It was a long day yesterday. It started off making the journey over to my FLGS The Hobbit Hole to pick up my pre-order of the final ever Duel Deck for MtG, Elves vs Inventors. This according to all the reviews I’ve seen wasn’t a great last hurrah for the product range. I was just getting it to not even add to my little collection of Duel Decks, but to harvest it for cards, particularly elves. The rest of my pre-order were the four new ready for prime time FNM Challenger Decks. These decks currently at present market values represent great value for money. The Hazoret Aggro with it’s copy of Hazoret and Chandra currently is amazing value. Both cards at time of writing were clocking in at £20+ a copy.

My intention is to also break up these decks and use the cards elsewhere. But first I want to play some games with them.

Whilst at my FLGS my pusher of cardboard and plastic known as the store owner John showed me the promo cards for the store championship being held the next day and for the open house the following weekend. Both elf cards. At the store championship a full art steal leaf champion, and the open house will have a full art Llanowar Elves. Both look rather cool. Yeah I want these for my Elf Commander deck. So I signed up for the store championship. I’m going to use one of the Challenger Decks to see how these do against more serious players (I’m lead to believe one of the stores regular FNM players is an ex pro player). Let’s put WotC claims to the test.

After my visit to my FLGS it was a rush back to Wisbech and The White Lion to meet up with Jeff and play War of the Ring. This was the second time I’ve played the game (the first time was the later part of 2016), so I needed a brief rules refresher. Once again I played as the free people of Middle Earth. Once again I got my butt kicked. I’m pretty sure that Jeff was taking it easy of me. I need to play this more often and look into tactics a bit more if I’m to progress at this game and be more of a challenge to Jeff.

We had a little time to kill between my shameful defence of Middle Earth and an evening gaming session. So Jeff kindly agreed to play some Magic using the new Challenger decks. I’m not going to say much about these games here, but save my thoughts until after the store championship when I will give my thoughts on the decks.

Six thirty came, Jonathan and Nathaniel arrived and Istanbul fully loaded with all the expansions and the kebab shop promo hit the table. Shockingly this is another game, although a favourite of ours that hadn’t hit the table since late 2016 also. That is the problem with having so many games between us. So many good ones there is never enough time to play them all. Apparently partners, families, work all want a piece of our time.

Jeff won our game of Istanbul, and the important part is Jonathan didn’t score more highly than me, we finished equal second. Friendly rivalry is always good.

It had been a long day, and a brain burning one too. So Jeff and I said our good byes and left the other two to play a Rick and Morty game of some description. Besides despite having a sandwich and chips for lunch at the hotel I was hungry and tired.

I love days like this.