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I made one of my returns to Magic after a short haitus. Not digging Avacyn Restored draft, and with Standard so brutal, I waited until M13 came out to go back to slinging some spells.

Here's what I drafted, going 4-0, and getting 1st place for the first time in my history of playing the game.

What you're quickly going to realize is just how lucky I got with this deck. There are aboslutely no bombs.  And with SO many creatures with zero power, it's insane to think that I managed to slip past each of my competitors with each round going to three games.

3 Island
7 Mountain
7 Swamp
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17 lands

1 Bladetusk Boar -- Intimidate proved to be a factor
1 Crimson Muckwader -- Didn't really do much for me
2 Dragon Hatchling  -- So cute, so deadly
1 Fire Elemental -- RAWR!
1 Goblin Battle Jester -- Won me the final game of the night
2 Mogg Flunkies -- Don't play well with Exhalted, but still nice beaters
1 Rummaging Goblin -- Was absolutely hands down key to success
1 Slumbering Dragon -- My Don't Wake Daddy card never woke up
2 Duty-Bound Dead -- Was absolutely hands down key to success
1 Knight of Infamy -- Was absolutely hands down key to success
1 Walking Corpse -- It's a bear.
1 Veilborn Ghoul -- Combos well with the Rummaging Goblin
2 Kraken Hatchling -- They can attack with the Flunkies!
1 Chronomaton -- I kept wondering if I wanted to attack or make bigger
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18 creatures

1 Gem of Becoming -- Extremely useful in thinning out deck
1 Murder -- Extremely vital. Man I wished I saw two of these.
1 Rise from the Grave -- 1st pack, 1st pick.
1 Searing Spear -- Extremely vital. Man I wished I saw two of these.
1  Vile Rebirth -- I LOVE THIS CARD
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5 other spells

So, I know I haven't posted anything in forever.  I've actually been playing Magic again quite a bit since November.  But it's not been until tonight that I've found any bit of success outside of a 7th place during the Dark Ascension Pre-Release Sealed.

Here's the deck I took to 2-0-1 today in an unsanctioned 6 player standard event today.

Angels and Humans
60 Cards

2 Evolving Wilds
2 Ghost Quarter
15 Plains
5 Swamp
--------------------------
24 lands




4 Accorder Paladin
2 Angelic Overseer
4 Champion of the Parish
4 Gather the Townsfolk
2 Serra Angel
1 Sun Titan
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17 creatures



1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
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2 planeswalkers



1 Angelic Destiny
4 Bonds of Faith
3 Day of Judgment
3 Doom Blade
1 Honor of the Pure
1 Increasing Devotion
4 Oblivion Ring
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17 other spells


Still could use some tinkering, I'm sure. People want me to exchange the Serras for something else, but I have a soft spot for the old broad.  There are other changes that probably could be made too.  And the sideboard too...

3 Celestial Purge
2 Demystify
1 Elite Inquisitor
3 Fiend Hunter
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Slayer of the Wicked
2 Timely Reinforcements
------------------------------
15 sideboard cards

The first round I beat a Birthing Pod Undying deck pretty sufficiantly.
The second round I beat a Control Delver deck very easily.
The third round I won the first game narrowly against a Heartless Summoning deck. During the second game the store really wanted to close so we decided to draw.  It was an unsanctioned tourney after all.

That was good enough for a tie at 1st place and 3 packs. Sadly, there wasn't anything really great in them. 

I returned to Magic: The Gathering this past weekend thanks to the Core Set's pre-release.  As you know, I am no fan of the current Standard metagame.  It reminds me so strongly of Mirroden and my hate for it before in all of it's broken glory.

Yes, things are starting to change thanks to some bannings.  But I'm still more of a fan of limited formats for the time being.

And for very good reason.  I tore open a great pool this past Saturday and piloted a kind of weak creature filled deck featuring a color I loathe playing to 4-1.  It not only won me 6 boosters, but provided it gets reported as a Limited Tourney as it should, it'll bring my record back over 1600 finally. HA!

 

41 CARDS, because 40 is what they expect.

LANDS

Mountain x 8

Island x 9

 

ARTIFACTS

Kraken's Eye x 1 -- Never came out. Sorry Lucky Charm!

 

PLANESWALKERS

Jace, Memory Adept x 1 -- Won me the majority of my games. Duh.

 

CREATURES

Coral Merfolk x 1 -- It's a warm body with 2 power.

Skywinder Drake x 1 -- Fliers are good in Limited.

Azure Mage x 1 -- End of your turn, I'll draw a card.

Aven Fleetwing x 1 -- Untargetable fliers are really good in Limited.

Merfolk Looter x 1 -- I did it during combat and drew some burn. Weee!

Chasm Drake x 1 -- Never used its ability but it was 'good enough' a 3/3 flier.

Merfolk Mesmerist x 2 -- This duo did the majority of my deck wreckin'.

Blood Ogre x 1 -- It's actually the first strike that helped more than bloodthirst.

Stormblood Berserker x 1 -- Never used its ability but did get bloodthirsty.

Goblin Fireslinger x 1 -- I didn't like him as much as a Tim.

Inferno Titan x 1 -- He did win some games, but was mind controlled once.

Crumbling Colossus x 1 -- I used this beast as a wall.

 

SPELLS

Mana Leak x 1 -- Early game counter or for a whole tap out bomb.

Jace's Erasure x 1 -- Made my foes go mental. Easy to mill 40 card decks.

Cancel x 1 -- Simple. Elegant. But required a lot of patience to use.

Ponder x 1 -- My favorite card in the deck. Hate blue, but see the appeal.

Ice Cage x 1 -- Wasn't as useful as it should have been. Easy to get out of.

Slaughter Cry x 2 -- It wasn't just the +3, but the defensive use of first strike.

Incinerate x 2 -- Again, I only roasted what I absolutely had to.

 

Upon retrospect I probably should have put in my Visions of Beyond instead of the Lucky Charm.  Though I thought 20 cards in a graveyard was half of a typical Limited deck.  I didn't expect I'd win most of my games milling. To be honest, I wasn't sure how I was going to win, but by being patient and using my burn/counter magic. I sat on my creatures long enough to dig through my library for my bombs, either Titan or Jace to be used in conjunction with the Erasure and Mesmerists.

I spent 30 bucks to enter the tourney, won 6 packs which is pretty much my money back technically.  And of course the value of The New Jace™ is going to flux wildly as are some of the other cards I snagged like the end the turn artifact.

 

 

This past Friday I finally got back into playing some Magic after having a few weeks off doing other things.  Important things, you know, like celebrating my birthday and Gay Pride Weekend.

Yeah, that's right, I'm the homosexual that really wished you'd stop calling everyone you don't like a tournaments a f--.  Seriously, this is why you have no life outside of this game, Sparky.

Anyway, I went my usual 2-2, though one of those "wins" was actually a "bye" so that wasn't that great.  It's no wonder my deck had trouble.  It was kind of hastily finished up since I don't quite yet have the cards to complete it correctly.  It was nice that my last round factored into who got 2nd place or not.  I won and that let Josh (my first round opponent and victor) get the packs.  He was kind enough to give me his cast-offs.  This is especially nice since I don't have much Scars yet.

On to the deck list.

 

SURPRISE! You've been infected!

64 cards

BLACK

Rise from the Grave x 2

Doom Blade x 2

Sorin Markov (I love this guy but he's got to go.)

Duress x 4

Tainted Strike x 4

Blackcleave Goblin x 2

Skinrender (Could probably use a second, maybe third.)

Plague Stinger x 2 (Could probably use more)

Nantuko Shade x 4

Royal Assassin x 2

Sign in Blood x 2

Quag Sickness x 3 (I kind of like these more than Doom Blade. -gasp-)

 

ARTIFACTS (this is where I need to get other cards, do some refining)

Vector Asp

Bladed Pinions

Contagion Engine (I probably would like the clasps.)

Accorder's Shield

Juggernaut x 4

Necropede

Whispersilk Cloak x 2

Ichorclaw Myr

 

LANDS

Swamp x 20

Mystifying Maze

 

I keep thinking I want to change up the deck and add white for Blinding Mages, Serra Angels, and Day of Judgments, but that muddies up the color that the shades and Quaq sicknesses want.  I also kind of like that I'm playing mono-black.  It's just such an unlikely thing.

 

 

Scars is here!

Scars is here!

I forwent the sealed event that was earlier in the day since I decided to get my usual post-FNM drink on.  Yeah, that's right, this geek still likes to party at the clubs.  Um, but anyway, so my first adventure back in Mirrodin was a draft.

A huge 26 person draft. 

And I went 4-1 and got 5th place with a prize of two packs.  Booyah!

It started off so tragic though, with an assmonkey who screwed up our drafting by "ending up with" 28 cards by the end of pack one.  Uh, what?  What kind of insanity is that?  Turns out, he ends up dropping immediately after the drafting portion of the program.  Joke's on him though as I've heard he's now banned from the store. 

He was my first opponent so I started my night with a free win.  While I'll take it, I really came to play.

I lose in the second round (which is actually the first I get to play in.)  I'm sure rushing the opponent is one of his tatics, and I did manage to fight that pretty well.  But he did legitimately beat me.  There wasn't much I could do against his puny 2/2 flier that became 3/3 a few times due to a blue "Lord" type card.

Third round was a long drawn out affair where the board just got clogged up each and every game.  But eventually I pulled it out 2-1.  He was playing blue/white and got some nice counter magic to hit at the right times.

Fourth round ended quite quickly as I just rammed poison counters down their throat.  I think he was splashing up to 4 colors which just wasn't working out for him.

And in the fifth and final round, it went to game three again, but with a few tricksy moves, I found ways to keep blasting away at his aggro-red deck and take him down 2-1.

In the end, I did really well and continued to boost my limited rating.  This is my second time winning prize packs for my finish, though I've had somewhat high finishes before.  Hopefully the trend will continue and some of the top players at the store will start taking me a bit more seriously? HA! Yeah right!

Here's my deck from tonight:

 

Does This Look Infected To You - 45 cards

Creatures

Bellowing Tanglewurm -- In spite of lots of artifact creatures, this did amazing.

Cystbearer x 2  -- That extra point on the defence matters on these infect critters.

Molder Beast x 2 -- Actually won me two games that I didn't win by poison.

Tel-Jilad Fallen -- Got in once for a triple dose of infect before killed off.

Vector Asp -- Sneaky infect is sneaky.

Wall of Tanglecord -- I wished I had more of these great defences against flying.

Necropede -- Infect that surprises as he throws his counter when dead.

Ichorclaw Myr   -- His pump when blocked ability is nasty with infect.

Copper Myr -- A useful warm body to block if needed.

Blackcleave Goblin x 2 -- The haste didn't matter much, still,  more infect.

Plague Stinger x 2 -- Obviously the easiest infect guys.

Skinrender -- Very essential. Easily took out some great threats.

 

Spells

Tainted Strike -- Surprise, you got infected!

Relic Putrescence x 2 -- Wasn't as useful as I thought.

Tel-Jilad Defiance x 2 -- Never came out, but I'm sure they're great.

Viridian Revel -- Probably was the factor against aggro red that munched artifacts.

 

Artifacts

Accorder's Shield -- Was useful for stalling.

Trigon of Corruption -- Was almost essential.

Trigon of Infestation -- Didn't happen.

Contagion Engine -- One of my early favorites.

Bladed Pinions   -- So much flying. This was a lifesaver.

Throne of Geth   -- Only happened once and sac'd itself but it was nice.

 

Lands

Forest x 9

Swamp x 9

Well, it was the last Standard FNM before the set rotation.  And wouldn't you know it, I didn't play against any of the decks that have been dominating the format.  No Jund.  No Pyromancer's Accention.  No Superfriends.  None of them.  There was Vampires, but I didn't play against him.

I did play against a Megrim deck and narrowly survived.

I also played against a mill deck and blew him totally out of the water.  I always play against mill the same way: Relentlessly and ignoring any possibility of things being countered.  Forget about bluffing, forget about everything.  Just play play play.

In the end, I went 2-2.  I lost to an aggro mono green deck in the first round.  Part of that was mana screw, part of it was not playing defence enough.  And in the fourth round, I lost to a deck I've lost against before: Josh's Kitties.  Of course, the fact that those cats are backed up with exhalted, Baneslayers, and Gaea's Revenge is painful.  In fact, during one game, he ended up popping Garruk AND using a Overwelming Stampede creating a giga-Gaea. Eff me in the effing A!

Here's what I was running:

 

Angels and Juggernaughts, Bitch - 60 Cards

Creatures

Rampaging Baloths x2

Sylvan Ranger x2

Lotus Cobra

Birds of Paradise x 4

Baneslayer Angel

War Priest of Thune x 2

Shepherd of the Lost x 2

Angelic Arbiter

Elite Vanguard x 2

Serra Angel x 4

Juggernaut x 4

 

Spells

Journey to Nowhere

Condemn x 2

Pacifism x 2

Day of Judgment x 2

Plummet x 2

Giant Growth x 2

Garruk Wildspeaker x 2

 

Lands

Terramorphic Expanse x 4

Forest x 7

Plains x 11

Another week, another M11 draft.  Consider before DragonCon, I did a draft and lost to all three of my opponents.  Then, M11 Sealed at Super Friday Night Magic, and I go 3-1.  The ratings for that haven't been posted which makes me curious if that was actually sanctioned or not.  I really hope so. 

So what did this week have in store?  After all, it probably will be my last time drafting M11 since Scars of Mirrodin is almost on our doorstep!

I went bold. I saw the writing on the wall in my first pack and decided to go heavy black, maybe a touch of green or white.  After all, I had some mana fixing in green all it needed was some fat.  But there was some fliers and a Serra in white.  Serras have treated me really well lately.

Second pack, I pulled Nantuko Shade.  Combine it with some Lilliana Specter's and Caresses and oh my god, I thought I'll go even more bold and go mono black! 

Even an Inferno Titan in the final pack didn't sway me.  While I was thankful for the mythic's apperance, I kept honing my mono black deck and took it to 3-1 and got 3rd place.  Considering only first and second get prizes, third is like first place loser. I lost to a feirce green deck first round that jumped a Bahloth at me.  Meanie!

Here's the deck.

Once You Go Black - 44 Cards

 

Creatures:

Gravedigger x2

Nantuko Shade

Reassembling Skeleton

Liliana's Specter x 4

Barony Vampire

Howling Banshee

Nightwing Shade

 

Spells:

Unholy Strength x 2

Stabbing Pain

Disentomb x2

Doom Blade x 3

Duress

Sign in Blood x 2

Blood Tithe

Quag Sickness

Liliana's Caress x 2

Whispersilk Cloak

 

Lands

Swamp x 17

This past weekend I participated in SUPER Friday Night Magic at DragonCon!  It was such a glorious event that I did extremely well in.  Sealed to many is just a luck of the draw, but I think you not only have to get the good cards, you have to identify which ones ARE the good ones and then to play them well.

I don't have my deck list, but I can tell you I went 3-1 winning a booster and two promo foils.  Flametongue Kavu and Whirling Dervish ).

With plenty of removal in red, two fireballs, Chandra's Outrage , Ember Hauler , I decided to pair it with the color of maximum evasion.  Okay, it helped leading the charge in my white was Serra Angel and Baneslayer Angel .  But to be honest, many of my games ended with that ye old reliable Fireball for a half-dozen or so.

The event cost 20 dollars.  You got 6 boosters to start, so right away it was a great deal.  Add to the fact, I got the Baneslayer, and I totally rocked this one out!

Also during the weekend I played in the DragonCon Convention League which turned out to not be that great.  Paying ten bucks for a preconstructed deck is just even money, and the cards you obtained if you won or lost was certainy just a luck thing.  I didn't get anything great at all with my 4-1 record.  I probably could have played more and got more, but there was too much to do elsewhere.

There were PLENTY of other events I could have attended, but I didn't know enough about the Eldrazi set to draft it and I didn't think I wanted to do a M11 draft either.  I really think they did a great job though supporting the game at Con and I give them two thumbs up.

Today, in recovery mode, I've learned it's preview time for Scars of Mirrodin.  Oh god, oh god, my first set since returning is on the horizon.  And boy it looks scary.

I altered the previous deck slightly, but have already since changed it again so I don't have a deck list.  I took out the Jinxed Idol section and put in more Hands.  I also tore out the Nissa's Chosen for Companions.  Now, I've altered it once more for DragonCon. It has a taste of blue for some Preordain.  Also two planeswalkers. We'll see what happens.

But as far as Friday Night Magic went, the draft was an absolute disgrace.  I took that thing apart so quickly.  I went Green and Black but without any bombs, I was mostly just a sitting duck.

I lost every round, and only managed to pull one win out of my ass overall.  Not good.

DragonCon is this next weekend, and who knows what kind of craziness I'll get myself involved in.  I have the altered version of the Eldrazi deck. It's green with touches of red and blue.  The Bloodbraid Elves are out.  They weren't providing as much cascading synergy as they really ought to.  That's what made room for the other good stuff.

Still trying to get a Jinxed Idol deck off the ground, my newest attempt is Red/Black.  Essentially, I'll be destroying and rebuilding my own skeletons or borrowing your creatures to attack and then sacrifice to the idols.  There is burn to keep me ahead of the life loss game.

I also have a White/Black life deck.  It's goal is to gain life whenever creatures come into play, during my every upkeep, and whenever spells are cast.  And then Juggernauts and Serras hopefully beat you to death. 

With a freshly born deck, I still only went 2-2.  Worse, my two wins were against girls who are both just returning to Magic.  I'm sure not to make many friends with the guys there by beating up on girls. 

Already, I can tell what I need to fix with the deck.  The Jinxed Idol secondary theme is weak.  Also Nissa's Chosen isn't as great as Garruk's Butt-Buddies.  And I'm sure there is no good reason to run only one Ranger.  I deserved to lose more than I did.

Here's the deck list with new formatting!

60 Cards

 

Creatures / Plainswalkers

Bloodbraid Elf x 4

Garruk Wildspeaker x 2

Nest Invader x 2

Sylvan Ranger

Kozilek's Predator x 4

Nissa's Chosen x 3

Birds of Paradise x 3

Fauna Shaman

Mitotic Slime x 2

Hand of Emrakul

 

Spells

Overrun

Growth Spasm x 4

Naturalize x 2

Brood Birthing x 3

Spawning Breath x 4

 

Artifacts

Jinxed Idol x 2

 

Lands

Rootbound Crag

Mountain x4

Forest x 17