Friday Night Magic 4 - Beware the Trees...

Bit belated this one.  Couldn't Tweet due to balancing the arrival of a friend to his first ever FNM (and getting on the right bus int he wrong direction to miss two rounds), and forgot to write up.

I thought that this one was a bit of a bust - the deck seemed to take ages to get anywhere and struggled to find answers to other people's win conditions.  I was playing Blue Green Landfall and had up to 30 mana on some turns due to 2x Vorinclex but failed to put enough X cost cards in to utilise it.

Round 1 was against good friend @Disknoir 's Blue 'stall then play Stormtide' deck which would be fantastic if everyone wasn't playing burn and removal spells.  I cocked up my landfall and lost my only decent flier by adding +2/+2 instead of +4/+4 and couldn't fly over the stormtide after this.  Due to time this was a draw in the end, but I bet I could have won game 3 due to knowing what I needed to keep back to beat the stormtide.

Round 2 was against a BladeHold deck I really couldn't beat once it got going.  I had to go collect my visitor during this game too so was a bit distracted - 2-0 to him.

Round 3 was against elves, and while game 1 took ages due to me not finding good damage producers game 2 was a walkover with the fab Hydra getting into 3 digit tokens again (it had in round 1 but been unable to attack).

Round 4 was unfortunately against my invited friend! It was fun to play, but as we'd been playing this same match-up the night before it felt like we'd been robbed of another contest.  i won 2-1 due to a slip up in round 2 on my part where I hadn't taken the lifelink into account.

I came top half and gave my friend the promo card - he'd earned it!

If I'd conceded faster in Round 1 game 1 we might have made it to the 3rd game and I could have come top 4.  As my Rd 2 opponed pointed out I needed to put BEast within in the deck and I realised after that adding 4 cards for red X cost spells would make the deck much more powerful.  After rotation I will run this deck again - but without landfall can a landfetch deck really be that good? It'll be fun to find out.

Also - here is my Planeswalker Points link!

Friday Night Magic 3 - Loss Adjustment

This week's was a four round affair where I took a Red/Black/Blue deck manipulation 75 card affair that I'd built the previous week while quite ill.  It didn't do very well.  The theme was 'make Time Reversal playable' This card is a Mythic Rare from the Magic 2012 set that is lower in value than most of the normal Rares.  Ponder - a common card - tends to sell for more.  I figured a way that you could kill people with it and went to work.

Round 1 - Red/Black Burn & vampires beat me 2:0

Round 2 - Elves beat me 2:0 (I think this was the same borrowed elves as a previous week being played by a different person)

Round 3 - Illusions beat me 2:0

Round 4 - A different Elves beat me 2:1.  Yes - I won the penultimate game of the night.

After the Illusions battle I spread out my cards and found I'd only left 4 Red spells in and still got lots of mana (basic and non basic) for them.  I took those out and fixed the lands and it ran a lot more smoothly.  Still very clunky and requiring longer games to win with not much in the way of stalling tactics (Spellskite as a star blocker?!) I managed to sneak out a Psychosis Crawler with a Time reversal in hand and played it for the win (when I draw a card Psychosis Crawler does one damage to target player - Time Reversal makes us both dump hands and draw 7) - goal!!achieved!!

Sure I had to loose 8 (plus two extra matches I played to see what happened) to get 1 win, but I've figured out the key parts of the process now.  I loved having Psychic surgery in the deck, but exiling cards only gets you so far - and the idea isn't really to let the opponent live to use their 7 cards.

On to next week where I'm looking after new players so will play a more traditional deck.

Friday Night Magic 2: The Infect Deck

So - Two friday night Magic's down.

Game 1: Played a 17 year old lady who had only bought her deck that day and hadn't really had chance to play with it (it was the empires Intro deck).  I won 2:0 but spent lots of time on education.

Game 2: Won the first round, but lost twice to terrible short mana.  The deck was mostly the bloodthirst Intro deck with some cool twists - this guy came 3rd/4th.

Game 3: This was Vs the combo deck from last week & I lost the first one then won a turn 2 super infect and drawn out regular infect. 2:1 and 2:1 overall.

Game 4: Played against the same deck as game 1 but with massive modification. I won a fast game 1, lost to empires in 2 and won on turn 3 in the final game.  3:1 and into the top 4 (woo!)

I chose Auramancer foil as my promo and gave it imediadly to a friend.

Game 5: Against the organiser again!! To revenge last weeks loss I won two straight games with infect to grab a Tormented Soul promo for myself.  Super Woo!

Game 6 - the Final.  We relaly only had time to play one fast game and after Mulliganing to 5 I still had nothing and had elected to play.  CAW living weapon made short work of me.  2nd is still amazing though.

Deck was
4x Titanic Growth
4x Giant Growth
4x Groundswell
4x Mutagenic Growth
as the engine

4x Glistner Elves
4x Phyrexian Myr

as the courier

with plenty of other evil tech to help such as the infect spider and corpse cur to pull it back.

Next week I'm thinking blue.  Maybe...

I got another Pharoh in the booster which is amazing for the black deck.

My First Friday Night Magic

Wasn't expecting much in the way of victories expecting all to be running tournament level stuff.  Turns out it was all friendly and similar to our own little game group. I'll happily go again next week.  Here are the Tweets from the evening.

I'm at my first #fnm about to get my ass handed to me by teenagers.


most have yugi out which is apparently sick... Not sure on numbers yet.


I see two black and red, and one illusions and lots of yugi. Nothing happening yet. Not sure what's happening!


Not sure what the kids in this internet cafe are playing but I want a go.  (Turns out it was League of Legends - looks good).


If you rush down you'd be top 8 and fifty fifty on a promo card. Thinking max 9 players. Non of the yugi lot are playing!


Game 1 against organiser. Close loss, fast win, close loss. Really fun final game, many creatures eaten. #fnm (I think I should have actually won the last game as I forgot to resurrect Vengeful Pharoh for free - killing his creature in process - winning this would have changed the whole evening :( )


Game 2, good player with odd, borrowed elves. Won two. Once I had control it was straight forward. #fnm (Turns out this guy had 4 Planeswalkers which never saw the board!)


Game 3: Red black burn. Obliterator won game 1, almost won a close game 2 which I'm not sure how I lost. And game 3 I was toast from opening (Think i messed up my creature attacks game 2 - could have got the extra damage.  G3 was a quick and messy affair...)


Game 4: guy hating his blue black deck from the start but it did lots but nothing deadly. 2 nil. #fnm (Opponent hadn't won all night and the deck seemed OK, but pushing in too many areas).


Overall I was joint third, but on opponents win percentages I was 7th! Still top 8 tho. ;) (yes - there were 8 players)

Booster Box Madness: M12 Edition (Pt1)

Being fairly new to Magic cards (4 months now I guess) I’d never appreciated the distribution of cards in a booster box.  I understood that (excluding foils) you couldn’t get two of the same card in a booster pack.  I understood that each back consisted of 10 common, 3 uncommon & 1 rare card – and that there was a 1 in 8 chance the rare would be replaced with a mythic rare.  Also there is a 1 in 68 chance that one of the common cards is replaced by a foil (and that foil card has an equal chance of being any of the 249 cards in M12 – including lands).  This is where I thought it ended – but it seems it does not.

You see like all trading card games MTG cards are cut from a large sheet.  This enables them to cut the cards in such a way that you don’t get repeats in a pack. I didn’t think about this too much, but it seems that the sheets thing goes further. The number of repeats of a card you will get in a box is also limited (excluding foils).  If you open the packs int he order they were in the box you even get a pattern of the lands that come out so that you get an even number of each type!  Now I’m basing this on the incredibly small sample size of my first M12 box (the second is still sealed ready for a games night in a month or so), but looking back at the New Phyrexia stats I kept (which was one sealed box with an added 8 more boosters from sealed deck events) it holds true.

From the opening of 36 packs from the same M12 box I have:

Common – 352 (not incl. 3 foil cards)

4x           52

3x           46

2x           3

Uncommon – 110 (not incl. 2 foil)

2x           49

1x           10

0x           1              (Cudgel Troll)

Rare – 32 (not incl. 2 foil)

2x           1              (Bird of Paradise)

1x           30

Mythic – 4 (no foil)

1x           4

Foil – 8

3 Common

2 Uncommon

2 Rare                   (Monomania & Redirect)

1 Swamp

As anyone who has even walked past a probability distribution this is unnatural.  It’s like the random sampling has happened to set rules that are hiding in the background – the sheets are probably large and with a non repeated pattern and the start point for a box probably varies dependant on where they come in the run.  This leaves me with the rather odd position of having bought a box of cards and having no real ‘swaps’.  It also means I can guarantee what I’m going to see in box two – 3/4 of every common, 1 or 2 of every common, mostly singletons of rares and some random mythics. 

This means if we play sealed deck with the other box and I have 3 copies of a certain common spell (say ‘cancel’) then I know that the rest of the group only has access to a maximum of one copy of that spell.  At large public tournaments I’m guessing this doesn’t matter at all, but in single store events playing from one box it may distort things a little.

Either way, I’m going to either have to sell the box without having the fun of the sealed/packwars/draft night (unlikely) or end up with a spare of all the commons and a full playset of the uncommons (likely – afterall 4 more mythics may await!).  I don’t mind the predictability of the contents of a booster box – in fact it means I can budget better around and know that any extra packs added on afterwards as impulse buys are far more likely to cause repeat cards.  It does make it far less likely that i’ll buy a 2^nd box in future, but I had my own reasons for not wanting to ‘play as you open’ on the first box this time so in future it’ll be less of an issue.

The mythics I pulled were Gideon, Primevel Titan, Time Reversal & Primordial Hydra.  3 out of 4 are ones I’d play so not bad.

Oops - 3 M12 Booster Boxes and 3 Chandra's Phoenix!

Not all mine. We went to Superdrome Worcester for the prices and snacks.

Ed:

Home now - a spot of relaxed and annotated booster ripping is in order.  One box is getting squirrelled away for multiplayer at a later date.

I do like Superdrome - it's essentially the kind of shop that every high-street should have so I have no qualms about choosing them over the more MTG Pro style store just up the road.  Anywhere that has 4 kinds of Risk and more plastic tat than I did as a teenager must be encouraged and supported.

Will probably post up the results - i'm due a run of underwealming cards, but as I've already found an Adaptive Automaton I'm not going to be too disappointed whatever happens.

Plus I have some amazing stuff from Yum Yum including a tea drink that looks like infected frogspawn and some new Meiji goodies that will get written up at FoodStuff Finds (eventually).

Just two M12 Boosters 0_0

With the Intro packs I got at the Pre-Release detailed below I got two boosters - one in each pack.  Initially I thought I'd let the recipients of the Intro packs open them themselves as it's good fun to do so.  Over the next few days I realised that firstly I wouldn't see the guys until I actually have boxes of boosters to play with, and secondly that getting them 'into' boosters would be a Very Bad Thing which would not enhance their play experience at all.  Me making them decks is far more cost effective and gives me something to do with those commons I have floating around.  They get their moments of discovery from opening & playing the decks so I resolved to open the boosters one a night.

Last night I cracked open the first one.  It was going pretty well - first card Ponder which is the most sought after common card, then a Mage and part of the Empires cycle and then.  A mythic rare dragon! Not only that, but Furyborn Hellkite is playable in the intro deck that I got them (Blood & Fire) and is only 1 mana above the Face card for the pack.  A great pull and as it's the second cheapest M card in the set at the moment not one I'd mind passing on if needed.  Certainly got my value from the £12 Into pack with this lot!

Cut to day two.  It's getting late and I've caught up on all the usual internet stuff so I decide to open the second booster as planned.  Commons are nothing special - even have a duplicate of two or three cards already just from the two boosters I have.  Uncommons are more interesting as there is an O Ring to pop in the Blue deck and a nice fire card and then I get to the card at the back. 

And then I do a double take and have a second look.

Two boosters - two Mythics - and probably the most desirable card in the set at this early stage.  This is Planeswalker number 3 I've found with Vess & Karn also coming in boosters, but probably the most surprising.  The probability of this is only 1 in 64 occasions so if I were to open 2 packs every day I'd get double Mythic once every two months (and I'd probably be poor from buying 128 boosters).

It's amazing luck though and I am certainly keeping both Mythics until after I get the box(es) on Friday so will give them a good amount of replacement loot instead of Chandra, the Firebrand.  Heck - I might even buy more Intro packs and slide the lucky boosters out into my pile just to be on the safe side...