Friday evening saw another gaming session with two of my favourite people to game with, Jonathan and Diego.

We started off with a game of Via Nebula. I think from the number of times it has hit the table since I finally got to play it shows how much Jonathan and I like the game.

I think Jonathan has looked into getting a copy also. Well based on the fact he has looked at the cost of getting it, and made the statement that it must be out of print or “between printings”. That fact is how he was explaining it’s current high price. It’s a reasonable conclusion I think to arrive at, both for Jonathan and for me. I’d probably argue that the game is out of print, and unlikely to see a reprint.

It’s the cycle of things in the boardgame world. Very few games make it to become every greens (always in print and selling). A few more may make it too more than one printing. But the vast majority will only see that initial first printing. Never to see life again. In a very rare case a game years down the line may get a second or third edition, or a reskin/new theme. Plus for reasons such as a company losing a licence the game may never be reprinted even if they wanted to.

For the reasons above it’s why if I’m interested in a game I try and get a copy when it comes out. There is no guarantee that say a year later when you finally decide to get the game you will be able to. Or if you are, you will not be paying some inflated price. I believe (and I can’t remember the sources, might be The Dice Tower) that a game print run can be between 10,000 and 20,000 copies. It’s not a lot really considering.

Via Nebula is a very good game. By a hot game designer. So the odds of it seeing another printing may be higher than normal. But it’s not a guarantee. And I don’t remember there being a massive buzz for the game at the time.

So as you can guess I’m feeling smug I picked it up second hand last year for less than retail. I got lucky. Glad it finally got to the table, and now enjoying it.

In our game it looked like we had all scored the same. However in review Jonathan had forgotten to claim the card for ending the game. That gave him the 2 points to claim victory. Diego and I drew first loser.

Our second and final game of the evening was surprise, surprise Wingspan.

My bonus card needed me to have 8 or more cards in hand to score 7 points. So I needed a card draw engine for that. Which is what I went for. But along the way I got top spot on the two early end of round scoring, and shared a third.

But despite that if the barn owl had been a bit luckier on it’s hunting I may have won. Out of a possible 5 tries it succeeded on only 2 of them.

So once again for the evening I was beaten by Jonathan by 2 points. A clean sweep of victories for him for the evening. My only consolation was I was first loser this time.

But another fantastic evening gaming, with great hosts The Luxe Cinema. The staff there are amazing and so welcoming.

Saturday was once again Standard Showdown.

This week I was trying out the new version of the Simic deck that focuses on ramp and being aggressive.

I tested the deck with John, and against an Andy Hall deck. It was mixed results and inconclusive.

First round was against John. And that went the same way as our test game earlier. I stomped all over his Golgari deck. Which had been a surprise because our test game had been against his merfolk deck. And that was what I was expecting to be facing. Still that little surprise didn’t change the result.

Round two I was up against Andy Church. I know that the result was I lost 2-0 but it doesn’t reflect that these were two close games. Which would be the story for the rest of the afternoon.

My final game against Alex could have been a win. But I did a massive miss play in the final game that would have slowed him down and stopped that white elder dinosaur coming out for a couple of turns.

But if you are not finishing top 3, then coming last is the next best option. Why? Last place gets you a guaranteed Standard Showdown pack. Other wise outside of those places it’s all down to the luck of the die if you get one of the remaining packs (depending on number of entries of course).

So I wasn’t unhappy being last. It mean that guaranteed extra pack. And boy was the one I had worth having. See below for the highlights from it.

But a fun afternoon of MtG as always.

Casual Games

John: Win 2-0

Andy Hall: Loss 0-2

Standard Showdown Stats

Standard Showdown Participants: 9

Rounds: 4

Round 1: John Win 2-0

Round 2: Andrew Church Loss 2-0

Round 3: Nathan Hall (burn deck) Loss 2-0

Round 4: Alex Loss 2-1

Record: 1-3

Final Position: Last

Prizes: 1 participation pack, a Standard Showdown pack (Vraska Planeswalker, Hinterland Harbour, foil Forest).

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.

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).

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.