Farewell, 2008…

… and may 2009 bring lots of raw niftiness for all and sundry.

On behalf of Lost Hemisphere, thank you to all our regular visitors for your patronage, and we wish you the very best in the coming new year.

Return of the King (More MEQ)

Despite the lack of a scanner, I think it’s only right that I share with you this delightful card from MEQ, as discovered in a box at my FLGS tonight when we went in for some sealed MEV goodness.

Why? Because it’s the return of the king. Once more, Pier Pressure is viable in Modern Age. Not only due to the abundance of 0-cost equipment that’s flowing like wine from the MEQ vinyard, but because we once more have a 5-drop Mr Fantastic that reduces the cost of equipment…

Oh, and I guess I’ll show you pics of the rest of the MEQ stuff as well, in no particular order…

Answering the call: Plagued!

It is somehow appropriate that as I worked on this concept I’ve suddenly become sick.

Yep.

Sick over Christmas break. Karma is a ***** sometimes, isn’t it?

So more and more the direction i took in this challenge, was manipulating an opponents ability to retain its board. Obviously, through use of plague counters, but also through the sheer awesomeness of bane, ubu and the original lazarus pit. Sure there’s a subtle theme around hoarding those locations for a potential Merlyn activation or a Nyssa kill, but for the most part its about simply taking advantage of whatever options you happen to draw into.

Playing God and the future of VS

Today we took the kids to the Ontario Science Centre, and had a ball as Gdaygirl and Gdayboy discovered all sorts of scientiffic stuff, ranging from manipulation of sound waves to genetic determination of skin tone to how a hover chair thingie moves (I got to steer…). 

While Gdaygirl was playing God and designing new creatures, the state of our beloved VS System rolled through my head, along with ponderings on what future we have, if any, considering the continued silence from UDE.

Naturally, this also brought to mind the future of Lost Hemisphere.

Holiday Traditions

Back home in Australia, Christmas was generally the highlight of the Summer holidays. Well, Christmas and my own birthday. One of my favourite things to do in those lazy Summer days was to sit out on the back porch with my dad, doing puzzles on the picnic table.

Even though I’m now a resident of the frozen North (see the pics in the last post for evidence), some traditions are worth keeping. Even though I may not have two months off from work, there’s still time for some puzzle goodness. Behold the first victim of the holiday season.

From me and mine, to you and yours

Character-Building Exercise: The Great Machine

Interestingly, it seems more and more we’re seeing fantasy cards and home-made essential collections starting to come together now that we’re in limbo as to the next expansion of our beloved VS.

Case in point, it looks like my WarmaVS ramblings inspired pal Bryan, host of GeekSpeakRadio, to put together some cards of his own based around Ex Machina. Enjoy.

When it comes to to the works of Brian K. Vaughan, much of the love goes to titles like Runaways and Y: The Last Man. Both are critical darlings and fan favorites, and that love is much-deserved. But there’s one book that put Mr. Vaughan on my radar, and for me, it has yet to be eclipsed. That book is Ex Machina, and it appeals to me on a very fundamental level.

See, when I’m not doing stuff like this or kvetching about nerdish things on my award-winning podcast, I’m a bit of a political junkie. In my undergrad days, I dual-majored in political science and broadcasting, and I’ve been involved in news ever since. I tend not to write much about it online since arguing about politics online is only slightly less productive than trying to push a rope uphill, but it’s still a topic that endlessly fascinates me. And, as you might expect, being as I am writing an article on this website, I am also quite a bit of a fan of superheroes. Therefore, a book combining the two is a natural addition to my pull list; so much so that I like to think BKV writes each individual issue just for me.

No More Mr Nice… Guy?

This card is one that I have yet to really see used to its fullest, and I find this to be an absolute shame. It’s a constant +2/+2 modifier that isn’t unique! Get two of them out and you can pump any character’s stats to the point where they are OVER the curve. With that sort of power, how is it that it seems like no one has so much as touched NMMNG?

Fortunately, I’m not the type to just let things sit about with things that I feel are wrong and let them stay that way. Instead I decided to build my own way to abuse No More Mr. Nice Guy. A couple of characters immediately came to mind as to how to do this. Cable is one character who you can shift out that has drops at several places and even has that ability to cheat uniqueness on his own. I thought he’d be too easy but I’ll likely revisit him. Similarly to Cable, Spider-Man has his new 1-drop with Shift, but most of his best characters are now Silver Age at best and such a build would be best in Golden Age. This left me with one character that really stood out as having enough characters to design a deck around while still being unique. That character is everyone’s favorite blue lady… or is that Victorian gentleman?

Gauntlet VX:

Okay, I gave him the week off to get his Christmas shopping done and everything wrapped, now it’s time to get Aaron “Onyxweapon” Mead back to work.

What? Let him have the Christmas week off too? SHENANIGANS! Fie and Tosh, let him work! It’s not like he has kids to entertain just yet (Hurry up and marry that woman and spawn, will ya, boy?). Still, it is the festive season, and it’s only fitting that we challenge our boy accordingly. We’re going to delve into the depths of VS history a little.

Christmas is, for many, a time of giving. As such, this week’s challenge is all about giving stuff to your opponent. We could make it easy and give +1/+1 tokens from Ultron… or Electron Scramblers and Power Dampeners… but I think we need to go further back, to speak to the Ghost of Christmas VS Past, to one of the first things you could ever give your opponent… the flu!

Build me a plague deck, Aaron. Bonus points if you can squeeze in Shadowpact to give June Moon to your opponent as well

Merry Christmas!

WarmaVS: Continuing Efforts

Happy weekend, fellow Lost! Here we are, less than a week til Christmas and all the niftiness that brings. I’m off work for a couple of weeks, so plenty of time to riffle cards and paint mini’s… or, ya know, continue with the enedeavour to combine to the two.

Today we look at some more character cards based around the Protectorate of Menoth in Warmachine, expanding on the Exemplar theme, tossing in another Warjack, and peeking at one of the two 7-drops I’m entertaining. 

The Reedeemer is a light warjack, not exactly known for accuracy but able to throw out a fussilade of shells that’ll force anyone not in decent armour to pull their heads back into their trenches.

In Warmachine, it’s notable for being able to fire up to three exploding shells in a single turn. I wanted to represent this with the Skyhammer tokens, allowing for (in theory) a maximum of three uses in a single turn, while still limited to only hurting the lightly-armoured. That it can affect multiple lowbies is a reflection of the blast effect of the skyhammer shells.