Saturday: 12:47

That's rather speedy, and no cheating. Clean grid, if not super-open. Looked like a Friday, and solved even easier.

More On Winning

It was round 3 of Friday Night Magic, and I was playing against my friend Craig. I had just lost to rival George. George is not very good at Magic, and I really hate it when I lose to him. But tonight, he just had a sick deck with a bomb rare, and I couldn't deal. The turn before I was going to die in the deciding game, I drew the one card that could save me, Prodigious Growth. I knew he had at least 2 Naturalizes in his deck to deal with 2 Luminous Bonds and a Heiromancer's Cage I had failed to draw that game. If he had the Naturalize, I lost. Otherwise, I won. I said "Show me Naturalize and I'll concede." He declined, so I cast the Growth and attacked. He cast Naturalize, and I flipped out, though I managed to stifle my language.

This is called a slow-roll, and it's very uncool. I maybe overreacted a little, but at least Craig agreed that it was, in fact, a slow-roll. And this story is actual supposed to be about Craig. I beat him game 1 rather soundly. While sideboarding for game 2, I asked him if he intended to play or draw. Strictly speaking, I'm not supposed to ask so early. His answer could theoretically alter my sideboard plans. That was clearly not my intent, but he seemed annoyed that I'd asked. While shuffling, I asked again. I do this because many players, myself included, sometimes forget to specify, and that can lead to miscommunication. He got really annoyed at this, like I was taunting him or something, and then went on to say he didn't enjoy playing me, because I never return his wish of "good luck." I explained I don't wish him bad luck, but to wish him good luck would be a lie. I was surprised at his affront, though. Many years ago, there was heated discussion about whether wishing someone good luck should be automatic. Some think so, some don't. I remember sitting down across from Mike Flores in the first round of a PTQ back in those old days, and he extended the hand before we even started, and said, "Lets have some fun today, Tim." Not luck, fun. I say that to my first round opponent at any major event now. I prefer the pre-game handshake because the post-game one can feel disingenuous, and even now there is debate on whether it's ok for the winner to offer a "gg" online or the handshake in real life What if the loser doesn't feel that way? Craig feels that there's something to be said for good will. In my mind, lying to my opponent or myself cannot possibly be good will. If someone is offended that I don't shake their hand after I lost to mana screw twice in a row, understand that "gg" stands for "Good Games."

I'm pretty sure Jon Finkel has never wished an opponent good luck. Here's a great story about Jon. Several years ago, Wizards got contacted by the Make a Wish Foundation. One of their sick kids wanted to meet some Magic pros, so WotC flew the kid down to Nationals or something, and he got to play some one-on-one Magic with Jon Finkel and Bob Maher. When Maher played the kid, he played nice, giving the kid advice. Then the kid played Jon and Jon systematically crushed him with no mercy. Bob was saying to Jon, "that was kinda mean." Jon said, "The kid wanted to play against the best. He wasn't there to beat us, he wanted to see the best players play their best." There is good will, and there is competition.

I view Craig as a friend. He may not like me as an opponent, but I hope he doesn't think less of me as a person because I don't wish him good luck. Many people are dear friends until they sit down across from me in a sanctioned tournament. Then they are a competitor. To treat them any differently than I would treat a professional is an insult to them and the game. I can understand, at FNM, it's not exactly the PT and we're not playing for many dollars, but Craig is serious enough, and I would hope he understands that it's because I respect him that I play hard against him.

Good night, and fair luck.

Friday: 24:08 (1 Google)

So or the past month, I've been grinding Final Fantasy VII into a fine powder once again. The Steam version has some achievement medals you can unlock for nothing but bragging rights. Most of them are just progressing to a certain point in the game or beating a required boss, so you'll get all those automatically. Then there's ones for defeating the Weapons, collecting ultimate weapons. I had all those too, but there was one called "Materia Overlord." It requires you master all the Materia. ALL OF IT. Now, since I usually grind really hard, I DO master most of the materia. All the Magic, all the summons, and all the commands I need to synth master materia with the Huge Materia in Cosmo Canyon. But ALL the materia means commands you don't need to master for master Command, like W-Summon and W-Item, which take forever to level up. It also means hideously BAD materia like HP<->MP, which switches your HP and MP, a dangerous proposition when you're fighting in the Northern Cave. I eventually got it all, but I don't recommend, would not do again.

And then there's Enemy Skill. I had never tried to master Enemy Skill, and I barely ever used it (I always have my eyes on the master materia prize, and E. Skill isn't needed for that). Blue Magic is something Square loves to use, but it never seems to work quite right. FF6 and FF7 typify almost everything wrong. If you're going to let any character use any magic, blue magic will quickly get outclassed by other other spells and summons. There are always some decent skills, like the recurring Mighty Guard, which puts Shell and Protect on the whole party (also Haste in FF6, though Miracle Shoes do all that plus Regen for free). FF9's Quina is better, since FF9 is class-based, though I only ever use White Wind a little during Cleyra, and Lvl5 Death later to sweep up Dragons. Maybe next time I'll go for learning them all, though there are some terrible ones like Limit Glove (deals 9999... if you're at 1. Nothing otherwise).

So anyway, Enemy Skill in FF7 is kinda lame though you can get some good spells. There are a couple you can miss, though. Trine is only cast by 3 enemies, and they're all one-time boss encounters. The really annoying thing is that you can find 4 E. Skill Materia in the game. One of these is picked up extremely late (after you get the airship), and if you did the Pagoda sidequest at Wutai earlier, you will not be getting Trine on that one (which sucks, since it's one of the better skills). The other one you can miss is Pandora's Box. Only a Zombie Dragon casts this, and only once in a game for some reason. If you fight one of these, they cast it, and you didn't have the materia equipped, that's that. I didn't know about this, but thankfully, when I started going for it, I hadn't encountered it yet (it only appears in one part of the Northern Cave). Beta is another annoying one. You can only learn it from the Midgar Zolom. When I decided to go for all the Enemy Skills, I was already level 99, post Weapons and everything. Zolom goes down like a prom dress. I can equip Cloud with the Buster Sword, and it won't be one-hit, but even then, I had a hell of a time getting it to cast the spell, and it will also randomly eject a character from battle, and you don't want it to be the guy with the materia. Apparently, if you're hardcore, you can fight the Zolom the first time you meet it (this is very early, and the game expects you to get a chocobo to bypass it) and pick up Beta at that point if you can survive, and it's a wicked spell that early, but I do OK. The other hassle is Chocobuckle. It's not hard to get with a trick, but its obscene that it's even included since I think you can ONLY get it with the trick. So, when you meet a Chocobo in battle, it will run away if you don't feed it or otherwise kill the enemies around it very quickly. If you attack the chocobo, it will peck at you and then run. But, if you run into a level 16 chocobo (you can tell by which enemies you encounter with it), feed it some good greens so it will stick around, then use the Enemy Skill Lvl4 Suicide, it will counter with Chocobuckle, which deals damage equal to the number of times you've run from battle. That is horrible, even if you run from every battle. The Japanese version was much better, where it multiplied that by the caster's level. Considering how hard it is to get, the least you can do is make it worth it.

And yet there are 2 achievements I haven't met. One is the Max Gil which I might have been able to do if I'd sold my last set of mastered Magics instead of synthing them. The other, I cannot do on this file. It's teaching Aeris her final limit break, and that is no picnic. First of all, you have to grind her pretty hard. To get the second limit, you have to use the first one 8 times. To get to the next, you have to kill 80 enemies (with her dealing the killing blow), then use that limit 6 times, then kill 60 more guys, then use that limit 5 times, and THEN you can use Great Gospel to teach her the final one. Other characters have similar thresholds for their breaks, and outside of Cloud, I usually grind this stuff in the Northern Cave. That's not an option for Aeris of course, and killing enemies with her is infrequent, to say the least, and difficult to game. Not to mention getting Great Gospel is a giant pain too. You have to take the boat back from Costa Del Sol to Junon to run into a guy who will only talk to you if the last 2 digits in the number of battles you've fought match (shades of Super Mario Bros.) and he'll give you some Mythril. Take it to a guy outside Gongaga, and you can get Great Gospel from him. Every time after my first time through, I generally neglect Aeris. Why bother? Aeris is weak, and I prefer the date with Tifa anyways. Maybe one more time through, just for that? FWIW, Great Gospel is amazing, and wouldn't be so bad for some of those tough Dragon fights in the Temple of the Ancients, since you're required to bring Aeris anyway.

Thursday: 8:59 (crusht)

That might not be a personal record for a Thursday, but it's hella fast, especially for a rebus puzzle, but I got the trick almost immediately. On a Thursday, when the grid is fairly basic, with no grid-spanning answers or at least a low word count (more white space), it's not hard to anticipate, but I don't think I noticed. Putting one right there in 1-Down helps too.

Listening to Phish live stream their concert in San Francisco. First set just ended. I could have gone to see it myself for $100, but I spent a lot going to GP Sacramento last weekend. Almost got to Day 2, but fell short in the last round (I felt lucky to even get that far, to be honest). I'd like to blame poor luck, but I think I just built the deck wrong. I had a Dragon: Arcades, the Strategist. Elder Dragon Legend? Easy color choices! Well, turns out Arcades is not too good. My Bant cards weren't awful, but my black was rather deep, and I should have thought more about it. More experience might have helped, but Arcades is Mythic, so I might have caught on to how it's not even close to Doran, and is embarrassing against a mere Giant Spider. Oh well. Sold some stuff, got paid.

Crossword 15:57

That's about 10 minute faster than Thursday.

So, careful what you wish for. Was running another Zelda random seed, and fuck this seed. I was getting nowhere fast, so I finally turned to the spoiler, which tells you where everything is. Look:

Progressive Sword Locations:

Swamp Palace
Master Sword Pedestal
Mimic Cave (the one inside Turtle Rock)
Ganon's Tower

Mirror location: inside Turtle Rock.

You can't get into Turtle Rock without a sword (you need a sword to use medallions) and you can't get into Swamp Palace without the Mirror. Which means the first sword you can get is on the goddam Pedestal! Two pendants were in the Light World and I got them, but the the third is Ice Palace. I hate Ice Palace, and it's not made more fun by not having a sword. I have everything else I need: Bow & Silver Arrows both Rods, both Canes, Hookshot, Boots, Book, Flippers, Lamp, Cape. It would have been fun to watch a professional take this on, to see at what point they realized they were going to pedestal. Even if you find out a sword is there with the book, you really want to find a different one somewhere else. In all the races I've seen, Pedestal was only forced twice, and it was for something much more mundane than your first sword. Eventually, you get pushed there. You also find Cape in Ice Palace,and you need that to get the Boots, which are needed to clear Desert Palace, a Crystal. That fact might cause people to jump out of Ice as soon as they found that, hoping that the locations opened by Boots got them their sword. So, troll of a seed to play, but watching someone else struggle would be fun.