Category Archives: Game day

Winner,winner, Hydroid Krasis dinner

Deck tech, Game day, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

Friday evening saw an impromptu gaming session with Jonathan. Don’t worry this bit is going to be short.

Our first game of the evening was the current hotness (and at the moment Jonathan’s and mine prediction for game of the year! And let’s face it this game has set the bar pretty high for the others coming out this year.) Wingspan. I actually started off with a hand of all five starting cards, which meant no resources. All of the cards were one or two resources to play, plus the buzzard was a zero cost card to play. So my first action was playing that buzzard. Jonathan started off very slow, and never really did get a lot of birds out. But even so, the gap between our final scores wasn’t massive. I took the victory by five points.

Our second game of the evening was the Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth game.

This is a licensed game that Osprey Games has produced using their other game The Lost Expedition as the starting point.

I liked The Lost Expedition (which I got at the UKGE last year) although it is brutally hard to beat.

In this update basically, we have a theme that I love (I’ve been reading Dredd for decades). And a theme that is being used by Osprey again later in the year when I believe they are releasing a Judge Dredd version of Wildlands called Judge Dredd Helter Skelter (and also why I’m selling my copy of Wildlands. I like Wildlands, but if I have to choose between a fantasy theme and Judge Dredd then JD wins).

The actual theme, art and storyline work very well together in this game. It would be fair the theme and art would have done nothing for Jonathan. It’s sci-fi. Not his cup of tea as us oldies would say.

Production wise they have got rid of the insert (that didn’t handle sleeved cards), added a storage box to hold the tokens and meeples that also acts as a divider in the box to help organise the cards. The cardboard tokens are a bit thin for my liking. I’d have liked something a bit thicker and robust. But at least the box now holds all the cards sleeved nicely.

You now have three modes of play. Solo, co-op and competitive. Which is nice. Jonathan and I only played a co-op game. It’s also nice that the game has that race element to it where you are racing the villains to get to Max Normal who is hiding in the Cursed Earth somewhere. Plus there is a mechanic where you battle a villain if you end up in the same region as them. Which we didn’t get to try out. We never caught up with the villains.

Having not played The Lost Expedition since the expo, we were rusty on the iconography. So we had to keep referring to the rules to refresh our memories on the ones we couldn’t remember but also on how the new icons worked also. The Psi icon was particularly interesting as a mechanic, and gave a hard choice. You would basically be adding an additional card to the encounters, but the choice was did you do it blind turning over the top encounter card and add it, or take a hit on Anderson (I think it was health) draw an encounter card each, make a case for playing the card you had drawn to be the one added to the encounter row over the other players card. Then adding the card decided by the players, discarding the other card. So a little control over your future!

Like it’s predecessor this game is brutal. But I enjoyed it. Need to try the competitive mode next.

Our final game of the evening was Hanamikoji. We rattled off four plays of this. It’s still a great, quick, two player game.

A great evening of gaming with one of my fav people to game with (the others know who they are) at a great host The Luxe Cinema. Who must have been fed up seeing me that day.

If you haven’t guessed the title of this post is a big spoiler for what follows.

Yesterday was Standard Showdown day once again.

I decided to play my Simic deck. The decision was mainly based on the lack of movement in the local meta. A minority of players are trying new decks. The majority are using the same deck week in week out, with the odd change once in a while. Which to be truthful is a bit boring.

There was only one game I felt a little guilt over. That was round 2 when I played a newish player whose deck really wasn’t competitive with the decks I knew most folks had. I think their deck was a slightly modified Planeswalker deck. It certainly wasn’t a fair match up against my deck. Counter, counter, smash. That’s my game plan. The guys deck was not going to disrupt that plan. It was a quick game.

Having won the first two rounds, I was worried about meeting Andy Hall in round 3. Or round 4 come to think of that. But John did me a solid in round 2 by beating him. A shock victory. But one that meant if I kept winning we would be unlikely to be matched up.


Round 3 did see me play against his son though (his son had won FNM the previous night). I wasn’t much concerned about this match up. I’d beaten it previously with this deck. I thought it’d go 2-1. But I aced it with a clear win.

The final round was against John and his merfolk deck. This could have gone either way. Probably the least confident of winning for the day. Plus there was a little pressure to win. If I lost, then it would be all down to the WotC algorithm once again to decide the top four or five. And based on it’s workings I wouldn’t finish top. I needed a win.

Game 1 I won comfortably. Game 2 was quick and John’s deck just overwhelmed me before I could counter anything or get bodies out. We had a decider. Which went my way. I got to the start of an oppressive board state. That had oozes out that were growing quicker than his merfolk, Krasis on the board, counterspells in hand. And mana.

Unusually Vivien Reid actually hit the battlefield four times yesterday, and got me creatures, and just as important allowed me to trigger her ultimate. So I had that emblem out. I hardly get to play her, having just the single copy in the deck. So it was nice to get her out and doing her thing.

I was the only undefeated player yesterday. And I think it’s the first time I’ve gone undefeated also.

There was talk about levelling the playing field out so some of the really new players could take part. The idea of just welcome packs, or just Planeswalker decks were floated. But there is in about 3 weeks a natural time to do something like this when the new Challenger decks come out. So that weekend will be Challenger decks only I believe.

Standard Showdown Stats

Standard Showdown Participants: 10

Rounds: 4

Round 1: Kar-Fai (Red burn/aggro)Win 2-0

Round 2: Win 2-0

Round 3: Nathan Hall (Golgari)Win 2-0

Round 4: John (Simic merfolk) Win 2-1

Record: 4-0

Final Position: 1st

Prizes: 1 participation pack, 2 boosters for winning and a Standard Showdown pack (foil Assassin’s Trophy inside).

Hoist the Jolly Roger

Game day, magic, MtG

The weekends gaming was a weekend of playing MtG.

Naturally Saturday was Standard Showdown at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. Usually I write the whole thing with a round by round summary. With a deck list tagged to the end if I played a new deck or tweaked the deck.

But I thought I’d change it up a little in this post.

I’d taken the new pirates deck with me for John’s daughter to play if she wanted to. However she was not feeling well. So I decided I’d change things up and play it myself.

Knowing John’s merfolk deck was a bad match up for the pirates (it negates the copies of Walk the Plank) I still tested the deck against his. The games were not complete walk overs, but still it lost.

I got off to a flying start to Standard Showdown with back to back wins. Although the games against Andy were made a lot easier with him getting mana screwed both games. In one of the games he mulliganed down to three cards. There was a bit of guilt during those games. An unusual feeling for me. But sometimes that’s the way the cards fall. As an MtG player it’s something you come to accept is part of the game. It’s not fun when you are experiencing it. A hint of optimism is always helpful. You just hope it’s a temporary blip. Or that any moment you will start getting the land and that it’s not too late to turn things round. But there is also an element of inevitability in the current game as your opponent plays lands, get their eggs in a row and finally puts you out of your misery.

Apart from my games against Mr Hall (one of the stores elite four) the ones I lost against Michael were pretty close. But even then with Mr H it wasn’t that I didn’t have answers in my deck, and my deck needed tweaking. I had answers just didn’t get them.

In the friendly games I played with the pirates deck it lost. The mono blue mill also lost in a friendly game. If I was able to mill once more for two cards it would have won. Naturally the Simic deck won it’s friendly game.


Standard Showdown Stats

Standard Showdown Participants: 10

Rounds: 4

Round 1: Simon (Gates Deck) Win 2-0

Round 2: Andy Win 2-0

Round 3: Andy Hall Loss 0-2

Round 4: Michael Loss 0-2

Record: 2-2

Final position: 5th

Sunday morning saw me being messaged by Dale to see if I wanted to meet up. So we did that afternoon at The Luxe. I took along the three standard decks I have currently for us to play with.

Dale and I spent the afternoon chatting and playing MtG. I had a great afternoon. But I’m sure Dale must have been bored with the MtG chat.

Deck plans:

Before Standard Showdown started Saturday John showed me a card he pulled during FNM the night before that did really well for him. It was Twilight Panther.

I immediately took a liking to it. It needs a swamp to activate its ability. But it’s a white version of Skittering Heartstopper. A card I like. Opponents are not keen to block a card like this with big creatures because with the mana open it takes that blocker out.

I like the idea of playing a deck with both of those cards in it. So that makes it Orzhov or white/black.

Looks like I have some card research to do know for a new standard deck.

Close but no cigar

Game day, magic, MtG


The postman broke the morning routine with a delivery that I wrote about in yesterday’s post. Otherwise there was no other deviation from my routine. My viewing whilst enjoying my morning caffeine fix was Northern Rescue on Netflix.

You also read about the 3D stuff I picked up on the way to my FLGS The Hobbit Hole yesterday. So nothing extra to report on that. Except I got soaked.

Whilst waiting for Standard Showdown to start I managed to play some friendly games with Kar-Fai who was there for Pokemon this week. Before his tournament started we managed to squeeze in three games. Two of which were with my mono blue mill deck, and the third was my Simic deck.

Friendly result: Win 2-1

In this weeks Standard Showdown there were 9 participants, which meant 4 rounds.

Round 1 Dean’s Nephew

I thought my day was off to a bad start when I rolled a 2 for who would go first. But Dean’s nephew rolled a 1! I wasn’t expecting that. I’d go first.

My opening hand was 6 lands and a counter spell. I decided to risk it. At least I’d hit my land drops. I drew into a second counter spell on my turn 2. If nothing else I could delay things a little.

The cards were kind to me, I was able to frustrate whilst getting my pieces into play. And the inevitable happened, and I took the first win.

Game 2 saw me win comfortably also. Helped a little by my opponent not getting all their land drops.

Result: Win 2-0

Round 2 Rob (blue/white mill?)

I think this was a first time playing Rob. I had no idea what to expect. But that’s the fun of the game. Does your deck have the answers for whatever your opponent has in their deck?

It was an interesting match up. There was little pressure on me early on in our games as Rob was playing walls. They only became a problem once he played the enchantment that switched off the defender, and allowed them in combat to do damage based on their toughness. Mix in a little control and mill and it was an interesting deck.

However if my deck is given that time to get its eggs in a row then it’s game over. And Rob’s game plan gave me that time.

Result: Win 2-1


Round 3 John (merfolk)

Once more John and I end up playing each other during a Showdown. During this season John’s deck has had the better of mine. Because of the nature of Standard Showdown between Saturday’s you tweak your deck based on the local meta. John had removed his Simic Ascendancy from his deck. Not sure what he replaced it with. He commented that he hasn’t seen the replacement card since adding it! My deck at the moment is fairly stable. If there are going to be any tweaks now it’ll be to the sideboard I think.

I took the first game comfortably. John sideboarded some cards in. He needed to be quicker off the mark he said. And he was in game 2, and took that one easily.

Game 3 the decider. Back to being frustrating while getting my Ooze and Krasis into place, before swinging in with massive damage.

I thought the games would be close based on previous experience. But these were not as close as our previous games had been. Which surprised me a little.

Result: Win 2-1

Pay attention to your opponents Planeswalker That’s the lesson from this friendly game. Especially when it’s about to ultimate and kill you. My excuse is I was distracted trying to end the game quickly to get on with the next round.

Friendly game: Loss

Round 4 Andy Hall (Blue/Black)

I nearly had a bye. Andy had gone off to collect his daughter and wasn’t back to start the round. But he did eventually turn up. Andy was sitting on a 2-1 record at this point to my 3-0. Boy was I feeling the pressure. Andy is one of the stores top players. I’d played him once in the previous season of Standard Showdown, and had my butt handed to me.

Game 1 was a back and forth, but I got some pieces out and got the win. I was happy I had won a game. Achievement unlocked.

Game 2 was evenly matched until Andy got out his 6/6 flyer that I had no answer for and didn’t draw into one. Andy got the win.

These were intense games. Both control decks. Hardly exciting to watch. Play a land, and pass turn. Waiting to react to whatever the other player did. A battle of the minds, waiting for the other person to blink first.

It was going to happen at some point in the day, and the deciding game was when I finally got mana screwed. It was quick and one sided. The lack of mana, particularly blue was enough of an advantage for Andy to execute his plan.

Result: Loss 2-1

As the dust settled there were four of use on 9 points. Andy and I were offered a play off for top spot. But I was happy to take second place based on the WotC algorithm.

Final position: Second with a 3-1 record

Prize: 1 participation pack, 1 pack for second place, and 1 Standard Showdown pack (had a baby Karn in it – I have 3 of these now so tempted to build a deck round him).

In response…

Game day, magic, MtG

I nearly missed this weeks Standard Showdown.

The morning had started as usual for a Saturday (I won’t bore you again with my morning routine). I was bathed, dressed, caffeinated and fed. All in good time. In fact if I had left at that point I’d have been early and had time to play a few games before battle commenced.

Instead I decided to go down a rabbit hole and start digging out Standard legal pirate cards (which is basically the Ixalan block) for building a pirate deck. A deck that John the owners daughter could play with, or use the cards to strengthen her own deck. I liked the idea of her pirate deck, it just needed to be more consistent. Too many one of’ s.

When I finally popped my head out of the rabbit hole, what I thought had been five to ten minutes of sorting through cards. Had actually been nearly an hour, and I know had less than an hour to get to my FLGS.

I grabbed a play mat, my card quiver with my standard decks and dice. Rushed out of the door and hit the road.

Despite the time pressure my drive over was relaxed and uneventful. Helped by not being a lunatic behind the wheel, sticking to speed limits, and listening to the latest Dice Pool podcast looking at the recently released Android Shadow of the Beanstalk source book for the Genesys RPG.

As I was making my way into the store I bumped into Paul. He was just making his way back from the coffee shop, coffee in hand. In side Paul accepted my invite to play our decks.

There wasn’t much rememberable about the game. My deck fired. Paul’s didn’t. We just finished playing as the first round match ups were announced.

Casual game with Paul I won.

The days field consisted of 8 players.

Round 1 Andrew (knights)

This round went the way I suspected. It was also a match up I was looking forward to.

Andrew is one of the better players at the store, and on a budget builds great decks. So pitching my deck and skills against him is always a great opportunity to test them.

The actual sideboard card I needed for going against Andrew’s deck was in the sideboard of my mono blue mill deck. Selective Snare, Sleep or River’s Rebuke would have been handy cards to have to buy me time.

But sadly they weren’t an option.

I was happy to take one game, and force a decider. I’m sure my “in response” when able to be played was annoying.

Result: Loss 2-1

Round 2 Nathan (green aggro)

Nathan is the son of one of the stores “elite” players. His dad wasn’t playing today (luckily).

The overall story of this match up was me saying “in response…” The annoying blue counter side of my deck really kicked in.

Our first game I was able to stabilise around five life, after taking a pounding from a Carnage Tyrant. Luckily a Biogenic Ooze came to my rescue along with a Hydroid Krasis. If my fading memory isn’t failing me I managed to get two out in this game at the same time. Double +1/+1 triggers at the start of my end step. The writing on the wall forced Nathan to reach the conclusion that his position was futile and concede the game.

Game two was similar, but luckily with Andrew playing Dean next to me I had the Judge next to me to clarify rules questions with. Nathan did try pulling a fast one at one point. Having played a Nullhide Ferox, whilst I was clarifying the hexproof and if it stood whilst casting. He moved to end of turn. With the ruling I could counter it, I insisted he was unable to move to end of turn, and the Nullhide Ferox was countered.

To be fair the Nullhide Ferox out wouldn’t at that point have caused me much of an issue. But it was the principle at stake.

Result: Win 2-0

Round 3 Paul (White/blue something)

Paul and his decks are a conundrum. I’d love to look at the deck lists. Paul is a great, friendly guy that is fun to play against. But his decks seem to be not ready for prime time!

Both of our games he mulligans down to five cards. Which means l’m starting with card advantage. Both games he amplified the advantage by going first.

It’s hard to counter stuff when your opponent isn’t playing cards! Either Paul wasn’t hitting lands to play cards in hand, or he wasn’t hitting anything but lands.

So without pressure I’m able to set up my own board state and counter the odd card when played.

I’d like to say that may be it was just two games of bad luck on the card draw, But a comment at the start of the round by John would imply that their match up was a similar affair.

As you know by my deck lists I’m not a deck builder savant. But there is something about Paul’s decks that isn’t quite right.

Result: Win 2-0

Apart from Round 3, I swapped out Nexus of Fate for two copies of Root Snare and a Frilled Mystic.

Final position: 4th with a 2-1 record

Afterwards whilst waiting for the final results to be announced Paul and I played a casual game again, this time using different decks. I played my mono blue mill deck against I think his pirate deck.

A couple of early Duress’s played by Paul denied me of a mill card and a counter spell. But with a couple of Persistent Petitioners, a Wall of Lost Thoughts, a couple of Vodalian Arcanist and a Muse Drake out I actually won the game with damage and not milling. Although I did do some milling. A couple of times Paul did hit me with my own Muse Drake with an annoying Hijack.

Casual game with Paul – Win

I didn’t take any Commander decks with me so had to borrow a deck from Andrew. The one I played was an Omnath elemental deck. I fell behind on the land drops, so there wasn’t much I could do. But on the other hand I also wasn’t a threat.

I did come across a nice card that would nicely into my big green stompy deck. But although it wouldn’t be thematic it would be nice in one or two other decks like the Horrors from the Deep, or even the elf deck.


Despite a slow start I did manage to hang in to be first loser.

Another great afternoon of MtG. I’ll put up new deck list with the tweaks tomorrow. Need to keep the length of this long post down.

Need for speed

Game day, magic, MtG


It’s Standard Showdown season once more. Naturally I went along to the first one at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole.

When I arrived at the store a X-Wing “mini” competition had started. The game still looks lovely when out on the table. Shame I was never able to get the game to the table and sold out of it. Well exchanged my collection for a couple of games I wanted. But I still miss the models, they are stunning. I don’t miss buying models just for the cards.

John and I tried to have a friendly game to test our decks, but with having to serve customers it was frequently interrupted. In the end John conceded with a dominant board state on my side ready to swing in.

This Standard Showdown was a pretty well attended one for a Saturday, with 10 entrants.

Round 1 – John (merfolk)

Sadly I was unable to continue the success of our earlier test game into the tournament.

I won the first game. But it was down hill from there. The second game saw me desperately play 3 Nexus of Fates to try and draw into an answer and snatch the win. But it was to no avail and just delayed the inevitable. Our third and final game was better for me. However John still managed to get into a superior position and get the win.

But close, fun games. I like those sort of games.

Result: Loss 1-2

Round 2 – Kar-Fai

Our first game must have been frustrating for Kar-Fai. He had me down to 2 life, before I stabilised and snatched the win from him.

You would have thought having won the first game so dramatically I would have remembered I had won it. But by the time I won the second game it had totally escaped me that I had won. The draw backs of old age.

Result: Win 2-0

Round 3 – Sophie (pirates)

Sophie had built her deck the day before. It still needed work. But the idea was good, and it has promise. Being more consistent and having more than one copy of cards would be the first improvement to make.

This was an easy match up for me. My deck walked all over it because of the reasons given above.

A bit more work and this deck will cause me problems.

Result: Win 2-0

Round 4 – Dean (dinosaurs)

My deck just didn’t fire in this match up. In some ways I need to be faster. But not sure exactly how. But my deck does struggle against fast aggro like decks. Something I need to look into. Fast aggro does seem to be a strong force in our meta.

Result: Loss 0-2

Afterwards Dean and I played a friendly game. This time I did much much better. But his Vivien Reid ultimate kicking in was the inevitable end for me. Trying to pump out oozes to delay things until I could hit a Krasis was futile.

Friendly Loss

After getting beat again by Dean but at least putting up more of a challenge, I played my mono blue mill deck against Kar-Fai in another friendly game. Which I lost. I hit none of my walls. So was at the mercy of Kar-Fai’s deck.

Friendly Loss

Final position: 7th with a 2-2 record

I only got a participation pack this time. Too many entrants to also get a Showdown pack. But I pulled a Repudiate//Replicate. That’s a sweet card for my deck. A strong card for going into the sideboard.

But another great afternoon playing MtG.

Horrors from the deep surface

Commander, Game day, magic, MtG

I’ve not been to a Monday Commander session at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole since the first one was held a few weeks ago.

So half term gave me the ideal excuse to get along to another one.

When I arrived a couple of ex-students of mine Josh and Tom were there, as was Andy a regular at the shop and training MtG judge. It appeared a bit of Commander deck building advice was being given to Josh.

I used my Muldrotha deck for the first game of Commander. Which was a true roller coaster ride. I do regret using my Cyclonic Rift to save Tom from a massive attack by Andy that would have killed him. I had already “bluffed” Andy not to attack me the previous turn of his. Well it wasn’t a bluff, I had the card in hand with the mana open to cast it. But Andy wasn’t sure of that.

What was my reward for saving Tom’s butt? Yeah you guessed it, a few rounds later he killed me first before moving on and killing Andy and Josh in a single strike.

Game two for the afternoon saw the Horrors from the Deep wake from their slumber and head towards the surface to wreck havoc and destruction.

Trench Gorger is such a great card to play once you have sufficient mana out. As you can see in the game yesterday it got rid of my remaining 22 lands, to become a 22/22. With trample. Which is nice. But the big benefit is that it gets rid of dead draws. Well not completely. There were still one or two cards that were in the deck to help me ramp and get lands, and therefore useless now. But that’s better than nearing 30.

Andy took out Josh. His threat assessment was that Josh was the bigger threat. Well he’d know because it was his deck Josh was playing.

With my big threats on the board I was able to take Andy out, well at that point I had them all with flying whilst grounding everyone else’s fliers.

It then took a couple of rounds for the horrors that had surfaced to pound Tom into submission. And get me my first win with this deck. Wow.

It was great to catch up with Josh and Tom. Everyone had a fun time. It’s great that The Hobbit Hole hosts this for those that are at a lose end on a Monday.

Sunday Afternoon Gaming

Game day

A relatively short post for today. Which many will be glad to hear.

Yesterday I had the pleasure to game with one of my favourite persons to game with (the others know who they are), Diego.

In this relaxed afternoons gaming we got Wingspan to the table. Which was a first play for Diego. And got a very respectable score of 60 points. Truth be told I was expecting Diego to crush me. But it was my eggs that grabbed me the victory and winning a couple of the end of round bonuses. We were pretty much matching each other score wise up until that point.


Wingspan was followed up with me teaching Hanamikoji to Diego. Because it is so quick to teach and play we got three games in. With Diego winning two of them. I think this may well be at the moment my favourite two player go to filler game.

We finished off the fun filled afternoon with a couple of games of MtG. Diego was kind enough to allow me to test my Simic Standard deck against his Elf deck. The version tested is giving me more reliable draw of the counter spells. One more tweak and I think I then need to fix a sideboard.

Thank you once again Diego for sharing you home and hospitality with me once again.

I’m going to finish this post with some photos of Nico and Loki the attack chihuahuas playing on the bed last night.

More Simic Deck Testing

Deck tech, Game day, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

Yesterday it was Ravnica Weekend at your FLGS if it does the whole MtG thing. Which means they were running a new D&D MtG cross over one-shot, plus a poorly promoted store championship using the draft format.

Sometimes, especially recently since Arena went into open beta, that WotC are trying to push everyone to the digital format of the game. They deny it naturally, but as the saying goes “actions speak louder than words”. And the actions of WotC are sending a very clear message to players and FLGS’. But this rant should be for another day and another post. Let’s get back on topic.

I went along to my FLGS The Hobbit Hole with the hope to test out my latest iteration of my Simic deck.

Naturally there were a few D&D sessions in progress when I arrived. Plus there was a Pokemon tournament about to kick off.

Table space was at a premium. Luckily I was able to find a player to test my deck with and more importantly a corner of the shop to play.

Michael who I was playing against was playing a mono white aggro deck. It was using life gain as an effective way to pump up some of his creatures. Which was very effective and in one particular game fast and deadly.

I didn’t use the sideboard. I think that still needs to be settled on. But just playing the main deck and getting a feel for it was good.

I know technically I have a 50/50 split between creatures and spells. But I’m counting Frilled Mystic as a counter spell. I think it’s a nice two for one in this deck. Counter spell and body on the ground.

In a recent MtG podcast I listened to there was mention that Nexus of Fate was being used in one or two decks that were Simic. I thought that sounds interesting, I have a couple of them. So I thought I’d add my copies to the deck give them a whirl. See what the fuss was about.

However against this white aggro deck I either needed more bodies out or bounce spells like Blink of the Eye.

I definitely wasn’t hitting the counter spells consistently enough in this match up. When I did they were the games I won. I was thwarting the game plan of my opponent, buying me time to get my pieces into play.

My feeling at the moment is that Steel Leaf Champion and Carnage Tyrant get moved to the sideboard fully and replaced with counter spells.

Ok here is the version 2 of my main deck that I played yesterday.

Creatures:19

4 Llanowar Elves
3 Hydroid Krasis
2 Incubation Druid
2 Steel Leaf Champion
3 Frilled Mystic
2 Zegana, Utopian Speaker
2 Biogenic Ooze
1 Carnage Tyrant

Spells:19

2 Open the Gates
4 Syncopate
4 Essence Capture
3 Thought Collapse
3 Wilderness Reclamation
1 Vivien Reid
2 Nexus of Fate

Lands:22

2 Breeding Pool
6 Forest
1 Hinterland Harbor
5 Island
1 Memorial to Genius
2 Memorial to Unity
4 Simic Guildgate
1 Woodland Stream

Michael and I finished off the afternoon of MtG with a couple of 1v1 Commander, his vampire deck against my Simic Horrors from the Deep deck. I’m not a big 1v1 Commander fan. For me it’s not Commander, at that point it’s Highlander (and that’s a different way to build decks).

The draw back of having a fun afternoon of playing MtG was Michael and I didn’t qualify for any of the cool promos that were being given away for Ravnica Weekend. But still a fun afternoon.

First Ever Alley Cat Games Con

Game day

Saturday saw roughly seventy odd gamers turn up at the offices of Alley Cat Games to participate in the company’s first ever con. It also clashed with the start of Standard Showdown season at my FLGS. If I was going to miss taking my Simic deck out for a spin, playing games with Jonathan and trying prototypes was a bloody good alternative.

The day started with Jonathan picking me up at the end of the street I live in. Thanks to roadworks closing off Jonathan’s usual route on to the A1, we ended up on the A14 and a pleasant cross country route to Letchworth that avoided the A1 altogether.

Once we arrived in Letchworth we pulled over in the car park of the local Morrison’s to enter the post code for one of the recommended car parks. Which saw us deciding to sample their breakfast offerings before proceeding to the car park. It’s important to make sure you are fully caffeinated and have a full stomach when playing board games.

After registering at the door, Jonathan and I found a table and played our first game of the day, Hanamikoji. Hanamikoji is a recent addition to my collection, after buying it from a friend and member of Fenland Gamers. Neither of us had played the game before, so this was a learning game.

Hanamikoji is a really nice, quick, two player game. Love the two main mechanics of hand management and area control. Each round you have four actions to take that are used to manage your hand and influence which cards you play. However you only take each action once.

One action for example you have is taking four cards from your hand, splitting them into two piles of two, and your opponent chooses one pile and those cards go in front of the matching card in the middle on their side. The remaining two cards go in front of the matching cards on your side. I love this I split you chose action, and all the decisions involved in that alone.

If you like Bloodbowl Team Manager, which is basically an area control game also. But want something that has a similar core mechanic but plays quicker. Then this is worth a look.

I love the art. It’s very watercolour, pastel shades looking. It has that old traditional Japan look and feel to it.

Jonathan and I won a game a piece.


The next game we got to “play” was one high on Jonathan’s list of games to try, Chocolate Factory.

This was a prototype, the game will hit Kickstarter later in the year. And we only got to play three rounds. Well there were a few people keen on trying it. So it would have been rude to hog the game.

However I was pretty impressed with the mechanics and the way the game played. Jonathan pointed out that the graphic design of this prototype needed tweaking. However it already has been taking into account the tweaks suggested, and the changes were shown to us digitally.

I liked the drafting element at the start of each round that gave you an improvement to your factory, and a round only power and access to selling to a department store.

The moving tiles through the factory and your engine, is a nice touch and piece of theatrics. The ordering of improvements from the drafting is key. It determines activation order.

The competing to sell to the department stores, with points being awarded on whose sold the most to each store at the end of the game, gives a nice competitive touch to the game.

There looks to be a couple of paths to victory, either going for the department stores for points, or completing your private corner shop ones. You could go for a mix of the two.

We thought having a role card with a unique power, similar to the ones used in Marco Polo would be a cool improvement to the game.

Overall this looks like it’s going to be a great, fun, game.

At the end of the third round we went to end game scoring. I came second aka first loser, while Jonathan propped us all up at the bottom.

Ruthless had been a pirate themed game faintly on Jonathan’s radar. So I twisted his arm to try it out. We were there, there was a copy in the game library. It made sense to me.

The copy we played, was unplayed! Jonathan and I had to punch cardboard! After setting up, which we thought the rulebook could be clearer on (it was a little confusing), one of the Alley Cat staff/helpers stepped in to talk us through the game.

As soon as it clicked the game was a deckbuilder, I laughed. Jonathan hates deckbuilders.

As far as deckbuilders go, it’s ok.

The fixed number of rounds was an interesting idea. As was using a semi poker hand mechanic with recruited pirates in front of you to decide points at the end of each. The end of game bonus scoring was ok.

I’m just not sure being ok in this day and age is good enough. The bar for deckbuilders for me is Star Realms/Hero Realms. Price, replay ability, expansions, game play. It ticks all the boxes. Then on the big box deckbuilders, I have Marvel Legendary and Eminent Domain. Which are both really good. Ruthless kind of sits in the middle ground. Unless you really really want to play a pirate themed deckbuilder, I can’t see why you’d get it.

The records will show I won our game.

Jonathan and I both enjoy roll and writes. We have one or two in our collections. So I thought a chance to try Welcome To DinoWorld couldn’t be passed up.

I’m not sure why but the game left me feeling indifferent. Even now while writing this post I still can’t really put my finger on why.

Would tweaking how the dice are used, and who can use which dice help? Maybe.

There was a massive misplay we found out after the game, which potentially might have made a difference.

The actual sheets used in the game are quite pretty. Which at the moment is about the nicest thing I can say about the game.

The roll and write market is getting crowded. Apart from theme I’m not sure this stands out. But is more man in the crowd.

I was first loser, but finished above Jonathan.

We followed up by playing Wingspan with Scott. Unusual for me I went with a new tactic of birds on board, instead of egg spamming. It didn’t quite workout enough to get me the win. But in out tightest scoring game to date, I lost by four points. And Jonathan was beaten into first loser position by a single point. So your deduction skills will tell you Scott won.

We finished off our days gaming with a game of Nusfjord. I really was rusty on this. I had played it once nearly a year ago. So after a brief refresher, we settled into building our fishing communities and fishing fleets.

It looked at the end of the game that Jonathan and I were going to have to share the honours of first place. But under further review I had missed three points from shares that I owned. Which meant I was the winner.

Although we left at 6pm there was another five hours of gaming left for those that had the stamina, and more importantly (most likely) didn’t have a long distance to travel. And to be fair our journey time was just under a couple of hours. So we could have stayed longer I suppose. But I think about eight hours of gaming for us was about right.

Our journey home was uneventful, full of good conversation, and we delivered Scott home safely.

Naturally this post would not be complete without a photo of me in action, and thanks to Jonathan I’m able to avoid disappointing you.


Some thoughts

Despite having a great time. The day did confirm to me that these sort of things (such as Handycon and Airecon) which focus on playing games may not be for me. They reenforced my opinion that you need to be going with a bunch of friends. I didn’t see much mingling going on, it seemed more people playing with people they knew. Which means if that is the case, why don’t you just stay at home and play games with your friends? Or if you are intent on going away for a weekend from your usual haunts, going to a hotel or hostel to play?

Having said that for Jonathan and me this is the ideal one to attend. It’s the gaming equivalent of a day out in London. Next time with a bit more planning maybe we can take more of our friends along with us, and have a Fenland Gamers day out.

Alley Cat Games. Now I will give a caveat for this next statement in that I haven’t played every one of their games, so is based on the ones I have played so far. Which is most of them. I think they should drop the smaller games and concentrate on the big games. In the current market place that we have, games that are good at best just don’t cut it. Publishers need to be putting out great games to stand a chance of standing out from the crowd, get the sales, and be a success. Dice Hospital and my experience of Chocolate Factory meet that criteria. Sadly the smaller games fall into the former, and don’t cut it. The Alley Cat Games crew are a great crew that I want to see succeed and grow. And their strength seems to be the bigger box games. For me those smaller games are not their forte.

But it’s easy for me to say. I’m just an armchair critic. It’s not my money on the line here. And what do I know?

I want to end this rather long post with a big thanks to Alley Cat Games for organising this mini con. For inviting us into their home and being such gracious hosts.

I’d also like to say a big thanks to Jonathan for doing the taxi duties. And being a great gaming buddy throughout the day.

Testing 1,2,3 Testing

Game day, magic, Magic League, MtG

Yesterday was the start of the Ravnica Allegiance Magic League with my FLGS.

I discussed this format for MtG in previous posts, but for those new to the blog, MtG or just poor memories and don’t want the trauma of remembering my posts, I’ll try and summarise it briefly.

Magic League is a sealed event, where a player buys three booster packs, and with the contents builds a 30 card deck to play against other participants. The league takes place over four weeks, and each week you are able to buy an additional booster to strengthen your deck. Also after three losses you can also buy a booster pack to strengthen your deck. At the end of the league you get a cool promo card for participating.

The nice thing about the league is that it is accessible for new players. It provides a level playing field between new and old by removing the large card collection, and having to spend lots of money to get a “competitive deck” (although you can build a competitive deck on a budget).

After buying my three packs for the league, naturally I cracked them open and did the first thing every MtG player does. I went to the back of the pack and looked at the rares and uncommons I’d pulled.

With two Simic Guild Gates pulled I was getting the distinct hint I should be leaning towards a Simic deck.

After just throwing my Simic cards together I had no decision making to make to get the right number of cards. I had the right number to build the deck with. Instead of playing a league match we played some Commander!

I only had the one Commander deck with me. It was my big green stompy deck. I didn’t win any of the three games we played. But I had a blast. My deck did it’s thing. I got creatures out, made them big, and stomped over a player or two.

I also managed to get some testing of my Simic Standard deck against John and his Merfolk deck.

Our first game was a surprise to me and John. By turn four I had three Llanowar Elves out, three lands and I’d cast a Biogenic Ooze. Ramp wise this was a start I could only dream of. With my removal and counter spells, pumping out more oozes, and them getting bigger each turn. I easily took the first game.

In our second game of the best of three, it was more to plan. Ramp, Wilderness Reclamation , Biogenic Ooze, frustrating John with counter spells and bouncing creatures back to hand. A bit of mill with the walls. Threats from John to kick me under the table.

We started a second round of best of three. But this time I took out the walls and replaced them with two Incubation Druid’s (it’s all I have) and a Llanowar Scout.

Despite losing to John 2-1. I did like what these bought to the table. The Incubation Druid was pretty good, getting a +1/+1 on it was easy with the Essence Capture. So I wasn’t having to wait for the three mana it can tap for. My main problem during these three games was my mana sinks hadn’t come out. So I wasn’t getting the full value from them.

During these games John got to witness the double Wilderness Reclamation, Biogenic Ooze combo. There was a little questioning with the stores future MtG judge (he’s,in training) about the way that combo worked during the start of the end step. My interruption was correct.

Our third game was pretty close. If John hadn’t tapped down all my creatures when he did, my Hydroid Krasis would have swung in next turn for lethal. As it was I didn’t have enough tricks in hand to prevent the loss. I really like games that are like this, where they could go either way. Close games that turn on a moment. They are exciting. Even now the next day, I’m replaying the decisions I made at that point, and working out if I’d done things a little different would the result have been in my favour?

Afterwards there was general chit chat. But eventually I went home after having a great afternoon of MtG. The Hobbit Hole really does have a great MtG community.