All posts by Darren

Ixalan Rare, Mythics, and Foils I Pulled #5

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So we are over the hump of these posts, and on the homeward stretch.

I have to say there are some cards here I do like the sound of. How playable they are in reality is another thing. There is a bit of me that says sell Hostage Taker. But then there is another bit that says keep it, you may need it. Then I go and check the price it is currently. It’s a £15 card!!! I may just take the money and run on that one.

Anyway you don’t want to hear about my MtG trading plans. You want to see more rare and mythics that I pulled. So never one to disappoint here are the next batch of nine cards.

 

Getting some staples for Commander

Commander, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

I decided that to help me build my first commander deck it was cheaper to use a precon commander deck to get some of the “basics”.

I didn’t want to cannibalise my Commander 2017 or Anthology decks. They are my let’s play magic with a group of friends go tos.

So I grabbed a 2015 precon to act as that sacrificial deck. This will be my first 2015 precon. But seeing as I haven’t any of the others (well all of them), and I won’t be in a position to get them all. It won’t become part of that “let’s play magic” thing I just mentioned for 2017 and Anthology, I don’t feel guilty using it as card fodder.

This deck gives me Sol Ring and Command Tower for starters. Plus 74 other cards (excluding basic lands).


Just to target buy these two cards would be around £6.

I loved the following card Karmic Justice when I saw it. It’s like a warning, leave me alone or something bad will happen to you. Plus with me going with Gishath, Sun’s Avatar as my commander I can play it. But Karmic Justice is a £5 card on Magic Madhouse and eBay but £1.75 from Chaos Cards. So depending on availability of the cards on the sites I would have been looking at between £8 and £11 for three cards! Obviously target buying was looking to be potentially more expensive than just getting the precon. Plus would I have even looked at or known to look at Karmic Justice without getting the precon?

For me just on a value for money exercise I think taking this approach to building my first commander deck, and getting my hands on some of the deck staples, plus expand my card pool to build from, and learning about cards to put into my deck then this was a good buy for the money.

So Karmic Justice protects, kind of, cards like Thought Vessel below.

I like not having to worry about hand size. It means you can keep answers to problems in hand ready to play at the right moment. Like the following bit of jank.

Can I find a place in the deck for this bit of jank below? But this digresses from the point of the post because neither card is in this precon deck.

I’m still looking through the cards, and trying to think if they fit in with the deck I want to build. But then again I just know the commander at the moment, with no real plan.

Maybe in my next post on this first deck I should look at this commander and try and work out a plan for the deck?

 

Ixalan Rare, Mythics, and Foils I Pulled #4

magic, MtG


Just about about half way I think in this long boring series of photos of MtG rare, mythic and foil cards from the latest set Ixalan.

I will say that I’m loving the art on the merfolk and dinosaur cards. However the vampire and pirate cards I am on a whole finding have my least favourite art of the set. I don’t know if it’s because they tend to be darker, or I’m just not liking the style. Just something isn’t clicking with me.

Oh you don’t want this middle aged man’s thoughts on the card art, go make your own mind up by looking at these cards for starters…

Ixalan Rare, Mythics, and Foils I Pulled #3

magic, MtG

Here we are with the third in this series.

Luckily I have been able to do all these in one go and schedule them for release. Sadly for you that means I have probably used my best introductions up already, and after this post it just gets worse.

I should really be saying more about these cards. But in reality I’m not a judge of what is good and what is bad. For instance Burning Sun’s Avatar, and Regisaur Alpha look good cards to me. I like both their enter battlefield effects. Alpha gives you a 3/3 green dinosaur token with trample, and other dinosaurs you control get haste! Seems sweet to me.
And Rampaging Ferocidon looks made for Commander. Switching off life gain, and dealing damage when creatures enter the battlefield to it’s controller. I’d think this would be a real pain when it is out, and force others to get rid of it.Where as Fathom Fleet Captain doesn’t set my world on fire, and I could not see myself playing it.

But I’m sure experienced Magic and Commander players will correct me on my assessment of those cards.

See you in the fourth post in this series.

Who Should Be My First Commander?

magic, MtG

MtG is addictive! Cracking open packs is addictive (Star Wars:Destiny has all this is spades too). Deck building is addictive. That desire to build a deck that executes your plan to perfection while crushing your opponent.

It starts with an idea. With Destiny it could be “I want to build a mini mill deck” or “I think Sabine/Rey would be a cool pairing”. For me it’s no different in MtG. I’ve never built a Commander deck before, but the itch has been eating away at me to do so. Especially ever since I saw Neheb, the Worthy in Amonkhet. Tribal (a term I only recently heard of, yes I’m still that wet behind the ears) Minotaur sounded really cool to me. Who doesn’t think minotaurs are cool?

Gishath, Sun’s Avatar is another Legendary that grabbed me as a great Commander to build a deck around. Dinosaur Tribal is probably cooler than minotaurs, just. And might even pip dragons.

So two potential deck ideas. But which to build first?

My main problem will be do I have enough minotaurs or dinosaurs to make the respective tribal decks? Or if I don’t, are there enough out there that budget allowing I can get to build the tribal deck?

Sadly at this point in time I don’t think there is. So do I kill two birds with one stone and build a deck that has both? A dinosaur/minotaur deck, with Gishath as the commander?

Having Gishath as the commander has the advantage of giving me access to white and this fun card…

I love janky stuff like this. That “wtf? Is that a legal card?” Is worth it. I might not win the game. But I’ve had fun.

Anyway I’m still pondering these options. It’s a hard decision to make.

Ixalan Rare,Mythics, and Foils I pulled #1

magic, MtG


I threatened this series of posts at the weekend, and I’m a man of my word. Well sometimes. Sometimes I forget what I have said. I’m nearly fifty (next year). My time on this planet is very limited. Things fail me from time to time, like my memory. Plus my mouth isn’t connected to my brain, so it’s also very likely that something comes out that my brain has no record of at all.

This series of posts over the next week will concentrate on showing what rares, mythics and foils I pulled at the weekend from all those Ixalan boosters I opened. Each post in this series will show nine cards. I don’t want to over load those not interested in MtG with too much in a single post. It might send them into a coma!

Without further ado, here are the first nine cards for you…

BTN September 2017

by the numbers, gaming stats, stats

I enjoy this monthly opportunity to look back and reflect on the previous months gaming. But when you see this months numbers, holy cow the impact of Dale and I not getting a chance to play Star Wars: Destiny is massive. It’s a very busy time of year for us, new timetables, not a lot of gaps where we are free at the same time. I think we have found a slot one lunchtime we are both able to play a couple of games. We will have to see how that goes.

Incredibly there was only one new game played this month. I don’t think that has ever happened. I’m going to have to review the stats, because if it did then it was in the early days of record keeping I’m sure.

Super happy that Scythe got to the table twice. It’s a great game, and once that new expansion hits will be hitting the table even more. Also two other big games hit the table this month. It’s kind of important to acknowledge the impact these games have on the number of plays for the month. Take Star Wars: Rebellion for instance. That game for Diego and myself on Saturday took four hours to play (including the new setup involved with the expansion). If we had been playing lighter games instead we might have got three or four games/plays in, in the same time period.

I also wasn’t able to attend a couple of gaming sessions this month due to life stuff, other commitments. So that also would impact the stats a little. But not by much.

Anyway enough waffling, here are the cold hard and fast numbers from the BG Stats app for September.


Averages time. I only beat the mode number of plays in September. The others I was not even close. And I repeat this with the number of games played also. Under on arithmetic mean and median, just over on mode.

The final section as usual presents the data graphically so we can try and see trends. After the fluctuating recent highs, September looks like a stock market crash on the plays front. Maybe I should normalise the previous months so they don’t have the Destiny numbers and see how big a drop it is if any?

My Game of the Month…

There was only one new to me game this month. But I don’t like to just give an award by default. Does Broom Service warrant being game of the month? I liked the game, it has some nice mechanics, great artwork. But still I’m not sure it makes the grade to be game of the month. So no winner this month.

Worst Game of the Month…

I’m glad to report no candidates for this award this month.

Hopefully hitting the table in October…

But going to put the ones from the last month back on for October.

  •  Zombicide – I want to get this to the table with the Big Bang Theory characters and see how they do in the zombie apocalypse.
  • Hero Realms with the character expansions.
  • Magic the Gathering Commander (with more than two players)

  • The weekly Friday Evening Gaming at The White Lion (or FEG@WL as I call it)
  • Every second Wednesday of the month we have our monthly meet up. This month that second Wednesday is 11/10/17.

I’m hoping that if you click on the image you can see what days we have stuff planned for so far in October.

If you are in the area and want to attend one of the events, please visit the Fenland Gamers Facebook page for further details about the event. Hope to see you there

Little guys win again!

Fenland Gamers, Game day, star wars

That’s the only way I can describe the fall of the Empire once again to the Rebellion.

Yesterday Diego and I played Star Wars: Rebellion with the newly released expansion Rise of the Empire.

Rise of the Empire adds new leaders, new missions, new units, new dice, and new tactic cards. All on the whole inspired/themed around the movie Rogue One.

The new tactic cards are normal size and replace totally the old ones. Plus they are used now in a more streamlined “cinematic” combat system. 

Both Diego and I both liked the new “cinematic” combat system more than the original one. You still have tactic cards for both space and ground battles but each deck is treated as your hand of cards when it comes to do a battle in that arena of conflict. At the start of each round of the battle you choose one tactic card from your hand, then simultaneously both players reveal their selected card, and resolve (the card is then discarded). Then you roll the dice, do damage etc. Except this time the crossed swords symbol is used to prevent dice. And the figures on your leader that were used to draw tactic dice now determine how many dice you can reroll in that arena of conflict. So obviously if you have played A Game of Thrones the boardgame you will be used to that selecting a card and revealing element. It’s the same mechanic. But it’s a nice way of doing this, and it forces you to make some tough decisions about when to play cards. I think after reading a thread when I got home we may have had a misplay on the sword dice. But hey ho.

The new characters, actions and missions were fun, and changed things up. Plus add a little variety to the game. 

It’s a nice expansion that I don’t think I’d play the game without out. 

In our game yesterday we had some great moments. But the game came down to a final battle, that if I’d destroyed Diego’s fighters  instead of going for his big ships first, I’d have won next round. Instead he was able to attempt to blow my Death Star up, and succeed getting him the final two points he needed. To add salt to the wound he also killed Palpatine that round.

A great afternoon gaming with a tactical genius. I will beat you one day Diego ;)

Booster Pack Pulls

magic, MtG

I’m not going to separate out the boosters by product. I could but I’m not. That’s too much work.

How many packs have I had to crack open?

  • 36 packs in booster box
  • 6 packs in prerelease box
  • 10 packs in bundle 
  • 2 packs in Planeswalker deck

I make that 54 boosters in total. So over a few posts I will be posting photos of the rares/mythics, foils that I pull.

Cracking packs is addictive. Once you start it’s very very hard to stop. 

Here are some stats from the massive cracking open of packs I did:

  • 13 foils
  • 6 legendary creatures
  • 8 of the new double faced cards

The following does not include the foil basic lands I pulled.

  • 12 swamps
  • 8 mountains
  • 7 forests
  • 7 islands
  • 8 plains

Tokens:

  • 23 treasure
  • 12 proxy cards
  • 14 vampires
  • 3 pirates
  • 6 dinosaurs
  • 2 plants
  • 3 illusions
  • 3 merfolk 

Plus the Planeswalker from the Planeswalker deck.

How did I do on my hit list for Ixalan?

  • Vanquisher’s Banner
  • Raiders’ Wake
  • Demolish
  • Dual Shock
  • Firecannon Blast
  • Star of Extinction
  • Sunbird’s Invocation
  • Crushing Canopy
  • Gishath, Sun’s Avatar
  • Huarli, Warrior Poet
  • Tishana, Voice of Thunder
  • Vraska, Relic Seeker
  • Unclaimed Territory

I don’t think that’s a bad dent in my hit list. 

In the Player’s Guide there is “The Top Ten Coolest Ixalan Cards”, how many did I pull?

  1. Jace, Cunning Castaway
  2. Gishath, Sun’s Avatar 
  3. Raptor Hatchling
  4. Vanquisher’s Banner
  5. Walk the Plank
  6. Dowsing Dagger/Lost Vale
  7. Revel in Riches
  8. Deadeye Quartermaster
  9. Bishop of Rebirth
  10. Kumena’s Speaker

As you can see I did rather well (ones I pulled in bold) with that list. With three I didn’t pull, but I’d got one from the prerelease weekend (in italics).

John the owner of my FLGS The Hobbit Hole did say on Friday when I was picking up everything that players at the store were going mad for “Hostage Taker”. His three copies were being snapped up in seconds. I managed to get one.

So I’m happy with that haul. I’m surprised that I didn’t pull one Planeswalker in this lot. But six legendary creatures or future commanders as I like to think of them, I’m happy with that. But two of them are doubles that I can trade/sell for others. 

I won’t be getting any more packs now for Ixalan until we start our next Magic League in November. We finish the current Amonkhet one next Saturday, with a Commander session on the 21st October as a casual fun break from the league.

Next set to think about…

Plus some stand alone products like duel decks that are coming out.