Back for more Magic.Many games have come and gone since the last recap. So this is more accurately an overview of the many gatherings and games that have occurred throughout the month.
Welcome back to the fold: Felix. Felix has come crashing back onto the Magic Monday scene winning a draft over at Matt's when Paul was out of town, and then the following week, with Paul gone and needing a place for Snape's Apartment to relocate to we landed at Felix's humble abode.
Snape, myself and Felix sat down and settled in for the night with decks in hand. I came armed with my Tezzeret deck 'The Crafter', my Mimic Vat deck, 'A Tale of Two Mimics' and my Vampire deck 'Vampirehouse-5'.
Felix came sporting his remodeled U/B infect deck 'Another Man's Poison', ready to make us sick.
Finally Snape, who had along with his Magic decks, came prepared for the night with a gigantic bottle of Livingston wine. And mind you all that this was a 1.5 litre bottle of a vintage year (2010...). It required no fancy glass, and nobody to share it with.
With the battle plan laid out before us we sat down for some nice FFA action. Out of the five games played, there was not one that had a clearly defined winner until the final turn of each game. Snape was quite a powerhouse on the evening, especially in the game where he played a U/W control deck. I mean, sure, maybe it wasn't the prettiest Magic game for Snape dropping negates onto the table from his hand without noticing and then thinking that they were land, but he still won in the end be denying me the creatures that I needed on the battlefield to gain some much needed board presence. Snape took two of the wins, in what was one of his better FFA performances of any gathering. Felix and I were left trying to pick up the scraps on most games, with me scraping together a few wins despite the odds being quite out of my favor. In the end the wine was long gone, and Felix's face was stuck in a mischievous grin from the antics, and I was mentally taxed from 5 epic and long grueling games.
The following Friday found Chris, Paul, Xiao, Don and Halo trekking to the local card shop to compete in the weekly Friday Night Magic event. Unfortunately the card shop was having technical difficulties and was not running online for a sanctioned tournament leaving many of the contestants soured and heading home. For the people who remained it was a nice casual round of games. Later on I headed over to the real Snape's Apartment in Paul's basement and met up with Xiao, Don and Paul and played some good best of threes. I matched up well against Paul and Xiao and was able to take those matches but I got thoroughly whooped by Don who was curiously yelling "WAAAAAAHHG!" throughout the entire three games.
The moment of the night was in the match with Don and myself. I was playing my Tezz deck, and Don was playing his Goblin deck. It was turn 7 and I was poised to come across on my next turn with a flying ornithopter for lethal damage. Don had two creature out and I was open, but he did not have the attack power to deal lethal damage. I pass my turn, and Don takes a deep breath before drawing (or at least from my point of view it was a deep breath). He pulls the card off of his library and a glint flashes across his eyes. He holds it up momentarily before declaring his pull as a lightning bolt. I groan. The top-deck moment of 2011 as far as I was concerned. Xiao pulled out a couple of great wins against Paul towards the end of the night.
The next night most of us came back to Snape's Apartment for some more Magic action. Felix was in attendance (much to Paul's disbelieving eyes), with Xiao, Paul, Snape and myself.
We had quite a large amount of action. Some of the memorable moments of Saturday:
-Paul and Snape drink alcohol from a bottle that contain a dead cobra in the bottle. Snape declares the alcohol quite delicious and requires more. Paul reels backwards in agony as his face contorts in 5 different ways and spews the alcohol out of his mouth in a fine mist all over the garbage can before audibly declaring his hatred of it. Meanwhile, Felix watches in horror as both participants react. Ok that's only a single moment. But it was the best one.
Paul's record for the evening: 10 wins and 8 losses.
Felix's record for the evening: 5 wins and 5 losses.
Xiao's record for the evening: 2 wins and 8 losses.
My record for the evening: 16 wins and 7 losses.
Snape's record for the evening: 3 wins 8 losses.
After all of the constructed play, Xiao and Snape had departed. Felix, Paul and I all drafted from some boosters Felix had left from his box of Mirrodin Besieged.
Felix ended up drafting mostly red with his artifacts. Paul drafted Green and Blue and Black mostly. And I drafted White and Black.
We decided with three players to do a FFA game with the draft decks, and the first person to get 2 wins would be the tournament winner. I won the first game, with a little luck and some good draws. The second game went to Felix who eventually overwhelmed us with too many creatures. The third game went to Paul who was drawing ridiculous amounts of Shriek Horns and targeting me with everyone, which with a 40 card library was devastating. Paul was thrilled. Felix declared all of our decks terrible, for after three games, and having no decisive winner we had to play a deciding game 4. Game four was a slog, and Felix came at me hard to begin. Then Paul got more shriek horns and whittled my library down. When the 4th game was in its final stages I was dead in the water with a good number of weenie creatures out and nearly no cards in my library. I looked at Paul with his Hexplate Golem and various other baddies with toughness greater than 1. Then I looked at Felix and saw his various creatures with 1 toughness. I did the only thing I could. I began picking off his creatures with my mortarpod. I first sacrificed a creature and targeted his Rusted Slasher which he promptly regenerated by sacking his own artifact. Then I attached the pod to another creature and went after the slasher again. He sacked another artifact. I attached and sacked again and he sacked another artifact. Paul could not believe it, and he tells Felix that he has an uncanny amount of love for that card. Finally I run out of mana, and creatures and Felix's army also looks significantly ravaged. From there on out each time I draw a creature I simply attach it to my mortarpod and kill one of Felix's creatures, because I couldn't do anything else with 2 cards left in my library. The result was that Paul eventually overwhelms Felix and deals lethal damage right after I have to draw my last card leaving me with no cards to draw for the next turn and he wins handily.
A nice Green Suns Zenith prize, awaited Paul.
Two night later on Monday Felix, Paul and I were back for more. We played a night full of FFA games. In the first game I played my G/R 'United in Boom' against Felix and his U/W control deck and Paul's Vedalken Creepazoid deck. At the outset of the game I steal Paul's ratchet bomb because I have foreseen the inevitable play of a Frost Titan late game from Felix, and I want to have something on hand to destroy it before it causes havoc. Many turns later I have added the Ratchet Bomb up to 5 and Felix has plenty of land at his disposal to drop the bomb any moment. Then Paul drops a Contagion Engine and begins killing all of my creatures and my defenses, AND to top it off his uses the proliferate to add two charge counters to my ratchet bomb to prevent me from killing his Engine, which was the last thing on my mind! The next turn Felix drops a Frost Titan, and I watch helplessly. I then explain the whole saga to both of them which causes Paul fits of hysterics. I still feel miffed about that move. STUPID PROLIFERATE! How you hate me so! Paul ends up winning the game after slowly dismantling, and I mean he really did piece by piece dismantle all my efforts. Even when I finally drew into Genesis Wave, it produced nothing to keep me in the game.
As the evening went on Felix took two matches with his U/B infect deck, leaving Paul exclaiming he could not believe Felix beat us both with infect. In fact, Felix summed up most of the games correctly saying that the first person to kill off another person eventually loses to the other person, and that held true for every one of our games except the final one.
Paul took two matches with both his Creepazoid and his Giddy Up each tallying up one win apiece.
I took three of the seven with one win from each my Mimic Vat deck, my Vampire deck and my U/B tezz control deck.
The last game of the night saw the game come down to all three of us at a stand still. It was my turn, and I had a 10/10 flying vampire that could swing and kill either Paul or Felix. The problem was that if I killed Paul, Felix could swing at my the next turn and do 4 poison to me and I had exactly 6 at that moment. The other option was to swing at Felix, but if I did that Paul could swing at me with a Hero of Bladehold and 5 other soldier tokens and my health was only at 7. I was dead either way. Every other game we had played had ended with one person killing off somebody only to find themselves on the receiving end of lethal damage a short time later. I broke trend and opted to kill nobody. This caused quite a different ending to the game, and it was Paul who drew better and was able to swarm Felix, who was left outgunned by the Hero of the Bladehold army.
In general news, those who are interest in New Phyrexia, and buying into a case please jump into the email string as Don is going to research a connection in the mid-west to see what the pricing on the case will be.
In secondary news, the deck building challenge issued a number of weeks back is still pending, as no one has officially submitted an entry besides myself. My deck is ready for the competition (should anyone else want to join). I suppose if no one else does I will simply declare myself the victor and buy myself a $10 prize.
If anyone is still interested please see the rules and restrictions from the previous post and contact me with your official interest/entry for the challenge and once we get enough submissions we will set a date and have a fun tournament with the decks. Or not. I thought it would be a fun challenge.
If you have not yet seen anything from New Phyrexia, you should go online and start checking out some of the spoiled cards. There are some major new powerhouse spells on the horizon! It should really give our decks some new life, and probably will be the foundation for even more decks to spring up.
