Deep Listens is a gaming podcast series I'm recording with a few of my friends. Every two weeks we pick and play a new game and then discuss it from a literary, philosophical, and game design perspective. Its kind of like a book club for video games. We try to dig as deep as we can on an individual game every episode so check it out!
In this episode Gino, Billy, and Pete discuss Magic Pengel: The Quest for Color and its amazing story. We cover all of the game's systems, our inability to draw anything but nightmares, and the game's restrictive leveling system. We then tear into all of the game's many rough edges before diving deep on the surprisingly mature story of Magic Pengel. There are some audio issues with this show, but they will not persist in future shows.
Dream on. Dream on. Dream on. Dream until yo' dream come true.
Deep Listens is a gaming podcast series I'm recording with a few of my friends. Every two weeks we pick and play a new game and then discuss it from a literary, philosophical, and game design perspective. Its kind of like a book club for video games. We try to dig as deep as we can on an individual game every episode so check it out!
In this episode Gino and Chris "Zombiepie" -REDACTED- discuss the end of Final Fantasy X! That means we discuss all of the madness that you've been anticipating! We also discuss Chris's continued inability to remember the simple elemental system in FFX and his reluctance to abuse the game's mechanics.
We then wrap up by sorting out FFX's place in our definitive list of Final Fantasy games. Do we have a new game on the top of the list?
They make you rip this thing's legs off and it's so sad about that turn of events.
Deep Listens is a gaming podcast series I'm recording with a few of my friends. Every two weeks we pick and play a new game and then discuss it from a literary, philosophical, and game design perspective. Its kind of like a book club for video games. We try to dig as deep as we can on an individual game every episode so check it out!
In this episode Pete, Billy, and Gino discuss the nightmare that is the story of Super Mario Sunshine. We also discuss the game's excellent platforming, hit-and-miss water mechanics, and cool open world. We then transition to discussion of Super Mario Odyssey and Gino gets back on the bike.
Deep Listens is a gaming podcast series I'm recording with a few of my friends. Every two weeks we pick and play a new game and then discuss it from a literary, philosophical, and game design perspective. Its kind of like a book club for video games. We try to dig as deep as we can on an individual game every episode so check it out!
In this episode Gino, Billy, and Pete discuss Always Sometimes Monsters and things take a dark turn. After some initial expository discussion Pete and Gino take turns venting about different issues they had with the game. Billy tries to inject some light, but there was no saving Always Sometimes Monsters from the critique. We go in-depth with every mechanic in the game: from the stamina system to the mundane mini-games to the game's cardiac tone. At least Super Mario Sunshine is up next...
Deep Listens is a gaming podcast series I'm recording with a few of my friends. Every two weeks we pick and play a new game and then discuss it from a literary, philosophical, and game design perspective. Its kind of like a book club for video games. We try to dig as deep as we can on an individual game every episode so check it out!
In this episode Gino and Chris "Zombiepie" -REDACTED- answer some listener questions, discuss the events from Macalania to the Calm Lands, and Chris harms himself with sausages.
Deep Listens is a gaming podcast series I'm recording with a few of my friends. Every two weeks we pick and play a new game and then discuss it from a literary, philosophical, and game design perspective. Its kind of like a book club for video games. We try to dig as deep as we can on an individual game every episode so check it out!
In this episode Billy, Gino, Pete, and Chris "Zombiepie" -REDACTED- take a bunch of listener mail. This includes a definitive list of all of the terrible games Chris has made Gino play and a lengthy role-playing exercise to get inside the mind of a die-hard Nets fan after a dismal NBA draft for the Nets. We then say goodbye to Chris and dive into The Stanley Parable. Pete and Gino take turns criticizing some of the game's shortcomings before Billy brings some more appreciation to the table.
Hello everyone, I’m back with a brand new invention and this time I decided to investigate one of the most overlooked cards of Amonkhet: Gideon. No no no, not Gideon of the Trials. People are already all over that card. I’m talking about Gideon, Martial Paragon. You know, the one from the planeswalker starter deck. I figured with Amonkhet Gameday testing us this weekend and plenty of Standard FNMs coming along with it, I should take a look at a card that anyone can get their hands on.
While Gideon, Martial Paragon might not have the wow factor of Gideon of the Trials or the proven track record of Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, he does have some very nice things going for him. He starts with a respectable 5 loyalty for 5 mana. However, he has a +2 ability that untaps all of your creatures and gives them all +1/+1, which means he’ll likely have a herculean 7 loyalty the turn he hits the battlefield. That is no joke and it means he’s likely to stick around for a while, pumping your team up the whole time. He has the standard Gideon 0 ability to become a creature and as a 5/5 indestructible burly-man he’s always a threat when he’s in play. His ultimate is a -10 that gives all of your creatures +2/+2 and taps down your opponent’s creatures, perfect for a game-winning, all-in attack. Gideon is clearly meant for a swarming creature strategy with his +2 ability and that’s exactly where I want him
I’m envisioning a deck that can take advantage of both parts of Gideon’s +2 ability, the creature boost and the untapping. While he’s clearly intended to be used with exert, one of the flagship mechanics from Amonkhet, I’m more interested in his interaction with a powerful card that’s fallen out of favor: Cyptolith Rite. Cryptolith Rite allows you to tap your creatures for any color of mana. When combined with a bunch of weenies and Gideon, you can easily flood the board with creatures while still peppering your opponent with attacks. But what to do with all of that mana? If only there was a card that rewarded you for just playing creatures and also reduced the cost of your creatures so you don’t stall without Cryptolith Rite. After a quick search on Gatherer I’ve found out that there is such a card: Oketra’s Monument. The monument reduces the cost of your white creatures by one generic mana and creates a 1/1 warrior with vigilance every time you cast a creature. That includes non-white creatures by the way.
These three cards are the three non-creatures I want to play and in a perfect world they would be the only non-creature spells in the deck. But alas, the world is not perfect so there is another non-creature spell I must play. Thanks to the looming threat of Aetherworks Marvel I feel I need to include a full 4 copies of Cast Out in the main deck. Without some way to interact with the marvel and the monsters it brings, I’m afraid my Gideon dreams would be spoiled by one of the most powerful and popular decks in the format. With that unpleasant concession out of the way, let’s get to the creatures!
I want a full 4 copies of Thraben Inspector and Hanweir Militia Captain. Inspector Clue-so is still just about the best thing you can do for one white mana and he helps ameliorate the deck’s lack of card draw. Hanweir Militia Captain comes down early and pays you off big time for going wide. She even contributes some Gideon worshipers to the cause when she flips into Westvale Cult Leader. She does everything we want to do. After our all-stars I took a bit of a Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute approach to spicing up the rest of the deck.
3x Oketra’s Monument
3 x Angel of Invention
3 x Duskwatch Recruiter
3 x Glint-Sleeve Artisan
4 Hanweir Militia Captain
2 x Manglehorn
2 x Regal Caracal
1 x Samut, Voice of Dissent
4 x Thraben Inspector
3 x Vizier of Deferment
4 x Cast Out
3 x Cryptolith Rite
2 x Gideon, Martial Paragon
4 x Canopy Vista
2 x Evolving Wilds
4 x Forest
4 x Fortified Village
2 x Inspiring Vantage
1 x Mountain
6 x Plains
Angel of Invention pumps up your team and brings two little buddies with it to help flood the board. Duskwatch Recruiter gives you something great to do with all of your mana and his flip-side furthers the cost reduction goal of the deck. Glint-Sleeve Artisan is not an amazing card on its own, but it does the necessary job of putting two bodies into play for the cost of one. Manglehorn helps add some additional resilience to Aetherworks Marvel by both killing the marvel if it’s in play and forcing it to come into play tapped if it isn’t. It helps that most decks in the format play some kind of artifact; so even in less advantageous matchups, he’s likely to find a trinket to smash. Regal Caracal is another card that brings friends and it also helps stabilize if an agro deck has pressured you. Do not underestimate the strength of dropping 7 power worth of lifelinking cats on turn 4 thanks to Oketra’s Monument. Samut might be a bit too spicy, but she can make for completely busted turns when combined with any of the three major engines in the deck. It turns out giving all of your creatures haste is pretty messed up. Last, but not least, Vizier of Deferment synergizes with all of the enters the battlefield abilities spread throughout the squad. It also has a neat synergy with Oketra’s Monument since it’s a white creature with flash. Giving you two surprise blockers and potentially blinking an attacker or blocker can make for some tricky combat phases.
I’m happy to report that this deck has some legs. Despite my initial reservations about the power level of some of the individual cards in this collage, the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts. This deck can flood the board in a similar manner to other Green/White token strategies and, while it doesn’t sport cards that are as individually powerful as Gideon, Ally of Zendikar or Nissa, Voice of Zendikar, it does pack a punch. I found that this deck has a great matchup against Mardu Vehicles since it attacks so well. Mardu is terrible at blocking and waves of 1/1s with vigilance from Oketra’s Monument are able to effectively block most of the creature in a Vehicles deck. To top it off Mardu’s spot removal isn’t great at dealing with the multiple threats this deck presents.
I also found that the addition of Manglehorn and Cast Out to the main board gives this deck some game against Aetherworks Marvel. GW Gideon Rites is able to pressure Marvel early and often with multiple threats. This taxes Marvel’s limited removal and precious energy reserves. To make matters worse for them, Ulamog’s double exile is slightly dulled by the number of bodies that this deck pumps out. Even after some ceaseless hungering, GW can recover if the eldrazi menace is Cast Out in time. Fortunately, if Marvel doesn’t come down early, GW Gideo Rites often goes so wide that a single Ulamog is not enough to turn the tide. There will still be games where Marvel kills you on turn 4, but that’s life in Standard right now, you just gotta live with it.
If you’re going to a gameday this weekend and you’re interested in playing a deck that’s slightly off the beaten path, give this one a try. It’s been a blast to pilot in testing and it finally gives that Gideon guy a chance to shine.
Deep Listens is a gaming podcast series I'm recording with a few of my friends. Every two weeks we pick and play a new game and then discuss it from a literary, philosophical, and game design perspective. Its kind of like a book club for video games. We try to dig as deep as we can on an individual game every episode so check it out!
In this episode Gino and Chris "@zombiepie" -REDACTED- answer some audience questions and concerns about their self-destructive endurance runs and their self-destructive Nekopara talk. They then transition to breakdowns of their FFV and FFVIII playthroughs. This leads to a re-evaluation of FFVIII's place on their scientific FF rankings list. They finish up by sending FFVIII out the only way they know how... with song.
Hello readers old and new! After a long hiatus away from writing about Magic: The Gathering, I’ve been drawn back in by the siren song of the Egyptian Nile… um I mean the Amonkhet Luxa. That’s right, after months and months away, the mummies have dragged me back in. I’ve never been a huge fan of ancient Egypt, I was more of a classical Greece person. However, the mechanics of Amonkhet have really intrigued me. I’ve always been a fan of Cycling and the versatility it provides. Embalm looks like a great mechanic for long battles of attrition. And Aftermath is the exact twist on Flashback that I’ve personally wanted for years now.
Yet, my article today is not on any of those mechanics. While each of those mechanics are cool, self-contained bits of value, I find far greater joy in cheating on costs. I love nothing more than manipulating my deck to exploit potential cost inefficiencies. Maybe it’s because I came up when Affinity for Artifacts roamed the land unchallenged; but, whenever I see a cost that seems misaligned with what you get, my ears perk up. With that in mind, today I want to talk about the -1/-1 counter mechanic in Amonkhet and demonstrate just how potentially busted it can be.
Amonkhet actually diverges pretty far from Magic’s previous -1/-1 counter sets, Shadowmoore and New Phyrexia. In Shadowmoore, -1/-1 counters were central to various value based strategies, what with persist creatures constantly coming back and with wither cards weakening everything in sight. Shadowmoore’s -1/-1 counters were an emblem of a harsh world and the relentless creatures that lived in it. In New Phyrexia, Infect played similarly to Wither, except it made opponents play with 10 life instead of 20. New Phyrexia was about an inexorable march of disease driven by Infect and Proliferate. In Amonkhet however, -1/-1 counters have the opportunity to get downright explosive. The -1/-1 counters of Amonkhet represent two mechanical metaphors. On the one hand, they can represent a trial. They are some hardship that, once overcome, leaves you stronger. But they can also represent the zero-sum ambition of the people of Amonhket. Why suffer weakness at all if you can foist it on someone else instead? It is this element of -1/-1 counters that I want to explore.
Thanks to a change in the Standard rotation schedule last year, Amonkhet and Battle for Zendikar are in in Standard at the same time. Neither set was designed with the other in mind thanks to the abruptness of the Standard rotation change. That likely means there is a greater than usual chance of there being a broken interaction between the two sets. A lack of testing and forethought tends to lead to mistakes (though apparently the Sheeli Rai + Felidar Guardian combo fell through the cracks despite being in the same block, so what do I know?). The interaction I’m interested in is between the cheap -1/-1 counter creatures of Amonkhet and the sacrifice fodder of Battle for Zendikhar. Amonkhet has a ton of under-costed creatures that have the drawback of placing -1/-1 counters onto a creature you control when they enter the battlefield, but BFZ has a few of cheap creatures that love to die for value. Let’s see what happens when we put them together:
4 x Blisterpod
4 x Dread Wanderer
4 x Exemplar of Strength
4 x Channeler Initiate
3 x Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons
3 x Plague Belcher
4 x Scrapheap Scrounger
2 x Baleful Ammit
3 x Rhonas, the Indomitable
4 x Grasp of Darkness
2 x Fatal Push
3 x Exquisite Agony
4 x Blooming Marsh
7 x Forest
9 x Swamp
This deck does one thing and one thing only, turn dudes sideways. Thanks to all of the cheap fodder creatures you can do things like this: turn 1 play Blisterpod. Turn 2 attack, then play Exemplar of Strength putting the counters on Blisterpod (making an Eldrazi Scion). Turn 3 attack, then play Exemplar of Strength and with the counters on the stack sacrifice the Scion to float a mana to play a Scrapheap Scrounger. Turn 4 attack with everyone and put your opponent at 3 life. That is pretty fast and almost all of the creatures involved come in under counter magic and have natural resistance to damage-based removal with their high toughness. Unlike the premier BG strategy, BG Winding Constrictor, this deck has almost no late game plan outside of Rhonas. It makes up for that lack in the form of pure aggression. On the upside, this deck does have a funny bit of hate against BG snake since cards like Hapatra and Exquisite Agony have their -1/-1 counters doubled when they are put on an opposing creature with Winding Constrictor in play.
In testing the card that stood out the most was Hapatra. She can get out of hand very quickly and once she does, she makes combat a mess for the rest of the game (barring a mass removal spell). If she can get a hit in early thanks to a well-placed removal spell or an opposing Scrapheap Scrounger, she can quickly fill the board with venomous snakes and -1/-1 counters, making almost every attack and block disadvantageous for the opponent. Rhonas was also very impressive, but more obviously so. He just beats your opponent to death and forces through damage. I mean, he’s great but there’s nothing clever about bludgeoning your opponent with an obviously overpowered card. I’m here for the marginal cost cheating, not the “winning” that people seem to like so much.
On the whole the deck is fun and plays unlike any aggressive deck I’ve played before. I’m not used to a low to the ground aggressive deck getting to have 4/4s and 3/4s without playing mass pump spells. I don’t think this deck is devastating as currently constructed, but with a few more cards from Hour of Devestation it could be a real contender. What do you think?
I've been a bit behind on posting the podcast to my GB blog, but that changes today!
Deep Listens is a gaming podcast series I'm recording with a few of my friends. Every two weeks we pick and play a new game and then discuss it from a literary, philosophical, and game design perspective. Its kind of like a book club for video games. We try to dig as deep as we can on an individual game every episode so check it out!
In part two, Gino and Chris "@zombiepie" -REDACTED- discuss their plans for the seventh Giantbomb Community Endurance Run, field an amazing question about the New Jersey Nets, and discuss everything from the blitzball tournament at Luca to Djose temple. This is your number one podcast for carefully examining dads who are also whales and the futility of Brooklyn basketball.
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