January 2012
15 posts
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“Dark Ascension, financially, looks like Worldwake, but with no man-lands.”
– Me, on team chat.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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...
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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.
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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...
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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!
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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...
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I'm Obsessed w/ this Play
#mtg is so full of fun surprises:
into…
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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...
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I love finding #mtgcommander combos I didn’t know I had. Grimgrin, Vengeful Dead, 11 Zombies and Living Death. Eat, eat, eat, rinse, repeat.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Updates from a Level 1 Prodigy
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 restore my access to that number and start the combine process.
I played my first and second...
November 2011
20 posts
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Innistrad Draft Report - 2nd Place
Last night, I played another @TheSundry Innistrad draft at Novel Places in Clarksburg. I *believe* I finished 2nd place. My record was 3-1 and my loss was in the last round to the guy who won at 3-0-1. I got paired down in the final round, so I couldn’t draw in. It was a pretty frustrating match, but I’ll get to that.
The Draft Highlights
I went in hoping to be on Travel...
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My Favorite Modern Play of the Evening
I’m testing my Teachings deck against the random practice room stuff (mono-green Plow Under, really?) and hit my second Storm deck of the night. Here’s the play sequence:
I lead off with Thoughtseize and see Gitaxian Probe, 2 lands, Pyretic Ritual, Manamorphose, Seething Song and Pyromancer’s Swath.
I choose Probe and he discards.
He plays a land and passes.
I play a land and...
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Sweet Revenge
Just played my third draft. Last night, I got knocked out first round to the nuts travel preparations deck. But if you recall, I pulled a Snapcaster and sold my rares for enough to draft again. I’m happy to say that I just went 3-0 pretty easily with… the nuts travel preparations deck.
Draft Highlights
Pack one is not super spectacular. Bunch of mediocre cards. I’m determined...
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Did Another MTGO Draft
Out round one. Had a decent UW deck with six removal spells including splash for a Brimstone Volley off mountain and foil Grotto. Couldn’t beat turn one Pilgrim into double Travel Preparations two games after a mulligan of one-landers both games, though.
On the plus side, my on-color rares sold for 14 tickets. Free draft :-)
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Eternal Witness
Thanks to my semi-casual playgroup, it looks like we’ll be embarking on the voyage into the world of proxy Vintage. I’m actually pretty excited, and not just because I own:
and
I’ll try to post some notes about how it goes when we start playing. I imagine that I will lose a lot of games until I figure out how the format itself works. But we’ll see. I have a pretty...
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Another Innistrad Draft Report
Just returned from another #mtginn draft with @TheSundry at Beyond Comics. We didn’t get many players again, so this was going to be another 3 round event. All of which means the breaking even point (aside from opening a Garruk, Don!) is pretty much at the 3-0 slot. So I put on my game face. Which looks like my other face.
The Draft
We open the first pack and I’m looking at a bunch...
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Oh, Totally Forgot to Post This...
Congrats to BBD for breaking through and winning a PTQ. I’m sorry, congrats to *PRO PLAYER* BBD for, etc.
betweeneverythingandtwo asked: the mtgo software is mildly pathetic... the UI gets better with passing time, but it still doesn't negate the random dropping factor that happens and ruins your day.
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Notes from MTGO Modern Night #1
I took my first foray into playing Modern on MTGO tonight with my UB Teachings deck. First off, no one swore at me, that was nice. Second, I only lost ~4/16 games to having to mulligan 0 and 1-land hands into the four to five range. Such is life.
At any rate, here are some notes about what I played against, how my deck fared, take-aways, etc.
Living Death is very popular. I played against it...
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“After nearly two decades of quixotic experimentation as some sort of absurd...”
– http://goodgamery.com/index.php/2011/11/08/magic-the-gathering-officially-becomes-card-game/
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By the way, it’s also possible that M. Night Shayamalan is secretly in charge of Wizards’ Organized Play division and sometime in a few weeks it’ll be like “BAM, sike, we now have MPR based on Planeswalker Points and Pro Tour points provide employment slots in R&D. SUCKERS.”
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The (Really) Long Position on #MTG
This post is in response to Chas Andres’ latest Traderous Instinct article: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/traderous-instinct-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/
First off, great article. Regardless of what you feel about his stance or points (or minor typos), this was well written, reasonably balanced and contained some actionable information. Whether it’s correct or not...
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FNm Report - INN Sealed
Played another @TheSundry FNM last night. This time Innistrad Sealed. I would have rather drafted, but that’s next week when I can’t go. We had some cancellations and ended up with 6 people (although a first-time-old-DCI-number), so we had to run it as a casual event. Oh well. PWP are irrelevant anyway, so it’s all good.
I’ve never found Sealed Reports too exciting, so...
Justin Duewel-Zahniser: Update: MTGO is Garbage →
bakujin:
ATM, they are working on a free draft system to get people used to sets and the interface. As for the rest of your issues, I’d suggest playing around in the casual play area until you can get used to the interface, it is a bit counter intuitive but it is the best MTG simulator. I’m sorry that your first experience was less than favorable but I hope you stick with it. I’ve been playing...
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Update: MTGO is Garbage
So, here’s a punch list of my first #mtgo experience:
Online drafts cost that much?!
I apparently accidentally joined a single elimination event while attempting to join Swiss.
The default turn stops are apparently useless/suicidal. My first round opponent concedes game 1 when I fail to kill him for three turns due to UI issues. Nice guy.
I am unaware that the timer causes me to lose the...
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MTGO, Here I Come!
So much has been said quickly and violently about the Organized Play announcement regarding competitive/professional Magic. I will not rehash the announcement or the concerns with it here. Plenty of people who get paid to write have already done that for you. Instead, I’m going to talk about the personal fallout, from my perspective, that comes from both this change and the move to...