Caveat: None of this makes sense, but a few quick words on the alley fight scene from They Live.
"I still believe in the American dream. Everybody goes through tough times." Nada (Piper) says something to this effect early on to Frank (David) while they stare at the city from the slums. Let's get half-assed political real quick. They Live came out in 1988, in the very last twilight of Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America". Collectivism was getting the tar beaten out of it. Nada discovers a crazy conspiracy and has to let other people know, Frank being the one he desires first because he has something of a relationship with him. But how does someone who in an individualist, and not even a strictly hardline one at that, go about getting someone to do something? They can tell them but they won't do it for them. Similar to how the the government was getting deregulated and the safety net was getting the axe (even though the state was still getting bigger). Get your ass in gear but don't expect much help if you can't.
Therefore, "Put on the glasses." Nada says it over and over when he has the upper hand in the fight scene. There are countless times when he could just force them over his eyes and the problem is solved but that isn't how he wants it to go down. He wants Frank to do it for himself. Back and forth they go. And finally, Nada just puts the glasses on him. He's finally given up on what he believed. It seems easy to think that happened earlier when the police destroyed the slums where he resided and enacted beatdowns on the inhabitants. But no, there's still room to maneuver. After all, the police are a protective side of the government. They might be a bit draconian, but they're on our side and the government's side. At the same time they're a functionary of a society that is corrupted and part of the state that apparently hasn't been hit by the deregulation bug. But Frank? He's just one man, working hard to support a family and minding his own business. He's the mold of the single go-getter. Sure, he complains about his situation, he's skeptical, but he's the one getting shit done. Nada is similar, he just has the rug pulled out from under him so harshly and quickly that he doesn't know how to react. He's also much more curious than skeptical, which is what gets him into trouble to start with. They're close enough to where it makes sense for them to paradoxically team up, so Nada knows he has to get to Frank eventually. Society, government, consumerism...sure, they're all manufactured lies. But a man like Frank? Nada knows he's as real as it gets, so he can only push him so far. The individual is still alive. Until Frank, in the ultimate act of individualism, refuses to cave. He fights and fights but he won't put on the glasses. So eventually Nada puts the glasses on him. Then the dream is dead.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
L.A. Noire - An Experience in Gaming
L.A. Noire is a game built for me. It takes a broad classical adventure gametype and drops it into late 1940s Los Angeles. Your role is a detective, working your way through various sections of the LAPD, catching cases in the moral shithole you'd expect. The game is James Ellroy-lite, though it mainly fails to transcend the cliches he blasts open so spectacularly. Still, a "crime" game? Yeah, I can get behind that no matter what. Collecting evidence, interrogating suspects, breaking cases? Distill it however you want and I'll lap it up. My threshold for enjoyment is perilously low. But really, L.A. Noire has been billed as much more than that, both by its creators and players. A lot of talk has centered on it being the first video game to transcend that pesky "game" label. Instead, it holds the category of "experience".
A caveat up front: I'm not here to be the dreaded defender of the games industry from all those proles and their Modern Warfare fix that destroys my chances of getting the latest JRPG translated. However, I do think the attempted re-branding of L.A. Noire is related in a way to how mediums are often interpreted. You see it a lot in comics, where people talk about sequential art as just a storyboard for a potential movie, everything already laid out, both interchangeable, completely missing the unique qualities that separate them. Sadly it's not just a question of the form, as the countless godawful movie pitches as comics, ready-made to lurch onto the screen attest. I rarely see anyone talk about the relationships movies have to comics on a formal level. This has started popping up in games discourse too. When surefire successes like Halo and Call of Duty drop, the developers are aiming for the blockbuster action setpieces you're used to seeing every summer at the megaplex. They're quick to trot out the dreaded (by me at least, YMMV) word: "cinematic". As in, they want the games to feel like movies. Once again, I'm not going to overextend in the other direction and say all this pap is diluting the industry and pretty soon you'll be watching a game more than you'll be playing it. But just look at how non-interactive cutscenes have become a standardized focal point of games. Sure, they've always been there, but now they're at the forefront of hype and advertising. Cinema's influence is more and more apparent.
That aside is meant to show that labels for media are often changed to denote an uptick in quality, relevance, or importance. Look at "graphic novel". No more of that comics crap, this shit is real. It's like a novel, but with graphics! Let's not focus on how inadequate that term is, being tied to the novel format, but on how it took something and tried to take the same contents of what it always had been and then drag it out of the doldrums and into the light. The same thing is happening with L.A. Noire. This is no game, it's an experience! Now I get to try and destroy that connotation.
After all, what is an experience? You experience anything. A song, a comic, a novel, a movie, a TV episode, a painting. But wait, games are all about inserting actions you make into that experience, thereby personalizing it. Well maybe. I've got two big problems with that. The first is that anyone's experience with anything is different. Sure, commonalities, themes, reactions, they certainly spread across all manner of people, but deep down everyone feels differently about the same thing. How you're feeling at the time, a personal situation that mirrors what you see, someone you just saw, these are just a few of the countless things that affect how you experience anything. So saying L.A. Noire is an experience is really as one-dimensional and unhelpful as you can get. Everything is personal to some degree.
Second, and this is the bigger one, games are at their heart no more personal than any other medium. A stock line might be, "Well, you're controlling what's happening, so you're invested in the action way more." And to an extent that's true. But anything can get you to care about what happens or want to see what happens next if it's compelling. And games operate in the relatively confined, linear world that other things do. Within reason, a book only keeps going as you keep turning the pages, music has to keep playing to finish, and games only play out if you do what is prescribed to you. Princess is in another castle? Keep jumping on stuff and shooting fireballs. Zelda's been captured? Use that hookshot and work through those temples. Some guy that might be a clone of you is about to melodramatically threaten the entire world with a weapon of mass destruction? Hide in boxes and use the codec. If you don't, you're getting nowhere. The rules change specifically from game to game, but the one that differentiates games from other mediums is everything the creators wanted you to see is there and you must work through it in the order that they prescribe. You can open a book and read a random chapter. You can look at any page in a comic separately. You can look at a painting an artist did at any point in their career. Now that may not be the most compelling or fulfilling way to accomplish something, but the option is there. How do you get to the final boss? You beat all the other bosses, overcome all the other challenges, acquire the upgrades. Your choice is severely restrained, if there is one at all. Sandbox games and other types certainly give you more options and things to do, but there is always a larger plot that is meant to be moved along at some point. You might also rebuke this by mentioning that you can play a single level or section of a game just like you can read a single chapter or single page, but the key difference is access. Unless that level or section is the first one, it's almost always going to be blocked until you've gotten there.
To be sure, games have mixed it up. Choices in video games have become all the rage lately, but they've been around forever. Do you wait for the train or keep going in Final Fight 3? Do you save Kid or leave her in Chrono Cross? Do you go light side or dark side in Knights of the Old Republic? The game plays out differently and it makes you feel like you have some control, like you're shaping things. But of course you're not. You make a choice, and one formulated avenue is brushed aside for another. Then you replay the game and go the other way so you can see it or to just get the achievements/trophies. Character customization, depending on the game, is one place where games can allow for strong user involvement and individualization, even though it often can paradoxically become almost non-existent in the games where it has the largest potential, like in World of Warcraft or other MMOs.
So now that my opinions are out there, what about L.A. Noire itself? It is really an experience, a new take that transforms games and elevates the form to new heights? No, not at all. In fact, by trying to paint itself as something other than a game but coming up short, L.A. Noire blatantly (and I would guess unintentionally in some ways) screams that not only is it not an experience, but that it is a G-A-M-E through and through. A few thoughts on why that is.
Choice is certainly a major factor in the game. In a certain case, you might have to find close to 20 clues at various crime scenes and interview people, asking close to 20 questions. If you miss a clue you have less information to work with which cuts back on the options you have during an interview. Whenever there are clues to find there will be a certain backing music, and once you've found all the clues for a certain area, a sort of "victory chime" will play and the music will go away. Finding the clues is usually only a matter of walking up to the few noticeable objects in an area and then pressing the corresponding button when the controller vibrates to let you know this is something you can examine. It's a very simple process. Sure, you can turn off the music, but then how do you know if you've gotten all the clues? That might not be a huge deal, especially if this was an "experience" but the game makes sure to point out how you did after the mission is over, when you get what is basically a score report, showing your stats for the case. It's tied to the linear nature of games. By placing a statistic on how you play the game, the developers are trying to railroad you into playing the game how they have designed it and grading you on it. Why not remove that from the equation? Because that's how games are made and how people consume them. If Team Bondi really wanted to push, that would have been a great way to start. You work the case and it ends and you move on to the next one. No report that shows you how your "experience" was wrong.
The interrogations have a similar problem. They likewise show up as a statistic on your case report, but there's little subjectivity present when they actually take place. Whenever you ask someone a question, you can respond by believing they're telling the truth, believing they're lying, for which you have to have a piece of evidence to back it up, or doubting them, which basically is when you think they're lying but you don't have evidence to back it up. It's a pretty good system that usually works well. Sometimes it's hard to decide on which piece of evidence to use if you believe the person is lying, but that's about it. Whenever you select a response you get a "good chime" if the answer is correct and a "bad" one if it is wrong. More blatant examples of the game telling you there is a specific way to play each case and even though it continues and changes in ways, you still got it wrong. Why not strip all that away and just let the case play out within an overriding framework that hides as much from the player so the gameplay gets further into opacity (I'm trying here, I swear, it may not look like it) and unpredictability.
One of the reasons this is all a problem is because L.A. Noire has an overarching story that goes on in the background at first and slowly moves into the main part of the game. Sure enough, you can't control any part of this narrative. So even when your character does stupid things that are barely explained (HE'S FLAWED, SEE BRAH? SHIT IS DAYEEP!) you get to watch and marvel at the dismal goofiness happening. So no matter how you do in a case, that story has to continue, which, in a surprise to no one, involves you climbing the ranks of the department and great scenes where you're lauded as the crime solver of crime solvers even if you punted the entire previous case. Even worse is when you see or hear details in a case that you want to act on but have no ability to. Obviously we're not near a point of interactive games, but this is really frustrating, especially if you're supposedly in an experience. It comes across as the developers cutely playing with you, knowing that if you do notice, you don't have the capability to act.
A final point of frustration: the telephone. Throughout the game there are various spots where you can use a telephone to contact dispatch or records and information. You sometimes will also get connected to other members of the department or be given messages or updates. The thing is, you can only use the telephone when the game allows you to. It feels badly artificial, especially when it blatantly shows up on your minimap whenever you're "supposed" to use it, and always very convenient to your current location. There are also a few spots in the game where it is far from obvious that you should use the telephone, but since the icon pops up, you know you'd better dial away (it's not like you always know who you're calling, in another annoying quirk) because you risk losing out on information if you don't. At times this can make you feel like the game is on auto-pilot, playing itself.
Throughout this it might seem like I'm being unfair to L.A. Noire, especially since overall I like the game. I just really hate the experience wording, it being one in long trend of trying to replace unique forms with watered down versions of other, supposedly better ones. Just for fun, and because this really went off the rails near the end, here's my dream take on how L.A. Noire should have played out.
No overarching story. Instead, you have various cases set around a locale (in this case Los Angeles post-WWII). You could switch up the playable characters and the supporting cast to keep it interesting, with enough differences so that they aren't the same person with a different graphics model. There's not success or failure indicators in the quest. The evidence and interrogation methods can stay. Instead of focusing on a greater story, spend more time putting in multiple angles and directions that each case can branch to.
A caveat up front: I'm not here to be the dreaded defender of the games industry from all those proles and their Modern Warfare fix that destroys my chances of getting the latest JRPG translated. However, I do think the attempted re-branding of L.A. Noire is related in a way to how mediums are often interpreted. You see it a lot in comics, where people talk about sequential art as just a storyboard for a potential movie, everything already laid out, both interchangeable, completely missing the unique qualities that separate them. Sadly it's not just a question of the form, as the countless godawful movie pitches as comics, ready-made to lurch onto the screen attest. I rarely see anyone talk about the relationships movies have to comics on a formal level. This has started popping up in games discourse too. When surefire successes like Halo and Call of Duty drop, the developers are aiming for the blockbuster action setpieces you're used to seeing every summer at the megaplex. They're quick to trot out the dreaded (by me at least, YMMV) word: "cinematic". As in, they want the games to feel like movies. Once again, I'm not going to overextend in the other direction and say all this pap is diluting the industry and pretty soon you'll be watching a game more than you'll be playing it. But just look at how non-interactive cutscenes have become a standardized focal point of games. Sure, they've always been there, but now they're at the forefront of hype and advertising. Cinema's influence is more and more apparent.
That aside is meant to show that labels for media are often changed to denote an uptick in quality, relevance, or importance. Look at "graphic novel". No more of that comics crap, this shit is real. It's like a novel, but with graphics! Let's not focus on how inadequate that term is, being tied to the novel format, but on how it took something and tried to take the same contents of what it always had been and then drag it out of the doldrums and into the light. The same thing is happening with L.A. Noire. This is no game, it's an experience! Now I get to try and destroy that connotation.
After all, what is an experience? You experience anything. A song, a comic, a novel, a movie, a TV episode, a painting. But wait, games are all about inserting actions you make into that experience, thereby personalizing it. Well maybe. I've got two big problems with that. The first is that anyone's experience with anything is different. Sure, commonalities, themes, reactions, they certainly spread across all manner of people, but deep down everyone feels differently about the same thing. How you're feeling at the time, a personal situation that mirrors what you see, someone you just saw, these are just a few of the countless things that affect how you experience anything. So saying L.A. Noire is an experience is really as one-dimensional and unhelpful as you can get. Everything is personal to some degree.
Second, and this is the bigger one, games are at their heart no more personal than any other medium. A stock line might be, "Well, you're controlling what's happening, so you're invested in the action way more." And to an extent that's true. But anything can get you to care about what happens or want to see what happens next if it's compelling. And games operate in the relatively confined, linear world that other things do. Within reason, a book only keeps going as you keep turning the pages, music has to keep playing to finish, and games only play out if you do what is prescribed to you. Princess is in another castle? Keep jumping on stuff and shooting fireballs. Zelda's been captured? Use that hookshot and work through those temples. Some guy that might be a clone of you is about to melodramatically threaten the entire world with a weapon of mass destruction? Hide in boxes and use the codec. If you don't, you're getting nowhere. The rules change specifically from game to game, but the one that differentiates games from other mediums is everything the creators wanted you to see is there and you must work through it in the order that they prescribe. You can open a book and read a random chapter. You can look at any page in a comic separately. You can look at a painting an artist did at any point in their career. Now that may not be the most compelling or fulfilling way to accomplish something, but the option is there. How do you get to the final boss? You beat all the other bosses, overcome all the other challenges, acquire the upgrades. Your choice is severely restrained, if there is one at all. Sandbox games and other types certainly give you more options and things to do, but there is always a larger plot that is meant to be moved along at some point. You might also rebuke this by mentioning that you can play a single level or section of a game just like you can read a single chapter or single page, but the key difference is access. Unless that level or section is the first one, it's almost always going to be blocked until you've gotten there.
To be sure, games have mixed it up. Choices in video games have become all the rage lately, but they've been around forever. Do you wait for the train or keep going in Final Fight 3? Do you save Kid or leave her in Chrono Cross? Do you go light side or dark side in Knights of the Old Republic? The game plays out differently and it makes you feel like you have some control, like you're shaping things. But of course you're not. You make a choice, and one formulated avenue is brushed aside for another. Then you replay the game and go the other way so you can see it or to just get the achievements/trophies. Character customization, depending on the game, is one place where games can allow for strong user involvement and individualization, even though it often can paradoxically become almost non-existent in the games where it has the largest potential, like in World of Warcraft or other MMOs.
So now that my opinions are out there, what about L.A. Noire itself? It is really an experience, a new take that transforms games and elevates the form to new heights? No, not at all. In fact, by trying to paint itself as something other than a game but coming up short, L.A. Noire blatantly (and I would guess unintentionally in some ways) screams that not only is it not an experience, but that it is a G-A-M-E through and through. A few thoughts on why that is.
Choice is certainly a major factor in the game. In a certain case, you might have to find close to 20 clues at various crime scenes and interview people, asking close to 20 questions. If you miss a clue you have less information to work with which cuts back on the options you have during an interview. Whenever there are clues to find there will be a certain backing music, and once you've found all the clues for a certain area, a sort of "victory chime" will play and the music will go away. Finding the clues is usually only a matter of walking up to the few noticeable objects in an area and then pressing the corresponding button when the controller vibrates to let you know this is something you can examine. It's a very simple process. Sure, you can turn off the music, but then how do you know if you've gotten all the clues? That might not be a huge deal, especially if this was an "experience" but the game makes sure to point out how you did after the mission is over, when you get what is basically a score report, showing your stats for the case. It's tied to the linear nature of games. By placing a statistic on how you play the game, the developers are trying to railroad you into playing the game how they have designed it and grading you on it. Why not remove that from the equation? Because that's how games are made and how people consume them. If Team Bondi really wanted to push, that would have been a great way to start. You work the case and it ends and you move on to the next one. No report that shows you how your "experience" was wrong.
The interrogations have a similar problem. They likewise show up as a statistic on your case report, but there's little subjectivity present when they actually take place. Whenever you ask someone a question, you can respond by believing they're telling the truth, believing they're lying, for which you have to have a piece of evidence to back it up, or doubting them, which basically is when you think they're lying but you don't have evidence to back it up. It's a pretty good system that usually works well. Sometimes it's hard to decide on which piece of evidence to use if you believe the person is lying, but that's about it. Whenever you select a response you get a "good chime" if the answer is correct and a "bad" one if it is wrong. More blatant examples of the game telling you there is a specific way to play each case and even though it continues and changes in ways, you still got it wrong. Why not strip all that away and just let the case play out within an overriding framework that hides as much from the player so the gameplay gets further into opacity (I'm trying here, I swear, it may not look like it) and unpredictability.
One of the reasons this is all a problem is because L.A. Noire has an overarching story that goes on in the background at first and slowly moves into the main part of the game. Sure enough, you can't control any part of this narrative. So even when your character does stupid things that are barely explained (HE'S FLAWED, SEE BRAH? SHIT IS DAYEEP!) you get to watch and marvel at the dismal goofiness happening. So no matter how you do in a case, that story has to continue, which, in a surprise to no one, involves you climbing the ranks of the department and great scenes where you're lauded as the crime solver of crime solvers even if you punted the entire previous case. Even worse is when you see or hear details in a case that you want to act on but have no ability to. Obviously we're not near a point of interactive games, but this is really frustrating, especially if you're supposedly in an experience. It comes across as the developers cutely playing with you, knowing that if you do notice, you don't have the capability to act.
A final point of frustration: the telephone. Throughout the game there are various spots where you can use a telephone to contact dispatch or records and information. You sometimes will also get connected to other members of the department or be given messages or updates. The thing is, you can only use the telephone when the game allows you to. It feels badly artificial, especially when it blatantly shows up on your minimap whenever you're "supposed" to use it, and always very convenient to your current location. There are also a few spots in the game where it is far from obvious that you should use the telephone, but since the icon pops up, you know you'd better dial away (it's not like you always know who you're calling, in another annoying quirk) because you risk losing out on information if you don't. At times this can make you feel like the game is on auto-pilot, playing itself.
Throughout this it might seem like I'm being unfair to L.A. Noire, especially since overall I like the game. I just really hate the experience wording, it being one in long trend of trying to replace unique forms with watered down versions of other, supposedly better ones. Just for fun, and because this really went off the rails near the end, here's my dream take on how L.A. Noire should have played out.
No overarching story. Instead, you have various cases set around a locale (in this case Los Angeles post-WWII). You could switch up the playable characters and the supporting cast to keep it interesting, with enough differences so that they aren't the same person with a different graphics model. There's not success or failure indicators in the quest. The evidence and interrogation methods can stay. Instead of focusing on a greater story, spend more time putting in multiple angles and directions that each case can branch to.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Movie Junkyard: 44 Inch Chest
Here's an interesting one. Is 44 Inch Chest a good movie? Who cares, when you've got these people on the screen just saying shit. Here's the whole movie. Ray Winstone plays Colin, a car salesman whose wife tells him she's found someone else when he comes in from the lot one day. He hooks up with the greatest crew of friends in the UK, who kidnap his wife's new guy. They then take him to a low-key spot and mentally and physically torture him. That's all in about the first ten minutes. The rest of the film takes place in that same building or in Colin's mind, as the group collectively decides what to do with "Loverboy" as they affectionately call him, locked in a cupboard for a good portion of the film in the same room as everyone else.
Just from looking at it, 44 Inch Chest screams "gangster/crime" flick. I don't know enough about anything resembling a film scene to know if Winstone has become typecast as someone who plays hardasses, but from this, Sexy Beast, The Proposition, and The Departed, it's arguable he's earned it. The supporting class is a lineup of character actors that should make the House of Windsor proud (and at least one of them indirectly has). Ian McShane, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, and Stephen Dillane. You couldn't get a better group of wise-ass gangster types on the screen if you tried and they're all incredible, as is Winstone. But this isn't your typical "gangster/crime" film, and it's quite a bit different from the ilk popularized by Guy Ritchie in the late 20th century, which have in their own way defined the expectations of what you expect out of a British crime film. It's worth noting that Sexy Beast, which also starred Winstone and was written by the same writers as this movie (Louis Mellis and David Scinto) takes a similar broad theme, one that centers on the drop-off years of professional criminal enterprise. It uses the familiar plot mechanism of a retired heist runner getting drug back into the old world through a heist that he can't avoid. 44 Inch Chest comes devoid of even that convention. There's no world to get drug back into because it doesn't exist anymore. What I see is a group of gangsters who are past any reasonable connection with the criminal world, underworld, or whatever you want to call it, yet it's still what defines them. They're all OLD and tethered to their own unknowing, complicated place where they only let allowable others in (Tom Wilkinson's mother he watches over, Ian McShane's hedonistic victims and accomplices). Colin's wife's adultery gives them an opportunity to recreate who they were. Sexy Beast is about whether you can go back and survive, but 44 Inch Chest is something much different and possibly worse. What happens when you've survived and don't have the capacity to go anywhere because your time has passed?
In that way, the film is what I'm going to inadequately call, not post-modern, but "post-gangster". A group of friends gets together to torment a guy who fucked one of their wives. Oh, and the husband? He's a car salesman who brings home chocolates and flowers for his wife, for God's sake. Sure, he might be unloading the cars illegally, using the business as a drug front, or just totally lying about it. It doesn't matter, there's no edge or tough guy cred there. And the guys are loving it! Sure, they sympathize with Colin, but what else are they doing? Absolutely nothing. We get a great scene where Ian McShane's character of Meredith recounts how he made a big score of cash, by basically getting lucky and playing some idiot who fails miserably at roulette and then later talks about buying shoes. This is what these guys have been reduced to. The kidnapping presents a warped passage back into the old ways, something halfway exciting that reminds of how awesome they used to be. Berating some tied up schmuck is as glorious as they come these days. What does everyone do but Colin? They stand around and talk about the old crazy characters and ridiculous stories. It's their personal version of world building within the film, the world that simultaneously was and is their own, even if others can't see it. And after pledging to give Colin some time alone, they eventually just come back in, because they can't wait to see what happens next and don't want to miss the action.
Just look at what the movie shows us. Basically nothing. The characters only exist outside their own creation when they drag Loverboy out of his place of work. And look at how they do it. They pull up in broad daylight and kidnap him at an indoor/outdoor corner cafe in front of everyone. They don't care, they're stuck in the old ways. Then it's straight to an empty neighborhood. When Colin walks around outside he doesn't see anyone, because all these guys are isolated from the new world. No one else is inside the house they're in. We get a few flashbacks through Colin's mind and that's all the deviation. The shots at the end of various parts of the rundown building? Seems like a reflection of the characters themselves. They're cracked and decaying but they still exist, even if no one is around them.
SPOILER
And that's why Colin lets Loverboy go. After a tremendous monologue on the nature and difficulties of a genuine loving relationship, where the camera is on Winstone's face, close-up, for almost the entire several minutes, everyone comes back in the room and Colin gives his decision. Why? Maybe because through the flashbacks, where Colin violently beats his wife to get her to tell him who Loverboy is, he then realizes that he's already tried to come back to the old world and he just can't cut it anymore. Any semblance of real transition stopped when he took it out on her. His friends encourage him to be a man, but what has that got him? She's gone and it doesn't matter what happens to Loverboy. Colin is back in the old world now, and Loverboy is what he thinks he used to be. Why kill him when he's still got his good days left and he's of the times? Or maybe Colin realizes that, as it seems he's the only one of the group to actually have come up with some semblance of life after gangster, that he should be happy with the years he had. Or does Colin realize he's back in the world, but also figures out that it's enclosed and their little sham is up? He's not a gangster anymore. He and his friends might act like they are for a few hours, but that doesn't change anything. They're all just moping along without any concrete endpoint. In the old days they would've just killed him. But Colin is smart enough to realize they're not there anymore and the uncertainty is just enough to make him think, "what's the point?"
All this is probably crap. I am far from the people I usually read. Watch 44 Inch Chest and don't think about any of this. Just listen to the dialogue and the killer actors that spout it.
Just from looking at it, 44 Inch Chest screams "gangster/crime" flick. I don't know enough about anything resembling a film scene to know if Winstone has become typecast as someone who plays hardasses, but from this, Sexy Beast, The Proposition, and The Departed, it's arguable he's earned it. The supporting class is a lineup of character actors that should make the House of Windsor proud (and at least one of them indirectly has). Ian McShane, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, and Stephen Dillane. You couldn't get a better group of wise-ass gangster types on the screen if you tried and they're all incredible, as is Winstone. But this isn't your typical "gangster/crime" film, and it's quite a bit different from the ilk popularized by Guy Ritchie in the late 20th century, which have in their own way defined the expectations of what you expect out of a British crime film. It's worth noting that Sexy Beast, which also starred Winstone and was written by the same writers as this movie (Louis Mellis and David Scinto) takes a similar broad theme, one that centers on the drop-off years of professional criminal enterprise. It uses the familiar plot mechanism of a retired heist runner getting drug back into the old world through a heist that he can't avoid. 44 Inch Chest comes devoid of even that convention. There's no world to get drug back into because it doesn't exist anymore. What I see is a group of gangsters who are past any reasonable connection with the criminal world, underworld, or whatever you want to call it, yet it's still what defines them. They're all OLD and tethered to their own unknowing, complicated place where they only let allowable others in (Tom Wilkinson's mother he watches over, Ian McShane's hedonistic victims and accomplices). Colin's wife's adultery gives them an opportunity to recreate who they were. Sexy Beast is about whether you can go back and survive, but 44 Inch Chest is something much different and possibly worse. What happens when you've survived and don't have the capacity to go anywhere because your time has passed?
In that way, the film is what I'm going to inadequately call, not post-modern, but "post-gangster". A group of friends gets together to torment a guy who fucked one of their wives. Oh, and the husband? He's a car salesman who brings home chocolates and flowers for his wife, for God's sake. Sure, he might be unloading the cars illegally, using the business as a drug front, or just totally lying about it. It doesn't matter, there's no edge or tough guy cred there. And the guys are loving it! Sure, they sympathize with Colin, but what else are they doing? Absolutely nothing. We get a great scene where Ian McShane's character of Meredith recounts how he made a big score of cash, by basically getting lucky and playing some idiot who fails miserably at roulette and then later talks about buying shoes. This is what these guys have been reduced to. The kidnapping presents a warped passage back into the old ways, something halfway exciting that reminds of how awesome they used to be. Berating some tied up schmuck is as glorious as they come these days. What does everyone do but Colin? They stand around and talk about the old crazy characters and ridiculous stories. It's their personal version of world building within the film, the world that simultaneously was and is their own, even if others can't see it. And after pledging to give Colin some time alone, they eventually just come back in, because they can't wait to see what happens next and don't want to miss the action.
Just look at what the movie shows us. Basically nothing. The characters only exist outside their own creation when they drag Loverboy out of his place of work. And look at how they do it. They pull up in broad daylight and kidnap him at an indoor/outdoor corner cafe in front of everyone. They don't care, they're stuck in the old ways. Then it's straight to an empty neighborhood. When Colin walks around outside he doesn't see anyone, because all these guys are isolated from the new world. No one else is inside the house they're in. We get a few flashbacks through Colin's mind and that's all the deviation. The shots at the end of various parts of the rundown building? Seems like a reflection of the characters themselves. They're cracked and decaying but they still exist, even if no one is around them.
SPOILER
And that's why Colin lets Loverboy go. After a tremendous monologue on the nature and difficulties of a genuine loving relationship, where the camera is on Winstone's face, close-up, for almost the entire several minutes, everyone comes back in the room and Colin gives his decision. Why? Maybe because through the flashbacks, where Colin violently beats his wife to get her to tell him who Loverboy is, he then realizes that he's already tried to come back to the old world and he just can't cut it anymore. Any semblance of real transition stopped when he took it out on her. His friends encourage him to be a man, but what has that got him? She's gone and it doesn't matter what happens to Loverboy. Colin is back in the old world now, and Loverboy is what he thinks he used to be. Why kill him when he's still got his good days left and he's of the times? Or maybe Colin realizes that, as it seems he's the only one of the group to actually have come up with some semblance of life after gangster, that he should be happy with the years he had. Or does Colin realize he's back in the world, but also figures out that it's enclosed and their little sham is up? He's not a gangster anymore. He and his friends might act like they are for a few hours, but that doesn't change anything. They're all just moping along without any concrete endpoint. In the old days they would've just killed him. But Colin is smart enough to realize they're not there anymore and the uncertainty is just enough to make him think, "what's the point?"
All this is probably crap. I am far from the people I usually read. Watch 44 Inch Chest and don't think about any of this. Just listen to the dialogue and the killer actors that spout it.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Comics Junkyard: Moebius
This is going to be the first of hopefully many more posts that focus, in some way or another, on comics. I've recently reoriented my priorities and decided I want to focus more on comics in my free time. I'm not planning on doing many, if any, reviews because I don't think I can effectively write them nor do they really serve a purpose in a vacuum. Instead I'm going to look at sequences, panels, layouts, and the art in general. I have to preface this by saying I have no background or really any capacity at all to discuss art on the comics page. So what I'm going to talk about are the things that strike me about whatever I'm discussing. I'm hoping I can go beyond "this looks cool", but I'm also not going to write too in-depth on anything. So with all that, why not start with an absolute legend of comics, just so I can trap myself right at the beginning.
Moebius is a beast, plain and simple. He's influenced so many people it's ridiculous. I remember ten or eleven years ago when I was first getting into comics as a young teenager, I saw Ladrönn's promotional images for Hip Flask and was blown away. At the time I hadn't seen what I'll inadequately call the "Euro Sci-Fi" style, even though now I can tell that Ladrönn had clearly seen Moebius (which doesn't detract from him at all, and he might show up in one of these some day). I don't know if Moebius was the one to really create the style, but at this point it's immaterial; it's his style.
Sadly, while Moebius' influence might spread the world over, his work is hard to come by in English. Various companies have started publishing ventures to get his work into the US as far back as the 1970s (I wonder if you can find this stuff in the UK), but the majority of it commands high prices, though some of it is cheaper depending on the book. Thankfully Humanoids, the publisher that is synonymous with most of his work in France, is now directly publishing stories in America for what is the first time since their short partnership with DC in the early 2000s and two Moebius books have already been released.
Fortunately, I have the internet and silent stories to placate me for now. Major props go to Grantbridge Street & other misadventures, where you can find not only Moebius but all kinds of other awesome comic gems. The images that I use in this post came from there. So for the inaugural edition I'm going to look at an Arzak story that appeared first in english in Heavy Metal #3. From what I've found, there are four short Arzak stories that are explained by some as delving into the dreams or subconscious. If you're thinking, "oh great, has there ever been a more boring cop-out or pretentious story mechanism than dreams?", you're not alone. Don't worry though, because if these are Moebius' dreams, we should all want to get inside his head.
Page 1. Not a lot to say here, but I think overall the colors are excellent. The warm earthy yellows and light browns come across as perfectly natural.
Page 2. What really strikes me here is the back of the scarf in the second panel. The way it rests as the car stops instantly caught my eye because of how well pronounced it is. Moebius might be known for the fantastic, but he can get down with the technical just as well.
Page 3. More on color. The figure pops so well when he enters in panel 1 when removed from the heavy light outside. I also like how the interior of the hallway somewhat mimics his green and purple scheme. It's almost like he's emanating outwards (is he?). And in panel 2, look at the juxtaposition of the figure on the foreground on the left and the pipes or hoses running out of the structure in the background. Everything else is diminished and the reader sees a sense of awe through the figure, even if the figure doesn't necessarily show any.
Page 4. The figure in panel 1 is a level of detail that is exemplary. Detail is something that I think is unique to an artist. The best artists can control it and make it work no matter if their work is "detailed" (Geoff Darrow, Frank Quitely) or not (Eddie Campbell comes to mind, though I could be completely off base there, though it's immaterial, because he's a master). With the inferior artists it overcomes any sense of style and is simply detail (David Finch and Alex Ross are two examples that while different, are still quite similar). Panel 2 is the greatest naked flying kick ever. I also like how the besides the two moving figures, the background doesn't change between panels 2 and 3, but the perspective moves slightly upwards two dimensionally, possibly to represent the arc of our goggled friend after he's been kicked. Also, the spherical object in mid-air in panels 2 and 3? I was fixated on that when I first looked at this page. At first I thought the person (thing?) sitting down was tossing it, but now I'm not sure. It really doesn't matter, because this is Moebius throwing in these small incidental details that help to fill out something as outwardly simple as the whole story. It sounds stupid to call it making the story more realistic or to claim world building, so I won't. It's just Moebius.
Page 5. Look at the angle Moebius shows when dude hits the ground in the first panel. I get the (probably) unjustified feeling that if this were drawn stateside, the figure would just fall over dramatically on his face. But how he slides and hangs on to the case? Is the case so heavy its dragging him, or is he just hanging onto it above all else? All I know is I really like that angle.
Page 6. Oh look the horde has finally awoken and...nothing. He just calmly enters and Moebius pulls the rug.
Page 7. Well here's Arzak. Once again, I dig the little details. The footprints in the ground in panel 2 where Arzak has been just pacing in the same circle, with the dust cloud added for good measure. And that face in panel 3. That's a gritty veteran's face if I ever saw one. "Well there ain't any new shit for me anymore, ain't no problem I can't fix, and nothing a little squintin' can't account for." Moebius also gets to draw a cool sci-fi apparatus that requires two hands, so even Viv Savage can use it.
Page 8. That middle panel is pure satisfaction that doesn't require some elaborate reaction. "It's done like I knew it would be, problems solved until the next one shows up." The briefcase is put back on the rear of the car and we're done. The side of the car we only see in this panel contains the best type of restrained madness.
Moebius is a beast, plain and simple. He's influenced so many people it's ridiculous. I remember ten or eleven years ago when I was first getting into comics as a young teenager, I saw Ladrönn's promotional images for Hip Flask and was blown away. At the time I hadn't seen what I'll inadequately call the "Euro Sci-Fi" style, even though now I can tell that Ladrönn had clearly seen Moebius (which doesn't detract from him at all, and he might show up in one of these some day). I don't know if Moebius was the one to really create the style, but at this point it's immaterial; it's his style.
Sadly, while Moebius' influence might spread the world over, his work is hard to come by in English. Various companies have started publishing ventures to get his work into the US as far back as the 1970s (I wonder if you can find this stuff in the UK), but the majority of it commands high prices, though some of it is cheaper depending on the book. Thankfully Humanoids, the publisher that is synonymous with most of his work in France, is now directly publishing stories in America for what is the first time since their short partnership with DC in the early 2000s and two Moebius books have already been released.
Fortunately, I have the internet and silent stories to placate me for now. Major props go to Grantbridge Street & other misadventures, where you can find not only Moebius but all kinds of other awesome comic gems. The images that I use in this post came from there. So for the inaugural edition I'm going to look at an Arzak story that appeared first in english in Heavy Metal #3. From what I've found, there are four short Arzak stories that are explained by some as delving into the dreams or subconscious. If you're thinking, "oh great, has there ever been a more boring cop-out or pretentious story mechanism than dreams?", you're not alone. Don't worry though, because if these are Moebius' dreams, we should all want to get inside his head.
Page 1. Not a lot to say here, but I think overall the colors are excellent. The warm earthy yellows and light browns come across as perfectly natural.
Page 2. What really strikes me here is the back of the scarf in the second panel. The way it rests as the car stops instantly caught my eye because of how well pronounced it is. Moebius might be known for the fantastic, but he can get down with the technical just as well.
Page 3. More on color. The figure pops so well when he enters in panel 1 when removed from the heavy light outside. I also like how the interior of the hallway somewhat mimics his green and purple scheme. It's almost like he's emanating outwards (is he?). And in panel 2, look at the juxtaposition of the figure on the foreground on the left and the pipes or hoses running out of the structure in the background. Everything else is diminished and the reader sees a sense of awe through the figure, even if the figure doesn't necessarily show any.
Page 4. The figure in panel 1 is a level of detail that is exemplary. Detail is something that I think is unique to an artist. The best artists can control it and make it work no matter if their work is "detailed" (Geoff Darrow, Frank Quitely) or not (Eddie Campbell comes to mind, though I could be completely off base there, though it's immaterial, because he's a master). With the inferior artists it overcomes any sense of style and is simply detail (David Finch and Alex Ross are two examples that while different, are still quite similar). Panel 2 is the greatest naked flying kick ever. I also like how the besides the two moving figures, the background doesn't change between panels 2 and 3, but the perspective moves slightly upwards two dimensionally, possibly to represent the arc of our goggled friend after he's been kicked. Also, the spherical object in mid-air in panels 2 and 3? I was fixated on that when I first looked at this page. At first I thought the person (thing?) sitting down was tossing it, but now I'm not sure. It really doesn't matter, because this is Moebius throwing in these small incidental details that help to fill out something as outwardly simple as the whole story. It sounds stupid to call it making the story more realistic or to claim world building, so I won't. It's just Moebius.
Page 5. Look at the angle Moebius shows when dude hits the ground in the first panel. I get the (probably) unjustified feeling that if this were drawn stateside, the figure would just fall over dramatically on his face. But how he slides and hangs on to the case? Is the case so heavy its dragging him, or is he just hanging onto it above all else? All I know is I really like that angle.
Page 6. Oh look the horde has finally awoken and...nothing. He just calmly enters and Moebius pulls the rug.
Page 7. Well here's Arzak. Once again, I dig the little details. The footprints in the ground in panel 2 where Arzak has been just pacing in the same circle, with the dust cloud added for good measure. And that face in panel 3. That's a gritty veteran's face if I ever saw one. "Well there ain't any new shit for me anymore, ain't no problem I can't fix, and nothing a little squintin' can't account for." Moebius also gets to draw a cool sci-fi apparatus that requires two hands, so even Viv Savage can use it.
Page 8. That middle panel is pure satisfaction that doesn't require some elaborate reaction. "It's done like I knew it would be, problems solved until the next one shows up." The briefcase is put back on the rear of the car and we're done. The side of the car we only see in this panel contains the best type of restrained madness.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
GP Nashville
What's better than mediocrity at the local level? Mediocrity at the higher level, of course. So I busted my ass at school and skipped work for a week to go down to Nashville for the Grand Prix. We arrived on Friday night to the sprawling location that is the Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center. Rob and I drove around three times trying to find a parking spot before we gave up and parked maybe half a mile away at a McDonald's and walked. In the process of getting to the site, we see like 20 pros and Rob doesn't recognize a single one, because he is concerned with being good at the game rather than reading about people who are good. We get sidetracked in the labyrinth inside the convention center, which was insane. They had the Christmas decorations up, which made any Christmas decorations I've ever seen look like shit. There was an entire area that was an interior island, and a nightclub within the convention center, along with a ton of restaurants and a hotel layout that I would never have been able to decipher. We find the tournament room and look around. I didn't do anything, but most everyone else did. Rob got in a draft, while some other people we met up with, Rick, Sam, and Jim, all played Standard in the Super FNM. Rob loses in round 1 of the draft and after that we head back to the hotel to get some sleep.
I wake up early because I was worried we would all oversleep and miss the main event or something. This does allow me to destroy the substantial free breakfast afforded at Holiday Inn Express. We all group up and drive back to the convention center, thankfully finding where the free parking is and not having to walk as far. After about an hour, the seatings go up for deck registration and we're off. I don't remember anything about the pool I opened, as I was nervous about misregistering or running out of time that I just burned through it. It comes time to swap and the person across from me, a kid no older than 10, is not even close to being finished, so a judge has to come over and finish the sheet. I get the deck about 3 minutes into the 5 minute verification process and get to sort through a non-alphabetized mess. The sheet looked like a crappy term paper when the judge had got done modifying it to fill in all the mistakes. He even had to create a new column there had been so many errors. By this time everyone has passed again, and deckbuilding is starting. The judges rule that we just keep each others pools and I get to start construction late, but not enough to where it really affected anything.
Here is what I opened:
Artifacts
1x Clone Shell
1x Strider Harness,
1x Memnite
1x Infiltration Lens
1x Golem's Heart
2x Echo Circlet
2x Copper Myr
1x Flight Spellbomb
1x Sylvok Lifestaff
2x Accorder's Shield
2x Bladed Pinions
2x Soliton
1x Heavy Arbalest
1x Livewire Lash
2x Origin Spellbomb
1x Barbed Battlegear
1x Snapsail Glider
1x Perilous Myr
1x Glint Hawk Idol
1x Palladium Myr
2x Contagion Clasp
1x Silver Myr
1x Tumble Magnet
1x Myr Propagator
2x Vulshok Replica
Blue
1x Halt Order
1x Plated Seastrider
1x Scrapdiver Serpent
1x Screeching Silcaw
2x Turn Aside
1x Vedalken Certarch
2x Bonds of Quicksilver
Red
1x Bloodshot Trainee
1x Shatter
1x Blade-Tribe Berserkers
1x Vulshok Heartstoker
1x Scoria Elemental
1x Oxidda Daredevil
2x Flameborn Hellion
2x Assault Strobe
1x Koth of the Hammer
Black
1x Psychic Miasma
1x Plague Stinger
1x Painful Quandary
1x Memoricide
1x Contagious Nim
2x Blackcleave Goblin
2x Grasp of Darkness
1x Carnifex Demon
1x Necrogen Scudder
1x Flesh Allergy
Green
1x Bellowing Tanglewurm
1x Slice in Twain
1x Cystbearer
1x Carapace Forger
1x Alpha Tyrranax
1x Untamed Might
White
1x Salvage Scout
1x Seize the Initiative
2x Soul Parry
2x Whitesun's Passage
1x Ghalma's Warden
2x Revoke Existence
2x Myrsmith
1x Dispense Justice
1x Glimmerpoint Stag
My deck:
1x Origin Spellbomb
1x Barbed Battlegear
1x Snapsail Glider
1x Perilous Myr
1x Copper Myr
1x Glint Hawk Idol
1x Palladium Myr
2x Contagion Clasp
1x Silver Myr
1x Tumble Magnet
1x Myr Propagator
2x Vulshok Replica
1x Bloodshot Trainee
1x Shatter
1x Koth of the Hammer
2x Revoke Existence
2x Grasp in Darkness
1x Carnifex Demon
1x Necrogen Scudder
1x Flesh Allergy
2x Plains
6x Mountain
8x Swamp
I think my pool was decent, I just misbuilt it badly. I had never constructed a Scars sealed deck, even just for practice. Opening Koth was also a problem, because I don't know if I should have even played red, as besides him I basically had a Shatter and some mediocre guys. I will say I won every game I played Koth, but I'm probably still just delusional. My mana base was an issue several times, though I don't think I outright lost any games to color problems, but I should have stuck to two. I did not have enough creatures, and the ones I did have were by and large less than stellar. Barbed Battlegear had no place in the deck, since it kills approximately half my creatures. I was thinking about the Bloodshot Trainee when I should not have been, whereas the Livewire Lash or Sylvok Lifestaff would have been much better overall. Glint Hawk Idol was a mistake too because I did not have the artifacts to reliably activate him, much less the white mana. Rob and I discussed the build later and came to the conclusion that straight black/white would have been the better build. Looking back I made a lot of mistakes, but I'm glad that I have been able to analyze them somewhat and simultaneously get a little practice in, which can only help me later.
Here is how the rounds went:
Round 1: Andrew Hoffman - U/R
Game 1: Neither of us get off to a fast start and I draw the majority of my removal so he can't punish me too bad before I draw Koth and drop him with enough protection to where I can get his ultimate. After I kill everything he plays for a few turns he concedes.
Game 2: The board stalls out here until he drops Argent Sphinx and I have to hope I draw Carnifex Demon but I don't and the Sphinx goes all the way.
Game 3: This one went down to the wire and I was doing everything I could to avoid a draw. Time is called during my turn when I have Carnifex Demon out, so I dump one counter and clear the board a little with him at 15. I attack that turn, then on Turn 2 during extra time after removing the final counter, putting him down to 4. He can only muster some non-fliers and I kill him on Turn 4 of extra time. Sometimes bombs, not love, are all you need. (In the case of love it's "is", I know.)
1-0
Round 2: Kyle Bousley - B/G
I wish I could scan the life totals from this, it would illustrate what happened just as clearly. As my opponent sits down, he talks out loud about how he had gotten a game loss in round 1 for showing up late and that wasn't going to happen again. I sorely wish it had.
Game 1: He comes out firing with the super aggressive poison draw and I'm throwing all my removal and a Tumble Magnet at him trying to slow the beats, but my low creature count dooms me as he has what seems like an endless stream of Corpse Curs.
Game 2: See Game 1. Just when I think I've stabilized and can actually start to develop a board position, he rips Untamed Might and finishes me.
Yay poison in sealed! As it turns out, my opponent had something like 9 poison creatures in his whole deck and proceeded to draw almost all of them both games.
1-1
Round 3: Andrew Watts - I can't remember his colors game 1, but he sided into B/G infect for 2 and 3
Andrew was a nice younger guy from Illinois who would have looked like Smalls in 1993 but looked like McLovin' in 2010.
Round 1: His deck seems pretty weak, but I also get Barbed Battlegear on Bloodshot Trainee and he has no way to stop it.
Round 2: He sides into poison and gets "the start" and the game is over in about 5 minutes while I have nightmares from Round 2.
Round 3: I get to 5 poison before I stop the assault and drop Carnifex Demon and bring him to 12. He reestablishes with more creatures, but I draw Koth and he has to start diverting his attacks so Koth doesn't go ultimate. I have enough protection where I can keep him alive and keep sending 4/4's, and the Demon eventually takes care of him.
2-1
Round 4: Mat Mansoor - G/? (I think red)
Game 1: He ramps into massive green dinosaurs and I succumb quickly, not even dealing him a point of damage.
Game 2: He does the same thing but I draw most of my removal and am holding on at 6, while he is basically topdecking the rest of the game and I slowly whittle him down.
Game 3: He gets the hat trick for huge beats but I manage to stop that at 7 life and get Carnifex Demon into play, destroying most of his board and bringing him to 5. He doesn't seem to have the answer and I rip Koth and he gets pretty disgusted before conceding, revealing the Contagion Engine in his hand that Carnifex Demon shuts down.
3-1
Round 5: Jean Baez - U/W
Well all good things must come to an end, and boy did they ever this round. Unlike the poison loss, I straight got outplayed and made my fair share of mistakes against a dedicated control deck. I also thought my opponent was French, which was wrong. His name was Jean, that's a French name, right? Somebody?
Game 1: He gets metalcraft on turn 3 with a Certarch out and starts tapping down my stuff and then adds Tumble Magnet for kicks. He has an army of 4 toughness guys and Sky-Eel Schools sitting there stopping anything I do. Eventually I draw Carnifex Demon and remove some of his guys. I send the Demon, still with 2 counters, and Necrogen Scudder into the red zone, not thinking, and he drops Dispense Justice, making me look even worse than I usually am. I'm forced to lose the counters before I really wanted to, while he drops a Trigon of Rage to pump his fliers to victory.
Game 2: He doesn't have the defensive start from Game 1, but he does have Contagion Engine, and that's all she wrote.
After the match my opponent asks me if I need any Magic cards in Spanish. Since I speak some Spanish I drop a little and he laughs and tells me he's from Puerto Rico (sort of like France, except not) and he has a card shop there before giving me his business card and telling me he would have most of his stock on him the next day. I meant to try and find him to buy something cheap just to have as a souvenir, but I never saw him on Sunday.
3-2
Round 6: Flint Woods - R/W
Round 1: I draw next to no creatures (there's none in my deck, you see) and am forced to chump and use Tumble Magnet defensively before Kuldotha Phoenix decapitates me.
Round 2: Seeing as how I'm one round away from elimination, I decide to side out the red and bring the white in for the first time. I get a Myrsmith down and start making lots of 1/1 tokens, followed by getting Propagator online, and soon I have two rows of an army and my opponent concedes before things get worse.
Round 3: Kuldotha Phoenix shows up right on schedule on Turn 5. I kill it and do everything to keep him off metalcraft, until he regains it with Wurmcoil Engine. Futile attempts at survival while I hope to draw Revoke Existence yield nothing, and the drop box is checked.
Final: 3-3
A record of 7-2 was required to make Day 2, so I was eliminated from contention. Besides Rob I was the only one of our group to make it that far, so I went to get some food. I got to wait 30 minutes at a "Quick Eats" hamburger place in the hotel, but I had a voucher for a discount and it was pretty damn good. Rob hung in until Round 8, when he picked up his third loss. I checked out feature matches and watched Sam go 3-1 in the Super Standard event, losing to a turd of a man in the finals. We headed back to the hotel soon after and I passed out, sadly missing the hotel breakfast the next morning. I did a draft the next day, but this post is long, so I will get to it later.
I wake up early because I was worried we would all oversleep and miss the main event or something. This does allow me to destroy the substantial free breakfast afforded at Holiday Inn Express. We all group up and drive back to the convention center, thankfully finding where the free parking is and not having to walk as far. After about an hour, the seatings go up for deck registration and we're off. I don't remember anything about the pool I opened, as I was nervous about misregistering or running out of time that I just burned through it. It comes time to swap and the person across from me, a kid no older than 10, is not even close to being finished, so a judge has to come over and finish the sheet. I get the deck about 3 minutes into the 5 minute verification process and get to sort through a non-alphabetized mess. The sheet looked like a crappy term paper when the judge had got done modifying it to fill in all the mistakes. He even had to create a new column there had been so many errors. By this time everyone has passed again, and deckbuilding is starting. The judges rule that we just keep each others pools and I get to start construction late, but not enough to where it really affected anything.
Here is what I opened:
Artifacts
1x Clone Shell
1x Strider Harness,
1x Memnite
1x Infiltration Lens
1x Golem's Heart
2x Echo Circlet
2x Copper Myr
1x Flight Spellbomb
1x Sylvok Lifestaff
2x Accorder's Shield
2x Bladed Pinions
2x Soliton
1x Heavy Arbalest
1x Livewire Lash
2x Origin Spellbomb
1x Barbed Battlegear
1x Snapsail Glider
1x Perilous Myr
1x Glint Hawk Idol
1x Palladium Myr
2x Contagion Clasp
1x Silver Myr
1x Tumble Magnet
1x Myr Propagator
2x Vulshok Replica
Blue
1x Halt Order
1x Plated Seastrider
1x Scrapdiver Serpent
1x Screeching Silcaw
2x Turn Aside
1x Vedalken Certarch
2x Bonds of Quicksilver
Red
1x Bloodshot Trainee
1x Shatter
1x Blade-Tribe Berserkers
1x Vulshok Heartstoker
1x Scoria Elemental
1x Oxidda Daredevil
2x Flameborn Hellion
2x Assault Strobe
1x Koth of the Hammer
Black
1x Psychic Miasma
1x Plague Stinger
1x Painful Quandary
1x Memoricide
1x Contagious Nim
2x Blackcleave Goblin
2x Grasp of Darkness
1x Carnifex Demon
1x Necrogen Scudder
1x Flesh Allergy
Green
1x Bellowing Tanglewurm
1x Slice in Twain
1x Cystbearer
1x Carapace Forger
1x Alpha Tyrranax
1x Untamed Might
White
1x Salvage Scout
1x Seize the Initiative
2x Soul Parry
2x Whitesun's Passage
1x Ghalma's Warden
2x Revoke Existence
2x Myrsmith
1x Dispense Justice
1x Glimmerpoint Stag
My deck:
1x Origin Spellbomb
1x Barbed Battlegear
1x Snapsail Glider
1x Perilous Myr
1x Copper Myr
1x Glint Hawk Idol
1x Palladium Myr
2x Contagion Clasp
1x Silver Myr
1x Tumble Magnet
1x Myr Propagator
2x Vulshok Replica
1x Bloodshot Trainee
1x Shatter
1x Koth of the Hammer
2x Revoke Existence
2x Grasp in Darkness
1x Carnifex Demon
1x Necrogen Scudder
1x Flesh Allergy
2x Plains
6x Mountain
8x Swamp
I think my pool was decent, I just misbuilt it badly. I had never constructed a Scars sealed deck, even just for practice. Opening Koth was also a problem, because I don't know if I should have even played red, as besides him I basically had a Shatter and some mediocre guys. I will say I won every game I played Koth, but I'm probably still just delusional. My mana base was an issue several times, though I don't think I outright lost any games to color problems, but I should have stuck to two. I did not have enough creatures, and the ones I did have were by and large less than stellar. Barbed Battlegear had no place in the deck, since it kills approximately half my creatures. I was thinking about the Bloodshot Trainee when I should not have been, whereas the Livewire Lash or Sylvok Lifestaff would have been much better overall. Glint Hawk Idol was a mistake too because I did not have the artifacts to reliably activate him, much less the white mana. Rob and I discussed the build later and came to the conclusion that straight black/white would have been the better build. Looking back I made a lot of mistakes, but I'm glad that I have been able to analyze them somewhat and simultaneously get a little practice in, which can only help me later.
Here is how the rounds went:
Round 1: Andrew Hoffman - U/R
Game 1: Neither of us get off to a fast start and I draw the majority of my removal so he can't punish me too bad before I draw Koth and drop him with enough protection to where I can get his ultimate. After I kill everything he plays for a few turns he concedes.
Game 2: The board stalls out here until he drops Argent Sphinx and I have to hope I draw Carnifex Demon but I don't and the Sphinx goes all the way.
Game 3: This one went down to the wire and I was doing everything I could to avoid a draw. Time is called during my turn when I have Carnifex Demon out, so I dump one counter and clear the board a little with him at 15. I attack that turn, then on Turn 2 during extra time after removing the final counter, putting him down to 4. He can only muster some non-fliers and I kill him on Turn 4 of extra time. Sometimes bombs, not love, are all you need. (In the case of love it's "is", I know.)
1-0
Round 2: Kyle Bousley - B/G
I wish I could scan the life totals from this, it would illustrate what happened just as clearly. As my opponent sits down, he talks out loud about how he had gotten a game loss in round 1 for showing up late and that wasn't going to happen again. I sorely wish it had.
Game 1: He comes out firing with the super aggressive poison draw and I'm throwing all my removal and a Tumble Magnet at him trying to slow the beats, but my low creature count dooms me as he has what seems like an endless stream of Corpse Curs.
Game 2: See Game 1. Just when I think I've stabilized and can actually start to develop a board position, he rips Untamed Might and finishes me.
Yay poison in sealed! As it turns out, my opponent had something like 9 poison creatures in his whole deck and proceeded to draw almost all of them both games.
1-1
Round 3: Andrew Watts - I can't remember his colors game 1, but he sided into B/G infect for 2 and 3
Andrew was a nice younger guy from Illinois who would have looked like Smalls in 1993 but looked like McLovin' in 2010.
Round 1: His deck seems pretty weak, but I also get Barbed Battlegear on Bloodshot Trainee and he has no way to stop it.
Round 2: He sides into poison and gets "the start" and the game is over in about 5 minutes while I have nightmares from Round 2.
Round 3: I get to 5 poison before I stop the assault and drop Carnifex Demon and bring him to 12. He reestablishes with more creatures, but I draw Koth and he has to start diverting his attacks so Koth doesn't go ultimate. I have enough protection where I can keep him alive and keep sending 4/4's, and the Demon eventually takes care of him.
2-1
Round 4: Mat Mansoor - G/? (I think red)
Game 1: He ramps into massive green dinosaurs and I succumb quickly, not even dealing him a point of damage.
Game 2: He does the same thing but I draw most of my removal and am holding on at 6, while he is basically topdecking the rest of the game and I slowly whittle him down.
Game 3: He gets the hat trick for huge beats but I manage to stop that at 7 life and get Carnifex Demon into play, destroying most of his board and bringing him to 5. He doesn't seem to have the answer and I rip Koth and he gets pretty disgusted before conceding, revealing the Contagion Engine in his hand that Carnifex Demon shuts down.
3-1
Round 5: Jean Baez - U/W
Well all good things must come to an end, and boy did they ever this round. Unlike the poison loss, I straight got outplayed and made my fair share of mistakes against a dedicated control deck. I also thought my opponent was French, which was wrong. His name was Jean, that's a French name, right? Somebody?
Game 1: He gets metalcraft on turn 3 with a Certarch out and starts tapping down my stuff and then adds Tumble Magnet for kicks. He has an army of 4 toughness guys and Sky-Eel Schools sitting there stopping anything I do. Eventually I draw Carnifex Demon and remove some of his guys. I send the Demon, still with 2 counters, and Necrogen Scudder into the red zone, not thinking, and he drops Dispense Justice, making me look even worse than I usually am. I'm forced to lose the counters before I really wanted to, while he drops a Trigon of Rage to pump his fliers to victory.
Game 2: He doesn't have the defensive start from Game 1, but he does have Contagion Engine, and that's all she wrote.
After the match my opponent asks me if I need any Magic cards in Spanish. Since I speak some Spanish I drop a little and he laughs and tells me he's from Puerto Rico (sort of like France, except not) and he has a card shop there before giving me his business card and telling me he would have most of his stock on him the next day. I meant to try and find him to buy something cheap just to have as a souvenir, but I never saw him on Sunday.
3-2
Round 6: Flint Woods - R/W
Round 1: I draw next to no creatures (there's none in my deck, you see) and am forced to chump and use Tumble Magnet defensively before Kuldotha Phoenix decapitates me.
Round 2: Seeing as how I'm one round away from elimination, I decide to side out the red and bring the white in for the first time. I get a Myrsmith down and start making lots of 1/1 tokens, followed by getting Propagator online, and soon I have two rows of an army and my opponent concedes before things get worse.
Round 3: Kuldotha Phoenix shows up right on schedule on Turn 5. I kill it and do everything to keep him off metalcraft, until he regains it with Wurmcoil Engine. Futile attempts at survival while I hope to draw Revoke Existence yield nothing, and the drop box is checked.
Final: 3-3
A record of 7-2 was required to make Day 2, so I was eliminated from contention. Besides Rob I was the only one of our group to make it that far, so I went to get some food. I got to wait 30 minutes at a "Quick Eats" hamburger place in the hotel, but I had a voucher for a discount and it was pretty damn good. Rob hung in until Round 8, when he picked up his third loss. I checked out feature matches and watched Sam go 3-1 in the Super Standard event, losing to a turd of a man in the finals. We headed back to the hotel soon after and I passed out, sadly missing the hotel breakfast the next morning. I did a draft the next day, but this post is long, so I will get to it later.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
It's Never Too Late to Give Up
Now that Scars of Mirrodin is dropped, any of these Limited articles will shift to it from M11. Just from the first draft I can tell that Scars is a more difficult set to draft, being that it's not a core set, added to the the artifact proportionality and the infect strategy. From that you can guess that my results were not up to my previous soaring heights, but oh well. I apologize because I do not know the set well enough to remember all the card names yet, so I will have to allude at some points. I drafted R/W and my deck was decent. I had Embersmith, two Shatter, the 3/3 dude that destroyers an artifact when he hits the battlefield, an Arrest, an Arc Trail, a Galvanic Blast, the 3/3 dude that exiles a permanent, and some other stuff. I really should hang on to my decks...
Just about every pick was tough, as I went in fairly blind and I'm fairly certain so did most of the others at the table, as the cards I was seeing were all over the place. I first picked the 3/1 pro-artifact Infect green guy, which might be terrible but nothing else really stood out. After that I got passed a little white and a lot of red. I saw a Ratchet Bomb pack one, pick two but took the 3/3 exile dude over it, which Rob told me was wrong and he is the Limited deity of Kentucky, so I'll go with him. I should've taken it just so I could sell it for five dollars. Other than that I don't remember many of the picks. This report sucks. On to the matchups.
Match 1 : Mon0-Blue
My opponent had a fairly artifact heavy blue deck, the highlight of which was two Volition Reins. The first game he takes one of my dudes, but I'm able to sacrifice the 3/1 artifact guy that hits players for 3, recur it with the 3/3 white flier that returns artifacts, sac it again and then Galvanic Blast him out. Second game I just die. This report sucks. Third game he stalls on land and I get a fast start with Myrsmith, so by the time he drops the Reins I've got too much pressure. Off to a good start.
Match 2: W/U
I've played against this guy before and he's always wearing good heavy metal t-shirts, so he's A-OK in my book. Sadly, the first game was a nightmare, as my draw was pretty bad and he was able to recur Contagion Engine multiple times. He was shaky on the rulers regarding how the Clasp could put poison counters on a player so he was not activating it, which I was hoping would give me an advantage (I mean, obviously it's an advantage...yeah, pretty pointless clarification of something that was unnecessary in the first place). Since I'm not on a clock, I manage to stay in the game just enough with Heavy Arbalest that he drops Sunblast Angel to just try and kill me. I misplay (thanks again Rob), as I have the resources to kill the Angel on my turn but don't see it and he kills me. When the first game is over we only have fifteen minutes left in the round...yikes. I do not know if I should have conceded earlier or not, but it at least would have bought more time in the match. Instead, I get an aggressive start Game 2 and win in about ten minutes. Still, that doesn't leave enough time for the third game and we draw. This is the first time I've ever gone to time in sanctioned play, so hopefully I will think about this in the future. Or just play faster. Or just play better. Or both.
Game 3 - G/B (not infect)
Well this was pretty disheartening. Game 1 he plays the black 3/3 flier for 2B where he loses three life. I bounce it my temporary exile guy, hoping to race him, but he has the -4/-4 removal spell for it and things aren't looking good and I lose quickly. Game 2 starts off much better, as he mulligans down to five. I keep a decent hand, but my opponent curves out from drops two through five, the last of which is the 2/5 Giant-er Spider guy, which shuts down my whole team. His fliers finish me off in short order. That series took about ten minutes. This format can be fast.
I don't have enough points to get into the Top 4 cut, so I leave to get some work in in lieu of doing a second (and cheaper, damnit), draft. Scars looks like an interesting set to draft, and I am wanting to try out the infect deck, so hopefully I will be able to draft again soon and please my legion of followers (MY READERSHIP HAS DOUBLED TO 2).
Just about every pick was tough, as I went in fairly blind and I'm fairly certain so did most of the others at the table, as the cards I was seeing were all over the place. I first picked the 3/1 pro-artifact Infect green guy, which might be terrible but nothing else really stood out. After that I got passed a little white and a lot of red. I saw a Ratchet Bomb pack one, pick two but took the 3/3 exile dude over it, which Rob told me was wrong and he is the Limited deity of Kentucky, so I'll go with him. I should've taken it just so I could sell it for five dollars. Other than that I don't remember many of the picks. This report sucks. On to the matchups.
Match 1 : Mon0-Blue
My opponent had a fairly artifact heavy blue deck, the highlight of which was two Volition Reins. The first game he takes one of my dudes, but I'm able to sacrifice the 3/1 artifact guy that hits players for 3, recur it with the 3/3 white flier that returns artifacts, sac it again and then Galvanic Blast him out. Second game I just die. This report sucks. Third game he stalls on land and I get a fast start with Myrsmith, so by the time he drops the Reins I've got too much pressure. Off to a good start.
Match 2: W/U
I've played against this guy before and he's always wearing good heavy metal t-shirts, so he's A-OK in my book. Sadly, the first game was a nightmare, as my draw was pretty bad and he was able to recur Contagion Engine multiple times. He was shaky on the rulers regarding how the Clasp could put poison counters on a player so he was not activating it, which I was hoping would give me an advantage (I mean, obviously it's an advantage...yeah, pretty pointless clarification of something that was unnecessary in the first place). Since I'm not on a clock, I manage to stay in the game just enough with Heavy Arbalest that he drops Sunblast Angel to just try and kill me. I misplay (thanks again Rob), as I have the resources to kill the Angel on my turn but don't see it and he kills me. When the first game is over we only have fifteen minutes left in the round...yikes. I do not know if I should have conceded earlier or not, but it at least would have bought more time in the match. Instead, I get an aggressive start Game 2 and win in about ten minutes. Still, that doesn't leave enough time for the third game and we draw. This is the first time I've ever gone to time in sanctioned play, so hopefully I will think about this in the future. Or just play faster. Or just play better. Or both.
Game 3 - G/B (not infect)
Well this was pretty disheartening. Game 1 he plays the black 3/3 flier for 2B where he loses three life. I bounce it my temporary exile guy, hoping to race him, but he has the -4/-4 removal spell for it and things aren't looking good and I lose quickly. Game 2 starts off much better, as he mulligans down to five. I keep a decent hand, but my opponent curves out from drops two through five, the last of which is the 2/5 Giant-er Spider guy, which shuts down my whole team. His fliers finish me off in short order. That series took about ten minutes. This format can be fast.
I don't have enough points to get into the Top 4 cut, so I leave to get some work in in lieu of doing a second (and cheaper, damnit), draft. Scars looks like an interesting set to draft, and I am wanting to try out the infect deck, so hopefully I will be able to draft again soon and please my legion of followers (MY READERSHIP HAS DOUBLED TO 2).
Monday, September 20, 2010
M11 Draft #2
I had to wait a week but draft #2 has come and gone. Read on to see if I return to the previous glories of the first draft or if I replay 2003.
Sadly there were no tales from before the draft, as we had the cards this time and were able to start much earlier. We have nine people again, so someone gets a bye. Some new faces, notably a guy whose name I forget but is called Johnny Redbeard by my friend Chris, who has a hatred so thick for him you can drizzle it over pancakes (I stole that line from Patton Oswalt). Mainly because JB comes down to the store, plants his ass in the floor and reads comics without paying for them and then will drop a fart every now and then. Just in case you were on the fence about this guy being a winner, here was his plan of action. He had to work at 8 pm. The draft started at 6 pm. Trouble in paradise? Yep, he willingly dropped $20 so he could get roughly $12 worth of cards and only be able to play one round, with no way to win any product and make his entry back. The only way that works is if you just rare draft, but M11 is a fairly weak set for that and it's a moot point because he didn't anyway.
My recollections are a little lax this week, sorry. I also have already donated my draft deck to the Smith cause so I don't have my decklist. The draft starts and I first pick Doom Blade. At the end of Pack 1 I'm clearly in blue black, with an Assassinate, Cloud Elemental, Air Servant, and a Scroll Thief. Pack 2 I pick up a Howling Banshee, Clone, Mana Leak and a Forsee, and notably a late (8th or 9th) Pyroclasm. Pack 3 I get some more decent stuff like an Ice Cage, Azure Drake, Augury Owl, Corrupt, and some filler. The highlight is a fourth pick Fireball...yeah, that shouldn't be in there. To compliment that, I find a Prodigal Pyromancer that tables and it looks like I have a red splash. I also had a Warlord's Axe and a Whispersilk Cloak. In retrospect I don't think I should have played the Cloak, as my deck was almost exclusively evasion creatures and creature-light already. The only thing it worked well with was Scroll Thief. Nether Horror or even Maritime Guard seems like the better choice. The Axe is a large mana investment, but since I only had one 5-drop and nothing higher, I thought it might be able to send my fliers over the top when I needed the last few points of damage. My mana base was 9 Island, 6 Swamp, and 2 Mountain. Once again I had nothing valuable outside of the draft, as I was on the other side of the table from the girl who opened a pack with double Primeval Titan and got a nice shiny $50-60 piece of cardboard.
Round 1: The Constructed Hype-Man Strikes Back
Again this guy drafted mono-black, but this time he didn't have Grave Titan. He did have two Captivating Vampire, which he had tried to base his entire deck around to horrific results. Game 1 is over pretty quick, his deck just can't compete with my pile of jank. Game 2 is not over pretty quick. I have the life totals, and at one point he was at 27 from Demon's Horn. However, as you know (or if you don't you do now) that card it terrible in Limited. I draw so much removal and he just keeps playing Disentomb. Finally I get a board presence and wipe his whole side of the field with Pyroclasm and estamos terminado. Addendum 1: David (or CHM, which is what I think I'm going to refer to him as in the future), says "pull" whenever he draws. I'm a little torn on this. I like the word pull, but only in the context of referring to a relatively obscure pop culture reference. For example, you and some friends are walking through an intersection, the light changes, the driver in the closest car blares his horn, and someone in the group then says, "Man, who does this guy think we are, Barry Allen?" Then someone else says, "Nice pull." My favorite is the line about the demilitarized zone from Ghostbusters. What's yours? Addendum 2: While the games are going on, Zach, who I didn't play last week but who I thought might be one of the better players, decides to scout everyone's deck. He comes over and just stares at my hand and I hide it face down. This will be sort of awesome in a turd way later. Addendum 3: Ron Trauma got the ultimate from Ajani Goldmane during Round 1 against the bastard 9th cousin of life.dec. He gained some life himself, then cast Overwhelming Stampede and attacked for over 100.
Round #2: Justin
Justin had a B/R deck that was a mixture of a burn deck and the Threaten deck. He had several Act of Treason but no way to get rid of the creatures. He also had a Fire Servant, something I had seen enough of last week. We split the first two games non-remarkably. In the third, he has almost no pressure after I Doom Blade his first guy and get in with Scroll Thief. I'm slowly whittling him down and get him to 5 with me at 15. With him at 8 mana he casts double Act of Treason and then laments the fact that he can't do anything with the one card in his hand, which is Demon of Death's Gate. I saw this card early in the draft and passed it. I think in the past I would have channeled Pete Townsend and planted that thing in my pile quickly, but I'm better now. That card is terrible. His attack with my guys does not kill me and then he asks what's in my hand. I tell him if he's conceding I'll be happy to show him. He says he is and I show him two land. I'm assuming he was worried about a counter for the card he couldn't cast regularly or through the alternate casting cost. Addendum 4: He was running at least two Lava Axe, which I'm assuming was his win condition. So do I side in my two Flashfreeze? Nope, because I'm that good/terrible. Addendum 5: After my game is done, there's only one match left. It's a guy who hasn't played in forever who drafted a mono-white deck that is beyond bad. He went with the stereotypical life gain with no actual kill condition or threats. As such, his games could last a long time, but he would never concede even though he literally had no chance at winning a game. Since we're on a short clock anyway, this is a problem. Now I don't want to be that guy, but too late. Read some Marx, go to Asia, or do something. Whatever it is, take one for the collective and FUCKING PACK IT IN.
Round 3: Zach
My deck decided to vomit this round, though I certainly didn't help. Game 1 I should have mulliganed to 5 but kept, hoping to draw an Island, which didn't show up until it was too late. Game 2 my opener is 6 lands and Warlord's Axe. I go down to 4 before I get a playable hand. This was a genuinely frustrating game besides the mulligans. I figure out this game that Zach's deck is even more creature-light than mine. So while I have nothing, he is attacking with Viscera Seer only for about four turns. This makes me think I have a chance, as I'm able to draw into some removal and Mana Leak, meaning he has no real pressure. Instead of playing threats while I sit with three land forever, he casts Sign in Blood and Jace's Ingenuity, making sure he has a full grip of goodness. As such, I finally start playing dudes and he plays Aether Adept for three consecutive turns. Yay. I mean, his strategy worked, I would just rather get wrecked quickly rather than slowly. Mind Control and Sleep help too, I hear.
So I'm at 2-1 and am able to draw into the Top 4 reset and we effectively skip the final round, which means we can play to see who gets to split the packs, as we still will not have time for the finals. Ron is first, Zach second, I'm third, and Luke is fourth. So I sit right back down against Zach.
Round 4 (or 5): Zach por el segundo vez.
Game 1 is a terrible flashback, as I mulligan more and he draws creatures. From the life totals, I can see I took him to 18 and then slowly went to zero. Things turn around in Game 2. He mentions early when I play a mountain that he did not know I was playing red from any of the previous three games. The whole game was a race but I had Fireball in my hand and I thought he he didn't know I had it because (FLASHBACK) that was the card I had in my hand that I hid from him. Here's the situation: I have Howling Banshee and six mana in play. He has a guy out that I have Ice Cage on, a Liliana's Specter, and a Cloud Elemental. He's at 7 and I'm at 6. He's tapped out so I decide to go for it. I attack with the Howling Banshee, thinking that it screams trick, though really I'm not sure. He did not have lethal on the board, though he might have had a way to get rid of the Ice Cage. He was running Unsummon and Diminish, but both of those would not have let him kill me the next turn. He could have cast Sign in Blood on me, as I can't remember if he had already played it that game. I think in that situation, with the life totals as they were, I would double block, but I could be thinking too cautiously. He lets it through, goes to 4 and I show him the Fireball. From a completely-admitted asshole/shiteater/worthless fuck perspective, the look on his face was priceless.
So like last week it's one game to decide if I get to give Rob more cards (unless I pull one of the seven or so cards I could sell on ebay) or if I go home with my draft deck only. This game was a nice change of pace, as he draws tricks but no guys and eventually he just can't cope with my board. He resolves Liliana Vess and tutors up Sleep to try and slow me down but my hand is an Exxon station while he's sitting on a few cards in hand and one creature that I have Ice Cage on. I play Liliana's Specter and he pitches Redirect, which seems odd, since that would be good for the Fireball I'm holding. The other card in his hand is a Diminish, which he plays when I attack. At this point we're both at 8 and he has nothing in hand and nothing effective on the board. I untap, ready to attack for five and then drop the Fireball but he concedes. Sadly, he cannot stop from saying about how he had messed up and thrown the game away by discarding Redirect and how I should be dead. The only problem with that logic is he's wrong. I could only Fireball for 4, so if he sends it at me, I just kill him next turn. He could hit my Specter but he couldn't kill my Banshee too because of the 3 toughness and having to pay for the split. Not to mention I had Assassinate and Corrupt (though I couldn't cast it on five mana) and another creature in my hand. I tell him this, letting him know there was nothing he really could have done, and he just keeps saying he threw the game away and I should have lost. Irritating, but I got the packs and opened absolutely nothing of value except a foil Mountain.
It's late and I suck. The end.
Sadly there were no tales from before the draft, as we had the cards this time and were able to start much earlier. We have nine people again, so someone gets a bye. Some new faces, notably a guy whose name I forget but is called Johnny Redbeard by my friend Chris, who has a hatred so thick for him you can drizzle it over pancakes (I stole that line from Patton Oswalt). Mainly because JB comes down to the store, plants his ass in the floor and reads comics without paying for them and then will drop a fart every now and then. Just in case you were on the fence about this guy being a winner, here was his plan of action. He had to work at 8 pm. The draft started at 6 pm. Trouble in paradise? Yep, he willingly dropped $20 so he could get roughly $12 worth of cards and only be able to play one round, with no way to win any product and make his entry back. The only way that works is if you just rare draft, but M11 is a fairly weak set for that and it's a moot point because he didn't anyway.
My recollections are a little lax this week, sorry. I also have already donated my draft deck to the Smith cause so I don't have my decklist. The draft starts and I first pick Doom Blade. At the end of Pack 1 I'm clearly in blue black, with an Assassinate, Cloud Elemental, Air Servant, and a Scroll Thief. Pack 2 I pick up a Howling Banshee, Clone, Mana Leak and a Forsee, and notably a late (8th or 9th) Pyroclasm. Pack 3 I get some more decent stuff like an Ice Cage, Azure Drake, Augury Owl, Corrupt, and some filler. The highlight is a fourth pick Fireball...yeah, that shouldn't be in there. To compliment that, I find a Prodigal Pyromancer that tables and it looks like I have a red splash. I also had a Warlord's Axe and a Whispersilk Cloak. In retrospect I don't think I should have played the Cloak, as my deck was almost exclusively evasion creatures and creature-light already. The only thing it worked well with was Scroll Thief. Nether Horror or even Maritime Guard seems like the better choice. The Axe is a large mana investment, but since I only had one 5-drop and nothing higher, I thought it might be able to send my fliers over the top when I needed the last few points of damage. My mana base was 9 Island, 6 Swamp, and 2 Mountain. Once again I had nothing valuable outside of the draft, as I was on the other side of the table from the girl who opened a pack with double Primeval Titan and got a nice shiny $50-60 piece of cardboard.
Round 1: The Constructed Hype-Man Strikes Back
Again this guy drafted mono-black, but this time he didn't have Grave Titan. He did have two Captivating Vampire, which he had tried to base his entire deck around to horrific results. Game 1 is over pretty quick, his deck just can't compete with my pile of jank. Game 2 is not over pretty quick. I have the life totals, and at one point he was at 27 from Demon's Horn. However, as you know (or if you don't you do now) that card it terrible in Limited. I draw so much removal and he just keeps playing Disentomb. Finally I get a board presence and wipe his whole side of the field with Pyroclasm and estamos terminado. Addendum 1: David (or CHM, which is what I think I'm going to refer to him as in the future), says "pull" whenever he draws. I'm a little torn on this. I like the word pull, but only in the context of referring to a relatively obscure pop culture reference. For example, you and some friends are walking through an intersection, the light changes, the driver in the closest car blares his horn, and someone in the group then says, "Man, who does this guy think we are, Barry Allen?" Then someone else says, "Nice pull." My favorite is the line about the demilitarized zone from Ghostbusters. What's yours? Addendum 2: While the games are going on, Zach, who I didn't play last week but who I thought might be one of the better players, decides to scout everyone's deck. He comes over and just stares at my hand and I hide it face down. This will be sort of awesome in a turd way later. Addendum 3: Ron Trauma got the ultimate from Ajani Goldmane during Round 1 against the bastard 9th cousin of life.dec. He gained some life himself, then cast Overwhelming Stampede and attacked for over 100.
Round #2: Justin
Justin had a B/R deck that was a mixture of a burn deck and the Threaten deck. He had several Act of Treason but no way to get rid of the creatures. He also had a Fire Servant, something I had seen enough of last week. We split the first two games non-remarkably. In the third, he has almost no pressure after I Doom Blade his first guy and get in with Scroll Thief. I'm slowly whittling him down and get him to 5 with me at 15. With him at 8 mana he casts double Act of Treason and then laments the fact that he can't do anything with the one card in his hand, which is Demon of Death's Gate. I saw this card early in the draft and passed it. I think in the past I would have channeled Pete Townsend and planted that thing in my pile quickly, but I'm better now. That card is terrible. His attack with my guys does not kill me and then he asks what's in my hand. I tell him if he's conceding I'll be happy to show him. He says he is and I show him two land. I'm assuming he was worried about a counter for the card he couldn't cast regularly or through the alternate casting cost. Addendum 4: He was running at least two Lava Axe, which I'm assuming was his win condition. So do I side in my two Flashfreeze? Nope, because I'm that good/terrible. Addendum 5: After my game is done, there's only one match left. It's a guy who hasn't played in forever who drafted a mono-white deck that is beyond bad. He went with the stereotypical life gain with no actual kill condition or threats. As such, his games could last a long time, but he would never concede even though he literally had no chance at winning a game. Since we're on a short clock anyway, this is a problem. Now I don't want to be that guy, but too late. Read some Marx, go to Asia, or do something. Whatever it is, take one for the collective and FUCKING PACK IT IN.
Round 3: Zach
My deck decided to vomit this round, though I certainly didn't help. Game 1 I should have mulliganed to 5 but kept, hoping to draw an Island, which didn't show up until it was too late. Game 2 my opener is 6 lands and Warlord's Axe. I go down to 4 before I get a playable hand. This was a genuinely frustrating game besides the mulligans. I figure out this game that Zach's deck is even more creature-light than mine. So while I have nothing, he is attacking with Viscera Seer only for about four turns. This makes me think I have a chance, as I'm able to draw into some removal and Mana Leak, meaning he has no real pressure. Instead of playing threats while I sit with three land forever, he casts Sign in Blood and Jace's Ingenuity, making sure he has a full grip of goodness. As such, I finally start playing dudes and he plays Aether Adept for three consecutive turns. Yay. I mean, his strategy worked, I would just rather get wrecked quickly rather than slowly. Mind Control and Sleep help too, I hear.
So I'm at 2-1 and am able to draw into the Top 4 reset and we effectively skip the final round, which means we can play to see who gets to split the packs, as we still will not have time for the finals. Ron is first, Zach second, I'm third, and Luke is fourth. So I sit right back down against Zach.
Round 4 (or 5): Zach por el segundo vez.
Game 1 is a terrible flashback, as I mulligan more and he draws creatures. From the life totals, I can see I took him to 18 and then slowly went to zero. Things turn around in Game 2. He mentions early when I play a mountain that he did not know I was playing red from any of the previous three games. The whole game was a race but I had Fireball in my hand and I thought he he didn't know I had it because (FLASHBACK) that was the card I had in my hand that I hid from him. Here's the situation: I have Howling Banshee and six mana in play. He has a guy out that I have Ice Cage on, a Liliana's Specter, and a Cloud Elemental. He's at 7 and I'm at 6. He's tapped out so I decide to go for it. I attack with the Howling Banshee, thinking that it screams trick, though really I'm not sure. He did not have lethal on the board, though he might have had a way to get rid of the Ice Cage. He was running Unsummon and Diminish, but both of those would not have let him kill me the next turn. He could have cast Sign in Blood on me, as I can't remember if he had already played it that game. I think in that situation, with the life totals as they were, I would double block, but I could be thinking too cautiously. He lets it through, goes to 4 and I show him the Fireball. From a completely-admitted asshole/shiteater/worthless fuck perspective, the look on his face was priceless.
So like last week it's one game to decide if I get to give Rob more cards (unless I pull one of the seven or so cards I could sell on ebay) or if I go home with my draft deck only. This game was a nice change of pace, as he draws tricks but no guys and eventually he just can't cope with my board. He resolves Liliana Vess and tutors up Sleep to try and slow me down but my hand is an Exxon station while he's sitting on a few cards in hand and one creature that I have Ice Cage on. I play Liliana's Specter and he pitches Redirect, which seems odd, since that would be good for the Fireball I'm holding. The other card in his hand is a Diminish, which he plays when I attack. At this point we're both at 8 and he has nothing in hand and nothing effective on the board. I untap, ready to attack for five and then drop the Fireball but he concedes. Sadly, he cannot stop from saying about how he had messed up and thrown the game away by discarding Redirect and how I should be dead. The only problem with that logic is he's wrong. I could only Fireball for 4, so if he sends it at me, I just kill him next turn. He could hit my Specter but he couldn't kill my Banshee too because of the 3 toughness and having to pay for the split. Not to mention I had Assassinate and Corrupt (though I couldn't cast it on five mana) and another creature in my hand. I tell him this, letting him know there was nothing he really could have done, and he just keeps saying he threw the game away and I should have lost. Irritating, but I got the packs and opened absolutely nothing of value except a foil Mountain.
It's late and I suck. The end.
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