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!