Entries Tagged 'Housekeeping' ↓
October 26th, 2010 — Housekeeping
You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t updated this blog in a while, nor put up any #FloresRewards videos in circa two weeks. All I can say is that Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon hit me one too many times. I blame the wee ones. I was full of, you know, Infect counters and unable to blog Blog BLOG as I usually do.
Now I wasn’t Poisoned to death or anything, just full of Infect counters, which simply sapped me of my usual Vampire Nocturnus powers. You see usually I have super duper vampire powers that allow me to operate at peak performance with essentially no Sleep. I was bragging / complaining to Patrick Chapin last week that I haven’t had a week where I had eight hours of Sleep every night in over six years, and I don’t get eight hours of Sleep in a single night on the average week. So obviously it bit me in the butt and radically reduced my vampire superpowers, and sent me to bed at 8:30 almost every night (for shame).
So basically I was this kind of vampire:
Lame 4th Edition Sengir Vampire
Instead of my preferred this kind of vampire:
The kind with, you know, his own tv show.
Grok?
Anyway, I am trying to catch up. So this blog post is just going to be a heads up about the upcoming Feat of Strength as I still haven’t put together a video to close out the first season of Flores Rewards.
We will draw on or around November 1, and the deadline for the last Feat of Strength will be October 31. Unsurprisingly, it will be Halloween costumes! So just put a pic up of yourself in your Halloween costume and mise 15 #FloresRewards.
We will actually have a double drawing:
- Winner, or in this case “first loser” will get the last set of Scars of Mirrodin dual lands (probably Razorverge Thicket, let’s be honest)*
- The real winner will get Jace, the Mind Sculptor
- The threshold for the last dual land will be 21 #FloresRewards, and the big winner will have a threshold of 51 #FloresRewards
That’s it!
LOVE
MIKE
* As an update, the first two sets went to Joey Pasco and Dexter Stevens; Joey chose Copperline Gorge and Dexter chose Seachrome Coast as I recall. Observant #FloresRewards readers will realize that these (and the end-of-the-season drawing) account for only 3 of the possible 5 sets of dual lands. We will deal with these in the recap for the “suit up against savagery” Feat of Strength.
P.S. Stuff that is all going out this week (Sorry to Doug, Voltaire, Joe, Joey, and Dexter for being slow):
October 13th, 2010 — Housekeeping
I am actually working on this week’s Feat of Strength video (which will include winners from both Hero of Fiction and Thank You), but I figured I have been dangling the maybes for long enough.
So in that spirit, I am running a rundown of some of my favorites, same as last time; but from Hero of Fiction.
Same stuff applies – I loved a lot of the Hero of Fiction submissions. Just because I didn’t mention you here as a runner-up doesn’t mean that I didn’t really appreciate your submission. Let’s go!
Jeff S. Higgins:
Jeff is the only “with” rather than “as” submission I chose for this review. Who doesn’t love a gigantic furry Millenium Falcon co-pilot? Plus, if I didn’t mention it, Chewie would probably tear my arms off.
David Mantel:
I am a sucker for the Lantern Corps rings. We have most all of them lying around casa Flores.
Paul Jordan:
I love how Paul basically crapped on my Harry Potter impression and did what I did in the video, except 100x better. Typical.
Doug Potter:
Doug Potter really told a story with his photos. I loved his pose and body language. Too bad he had already won a previous challenge… I was tempted to put another feather in the Empty the Warrens savant’s cap.
Gabriel Gutierrez Saldate:
Spanish Buzz! I absolutely adored this pic! I had a hard enough time picking a winner — in fact I couldn’t pick just one this week — and Gabriel had me about an inch from a threeway of #FloresRewards. Great pic.
So… spoilers!
I couldn’t pick just one. So in the same week we had Bighead Joe winning Thank You, his podcasting partner Joey Pasco takes one half of Hero of Fiction.
Joey Pasco:
What set this one apart? To me it is storytelling. Joey didn’t just put on a costume… This was like an Alex Ross painting if you take my meaning. He’s looking over the top of those glasses. He isn’t just Superman, he is pulling open Clark Kent’s shirt to reveal that great big red-and-yellow Kryptonian target on his chest. There is even the windblown necktie going over the top of one shoulder.
To Joey: Lands.
Dexter Stevens:
Besides fearlessly revealing himself to the #FloresRewards community in the unitard uniform of the floppiest of all Justice League founders, Dexter depicted Aquaman perfectly.
Check out the look on his face!
He is raising his fists for battle… But is wearing a freaking skintight orange unitard with black panties over green panty hose.
This is the essence of the ineffectual Aquaman. He talks to fish. You can almost see the king of Atlantis about to lose an “I talk to fish” battle lose that upraised fightin’ fist to the wiles of someone who… you know… talks to fish better.
To Dexter: More Lands.
This month, starting with upcoming video Savage, Lands we are going to give away complete sets of Scars of Mirrodin dual lands. You know:
So we’ll give away two sets for Hero of Fiction; another set for the upcoming Savage, Lands, and then a set each the weekends of October 22 and October 29. To clarify, there are 20 total dual lands, and each winner will get one set (i.e. four lands).
Then, at the end of October — and about the end of Season One of #FloresRewards — we’ll give away the big prize.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor!
I was going to run some kind of shenanigans around this, but I figure you guys would rather topdeck Jace, the Mind Sculptor than more-or-less anything else. Details to come around that biggie prize!
Do me a favor and help share the #FloresRewards love. Please use the Share and Enjoy link at the bottom of this post to tell your Magic-playing buddies on Facebook (or wherever) that we are running out a Jace to finish the season. Season Two is going to be even bigger, by the by!
Anyway, I’m going to get back to editing Savage, Lands now… But here’s a preview of this week’s Feat of Strength!
Savage, Lands
LOVE
MIKE
October 11th, 2010 — Facebook, Housekeeping
And by “five” I mean eight. Originally I was only going to put five of my favorite submissions from the “Thank You” Feat of Strength, but there were just too many great ones to cut so slim.
So per my blog post earlier this week — or is it last week at this point? — I am just catching back up on #FloresRewards stuff.
Last week was a monster with the TCGPlayer tournament eating up both my weekend days; this week States actually gobbled up one of them, but I need to get back to my peeps.
I will have a new Feat of Strength video with tons of details for the last month of the first season up tomorrow-ish; but for now I figured I should announce the winner of those last four Fauna Shamans.
First of all, thanks so much to everyone for your “Thank You” Feats of Strength. Just because I didn’t highlight you in this post doesn’t mean that I didn’t think that your “Thank You” was fabulous. Usually when people say that it’s a kiss off, but in this case, 100% true; I promise.
Here are a handful of our favorites.
Steven Scott Showers:
Steven made a deck for his brother as a “Thank You” for giving him his car. I mean mise. Mise car, that is. Plus, this is a Magic: The Gathering-related blog, right? This one is a cute hybrid of Grove of the Burnwillows + Punishing Fire combo and Goblin Guide and “your opponent’s face” combo.
Dexter Stevens:
What’s great about this one is that Dexter did something that — I assume — the dog loved / would love. Who cares what we love? I loved it for that reason.
Gabriel Gutierrez Saldate:
Gabriel actually contacted me to find out if I liked penguins. In fact, as a grade-school kiddo, I had the nickname “penguin” … Great creativity on this one. My kids love bento by the way.
Steven Corrigan:
This one is super simple; but I absolutely adored the shapes and composition. It’s like the final table at Top Chef when they talk about something simple and good being perfect. Steven’s Feat of Strength was one of my absolute favorites.
David Mantel:
My wifey loved this one. Fabulous winks, David.
Voltaire Abaya:
Initially I didn’t know what the hell was going on in this one. Apparently this is [previous challenge] winner Abaya’s “Thank You” for Who’s the Beatdown, the Philosophy of Fire, and Deckade. So different from all the other submissions; more than worth a mention.
Thea Steele:
Thea was all gearing up for her wedding, and was understandably a day or so late on her submission; so as excellent as her silkscreening was, I didn’t think it was fair to consider her for the win… But I wanted to mention it anyway because I thought it was so cool.
So who won?
None other than Bighead Joe from Yo! MTG Taps!
Joe works at a store, and unbelievably made FNM free as a “Thank You” to his local community. As you know #FloresRewards is all about community building and doing cool stuff… and this is about as community-building and cool, and Magical as I can think of.
Joe “Bighead Joe” Panuska:
(You can click the above to see Joe’s freebie email — and notice of the 10,000 unread emails in his inbox — in greater detail.)
Great job on this one, Bighead buddy.
Late this week:
- The long-awaited next video + Feat of Strength
- The winner of Hero of Fiction
- Rules and prizes for the rest of the month (they will be awesome)
- And we get to those reader responses! I can’t wait to dig into the community-created content
LOVE
MIKE
(and love all of you, too)
September 26th, 2010 — Housekeeping
A couple of stuff…
To the surprise of no one, “Flores is da man” according to Jonathan Medina (and presumably #FloresRewards Primeval Titan winner Mitchell McCulloch). In case you haven’t seen it, here is the first #FloresRewards prize posted on the Facebook fan page:
“Flores is Da Man” -Jonathan Medina
So to Ross and Voltaire, I am ordering the Baneslayer Angels along with the next two weeks’ worth of Fauna Shamans post haste; should be in the mail before the end of the week! Congrats, guys!
So this weekend’s [upcoming] #FloresRewards video may have you scratching your head. The answer is, yes, I really am that crazy.
I am actually kind of surprised at the response to some of the past couple of weeks’ videos on YouTube (that is, negative / “this is dumb”). I guess that is the risk with using my pre-existing semi-popular YouTube channel for #FloresRewards when 100% of previous videos were Constructed crushing. But whatever. I decided at age 11 to stop caring what other people think of me and never looked back.
Anyway, that will come up when that comes up.
For now I just have some housekeeping I want to put out there.
- Do we really only have one entry for “Thank You” so far? I know that I gave you guys a long due date horizon, but at this rate, James Prater is going to gun himself a set of Fauna Shamans with no competition whatsoever. Remember to get your “Thank You” #FloresRewards entries up at http://bit.ly/FloresRewards before September 30.
- Speaking of “September 30″ … The next day is the start of the Big Apple Comic Con. And with that, the TCGPlayer Championship Series in New York. I want to do something super cool around this event that I know a lot of you guys are going to be at. For now, there will be some sort of mising around doing something at Shake Shack that weekend (good times and probable #FloresRewards). In addition, anyone who has Scars of Mirrodin gas to loan YT for the Saturday event can mise #FloresRewards Let’s say 5 #FloresRewards per Koth of the Hammer I kid. Not really.
- The other thing that I want to work on is getting unique content for this here blog. A week or two ago I put out a Tweet that gave me some great Insight for the other awesome blog (http://fivewithflores.com of course). Overwhelmingly Twitter fans said that they liked the short, focus-on-a-card type content for Five With Flores, so I am going to focus on that. But what should we run here? It probably doesn’t surprise you that traffic spikes whenever we have a Feat of Strength video, but people don’t really visit the blog otherwise. What kind of stuff should I run here that would be different and unique from the — let’s face it – voluminous Magic content that I produce around the Internets? Put your ideas in the comments below; participation is worth 2 #FloresRewards, and if I actually try one of your ideas, that bumps up to 5 #FloresRewards. I have actually turned down some interesting / flattering opportunities recently because I wanted to focus on growing $FloresRewards as a brand, Facebook fan base, all of it… and I am turning to you guys — the existing group that cares about this projects so far — to help me out. You know, me = Princess Leia, You = Obi-Wan Kenobi.
May you have a rewarding rest of the weekend!
LOVE
MIKE
September 10th, 2010 — Facebook, Housekeeping
“You’re giving away a set of Baneslayer Angels? Heck, I’ll join!”
-Pro Tour Historian Brian David-Marshall
A couple of updates…
I just wanted to share a pic from this week’s Feat of Strength from the Facebook page:
Eric Theiss
Eric Theiss, who is currently deployed to Iraq, shared this creative take on the Shake Shack / burger Feat of Strength. He asked if he could get the full 12 points for “Shiekh” Shack, but that wasn’t the rules… So no.
On the other hand, this pic was the very definition of above and beyond the call of duty — so much so that Brian David-Marshall himself called it out to me — that I granted Eric an extra five #FloresRewards as a bonus.
To check out Eric’s pic and all the crazy stuff your fellow #FloresRewards fans have been doing, check out the Facebook page at http://bit.ly/FloresRewards
Speaking of scoring points and the Facebook page and all that jazz, I decided to clarify our next prize drawing, and move it back a week. We are still going to give away a play set of Baneslayer Angels! Never fear! We’re just not doing it this week. Part of that is because I need a little space, but the greater part is because I wanted to be more inclusive and let more people get into the party. We launched #FloresRewards Spoilers over a holiday weekend, and I’m sure that affected some players’ chances of participating this week. Various friends have expressed to me that they felt they were already too far behind… But we want lots of love here at #FloresRewards! So I decided to move back the Baneslayer Angel drawing until next week to give new fans a chance to pick up some points. So basically, you no longer have any excuse, Paul.
I’ll draw on the 18th or 19th (next weekend), thusly:
I am not sure what the higher point total will be. If I did it this week, I would set the bar at 31 points (we have between 10-20 players at this point total right now). So probably I will have it at 41 points next week.
We will still have a full Feat of Strength this week and various interaction / RT / etc. opportunities to score some random additional points.
Case in point…
I have a couple of ideas for the next Feat of Strength. Which would you prefer for this weekend?
- Celebrity Crushes
- Physiology
Vote in the comments of this blog post by midnight September 11 with your preference. Every vote gets 1 #FloresRewards point; if you are on the winning team (i.e. you voted for Celebrity Crushes and we go with Celebrity Crushes, say), you get 2 #FloresRewards instead. Easy, right?
Last thing – Since we are pushing back the Baneslayer Angel drawing, I am also pushing back the deadline on the burgers, et al Feat of Strength. It was supposed to be tonight, but give yourself another week and see if you can do something as awesome as Eric did (so a new end date of September 17).
So, to summarize everything in this post…
- Eric Theiss showed you how to creatively earn 5 extra #FloresRewards
- We are moving back the Baneslayer Angel drawing by one week (plus clarification on the contest rules)
- This week’s Feat of Strength is either Celebrity Crushes or Physiology – Vote for 1-2 #FloresRewards
- If you haven’t done the burger challenge yet, you have another week
That’s it!
LOVE
MIKE
September 8th, 2010 — Housekeeping
Multiple Magicians have asked me for a list of all possible #FloresRewards. Here is everything I can remember:
I don’t think phodgson is actually playing
If you are, say, Thea Steele and you go to Pat’s King of Steaks for the second Feat of Strength (I don’t know where in Pennsylvania Thea actually lives), you could conceivably have 40 #FloresRewards points at the end of this week.
Most players who have executed on basically every scoring opportunity would have about 35 #FloresRewards.
Remember, there is a 25 #FloresRewards floor for the upcoming Baneslayer Angel drawings. I think I am going to split up the Baneslayer Angel playset and do two drawings, one for those with 25 points, and one for those with an as-yet-undetermined points tier (we’ll see how many is “interesting” come later in the week, but I think probably in the 30 point range).
So, in other words…
Let’s see some burger* pics!
LOVE
MIKE
* Or, whatever.
PS As you can see from the phodgson +7 one-time bonus, I will give out #FloresRewards bonuses just because I feel like it. So keep an eye out for making clever comments.
PPS Good citizens who want to get great prices on Magic: The Gathering cards will probably comparison shop at http://TCGPlayer.com/FloresRewards (because it is awesome)
