A Keyforge Dilemma

keyforge

Have I worn you down yet with all these Keyforge posts?

Anyway I have a dilemma. I caved and looked at the deck lists for the decks I’ve opened up. And one of the decks is a Four Horsemen deck.

What’s a Four Horsemen deck? It’s a deck that contains the following four cards.

As the summary shows they are either at a special or rare rarity within decks. I believe they only come as a group. I’ve not heard of anyone just having one or two of the four.

What’s the dilemma? Well I’d like to keep it and play the deck. But on the other hand if I leave it sealed and sell it I could probably get a bit more than I payed for it.

Wait? What? Some of these £9 decks are going for more than they cost? Yeah, especially these Four Horsemen decks.

Depending on the supporting cards in the rest of the deck these can go for up to £200.

The only draw back selling is the deck is registered. So whoever bought it wouldn’t get the ember for it when they registered it.

It’s not as if I’m going to play the deck competitively. So no real advantage keeping it for that.

Still I’m undecided. Keep flipping on what to do. But leaning towards selling.

Midday Showdown At The Hobbit Hole

Game day, magic, MtG

Another Saturday and another (my fourth) Standard Showdown. These are getting addictive!

Naturally I tweaked the deck a little this week. There were some cards I wanted to give a try. But more on that later.

Once again this Standard Showdown was an 8 man field.

Round 1 – Charlie (red aggro)

I’d never played against Charlie before, he’d been looking at his deck with Ben when I arrived at the store. I’d overheard Goblin Chainwhirler being mentioned so I knew at least this deck had red.

Game 1 started off to plan, but I was undone by Experimental Frenzy with no way to remove it while it was out. Experimental Frenzy just allowed Charlie to flood out an overwhelming board state that I was unable to stop.

Game 2 was more like it. Things clicked, creatures came out, I controlled the board. That annoying card didn’t come out.

Game 3 for me was a complete disaster. I was mana screwed, so it was just turn by turn chipping away at me until I was dead.


Definitely my undoing against this deck was the combination of Experimental Frenzy, lots of cheap cards, and plenty of lands. Once that combination is in place, unless you can disrupt it, you have lost.

Result: Loss 2-1

Our games were pretty quick. So we played a couple of friendly games to fill the time. Our first game was a first for me too. I had the perfect start with the perfect hand. It had the mana, Llanowar Elf and Steel Leaf Champion. So I was attacking with with Steel Leaf Champion turn 3. The deck just went through the gears as intended and won before Charlie got started.

The second friendly game was more of the earlier Experimental Frenzy b.s., while I struggled for mana. Naturally I finished on another loss.

Round 2 – Paul

Another new opponent, this time Paul who had thrown together a Boros deck.

This was an easy match up for my deck. Especially when in the first game Paul had to mulligan down to 4 cards, and ended up mana screwed. I had some sympathy, as MtG players we have all been there. You just have to sit there hoping against odds that you draw into mana before it’s too late. Sadly for Paul that moment never came. Remember I’d been in a similar situation in the first round.

The second game Paul just never had a board presence. So once again despite him having mana this time, he was unable to stop me swinging in.

Afterwards I had a look at Paul’s deck. He was going Boros dinosaurs. But was missing the copies of the obvious ramp cards, and a few dinosaurs. I like the idea behind the deck, and I think it could be a fun deck to play.

Result: Win 2-0

Round 3 – John Golgari v Golgari

We’ve seen this match up a couple times since I built this deck. Both times my deck has been victorious. Naturally in that time tweaks have been made by both of us. John is still chasing that graveyard boosting his creatures tactic.

However as in the previous games my deck was victorious. Being able to remove any of these big threats John could create because of his graveyard and swing in unimpeded worked for me. It’s a simple tactic, and has been successful for me in the past.

Result: Win 2-0

Overall Record: 3rd Place 2-1

Prize support was down this week. Third place only got me a participation booster and after a roll off a Showdown booster.

So how does the WotC system determine that I come third, whilst another player with the same match ratio comes second?

After a bit of internet research, and downloading the official WotC tournament rules, I looked at page 17.

“The following tiebreakers are used to determine how a player ranks in a tournament:

1. Match points

2. Opponents’ match-win percentage

3. Game-win percentage

4. Opponents’ game-win percentage”

So basically one of those tiebreakers didn’t go in my favour. I know the Opponents’ game-win percentage I had would have been worse. My route to two and one was easier, with opponents that had a worse track record than those faced by second place. So basically you not only have to win, but you want you opponents to do well also.

If you want to go into specifics and the math behind those tiebreakers look at Appendix C of the tournament rules.

6 Player Commander

After battling it out with our standard decks a 6 person Commander game started. I was playing my mono green big stompy deck. Dean was playing some partner Commander deck. Michael was playing an Edgar Markov vampire deck, Charlie had borrowed the b.s. dragon deck from Dean, can’t remember Andy’s deck, and Ben was back with the b.s. no fun Estrid deck.

Luckily for the rest of us the Estrid deck never got to hit its stride, although it did have a white enchantment out that meant Ben tapped a creature at the start of each players combat phase. Very annoying if you only had one creature out.

I was ramping nicely, getting stuff out. The others were targeting the two b.s. decks (dragons and Estrid). I played Praetor’s Council, so I had an unlimited handsize. Which was handy for when Dean was bouncing creatures back to hand on mass. I wasn’t having to discard cards because of it like the others.

Andy hit everyone for 8 life each, and gained that much life. He was looking good on 80 odd life, it would have to be commander damage to take him out.

Eventually plays started dropping out. I was in a reasonable position on 30 health and creatures out on the battlefield. I was a threat, but not acting in a threatening way by attacking. If anyone thought of attacking me I’d remind them “do you really want to upset the big nasty green creatures?”

Dean and Ben were under 10 health, so I killed them both off. Leaving just Andy and me.

So how do you win against a player on 86 life? My 2/2 Commander wasn’t going to be doing much Commander damage, even if it had been out on the battlefield.

Thanks to Zendikar Resurgent (ZR) I was getting basically double mana, and card draw. Which was handy because I drew into Primordial Hydra (PH). Primal Vigor (PV) was already out also and going to play an important part in the plan.

I played PH which entered the battlefield as a 52/52 (X was 26 thanks to ZR and PV did the rest) with trample. I thought as a matter of honour I better let Andy know what would happen at the start of my next turn.

Andy decided to swing in with everything. The total damage would be short by 4 points of killing me. He had no cards in hand. But I suspected shenanigans. So I held PH back, and blocked with my other creatures. The last thing I needed was a creature being given deathtouch and killing PH.

We resolved the combat. I went down to 13 life.

Next turn 52 more +1/+1 tokens went onto PH due to its ability. Thanks to PV it then got 52 more and PH was now a 156/156 with trample if I did my maths right.

I could now one shot kill Andy with a really big fecking hydra. Forget Godzilla. King Kong who? Primordial Hydra was the man!

I swung in with everything. There was a massive over kill. And a bloody big crater/footprint with Andy’s corpse at the bottom.

I’d won!

Ok here is the bit some of you have been very patient and waited for.

I’ve been wanting to try these 2 cards in the deck for a while now. But couldn’t really decide what I would swap out. But after Andy looked at my deck the last time he commented about how he couldn’t see why Dire Fleet Poisoner fitted in. Ok I don’t get any benefit from its etb effect. But I really liked the flash and deathtouch. I still do.


I really like the art on Pitiless Gorgan. It’s why I got a playset in foil. The card is very cheap too, even as a foil. Or was when I got them.

Now Pitiless Gorgan isn’t as good as Dire Fleet Poisoner in my opinion. Costs more and doesn’t have flash. But I can use just forests to cast, which is a benefit if I haven’t hit any swamps or dual lands.

I like that ability of Pilfering Imp. It adds another control element to the deck, and getting rid of potential threats from an opponents hand. Plus a flying chump blocker if needed and a cheap bit of damage.

Here’s the deck list…

Creatures:28

4 Llanowar Elves
3 Pilfering Imp
2 Skittering Heartstopper
4 Vicious Conquistador
2 Pitiless Gorgon
4 Steel Leaf Champion
2 Thrashing Brontodon
1 Nullhide Ferox
3 Ravenous Chupacabra
2 Carnage Tyrant
1 Ghalta, Primal Hunger

Spells:11

4 Assassin’s Trophy
2 Find // Finality
4 Vraska’s Contempt
1 Vivien Reid

Lands:21

6 Forest
1 Foul Orchard
4 Golgari Guildgate (a)
1 Overgrown Tomb
7 Swamp
2 Woodland Cemetery

Sideboard:15

1 Pilfering Imp
2 Skittering Heartstopper
2 Thrashing Brontodon
1 Demon of Catastrophes
1 Doom Whisperer
1 Ghalta, Primal Hunger
2 Find // Finality
2 Never Happened
2 Ritual of Soot
1 Vraska, Golgari Queen

Oh before I forget here’s the mana curve and amc for the deck.

Mugtastic

Fenland Gamers, game night

Wow 3 new members last night came along for the first time. And it was great to meet them and share a game or two. Now we need to find a way to get more people to come along to the sessions. We seem to get between 4 – 8 people coming along each time. It would be nice to see this grow.

While waiting for all those that we knew/thought were coming along we cracked out Kingdomino. Yeah what can I say? I surprisingly won the game. I thought another player was going to be the walk away winner, but they screwed up the 10 point bonus at the end, which gave me the win.

While James and I played Keyforge. James wanted to try it (I was more than happy to go along with this). The others played Sheriff of Nottingham. We started off learning the basics with the introductory decks in the starter set. I lost that game. We followed up playing with 2 of the unique decks (Mrs “Slingshot” Badscout v Andromeda “Silverfish” Beligus), and I managed to steal the win in that game by playing Key Charge (which for the cost of an ember allowed me to forge a key at the current cost).

Then our third and final game with (A.X. Obserkorg of the Awkward Region v Yorkferou, Factory Protector) saw James back with the glory of victory as he easily won, using my own trick from the previous game!

But the games were fun and I think James is now considering getting a couple of decks for him to play with his partner.

We were all back together playing as a single group for our remaining games of the evening. The first of which was a couple of games of No Thanks! What more can I say about this game? It’s just a great filler game, quick to teach, fun to play. (In fact I’d go as far as to say this should be in every ones game bag. If you are looking for a stocking filler/family game, to play over the hols, this is a no brainer. Stuff it I’d happily recommend any of this evenings games for the holidays and family time. Well not Keyforge but that’s only because it’s a 2 player game.) Didn’t come close to winning either of the 2 games we played. I think this was the first time I’ve played it with 6 players. Surprisingly it still worked at that player count. Sometimes games at their maximum player count aren’t fun or at their best stretched to their limit. Which is also true sometimes at their lowest player counts also. But No Thanks! held up well.

The evening was finished off with a game of Perudo/Liars Dice. Yeah if you are going to get a version of this game the Richard Garfield 30th Anniversary Edition of Liars Dice is worth the extra for the play mat. It also confuses the odd player that reads the bid the wrong way. Any little advantage helps. Sadly not enough for me to win. Jonathan managed to do that.

Also at last nights meet up we had a couple of mugs with the Fenland Gamers logo on display for members to see.

There were two designs. One with a big all round logo, and one with a smaller logo on one side.

My friend Sam produced these using the supplied image from me. I think these turned out pretty amazing. What’s even more incredible is that Sam is only charging a fiver for them plus postage.

The link to Sam was provided on the clubs Facebook page for members to order their own if they want one. I hope that Sam gets some orders from our members. They’d make the perfect gift for that impending gift exchanging event next month.

Once again I have to say a really big thank you to our hosts for the evening The Luxe Cinema and the amazing on duty staff.

The magic behind the wizard

D&D, game night, RPG

Welcome to the second D&D post. The last one took a while to write, but now we are all up to date on the adventures of Dram and the large folks these posts should be quicker to write.

Naturally when I retell the events of the adventuring that week they will be told from the ground level that is the world that Dram occupies.

But who is Dram?

Dram is a halfling wizard. Think miniature Gandalf. Hence the colour scheme I painted the miniature I found for him.

Dram’s mouth gets him into so much trouble on his wanderlust over the Forgotten Realm. That’s despite the sage advice his pop often repeated to him “engage your brain before opening your mouth” as he was growing up.

Dram from an early age found a love for reading, particularly manuscripts and scrolls. Which luckily the village elder had many of. They told stories of fantastical creatures, and wild and dangerous places full of interesting things.

Then one day a wounded wizard stumbled into the village. The village druid patched up the wizard, and a place was found for him to recover. The days following the villagers dressed the wounds, fed and watered the wizard. It was during this time that Dram while helping his father and mother take their turn looking after the wizard stumbled across the wizards belongings. Which had these strange books and scrolls that he hadn’t seen the likes of before.

This interest in the spell books and scrolls hadn’t gone unnoticed by the wizard in his weakened state. While recuperating the wizard started to teach Dram how to read the magical incantations. It wasn’t long before Dram was able to make a stick create light. He was a natural.

Fully healed the wizard was ready to leave and continue on his journey. But before doing so he spoke to Dram and his parents. He wanted Dram to go with him and continue his studies to become a wizard.

Dram was still too young to go on a wanderlust. But technically this wasn’t one he argued to his parents, he was going off to school, not find adventure. Dram’s parents reluctantly agreed.

Years later a letter was delivered to Dram. It was from his friend Targi. It was fortuitous in it’s arrival. Dram was just about to have his studies cut short due to his mouth getting him into trouble once or twice. It might have been more but who was counting? Oh the senior wizards, that’s who.

Dram decided to head off on his travels looking for adventure and his friend Targi. They needed to talk.

Which is how Dram ended up in Neverwinter, and bumping into the motley crew he’s ended up helping and saving on the odd occasion. They’d be helpless without him.

His current spellbook is…

Before I get onto the latest of Dram’s journal entries. Thought I’d include pictures of pilfering Ace. Naturally outside of the game I can refer to Ace as that, but inside the game Dram currently has no idea.

Now on to the latest adventuring…
It was weird. Dram didn’t know how to exactly explain it. One moment he’s chatting away and then the next he felt all different. He couldn’t quiet put his finger on it. Dram felt like if he tried he could remember more, even last longer trading magical blows with another wizard. Was the staff causing this? No. Dram would have noticed that when he examined the it, wouldn’t he? He started mumbling words he’d never used before.

After the conversation had finished with the nun lady Dram headed back to the inn for a late brunch, while the others went off and did their thing. “Weird”, thought Dram, “why wouldn’t they want to eat now and do other stuff afterwards?”

Back at the shrine, everyone had done their “thing”, and Grull wanted to see this banshee. Which kind of sounded interesting. Dram hadn’t seen one of them before. “Besides without me Grull is bound to get into all sorts of trouble, I better go with him” was the thought process that flashed through Dram’s mind before chirping in that he was going.

After getting directions we all set off to see this banshee.

We set up camp in a familiar spot, and Sarmyar and Dram took first watch. As luck would have it a dire wolf and some wolf friends of it’s turned up. The dire wolf was standing right behind Dram, while the wolves were trying to wake up the rest of the party. Dram decided to show the dire wolf a cool party trick called witch bolt. Which it didn’t seem to pleased about. But luckily it took that frustration out on Sarmyar’s pet panther.

“AGAIN! I’ve done all the work!” exclaimed Dram as Sarmyar finished off the dire wolf.

“Good grief that gnome is sleeping through all this excitement, and there are wolves standing right over him!” Grull and Ace rush over to help the paladin, who wasn’t asleep. But out for the count.

While that was going on Dram turns his attention to the last wolf and mumbles some new words and casts a scorching ray. Which drops dead as it tries to run away.

After the excitement, everyone tries to get some rest in before morning.

The next morning Grull and Dram come to a deal, Dram will make breakfast for Grull, if Grull makes a nice dire wolf blanket. So while Dram is cooking, Grull is skinning and tanning away. Ace smelt the food, and tried begging some free breakfast. So Dram threw him some ol’ jerky.

Over breakfast Grull started hallucinating that he could talk to the panther. Not just the panther but to all animals. Dram replayed the previous nights excitement back in his head. He didn’t remember seeing Grull get hit over the head at any point. “Strange Grull is going completely bonkers. I must keep an eye on him”, thought Dram.

As luck would have it a cart came along that was going our way. It was nice to not have to walk and be able to just relax and take in the scenery as we went along.

The party was dropped off at some ruins that apparently was our stop. It was evening but everyone else thought it would be a good idea to go see this banshee. Even more remarkable we found her woodland lair and she was in. Ace did all the talking with Grull chipping in. Dram thought Ace likes to think he’s a ladies man, and his charm would even work on a banshee. Dram thought it was pretty cool seeing this dead elf hovering there, he could see right through her.

Ace gave her the comb that he’d been given to use with the banshee. But Dram had drifted off now and was bored. “If the banshee wasn’t going to do anything cool like attack Ace, why were we hanging around?”, he thought.

After the banshee disappeared we headed back to the ruined town and made camp. That was uneventful too. This trip was starting to get boring.

The next morning fully rested, the gang headed South.

Late afternoon, early evening the party arrived at a tower. Upon closer inspection from afar 12 zombies came out and started to gather round a human and the tent he was stepping out of.

“Obviously this guy is up-to no good”, and instantly before the others could react, Dram had cast his Scorching Ray and hit the human.

“How is he still standing?” Thought a puzzled Dram. “He should be frazzled.” But he wasn’t, it turns out he was a “fellow” wizard but of that awful necromancy school. Dram don’t trust him. 12 zombies isn’t innocent and self defence.

Ace once again started to try and sweet talk the wizard. Ace is standing next to the wizard trying to bargain for something. When suddenly the wizard disappears and Ace is surrounded by zombies. Dram knew it. You can never trust those necromancers.

And that is where our adventure finished until the next instalment.

My third and fourth Keyforge decks are called…

keyforge

So curiosity got the better of me and I opened the next 2 decks to find out what they were called.


Not amazing names. Why protect a factory? Is that the capitalist deck?

But it’s going to be very interesting to see how these 2 decks play. They share 2 common houses. It will hopefully give me an idea what impact that third house has, and if I like what they do.

The Master Vault – the Keyforge App

apps, keyforge

Last Friday saw the release of The Master Vault app, a companion app (and website for those that don’t want to use the app) for Keyforge.

Hats off to FFG they were aiming to have it available for the Keyforge release, and it was on both iOS and Android.

Ok before I look at what the current state of play is with this initial release of the app, it should be noted that to use this app you need an Asmodee account. So if you don’t have one you will be prompted to create one, which is a fairly painless process. I’m assuming these Asmodee accounts will be used across various other apps/games also.

So with an Asmodee account setup, you login to the app, and it lets you do stuff. Like what? I’m not doing this in any particular order, but you can add a deck. Basically every deck apart from the 2 non-unique starter decks has a QR code that identifies it. Using the add deck option allows you to register that deck as yours by scanning in the QR code using the camera on your phone (you can also enter the code manually). A claimed deck earns you an ember.


The My Decks lists all the decks you have scanned in. Not only that it allows you to drill down to see the cards in the deck and also to remove it (this allows you to sell/give away the deck, and the recipient to register it). Eventually as you can see there will be more information about the deck that will track how well the deck has done in organised play.

The profile page gives you the ability to share your profile with others using the tried and true QR codes. While also summarising the treasure you’ve collected. Which we have already seen can be collected by buying decks and scanning them in. I’m also assuming you may get ember from organised play (seeing as there is no local events, not sure this will be much of an avenue to gain ember for me). I’ve no idea what happens when you get a key. Hopefully there will be some cool rewards in the pipe line.

I do like the buttons that allow you to jump around the functionality of the app from the various sections. It streamlines doing stuff without having to keep going back to the main menu.

The app does look nice. And I think this is the first time I’ve seen QR codes put to a good use within a game.

I’ve not confirmed this but Mike Hatcher (a Youtuber and entertainer – his channel is entertaining) said the only difference between the app and website is that the website allows you to look for Keyforge events near by. I also agree with his conclusion that this bit of functionality should be in the app at some point. It seems a logical thing to add.

FFG have been on record as saying that they want the Master Vault to be the one stop shop for Keyforge players. Which is a nice ambition for the app/website. I think this is a good start. I’m assuming they have their roadmap for where it’s going (would be nice to see it). And I’m sure the Keyforge community will have suggestions of what they would like to see in the app also. Especially after it’s been in their hands for a while.

I know several players would like to be able to play the game online. Is the Master Vault the right place to do this? I don’t think so. But there is no reason why it can’t be linked to your account, and make your decks available for you to play with in a separate app.

My first 2 Keyforge decks are called…

keyforge

I finally caved in and opened up 2 of my Keyforge decks to see what they are called.

I admit after watching stuff online over the weekend I was getting real curious about what I had.

Plus I wanted to try out the functionality of the Master Vault for my next post on a Keyforge related topic.

I’m happy that these 2 decks don’t share a house. So when I finally break the seal and play with them they will be different experiences.

The Awkward Region sounds like it’s somewhere I’d be right at home, or even a native. I like the wizard sounding name of Andromeda “Silverfish” Beligus. Even the art looks wizard like.

I want the decks when I play them to be a surprise. So I’m currently avoiding looking at the deck lists for these 2 decks. If you are curious about the cards in the deck you are welcome to look the decks up on the Master Vault. Just don’t spoil them to me.

At the moment the archetype of each house is still a bit confusing. I’m trying (probably wrongly) to match them to ones I’m familiar with within MtG. So which is the graveyard shenanigans house? Or which is the control/counter spell house? Once I’ve got my head round that I’ll know what houses I’m looking forward to in a new deck.

There are still 3 unopened decks. Which for a day or two will remain that way.

Force of Will!

Uncategorized

For those that don’t do Instagram, and/or stalk me on social media like Facebook and Twitter. I present here a sequence of photos taken the other evening of the terrible duo playing mind games over a chew.

For the record there was more than one chew. But as usual Nico likes Loki to do the hard work. Plus he likes to practice his Jedi mind-tricks on young Loki.