The 25th Recap of Events

Saturday saw some fun format of Magic being played as we played quite a bit of free for all, and we also played some Prismatic as well, which is a change of pace from the ordinary multiplayer games.

Saturday we had a nice turnout as Don, Xiao, Snape, Paul and Halo were all in attendance to start the night off.

There were a lot of games played but the most fun on Saturday was surely the Prismatic game. If not familiar, this is a game where five players each play one of the colors of Magic. The decks played must be only that color. The five players sit in accordance to the order of the orbs, as seen on the back of a Magic card. Each orb has two orbs across from it that are that color's enemy colors. In the prismatic game, the object of the game is to kill both of your enemy colors before anyone else kills their enemy colors. Easier said than done.
In our game on Saturday, Paul sat in the white position, Xiao in blue position, I sat in black position, Snape sat in red position and Don sat in green position.
As the game got going Paul got out to an early start only to see his position weaken when Snape blasted his creature into nothingness with burn. Paul retreated back to his hand, and allowed other people to incur the wrath of Snape, while he collected card advantage in his hand. Xiao was content to throw a counter out here and there, but most of the action settled on Don and me. Don was aggressively playing cards and getting ramp built up, while I was trying to kill everything Don had. By turn 6 I had board presence with 2 Royal Assassins, who were eager to kill off anything Don tapped, which was many things each turn with all of the mana he was trying to generate for his Eldrazi spells. While I wasn't purposely trying to target Don, both he and Paul were the colors I had to kill and Paul was not posing a threat, and Don was specifically targeting me with his attacks so I had to counter. Early on Don attacked me with a Eldrazi causing me to sacrifice some much need land, but I kept me Royal Assassins for "blocking" and kept the pressure off as much as I could. Snape proved to be my worst enemy of all, as most of the damaging moves he made were game-crippling for me and no one else. One would expect that as Blue and White were his enemy colors, he would have been content on killing and disrupting their plans, and actions. Instead the only person throughout the entire match that killed off any of my creatures was Snape. Which wouldn't have been as frustrating as it actually was had other people had creatures out when he chose to play board-sweeping burn spells. Maybe it was just confusion. Or maybe he was wearing Pabst goggles.
Around about the time I was losing yet another wave of creatures to Snape and his burn, I was nodding to Paul across the table that I knew who would win the match, and Paul knowingly nodded his head towards Xiao, to which I slowly nodded.
Assessing the situation, and the events as they transpired had seen my board presence thwarted at each turn by Don and Snape, and Paul was not able to do much, while Xiao was slowly building up a nice army of land to be able to play his Platinum Angel, which we knew was coming. It was the moment he played Whispersilk cloak, that I understood what the game would amount to.
Many....many...many turns later Snape, and Don were both dead, and Paul and I were left alive trying to figure out if there was something we could have done to prevent the inevitable, but there was not.
So, a brief history of our Prismatic game boils down to Paul winning the first one playing Blue, Snape winning the second match playing Red, and Xiao winning the third playing Blue. It almost makes me want to play a mono colored Blue deck for the next Prismatic game, although...I just can't seem to condone that for myself. I like Black and White far too much to stray away into uncharted territories.

After we finished up the Prismatic game, we split up having three people play a FFA game, and two people playing heads-up, best of three. We rolled for original seat positions and then started. The idea was that the winner of the heads-up game would stay in their seat playing the winner of the FFA game, and the loser of the heads-up game would move into the FFA game, which became known throughout the evening as the Magic Mosh Pit. Paul was stymied by the format at first until it dawned on him what exactly we were doing, in a moment of clarity. Paul did spend a good amount of time playing at the heads-up table against various challengers, and Snape was a little bit frustrated during the FFA games when he could not get a win to save his own life, and the games that started well for him saw him ganged up on by the opponents as a mutual threat. It was a bit funny for me specifically because I like seeing someone else experience the usual treatment I get within the FFA format. A taste of their own medicine, as it were. (I'll have a good example of this to share from the Monday night games, to be certain).

Overall for Saturday evening Paul seemed to be the most dominant, as he was seeing some extremely good draw from his decks, for some good solid wins.

For a note of personal glory I was able to face Paul with my Vampirehouse-5 deck, against his Giddy Up deck for a re-match of last week where in brutal fashion he smash those white knights down my vampires throats. This week I was able to redeem myself and give him a nice dose of Vampire lovin' with a little help from Paul's new BFF: Gatekeeper of Malakir, which in a nice serendipitous fashion I would get in my hand when I needed them, but wasn't hoping for them.

On Monday we were pleased to see Matt, with many new deck creations! and Chris stop by Paul's to join in some nice Magic melee.

Since each of the games were logged, I will give a brief synopsis of each:

The first was a 3-way FFA with Chris playing U/W, Halo playing mono-U, and Paul playing mono-W. Paul was victorious with the quicker deck, and a nice helping of battlecry bonus damage for the win.

In a heads-up game Chris was playing his new G/W infect deck against Paul's mono-W Giddy Up and got slapped around, watching Paul take the match 2-0.

Chris then faced up against Matt, playing his R/W Red Cross deck, while playing his own mono-R Face Destroyer and winning the match 2-1.

Then in a 4-way FFA game I was able to eek out victory with my B/W Tale of Two Mimics, over Chris's mono-G Eldrazi deck, Matt's U/B Hematoma, and Paul's mono-G Mana Whore Eldrazi deck.

In a second 4-way FFA game, I watched by idly as Matt and Chris both beat my ass down rendering me useless with my Tale of Two Mimics. Matt was playing his mono-R artifact deck, and Chris was still playing the mono-G Eldrazi deck. Paul won the match with his mono-G Mana Whore deck, letting the other two focus all of their attacks and enery on me, while he built of land and resources to spit out Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. The game was notable for me as it was the first time that I had lost, with that deck in a 4-way FFA game. I had no chance. The bad blood was still in everyone's mouth from the previous game. I should never again play the same deck in a 4-way FFA back to back.

Matt played his G/B Vampire deck True Blood against my R/B Vampire deck Vampirehouse-5 and I took both games due to overwhelming creature power from a Blade of the Bloodchief.

Matt and I also played a match with his Artifact deck against my U/B One Day War infect deck where I was able to ping him for Poison counters with Phyrexian Crusaders aplenty.

Chris and Paul matched up with the mono-R Face Destroyer getting destroyed by Paul's R/B Rotten Leftovers, where Kiln Fiends and Ob-Nixilis are the flavors of the day for his leftovers.

After Chris left a 3-way FFA ensued where I played U/W control, Matt played his mono-R haste deck, and Paul played R/W land destruction/damage prevention. I had shit luck and didn't draw a single Luminarch Ascension the whole game, which left me on permanent defense, as the only creatures I put out were promptly lightning bolted by Paul. I promptly scooped my cards in disgust and frustration as soon as Paul play armageddon. Matt spent the whole game attacking me, which pretty much just forced me to use resources and make stupid decisions allowing Paul to sit back and watch. It's like Magic played as The Scarlett Letter.

The next 3-way FFA Paul won in a see-saw battle with his mono-W Giddy Up deck against my R/B Vampires and Matt's mono-R haste deck. Every advantage I gained against Paul was promptly taken away by Matt who certainly had it in for me all night, as he was my kryptonite for the evening.

To end the night Paul and I played another heads-up match where he was out for revenge from Saturday with his white knights against my vampires. The first game saw me get advantage on Paul early, and he spooged guard duty's all over my creatures only to see me get a Malakir Bloodwitch out on the field effectively rendering his spells and creatures useless. He scooped with no answer. The second game was a bit closer with a Student of Warfare out early and deemed indestructible by a Knight Exemplar on turn 3. Luckily I was able to come back on turn four with a Burst Lightning to kill of the Knight Exemplar leaving the student vulnerable. I played a Gatekeeper of Malakir (kicked) to kill it off and shift the tide of the game, while I still had 11 health points left. I bolstered my position on turn five with Anowon, the Ruin Sage and then drew a Malakir Bloodwitch to seal fate.

We decided to play one last match where I played Parody of Parity, and he played Rotten Leftovers. The first game I had him on the ropes and was ready on turn 5 to come over for the last poison counters, but his kiln fiend, came over on turn four for the full 20 damage in one turn leaving me shocked and impressed at the same time. He stole the game right out from under me. The second game I had to mulligan down twice to get land and still drew poorly, and Paul capitalized on the advantage playing Kiln fiend aggressively and forcing me to chump with my creatures to block and kill it. Ob-Nixilis came out and a turn later with the help of an Oracle of Mul Daya I saw the demon pump up drastically, and drain my life. I waited until he attacked to play condemn, but Paul had his own trick up his sleeve and cast fling on top of the stack in response to my condemn ending me again with a surprise. It was the best win of the night for Paul.



In other news, the photo at the top of this post is actual Magic art that is on display at the Wizards Cupboard in Tampa Bay, Florida. I can't believe people do stuff like that to their Magic cards.