Top 8… Chef?
michaelj | November 12, 2008 | 11:32 pmTonight was off-limits for Podcasting because Brian had to go home and watch Bravo’s Top Chef with his wife.
Secretly — not so secretly now — I went home and watched it with my wife as well.
Two of the new cast members were old school chums; they were friends who had not seen each other since cooking school… and then re-connected via the show.
Drama of dramas, they ended up against one another in the final two: one would be eliminated. *
He is all sad… they have just re-connected!
“Truthfully,” she says, “I hope he gets eliminated… because then I get to stay on the show!”
Like everything, this led me to thinking about Magic: The Gathering.
Some players genuinely wish all their opponents — especially their friends — well. They stop people from killing themselves with Pacts (Kenji Tsumura), or allow take-backs if the opponent is confused about the tapped-ness of a token creature (Andrew Cuneo).
Others, smiling or not, always hope their opponents are manascrewed — even when the opponent is one of their best friends — (in my opinion this is not to say they don’t play ethical Magic).
Firestarter: Which one are you? Why?
LOVE
MIKE
* Both of them were buffoons by the way. Four players competed for three spots on the show. Two of the players apply fire to flesh and present seasoned pork or perfectly seared scallops; the other two present salads to Tom and Padma. Any guess which two made up our dramatic duo?
Agreed that the participants in final four who chose not to make something other than a salad in the Quickfire were donkeys. By the way the other two made perfectly cooked pork and slightly over-cooked scallops top be precise Mike.
And even if they were perfect you would still need to work hard to trump EarthPig. EarthPig is the leader of the Justice Society of Delicious Animals. Other members include SkyPig (aka The Duck) and SeaPig (aka Tuna) and their sidekick PlantPig (aka The Avocado).
Depends on the tournament. Random FNM or drafting I don’t really care. PTQ and the like I want to win, and if my opp being mana screwed is the only way to get there, I hope it happens.
I’m pretty cutthroat. If there is genuine confusion that leads to an obviously bad play, such as not knowing when a dice token is tapped, then I’d allow a take back. But if they miss a Pact or make some other donkey mistake, then they can deal.
At States a guy I test with every once in a while was playing 5CC against Fae in Round 5, and already had a loss. They moved into game 3, with my guy making some sideboarding changes. He presented his deck and the opponent pile shuffled and proceeded to call a judge when he got a count of 61. Obviously he presented an illegal deck and the judge gave him a game loss. The guy was FUMING. It was absolutely ridiculous. I know he must of felt like an ass and been angry with himself at making such as easy to catch mistake, one that ended his tournament life, but when I play in a tourney I play to win. Expecting anything else from anyone absurd.
Obv I’m a nice guy when it comes to Magic. Except when I’m testing with Osyp. We play prison rules - as cutthroat as possible. It usually ends up with one being thrown out of the other one’s house.
Re: Top Chef - got into it last year and can’t stop watching it. “We must both be on the same wavelength, cuz we thought summer….salad.” Lolz. I hope they wind up with some real characters like last year (Dale/ various lesbians)
Pnaps favorite shows:
Su - Housewives, Entourage, Life and Times of Tim, Dexter, Californication, Trueblood
M - Gossip Girl (God help you if you don’t watch this)
T - nothing currently
W - Top Model / Top Chef / South Park
Th - Greys, 30 Rock, Office
” He presented his deck and the opponent pile shuffled and proceeded to call a judge when he got a count of 61. Obviously he presented an illegal deck and the judge gave him a game loss.”
Am I missing something here?
100.4. There is no maximum deck size.
I find in incredible that people allow “take-backs” or remind people about pacts at sanctioned events beyond FNM. I’ve lost to my own pacts on two occasions. Once, I just forgot and my opponent literally laughed in my face. The second time, I played badly and underestimated a multiple Magus of the Moon draw by my opponent and pact-ed stupidly on my pre-combat main phase. I don’t think I would even remember those occasions if those events were undone by someone’s kindness. Especially because I would have won otherwise… who bothers to analyze what they did wrong when they win? Good players, I guess…
mmmmm skypig.
“Am I missing something here?
100.4. There is no maximum deck size. ”
There is no legal maximum, as long as you can sufficiently shuffle it yourself, I believe. However, 60 cards is far and away the standard deck size, as it was in this case. He registered a 60 card deck but boarded in an extra card.
Trueblood is 2good
I think in a PTQ or similar premier event, I’d happily roll everyone I played against, whether I know them or not. It’s just a game, so it doesn’t matter much if I knock someone out of contention, and at the same time, I wouldn’t have come to a PTQ if I didn’t want to win. I expect the same is true for everyone I play against.
That said, being “cutthroat” doesn’t come up, well, at all. There are no take backs, but…I don’t like take backs even in casual play. It just makes for sloppy unfun games. I accidentally offed myself with a Pact I couldn’t pay for at some random FNM last year, and it annoyed me when the guy offered me a take back on it.
I’ve only ever game lossed one person at a tournament, and that was when I realized he had cards in his deck that weren’t in the format (this was shortly after the 9th to 10th switchover, and he had four copies of some card that hadn’t made it into 10th in a Standard tourney).
It really depends on the player and the situation, which probably makes me a bad competitor. If my opponent is a dick, or at least very precise in his own play, I’ll hold him (and myself) to a higher standard, disallow takebacks, etc. If I’m totally rolling him regardless of minor errors, I’ll let it slide. However, in a PTQ, if one of the choices my opponent has is “lose the game” or pay for a pact, and that’s the choice he makes, who am I to interfere? I’m not going to try and do a little dance to distract him and hope he forgets, but I have no respect for people who didn’t put enough time testing their deck in real circumstances. If your playtest partner keeps letting you take back forgetting to pay for you pacts, GET A NEW PARTNER.
MichaelJ: why would you have to watch Top Chef in secret? It’s a great show, so not many would tease you for watching it, unlike, say, “Dancing with the Stars”, which I’ve copped my fair share of grief for watching. Fortunately that’s all behind me, and Liz and I have purged that from our TV-watching schedule, :-).
My early picks for Top Chef (other than the obvious Steffan) are Hosea (the other bald guy) and Leah (the one that works at Centro Vinoteca, Anne Burrell’s place in the West Village).
Luis
Luis:
How secret can it be if I fessed up to it in front of all you thousands?
Is Hosea the tattooed guy who accidentally made the great Indian dish? He seems like the main competition for Steffan at this early stage.
PNaps:
If you recall from Podcasts gone by I called Blake Lively as the next It Girl several years ago. However I don’t love a Gossip Girl. Maybe I have to give it another try. By the by I have had very good results from taking teevee advice from the Top 8 Magic set; I think it was Pselus who told me to try Veronica Mars… which is like my favorite show (too bad).
Hosea is the bald white guy with a goatee who got Brighton Beach as his neighborhood and made the three latke/potato pancake looking things with sour cream, caviar, etc.
The guy who lucked into the Indian dish is Hawaiian, though I can’t remember his name. His masala lamb did look pretty tasty.
Luis