I got back this weekend. I had a decent time, if a rainy one. My team won the 5-man melee tournament with a 9-0 record. I think there were 25-30 teams overall. I won a couple other things and ended one with a 20-3 (63-8 overall) record.

K-Run, it's good to see that the format still "isn't that great"-- makes me wonder when "at the moment" becomes "always".

I'm going to try and stay aware of when the next big event rolls through my area so I can swing by; if it's sealed deck I might even play.

I still have a Stompy deck and a 5 color, all basic land control deck I used to play when my school still had a gaming club, but I don't see myself getting back into Vintage any time soon. I'm way too out of touch and it'd be too expensive to rebuild my collection to where I could play something that would satisfy me, even with proxies. I'm going to go out on a limb and take a wild guess that the best decks in Vintage are a combo deck and/or a highly disruptive control/combo deck that's 1-2 turns slower than the combo deck, so right there I'd need hours of playtesting to be competitive again. If the urge ever struck me, I'd probably draft.

Plus, the way that GenCon went down I feel like I went out on top in terms of my demonstrable understanding of the game. If I made a serious return I'd be a worse player than a lot of people, including you. I'd rather stay out and remain a vague specter that, apparently, still haunts your dreams.    Matt V can tell you I'm a much better fencer than I ever was a Magic player, anyway. I think I went 10-1 "matches", 21-3 "games" in my last tournament.

Right now most of my "playtime" is devoted to learning quarterstaff combat from various sources and working through the unarmed combat in the Codex Wallerstein. Europeans actually have a very rich martial heritage, and a brutal one at that. I think my favorite grappling technique thus far is the one that dislocates the shoulder by tearing out all the tendons around it, breaks the elbow sideways to the joint, and, "if done properly", also breaks the wrist in two places. Brutal, I tell you, brutal.

I'm leaving for Pennsic in a couple hours, so I'll be AWOL again. Pennsic is sort of the GenCon of my current hobby, but with fresh air. 

Have a good one, all, and if anyone's interested I can share some stories upon my return. If not, okay too.

It's good to hear from all of you. Oh, and I just saw Matt D'Avanzo about 2 weeks ago. He lives in NC now.

Hey, wow. I think this might well be my first post here in a couple years. I happened to stumble back this way while looking for an old piece of writing I'd done, as my name appeared in http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=33389.0.

Steve, I just wanted to say that I think it is totally awesome that my legacy in this format is such that it's still around to be tarnished, oh, what, 3 years after I sold my collection and closer to 4 since I stopped playing much? That put a smile on my face, and brought back a lot of fond memories of all you guys, especially of the very steep learning curve that most of us went through around 2000. I recall a time when you argued against using Force of Will because it cost a control deck a card to use. I'm pretty sure we all had some theories that we can look back on and laugh at. I'm personally a much bigger fan of remembering the first big GenCon tournaments for Vintage, but I fully admit my bias there. 

In case anyone is wondering (or cares!), I'm still heavily involved in the SCA and am about as deep into the research of historical European martial arts as I used to be in Magic, though I daresay that I've a bit more talent at this than I did with the cards. I'm still teaching, which I love. I also got married early this year to the same woman I was seeing when I stopped playing, and I'm very happy. I hope that all of the rest of the old guard turned out as well as I have; I haven't been in touch at all for a long time and that's my own fault.

Every once in a while I think about visiting an SCG event just to say hi; I happen to stab one of the level IV judges in the head from time to time so I'll have someone to whom to talk shop.  I'll keep an eye open for a forthcoming event.

And a small part of me is, of course, wondering just how many people are on this board who are going to wonder, "Who is this guy?"

Anyone ever see this article before? It's pretty funny, especially considering how many WoW players I know. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml

That shit made me want to erase the first trilogy from my memory. What an atrocious movie.

Serenity, however, will make you weep openly and scream at the heavens "DAMN YOU LUCAS! THIS IS THE MOVIE THAT YOU COULD HAVE MADE!"

Make sure you watch the Firefly series first, though. It's better that way.

Best: Joker or Magneto.

Favorite: THANOS!

Well fuck, I'd best stay away from any kryptonite.

This is, in fact, completely true. It was in 1999 or 2000 I think, and pretty much caused several of us to write off anything Smmenen said for years afterward. In fact, many never truly forgave him. Some of the more venerable members can attest to this.

I also remember how horrible a liar Rakso and Meridian were during the "Doomsday" joke we pulled-- it was like watching a horrible caricature of people lying.

I remember when SliverKing and I were so certain of one of us winning the tournament the next day that our playtesting night consisted of him getting extremely drunk at a strip club and me buying lapdances.

Actually, that never really changed; it just expanded to include more people.

I remember when Smmenen wrote something like an 8 page article explaining why Force of Will was unnecessary in control decks. Not only unnecessary, but stupid.

No, really. Ask around.

I also remember when Type One shifted and became a frenetic orgy of mana production and card drawing. Urza's Block, it was called, and sheeeeyat were some of us reluctant to embrace it.

2006 marks a decade for me. Two years since I sold my collection now, too.

I still play at my high school. It's awesome. 4 Thawing Glaciers, a whole bunch of basic lands, and I win with one of each Pheldagriff. It's like 1995 all over again, and I look forward to it each week.

The correct answer is Final Fantasy. 8-bit 4 Life.

Hell, maybe I'll swing by just to visit.

Antonio, there are some pretty nice restaurants nearby if you're up for it.

Batman could always just show Vader Episodes 1-3, which would cause him to cut off his own goddam head out of shame.

Just in case anyone out there is still interested in reading these... I'm still running around with swords in my spare time. I wrote this up last week for some friends so the timing is a little off. I'm back at work now and am almost through with my first week of students. Block scheduling is new and fun.


Pennsic XXXIV has come and gone, and though I am sad to see it go I am even less pleased about the prospect of having to wake up at an ungodly hour tomorrow. However, I have the bruises and sore muscles to remember my vacation by.

Highlights of the War include:

Making it to the semi-finals in a tournament of 80 people and having my friend and student Dominyk win the tournament, defeating the woman who knocked me out. My final record was 11-2.

Immediately thereafter, my 5-man team made it to the top 8 of the Five Man Melee tournament, undefeated in our pod. We got knocked out by a team of fellow Atlantians when a long day and lack of food and rest resulted in some miscommunication. During one round I saw Dominyk about to be DFBed; I shouted a warning and ran at him. He bent at the waist to duck, and I parried both blades of the bad guy and stuck him twice over Dominyk's back at a full sprint. It was sweet.

Breaking through the East Kingdom line for the Field Battle war point and butchering people with both blades as I ran to take out their commander. In a later battle, I dropped four myself despite being the one carrying our company banner.

Lasting 30 minutes into the Woods Battle war point without being hit despite being in constant engagement. I only had to resurrect twice, and only after the Middle Kingdom's queen requested that we stop using Death From Behind on the hapless and hopelessly outnumbered EK army.

Lots of other stuff happened, of course, but that's about all I can remember at the moment, and time and energy are short.

There is a saying "So goes Atlantia, so goes the War". Sir Timoch told me that someone once asked him what happens when we lose, and he replied "I don't know; I've only been doing this 20 years."

"Yestarday", huh? How "ridiculous."

I've got to go with Smemmen on this-- when we did all of our testing against Slaver, the build that was supposed to beat Hulk something like 9 in 10 lost more like 6 in 8. It's really not a tough matchup if you know what lines of attack to make.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I'll never buy any Star Wars DVDs, and that the only way I will ever watch them is on the old VHS tapes I have of the real trilogy. You know, the one that the world fell in love with before it was hideously disfigured.  I will see this new movie hoping for the best and being prepared for the worst, knowing full well that the best part of the last two movies involved Christopher Lee doing a Star Wars kid impression with his leprechaun opponent added later digitally.

Equal protection under the law is equal protection under the law.

I sold my cards on TMD to keep them in the community.

Goodkind becomes PAINFULLY bad after the first book as he gets more and more like Ayn Rand and less and less like a coherent novelist. I actually gave away a stack of hardcovers just because I couldn't stand to have them on my shelves anymore.

SO BAD.

So the answer seems to be "Um, sometimes?"



Doesn't matter anyway; something will come out in a set or two that will just make this deck erupt o'er the land like a plague of locusts, like a one mana artifact that does something like "discard a card: draw a card." Then WotC will say "It's not card advantage, it's card quality and therefore balanced" and refuse to ban the damn thing.  

I'd argue that the unstated premise was "is there a problem with the gender neuter being the same as the masculine?" Several people were assuming so, and trying to solve the "problem". I simply said there was no problem to solve.

My unstated premise is that many people are sensitive about things that are immaterial and tend not to worry about things like pollution or obesity.

See, we tied it  back to Magic after all!  

English simply doesn't have a different word. We only have small vestiges of assigning gender to words at all.

Furthermore, to "beg the question" is to take for granted the truth of the very thing being questioned, or to assume the answer to an unstated premise. It is, in fact, true that "he" is both masculine and neuter in English, and that no grammatically acceptable or linguistically precise alternative exists. Problematic or not, that is the language you speak.

"He" is both masculine and neuter in English. Cope.

Can anyone recommend a good anti-spyware program? Mine has been less than stellar lately.

Thanks!

Chocolate is overrated. It's a decent sweet, and certainly has its moments, but is not the be all end all of candies.

Unless you have ovaries, in which case you probably have a stronger emotional attachment to it than you do to your own flesh and blood.

Kl0wn, that made me snarf. Thank you, silly boy.

Heh, I just repurchased the game a couple months ago after remembering how awesome it is.

I also seem to have forgotten abuot 90% of my skills with the game, which is sad, sad, sad. I'm still in the "swarm" stage of strategy, after just leaving the "defense!" stage.

Gunmetal sleeves are the best. They last about 3 times as long as normal sleeves for me, and they're a little bit taller than most so the tops are better protected.

Heh, okay, I didn't realize "ass whooping" was a card.