Tap: Max's Game, and Independant film about Magic players is released for viewing onlie for FREE. Look for my review of the movie next week! -Shoe Add Comment I have many things related to game design that I love and currently have 3 places where I post items. I want to try and semi-consolidate them all here so that there is one easy place people can follow to get all of the good ol' fashon Shoe writin' they can handle!. Starting next week, the new schedule for my writing will tenatively be like this: Monday: Mad Scientist! MONDAY - I want to try to have a regular feature involving my first published game, and the fun stuff that can and does happen with it. Also, any updates on the revised second printing will go here. These posts will be on the main Shoebox Games Blog. (See below) Tuesday: Shoebox Games - Something will go up on my gameing/ game design blog. Wednesday: WOOBERG Wednesday - Something will go up here. Thursday: Comic Vine - Cool Concepts (where I post lists of cool characters from the Marvel Universe and stories I would like to read (or write) with those characters) Friday - Radical Resources: Fridays I will link from Shoebox Games to posts on other blogs and sites that could be helpful in game design, interesting to read, or just plain old funny! Shoebox Games, My Other Blog is a Harley 05/01/2012
I have taken to writing more about games in general on my sister/completely-unrelated-other-site, Shoebox Games. Here is my latest entry for those who may be interested. Developing Good RPG Plots For the Advanced GMOn WOTC's "Ask Wizards" feature the other day I was reminded of a topic that gets playfully tossed around by Wizards quite a lot: "If you were forced to remove a card type from the game, what would it be?" ow, some of you may remember this as one of the first Great Designer Search questions, to which you can find my answer if you click the question above; Sorceries, by the way. Mark Rosewater suggested on his Tumblr (or however you misspell it for that site) and it was posted again in the aforementioned "Ask Wizards" segment, that he though Instants should be the card type to go and that Instant should have been a super-type that gave a card Flash more or less. These statements by myself, and MaRo got me to thinking about the way cards are designed these days, and by how most decks are built for any format these days, casual decks included. There is a distinct lack of Sorceries seeing play in most decks these days. My theory is that, due to all of the amazing creatures with enters-the-battlefield abilities, Sorcery spells have quite the competition. Sorceries have to fill one of two roles to even see any significant play in a deck. The first role a Sorcery can play to get into a deck is that of the Unique Effect. If there simply isn't an instant or creature that can duplicate the effect, [card]Wheel of Fortune[/card] is unreplacable by a Creature or Instant spell so the card gets played. The second reason players will still consider a Sorcery is that it costs SIGNIFICANTLY less than any Creature or Instant options. [card]Demonic Tutor[/card] (and possibly even [card]Diabolic Tutor[/card] if Demonic is unavailable or restricted by format) still gets run by players even after [card]Rune-Scarred Demon[/card] saw print, although, in multi-player the Demon seems much stronger due to the free finisher tacked on to the already powerful spell effect. I wonder if WOTC's recent increase in enters-the-battlefield creatures isn't going to cause a problem down the road for the Sorcery card type. It has certainly raised the bar for what constitutes a playable Sorcery. I have noticed a steady decline in the number of Sorcery spells in each of my decks. Take a look at your decks, do you notice the trend too? Until next time... Use YOUR shoes as counters, -Shoe The EDH Cube Experience 04/16/2012
I had an oppertunity to get out and sling the cardboard this weekend and boy was it a good time. I have been skeptical of the EDH Cube format since it's inception. EDH being a format with rigerous deckbuilding requirements seemed like a bad fit to be paired with a limited format. Happily I was wrong about that. When built well a Cube can likely handle most building restrictions (depending on how many packs you have time to draft. 5-Color and 250-Magic seem like bad candidates). Here is a link to the Cube List our playgroup used. I started out expecting to draft heavy in green, since I believe, it is the best color in EDH. I ended up with an early [card]Coiling Oracle[/card] and shortly thereafter was able to pick [card]Riku[/card] and [card]Momir Vig[/card]. I originally planned to play with Riku and drafted A LOT of creatures with enters-the-battlefield or death triggers/sac abilities, as well as some powerful spells. After the drafting section we chose teams and were allowed to pass a few cards (3 I think) to each other for the deckbuilding process. My group played with 45 life, 60 card decks (highlander OBV) and I ended up having far too many good cards! This forced me away from Riku and ended up with a pretty sweet Vig deck that looked like this: Shoe's EDH Cube Draft Deck - Momir Vig
We got a 5th turn [card]Soul Foundry[/card] with a [card]Spore Frog[/card] imprinted on it, which kept my team alive far longer than it should have. A [card]Painful Quandary[/card] and [card]Lightning Reaver[/card] (cloned in various ways a couple times) by another team cleaned up us first and the other team second rather quickly. I sat on my first turn [card]Sol Ring[/card] and 2 lands for most of the game, and my teammate, Chris, didn't fare much better. The random discard from his first turn [card]Gamble[/card] made him discard the planeswalker that was most of his early game plan and we quickly folded to attrition. All-in-all, EDH cube is rather fun and it something I may try to put together myself. The UN-Cube and my currently active EDH decks are taking up most of the cards I would need for now, but the format is certainly fun. It gave me a good reason to play some of the fun cards I tend to avoid due to overuse in the EDH community and was an interesting building experience. Removal seemed to be a little sparse for most of the colors that weren't black. My deck seemed light on it, and the entire table couldn't get rid of ONE [card]Lightning Reaver[/card] which seemed like a balance problem. In the end, a great time was had by all, and my opinion of EDH Cube has changed. So, until next time, if you are invited to give EDH cube a try I think you'll enjoy it. Fun With UN: Un-Cubed! 04/04/2012
Not too long ago, I posted a list of my Un-Cube. Trying to create the most humorous play experience possible, I packed the cube with near-complete sets of both Unhinged and Unglued. After that I added funny cards from Magic's history to try and make every single card in the cube have relevant abilities. Recently, we were able to draft from the cube and we had a great time. Many humourous moments were had, here is a quick recap; Drafting cards was humorous, but nothing of note happened. However during deckbuilding there were a couple of funny moments. Cards were often regarded as unplayable for things like "this card is too annoying" or "this card keeps falling off my head!"  During deckbuilding, many experiments were done. Here, Tavis considers playing Charm School only to find it quite slippery. I ended up going Black-Green and drafted a [card]Necro-Impotence[/card] Deck. I never got the chance to see if Necro's silver-bordered cousin was as good as the original, but I did have to memorize the stupid artist so I could [card]Aesthetic Consultation[/card] for it. I also got several decent forms of removal and had a decent creature base. My team even won the second match we played. (As an aside, games were played with teams of 2, as there were 4 of us playing and Unglued has many team-based cards.) It's been a while, so I don't remember much about the games we played, but here are some moments I DO remember and won't soon forget. By far, the most amusing plays of the evening involved a [card]Working Stiff[/card] in play. The card puts a big target on your head, but not like you'd expet. People want to try as hard as they can to make you do stuff while not bending your elbows. As soon as the Mummy entered the battlefield, Chris became a quick target for [card]Ashnod's Coupon[/card].  You never really notice how important something is until you aren't able to use it.  Apparently, bending your elbows is awesome tech.  Even though all he got was water, that was the best Ashnod's Coupon ever redeemed....resolved...cashed in...? Another awesome [card]Working Stiff[/card] related observation. There is an adverse side to tutoring for cards as well.  After searching his deck, Chris finds shuffling to be troublesome. All in all, the Un-Cube was a huge success and we had a great time. I removed a few cards like the [card]Wrath of God[/card] and the 4 [card]Feast of Flesh[/card] and added in some other goofy stuff. I have also foiled out several cards to make [card]Super Secret Tech[/card] a more desirable pull. Hopefully sometime in the near future I will have a chance to pull out the cube again and give it another go. Until next time, Use YOUR shoes as counters! -Shoe Un cube report coming soon 03/14/2012
Things have been busy lately. Haven't had much time for WOOBERG or Magic at all with 3 birthdays, home buying, work, business trip and more. We did manage to get in a team draft and 2 games with the Un-Cube which I will post about as soon as time allows. Thanks for reading, Shoe Things have finally hit a minor lull on the home-front, and I am BACK! Well, maybe not once-a-week back, but certainty new content is being posted as is evident by this article here. I was throwing around a deck full of Mutants the today (the creature type Mutant, not X-Men), which made me thing of this old series I was previously working on. People love them some tribal decks, but most people play Elves, Goblins, Slivers or something along those lines. What about all of the other races and classes of Magic. If you know where to look there is a deck for MOST of the creature types. I am skipping all of the heavily supported creature types and of any creature type which does not have the requisite 20 creatures for a deck without dipping into ol' Mr. [card]Mistform Ultimus[/card] and gang. Last time around, we has some fun getting stoned with a basilisk deck. This week we move on to the next entry along comp rule 205.3m and we come to bat. Bat seems like a pretty awesome tribe since everybody in the deck flies and there was at least one cool double-faced bat in Innistrad. A quick Deckbox filter for creatures with type bat reveals a mere 10 printed bats, all of which are black and all but one of which are mono-black. Also, if we dip into some token generators, we could splash white more confidently if we wanted to. Being a fan of mono-color decks I think we will aim for mono-black. [card]Skeletal Vampire[/card] is like a wierd backwards-lord for bats, and a pretty good finisher. [card]Bad Moon[/card] seems good and thematically accurate. DA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA BAT MAN!
Black can obviously kill lots of dudes, and the bat deck is no exception. Clearing the way with spot and mass removal, keeping the hand filled with Bronze Herald and getting in there with the bats! The only real strategy is "SCREW THE GROUND, I've got WINGS!" Kill the dudes in the sky that can profitably block your bats and smash face. Pretty much all bat creatures have 0 subtlety to them, so aggro is best! Join us next time when we go [card]Muraganda Petroglyphs[/card] BEARS!
I know content here has all but crawled to a brutal halt, but I am doing my best to keep things rolling even with everything that is going on in my life. In case this is your first time at WOOBERG, I don't really have the time these days to play Magic on any kind of reliable schedule. I have 4 young kids and my wife and I are working on becoming first time home buyers! Something I found that I thought people might like to see is a behind the scenes look at an episode of Commandercast. I was featured on the Spicing Things Up episode, and rightfully so I think. The episode focused on variant ways to play EDH/Commander, and variant formats is definitely my thing. Anyway, I recently found the outline I made when I was preparing for the episode and thought it might be cool to share it with my readers, so HERE IT IS! *Intro (talk about myself and/or WOOBERG ) * Variants on 2HG - Life totals (30, 40, 60[likely the best], 80) (Life total determines speed of the game, higher life==longer games. For games most like normal EDH play @80 these will run REALLY long and favor combo strongly, 60 is the sweet spot for me, still allows long games, but feels different enough from normal EDH to be worth playing) - Shared turns or Not shared turns (Speeds up game, can make responding to opponents spells more complicated) - All players draw on turn one or skip the first player on the first turn of the first team - Deck Construction (highlander or 2HG highlander where teammmates may not play with same name cards. Also [card]Erayo[/card] is banned!) * Style of Play - Pick up an existing deck and pick a teammate and go - Building for 2HG (Plays alot more like 1v1) * Number of players - 4 players required, this plays alot like 1v1 - much more than 6 boggs a game down A LOT * Difference in Play - Card advantage becomes less important (as your team and your opponent's team draw the same number of cards, no inherit card disadvantage like normal multiplayer) (If I terror a [card]Goblin welder[/card] that my opponent controls, my team has spent one card to destroy one threat. In 2HG there is no CA loss or gain, in 4 man multiplayer this would be – 1 card you(r team of just you), +2 cards for all opponents(+1 or Opponent A, +1 for opponent B, +1 and -1 for Opponent C who has welder) - Spot Removal becomes better - Tempo becomes more important (Putting on early pressure becomes a much more viable strategy, [card]Uril[/card] and Voltron [card]Ismaru[/card] become a TON better. Hell [card]Goblin guide[/card] becomes playable as most people have few basic lands and it puts on some early pressure. ) - Aggro becomes much more of a valid strategy (Smaller aggressive creatures will do more damage for you. A [card]Nekkratal[/card] may be a lot worse than a [card]Dark Hatchling[/card] In normal EDH, but in 2HG the earlier play that removes a dude and starts swinging sooner is well worth the tradeoff. ) - No politics (You or teammate must have answers, cannot rely on someone else to remove stuff) (In normal multiplayer, you can pray that one of your opponents also views the [card]Survival[/card] on the table as a big threat if you are playing [card]Bladewing the Risen[/card] and can’t deal with it. In 2HG you have to be sure your teammate can handle it.) * Strategy - Shared turns does not equal 2 different stacks (wait to play spells when your teammate has already played stuff - Use a powerful spell a teammate has to feint for a bigger threat you have) - Less talk more signaling (your opponents can hear you "scream” :P) - Useful 2HG comp Rules 810.7c As the declare attackers step begins, the active team declares attackers. If an effect of an object controlled by a defending player prohibits a creature from attacking him or her, that creature can't attack the defending team. ([card]Propaganda[/card] and the like become better) 810.7d Example: If an attacking creature has forestwalk and either player on the defending team controls a [card]Forest[/card], the creature can't be blocked. (Landwalk improves) 810.7f … If an attacking creature would assign combat damage to the defending team, the active team chooses only one of the defending players for that creature to assign its combat damage to. (makes [card]Worship[/card], [card]Dread[/card], [card]Aurification[/card]...etc bad) 810.8a Players win and lose the game only as a team, not as individuals. the game. (Poison is GOOD, alt win is GOOD) 810.9a If a cost or effect needs to know the value of an individual player's life total, that cost or effect uses the team's life total instead. (Wincat) Obviously, this was not edited for spelling, grammar or really even intended for any eyes beyond my own. The benefit of this is, Commandercast is always recruiting new people from the community onto their show. Having a look at the behind-the-scenes aspects of the show will give potential guests somewhere to start preparing from. Fun with UN #2 - THE UN-CUBE by Shoe! 02/03/2012
Playing Magic has taken a back seat to other things in my life lately. In the process of purchasing my first home (yay!), working extra side gigs, and trying to get some of my game designs into playtest...etc. So since I am not PLAYING much Magic, I have the itch to BUILD for Magic. Today I finished my UN-CUBE! 400 cards of pure gooftastic goodness. All the cards that I could include from the un-sets made it in, as well as several cards from other sets to keep abilites on the un-cards as relevant as possible. (see Homarids and cards starting with Z for example). Decent draft strategies include RW Premium card beats, [card]Now I Know My ABC's[/card] decks, snow-themed decks and much much more. HERE IS THE LIST! |  About ShoeShoe has been playing MTG since mid to late 1994, He acquired the nickname ‘Shoe’ through a stupid joke made during a MTG game 
Check out my first published game design!
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