Given that Lord of the Rings was the set that made me dip my toes into Magic, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that my anticipation for a return to Middle Earth was high. Well, The Hobbit is the latest foray into this wonderful land, and to say my hype levels were high would be an understatement. But does it live up to my high expectations? In many ways, yup. Small set for a small hobbit https://youtu.be/bNUY-f4cI1s Like a few recent sets, this one is a draftable small set. This means that there are a total of 193 unique cards in the…
Author: Blair Loveday
When it comes to headphones, there are so many options to choose from. Do you need it on your ears or over your ears? Do you need sound quality to be king? Or mic quality? Do you need it to be able to cook your breakfast for you? It can be overwhelming to decide, especially with the big money that can be attached to it. Well, JBL has released the JBL Live 780NC headphones, and at under $300 it’s a shockingly solid setup, but they won’t cook you bacon and eggs. Style and comfort https://youtu.be/s6guXB9bzvA The JBL Live 780NC won’t…
Smart speakers can make your life easier if you have all the smart home fixings in your house. The problem can be which ones to buy, but also which ecosystem to buy into. My house, for instance, has been mostly Alexa, but is it worth giving another smart home ecosystem a try? I took the newest Google Home Speaker for a try to see if it is worth it. The mid-range speaker https://youtu.be/kkeEIbIR2kc Knowing where to start can be hard, and this is because even in the same range there can be multiple models. Google has simplified this, as previously…
There is such a range of fitness trackers, smartwatches, and fitness trackers that are also smartwatches, that it can be hard to know where to start. Well, Fitbit has come in with their low-cost fitness tracker designed to do exactly that. The question is, is it worth it? Style https://youtu.be/v4xrW2FVEq4 One thing you will immediately notice with the new Fitbit Air is that there is no screen. We are so used to them being jacks of all trades that I expected to see something more there. The Fitbit Air has ditched the screen, and instead you get all your info…
Getting closer to Marvel Super Heroes, I was not overly excited. I don’t know if it is a combination of Marvel burnout, Spider-Man being initially fun but getting a bit the same, or the fact that TMNT and Secrets of Strixhaven were so much fun, but I wasn’t ready for the world of superheroes in Magic again yet. Then spoiler season rolled around. I started seeing cards that had me excited; next thing I knew, I was signed up for four pre-release events last weekend. Whoops, it turns out I was excited; I didn’t know it yet. So how Marvel-ous…
It’s fantastic to see a developer find a new craft and then take to it in a way we didn’t expect. When Housemarque released Returnal, we had plenty of reasons to be nervous about them diving into 3rd person shooters, but cynics were proven wrong. Well now, they have taken that formula and improved on it with Saros to make a good new version that feels Housemarque. https://youtu.be/Rhj4r0y11os Saros has you play as Arjun. Arjun and his crew need to go to the planet Carcosa to find out what happened to previous expeditions that seemed to disappear. See, this world…
It can be fun checking out a new anime with little to no context. I hadn’t done that for a while and so thought I would try it with Kaiju No. 8. Fortunately, this was one of the cases where I was highly rewarded for the gamble! https://youtu.be/JwF7bhvnCxI Kaiju No. 8 takes us to a Japan where Kaiju randomly appear and cause devastation to be taken down by a special force called the Japanese Anti-Kaiju Defense Force, or JAKDF. The show starts with a successful destruction of a Kaiju, where we meet our hero Kafka Hibino. Kafka isn’t your classic…
There is no lack of movies about war, especially movies about WWII. Nuremberg is a different movie, in the best possible ways, and it is much more enjoyable than I was expecting. As you may expect, Nuremberg is about the Nuremberg trials but less about that than the buildup to it. The flick starts with the capture of the awful Hermann Göring, one of Hitler’s top dogs. Then the film kicks off with a series of different stories. One is that Robert H. Jackson, played by Michael Shannon, wants to kick off the Nuremberg trials instead of hanging them to…
Normally with headsets, I tend to check out the mid-priced devices. The slot where you get some premium features but don’t break the bank. Well, I got the chance to check out the $600 JBL Quantum 950 to see if that extra cash justifies itself or if the midrange devices are a better bang for your buck! What does the Quantum 950 offer that other headsets don’t? https://youtu.be/JQcNeFLxnz4 One of the coolest things the Quantum 950 offers is hot-swappable batteries. Rechargeable headsets are awesome, but when they run out of juice, you wind up having to cable yourself to your…
TMNT was way better than it deserved to be, and I had a cracking good time drafting it. So after seeing how good Universes Beyond can be, the question became how good would the next in-universe set be. Well, now we have Secrets of Strixhaven, I can say it is beyond fantastic. What is the secret? https://youtu.be/WUzG8tRX0x4 This is where I normally give a short feel for the online web stories for the set. The problem is, there is a prequel novel, which I don’t want to read the online series until I have read the novel which is still…