JokerSmilez

Is there going to be a Quick Look of this game? I'm pretty sure I heard that Ubisoft wasn't sending out review copies but I was still expecting a Quick Look on release day for such a seemingly big release.

The price is $35 Canadian plus shipping.

Requests for more can be sent to her directly on Twitter (twitter.com/chibijenova) or you can press the "Ask A Question" button on her Etsy store.

@mb: Wow, that was fast! We'll send it out ASAP.

My wife embroiders as a hobby and wanted to make something to remember Ryan so she made this: http://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/173904939/charmingly-garrulous-ezio-hoop-art

She's decided to sell it and donate the proceeds to the National Sleep Institute for Sleep Apnea Research and asked me to post the link here.

Hope you guys like it and it's cool with the mods that I'm posting this link. Like I said, 100% of the proceeds will be going to a charity in Ryan's honor. If there's enough interest, she'd be happy to make more (although, it does take about a week to make one) so let me know what you guys think.

EDIT: Looks like it's sold to @mb. Requests for more can be sent to her directly on Twitter (twitter.com/chibijenova) or you can press the "Ask A Question" button on her Etsy store.

So, a few weeks ago, I started noticing just how often Brad says the phrase "you know" and now I can't stop hearing it and it's starting to get kind of annoying.

He seriously says it several dozen times an episode, sometimes multiple times in a sentence when he's trying to explain something.

Has anyone else noticed this?

@bisonhero: I think his original post was about how it's pointless to spend money to get "Legendary" cards if you can get beat with easy to obtain cards even by F2P players, but it sounds like you're talking about balance. Yes, most commons are trash and most legendaries are powerful when matched with good rares and heroics that make a deck actually work together. But MtG wasn't that different from that, but vastly increased mechanics, complexity, and number of cards meant that commons and uncommons could remain competitive even against rare-stacked decks with most good decks only relying on a handful of rares (dual lands were the rare staple from when I played). Back in my MtG days, I would take great pleasure in playing a Standard deck with 0 rares in it for the sheer joy of dismantling some spoiled kid who got his mom to buy him all the cards necessary for some tournament winning decklist he found online.

I agree that the power level of most legendary and heroics are a bit too strong. I think the power level of commons needs to come up to try and balance out the power curve between commons, rares, heroics and legendaries (Lord knows how many total garbage rares are in Magic) but I guess the F2P model makes them weight the power more towards the more difficult to acquire cards to incentivize spending money, which is pretty scummy but whatever.

@starvinggamer: I wish this game had a "draft mode" which focused more on building a deck with what you've got instead of grinding for as many Savants, Grimgaunt Predators, and other OP shit. The last few years I played MtG was only draft because it's way more fun and really focuses on the skill of the player rather than the size of their wallet.

The results don't mean that anyone can slap a deck of commons together and beat a good deck, it just means that powerful cards are found at all rarities. Stacking your deck with rare cards does not guarantee victory in any CCG.

That being said, the deck he won with revolved around Savants, arguably the strongest cards in the game but don't happen to be that rare. In fact, 10 of the top 16 decks in that Reddit tournament were running 3 (the maximum) Flamershaper Savants. That doesn't sound like "an absurd amount of randomness" to me (even if it does speak to some balance issues).

@sparky_buzzsaw: It's just really frustrating for new players who only have the starter cards to basically be forced into getting their asses kicked by everyone who has been playing awhile or just play against the computer for 10 minutes a day every day for a couple weeks until they've built up enough cards to get something half decent. For a new player, there's no incentive to play longer than that unless you spend money which doesn't exactly make you want to spend money.

From everything I've read about tournament winning decks and from the play experience I do have (about 50 games vs. people), Savants are really strong. And in over a week of getting every daily bonus and using all my silver on boosters, I've managed to get 1 Darkshaper and 1 Steelshaper and that's it. Maybe this is the norm for F2P CCG's but it really seems to discourage F2P.

That said, I've managed to put together a deck that so far is nearly undefeated in about 20 games (mostly against Darkshaper Savant/Predator decks because almost everyone else seems to playing some version of those).

Creatures (15):

• 3 Alloyin General
• 3 Metamind Adept
• 2 Battle Techtician
• 3 Deepbranch Prowler
• 3 Deepwood Bear Rider
• 1 Shardplate Delver

Spells (15):

• 3 Electronet
• 3 Heavy Artillery
• 2 Energy Surge
• 3 Feral Instinct
• 2 Enrage
• 2 Ferocious Roar

Maybe it's because I have a lot of CCG experience and I'm not playing against great players but my deck just seems to overwhelm people in the mid game. They can't seem to get anything of their own rolling because they can't ignore 3-4 creatures hitting them for 10+ each and they spend everything they've got trying to keep my creatures down.

I'd like to try it against more experienced players with established decks because maybe I've just been lucky and matched against players just trying to copy a "top tier" deck without really knowing how to play. However, it feels does good to beat players with Legendary and "stronger" cards in their decks when I'm just running some random aggro deck I've pieced together in a few days of mostly bad boosters.

So, am I reading this right? If you don't want to pay money in hopes of getting a "rare" digital card in a game that's still in beta, and all the cards you currently have are total garbage, there is literally zero reason to play beyond the 30 or so minutes it takes to get all the Silver you can earn in a given day? Grinding and playing the game is completely meaningless?

Man, they are really pushing the "pay to win" angle HARD.

7.

I don't know a lot about F1, but I know a thing or two about microphones.

Most good quality dynamic microphones would be able to handle the SPL (Sound Pressure Level) of an F1 car. The Shure SM58 (an industry standard dynamic microphone) can handle up to about 180db and F1 cars produce about 130-150db.

Drew, you're likely most familiar with "condenser" microphones, as that's what almost all Lav mics are, and they have much lower SPL limits. For those who don't know anything about audio, dynamic basically means it doesn't require outside power, using electromagnetic induction to pick up sound (a movable induction coil in a magnetic field vibrates to ambient sound). Condenser microphones do require outside power (also known as Phantom Power or "+48V") which comes from the sound board or a battery pack as they have onboard electronics and amplifiers which can overload and become damaged. Condensers are generally higher sound quality (especially in the higher frequency range) and higher dynamic range but are much more sensitive to audio levels as well as physical shock (you can break them by dropping them). Dynamic microphones are very common in live audio (where my experience is) because they can handle extremely high volume levels such as the volume of a fully cranked guitar amp or a loud snare drum as well as being generally very durable (the Shure SM57 or SM58 could be used a hammer if you really needed to and it would still work just fine). So, my guess is they're using some type of dynamic microphone with a pad (a filter that reduces the strength of incoming signal) on the preamp to prevent it from overloading and clipping. You can get condenser microphones with built in pads that enable them to handle higher SPL's so it's possible they're using that, but even with a pad, I don't know how well a condenser mic could handle the volume of an F1 car.

It's also possible they're using ribbon microphones, which is another style of microphone that also uses electromagnetic induction to pick up sound (a "ribbon" of conductive material between the poles of a magnet) that can also handle high SPL's and has better high frequency response than your typical dynamic microphone. These types of microphones are less common (although in the early 1900s, they were the standard) but modern manufacturing has made these cheaper and more durable so they're becoming more popular, so it's also possible one of these is being used but my best guess would be that it's just a high quality, small, light, dynamic microphone.