Blog Blog Cherry

King of the Pill: A glorious upgrade

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 07:37:00 +0000

King of the Pill an adventure web comic with new content every day. Start your glorious upgrade today!

Best Free No Dowland MMO CCG on the Internet

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 05:24:00 +0000

In just a few minutes, you too can be playing my favorite free massive multiplayer online (MMO) collectible card game (CCG) with no downloads. Urban Rivals is by far my favorite MMOCCG hands down.

Have you ever been sitting at work, or bored at home and want to play something simple, fast, but tough and challenging at the same time? Urban Rivals is the game for you. It only takes a minute to sign up and open your first FREE booster packs. In minutes you will be battling, leveling up your cards, and unlocking achievements. Play in tournaments to earn credits to by more packs, and earn the in-game currency that lets you buy cards you need from the market. Enough talk sign up right away:

sign up and start playing

The Price is Right
You do not need to pay anything to play. If you want to spend money to buy extra booster packs you can, but you can grind aaway in tournaments and make good trades in the market and find yourself with a great deck. Admittedly, it takes a while to grind yourself up to the expensive cards, but each pack you open you can get lucky. Open up a valuable card, sell it on the market and then pick up better cards for your deck. Next thing you know you are dominating and unlocking achievements all over.

Strategy Rules, Luck Drools
Yes. This game is almost all strategy. Somebody you can have bad cards and simply out smart your opponent for the win. People that are good with math and probability probably have the edge, but those that can bluff and make the right plays may have the even better edge. Each game lasts only 2-5minutes and in a one hour tournament you will probably play between 20-35 matches, depending how fast you and your opponents are. Its quick, its fun, and there is always something to do.

Play for Hours or Play for Minutes
Sometimes I will jump on for a few minutes and test out my deck, or try out a new card, or level up a guy. Sometimes I will spend an hour trying to unlock or complete a certain reward. Sometimes I spend all day playing tournaments trying to be #1 and hit the jackpot of credits. Its fun going into the shop on a spending spree buying packs left and right.

I have been playing Urban Rivals since 1998, and I've collected a ton of cards including a handfuls of those collectable rares (CRs). Even if you just want to see what it is all about spend a few minutes, sign up, and give it a try. You won't be disapointed, or your money back (and that is true, because it's free to play.)

Join Urban Rivals today!

The Best Free Multi-player Online Card Game

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 09:24:00 +0000

You do not need to spend a dime, and you dont need a credit card to ride this train. Urban Rivals is an amazingly fun, challenging and addicting massive multi-player collectible card game......and its completely free to play! Yes, it is a free collectible card game, massive multi player game, with no downloads!

Easy to Join
Its easy to join Urban Rivals and you can get started within the next half hour and be battling other new players right away. You get a free pack of cards and you can build decks right from the start. When you battle, your cards gain experience and can level up (or evolve) into more powerful cards.

No Downloads
When I was looking for awesome games to play, I hated games that looked and sounded cool, but then took hours to download and then took hours to erase from my computer after I realized the game wasn't even fun. Urban Rivals is the best free massive multi player online (MMO) collectible card game (CCG) I have ever found. Plus, you do not need to download anything to play! You can play from work, from school, from a friends house, all you need is the internet to jump into your account! The entire game is played in flash.

Gameplay
The way the game is set up, there is a lot of skill involved in the game. It is always fun to beat a player who is a much higher level than you, and make them feel shame. You get to pick your deck, and during the game you assign power pills to each character which is hidden from your opponent. Those pills multiply the characters attack damage and can win or lose you the game.

Pay if you want
It is free to play. You can spend money to buy extra packs, however I spent months playing on the free account and leveling up my guys and selling them in the shop. It was great. Eventually I spent 5 dollars to buy a few extra packs and with those cards I managed to trade and play my way up to a huge collection of cards.

Earning Packs
If you are like me, and want to play online games that are FREE, but also really fun, then urban rivals is for you. The other neat thing is that you can earn credits to buy packs simply by playing in free tournaments. These tournaments happen every two hours! You can join a ton of tournaments every day and earn packs of new cards for doing it. It is really fun.

Friends Friends Cards
Don't also forget about the sponsor program, because if you sign up with my link here , then you can get your friends to sign up under you and then you earn credits from them. It's another great way to earn free cards, plus then you can play with your friends.

20 point lava axe

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 09:41:00 +0000

It's the 12th turn of an magic online M11 swiss draft. My opponent has just knocked me down to 8 life, and I had to chump with two guys to survive. All I have is both my fire servants. Next turn he will threaten to alpha strike (aka kill me) with a cloud crusader, garruk's packleader, spined wurm (i had just killed one last turn), and an air servant.

Having only two fire servants on the field, I play lava axe for 20 damage. It was the only damage I dealt in the game, and was enough for the game win (and match win). My opponent was sure damage doesnt stack twice, and went to complain. Either way, I win and move on. Apparently the lava axe damage does double, twice. It would make sense if the lava axe did its normal 5, and then an extra 5 (double the lava axe amount) for each fire servant.

I just thought it was too great not to post about. A 20 point lava axe for the win.

For anyone that arrives at this blog to read about magic you should definately start reading my articles at Magic on a Budget. You can read my 10 tips for saving money while playing Magic, or read what I consider to be the best way to spend $20 in Magic and why.

My Professors' Sealed Deck Entry

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:04:00 +0000

Below is my sealed deck entry to The Professors YouTube Magic2011 sealed deck contest. Before you read the deck I decided to submit, you should first read about the pool and how I decided on the deck list below: The Professors M11 Sealed Pool.

Green or Black
Opening two Phylactery Lichs in the 6 M11 packs in the sealed pool made me want to play black so bad. However, I went over this deck many times and found that the Lichs can be a beating until any number of cards shuts them down. Losing my Lichs to a naturalize or solemn offering ends the my advantage really fast. The odds of having tech in your colors to deal with the artifacts made the Lich build seems far too fragile (manic vandal in red, solemn offering in white, naturalize in green). Since most sealed decks play 2-3 colors, and will on average opened 2-3 artifact destruction cards. It is likely the Lich's will not survive, not to mention that they become the only target in that build, and become easy fodder for not destruction removal. Therefore, I decided to switch to the pile of big green creatures we opened and build a green/blue/black deck.

Here's my submitted deck:

one drops
1 diminish
1 unsummon
1 wall of vines
1 llanowar elves

two drops
1 augury owl
1 ice cage
1 naturalize
1 doom blade

three drops
1 scroll thief
1 gargoyle sentinal
1 crystal ball
1 sacred wolf
1 warlord's axe

four drops
1 foresee
1 cudgel troll
2 giant spider

five drops
1 rise from the grave
2 spined worm
1 acidic slime
1 garruk's packleader

six drops
1 yavimaya worm

land
1 terramorphic expanse
6 forest
5 islands
1 swamp

17 land
14 creatures
9 spells

Sideboard strategy:

Against other big beater decks the 2 armored cancrix can help hold down the fort, I would probably remove 1 spined worms and 1 naturalize. Against aggro fliers I can sideboard another Wall of Vines. Autumns Veil for blue/ black decks can be sided in for diminish and spined worm. Negate can replace Naturalize if they have bombs like Planeswalkers, Earthquake, Day of Judgment or playing Mass Polymorph. Anytime my big guys are being blown out by removal or bigger creatures like titans, I will sideboard in traumatize and hope to mill their big threats, and remove 1 spined worm. I was tempted to main deck Traumatize, but wanted to have as many big creatures game 1 and then have the option to surprise my opponent with it game 2. I assume I will sideboard in traumatize versus 75% of the decks I would face. Although I would much rather have a body in the other 25%.

Gameplay strategy:

Get big guys out, get card quality advantage with Augury Owl, Foresee, Crystal Ball and then race. I have enough disruption blue removal to slow down big creatures and should be able to pound away. I have 1 wall of vines, augury owl and 2 giant spiders to deal with fliers and a lot of my guys have big enough butts to avoid being too effected by cheap removal spells like lightning bolt. In the end I am pretty happy with my build.

The Professors M11 Sealed Pool Contest

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 01:20:00 +0000

This week on YouTube the Professors, a weekly Magic video blog, posted a video which included a sealed pool contest. The Professors do this for each new set release. They challenge the viewers to submit a sealed deck from the chosen cards and the winning deck list wins a nice big prize. I have never entered, although I enjoyed watching people come up with sealed lists. I will admit, while I am decent drafter, I find sealed pools to be very difficult and usually break even 50/50. I am not bad, but not good either. That being said, I figure I would give this list a try. Here's the sealed pool:

White:

1 Ajani's Mantra
1 Blinding Mage
1 Infantry Veteran
1 Inspired Charge
1 Mighty Leap
1 Palace Guard
1 Siege Mastodon
1 Solemn Offering
1 Tireless Missionaries
1 Roc Egg
1 White Knight

Blue:
2 Armored Cancrix
1 Augury Owl
1 Diminish
1 Foresee
1 Harbor Serpent
1 Ice Cage
2 Merfolk Spy
1 Negate
1 Preordain
1 Scroll Thief
1 Unsummon
1 Call to Mind
1 Traumatize (rare)

Black:
1 Barony Vampire
1 Blood Tithe
1 Bog Raiders
1 Doom Blade
2 Nightwing Shade
1 Quag Sickness
1 Sign in Blood
1 Stabbing Pain
1 Unholy Strength
2 Viscera Seer
1 Rise from the Grave
1 Haunting Echoes (rare)
2 Phylactery Lich (rare)

Red:
1 Act of Treason
1 Berserkers of Blood Ridge
1 Demolish
1 Fling
2 Goblin Balloon Brigade
3 Goblin Piker
1 Lava Axe
1 Manic Vandal
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Thunder Strike
1 Volcanic Strength
2 Chandra's Spitfire
1 Fire Servant

Green:
2 Giant Spider
1 Hunter's Feast
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Naturalize
1 Sacred Wolf
2 Spined Wurm
1 Wall of Vines
1 Wall of Vines (FOIL)
1 Yavimaya Wurm
1 Acidic Slime
2 Autumn's Veil
1 Back to Nature
1 Cudgel Troll
1 Garruk's Packleader

Colorless:
1 Crystal Ball
1 Demon's Horn
1 Gargoyle Sentinel
1 Kraken's Eye
1 Warlord's Axe

Land:
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Dragonskull Summit (rare)
1 Sunpetal Grove (rare)
2 Plains
1 Island
3 Mountain

Whenever I do a sealed pools, I first pull out my rares to see if I drafted any bombs. In this pool, there are no huge bombs that beckon a deck to be build around it. Two duel lands is nice, and having three black rares may guide us into that color, although I never build simply around rares. Every card from a common to a mythic is equally important when building a sealed deck. Finding synergies with rares is fine (like haunting echoes and traumatize) but I never begin deck building until I've gone through each card:

Rares:
1 Dragonskull Summit (rare)
1 Sunpetal Grove (rare)
1 Haunting Echoes (rare)
2 Phylactery Lich (rare)
1 Traumatize (rare)

The craziest thing is that we pulled two Phylactery Lichs. This is rare and something we cannot ignore. While we go through the rest of the cards I will be counting my artifacts to see if we can play double lichs! This would make us VERY black (nearly mono) but would be pretty cool.

After looking over my rares, the next thing I do is pull out powerful cards in each color. I try to value each colors potential power to figure out what my main color or colors are going to be. I pull out all the cards that I think are powerful from each color and see how they stack up or work together with other colors. It is key to remember we have three mana helping lands (two duels and terramorphic expanse) that will help us splash a third color or guide us into two specific colors. The other thing I make sure to do in this process is make note of archetypes (evasion creatures, milling, control, aggro) because a bunch of spells that accomplish those goals may not be the best spells in your pool but combined together can win you games. On to the key spells in each color:

White:

1 Blinding Mage
1 White Knight

White got the shaft in this pool. In fact it would be hard to pen six m11 packs and have worse white cards. On the other hand, at least we didn't open a bomb white card like Baneslayer without any support. Actually, I am always happy when one of two colors are completely dry, it makes building your deck easier. For the professors contest it makes coming up with an original deck much harder (i bit no one builds a white deck in the entire contest). Back to the cards, White knight is a good card but would never be played without support because of the double white mana cost. Basically, we could splash white for blinding mage, which seems really weak and just asking for mana problems. It looks as though white cards can be put away for this sealed pool.

Blue:

1 Augury Owl
1 Diminish
1 Foresee
1 Ice Cage
1 Negate
1 Unsummon
1 Traumatize (rare)

Blue got some good removal or psuedo removal cards. This is a good mix of cards that are very good in sealed. Remember that the odds of seeing huge bombs in sealed are twice as likely than in draft, since each player has 6 rares to choose from. This means cards like unsummon, diminish, ice cage, and negate and all very powerful cards. I tossed traumatize in here because with all the other support, we could go for some type of milling strategy. We did not pull Jace's Erasure which would solidify a mill strategy. Instead, traumatize could simply help cut their deck from powerful spells, which is very relevant in M11 because of all the tutors (diabolic tutor, liliana vess, fauna shaman, squadron hawks). This means traumatize can eliminate big threats the opponents may try to exploit, and also could be a good sideboard card for decks with threats we cannot deal with. Overall blue has no good creatures, but would make a great secondary color.

Black:
1 Doom Blade
2 Nightwing Shade
1 Quag Sickness
1 Sign in Blood
1 Stabbing Pain
1 Rise from the Grave
1 Haunting Echoes (rare)
2 Phylactery Lich (rare)

Black got the most cards in the pool, and some really good ones. Once again I must say, the craziest thing is that we pulled two Phylactery Lichs. One Lich is not playable in an m11 sealed deck, and two is still unplayable unless you have artifact support. Lich's can be a 5/5 on turn three! Which is worth working towards, and with two Lich's out it is very hard for an opponent to recover from. The Rise from the Grave helps us bring them back too, and also can steal their bombs if we traumatize them. Before we commit to the Lichs, we do want to note the Doom Blade and Quag Sickness. Remember that Quag Sickness needs black support, and is not a good splashable removal spell (I made this mistake on mtgo). Quag is a great removal if you are playing heavy black. Nightwing Shade is decent, not great, but worth noting if we play heavy black. Shades are always worse with multiples (which I learned in m10) since your mana can't pump them both. I excluded the double Viscera Seer's but they are worthy to note, because they may be a great one drop that helps us chump and scry as the game progresses. Black seems decent, although it look like we would be building around the Lichs if that was our choice.

Moving on:

Red:

1 Act of Treason
1 Fling
1 Lava Axe
1 Manic Vandal
2 Chandra's Spitfire
1 Fire Servant

Vandal is a good sideboard card. Fling and Act of Treason is a great combo, and works well with our double viscera seer. Steal their guy and fling it or sacrifice it and scry. Also, Chandra's Spitfire and Fire Servant are great cards. It is too bad we did not draft any lightning bolts or Chandra's Outrage. Both cards need damage dealing removal, and we basically have none. Our black removal does not deal damage, and our blue removal does not deal damage. Sadly, as nice as our 3 red creatures are, they simply do not work well in this pool as nothing supports them. However, fling and act of treason are two cards we can consider splashing, especially with the Dragonskull Summit and Terramorphic expanse. Manic Vandal could still be a relevant sideboard card if we splash red, but not mainboard because we need to be careful he doesn't only have targets we control.

Green:
2 Giant Spider
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Naturalize
2 Spined Wurm
1 Wall of Vines
1 Wall of Vines (FOIL)
1 Acidic Slime
2 Autumn's Veil
1 Cudgel Troll
1 Garruk's Packleader

Green has some beefy creatures. One mana excellerent in llanowar elves and some very good defensive one drops in Wall of Vines. I like cudgel troll and acidic slime a lot, and two spined wurms could be a beating. When I see double wall of vines, which is good against fliers, I do start considering using some of the red pump spells as ways to kill off pesky fliers since in my entire pool I am lacking quality removal. Having so many big beaters is something that should never be overlooked in a sealed pool and would make a great backbone to a deck. In the end, green looks just as solid as black as a main color.

Colorless:
1 Crystal Ball
1 Demon's Horn
1 Gargoyle Sentinel
1 Kraken's Eye

I laugh at the colorless spells, because they taunt me to use the Lichs. Both a blue and a black 2 drop artifact, that would work GREAT with the Lichs. Crystal Ball is also going to make the cut no matter what we play. The Gargoyle Sentinel is the same. A great big beater for three. Having three good cheap artifacts for the Lichs seem good, since they are hard to kill. If they have to sideboard a bunch of cards to kill my artifacts it will give me time to use cards like traumatize and haunting echoes. However, our green creatures may be the key to victory in this deck.

The Dilemna
The chance to play double phylactery Lich's is so enticing, but we will be struggling to stay mostly black while trying to get good blue/red spells into our deck. At the same time our green is powerful, but doesn't pair too well with our other colors. We could take out our Lichs and play green/black, playing 50/50 will allow us to play our Quag Sickness and the flying Shades. The question becomes do we play heavy black Lichs with blue and red splash? Or do we play green, splashing black/blue? I think both decks seems powerful, the Lichs seem cutesy and dynamic and the green strategy seems consistent. So what deck would you build with this pool?

I am going to study the curve of the two decks and playtest a little bit before making my final decision. I am also going to figure out what cards and decks beat me, and try to figure out which deck is the most stable against other sealed decks, especially after sideboard. I'll be submitting my deck in the next 24 hours.

Drafting Magic 2011

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:40:00 +0000

With the pre release and the release behind me, I have done one sealed and one normal draft for the set. I took first place in the draft (out of 12 people) and second place at the sealed event (out of 13 people). I figured I would write down a few things I noticed from the set and a recap of how I draft this set compared to others.

Two things I want to mention first: I am a new player, I started with Alara Reborn last year; and I play in a small Magic Community (in North Dakota) where there are a few good players and a pool of mediocre players. That being said, it is a lot easier to draft here than online or at bigger events with more qualified players.

M11 was the first set that I felt comfortable drafting right away, due to drafting M10 about a million times on-line; while I was trying to learn how the game works. I am going to focus my review on my booster draft, and only refer to the sealed draft. Twelve players showed up to our draft, which is a good number for our store. We split into two draft pods and played 4 rounds against our own pod. We rare pool draft, meaning we play $10 for our packs and then pool all rares from all packs and 1st places picks the first rare etc etc until all the cards are taken. Each player gets 3 rares at the end of the night and keeps all their commons and uncommons. I love rare pool drafts because its inexpensive and rewards good draft players, plus if you lose all your games you still get 3 rares out of the deal and only spent 10 bucks. Also, in a rare pool draft you do not feel like you need to take money rares, you can pass them knowing they wont help your deck.

Even before I picked up my pack I was trying to remember all the good common LSV recommended to pick in his set reviews. His reviews are essential reading for me prior to a draft. However, only blue, black and green were reviewed prior to the draft so I only had inside information on those colors.

Pack One
First pack I opened contained a Fauna Shaman, which I wanted in my collection. However, in my meta game every loves green! When I drafted sealed with a majority of the same players, green was played in 90% of the decks. I knew I wanted to play blue if possible, but the best card in the pack was Grave Digger. I am very familiar with Grave Digger from M10 and he is always a valuable card. The player next to me pulled a foil Day of Judgment, and in a rare pool draft foil rares can be drafted and kept. He made his money from the draft, even though I think he ended up at the bottom of the rank for the draft.

Pick two, I took a lightning bolt. Pick three, a doom blade. I was pretty happy with the first three picks. I did see some good white (pacifism and excommunicate) and a few blue flyers I wanted to see again. For the record I almost always draft blue, which is under drafted at our tables although, i learned later, the guy to my right was taking blue. Luckily for me he was taking all the blue cards I did not want and I had free reign over the LSV recommended Cloud Elementals. I ended up with three. Although, only took one in pack one and was not sure if I would play blue.

The rest of pack one I took some black and blue flyers. Red was dry as a draft can be with 6 players. I never took another red card other than my pick two lightning bolt, even though I was ready the entire time to splash red. I incorrectly pegged the player to the left, who revealed the foil day of judgment, to be playing white and using his Day; instead he opted to draft green blue. I'm not sure why he did this, since there were ample white cards coming around. At the end of pack 1 I snagged two Liliana's Specters and was surely playing black. I did also draft a late Blinding Mage and considered playing white.

Pack Two
I took a first pick Mind Control which I will never regret. It forced me into blue, which was fine as I wanted to play blue anyways. My misread on my player to the left with the Day of Judgment was obvious as good white cards came my way; this included the passing of limited bomb Vengeful Archon. I also passed on it for another Grave Digger pick two and became more sure of black/blue with a possible red splash. Two whispersilk cloaks went around in this pack, as did a War Priest of Thune. I took a pick 4 augury owl, who was great for me. I also got more Liliana's Specters. I ended with 4, but only played three in my deck. I picked up more card draw, and saw that I had a very aggressive curve with almost all flying creatures. I needed removal, and I was set.

Pack Three

I debated in pack three on what to take, and ended with a Corrupt which saved my butt many times. I forget what I was debating about, but the corrupt was essential in my deck as I did not see any more removal. I had another gravedigger pick 5 and felt my deck was pretty solid at this point. A ton of three drop flyers, card draw, and a few spots of removal. Card draw acts like removal, since it gets removal. I love scry by the way, its my first time using the mechanic. And the one forsee I had in my deck was brilliant. Drawing two cards and planning out your next two cards is so sweet; especially since I only had 1 doom blade, mind control, 1 quag sickness and 1 corrupt.

In the end 4 out of 6 players played red, which is why red was so dry. 3 of them as their main color. Three players also played green and I was happy to steer clear of those colors. Black was myself and one other. Only me and my two neighbors played blue, and only one player was playing white. He took FOUR pacifisms (FOUR!) and second overall in the 12 person draft. The white/red was the only threat of beating me in my 4 matches (more on that battle below...).

The Deck

1 doom blade
1 sign in blood
1 black night
1 reassembling skeleton
1 augury owl
2 liliana's specter
3 cloud elementals
1 quag sickness
1 barony vampire
3 gravedigger
1 howling banshee
2 azure drake
1 foresee
1 air servant
1 nightwing servant
1 corrupt
1 mind control
10 swamp
7 island

Notice my zero rares. There are very few rares worth playing in M11 in my opinion. Rise of Eldrazi is different. Planeswalkers and Titans are playable in M11. I think the format will prove to be way too fast for most bombs in the set to be realistically playable. I'll be happy to pass the rares and play the aggro cards all day long. I only drafted two rares, I drafted the white Serra Ascendant, and Overwhelming Stampede. I hate drafted the stampede since it would wreck my removal light deck.

relevant sideboard:
1 mindrot
1 lilianna's specter
1 deathmark
1 duress
2 harbor serpent

My sideboard had a few discard spells which I didn't maindeck because I already had two specters knocking a card out of their hand and 3 gravediggers to repeat the process if I wanted them to discard. I still sided in mind rot and the third specter in a few games. Deathmark was in almost every game 2. The only reason I did not maindeck the harbor serpent is because my deck was agro flyers. I did not want to be holding serpent when I could be bashing with flyers. A few times I did have the mana to play the serpent, but usually the reason I had that much mana was that my opponent had removal for my early fliers. Without early fliers they hold removal for the serpent on turn 7 and I am probably dead by then. I did draft phantom beast, nether horror and two rotting legions but they seemed ground fodder when my plan was to attack in the air turn three and beyond.

I do admit that there is no way I should have been able to draft so many Cloud Elementals, Gravediggers and Azure Drakes. I never expect to draft this deck online or anything. Normally I would be playing a few of those cards and forced to main deck some of those ground beaters. However, I will take as many Azure Drake and Cloud Elemntals as possible in my drafts, only picking removal above them. It was hard to decipher how good Liliana's Specter was. I kept taking them really late (even second to last pick) since no one was strong black except me I was able to take prime blue cards and let heavy black cards fall in my lap. The double black cost for Specter did slow me down a few games, but overall the card advantage it gave me (especially paired with my draw effects from foresee, Augury owl, and Gravedigger) meant I was in good shape late in each game.

Match 1

Game one I faced a green/blue deck. The guy who drafted to my left and first picked the foil day of judgment. My flyers dominated game 1. His green never presented a problem, I even double blocked two Yavimaya Worms in this match, (with my fliers) and had plenty of fliers to refill my side of the table before he could recover. I was slightly worried when he mana leaked ( i card i never saw) my gravedigger, but I signed in blood back into the driver seat. My opponent did misplay his Awakener Druids tokens by not realizing his 4/5 lands had haste. I sided in a deathmark for a nightwing shade, that shade underperformed in game 1. Game 2 was amusing as he equipped one (of three) of his Wall of Vines with Primal Cocoon , which was excellent tech against my fliers. The amusing part was when he let my fliers go over him until the 0/3 became a 3/6 and I had him down to 11 life. By this time, I stopped attacking until I drew removal and kept trading my fliers to hold of his ground game. Eventually, I drew my doom blade and killed his 5/8 wall and won in two turns. It was a big mistake not to stop my fliers with his 2/5 wall because it would have kept him at a higher life total, and forced me to keep tapping my fliers to do minimal damage while his big creatures would get through. I also saw him in a latter game let his wall get a 13/16 and then promptly lost that game too. The lesson here kids, +1/+1 is nice and all, but primal cocoon does nothing if the creature doesn't attack or block.

I win 2-0

Match 2

This time I faced the other green/blue deck, who was drafting to my right. I saw during match one that he had a Stormtide Leviathan . I was not too worried about the Leviathan because I was aggro and planned to kill him long before it hit the battlefield. Even so, I planned to save my mind control for him just in case. Game 1 I had a good hand and played a turn 2 Augury Owl and turn 3 Liliana's Specter, he was so disappointed about discarding a card that I put another Specter in my deck for game two. I traded a my specter for a merfolk spy. Turn 4 I played a gravedigger to get back the specter but just like match one, it got mana leaked. It did not matter as I play flier after flier and won with 17 life.

Deathmark, Liliana's Specter in and the Nightshade and Black Night out.

Game two was fast. I had a bunch of fliers by turn four. He slammed a side-boarded Giant Spider. Turn five I contemplated what to do, and realized Mind Controlling the Giant Spider did not give him many outs. My fliers picked away at him as he filled his board with big creatures. He never had a chance and feigned an alpha strike (if he had two pump spells), but I blocked with his own Giant Spider and he didn't even have any pump spells anyways. Fliers win.

I win (2-0)
Match Record 2-0 (4-0)

Match 3

Our pod was way faster than the other pod. We were consistently done faster then them, and had a chance to talk about our decks. I found out quickly that the other good deck was the white/red deck with 4 pacifisms and fliers. I was worried about this deck. This is the deck I had to face in match 3, he was 4-1 and I was 4-0. Game one was brutal as he turn 3 pacified cloud elemental, turn 4 lightning bolted cloud elemental, and turn 5 pacified cloud elemental. He told me afterward it was all top decks. Needless to say when armored ascension his the table I was dead. He also dropped Ancient Hellkite just for good measure.

I sided in Duress. Mind Rot. Liliana's Specter for my Barony Vampire, Black Night and Howling Banshee.

The next game started exactly the same. He pacified all my threats and this time even Combusted some of my fliers. He side-boarded two of them, and they were devastating. However, my removal was there this time and we came to a standstill. Him at 20, me at 10 life. He even mighty leap (lept) a guy into my flier to trade with my bigger flier. It seemed to be his game when he played Serra Angel, but I stole him on my next turn. Even when he pacified it, my card advantage kept me ahead the rest of the game.

Game three was looking grim again. His 2/1 Stormfront Pegasus and Goblin Piker were hitting me while my fliers were pacified. He played a turn five Armored Ascension on the Piker, making it a real threat. My next turn I mind controlled him and won the game with my fliers. Every game Mind Control hit, the tide turned in my favor... BIG TIME. I was losing each game until it hit the table. He was also playing the Sorcerer's Strongbox and drew three cards in games 2 and 3. But both times it was not enough to combat my gravedigger plus card draw.

I win 2-1
Match record 3-0 (6-1)

Game 4

In match 4 I played a red/black deck that was doing decently. I caught this player cheating (drawing extra cards off the top of his deck) twice, and I can only assume this is how he won his previous games. I have not played this person often before, and I noticed huge card advantages in game 1 and began watching each draw step. I caught two ('mistakes') when he was drawing his card. I called him on it and he apologized for the 'mistake' and we kept playing. Moving on...

Game one we both mulliganed to six, this was my first bad draw of the tourney. I kept a hand with corrupt, mind control and only one island. I have no early drops and assumed I would draw some. I didn't and his turn 5 Chandra Nalaar and a Lava Axe destroyed my deck. I did recover and managed to kill Chandra and stabilize at 4 life. But when he summoned and attached a whispersilk cloak on some little guy I realized I was very dead. It was here I noticed he had 7 cards after I had duressed him and spectered him, and he had mulled to six with me. I was suspicious but conceded.

I brought in a mind rot hoping to force him to discard some of his burn. I took out a cloud elemental because the only block fliers was going to be a problem. Although I was concerned about his two Chandra Spitfire's.

Game two he had another fast start. I killed his spitfire with a quag sickness mid-game. He used rise from the grave to get it back, I then Corrupted it. I looked to be ahead, until I caught him drawing too many cards. He still had a ton of cards in hand somehow. He also struck with a lava axe again, putting me down to 4. I played foresee and hit a doom blade and a duress, i also buried unhelpful lands. I missed with my duress. I almost spent my doom blade hastely on my own turn with two mana open. I opted to save it, since I would kill him next turn if he did not kill me. He played a whispersilk cloak but upon attaching it to his 4 toughness guy, I doom bladed him and then won the game.

Game three was much easier. Turn one duress pulled out a Chandra's Outrage and also saw that he had no mountains in hand. I was able to Owl myself, and then Liliana Specter another instant from his hand. By this time he had a mountain and Chandra's Spitfire was on the board. I decided to Mind Control it on turn 5 and the rest was history. I did catch him again drawing extra cards during these last few turns. I was not happy, but he played it off as an accident, go figure.

Fliers win 2-1
Match record 4-0 (8-2)

Rare Pool Draft

The other pool produced a Primeval Titan. We had two Fauna Shaman's, Chandra, Lilianna, Day of Judgment, Frost Titan and a bunch of duel lands. I was announced the first place and I took the money rare, Primeval Titan, and I am listing it on ebay. This means I will be profiting from the event. I also selected a Liliana Vess and a Destructive Force third pick which I want to try in a G/R land kill deck. I did get to trade for a Fauna Shaman and two Mass Polymorph afterwards.

Overall, as usual, I think fliers (evasion) are hard to beat. It seems the best cards in M11 are the same as M10: lightning bolt, doom blade, pacifism, mind control. You need to be fast enough, or be able to hold off creatures until you drop a bomb. Mass fliers won 4 of the top 5 spots in our draft. I had the most fliers and I had the best record. All the fancy artifacts seemed semi useful, but just not as good as playing another 2/3 flier for three mana. Again, I do think my deck was better than it should be since the pod was 6 players, and 6 players who weren't taking the best cards. I could talk for hours about signals in draft, or understanding your meta-game in a small setting but its all information you can read on-line told by much better Magic players.

This Saturday I draft M11 again.

Magic: the gathering for beginners

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Mon, 17 May 2010 22:44:00 +0000

Just a little over a year ago, I decided to learn Magic: the Gathering. A collectible card game, in which you collect cards and create decks that are meant to battle other players and their decks. After over 12 months of learning this complicated game I have come to two conclusions: Magic the Gathering is addicting; and Magic the Gathering is expensive.

I started playing the game, trying to spend as little money as possible while giving myself the best chance to win. I spent very little money, and played in Magic the Gathering Online casual rooms to learn all the rules. The amount of things you must learn to simply understand how things work in Magic is a little daunting. You need to know and understand dozens upon dozens of keywords and abilities like haste, vigilance, exalted, flanking, terror, shroud etc. Each keyword has a very different function in the game. Understand and knowing these keywords is extremely important for a beginner.

Art vs Cost
The artwork has drawn me to this game since it first came out while I was in middle school. The cost of the game kept me from playing it for an entire decade, although I was always eager to learn it at some point. Then, during an attempt to create my own card game, at conventions and playtesting groups it become apparent that I needed to know and understand Magic the Gathering, since everyone was comparing my (much more simple) game to Magic the Gathering. I have also spent many days searching for free online CCGs or MMO games to play, and have written about the good ones on this site including Urban Rivals and WarStorm. The funny thing is, both of those games are easily compared to Magic: the Gathering and while fun and much cheaper, just do not have the depth of the game of Magic.

Four Figure Investment
I first of all want you to know, that if you want to learn Magic the Gathering and want to be successful, you will need to invest about $1000 into the game. You can do this begrudgingly (like me) and try to find ways to beat the system or win with the cheap cards (like me), and eventually creep towards the $1000 mark... or you can bite the bullet and enter the game playing with the best cards money can buy. You will immediately have the best tools to work with and be able to learn how to play the most powerful cards. In retrospect, I wish I would have bitten the bullet initially and just purchased all the best cards instead of buying packs and gambling for good cards. In the end, I am still only partially invested in the best cards and am well over the four figure mark. The other thing to note, you never stop paying money (unless you quit) because you need to enter tournaments or buy cards from the newest sets. Wizards of the Coasts (the creators of the game) have a brilliant system set up to negate any staleness with their product by introducing new and better cards multiple times per year. I do want to express the 'investment' phrase in regards to MTG; it truly is an investment to buy cards in Magic, because cards hold their value and can be sold back for a relatively high percentage anytime you want to quit the game. However, damaged cards and unimportant cards are nearly worthless. Meaning, buying packs does not yield a good return on your investment (unless you are lucky), whereas buying powerful cards will have a much better return (sometimes more than you invest). I am no expert in which cards to buy at what time, but there are people who are very knowledgeable at this sort of thing. I feel pretty confident that I could sell my entire collection piece by piece and get about 40% of what I invested (keep in mind I have purchased many low return packs and therefore my percentage is very low). Which means I have about 600 dollars worth of Magic cards that I own.

Friends and Tournament Play
I was terrified to play in tournaments, partially because I did not know the rules very well and partially because I had a terrible no rares deck. I do think tournaments and Friday Night Magic events (weekly events for players to play each other) are a blast, and a great way to use your cards. You could be very happy just buying a few cards and playing with friends over the dinner table. The game is fun enough and accessible enough (in intro packs) that anyone wanting to simply TRY the game can do so for about 20 dollars and even get a few good cards in the deal (probably a 10%-20% return rate, but worth it in order to try the game). The game is fun on so many levels, that you as a playing can determine your own level of involvement. You could plan your weekend around tournaments, read articles daily and play in online PTQs; or you could buy one pack a month from WalMart and play with your college roommate after classes of Fridat afternoon. Either way, there are many ways to enjoy this game.

This is my first real blog about Magic: the Gathering and I hope it may be of some use to new players. I wish I would have recorded more things during my start, and will reference some of my old notes when writing future articles. Basically, I want to help the new player who may or may not be serious about the game, get a head start and learn all the tricks that took me forever to learn. Simply things about the game of Magic that old players forget they even know. If you enjoyed this article, please let me know.

Best free online MMO CCG!

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 02:43:00 +0000

Urban Rivals is the best free massive multi player online (MMO) collectible card game (CCG) I have ever found. Plus, you do not need to download anything to play! You can play from work, from school, from a friends house, all you need is the internet!

Years after I found Urban Rivals, I still play when I find time. I have collected 90% of the cards, which are hilarious by the way, and I still enjoying playing the players. The game is a great mix of strategy and skill, sometimes there is even a little luck thrown in.

It is free to play. You can spend money to buy extra packs, but I only spent a few bucks when I started and have managed to build the rest of my collection by getting my friends to join.

You can use this link to register quickly:
http://www.urban-rivals.com/?sponsor=2113025
It will automatically make me you sponsor and I'll help you progress

In fact, anyone that registers a new account and sends me an e-mail I will send you a free rare card! Just send me a message once you've joined.

You can check my profile here:
http://www.urban-rivals.com/player/?id_player=2113025&sponsor=2113025

Click here if you want to look at the characters:
http://www.urban-rivals.com/characters.php?sponsor=2113025

Diggers Digg my Duggitry

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:38:00 +0000

Billy Vs Matt Round 11 - Sledding Art Battle from Matt Semke on Vimeo.

Trade diggs with me.

digg it here

If you digg mine, I'll digg yours.

blogging for cash

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:24:00 +0000

Twitter is clever.
Blogging can get old.
Making money from my words.
A dream too many have.

When words have over crowded
an internet of no attention spans
so posts turn into poems

making money with blogging
is a fade
that never even existed
like pogs
or slinky dancers

google still pays me
once a year
for old ads on old pages

sadly my blog has no friends
no one clicks on the ads
and the posts are few and far between

never topical
only recycled.

Easiest way to get a hundred twitter friends

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Fri, 15 May 2009 23:18:00 +0000

If you are simply trying to buff up your twitter list, you can use, Xavier media and with their pyramid scheme antics, you cna have a bunch of people getting you twitter friends in no time. I only have 136 so far, but I've only just begun using Xavier.

At first I was trying just to get artists, and people I knew as friends. Since then I've been trying to add everyone, so now I am giving Xavier Media a try. I'll report how well it works. One thing is for sure, if you join right now, it helps me. So....join now.

Give it a try, you can always quit.

For those that read this blog often, you know that I make minimal money with my blog. A little on adsense and a little with Project wonderful. I have given up on all other avenues, because they simply dont work for casual bloggers. They only work for people who blog 100 hours a week. Use adsense and project wonderful or give up your life to blogging. You choose.

Free online fighting game: My Brute

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:22:00 +0000

I just joined after seeing a youtube video, basically making fun of the game. You simply make a character and then pick people to fight. So far it doesnt seem like there is any skill involved.

Here's me: http://williamhessian.mybrute.com

Some of the higher leveled characters seem pretty cool, with neat abilities and pets to help them attack. The game may be very unsophisticated, but its a good way to spend a few minutes each day. I doubt it will hold anyone's attention for too long, but its fun to join and fight.

Free to join MMO game.

www.mybrute.com

I just fell in love with Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:57:00 +0000

I've been trying to link my professional art website with my blogs, both my art blog and my immortality blog. Without either spending a million hours with html and without cluttering up my simple layout. I used twitters widgets and BAM! perfect. I can update my website, and have links to my blog in a hot second by simply posting on twitter.

While twitter's function for drawing people to my websites is only minimal, the ability to use their widgets on my own blogs, on my website and in other places makes it an indespensable tool. The fact that I attempted to try this out, and it took me 5 minutes to get it up and tweeked to perfection is just too darn cool.

You can go see how is worked on my art page: http://williamhessian.com/

You can add me on twitter: http://twitter.com/williamhessian

Entrecard selling out?

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:10:00 +0000

After the inter-fad for blogging traffic, Entrecard, was such a huge success things have drastically slowed down. The infatuation phase was fun for everyone, as we all watched hundreds or thousands of new hits to our blogs (granted, most were quite superficial hits- they were still hits). Entrecard has slowly opted for new features here and there, and we watched as Entrecard's brilliant ideas fades in the wind like every other traffic generating system. It's a brilliant idea, but never built to last. For those bloggers who have stuck with entrecarding this far, now the game has really changed, they are now getting paid advertisers (not blogs) to buy space on our websites. Yes, we can approve and reject these ads, but they are pushing for us to accept, and basically make them money. They are allowing us to BUY these ad spaces- how nice of them. But not offering us very much in return.

Here is a couple of questions and answers I found on the forums:

Am I getting credits or something for accepting these paid ads?

No. We are expecting everyone to do their best to help support Entrecard within their own capabilities. We have decided to leave how you do that up to you, at least initially. We hope that many of you will choose to support Entrecard and the users by supporting this feature, and allowing us to earn money both to pay for hosting and to fund the upcoming CashOut feature.

Why is this even necessary?

In simple terms, Entrecard needs money in order to pay for things like web hosting, development etc. For those who aren't familiar with the industry, things like the Market cost upwards of US$7,000 to put together, and hosting costs are in excess of US$1,000/mn for the systems needed to serve the EC community at this time. It's not cheap. So, to be clear, your free Entrecard account costs Entrecard a fair chunk of money. We've already done some things, such as selling credits, to help balance these costs so we can continue operating. Paid ads is simply another option.

What's this CashOut thing?

CashOut is a feature coming up shortly. It's our carrot to give back to the community for helping support the whole system. In essence, we take 75% of the funds acquired via the paid ads programme, and we put that into a fund that will be used by Entrecard to buy credits from users (if they want to sell) in exchange for US$. This fund is accumulating as we speak, and I hope to have the CashOut user interface complete by this time next week.

Personally, this marks another notch in the road to either selling the company, closing shop, or selling themselves out to porno sites and internet scams. Sad entrecard. I am thinking about removing entrecard from my blogs completely. I barely get any traffic from them anyways. Have you had any luck or misfortune with entrecard lately?

20 thousand twitters followers for free?

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:50:00 +0000

This might be a scam:

http://twitter.xaviermedia.com/t/williamhessian

However, Xavier Media is using a pyramid scheme type system to attract more followers to your own twitter account. I decided to give it a try, and will update my results here in the future. My guess is that it will generate only a handful of followers for me, and basically be useless. However, I am too curious to pass it up.

You can click the link above and try it for yourself, if you need new followers on twitter. Even if you decide not to try it, you can follow me on twitter, and keep up to date with all of my projects; art projects, immortality projects, and much more.

Free followers on twitter is always nice.

The best free no download mmo ccg on the internet

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:11:00 +0000

In the past 6 months I have been finding good and bad MMO (massive mutli online) CCG (collectible card games). I only play free games that have no downloads (because i need to computer space). My favorite has been Urban Rivals which I still play on occasion.

However, a new game has surfaced. It is called Warstorm and is a brilliantly designed game. Be forwarned, it is basically a deck building game and does not required much of you each game. Actually all you do is sit back and watch the outcome. However, the missions and ladder battles are very compelling. You are awarded pack after pack for completing certain achievements and you can then change and upgrade your armies accordingly.

I played for a week and had to try investing money to see new cards. I have been loving it so far, and just joined leagues. However, there are many players who play solely without paying a cent and simply spend lots of time selling, trading and using the marketplace. I would compare this online game to Magic: the Gathering, only a lot less complicated. I still really enjoy Urban Rivals which is a brilliant online CCG but Warstorm is my new favorite.

If you are interested in online card games, try them both and let me know what you think.

The easiest way for a new blogger to make money

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:21:00 +0000

google adsense is easy, project wonderful is also easy, scroll through my previous posts for info about both of those revenue earning products. However, the easiest way to make money from blogging is by using pay per post:

I admit that it can be tricky to get your blog accepted, you need 10 posts per month, and each post needs to consist of a certain number of words, and original content to be accepted. Although, all those guidelines actually help to make your blog better in the first place. Secondly, you then get to start writing blogs about various topics for money. The more popular your blog is, the more opportunities you will receive. The higher your search rank, the more expensive offers will become available to you. I have a Real Rank of 3 now, which allows me to browse approximately 50 offers ranging from $1.50 to $8.00 per post. Post typically ask for a review of their product within your post, and one link. I choose only things I am interested in, however if I got creative I could easily write about any of the topics, and you can do multiple in one day. I've already earned over 40 dollars so far, and I've only done 4 posts, you get an extra 20 dollar bonus for writing your first post.

Needless to say, Pay Per Post is pretty awesome. If you have the time and the right blog, you could accept every opportunity each day and make a bundle each day. Top earners can earn over $100 per day! Join the site and look around, see if your blog gets accepted and then start blogging..... for cash.

Still the best free online web based MMO CCG with no dowloads

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:57:00 +0000

It's still Urban Rivals. Massive multi player collectible card that is completely free. Plus no downloads, the cards are hilarious and its a fun strategy game. You can buy credits if you want, if you are impatient and want really good cards right away. However, I did not spend any money my first 30 days and was loving the game.

After 30 days I did spend 5 dollars to test out how hard or easy it was to buy credits, and it was quite easy. I probably should buy more credits simply because I've had hours and hours of enjoyment from the game.

You can use this link to register quickly:
http://www.urban-rivals.com/?sponsor=2113025
It will automatically make me you sponsor and I'll help you progress

You can get free cards and play your first game in a matter of minutes.

Another great thing about the game is the referral system. For instance, if anyone joins under you and spends any money in the shop, you get a 10% in credits to buy more in-game packs. I have managed to attract 72 sponsorees to the game which has given me 1410 credits. Buying this many credits in the store would cost me approximately $65. Free credits in Urban Rivals! The sponsor system basically gives me free money to buy new cards!

If you havnt tried the game, give it a shot, and if you hate it, quit right away. If you like it, stick around and play some more. The tourneys are every other hour, and they are a blast. I'd be glad to help any newcomer.

Give Urban Rivals, the greatest free online MMO CCG with no downloads, a try today!

Blogger interviw on podcast

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:05:00 +0000

You can hear a 38 minute interview with me on Vox Pod.

Rick, the inventor of Vox Pod is dedicated to interview artists around the world, calling Vox Pod a "free voice for free minds". After finding my website through craigslist, Rick asked me to be the first artist interviewed for his new podcast. I was honored and happy to oblige. I sat down a few days ago at a local coffee shop, started up Skype, and had a very exciting interview with Rick.

I am subscribing to his podcast to hear who he interviews next. I have a feeling, based on the great questions he asked me, that he is going to have a great cast of artists and be a source of great information.

If you have a little time please check out the interview. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

My Vox Pod Interview

Problems logging into feedburner

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:11:00 +0000

Am i the only one having problems logging into feedburner? I spent a month trying to figure out what was wrong. My password never matched, and I had to continuously reset my password over and over. Then all of a sudden.... it logged on.

This was great, because all of my blogs use feedburner for their RSS feeds. I have never been able to get in and manage my blogs, with the log in problems, so I never had the chance to really give any feedback on my opinions of feedburner.

After a few days of playing around, now that I can get in, I love feedburner. I would suggest it to any blogger, and with the e-mail subscription option, which I just enabled on my art blog and my immortality blog, its like having a newsletter service....for free! I have been spending hours researching newsletter services, trying to pick out the best ones for my art website. Newsletter services tend to be quite expensive (a yearly fee), difficult to set up, and often hard to regulate. By simply turning my blog into an e-mail subscription people can easily subscribe and all the work is already done for me.

Feedburner also lets you manage your subscriptions and easily change other settings to determine when your updates are e-mailed, how often, and in what form. Feedburner is chalked full of a number of other great additions to any blog. It is truly exciting. Now I just have to get my readers to sign up.

The best blogging advice ever

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:13:00 +0000

I've been a blogger for over a year now. In fact, its almost two. As scary as that is, I am very happy with what blogging has taught me. It taught me about business, advertising, writing, promoting, networking, computers and the internet. I even made a few dollars along the way. Now that I can look back at my blogging adventures, I can tell you the best advice a blogger can give:

Do not blog for the money.

It can be a painful and sad road if you are blogging only to make some extra cash. I spent hours in the first few months of blogging doing anything and everything to gain readers, publicize and sell advertising. In the end, when the dust settled, the blogging research I did to try to make lots of money really became second hand to the joy and fun of writing about something you love or are passionate about.

I would say 99% of the blogs about blogging sites out there are failures that do not make more than 20 dollars a year selling ad space. If you aren't careful, you'll be next. Just browse entrecard in blogging resources or marketing, there are 10 bad unkept sites to every good one. The key to being one of the good ones is to commit yourself to writing great posts for at least 12 months. Never let up, and make sure to promote the heck out of yourself, either by purchasing ad space or by using a multitude of free blog marketing tools like entrecard, feedburner, blog catalog, mybloglog and many others. Find communities of potential readers and find out what they read, and then write some good stuff, and ask them to come read your work. Soon enough, if your product is good, people will come and you will have a readership and once you have readership you can start earning a little money with your blog.

I spent so much time watching and keeping detailed notes of my adsense and project wonderful numbers, counting the pennies each day. Trying to determine what posts sparked the most clicks on advertisements and what posts were duds. This study was what we call, "a waste of time". It just distracted me from writing more blogs,and focusing on good content and not simply following patterns that work.

Feel free to blog some of my older posts, which have been a big help to many bloggers before you. I hope you enjoy.

Blog Rush is dead!

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:30:00 +0000

I just got an email stating that Blog Rush is shutting down. This was forseen months ago by many when blogrush's results were less than favorable. When I first signed up, I enjoyed clicking on other's blogs but soon became disinterested when I saw the same blog popping up and never felt I was getting much traffic from the widget.

At times I would get a good deal of impressions, where my blog title would appear on a widget on someone elses' blog, but very rarely did that result in actual traffic to my blog post. Granted, I feel entrecard's numbers are going similarly in that direction. This culture of widgets and traffic increasing programs never seem to last the test of time. Like the economy, it all looks good for a while, until it pops and then thins are never the same. I consider Blog Rush to be yet another short lived blog traffic fad. I actually really enjoy the concept of Blog Rush, and also enjoyed the layout and how it worked. It just simply was not successful at bringing new readers to a blog at a consistent rate. I could go a weeks with three blogs not getting one or two hits.

I never gave up with the widget, because I enjoyed having random outbound links to other topic related blog posts. It was kinda neat, even if it was failing.

Goodbye Blog Rush. You tried. And now you died.

100 bucks from google

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 05:42:00 +0000

This was a hard earned check. It took about 10 months to earn this money, I had to build 4 blogs, post about 100 blogs, and advertise myself all over the internet. I am very glad to finally cash a check (since you do not get a check until you have earned over 100 dollars with google adsense).

I wanted to post and prove it. Blogging can earn you real money, it just takes a ridiculous amount of time and effort. Needless to say, its a busy time, and blogging is tough (just see my last post for proof) but in the end, the blogs that I really enjoy doing are much easier to consistently update.

My fascination with the blogging culture has begun to die. I find too many people are blogging, and too many people are not caring, and I think its time to find something new.

No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger

noreply@blogger.com (williamhessian) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 05:40:00 +0000

No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger.No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger.No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger.No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger.No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger.

Blogging in a bad economy, having to get extra jobs and find new ways to eat and get to work, means my blogging on blogblogcherry is lacking!

No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger.No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger.No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger.No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger.No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger.No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger.No money and no time makes Jack a bad blogger.