arm matching that description because it doesn’t match anything Izzet would do, so clearly this doctor/scientist is lying. But on their way to jail via the train, some Gruul or Rakdos captive gets out and demolishes the train escaping, letting our hero get free too.

And in comes in not Profft but a different investigator, our asshole, take-no-shit bounty hunter character who doesn’t care if our hero is innocent, they’re just doing their job to bring him in (but in the end of course they end up helping because they ultimately care more about the grayish truth than the supposed black and white of the situation and they even let their heart care just a little bit).

I think what triggered this was the flavor text which had me thinking of this exchange:

Tommy Lee Jones’ character: ‘Renfroe! What are you doing?’

Renfroe: ‘Thinking.’

Jones: ‘Well why don’t you think me up a cup of coffee and one of those chocolate donuts with the little sprinkles on it, huh? As long as you’re “thinking”?’

Aftermath Analyst

“Could someone bring me more evidence markers? Like … a lot more?”

Artist: Danny Schwartz TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[sarroth]

‘History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man.’

Corpsejack Menace

Vault 22’s experiments were supposed to yield plentiful plant food for the survivors. Ironically, the survivors were plentiful food for the plants.

Artist: Russell Lu TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[sarroth]

Have that deck that just cannot win no matter how many times you tune it?

[sarroth]

As someone getting back into Pokémon TCG after… 23 years? 24? and who still somewhat actively plays Magic, love the combo here and would enjoy seeing more. Get some ‘Mon into little Chandra goggles!

had an amazing time at magic con chicago with old friends and new!

@KessWylie (twitter) / @GavinVerhey (twitter) @RhysticStudies (youtube) / @ZBexx (twitter) @Magic_Mishamigo (twitter) / @mangabookclub (tumblr) / @creativekittystudios (instagram)

🥰🥰🥰

[sarroth]

I don’t do tournaments so this was news to me. Fuck yeah including ‘intentional misgendering’ as clearly stated reasons to drop an asshole from a tournament.

Brb going to wotc to get this card printed and included in every pre-con

Let's just say I had a bad experience at mtg today.

[sarroth]

Evidently this week is one for endings, as in addition to Rooster Teeth planning to shut its doors, I read Warner Bros his indefinitely shelving its Coyote vs Acme movie despite it being completed (a la Batgirl) and now this.

Sure, the writings were on the wall: There were certain cards whose images were wrong or would be blank that never got fixed, despite updates, and they hadn’t added new Planeswalkers or expansions in like a year.

I had unlocked every card while playing for free so I wasn’t playing as obsessively anymore but it was still an occasional time sink that I found joy in, whether it was my zombie mill deck, or either of my Oops All Dragons decks (transform all creatures you control and each card in your deck into dragons), or the very-red feeling decks that ran an artifact that transforms a creature into a random big one that is sacrificed at end of turn - turning that neglected artifact in the meta into a winning deck was loads of fun. I know they want us to just switch to Arena, but I appreciated the differences in Spellslingers, like the limit on 5 creatures for each player, which made viewing the board state on a mobile device easier but opened odd gameplay options like a sacrifice deck that uses replacing one of your 5 creatures on a full board with one in your hand (as that caused you to sacrifice the creature you chose to replace). My son had also just gotten into it and I’ve been waiting for his recent grounding to get over so he could level up enough for PvP play. Alas.