Category Archives: magic

magic

It’s that portal song title post again

D&D, Fenland Gamers, magic, MtG, new arrivals, news, vampire the masquerade: rivals

Time sure flies.

Before you know it over a week has passed since the last post.

Not much has happened to share on here. Obviously world events are still putting a dampener on things like playing board games in person. Plus there hasn’t been much online gaming using apps (outside of Star Realms and Epic the Card Game) either.

My “secret” project is going slowly. I’m not sure what folks will make of it. It is a departure for me and this blog. Which I hope folks will like.

On the Kickstarter side of things Vampire the Masquerade: Rivals finally landed (after it hit retailers).

Naturally I’ve sleeved it all up with the official sleeves that came as part of the Kickstarter. I’ve even used a couple of the Stonemaier token containers to surprisingly store the tokens for the game.

From a recent Renegade live stream it was revealed what the next expansion will be after the first expansion Blood & Alchemy comes out. It will be called The Wolf and The Rat. But it was also revealed they have a third expansion that has finished production and a fourth currently being worked on. Both of them currently remain unnamed.

And yes for the record I have pre-ordered Blood & Alchemy. The bonus for doing so are a couple of alt art vampire cards, one for each clan.

Vampire the Masquerade: Rivals first 3 OP kits

Another big reveal from the stream were the contents of the first three OP kits for Vampire Wednesdays. These will be available for your FLGS to order, or for those that can’t get their local store interested, or get to a store to participate you can order direct from Renegade. These OP kits introduce three new vampires that will eventually be available on the Renegade website to purchase.

I got the season 0 OP kit as part of my Kickstarter and plan to get these as well. These will form part of my attempt to kick off a Rivals scene in Wisbech once Fenland Gamers starts up gaming sessions again. Although my track record in doing that sort of thing is pretty poor.

Which brings me nicely onto the news that Jonathan and I have had chats between ourselves and also with our hosts The Luxe about when and how we will start gaming sessions back. Taking into account current world events we are eyeing September as our target month for once more holding meet ups.

Hopefully in the meantime those corrupt, lying bullies in charge of running our country will not screw things up (although history is not on their side on that front) and we will indeed be able to safely once more gather to roll dice, shuffle cards and move pieces of plastic around a board.

On the D&D news front apparently next week (Tuesday) instead of releasing stories setting up the next MtG set, because that set is a D&D/MtG standalone crossover set, WotC will be releasing five free D&D adventures for players to download. These 15 to 20 page adventures are aimed at tier 2 characters, specifically levels 8 – 10.

Hopefully the next thing you read on here is the “secret” project. But you know me!

MtG Arena App Update

apps, iOS, magic, MtG, MtG Arena

Thought I’d give a little update on the iOS version of Arena.

I raised a support call with WotC over redeeming the codes I had. Which they did respond to. You need to either use the PC/Mac version, or go to your account settings and https://myaccounts.wizards.com/code. Now this bit must be new (as in the last year) as I don’t remember WotC allowing codes to be redeemed via the web before.

Completed Colour Challenges!

So now I have some free packs and decks. Not many but some. It’s a start.

However having ground out the Colour (I refuse to use the American spelling here) Challenge unlocked the rewards as I progressed through each, and unlocked the other game formats. What it does not do is give me the free deck for having completed it, or acknowledge that I’ve completed it!

But Colour Challenge Not Complete!

The WotC twitter support did reply to my query about this with…

WotC Twitter Support Reply

So I visited the link, and created a feedback (that’s all it allows you to do) with the above screen shots attached.

In the meantime, I entered promo codes (happy I can do that now), ate, slept and other stuff.

With time to kill this morning I decided I’d check to see if I had a reply.

I want to say to my surprise there was no reply or even acknowledgement that my “bug” had been seen. But I was disappointed that there had not even been any form of acknowledgement. Which is the minimum you expect, even if it’s automated.

Naturally I voiced that disappointment via social media with the WotC Help account in a fairly civil manor.

I know the cards in this red/green deck aren’t going to be great. But they are cards none the less. Plus the challenge needs to be acknowledged as being completed so it can give me another to attempt (possibly). These challenges are one of the ways to grind out gems/coins and boosters for free. If the aim is to spend as little as possible (my total outlay so far has been a fiver on the intro booster offer) then this needs to be working.

MtG Arena hits iOS

apps, iOS, magic, MtG, MtG Arena, news, online play

Today Magic the Gathering Arena hit the iOS App Store.

Finally! It’s long over due on the platform. It came out on Android as an early access at the end of January.

Mini rant…

In my opinion Arena should have been on mobile from launch, or failing that within the first 6 months of launching. I really do think WotC fumbled the ball on this. By taking so long to reach other platforms other than PC, WotC really failed to make a significant dent into rival games such as Hearthstone. And that’s despite throwing lots of money at advertising, and “buying” streamers.

Initial impressions…

So this morning after downloading Arena onto my iPad, it had to then download even more data before I could do anything but play the tutorial. Then before the majority of game modes are made available I had to complete the Colour Challenge to unlock them. Which is basically play a mono coloured deck against an “AI” opponent playing one of the remaining colours, then the final game would be against a random real opponent. And you have to do that for each colour type, before you can play Standard or Historic for example.

The “AI” opponents are more logic puzzles than playing against an AI, as the cards drawn are the same each time. So it’s basically about playing the cards in the right order.

The real player opponent was fun. However there were some uneven matchups with obviously more powerful decks, they were not mono colour for starters. I think this for a complete novice to the game could be very off putting.

Being a paper player I have collected more than a handful of Arena codes over the last couple of years. These codes unlock decks, boosters, etc within Arena. You have to enter the code within the in app store to unlock them. However it appears that in the version of Arena released today there is no way to redeem those codes. So if like me you don’t have a PC/Mac you can’t use them, hopefully they won’t expire before WotC sort this out. Which would not be cool.

I knew I’d like playing MtG using Arena. It’s MtG with a slick “modern” UI. What’s not to like?

Another rant…

However it’s all the crap around playing the game that WotC have with their nickel and diming players for every penny they can screw out of them I don’t like.

I’ve seen comparisons online, and WotC are one of the meanest, less generous companies for this type of game. The in game economy is very much weighted in their favour.

Which means building up a collection and being able to build decks requires you to spend a lot of time grinding away, or spending lots of money. Neither is ideal.

Will I continue to play Arena? Possibly. Redeeming these codes is a biggie for me. Maybe a deal breaker.

It’s MtG Time Spiral Remastered Release Weekend

Commander, magic, MtG

It’s that time once again for a new release of MtG cards. This time WotC have gone back in time to 2006 and the Time Spiral block, and created basically a curated set of cards from that block, and released it as Time Spiral Remastered.

If you purchase a booster box or a ticket to the play online event this weekend (which gets you 4 booster packs to build a deck from and play online with using spelltable) you get a promo foil Lotus Bloom.

I’m not going to go through all my pulls but one pack had the following two cards in it. A foil Path to Exile and old style Etali! I was very chuffed to say the least.

Etali is my commander in the mono red aggro Commander deck I have. So I’ll be replacing the Ixalan card with this very cool retro looking one for sure.

I hope you got some cool pulls.

Big Green Stompy v2

Commander, Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these deck posts. There are more planned. After all I have two new decks nearly finished, and three other decks that need updating with new cards.

I thought after the post the other day about one of the upcoming Kaldheim cards that I was really excited about I’d finally update the Big Green Stompy deck this morning.

Some times it is so easy to update a deck. Especially if its one I built a long time ago and I wasn’t using “good” cards but ones I had at the time.

Other times it’s so hard to do, as you don’t want to take cards out. But you have to because you want to use the new cards.

Below are the updated decks stats. The AMC has crept up.

Ok according to the Decked app that I use and CardKingdom if I had to replace this deck I would not be able to. But below I’ve listed the top 10 most costly cards that the deck currently uses.

Like so many cards, The Immortal Sun is in need of a reprint. It’s almost a staple for me, and possibly many others too. If at the same time they could reprint Growing Rites as well I’d appreciate it.

Ok here is the bit you really want the cards that make up this version of the deck.

Note yes it might be on the low side for lands. But there are mana rocks, cards that reduce the cost, creatures that tap for mana, and cards that search for lands. Plus cards that increase the amount of mana that lands tap for.

Creatures:35

1 Boreal Druid
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Feral Hydra
2 Hungering Hydra
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Mistcutter Hydra
1 Leaf Gilder
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast (Alternative Commander)
1 Primordial Hydra
1 Voracious Hydra
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Lifeblood Hydra
1 Llanowar Tribe
1 Managorger Hydra
1 Steel Leaf Champion
1 Thrashing Brontodon
1 Elvish Piper
1 Vizier of the Menagerie
1 Yeva, Nature’s Herald (Commander)
1 Gigantosaurus
1 Ohran Frostfang
1 Seedborn Muse
1 Aggressive Mammoth
1 Carnage Tyrant
1 Gargos, Vicious Watcher
1 Hydra Broodmaster
1 Hydra Omnivore
1 Kogla, the Titan Ape
1 Oran-Rief Hydra
1 Giant Adephage
1 Tornado Elemental
1 Khalni Hydra
1 Worldspine Wurm
1 Ghalta, Primal Hunger

Spells:43

1 Adventurous Impulse
1 Animist’s Awakening
1 Attune with Aether
1 Sol Ring
1 Bonds of Mortality
1 Emerald Medallion
1 Heroic Intervention
1 Land Grant
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Nylea’s Intervention
1 Thought Vessel
1 Charge of the Forever-Beast
1 Crushing Canopy
1 Cultivate
1 Garruk’s Uprising
1 Gift of Paradise
1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
1 Krosan Grip
1 Nissa’s Pilgrimage
1 Retreat to Kazandu
1 Rhonas’s Monument
1 Unbound Flourishing
1 Vivien, Champion of the Wilds
1 Court of Bounty
1 Leyline of Abundance
1 Momentous Fall
1 Return to the Earth
1 Tempt with Discovery
1 Whirlwind
1 Wilderness Reclamation
1 Doubling Season
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
1 Primal Vigor
1 Vivien Reid
1 Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate
1 Caged Sun
1 The Immortal Sun
1 Wave of Vitriol
1 Zendikar Resurgent
1 Praetor’s Counsel
1 Sandwurm Convergence
1 The Great Aurora
1 The Great Henge

Lands:22

1 Detection Tower
1 Emergence Zone
1 Field of Ruin
15 Forest
1 Guildless Commons
1 Temple of the False God
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary

Kaldheim Spoiler Gets Me Excited!

Commander, magic, MtG

At the end of this month MtG players get their hands on the new Norse inspired set Kaldheim.

Until then we are in the middle of what is known as spoiler season. Which is basically when WotC use various content creators (mainly streamers and YouTubers) that they deem worthy to reveal cards from the new set (and hopefully building up excitement) over like a two week peroid before revealing every card in the set.

WotC did spoil one card that has me very excited for it, and adding it to my Big Green Stompy Commander deck.

This deck is my mono green deck that plays big creatures. Naturally there are more than a handful of hydra in the deck. I think it would be fair to almost say I’m not far off from this being a hydra tribal deck.

To make those hydra and any other that I put a +1/+1 counter onto I have the following three cards in the deck.

As you can guess with just one of these cards out the hydras can come in pretty big. If I’m allowed to have more than one of these cards out at the same time (a pretty silly move by the other players) then the hydras start to become silly.

However I do play one hydra that just abuses the cards above and the math can get insane! That card is Primordial Hydra.

I think in a previous post many many moons ago now I told you about a Commander game at my FLGS where I indeed did have Primordial Hydra out with Primal Vigor and won the game swinging in with a 156/156 hydra. You can imagine how insanely large Primordial Hydra would have gotten at the start of my next turn.

Now with Kaldheim I will have a new instant add to the deck. And forgive any pun but it doubles down on the counter doubling for me! The new card is Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider.

For my deck it’s an insane card and increases the odds of me hitting a way to double my counters. That’s the bit I like a lot. A 6/6 with tramp and haste for 6 CMC is nice, and a green deck not a lot to pay, and possible to play early ahead of curve with the right ramp pieces in hand. And I have ramp in the deck. It’s green!

The final paragraph on the card is a really nice bonus. Which if I’m reading this correctly means that while Vorinclex is on the battlefield any Planeswalkers that opponents play comes in with half the counters on it! Which means it takes longer for an opponent to ultimate them and gives me and others longer to remove the Planeswalker. Plus it negates single +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters being placed if my understanding of the text is correct. But making sure that whatever permanent the other player brings in with counters is smaller is amazing.

So in my deck this is a monstrous card indeed. I think you can see now why I am excited about the card.

Hodge podge

Commander, magic, MtG, RPG

We are now in to the last few days before Christmas. A Christmas that will be unusual for many. Where time will be spent away from loved ones instead of with them.

Over on the Fenland Gamer discord server we have a game of chess in progress. Which at the moment looks mainly to be between Jonathan and myself. Gavin did suggest a couple of moves. But otherwise it hasn’t captured anyone else’s imagination and had them participate.

Sitting in my pile of RPGs to try are the new Fate Condensed rules, and the Fate Space Toolkit (a source book for running space themed Fate sessions).

It’s looking like the Cyberpunk Red core rules won’t be hitting the UK FLGS’s until the new year. It’s the now expected reasons for the delay of current world events. So I’ll try and get a copy then.

The last couple of days have seen the start of the Kaldheim spoilers.

If I remember correctly Kaldheim is a viking inspired set.

There have been a couple of cards spoilt that will be insane in my elf tribal Commander deck. Elven Ambush (below) potentially could give me an insane number of elves on the battlefield. With cards like Essence Warden (life gain), Elvish Vanguard (gets bigger), Ivy Lane Denizen (+1/+1 counter) also giving a major benefit from playing it.

Canopy Tactician gives a nice Lord effect making everything else bigger, and taps for 3 mana.

I like Sarulf, Realm Eater. I’d like to use it in the new deck I have in the works.

There are some nice looking angels as well in this set. And I really do need to revisit my angel deck and update it. Especially since Iona got banned.

Naturally I have preordered the two Commander decks that will be coming out along side Kaldheim. Plus a couple of the white and green themed boosters. I also have a prerelease kit preordered too. I’m still deciding whether I’ll get a draft booster or just a gift box.

I’m also tempted to pick up some of the excess prerelease kits that my FLGS has left over from previous sets. Thanks to world events times have been hard for all FLGS’s. It’s because of this that this rare opportunity is an option. Under normal circumstances this would not even be possible because they get sold out prerelease weekend. It’d be cool to use some as prizes once physical MtG is possible again to once more try and get something started locally.

MtG in Medical Drama!

magic, MtG

I’ve been binge watching Chicago Med.

I actually like US Hospital Dramas. More so than UK ones, which I dislike.

There I’ve said it. You can hate me now.

As I was watching the penultimate episode of season five (S05E19) “Just a River in Egypt” I noticed that one of the main characters was playing MtG with a child patient.

It was a pleasant surprise.

Now this isn’t the first time MtG has been featured in a mainstream tv show or movie.

There is the obvious now infamous cock magic episode of South Park. In which Kenny gets involved in underground games of MtG against cockerels.

A much less obvious one is Zombie Land 2: Double Tap. It’s almost an Easter egg. Blink and you miss it. I can’t claim to have spotted this one. I must have blinked. My friend Duncan pointed it out to me.

Have you spotted MtG in any other film or tv show?

Finally think I have found a Commander for my in progress deck

Commander, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

Thought I would write a post to break up the Belated #RPGaDAY2020 posts. I’ll be back tomorrow with the Day 5. But you are looking tired, and need a little MtG break!

I’ve been mulling over and every now and then going through my collection looking for cards to go into a possible Eldrazi Commander deck.

Part of that mulling process has been who will be the Commander?

I didn’t want to use one of the legendary Eldrazi as that instantly tells any opponents what I’m playing and puts a huge target on my back.

It was only during the Commander Legends spoilers that it hit me The Prismatic Piper would be perfect.

Putting The Prismatic Piper out would mean that my opponents would have no idea what my deck is until I played a basic land.

So far this is what I have. Yes some obvious big hitters are missing at the moment. But I have time to save up to get those. These are initial thoughts anyway. Still others to add to the list. There will be a lot of tweaking before I settle on the final version to start playing with.

Creatures:17

1 Stonecoil Serpent
1 Walking Ballista
1 Hedron Crawler
1 Palladium Myr
1 Scuttlemutt
1 Conqueror’s Galleon
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Epitaph Golem
1 Scuttling Doom Engine
1 Meteor Golem
1 Myr Battlesphere
1 Roving Keep
1 Artisan of Kozilek
1 Desolation Twin
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1 Emrakul, the Promised End

Spells:26

1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Bag of Holding
1 Expedition Map
1 Sol Ring
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
1 Arcane Signet
1 Culling Dais
1 Damping Sphere
1 Golden Egg
1 Mind Stone
1 Swiftfoot Boots
1 Torpor Orb
1 Commander’s Sphere
1 Darksteel Plate
1 Mana Geode
1 Spectral Searchlight
1 Spinning Wheel
1 Worn Powerstone
1 Icy Manipulator
1 Karn, Scion of Urza
1 Karn, the Great Creator
1 Panharmonicon
1 Thran Temporal Gateway
1 God-Pharaoh’s Statue
1 Ugin, the Ineffable
1 Chromatic Orrery

Lands:40

1 Animal Sanctuary
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Buried Ruin
1 Command Tower
1 Crumbling Vestige
1 Cryptic Caves
1 Emergence Zone
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Fabled Passage
1 Field of Ruin
1 Field of the Dead
1 Gateway Plaza
1 Grasping Dunes
1 Interplanar Beacon
1 Karn’s Bastion
1 Mobilized District
1 Painted Bluffs
1 Phyrexia’s Core
1 Radiant Fountain
1 Sanctum of Ugin
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Urza’s Mine
1 Urza’s Power Plant
1 Urza’s Tower
15 Wastes
1 Zhalfirin Void

What do you think I should be adding to the 99?

More Commander candidates

Commander, magic, MtG

Another MtG post!

Thought I’d share some arrivals that I’m considering for various Commander decks.

Brand as you can see is a card that will be a must have in my 99 for the mono red decks that I have, plus any that splash red like my dinosaur tribal or dragon tribal decks.

It’s a fact of Commander life that certain cards like the new Planeswalker card Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools in the soon to be released Commander Legends steal permanents from under your nose. Having a card to regain control of those stolen permanents is essential. I had a card or two like that in my token spam deck. But nothing in red.

Luckily I stumbled across this card in a twitter discussion and instantly thought it was cool and needed for my decks.

I couldn’t remember if I had Voracious Greatshark. I certainly didn’t have the foil extended art version. Obviously this is a card looking for a place in the horrors from the deep deck.

What I like about this is it has flash. It’s a counterspell and gives me a 5/4 body. Ok it’s not cheap at 5 CMC, but that’s not bad, otherwise it’d be broken if it was cheaper.

Another card looking for a place in my mono red goblin deck is Outnumber. That could potentially take out very big creatures.

Lurking Predators is a strong contender for a couple of decks. Cheating creatures out onto the board, especially big expensive ones is always a neat trick to pull off. This would certainly make opponents reluctant to play stuff.

Whelming Wave can only potentially go into my horrors from the deep deck. A board wipe that leaves my creatures on the board. Ok not ideal that it’s bouncing back to the opponents hand. But that gets rid of tokens, and slows the opponents down a little as they have to recast the creatures to rebuild their board state. That is if they survive.

Man-‘o-war was chaff that came with Brand to help protect Brand. But I’m actually considering it. It’s that bouncing a creature back to hand etb that makes it attractive.

I think I need to start the deck updating process and share the new updated decks lists.