MtG Decklist - Spice8Rack's Omo | Extra Turns #61

 

I just watched episode #61 of Extra Turns, and I absolutely loved this deck! When I originally started playing Magic the Gathering, I loved the artwork for Vesuvan Doppelganger by artist Quinton Hoover. In fact, I love all of Hoover's art. (I didn't realize until writing this that Hoover died in 2013.)

Above all the other cards, I appreciated the doppelganger's ability to shapeshift and I think that really drew me into enjoying Omo, Queen of Vesuva and the cards abilities.

As I watched the episode, I really got to see Omo work her magic. While Spice8Rack ultimately didn't win (sorry for the spoiler), I felt like the decks mechanics really matched the type of game I enjoy playing. I'm looking forward to building this deck and eventually playing with my friends. If you try this deck out, please let me know how you enjoyed it.

Chew Vol 9: Chicken Tenders

Title: Chew Vol 9: Chicken Tenders

ISBN: 9781632152893

Price: $14.99

Publisher/Year: Image, 2015

Artist: Rob Guillory

Writer: John Layman

Rating: 3.5/5

Just so we’re all on the same page, Chew features a number of people with strange, food-related super powers. Most prominent among them is Tony Chu, a detective for the US Food and Drugs Agency, who along with his food, or in fact anything he eats, ingests a whole lot of background information about its source. This doesn’t apply to beetroot, but, as unsavory as it may seem, it does apply to cannibalism. His partner John Colby has no food-related power, but instead has bionic implants following an accident in the first volume. Family Recipes detailed how they achieved the biggest bust in the FDA’s recent history, in the period since poultry was outlawed after 23 million Americans died in a bird flu epidemic. In that time Chu has discovered many things, not least that the world may end.

John Layman doesn’t want you concerning yourself with that, though. It’s nice outside, and who wants to be depressed? Wouldn’t a nice wedding cheer us all up? Of course it would, so that’s what we get as Chu and Amelia plight their troth in the Hunka-Hunka Burnin’ Love chapel in Las Vegas during the FDA convention. Unfortunately the honeymoon is cut short and the first chapter ends with… Well, actually, it’s been a running joke throughout the series to date that unexpected people end up in bed together, splendidly illustrated by Rob Guillory, and he ends the first chapter with a doozy.

Chu’s then dispatched to a top secret underwater research lab where he needs to discover who murdered Sammy the Navy Seal. It doesn’t matter, though, because in what’s typically hilarious Chew fashion, that’s irrelevant, and elsewhere a broad conspiracy is expanding. Super combat rooster Poyo’s not involved, despite his cover status, as he has a fairytale world to save from a groceryomancer who’s bringing killer vegetables to life. Elsewhere, among other matters, we learn of “the secret discipline where cooking and war intersect”.

Anyone unfamiliar with the lunacy that is Chew may be wondering what the hell they’re reading about here. Then again, they really should get with the program (or wake up and smell the coffee, whichever they prefer) and feast on Chew, the most consistently funny series of graphic novels being published today.

MtG Decklist - Chatterfang, Squirrel General

 

One of the first decks that my friend created was a squirrel deck. It was for a 60 card format, but it was lethal. Since she created hers, she has made modifications and also helped me to create one of my own. This is the next evolutionary step from 60 card deck to a commander deck.

Originally I had purchased the Chatterfang commander deck from Moonveil Games. It was good enough as it was, but I felt like it needed more. The lethality of this deck is being able to make so many squirrel tokens. In a recent game, I found that there were a couple of infinite loops when generating tokens. Since I play with friends and we are not CEDH players, I made sure my friends were aware of the loop and kept the process to a single interaction of tokens.

Parallel Lives and Doubling Seasons were the main ingredients that I needed to add to make the token generation aspect work effectively. In the afore mentioned game, I had so many squirrel tokens on the battlefield, but it didn't feel like it was enough to be able to win because my opponents not only had higher life totals, but also had bigger blockers to my 1/1 tokens. That all changed when I pulled Preposterous Proportions.

Fairest Vol 4: Of Men and Mice

Title: Fairest Vol 4: Of Men and Mice

ISBN: 978140125058

Price: $14.99

Publisher/Year: Vertigo, 2014

Artist: Shawn McManus

Writer: Marc Andreyko

Rating: 3.5/5

This book kind of passed the Fairest test, which is the requirement that the tales be about women. Cinderella and Snow White were at the heart of the tale, though Marcel, Ramayan, Crispin, and three blind mice, along with Fairy Godmother and Leigh factor largely into the story. This book also hinges a bit on the other Fables tales, particularly the one where they discover that Fairy Godmother has gone bad/has Alzheimer's and the last Fables trade where one of the young girls discovers a bunch of evil rats.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention how excited I got that Cinderella was going to India, and there wasn’t any culture appropriation and we even had Indian Fables, including the fabulous Ramayan, join in. However, there was a cover where Cinderella was portrayed as a Hindu goddess with multiple arms and holding her shoes. Fail.

There was, however, a big win for diversity. Andreyko made Crispin blatantly gay and made the Huntsman his partner. Yay! How many issues of any Fables story did it take before having two gay characters?! Seriously. And it doesn’t go without notice that it was Andreyko, a gay man himself, who made it happen.

I really enjoyed the team up of Cinderella and Dickory together. Seemed like both were greatly underestimated by any of the foes that they went up against. Thought it was hilarious that Fairy Godmother’s guards believed she was meditating. Also that Cinderella and Dickory found her smoking pot in an Amsterdam cafe.

A bit problematic that Fairy Godmother’s dementia was shot away with a bullet. I liked that Snow pointed out how popular Cinderella was as a musical, and that it was at the height of the season.

The whole story about Marcel being the errant rat who stayed human after Fairy Godmother’s spell and loved all the women he slept with. Who then gave birth to his children: human, rat/human hybrid, or rats. Gross. Seriously, glad that the dude stopped on his own and Cinderella gave him shit about putting them up for adoption, taking them to the circus, or letting them go in the wild.

MtG Decklist - Erebos, God of the Dead

 

I remember playing a game one time and casting Whip of Erebos and thinking what a wonderful card. I ended up doing some research on the character of Erebos and worked on designing a commander deck around him. Here we have the product of that work.