Magic the Gathering goes to the future
Plus Nintendo announces the end of an era, Tim explains why old games look terrible on LED TVs, and Alice visits the Queen’s Garden.
Hello friends!
It has been a massive week for tabletop gaming, with the new Magic the Gathering set and a new Azul sneaking in between massive blockbuster video game releases. Remember when February used to be part of the quiet time for games? We truly live in the golden age of overwhelming choice.
Both releases further complicate existing franchises, but sitting down at a kitchen table to bond with family or friends over shared confusion over the rules of a new game is a truly beautiful thing. (Though, there’s also nothing wrong with sticking with what you know if that brings you more joy.)
Magic the Gathering goes to Japan
By Alice
The latest Magic the Gathering expansion has just been unleashed upon an unsuspecting public, and Wizards of the Coast has broken with tradition to give the set a modern flavour. It’s a bold move, considering how much the game relies on the traditional fantasy tropes of “non-specifc ye olde time with dragons and patriarchy”. Even bolder considering no Japanese people were involved in the development of a set that leans heavily on Japanese themes.
I haven’t had a lot of time with the physical cards yet, and I’ve only played a dozen or so games with the new cards on Magic: Arena (the MtG game/app), but I like what I’ve seen so far. There are some epic green/white enchantment decks that can be made (I’ve been crushed by several of them), and I love the samurai mechanic, which gives your samurai creature extra buffs when it attacks alone, as long as you have other samurais on the battlefield.
Sagas are back, and I still haven’t seen them used to great effect yet. Not sure anyone was hoping for the return of Sagas.
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is set on the Kamigawa plane, which proved extremely unpopular when it was first introduced in 2005, but seems to be a bigger hit this time now that they’ve set it 1000 years in the future and haven’t gone as wordy as last time.
The meta is still being worked out for this set, so I have no guidance on how you should play or what cards you should seek out (aside from samurais). But it’s definitely a fun set to draft, whether you’re ready to brave the great unwashed at your local game shop, or draft online.
What to play
Wylde Flowers from Australian developer Drydock has just launched on Apple Arcade, and it is aggressively adorable. It’s a life sim set in a small town, with vegetables to farm, a mystery to uncover, and villagers to woo. It’s just the right vibe for a relaxing evening.
Also new to Apple Arcade is Hidden Folks+. It’s like if Where’s Wally was more interactive and going through a black and white sketching phase. It’s just the right game to unwind with in front of some trashy television.
There are a few great co-op games on sale across all consoles this week if you happen to have a friend and a couch available. This includes cartoon run-and-gun Cuphead, frenzied kitchen sim Overcooked and its sequel, and Aussie physics-based removalist nightmare Moving Out. And hey, if you don't have a friend available, there are also some good deals on entire trilogies over on Xbox. The three-pack of Batman Arkham games is $25, the middle trilogy of Assassin's Creed (Black Flag, Unity, Syndicate) is $34, and a whole load of LEGO Marvel goodness is $36.
The long-awaited Elden Ring is out later this week. Though the profile of this game is big enough that just about everyone will have heard of it, it’s the latest in director Hidetaka Miyazaki’s series of “Souls” games which is quite definitely not for everyone. I’ve never been able to become invested in one myself despite hours of trying, and yet many people absolutely love the mystery and challenge of these brutal fantasy worlds. You may have heard that Souls games are “hard”, but it might be more accurate to say they demand a lot from the player. If you’re not sure it’s for you and don’t want to shell out $100 to find out, your best bet to try first might be Bloodborne. It’s $25 on PlayStation, and hailed by many as the best and most newcomer-friendly entry.
The makings of a future lost era
By Tim
For decades there’s been hand-wringing about the death of physical packaged games, and the dangers of a wholly-digital future. In a lot of cases I find the freak-outs to be hyperbolic, and not so different to any other “old person fears progress” argument. But there are situations in which it’s hard to ignore the downsides, such as with the impending decommissioning of Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS online stores.
These two consoles were the first time Nintendo offered all full games as digital downloads, and there were many games that were exclusive to the digital store as well. Nintendo has already taken the ability to shop with credit cards offline, but when the eShop stops working entirely early next year, there will be major ramifications.
Major releases from the era, like Bravely Default or The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, will no longer be available at RRP on the digital store and will instead be subject to physical media’s ballooning inflation on the collector’s market. And incredible digital exclusives like Fallblox and BoxBoy will be entirely inaccessible.
I understand Nintendo’s reasoning behind the move; maintaining legacy servers costs money. And I understand why a lot of people will be apathetic; these are decade-old machines, and you still have a year to get what you want (which you should do!).
But both of these attitudes are short-sighted. Just as there is appetite today for PS2 and Gamecube games, there will one day be appetite for the games of the 2010s, and many of them will be lost to history. As a platform-holder that purposefully took full control of distribution by going digital, I believe Nintendo has a responsibility to stop that from happening.
But not only has it proven it does not care about the issue, its statements so far would indicate it doesn’t even understand it.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
There is a new version of Azul that’s come out recently, and the world is good again. Azul: Queen’s Garden takes the biggest turn away from the regular Azul mechanics, which makes it exciting, but also ripe for many, many mistakes during the learning process. The plot this time is that the king wants to build a beautiful garden for the queen, and somehow this leads to competitive tile placement.
Because it’s so new, there aren’t really any good videos explaining the rules that I can find and, as usual with Azul games, the rules are written in a way that makes the game seem much harder than it is.
The gameplay follows the usual tradition of taking tiles from coasters in the middle of the table but, instead of being able to choose from 5-9 coasters with combinations of the 5-6 tile types, they’ve added some complications. First up, there are six different colours, and six different patterns. Secondly, there is a stack of 5-8 hexagons in the middle of the table for each round, and four tiles are put onto an upturned hexagon for you to take either all of one colour or all of one pattern, then that hexagon and its tiles are moved aside and the next is set up. You’re also drafting the hexagons, which get turned right way up and have their own colours and symbols.
The rituals are intricate, but the way to think of it is: What if sudoku required that you draft tiles, and that your opponents would take the single light purple tree you need in the final round, ruining your entire strategy (random example)?
The extra complications make it a much meatier game, but absolutely not one for the faint of heart. We’ve played about 10-15 games and still have to keep the rulebook open. It’s a big risk for a series popular for its simplicity, and absolutely shouldn’t be anyone’s first introduction to Azul. But, if you’re an Azul fan, it’s certainly worth checking out.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
There are many reasons that old games designed to display on a CRT look or feel wrong on modern TVs. I suspect a lot of people mistake these artefacts for proof that old games are just ugly or difficult, but if you happened to play one on a display from 30 years ago you might be surprised that those pixels are actually beautiful illustrations, and those impossible jumps are much easier to manage.
Artists on old games would rely on the specific characteristics of a CRT to add gradients, colour, texture and detail to their work, whereas putting them on a new TV will expose the art as raw pixels, essentially giving every game the same blocky aesthetic. And since CRTs defy being photographed, it's easy to believe this is just how the games always looked.
And that’s assuming you’re playing on a well-made digital re-release, emulator box or microconsole. If you’re plugging the original console straight into your TV you’re subject to bad scaling and laggy, messy processing.
I don’t begrudge anyone playing old games with sharp, raw pixels, but it’s a shame that getting something approximating the original look without a CRT is so difficult.
For the last six months or so I’ve been using the RetroTink 5X Pro scaler, and it does such a great job displaying original consoles on my 4K TV that it honestly makes every old game exciting again. As you can see in the image above, where the 5X was hooked up to my Super Famicom, the pixels are not hidden but they are perfectly scaled to 1440p and broken up by a CRT-style mask to restore a lot of the original texture and intent.
It's a brilliant use of FPGA chips and algorithms that wouldn't have been possible a few years ago, but at around $550 it’s a big ask for anyone that just wants to enjoy their Sega Mega Drive.