Rainbow Angels Attack!

OK - a very short write up of our latest casual games day at Digital Dragons in Lichfield.  Only 6 players, which was less than I'd hoped for and kept us at three rounds plus possible play off action (which was cancelled - see later).

Round 1 was me Vs Paul the shop owner and was a fairly lacklustre affair seeing me loose out as I didn't really see the right parts of the angel deck.  Playing the shop owner while customers are about is always dangerous (but means we have a 'floater' that can jump in to make even numbers and is better than a bye).  We mostly talked toot about the events and the cards we had.  Due to retail happenings I conceded as time was called.  Then I spent a good 30 mins hovering over the one remaining game that was still on it's game 1.  It seems the elves had spawned all their mana producers and Birthing Pod couldn't break through!  Eventually (ironically as I put them on turns) Pod missed a combat trick and Elves found their Ezuri to break through for the win.

Round 2 saw me against the Birthing Pod.  I expected to loose badly to this Event Deck++ after stalling in round 1, but I seemed to nail the starting hand with a mix of lands and a few angels for when I got there.  And then I got to reveal the secret reason for wanting to play my Angels - the oversized promo cards!

Hooray - Sigarda, Host of Herons hits the board and grows too!  As the keen player may have spotted my opponent is a little mana screwed here.  Infact the only play he did have was a turn 4 Skinrender whose only legal target was itself! (oops) This was a far cry from both of our last games and didn't really show off the cards I'd suggested for the pod deck so we rushed to game two.

This happened in game two - double mythic promo angelic action!  I started with Giesela in hand and Double Abundant growth followed by Scroll of Avacyn was ripping through my deck to find what I needed to get her into play.  The pod was racing me handily, but doom-bladed my life linker angel on the turn before I dropped the Blade of Goldenight teaching the important lesson to wait with your instants!  My pod buddy was very nice about the 20 in the air that ensued, but we didn't get chance for a game 3 as the Elves had caused a massive rout on the other table lining them up to fight the mono white humans deck that one of the local players had got.

My game 3 was another slow affair against the other local player with his white Angels & Humans deck - we were both grinding out and playing similar cards (I did loose my Bruna, Light of Alabaster a little too hastily to try to trade) until the White Mikeaus started to get going.  This caused me to loose very slowly indeed as I found all my mana guys and BOTH birds of Paradise that I put in to ease the lack of white that side-boarding all the dual lands caused.  After many turns of not doing much he finally got big enough to be close -then silent departured all my guys - nooooo!  That was a 1-0 loss that put me at the bottom of the standings, but with a big smile on my face.

During the last round a family came in with two small boys and after sheepishly watching a few games decided to make their first ever Magic purchase in the Venser Vs Koth Duel decks (that I'd been tempted to pick up earlier but resisted due to all the Planechase goodies).  This was during my match so out of respect I didn't leave it to go and advise.  They did pop back in later to complete the purchase and pick up boxes and sleeves too - so I rushed over and found them some of the promo cards from the Gateway things we had so they had a Gather The Townsfolk and a Nearheath Stalker to add to their collections.  I had a flick through my trades folder to see if there was anything else suitable (idiotically forgetting about all the Avacyn commons I'd dumped in the store collection earlier) but decided not to confuse things.  While the Duel Deck would not have been my choice for two young players I think that the balance and flashiness of it all was what attracted them to it.  I offered to help them if they ever came to one of the store events in future.

Elves smashed the humans in the last round, and in the standings this meant that Elves were top just above the Humans so it seemed silly to have a play off and we moved all the tables and had a massive 6 player game of Zombie Fluxx instead with some of the YuGiOh Players joining in while the shop was cashed up.

Another great day had by all with more to come soon in June!

Playing Fair

Sometimes in Magic: The Gathering (as well as in real life) it's hard to play fair.  This isn't due to pre-ordained cheating strategies or even 'forgetting' to activate triggers but due to things that occur outside the game.

This realisation came after organising the first real sanctioned tournament at Digital Dragons in Lichfield and coming away the winner - with a deck I'd designed to either win fast or loose fast.  It turns out that just having a good card pool to pull from and throwing together a green and white humans deck made almost entirely out of promotional rares can do quite a lot!  The deck was essentially Fateful hour based which meant that it punished the other player a little too much and wasn't all that fun.

In the run up to the second 'big' tournament (we schedule casual events frequently when there happen to be games in store) I decided to make a deck that was competitive but would be fun to loose to, and hopefully fun to beat.

Here is my basic mana curve:

As you can see (if you tilt your head) this is all the Angel creature cards from Innistrad block. And the 1 M12 Angel too. And Angelic Wall as I figured it was lonely.  There are some very overpowered (in terms of the players that may turn up's collections) cards here in the 5 AVR Mythic Rares, but this time they are singletons. No more will they have to battle through multiple copies of the same depressing Humans - now there are Singleton Angels to have to read - if I can race up the mana curve.  I figured that this strategy will give me a lot of variability, while also allowing me to try out the new cards in a fun setting.

Last time I put up all the prizes and intend to do the same again - I skipped myself and started the prizes at 2nd and 3rd place.  This means I'm not too worried if I do happen to win, but I am worried that the less experienced players won't have as much fun.  This is reflected in my support cards.

I've put in Borderland Ranger instead of Scorned Villager, but kept the Avacyn's Pilgrims.

I've dropped Ponder entirely and reduced Gitaxian Probe to a two of in favour  of Fleeting Distraction (it has little fairies in the art to help with the theme).

I am playing 4 Seraph's Sanctuary and 4 Scroll of Avacyn.  I'm also starting with all basic lands, with the 9 dual lands hiding in my sideboard for when I face the couple of experienced players that will be going.

I also have a few more tricks that should help the deck plough through it's cards in search of it's 18 Angels and help with the multicolour deck.  I will post back a report next week.

TO be...

I am now officially a Tournament Organiser for Digital Dragons (and have figured out phone blogging)!

This means I can set up events and keep an eye on things from home which will be a lot more convenient , if less sociable.

Yesterday we did a mini casual event of mini masters using my boosters I'd just bought. Good fun all round. I now have three Moonsilver Spears which I think will turn out I be much more
Important than people currently realise...

Off to a launch event this morning, but the store seems to be closed still. We will see...

#ccLich - Our Casual Magic day at Digital Dragons

Today was the first, real, proper Magic event with outside players at Digital Dragons in Lichfield as organised by me, Paul the shop owner and a mutual friend Tom who hooked us up.  We'd done a little bit of promotion and ended up having two spontaneous practice days (where I was in store and so we did mini events) so knew what we were in for.

I got there a bit early to teach Tom how to play his new event deck, and got chatting to a few of the local players.  When it came time to start we had 7 people present so the store owner Paul agreed to play single round games and to join in - I lent him a Standard legal zombie deck that was a bit basic but fun.  After poking about at the odd Wizards tool for starting games we were ready a bit later than planned.

As I was the most experienced player I'd built a white + green splash humans & angels deck out of all the White promo cards I'd collected but never even played.  I expected it to be solid and easy to play against, and this turned out to be true but it was better than I'd predicted.

Round one seemed to pit experience against rookies in every pairing so almost became a teaching round where people were figuring out their cards.  Round two I got paired against Tom as we'd both won in Round 1 and we played a massive long drawn out single game that went on for about an hour due to my lack of lands which kept getting blown up (we decided timers would be a bad idea as we had plenty of time for the 3 rounds) and was only won by me as he didn't spot he could have used birthing pod to fetch a blocker.  As he'd already fetched out most of his creatures there were only a few mana point values he could hit!

Best interaction saw me with Gideon PW (a singleton - forces his guys to attack), Gideon's Avenger (he taps, I get +1/+1) and Norn's Annex (he has to pay 2 life for each attacking creature).  This would have been a game ender after only 15 or so mins, but in our practice game I taught him to pod a 2 drop into the corrupter to destroy the Annex.  The Avenger got huge and was what won the game, but my unexpected combo would have seen him loose 12 life per turn so was neatly avoided.

Final round saw me play local player Vicky with her so far undefeated monsters deck. Having both Vampires and Zombies and a few black spirits I wasn't sure what to expect.  Game 1 had me being beaten down in the air by the Aristocrat over two turns while I had 5 human tokens and 1 Avacyn's Pilgrim and the Doomsayer (tap to get a human). She took me to three life and would kill me in the next turn.  My human deck was built around fateful hour mechanics and luckily the Doomsayer added +2/+2 to all creatures on my team giving me an attack of 20 against a fully tapped out opponent.  It was a quick and sneaky win which I felt a bit bad for.

Game 2 was more even until I hit my 6 drop - an enchantment that gave all creatures double strike and lifelink.  I'd not expected to manage to get to 6 so this was a cool bonus.  Two turns later it was all over and as we were not doing playoffs I'd won the tournament!

I took a comfort break, and played another of the local players Chris with my back-up deck (was 1-1) while the 3rd 4th place match was finished and won by Vicky's brother Rob (also a friend of mine) and had the idea to buy a booster for the top three players out of my own funds to reward their turnout (the tournament was free entry to encourage more players which almost didn't work!).  All packs had good card in and karma rewarded me with my 2nd Drogskol Reaver which will be fun to build around.

As every player bought at least one booster I think an entry fee + prize pack would be a safe option for the next event (last Sat of every month until we get tired of it is the plan!).  Hopefully we can mimic The Road To WPN and get Core status just like internet hero and general nice guy Don did!

Afterwards some of us went back to Robs to gaze at his fish and talk toot and play a 3 player card game that was more about the tea and chat than the game.  A pretty good Saturday all in all!

Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 Downloadable Deck Packs Deck Lists

http://www.wizards.com/magic/digital/duelsoftheplaneswalkers.aspx?x=mtg/digital/d12/decks

Wizards have quietly been releasing two decks every two months for Planeswalkers while I've been busy with FNM and real life and I thought it may be useful to share the links to the full deck lists here.

They are theme decks and seem to be quite popular (especially the Knights one which currently seems a little more powerful than the rest).  The names are March to War (White Red), Ghoulkeeper (Black grave returns), Forest's Fury (Treefolk tribal in Green), Dark Heavens (Black & White and similar to a DKA intro deck), Beknighted (White Knights), and Trinity of Elements (Riku of Two Reflections Blue Green Red).

Hopefully DLC 2 for the Dark Ascension paper block will be announced this week - i'm expecting it to come out after the launch of the block but to contain more cards from it because of this.  I don't think Wizards were keen that we knew a bunch of cards before they released the info due to people peeking into the game files!


Speaking of Ascension we've been playing that in the house almost as much as Magic: The Gathering so I may do a quick write up of that one of the days...

Innistrad Prerelease, Launch and Launch

Just a quick note about these!  I went to the £25 66 person Pre-release, an 17 person draft (my first ever) launch in which I only had to pay £10 entry to get the promo (which is pretty good) and then the £25 launch in Stafford where there were about 28 people.

I didn't do amazingly in any of them (in fact I did best in the draft, but still wasn't top half) but I did have a lot of fun and got some great cards.  Thinking of scaling back for the next set - but I still got a booster box to crack.  I am in possession of 67 unopened booster packs counting the 2012 ones we haven't played with yet!

Friday Night Magic 6 - Leaving Zendikar

Pre-release, launch & life have all been busy.

Almost 2 weeks ago I took my favourite deck The Black Deck in it's newly streamlined form as Phyrexian Suicide Cult out to FNM to see if it could do better than in my very first FNM now I knew what was going on.  Essentially it did really well - I came 2nd, but lost to the same guy I lost to in round 3.  Black sacrifice decks don't do well against decks full of cheap creatures, and certainly not one full of exile enchantments!  The player was easily the most experienced person there and while it was a borrowed deck he'd made it a lot more consistant than the owner had & didn't drop a game all night.

The 'quarter finals' against my friends illusions deck was very close - I'm not sure what happened int he end, but I think I utility milled him by surgically extracting Ponder and then removing all his decent sized creatures with Life's Finale straight from the deck.  This may be a direction to move in now that there won't be as many double use creatures around.  I chose Pathrazer of Ulamog DCI promo as my free card to celebrate rotation.

I was happy with the decks performance and it could retire in style and I could potter off to the following day's Pre-release happy.