It’s been almost a month since we’ve been to the world of Runeterra, and last time we were in the Lab experimenting with ASM… ARAM. This time, we have another new mode to tinker with in the Lab, this time called Quick Draw.

Let us test our luck and skill at improvising with the fleeting hand and limited mana at our disposal. Can we rise above our opponents with quick thinking and finesse, or will they be the ones standing when the dust settles?

In theory, I think this is a really cool mode. Each round, we draw 5 Fleeting cards at random, which means they’ll disappear at the end of the round, and gain 3 mana. Normally, 3 mana wouldn’t extend very far, but each spell comes at a significant discount, costing anywhere from 0 to 3 mana. This means that we need to maximize our mana in order to get the most value out of each hand before it goes away.

While playing on stream, I did notice a problem where my hand was frequently full of cards that wouldn’t make any meaningful impact on the board state. This left me twiddling my thumbs while my opponent was busy capitalizing on the big bombs they had lucked into. Or, as was sometimes the case, the opposite happened and I drew into the right cards to win almost immediately. Either way, it wasn’t a pleasant experience because one party blew out the other.

The ideal would be something closer to those last few matches we played, where both players are making powerful moves to swing the game back and forth in an exciting match. One lucky draw or misplay could spell the difference between victory or defeat, standing on the razor’s edge.

I would change the mode itself to make this pulse pounding match more likely. Rather, I would adjust the pool of cards available to draw, making sure that whatever cards show up in a player’s hand have the potential to make immediate splashes on the board, even if not large ones. Even if it doesn’t cost mana, it feels terrible to see one of your cards is a 2/1 with no relevant abilities, and the rest of the cards in hand are combat tricks or cost reducers, the latter of which probably don’t need to be in this mode in the first place.

Still, it’s a good experiment that could use some refining. When the stars aligned, it paved the way for some tense and explosive gameplay.

Another week, another couple of rounds of Commander with my playgroups. Yes, you read that correctly.

One of my friends who used to be in the first playgroup but needed to drop out for his new job started up another one with a few others at a time better suited to his schedule. After awhile, I was invited to join the group, and I did so gladly.

Of course, that also gives me more material for this series. I won’t go into every match I ever play. That said, as long as my stamina is up for it, I’ll write with about those matches that just need to be saved for the record books.

With my new Tuesday group, I brought out a new version of my Syr Konrad list, removing the Mindcrank combo from last time and adding in a density of creatures to get more triggers of his ability. The other players were running Xantcha, Sleeper Agent, the Gitrog Monster, and Heliod, Sun-Crowned.

I had a slow-start, but at I managed to consistently hit my land drops for most of the game. Xantcha… wasn’t so lucky. They started with 3 lands in hand, but one of them was Maze of Ith, and they rarely drew lands for the entire match despite having 37 of them in the deck. 

Aside from casting their commander onto my board, I don’t remember them actually making many other plays at all. And sadly for them, they didn’t realize that the Ayara, First of Locthwain I had on board allowed me to sacrifice her before my turn came up.

Meanwhile, Gitrog was doing the kind of thing one expects a Gitrog deck to do, after getting him out early with a Dark Ritual. And with cards like Ramunap Excavator and Scapeshift, they were able to generate quite a lot of value on board…

…especially when those lands obtained with Scapeshift include Cabal Coffers, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, and Field of the Dead. With a Retreat to Hagra, that also led to a sizeable life drain.

Life which was sorely needed, because Heliod was growing into a surprising terror. As experience has taught me, the turn 1 Serra Ascendant is no joke in Commander. Those early swings can really add up, especially when coming from a big flying creature. Fortunately, I had tools to start recouping losses even after it was gone, like Gary Asphodel with 8 devotion to black.

But the real terror came from Heliod’s synergies. He had a combination of Pristine Talisman, Alhammarret’s Archive, and Rhox Faithmender on board, which meant his life total was soaring to such extremes that the rest of us had difficulty keeping him down. My strategies was hampered briefly by his Angel of Jubilation, but I has able to give it the Tragic Slip after chump blocking a few attacks. Between his swings and my pings, the rest of the board couldn’t keep up and starting dying until it was a one-on-one between Heliod and myself.

This was where I started to reassert control of the game, because I was able to reliably accrue bodies to block with, and draw more cards the Heliod could, to the point where he had to cast Cleansing Nova to wipe both boards out just despite having more powerful pawns to lose.

Afterwards, I manage to achieve a combo of Syr Konrad and Bontu’s Monument, with Carrion Feeder as a sacrifice outlet, Pitiless Plunderer for mana, and Gravecrawler to achieve infinite cast and death triggers to melt away the rest of Heliod’s impressive life total. No matter how much life one has, it is always a finite number.

While I ultimately combo’d into a win, Heliod was top-decking at that point while I was still able to use cards like Skullclamp for card draw. Odds are I would have taken the game over just through attrition, but having the ability to finish the game off quickly just saved us all the time and heartache. That said, it’s conceivable that Gitrog could have taken over if they were luckier, or Heliod might have taken me out if I couldn’t block enough of his damage. Anything can happen in a game of EDH, so you need to watch out.

Welcome to another chapter of the Mind Games, as my friend Mathias and I continue our adventures inside Talos 1.

Today, we use Danielle Sho’s intense loathing of our brother to unlock the road to Deep Storage, arming ourselves before we blast off into the Cargo Bay before running down to the Life Support to turn the entire station off and turn it back on.

Along the way, we encounter many of the survivors left on the station, making tough choices(tm)(C)(R) that will impact both them and our remaining time on Talos 1.

And as always, thank to Sam Callahan for his work on the thumbnails for this series.

This is the segment of the game where we start to get more familiar with the rest of our cast of characters, optionally taking a moment of our time to assist them. I forgot about how close together all of these choices were, but I wonder how much of that comes from the way we’re playing the game by focusing on the main quest.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that these aren’t fairly bog-standard moral choices as far as video games go, because they are. That said, the game does a better job of presenting them than most, and players might not even be aware they’re making a moral choice in the moment. Usually, they take the form of a timed side quest that we can fail if we take too long, like in the cases of Dr. Igwe and Mikhaila. There’s always plenty of time to save them, so accidental failure is unlikely. If they die, it’s probably on purpose.

But more than that, another part of what makes it work is listening to January pontificate about the choices we’ve made and why. Whether it’s because their version of Morgan couldn’t anticipate another one of her incarnations acting with compassion, or that she was simply unable to code a sense of morality into her operator, January seems genuinely impressed and baffled by our choices to go just slightly out of our way to help the people we encounter on the space station.

The operator also makes an interesting point that our compassion might end up being wasted since we do still intend to destroy the space station. Which raises the question of whether or not it is more or less cruel to give the crew of Talos 1 that shred of hope knowing that our actions will likely lead to their untimely demise either way. Ultimately, events that have yet to occur will render this discussion point moot, but it is still something to consider.

Next time, we’ll return to Jupiter’s palace to obtain the second Arming Key as new perils unfold.

It’s been a while since we’ve engaged with the Standard meta-game here in MTG Arena. To be honest, I’d been growing bored and disinterested since it seemed like nothing even the release of Core Set 2021 did anything to shake up or otherwise change the kind of decks being played. It was still mostly Bant/Sultai Ramp, with Temur Reclamation and Mono-Red Aggro trailing right behind, just as it’s been for months now.

That all changed thanks to the recent update, banning a number of key cards that forced most of those decks out to make way for new archetypes to take the stage, while we still have the cards from the Ravnica sets and Core Set 2020 to make use of.

You can find the decklist here. 

Out of all the bans, probably the most impactful one is Teferi, Time Raveler. He the primary reason to run UW, as a strong tempo/disruption piece that can come down early and replace itself. Additionally, his passive completely nullified counter magic (and instant speed interactions), which killed tempo decks almost immediately after he was released. You might remember a couple of the times where, while playing one of the Flash decks, that the moment Teferi is resolved, I pretty much had to surrender. The entire format was warped around not having access to instants, and doing away with him pre-rotation makes it possible to play around with tools we just couldn’t before.

Wilderness Reclamation is another card than maintained relevance for an extremely long time. This was actually a piece of a combo with the Explosion half of Expansion/Explosion. We’ve actually played this deck before, and you can see the combo in action there. Even without that combo, the extra mana gained from it can make a huge difference, allowing it’s controller to safely tap out knowing they’ll still have mana available later. Obviously, the deck named after it relied on it to function, so with it being banned new decks will rise up in its place.

Growth Spiral is banned because, along with Uro, it served as the backbone for both the Bant and Sultai ramp decks that have terrorized most of standard since Theros, along with Nissa. With such a glut of these effects, it was trivial to accumulate a lot of lands/mana and use that to quickly overwhelm the opponent with a choice of powerful finishers. Usually, it would end up being a Hydroid Krasis, or Nissa herself. Getting rid of it won’t completely cripple ramp decks, but it will force them to change up their game plan and do something different.

Sadly, the last card to get banned was Cauldron Familiar, but I understand why. As I have demonstrated time and time again, this card forms a powerful combo with Witch’s Oven that forces the opponent onto a clock that will slowly kill them if they don’t stop it. This core synergy formed the foundation of many powerful decks that used Mayhem Devil and/or Korvold as win conditions, getting many triggers off each sacrifice to control the game. I’ll be sad to see it go, but I’m not surprised because it’ll likely take over the power vacuum once the other big archetypes go away, losing only a few valuable pieces in the rotation.

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Which brings us to the deck we’re playing, which is a hybrid deck using a couple of different strategies that synergize well. Cards like Burglar Rat and Yarok’s Fenlurker can be used to slowly chip away at our opponent’s hand to put them on the backfoot, especially when we double up on those types of effects using Yorion or Charming Prince.

Then, once we’ve got a collection of bodied just sitting there, we can use Doom Foretold, (the card that convinced me to play this deck because I missed Esper Dance) in conjunction with other removal pieces like Oath of Kaya and Elspeth Conquers Death to wipe out our opponent’s board to keep them down, finishing it off with either Yorion himself or Kaya, Orzhov Usurper.

I don’t think it’s a top tier deck, but it’s a fun one.

Once more, we step into a mind game. And once more, my good friend Mathias is joining me for the adventure.

After a brief adventure in the G.U.T.S. of Talos 1, we explore the Arboretum, including “Jupiter’s palace at the top of the heavens” and the greenhouse where the staff have more urgent things on their mind. Then, we explore the Crew Quarters to participate in a good tabletop role playing session while eating shockingly bad food from the station’s kitchen staff.

We also manage to beat the game… -ish.

Thanks again to Sam Callahan for his work on the thumbnails for the series.

The Crew Quarters is one of my favorite areas of the game, because of how much we learn about the people living in Talos 1 from all of the environmental details strewn about. Because of the nature of our main story quest, obtaining voice samples of Danielle Sho, most of it will focus on her and her relationship with Abigail Foy. And that’s a really touching and powerful relationship.

What I want to focus on though, is what these details reveal about Morgan and Alex Yu, since we learn a lot about who they are and how other people on the space station relate to them. Between the two of them, Morgan appears to have been more popular among the Talos 1 crew than their brother, and for good reason. 

As we talked about in the show, both of them, as the ones in charge of the space station, have the ability to pull rank and ignore certain rules and regulations as they see fit. However, they do it in different ways. Alex appears to really only pull rank in ways that obviously benefit him and him alone. While the rest of Talos 1, Morgan included, has to participate in regular physicals to stay in shape, Alex regular uses his status to avoid taking part in those exercises, presumably out of embarrassment. Additionally, he breaks the chain of command to give orders that he’s not in a position to give, like spying on potential whistleblowers and thieves. This extends to the regular psychological evaluations, which get reported back to him as well.

Meanwhile, Morgan used their rank to make life on Talos 1 easily, building custom operators like Skillet (RIP in peace) to help out the head chef despite regulations forbidding the use of custom operators. And they’re also willing to overlook Mikhaila Ilyushin’s paraplexis despite the fact that it disqualifies her from working on Talos 1.

You could argue, especially in light on what we learn of Morgan later on, that these are selfish decisions that they is making for the sake of convenience, since they make life on the space station easier overall. However, it demonstrates that they have the emotional intelligence necessary to value the crew’s morale and mental health. Aside from that, it appears Morgan stays fairly detached, observing how each member of the crew feel about both them and Alex respectively, while analyzing how useful they are around the station and what they can do in order to maintain their usefulness in the long haul.

And as this Paste article notes, Morgan’s room does a good job of acknowledging their Asian heritage, without making it a significant focus. In fact, both of their rooms are really strong cases of visual storytelling. Observant viewers would note that Morgan’s private room is almost a one-to-one recreation of their apartment from the opening of the game. (Remember, although it was a simulation, it had to be an accurate enough facsimile that Morgan couldn’t tell the different.) It  is a fully equipped workspace with a computer, workbench, and tools. But there’s also a bookshelf with a mix of practical and recreational reading, and a TV/game console combo. Alex also gets in on the environmental storytelling with a treadmill that’s covered in boxes and a globe that hides a key-card to his private escape pod underneath.

A pod that we can use to escap-*white noise*

A pod that might come in handy later. It would be cowardly to run away, after all.

Before a sign off, I want to give a shout out to NoClip, who are currently running a documentary series on Arkane Studios. In particular, they did an amazing episode chronicling the incredible opening to this game and how it came about. It’s absolutely worth your time.

Lately, I’ve been burned ever so slightly by both Legends of Runeterra and MTG Arena, but for different reasons. As I was looking for something to play instead, a friend of mine on Twitter started asking about games to play with Twitch integration. Some of the games that came to mind were ones I’ve already played on stream, like Slay the Spire and Dead Cells, but there was one that I remembered loving, but forgot had Twitch integration.

While I’ve talked about Hand of Fate a few times on the old Texture Pop podcast, I’ve never actually showed off either the original game or it’s sequel. And since the sequel allows for viewer participation, it seemed like a good idea.

(Apologies for the abysmal audio balancing on this video. I have no excuse for this one, and I should have seen how loud it was while recording.)

What I find most impressive about Hand of Fate is how well in simulates the experience of playing a tabletop adventure while still taking advantage of the digital space to do things that could not be done on pen-and-paper. And a large part of it’s success come down to the performance of The Dealer.

The Dealer serves as both our adversary and constant companion, connecting the whole experience together to better sell the scene. Every fortune is met with begrudging acknowledgement and faint praise. Every failure is responded to with snide wit and thinly-veiled contempt. While this isn’t as pronounced in the sequel as it was in the original game, shades of it still exist. I couldn’t help but feel as if I had formed a strange relationship with him through my time playing, built on a strong desire to beat him at his own game.

And by traversing this game map, forged by cards both we and Dealer have added to the deck, it truly begins to feel like playing a Dungeons and Dragons campaign led by an asshole DM who nonetheless is still trying to at least play fair so that he can feel good about destroying us.

That extends to the mechanical structure of the game. Sure, the Arkham-style combat system is nothing to write home about, but it does a fine job of being an outlet in which the other systems feed into. It’s cool to see all of the equipment we’ve acquired through our adventure attach itself to our avatar, our stamina determined by how well we’re been keeping ourselves fed and healthy.

It’s the package, when put together, that forms such a strong whole that I find endlessly compelling. I’m happy to come back to it, even after all this time.

Everyone’s had that experience where certain commanders just end up fundamentally warping the game around their abilities. Like that Lavinia, Azorius Renegade player who you just know is playing the Knowledge Pool combo or my own Marisi deck who forces the rest of the table into uncomfortable combat, these are commanders that immediately telegraph that you’re not in for a “normal” game of Commander.

Out of the three players who were in the match played, two of us were using such commanders. I was one of them, using a new flying “tribal” deck I had built around Inniaz, the Gale Force. The other game-warping commander was Zedruu, the Greathearted. And our third player had Kess, Dissident Mage as their general.

Unfortunately for Zedruu, they had problems out of the gate. By turn 3, they were already starting to miss land drops, causing them to fall quickly behind the rest of us in terms of mana. Their saving grace was that, once they managed to get their third mana source in play, they started placing pieces on the board they effectively hindered us. Cards like Meekstone, Eidolon of Rhetoric, and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale meant that both Kess and I weren’t able to be as aggressive as we would have wished.

This was particularly vexing since I had a Serra Ascendant on board and I wanted to swing in to get my life total nice and high. The other notable card, aside from Inniaz herself, that I managed to stick in this early stage of the game was my Thopter Spy Network. Thanks to the mana rocks on my board, I was able to start building up an army of flying creatures weak enough to dodge the effect of Meekstone, even when bolstered by Favorable Winds.

I also tried to cast a Moat, but Kess Disallowed it before it could resolve, with protests of “I need to be able to attack” and “most of my creatures don’t have flying”. Seems unfair to me, but what can you do?

And really, that was what Kess was doing best in this early part of the game, using removal to make their influence known. Using Chaos Warp on The Tabernacle, Deadly Rollick on my Serra Ascendant (and later Inniaz thanks to Kess’s ability), and later using a Reforge the Soul after Rifting all of our cards back to our hands to reset the game board.

Fortunately, one of the cards in my new hand was a Time Wipe, which equalized the playing field. I was able to cast my Thopter Spy Network again before Reforge the Soul was casted, letting me keep one of my most valuable pieces. That said, I was starting to fall behind, which allowed both Kess and Zedruu to make their moves and build to their end games.

Kess was by far the more visible of the two threats, creating an Army of the Damned, which neither Zedruu nor I could deal with since we were out of board wipes. Since I had already demonstrated Inniaz’s power prior, and had a Luminarch Ascension on board, those zombies naturally found their way to me. I wasn’t dead, but I was in a bad situation.

Seeing that Kess had my number, Zedruu chose that moment to unleash their own move as well. After playing their commander on the previous turn, they used the mana they had finally managed to accumulate taking the following course of action. 

First, they began by casting Illusions of Grandeur to give themselves an extra twenty life. Then, they used Zedruu’s ability to give control of it over to Kess, which meant that Kess would be the one to lose twenty life when it leaves. And finally, with Grasp of Fate, they exiled both that and my Luminarch Ascension to bring Kess down to 4 life, while I remained at 6. And while that was certain a terrifying situation, it also brought me exactly the tools I needed to keep myself in the game.

With my Spy Network in play, and a number of cheap creatures, I was ready to start swinging with Inniaz again. Kess threatened to destroy her before combat so that I couldn’t get the trigger, but I was ready for that eventuality. Not with a counterspell, or any card for that matter, but with an ultimatum.

If we were playing with webcams, I would have looked Kess dead in the eye as I told her that unless Inniaz gets an attack trigger, Zedruu had a 100% chance of winning the game before their token army had the chance to finish both her and myself off with another Illusions of Grandeur transfer. Obviously, this is something I selfishly pointed out to my benefit, but she also knew that I was telling the truth, and so my combat proceeded unhindered.

By taking control of Zedruu, handing a useless token over to Kess, and moving a zombie over to Zedruu’s board, I bought both of us another turn. Zedruu was the linchpin, allowing the deck transfer cards over to other plays to suffer their downsides. In robbing her of that piece, I bought the rest of us enough time to keep going.

At that point, my plan was to team up with Kess to at least get Zedruu down to a point where they were much more vulnerable. Sadly, thanks to a Glacial Chasm, that wasn’t to last. With no other target, I had to murder Kess, stealing a Linvala, Keeper of Silence from Zedruu in the same breath.

In the ensuing one-on-one, Zedruu tried valiantly attempted to turn the tide back in her favor, with powerful cards like Sun Titan to try to reestablish a board state. Sadly for her, I was able to scalp those cards by switching them for thopter tokens. The coup-de-grace was when I used that same Sun Titan to resurrect a Remorseful Cleric, which prevented them from ever trying to bring back their combo pieces with the Hall of Heliod’s Generosity they had access to. Between that and the increasingly difficult cumulative upkeeps of Glacial Chasm and the Illusions of Grandeur they destroyed Grasp of Fate for, there was no chance.

Between Inniaz and Zedruu, that was such an interesting, awkward, and well played game for all three players. Although I managed to achieve a strong enough hold in the end to win, the pendulum could have easily swung in any number of directions. As I write this, I’m still somewhat shocked that I wasn’t taken out the other player, but sometimes that’s just how the wind blows if you know how to take advantage of it.

Jumpstart is one of the innovative and interesting formats I’ve seen the designers at Wizards of the Coast come up with. This weird hybrid format, combining the focus of pre-constructed decks with the variety that comes from a Limited format like Draft or Sealed.

Though boxes of it are hard to come by and too expensive when they are, largely due to Covid-related manufacturing issues, a version of it has come to MTG: Arena for us to play in the meantime. Is this new way to play all it’s cracked up to be? Or is Jumpstart dead in the water?

Let’s find out.

Each Jumpstart pack contains 20 cards, including lands, that all fit a singular theme. By combining the contents of any two of the packs, a deck of 40 cards can be created, fully playable without any need on the player’s part to sift through the contents of those packs to build their own brew with what they have. The Professor at Tolarian Community College goes into greater detail, but the idea is that new and veteran players alike can “Jumpstart” their game by opening a few packs, jamming them together and getting straight to the gameplay.

And this concept largely works. While come themes are clearly a bit stronger than others, all of them have the potential to both hold their own and synergize with other themes in the set. The addition of the Thriving lands for mana fixing help alleviate the problem of mana screw that players could otherwise experience in a set like this, and even two wholly unrelated themes can still win games.

A lot of pre-constructed products have a problem where they result in extremely slow games, as a combined result of many high-CMC cards and lands the ETB tapped. Thankfully, in the hour of game I played, this didn’t seem to be an issue. I was almost always starting to make meaningful plays by turn two. There’s even a decent suite of combat tricks and removal to allow for very interactive gameplay and creative combos.

Overall, I hope this is a mode that stays in Arena long term. It might have even persuaded me to look for a box myself once production evens out and prices return to reasonable levels.

I can’t believe I haven’t played this one on stream yet, especially since it’s one that I never tire of. Arkane Studio’s Prey is one of, if not the, most criminally underappreciated and undersold games of 2017.

Where Dishonored and it’s sequels derive heavily from the Thief franchise that game before it, Prey drinks from the same well as System Shock did. In all but name, this is the closest we’ll get to System Shock 3 until the actual System Shock 3 exits development hell.

It is my hope that by the end of this series, you will come to love this game the same way I do, if you haven’t already.

Credit to Sam Callahan for providing the thumbnail.

As I said while recording during the stream, this is one of the best opening sequences I have ever seen in a video game. So much groundwork is being laid to establish and set up threads, both in terms of the overarching story and the abilities we will gain access to over the course of the game, that I can’t help but be in awe at the work that must have gone into it.

The opening simulation, complete with helicopter ride and fake elevators to get into the test chamber, culminates in a fantastic moment where we have to literally step through the Looking Glass (which is both a very unsubtle literary reference and a cool nod to Looking Glass Studios). But more than that, it helps establish what will become a vital plot point for the story that follows: The process of uninstalling Neuromods erases all memories from after it’s installation. Erasing the neural connections established by Neuromod can only be done by wiping out the memories and experiences built on top of it.

That’s before we get into the double duty of the three tests that we undergo in the facility. When playing through the game for the first time, these segments are perfect for helping a new player familiarize themselves with the basic control scheme. Most of it is standard stuff, but it can be helpful even for people with immersive sim experience to reestablish their muscle memory. They’re all simple tasks, with no time limit on how long players can take.

And yet, these same tests take on a whole different meaning on a repeat playthrough, when we’re already aware of the existence of the Typhon and the incredible powers they possess: Powers which the Talos 1 researchers are attempting to install into humans. Each of these tests were designed to test one of these powers. The three boxes, which we use to learn how to pick up objects in the world, we supposed to be used to test the Typhon power to generate an anti-gravity field. The chair we hid behind was something we were supposed to mimic in order to blend in with the scenery. And lastly, the button on the other side of the wall we learned to jump over was meant to be manipulated telekinectically from a distance. Without us knowing, the game has already previewed abilities that we may or may not acquire for our own as we explore the space station.

To top it off, we head back to our office, guided by the ghost of our past self, from before the mind wipe, established yet another important back of the story: What does it mean to be “you”? The final questionnaire hints at this, but every time Morgan Yu finishes with an experimental Neuromod and gets their memory reset, they don’t come it the same way they went in. Their personality changes in ways both subtle and overt. And as a result, we need to ask the question of who the “real” Morgan Yu is, assuming such a concept even applies anymore.

Get ready, because as this series continues we’ll be sure to enter into a Mind Game. It’s time to see how deep down the rabbit hole we can delve.