Monthly Archives: July 2018

Core set 2019 Prerelease Event

Game day, magic, MtG

This weekend is Core 19 Prerelease weekend. That magical time for Magic players where they get to play with the cards from the newest set a week early. And thanks once more to the benevolence of our overlords WotC, store owners were also allowed to sell to eager players like myself a whole week early booster boxes (with while supplies lasted the second, more controversial buy-a-box promo).

I think WotC must had arranged this Prerelease weekend specifically for me. That, or it’s just pure coincidence that it coincides with The Rose Fair. An annual event in my home town, that sees lorries driving really slowly round the town with their trailers poorly decorated around a theme, and occupied with people that have even less of a life than myself. I think the technical term for these is floats. It’s such a massive inconvenience, but it brings in trade to the town I suppose.

Without the Prerelease I’d have been stuck at home, having to suffer The Rose Fair and hot weather. Instead I got to leave early so I wasn’t trapped in my idea of hell, and make my way to my FLGS ready to play some Magic.

Naturally I was early, so the FLGS wasn’t open. While waiting for it to open some of my ex-students turned up. They too were there for the Prerelease and hopefully get a game of Commander in.

While waiting for the Prerelease to start, I cracked open one of my booster boxes. As did one or two of my ex-students who had also bought a booster box. I won’t bore you here with what I pulled but there will be a short YouTube video up in the next couple of days with the highlights. But I will say this was super fun, cracking packs, seeing what others had got. I liked the social aspect of it.

It was time to open our Prerelease kits and start building a deck. I got a blue life countdown die, my promo wasn’t great. I did get a second crucible of worlds, but more importantly for this sort of event I got cards I could build a deck with. Or I thought I had. I went black/red with a little bit of graveyard shenanigans. Found out a bit later that there was a foil Nicol Bolas pulled. Sweet.

My first game was against a returning player to Magic Lauren. Her deck was good, which her final position of second, and zero losses proved. Losing 1-2 to her was not bad. I know one or two (which included an ex-student) got wiped out 2-0. So winning a game was an achievement. I was happy because I got to play crucible of worlds, played some lands from my graveyard, pulled some creatures back from the graveyard (well until Lauren kindly exiled my graveyard). It was doing its thing.

My next game was against Grant. I’d played against Grant at a previous Prerelease. I won that match up. History was not to repeat itself. This time Grant won 1-2.
I have to say I really enjoy playing against Grant. There is friendly banter, a laugh and joke. Actually it was the same with Lauren as well. Sometimes there are people you don’t like playing against because they are not fun. They take it way too serious, or lack that social interaction skill (who knew Magic players with poor social skills?) But Grant and Lauren I’d gladly play against any day.

Lauren even joined in the banter against an ex-student, and totally crushed him in their game.

My third match was against Charlie, who I beat 2-1. Our first game I won due to a massive misplay by Charlie that gave me the win. He then redeemed himself by taking the next game. I was able to take the tie breaker in a closely fought third game.

Throughout the day between rounds, it was “how’d you do?”, or checking out how others were doing if they were still playing. And being the supportive friends encouraging their opponent to smash them.

Before the final round an ex-student and I pitched our Prerelease decks against each other seeing as we hadn’t been drawn against each other. That ended in a win each.

I didn’t get a fourth round game because some players had left without saying anything to the organisers to go watch I’m assuming the England match. So the person I was matched up with was awol for possibly the reason I’d given. Which meant I had a buy. I’ll take a win anyway I can.

That meant I finished 12th out of 26. Which is respectable. But more importantly I finished above my ex-students.

After opening our 2 participation packs, we sat down for a game of Commander.

Charlie hadn’t played with us before, so wasn’t aware of our social contract. The social contract we came up with, and is one used also with the Fenland Gamers MtG group is in Commander, no mass land destruction, no going infinite. These two things are not fun. It’s why I have 2 versions of my mono red deck. The mass land destruction version doesn’t get played. Only time it has was when my ex-students allowed my to test playing the deck while I was building it. My mono red can do multiple combat phases, at most a couple, it can’t do them infinitely. I’ve deliberately not even looked into going infinite.

Charlie had a couple of cards that destroyed all permanents. He had to fire one of them off to stop another player. It was basically a game restart. It wasn’t fun, and basically handed the game to the player who Charlie was trying to stop. But up until that point my big green stompy had been doing its thing. Building up a threat, being annoying.

Game 2 was a rushed affair really. Which saw me lose the game in a game of rock, paper, scissors that we used to decide the winner between the final 2 of us left in the game.

Thanks to John the owner of my FLGS The Hobbit Hole you get the chance (some may even call it lucky) to see me in action as third Magic player at the back!

It really was a great Prerelease. Everyone was having fun, lots of smiles on people’s faces as they played. I played Magic with some fun people. It was really cool meeting up with my ex-students, and getting to the chance to play some Magic with some of them. Yeah this was probably my best Prerelease to-date. An amazing day.

The Wisbech Han Solo

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night deceit, half truths and smuggling where the order of the day as we tried to smuggle contraband past the Sheriff of Nottingham.

It’d been a while since we had played the game last. And this was a first time for Nathanial and Jess.

Since Jonathan and I last played the game I had managed to get hold of the mini that the publisher did for the store game kits. This mini replaces the cardboard standee used to signify who is currently the sheriff. As minis go it’s rather nice, and I bet it would look awesome painted.

At some point I should get the expansion for the game. But considering how often we get or play them game there is no great pressure.

It would appear from the result of our game that I am indeed the most deceitful. But we knew that before the game. I lied, bluffed and bribed my way to victory.

Our second and final game was also another favourite game that we haven’t played for a long time, Dice Town. This is another game with expansions which I don’t have. And yet again the amount of times this hits the table, would it justify getting them?

I’m pretty sure me asking the question not once but twice will have shocked my friends.

I was denied victory by one point. One point that I had until Nathanial played a card taking a gold off every other player at the end. That card gave him the win by one point. If he hadn’t played it, I’d have won by 3 points. Those types of victory are the sweetest. Nathanial seemed to be really happy with stealing the win. He said this was the first time he’s beat me. But I’m sure that’s not right. Sadly I can’t confirm either way because at the moment on the app I record game plays he gets logged as anonymous.

But still despite the heat we had a great evening of gaming.

From the depths

magic, MtG

It’s obvious I think that my next Commander brew is not going to be the infect/wither one that was hinted at in a previous post. The lure of big green stompy things was too compelling.

But as I was going through my disorganised filing system (I really must get better organised) looking for cards that would be good or cool in the new deck I came across one or two other cards in other colours that I thought I must build a deck with them in.

Particularly those cards seemed to belong to a single colour and have a common theme. The colour is blue, and they all seemed to be big monsters. With the likes of Fleet Swallower, Stormtide Leviathan, Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep and the Rivals of Ixalan…


Elder Dinosaur Nezahal, Primal Tide. These are all cards that are hard to play in other formats, not impossible. Let’s face it unless you have some way to cheat them out earlier, usually by turn 7 or 8 the game can be pretty much over.

But that’s the beauty of Commander. Big creatures that are fun to play, in this casual format are playable (unless you are playing competitive Commander, but where is the fun in that?)

I’ve played Thing in the Ice before, it’s such a fun card (unless you are on the receiving end of it). It comes in all innocent then four instant or sorcery spells later, BAM! It’s transformed into Awoken Horror a 7/8 Kraken Horror that clears the board for it to swing in unopposed. Nice thing is Arcane Adaption allows me to make all my creatures Horrors if this happens late game. Early on I may not even bother, and use Arcane Adaption to make everything of mine a Kraken.

At the moment this “from the depths” (seems a cool name to give this future deck) is looking like a mono blue deck. Which I’m not opposed to. But I’m not sure who to have as the commander. I suppose I could have one of the legendary creatures from above. But do I want a commander that is expensive? I’ll have to research potential commanders that fit in with this big stompy plan. It may open up more cards that fit in with the plan.

I’m not sure what ramp cards I have access to in blue, if any. It may have to rely on the staples like soul ring to get there quicker. Naturally being blue I have access to the full control suite to help keep me alive, interrupt the plans of others, bounce creatures back to the owners hands etc etc.

Plus the above cards may be giving you a certain image of me. I like playing big stompy creatures. The current brew is mono green big stompy creatures. I have dinosaurs and dragons as other decks that have big stompy creatures. I don’t know why, but there is something satisfying swinging in with a big creature and doing lots of damage. I think the only thing that tops it is killing said big creature with a 1/1 deathtouch creature.

So that’s my initial thoughts on a future big blue stompy deck. Or cards that I want to build the deck around. Oh wait I’ve just thought when I play this deck once built, I can say “I’m about to slap you with a big wet fish” as I swing in.

Timeless Legends

magic, MtG

If you are a MtG player/fan and just so happen to be going to this years Comic Con, and if you are fast enough (as I’m sure these will fly off the shelf) you can for the bargain price of $99 buy from Hasbro this limited edition Timeless Legends box set.

This box is 5 classic Planeswalker cards of the usual suspects featuring new art. And I have to say that under sells the art. Because the art is unbelievably awesome. The artist Terese Nielsen has really knocked it out of the park. I think this is some, nah is the best art on a MtG card to date. And there has been some pretty amazing art on the cards over the year.

Does anyone else think that the ex-magic cosplayer Christine Sprankle may have been the inspiration for the Chandra card?

The sad thing is I think the secondary market for this product is going to be hundreds of pounds. Every MtG player will want these versions of the cards. I know if I had the disposable income I’d be splashing the cash for them.

These cards really should have a wider distribution, and even then I think these would be going for more than rrp or msrp as the yanks call it.

I hope the art from these becomes available as prints to buy. That will be the closest I will come to having these cards.

In the meantime if you are lucky enough to get this sdcc exclusive, well done you lucky so and so. Wish I knew some-one well enough who was going to get me one. Draw back of being an anti-social me.

Hail Hydra!

magic, MtG

As a comic book fan would I call this post anything else to show off some of the new arrivals and cards I already had that make sense going into a big green stompy deck?

I have chosen a few hydra for the deck. I particularly like the way that some of them I can sink as much mana into them as I can at the time of casting to make them pretty big. Especially if I have Doubling Season out.

Oh there are a couple more hydra in the postal system. Hydra are almost a sub tribe within this deck. It’s not quite hydra tribal. Naturally there will be one or two dinosaurs in the deck. Ghalta and Carnage Tyrant for starters. But there are one or two others that deserve a slot. I’m thinking for this deck around 30 creatures in total, some of them will like Llanowar Elves allow me to ramp. Sadly I won’t be able to get away with using some of the great tribal cards to pump things up, but I’m sure I can find alternatives that boost all my creatures. It’s mass board wipes that I’m going to be short of.

While I’m talking about cards that may or may not be going into big green stompy here are some more recent arrivals.

Naturally with the clue I gave the other day one of my possible commanders is in the photo above. Ugin is definitely going into my Dragon deck, but does he go in this new deck? I’m not sure. Elvish Piper, not big, but allows me to cheat out creatures that are.

I wonder which of my remaining cards will arrive before the weekend?

Zombicide Reused

Uncategorized

So you have this fun co-operative zombie survival horror game that gets harder the more zombies that you kill. You have everything for it (well almost everything), but it’s hard to get to the table. Not everyone shares your love for the game. Which means all that thematic plastic and cardboard is taking up valuable shelf space, calling you to play with it.

After a long overdue conversation last night with a great friend of mine that lives north of the border and who I often describe as the “Scottish version of me” (which isn’t really a compliment) I know have a rule book on it’s way through the crumbling UK postal service.

My friend told me about a rule book just released from the looks of it from Osprey Games called Last Days Zombie Apocalypse, a miniatures skirmish game that could use any old miniature. After our phone call in a blatant attempt to lure me in my friend shared a video about the rules via a tweet.
After watching the video I was very interested. Even more so when I saw that the rules were just under £14 with Prime on Amazon.

So what attracted me to click the purchase button for the rules to this miniatures skirmish game? I mean I often complain that the reason I don’t play any miniature type game like Age of Sigmar, Star Wars: Legion and Blood Bowl to name a handful is the cutting of sprues, gluing and painting before I can even play them. Which takes an age. My argument has been I want to be able to buy the game in a FLGS, open the game up, punch cardboard for 20 minutes and start playing or learning to play. Not spend hours/days constructing everything before I can start playing. Which is basically every miniatures game out there. How about that for a sweeping generalisation?

The reason I went for this rule set for my first miniatures skirmish game, (ok may not be my first if you include Star Wars: X-Wing and Star Wars: Imperial Assault skirmish mode) is because it is designed to be used with whatever models you have at hand. The designer even mentions various games and sources you can get models from to use in the video (and on the Facebook group for the rules). One of those games he mentions is Zombicide. Oh wait I have a lot of Zombicide stuff, I can use them! A miniature skirmish game where I can virtually start playing straight away using my Zombicide miniatures, count me in.

Now I know that my unpainted miniatures will be an abomination to the full blown, totally into the hobby, builds their own custom miniatures person. But stuff them. This all of a sudden makes the format accessible to some-one like me. And believe me there are an awful lot of people like me out there, where that cut/glue/paint bit switches them off totally. Until the likes of Games Workshop remove that part of their product they will never really make the miniatures hobby accessible to a wider audience.

But back to this rule set. As part of my due diligence I looked at some of the terrain options that were linked to by the designer. They look pretty cool, and a reasonable price. The game like X-Wing plays in a 3ft x 3ft area. Which is a nice size. Totally easily to get a playmat to cover the play area so it is easy to know the boundaries. There is also the fact that this rule set adds zombies into the mix too. So there is that extra element to the skirmish that you have to take into account. How this compares to the Walking Dead miniatures skirmish game I don’t know. Not sure I will get to know either, because I won’t be buying it because of the above reasons.

I’m pretty excited to look at this rule set and see about adding some of the Zombicide characters into this alternate zombie apocalypse. I want the Big Bang Theory Gang as my skirmish crew.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

magic, MtG


In my post Saturday about the Open House at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole I wrote that one or two cards that I got had me inspired to brew a big green stompy deck for Commander at some point. This post is the story of the start of that brewing.

Sunday started off early with an experiment. Using the best cold brew in town (my own, not that awful brown sludge Costa passes off as cold brew), some milk, a dash of vanilla syrup and ice, I blended the lot together and created my initial version of a cooler or whatever they call them at these franchised coffee chains. In this current damn awful heatwave it was a refreshing chilled way to start the day.

Earlier, before doing the coffee experiment I had shared with the world via Radio 5 Live how absolutely lazy my planned Sunday was going to be, and deciding when to have a bath was my big decision for the day. I know you are dying to know what the answer to the big question was. 11:30am was when I decided to impersonate a beached whale trapped in a confined space, and enjoyed a relaxing soak and read a chapter from the book Cyber War by Charles Arthur.

Somehow I ended up having a nap yesterday afternoon. After I woke up I was compelled to find the full art promo from the Game Day the previous weekend. If I didn’t I knew not knowing where I’d placed it would eat away at me. The not knowing would just consume my every thought until I found them. So it was in my best interests to find them fast.

From locating the promos and filing them away in the folder, it was easy to jump to seeing if I had any suitable commanders for a big green stompy deck. My legendary creatures are in a folder too. There were a couple of potential commanders, plus I had a couple of Nissa Planeswalkers that might also be good in the deck.

But what did the internet think? I was pretty sure some-one must have asked the question I was thinking. Naturally they had. In one particular thread on reddit I think it was, there was a discussion with suggestions being offered to the original poster. There were a couple of possible commanders I really liked the look of. Somehow those 2 cards ended up in an eBay basket and now on the way to me.

But that was the slippery slope, a handful of hydras accidentally decided they needed to be in this deck. As did a rare green board wipe, and a couple of cards for the mono red deck.

I’m hoping that the majority of these cards will be with me before next Saturdays Commander game. Although I know a couple are unlikely to be because they have to navigate the choppy waters of international postal services. But at least I should have the skeleton of the deck ready to play.

Oh which Commander am I going with? Well there will be a choice of 2 for me in the deck. I’ll chose which to go with based on the other Commanders on the table. But the image above does give a clue to one of them.

Next Weekends Plans – More Magic!

magic, MtG

This weekend isn’t over yet, but today will as my text (that got read out) to Radio 5 Live said be doing absolutely nothing. My biggest decision of the day will be when to have a bath. Other than that it’s watching Netflix, experimenting with my cold brew and blending it it with ice to get the ratio right.

But because we are fastly approaching the release of Core Set 2019, it means next weekend is Prerelease weekend. So basically a chance for players to get their filthy grubby hands on cards from the new set a week early.

Thanks to a decision made by WotC for Dominaria stores like my FLGS The Hobbit Hole are able to sell booster boxes a week early. So instead of just a handful of packs early from the Prerelease kit and from participation prizes, we can get boxes of boosters with the buy a box promo (while supplies last).

It’s a rather sweet promo, that has caused some heated debate because it is only available as the promo and no other way. There are plenty of places online where you can find the rants and ramblings on this so I won’t go into any more here.

So you may have guessed correctly I’m going to a Prerelease event next weekend. I’m looking forward to it. Not only because I get to play some MtG with the new cards, but also I get to play Commander with some of my ex-students who also are going.

Is it next weekend yet?