Sample Format: Infinite Magic II

In Magic:TG, you have a deck of 60+ cards, containing at most four of any card (except basic lands, which produce mana). This is sort of an historical aberration. When Richard Garfield first invented Magic:TG he was working out what it should be from scratch, and he imagined people trading one-on-one for cards they wanted, thus part of the game is acquiring the cards you need, and part of the game is building a deck out of them, and part of the game is playing a game with those decks.

However, it turned out that the internet came along and made it very easy to trade cards with people all over the world. Thus a casual player might be limited by the cards they had to hand, but someone willing to pay, or a professional player who had to pay to get the best deck, could buy the best cards. So, instead a rule was instituted you could only have 4 of any card, and magic cards are designed with this assumption.

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I'd be interested to see the metagame (which decks are good, and which beat which other ones, like rock-paper-scissors), but it doesn't look like it'll be very different to playing finite decks with no four card limit.

Next time

What if you play with the four card limit on infinite decks? (Or maybe ban cards which are very broken in this format?)

Weekend films

I successfully went swimming, even though it looked a bit overcast beforehand, and it turned out nice when i was there.

I took Mobbsy, Sonic and Mds to see Forbidden Kingdom. It was very pretty, with lovely characters. Although I think Mobbsy was right that to say it had very little plot -- I though tthe mythology was lovely, but nothing much happened during the film. Basically, if you liked the trailer, you should see it -- it was like you'd expect, but better, very well done (and not as silly as you might fear, seeing Jackie Chan and Jet Li wrangling). I don't know enough Chinese mythology -- a variety of things come from there, and I don't know if that would make it interesting or painful if you do know, but to me it was a very pleasing blend of Western-style and Chinese-style things.

I've been cleaning up and packing, with mixed success, but a lot more productive that I normally manage :)

Fishpi, his Rachel, and I went to see Wall-E. I didn't like it as much as everyone else did (not as much as the Incredibles), but I thought it was very good (one of the best other Pixar films). It's marvellously animated, Wall-E and Eve are tremendously expressive. It's sweet. And never annoying. And generally enjoyable. But it never made me laugh much, and there wasn't that much to the plot. I guess time will tell.