Games night & actually winning

I've been busy so not really bothering with this, but I guess a few words can't hurt.

I've actually won some friendlies now.  Whether was as a result of me inviting everyone round to my house to play and giving them snacks, or my constant shouts of "don't attack me, I've got nothing!" but I won our first (and only) 4 player match.

Was a fairly standard resurrection deck really, but with black, white & blue it had a lot of counter too. Mana was so plentiful by the end and due to my getting 7 cards a turn from the Sphinx and draw I could pick & choose my hand.  Took two players out in one turn and then over-run the remaining guy with my big beasties.  I've changed most of the creatures in the deck now for the ones I actually wanted that were still in the post, so it'll probably never win another game.

The Artifacts/red mana Firin' Squad deck got a win that day too by out competing a valakut deck which isn't too bad.


I also knocked up an infect deck to see what cards I had that fitted and ended up winning three games out of 4 with that.  It's an interesting mechanic if the opponent isn't expecting it especially as it's not too hard to put 5 on someone with that first mad hit.

My Blue Draw=damage deck was quite fun too and while it's only ever won one game I think it could nest nicely into a control deck if I could be bothered to figure it all out.

The Red/Blue I'm looking at currently hasn't won yet, but I'm still refining the balance between control & destroy while keeping it cheap in both senses. As I only have 4 non common cards in it (and neither are essential) I might strip it back to Standard Pauper just for kicks & see how many mythics it can destroy.

Of course I could always go look up some deck-lists but that feels like cheating.

MTG on hiatus now until after exams & NPH launch. It's only a week I guess, but it's going to be a long one...

One for the real world

Cards I've ended up with greater than 4 of for people in my game group. 2 x DBC + a few boosters means I have a reasonable amount already!

Spares	Card	Colour	Clear	Colour	Total Mana	Rarity
3	Rise From The Grave	BK	4	1	5	U
2	Sign In Blood	BK	0	2	2	C
1	Aether Adept	BL	1	2	3	C
1	Guard Gomazoa	BL	2	1	3	U
2	Into the Roil	BL	1	1	2	C
2	Mind Control	BL	3	2	5	U
1	Steady Progress	BL	2	1	3	C
1	Unsummon	BL	0	1	1	C
1	Wind Zendikon	BL		1	1	C
2	Brass Squire	CL	3	0	3	U
1	Perilous Myr	CL	2		2	C
1	Plague Myr	CL	2	0	2	C
1	Psychosis Crawler	CL	5	0	5	R
1	Stone Golem	CL	5	0	5	C
1	Triskelion	CL	6		6	R
2	Garruk's Companion	GR	0	2	2	C
2	Garruk's Packleader	GR	4	1	5	U
1	Llanowar Elves	GR		1	1	C
5	Terramorphic Expanse	LD			0	c
1	Earth Servant	RD	5	1	6	U
1	Ogre Resister	RD	2	2	4	C
2	Anjani's Mantra	WH	1	1	2	U
1	Ghalma's Warden	WH	3	1	4	C
2	Kor Skyfisher	WH	1	1	2	C
2	Pacifism	WH	1	1	2	C
2	Souls Attendant	WH	0	1	1	C

First trial decks - report

So I'm currently something like 0 wins 10 losses in our casual Magic circle, and with my working burden still being high it's unlikely to change. Here's what I've tried so far:

Black Vamps & Blue Splash – decent set up but played a Legacy deck that's pretty well refined. Deck is mostly black singles in original form to see what works but one match isn't going to tell you that!

Blue Green Landfall – this is essentially Mysterious Realms updated with more uncommon and some excellent M11 and later cards and some great WW booster drops. This has been consistently good, but I seem to end up with more mana (due to action cards) than creatures. Lost a 3 player due to not realising I could counter a mass removal spell when I had way more creatures than opponents. Learning curve.

Blue Insanity deck – a gimmick deck that is purely for fun and focuses on getting lots of cards into my hand. Got mana screwed by drawing 16 lands in 18 cards when I only have 24 in the deck, otherwise shows potential.

White NHS deck – this is all about lifegain, but I'd misunderstood the ally clause on cards and included 8 useless cards, will remove these and repeat

Firing Squad – Red & art deck. Drew my two 8 mana joke creatures in my starting hand, didn't think to mulligan and still didn't loose too badly. Have put the cards I had in reserve in instead.

 

Pretty sure I tried another Magic The Gathering Planeswalkers style deck at one point, and I have an unused Worldwake 'Flyover' pre-made I got using store credit to play with.

 

Need to keep revising these (and revising for exams) and stop buying cards too. I estimate £120 total now – spreadsheet not up to date with prices.

Why this place has ‘Snack’ in the title

Seeing as this is only the Gaiden or side story blog I feel that I should explain what it is.

I write twice weekly for www.foodstufffinds.co.uk on snackfood and convenience food (on a good day they get 1,000 hits!) and gradually my reviews were becoming more and more self indulgent. I was shoehorning which ever game I was most obsessed by into the reviews such as:

 

Nintendo 3DS Launch - Amsterdam [by @NLi10]

Halo Reach - Mana Potion Vs Sleep [feat. Halo Reach] [by @NLi10] (CyberCandy Birmingham)

The Overlong MW2 rant - Health Potion, www.manapotions.com by @nli10 (via Cyber Candy, Birmingham UK)

Blood, Blood & True Blood [by @NLi10] (Various Victims)

And THREE for the Indiegame Uprising:

Cake & Biscuits - Various small enterprises [By @NLi10] , 19 Gales Fresh Hand Made Blueberry & Apple Turnover {by @NLi10} (19 Gales Farm Shop - Birmingham University Campus) , 19 Gales Fresh Hand Made Pork Pie [by @NLi10] (19 Gales Farm Shop - Birmingham University Campus)

Etc.

I think that FSF should stay more about the snacks so I've moved the long game rants here and started fresh. It means that @Cinabar doesn't have to proofread 1,000 word articles on Magic Cards, obscure ikkitosen games and I get to rant somewhere (and have card lists available when I need them in one place).

I'm hoping that the next time I don't turn down an invite to a games event (supposed to be going to London for the 3DS again, staying in bed instead) I can write it up long here, and then just talk about the consumables on www.foodstufffinds.co.uk

Anyway – feel free to pester me on Twitter or on either blog. @NLi10

And just because I'm having fun with these things (both writing & gaming) it doesn't mean I claim to be any good.

 

Just my reviews.

http://foodstufffinds.blogspot.com/search?q=NLi10

MTG is addictive – DO NOT START

Seeing as I'm updating this when I pick up more cards I thought I'd throw something up today.

I 'won' a few more auctions on the ebay over the past week and there are two shipments of cards either on their way or waiting for one final auction to end. Once this lot is sorted I'll put a link to my favourite seller, it'll keep the prices out of my reach for a few days. Combining a habit forming card game with an auction site that uses games style feedback to keep you playing is a dangerous thing.

 

I think a realistic life time limit now of £100 is going to be sensible. I'm just passed 3/4 way there already in about a week, but frankly I do have everything that I'd want now. I'd be more likely to go pick up 1 or 2 mana cards for 10p from Wayalnds Forge again to smooth out my horrible mana curves. The fact that I understand this means I've been thinking about it too much.

Over the past week I've made another 2 decks bringing the total to 3, and I'm happy with one and the other two I threw together and barely looked at. Will get to play with them next week hopefully.

Singles Night

Had the day off today and was in town anyway so visited Waylands Forge to check out the single cards.

Spent much longer looking through them than I planned but came away with some decent things that I'd wanted, and some cards I'd never heard of that looked good.

Finished making deck number 2 based on a pre-constructed beginner deck that had a lot of the more expensive cards I fancied in it anyway.  The black deck (with a hint of blue) that I made lost at work, but I drew 5 or 6 mana in a row which is pretty hard for a vampire based deck to live through.  Such is Magic.  Will keep it the same and try again, but I have more confidence in the new deck.

And besides, this one's a lot more 'Dominion' and fun.

Up to 500 non land cards now and the budget idea has long gone out of the window.  One set of e-bay card yet to arrive, and one auction for the remaining card I fancy still to end. Other than that I'm not buying until the next expansion hits.

Deck Builders Toolkit 2011 - Booster Packs

As most people will tell you the actual Deck Building portion of the toolkit is great, but most of the locked in value comes from the 4 recent boosters.

If I sold the uncommon, rare & mythic cards from my two sets I'd probably recoup my spend.

Sword of Body and Mind was my biggest draw and is worth about £12
Liliana Vess was the second best and is worth about £4
as these mythic rares were both in the same box this was a bargain!

The other box had more mid price cards, but a foil Phylactery Lich which is pretty cool, but a really low value foil rare.

Once I've had a serious look at everything I'll evaluate what I got more clearly and I've decided not to sell anything until I get the ebay cards and decide what works well together.

Excluding commons across 8 boosters I got:

1 Liliana Vess

1 Myrsmith

1 Razor Hippogriff

1 Halt Order

1 Sword of Body and Mind

1 Stone Golem

1 Corrupt

1 War Priest of Thune

1 Myr Turbine

1 Nested Ghoul

1 Accorder Paladin

1 Lead the Stampede

1 Triskelion

1 Earth Servant

1 Corrupt

1 Prized Unicorn

1 Phylactery Lich

1 Elite Vangard

1 Crystal Ball

1 Reassembling Skeleton

1 Necrotic Plague

1 Pyroclasm

1 Demon’s Horn

1 Chandra’s Spitfire

1 Cerebral Eruption

1 Liquimetal Coating

1 Bloodshot Trainee

1 Carrion Call

1 Mirran Crusader

1 Kuldotha Flamefiend

1 Viridian Corrupter

1 Metallic Mastery


Plus the Semi Random packs of cards you get to start decks


And the standard cards you get in every DeckBuilder's ToolKit