Howitzer

Various things (Were-Nanase winning the poll, the new Shadows Over Innistrad block, etc) have gotten me in a Magic mood lately and, specifically, an Innistrad mood. I'd like to relate the story of the best game of Magic I ever played, which occurred in the summer of 2012, while the first Innistrad set was still legal in standard. The players: Slumbering Dragon - A 3/3 flying creature for a single red mana. It also gets a +1/+1 counter every time an opponent's creature attacks you! The catch is that it is not allowed to attack or block unless it has 5 such counters. Reverberate - Red's answer to Counterspell, for 2 mana this one copies a spell and lets you change the target of the copy rather then stopping it entirely. Llanowar Elves - The original mana dork, for one mana you have a creature that generates an extra mana for you every turn. Predator Ooze - For three green mana, this indestructible creature gains a +1/+1 counter every time it attacks. Increasing Savagery - Four mana allows you to put 5 +1/+1 counters on a single creature. Then you can pay an additional seven mana to put 10 more on. Magic 2013 had just been released, and I was enamored with Slumbering Dragon. I put together a red/green deck where the purpose was to play a dragon on turn one, and then use various spells (such as the above Increasing Savagery) and effects to put a bunch of +1/+1 counters on it so that I could attack with it without waiting for my opponent to pump it up naturally by attacking me. I sat down at a casual table to try my new deck, and won the die roll. I elected to play first and drew a crap opening hand. Mulliganing to six cards gave me a worse hand. Five cards was the same as six, just with one fewer card. Four was also awful. I finally stopped at Three, which was a hand consisting of the Slumbering Dragon, a Reverberate, and another spell that doesn't figure into the story. I think it was a Ring of Valkas. Regardless, the hand didn't contain any lands, but all I needed was one to play the dragon, so I kept it. I did have the first turn, but without a land to play there was nothing I could do, so I passed. My opponent drew a card and played their first turn, which consisted of a Forest and Llanowar Elves. I drew for my second turn, and got the Mountain I needed. I played it and the dragon. My opponent took their second turn, and played another Forest, then tapped both forests and the elves to play Predator Ooze. I topdecked another Mountain, and played it before passing the turn. My opponent played Forest number three, and then taped all three forests plus the elves to play Increasing Savagery on their Ooze. My eyes bugged out as I realized what was about to happen, and in response I tapped both of my mountains and reverberated that sucker, targeting my dragon with the copy, and bringing it online! I now had an 8/8 flying dragon to my opponent's 6/6 Ooze. For some reason, my opponent decided to attack anyway, which triggered both the "add a counter" effects of his ooze and my dragon. My 9/9 dragon easily parried the now 7/7 ooze. Going back to my turn, I couldn't attack with my dragon fast enough, and slammed my opponent's face in for 9 points of damage, leaving him at 11 life. I then passed. On the next turn, my opponent didn't play any spells, but instead just attacked with both the elves and the ooze. The ooze ability triggered again, putting it at 8/8, but my dragon triggered twice (once for each attacker), and it became an 11/11. It was my turn to take 9 points of damage. On my next turn, I swung at my opponent for 11 damage, putting him at 0 and ending the game. Over the course of the entire game, I never drew another land, and didn't play anything other then the dragon and the reverberate. I simply could not believe my luck when my opponent busted out the exact spell that I wanted to target my dragon with, and I was able to copy it. What amazing plays has everyone else done or witnessed?

It's a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was a response to the previous post where you said you were pushing the limits of probability. Drop everything right now, head to your local library, and read that book, and you'll get the joke. As well as having read a really good book.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/single-magazine-5566559 Once again, Dan has totally managed to subvert all expectations, while at the same time meeting them.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/single-mall-on-5559234 Elliot, that is clearly too small. You need to call for Ashley and have her help you out.

Valve's been very catty and dropping vague hints about the possibility. On the other hand, it's impossible to tell if Valve's hints are just appeasing the fan theory, or if the theory was because of Valve's hinting. Source

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=466 Truly an epic contest.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/double-calling-5566586 Is it hot in here, or is it just me?

https://www.patreon.com/posts/dans-choice-1-5566543 Can't say I was expecting that.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/april-sequence-5374088 The moon apparently moved behind some clouds.

Actually, the first game in the series was called Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. Then you had Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, the expansion for that called Beyond the Dark Portal, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and its expansion, The Frozen Throne. Then, of course, after all that, you've got World of Warcraft, the only game in the series to not have a subtitle.

And that's what you want anyway. If the hourglass is intended to be a metaphor for the aging process, you don't want to reverse it. You'd eventually get too young and blink yourself out of existence. You want to stop it, no longer becoming younger or older. Turning the hourglass on its side is the way to do that.

Eh, eventually everything works its way back to Gilgamesh.

Scratch off the Death Star paint and you get Sauron. Wherever he gazes, doom follows.

I'd go farther then that and just say that Star Wars is fantasy. It's just happens to be fantasy with a sci-fi paint job. Scratch the paint off, and you've totally got elves, orcs, swords, and wizards.

I'd like to point out that the word "parsec" shouldn't be in Star Wars at all. The distance of a parsec is calculated based on Earth's orbit around the Sun. It's useful because you can calculate how far a celestial body is from Earth by calculating what it's angle in the sky is, then waiting half a year, and making the same calculation again. Because the Earth is on the other side of the Sun when you make the second calculation, the angle will be slightly different, and you can use basic trigonometry to calculate the distance. (A parsec is about 3.26 light years.) As Earth isn't in Star Wars (it takes place in "a galaxy far, far away"), there's absolutely no reason to have a unit of distance that's based on the size of Earth's orbit. QED

Not necessarily. Humans don't have 4 breasts either, yet I'd still call Nanase human in that one sketchbook.

Slim to none.

The telegram was obviously delivered by Thing, who scampered away quickly once the job was done.

Reminds me of this Monty Python sketch:

I like this one.Téa is incredibly cute.

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=464 And now a return to not returning to form.

Well there's your problem right there. Unless you're a creator, why would you have any money in your Patreon account at all? I certainly don't. I have it set up to take my pledge out via paypal at the beginning of each month, and I'm sure a lot of other people either do that or have a credit card set up as well. I'm sure that IF you have cash in a Patreon account, it will take that first, and might even do it right away (not sure on that part, as I've never tried it), but I'm sure that people who actually do it that way are a tiny percentage of the total number of donators. The amount pledged is never ever the amount you get when cards get charged, because cards get declined.

Except we don't actually know it's been covered. Some of that is probably from Patron adjusting minor this due to fee changes and what not, but I guarantee that a lot of it is due to declined credit cards.

Seems like a dangerous thing to be doing. After all, Dan's got the pencil.

Well, the charging has begun, and it suddenly dropped down to 3512, which is actually a bit more then I expected. No second place two character pinup.