Some things are not as hot as they seem initially

This weekend, the TF2 Pyro update was released, as I wrote before. Since the achievements weren't rolling fast, I tried out one of those "achievement servers". Chaos. The irony in such servers is that it's meant to get your achievements fast. However, if you go play on them, it's likely that the only achievement you'll get is "Die too often.", which is sad, because it isn't a real achievement and I can get it in normal servers too. No problem.

The map I was on had intel points, a control point, a swimming pool and a spawn. Not 2, but 1, resulting in spawn killing. As the red to blue ratio was a 2:1 one, the blues were being singed, burned to a crisp as they spawned. Everytime I could chop someone down (I was on Red) with my axe to get the Lumberjack achievement, I would get cut down myself by a stray Blu that had survived the initial hosing of petrol and fire.

I have to be honest. I grinded the Pilot Light, Hotshot and Dance Dance Immolation (har har) achievements, to get my ax. The rest are honestly ground on normal servers. I have to say though, that the Pyro achievements are easier to achieve than the Medic ones. The Medic has to rely alot on your teammates for the achievements. The Pyro... Well, you're the one that has to fry the foes. Atleast the Pyro is a class that doesn't throw the game too much of balance. I fear the day when Heavies get their patch.

P.S.: Firewatch image is epic. It captures the silliness and uberness of the Pyro class perfectly.

Pwned

My "little"15-year old brother is a Wii-person. I, however, am a PC/X360-person. When he bought Guitar Hero III for the Wii, I was not amused by the lack of achievements, lesser graphics (Assuming that GH3 for the Xbox is graphically any good) and worst: No Downloadable Content (DLC). Between the packs, Halo Mjolnir theme and such, there is bound to be some fun content. However, I didn't see this one coming: "I am Murloc" by Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain is on the X360 and PS3 as DLC now, according to WoW Insider.

Now he is thinking about selling his Wii-tar and getting the X360 version anyway.

Orb of Insight

The Orb of Insight is back on magicthegathering.com for the upcoming set, Eventide. Although it has been there for a few days now, I couldn't use it till now. The thing loads normally, it works, but it didn't show a special code. So the anti-spam screwed it up.
The Orb of Insight tells you how many cards use the phrase you enter. For example: You enter sorcery, you get the number 23. This means that there are 23 cards with the word sorcery on it. this can be in the card type box, name or text box.

So, some numbers:

Sorcery: 23
Instant: 21
Artifact: 12

Changeling: 0
Dragon: 0
Goblin: 7
Merfolk: 9
Kithkin: 16
Hag(one of the new types I found out from the preview pack): 12
Elf: 4
Scarecrow: 7
Beast: 6
Elemental: 24 (!)
Treefolk: 6

Rogue: 7
Warrior: 13
Wizard: 11

Wither: 13
Persist: 11

So, a set with alot of Elementals, very few Goblins and no Dragons.

Guitar Heroism

A few weeks ago, my brother bought Guitar Hero III. One of the problems was: For which platform? My little brother is someone that doesn't care about the financial and/or practical sides. So he bought it for the Wii. While we have a Xbox 360. Idiot.

So we have the following:
No DLC. No Achievements. Inferior Graphics. Nice.

Funny part is that I own him in GH3, while I hardly play it.
Again, this has 2 sides: I'm not allowed to play anymore, because I own him. And he asks me to do songs that he can't do himself.

Anyway, that's not the point. Yesterday, we went the the mall and got us some goodies. He got himself a Creative Zen Stone, since his old 15-euro mp3-player broke. I got me some Microsoft Points to buy On The Precipice of Darkness: Episode 1. He also bought Puzzle Quest for the Wii, for a whopping 50 euros. Ofcourse, the XBLA version is 1200 points. 2100 points are 25 euros. You do the math.

Then he got angry at me when I said that he should trade it in and buy the points, so he can play it on the Xbox, cheaper. At this point I couldn't care less anymore, since I wanted to save him money, while he thinks I'm being Pro-Xbox again.

About 15 minutes later, he comes into my room saying:

"It's hard to admit, but... It's terrible on the Wii, my arm hurts and it's impossible to select the gem you want."

He went back to trade it in, and came back with a speaker set for his Zen Stone and DoA:Extreme 2... A terrible Xbox game.

On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Pyro's and Drafts

Wow. A while ago, Penny Arcade came with a game of their own. An episodic RPG with the same style and humor of their comic. Seeing as how the demo was awesome (me and my friends had a blast), I bought the full game today on XBL Arcade. The story is silly enough, gameplay is solid and I want more.

After a giant Fruit Fucker uses your house as a stepping stone, placing your all of your house on the same horizontal plane, you want revenge. You join Tycho and Gabe, who conviently pass by as they are chasing the robot, to solve the mystery behind the mechanic monstrosity. Once you get past the suburbs you live in, it's obvious that the guys from PA made quite the effort to get a good story going. With every minute you play, the plot thickens. Using Paper Mario/Super Mario RPG style of combat, even that is fun. This coming from someone that hates Final Fantasy because of the combat system (Seriously, If I ever have trouble sleeping...).

But... There are 2 things that I dislike. Near the end, it is unclear where you need to go to get the items to upgrade your weapons. The game isn't that big, so it's not that hard to turn it upside down, but still. And the ending credits.
I don't dislike credits, just the ones that I cannot skip. Anyhow, good game, go get it.


Also, The Team Fortress 2 Pyro Achievements are in. After playing for 8 hours straight yesterday, I finally have all the unlockables, the flaregun, backburner and Axtinguisher, unlocked at 10, 16 and 22 achievements respectively. Flaregun is awesome in maps without water, just to screw with your long range enemies. Backburner is fine in close combat, but it sucks if a Soldier/Demoman gets the jump on you and the Axtinguisher is epic, exept against Pyro's. Flame retardant suits don't allow them to burn very well. Seeing as the Axtinguisher deals 50% damage against non-burning and crits 100% on burning enemies, that's a bit of a problem. On the other hand, it looks so epic... Barbed wire on axes looks so evil.

Me and my gaming group, with which I play Magic:The Gathering, are trying something new to balance out the differences in funds, cards etc. We draft.
It's supposed to be a bit more desperate than others, just make packs of cards, with the same consistency as boosters, or use actual boosters. Then draft and play for ante's. But: We use 2 boosters to make a 40 card deck, not 3. So far it's lots of fun.

Usually I don't link from YouTube

But these 2 video's are an exeption.





Enjoy!

My Revenge will be sweet.

About 2 weeks ago, I had an idea: After having all of my creatures killed off time after time by my opponents, why not try a deck without creatures? I took my collection of cards, took red ones for direct damage, blue for counterspelling and black to destroy creatures. It's easy to build: Take 4 Terrors, 4 Lava Axes, and stuff like Negate and Disperse. After leaving nothing but ashes in my wake (not literally) while playing against my friends (Well, with 2 exeptions: Kithkin decks and a rogue deck), I went to the local gaming store to get some tips on improving it.

Once I got there, I went to play a game against the shopkeeper... Ouch. He had a deck that revolved about discarding cards untill he got 4 Bridges from Below in his graveyard, something strong like Akroma in there too and then he pulled all sorts of stuff from his graveyard.

When a non-token creature that he controlled was put in his graveyard, he got a 2/2 zombie token. So per creature killed, he got 4 2/2 zombie tokens. Remember that I have no creatures? The cheapest creature removal I have is Terror, it costs 2 mana and it only kills non-black, non-artifact creatures. The zombie tokens are black. So I cannot do *anything* against his tokens. Which piled up and piled up. At turn 4, I lost the game already.

A few days later, I met a guy there that plays a graveyard deck too, but this one is an Extended deck, which revolves about "Dredge":

502.47. Dredge
502.47a Dredge is a static ability that functions only while the card with dredge is in a player’s graveyard. “Dredge N” means “As long as you have at least N cards in your library, if you
would draw a card, you may instead put N cards from the top of your library into your
graveyard and return this card from your graveyard to your hand.”
502.47b A player with fewer cards in his or her library than the number required by a dredge ability
can’t put any of them into his or her graveyard this way.

So he can throw all sorts of stuff in his graveyard. And he then used Dread Return and Bridge from Below to build a huge army. Again with Akroma, because of the many abilities. But...

The Shadowmoor set is coming up. The pre-release is next week. Our magic group is going with a grand total of 4. 4 is the maximum amount of the same (non-basic-land) card allowed in your deck. And with the card to the right as the pre-release card we will all get... The pictures doesn't show the original art, but the promo art, which we will get. Now: Scroll back up, read Dread Return, then the card to the right and then the dredge rules. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?


Use Dredge-ing to get all of your Demigods of Revenge in your graveyard, then play one. Just one. Use Dread Return for it, or something like that and POOF! You have an army of 4 5/4 flying monstrosities with haste (they can attack immeadiatly) and flying (hard to block), so you have a whopping 20 damage soaring through the skies. And 20 is the amount of starting life. Demigod of Revenge, prepare to be (ab)used.

EDIT: Scrap Dread Return, gief stuff like Revive the Fallen and Gravekeeper.