Hello everyone and welcome to a new thing I’m calling the Weekly Round-Up!

As I’m sure many of you have noticed, the dates in the title show longer than a week, and that is because I got to this later than I had originally wanted.

The intent of this is to give a reminder to people to see what they may have missed, post the socials, and give everyone reading a general update. This will be posted every Monday and will talk about the previous week of blogs in broad terms.

That out of the way, I have a lot to catch up on.

Daily Commander

I have chosen to start at December 13th because on my Ko-Fi page the last one to update was Nemata, Primeval Warden and I have been running all over the place so I haven’t been doing my due diligence to update it, which is another reason for the Weekly Round-Ups.

Starting after that was Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats, playing with the Party mechanic.

Then we went and took a look at big mana with Kozilek, the Broken Reality and looked at Asmira, Holy Avenger as a sort of aristocrats Commander after that.

Setting everything up with effectively Suspend was Alaundo the Seer followed up by Qala, Ajani’s Pridemate with a life gain strategy.

We went a little goofy with dice rolling with Monoxa, Midway Manager and tried to find an ideal Storm strategy with Ral, Monsoon Mage.

There was taking a look at a sort of group slug deck with Grismold, the Dreadsower and manipulated our library with The Reality Chip.

We hit along with Minotaur typal using Neheb, the Worthy and rounded things off with an Energy deck using Yarok, the Desecrated.

Casual Chat

There were two Casual Chats that I did in this time period and it is something I would like to tweak.

First off, we had a look at Top Down, and Bottom Up design philosophies as it concerned card games as well as talking about Ban Lists and why they are needed, but can cause some issues as well.

What I’ve done with the Casual Chats is basically talk about aspects about game design coming from the thoughts and opinions of someone who has played a few card games, but is not a professional game designer.

I enjoy them, in so far as I enjoy writing long diatribes about an opinion I have, but I can’t just stick to card games.

While I do know some stuff about card games, I am not a professional game designer. I have consumed a lot of media on how to design card games, what makes a good one and a bad one, but I am in no way a professional.

So, while there will still be Casual Chats about thoughts I have about card games, I do want to branch out and talk about other things. Maybe talk about movies, TV shows, or some other thing that has taken my fancy at the time.

They are called Casual Chats, so they inherently should be more casual than a diatribe on a particular opinion I have about card games.

Upcoming

As the holidays roll around, I do have a unique Daily Commander coming up on December 25th that is sure to scratch some heads.

It also attempts an adjusted layout technique for multiple cards rather than just a single card before a number of paragraphs talking about multiple cards.

If it goes well then it will be something that I’ll be doing more consistently.

Then coming up for the Casual Chat is going to be something that isn’t related to card games, and will be talking about a different piece of entertainment. I can’t say what it is yet, but it will be something different.

Socials

For those of you who are more social media aware, I do have a Bluesky that you can follow.

Most of the time it’s about the blogs, but I am going to be making more of an effort to post things that are not just the blogs. I am still fairly new to this form of social media, so please bear with me.

If you want to support me more directly, I do have the Ko-Fi page that I mentioned earlier. I have taken off the commissions aspect of it because I realized that most people won’t want to hire someone who is fairly new at writing blogs to write about something.

Bluesky is @jmcasualnerd.bsky.social and Ko-Fi is https://ko-fi.com/jmcasual

In Conclusion

I just want to tell everyone to have a happy and safe holiday season. Things can get crazy around this time of year, and it is my sincere hope that people are able to spend time with people who love and appreciate you.

At the end of every blog I write, I always end with Peace. That is a carry over from an old writing habit I have, a signature if you will, and something that I truly believe in.

Call it a hippy mentality or some other derogatory term, but I am an advocate for peace and wish that there is some form of it for every one.

The world is getting crazy, or rather has always been crazy and we are just noticing it for what it really is, but I want to make a place where people can go and just chill out.

As someone who has been a high stress individual for most of my adult life, having something that keeps me at peace makes things easier to deal with. There are still stresses and it isn’t something that will work for everyone, but if I can make a place that’s peaceful, relaxing, and a bit goofy and weird, then I have accomplished my goal.

Happy Holidays everyone.

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual