Banhammer 40K: Modern Magic edition

I love Magic: The Gathering. Despite my attempts to separate myself from it after numerous bannings in Modern and various other stuff I still came back to it after Dragon's Maze. Despite how bad it was to play with Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash I still kept on going with it, that is the power of Magic. So when it comes to pro-Magic the format I love most is Modern. This being said I despise the modern ban list, and I've decided to go through it and try to explain the reason why I understand or dislike the bannings in modern magic. I'm only going to go through the one's I understand completely or completely dislike.

Ancient Den, Vault of Whispers, Tree of Tales, Great Furnace, Seat of the Synod, Skullclamp: I can understand what they want here. Wizards does't want Affinity to resurface, at least not in its original form. Now the current form of Affinity is still good, but the original was backbreaking. Back in the day you either played Affinity or dedicated Anti-Affinity. 

However there are other ways to get rid of it. One really great one is to get rid of Disciple of the Vault. He states that whenever an artifact dies on your side of the field that he drains an opponent for one. Getting rid of him gets rid of the biggest and easiest way that Affinity kills its opponents. 

Second Sunrise: This is the most recent banning, and while at first I was kind of pissed off because this is one of the few decks left in modern that had less than a $200 minimum price tag. But after a few moments to simmer down I got what they didn't want. You see one of the biggest things that Wizards wants is for Modern to not be Legacy. Now what this normally means is that they don't want decks that can combo on turn 5 or earlier. But it also simply extends to certain decks just not being fun.

Seething Song: Okay, so there is this theory that Wizards hates combo decks. I personally think that this rumor is untrue... in its current form. When you change it to, Wizards hates all non-Kiki-Jiki related combo, then it becomes true. Despite the fact that U/R Storm wasn't winning any tournaments, wasn't breaking any records, wasn't even all that amazing, they still banned it. Right after I had dropped 90+ dollars on most of the deck. Screw you Wizards.

Blazing Shaol: This one unfortunately makes a depressing amount of sense. At first the only place that was planning Blazing Shaol was a, interesting no-land combo deck that used free spells. But then Infect happened. Infect is pretty dangerous as a mechanic already, so add in free pump spells like Invigorate, and of course Blazing Shaol and you have a recipe for consistent turn-two kills. 

Bitterblossom: Wizards has been known to wonder, why aren't blue players making good control decks for modern. Well I would answer because you've banned all the cards that let them do anything. I know that you were scared that Jace would do to Modern what he did to Standard but without him Blue decks have to rely on really crummy game finishers and fishing materials. And without Bitterblossom and Faeries around to keep the control and combo players in check all that will happen is Modern will become Legacy. One really good deck that everyone plays, eventually requiring the printing of a card to defeat said deck, or a banning, which you don't want. 

Wild Nacatl/Cloudpost/Punishing Fire/Green Sun Zenith: These are all cards that were banned after debuting in Modern, much to the annoyance of everyone. First off the Nacatl, yes Zoo was kind of awesome in the format, but getting rid of it seems a touch nutty. Cloudpost's banning was also really dumb, it was the deck that everyone wanted to play. Just ban the sneak attack sorcery from Kamigawa and you fix all of the problems. Punishing Fire was quickly noticed to have a particularly good combo with a certain green-red land from Future Sight, and soon got the banhammer to avoid that deck becoming the only thing anyone played.

Green Sun on the other hand I can think of no defense for. They claimed that Green Sun was "preventing diversity in green decks in the format." This is bullcrap, it encourages diversity, by allowing you to play one copy of cards that you don't have the space to play a bunch of, and still cast them. Any search card does this, especially one as undercosted as this one.

  

Dread Return/Golgari Grave Troll: Ah dredge. How nobody likes you. It is kind of funny just how many people seem to hate dredge despite the amazing amount of hate that Wizards prints for it. Think about the contrast between cards that get printed for dredge versus cards that are made against it. Now personally whether or not dredge should be playable in modern is up in the air, since it hasn't been playable in the format ever. Personally I'd say unban these two for three months, see what happens decide from that. Yes if it turns out that its harrowing then people will have to deal with it, but then again Wizards people hate the modern format regardless you may as well improve it for those who still have some faith in you.

Conclusion

The modern format is slowly turning into the next extended. Its having the life crushed out of it slowly but effectively. Whenever a new deck gets popular it is almost immediately banned from existence, forcing a boring format. The ban list needs to be gone over by some fresh eyes, to have some life breathed into this format. Come on Wizards, do some unbanning, you probably won't regret it.

Equestria girls, they are forgettable (possibly)

Okay so this is the new trailer for the upcoming movie My Little Pony: Equestria Girls.

Okay so let's go over this in the style of my other blog, STOP/GO/GAME.

Animation: There is one worry that can be thrown out. When I first saw the designs of the human mane six I panicked. One of the best parts of MLP has always been the great animation, and the original posters for this new show didn't help to soothe my fears of a quick cash-in. Thankfully from this trailer we can at least see that the animation quality is on-par, if not better, than FiM which gives me some sense of positivity. Good thing too, cause the rest of the trailer does the polar opposite...

The Humor...: Okay now some of my younger fans may be blissfully unaware of this so allow me to ruin the late 80's/early 90's for you. See there was this trend, we called it "Earth fantasy" basically all you had to do was bring a character from a fantasy kingdom to modern earth, it was a popular genre for cheap films. You didn't have to make many costumes, the script basically wrote itself as you just had points where the main character points out stupid stuff about modern earth customs, it was quite popular with films like Beastmaster 2: Through the portal of time, Hercules in New York, and Lords of Magick. They also shared one other piece of common ground... THEY ALL FUCKING SUCKED!!! They were some of the worst fantasy movies of the two decades, they were played out, unfunny, insulting garbage. And guess what type of humor is most prominent in the trailer... go on guess.

The Guy: Oh God how I wished that this wouldn't happen. How many of you want to guess that this is some kind of love interest, go on guess. Because all the teenage crowd relates too is sex and Disney romances, got to have one or the other if you're appealing to teens. Hey wait, doesn't he look like...

AHHHHHHHHHH, CAN'T GET IMAGE OUT OF HEAD, AHHHHHHHHHHHH,

Possible Chrysalis return?: I say this mostly because of the big green column of fire in the trailer, but honestly I would pay good money to see Chrysalis as a member of the Mean Girls... What does that say about me?

Who loves retreads?: One of the biggest problems that I have with this trailer is the way that it establishes no differences between itself and the main continuity aside from being set in High School, which sucks, and having them as humans. Pinkie Pie is still Pinkie Pie, which I guess was inevitable although I would've liked to see the character in a different direction. Spike is a dog, which sucks. Seriously does Hasbro hate Spike now? Like with Just for Sidekicks they turned him into a lying asshole, then 'The Episode which must not be named' happened doing further damage. Like does one of the higher-ups have something against Cathy Waseluck, because how could you, she has such a cute voice. Oh yes, and implied conflict about Twilight not having magic and having to solve a problem without it... gee haven't heard that one before now have we? (Winter-Wrap-up)

Conclusion: I was originally going to give this the benefit of the doubt. I thought that it couldn't suck, at least not completely. If there is one thing that Hasbro knows how to do its marketing, it was the only thing that they were good at in the 80's, and they haven't gotten any worse. So the only conclusion that I can draw is that the finished product resembles the trailer, which isn't very good. I want to be excited for this, and I want to be proven wrong. So come on Hasbro, work the magic that the first episode worked, make me eat my words goddammit.

Why I hate MLP:FiM season 3

Once again I will begin this by sounding apologetic, I am a huge brony, if I must use that word. I own several shirts of ponies, as well as the season 1 DVD, which somehow features cheaper menus than the ones that I made on downloaded anime back in the day. Seriously Hasbro, do you need a free copy of Vista? Because that is what I used and I have more animated main menus. Like you seriously couldn't add the opening in the middle or something? Maybe some assorted clips if you were feeling really fancy? I did pay thirty bucks for this damned thing at my local MovieStop, you could at least validate me by making the main menu not look like badly made bootlegs that I would have found in a van behind the convention center. Where was I? Oh yeah, season three.

The really good: Sleepless in Ponyville

I am going to separate this into four categories, really good, kinda good, kinda bad, really bad. With that in mind I find it pretty awful that there is only ONE classic episode this season. Now some may call that heightened expectations, but I would argue that they have managed to meet these expectations before. Season 1 gave us Stare Master, Party of One, Suited for Success, and Best night ever. Season two had Return of Harmony, Lesson Zero, and my favorite MLP episode of all time, Ponyville Confidential. Even though the third season was dealing with only half of the episode count of the previous seasons I still would've expected at least two episodes worthy of more than one watch, or at least for all the truly awful episodes to also be cut in half, but we'll get to that.

That being said, this episode is really good. It's probably in my top five of all time, and that is saying something considering the episodes that I listed above. The 'hook' of the episode is that it finally fills out the Cutie Mark Crusaders, as it gives Scootaloo, the only crusader that hadn't had her own episode yet, an episode. But the really fun part were the references to classic animation and humor, the reworking of classic horror iconography into pony, and a heartwarming story. All in all I am looking forward to more from this writer, you have given me hope good sir, please continue. 

The sorta good: Mystery Cure, Apple Family Reunion, Bad Apple, Crystal Empire 1+2

Now with every season there are the episodes that could've been awesome favorites, but just didn't go all the way for some reason. Whether it be the weird pseudo-psychology of the Cutie Mark that is explored in Mystery Cure. The sort of boring and badly paced, but still heartfelt and surprisingly rewatchable Apple Family Reunion. The genuine laughs coming from the generic plot of Bad Apple. Or the utterly failed potential and garbage villain, but surprisingly tense and well-done finale of the two Crystal Empire episodes. There were quite a few episodes that, while I don't actively seek them out, if it comes on at six in the morning before I go to work, I'l watch for a while. But then there were the disappointments.

The sorta bad: Wonderbolts Academy, The Equestria games, Just for Sidekicks, Too many Pinkies, Keep Calm and Flutter On

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to Wasted Potential theater! The problem with these five episodes is that they could've been pumped up to 'pretty good' or 'excellent' in a heartbeat, with just a little more effort. Wonderbolts Academy had kind of a hokey premise, "Hey guys what if we did an extended parody of Top Gun, but with ponies!" But that doesn't exempt it from being good, what does is a moral thats plastered in with very little subtlety, and an antagonist that barely registers. I mean yeah Sombra was pretty boring, but I can remember his name. 

The problem with Too many Pinkies is easy to decipher, it isn't funny. In a show based around comedy not being funny is pretty bad. Just for Sidekicks is one of two episodes that turned Spike from one of my favorite characters to one of my least. I mean yes you can still do the "Liar revealed" trope well, Oz: the great and powerful, but you have to work at it. And Equestria games was just confused about what it wanted to be. Did it want to be a painfully unfunny series of misunderstanding gags, did it want to be an exploration of the Crystal Empire, did it want to reveal more about Rainbow Dash and give her a few moments of actual character development? No, it wanted to do all of them in 22 minutes, and it gave no example that it could.

The really bad (Horribifuckus [tm The Nostalgia Critic]): Magic Duel, Spike at your Service

I have watched some awful stuff in my time, and yes there are quite a few episodes of this show that I would rather not watch again. But somehow, both the pandering Magic Duel, and the atrocious Spike at your Service managed to get onto my Top 5 Worst MLP:FiM episodes list. Magic Duel just struck too many wrong chords with me. Most of the humor was reliant on either attempting to create memes, which they unfortunately succeeded with, or referring to memes that already exist. Now some people, Saberspark, would probably say that its silly to worry about them trying to make us bronies happy, but I would say that is missing the point. I didn't become a brony because of the memes, I didn't become a brony because of the community that I'm now a part of, I became one because I loved the show. I didn't love the show because of what fans did with it, I loved it for being a smartly written TV show. And if they could pander to fans without losing that then I would have no problems with it. But if Magic Duel is a showcase, then we have to pick one, fan tributes, or good writing. I know what side I'm on, I don't know about you.

This is of course not even mentioning the utter horror of existence that is Spike at your Service. Now I have actually watched all of the different incarnations of My Little Pony. I watched the original 80's show, I watched Tales, and yes, I watched all of the G3 specials. This is the worst thing My Little Pony related in existence. Worse than the baby G3 stuff, worse than Rarity/Rainbow Dash from G3, worse than the My Little Pony movie, worse than all of the songs about boys from G2. Worse than it all. I despise this episode more than anything with the My Little Pony name on it that I've ever seen. It is the Michael Bays Transformers trilogy of the My Little Pony universe, only made worse by the knowledge that its by the original creators.

Conclusion

Now this isn't some "I'm leaving the fandom" rant, this is a critique. When you really love something then you have to occasionally be hard on it. When a shows creators start to dip in quality, you don't ignore it, you call them out so that they can improve. Why? Because if you really love a show then you want it to be the very best that it can be, I know that I do, what about you?

Mii + U = Wii

The WiiU is not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. Yes, it does have a rather glaring deficiency of actual games. Yes, more and more companies are avoiding releasing games on the system, even going so far as to not even attempt to come up with reasons for shunning the console anymore. But despite this I do think that the WiiU deserves more credit that. So I'm going to attempt to give a few reasons why upgrading to the WiiU might be a better idea than you'd think.

Fight the crash!

As much as most gamers would like to say otherwise we are most likely approaching another games crash. I don't think that this one will be nearly as devastating as the crash of 83' but there is always a distinct possibility. Anyways, if we want current-gen gaming to survive the coming crash then we need to support the industry, while not supporting the terrible behavior that is endemic to it. In terms of the new console generation the only console that seems to be worth picking is the WiiU. The PS4 doesn't seem to have any real improvements over the previous console, and not just in the graphics department. I'm no stickler about graphics, but really, if the improvements are completely unnoticeable then why would I spend $500 on a new console? And that isn't even getting into the horror that is the new XBOX. 

So already the WiiU is winning by default. But I do genuinely think that if anyone can survive the coming crash in their current form then it is Nintendo. As they are the one of the major three whose bottom line comes almost entirely from games, as much as I'm sure that merchandise also plays a role, Nintendo is the only one who will probably want to fight for their survival. Sony and Microsoft would take a hit from completely ditching their game-making sections but would eventually recover and stabilize, Nintendo, as they need it more, would probably stick through the hard stuff and come out okay.

History repeats itself

In recent years Nintendo consoles are treated by hardcore gamers with immediate derision upon announcement and subsequent release. This is usually regardless of overall quality, and its because of this that I find it difficult to believe when people call the WiiU "the worst thing evarrrr."When the Wii was first announced it faced a similar degree of angry consumers, and eventually that gained a decent amount of respect over the years. Besides I think that whether or not consumers are happy with Nintendo this week matters a touch less than...

Anti-Nintendoism, from developers

I am aware that this sounds relatively conspiracy theoryesque but hear me out. Imagine for a minute that you are a third-party developer, living the high life as your market is almost exclusively dominated by the PS3 and XBOX 360. You only have to make two versions of you game, one for each console, before launch. Then Nintendo comes along and wants your games on its system. The first thought that floods your mind is the uncomfortable thought of more work for you to do, which is then supplanted with thoughts of what things used to be like under prior Nintendo-ruled eras. The fact that the version of your game that goes on their console will NOT be identical to the other version, memories of their proprietary controls and disks, their higher standards for third-party involvement in the past... So what do you do? Do you accept them back into the fold, or do you essentially boycott their system? You know, make up some crap about it being 'underpowered', about how the control system won't work, about how you don't know what to do with the screen on the controller. Which of course leads me pithily to my next point...

Innovation is nice... games still matter more though

This is the long and short of it, Nintendo is probably going to be the only immediate console-maker to survive the crash. And while I will enjoy companies that I already despise like Ubisoft and EA come crawling to Nintendo wanting to be let back into the fold, and I would enjoy it more if these companies dissolved and their former members went off to form new companies, like the crash of 83'. The problem is that Nintendo cannot sustain an entire console off of first-party exclusives. So at the moment we need games for it, reasons for people besides the already converted to buy them.

Basically what I'm saying is that while forcing developers to come up with actually interesting uses of the WiiU's unique screen interface is eventually a good idea we need to start by having a game library on it. You can't just ask people to upgrade Nintendo, you need to prove to them that they are actually signing on for the next generation of consoles. And admittedly this isn't your fault, this time, to my knowledge, but it is something that needs fixing before you can consider yourselves back in the game.

Conclusion

The WiiU is a good system, currently being let down by an apathetic public and a (seemingly) hateful group of developers. These are all problems that NEED to be solved. If the we have any hope whatsoever of avoiding the next games crash then we need Nintendo. They are the only ones who treat their consumers like the ones that matter, like us having good experiences is important to them. And frankly in these times, that is more important than ever.    

Viva la Vita

I love the PlayStation Vita. I think that it is currently the best handheld gaming system out there. Now this isn't to say that I don't like the Nintendo 3DS, I do love my 3DS, I just love my PSV more. Now there are many reasons for my love of the Vita, and I'll detail that love in the coming paragraphs.

The advantages of the second analog stick

One of the main problems that plagued the original PSP was the lack of a second analog stick. The second analog stick in most games is used for camera control, so that meant that all PSP games had to either have fixed cameras, or weird camera controls. The best example for the awkward controls example is God of War: Chains of Olympus. In the original God of War the right analog stick wasn't used for camera, but was used as a dodge function. So without the right analog stick the game had you hold the L and R buttons and then use the left analog stick. This is particularly annoying since holding the L button is used to lock on, and holding the R is used for magic. This meant many a time when you dodged in random directions, or even towards a boss, when you wanted to cast magic. Or even casting magic accidentally when you just meant to dodge. 

So the return of the second analog stick is already a great thing, but it also sees the return of the second L and R buttons. The PSV has both a touch screen in front, used to cycle through menus and occasionally in gameplay, and a touch pad in the back. The touch pas acts as both L2 and R2, meaning that you can play a wider variety of Playstation Network games that require both. This also means that you can play PS1 games without having to constantly bring up the menu to change the LR buttons to the L2R2 buttons. There is also an options menu that you open by pressing a finger to the front touch screen and swiping down, which allows you to change all of the key bindings.

Putting the Cart back on the horse

Now one thing that initially drew controversy about the PSV was the lack of backwards compatibility. And trust me, I was right there with everyone, backwards compatibility is an important aspect of modern gaming, as it helps to soothe the initial lack of games at launch. This is the reason was upgrading to the Wii was easier for a lot of die hards to achieve. You could just replay all of your old GamCube games until the new installments of your favorite series was released.

Now Sony did themselves a disservice by not explaining that the reason was that the new console wouldn't be using the old UMD format. Let's just put this out there, UMD sucked. There wasn't a lot of storage space, and the damn things were to easy to break. The slightest push in the wrong place could brick a game beyond repair, something that is just inexcusable in today's market. But now Sony went back to a cartridge format, with little SD cards that hold the games. Firstly this is good because it doesn't cost a lot of memory to store a game save anymore. But this also makes them harder to break and longer lasting. Now this combined with the use of the touch screen brings the comparison to something that Nintendo would've produced, but with one small caveat...

Effective use of its potential 

Now don't get me wrong, I love my WiiU, I plan to have the next installment of this defend Nintendo's latest. But the PSV has a touch more grasp on what it can be used to do, rather than having its potential being its selling point. The WiiU gamepad could be used to revolutionize the way that game's are developed, or it could just be used as a port machine, which frankly I would prefer at this stage so that I don't have to purchase the incoming disasters of MyBox or PS4, or to use their other names $$$$. But right now no one is doing anything that wouldn't have been doable without the Game Pad.

The PSV is doing slightly more in terms of capturing its potential. Most recently the game Soul Sacrifice used the PSV touch screen to cycle through menus and the pages of the in game tome. Assassins Creed 3: Liberation uses the touch screen to change weapons. Disgaea 3 uses the back screen as another form of camera control. Basically what I'm getting at is that the developers that are playing with the PSV aren't simply doing the same thing over and over. They are using it for different purposes depending on the game.

Greater possibilities on the horizon

Considering the outstanding graphics quality as well it could be used to break the stigmas on portable ports of console games. It could actually have a similar experience to the original console port, which Sony is trying to make possible. The number of exclusives that have PS3 to PSV cross-play options is actually pretty large considering how recent the announcement that it was something the company wanted to focus on was. With a little more tweaking Sony may even be able to make it so that if you purchase the console version you can play it on both, with some kind of streaming service.

Obviously some are going to say that this is kind of naive thinking, but I believe that I have a solution. If you cross-play the game, some of the content is only available on the console port of the game. This encourages purchase of the more expensive console version but allows play on both. This also encourages online play, since it could allow people to play online regardless of which version they bought. I would love to buy a portable Blazblue, if I could also play online against the larger console player base.  

Conclusion, and preview...

Basically I think that the PSV is a fantastic piece of hardware, that I love to death. But more importantly the system represents the 'good' future of the industry. Where the social aspects of the games are there, but they ultimately serve the games. Not the games serving the social aspects, that's the wrong way. And on that note next time I would like to refer you all to the only next-generation game console that seems to want to actually be a games console.