I'm still having fun playing ranked games in Hearthstone. I managed to hit rank 15 before falling back down to 17 last night. I feel like I'll probably bounce around at this level for a while and I'm okay with that. The games I'm playing are great and I feel like I'm being matched up with people around my skill level. I'm actually using a deck I built myself which I think helps a lot. I tried some of the net-decks I found online but it's sort of like being given the keys to a formula one car and having no idea how to drive it. I'm sure they are great decks but if I don't understand the card combos and dependencies built into it then it's not going to do me any good. I've had much better luck constructing my own deck and making changes as I discover new cards or get my own ideas about combos. I'm playing a Druid deck right now since that's what I always played in WOW and I'm really digging it.
Originally this comic had Gabe saying he hated the "Hunters" and their Zoo decks. I lurk over in the Hearthstone subreddit and saw we were taking some flack as apparently Zoo decks are most commonly attributed to Warlocks in the current meta. I went ahead and made the change but to be fair the concept of a Zoo deck is something I first heard about in MTG and it just meant a deck using a bunch of cheap monsters that overwhelmed the opponent. I've played my fair share of Hunters who end up playing beast after beast all combo-ing off each other and snowballing until I'm looking at a menagerie I felt comfortable calling a "zoo".
Hearthstone is dominating my game time right now but I grabbed a couple other interesting iOS games this week.
Tiny Dice Dungeon is a fun little RPG that uses a dice rolling mechanic for its combat. It's a push your luck style system that will be familiar to anyone who has played Zombie Dice. You roll dice to deal damage and you can keep rolling and building damage but if you roll a one the attack is an automatic miss. You can also collect monsters which is something I have a soft spot for.
I also picked up Third Eye Crime and I'm liking it. It's a really interesting stealth game with a main character who can sense what other people are thinking. In this case it allows you to "see" via red highlights where guards think you are hiding. It's similar to Splinter Cell in that you know the last place the guard saw you but it goes further by highlighting areas of the map that the guard thinks you might have gone. As he searches for you he eliminates some zones and other areas light up as possible hiding spots. It's a really smart mechanic and worth checking out.
Finally I grabbed episode three of The Wolf Among Us and started that last night. It came out during PAX and I'm just now getting around to it. I'm still loving this story and can't wait to see where this episode goes.
Also this person at i09 says they do not like the teaser image for the new Jem and the Holograms movie. They said the movie is "looking like a rushed nostalgia grab. Even the poster is hasty; Jem's eye makeup is off in a way that looks sorrowful rather than celebratory." this bothered me for a couple reasons and the fact that it bothered me actually bothered me more. I pointed it out to Tycho who is a huge Jem fan (not a joke) and found myself getting riled up as I explained my issues with the article. The eye makeup is not "sorrowful". It's just some pink makeup and it looks the same as it does in the cartoon. You could try and argue that her pose is sorrowful but even then I have to disagree. This is the moment before the show starts. This is Jem backstage just before the curtain opens. This is the quiet split second before the lights and the music. It's a perfect moment to share and mimics the actual point we are at with this movie. The show has not started yet. What we are seeing is the deep breath before the movie and I think it's perfect. Also it's not technically "eye makeup" it's a hard-light hologram projected over her body through her earnings by the super computer Synergy that was built by Jem's (A.K.A. Jerrica's) father.
Yeah, so that's a thing I said.
-Gabe Out
