Simplicity, why you should strive for it in competitive deckbuilding.

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Marius van Zundert

I’ve always been interested in artforms most people my age find boring unless they’re in artschool or something (not that I am). I guess it comes from having a huge interest in History and the great logical thinkers of old. Some of my favorites include reinessance masters like Michelangelo and some of the great masters in Music like Frédéric François Chopin. [*1]

Simplicity

Now how is this relevant to current day life and especially Magic you might ask? Let me present you with a quote that outlines what I really want to talk about.

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Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer

Posted on November 25, 2010 by Marius van Zundert

So Awesome!

Some Pro Magic players (including Magic Pro Tour Champions Justin Gary, Rob Dougherty, Brian Kibler and John Fiorillo) got together and created a deckbuilding game. Not unlike the tremendously popular Dominion. The basic idea behind deckbuilding games is this; each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards. In the center of the table is a selection of other cards the players can “buy” as they can afford them. Through their selection of cards to buy, and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck on the fly, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by the end of the game.

I recently got my hands on a copy of this great game and wanted to share some thoughts about it.

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Starcraft 2: Return of the Protoss

Posted on November 24, 2010 by Marius van Zundert

Since they got me this game for my Birthday earlier this month I’ve been really getting back into it. I played the original a LOT for years and then just quit playing most non-console video games all together. Mostly because during that time I switched to using a Macbook and I was tired of sitting behind a computer screen all day and then sitting behind it all evening.

When Blizzard first released the message that Star Craft 2 was to be released my heart jumped a little as I remembered all the good times I had with part 1. I really wanted to get into this game so I put it on my wishlist. Safe to say, now 2 weeks after my birthday I finally got around to putting some serious time in. I was mostly a Protoss player but dabbled in Zerg as well from time to time. I considered myself to be at one point, rather good.

So I had to create a new Battlenet Account as I couldn’t use my old one, first thing I noticed was the passwords are being limited to only alphanumeric characters. That’s promoting bad passwords! Why would you limit people like this? it makes no sense whatsoever, and giving people access to all special characters can only improve security on a whole. It makes no sense whatsoever. (Read a good article about passwords here )

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Survival in Legacy

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Marius van Zundert

Survival or Vengevine, which straw broke the camels back?

There’s been a lot of talk regarding the card Survival of the Fittest in Legacy. Some think the card has become insanely unfair, others advocate that Vengevine Is the real problem and the straw that broke the camels back. I’ll offer my thoughts on this subject along with what I think is the best deck featuring Survival.

There’s been a lot written about this subject in recent month’s by various Pro players but I’m going to try and offer another perspective. People are far to easy to call for the Banning of a card and I think this is no exception.

Why Ban cards?

Now this is a tricky subject, not nearly so clear-cut as some would think. The world is full of players who think everything under the sun should be banned. Some players believe that any strategy or card that regularly beats them should be labeled cheap, broken, unfair and consequently banned. In actuality, very little ever needs to be banned. The most common thing heard by players is:

“But It’s Too Good!”

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Returning

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Marius van Zundert

So this will be my first blog post since August 2009, I’ve moved the blog to my main domain, I’m going to be revamping some categories and updating the software in the coming weeks. I just really wanted a place where I could write about everything that’s keeping me busy from tech stuff to hobby stuff. So, what place is better then my own blog?… more to follow soon.

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