Busy moving and Gathering

Sorry for the lack of updates in the last week or so. I have been busy arranging my move back to the Midlands, packing up books and furniture, as well as arranging the house ready for when I get back and our new arrival shows up in a couple of months time!

This has meant that not only have I not had chance to write my usual blog posts, I have also not had the chance to play much, either table-top roleplaying or Magic: the Gathering. However, with moving back at the end of next week, and being able to meet up with my gaming group more regularly I should soon have plenty of things to write about.

Coming up this weekend is the Lorien Trust's Gathering (not to be confused with MtG). This is the biggest event in the LT's calendar and I for one am really looking forward to getting back to Erdreja, along with the rest of the VKP. It looks like we may have a fifth member for this event which is great news (fingers crossed there Anna!), and our glorious leader Scrat should hopefully be full of both keen and command this event. On top of the usual excitement for a LARP event, I am extra excited as this will be the first time I have ever gone to an event having spent OSPs (the systems experience points) on my character. I should go from an adequate healer to one who is much more useful at both healing and holding my own in battle, and repairing hits to body and armour alike. If I can find some nifty new bits to add to my kit that will be even better!

The VKP.... on a dry day! Octavian is hiding behind our glorious leader, Scrat...

One of the issues we have with LARPing weekend events is the ever present threat of bad weather. However we are pretty lucky as a group, as we are only about 15 miles from the site so if things get too rough we can retire to our home town and get dry. This leaves us with what to do whilst the inclement weather gets it's self gone. The obvious answer? More gaming of course! Last time around, we got one day rained off so went home and played a session of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in Pathfinder; this time around I have a back up plan which consists of us going old school. My recent purchase of Twilight 2000 from RPG Now has meant we have a bit of a build up in enthusiasm for playing it, so if we get bad weather then I hope to get some characters rolled up and start exploring the landscape of post-WWIII Poland. Along with that I am sure there will be plenty of hands of MtG to test some of my decks with, and general beer to be drunk, friends to be chatted with and all the other fun LARP brings with it.

A Deck in Progress

Its been a little while since I have posted about Magic: the Gathering, so I thought I would share a deck that I have in progress currently. Unfortunately, my opportunities to play have somewhat dried up of late. My workmate has drifted out of playing, and the last few weekends have been rather busy so have not had chance to drop in to Nebula Custom Gaming to get a game in. Hopefully I can rectify this at the weekend, and soon I will be moving back to the Midlands so that I can get down and game in the evenings.

Centaur Healer: this deck's work-horse (pun intended).

Anyway, on to the deck. This deck is a green-white deck, built in response to the increasingly poor win ratio I was having against my work mate's Red Deck Wins deck. I simply couldn't out-damage that deck with my Minotaurs, so I decided to change tack and go for something that would slow him down so much that he would run out of steam. For this I decided to use a tactic that is seen as somewhat sub-optimal in MtG: gaining life. Normally it's not great, but against a deck expending large numbers of cards for direct damage it can really mess up their flow, and if played right can give you serious card advantage. The deck list looks like this:

Lands (x23)
------
4 x Selesnya Guildgate
10 x Forest
9 x Plains

Creatures (x22)
---------
4 x Centaur Healer
4 x Kalonian Tusker
4 x Lagonna-Band Trailblazer
2 x Hundred-Handed One
2 x Crocanura
3 x Briarpack Alpha
2 x Renowned Weaver
1 x Karametra's Acolyte

Planeswalkers (x1)
--------------
1 x Ajani, Mentor of Heroes

Spells (x12)
------
2 x Alive//Well
3 x Giant Growth
2 x Unflinching Courage
2 x Heroes Reunion
3 x Feral Invocation

Artifacts (x3)
---------

2 x Selesnya Keyrune
1 x Godsend

Sideboard
----------
2 x Oblivion Ring
2 x Call of the Conclave
3 x Hopeful Eidolon
2 x Guardian of the Gateless
4 x Plummet
1 x Archetype of Endurance
1 x Nyx-Fleece Ram

Before opportunities to play dried up at work, this list was holding it's own against the Red Deck Wins, sucking the speed out of the game and allowing enough blocking both in the air and on the ground (thanks to creatures with Reach like Crocanura and Hundred-Handed One). The Sideboard was developed to increase the deck's potency against aerial threats with Plummet & Guardian of the Gateless, and it has more Lifegain in the form of Nyx-Fleece Ram and Hopeful Eidolon.

The Nyx-Fleece Ram: who doesn't need a sideboarded sheep?

The deck looks (so far) like it has enough creatures to form a decent attack, and the curve works well enough that I usually get something defensive (like Lagonna-Band Trailblazer) out early enough to keep myself alive and then build up a respectable force before sweeping in and causing damage (at least, that's the theory). However, without more play testing this is still very much in the development stage. Hopefully, getting down to Nebula more, and also being closer to my brothers will mean I get more chance to test this out soon.