Eructations and brand new mammals

“In the 1800’s Frenchman Joseph Pujol apparently became so adept at controlling his flatulence flow he could sound musical notes. Called ‘le Petomane” - the fartiste - he was reputedly the highest paid performer in France at his prime” - The Canadian Press

This little gem was in the paper this morning, and I’m torn. Should I be concerned that there was apparently so little to report on that they dedicated a third of a page to flatulence, or amused that someone’s actually put some thought into writing a third of a page on something that we, really, don’t think about at all.

I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times my bottom burps during a 24 hour period, all I know is my wife runs for cover while my kids giggle like lunatics when I let one rip.

Truly, my posterior emits some prodigious fumes. This particular entry is, admittedly, not as vanilla scented as the rest of the blog. For that I apologize.

In other, non-toot-related news, welcome to the world, Rhynochocyon udzungwensis !

After all of our efforts to reduce the number of mammals on the planet through means ranging from eating and wearing them to simply introducing new predators they’re not prepared for, some scientific boffins have gone and found themselves a whole new mammal species in the dark continent.

True to the traditions of being as odd as possible, while it looks like an elephant shrew it’s actually more closely related to a manatee. As I come from the land that gave the world the platypus, I can truly appreciate bizarre animals that do their best to defy classification.

Here’s hoping this cat-sized little sod sticks around long enough to be given a more pronouncable name.

We’re bringin’ Wacky back…

… We’re bringin’ Wacky back… (who?)
… Them other players think we’re slightly cracked…. (whut?)
… But we have much more fun and that’s a fact… (whut!)
… We’ll keep playin’ til we’ve got cataracts… (huh!)

Here endeth the Justin Timberlake impression. 

Next week at the Hobby Kingdom’s Hobby League we’re gonna try something a little… unusual. The game, as we know it, will be altered on a turn by turn basis by cards drawn from the Mutator deck. Think of them as akin to the planets from the Galactus Big Deck, but slightly more off-kilter, more generic in their effects, and in some cases, more mind-boggling.

This is in large part the brainchild of CaptainSpud, so he gets a round of applause - and maybe a cookie or two. 

Mutator VS
There is an extra phase before the draw phase every turn. During this phase, the players reveal the top card of the Mutator deck and immediately enacts its effect(s). There is no chain during this phase; players cannot play effects of any kind, and characters’ powers have no effect during this phase. The revealed mutator card is then discarded.

Crash and burn…

 Gah! Beaten… humiliated…

Okay, four rounds of hobby league tonight. I ended up taking the Boomdeck, Carrie took a Nova Blast variant, and just cos she hadn’t made up her own, Gamerette borrowed my Family Of Four.

Game one: Against hidden Injustice Gang. Everything was on track. Rigged was ticking, Hulk was in hand for the turn 6 smite… but turn 5 he managed to pump his way through my defenses and knock me into negatives. Pipped at the post; if we’d gone to 6 then I’d have been fine, but I missed Vengeance on 5 and he capitalised nicely.

Game two: Against SecSoc. Again, everything was looking good. Bombs a-tickin’, Elektra sneaking in some bonus whacks, Morbius keeping my endurance high enough that Hulk hit the board at 41/41… but my opponent had initiative on 6, and still had a 1-drop Dr Polaris hiding. The lack of anti-hidden tech meant he could exhaust Hulk, who had already cost me all of my endurance, and with the rest of my board I was only able to knock him down to 7.

Game three: Against Nova Blast. I hit everything I needed, Carrie missed everything but 3-drop Punisher and Night Thrasher. I’m sorry to say it was a slaughter. Finally tally had me at 43, her at -8. We played a just-for-fun game afterwards, since we still had plenty of time, and this was much a much closer game and both decks did what they were supposed to - Hulk just finished her off.

Game four: Against JLA. Missed Vengeance on 5 - for the fourth game in a row, no tutors in hand - but things would still have been dandy for the win were it not for Keystone City reinforcing against Hulk’s rage, and Wonder Woman redirecting the Rigged Explosives to blow up in my face. Feh.

So the end result was, I didn’t even get my third Espionage. Gonna have to trade for one now… but the games were still fun, the company exceptional, and I got to snuggle baby Emma again for a little bit.

Next week we’re gonna try random global effects. A bunch of cards, random effects to throw the games for a loop and up in the air. Wacky fun to ensue!

Stu-vivor Round Four

The challenge: A story deck. Choose a format, and build a deck that tells a specific tale. The theme and situations and characters can be an original script from the bowels of your imagination, or it can be directly correlated to a real comic book arc. Each card in the deck must be used in the narration, walking us through an actual game state.

 …

This gave me much to ponder. Make up my own tale, or use something already in comics? Making up my own would give me much more freedom in building the deck… but matching an existing tale would be pretty darn cool if I could pull it off.

My first thought was the Annihilation Wave… and the Pi_3.14159 posted a deck along those lines. Dang.

Next thought, what about the Secret Wars? Nope, CaptainCuba posted his decks for that story.

I kid you not, the first two tales that came to mind, and both ideas were sniped. The nerve, I tells ya!

Then another idea came to mind… a card I LOVED playing back in the day, with a thoroughly implausible story behind it, for which pretty much all of the key players had cards.

Cultural Variance

Tonight I taint the Lost Hemisphere with its first non-VS related post. Such are the depths I sink to.

Back in the balmy snowiness of December, my place of employment was to hold its Christmas party (I don’t care if you think it’s a “holiday party” or not, it’s a Christmas party to me), but it got rescheduled at the last minute due to impending overabundent snowiness.

Rescheduled to this evening, January 26th.

This is a special date for me, being Australia Day, so naturally I wore my Australian Flag tie and happily explained the significance to anyone who asked. To their credit, some of the local Canuckians actually knew already, good on ‘em.

Sitting around the table with a bunch of the girls I work with and all of our respective spouses, it’s always amusing to see what anecdotes surface (and boy howdy, we had some doozies…), but two of my favourite giggle-inducing terms came up.

The first is Thong.

• In Canada it’s an article of underwear. This underwear is usually referred to in Australia as a G-string.
• In Australia, it’s footwear. This footwear is usually referred to in Canada as a flip-flop.

I still smirk when I explain that when you’re on a beach in Australia, seeing a hot sheila wearing a black rubber thong isn’t anywhere as exciting as you might otherwise think. Tee hee.. 

The second is Roots.

• In Canada, Roots is a highly recognisable brand of clothing known for being Canadian and of good quality.
• In Australia, Root is a less-offensive synonym for the F-bomb.

Allow me to provide examples.

• He/She is a good root.
• They were rooting.
• Do you want to root?
• You’re rooted.

Substitute the F-bomb for any of those and you get the point.

Now, imagine the thoughts that cross my mind when my now wife, then to-be-girlfriend, walked through the security gates at the airport the first time we met in person, with “Roots” in big bold letters across her ample bosom.

Further, imagine the thoughts crossing the minds of the average Australians upon sighting the Canadian Olympic contingent back during the Sydney Olympics in 2000, when they all proudly marched out for the opening ceremony with Roots logos on all of their uniforms.

• “Well, we wondered how they all got so fit…”
• “That explains how they keep warm in those Canadian winters…” 
• “Is that they’re mission statement?”
• “Oh dear Lord, the luge team…”

Ah, the logo… that doesn’t help. The logo for Roots, this pride of the Canadian clothing industry?

 

A beaver, with what can be construed to be lengths of wood.

I love my home country… I love my adopted country… but DAMN if it doesn’t make it hard to walk through the mall and not burst out laughing at complete strangers…

Anyway, Happy Australia Day to all the displaced Aussies, like myself, who find ourselves out in the world spreading our love of vegemite and good beers.  Good on yer, mates.

Things that make you go Boom!

I’m all about fun, casual decks. Thus, I hereby tip my hat to Planet Kalee’s latest post, where the man behind The Great VS Resolution tosses together an Illuminati deck. Why gosh, doesn’t it just make me want to put one together myself… but I can’t.

Not just yet.

Next week, Burlington’s Hobby League goes Modern, and I need to toss together two decks - one for me, and one for Babymomma Carrie. Carrie and her other half Pablo have busy lives nowadays with baby Emma; we’re absolutely thrilled that they’re still coming out to play with us, Emma in tow, despite trying to work with their respective theatre companies and running on what little sleep Emma allows them.

Thus, to take some of the pressure off of Pablo, I’ve offered to slap something together for Carrie to play.

Stipulations: Modern Legal, and pretty straightforward.

Pablo’s the family VS guru, Carrie’s a player and loves it but doesn’t have the depth of knowledge that rebounds through Pablo’s cranium. As such I can’t toss in anything too complicated or throw too many unfamiliar cards at her, or I may as well just be shooting her in the foot from the word go.

Now, the obvious choice for Modern for me is Family Of Four. I mentioned this earlier in the week. It’s not hard to play, it’s pretty darn bifftastic, and I’ve already got it assembled… but I have the urge to play something different.

So the questions, then, are what deck DO I play, and do I really want to hand Carrie Family of Four? Hee…

We’ve already covered the facts that I like mono-affiliation decks, I’m mainly a Marvel collector in the past, and even then I only collect specific teams. As such, we have available to us:

• MTU: Spider Friends, Defenders
• MVL: Fantastic Four, Marvel Knights
• DCL: Secret Society

I didn’t collect playsets of any of DWF’s teams, and my DCL SecSoc playsets still have gaping holes in them (Hey Mister, can you spare a Black Manta?), so that leaves us with the four Marvel teams. If we look to avoid the obvious Family of Four deck, that leaves us with three teams to choose from for the two decks.

Another Tuesday Night…

Random Punks is always an interesting thing. Not only does it open the door to those who don’t have extensive collections of rares, it also makes people think outside of their comfort zones. No EomE’s, no Mobilizes. No Beatdowns (Batzarro or Savage), no Blinding Rages. No Reigns of Terror, no Families of Four, no Fizzles.

I like it.

Tonight we had a good mix of decks, ranging from a devilish combination of the new Injustice Gang hidden stuff with Hellboy to a reservistapalooza combining Avengers, Titans and Brotherhood. Of course, I had my Wild Pack/Inhumans mix.

 It performed admirably for the most part, Jolen locking down Hellboy turn after turn (and keeping his cosmic token thanks to a Powell-searched Terragenesis) in the first round,  and then Man-Eater nicely opening the door for me to put Sandman through Dr Sivana for the win against SecSoc.

Final round, I have no idea what happened. I suddenly lost any luck I may have had earlier on in the evening, and what should have been a reasonable match for the grand prize turned into a slaughter as I missed my 1, 2, 3 and 6-drops. Oh, missed all the team-ups too.

No Powell searching me out ongoing’s. No Chen turning everything into a power-up, or San to hunt out locations. No Man-Eater to give me anti-hidden tech, or Jolen to lock down big attackers.

By turn four my opponent had already built a solid board, with Argent tossing out +1/+1 tokens like they were red M&M’s. Speaking of which, I should start using candy as tokens again. We used to use cheerios for action tokens in Heroclix, it was entertaining watching my wife’s face when I asked her if she wanted a bowl of action tokens for breakfast…

Well, in the end I’m not a Gotham player, so Batman cards interest me not, but I’m happy to have another Espionage for my binder. A playset is desirable…

Next week: Modern Age. I could easilly bring Family of Four or Moon Knight Multi-beats, but I’m thinking I should come up with something else… tune in for a random, rambling post about what I come up with!

And now, just to give you something to ponder: 

What would you name your very own pet wombat?

Wild Punk’t to the Moon!

We’re decidedly blessed to have an AWESOME venue, complete with ambient music, 25-cent cans of pop, and high-back office chairs around the gaming tables,  to engage in hobby league shenanigans every Tuesday night.

It’s only fitting, therefore, that we kick up the awesomeness each week by engaging in a wide variety of tomfoolery with our decks. Netdecking all over the place? We’ll have no such thing! Nothing but tier 1 decks? Pshaw! A truly competitive proving ground? Nah.

We play for fun, pure and simple. To help us achieve this goal, each week we play by a different theme. We mix up the ages, we mix up the formats, and we generally try to keep it fun and interesting. I’m telling you now, it’ll be the key to keeping the VS love flowing while we wait the long wait for Marvel Universe….

This week, we decided to go with Random Punks. It’s been a while since we shoved all those gold-numbered cards to the back of our binders, and concentrated purely on grey and white.

Angels in the Outfield…

Once again taking inspiration from Stuby, there’s been talk of angels and their impact on our lives lately. Are they real? Do they actively intervene on our behalf with a divine being of some sort? Do they taste like parmesan cheese? Given the choice, would they prefer coke or pepsi?

 All personal beliefs aside, there’s more than a few angels in the VS system - the most obvious being the X-Men’s resident winged mutie, Warren Worthington.  So, since I’m all about decks that are assembled on a whim and just for fun, let’s look at what sort of angelic theme deck we can put together!

 A quick check through the filters of VSed (available for download at both VSRealms and TheKamiza), or even the magnificent docx’s search engine, gives us a few options right off the bat for characters…

By the pricking of my thumbs…

… something VS this way comes.

Okay, thanks to our old pal Stuby posting a link on VSRealms, the Lost Hemisphere had a nice spike of hits… and some folks are still trying to figure out what the heck he was talking about.

 Long story short? Decks.

Oddly enough, a both the Tuesday night hobby league at the Hobby Kingdom, and the Tuesday night hobby league that Stu attended, both saw a Superclones deck, and also had a decent showing from the Morlocks. Additionally, hidden Injustice Gang shenanigans showed up.

Is this a sign of things to come a the upcoming Mega Weekend? Who knows, but it may well be that Superman puts in a showing and finally earns the respect that would normally be expected for a flagship character.

Now that we’ve spelled it out for those who were stumped, on to the next ramble.

Those who know me will cock an eyebrow at this, but I’m debating playing a non-Marvel character at the DCL Legends tourney. Why does this cause cocked eyebrows? Because, with the exception of Manhunters, I pretty much only favour Marvel teams in my ecclectic collection. I have playsets of most SecSoc stuff, and a full playset of Legion, but everything else I tend to focus on is Marvel.

 So what’s caught my eye this time around?