Magic: The Gathering

Hahah. When's the next time you're home again?

Well, next week is finals week for me. The week after, I'm back that whole time, so you've got me for a week.

Coolio.

that took too long

Joseph how'd it go?

Long story short, I came for magic and left emptyhanded by the hands of YuGiOh players :C

After spring break, I'll meet other planeswalkers. It'll be good stuff. I actually found out some of my Student Music Association friends play Magic, so that makes me happy :O

I wish CSUN were as cool as UCR and had people who played Magic -_-.

Jocelyn made a really awesome standard mono black zombie deck by herself which she's bringing to the standard tournament tomorrow at emerald. It consistently knocks you down with 1 and 2 mana 2/2s and kills your shit with removal. The first couple times I played it I kept losing because I continued walking my fatties into tragic slips with no answer lol. Fun stuff

Oh man, that sounds fun. I'll need to play against her while I'm still there

Yeah, I take pride in the fact that I helped her learn how to play. I like helping her with her decks. She has this really awesome blue/green aggro proliferate that beats face hard with ludevic's test subject and a plethora of hydras. It's a scary deck to play if you have little to no removal hahah

Oh man, this sounds like a ton of fun. I wanna go against that one with my white token. It'll be just like Pikmin

lol I dunno man. Primordial hydras make your birthdays shorter when you don't draw into removal.

Hey man, don't underestimate the Asian birthday and its length.

But yeah, big fatties are gonna be a pain, but maybe my deck as is would stand a vague chance while the Bonds and Days are still in there

True, true. Now I wanna play lol. I'd ask if you were up for a game right now, but it's passed midnight hahah. Maybe tomorrow?

Hmm that reminds me. Maybe one day we can play 3 way online with Jocelyn

Ha yeah, definitely not right now; I may risk waking my roommate

And oh lord, down. That'll be a trip

So I just got home from the standard constructed tournament over at emerald. Being the first time trying my standard deck out, I was pretty confident I wouldn't do very well xDDDD, but I did a lot better than I thought. Jocelyn played too using a mono black zombies deck with a one-of Gravecrawler she got in almost all her opening hands lol.

So it was 3 rounds and my first round I went up against blue/black control. Hilariously enough, I had been training myself to use my deck specifically in reaction to blue/black control decks at home, so the first game essentially went as follows.

Turn one llanowar, done.
On his turn, darkslick shores.
Turn two, elvish archdruid. done
On his turn, swamp.
Turn three, play land, and, although I had both a vorapede and primeval titan in my hand, I cast strangleroot geist with 3 up for the mana leak, and swing for two. After that it was all downhill for him, and I baited him hard for counterspells. Then when all my fatties hit the board and he tried to kill them with removal, I had my ranger's guile at the ready. It was a glorious victory hahah.

Second game I drew two strangleroot geists and was pummeling him with them hard, but then he dropped a wurmcoil engine and stopped me dead. I was forced to triple block to kill wurmcoil and then I only had one creature left to block one of his little wurmcoils (the lifelinker, of course). Then I was top decking searching for any answer, a fatty really, but all I kept drawing into was land, and he wittled me away until I died. I had a feeling he had a counterspell at the ready either way, though.

Our last game I foolishly kept a one land hand with two birds of paradise, and dumped them out, only to get my board black sun's zenithed. Then, I somehow actually still got to stabilize and began attacking with viridian emissaries and strangleroot geists, but then he double curse of death holded me and killed me hard with Karn Liberated.

My second game was against zombies, and I think was the most though-provoking of my matches. I would have won the first game if it weren't for a stupid kessig wolf run play I did on my last combat phase. I was down to 5 and he had a tapped grim grin, a tapped diregraf ghoul, and a diregraf captain. I attacked with a 6/5 vorapede, my primeval titan, and viridian emissary. He sacs the tapped ghoul for grim grin, untaps, and blocks primeval with it, and the captain blocks my vorapede. I then proceeded to activate my wolf run for the boost, but instead of giving it to primeval and killing grim grin with him, I gave it to vorapede..... So I wipe his board except for an untapped grim grin, bring him down to like 2, and all I have is 5 life and a bird of paradise facing down a 7/7 grim grin who kills a creature when it attacks and gets a +1/+1 counter. Huge misplay on my part.

My second game I made up for it. I recall attacking for 5 with my vorapede on turn 4 and him taking it, resulting in me cassting a hunter's insight on it and drawing 5 cards. It was delicious. I also sideboarded in autumn's veils, so the turn after, I baited a primeval into a mana leak with one green open, and saved him with an autumn's veil. He was like AWW SHET.

My third game my deck was out for blood.....
Turn one, llanowar.
He plays island and ponders.
Turn two, Elvish archdruid.
He plays island and ponders again.
Turn three, drop my third land which was a kessig wolf run, cast primeval titan with him tapped out, search up inkmoth nexus and my single mountain with primeval's enter the battlefield trigger.
He passes.
Turn four I attack for 6. He takes it. I cast a moldgraf monstrosity with llanowar untapped. He goes for the counter, and I shoot the autumn's veil. Next turn I had 14 trample damage on board with an active kessig wolf run for 4 more plus 3 ranger's guiles in my hand. GG.

My third match was a killer uphill battle. B/W tokens. Just as fast as me, more consistent, and came out in groups rather than one huge body. Also, they flew -_-. Not the best match up for a mono green deck. Game one he pummeled me hard with 3 3/3 fliers thanks to two intangible virtues and a drogskol captain. I died by turn 4 or 5... in the sideboard, I took ratchet bombs, prey upons, and naturalizes for his enchantments, but game two was just as bad a train wreck because I drew into no land, and by turn 5, although I slowed him down with my naturalizes, I only had three land and a birds of paradise. Fortunately, the next two turns I drew into land, and was able to pop down my primeval I had in my opening hand. I was pretty confident I stabilized, but then I forgot to take into account the fact that he sideboarded too, and more likely than not, sideboarded in O-rings for my fatties. On his turn, he O ringed my primeval and I died to 4/4 flying hexproof ghost tokens. It was painful lol. Interestingly enough, the guy who I played was either deaf, mute, or a combination of the two, so silently playing with hand gestures was an interesting treat I got to enjoy.

Newest episode of Friday Nights

Mario, I'm surprised how well you utilized my Esper deck. I thought the deck was pretty outdated and wouldn't stand a chance against most decks nowadays, and then you went and dominated both my Goblin and Token decks.

So that gives me hope in my deck, as well as my deck building skills.

Hahah yeah it's a fun one. The way you built it makes it pretty consistent if you let it live long enough, and I think the reason you didn't have as much initial success with it at Providence was because of lack of rules knowledge on anyone's part, like for instance, the fact that you could use Transmuter's ability on your opponents' turns like I did as sort of a fail safe and also to be able to react to any funny business. Also the fact that some of us, myself included, didn't know exactly how planeswalkers worked, so I would use my planeswalker ability on your turn to fuck you up somehow. Also, I feel that people knew this deck strived for the late game so people just played their fast decks against it, and some *coughChestercough* even cheated while playing. In my opinion I think you could have a beastly nearly unbeatable deck if you reconstruct it with a solid early game. Maybe instead of the canonist pop in 4 spell disrupters like mana leak or cancel so that instead of only one spell, they play no spells lol. Or maybe you could do the 2-2 split with canonist and 2 disrupters so that when you have a canonist out and they cast something that you counter, they can't cast any other spells no matter how much mana they have (unless they're artifacts). Also some unsummon effects...like unsummon and vapor snag to bounce dudes that got past the counter spree, and then you can subsequently counter on the way back down next turn. Esper control was quite the nuts back in the day. In fact, I think it was the only viable matchup for Jund, which is still apparently wrecking in modern format...

Yeah man, it made me really happy. I'm gonna try to dig out my old cards and see if I can build something decent out of it haha

I formally denounce my former alignment to green and pledge my allegiance to red.






I look forward to burning you all to a crisp with my cheap, broken cards...

Red is just absolute assrape this time around.

But alright, so I just got back from my very first FNM draft. I found a card store about 15 minutes from UCR, so I drove over, signed up, got seated and we all got our packs: one Dark Ascension, two Innistrads. First pack, I looked around and found myself Geralf's Messenger. So I thought, okay. I guess I'm gonna have myself a nice zombie deck. Packs get passed around, someone passed up a Diregraf Captain. At this point, all I could think was OH HO HO, BLUE/BLACK ZOMBIES IT IS. Packs for passed around, and I got myself a couple cheap cards with some interesting side effects to help me get ahead early game: Black Cat, a Manor Skeleton, Typhoid Rats, that good stuff. Along with those, I nabbed a couple Stitched Drakes for flying defense and Sightless Ghouls for extra beef. I got some extra spells like Claustrophobia and Dissipate for extra support, and so on. But what REALLY sold me was the Rooftop Storm someone had passed up. So there I was with a little deck of blue and black, ready to see where it would take me.

First round was against a guy who built a green black deck with a splash of red for his Kessig Wolf Run. First round he couldn't get any creatures out, and the only creature he managed to put out, I Claustrophobia'd it. So I practically swung at him with nothing but a cat and mice. Round two was more interesting. The game was pretty close, he was at 6 and I was at 8. He brought out a Reaper from the Abyss and had some other pretty significant cards out. I had a Stitched Drake out to block, along with a Manor Skeleton and a Sightless Ghoul equipped with a Skeletal Grimace. I could block everything he had, but things didn't look so good for me. Luckily on the turn right before last, I dropped a Spiteful Shadows on his Reaper and no matter what he would have done, it would have ended badly for him: he could alpha strike with everything and I could block him with the Drake and have him lose his remaining life, or he could pass the turn and let me alpha strike and he could either take it and lose or block it...and lose. Whatever the case, I won that.

We finished early, so we decided to play a casual match with our other decks. He had a blue/white mill/fog where he focused on milling me and preventing any possible combat damage I'd inflict. So that was that, and I moved onto round two. My next opponent was also a newcomer to the draft scene, and he ran a black/red of some sort. His deck didn't exactly have any particular focus, just a bunch of fatties that didn't come out til like turn 4. My issue, however, was the fact that my deck had a hefty amount of enchantments and instants to help out my creatures.... and they all just happened to be ALL IN THE TOP HALF OF MY DECK. So I was praying for a creature, only to come up with a bunch of Artful Dodges, Curiosities, Gruesome Deformities and so on... none of which I could use because of my lack of creatures. And this happened two games in a row. So due to the fact that I had no defenders, I lost that round.

Next, my luck just plummeted when I was matched up against an official DCI tournament judge. He was running red/white Spirits that dominated by around turn 4. That was just a sad, sad clusterfuck, not even worth talking about.

So I didn't end up winning, but that's fine. I didn't get the promo either, but that's alright too. At least I got experience, and I now have the framework for what could be a pretty awesome Zombie deck. I'll probably go again next week, then the Avacyn Restored prerelease the week after.

Dude you me and Matt and my brother and Jocelyn should all go to the prerelease together :O

On a side note, cool pull on the messenger and rooftop storm pick. I like how you committed to zombies so quickly xDDD. that mill constructed deck you played against seemed like ass...what cards did it have??

I'm down; I'll definitely be home that weekend, so it should be good stuff.

And yeah, I started off saying "YEAH ZOMBIES" but halfway through the Innistrad packs, it slowly took a turn from zombies to mill. When we went through all the packs and we were just deckbuilding, I weeded out the milly cards and tried to make a steady Zombie deck, which sort of held its own.

Oh yeah, and on the first Innistrad pack, one guy was screaming cus he got Garruk, which he said he needed in another deck of his but wouldn't fit in his draft deck, so he passed it up. I dunno, man, I would have just taken it xD

And the mill guy was a freaking long battle. First off, he had a bunch of Font of Mythos and Howling Mine so he had me drawing like 8 cards a turn, and Jace's Erasure and had me discarding every time he drew a card. I mean, it was nice having a lot more to choose from, but when I'd lay something down, he'd only Negate it or Cancel it. He had a bunch of Dawn Charms, Angelsongs and cards along the same vein, so every time I would attack, he would just prevent the damage, which was a bitch cus by around turn 9 I had a good 30 something tokens out, ready to take him down. He also had Jace, but the second it touched the battlefield, I'd O-Ring it. Overall, it was a pretty ridiculous battle.

Sounds like fun xD. You used goblins or humans? I haven't played in like a week and a half or something which sucks 'cause yesterday there was 2 headed giant at Emerald. But I guess I should be saving my money for Avacyn Restored anyway hahah. But Joseph, are you free to play at all today?

I ran Humans. It was ridiculous; I was Increasing Devotion like no other, tapping like four Thraben Doomsayers at once, even flashbacking some of the Devotions. I had an ARMY out. Then when I alpha strike for at least four times lethal.... "Oh, Angelsong." I had a smile on, but I was ready to rip my hair out.

And I'm available physically, but I'm not mentally in the right mindset. Being sick isn't fun ._______.