At the Kitchen Table

I had a fairly good draft today. A first pick Battlegrace Angel pretty much set my colors. After that the white flowed freely into my pile of cards along with generous amounts of other Bant cards. I ended up with the following:

Basic Lands (16) 7 Plains 5 Island 4 Forest Lands (1) 1 Unstable Frontier Creatures (14) 1 Aerie Mystics 1 Aven Squire 1 Valeron Outlander 3 Rhox Bodyguard 2 Deft Duelist 1 Battlegrace Angel 2 Sigiled Paladin 2 Jhessian Infiltrator 1 Akrasan Squire Enchantments (3) 3 Angelic Benediction Sorceries (2) 1 Martial Coup 1 Covenant of Minds Instants (4) 1 Resounding Silence 2 Unsummon 1 Hindering Light

I didn’t keep notes, so not much here.

Round 1 was against a nasty, removal heavy jund deck. Game 1 was pretty quick with me taking a loss. Blightning was involved. Game 2 went long, with Battlegrace Angel gaining me some life. I went on to take the win. Game 3 was similar. We went into turns before my opponent finally scoped them up with me ahead by 8 life.

Round 2 was against a Naya deck packing Where Ancients Tread. Game 1 was pretty even, with me starting early and chipping away at her life total. Once she got online my life started dropping in big chunks. She was at 4 when she took my final 3. Game 2 was fairly quickly mine, aided by a lack of forests on my opponent’s board. Lots of exaltation mean I was swinging unblocked for 6 per turn. Likewise, game 3 was decisive, with Battlegrace Angel coming online and jumping my life a couple times to 30, while eating away at hers.

Round 3 was very sad. I was up against a BR deck full of Gryxis nastiness. Flyers, unearthers, ugh. Games were over pretty quickly. Martial Coup did a nice job of clearing the board and buying me a few turns.. alas, to no avail in the end.

Superstars held a Type 2 $1K prize pool event today. I went, taking Jerry’s deck (that he’ll write up shortly). I didn’t do so well.. going 1-2-2 before bailing. I learned a lot about the deck, had loads of fun, and got some trading in.

I heard we had 40 players out for the 1K, and there was a Yugioh tourny going on at the same time, as well as some drafting on the side. It was a busy place. Pics below.

Hello all, and welcome to my involvement in Dave’s blog.  I will be using this to talk about magic the gatheriing, and the breakthroughs, no matter how small and insignificant that i make with the T2 metagame. 

And now on to a bit about myself and my magic playing experience, I live in an up and coming town in Nova Scotia, where i have spent all 18 years of my life.  The magic community here is a nice, but smaller group of people who all enjoy getting out to an FNM, so all and all it is nice. 

I have been playing since 1998 when my cousin taught me the ropes with the BR phyrexian precon from urzas saga,  and i have been hooked ever since.  I started playing more competitively about 4 years ago when I started attending regionals and other larger scale tournaments, with a mixed bag of results at the start, going from nOOb status of 1-5 to top 8ing or at least being close for the past year or so.  I am hoping to attend nationals this year for the first time, which will be an amazing experience.

Thanks for reading my first post, and i promise that in the future I will actually have something interesting to say and some insight to shed, starting with a deck that I have been playing with a lot lately, that you will see with Dave Astels as he takes it into the 1k event at Superstars this weekend, after which match reports and a matchup summary as i have finally gotten a gauntlet of pre conflux finished to test with.  I wish the best of luck to Dave and I can’t wait to see my deck in the top of the standings =).

So until next time, do not let the cards tap you the wrong way, and enjoy.

I’m pleased to announce that a good friend of mine has agreed to join me on this blog.

Jerry was one of the leading players at the FNM where I took my first MTG steps away from the kitchen table. That was a couple years ago, and as I got to know him, I watched him develop into an accomplished player, learning a lot in the process.

Welcome Jerry! I’m sure we’ll all learn plenty from your posts.

Tonight I decided to clean up my piles of Alara land… where did it all come from!?

This is a bit delayed… I forgot I got some pics.

I did better on day 2 at Superstars. My first pool was pretty good, including a Blood Tyrant, that turned out to be MVP. I ended up building a solid Gryxis deck. I ended up going 2-2, with a 4th round game deciding between 3-1 and 2-2 for both of us. Game three went to the end.. with both of us at 2 life before the final blow.

The second flight was far less satisfying.

You can see Gerry Thompson in the shot below (watching the game on the right)… LSV is elsewhere:

I’m really happy with Conflux. Lots of great cards, I’m looking forward to revisiting my “There Be Dragons” deck to work in things like Banefire. There are some things from Esper that I want to try out in my extended affinity deck. And I have some ideas for block constructed decks as well.

Conflux in general adds nicely to Shards. It extends the idea of the 3 color shards, giving you (as expected for sets 2 & 3 of a block) more cards to augment the base set of the block.

Conflux also is a nice logical progression that started in the Shadowmoor/Eventide block. That was, in essence, a 2 color block focussed on allied and opposed color pairs. Shards was a 3 color set focussed on allied color triples. Conflux take the next step with a focus on 5 colors.

At first I thought “5 colors.. insane”. But the fixers are there. At the prerelease I built 2 5 color decks and a 3 color (Gryxis) deck. I didn’t have trouble getting all 5 colors online in reasonable time. In one game I had the 5 basic lands type in play on turn 5, letting me drop the 8/8 Fusion Elemental.

I say a hearty “Well Done!” to the Bill Rose & his design team and Mike Turian & his development team.

I finished Agents of Artifice on my way into the Sunday prerelease at Superstars.

Wow. I really enjoyed it. Really good story.. nice backstory on some of the recent (ok.. like a year ago for Jace & Lilliana) additions to the Magic mythos.

But there’s lots of surprises and twists… I literally had trouble putting it down through the last quarter.

It’s a good read. Buy it (hardcover!! which is a first i think for an MTG novel.. nice) and read it. And you get a sweet looking foil Jace card (art from the book cover.. which is ‘foil’ as well… sweet).

We had a great time at the big prerelease. LSV & Gerry T were gunslinging and were surrounded the whole time. Lots of people, lots of cards, lots of magic.