LOL Smurfs

I haven't written in a while. Well, for the whole time Brian was here, I haven't written. Anyway, tomorrow is May 1st so I'll write a whole blog entry on my main site then (or in a few days), so for now I'll just mention something that happened yesterday.

Actually, it's not that interesting. In any case, Ambrose and Mike made new LOL accounts so to play with them we made smurf accounts, Alex, Duy, and myself. We queued up, and we fought against another team of 5, probably mostly smurfs as they totally pwned us.

We shrugged off the loss and played again, only to be queued up against the same 5 guys! This time we also got owned during the laning phase but when it all mattered we ended up winning. They requested a tie-breaker, but it was midnight so we added each other to our lists and we'll do a custom game sometime... although now that Alex is without Duy's computer, his laptop isn't very LOL-worthy so he might not be playing with us for a while.

Anyway, that's it. Later (on the other blog) I'll update about Brian's visit, Tales of Graces F, Kingdoms of Amalur, and some Magic.

Avacyn Restored - Full Set

Okay, so a new Magic set is coming out soon, and now all the cards have been officially shown. This set looked pretty good, pretty "epic", good cards for Commander, lots of splashiness - and now that the full set has been shown... some of the cards feel... like a letdown. I don't mean there are cards that are bad - I mean, it feels like there are some redundant cards, or they didn't put much thought into these cards. I'll go through some of them now:

DKA had Skillfull Lunge (Target creature gets +2/+0 and first strike UEOT) and now AVR has Zealous Strike (TC gets +2/+2 and first strike UEOT) - maybe flavourwise, Lunge was purely offensive and now the humans are being more confidant, but cardwise it feels unoriginal to have both of these in the same block. Draft-wise, you would probably not draft DKA and AVR together but it still feels lazy.

DKA has Hollowhenge Beast (3GG - 5/5 vanilla) and AVR has Wildwood Geist (4G - 3/3, gets +2/+2 on your turn). It just feels worse, and also lazy.

AVR has these two cards:
2G - Instant - Destroy target artifact or enchantment. You gain 3 life.
And
1W - Instant - Destroy target enchantment. You gain 2 life.

Really? This just feels like really lazy design. Doesn't even feel like there's a story behind them.

Lastly, AVR has these 3 cards:
2G - Common - 2/2 - Soulbound +1/+1
3G - Uncommon - 2/2 - Soulbound +2/+2
3GG - Rare - 4/4 - Soulbound +4/+4

That sounds like a pretty lame "cycle" if you ask me.

Ignorance

So yesterday, Alex did his ActSci test and passed - but later he came home and opened his mouth and I had to confront him about it - "I don't like you - you're very ignorant". Shortly after I went to bed, and the day ended on a bad note. This time, we were talking about how (in LOL) you're supposed to do bot games to learn how to use characters, and Alex agrees, but Duy and I both recall him using skills in a game, yet he doesn't read what the skills do - so how can he truly know what the skills do? I bring up the example of how with Kog'Maw's Q - if you just use it, it looks like an attack that... well, doesn't do a lot of damage. The attack speed upgrade isn't really noticeable at early levels, and similarly, you'll never guess that it causes Armor and MR reduction. Similarly, Karthus's wall noticeably slows enemies, but the 35 Armor and MR Reduction isn't noticeable at first glance.

Alex's response? He doesn't care, and he said knowing these he wouldn't play differently. So he's unwilling to learn the little things about the different skills, and if that's not ignorant, then I don't know what is. (note for the rest of this entry - sometimes I would clump "stubborn" with ignorance; after all, stubbornness is "ignorant to change").

Anyway, before that, there was a time where he was trying Kassadin for the first time. When you try new champions, well, when I try new champions, I like to try out new skills, maybe new playstyles, etc. - after all, that's what sets champions apart from other champions. Anyway, I noticed Alex was playing Kassadin and he has 3 points in Q, 3 points in E, 1 point in R, but by level 7, zero points in W. So I ask him why he doesn't have a point in W, and he just goes on and on about how it's a bad skill. I've used Kassadin before, and as I explained before, I like to try out all the skills... but here is Alex, acting all high and mighty and never putting a point into W. Alex acts all high and mighty - I've used Kassadin once, he's used him zero times, but he's supposedly already ten times smarter than I am at Kassadin. And then eventually he low-balls me by citing one of the times a Kassadin beat me with mostly just R and Q. What the fuck? So I slammed my iPod onto the table and stormed out of there. What a motherfucker.

Before that was when I was using Kogmaw, and we were comparing different playstyles, about how I would use a lot of his E to slow down groups of enemies, but Alex was having none of it - he kept trying to tell me how E was bad, and then later when I refused to step away he mentions how I'm a weird player. What an ignorant fuck, because I play guys differently than he does.

Aww fuck, I'm having a hard time writing this entry. I'm deciding now, Alex isn't playing LOL on this computer tonight. He's just making me so angry. It's not just LOL, too. I tend to put quirky cards into my Magic decks, and everytime Alex sees them he shakes his head and makes me feel like a total idiot. He's not just ignorant about trying new things, he's ignorant about other people's feelings. On a more LOL related note, back when I was learning, we would be in a team game and he would say something like "hey Duy and hey Pug, looks like we're going to have to win this fight" - basically stating that I'm sucking, when I'm sitting right next to him. What an ignorant bastard.

Anyway, back to Karthus. So, fucker, you think his Armor and MR reduction doesn't change the way it works? On a guy with no armor or MR, he takes 100/100 (or 20/20, for simplicity) damage. While walking through Karthus's wall, he would take 100/65, or 20/13. That is, he would take about 53% more damage. If he had say, 100 armor, he would take 100/200. Walking through the wall, he'll have 100/165, or 20/33. That's 60% instead of 50%, so he will take 20% more damage. So that time you were Ashe and you were doing so much damage to the enemy team? Was it luck? Was it an act of God? Was it your IE? No, it was me, Motherfucker. My wall gives our team 20-50% more damage output, meanwhile dropping their movement speed to 20%. So next time you think your guy is so awesome, think again, fucker.

It also works the other way around. You better think twice about walking through that Karthus Wall, thinking it will only slow you. All of a sudden you're taking 50% more damage from all sources around you. Let's see how long an Ashe lasts in there.

Cards Against Humanity

So yesterday was VCSA Board Games' Night, and it was fun! About 15-25 people showed up, and among the usual games of Monopoly Deal, Taboo, and Jenga, there were two standouts for me. The first was Taboo 2, which I didn't know existed.

It's Taboo but it's better; instead of two clues per card (in English and French), you have 4 clues per card, all English. There are more cards and they're new, so at least for some time they'll be fresh for us :D Additionally, there's a "bonus" die, which you can use optionally to make the game fresh and allow come-from-behind-victories. At the start of the round you roll the bonus die and then you might do the round as normal... or you might have double the time! OR, instead of just getting your team to guess, you get everyone to guess! OR, maybe you have to pick one member of your team and you can only talk to him/her! So that's that. Taboo 2 (that's not the official name) is an automatic buy when I find it.

The other standout game was Cards Against Humanity. At first I wasn't too keen on playing it, but after trying it, it was really funny and I enjoyed it immensely. The tagline of the game is "A card game for horrible people". Basically, it's just like Apples to Apples but meaner, raunchier, and naughtier. Here's a 2 minute video from the creators explaining the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHZh5V8nfO4

In Apples to Apples, you get an adjective, and then the other players complement it with a noun or a verb. In CAH, instead of adjectives, you get cards with fill-in-the-blanks. Actually, I was gonna type more stuff but I found this youtube video and that explains it pretty well. Anyway, I enjoyed the game. Apples to Apples is fun but a lot of the time it's very mild, and funny moments arise when you hit something epic or something just a bit funny. Sure, CAH has a bunch of mild cards, but more often than not, you'll get hit by something off-color and you just burst out laughing.

Would I get it? Probably not. Duy played it a little bit, but I don't think it's his cup of tea. Vinh won't play it. Mom and Dad won't play it. Alan won't play it. David won't play it. Eric, Alex, Raymond, probably Ricky and Ambrose, and I would play it. So... it's good for party occasions, but only with the right people. Hmm, maybe I'll get it, it's something good to have, that's not used very often. Like a Fire Extinguisher.

Updating

Maybe I should update this blog once a week, or... originally (by originally, I meant today or yesterday, not like, when I first started this blog) ... orignally, I wanted to blog once a day on here, but maybe there's not enough to write about here, unless I make a list of things or something. I do have a list of my top 150-200 videogames of all time that I wrote out for a message board once, complete with a couple of paragraphs per game explaining why I liked it and stuff.

But, if I don't find enough stuff, maybe I should just update this once a week... then again, I don't want to force it, maybe I don't have enough stuff to write. I don't want to force it and make this blog unreadable - I mean, what if everyday I wrote something like this? I write about not being able to write anything. Fun fun.

Anyway, I was going to say something this "update"... oh yeah, I have a Twitter account and I know I have it and I know I don't tweet a lot, but I just checked and apparently since 2009 I've tweeted 61 times! That said, 27 of those 61 times were tweets in the first month (December 2009), 17 of the 61 are from January 2010 to April 2010, and the other 16 tweets are between November 2010 to now, and most of those 16 are replies or retweets, no new "blog" information from me.

Anyway, so I just decided that I might tweet more. I have about ~30 followers, mostly friends, so most of it will fall on deaf ears too but whatever. Maybe... something something. Again, I don't want to tweet randomly... OOH! Well, Google Wave is now done, so maybe twitter can be my new Google Wave... except that "I" had "followers" on Google Wave and not so much on Twitter. I do like the idea of having my "tweets" read, so that's why I send e-mails, but... well, whatever.

Something Something... I'm starting to ramble, so I'll just stop it here --

Random Words

I haven't updated this blog in forever. I made this blog so I can write stuff in this blog that I wouldn't write in the other one; like, on the other blog, I might update once a week or once every two weeks (nowadays it's once a month), and I would go over general stuff, like what we did that month, what games we played, etc; and I mean in general - so I would have a paragraph talking about what tv shows I liked that month, another paragraph for what games we've been playing, and one paragraph each about special things we did, special things that are coming up, and so on.

So this blog would be both a more specific blog and a... different, kind of blog. Like, on my main blog I wouldn't go in detail about Kingdoms of Amalur; I would just write one paragraph. Meanwhile on this blog, perhaps I would write a whole article about it, for those that are more interested in it.

Also, I was thinking I would update this blog more often. Look; before this post, there was a March 29th 2010 post, and before that, there was a post almost everyday from December 13th 2009 to February 4th 2010. So I would update this blog on a near-daily basis, with smaller things, or maybe a list of things. I would countdown my list of top 100 videogames or top 50 movies, or things like that.

The other blog was more general; if you went there once or twice a month, you would always be caught up. If you went here once or twice a month, you would have to read several pages of entries to be all caught up. I didn't want that experience to be on my main blog, so that's why I made this blog. In short, this blog is kinda like the twitter-version of the other blog, or at least, it was supposed to be.

Anyway, so I am just updating this now, and maybe I'll end up posting something here. I was thinking about writing about Kingdoms of Amalur, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to write, lol. Anyhoo, I guess that's it for now.