Snack, Play, Love

Zombies, Run - A review? Maybe a story? @ZombiesRunGame

2016-05-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

Before we go any further I should make it clear that I don't run. I can walk 30K in a day when I'm by myself, my pedometer knows this, and I do walk pretty fast. But I never run. Well for more than the 10m it takes to get to the bus.

There is a lot of fuss at the moment about VR headsets (that make you motion-sick and cook your face) and Augmented Reality (where you use your phone instead of your eyes) but I want to talk today about something I kind of bumped into that isn't really a game. Well, in the same way that walking simulators are not games I guess.

I hadn't been feeling great for a while, but had changed my diet radically and cut out a lot of processed food and sugar and really reduced meat. Then one weekend while out working for a festival my body started to fight back. I just couldn't move my right shoulder at all without great pain. I presumed I'd dislocated it in my sleep so we went to the A&E tent. They advised basic painkillers and rest. Luckily I'd worked all my shifts. I put it down to the diet and switched back to calorific junk.

[Picked up a box of pain-killers]

Only this one requires real walking, preferably at speed.

My feet began to hurt. It wasn't a normal kind of ache from doing too much - or so I thought - because I'd not done much. Two consecutive weekends of standing on gates for Oxfam with a bit of walking in-between was fairly lightweight for me. Granted I wasn't wearing the best boots but it shouldn't have caused this. Some days I could barely walk to the bus stop to work. I was rationing the trips away from my desk at work. Something was wrong.

[Picked up a mobile phone]

I first saw the Zombies, Run app ages ago. The basic premise is you go for a run and the zombies chase you. I think it showed up when I was looking for something else and it was either free or cheap (it's free to start now) and it got buried on one of the many screens my phone has cluttered up with nonsense. Either way I downloaded it, signed up in July 2015, then completely forgot I had it. Interestingly as part of the activation process I'd given out my e-mail (which is why I know the date I signed up) and they'd send me a message every couple of months. I also joined their Twitter.

I got a stomach bug that took me off my feet for two days. My feet, glad of the rest, got better. It was like my healing abilities had been turned way, way down and I'd not spotted that - probably because everything else was too busy. Everything still ached, shoulders feet and now wrists, but I could walk again and this cheered me up a lot.

[picked up a pair of running shoes]

I'd wanted something to keep me a bit fit after I'd had to stop Wrestling Training (another long story) and had grabbed a few different motivational things to use as commitment bundling, mostly to go with the expensive running shoes I'd bought to train in as running barefoot in the wrestling dojo hurt my knees. I started non of them past a cursory glance.

The word run in this app name put me off. I wasn't fit enough to run - that's for well people without medical issues. So it didn't get used. I'll save it for when I'm well.

Everything got worse. I went for initial blood tests. These allowed me to go for the proper blood tests. These blood tests came back with results so off the chart that all the scientists in my lab were worryingly nice to me. The GP referred me to the clinic for people with Rheumatoid Arthritis. I'm 36.

[Picked up Rheumatoid Arthritis]

Following the Zombies, Run Twitter account literally changed my life. One day in December they sent out a tweet about a virtual race. This was a 5K run - something that is way beyond anything I'd ever attempted. But there was loot. Oh boy was there loot - zombie tops, promise of a medal - and nobody would know if I didn't actually do the run!

So I thought about it for a few weeks and signed up on Jan 4th (you know - when everyone thinks about making resolutions and commitments). Having never once used the app. Commitment bundling in action - "I can have this nice thing because I'm going to do something to earn it". One of the things that inspired me to do this was a guy called Derek Mitchell who is a guy who struggles with his weight that so far this year has done 15 5K runs. I've procrastinated writing this up for so long that he keeps adding more to the total. He's going for 30 in the year. Anyone can move 5k if you aren't worried about other peoples times, right?

The app was still sitting there and totally free. So the following day Jan 5th, on the way home from work, I thought I'd better have a go.

Here is how the first session with the app went. I started it while I was still in the building (a large hospital) and was immediately treated to some story . I hadn't expected this, I didn't know there were people to care about and reasons to want to keep going. We were barely introduced to the world before my music kicked back in (you point it at a playlist on your phone). Rufus Wainwright started to sing about love, and then the Zombies got me.

[Dropped a Bottle of Water]

I know this because the app keeps all the details. It's like it knows that I'm a bit geeky. What happened was this. As you leave the site you have to cross two roads right next to each other. Your pace is measured by the app, when the zombies attack you have to increase your pace to avoid them. The attack happened in between these crossings and I just couldn't run. If this was Dark Souls everything would be over - but the character dropped some items to distract the zombies. Rufus continued to serenade the horde, and I crossed the road and kept walking. There is even a map of my route - I know I didn't go through the park and when I got home instead of walking straight home I looped round the block in the hope of finishing the story. It didn't work. It took 27:41 to do 3.31 Km and it still hadn't ended.

My feet still hurt from doing too much walking but their seems to be a 48 hr lag between over exertion and the pain. I have to get to work somehow and I have a mission to finish. I want to know what happens next.

The following morning I decided to take a leisurely walk to work through the park. I know this because the app knows this. I didn't start the app until I'd crossed all the roads and was ready. 1 min in the zombies caught me because I stopped and retied my laces. I did pause it (34 seconds) but I guess not soon enough due to fumbling my phone out of my pocket The arthritis is really affecting my hands now and I'd forgotten to double knot. Always double knot in a zombie apocalypse situation.

I reached the mission goal 6 mins in. This means at a slowish pace a mission would be doable with a detour home. Nicely there are DJ skits for after you complete the run so you still feel like you are in the world of the game.

On the way you pick up [items] for an idle game, like a really simple city builder. You run, you get supplies, you add to the town. In isolation it's just a distraction. If you look at the above screen grab again you'll see how mundane these items are. I guess in an apocalypse an extra pair of shorts or any batteries at all would be a help. Occasionally you'll evade the zombies and it will say [picked up some clean underwear] - it's as if it knows...

One thing I'd need to fix was that I couldn't really hear the story over my rubbish free-with-the-iPhone headphones and that the songs on my phone (just the last few CDs I added to my computer) would need revising. It was all comedy songs by Mal Webb and really quiet stuff. Just not appropriate.

At first it's really jarring when the story butts in - you're off thinking of stuff and then Sam comes on the radio to tell Runner 5 about the world and send them into some danger. It soon becomes second nature, flitting between rock music, thoughts about life and then the story about a small town besieged by zombies.

I officially started my RA treatment on 1st March 2016 - the tablets take 12 weeks to kick in meaning that my appointment this Tuesday 24th May is the point at which we should know if its working. This feels like forever.

That said it was March 9th before I attempted mission 2. I was walking normally. I'd figured out a smart route home and I'd invested some HMV vouchers in some headphones that were amazing. Even better I discovered I could pause the app with the in-line controls. I would be unstoppable. I've not been caught since! I did the 4km in 38m finishing the story in 33 mins and spending the rest of the time listening to the radio chatter.

My goodness I really needed to fix the music playlist though. I set this up and resolved to wait a few weeks and go again.

Then something odd happened.

I was invited to come and spectate my partner's family on sports relief day - in the UK this is a big charity thing where you walk a mile and get sponsored. I hate sponsorship but agreed to show my support by watching. It was far too early in the morning and it was really cloudy. I get cold really quickly at the moment and the prospect of standing around for two hours was miserable. I already ached just getting there. I hit upon a great idea. The set up was for 1 mile, 3 miles (what the family had been training for) and 5 miles. 3 miles is about 5K and out of the question. If I walked a mile I'd go four times round the track, I'd warm up, I'd be *participating* and it would encourage the other family spectators we took to join in too. After all - I'd already taken 4 painkillers that morning anyway. At the table it was £7 to join in - all going to charity and the price didn't matter what distance you signed up to do. I figured I'd sign up for the 5k and walk and drop out when the family finished. I'd save my real 5k for the proper zombie run.

Abel Township however had other ideas. As part of the Zombie Virtual Race package there were three missions. Two 5k training missions and the race itself. The first of these had become available about the time i did my last walk. I decided to play Race mission 1 and to just stop it when I stopped (the same as I'd done with the first normal mission) and then use the rest after I'd recovered.

The warm up turned out to be walking around the track twice - infuriating as this was half my distance, but doubly so as the 5 mile people started to right away after this, and we started a little later, cold again warm up negated. Also everyone else had come dressed for the part - i was wearing my jeans and coat. I took the coat and stashed it in my rucksack inside the track by the medical teams. I gravitated towards the back behind all the lycra and sports gear and began the countdown on the app after they all started.

I'd positioned myself right at the back expecting to be the slowest there. Everyone gradually started to walk. I needed to loosen up, to relax and to get past the large clump of people who I'd let start in front of me. Most of all I just couldn't get warm with a gentle walk. Unless I ran at least the first half a lap, just to clear a space and to get warm. And then I kept going.

I ran the first 6 laps.
I felt normal.
I ran 2k.
In 10:31.

Flow is very important. Sometimes the thing you are doing right now just feels right. Running at a moderate pace felt right so I kept doing it. I got a bit warm so undid my jacket and took off my gloves. Oh yeah - I was also the only person wearing gloves. Jeans did mean that I had space for my huge phone in my pocket though and the story and tunes were much more appropriate. Motivating but not pushing me too hard.

I'd lapped my friends by this point, but was sure that I'd burn out before they did - I wasn't too far off.

[Picked up a knee injury]

...I don't think my left knee liked all the turns...

It was a gradual shooting pain that started at about lap 5 and caused me to adjust my gait. I knew enough about movement to slow up a little and to stretch it out. To be honest though I found it amusing. It wasn't one of the normal daily pains and it was refreshing to hurt somewhere different. My condition doesn't cause knee pain usually so I figured I'd just overdone it. I resolved to walk for a lap (at usual turbo walking speeds) and my friends untapped themselves.

Then the panic came. It wasn't an 'attack' in the game, but the story made sure I knew I had to run. Haim came on and played some breezy summer pop so I ran. Then I walked. Then I ran. I followed someone whose pace was similar to mine when I did the running at the start and made sure I stayed a similar distance to them, gradually catching them if anything. I finished the 5K in 28 mins. Beating the family members who had been training by a lap and a half, and deciding consciously not to sprint finish due to knee and not wanting to overtake the pace setter I'd credited for a lot of my success.

[Picked up a medal and a bottle of water]

After the race my knee got worse. The adrenalin had taken care of the excess pain but it was becoming very stiff and unmanageable. The other family members walked causally up the steps to the car. I had to take each step one at a time with my full weight on the bannister. I probably said a lot of swears. I avoided getting up once in the pub, and really struggled for the rest of the day with basic movement tasks.

It took about a week to walk without any pain. In that same week I did three more missions taking the total to 5.

I paid a year's subscription to the app before I did this allowing me to change the duration of the missions making them just a little shorter - 3km - and allowing me to use them to get home and still be able to pop into the shop [picked up a bottle of milk]. There is no limit to the number of [items] you can pick up on the paid version so the town evolves a lot faster.

The town became my town. The runs became a reason to get items, and a reason to move the story forwards. The items became a reason to make the runs longer, and to not worry about the times.

I am Runner 5, and this is where I run/walk/run. It's a railway that is turned into a walkway for people and cyclists that connects two local areas and goes close enough to my house to be perfect. I only found this due to a local walking scheme one year and I love it.

I happened to spend the weekend somewhere I had access to rough farmland/undergrowth and decided it would be perfect to do the 2nd 5k. There was no way I could match a track based time when climbing fences - and as it turns out jumping puddles. It is fairly apocalyptic, that's a single daffodil. My jeans soaked up an awful lot of the morning's rain.

There were also real world pick up items. due to the neighbouring golf course

[Picked up 27 golf balls]

and more importantly I'd [picked up my zombie survival kit] in the post that week.

I completed the distance in 48 mins. I had to dry my shoes out for three hours before I could go home on the bus. I loved every minute - it was like being a kid again and having a reason to mess about in the fields.

I had 7 days left from that Monday to recover and run the real 5k. I had settled on the running track next to where I first did my wrestling training and fantasised about various ways I could sneak in and use it, but it turns out you can just give them a fiver if you time it so there aren't any Sunday league matches on.

The footballers from the morning session were walking out as I lined up for the most appropriate lane which I kept for all of the run (except the bit where I had to shed layers). I ran for the third 5K in a row in my jeans because it was now a tradition.

I probably started too fast again, but I was having fun, it was a nice day and the general wasn't going to get his way if I had anything to say about it!

I ran the wrong way around the track, putting the corner pressure on my right knee instead and it worked. Whether it was all psychological or not it still worked. I was not only able to walk home afterwards, but I suffered no ill effects. I even managed some stairs.

My leaderboard time was in the top 10% (I think it was about 300 out of 3,600 in the end) and I didn't injure myself - win!

[Picked up a second medal]

Zombies, Run! is a very hard piece of software to review. It's like a radio play box set that only makes sense when you are moving. And you really don't have to move that far or fast to take advantage of it. Instead of setting the distance for a mission you can just set a time (on the paid version). A year of the app is £12.99 which is a lot less than most gyms charge for 1 month.

To me it's the birth of a new genre - games that take place in real space, but absolutely any real space. You don't have to have a £700 VR set up - just a smart-phone and headphones. If it could mark out objectives based on previous routes and get a bit smarter it'd be amazing - for instance it could spot that my road route and my forest route link up and tell me that the zombies were in the way and I'd have to go around instead of direct. I know that wouldn't be beyond the realms of the technology, but in some ways I think that would ruin the simple meditative purity so it'd be a hard call to make.

It's helped make a time in my life when it's been very hard to look positive that little bit easier and it's given me motivation to do exercise and to get better. Today is the first day that I haven't taken painkillers in the morning in a long, long time. It aches to type and it'll ache a lot more to type tomorrow, but I needed to document these things that are for me intrinsically linked. (note: I've since gone back to single pain killers morning and night instead of 4 at each). As mentioned this Tuesday is the date at which the meds officially take over, and they are certainly helping. I get really tired, really easily but it's been a lot worse than this and it's easy to believe it'll be a lot better.

Some graffiti appeared in one of the tunnels on my walk home recently. It cheers me up to see it as it marks the end of the woodland path and the ramp back up to the roads and normality. Whether it's a zombie horde or a hidden illness that's getting you down there is always hope.

We can all be our own Runner 5.

SolForge: Thundergale Invoker, bonus art

2014-03-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

Continuing on from my Games & Tea Guest Article on my vanity card for SolForge here are all the remaining bonus arts that I got. The story behind how we got to this point is on the other article.

Here is an early storyboard style of the card with a completely different level 2/3. maybe at one point this could have been a 4 level card, but the two middle arts are similar enough that i suspect they were just variations on a theme. You can already see the key features are in place.

This appears to be one of the final 'faceless' versions of the level 1 card. I suspect a lot of the vanity cards started out in a similar way. As Anton was working remotely with us I suspect that was the hardest part - using reference pictures at angles that were different to the required poses.

Here is the reworked level 2 in various stages. Oddly the far left picture looks more like my dad! The colorised far right one still underwent some positional changes before the more final version below.

This early level 3 is a lot more abstract due to the shading, focusing on the figure himself and the wind gauntlets. I quite like this one and may swap to using it as my forum avatar. The ethereal qualities are probably too serene for the final battle ready level 3 and the chaos of the wind on the final version is more in keeping with the theme.

And thats it! There are other pictures of me and slight variations on these, but I think that you get the overall process. As StoneBlade have been known to give away vanity cards as prizes I can't wait for the tournaments to start! :D

Thanks again to Anton & Eric for their hard work and to StoneBlade for sharing these sketches with me and allowing me to share them with you.

SolForge - The Making of "Nesh, Wind Giant"

2014-03-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

On August the 2nd 2012 while watching the SolForge live-stream for the final count down I decided that the game and the community were interesting enough to increase my investment from one of the low tiers to one of the high ones. I wanted the prize on offer (At Club1980 drafts are free...) and couldn't make use of the GenCon tickets on the layer above so it seemed perfect.

I resolved to forget about the game for a year and when the new Magic core set came out that summer I'd begin to wind down my activity and spending on that and reap the savings. I'd looked at the lower tiers when signing up but come the e-mail asking for pictures on March 13 I'd pretty much forgotten about the 'Your likeness on a card' tier. At the time I'd joked i'd give the honour to someone else, or that I'd try to get one of my cats on the card. When it came up though I thought it would actually be cool to see this through.

My first contact was Eric - the concept writer for SolForge - and he laid out what we'd need to provide. Over the next few messages I stated that i didn't really care which faction, but gave two real ideas. The first was job based, I work in infection control so how about a Nekrium guy whose job it is to do the reverse. The second was based on my partner and I going on long walks in the British countryside. It was from one of these walks in Wales that we got our source pictures. I created a Tempys shamenesque character called Nesh (a northern dialect word I picked up at uni) who is more at home on remote ridges than the battlefield.

I sent over 4 pictures with some fully body and close ups that I'll spare you but these two capture the essence. A guy who is more of a tactician than a solider. I mentioned that I'd prefer equipment more than weapons to that end, and I mentioned that I'd love scale birds.

Time passed. Many more hikes were done (including Norway - I think my card would have been a little different with those pictures used!) and it became Jan 2014. Eric got back in touch saying that Anton (the artist) required some more close up shots at varied angles so that he could get the faces right. Naturally I panicked about this and eventually managed to get some I was reasonably happy with, for example this one.

This is my deliberate attempt at an enigmatic face. This is harder than you'd expect when home alone and having to resort to selfies. Many digital photographs were deleted that day...

It was in response to this that I received my first idea of what the card would be like. Pleasingly this sketch had the file name of "Nesh - example", which was the name I'd given to the write-up in the original e-mail discussion. For me it helped to visualise the character, but I'd no hope of becoming a unique named character as that was a much higher tier.

I did as instructed and copied the pose (long arms come in handy for these selfies I tell you!) and sent it off. Note the cereals in the background - FoodStuffFinds till I die yo!

At this point I was getting excited. I showed the initial pic to a few fellow players and they agreed it looked pretty cool. Eric mentioned he's seen the final versions and that he thought they looked cool too so all was good.

Time passed.

Set 2 was announced as being "in March" and the end of the month rapidly approached. As the preview cards came up I wondered at each time whether I would recognise myself. On the morning of March 18th I had to be at work early for a conference and didn't check anything digital until I was in the car on the way there (being driven I might add). There was the usual tournament stats post up which had been linked from the forum, and I just happened to notice a new card had been previewed below...

Thundergale Invoker appeared to be a Tempys card like mine was from first glance, and it involved wind... I had a zoom in and then a rather large smile on my face! I couldn't explain out loud in a car with work people, but tweets and messages were sent to those in the know. Much was said about me sending naked pictures to StoneBlade (I didn't :p) but everyone agreed it was indeed a good likeness.

The article here detailed the cards abilities and it seemed to fit in with the kind of play style that I have. Essentially it allows you to move your pieces around with the power of the wind if you played them in the right slots.

I immediately messaged Eric after work to say thanks to both him and Anton and to ask permission to write this experience up for posterity and to beg for some of the art that went into the process. So I've included a few of the more exclusive key pieces here but to save on the Games & Tea internet I'll host the majority back on my regular blog.

Here we see three of the original pictures I sent in, alongside what I guess is the very first concept sketches for the card. This includes the original idea of looking out at the action from afar, suiting up, and entering the fray. The wind gauntlets are particularly cool, looking decidedly like something from the Dynasty warriors series. While this makes the CosPlay harder, I think that it's a great idea.

Before I finish up here I'd like to thank StoneBlade in general but specifically Eric and Anton for taking the time to make something that I am very happy with. If this much effort went into all the players vanity cards then that's a lot of extra work. I look forwards to discovering who all the people behind the faces are over the next few weeks and continuing to aggressively draft 'me' and then getting sad when the creature dies.

But hey - there are plenty more copies to draft and play, and we'll always have those scale birds, right?

Part 2: Thundergale Invoker Bonus Art here

Modern Masters - Fairies40

2013-10-26T10:39:00.002-07:00

A while back we did a normal Modern Masters draft (non-phantom) and I ended up in Fairies. Turned out to be a decent deck as I went 3-0 winning the draft (yay) and then beat a few non-draft modern decks afterwards.

As I'd like to keep the deck list for posterity before I convert it to fairies 60 I'm putting it here.

Land (17)
9 Island
7 Swamp
1 Vivid Marsh

I & S (12)
1 Spell snare
2 Erratic Mutation
1 Echoing Truth
2 Traumatic Visions (counter or land cycle)
1 cryptic command (first pick!)
1 warren weirding
3 peppersmoke
1 drag down (-2, -2 is fine)

Guys (10)
1 Meloku the clouded Mirror
1 Pestermite
2 Latchkey Faerie
2 Spellstutter Sprite (counter faerie!)
2 Dreamspoiler Witches
1 Thieving Sprite
1 Festering Goblin

Toys (1)
Aether Spellbomb

I did have other playables, but this was the version that seemed to work the best.

Magic The Gathering - Deck Builder's Toolkit 2014 Core Set

2013-07-21T04:08:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again! The one MTG product that I bother to write up and open because frankly it's very useful for new players and overlooked by the majority. It has always been a pain to find a full card list and as I'm making one for my reference it seems worth putting online.

A quick note before we begin - there is no such thing as the Deck builders Toolkit 2013 - they have moved this years in line with the core set numbering and as such skipped a year in name alone. This makes a lot of sense.

The booster packs included in this year's offering are:

M14,
GateCrash,
Return To Ravnica
M13!

While the inclusion of a core-set booster that will be rotating almost immediately is a little confusing I'm guessing they didn't want to include too many 'gold' coloured cards that would make new players confused. It seems like a step back from last year's product but is reasonable for casual play.

While the contents of these boosters are entirely random I do seem to have reasonable luck with them as I got a Deathrite Shaman (which I traded for $15 worth of Modern cards) and the new Garruck card which has a $25 value at the moment. As the box retails for £18 here (and boosters are £3.50) I pretty much already have my money back and doubled. That said - boosters are a lottery and I'd say we are looking to get £6 of value from the rest of the cards.

As ever there are four sealed packs in the box, White, Red, Gold and Gold Stripe.

The non-random (white banded pack) cards are :

White (M14 unless stated)

Common
Pacifism x2
Hive Stirrings
Seller of Songbirds RTR
Fortify
Master of Diversion
Assault Griffin GTC
Dawnstrike Paladin
Avenging Arrow RTR
Capashen Knight
Sunspire Griffin RTR
Angelic Wall
Griffin Sentinel
Suntail Hawk

Uncommon
Serra Angel
Blessing

Blue (M14 unless stated)

Common

Paralysing Grasp RTR
Divination
Frost Breath
Archaeomancer x2
Wind Drake DGM
Voidwielder RTR
Stealer of Secrets RTR
Messenger Drake
Seacoast Drake
Doorkeeper RTR
Cancel
Disperse
Tome Scour

Uncommon
Opportunity
Skyline Predator RTR

Black (M14 unless stated)

Common
Wring Flesh
Mind Rot
Festering Newt
Stab Wound RTR
Duress
Liturgy of Blood x2
Child of Night
Nightwing Shade
Accursed Spirit
Corpse Hauler
Deathgaze Cockatrice
Drainpipe Vermin RTR
Minotaur Abomination

Uncommon
Doom Blade
Corrupt

Red (M14 unless stated)

Common
Shock x2
Act of Treason
Chandra's Outrage
Annihilating Fire RTR
Seismic Stomp
Goblin Shortcutter
Regathan Firecat
Pitchburn Devils
Viashino Racketeer RTR
Blur Sliver
Dragon Hatchling

(now in red banded pack)

Tenement Crasher RTR
Riot Piker DGM

Uncommon
Guttersnipe RTR
Flames of the Firebrand

Green (M14 unless stated)

Common
Centaur's Herald RTR
Predatory Sliver
Kraul Warrior DGM
Aerial Predation RTR
Elvish Mystic x2
Deadly Recluse
Brindle Boar
Sporemound
Rumbling Baloth
Giant Growth
Trollhide
Hunt the Weak
Axebane Stag RTR

Uncommon
Briarpack Alpha
Howl of the Night Pack

Colourless (M14 unless stated)

Common
Sliver Construct

Lands
Then you get 5 copies of each of the 4 basic land arts across each of the 5 colours in the set meaning
20 Plains
20 Island
20 Swamp
20 Mountain
20 Forest

This covers the rest of the red banded pack and the entirety of the gold banded pack.

There are also
4 Transguild Promenade
used to split up the gold stripe pack.

The remainder is the Semi-random deck seeds which I got the following for:

CounterBurn
Syncopate RTR UC
Guttersnipe RTR UC
Izzet Charm RTR UC
Blast of Genius DGM UC
Goblin Electromancer x2 RTR
Essence Backlash RTR
Nivix Cyclops DGM
Explosive Impact RTR
Chandra's Outrage M14

(an excellent start to an Izzet deck! Also the first gold cards in the fixed cards from the box. The art on the poster adds in Divination from the fixed cards)

Slivers - all M14
Steelform Sliver UC
Battle Sliver x2 UC
Manaweft Sliver UC
Predatory Sliver x2
Sentinel Sliver
Striking Sliver
Blur Sliver
Groundshaker Sliver

(wow - a three colour shard! They have included lots of multiples when you include the fixed cards, and the poster hints that you need a Pacify or two to clear the way for attacks)

Sacrifice - Mostly M14
Gnawing Zombie UC
Barrage of Expendables UC
Tenacious Dead UC
Goblin Rally UC RTR
Act of Treason
Blood Bairn
Pitchburn Devils
Festering Newt
Drainpipe Vermin RTR
Altar's Reap

(this is a new and odd archetype - cheap guys that die for profit and harm to the opponent. Without the Blood Artist this seems less viable, but there is certainly support in the kit for this - and maybe in M14 draft!)

Library Depletion (or Mill)
Psychic Spiral UC RTR
Codex Shredder UC RTR
Millstone UC M14
Coerced Confession UC GTC
Tome Scour x2 M14
Doorkeeper RTR
Psychic Strike GTC
Paranoid Delusions GTC
Pilfered Plans DGM

(Mill decks are nothing new for the toolkit, but a hybrid card and a lot of Dimir gold cards from the block means this is a touch more powerful than usual. That said it's unlikely to be more than a casual strategy)

Missing Shards

These are on the poster, but I haven't located the full decklists yet.

LifeGain
Voracious Wurm
Angelic Accord
Congregate
Unflinching Courage
Centaur Healer
Soul Mender
Brindle Boar
Dawnstrike Paladin
Predator's Rapport
Divine Favor

(notes that merely gaining life cannot win you the game, but with these key enchantments and such out it certainly helps!)

Red-Green Aggression
Gruul War Chant DGM UC
Slaughterhorn (x2?) GTC C
Marauding Maulhorn M14 C
Advocate of the Beast M14 C

(Notably no Burning Tree on the poster, but it'd certainly make sense in the deck)

Skies
Lyev Skyknight
Air Servant
Warden of Evos Isle
Frost Breath

(detain and fly deck - basically blue white evasion renamed)

Tokens
Seller of Songbirds
Trostani's Judgement
Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage
Eyes in the Skies

(while I noted the fixed cards avoided guild mechanics this introduces and excels around the populate mechanic. Nice)

Red-White Swarm
Sunhome Guildmage
Truefire Paladin
Righteous Charge
Firefist Striker
Show of Valor
Viashino Firstblade
Master of Diversion
Riot Piker
Skyknight Legionnaire
Wojek Halberdiers

(wide decks with lots of small guys attacking? That will be the battalion deck then!)

Mana Ramp
Nimbus Swimmer
Seek the Horizon
Urban Evolution
Woodborn Behemoth
Verdant Haven
Gatecreeper Vine
Axebane Stag
Divination
Axebane Guardian
Voidwielder

(apparently there is no ramp in standard according to the internet - this proves them wrong)

Black Control
Corrupt
Doom Blade
Diabolic Tutor
Sengir Vampire
2x Quag Sickness
Mind Rot
Child of Night
Perilous Shadow
Deathgaze Cockatrice

(A good old traditional deck where you kill everything, and win through card advantage - and big vampires)

Well that's the lot! Again I think this is an improvement on last year, and while I think that M13 booster docks it a lot of value in the eyes of established players it will certainly help the pre-rotation players out with a few more staples to build with.

If you have a massive spares box then print off the poster and give a new player free choice of a few commons and uncommons to build their own shards. If you don't have that but do have a player that owns intro decks or sample decks and nothing else then this is still the next best step in MTG.

I do like bridging products and this seems to have been the catalyst that took our playgroup from owning cards to building and competing so it certainly works. Also - the DBT boxes are much better than a FatPack for storing cards!

(Updated shards with the odd fonted text comes from the great people at MTG Salvation's combined efforts to find all the shards in this thread)

Why are we playing bad iPhone & FaceBook games and not Magic?

2013-05-18T06:55:00.002-07:00

The WOTC Head Designer Mark Rosewater is on Tumblr and mentioned the fact that MTGO is not available on Macs (although I have Windows 7 on mine so I can use it if I really wanted), and this reminded me of a more fundamental question - so I asked it:

"Why can't I play Magic in more social ways digitally? Paper MTG is the market leader, but all digital versions a generational step behind competitors. I too have a Mac, Family & iPhone and basic Magic available during my down-time would be perfect. The question is - why no FaceBook playable sociable MTG based on precon sample decks? The same as LGS get to give out free, but as free to play iPhone/FaceBook app. It's the next logical step after Duels in acquisitions. Is there a Digital 7 yr plan?"

I realise this is a little mixed up due to the character limit so I figured I'd vent here to avoid submitting further embarrassing questions.

Why can't I play Magic in more social ways digitally?

I have Go, Ascension, various drawing and word games on my phone. I can play them against friends as live. We take it in turns as and when we have a sec. It's fun as the games are more frequent than I can manage face-to-face. We'd love to play MTG like this (it's the main game in our social circles) - we'd love it so much we would pay money. Plug in daily MTG and MTG related adverts for new sets and events into the app and you have an acquisition & retention strategy that makes Duels of the Planeswalkers look like nothing.

Paper MTG is the market leader, but all digital versions a generational step behind competitors.

Forget the fact that MTGO looks a bit dated and only works on one platform. The interface itself is very dated and based on past assumptions about interface design that have been superseded (see Interface Culture by Steven Johnson - which is itself now out of date...), but more importantly it has a massive barrier to entry. It's not free to sign-up. It contains no tutorials to my knowledge (personally I'd put them on YouTube so the Tutorials act as an advert for the product). An experienced MTG paper player is easily put off and confused by the way it unfolds. It took me several attempts to make a deck and to jump into even the beginner rooms.

Compare this to a new player experience for League of Legends, or Happy Wars. I have no doubt the product suits the existing players (so much so that they will struggle to drag people onto the new client even though it's technically better), but I love MTG and have no desire to play.

Duels is great - it's what got me playing - but it's also one of my biggest concerns. It's a lovely sealed style environment - playing set restricted card pools against each other is what I love most in paper - but each year it gets dumped and you start again. Also the cards (older versions anyway) were so badly explained in terms of their real world legality that when I transitioned to paper I bought things that were not 'standard legal' and thus had to scrap a lot of ideas once I made it to FNM. Now I Tournament Organise at a small store the main question from Duels players is where they can buy that deck they love. And we have to break their hearts. Stick Duels to standard base decks, with Modern as the unlocks or bought decks and this problem vanishes and you get new players that PREFER Modern coming in. Bonus!

I too have a Mac, Family & iPhone and basic Magic available during my down-time would be perfect.

Why are we playing bad iPhone & FaceBook games and not Magic?

I know GP winners who play terrible, grindy card games on their phones - those ones where the cards are just a means to an end with no real mechanics or structure. They have pretty art and the more time you put in the better you are due to the time based advancement mechanics. The thing is they are available on our phones and iPads and we can play them with our friends asychnronously. MTG didn't even keep their iPhone card gatherer application up to date and deleted it within a few months. This was a YEAR ago. I can't build decks on my phone officially. I have to use 3rd party apps (some of which WOTC tried to remove or change when theirs came out) to look up prices or store collections.

Playdek have been brought in to do a D&D game. Their Ascension game is the most use thing on my phone next to texting. Something basic like that would be fine - something free and accessible to those who watch Day9 on the ProTour and want to figure out the basics.

The question is - why no FaceBook playable sociable MTG based on precon sample decks? The same as LGS get to give out free, but as free to play iPhone/FaceBook app. It's the next logical step after Duels in acquisitions.

If I had an MTG app on FaceBook I could go ahead and delete most of the other games. All it would need to be is the preconstructed single colour basic decks that we get given to hand to new players. They ask how to play, we break out two of these decks and they get to take them home. Do that digitally. Allow us to play our friends using it and record our win losses. Allow us to combine these to make 2 colour 60 card decks and there are 20 different decks to be played - 25 if you can double colours up. That is more than enough content to keep people interested and again - you link to Duels from this (The Next Step...) and DailyMTG and Twitch Coverage and so on. To me this would be a nightmare to program, but FaceBook isn't going anywhere (and you could probably do it on the actual MTG site using Forum ID as a log in too for those that fear it) so it'd be worth the investment.

Is there a Digital 7 yr plan?

Mark talks about the 7 year plan for paper Magic. I don't think digital has one. Tablet DOTP is a nice step, but it should be Tablet MTGO & iPhone links (build decks on phone - play on tablet or Computer). I realise this is all things that would take a lot of investment, but I can't see how it wouldn't be worth it in the long run.

Complexity creep is frequently cited as the number 1 thing most likely to 'kill Magic', I think that the new wave of Digital products outclassing MTG from every angle is more probable and by the end of this year the blue ocean of digital TCGs will be a hotly fought arena. I do hope paper Magic survives.

Combo season

2013-03-14T10:49:00.001-07:00

Seeing as I have the wireless keyboard/iPhone set up on the bus for the main Blog I figured I might as well add a few words here.

Gatecrash has gone well, the front loaded costs mean that I've spent much less on extra cards (I bought 4 Zegana for $26 and a week later the price doubled) and I've traded aggressively for things I need for decks only.

Unexpected Results into Boborygmous is a lot of fun, and can do well at FNM. It can also go 1-X...

Probably taking Burn At The Stake combo deck tomorrow if I go. I have the latest version of 'counters matter' and haven't got round to sleeving the almost mono Black gu that is the denial ramp deck. That looks to be the most fun of all, but the hardest to tune.

Solforge promises to be around the corner, and I have two new Ascension expansions (one in hand, one on way) to contend with too. As new players get into it I find myself playing the original more and more - is the new stuff just too complicated?

It's looking good for gaming, and MTG has a combo viable standard environment. Things are good.

New Set Blues - GateCrash

2013-02-02T15:48:00.003-08:00

Oh hello there - long time no see! Do I have you in round 1? A preview of the finals already then! What have I been up to? Well mostly GateCrash these past few weeks.

We've had...

£157 worth of Devak0rp pre-orders
1 £25 Birmingham Simic pre-release
1 £33 Stafford Orzhov Pre-release (travel costs)
1 £52 Birmingham launch Draft (!! - i'll explain)
1 £12 Birmingham launch Draft (more affordable) (& 30p on a card)

That makes £279 on Magic in two weekends. ouch! That said - with the £60 of eBay things that have gone it's a reduced £219 - and I plan to make it go down further. To explain what I have I guess I should go through in order - more for my own sanity than anything.

Preorders I - the bulk.

I decided that buying a box was fun fairly early on, but then always wanted to play that box. At £90 I figured that if I did a similar amount of drafts and sealed and averaged at £2.50 a pack then I'd be fairly sorted. I also realised I'd be missing all the neat tricks commons and uncommons. 1 £25.14 preorder later and those were all booked - 4 of each uncommon, and around 6 of each common. I may need to trade for a few that I get 3 ofs but it should be OK. These are 'incoming'.

Preorders II - the junk

I like gadget rares, and with pre-odrering the lower cards I had spare funds to cherry pick a few. I think I got maybe (redoes maths - oh!) £50 of those, which does sound quite a lot now. The plan was to spend less on events though.

Preorders III - the shock

12 cards, shocklands, 84.51 or £7 each. This is scary & ouch territory except they are currently £10 each in the stores and any spare ones I pull can now be back converted to pay off the main bill. Also these are stable cards so where as the others will go up and down these will settle around £6-£8 so can be treated as fluid assets in MTG terms.

First event - ManaGeek Birmingham pre-release.

Having been undefeated in prereleases since 1 loss in AVR block I've gotten quite good at extracting value from these. My unremarkable Simic pool 5-1 losing to the winner's fast Boros meant 5 packs (plus the 6 'entry packs). Fab but tiring day.

11 packs - £25 - £2.27 per pack

Second Event - ManaGeek Stafford Pre-release

Tired at the start, fever rose through the event and I was misplaying like a trooper by the end. 2-4 to scrape 1 pack and throw away the extra £10 of travel costs from playing the much easier Birmingham event (that actually gave correct prizes this time!) meant that I was heavily overtaxed by playing Orzhov.

7 packs - £33 - £4.71 per pack (OUCH!! should have got a fatpack and stayed in bed!) for event
18 packs - £58 - £3.22 per pack so far

Also - my pulls were rubbish. Having planned to draft these packs with the semi-pros on the Tuesday I instead spent three days in bed sulking due to some insane fever I still haven't quite shaken. Massive missing out of EV there as I'd have got at least a few things I wanted as it wasn't even the good junk rares.

Third event - Waylands Launch Draft

I'd been looking forwards to this quite a bit. The hazy, crazy part of my brain had been mentally preparing myself for Tuesday's draft, and then carried on til Friday as I didn't get it out of my system. All of the talk from the 30 players in the room was how bad Dimir was in sealed, I guessed it'd be pretty swift in draft so in my 10 person pool tried it out. being the only person in an archetype gets you a few interesting cards, three unblockable rogues, three mill guys, one intimidate 1 drop & two cloudfin raptors. 3-0. I came 2nd due to a player who had an amazingly fast Gruul deck. As again Boros threatened me most I figured Gruul may be next. 3 packs played and 4 prize ones plus promo.

Why was this £52? I paid for 4 people to enter as my cousins came to stay. I can't really factor those in to the packs can I? Especially when they got to keep their mythics... :(

7 packs - £13 - £1.85 per pack (I must be better now!)
25 packs - £71 - £2.84 (more economical)

Fourth event - Global Gaming Launch Draft

We like Global Gaming, it's small and local and full of people like me - only younger! They out play us easily, and often have better decks due to being focused, but they lack limited experience so can be interesting to draft against. I got a first pick bulk mythic dragon which I can NEVER resist in limited, so built Gruul around that - it was pretty cool and only lost to one guy. Once in rounds, and again in the final. Oh well - another second place! As we'd agreed to split the packs evenly instead of 5 I got 7, hooray! He got a shock and a guild leader, I got the black mythic that is another bulk one. Such is life. Maybe I should have kept ALL these packs sealed...

10 packs - £12 - £1.20 per pack (now we are talking!)
35 packs - £83 - £2.37 per pack and only one short of making a box across all events!

Not only did I play the box instead of sitting at home trying to stop the cats from attacking my foils I also played in events I may not have and got a few sneaky trades in. Sure I spent an extra £39 on funding the cousins, but I'm sure I can trade that back off them as they get bored of the shiny mythics (although they have discovered eBay too - curses!)

So that is
£83 - packs/events
£39 - Youth contributions
£157 of pre-orders/speculation
so £240 on me, minus the £60 from eBaying 4 mythics that I'd never once sleeved to play (2 sorin, 2 Thundermaw) so £180 down so far.

Not a bad way to buy and play a box, and in theory I think some events I could have done better in by chosing more carefully and not playing sick! I have three of the shock lands I'd already pre-ordered so that's £30 back at some point (probably in trades) and other interesting things like the Ghost Council which are money rares that I'll never likely play.

Another draft Tuesday too, better get cataloguing and eBaying some more to pay for this...

Deck Builder's Toolkit 2012 (M13 Edition)

2012-07-21T01:11:00.000-07:00

Well - as with last years edition it seems no-one has collected all the card lists for this. Unlike last year I'm going to put them all in one post. As with last year this set is for starting out players with small collections. it comprises ENTIRELY of commons and uncommons (and not many uncommons - 2 per colour and then 4 per deck fragment - 26 in total) but the cards contained would be more expensive to buy outside of this pack purely because of the boosters. The boosters give you another 12+ uncommons and 4+ rares (due to flip cards and foils you can get more than this) and basically make up 80% of the cost of the box. For me - even if I give most of the cards away this year (which I will likely do) I get the boosters, the cool box and the joy of all this typing again...

See you next year.

The Boosters are Innistrad Block:

Innistrad
Dark Ascension
Avacyn Restored
M13

This makes sense as now the product is perfectly positioned to last a whole standard season - kudos WOTC!

The Semi Random packs (gold dashed section) are:

Blue Black Evasion:
Curiosity
Talrand's Invocation
Welkin Tern
Faerie Invaders
2x Searchlight Geist
Invisible Stalker
Harbor Bandit
Gryff Vanguard
Bloodhunter Bat

Humans:
Fiend Hunter
Crusader of Odric
Gather the Townsfolk
Bonds of Faith
Avacyn's Pilgrim
Commander's Authority
Hamlet Captain
Bonds of Faith
Heavy Mattock
Timberland Guide

Library Depletion:
Jace's Phantasm
Stern Mentor
2x Mind Sculpt
Curse of the Bloody Tome
Dreadwaters
Fog Bank
Cellar Door
Vedalken Entrancer
Dream Twist

Tokens:
Intangible Virtue
Moan of the Unhallowed
Captain's Call
Gather the Townsfolk
2x Vile Rebirth
Lingering Souls
Goldnight Redeemer
Attended Knight
Glorious Charge

Midrange Green:
Roaring Primadox
Acidic Slime
2x Borderland Ranger
Elvish Visionary
Yeva's Forcemage
Mwonvuli Beast Tracker
Bond Beetle
Timberland Guide

Exalted:
Knight of Glory
Angelic Benediction
2x Guardians of Akrasa
Aven Squire
Duty-Bound Dead
Knight of Infamy
Duskmantle Prowler
Servant of Nefarox
Cobbled Wings

Spirits:
Gallows Warder
Drogskol Captain
Geist Snatch
Voiceless Spirit
Ghostly Possession
Battleground Geist
Midnight Haunting
Voiceless Spirit
Feeling of Dread
Spectral Prison

Angels:
Defy death
Emancipation angel
Seraph of dwn
2x scroll of Avacyn
Serra sanctuary
Serra angel
Archangel
Angelic wall
Bladed bracers

Vampires:
Vampire nighthawk
Rakish heir
Vampiric fury
Stormkirk captain
2x crossway vampire
Vampire interloper
Falkenrath noble
Bloodcrazed neonate
Victim of the night

Zombies: (from poster - may be elsewhere in kit)

Diregraf Captain

Armoured Skaab

Thought Scour

Abattoir Ghoul

Red Burn: (from poster - may be elsewhere in kit)

Volcanic Geyser

Thunderous Wrath

Pitchburn Devils

Rummaging Goblin

You also always get 4 Evolving Wilds

Credit for the typing up of these goes to the posters in the message board thread below:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=432032

I added my own semi-random decks and checked the ones I had.

As you can see of the 11 deck fragments, you have the 5 tribal themes from Innistrad block (vampires, spirits, humans, angels, zombies) - notable for the absence of Werewolves which has been worked into the Midrange Green cards but without any DFC (but you get one in the INN & DKA packs so I'm not sure why this was excluded). We have the returning mechanic deck in Exalted, the Library Depletion (Mill) and Burn. The most interesting are the Evasion & Tokens which were not in last years selection but are thematically from the recent block.

Non Random Cards.

White Banded Pack - commons

Ghoulcaller's Bell

Elgaud Inquisitor
Voice of the Provinces
Attended Knight
Cathedral Sanctifier
Chapel Geist
Niblis of the Mist
Seraph of Dawn
Griffin Protector
Glorious Charge
Safe Passage
2x Pacifism
Cloudshift
Urgent Exorcism

Mist Raven
Gryff Vangard
Archaeomancer
Stormbound Geist
Deranged Assistant
2x Welkin Tern
Scroll theif
Thought Scour
Essence Scatter
Negate
Divination
Curse of the Bloody Tome
Encrust

Vampire Interloper
Liliana's Shade
Ravenous Rats
Bloodhunter Bat
Tormented Soul
Driver of the Dead
Markov Patrician
Ghoulcaller's Chant
Sign in blood
2x Murder
Duress
Dead weight
Victim of Night

Pitchburn Devils
Torch Fiend
Bladetusk Boar
Forge Devil
Heirs of Stromkirk
Rummaging Goblin
Fire Elemental
Searing Spear
Traitorous Blood
Brimstone Volley
Demolish
Krenko's Command
Pillar of Flame

Borderland Ranger
Avacyn's Pilgrim
Elvish visionary

Red banded pack - green commons + uncommons + start of lands

2x Arbor Elf
Ambush Viper
Geist Trappers
Pathbreaker Wurm
Wildwood Geist
Titanic Growth
Farseek
Ranger's Path
Natural End
Prey Upon

Crusader of Odric
Oblivion Ring

Talrand's Invocation
Niblis of the Breath

Vampire Nighthawk
Abattoir Ghoul

Falkenrath Exterminator
Gang of Devils

Roaring Primadox
Hollowhenge Scavenger

M13 land (Two copies of all 4 M13 designs) so:
8 Plains
8 Island
8 Swamp
8 Mountain
8 Forest

Gold banded pack: remaining lands

M13 land (Three copies of all 4 M13 designs) so:

12 Plains

12 Island

12 Swamp

12 Mountain

12 Forest

Hope this helps someone!

M13 Pre release Write Up

2012-07-08T08:05:00.001-07:00

I don't really get around to writing up that many events these days, except for the Digital Dragons ones as they are more relaxed and about fun more than winning. I thought I'd make an exception for this one, even though I only managed to take one picture all day. This is the picture.

That's 8 boosters, one Xathrid Gorgon Promo and a BIG Planeswalkers mug - and it comprises the winners prize that I got to take home with me! No one was more surprised than me, as I didn't originally think my card selection was that exciting. I had a big Green Mythic & Jace Planeswalker card in my pool so people were telling me that I had a good pool, but the fact is I played neither for the majority of the day.

Here is the deck that played Round 5:

Land:
Sunpetal Grove (rare 1)
9 Forest
7 Plains

Creatures
2 x Bond Beetle

Flinthoof Boar (u)
Timberpack Wolf (which I never drew in the tournament!)
Aven Squire

Attended Knight
Crusader of Odric (u)
Centaur Courser

2x Roaring Primadox (2u)
Primal Huntbeast
Griffin Protector
Healer of the Pride (u)

Silklash Spider (my other rare)
Serra Angel (u)

Other Spells
Prey Upon

Pacifism
Giant Growth

Oblivion Ring (u)
2x Safe Passage

2x Captains Call
Divine verdict

Thats a main deck with 16 basic lands, 2 rares (one of which is a dual land), 7 uncommons and 15 commons. Hardly a bomb filled deck!

Sideboard cards over the matches included:

2x Ring of Thune (started round 1 with one in the deck - after game 1 round 2 I never played them again)
Erase
Naturalize
Glorious Charge (flirted with this one - I never drew it so was hard to evaluate)
Plummet (goodbye nighthawk!)
and my other Mythic Elderscale Worm (I planned to put him in for long matches, after siding in and casting him in game 2 round 1 he never found my hand again. He didn't really combo with much in my deck really).

Round 1

This was against our buddy Phil who was playing Black and Red and I think Blue too. Game 1 he overwhelmed me with nighthawk so I sided in all the killing it tools meaning he never found nighthawk in game 2. He got out his Xathrid Gorgon and began to destroy me - and if he had the day would have been very different, but I pacified and then Oblivion ringed it. Unfortunately I blocked something I didn't need to and lost my Primadox so couldn't slow flicker the Mythic that had turned to stone. Luckily I just kept hitting him with other things so got my first win to take it to 1-1. Game 3 was all about playing too many colours and I won with a combination of my 3/3 and 4/4 buddies.

Round 2

This was against my friend Rob who I really respect as a player and have lost to in constructed a very large number of times. Fortunately I seem to have the edge in limited. Round 1 I found myself with gear and no creatures and a lack of answers to a flyer with enchantments and artefacts on it. As my sideboard shows I was ready for this and switched gears to punish the single creature focused strategies. Combo decks can play control pretty easily and then flick back to aggro as needed. This worked pretty well although mainly because he didn't find his Hydra to stomp me with. I won 2-1 and pointed out that the Rancor in his sideboard was worth playing. He still played a big fat deck full of all the fun spells, which I think cost him wins but won him friends and a little cheer when he got the random prize of the Primeval Titan Playmat at the end of the night.

Round 3

This was played against Don - one of the talented Magic playing students. This is the match I remember least about - I do remember a sleeping dragon that I had to keep an eye on and strategically timed my attacks so I could blow it up on the first turn it was useful to him. I'm evil like that. I do think the card is important in limited as most people played a lot less answers than I did. This was the first point at which I felt my deck was truly working. No 7 cost creatures, no clunky equipment that is only useful to half my deck, and only siding in and out things that influenced the battle. It was at this point I settled on 41 cards too - frankly the two bond beetles meant that the chances of getting land screwed were minimal, and the extra removal spell helped a lot.

I'd built a blue black control mill deck out of the remaining cards, mainly to relax me. I played this against Don and lost in short order - one card away from finding Jace. I'd managed to unsummon his sleeping dragon at a couple of perfect opportunities but he had tokens and pressure which I lost to. I really want to fix this deck and play it again though.

Round 4

This was against one of the best regular players that the store Jamie, who played a similar deck to the one in the last round. There were lots of mana problems and inconsistencies here too, and I think I was the only person to beat all three of the players I played in the last three rounds. He seemed to have mana problems round 2 I think and I got my slow-flicker the bond beetle combo going making Crusader of Odric something like an 11/11 taking out a creature per attack. I was also gaining at least 2 life per turn due to this. I think that a different draw on his part would have made this a much harder game. The luck was with me.

Round 5

This round I faced down Alex, probably the best of the local student players. I'd beaten him at the last pre-release 2-1 and was convinced he'd get his revenge on me but it wasn't to be. Game 1 was fairly fast and I didn't really know how to sideboard. Game 2 I thought I had him on a couple of occasions and I just had to keep attacking all out as I had both of my Safe Passage in hand meaning if the blocks turned out bad for me I could prevent them. In the end after two of them he conceded having just drawn three blank turns.

I was a bit emotional at this point and had to go outside...

Aftterwards I looked at Alex's deck and he had a couple of massive cards like Krenko, Mob boss that could have easily swung either game. His deck was also as consistent as mine and as we both table shuffled it was just pure random unluckiness of the draws that saw me getting my first Pre-release victory and not him. He's the kind of player I expect to see doing well at the PTQs pretty soon and I felt honoured to have beaten such worthy players on the way to my win. My overall game win percentage was in the 86% region which is amazing for me.

I had to check the stats page - 34 players, only one was undefeated.

I haven't opened my 8 prize packs yet - yesterday was also my 33rd birthday so was rather busy. Pretty memorable though - I think you'll agree!

Digital Dragons M13 League

2012-07-08T06:00:00.003-07:00

Digital Dragons M13 League

Digital Dragons Lichfield is running it's first ever Magic The Gathering League for the new M13 set starting on Friday 13th July and Saturday 14th July. Store owner Paul is in charge, but local Magic player Rich will be helping out with organisation & rules as Tournament Organiser.

Full details are below, but this is the store's first ever weekly Magic: The Gathering event and depending on how popular this is we may be able to increase the events we can run. The top finishers at the end of the league will get a Nichol Bolas - Planeswalker poster with all entrants receiving an alternate art Goblin token! There will also be a grand prize for the player who comes top of the league of a Planeswalker shoulder bag. Each player that pays the week 2 league fee will receive two booster packs as part of their prizes on the final week.

When you join the Magic 2013 League, you will be given the opportunity to play with the newest cards in an on-going, five-week league. There will be prizes, and special rules for the league that change weekly. The format for the Magic 2013 league is Sealed Deck— with three options on how to build your deck (see below).

Over the course of the league, you will be able to add more boosters to your league deck, but you cannot add cards from your collection or trade the cards from the league until it is over.

If you miss a week or need start late and to catch up then you can do this too - just talk to the store owner Paul.

Simply turn up on the dates below, choose and pay for one of the deck options below and build and play away. If you can bring your own basic land cards then do so, and if you want to protect your cards then you can bring or buy sleeves.

M13 League - Wizard's Official Overview

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Events.aspx?x=mtgcom%2Fevents%2Fleague-facts&fb_source=message

Dates:

Week 1 - Friday 13th July & Saturday 14th July

Week 2 - Saturday 21st July (also a Standard Monthly Magic Tournament at 12:30 on this day!)

Week 3 - Saturday 28th July

Week 4 - Saturday 4th August

Week 5 - Saturday 11th August (also a Standard Monthly Magic Tournament day at 12:30 on this day!)

The league matches can be played in store at any point during these days and in the following week. All results should be reported directly to Paul.

Rules Overview

Sealed decks...

● must contain a minimum of 40 cards.

● have no maximum deck size (but you must be able to shuffle your deck with no assistance)● have no maximum number of duplicate cards allowed in the deck. (e.g. if you open 5 of the
same card in your Booster Packs, you can play with all five in your deck).
● can be built using your own Basic Lands, or you may borrow from the store stock,
provided you return them at the end of the League.

Matches

● League games should be played in the Store if possible, but if Paul or Rich are Ok with it then the local cafe's and similar local venues can be used if the store is not available. It is up to Paul if the result of a match not played in store counts.

● A match consists of the best of 3 games between two players; matches are not timed.
● As with other Sealed Deck events, you may make adjustments to your deck from your sideboard between games. You may construct an entirely new deck between matches.
● Each player can play no more than 25 League matches during each 5-Week League and cannot play more than 5 matches per Week. The only players allowed to play more than 5 scoring matches per Week will be those that join the League late. Catch up matches for players already in the League will NOT be allowed. A player that has already played 5 scoring matches in a Week may, however, play additional non-scoring matches against players that still need scoring matches for that Week.

● In a single week (Wednesday – Tuesday) each player may not play an opponent more than once (with the exception of
players joining late: see below).
● Matches may be continued over more than one day if there is not enough time to complete all the games at once,
though an incomplete game is considered a draw game (it can be played over if both players choose). A match must be
completed within the same League Week, however.
● When each match is completed, you and your opponent will inform Paul of the result. If the match is not played in store then let Digital Dragons know the result as soon as possible via either FaceBook group or popping into the store.
● Sportsmanship is a must for League. We encourage everyone to have fun! If someone is looking for a match and you are too, and they ask you to play, you cannot deny them a game just because you don’t like them, or because you are looking for an easier opponent.

Joining Late

● Players who sign up for the League late will be allowed to purchase all the Booster Packs at once to catch them up with everyone else (the original 6, plus 1 per Week for Weeks 2 through 5). Please note: Additional Booster Pack purchases can ONLY occur once the Week has officially ended and the results for that Week have been tallied. In other words, after Tuesday.

● Players joining late can play extra matches in the Weeks they play to catch up with everyone else. (e.g. a player joining in Week 3 could play 15 scoring matches that week, or 10 scoring matches each in Week 3 and Week 4).

● Players trying to make up matches may play the same opponent more than once in a Week; however, not more times than the number of Weeks late they are joining (e.g. if a player joins in Week 2, they could play the same opponent twice (but not more than) during Week 2 to catch up).

Scoring

● Each player in a match gets 1 point just for playing, and the winner gets 2 bonus points in addition for a total of 3.

● As long as one game is completed, both players will get the minimum 1 point.

● League results will be tallied up every Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.

● The League Standings will be posted online and in-store.

There are also rules players use during their matches. These rules change every week.

Week 1: No effect.
Week 2: Whenever a creature attacks alone, that creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
Week 3: Creatures have ": Add to your mana pool."
Week 4: Creatures have vigilance.
Week 5: Instant and sorcery spells cost less to cast.

-----------

Standard Entry - Total cost - £40 (minimum cost £26)

This is how a Standard sealed deck / MTG league normally works. It's designed for players that are experienced with building Magic: The Gathering decks in short spaces of time and want a completely custom made deck. You receive random cards and build a deck of your choosing and modify it as the weeks go on.

Week 1 - Pay £20 to receive 6 M13 boosters and build a 40 card deck of your choosing - Play 5 league matches!

Week 2 - Pay league fee for prize pool. Buy one optional M13 booster pack at the discounted league price of £3.50 to change the cards in your deck as you wish. Play 5 league matches!

Week 3 - Buy one optional M13 booster pack at the discounted league price of £3.50 to change the cards in your deck as you wish. Play 5 league matches!

Week 4 - Buy one optional M13 booster pack at the discounted league price of £3.50 to change the cards in your deck as you wish. Play 5 league matches!

Week 5 - Buy one optional M13 booster pack at the discounted league price of £3.50 to change the cards in your deck as you wish. Play 5 league matches! Collect prizes!!

Intro Level Entry - Total cost £25 (Minimum cost £18)

This introductory version of the league deck means that you get a fully formed deck from the below 5 of your choosing to play with over the weeks.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1007

This removes the building process in week one and makes decisions about cards to add simpler as you only have two colours. You will also be starting with a 60 card deck which means that it's the same as standard constructed Magic. It does mean that any great cards you open in the future packs in the other three colours may be harder to use, but the more experienced players in the store will be able to advise on this. It's also the cheapest option.

Week 1 - Buy an M13 Intro deck of your choosing (keeping the two included boosters sealed) and Play! It really is that simple, you enter the league with a pre-made 60 card deck that is based around two colours. Play 5 league matches!

Week 2 - Pay league fee for prize pool. Use the first M13 booster from your Intro Deck box to change the cards in your deck if you wish. Play 5 league matches!

Week 3 - Use the second M13 booster pack from your Intro Deck to change the cards in your deck as you wish. Play 5 league matches!

Week 4 - Buy one optional M13 booster pack at the discounted league price of £3.50 to change the cards in your deck as you wish. Play 5 league matches!

Week 5 - Buy one optional M13 booster pack at the discounted league price of £3.50 to change the cards in your deck as you wish. Play 5 league matches!

If you miss any weeks you can catch up the matches (max 5 per week) as mentioned, or purchase the boosters you missed out on. Play 5 league matches! Collect prizes!!

Collector's Edition Entry - The 'Fat Pack' - Total cost £43.50 (Minimum cost £40)

This has been requested by some of the players who were already planning to pick up a Fat Pack. This is a box that contains everything you need for the new set - 9 boosters, a spindown counter (life die), a book listing all the cards, some land, and two small cardboard boxes. As this is almost perfect for a league (all you need to add are optional protective sleeves) we are allowing players to pick one up and use it for the league - and it covers everything except for that 10th and final booster (which is optional) and the league fee for the prize pool. Supplies of Fat Packs are limited so make sure you book in advance if you plan to take advantage of this option!

Week 1 - Buy a Fat Pack in store and select 6 boosters to use for the League. Build a 40 card deck of your choosing. Play 5 league matches!

Week 2 - Pay league fee for prize pool. Use 1 of your fat Pack boosters to change the cards in your deck if you wish. Play 5 league matches!

Week 3 - Use 1 of your fat Pack boosters to change the cards in your deck if you wish. Play 5 league matches!

Week 4 - Use 1 of your fat Pack boosters to change the cards in your deck if you wish. Play 5 league matches!

Week 5 - Use 1 of your fat Pack boosters to change the cards in your deck if you wish. Play 5 league matches! Collect Prizes!!

Rainbow Angels Attack!

2012-05-21T12:15:00.001-07:00

OK - a very short write up of our latest casual games day at Digital Dragons in Lichfield. Only 6 players, which was less than I'd hoped for and kept us at three rounds plus possible play off action (which was cancelled - see later).

Round 1 was me Vs Paul the shop owner and was a fairly lacklustre affair seeing me loose out as I didn't really see the right parts of the angel deck. Playing the shop owner while customers are about is always dangerous (but means we have a 'floater' that can jump in to make even numbers and is better than a bye). We mostly talked toot about the events and the cards we had. Due to retail happenings I conceded as time was called. Then I spent a good 30 mins hovering over the one remaining game that was still on it's game 1. It seems the elves had spawned all their mana producers and Birthing Pod couldn't break through! Eventually (ironically as I put them on turns) Pod missed a combat trick and Elves found their Ezuri to break through for the win.

Round 2 saw me against the Birthing Pod. I expected to loose badly to this Event Deck++ after stalling in round 1, but I seemed to nail the starting hand with a mix of lands and a few angels for when I got there. And then I got to reveal the secret reason for wanting to play my Angels - the oversized promo cards!

Hooray - Sigarda, Host of Herons hits the board and grows too! As the keen player may have spotted my opponent is a little mana screwed here. Infact the only play he did have was a turn 4 Skinrender whose only legal target was itself! (oops) This was a far cry from both of our last games and didn't really show off the cards I'd suggested for the pod deck so we rushed to game two.

This happened in game two - double mythic promo angelic action! I started with Giesela in hand and Double Abundant growth followed by Scroll of Avacyn was ripping through my deck to find what I needed to get her into play. The pod was racing me handily, but doom-bladed my life linker angel on the turn before I dropped the Blade of Goldenight teaching the important lesson to wait with your instants! My pod buddy was very nice about the 20 in the air that ensued, but we didn't get chance for a game 3 as the Elves had caused a massive rout on the other table lining them up to fight the mono white humans deck that one of the local players had got.

My game 3 was another slow affair against the other local player with his white Angels & Humans deck - we were both grinding out and playing similar cards (I did loose my Bruna, Light of Alabaster a little too hastily to try to trade) until the White Mikeaus started to get going. This caused me to loose very slowly indeed as I found all my mana guys and BOTH birds of Paradise that I put in to ease the lack of white that side-boarding all the dual lands caused. After many turns of not doing much he finally got big enough to be close -then silent departured all my guys - nooooo! That was a 1-0 loss that put me at the bottom of the standings, but with a big smile on my face.

During the last round a family came in with two small boys and after sheepishly watching a few games decided to make their first ever Magic purchase in the Venser Vs Koth Duel decks (that I'd been tempted to pick up earlier but resisted due to all the Planechase goodies). This was during my match so out of respect I didn't leave it to go and advise. They did pop back in later to complete the purchase and pick up boxes and sleeves too - so I rushed over and found them some of the promo cards from the Gateway things we had so they had a Gather The Townsfolk and a Nearheath Stalker to add to their collections. I had a flick through my trades folder to see if there was anything else suitable (idiotically forgetting about all the Avacyn commons I'd dumped in the store collection earlier) but decided not to confuse things. While the Duel Deck would not have been my choice for two young players I think that the balance and flashiness of it all was what attracted them to it. I offered to help them if they ever came to one of the store events in future.

Elves smashed the humans in the last round, and in the standings this meant that Elves were top just above the Humans so it seemed silly to have a play off and we moved all the tables and had a massive 6 player game of Zombie Fluxx instead with some of the YuGiOh Players joining in while the shop was cashed up.

Another great day had by all with more to come soon in June!

Playing Fair

2012-05-14T13:44:00.001-07:00

Sometimes in Magic: The Gathering (as well as in real life) it's hard to play fair. This isn't due to pre-ordained cheating strategies or even 'forgetting' to activate triggers but due to things that occur outside the game.

This realisation came after organising the first real sanctioned tournament at Digital Dragons in Lichfield and coming away the winner - with a deck I'd designed to either win fast or loose fast. It turns out that just having a good card pool to pull from and throwing together a green and white humans deck made almost entirely out of promotional rares can do quite a lot! The deck was essentially Fateful hour based which meant that it punished the other player a little too much and wasn't all that fun.

In the run up to the second 'big' tournament (we schedule casual events frequently when there happen to be games in store) I decided to make a deck that was competitive but would be fun to loose to, and hopefully fun to beat.

Here is my basic mana curve:

As you can see (if you tilt your head) this is all the Angel creature cards from Innistrad block. And the 1 M12 Angel too. And Angelic Wall as I figured it was lonely. There are some very overpowered (in terms of the players that may turn up's collections) cards here in the 5 AVR Mythic Rares, but this time they are singletons. No more will they have to battle through multiple copies of the same depressing Humans - now there are Singleton Angels to have to read - if I can race up the mana curve. I figured that this strategy will give me a lot of variability, while also allowing me to try out the new cards in a fun setting.

Last time I put up all the prizes and intend to do the same again - I skipped myself and started the prizes at 2nd and 3rd place. This means I'm not too worried if I do happen to win, but I am worried that the less experienced players won't have as much fun. This is reflected in my support cards.

I've put in Borderland Ranger instead of Scorned Villager, but kept the Avacyn's Pilgrims.

I've dropped Ponder entirely and reduced Gitaxian Probe to a two of in favour of Fleeting Distraction (it has little fairies in the art to help with the theme).

I am playing 4 Seraph's Sanctuary and 4 Scroll of Avacyn. I'm also starting with all basic lands, with the 9 dual lands hiding in my sideboard for when I face the couple of experienced players that will be going.

I also have a few more tricks that should help the deck plough through it's cards in search of it's 18 Angels and help with the multicolour deck. I will post back a report next week.

TO be...

2012-05-05T01:32:00.001-07:00

I am now officially a Tournament Organiser for Digital Dragons (and have figured out phone blogging)!

This means I can set up events and keep an eye on things from home which will be a lot more convenient , if less sociable.

Yesterday we did a mini casual event of mini masters using my boosters I'd just bought. Good fun all round. I now have three Moonsilver Spears which I think will turn out I be much more
Important than people currently realise...

Off to a launch event this morning, but the store seems to be closed still. We will see...

#ccLich - Our Casual Magic day at Digital Dragons

2012-04-21T16:35:00.001-07:00

Today was the first, real, proper Magic event with outside players at Digital Dragons in Lichfield as organised by me, Paul the shop owner and a mutual friend Tom who hooked us up. We'd done a little bit of promotion and ended up having two spontaneous practice days (where I was in store and so we did mini events) so knew what we were in for.

I got there a bit early to teach Tom how to play his new event deck, and got chatting to a few of the local players. When it came time to start we had 7 people present so the store owner Paul agreed to play single round games and to join in - I lent him a Standard legal zombie deck that was a bit basic but fun. After poking about at the odd Wizards tool for starting games we were ready a bit later than planned.

As I was the most experienced player I'd built a white + green splash humans & angels deck out of all the White promo cards I'd collected but never even played. I expected it to be solid and easy to play against, and this turned out to be true but it was better than I'd predicted.

Round one seemed to pit experience against rookies in every pairing so almost became a teaching round where people were figuring out their cards. Round two I got paired against Tom as we'd both won in Round 1 and we played a massive long drawn out single game that went on for about an hour due to my lack of lands which kept getting blown up (we decided timers would be a bad idea as we had plenty of time for the 3 rounds) and was only won by me as he didn't spot he could have used birthing pod to fetch a blocker. As he'd already fetched out most of his creatures there were only a few mana point values he could hit!

Best interaction saw me with Gideon PW (a singleton - forces his guys to attack), Gideon's Avenger (he taps, I get +1/+1) and Norn's Annex (he has to pay 2 life for each attacking creature). This would have been a game ender after only 15 or so mins, but in our practice game I taught him to pod a 2 drop into the corrupter to destroy the Annex. The Avenger got huge and was what won the game, but my unexpected combo would have seen him loose 12 life per turn so was neatly avoided.

Final round saw me play local player Vicky with her so far undefeated monsters deck. Having both Vampires and Zombies and a few black spirits I wasn't sure what to expect. Game 1 had me being beaten down in the air by the Aristocrat over two turns while I had 5 human tokens and 1 Avacyn's Pilgrim and the Doomsayer (tap to get a human). She took me to three life and would kill me in the next turn. My human deck was built around fateful hour mechanics and luckily the Doomsayer added +2/+2 to all creatures on my team giving me an attack of 20 against a fully tapped out opponent. It was a quick and sneaky win which I felt a bit bad for.

Game 2 was more even until I hit my 6 drop - an enchantment that gave all creatures double strike and lifelink. I'd not expected to manage to get to 6 so this was a cool bonus. Two turns later it was all over and as we were not doing playoffs I'd won the tournament!

I took a comfort break, and played another of the local players Chris with my back-up deck (was 1-1) while the 3rd 4th place match was finished and won by Vicky's brother Rob (also a friend of mine) and had the idea to buy a booster for the top three players out of my own funds to reward their turnout (the tournament was free entry to encourage more players which almost didn't work!). All packs had good card in and karma rewarded me with my 2nd Drogskol Reaver which will be fun to build around.

As every player bought at least one booster I think an entry fee + prize pack would be a safe option for the next event (last Sat of every month until we get tired of it is the plan!). Hopefully we can mimic The Road To WPN and get Core status just like internet hero and general nice guy Don did!

Afterwards some of us went back to Robs to gaze at his fish and talk toot and play a 3 player card game that was more about the tea and chat than the game. A pretty good Saturday all in all!

Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 Downloadable Deck Packs Deck Lists

2012-01-15T08:56:00.000-08:00

http://www.wizards.com/magic/digital/duelsoftheplaneswalkers.aspx?x=mtg/digital/d12/decks

Wizards have quietly been releasing two decks every two months for Planeswalkers while I've been busy with FNM and real life and I thought it may be useful to share the links to the full deck lists here.

They are theme decks and seem to be quite popular (especially the Knights one which currently seems a little more powerful than the rest). The names are March to War (White Red), Ghoulkeeper (Black grave returns), Forest's Fury (Treefolk tribal in Green), Dark Heavens (Black & White and similar to a DKA intro deck), Beknighted (White Knights), and Trinity of Elements (Riku of Two Reflections Blue Green Red).

Hopefully DLC 2 for the Dark Ascension paper block will be announced this week - i'm expecting it to come out after the launch of the block but to contain more cards from it because of this. I don't think Wizards were keen that we knew a bunch of cards before they released the info due to people peeking into the game files!

Speaking of Ascension we've been playing that in the house almost as much as Magic: The Gathering so I may do a quick write up of that one of the days...

Innistrad Prerelease, Launch and Launch

2011-10-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note about these! I went to the £25 66 person Pre-release, an 17 person draft (my first ever) launch in which I only had to pay £10 entry to get the promo (which is pretty good) and then the £25 launch in Stafford where there were about 28 people.

I didn't do amazingly in any of them (in fact I did best in the draft, but still wasn't top half) but I did have a lot of fun and got some great cards. Thinking of scaling back for the next set - but I still got a booster box to crack. I am in possession of 67 unopened booster packs counting the 2012 ones we haven't played with yet!

Friday Night Magic 6 - Leaving Zendikar

2011-10-04T16:24:00.000-07:00

Pre-release, launch & life have all been busy.

Almost 2 weeks ago I took my favourite deck The Black Deck in it's newly streamlined form as Phyrexian Suicide Cult out to FNM to see if it could do better than in my very first FNM now I knew what was going on. Essentially it did really well - I came 2nd, but lost to the same guy I lost to in round 3. Black sacrifice decks don't do well against decks full of cheap creatures, and certainly not one full of exile enchantments! The player was easily the most experienced person there and while it was a borrowed deck he'd made it a lot more consistant than the owner had & didn't drop a game all night.

The 'quarter finals' against my friends illusions deck was very close - I'm not sure what happened int he end, but I think I utility milled him by surgically extracting Ponder and then removing all his decent sized creatures with Life's Finale straight from the deck. This may be a direction to move in now that there won't be as many double use creatures around. I chose Pathrazer of Ulamog DCI promo as my free card to celebrate rotation.

I was happy with the decks performance and it could retire in style and I could potter off to the following day's Pre-release happy.

Birmingham - City of Magic

2011-09-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

When we started playing on March 11th 2011 by buying the Deck Builder's Toolkit 2011 we found few Magic The Gathering events happening in our local town (Birmingham, UK). Now it requires two blog posts. One with the list - and one to explain what I think happened (I am an Analyst after-all).

This is the second post with what I feel caused this shift, and my tiny part in it:

On March 11th 2011 three guys with disposable income walked into a games store and paid £15 for a box of cards. Each. Then one of them bought a second box (this was me). This simple action was part of a chain of events that led to a town with only one Wizards Play Network (WPN) event per quarter (Magic Geek's Pre Releases) getting more than any one person could attend, or even easily count. While I am personally responsible for these three poor souls (and a 4th who tried his best to resist the call of the Elves) I'm not responsible for the amazing amount of events that are scheduled for the next two weekends, but I thought it'd be interesting to see exactly what was. But I'm getting ahead of myself - the real story starts during the Xbox December online sales.

I was working away over the pre-Xmas period and spotted on my Xbox that the Magic The Gathering game had dropped in price from 800 points (£6.40) to 400 points (£3.20) and while I'd enjoyed the trial it's safe to say I didn't really get the game so I deleted it. I figured it'd be some cheap fun and good for short breaks in work and so I bought it after redownloading and re-trialing it. I played it an awful lot over the next few months - encouraging friends to get it too. I also renamed the blog and re-purposed it from Pokemon to general games (as was always planned in my 'write every day' strategy for essay improvement). Shortly after this promotion the game hit half a million copies sold and the sequel was announced. I looked into buying cards and found that a beginners box of cards was about £17 but that if we waited a month then the new version was out. I mentioned it to people at work and we decided to all jump in. Note in that last story that my total cards budget was £25 and I'd said I'd sell any I found worth over £10.

Some opened all their boxes and put into piles. I catalogued all three sections here, and looking back it's amazing to see that some of the cards from those first 8 boosters are still ones I play. This section still gets a huge chunk of the site visits so this is an amazingly popular product and loads of the people at Friday Night Magic (FNM) have the boxes from this for cards, but again this is yet to come.

Over the next few weeks I raised my spending limit to £100 and then broke it all without getting anywhere near a win, even casually. I like to think of this as the Schumacher effect (after the F1 driver). He tended to go off a lot in practice sessions and the UK commentators would get happy that he was vulnerable. Truth is the only way to find out the absolute fastest speed you can take a corner at is to go over it and then do just a bit less in the actual race. This effect stood me in good stead as a month and a half after buying the cards I'd actually won some crucial big games within our casual circle - go me! Uni was busy and so was work so MTG had taken a back seat.

I did some Googling about the new set and found that they were running an event 20 min walk from my house for it's release! I had to go - even if it was £25 and only 8 weeks after we started playing. Mentally i was drained before I'd turned up, but I did OK and found Karn & a Mox Opal which have since traded places on the value scales. I was surprised to find the event was relaxed and full of people just like me who played for fun (at the bottom tables at least!) and I honestly think that if this first experience wasn't so great that I'd have never gone to another event. I was also surprised to find out that it wasn't some official organiser and just run by the shop Magic Geek. I now understand how it all works, but do feel sorry for the tournament organisers like Steve that don't get all the bonuses the physical shops get just because he runs online & events only (especially when so many people seem to be new players that turn up to his events - new DCI cards are always being given out).

Karn took a trip to e-bay, didn't sell and then I went and bought a box of boosters which was rapidly shredded and then ignored due to work. A month passed. All was quiet on the MTG front and then something happened. The new version of the Xbox game launched. This simple pebble into the placid lake of nerddom is the start of why we have the massive amount of events. Suddenly the people who missed out on the game and the related promotions had an excuse to join us in our addiction. The promo cards were dished out giving the site a confusing story (as I got the old promo decks by mistake) but one that still gets the most hits. The promo cards were only in proper game stores, and the online tool (when it was playing ball) directed you to these shops. Our local store Wayland's Forge practically sold out of sealed Magic decks and boosters when this happened - all their lapsed players returned at once. This amazing act of acquisition convinced a lot of other stores that they should also register to give out the promotional cards - other stores pinged up on the WPN radar as places to not only buy cards, but to get the special shiny giants.

As the actual launch for Magic 2012 came and went the stores seemed to realise that they'd missed out on a pay day. Customers like me were talking about their competitors and travelling a few miles to the events. It's still a big job to put on a full Magic event so most waited until the Magic Celebration (a free event for both stores and consumers which I couldn't attend) to get started. A few started a little earlier such as the fabulous Road to WPN Blog details where a guy with no stores ends up running two lots of events and Game UK who runs the FNM that I've been to 5 of so far - even though it's only just become official and only gets the Promo cards from October. A store needs to run events before it becomes a CORE store and gets full access to the promo program and Game UK has just hit that one week too late to run a pre-release. I guess many are in a similar position as most Birmingham stores are only running a launch (or an unofficial event on launch day in a few cases!). This suggests that Magic Celebration needs to be about a month earlier so that stores can get 3 more events in within the time needed to pre-release the first set in the new block.

As an aside you may have noticed from the pics I got 4 titans - I bought 4 copies of the game! While the Steam & XBL versions were for myself the two spare XBL versions were for younger relatives. Since I paid for their games I got their promo, but since then both have expressed an interest in the paper product too... This was a risk I was willing to take as frankly there are far more damaging activities for teenagers than a card game that teaches important lessons about budgeting, winning and loosing and encourages critical thought. Long story short both are turning up to the last Zendikar FNM as their first full FNM (one made it to half of one a week ago...). More player acquisitions due to the value and desirability of the promos. I'm guessing a similar story has been told in many households and across many formats.

This mass of events is great for semi-players like our group. We aren't too bothered about winning the whole thing, we are just happy to participate. I got 2nd at one of these Friday tournaments but was lucky that no-one expected infect (cheers MaRo!) and may not get away with that again. This mass of events is basically the market's response to the new player base, and the response by us the player will determine how many survive. I suspect the Sat pre-release will fill up so am going to pre-book my place just in case.

As every store in town creeps towards Core status together in the next three months it will be very interesting. Cards will get cheaper for stores and maybe players, players will get better due to practice and events will either become larger or forced out by the competition. Those attached to shops may not care once they get the bonuses that Core status brings (lower priced stock and more freebies) but some may push for ADVANCED status for running 32+ player events.

Magic is poised to become bigger than it's ever been. I've played with people from work as a pretence to invite people over for an evening of fun. My fiance has even invited her work friends over and joined in with the fun (although Commander probably wasn't the best place to start). And over the next few months I'll play a lot less - these things always cycle, but a few good friends have expressed an interest in being shown how to turn creatures sideways and 'Despise' people with a smile on their face. And who am I to deny them that pleasure.

TL;DR?
Planeswalkers 09 dropped in price & reached a broader section of marketplace
Cheap beginner card sets got the early adopters in
Planeswalkers 2012 restarted everyone at the same point with desirable shiny cards
Magic Celebration got people out into the shops proving that there was an audience
Stores responded and scheduled events - if unsupported they may be one offs.

Innistrad Schedule

2011-09-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

Friday Night Magic 5 - Compare the Myr Deck

2011-09-18T06:36:00.000-07:00

As Steel Overseer is about to drop out of standard I felt compelled to play my multiplayer Myr deck build for the pre-FNM games nights we had at my house. I miss these, but we may restart them on a Wed.

Basically the idea is you throw out a load of little Myr then boost and tap/untap them with trinkets and then hope to find my one copy of Tempered Steel or Jor Kadeen to make you win faster. I have 1 voltaic key to reuse the overseers as needed too which adds to the chaos. In theory it works. Not against the FNM field though...

Round one was a 2-0 loss against burn & bloodthirst which was interesting, but I couldn't keep anything on the board long enough to get boosting.

Round 2 was the White Ally deck and while I started big in game 2 I got DOJ'd off the board and couldn't rebuild fast enough to get my items powered up. 2-0 again

Round 3 was more promising as this Diabolic Tutor deck was good, but I had essentially 4 turns to ramp up. I kept drawing into my high cost Scrapyard Salvo and Relentless Assault 'end game' cards and couldn't outpace him. 2-0. I took these out at the end of the game and won 4 straight side games over the rest of the evening! Such is Magic.

I did a write up of this with the LSV energy drink for FSF.

Round 4? Bye. This gave me the extra 2 PWP I needed to hit Level 10! With the FNM/Pre-release next weekend giving me a pretty much guaranteed 5 base participant points I could be sitting pretty for the start of the Oct FNM proper.

Next week Phyrexian Suicide Cult 1.5 takes it's final bow prior to rotation. And I have a few extra surprises slotted in...

Friday Night Magic 4 - Beware the Trees...

2011-09-18T06:09:00.000-07:00

Bit belated this one. Couldn't Tweet due to balancing the arrival of a friend to his first ever FNM (and getting on the right bus int he wrong direction to miss two rounds), and forgot to write up.

I thought that this one was a bit of a bust - the deck seemed to take ages to get anywhere and struggled to find answers to other people's win conditions. I was playing Blue Green Landfall and had up to 30 mana on some turns due to 2x Vorinclex but failed to put enough X cost cards in to utilise it.

Round 1 was against good friend @Disknoir 's Blue 'stall then play Stormtide' deck which would be fantastic if everyone wasn't playing burn and removal spells. I cocked up my landfall and lost my only decent flier by adding +2/+2 instead of +4/+4 and couldn't fly over the stormtide after this. Due to time this was a draw in the end, but I bet I could have won game 3 due to knowing what I needed to keep back to beat the stormtide.

Round 2 was against a BladeHold deck I really couldn't beat once it got going. I had to go collect my visitor during this game too so was a bit distracted - 2-0 to him.

Round 3 was against elves, and while game 1 took ages due to me not finding good damage producers game 2 was a walkover with the fab Hydra getting into 3 digit tokens again (it had in round 1 but been unable to attack).

Round 4 was unfortunately against my invited friend! It was fun to play, but as we'd been playing this same match-up the night before it felt like we'd been robbed of another contest. i won 2-1 due to a slip up in round 2 on my part where I hadn't taken the lifelink into account.

I came top half and gave my friend the promo card - he'd earned it!

If I'd conceded faster in Round 1 game 1 we might have made it to the 3rd game and I could have come top 4. As my Rd 2 opponed pointed out I needed to put BEast within in the deck and I realised after that adding 4 cards for red X cost spells would make the deck much more powerful. After rotation I will run this deck again - but without landfall can a landfetch deck really be that good? It'll be fun to find out.

Also - here is my Planeswalker Points link!

Friday Night Magic 3 - Loss Adjustment

2011-09-03T04:08:00.000-07:00

This week's was a four round affair where I took a Red/Black/Blue deck manipulation 75 card affair that I'd built the previous week while quite ill. It didn't do very well. The theme was 'make Time Reversal playable' This card is a Mythic Rare from the Magic 2012 set that is lower in value than most of the normal Rares. Ponder - a common card - tends to sell for more. I figured a way that you could kill people with it and went to work.

Round 1 - Red/Black Burn & vampires beat me 2:0

Round 2 - Elves beat me 2:0 (I think this was the same borrowed elves as a previous week being played by a different person)

Round 3 - Illusions beat me 2:0

Round 4 - A different Elves beat me 2:1. Yes - I won the penultimate game of the night.

After the Illusions battle I spread out my cards and found I'd only left 4 Red spells in and still got lots of mana (basic and non basic) for them. I took those out and fixed the lands and it ran a lot more smoothly. Still very clunky and requiring longer games to win with not much in the way of stalling tactics (Spellskite as a star blocker?!) I managed to sneak out a Psychosis Crawler with a Time reversal in hand and played it for the win (when I draw a card Psychosis Crawler does one damage to target player - Time Reversal makes us both dump hands and draw 7) - goal!!achieved!!

Sure I had to loose 8 (plus two extra matches I played to see what happened) to get 1 win, but I've figured out the key parts of the process now. I loved having Psychic surgery in the deck, but exiling cards only gets you so far - and the idea isn't really to let the opponent live to use their 7 cards.

On to next week where I'm looking after new players so will play a more traditional deck.

Friday Night Magic 2: The Infect Deck

2011-08-26T16:11:00.000-07:00

So - Two friday night Magic's down.

Game 1: Played a 17 year old lady who had only bought her deck that day and hadn't really had chance to play with it (it was the empires Intro deck). I won 2:0 but spent lots of time on education.

Game 2: Won the first round, but lost twice to terrible short mana. The deck was mostly the bloodthirst Intro deck with some cool twists - this guy came 3rd/4th.

Game 3: This was Vs the combo deck from last week & I lost the first one then won a turn 2 super infect and drawn out regular infect. 2:1 and 2:1 overall.

Game 4: Played against the same deck as game 1 but with massive modification. I won a fast game 1, lost to empires in 2 and won on turn 3 in the final game. 3:1 and into the top 4 (woo!)

I chose Auramancer foil as my promo and gave it imediadly to a friend.

Game 5: Against the organiser again!! To revenge last weeks loss I won two straight games with infect to grab a Tormented Soul promo for myself. Super Woo!

Game 6 - the Final. We relaly only had time to play one fast game and after Mulliganing to 5 I still had nothing and had elected to play. CAW living weapon made short work of me. 2nd is still amazing though.

Deck was
4x Titanic Growth
4x Giant Growth
4x Groundswell
4x Mutagenic Growth
as the engine

4x Glistner Elves
4x Phyrexian Myr

as the courier

with plenty of other evil tech to help such as the infect spider and corpse cur to pull it back.

Next week I'm thinking blue. Maybe...

I got another Pharoh in the booster which is amazing for the black deck.

My First Friday Night Magic

2011-08-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

Wasn't expecting much in the way of victories expecting all to be running tournament level stuff. Turns out it was all friendly and similar to our own little game group. I'll happily go again next week. Here are the Tweets from the evening.

I'm at my first #fnm about to get my ass handed to me by teenagers.

most have yugi out which is apparently sick... Not sure on numbers yet.

I see two black and red, and one illusions and lots of yugi. Nothing happening yet. Not sure what's happening!

Not sure what the kids in this internet cafe are playing but I want a go. (Turns out it was League of Legends - looks good).

If you rush down you'd be top 8 and fifty fifty on a promo card. Thinking max 9 players. Non of the yugi lot are playing!

Game 1 against organiser. Close loss, fast win, close loss. Really fun final game, many creatures eaten. #fnm (I think I should have actually won the last game as I forgot to resurrect Vengeful Pharoh for free - killing his creature in process - winning this would have changed the whole evening :( )

Game 2, good player with odd, borrowed elves. Won two. Once I had control it was straight forward. #fnm (Turns out this guy had 4 Planeswalkers which never saw the board!)

Game 3: Red black burn. Obliterator won game 1, almost won a close game 2 which I'm not sure how I lost. And game 3 I was toast from opening (Think i messed up my creature attacks game 2 - could have got the extra damage. G3 was a quick and messy affair...)

Game 4: guy hating his blue black deck from the start but it did lots but nothing deadly. 2 nil. #fnm (Opponent hadn't won all night and the deck seemed OK, but pushing in too many areas).

Overall I was joint third, but on opponents win percentages I was 7th! Still top 8 tho. ;) (yes - there were 8 players)