Category Archives: MtG

Let’s brawl

magic, MtG, news

Last week WotC made some interesting announcements. Announcements that I’m pretty sure a few MtG podcasts whichever format they cover will discus, dissect, and over analyse with far superior insight than myself.

First up WotC announced a new format for MtG. A kind of Commander lite, called Brawl.

Brawl is meant to be an easier version of Commander for new players to get into. Here is a brief summary of the brawl specific rules:

  • 60 card Singleton (apart from basic lands there can only be a single copy of a card in the deck) decks
  • 30 starting life
  • Only legal cards in Standard can be used
  • Commanders can be legendary creatures or Planeswalkers
  • No commander damage

Otherwise it follows the Commander rules for everything not covered above.

I’m not sure how I feel about this new format. I’m definitely curious. But there is some doubt about do we really need it? Why not just play Commander? If you read the WotC articles that have gone up about the format and the announcements tied up with it, they argue it has a lower barrier to entry, easier to get into, than Commander especially for new players to the game with smaller collections (which may be just the current set released). It’s interesting to see that WotC see Brawl as an introduction to Commander and Standard. I thought the new Challenger decks were/would serve as that. The question I have is this just a format to sell more booster packs? If this takes off won’t it just push up the price of cards in standard, and thus making the barrier to entry to standard even more expensive? Which is something I thought they didn’t want to do.

I don’t see getting into Commander as that expensive or with the imminent arrival of Challenger decks Standard also. Buying a precon for Commander and upgrading it doesn’t have to be an expensive thing to do. Recently I under took that very exercise with the 2017 Arcane Wizardry precon. After putting my amazing google ninja skills to work I found an article that did a $20 upgrade for the deck (I’ve now ordered the cards from a sister post for the dragons precon). But there are a few articles/videos out there with tips for upgrading them. And I would imagine that not long after the Challenger decks hit, that a few articles will appear on how to upgrade them. Once you get a precon you start to get some of the Commander staples that are needed for building your own decks.

Naturally as a format this is going to have a changing card base. So for Commander players there are going to be a few challenges in building these Brawl decks because all of a sudden staples like Sol Ring are gone. How do you mana ramp in Standard? With that shifting card base decks will also need to change, and I can see certain styles of play coming and going. A deckbuilders paradise.

I think there will be some interesting decks built for Brawl. I’m working on 2 at the moment. Mainly because I want to at least try the format. So our MtG tournament over Easter will now be a Brawl tournament instead of a Commander tournament. I’m doing the 2 decks so that Dale can join in. One will be a Dino tribal deck which will be the one I’ll give to Dale to play. Whilst mine is probably going to be mono green, trying to use the etb effect to my advantage. I’d like to keep bouncing creatures to get multiple etb use from a card. But I need to solve how to do that in Standard.

Tied up with the new format is the poster child for it, the buy a box promo legendary creature, Firesong and Sunspeaker Minotaur Cleric.


This card will only be available as a promo and only when you buy a booster box while stocks last. I think it’s pre-orders only too. But I may be wrong on that front. So yes like many I’ll probably be building a deck with it as the commander. Although I gather there may be some complaints about this exclusivity.

The final announcement was that WPN authorised stores (ie your FLGS) are allowed to sell booster boxes a week early at the pre-release events! Great news for the FLGS (especially US ones that have to compete with the likes of massive chains like Walmart for your MtG money, UK FLGS don’t have that competition yet to my knowledge). Pre-release weekend is going to be massive for the FLGS. But is it only shifting sales from one weekend to another? Hopefully it will get more people taking part in the pre-release events.

What do you think about this news? If you haven’t commented before I need to approve your first comment then after that you can comment as often as you like without my approval. This was the least intrusive way to cut out on spam. So I hope it hasn’t put too many folks off from leaving comments.

Rivals of Ixalan Commander Favourites Part 2

Commander, magic, MtG

And I’m back with the second post looking at cards from Rivals of Ixalan that I like for Commander.

The first card for this post is Mastermind’s Acquisition. A 4 CMC black sorcery that allows you to tutor (that’s MtG talk I believe for search) for a card in either your library or outside the game. So you can bet I’m taking a pile of ‘useful’ cards with me to Commander games when I have this in my deck. Those ‘useful’ cards will for me be those cards that very nearly made it in to the 99. My reasoning is if they were good enough to be almost in, then they are good enough to be in what will effectively be a sideboard. The reason I’d take this approach is it’s less hassle than taking my whole collection along to games with me.

Although there are 6 of them, this is only really one choice, and it’s the Elder dinosaurs. These are BFD’s (Think about it). I think one or two are slightly weaker than the others. But if you need a big hitter with a nice added bonus then these fit in nicely to any none tribal deck. Etali is the commander for my mono red deck, with Zacama the commander of my dinosaur tribal deck. I think that that should tell you what I think of those cards.

Oppressive board state

Commander, magic, MtG, new arrivals

The past week there has been a more Commander slant to our games of Magic at work.

Last week I was playing my decks (Dinosaurs Tribal, Mono Red with Land Hate, the cheaply upgraded Arcane Wizardry 2017 precon, even my first ever built Commander deck with Scarab God saw play). But this week I wanted to play with the two Anthology decks (Guided by Nature and Evasive Maneuvers) that I hadn’t played with yet.

The first game with Guided by Nature that I played really did drag on. It was one of those epic long Commander games. Constant board wipes stopped me from getting set up. Eventually one of the students won with one of their 2017 precon decks. I don’t remember which one it was.

Yesterday instead of playing Evasive Maneuvers I went once more with the Guided by Nature deck. I had a great start to the game, after about 4 turns I was ahead on mana, I got my Commander out, was starting to build up a board presence. Then bam! Board wipe. I survived a second one too but with not such a big board state in front of me. Then I got the card Praetor’s Council that put my graveyard back in my hand, gave me no maximum hand size for the rest of the game. It was basically game over after that. I had a lot of mana, was able to tap Priest of Titania for lots of extra mana, I was getting an elf token every time I cast an elf, all my green spells cost one less to cast, my Commander gave me an elf Druid token, I was drawing a card for each none token creature that entered the battlefield that I cast. My turns were getting insane. Then I drew into Wellwisher and adding 1 life for each elf on the battlefield. The maths was getting silly. The inevitable happened I was able to swing in with lots of creatures that had been buffed up to some insane levels, and get the damage through as if the creatures had not been blocked. This deck was working just like the Strictly Better MtG Pauper Elf Deck. Which I enjoy playing.

I was going to build an elf tribal deck for Commander. But I think that Guided by Nature has a lot of the cards I want in my deck, including the Commander. So I think I may get a second copy of this and upgrade it. There are a few big creatures in this deck that although they have some great abilities are not elves, and so not really suitable for an elf tribal deck. So I’ll change my plan and look at how to upgrade this deck.

The photo below is my board state when I won with Guided by Nature yesterday. The photo was taken by a student who kindly gave me permission to use it here.

When I got home the latest kickstarter to come to fruition arrived The Flow of History. I’d nearly forgotten about this one until the email arrived saying it was being sent out. Somehow TMG had been a bit lapse in sending out kickstarter updates, or if they had I’d missed them totally.

I had to watch a YouTube video to refresh my poor memory what exactly the game was about. I also had to go back to the kickstarter page and remind myself what the extras were from the stretch goals. So basically I have here a card based civilisation style game, that has an auction mechanic, and is pretty aggressive! There is even a 2 player variant that uses a ghost third player.

I think this will be my third civ style/themed game in my collection. At the moment I think the three would all fall on the light to mid scale of things. I really do want to try one or two of the heavier/longer civ games out there.

Along with Tao Long this will be burning a hole on my shelf’s waiting to be played. Soon to be joined by The Manhattan Project 2 which is getting sent out to the kickstarter backers in the next couple of weeks I believe.

Mono Black Aggro v2

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

The one thing missing from my initial version of a black aggro deck was a sideboard. Which I have to admit took a bit of a back seat while I have been working on other decks such as that Angel deck I did. Yeah I am aware these aren’t the best decks in the world. But these decks I’m sharing are only being played in casual games, not some hyper competitive FNM thing.

This version plays 12 1 drop creatures and 8 2 drop creatures. The addition of Night Market Lookout is great early on, damage and life gain. I dropped the Dinosaur Hunter, and replaced it with the Dire Fleet Poisoner. Which has Deathtouch, and Flash. So much more useful than Dino Hunter that only really kills things bigger than it if they are dinosaurs, and doesn’t have Flash.

The thing I noticed playing the earlier version and this one also to some extent is that this deck loves big creature decks. It has a lot of removal, either as spells or abilities of creatures I play in the form of etb effects or Deathtouch. Token spamming decks can be a problem. Hence the addition of cards that give opponents creatures -2/-2. That will get rid of a lot of tokens.

Ok here is the pretty graph bit from the Decked app.

I’m pretty happy with that AMC. It’s dropped from 2.28 to 2.16.

If you want to leave comments about the deck, if you haven’t commented before I need to approve the comment first but after that you are golden to post with out me needing to approve the comment. It’s just an anti-spam thing.

So here is the deck list you want to tear apart.

Creatures:27

4 Night Market Lookout
4 Skittering Heartstopper
4 Vicious Conquistador
4 Dire Fleet Poisoner
4 Gifted Aetherborn
2 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
4 Ravenous Chupacabra
1 Tetzimoc, Primal Death

Spells:10

2 Duress
2 Fatal Push
2 Walk the Plank
1 Gravepurge
1 Recover
2 Mastermind’s Acquisition

Lands:23

4 Desert of the Glorified
19 Swamp

Sideboard:15

1 Massacre Wurm
1 Noxious Gearhulk
1 Bontu’s Last Reckoning
1 Drown in Sorrow
1 Golden Demise
1 Infest
2 Live Fast
3 Never // Return
1 Rags // Riches
3 Vraska’s Contempt

Dinosaur Tribal Commander Deck V2

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building


For the time being this is my final version of my Dinosaur Tribal deck for Commander.

It’s not that too different from before. There is one extra dinosaur, which is the Polyraptor. On the spell front the lightning bolt, Ashes of the Abhorrent and Rain of Thorns are gone. Lightning Greaves is in, as is a Madblind Mountain in the lands.

In games Zacama once out on the battlefield is devastating. Talk about controlling the battlefield with those activated abilities. I don’t think much more needs to be said about the deck. So here is the version 2 deck list…

Creatures:38

1 Kinjalli’s Caller
1 Drover of the Mighty
1 Otepec Huntmaster
1 Raptor Hatchling
1 Atzocan Seer
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Frilled Deathspitter
1 Kinjalli’s Sunwing
1 Rampaging Ferocidon
1 Ranging Raptors
1 Ravenous Daggertooth
1 Thrashing Brontodon
1 Wayward Swordtooth
1 Forerunner of the Empire
1 Grazing Whiptail
1 Imperial Aerosaur
1 Knight of the Stampede
1 Raging Regisaur
1 Ripjaw Raptor
1 Charging Monstrosaur
1 Charging Tuskodon
1 Crested Herdcaller
1 Imperial Ceratops
1 Raging Swordtooth
1 Regisaur Alpha
1 Snapping Sailback
1 Bellowing Aegisaur
1 Burning Sun’s Avatar
1 Carnage Tyrant
1 Etali, Primal Storm
1 Sun-Crowned Hunters
1 Thundering Spineback
1 Gishath, Sun’s Avatar
1 Polyraptor
1 Wakening Sun’s Avatar
1 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
1 Zacama, Primal Calamity
1 Ghalta, Primal Hunger

Spells:30

1 Blazing Volley
1 By Force
1 Commune with Dinosaurs
1 Silent Gravestone
1 Sol Ring
1 Abrade
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Path of Mettle
1 Blood Sun
1 Commander’s Sphere
1 Crushing Canopy
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Gift of Paradise
1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
1 Harvest Season
1 Herald’s Horn
1 Karmic Justice
1 New Horizons
1 Sweltering Suns
1 Teferi’s Protection
1 Huatli, Radiant Champion
1 Return to Dust
1 Fumigate
1 Huatli, Warrior Poet
1 Vanquisher’s Banner
1 Kindred Charge
1 Planar Cleansing
1 The Immortal Sun
1 Star of Extinction
1 Zendikar Resurgent

Lands:32

1 Blighted Steppe
1 Blighted Woodland
1 Blossoming Sands
1 Boros Garrison
1 Command Tower
1 Fertile Thicket
5 Forest
1 Jungle Shrine
1 Madblind Mountain
5 Mountain
1 Opal Palace
1 Path of Ancestry
5 Plains
1 Ramunap Ruins
1 Rugged Highlands
1 Scattered Groves
1 Stone Quarry
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Wind-Scarred Crag
1 Windswept Heath

Spicing Up Commander

magic, MtG

I’ve been testing the decks that I have built for Commander, but plain vanilla Commander game after game can get repetitive for some. So I have used a couple of things from other parts of the MtG Universe/Products to spice things up a little.

The first up bit of spice we used was the Planechase cards that came out I want to say around 2012. Now I’m not interested in the decks that they did. I wanted the Planechase cards themselves and the special dice that were done for them. Luckily over a year ago I picked up the full set of these cards (or I believe that is the case) from Magic Madhouse. I want to say I got the dice from them also, but my poor memory is also saying eBay for them. But I’m pretty sure it was Magic Madhouse. Either way I have the dice to go with the cards.

They are are not normal dice btw. Oh no. They are still 6 sided, but only 2 sides have anything on them. As the photo on the left shows. If you roll the Planechase symbol (that circular one that looks a bit ying/yang) then you get the Planechase part of the card, if you roll the Planeswalker side you planeswalk to a new plane and Planechase card.

So how do you use the Planechase cards in the game of Commander? We used a single common deck. Once we have established who the first player is, the first player at the start of their go turns over the top of the deck. If the Planes part of the card specifies a You, we have that refer to the person who has just done the planeswalk, and they get the benefit/penalty. Otherwise it applies to everyone. On a players go, whenever a player can cast a sorcery they can also roll the Planechase die. The first roll is free each turn, but from then on the cost to roll the die goes up by 1 mana. So a second roll would cost the player a single mana, a third roll 2 mana and so on.

We have found that playing with the Planechase cards a fun experience. The suspense of seeing what planes we are going to and how it changes up the game play was exciting. We did hit one that was a board wipe!

Our next bit of spice is a recent one from the tail end of 2017, Explorers of Ixalan (EoI). Now the nice thing about this is that you can (or could) just pick up the game side, ie the tiles, for around £11. When EoI is setup things look more boardgamie.

You can claim one tile each turn, the number on the tile is the mana cost to claim the tile. You are also able to reserve a tile until your next turn (there is a token for this). Sadly the 3 cost tiles can’t be claimed until there are no 1 cost tiles touching it. And the same for the 6 cost tiles in the middle. These when claimed can have an instant effect on the game, or they could be a quest that stays with you until the condition is true. Or the final tile type is a site that gives you an on going ability for the game.

I’d played the initial game with Dale last year when I first got it. It was a nice variation to MtG for 2 players. It worked really well with 4 players in Commander.

The nice things about these 2 bits of spice is that they give players something to do with spare mana, or the mana they have if they are not drawing and lands.

Our final bit of spice is the archenemy cards from the Archenemy Nicol Bolas set from 2017 I think? This gives you 20 archenemy scheme cards you can use in a 1 against 2/3 players. It is possible to pick up just the archenemy scheme cards, otherwise you will be forced to pay out £35 roughly to get them. But you do get 4 decks worth of cards you can cannibalise for deckbuilding and the rather cool life tracker that came with the Commander Anthology. I’d love to have the archenemy scheme cards from the original archenemy release, I think that these are different to the Nicol Bolas ones. However getting these seems rather elusive and expensive. Which is a shame. WotC should reprint these separately in a single pack for people to play with. I don’t care about the MtG decks that came with the scheme cards. Keep that value out there, just get the scheme cards into players hands. Give players a choice of multiplayer formats. I know one thing if I could get them I’d be using them with my students. Not just in Commander games but in regular deck games also.

The game I played using these the card draw just wasn’t with us against the archenemy. Which meant we were killed off rather quickly. However despite this brief use of the scheme cards, the students still wanted to play another game using them. So that should tell you something about how much fun this format of the game is.

I’m sure that there are other ways to spice up a game of Commander. I think there was even an episode of The Command Zone about this very thing way way back, or last year. But these from my experience have been fun and changed things up a little.

Rivals of Ixalan Commander Favourites Part 1

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

Ok so the verbal diarrhea is back. I’m going to bore you with some of the cards I like from Rivals of Ixalan for Commander.

As you can see my first cards are The Immortal Sun (TIS) and Blood Sun (BS). At the time of writing TIS is going for around £7, and BS for a more reasonable £1.50 on Magic Madhouse.

So why do I like them in Commander? Well TIS does a lot for it’s 6 mana cost. Switching off Planeswalker loyalty abilities is really useful. In my local Commander meta (ie the students I play Commander with at work) there are one or two Planeswalkers in the decks. Heck I even use them in my Dinosaur tribal deck and a couple of others. I don’t mind taking the hit from this ability on my own Planeswalkers to stop an opponent using theirs. Getting the extra card draw each turn is immense. Card advantage and hopefully getting to a card you want faster is not something to be laughed at. But then I can cast my spells for a reduced cost on top of that! Then the universal buff to all my creatures of +1/+1. I think the value this card gives me when it hits the battlefield is way more than the 6 mana it costs me.

BS on the other hand is a great card. 2 and a mountain, I draw a card, and switch off all those non-basic lands except for generating mana. It means when I play a non-basic land it doesn’t come in tapped, or force me to return a land to my hand. Ok I won’t gain a life either, but then I won’t lose one. Yeah it benefits my opponents also. But it stops them tapping and sacrificing a ramunap ruins to do me 2 to the face.

I currently have both cards in the 2 decks I have built (Dinosaurs Tribal and Mono Red) and the Wizards one I am upgrading.

Tron Angels – mono white deck

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

I had to build this deck, angels are cool. Especially Archangel Avacyn and the Felicia Day look a like Archangel of Thune (wish I could take credit for that one, but that goes to Day 9 and the MtG show that they used to produce for the Geek and Sundry YouTube channel).

Naturally I would like Archangel Avacyn to transform into Avacyn, the Purifier. Sometimes I will throw a wall or Honour Guard under the bus, after I have flashed her out in the combat stage to get her to transform straight away.

But the transformation I really am after is from Gisela and Bruna to get Brisela, Voice of Nightmares out. I’ll happily play Gisela as early as possible, chump block with her, whatever. I’m not really worried if she gets to the graveyard. Playing Bruna allows me to fetch Gisela from the graveyard and instantly get Brisela at the end of that turn. The double card creature truly is an amazing thing to see on the battlefield.

The main thing I needed to solve for this deck was surviving long enough to play all these beautiful costly angels. The solution I game up with was 10 walls, 2 Tocatli Honor Guards. I’m basically using Winged Shepherd for it’s cycle ability, but can also be pulled back from the graveyard using Bruna if need be. Authority of the Consuls puts an end to haste and flash causing creatures to etb tapped, and gives me a life. Cast Out gives me that bit of getting removal of big threats. And Rout is just a good ol’ board wipe. Although Overwhelming Splendor is a funny card to play.

This deck also needs some serious ramp. That’s where the Tron Lands come into play. All three out they tap for 7 mana. I also get a little discount with The Immortal Sun, and creature buff. And with the Tron lands it’s 6 cost is nothing. I’ve had this out turn 4!!

So here is the all important deck list that I know you are dying to look at and pick holes in.

Creatures:29

4 Wall of Hope
2 Angelic Wall
2 Tocatli Honor Guard
4 Wall of Omens
2 Gisela, the Broken Blade
2 Angel of Invention
1 Angel of Sanctions
3 Archangel Avacyn
2 Archangel of Thune
2 Linvala, the Preserver
2 Winged Shepherd
3 Bruna, the Fading Light

Spells:9

1 Authority of the Consuls
2 The Immortal Sun
2 Cast Out
2 Rout
2 Overwhelming Splendor

Lands:22

2 Evolving Wilds
8 Plains
4 Urza’s Mine
4 Urza’s Power Plant
4 Urza’s Tower

Sideboard:15

2 Angelic Wall
1 Gisela, the Broken Blade
1 Linvala, the Preserver
1 Bruna, the Fading Light
1 Authority of the Consuls
2 Demystify
2 Searing Light
1 Ashes of the Abhorrent
1 Dazzling Reflection
1 Cast Out
2 Rout

For fun I did play a version of this deck with a couple of Approach of the Second Sun slotted in. That was fun, and an easy card to cast with the Tron lands.

Commander Decks Update

So that is the deck, it’s now going to be broken up and used to form the basis of an Angels Commander deck.

If I haven’t forgotten anything then I think this is the list of my planned Commander decks that I want to build.

  • The just mentioned Angel deck
  • A Death and Taxes deck
  • Elves

I currently have 3 Commander decks in progress.

  • A dinosaur commander deck
  • A mono red deck with land hate in it
  • Upgrading the Arcane Wizardry Precon.

The dinosaur deck is nearly if not there. You have seen the deck list already for the initial effort. When you see the “final” deck list I don’t think that you will see much difference.

Mono red is also close to being there I think. I’m waiting for a couple of cards to arrive that need fitting in. Then I need to come up with a version without the land hate.

I have a Wizards deck with some changes made to it. But there are a few more to do to this one. I have those changes on the way.

It’s Clobbering Time

Fenland Gamers, Game day, magic, MtG

I know it’s been rather quiet on here lately. Well I am a firm believer of if you haven’t got anything to say then don’t say anything. Which really will surprise friends, family and work colleagues, because I talk a lot of crap. However you already know about the man flu, and life events that took out a couple of weeks of play. Then as everyone knows the weather last week kind of killed things off.

Surprisingly I did play some Magic last week.

As the photo above shows although not perfect we have at least enough room in my classroom to play Magic during breaks.

Sunday saw our party of brave adventurers return once more to the world of Gloomhaven. Oh SPOILER ALERT!!

The plan from our previous time in the Gloomhaven universe was to help out the local law enforcement and bring down a local crime lord. A local crime lord that we had already done the bidding of, by murdering some Inox caravan raiders. Just to teach them a lesson on behalf of the crime lord. Yeah our hands were dirty from that. Reflecting back on it, that mission if you remember didn’t sit well with me. Our mission was to infiltrate a warehouse in Gloomhaven owned by the crime lord. Sadly this mission was denied to us. Between our times in the Gloomhaven universe, Justin had visited his brother and they had started a new campaign, with new characters. Although they hadn’t started off with the intent of doing our planned mission. They ended up doing it anyway. I was a bit salty about this.

I have to admit I’m not a big fan of this mechanic that the designer built in to Gloomhaven. I think almost to a point that it may actually ruin the game for me. Or more specifically this play of the game. I still enjoy the game, and the mechanics. But I don’t like that missions etc can be denied from me. We had decided we were going to do the warehouse mission, but we can’t now. We won’t get to see the end of that story arc, or experience that mission and atone for our acts of murder. I know there is the argument, that “oh, we went along to the warehouse and found that it had been already raided”. But I don’t like that.

After a little debate and ruling out some watery options because we didn’t meet the mission requirement, our party settled on visiting the Windswept Highlands.

This new mission was heavily pushed by Charlie. Possibly because it offered the chance for him to make inroads on his characters objective for the campaign. We were on look out for some ingredients for an alchemist. All we had to do was visit the plateaus of the windswept highlands, fight against strong winds battering us around those plateaus. Oh and the small matter of defeating the indigenous monsters, such as sleeping spitting drakes, and the sun and wind demons. The spitting drakes would wake up if attacked or we were next to them.

There were also 3 treasure tokens we had to get to to open up 3 doors. The third and final treasure token when collected would open the door that would allow us to get to the exit point and victory. Naturally opening a door would not reveal anything good. My suspicion was more monsters.

If that wasn’t hard enough if one of us ended up exhausted then that was it mission over. The only plus point was if we got exhausted on the exit point we were ok.

My mission objective was to be the first person to kill a monster. Sadly this was not going to happen. Because of a road event, and not being able to clear a blocked path of a rock fall we started off this mission with 2 cards in our discard pile. Obviously this was to show how exhausting clearing heavy boulders away was. Not exactly a good way to encourage us to do the right thing in the future, putting us at a disadvantage before we even start killing stuff.

I got separated from the others when I opened the first door and then had a battle with two wind demons. Whilst the others went off to try and open the other 2 doors. Sadly the overwhelming odds of lots of sun and wind demons, plus the sleeping spitting drakes proved too much for the party. Despite the others in the party achieving their individual mission goals, it was all to no avail. Despite being a big bruising brute that likes to rush in and clobber things, Edmunds character took too much damage from the superior numbers. His character became exhausted and that was all she wrote. The mission was over and we had failed. None of the completed personal mission objectives mattered.

The wind mechanic introduced was interesting. At the end of each round our characters if able to would move 1 hex on the board left, up, right and down depending on the turn. It meant you had to think about where you finished your turn, because if you finish in the wrong place you could end up blown into a trap or worse blown into a space next to a sleeping spitting drake. I felt it did capture that being battered by gusts of strong wind.

Our first defeat. I’m sure that we will experience many more throughout the campaign. But still I was hoping we would of had a longer winning streak before suffering our first loss. I know how an Arsenal fan feels now.

Also over the weekend I was looking at some mono red land hate cards to put into this mono red Commander deck I am building. That Boiling Seas is awfully lonely at the moment and needs some friends. The nice thing about this land hate is that it slows and cripples my opponents, while leaving me mana rich. I’m waiting for Blood Moon to hopefully drop a little in price once Masters 25 hits FLGS this month. I’m not sure really who my Commander for the deck will be. I may play it with a different Commander each time to see which one is best.

Right hopefully now all the other events are out of the way and normal service has been resolved.

Dinosaur Tribal Commander Deck List

Commander, Deck tech, magic, MtG

Well this should be no surprise, my commander is Zacama, Primal Calamity. 6 R/G/W for a 9/9 with Vigilance, reach and trample. Plus look at the etb. Wow! You can start using his abilities straight away, or cast some other shenanigans from your hand.

With the dinosaurs selected from the ones available from Ixalan and Rivals of Ixalan I’ve tried to go with ones that I can get some sort of secondary benefit from, whether that is from an enrage ability or etb. The non-dinosaur creatures that I have gone for are there for ramp. They either allow me to tap them for mana or give me a discount on casting dinosaurs. Naturally having the two Hautli Planeswalkers is a given to. Although I haven’t actually managed to draw one yet in the 4 games I have played with this deck.

I do have a few mana ramp spells, which I think are needed big time in this deck considering the cost of those dinosaurs to cast.

Here is the graphical stuff that the Decked app produces.


I’m pretty surprised you that AMC. Thought it might be a little higher than that.

Here is my initial deck list for this commander deck.

Creatures:37

1 Kinjalli’s Caller
1 Drover of the Mighty
1 Otepec Huntmaster
1 Raptor Hatchling
1 Atzocan Seer
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Frilled Deathspitter
1 Kinjalli’s Sunwing
1 Rampaging Ferocidon
1 Ranging Raptors
1 Ravenous Daggertooth
1 Thrashing Brontodon
1 Wayward Swordtooth
1 Forerunner of the Empire
1 Grazing Whiptail
1 Imperial Aerosaur
1 Knight of the Stampede
1 Raging Regisaur
1 Ripjaw Raptor
1 Charging Monstrosaur
1 Charging Tuskodon
1 Crested Herdcaller
1 Imperial Ceratops
1 Raging Swordtooth
1 Regisaur Alpha
1 Snapping Sailback
1 Bellowing Aegisaur
1 Burning Sun’s Avatar
1 Carnage Tyrant
1 Etali, Primal Storm
1 Sun-Crowned Hunters
1 Thundering Spineback
1 Gishath, Sun’s Avatar
1 Wakening Sun’s Avatar
1 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
1 Zacama, Primal Calamity
1 Ghalta, Primal Hunger

Spells:32

1 Blazing Volley
1 By Force
1 Commune with Dinosaurs
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Silent Gravestone
1 Sol Ring
1 Abrade
1 Ashes of the Abhorrent
1 Path of Mettle
1 Blood Sun
1 Commander’s Sphere
1 Crushing Canopy
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Gift of Paradise
1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
1 Harvest Season
1 Herald’s Horn
1 Karmic Justice
1 New Horizons
1 Sweltering Suns
1 Teferi’s Protection
1 Huatli, Radiant Champion
1 Return to Dust
1 Fumigate
1 Huatli, Warrior Poet
1 Vanquisher’s Banner
1 Kindred Charge
1 Planar Cleansing
1 Rain of Thorns
1 The Immortal Sun
1 Star of Extinction
1 Zendikar Resurgent

Lands:31

1 Blighted Steppe
1 Blighted Woodland
1 Blossoming Sands
1 Boros Garrison
1 Command Tower
1 Fertile Thicket
5 Forest
1 Jungle Shrine
5 Mountain
1 Opal Palace
1 Path of Ancestry
5 Plains
1 Ramunap Ruins
1 Rugged Highlands
1 Scattered Groves
1 Stone Quarry
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Wind-Scarred Crag
1 Windswept Heath