Shhh, she's stalking!

I love everything about it – the casting cost, p/t, abilities, and the art.  Especially the art.  Not only does it convey some good flavor: Naya invader in Esper lands – for the non-Magic geeks, the materials making up the wall behind her give away a little about her location – but it’s also flat out gorgeous.  The only tiny, tiny complaint I could muster about it is that her face is a bit glossy.  But that’s just petty isn’t it?

A 2/1 for 2 that is mostly likely going to be a 3/2 shroud on turn 3 or later? (Or even turn 2 if you played a borderpost turn one) – what’s not to love?

I’ve played a little bit of ARB-ARB-ARB draft and she’s a blast in there.  I’m going to play as many of those as I can in the week or so that format lasts on MTO – I’m much less excited about ALA-CON-ARB, but that will be fun too.

You always see people getting cards signed by the artists – this is a card I would actually consider doing that for.  Or, better yet, maybe they’ll make a playmat or a poster of it (not that I’ll ever play paper magic again) – that I would buy, and even get signed if it was convenient.

I’ll have more to say about Alara Reborn as time wears on, but for now it looks to me like the best/most fun set yet (during my brief tenure from Lorwyn to here).

I honestly would have been happy just to get the Wall of Reverence – but the rest of the deck supported it really well.  I won second in that draft, and I actually expected to win.  The guy that did beat me…his deck was really unspectacular, but effective.  Basically domain commons + megolonth.

I beat the nice girl who got the Ethersworn Adjudicator at least – that card is NASTY to play against – especially in a deck with as little removal as mine.  Thank you Martial Coup!  Wall + growing ooze was really nasty though.  The 1st round of the second match I beat the other guy by decking him – I ended up with 96 life to his 31.  He had a couple of first strike deathtouchers, so there was nothing I could do other than wait him out.  I felt bad due to the tediousness of it, but it was the right play.

Now I just need 3 more walls….

It’s interesting, it’s aged pretty well. Even at 800×600 it still looks good, and it’s still seems pretty fun.

Of course the spammers are OUT OF FUCKING CONTROL.  Every 3 or 4 minutes a spammer joined my game to spam some bullshit website.  That was not happening when I left.

It’s hard to play one handed (no, not that silly!  Holding a baby.) though, so we’ll see how far I get.

Lately my gaming is focused on Magic Online, because I can play pretty decently with either hand.

Hopefully  Blizzard releases info on the 4th D3 class soon.

So yeah.  I was just going to do some of that – grabbing decent cards then intending to take a massive loss.  Instead I grabbed 2 rares that I wanted (Canonist & Master of Etherium) – that I didn’t even use in my deck – and then proceeded to built a Bant deck that SMASHED through the first two rounds.  Seriously, I was done with each match in 10-15 minutes I think.  Both rounds I finished my opponents before the others finished their first rounds.  It was pretty crazy.

And then, to top  it all off,  I won the final round – heck I’ve only won 4-3-2-2s …twice maybe?  Once?  It’s rare.  So yay for 8 packs of (virtual) cards.

If you’re reeeeallllly curious, here’s the deck I had:

1 Rockcaster Platoon
2 Akrasan Squire
1 Kathari Screecher
1 Elvish Visionary
2 Waveskimmer Aven
1 Dispeller’s Capsule
2 Jhessian Infiltrator
1 Fatestitcher
1 Welkin Guide
1 Call to Heel
2 Sighted-Caste Sorcerer
2 Rhox War Monk
1 Sigil Blessing
1 Sanctum Gargoyle
1 Excommunicate
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Hindering Light
1 Obelisk of Bant
1 Arcane Sanctum
6 Plains
5 Island
5 Forest

Sideboard not relevant because I never needed it.  Every card in the deck saw good play except screecher & capsule.

I know – Rockcaster right?  I actually played him for a win one round too.  Infiltrators are really obnoxious in draft – I’ll often take them just so I don’t have to play against them – at least if I’m not playing much removal.   I also really like Waveskimmers in draft.  Rhox is reliable as always.  All the 2ofs really helped my deck to play reliably (duh).

I lucked out in that I never had to play against much creature destruction.  It seems like that would have been problematic.  The first deck I played against was Jund with some removal though and I did alright.  Thankfully my opponents eliminated whoever had the Executioner’s Capsules & Bone Splinters – or they just didn’t see much play.

Weee if you know what all that gibberish means, you must have a seat near mine on the geek bus.

This after getting overly annoyed at a douchebag in a previous game.  People who don’t even bother to say some sort of hello – even “gl hf” is good enough for me! – just annoy me.

Anyway.  Onto the rest of the story, no time for douchebags…I’ve drafted one other deck I thought actually had a chance to win before, it was a BW Eventide-Eventide-Eventide draft…pretty brutal deck for a draft I thought, but I think I lost right off with that one!  One other time I made it to 2nd place, but I can’t recall what with.  This time I went with RW and it worked quite well – some of the games were tough, down to the wire – but those are the best!

Here was my pool & deck if anyone is curious:

5 Mountain
3 Battlegate Mimic
2 Unmake
2 Double Cleave
3 Ballynock Trapper
1 Belligerent Hatchling
10 Plains
1 Divinity of Pride
1 Springjack Shepherd
1 Spitemare
1 Endure
1 Voracious Hatchling
1 Endless Horizons
2 Hearthfire Hobgoblin
1 Recumbent Bliss
1 Rugged Prairie
1 Rugged Prairie
1 Puncture Blast
1 Flame Jab
2 Scourge of the Nobilis

Sideboard
1 Inside Out
1 Chaotic Backlash
1 Antler Skulkin
1 Moonhold
3 Plains
1 Harvest Gwyllion
1 Hoof Skulkin
1 Pyrrhic Revival
1 Beckon Apparition
1 Nip Gwyllion
1 Cenn’s Enlistment
1 Kithkin Spellduster
1 Stream Hopper
1 Patrol Signaler
1 Jawbone Skulkin
1 Quillspike
1 Impelled Giant
1 Duergar Mine-Captain
1 Kithkin Zealot
1 Hobgoblin Dragoon

I never even got to swing with the Divinity! :(  I got it out once, right as I won that game.
Check the DOUBLE dual lands – same one too (one is foil)!  What are the odds?  Esp. getting the exact dual lands I needed…crazy.

That Quillspike is foil too…gotta trade it for something useful before the value drops!

I played another round later with a really wacky w/g “leftovers” deck (I was just grabbing good cards that flew by..saw too many to build a “killer” deck)…actually won a round with it (go Whiteclay+Power of Gond!) and almost won a second – only a poor choice of color on Painters Servant hosed me.  Still, 6 free packs from both drafts is $24, nothing to laugh at for a budget gamer like me.  Drove of Elves is a real stand out – at least in limited – that card really surprised me, and I will definitely consider building around it in the future.

Well, the good thing is you can just buy singles from various shops, bots and players for “tickets”, which cost a dollar each.  I bought maybe 3 packs ($4.07 is way too much to pay for a pack of the current set anyway!), and everything since then has just been cheap singles for decks I’m working on (almost all of which suck).

There are a ton of “fun” rares you can get very cheaply – I’m only getting stuff from the current Lorwyn/Morningtide/Shadowmoor block though, so I don’t know beyond that.  But stuff like the Lorwyn elemental incarnations (Dread, Purity, etc.) can be gotten for as little as .1-.2 tickets.  Plainswalkers for as low as 1 (Jace).  Most commons are < .2 tickets if not something like .03, and most uncommons are < .5.  Rares are where things vary wildly of course – the  Liege cycle varies from 2-6 tickets and the rare lands all run pretty high as well.  Bitterblossom is about 15 and Mutavault is about 30 if you’re curious.  Yes, one card, which I’ve seen 4 of in multiple decks, is worth more than most of my cards put together (not sure what I have now…but I’m sure 2 mutavaults would be more than the total value of all my cards).

What?  Back to the sucking.  Yeah, I suck horrendously at Magic.  OK, that’s not quite true – what does become evident though is that, in most cases, money = wins.  Certain cards some of us just can’t get unless we get really lucky on a pack (and then we’ve still only got 1 copy of that card, which isn’t very helpful), or draft a lot or something.  Basically, money.  Anyway, if you play a “true” casual deck like mine (not tournament worthy, no bitterblossom/mutavault/etc.), and you see the other person play one of these cards – mutavault is the main one that springs to mind, you will probably lose.  Unless they got a really bad draw.

Luckily there is always that aspect of raw luck to magic.  And while in general I’m against luck in games of strategy, if it’s all that’s going to get me a win once in a while, I’ll take it.  I saw that because I thoroughly trounced a guy playing what looked to be a pretty balanced tournament level faerie/bitterblossom deck with my lowly kithkin deck (with only 2 cards valued over 1 ticket, neither of which saw play) today.  Of course, these are the same people that won’t even say “Hello and gl” or “gl, hf” or even “u2″ when a match starts, and don’t even have the decency to say “gg” when THEY beat you, let alone when you beat them.  They just join the game, smash you (sometimes VERY quickly) and then leave.  I guess that’s fun for someone with the mind of a 4 year old…but zero fun for me.

Yes I know that’s how you win tournaments…but this isn’t a freaking tournament!  It’s the “casual” room.  There is a room for practicing with tournament decks (at least I think there is).  Anyway, none of this is news, its a long time gripe with online games of this nature, I just thought I’d add my take on it.  To be clear: I don’t have any problem with these decks at all, they are pro-level, competive decks and HAVE to be uber to have a chance in that kind of gameplay.  I just don’t think they belong in the standard rooms.

There’s a nice comparison of some shop/bot prices here.  Cardhoarder has a bot (cardhoarder.bot is the screen name I think), and I get most of my stuff through there.  Very fair, competitive prices.  There are other bots and individual traders with better prices, so if you shop around you might get lucky.

I do find at least one or two decent people in almost every session though, and my buddies list of people to watch out for and maybe hit up for a game is growing.  So they are out there.

What else?
Hmm, the interface is decent, at least inside the game – although there are all kinds of arcane short cut keys you’ll need to look up.  F2 is a livesaver (it’s the same as clicking “OK”), and I hear F4 and F6 are pretty handy, but I’m weary because I already accidentally hosed myself once with F4.

Before you get into a game, the actual “room” interface is basically shit.  It’s passable at best and barely gets the job done.  The filters (the few they have) are woefully inadequate and the goddam listing window autoscrolls whenever a game is added/removed.  Using the “waiting” filter is the best you can do, which usually nets you less than a page of listings and only shows the games waiting for players. Of course, if you want to look at the larger list for some reason, get ready for lots of jumpy scrolling!

The “deck building” interface is pretty fluid, and seems to do the job well enough.  Having to hit “reset” everytime to get plainswalker cards to show back up is annoying though.

Conclusion:

It’s fun, but know what you’re in for.

And look me up if you want some very casual gaming (but don’t think I mean SLOW – you’d better click that goddam button and not leave me waiting for 3 minutes when you have NO MANA & NO OPTIONS for doing anything).

Anyway, if you’re curious about that kind of thing, my guide is posted on the CoH/CoV forums here.

Other than that well…let’s see.

We still haven’t found a house.  The jackass bank on that short sale hasn’t so much as spit on us since we made the offer almost a month ago.

Z has been really restless this week (falling asleep early and waking up more at night, extra cranky in the evenings), I think he’s teething again.  It’s either that or sick, and I hope it’s not sick.

It is FINALLY getting warm up here.  I have a feeling it will get too warm to sleep soon, and that will be fuck awful annoying.  I hate extremes – why does it have to go from shitshitty to toofreakinghot?  Can’t it just be mildly warm.  I love mildly warm, it’s great.  I can sleep in it.

I’m thinking I’ll be going to the MtG Eventide pre-release, possibly all by my lonesome, but I did invite a certain Science Hero who may or may not be involved in non-fued.  I’ll probably blog about it and how badly I lost, but how much fun I had loosing.  July 12th I think.

Z is walking around…have I mentioned that already?  Well, he is and it’s cute as hell.  I’m not sure if anything could be cuter than a baby who’s just learning to walk.  I have a feeling it’s all down here from here (except for a nice bump when he finally learns to say “mommy” and “daddy” and then another one when he says “I love you” and give “real” hugs…that will be sweet).

We’ll be hitting Cali up soon for my Uncle’s wedding, and my family will get to see Z for the first time in hmm 8 months I guess?  Not too long, but a lifetime in baby years.

Then…2 months after that…Maui!!!  Our first ever trip to Hawaii!  We’ve got like… a condo with an “ocean view” here.  Soooo freaking excited.

Onward and inward.

I’ll lay at least 40% of the blame on my cards. I didn’t have anything I felt I could build a deck around, while both my opponents got at least 3 rares into their decks. I went white/green/black for kicks, but in retrospect I think black/red +blue splash would have gone over better (this is the other 60% of the blame that should be on me). But hey – I’m just playing for fun & to learn, not to win. So on that level, I think I learned a lot about what not to do next time. Especially land & deck size, mine was just too big with 49 cards & 20-24 lands (I varied it as the rounds went on). Next time I really need to stick closer to 40 and go with less land.

So yeah, I didn’t get any bombs, or even the little tiny common combos that I like (like the untapping->tapping common faerie is awesome…and 3 tournament packs + at least 8 boosters now and I still haven’t gotten one.  Yes I have 3 Kitchen Finks & 2 Leech Bonders.  Go figure).

Unlike the deck from my previous tournament, I will not be keeping it and attempting to tune and reuse it.

But I still had lots of fun, even losing (sometimes very fast!) and met some nice people.  I look forward to the next time.

OH – and weirdness!  I picked up a tournament deck & 3 packs on the way out – the tournament pack had NINE uncommons and NO rares.  Lame!!  Of course, all the uncommons were decent so it wasn’t horrible.  But still, rares are where the “money” is at, so I’m a little frustrated that way.

And I did ok for my first time out. 1 draw 2 losses 1 win. The first draw should have been a win though – the round ended with me in the lead and able to smash him on the next turn or so, but the time was up so it was called a draw. Alas! If that had been a win I would have won a pack (lowest prize) or something, but oh well. It was still a lot of fun and, for the most part, people were a lot more normal than I expected. I mean, the freaky-freakys were there, don’t get me wrong, but for the most part there were a LOT of average Joes (the good kind) there.

My deck wound up being blue/white with some white/green hybrids & blue/black hybrids thrown in because I could play them for the blue & white. All around, I’m pretty pleased with it – it played different every single game, which is kind of frustrating, but that’s the way it goes with sealed I guess. The really frustrating thing is that I had my “killer” card (of which I only had one of in a deck of 41 cards) in my hand from the first draw for 3 games in a row and was unable to use it – very frustrating!! (It was a 5/7 flier with “all attackers have lifelink” if you care). All my opponents were red/black I think – some with green splashes. I found that very weird because everyone at my starting table built blue/white. I wonder if that has to do with the way the cards are distributed in the box & clustering. Whatever.

First round the had 1 copy of Beseech the Queen that he managed to draw & play in all 3 games. He made good use out of Conspired Giantbaitings – I think he had two in the deck. We were pretty evenly matched I think, and I got a lot of (mis!) use out of my Leech Bonders for whom I didn’t realize their untap ability cost 1U – but neither did so eh!

Second round the guy obviously didn’t like some of my cards and was kind of pissy about it, but I did beat him one game. I might have had him the last one two, except that he had an enchantment that let you tap to make a token on a creature that could untap to tap mine – so he could tap mana/2 of my creatures and make that many tokens every time. For some reason he didn’t, so the game took a lot longer than it should have.

Third round I managed to win all 3! We put 2/1 on the scorecard because he said/thought he won one, but I realized afterwards that I had won all 3. But he was really nice, so I don’t hold it against him. I don’t think he managed to get any of his heavies out, but he had some nice non-blockable blue/blacks and I forget what else.

Last round was against a nice guy who happened to be …probably 8 – 15 years older than me and was also a father, so that was cool. I won the first one, then didn’t mulligan when I should have on the second and started out with 2 lands…and stayed at that for like 5 turns. Last round was really, really, really close. He had a rare that tapped for X to give him X life though, and some other groovy stuff I forget. Anyway, I was one turn from dropping my fatty lifelink flier, alas.

I really like my randomly built deck, and will be improving and tuning it when I can buy the cards (pre-release allows you to get some new cards a week or two before they come out). I’ve got some great semi-accidental combos in there. It was lots of fun, even to lose (and I did good for a newbie – hell I didn’t even know about the second main phase after you attack – WTF is that about?).

Thank you Jen for watching Z for so long!! (It took at least an hour longer than it should of I think due to lack of organization at the beginning or something).

And yes, I know I’m a geek.

Traveling (overnight) with a baby is fun. I forget how much fun because we do it so rarely – this is only the second time actually. The first was the Thanksgiving trip, which was over a week long anyway, so just a pain in general. So maybe this was technically our first trip…well, whatever. Babies need lots of stuff to travel: blankets, 3-4 sets of clothes (we used them all in 2 days!), diapers, wipes, snot rags, food bibs, spit bibs, toys, more toys, things to keep toys clean, a blanket to crawl on, etc. Man, that lazy baby needs to pack his own shit next time!

He had fun though I think, getting to see some new/old/infrequently seen faces, and putter around (he’s almost crawling!) on a different floor.

Toby and Jessica came by, and then there were six.

What about the card games you say? No, not poker or bridge or whatnot, but geek-tastic Magic the Gathering. I played a little bit several years ago when we lived in Santa Barbara with Eric, and haven’t really touched my cards since then. For some reason, I picked some up a few months ago, checking out the current set – Lorwyn. Then, I got Andy Weber to grab a deck and we played a few games…and he must have liked it, because he went back and got Toby into it as well. So we (thank yous go out to loving wives) got to play several games over the course of the days including my first multi-player games. That was interesting. They play with really large decks too (80+ cards) <insert penis jokes here>.

Here’s an action shot.  Toby is trying to keep Zain from eating the counter.   Andy is pointing out the snazzy leaf they’ve got that makes their table bigger.

For some reason I feel like adding that I had several lines I had to delete, because they sounded like horribly tacky double entendres.  But maybe they were?  Who knows.  All I know is I kept writing things and then going back and erasing them.  Because I am older than 14.  Usually.