Category Archives: MtG

Token Spam Monday

Commander, Game day, magic, MtG

I was able to get along to a Commander Monday at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. One of the benefits of Easter holidays and working in education.

I took along 3 decks with me today. 3 decks that I hadn’t played for a long while.

In the first game I played my mono white angel deck that has Lyra Dawnbringer as it’s Commander.

I was mana screwed with the deck. Naturally with a lack of lands or ramp I was behind the curve of the others. Eventually I was able to get Reya Dawnbringer out, but she was bounced back to my hand before I could use her ability.

Eventually I did get Reya out, which allowed me to pull back Emeria Shepherd from my graveyard. I then cleverly played one of my elusive lands to trigger Emeria’s ability to put another angel on the battlefield.

But getting this combo off was the highlight of the game for me. It was also one of the last things I got to do before meeting my demise.

Game 2 saw my Trostani token spam deck hit the table.

This deck went silly at one point with soldier tokens. Seedborn Muse allowed me to fire off the Rhys the Redeemed 6 CMC ability during the other players turns.

When you are basically doubling everything. It soon gets silly. By the time I was board wiped I had 108 tokens out. Sadly for the guy that did the board wipe he drew a card for each creature killed. Basically milling himself.

So yeah I didn’t win after that. But I did something pretty awesome and cool.

The third and final game was with my elf deck that got show down by a bloody angel that switched off activated abilities on creatures. So all of a sudden after that was played no tapping for mana, to add life, or buff up a creature. It was kinda funny really. I play the same angel in my angel deck, and had done so in the earlier game. Sadly it’s a great card against my elves.

So not a win in sight, but I had a blast. Did some cool stuff. Great company. What more could you want?

The loosing streak continues

Game day, magic, MtG

Technically I had two decks in yesterday’s Standard Showdown.

John’s daughter took part and played with my pirate deck that I had put together for her. I was playing with the mono blue mill deck this week.

As fate would have it my first round match was against Sophie and my pirate deck. I took the first game milling Sophie out. But that was because the cards hadn’t been kind to her, and I was given time to get pieces into play. Game 2 Sophie took, and game three was a total wipe out. In game 3 Sophie had a fast start, getting the cheap creatures out from turn one and hitting hard.

Round 2 was against John and his merfolk deck was too fast for my mill. It would also help if I hit the mill cards. The plan failed spectacularly in this game.

Round 3 was the battle for last place and the Standard Showdown pack between Michael and myself. Luckily for Michael his deck was too fast for mine. And I once again got my butt handed to me.

The one thing I took home from this Standard Showdown for my mono blue mill deck is that it’s too slow! Especially for our meta. Going to have to think about how to speed it up or frustrate long enough to win.

Naturally the guaranteed Showdown pack took the sting of last place away.

Casual Games

Michael: Loss 1-2

Kai-Far: Win 1-0

Standard Showdown Stats

Standard Showdown Participants: 8

Rounds: 3

Round 1: Sophie Loss 1-2

Round 2: John Loss 0-2

Round 3: Michael Loss 0-2

Record: 0-3

Final Position: Last

Prizes: 1 participation pack, a Standard Showdown pack – pulled a breeding pool shock land, real happy with that.

I think my pirate deck and Sophie came 6th.

War of the Spark Trailer – Reaction!

magic, MtG

I know that corporations and celebs these days don’t like critique. Skins seem to be a lot thinner. Any critique gets dismissed as trolling, and they set their fan base on to those comments that they don’t like. It’s a form of bullying. Say something I don’t like and I’ll unleash my fan base on you.

With that in mind let’s upset WotC and the millions and millions of fans that have watched the trailer for the next MtG set War of the Spark that was released at the weekend.

Before I have my say go have a watch of the trailer.

The reaction by fans was mental to this. Apparently people had tears, goose bumps, orgasms (ok I’m making that bit up but I bet some-one has claimed it), felt emotionally drained and many other over reactions.

Me, being a cynical old person who is hard to please simple said “meh”.

I have to give WotC credit where credit is due. Compared to the usual trailer/teaser they put out. WotC have really pushed the boat out on this one. And they should be applauded for that.

I’m not a fan of cover versions of songs. Very rarely do they work for me. I can name a couple of covers that improve on the original. As I write this post the only one that really springs to mind is the man in black himself Johnny Cash with the Nine Inch Nails cover Hurt.

A lot of the time a cover manages to remove the heart and soul of the song, add nothing, and make me rage. Sheryl Crows cover of Sweet Child ‘O Mine is one such example. As are some of the blue grass covers of the same song.

Which brings me to the cover of Linkin Parks In the End used in this trailer. OMG it’s awful. The saving grace part of the cover for me is that the singer seems to have some depth to their voice, and imparts some feeling. But I’m not a fan of the slowing the pace of the song down.

It’s obvious the director of this trailer thought it added an emotional depth. But in reality it doesn’t and is trying to use a lazy trope to try and manipulate an emotional reaction. Which to be fair, from the reaction of the majority it worked.

For me the animation and this is a problem with the majority of animation these days is that character animation doesn’t look natural, particularly Liliana. It’s something about modern techniques using 3D models that they are not able to capture facial emotions properly, and the stilted movement, I’ve been watching the new Ultraman cartoon on Netflix and it has the same issues. The rendering and the realistic look of this trailer. Can’t fault it. Looks pretty. But somewhere down the line this form of animation whilst looking amazing lost something.

The structure of the trailer story wise. Another over used cliche. Start at the end, rewind a bit and play through at normal speed. It begs the question what came first the song cover or the story structure. Which was made to fit the other? Would it have had more impact with a shock ending instead of giving it away at the start?

Overall I felt that this trailer was nothing more than a glorified video game cut scene. It wouldn’t look out of place in a video game. All credit to WotC they have upped their game. But…

What did you think?

From hero to zero

Game day, magic, MtG

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).

Simic Aggro Thoughts

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

As you know from the previous post my Simic deck won last weekends Standard Showdown.

I also had that mini rant about basically the local meta being a bit stale with the same decks being played each week. The week before the pirate deck I came up with ended up mid table. I still have the mono blue mill to try in anger. Although it has been fun to play in the casual play.

But with all this in mind and partaking in the side of the game I really like, deck building. I’ve decided to rebuild the Simic deck with a different focus. My initial version of the Simic deck had a ramp element, and that is the side I decided to focus on and be a bit more aggressive.

But before I go any further it’s probably best I give my boiler plate get out of jail disclaimer for my decks.

“I’m not claiming these are the best decks in the world, they certainly are not top competitive decks. They are hopefully fun, affordable (subjective I know) decks. I don’t try and keep to a target price point. I try and use as many cards in my collection as possible to keep my costs down. I’m certainly not a master deck builder claiming this deck will win tournaments, if it is fun to play and does it thing then I’ll be happy.“

Right with that out of the way back to the conversation about this “new” deck.

It’s going to feel odd playing with so many creatures now, and so few spells.

But with the theme being ramp and aggro, the Llanowar Elves had to be back into the folder, along with the Steel Leaf Champions. We all know the dream starting hand of 2 forests, a Llanowar and Steel Leaf in this type of deck.

With 8 creatures that can tap for mana, 2 cards in the sideboard that have the Convoke mechanic (creatures I control can tap to add mana to cast the card) and Growth Spiral I think I have the ramp side covered. Oh and Song of Freyalise will help with the ramp.

I went with Evolving Wilds over Open the Gates as my mana fixing because Evolving Wilds puts the basic land I fetch on the battle field tapped. While Open the Gates doesn’t, it goes to hand and costs a forest to cast. Plus I’m not playing Guild Gates in this deck. They are too slow. This deck needs to come out sprinting, not walking. Lands that come in tapped are therefore out.

This deck also has a plan to handle the aerial threat of flyers with the classic two for one Crushing Canopy. Whether I like it or not enchantments are apart of the meta. So this card allows me to handle both. There is also Sagittars’ Volley in the sideboard to handle those 1/1 weenie fliers.

I’m also playing some fog cards which hopefully will nullify an attack and leave it open for me to swing in with lethal. Or ride out the storm if sleep has been played.

Naturally with Carnage Tyrant and Nullhide Ferox I have creatures in place that combat control decks. There is also Thrashing Brontodon included as part of the anti-enchantments plan.

Impervious Greatwurm, the buy-a-box promo. Probably unplayable, definitely not competitive. But it’s a fun card, that with the ramp and it’s convoke could be cast easily. With that on the battlefield even Ghalta looks punny.

So that’s enough of justifying my decisions for this deck. Let’s look at the mana curve.

Would like it under 3 For the AMC but I’ll live with it. Fitting Siren Stormtamer into the deck somehow would bring it down. But that’s a card to try after some testing.

Here is the initial deck list. What would you take out or add?

Creatures:27

4 Llanowar Elves
3 Hydroid Krasis
4 Incubation Druid
4 Steel Leaf Champion
3 Thrashing Brontodon
3 Nullhide Ferox
2 Zegana, Utopian Speaker
2 Carnage Tyrant
2 Ghalta, Primal Hunger

Spells:11

3 Growth Spiral
3 Root Snare
2 Song of Freyalise
2 Crushing Canopy
1 Vivien Reid

Lands:22

2 Breeding Pool
2 Evolving Wilds
10 Forest
2 Hinterland Harbor
5 Island
1 Woodland Stream

Sideboard:15

4 Frilled Mystic
1 Carnage Tyrant
1 Impervious Greatwurm
1 Root Snare
2 Crushing Canopy
4 Pause for Reflection
2 Sagittars’ Volley

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.

A hoy there my hearties

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building


Before I present the deck list and my “analysis” of the deck here is my get out of jail disclaimer about these decks.

“I’m not claiming these are the best decks in the world, they certainly are not top competitive decks. They are hopefully fun, affordable (subjective I know) decks. I don’t try and keep to a target price point. I try and use as many cards in my collection as possible to keep my costs down. I’m certainly not a master deck builder claiming this deck will win tournaments, if it is fun to play and does it thing then I’ll be happy.“

Sufferer’s of this blog will remember not too long ago, a couple of Standard Showdowns back, I played the daughter of the owner of the FLGS in one of the rounds. She had constructed a pirate deck the evening before that needed some work. There were a few one of’ s, which meant it wasn’t consistent.

I liked the idea/theme of the deck. It just needed some tinkering. So I’ve done some tinkering and come up with a Dimir Pirate Aggro deck.

Like my friends daughter I will be using Hostage Taker and Forerunner of the Coalition. Although if memory serves me rightly she only had one copy of Hostage Taker. I can’t remember the other cards she had in her deck. Which is probably best. Starting with a clean slate so to speak.

So I went through the stack of cards digging out all my pirates. I’m not splashing red, so those pirate cards are out. Which was a great way to eliminate a load of cards. It was hard enough getting down to the 75 for this deck as it was from the two colours.

So this is an aggro deck. It needs to hit the ground running. Sadly none of the cards have haste. So it needs to be swinging in for damage turn 2 the latest. Turn one is play a land, and a one drop. Turn two play a land, play a duress, and hit for damage and drop another one drop. Turn three is hopefully another land and the first Forerunner of the Coalition. And so on. That’s the prefect start.


I thought the Timestream Navigator will provide a useful distraction to the opponent, and if allowed to be used that all important extra turn. Who needs Nexus of Fate?

Between Hostage Taker and Kitesail Freebooter there is removal to take care of the creatures Walk the Plank can’t deal with (basically her dad’s merfolk deck).

Naturally the sideboard has a plan to take out those nasty Carnage Tyrants and Ghalta’s that one or two players are using in our local meta in the form of Dino Hunter. And the sideboard has more removal and hopefully a way to get rid of token spam.

So I’m excited to play this deck in a few test games now. The lands could be better. I’d like the Dimir shock land and check land in this deck. But that’s an expense I’m not going to splash out on. I definitely don’t want guild gates in here they would slow the deck down. It was hard enough using the two Submerged Boneyards. Maybe I could put in a couple of Evolving wilds. The ratio of the basics also needs tweaking to be more in favour of swamps.

Ok here is mana curve for the deck.

I’m happy with that. The CMC is about what I want for this type of deck.

Ok here is the deck list I have come up with for this initial Dimir Pirate Aggro deck.

Creatures:30

4 Grasping Scoundrel
4 Siren Stormtamer
4 Dire Fleet Poisoner
4 Kitesail Freebooter
4 Timestream Navigator
4 Forerunner of the Coalition
3 Slippery Scoundrel
3 Hostage Taker

Spells:8

4 Duress
4 Walk the Plank

Lands:22

10 Island
2 Submerged Boneyard
10 Swamp

Sideboard:15

4 Dinosaur Hunter
1 Warkite Marauder
4 Deadeye Rig-Hauler
3 Golden Demise
3 Vraska’s Contempt

What would you change?

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).

Simic Standard v4

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

Yesterday I said I would put up the deck list for the tweaked Simic deck from the weekends Standard Showdown.

And I’m a man of my word, and like to carry out my threats.

Didn’t do this following bit for the last version of the deck. Maybe because I forgot. But to help me sleep I try and convince myself I did it to keep the length of the post down.


The AMC has gone up from 2.89 to 3.11. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I am happy with the mix of creatures and spells. It’s definitely a frustrate the other player until my pieces are in place type of deck.

With a bit more money the land base could be improved. But it’s Standard Showdown not a Pro-Tour or Grand Prix. So it’s slower than it could be.

Here is the moment you have been waiting for in this post. The latest iteration of my Simic deck.

Creatures:15

3 Hydroid Krasis
4 Incubation Druid
3 Frilled Mystic
2 Zegana, Utopian Speaker
3 Biogenic Ooze

Spells:23

4 Syncopate
3 Blink of an Eye
4 Essence Capture
2 Essence Scatter
3 Thought Collapse
3 Wilderness Reclamation
1 Vivien Reid
3 Nexus of Fate

Lands:22

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

Sideboard:15

3 Steel Leaf Champion
1 Frilled Mystic
2 Carnage Tyrant
2 Negate
2 Repudiate // Replicate
2 Root Snare
3 Sagittars’ Volley