At the Kitchen Table

In this post I’m going to talk about adding events and decks to decks.channelfireball.com

First you need an account. That’s as easy as going to decks.channelfireball.com, clicking on “Signup” or “Login with Facebook”. Once you have an account you’ll see a NEW item on the menu. Drop it down (click on the green downward pointing arrow to the left of it) and pick NEW DECK or NEW EVENT.

Adding an event

As you would expect, the form for adding an event is pretty simple.

Even so, let’s go through field by field.

Give the event a name. I’ve been following the convention of abbreviating what and spelling out where. For example, PT Avacyn Restored and SCG Madison, and GP Lincoln. You might also want to put the year when there’s just a location, since a location can be host of a GP or PT repeatedly. The new PT naming format avoids this problem by naming them after the set that is debuting there.

Where is the event being held? For PT Avacyn restored, that’s Barcelona, Spain. For GP Lincoln 2012, it’s Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. For a store level event, I would put the store name as well. E.g. Galactic Force, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

When was the event, or when did the event start in the case of a multi-day event. Click the field and a calendar pops up for you to use to choose the date.

What kind of event is it? This drop down gives you the choice of various event types, such as Grand Prix, SCG Open, Game Day, and Friday Night Magic. Pick the appropriate one.

Pick the format. For constructed anyway. If you want to add a draft event, leave this blank and make a note in the next field that it’s a draft, and what packs were used.

Finally, you can add a freeform note to the event. Use the above fields when you can, as the notes field won’t be used during search.

That’s it, click Create and your event will be created. We’ll be sure to add went for the large/global events such as the PTs, GPS, SCG Opens, etc. But feel free to add the event’s you’re running as TO, store owner, etc.

Adding a deck

Adding a deck is almost as simple.

As above, let’s go through it one field at a time.

Every deck needs a name. If it has an actual name, use that. I miss the days of decks with names like Cephalid Breakfast. For lack of anything better, name it by the designer/player and event. E.g. Joshua Cho – PTAVR.

Who designed the deck. Generally, if I don’t know the designer I’ll use whoever played it.

You can add a freeform text description/notes/comments to the deck. This is completely optional. NOTE: This field is not searched by the deck search.

If the deck was played in an event, enter the name of the event here. If you do, the name will be auto completed. For this reason, it’s a good idea to add the event first. An event isn’t required.

If you set an event, you can also set the person who played the deck. The system will try to autocomplete the players name for you. Currently you can only set a single player for the deck when you create it. You can add more if you edit the deck.

Also, if you set an event and player, you can set how they did with it.

This is the focus of this form. Here’s where you paste the deck list. For now it’s pretty dumb. Formatting of the list is pretty flexible but you need to spell the card names correctly (though case is ignored).

Only two things matter with the formatting:

1. cards are on a line consisting of a number followed by the card name,
2. sideboard follows the main deck and is separated from it by a line containing the work sideboard.

Blank lines and other lines are ignored.

Here’s an example:

4  Cavern of Souls
4  Evolving Wilds
9  Forest
4  Hinterland Harbor
2  Island
1  Plains
4  Avacyn's Pilgrim
3  Dungeon Geists
4  Geist of Saint Traft
4  Invisible Stalker
3  Strangleroot Geist
4  Wolfir Silverheart
3  Abundant Growth
4  Increasing Savagery
3  Silent Departure
4  Spectral Flight
Sideboard
3  Dissipate
2  Garruk Relentless
4  Tree of Redemption
2  Undead Alchemist
1  Witchbane Orb
3  Wolfir Avenger

Here’s the same list as it was copied straight off the Wizards of the Coast Top 8 Decks page:

Main Deck
60 cards

4  Cavern of Souls
4  Evolving Wilds
9  Forest
4  Hinterland Harbor
2  Island
1  Plains
24 lands

4  Avacyn's Pilgrim
3  Dungeon Geists
4  Geist of Saint Traft
4  Invisible Stalker
3  Strangleroot Geist
4  Wolfir Silverheart
22 creatures

3  Abundant Growth
4  Increasing Savagery
3  Silent Departure
4  Spectral Flight
14 other spells

Sideboard
3  Dissipate
2  Garruk Relentless
4  Tree of Redemption
2  Undead Alchemist
1  Witchbane Orb
3  Wolfir Avenger
15 sideboard cards

All that remains is to click import.

In the next post, I’ll go through the deck editing process.

Here’s the current search screen from decks.channelfireball.com. I’m going to walk through it section by section.

Color

Check each color of interest. The controls below the colors specify exactly how the selected colors are used:

Match all selected colors

Search for decks that include ALL of the selected colors. For example, if white and blue are selected, search for decks with both white and blue in their color profile.

Match any selected colors

Search for decks that include any combination of the selected colors. For example, if white and blue are selected, search for decks that contain white or contains blue, or contain both.

Exclude unselected colors

This lets you ignore decks that contain any of the colors that aren’t selected. We’ll use the above examples, If this is checked, any decks that contain black, and/or red, and/or green would not be returned by the search. If it is unchecked, decks will be returned based only on whether they contain white and/or blue (depending on the setting of the all/any radio), regardless of any other colors they might contain.

Designer

This is simple enough: search for decks designed by a specific brewer. As time goes on and the collection is maintained, this will become more powerful.

Cards to look for

This section let’s you narrow the search to only decks that contain one or more of the cards you enter. There’s space for one card by default. If you want to add more cards, click the Add card link to create a new space. You can subsequently delete cards from the list (subsequent fields will have a delete link next to them). card name will be autocompleted for your convenience.

The radio buttons below the card list give you the option of searching for decks that contain one or more of the cards in the list, or decks that contain ALL of the cards you list.

Cards to avoid

Similarly, you can create a list of cards that MUST NOT appear in decks. Any decks containing ANY cards in this list will not be considered in the search.

Legal in format

This lets you specify a single format to constrain the search by. Only decks legal in the selected format will be searched. If Any is selected (the default) format won;t be used to limit the search.

Events

You can use events to limit the search, though note that not all decks are associated with events. You can specify a specific event by name, type of event (PT, GP, etc) and format. You can also specify a date range: events within the range will be searched for.

Decks that appeared in the resulting events will be included in the search.

Result order

This simply lets you control the order of the search results.

Make your settings, click Search and you’ll be take to a list of decks that you can page through.

Have fun!

Since late January I’ve been working with ChannelFireball to bring to fruition an app idea that I’ve been thinking about for some time. And it’s going to go live soon. It might be by the time I finish writing this post, in fact.

In simple terms, it’s a database of decks for Magic: the Gathering.

Drawing from my experience at places like Google and Groupon, I’ve built a system around search and recommendation. Visit and it shows you the latest decks by Team CFB and the latest decks in the popular formats.

The Home Page

When you visit the site, you’ll see something like this:

The top section highlights the most recent decks by TeamCFB members. Click on the team member’s name of pictures, to see more of their decks. Click on a deck name to see the details of that deck.

Below that is a section listing recent decks for 5 prominent formats: the current block format, standard, modern, legacy, and commander. The top format is more prominent: being full width with twice as many decks listed. This will usually be the format of the current qualifier season, or the upcoming PT.

The Deck Screen

Anywhere in he app, deck names are clickable and take you to the detail screen for that deck. This looks like:

Now, let’s go through this step by step. The bar at the top contains the deck name (this is one place you can’t click to see the deck… but what would be the point) and the designer’s name.

Next is the deck menu.

This is only usable when you are signed in and looking at a deck that YOU added. Support for the idea of Your Stuff will be expanded soon.

Below the menu is the deck meta-information. This includes some description (optional), the formats it is legal in (computed form the card legality, and updated over time) currently. Finally, there’s the date this deck was added to the systemm.

Before the deck list, itself, there is a row of deck-specific links.

The first two are export the deck list for apprentice and MTGO (text format) and will download directly. The “WP MTG HELPER” link will be handy for those of you running a WordPress blog and using the wpmtghelper plugin. It gives you the code to copy & paste into a post. The “DCI FORM” produces a filled in DCI deck registration form. If you are logged in your name and DCI number (as set in your profile) will be filled in as well. Here’s an example.

The final link is to a sample hand generator. This initially gives you a hand of seven cards. From there you can choose to see new hands of 5, 6, or 7 cards as well as draw several more cards. At the very top is a link to return to the deck list.

Next as we go down the screen is the list, itself. Maindeck followed by sideboard (if present), cards separated by type, with a card view to the right. If you are looking at a commander deck, there is an additional card view at the bottom of the list.

Under the card view is an area for social media widgets.

You can like or share a deck on Facebook, share it on Google+, or tweet a link to it. Do it. Spread the love.

Below the deck list are the stat graphs:

As you can see, there are graphs for mana curve, color breakdown of the cards, and type breakdown. Notice the tabs. There is a set of graphs for the main deck, the sideboard, and combined. If the deck doesn’t have a sideboard, Then there are no tabs and a single set of graphs.

Finally, at the very bottom are comments using Facebook comments.

The Sidebar

There is a variety of blocks in the sidebar on the far right. There’s an ad at the top. These should be somewhat applicable. Let us know if something totally off the wall shows up there.

Below the ad is the account block. This is where you log in. You can use a email and password or log in via Facebook. If you had an account before (e.g. during the beta) you can use the Facebook login and it will automatically connect it to your existing account IFF your Facebook account uses the same email as your decks.channelfireball.com account. Note, you can log in using your email & password, click “Edit Profile’ and update your email address to be the same as the one on your Facebook account. If you don’t want to use Facebook You can signup here as well. If you ever forget your password, there’s a link to start the password reset process.

Using Facebook to login is the easiest, and if you don’t already have an account on the site, you can just click on the “Login with Facebook” button and an we’ll automatically create an account for you that’s linked to your Facebook account. Using Facebook lets you like decks, as well as share them on Facebook.

That’s all you’ll see unless you log in. Once you do, a couple more blocks appear. Directly under the account block, there is a feedback block. This is simple a text field and a submit button. If you have anything to say to us, this is the best way to do it. If you see any problems, have feature ideas, or anything… let us know.

Below that is a block of new stuff: the five most recently added news items, decks, and events. Each section has a link to see more.

When you are looking at a deck, there is another block above the “New Stuff” block. It contains lists of decks that are related in some way to the deck you’re looking at. At the bottom of the block is a More… link that takes you to the full lists of related decks.

• color – decks have the same color(s)
• designer – decks are designed by the same person
• cards – decks have at least 40 cards in common, e.g. if one deck as 3 Ponders and the other has 4, that’s 3 cards in common. This includes any sideboard as well as the main deck. The nuber of cards in common will be indicated.
• curve – Each slot in the decks’ mana curves differs by at most 2 cards. The greatest difference (0, 1, or 2) will be indicated.

Search

Search is central to the app. Currently you can search by color, designer, cards (both that have to be in the deck and those that can’t be in the deck), format, and events. Our goal is to make search powerful but also keep it as simple as possible.

That’s All For Now

That should give you plenty to find your way around the app. I’ll post something soon about adding events and decks.

Have fun, and let us know what would make the app more useful for you.

I checked out some of the old WoW ads on YouTube. Some are hilarious. Here are some of my favs.

This was the first one I saw, and is unlike the rest as it doesn’t use the celebrity’s in-game avatar. In fact, there’s no game play shown at all.

next up is Mini-Me.. um.. Verne Troyer. He’s so full of atitude, and they did an awesome avatar for him.

Bill Shatner is always a hoot, especially as a tauren. I always knew he was full of bull shit

Of course, Ozzy Osborne is an undead. What else could he be? Here he’s trying to wrest the title os “Prince of Darkness” from the Lich King. I love his spin on the tag line “What’s your game?”

Mr. T as a night elf “Mohawk”

Vic Mignogna as my game character: an undead warlock.

Jean Claude van Damme in a french ad, as a troll mage who apparently likes turning opponents into sheep.

Here’s a spanish one with Willy Toledo as a human paladin

A German one featuring Thomas D as an orc warrior.

Steve van Sandt in a lower impact ad. All he says (as his character on the Sopranos) is “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.” I know the feeling. I’m pretty sure plenty of other people do, too.

And the obligatory Chuck Norris reference.

Of course, this being the internet, these ads have inspired plenty of parodies. This one is hilarious.

One nice thing about the these ads is that they give a good selection of races and classes.

What’s your game?
Was spielst du?
Et toi? Qu’tu joue?
¿y tú? ¿Qué jugar vas?

I picked up the new album by Spruke (this time with Laura Diemer rather than Patrick Chapin): Katana & Tonic.

Overall, an enjoyable album. It’s somewhat out of the core of my listening habits (which tend toward music with a harder edge: when Suzanne suggested our Doberman might prefer some German music my thought was Rammstein, not polka) but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I’m in no way a music critic or aficionado, but I enjoy music and I’m fairly opinionated about what I like and don’t like. I liked this album.

“I Hate” is catchy, even if the lyrics are somewhat bitchy. “I hate what the 80s did to my sense of humor” Bitchy yet clever. The music is unabashedly electronic.

“Sonic” has, in my opinion, awesome sounding vocals.

“Armchair Girlfriend” is a much better song than I initially thought. It’s one of my favs now. How many of us gamer-guys wish we had a a gamer for a girlfriend?

“80 Above or 20 Below” is a change of pace. Echo-y and somewhat haunting. A bit slow for my taste, but nicely done.

“Katana & Tonic” is reminiscent of something I would have listened to in the 80s. Love the ‘Magic card’ reference: “I’m a Magic card. Someone come and tap this.” A total toe tapper.

I really like the intro sequence to “Easy”. This track is much heavier than the bulk of the album, and appropriately so for the lyrics. Refreshingly different.

“Technologic” Rocked. I love this track. Nice staccato beat. It reminded me of “Mise” from Spruke’s previous “Tha Gatherin” (with Patrick Chapin). Again, not typical of what I listen to, but I really like it. It makes me smile each time it starts playing.

“Mhm/Okay” is pretty pessimistic, but not all that unrealistic. Interesting sound, though.

“Lovely Lately” starts out slow and breathy before stepping it up a notch. There are some nice riffs that kick in half way through. Sounds like an electric guitar but with Spruke you never know.

“The Shrug” is a bouncy pop tune with some great vocals. Spruke mentioned to me that he’s been thinking about doing video game scores and the opening bars of this track promise good things in that direction. Once again, it has something of an 80s feel to it.

“Sex (It’s All Talk)” is a blast. Spruke put out a call on twitter for people to call his voicemail and leave a sexy message. He took these and knit together into the background of an amazingly punchy, catchy tune. I love this track!

So, for me the album has some high points and low points.  The high points were really high, in that I can listen to some of the tracks repeatedly (e.g. I Hate, Armchair Girlfriend, Technologic, Sex). Even the tracks I wasn’t so impressed with initially are growing on me. Overall a fun, very listenable album with a diversity of styles. Also, Laura is way hot, which I realized when I found the “I hate” video. Go check it out; several of the tunes are on youtube.

As I was getting back into gaming in a serious way, I did some research on input devices. I had previously used my trusty Logitech Trackman Marble Wheel for gaming, but was curious about what my options were.

Anyway, I was less than content with the mouse and keyboard combination. The keyboard felt so inappropriate for gaming. What my research turned up was this beauty, which seems to be pretty much the gold standard for MMORPG controllers: The Razer Nostromo.

You can configure up to 20 gaming profiles and each can have 8 different keymaps. For example, I set up profiles for WoW and Diablo III. While I haven’t experimented with multiple keymaps yet, I can see the utility for switching between game modes, e.g. explore and combat.

Razer touts two difference in the Nostromo compared to regular keyboards aimed at improving responsiveness for gaming:

Hyperresponse:

A physical aspect of the keys that allows for rapid, accurate actuation when pressed anywhere on the keycap.

Ultrapolling:

Simply reading hte key grid more often, and thus reporting presses to the game sooner, giving less lag between pressing a key and triggering the corresponding game action.

All keys and buttons can be mapped to mouse events, key presses, control of profiles and keymaps (as well as being disabled entirely). Additionally you can record macros made up of them and assign those to keys/presses/etc. Overall it’s a very useful bit of tech.

I’m still playing around with keybindings, but I’ve found having the the map (bound to ‘M’) on button 15 (which I can hit with the side of my thumb) handy. I’m currently using the D-pad for moving forward and backward, and strafing. I’ve disabled the diagonal positions. The thumb button above the D-pad is bound to my main mount. The wheel controls zoom (distance from the toon). I’ve gone simple with the keypad and bound keys 1-10 to keys ’1′ -’0′. I’ve installed the bartender add-on and want to play with configuring that to adjust my action bars to reflect the Nostromo’s key layout. I’m starting to wonder if I should use keys 2-5, 7-10, and 12-14 for primary commands, and the offset, farther away keys 1, 6, and 11 for auxiliary functions.

The backlighting is cool, useful, and adjustable. There’s a switch on the underside of the unit to switch off the backlight when not in use. The control panel lets you adjust the level of the backlight to one of 10, 40, 70, and 100 percent brightness. A nice touch.

The hardware itself seem solid and robust. The palm rest is adjustable and very comfortable out of the box. The cable and USB plug are high quality as well. I expect it to stand up to serious use. Beyond the device itself, the packaging was sturdy but not over the top, the inserts were well done, and there were stickers! The first order of business was to hop onto Razer’s support site and download the OSX driver and configuration app. Although it claims not to be “certified” for Lion, I’ve had no problems with it.

I have to say, I’m very impressed with this device so far. I expect it to significantly increase my enjoyment of gaming as I get back into WoW and Diablo III hits the street in less that a month. As I get more experience with the Nostromo, I’ll write more about my experiences using it, but for now I’m quite happy.

If you’re a gamer, I suggest you check it out and have a look at the other products from Razer as well. They have some cool stuff.

I’ll soon have my Logitech MX Revolution mouse back in action. That’ll give me an additional 7 controls beyond what my trackman provides (thumb rocker, 2 thumb buttons, top button, and left/right tilt on the wheel). My thought is that that will be adequate. My only concern with it is that it’s wireless. I’ve had trouble with Bluetooth mice before when gaming, mainly due to lag in heavy firefights. The Revolution is rechargeable, so running out of juice shouldn’t be an issue. In the back of my mind is the idea of getting a Razer Naga to match the Nostromo.

This mouse looks crazy good. Check out the awesome promotional video:

Diablo III is almost here… At Last. Many of us have been looking forward to its release for what seems like years because, well, it has been years!

I was seriously into Diablo II back in 2006 and early 2007. I played, the girl I was living with played, our sons played, our sons’ friends played. We spent on xmas vacation ’06 with the kitchen table covered in laptops and networking gear so that 5 or 6 of us could spend 24×7 working through the game as a group. Then there was the week that my girlfriend and I would spend the majority of our waking hours working through the game together.

So when I got the itch to play some Diablo a couple weeks ago, imagine my disappointment when it wouldn’t run on Lion. A friend told me about Torchlight on steam.. oh.. free demo. Don’t mind if I do. But it didn’t satisfy my need. So I looked at my long dormant WoW account (I’d played off and on for most of a year in 2009 with the Burning Crusade expansion) and discovered the new Scroll of Resurrection. This let me dust off my dormant account, upgrade it to Cataclysm, boost a character directly to level 80, along with complimentary matching gear, skills, and mounts. And it came with 7 days of free play. FOR FREE. Sweet. I found someone who could send me a scroll, and I was off. I was hooked again.

I decided that I wanted to play Wow again, and so I needed a subscription of some sort. As part of the ramp up for Diablo III, Blizzard was/is running a cross promotion wherein you get Diablo III for free as soon as it launches when you buy an annual subscription (plus you get to download a locked copy right away, avoiding much of the massive server congestion that is sure to occur (there will be patches to download no doubt, but that should be minor)).  That’s pretty much half the cost of the subscription that I was planning to spend anyway.  Rationalization achievement unlocked. And so I happily got (re)acquainted with Azeroth and the changes that the Cataclysm brought.

One thing I wasn’t really expecting was this, that showed up in my email a couple days ago.

So it was with not a small feeling of elation that I started the beta client downloading. After a short while it was ready to play.

I won’t go too far into the actual series of events in the beta, as that’s been well covered elsewhere.

The first thing that I noticed was how it was definitely Diablo, but better. The graphics are shockingly crisp and detailed. Movement was smooth. Lighting was amazing. The life & ‘other’ globes don’t just fill with color, they fill with churning, swirling mist.

Another change is that, whereas in Diablo II every character used mana (indicated by a blue filled globe) to power thier spells and abilities, in Diablo III each class has it’s own power source which is recharged in a class specific way.  I really like this as it makes the different classes play very differently. No longer can you simply quaff a vial of mana potion. In fact the Demon Hunter’s abilities are powered by two sources: hatred and discipline. They are full of hate so it replenishes quickly on it’s own. Discipline is harder to come by for these guys, replenishing more slowly. However, while hatred fuels their attacks, discipline powers defense. Both are necessary.

The monk is powered by spirit which is replenished by using his attacks and especially by combo attacks.

Barbarians, naturally are powered by fury! This replenishes when they fight, specifically when blood is split, be it their enemies or their own.

Wizard fuel is something called Arcane Power. They have plenty of it and it tops up pretty quickly. True to form, they are so buzzing with the stuff that they could seriously damage themselves if they were to channel too much power too quickly.  And so, their more potent spells have a cooldown period. Not magic missiles, though.  They seem to be limited pretty much by how fast you can click.

And finally, the witch doctor. This class harkens back to the simpler time of Diablo II and uses plain old blue mana. Alas, it replenishes very slowly once used. Fortunately witch doctors are akin to the druids of Diablo II in that they can summon familiars to help fight and defend them. This also reminds me of the Warlock in WoW (my current primary character).

I immediately created a monk character and dove in. The monk kicks some serious ass, and will be my first character when the game finally releases. I played all the way through without so much as a “OMG I might die here!”.  Serious BAMF.

I played through the beta as a Wizard as well. I’m not as much of a fan of this character for single player mode. He’s a great damage dealer and will work great in a group with a solid tank (such as a monk).  I got into trouble and died once when he got swarmed . That’s his weakness: he does remote damage and isn’t built for melee.

I went through as a barbarian, as that was always my favorite class in Diablo II. He’s a pretty kick-ass, and will have a lot of later game potential. I was initially a bit disappointed but, not surprisingly, once you get him some half decent armor and weapons he comes into his own. His ability to recharge his fury supply by fighting is amazing. You want him to have plenty of fury for his nasty abilities when? When he’s fighting. How does he work up fury? By fighting. Seems good.

Blizzard has given the talent tree an overhaul since you probably last saw it. I still have to explore that as it also shows up in the new WoW expansion.

As soon as you choose your character and land just outside New Tristam. The game inherits the dark, gloomy atmosphere, the randomized maps, the monsters, items, merchants, runes, etc. from it’s predecessors. There are some new things, of course.

Skill runes let you tweak and customize your learned skills.

If you remmeber, in Diablo II you could hire hencemen. Now you have followers, which are similar but more fleshed out. They have their own skill progression, for instance. And aren’t as generic. You run into one of them in the beta, and it was a nice surprise as the fight gets more intense as you get closer to the skeleton king.

There are still various merchants at which you can buy and sell potions, armor, weapons, and the like. Additionally there are craftsmen and artisans. These folks will travel with you, working with things you find on your adventure. Give them materials to work with, invest in their training, and they will create items for you or improve the ones you have.

You can now respec your skills. When you invest your skill points, it’s not permanent: you get to change your mind and redistribute them.

You can share items between your characters using your stash. It’s a shared resource on your account.

Notably, identifying items and creating portals back to town are now abilities and no longer require scrolls.

Combat is now deeper than just madly clicking on monsters.There are more tactical possibilities, and you have to be more careful because not only are you using your resources, but many spells have a cooldown.

A major new feature is an auction house, which will be familiar if you’ve played any amount of WoW.

Another import from WoW are PvP arenas, which provide more structure than was present before.

As in Diablo II, there are Normal, Nightmare, and Hell difficulty levels which offer more than just a harder game. And there’s a new Inferno level that sounds brutal.

And, of course, more kinds of monsters and items.

Full details on the differences from Diablo II can be found here.

Even with all those changes, there’s plenty you’ll recognize:

The waypoints are still there, and work the same way, albeit prettier:

Of course, Deckard Cain is still the main man. And still as chatty as ever.

It’s not surprising that zombies are the main monster in the early bit of the game. They’re popular these days. In Diablo III they’re very well done. You’ll often find them feeding on the corpse of some unfortunate villager, or adventurer, or soldier. Fortunately for you, however, you can generally loot the corpse once you’ve dispatched the zombies. Here’s my barbarian happening upon a group of zombies busy chowing down.

Oh, and this is what it looks like when you’re close to death. Yes, the running away. But also notice the red haze.

Some new features are designed to keep you going in combat as long as possible and give you as good a chance as possible. One such thing is the way that healing globes (the glowing red globe in the snap below) will drop in the middle of a fight. picking these up by running over them (you pick up gold the same way BTW) will buf the entire party. So be careful about accidentally picking them up when you don’t need them yet: they activate immediately.

Also notice, specifically in the above snap, that current objectives/quests appear in the HUD just under the map. Now for some semi-random cool shots.

Here I am using my big-smashy-spectral-hammer-thing. This is the first ability your barbarian gets that uses fury.

Here’s a shot from early in the game. I love the amount of detail. The trees, the bridge. You can’t see it in the snap, but the running water effect in the brook is very nicely done. You can also see your location, map, and objectives in the top right, and a WoW style transcript in the bottom left. As we have come to expect from Blizzard, the game is a sensory orgy for your eyes and ears.

Here’s your inventory popup, along with the popups for inspecting what you have. When you mouse over an item it shows the specs on it, as well as what it would replace if you equipped it. I love the Da Vinci-esque diagram of your character/equipment. The visual detail in this game is breathtaking.

And her’s a shot just because it’s pretty awesome.

Speaking of visual detail, notice the blood splatter as I toast a bat.

And of course, what RPG type game would be complete without barrels to break

That’s pretty much it. I haven’t gone through with the demon hunter or witch doctor yet, but I need to get back to Azeroth.

In summary, if you enjoyed Diablo II, I’m confident you will love Diablo III.

I don’t play nearly enough ‘paper magic’. I’m busy with various projects, work and otherwise. And something always seems to come up Friday evenings. When I switched to being indie and working from home I figured I’d have plenty of time to spend at my LGS.  Far from it. I’ve re-caught the entrepreneurial bug and have so many ideas to work on that it’s hard to tear myself away from the keyboard.

And then there’s Diablo III on the horizon. This pulled me back to RPG gaming, and after a bit, back to MMORPGs and World of Warcraft.  When I saw there was a Scroll of Redemption offer that could be used to reactivate my subscription with some sweet bonuses, I couldn’t resist. A one year subscription (which netted me a copy of Diablo III, predownloaded and ready to go on launch day as well as access to the Diablo III and Mists of Pandaria betas), a gaming keypad, and a Atlas of Azeroth latter and I’m in deep. Which means less time to get to the LGS for magic. Commiting 5-6 hours at once is a big deal.

Along with all that, I’ve started playing some 4 player Commander on MTGO with Trick and the like. I had my MacBook Pro set up with VMware Fusion for MTGO and DotP, and it worked reasonably well, but the screen was too small for multiplayer. So I got it up and running on my 24″ iMac. The higher specs and bigger screen make for some very nice MTGOing.

The end result was my deciding to cut back on paper magic in favor of playing more online. To that end I’m reducing my paper collection to a 1x of most cards.  I still have my casual decks (dual decks, planechase, etc) and a few “pet decks”, but my collection and play will mainly be online from now on.

It just occurred to me that I didn’t post binder inserts for Dark Ascension: Page_Inserts – Dark Ascension.pdf

Adam Styborski (content manager for GatheringMagic.com) asked me to write a review of the new Magic Toolbox app from Wizards of the Coast. So I did, as I was very pleased to be asked as well as having a strong opinion about it. Check it out, especially if you’re curious about that app.