Lots of polishing and reformatting has made this post about healers in MMO games much more readable! Take a few minutes and learn about what healers are and how they work…and, if you ever played City of Heroes, reminisce with me. 🙂
Category Archives: Thursday in the Zone
Gaming-related posts, covering games of my particular interest from the collectible, video, and PC genres.
Redo: Competitive Magic is for Plagiarists
Today, I took out all the tentative phrasing and apologetic language out of this post about competitive Magic and the “netdeck” phenomenon. The gloves have officially come off, and I have strong opinions about netdecking and what it’s doing to casual M:TG.
Redo: Resident Evil Deck Building Game
Had to do a fairly good-sized update to this introductory post for the Resident Evil Deck Building Game, since the game is no longer being published. (But you can still find it online! :D)
Redo: Life Gain…It’s Not Just a Stall Tactic Anymore!
Quite a bit of editing and polishing went into this redo of my post on using life-gain in Magic: the Gathering…check out the improved content (and a couple of new ideas thrown in, too)!
Redo: You Hurt Me, I Hurt You: The Mystics Team Ability
Tidied up this old favorite post of mine, about the Mystics team ability in HeroClix. Never heard of Mystics? Click, read, and enjoy a VERY different take on HeroClix strategy!
Stages of Collectible Gaming (Funny Graph)
From personal experience (and being around other gamers), I believe this graph is quite, quite accurate. LOL!!
Graph made with the help of GraphJam FlashBuilder.
Redo: Building a Better Team Support Toon, part 2
Even though City of Heroes is not playable at the moment, I still wanted to take time and profile the “team support” power trees that were available as of the game’s sunset. Who knows, we may get a second chance to build characters with these powers! Read on to see the complete list!
Your New Favorite Support Piece: The Mystical Elf
As part of the Yu-Gi-Oh! HeroClix set, there’s one figure you’ll definitely want if you enjoy strong Support pieces. Let me tell you about Mystical Elf!
How to Play Mystical Elf
This little lady is meant to be played close to her teammates so that Mystical Healing can go off and so she can more effectively use Prob and Support. As for defending herself, her Barrier, Phasing, and Willpower make her hard to target and pin down for long. Her 8 move, 10 attack and fairly high defenses most of the way down (including that fantastic 19 on last click) are good enough stats to ensure that she’ll be sticking around for a good portion of the game at least. All this for 50 points–not bad!
Additional Functionality: The Trap/Spell Mechanic
Notice the “Trap/Spell,” “Graceful Dice,” and “Skull Dice” rules–these can be used on another friendly Yu-Gi-Oh! character to enhance Mystical Elf’s usefulness even more. Whenever she would be defeated, you can instead turn her into a Spell or Trap card as described. (Skull Dice would be a nasty surprise for your opponent if you’re playing against a beatstick team, and Graceful Dice would be an excellent boost for a character who needs Prob.)
Also, you can include her dial facedown at the beginning of the game for 7 points if you don’t have room for 50 points or don’t want to use her Support characteristics. Just choose your friendly Yu-Gi-Oh! character and set the dial facedown on their card, and you’re ready to play!
Final Note: Trap/Spell Legality
Whether Trap/Spell functionality is legal in standard Golden Age games is hotly debated on HCRealms at the moment, but both an official judge and a forum moderator have said that individual venues can house-rule this to be legal or not. Just ask your local HeroClix judge whether they allow Traps/Spells before building your team for standard Golden Age events–if they say no, you can always play Mystical Elf as a regular Clix piece and get most of the benefit. She’s versatile!
Redo: Building a Better Team Support Toon, part 1
A bit of editing, a new image, and another explanatory link brings this City of Heroes post up to par. The game might be dead for now, but the strategies outlined here could potentially work for any MMO!
What No One Tells You About Collectible Gaming
Collectible gaming–buying plastic figures and/or cards to play in games with others–is a fun pastime for quite a lot of people, myself included. But there are a few things about the hobby that I didn’t quite understand before I got into it:
You will end up with “extras” that you can’t sell for any money, period.
No matter how seldom you buy stuff for the game, no matter how much you try to sell instead of trade, you will ALWAYS end up with extra figures or cards that nobody seems to want, not even on eBay or gaming-specific trading/selling sites. There are two ways to deal with un-sellable extras: set aside a box in your closet for them and forget about them, or give them away to new players who need to build up their collections. (I’d personally recommend the second way, given that nice veteran players gave me a lot of extras when I first started playing Magic and HeroClix, and I’ve kept some of those cards and figures to this day.)
Storing your collection so that it won’t get damaged will become somewhat of an obsession in itself.
Take it from me: once you’ve spent actual money on your collection and/or acquire something you REALLY want, you’ll be invested in taking care of it. This often means buying special padded miniatures boxes to keep your figures from getting damaged, card sleeves and/or toploaders for valuable cards, etc. Not only that, you have to be concerned with keeping your collection away from sunlight (fades everything), water, dust, and excessive heat (the latter especially with plastic/rubber figures, which can and will begin to soften in hot cars). (As OCD as all this might sound, it’s worth it if you ever want to sell or trade these items later–Near-Mint and Mint condition items sell or trade best!)
You will never be “done” collecting unless you cut yourself off cold turkey.
Admittedly, this is how collectible games stay alive–always creating new stuff for us to collect. There’s always one more figure to complete a set, one more card we don’t have. But this can be quite a strain on the wallet…and on the arms and back as you struggle to move your collection! Once you start collecting, if you’re deeply involved in it, you won’t ever be quite done fleshing out your selection of figures and/or cards, unless you set goals of routinely upgrading and cleaning out your collection to only keep the stuff you play and enjoy. Which leads me to my last point…
Your collection can reach ridiculous sizes in a very short time.
Without regular pruning (and heck, sometimes even WITH regular pruning), your gaming collection can swell to fill a room corner, a closet, a room, or even your whole house (I’ve seen it happen!). Even if you’re trying not to buy new stuff, purely trading out old for new, your collection can take over your living spaces quite easily. (See: my “gaming shelf” in my closet, which is so shamefully overflowing that I’m not even taking a picture of it, LOL) If you want your collections to be enjoyable yet contained, you have to be really proactive about containing them!
What Do You Think?
Have I accurately described a collectible gamer’s life? Let me know in the comments!