I finally got to play in a PTQ this season after missing a bunch, but had no idea what to play. I prefer aggro-control / midrange options to pure aggro or control, and had had bad luck in this format with 5-color control anyway, so I had it narrowed down to Merfolk or Jund in some form. I brought a friend who hadn’t played since before Alara Reborn and handed him Kithkin, while I decided on my variation of the Conley Woods deck:
Mainboard:
1 Fire-Lit Thicket
2 Graven Cairns
1 Forest
1 Mountain
4 Reflecting Pool
1 Swamp
4 Twilight Mire
3 Vivid Crag
4 Vivid Grove
4 Vivid Marsh
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Mulldrifter
4 Putrid Leech
3 Shriekmaw
3 Anathemancer
3 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Makeshift Mannequin
3 Jund Charm
3 Ajani Vengeant
Sideboard:
3 Caldera Hellion
3 Puppeteer Clique
3 Captured Sunlight
2 Great Sable Stag
1 Anathemancer
3 Thought Hemorrhage

This is based off of a few different decklists. It started with Conley Woods’ deck from Nationals, but then at the Boston PTQ there was a deck in the Top 8 with Ajani Vengeant main, which seemed so good – it kills Stag; it’s lifegain against RB; it’s insane against 5-color control. It’s good in the Jund mirror as well. Captured Sunlight was my own innovation – Chris Jobin had suggested Behemoth Sledge in the SCG forums, which seemed terrible because it is slow, they can kill all your guys in response, and you can’t even equip a creature with a Mannequin counter. It got me thinking about GW cards though, and led me to Captured Sunlight.

Heroes of Newerth: A nice DotA clone with gorgeous graphics and a lot of potential. It's in beta right now and we have plenty of beta keys. Let me know if you're interested in trying it out for free.

No more excuse for not playing DotA.

GET IT NOW!!!

FINALLY! It's that time of year again. [UPS]Lynx, [UPS]Kingpin, and myself will soon be on our way to Icrontic Expo '09. Hopefully, we'll once again be bringing back a plethora of pictures to give you all a taste of the epic-ness.

The folks at Icrontic were awesome last year and we're hoping for even more pwnage this time around.

If you want to follow the action throughout the week, check out Icrontic's photostream on Flickr.

Congrats are in order for Boxcar. He's now a married man, and a very lucky hobo.

Wishing you the best.

A bit more news has come out regarding the upcoming AvP title. Check it out here.

First off, grats to Firebarrel for downing college. I hear the boss dropped a BoP BS degree.

To celebrate we went and smashed some PuGs in dota. Welcome back brother.

I'm using the my precious fifteen minute break from work to post a couple of exciting news updates.

Firstly, The Orange Box is on sale again. $10 for Hl2, Ep1, Ep2, Portal and TF2. So go buy it already. I'm considering picking up an extra copy for a second LAN party steam account or something.

And the big big news. Screenshots have surfaced of.....

ALIENS VS PREDATOR 3!!!

I don't think I've been this excited about pre-release hype since the Prerfect Dark era. I didn't even know this game was in the works. Hope they're working hard on the multiplayer content. See the shots here.

So a few updates for you guys today. We continue to play DotA with regularity(and melt faces equally regularly); I can't recommend it enough even if you do have to shell out for Warcraft III + Frozen Throne.

On that note, Demigod came out this week. Most of the official reviews I've seen so far have been very good, though I have not seen any impressions from actual gamers. Soogan and I have considered picking this one up; if anyone else is interested in playing, let me know. Perhaps if you're hesitant to spend $40 for an old game like Warcraft III you'd be more apt to spend it for a new and eye-candy-packed game like Demigod. It's very early to make the jump from DotA to Demigod but I'm sure it's a possibility as Demigod gets more content and the community grows(if it does).

We've also picked up playing Magic the Gathering (via LackeyCCG) and I highly recommend getting in on that if you haven't yet. It's free, you can't go wrong there. In addition to MTG, Lackey supports plug-ins for a slew of other CCG's. Soogan and I are going to try out SWCCG and WoWTCG some time in the next week hopefully.

Team Fortress 2 of course has not been forgotten and I've been trying to hop on Icrontic's server whenever there are people on. Though the latest scout update has made some rather disappointed game play changes in my opinion. /sigh, that's what F10 is for.

That essentially sums up my multiplayer gaming as of late. If anyone is interested in hitting up any of the games mentioned above ping me on Steam.

And one final note. The release is a ways off, but if you want to make your head explode, check out ACHRON. I really hope they find a publisher and are able to make that idea a reality, it's pretty looks pretty sick.

I lied. Last bit of news. For those of us who lost hours of our lives playing Spin the Black Circle, you may be interested in seeing And Yet it Moves. I have not purchased it yet, but intend to next time I get bored..or the price drops further. And if you haven't played Spin the Black Circle..you should.

Ok, I'm done now.

p.s I "quit" WoW...for now..again. But the 3.1 patch did come out this week. Still, it tempts me not...for now... Contact [HOBO]Thirty-Twice for any WoW needs these days for know nothing..NOTHING!

The last couple of months have seen the complete abandon of TF2 in favor of DotA and WoW. Though we may be getting back to Team Fortress here and there.

In DotA we will soon be joined by Boxcar Bandit. And hopefully at some point we can get Rock Soup in there as well. We've been having a blast destroying PuGs as of late, and having a feeder or two might make things challenging for a change.

Game on.