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.

Fishing

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night was meant to be game 4 of Charterstone. But life predictably got in the way for one of the group. Unlike previous hiccups alternate gaming too place instead.

The substitute game hitting the table last night was Nusfjord.
Jonathan (Owner of the game) had only played the game solo, and for the first time a couple of days before. So this was a first for him as a multiplayer game, and it was the first time at all for Jeff and myself.

The decision to play Nusfjord was made late afternoon. Which meant Jeff did his homework and watched a couple of reviews online. Me? Once I was home I had tea and watched the latest episode of the relaunched Roseanne. It hadn’t even occurred to me to swot up like Jeff.

We had the usual joke of “it’s just like Agricola”, before Jonathan went over the rules.

I love the meeples they have in this game. The wooden fish, the little boat first player marker. The wood meeple is a wood meeple. In fact I like the components a lot with one exception. That’s the cardboard money tokens. Talk about letting the side down. They are minuscule. If this game ends up in my collection then these will be the first thing I’d upgrade in the game, possibly the only thing. I have spare cardboard coins from 7 Wonders, 7 Wonders Duel, and Clans of Caledonia that I could replace them with. Well you’d have spare as well if you had the cool metal coin upgrades for those games too.

I really did enjoy this game, despite coming in last. I found this game far more accessible than Feast for Odin. That was like a complete sensory overload with everything you could do. This game has 3 resources, fish, wood and coins. You can see the elements that Uwe Rosenberg likes to use in his games reused here. For me the way he’s mixed them works. I like the shares mechanic. You can issue them as an action and get money for them, you can buy other people’s shares. When you have another players shares they give you a fish for each share you have of theirs at the start of each round. The recruiting village elders to get slightly better actions that only you can take is cool. Building buildings will gain you a one off bonus, plus maybe points at the end of the game. These buildings also cover up spaces on your player board, that if empty give you negative points at the end. You also have to build boats to increase the amount of fish you bring in at the start of each round. But these boats are also worth points at the end of the game.

This isn’t a points salad type of game. Yes points are how you decide the winner. But these aren’t going to be massive scoring games. Jeff won with a score of 30 points, Jonathan got 27, and I came in last with 23. With the 3 building decks there is going to be some variety each game because not all cards are used. Plus then you will also get different combos.

I’m nearly on the edge of saying this is my favourite game of Rosenburg’s that I’ve played. Nope it is. No doubt about it. It hits the sweet spot for me. Yeah I’d happily play this again.

After we finished playing there was some general chatter, plans made for Fridays gaming, and then we disappeared off into the night.

Magical Wizard Wars

Commander, magic, MtG

What happens when 2 wizards go to war? Well if you are the third person at that stand off you get to sit on the side watching fire balls and enchantments fly around.

Today in a pretty fun Commander game 2 arcane wizardry decks went up against each other, while a Hapatra snake token deck mainly got to do nothing.

My arcane wizardry deck has been upgraded to be focused around Kess as the commander, and her ability. So it has less focus on getting wizards out on the battle field, and more focus on instants and sorceries, and playing them multiple times using Kess’s ability and naturally other spells that do a similar thing or make a copy of a spell that has been cast. Most of my upgrade is based on the $20 upgrade from this MTGoldfish article. I’ve strayed a little with the odd card. And I’ll put the list I’m playing with up at some point soon. I did find at one point in this game wishing I had an unlimited hand size. I can fix that by trying to squeeze in a Thought Vessel.

The other wizard at the table was also using the arcane wizardry deck but with no upgrades, and had Inalla as the commander. So they wanted to get lots of wizards out to make use of Inalla’s ability.

By the end of the game Hapatra was costing 18 mana to get out. Yeah we were controlling that battlefield. These wizard decks are reactive, especially mine. So it must have been a bit frustrating for the student. I have to admit it almost became a challenge how much can we push up that casting cost of Hapatra?

By the time it had come to delivering my winning blow I had about 8 2/2 blue drakes on the field. Not bad for a deck not specifically aimed at playing creatures.

My killing blow was most apt for a Kess deck. I cast a Comet Storm, with an X of 28, kicked, and because I paid one of the 2 mountains required using a transformed Primal Amulet I was able to copy the spell!

I know after playing this game I need a card in that gives me an unlimited hand size. It would have come in real handy when I pulled back all my instants and sorceries from the graveyard to avoid them being exiled by a bit of graveyard hate. I have an artefact that will do this. But what do I lose to fit it in?

From the spoilers I’ve seen for Dominaria (the next set), there are one or two wizards that would sit nicely in an upgraded Inalla deck. I know there are a couple of angels I want in my angel deck. I’m hoping to have the first attempt at the Elf Tribal deck done next week. Then it’s some play testing. Followed by getting the angel deck done.

An experiment starts

Uncategorized

I’ve finally crumbled and decided to give the UK Math Trade a try. I’m treating it as a kind of experiment.

What is a Math Trade? It’s a complicated way to trade games. People add to a list the games they want to trade. That bits simple. They then look through what people have put up for trade and hopefully find some that they would like to get. This part is handled by a separate website to the list. When you find something you would like you then have to say which of the games you added to the trade you’d like to offer for it. Once again that seems simple. Once everyone has done this by a given deadline, a piece of software does the complicated stuff and matches people up. After that you get to decide if you will accept the offer being made to you that was assigned by this algorithm. While you are doing that, others are also doing the same. All accepted offers then get sent out, and people have got rid of old games they no longer want and get new games that they want to try. And I think that’s the whole Math Trade in a none coherent explanation.

So I’ve put up an unopened Dark Souls the board game, a Kickstarter Edition of Clans of Caledonia with the metal coins, and the expansion for Star Wars: Rebellion unopened.

If I can get The Gaia Project then I’ll be really happy. But Nations or Civilisation would also not be a bad result.

So let’s see how this goes.

Dinosaur Tribal Brawl Deck

Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

This post will come as no surprise to anyone, especially after I said I’d put this list up in my previous post on Brawl. Yep jumping on the bandwagon like so many on the interweb whether they are youtubers or just players of the game, I’m putting up a Brawl deck list.

But before I start talking any more shite about deck building etc, I’m not claiming to be a brilliant deck builder, or that this is the greatest deck ever. This like the other decks I’ve put up here on the blog are just that decks I’ve built and enjoyed playing and decided to share with the world. Remember I don’t take part in FNM, or competitions, I’m just a casual player who enjoys building decks to play with. Feel free to suggest improvements, glaring mistakes, explain to me why my commander is the worst one ever, or why card X is better than card Y in the comments. If you haven’t commented before I need to approve your first comment but after that you don’t need me to approve anything. It’s just a little anti spam measure that hopefully isn’t too much of a hinderance.

For my first Brawl deck list I’ve gone with a dinosaur tribal deck based upon my dinosaur tribal Commander deck. With that as my starting point I first removed all the none Standard legal cards. This included all those cards not in Standard but legal in Commander, plus any cards that are banned in Standard (which in my Commander deck was 2 cards). That left me with around 74 cards. 14 too many for a Brawl deck.

Naturally I’m sticking with the same commander, Zacama, Primal Calamity. I don’t like playing against him. He’s so oppressive. In our meta once he’s out with the mana to back him up he’s stomping all over the battlefield. It’s basically game over. But how did I select which creatures stayed and which didn’t? With none of the Commander staples for mana ramp, the creatures that tapped for mana or gave me a discount had to stay. The Elder dinos were going to stay, then I went with creatures that gave me some ability when played, and stayed away from those that had the enrage ability in general. When I looked at the deck list when writing the post I thought I’m light on lands. Ideally there should be 23/24. But then I remembered with the creatures that tap for mana or give a discount, plus enchantments that increase the mana I can tap for, Growing Rites of Itlimoc, and Immortal Sun there is a bit of ramp and extra mana hidden elsewhere. There is also some tutoring with Commune, Forerunner, and Harvest Season. So with the tools or should that be cards? That I have this ain’t too bad a deck.

Here are the pretty pics the Decked app generates for me.


So the Brawl version has a slightly higher AMC to the Commander deck which has an AMC of 4.19.

So after all that waffle here is my first Brawl deck, Dinosaur Tribal.

Counts : 60 main

Creatures:27

1 Kinjalli’s Caller
1 Drover of the Mighty
1 Otepec Huntmaster
1 Raptor Hatchling
1 Atzocan Seer
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Frilled Deathspitter
1 Kinjalli’s Sunwing
1 Ranging Raptors
1 Thrashing Brontodon
1 Forerunner of the Empire
1 Knight of the Stampede
1 Ripjaw Raptor
1 Charging Monstrosaur
1 Charging Tuskodon
1 Crested Herdcaller
1 Raging Swordtooth
1 Regisaur Alpha
1 Burning Sun’s Avatar
1 Carnage Tyrant
1 Etali, Primal Storm
1 Gishath, Sun’s Avatar
1 Polyraptor
1 Wakening Sun’s Avatar
1 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
1 Zacama, Primal Calamity
1 Ghalta, Primal Hunger

Spells:14

1 By Force
1 Commune with Dinosaurs
1 Silent Gravestone
1 Abrade
1 Blood Sun
1 Crushing Canopy
1 Gift of Paradise
1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
1 Harvest Season
1 New Horizons
1 Fumigate
1 Vanquisher’s Banner
1 The Immortal Sun
1 Star of Extinction

Lands:19

5 Forest
6 Mountain
5 Plains
1 Scattered Groves
1 Stone Quarry
1 Sunpetal Grove

Aaah Grasshopper

Game day

My formative tv years were the 70’s and 80’s. I grew up watching “classics” like Kung Fu, The Water Margins, and Monkey, among many others.

But you are probably thinking wtf has this got to do with board games? Today I was meant to be playing Mechs vs Minions with Diego at our usual gaming hang out. However there was a little hiccup in the plan. Yep where we planned to play wasn’t actually open because of the bank holiday. So we had to go to an alternate venue to play. Naturally the new place Wetherspoons isn’t ideal for Mechs and Minions. So I had quickly nipped back home, and picked up a selection of 2 player games more suitable for a pub environment.

Yes I know I still haven’t established a link, bare with me.

Out of the selection of games I’d taken along we went with my kickstarter deluxe copy of Tao Long: The Way of The Dragon. Yes I was finally getting the game to the table. Within the game there are several modes to the game play. There is a novice/rookie mode called Grasshopper, then an intermediate mode called Monk, followed by the Master mode, and then finally a “The Chosen One” mode. As you advance the more sophisticated the game play gets, until you get to the The Chosen One Level.


Which as the screenshot above shows from the rules is pretty intense.

But it’s that rookie grasshopper mode that is my link to the opening sentence. Who from my generation would not think of that classic series and the flashbacks to the monetary and Caine’s journey to enlightenment? Or even the British comedians who did comedy skits based on those scenes on 70’s tv?

But back to the game. The components in this edition of the game, and the neoprene board are fantastic, and despite a simplicity stunning. And for being in essence an abstract game really generates an oriental feel to the game. I like Tsuro, but for me this is going to be my duelling dragons game of choice. It has that aerial battle feel, but with more strategy involved.

The strategy comes in the form of the Ba Gau part of the board where you select the action you want to take. There is some hard decision making going on here. You want/have to take a move, but if you do it leaves your opponent open to attack you, or manoeuvre into a more favourable position. This is surprisingly deep considering how simple a mechanic it is. But in Master mode it gets even deeper and more complicated! But we didn’t play at that level today.

If you rethemed this game as light cycles, it could be the light cycle arena from Tron (a movie I love) or a board game of snake (That old Nokia game).

We played the following map layouts: The Field, The Valley, The Gorge, The Torus, and The Cave.

Naturally our first game was The Field while we got used to the rules, flow of a turn, and discovered a couple of misplays. We then worked our way through the map layouts introducing new game elements such as portals and obstacles. We hit The Torus and it’s much smaller play area last and played about 4 games with that layout. Out of 8 games I won just 1. Yes Diego royally kicked my butt at this game. The only break in our games was when we stopped to consume out burger and chips for lunch. Hey it’s the safest thing they do at spoons. Very little for them to get wrong.

Despite that thrashing from Diego I enjoyed playing the game. It joins a handful (if that) of great abstract games I have in my collection now. I think Tao Long will make it in the bag for games to take to UKGE to hopefully play.

I did have my revenge on Diego afterwards by boring him with how I don’t get these youtubers and what kids see in them. Plus other ramblings of some-one who has seen better years. But still a great day gaming with a great friend, who will make a fantastic dad when his daughter arrives at the end of the month.

Easter Pulls Part 3

magic, MtG

A little Easter day fun to start off the third and final post on my Easter pulls. Why I didn’t think to do something like this earlier I don’t know. Personally I think Nico would make a rather good Planeswalker. He certainly could replace Nicol Bolas for scheming. Not long after Loki arrived I remember having both dogs on my lap and catching Nico shoving Loki off onto the floor when he thought I wasn’t looking! Mind you Loki is just as evil. Take this morning for example when I thought he was just after some attention, a little tummy rub. Oh no he came over and threw up all over me. I tell you these attack chihuahuas are pure evil.

So let’s get on and look at the last of my Easter pulls.


What a final 3 packs. Thalia was one I’d seen in the spoilers etc and a “that would be nice to have, but…” so to pull her is a real treat. Caustic Tar Pit is a nice pull, and will go into a Commander deck, maybe my revisited Scarab God deck. Highland Lake a land, always want them. Stoneforge Masterwork is screaming tribal deck to me.

Advance warning, this Friday sees the Challenger decks and final ever Duel deck hitting your FLGS. Got mine ordered and paid for. So look out for some coverage of those.

Easter Pulls Part 2

magic, MtG

So here we are Saturday, day 2 of opening the booster packs I bought. Apart from Timber Gorge, I wasn’t really over thrilled by these 3 packets. Nothing really jumped out for decks that I’m currently brewing.

Yesterday I caught an announcement by CardKingdom that they have added a new product to their offerings. As long suffering readers will sadly recall I like their rookie and battle decks. So when CardKingdom announce they will be now be selling limit copies of a cube for $99 then I’m interested. This is aimed at those who want to start obviously playing MtG and draft using a cube. The cube being offered by CardKingdom is a 360 card cube, which supports between 4 – 8 players drafting. If at the end of April they have any left I’m going to treat myself to one as a 50th birthday present to myself and to celebrate my new job that I’ll be starting at the start of May. Oh yeah I’m moving on. My time at my current employer is coming to an end. I’ll maybe write more about this in May. I’ve been interested in the cube format for a while, just not enough to do anything about it. However the announcement yesterday got me thinking about it again. I like the idea of building a tribal themed cube, using elves, goblins, vampires, and menfolk with possibly a fifth tribe that I’m undecided about.