Category Archives: MtG

Liliana Planeswalker – Death Wielder 

magic, MtG

I’m a fan of the lady in black Liliana. I love the graveyard shenanigans that she does. I even have a commander deck in the design process that makes use of her special abilities. Yeah I know I haven’t finished the dinosaur tribal one yet. But that doesn’t stop me from thinking “oh I’d love a deck that makes use of that”. I’d also like to do a merfolk tribal deck too. And that’s after seeing a preview of the Ixalan duel decks that are coming out in November. 

So on my travels I saw the Liliana Death Wielder Planeswalker card and thought that’d be cool to play with. Can you believe there are folks on eBay that will sell you the foil Planeswalker card from this deck for more than it costs to buy this deck? Buyer beware indeed. It’s also the reason why I bought this preconstructed deck over just getting the card. I’d rather have the deck and add the other cards (eventually after playing with it) to my collection to use as potential building blocks for a commander deck for less money. 

We get the standard stuff in a Planeswalker deck.

Half the value of the deck is the two boosters, that if bought separately would cost between £7 – £8. The cardboard deck box is thankfully large enough to hold the deck sleeved. But at best worth a quid. Then the 60 card deck making up the rest of the value. 

For new and returning players these Planeswalker decks are great vfm. For the established player less so. Unless like me you want the foil Planeswalker. Then it’s amazing value. 

Here are the rares and full art basic land that I pulled from the two boosters.

Magic and Politics!

Commander, Fenland Gamers, Game day, magic, MtG

As a “palette cleanser” between MtG leagues we set up a Commander session.

Commander for those wondering what the hell it is, is a multiplayer variant of Magic the Gathering. Each player has a commander (a Legendary creature), a deck of 99 cards (apart from basic lands, you can only have one copy of each card), and starts with 40 health. It’s basically a free for all after that, last man standing is the winner.

But the thing is there is a political element to the game that a “normal” game of Magic doesn’t have. You are making deals, ganging up to remove the current big threat on the table. 


We had seven players turn up to play Commander. Which meant we had two tables with people playing Commander. 4 players on one table, and 3 on the other.

I was on the 4 player table. Which was made up of myself, Diego, Justin, and Jamie.  We were all playing with preconstructed decks. Justin was using the cat tribal 2017 deck, Jamie had the dragon tribal 2017 deck. While Diego and I had decks from the Anthology. I had chosen the Plunder the Graves deck, which I assumed was going to be putting stuff into the graveyard and doing stuff with it. Diego chose Freyalise Llanowar’s Fury that had a Planeswalker as it’s commander. 

Naturally dragons were seen as the biggest threat on the table. So we all smacked Jamie first, although the odd blow went towards each other as well. However that allowed Diego to make use of his deck, get commander out, work those combos. It wasn’t long before Diego had too much out, and was dominating things. Sadly no board wipes were coming. So the inevitable happened, he won.

Our second game started out the same way. Keep those big nasty dragons off the table. This game was looking like a win for Justin. He’d got 22 health left, Diego was on 8, I was on 10. I’d got some creatures on the board (after a great power play a couple of turns earlier) that made me less of a target than Diego. I’m not entirely sure I could have survived Justin swinging at me, but luckily I didn’t have to find out because he swung in with everything he had but 1 creature suffering from summoning sickness at Diego to finish him off. If I swung in with everything I had enough to win, even if Justin blocked. I’d won!

The tables then swapped round. The four player table was now Justin, myself, Josh and Michael. Josh was running the dragon deck. But the biggest threat was Michael and his constructed deck he built. Which meant a pact was made to target him first. I’d mulliganned most games during the afternoon. But I’d forgotten we were using the Paris mulligan, I could have been keeping a card or two I wanted in the mulligans. Doh! The biggest surprise for me in this game was that I lasted so long in this epic long game. I needed lands, particularly a forest so I could start playing cards. I had removal stuff in hand that would ruin Michaels plans, if I only had a flipping forest. 

Our alliance fell apart for a while after I was finally able to cast spells, and a failed attempt to remove Michael’s two creatures in front of him. I had played a card that forced everyone to sacrifice two creatures. I had none, so was ok. It got rid of the creatures in front of Josh and Justin. However it didn’t get rid of the one I’d hoped for with Michael. He flashed in a third creature and sacrificed that saving the threat. Justin soon developed into the biggest threat, and saw him with some nasty pumped up cats in front of him. We all managed to work together to take out one particularly nasty threat from Justin. Josh was getting salty about not being able to keep any dragons out on the battlefield. I don’t think it helped when I took control of one from his graveyard. Justin killed Josh first. I was next on his hit list. Not a surprise really. After such a bad start I was gobsmacked is lasted so long. At my death Michael had just triggered his threat.  He was no getting an extra turn after every other players turn. With his extra turn he somehow wrangled it so that after Justin’s turn he’d be getting 17 extra turns!!! That’s game over once he started taking them for Justin. Sadly for Michael he never got to take them. Justin smacked the life out of him to grab the win.

A great afternoon, some amazing game play. This was such great fun. 

Commander adds that extra political element, and multiplayer that almost makes MtG into a different game! If you don’t like “regular” MtG would you like Commander? It depends on what it is you don’t like about MtG. At the end of the day you are still playing MtG. However as my bad starts have shown that isn’t such a liability in Commander. The bigger liability is being seen as a threat. So if it’s the “I always draw badly” or “it’s down to luck of the draw” as your reasons for not liking MtG then give this a go. If it’s the theme and mechanics, that’s not changed.

A big big thank you to our hosts Fenrock for the use of their facilities, and great coffee.

Our next MtG league starts on the 4th November for anyone interested in joining in the fun. Details of time and location (Fenrock) can be found on the event set up on the Fenland Gamers Facebook page. Where you can also sign up to say you are coming (which would be handy to know so I know how many boosters to get in).

Amonkhet Bundle Pack

magic, MtG

I can’t believe that I missed getting this bundle in for Amonkhet.

Let’s jump in with more content lite. You already know what I think about the vfm for the bundles from previous posts.


In the players guide it has The Top Ten Coolest Amonkhet Cards. So how many of them do I have?

  1. Nissa, Steward of Elements
  2. Kefnet the Mindful
  3. Trial of Solidarity
  4. Liliana, Death’s Majesty
  5. Never/Return
  6. As Foretold
  7. Glorybringer
  8. Honored Hydra
  9. Wayward Servant
  10. Channeler Initiate

I actually like the look of that Nissa too. I think she could fit into the unconstruction Dinosaur tribal deck I’m playing. Getting the 5 or less converted mana cost creatures out for free would be a very useful thing to have. Scry 2 isn’t a bad ability either.

But what did you pull Darren?

  • 3 full art lands

  • 3 shiny Foils


Followed by the following rares/Mythics…

  • 2 Legendary creatures

Well apart from a couple of target buys like Nissa and As Foretold, this is my farewell to Amonkhet.

The art on a lot of these cards has been amazing. It’s been fun. I enjoyed playing with the cards in our league. I will pay a little visit to Hour of Devastation, so I won’t be saying good bye completely to this plane.

Gisharth’s Army

Commander, Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

Welcome to the start of a long and laborious series of posts where I work through building my process (based on the template suggested by The Command Zone, with input from The Prof at Tolarian Community College).

My Commander is…


Considering the title of this blog post, is it really a surprise? So I am running a three colour mana deck. As the rather crude image at the start of this post says, this will be a dinosaur tribal deck. I think it has to be to make use of Gishath’s ability.

Here is The Prof with a short information film about how to choose the right commander.

Obviously I have followed The Prof’s most important rule when selecting a Commander to play with:
I want to play dinosaurs, I want a big fun dinosaur commander. Who in their right mind doesn’t want to play dinosaurs right now? Nope pirates are not even close, so don’t go there. Just for the record in the current set Ixalan, it’s dinosaurs, merfolk, then vampires, and finally the over rated pirates. Why do I hate pirates? Those awful (and that’s the most positive word I can think about them) movies in the Pirates of the Caribbean series.

Unlucky for me I don’t seem tick some of the other factors that he hints we might like to consider.

Gishath is not a cheap commander to cast, at a converted mana cost (cmc) of 8. Which means I am breaking his following advice:

But considering this is the only dinosaur commander, then I have no choice but to accept that I won’t be getting Gishath out on to the battlefield early.

I do know that being red, green and white I have ticked one of The Prof’s recommendations.

Having access to those three colours of mana means I can use, or at least have access to all the dinosaurs that are in Ixalan. Which is what I want in a tribal deck (I think).

I’m not sure in what universe Gishath would not be considered an immediate threat when it enters the battlefield. Gishath has trample, vigilance and haste. Plus when it does damage to another player you draw cards and get to put into play any dinosaurs drawn! So I kind of break the following rule from the Prof.

I have to consider the following questions that The Prof raises:

  • is my commander my win condition?
  • does my commander enhance the existing synergy of my cards?
  • is my commander a tool that strengthens my position in the game?

That first point is important, The Prof says that your commander shouldn’t be your win condition because your commander will always be a target and get removed. He recommends you have multiple win conditions, and that you are able to win without your commander. The Prof suggestions a commander that enhances an existing synergy within the deck is the stronger route to go. Considering I haven’t built the rest of the deck yet it’s a hard one to say whether Gishath will do that or not. But it’s something I will need to consider when looking at cards.

In my next post in this limited series I will start looking at constructing my commander deck, starting with my mana base for the deck.

Cake and Magic

magic, MtG

It doesn’t get much better than a student baking (this was a belated cake to celebrate German Unification that happens on 3rd October) and bringing it in to share.

Not only that, it’s enrichment for my students today. So it was great to see them playing with their new Magic cards that they have purchased, and their welcome decks. One got the Huatli Planeswalker deck, another got the latest deckbuilding kit. Some games of Magic were played by them. A couple have downloaded a life tracking app to use while playing to track their life totals. There has been 1 v 1, 2 v 2, games.

Yesterday one of my students came up to me and said he’d been watching Magic videos on YouTube all weekend, and wants to play Commander now. So looks like in his enrichment session I will have to bring in my Commander 2017 decks for him to try.

Naturally I have to play the odd game with them. If a student manages to beat me they take great pleasure in that. They have had to work for that victory, I haven’t let them win. The games have been pretty close when I have lost. I know that once they improve then they will easily beat me. My win record against more experienced players proves that.

But it’s all good because we have had delicious cake as we play.

What have I started?

Magic Bug Bites

magic, MtG

I still have enrichment sessions with my students this year. So once again I approached WotC directly to see if I could get some of the 2017 (Amonkhet based) Welcome Decks for Magic the Gathering.

And once again WotC were generous enough to send me about twenty decks to give to students to learn to play Magic the Gathering with.

The Welcome Decks arrived Monday, so I started handing them out to students in this weeks enrichment sessions. Sadly for my level 2 students this has meant they have only been able to get a couple of the packs. The rest have been distributed to my level 3 students during their enrichment session.

I was not prepared for how hooked they would become. After the enrichment session they went to lunch. When I went through our cafeteria, there were some of my students playing with their Welcome Decks. They had even come up with their own format of 2 v 2, that was very close to a two-headed giant format. They had separate life totals and shared mana. Which was very impressive indeed.
Despite getting literally nothing, the Magic bug has also hit some of my level 2 students. I have had students staying in the classroom playing my Magic Duel decks over their lunchtime.

Naturally some are already asking how do I get more cards? So I am directing them to my FLGS The Hobbit Hole, plus apparently there is a comic shop nearby to where I work that sells Magic cards as well (although I believe they are not able to run official Magic events like prerelease).

But it is so cool to see this excitement about a game. I need more Welcome Decks, but asking for more like Oliver Twist with his empty bowl with WotC after they have been so generous already makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.

I’d love to be able to give some free deck boxes similar to the cardboard ones the stores give when you join a Magic League. However I know there is not a chance in hell of getting them out of WotC. They reserve that sort of thing for stores only. And for sure stores won’t give this sort of stuff away. They understandably want to use these things to get players into their stores. Maybe one day I’ll be able to solve this problem and give my dream starting experience to Magic for my students.

My Commander Deckbuilding Homework

Commander, Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

I’ve already pondered on here about the Commander I want to build a deck around.

But I’ve not build a Commander deck before. So this process will be documented on this blog in a series of posts (yes I’m going to bore you with more MtG posts, if you haven’t been bored enough with them already).

However there are some useful videos on building a Commander deck on line.

The first is from The Command Zone podcast. It gives a template to use as the basis for your own deckbuilding process. I’ll be using this template for the basis of building my first deck.

It’s definitely worth looking at the links in the description of the video. There is a lot of useful stuff there, plus a link to a list of essential cards for Commander decks.
They mention another channel that I enjoy Tolarian Community College. I like his style, light humour and honesty. In fact I think his “is such and such value for money” influenced my posts. I’ll say influenced because they are posts and not videos. But you could easily say copied as well, and I wouldn’t disagree.

Here is a video by The Prof about building a three colour mana base in Commander. Which is what I am going to have to do for my first Commander deck.
You can find a whole playlist of The Prof’s videos about Commander basics HERE.

While I am talking Commander, we have a Commander session planned for the 21st October at Fenrock for anyone (locally really) interested in playing. It’s free to attend, you just need to bring a Commander deck with you, which could be one you have built yourself or a precon. I know I will be using a 2017 precon myself if I haven’t finished building my first deck. You can find more details in the events section of the Fenland Gamers Facebook page.

Amonkhet League Finale 

Fenland Gamers, Game day, magic, MtG

Yesterday was the finale of the first Fenland Gamers Magic League. We had been using the Amonkhet set for this. 

My first game of the afternoon was Michael. Michael’s deck was a nasty one. I haven’t won against him all season, although I did come close once! I started off well this time. But it soon all fell apart and I was looking defeat in the face again. With 2 life left, and a Painful Lesson in hand, instead of waiting to take the beating from Michael I committed suicide. I played Painful Lesson on myself. 

Next up another player I had never won against, Josh. That was a very quick game. I spent most of that game waiting for a swamp to surface so I could play one of the cards I had in hand. 

Jamie threw down a challenge to play him next. But before I accepted I went to my sideboard and swapped in Harsh Mentor. I’m glad I’d pulled this card. It was a silver bullet for Jamie’s deck. Playing it early would disrupt his game plan. 


The corner stone of Jamie’s plan are these two cards.


Which usually chips away at you until he can swing in with his creatures. You take a bit of damage in the build up, and your creatures are stopped from attacking. Eventually at the crucial moment you can’t block either. This time I was able to get Harsh Mentor early, which forced Jamie to remove it with an instant spell which I think was Cut/Ribbons. That spell in the graveyard nearly won him the game. If he’d had one more mana it would have. But I get ahead of myself, back to the removal of Harsh Mentor. That scuppered my plan. I wasn’t worried I had a second, and hopefully would draw into it quickly. I even used my suicide card on myself to try and draw into it. Luckily I play with Wander in Death that allows me to pull back two creatures from my graveyard. While I was waiting for either of the two cards to turn up I was doing a pretty good job of making sure Jamie didn’t execute his plan and keeping his battlefield empty or not able to attack. So when I drew Wander in Death with Jamie on 7 health and myself on 8. I knew I had him. Harsh Mentor was out on the board, next turn bam! Jamie was shut down, he knew it was over if he couldn’t pull it out of the bag. He did the math, the Ribbons half of Cut/Ribbons was short by 1 mana for killing me. Jamie decided to make the futile jesture anyway of dealing me the 7 damage. I was on 1 health, my go. Unable to switch off my attackers with out hurting himself, or block me with creatures, I swung in for the kill and sweet sweet victory. I was a bit vocal, and a quick tease of Michael from Josh and me as I had beaten Jamie when he hadn’t been able to. 

After beating Jamie it was my turn to play Sarah. Harsh Mentor was returned to the sideboard, it had done its job. The game started out poorly. And I was soon in single digit health. But then my cards started kicking in. With my Cartouche  of Ambition out I had life link, and my life total started going up. I had weathered the storm and was hitting back. Somehow in a game I thought I was going to lose, I clawed my way back to get a victory. Two wins in a row! 

Next up was Jamie’s son Lucas. The cards were just totally unkind to Lucas. He just had no answer for the cards I was playing. By the time I’d won I had accumulated over 40 life. 

My final game of the afternoon was Chris. Another player I had not won against all season. Another big hitter. We traded blows. Scuppering each other’s plans along the way. But I ended up victorious. Bloody hell what was happening 4 back to back wins. What a way to end the season. 

I’ve really enjoyed our League. My final record for the season was 11 wins, 16 losses.

Michael took the Most Wins and the Most Plays awards for the season and walked away with two boosters as his prizes. Sarah got the friendliest player award and a booster. So congratulations to them both. 

For those interested here is the final version of my deck.

Deck: Fenland Gamers Amonkhet League 2017.dec
Counts : 30 main

Creatures:9

  • 1 Bloodrage Brawler
  • 1 Dune Beetle
  • 1 Gust Walker
  • 2 Blighted Bat
  • 1 Cursed Minotaur
  • 1 Wasteland Scorpion
  • 1 Emberhorn Minotaur
  • 1 Merciless Javelineer

Spells:11

  • 1 Blazing Volley
  • 2 Magma Spray
  • 1 Impeccable Timing
  • 1 Mighty Leap
  • 2 Cartouche of Ambition
  • 1 Faith of the Devoted
  • 1 Painful Lesson
  • 1 Sweltering Suns
  • 1 Wander in Death

Lands:10

  • 1 Cradle of the Accursed
  • 3 Mountain
  • 2 Plains
  • 1 Sunscorched Desert
  • 3 Swamp

A big thank you to our hosts Fenrock. Great facilities and just as important coffee. 

Our next Magic League will start in November, and will be using the Ixalan set. If you are interested in joining in on the fun you can find out dates and times on the Fenland Gamers Facebook page in the events section,

In the meantime we do have on the 21st a Commander session planned if anyone local fancies playing. Once again details on our clubs Facebook page.