Rockin’ the Elves

Went to my first FNM (Friday Night Magic) ever last night, nervous as all hell because as much of a goof as I am I don’t deal well with meeting new people. I think it’s part of that whole “negative self-image” thing. I had been meaning to go for a few weeks now, and even though I had finished construction of my green/black elf deck in time to play last Friday, it’s a fuck-awful drive from Lexington to Wakefield on Friday afternoons, and even if I take the back roads I have to leave my office at 4:00pm in order to get to Wakefield in time.

This being my first real foray into competitive constructed Magic (I’ve played sanctioned before, and have a whopping two limited matches under my belt… from 6 years ago), I played about as bad as could be expected.

I lost my first match to Faeries in two straight games against a really nice opponent named Nate (or Nathan, or Nathaniel, one of the three). Game one was ridiculous. I had back to back Colossus draws, and while the first one was countered, the second one hung around just long enough to see the game end to Mistbind Clique showing up on my upkeep for the next three turns. Game two I had all the removal in the world in my hand from the get go, including all three Terror’s in my deck, and then I drew into Colossus, Squall Line, and Cloudthresher. You’d think that a deck which runs 28 mana sources would be able to find two sources of green easy enough, but I stalled on 3 lands, only one of which produced green mana.

There was enough time at the end of the round so we played a few more for fun. Still being jittery and nervous I made a lot of mistakes, most of which I realized shortly after the fact but before I had a chance to do anything about them.

Round two I played against Bruce and one of the more interesting red decks I’ve seen, and couldn’t possibly have been prepared for. Game one ends when he casts Cragganwick Cremator with only one card in hand. That card ends up being a Krosan Cloudscraper (!!!!) and I get domed for 13. I have a special place in my heart for the ‘Scraper from when I started playing and had my “OMG HUGE CREATUR3Z!” phase (and even now I run him in my Sutured Ghoul reanimator deck), so I can honestly say that this is the coolest thing anyone has ever done against me in a game of Magic. I also had 2 Thoughtseize in my hand the whole game that I never played. No sense in helping the red deck kill me.

Game two I don’t draw any of the Kitchen Finks or Primal Commands that I’d boarded in, and an active Pyrohemia goes apeshit on my life total. Had I just been able to do one more damage to him this game things might have been different, since he was only up by 1 before I was Pyro’d into the stratosphere.

Match three I’m up against Steve, who’s running an interesting green/white elf deck that does very bad things with Lieges and Shield of the Oversoul. Game 1 I lose to a conspired Giantbaiting, as he has just enough damage on the table to do me in after blockers are declared.

Game 2 sees my first win of the evening as all the creature kill in the history of life makes an appearance to mow down his team so I can swing in for the win. Even though I won, I made a pretty silly mistake in not activating a Treetop Village during a late game attack when he was at two life and had just enough blockers to handle my creature threats. It allowed for a few more turns of stalling, and could have come back to bite me in the ass.

Game 3 I’m in again heavy with the creature kill, and am cracking in with a Vanquisher, Kitchen Finks, and Village for 9 on the 4th turn. He gets a small army in play but eventually gets stuck on land and scoops the turn before I would have used a Profane Command-fueled alpha strike.

Hooray, Matt finally wins one! 1-2 on the matches, 2-5 on the games. Not the best stats in the world, but for first time jitters coupled with some really questionable play on my part at times, I wouldn’t have expected to do any better. When the pairings for round 4 are announced, I get the bye, so technically I finish at 2-2 on the day.

This was a great experience. Got my nerves out of the way, had a bunch of fun, and played against some really cool people. Looking forward to next week, but hopefully this time around I’ll be a little bit smarter about how I play out my turns. This seems to be a pretty friendly group. There were about 10-12 people there last night, and I got the vibe that they were most, if not all, regulars.

I was going to go to the PTQ in Brighton today but ultimately decided against it. I’d have loved to play again today, but quite honestly last night showed me what happens when I go in nervous and unprepared (I had not tested the deck I built at all), so I need to start testing the format and build up a bit of confidence before I tackle something like that. Besides, it gives me some time to get my hands on 2 more Ajani Goldmane and 3 more Windbrisk Heights for the Kithkin deck.

Maybe next week I’ll try to drag someone with me.

I Am a Terrible Card Designer

I suppose, in a vacuum, that title should not be shouted from the hills with glorious triumphant… err… ness…? That said, I’m proud to announce it because I somehow managed to get a card I designed into an article on starcitygames.com which happened to be about (you guessed it) bad rares in Magic: The Gathering. If you’re interested in reading it, The Ferret did a pretty bang-up job of writing a few “bad rare” articles over the past few weeks, and included his own contest to see who could design the worst.

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/15764.html

I submitted “Combustion Chamber”, along with two other contenders: a red/blue enchantment that let you sacrifice a land to bounce a land, and an artifact that let you prevent damage at the trade-off of your opponent drawing cards. I thought them all awful at the time, but then I realized that the blue/red enchantment is actually quite good. You could steal lands with cards like Annex, and then sac them to bounce an opponent’s land, effectively setting them back two land drops. Coupled with Stone Rain’s, Boomerang’s, and some Wasteland-like effects and you could really mana-fuck your opponent.

Combustion Chamber
1BR
Enchantment
Black and red spells you play cost 1 less.
Whenever an opponent plays a spell, Combustion Chamber does 2 damage to you.

I did not win, and I’m okay with that, because quite frankly I mark out hard for this game, and just having my name and my card idea mentioned in the article are awesome. I tried to keep the card in flavor for the two colors it represents, with both having a history of fast mana effects, and both normally colors tending to have drawbacks for being aggressive. The flavor and the name for the card comes from the idea of a broken-down furnace, where energy is generated (in the form of mana) at the expense of polluting the environment around it (thus the damage-based drawback).

The other two cards I submitted are below, for the enjoyment of the two people who might be reading this.

Temporal Terraforming
UURR
Enchantment
Sacrifice an untapped land you control: Return target land to its owner’s hand.

Physician’s Diary
4
Artifact
X, tap (X cannot be more than 3): Prevent the next X damage that would be dealt to you from a single source; that source’s controller draws X cards.

Terraforming did not first have the “untapped” restriction. I thought that allowing players to tap the land first would make this playable, but that was before I remembered the U/R Magnivore deck that people used to play in Type2 when Kamigawa block and Ravnica block were legal. And in multiplayer games, with cards like Blatant Thievery running around, you could screw over EVERYONE in one shot. It would be awesome. Then they would kill you.

So that’s the end of today’s Magic discussion. I have more thoughts, but they’re on other things, and before I write them up I really need to eat. Haven’t had anything in 10 hours.

Modern Suicide Black, Phase 1

I had honestly thought that I could make a suicide black-style deck for the new MTG standard environment, and that it might actually not suck. I assembled a build that I thought looked like it might have some game against the other decks in the environment, if for no other reason that the surprise factor. It’s always been a fun strategy, even if it’s not terribly successful, but the thought of playing undercosted critters (even if many do come with a drawback) and smacking my opponent in the head with discard is just to obnoxious to pass up.

So the first thing I did was assemble a stack of cards that I have which fit the bill:
Nether Traitor
Hypnotic Specter
Deepcavern Imp
Nightshade Stinger (don’t laugh, a 1/1 flyer for B is perfect in this archetype, even if he can’t block)
Dauthi Slayer (but shadow is even better)
Sangrophage (which might get cut, but I’ll go into detail later)

I coupled that with some Bad Moons, a few Tendrils of Corruption, and a some Nameless Inversions and set out into the Casual Decks room in MTGO. I was promptly decimated in 4 turns by mono-green treefolk.

Fucking TREEFOLK!

I even started with a hand that had 3 swamps, and the following spells:
Mirri the Cursed, Nightshade Stinger, Bad Moon, Sangrophage

I thought this was a solid hand, since it had my first three land drops, and 11 damage worth of creatures (including the enchantment boost) over three turns, and could have ended the game in 4 had I found another swamp. Unfortunately for me, my opponent neutralized my Stinger, blew up my Bad Moon, killed my Sangy, and then RAN ME THE FUCK OVER with a 9/9 trampler and two other dudes.

I’m not giving up hope. I want to make this work, but there are some pieces missing from the puzzle. I still need to get my hands on a few more pieces, not the least of which is a set of Thoughtseize. They’re infinitely cheaper online (about $6 a whack), so I can get a playset of 4 for the price of ONE cardboard version, and of those I need 3 to round out the set. Let’s not even begin to discuss the ridiculousness that is Mutavaults, either. I pulled one from a physical Morningtide pack, and I think that’s the only one I’m going to have for a while, barring some miracle.

I think it’s also worth noting that the version I play online is strikingly different from the version I intend to start playing at FNM this week, and the reason for that is that with the exception of Thoughtseize and Vault (which are both going to have to wait), I have my pieces ready. Off the top of my head, I’m running…

1x Mutavault
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
20x Swamp
4x Nightshade Stinger
3x Nether Traitor (couldn’t get these online)
4x Hypnotic Specter
4x Sangrophage
4x Stromgald Crusader
4x Dauthi Slayer
2x Tombstalker
2x Korlash, Heir to Blackblade (only have 2 real ones; don’t have any online yet)
3x Bad Moon
4x Nameless Inversion
4x Tendrils of Corruption

And in the board…
3x Pithing Needle (which will always name Mirror Entity)
3x Deathmark
2x Extirpate
3x Mirri the Cursed (Faeries be damned!)
4x Slaughter Pact

I might be crazy in thinking that this idea won’t suck. I might be close to a decent build, with only a few bits missing. I might get rid of the Sangrophages, because he’s not nearly as good as Carnophage (that 1 extra mana, 1extra damage you take, and one extra turn you need to wait to start attacking is not justified by a 3/3 body).

Maybe this Friday will see some different results, but if getting croaked by random treefolk is any indicator, this could hurt. Badly.

There are some cards that this deck screams for that I just don’t have yet, in no particular order those are…
Thoughtseize
Profane Command
Pendelhaven
Mutavault

You could also make a strong case for Bitterblossom, which is like Sarcomancy, only infinitely better. Seriously. The deck is also in dire need of a drawing agent, but I’m not quite sure what that could be. Graveborn muse is appealing, but because the only other zombie the deck currently runs is Sangrophage, and that might get cut, I’m not sold on the idea. There’s also the problem of the Muse being a creature, and much easier to deal with, though Dark Confidant is also a creature, but that doesn’t stop people from running him. I’d really like something along the lines of Night’s Whisper, but since that isn’t happening anytime soon, we’ll have to make do with what we have.

This deck needs a lot of work, but design is always iterative, so I expect nothing less. I suppose I’ll just have to see how it actually plays out against actual opponents before going through the next iteration.

Hooray for surprises

Victory for me.

Today I woke up, fresh off of last night’s surge of creativity, wishing that my new machine would get here all the quicker, but knowing that I would have to wait until Tuesday’s estimated delivery date. So, after having overslept an amount that has become unprecedented since living with my wife (today saw me wake up at 12:45pm), we went out and grabbed something to eat. As she dropped me off at the house before heading out to pick up her dad, I was surprised to open the door and find a special treat.

My new PC has arrived.

StarCraft 2 and WeGame

The original StarCraft is one of the best games I have ever played in my life. Having been a fan of Warcraft since the early-mid 90’s, ever since I first played Tides of Darkness, I had always thought of StarCraft as the next step in evolution, as the pinnacle of the genre up to that point. I joke from time to time that it’s the game that ended my college career, and while that’s not true in the least, I sure did play it a hell of a ton.

When I first read on the World of Warcraft launcher that StarCraft 2 was in the works, I damn near soiled myself with glee. For a while, SC2 was one of those “rumors you wished would come true”, kind of like Duke Nukem Forever (sorry 3D Realms, but seriously, get your shit together). Now it’s actually in the works. If you’d like to take a look at how it’s shaping up, may I direct you to this clip, which is located at wegame.com:

http://www.wegame.com/watch/Starcraft_II_Terran_Demo_part_1/
(The user who posted these, Starfeeder, has a few other clips up that show some more of the content)

If you haven’t heard about WeGame, think of it as the Youtube of recorded games. I’d only heard of it myself a few days ago, and from what I’ve seen so far it’s pretty cool. So far I’ve watched some folks show off their Half-Life 2 mods, seen some pretty ridiculous Counterstrike kills, and have watched a hysterically funny World of Warcraft machinima called “Inventing Swear Words” about a tauren who marries an undead. Genius.

On a completely unrelated note, I ordered myself a new desktop last weekend, and it should be delivered by Tuesday. I’m really looking forward to having a more powerful desktop, splitting my display across two monitors, and all the fun little dev tools that I’ll be installing. That also means that I believe the game project will be picking back up. Victory for me.

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