- 2 days ago
Catch the latest from Castle Rat with their new video Dragon and explore what the Universe Beyond Star Wars means for gameplay.
This update covers the recent Castle Rat drop and breaks down how upcoming MTG sets might shift the competitive landscape. If you are tracking new music releases or trying to figure out if you will have the right tools for the new Star Wars crossover, this discussion is for you.
We analyze the implications of the Universe Beyond Star Wars announcement on deck building strategy. By looking at the potential card interactions, you can better prepare for when the set officially hits the table. Castle Rat continues to be a unique force in the scene, and Dragon is worth a watch for anyone following their aesthetic.
Subscribe for weekly MTG meta updates and gaming news. What do you think about the Star Wars crossover impacting the current card pool?
0:00 A collection of thoughts and recent updates
0:45 Exploring folk horror and fantasy settings
1:54 Reflections on media and the power of nostalgia
3:30 The complex intersection of healing and escapism
6:22 Analyzing the aesthetic of doom metal and film
This update covers the recent Castle Rat drop and breaks down how upcoming MTG sets might shift the competitive landscape. If you are tracking new music releases or trying to figure out if you will have the right tools for the new Star Wars crossover, this discussion is for you.
We analyze the implications of the Universe Beyond Star Wars announcement on deck building strategy. By looking at the potential card interactions, you can better prepare for when the set officially hits the table. Castle Rat continues to be a unique force in the scene, and Dragon is worth a watch for anyone following their aesthetic.
Subscribe for weekly MTG meta updates and gaming news. What do you think about the Star Wars crossover impacting the current card pool?
0:00 A collection of thoughts and recent updates
0:45 Exploring folk horror and fantasy settings
1:54 Reflections on media and the power of nostalgia
3:30 The complex intersection of healing and escapism
6:22 Analyzing the aesthetic of doom metal and film
Category
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GamingTranscript
00:00Hi! So here's a couple things that happened, some news stuff, and just a couple things I want to talk
00:07about.
00:07First and foremost, Castle Rat this morning has dropped a new video called Dragon. Check it out.
00:16Another thing that's been working in my head since the whole announcement of Universe Beyond Star Wars
00:26is that once that comes out, we might have all the tools needed to finally create a Kroll homebrew.
00:33That would kick ass.
00:35Other than that, Anise was going over who won what, stuff like that.
00:40Crooked Moon, that's interesting. It's like a Halloween-esque motorcycle.
00:45A Halloween-esque fantasy setting.
00:47Yeah, I heard a motorcycle in the background. I don't need to say motorcycle. Okay, let's start again.
00:52Crooked Moon is a fantasy Halloween horror folk fantasy, I think.
00:57It has a lot of new classes. It's 2025 or 2024 D&D compatible, which is alright.
01:03I haven't seen... I don't know if I'm going to buy it. I'm going to try to review it without
01:08buying it.
01:08Just any Edmunds and Nobles there or any game store that lets me open it on a table.
01:13What else? Oh yeah, Zamora came out. Ballad of the Witch.
01:18It's on Kickstarter, got financed in like a couple days, I think, really quick.
01:22Yeah.
01:23From what I see, it's going to be like a Legends of the Mist slash D2024, D&D24 system.
01:30Compatible? Blah.
01:31Totally not natural.
01:32I'm trying to put on a happy face. My dad's still in the hospital and he's not doing good today.
01:37He's had a bad day and yeah, well, I don't know.
01:40The algorithm tries to fight AI. I hope it rewards my vulnerability, but I'm not being vulnerable for the algorithm.
01:47Just trying to share with the people on the ether.
01:50Alright, other things I saw that were kind of marginally cool.
01:55Legend of the White Dragon.
01:57It's like, if you're... I don't know what it is.
02:00It's kind of... Like, they made a Power Rangers movie with a lot of Power Rangers and other, like, actors
02:06around it.
02:07Without the Power Rangers name. That's the best way I can describe it.
02:11Although, I'm pretty sure they've trained everybody on set to never say the P word, being Power Rangers.
02:19I think it's kind of cool if you grew up with Power Rangers.
02:22The guy who played the White Tiger, or the Green Dragon Power Ranger, is the White Dragon with the title.
02:29It's kind of interesting. It's obviously kind of a Mara Sentai movie.
02:35You know? American Sentai?
02:38I don't know. That thing.
02:40But yeah. That's it.
02:41Just another dumb, quick vlog that I'm shooting at the ether.
02:46I have no willpower.
02:48No more kind of desire or anything.
02:52But that's it. Just praying hard.
02:55And hoping my pops gets well or makes it through at this point.
02:59I don't know what's going on.
03:01He's relatively stable so far.
03:03Yeah. What else?
03:04This is, like...
03:05This is why I don't like watching streams.
03:07This is not even a stream.
03:08This is me, uh, vlogging.
03:10Which, you know, you just have a vlog partner and you can shoot the shit.
03:13Ho, ho, ho.
03:14If you have something interesting, especially if you have a guest.
03:17Like, vlogs without a guest, I find.
03:19It's just some crazy person ranting.
03:21At least that's me.
03:22Vlogs with guests, they interact.
03:24It's more interesting.
03:25Oh.
03:26This is just me.
03:27One thing that's always bothered me, and I thought about doing this when my kid was in the hospital a
03:34lot.
03:34She was recovering from leukemia.
03:36And I never did try to play D&D with other families or kids.
03:41The reason why is because of healing in D&D.
03:43Any person who's had to be in a hospital a lot knows how healing in the real world sucks.
03:48It's not this wave your hands.
03:51There's no lay of hands going on here.
03:53I mean, that's why it's such a miracle in the Bible.
03:55You know, life is so difficult.
03:59And, I guess D&D's the escape.
04:01And part of the escapism is that, you know, you can cure your gonorrhea with a wave of the hand.
04:09Or you can, you know, bring back the folks that you miss.
04:12Maybe it's hard.
04:14It's always the wish spell or some really hard quest.
04:18But how many people climb Mount Everest to bring back their loved ones?
04:21How many people, I think, I don't know.
04:24These kind of thoughts popped in my head a lot when my kiddo was a lot sicker.
04:29Now she's done with her meds.
04:30Supposed to be celebrating right now.
04:31But my dad's in the hospital is putting a damper on everything.
04:36All right.
04:37I don't know.
04:37I made a list of topics to talk about.
04:39I just blazed through them.
04:42But, yeah.
04:43CastleRat is, if you don't know, it's this doom metal fantasy kind of band.
04:48You know, they have the aesthetic of, I would argue, kind of reminds me a lot of Dio's Holy Diver
04:56video.
04:56Where he's, you know, walking around with a sword and just hacking at people.
05:01That's kind of like their image.
05:03Although, their singer is kind of this redhead who wears a chainmail bikini.
05:08I'm a red-blooded male.
05:10And, yes, that makes my heart pitter-patter.
05:13Any person who likes ladies will have their heart pitter-patter when they see her.
05:17She's not.
05:18I mean, she's, I don't know.
05:19She has a lot of stage charisma.
05:21I don't know if she's a Playboy model material.
05:24But I don't think you need to be a Playboy model to be hot.
05:27I've met Playboy models.
05:28I think I have maybe a couple of them.
05:30Their numbers in my phone.
05:31Yeah, I do.
05:32I've worked with them.
05:33I'm professionally not in there.
05:35But, yeah.
05:35I don't want to.
05:37Oh.
05:37All right.
05:38So, yeah.
05:38That's Castle Rat.
05:39I'm going to put a clip right here.
05:43Creature, oh, creature of sadness.
05:48Born of the outburst of magic.
05:53Anger and fear holds a captive.
05:57Dragons link, frantic with madness.
06:24So, that was Castle Rat.
06:26Yeah, Krull.
06:27Now, Krull, if you're not familiar with Krull.
06:30Krull is this awesome D&D movie.
06:35That's the best way I can describe it.
06:36It starts at this wedding.
06:40The groom and the princess.
06:42And they have to do this magic ritual to show how they're perfect for each other.
06:47I'm not going to go into too many details.
06:49But then these aliens come from outer space.
06:51And their dark lord steals the princess.
06:55So, it combines fantasy with a little bit of the sci-fi.
07:02It's cool.
07:03It's awesome.
07:05And the titular weapon, Krull.
07:08The Krull is this boomerang shuriken kind of thing.
07:15And it's just this rad, you know.
07:17It's this shuriken, boomerang shuriken switchblade kind of thing.
07:21That's how I can describe it.
07:22It has pop-out blades.
07:23It's kind of pure 80s chaos.
07:26Pacing is 80s pacing.
07:28Which is not fast.
07:29It's early 80s, 70s almost style.
07:32Well, the movie's in the 80s shot, I believe.
07:35And it's cinematography's gorgeous.
07:38A lot of beautiful landscapes that she liked.
07:40I love movies with beautiful cinematographic landscape.
07:45I'm a huge fan of Lawrence of Arabia.
07:48Not for the story.
07:49Although it's one of the greatest movies of all time.
07:50I just love watching shots of the desert.
07:53They won me it there.
07:54Yeah.
07:55But Krull is no Lawrence of Arabia.
07:57But it has a good cinematography.
07:58Liam Neillson's there.
08:00Yeah, that's one of his early roles.
08:01I think it's shot not far from another movie that features him.
08:05Which is Excalibur.
08:06But yeah.
08:07Crooked Moon.
08:07Now.
08:08I just peeked at it online.
08:10Like I said, it's just Halloween-esque folk horror fantasy.
08:14New classes and stuff like that.
08:16Reminds me of something Agarnack Studios is doing.
08:21Agarnack is a YouTube channel I follow.
08:23I think he doesn't live far.
08:24He lives in SoCal.
08:26I believe.
08:27I've tried contacting him.
08:28He must think I'm dog shit.
08:29Because he never applied.
08:30But I don't give a shit.
08:31Legend of the Mist.
08:32Yeah, that's on my list too.
08:33It's another more narrative-based RPG.
08:36Kind of an alternative to Daggerheart.
08:38Ooh, did I say that out loud?
08:40Yeah.
08:41Zamora.
08:42Battle of the Witch.
08:43There's a dual system kind of stuff I mentioned earlier.
08:47I don't know.
08:48It looks interesting.
08:48The trailer on the Kickstarter just had fantasy music.
08:52No text.
08:53Nobody talking to you describing it as it was pure.
08:55Yeah.
08:56Go for it.
08:56I'm envious of people who have successful Kickstarters because I have a horrible track record so far.
09:03I either don't go all the way or I just launch them and just give up on them before they're
09:08anywhere.
09:09So yeah, here we are.
09:10Legends of the White Dragon.
09:12That's other stuff that I wasn't going to talk about on my list, but I don't know.
09:16I'm just renting what else.
09:18I have books on my shelf that I'm staring at that I need to finish.
09:24And those are not really TTRPG books.
09:27Well, I see.
09:28This is some fantasy TTRPG fiction.
09:33I don't even know where I got it.
09:34I know it's not.
09:35It's just some, I don't know.
09:36Divine Dungeon Universe.
09:37I don't know what that is, but I don't know where I bought it or I bought it.
09:43What else do I have on here?
09:44Some of my daughters.
09:46A couple, like a Jujutsu Kaisen manga, a Demon Slayer, a Himitsu Academy, or a Himitsu Academy.
09:55I can't say it.
09:56It's a K, not a H, yeah.
09:57A cheap copy of the Book of the Five Rings.
10:01And this thing, Legends of Lattes, which seems like a silly premise.
10:06I picked it up.
10:07I don't know why.
10:08I haven't read it.
10:10It's, the idea is this orc, female orc adventurer who retires and opens the first coffee shop
10:18in the fantasy world.
10:20So, yeah.
10:21Some of the books on my bookshelf.
10:23I need to make a video about my bookshelf.
10:25I need to pick up my floor.
10:27My floor has a ton of books that don't fit on my bookshelf.
10:30Yeah.
10:31Trying to find liberty in hard times is something, I think, that's very important.
10:35I don't think it's always, we always know.
10:37I remember when I was young, my dad hated, might be playing Dungeons and Dragons.
10:42I think he does not as much the game itself.
10:47It's just, we'd go there sometimes.
10:48I mean, like, there'd be these two people who talked to the owners who kind of worked there.
10:53And they'd have some of the most inane, asinine conversations ever.
10:58Like, they were, you know, the typical thing, dumb American shit, like, assuming people in Europe.
11:04I'd hear that a lot.
11:04Like, they didn't know if Europeans had running water since World War II.
11:07Yeah, like, really?
11:08You don't know if?
11:09Yeah, I've heard that, you know.
11:12But I've heard that from old senior citizens, too.
11:14Back when I was, those guys were probably either 100 years old or pushing daisies.
11:20But yeah, I'd heard that from old World War II vets and stuff like that.
11:24No, we've, it's pretty modern.
11:27And I'd tell them.
11:28And they'd be somewhat proud.
11:30Which is good, because they should be proud.
11:32After all, having grown up in France, it was a beautiful country.
11:36I don't know what it is now.
11:37America used to be a beautiful country.
11:39And I think we, both parties, have kind of put their, I don't know, caddy-checked the pool, so to
11:46speak.
11:47And now we all hate each other and blame each other.
11:50Instead of working with each other to figure out solutions, original solutions.
11:55I'm not against the desire of some people on the left.
12:00It's just, I think it's the wrong playbook.
12:03And I used to be, it used to be, you know, the Democrats were dead, were not a socialist party.
12:08They were a left-wing party that was dedicated to doing, finding ways to do things that are not socialist.
12:16If you really think about it.
12:18There's always been some people who are just easy to just let big government do everything.
12:22But the whole point of the Clinton era was not to be that way.
12:25I grew up in the Clinton era.
12:26I was a teenager.
12:27I grew up in the ring and hear people yelling at me, boomer, which is stupid, because I'm not.
12:33But everybody older than you is a boomer.
12:35Everybody your age is the right generation, whatever that is.
12:39And everybody below you is a millennial or a gen alpha.
12:43I'm a Xenial.
12:43I'm born in 79.
12:44So I'm technically both a Gen X and a millennial, because I've had both of those experiences.
12:50I knew the glory days of NWOG.
12:53But I was still a child when the first computers started creeping everywhere.
12:58So yeah, I don't know.
13:00This is just a crazy ranty blog.
13:03Blog.
13:04Yeah.
13:04I don't know what I'm going to do.
13:06I think I'm going to fly away some days.
13:09I used to have this fantasy of building this giant airship and just traveling and flying away.
13:17Not an airplane, but an aerostat airship, rigid frame, and just going across the country.
13:23I don't know.
13:24I don't know if it's impossible.
13:25I don't know if this is something I should have wrote as a story.
13:28I mean, what would you do?
13:29How would you fly?
13:30Where would you go?
13:31Yeah.
13:31All right.
13:32What else?
13:33Powerball's almost at a billion.
13:35Or I saw some of the signs just 999.
13:37So I don't know if it...
13:38Because of course, every time it goes without people buying tickets, we boost even more the jackpot.
13:46Yeah, that's all right.
13:47So what else is new?
13:49I just hope everybody can find peace in this fucking world.
13:52Peace while they live.
13:53I think everybody finds peace in the grave.
13:55I hope.
13:56I don't know.
13:56This is a very melancholy vlog and I have a feeling nobody's going to watch it.
14:02This is not a video for anybody other than people who know who I am, who love me, who
14:07hate me.
14:08I bet some asshole might be jerking off to this because they hate my guts.
14:12I'm like, oh my god.
14:13Oh, this asshole.
14:15Look at him.
14:15Yeah.
14:16I hate who I am.
14:16I hate my weaknesses.
14:18My moral failings, which are many.
14:20I wish I could...
14:21And I see Eddie Greenwood.
14:23Not only he's a great author, but I just watch his own naturally.
14:26Oh, he just kind of...
14:27I guess he knows what he's talking about and I'm talking off the cuff about, you know,
14:32my life, my misery.
14:34I don't want to talk about my misery.
14:36I don't want to...
14:36I just want to expunge it.
14:38I got to check my phone.
14:39I got a text.
14:40Who knows?
14:40No, it's the fucking...
14:41My daughter's TikTok account.
14:43She uses my phone.
14:45Yeah, some other weird thing I saw.
14:47Might be a cult.
14:49Might be some public speaking group.
14:51I have no clue.
14:52I just gave him my phone number.
14:55Life is sweet that way.
14:56Well, what else is new?
14:58So, if you notice over here, there's like a little...
15:01I don't know what you call that.
15:02Watermark.
15:03Wow, my brain's fried.
15:04I'm using this thing called Chemo Studios to see if it's that worth it.
15:10You can pay $100 to have, you know, the full suite forever or pay their SaaS subscription.
15:16I hate SaaS.
15:18I don't know.
15:19I hate SaaS, but I also am working on developing a SaaS for realtors.
15:22I used to work real estate.
15:23It wasn't necessarily a job I was, I think, cut out for at all.
15:27It's not that I wasn't knowledgeable.
15:29I think it was just really hard.
15:32I think as a young parent, my wife was just...
15:35She needed me at the house all the time and took too much advantage of that.
15:39She always needs me around the house.
15:41It used to be because of her Huntington's, but now it's just something else.
15:45Either way, disease, being a young parent.
15:47I think a lot of loving somebody is just knowing that you can rely on them, knowing how much
15:51you can rely on them, which hurts.
15:53If you know that you're going to lose them, it hurts.
15:55Or if you're losing them slowly, it hurts.
15:57Not the need.
15:58Not the fact that you need them or you're not taking advantage of them.
16:03Because ultimately, they become a part of you.
16:05And you are a part of them.
16:10And to watch them wither away is like a part of you is withering away.
16:14Oh, fudge.
16:15This is deep.
16:17I don't like to be deep.
16:18I want to be shallow.
16:19Fun.
16:19California.
16:20I've lived in California for like 20 years and I still think everybody's shallow.
16:25I know it's not true.
16:26I know there's people of all types, but there's a certain...
16:29I don't know how to explain it.
16:30This cultural expectation that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
16:35Best way to describe it.
16:36I don't know what it is.
16:37I can hear my wife calling for help of some sort.
16:41I'm going to let go.
16:42I'm going to try to come up with a useful video for the society.
16:46Or at least for gamers.
16:48I don't know.
16:49How to hypnotize your players so they think they had a good session.
16:53That would be a great topic.
16:55Alright.
16:55Well, I hope our days get better.
16:57Thank you for hearing me.
16:59Bye.
17:00Bye.
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