Monday, May 30, 2011

Good Card, Bad Card #51

So I've been in a ditch the last 6 days. Another episode of "going broke" in poker. I've seen this episode plenty of times in the past. Seems to be my M.O. when playing poker full time, I run really well for about two or three months, then things 'go bad'. Part of it is numbers, part of it is playing poorly, or pushing things when the move is to scale back. It's just the way it goes really. When you're playing full time you're supposed to have 6 months of living expenses in savings, just in case things 'go bad'. Well, I'm just a guy from Jersey living day-to-day, I'm lucky to have a month or two. So I've decided it's time to go back to the real world again. I also had some other personal stuff going on, family troubles. It's funny how everything seems to go good at the same time, and how everything goes bad at the same time. I got stressed out for a little while. I considered filing some lawsuits or sending somebody a hate-filled private message.... but then I remembered I'm not from the Midwest and trek has nothing to do with my "real life". So I chilled out for awhile, took some quite time, plotted out my next move. That's what people from Jersey do, just figure it out and make the best of it.

For GCBC we're onto Reflections 2.0. This set was hot when it came out, everyone was buying it up. It had a lot of 'hot tech' in it, as an Ohio buddy of mine likes to say. I had a lot of different options here when choosing cards, and I'm sure I'll come back to this set in the future.

Good Card: Ohhhh! Nothing Happened!

Why: I always felt like a fool when filling out a decklist when using this card. I'd have to check to make sure how many "h's" were in the Ohhh! part, and remember the card ended with an exclamation point (!). I didn't want some fool to give me a game loss for messing up this dumb title. As for the card, this is the ultimate "meta card". This is almost like a 1E referee card, in the sense you can punish somebody who's abusing a dilemma too much. When Tragic Turn was running wild (and sometimes it still is) a few years back, I started packing this card. When you blew out all three of their Tragic Turns they were left with a big pile of monkey crap for a dilemma pile. But it's also good against anything else someone might abuse: Legacy, Gorgan, Tactical Disadvantage, Overwhelmed, etc. The last couple years in the first round of Day 2 at Worlds I've run into guys playing this against me. Lucky for me, I played Tragic Turn Day 1 and opted for a standard pile Day 2. I guess they figured I would go with a gimmick pile, but that's something I rarely do Day 2.

Bad Card: The Three Vipers

Why: You probably forgot this card was even in this set. That's because nobody plays this terrible dilemma. Why? Because it's a 3-cost space damage dilemma that has no attribute requirement. Why would I play this when I have plenty of other choices that are tougher to get past? Two set of requirements, both with 3 skills. Sure, one side is 2 navigation, which can be tough, but in today's world of super easy skill gain your opponent is going to get past one side of this dilemma. It doesn't even have a cool damage effect. Discard one card from hand at the start of the turn. Really? That's some lame sauce right there. I rather just play Prefix Codes, stop them, then blow them out of the stars.

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