Escaping and Home Game Time Again

For some reason I always get the motivation to write as I'm doing my insomniac thing at 2am in the morning, well I guess I shouldn't be that surprised since around this time of night I always wrote my best last minute reports in college.

In addition to my org chart fiasco at work, constant rumors swirl about various undertakings that are alleging to be happening. Allegedly 11/10/10 a big re-org resulting in layoffs of 4% of the workforce will be announced, so yeah its just a little stressful to say the least.

So when I come home I try distance myself as much as I can from that "other world" and get involved in the xbox (Fallout: New Vegas), or playing some HORSE on Stars, or what I've been doing lately is getting back to playing Magic: The Gathering Online. 

If you've never played MTG, its easy to just dismiss it as some weird D&D stuff which isn't entirely inaccurate, but more than that, its a game that lets you customize your experience to be an extension of your own personality. There are 5 colors essentially to choose from: Red (direct damage, aggressive creatures), Green (powerful creatures, life gaining), White (flying creatures, defense), Blue (spells, card denial), and Black (discard,  undead creatures). Yeah the "black" color got the game banned from my grade school because 2 of the cards had pentagrams on them and they don't go over well in Catholic school...

Anyway, you can start to see why more than a handful of poker players started out playing MTG. MTG, in my opinion, is more strategic than poker. Not only do you have to play your opponent's cards (usually in a head's up setting, but not always), but you have to craft a 60 card deck that is fluid. And by fluid meaning you cant sit and rely on just one combo to come up, since it may never come, you have to craft a deck that has multiple card combos, and then combos on top of that which might not have even been planned in the first place. 

And that's just one facet of MTG, they have drafts where 8 people buy three booster packs (15 cards) and pick a card a pass until all 3 boosters have been depleted. So you have to build a deck based on no prior knowledge of what cards you are going to get plus be aware of what other people seem to be picking.

That's why I love it, not just because i can play a Goblin or make you discard half your deck, its the strategy and personalization that makes me keep coming back.

Now on to poker, my monthly home game is this Saturday. Looks like we'll have a decent turnout (6-7 people) I just need to get back to winning ways. I'm on a 5 month snide of no wins.

Its good to escape, now I just need to kick the insomnia.