Entries Tagged 'Videos' ↓

I just got back from a week-long family vacation in Orlando, Florida!

Yay!

Here is a preview of tomorrow’s TCGPlayer.com article:

That’s it,

LOVE
MIKE

These videos are a preview of a new deck (Mythic) I will be talking about in the TCGPlayer column this week.

I actually have a third (versus an interesting Eldrazi Green Ramp with Mimic Vat) exporting right now… But I am going to bed.

Enjoy!

Mythic v. Pyromancer Ascension:

Mythic v. B/U Control:

LOVE
MIKE

Concerning:

Contagion Clasp :: U/W Control decks… with Contagion Clasp :: Luminarch Ascension
DailyMTG :: Spoilers :: … and Contagion Clasp

Last week I wrote very briefly about Kurt Spiess’s U/W Proliferate deck.

And I mean very briefly.

To wit:

Main deck Luminarch Ascension is quite powerful against other control decks.

It turns out that that is true as you will see below (spoilers!)… But Kurt’s deck deserved more attention than the one line I gave it, probably. I actually caught more better notice of the deck listening to the Yo MTG Taps podcast care of Joey and Joe last week… and even though I noticed the main deck Luminarch Ascension, I managed to miss the entire Proliferate sub-theme provided by Contagion Clasp.

Contagion Clasp

I don’t want to do a lot of hardcore analysis of Kurt’s deck, as that is actually the topic of my Top Decks article this week (spoilers!), but I do want to say a bit about Contagion Clasp.

In addition to facilitating the Proliferate mechanic and potentially improving the performance of the deck’s many Planeswalkers, Contagion Clasp is actually an all right card on its own. It kind of fills the same purpose as Oust against creatures like Lotus Cobra or Plated Geopede (or if you’re really lucky, Top 10 card Joraga Treespeaker).

That’s not its job in this deck, not really… But it would be foolish to ignore the fact that Contagion Clasp does have some value as a monster fighter. Little monsters anyway.

Now of course there is the topic of that Luminarch Ascension. If you can get one counter on a Luminarch Ascension, Contagion Clasp can ramp it up to four counters even if you are getting attacked… That really helps to justify the card’s inclusion as a main deck threat, unusual for the often aggressive Standard meta.

Anyway, Kurt’s deck:

U/W Proliferate – Kurt Spiess

2 Contagion Clasp
3 Everflowing Chalice

2 Frost Titan
1 Into the Roil
2 Jace Beleren
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Mana Leak
2 Negate
4 Preordain

4 Condemn
2 Day of Judgment
2 Gideon Jura
3 Luminarch Ascension

1 Arid Mesa
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
5 Island
3 Plains
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Seachrome Coast
3 Tectonic Edge

sb:
3 Flashfreeze
1 Into the Roil
1 Negate
2 Spell Pierce
1 Volition Reins
3 Baneslayer Angel
2 Day of Judgment
1 Luminarch Ascension
1 Revoke Existence

Anyway — more spoilers for things to come — you can nab a sneak Peek at this week’s Top Decks, which includes the following videos, both starring Kurt’s U/W deck.

U/W Proliferate v. B/U Conley Style:

U/W Proliferate v. Genesis Wave:

That’s that!

LOVE
MIKE

Concerning:

Frost Titan :: Adding Frost Titan to TurboLand :: (Adding Also Rampaging Baloths)
Videos with KYT :: bash Bash BASH :: … and Frost Titan

I once put Frost Titan on a sub-Sphinx of Jwar Isle level of playability. Oops.

We now join the continuing adventures of TurboLand, already in progress…

Most of you saw my article RE: TurboLand on TCGPlayer last week. And with it, the most heinous excuse for forum replies… well… ever basically (Patrick Chapin is convinced it is one troll with 76 accounts).

Anyway, despite what the trolls say, I think TurboLand is one of the best decks in Standard, and it has been brilliantly +EV for me in the tournament queues. Fair’s fair: I did make some changes to the deck partly based on the comments from the forums on TCGPlayer, so we have this beauty (for your 5K consideration):

TurboLand Again!

2 Frost Titan
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Genesis Wave
4 Joraga Treespeaker
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Oracle of Mul Daya
4 Overgrown Battlement
4 Primeval Titan
2 Rampaging Baloths

8 Forest
4 Halimar Depths
4 Island
4 Khalni Garden
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Tectonic Edge

sb:
1 Eldrazi Monument
1 Elixir of Immortality
4 Into the Roil
3 Negate
3 Obstinate Baloth
3 Pelakka Wurm

Main deck the main swap is:

• -4 Explore
• +2 Frost Titan
• +2 Rampaging Baloths

The deck was a bit heavy on acceleration, and Explore is one of the only cards that is not good with Genesis Wave. I used the spots for more finishers.

It is important to note that I added sixes and not sevens. Yes, yes – I considered Avenger of Zendikar but that big seven is not as good as a six in this deck. Why? Consistency, predictability, and curve.

You see, this is a Primeval Titan deck, which the original TurboLand was not, and most current Genesis Wave decks are not. What does that mean?

• You have six mana for Primeval Titan (6).
• Primeval Titan gets you two lands (8).
• One of those lands is Halimar Depths, so most of the time you can ensure an untapped land drop the next turn (9).

See where this is going?

Nine mana is GGG + 6 for a Genesis Wave follow up. Every non-Genesis Wave card in this deck is eligible for such an on-curve Wave. As good as Avenger of Zendikar might be… It isn’t that 100% of the time, so in the “explosive Landfall token creatures fatties” category, Rampaging Baloths gets the nod.

It is possible it is just right to play more Frost Titans, though. This deck is an “over the top” aspiring enigma, and doesn’t have an excess of battlefield control. Frost Titan is a Genesis Wave-friendly finisher that does just the right thing.

Two notes before we move on to movies:

1. Primeval Titan into Halimar Depths is a combo. It is almost like having a mini-Jace, the Mind Sculptor. You can always draw the best card of the next three. In some cases you can toggle and tier your draws to set up Oracle of Mul Daya card advantage simultaneously. This can be invaluable for getting Genesis Wave and avoiding Genesis Wave + Genesis Wave issues.
2. I am having big problems with the Argentum Armor deck. It is embarassing. It is like losing to ghosts in real life. What did you die of? You know, ghosts. Ghosts aren’t real! I know, embarassing. I was chatting with the guys from The Eh Team podcast and Scotty Mac suggested Ratchet Bomb… Might be the answer! The problem is that they have Sword of Body and Mind, and can run past my Frost Titans and my Khalni Garden tokens and motherloving deck me. Embarassing!

Anyway, the games:

This first set is semi-not exciting.

1. First game KYT wins mostly because he went first. He talks about maybe not playing his Frost Titan on turn six. If he doesn’t play it there (tapping my land) I will almost certainly win. I have double Primeval Titan and Jace in my hand, so I will play a Primeval Titan if he doesn’t play a Frost Titan; he will Mana Leak. He will then be presented with the same decision. Except if he plays Frost Titan now I can resolve my Primeval Titan and presumably win with my Halimar Depths combo or Jace in hand… But he won.
2. Second game KYT won because I stopped on two.
3. I won the third game, which was exciting.
4. We played another 3-4 games, but KYT lost them. In other news, I won all of them 🙂

Anyway, we are hella thankful to KYT for recording and editing these.

Next set:

This one is not unexciting… It is in fact quite exciting. And embarassing. We both basically play awful, awful Magic. But you can at least see the TurboLand deck do some interesting stuff this time around.

Thanks to KYT, again, for his help and testing these!

LOVE
MIKE

This week on TCGPlayer I presented Seven Traits of The Best Deck. If you haven’t read it, you should. I know I have a tendency to toot my own horn at times, but I quite liked this one:
Seven Traits of The Best Deck

Tim Landale recently got the most out of Mystifying Maze

Per usual (for me lately… apparently I am getting old), I have more and more to say about even the topics that spawn 3,000+ word full-length articles.

Luckily I have a highly trafficked and much-beloved blog with which I can expand and expound (as opposed to my not-yet-highly-trafficked, if even more beloved blog http://FloresRewards.com).

Today I am going to talk a bit [more] about point 3, “They Get the Most Out of Their Mana”.

One thing to remember when working on a mana base is that lands are a double-edged sword. Yes, you ultimately want consistent lands that come into play untapped and produce the colors you need to, you know, help you present that unbeatable opening hand. But in addition, lands can be a very low-cost source of additional value, particularly in one-color decks.

Back at the end of the 1990s, at the World Championships, seemingly all the successful decks were one color. Why? They let us play Wasteland. And the next year, they let us play Rishadan Port! All these lands are good examples of:

1. How one-color decks could be successful by playing such “colorless” lands (you could add a tool to manascrew your opponent without overly disrupting your own mana base), and
2. Why one-color decks did so much better than multicolor decks (the multicolored decks were getting their splashes, off-colors, and even first big plays pre-empted and screwed by the damn Wastelands and Rishadan Ports!)

I am a big believer in maximizing the consistency of the mana base in terms of performing what I want, when I want… With “when I want” defined as “immediately.” To with, when Kamigawa Block was legal, like all my decks that were two or more colors played four copies of Tendo Ice Bridge. If you needed a color — any color — and you needed it now, there was no better land than Tendo Ice Bridge (especially since so many of my teams were built with four copies of Meloku the Clouded Mirror).

Here are some then-and-now examples of how some of the best decks (though in these cases, the second best decks, both times) made subtle changes to existing mana bases to gain value:

Kuroda-style Red, Josh Ravitz

1 Swamp
15 Mountain
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Pulse of the Forge
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Magma Jet
3 Beacon of Destruction
4 Wayfarer’s Bauble
4 Solemn Simulacrum
4 Shrapnel Blast
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Molten Rain
1 Sowing Salt

Sideboard
3 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
3 Cranial Extraction
4 Culling Scales
4 Fireball
1 Sowing Salt

… There’s that Tendo Ice Bridge again!

Tendo Ice Bridge was an addition over the straight Red version we played at Regionals (where my sideboard was:

4 Culling Scales
3 Fireball
1 Hidetsugu’s Second Rite
2 Sowing Salt
4 Unforge
1 Stalking Stones

That sideboard of course had elements of one of the best sideboards of all time, but was not the true work of poetry that Josh used to eventually battle to the Top 8 of US Nationals.

I am just going to pause for a second to think about how great Josh’s sideboard was. It was clearly one of the best sidebaords I ever built, but more than that, was probably one of the best sideboards of all time.

I mean we were able to fit both a full transformation and a solid repositioning in those fifteen cards!

For purposes of this blog post, the etra value came from just running Tendo Ice Bridge. In a de facto one color deck, Tendo Ice Bridge was free. It came into play untapped, it tapped for Red if you needed it to… But along with the one Swamp (and eight artifact searchers), Tendo Ice Bridge allowed Kuroda-style Red to flatten Tooth and Nail with Cranial Extraction.

Any guesses on what we would name?

Eldrazi Ramp, Tim Landale

2 Cultivate
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Everflowing Chalice
4 Explore
1 Eye of Ugin
11 Forest
4 Growth Spasm
4 Joraga Treespeaker
4 Khalni Garden
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
2 Mystifying Maze
4 Overgrown Battlement
4 Primeval Titan
4 Summoning Trap
4 Tectonic Edge
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
3 Wurmcoil Engine
Sideboard
2 All Is Dust
1 Eye of Ugin
2 Nature’s Claim
3 Obstinate Baloth
2 Pelakka Wurm
4 Terastodon
1 Wurmcoil Engine

For those of you who want me to use more recent deck lists, here is one from just last weekend.

The one thing I was really impressed with talking to Tim at the $5K was his use of two Mystifying Mazes. Some mono-Green players didn’t use it at all!

Tim talked about how it was good quite often and they added a second copy because it was so low cost (there is that “one color deck” bonus again)… He recounted that even with his Eye of Ugin stripped, he was able to win a race with a single Primeval Titan purely because he played two copies of the mighty Eye.

Tim’s mana in general was extremely impressive, though. One thing that struck me was his play of Growth Spasm, cutting darling Cultivate (he said he might cut them all if he had it over again). Growth Spasm gets you to a faster Primeval Titan than Cultivate, and he focused getting the most out of his mana on getting the most powerful card, most quickly.

Like I said, impressive.

You’ve probably already seen this, but here is a video that I (with BDM) did with Tim a couple of days ago. If you haven’t already seen it, it was at least nominally done for Top Decks, but I have to have all these ducks lined up ahead of time in order to submit them to the mother ship. Enjoy!

LOVE
MIKE

Because you demanded it (and by “you” demanding it, I mean because I felt like writing it), my nightly television schedule!

I watch maybe six hours of television per day; probably more on the weekends. People are sometimes surprised to hear that, and there are other grownups / parents who seem horrified to hear that. However the fact is I stay up working most nights… Either working on my blog or other Magic-related projects (or just playing Magic Online); and of course I wrote a real live book last year.

My wife is much more reasonable than I am and goes to bed at a halfway reasonable time. But for me? I just like having the television on while I am up.

Anyway, I was inspired by Facebook posts by Ken Krouner and then Osyp Lebedowicz recently and decided to do something that Zvi Mowshowitz does on an (at least) annual basis; and post my general tv schedule. Of course I am not 100% married to any given time of day (thanks to DVR), but for the most part, this schedule will adhere to the regular times or nights that these shows appear.

DVR and On Demand:
There are some shows that I never watch live; I just watch them on Prime Time On Demand; these shows include veteran comedy Parks and Recreation and Justified. Who even knows when they are on?

Sunday:

In other circumstances I would list shows like Entourage (incidentally coming off a blah season but absolutely five star season finale) or Dexter (ditto to the season finale; was not blah), but I wanted to concentrate on what I am watching right now.

60 Minutes
I don’t watch 60 Minutes slavishly, but I enjoy it and watch it most Sundays; partly based on the fact that it comes on right before…

The Amazing Race
Another show I don’t watch slavishly; back in the day I was an immovable fan of Fox’s Sunday night lineup (The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, Arrested Development, etc.); now we watch The Amazing Race partly as compromise, having moved over the years between Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Alias and the various masterful HBO Sunday lineups including The Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome, and so on. Katherine got me into Survivor and Big Brother very early in our relationship but it took years for us to tag onto The Amazing Race, which is (critically at least) considered the best of the competition reality lot. I would rate it as pretty gripping / pretty good; but if there were a strong HBO option at this time of the year, I would probably be taking it.

Breaking Bad
The amazing thing about Cranston is that he was on what was on (pre-Arrested Development) the best comedy on Fox [and probably on television] but never really got the attention for his comedic or physical work (largely overshadowed by Jane Kaczmarek who was of course fabulous); but now that he is playing the exact opposite character on the exact opposite show, he’s rocked the back-to-back Emmy Awards. I know that Breaking Bad is generally marketed as “the best show on television”. I don’t know I would rate it there; it is very good, though. It is like Weeds in that it follows the formula of The Breakout Novel (starting the characters in the shit, then putting them increasingly deeper in it), which ensures its gripping-ness. Gripping it is, and challenging like nothing else on television.

Monday:

Monday is a heavy television night for me. Because I watch two “simultaneous” teevee shows on Monday, it is consequently a heavy DVR night. Here goes:

How I Met Your Mother
Zvi rates this as the best comedy on television. I don’t know that I would have it as top 3 even, but I love How I Met Your Mother anyway.

Like much of the initial audience, I started watching because of the Doogie Howser, M.D.-meets-Willow Rosenberg casting… and never stopped. They aren’t even the main characters!

House
I adore this show (which most of you remember was initially just drafting on American Idol‘s popularity); it has sustained a strong level of quality for years. It somehow features not just great writing but the hottest woman on earth (which is a not uncommon joke on the show), and a cast of truly lovable misfits and geniuses.

Gossip Girl
Longtime Top 8 Magic podcast listeners know that I long called Blake Lively as “the next it girl” two years before the premiere of Gossip Girl. That’s how good michaelj is at calling an it girl 🙂

Gossip Girl is a lot less interesting than it was in, say, the first two seasons when we were still trying to figure out who Gossip Girl was / is; I must admit that despite the acquisition of Kristen Bell (who is the voice of Gossip Girl), I was initially embittered at the fact that Gossip Girl supplanted my all-time favorite television show Veronica Mars on the CW. What, they couldn’t have two shows set in an environment of mystery and rich teenagers? I still like Gossip Girl enough to follow it closely, based on an adoration of Blake Lively (versus Serena) and Chuck Bass, though I am kind of annoyed by every other character but Nate Archibald (who is the unsung baller of the show, having tagged basically every major character-ette despite being poor for about half a season) and Little J (us something-Js have to stick together).

24
This last season is easily the worst season ever. However the show has not gotten less gripping, and being the worst season of one of the best shows of all time does not remove it from the must-view list. The way they are scripting 24 right now, I am tired just watching. Poor Renee. Poor Jack.

Tuesday:

Glee
They had me with the pilot-closer “Don’t Stop” and haven’t let go. This show features so many people I love (Kristen Chenoweth being the best example) and such great performances of such great music… If you don’t watch Glee (and twice-plus), you’re dumb basically.

Lost
Is the final one the best season ever of one of the best shows ever (like a mirror to 24, kind of)? I don’t know. But I can’t look away. If you aren’t deeply into Lost yet, you are in for a treat. I am going to re-watch my DVDs from season one starting this summer. There are so many details that even though I know the macro story, I bet I will love making small connections for myself all along the way; I can’t imagine how great it will be for first time viewers.

A lot of the criticism of Lost comes from a position of ignorance. Zvi actually makes the best analogy when he talks about the complexity of Magic (you know, the best game of all time); yes, it’s complex. Lost is a complex show. Both are necessarily complex and difficult for new devotees. But if they weren’t so complex, they wouldn’t be so unassailable. And they both are. When was the last time a president moved the State of the Union for a television show. TDG.

That.

Damn.

Good.

V
It took me a while to get into V because it was originally on Wednesday nights, when I have Movie Klub… But it ended up being the first show I bought to watch on my iPod. V is so surprising and scary it made me jump while watching it on a little three inch screen.

I am not unique but probably still a little bit unusual in that I am a current fan who was also an original 1980s V fan. However I have some additional crossover in that Elizabeth Mitchell’s character Juliet was my favorite character on Lost, and she is the lead on V now. Anyway, a very watchable show that I don’t like to miss. Full of alums from Firefly and other SF geek stuff you might like.

Wednesday:

Earlier this week, KK was lamenting the lack of good television on Wednesday nights. Wednesdays are actually a special case for me; I have Movie Klub, hosted by the incomparable Lan D. Ho at casa Jon Finkel and try to hit that every week. I don’t have any real / regular Wednesday night viewing, but I really should catch up with Top Chef Masters and possibly The Ultimate Fighter. But right now, I am behind on both.

Thursday:

Survivor
Arguably the first great competition reality show, Survivor is now in its 20th (?) season… and this is probably the best season ever. Survivor: Heroes v. Villains is an All-Star season that brought back all of my favorite players (Tom, Boston Rob, and Russell H.) along with a host of other popular players (Rupert, JT). The game play has been amazing. The best players have been putting on a clinic and the players who were supposed to be some of the best are all gone now. Russell made a move that looked to me like the best move ever on his way to ousting the dominant Boston Rob (early favorite for “best ever”) and just last week Parvati (Russell’s chief ally) made a move that required a truly inspired read on the enemy — the perfect marriage of information and opportunity.

Like much of the Survivor audience I fell in love with Russell’s hardcore game play last year, and he took the #1 spot in my opinion from Tom, despite finishing only second. This year I was afraid that Russell might not have been able to play his balls-out swing-for-the-fences style, but he has been as aggressive as ever, and a dominating player from the social side, making plays that cracked Boston Rob’s numbers advantage and eliminating JT (with JT never seeing the blindside coming). However it might be Parvati (seductive winner of the last All-Star season) who emerges as the best player of all time. KK (Survivor superfan) and I are separately rooting for our favorites between these two allies, against one another.

The Office
By the second season, I had The Office as the funniest show of all time. While I think that it has dipped in quality somewhat, I still have it as the #2 comedy on television.

30 Rock
Arguably the best show on television, probably the best written, and certainly the best comedy.

So obviously it will lose its Emmy lock to Glee later in the year (but I’d be fine with that). One half an hour I try to hit every week, and without fail.

Friday:

Ben 10 Alien Force / Ben 10 Ultimate Alien, Batman the Brave and the Bold, Star Wars – The Clone Wars

These are all Bella’s shows; we watch them on Saturday morning before the rest of the family gets up, typically; however they all get DVR’d on Friday night.

Batman the Brave and the Bold is charming; it has more of a reverence — even fanboy quality — for the superhero mythos than any Batman cartoon in recent memory. I will not soon forget the Christmas episode when [robot] Red Tornado gets Batman a mug that reads “World’s Greatest Detective” for a gift. It is probably not a better show overall than the early 1990s Bruce Timm / Paul Dini Batman: The Animated Series that spawned the Superman and Justice League franchises, but I like Batman the Brave and the Bold more than the 2000s The Batman.

Star Wars – The Clone Wars really hit its stride this season; much better than the first. I love a lightsaber fight.

Saturday:

Doctor Who

Without a doubt the high point of my television week is my favorite show, Doctor Who.

Back when Battlestar Galactica was on Friday nights on The SciFi Channel, I secretly looked forward to Doctor Who even more.

I have been a Doctor Who fan since the age of four. I used to dream about his companions as a kindergartner and after a fair sized gap based on living in the wilds of western Pennsylvania (I don’t think our PBS affiliate had Doctor Who), I came back to Cleveland, eyes stuck on Peter, Colin, and Sylvester (Doctors five, six, and seven) until the show’s cancellation at the end of — if I recall — my Seventh Grade year. I saw the made for tv movie as a freshman in college, but like everyone else I didn’t like it. Today, Doctor Who I find better than ever.

Peter Davidson was “my” Doctor growing up (Doctor #10 David Tennant has said the same thing), but Tennant ended up my favorite Doctor of all time. He wound up his run just earlier this year.

The show has re-started a bit with Matt Smith as the eleventh man [in continuity] to play The Doctor, with Stephen Moffat taking over as head writer with this season. My sister and I have been positively giddy, because Moffat wrote all the best eps the past several seasons anyway (typically creepy one-ofs).

If you don’t know what I am talking about, here are the basics:

• The Doctor is / started out basically the smartest man in the universe. He is a Time Lord, a member of a race who can travel through all space and time. In fact he was chief among the Time Lords. In the early 1960s he quit his job as Lord President of the Time Lords to run around all of time and space adventuring. Yes, he is a bit mad.
• The original actor who played the Doctor was quite old but the show had to go on; the writers conceived of an idea where — by nature of their immortal alien backgrounds — Time Lords can change their faces and regenerate bodies that have been ravaged by age or ravaged by bullets (as in the case of #7)… Really just opening the show up to a separate actor. The Doctor is in a sense the same person (same genius, same madness, same sense of justice), but each actor puts a very different personality on that framework. They are all different men as well, act differently, and so on.
• In the current continuity, The Doctor is the last of the Time Lords and has basically declared himself God. While 99% of the time he exudes a foppish, fun-loving, outward persona, he harbors a darkness that did not exist before the 2005 reboot. You see it was the Doctor who was responsible for the destruction of all his own people — and these are a people who could theoretically travel through time and space — in order to end a great war. My favorite element of the current series (that was not really present when I was a kid) is when the Doctor goes all Alpha Male on the enemy. He can beat a conquering alien in a swordfight, stop an entire invasioni single-handedly with no weapons, or get really nasty; for example a family of aliens who tried to steal the Doctor’s immortality… he made them immortal, but basically locked them in unending hell-like punishments for crossing him.
• The Doctor has always travelled in his adventures with designated Companions (usually beautiful British women), though apparently there is no sex. My favorite companion was Dr. Martha Jones (an actual medical doctor); my second favorite Companion is Matt Smith’s current one, Amy Pool, a scottish redhead who was the victim of the Doctor’s absent minded time meddling starting at the age of seven. She is also a superbabe in that pasty redheaded Scottish way that we Americans only see on foreign television shows.

If that seems SF-nerdy, oh well. Doctor Who is the epitome of SF nerd television. Doesn’t matter. Favorite show. Et cetera.

As with Figure of Destiny, I am embedding a YouTube video of my favorite Doctor Who episode of all time, “Blink” at the end of this blog post. “Blink” won the short form Hugo Award in 2008 (Moffat’s third consecutive win for a Doctor Who episode, beating out Battlestar Galactica‘s best ever episode, “Pegasus” in 2006). The Companion is Martha Jones (my favorite), and the Doctor is David Tennant (my favorite); however most of the screen time goes to Carey Mulligan, who in the last two years has become an international celebrity via her roles in Public Enemies, An Education, and the upcoming Wall Street sequel.

I hope you like “Blink” … As I said it’s my favorite ep ever, and I find it genuinely creeptacular; if you do, there is hope you might like the rest of the show, and thereby adopt it as your favorite as well.

Peace out,

LOVE
MIKE

Well, here it is… The first Five With Flores video in close to a year!

The audio could be better, but hey — a little out of practice.

Enjoy 🙂

LOVE
MIKE

I am going to be getting on a plane in about two days and going down to relatively sunny Orlando, Florida for almost two weeks. I am taking the kiddies to Disney World and also visiting with family over the Christmas holiday.

Chances of playing much Magic while I am gone are next to nada, but there is something I have been wanting to post for a couple of weeks.

Sharp readers probably recall I posted a few weeks back that I was re-reading The Hobbit. Boy is that book superb!

I had read The Hobbit previously, of course, but I remember not liking it that much (I liked The Lord of the Rings on first read, but The Silmarillion I actively disliked on first reading but loved on subsequent reading). Anyway, for some reason if you re-read The Hobbit at 33 it goes very quickly… I read it in a matter of hours and loved every second.

Now the reason I got back into all the JRR stuff is that I was actually telling Bella the story of The Lord of the Rings on a train ride home one day and she was completely captivated. This got Katherine and me to pull out the Peter Jackson DVDs and start the reels turning, but of course Bella (at five) is too young for the good stuff.

But what about the also-good stuff?

While I didn’t have a really solid memory of The Hobbit the book before re-reading this time around, I have had for as long as I can remember (before kindergarten, certainly) a very specific memory of The Hobbit the story. And that picture comes from the Rankin/Bass version from my childhood.

If you haven’t seen the Rankin/Bass version, you’re in for a treat! My mom still sings me songs from it, and it has been about 30 years since we first saw it together, when I was younger than Bella.

Because this is 2009 — almost 2010 — you can find basically anything on YouTube… Including the entire Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit… I’m embedding all of it below. If you have about 90 minutes and a hankering for a pocket full of joy, I suggest you bust out some microwave popcorn and enjoy the show.

I was medium terrified of the villainst in this version when I was in the single digits, and thirty-ish years later, I still find even Elrond creepy. The animation doesn’t look “modern” but it is still quite nice to look at… I still enjoy it, and I think they did a great job with the characters; in particular Gandalf, who is played distinctively by John Huston.

For what it’s worth, Bella absolutely loved it.

LOVE
MIKE

I made a video about B/G Elves in Standard.

It seemed like it was time! All four qualifying players from last week’s LCQ * were playing B/G Elves variants, so it seems like the deck is the real deal [again].

At first I didn’t believe that Gabe Carlton-Barnes played Elves (if you know Gabe he is much more likely to play Faeries, Fog, or even Wizards)… I haven’t talked to Gabe yet but his blood runs Blue. So if he qualified with Elves, it is probably worth the look-see.

This is the deck Gabe used to qualify (and the deck we featured in this video):

1 Nameless Inversion
3 Profane Command
4 Thoughtseize

4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Putrid Leech

3 Chameleon Colossus
4 Civic Wayfinder
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Imperious Perfect
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Wren’s Run Vanquisher

3 Forest
4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Mutavault
2 Swamp
4 Treetop Village
2 Twilight Mire

sb:
3 Loxodon Warhammer
4 Deathmark
3 Guttural Response
1 Chameleon Colossus
3 Cloudthresher
1 Hurricane

I played five or six matches with Gabe’s Elves deck and was relatively impressed.

I taped a great matchup against B/R where I got Fulminated down to two lands, then exposed my Mutavault with him having only one card in hand. Obviously it was a Shock and I was in the Stone Age.

I topdecked out of it and pulled it out!

The deck is relatively fast and was superb at beating random garbage decks.

However it seems atrocious against any kind of Reflecing Pool Control-type deck. I got devastated by a variety of Cruel Ultimatum and Broodmate Dragon combinations.

Anyway, the vid:

LOVE
MIKE

* I will talk about these Blue Envelope-grabbers in greater detail in this week’s Top Decks but I just wanted to congratulate Brett Blackman as well. Brett is a friend, reigning Pennsylvania State Champion, and a Top 8 Magic intern! Good job Brett 🙂

Currently Reading: Codeflesh

For you, a YouTube video about new It Deck Cascade Swans. Not just a Regional Top 4 deck anymore, Cascade Swans has just taken a Grand Prix title!

I used Parth Modi’s version of Cascade Swans, as (as I mentioned in the previous blog post) I used to make this video before the deck went and won a Grand Prix. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, here is ye olde deck list:

2 Ad Nauseam

4 Bituminous Blast
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Swans of Bryn Argoll

4 Seismic Assault

4 Reflecting Pool
4 Graven Cairns
4 Cascade Bluffs
4 Rugged Prairie
4 Ghitu Encampment
4 Treetop Village
4 Spinerock Knoll
4 Vivid Crag
4 Vivid Marsh
1 Mutavault
4 Fire-Lit Thicket
1 Mountain

sideboard:
4 Qasali Pridemage
3 Vexing Shusher
2 Volcanic Fallout
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Aura of Silence
2 Ajani Vengeant
1 Ad Nauseam

So a lot of people have been asking why I haven’t made a video in forever.

It is actually a different answer than why I didn’t update this blog for like half a month.

Basically remember when MTGO was super slow and it was un-possible to get a game? That short spell kind of got me in the habit of not playing MTGO for a while, and then every format got super boring due to not being in step with the actual Constructed formats due to set differences. I’d say that all of that is behind us… but instead I just hope that you like this video.

LOVE
MIKE

Currently Reading: Birds of Prey Vol. 5: Perfect Pitch