22nd Recap is here!

Every so often there are things that happen in life that are so rare in occurrence and so incredible that everyone who was involved is changed as a result of it. These would be events likened to the creation of the universe, the first space flight, the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, the completion of the Egyptian pyramids, the bombing of Hiroshima,

and the first instance of time travel. Fact or fiction, these are all monumental events that have shaped history. The event that I am about to tell you about is not that kind of event. I will, however, still be recounting the events that unfolded. There are also events in life that occur that need to be experienced in person to understand completely. They are events that mold the impressions of everybody involved in extraordinary ways, and create a unified bond around the event in question. These types of events are often shared later through dramatic verbal accounts, recounting the highlights and trying to give the listener some semblance of the feeling that was gained through the experience and live the moment again, vicariously through the reactions of the listener. Unfortunately for the listener, their reaction is destined to fail to live up to the expectations of the story teller. This is merely a product of the extreme emotional connection that the story teller has towards their experiences. The listener may think the story is okay, but will inevitably feel that in order to truly grasp the magnitude of the experiences being described they would have actually had to have been there. That being said, I will still be recounting the events that occurred in Snape's Apartment on this past Saturday. I will exercise my linguistic abilities to share these events knowing ahead of time the futility of what I am doing. Still, I find it enjoyable.

Are you still reading? I can't believe it. How long have you been reading that last paragraph? Two minutes? Ten minutes!? Well, if it took you ten minutes to read this far you have either not been giving your full attention over to reading this, or you may have some mild form of down syndrome. I am not a doctor, so please do not take my word alone, and visit your physician as soon as possible to get that checked out. Unfortunately, our medical science has not developed far enough along to alter genetics to cure down-syndrome. Even if we did possess the scientific know-how to cure something like down-syndrome through genetic implants and gene splicing therapy, the government and human rights group would surely tie that up in a bureaucratic nightmare, so you have no hope. Also if you are still reading, I apologize for taking up another five minutes of your time.

Let's recap. In the last 3 minutes (15 if you suffer from mild brain damage) I have probably insulted Japanese people, dinosaurs, Christians, politicians, and people with down-syndrome. Those are all separate, as I doubt that there are any dinosaur Politicians in Japan who go to church and have down syndrome. Even if that person existed, I highly doubt that they would be reading this blog anyway. I think I would be safe.

Retarded dinosaurs are still scary though.

The attendance this past Saturday was good, though we had a number of notable absences. Felix is currently on IR due to injury. So everybody should send their well-wishing to Felix to speed along the recovery. We hope to be able to have him around again as soon as possible. Magic without Felix and his Felix-isms is not quite the same. Chris was spending a weekend in Portland. I can’t imagine anything in Portland is as fun as playing Magic: the Gathering…well, except for one thing. Lowell was on a Californian trip, but we all hope to see him soon at one of our gatherings. Matt was unable to make it, as he was too busy working. Snape was also unable to attend because his girlfriend coerced him into having an entire weekend of Valentine festivities. It is always fun to have as many group members attend, as possible, but we have quite an amount of depth in our group these days, so even with all of the aforementioned players absent we were still able to field a decent showing of players. Paul was there, as were newcomers Don and Xiao and yours truly.

Last week we broke from the norm and started off the night playing heads-up games, but this past Saturday saw a return to our standard FFA games to get the evening kicked off in a fun and rambunctious way. Don, Xiao and Paul played in a couple of FFA games while they were waiting for me to arrive. Don loaned his blue and green permission control deck (see what I did there?), as Xiao is still waiting for his cards to arrive. Don played his red and black burn deck and Paul was happy to play his newly reconstructed white knight deck. Paul was certainly geared up to jump all over Don and Xiao with his ramped up white knights but he did not foresee Xiao upsetting the balance of his game by countering every spell he attempted to play. Paul quickly developed an apathetic attitude to, what would normally be an exciting part of his turn: casting a spell. Each time he cast a spell he would half-heartedly show the card to Xiao before tossing it in his graveyard without even bothering to ask if Xiao was actually planning on countering it. It turns out that he was correct each time, but that did not diminish the humor of it. Finally it got to a point in the game where Paul was out of spells to play and had to top deck each of his draws. Unfortunately for Paul for the next 11 turns he saw nothing but land drops. Amazingly he still stayed in the game during the course of those events as Xiao and Don were keeping one another at bay. Don was struggling to keep firepower on the table, or gain enough of an advantage to start going offensive. Xiao had shored up defense and was sitting tight. Paul drew a creature. It was Hero of Bladehold and a tiny bit of hope shone through the bleakness Paul was experiencing. Xiao took the opportunity on his next turn to take that tiny bit of hope Paul was experiencing and snuff it out. Mind control came slamming down onto the battlefield and stole away the Hero of Bladehold. The game was significantly tipped in Xiao’s favor, and he went on to take the win.

The second game saw the three duelists manning the same decks and Paul was keenly aware of what fate had in store for him unless he could act quickly. The game started out quickly with Paul getting out a Sword of Vengeance, which sat on the battlefield waiting to pick picked up and wielded by one of Paul’s many white knights. Don was slowly building up a nice defense of skeletons and pyromancers. Then the real game began, with Paul attempting to play a knight and Xiao revoking the attempt, and again it was Paul trying to play another knight with Xiao responding with another counterspell. Paul fell back into the apathetic role of pre-discarding his spells to the graveyard in anticipation of Xiao’s counters. Don slowly picked off life points with Skeletons and Pyromancers. Paul took small consolation in not drawing land every turn even though every attempt he had to play a spell was met with a rebuttal from Xiao. I showed up in the middle of the game to witness Paul’s woes and watch Xiao and Don trying to gain an advantage over each other. Then a strange thing happened that broke the game open for Paul and snapped him out of his daze. A spell he cast resolved and, as it was with the last game, it was a Hero of Bladehold. He immediately equipped the Hero with his sword that was in play and attacked with it. Xiao took a big hit and the game looked like the tide had turned and both Xiao and Don were thrust into a common ground, where Paul was the aggressor and they were scrambling for an answer. Then a funny thing happened. Xiao cast Mind Control again and again it was the Hero of Bladehold that he took. The game was in turmoil again, and Xiao was taking it by the reigns. Though the game went on for many more turns, the balance did not shift and it was Xiao who swept the FFA games to begin the night and went 2-0.

I broke out my white infect deck and Paul volunteered to play against me with his white knight deck. Don and Xiao broke off to play with Don playing his white and green life gain, and Xiao playing the black and red burn deck.

I was feeling fairly confident because Paul and I had matched up with these two decks last week, and they were very evenly matched but I was able to prevail sweeping in for the win with armored ascension. This week I was ready to show-up Paul’s white knights again. As we got into the first game, it was Paul that was jumping out to an early lead with a couple of battlecry knights. I jumped into the action a little late but put the game at a stalemate with a nice helping of pumped up infect creatures that scared Paul from attacking me for a number of turns. I was able to infect Paul up to six while keeping my defenses shored up. As much as I was trying to posture, and keep Paul scared from attacking me by keeping cards in my hand, he eventually overcame whatever fear he had and swept in and gouged me for some of my life. I had one chance to sweep in for the kill, but he had his own treachery that got rid of one of my creatures and kept him safely out of harm’s way. Game one to Paul.

The second game was just as brutal, but despite the battles and treachery it was Paul who came away with the win in another tight game.

We went around in best-of-three matches until we had each played all opponents. My toughest match of the night was against Xiao when he was playing Paul’s land destruction deck. I knew the deck was a good build, and had some serious potential to wreak havoc on games, but I had never seen it perform so well. I came out on top for the match, but I had to kick and scrape my way there and the match certainly required a good amount of luck to come out on top. I think Xiao is going to be showing Paul how to play that deck between now and the next gathering.

After we finished up with the heads-up games, we broke open another FFA game with all four players going at each other. I played my vampire deck which I have recently tweaked to make it standard again. Paul was playing his favorite multiplayer deck: mana whore. Don played his life gain deck, and Xiao was content playing Paul’s land hate deck.

The first game started off with a good pace. I jumped out on the battlefield with some quick-drop vampire’s which prompted Don to announce that he was planning on playing pacifism on my creature, because it was one of his favorite moves. I spent my first turns swinging at Paul and taking him down as quick as I could. This, of course, elicited some negative comments, moans and groans, and dramatic whining from Paul who expressed his sarcastic ‘surprise’ at being singled out as a target by me. Personally I think he should feel flattered that I am inclined to go all out as a tactic against Paul. More than annoying Paul, I think it shows respect for his skills and deck building. Of course, it is fun to watch Paul squirm as well. Fast forward a bit and Paul is at 2 life points. I have three vampires in play and I am waiting for the next turn to come around to I can lay the final blow upon Paul. Paul gets his turn first and plays a summoning trap which allows him to view the top seven cards of his library and choose one creature from among the cards and put it directly into play. He draws Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Why wouldn’t he draw that card? He deserved to draw that card right before his final demise. Then a strange thing occurs. Despite Paul having in play, a 15/15 creature with flying and an annihilator 6 ability, I am still viewed by Don and Xiao as the biggest threat! Xiao takes his turn and decides to cast an Ice Cage onto one of my vampires. I’m annoyed. Paul is laughing hysterically. Don chuckles. Xiao ends his turn without doing anything else. Don takes his turn and casually draws a card and passes his turn without doing anything else. I draw, and take solace in the fact that I still have two attackers so I can still take down Paul despite him having a 15/15 creature. He cannot block both of my creatures at once, so I announce my attack with my remaining creatures. The unthinkable happens! Don taps a single forest and puts Fog onto the stack! I am stunned silent for at least thirty seconds. Paul is laughing so hard he is wiping tears from his eyes. Don and Xiao are laughing too, but I’m thinking that they won’t be laughing long when Paul starts annihilating all of their permanents. Paul is still laughing, and I am laughing now too, but more at how ridiculously strange the situation is rather than how funny I currently think it is. Paul still has tears in his eyes, and soon I’m laughing simply because it is so infectious, and my cheek muscles are beginning to get sore. Paul takes his next turn and his attack is obviously directed at me. I annihilate all of my land and a creature. I have one creature left and nothing else. Laughter. Xiao takes a turn but does nothing exceptional with doom knocking on his door. Don also wastes an opportunity to take Paul out with two life points. Laughter. I draw for my turn, and of course can do nothing because everything I had was annihilated. I attack Don with my creature. Laughter (mostly from Paul, who is still in tears). Paul goes again and attacks Don who is forced to annihilate six permanents. Don is shocked! He can’t believe Paul would do that to him after he saved Paul. Paul is hysterical, and I can’t help laughing either. Don is laughing at the ridiculousness of it all and Xiao has been won over by the infectious nature of the laughter as well. Paul tries to slow play the game after this because he thinks it will be fun to build up an army of ridiculous creatures, but I point out his flawed thinking and guide him to a quicker route to the win. Laughter, and more laughter. The game is over, and Paul has won in miraculous fashion. Sitting at 2 life points and still somehow, with the help of Xiao and Don is able to stay in the game and pull it out of his ass. Don and Xiao are beside themselves and swear they have learned their lesson. To be sure, this was one of the funniest matches I have ever been a part of and my cheek muscles are still a little sore from it.

The last game of the night was also a FFA game, and Xiao was still choosing to play the land hate deck, while Don was now playing his burn deck. Paul was playing his stasis deck and I was playing my mill deck. Trying to mill in a 4 player match is not really the best strategy, but this was not an ordinary mill deck. The game starts off with some mild action and on turn four I have played Jace, the Mind Sculptor. The next turn was Paul’s and he plays stasis, which locks the game down. The game does nothing for about 15 turns as I spend my time “jace-ing up” and drawing cards. Xiao and Don are completely locked down. Paul is also locked down, as he had to preemptively play Stasis when Jace came out. Paul is desperate as he plays land tax, which allows me to set off my archive trap cards I have been stock-piling. I mill Paul heavily and he lets Stasis die without the upkeep. The game unlocks and all hell breaks loose. I get out bloodchief ascension and it triggers two turns later. I mill Xiao with Glimpse the Unthinkable and it instantly kills him. Next I kill Don, and then it is down to me and Paul, who only has 4 cards left in his library and he feebly attempts to draw and answer but his answers have all been milled. The game was torturous, but so ridiculous that we still spent most of the game laughing at how ridiculous it was.

At 2:30 in the morning we wrapped up the game, and put an end to another session of Magic Monday (on Saturday).

Going forward it should be much more viable to play with more consistency on Mondays again as I won’t be working as late on Mondays. This still leaves opportunity to gather on Saturdays whenever people want to, and anyone who can participate in any FNM event should certainly do so, because it is good exposure and experience.

Also, it is worth mentioning that our case of Mirrodin Besieged has arrived and is currently on display at Chris’s house. Chris took the time to take the boxes from the case and build a nice pyramid out of them and put his cat on guard duty like an Egyptian sphinx. Unfortunately we are going to have to wait past this coming Saturday to tear into them as Chris is unavailable through this coming weekend.

So hear concludes another recapitulation of our weekly gathering. Please stay tuned for the next entry to our epic events, even if they pale in comparison to the discovering of the Americas, or the discovery of electricity. These stories have their niche value, and are compelling in what they do for the camaraderie that is gained in a group like this. Sharing the exploits of the games, the ups and the downs, the frustrations and the elations are all part of the experience. Maybe you do have to be there in person to appreciate the sentiments shared, though it is more likely that you simply have to be there in person to understand what is happening because if you aren’t there in person and you are reading this you likely do not even know how the game is played.

And again I do apologize to all the mentally handicapped readers for dragging you through, what must have surely been an excruciating 2 hours.