day 35- YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cornwall's Random Card of the Day #603: Trumpeting Gnarr
Trumpeting Gnarr is an uncommon from Ikoria: Lair of Beasts.
So, all Gnarrs have text with something to do with creatures entering the field, or dying, but in this case, it just creates creatures instead. Kinda weird.
What's weirder is the Mutate ability, which I still had to double-read before making this post. Basically, you mutate a creature onto another creature by paying the cost. If you put it over the other creature you get the stats and abilities of the mutating card, and the abilities of the other card. And if you put it below another card, you give that card this card's abilities. Both are considered to be mutating, to my knowledge. So you can just keep stacking shit on this guy and getting multiple 3/3s. I THINK.
I never played Ikoria, and from the sounds of it I'm better off, at least as far as limited is concerned. Not cause of this. Though I guess Mutate didn't help. No, Companion and cycling really fucked the format up, or so I am told. Shame, seemed creatively a cool idea.
"cost of living crisis" give me a FUCKING break it's called "unprecedented corporate greed and income inequality" fucking cost of living crisis like it's just a natural or unexplainable phenomenon Christ
📢Cuteness alert!📢
We’re feeling all aflutter with excitement for a brand-new bundle of fluff on exhibit! This adorable puffin chick (puffling) hatched on July 19 and currently weighs just over 1 pound.
Whalecome to this big, bayutiful world, little fluff nugget! 🎊🐥
did not know they looked like this as chicks!
What's the difference between having 30 Legendary creatures in a set and having 30 non-Legendary creatures in a set? They are mechanically identical in 99% of cases.
Legendary has a drawback that comes up in all non-singleton formats. And in the most popular singleton format, it determines what can be a commander. So, 99% is incorrect.
This just in: Commander Player Considers Commander Games to be 99% of All Magic
Cornwall's Random Card of the Day #602: Pyroconvergence
Pyroconvergence is an uncommon from Return to Ravnica.
That is a pretty sweet lookin flamethrower! Obviously an Izzet invention, though nowadays, I'd say it looks more at home in New Capenna.
This card is one of those uncommon build-arounds that they put into sets to give them a bit more variety for the repeat drafter. This one has a bit more synergy with the set in general than they normally do, as Return to Ravnica was, surprise surprise, a gold set. But this one kinda encourages you to go the "oops all gates" route and just play as many multicoloured spells as you can. It also works well with the hybrid cards dotting the set as well.
Cornwall's Random Card of the Day #601: Leechridden Swamp
Leechridden Swamp is an uncommon from Shadowmoor, shown here in its Planechase printing.
This thing is a surprisingly good clock in a grindy black deck. It was part of a cycle of lands which tapped for a small effect if you had two or more permanents of the colour it cared about, in this case, black. This is where my playgroup learned that "permanent" didn't necessarily mean "creature", having two enchantments on the field, even if they enchant another player's stuff, still counts.
This is like. Insane
Why in the blue blazes is chess separated by gender?
Men just have the YOKED UPPER BODY STRENGTH to totally DESTROY their chess pieces through the opponents, it just wouldn't be fair, listen to me I am a man I can totally lift things
Ian Yusem’s Meatgrinder (2021) is a continuation of The Drain (2020)…which…crap, I don’t think I have posted about that yet. OK, so The Drain takes place on a colony ship where prisoners are trapped in a never-ending war. Tasked by their corporate jailers to retrieve an artifact in exchange for their freedom, the zine takes the basic concept of the funnel from Dungeon Crawl Classics and applies to to Mothership. It’s good, and has strong horror videogame flavoring.
Which is appropriate, because so does Meatgrinder! Free of the World War I meets Resident Evil vibes of the colony ship, players continue to fight for their survival in an actual hell modeled quite clearly on DOOM, right down to the videogamey maps. There are seven awful locations to explore where players will encounter ten obscene mockeries of existence whilst searching for anti-relics and possibly mutating into new, terrible forms. Handily, a metaphysical womb near the bloodplains constantly spawns new, naked replacement player characters. Their screaming awakening into sentience ensures that total party kills are only temporary.
It’s a good time!
Damn I gotta rename my RPG
Recently discovered your account. So cool that you're sharing your experience with us! I discovered Star Trek during the pandemic and have since become utterly obsessed. DS9 was the best by far!
I would love to hear more about the writers! Were you all fans of trek when you were hired, or were some unfamiliar with it? Do you all keep in touch and share opinions about the writing on other trek shows? Is some of the magic lost from having seen behind the scenes, or does it enhance it?
Thanks!!
All of us were definitely familiar with STAR TREK (both TOS and TNG) when we joined DS9. In fact, most of us had worked on TNG at some point, even if it was just as a freelancer (like me). I think our degree of fandom varied. I would have characterized myself as a big fan of TOS and a casual fan of TNG when I was invited in to pitch to TNG, mostly because I fell off the bandwagon after the rough first season. But I watched episodes every night in syndication to prep for my pitches, and I definitely became a fan once I saw how much the show had improved after I gave up on it.
I'd say Ron and Rene were probably the biggest fans. They got into TV because they wanted to write STAR TREK, more or less. I'd say Pete Fields was probably the least invested in the franchise, in that by the time he came on, he'd been writing TV since MAN FROM UNCLE, so to him, it was just another show (one he liked a lot) and another gig. The rest of us were somewhere in between.
We all talk from time to time. I picketed with Ira a few weeks ago. I saw Brad and David on the picket lines over the past few weeks as well. We're not all super-close but it's always great to see each other. Sometimes we talk about current shows, but honestly, we usually talk about each other's families and how our lives are going.
As for the magic, it can be a little hard to watch STAR TREK now as a casual fan and not second guess things or wonder how I might've done a particular scene or episode, but I'm usually able to get past that to enjoy the latest LOWER DECKS or SNW. I still love STAR TREK in all its forms and I'll always been proud of the work Ira and the rest of us did DS9. I'm deeply blessed and grateful to call Ira, Ron, Rene, Hans, Brad, David and Jim my brothers. And I miss Michael, Pete, and Evan a lot.
(prefacing this with the fact that this is an official writer's own personal tumblr and I don't wanna misrepresent him so I guess if you're reading this and you disagree let me know so I can take this down but)Low-key callout on Dis and Picard.
I fell down these stairs just looking at this picture
Cursed artifact: Stairs of Discontinuity.
Exposure has a 90% chance of causing a concussion, but a 10% chance of spontaneously increasing your parkour skill
[ID: screenshot of a tweet. caption: "What do you mean the carpet is killing people?! The carpet can't -" image: a staircase descends in front of you. the steps are tiled with striped carpet at varying angles, which makes it difficult to distinguish one step from another.
end ID]
This is them. The stairs we've all been warned about.
Cornwall's Random Card of the Day #600: Cho-Manno, Revolutionary
Title Drop!
Cho-Manno, Revolutionary is a rare from Mercadian Masques. This guy was the head of the rebellion in Mercadia, trying to overthrow their oppressive hegemony(good on em). You might be forgiven for thinking that Lin-Sivvi was the leader, since she was the focal point of the Rebels deck and lynchpin of making the whole thing work, but, no, it was this guy.
Add this to the "seems super broken when you're only just picking up the game" list cause he can be destroyed neither by combat, nor red removal. Which seems good, till you realise black removal is totally a thing that can and will kill him. Dies to Doom Blade. Also a 2/2 can be blocked forever by any creature with 3 or higher toughness. BUT YOU CAN AUGMENT IT- yes but you could augment any creature, and doing so here will only make it worse when the black player starts thinking you're a threat. Better to augment something with a higher power, perhaps.
I don't reckon we'd see this effect again in the game for anything costing less than 7 mana, though, since it ALSO falls into the "old card which is miserable to play against or worthless depending on the matchup" list. Against red decks, this thing will likely stop you winning. Against decks with non-damage-based removal, or with tough walls and fliers, or any number of other common things, it's an overcosted bear.
Fig tree that grows upside down, the Park of the Baths of Baia on the shore of the Bay of Naples
Goals
I see posts go by periodically about how modern audiences are impatient or unwilling to trust the creator. And I agree that that's true. What the posts almost never mention, though, is that this didn't happen in a vacuum. Audiences have had their patience and trust beaten out of them by the popular media of the past few decades.
J J Abrams is famous for making stories that raise questions he never figures out how to answer. He's also the guy with some weird story about a present he never opened and how that's better than presents you open--failing to see that there's a difference between choosing not to open a present and being forbidden from opening one.
You've got lengthy media franchises where installments undo character development or satisfying resolutions from previous installments. Worse, there are media franchises with "trilogies" that are weird slap fights between the makers of each installment.
You've got wildly popular TV shows that end so poorly and unsatisfyingly that no one speaks of them again.
On top of that, a lot of the media actively punishes people for engaging thoughtfully with it. Creators panic and change their stories if the audience properly reacts to foreshadowing. Emotional parts of storytelling are trampled by jokes. Shocking the audience has become the go to, rather than providing a solid story.
Of course audiences have gotten cynical and untrusting! Of course they're unwilling to form their own expectations of what's coming! Of course they make the worst assumptions based on what's in front of them! The media they've been consuming has trained them well.
