Elder Dragon Highlander

Elder Dragon Highlander is an extremely fun Magic: the Gathering format. Wizards re-branded the format as "Commander", and they've made it available in Magic: the Gathering Online as well. Myself, I really enjoy my Thada Adel, Acquisitor deck. It doesn't win especially often, but it's incredibly fun to play. I've dubbed it "Stealy McStealypants", because the deck doesn't really have a win condition — I use my opponents' win conditions against them. No matter what it is, my deck is capable of stealing – sorry – 'acquiring' it.

Anyway, this post is mostly about the awesome game I just had on Magic Online. The game was between me (Thada Adel, Acquisitor) and two other people (one playing Sharuum the Hegemon, a known top-tier combo deck; the other playing Karador, Ghost Chieftain. The game starts off slow, with everyone playing lands and not doing much else. I play Thada on turn 3, as I usually do (normally, I use her to steal some Sol Rings or somesuch at the beginning of the game, and rarely do much with her afterward), but when I attacked the Sharuum player, he dropped a Shimmer Myr in my face.

The Karador player, who had been peacefully ramping up mana, drops Teneb, the Harvester onto the field and takes a swing at me, so I steal it with Dream Leash. Unfortunately, before I can use Teneb for anything, the Karador player is forced to leave due to unforeseen circumstances.

By this point, the Sharuum player has Leonin Abunas in play. After some back-and-forth, I finally get in a hit with Thada, and steal Norn's Annex to slow the mounting army of automata. I'm able to deal with things to some extent by using Capsize on the Leonin, but that eats up six mana each turn and it doesn't leave me with much. Then the Sharuum player equips the Leonin with Swiftfoot Boots and I'm in trouble; almost everything on his field is an artifact, I can't target any of his artifacts with anything, and I can't target the thing preventing me from targeting them. A conundrum. Current life totals — Me: 10, Him: 34.

So, I steal his Venser, the Sojourner using Blatant Thievery, and then use his third ability and start exiling permanents from his field. Unfortunately, I still can't target most of his things, and I'm forced to target his lands. Time Stop buys me another turn to find an answer, and Rite of Replication builds me a wall of creatures to hide behind. (It also gives me throwaway targets for Venser's emblem, since it's a mandatory trigger and I've run out of targets on my opponent's field.)

Here's where the fun really starts. Mystical Tutor searches my deck for Bribery. (Since I already had Future Sight, I can cast it off the top of my deck.) Bribery searches my opponent's deck for Kuldotha Forgemaster. Moving Lightning Greaves onto the Forgemaster allows me to activate its ability immediately, to search my deck for Mindslaver. Then, I activate Mindslaver to control my opponent's next turn.

At this point, the life totals are 10 to 32 (my opponent paid life into my Norn's Annex), with the following battlefield:

Him: Vault of Whispers, Seat of the Synod, Everflowing Chalice (one charge counter). Copy Artifact (copying Norn's Annex), Sculpting Steel (copying Norn's Annex), Skullclamp, Swiftfoot Boots. Leonin Abunas (equipped with Swiftfoot Boots), Shimmer Myr, Etherium Sculptor, Faeire Mechanist.

Me: 10 Snow-Covered Islands, Strip Mine, Teferi's Isle, Ghost Quarter, Reflecting Pool (enchanted with Dream Leash), Thran Dynamo. Sensei's Divining Top, Norn's Annex, Gauntlet of Power, Future Sight, Lightning Greaves. Magus of the Future, Empress Galina (equipped with Lightning Greaves), Thada Adel, 5 Sphinx Ambassador.

Controlling my opponent on his turn, I move the Swiftfoot Boots to his Faerie Mechanist and cast Demonic Tutor, searching his deck for a basic land, rather than something useful. Then, I attack with all of his creatures (paying 8 life into my Norn's Annex) and block with my Sphinxes. Now that I can target everything on his field, I capsize each of his lands and his Everflowing Chalice, using Venser's emblem to exile his Copy Artifact (Norn's Annex), Sculpting Steel (Norn's Annex), and two equipment. His field completely empty, I swing in for 38 damage and the win.

In description after-the-fact, it seems... less. But at the time, I was frantic for an out to the hexproofed field, especially once I realized Venser's emblem was mandatory and I'd have to exile my own cards ever time I cast a spell. I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out what to get with Mystical Tutor, and picked Bribery hoping he'd have a board wipe or something. Then I spent far too much time looking at his creatures, not finding what I'd hoped for. And then a light turned on in my head, as I realized I had Mindslaver in my deck and there was a Kuldotha Forgemaster sitting there, waiting to be bribed.

Testing!

Just playing around with Windows 7, and I've installed some new desktop gadgets. Right now, I'm playing with the Blogger Buddy gadget to make this post!

Goonfleet vs. Band of Brothers - The Mittani Speaks

Wars are not won by the winner; they are lost by the loser

— The Mittani

The Mittani has begun a column on Ten Ton Hammer, and he reflects on the second Delve war. In his words, "Wars are not won by the winner; they are lost by the loser". Much like a game of tennis, both participants enter equally matched, and wait to take advantage of their opponent's mistake.

The Mittani outlines three turning points in the war that gave Goonfleet the Delve, two of which happened before the actual war began in earnest:

1. Haargoth Agamar defected from Band of Brothers, "an error of basic corporate security writ large, where a player who had been absent from the game for four months was allowed to maintain roles in the executor corporation".
2. KenZoku published the entirety of their director forums, believing the Goons had it already, and wanting to prevent damning alterations. In truth, the Goons had only collected approximately 40% of the director forums before disbanding BoB and getting Haargoth's forum account banned. In addition to making them the fool for falling to The Mittani's bluff, it released information on their true opinion of the pet corporations, such that individual players in the pets vowed not to help in the coming conflict.
3. After losing a mothership and a titan on the same day to ambushes, KenZoku command sent out the order to dock the entire capital fleet in PR-8CA in preparation for the next day's fighting. As soon as KenZoku logged off, Goonswarm and its allies "covered the station with warp disruption bubbles, preventing any kind of egress." They camped the locked-down station for three weeks, locking away over 230 capital ships, preventing KenZoku from defending the Delve from the Goon's assault.

My hat off to you, Mittens. The Second Delve War may have been won due to the mistakes of your opponent, but you guys made Eve drama interesting even for those of us who don't play the most expensive screen saver ever.

Source Code Sucks

By which I mean, looking at source code on most websites sucks. The formatting is often broken, and there's rarely syntax highlighting. This post was prompted by a comment from an author of another blog that Blogger screws up source code. That's not the problem; the problem is that a lot of time and money has been poured into <insert favorite IDE>, while the same effort is not warranted to web browers and most websites.

However, with a little finesse, there is a solution that's easy to implement. You need:

1. CSS for the code box and syntax highlighting
2. A good find/replace JavaScript
3. Code samples

Alex Gorbatchev of dreamprojections.com has created an excellent Syntax Highlighter script. (download link)

An Example

<html> <head> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="dp.SyntaxHighlighter/Styles/SyntaxHighlighter.css" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="dp.SyntaxHighlighter/Scripts/shCore.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="dp.SyntaxHighlighter/Scripts/shBrushCSharp.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> <!-- window.onload = function() { var codeBlocks = document.getElementsByName('csharp'); for(var i = 0; i < codeBlocks.length; i++) { codeBlocks[i].className = 'csharp'; } dp.SyntaxHighlighter.ClipboardSwf = 'dp.SyntaxHighlighter/Scripts/clipboard.swf'; dp.SyntaxHighlighter.HighlightAll('csharp',false,false,false,1,false); } //--> </script> </head> <body> <code name="csharp">using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; namespace HelloWorld { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { } } }</code> </body> </html>

This would produce:using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; namespace HelloWorld { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { } } }

The Google Code wiki for the JavaScript Syntax Highlighter shows how to modify settings of the code block through the class attribute. The same configuration can be done with the HighlightAll call, using the following parameters:HighlightAll(name, showGutter /* optional */, showControls /* optional */, collapseAll /* optional */, firstLine /* optional */, showColumns /* optional */)

Vertical Studio

I've recently discovered an amazing video production team, Vertical Studio. To quote the blog page,

Our goal is to produce quality videos featuring original music, elaborate shots, and cinematic cameras movements.

The videos are quite good, and use the City of Heroes engine for the graphics. The videos are even more impressive if you play the game, because you realize how much demo editing went into making it.

Princess of Dusk:

Dies Irae:

Night Prayers:

Blogging, it's the new thing

Who doesn't blog? I mean it seems everybody has one. Makes me feel weird when people say things like "Hey, I blogged to my blog last night. It was blogging awesome. You should blog on over there and blog it out. I blog you'll blog it."

Ok, maybe only blogging Smurfs talk like that. But I figured "why not?!" I'm a computer scientist, it's time I got with the times. Even if I prefer Veranda.

So, here's my attempt at a serious blog. It's actually my second attempt at a blog, the first being with my Shaiya account. Ha, that game's a flop, at least in my eyes. It doesn't really even make much sense to attach blog software to a game account.

Anyways, for anyone reading this blog, expect complaints about my Computer Science courses, my take on things happening in the game industry (probably with comparisons to City of Heroes/Villains, my current gaming crush), and more. A place to release my thoughts onto the web, and unlike some people, not freak out when people actually *gasp* read it.
(And yes; the school in question was my High School, the leader of those cheerleaders was in my Algebra 2 class, and Condoms To Go now has a "No Cameras" policy)

Also, I'm a programmer, not an artist. I don't have the best eye for things that are visually pleasing. I'd appreciate others' take on the formatting and colors of the blog.