A look back at FNM

The following people showed up for FNM this past weekend: Don Hayes, Xiao Yu, Denis Sadowski, Terrance Bouldin-Johnson, Jeff Snape, and Paul Ohlhaut.

It was pretty successful and a lot of fun. Don played a creature feature green deck that he admitted was mostly for fun, Xiao played his tempered steal deck, Denis borrowed my red/white goblin and life gain deck, Terrance played one of Don's deck, Snape played an artifact deck (and later regretted not playing vampires), and I played Giddy Up (indestructible knights). It was very nice to see so many different decks. I did several walk arounds and while tempered steal and MBC were a little more popular than anything else, there were lots of verity. . It was pleasing and fun and stark contrast from last time I was at FNM, where I literally counted 10 squadron hawks, 5 swords of feast and famine, I don't know how many stoneforge mystics and jaces, on the remaining 4 tables. It was absurd and lame. So good to see variety.

We checked in with each other throughout. Xiao and I started strong, both going 2-0 in our first match-up. Unfortunately we paired up against each other next round, and unfortunate for me I lost both games. Couple of very close-ons but he bested me both times. It was a tough deck and too fast for mine. Xiao catapulted into the upper tiers right away after that. Denis also did well, going 1-1, against quality opponents. Don was getting whipped, and Snape was holding his own against some formidable foes. I watched Snape playing a guy I routinely see, and see doing well. He had the upper hand for most of the match, but a black sun zenith sent Snape reeling.

The final round was interesting, several of us had a chance to place, and Xiao had a chance to win the whole thing. Xiao was sitting at 3-0, Denis and I at 2-1, Snape at 0-3, Don at 0-3, and Terrance at 0-3. Although Snape got in a several single game wins as did Terrance and I believe Don did too.

I'll get my game out of the way first. I played a punk-ass little kid who was probably 16. He was kind of half retarded, half idiot savant. He clearly liked himself a lot. He had a deck similar to my old Obnoxious deck with Kiln fiend and fetch lands that can kill you in 1 turn. He was super annoying and saying "Go" really loud when it was my turn. So I yelled the same back at him, and started being an uber dick to him. He kind of settled down a little bit, I think seeing that I was being pretty aggressive for a typical magic player. Not aggressive in attacking him with creatures, but aggressive in words and calling him out for being cocky and making general fun of him. Anyway, he blew me up pretty bad the first game. So I sideboarded a bunch of creature hate. Unfortunately I made a critical mistake, which I knew would probably cost me on game 2. It's ironic because I beat James in a similar fashion once, when he got greedy in a similar way. He will know what I'm talking about. I've got the little cocky brat down to about 10 life. He hasn't touched me yet. He plays Obnoxious, says "Go". I have two choices at this point. I can play a sword of feast and famine and end him next turn without question, or I can oblivion ring his Obnoxious. Realizing I'm at 20 life, I think, how can he do 20 damage to me? I'll just put this sword out there and he will concede, considering it's protection from black, he is screwed, sure death. Well, he doesn't concede. I'm a nervous. His turn. He drops fetch land and 2 harrows, for  a total of 4 land fall, doing 12 direct damage to my face. This in turn makes Obnoxious 15/15, and then makes him unblockable for the win. I'm very sad. I got greedy, and I lost to the little bastard. He is then very anxious to play vintage. I take out Rape. But he has a fucking Dredge deck, which I had only read about on the internet  a week prior. He built the thing exactly to the pro deck's spec. And if you know anything about Dredge, you know that discard is the exact opposite way to beat it. THat dredge deck is pretty funny though. It has no lands in it. and uses these creatures that fly out of the graveyard on special reasons. You essentially want to rid yourself of your hand and library and build a big graveyard, because your shit explodes on the field for free after that. so his ego was pretty big by this time. So then he goes to the bathroom and asks me to watch his stuff. So I'm like "ok", I mean he is a 16 year old kid, playing magic on friday night instead of trying to get laid at that age like the rest of 16 year old boy humanity. but, I see him later sitting at a table talking to some other nerds. and I wanted a drink. I was pissed. I yelled over to him and said, "Hey you, what the fuck are you doing making me watch your shit.  I'm getting a beer."

Then poor Xiao lost, but Denis won. They both went 3-1, and won many packs. I somehow placed and one 1 single pack with shitty cards. It was nice to see them both do so well. And nice to see denis play my deck and get as far as he did.

After words, the winner of the whole thing, Travis, came over and played with us. He's a real nice dude, and very good at the game. I've seen him when 3 FNMs now. His deck crushed mine 9 out of 10 times. The one time I won, he seemed very happy for me. Which was nice, but made me feel like a retarded little kid at the same time. But I happily excepted the win, even though I think he may have lost on purpose. Regardless, Travis is in to playing with the group on Saturdays. I've got his number and exchanged a few texts. I think he will teach us a lot. We can offer him fun times with booze and good people in exchange.  He wanted to play this saturday, but it wasn't in the cards.  By the way, his deck did crazy things. He was drawing a thousand cards per turn and blowing up my shit simultaneously. It would be turn 3, and I would have one land, and he'd have like 18 permanents on the board.

Last thing... I was thinking about my favorite cards. They change slowly over time. It's like music, you have your favorite CORE bands and songs and then your favorite stuff right now. Well right now, I'm in love with the Grand Cenobite. What a sexy card. The art is fucking cool as shit. The white and red. It's evil, but kind of hot. And I love red and white together. It does really cruel things to your opponent but it's pure white. It has an odd power and toughness, and it has no fucking face. It will ruin your day when it hits, and at 7, it's hard to cast on pure white alone, but I think I may have a new General for EDH.

My favorite cards seem to be chics. Always number one core card is Braids, and even the paradoxical  Braids I love.

Happy Birthday!!! (NERD!!)

James turned 50 today, wish him happy Friday.

Also, I was kidding about you being nerd....

A close look up at: Eff Tez

I saw James building The Crafter on tapped out. So I made a deck in parallel whose only purpose was to beat it. It consisted of

4x solemn offering
4x Leonin Relic-Warder
4x divine offering
4x Kor Sanctifiers 
4x Devout Lightcaster 
4x Celestial Purge

and a bunch of other anti black and artifact cards. Oh it was great. He got real mad and said he would never play ef tez again. I'm going to reassemble it all over his face.

love
Paul

A Close Up Look at: The Crafter

What makes this deck tick?

Well first I had to acquire a playset of Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas because he really has some great mechanics to work with.

Next I had to decide on my mana base. What colors did I want? Should I go U/B with a solid control scheme, or should I go esper (U/B/W) to allow for more stall and some solid protection?

In the end, and after some playtesting, I came to the conclusion that U/B control built around this would be best, so I need have blue and black lands. I set aside a play set of Darkslick shores and a playset of Drowned Catacombs. I also set aside 10 swamps and 10 islands. I know that is more land than I needed but it would allow me to tweak my land base as I added and subtracted cards.

Next I had to look at what control cards I wanted. There are a lot of options available in both blue and black, but the bottom line is to keep a scheme that works well for what you feel like you will be playing against, which sometimes boils down to trial and errorl; winning and losing. This deck has seen many iterations in its lifetime, and may see more as cards because more or less useful. There is no right or wrong way, but keeping a consistency is something to always keep in mind. Also choice like Mana Leak over Stoic Rebuttal will have to be made, and ultimately those choices can boil down to preference, as well as imagined situations of usefulness. I chose Mana Leak here because it allows for more flexibility in a duel color deck, and for early game counters, when I need them.

Why not doom blade, or Go for the throat? Also preference. I could easily use those cards, and likely would have 2-4 of those in a sideboard for extra removal options.

I chose:

3x Despise

3x Dismember

1x Duress

3x Preordain

2x Tezzeret's Gambit

4x Mana leak

2x Contagion Clasp

4x Tumble Magnet

Next I needed My creature base, and I had one thing to keep in mind. I needed artifacts. It is not a lot of creatures, but keep in mind this is a control deck, and the main concept is to control the game until I can drop the hammer. The permission style of the early game should allow for that to happen as long as I can keep up with what the opponent is throwing at me. Keeping in mind that life is not a focal point for this deck. If I lose life early I should just let it happen and focus on my moves as they come to me. If everything is working as planned, I should likely be gaining life back as the game turns in my favor in the later stages of the match.

I chose:

4x Vault Skirge

3x Wurmcoil Engine

3x Phyrexian Metamorph

I also have:

4x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

For land I favored swamp mana and selected:

2x Darkslick Shores

4x Drowned Catacombs

6x Island

12x Swamp

(totally 24) Some may argue that it isn't enough for a true control deck, but this really doesn't need to hit wurmcoil titans to win, as I can pump out 5/5's with Tezz if I need to. Also, my mana curve hits a peak at 3-4 CMC (coverted-mana-cost), so I can't really see the need for more.

I took 6 true islands, just to ensure that in my opening hand I get some blue mana consistently for preordain (or maybe ponder) and mana leaks. As that is a key to being able to keep the game in my favor early.

Depending on how changes to this deck are made in the future I may have to slightly alter the mana base by the number of island, or swamps I am playing, but aside from that nothing should need to change for total count.

The control scheme works like this. I plan on being able to open most games with a preordain, duress or despise. I don't have a particular preference as long as I am either gaining a slight card advantage in some capacity. That seems like a miniscule distinction to harp on, but I can overstate enough how important getting those cards opening hand can be.

The rest of the game is going to hinge on countering or removal for the first few turns if necessary. Keep in mind, that playing creatures at this point is completely unnecessary, and I would only do it if I had satisfied my ability to control the game as much as I could, or I had no better play and I needed board presence. Ideally I would like to wait until I can board at least 1 tumble magnet, and hopefully a contagion clasp (in an ideal situation). That can keep me rolling.

The idea is to create a board state that favors me being able to play Tezzeret and start using him to dig through my deck for Wurmcoil engines. I have other options of course, but that is the favored. Vault skirge is a great tool with Tezz, as are tumble magnets if they loose their juice.

Once the board is controlled and wurmcoils rain down, it should be game over. If it is not stalling out until at least 5-6 artifacts are on the board to use Tezzeret's [-4] ability is a nice way to say "I'm winning now".

Also with regard to Tezzeret it is important to keep in mind that the 2 most important things I can do with him are [+1] to dig for artifacts such as Wurmcoils, or [-1] to transform a card like a used up tumble magnet into a useful 5/5 creature. Also...with proliferation in the deck...I can keep adding 5/5 creatures to the field if I have artifacts. His final ability is useful, but not something to focus on or play towards.

There isn't much more to it. You may wonder about Phyrexian Metamorph and that is simply used as a utility card to produce whatever it is I may need. More tumble magnet? Done. More wurmcoil to add insult to injury? Hell yeah. Emergency chump blocker? I guess. :(

Each card fits into the overall scheme, but some flexibility is allowed with Tezzeret and his ability to turn any static artifact into a beast, and phyrexian metamorph for being able to add more than 4 copies of a card in my deck. Nice.

So why only 3 preordains? Why 3 despise and 1 duress? Well, that's actually just trial and error, as well as knowing my opponents. Despise tends to have much more of a chance to successfully hit something in their hand and duress can hit anything that else that despise misses but it has less overall targets so having it is nice, but I don't want to dead draw any. 1 is a safe number, and together they essentially form a "playset". the 3 preordains simply indicates that I needed to strip down something to make room for another utility card and 4 preordains was not absolutely essential. In this case I had needed space for the 2 contagion clasps. Cutting 1 phyrexian metamorph and 1 preordain were easy choices.

What Efs this deck up? Well anything that hates black can screw me. Celestial purge is not a friend of mine. Artifact hate is terrible, and very quick, very aggressive decks can put me down if they are firing on all cylinders. Also, flying tends to be a bit troublesome as well, but not an outright weakness like artifact hate is. There you go, haters. :)

I have mentioned this before to all new deck builders. Start safe. Build a deck with only 9 cards (full playsets of each; totally 36) and then add 24 lands for a 60 card deck. This will give you a great starting place for a new deck-in-progress. I often times start losing lands to add more functional cards, but always keep in mind you mana-curve. If you have heavy costing cards, keep your land count up to ensure that you don't miss many land drops early in games. It can make or break a game.

I live a little bit on the edge sometimes, but that is only after many games of testing builds with a deck.

(9x4)+24 is a great stepping stone. Use it wisely or get tied up with the mana-screw.

Maybe this was enlightening?

Xiao had previously commented on wondering how it is I come out victorious so often. I would think a lot of careful planning is part of it, but in the end the games themselves often boil down to quick thinking, on the spot decisions, and a hefty helping of luck.

I will makes plans on doing this for other decks, in the near-future. If someone wants to hear insight on a particular deck. Let me know, and I will take that deck on the next blog tour.

Until next we duel.

What time is it?!

Fucking Adventure Time bitches.

...or maybe 10:30.

Last Saturday we nerded it up. Heavily.

In attendance was yours truly, Xiao, Snape, Denis, Felix and J.D. We partied at Snape's because sometimes it is easier to bring the party to a dude, than whatever you imagine is the opposite of that.

Felix abstained from Magic. He's waiting until they go steady to make that commitment. Instead Felix, J.D. and Denis spent hours embroiled in an epic battle on the high seas right in the middle of Snape's living room. I mean it was literally in Snape's real apartment this time. Not in a basement with the same name. The sea battle was straight out of 1988. Really. That's when the game was made, according to Felix's fake instructions he had for the game. So there was no way to know for sure if they were playing correctly at any given time. Although they were thoroughly enjoying themselves, so that really makes it irrelevant if the rules were correct or not.

Felix spent a lot of the evening cursing Poseidon's luck, while J.D. hung on splinters from ships he once manned. Denis sailed around them with a mighty fleet doing his best Thomas William Bevil (the only prominent Canadian sailor I could locate).

Snape, Xiao and I play some FFA games of Magic on the other side of the table.

Xiao was the big winner of the evening dominating the rest of us with his his mono-color pauper decks. I was able to squeeze out a couple of victories myself, but Xiao's were more celebrated and well won.

Denis and I broke out some EDH/Commander action as well. Denis was primed up on his Mayael deck while I finally got to show Ob Nixilis some serious action.

The first game was a lot of fun as we both same our decks play quite well despite Denis not being able to put out his Commander due to my having pestilence in play. I eventually was able to grow Ob Nixilis to become quite obnoxious, and over taken him after clearing the board with pestilence.

The second game was a long one, with all sorts of creatures coming in and out of play. finally Denis was able to get rid of my Commander and Geth, who had snuck back out again and fly over me with a slough of dragons that had be ejaculated out from Mayael.

We called it even so Xiao could swap places and play Denis with his EDH deck, based around Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer.

Xiao had Denis on the ropes early, but eventually Xiao lost his momentum and had to resign himself to the onslaught of the Naya hoards Denis through at him.

Another good night of gaming. If you weren't there you probably wish you were, unless you are Don, who was at PAX, which was also probably awesome.

Who is volunteering to scribe for the next meeting?

I'm also still waiting for every member of the group to get back to me with their ranked deck submissions, and whether or not they want to donate small fees towards being able to fund tournaments.

I am open to all ideas and suggestions on that front.

If you want your deck ranked please send:

Your deck name, your deck colors and play style and what legality it is.

Denis is the only person to submit a deck so far, for his EDH deck.

I have submitted the following:

War Vat: mono black/control/standard

Peace Vat: mono white/control/standard

The Crafter: U\B Control/Standard

Time Psycho: mono blue/control/Standard

Vampirehouse: R\B aggro/standard

Parody of Parity: mono white/aggro/standard

Permission to Infect: U\B control/standard

Apology Accepted: U\B\W\G Mill/Legacy

The Black Ajah: mono black/EDH

What are yours?

Until next time we duel.

Behold: Archenemy

Acrhenemy. If you ask me, I'd say they made this multiplayer format for me. Even if they did not, I still can't help but to feel like the archenemy in many free-for-all games. Or at the very least I find myself wanting to be able to play a scheme card as a last resort after my life total has been reduced to 1, and my chances of victory are 0.01%

The beauty of the archenemy setup is that it provides an interesting challenge for both the team against the archenemy and the archenemy in different ways. The archenemy is charged with defeating the opponents who are battling him. It could be 2,3 or 4 opponents and while the scheme cards are powerful, they are also unpredictable and not a reliable force each and every game. The schemes are something to effectively use when opportunities present themselves, but a greater strategy is dismantling the attacks and strategies from the team working to tear you down. On the other side of the coin is the team working to bring the archenemy down, which is quite an undertaking. The teams need to plan a strategy and work together to plan their attacks and when to makes aggressive moves and when to hold back, as scheme cards can wreck a plan as easily as they can set things in motion.

The game itself is not much different than a regular game of Magic. The biggest difference is the scheme cards, which are placed in a separate deck of 20 cards. I find that, it is more fun to add more cards than what is specified by the rules because it add less consistency to the scheme deck, as well as it allows for games that could go longer than 20 turns to stay away from redundancy. The multiple sets of Archenemy also allow a certain amount of customization for the Archenemy to make the deck of scheme cards more tuned to their specific deck. I currently only have 2 of the 4 archenemy decks, but I would eventually like to have all four sets of Archenemy scheme cards available for the group to use, which would allow us to have various pre-set scheme decks for the archenemy.

From the start of the game each participating player draws a hand like normal. Mulligans are allowed. Once play starts the archenemy always goes first and immediately turns over a scheme card. The scheme is set in motion and affects the game for however the card specifies. After the scheme is set in motion play resumes as normal. The archenemy starts his turn as normal and draws (yes even going first). The archenemy plays through his turn as normal and once complete the opponents go. The players opposing the archenemy complete their turns simultaneously, the same as how turns are done in a game of 2-headed giant. The players can number from 2-4, but I've also considered a variation where a team of 2 archenemies play against a team of 4-6 opponents, still only using one scheme deck (or maybe 2?).

The archenemy starts the game with 40 life, while each opposing person will start with the standard 20 life.

The game is over when all opposing players to the archenemy(s) are eliminated, or when the players have eliminated the archenemy(s) from play.

I was also thinking that as we move forward, and possibly incorporate EDH play into our group we may be able to combine both EDH and Archenemy to have and EDH archenemy play against a team of of EDH teammates, in the exact same format as listed above.

Let me know your thoughts on this, as nothing is set in stone, and any tweaks to the gameplay that would enhance the gameplay and create a more enjoyable experience for the group is ultimately the goal.

-James

Where have you been all summer?

Hello. I hope the summer has been filled with Magic.

This is just a brief introductory into what this group is currently and what it has been. We are a group of Magic: the Gathering players (just without official cosplay costumes) who meet about once a week and play casual games in a variety of formats, including drafting.

The group formed in June of 2010 and has been picking up members ever since. We've seen a lot over the last year as a group. People who have come and gone, sets that have come and gone, and decks that have been good and bad.

Currently we have been having our primary play day on Saturday in the evenings, and this seems to be the best day to gather the most people at once, so we will remain on this course for scheduling, unless anything else necessitates a change.

Statistics are an important part of most games that involves winning and losing, and in our group we have, in the past, kept up on this information for everyone's individual decks. We have gotten away from it over the summer months, and we are planning on getting it integrated back into the group. In order to facilitate this happening, we will need every member to submit each of their decks that they want to have stats tracked for. The stats include wins and losses for categories of play such as: Head's Up play, Free For All play, Archenemy games, EDH games, and tournaments and drafting. Each deck will have overall win/loss percentages tracked as well as overall wins and losses in each of the aforementioned categories. It is not required that decks be submitted for the spreadsheet, but only decks tracked on the spreadsheet for rankings will be able to have information tracked, as well as participate in Magic Mondays Group sanctioned tournaments.

I will reply to this post to give an idea of what information about your decks I will need, with regard to the spreadsheet.

Also, I am opening up this blog for other members to write about our get-togethers, or whatever else they have on their mind Magic related. Surely sometimes it might be neat to hear thoughts from other group members about decks they are conjuring up, or thoughts on specific cards or game-types.

If you would like to be involved let me know and I can email you the specifics on the blog to become an active scribe.

In addition, each get together needs to have someone assigned who is responsible for keeping track of the wins and losses of the games, as well as notes, and photos of the games and people involved to keep this blog's heart beating with a healthy pulse. I used to be able to do this seamlessly while still being able to play plenty of games each week, but I just can't foresee being able to do it consistently each week. Besides it may be nice to have different voices from week to week sharing their thoughts about our games.

I don't want this blog to get in the way of playing, however, as that is the main goal of getting together, which is partially why I let it sit on the back-burner all these months. I just wanted to play. If we pass the torch around, we can surely make this a much more lively blog to participate in.

Please let me know who is interested.

Additionally, I am thinking about group tournaments every month or so, that actually produces prizes and swag that you have a chance to win by destroying the competition with your deck. Or we could concoct some sort of light-hearted "league" or sorts where each week we play a number of "league" games against assigned opponents and the wins and losses of the league determine who makes the "play-offs" and the "championships".

I was thinking that we could fund something like this if members of the group were willing to shell out $5 each months towards getting prize cards, or prize swag for the winners. I want something to feel competitive but not so much that there is pressure. A prize could be something like: sweet high-quality deck sleeves, or a playmat, or a couple of single high-value cards that are mythic-rare etc.

I hope this lights a bit of a fire under the group to get creating on decks and ideas and to get playing some serious magic. Screw FNM! This is where the real Magic happens.