February 2012
13 posts
Step 1: get better at article writing.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Podcast!
6 tags
http://legitmtg.com/competitive/letting-the-black-c... →
My first article is live on LegitMTG. Yayz. If you check it out and have comments (pretty please), questions, constructive feedback, etc. then please leave it on the site if you can, rather than here. Helps get them off the ground with some activity.
4 tags
Last iteration for tonight:
Even for a January
It is cold even for a January. The warm sunlight through the window is a trick of the Ice Queen to lure out our beating hearts.
The empty iron tea pot lies open on the table, drying out.
Leaves wet and swollen, flushed down the garbage disposal
We are on the cusp of February, full of paper hearts, longing and countless more cups of...
4 tags
Even for a January
It is cold even for a January. The warm sunlight through the window is an ancient lie.
I air dry the empty iron tea pot which, like my beard and hair shows character and wear through a build up of mineral white.
The cost of all things may be immeasurable indeed, but perhaps no more so than their absence.
—-
I’ve been working on this one and hacking and...
I just added an axe page so you can axe me questions.
I’ve been on Tumblr so long that the feature didn’t even exist when I started.
<— old
6 tags
Pre-writing article #2. So far, we’ve covered Chipotle, some Turkish guy and what is apparently Drew Levin’s theory about losing the round after you eat. Good stuff.
5 tags
DKA Sealed Gets Revenge on Me
My pool tonight was warm garbage. I didn’t have enough white or blue to play those colors, so I had to go Jund. No color had enough playable creatures or spells to play 2 color or 2 with a mild splash. So I ended up having to go three color split somewhat evenly. My entire pool had 5 playable two drops, but only 4 on color. So I ended up with a horrible curve. Of my rares, three were lands...
6 tags
Dark Ascension Release - Sealed Tournament
Saving the details again in case the writing gig pans out. I just returned from the release tournament with Don’s Magic and Sundry at Beyond Comics. Once again, my pool did not contain anything of significant financial value (my cash bomb was… Clifftop Retreat) so I had to try to win prizes to get back my value.
I resisted the urge to play blue for both Griptide *and* Grasp of...
I think it would be fun to calculate what % of my adult life I have spent under NDA.
The plan for the article, if the editor approves, is to write about Magic from the perspective of the casually competitive 30-something with kids and full time jobs. A demographic which I feel is important and does not have a lot of coverage. I will likely focus on Limited and Eternal, from a format perspective. That’s the concept. The margin between the grinders and the casuals which is...
4 tags
What to do with this blog?
I posted before that I will be writing a Magic column for a new site here shortly. With any luck, my first column will go up on or not too far after the weekend launch of Innistrad. I’ll be sure to post a link. However, I’m still struggling with the question of what to do with this blog. I enjoy being on Tumblr and I definitely feel like I want to be writing casually somewhere that is...
January 2012
21 posts
3 tags
Writing gig locked up. Frantically working on my first article in the next few days. Consequently, this blog will suffer a lack of structured articles if the gig goes well and they keep me on. If I start to get enough feedback from the articles and such, this my become more about anecdotes, Q&A and personal stuff once again.
What would you like more of from me?
7 tags
Dark Ascension Non-Report
I will be posting an unusually short Dark Ascension pre-release tournament report this time around. I’ve been offered (although still confirming) a writing gig for an up and coming Magic site and I don’t want to get ahead of the possibility of writing an article based on my experience at this event with my 10-year-old son. Stay tuned!
The long and short is that I went 2-1-1. My sealed...
4 tags
“Dark Ascension, financially, looks like Worldwake, but with no man-lands.”
– Me, on team chat.
5 tags
8 tags
Imaginary Wizard Fighting @ SCG DC
Sorry for the delay. Here is my usual short form tournament report for the Starcity Games Open tournament in Washington, DC. Since I don’t really play Standard, I went to bird friends until the Legacy Challenge on Saturday and planned to use that to decide if I wanted to grind out 7,000 hours of Legacy on Sunday.
Legacy Challenge
I played my BG Loam deck that I brewed up featuring Worm...
5 tags
I’ll have my write-up from SCG DC up sometime this week. Busy with quarterly release planning, but should clear up a bit in a few days.
If you’re at SCG DC and play Magic, say hi. I’ll be the guy in the jeans.
4 tags
5 tags
Classic White Trash versus Landstill. Victory, 2-1, White Trash! I thought the combination of Mishra’s Factory, Standstill and Pernicious Deed with Spell Snares would be too much for me. He won game 1 when I had no clue what he was playing and Revoked Lotus Petal. But, post-board, I managed to get Revokers down for Pernicious Deed before he could play a Standstill and rode them to a very low...
Okay Tumblr, I Get it Finally
You’re all sad and lonely. You make artsy pictures about your sad loneliness and you all reblog each other’s pictures like 10000000 times. Maybe it would be more productive to just organize a big hug party somewhere.
I’m being serious. With ice cream.
5 tags
Classic White Trash (Or, My MTGO Update)
It’s about time that I write a blog post talking about my experience with embracing Magic Online.
MTGO is Perfect (For Me)
I can play in the evenings after my wife passes out on the couch. There are no logistics involved.
If I want to make changes to my deck, I don’t have to find people to trade with locally over a few weeks or order things and have them shipped or try to trade by...
ffssynchronize asked: Now I don't play MTGO, but HOW could Figure of Destiny cost 40,000 tickets? Am I confused when it comes to the value of just one ticket?
12 tags
Magic the Gathering in 2011: the 30+, Married w/...
After reading Aaron Forsythe’s wrap-up article for 2011, I was inspired to collect my various thoughts on the year into a summary from a specific perspective: old family people. Well, old-ish. Yu-gi-oh old, at least.
What makes up our little demographic?
We tend to play more Eternal than younger age groups.
A lot of us started back in the “old” days with things like...
5 tags
December 2011
17 posts
My six year-old son just crushed me with a 59/59 Vish Kal and ended the #mtg game at 109 life. Huh.
8 tags
Notes from Gameday
I thought I would share some notes, thoughts and anecdotes regarding yesterday’s game day. I took my kids to Your Hobby Place in Martinsburg (which is an awesome shop) to pick up pre-con Commander decks. They’ve been enjoying EDH thoroughly at home, but using borrowed decks and wanted to get their own.
The youngest got Counterpunch and the oldest got Heavenly Inferno, basically so...
1 tag
3 tags
4 tags
Bringing a Gun to a Gun Fight
Alright, #EDH. I tried to be a gentleman. I bought in to the social contract. I really tried. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
This One Time, At Casual Night
I’ve never met this guy before. He asks if I have an EDH deck. I say, yeah, let’s do this. My deck isn’t designed for 1v1, but that’s okay. He then asks “do you play competitive EDH?”
What was that sound? Was that...
Vic talked me into cracking the 4 Innistrad packs I’d been saving to draft. I told myself that doing pick orders was using them enough to just open them. Liliana. Yay!
7 tags
My Vintage GRO Deck
First off, I cut my finger and I’m typing with a band-aid on. Apologies for any keystroke errors that slip through.
I posted before that a few of us (actually, exactly 2 of us) have started playing proxy Vintage. Basically 15 proxy, although I don’t think we actually set a limit. I went about putting together an Oath deck and promptly discovered that I don’t like playing Oath...
4 tags
I'm Obsessed w/ this Play
#mtg is so full of fun surprises:
into…
5 tags
heartofmetalguru:
justindz:
I love finding #mtgcommander combos I didn’t know I had. Grimgrin, Vengeful Dead, 11 Zombies and Living Death. Eat, eat, eat, rinse, repeat.
Does vengeful dead still trigger with token zombies since they dont hit the graveyard?
I run a grimgrin commander deck and I usually use lich lord or cemetery reaper to pump out zombies to fuel grimgrin until I can...
6 tags
I love finding #mtgcommander combos I didn’t know I had. Grimgrin, Vengeful Dead, 11 Zombies and Living Death. Eat, eat, eat, rinse, repeat.
5 tags
Justin Duewel-Zahniser: Updates from a Level 1... →
topher2323:
justindz:
First off, I’m behind on my FNM report. I’ll try to post it later today. Spoiler: I fall off the train. What I really want to talk about first are a few fun things that happened around that:
@TheSundry was able to locate my previous DCI #.
Within the day, Wizards ORC person, Tifa was able to…
As a side note, Emrakul is banned all around in Edh. =P
That was a Vintage...
5 tags
Just lost a Modern match to Zoo 1-2. I rolled him easily game 1, then game two lost a close one to a top deck burn spell with him one Geist swing from dead. I missed a white source on turn 4 after drawing with Esper Charm to play my own Elpeth and he got to land his. Then, I screwed up my River of Tears triggers and couldn’t hit it with Tar Pit. Post-board, Zoo seems to like to bring in...
5 tags
A Little MTGO Modern Teachings Update
This evening, I managed to get in a few matches of Modern w/ my Esper Teachings deck. Some of you expressed interest in how that’s going, so I thought I’d post a few match notes:
Game only - played against a Mill/Fog deck. I used Extirpate on Dampen Thought, but I think in retrospect, I probably should have nailed either a Fog effect or Howling Mine. Either way, it was reasonably...