More Epic Space Battles

Fenland Gamers, Game day

I’m going to start this post off with a clip from the most pointless sequel ever The Huntsman Winter’s War.


It’s that last few seconds where evil Queen played by Charlize Theron leans over and almost whispers “and you thought it was just a Game”. I’d like to pretend I’m a mine of movie clips and quotes for all occasions , but sadly I’m not. I just happened to be watching this first thing over my coffee and chocolate chip brioche, and thought “oh how appropriate, that sums up TI:4”.

We were due to start playing at 10:30. So to cut down on the prep and let us start playing as quickly as possible I got to The White Lion early to set up. The official FFG 20th anniversary 3ft by 3ft playmat looks awesome.

Despite starting at 10:28 to go through the selecting of races, setting up the tiles of our galaxy, placing initial forces, choosing our initial secret objective and other game play set up steps, which did include a brief how to play for our new player, the process still took 40 minutes. A very brief break for the usual refreshments, bodily movements, and nicotine hits for those that needed them, then saw our empires start competing for glory and power.


For a long time the game was fairly peaceful, no battles. Just some trading, swapping promissory notes, etc. Our galactic empires expanded, planets grabbed, borders established. But the expansionist ambitions of Jeff with his 2 war suns was starting to become a big threat on the board. Somehow I managed to grab Mecatol Rex and hold on to it. If only I’d been able to pull off the same stunt with my home worlds against Jeff. The fall of my home planets gave Jeff 2 of the 3 final victory points he needed to grab the win when it came to claiming the open objectives. A completed secret objective was the third.

So since getting Twilight Imperium 4th Edition last year, this is the third time I’ve played it. Which isn’t bad considering the share scale of the game. But the more important fact is Jeff has won all 3 games. Although I seem to be improving because I got a score of 7 this time. My highest score so far.

We had a great day playing TI:4, and what I still find amazing is despite it taking a long time to play, it just doesn’t seem that long, and time flies. It like you start playing in the morning and then the next thing you know it’s the evening. Time travel folks.

Can’t wait to play Xia next and then to organise the next session for TI:4.

Elf Tribal Commander Deck

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

The basis for this deck is the 2014 and Commander Anthology Guided by Nature Commander Deck. I was going to create an Elf Tribal deck from scratch, but after playing the mentioned deck there were a lot of cards that I’d want for my deck. So I bought a secondhand copy of Guided by Nature to change. Why reinvent the wheel, or most of it?

Like my other tribal decks there are some staples I’m now including in all my tribal decks. This Elf deck particularly generates lots of 1/1 token creatures. These are particularly vulnerable to cards like Blazing Volley, Scalding Salamander, or XXX, that can clear the battlefield of tokens and small creatures. These tribal cards amongst other things buff up my creatures protecting them from such cards. I think the last piece to my jigsaw will be to find an affordable (ie cheap) card that gives all my creatures indestructible.

The game plan for this deck is simple. It goes wide really fast. But the idea isn’t to really to swing in with lots of little creatures. Elf decks exploit this numerical advantage in other ways, like generating lots of mana, life, or buffing a creature. With the tribal cards that swing in with lots of not so small creatures is an option. But in reality it will be swinging in with one or two pumped up creatures.

Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury will remain the Commander for this deck. Her +2 loyalty ability is what we are really after. Getting a 1/1 Elf Druid token that taps for mana. Ramp, and spamming the board with elves perfect. Her -2 loyalty ability is also pretty handy too. It’s there but not sure I’d use the ultimate. Plus I think the ultimate isn’t very threatening. Her +2 is the dangerous ability, and why opponents will target her.

I’ve played around with the decks mana base. Changed one or two of the non basic lands, and reduced the number of basic lands from 25 to 16! Which means I’m playing 28 lands in total. But with a Growing Rites of Itlimoc, a couple of mana rocks, elves that tap for mana I don’t think mana is going to be an issue. Plus there are a fair few cards in the deck that allow me to go search for a land.

Here is the deck list.

Counts : 100 main

Creatures:37

1 Boreal Druid
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Elvish Skysweeper
1 Essence Warden
1 Ezuri’s Archers
1 Joraga Warcaller
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Druid of the Cowl
1 Elvish Vanguard
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Leaf Gilder
1 Priest of Titania
1 Sylvan Ranger
1 Steel Leaf Champion
1 Thornweald Archer
1 Wellwisher
1 Adaptive Automaton
1 Elvish Archdruid
1 Elvish Branchbender
1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
1 Farhaven Elf
1 Imperious Perfect
1 Lifespring Druid
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Timberwatch Elf
1 Titania’s Chosen
1 Drove of Elves
1 Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen
1 Immaculate Magistrate
1 Ivy Lane Denizen
1 Lys Alana Huntmaster
1 Masked Admirers
1 Wild Wanderer
1 Wildheart Invoker
1 Yeva, Nature’s Herald
1 Tajuru Pathwarden
1 Elegant Edgecrafters
1 Gladehart Cavalry

Spells:34

1 Glaring Spotlight
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Silent Gravestone
1 Sol Ring
1 Stoneforge Masterwork
1 Emerald Medallion
1 Land Grant
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Lull
1 Moss Diamond
1 Steely Resolve
1 Thought Vessel
1 Beastmaster Ascension
1 Commander’s Sphere
1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
1 Herald’s Horn
1 Nissa’s Pilgrimage
1 Presence of Gond
1 Pulse of Murasa
1 Root Out
1 Hunting Triad
1 Whirlwind
1 Coat of Arms
1 Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury
1 Overwhelming Stampede
1 Predator, Flagship
1 Vanquisher’s Banner
1 Desert Twister
1 Grim Flowering
1 Obelisk of Urd
1 The Immortal Sun
1 Wave of Vitriol
1 Zendikar Resurgent
1 Praetor’s Counsel

Lands:28

1 Arcane Lighthouse
1 Evolving Wilds
16 Forest
1 Haunted Fengraf
1 Havenwood Battleground
1 Jungle Basin
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
1 Path of Ancestry
1 Scavenger Grounds
1 Slippery Karst
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Tranquil Thicket

MtG Dominaria Open House This Weekend

magic, MtG


This weekend your FLGS will be holding Open House events for MtG. I believe my FLGS The Hobbit Hole are holding theirs on Saturday. These are regular events throughout the year aimed at new and returning players to MtG.

You turn up at your FLGS, get a free Welcome deck, an experienced MtG player teaches you how to play. Once you are happy with how to play MtG, you then play 2 or 3 games solo against other new players. Once you have played those games you get a rather sweet full art Llanowar Elves promo card from the new Dominaria set.


If you are feeling brave after attending there is naturally the weekly Friday Night Magic that are held at your FLGS. You may want to buy one of the new Challenger decks for this if they are playing Standard. If they are doing a sealed or draft event you won’t need anything extra, you use the booster packs that your entry fee covers to build a deck. These can be a bit daunting, but those weird, scruffy looking guys don’t bite, and will gladly help and give advice.

However next weekend is the Prerelease weekend for the new set Dominaria. This means you get to play with the new cards a week early. They are fun things to attend, and the cost covers a Prerelease kit, 3 rounds of playing Magic, and 2 participation booster packs. So for your entry fee you get 8 boosters packs from the new set, a foil promo card, and a life count down die. Which is pretty good value.

Then the following weekend it’s the actual release weekend when the new set officially goes on sale. Your FLGS will most likely be doing drafts with the new cards that weekend.

If you are interested in learning to play this weekend is a great jumping off point. Hope you can get to a store and get that sweet promo card. I’ll be jealous I’m playing TI:4 instead so won’t get one.

Some random stuff

magic, MtG

One of my students has recently been given entry into the closed beta for MtG Arena. His main complaint about the game is due to him! His pc is not powerful enough at times during the game. Those times are when certain animations occur. Otherwise I believe he’s fairly happy with the actual game play.

For me Arena is dead to me until I can play it in my iPad. They could be testing it on iPad during this closed beta. For starters WotC are developing Arena in Unity. Which means they can export the game for whatever platform they like basically. No reason not to see a console version either. If White Wizard Games can do a closed Kickstarter backers alpha testing of Epic on PC/iOS/Android, and I bet they have less resources than WotC on this, then why can’t WotC with Arena? TestFlight on iOS allows this.

Because of the above Arena isn’t on my radar and wasn’t a consideration when I heard about Brawl. But since then some online have pointed out that one of the reasons Brawl may have been developed was for Arena. Commander is one, if not the most popular formats for MtG. Sadly Arena will not be able to play it due to the share number of cards that are legal in the format (thousands). So with Brawl only using the cards from Standard, and those are the cards available in Arena. The conspiracy theory is that this is why WotC invented Brawl, to add Commander like play to Arena. I certainly can see how this sounds credible. It’s also been pointed out in a podcast that Brawl in Arena may only be a 1 v 1 format, because they can’t see how the multiplayer element and board states would be handled.

For me I don’t want to have to grind to be able to do anything, like deck build.

Math Trade Update

A brief update on the UK Math Trade I’m taking part in. The list is now closed for adding games. It’s now entered the phase where people have until tomorrow I think it is to submit their want lists. This is basically you selecting the games you’d like to trade for and what you are offering from the games you put on the list.

I’ve submitted my want list.

It’s up to the software they run next to make the match ups. The Rebellion expansion I’m using as a wild card and see if I get offered anything of interest for it.

Dragon Tribal Commander Deck

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

Last August WotC scored a home run with their tribal Commander decks. I know I’ve upgraded the Wizards deck first, but it’s the dragons everyone wants to play in reality. A bit like when Ixalan came out, dinosaurs were the real stars. And yes I wanted to upgrade the dragon deck. So my starting off point for this deck was that $20 upgrade from the same source as the Arcane Wizardry one I did. That worked really well, although I did deviate for that one also for a couple of cards. Like the wizards mtgoldfish give you a couple of ways to take the deck. I went with the only real one to play with dragons. I went big instead of wide.

The cards from the suggested upgrade list are being kept to one side in a little card holder so I can easily play with that version of the deck if I so wish.

For some reason I don’t have a Dragonlord Atarka. Which is part of the upgrade list in that article. Yes I have one on the way now. However in the meantime it leaves the deck a card short. So at the moment I’m trying it with the Nicol Bolas Elder Dragon Legend. But I’m also thinking Glorybringer might be a nice card in that slot too. So at some point I might try it with that also.

Anyway my main deviations are tribal cards, such as Adaptive Automaton, Vanquisher’s Banner and Coat of Arms. There are a few scattered in this deck. So my dragons get even bigger.

Naturally my Commander is The Ur-Dragon. The eminence ability alone makes it worth while. 1 discount on casting other dragons isn’t to be sniffed at.


Tactically this is a swing in with big dudes deck. Which if you hit the cards are pumped up even bigger. All the creatures apart from being big hitters also have some sort of ability that benefits us. That might be when they enter the battlefield, attack or die. Either way whatever is triggered is good for us. Although Deathbringer Regent does have to be timed so he’s not also taking out our own creatures. Otherwise it’s a board wipe leaving us with a 5/6 on the board with nothing to block it, especially if it has been given haste.

Here is the all important deck list…

Counts : 100 main

Creatures:28

1 Dragonlord’s Servant
1 Adaptive Automaton
1 Dragonspeaker Shaman
1 Boneyard Scourge
1 Dromoka, the Eternal
1 Kolaghan, the Storm’s Fury
1 Scalelord Reckoner
1 Scion of the Ur-Dragon
1 Scourge of Valkas
1 Sunscorch Regent
1 Wasitora, Nekoru Queen
1 Broodmate Dragon
1 Crosis, the Purger
1 Hellkite Charger
1 Hellkite Tyrant
1 Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
1 Ryusei, the Falling Star
1 Savage Ventmaw
1 Silumgar, the Drifting Death
1 Steel Hellkite
1 Teneb, the Harvester
1 Atarka, World Render
1 Bladewing the Risen
1 Deathbringer Regent
1 Ojutai, Soul of Winter
1 Nicol Bolas
1 Utvara Hellkite
1 The Ur-Dragon

Spells:33

1 Earthquake
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Sol Ring
1 Dragon Tempest
1 Farseek
1 Helm of Awakening
1 Rampant Growth
1 Seek the Wilds
1 Steely Resolve
1 Anguished Unmaking
1 Commander’s Sphere
1 Cultivate
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Descendants’ Path
1 Elemental Bond
1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
1 Herald’s Horn
1 Kodama’s Reach
1 Temur Ascendancy
1 Crucible of Fire
1 Frontier Siege
1 Syphon Mind
1 Utter End
1 Whip of Erebos
1 Coat of Arms
1 Crux of Fate
1 Gravitational Shift
1 Kindred Discovery
1 Palace Siege
1 Unburial Rites
1 Vanquisher’s Banner
1 Obelisk of Urd
1 The Immortal Sun

Lands:39

1 Arcane Lighthouse
1 Arcane Sanctum
1 Command Tower
1 Crucible of the Spirit Dragon
1 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Exotic Orchard
3 Forest
1 Frontier Bivouac
1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
3 Island
1 Jungle Shrine
6 Mountain
1 Mystic Monastery
1 Nomad Outpost
1 Opulent Palace
1 Path of Ancestry
3 Plains
1 Sandsteppe Citadel
1 Savage Lands
1 Seaside Citadel
3 Swamp
1 Vivid Crag
1 Vivid Creek
1 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Marsh
1 Vivid Meadow

Big Lizards and Elves Rule The Planet

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night, magic, MtG

Today instead of the planned games of Brawl we ended up playing Commander. This meant I could try out the new decks. First up for my testing was Elf Tribal. Dale played with the Plunder the Graves precon. Whilst our opponents had a snake themed deck, and the Heavenly Inferno precon.

Surprisingly there were no board wipes played during this first game, and unbeknown to me this would be a trend for the days games of Commander. with no board wipes my Elves were able to run rampant, build up a big board state and just win.

The second Commander game saw my Dragon Tribal getting an outing. So Dale played my Dinosaur Tribal deck, whilst once again we were up against the snakes deck and the Guided by Nature precon this time. So basically big creatures against 2 decks that were going wide. There was a kind of early board wipe when I bought on to the battlefield my Deathbringer Regent, that destroys all other creatures if there are 5 or more other creatures on the battlefield. Which at the time I played him there was. After that for some reason the Dinosaur deck refused to play ball for Dale and gave him nothing. While I was just allowed to get lots and lots of dragons on the board. Mainly in the form of 3/3 cat dragon tokens (through Wasitora, Nekoru Queen), and 6/6 red dragons with Utvara Hellkite. And that is the one that was making things insane for me. I think my killing blow to Dale if it was real would have been a Dale looking up at the sky, and not seeing the sun. Mainly because due to the share number of dragons flying in they blocked out the sky.

After playing my now standard legal black aggro deck against Dale and a new deck he had created (I won that game). I played Commander again. This time I played the Dinosaur tribal deck, and it worked for me. I got Huatli, Warrior Poet out early, and from there each turn I was getting a 3/3 green dinosaur token with tramp. I was getting other dinosaurs out, including my Commander. Once again unchecked and no board wipes my board state was too powerful.

My fourth and final Commander game for the day was with my Elf Tribal and with the reoccurring theme of the day of no board wipes hit it’s grove and just laid waste to my opponents. I have to admit during the games I did have a tinge of guilt at times, usually when I had such overwhelming forces and was just about to unleash total destruction on them.

Afterwards Dale and I played some games of Standard using the new Challenger decks. Sadly the Approach deck didn’t do too well this time against the Hazoret one.

I don’t feel that my Commander decks are that good. It’s just with no board wipes and not kept in check they were allowed to do their thing. The tribal element was working well. Which reminds me, I need to revisit my Dinosaur Tribal deck and try and squeeze in these new tribal cards I have. So a Dinosaur Tribal v3 deck is on the cards.

In the evening it was the monthly meet up for the Fenland Gamers. Our first game of the evening was Snow Tails. This was a new game to us all apart from Gavin who owned it, and had played it once.

This is basically a husky sledge racing game in the style of Formula D, but with out the dice rolling. That part has been replaced by cards.

A nice twist to the game format is that crossing the finish line first does not mean you have automatically won. What counts is how far past the finish line you finish. So unless you crash out of the race by taking on too much damage, then you still have a chance of winning.

Managing your sledge with the cards so you determine it’s speed and whether it pulls to the left and right is at times tricky. Especially when you have to negotiate obstacles and corners. Plus there are various check points on the track that if you are going to fast through them mean you take on damage.


And I do like the damage mechanic of this game. You have a hand of 5 cards. When you play 1 or 2 cards on your turn you then draw back up to 5 cards. But if you take damage you draw a damage card instead that reduces the number of cards you have to play with, and stays in your hand. They can’t be removed from your hand. So when you take a fifth bit of damage that’s it you have crashed out of the game.

This is a nice game which I found although similar to Formula D, was also different enough to be a refreshing take on the genre. In our game only 2 players finished the game. Jeff, Gavin and myself crashed out of the game.

Our second and final game of the night was Roll for the Galaxy. Like a couple of recent games I’ve played at meet ups this was another game that hasn’t been to the table since October 2016. So I was a bit rusty on the rules, and don’t think I did a good job of explaining the rules. I do like this game, but I don’t think I’ve won a game yet. Which is my way of saying I didn’t win, that honour was taken by Jeff.

After all this I gaming it was time for home and some hunting for highlights of Liverpools victory over City.

Brief Brewing Update

magic, MtG

Not much gaming the last couple of days. But there has been some Commander deck building.

I’ve been brewing (with some help, these aren’t all my own work) 2 decks for these Commanders.

Naturally there will be deck tech posts about these 2 Commander decks in the near future. You have been warned.

But first I want to get a game or two in with them. Both tribal decks, but different tactics. I’m hoping that with the Magic tournament arranged for tomorrow as well as brawl we will get a chance to play Commander. Although this sounds greedy I’d like to play some more with the new Challenger decks too.

I’m also hoping my students have had a chance to brew solutions to a Progenitus deck another student has just built.

Naturally I’m expecting to see decks that stop Progenitus being cast, or use board wipes to get rid of it. But it will be interesting to see what solutions they come up with.

The Hobbit Hole MtG Rivals of Ixalan Store Championship

Game day, magic, MtG

Saturday was the Rivals of Ixalan Store Championship for my FLGS. In my previous post I wrote how I’d been tempted to enter because of the promo full art Steel Leaf Champion for participating. I’d also said I was going to use the tournament to test the new Challenger decks from WotC.

For the tournament I went with the Vehicle Rush deck, which after some very quick research in the morning was meant to be the stronger, more rounded of the four decks. Ok so I’ll go with that. Not played an artifact heavy deck before. So this was going to be a bit of a learning curve for me. Should I have stayed with a deck type I’m used to playing? Only time would tell.

Round 1 and I was up against the fabled Merfolk deck of Rob. John had spoken of this deck in hushed tones on Friday. Game 1 and I nearly took a win. Rob was down to 4 health, before his Ghalti and Merfolk did their job and steam rolled me. Our game 2 and once more Ghalti and those Merfolk just road all over me with me doing hardly if any damage.

I did get Rob to take a look at my mono black aggro deck, that is one card away from being standard legal. Swapping the 2 duress out to the sideboard and putting 2 Vraska’s contempt from the sideboard into the main deck was his main bit of advice. Rob also suggested looking at Kitesail Freebooter. Which I have considered in the past for this deck. I might put it in the sideboard to replace the non-standard legal cards. Otherwise he thought it wasn’t bad. I’ll take that from a much more experienced player.

Round 2 for me was a buy! So I was able to chill, take some photos for this post, watch a game or two.

Round 3 I was up against a player called Ben. In our first game, I did some damage, but he was beefing up creatures with cartouches left right and centre and there wasn’t much I could do about it. I was soon killed off. Our second game for me was a total train wreck. I was totally mana flooded. I had an initial had of one artifact creature and 6 lands, which I should have mulliganed. But I thought I’d risk it, surely I’d hit none lands for a few turns. But no it was land after land. Nothing I could do but lose.

The fourth and final round of the tournament had me up against a player called Dean. He was playing a dinosaur deck. I was a turn away from grabbing a win, when he played Ghalti, gave it haste and stole the victory. Not a great start. But then I bounced back and took our next game. It was down to the third and final game as the decider. Dean was getting land, but was not able to play much! I’d love to know what he had in his hand. But it meant I was able to do the unthinkable and win again and get a legit victory for the tournament.

At the end of the day my record for the tournament was 2-2, putting me in 6th place out of 9. Which meant I got a Top 8 deck box, the full art Steel Leaf Champion, and a participation booster pack of my choice (although Iconic Masters and Masters 25 were not included). I went with an Oath of the Gatewatch booster, but there was nothing in it of interest so like another player I gave those cards to a young lad who had taken part.

Why is Steel Leaf Champion my main prize and the reason I attended? A 3 cost, 5/4 elf that can’t be blocked by creatures with a power of 2 or less. That’s a powerful card. Which with the reprinted Llanowar Elf could be a turn 2 play. So you are hitting your opponent turn 3 for 5 damage. It can’t be easily taken out with lightning strikes or abrades. I’d have to look at other cards in Dominaria, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few decks built around this. I’m certainly going to be doing that. It’s something to look for in sealed events.

Ok let’s talk about these Challenger decks then. So I’ve played them against each other, and in a tournament that wouldn’t be too dissimilar to a FNM.

So Challenger decks are in WotC’s own words “intended to be playable and competitive right out of the box”.

In the rather attractive cardboard boxes you get standard legal 60 card deck, with a 15 card sideboard, plus a countdown life counter die.

So who is the target audience for these decks? I’d say new and returning players that want a deck that they can buy and play straight away at a FNM, and overtime up grade and make their own. And as WotC have said maybe win a game or two.

I know that at current card prices certain Challenger decks will sell a lot faster than others. That’s going to be mainly because for experienced players those decks represent a cheaper way to get their hands on copies of certain cards. So I’m hoping that WotC are doing a massive print run to keep these decks in stock for the intended audience to buy and play with.

I have to say playing these decks against each other was fun. In our limited number of games they seemed fairly balanced against each other. So I can see these being great for casual play also.

After the store championship today against competitive Magic players, I think the deck did as intended. For a precon it held it’s own. I won some games, lost more, but some of those games were fairly close also.

There is one fault with these decks. If the intended audience is the new and returning players, where are the tokens to go with these decks? This Vehicle Rush deck generates energy and 1/1 thopter tokens. So why weren’t these included? WotC give you the tokens needed with Commander decks. I’d argue that new players wouldn’t have the necessary tokens, and very likely nor would the returning player.

I’d definitely recommend these decks. They are fun to play, and give a solid basis to make the deck yours.

Been a long time since I rock n rolled

Fenland Gamers, Game day

It was a long day yesterday. It started off making the journey over to my FLGS The Hobbit Hole to pick up my pre-order of the final ever Duel Deck for MtG, Elves vs Inventors. This according to all the reviews I’ve seen wasn’t a great last hurrah for the product range. I was just getting it to not even add to my little collection of Duel Decks, but to harvest it for cards, particularly elves. The rest of my pre-order were the four new ready for prime time FNM Challenger Decks. These decks currently at present market values represent great value for money. The Hazoret Aggro with it’s copy of Hazoret and Chandra currently is amazing value. Both cards at time of writing were clocking in at £20+ a copy.


My intention is to also break up these decks and use the cards elsewhere. But first I want to play some games with them.

Whilst at my FLGS my pusher of cardboard and plastic known as the store owner John showed me the promo cards for the store championship being held the next day and for the open house the following weekend. Both elf cards. At the store championship a full art steal leaf champion, and the open house will have a full art Llanowar Elves. Both look rather cool. Yeah I want these for my Elf Commander deck. So I signed up for the store championship. I’m going to use one of the Challenger Decks to see how these do against more serious players (I’m lead to believe one of the stores regular FNM players is an ex pro player). Let’s put WotC claims to the test.

After my visit to my FLGS it was a rush back to Wisbech and The White Lion to meet up with Jeff and play War of the Ring. This was the second time I’ve played the game (the first time was the later part of 2016), so I needed a brief rules refresher. Once again I played as the free people of Middle Earth. Once again I got my butt kicked. I’m pretty sure that Jeff was taking it easy of me. I need to play this more often and look into tactics a bit more if I’m to progress at this game and be more of a challenge to Jeff.

We had a little time to kill between my shameful defence of Middle Earth and an evening gaming session. So Jeff kindly agreed to play some Magic using the new Challenger decks. I’m not going to say much about these games here, but save my thoughts until after the store championship when I will give my thoughts on the decks.

Six thirty came, Jonathan and Nathaniel arrived and Istanbul fully loaded with all the expansions and the kebab shop promo hit the table. Shockingly this is another game, although a favourite of ours that hadn’t hit the table since late 2016 also. That is the problem with having so many games between us. So many good ones there is never enough time to play them all. Apparently partners, families, work all want a piece of our time.

Jeff won our game of Istanbul, and the important part is Jonathan didn’t score more highly than me, we finished equal second. Friendly rivalry is always good.

It had been a long day, and a brain burning one too. So Jeff and I said our good byes and left the other two to play a Rick and Morty game of some description. Besides despite having a sandwich and chips for lunch at the hotel I was hungry and tired.

I love days like this.