Fenland Gamers Friday Night Gaming

Last night saw the Fenland Gamers meet up at it’s usual haunt The White Lion to play some games. While Charlie, Diego and myself were struggling for survival in a post apocalyptic future once more in Outlive. Jonathan, Jess and Nathanial were subsistence farming in Agricola Family Edition.

The postal gods had been really kind to me, and the Kickstarter exclusives for Outlive had arrived the previous day. So we were using the new recessed player boards, first player marker and event. The other bits like the mini expansions, rooms, leaders I saved for another day.

I’d been doing really well for the first 5 rounds of the game. But the final round was a disaster for me. I went from being in with a shot at winning to not even being in the same country as winning. Failing to be able to scavenge or hunt enough food to feed my survivors meant I had to lose survivors when it came to the night phase. And that hit my scoring big time. I crashed to the ground hard.

Charlie had thought he was out of the running for most of the game, did not score any events, yet when we were totally things up made a late surge to come in a comfortable second place. Leaving the run away victor Diego and his survivors being saved.

While we finished off our game, the others played a quick game of The Mind. After which we all played a couple of games of Perudo. Component wise it doesn’t get much simpler than those in Perudo. Plastic cups and dice. Yet this simple bluffing game is such fun. I lost the first game, which Diego went on to win after being left to just him and Jess as the last 2. Naturally being out first, meant the friendly banter was aimed at me. I believe Jonathan’s words were “put that in your blog”. I did better in the second game, but sadly to rub salt in the wound Jonathan won.

This was Charlie’s last time at the group. He has had to move away for work. So it was great to have had this opportunity to play some games with him. Good luck Charlie with your year of living in Preston. We hope to see you at the end of September when we attend Tabletop Gaming Living.

We really are grateful to our hosts The White Lion for providing the facilities for us to game.

Dominaria Store Championship

Yesterday I’d finally got my act together and built a standard deck ready for the Dominaria Store Championship at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole. I went with big green stompy.

My first game was almost a mirror match up. The main difference was they were playing more artifacts than me. Our 2 games were quick games. Both saw me mulligan to get the right cards that I was looking for. Which was basically to have Llanowar Elves, Steal leaf Champion, a couple of forests in my hand. Everything else in my hand is gravy. Both games saw me get Ghalta out cheaply. The second game I had him buffed up to a 16/16.

I knew my next match wouldn’t be as easy or quick. This win was going to put me in with the big boys.

Despite losing the next round 2-0. It doesn’t show how despite the losses, my deck did ok against the knights deck. The first game was not a complete walk over and saw me frustrating my opponent at almost every turn. Our second game saw an early Silent Grave at least stop some of my opponents graveyard shenanigans that allows him to recur cards. So yeah I lost, but I felt good about it. My deck had put up a good show for itself.

The third and final round saw me up against a blue/white Teferi deck. This was not a fun match up. Our first game saw me mana screwed, then when I tried to get something out it was countered, bounced back to my hand. The usual blue control shenanigans. In the meantime Teferi was out, and able to ultimate. I couldn’t do anything to prevent it. Every time my opponent now drew a card he could destroy one of my permanents, which was at that point 4 lands. The writing was on the wall, I conceded. Our second game was a better start for me, but still unable to keep any creatures out long enough to do any damage. I had lots of mana, but still Teferi kicked in again. So I conceded, no point going through the motions. I lost 2-0, and unlike the previous game, didn’t really enjoy the experience.

My final win loss ratio was 2-4 for the tournament, which was enough to bring me in 6th place, out of 8. So I walked away with 2 copies of the promo for the competition, a cool top 8 deck box, and a participation booster of my choice.

Afterwards we had a casual game of Commander. I played my Elf deck with Doubling Season added. Two of my opponents at the table were the players I lost against in the tournament. Now if allowed elves goes crazy. And they allowed my elves to go crazy. I did take some early hate when there was an artefact out that caused me to take a hit every time a creature came out instead of gaining a life. But my Commander allowed me to shut that off.

Funny enough the Teferi player from the tournament got salty when I killed him off, claiming he was not a threat. And at that point he wasn’t. But I didn’t like the Planeswalker that he had out. Plus before the game started there was a hint from one of the others he could go infinite. I thought he had a bit of a nerve being salty, considering his Teferi deck, and just because his deck hadn’t managed to get going. “This is the reason I don’t play Commander often” were his words to one of the others. I had no guilt. Revenge is a dish best served up in Commander.

To be fair if I had lost the game, I would have been happy it had started to do its thing. And Commander games one moment you are top dog, then something happens (usually a board wipe of some kind) levels the playing field, and then some one else gets the ascendancy. Then the cycle repeats. But I managed to stop a board wipe before it could happen. Got a Doubling Season out, had unlimited hand size, and a lot of cards in hand. So I would have recovered quickly from a wipe. But still I was able to swing in and get lots of damage in. I think at the end, all my elves were +5,+5 from artifacts and an elf played. Then I played an elf that because of Doubling Season came in with 20 +1/+1 tokens on it, which meant all my elves got also +20/+20. It was game over.

An unchecked Elf deck is a dangerous thing.

Afterwards I asked if the others could recommend cards they thought I was missing. I got a couple of good recommendations that I will track down to add to the deck. Which I know now one of my ex-students will be cursing and saying “hell no”.

Next Saturday is Open House weekend. So head down to your local FLGS, get a free Welcome deck, learn to play Magic. Play some games with your new deck. Then get the

full art Guttersnipe promo card. Which is a pretty sweat card in a red burn deck.

If the Magic bug hits you, you can also buy one (or more) of the 5 new Planeswalker decks that stores with a WPN are allowed to sell early at the Open House. The new Planeswalker decks are cheaper now at £10 approximately, but only come with a single booster pack now instead of 2. I don’t mind this, but some players are complaining.

So in a way this is going to be like a pre-pre-release. I like this bit from WotC allowing the FLGS to sell product early.

With all this goodness going on next week you know I’ll be there.