EDH / Commander play

One of the aspects I like about playing Magic: The Gathering (MTG) is playing the cards in combination with each other for interesting effects and outcomes, and the social play. I do like playing competitively, but I really enjoy play in a relaxed atmosphere, where each person has enough time (and life points) to be able to get some combos out, before the game grinds to a halt due to someone winning. One on one is fine, but it is much more social and fun playing in a group, where alliances can be forged in one turn, only to dissolve in another.

One sub-game of MTG is attempting to address that - called Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH), or as it is better known now MTG Commander. The rules can be found on-line, or in the main website, but in summary:

• You have 100 single (no duplicate except for basic lands) cards in your deck including your commander card
• The deck has to be in the same colour as your commander's colour/s
• The commander must be legendary
• Your commander starts off in a "commander zone" and stays there until it is ready to be cast - it does not add to your hand total
• It costs more every time your commander dies to cast it out of the commander zone
• You have 40 life (instead of the 20 you get in a normal game), but if you sustain 21 or more points of damage from a single commander, you loose
• Games take longer - not the 25 minutes a normal game may take, but closer to an hour
• You are encouraged to make up more rules to add more fun to the game

Getting together 100 cards is a lot to ask for, especially if you are new-ish to the game, so to assist, the guys at Wizards (developers of MTG) came out with preconstructed Commander decks - with oversized cards for the deck's commander. Those decks (with their mana colours) are:

1. Heavenly Inferno (white, black, red deck)

2. Mirror Mastery (blue, red, green)

3. Counterpunch (black, green, white)

4. Political Puppets (red, white, blue)

5. Devour for Power (green, blue, black)

Each deck's checklist can be found on the wizard site, or you can find the entire card list for the MTG Commander set on Gatherer.

Along with that, I also got some sleeves, and storage boxes:

Since I am new to this format, I have not had a huge opportunity to playtest the different sets. I will be able to give a better indication over time, but I will leave that to another articles. My thanks for allowing me to put all this together goes to:

• Maelstrom games - for great prices of the actual decks themselves
• George Raymo Toys - for the blue sleeves (sent in bulk to save on shipping)
• CCG Magic Central - for the storage boxes (sent in bulk to save on shipping)
• Good Games Melbourne - for the oversized sleeves

Lastly, I have noticed some people actually constructing commander decks by hand, and doing this all in one colour. It limits the possibilities you have, but if you can get the cards you need, you can be very annoying for other opponents. Think of an Erayo's Essense (the flipped side of the card) as your commander, and then playing an Arcane Laboratory - hence locking out your opponents from casting regular spells. It would make you very unpopular, very fast.

Typing speed (or lack of it)

I have never been a good typer. I make many mistakes and I sometimes have to look at the keyboard. I never have taken a course for typing, but it has been something I have picked up from the many years I have spent working with a computer and a keyboard. I now have some measure of what I can accomplish when it comes to typing:



WPM Test

Your Typing Speed is 41 Words Per Minute.
You typed 2 incorrect words.
Your gross typing speed is 43 words per minute.
Your accuracy is 95%.

Anyone out there any faster? Click on the link to test yourself, and I welcome all "braggers"...

Burn, Chewie, Burn!

Along the lines of a previous post of Cheap Slivers Premium Deck, I found the Fire & Lightning Premium Deck at the Dungeon of Magic (located in the Royal Arcade, Bourke Street Mall, Melbourne City). This all relates to the game Magic: The Gathering (MTG).

In the same way the Slivers deck was cheaper than what I have seen before, the Fire & Lightning deck was also cheaper than I have seen before - being $30. In case you are wondering what the package looks like, here it is:
This led to an interesting revelation from Chewie. I was buying some cards to top up my deck when he accused me of cheating (while we were in the store).

I asked him "Why?"

He responded by saying I should have used my (customized) Kamigawa ninja deck as it was. I told him I built it myself by merging some pre-constructed decks with some of my own ideas. At this point is where the revelation struck Chewie - the game / deck is fully customizable to the way you want to play it. He tried to make an argument that I should have played the deck as it was (again). I said I could not as it has already been altered. At this point, the store attendant suggested to Chewie that he could also customize his game by purchasing some of the products he had for sale.

So, to be "fair" until Chewie gets a better understanding of the game, I will use either the Fire & Lightning deck or the Slivers deck on him "out of the box". Any other suggestions on how to be fair?

A carton of Quai54s

In a follow up to Quai54s, here is an image of the shoes before I disposed them:

I only took this picture, as I rarely buy the same shoe more than twice. I have bought some of my favorite shoes, in quantities of two, as I find myself liking an item (and this does not directly apply to shoes), then finding out a few years later on that I would like another item, but they no longer produce them.

In the case of this particular shoe, I was far from impressed by it. I do not appreciate the look for the Air Jordan V, and I did not like the colour scheme employed by this shoe. If other people like this shoe's look, then that is fine with me too. I do not have an issue with that - I will not judge or discriminate against your tastes or choices. This particular shoe is not the shoe for me.

Cheap Slivers Premium deck for MTG

I have been on hiatus from playing Magic: The Gathering (MTG) for a few months. Jarvo is busy doing what he's doing, and KittyKat has lost interest in playing with her current deck, and finds no time to make up a new one. Step in Chewie.

Chewie asked me about the game a few weeks ago, and I finally dug up some decks I have played with. One is my usual deck (blue and black ninjas), and the other is KittyKat's deck (with the annoying Chaos Confetti strategy). Chewie did not have a deck, so we went off to the Dungeon of Magic (located in the Royal Arcade, Bourke Street Mall, Melbourne City) to pick up a starter pack for himself.

That is where I stumbled upon this:

This is the MTG Slivers Premium Deck (click on the link to have a look at the card list). When it was first released in Australia, it retailed for $55. Currently on ebay.com you can find them from $40 and upwards - and that does not take into account shipping. The price at Dungeon of Magic is $30. That is a brand new box - not second hand. You can find about 3 or 4 of the cards in there that sell singly for around $10. This is great value, and if you play MTG, do pop on in to take advantage of this special.

As for the future, when Chewie gets up to speed, I'll blog about some of the games we have.

Is Nike toying with their sneaker buyers?

This article is not about a particular shoe, but more about getting shoes in Australia. When I'm referring to shoes, I am specifically referring to sports shoes - usually from Nike, and sometimes from Adidas, that are released in some parts of the world, but not in Australia.

To sum it up - "it's pathetic that Australia gets ignored for certain shoe releases". I currently have a appreciation and a hatred for the shoe resellers. I'm mainly talking about the people that camp out in front of shoe stores when certain limited releases occur, and buy shoes only to sell them later for a marked up profit.

Take for example, the Air Jordan XIII - Ray Allen PE. This shoe retailed for USD$175 in the United States of America. Apparently there were stories that it was going to be a limited release of around 2561 shoes - to coincide with the 3 point record breaking of Ray Allen. People camped out for this shoe, and in some cases, 4 days in advance. I would like to have this shoe, being a long time supporter of the Boston Celtics, but I am not willing to pay the $500+ prices that some people are trying to charge for this shoe. I have even seen in some ebay entries prices of $1100+. This is totally insane.

While these resellers make a massive markup on these types of shoes, the unfortunate truth is that sometimes, being in Australia, you have to deal with them to get shoes that the major sports goods companies do not bring over here.

Something else I would like to make a note of is the amount that has been released. Initially the shoe was set to release in Miami and Boston only. Then it released in some European shoe stores. Then it released in Hong Kong. For such a limited release, it has had a very international market. From my rough calculations, there is still around 1800+ shoes that have not been accounted for. I hope that Nike is going to release these shoes in Australia, in the similar fashion that the Quai54s were originally a Europe-only release, that saw its way to Melbourne.

Otherwise,

WANTED:

• 2 x size US 11 Air Jordan XIII (13) - Ray Allen PE 414571-125
• 1 x size US 8 Air Jordan XIII (13) - Ray Allen PE 414571-125

Shipped to Melbourne, Australia.

All reasonable offers for sale will be considered!

Air Jordan V Quai54s

Art is associated with beauty, and as the saying goes "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Art has a component of the subjective in appreciating it. This can also translate over to design. I have never been a big fan of all the Air Jordans that have come out, but I thought I would give these a chance to grow on me, being the Air Jordan V Retro - Quai 54.

I do have a pair of Air Jordan Is, VIs, a few VIIs, a XI, a few XIIIs, a 2009, a 2010, and a few 2011s. I am interested in getting some more, but the Vs were never apart of that interest.

There are essentially two versions of this shoe made for the Quai54 (a street basketball tournament that is usually held in Europe) - a white version (as shown below in the images), and a friends / family release being a black pair. The black pair is limited to around 50 to 60 pairs. This article is about the white pair, which was somewhat of a general release. These were initially going to be a Europe-only release, but for one reason or another, they found their way to Melbourne, Australia.

The shoe is a high quality leather Air Jordan V. The "23" on the outside heel is replaced by the Quai54 logo, but the rest of the shoe appears to remain true to the originals (with the exception of the word "Jordan" replacing the word "Nike" on the bottom of the outsole). The tongue is made out of 3M reflective material, which was initially designed to reflect camera flashes when photographers would take pictures of Michael Jordan in the motions of making a dunk. Quality was good, as the paint work appeared to be in the right areas, as well little to no excess glue found on the shoe where it was not supposed to be.

I cannot comment on how they feel as I never wore them. They were not very endearing for me (and I know this is opposed to the current opinion of them), so I decided to dispose of the shoes, but not before I took some pictures:

These shoes were obtained from the Footlocker on Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. If you would like to obtain them, you can try the Dead Stock Society web site - as the guys there may have some different sizes still in stock.