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...

Gathering 1.0.5 - 17/07/2012

Gathering 1.0.5 I hear you ask? Well if you remember a while back I did a break-down of the groups I play Magic: The Gathering with, well it seemed fit to make a new code for the group that was my uncle Mark, Bernard, Lee and of course myself; but hey, enough of this and on with the game reports.

I played “Make way for the Big Boys” for the first game and it worked exactly how it was supposed to; it created a wall of death-touching creatures which meant that my opponents didn’t want to attack. Attached to all of them were enchantments, which if tapped, dealt one blow of damage to a creature or opponent. Being that they have death-touch it simply destroys the creature, this thins the herd and makes way for my big “hitters”. However, the two big hitters I managed to play were destroyed before I could use them effectively. 

This game ended up being very long as I was in a defensive/responsive state of play during the game, which in retrospect put everyone in the same boat. In this retrospective mind frame, I shouldn’t have won because Bernard had managed to build up quite the army, but didn’t do anything to anyone and as such got bored; he then conceded to play on the PS3. This left my uncle and Lee, who I had been keeping at bay by destroying their creatures. Lee was playing with his Golem deck, which if left for too long can over power you with vigorous Golem tokens.

In the end I managed to wear them both down, slowly but surely, to my first win of the night.

From this point on, Bernard would not play any more games.

For the second game I played my new favourite deck, “Call for Reinforcements”. It worked a treat again. I walked straight over both Lee and then my uncle with 20+ token creatures. My uncle was playing with his beast deck and had drawn an opening hand with no lands. He decided to take a risk because if he could draw two lands, all the cards afterwards would be land providing cards, setting the deck up perfectly. Unfortunately this was not the case as he only drew one, and by the time he’d drawn a second I had taken Lee and his zombie deck out.

The third and final game of the night was upon us. It was both a short and sweet game. I played my “Greenie Meanies” deck and again, swiftly powered the quick hitter into the game, I was able to conjure trample and power-up spells which lured the others into blocking and consequently powering my cards up even more! Unbelievably uncle had mana problems again.

My uncle decided to concede once I had taken Lee out; I was hoping for more of a challenge from Lee as is first card was a 1/1 with life link, and if he escalated to a life count over 30, he would then have a flying power. This was not the case, which was a real shame in one sense as I wanted a good fight, but at the same time it proves that my deck works in the way that it was designed to.

All in all it was another good night for me.

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.

Call for Reinforcements

I feel like I shouldn’t be sharing this deck idea just yet, but I can’t quite contain my excitement. I just have to tell all!

With the release of Innistrad, came “Parallel Lives”.

So of course I had to jump on a token building deck.

There are so many ways to make tokens, and not just in the Innistrad block; I naturally wanted to use them all but of course this is impossible, more so it would make for quite an inconsistent deck that could potentially be very weak. I decided to keep to an old favourite of mine.

Elves!

My strongest colour is green, and in all truthfulness probably always will be. Friends of mine who have been playing Magic: The Gathering for the same length of time will know that I mean business if I lay green cards, and as such either hate it or cannot wait for the challenge.

So, back to the elves and the release of the Lorwyn block in 2007, we saw elf decks that could produce tokens like they were going out of fashion. Instinct led me back to my older cards and I shifted through them.

“Lys Alana Huntmaster”

This sets elves as my main creature base, and keeps the effect to work. Is this a problem you may ask? Simply, the answer is not in the slightest as elves are a useful tool within green decks. With this a path to a strategy involving the mechanic of “Kinship” opens up as I’d be likely to draw elves. I threw in “Wolf-Skull Shaman”. 

A token elf themed deck isn’t complete without “Rhys the Redeemed”.

 If I’m failing to pull elf token spells such as “Gilt-Leaf Ambush” and “Hunting Triad”

 

 

then I have no means to make elf tokens on a turn by turn basis. Not only that, but with 6 mana, I can double my token count with his second ability and remember if I have “Parallel Lives” out in the game...

... I think you see where I’m going with this.

Really?! You don’t?

Ok, I’ll explain.

Imagine for example that I have three elf tokens on the battle field.

 I use the second ability of “Rhys the Redeemed” and copy them, 

 putting three more elf tokens onto the battle field, but because of “Parallel Lives”

 I put twice as many out. Meaning there is six tokens going onto the battlefield instead of three.

Now I have nine elf tokens.

During the next turn, I repeat this move. Nine tokens would give me nine copies from “Rhys the Redeemed”, but another nine from “Parallel Lives” gives me nine more. Leaving me with eighteen new tokens and a grand total of twenty seven elf tokens!

 

Again, I repeat so on and so forth.

With maths like that it only makes sense that “Wellwisher” would have to be in my deck.

. So mass token making, coupled with mass life gain leads me to add some white colours to my deck with “Storm Herd”.

I have 10 mana to pay but by the time I might get to play it I could be well over the mark for a life count of 100. One hundred 1/1 flying Pegasus’ is not bad; sorry if “Parallel Lives” is out 200!

As I’m sure you will know, white is the way to go if you want to gain life, and it’s a shame I only own one of each of “Soul’s Attendant” and “Suture Priest”.

                                          

If I get the chance I will be looking to add more of them to my ever-growing collection of cards.

I found that I had had two of “Resplendent Mentor”,

which at first touch would be a bit of a late comer into the game particularly as the white creatures would only come into their own after playing “Storm Herd”, but “Rhys the Redeemed” tokens are green and white elves. WIN!

As most of the tokens that are being made by this deck are 1/1’s, I thought I’d drop in “Sigil Captain” – this pumps them up to 3/3’s. Nice!

At this point, I’m doubling the number of tokens I have and continuously gaining life, then gaining even more by tapping “Wellwisher”, and how about doubling the number of creatures in play with “Saproling Symbbiosis”?

Then just to rub salt into the wound, “Folk Medicine” or “War Report”.

                                              

 

It’s going well, and you’re doubling the army you have built and magically gaining life just by breathing, then... BAM! Your opponent plays an enchantment which stops you from attacking or something to that effect anyway.

So how would you like “Epic Struggle”? That should see you right I think.

You may have learnt that I like to mix things up every now and again, so I threw a wild card in. “Army of the Damned”.

I’m not sure if it will ever be needed, but at the time of making the deck it seemed necessary, therefore we shall see how the deck plays out and I may make further amendments as I go. I am happy with this deck so far as the last time I played it, I won with 96 elf tokens, 64 wolf tokens and a life count of 365.

DECK LIST:

  Green Creatures:

                Lys Alana Huntmaster x3

                Wolf-Skull Shaman

                Urborg Elf x3

                Ambassador Oak

                Wellwisher x4

                Quirion Elves x2

  White Creatures:

                Suture Priest

                Resplendent Mentor x2

                Soul’s Attendant

                Thraben Doomsayer x2

  Multi-coloured Creatures:

                Rhys the Redeemed

                Sigil Captain

  Other Green:

                Grizzly Fate

                Presence of Gond

                Epic Struggle x3

                Gilt-Leaf Ambush x3

                Folk Medicine x2

                Roar of the Wurm

                Saproling Symbiosis x3

                Feed the Pack

                Hunting Triad x 2

                Parallel Lives x3

                Abundant Growth x 2

  Other White:

                War Report

                Gather the Townsfolk x2

                Storm Herd x2

  Other Black:

                Army of the Damned

  Land:

                Evolving Wilds

                Wooded Bastion

                Woodland Cemetery

                Forest x11

                Plains x11

Weekly Gathering 2.0 - 04/7/2012

You may ask what ‘Gathering 2.0’ is. ‘Gathering 2.0” is what I shall now call my second group I play MTG with.

To make it easy and to avoid any of my groups getting offended, here is a breakdown of my Magic: The Gathering groups.

·         Gathering 1.0 originally consisted of just my Uncle Mark and I, but as of late, my cousin Bernard has since joined. He is thirteen. On a rare occasion my friend Kev joins us too.

·         Gathering 1.5 is the same as 1.0 with the addition of Lee, Carey, Carey’s son Chris and on the rear occasion Carey’s wife Sadie will join us.

·         Gathering 2.0 is James, Pete and I.

·         Gathering 2.5 is the same group as 2.0 with the addition of Chris, Rob and Rachel.

So there it is, all of my groups and its variations... Confused?!

Let’s set the scene, it is a Wednesday night and time for Magic: The Gathering and everyone had new decks to bring to the battlefield! I had 3 decks; “Make Way for the Big Boys”, “Greeny Meanies” and “Call for Reinforcements”. I played “Call for Reinforcements” three times as it is my new favourite deck, even considering the fact I had settled for what is the deck to start with, fortunately for me it worked more than beautifully.

During the first game I used “Make Way for the Big Boys”. In this deck the main theme is the use of “Deathtouch” and “Arues”; with these you can tap the creature it’s attached to and deal 1 damage to the target creature. It doesn’t sound like much but “Deathtouch” is convenient for use in a deck as when every creature deals damage, it destroys the creature. Thus instead of having to deal combat damage, I can deal direct damage and consequently killing my opponents creatures.

Unfortunately, I only drew one “Deathtouch” creature which was “Defang’ed”.

As a result, this stopped my deck in its tracks which then meant I could not deal with Pete’s new dragon deck and he made quick work of getting rid of me. Though I did go all out before dying and left him on a life-count of 2. This left James with the means to finish off Pete with his new Knight deck, but he wasn’t paying close enough attention and missed the chance. Twice!

For the second game I used my “Call for Reinforcements” deck, which is a token building deck. This was working well as I had built an army of tokens with over 20 creatures in play; with this in mind I was going to start my attack, that was until Pete played “Engulfing Slagwurm”.

This was an inconvenience, as if it gets blocked it destroys the blocking creature and gains life for the creatures defence; this wasn’t necessarily going to be a problem for me, that was until he enchanted it with “Lure”.

All creatures able to block, do so...

He attacked with it.

All my creatures were untapped and able to block... I lost everything but the most unfortunate thing was that I had nothing to take the enchantment away with and my next card was aptly named, “Epic Struggle”.

Being that Pete went for me first, James had the chance to save his Wolves by ensuring he kept attacking, therefore keeping his creatures tapped and unable to block.

I then used the same deck again which is very unlike me as I usually like to keep the game fresh by changing my deck every game. But I really can’t remember the outcome.

In the next game I used my “Greeny Meany” deck. It didn’t look like a good start for this deck as I had to ‘mulligan’ down to four cards in my starting hand. This ended up being a very good hand as it would seem I had the means to knock Pete out with small creatures that had “Trample” and power-up spells. James would not cast any creatures this game which meant I took him out in one hit but a deal of 22 points of damage.

For the last game of the night I went back to “Call for Reinforcements” and it worked amazingly. Now apologies for how big-headed this may sounds but I did not expect it to work so well and I don’t even remember what the other guys played with. But anyway, my winning army consisted of “Rhys the Redeemed”, “Souls Attendant”, “Wellwisher”, “Wolf Skull Shaman”, “Parallel Lives”, sixty four 2/2 Wolf tokens and ninety six Green/White Elf tokens, which totalled a life count of 365. All in all I think that deck works well.

There are some additional things to consider, Pete has only been playing for 3 months at most and is formulating amazing combinations; so well done to him.

Also if my tutor from school reads this, yes I stole your deck name “Greeny Meanies” but it fits my deck really well; possibly because it is roughly based on yours.