Even if I could reconnect with the past, would I?  To go back to the past and connect with it, to connect with the people there, would also mean to be changing it, to be changing both past, present, and future.  To change is to die.  Would I really want to "destroy" what I held so precious, just to experience it again?  To go back to the past does not mean avoiding loss.  To go back to the past, means giving up the present, and the future.  What really, is the difference, then?  Only that one is known, and the other, foreign and uncertain.  I guess sometimes, the past really is better than the present.  And it is that sense of regret that makes me, makes us wish that we could go in the other direction, to go back to what is known instead of being forced to do what is right, and look for a better place with our heads turned forwards.  Is longing for the past really much different than wishing for something that does not exist in the present?  Or hoping for a future that does not exist?

This weekend has not been a bad one, not really bad at all.  After that last post about Yasunori Mitsuda's music, I started to work on Rain (the game we'd been working on this summer) while my pot roast/stew cooked, and made good progress.  In fact, after continuing to work on it for most of the night, I'm really happy to say that I've just about finished!  All that's left is to square away some minor things to get it ready for release (mostly making sure the soundtrack is all prepped to go), and then it can be shared with the world.  It's been a long time coming...Rain has really been the fruition of multiple months worth of contemplation, planning, and execution, so it's really great to see it finally come together as a finished product.

I spent a good part of Saturday testing out the commons from Khans of Tarkir (the new Magic set) with my brother.  We've learned some useful things about the format, but of course it's limited testing and I do think that the uncommons and rares will change things significantly in some ways, yet I think our restricted environment was also fairly representative in other ways as well.  Aggro seemed really weak in M15 when we were doing our testing for that, but we turned out to be slightly off base, as it wasn't quite as bad as we thought it was, mostly due to the fact that we were testing it against the really good decks.  I think there is something to be said about the fact that sealed pools will generally lead to mediocre curves, so if your pool *does* happen to have a good low-curve deck with consistency and some removal to punch through, that might be a game plan.  But in Khans I'm still seeing that as more of the exception than the rule, just because there are all these guys with huge butts and huge guys that start coming down on turns 5 and later.  By that time all of your 1-4 drops get outclassed unless they have some sort of evasion.  The critical point here I think is that there is a distinct shortage of good combat tricks at cmomon, much similar to M15 actually.  Obviously when you compare to Gatecrash you can see the huge difference in that the Boros aggro decks in GTC had both aggressively-costed guys (wojek halberdiers, 3/2 for 2 and skyknight legionnaire, 2/2 flying for 3) as well as combat tricks that you could use to remove blockers (martial glory, some random white combat tricks, mugging, etc).  Even RTR was better in this regard because you had 2/2s, then 3/3 centaur tokens, and you still had combat tricks like giant growth, etc at common so that even if someone was trying to play some defensive deck with 4-toughness guys to hold back the fort, you can 1-for-1 trade them with a combat trick when they blocked.  I don't see that as happening in Khans since their blockers will be things like 1/4 lifelink, 2/5, 0/5, even 3/6 guys are common.  This means your 2/2 guys are completely useless unless you go super-wide with the goblin/warrior token deck I guess.  Maybe if you get a lot of removal?  RB splash w Mardu aggro might be a thing, I guess, since R has things like the arrow 4 damage sorcery, and black has stuff like the 2 mana -2/-2 which is great at taking out their turn 3 morph.  So you do something like...t2 hasty 2/2 attack for 2, t3 3/1 attack for 2, t4 kill their morph and play a 2/1, attack for 5.  Then you act of treason them and kill them?  The problem is that that plan doesn't really work as well when they play a 1-mana 0/4 and then some other dude.  Well, we'll see I guess.

Perhaps the only bad part of this weekend is that it's already 3:15 AM here and I'm yet to be asleep yet.  There are still many things left to be done, but that will have to wait until later in the week I guess.  I need to pace myself at work since I know that I'm at a point where if I start working harder than I should I'll just burn out, so I just need to work smart and work a normal amount.  We're already going in this weekend (bad timing because it's prerelease weekend), so it doesn't make sense to burn myself out before then anyways.  I also still have lots of things I want to draw using charcoal, I keep on thinking of things but no time to draw.  Bleh.  But again, Rain is done now, and that was pretty much the highest priority thing to get finished, so you can't really call that anything other than a victory.