Making Magic in the Arena - Jumpstart

Jumpstart is one of the innovative and interesting formats I've seen the designers at Wizards of the Coast come up with. This weird hybrid format, combining the focus of pre-constructed decks with the variety that comes from a Limited format like Draft or Sealed.

Though boxes of it are hard to come by and too expensive when they are, largely due to Covid-related manufacturing issues, a version of it has come to MTG: Arena for us to play in the meantime. Is this new way to play all it's cracked up to be? Or is Jumpstart dead in the water?

Let's find out.

Mind Games - Prey (2017) - Part 1

I can't believe I haven't played this one on stream yet, especially since it's one that I never tire of. Arkane Studio's Prey is one of, if not the, most criminally underappreciated and undersold games of 2017.

Where Dishonored and it's sequels derive heavily from the Thief franchise that game before it, Prey drinks from the same well as System Shock did. In all but name, this is the closest we'll get to System Shock 3 until the actual System Shock 3 exits development hell.

It is my hope that by the end of this series, you will come to love this game the same way I do, if you haven't already.

Credit to Sam Callahan for providing the thumbnail.

In League with the Legends - A.R.A.M.

Recently, League of Legends implemented a new feature called "The Lab", where it will introduce experimental modes of play that are unique from the others.

For our first round in the Lab, we play a classic mode from League of Legends: ASMR... I mean ARAM, short for "All Random All Mid". Four random champions are selected, and after a mulligan the deck is built based on those champions.

Which means that there's no need for us to build anything for it. Let's just dive in and see what happens.

Magic: The Gathering - Commander Night Playback - Achieving the Moral Victory

Statistically speaking, if a 4-player pod are building and playing decks are similar power levels, any one player should win roughly 25% of the time. This means that players should expect to lose the vast majority of their matches.

While this week's matches fall into that other 75%, I still managed to get in my licks and make an impact on the board.

Almost on accident, our first match went in a tribal direction. One of my friends ran Goblin-tribal with Muxus, Goblin Grandee. Another ran Morophon, the Boundless as a God-tribal deck, and the third player ran a Gishath, Sun's Avatar deck with dinosaurs.

So what tribe did I go with: Human Advisor, of course! And thanks to Bruvac, the Grandiloquent, I have the perfect commander for my Advisor-tribal deck. (wink wink)

Time Twister - Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped - Finale

This episode has been a long time coming. Since we began our adventures with the remade PS1 games back in November or December, depending on how you're counting, we've had many incredible journeys across fantastical worlds.

But all good things must come to an end. And this series is no different. Today, we collect the remaining gems and relics and place the finishing touches on our adventures. Afterwards, one last confrontation with the good doctor is all we needed to end this story... until next time of course.