Not much gaming happening this week due to life events and stuff. Do you want to hear about the diarrhea bug sweeping our dogs at the moment? It has hit Strider particularly badly due to his age I think. But he has started to improve, which I’m relieved about. It means I didn’t get to see Deadpool 2 last night, but Strider comes first every time. So I’m going to fall back on the the ad hoc series I started in the last post as a content filler to at least let you know I’m still alive.
I got Archangel of Tithes the same time as I did the previous card Silverclad Ferocidons. As long suffering readers will remember (that’s assuming you read my MtG ramblings) I’m slowly getting together the cards for an Angel Tribal Commander deck. I can’t remember how I stumbled across this card, but the 4 CMC cost of the card was rather attractive. I liked the abilities as well. Taxing opponents for attacking or blocking me I like. It means they need to leave mana open to do either, and thus potentially slowing them down. If I can give Archangel of Tithes vigilance as well it basically locks things down totally. Being 3/5 means it can’t be lightning bolted away easily. I think for this to not make the Angel deck the cards are going to have to be pretty special.
All posts by Darren
Why did I Buy That Card? #1 Silverclad Ferocidons
Welcome to a brief adhoc series about recent targeted buys and why I bought them for my MtG decks.
Its a dinosaur, so that should be a big hint why? Especially if you are a long suffering reader of this blog. Yep that Dinosaur Tribal Commander deck of mine is the reason why I got this.
I don’t how I missed this card during Rivals of Ixalan. But after seeing its Enrage ability of when it takes damage each (and that’s the key word) opponent has to sacrifice a permanent. I thought that’s removal, a card that they won’t want me to block or attack with because if they do, they have to get rid of something. But I can ping it myself with some of the cards in the deck to force them into the situation.
The 7 CMC for an 8/5 isn’t that big a deal in Commander, plus with discounts it could cost me a lot less. It’s enrage ability tied in with its toughness means it can take a ping from my own cards and still be around afterwards. So I like the look of the card, it’s just which card does it replace?
Dominaria Magic League Week 2
Week 2 of the Dominaria Magic League means the chance to buy a Dominaria booster to strengthen the deck. Expecting enough losses to buy a loser booster, I bought 3 Dominaria boosters for the bargain price of £10. Potentially buying 2 packs during the day, this was going to save me money! Naturally playing by the rules I only opened one of them as my allowed booster for the week.
Thanks to what I consider to be an over priced event the Birmingham GP had robbed my FLGS of the majority of its Magic players this weekend. So the Standard Showdown that was also taking place was 6 players. I hadn’t realised it was on, but then again I didn’t really have the time to play in it anyway. I’d come along in the hope to get some league games in. Which was looking remote when I saw the scarcity of participating league players.
My pulls in this weeks pack that go into the sideboard.
Creatures:8
1 Skirk Prospector
1 Rat Colony
1 Serra Disciple
1 Academy Drake
1 Aesthir Glider
1 Baloth Gorger
1 Josu Vess, Lich Knight
1 Urgoros, the Empty One
Spells:6
1 Healing Grace
1 Navigator’s Compass
1 Rescue
1 Grow from the Ashes
1 Chainer’s Torment
1 In Bolas’s Clutches
I did make some adjustments to the deck, but I’ll do a deck list after the final week.
Just for the shits and giggles I threw all of my red cards, plus some artifact creatures and artifacts together added a black creature to give me a big hitter to make a second deck from my league card pool.
Creatures:12
3 Skirk Prospector
1 Bloodstone Goblin
1 Keldon Warcaller
2 Howling Golem
1 Amaranthine Wall
1 Keldon Raider
1 Rampaging Cyclops
1 Warcry Phoenix
1 Demonlord Belzenlok
Spells:6
1 Navigator’s Compass
1 Warlord’s Fury
1 Blackblade Reforged
1 Jousting Lance
1 Fight with Fire
1 Radiating Lightning
Lands:12
8 Mountain
4 Swamp
How did I do this week? Well despite the lack of participating players this week I managed to play against 2 players and get in 6 games before I had to return back to the mundane world and a Strider who has an upset tummy and all that entails coming out of one end.
After deck building and adjustments I managed to get a game in against Kar-Fai, who readers will remember as an adversary from my Netrunner days, before he took part in the Standard Showdown. I was pleasantly taken aback that there was no attempt to lure me back into the world of Android and Netrunner. I love the Android universe, and love the game of Netrunner. But it seemed to me that FFG just loved targeting the factions I loved to play for banning cards. So with the revised core set, rotation etc, the game may be in a “better” place now. But I’m still smarting from the hurt of them knee capping my decks. I then played the remaining 5 games against a new player in the league Philip.
I played the first 3 games with the new deck and it won more than it lost 2-1. I then played the remaining 3 games with my first deck and that went 3-0. So in the end I was 5-1 overall.
I’m not sure what it says or how the other players feel that my red deck is just something I threw together with very little/no thought, and still won with it. I felt a little guilty, and also very lucky that it seemed to work.
Once I got home naturally I opened up the other 2 boosters and added the cards straight into my collection ready for deck building.
Anyway a great couple of hours playing MtG. Looking forward to week 3.
An unexpected phone call
I’m enjoying my new Fridays. I’m home an hour earlier than I used to be. Which is real nice. But last night that extra hour was put to good use by having a bbq. Over my cheeseburger I was watching the season finale of The Big Bang Theory season 11. I was well into The Flash when Jonathan phoned asking if I wanted to meet up and try his latest arrival Azul. I jumped at the chance to try a game I was keen to try and also to be playing it with a good friend.
When Azul came out last year there was a lot of buzz around the game. So it had made the radar of both Jonathan and myself. We have been known to enjoy the odd abstract game or two. There are one or two in our collections. I had asked another friend Scott to bring his copy to the expo at the end of the month for both of us to try. However an opportunity (one that I missed) came up for Jonathan to get a copy. That copy arrived mid week, and hence the phone call last night.
As usual at The White Lion we started off having a little chat semi board game related over our pints of Thatchers, before learning how to play Azul.
I really liked the production values for the game. The plastic pieces have a nice feel to them. The player boards and factory circles are cardboard, but really great quality. Love the colourful design of the pieces. I can see why people joked online about playing the game with starbursts, they do kind of come to mind when looking at the pieces.
Like Santorini and Onitama the actual mechanics are fairly simple. But this simplicity hides what is actually a deep strategic game. There are some really nice decisions to make during the game, such as do you take a particular tile to screw over your opponent and miss a scoring opportunity for yourself? Or do you take a tile now to set up a future high scoring round or do you go for a score this round that won’t be as high.
And this played really well as a 2 player game, and is from reports also fun at its higher player counts. Which I’d like to try it at. Also the game played surprisingly quickly too. Which is nice. I find this just adds to the one more game syndrome. Before you know it you have ended up playing the game a lot more times in that session than planned.
Jonathan won our initial game. But our second game I smashed him. And it all turned on one decision that he made during the game to screw me over instead of furthering his own plans. That next turn I scored all five lines in some nice combos, while Jonathan had crippled his own scoring. Which set me up nicely to continue scoring big and get the win.
Guess what? I liked this game a lot. Yeah I’ll be picking up a copy at some point sooner than later.
After our games we finished off our beverages with more chat about life the universe and everything. It’s a shame we didn’t record these because I think especially this end one would have been interesting to folks.
BBQ, playing a a great game with a friend, great conversation, does the start to a weekend get better than this?
May 2018 Fenland Gamers Monthly Meetup
Last night it was the second Wednesday of the month once again, and yes we are back to Wednesdays after that very brief dalliance with Tuesdays.
Because of the numbers that turned up we split up into 2 groups to play. Gavin, Jeff and Katie played Gavin’s recently arrived copy of Sagrada. Whilst Jonathan, Jeff’s son and myself played Majesty: For the Realm (from Jonathan’s collection).
I hadn’t played Majesty before, and after a little banter between groups directed at Gavin who also owned the game but didn’t have the nice play mat that Jonathan did, we got on building our engines in this nice little engine building game.
There are some nice little touches to this game, that although clearly a gateway game is enjoyable for more hardened gamers. The take that mechanic within the game is simple and quick, and more importantly generally doesn’t target a specific player, but all those that can’t defend against the attack. Naturally if only one player can’t defend against an attack then it might feel like they are being targeted.
The sliding trade row, with items positioned nearer the supply costing more is a nice mechanic. Similar in style to choosing a race in Small World, but instead of using coins, you use meeples from your limited supply.
You are building an engine basically with the cards you are placing in front of you. But you are also having to pay attention to the cards that other players are collecting. At the end bonuses are awarded on majority for that card type. So you are trying to maximise the coins you collect when you place a card in your tableaux, but also trying to minimise giving stuff to your opponents, while making sure you maintaining your majorities, or sneakily stealing one.
Oh the play mat was a custom one that Jonathan had made. I actually liked it, and thought apart from having a 5 value coin would be the other addition the actual game needs.
Yeah I liked this, happily play it again.
Unusually both games ended at the same time. Talk about good timing. It even meant I could get a good photo of Jeff holding the social media winners boasting card for Sagrada. Yes that means he won the game.
The groups mixed up again for the second game of the evening. This time Gavin, Jeff’s son and myself played The Flow of History, while the others played Vikings.
Let’s just say despite getting The Internet I was still first loser as Jeff calls it. But I still on a second play of this game enjoy the game. Gavin won the game, despite constant protests during the game of “I have no engine” or “I have no resources”. He did protest too much I think, and then sneakily won!
Jonathan had a few days earlier grabbed a charity shop bargain for me of this old MtG Official Encyclopedia for a whole pound of the realm. Which was very kind of him to do.
The Vikings game finished before ours, so they started playing a Rick and Morty themed game of some kind. A lucky escape for me. It’s not a game that really grabs me.
It was really great to see what for our meet ups was a very good attendance.
Jeff earns Avenger status
Yesterday nearly ended in disaster before it even started. We were meant to be playing Xia at our regular haunt. However despite numerous attempts to confirm that it would be open, the best answers I had been given were “I think so” to “don’t know”.
So I turned up early to make sure and get set up. So I was a little more than disappointed when once again it was closed. Our alternative venue wouldn’t be open until 2pm. For today that would be too late. So I tried letting the others know not to come. Then I waited. Waited in a hot car with the windows open, just in case my message hadn’t got through. During that wait the venues laundry service turned up and after a little frustration of finding out the place was closed, drove off.
Then dead on time the others turned up. My frantic messaging had been in vein. After some discussion through opened car windows, a brief phone call, Jeff offered to host the game at his along with a bbq afterwards.
Our 3 car convoy made its way to Jeff’s house picking it’s way through the Fenland country roads to his remote Fenland castle of solitude.
There was hardly any wind, so we setup Xia outside, so we could enjoy this brief glimpse of a British Summer.
Being outside, and having a game plan didn’t make any difference to the end result. Despite thinking I was going to play the game more aggressively, arming my ship, giving it armour plating, forgetting to initially give it engines before realising my mistake and swapping the missile for an engine. I still just floated around space aimlessly not doing much, somehow getting 4 game points. A point was for rolling a natural 20, I completed a mission, and I think the other 2 points were for from those tokens you can collect on the board.
So while I was executing my game plan poorly, Jeff and Chris were doing a much better job of racking up fame points, and doing stuff like trading, and completing missions. And that was despite the game smacking them in the face on their first turns by destroying their ships or inflicting lots of damage. It was brutal to watch, and yet funny.
In the end despite late pressure from Jeff, Chris reached the target 10 fame points first, and claimed victory.
Afterwards I got to enjoy a rather nice burger, and great company, before I had to head on home.
Thanks to Jeff you get to see me modelling one of his stylish sun hats, along with arms that should have taken up the earlier offer of sun lotion.
A big big thank you to Jeff and family for saving the day and feeding me.
Dominaria Magic League Week 1
Yesterday was the start of the Dominaria Magic League at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole.
The Magic League is a sealed event, £10, 3 boosters, 30 card deck, blah blah blah. I’ve talked about this before. If you want to know more just go read about it on the WotC website.
As I walked into the geek nirvana I saw 2 of my now ex-students playing MtG. It was good to see them. They weren’t taking part in the league. They were there to play a few games of MtG, buy some boosters, and maybe improve their decks with their pulls.
I got one or two nice pulls that once the league is over will be useful for deck building. But so far this set hasn’t been kind to me on pulls for sealed events. And yesterday was no different.
I thought I’d gone prepared but sadly after I had opened my boosters I realised I’d forgotten to bring any lands and sleeves with me. This was an excuse to throw more money at John the store owner.
I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t buy any of the Ultra-Pro Relic Tokens. Being of very little self control, as I was purchasing the sleeves I needed (Dragon Shield Matt sleeves which are my favourite) I crumbled and bought some.
Here is the deck I built and the sideboard of the remaining cards from the initial 3 boosters, and the booster I bought after 3 losses.
| Deck | Sideboard | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Creatures:81 Cabal Evangel 1 Rat Colony 1 Academy Drake 1 Llanowar Envoy 1 Baloth Gorger 1 Grunn, the Lonely King 1 Muldrotha, the Gravetide 1 Primordial Wurm |
2 Skirk Prospector 2 Tragic Poet 1 Bloodstone Goblin 1 Keldon Warcaller 2 Serra Disciple 1 Aesthir Glider 2 Howling Golem 1 Tolarian Scholar 1 Amaranthine Wall 1 Keldon Raider 1 Rampaging Cyclops 1 Sanctum Spirit 1 Thallid Omnivore 1 Warcry Phoenix 1 Guardians of Koilos 1 Mammoth Spider 1 Sentinel of the Pearl Trident 1 Tatyova, Benthic Druid 1 Cold-Water Snapper 1 Demonlord Belzenlok 1 Evra, Halcyon Witness 1 Short Sword 2 Syncopate 1 Warlord’s Fury 1 Ancient Animus 1 Blackblade Reforged 1 Blink of an Eye 1 Jousting Lance 1 Vicious Offering 1 Fight with Fire 1 Wizard’s Retort 1 Radiating Lightning 1 Blessed Light |
||
Spells:81 Demonic Vigor 1 Fungal Infection 1 Navigator’s Compass 1 Rescue 1 Saproling Migration 1 Shield of the Realm 1 Grow from the Ashes 1 Spore Swarm |
|||
Lands:145 Forest 3 Island 1 Memorial to Unity 4 Swamp 1 Woodland Cemetery |
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So how did this 3 colour deck do?
I thought I was on a hiding to nothing for the day when I lost my first game. But I then went on to win my next 3 games. After a break playing a game of Commander with my ex-students (which I lost, just wasn’t getting any lands) I then went on to lose my final 2 league matches. So my league record for the day was 3-3.
The deck did better than I’d thought it would. It doesn’t have enough low cost creatures to keep me alive in the early game. This is definitely a mid to late game deck. Which in this format isn’t great.
I now have until my next league game to look at the sideboard and either swap cards over, or completely rebuild the deck.
Trust no one
There have been a couple of good suggestions on recent episodes of the Commandzone. The first suggestion was from one of their listeners/viewers that keeps deckbuilding costs down for Commander. For common cards that are used in a lot of decks the person proxies in the card, then when they need to play they pull the card out of a folder to use. I don’t use a folder, I use a deck box. But it’s a great idea that as I said helps keep costs down. The only draw back is that if I’m lending some-one a deck to play with that I’m doing this with, and I’m using a deck I’ve done this with there may be a clash over the use of a card. But that’s a very minor issue.
The other idea was for drafting amongst friends. Let’s assume that 4 friends want to draft, they also have each bought a booster box of the latest set. Instead of mass opening their boxes, for the draft session they use the box of one of the players. BUT they don’t keep the cards they draft, they go back to the owner of the box at the end of the draft session. Then next time they want to draft they use one of the boxes from one of the other players, and like wise that player gets all the cards back at the end. I like this idea. It gets away from the store drafts of trying to draft a good pool to build from and keeping high value cards. So players can just concentrate of a good draft experience. I have to admit it’s that draft value dilemma that keeps me away from playing draft in a store.
But this got me to thinking. The 2 conspiracy sets are draft sets. What if I used this idea and then put these cards into a conspiracy cube to be used again for drafting?
So my plan goes like this. Buy a booster box of conspiracy take the crown (the second set). Invite 4-6 good friends to an afternoons drafting and multiplayer Magic using that booster box. At the end get the cards back, and use them for the cube. Then repeat until the booster box no longer has enough boosters to be used for drafting. Crack open any remaining packs, add them to the cube. That gives me my final conspiracy cube to play with.
Thanks to my very generous colleague and friends at my last place, I used the money they collected to help purchase a booster box of conspiracy take the crown. Which as I write this is out for delivery according to a text I’ve just received. That text surprised me because yesterday the courier texted me and emailed me to say I would be getting it on Tuesday!
I also have a bid for an original conspiracy set on eBay at the moment too. That finishes later today. So who knows if I win that I’ll have 2 conspiracy cubes eventually.
I didn’t get into all that unstable hype and drafting before Christmas last year. But while I was brainstorming this cunning plan I thought I could do this with that as well. So I may at some point over the Summer do the same with that set. Then I’ll have an unstable cube too. This plan makes unstable more attractive to me. I won’t have some cards that I can’t play with in my decks. Instead I’ll have a whole cube I can draft and enjoy the experience of over and over. It makes me feel better about investing the money into the set.
So that’s the plan. Let’s hope I can pull it off.
Star Realms Scott’s Revenge
Continuing my recent series of boring Star Realms games, this one has Scott returning to form and annihilate me.
If that didn’t put you off the game the latest update adds another expansion. I’m not too bothered with the campaign side, I don’t play it. But the extra cards I’ll gladly take.
WWG added in-app tournaments which is going to be interesting to see how this develops, and what sort of costs are involved.
The initial tournament is 20 units of the in game currency an attempt, which is approximately 25 cents if my calculations are correct.
Looking at the prices below depending on the cost of other events I’m reasonably happy with the charges being made to buy the in game currency.
Considering I have won one game and got a reward of 3 credits, the temptation to keep playing to get those foils is tempting. It helps that the cost to enter is low. But is that because WWG want to draw people in to get them used to paying to play? If WWG keep the prices low, then I can see this taking off. But if they get the pricing wrong, and try to milk the players I won’t be using this.
Magic League This Weekend At The Hobbit Hole.
This Saturday my FLGS The Hobbit Hole kicks off at 11am the Magic League for Dominaria.
“Players start with 3 boosters and may purchase another each week, plus another after any set of three losses.” From that initial 3 booster packs you build a 30 card deck with which to play against other players participating in the league.
When you buy that initial 3 packs you get a “collection box”, which is basically a cardboard box to store you deck and unused cards in. Plus after you have played 10 games you get a promo card. Which for the League games is Zhalfirin Void I believe.
Naturally it will be rather nifty to get a copy of this, so I’m going along to take part. I’m hoping that I will be a bit luckier in my pulls for this. I haven’t been overly lucky so far with this set.