At the Kitchen Table

It’s  the end of the Worlds as know it.

Today started early. I set my alarm for 7am so that I could be to the site in plenty of time to see the opening ceremonies and the HOF induction.

I caught the 49 bus to Fort Mason. This reminded me vividly how much nicer the public transportation system in Chicago is.

I made it to the venue in plenty of time. On entering the hall, I was greeted my Magic’s reigning posterboy:

Meeting people.

I spent much of the day simply meeting people: those that I’ve met before, and those who I know on twitter and the like.

The list is long but the day began, and ended (over a fabulous diner at Tony’s) with Robert Martin (Men of Magic), Trick, Adam (aka Trick version 2.0), and Evan.

I got a seat for the ceremonies. BDM stopped on the way to the stage to say hi. Brian is simply a great guy whose knowledge of the game and it’s history is simply amazing.

I watched the opening ceremonies and the HOF induction. It’s so good to see Steve OMS get in. This is so long overdue. I noticed Shuhei having a good laugh at the recounting of his past achievements and adventures: Play every GP across the world, and something about petting an alligator?! He was in fine form today, in Japanese attire.

I squoze in an 8 man standard pickup. I played UW Illusions, and lost in round 2. More public events later in the weekend.

After that event I wandered around more and met up with more people.

Notably, I ran into Lokman Chen Fresh from his GP San Diego top 8. Lokman is someone I have good memories of playing at Superstars when it was my LGS.

I finally had the pleasure of meeting @affinityforblue himself, Joey Pasco. We had a long chat that wandered over several magic and non-magic topic.

Tristan Sean Gregory is another guy I know from my days at Superstars/ChannelFireball. Good times catching up and having a deep discussion of the OP changes.

I must say I was dismayed when I saw where the event was. Restaurnats? NOT. Coffee? NOT. The coffee I took care of with a short walk to StarBucks, and lunch was in true San Francisco style: food trucks! Real food trucks, unlike as the legally castrated trucks in Chicago. Yummy food trucks, too. Mmm.. chicken and donuts!

Waiting in line for lunch I met Josh Frankel (@inkwell_looter) and chatted with him and Mark Rosewater.

Sat with Josh, Adam (@the_stybs) his wife, and a couple other guys.

After lunch Adam and I played a game with a couple casual decks he had. I ran the BG werewolf deck with copy effects. I won that one fairly handily. I believe  he is planning to write it up. It was fun, and the first time Ive had the opportunity to play with werewolves. The dual face cards are a bit of a pain, but the werewolves are great fun. After he experience with them, as well as the Delver in my Illusions deck, I see the value of using checklists.  I’m sold.

Many of the greats are here. Many old timers as well. I’ve seen Jon Finkel several a times, Alan Comer, Darwin Kastle, Rob Dougherty, Randy Beulher. Many seem to be here because it really is the end of the Worlds as we know it.

Artists, spell slingers, and Seishiro Ohkubo with his amazing 3D alters. So nice I’d want to put them in a perfect fit…. um….

Finally met and had a good chat with Ziam Beg, after working with him on channelforeball.com.

Adam and I did a fairly significant trade.  I almost took one of his Underground Seas as part of it, but decided to go with more on less valuable lands: pains and various colorless generators for my Karn Commander deck that I’m rebuilding. I followed that up with cruising the vendor booths for more Commander fodder.  I like Adam’s idea of building a ‘Commander box‘.  This weekend is getting it up & running.  It’s time to head back to the ATM…

After a day full of magic Adam, his wife, Trick, Robert, and Evan and me heading to dinner at Tony’s in North Beach (corner of Union & Stockton). If you like traditional pizza, get there at least once while you’re here!

The day wrapped up back at the Armory with me meeting (a hug was as far as it went) my favorite kinklive.com girl.  A while ago it came to light that we had a couple of really good friends in common (which I had dinner with on Wednesday, in fact). A great day over all.

A new set means a new binder, which for me means a new set of page inserts: Page_Inserts-Innistrad.pdf.

Innistrand was interesting because of the dual face cards: they are each two unique cards as far as the card database is concerned. Some work was needed to deal with them (i.e. have on insert per DFC rather for each gatherer entry).

I recently got the set of 5 commander decks to jumpstart my reentry into playing EDH… um… Commander. The Counterpunch deck especially caught my attention, so I sleeved it up and started digging into it. I dug through my stash of tokens to pull out what the deck needed: Zombies from M11, Soldiers from SOM, Eldrazi Spawn from ROE, Wolves from ZEN, Snakes from ZEN, and a ton of Saprolings from M12. They were easy. The rest presented challenge. I dodged the Squirrel bullet by swapping out Acorn Catapult for Doubling Season. I considered buying a pile of Unglued Pegasus tokens but decided against it. I decided to make my own for the remaining. So I fired up Magic Set Editor and google image search. Things went smoothly and I ended up with Spider, Pegasus, Spirit, a couple different Insects, and a Spawnwrithe that someone else had made. Here they are:

And here’s a PDF of them, ready to print.

Today I ordered a couple cases of M12 and got a binder ready to hold it. I tweeted such and included the following picture. @the_toMatto asked about my organization system. I’d been planning to write about it, so I figured now was the time.

Early in my relationship with Magic, as my collection was outgrowing a couple 800 count boxes, I saw that one of the kids at the LGS I frequented was putting cards in the corners and edges of the standard 9-pocket binder pages. That left the center empty. He had various foils and such in the center spots. I figured that I could improve on that and use the center for indexing purposes. Being a programmer I wrote a program to generate a PDF of inserts. Here’s a shot of a page from my NPH binder:

So here’s how I store my cards. Each set gets a binder. Previously I used D-ring (D-ring, not round ring!) binders from Staples, which worked well enough. This time around I’m using Ultrapro Magic logo binders. Cards were put in the binder, two sets of 4 on each face of each page, sorted by collector number.

I have bulk basic land in a couple 800-count boxes, and a smaller box containing my ‘working’ basic land collection (many copies of my favorite version of each basic). Other boxes contain random selections of older cards.

If you’re interested, here’s the PDF for M12 center inserts. Print it, cut them out, and load up a binder.

“I never was on the ProTour”*

I haven’t even played in a GP. I played in a ton of small events at SuperStars/ChannelFireball, including a PTQ (if memory serves) and Regionals one year. I even top8ed a sealed 1K (or something similar). I was an FNM regular before moving to California, and am trying to become one again at my new LGS in Chicago.

So when I decided to contract to StarCityGames, Indy was a few weeks and a cheap/quick trip away. I talked to Evan and decided to go, have some fun and talk some business.

Evan ended up bailing due to an impending child so it changed to a chance to meet some people (including some SCG folks) and play some magic. My buddy Jerry Martin shipped me a list he’s been brewing that he says has good matchups against CawBlade and DeceiverTwin. So I figured I’d pick up the remaining cards for it when I got there and see what it could do in side events and casual games. For fun, I also brought along UR DeceiverTwin.

I’d been building a friendship over the last couple of months with Kelly Reid from QuietSpeculation and when his arrangements for a place to sleep fell through I was happy to be able to offer him & Matt the other bed & floor in my room.

*If you don’t have the album by Tha Gatherin, give it a listen. It’s half decent to good and all about Magic.

It is with a mix of feelings I am announcing that as of the end of May I will no longer be working for ChannelFireball. It’s been good and I’ve greatly enjoyed working with Jon, Zaiem, Luis, and the rest. I leave content that matters are in Zaiem’s capable hands and I look forward to seeing great things from CFB.

Starting June 1 I’ll be working for StarCityGames on a contract basis. Evan has a bunch of super cool projects bubbling away in his Breeding Pit of ideas that I’m looking forward to getting involved with. June is going to be very exciting as I find out what he’s cooking up and get up to speed on the inner technical workings of SCG. It was one of those opportunities that come along unbidden that you simply can’t turn down. Working for SCG has been a semi-serious goal since I discovered them shortly after getting addicted to the game.

What do I bring to SCG? I’ve been working in the software field in some capacity for almost 30 years in areas ranging from environmental control and monitoring systems, AI, games, programming tools, web apps and iOS apps. Some of you might know me from the Agile and Ruby worlds where I have my name on the covers of a few books. If you’ve ever used a little tool called rSpec, you know of me. I’ve consulted to or worked for numerous technology startups as well as some big names including Intel, Fannie Mae, Daimler-Chrysler, Google, and Groupon. My goal is to bring that depth and breadth of knowledge to SCG and do some truly awesome work that will benefit the Magic playing community in general.

If you’re at SCG Indy in a couple weeks, find me and say “Hi”. I’m looking forward to meeting many of my online acquaintances a well as new friends.

I’m @dastels_mtg on twitter, dastels on facebook, and can be reached at dastels@starcitygames.com.

Dave

I’m writing this from memory so some details are likely a bit off.

I was very vaguely aware of Magic: the Gathering when I was in grad school (my undergrad days ended a bit before Magic had made it’s appearance). Very vaguely aware. It’s just as well because, while I’m sure I would have taken to it, my wife at the time would have frowned on such a “frivolous” waste of time and money. Note that she’s now my ex-wife.

So, fast forward 10 years and 3 relationships. I was seeing a truly geeky woman whose son kept spending his money of random grab bags of some sort of cards for a game. “What the **** are those?” I asked. “Magic cards!” he answered. Then his mother gets that faraway look in her eyes and tells me about her undergrad days when she “played Magic” (ya, I prefer them young) and how it started getting too expensive to keep up with the good cards, so she stopped playing. Then she disappeared into the basement and came back with a shoebox full of cards. Mostly Revised, 4th Ed and the like. She looked through them in a state that I can only describe as nostalgic bliss.

After a while she looked up and said something like “I should start playing again.” and “You should try it, I think you’d like it.” and finally “Let’s get some cards!” I said something like “Isn’t that kind of dorky?” Pot, meet kettle.

This was just before the Planar Chaos launch weekend. On launch day we dropped her son off to play in the tournament. We talked to the shop owner and looked at some cards. We looked at some of the recent precon decks. We settled on a couple of Ravnica block decks. I chose Simic (UG graft). I can’t remember for sure what she went with, but I believe it was Orzov (BW). And so we played. A lot. Her son taught us how to play. We played. We consulted the comprehensive rules. We read articles on the mothership. We taught her son how to play correctly (he learned from friends around the lunch table at school).

Our early days were very much like the stories you hear of the game’s early days. We visited local shops, and flipped through their binders. We bought cards that would work with our decks (mainly green in my case). Our decks grew into a massive collection of fairly random 1-ofs. Mine reached around 125 cards before we stumbled on the rational for sticking to the 60 card minimum. Thinking about it, my early deck resembled an unfocused EDH deck.

It’s intersting to think back to when our combined card collection fit into an 800-count storage box with dividers for each color (plus artifact & land). Then we moved to an 800-count for each color. That was a big step. As we got more serious, so did our storage. We switched to binders: One per set, a playset of 2 cards of each page face. I saw that one of the kids at the Gametronics (the local shop where we learned so much about the game … a bit thanks to Matt, Jerry, and the rest of the regulars for spending so much time talking to us and answering all our questions) was putting cards in the corners and edges. That left the center empty. I wrote a program to generate a PDF of inserts (below). As soon as each new set was available on gatherer, I’d load it into my program and print inserts. Then cut them out and put together the binder.

In time (probably about when Shards of Alara came out) I got interested in EDH (now Commander) and began acquiring 1x older sets. When I sold my collection (out of necessity, not desire) I had a nice collection going back to Arabian Knights (with a handfull of missing sets). which occupied a moderate sized bookcase.

But I digress: back to the history. Soon we were going to FNM. We drove 4 hours and spent a couple nights in a hotel for the Futuresight prerelease (we later did the same for Lorwyn). We were hooked. When it went on sale two weeks later we bought two cases and assembled a play set each (and remember, this was 3 months after we bought our first precon and started learning how to play). We did the same with 10th Ed. and Lorwyn, and even backfilled with Coldsnap and the rest of Timespiral block.

We were a magic playing family. One Christmas I got her sets of Alpha Serra Angels and Hypnotic Spectors.

We’ve since split up and so I don’t know whether she’s still playing or not. I’m pretty sure her son is as I see pics of him on the local shop’s FaceBook page, and (after a short hiatus) so am I.

We may not be together anymore, but I owe her a great deal for introducing me to the game.

I really enjoy Winston Draft. It’s has a very different feel than a standard booster draft. I like the 1-1 competition. A friend and I did a Winston with some Zendikar boosters. for the first half of the drafting I was thinking of going UW. Then, about half way though, the black cards started showing up, and I started moving into black. The black kept coming off the pile, as did some more juicy blue cards. I ended up strongly in UB … with a surprise (for my friend) mise. Here’s my list:

Basic Land (14) 6 Island 8 Swamp Land (4) 2 Soaring Seacliff 2 Teetering Peaks Creatures (12) 1 AEther Figment 1 Heartstabber Mosquito 1 Hedron Crab 2 Kraken Hatchling 1 Merfolk Wayfinder 1 Mindless Null 1 Reckless Scholar 1 Tempest Owl 1 Umara Raptor 2 Vampire Lacerator Sorceries (1) 1 Grim Discovery Instants (5) 1 Cancel 1 Disfigure 1 Into the Roil 1 Lethargy Trap 1 Mindbreak Trap Enchantments (3) 1 Paralyzing grasp 1 Quest for the Gravelord 1 Soul Stair Expedition Artifacts (1) 1 Explorers Scope

The 2 Teetering Peaks are a total mise, and were responsible for a Kraken Hatchling doing 4 points of early game damage (2nd and 3rd turn on the back of a turn 1 Hatchling). Explorer’s Scope was handy in smoothing out the color mix. In fact, in one game it was my only source of Swamps.

Other good plays included grasping a Timbermaw Larva (with him having 3 forests in play), as well as canceling a Tanglesap to set up a lethal attach next turn.

I had a box of Zendikar to open and figured that I’d do it 6 packs at a time, treating them like sealed deck pools. It might be good practice for the upcoming sealed league I’m running at work. And why not write it up while I was at it. It might be interesting to look back at my thoughts later.

I’m writing this in flow, with minimal editing. I’m trying to capture my thoughts in as they presented themselves.

So after opening 6 packs, here’s my pool:

• White
• Blue
• Black
• Red
• Green
• Colorless
• Land

1 Bold Defense 1 Caravan Hurda 1 Day of Judgment 1 Journey to Nowhere 1 Kor Cartographer 1 Kor Duelist 1 Kor Outfitter 2 Kor Skyfisher 1 Narrow Escape 2 Noble Vestige 1 Steppe Lynx 2 Sunspring Expedition 1 Archmage Ascension 2 Caller of Gales 1 Into the Roil 1 Ior Ruin Expedition 1 Kraken Hatchling 1 Lethargy Trap 1 Seascape Aerialist 2 Sky Ruin Drake 1 Spell Pierce 2 Tempest Owl 2 Welkin Tern 1 Whiplash Trap 1 Bog Tatters 1 Crypt Ripper 2 Desecrated Earth 1 Disfigure 1 Guul Draz Specter 1 Hagra Diabolist 1 Heartstabber Mosquito 1 Malakir Bloodwitch 1 Marsh Casualties 1 Mind Sludge 2 Mindless Null 1 Needlebite Trap 1 Nimana Sell-Sword 1 Quest for the Gravelord 1 Soul Stair Expedition 1 Vampire Hexmage 1 Bladetusk Boar 1 Burst Lightning 1 Chandra Ablaze 1 Demolish 1 Geyser Glider 1 Goblin Bushwhacker 1 Goblin War Paint 1 Highland Berserker 1 Inferno Trap 2 Plated Geopede 1 Punishing Fire 1 Shatterskull Giant 2 Torch Slinger 1 Unstable Footing 1 Grazing Gladehart 1 Harrow 2 Joraga Bard 1 Nissas Chosen 1 Primal Bellow 1 Relic Crush 1 River Boa 1 Turntimber Basilisk 1 Explorers Scope 1 Khalni Gem 1 Spidersilk Net 1 Graypelt Refuge 1 Jwar Isle Refuge 1 Magosi, the Waterveil 2 Piranha Marsh 1 Soaring Seacliff 1 Teetering Peaks

15 White, 16 Blue, 18 Black, 16 Red, 9 Green. My first thoughts looking through the pool went to Day of Judgment, Chandra Ablaze

While Chandra Ablaze looks spicy (planeswalker!), she really needs more red spells.

Day of Judgment is nice removal, and there’s some point removal in black.

There’s a few vamps, but not enough to be a theme, certainly not enough to power Malakir Bloodwitch, although she’s not too bad without her CIP effect. Discard may be a usable side theme: Desecrated Earth, and Mind Sludge could serve to strip the opponent’s hand and power up Guul Draz Specter.

Let’s look at some other Zendikar mechanics to see if there’s enough to build a deck around.

Allies:

• Seascape Aerialist
• Hagra Diabolist
• Nimana Sell-Sword
• Highland Berserker
• Joraga Bard x 2

Six allies over 4 colors are likely not worth paying much attention to.

Landfall:

• Steppe Lynx
• Sunspring Expedition x2
• Ior Ruin Expedition
• Soul Stair Expedition
• Geyser Glider
• Plated Geopede x2
• Grazing Gladehart
• Turntimber Basilisk

Harrow and Explorer’s Scope add to the landfall package.

Ten landfall cards with a couple of boosts might be worth looking at, possibly as a RG build. White has several other cards that work well with landfall, with CIP effects to return lands to be replayed, or to fetch additional land, so maybe WRG. White also has a bit of removal. A WG dual helps make this more feasible. Blue and Black just have expeditions.

So let’s look at a WRG build:

Landfall Deck Take 1

---

Land (2) 1 Graypelt Refuge 1 Teetering Peaks Creatures (9) 1 Geyser Glider 1 Grazing Gladehart 1 Kor Cartographer 2 Kor Skyfisher 2 Plated Geopede 1 Steppe Lynx 1 Turntimber Basilisk Sorceries (1) 1 Day of Judgment Instants (2) 1 Harrow 1 Narrow Escape Enchantments (3) 1 Journey to Nowhere 2 Sunspring Expedition Artifacts (1) 1 Explorers Scope

That’s 16 playables, which leaves room for at most 5 more cards. I want to run 18 land for the landfall triggers as well as handling the color requirements. What’s the deck look like?

Nice curve, mostly white. It could use a few more creatures and some removal. How about adding some more red cards:

Landfall Deck Take 2

---

Land (2) 1 Graypelt Refuge 1 Teetering Peaks Creatures (12) 1 Geyser Glider 1 Goblin Bushwhacker 1 Grazing Gladehart 1 Kor Cartographer 2 Kor Skyfisher 2 Plated Geopede 1 Steppe Lynx 2 Torch Slinger 1 Turntimber Basilisk Sorceries (1) 1 Day of Judgment Instants (5) 1 Burst Lightning 1 Harrow 1 Narrow Escape 1 Punishing Fire 1 Unstable Footing Enchantments (3) 1 Journey to Nowhere 2 Sunspring Expedition Artifacts (1) 1 Explorers Scope

Now the stats are:

Now we’re at 12 creatures, which is probably ok. Some additional removal/burn. The color balance has shift from Wrg to WRg. With some lands we have:

Landfall Deck Take 3

---

Land (18) 1 Graypelt Refuge 1 Teetering Peaks 6 Plains 6 Mountain 4 Forest Creatures (12) 1 Geyser Glider 1 Goblin Bushwhacker 1 Grazing Gladehart 1 Kor Cartographer 2 Kor Skyfisher 2 Plated Geopede 1 Steppe Lynx 2 Torch Slinger 1 Turntimber Basilisk Sorceries (1) 1 Day of Judgment Instants (5) 1 Burst Lightning 1 Harrow 1 Narrow Escape 1 Punishing Fire 1 Unstable Footing Enchantments (3) 1 Journey to Nowhere 2 Sunspring Expedition Artifacts (1) 1 Explorers Scope

It would be interesting to play this deck, and it seems I already have the cards in my MTGO collection, so if anyone fancies testing a bit with their own ZEN sealed deck, I’m game.

There has been a bit of buzz this week around a topic that rears it’s head semi-reguarly: Women in Magic.

This time it started with a contest for The hottest girl in Magic with a call for photos that Nerds would analyze in detail. Contest or collecting spank bank material? There was an instant flurry of protest in twitter, and notably This is why we can’t have nice things by Thea.

This is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. And not just specifically women in Magic. There’re a certain stereotype of what sort of person plays magic. Like any stereotype, it’s somewhat warranted but is by no means all inclusive or representative.

To summarize the stereotype, I remember a joke someone made once “Want to find the Magic event? Just follow the fat guys with backpacks.”

In my experience the outside world’s view of a Magic player is a classic nerd: male, late teens to early twenties, often overweight, socially inept, probably with less than adequate attention to personal hygiene.

There’s a lot of players that fit that stereotype. But there are plenty that don’t, and women are just one group within that.

Go to any FNM, PTQ, etc. and you’ll usually see players that fit that description to varying degrees. But you’ll see some who don’t. Women, little kids, older folks.

The worst part of this whole thing is that the fringe players get discriminated against. As an older guy I don’t get too much of that, but women players do.

I’d like to start a project to talk about this. I’m thinking of a series of essays, probably released in the form of a free ebook, that tell the stories of a collection of fringe players.

I personally know several women, several older players, and several players that started when they were quite young, but I need more. Consider this a call for authors who would like to tell their stories.

Are you, or do you know, someone who is outside what could be considered the “typical” Magic player? If so, would you like to write about your/their story?

There are a couple reasons this issue is important to me:

1. I was introduced to the game by a woman, who taught me to play, and who usually handed me my ass when we played (which was a lot).
2. For a couple years I was living in a long distance relationship and not screwing around. I was playing A LOT of magic during that time. My current girlfriend figures the magic was the reason I wasn’t getting laid (although the opposite would be more accurate).

My goal is to educate both the magic community, as well as those outside that look down their nose at Magic and those of us that love it.

So get in touch at dastels at gmail dot com if you would like to take part in this.