Dave’s Personal Blog

Another day spent at Superstars and the Shards of Alara prerelease. I was in two flights today, an individual and a 3-man team event, both sealed deck… what awesome fun. I got to play with the new cards, collected up a handful of rares for my collection, including a few of the new mythic rares. To boot… I came out with 5 of the foil prerelease Ajani Vengeant card.

I learned a few things:

1. Big Green Monsters are very, very effective,
2. BUT.. you need white lockdown and/or black removal to manage the early game and clear the way for your monsters,
3. Having your lands removed from the game isn’t a pleasant feeling,
4. You can’t convince your opponent to add counters to your Feral Hydra.

So that was roughly 10am-8pm for two days. 20 hours of magic. Nice.

Next week is the release. Guess where I’ll be.

I write this as I wait for the train home after an incredible day of Magic.

I did poorly in the first flight: 0-4.

The second flight went better. I opened Ajani and decided to play him… setting colors to RGW. I then threw out any B or U cards and selected the best of what remained. That approach seemed to work ok as I proceeded to plow through 3 rounds dropping big monsters and flattening opponents. All (except in cases of mana screw) were awesome games. Once I even came back from 1 life to win.

I went 0-2 in the final round (2 incredible games) to finish 3-1, taking home boosters to cover Monday night’s draft.

I took part in the open dueling as well. Great fun and netting another booster and prerelease foil. Tomorrow will complete a playset of them.

Kudos to Superstars. They’re doing a great job.

I’m at the Shards of Alara prerelease and having great fun even though I haven’t won a game yet.

Here’s a deck I put together after Lorwyn came out, that I’ve only had the opportunity to play recently. It’s done surprisingly well around the kitchen table.

If you were a DOOM or Quake 2 player, you know what BFT stands for… “Big F***ing Trees”. Here’s the decklist:

Nothing too elegant… it’s pretty blunt with a brute force approach: make some big nasty trees and send them across the table.

The main idea is to drop land as fast and furiously as you can… dumping it from your hand in the early game with the Skyshroud Ranger, fetching more with Rampant Growth and Into the North. The ranger potentially gives you some early game damage or blocks as well. Rites of Flourishing accelerates the game, giving you more cards and more forests. All the land is snow land, so once you can bring some Scrying Sheets online you can start pulling land off the top of your deck at the end of your opponent’s turn with any land you still have untapped.

So that’s aimed at getting you set up with a huge base of land. That lets you cast some serious stuff. Stuff like double Epic Proportions as a combat trick. It also powers up your Dauntless Dourbark, which the Treefolk Harbinger can help you get on the board. Timber Protector is there as another sizable body & target for Epic Proportions, as well as protection for your Dauntless Dourbark. The Battlewand Oak is another body, with a nice pump when you drop multiple trees (animated or not) in a turn. Don’t be shy with this deck… you want to drop stuff in your pre-combat main phase to power things up as much as possible before combat.

When it works, this deck does some sick stuff. One game I had a 22/22 trampling Dourbark (among other things) thanks to the trees in play and 2 Epic Proportions.

In light of sets since Lorwyn, there are some thing that could be put in this deck: Tower Above and Monstrify come to mind.

I really like Magic the Gathering.

I like playing it. I like collecting it. I like hanging out with other people that like playing it. I really like playing it a lot. I haven’t been playing it nearly enough since I moved to California.

It’s not exactly cheap to collect and I don’t feel I’m getting my money’s worth since I’m not playing much. Also, to be honest, I’m not that good at it… again since I’m not playing much.

As the dawn of another set looms on the calendar, I see two options: give it up, or play A LOT MO’ MAGIC!

So when Superstars moved to their new location (which is so much easier for me to get to/from) I decided to go with door #2.

To get things started, I’ll be at the prerelease this weekend… for a minimum of 3 flights (so up to 15 consecutive hours)… and possibly more on Sunday… and an outside chance of a midnight flight on friday night.

That’s A LOT MO’ MAGIC!!

And that’s just the beginning.

Tonight we got together for some Lorwyn-Lorwyn-Morningtide drafting, as Peter had some packs left from the spring. It was a bit odd as there were just 4 of us, but fun none the less. I was pleased with how I did. Here’s my deck:

I played Eric and his UW deck first. The game must have gone on for an hour at least. At the end he had 13 cards in his library and I had 12… thankfully I kept his Jace just short of milling me. The game finally ended when I sent everything in, four 1/1s against Jace (who had 10 loyalty counters iirc) and the rest against Eric. Paying 5 to the Pride added 5 points of damage and 5 tokens for a total of 9 points of damage to Eric. A post combat Notorious Throng added 9 1/1 flyers to my side of the board… more than enough at that point. Game over.

I went 1-2 with Jeff.. the last game being great fun. An awesome top-deck turned the game around on his last turn.

So I went 2-2 on games for the night… better than my usual record. I’m happy with how I drafted and how I played.

I spent the bulk of last weekend (the waking hours anyway) at Superstars. Superstars is a (some would say “the”) Magic the Gathering retailer in the South Bay area (if not beyond).

Here are some more pics from the weekend.

The space is awesome… huge… natural lighting from skylights… just fabulous. I love the banners from Magic over the years. It’s far more convenient for me to get to/from compared to the previous location. Between that and the fact that I want to get more serious about Magic (i.e. play a whole bunch more… I’m targeting 16+ hours a week of actual playing time, plus time reading and experimenting with cards), I expect I’ll be spending a fair bit of time there.

Great after-market activity too. I sold a handful of cards to the shop, and traded for a bunch that Nancy or I needed.

A good friend I got to know in Chicago was in town and dropped by for me to teach him how to play. We had a game of Elves vs. Goblins. He played Elves.. and had insanely good draws… I on the other hand got mediocre draws and had my ass kicked into next week. Ah… but what better way to learn. He was hooked and left with a couple of precon decks from 10th for he & his wife to learn/play. I gave them a box full of extra 10th (un)commons I had to give them a jump start.

Tonight is the first weekly “Night of Magic the Gathering at Dave’s place”. A few of the guys are coming over and mahem and merriment are sure to ensue.

The inception of this idea spurred me to finally buy a table and chairs for my dinningroom area. Gotta love IKEA! I picked up a coffee table while there… so there’s plenty is place to play.