Magic Monday Recap #20

Okay. So technically, we did not play on Monday. We are in a state of flux with what day we can all meet currently and Saturdays have produced the largest turnouts, so Saturdays have been the day of choice
This past Saturday was cold and dreary, and in surprising fashion for Seattle, also rainy. Nothing beats the winter weather better than grabbing your Magic: the Gathering decks, and your d20 and getting together to duel.
Typically we always meet at Paul's, but when we cannot someone else is always eager to step up to the plate and host our game session. This week Don, who is coincidentally the newest member to join our play group, took the helm. A big thanks goes to Don for being a gracious and generous interim host, and also to Don's wife for agreeing to let a bunch of dudes invade her home, upset their dog to near-hysteria, and eat all of their snack food. Next time we need an interim host and Don chooses to be it, we should institute a rule that after losing a game you must soak in the hot tub to lick your wounds.
Additionally a big thanks goes out to all who can attend. So Don, Felix, Matt, and Snape: thanks! We certainly had some fun, as always.

So the theme of the night was: constructed, open format play. Most of us were playing standard legal decks, but I did play a couple of extended decks as well, and Snape was playing a lot of his legacy decks as was Matt.
Before I get into some of the games, I think it is worth taking a moment to have a few fun facts about some of the guys playing.

Let's start with Snape. Snape showed up to play with over 40 decks ready to go, the actual number was never counted but he claimed to have an additional 15 decks made that just needed to have land added to them. So let's have a round of applause for Snape, who is by far and large, the most prolific deck builder of our group.

Mr. Matt showed up to play with a deck that was nearly as tall as one of Snape's PBR beers (in a can). He said he was working on thinning it down, which produced comments about some of Paul's decks over the summer that were also very large to begin with, although not as tall as a can of beer! Surely Matt now is the member of the group who builds his decks on the grandest scale, or not at all.

Felix. Felix shows up and sits down at the table with two deck boxes, but immediately announces with a sly smile that he only brought one deck to play. Of course that elicited quite a few scoffs and exclamations Felix braves the fray as the highlander of the night.

The first game of the night was unconventional. Meaning it was an invention of Felix's. It was surprisingly fun and challenging. The game started off with four people each playing heads-up against one opponent. In our case it was Felix matched up against Snape, and Don matched up against me. The idea of the game was that while we were both playing separate games to start with the moment one of the players lost the remaining three people were flung together to finish the game. If that did not make sense, I apologize and will make up for it by giving a more detailed account of the game.
Don and I started our game along side Felix and Snape. Don was playing his Green and White life gaining deck, "Vertigris Vitae". I was playing "A Tale of Two Mimics," my black and white control deck. Our game was a slow grind, with a lot of turns going by and not a lot happening. Don took opportunities to ping my health when he had a chance but they came irregularly, and most of the game from the start saw him slowly gaining life without much threat from me. I kept him at bay with Day of Judgments and chump blockers and eventually a mimic vat.
At the same time Felix was matched up against Snape. Felix was playing "Another Man's Poison" against Snape's "Deck #32". The game started out on a seesaw, but soon Felix was getting enough land to spit out a mimic vat and then Skitheryx, the Blight Dragon. That spelled the end for Snape, and it also spelled a new start for the game because suddenly Felix was part of the game Don and I were entrenched in. Felix had to wait for his turn to come in our game, but his presence had an immediate impact. Suddenly Don and I were threatened by a hoard of infect creatures that could nearly kill each of us with one direct assault each. I took my draw and tried to strengthen my position against flying but all I had was a lousy chump blocker. Don gained life, although he looked like knew life was suddenly not that important as he cranked his counter up. Felix took his first turn in the new battle and immediately went full force at Don. It was a bold move, but one that Don had no defense for and it left him with nine poison counters in one swing. Don took his next turn and quickly passed it. I drew and hoped for something beneficial but was in the same place I was to begin the previous turn. Felix made another strong move on his turn by swing for both me and for Don. Don immediately tapped the creature coming after him, and I chump-blocked the guys coming after me which killed off his Hand of the Praetor. I was able Mimic Vat the Hand of the Praetor and felt good that I got something out of it. When the turn went back around to Felix again he swung everything he had at me and Don immediately tapped one of the attackers leaving me to only take four poison counters. Felix was befuddled, and could not believe Don would do such a thing, but Don knew that if Felix was able to kill me off then Don would have no way of blocking both of Felix's flying creatures so he saved me in hopes that I could do something to remove the threats. I drew another flying creature and had to chump it which gave me a Mimic Vat flying creature to block with. The game went around like that for many turns. Before Felix took a bold move because Don got aggressive and started attacking Felix's life while he had no blockers which put Felix on a clock that didn't exist before. Felix had to kill Don or he would be killed by Don. So Don exited the game, leaving Felix and me. Felix suddenly was outnumbered because Don's departure from the game removed both of his Pacifism cards from the game leaving me with two new creatures in the battle. One of them was a Vampire Nighthawk. Felix was in trouble because unless he could get me in one turn, it was over. He did not have a distortion strike and he had to concede the game knowing I would swarm him next turn.

Overall it was a fun format, for something concocted on the spot. Snape looked a little bit bored waiting for the end of the game to arrive so he could jump back in. He did have his friend PBR to keep him company so it was not a complete bust for Snape while he waited.

Matt showed up as the game concluded and we jumped into some more games. Snape, Don and Matt started up a three way game, while Felix and I battled head-to-head.
I battled Felix with my "Parody of Parity" deck which is white poison. We traded games 1 and 2 and it was down to a decisive game three.
Don, Snape and Matt were in an epic game. Snape was clearly in command of the game, from a spectators point of view. He had amassed quite an army. A few turns later Don was scooping his cards from the table. Matt was holding his own, and Snape and Matt were at a stalemate when Felix joined the fray after losing the third game to me. Felix got up-to-speed in the game only to see Snape empower himself further and start dominating over both Matt and Felix at once. Snape destroyed all the competition in that game, which was his most powerful performance of the evening.

Felix and Matt departed earlier than the rest of us, and the remainder of the night Don, Snape and I played three-way matches reaching a climactic point when we played our final three-way with Don pushing his way to victory as Snape and I sabotaged one another much to my dismay and amusement.

Felix was crowned the new Paul, for his achievements in knocking over beer onto the table and his own cards.

Snape achieved the his weekly goal by finishing all of his PBR.

I achieved my goal which was to improve my white poison deck from a sub .500 deck to a above .500 deck.

Don wins the award for best win of the night in the final game of the night. Somehow the final game win is always the most epic.

Matt wins the award for most giant deck. It barely fit in his iPhone box!

To the absentees:

I hope Paul had a nice time playing "Testicles of Agony" in Palm Springs by himself. It would be funny if he lost more than he won.
I hope Lowell is feeling better. We've missed having him around the last couple of weeks.
I hope Chris had a great show at the Comet. I am sorry I missed it, but the Magic was calling.


A big thank you goes out to Felix, for getting this blog set up to use, and for posting all of the wonderful pictures.

Another thank you goes out to Chris for taking the initiative and ordering the case of cards. I'm truly excited, and having a hard time waiting for them to arrive.

A second thank you also to Chris for making the shirts that commemorate our gathering! Felix was very impressed with the detail on the lettering. Which begs the question. How do the rest of the members get shirts? Can more be made?

On another commemorative note, this is the 20th installment of this recap of events; roughly five months of blogging (and now with an actual blog).

The weeks certainly do fly by!