Modern FNM

FRIDAY NIGHT MAGIC!!! 

Surprisingly enough, even though I've attended prereleases, launch events, and a peppering of Grand Prixs I have not gone to an FNM yet. Crazy right? Anyway, a few co-workers and I decided to all go as a group because our local shop was running a Modern FNM rather than their normal standard. Earlier this year, as popularity in the format increased, they began holding the occasional Modern tournament, mostly on weekends of prereleases and set launches.

I've been playing two decks with my friends for the last few months: UR Storm and Affinity. There are a lot of options out there, some more complicated and fun than others. Cost is also a HUGE factor in the decks I play. And let's be real here, Modern is not a cheap format to get into even with Modern Masters injecting the current supply.

So how'd I do? Well I went with my Affinity deck since it requires less thinking compared to the UR Storm deck I run. As my first go at an FNM, I wanted to just relax and have fun and Affinity was that for me. It ended up being 5 rounds and I went 3-2. I think I could have gone 4-1 and won prizing but my sideboarding was a bit off and will probably need some work.

4x Darksteel Citadel

4x Blinkmoth Nexus

3x Inkmoth Nexus

3x Glimmervoid

1x Mountain

1x Island

4x Vault Skirge

4x Signal Pest

4x Ornithopter

4x Arcbound Ravager

4x Steel Overseer

3x Memnite

3x Master of Etherium

2x Etched Champion

4x Mox Opal

4x Springleaf Drum

4x Cranial Plating

4x Galvanic Blast

Sidboard

3x Wear//Tear

3x Whipflare

3x Shrapnel Blast

2x Ethersworn Canonist

2x Grafdigger's Cage

2x Welding Jar

Round 1 - Gifts Ungiven

Started off my night against a 4-color gifts deck. The brief conversation we had before the match led me to believe this gentleman was pretty experienced. And yup....he was. On top of the skill level, I also didn't have the greatest hands. Game one drew me no real juice and gave him an Engineered Explosives for 1 (bye bye Signal Pests) and game 2 started with me mulliganing to 4 on the play >_<

Off to a rocky start but I'm more comfortable in this setting now. I've gotten the first round jitters out and am pumped to not scrub out.

 

Round 2 - BW Tokens

Ended up being matched with one of my friends. We'd play tested a few times over the last few weeks as he was deciding on a Modern deck to pilot with his decision being the BW tokens deck. After all of games though, I always felt my deck was fairly strong. As long as I could draw the right juice, I'd be fine. And then after sideboard, the deck would be even better.

I won game one with the normal swing in for lethal using Cranial Plating. The real games began after sideboard. He brought in the appropriate pro red creatures, knowing that the most widely used spells are Pyroclasm and in my case, Whipflare. With key Zealous Persecutions against my 1/1's, he was able to establish board control fairly easily. For game 3, I boarded in my Whipflares and Wear//Tears. Whipflares for the obvious board wipes and Wear//Tear to Tear down his Intangible Virtues. Luckily, he did not draw his Burrenton Forge-Tendor so my Whipflares did their job.

Round 3 - UW Affinity

I should have realized when my opponent told me he cobbled the deck together last minute that it would be a little different of an experience. It was sort of a mirror match though he was using cards that were more popular a few years ago and from a different format. He was still running Frogmites and even ran Tempered Steel. Aside from a lucky fast hand in game 2 (triple Signal Pest + Master of Ethereum), I won pretty easily.

Round 4 - Mono White Hatebear

Nice guy. We ended up talking about how I could have won game 2. We both were staring at the board state and I started saying "Well looks like you have it." but his perplexed look kept me in the game trying to figure out if I was missing something. I ended up saying we can still go to game 3 because I didn't really care if I won or lost so we ended up just trying to see if I could have won. What ended up happening was we both were focusing so heavily on winning with Infect counters from my Inkmoth that we missed converting that damage from Infect to regular using the Blinkmoths. We both had a good laugh about it and moved on to game 3. Not much to say about the game. I ended up with 2 flyers, a Cranial, and 2 ways to generate black mana. I don't very often get to use Cranial's instant speed attaching ability but it was a pretty sweet tool here.

Round 5 - BW Tokens

Oh, this one hurt. He 2-0ed me but I felt like I could have won both. I couldn't draw the juice again and being on the play, I didn't want to thin my hand out too much when I'm trying play out 4-5 cards turn 1. After sideboarding in the Whipflares and Wear//Tears, I wasn't able to clear out his board enough for my creatures to swing in. 

In the end I came in 6th out of 17. I performed the best out of my play group but felt like I could have made top 4. I learned a lot about my LGS and building the appropriate sideboard. The manager said he would be holding a Modern FNM once a month since the turn outs been increasing so I'll be sure to ready my deck for next time.

Spoils of War

With the weekend's Grand Prix in Las Vegas over and our mental wounds licked clean, I gotta say it was a pretty awesome experience. Not only in the competitive sense but being a part the biggest event that Magic's ever had is something we'll have forever. 

But that's enough jibber jabber on that topic. I'm here to talk about how it went. Clearly I made day 2 and won the entire thing. I'm on my way to the pro tour, practicing with all the greats as I type this. I'm just that awesome.

In a world where I had all the free time of a bum and all the money of a working stiff, then maybe this could be the case. But seeing as how this is more reality than anything, I, in fact, did not make day 2 and actually dropped after 4 rounds. Sad I know. You could even say I was robbed! But let's not dwell. I've learned so much from this experience and had a fun time along the ride. Here are some shots of the event over the 3ish days I was there.

Imagine this scene multiplied by 20. That's how crazy the venue and turn-out ended up being. The event totaled at 4500 for the actual event plus whoever else just showed up to do side events. The lines for everything were crazy. My group ended up getting there at 7 AM on Friday to check in and get our prereg card and playmat. Even at 7 AM, we were around #600 in line. Ridiculous.

A few artists were there like Daarken, Steve Argyle, and Chris Rahn. Like I've mentioned before, I really enjoy the art of magic and it's awesome how they can come out to these events for fans to meet them. One day I'll be able to meet Raymond Swanland and Todd Lockwood. One day...

They had a pretty cool setup near the artists to showcase some of the art used in Modern Masters. I kind of wish they had it out in an area with more traffic but even still, people swung by to check it out.

And now for the spoils. While I may not have come away with the grand prize of $3000 (?), I did come out on top with the cards I did pick up. Combined with my girlfriend's pool, we definitely made our entry fee back. Most notable and profitable was the Tarmogoyf I pulled during the free mini-masters side event. We also got a foil Arcbound Ravager and foil Kira, Great Glass Spinner plus some nice commons and uncommons that are worth a few dollars. In the end, we didn't walk away empty handed and had fun in the process. I can't wait for the next event to roll around in my area because I'll be damn sure to sign up for it.

Brave New World

So a week's gone by and now that all the dust has settled, what do we have to show for it? Maybe a winner or loser? I don't know, but we definitely have some pretty fucking awesome games!

So I was lucky enough to attend E3 this year. The stars aligned and I was able to take a few days off to trek up to LA with my girlfriend and see what the industry had to offer for the coming year. The big deals this year, of course, were the next-gen consoles that Sony and Microsoft had announced earlier this year. Snarky comments and memes aside, both had very impressive line-ups and at least one thing that I was interested in. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of negatives to go around but we can get into that later. Onward to the sweet pictures!

I know E3 is normally about games and I just implied I would be talking about games so starting with action figures is definitely a bait and switch, but these prototypes are so awesome that I had to start with them. Play Arts, a Square Enix brand, has really upped their game with the quality of figures recently. They've done high detail figures for common Square IPs like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts but they also design products for other companies like Konami. They were showing off some new designs for Raiden (MGS2 version) and Liquid Snake (MGS1). And If they end up anywhere near the quality of the recent figures, I'm really looking forward to picking up some more junk to clutter my desk T_T.

I initially ventured over to the Sony booth because I wanted to try out their PS Vita games but got distracted by a little game called Transistor. Holy crap Supergiant Games is a crazy talented group of people. These are guys behind Bastion and with the success of that title, they've begun and seem to be pretty far along on their next game Transistor.

On the surface, it looks similar to Bastion. Isometric, action RPG. Ok, cool. I guess you guys have found your calling. But after playing it, you realize just how different the game is. While you can just go around smacking enemies like any other 3rd person action game, the real game is how you strategically set up your enemies so that you can pause the gameplay and then queue up actions. A seemingly beat'em up game suddenly becomes a strategy and tactical game. I'm really excited to see how this game turns out and will probably be supporting them when it does.

Initially, I hadn't felt very compelled to look into or care about Destiny. I haven't been big on shooters in the last few years and the last shooter that I really got into was probably Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on the PS3. As I write this out, I'm realizing I still don't really care about the usual shooter and what actually gets me going about this game are the RPG and multiplayer elements. I love picking a class at the start of a game and being able to customize them so they feel like they're mine. And then what makes almost any game infinitely better? Making it multiplayer. The demo they had at the Sony Press conference was crazy. Even though it started out a bit slow and felt like we had just been blind sided by a tech demo, once the world boss came into the picture and other parties started pouring in, I was hooked. You can check out the video here.

I'll be honest, video gaming hasn't been that interesting to me in a while. As we crept towards the end of the generation, I felt everything was becoming more and more stale. It didn't help that I had become so preoccupied with Magic but, big picture level, I don't know if actually made that big of difference. With these two new systems slated for this year and the sheer potential they both have, I'm super pumped to get back into console gaming.

This weekend, a few co-workers and I will be heading to Las Vegas for the Grand Prix. It's going to be so disgusting how much card playing is going to happen this weekend. I'll be back next week with musings and pretty pictures to accompany them. See ya :D

Nerdy Events

Can't say I don't enjoy my life. Being in the gaming industry definitely has its perks. Not only do I get to attend industry events like E3 but my company is full of people as nerdy as myself :D

Drafting really is a great thing. It can be a fun and social or strategic and cutthroat format depending on who you play with. Myself, I prefer the fun, social side of things. Why? Well if I already play standard and modern, I only have so much brain power to go around for all that complex thinking. I need my breaks too and choose to play some draft or EDH to get all the jitters out.

Most recently I've been drafting the new set, Modern Masters, just released this weekend. It consists of modern staples so you'll see cards like Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant. Check out the full spoiler here on Wizard's site: Spoiler

From the two drafts I have played so far and the one sealed event, it's increasingly impressive that Wizards was able to add in so many well defined archetypes into one set. You can go U/B Faeries, G/W Tokens, B/W Rebels, U/R Storm, U/W Affinity, and the list just goes on. And even with such a limited set of cards, each of these archetypes feel and play like they should.

But onto the actual games! My first draft was pretty abysmal. I attempted to go Esper Faeires but I made such a noob mistake. I could see what was being passed to me and I knew I should have gone those colors but I really didn't want to go red and forced the U/B/W instead. Well....that led to a 0-3 record. So I'm off to a rocky start but that doesn't shake me.

A few of us head out to a local shop the next day to draft some more. Since we kept what we pulled and I wanted to somewhat break even on a $30 draft, I opted to pull the rares if they were worth anything and not in my colors. Yes, I'm a terrible person but can you really blame me for wanting to get my value out of it?

Anyway, pack 1 was fairly easy for me. The rare was Sarkhan Vol. Pretty playable if you ask me since right out the gate he can buff all your tokens or steal your opponent's giant for some beats. Based off the previous night's draft and what I had been reading online, people aren't really fans of the GR beatdown so it was fairly easy for me to get some solid creatures and tricks. My deck went 3-1 that night and I think I ended in 4th place. Not too shabby.

The sealed that a few friends and I did was much different. We were practicing for the upcoming GP in Vegas so we were playing and giving out opinions very constructively. I LOVE playing this way where everyone is trying to learn rather than win at any cost. I attempted to go for the dredge and retrace deck but just couldn't get the engine going. I was missing key cards and was definitely trying to get the combo going too early, costing me plenty of games. I ended up switching to U/W Affinity and went undefeated with the deck. By the way, Cryptic Command is a pretty good card.....just saying.

I'll be drafting more in the coming days leading up to the GP. I'm not saying I'll be cracking day 2 but I definitely want to give it my all so I can come back and share the deets!

ALSO, I'll be going to E3 this week so for sure I'll be uploading some pictures and talking about my experiences. 

So now that the weekend is over and Dragon's Maze pre-releases have wrapped up, I gotta say I'm pretty happy with how things turned out. It was a fairly successful event even if I didn't pull any bombs. Here's the rundown. I went with Gruul since aggro is usually strong at events like these and I also went 3-1 during the Gatecrash pre-release with Gruul. Unfortunately, my secret ally ended up being Izzet. I'll be honest and say I wasn't that happy about with it but my friends calmed my fears and convinced me that Izzet had some pretty good cards too. Especially removal ; )

Well after deck construction began and opening packs, I decided to go Naya with a focus on Gruul. I had gotten some pretty good Boros cards to help fill out the deck: two Viashino Fireblades and 1 Warleader's Helix was what I splashed white for. Overall, I only ever lost games because of mana screw or just not drawing enough creatures. While playing a Dimir player, I lost the first game because I couldn't play enough creatures to stop him from casting the Dimir champion Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker.

Well, I lost that game pretty handily. After sideboarding, we played out a few turns (maybe 4 or 5) and I was able to smash in for 16 damage with one creature. Can't say I wasn't happy about that. Gruul is all about reckless damage and brute force. What's more reckless and forceful than a 16/1 creature? How did I get that? Well LET ME TELL YOU. I was able to cast a Madcap Skills onto Feral Animist. Then bloodrushing and using its activated ability to rocket it up to 16 for the win.

The round that I lost, though, was a bit disappointing. He was playing Rakdos and playing very straightforward. I've matched against him in the past and know he's not the greatest player. Unfortunately, because of card draw, I just could not get board presence in anyway. So there went my chances of a 4-0. But that's ok. I was still able to maintain composure and get my 3 wins. Which leads us to my final match. This was a Naya player as well but focused on Selesnya. Mid-game he began playing health regen cards which really begins to hurt against an aggro player. At some point, you just lose steam and can't break through their walls anymore which is what happened game 1. But thanks to some more Mad Cap skills and a clutch Street Spasms for 1 ._. I was able to steal the win.

The prizes didn't really having any cool cards in them either. I was hoping for the Golgari champion Varolz, the Scar-Striped because I've been theory crafting a Jund zombie deck that doesn't require Falkenrath Aristocrat (what? I'm sorta cheap) but we'll see how that turns out.

That was my pre-release in a nutshell. Pretty fun though I think I enjoyed RtR and GTC a bit better. Should we point out what card someone pulled that's hinting at Modern Masters? In case you haven't seen it, someone opened a pack that had Aether Spellbomb. I'm starting to get giddy over the set but at the same time wish it wasn't going to be so expensive but that's a topic for another day! Thanks for stopping by! Now time for me to sleep.

Epic Landscapes

[Edit] HA well it turns out they didn't that far ahead? From the PAX East panel they mentioned how they went back to the artists who created those guildgate pieces and asked them to expand upon them. WELL THEN. Still cool nonetheless. :D [Edit]

The art of Magic. Nothing gets me more pumped than when the new art for cards begin to appear on sites. And this is a really exciting time with spoilers popping up all over the place, most recently at PAX East in Boston. You don't need card names or descriptions to appreciate the imagery and they give players a view into the Magic universe, helping set the tone for a color in the set.

Dragon's Maze, the last set in the Return to Ravnica block, has begun revealing its lands and a handful of creatures. While the creatures are getting plenty of attention because of their role in the lore (champions for each guild and all legendary) I'm really enjoying how the guildgates look. For those who have been playing this block, you know what the gates are. But for anyone who isn't quite aware, the guildgates were lands that allow players to tap for 1 of 2 colors. What makes this last set interesting is they are reprinting all 10 of the guildgates from the first 2 sets but instead of using the same images as before, they have zoomed out to reveal the full size of the picture. I don't think anyone was expecting that. Nobody thought the original pictures used were just small snippets of the actual piece. Here's are some examples of what Wizards has done. And in case it needs to be mentioned, I don't own these images. I just REALLY admire them and everyone involved in creating them.

Section

Full

Section

Full

Pretty cool eh?

In general, the art has always been a huge part of the appeal for me. What can I say? I like stuff that looks cool. I sometimes want to use cards just because they look interesting. In games with character customization, I spend much longer than a human should on creating the looks. ^_^

One of my favorite artists is Raymond Swanland. Along with art for Magic, he's also done work with Games Workshop and Cryptozoic's World of Warcraft TCG. Probably my favorite card by him would be Lightning Helix.

Overall, what has always stood out to me about his art is how much energy is going on in a scene. The figures and scenery are never solid and there is always a sense of action or activity. It's not quite at the level of being called busy because all the flare surrounding the focus of the image has a purpose and fits the theme of the picture. My girllfriend and I shorthand his style as the swirlies. You can see his work for Magic here.

I attended PAX Prime in Seattle last year and from what I learned at their panel, they are really putting more focus on having the images set the tone for the block. With what they've done in RtR, I'm really looking forward to how epic in scale the next block, Theros, will be. 

Intermission

Hey all!

It's been awhile since I've posted but like all good things, moderation is key...? Something like that right?

Anyway, I've been trying to figure out what I want to focus on. I've been pretty bored of the current standard format. You have Jund Control and Naya Aggro decks. And while I understand that the color combinations will always be there, the main cards are all the same and I've just been growing tired of them.

What do you have? Thundermaw Hellkite, Huntermaster of the Fells, Thragtusk, Boros Reckoner, and Restoration Angel. Sure, you could say we have 5 powerful cards, all with synergies, that we can then build decks around (I know, this sounds like sarcasm, but bear with me) but when you see the same cards in multiple decks with just minor tweaks, the format feels tired. Don't get me wrong, it's still fun winning with them ; ) but when you watch the games, everything begins to feel samey. So what I'm really getting at is I'm waiting for a massive shift in the format before I really dive back in. What will do it? Maybe someone needs to discover a new deck that is unstoppable in the current format, forcing the community to build decks to better counter it. Or maybe the players have just figured out all this meta has to offer and we need the next set to show up or Innistrad to rotate out.

But let's be honest. This is a very healthy format. All the current decks are seeing just the right amount of play to keep each other in check. We aren't seeing the situation like before RtR released with UW Delver was running rampant. So really what I'm saying is I'm ready for some change. My ADD (I don't really have it but that's what we do right? We blame it on ADD) wants to see new things being played. New flashy cards and combos. =)

Kudos to Wizards. Designing these last few sets of cards to be very well balanced. It's been a bit since there's been such a stable format.