Gathering 2.0 – 18/07/2012

This was my second game of Magic: The Gathering for the week! Oh, I’m spoilt!

For the first game I opened with my “Make way for the Big Boys” deck. Low and behold it worked again! I can only imagine it is because it had been shuffled out a bit by now, ensuring the cards are aligned in a more satisfactory way. 

Pete was in a strong position, and other than having “Cathedral Sanctifier”  he also had two tokens. 

James was playing with a Goblin deck that proves to be a force to be reckoned with, particularly as he hit Pete with fourteen blows of damage in one turn.

I thought I was going to be taken out quickly as I struggled with land; if anything this probably helped me because I wasn’t seen as much of a threat. Once I had established four mana, I was able to play “Lumberknot”.

With my death-touch creatures, I combined a few enchantments to deal one direct hit of damage to my opponent’s creatures. I was powering “Lumberknot” up very nicely. By this point, James and Pete had beaten each other down to a point where I was able to swoop in and take the rewards.

“Greeny Meanies” was on the menu for game two. I started with a nice “Wandering Wolf” 

so while attacking with it, it powered up, therefore could not be blocked by anything smaller. James had chosen to strike me first with a 2/2 zombie that costs only one mana to play. I felt that this was an invite to attack relentlessly at him. With James down, I only had Pete to worry about. He played a card which gave him protection from one creature type of his choice for his other creatures. As I had nothing but wolves in play, he wisely chose a wolf. However, he had forgotten that my “Wandering Wolf” power is far greater than anything of his, thus he cannot block; rendering his protection useless. This led to my second win of the night. 

It was time for game three and this meant it was necessary to break out “Call for Reinforcements”. I played “Rhys the Redeemed” as my first card;

knowing Pete’s style I knew it wasn’t going to last long, but hey that is just the name of the game. During this game I managed to play not one, but TWO “Parallel Lives”.  

   
                                           

This meant I was no longer making just double the amount of tokens, but more!

So, when I played “Grizzly Fate” I receive two tokens, 

and with “Parallel Lives” I receive four; but with two in play, I get double the amount, meaning I get eight tokens!  

Likewise when I played “Hunting Triad”, instead of gaining just three 1/1 green elf tokens, I got twelve.

I will mention that Pete had played his “Liliana Vess” card,

but the nature of my deck meant that I was not too worried about it because without being big-headed, most of my deck is formed of token making spells. I suppose that with my “Rhys the Redeemed” card being in the graveyard, it could have some interesting consequences.

Being that I had twenty creatures in play, I felt it was time to play “Epic Struggle”. 

This of course meant that I had painted the biggest target on my own forehead. However, if Pete and James could not take me down, I would win the game in my next upkeep.

Pete went all out and attacked me in the hope that I would defend to drop my creature count. I decided to take the damage like a man; this resulted in me being on a life count of four. At this point James had two 1/1’s in play, so I was feeling confident.

It was James’ turn and he drew a land which was of no help to him, but then he remembered he had the ability to discard a card and draw another.

It was just what he needed.

Four blows of damage to the target player and one damage to all of their creatures. Well I was gone before my army needed killing off. It was a well earned defeat.

Pete would go on to win this game with his newly made vampire deck, which worked very nicely indeed.

Game four saw the use of my Vanguard cards. For this we all picked our decks then at random chose a Vanguard card that we would then use for the entire game. 

James had “Takara”.

Pete had “Karn”

I had “Rofellos”

 

I think the only person who felt the benefit of their character was Pete because his “Angel Tomb” didn’t have to wait for a creature to come out to be a 3/3, and once he’d played “Call to Serve” with it, he was unstoppable. This was merely due to the way in which he drew these cards so quickly.

The last game of the night and I suggested that we play a sped up format, where you play all of the lands in your opening hand  then you draw that amount of cards so that you start with a full hand.

For this James played “Sisay”,

Pete “Volrath”  

and I had “Mirri”.

Not only did James get a boosted amount of lands in play, they now counted as double. And his first turn saw the appearance of “Nissa Revane”...

An elf deck with double powered land? It was very one sided and gave James the victory that he deserved.

From this week’s set of games it is obvious to me that all of us have grown as Magic: The Gathering players and developed our skills to a higher level. But does this mean that we will be having more fun?

With all the hard hitting combinations built for big and/or quick wins, have we lost the fun little quirks of the game? Only time will tell...