About a month ago on the podcast I co-host (5wowthings), we had @OriginalOestrus as a guest and discussed Magic: The Gathering (linked here if you want to listen). @thebiggameover wanted to know how magic worked, and we explained to him it is a very difficult game to learn.

If you don’t know, Magic: The Gathering is a trading card game created by Wizard’s of the Coast, the same guys who make the Dungeons and Dragons table top game. A game of Magic represents a battle between planeswalkers, who employ the magical spells, items, and creatures (depicted on individual Magic cards) to defeat their opponents. It has a very organized tournament system from which a community of professional Magic players has developed.

While a lot of people have heard of Magic, not many know how to get into the game. Some who have tried have found the rule set daunting because, let’s face it, there are hundreds of rules to learn and only hard core players know them all. After listening to that episode, Sidenorna, one of our newer listeners, wrote me on a good way to teach someone. So if you know someone who would like to learn, or would like to learn and know someone who plays, direct them here as she has written up a great teacher’s guide.

I have played Magic: The Gathering on and off and again for many years. Now, to master Magic is a lot of work, but not to learn it. Magic in it’s whole is overly complex filled with details and some odd rules, but the basic game of magic can be broken down in many easier steps. Here is the key that has helped me teach a few people over the years.

Step one, start with two super basic decks made of about 40 cards. Use only creature cards and lands of one color and limit the abilities the creatures have to simple and passive abilities, or none at all. Things like flying, first strike, pumping, the basics that are easy to understand. Avoid abilities that require tapping or abilities that are spell like. Play a game as normal with the person learning, teaching them the untap, upkeep, draw, main, attack, and then second main phases. The key is to keep it simple. I know this may be boring to the teacher, but the point is to teach, not to have fun just yet.

Once the new player has this down, add in a new type of card; either enchantments/ artifacts, or sorceries. Things that are not creatures that are usable only on your turn. Again, make sure you keep the spells simple. After they are familiar with the rules of those types of spells, add in instant spells.

Above all else, if they having a hard time getting a rule or idea slow down. Sure those are only three phases and one big one that is a bit vague, but they can be broken down into smaller steps. The big issue with teaching magic most people have is they want new players to dive right in, but much like anything worth doing this it is about taking small steps.

And there you have it, guys. Keep it simple, break it into smaller steps. I’ve learned from teaching my cousins that the attack phase is the hardest to understand, so remember to break that up especially. Hope you found this as useful as I did (I think I can teach my youngest cousin to play now), so have fun and game on!

One of my fellows from the Twisting Nether Gazette wrote the following review about Amnesia: the Dark Descent. I’ve wanted to feature this game in a review, but horror/survival games scare the piss out of me so I never play them. I have watched OMFG Cata play this game, but that doesn’t seem like enough to write a review on, so here is Karkarov on Amnesia: the Dark Descent. I’ve added some links, but otherwise, it’s all him.

Lately I have been playing this game called Amnesia: the Dark Descent made by the same people who created the Penumbra series, Frictional Games.

This is what we call a survival horror game. The real thing mind you; this is not Resident Evil 5 where you have a partner the whole time and a semi auto shotgun to solve your problems. You play as an amnesiac named Daniel who wakes up inside an old Gothic castle around the year of 1839-1840. All you know is your first name and that there is a “shadow” hunting you, bent on killing you. The story is supposedly based on the Lovecraft tale “The Outsider,” but I haven’t read it so I can’t say. The game feels like a Cthulhu story for certain, though.

I have played a decent clip into the game and I am really digging it. If you like horror games, you want to give it a shot. It isn’t the longest thing in the world but the graphics, presentation, and atmosphere are top notch. It is only 20 bucks, which is less than even a DS game and barely more than games like Shank, which are nothing but re-skinned beat-em-ups with a whole 6 hours of play through. Amnesia also will have a pretty neat tool set, which they are working on now,  so people can make their own adventures.

I should also mention the reason I made the quip about the shotgun: Your character spends the entire game unarmed. That’s right, if you are ever actually engaged in combat you a dead man. The only way to actually clear encounters is to either avoid them when possible, hide, or hunker down in a room and block the door while praying the thing after you loses interest or fails to break in. In addition to all this, you have limited light sources – a lantern that can run out of oil – and spending time in the dark causes you to slowly go insane.

Sounds fun right? Check out the demo on their webpage [linked above] or, if you want, you can watch some of my “Let’s Play” vids that I am making of the game. The early ones aren’t the greatest but they get better.

Don’t like my style? Then check out other peoples work because there is a lot of content out there for this title on Youtube.

Why am I bothering? Because it is a well priced indy game for the PC that is getting very little press and it deserves to be a monetary success. That’s why. Currently, it sits in the high 80′s on Metacritic so most reviewers are agreeing with me.

Here is a link to my vids playlist if you want to watch it: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_lis…024ED8CB65B1D1

Nika Davies farming in Lord of the Rings Online

One thing I really am excited about is the concept of the farms and associated dailies. Personally, I can’t help but wonder if this this Blizzard’s way of testing the waters for possible player housing in the future. The reason I think that might be a possibility is because the farms will most likely be instanced. They have a very similar thing in Lotro (Lord of the Rings Online) with both farms and player housing, and I have a feeling Blizzard got the idea from there.

The way housing worked in Lotro was a series of neighborhoods, each containing maybe a dozen houses of different sizes and costs. You entered the neighborhood through a portal similar to entering a dungeon, so they didn’t take up all that extra space in the world. If they make the farms instanced, and it’s successful, I could see player housing happening someday in the (far) future.

As for the farming itself- if it’s anything like they do in Lotro and it sounds like it will be – it was a lot of fun! I absolutely love professions though, so this was just another fun option. You started out with a few different seeds to plant either vegetables, wheat, or tobacco. As you leveled up, you would unlock different seeds. It wasn’t like Farmville where you plant things and check it over several days. It was more like any profession or fishing. You planted the seeds and had a progress bar, and you could actually see the plant growing. Then you harvested it. The whole process didn’t take much longer than fishing from a school of fish.

The fields were not individually owned. It was more like a community area and you’d see several people in the same field, all planting and harvesting things. I’m wondering if it’s going to be something like this with our own little farm houses around it that we can decorate. I’m really hoping they’ll be instanced BUT in groups so you can visit each others farms and/or have neighbors. It seems to me like it would be easier for them to put clusters of people in each instance rather than having one instance for every single player in the game.

- Nika Davies

The classic hunter PvP pet is a spider. There are many spider models, and they have a nice Web ability. These pets are useful in all types of PvP: Bgs/Arenas/world pvp. AND they are pretty useful against most enemies, because you get to hold them in place. (Healers can’t run behind a wall. Melee can’t keep chasing you. Casters can’t stand on you and attack) I prefer wasps over spiders though. Wasps have a stun that lasts two seconds. The stun lasts shorter than the web, yes, but the target cannot do anything while stunned..and if you’re lucky, they’ll waste their trinket on that.

IF you are doing PvP with a rogue or a warrior, you might want to use a Hyena or a Boar. These pets have an ability that increases all Bleed damage by 30% for 15 seconds, and the cool down is only 10 seconds. That means, they can keep reapplying the debuff to enemies, while your melee buddy uses it to his/her advantage.

If you are doing PVP by yourself, and you are Marksmanship, you might want to try using a bird of prey (which is NOT the same as a carrion birds) Birds of Prey have an ability that disarms enemy players for 8 seconds! That is VERY useful against melee classes and against fellow hunters, because it also removes the ranged weapon.

If you are Survival, you should either use a wasp, spider OR a wind serpent. Wind Serpents apply a debuff to the enemy that increases all magic damage taken by 8%. This is good for explosive shot and arcane shot. It is also good if you are PvPing with a caster.

If you are a Beast Master, it is always helpful to have a spirit beast. They stealth and can heal you. Although, sometimes you might want to disable their stealth ability, because if you’re doing an arena,they may not get to your enemy fast enough. Corehounds are good for battlegrounds, because they have a bloodlust ability. When they use their Ancient Hysteria (Bloodlust) you get a debuff in which you cannot beneft from ancient hysteria for 10 minutes. This debuff disappears when you die, and in battle grounds you tend to die a lot, so you can just keep using the ability everytime you are revived.

In general, for PvP, you shouldn’t bother specing your pet into extra stamina or armor. GOOD pvpers don’t bother to attack pets, and if they do you can just use mend pet. Dash is very helpful, and so is heart of the phoenix if you are a beast master (If your pet dies, insta revive)

A warning for all hunters. Occasionally in arenas or BGs, a melee class will attack your pet so he/she can heal up. For example, if you are hiding behind a wall, and your pet is attacking a rogue, the rogue will start fighting your pet and then use Recuperate to gain more and more health.

A wonderful website to use to get information about Hunter pets is petopia.com . This website has all the abilities and all the different types of pets.

Ty
-Ugraz