Fallen Empires

I made a trip to Chatham last Wednesday, nothing special about that really. But I went into their “indoor market”, just to have a look.. Inside I found that all the shops I remembered being in there had all gone. All but one. I can’t remember the name of it but it’s a shop the size of my cupboard under the stairs. I’d never been in there myself but I remember wanting to go in when I was 11 because I saw in the window a packet of first edition Pokémon cards; at the time no one in school had any of them so I begged my mother but on that day she had no money. Anyway I went in on this day to see if he had MTG cards; being that this was a very small shop I thought it would be an easy find. NO! There was so much in there; I had to ask in the end.
There was one very small shelf. On this shelf was booster packs of Morningtide, Jugment and Fallen Empires. Fallen Empires you ask? Well as I was standing in the cupboard of all things Geek I didn’t know the set all that well. This means it’s an old set. For £1 I bought a pack.

Upon getting home I opened this booster pack. First thing I noticed for starters is that it only has 8 Cards instead of today’s standard of 15. The creature cards are still called ‘Summon’.  I did some research because for one thing I’m surprised to find a set so old still sealed in its packaging. I went to the place everyone does when they want information... Wikipedia.

Fallen Empires was the eighth Magic: The Gathering set and the fifth expansion set, released in November 1994. Out of the set of 187 cards, 102 were functionally unique, with the remainder being variant illustrations of other cards in the set. The mechanics of Fallen Empires include a tribal subtheme and heavy use of counters and tokens. Thematically the set experiments with conflict within the colors. The expansion symbol for the set is a crown.                                                                                                                                                                

Storyline

Fallen Empires takes place on the continent of Sarpadia after the Brothers' War in Antiquities. Each of the major cultures on Sarpadia is confronted with internal threats caused by the cooling weather: the dwarves are attacked by orcs and goblins; the Vodalian merfolk face the homarid menace; the elves of the forest struggle to contain the fungus-like thallids; the proud soldiers of Icatia confront opposition from religious zealots; and the dark Order of the Ebon Hand fights a thrull revolt. The storyline of Fallen Empires is continued in the Ice Age set.

Set history

Fallen Empires is widely regarded as one of the weakest sets in the game's history. Wizards of the Coast even points out on the product page of Fallen Empires that the set "with mixed reviews from players, and controversy over the set's effectiveness still rages on." This along with the massive overprinting of the set makes its cards next to worthless on the secondary market. Each card including the rare cards can usually be acquired for less than £2. After the set was released, Richard Garfield stated.

“It is easily the most complicated and best-looking of the expansions. The play value is high for the complexity, and the cards are very valuable for play. The flavour is probably the most cohesive since Arabian Nights. This expansion is easily my favourite”.

—Richard Garfield, The Expanding Worlds of Magic.

Cards I got:

Even though it is thought of as the least liked set, I’m inclined to buy the rest of the stock in that shop when I next go there.

Valentines Day

What did you do? Buy someone special, flowers?...  Chocolates?... A NEW CAR?!

Well do you know what I did? I went to work all day and worked hard to hopefully buy my special someone, something special whenever I might have the money.. If it hasn’t gone straight into my car.

Now my Girlfriend and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, one of the major facts for this is that we officially became a couple two days after. BUT surely this day is meant for people to let another person know they like them without giving the game away, making the recipient feel special and if they were to one day make it as a couple it would be so much more special.

Whatever it is meant for, I don’t see it worth celebrating if you’re in a relationship. Save it for another day. Don’t tell your other half surprise them.

Draft Deck

Last Wednesday I held a successful Draft night. For those who are unfamiliar with the term Draft in the game of Magic the Gathering this is how it’s played:

Each player is given 3 booster packs. At the same time all players must open a pack. Then you take one card, and pass the rest of the pack on to the next player, they choose one card and pass the rest of the pack on and so on and so forth. The idea is that you will all end up with 45 cards to which you will need to make a 45 card deck to play with.

Obviously you will need to think about the cards you are taking, and whether you can make it into a playable deck. I also find that all players have to agree that they’re not just after rare cards.

So, things to consider when making a draft deck: 45 cards to make your draft deck... but you will need to take some cards out to add land (which are important). So you will in a sense be left with a sideboard. This does mean you have some space to take some cards with you that you don’t want to see used against you. But do you take that risk? Another player could be aiming to make a deck very similar to the deck you’re trying to make, to which you find the cards you want are being taken before you can get them

Moving on to the draft game I held in dining room. We had three players, my good friend Kev, my Uncle Mark and myself. We all have different playing styles. This worked well when it came to the decks that we all made. We had one Rise of the Eldrazi and two Scars of Mirrodin packs each.

Kev’s deck: When it came to it Kev wanted to make a black/another colour deck but I had jumped in taking the black cards. So he ended up with a multi coloured deck. He managed to bag “level up” creature cards with happened to finish me off.

Marks deck: Mark had gone for a White/Green deck. He only got Plains out so we never saw what Green cards he actually had. This is the reason he conceded in the end as he had a hand of only Green cards.

My Deck: I went for Black, as in my First pack was ‘Baneful Omen’, although there was also ‘Hand of Emrakul’. I was torn because in any deck you want a big creature, what made me pass it on though was the ability which required ‘Elarazi Spawn’ (A 0/1 creature token “Sacrifice this creature: Add 1 to you mana pool.”). What really set me on black was ‘Consume the Meek’.

I did end up picking ‘Hand of Emrakul’ because there was ‘Dread Drone’ and ‘Essence Feed’ being passed around so with them I went for it. I know the chances of getting all three would be pushing my luck but you have to think that after the draft you have got the cards forever, so I was thinking about any future decks I may use them in. Another card that went in hand with these was ‘Eldrazi Temple’, this was going around too so I took that up as the other must not have seen the combos.

Being that we had Scars of Mirrodin boosters, we had a lot of Artefacts to choose from; when I saw ‘Kuldotha Forgemaster’ I had to have it as I’m in the middle of making an Artefact deck. But how happy was I to get ‘Wurmcoil Engine’? I now had a reason to use both in my draft deck.

I also started to take red cards to be my second colour but in the end they all ended up in my sideboard.

My deck list:

                Black Creatures:

Dread Drone

Cadaver Imp

Plague Stinger

Contagious Nim x2

Blackcleave Goblin

Necrogen Scudder

Painsmith

                Artefact Creature:

                                                               

                                                Ichorclaw Myr

                                                Moriok Replica x2

                                                Palladium Myr

                                                Kuldotha Forgemaster

                                                Wurmcoil Engine

                Colourless Creatures:

                                                Hands of Emrakul

                Black Other:

                                                Grasp of Darkness

                                                Essence Feed

                                                Tainted Strike

                                                Instill Infection

                                                Inquisition of Kozilek

                                                Baneful Omen

                                                Consume the Meek

                Artefacts:

                                                Accorder’s Shield

                                                Strider Harness x2

                                                Necrogen Censer

                                                Pennon Blade

                                                Trigon of Corruption

                Lands:

                                                Eldrazi Temple

                                                Swamp x 16

When it came to game play this deck did dominate with Creatures having ‘Infect’ (This creature deals damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters and to players in the form of poison counters). But these started to fail as the other players creatures got stronger.

Having only played one game so far with our draft decks it is hard to say how good we have been in making decks, but with more games will come more updates.

Cards not used/Sideboard:

                Demonic Appetite

                Iron Myr

                Saberclaw Golem

                Spawning Breath

                Raid Bombardment

                Kiln Fiend

                Akoum Boulderfoot

                Flameborn Hellion

                Ferrovore

                Ogre Geargrabber

                Mountain x2

                Engulfing Slagwurm

    Forest

                Plains

First Blog

Hello there!

I would like to start by saying I have never blogged before, so if they’re a bit slow at first don’t hold it against me.

I will be mainly blogging about Magic The Gathering as it’s my biggest hobby and would love to open my own trading card store with space to have people play all day long.

I will have other posts... I hope.. but we will see how it goes.

Hope I have followers but if I don’t it kills some of my free time.