Just a quick note about these! I went to the £25 66 person Pre-release, an 17 person draft (my first ever) launch in which I only had to pay £10 entry to get the promo (which is pretty good) and then the £25 launch in Stafford where there were about 28 people.
I didn't do amazingly in any of them (in fact I did best in the draft, but still wasn't top half) but I did have a lot of fun and got some great cards. Thinking of scaling back for the next set - but I still got a booster box to crack. I am in possession of 67 unopened booster packs counting the 2012 ones we haven't played with yet!
Tuesday 4 October 2011
Friday Night Magic 6 - Leaving Zendikar
Pre-release, launch & life have all been busy.
Almost 2 weeks ago I took my favourite deck The Black Deck in it's newly streamlined form as Phyrexian Suicide Cult out to FNM to see if it could do better than in my very first FNM now I knew what was going on. Essentially it did really well - I came 2nd, but lost to the same guy I lost to in round 3. Black sacrifice decks don't do well against decks full of cheap creatures, and certainly not one full of exile enchantments! The player was easily the most experienced person there and while it was a borrowed deck he'd made it a lot more consistant than the owner had & didn't drop a game all night.
The 'quarter finals' against my friends illusions deck was very close - I'm not sure what happened int he end, but I think I utility milled him by surgically extracting Ponder and then removing all his decent sized creatures with Life's Finale straight from the deck. This may be a direction to move in now that there won't be as many double use creatures around. I chose Pathrazer of Ulamog DCI promo as my free card to celebrate rotation.
I was happy with the decks performance and it could retire in style and I could potter off to the following day's Pre-release happy.
Almost 2 weeks ago I took my favourite deck The Black Deck in it's newly streamlined form as Phyrexian Suicide Cult out to FNM to see if it could do better than in my very first FNM now I knew what was going on. Essentially it did really well - I came 2nd, but lost to the same guy I lost to in round 3. Black sacrifice decks don't do well against decks full of cheap creatures, and certainly not one full of exile enchantments! The player was easily the most experienced person there and while it was a borrowed deck he'd made it a lot more consistant than the owner had & didn't drop a game all night.
The 'quarter finals' against my friends illusions deck was very close - I'm not sure what happened int he end, but I think I utility milled him by surgically extracting Ponder and then removing all his decent sized creatures with Life's Finale straight from the deck. This may be a direction to move in now that there won't be as many double use creatures around. I chose Pathrazer of Ulamog DCI promo as my free card to celebrate rotation.
I was happy with the decks performance and it could retire in style and I could potter off to the following day's Pre-release happy.
Wednesday 21 September 2011
Birmingham - City of Magic
When we started playing on March 11th 2011 by buying the Deck Builder's Toolkit 2011 we found few Magic The Gathering events happening in our local town (Birmingham, UK). Now it requires two blog posts. One with the list - and one to explain what I think happened (I am an Analyst after-all).
This is the second post with what I feel caused this shift, and my tiny part in it:
On March 11th 2011 three guys with disposable income walked into a games store and paid £15 for a box of cards. Each. Then one of them bought a second box (this was me). This simple action was part of a chain of events that led to a town with only one Wizards Play Network (WPN) event per quarter (Magic Geek's Pre Releases) getting more than any one person could attend, or even easily count. While I am personally responsible for these three poor souls (and a 4th who tried his best to resist the call of the Elves) I'm not responsible for the amazing amount of events that are scheduled for the next two weekends, but I thought it'd be interesting to see exactly what was. But I'm getting ahead of myself - the real story starts during the Xbox December online sales.
I was working away over the pre-Xmas period and spotted on my Xbox that the Magic The Gathering game had dropped in price from 800 points (£6.40) to 400 points (£3.20) and while I'd enjoyed the trial it's safe to say I didn't really get the game so I deleted it. I figured it'd be some cheap fun and good for short breaks in work and so I bought it after redownloading and re-trialing it. I played it an awful lot over the next few months - encouraging friends to get it too. I also renamed the blog and re-purposed it from Pokemon to general games (as was always planned in my 'write every day' strategy for essay improvement). Shortly after this promotion the game hit half a million copies sold and the sequel was announced. I looked into buying cards and found that a beginners box of cards was about £17 but that if we waited a month then the new version was out. I mentioned it to people at work and we decided to all jump in. Note in that last story that my total cards budget was £25 and I'd said I'd sell any I found worth over £10.
Some opened all their boxes and put into piles. I catalogued all three sections here, and looking back it's amazing to see that some of the cards from those first 8 boosters are still ones I play. This section still gets a huge chunk of the site visits so this is an amazingly popular product and loads of the people at Friday Night Magic (FNM) have the boxes from this for cards, but again this is yet to come.
Over the next few weeks I raised my spending limit to £100 and then broke it all without getting anywhere near a win, even casually. I like to think of this as the Schumacher effect (after the F1 driver). He tended to go off a lot in practice sessions and the UK commentators would get happy that he was vulnerable. Truth is the only way to find out the absolute fastest speed you can take a corner at is to go over it and then do just a bit less in the actual race. This effect stood me in good stead as a month and a half after buying the cards I'd actually won some crucial big games within our casual circle - go me! Uni was busy and so was work so MTG had taken a back seat.
I did some Googling about the new set and found that they were running an event 20 min walk from my house for it's release! I had to go - even if it was £25 and only 8 weeks after we started playing. Mentally i was drained before I'd turned up, but I did OK and found Karn & a Mox Opal which have since traded places on the value scales. I was surprised to find the event was relaxed and full of people just like me who played for fun (at the bottom tables at least!) and I honestly think that if this first experience wasn't so great that I'd have never gone to another event. I was also surprised to find out that it wasn't some official organiser and just run by the shop Magic Geek. I now understand how it all works, but do feel sorry for the tournament organisers like Steve that don't get all the bonuses the physical shops get just because he runs online & events only (especially when so many people seem to be new players that turn up to his events - new DCI cards are always being given out).
Karn took a trip to e-bay, didn't sell and then I went and bought a box of boosters which was rapidly shredded and then ignored due to work. A month passed. All was quiet on the MTG front and then something happened. The new version of the Xbox game launched. This simple pebble into the placid lake of nerddom is the start of why we have the massive amount of events. Suddenly the people who missed out on the game and the related promotions had an excuse to join us in our addiction. The promo cards were dished out giving the site a confusing story (as I got the old promo decks by mistake) but one that still gets the most hits. The promo cards were only in proper game stores, and the online tool (when it was playing ball) directed you to these shops. Our local store Wayland's Forge practically sold out of sealed Magic decks and boosters when this happened - all their lapsed players returned at once. This amazing act of acquisition convinced a lot of other stores that they should also register to give out the promotional cards - other stores pinged up on the WPN radar as places to not only buy cards, but to get the special shiny giants.
As the actual launch for Magic 2012 came and went the stores seemed to realise that they'd missed out on a pay day. Customers like me were talking about their competitors and travelling a few miles to the events. It's still a big job to put on a full Magic event so most waited until the Magic Celebration (a free event for both stores and consumers which I couldn't attend) to get started. A few started a little earlier such as the fabulous Road to WPN Blog details where a guy with no stores ends up running two lots of events and Game UK who runs the FNM that I've been to 5 of so far - even though it's only just become official and only gets the Promo cards from October. A store needs to run events before it becomes a CORE store and gets full access to the promo program and Game UK has just hit that one week too late to run a pre-release. I guess many are in a similar position as most Birmingham stores are only running a launch (or an unofficial event on launch day in a few cases!). This suggests that Magic Celebration needs to be about a month earlier so that stores can get 3 more events in within the time needed to pre-release the first set in the new block.
As an aside you may have noticed from the pics I got 4 titans - I bought 4 copies of the game! While the Steam & XBL versions were for myself the two spare XBL versions were for younger relatives. Since I paid for their games I got their promo, but since then both have expressed an interest in the paper product too... This was a risk I was willing to take as frankly there are far more damaging activities for teenagers than a card game that teaches important lessons about budgeting, winning and loosing and encourages critical thought. Long story short both are turning up to the last Zendikar FNM as their first full FNM (one made it to half of one a week ago...). More player acquisitions due to the value and desirability of the promos. I'm guessing a similar story has been told in many households and across many formats.
This mass of events is great for semi-players like our group. We aren't too bothered about winning the whole thing, we are just happy to participate. I got 2nd at one of these Friday tournaments but was lucky that no-one expected infect (cheers MaRo!) and may not get away with that again. This mass of events is basically the market's response to the new player base, and the response by us the player will determine how many survive. I suspect the Sat pre-release will fill up so am going to pre-book my place just in case.
As every store in town creeps towards Core status together in the next three months it will be very interesting. Cards will get cheaper for stores and maybe players, players will get better due to practice and events will either become larger or forced out by the competition. Those attached to shops may not care once they get the bonuses that Core status brings (lower priced stock and more freebies) but some may push for ADVANCED status for running 32+ player events.
Magic is poised to become bigger than it's ever been. I've played with people from work as a pretence to invite people over for an evening of fun. My fiance has even invited her work friends over and joined in with the fun (although Commander probably wasn't the best place to start). And over the next few months I'll play a lot less - these things always cycle, but a few good friends have expressed an interest in being shown how to turn creatures sideways and 'Despise' people with a smile on their face. And who am I to deny them that pleasure.
TL;DR?
Planeswalkers 09 dropped in price & reached a broader section of marketplace
Cheap beginner card sets got the early adopters in
Planeswalkers 2012 restarted everyone at the same point with desirable shiny cards
Magic Celebration got people out into the shops proving that there was an audience
Stores responded and scheduled events - if unsupported they may be one offs.
This is the second post with what I feel caused this shift, and my tiny part in it:
On March 11th 2011 three guys with disposable income walked into a games store and paid £15 for a box of cards. Each. Then one of them bought a second box (this was me). This simple action was part of a chain of events that led to a town with only one Wizards Play Network (WPN) event per quarter (Magic Geek's Pre Releases) getting more than any one person could attend, or even easily count. While I am personally responsible for these three poor souls (and a 4th who tried his best to resist the call of the Elves) I'm not responsible for the amazing amount of events that are scheduled for the next two weekends, but I thought it'd be interesting to see exactly what was. But I'm getting ahead of myself - the real story starts during the Xbox December online sales.
I was working away over the pre-Xmas period and spotted on my Xbox that the Magic The Gathering game had dropped in price from 800 points (£6.40) to 400 points (£3.20) and while I'd enjoyed the trial it's safe to say I didn't really get the game so I deleted it. I figured it'd be some cheap fun and good for short breaks in work and so I bought it after redownloading and re-trialing it. I played it an awful lot over the next few months - encouraging friends to get it too. I also renamed the blog and re-purposed it from Pokemon to general games (as was always planned in my 'write every day' strategy for essay improvement). Shortly after this promotion the game hit half a million copies sold and the sequel was announced. I looked into buying cards and found that a beginners box of cards was about £17 but that if we waited a month then the new version was out. I mentioned it to people at work and we decided to all jump in. Note in that last story that my total cards budget was £25 and I'd said I'd sell any I found worth over £10.
Some opened all their boxes and put into piles. I catalogued all three sections here, and looking back it's amazing to see that some of the cards from those first 8 boosters are still ones I play. This section still gets a huge chunk of the site visits so this is an amazingly popular product and loads of the people at Friday Night Magic (FNM) have the boxes from this for cards, but again this is yet to come.
Over the next few weeks I raised my spending limit to £100 and then broke it all without getting anywhere near a win, even casually. I like to think of this as the Schumacher effect (after the F1 driver). He tended to go off a lot in practice sessions and the UK commentators would get happy that he was vulnerable. Truth is the only way to find out the absolute fastest speed you can take a corner at is to go over it and then do just a bit less in the actual race. This effect stood me in good stead as a month and a half after buying the cards I'd actually won some crucial big games within our casual circle - go me! Uni was busy and so was work so MTG had taken a back seat.
I did some Googling about the new set and found that they were running an event 20 min walk from my house for it's release! I had to go - even if it was £25 and only 8 weeks after we started playing. Mentally i was drained before I'd turned up, but I did OK and found Karn & a Mox Opal which have since traded places on the value scales. I was surprised to find the event was relaxed and full of people just like me who played for fun (at the bottom tables at least!) and I honestly think that if this first experience wasn't so great that I'd have never gone to another event. I was also surprised to find out that it wasn't some official organiser and just run by the shop Magic Geek. I now understand how it all works, but do feel sorry for the tournament organisers like Steve that don't get all the bonuses the physical shops get just because he runs online & events only (especially when so many people seem to be new players that turn up to his events - new DCI cards are always being given out).
Karn took a trip to e-bay, didn't sell and then I went and bought a box of boosters which was rapidly shredded and then ignored due to work. A month passed. All was quiet on the MTG front and then something happened. The new version of the Xbox game launched. This simple pebble into the placid lake of nerddom is the start of why we have the massive amount of events. Suddenly the people who missed out on the game and the related promotions had an excuse to join us in our addiction. The promo cards were dished out giving the site a confusing story (as I got the old promo decks by mistake) but one that still gets the most hits. The promo cards were only in proper game stores, and the online tool (when it was playing ball) directed you to these shops. Our local store Wayland's Forge practically sold out of sealed Magic decks and boosters when this happened - all their lapsed players returned at once. This amazing act of acquisition convinced a lot of other stores that they should also register to give out the promotional cards - other stores pinged up on the WPN radar as places to not only buy cards, but to get the special shiny giants.
As the actual launch for Magic 2012 came and went the stores seemed to realise that they'd missed out on a pay day. Customers like me were talking about their competitors and travelling a few miles to the events. It's still a big job to put on a full Magic event so most waited until the Magic Celebration (a free event for both stores and consumers which I couldn't attend) to get started. A few started a little earlier such as the fabulous Road to WPN Blog details where a guy with no stores ends up running two lots of events and Game UK who runs the FNM that I've been to 5 of so far - even though it's only just become official and only gets the Promo cards from October. A store needs to run events before it becomes a CORE store and gets full access to the promo program and Game UK has just hit that one week too late to run a pre-release. I guess many are in a similar position as most Birmingham stores are only running a launch (or an unofficial event on launch day in a few cases!). This suggests that Magic Celebration needs to be about a month earlier so that stores can get 3 more events in within the time needed to pre-release the first set in the new block.
As an aside you may have noticed from the pics I got 4 titans - I bought 4 copies of the game! While the Steam & XBL versions were for myself the two spare XBL versions were for younger relatives. Since I paid for their games I got their promo, but since then both have expressed an interest in the paper product too... This was a risk I was willing to take as frankly there are far more damaging activities for teenagers than a card game that teaches important lessons about budgeting, winning and loosing and encourages critical thought. Long story short both are turning up to the last Zendikar FNM as their first full FNM (one made it to half of one a week ago...). More player acquisitions due to the value and desirability of the promos. I'm guessing a similar story has been told in many households and across many formats.
This mass of events is great for semi-players like our group. We aren't too bothered about winning the whole thing, we are just happy to participate. I got 2nd at one of these Friday tournaments but was lucky that no-one expected infect (cheers MaRo!) and may not get away with that again. This mass of events is basically the market's response to the new player base, and the response by us the player will determine how many survive. I suspect the Sat pre-release will fill up so am going to pre-book my place just in case.
As every store in town creeps towards Core status together in the next three months it will be very interesting. Cards will get cheaper for stores and maybe players, players will get better due to practice and events will either become larger or forced out by the competition. Those attached to shops may not care once they get the bonuses that Core status brings (lower priced stock and more freebies) but some may push for ADVANCED status for running 32+ player events.
Magic is poised to become bigger than it's ever been. I've played with people from work as a pretence to invite people over for an evening of fun. My fiance has even invited her work friends over and joined in with the fun (although Commander probably wasn't the best place to start). And over the next few months I'll play a lot less - these things always cycle, but a few good friends have expressed an interest in being shown how to turn creatures sideways and 'Despise' people with a smile on their face. And who am I to deny them that pleasure.
TL;DR?
Planeswalkers 09 dropped in price & reached a broader section of marketplace
Cheap beginner card sets got the early adopters in
Planeswalkers 2012 restarted everyone at the same point with desirable shiny cards
Magic Celebration got people out into the shops proving that there was an audience
Stores responded and scheduled events - if unsupported they may be one offs.
Innistrad Schedule
When we started playing on March 11th 2011 by buying the Deck Builder's Toolkit 2011 we found few Magic The Gathering events happening in our local town (Birmingham, UK). Now it requires two blog posts. One with the list - and one to explain what I think happened (I am an Analyst after-all).
This is the first post with the list of activities:
Fri 23rd Sep: Game UK @ Global Gaming - Farewell to Zendikar FNM - £4
Sat 24th Sep: Magic Geek @ Quality Hotel - Innistrad PreRelease 6 Booster Sealed - £25
Sun 25th Sep - day of rest / Forbidden Planet Birmingham - M2012 Booster Draft (old skool!)
Wed or Thur - My House - Launch Prep/Games night
Fri 30th Sep: Game UK @ Global Gaming - Launch Party 3 Boosters I think - £10
Sat 1st Oct: Waylands Forge - Launch Event 6 Boosters £TBC-£20?
Sun 2nd Oct: Magic Geek @ Oddfellows Hall Stafford - Innistrad Launch 6 Booster Sealed - £25 (or FP Launch B'ham)
I think there are other events going on too - for example our preferred card shop (the fabulous Superdrome in Worcester) is doing both Launch & PreRelease and so is their odd neighbour Mana Leak. Very tempted to go to their Launch event, but I think that clashes with Wayland's trying out their first major event in a long while - and they are my 2nd favourite games shop ever (Role'n'Play Wolverhampton - how we miss ye - hang on, according to Google they just moved again!! Woo!!). Both Forbidden Planets (B'ham & Wolves) are running Launch but not Pre-Release events. That's a crazy amount of magic compared to just 3 Months ago...
If you want to check out what is near you then pop your postcode in here. As you see above attending everything would be expensive, but I hope to pick & choose.
And stay tuned for the 'think piece'!
This is the first post with the list of activities:
Fri 23rd Sep: Game UK @ Global Gaming - Farewell to Zendikar FNM - £4
Sat 24th Sep: Magic Geek @ Quality Hotel - Innistrad PreRelease 6 Booster Sealed - £25
Sun 25th Sep - day of rest / Forbidden Planet Birmingham - M2012 Booster Draft (old skool!)
Wed or Thur - My House - Launch Prep/Games night
Fri 30th Sep: Game UK @ Global Gaming - Launch Party 3 Boosters I think - £10
Sat 1st Oct: Waylands Forge - Launch Event 6 Boosters £TBC-£20?
Sun 2nd Oct: Magic Geek @ Oddfellows Hall Stafford - Innistrad Launch 6 Booster Sealed - £25 (or FP Launch B'ham)
I think there are other events going on too - for example our preferred card shop (the fabulous Superdrome in Worcester) is doing both Launch & PreRelease and so is their odd neighbour Mana Leak. Very tempted to go to their Launch event, but I think that clashes with Wayland's trying out their first major event in a long while - and they are my 2nd favourite games shop ever (Role'n'Play Wolverhampton - how we miss ye - hang on, according to Google they just moved again!! Woo!!). Both Forbidden Planets (B'ham & Wolves) are running Launch but not Pre-Release events. That's a crazy amount of magic compared to just 3 Months ago...
If you want to check out what is near you then pop your postcode in here. As you see above attending everything would be expensive, but I hope to pick & choose.
And stay tuned for the 'think piece'!
Sunday 18 September 2011
Friday Night Magic 5 - Compare the Myr Deck
As Steel Overseer is about to drop out of standard I felt compelled to play my multiplayer Myr deck build for the pre-FNM games nights we had at my house. I miss these, but we may restart them on a Wed.
Basically the idea is you throw out a load of little Myr then boost and tap/untap them with trinkets and then hope to find my one copy of Tempered Steel or Jor Kadeen to make you win faster. I have 1 voltaic key to reuse the overseers as needed too which adds to the chaos. In theory it works. Not against the FNM field though...
Round one was a 2-0 loss against burn & bloodthirst which was interesting, but I couldn't keep anything on the board long enough to get boosting.
Round 2 was the White Ally deck and while I started big in game 2 I got DOJ'd off the board and couldn't rebuild fast enough to get my items powered up. 2-0 again
Round 3 was more promising as this Diabolic Tutor deck was good, but I had essentially 4 turns to ramp up. I kept drawing into my high cost Scrapyard Salvo and Relentless Assault 'end game' cards and couldn't outpace him. 2-0. I took these out at the end of the game and won 4 straight side games over the rest of the evening! Such is Magic.
I did a write up of this with the LSV energy drink for FSF.
Round 4? Bye. This gave me the extra 2 PWP I needed to hit Level 10! With the FNM/Pre-release next weekend giving me a pretty much guaranteed 5 base participant points I could be sitting pretty for the start of the Oct FNM proper.
Next week Phyrexian Suicide Cult 1.5 takes it's final bow prior to rotation. And I have a few extra surprises slotted in...
Basically the idea is you throw out a load of little Myr then boost and tap/untap them with trinkets and then hope to find my one copy of Tempered Steel or Jor Kadeen to make you win faster. I have 1 voltaic key to reuse the overseers as needed too which adds to the chaos. In theory it works. Not against the FNM field though...
Round one was a 2-0 loss against burn & bloodthirst which was interesting, but I couldn't keep anything on the board long enough to get boosting.
Round 2 was the White Ally deck and while I started big in game 2 I got DOJ'd off the board and couldn't rebuild fast enough to get my items powered up. 2-0 again
Round 3 was more promising as this Diabolic Tutor deck was good, but I had essentially 4 turns to ramp up. I kept drawing into my high cost Scrapyard Salvo and Relentless Assault 'end game' cards and couldn't outpace him. 2-0. I took these out at the end of the game and won 4 straight side games over the rest of the evening! Such is Magic.
I did a write up of this with the LSV energy drink for FSF.
Round 4? Bye. This gave me the extra 2 PWP I needed to hit Level 10! With the FNM/Pre-release next weekend giving me a pretty much guaranteed 5 base participant points I could be sitting pretty for the start of the Oct FNM proper.
Next week Phyrexian Suicide Cult 1.5 takes it's final bow prior to rotation. And I have a few extra surprises slotted in...
Friday Night Magic 4 - Beware the Trees...
Bit belated this one. Couldn't Tweet due to balancing the arrival of a friend to his first ever FNM (and getting on the right bus int he wrong direction to miss two rounds), and forgot to write up.
I thought that this one was a bit of a bust - the deck seemed to take ages to get anywhere and struggled to find answers to other people's win conditions. I was playing Blue Green Landfall and had up to 30 mana on some turns due to 2x Vorinclex but failed to put enough X cost cards in to utilise it.
Round 1 was against good friend @Disknoir 's Blue 'stall then play Stormtide' deck which would be fantastic if everyone wasn't playing burn and removal spells. I cocked up my landfall and lost my only decent flier by adding +2/+2 instead of +4/+4 and couldn't fly over the stormtide after this. Due to time this was a draw in the end, but I bet I could have won game 3 due to knowing what I needed to keep back to beat the stormtide.
Round 2 was against a BladeHold deck I really couldn't beat once it got going. I had to go collect my visitor during this game too so was a bit distracted - 2-0 to him.
Round 3 was against elves, and while game 1 took ages due to me not finding good damage producers game 2 was a walkover with the fab Hydra getting into 3 digit tokens again (it had in round 1 but been unable to attack).
Round 4 was unfortunately against my invited friend! It was fun to play, but as we'd been playing this same match-up the night before it felt like we'd been robbed of another contest. i won 2-1 due to a slip up in round 2 on my part where I hadn't taken the lifelink into account.
I came top half and gave my friend the promo card - he'd earned it!
If I'd conceded faster in Round 1 game 1 we might have made it to the 3rd game and I could have come top 4. As my Rd 2 opponed pointed out I needed to put BEast within in the deck and I realised after that adding 4 cards for red X cost spells would make the deck much more powerful. After rotation I will run this deck again - but without landfall can a landfetch deck really be that good? It'll be fun to find out.
Also - here is my Planeswalker Points link!
I thought that this one was a bit of a bust - the deck seemed to take ages to get anywhere and struggled to find answers to other people's win conditions. I was playing Blue Green Landfall and had up to 30 mana on some turns due to 2x Vorinclex but failed to put enough X cost cards in to utilise it.
Round 1 was against good friend @Disknoir 's Blue 'stall then play Stormtide' deck which would be fantastic if everyone wasn't playing burn and removal spells. I cocked up my landfall and lost my only decent flier by adding +2/+2 instead of +4/+4 and couldn't fly over the stormtide after this. Due to time this was a draw in the end, but I bet I could have won game 3 due to knowing what I needed to keep back to beat the stormtide.
Round 2 was against a BladeHold deck I really couldn't beat once it got going. I had to go collect my visitor during this game too so was a bit distracted - 2-0 to him.
Round 3 was against elves, and while game 1 took ages due to me not finding good damage producers game 2 was a walkover with the fab Hydra getting into 3 digit tokens again (it had in round 1 but been unable to attack).
Round 4 was unfortunately against my invited friend! It was fun to play, but as we'd been playing this same match-up the night before it felt like we'd been robbed of another contest. i won 2-1 due to a slip up in round 2 on my part where I hadn't taken the lifelink into account.
I came top half and gave my friend the promo card - he'd earned it!
If I'd conceded faster in Round 1 game 1 we might have made it to the 3rd game and I could have come top 4. As my Rd 2 opponed pointed out I needed to put BEast within in the deck and I realised after that adding 4 cards for red X cost spells would make the deck much more powerful. After rotation I will run this deck again - but without landfall can a landfetch deck really be that good? It'll be fun to find out.
Also - here is my Planeswalker Points link!
Saturday 3 September 2011
Friday Night Magic 3 - Loss Adjustment
This week's was a four round affair where I took a Red/Black/Blue deck manipulation 75 card affair that I'd built the previous week while quite ill. It didn't do very well. The theme was 'make Time Reversal playable' This card is a Mythic Rare from the Magic 2012 set that is lower in value than most of the normal Rares. Ponder - a common card - tends to sell for more. I figured a way that you could kill people with it and went to work.
Round 1 - Red/Black Burn & vampires beat me 2:0
Round 2 - Elves beat me 2:0 (I think this was the same borrowed elves as a previous week being played by a different person)
Round 3 - Illusions beat me 2:0
Round 4 - A different Elves beat me 2:1. Yes - I won the penultimate game of the night.
After the Illusions battle I spread out my cards and found I'd only left 4 Red spells in and still got lots of mana (basic and non basic) for them. I took those out and fixed the lands and it ran a lot more smoothly. Still very clunky and requiring longer games to win with not much in the way of stalling tactics (Spellskite as a star blocker?!) I managed to sneak out a Psychosis Crawler with a Time reversal in hand and played it for the win (when I draw a card Psychosis Crawler does one damage to target player - Time Reversal makes us both dump hands and draw 7) - goal!!achieved!!
Sure I had to loose 8 (plus two extra matches I played to see what happened) to get 1 win, but I've figured out the key parts of the process now. I loved having Psychic surgery in the deck, but exiling cards only gets you so far - and the idea isn't really to let the opponent live to use their 7 cards.
On to next week where I'm looking after new players so will play a more traditional deck.
Round 1 - Red/Black Burn & vampires beat me 2:0
Round 2 - Elves beat me 2:0 (I think this was the same borrowed elves as a previous week being played by a different person)
Round 3 - Illusions beat me 2:0
Round 4 - A different Elves beat me 2:1. Yes - I won the penultimate game of the night.
After the Illusions battle I spread out my cards and found I'd only left 4 Red spells in and still got lots of mana (basic and non basic) for them. I took those out and fixed the lands and it ran a lot more smoothly. Still very clunky and requiring longer games to win with not much in the way of stalling tactics (Spellskite as a star blocker?!) I managed to sneak out a Psychosis Crawler with a Time reversal in hand and played it for the win (when I draw a card Psychosis Crawler does one damage to target player - Time Reversal makes us both dump hands and draw 7) - goal!!achieved!!
Sure I had to loose 8 (plus two extra matches I played to see what happened) to get 1 win, but I've figured out the key parts of the process now. I loved having Psychic surgery in the deck, but exiling cards only gets you so far - and the idea isn't really to let the opponent live to use their 7 cards.
On to next week where I'm looking after new players so will play a more traditional deck.
Friday 26 August 2011
Friday Night Magic 2: The Infect Deck
So - Two friday night Magic's down.
Game 1: Played a 17 year old lady who had only bought her deck that day and hadn't really had chance to play with it (it was the empires Intro deck). I won 2:0 but spent lots of time on education.
Game 2: Won the first round, but lost twice to terrible short mana. The deck was mostly the bloodthirst Intro deck with some cool twists - this guy came 3rd/4th.
Game 3: This was Vs the combo deck from last week & I lost the first one then won a turn 2 super infect and drawn out regular infect. 2:1 and 2:1 overall.
Game 4: Played against the same deck as game 1 but with massive modification. I won a fast game 1, lost to empires in 2 and won on turn 3 in the final game. 3:1 and into the top 4 (woo!)
I chose Auramancer foil as my promo and gave it imediadly to a friend.
Game 5: Against the organiser again!! To revenge last weeks loss I won two straight games with infect to grab a Tormented Soul promo for myself. Super Woo!
Game 6 - the Final. We relaly only had time to play one fast game and after Mulliganing to 5 I still had nothing and had elected to play. CAW living weapon made short work of me. 2nd is still amazing though.
Deck was
4x Titanic Growth
4x Giant Growth
4x Groundswell
4x Mutagenic Growth
as the engine
4x Glistner Elves
4x Phyrexian Myr
as the courier
with plenty of other evil tech to help such as the infect spider and corpse cur to pull it back.
Next week I'm thinking blue. Maybe...
I got another Pharoh in the booster which is amazing for the black deck.
Game 1: Played a 17 year old lady who had only bought her deck that day and hadn't really had chance to play with it (it was the empires Intro deck). I won 2:0 but spent lots of time on education.
Game 2: Won the first round, but lost twice to terrible short mana. The deck was mostly the bloodthirst Intro deck with some cool twists - this guy came 3rd/4th.
Game 3: This was Vs the combo deck from last week & I lost the first one then won a turn 2 super infect and drawn out regular infect. 2:1 and 2:1 overall.
Game 4: Played against the same deck as game 1 but with massive modification. I won a fast game 1, lost to empires in 2 and won on turn 3 in the final game. 3:1 and into the top 4 (woo!)
I chose Auramancer foil as my promo and gave it imediadly to a friend.
Game 5: Against the organiser again!! To revenge last weeks loss I won two straight games with infect to grab a Tormented Soul promo for myself. Super Woo!
Game 6 - the Final. We relaly only had time to play one fast game and after Mulliganing to 5 I still had nothing and had elected to play. CAW living weapon made short work of me. 2nd is still amazing though.
Deck was
4x Titanic Growth
4x Giant Growth
4x Groundswell
4x Mutagenic Growth
as the engine
4x Glistner Elves
4x Phyrexian Myr
as the courier
with plenty of other evil tech to help such as the infect spider and corpse cur to pull it back.
Next week I'm thinking blue. Maybe...
I got another Pharoh in the booster which is amazing for the black deck.
Saturday 20 August 2011
My First Friday Night Magic
Wasn't expecting much in the way of victories expecting all to be running tournament level stuff. Turns out it was all friendly and similar to our own little game group. I'll happily go again next week. Here are the Tweets from the evening.
I'm at my first #fnm about to get my ass handed to me by teenagers.
most have yugi out which is apparently sick... Not sure on numbers yet.
I see two black and red, and one illusions and lots of yugi. Nothing happening yet. Not sure what's happening!
Not sure what the kids in this internet cafe are playing but I want a go. (Turns out it was League of Legends - looks good).
If you rush down you'd be top 8 and fifty fifty on a promo card. Thinking max 9 players. Non of the yugi lot are playing!
Game 1 against organiser. Close loss, fast win, close loss. Really fun final game, many creatures eaten. #fnm (I think I should have actually won the last game as I forgot to resurrect Vengeful Pharoh for free - killing his creature in process - winning this would have changed the whole evening :( )
Game 2, good player with odd, borrowed elves. Won two. Once I had control it was straight forward. #fnm (Turns out this guy had 4 Planeswalkers which never saw the board!)
Game 3: Red black burn. Obliterator won game 1, almost won a close game 2 which I'm not sure how I lost. And game 3 I was toast from opening (Think i messed up my creature attacks game 2 - could have got the extra damage. G3 was a quick and messy affair...)
Game 4: guy hating his blue black deck from the start but it did lots but nothing deadly. 2 nil. #fnm (Opponent hadn't won all night and the deck seemed OK, but pushing in too many areas).
Overall I was joint third, but on opponents win percentages I was 7th! Still top 8 tho. ;) (yes - there were 8 players)
I'm at my first #fnm about to get my ass handed to me by teenagers.
most have yugi out which is apparently sick... Not sure on numbers yet.
I see two black and red, and one illusions and lots of yugi. Nothing happening yet. Not sure what's happening!
Not sure what the kids in this internet cafe are playing but I want a go. (Turns out it was League of Legends - looks good).
If you rush down you'd be top 8 and fifty fifty on a promo card. Thinking max 9 players. Non of the yugi lot are playing!
Game 1 against organiser. Close loss, fast win, close loss. Really fun final game, many creatures eaten. #fnm (I think I should have actually won the last game as I forgot to resurrect Vengeful Pharoh for free - killing his creature in process - winning this would have changed the whole evening :( )
Game 2, good player with odd, borrowed elves. Won two. Once I had control it was straight forward. #fnm (Turns out this guy had 4 Planeswalkers which never saw the board!)
Game 3: Red black burn. Obliterator won game 1, almost won a close game 2 which I'm not sure how I lost. And game 3 I was toast from opening (Think i messed up my creature attacks game 2 - could have got the extra damage. G3 was a quick and messy affair...)
Game 4: guy hating his blue black deck from the start but it did lots but nothing deadly. 2 nil. #fnm (Opponent hadn't won all night and the deck seemed OK, but pushing in too many areas).
Overall I was joint third, but on opponents win percentages I was 7th! Still top 8 tho. ;) (yes - there were 8 players)
Saturday 23 July 2011
Booster Box Madness: M12 Edition (Pt1)
Being fairly new to Magic cards (4 months now I guess) I’d never appreciated the distribution of cards in a booster box. I understood that (excluding foils) you couldn’t get two of the same card in a booster pack. I understood that each back consisted of 10 common, 3 uncommon & 1 rare card – and that there was a 1 in 8 chance the rare would be replaced with a mythic rare. Also there is a 1 in 68 chance that one of the common cards is replaced by a foil (and that foil card has an equal chance of being any of the 249 cards in M12 – including lands). This is where I thought it ended – but it seems it does not.
You see like all trading card games MTG cards are cut from a large sheet. This enables them to cut the cards in such a way that you don’t get repeats in a pack. I didn’t think about this too much, but it seems that the sheets thing goes further. The number of repeats of a card you will get in a box is also limited (excluding foils). If you open the packs int he order they were in the box you even get a pattern of the lands that come out so that you get an even number of each type! Now I’m basing this on the incredibly small sample size of my first M12 box (the second is still sealed ready for a games night in a month or so), but looking back at the New Phyrexia stats I kept (which was one sealed box with an added 8 more boosters from sealed deck events) it holds true.
From the opening of 36 packs from the same M12 box I have:
Common – 352 (not incl. 3 foil cards)
4x 52
3x 46
2x 3
Uncommon – 110 (not incl. 2 foil)
2x 49
1x 10
0x 1 (Cudgel Troll)
Rare – 32 (not incl. 2 foil)
2x 1 (Bird of Paradise)
1x 30
Mythic – 4 (no foil)
1x 4
Foil – 8
3 Common
2 Uncommon
2 Rare (Monomania & Redirect)
1 Swamp
As anyone who has even walked past a probability distribution this is unnatural. It’s like the random sampling has happened to set rules that are hiding in the background – the sheets are probably large and with a non repeated pattern and the start point for a box probably varies dependant on where they come in the run. This leaves me with the rather odd position of having bought a box of cards and having no real ‘swaps’. It also means I can guarantee what I’m going to see in box two – 3/4 of every common, 1 or 2 of every common, mostly singletons of rares and some random mythics.
This means if we play sealed deck with the other box and I have 3 copies of a certain common spell (say ‘cancel’) then I know that the rest of the group only has access to a maximum of one copy of that spell. At large public tournaments I’m guessing this doesn’t matter at all, but in single store events playing from one box it may distort things a little.
Either way, I’m going to either have to sell the box without having the fun of the sealed/packwars/draft night (unlikely) or end up with a spare of all the commons and a full playset of the uncommons (likely – afterall 4 more mythics may await!). I don’t mind the predictability of the contents of a booster box – in fact it means I can budget better around and know that any extra packs added on afterwards as impulse buys are far more likely to cause repeat cards. It does make it far less likely that i’ll buy a 2nd box in future, but I had my own reasons for not wanting to ‘play as you open’ on the first box this time so in future it’ll be less of an issue.
The mythics I pulled were Gideon, Primevel Titan, Time Reversal & Primordial Hydra. 3 out of 4 are ones I’d play so not bad.
Friday 15 July 2011
Oops - 3 M12 Booster Boxes and 3 Chandra's Phoenix!
Ed:
Home now - a spot of relaxed and annotated booster ripping is in order. One box is getting squirrelled away for multiplayer at a later date.
I do like Superdrome - it's essentially the kind of shop that every high-street should have so I have no qualms about choosing them over the more MTG Pro style store just up the road. Anywhere that has 4 kinds of Risk and more plastic tat than I did as a teenager must be encouraged and supported.
Will probably post up the results - i'm due a run of underwealming cards, but as I've already found an Adaptive Automaton I'm not going to be too disappointed whatever happens.
Plus I have some amazing stuff from Yum Yum including a tea drink that looks like infected frogspawn and some new Meiji goodies that will get written up at FoodStuff Finds (eventually).
Tuesday 12 July 2011
Just two M12 Boosters 0_0
With the Intro packs I got at the Pre-Release detailed below I got two boosters - one in each pack. Initially I thought I'd let the recipients of the Intro packs open them themselves as it's good fun to do so. Over the next few days I realised that firstly I wouldn't see the guys until I actually have boxes of boosters to play with, and secondly that getting them 'into' boosters would be a Very Bad Thing which would not enhance their play experience at all. Me making them decks is far more cost effective and gives me something to do with those commons I have floating around. They get their moments of discovery from opening & playing the decks so I resolved to open the boosters one a night.
Last night I cracked open the first one. It was going pretty well - first card Ponder which is the most sought after common card, then a Mage and part of the Empires cycle and then. A mythic rare dragon! Not only that, but Furyborn Hellkite is playable in the intro deck that I got them (Blood & Fire) and is only 1 mana above the Face card for the pack. A great pull and as it's the second cheapest M card in the set at the moment not one I'd mind passing on if needed. Certainly got my value from the £12 Into pack with this lot!
Cut to day two. It's getting late and I've caught up on all the usual internet stuff so I decide to open the second booster as planned. Commons are nothing special - even have a duplicate of two or three cards already just from the two boosters I have. Uncommons are more interesting as there is an O Ring to pop in the Blue deck and a nice fire card and then I get to the card at the back.
And then I do a double take and have a second look.
Two boosters - two Mythics - and probably the most desirable card in the set at this early stage. This is Planeswalker number 3 I've found with Vess & Karn also coming in boosters, but probably the most surprising. The probability of this is only 1 in 64 occasions so if I were to open 2 packs every day I'd get double Mythic once every two months (and I'd probably be poor from buying 128 boosters).
It's amazing luck though and I am certainly keeping both Mythics until after I get the box(es) on Friday so will give them a good amount of replacement loot instead of Chandra, the Firebrand. Heck - I might even buy more Intro packs and slide the lucky boosters out into my pile just to be on the safe side...
Sunday 10 July 2011
M12 Pre Release Promo Loot
As part of the promo event run by Magic Geek .co.uk I picked up two of the new M12 Intro Decks, Mystical Might and Blood & Fire, along with two Promotional Bloodlord of Vaasgoth.
First up the Blue White Illusions deck Mystical Might. This is pretty fast and can cause some trouble for beat down decks as by the time they are playing threats this deck has counter magic up and running. I managed to hand the first loss to a high ranking agro goblin deck that was playing in the sealed deck, and beat some constructed decks with it too. It'd be fairly easy to upgrade (there are a lot of non illusion creatures).
The rare card Lord of The Unreal is the star and the deck only lost once when I'd got that out. Extra copies would make this more consistent.
The other deck is slightly different - it's a balanced Red Black deck that focuses on the Bloodthirst mechanic so has burn and direct damage as it's theme. It's also good but seemed less able to beat the decks on offer. I ran out of time so only played the six necessary games to earn the promo, but never got to play either of the high cost mythics - M12 is just that fast.
The mythic vampire promo would slot right into this deck and boost a good few of the cards. It'd be harder to supplement the bloodthirst mechanic as M12 is the only standard legal set featuring the keyword. Haste creatures would be a great way to get first turn damage to start the chain though.
There are some great uncommons in these packs - O ring in Blue White & Swiftfoot Boots in the Red Black so if you aren't looking to get too many boosters it may be a cheaper way to get the star cards of the set in workable decks without breaking the bank.
I didn't open the boosters.
First up the Blue White Illusions deck Mystical Might. This is pretty fast and can cause some trouble for beat down decks as by the time they are playing threats this deck has counter magic up and running. I managed to hand the first loss to a high ranking agro goblin deck that was playing in the sealed deck, and beat some constructed decks with it too. It'd be fairly easy to upgrade (there are a lot of non illusion creatures).
The rare card Lord of The Unreal is the star and the deck only lost once when I'd got that out. Extra copies would make this more consistent.
The other deck is slightly different - it's a balanced Red Black deck that focuses on the Bloodthirst mechanic so has burn and direct damage as it's theme. It's also good but seemed less able to beat the decks on offer. I ran out of time so only played the six necessary games to earn the promo, but never got to play either of the high cost mythics - M12 is just that fast.
The mythic vampire promo would slot right into this deck and boost a good few of the cards. It'd be harder to supplement the bloodthirst mechanic as M12 is the only standard legal set featuring the keyword. Haste creatures would be a great way to get first turn damage to start the chain though.
There are some great uncommons in these packs - O ring in Blue White & Swiftfoot Boots in the Red Black so if you aren't looking to get too many boosters it may be a cheaper way to get the star cards of the set in workable decks without breaking the bank.
I didn't open the boosters.
Saturday 9 July 2011
M12 pre release
I completely forgot to live blog the pre release. Things got a bit hectic! I got two intro decks and played around 15 games to earn my promo cards. Pics another day.
Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone
Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone
Thursday 7 July 2011
Full Duels of the Planeswalkers Promo Deck Lists - finally!
Turns out that the correct product name for the new Planeswalker promo decks is sample decks and here the listings all are:
MTG D12 M12 Planeswalker Promo Decks
Finally got one of the modern decks (Blue B) to confirm this & to bring the total of Grave Titan Promos to 4.
MTG D12 M12 Planeswalker Promo Decks
Finally got one of the modern decks (Blue B) to confirm this & to bring the total of Grave Titan Promos to 4.
Monday 4 July 2011
Friday 1 July 2011
Post Planeswalkers, & Pre M12
Well it does seem that I got old decks instead of this years ones - but as the store has run out of cards I can't get my hands on the new ones for a while!
We are kind of in an odd MTG gap now, while people gaze at the new cards and formulate decks that they may never get to play. I like the Zombie tribe. The Black Deck seems to eat anything that's put in it's way (it's basically designed to mill creatures) and a zombie version could be interesting. I have three Grave Titans afterall so anything is possible.
I'm thinking that SuperDrome at £83 a booster box (about £2.20 a pack) as a walk up price will be my chosen store again. 60 packs would be ideal so 2 boxes would give me enough to let friends buy and to use as gifts. Need to pick up some of the starter decks too so hopefully can do that at the pre-release (I'm not playing but it seems rude not to pop in). Will take a decent camera - the store is like a nerdier version of Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium.
Real life is too busy to worry about finding the cheapest cards & best decks. I've sorted out my (growing) spares collection and only kept 4 of anything. Digital playtime is where it's at, loosing for fun and winning for unlocks.
We are kind of in an odd MTG gap now, while people gaze at the new cards and formulate decks that they may never get to play. I like the Zombie tribe. The Black Deck seems to eat anything that's put in it's way (it's basically designed to mill creatures) and a zombie version could be interesting. I have three Grave Titans afterall so anything is possible.
I'm thinking that SuperDrome at £83 a booster box (about £2.20 a pack) as a walk up price will be my chosen store again. 60 packs would be ideal so 2 boxes would give me enough to let friends buy and to use as gifts. Need to pick up some of the starter decks too so hopefully can do that at the pre-release (I'm not playing but it seems rude not to pop in). Will take a decent camera - the store is like a nerdier version of Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium.
Real life is too busy to worry about finding the cheapest cards & best decks. I've sorted out my (growing) spares collection and only kept 4 of anything. Digital playtime is where it's at, loosing for fun and winning for unlocks.
Saturday 18 June 2011
MTG Duels Of The Planeswalkers 2012 Promo Decks
Today I started off with these:
And ended up with this! The irony of printing out full colour laser prints of cards then trading them in for the same but on cardboard was not lost on me...
ED: These Decks seem to be the Planeswalkers 2009 decks instead of the 2012 decks!
FULL DECK LISTS OF PLANESWALKER PROMO DECKS HERE
I picked up 4 of the 5 possible promo decks that you get free with a voucher from buying the Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 on Steam, Xbox 360 or PS3. It turns out the cards are mostly from the set 10th Edition (or X) released in July 2007 (usually 16 commons and 2 uncommons). Are 4 year old cards worth having for free? Certainly! Especially if you are new to the game. Also I feel some of these will see M12 reprints so be standard legal. All have 12 lands.
First up Lilliana - Black
Seems to be a typical black deck - a few cheap creatures and lots of destruction. Not much discard and only one creature above 2/2. Seems a nice beginner Black deck.
And lastly a white life gain deck. No equipment but a few boost spells to ramp things up. Angel's feather only has 17 possible targets to gain life from as you are unlikely to be playing another white deck. In this smaller format though it may work.
Not got Blue, but I'm guessing the deck list will be online and I may end up with another voucher before the offer runs out anyway as more non-paper MTG friends buy the game!
I'm going to play a few games with these to see how it all works - 30 card mini decks may be ideal for our lunchtime games. I'll probably pass these off to the people who gave me the vouchers to start off their card collections...
And ended up with this! The irony of printing out full colour laser prints of cards then trading them in for the same but on cardboard was not lost on me...
ED: These Decks seem to be the Planeswalkers 2009 decks instead of the 2012 decks!
FULL DECK LISTS OF PLANESWALKER PROMO DECKS HERE
I picked up 4 of the 5 possible promo decks that you get free with a voucher from buying the Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 on Steam, Xbox 360 or PS3. It turns out the cards are mostly from the set 10th Edition (or X) released in July 2007 (usually 16 commons and 2 uncommons). Are 4 year old cards worth having for free? Certainly! Especially if you are new to the game. Also I feel some of these will see M12 reprints so be standard legal. All have 12 lands.First up Lilliana - Black
Seems to be a typical black deck - a few cheap creatures and lots of destruction. Not much discard and only one creature above 2/2. Seems a nice beginner Black deck.
Chandra - Red
Burn deck! Also this has Lorwyn and Morningtide cards in so has a bit more variety. I think that the uncommons in this deck are pretty good, and Prodigal Pyromancer is very useful in this short format too.
Garruk - Green
Mana ramp, creatures and consistency - it's only got one less card than the other decks (13 land) but 3 less types of card than the red & black decks. Lots of big creatures and targets for other's spells - most having 4 body is a problem for many of these decks.
Anjani - White
And lastly a white life gain deck. No equipment but a few boost spells to ramp things up. Angel's feather only has 17 possible targets to gain life from as you are unlikely to be playing another white deck. In this smaller format though it may work.
Not got Blue, but I'm guessing the deck list will be online and I may end up with another voucher before the offer runs out anyway as more non-paper MTG friends buy the game!
I'm going to play a few games with these to see how it all works - 30 card mini decks may be ideal for our lunchtime games. I'll probably pass these off to the people who gave me the vouchers to start off their card collections...
Saturday 21 May 2011
NPH Booster Box Pics
Sealed box & box topper promo
All the cards, Commons on left & right, Uncommons back centre, rare front centre, mythic & foil scattered in front.
This is only the 36 packs from the box and not the extra 8 from drafts.
Booster Box Madness, New Phyrexia Final totals
After opening all the booster packs and add in the 8 packs from Pre-Release and launch there are only 14 cards I haven't got from New Phyrexia. Because of this it's much easier to list what I DON'T have instead of what I do.
I'm missing:
Mythic
Batterskull
Rare
Phyrexian Unlife
Phyrexian Ingester
Psychic Surgery
Chancellor of the Dross
Glistening Oil
Surgical Extraction
Slag Fiend
Melira, Sylvok Outcast
Caged Sun
Hex Parasite
Omen Machine
Unwinding Clock
Uncommon
Auriok Survivors
It's an odd mix - mainly because I lucked into only getting one repeat Mythic and had some clumping in the Rares. Only missing one uncommon is also good, even if it's one that combos nicely with all the gear in the set.
There is only one common that I have 4 copies of (the Black card Evil Presence - enchanted land is a swamp) so I may end up grouping up my common spares and selling (or attempting) those on the internet as a set. Seems singles sell better and for more, but it's not time-effective for me to try that.
Would I do it again? It's certainly expensive (£82 for the box) and with £50 also going on the launch events it's certainly something that I'd have to think hard about doing before each set. Getting all the mythics (except one) this way was quite lucky and while I could probably sell the cards and get most of it back I'm more likely to keep hold of the good stuff.
Only time will tell, but I'm not seeing any reasons to buy more cards between now and July, except for the promo cards from Planeswalkers 2012 on Xbox & PC :)
I'm missing:
Mythic
Batterskull
Rare
Phyrexian Unlife
Phyrexian Ingester
Psychic Surgery
Chancellor of the Dross
Glistening Oil
Surgical Extraction
Slag Fiend
Melira, Sylvok Outcast
Caged Sun
Hex Parasite
Omen Machine
Unwinding Clock
Uncommon
Auriok Survivors
It's an odd mix - mainly because I lucked into only getting one repeat Mythic and had some clumping in the Rares. Only missing one uncommon is also good, even if it's one that combos nicely with all the gear in the set.
There is only one common that I have 4 copies of (the Black card Evil Presence - enchanted land is a swamp) so I may end up grouping up my common spares and selling (or attempting) those on the internet as a set. Seems singles sell better and for more, but it's not time-effective for me to try that.
Would I do it again? It's certainly expensive (£82 for the box) and with £50 also going on the launch events it's certainly something that I'd have to think hard about doing before each set. Getting all the mythics (except one) this way was quite lucky and while I could probably sell the cards and get most of it back I'm more likely to keep hold of the good stuff.
Only time will tell, but I'm not seeing any reasons to buy more cards between now and July, except for the promo cards from Planeswalkers 2012 on Xbox & PC :)
Saturday 14 May 2011
Booster Box Madness! New Phyrexia Edition
Karn didn't sell. One sold for more than mine, but I'm guessing they bought other cards from the same guy. It's tempting to re-list, but...
I bought a full New Phyrexia Booster Box (with promo card thanks to @J_A_May)! This works out at £2.28 a pack instead of £3.59 local price so is a reasonable saving IF I pull some decent cards.
So far (16 packs) I have got:
Mythic
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
Sword of War and Peace (pack 15!)
Rare
Spellskite
Invader Parasite (x2)
Chancellor of the Tangle
Phyrexian Swarmlord
Birthing Pod
Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer
Lifes Finale
Moltensteel Dragon
Bludgeon Brawl
Myr Superion
Soul Conduit
Puresteel Paladin
Foil
Furnace Scamp
Beast Within
Mycosynth Wellspring
Rotted Hystrix
Promo
Surgical Extraction from the box topper
With the stated 1/8 Mythic rare and 1/4 Foils I should have got 2 Mythic and 4 Foil so far so I'm ahead of the curve again. Not quite as good as the 3 mythic from 7 packs at the pre release (4.5% chance of that or better happening according to the binomial distribution) but increasing n smooths out the probabilities.
I bought a full New Phyrexia Booster Box (with promo card thanks to @J_A_May)! This works out at £2.28 a pack instead of £3.59 local price so is a reasonable saving IF I pull some decent cards.
So far (16 packs) I have got:
Mythic
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
Sword of War and Peace (pack 15!)
Rare
Spellskite
Invader Parasite (x2)
Chancellor of the Tangle
Phyrexian Swarmlord
Birthing Pod
Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer
Lifes Finale
Moltensteel Dragon
Bludgeon Brawl
Myr Superion
Soul Conduit
Puresteel Paladin
Foil
Furnace Scamp
Beast Within
Mycosynth Wellspring
Rotted Hystrix
Promo
Surgical Extraction from the box topper
With the stated 1/8 Mythic rare and 1/4 Foils I should have got 2 Mythic and 4 Foil so far so I'm ahead of the curve again. Not quite as good as the 3 mythic from 7 packs at the pre release (4.5% chance of that or better happening according to the binomial distribution) but increasing n smooths out the probabilities.
Monday 9 May 2011
Wanna buy a Karn?
Decided to pop Karn on ebay & see what happens.
http://bit.ly/l7zQYo if you want to have a look.
http://bit.ly/l7zQYo if you want to have a look.
Sunday 8 May 2011
New Phyrexia Pre-Release Write Up - May 7th 2011
Three of us went to the NPH launch in Birmingham Yesterday and it was interesting and fairly relaxed.
My brain was already tired from a hectic week so I really wasn't at my best, but from my 6 booster packs for the sealed deck thing I got Karn Liberated & a Mox Opal so within a few minutes of the start I'd got my entrance fee sorted. Karn is a decent card, but doesn't really suit my play style so I may pop him up on ebay this evening so that someone can trasure him more than I do and I effectively get free entry to the NPH Launch next Sun.
Play wise I went White Blue Red but mostly in artefacts and thinking like a regular deck I went with lots of cheap cards (& Karn).
My first opponent beat me quite easily (he ended up top 8) and we had a good long chat about games afterwards.
My Second also beat me (mostly by stealing my Karn & other top cards) and then gave me a few hints on my deck based on my other cards.
This trend continued with the third opponent who beat me (closer due to some of the tweaks) and then helped rebuild my deck. I found I'd left out some good synergy cards that worked together with the other artefact creatures. Effectively this turned my defensive artefact pile into a Tempered Steel deck.
I then proceeded to win the remaining 7 games, to get a lovely 50% win rate (the extra game was due to a speedy turn 5 win that meant we had time to try again). The last 3 opponents were all good sports and we swapped card tips and strategy advice and generally had a good time.
The NPH set changes things a lot as I often did more damage to myself than my opponent did to get things like Slash Panther out faster, but it turns out that this is a pretty effective way to control the board. Phyrexian metamorph is 3 mana and 2 life to copy that amazing high mana creature your opponent played in their last turn, or to duplicate your Slash Panther for 8 damage that turn. And the launch promo is a foil copy of this card so I may just have to pop along to that too.
My brain was already tired from a hectic week so I really wasn't at my best, but from my 6 booster packs for the sealed deck thing I got Karn Liberated & a Mox Opal so within a few minutes of the start I'd got my entrance fee sorted. Karn is a decent card, but doesn't really suit my play style so I may pop him up on ebay this evening so that someone can trasure him more than I do and I effectively get free entry to the NPH Launch next Sun.
Play wise I went White Blue Red but mostly in artefacts and thinking like a regular deck I went with lots of cheap cards (& Karn).
My first opponent beat me quite easily (he ended up top 8) and we had a good long chat about games afterwards.
My Second also beat me (mostly by stealing my Karn & other top cards) and then gave me a few hints on my deck based on my other cards.
This trend continued with the third opponent who beat me (closer due to some of the tweaks) and then helped rebuild my deck. I found I'd left out some good synergy cards that worked together with the other artefact creatures. Effectively this turned my defensive artefact pile into a Tempered Steel deck.
I then proceeded to win the remaining 7 games, to get a lovely 50% win rate (the extra game was due to a speedy turn 5 win that meant we had time to try again). The last 3 opponents were all good sports and we swapped card tips and strategy advice and generally had a good time.
Friday 29 April 2011
Games night & actually winning
I've been busy so not really bothering with this, but I guess a few words can't hurt.
I've actually won some friendlies now. Whether was as a result of me inviting everyone round to my house to play and giving them snacks, or my constant shouts of "don't attack me, I've got nothing!" but I won our first (and only) 4 player match.
Was a fairly standard resurrection deck really, but with black, white & blue it had a lot of counter too. Mana was so plentiful by the end and due to my getting 7 cards a turn from the Sphinx and draw I could pick & choose my hand. Took two players out in one turn and then over-run the remaining guy with my big beasties. I've changed most of the creatures in the deck now for the ones I actually wanted that were still in the post, so it'll probably never win another game.
The Artifacts/red mana Firin' Squad deck got a win that day too by out competing a valakut deck which isn't too bad.
I also knocked up an infect deck to see what cards I had that fitted and ended up winning three games out of 4 with that. It's an interesting mechanic if the opponent isn't expecting it especially as it's not too hard to put 5 on someone with that first mad hit.
My Blue Draw=damage deck was quite fun too and while it's only ever won one game I think it could nest nicely into a control deck if I could be bothered to figure it all out.
The Red/Blue I'm looking at currently hasn't won yet, but I'm still refining the balance between control & destroy while keeping it cheap in both senses. As I only have 4 non common cards in it (and neither are essential) I might strip it back to Standard Pauper just for kicks & see how many mythics it can destroy.
Of course I could always go look up some deck-lists but that feels like cheating.
MTG on hiatus now until after exams & NPH launch. It's only a week I guess, but it's going to be a long one...
I've actually won some friendlies now. Whether was as a result of me inviting everyone round to my house to play and giving them snacks, or my constant shouts of "don't attack me, I've got nothing!" but I won our first (and only) 4 player match.
Was a fairly standard resurrection deck really, but with black, white & blue it had a lot of counter too. Mana was so plentiful by the end and due to my getting 7 cards a turn from the Sphinx and draw I could pick & choose my hand. Took two players out in one turn and then over-run the remaining guy with my big beasties. I've changed most of the creatures in the deck now for the ones I actually wanted that were still in the post, so it'll probably never win another game.
The Artifacts/red mana Firin' Squad deck got a win that day too by out competing a valakut deck which isn't too bad.
I also knocked up an infect deck to see what cards I had that fitted and ended up winning three games out of 4 with that. It's an interesting mechanic if the opponent isn't expecting it especially as it's not too hard to put 5 on someone with that first mad hit.
My Blue Draw=damage deck was quite fun too and while it's only ever won one game I think it could nest nicely into a control deck if I could be bothered to figure it all out.
The Red/Blue I'm looking at currently hasn't won yet, but I'm still refining the balance between control & destroy while keeping it cheap in both senses. As I only have 4 non common cards in it (and neither are essential) I might strip it back to Standard Pauper just for kicks & see how many mythics it can destroy.
Of course I could always go look up some deck-lists but that feels like cheating.
MTG on hiatus now until after exams & NPH launch. It's only a week I guess, but it's going to be a long one...
Tuesday 12 April 2011
One for the real world
Cards I've ended up with greater than 4 of for people in my game group. 2 x DBC + a few boosters means I have a reasonable amount already!
Spares | Card | Colour | Clear | Colour | Total Mana | Rarity |
3 | Rise From The Grave | BK | 4 | 1 | 5 | U |
2 | Sign In Blood | BK | 0 | 2 | 2 | C |
1 | Aether Adept | BL | 1 | 2 | 3 | C |
1 | Guard Gomazoa | BL | 2 | 1 | 3 | U |
2 | Into the Roil | BL | 1 | 1 | 2 | C |
2 | Mind Control | BL | 3 | 2 | 5 | U |
1 | Steady Progress | BL | 2 | 1 | 3 | C |
1 | Unsummon | BL | 0 | 1 | 1 | C |
1 | Wind Zendikon | BL |
| 1 | 1 | C |
2 | Brass Squire | CL | 3 | 0 | 3 | U |
1 | Perilous Myr | CL | 2 |
| 2 | C |
1 | Plague Myr | CL | 2 | 0 | 2 | C |
1 | Psychosis Crawler | CL | 5 | 0 | 5 | R |
1 | Stone Golem | CL | 5 | 0 | 5 | C |
1 | Triskelion | CL | 6 | 6 | R | |
2 | Garruk's Companion | GR | 0 | 2 | 2 | C |
2 | Garruk's Packleader | GR | 4 | 1 | 5 | U |
1 | Llanowar Elves | GR |
| 1 | 1 | C |
5 | Terramorphic Expanse | LD |
|
| 0 | c |
1 | Earth Servant | RD | 5 | 1 | 6 | U |
1 | Ogre Resister | RD | 2 | 2 | 4 | C |
2 | Anjani's Mantra | WH | 1 | 1 | 2 | U |
1 | Ghalma's Warden | WH | 3 | 1 | 4 | C |
2 | Kor Skyfisher | WH | 1 | 1 | 2 | C |
2 | Pacifism | WH | 1 | 1 | 2 | C |
2 | Souls Attendant | WH | 0 | 1 | 1 | C |
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