Monday, August 26, 2013

Theros Spoilers!

Theros Spoilers!:

Alright so let's preface with this was supposedly Lolzor's big article that he was super excited to talk about, but really it's Sefah here going to do some spoilers on random cards I pick out.

Alright let's see what we get.













Well this seems like a nifty card. Maybe not the card itself but that mechanic is very interesting. Seeing as the only previous Enchantment creature was Lucent Liminid. Now it should be known that an Enchantment creature is no different than an artifact creature. It can still be Naturalized and stuff.

Alright, a 5-cost 4/4 flier with first strike is pretty good. It's no Baneslayer Angel, but it has this really nifty effect that for 7 mana it can be an aura. Now I don't know if you read my previous article about how much I hate aura enchantments due to how easy it is to get 2-for-1'd, (exceptions: Rancor, Angelic Destiny) but this keyword mechanic kind of circumvents that a little.

For a huge mana cost of 7 mana, it becomes an enchantment. Then if the creature dies, the enchantment falls off and becomes a creature. A huge mana cost, and this might not be the best card to represent the mechanic, but I'm sure there will a card when the rest of this set is spoiled that could find it's way into a little archetype in standard. Just like Kiln Fiend.






Now this is my kind of card!

3-cost 5/5 indestructible that let's you scry 1 each upkeep. Pretty strong if you ask me. It's drawback is your "devotion to blue". An interesting mechanic but it seems like a huge hassle in a multiplayer format. Not necessarily this card, but I could imagine a card that was like "Each player loses X minus Y life, where X is the cost of the spell, and Y is the devotion to black for each opponent." I really hope a card like that doesn't exist, just unnecessary counting. Nonetheless it's a good mechanic, I just hope it doesn't come down to a rules/time consuming thing. Like banding.











Simple and straight to the point.

It's Naturalize and a situational Shock on the same card for more color intensity. What's not to like?

Stay tuned for next week where we reveal more and more mechanics and post our thought on them.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

SCS Live! -- Sanctum? Damn Near Killed 'Em


Lolzor and I (Sefah/Baalhrezem) are streaming again!

Come join us, we're playing an FPS/Tower Defense called Sanctum.


Follow us at @SnoCoveredSwamp
(yes the W was too much to ask for)

Last week on SCS Live!:
Check our previous posts, we put up a few cool screenshots, including a very frightening one.

Friday, August 23, 2013

SCS Live! Photos



Just Some Pictures of one of our old SCS Live! events featuring the game Multiwinia.

And one final picture. It's pretty unsettling and happened when me and Lolzor played Garry's Mod at 4 in the morning.



The stuff of nightmares.

Enjoy.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Twitter crazy!



So I have a huge collection I have to go through at work today so in place of an article I'm gonna be tweeting like a mofo all the interesting things I find. I'll probably put up a small recap if I get around to it. Anyway tune in!
@SnoCoveredSwamp

Monday, August 19, 2013

SCS Live! From The Vault FTL



Hey guys, we are reaching into the vault to bring you some sweet space action! Watch me and Sefah play some FTL and concur internet issues. I believe the gameplay starts at 18 min after our normal setup issues (and SCS standard). This will hopefull be the last video on Sefahs personal channel we should make our own youtube. Enjoy guys!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFPZnaF84UI

RCotD #216

Random Card of the Day #216:

Robber Fly - 2R
Creature - Insect
Flying
Whenever Robber Fly becomes blocked,defending player discards his or her hand, then draws that many cards.
1/1



Ehhh this card is blah. I was hoping for something more today but alas this will be short. This card is bad, not awful but bad. 3 cost 1/1 with an interesting effect but nothing spectacular, not to mention its kinda hard to get off. There could be some interesting combos with this also it messes with planning if you can get it to happen often. It might be ok in limited just because of deck size. Overall I don't like it. 2/5


Sorry about the weirdness me and Sefah have been on the road doing different things. Also next week will begin our spoiler season for Theros so get ready!

Share and Follow guys!

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

What Makes a Game Interesting For Me

This may seem like a kind of stupid post, specifically because it pertains to me, but theres some underlying truth to all of this.

Lately, Lolzor has been showing me several games that I probably would not have played otherwise. I kind of live under a rock when it comes to games. I get very good at a few a games. And I mean very good. I was CAL-main in cs 1.6; Platinum in League of Legends; Platinum in Starcraft II--but this doesn't always apply to other games that are/were firsts for me.

For example, when he tried explaining Borderlands to me (Borderlands one, that is) I was very reluctant to accept it. Back then, the only FPS game that I played was Counter-Strike 1.6--so when he was explaining "percentage chance of igniting" it seemed very luck based in a game of fps, where skill is supposed to matter, not luck. When Borderlands 2 went on sale I was pretty hooked. It's actually a 100% chance to ignite if you can critically strike them (similar to a headshot in counter-strike), which makes it very rewarding for skill level, but still a percentage chance of a regular hit igniting. An odd balance between casual play and rewarding skill. I enjoyed the game thoroughly.

Another game, was Faster Than Light. The way he explained it was "Oregon Trail in space." Now Oregon Trail was fun in elementary school, but I really wasn't that interested in the game. It was fun, but not really addicting and I only played it a few times. About the same amount of time you would play a flash game. FTL was actually significantly more interesting. The further you get into the game, the more interesting it becomes. Basically it's ship-on-ship action. Each ship has a shield, where you have to break through it to deal damage to the ship it self, but the ship is constantly regenerating shields. While a ship battle is happening you also have to manage your crew because sometimes the enemy ships will board you, so you have to fight off hand-to-hand combat while maintaining shields, oxygen levels, etc. With enough play you learn all the weapons, and then you have to learn volley control to beat some of the harder ships. You could use the auto-fire option but it is suboptimal and you would want to prevent as much ship damage as possible. Volley control is pausing-unpausing-pausing the game while your laser shots are en route to have the least amount of time between your first and last shots; this way you "burst" through the shield, rather that trying to fight shield regeneration the whole time.

Yet another example is Super Meat Boy. I heard this game was a frustrating platformer. Platformers are kind of an old favorite of mine, so I bought it while it was on sale. The game fun, and as frustrating as I had wanted it to be--but it really doesn't have the replayability that I would have expected. I played it for about 20 minutes, beat the first boss, saw there were 6 more levels and just went: "well, that was fun" and closed the game.

There was nothing particularly captivating about it. No replayability (is that even a word?), and more importantly no meta. I enjoy a game with a good meta game. Things that offer choice but it's pretty obvious which one is better. Maybe another choice is better if a specific scenario arises, but it's still a pretty blatant choice. A very old example of this was the online card game: Estiah. You are a fantasy character who's equipment is cards. You make a deck of your equipment and topdeck the whole game. Some attacks do magic, some do physical damage; there's armor/warding for defense, and you can mill through "spirit damage" which you can willpower against it. It's very interesting and even has class systems which unlock exclusive cards for your class only. Every player went to try and get the best cards, but everyone always went back to a level 35 card called "strike." This card unlocked card combos, so when you played with friends/someone in your party and someone used a frost attack and you pulled strike within 2 turns, you would get a free attack called "Frost Strike", essentially giving you an extra turn. This applies to some Fire cards for "Flame Strike" and if you even pulled Strike back-to-back you would get X-strike. Because it combo'd with everything and even combo'd with itself, it was basically mandatory to have 4 of these in your deck, even if you were level 51. (Which was the highest level when I quit.)

I'm pretty sure I could rant even more about previous games that I have played, but if there's not enough depth to the game, I call it "having the depth of a flash game." There are several very high quality flash games, but you would never play them for more than a couple of days.

Thanks for reading!

Saturday, August 10, 2013

I heard you like Single Player games?

Whats up guys, sorry for the late article, it's been kinda crazy on my end. Anyway as I was looking for inspiration this week I was looking through old articles and realize the majority of games I recommend are multiplayer...so people who maybe don't like dealing with their friends or online play for every game are getting the shaft here. So I'm going to write 2 articles on some of the single player games I really like. This week I'm going to highlight some older games that are still readily available. Let's get to it.



Let's start with an SCS classic. Megaman. No not one game but the series, bot X and original. These games are great, hands down my favorite series of all time. If you don't know it (I don't know how) let me explain, Megaman is a jump and shoot side scrolling platformer with the niche' being that when every megaman kills a boss he gets their power. Each boss in the game is weak to another boss, you find them out (like woodman is weak to heatman) and the game is alot easier. Now the Megaman X series is basically the same game just more advanced and with a super solid storyline. I recommend both series highly, X series for its advance play and interesting storyline and the original for the simple but perfect feeling.

Original series start by playing Megaman 2, X series start by playing X1. 
All the games are easily found via console bundles or emulator or even digital download on some Nintendo platforms.



Next up is FFX. Now I don't know if I would recommend the whole series to anyone because frankly its alot to take in but after playing this game you will have a decent idea. FFX is one of the more streamlined Final Fantasy games and is very very solid. The story is good, the combat is solid, and I didn't find too much of any dragging or grinding that I didn't bring on my self for want of completion. The difficulty ramps up very nicely. Now there are arguably stronger games in the series (6,7,8,9 are all fantastic games) but I think this is a good litmus test for Final Fantasy or JRPG's in general. Highly recommend playing this once or at least trying it.



Last for this week is going to be another series. So far I've done a jump and shoot and a JRPG...soooo hack and slash time? Devil May Cry is a series that fulfills that "I just wanna beat shit up and look awesome doing it" itch, while also having an at least mildly interesting storyline (It's nothing too deep but you will wanna pay attention at least, plus Dante is a smart ass so that's fun). Basically you cut through Demons and Angels while getting upgrades and weapons to help you kill in new and interesting ways. You also have guns...so yea. It's fun and engaging while having enough there to have actual fun combo play through stringing combos together. Speaking of that you will need to master that type of play because after normal shit gets real. DMC games all have a normal game mode and then each other difficulty ramps up in insane ways (the final difficulty in the most recent game had it so Dante died in one shot, enemies had double health and Dante did half damage). Luckly the normal mode is not that punishing but yea if youlike a challenge there is plenty of replay value in this game. This series keeps evolving in new and better ways, the latest installment got ripped up for changing Dante's hair color but in fact added such new and fun game play that who cares?  

To understand the story start from DMC but DMC 2 is arguably one of the best in the series so I wouldn't blame you for starting there and just figuring it out (you're a smart kid right?) 


That's all for now. I'll be back with some more games in a few weeks.
Lolzor OUT!


@SnoCoveredSwamp
@Lolzor_SCS
SCSLive@snowcoveredswamp.com
www.twitch.tv/snowcoveredswamp

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Lolzor's article...

My article for yesterday is going to be delayed till Friday due to...well Buffalo Wild Wings and my work schedule. Sorry guys.

Monday, August 5, 2013

MUCMonday #42

Making Up Cards Monday #42:

And now for our most popular segment of Snow Covered Swamp: MUCMonday.

Lolzor will fill these in with valueable information about how the card was made when he gets the chance.

Yooooooooo. It's the week of the 20th anniversary of Magic, so yaaayyyy!












Rattle Dattle Shaker - 2B
Creature - Zombie Cleric
Whenever a swamp enters the battlefield under your control target zombie gains intimidate until end of turn.
2/2

Ok so there are a few small zombie combos we added in recently. We needed to add some commons and uncommons to the set so me and Sefah came up with mini combos good fro draft with possible use outside of limited. This is one of them.











Punishing Constituent
Instant
(Nonexistent mana costs can’t be paid.)
Punishing Constituent is red.
Apothic - If an opponent took five or more damage this turn, you may reveal Punishing Constituent from your hand and put a copy of this spell on the stack. Use this ability only once per turn.
Deal three damage to target player.

Here we are at the second cycle of Apothics. These all have a requirement that needs to be filled but has very high reward (in this case a recurring bolt)









Unforgiving Wall - 2GW
Creature - Plant
Defender
Whenever Unforgiving Wall enters the battlefield or dies put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
1/4

More of those commons znd uncommons to flesh out the set...me and Sefah like multi color cards






Thanks for reading, check back later in the week for more articles! Don't forget to share!

Sunday, August 4, 2013

SCS Live!: Borderlands 2 (I swear we will finish)




Alright guys this should be it, hopefull we are finish BL2 today so tune in.

We have a new channel if you didnt know so check us out and follow: http://www.twitch.tv/snowcoveredswamp/old

Don't forget our new twitter account: @SnoCoveredSwamp (because appareently the "W" was too much to ask) and @Lolzor_SCS and @Baalhrezem. We have been quite active lately

Last week on SCS Live:
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Friday, August 2, 2013

Crack A Pack Day!


Starts at 24:00 (ignoring 24 minutes of banter)


Hey guys! So in case you missed it Me and Sefah did a bit of a fail stream to celebrate the Crack a Pack day that Wizards made up. We attempted to pack war with...difficulty. Here is a quick recap for you lazy fools who don't wanna watch.


T1: Stealer of Secrets
T2: Mind Rot targeting Lolzor. He discards Nivix Guildmage and Electrickery. End of turn, Cycling Crosstown Courier (pack war rule)
T3: Draw, swing for 2, draw. Main phase two: Fencing Ace
T4: Flinthoof Boar
T5: Draw, Lolzor swings with the board. I block the Fencing Ace. Before combat damage Annihilating Fire, in response Safe Passage. Combat damage, Fencing Ace is destroyed.
T6: Elvish Visionary, pass.
T7: Search Warrant revealing: Gem of Becoming, Fog, Craterize, Warpriest of Thune, Chandra's Fury, Archeomancer, Essence Scatter. Lolzor gains 7 life. End of Turn Chandra's Fury.
T8: Resolve Liliana of the Dark Realms, use her +1. Swing with Flinthoof. Lolzor blocks with Stealer and Savage Surge's it. Flinthoof Boar is destroyed.
T9: Centaur's Herald. In response: Essence Scatter. Swing for 2 at Liliana, chump block with Elvish Visionary.
T10: Activate Liliana's -3 to kill Stealer of Secrets. Archaeomancer bringing back Essence Scatter.
T11: Dead Reveler, in response Essence Scatter.
T12: Swing for 1. Play Walking Corpse. Use Liliana's +1.
T13: Archon of Triumvirate, pass.
T14: Warpriest of Thune, activate Liliana's +1, pass.
T15: Swing with Archon at Liliana, detaining Warpriest and Walking Dead. In response: Fog.
T16: Activate Liliana's -3 to kill Archon. Lolzor concedes.

"You lost to a misplay."
"Story of my life."