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The PalinDrome: Palin's Thoughts for January 6, 2008:
Miscellaneous Topics
Hello again!
Contrary to what my lack of activity might imply, I haven't completely given up
on Chaotic yet (honest!), and to prove it I have a veritable grab bag of
Chaotic-related topics to write about tonight. The ingredients for tonight's
blog range from gripes about booster packs to gripes about ChaoticPad, with some
non-griping topics sprinkled in for taste (but it wouldn't be the PalinDrome if
I didn't complain without end about things that are beyond my control). Now
then, all of this talk about food is making me hungry, so I'd better crank this
baby out so I can go grab a snack!
First, I'd like to take a moment to talk about some recent issues I was
having with ChaoticPad, which I'm sure other people were having as well. For
starters, there was the "ChaoticPad not detected" error. I'm glad this one was
fixed, because I didn't want to have to work around it every time I wanted to
play. Another problem I've had occasionally involves ChaoticPad freezing up and
playing a terrible sound (I think it's part of the transformation sound played
over and over very quickly). The only solution for me is to close ChaoticPad,
start it up again and hope that my opponent hasn't taken too big of a chunk out
of my health by the time I get back. I'm sure the developers are working on
this, but I just wanted to air my grievances.
However, other than the occasional bug, I like how ChaoticPad is coming
along. They recently added a feature that tells you how many people are waiting
for an auto-challenge, as well as an estimate on how long it will take to start
a game if you were to auto-challenge. Speaking of which, I also really like
auto-challenges. It was kind of weird for me to send of challenges to people I
don't know, asking for a game. The fact that the computer pairs you with someone
who is close to your skill level makes it even better. I also like how they
display your ELO score and rank so you can check it at a glance, although it
does act as a constant reminder that I need to play more and move my ranking out
of the 400's and into at least the 200's. But overall, I enjoy using the
ChaoticPad, even if I still hope that they're continuing work on a browser-based
client.
Another thing I wanted to talk about this evening are booster packs. Now, by
no means am I an expert on the booster packs, as I tend to only get one every
once in a while. However, I still can't help but be a little disappointed with
what I get sometimes. For instance, I bought a booster today hoping to get some
nice Attacks and Locations. Instead, I received one Flashwarp, no Locations, and
some Mipedian and Danian Creatures and Mugic. Don't get me wrong; I like a few
of the cards I received, for I now have two Choruses of the Hive, and a better
Brathe for my Mipedian army, as well as a Melody of Mirage to torture my
opponents with once they let you use Mugic over ChaoticPad. It's just that
unless I get some good Attacks and Locations, I can't really use all of these
nifty Creatures unless they can work with the Attacks and Locations from the
starter decks, because that's what I'm more or less stuck with. I'd have to buy
more than a few booster packs just to broaden my range of regular Attacks and
Locations in order to noticeably tweak my starters and make them more flexible,
let alone build a deck completely from scratch (and I'm not even talking about
rares here, just commons and uncommons that I don't have yet but could use).
Now, I'm not sure how difficult/costly this would be to implement, but
here's how I would go about boosters: guarantee a certain number of cards from
each card type based on how many of them there are in the entire set. I quickly
counted how many cards of each type there are in this set, and found that there
were 97 Creatures, 49 Attacks, 38 Mugix, 31 Locations, and 29 pieces of
Battlegear. If you apply the proportions of these card types to a 9 card
booster, that would mean it'd contain 4 Creatures, 2 Attacks, a Mugic, a
Location, and a Battlegear. It removes just enough of the random element to
prevent crushing disappointment from getting a booster of nothing but Creatures
when you need Attacks, while still being random enough to keep it interesting.
The Card of the Day/Week/Indeterminate Amount of Time for Jan. 6 is Melody
of Mirage. Like the other card's I've reviewed, I haven't had the opportunity to
use it, but I can't wait until I can. The reasons are fairly obvious: unless
he/she has counter-mugic, a single Mipedian mugic counter will instantly wipe
the smug look off of any opponent's face after they manage to play Allmegeddon
with Stronghold Morn/Heptadd and replace it with a dumbfounded gaze of shock and
awe. Besides messing with your opponent's head by denying him the opportunity to
deal lots of damage to you, I imagine MoM would also come in handy when you need
to stay alive for just one more turn. Either way, I could see Melody of Mirage
coming in handy in just about any match, and I think chances are good that
anyone running Mipedians would use it.
Palin
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