Ultimate Life Counter of Dooooom!

By Wizards of the Coast & Alliance Game Distributors

The Life of Game

Gamer Bling has mentioned before, and will doubtless mention again that Michael Webb is one of the greatest people in gaming, largely because of Mr. Webb’s opinion that Gamer Bling is an essential part of his marketing plan.

Recent events notwithstanding. Which recent events are as follows:

At Gen Con Indy 2008, he promised Gamer Bling some really nifty new excessories to review and gawk at and gloat over and flaunt and what have you. Because he knows that Gamer Bling will so embarrass himself in public with new gizmos that the events will go viral and draw ever more attention to Alliance Game Distributors in general and Gamer Bling’s patheticness (patheticocity? patheticization? patheticificity?) in specific.

That was August 15, 2008, give or take a day. Around lunchtime, give or take an hour. Which lunch Gamer Bling was having with Jim Bishop, who enjoys a great advantage over Gamer Bling inasmuch as he (a) works for Turbine, and (b) is employed. But Gamer Bling has a hotter wife than Jim does. Which, if you know Jim Bishop, and everyone should, because he’s almost but not quite as cool as Michael Webb, who gives Gamer Bling free stuff, is a pretty easy thing for Gamer Bling to say. Not necessarily to type, because parsing that last sentence is a bear, although Gamer Bling believes it is in fact punctuated correctly punctuated.

Fast forward to 18 December 2008. Suddenly Gamer Bling realizes what the nagging void in his heart is: he still doesn’t have a job new bling from Alliance!

He dashes off a quick email: “So where’s the cool Magic life counter thing?”

Unfortunately, he accidentally sends a copy to the Secret Service, who sends someone to bust him for drug use. He is only saved by the prompt reply from Your Hero and Mine, whose email reply begins, “Ummm…”

That’s a direct quote.

Now, when they are successful, printing trading-card games is actually more efficient than printing money. When they are unsuccessful, printing trading-card games is actually less efficient than flushing your cash down the loo, and that’s saying something.

So one can imagine that the bling available for TCGs is already pretty good. In fact, TCGs were printed full-color from the get-go in 1993, while Castle Falkenstein, released in 1994, raised the RPG bar by having roughly half its pages printed in color. These days, full-color illustrated metal deck boxes are commonplace; full-cover metal slipcase RPG books are not. Artsy foil and branded card sleeves are de rigueur, which does not mean that they are stiffening up after death. That’s rigor mortis. Gamer Bling does not blame you if you were unaware of that; for many long years he thought Manual Labor was the President of Mexico. (Cue rimshot.)

So with metal deck boxes and foily sleeves and embroidered shirts and life counters of more types than you can shake a stick at (and if you shake a stick at all of them, you will have a tired arm, but at least the TCG guys will stay away from you), what does it take to be truly considered TCG bling?

Two words: Alliance.

Okay, that’s one word.

Or maybe two, if you consider that Michael Webb is Gamer Bling’s ally and he gets antsy in anticipation of sending out new bling, so you have ally+ants.

All right, Gamer Bling will quit now. Even he thinks that last joke was lame; he will not subject it to the Official Companion Eyeroll test, which would doubtless be large and centrifugal enough to reverse the rotation of the Earth.

Regardless, just in time for the 15th Anniversary of Magic: The Gathering, Alliance teamed up with WotC to create the Ultimate Life Counters of Dooooom!

Now the 15th Anniversary is supposed to be the crystal anniversary according to tradition. Nowadays the gift schedule has been ramped up so people can hit their silver and gold anniversary before they get divorced, and if the trend continues, soon they’ll be celebrating their golden anniversary before the grubs kids graduate from high school. Be that as it may, the oxymoronic “modern tradition” holds that the 15th anniversary is the watch anniversary. Like a nice gold watch, you know?

Crystal for the traditionalist (which gift-givers prefer) and watch for the modern (i.e., the recipients’ preference). Neither of which correspond to plastic, which is what Alliance gives us.

But that’s okay. Because this is Alliance we’re talking about, after all.

The 15th Anniversary set of Magic was the Shards of Alara set, which released October 3rd (which, for those of you paying attention is still some twelve weeks before Gamer Bling finally got his set, which is number 099 out of 250, for those keeping track).

Now, in Magic, “life” is a player’s vitality. In a desperate attempt to get some RPG references into this blog post, Gamer Bling will point out that they act much like hit points in most role-playing games; you don’t care how many you have until that number threatens to hit zero. Yes, you can be involved in an epic battle with a tribe of fire-breathing flying kobold sorcerer rogues, and be suffering from arrows, slings, nasty words, a couple of short swords in your kidneys, and even a critical hit with a lance right through your head, but if your hit point total is still one or greater, then you can fight every bit as well as someone fresh out of pre-game warm-ups.

In Magic, “life” is also what a player’s parents append to the phrase “Get a…” but that’s a different story.

So tracking life is important; you need to know how far you are from losing, and how close your opponent is to losing. In fact, that and a couple of cards in your hand is pretty much all you need, so when you bling, you need to bling hard. Because, unlike RPGers, you can’t have leather-bound books and castleriffic DM screens and laser-etched dice and chainmaille dice bags and magnetic markers and character portraits and miniature dungeons with real treasure and flowing water and your hamster acting as the unstoppable land leviathan.

Thank goodness for Alliance then.

These life counters come in a set of five, one for each color. They were made available to select retail stores that preordered 3 or more cases of Shards for an SMRP of $5171.04. Because those four cents matter.

Each Ultimate Life Counter of Dooooom! has several layers of gears, most of which are sadly ornamental and do not control life, the universe, and everything even if they are cast in translucent plastic. The center is dominated by a wonderful Magic 15th Anniversary logo flanked by two mana symbols, all printed black on… wait for it… silver foil. Which is smooth and mirrorlike enough that Gamer Bling can see his gloating mug in it.

At each end of the Ultimate Life Counter of Dooooom! are an arrow and a pair of partial gears, one large one covering some 175° of arc, and smaller one covering roughly 80°. The teeth of these partial gears are emblazoned with numbers, allowing users to track life totals from 00 (aka “I WIN!”) to 49. You have to use tokens or something once you break that glass ceiling at 50 life. Or else you forfeit the game for being a wanker.

Since there are five colors of Magic (colorless not counting) and Gamer Bling has five of these Ultimate Life Counters of Dooooom!, one might surmise that there is, in fact, one counter for each color. And one would be right. But it still avails Gamer Bling of the chance to create a gratuitous table.

Mana	Plastic Colors	Mana Symbol	Numerals In
Black	dark gray	Goth skull	whitish
Blue	blue	Emo teardrop	whitish
Green	green	Carbon-offset tree	whitish
Red	red	Tribal Tattoo fireball	whitish
White	alabaster	Multiculturalist sun with the eight solar rays of chaos pointing in different directions	black

Fully extended, these beauties measure 8” long and 4” wide, which is way bigger than your standard 62mm by 88mm Magic card. This means that these life counters are almost as valuable for intimidating bling factor as rare cards such as Black Lotus (which Gamer Bling does not have one of) and Fraternal Exaltation (which he does).

Weak Points

They don’t fit in your deck box.

They don’t fit in your card box.

You probably don’t have one.

If you do have one, you have to pay for bodyguards to keep you safe from other stick-waving TCGers.

And, most heinously, it took Gamer Bling many blingless months to get his set.

The Bottom Line

Wow. These are awesome, and well deserving of the Dooooom! appellation. Easy to use, with smooth engineering courtesy of Gale Force 9, these are the accurized Barrett sniper rifles of the TCG world.

Gamer Bling is sorely tempted to put them up on eBay to see what they’re worth, except that he would then have to sell them.

But for sheer bling factor, Gamer Bling will use one of these to track his hit points at the next D&D game… and the other side to keep a running total of damage inflicted! Bwah hah hah hah hah!

Summary

Bling Factor: 10
Quality: 10
Utility: 9
Price: Free with a big fat preorder.
You need: Yes.

E-tail

Yeah, right. The only etail happening here is called eBay.

The Future

There is still time! It turns out that Alliance has some sets left, and they will be made available with the release of Conflux (scheduled for 6 February 2009)!

Beyond the release of Conflux, Gamer Bling has no clue. But he has started salivating. It has become a Pavlovian response to receiving email from Michael Webb.