Weekly Gathering 2.0 - 11/07/2012

The gathering this week took place at James’. When I arrived, James and Pete were finishing a game; as such I knew these two would be warmed up and ready to do battle.

For the first game I opened with “Make way for the Big Boys”. It would prove to be slow game for me, what with only drawing four lands throughout the entire game, and my only mountain was destroyed by James stunting the main objective of the deck. Pete would then see to both of us with his dragons; this is the third time I have used this deck and not had much luck with it. But I shall continue to test it more to decipher whether it is down to drawing a bad hand of cards.

During the second game, I played “Greeny Meanies”. This deck didn’t prove to enhance my luck, particularly in terms of mana. However, being that most of the creatures and spells are all low cost to play, I pursued fast with small “tramplers”. I took James down first as he was by far the biggest threat. Unfortunately for Pete his deck had stalled and to jump start now wasn’t going to help because James had been working on him for a while now, so all I had to do was knock that last bit of life off.

My first victory of the night was a sweet taste considering I had such a low count of mana in play.

Game three saw my “Call for Reinforcements” deck make another appearance. It looked as though it may have ended before it had even started. I had to mulligan down to four cards; but with my first draw, my game was set.

“Soul’s Attendant” for life gain, 

“Quirion Elves” for extra mana, 

“Grizzly Fate” for tokens, 

"Parallel Lives” to double any tokens that come into play

and “Rhys the Redeemed” to double the amount of tokens in play.

 

Once my doubling mechanic took action, there was nothing anyone could do to stop me. I ended up throwing fourteen 2/2 grizzly bears at James, to which he only had two creatures that were able to block. He was done for.  Once again Pete’s deck had failed to take off and by the time he had a dragon in the game play ready to attack, I was over the fifty life count, and had twenty-eight grizzly bears at my disposal.

The next game saw the return of my old-school first deck, “Mana Munching Monsters”. I don’t think I’ve had such a sweet set up for a game with this deck before.

Turn two, “Copper Myr”. 

Turn three, “Fyndhorn Elder”.

Turn four, “Elvish Aberration”. 

With this I was set for mana.

I began by drawing only low level creatures, though this started to concern me. When all hope was nearly lost, the gods of Magic: The Gathering handed me “Decree of Savagery” which boosted my creatures up nicely. 

This was also just in time to stop James as he had developed into a threat. Pete, again, was struggling and was taken out without a fuss. James was left with a life count of 2 when he was able to stop me in my path with an ever-growing 13/13 which was powered by how ever many creatures he has on the battlefield. Fortunately, I had played “Shape of the Wiitigo” which gave me a 13/13 too.

I couldn’t get through his 1/1 tokens though as I had no trampling creatures. But once again the gods were on my side, giving me “Lone Wolf”.

It can deal its damage as if it wasn’t blocked!

It’s a 2/2! James was on a life count of 2!

Content with my winning streak, I thought I’d play a deck I have only used twice in the past. It is my least favourite deck and I had made it purely for the sake of making a deck. It is called “Faerie Fun” and the name says it all really. Gay.

Anyway, I played this deck with no hope in hell; atleast that is what I thought. I played the Flash mechanic to my advantage, using it to take care of low level attackers that thought they had a clear path to me. Making small but quick hits on James in the air, he was gone in no time. Now time for Pete; he was playing his Dragon deck again.

He drew three Dragons that he could play this game, but I made him put one to the bottom of his library from his hand because I had “Vendilion Clique”.

The next two that made it into the game were destroyed by “Dark Banishing” and “Violet Pall”.  

 

With this I kept hitting him with small flying attacks which eventually concluded in his defeat.

Yes! You heard it here first. A Faerie deck took on a Dragon deck and won. I was genuinely sorry for this.

The last game of the night and I went in with my hit and miss “Artefact Antics”. I was lucky again and drew flying creatures and flying equipment. I had plenty of power increasing equipment and enabled me to aim my creatures at James; this made quick work of him. I didn’t think of Pete as a threat in this game as he was only drawing land, of course this meant that he was not limited to what he could play...

I was doing just fine until he drew a creatures whose main ability was to tap my creatures for 3 mana. He was sat on eleven at this point, meaning he could tap three of my four creatures, to which my damage rating was drastically cut down. He would then play “Seraph of Dawn”. 

Even though he still couldn’t kill all of my creatures, any of the attacks I could deal would only enable him to jump in first and tap my cards, then block with his life-link angel.

At the same time, if I didn’t attack, I still had ample defense from him. He did however have the means to slowly deck me. I weighed it up in my mind and saw that if we continued playing it would be a very slow and drawn out game. This I find takes the fun out of games, as such I conceded. I think Pete would have preferred a clean win rather than me giving up but I had nothing to prove, and did not mind giving the game to him as he had held on so well.

I think this was one of my most successful nights for a long while, and look forward to the next.