I mean, I say pretty much whatever I am thinking at the time; and maybe unlike other people I change my mind about things fairly often (based on learning, new knowledge, and so on). For example I didn’t like Sensei’s Divining Top at the beginning… But after some soul-searching, later the same year Patrick Sullivan expressed disappointment in me that I had gone from “the premiere topless deck designer†to, whatever, another Top-jockey.
Unlike many other people I consider myself flexible and am willing to change my opinion on things, hopefully, in the effort of improving as a person.
So the one thing I wanted to point out is that in this Top 8 Magic Podcast I said that I made a deck that “beats everything†… Before getting into the meat of this blog post I wanted to address what I mean by that.
For sake of argument say you had a deck that has 55% win expectation against every deck in the field. From the position of who beats what, this deck technically “beats everything†… But what is the win expectation of a player in an eight-round tournament?
4-4
Does this deck have superior win expectation to, say, every other deck in the field?
I don’t know. CawBlade variants have an above average win expectation as well. This has nothing to do with the fact that the 55% deck does in fact “beat everything†(in a sense). And I’m not saying that the MWC deck that I was referencing has a 55% win expectation per se; just using that number to make a simple argument.
Now I said on the big Twits that I would post an 11th-hour blog post before tomorrow’s National Qualifiers.
I wrote about my Mono-White Control deck in today’s Flores Friday on StarCityGames.com. Out of respect for Star City I am not going to reprint the deck list here; however I will address sideboarding with the MWC.
This is the sideboard I was playing with most recently in this week’s videos:
2 Contagion Clasp
1 Tumble Magnet
4 Baneslayer Angel
2 Celestial Purge
2 Day of Judgment
4 Kor Firewalker
That said, I pretty much just crammed in a bunch of cards that I liked that I couldn’t fit into the main deck and called that the sideboard. That is lazy sideboarding, though; so hopefully in the context of this blog post we can make some amount of incremental improvement.
If you want the MWC deck list (and to learn the frankly hilarious story behind it), I encourage you to pop the $.15 or whatever it costs to read over at Star City, here:
The approach we are going to take to refine the sideboard will be a bottom-up approach instead of a top-down. I asked the Indomitable Twitter Army to give me the five decks they were most interested in beating, and the answers are more-or-less these:
U/W CawBlade
DarkBlade
RUG
Valakut
RDW
U/W CawBlade
Summary: U/W CawBlade has the advantage of being able to play two different games. It has an initiative-based game based on Stoneforge Mystic + Sword of Feast and Famine, and can also win a long game with Jace, the Mind Sculptor + Gideon Jura.
MWC has the ability to keep even and trade during the first ten or so turns of the game, matching Stoneforge Mystic and Squadron Hawk. You can possibly win or lose the game at this stage mostly depending on whether or not you hit your lands. This is a point in the game where Preordain really shines; and MWC ain’t got no Preordain. Luckily you have a good number of lands.
Unfortunately I have relatively little experience playing against a Sword of Feast and Famine + Mortarpod configuration of CawBlade (tons against people who are just going and getting Swords), so I can’t speak to an opponent who is primarily using his guys to keep you from equipping Sword of Feast and Famine to a Squadron Hawk.
Presuming your opponent is primarily trying to hit you with a Sword, you can either chump (presuming you are doing something proactive going the other way) or trade (ideally), or lean on your artifacts. For example, getting your Contagion Clasp and / or Tumble Magnet is going to be desirable at this stage.
Let’s assume that you live past the first few turns, and the initial Royal Rumble of small creatures. The typical CawBlade deck only has eight dudes, and you can catch them with a big Day of Judgment or All is Dust to remove the opponent’s swordsmen, hampering their long-term with Sword of Feast and Famine. So let’s talk about the Planeswalker phase.
Basically you can attack their Planeswalkers to death or catch them with All is Dust. You have to be a bit wary about when you are tapping out. It is often desirable to sit back and let them ‘walk you in exchange for powering up Everflowing Chalice with Contagion Clasp so that you can pay 2, 3, or 5 mana on an All is Dust. Luckily, once you are out of the initial 1/1 and 1/2 battling, the opponent’s actual ability to close out games is not at hyperspeed.
What sucks?
Nothing sucks completely. All your cards have at least some utility.
I think there is tension around Wall of Omens and Survival Cache because those cards presumably draw you into lands. However they, along with Wurmcoil Engine, fall into a not-bad but not-optimal bucket.
One thing to consider about Wall of Omens is that a Wall of Omens will contain just a Stoneforge Mystic + Sword of Feast and Famine (i.e. there is no matching Squadron Hawk). Another thing to keep in mind is what your curve is at. If the opponent doesn’t have some kind of legitimate creature removal, Baneslayer Angel is actually quite a bit better than almost anything else, provided you aren’t being demolished by Tumble Magnets.
Expedition Map probably seems a bit odd as we are taking out a colorless creature, but you want another land (ideally for Eye of Ugin) as you are upping curve.
DarkBlade
Summary: Darkblade is actually just a better CawBlade against you. Your Tectonic Edges are a bit stronger and your special lands are a bit stronger as they have less Tectonic Edge action, but Inquisition of Kozilek is spectacular against you.
To be honest, despite a good record against CawBlade in aggregate, I have struggled more with DarkBlade with MWC.
I would leave in Wurmcoil Engine because it is quite good against Go for the Throat, and Baneslayer Angel isn’t. Contagion Clasp is pretty good here as Hawk suppression early, and of course the card is too good with Tumble Magnet.
RUG
Summary: RUG is a powerhouse cross-strategy deck. It includes explosive mana from Lotus Cobra, sheer power from Jace, the Mind Sculptor, an aggressive man-land, and equal Blue supplementation equal to CawBlade.
The most important thing is to keep from being blown out by Lotus Cobra. If you are playing a fair game, you are going to win. Tumble Magnet is good against Raging Ravine, and to a lesser extent, Inferno Titan… But honestly, who cares? You need to tap Primeval Titans but just taking damage isn’t a huge deal for you. Additional consideration is Precursor Golem, and Tumble Magnet is not very good against that card.
Obviously ever Contagion Clasp in your collection is in. Day of Judgment is arguably better than All is Dust in this matchup because of Precursor Golem. I would play to keep from getting blown out and try to win a long game, as if you can keep from auto losing to their Top 10 paradigm-warpers Jace and Lotus Cobra, your long game is actually superior.
-1 Tumble Magnet
-4 Survival Cache
+2 Contagion Clasp
+1 Expedition Map
+2 Day of Judgment
Survival Cache is iffy in this matchup due to being kind of awful as a mid-game topdeck against Inferno Titan or Avenger of Zendikar (and can even be goofy against Lotus Cobra + Lightning Bolt). You need the Expedition Map to make up for it.
Valakut
Summary: Valakut can be customized in any number of ways. There is a huge difference between playing a Summoning Trap deck with Lightning Bolts and even Pyroclasms main and a turbo turbo version with Green Sun’s Zenith, Lotus Cobra, and no creature suppression but Tumble Magnet; especially early game. The possibilities on blowouts are so swingy, and whether or not your little dudes survive (or you can sneak in with an Inkmoth Nexus) varies grandly. That said, the most important thing is to contain Primeval Titan. That’s it. That guy either beats you outright or finds a bunch of copies of Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and that onetime Top 10 card beats you. If you can contain Primeval Titan, you can fight Valakut heads up with Tectonic Edge, and again, your long game is simply superior.
This configuration presumes the Lotus Cobra version, which seems to be more popular (Contagion Clasp for Cobra, Tumble Magnet for Primeval Titan, Expedition Map for Tectonic Edge):
-4 Survival Cache
-1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
-1 Wurmcoil Engine
+2 Contagion Clasp
+1 Expedition Map
+1 Tumble Magnet
+2 Day of Judgment
RDW
Summary: Don’t die. This one is yours to win. Goblin Guide + Kabira Crossroads is a sick combo!
-4 All is Dust
-1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
-1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
-1 Eye of Ugin
-3 Stoneforge Mystic
+1 Tumble Magnet
+3 Baneslayer Angel
+2 Celestial Purge
+4 Kor Firewalker
Overall strat is to side out all the expensive cards, focus on cards you can cast as long as you are not manascrewed, and crush with color hosers and life gain.
Weird pull here (which you wouldn’t make against Boros, say) is Stoneforge Mystic. Swords are still gas, especially if you apply one to a Kor Firewalker, but spending a bunch of mana in the hopes of being blown out by a Searning Blaze is loose at best.
In sum, I think I’d cut a Baneslayer Angel for an Expedition Map.
LOVE
MIKE
Post Script: The “Modern†MichaelJ Model
The MWC deck is viable according to the “old†paradigm of deck design; that is, you should play it (if you are going to play it) because “it beats everything†(supposedly). However longtime readers (or should I say followers of this blog) know that my current paradigm, that is the paradigm I used to build Naya Lightsaber, qualify with Grixis Hits, and so on know that I currently build by trying to play the most Top 10 cards possible.
MWC has a fair number of Top 10 cards (overall #2 card Stoneforge Mystic, Squadron Hawk, Tectonic Edge, and arguably Tumble Magnet); but clearly it lags CawBlade’s Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Mana Leak; and Preordain.
If I don’t play MWC, I will play U/G Genesis Wave, as encouraged by Josh Ravitz and Brian David-Marshall. This would be my deck list:
sb:
4 Tumble Magnet
3 Wall of Tanglecord
4 Spreading Seas
4 Obstinate Baloth
U/G Genesis Wave plays a fair number of Top 10 cards (certainly more than MWC)… Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Primeval Titan; Lotus Cobra; Tectonic Edge (and arguably Spreading Seas and Tumble Magnet). That said, it certainly gives up Mana Leak and Preordain.
The U/G Genesis Wave deck has plenty of very good cards but actually exists at a crossroads. It is a “modern†designed deck from one standpoint but also leans on MWC’s advantage (U/G is actually the best deck in the format both against other Jace decks and other Titan decks). On balance, MWC basically never loses to bad decks, whereas U/G is traditionally somewhat soft to Boros or Kuldotha Red (argh on that one).
So for those of you looking for the U/G Genesis Wave deck, that is the current listing.
Most of the time generalizations that start with “always” or “never” are to be avoided. There are very few true always and never situations in the real world.
As a general rule, though, I would suggest to aspiring Magic: The Gathering writers to never apologize for their work.
This comes as a reaction to the forums from World of Wefald – Kibler’s Extended Darling. Some forums denizens are complaining about Wefald’s latest article (a Frank Karsten-esque review of MTGO Extended performance). Personally, I quite liked it.
In particular I loved this quote, Wefald musing around the performance of certain tribal themed strategies:
“Really…? Elves and Faeries…? What’s this game coming to? Back in my time, we killed our opponents with Chuck Norris-caliber win conditions like Psychatog, Sutured Ghoul, and Bosh, Iron Golem. If the good people at Wizards continue along this path, I’m pretty sure that by 2014, I’ll be writing articles on Mono-Pink Control and Unicorn-Go, while being cuddled to death by Care Bear counters.”
In related news: “Death by Monkeys!” (from Toy Story 3 obv)
How evocative!
Hilarious!
Good writing, Wefald!
But per usual, certain forums denizens are all “I paid for this” one click in.
Obviously Star City Premium customers are allowed to voice their concerns over perceived article quality. They are, barring the occasional contest winner (including future Flores Rewards winners, once I am done with the cryptic but superlative OMG) paying customers. I am pretty sure the right to bitch and moan about the contrast on high definition television sets is the fourteenth point afforded by the Bill of Rights, just after the rarely-enforced freedom from long lines at the DMV lucky number thirteen.
Of course they should be allowed to voice concerns!
In fact, it is sometimes the case that a Premium article is not — gasp — very good!
However, my suggestion…
And this is one of those rare not-wrong always / never situations…
Is never, ever apologize for your writing.
Let me tell you. I have been doing this for over sixteen years now. A good number of my articles have been stinkers. Not good. On more than one occasion I have been wrong (believe it!) … Even some of the ones that I put a ton of effort into have things like “Compulsive Research is Constructed Unplayable” in them. For months I railed against Tooth and Nail being a good card to play! It’s okay to be wrong. When you put out a high volume of articles, they can’t all be great.
Kevin Love is one of the best players in the NBA. He is the greatest rebounder on the planet, even better than Orlando’s Mr. Howard this season. He can throw up the long ball and score from three. He does nothing but score 20 points and pull down 15 rebounds game atfer game.
Love misses over 50% of his field goal attempts.
Over the course of his career, Michael Jordan, not just the greatest basketball player ever, but arguably the greatest sportsman of all, missed 12,345 shots and 1,445 free throw attempts (Michael, the most unstoppable scorer in the history of the game, was a career sub-50% shooter). Shaquille O’Neal, iconic center of numerous contending NBA teams, finalist with Orlando, LA, and Miami, has missed over 5,000 free throw attempts!
At a high level of usage, you simply don’t hit them all.
It is possible that some articles should never have been published, never have been accepted, never have been turned in… Maybe never have been attempted. But the fact is, once they are out there in the universe, there is no point in apologizing for them. No point at all.
At this moment in my writing career I have no idea which articles are going to turn out to be favorites. There is little correlation between what I think is good and what the audience thinks is good. I still can’t get over the time when I revealed the U/G Genesis Wave deck (which turned out to be a pretty significant deck)… To mono-horrible reviews at TCGPlayer.
An even more stark contrast may have been my first article [back] at TCGPlayer. It would be hard to find a more poorly reviewed article. What I said was perceived to be so controversial / wrong that TCGPlayer.com readers doubted I wrote it at all!
But do you know how many of my predictions ended up being dead on? Like 80%.
Nobody picked up Goblin Outlander, and Liliana Vess + Emrakul, the Aeons Torn didn’t suddenly become the go-to combo in Standard, but everything from the fall of Path to Exile to the adoption of Oust to people hard-casting Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre all turned out to be dead-on.
Did I kind of get mixed up over which Eldrazi had which ability? Yeah, whatever. But the the real thrust of the article was right, the people who spent so much effort trying to tear down my ideas those months ago are all wrong (unsurprisingly)… But who cares? They don’t even use their real names or whatever.
Do you see my point?
There is just no engaging with this brand of criticism.
I wrote an update to the article because Chedy asked me to, but I would have been fine doing nothing. There is no point in apologizing.
That said, I am lucky in that every single week I get messages like this on Facebook, Twitter, and so on:
… I get them on the same articles where I have negative comments from other areas.
Master McLeer a-liked this one so much he wishes he could have “Liked” it… But on the Twitters, on the forums, in ye olde inbox people are all up in my disk drive terminology or criticizing the fact that I like nice things. Am I supposed to apologize to one reader for something that another reader, commenting in another area loves?
I do, honestly, appreciate constructive feedback, but for reasons I have described elsewhere and often, try to distance myself from forum discussions for the exact reason that I am producing this suggestion today: There isn’t any point. The article doesn’t suddenly get better when I post in the forum. Players who can’t wrap their heads around a concept don’t suddenly agree with you when you try to explain the same thing a second time. In the cases you are wrong (and again, I have been, and more than once), that doesn’t suddenly flip like pre-game quarter because some faceless someone complained about it.
Wefald shouldn’t have to apologize for his article. Like I said, I thought it was fine. Better than fine, it had some useful information bundled together with memorable writing. But even if it didn’t, he isn’t doing anyone any favors by engaging in this way.
… That’s my opinion, anyway.
Thoughts?
LOVE
MIKE
PS (not a suggestion)
PPS Be a pal and buy Deckade!
It’s hard to explain how much I love my Nintendo Wii.
My parents actually won it in a raffle last year, but (unsurprisingly) did nothing with it but let it collect dust in the box, so for Christmas this past year, they shipped it to us (well, ostensibly Bella and Clark). So there you have it, for the past two months or so I am (that is, we Floreses are) the proud owner[s] of a Nintendo Wii.
“Blah blah, just another video game system, blah blah.”
Despite being a hardcore gamer, as “definitions” go, I have not been much for video games since maybe the early 1990s. I mean in 1992 I was a fierce Street Fighter II competitor (albeit my Dragon Punch was inconsistent from the right), but since I got into Magic seriously in the mid-1990s, I have focused most of my gaming energies in that direction… Almost no video games for the past… can it really be 17 years?
Apparently!
I mean I will still game LEGO Batman with Bella or help Clark with his StoryLand adventures or whatever, but not for myself, for my own focus. To wit, I was the worst Kart player in our group in the 1990s, whereas before Magic, I was one of the best Street Fighters.
So a decade and more later… Enter the Nintendo Wii.
When these things first came out a couple of years ago, my friend Drew Nolasco (newest member of WotC R&D, but then working full time at Top 8 Magic) was telling me that the Wii was changing the face of video gaming. It was a platform not to reinforce the addictions of hardcore gamers like ourselves, but “would get grandmas playing Nintendo” … at least that’s what Drew predicted.
And true to form, since seeing how I and my family have been using her Christmas present, my mommy (herself a grandma and former owner of an essentially unused one) has elected to re-Wii.
So from the one hand, she shipped something she wasn’t using, and now has to go buy a new one; from the other, I am the owner of a used video game system… that I have declared to be the best thing I have ever owned.
Okay, so why is the Wii so awesome?
Though I am a great lover of Mario Kart from my college days (YT, TunaHwa, and altran would play Mario Kart Wii and Goldeneye on altran’s N64 when we needed a break between playlets sessions… I was playing maybe 50 hours of Magic a week back in 1997 or 1998). So yes, I Kart with the kids, which is made fun by these wheels that they let you plug your controller into.
A Kart controller.
But that’s not why the Wii is so awesome for me.
First of all, we get a lot of mileage out of our Netflix subscription.
I am toying with the idea of just canceling our cable. For what we spend on cable tv per year, we can basically buy another Mac Air (ever think about it that way?), or an iPad… Which based on our Netflix subscription (a paltry $5 a month), plus Hulu (free), we would be getting a better ROI. The down side is that much of our tv consumption is premium (Dexter, Entourage, upcoming Game of Thrones and so forth), so @craftyK is currently putting on the objections.
That said, I have mentioned how much I like Spartacus a couple of times, and since I don’t actually subscribe to the premium channel Starz, I only get to watch Spartacus thanks to my Netflix subscription… which I run through the Wii, onto my tv. Yes, it is kind of strange using a video game system as a proxy Internet interface for an online streaming service that approximates television, which is then piped back through the television as the UI… But long story short, I like me some Spartacus: Gods of the Arena; and I like being able to watch it from the couch rather than the desk.
The Wii lets you watch tv like Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, through the Internet, using your tv. Confusing, I know.
The other reason I like the Wii is the Wii Fit. Right before I started writing this blog post I did an hour of yoga on the Wii and feel great! (Actually, it inspired me to post this post.)
And unlike using a yoga video or phoning it in at the gym, the Wii Fit can actually critique your form! The Wii Fit knows when you drop your other leg for stability on a difficult pose, and cautions you for being too jittery. It can even track your pace in free run mode (running while you change the channel and watch something else), which keys into our drive as gamers to get a better score and battle past our personal bests. When Bella first started studying karate seriously about a year ago, she impressed her instructor and everyone else with how long and confidently she can hold a bridge (the bridge is basically the perfect exercise, challenging every part of your body simultaneously… look it up); I tried to match what my five- or six-year-old daughter could do for 90 seconds or more and just ended up giving myself back spasms. Today I can effortlessly move from a Wii modified “bridge pose” into a “real” wrestler’s bridge and hold it for 30+ seconds. My personal goal is to eventually be able to beat Bella, who can hold a full bridge for over 3:30.
A bridge, sometimes called a “wheel pose” (obviously not Bella doing it)… This is harder, much harder, than it looks.
Modified “bridge pose” you do on the Wii. By practicing this, I have trained myself into being able to transition into a “real” bridge.
When I first got together with Katherine — going on ten years now, most of them joyous — I was almost 25 pounds lighter. In full dating mode, I was running maybe eight miles a day, and very mindful of my weight, diet, and ability to trick beautiful women into thinking I was cool, interesting, a decent prospect, whatever. But after successfully roping the optimal wife into my long-term clutches with a tiny band of platinum and what I can only assume is a magic shiny stone… Honestly, there aren’t any excuses. Even when I was awesome at running endurance with a sub-60 beats per minute resting heart rate, I was never flexible and was always hurting myself by pushing too hard at the gym without warming up. It’s amazing to me that basically a video game is putting me into a position of being more flexible than I was when I was ostensibly in much better shape.
And as far as new year’s blah blah blah goes, I’ve already dropped about six pounds while still hitting BonChon, Hill Country, etc. with my friends every week. Just from doing yoga, free running, and other fun exercises on the Wii. It’s actually amazing to me.
How to use YouTube :: The top 100-ever cartoons and stuff :: Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Death Note :: Ahsoka Tano’s new… um, lightaber :: … and How to Use YouTube
Ahsoka Tano, new costume, peek-a-boo and TWO FREAKING LIGHTSABERS
Having already figured out the strategy to be discussed in this blog post, I ended up happening on IGN’s list of the Top 100 animated programs of all time.
I don’t really visit IGN all that often any more, but I still have warm feelings RE: them from the days — more than ten years ago — that The Dojo made like $5,000 a month as an IGN affiliate.
They have (spoilers!) The Simpsons as the best animated show of all time; they have Batman: The Animated Series as number two. That seems like they got the big stuff right!
Some stuff they got wrong, but it is mostly personal preference (i.e. I have good taste); for instance The Smurfs (terrible) is not better than M.A.S.K.
Though IGN tipped the hat to a lot of the great Disney afternoon cartoons, they missed Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears, which was much better than some of the ones they mentioned (like the boring Tail Spin).
In any case, I mention the list because I am going to use it for inspiration; inspiration of what to watch of course! Here are some shows I am going to check out that I’ve never really thought to follow before:
Fullmetal Alchemist
Death Note
Naruto
Cowboy Bebop
Firestarter: Any more suggestions?
Plus, given how high they rated Neon Genesis Evangelion, I’ll probably go back to that. I have memories, still, of VHS tapes and how much better the Japanese subtitled eps of Neon Genesis Evangelion were than the English dubs back from the summer of 1999 (my first summer in New York). The old guard — altran, TunaHwa, and even Adrian Sullivan — working at The Dojo used to watch us some mecha.
But the title of this blog post is “How to Use YouTube” not “Some Top 100 List from IGN” … What’s up?
Recently I have been complaining about the new outfit on Ahsoka Tano (Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice on Star Wars: The Clone Wars). IRL friends who also happen to be Twitter friends like Teddy Card Game and Luis Not-Vargas have been commenting on the season and the costume change on Twitter with me. Why does Ahsoka suddenly have peek-a-boo boobs? Why does she have two lightsabers now?
Apparently I missed an ep or two… But it’s not like they explained the costume change. Whatever!
Luckily, I could find the eps I missed pretty easily. Hooray!
It turns out that if you know what you’re looking for, you can find anything you want on YouTube. For example, I was looking for episode 10 of season three of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (according to Teddy Card Game the first appearance of Ahsoka’s peek-a-boo boobs), and found it instantaneously!
How insane is freaking YouTube?
I looked up Death Note episodes on Wikipedia to find the first one… Turns out it is on YouTube! (not a surprise)
I haven’t watched these yet; but I presume they are awesome. I’ve already been warned not to read any spoiler sites because the show is supposedly full of more twists and turns than the letter S.
I was amazed that I could find any episode from obscure, short-lived series like Visionaries (I used a half-remembered reference from age 11 or so in the big project I am writing and recording for SCG), as well as what I wanted from M.A.S.K. On this, the manufactured Hallmark holiday of romance, I can say for true: YouTube, I love you.
LOVE
MIKE
P.S. Don’t forget the Firestarter!
P.P.S. A pal would buy Deckade P.P.P.S. Y’all know how mono-seriously I take lightsaber fightin’. Just sayin’. SHARE AND ENJOY (please)
Concerning:Smoke and Guns by Kirsten Baldock and Fabio Moon
Smoke and Guns is like no other graphic novel.
It is almost like a Wes Anderson film. Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson say that when they make their movies, they try to describe a world that follows the rules they like, rather than the rules of the real world.
Smoke and Guns — without ever really coming out and saying so — kind of imagines a prohibition-esque world where beautiful girls sell cigarettes on the street… and lethally guard their street corners and local bar real estate with… you know… guns.
Kirsten Baldock was herself a real-life cigarette girl before writing this graphic novel… Though I assume the more conventional type rather than one of the heat-packing adventurettes depicted in this story; you get this sense of sisterhood and hidden knowledge and almost pride from reading the book that you might not expect given the plot.
Smoke and Guns follows the story of ambitious cigarette girl Scarlett who gets into trouble picking a fight with another merry (and murderous) band of cigarette girls, ends up hostess-ing the wrong party after she is disciplined by her madame-esque cigarette-hawking boss-lady, and ultimately excites a gang war. She is not so much the hero as the protagonist for no other reason than the story mostly follows her. I mean she has a really big chip on her shoulder and I think you want to cheer for her in the same way that you want to cheer for Tony Soprano versus any of the other dirtbags and murderers who happen to share screen-time with him. Beautiful? Yes. Nice? Not so much. You get the feeling that Scarlett has everything coming to her, but she has enough Indiana Jones to her that you don’t care.
If it sounds like a thoroughly superficial story… It is.
Yet it’s freaking great!
Smoke and Guns moves with a rare velocity in modern comics. Fabio Moon’s visual storytelling can flow from frame-by-frame, panel-by-panel description of a single cigarette being lit, to ice cold ultra-violence, gun-play, and grenades lobbed between nubile cancer-peddlers. The story tries very hard to be crass — cigarette girls dressing up as everything from sexy nurses to Chun-Li from Street Fighter — but it manages to be demeaning… never. Really never. The book is so overloaded with girl power, the fact that the violent participants are also sexy kind of never comes up.
In that sense, it is a storytelling triumph.
Of course I found this indie book because of Fabio Moon, previously mentioned in my Ursula review. Smoke and Guns was Moon’s first work without his brother Gabriel Ba; and it is well worth the look.
While no one is going to mistake this quick read for Watchmen, Smoke and Guns really does have something unique going for it. It is one of my favorite graphic novels, I read it several times a year, and love almost every page (the Chun-Li stuff is sadly more cheddar than cheesecake).
Bonehoard :: Lhurgoyf :: Inevitability
TDC Heat :: Sword of Feast and Famine :: … and Bonehoard
Bonehoard
I can’t believe I missed this one when initially, especially given my history.
Bonehoard is almost strictly better than a card that I considered a bomb in previous years, Lhurgoyf.
I played Lhurgoyf in my 1998 Northeast Regionals deck, TDC Heat (you may remember this deck from the pre-Psylum version of The Dojo, or perhaps from my writeup of Lord of Extinction two years ago). I think I testedmore for that Regionals than almost any other tournament I’ve ever played. The big decks at the time were Deadguy Red, Tradewind Rider decks, and Mono-Blue Control. TDC Heat, with its islandwalking River Boas, was extraordinarily effective against the Blue decks. Against the Red ones,  your creatures were simply better than theirs, you had Uktabi Orangutan to smash Cursed Scroll, and would trade one-for-one with everything else. Then, as the dust cleared, you would untap with a gigantic Lhurgoyf. Rawr.
Bonehoard, as I said, is almost strictly better than Lhurgoyf. For four mana, you tap for a [potentially] huge X/X… just one tiny toughness off of Lhurgoyf. The differences are:
Bonehoard’s Living Weapon is Black, not Green. Black creatures don’t die to Doom Blade, and therefore are more resilient than Green creatures, all other things held equal.
You don’t stop at just one.
I honestly don’t know how I missed this one. Not only is Bonehoard the stones by itself, but you can move it onto an evasion creature for a mere two mana. You can not just play — but continue to play — the attrition game. One problem with Lhurgoyf was that as big and powerful as it could be — including after a Wrath of God against a control player — it was still just one creature. Someone might kill it. You might be able to kill the Living Weapon, but the next guy, and the Next guy, and the NEXT guy after that would all be able to hit as hard.
Also, you might kill in one with Inkmoth Nexus 🙂
So… Bonehoard or Sword of Feast and Famine?
I am pretty sure — especially given Sword of Feast and Famine’s performance in Paris this week — that the latest Sword is the higher ranking piece of Mirrodin Besieged equipment, but there will probably be decks that want to play lots of Bonehoards. I can envision some future incarnation of Green or White creatures tapping and trading and playing Bonehoard after Bonehoard. “Just” creature elimination is not going to be able to deal with these beyond the Living Weapon. Even a puny Birds of Paradise will go lethal very quickly, given the right conditions.
I don’t know if you understand what “so much” is, exactly. Almost all of it is hardcore Magic stuff (which is why I have been updating this blog a bit less, and a bit less about Magic, of recent). But “so much” is as much as 12,000 words in a day. Do you know how much 12,000 words is? It’s between six and eight Premium Magic articles. In a day.
Big brags, I know.
The weird thing is that so much of it is blending together. Today when I was polishing off Flores Friday, and then transitioning back into my larger project, I was getting confused where “Ten Rules of Reaction” ended and “One Rule: What Makes a Deck?” began, versus my longer project, versus my next project, which I am planning with BDM.
The amazing thing? I can’t believe how some of it is pretty good! 🙂
Okay, enough big brags.
Today I was watching DC Showcase: Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam on Netflix streaming. I don’t know if I’ve said a lot about Netflix streaming, but it is about the best five bucks you can spend per month. Anyway, I found this stream-able video, which actually includes four shorter animated films, all directed by the excellent Joaquim Dos Santos.
The Superman/Shazam! section is the longest of the four at 22 minutes.
I was a bit puzzled by this one. Its visual style is very reminiscent of Joshua Middleton. Middleton was the artist on a Superman/Shazam! limited series a few years back. If memory serves, production on “NYX” was so slow, Middleton’s Marvel exclusive ran out and he signed an exclusive with DC.
In case you don’t know who Joshua Middleton is, he is maybe the best artist in comics. I mean there are a lot of great artists in comics, but there is only one that my wife (who is not a comics fan, but who has to put up with my thousands of comics and graphic novels, and also has a fine eye for aesthetics) says is the best, and that is Middleton. Also, traditionally writers get top billing in comics credits, but when Middleton collaborated on “NYX” with Joe Quesada (the writer of the project, one of the biggest names in the game as the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel, and himself an accomplished illustrator), it was Middleton who got top billing. This is a pretty famous spread from “NYX”, colored and not:
Anyway, I found the visual style reminiscent of Middleton, which seemed appropriate based on the existence of the aforementioned limited series… which was a completely different story. This “makes sense” in that earlier DC direct-to-DVD releases aped the styles of the original comics artists (Ed McGuinness on Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Darwyn Cooke on New Frontier, and so on).
I have very little so say about this longest of the four other than that. It was only pretty good.
The next up was DC Showcase: The Spectre, which was stone awesome.
I was pretty surprised because the Spectre is not exactly one of my favorite characters, but the visual style was unbelievably cool. Despite being an animated short film, this chapter used a dramatic 1970s-esque noir visual style… It could have been Grindhouse or shot on a super 8.
The Spectre is a bit different than in the comic books, often animating stuff — from special effects dummies to flying cars — to take out villains. In the (spoilers!) final scene, Spectre kills Alyssa Milano’s (!) character in a tornado of paper cuts, animating hundreds of hundred dollar bills in a gruesome finale.
Awesome segment, up to and including the blacksploitation-esque music running during the closing credits.
DC Showcase: Green Arrow was also pretty fun. Another 12 minute, action-oriented short film, this time starring — you guessed it — Green Arrow.
This ep is just Green Arrow at an airport, stumbling onto an assassination attempt of a ten-year-old princess. It is dominated by tongue-in-cheek puns, so like LSV would like it.
(Stuck in traffic) “Come on! The arrow’s green!”
(Later) “Green light!”
In the final scene, an embattled Green Arrow is about to be defeated by a final enemy after taking down the ostensible End Boss, but is saved by longtime love, Black Canary. He proposes to her on the spot, and his new friend, the princess encourages Black Canary to say yes, because “Every queen needs a consort.”
“Yes,” concludes Green Arrow. “Every Queen does.”
I told you it was pun-ny! Green Arrow’s civilian name is Oliver Queen.
Finally is DC Showcase: Jonah Hex. I was pretty surprised they ended with this one. Obviously Superman is the most popular and starting with him makes sense. I would think that Green Arrow and Black Canary would be the second most popular; whereas I don’t give a hang about Spectre (which ended up stone awesome!) or Jonah Hex, who is a disfigured gunfighter. Why end with Jonah Hex?
Well, they pulled out all the stops on this 12-minute segment. The Jonah Hex ep included Thomas Jane (“Hung”) as Jonah Hex; Linda Hamilton (Terminator series) as a sexy, villainous, madam; and Michelle Trachtenberg (“Buffy: The Vampire Slayer” and “Gossip Girl”) as a barmaid / snitch. Basically, an unreal cast for such a seemingly small — 12-minute — project.
I loved the Jonah Hex segment as well, which is a combination of Old West prostitution and vicious fighting. In one particularly gruesome exchange, Hex hurls a thug face-first into scalding metal, scarring his face (a mirror of Jonah’s own disfigured visage). I physically winced at how horrible that would be for the character… But then realized there was no way he was getting out of this fight.
As a whole, the four were outstanding, and I am going to re-watch them again this week, probably.
So there is more on television than there… was a few weeks ago.
I have been watching more Netflix streaming — specifically burning through Spartacus and Spartacus the past couple of weeks — but all that deserves its own blog post (or more than one, probably). For now I’ll concentrate on regular tee vee stuff.
Monday
“Gossip Girl” is back!
I love “Gossip Girl”!
I love Blake Lively!
I loved Blake Lively before you ever heard of her!
Everyone knows all this!
Seriously, Lilly is a disaster. Thea Steele says you almost have to forget everything Lilly has ever done to watch any episode of “Gossip Gir”l. I think she might be a worse mother than January Jones on “Mad Men”.
Did I mention I love “Gossip Girl”?
I think there might be an inevitable end game where Dan ends up bumping up against Blair… I mean they are almost the only main cast members who haven’t hooked up with each other.
Tuesday
“V” has been okay. I hope it keeps going is all I can say… The first hand full of eps this season have been weaker than the first couple of eps last season, &c.
I have been enjoying “White Collar” immensely. The USA shows are lovable in general, and “White Collar” is basically about a well dressed guy who runs mono-shenanigans for a living.
Wednesday
Dagger!
“Top Chef” was a disaster for the good guys this week.
Spoilers! in case you didn’t see it coming…
I had two horses amongst the Top Chefs (out of four), and lost the win to Antonia (Megan’s only remaining chef).
Then, in the bottom three, PNaps had two horses there; both of whom prepared worse dishes than Tre. As far as I could tell, Mike Isabella — who is an Italian American chef — completely botched his pasta, and Filipino Dale made a dish “he makes for his girlfriend” that would keep him from ever getting laid… Tre on the other hand cut his vegetables too thick or something.
Standings:
Phil Napoli: 1
YT: 5
Luis Neiman: 15
Megan Holland: 29
Thursday
Thursday is like a renaissance of television. “30 Rock” has had two eps this season that rival the best episodes ever, and this week’s “Community” — centered around Dungeons & Dragons — was absolutely charming (especially for gamers like YT). But the one show that I look forward to the most is the returning “Parks and Recreation”.
I have been watching a lot of “Parks and Recreation” on Netflix streaming while I have been working on my big upcoming project for Star City Games. Sister City from last season is simply one of the funniest half hours of television you could ever watch… But I couldn’t find a link to embed. So instead, here is last night’s “Community” … Which any fan of The Lord of the Rings movies (or most gamers) will appreciate:
A Dark Elf.
Friday
I have to catch up on “Star Wars: The Clone Wars”. I have basically every ep from this season on DVR but have only watched maybe two or three. I fault the kids, who have vastly diversified their limited tee vee time across more varied (but not interesting to me) interests. A lot of the commercials and teasers have looked absolutely awesome.
“Young Justice” returned to form this week! Last week was only okay, and I didn’t love the week before, but this week’s Schooled was very nice. It featured the first training session with Black Canary (one of my favorite characters in the DC Universe) teaching the kids how to fight. Canary opened up with this nugget of wisdom (before being hit on by Kid Flash):
“Combat is about controlling conflict — putting the battle on your terms. You should always be acting, never reacting.” -Black Canary
I am 100% stealing that for some future Magic article on mindset (surprising, I know).
Last, “Ben Ten: Ultimate Alien” returned tonight with a pretty decent ep. Not the best Ben Ten effort, not by a wide margin, but still a good fight with an always welcome short cameo by Azmuth. I like how, even though Ben has to use all different new aliens for toy sales purposes, he is more adept with some of the older models (or variations), and can close out basically any opponent. Per usual Kevin evolves in terms of model just a little bit as he has with every season… Still 100% recognizable, but with big Popeye forearms in his “stone” mode this week. As humans we love a mixture of the familiar and variation, and little tweaks like Kevin’s visuals offer just that.
It’s possible I will be able to watch the new Spartacus: Gods of the Arena later tonight, but probably not. It’s probably the best show on television right now.
Saturday
Who knows?
Sunday
I’m a bit behind on some of the premium cable shows, but have been religious with “Episodes” — the new Matt LeBlanc vehicle on Showtime. Very good… funny… and eye-opening, kind of like the first season of “30 Rock” alongside “Studio 60 and the Sunset Strip” (but a slightly different subject matter, obviously).
Thrun, the Last Troll :: Sun Titan :: The Rock
Young Justice :: Tom Martell :: … and Thrun, the Last Troll
If you watched the first couple of episodes of the new “Young Justice” cartoon, you know that Dick Grayson is wondering why no one is just whelmed. First Mr. Freeze is underwhelmed at Robin coming after him; then the future Young Justice kiddies are overwhelmed at the majesty of entering the Hall of Justice and seeing the gigantic statues of the League founders. Underwhelmed… overwhelmed… surely you grok at this point.
But as for Thrun, the Last Troll… I think I may fulfill Robin’s requested measure of whelmed-ness.
Thrun, the Last Troll
First, let me tell you a story.
Pro Tour LA (Antoine’s)… I am 1-0 after a haymaker-after-haymaker-exchanging brawl with Dragonstorm.
Second round Feature Match against Hall of Famer-to-be Raphael Levy. Raph was on B/G beatdown and I was playing B/W cycling. Sadly, the format was Extended. I felt like I had a heavy absolute advantage in the matchup with lots of creatures elimination and sweepers, but Raph had the edge in speed and skill, so I had relatively little margin for error. We split the first two games and were deep in the third.
Unsurprisingly, Levy has the early lead but I battle back with a lot of cycling… Undead Gladiator helping me hit my land drops and relevant removal spells; Eternal Dragon fueling Undead Gladiator (and obviously helping me hit my land drops). I get Raph to no cards in hand and tap for an Eternal Dragon to hold off his squad (headlined by a Troll Ascetic).
He topdecks Putrefy and smashes.
Raph’s mid-game topdecks are pretty lame, as he can basically draw Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves… and does.
I manage my life total and figure out how I am going to win. I need to get a little bit up in cards (Eternal Dragon for that), then use the bonus to bring back Undead Gladiator (cheaper to play), and chump his Troll for a couple of turns until I can play two Eternal Dragons and start attacking with one of them. Three turn clock, max, once those paps are online.
My plan is to just cycle up lands and pitch them into Gladiators. I have 10+ lands in play but I still need a couple more to be able to re-buy, chump, other re-buy, and hit double Dragons; I should have just enough cards to keep chumping, provided Levy doesn’t play another relevant threats (that is, something big enough to knock over a Dragon) in the next couple of turns. Over the course, Raph draws another Putrefy to get damage in through a Dragon, but I think I am okay (if armed with relatively little margin for error).
Then tragedy strikes.
I draw Haunting Echoes.
“Ooh,” I think. “New plan!”
I mean “maybe” new plan, right? New-ish. I can pitch a Haunting Echoes for an Undead Gladiator as easily as I can discard a Plains. Plus, if I topdeck a Wrath of God I can just go for the throat and win on the spot. So I hold Haunting Echoes as my card for the turn upon starting to set up my game plan.
Remember how Raph was topdecking irrelevant Birds of Paradise? Amazingly you can convert one of those into the Flashback on a Cabal Therapy. Sure, Raph missed the front side (I mean who else in this tournament was playing Eternal Dragon, Undead Gladiator, and Skeletal Scrying)… But the second time around?
Goodbye Haunting Echoes.
So now I no longer have the card I need for next turn’s Gladiator re-buy as I set up another Eternal Dragon. Had I held a Plains instead, he wouldn’t have been able to strip me of the required Gladiator re-buy. Plus, Raph has a Sword of Fire and Ice on his Troll Ascetic, so when I have to block with my Eternal Dragon, he flaps his wings sloppily into ye olde graveyard.
Uh-oh about that new plan.
Now I really have to mise up a new plan.
I vigorously cycle on my upkeep, needing Wrath of God. Then, with six maan remaining, Undead Gladiator answers my call.
Akroma’s Vengeance!
I have just enough to take out Levy’s Sword, plus sweep all his irrelevant little dudes alongside his Troll Ascetic.
I sit back in my chair, thanking God and library manipulation for my luck.
“Um… Regenerate?”
Regenerate!
No! Stupid Troll Ascetic!
Raph swings in for the kill.
The real story here is how I should have played with focus and follow through, but the immediate issue for the present case is that Trolls regenerate.
Thrun, the Last Troll is Troll Ascetic, ostensibly improved.
If the match were taking place in the present, I wouldn’t even have been able to cycle into Wrath of God for the win; because now Wrath of God — that is Day of Judgment — lets Trolls regenerate out.
The fact is, there are relatively few answers given our current Standard framework for Thrun. You can’t point a Mana Leak at it, and — at least the turn after the turn it hits — Thrun is difficult to remove with spells. Earlier this week I expressed underwhelmed-ness to some friends RE: Thrun… Sure, you can’t target him — but I kept forgetting that on top of all that other text, on top of the pretty resilient body, the last Troll also regenerates.
Aesthetics Thrun, the Last Troll is reminiscent of Troll Ascetic, with an additional layer of defense against Blue permission spells. It costs one additional mana but gains hugely in power and toughness; a 4/4 for four mana considered highly efficient given the presence of three relevant abilities. The second one is in particular worth a mention given that Thrun should be a heck of a swordsman. If you improve it just a little bit via equipment, Thrun jumps the power curve more than most any other creature in Standard, combining superior size with essentially extraordinary resilience. Answering Thrun will often be a test balancing patience and timing.
I think Thrun is exactly as good as a creature has to be to be seriously considered at four. Its perceived over-the-top-ness in terms of power level relative to curve point is essentially necessary considering it is actually competing with cards like Oracle of Mul Daya or Garruk Wildspeaker, rather than combat creatures for space (given the marketplace).
My question, though, aesthetically… What is Tom Martell going to do in a world with no more Trolls?
Where can I see Thrun, the Last Troll fitting in?
I think that Thrun, the Last Troll will be very Tarmogoyf-ish… Played heavily by decks that capable of casting it, but not played everywhere. For example, Tarmogoyf was often passed over in more controlling versions of The Rock; it was more desirable for them to play Sakura-Tribe Elder and Kokusho the Evening Star, rather than the uber-two. Great card, cross-deck Staple… But not everywhere-played.
Now obviously the decks that can — or are willing to — pay 2GG for a creature are far less common than those that can pay 1G for probably a larger creature. That will cut into Thrun’s market share, but it will still probably be everywhere-played. I don’t know that Eldrazi Ramp decks would play Thrun, even though they can; same reason Death Cloud The Rock didn’t play Tarmogoyf. Eldrazi Green, though? Probably. Aggressive two-color decks with GG capabilities will likely make room in the curve, though it is unclear whether Thun gets played over, say, a Vengevine. My intuition is that decks that want a Vengevine will still want a Vengevine, but that there can be decks that want both; say… six fours.
The biggest question mark around Thrun (I mean other than what Tom is going to do with his time) is around its cost. It’s a bit of a sell, especially given its initial non-invulnerability. Is Thrun better than Vengevine? Do you play more fours? How does it intersect relative to Baneslayer Angel? A Titan? The answers are not obvious and I don’t know that the right deck yet exists.
Snap Judgment Rating – Staple (low, Standard; Role Player – low elsewhere)
Before we continue, I updated the recent post RE: Consecrated Sphinx. Nico Boshoff from ye olde Unstoppable Twitter Army threw me a great idea combining the [+2} ability on Jace Beleren with the mise-tacular misings of Consecrated Sphinx, which I think upgrades the 4/6 quite a bit.
But enough about Magic: The Gathering.
Sunday “Big Love” is back. However I did not realize that until this AM, taking Bella to her first grownup karate class. Ergo I have to catch up on that one before tomorrow night’s ep.
“Episodes” has been entertaining so far. There are multiple layers of “fish out of water” (sophisticated British writing couple in cutthroat LA, dopey Joey from “Friends” in sophisticated British boarding school comedy) going on that play together well. Not my favorite show or anything, but fun to watch and I don’t plan on missing any.
Last season was the best so far for “Californication” … This season hasn’t really maintained the quality so far. It is still event tv for me, but — I almost can’t believe I am saying this — it’s semi-tiresome that Hank just mono-nails whatever hot woman happens to walk by, regardless of age or circumstance.
Monday I don’t remember what happened on “How I Met Your Mother” and the only thing I can remember from the return of “House” is that the guy who played Shaggy was the guest star.
Tuesday “V” is sitting on DVR. I don’t remember what I was doing on Tuesday but probably there was a tv conflict with Nintendo Wii usage. Basically we figured out how to set up our Wii to run Netflix streaming, which is not actually an upgrade relative to the iMac (or for that matter the Air I am typing this blog post on), but there is just something symmetrical about watching television on your actual television. In terms of Netflix streaming, Katherine has been burning through seasons of “Bones” and I have been spending my late nights writing to the battle cries of blood-soaked “Spartacus: Blood and Sand”.
“Spartacus: Blood and Sand” is quite simply like nothing else on television. It is like “Rome” to the nth power. All the stuff that was over the top about “Rome” … the idea that someone might be crucified — motherloving crucified — for slighting his commanding officer is amplified to someone actually getting crucified (after other nasty stuff has already happened to him). It is bloody like nothing I have ever seen on the small screen (basically nonstop dismemberments), and the show boasts more nudity — male and female both — than “Californication” does. I can’t stop watching it.
For those of you who don’t know, the “Spartacus” franchise is in trouble. The star was diagnosed with cancer in between the first season (the one I am watching now) and the second; so the second was replaced by “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena”, a six-episode prequel series focusing on other characters (including my favorite, onetime Xena and Cylon, Lucy Lawless)… that doesn’t actually feature the character Spartacus himself. It is unclear if there will ever be a third season (second season?) at all.
Oh, I have a fair number of girlfriends (no, not that kind of girlfriend) who think — or at least used to think — that the dudes in The 300 were really built like that. The gladiators on “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” are all musclebound and running around half-naked, slashing each other for 42 minutes at a time; I mean, if you’re into that kind of stuff.
Wednesday Wednesday is “Top Chef: All Stars” day, and you know what that means… Update to Top Chef Draft!
Skip ahead if you fear a spoiler.
This space intentionally left blank.
Ditto.
Okay! Warnings over!
This week  was nearly optimal for the home team. A Quickfire win by Filipino Dale was yet another one point boon for Phil Napoli. Good lord Phil’s draft is looking good right now. He has Angelo (probably the 2d most favored chef in the competition), Mike Isabella (meaning just another competitor to help out points-wise), and motherloving Filipino Dale. Filipino Dale went fifteenth pick out of sixteen, and has already solo-crushed multiple Elimination Challenges.
I came off best on the week, with three points over Phil’s two points, because all three of my remaining horses — Tre, Carla, and Fabio — were in the winners’ circle, though overall winner was Richard (probably the most highly favored chef, and a member of Luis’s stable). Megan took a dagger with the loss of Marcel, her first pick (+9 points), but I felt awfully justified in not taking him at that point… despite the fact that my own first pick left the show two weeks ago.
Current standings:
YT – 1
Phil 1
Luis 17
Megan 31
Thursday Lots of stuff on Thursday to talk about, in particular “30 Rock” moving to head-to-head time slot battle against “The Mentalist” (Katherine says she watched “The Mentalist” this week “while eating fiber” if you grok), but the tops has to be the return of “Parks and Recreation” mid-season.
I already liked “Parks and Recreation” but I loved the reference to UCLA coach John Wooden during the basketball rivalry section, specifically the great basketball coach’s Pyramid of Success. Many of you have no idea what I am talking about. I don’t care.
Update!
Osyp Lebedowicz posted The New York Times posting the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness. Not what the great coach Wooden used to command his mastery of basketball, of course, but well worth the LOL.
Click the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness image for full size.
Friday “Young Justice” fell like a stone this week.
Somehow, after the awesome two-part opener, the third episode managed to lapse severely in terms of animation and color quality… The story was only okay… But at least the question I had RE: Speedy / Red Arrow was answered… dude has no interest in joining up.
So… Get it while you still can:
Every time I embed, say, the best ever episode of “Doctor Who” or the entirety of The Hobbit, The Man comes down with the ban-hammer. But until that happens, you can check these out.
(no shipping!)
on Amazon
