Where I am with Magic the Gathering

The last thing I wrote about MtG was way back in January of 2015, around the release of Fate Reforged, coming up for 8 years ago. In terms of MtG this is effectively ancient history! Back then we were still in the times of the block structure, back before the current era of FIRE design, and back when Commander wasn't the dominant way of playing the game. I dropped out of the game within a year of writing that article, just too busy to keep up, and lacking the money to keep up with the products. I finally decided I would start selling off some of my unused expensive singles in 2021, and so started to put some up for sale.

One of the cards the got sold off

 Predictably, after a short while looking up cards and prices, I started to see cards I thought might be good for my favourite EDH deck, The Gitrog Monster. This quite quickly snowballed from me selling a few cards to starting to buy a few. This very quickly reignited my interest in the game, fuelled further by my son finding the game of interest and wanting to play. Fast forward to now in late 2022 and I would say I am once again fairly enfranchised, although I cannot keep up with the release schedule, nor can I keep up with the explosion of legendary creatures that are released in each set. I once started a series of articles ranking all of the eligible commanders on mtgcasualplay.com, which appears to now be a defunct website, and this was something that was reasonable to attempt back in 2015, if quite ambitious. Now, in 2022 trying to rank all of the eligible commanders seems insane! In the most recent set, Dominaria United, there are 41 legendary creatures that could be used as the commander of a deck, and that doesn't include those from the accompanying Commander products (which is another big change that has happened in the meantime). It is pretty clear how Wizards of the Coast are catering more and more for Commander, and the release schedule for products has also ramped up massively. So I won't be trying to resurrect my old series, even if my views and experiences have changed and grown, meaning I think it would be better written now and contain better insights. In terms of MtG content moving forward I intend to do a mixture of articles about the decks I have built or will build, as well as looking at products and cards as they come out. 

 

For the first time in my life, I find that I have someone to play regular games with: my son is now old enough to enjoy the game and be able to play it without having to require help most of the time. Although EDH is best enjoyed in multiplayer, we also play a fair number of games 1 on 1 and have a blast. I am not ashamed to say he can beat me about as often as I can beat him. I even intend to take him to his first Friday Night Magic this Friday at Asgard Games here in Walsall. He has even taken part in helping construct some EDH decks of his own, and those are pretty good fun to play against, with a similar enough power level to most of mine that they are an even game. You can check out the current roster below (all decks are stored at Moxfield)

My Decks

• Mono-Red Artifacts - Daretti
• Golgari Lands - The Gitrog Monster 
• Dimir Sacrifice/Treasures - Eloise, Nephalia Sleuth
• Orzhov Aristocrats - Liesa, Forgotten Archangel 
•  Mardu Reanimation - Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
• Golgari Elves - Lathril, Blade of the Elves
• Selesnya Vanilla Tribal - Jasmine Boreal of the Seven 
• Esper Lifegain - Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
• Rakdos Goblins - Wort, Boggart Auntie (a development of my very first EDH deck!)
• Naya Pump and Smash - Minsc, Beloved Ranger  
• Grixis Dethrone - Marchesa, the Black Rose
• Mono-White Tokens - Bennie Bracks, Zoologist

Billy's Decks

•  Dimir Zombies - Wilhelt the Rotcleave 
• Mono-Red Goblins - Krenko, Mob Boss
• Five Colour Superfriends - Garth One Eye 

It's quite a long list , and there are a few others that are kicking about that are in various limbo states, as well as a couple I don't actually enjoy but haven't gotten around to deconstructing. No doubt this will be added to and changed as I go along, but this provides a handy snapshot of what things look like as I write in October of 2022.

 

Everything I wanted in my last article on MtG!

As an aside for anyone who read my last MtG article, yes I did indeed pull an Ugin, the Spirit Dragon in Fate Reforged. See if you can spot it in a deck list! 

 

Well, that was some break!

 And just like that, over 7 years have gone by! When I last wrote on this blog it had just started a journey into a new career as a teacher, filled with enthusiasm and hope, looking forward to enjoying a mix of gaming and work. Turns out it didn't quite work like that! However 2 years of global pandemic, some mental health issues, moving house, raising a child and the reality of teaching all came together to rob me of my motivation to write about gaming with any regularity and so the month long break I promised myself before I wrote my next post turned into multiple months and then into years.

The shelves have gotten more full!

Gaming as it stands (mostly) at the moment

 This period of time has also coincided with some serious changes (in multiple stages) in my relationship with gaming. I fell away from Magic the Gathering from about 2016 through to 2021, barely maintaining my decks and paying very little attention to the sets that were released, or how my favoured format of Commander developed. Along with this the landscape of roleplaying games changed considerably with the rise of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition along with play shows such as Critical Role and TV shows such as Stranger Things making the game (and the hobby as a whole) slightly more mainstream than it had ever been. I however didnt really change along with this, and still play mostly the same games I did back in 2015. It was where and when I played that has changed, with the regularity of games dropping off and then with COVID19 rolling around in 2020, my sometimes online gaming became only online gaming. As I write this in late 2022 the vast majority of games I run (still almost exclusively a GM rather than a player... some things never change!) are still online. My players and I are scattered across the UK so it means that we can still play together despite the challenges life throws in the way.

Enjoying a spot of game planning

The Adventures in the Forgotten Realms prerelease in 2021, the set that got me back to MtG

So why now am I writing this, so long after the last piece on this blog? Well I now sit for the first time in 7 years with the motivation to write about gaming. Truth be told I have often flirted with the idea of writing again, and have had a few short lived projects that fell by the wayside, but none of them have ever quite managed to provide the same level of joy and satisfaction that this blog gave me when I wrote it regularly back in 2014-2015. There have been some changes in my life which mean I am now in a place where I have the motivation to write again and I feel like there are things I want to write about. So here it is, the first post of what I hope will be many. I have a list of content I'd like to cover over the next few weeks and months, and I have the time and the motivation to get my thoughts down too. Hopefully some people will see this and those that do will enjoy what I have to say, or at the very least it will provoke some thoughts and conversations. Over the next few posts I hope to have a mix of Magic the Gathering deck articles, RPG gameplay updates (I have just launched a new Pathfinder 1st edition game) and some things on boardgaming, something that is a big change to me over the past few years.

It's been a while...

Wow, it's been some time since I last posted here! I fully intended to make sure i wrote something at least every two weeks and that has really fallen by the way-side. Looks like the reality of travelling for work and having a young family has taken its toll on me and my spare time. I have even ended up reducing the amount of table top gaming I am doing, with my last campaign (a Vampire: the Masquerade game set in Detroit) playing out slowly over 6 months before grinding to a holt recently. All of this has left me feeling a longing for getting back to writing, which recently I have been able to do, thanks to mtgcasualplay, who have kindly let me publish a series of articles about Commander. I have recently started the mammoth task of giving a short review to every card that is legal to play as your Commander, and the 2nd part of my article series has gone live today.






In other news, I have been able to do something recently that I haven't done for a long time and that is actually play in a a table top RPG game. As a one off a friend wanted to demo the new Star Wars game Age of Rebellion by Fantasy Flight Games, and so got the starter set. I agreed to play to help out the two other players who were brand new to RPGs, acting as the voice of experience (or something like that).  The system was new to me, and involves some custom dice, along with the idea that the players make all the dice rolls, and the GM sets which ones are rolled. I reminded me of a cross between Numenera, and the old Space Crusade board game from the 1990s, but that was no bad thing.

Unusually for me I didn't descend into a raging lunatic at the first opportunity and we all had a blast playing it in a relaxed atmosphere without taking it all to seriously which was really good fun. I think that I have a take away lesson from this session and that is to cut back on the seriousness a bit and remember we are all here for some fun. I want to try my next D&D campaign a bit like this, so less focus on rules minutiae, and more on just making sure everyone has fun.

That is the end of this short update, but hopefully I can get back to updating this more regularly now, especially as I will soon be working much closer to home. This will hopefully mean more gaming time and more time to write.

 

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.

Finally got that working...

This is just a really quick note to say I have fianlly cracked installing an autocard app to my blog so now my links should pop up nice pictures of the cards I am talking about. To give credit where credit is due, I used the The Munson's App to get it up and running on Blogger, so a big thanks to them.

Currently I only have autocard links for my last blogpost, and will be making every post that features MtG cards from now on have autocard links too. I am aiming (time permitting) to go back and change the links in older posts so that they too conform to the new style. It has been my aim from the start to include an autocard, and now I have one, it seems a shame to not use it on all of them, but that is a time consuming process.

There is one oddity I have notcied currently with how the cards appear. Mostly they pop up just fine, but cards in sets from Journey into Nyx onwards pop up an empty box. I am currently not sure why this should be but I will do some investigating and try and find out what the score is there.

In other news, there is the upcoming Fate Reforged release, due at the end of this month. I have been eagerly following the spoilers as they have come out, and have my eye on one or two of the cards as potential bombs for Commander, in particular Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest:

I think this card has a whole host of potential as a general in Commander, and brings in the Jeskai wedge colours nicely. I did have a copy of the Jeskai legend from Khans of Tarkir; Narset, Enlightened Master, and I was somewhat underwhelmed so she got traded away. I felt I had to jump through too many hoops to make her work, and this is where I feel Shu Yun looks a much better selection. Same body, better ability and Prowess. Yes he loses Hexproof and First Strike but I still prefer him.

All of this musing got me thinking... I might actually do something of a set review for Fate Reforged, looking at them through the lense of Commander. Obviously these will be entirely my opinion, and I am not too sure I am qualified to give it, but at least it will give me an outlet to talk about the card. Watch this space.