Silent but deadly

Commander, Deck tech, Game day, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

For the holidays my FLGS is running daily events on the days it’s open. Luckily for me there were a handful of us with spare time and a Commander deck at the store to play some Commander yesterday afternoon.

My initial activities at the store involved me putting the finishing touches to my Ninja Assassin deck. I’d got the majority of the cards I needed. I just hadn’t put the finishing touches to it. So I added some new Core Set 2020 “staples”, plus I took one or two cards out of my Scarab God Zombie deck.

It certainly could do with some optimisation. But as a “first draft” check I’m I’m along the right lines and that the general game plan works, it’d do.

I also got a rather nice fancy deck box for it. That fancy box being the Dragon Shield N100+ (or something like that).

It’s like a slim version of an Ultrapro deck box I have. The Ultrapro box is rather fancy, and was extremely difficult to get hold of at the time. These cool Dragon Shield N100+ boxes are easy to get for starters. Which is a big big plus.

We managed a couple of Commander games. The first one was a 3 player (Glen, Alex and myself) game, and I had Grafdigger’s Cage out, and it was keeping Glen’s deck under control. It stopped him using some graveyard shenanigans. So Alex kept attacking me! Naturally once I was out of the picture Glen was able to step up his game, use those shenanigans I’d kept under control and win.

Our second game was a five player game. Most of us had our moments, and were able to do something pretty cool. I particularly liked that I was getting to play some of those new “staples”. Scheming Symmetry was used really effectively in this game. I went and got a 7 CMC ninja and put on the top of my deck. Whilst the player I selected to join me in finding a card and putting it on top of their deck, went and chose a card that was going to be painless if used against them. That’s the nice thing having a ninja threat that let’s you exile the top 2 cards of their deck and cast the cards for free! Remember that 7 CMC ninja? Well with my Commander connecting that meant I hit everyone for 7 damage.

In the end Glenn and myself were head to head. But he was able to lock me down with enchantments long enough to grab the win.

I actually really enjoyed playing this deck. I love the ninjitsu mechanic. The deck needs some form of enchantment/artifact removal. Also I may have to dig out a Settle the score for those indestructible creatures. But I’m happy with the power level. It’s a 5 at best. Which is about right.

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.“

Creatures:36

1 Changeling Outcast
1 Hired Poisoner
1 Mist-Cloaked Herald
1 Pilfering Imp
1 Siren Stormtamer
1 Cerulean Drake
1 Daring Saboteur
1 Duskmantle Operative
1 Metropolis Sprite
1 Skullsnatcher
1 Thrill-Kill Assassin
1 Warkite Marauder
1 Adaptive Automaton
1 Darkblade Agent
1 Eyeblight Assassin
1 Mist-Syndicate Naga
1 Mistblade Shinobi
1 Slippery Scoundrel
1 Stronghold Assassin
1 Throatseeker
1 Walker of Secret Ways
1 Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow (Commander)
1 Azra Smokeshaper
1 Etrata, the Silencer
1 Ingenious Infiltrator
1 Moonblade Shinobi
1 Nightshade Assassin
1 Ninja of the Deep Hours
1 Storm Sculptor
1 Fallen Shinobi
1 Higure, the Still Wind
1 Ninja of the New Moon
1 Okiba-Gang Shinobi
1 Throat Slitter
1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
1 Silent-Blade Oni

Spells:27

1 Bag of Holding
1 Brainstorm
1 Grafdigger’s Cage
1 Scheming Symmetry
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Silent Gravestone
1 Sol Ring
1 Crook of Condemnation
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Dowsing Dagger
1 Pillar of Origins
1 Assassinate
1 Commander’s Sphere
1 Dimir Locket
1 Icon of Ancestry
1 Murder
1 Rhystic Study
1 Urza’s Incubator
1 Creeping Chill
1 Cryptic Command
1 Damnation
1 Diabolic Tutor
1 Drawn from Dreams
1 Mastermind’s Acquisition
1 Conspiracy
1 God-Pharaoh’s Statue
1 The Immortal Sun

Lands:37

1 Arcane Lighthouse
1 Barren Moor
1 Blasted Landscape
1 Command Tower
1 Cryptic Caves
1 Crystal Vein
1 Darksteel Citadel
1 Dimir Aqueduct
1 Dimir Guildgate (a)
1 Dismal Backwater
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Field of Ruin
1 Gateway Plaza
1 Guildmages’ Forum
8 Island
1 Isolated Watchtower
1 Karn’s Bastion
1 Morphic Pool
8 Swamp
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Unknown Shores
1 Watery Grave

Oh and here is the obligatory mana curve.

Throne of Eldraine and Booster Fun Fun Fun! #MTGEldraine

magic, MtG, news

Over the weekend at a panel/talk at SDCC Chief MtG Game Designer extraordinaire Mark Rosewater dropped some bombs about the new set coming out at the start of October and changes to products/boosters.

This post is going to be my thoughts on what was said/written, and won’t cover everything. If you want to see what the full article says you can pop on over and read it on the WotC site HERE.

New Set

So let’s start with the name of the new set (which was actual released Friday) and that is Throne of Eldraine. As this tweet from during the talk shows it’s got a pretty cool theme in my opinion.

And I have to admit from the art they shared on Twitter, also during the talk (one or two bits I’ve shared below), I’m loving the look and art.

I love the mashup. Just with the pieces shared so far I was going oh that’s “Snow White”, that’s “The Little Mermaid”.

But below the mashup between what obviously is King Arthur and Snow White, and the Planeswalker emblem made out of a castle/Camelot in the middle. I hope this becomes a playmat. It’s a fantastic mashup of genres.

But the whole look has a kind of twisted fairy tale feel to it. I’ve seen a similar take before, just can’t put my finger on where. Does it get more twisted than the Goldilocks and the Three Bears below. What a wicked, twisted, image. I have expect this image to be shared over the internet naming and shaming Goldilocks and her trophy hunting of bears.

So after that pretty awesome art. Which did the intended job of getting me excited for the upcoming set. Let’s look at the fiddling with booster packs and cards!

Changes Already in Place

“…the chance of getting a foil has increased from less than one in four boosters to one in three.” Maybe I was unlucky but I didn’t seem to get more foils when opening boosters. Not a very scientific, fact based opinion. But I don’t record those sort of things whilst opening a booster box.

The new token frames, and particularly the art on them for Core Set 2020 has been stunning. Everyone at my FLGS has been commenting how much they like them.

The New Frames

I’m indifferent to the changes that are coming like the borderless Planeswalker cards, extended art frames and the showcase frames. I’m pretty sure if I pulled one, especially the borderless Planeswalker cards of a Planeswalker I really wanted, I’d be jumping the moon with excitement. Like I would now if it was a foil. And I’m pretty sure if I pulled any of them I’d be “oh wow”. Because even though the card images look cool on screen. They really look amazing when held in the hand. The images do not do the physical card justice.

Collector Boosters

An interesting product indeed. $20 – $25 boosters! I have no doubt this will sell. How much it will impact the sale of regular booster boxes or boosters I don’t know. It’s also going to be interesting to see how this effects the secondary market. Technically it’s putting more copies of the rare and mythics out there, especially in the new frames, and also more foils. It might be something I’d buy an odd booster of. But do the math 36 (assuming that a booster box is 36 packs and not 24) x $20. That’s $720 a box. An FLGS might sell a box for slightly less. But this has the potential to be the most expensive MtG product yet! But there are folks out there that will pay this.

Brawl Decks

Falling under flogging a dead horse. Brawl has been dead for over a year now. In fact it burned brightly for a couple of months, and then disappeared. WotC have announced that with Throne of Eldraine they will be producing preconstructed Brawl decks. So Brawl versions of Commander and Challenger decks. Too little too late? This was a product players were calling for when Brawl was introduced. But now?

When I read the article I thought why? Surely WotC know this is a dead format? Then I saw the tweet below.

I still think that WotC are missing the point with 1v1 versions of multiplayer formats. It’s the multiplayer part that makes them popular. But with them introducing the format to Arena, it’s natural that they would try and resurrect and breathe life back into the format. Because let’s face it they want the Arena players to be able to go into their FLGS and play the format also. Which I don’t think will happen.

I’m not sure the Brawl decks will sell. Unless all the cards in the Brawl decks are standard legal and these “new mechanically unique cards” become core to a top tier standard deck. I just don’t see these decks selling as well as the Commander products, or for that matter the Challenger decks.

No one plays the format. So why buy decks for a format no one plays? Unless it’s for the cards to use in other formats.

And yes Arena is still dead to me. And when it eventually does come out on iOS it will still be dead to me. WotC will have to do something they will never do and be generous with all the Arena codes I have sitting in a pile gathering dust, and let me use them all. But from the sidelines, the restrictions on the number of codes that a person can use is still ridiculously mean. The new master tree thing looks like another way to fleece players. It seems the only lessons WotC are learning from the video game industry is all it’s worst practices.

We won’t revisit why Arena is not beta software. Ok let’s, if you are running million dollar events relying on the software, paying celebs and streamers to use and stream your software. Then that’s not beta. You don’t run high profile events on beta software. That was shorter than I thought.

In the meantime they continue trying to bend the physical game to make life easier for Arena players, what looks good for streaming, and easier for their coders.

Also in a weeks time it’s spoiler season time once more…

From leaked spoilers last week we already know the core mechanics that will be in the four new Commander decks. But I’ll talk about those and how I feel about the new decks at the time of the spoilers.

So that’s my thoughts. What do you think of theses announcements?

WotC Ruin Saturdays

Deck tech, Game day, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building


The first Not Saturday Showdown since Core Set 2020 hit, and WotC changed how they did prize support for organised play, and killed off Standard Showdown.

A simple explanation of the new prize support is now each store gets an allocation of prize packs (the equivalent of the old Showdown packs) based on the tickets and engaged players that they have.

Each pack is made up of 4 cards. You can get the full break down HERE.These new packs replace FNM promos, Open House promos, and Standard Showdown packs, etc.

I think my FLGS gets 8 or 10 packs a week to use as prizes for all events in a week. It used to get 6 Standard Showdown packs a week, plus promos for FNM, and any event specific ones.

Just how would this new system work?

Not very well.

Basically there were 2 packs up for grabs 1 each for the top 2 spots. No door prize for last place. And no random draw for the remaining packs for the week. So there was less prizes, and less chance of getting a prize. Pretty shitty.

For me WotC have ruined our Not Standard Showdown. They spent all this time trying to build up the standard player base. Which is what they want really. It sells packs/booster boxes. Now with abandoning the Standard Showdown event, cutting down the prize support they are putting this at risk, and undermining the store and that format.

Standard Showdown was fun (still is). It was/is cheap to enter. However just getting a booster pack for participating and a greatly reduced chance of a prize is not enough to attract me. Now I ask the question do I travel the half hour to my FLGS to get just a booster pack or do I stay local and play with friends? The later option sounds a lot more attractive now. Back to kitchen table magic.

In the above equation I also need to factor in the meta. In my FLGS meta it’s getting a bit stagnant. Only two or three of us play different decks on a regular basis. The majority play the same deck week in week out, with the odd tweak when new cards come out. Some of those decks are pretty strong, and means they finish in the higher places regularly. Which reduces the chances even more of a prize in the new prize support structure. And it’s not much fun. Oh it’s your aggro dino deck again, oh cool burn. This new less generous prize support is only going to encourage more of this sort of meta. In fact it’s going to encourage more net decking for the better decks.

So reflecting on the above what WotC have decided for me is no more Not Standard Showdown. I’ll probably only attend pre-releases now. Won’t bother with booster boxes. I’d already dropped the bundle because of the change to it for Core Set 2020. I’ll target buy the cards that I need for Commander when new sets come out. Which actually hurts WotC because they don’t see any of that money. And just concentrate on playing my favourite format of Commander with friends.

It’s going to be interesting to see if my decision is reflected amongst other MtG players, and if is if the number doing so will make a difference.

So yesterday in my actual event games I did crap. No hiding from it. Being mana screwed in a few of them just didn’t help.

Now the casual games was a different story. Especially against Bob. But when it counted he won. Our casual game where I played Orzhov against his burn was funny. The games were over in seconds! First game opening hand Leyline of Sanctity. So a turn zero play. He saw that, slammed his hand on the table, put it on top,of his deck, and conceded. Game 2, I mulliganed into the Leyline again. Same result. It was funny his reaction. But we are used to that from him. Plus mono red burn typically doesn’t have any enchantment removal. Leyline of Combustion also proved affective against burn.

Let’s look at the cold hard numbers that don’t lie, but don’t tell the whole story either!

Casual Games

Bob (before): Win 2-1

Kid (before): Win 2-0

Bob (between using Orzhov deck): Win 2-0

Bob (at end): Win 1-0

Not Standard Showdown Stats

Participants: 11

Rounds: 4

Round 1: Sam Loss 0-2

Round 2: Buy Win

Round 3: Dean Loss 0-2

Round 4: Bob Loss 0-2

Record: 1-3

Final Position: 9th

Prizes: 1 participation pack

So for the history books this is version 2 of the Gruul Dino deck that I used at the weekend. You can, if you are even remotely interested to see my initial version of the deck, look at the post with the deck list here.

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.“

Creatures:27

4 Marauding Raptor
3 Otepec Huntmaster
4 Raptor Hatchling
3 Ranging Raptors
2 Ripjaw Raptor
4 Shifting Ceratops
3 Charging Monstrosaur
2 Regisaur Alpha
2 Ghalta, Primal Hunger

Spells:12

3 Commune with Dinosaurs
2 Act of Treason
3 Rhythm of the Wild
2 Vivien, Champion of the Wilds
1 Vivien, Arkbow Ranger
1 Vivien Reid

Lands:21

3 Evolving Wilds
8 Forest
7 Mountain
3 Rugged Highlands

Sideboard:15

3 Thrashing Brontodon
2 Grazing Whiptail
1 Burning Sun’s Avatar
1 Carnage Tyrant
2 Grafdigger’s Cage
2 Savage Stomp
2 Tibalt, Rakish Instigator
2 Leyline of Combustion

And as is tradition for when I give a deck list here is the mana curve and cost of the deck.

Building streets and trading goods

game night

Earlier in the week, might have been Monday actually, Penny Lane drop through my letter box.

I had asked Jonathan if he was free to get a learning game in. But events at work mean that was not going to happen. So yesterday afternoon I was pleasantly surprised to get a call asking if I wanted to meet up in the evening for a drink and play a game.

So we both met up at Spoons to play some games and enjoy a beverage or two. First up on the table was, you guessed it Penny Lane.

Penny Lane is designed by Justin Blaske (creator of Mint Works) and Mel Primus. I don’t usually mention the game designer in these little “five minute” reviews. But it’s kinda relevant really when we look at Penny Lane.

When I was looking at the rules initially after it arrived my first thought was this sounds a lot like Mint Works. Which when I checked can be easily explained. As I pointed out above one half of the design team for this game was responsible for Mint Works. So that would explain it.

But Penny Lane isn’t just a larger, prettier Mint Works.

Although the game plays the same. There are a couple of additional mechanics that expand the game and tactics.

So the theme is you are trying to build the most prosperous city avenue.

There are two phases to a round. The action phase and the upkeep phase. In the action phase players take actions until all players have passed consecutively. Then in the upkeep you check for the end of game conditions, tidy up, and gather resources.

The actions you can do are determined by the 8 cards that make up the Main Street. The majority of the actions require coins to activate the action, whilst a couple of them require a worker to be placed there.

The new parts that lift this game above Mint Works are to do with the worker meeples and the tableau building.

Some of the buildings you can buy come with workers, and some buildings need workers on them to activate the buildings abilities. Those that come with workers once the worker has been moved to another building to activate its ability reveal a victory point. But you can’t just move workers willy nilly. You need to spend 2 coins on selecting the appropriate action on the Main Street.

Buildings also have links on them. There are two types of links. Money and victory points.

As you can see in the photo above the links on the building are only half of the icon. If when you place the building complete an icon you get what it represents during upkeep.

If your lane has 10 victory point icons in it, made up from completed links, revealed worker spaces or building abilities, or buildings that just have victory points on them the end of the game will trigger at the start of the upkeep.

Otherwise during upkeep you get a coin for each completed coin link, card ability that generates them.

So you are having to not only think about what the building does, but also what links it has and where you will place it in your lane.

The additions are nice and add a little more depth to the game. But not so much that it slows the game down. Penny Lane still plays quickly.

So what are the bad points of the game? Well they are production,graphic design ones that are minor in the grand scheme of things.

For instance some of the Main Street cards have a little top hat symbol on them which indicates which side is used based on the number of players. The size of this makes the number unreadable! Why they just didn’t just make it a bit larger and more readable I don’t know. Or just put the icon on the side that is used in a 2/3 player game I don’t know.

The none standard card size used for the Main Street cards is annoying. I was able to sleeve the building cards no problem. But the Main Street cards are approx 10mm too tall to fit in 70mm by 110mm sleeves that I had on hand. Why not just go with the “standard” digit card size? The player boards only thing I can think for them is to laminate them.

I’d also liked to have seen the Main Street cards thicker, or even cardboard. I did notice one or two of the cards warp on the table. So they will have to be sleeved. I’d have liked to seen the player boards use thicker card stock too.

If you like Mint Works you will love Penny Lane. Jonathan and I both really liked this. I’m going to go as far as to say it replaces Mint Works for me. Ok the box is larger. Not by a great deal. Still very portable. But I like the little extra it brings to the table. It’s fun. Quick. And scratches that worker placement itch when you don’t have that much time. Hopefully this will get a bit of buzz when it hits. It deserves it.

The history books will record that I won both of our games.

Our final game of the evening was the classic two player Jaipur. That after a very close first round where a point separated us. Jonathan widened the gap he had and won.

A great unexpected evening gaming. A fantastic way to end the week.

Games Played: Penny Lane, Jaipur

Taking free #DnD to the next level!

D&D, RPG

With the Essentials kit now out in the US of A, on a limited basis as a Target exclusive until 3rd September.

I think it was a good time to remind people interested in getting into the game that they don’t have to wait.

In a previous post I talked about using free resources from WotC and Matthew Colville to run a D&D night with a bunch of friends.

However with the emphasis of the Essentials kit being to take players the next step and play using characters they created. I thought it would be appropriate after there was a reminder shared on Twitter that there is a great free official resource that gives you some extra races you can use, to write this post linking to some sources of free adventures you can use for this next step.

Here is the link from the tweet Elemental Evil Player’s Companion.

So with that pdf and the free basic rules, you go from 4 races to 8. Plus more spells for druids and wizards to choose from.

But what are the players going to do with these new characters they have created? I’m assuming that you and your friends have already done the Colville adventure mentioned in the previous post. Now after spending time creating a character personal to them your players will want to spend more than a one shot with them. They will want a campaign!,

You can create your own but I’m going to assume that is something you want to do down the road. Well you could look on the DM’s Guild, and do a search for free adventures there. There are plenty to choose from.

This post links to some free Adventurers Guild adventures many suited to first level characters that are hosted on the WotC servers.

Another great source of encounters that could be turned into a mini campaign are the Encounters of the Week over on D&D Beyond. The post I’m linking to here is the 8th in a series of encounters that lead into the upcoming storyline adventure book Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus. At the bottom of the post are links to the other 7 posts and the order they are experienced. But there are many others there that can be strung together. I particularly like the 2 they did for Ghosts of Saltmarsh (here and here).

But the above just scratches the surface of what’s on offer out there. After my first session has run, my notes for that will be here. If you are desperate enough you could use them as well.

If an adventure mentions a monster and you don’t have the stats for it, google is your friend. It will usually give you a D&D Beyond result, so maybe look there first. Also on a side note you can access the basic rules on D&D Beyond for free that does give you access to more than the free pdf when it comes to classes and races. Well more in general. Add in the free Elemental Evil pdf above and you have a lot of choices for your players.

I hope this post was of use. I’m off to finish prepping for my first session.

Another zombie apocalypse on it’s way

RPG

After some hiccups over the past few months another Kickstarter should be with me soon. That seems to have been the story for a few I backed over a year ago. As Dad used to be fond of saying “shit happens”.

Anyway the Kickstarter that is coming (the posting of it starts today apparently) is Zombie World.

I was online using their webstore and the discount codes I was given ordering the stuff that I had backed. Due to the high demand on their server (because every other backer was doing the same) the experience was less than enjoyable. Countless server timeouts, having to enter the same discount code multiple times before it registered, really long processing times. But I endured and managed to get my order in, with the appropriate level of shipping costs that I was prepared to pay. It was an unusual way compared to other Kickstarters to get what I had backed and pay for shipping. And if the experience had been better, one I’d have been none fussed about. In fact it may have been one I’d rave about. I like the option of choosing my shipping method.

“Zombie World is a card-based tabletop roleplaying game of survivors fighting against the living and the dead for their own place in the world. The game is designed for easy, quick, and intense play.”

Zombie World is “powered by the Apocalypse system” or a version of it. This one uses cards instead of dice.

Naturally once it arrives there will be a post about the unboxing of what arrived.

So yet another RPG in my collection. But one I think that will be easier to get to the table. And that is the plan.

I’m hoping that once it arrives to run one shot adventures using the base game and the two expansions.

The system (at least the way described) allows for this sort of play. In fact if I remember correctly it’s listed as a strength of the game system. Carry the box around and play when ever.

So based on that it should be possible at a Fenland Gamers club night to have an impromptu RPG session using this. Assuming those that attend are happy to explore a zombie apocalypse.

It’s also said that this system could be run as a campaign also. Which if it didn’t would be a major drawback. And at some point it would be interesting to see how that went. But we are also then getting in to The End of the World: Zombie Apocalypse from FFG territory.

Anyway I’m excited to finally be getting this. And definitely looking forward to getting it to the table.

Proud Dad Moment

Uncategorized

Today saw one of the proudest moments of my life as a dad, as my son Nathan graduated with a degree in tv production from Portsmouth University.
Luckily modern technology gets around the limited hall space and distant family problem that has plagued graduation ceremonies of yesteryear. So for reasons, I was able to watch the ceremony and see that moment as he walked across the stage.

I hoping those reasons will allow me to get a photo of him in his gown.

What next for my boy? An Masters in the subject. Which will see him do the unthinkable for a Portsmouth football supporter and move to Southampton.

But it’s his day, and I hope he’s having a great time celebrating.

Star Realms – Frontiers Expansion Game Play

star realms

Last week saw WWG release the latest update to Star Realms. This update introduced the Frontiers expansion (“Adds 45 new ships & bases and double ally abilities!”) to the game. Something I’d been looking forward to. Mainly because despite having the actual physical cards I’d not managed to get them to the table. I can’t remember when I last played the game in the real world.

When you look at the update details on the iOS App Store there is no warning that the update will wipe any existing games. Apparently on Android there is, and a warning was also pushed out as a message. Some will argue that there was a warning on Facebook and the games official blog. I’m going to assume on other social media also. But like many we had missed those warnings. Which is easy to do. In fact a lot people didn’t know an update was dropping until it appeared. I normally look at the apps update details in the App Store to see what has been changed (see image above). So it’s inexcusable that there was no such warning on the iOS update. Naturally I lost the majority of my ongoing games.

I am liking the new cards. And a lot of my current games (initially anyway) have been with just this expansion (all others switched off). Which is natural because players of the game want to play with the new cards. It’s true here as it is in any other card game.

However there is one annoying thing about some of the new cards. The graphic design of the icons that tell you the cards abilities such as attack, authority, or gold is awful and sticks out like a sore thumb. The basic problem is it’s too large, and looks odd when viewed against other cards. It comes across as childlike to me, and that they would be more at home in a version of the game aimed at young children or those with poor eyesight.

And now for the viewing pleasure of the handful of folks that watch these videos, here is a recent game using the Frontiers expansion.

How many games did you get wiped? What do you think of the new cards?

Core Set 2020 Draft Weekend

magic, MtG

For your FLGS the cash injection that is a MtG release continues. There was Pre-release last weekend, and then this weekend it was the actual release and all product could be sold, and draft events.

While waiting for the draft to start I got to play some games of Standard against Sam and his deck. He was playing a deck built around Arclight Phoenix and Crackling Drake. It’s a strong deck. I didn’t sideboard anything. I think I’ll need some plummets in the sideboard to take this deck on. Plus some graveyard hate.

We started the draft and I pulled a Leyline of Sanctity in my opening pack. Sweet. I now had a playset of them. I’m very happy with that. It also set the colour I started drafting. That first pack I drafted only white cards. I knew I’d need a second colour, and decided to go blue.

I think I’m getting worse at this MtG thing. I managed to scrape a win against an ex-student. But otherwise things didn’t go exactly to plan. Against Sam I got mana screwed in our first game. Which never helps. But was the opposite to one of the losses I suffered against Andy in the first round when I flooded out! There was a little laugh with John when he beat me. When he was delivering his killing blow there was a misplay when he tried to do 2 direct damage to me from an ability. Only for me to point out to him that he was unable to target me, I was hexproof. It was a minor moral victory. Poor compensation for losing.

ok here are the cold hard stats.

Casual Games

Dean: Loss 0-1

Sam: Loss 0-3

Draft Stats

Participants: 10

Rounds: 4

Round 1: Andy Loss 0-2

Round 2: Tom Win 2-1

Round 3: Sam Loss 0-2

Round 4: John Loss 0-2

Record: 1-3

Final Position: 8th

Prizes: 1 participation pack

I have to say that I think with the changes to the prize support for events that WotC have made, things are definitely more stingy. If Not Standard Showdown plays our the way I think it will, then next week will be my last one. But we will discuss this in more detail next week. But the spoiler and headline for my theory that will be tested is that WotC are slowly killing off and discouraging these sort of events.

Visitors from the Rhine

FEG@WL, Fenland Gamers, game night

Yep it’s been one of those weeks with not much on the gaming front going on. Which explains the lack of posts this week. Think of it as having a much needed holiday from my ramblings.

Earlier in the week Jonathan set up the Facebook event for the evenings gaming session. I posted a suggestion on the comment section for the event of playing Viticulture again but with the Visit from the Rhine Valley expansion.

Visit from the Rhine Valley was a small expansion that both Jonathan and I had picked up at the UK Games Expo over a year ago. Which as you can guess from the previous post we had not played. In fact my copy until Wednesday was still sealed.

Visit from the Rhine Valley is an alternate set of visitor cards for Viticulture. However these cards focus more on wine production than producing victory points. Setup is dead easy. You use these visitor cards instead of the ones in the core game.

I enjoyed these new cards, and their focus. They did seem very combo like. Earlier on I was able to play 2 Summer visitor cards that would unknowingly payoff and get me the (spoiler) win. Using the Vine Trader I was able to discard 2 cards to get €6 to take my coins up to the required €9 that I needed for the Premium Wine Dealer. Which in a single play gave me 7 champagne without the large cellar.

That would turn out to be a great play for later.

I love cards like the Skeptic where you could age something and fill an order. That card was a life saver. I was short by one for an order and would have had to wait until the next year before filling. But this card let me fill the order and get that all,important residual payment. But that card would easily combo with others that would allow you to make wine to use for using the Skeptic.

I was in the lead in our game, but Jonathan wasn’t far behind. I needed one more contract to complete to trigger the end of the game. Sadly I didn’t have the wine to complete any of the ones I had in hand. So I took the draw contract action, got to draw 2 cards. One of the two needed 9 champagne to complete. Wait I had 9 sitting in my cellar. That 7 I’d initially got had now aged into 9 bottles. I could complete an order. What a fortuitous top deck. And seeing that earlier play pay off. Wow. Until that point I hadn’t seen any contracts that needed champagne to complete.

It was enough to trigger the end of the game, and give me the win.

If I had one complaint about this expansion it’s the wording on some of the cards could be clearer.

One or two of the cards were worded like the example above. It wasn’t really clear was it pick just one, or could you do the first and one of the last two? We house ruled it was the former.

But this was a fun expansion. Loved the focus on wine production. Definitely a must buy for fans of Viticulture. Especially if the game has been played a lot, and you want to spice things up a little.

Our last game of the evening was Love Letter: Batman. It’s still a great game. Definitely a group favourite as a way to unwind at the end of an evening of gaming. Sadly Jonathan was able to grab the win.

A great evenings gaming.

Games Played: Viticulture, Love Letter: Batman