Updates, constantly.

Click here, "Fox Murdoch on Twitter", and you'll have a round by round update of my progress today and tomorrow.

Saturday
+ 11am, Standard using mythic red.
+ 3pm, draft forcing red/white nonmetalcraft beats

Sunday
+ 9am registering for PTQ
+ 10am cracking and building [please crack bad, get passed good!]
+ 11am round 1
et al

Enjoy!

Preparing, constantly.

So, this is my quiet before the storm. Tomorrow Rony and Neil pick me up for some Standard action over at Mega Games in Penrith. 11am start, then at 3 we get to draft more SoM. I can't wait, especially because there's a girl who plays there who always drafts white. So much so the boys all avoid it like the plague, so it's free pickin's to anyone who wants to jump in.

Then after that I'll need a trip in to the city to sell some more cards to remake the money I've spent (3 times now) for the PTQ entry fee. $40 for 6+ boosters is alright, plus a day of entertainment. The annoying thing there is that I've had to make that money a few times over, despite putting it aside as far back as last last tuesday.

Drafting SoM a lot has helped to sculpt my view of which cards are good, how to build and what to aim for. red/white metalcraft all the way. I'm expecting it 80% in the second round assuming I win the first round. And the top 8 draft would be a splendid place to get my first 3-0, and what I'm aiming for.

Though right now I need to relax a bit, because I'm tired and sore in the shoulders and bored. We had chinese for tea (when I wanted KFC) and a beer that knocked me out harder then expected.

Best of luck, all.
Fox Murdoch.

Sealed pool, constantly.

Exactly what it sounds like, the below is a sealed pool for you practice.

WHITE
Seize the Initiative
Revoke Existance
Whitesun's Passage
Ghalma's Warden
Kemba's Skyguard
2 Soul Parry

BLUE
Vedalken Certarch
2 Turn Aside
2 Stoic Rebuttal
2 Disperse
Steady Progress
Sky-Eye School
Bonds of Quicksilver
Darkslick Drake
Riddlesmith

BLACK
2 Fume Spitter
Plague Stinger
Psychic Miasma
Bleak Coven Vampires
Moriok Reaver
Contagious Nim
Relic Putrescence
Grasp of Darkness
Tainted Strike
Corrupted Harvester
Necrogen Scudder

RED
Hoard-Smelter Dragon
3 Vulshok Heartstoker
3 Ferrovore
2 Goblin Gavaleer
Oxidda Daredevil
Assault Strobe
Scoria Elemental
Turn to Slag
Melt Terrain
Blade-Tribe Berserkers
Furnace Celebration
Bloodshot Trainee
Ogre Geargrabber
Barrage Ogre

GREEN
Genesis Wave
2 Wing Puncture
Ezuri's Archers
Cystbearer
Alpha Tyrranax
Carrion Call
Slice in Twain

ARTIFACT
Vulshok Replica
Throne of Geth
Trigon of Mending
Babed Battlegear
Rusted Relic
Trigon of Rage
2 Myr Galvanizer
Heavy Arbalest
Chimeric Mass
Grindclock
Myr Propogator
Platinum Emperion
Wall of Tanglecord
Leaden Myr
Bladed Pinions
2 Tumble Magnet
Iron Myr
Strider Harness
Golden Urn
Nihil Spellbomb
Silver Myr
Moriok Replica
Flight Spellbomb
Chrome Steed

I'll post my build later tonight, right now I'm watching the kid (my sisters).

Missing posts, constantly.

Have I been hacked? Am I not pressing the right button? I'm pretty sure I wrote an update the other day, which doesn't show up on my blog. Or it does, and I have yet again no idea what I'm doing.

Regardless after the tuesdays performance of 0-2 drop from a draft [my deck was BLUEwhite awful] I drafted again thursday, wound up red/white and managed to lose the first round to green/black poison, with them getting 2 Trigon's of Infestation - the card is a menace! He got two, did Johnny, and he was able to dump a 1/1 every turn. His Plague Stinger was joined by a token who had Bladed Pinion (I say it "pignon" as in champignon) so my ground dorks who were actual cards and not just "2 mana" were way outclassed.

Preparing for death I win the next two rounds and wind up a rosy coloured third. I'm happy with that, it means every single draft/sealed I've got red/white with has landed me 2-1 finishes. I'm set to going red/white at the sealed PTQ Paris this weekend, but if the colours don't show up...

I just figured it out. My link on good games forum is to a specific post. I gotta fix that.

SO YES! A few great articles I've read lately, all about Scars sealed. Finding articles can be hard but I just use my phone and it really culls the shite from the mango-y goodness. One inparticular had instructions for making your own Sealed pool Cube maker. I've done plenty of draft/sealed re-pack lots for up to 8 players, because I always have rares and things to try and do, so to see a formula to make it easier than "make every booster by hand" was awesome. The link is as follows: http://60cards.com/articles/scars-sealed/

As well as that it's just funny to see the wide range of articles on offer by so many writers. One article description reads thusly (kiddies avoid your eyes):

"So, I started an e-mail group about scars sealed pools, but since everyone on it is a useless shit, I'll just post the pools here as well"

The article (Click here) itself is also worth the read. Anything written will help you, whether you agree with the writer or not. It'll open your brain to new ideas, or new methods for old tricks, and the more you look at the better.

The pro vs amatuer argument suggests you could be elitest and only read the 'real content' of channel fireball etc etc but I find no matter what build you go with, you'll get people who agree and disagree no matter who you are, apart from the suck up trolls in the channel fireball comments sections. Not all of them, but certainly a visible percentage.

Brief news on my next article -- being christmas December I'm going to write about pride and how it affects the magic playing population. I figure it's a good follow up to Wisdom/Intelligence, and it has NOTHING to do with christmas, as opposed to some dinky red/white/green deck.

That may get posted here...

Failing, miserably.

Yes yes yes, slim readers. I drafted the other day for one last minute test before this sunday day, and the PTQ itself. You might call practising the DRAFT portion optimistic but I like that word. It was also a very good lesson for me, as I utterly stank at it.

Hoping red/white, I open Ezuri's 4/4 metalcraft 8/8 trample and pass it, taking the much less powerful, but certainly red/white something-or-other. I can't even remember. The rest of the draft continues until I can see white is coming, sparingly, and red is all but divorced of me. I don't know what to do. There seems to be some nice blue coming, so I move in to that.

Try not to do this at home, kids. We're not trained professionals and it didn't work for us. It won't work for anyone. The draft went with my deck being way to fat around the 3/4 cost mark, and I hardly got anything worthwhile in my 2 rounds.

Yes two rounds. I lost 0-2 0-2 both matches so I figured it was nicer on my rating to drop for the last round, giving Mr 7th a smug feeling of "mised it."

Of note was that the winning deck was indeed red/white.

Of extra was a friend of mine who drafted earlier then me had tried for mono-green poison, and went 0-3. This is a surprise to NO ONE.

Also an extra note to the Scars sealed practice that I ran the other day - the top two decks, mine and Tony's, were red/white. The other red/white deck came third, while a red/green was fourth and fifth was taken up by red/white yet again. Rony's immaculate self-destruction deck was 7th, at red/black/green.

This really enforces the idea that I'm going to force red/white on the day. I'll have a savagely good 65% chance to win against the non-red/whites, and if I don't get bombs my skills should help pull through against the better players, or I'll invoke some Irish luck so they don't draw their bombs while I do draw mine.

I foresee an X-2 finish, needed to top 8 with a group of maybe 40-60 players (PTQ Prague got 80 back in 200X) and I'm sure that'll quickly disolve into the competant players, and those who showed up for the flighty lottery pick of cards to "win a trip to France."

On the above work, "luck": I'm a great believed in luck when it comes to finding coins on the ground. I have no such belief with Magic. Your draft choices, deck building choices, mulligan choices and awareness-in-game really help to form a consistant approach to playing, and if other players don't have it then they're believing in luck, and throwing themself at it's mercy.

It's what you do with what you've got -- lemonade from lemons is still a nice drink.

Weekending, constantly.

Life first, Magic later. Skip ahead I dare you.

I've just done half an hour on the bike with my arms. The handles move back and forth so no I didn't just sit there and watch TV. Feels good.

This comes after yesterday, when I woke up and me + crew drove to Sydney to picnic, kick the soccerball around and try some frisbee, which was all really fun and awesome. As a super added bonus, I didn't burn anywhere apart from the tiniest part on my skull, and only just at that. With my physiology I'm scientifically set to start burning after 12 minutes, so thank you sunscreen.

The saturday before I woke up at Amy's, always nice, and joined her for a trip into the city where I saw her off at TAFE and then went back to her place. I fed the cats, dog, chickens, rabbit, guinea pigs and fish, then myself. I had the good luck of finding $3 in a cash vending machine as well, so I that was just golden.

The night before I'd stayed over Amy's and we finished off Deathnote. Now as far as anime's go, I'm not an automatic fan of anything made today. I was raised on Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ninja Scroll, Astroboy. Good things, that were actually DRAWN in the 80s 90s, and yes this includes Sailor Moon and Samurai Pizza Cats. Also Pokemon to the first few seasons.

Deathnote starts off interesting, gets really good when L is introduced (he's like the guy who's out to foil the main character, Light) and then... it's best described as it still ends awesome, but man why did they $$$^ @$%& & #$%% #$% #$% #$^^^? Onto Magic!

The sealed event went fine. I thought we had 4 people on the day, but everybody rang and showed up late. With 6, we cracked packs and built and played. Then at about 35 minutes we got a call so we had a 7th player. Easy, he gets a bye for round 1. Then our eighth calls, same thing. Alright, show up, build quickly and play off. They do and Josh loses, so his auto-win turns into a lose. He'd been outta it for a month so good on him.

The full list: me, Rony, Tony, Josh, Arnold, Jund-Kid (he's 13 and has no life apart from playing Magic with 26 years old, weird), H Y and Endicott. Round 1 myself, Tony, Arnold and HY win. Round 2 Rony and Josh lose so fight for the wooden spoon while I win as does Tony, so we play off for first.

He wins the first game and I win the second and the third one wins. We're both red/white but he had the control deck, and that meant I needed fast starts or for him to feck up and neither of those things happened. He had some nice combos, like Tempered Steel + Myr Propogator, as well as a Hippogriff to return anything dead.

Funnily enough I talk myself into losing as he plays the 'Griff and thinks about either Vulshok Replica or Rust Tick. I imagined Rust Tick for sure, he'd tap down my Glint Hawk Idol and then just win with a leisurely pace, but I say "Vulshok can bash and is quickler," so he takes it.

The game progresses until he's got bods out, I've got 2 active Smith's and am making 1/1s to block and ping him every turn but he swings with everybody and I block to be on one life and hopefully draw a solution in the form of Revoke Existance -- forgetting that on one life Vulshok Replica reads "1R: win the game."

Atleast it came down to the last game of the last match. I'm confident of my abilities at next weeks PTQ, but my inexperience with anything apart from RED/WHITE does make me a tiny bit apprehensive. I'll just open bombs, easy.

The draft I will practice for again on thursday. I get credit at Good Games in the city for the articles I write (not these things) so it's free and why the heck not? If you're thinking of attending PTQ Paris yourself, best of luck and hope you don't come against me.

Drafting, constantly.

Hello reader! This blog is to act as an instant-feed of all things Fox Murdoch, Magic-wise. Think of it like fivewithflores.com, only with Fox Murdoch instead. Yeah, we won't ask you to pay.

At the moment I'm finishing up an article about drafting red/white in Mirrodin. Not specifically metalcraft, but just red/white gray ogres. It's a surprisingly consistent deck. Glint Hawk Idol runs the attack, Galvanic Blast is a MUST but apart from that the deck just plays creatures and spells to go toe-to-toe with the opponent until you outpace them in the battlefield.

The latest news I'm excited about is both PTQ Paris coming up soon, and when Besieged comes in - I've got plans for both events. PTQ Paris is going to be hot simply because it's Paris. I've been twice, and will go a third time. To help myself and friends I'm running a sealed practice on saturday night at my mate Rony's. Rony's the equivalent of the most awesome person you know, mixed with me.

The plan is to star around 12, and everyone cracks the standard 6 packs, builds and then you play as many other people as you can. The ideal would be 3-5 rounds before we cut to a top 8 draft, but to do that I'd need more boosters then I have. If we don't get a full 8 players for it, we can use those packs and reconstruct some more.

One thing I want to point out - I asked good and bad players to come. A realistic PTQ isn't just the best players, it's everyone. And the benefit to playing good players if tightening your skills. The benefit to playing bad players is to learn how exactly you should duck and weave, and most importantly not go on auto-pilot. "Easy win" are the most famous last thoughts of many a would-be PTQ'er.

The other item of interest is Mirrodin Besieged, which means we're finally going to see Phyrexia's assault on Mirrodin. The exciting thing is the new draft format - now you'll start by opening the newest pack first. So it goes Besieged, Scars, Scars. This gives me, as a writer, plenty to write about, but I'm excited because I'll actually be able to watch a format change and mold into a new something -- and to actually care about it.

Previously I haven't had to as I didn't draft because I was crap. I'm suddenly vastly improved and hope to keep it that way. My thoughts at the moment are red/white may suffer, as there's less G Blasts and Glint Hawk Idols, and poison will only stand to improve, as Plague Stinger gets less bountiful but there's most poison on the way, and there's Vector Asp as the other common poison regardless (even if you have to pay for it's venom to work).

I'm also looking to trade two normal Vensers (signed by the artist) for a foil copy. I'm collecting a foil set of Mirrodin and so far have 2/15 mythics, and plenty of the rest. Donations accepted with mad props made as appropriate.

Titans, constantly

I have no doubt you've seen the Titans from M11. I made a list of all the permanets costing 3 or less from current Standard, not so for M11 who's only partially spoiled. Here it is and what sounds like the best fun for me:

Canopy Cover
Courier's Capsule
Crystalisation/Pacifism etc
Dragonmaster Outcast
Electropotence/Wooly Thoctar
Battle Rampart [two frees]
Evolving Wilds
Exuberant Firestoker
Fleshbag Marauder
Gargoyle Castle
Goblin War Paint
Great Sable Stag
Gustrider Exuberant
Hamilar Excavator
Illusionary Servant
Illusory Demon
Jace Beleren
Jenara, Asura of War
Knight of the Reliquary
Kor Hookmaster
Leatherback Baloth/ooly Thoctar
Lightning Talons?
Luminarch Ascension
Lust for War
Mage Slayer [equip, bash for +4/+0, take the hit n die]
Mark of Asylum
Mask of Riddles
Mayael's Aria [win]Quest for the Gemblades
Mortician Beetle [alongside]
Oblivion Ring
Ogre's Cleaver
Plated Geopede + landfallers
Protomatter Powder
Quest for the Gemblades
Renegade Doppelganger [x4]
Rotting Rats
Sage Owl
Sangrite Backlash
Sanity Gnawers
Savage Hunger?
Scepter of Dominance
Scute Mob
Snake Umbra [Naya, Cunning Sparkmage]
Stoneforge Mystic
Student of Warfare
Tectonic Edge
Telepathy
Thada Adel, Inquisitor
Tidehollow Sculler
Trailblazer's Boots
Transcendant Master
Vampire Hexmage [Walkers gonna hate']
Venerated Teacher
Wall of Denial
Wall of Omens
Whispersilk Cloak

I like Marauder as the best black/white option, though Wall of Omens is the most delicious mono white. Killed my wall? OK it's back, I've got 6/6 beef AND another card, ta darling!

MOVIE - Letter's to Juliet

I did something last night I didn't think I'd go -- give up famboy material such as Ironman 2 or the rehashed Gladiator wannabe "Robin Hood" and see Letters to Juliet instead. It was the lack of intelligence the other movies threatened me with that shaped the decision. Plus being with my old friend Kim, who's tolerated many a monster/fighter movie already.

The start was very girlpal esque, Juliet's Window is a this tight little spot in Verona where distraught people, mostly females, write letters of their situations and stick them to the wall. Then the Secretaries of Juliet take in the letters and respond to each and everyone of them.

Our main girl, Sophie, blonde and beautiful but nowhere near over-the-top glamorous (extra points here) follows them when they're collecting letters, and says she wants in. Also has a dream to be a writer, not a mere fact checker, for the local paper she works with. Ta da, chance to write.

She follows them, after friendly meetings, and finds a letter 50 years old in a brick inside the wall. She answers it, hoping against hope that the recipient stick resides at the listed address, and of course gets a response (or the movie would've ended). Claire, the writer of the original note, shows up with her grandson to find out who wrote the letter and find her missing man, Lorenzo Bortelini.

Her disgustingly rude grandson, a fantasticly handsome Australian actor of Home and Away, has joined his granny for the quest. They hit it off. Only Sophie has a fiancee who's an easy write off from the script as he's always off to wine tasting and mushroom and food, being a chef.

They look everywhere and don't find him, Claire and Attractive Male grow closer, eventually kiss and then they split ways when they find a particular Lorenzo sitting in a grace. "Too much emotional wear and tear", ya know?

They find the guy before Sophie returns home.

This is really a love note to Italy, gorgeously shot and it looks good and it isn't so disgustingly lovely-dovey like many a chick-flick. I actually enjoyed this and could laugh when Claire and Sophie ganged up against Attractive Male Lead to get him to shoo off, leaving the girls to talk.

She returns to New York with her story of Clair's finding, then gets invited to the wedding and heads back. They get together.

Simple and not selling love as the greatest virtue in the world, ever, bar none. More telling the story of how love is merely as durable as you are, if not moreso, and such it's never too late.

Want minireviews of the other movies I didn't watch?

Ironman 2 - Tony Stark saves the day in metal.
Robin Hood - we're all left with a "But they already MADE Gladiator" feel in our mouths
XXXX? - I honestly can't remember the fourth option that there was.

The soul is a cheat, constantly.

Thinking momentarily on the habit/knowledge/usefullness of robots, and making them (I was searching for Daft Punk images) I recalled a quote from a while back some afficionado said about the intelligence of robots:

"If you put together all the brains of the all the robots that exist, you'd get something as smart as a lobotomised cockroach."

Damning to be sure, but it gave me pause to consider why it's so fucking hard. Then I looked at myself and realised: I have no idea how I work, and we're trying to replicate THAT--self awareness. If we don't even know how to create that we surely can't replicate it in anything else, much less anything metalic and rubbery, instead of organic. For that matter we have proof that organic doesn't even dictate that intelligence/self awareness be present, ala trees, shrubs, and most of mount Druitt.

So I say the identity we all have, this soul we fixate on, is God, or our creators, or bloody luck's, easy-cheat way of saying "Oh yeah? Well they can think for themselves too, yeah!"

Honestly, to think further on it eyes developed because of sight, limbs because of a need of motion. EMOtions, therefore, and identity, formed as a response to something else, fellow-being interaction. Fellow-being not excluding animals and such, but communicating anything else with intelligence you come in contact with.

Emo is the ability to measure self worth. Influence is the ability to alter yours (or anothers) and the control of that usually determines a winner in this game we're all playing, in which no one actually remembers putting that $2 coin into the machine blinking "Insert coin to play."

Hense, the soul is a cheat. That's why we can't explain it, it doesn't bear examination.

Love you all.

Judging, Constantly

I recently regained my level 1s for Judging. The last major event I was at before that was head judging a PTQ something. One of the players got DQ'd by myself and my back up of judges, for "lying to a tournament official" based on the information he'd provided regarding his method of shuffling. The pain of the experience, for all involved, sticks as pointedly in my mind as does my own first win in a three player game back in high school during lunch.

I hadn't judged for two years since, but it wasn't the event itself that caused the absence. I'd personally had enough of the drama of judging, which is really the hardboiling of everything you do and don't get respected for, or taken seriously. The problem players, the grateful judges, the feeling good about learning good leadership/organisation skills plus, and mostly of all, the lack of playing a very fun game.

So I left the game, played much more often, and still sucked just as hard. For some reason in the recent year my game has picked up wonderfully, and I've returned to judging. A main reason is to experience new sets without putting money down, being a povo uni student. The better playing is just because I'm a great deal better then I was.

The funny thing about this Yeah, Constantly update is how a judge [or myself] views a new set coming out. Rather then what new cards are about, I'm interested in what new interactions are going to break my games, which questions I'll have to answer time and time again, and guessing [with 75% win] which cards are going to need errata. Walking Atlas, for example, was a no-brainer.

Seeing the new Eldrazi was particularly fun, as everyone leapt to possible solutions to these monsters. You can Terror them, but not Emrakul. You can couterspell them, but you'll still give 3 cards, vindicate or an extra turn to your opponent. Though I found a card which deals with Eldrazi, abilities and all:

Time Stop

Knowing the rules and how to truly mess around with the cards is the extra delicious that comes with being a judge. Of course we're wrong at times, or inaccurate, but we're essential to run the tournaments. Other then that, we're also tooling around with the extra section of Magic the casual players seem to miss -- the nuts and bolts.

/judge rant.

Audience, Constantly.

Very thin level of magic content today non-readers. I'm talking about good news week, Monday night game/talk show where Paul McDermott, Mikey Robins and Claire Hooper lead groups of B grade stars through a series of questions, mostly relating to current weird newstories and generally being funny.

I've been in the audience recording of these shows quite a few times, but on the latest one I got what might be nothing, or a minute eclipse of real. As the audience is piling out of the studio McDermot jokingly shouts "Go on, get the fuck out. You've spent long enough here!" Everyone laughs and continues out, then to the fellow on the stairs just in front of me I hear him shout "Don't fucking make eye contact with me buddy."

The use of buddy confuses me as to how he meant it - it's a friendly thing and a possible threat in Australia. The phrase itself, "Don't make eye contact" is funny itself, parents always warn against making eye contact with dogs because dogs see it as a threat. Though technically anytime eye contact is made someone should look away first, the inferior.

The moment seemed to be mostly unnoticed, the rest of the audience didn't hear it, and it just seemed like a horrid little drunk-off-screen pissed-off actor was in front of me, instead of the cheery faced Paul McDermot. To learn that "it all" is for the screen/camera wouldn't be a surprise, the greatest of lies in the world is TV personalities, but that moment when the potential shade fell was interesting none the less.

To relate this to magic, think of bad commons that you've lost two. You put thems aside, assuming they wont/can't/are incapable of winning games, and then someone plays a Tainted Bond on your 3/3 beast token, puts Lure on their own 1/1 and attack. You gotta block, lose 3 life, and the match.

You wont believe that's how it went down, but it did.

Tokens, constantly.

A large part of Magic is it's tokens, moreso it's token creatures. I'm talking about the current cuties Spawn tokens. Before them came the ever expendable but more adorable Myr tokens of Mirrodin, and the lethal tokens of choice are of course the 1/1 Saproling hoards.

There's three spells to care about if you wanna Spawn-ramp up to your 15 cost Eldrazi mythic monsters (Not as cute). Corpsehatch, Kozilek's Predator, Brood Hatchling/er. Kill a critter get 2 tokens, make a 3/3 get two tokens or a 3/3 and three tokens. The strength of the cards comes from their ability to be relevant and still OK Playable even without the Spawn token generation. 5 mana instant kill spell is still a killspell, and in Rise one of the few cards that kills fatties easily. A Hill Giant is everyone's favourite "Dork" and a 5 drop 3/3 is kind of like everyBlackMage's "Atleast it's a good bad creature" of choice. Perhaps less so the last one, but the point remains.

It's a big like a gift, who's wrapping paper is solid gold. Ever since Lorwyn I've taken great notice of "army in a card" creatures, posterchild of which is Cloudgoat Ranger, and before that Siege-Gang Commander (though you could argue Siege-Gang isn't Army in a card so much as Shock-alot on multiple legs). If the above mentioned Rise cards did make similar tokens, 1/1s not 0/1s, they've have to bump up a rarity each.

A Spawn token with flying can block an untapped Pristine Angel - true story.

Which Eldrazi monster is the best one to ramp up too? Sadly the nature of 2-for-1s leaves me postponing the moment to "cash in" for very long times, and with tokens its worse as you can sack 5 tokens for a quick Crusher and get it bounced - 5 for 1 really. They weren't cards but they're spent resources now.

Hand of Umrakul is the worst of the lot, being a measly 7/7 with Anihilator 1. Sac a land, block with my Pelakka Wurm, draw card and get on with it. I personally favour Ulamog's Crusher, as the 8/8 for 8 body itself is good, with Anihilator is great. As for a speed experiment Hand Of does get out the gate quicker but only via tokens. Turn 3 is the earlier I can see it coming out, as Brood Hatching [1R put a token into play. If you had one, put three instead] gives you turn 2 a token, turn three another gives you the last three which you can 4-sac for 7/7 goodness. In this case the anihilator 1 is quick enough to matter, but even so Oust laughs as it undoes a lot of work.

It feels that the indispensibility of the Myr tokens is more a benefit then the Spawn tokens. Being bum blocks, mana acceleration and powerless are their main points, but less effective seeing you can be screwed once you've decided to cash them in. Doesn't make them less fun. The Myr themselves had their own cards as well, including an indestructible lord [Myr Matrix] and their ability to die and be done with feels like they've done their job, as opposed to paying for someone else's job to get started.

Still turn 4 "Kozilek's Predator" turn 5 "Another Predator, Flame Slash your whoever," is an awesome way to start.

Spoilers, constantly.

I'm a fan of filmonic.com, which talks about movies coming up in the future. Problem is, the 2011 2012 kind of future. It's information and posters and suchlike, but the product they're extolling wont be due out for another 24 months at the least. That's a long time to hold excitement, and plenty of movies die before they're ever made. That's the bad thing about such a long-sighted movie schedule.

I'd like to stitch the same idea to spoilers for Magic sets, but the time between cards being spoiled and the actual cards being available is a pebble compared to the asteroid storm of the movie's spoiler-to-real world incarnation. The principals are similar though in that movies that die are like cards that never were. Good case would be Giant Solufuge spoiled as a 4/3, not the 4/1 it is. People went nuts.

It came out and they were disappointed, "Better when it was 4/3." I got this information from a recent Mike Flores article on mtg.com, he's good for his word. To further look at the spoiler-ific, we already know that Scars of Mirrodin is coming out "next". It's still 3 months away though. There's an entire big set to deal with before then.

Good bye.

Yeah, Constantly.

Welcome to the start of my new Magic blog. It's an old movie blog just revamped. Rise of the Eldrazi has just come out, and I'm starting with Flame Slash:

I don't care that Lightning Bolt does a quicker, faster slicker job of winning the game - for it's same same mana cost with Path to Exile I'd like to say that Flame Slash is reds version of Path to Exile. Single mana that torches creatures. Better yet, they don't get a land. Neither spell hits your opponent for whatever, and pretty much anyone with a toughness 4 or less is going to get it, so early game threats.

The need to spend R on your own turn doesn't mean you can't go another RR, Kaargan Dragon awesome-ness. I may not be widely adapted in favour of more flexible cards, but I for one love it. More excitingly it torches Rhox War Monk and ceases any life-gain shinanigans, unlike Mr Bolt who apologies most humbly.

The other most exciting creature from Rise is Drana. Her body is amazing, and ability is crazy. If left alone she's a menace to your opponent, and can go toast to toe with Baneslayer Angel in the first turn of a race, then next turn eat her up and swing for 9. Protecting here with a W costed Instant makes her basically a 6 drop but even then killing for mana alone [no card required] is delicious.

Of the two Planeswalkers Gideon will see more utilisation while Sarkhan will see more hate as people remain unconvinced of his power. He isn't power though, he's card draw and simple "Quadruple Dragon" action.

The Day of the Locust

Biblical references aside, who's the Locust? Being mostly a relationship writer I assumed it was Faye and her locust like ability to cause a plauge upon the intelligence of men who were after her. This reflects the plague effect that Hollywood has on it's inhabitants, both those making movies and money, and those wishing to be in movie creation to earn money.

The outward appearance of both the book and the money promise a thing much more fun then what you actually get. "Day of the Locust" sounds like it's a great scifi movie with awful special effects and monsters towering over buildings. No such thing. Mercifully the book is the 'quicker' read, despite taking much longer to time-wise consume, because it doesn't take such a long look at Tod Hacket's real-life realisation of his artwork Hollywood burning down to hell.

The movie doesn't give long enough time nor development to the already undeveloped storyline of the book, nor are the characters anything but more real - I viewed Faye Greener with a level of "somewhat idiot, but I could get her if I knew her type" and as the horrible female plague upon the male characters, but watching the movie I rewrote it all in one succinct word: cunt.

Terrible Woman, Pathetic Men would've been a better name for this movie which is trying to be many things at once. It's a history piece focusing on Hollywood in 1930s, it's a character work of Homer Simpson and his hands and utter complete lack of self-realised known purpose, it's a relationship tragedy between Tod and Faye as well as being an expose on the way life was back then.

It doesn't deliver on any of these so much so that any one aspect takes the lead and pushes the whole business. You could argue that the 1930s Hollywood lifestyle does so but the attention and amount of energy put into Faye's horrish behavior and Tod's pathetic attempts after detract from it being purely a "location" piece.

The best scene is the very last, when, after the riot at the opening of Bucanneer, Faye returns to the old house in which Tod Hacker rented, and finds it empty. She enters, sees the shadowed baron room, smiles and leaves. The crack in the wall still holds a rose that Tod put there when he moved in.

A triumphant amount of effort was put into the making of this film, but to say it's good for it's ability to match bad acting for what is meant to be a movie about bad acting (and bad living in general) is too easy, shooting fish in a barrel. Anyone can make a movie or book and say "It's meant to be shit, so the actors/writing is to match." That's no excuse, look at what Kevin Spacey did with "middle age crisis white guy" in American Beauty.

At times the movie strikes a horror note, such as when Homer attacks Adore and then later in the same riot scene when Tod is seeing figures from his mural as the people involved in the riot. The best bit there is the visuals, they are haunting figures.

Probably the best thing about the movie is indeed the appearance of things, as it all looks very good. Despite the characters being cliched. A well dressed cliche is still a cliche. Had someone else had the acting of it, or the directing of it, or the loop-voiced recording of it, we might've seen a movie that damn well deserves to be loved and adored and showed to everyone, but as it stands it appears most people, in it's defense, point at it's relevance as a snapshot of Hollywood life in the 1930s, yes the Depression as well, and saying "Look, that's historically relevant."

It's problem, as a book, is it raises no ultimate point, urges no moral upon it's reader. "Here lies stuff, look upon it" is about as deep as it gets, exampling rather than provoking thought. "And then... and then... and then..." is a bad way to write any movie other than an action, and this isn't an action movie nor book.

The cock fight scene is probably going to make a few people cringe away, but once again brings up the topic of males fighting over this one female who drives them all ga-ga. Two cockerols fighting for the win, two (or more) males fighting for Faye.

Mostly it's a practice in self control before all is lost and you break that which you sought to keep anyway. Homer wanted to be liked, and is torn to shreds after boot-jumping little Adore's lungs out all over the pavement. Tod finally grows his own set of balls and get's himself a "win" against Faye, instead of her always having the way of things, but this leads to further setting off Homer in the following scenes. Faye finally gets the boot up her arse she needs, that is to have to put effort into looking after herself, but we never see anything beyond the movies end so she could very well have gone back to prostitution, or merely started over with another perfectly beautiful sap. And finally Faye's father dies after happily talking to Tod about his daughter and wife's promiscuity, or lack there of. Here he's finally spotted a boy who'll look after her, if she'll have him, which, considering her character, is all he could realistically hope for.

Maybe Locust is alike Sambuca, in that once people hear the name spoken they either demand you put it away, or put more into their cup. Eitherway a strong reaction. Unlike Sambuca however this always generates a bad response, or a defensive response who's main aim is "just look at the historic relevance, would you?"

It's place in the Top 100 doesn't seem confusing, considering I've only seen and read the book once and written all of the above, so I'm sure it's relevance far extends beind a mere defense of the book's inherit worth. It is very thought provoking and a fantastic study in human relations, especially concerning those of the dogs (plural) chasing the bitch (singular).

The original title for the book was The Cheated, which I think would've made a more realistic title. Not so many people would've been disappointed when they didn't get the scifi and guns and stuff.

-FM

Up, what's.

I just finished watching Up again. It's a story about seeing your dreams become real. The last image we see is the wife's house over the waterfall, befoer a sweet "and then this happened" to accompanying the other wise boring (for kids) credits.

The movie ends when the story has finished being told, which is at two points in this movie. The first is when we see the old man as the old man he is for the main of the movie, once we've been shown his life from childhood to marriage to burying his wife. Their little story is very intimate, and very one sided as he says rather two words during the whole scene, and nothing else whenever he's rememebring his wife.

The movie sadly degenerates into action once the plot has been delivered and everyone's "hopes and dreams" communicated. It follows the beautifully well written, call and answer style of a good movie, but it confuses me as to why there is so very much attention and love put into the start of our story if the juice of that effort is more like %5 of the rest of the story.

We see an old man who wants to grant his deceased wife's wish. He meets a childboy who wants to go on a real adventure. Who are confronted by an established adventurer, torn from the spotlight as a wrongful fraud. The relation between the characters, taken from Frank's pov (that's the old man's name, right?) are apparent but not immediate.

Russell is the child adventurer inside Frank himself. The old baron who's trying to reclaim his dignity is the angry old man Frank could have become, hellbent on his now obsessive target.

The graphics and visual, as always, are perfect and stunning and pay an interesting mix of attention to realism. Russell's face is smooth and lucid, like a chubby childs as he is. Though we see Frank's ears are practically pentagonal. What do you make of that? During the abduction scene we see a backlit Russell silhouetted against the screen, yet his ears are a translucent red, as the powerful searchlights permeate through his skin - again this fantastic depth of realism with very realistic character, essentially blood puppets.

The first time I saw Up at the movies I enjoyed the experience, but felt as though the movie was another "mass production" for having all the same hijinks of a classic Disney/Pixar make. Too comfortable, no new ground really broken. You may decide to give credit for the use of blood in the movie (maybe Bambi has also used visual violence and the dead zebra's cut off leg in Lion King) but that's a minor step of newground compared to what I'm meaning.

The same can be said of Quentin Tarantino's newest Inglourious Basterds, though with QT it feels much more like it's just "QT at the movies again." It's not that bad with Up, it just feels as though they've found a formula and have stopped working on it.

It's great for the kids, and adults will like it as well, but it gets mean and the adventure is, if you can't believe in houses flying thanks to balloons, unbelievable. This is made with kids primarily in mind however, so don't it, or yourself, so seriously.

The Incredibles and Toy Story are still my top choices for Disney/Pixar's best movies, while Up sits in the top 3 definately. You may feel Wall-E deserves a mention, and I'd agree it gets a top 5 spot but the most of Wall-E was an experiment in making dialogue-poor robots emotionally receptive to the audience, which they did astonishingly well. I'm not a tree hugger nor do I hate them, but the environmental message attached to Wall-E made a solid block of "Real world" for the audience to digest, which I'm not sure was received well. It teaches a good lesson to those watching, but at a fantastic cost to an amazingly fantastic sci-fi world with very emotional robots - real world reminder.

Up is a great movie and definately another notch in Disney/Pixar's belt for another CG classic, and it'll be love forever like most of Disney's movies. (Mulan, we're sorry but the doors on your left) Enjoyable, sweet, adventuring and grounded with real world sentiments and lessons. Considering how very much they could've screwed this up, they've gone a shimmering colourful job.

Squirrels!!