It must be Fate (Reforged) to get so lucky! Plus my first ever FNM.

So this past weekend saw the release of Fate Reforged, and I had a booster box of it on order since late December, which I got to crack this weekend with great excitement. In my last couple of posts i have discussed cards I was on the lookout for, namely Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest, and so I was keen to see if I could get lucky and crack one or the other of those. To cut a less than exciting story short, I was lucky enough to crack them both! This set me up nicely for the rest of the box, and I wracked up further luck by getting 2 fetch lands ( Polluted Delta and Wooded Foothills) and a foiled Tasigur, the Golden Fanged. All in all, along with the other rares and mythics as well as some pretty sweet uncommons I got a decent haul from my box, and it has set me up nicely for the coming weeks, giving me plenty of fuel to build new Commander decks around (I got 4 of the 5 new clan Khans, and 4 of the 5 Legendary dragons) so I will be trying to brew some interesting new lists using some of these.

One of the things I was looking out for in addition to the headline grabbing new rares and mythics were some  new cards which I think would work nicely in a hyper aggressive mono-red list that I took along to my first ever FNM a couple of weeks back. This deck was built around the idea of playing nothing more expensive than a 2 drop creature and getting in for the 20 points of damage before the midrange decks and control decks that are dominating the current Standard meta get chance to build up. I built my initial list, focussing on Monastery Swiftspear and Akroan Crusader, along with Satyr Hoplite and a whole bunch of instants and sorceries with lost casting costs that target the two Heroic creatures. To round out the list, there were a pair of Act of Treason to steel my opponents big blockers, and Tormented Voice to give me some card draw. To complement the draw and the Heroic, as well as provide some place to dump mana, and give me more punch, I had a pair of Dragon Mantle. When I had finished pulling it together I realised this was built totally from common and Uncommon cards, more by accident than design. However I gamely took it along for my first ever FNM, fulfilling a New Year's resolution in the process, and proceeded to go 1-3 over the evening. Not the greatest ever record, but certainly not the worst I could have done. I played an Abzan midrange that walloped me very quickly when really I should have mulliganed my opening hand in game one, for my first match, which I lost 2-0. The second match was a mirror and was a narrow 2-1 defeat in which all three games finished with the winning player on 3 life or less: not bad considering I was playing a plainly superior version of my deck! The third match was a dream, playing a neat looking Jeskai combo deck, and beating it comfortably 2-0. I went into the last match hoping I might be able to go 2-2, but went up against a mono-Green monsters deck that my opponent openly admitted was bad against aggro game one... and lost game 1! I got serious mana flood, and lost to Polukranos, the World eater. My opponent quickly sided in 11 cards against me and proceeded to beat me down rather efficiently in game 2 to give him a 2-0 victory, and put me at the end of my first ever FNM. I am certainly going to be back at the first chance I get, but I need to improve my list.

Along with FNM I organised an MtG day with my playgroup, running at my house (with the agreement of my ever supportive wife, thank you for that!). Unfortunately a couple of them were not able to make the day, but I did manage to hook in some of my players, and we proceeded to test out a whole bunch of the Commander lists I have built, as well as a couple of great 60 card lists one of my players, Ian, has designed. It was  great to be able to really knuckle down and spend a whole day messing about with cards, and I am hoping I can do it again soon. One thing we might aim for next time, assuming we can find enough players for it, will be playing Kingdom with our Commander decks. I found this thanks to the Commander's HQ podcast, so big thanks to them, and I would recommend that show to anyone who is into Commander, as it's a real good listen, and gives some nice advice about deck building too.

Fate Reforged and a Magic Day

In recent weeks I have had an explosion of deck building/brewing, with my count of Commander decks going from 3 to 18 (and counting). The more I think about what would be fun to build around, or fun ideas, the more of them I get and this means I end up brewing decks, which in turn adds more fuel to the fire. Having had a decent amount of success securing some interesting cards in trades or via eBay auctions, this means I have plenty left in the tank to keep on brewing. I am certainly not saying all (or in fact any...) of these decks are amazing but hopefully they are all fun to play.

Why did I open with that paragraph? Well, because this coming weekend I might actually get the chance to play some of these brews in some multiplayer games. I have managed to scrape together some members of my playgroup and a free day to dedicate to simply playing some games. I have found that as I get older and gather more responsibilities, the chance to dedicate large chunks of time gets less and less. However my ability to get hold of the games themselves, or new parts for said game (in the case of Magic: the Gathering). I find this all very frustrating, so I am really looking forward to being able to indulge my MtG addiction for a whole day, and have to give thanks to my wife for giving up the table for a day.

This coming weekend also sees the release of Fate Reforged, the second set in the Khans of Tarkir Block. The first set saw me buy a booster box for the first time ever, and I really enjoyed the experience of cracking it, and trading from it to get the cards I wanted from the set. I loved getting some of the cards I really wanted, and in the last 3 months it has given me plenty of good cards to build with or trade for stuff I really wanted (Fetchlands were pure gold for this, as I am not a Standard/Modern player really!). The box also gave me my first ever foil Mythic: Narset, Enlightened Master, which was a pretty cool card to open. If you have never opened a foil Mythic, it is a really fun feeling for a casual player I think.

Narset: my first ever foil Mythic

 With this in mind, I went right ahead and preordered myself a box of Fate Reforged from Manaleak, and its arrival coincides rather well with my gaming day. I might actually get to try my hand at some Limited Magic, as long as I don't just blow through them all beforehand (much as this would greatly upset Brian Wong and Marshall Sutcliffe on the Limited Resources podcast, sorry guys!). Hopefully I will have a whole heap of fun opening the box and seeing what I get. I think cracking this with my playgroup will add to the fun, and playing some Limited with it will be added fun: perhaps some DC10 might be a good way to play the packs out, as I won't have enough Khans of Tarkir to do a proper  FRF-KTK-KTK draft.

Thinking about the cards that are in Fate Reforged, there are definitely some target rares and mythics that I want to pull, especially when I put my Commander hat on (which is my usual MtG play style). One is Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest, which I elaborated on in my last post: however there are two standout non-legendary cards I want to get my hands on, and I am sure they are no great surprise. The first is Monastery Mentor, which looks to be a fantastically fun card for any deck that uses Prowess, or in fact a deck that wants tokens, and plays non creature spells. I can think of a couple of my decks it would be great in (Selesnya Tokens for example), and I think it will be a really fun card. I do also think that it might be a really good card for Jeskai decks in Standard, but that isn't really my area of expertise. The second card I really hope that I open is Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: this card is looking a lot like the chase mythic in prerelease. It is only the second colourless planeswalker that Wizards have created, and it looks like it may well fit into the current Standard in the Perilous Vault control decks. He also could fit in every single Commander deck, due to him being colourless. The other colourless planeswalker, Karn Liberated, is one hell of an expensive card and looks to be really fun to play. I am hoping I get an Ugin as I really think he will be right up there.

I will certainly be writing about what I pull, and see if I get my wishes come true (hey, I like Magic Christmas Land), and will write up the highlights of my Magic Sunday if I get some good stories from it. Good luck to everyone who is cracking Fate Reforged this coming weekend.

Boxing with Khan(s)

So I purchased my first ever booster box recently, of the newly released Khans or Tarkir set. Up until now I have purchased boosters, Fat Packs and even gone halves on a booster box but this was my first ever solo purchase of a box, and I did it with great excitement. This would be my first chance to keep all the mythics and rares myself, and there would be 36 fresh boosters to crack... what's not to like???

I hadn't really read up much on the Khans set before I got the box, mainly to preserve the sense of mystery in the new cards when I opened them, but I had read about Wizards of the Coast changing how Standard was going to work with fair warning before Khans was released so I knew what to expect there. As I play a mixture of different formats, the changes to Standard didn't seem so bad to me, and keeping it fresh every 18 months seems like a step in the right direction. It's not like I lose the use of the cards when they rotate out, I have other formats I can play them in.

I collected the box from Nebula Custom Gaming and sat down for a while to start cracking boosters, as I had a little time to kill, and was too excited to wait (despite being a grown man I retain my childlike excitement at new toys it seems). My excitement was sustained by opening my first two packs and pulling a foil rare and then a foil mythic (for a total of 4 rares and mythics from 2 packs).
Narset, Enlightened Master in foil rather complemented Jeskai Ascendancy in foil rather well I thought, and certainly made me want to crack more open. After cracking a few more open, and discussing with Lee the prospect of some swaps (I would have loved to have gotten hold of Sorin, Solemn Visitor off of him but it was promised to someone else) I had gotten a couple of rare fetchlands (which are very much this set's cash cards) but needed to go and collect my brother, so had to delay opening the rest.

Later on, as I was opening the remaining two thirds of the box, I was a little disappointed. I had gotten a mythic and a foil rare in the opening two but with 8 packs left to go had failed to open any other mythics. Sure I had grabbed a total of 5 fetchlands, and had gotten some really interesting looking cards, but come on, everyone loves a mythic! I need not have worried it seems, the last 8 packs yielded 5 more mythics rares, including a Sorin, Solemn Visitor of my own to my great pleasure. I also grabbed a Wingmate Roc, a very strong looking Mythic that looks like it will be good fun to play.

With all of my boosters opened and with some cards already earmarked for resale (read: fetchlands) I set about considering the set as a whole. It has a strong 3 colour scheme and this was something I hadn't come across before. I had invested quite heavily in the Return to Ravnica block, especially Dragon's Maze so had experienced a multi-colour focused block before but three colours was a new thing. I have been considering what i should play and what I should build from these cards, and was immediately drawn towards Abzan based on a number of the cards I had pulled (including Sorin). Also there were some really fun looking cards that were Blue/Green (not colours I normally play) so there may well be something for Sultai and Temur brewing away in the back of my mind. The fact that I then acquired a playset of Sagu Mauler may also have boosted these colours for me too ;)

All in all I am looking forward to getting my teeth into building a new Standard deck focusing on Khans or Tarkir. I certainly have some cards that I am not using from the Theros block that could slip nicely into an Abzan deck, and I am very much looking forward to brewing something up and seeing how it does. I'll hopefully get a decklist up in the next week or so.

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.

A mixed blogging week

So whilst I was away on holiday I had all sorts of productive plans for things I would plan and write for this blog. However it looks like events conspired against me! I had planned to write up my plans for a Sliver EDH deck, but alas I had the cards I wanted delivered to the incorrect address so didn't receive them in time to take them away with me. However it does mean I should get to collect them this evening from my post box.

Since I could not work on my Sliver deck, I decided to try and do a write up about my work in progress decks. I sat down at the table, with the sun shining and a cool drink, only to find that there power cable for my laptop was irreparably damaged! This meant that I couldn't write up what I had intended to write, due to the lack of power. I only managed to replace the cable yesterday upon my return from Wales. Once again, at least this gives me some ammunition for things to write this week and next!

I did get to do two relevant things on my week vacation though: first off I spent some of the time writing up ideas for my ongoing Numenera game. The location where we based proved quite inspiring for game writing, as did the amount of reading for leisure that I did through out the week. This means I have a (hopefully) fun location for my players to explore in the Ninth World for the coming sessions. I hope that I can get a rough copy of the location drawn up and some description posted for a future article. The second thing I managed this week was to find the only shop in Pembrokeshire that is in the Wizards of the Coast Magic: the Gathering network. This proved useful as it was my brother's 31st birthday this past weekend (Happy birthday Ian :D )and it meant I could get him a present on time, selecting one of the Magic 2015 Intro Packs, Hit the Ground Running. So far we haven;t had chance for a game with this Blue-Green deck but I am looking forward to playing against it, and I am glad to have given Ian something new to build against (his Depths of Power based deck from M13 was devastating). The new deck included a Stormtide Leviathan, so he was happy, as this was used to such good effect in Depths of Power.

Stormtide Leviathan: horrible blue so and so!

There was one new(ish) thing that I started on whilst I was away. Back in 2004 when Vampire the Requiem was released by White Wolf as a replacement for Vampire: the Masquerade, I acquired a copy of the core rulebook along with the World of Darkness book required to run the game. Over the years I have slowly gotten my hands on a few more of the books, but have not once in 10 years ever run the game (although I have played a couple of one offs using the system). Last year, on a whim, I got New Orleans: City of the Damned second hand, but hadn't gotten round to reading it. With my laptop out of action, and needing my RPG fix, I started reading this whilst I was away, and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. In a discussion with my player group we came to the conclusion that it might not be a bad idea to try Requiem finally. This means that I have added it to the roster of stuff I want to run in the future, and when we finish/pause the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, I might look at running Requiem. For now I have added it to my list of topics in the tags, and hope I can get more written about the game soon.

My latest read and a new (old) topic for the blog.

Magic 2015

Well its the release day for the latest Magic: the Gathering core set today. I already have a pre-order in place for some of the cards that I found interesting (Sliver Hivelord I am looking at you), but more than anything I am looking forward to getting some boosters and seeing what I get!

The Sliver Hivelord, centre piece for my first Sliver Commander  deck.

I have wanted to get a long to a pre-release for a Magic set but never managed to make it yet, real life keeps getting in the way. It doesn't help that I live away from home during the week, so vanishing for a day at the weekend can be a little unfair on my wife I feel, but hopefully, very soon, that will no longer be an issue as I am moving home to Walsall. What this means is that I can hopefully get myself along to see a pre-release and give a go to playing some Limited, which is a format of Magic that I have never yet experienced, and would love to give a go to. I am looking to see if I can rope my brother in to attending the pre-release for the next block so that we can both get a chance at drafting and playing in a tournament environment for the first time.

The Magic 2015 promo image, featuring the newly changed Garruk.

In the meantime it's time to start looking at my decks and figuring out what I need to remove that has rotated out of Standard, and what i can put in to replace those cards that have gone. I have a week's holiday away with family next week, so I am hoping that I can use some of the time to look at my decks and see what changes need to be made. My holiday should also give me time to catch up on the session write ups for my Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, ready for the next session. I am looking forward to getting the campaign log up to date before I forget vital details of what has gone on! The final plan for my spare time, games wise, is to build my Sliver Commander deck, which will be focused around my newly acquired Sliver Hivelord. That should be enough to keep me going for a week away, and I should be able to present the decklist for my Sliver deck once I am back.

Weekend Gaming

So its been a bit of a busy weekend that has just passed, but I did manage to get an afternoon in, on Friday, of playing MtG down at Nebula Gaming again. I got some games in with my own decks, and I also managed some pretty decent trades, acquiring Ashiok Nightmare Weaver in exchange for an old Champions of Kamigawa deck I have had kicking around for 10 years. I once again got to try out the Minotaurs in a few games and the deck has really come along nicely, winning most of the hands it played. It isn't having quite the same effect on my regular, break-time gaming at work, however. My workmate has improved his deck (a Red Deck Wins archetype deck) once again and last week it proved remarkably difficult to beat. The introduction of Boros Reckoner and Chandra's Phoenix have made meant that the deck is now fast, lethal, filled with evasion and has a creature with cheap recursion. It is clear that Hellcow's Hammer isn't going to out-aggro it, so I have spent some time this weekend considering ways I can compete with this deck, without spending a large amount of money (preferably by using cards from my collection).

The two new cards that are causing me such pain

 So far my ideas for working around RDW are as follows: a return to a mono-blue deck, but this time make it much more creature heavy. This deck would use a playset of return-to-hand effects (Voyage's End, Aetherize) coupled with some cheap, tough creatures to stabilise the board state (in this case Sigiled Starfish and Frostburn Weird). To aid in attack there are creatures with evasion (Phantom Warrior, Cloudfin Raptor) and then there are some big finishers that benefit from protection of one kind or another (Benthic Giant, Tromokratis). This might work, but it might be too slow, and I think it might still be vulnerable to direct burn. With that point in mind I came up with a second idea: a Green-White deck centred around the idea of efficient creatures that also allow for lifegain. Now lifegain is usually a sub-optimal idea as it does nothing to alter the board state. However against burn it allows me to stay alive long enough to see my endgame through. A card I long ago dismissed as useful, Heroe's Reunion, is what I am looking at, along with others that add life when they come in (Centaur Healer, Alive//Well). The other creatures allow for some nice blocking early on, and there are again some big finishers (Hundred-Handed One). Godsend adds some handy removal and a nifty power boost too, plus its difficult to get rid of it. Both of these decks are with me this week and I intend to give them a go, see how they do. I'm not expecting them to be brilliant, just be the basis of something I can build on. I'll be writing about the results later in the week.

Godsend: a nasty little surprise, and one of my key hopes for this deck.

One other thing I have been doing at the weekend that is gaming related is preparing for a short campaign to be run on Wednesday nights with some friends of mine over Roll20. This will be a Numenera campaign, the new(ish) game written by Monte Cook and released last August after a very successful Kickstart campaign. I backed it at the Kickstart but have only had chance to run a very brief one off so far. This new game will give me chance to try it out some more and get a good feel for the system and the setting. It's something I have been itching to give a go to, and something that should give me some more topics to write about.

The Ninth World should give some fun stuff to write about!

The Hellcows Revisited

So, I have been using my Minotaurs deck for a few weeks now, playing it, testing it and trying to make steady improvements to it. It has played in games against my workmate, it has played in games at Nebula Custom Gaming, and it has played in games against my brother too. In all of these games the deck has held it's own, winning around 50% of the games it has played (perhaps even a little more). Why have I gone ahead and said all of that? Because I want to write about the deck list! So here is the decklist as it stands for my newly christened Hellcow's Hammers:

LANDS

• 4 x Rakdos Guildgate
• 11 x Mountain
• 7 x Swamp

CREATURES

• 2 x Gnarled Scarhide
• 2 x Ragemonger
• 4 x Kragma Warcaller
• 2 x Felhide Petrifier
• 3 x Deathbellow Raider
• 3 x Oracle of Bones
• 3 x Ragebood Shaman.

OTHER SPELLS

• 2 x Searing Blood
• 2 x Magma Spray
• 2 x Sinister  Possession
• 2 x Doom Blade
• 3 x Stab Wound
• 2 x Flurry of Horns
• 2 x Shock
• 2 x Fall of the Hammer
• 2 x Lightning Strike

SIDEBOARD

• 1 x Flurry of Horns
• 2 x Felhide Brawler
• 2 x Lightning Strike
• 2 x Drown in Sorrow
• 2 x Minotaur Skullcleaver
• 2 x Duress
• 2 x Pharika's Cure
• 2 x Dark Betrayal

So, there are three things that are immediately obviously different about this deck list from the original:

1) There is now a side board. The original was a 60 card Intro Pack deck, and so did not include a sideboard.

2) There has been significant concentration of cards. The numbers of certain cards have been upped considerably, whilst some that were only present as singles before have been removed.

3) The non creature spell suite has been altered considerably. Several of the previous Instant and Sorcery spells were very expensive for their effect, and some were down right bad cards (I'm looking at you Lightning Diadem).

The creature cards have undergone considerable revision whilst I have been playing the deck. One thing that quickly became apparent was that single cards (like the Fanatic of Mogis, Rageblood Shaman, and others) were not coming out often enough to make them reliable. My choice was either to acquire more copies of said card or cut them out altogether and replace them copies of other minotaurs. In the case of the Rageblood Shaman and the Felhide Petrifier, I upped their counts to 3 and 2 respectively, whilst removing the Fanatic of Mogis, and the Warchanter of Mogis altogether. I found both of these creatures to be somewhat expensive and their tricks too situational for my style of play.

Warchanter of Mogis: one of the cards removed from the deck altogether, as I found it too expensive and it's ability too situational to be useful.

A major change in the creatures was the decision to remove all of the non minotaur creatures altogether. This meant that the foil rare from Voracious Rage, Spawn of Thraxes, has been cut as it was very expensive. Whilst Spawn did give the deck some flying and it made a splash when it came onto the board, it had no real synergy with the minotaurs and so he was cut. Along with the unfortunate dragon, Insatiable Harpy and Pharika's Chosen were also removed: the harpy due to her being a single card that was replaced by minotaur duplicates, and Pharika's Chosen was directly replaced by Gnarled Scarhide in the one drop slot.

The non creature cards underwent a major overhaul whilst play testing. Flurry of Horns and Magma Jet stay as they were (although one more copy of Flurry was added to the sideboard), and Searing Blood was increased from 1 to 2 to make it more viable. However the remainder of the spell suite was removed for various reasons: like the aforementioned Lightning Diadem is just a bad card, over-costed, and weak. Other cards such as Rollick of Abandon or Pinnacle of Rage were just expensive for what they did, and were also only singles, so their utility was limited.

Poor old Lightning Diadem, just plain bad as a card.

There are still some areas for improvement I feel. I want to increase the number of Ragemongers as they really are a very handy card, both for reducing summoning costs and also acting as removal bait. The Boros Reckoner would be an obvious (but expensive) card to add to the deck. The fact it is a minotaur counts heavily in it's favour, but the fact it rotates out of Standard in October counts against it (since it is a £6 card, so £24 for a playset). The spell suite has a number of areas I think I could improve, with possibly getting rid of Sinister Possession and replacing it with something more deadly, such as  2 more Doom Blades. However, I do feel like this deck is nearing completion and is probably 95% of the way toward where I want it to be. Well, at least until Standard updates in October!