Jeff earns Avenger status

Fenland Gamers, Game day

Yesterday nearly ended in disaster before it even started. We were meant to be playing Xia at our regular haunt. However despite numerous attempts to confirm that it would be open, the best answers I had been given were “I think so” to “don’t know”.
So I turned up early to make sure and get set up. So I was a little more than disappointed when once again it was closed. Our alternative venue wouldn’t be open until 2pm. For today that would be too late. So I tried letting the others know not to come. Then I waited. Waited in a hot car with the windows open, just in case my message hadn’t got through. During that wait the venues laundry service turned up and after a little frustration of finding out the place was closed, drove off.

Then dead on time the others turned up. My frantic messaging had been in vein. After some discussion through opened car windows, a brief phone call, Jeff offered to host the game at his along with a bbq afterwards.

Our 3 car convoy made its way to Jeff’s house picking it’s way through the Fenland country roads to his remote Fenland castle of solitude.

There was hardly any wind, so we setup Xia outside, so we could enjoy this brief glimpse of a British Summer.

Being outside, and having a game plan didn’t make any difference to the end result. Despite thinking I was going to play the game more aggressively, arming my ship, giving it armour plating, forgetting to initially give it engines before realising my mistake and swapping the missile for an engine. I still just floated around space aimlessly not doing much, somehow getting 4 game points. A point was for rolling a natural 20, I completed a mission, and I think the other 2 points were for from those tokens you can collect on the board.

So while I was executing my game plan poorly, Jeff and Chris were doing a much better job of racking up fame points, and doing stuff like trading, and completing missions. And that was despite the game smacking them in the face on their first turns by destroying their ships or inflicting lots of damage. It was brutal to watch, and yet funny.

In the end despite late pressure from Jeff, Chris reached the target 10 fame points first, and claimed victory.

Afterwards I got to enjoy a rather nice burger, and great company, before I had to head on home.

Thanks to Jeff you get to see me modelling one of his stylish sun hats, along with arms that should have taken up the earlier offer of sun lotion.

A big big thank you to Jeff and family for saving the day and feeding me.

Dominaria Magic League Week 1

magic, Magic League, MtG

Yesterday was the start of the Dominaria Magic League at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole.

The Magic League is a sealed event, £10, 3 boosters, 30 card deck, blah blah blah. I’ve talked about this before. If you want to know more just go read about it on the WotC website.

As I walked into the geek nirvana I saw 2 of my now ex-students playing MtG. It was good to see them. They weren’t taking part in the league. They were there to play a few games of MtG, buy some boosters, and maybe improve their decks with their pulls.

I got one or two nice pulls that once the league is over will be useful for deck building. But so far this set hasn’t been kind to me on pulls for sealed events. And yesterday was no different.

I thought I’d gone prepared but sadly after I had opened my boosters I realised I’d forgotten to bring any lands and sleeves with me. This was an excuse to throw more money at John the store owner.


I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t buy any of the Ultra-Pro Relic Tokens. Being of very little self control, as I was purchasing the sleeves I needed (Dragon Shield Matt sleeves which are my favourite) I crumbled and bought some.

Here is the deck I built and the sideboard of the remaining cards from the initial 3 boosters, and the booster I bought after 3 losses.

Deck Sideboard

Creatures:8

1 Cabal Evangel

1 Rat Colony

1 Academy Drake

1 Llanowar Envoy

1 Baloth Gorger

1 Grunn, the Lonely King

1 Muldrotha, the Gravetide

1 Primordial Wurm

 2 Skirk Prospector
2 Tragic Poet
1 Bloodstone Goblin
1 Keldon Warcaller
2 Serra Disciple
1 Aesthir Glider

2 Howling Golem

1 Tolarian Scholar

1 Amaranthine Wall

1 Keldon Raider

1 Rampaging Cyclops

1 Sanctum Spirit

1 Thallid Omnivore

1 Warcry Phoenix

1 Guardians of Koilos

1 Mammoth Spider

1 Sentinel of the Pearl Trident

1 Tatyova, Benthic Druid

1 Cold-Water Snapper

1 Demonlord Belzenlok

1 Evra, Halcyon Witness

1 Short Sword

2 Syncopate

1 Warlord’s Fury

1 Ancient Animus

1 Blackblade Reforged

1 Blink of an Eye

1 Jousting Lance

1 Vicious Offering

1 Fight with Fire

1 Wizard’s Retort

1 Radiating Lightning

1 Blessed Light

Spells:8

1 Demonic Vigor

1 Fungal Infection

1 Navigator’s Compass

1 Rescue

1 Saproling Migration

1 Shield of the Realm

1 Grow from the Ashes

1 Spore Swarm

Lands:14

5 Forest

3 Island

1 Memorial to Unity

4 Swamp

1 Woodland Cemetery

So how did this 3 colour deck do?

I thought I was on a hiding to nothing for the day when I lost my first game. But I then went on to win my next 3 games. After a break playing a game of Commander with my ex-students (which I lost, just wasn’t getting any lands) I then went on to lose my final 2 league matches. So my league record for the day was 3-3.

The deck did better than I’d thought it would. It doesn’t have enough low cost creatures to keep me alive in the early game. This is definitely a mid to late game deck. Which in this format isn’t great.

I now have until my next league game to look at the sideboard and either swap cards over, or completely rebuild the deck.

Trust no one

magic, MtG


There have been a couple of good suggestions on recent episodes of the Commandzone. The first suggestion was from one of their listeners/viewers that keeps deckbuilding costs down for Commander. For common cards that are used in a lot of decks the person proxies in the card, then when they need to play they pull the card out of a folder to use. I don’t use a folder, I use a deck box. But it’s a great idea that as I said helps keep costs down. The only draw back is that if I’m lending some-one a deck to play with that I’m doing this with, and I’m using a deck I’ve done this with there may be a clash over the use of a card. But that’s a very minor issue.

The other idea was for drafting amongst friends. Let’s assume that 4 friends want to draft, they also have each bought a booster box of the latest set. Instead of mass opening their boxes, for the draft session they use the box of one of the players. BUT they don’t keep the cards they draft, they go back to the owner of the box at the end of the draft session. Then next time they want to draft they use one of the boxes from one of the other players, and like wise that player gets all the cards back at the end. I like this idea. It gets away from the store drafts of trying to draft a good pool to build from and keeping high value cards. So players can just concentrate of a good draft experience. I have to admit it’s that draft value dilemma that keeps me away from playing draft in a store.

But this got me to thinking. The 2 conspiracy sets are draft sets. What if I used this idea and then put these cards into a conspiracy cube to be used again for drafting?

So my plan goes like this. Buy a booster box of conspiracy take the crown (the second set). Invite 4-6 good friends to an afternoons drafting and multiplayer Magic using that booster box. At the end get the cards back, and use them for the cube. Then repeat until the booster box no longer has enough boosters to be used for drafting. Crack open any remaining packs, add them to the cube. That gives me my final conspiracy cube to play with.

Thanks to my very generous colleague and friends at my last place, I used the money they collected to help purchase a booster box of conspiracy take the crown. Which as I write this is out for delivery according to a text I’ve just received. That text surprised me because yesterday the courier texted me and emailed me to say I would be getting it on Tuesday!

I also have a bid for an original conspiracy set on eBay at the moment too. That finishes later today. So who knows if I win that I’ll have 2 conspiracy cubes eventually.

I didn’t get into all that unstable hype and drafting before Christmas last year. But while I was brainstorming this cunning plan I thought I could do this with that as well. So I may at some point over the Summer do the same with that set. Then I’ll have an unstable cube too. This plan makes unstable more attractive to me. I won’t have some cards that I can’t play with in my decks. Instead I’ll have a whole cube I can draft and enjoy the experience of over and over. It makes me feel better about investing the money into the set.

So that’s the plan. Let’s hope I can pull it off.

Star Realms Scott’s Revenge

star realms

Continuing my recent series of boring Star Realms games, this one has Scott returning to form and annihilate me.


If that didn’t put you off the game the latest update adds another expansion. I’m not too bothered with the campaign side, I don’t play it. But the extra cards I’ll gladly take.


WWG added in-app tournaments which is going to be interesting to see how this develops, and what sort of costs are involved.

The initial tournament is 20 units of the in game currency an attempt, which is approximately 25 cents if my calculations are correct.

Looking at the prices below depending on the cost of other events I’m reasonably happy with the charges being made to buy the in game currency.


Considering I have won one game and got a reward of 3 credits, the temptation to keep playing to get those foils is tempting. It helps that the cost to enter is low. But is that because WWG want to draw people in to get them used to paying to play? If WWG keep the prices low, then I can see this taking off. But if they get the pricing wrong, and try to milk the players I won’t be using this.

Magic League This Weekend At The Hobbit Hole.

magic, Magic League, MtG

This Saturday my FLGS The Hobbit Hole kicks off at 11am the Magic League for Dominaria.
“Players start with 3 boosters and may purchase another each week, plus another after any set of three losses.” From that initial 3 booster packs you build a 30 card deck with which to play against other players participating in the league.

When you buy that initial 3 packs you get a “collection box”, which is basically a cardboard box to store you deck and unused cards in. Plus after you have played 10 games you get a promo card. Which for the League games is Zhalfirin Void I believe.


Naturally it will be rather nifty to get a copy of this, so I’m going along to take part. I’m hoping that I will be a bit luckier in my pulls for this. I haven’t been overly lucky so far with this set.

So long and thanks for all the fish

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As final days at a place goes this was a pretty good one, if not on the expensive side.

I’d ordered a cake for the staff room, along with 24 cup cakes for my level 3 students that were in today.

After the cup cakes had been wolfed down, my Dragon Tribal deck swooped from the sky reigning fire on the other players. It helped that 2 of my opponents were mana screwed, they were just not getting any.

Between the fiery destruction in Commander and lunch there was time to do a quick run to my FLGS The Hobbit Hole to pick up a bundle for Dominaria and another Prerelease kit. I’ll go over the pulls in another post.

Lunchtime a massive abuse of the Two for One Tuesday deal at the local Dominos meant there was pizza in the staff room and for my students. The pizza for my students didn’t last long at all. A plague of locusts take longer to strip a field of crops, and that’s fast.

I suppose I was feeling a little extra generous with it being my 50th yesterday and all. In a way this was a kind of me celebrating yesterday but doing it today, along side saying farewell.

My year 1 Level 3 students got me a play mat that some of them had signed. Which is pretty cool, and a nice thing to remember them by. Going to miss them, they were a great bunch on the whole.

Although I’m leaving these students, I hope I made the last day an enjoyable one for them. They have a lot of work ahead of them to complete the year. But I know they will do it.

For now I’m going to rest on my laurels for the evening. Tomorrow is a new start for me, and the work starts all over again.

50 Years on this Earth

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Considering how annoying I can be I’m surprised I’ve made it to this age. Sadly I’ve not aged as well as Kylie who is the same age.

I’m not a big one on celebrations. It’s been a normal day. I sent a pizza to Nath down in Portsmouth so that he can have a mini celebration on me. And that is about the extent of my celebrations.

Tomorrow is another big day, it’s my last day at my current employer before moving onto a new employer nearer to home.

What would you buy? A Star Realms Question

star realms

Scott does this sort of post on the Star Realms Facebook from time to time. So I thought I’d copy him.

In the discard and draw piles you have the usual scouts and vipers, plus a Cutter and Mech World.

So what would you buy?

I went for the Embassy Yacht, and hit Scott for 6 damage. Was that the right thing to do this early on in the game?

Scott Schools me in Star Realms

star realms

In an ever escalating war of friendly banter I just put up the last 2 games of Star Realms Scott and I played. Sadly the Star Realms app didn’t have the game available that started this off from the start of the week. So no seeing me get my butt handed to me by Scott. But don’t worry I’m sure there will be an opportunity for me to put one of those games up soon enough. After all our stats against each other show that Scott is the better player.

You can visit Scott on his YouTube channel Scott Plays HERE.