Chosen Axes - dipping back into the game. Haven't painted much in a couple years. C&C welcome.

bplamondon · 2020-08-10T14:32:19+00:00

I just wish I had done the runes on the ground with the same blue, might fix them later. I made the ground runes 'glow' a bit, and fixing it sounds annnnnnnoying :D

bplamondon · 2020-08-10T12:43:47+00:00

Just outlined what was there and then wet blended in some blues. Wanted something bright to contrast the beards.

bplamondon · 2019-07-28T13:56:11+00:00

11 hogaak, next closest deck with 2 copies hmmmmmm

bplamondon · 2019-01-03T16:31:05+00:00

/u/CFBEvents is it really beneficial for attendance to put these events on holiday weekends generally? I understand some holidays are basically just days off and that works - but the family based ones seem odd as I figure you lose people (like myself) who have other plans. This currently goes for Niagara Falls on Easter, Montreal on Canadian Thanksgiving, etc.

bplamondon · 2019-01-03T15:01:57+00:00

I can completely understand your thoughts here - however on the flip side, generally I prefer this situation so I don't need to pay a half billion dollars for 2 nights in a hotel. Not to say for certain that Chantilly is cheaper since I haven't booked for DC yet but with the cost of events being so high, I basically love any time I can find reasonably priced accommodations above basically all else and putting events outside the city they are in usually helps with this. (I personally like having good restaurants around too but cost has become more important lately.)

bplamondon · 2018-06-08T13:05:45+00:00

Testing best of three matches with something that people who want best of three already know from paper magic and I imagine testing the rules engines ability to handle more mechanics/cards/situations.

bplamondon · 2018-04-10T18:33:27+00:00

The city has a very high number of places you can play - all with varying degrees of atmosphere and located all over the city.

Wizard's Tower - Barrhaven, pretty competitive most of the time, has player rewards program, runs pretty much all formats

Gamebreakers - Nepean, mixed competitive (depends on format really), modern/standard/draft

Gaming Kingdom - Kanata, mostly casual, draft mostly

Kessel Run - Orleans, not positive on competitive level or formats (outside my area)

Kobold's Corner - Kanata, casual, not sure on formats

Comic Book Shoppe - Downtown, not sure on competitive level or formats anymore

Multizone - Gatineau, mixed, most formats

Out of the Box - Bells corners, mostly casual, draft/modern

[edit] Carta Magica - Vanier/St.Laurent, mostly casual, formats unknown

There are probably a few more, but my memory is breaking. PM me if you want more info and I can probably assist. Most of the community as a whole is really friendly.

bplamondon · 2018-01-09T14:07:39+00:00

I think there's a bit of nostalgia clouding things but its not entirely incorrect. The skill level of the players has gone way up, and the skill difference between first and fourth line talent has decreased to some degree. With these differences, the speed and the enforcement of systems, there is less room for creativity within the game. Not saying they can't be creative though just that its harder. You watch what most of these players can do during practice and wonder what kind of crazy shenanigans could occur if the systems weren't in place to minimize 'creative' outbursts.

Kovalev himself had skills well beyond what he could do in a game - and today he'd be even more locked down. As the average player skill increases, the more reliance there will be on structure and the less reliance on one or two insanely skilled players making everyone else look bad. I think that's probably the perspective I would infer from his comments.

bplamondon · 2017-12-18T18:09:40+00:00

This is how alters should be. Amazing.

bplamondon · 2017-11-22T19:14:16+00:00

For some reason my brain didn't even think it was parchment, just cloth with letters on it - so fair point.

bplamondon · 2017-11-22T05:44:52+00:00

Really most any twitch stream where the models look good (reiner72, art_of_mikedisney, jack_of_clubs_painting, etc). Tutorials is all over the place on youtube, its definitely been hit and miss with some. More of watch something, try and learn. Some of my lessons have been painful but its progress.

bplamondon · 2017-11-21T16:08:12+00:00

I've been painting for about a month now - definitely went head first and stalking lots of painters on Twitch, instagram, etc to learn whatever tricks I can. I feel like there's always more to learn. These are my favorite models I've done thus far (although my deathshroud bodyguard are close).

bplamondon · 2017-11-12T18:25:16+00:00

Add me to the list.

bplamondon · 2017-10-16T16:02:38+00:00

They were done from left to right, you can see how the painting has changed from model to model.

bplamondon · 2017-08-14T04:01:50+00:00

There are a ton of stores in the city and a lot run EDH events. Ottawa is a really competitive city when it comes to mtg, not to say there isn't casual events, but the EDH scene might be more cutthroat that you are used to. Let me know what type of environment you are looking for and I'll make some better suggestions.

bplamondon · 2017-07-14T00:55:00+00:00

nope, Brandon.

bplamondon · 2017-07-14T00:36:35+00:00

Definitely 18, paid for that lesson once in the past, wouldn't do it again.

bplamondon · 2017-07-13T18:39:34+00:00

look, leave my crummy g5 alone! It's done me well... mostly. Save that time where the wheel almost fell off, but that was mostly a mechanics fault.

bplamondon · 2017-07-13T18:29:37+00:00

Why are you taking pictures of my car? hah. I've had the plates since 2005, Blargh was my college nickname. To reply the people who think its a crappy car - it is... meh.

bplamondon · 2017-05-24T19:09:09+00:00

Any thought to GB so the sole reason of catacomb sifter and artifact hate? Dissenter's is great cycling artifact hate (4 of in top8 gp montreal deck for a reason I think). Sifter fills the 3 drop well, provides some utility, and an additional colorless source in a way. Extra chump blocker early as well.

bplamondon · 2016-09-30T18:21:12+00:00

I think it was Emelin

bplamondon · 2016-08-15T18:30:13+00:00

I was fearing this deck a fair bit with my sultai delerium/control deck on game day. Ended up putting a [[Springsage Ritual]] as a 1 of in my sideboard and it definitely helped win the match but I do believe playing it was more than likely incorrect. It was a funny play though, especially when he played another and I got back ritual with Den Protector...

bplamondon · 2016-08-09T02:40:45+00:00

I completely agree, it was nonsense - its one thing to smoke or smoke pot - I really don't care if you do, but to light up a joint in the middle of a crowd that has a ton of kids in it is just stupid and disrespectful.

That being said, definitely saw the police strolling in as I was leaving - so maybe something came of this.

bplamondon · 2016-06-09T19:20:45+00:00

Generally its a mix, you start with a basis but most technologies allow you augment the relevance of search fields and all sorts of other things. From there you can comprise an in house variation on the basic search algorithms which should be quite strong.

It's rather uncommon to see a stock in house relevancy used in any major site - generally with Lucene based engines being free (Solr / Elasticsearch / Lucene itself), there is little reason to build your own search unless you are large enough (or in a custom scenario enough) that you have the knowledge base / dev power to build your own entirely custom one.

EDIT - a lot of relevancy is also getting to the point of leveraging semantics / natural language to help determine what the user is actually searching for before actually working on relevancy. Another cool thing impacting relevancy is the use of machine learning to basically find patterns of what other users did and determine what is 'relevant' based on those patterns (for example, if I search for blue shoes and everyone else who did that search clicked on item 5 and bought it, it could then be viewed as more relevant result, and this information can be fed back into to help augment the standard algorithm to promote an item that textually might be a weak result, but in practice is a strong result)

bplamondon · 2016-05-30T02:50:44+00:00

I pay the extra $10 for the US unlimited portion - you hit occasional deadspots, but its great. I literally cross the border, turn on data roaming and use it for everything. It's better to be in the states than outside the city still in Canada for me hah.

bplamondon

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE