World of Warcraft 2.0.1 patch proves players couldn't play in the first place!

The massive World of Warcraft 2.0 patch is upon us and is causing shock waves across the WoW community! In this stunning turn of events for the market leading MMORPG...

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... just wait! This just in! WoW always has issues on patch day! EVERY GOD DAMN MMORPG TO DATE HAS ISSUES ON PATCH DAY! Welcome to the "real world" and now let us continue with our regular scheduled programming.

There were some significant changes with the patch and I'm not talking about the Shaman/Paladin gear drops.

• Arena System introduced
• Honor System revamped
• The Burning Crusade talents introduced
• Massive UI changes
  

PvP Changes

The Arena system was introduced and subsequently has crashed. The Arena is set for small teams to do battle against each other while competing in a ladder type competition among all players within your Battle Group. Currently the Arena is set up for practice matches only. It requires a team of all level 70's before you can advance in the ladder. So the Arena system can't really be judged until after The Burning Crusade is launched.

The other part of the PvP changes comes in the form of a new, but not really new Honor System. Honor decay is gone and Battleground faction grinding has been removed. In their place has come a static Honor system where you never lose points and a Battleground reward system built around completing goals. For example to earn the top rewards for Alterac Valley you may be required to win 30 matches and turn in the tokens to an NPC. The current feedback is that it is much easier than grinding faction which is a great change for casual gamers.

The main complaint with the PvP changes has come from the hardcore rank grinders who were pushing for rank 14 prior to the 2.0 patch. They feel cheated because all their hard work was washed away when Blizzard reset honor back to ZERO. The only thing I have to say to these idiots is; "You got what you deserved. Blizzard announced the changes in plenty of time for you to stop, but you continued to grind. Someday you will wake up and realize what a waste your life has been and maybe then you will go out and do something with it." Yes, that is exactly what I would say and I believe I've just said it.

The Burning Crusade Talents

Every class has had their talent tree updated in preparation for The Burning Crusade and level 70. Of course this has introduced a plethora of bugs and outright overpowered classes. Warlocks kill with a single DOT spell. Paladins can actually do damage now (like they couldn't before???). Pretty much a case can be made for any class being overpowered at this very moment.

This isn't shocking considering how much the game will change when The Burning Crusade hits and people start to reach level 70. WoW wasn't exactly balanced to begin with. In a classes most basic form without tweaked talent sets and green gear there may be balance, but when epics and uber talent templates get involved it is all tossed out the window. I will leave this topic here because I believe it will take a month for the community to adjust to these changes and then it is a mute point because The Burning Crusade will be ready for launch.

Massive UI Changes

With the 2.0.1 patch there has been upgrade to the LUA scripting laguage used for the WoW UI and this takes me to my title for this post. WoW players can't play the game without their easy mode UI add-ons. Decursive, ClickHeal, CTRaidAssist, and on and on and on are now completely broken and most likely won't be fixed. Most of these gamers will scream at Blizzard for the lack of a decent UI to play the game. I will blame the players for letting UI mods dominate their play style.

The cry is heard the loudest in the raiding community. Their precious raid schedules are screwed because easy bosses that they used to defeat in minutes are now wiping their raids without UI mods to hold their hands. I personally applaud Blizzard for finally putting their foot down and forcing people to play their game.

I am happy that it now takes two button presses and manually clicking a target to remove a curse, poison, or disease. I am elated that healers now have to communicate to heal. I am glad that players with skill will now be rewarded with a better experience. I laugh at raiders that suddenly found out that they can't and could never play this game.

This changes the game and I'm glad for it. I have never used anything, but a few minimalistic UI add-ons. A cleaner quest tracker (MonkeyQuest), Auctioneer, and the Census+ mods have been my staples since launch. Everything else has been done through the standard UI. I have never relied on a UI mod to make my class easier to play and I strongly believe I am a better player because of it. I play a Shaman and there is no shortage of UI mods that could of made my life easier.

Conclusion

Let me conclude this with a bold statement. Fuck the whiners. I've whined a good bit in my days and almost always I was told to stuff it. Let me return that advice to the current WoW community. Blizzard has shown a remarkable knack for getting World of Warcraft up and running after a few patch delays just like any other MMORPG out there. The only difference is that Blizzard does it for 6 million users.

Pirates CSG: The only SOE game I would probably ever consider playing!

I do not like SOE. Never have and probably never will. However, they acquired a pretty good CCG/TCG company that they are now using to bring popular card and miniature games to the online space. Since there are very few commercial successes in this area I have to question the move, but none the less I am happy to see some quality coming out of their line up.

Case in point. Pirates CSG Online. This is probably the only game from SOE I would consider paying to play and it more has to do with the fact that WizKids made a damn fine game that SOE is just publishing an online portion of. Even then it will not be in a "buy a virtual booster pack of cards for virtual play pieces at the same price as the real stuff". I would pay a small monthly or reasonable one time fee for access to whatever I need to play.

It is currently in beta so head on over and get the client for free. All you need to play is a Station pass. Unfortunately or fortunately I already had one :P

Dreamblade

If anyone has been following my gaming activities lately they may have noticed that I haven't touched or talked about an MMORPG or even a PC game in a month or so. That is because I have been at my local game store!

I have been pretty much glued to collectible card games (aka. trading card games). Well along with the card games comes another form of gaming nirvana; tabletop miniatures. I decided last week to get into Dreamblade and tonight will be my first full night playing it. Hopefully it will be a ton of fun.

What attracted me to the game is the chess like play. While each player can and often does have different miniatures it does not mean the game rewards the player with the better pieces on the table. This game rewards the person who is a better player.

The rules for Dreamblade are dramatically different than most table top miniatures games. It is played on a pre-defined chess like board. The figures come pre-painted and all rule information is printed on the bottom of the miniature. Pieces move around the board one square at a time and combat is decided via the roll of a set of dice.

With dice comes randomness, but even the newest player learns quickly how to mitigate the luck factor and strike only when the odds are in their favor. There still is the chance for GREAT dice rolls that can turn a game around, but even then a good player will have control of the board to prevent luck from stealing a victory.

This is a great game for those players who don't want massive miniature armies to manage and collect. The warband size is limited to 16 and it is not too often you will find the need for multiple copies of a single high value miniature to be successful. With just a starter set and a quick romp through your local game shop's common/uncommon bin (or eBay) you can piece together a working warband.

Hopefully I will have more to say later when I get done with my night of Dreamblade, but until then have fun!

Turkey Day has come and gone!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Along the way I turned 25 and I just have to tell everyone that birthdays around Thanksgiving are the best! I always get the type of pie I want and there is always people in town for a bigger birthday party. Which just so happens to mean more opportunities for presents! Haha...

It was a great birthday and I scored a nice Weber grill. It is one of the old school charcoal grills that Weber is famous for. Maybe I can get in a Weber commercial with it now?

Have a great gaming week.

Playing with my Token Control deck!

I had the chance this past weekend to get a couple games in for The Spoils TCG with my Token Control deck. You can read about it here. I don't have all the cards I need yet, but the deck is playing exactly the way I wanted it to.

The first game I played it against a Warlord/Gearsmith deck which just so happens to be made of my cards. I was teaching another player how to play and Warlord is an easy place to start. Fortunately the person I was teaching was a quick learner and a veteran of many other card games. He picked it up fast and was able to use some of the better parts of Warlord/Gearsmith deck to good effect.

I won the first game, but that was rather expected considering the Warlord/Gearsmith deck was really just thrown together. Still it was satisfying to see my deck performing the way I had expected. My opening hand was full of starting points for various strategies I have worked into the deck. The name of the deck is Token Control and that is exactly how I played the first game. Throwing down with Qutidian Assassinations and Sudden Osprey I was able to get a well built Red Raven through for some massive early game damage. After trading a few creatures I finally was able to punch through for the win.

The second game I decided that we should swap decks so he would have a decent deck to play with. Of course this meant I would have to play the unfinished Warlord/Gearsmith deck. While it isn't exactly like playing sealed or limited play it is still great practice to play with a non-optimized deck. I didn't get a great starting hand with the Warlord/Gearsmith deck, but I was able to stall a few rounds with a Jacque's Trap which stopped an early rush from a Red Raven.

Halfway through the game it was evident my opponent had learned enough about the game to start playing a good bit better. Then I came to realize just how frustrating my deck was to play against. I pulled off a great research combo with 700130x 3lf only to get sucked a Lugubrious Finger Trap. By this time he had been able to build up a very nice Red Raven with several tokens. A Very Big Hat of Invisibility pretty much meant I wasn't going to block it any time soon.

I was able to get some damage across and brought his influence down into the teens, but I was never really threatening to win. He was getting horrible luck with resources for the game. It wasn't until late game when he finally got a second Obsession in play which started opening doors. 90% of the games with my Rogue/Arcanist deck there are 2 Obsession in play on turn two.

He was able to hold onto the Red Raven long enough to finish me off and I was quite pleased to see a new player pick up my deck and be successful with it. Now I just hope to get some more cards and get some testing done against some tougher decks and opponents.

My First Deck Build for The Spoils TCG : Token Control

Totals:
Card total - 80
Characters - 24
Tactics - 30
Items - 10
Resources - 16

Resources:
Obsession - 14
Deception - 2

Arcanist Items:
2x Knobby Stave
2x Napiform Protuberence
4x Very Big Hat of Invisibility
2x Lugubrious Finger Trap

Arcanist Tactics:
4x Voidal Replication
2x Forget
4x Remember
2x 12 Man Brunch of Doom
4x Quotidian Assassination

Arcanist Characters:
2x Sneaking Spitspider
4x Servile Centipede
4x Insidious Ecto-Manipulator
2x Quotidian Ejector

Rogue Tactics:
2x Rapine
2x Yoink!
2x Ambuscade
2x Forced Recruitment
4x Scrag
2x Warehouse Raid

Rogue Characters:
2x Sudden Osprey
2x Heist Planner
4x Red Raven
2x Card Counter
2x Hyperphagic Sarcophyle

How It Plays

The Deck is untested, but here is how I feel it will play. The beginning of the game is all about getting something out on the board. Early game the Rogue Characters play a bigger part because you start with two Deception in play. Heist Planner works well to clean out their deck and start their discard. Hyperphagic Sarcophyle is an even better play because every turn it can do damage without defenders it gains tokens which is important to this build. Qutidian Ejectors are also great in the early game if you are facing fast beat sticks.

The goal by the second turn is to have two Obsession played to meet the majority of your thresholds. With four resources in play the ideal situation to be in is to have a Hyperphagic Sarcophyle or Red Raven on the board. This way you can play an Insidious Ecto-Manipulator and start pumping tokens onto Hyperphagic Sarcophyle or Red Raven. Don't put all the tokens on one card if you can avoid it because a stacked card makes a prime target for destruction or bounce back to your hand.

By mid-game hopefully Knobby Stave will have made an appearance and you will be sitting with a Very Big Hat of Invisibility in your hand. Also you should have a character in play with a few tokens that you can attach the Very Big Hat of Invisibility to. Attack as a covert party and if your opponent manages to throw down a covert defense just pop out Qutidian Assassination to clear path.

Both the Stave and Hat play a big role with Rapine. Once the Stave is depleted simply leave it around to satisfy Rapine's destroy cost.

The rest of the deck is just a varied selection of cards that will help build tokens, allow you to bounce cards, or play a key role against certain situations. Card Counter has a coin flip which puts a token on Red Raven. Yoink! can be used to retrieve stolen or destroyed items.

This deck has a focus, but isn't too overly focused. I think it will fair well against a wide variety of decks. It has a finishing strategy with token built characters and covert items. It has a full line of recycling tactics and support creatures. The biggest concern is being low on resources each turn which is something I may need to work on as I play with it. Now just to get all the cards and get some games under my belt to test it!

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This isn't a final build yet. I am still considering swapping 12 Man Brunch of Doom for Qutidian Misfire and including a couple Voidal Perversion for more tokens. I just haven't decided what to drop in place of them. Also Voidal Poisoning may be a key card to this deck if I find that my token characters get dumped a lot. If your token creature is about to be bounced or destroyed simply play Voidal Poisoning to dump the tokens for some great effects. Though I think Ambuscade can be more efficient than Voidal Poisoning and is why I have Ambuscade in the deck.

Say Uncle!

My sister-in-law is in the hospital preparing to give birth to her first child which will be my first nephew. It has been quite a journey and I am looking forward to being Uncle Heartless. Now I just need to determine the proper games to distribute as gifts at the proper ages to produce a top-notch gamer by age 13.

The Spoils TCG Pre-Release Tournament 11/12

The Spoils

The Spoils is a trading card game developed by Tenacious Games Inc. that is being dubbed as a Tournament Card Game (TCG). The development team is a veritable who's who of the card gaming scene. With names like Jon Finkel, of Magic: The Gathering fame, this card game has been built from the bottom up with competitive play as the core.

On top of making a game that rewards skill while minimizing luck during play the team at Tenacious Games have literally put their money where their mouth is. For competitive play they have developed The Spoils Tournament Experience (STE) where they will be doling out over a million dollars worth of prize money. Not only does that show confidence in their product, but it shows a true understanding of where they plan to take The Spoils as a game.

Casual Gamers?

With all this talk about tournaments and pro-level gaming won't the casual card gamers be pushed out? I have never gotten heavily involved in any card gaming tournament scene, but I have played Magic the Gathering for several years and I’ve dabbled in various other card games along the way. I was able to pick up The Spoils for the first time and within a few games I knew enough to know where I was making mistakes instead of cursing bad luck.

The Spoils plays in such a way that you learn as you go. Every single turn and every single card played brings you one step closer to grasping the possibilities that lie within The Spoils TCG. Immediately upon picking up your first set of cards it is more than evident that the game is filled with many complex combinations.

Fortunately The Spoils has learned from the past of other games like Magic and have improved upon them. There are several common keywords that are clearly defined. The structure of each turn is well documented and well thought out. Throw in a glorious mulligan rule, two starting resources, and you have a quality game on your hands that begins play on the first turn.

A lot of talk around The Spoils has been how it is just another Magic with a few tweaked rules to prevent abuse. What I've discovered is a game that is far more organized and far more rewarding than other major card games. Many luck aspects have been removed and you often find yourself actually playing the deck you built instead of the cards you were dealt.

The Spoils is a refreshing change of pace. What seemed like a Magic clone beforehand has become an entirely new beast to conquer. The cards have a more adult and nerdy theme which suits my interests. On top of that the flavor text is just plain funny… any game that has a card proclaiming “I’d hit that” is a winner in my book.

Pre-Release Tournament 11/12/06

I was fortunate enough to attend a pre-release tournament at my local gaming store, Reality Check Games, this past Sunday. The store owner asked if I could spin up a little event wrap up so here it is.

The tournament started with 10 players in a Swiss format. The initial deck building period was set to 30 minutes which seemed wholly inadequate considering most of the players had no idea what they were doing. Those are the rules though and everyone struggled equally to grasp the deck building concepts. Some players spent more time reading the rules while others spent more time reading cards.

Time rounds began at 40 minutes per round which was extended to 60 minutes due to the fact that we were all struggling to get games moving at a reasonable speed. Once players started clicking with the rules the games started going faster which is a testament to the “learn as you play” flow of the game.

While I don’t have a break down of the rounds I will post the end results.

1. Chris C.
2. Teresa
3. Thomas
4. Josh
5. Matt (aka me)
6. David
7. Dan
8. Meagan
9. Buda
10. Scott

Prizes were given out for the top 8 spots and a consolation prize was given out for 10th; so 9th place was truly the only loser. Even then all 10 players walked away with the cards they played with and an invigorated interest in the game.

The top two players, Chris C and Teresa, were both seasoned Magic players along with the fourth place finisher, Josh. Thomas is a young gun and is the current shop “man to beat” in the World of Warcraft TCG.

Most of the other players also had various gaming experience with card games. Finishing in fifth I have several years of casual Magic game play under my belt. David and Dan cleaning up in 6th and 7th both have varied backgrounds in several games from tabletop miniatures, pen’n’paper RPGs, and other card games.

It was apparent that the more experienced card gamers had the better tactics in winning the games. I don’t want to say better decks because every game I played or watched it was easy to identify where the mistakes were made. Often times a mistake or two resulted in a loss. Unfortunately for me that meant a few too many losses.

Everyone made mistakes. Even the top finishers had their fair share, but with years of card gaming under their belt they knew how to recover and play well enough to overcome to take home a win. And that is the point I want to make. The Spoils is a game that rewards the thinkers and the strategists in all of us. While there is sure to be great deck builds in the future I doubt many of them will make it far without a smart and canny player playing them.

Overall the tournament was fun, well played, and hosted in a great venue. I look forward to plenty of The Spoils in the future. Until then…. wanna touch it?

My first night playing the World of Warcraft TCG

I finally had the chance to play a few games of the World of Warcraft TCG last night. It was a long night and I learned a lot of lessons about the game. Starting off my deck is horribly underpowered due to the fact I have almost no selection of cards to empower it. My ragtag collection tossed into my Shaman starter deck was no match for any of the decks last night.

Game 1 : Shaman Deck vs. Paladin Deck

The first game was against another player that has never played the WoW TCG. He was borrowing a paladin starter deck with a few borrowed equipment cards. We played most of the game open handed so we could get assistance playing. A few rules here and there were missed and we weren't always applying combat damage correctly, but overall it was a fun experience.

Midway through the game I pretty much assumed I had the win when my hero's health was at 28 and the opponent's was at 12. I was doing consistent damage and felt the game was in hand. This is where I made my mistake. In the WoW TCG you can play any card from your hand face down as a resource. I had been holding onto Healing Wave (Heal 8 damage.) for a while and decided to play it as a resource since he had been unable to damage me for the most part.

Once my healing wave was face down the game began spiraling out of my control. He drew a Wraith Scythe (Heal yourself for the amount of damage Wraith Scythe inflicts.) and attached it to his hero. Combined with an ongoing ability that gave his hero +1 ATK he was hitting for four damage a turn and healing for four damage. Unfortunately I had no protectors in game so I could not intercept the damage incoming to my hero.

With a stalemate between our allies I was unable to out damage his Wraith Scythe's healing power and he was able to just beat me down and seal the deal with a Quick Strike.

Game 2 & 3 : Shaman Deck vs. Alliance Druid Deck

The last two games I played were against a rather competitive player who had a dearth of available cards. It showed in the fact that his deck was well balanced and was not lacking for any card he needed. The basic premise of the deck is fast play protectors that stall the game combined with allies that can retrieve dead allies from the graveyard every turn. Throw in the druid healing spells and it is a beast of a deck.

In each game I was only able to deal a single blow before his army of low cost allies overwhelmed the board. With some bigger tank protectors in play I could hold out until he was able to play Tracker Gallen (Tracker Gallen has +1 ATK for every ally in your party.). With 12+ allies in play his Tracker was a 12 ATK powerhouse. If you attempt to kill the Tracker he simply flips Mezzik Darkspear's ability (Destroy an ally in your party. Do damage to target hero or ally equal to that ally's ATK.). So before combat damage resolves he sacrifices Tracker Gallen and is able to instantly do 12 damage to your hero which you can't protect against.

The only counter that works is to have an instant damage card that can hit Mezzik when he exhausts for his ability. Even then with his ability to cycle allies out of his graveyard you can't keep them out of the game.

Overall it was a great learning experience and even with the 0-3 record I still enjoy the game. If I ever get enough cards I think I have a good strategy to counter the Druid deck.

Response to price gouging on World of Warcraft TCG

The Internet is a scary small place. My local game store owner that I unfairly critiscized in my previous World of Warcraft TCG post for gouging prices on booster packs has responded. He would like me to post the following to explain the situation.

"I sold out of the first run of WoW boosters and starters pretty quick. That was the only merch I got at wholesale price.

The second set of product was just starters, and I only got those because I paid RETAIL cost at a local store and I raised the price from $15 to $20 (hardly gouging, as you mentioned.)

The third set of product was a box of starters and a box of boosters. Again I paid RETAIL for those as well (plus tax, btw) and so I kept the starters at $20 (even though that means I only make about $3 each) because I wanted them to be affordable. I did raise the boosters to $7.50 but not because "we're the only ones in town" but because I had to if I wanted to make the product available.

Lastly, the most recent set of WoW product to come in cost me well over retail, because my distributor is charging me $19 per starter and $6 per booster. I'm keeping the product at my previous price, since I think it's unfair to charge more. Hopefully I'll make some money off of coffee, since technically I'm not making any off of WoW.

I do like being the only store in town that has the product, and I go to excessive lengths to get the product for my customers. I had no idea I was getting slammed for it in the process. Hell, I thought I was doing folks a favor."

I want to thank him for replying and straightening out the situation. I rushed to judgement obviously and posted a gut reaction to the pricing without understanding the distribution end. I can't really tell you how wonderful of a store the owners are running. I have been through a few gaming stores in my life and it is nice to finally have one that really cares about the gamers more than pushing product.