Snow-vember

For those that don't know, I live in western New York, and we are absolutely buried in snow right now.  Generally speaking this isn't exactly new for the area, but such a concentrated amount of snow so soon and so quickly is kinda crazy.  The bright side is I don't have a car to deal with, just a ten minute walk to work and back.  In between I'm in full hibernation mode, which means Strategy games and the new Hex Novel that was released this week.

I'm only a few chapters in, but the novel is solid so far.  It's got all the makings of the classic fantasy bildungsroman, with some Great Wolves thrown in.  The novel's apparent protagonists don't appear to be depicted on any cards as of yet, but the peripheral characters include well known humans like King Gabriel and Princess Victoria.  Prince Talysen is also name dropped, brother to King Gabriel and lord of Gawaine, an area heretofore known for its snipers and legionnaire.  I got pretty deep into the lore of Magic too, particularly during Kamigawa Block, so it's always fun to see what sort of mechanics get put to the iconic characters.  However Hex will also be releasing lore not just through flavor text and novels, but through the dungeons and overarching campaign, and with the Frost Arena coming mere weeks after the launch of Shattered Destiny (assuming it is relatively bug-free), lore freaks like me will be rejoicing!

In the mean time I've been fooling around with Civ5 Mods and have decided to give Europe Universalis IV another go, having bought it last year and not really picked it back up due to time constraints (college and LSAT prep).  Now that the controls are becoming a little more intuitive and I seem to have a grasp of the mechanics, I'm planning on an Ironman run as Castille soon (though I know they've been done to death a bit).  I'll probably end up streaming that this weekend when I get some time, as well as a weekend of Hex events during launch weekend December 5-7th.  We still only have about 150 cards from Shattered Destiny spoiled so far, and since the set has over 200, there's plenty of room for meta-changing and theorycrafting gems to emerge during the previews next week.  When the official set launches, you can view all the cards in the set in the card manager by selecting "Show All," a neat feature I might utilize to do a set review when it's patched in.

Outside of that it will be a pretty relaxing week.  Next week I will try to pre-build a few decklists I'd like to test for the upcoming Blood Cup Tournament.  Until then, stay warm!