Eating Habits

Now, I don’t consider myself worthy of putting myself onto a programme for fussy eaters, BUT I do have a thing when it comes to my sandwiches.

When I cut them into rectangles, I always have to eat the flat side first (the bottom half of the bread); then obviously the rounded side (which is the top half).

I have recently moved to my Nan’s, and when she makes sandwiches for some reason she puts the two slices in opposing ways.

While this isn’t necessarily a big issue, it does mean I don’t know where to start my sandwiches.

So, the second sandwich related issue is as follows:

My girlfriend does not like mayonnaise to the point where I almost have to use two different knives when making our lunch.

BUT she will eat a prawn mayo sandwich; I will let this one go as I will admit that the prawns do in a way change the flavour of the mayo. However the other day I went into Greggs to buy us lunch. I didn’t look at what she picked up as I will buy her anything she wants, so felt no need. It was only when we got back to my mums and due to the lack of seats, she had to sit on lap, it was then I noticed the sandwich filling was chicken, bacon and MAYONNAISE!

Her response to my questioning was “I don’t like it out of the jar”.

Well once I did have mayonnaise in a squeezy bottle, but more often than not mayonnaise ends up in a jar because mayonnaise is mayonnaise!

Weekly Gathering

There was a change of scenery this week, being that we played at Lee’s humble abode. We also didn’t have all of the usual gang present; my uncle was unavailable which was why we weren’t playing round his, which meant Kev was going to give this week a miss. As such, Lee and I arranged to play at his and invite his brother Carey along.

Carey had started at the same time as Lee and had picked it up at the same speed, making for a good round of games. In actual fact, because they have only just started playing their a little quicker on some of the rules, well what I would think us smaller rules as a result of only the rule book being read. For example, when you mulligan in multi-player games you draw 7 cards again, then if you need to again you start drawing one less from then on.

When I turned up both Lee and Carey were already playing, this is something I like to see, a player who can’t wait to get the ball rollin’. Once they had finished the game, I of course jumped straight in, starting with my new deck that sat doing nothing in the multi-player games of last week. I had changed some cards for “Copper Myr” and “Palladium Myr” cards.

This worked in speeding up the game-play of the deck, meaning I was actually casting creatures.

Carey was playing with the only deck he has made so far; a quick, low-casting cost Myr deck, which took no time in getting to work on me with his “Hovermyr” cards.

However, he would soon be sorry as Lee was using his “Umbra” deck and so armed with plenty of “Aura” cards and his “Aura Gnarlid”.

Carey hadn’t much defence.

Even though my deck had finally woken up and I could play my “Kozilek, Butcher of Truth” card,

I did have to use my “Mana Vault” card a couple of times without having the mana to un-tap it the next turn; ultimately resulting in damage being dealt to me.

Carey had held onto his “Hovermyr” card, which finished me off.

In the next game I used another big, hard-hitting deck. “Mana-Munching Monsters” (you can find the deck list for this in my blog post titled “First Deck”). This deck didn’t work as fast as it usually does which I believed was going to the end of me that night, but luck was on my side.

In my hand I had “Kurgadon” and “Allosaurus Rider”.

 

At this point, I only had 5 mana, so I went on to play “Kurgadon” first, then playing “Allosaurus Rider” – by removing two green cards from the game, this bumped up “Kurgadon” with 3 “+1/+1” counters. I only had 3 forests in play, meaning “Allosaurus Rider” was only a 4/4.

During the next turn I enchanted “Allosaurus Rider” with “Blanchwood Armor” which gave him +1/+1 for every forest I controlled.

I had managed to lay on that turn so I now had 4, making him a 9/9. From here on in, every forest I laid would give him another +2/+2. NICE!

This gave me a nice defence line which stopped anyone from coming my way. I stayed this way, drawing forests till my “Allosaurus Rider” was a 15/15 and still on the defence. I then drew my winning card, “Rhox”;

this is because he can deal damage, though it is not blocked, but has a regenerate ability.

In the next game I used my new “Infect” Deck (Deck review coming soon!). It was pleasantly surprising, as it was a success. For a deck thrown together it’s one I’m rather proud of.

As you may guess, all the creatures in this deck have “Infect”, if not then they have “Defender”.

To start with I cast “Vigean Hydropon” and with its “Graft” I can give a +1/+1 counter to five creatures.

This works well for “Blighted Agent” with “Infect” and being un-blockable, powering this card up is a good idea.

What sealed the game was “Phyrexian Hydra”.

I had spent the game wearing the others down with “Blighted Agent”, so once I drew “Phyrexian Hydra” I didn’t need to deal much more damage.

In the last game of the night I used my deck now named “Pay Your Dues” (you can find a deck list for this under the post “The new [unnamed] red and black artefact deck”). This was to be a game where I wouldn’t do much, if anything at all. Carey had changed his deck to the Knights deck, from the Knights and Dragon duel deck(you can find a review of these decks under “Knights vs. Dragons: Duel Decks”).

As soon as he got “Kinsbaile Cavalier” out,

I saw the demise of both Lee and myself, with all his creatures having “double strike” there was no stopping him casting more knights. So in the end we both conceded.

All in all it was another enjoyable night, and some good results for my new decks.

 

Weekly Gathering

Another week of godly sized battles has passed, and once again we had what I now consider to be a full house (four people apparently fill my uncle’s house rather well). The full house consisted of my Uncle Mark, Kev, Lee and of course myself.

Mark and I started early, as we waited for the other two to arrive; just some straight games to begin with. I had a new deck to use (the deck list will follow but I don’t want the others to know it yet!). The first game would determine how well the deck would work and I’m afraid to say it didn’t work too well. By the time I had cast a creature I was on a life-count of 4.

The second game was a bit better; Mark was using his White/Black Cleric deck, which at the best of times is a strong deck. He was winning up until I cast “It That Betrays”,

with this an opponent sacrifices a non-token permanent, and I gain control of it. Then “All Is Dust” followed,

which forces each player to sacrifice all coloured permanents. The holder now controls all of the lands, creatures and coloured cards that happen to be in play. So by clearing Mark out of all of his cards, I built myself quite the army.

We then moved on to a game with commander decks. The first game Mark had ‘Heavenly Inferno’ and I had ‘Devour for Power’... Well I only drew “swamps” for mana, and there wasn’t enough for any spell in my hand. I was simply had, and in a big way.

In the second game, Mark had “Political Puppets” and I had “Mirror Mastery”. This time I had a good draw and we ended the game early because the gathering was complete with the arrival of Kev and Lee. However, I did manage to produce a “Simic Sky Swallower” and a token copy,

also a 27/27 “Trench Gorger” complete with a token copy; this I thought was quite good.

But let’s get back to the point, with all four players present we got down to business with straight multi-player games. There was one game which saw my deck being virtually inactive until I was on a life count of about 6, but this would not be enough to pull me back into the game. In the next two games I would not get anything out either, and Kev would be the one to dispose of me.

During the third game, we introduced Lee to Planechase. The Planer deck was played down in the game, due to the presence of Kev’s Elf deck (which I designed), and Marks sliver deck. Kev made quick work of getting rid of the sliver deck before it got out of hand. Lee followed suit by taking Kev out with his 2 “Child of Night” cards.

Kev was down to a life count of 4, as Mark was using his Slivers to stop the Elf take over. Evidently the silent winner in the dark was Lee’s Vampire deck.

After my unsuccessful night with my new deck, I suggested an Archenemy game. When we have played them in the past, they haven’t been very fun, as two people is simply not enough to take on an Archenemy. I am happy to report, that atleast three people is a good number for it to be a success. We did only play the one game, but the rest of the group had managed to get me down to a life count of 12 before I won.

Now I usually don’t aim for just one person from the beginning of a game, but seeing as though Kev had taken me out twice, despite the fact that I had caused no damage to anybody and was still a long way off from doing so, I changed my mind – partly because I felt it was a little unfair to make me the main target on two separate occasions.

The three of them had made it their plan to use elf decks pre-Lorwyn back when elves powered up from every other elf in play. Lee, who is still relatively new to the game, has elves yes, but post-Lorwyn.

As a result, Kev ad Mark were powering up with every elf in play, tactically they would be the ones to target first. And as I pointed out earlier, my eye was already on Kev.

As the three of them had mentioned what decks they were using, I had to choose which deck to choose for myself. I went with “Scorch the World with Dragonfire”.

With the flying dragons, I was bound to have the upper hand, but another nice draw was “Volcanic Fallout”,

dealing all creatures 2 damage; elves aren’t very big creatures until they are powered up so I had cleared the field for my “Chameleon Colossus” to walk through as a nice 8/8.

This move meant the end of Kev. Mark was next, and obviously last was Lee (who conceded). A wise move as I was about to draw my “Two-Headed Dragon”.

At this point in the night, it was time for Lee to depart, leaving the rest of us to go back to straight multi-player games. This was to be the last game of the night.

What was interesting about this game was that we all chose blue/white decks; yet again another deck where I wouldn’t do much. I had drawn three “Blizzard Specter” cards and “Zur the Enchanter”,

just no swamps till the turn before Mark took me out. Typical - however, this would not happen till after Kev was taken care of.

Mark was the playing the Worldwake Intro Pack “Flyover”,

Kev had what can only be described as an annoying Enchantment deck and I was using my Counter deck.

The thing that makes Kev’s deck annoying is this combo: “Enchanted Evening” and “Greater Auramancy”,

but Mark had flown over and ended that before it could become truly annoying, as it usually does. You can see why I wanted “Zur” out, with every card being an enchantment I could look for any creature or spell I wanted with the converted mana cost of 3 or less.

It wasn’t much of a game, but it was a good first game for Mark’s Flyover deck.

Commander

“Commander” is a fan-made multi-player format.

So what is it all about?

Magic: The Gathering Commander consists of five different 100-card singular decks. To continue the tradition of oversized cards that are associated with the MTG multi-player releases, each deck includes three premium oversized legendary commander cards; these premium cards can be used in conjunction with the regular versions of the cards (which can be found within the deck).

In the sense of an Eternal format, the new cards are “legal”, (that’s vintage and legacy), but they are not legal in regards to Standard, Extended or Block Constructed.

There are three “wedge” colours to the Commander decks, with a corresponding new commander to each. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, “Wedge” is a term used for three colour combinations consisting of an allied pair and a shared enemy. Said combinations have been distressfully short-supplied on legendary creatures, therefore each deck contains the corresponding Planar Chaos Dragon (for example, Intet, the Dreamer), as well as two completely new legendary commanders in the specified colours; plus oversized foil versions of all three.

So how does the game-play work?

In all honesty there isn’t a lot I can pass comment or judgement on as I have only played once, with one commander game. Nonetheless I shall continue.

Four decks were used within our game; and a new player was thrown into the mix. My uncle Mark was armed with “Political Puppets”,

Kev had “Devour for Power”

and Lee (our newest recruit who has only been playing MTG for a week but had made an exceptional deck that proved a challenge) had “Heavenly Inferno”.

I had “Mirror Mastery”.

It was a slow game merely because we spent a lot of the time familiarising ourselves with our new cards, but inevitably the game-play will speed up the more we use the decks.

Kev was the only player who didn’t manage to get his commander “The Mimeoplasm” out of the command zone.

This was the death of him as he put “Dreamborn Muse” into play.

This would ordinarily have been fine if he could have incorporated “The Mimeoplasm” into the game-play, but things did not pan out how we would have hoped; as such we didn’t like the idea of losing all of our cards before really getting our teeth into the game, and so the alliance was silently made and we picked on him one by one until he was gone.

Lee was the next to go, this was the result of Mark taking control of his commander - “Kaalia of the Vast” -stunting what we all assumed was the winning deck.

Naturally we thought this as every time damage was dealt to us via “Kaalia of the Vast” Lee would earn a dragon or angel, whom were sent flying towards us and we had no means of defence. But with his commander gone, he simply did not have the mana to pull through when he drew “Avatar of Slaughter” and instinctively I counteracted this move.

Once I had taken Lee out of the game, I played “Chain Reaction” levelling the playing field; for a short space of time this worked in my favour as Mark had built quite an army, whereas I had not...

I then made a mistake when playing “Baloth Woodcrasher”,

I was meant to leave an “Irland” and a “Firest” in order to perform a copy-cat move with my Commander “Riku of Two Reflections” but I messed up, and as a result Mark stole my Commander from my grasp, and from that point I just couldn’t draw any creatures, which eventually led to my demise.

All in all it was a challenging game, which I thoroughly enjoyed and I’m looking forward to playing it again, as I’m sure the others are.

Additional notes:

I cover all of my decks with Ultra Pro covers and use the deck boxes accordingly; as such I purchased the special Commander deck boxes which admittedly look really cool! BUT I soon realised they have a design flaw. The lid, if closed all the way, bends the cards in the box. So definitely beware of this, close gently and stop just as the Velcro grips.

I also tried the new matt card sleeves. I must say I am not impressed; they make the cards look foggy (Kev thought his eyesight was getting worse!). They do however stop the light reflecting off the cards when they are laid on the table which is a bonus, so I feel it is a case of whether you want to put up with foggy cards or having to tilt the cards to avoid a glare from your light source. I myself will put up with the glare, and not only because the older sleeves are cheaper!