How I met my minis

Let me tell you about Mageknight.

It was 2002. Pat and I decided to get into Mageknight. Back in those days, XP still was more of a hobby shop than a PC cafe. Greenhills had not yet been razed, and there were still hobby stores on the fourth floor for card and plastic freaks. Me, Pat and my brother would go to Arena and stare for hours at the shelves full of little plastic minatures. At first, our priority was just to get a playable army as cheaply as possible, so we happily bought anything that was cheaper than 2 pesos per point. This is pretty much the same as deciding to buy cheap Magic cards with high casting costs. It gave the result you would expect: armies full of bad, overcosted figures. But back then, it didn't matter so much to us, as long as we got to play. Most of the time we would just hang out at UP. Between my Quantum Physics and her Instrumentation classes, we'd go behind the CS library for privacy and pit Troll agains Werewolf, Tree Elemental against Steam Golem.

After a while, we did end up playing competitively. I'd spend a lot of my online time on the old MKRealms forums, buying cheap singles. We bought Dragons and Giants. Played 2000 point armies. Pat actually paid for and managed her own collection, playing in tournaments with more cutthroat armies than I did.

Unfortunately, the problem with Mageknight were obvious even then. Ranged units were priced only slightly higher than melee units, even if in practice, the melee units would get shredded before they ever got close. Turtling was superior strategy; it was not uncommon in tournament games for time to be called without a single attack. Internal playtesting was a joke. It seems that Wizkid's solution to the dominance of long range was to make even longer ranges. Bigger, and bigger, and bigger.

It all came to a head when they released a new base set, named simply Mage Knight, known colloquially as 2.0. We were given a choice: Play a better game, but know that all of your old figures are obsolete, dead plastic. Or, quit, take your figures home, and never buy new product again.

We quit.

Racial Tensions

[Magic]

I really like Tribal. I like the synergy and combat, much much more than 5-color goodstuff decks (hence my antipathy towards Alara block as a whole). It wouldn't be a stretch to say that one year after, Lorwyn is my favorite Magic block - the organic evaluations in limited, the tribes of constructed, the semi-classical setting.

Over the holidays, I made decks for the eight races of Lorwyn block. The goal was not to make finely tuned winning machines, but to make decks that were fun and balanced to play against each other - good fillers for boardgame night.

Last week, I got to try them out with Cels, Jem and Pat. I'm happy that everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, even if the decks needed more tuning - although part of that is because two headed giant plays pretty differently from 1v1. (As an aside: Pat loves 2HG)

Let's Magic!

The Pit

It's easy to order things online.

Too easy.

Shit like that is why I don't want to have a credit card, really.

Never gets old

I love the mountains,
I love the clear blue skies
I love big bridges
I love when great whites fly
I love the whole world
And all its sights and sounds
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da
I love the oceans
I love real dirty things
I love to go fast
I love Egyptian kings
I love the whole world
And all its craziness
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da
I love tornadoes
I love arachnids
I love hot magma
I love the giant squids
I love the whole world
It's such a brilliant place
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da

2008 - In Review

What did 2008 bring for me? Well, a lot, I guess. This post turned out to be longer than I thought it would be. To be honest, half this stuff I've already mentioned here over the course of the year. However, like a low-budget sitcom episode where you have flashbacks from previous episodes, I will dare to repeat myself: I feel that putting everything together in one post will put things in perspective.

WoW
December 2007, I started playing WoW with Pat. I continued to play for the first several months of 2008, grinding my shaman Foluzar up to the mid-60s. My interest petered out at that point, and I stopped playing WoW for a while.

Harvest
I was also the OM IT Row Leader for Japan Harvest. In truth, half the time I had no idea what I was doing, and I spent a lot of extra time running around just to make sure things went right on the project. Harvest finished with an excellent cutover though, so in the end I can say that I picked up a lot of good experience from this.

Singapore
One particular high note in the Harvest was spending a month working in Singapore. At first I was hesitant, because it meant the uncertainty of travelling alone and the sadness of leaving Tesla and Pat behind. It worked out great though, particularly with HP paying for the trip. I didn't get to save any of the pocket money, but I got a lot of books, comics and food out of it.

Obama
One of the things that took up a lot of my mindspace was Obama's election. I read Dreams from my Father a couple of years ago, and felt a connection. I watched Obama as he struggled through the primaries and the general, savored each victory and raged at each loss. Obama made me believe the crazy idea that maybe there are a handful of people out there who are genuinely interested in making this thing work. I despair at the thought of trying to find honest men in the fetid swamp of Philippine politics, but for Hope, I'll give it a shot.

Loss
Speaking of filth, my wallet was stolen this year, at the Luzon bus stop/overpass. Huuuge loss. Ironically, I went home early that day because I was feeling sick; now I actually feel safer commuting late at night.

Boardgames
On the lighter side, 2008 also brought Boardgames. Celsus already had a huge bunch of Settlers of Catan, but finding Gamecrab introduced us to a plethora of board games, most of them good. Puerto Rico was the runaway hit from our first play (although the lack of random/expandable elements stops it from being highly replayable). From Po's shipment, I got a bunch of other games too. Carcassone is pretty, simple, and easy to get into, while having it's own subtle grace. Blue Moon City was enjoyable the first few times I played it, but unfortunately I never got around to playing with my copy yet! San Juan has a superficial resemblance to Puerto Rico, but is a good game in it's own right; unfortunately it's overshaowed at the office by the very similar Race for the Galaxy. I really wanted to buy Descent, but the NG price increase stopped me. In the end, I'm glad Arnold bought it, because it's much more suited to the Ameritrash crowd at work - Descent really has issues with downtime and game length. I'm looking forward to 2009 and the new games that it will bring in.

Essential X-Men
I've always loved the X-Men, and when I saw these books in Singapore, I had to have them (I was flush with my per diem, after all). They're just in black and white, but this is truly the good stuff.

TF Animated
Transformers Animated was released this year, meaning a new show and a new line of toys. The cartoon is pretty decent, although around half the episodes are fluffy filler. The toys had the same clean, stylized look of the show, directly contrasting with the fiddly look from the movie. The style makes it doubly wonderous that they transform so well. I bought a bunch of these, and they're just great. I should take some pics.

Busou Shinki
A cute little toyline that's fun to play around with and display. Well, I guess it's not a time sink, really, but I spend a solid chunk of cash on this, so in the list it goes.

LEGO
One of my bigger hobbies this year, I actually started on Lego because Pat asked me to look into it. Good thing, too: this means Pat pays for half the stuff, which is a rare bonus. A thoroughly enjoyable toy experience, in a year that I got with a lot of toys. Only downside is, the price difference between the US SRP and the local prices are so huge, we ended up ordering a lot online - an activity whose timing disrupts my spending patterns.

Ikariam
This browser based game takes just a few clicks at the start and end of each day, but still it's pretty engaging. Honestly, I can't believe I'm still playing this. It must be that good.

Other Games
The DS is still going strong, although I tend to play 10 minuite games now (like Layton, N+ and Ninjatown), instead of playing RPGs (I am sure I blame WoW for this). As for card games, well, nobody plays the WoW TCG anymore, and while Magic started strong with Morningtide, I stopped being interested after that. Considering that the office is a full proxy environment, that's a bad sign.

WoW: WotLK
Did I already mention WoW? Well, I'm going to mention it again, because when Wrath of the Lich King released this November, everyone scrambled to upgrade... myself included. With a brand new Death Knight on a new server (Dark Iron), I might actually hit cap this time.

Onwards!

King's Castle Siege

King's Castle Siege is the largest set in Lego's current Castle lineup, with 973 bricks, divided into 7 parts. We got this off Amazon for 100 USD.

The first part is just the minifigs. There are 6 human and 4 skeleton minifigs, and a horse and dragon. Three of the skeletons aren't minifigs in the traditional sense; they're just made of specialized bricks. The humans all have unique faces, and there's more than enough weapons for everone, not even counting the extra weapons found in the actual castle.

The dragon is pretty huge, a lot bigger than it looked on the box. It's built from several large parts, which gives it a decent amount of articulation, with some particularly good range on the head and neck. There's four studs on the back for a minifig to ride, and there is in fact some construction used to attack the wings, but it would be a stretch to call this brick built. The result is a bit duplo-ish, but overall it does look quite good.

The second section is the front gate. There's some playable features here: a drawbridge that you can lift using a lever and chains, and a portcullis that you can drop by pulling out its support. Note also the technic pins and holes at the bottom; this is how each part of the modular design attaches to each other.

The third section is a pair of towers. There's some nice detailing here: small catapults, flags, shields, torches. There's space for minifigs on top of the tower, and also inside the tower, perhaps to shoot out throught the arrow-slits.

The fourth section is a simple wall. There's a large catapult on a rotating platform, and a weapons rack with two swords and a spear, in case those minifigs want extra weapons.

The fifth section is a wall and tower. Another play feature here: part of the wall can be pushed in. You can also see that the top floor has a small jail cell.

The sixth and seventh sections are the rear gate and the king's tower, respectively. The rear gate has a neat double door, but is otherwise unspectacular. The king's tower has a lot of shiny parts, a golden sword, treasure chest, and throne. It even has a sniper's post up on top! It is pretty airy though, being supported by arches instead of walls.

Overall, it's a pretty nice set. It's mostly built with regular bricks, so it's easy to modify if you have extra parts (explaining why some people end up buying multiples of the set). And I'd say it's justified! If you're just going to get just one Castle set, it had better be this one.

Manila Papers

We went to Komikon 4 this weekend, at Bahay ng Alumni. Going in, I made it a point to really set aside a budget for this; still, it's a little hard to take a plunge on the very indie ones. I did end up spending a lot of money though, and I guess that makes this a success for me!

One highlight would be Zsa zsa Zaturnnah, with a personalized autograph for just 200 php.

Another good one is Elmer, which is a well written SF story about chickens gaining intelligence en masse.

Haven't gone through the rest yet. I'll get back if anything is particularly good.