After my last news post, I got a ton of Hearthstone advice. Lots of it was about card strategies, but one piece of advice changed the game for me. One reader sent me an email saying that he assumed I was playing casual, and that was part of my problem. He says all the hardcore players are afraid of losing stars in ranked games, so when they want to play a new deck, they go to casual. It ends up making casual play a place for these monsters to try out their crazy deck creations. He told me to play ranked instead, and I am having a great time. He explained in his mail that when you play ranked you start out at level 25, and as you win games, you work your way up through the ranks. You end up advancing pretty quick until you sort of level out and end up playing folks of about your same skill level.

I've been playing a few hours of Hearthstone every day of my vacation. During the day while the kids are playing in the sand or after they go to bed while I'm out on the porch. The soothing sound of the ocean waves is the only thing that has kept me from snapping the iPad in half and tossing it into the water.

The Night Of A Thousand Hours: Wayrest Chapel

The Night Of A Thousand Hours: Escape

The Night Of A Thousand Hours: The Mermaid Incident

This is sort of strange for me. I've never done anything like an actual commercial before. I mean, I've drawn comics for companies which are essentially commercials, but I've never appeared in one myself. Everyone knows I'm a huge fan of the Surface though, and I really like all the folks over on the Surface team at MS. When they asked me to appear in a video, I said hell yeah.

The Night Of A Thousand Hours: Introduction

We missed Annarchy, and we wondered who she was hanging out with these days, so we thought we'd find out.

I have been around long enough to have been through several iterations of the "how wil webcomix make moneee" wars, and Kickstarter turned out to be one of the ways. Fronting the costs for a full print run is no joke, and one of Kickstarters many heads is that of the Social Media Powered Pre-order Engine. If you are a native creature of the web, it can help you transmute that work into an object.

National Tabletop Day was a blast. Kiko took some great photos of the event.

I had some requests for a version of today's comic minus the text. I'm happy to deliver.

There was a period of time in which I attended so many weddings that I had to struggle to remain in the moment at them. I have this problem anyway, my head is like a balloon with only the suggestion of a tether to the neck. Eventually, as I suggested at the time, I couldn't see individuals at these things. Every time the ritual was performed, and performed hence, I only see the underlying interplay of immortal symbols.

Tomorrow is National Tabletop Day and we will be celebrating down at Card Kingdom all day. We’ll have a few tables and some GM’s running Thornwatch for folks. Sign ups will be handled on a first-come, first-served basis. So come down early and get yourself signed up.

Gabriel is fairly aggressive in his gleaning of the iOS App Store, in a way I never was. He'd been using a Windows Phone so long that when he switched back, he was parched. I didn't know that the store updated on Thursdays until he told me. It's been fun, though, because where typically I have to present him with things for him to dismiss with maximal cruelty, being in the "exhausted, begone" position myself is Goddamned fantastic.

Last time I talked about Pinny Arcade pins at PAX East I mentioned there were a few more that I couldn't talk about. Well I can talk about them now!

I’ve probably put more hours into Fairway solitaire than any other game. It has always just sort of filled in the cracks of my life. Waiting for a match to start or a level to load in another game? I can get a couple turns in on Fairway Solitaire. Bored while sitting at the doctors office or waiting for a movie to start? Fairway Solitaire is the answer. Well after years of playing the first one, Fairway Solitaire Blast has finally come out! It's free and you can grab it for iOS or get it on Android right now.