Here it is folks, my first steps back into the world of real life Magic: the Gathering.
I'd dropped by the venue (Magic Comics & Hobbies) on Thursday (11/3) to buy the cards for my deck and to see if anyone was around who could offer words of encouragement or advice. I was lucky enough to run into the fella who organizes the card games at the shop as well as the owner. They were both extremely helpful and even suggested essentially what I had planned to do from the beginning: Buy an event deck and upgrade it along the way.
I had Friday off from work (I typically work Sunday - Thursday) and slept late. After eating dinner with my wife Noelle I was lucky enough to stumble onto a set of sleeves left over from my Lord of the Rings TCG years. I had a set of nice, green Dragonshields to protect my brand new deck! Sleeving up the cards brought me right back to the hours I used to spend test drawing in front of the TV. I probably drove Noelle right up to the edge of insanity with my constant shuffling as we watched 30 Rock. I'm just thankful she didn't feed my deck to the guinea pigs.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Saturday, November 5, 2011
The Deck
In order for me to play constructed Magic I needed to find a decent deck that wouldn't lead to my death at the hands of an angry wife.
I did some research, read some coverage to see what decks have been performing well to try and find a list without too many pricey cards. I also wanted to get something fairly competitive because if I ended up being frustrated I'd just run out and buy something else right away.
I ended up buying the Innistrad Event Deck Hold the Line for $25 along with extra copies of Champion of the Parish , Honor of the Pure , Elite Vanguard and Mirran Crusader to try and make it a little more powerful. All in all I spent right at $60 and ended up with a pretty powerful mono-white deck to bring to Friday Night Magic.
Here's the list, more or less, that I'll be playing for a little while:
Champion of the Parish x 4
Gideon's Lawkeeper x 4
Doomed Traveler x 4
Elite Vanguard x 4
Accorder Paladin x 4
Mirran Crusader x 3
Fiend Hunter x 4
Bonds of Faith x 4
Oblivion Ring x 4
Honor of the Pure x 4
Plains x 21
If I can get my hands on another Mirran Crusader and maybe some Ghost Quarters I'll wiggle some things around. There's not a ton of subtlety there, I play small guys and bash face, but I'll take advantage of anyone who stumbles on mana or gets a bad draw.
My next post will be up soon with some thoughts about my first tournament, Friday Night Magic, so check back soon!
I did some research, read some coverage to see what decks have been performing well to try and find a list without too many pricey cards. I also wanted to get something fairly competitive because if I ended up being frustrated I'd just run out and buy something else right away.
I ended up buying the Innistrad Event Deck Hold the Line for $25 along with extra copies of Champion of the Parish , Honor of the Pure , Elite Vanguard and Mirran Crusader to try and make it a little more powerful. All in all I spent right at $60 and ended up with a pretty powerful mono-white deck to bring to Friday Night Magic.
Here's the list, more or less, that I'll be playing for a little while:
Champion of the Parish x 4
Gideon's Lawkeeper x 4
Doomed Traveler x 4
Elite Vanguard x 4
Accorder Paladin x 4
Mirran Crusader x 3
Fiend Hunter x 4
Bonds of Faith x 4
Oblivion Ring x 4
Honor of the Pure x 4
Plains x 21
If I can get my hands on another Mirran Crusader and maybe some Ghost Quarters I'll wiggle some things around. There's not a ton of subtlety there, I play small guys and bash face, but I'll take advantage of anyone who stumbles on mana or gets a bad draw.
My next post will be up soon with some thoughts about my first tournament, Friday Night Magic, so check back soon!
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Day 1 - Magic Online Innistrad Sealed
I decided to start off with a Magic Online Innistrad 4 pack sealed event.
Theoretically this put me on even footing with everyone else, we all opened 4 packs, we all built our decks. I don't have to fight uphill against opponents who've spent hundreds of times as much money as I have.
Of course some of the folks I played could have had a lot more experience playing with the cards than me or they could have easily been as new to the current state of MtG as I am!
My MODO name is Carny and I've been on there for quite a while actually, I've just never participated in many events.
I bought my event tickets and hopped into the queue to wait for the event to start.
This brings my tally of money spent on Magic to $16.00, the cost of 4 Innistrad Booster Packs.
The first thing I did when my brand new cards appeared in front of me was to sort them by rarity. No slow-rolling of the good stuff for me, I wanted to see a Mythic Rare staring back!
Unfortunately I wasn't lucky enough to score one of the crazy expensive cards but I was lucky enough to get 2 nice White rares!
Here's what I got out of the 4 packs:
White
Geist-Honored Monk
Angel of Flight AlabasterBonds of Faith
Avacynian Priest
Gallows Warden x 2
Midnight Haunting
Paraselene
Rebuke
Selfless Cathar
Spare From Evil
Spectral Rider
Urgent Exocism
Voiceless Spirit
Black
Corpse Lunge
Curse of Oblivion
Diregraf Ghoul
Manor Skeleton
Maw of the Mire
Skeletal Grimace
Stromkirk Patrol
Victim of Night x 2
Blue
Armored Skaab
Claustrophobia
Curse of the Bloody Tome
Frightful Delusion
Hysterical Blindness
Silent Departure
Think Twice
Green
Full Moon's Rise
Grizzled Outcasts
Kindercatch
Naturalize
Somberwald Spider x 2
Spidery Grasp
Red
Crossway Vampire
Feral Ridgewold
Harvest Pyre
Into the Maw of Hell
Nightbird's Clutches
Pitchburn Devils
Rage Thrower
Riot Devils
Tormented Pariah
Village Ironsmith
Artifacts & Lands
Clifftop Retreat
Stensia Bloodhall Foil
Cellar Door
Cobbled Wings
Demonmail Hauberk
Inquisitor's Flail
One-Eyed Scarecrow
Witchbane Orb
I had some trouble deciding on how to assemble my deck. I knew I was going to be playing the really nice white cards but none of my other colors seemed deep enough to support a whole deck. I tried the Black cards first since I had 3 really nice removal spells in Victim of Night x 2 & Corpse Lunge. There were only 3 creatures in black though and 1 of them cost 5, the same as my 4 big White guys! Green and Blue were both in just as bad shape as Black but without the appealing creature-kill-cards.
I finally settled on playing Red even though the creatures were less than exciting. Red gave me almost as much removal as Black and allowed me to play my fancy Clifftop Retreat dual land. It also helped a lot that the minimum deck size for this event was 30 cards, I doubt I could have found another 10 to play!
After a short wait for the rest of the players to finish building their decks, a wait that I spent typing up the beginning of this post, I was paired up with my first opponent. I don't know the protocol on posting people's MODO handles so I'm going to leave them out this time around, the last thing I need is to get on a stranger's bad side! I made a point to begin this match and each one after with a "good luck to ya!" and my first opponent popped right back with the same (although he was the only one).
My first 2 matches went wonderfully. I won them both 2 games to none on the back of my powerful White cards and my Red removal. There was one very close game, though, where a boosted Invisible Stalker almost took me out all by himself! I liked working out what my opponent was capable of and it felt really good to win that game at 1 life. I even got to make use of my Sideboard to swap in an Urgent Exorcism for my opponent's Spirit tokens.
My final opponent, the one who stood between me and total victory, ending up not showing up for the round. I had a decent hand ready of Cloistered Youth, Midnight Haunting and land but, after waiting for just under 10 minutes for him to decide about his opening hand, the MODO program kicked him out and declared me the winner. I was sad that I'd been robbed of at least 2 more games of Magic but, on the up side, I'd won enough packs to cover my next event and then some!
I had a lot of fun, it's always nice to win, and I'm excited about my next chance to play which will be Friday Night Magic at Magic Comics and Hobbies in Slidell, LA. This time I need to scrape together some semblance of a real deck without spending my entire paycheck!
WHAT I LIKED
$16.00
Theoretically this put me on even footing with everyone else, we all opened 4 packs, we all built our decks. I don't have to fight uphill against opponents who've spent hundreds of times as much money as I have.
Of course some of the folks I played could have had a lot more experience playing with the cards than me or they could have easily been as new to the current state of MtG as I am!
My MODO name is Carny and I've been on there for quite a while actually, I've just never participated in many events.
I bought my event tickets and hopped into the queue to wait for the event to start.
This brings my tally of money spent on Magic to $16.00, the cost of 4 Innistrad Booster Packs.
The first thing I did when my brand new cards appeared in front of me was to sort them by rarity. No slow-rolling of the good stuff for me, I wanted to see a Mythic Rare staring back!
Unfortunately I wasn't lucky enough to score one of the crazy expensive cards but I was lucky enough to get 2 nice White rares!
Here's what I got out of the 4 packs:
White
Geist-Honored Monk
Angel of Flight AlabasterBonds of Faith
Avacynian Priest
Gallows Warden x 2
Midnight Haunting
Paraselene
Rebuke
Selfless Cathar
Spare From Evil
Spectral Rider
Urgent Exocism
Voiceless Spirit
Black
Corpse Lunge
Curse of Oblivion
Diregraf Ghoul
Manor Skeleton
Maw of the Mire
Skeletal Grimace
Stromkirk Patrol
Victim of Night x 2
Blue
Armored Skaab
Claustrophobia
Curse of the Bloody Tome
Frightful Delusion
Hysterical Blindness
Silent Departure
Think Twice
Green
Full Moon's Rise
Grizzled Outcasts
Kindercatch
Naturalize
Somberwald Spider x 2
Spidery Grasp
Red
Crossway Vampire
Feral Ridgewold
Harvest Pyre
Into the Maw of Hell
Nightbird's Clutches
Pitchburn Devils
Rage Thrower
Riot Devils
Tormented Pariah
Village Ironsmith
Artifacts & Lands
Clifftop Retreat
Stensia Bloodhall Foil
Cellar Door
Cobbled Wings
Demonmail Hauberk
Inquisitor's Flail
One-Eyed Scarecrow
Witchbane Orb
I had some trouble deciding on how to assemble my deck. I knew I was going to be playing the really nice white cards but none of my other colors seemed deep enough to support a whole deck. I tried the Black cards first since I had 3 really nice removal spells in Victim of Night x 2 & Corpse Lunge. There were only 3 creatures in black though and 1 of them cost 5, the same as my 4 big White guys! Green and Blue were both in just as bad shape as Black but without the appealing creature-kill-cards.
I finally settled on playing Red even though the creatures were less than exciting. Red gave me almost as much removal as Black and allowed me to play my fancy Clifftop Retreat dual land. It also helped a lot that the minimum deck size for this event was 30 cards, I doubt I could have found another 10 to play!
After a short wait for the rest of the players to finish building their decks, a wait that I spent typing up the beginning of this post, I was paired up with my first opponent. I don't know the protocol on posting people's MODO handles so I'm going to leave them out this time around, the last thing I need is to get on a stranger's bad side! I made a point to begin this match and each one after with a "good luck to ya!" and my first opponent popped right back with the same (although he was the only one).
My first 2 matches went wonderfully. I won them both 2 games to none on the back of my powerful White cards and my Red removal. There was one very close game, though, where a boosted Invisible Stalker almost took me out all by himself! I liked working out what my opponent was capable of and it felt really good to win that game at 1 life. I even got to make use of my Sideboard to swap in an Urgent Exorcism for my opponent's Spirit tokens.
My final opponent, the one who stood between me and total victory, ending up not showing up for the round. I had a decent hand ready of Cloistered Youth, Midnight Haunting and land but, after waiting for just under 10 minutes for him to decide about his opening hand, the MODO program kicked him out and declared me the winner. I was sad that I'd been robbed of at least 2 more games of Magic but, on the up side, I'd won enough packs to cover my next event and then some!
I had a lot of fun, it's always nice to win, and I'm excited about my next chance to play which will be Friday Night Magic at Magic Comics and Hobbies in Slidell, LA. This time I need to scrape together some semblance of a real deck without spending my entire paycheck!
WHAT I LIKED
- Winning
- Feeling Challenged by 1 of my opponents
- Getting new cards online (I still have a pitiful collection)
- Not getting to play all 3 rounds
- Waiting between rounds (it took just under 2.5 hours to finish the whole event
$16.00
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
What's a Stangg?
Hi there!
I used to be a big time Magic: The Gathering fan.
I can still remember going over to my friend's house in 7th grade and learning, sort of, what all the different symbols meant and how you used them to fight other people.
I loved it, right from the start, and I hassled my Dad for a deck of my own until he drove me down to the local comic shop to pick one up. I don't think he even knew what he was buying, he just wanted to shut me up.
I convinced him to buy me 2 Revised Edition starter decks, 1 for me and 1 for him, so that we could play each other. I'm positive that my Dad saw through my thinly veiled attempt at extra cards but he bought them anyway. I had a motley collection of my own.
I played Magic at school, at church, at home and even online in a CompuServe forum purely by text.
For the next few years I searched high and low for all the info I could find, I wanted to be the best, to know everything there was to know about Magic.
I read InQuest, Scrye, The Duelist and any other magazine with the slightest mention of MtG.
For a while there I was probably spending just as much money on publications as I was on cards!
At some point, for some forgotten reason, I decided to play the new Star Wars CCG and I fell in love with it even though I know I barely understood how to play. Over the next year I moved away from Magic and found a local group that played SWCCG. I played Decipher's Star Wars game and then their Lord of the Rings game when that came out. I loved both games and still have some of my favorite memories tied to them.
When organized play for LOTR ended I moved on to Upper Deck's comic book themed VS System and played on the Pro Tour for several years. I even made money playing VS as UDE threw money hand over fist at the game to try and lure players over from other games. I got to play against some well known Magic players like Brian Kibler, Jon Fiorillo and more that I've since forgotten. It was a really amazing experience to really like you were one of the best in the world at something and I made friends with people that I'm still in touch with on Pro Team DeckTech.
Eventually the money ran out for the VS System and as soon as the cash payouts disappeared so did the huge turnouts for the big events. I sold off my cards, figuring that my days of CCG's were over, and started to play World of Warcraft. There was a month or so where I dabbled in the local Magic scene but I never felt like I was wanted there and so I quickly retreated back in to WoW.
That catches us up to today. I'm a 30 year old, happily married man who plays World of Warcraft, collects toys and like to write about his nerdy hobbies. I still read about MtG every day on the web and I still get little urges to pick up the game every once in a while, to see what things are like out there, to see if I still know how to play card games like a pro.
This blog is going to follow me as I dip my toes in to the New Orleans area Magic: The Gathering scene as a guy who hasn't sat down at a gaming table in a very long time. I'm hoping it'll be interesting but, at the very least, it should be pretty funny to hear about how badly I get my butt kicked every game.
I'm going to keep track of how much money I spend, truthfully, and I don't plan for it to be a whole lot. I'm not expecting to be the best Magic player in town but I do wanna enjoy myself while I get beaten mercilessly.
The thing I'm the most interested in, scared by and have the least knowledge about is the kind of environment I'll be jumping in to. In the past I've found Magic players to be the most unpredictable demographic to predict. I remember far more jerks than friendly folks but there have been helpful and nice people too. I just don't know if I'm going to be welcomed or treated as an enemy from the get-go.
So check back soon if any of this sounds interesting to you. If there's anything extra you'd like me to talk about please comment here or on Twitter @rexplode and I'll do what I can to work it in.
Oh yeah, if anyone has any suggestions for me about how to go about this process for God's sakes please help me.
P.S. - Stangg
I used to be a big time Magic: The Gathering fan.
I can still remember going over to my friend's house in 7th grade and learning, sort of, what all the different symbols meant and how you used them to fight other people.
I loved it, right from the start, and I hassled my Dad for a deck of my own until he drove me down to the local comic shop to pick one up. I don't think he even knew what he was buying, he just wanted to shut me up.
I convinced him to buy me 2 Revised Edition starter decks, 1 for me and 1 for him, so that we could play each other. I'm positive that my Dad saw through my thinly veiled attempt at extra cards but he bought them anyway. I had a motley collection of my own.
I played Magic at school, at church, at home and even online in a CompuServe forum purely by text.
For the next few years I searched high and low for all the info I could find, I wanted to be the best, to know everything there was to know about Magic.
I read InQuest, Scrye, The Duelist and any other magazine with the slightest mention of MtG.
For a while there I was probably spending just as much money on publications as I was on cards!
At some point, for some forgotten reason, I decided to play the new Star Wars CCG and I fell in love with it even though I know I barely understood how to play. Over the next year I moved away from Magic and found a local group that played SWCCG. I played Decipher's Star Wars game and then their Lord of the Rings game when that came out. I loved both games and still have some of my favorite memories tied to them.
When organized play for LOTR ended I moved on to Upper Deck's comic book themed VS System and played on the Pro Tour for several years. I even made money playing VS as UDE threw money hand over fist at the game to try and lure players over from other games. I got to play against some well known Magic players like Brian Kibler, Jon Fiorillo and more that I've since forgotten. It was a really amazing experience to really like you were one of the best in the world at something and I made friends with people that I'm still in touch with on Pro Team DeckTech.
Eventually the money ran out for the VS System and as soon as the cash payouts disappeared so did the huge turnouts for the big events. I sold off my cards, figuring that my days of CCG's were over, and started to play World of Warcraft. There was a month or so where I dabbled in the local Magic scene but I never felt like I was wanted there and so I quickly retreated back in to WoW.
That catches us up to today. I'm a 30 year old, happily married man who plays World of Warcraft, collects toys and like to write about his nerdy hobbies. I still read about MtG every day on the web and I still get little urges to pick up the game every once in a while, to see what things are like out there, to see if I still know how to play card games like a pro.
This blog is going to follow me as I dip my toes in to the New Orleans area Magic: The Gathering scene as a guy who hasn't sat down at a gaming table in a very long time. I'm hoping it'll be interesting but, at the very least, it should be pretty funny to hear about how badly I get my butt kicked every game.
I'm going to keep track of how much money I spend, truthfully, and I don't plan for it to be a whole lot. I'm not expecting to be the best Magic player in town but I do wanna enjoy myself while I get beaten mercilessly.
The thing I'm the most interested in, scared by and have the least knowledge about is the kind of environment I'll be jumping in to. In the past I've found Magic players to be the most unpredictable demographic to predict. I remember far more jerks than friendly folks but there have been helpful and nice people too. I just don't know if I'm going to be welcomed or treated as an enemy from the get-go.
So check back soon if any of this sounds interesting to you. If there's anything extra you'd like me to talk about please comment here or on Twitter @rexplode and I'll do what I can to work it in.
Oh yeah, if anyone has any suggestions for me about how to go about this process for God's sakes please help me.
P.S. - Stangg
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