MAGFest Panels

Had a great time at our innaugural MAGFest, the Game OverThinker/MovieBob Q&A Panel of which is now available on Blip in four easily-digestable parts: PART I, PART II, PART III and PART IV.

Rust What the Doctor Ordered

I love my airbrush, and I'd like to show you why.

Do you see those highlights and shadows? Other than a slight glare in the middle, all the highlight and shadows effects are from the airbrush. There's no way I could use a brush at this scale without flipping my painting table

But it's too clean, don't you think? I have been wanting to try the hairspray weathering technique I've been hearing about, and anything Cryx related is a prime candidate for rust.



Hideously beautiful. I'm trying to decide if I'm more excited to get the necrotite glow in all the vents, or get a grime effect going down all the rivets. I guess you'll find out tomorrow!

And before I'm accused of cheating by making blog posts about a commission piece, I want to assure you that this won't be a normal thing. It's a Colossal, and it deserves special treatment.

See you tomorrow!

Everybody Watch Jimquisition Now

Today, my friend and colleague Jim Sterling is a hero:

NOTE: Graphic imagery from 1:20 - 1:49

The Escapist : Jimquisition : Desensitized to Violence

A Twist on Tennyson

Below the thunder of the upper deep;
Far far beneath the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth.

-Tennyson




Before the gale of my prized airbrush;
So, so aniticipated by my painting tray,
This monstrous, beautiful, horrifying creature
The Kraken cometh.

-Ray




Prepare yourselves.

I'm not sure where I'm going, but I hope you'll come along.

I started this blog not really knowing where to take it. The stated goal was a general blog focused on geeky things I enjoy.

But with this Post A Day commitment, I'm finding that I need to have something with a bit more depth to it. What follows is a jumbled assortment of musings. Tread with caution.

Without spoiling a future series of posts, I stumbled upon something somewhat interesting last night. I was going over ideas for future posts, and I found myself really digging in to my gamer psyche. I like to think that I'm pretty self-aware, but I started to really evaluate myself. With no firm ideas in mind, I took my thoughts to fellow geeks around the world.

What a trip it's been.

                                         

The resulting conversations on various forums have me excited. Many have been unapologetically honest about themselves, and I'm envious of it. I hate cliches, but I found that people were being more honest in public than I was in my own head. I'm still working through it, but yesterday's novel was a nice bit of catharsis.

I say all that because it's inspired me to have a truly engaging blog. Doing a post every day, the easy answer is to do fluff pieces. But we don't want fluff, we want substance!

Sweet, sweet substance.

So you should really look forward to (or dread) some deeper articles throughout the year.

Here are some more ideas I've had, which are in no way ordered or even understandable:

-I want to do more video stuff. I've always shied away from the spotlight, but I had a lot of fun doing my airbrush video. In pushing myself to blog every day, I think this will be the year to really push myself outside of every comfort zone I have.

-With enough feedback, I'd really like to have at least one weekly column for people to look forward to. Insights, battle reports, reviews... who knows. Unfortunately I can't plan for success, so it's up to you to let me know if you'd like to see more or less of something!

-Photos. This is more of a personal rant than anything you care about, so skip to the next point. I realized that I was breaking some copyright laws by using Google to find my blog images. That's why almost any photo you hover over how thanks someone who posted a picture under Creative Commons. Unfortunately, the availability of good, free images is pretty anemic.

Admit it, you skipped here then read the previous sentence just to see how this image could be relevant.

I want to start taking my own. Google was a good way to sort of get images I wanted, but doing my own should be infinitely better. So now I get to be a photographer too. New experiences!

-Chronicling new experiences. In the land of the geek, there's always something going on. Being a hermit means that there's a lot I've missed out on over the years. Conventions are an obvious one, but there is so much out there to do. And now that I have a group of friends to drag along with me, there's no reason not to!

-Giveaways! Let's face it, I've made my deadline every day this year. Odds are highly against any of you getting a giveaway prize from that. So in the spirit of fairness, I want to do giveaways when we reach milestones. Facebook likes and YouTube subscribers are the obvious ones, but I'm a master of finding excuses to give people stuff. Just remember that you can't win if you don't follow me!

-Audience participation. I'd love to get you guys involved in what's going on. How? No idea, but the dream is there.


So that's where I"m at. More is coming, and hopefully the majority of it will be good. Writing something every day is a bit pointless if there's no one there to read it, so my goal will always be to inform and/or entertain - feedback helps! Unfortunately there's no easy-to-follow road signs for creating good content on a daily basis, so this will be a journey we'll take together.

No comment can do this justice.

See you tomorrow!

                                       

Paying Admission to Have Fun

It's 2013, and money is a thing. Most of us have uttered the phrase "I"d love to buy that, but..." at least once this week. We have to cut corners and closely monitor every penny we spend, and it can really get us down.

So go put your wallet somewhere out of earshot, because I'm going to encourage you to spend money on yourself.

Let's kick this off with a story. When I got my license, I inherited my mom's 1988 Ford Bronco II. Here's a photo I pulled from Google Maps.

                                 

I knew going in that this thing would be a headache. My mom, who is very delicate with her vehicles, was getting this thing repaired quite often. But to me, this was a smart choice because I had no up-front cost; the only thing I'd need to pay for is maintenance, and surely that wouldn't outweigh the cost of just buying a newer vehicle. Judging by my use of language, you know where this is going.

In the few years that I had it, I dropped thousands of dollars on repairs. I don't even want to put a humorous picture of a junky car to emphasize this point because I'm just that bitter. At one point, I was calling AAA a few times a month - the tow drivers started remembering me, for crying out loud! By the time I got rid of it, I'm pretty sure the only thing I hadn't replaced was the body.

That first car has forever shaped how I experience driving. Even after 7 years, the slightest hint of a problem in a car has me panicking. If I feel the car shift gears too slowly, or take a millisecond too long to start in the winter, I just know the thing is on its way to the graveyard.

Highway to Hell reference, anyone?

In that underused part of my brain known as logic, I know my experience isn't representative of the average person. If a car lags a little when going uphill against the wind, I know it's normal. It doesn't mean I should frantically prepare myself to swerve across a lane of traffic so I can make it to the shoulder before I cause a pileup with double-digit casualties. But still, I feel the dread.

Let's bring this back to geeky relevance. Around the time I had the Bronco, my friend Brian introduced me to Magic the Gathering, quite possibly the world's most popular trading card game.

Brian started me out with a pretty simple deck. He had me buy a theme deck, which was a sub-par deck that would let you get your feet wet. I started during the Ravnica set, which was a time when the cards were all very flavorful and went together thematically.
                                     

I'll never forget you, Agrus Kos.

Brian, who I didn't realize was a fantastic deck builder and strategist, sat me down and gave me a few upgrades to get my deck moving.

Our first few games went as well as they could have. He made a few casual decks that were a good level for me to play against, and then I started trying to build competitive decks on my own so he could really test himself against his high-level decks.
                                       
Here's how I built decks: I'd find something fun I wanted to take advantage of life life gain, flying, creature spam, etc, and I'd build a deck around it. But everything had to fit together thematically. There was no room for a goblin in my burn deck unless he was carrying fire in his card art. Elves were elves, and there was no way I'd put another creature on the board beside them, even if it was a 100% improvement to the deck. I liked my fun, casual decks and wanted them to be competitive.

What I saw looking at my deck

                                                 
Here's how I imagine Brian built his decks (I can't say for sure, I'm still bad at it): Decide on a primary and secondary win condition. Research cards and abilities that would help him achieve his goal. Test extensively. Do they work together? If yes, play until you find a weakness to fix. If no, fix it and restart testing.

And his                                                   

To complement his willingness to do well, Brian paid no attention to card prices. If the card was the best for his deck, it would be in his mailbox in a few days and ready to crush me. To complement my unspoken theory of "fun decks at the cost of fun games," I bought several decks that only cost me $20-30 and insisted that they'd do well because they looked so fun.

Brian would spend his off-time building decks or reading tournament reports and articles aimed at pro players.

Any off-time I dedicated to MTG was spent exclusively on Building on a Budget, which at the time promised decks costing no more than about $30.

Brian played to win no matter what. I played to win on a budget.

This wasn't necessarily a bad thing for awhile. I'd play my decks against those that were still in their development infancy. I probably won 1/4 of my games, which I was honestly happy with. My decks performed well, and they were often close games. Had we continued playing in his kitchen, MTG would have never lost its luster.

One day, the Building on a Budget author at the time made a budget storm deck using Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens as win conditions. It was a deck that could win consistently, and the only strategic input I had was when to start my combo. After several games spent learning the deck, I decided to accompany Brian to a local magic tournament. I had a rocking budget deck, and I was going make people burn their $400 decks in a mixture of awe and frustration.

That didn't happen. I did win one of my official games and one of my fun games I played against some casual players, but it was a humbling experience. Looking back, I see it as the day I realized that Magic was a game of power, and power comes with a literal cost.

But at the time, I was mad. Wizards of the Coast was forcing me to buy all these expensive cards just to be competitive. I wanted to bring a knife to a nuke fight.

And no matter how many I brought, I still got exploded.

                                 

So I decided not to play their game. I wanted to do well in a competitive environment, but I couldn't because I wasn't willing to pay the admission price.

After all these years I've found a group of casual players with a similar budget, but even now the decks I want to build will be grossly underpowered because I'm playing a $1 version of a $15 card and pretending there's not much difference. I'm using common lands in place of rare lands. I purposely choose bad cards over good ones.

It's bad, but I can't get past my own obstinance that took root years ago. I still haven't truly experienced what Magic is all about because I refuse to use the proper tools. I want a Selesnya Aggro deck, and a Goblins deck with 4 Goblin Piledrivers, and 100 other decks I have sitting in a bookmarks folder labeled "Expensive Fun."

It's not about winning for the sake of winning. If I'm not having fun, I'm done. But in Magic, I think the greatest fun that can be found is when two people can sit down with equally powerful decks and win a battle of wits, not a battle of "who has the least crappy budget deck."
             

                                         

                                                   It couldn't be helped.

                                         





















Let's get back to the point of the article: why it's not a bad thing to spoil yourself. If you saw my video yesterday, you know how excited I was once I pulled the dual-action trigger. Everything about the airbrush lived up to my expectations, and that thrill hasn't worn off after sitting down and putting it to work (more on that later). I spent over double what I planned on spending, but I did so without hesitation for one reason...

I wanted to enjoy it. I originally searched around for the cheapest airbrush I could find that didn't require me to just blow through a hose to supply the air. I read countless stories about people who went cheap, and I probably still would have done it if my wife hadn't been so supportive of me doing it right. For commission painting, an airbrush isn't just a luxury item. If I'm serious about the quality and turnaround of my work, this was a mandatory investment.

Had I gone the route of my previous experiences, I know I'd hate airbrushing, and soon I'd hate painting too. I didn't want to lose my passion, so I spoiled myself. I paid the admission price, and I've never felt so good about a purchase.

So for those of you who have made it this far, thank you. Now go spoil yourself in the things that matter to you. That doesn't mean to go out and buy a $500 pair of those because you need to walk around in life. It means that if you're serious about training for a marathon, don't look at your 8 year old pair of blister-causing shoes and say "Eh, covering my feet is good enough."

                                                                            

Or do the Tour de France on dad's old bicycle.

                         

Don't let a poorly-made product be the only reason you fail at something important to you, simply because you don't want to pay the price of admission.

                                 


To finish things off, I'd like to show you what I accomplished after posting my first airbrush experience yesterday:

14 models mostly basecoated, and 1 primed and ready for me to figure out the color scheme I want to use. Total time? About 4 hours of interrupted work. A good chunk of time was spent cleaning dried paint out of the nozzle (my fault) and trying to fix "overspray" which was messing up the highlights (also, I'm a dad, so there's that disruption factor). After some great advice I received from many fellow painters I'm confident I could do a large batch like this in 2 or 3 hours.


So there it is, my longest post of the year.

See you tomorrow!

I Don't Want To Game On This Planet Anymore

Y'know, it's funny. When I created The AntiThinker, he was supposed to embody an exaggeration of the absolute worst in gamer culture. Turns out, I didn't exaggerate enough...

Patricia Hernandez over at Kotaku points the way to a new candidate for gaming's worst human: A (popular, of course) YouTuber who puts up "how-to" videos instructing his followers on how to harrass female gamers for the crime of playing video games while female - "justified," of course, by the idea that these women are only gaming as a way to "con" poor, helpless men out of their money with sex appeal.

I'm not going to link directly to his stuff, but you can get the gist of it and watch (if you want to) from Hernandez piece HERE.

The whole thing is nothing short of revolting, top to bottom, particularly the sociopathic glee that the guy takes is carrying out and encouraging what's basically a keyboard and a mouse away from what'd be (verbal) sexual assault in the real world. But I'm particularly fascinated/repelled by the argument of him, his fans and too many of the Kotaku commenterati that somehow this is tit-for-tat "payback" because some of the women MAY be using their sex-appeal for attention or even monetary gain - essentially "they're WHORES, so they had it coming."

First off, the thing is... I don't give a shit. Setting aside that I have no real moral objection to (ethical) sex workers in the real world, I see absolutely NOTHING wrong the flirting-for-attention/cash "camgirl" phenomenon in gamer culture or otherwise on the net. People pay ME because they think I'm funny/insightful/whatever, I don't see how paying someone for being pretty/flirty is any different or deserving of "punishment." If you get "conned" out of kicking some paypal credits to this or that person online because she batted her eyes or flashed some cleavage and you felt like a schmuck later... that's on YOU, pal.

Secondly, what experience in real life tells you that this would be "okay" even in a virtual space. Do you imagine that punishing women for being sexy for attention or some other gain is a thing that happens? Do you know what would happen to anyone who walked into, say, most non-shithole strip clubs and spoke/acted towards the dancers the way this kid does to "virtual" women? A trip to the parking lot and a new set of finger-splints.