“There will come a day so dark you will pray for death. On that day your prayers will be answered.”
—Minaldra, the Vizag Atum

For the record the above is the flavour text from the card Zombie Apocalypse.

For me my decks are a living thing. Yes I create them, play with them, but over time you come across new cards (well new to me) from the rich history of thousands and thousands of cards that WotC have released for the game, or from a new set when it gets released. You see the card and think that it would go great in X deck. However you are then faced with the dilemma of what card(s) get replaced. Although on occasion it’s so blindingly obvious you don’t have to think about it. But a lot of the time it’s a very hard decision that involves vision quests, soul searching, consulting mystics and wise men hiding in caves at the top of mountains.

But why am I talking all this crap? I have that very dilemma at the moment with 2 new cards that I have got in. Both would fit in really nicely in my Elf Tribal deck. But that big question remains, what do they replace?

I like both of these cards. Hall of Gemstone is a great land/mana hate card that would cripple non-mono colour decks. Which when you are “tiny” elves trying to build up a nice board state helps a lot. Although it does kind of put a target on you for doing it. Realm Seekers, a 6 CMC Elf that potentially in Commander played at the right time come in as a very big creature indeed. In reality I’d expect to see it come in with between 3 – 8 +1/+1 counters. Play this after I have just put my graveyard back in my hand, with unlimited hand size for the rest of the game, and this becomes insane.

I’m pretty sure I may be revisiting this particular dilemma once I get my hands on Dominaria with one or two of the new elves in the set.

But with this current dilemma how would you fit these cards in? Would you even try? Maybe you know better cards that should be going into the deck. Let me know in the comments below. Remember if you haven’t commented before I need to approve the first comment, then after that you are golden to comment whenever you like without me needing to approve anything. This is a simple anti-spam thing.

If you remember in my ramblings Tuesday I mentioned somewhere on the horizon was a plan to build a deck that abused the etb effect. Well I now have the commander I want to use for this deck.

Yep Brago, King Eternal. I saw this card in an article on the top 10 cards in Conspiracy, and thought wait that’s the perfect Commander for this non-existent deck of mine. Possibly would have liked green in there as well, but you can’t have everything. Naturally the one must have card to go along side this is going to be Panharmonicon. I’d like to say the deck is building itself. But sadly that’s not the case.

What cards do you think I should be considering for this etb abuse deck?

This weekend your FLGS will be holding Open House events for MtG. I believe my FLGS The Hobbit Hole are holding theirs on Saturday. These are regular events throughout the year aimed at new and returning players to MtG.

You turn up at your FLGS, get a free Welcome deck, an experienced MtG player teaches you how to play. Once you are happy with how to play MtG, you then play 2 or 3 games solo against other new players. Once you have played those games you get a rather sweet full art Llanowar Elves promo card from the new Dominaria set.

If you are feeling brave after attending there is naturally the weekly Friday Night Magic that are held at your FLGS. You may want to buy one of the new Challenger decks for this if they are playing Standard. If they are doing a sealed or draft event you won’t need anything extra, you use the booster packs that your entry fee covers to build a deck. These can be a bit daunting, but those weird, scruffy looking guys don’t bite, and will gladly help and give advice.

However next weekend is the Prerelease weekend for the new set Dominaria. This means you get to play with the new cards a week early. They are fun things to attend, and the cost covers a Prerelease kit, 3 rounds of playing Magic, and 2 participation booster packs. So for your entry fee you get 8 boosters packs from the new set, a foil promo card, and a life count down die. Which is pretty good value.

Then the following weekend it’s the actual release weekend when the new set officially goes on sale. Your FLGS will most likely be doing drafts with the new cards that weekend.

If you are interested in learning to play this weekend is a great jumping off point. Hope you can get to a store and get that sweet promo card. I’ll be jealous I’m playing TI:4 instead so won’t get one.

One of my students has recently been given entry into the closed beta for MtG Arena. His main complaint about the game is due to him! His pc is not powerful enough at times during the game. Those times are when certain animations occur. Otherwise I believe he’s fairly happy with the actual game play.

For me Arena is dead to me until I can play it in my iPad. They could be testing it on iPad during this closed beta. For starters WotC are developing Arena in Unity. Which means they can export the game for whatever platform they like basically. No reason not to see a console version either. If White Wizard Games can do a closed Kickstarter backers alpha testing of Epic on PC/iOS/Android, and I bet they have less resources than WotC on this, then why can’t WotC with Arena? TestFlight on iOS allows this.

Because of the above Arena isn’t on my radar and wasn’t a consideration when I heard about Brawl. But since then some online have pointed out that one of the reasons Brawl may have been developed was for Arena. Commander is one, if not the most popular formats for MtG. Sadly Arena will not be able to play it due to the share number of cards that are legal in the format (thousands). So with Brawl only using the cards from Standard, and those are the cards available in Arena. The conspiracy theory is that this is why WotC invented Brawl, to add Commander like play to Arena. I certainly can see how this sounds credible. It’s also been pointed out in a podcast that Brawl in Arena may only be a 1 v 1 format, because they can’t see how the multiplayer element and board states would be handled.

For me I don’t want to have to grind to be able to do anything, like deck build.

Math Trade Update

A brief update on the UK Math Trade I’m taking part in. The list is now closed for adding games. It’s now entered the phase where people have until tomorrow I think it is to submit their want lists. This is basically you selecting the games you’d like to trade for and what you are offering from the games you put on the list.

I’ve submitted my want list.

• Apocrypha Adventure Card Game – offered £45 for this
• Tannhauser + expansions – offered Clans of Caledonia and Dark Souls
• Via Nebula – offered Dark Souls

It’s up to the software they run next to make the match ups. The Rebellion expansion I’m using as a wild card and see if I get offered anything of interest for it.

Not much gaming the last couple of days. But there has been some Commander deck building.

I’ve been brewing (with some help, these aren’t all my own work) 2 decks for these Commanders.

Naturally there will be deck tech posts about these 2 Commander decks in the near future. You have been warned.

But first I want to get a game or two in with them. Both tribal decks, but different tactics. I’m hoping that with the Magic tournament arranged for tomorrow as well as brawl we will get a chance to play Commander. Although this sounds greedy I’d like to play some more with the new Challenger decks too.

I’m also hoping my students have had a chance to brew solutions to a Progenitus deck another student has just built.

Naturally I’m expecting to see decks that stop Progenitus being cast, or use board wipes to get rid of it. But it will be interesting to see what solutions they come up with.