Monthly Archives: March 2018

Easter Pulls Part 2

magic, MtG

So here we are Saturday, day 2 of opening the booster packs I bought. Apart from Timber Gorge, I wasn’t really over thrilled by these 3 packets. Nothing really jumped out for decks that I’m currently brewing.

Yesterday I caught an announcement by CardKingdom that they have added a new product to their offerings. As long suffering readers will sadly recall I like their rookie and battle decks. So when CardKingdom announce they will be now be selling limit copies of a cube for $99 then I’m interested. This is aimed at those who want to start obviously playing MtG and draft using a cube. The cube being offered by CardKingdom is a 360 card cube, which supports between 4 – 8 players drafting. If at the end of April they have any left I’m going to treat myself to one as a 50th birthday present to myself and to celebrate my new job that I’ll be starting at the start of May. Oh yeah I’m moving on. My time at my current employer is coming to an end. I’ll maybe write more about this in May. I’ve been interested in the cube format for a while, just not enough to do anything about it. However the announcement yesterday got me thinking about it again. I like the idea of building a tribal themed cube, using elves, goblins, vampires, and menfolk with possibly a fifth tribe that I’m undecided about.

Easter Pulls Part 1

magic, MtG

As I threatened yesterday when I told you about my Easter present to myself, here is the first post with the pulls from the first three packs.

I’m really happy with Utopia Sprawl, Weirding Wood, Ensnaring Bridge, Corrupted Crossroads and Submerged Boneyard. The first two will fit nicely into my Elf Tribal Commander deck that I’m working on. The other two, well, it’s always good to have more land options when deck building. Why didn’t I mention Joraga? I already have her, and her inclusion in the that elf deck will be dependent on which Commander I choose. I haven’t made that decision yet. I can see Ensnaring Bridge being a good card to put in a Commander deck to shut down those decks that like to swing in with big creatures.

See you in tomorrow’s post.

My Easter Treat

Uncategorized

It’s the start of the Easter holidays, and I decided my Easter present to myself would be 9 booster packs of this little card game called Magic the Gathering.

So starting tomorrow I will open 3 packs and post my pulls on here. And then I’ll repeat that for the following 2 days.

While I was choosing my packs at my FLGS, I put my order in for pre-release weekend. Along with which of the Summer releases I wanted.

Oh one for the diary it’s MtG Open House again on the 14th April at your FLGS.

I’m so tempted by Star Wars Legion which has just been released over here. But I don’t know anyone who is getting it, or wants to get it and play. So I’m loathe to invest time and more importantly money into it. It’s not as if I’m getting some of my more miniature heavy games like Imperial Assault, Zombicide, and The Others to the table. So if I’m struggling to get them played it’s going to be even harder to get a miniatures game to the table. It’s not like I was playing X-Wing every week when I had that. That’s the drawback of living in the back of beyond.

Brawl Play First Impressions

magic, MtG

So the curiosity for brawl has been satisfied. I thought I’d be writing this over the Easter hols. But I managed to get 3 games in yesterday. So here are my initial impressions of the new format.

I was going to build a dinosaur tribal deck over the weekend. But then I had the bright idea of using my dinosaur tribal commander deck as the basis for the brawl deck. As it turned out after I removed all the non-standard legal cards from the deck I was left with 59 cards, I added a single extra basic land, and that became my dinosaur tribal deck for brawl. My second deck was a mono green deck (deck list in another post) that was going to try and abuse etb effects and energy counters.

One of my students knocked together a menfolk deck from the cards he had with him. So lending my dino tribal deck to another student we played some games of brawl.

We played 3 games in about an hour forty. So brawl games are a little quicker then Commander games. Or can be. Playing it the games are basically commander. So if you like Commander then you will like playing brawl I think. The deck building side is challenging not having the Commander staples to call upon. But that’s an interesting twist and constraint to the deck building. Sometimes there isn’t an alternative and you have to work around it. For instance my mono green deck may have to evolve to a different commander so that I can splash in a second colour and get access to some board wipes of some description. I felt that was an element that the deck was missing when I played it.

The games were fun. The speed of the games did surprise me. The games we played I enjoyed, despite not winning. Although today as I write this I did get to play my dino tribal deck and stomped my way to glory. It’s not nice being on the other end of this dino deck. I can testify to that from yesterday. I’m almost coming to the conclusion that Zacama is too powerful. Once that hits the battlefield mid game, with lots of land to use to pay for it’s abilities, it’s almost game over. Well that’s how it appears in the local meta at the moment.

For me I think brawl will be for when I want that Commander experience but don’t have the time to play Commander, like during a lunch break for instance.

Current bloomin play me already games

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Sometimes games sit there on the gaming shelf eating away at your conscience saying “Play me, play me”.

Here are three games I haven’t played since getting them that I’d really like to get to the table soon, and are screaming at me to play them.

I got Homeland for a bargain tenner in the later half of 2017. It had reasonable reviews at the time, at that price a steal. Hidden traitor games are fun. Just need to get the right players together to try it. Naturally the other two are kickstarters that arrived in 2018, and yeah I want to get them to the table.

Existing games I want to play


I have the new expansion for Cry Havoc, and the first expansion for Kemet. So naturally I want to play these games with the new stuff. Scythe I just want to play again with those lovely airships from The Wind Gambit expansion.

Let’s brawl

magic, MtG, news

Last week WotC made some interesting announcements. Announcements that I’m pretty sure a few MtG podcasts whichever format they cover will discus, dissect, and over analyse with far superior insight than myself.

First up WotC announced a new format for MtG. A kind of Commander lite, called Brawl.

Brawl is meant to be an easier version of Commander for new players to get into. Here is a brief summary of the brawl specific rules:

  • 60 card Singleton (apart from basic lands there can only be a single copy of a card in the deck) decks
  • 30 starting life
  • Only legal cards in Standard can be used
  • Commanders can be legendary creatures or Planeswalkers
  • No commander damage

Otherwise it follows the Commander rules for everything not covered above.

I’m not sure how I feel about this new format. I’m definitely curious. But there is some doubt about do we really need it? Why not just play Commander? If you read the WotC articles that have gone up about the format and the announcements tied up with it, they argue it has a lower barrier to entry, easier to get into, than Commander especially for new players to the game with smaller collections (which may be just the current set released). It’s interesting to see that WotC see Brawl as an introduction to Commander and Standard. I thought the new Challenger decks were/would serve as that. The question I have is this just a format to sell more booster packs? If this takes off won’t it just push up the price of cards in standard, and thus making the barrier to entry to standard even more expensive? Which is something I thought they didn’t want to do.

I don’t see getting into Commander as that expensive or with the imminent arrival of Challenger decks Standard also. Buying a precon for Commander and upgrading it doesn’t have to be an expensive thing to do. Recently I under took that very exercise with the 2017 Arcane Wizardry precon. After putting my amazing google ninja skills to work I found an article that did a $20 upgrade for the deck (I’ve now ordered the cards from a sister post for the dragons precon). But there are a few articles/videos out there with tips for upgrading them. And I would imagine that not long after the Challenger decks hit, that a few articles will appear on how to upgrade them. Once you get a precon you start to get some of the Commander staples that are needed for building your own decks.

Naturally as a format this is going to have a changing card base. So for Commander players there are going to be a few challenges in building these Brawl decks because all of a sudden staples like Sol Ring are gone. How do you mana ramp in Standard? With that shifting card base decks will also need to change, and I can see certain styles of play coming and going. A deckbuilders paradise.

I think there will be some interesting decks built for Brawl. I’m working on 2 at the moment. Mainly because I want to at least try the format. So our MtG tournament over Easter will now be a Brawl tournament instead of a Commander tournament. I’m doing the 2 decks so that Dale can join in. One will be a Dino tribal deck which will be the one I’ll give to Dale to play. Whilst mine is probably going to be mono green, trying to use the etb effect to my advantage. I’d like to keep bouncing creatures to get multiple etb use from a card. But I need to solve how to do that in Standard.

Tied up with the new format is the poster child for it, the buy a box promo legendary creature, Firesong and Sunspeaker Minotaur Cleric.


This card will only be available as a promo and only when you buy a booster box while stocks last. I think it’s pre-orders only too. But I may be wrong on that front. So yes like many I’ll probably be building a deck with it as the commander. Although I gather there may be some complaints about this exclusivity.

The final announcement was that WPN authorised stores (ie your FLGS) are allowed to sell booster boxes a week early at the pre-release events! Great news for the FLGS (especially US ones that have to compete with the likes of massive chains like Walmart for your MtG money, UK FLGS don’t have that competition yet to my knowledge). Pre-release weekend is going to be massive for the FLGS. But is it only shifting sales from one weekend to another? Hopefully it will get more people taking part in the pre-release events.

What do you think about this news? If you haven’t commented before I need to approve your first comment then after that you can comment as often as you like without my approval. This was the least intrusive way to cut out on spam. So I hope it hasn’t put too many folks off from leaving comments.

Rivals of Ixalan Commander Favourites Part 2

Commander, magic, MtG

And I’m back with the second post looking at cards from Rivals of Ixalan that I like for Commander.

The first card for this post is Mastermind’s Acquisition. A 4 CMC black sorcery that allows you to tutor (that’s MtG talk I believe for search) for a card in either your library or outside the game. So you can bet I’m taking a pile of ‘useful’ cards with me to Commander games when I have this in my deck. Those ‘useful’ cards will for me be those cards that very nearly made it in to the 99. My reasoning is if they were good enough to be almost in, then they are good enough to be in what will effectively be a sideboard. The reason I’d take this approach is it’s less hassle than taking my whole collection along to games with me.

Although there are 6 of them, this is only really one choice, and it’s the Elder dinosaurs. These are BFD’s (Think about it). I think one or two are slightly weaker than the others. But if you need a big hitter with a nice added bonus then these fit in nicely to any none tribal deck. Etali is the commander for my mono red deck, with Zacama the commander of my dinosaur tribal deck. I think that that should tell you what I think of those cards.

Oppressive board state

Commander, magic, MtG, new arrivals

The past week there has been a more Commander slant to our games of Magic at work.

Last week I was playing my decks (Dinosaurs Tribal, Mono Red with Land Hate, the cheaply upgraded Arcane Wizardry 2017 precon, even my first ever built Commander deck with Scarab God saw play). But this week I wanted to play with the two Anthology decks (Guided by Nature and Evasive Maneuvers) that I hadn’t played with yet.

The first game with Guided by Nature that I played really did drag on. It was one of those epic long Commander games. Constant board wipes stopped me from getting set up. Eventually one of the students won with one of their 2017 precon decks. I don’t remember which one it was.

Yesterday instead of playing Evasive Maneuvers I went once more with the Guided by Nature deck. I had a great start to the game, after about 4 turns I was ahead on mana, I got my Commander out, was starting to build up a board presence. Then bam! Board wipe. I survived a second one too but with not such a big board state in front of me. Then I got the card Praetor’s Council that put my graveyard back in my hand, gave me no maximum hand size for the rest of the game. It was basically game over after that. I had a lot of mana, was able to tap Priest of Titania for lots of extra mana, I was getting an elf token every time I cast an elf, all my green spells cost one less to cast, my Commander gave me an elf Druid token, I was drawing a card for each none token creature that entered the battlefield that I cast. My turns were getting insane. Then I drew into Wellwisher and adding 1 life for each elf on the battlefield. The maths was getting silly. The inevitable happened I was able to swing in with lots of creatures that had been buffed up to some insane levels, and get the damage through as if the creatures had not been blocked. This deck was working just like the Strictly Better MtG Pauper Elf Deck. Which I enjoy playing.

I was going to build an elf tribal deck for Commander. But I think that Guided by Nature has a lot of the cards I want in my deck, including the Commander. So I think I may get a second copy of this and upgrade it. There are a few big creatures in this deck that although they have some great abilities are not elves, and so not really suitable for an elf tribal deck. So I’ll change my plan and look at how to upgrade this deck.

The photo below is my board state when I won with Guided by Nature yesterday. The photo was taken by a student who kindly gave me permission to use it here.

When I got home the latest kickstarter to come to fruition arrived The Flow of History. I’d nearly forgotten about this one until the email arrived saying it was being sent out. Somehow TMG had been a bit lapse in sending out kickstarter updates, or if they had I’d missed them totally.

I had to watch a YouTube video to refresh my poor memory what exactly the game was about. I also had to go back to the kickstarter page and remind myself what the extras were from the stretch goals. So basically I have here a card based civilisation style game, that has an auction mechanic, and is pretty aggressive! There is even a 2 player variant that uses a ghost third player.

I think this will be my third civ style/themed game in my collection. At the moment I think the three would all fall on the light to mid scale of things. I really do want to try one or two of the heavier/longer civ games out there.

Along with Tao Long this will be burning a hole on my shelf’s waiting to be played. Soon to be joined by The Manhattan Project 2 which is getting sent out to the kickstarter backers in the next couple of weeks I believe.

Mono Black Aggro v2

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

The one thing missing from my initial version of a black aggro deck was a sideboard. Which I have to admit took a bit of a back seat while I have been working on other decks such as that Angel deck I did. Yeah I am aware these aren’t the best decks in the world. But these decks I’m sharing are only being played in casual games, not some hyper competitive FNM thing.

This version plays 12 1 drop creatures and 8 2 drop creatures. The addition of Night Market Lookout is great early on, damage and life gain. I dropped the Dinosaur Hunter, and replaced it with the Dire Fleet Poisoner. Which has Deathtouch, and Flash. So much more useful than Dino Hunter that only really kills things bigger than it if they are dinosaurs, and doesn’t have Flash.

The thing I noticed playing the earlier version and this one also to some extent is that this deck loves big creature decks. It has a lot of removal, either as spells or abilities of creatures I play in the form of etb effects or Deathtouch. Token spamming decks can be a problem. Hence the addition of cards that give opponents creatures -2/-2. That will get rid of a lot of tokens.

Ok here is the pretty graph bit from the Decked app.

I’m pretty happy with that AMC. It’s dropped from 2.28 to 2.16.

If you want to leave comments about the deck, if you haven’t commented before I need to approve the comment first but after that you are golden to post with out me needing to approve the comment. It’s just an anti-spam thing.

So here is the deck list you want to tear apart.

Creatures:27

4 Night Market Lookout
4 Skittering Heartstopper
4 Vicious Conquistador
4 Dire Fleet Poisoner
4 Gifted Aetherborn
2 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
4 Ravenous Chupacabra
1 Tetzimoc, Primal Death

Spells:10

2 Duress
2 Fatal Push
2 Walk the Plank
1 Gravepurge
1 Recover
2 Mastermind’s Acquisition

Lands:23

4 Desert of the Glorified
19 Swamp

Sideboard:15

1 Massacre Wurm
1 Noxious Gearhulk
1 Bontu’s Last Reckoning
1 Drown in Sorrow
1 Golden Demise
1 Infest
2 Live Fast
3 Never // Return
1 Rags // Riches
3 Vraska’s Contempt

Ancient Civilisations and Plunder

Fenland Gamers, Game day

It was a weird weekend for gaming. No Friday session, we’ve gone from a weekly one to every 2 weeks now.

I managed to get to the Saturday afternoon session. Which was good as I was hosting it! And then as you will later read not able to get to the Gloomhaven session on Sunday.

Saturday afternoon saw Jeff, Diego, Nathanial and myself playing a couple of games. The first game we played was at the request of Jeff, Imperial Settlers. I really like Imperial Settlers. It’s just getting it to the table. The modern gamers biggest dilemma after “should I back that kickstarter”? and “why didn’t I buy that game when it was in stock?”

I think this was probably the most aggressive of the handful of times that I have played Imperial Settlers. There was plenty of razing of others buildings going on.

I am glad to report that Jeff enjoyed his game of Imperial Settlers. Which I’m glad of, because I don’t think I will have a problem finding players for the next time I want to get it to the table. That next time I want to get one of the expansions mixed in. I have them all, and yet not played with any of them!

Oh Diego took the honours with this game.

Our second and final game for the afternoon was Diego’s copy of Raiders of the North Sea. I have to admit this has been one I’ve wanted to try for a long time.

This is a worker placement game with a vikings theme. Does it capture that theme? I think as well as a worker placement game could. The worker placement is a little unique to others that I have played. You place a worker and do that action, then remove an existing worker (not the one the one you have just placed) to take a second action. Some of the action spaces can only be used with certain colour workers, and these get unlocked as you plunder foreign lands. I like this way of worker placement. It creates some interesting decisions about which action you take and then leaving it for some-one else to also take on their turn. But then again the action you want to take by removing a worker may not have the right coloured worker on it for your next turn. But you really really need to do that action. Then you add in about what actions you are leaving open for an opponent to take. Love it.

You have a little engine building going on with the recruiting of vikings to your raiding party. The Viking cards have a dual use. They can be played for an action on the card or added to your crew with a crew ability. To be able to go out raiding you need to meet the criteria of the place you are going to pillage. Some of the vikings reduced this cost, or gave you a raiding bonus depending on the space raiding.

I thought the production values for the game were good. Loved the meeples and resource tokens. And the metal coins (not sure if these were an upgrade that Diego added) were really nice and thematic with the Celtic/Viking lettering and symbols.

Despite Jeff getting into the halls of Valhalla before the rest of us, I enjoyed the game and would definitely play this again.

When I got home, Strider seemed to be struggling with his back legs. He has had this before in the past. The last time about 5 months ago. It means basically he struggles to stand up, and when he is standing up, falls down very easily. Which means I have to be there to pick him up when he goes down and lift him up to his feet in the first place.

Sunday Strider was worse. So I let the guys know I had to stay and look after Strider. The day was spent trying to make sure that when Strider went down he was picked up and was not getting too stressed. I even took his food and drink to him on his bed, and held it while he ate and drank.

Luckily yesterday he started to make a recovery during the day. Then mid evening once I was home and had aided him into the house from Nan’s, he was back to normal. Mum seems to think that it is down to her massaging Striders back legs during the day. I don’t see how it didn’t hurt. But was it the thing that speeded up the recovery? I don’t know the jury is out for me. But I’m glad my best friend is better. Don’t tell the 2 little terrors I said that.

Some Netflix viewing recommendations

From time to time recently I’ve recommended various shows and films on streaming services like Netflix or Amazon Prime. I think once I recommended a movie in the cinema. This tagged on section is back with some great stuff on Netflix.

My first two recommendations are for your binge watching pleasure.

I love the Netflix Marvel shows. So when a new one hits the service I binge watch it with as few breaks of possible. So I’ve normally finished by the following days lunchtime. So which of the Netflix Marvel lineup warranted this binging this time? Jessica Jones Season 2. I like how this season breaks away from your typical comic book villain trope. This isn’t your run of the mill superhero stuff. The themes are also a bit hard to deal with especially season 1. But just watch this, it’s great.

My other binge watch recommendation is Ghost Wars. This is a bit of a weird one. A person who sees ghosts, the dead coming coming back as ghosts and attacking the living, a secretive research lab, the sins of the past coming back, there is a lot going on in this series. I’m not sure how they will take it to a second season, or even if it would work. I hope they don’t make one, and leave this as the enjoyable watch that it is.

The final two recommendations are a couple of movies that have gone straight to Netflix. Which seems to be the present day version of straight to video. However these two movies have higher production values than the usual low budget fair that makes it way to the public. Mainly because these were biggish budget productions that the studios got cold feet about releasing on the big screen. Although I do know that Annihilation did get a very limited cinema release in the US and one other country.

Seeing as I’m already talking about Annihilation I might as well continue doing so. This is based on the book of the same title. It does deviate from the book a bit. But despite that annoying deviation it’s still a watchable movie. If you liked Arrival, Contact, even Interstellar then I think you will enjoy this.

The final recommendation is the really stylish looking Mute. I found it a little predictable in spots. But overall it’s a watchable movie that touches on some dark subject matter. The Bladerunner-esq vision of Berlin was fantastic and refreshing.