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 games of Vintage!
- I played my third and fourth EDH games with Grimgrin and had a great time.
Back to 0
Thanks to Don’s and Tifa’s efforts, I am now going to be once again operating from my original, mid-six-digit DCI # from the 90s. I logged in and the number apparently has 0 Planeswalker Points. I know that’s incorrect and I hope it’s temporary, because it would be nice to give my (meaningless) rating a boost and jump to the next level, where… nothing happens.
Being an eternal player, though, and one who was in on—or at least near—the ground floor of Magic, I’m proud of my old number and psyched to be using it again. I feel like some kind of Wizard laureate. I’d say Planeswalker laureate, but that concept is somewhat of a revisionist creation.
Vintage
I took the kids over to Ryan’s house last night to play various kinds of Eternal and some Ascension. Most of which didn’t happen because EDH takes ages. But we did manage to play our first “match” of Vintage. Ryan rocks Noble Fish, which is pretty hard for me pre-sideboard. I wasn’t expecting much, but primarily wanted to start learning how to play my own deck!
Basically, game 1, he keeps a good hand that lacks permission. I open with Forbidden Orchard, Mox Something, Oath of Druids and on my second turn I spin into Emrakul. He draws a card, has no outs and scoops.
Game 2, he opens with a Noble Hierarch and is able to play Stony Silence on turn 2. I can’t stop/fight it with my Mana Drain, so he slows me down. He then plops down a Cold-Eyed Selkie, 2 Qasali Pridemage, 2 Meddling Mage and Jace and I can’t recover since my Tezzeret and Oath win-cons were taken out and my Tinker was countered early on. I’m fairly sure I kept a bad hand here, but I still don’t quite have a feel for which ones are viable or not.
Next time, I hope to play a bunch more and to play post-board games.
Grimgrin, Corpse Factory
After Vintage, we then played two games of EDH with the following meta:
- Me, on Grimgrin, Corpse Born Zombie Tribal
- Ryan on Riku of Two Reflections
- Matt on Riku of Two Reflections
- Chris/Alex on Karador, Ghost Chieftain
Game 1, the two ramp players ramped and played various bombs and obviously threatening cards. In the meantime, I played Endless Ranks of the Dead. I did not have more than 3 zombies for most turns, attacking, blocking, etc., so it wasn’t doing much. However, given that I wasn’t very threatening, my life total remained pretty high. The game swung in my favor when I resolved Army of the Damned (the Riku players ran out of counters, countering each other’s stuff) followed by Rooftop Storm and pooped out my hand. I ended the game with 24 zombie tokens, a very large Grimgrin and a few other solid zombies. Ryan managed to play Blasphemous Act three times that game. The third time, I had enough guys out to eat them all with Grimgrin and let him survive. That was pretty cool, especially since I had Minamo, School at Water’s Edge out.
Game 2, I was too slow compared to the two ramp players and Alex was barely paying attention. It turned pretty much into a battle of the two Riku players both with infinite lands, a Roil Elemental and a Mimic Vat while I did nothing. At one point, it looked like the game might actually unlock and progress and Matt pulled out an infinite Time Warp loop so we all just went home.
Bottom line, I like Grimgrin quite a bit. Although I really liked the Merfolk deck, it had two fatal flaws. First off, it had a very hard time recovering from sweepers. Zombies obviously do better there. Second off, although tricky the Merfolk are inherently very small and basically can’t beat things like Batterskull or sufficiently large creatures without over-reliance on Swords. Zombies play the long game better, I feel.
The one card I’m considering cutting is Graveborn Muse. That may sound Sacrosanct, but I was frequently in a position where playing the card would have simply killed me, given the size of my Zombie horde. I think this card may be somewhat mutually exclusive to Endless Ranks of the Dead and/or Army of the Damned. But we’ll see. I’ve also considered adding a Mimic Vat, which is obviously an insane card and plays well with Zombies. However, it seems like one of those spiky-auto-include cards like Emrakul that just shows up in every deck and ruins everyone’s fun. Not sure I want to be that guy. Also, it would amount to playing non-Zombies, indirectly, and so I might also consider it a violation of my tribal rules.
Alright, off to the gym. Anyone else have some sweet Eternal action over the weekend? Drop me a note.
