DAILY RANDOM MTG CARD: Blasphemous Act

The old Innistrad block is one of my favorite blocks that Magic: the Gathering has put out. I can’t really say the same for the Shadows Over Innistrad block. One of the things that really throws me off is the 8 and a red mana cost; it really gets your mind running with the thought of “how can a sorcery cost this much to cast?”

Then you read the text: it cost one less for every creature on the battlefield. Not just your creatures; your opponent's creatures as well. This card could very well be costing only one red to cast! Great board clean up, stinky part is that the 13 damage goes to your creatures too, killing them unless they are indestructible.

Which crazy sorcery do you like?

As always, thanks for reading my blog!

PUCATRADE SWEEPSTAKES HUB!

The new updated Magic: The Gathering trading website “Pucatrade” has recently announced a new addition to their website: The Sweepstakes Hub. What you can do is use the Pucatrade points that you’ve accumulated to unlock entries to the sweepstakes.

Each 100 puca points you use in the sweepstakes will enter you in the giveaway. You can use as many puca points as you want, to earn entries to get the prize. So far a few winners has been chosen already. One winner won a tropical island card, and the recent winner has won a japanese booster box of kaladesh, and now they are giving away a 

Lifetime Member Bundle

You get more entries for spreading the word around on social media, so if you really want this to fancy one of your decks, using your points and spreading the word helps. The cards/products are coming from the Pucatrade staff’s personal collection. You won't be getting any bad cards that are ripped up or damaged in any kind of way. They will make it worth the points you spent in the sweepstakes. To check out the sweepstakes, you can use the website link provided and enter if you want to. Just click on this sweepstakes word and it will take you to the site.

As always, thanks for reading my blog!

LIMITED DECK

I have a deck I made from sealed prerelease event of khans of tarkir. My plan is to make it into a 60 card standard deck, now for some reason a lot of people are against doing such a thing. But wither way you look at it, it’s still being constructed either way you do it.

I went 1-2 at the prerelease, but I still feel that it’s a pretty good deck to play with, which is why I want to make it a 60 card deck to use for standard FNM or whatever event that will allow standard deck to be played. What I’m going to do (if I get any suggestions) is experiment with it to see what it can turn into. I do have other cards from other sets I can probably put in, but I kind of want to see how it looks with just the khans cards.

Here is the limited deck I used for the prerelease I have it set up on tappedout.com <---click that to go to it and playtest it if you like and give some suggestions. I will make a switch up on the limited deck for my blog on Friday, Tuesday, and possibly Wednesday. I’m hoping to have a 60 card deck before then. As of when I would go and try it out at an event is still kind of up in the air for now. The maybeboard on the site are what cards I have from khans as of right now, and those are the cards I like to use to make this a 60 card deck. The other cards I have that are still standard is still an option, but as of right now I want it to be a khans deck of cards.

Leave me comments of your thoughts and suggestions for this deck!

Thanks for reading my blog!

5 OF A KIND

       A while ago I decided to buy myself some chromanticore cards figuring I would make a 5 color deck around the card. A while was actually quite a few months ago, and it’s been sitting in my collection box pretty much, well collecting dust (but not really since they are in sleeves).

       My brother in law calls me up the other day and challenges me to a five color deck making with me. The deal is he makes one revolving around door to nothingness and mine around chromanticore. A few hours later with interruption of taking my daughter’s temperature and giving her meds to make her feel better from the cold she has, the deck was finally done. Goldfish tested it and it looks like a promising deck to play around with.

      It’s game time now. The deck started out looking good with all the mana fixing cards but I didn’t get very far before I got destroyed by his massive amount of enchantments with life gain and my life drain because of it. The second game we decided to give it a try again and see if it does anything different. And they pretty much did. This time I was able to get more scrying done to get the cards I want on top of my library so I can draw it and play it. It helps having Patrick (it’s a nickname of what I call sigiled starfish) out there on the battlefield as well.

      About 12 turns later I couldn’t get him down on life. I manage to get chromanticore out as a bestow cost for my fanatic of Xenagos after doing the ordeal of nylea giving it 3 +1/+1 counters and gaining a land into the battle field, making it a 10/10 creature with flying, haste, lifelink, trample. Attacked and knocked him down to 10 and I gained 10 from the lifelink. But it wasn’t enough for me to stay alive for I don’t really have any removal in the deck to get rid of the door to nothingness card he had. He tapped out his mana and I lost the game.

     It was an extremely long game but it was a fun game to play.  If I could get some of the cards I actually wanted out sooner, the game would’ve ended sooner. But it didn’t end up being that way so what can I do? This is really my first ever five color deck and I think I did quite well with it. If you want to give a try I have the deck on tapped out.com <-- click that to go to the link. Let me know what you think of it or what improvement you think it needs.

How do you feel about five color decks?

If you have one what kind of deck is it?

Leave your comment of your thoughts!

Thanks for reading my blog!

A MAGICAL CHANGE…AGAIN

Words got out from head designer mark rosewater on august 25, 2014 that wizard made an announcement about some big deal changes to the game and it’s standard rotation. Seems like there was a lot of positive feedback about the changes than there were negative feedbacks, which is usually the other way around.

Most people know about the change already but I’d like to put my opinion into it, just as everyone else did. Now the new rotatation of stand is going to work like this:
• Instead of two three blocks they will be doing three two blocks set a year, which means the core set will be no more.
• The rotation of standard will be rotated out in 18 months instead of 24 months, so the rotation is going to happen much quicker than ever.

       So the RTR block will (obviously) be rotated out when khans of tarkir will come out. Than in the spring of 2015 the next set of khans will be out, which nothing rotates out from that. But in the fall theros will be rotated out leaving the three sets from the khans block out there. then they will be doing rotations to the point where it would be the two block set instead of the three block sets. Seems like a lot to dwell on but hey we have a year and a half before this starts happening.

      Like most players I seem to be fine with the core sets not coming out anymore. They are just all reprints and never really that exciting to be picking up at the store. Either way I may still buy them just to have them. I like the three block sets but down grading to having only two block sets is a huge difference. It makes me wonder if they are going to be printing more cards for the blocks. We will find out once they start doing it this way.

How do you feel about the change?

Comment with your thoughts!

Thanks reading my blog!

ANNIHALATION IS COMING

Another from the vault set is coming out on the 22nd of august 2014. This time it’s called “Annihilation”.  This yearly set seems like it going to be the best from the vault set they would come out with. All because you can destroy each other to oblivion with the type of cards they have selected for the set. With board wipes, destroying creatures, and burning things up. All the fun there is in the world in one set, but for a limited run and pretty much when they are gone, they’re gone.

They have cards like Armageddon, where it destroys all lands and child of alara where the card will destroy all nonland permanents and they can’t be regenerated if child of alara dies. So either way you turn there’s some kind of board sweep going on destroying everything in sight. I’m pretty sure there are some crazy combos that can happen with the set. The only way to do that is to buy one and open them up and see what you get. I’m not certain that all the box set you get will have the same cards in it, but it would be pretty fun either way finding out what you would get when they’re opened. You can pre-order now so that way you will have it when it comes out the day of, like I said there will be a very limited run of the set. Any leftover will be priced way higher than anyone would want it to be and getting it at pre-order price and prie it would be the day it comes out is a bargain price.

The set will include:
• 15 Premium foil cards (including 6 with new art).
• A Spindown life counter.
• Also a collector's guide.

All cards are black bordered and tournament legal. This means that these cards are legal for use in any tournaments where the original printings are still legal.

Would you consider getting the new from the vault set?

Leave me comments of your thoughts!

Thanks for reading my blog!

M-15 GAME DAY

     

         This weekend (8-9-14 to 8-10-2014) the m-15 game day weekend, which also marks when the new core set has been out for about a month.  LGS usually do an event to celebrate its one month, some would only do it for one day and some would do it for 2 days. The one I’m going to is on a Saturday just because there are more prizes to win (by any given chance I actually get enough wins to get anything). I’ve never really had much luck at winning anything but I’ll take it as a learning experience and also see what other people have to play with.

The hardest part about going into game day is what deck do I want to use, and what are the pros and cons of using that type of deck. For me I am torn between my sliver deck and my human heroic soldier deck. It seems like my sliver deck might be the way to go considering how nutty it can get and how quickly it can do so. My heroic human soldier deck has it’s up and down with it. The deck seems to been having problems with mana lately and it was never like that before. But I think I’ll try various decks and see which one seems to fit better for playing at game day.


I will wish everyone good luck with their game day event if they are going, in my next blog I will say what my results was as far as not losing (or not winning).

What deck will you go with for game day?

Comment with your thoughts!

Thanks for reading my blog!

REPRINT IN QUESTION

Question comes to a lot of player’s mind of why cards get reprinted and why cards don’t get reprinted. I think it’s often asked but I never really hear anyone asked. My it’s my own personal question I seek out to have answered, so I researched on it and it didn’t take long for me to find my answer, apparently it has been asked a lot by other players.

The game of magic the gathering has a tremendous appeal to both collectors and gamers. With the game being both enjoyable and skillful, it kind of feels like the cards deserves to be reprinted for more enjoyable game play. Not to mention newer players can get a chance to play with cards they never have the chance to play with yet.

There are a lot of cards I’d love to have reprinted but they probably won’t be. There’s actually a reserve list of cards that won’t get reprinted, and most of the cards that is not on the list may (using that word loosely) be reprinted. I’m sure there are players out there that to have “cards to (need) be reprinted” list. But wizard will only reprint cards if there’s functionality to them, like if they printed a new card that works similar to older cards, then there’s no need to be reprinted.

What cards would you like to see be reprinted?

Leave comments of your thoughts?

Thanks for reading my blog!

COUNTERFEIT MAGIC IS A THING?

Words are floating around about a Chinese company counterfeiting magic cards. Words are also floating around that there’s a few places in the United States are under investigation for making counterfeit cards. Whatever is going on with the counterfeiters, they need to stop. Because if people buy these counterfeit cards and try to play at an event host by wizards, they could be banned and or just have the cards taken away (not 100% on that part but from what I’ve read, it’s a possibility).

Here are just a few ways you can test out the cards for it being fake or not. One of the cool ways you can find out is using a black light. The real card would appear luminescent as part of the property of the card-stock they are printed on, where the fake one would not luminate. This probably doesn’t work every time because the counterfeiters have gotten better with making it look like the real thing even under a black light.

Another neat way of checking for fakes is the light test. It’s where you take the card and hold it near a strong bright light bulb. If the card is easily readable from the back then it’s a fake, where the real one has a blue filament in the middle of the card that would only allow so much light through the card. So this could go either way.

There are a number of other ways to tall if its fake but in order to do those test, you got to have a lot of guts to do it. Such as the bend test to see if it will crease easily, and tear the card in half to see if there’s the blue filament in the middle of the card. Me for one will not do the tear test because if it’s the real thing, then I screwed myself out of having or owing that card.

One more thing to find out if the card is a fake is he artwork on the card. Because if it looks like cartoon characters or video game characters, its definitely a fake, Especially if it has ridiculous abilities in the flavor box.

What would you do with counterfeit cards if you ever come across one?

Leave comments of your thoughts.

Thanks for reading my blog.

WHAT A PAIN IN MY LAND

With the new release of the core set m-15 for magic the gathering from wizard of the coast they reprinted a lot of old cards. Within those reprints they reprinted the “pain lands” as they are called.  For some people, they really like these kinds of cards, but for me? I’m not a big fan of them.

        My personal opinion? I like shock lands better, only because you get hit for 2 if you want to untap the land card right away, and that’s the only time you will get hit with the damage. The pain lands you get hit with one damage each time you use the land cards for one of the colors that are listed on the card. If you don’t use one of the colors listed on the card you won’t be hit with 1 damage each time, you can get a colorless mana. That can be helpful at times, but not really.

How do you feel about the pain lands?

Leave me a comment of your thoughts.

Thanks for reading my blog.

THE SLIVERS ARE BACK IN TOWN

     

       With the newest core set of magic the gathering M-15 coming out officially July 18th 2014, the slivers are back. I’m sure everyone loves the new artwork for the new slivers, considering they look just about human in the last core set; now they look more like regular slivers in the new core set.

Let’s look at the biggest fattie of slivers, the sliver hivelord. It’s a 5/5 creature with the ability of giving other slivers indestructible. Sure it’s all the color of mana to drop out on the battlefield which is in some case pretty hard to do. But with the other slivers you can have in the deck with mana weft sliver and such shouldn’t be too much of a problem to bring out. The new slivers still have the slivers you control ability instead of the all slivers get the same kind of ability. Which me personally I like better because why would I want to help my opponent make their creatures better?

Some of the other slivers are pretty good to have. They seem to have one sliver for every color of the mana this time around instead of having two or three different ones for the same color. What’s also different is they have a sliver land card called sliver hive, which helps put sliver tokens out onto the battlefield by tapping 5 colorless and the sliver hive card to get the 1/1 colorless sliver onto the battlefield, but you can only do it if you control a sliver. It also has tap sliver hive to add 1 colorless to your mana pool and it also have tap sliver hive to add any one colorless to add to your mana pool only to cast a sliver. This card is very specific to what it can do only for sliver decks, then again who wouldn’t make a sliver deck with  the land card in it?

Then we have the venom sliver, a 1 and a forest to drop out onto the battlefield with a 1/1 power and toughness to give all slivers you control deathtouch. This is a great card to have in a slivers deck, you can use the venom sliver as a chump block to get rid of the other player’s creatures. If you have sliver hivelord out there with the venom sliver, your sliver will live and the other player’s creature won’t.

Belligerent sliver is 2 and a mountain to drop this bad boy out onto the battlefield with a 2/2 power and toughness and give all slivers you control “can’t be block except by two or more creatures”. This isn’t so bad for the mana cost. Although the sliver looks more like a lion sliver but that’s ok with me, the artwork doesn’t help my gameplay any.

There’s also a sliver that can provide control in your deck as well. Constricting sliver is a five and a plains to cast out. It’s a bit of an expensive sliver to cast but it’s sort of worth it to exile an opponent’s creature as long as the constricting sliver stays in the battlefield. When I say sort of, I really meant not really considering it’d be way late in the game to cast it, unless you have a bunch of spells and mana weft sliver that can give you more mana to produce to get it out quicker.

Diffusion sliver is a one and a island to cast for a 1/1 power and toughness to give all slivers the ability to counter spells or unless it’s controller pays two when they become targets of spells. This would go well against a burn, counter spells type of deck. But I’m not sure of how the counter would work, I think the sliver gets to stay put while the counter or spells that targets it goes straight into the grave yard. This can force the other player to keep mana open to do such spell and prevents them from putting anything else out onto the battlefield.

Then the last sliver I’m going to talk about is the leaching sliver which just like the diffusion mana cost but only with the swamp in the mana cost to drop a 1/1 power and toughness with the ability to give all slivers to give the defending player 1 damage whenever a sliver attacks. This card can be a good ending game win kind of card because even if the defending player blocks and they have very little life left to hold on to the 1 damage still goes to them and lose the game.

That’s all I have to talk about slivers today.

What is your favorite new sliver?

How do you like the new art work for them?

Leave your comments of your thoughts.

Thanks for reading my blog.

COMICS OF MAGIC

COMICS OF MAGIC

            The comic above is from cardboard-crack.com.  The comic strips on their webpage are about one of the most addictive game on tabletop, Magic the Gathering. I chose this particular comic strip only because I feel very relatable to it. Most of their comic strips are funny, real, and relatable in some way shape or form. This one is one of their not so funny ones but it’s still good because you can relate to it in so many ways. I’m sure a lot of people also feel the same way from this particular comic strip.

            Sometimes in life you may feel bullied, let down, get your feelings hurt by other people. Most people would go and pop pills or commit suicide (depending on how much of their life they were given crap) or runaway. Sometimes you would be better off forgetting about all the bad things that were happening to you and do what you do best, play magic the gathering (providing if you do play the game at all). A good compliment is the best feeling to receive. Sometimes all it takes is one simple compliment to make your day worth it.

            Sure I don’t get called a genius at magic games I’ve played, but someone saying “hey, that deck is pretty good” is good enough for me. I’ve been told I do a lot of wrong things at jobs, my personal life, and everyone pretty experience it on the road with other drivers (even if you didn’t do anything wrong). Simple thing to do is to not let it get you down. If you are feeling down from everyday life, put your magic decks to work and show it who the boss is.

          I would like to thanks cardboard-crack.com for letting me use this comic strip for my blog and as promised I will put their links up for their webpages. They do amazing work with the comic strips and obviously a big magic the gathering fan.

What’s your favorite cardboard-crack comic strip?

Leave comments of your thoughts.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Cardboard-crack links:

FB page: https://www.facebook.com/CardboardCrack

Webpage: http://cardboard-crack.com/

If you like the card-board crack comic strips they also have books full of them. You can purchase them on amazon by clicking here.

THE INVENTORY BUILD

I’ve decided that I was going to inventory my collection onto the computer just because I have an OCD thing about it and I want to keep track of my cards a little better. I would do excel spreadsheet with them but I haven’t done a spreadsheet since jr high school, plus they are a pain for me to figure out how to use (plus I don’t even have excel on my computer, I think). If anyone wants to help then be my guest.

My original idea for me to do this is because of the Google + community full of Magic the Gathering players. The community is very helpful in helping other people without being a troll or a goblin about it (except for a certain person that can’t be named). I’m still kind of shaky with the idea of doing this because I’m afraid the outcome wouldn’t be good. In fact I almost scrapped the idea entirely and just do an inventory for myself. There was a part of me that wants to just go through with it and see what happens.

For my idea of even doing the inventory is to let the community help me build a deck (standard of course) that I can use for FNM or open trials. All the credits will go to whoever helps build the deck. I will put some input in it as well, not going to be one of those guys that make the other people do their work for them. I had a couple of positive feedback about it when I posted the idea, so hopefully it will still work out like I hope.

I will post the list in google doc for my inventory, because that seems to be the best way for everyone to see the list without it messing up the format. I am also open for trades on a lot the cards listed as well, just ask me and we will go from there. I have a wish list on deckbox.org of what I’m looking for as well. Worst thing that could happen is me saying no.

CLICK HERE to see the list. Let me know in the comments or you can email me by going onto my Google + <--click that and look at my about tab to find the email there. If it gets to argumentive between people, I’m going to put a stop to it.

Thanks for reading my blog.

Is this a good idea or a bad idea? Let me know In the comments.

EXCITEMENT…FOR NOTHING…

Ever do a booster draft or just buy booster packs and get excited about certain cards that you got in the booster pack? Ever find out that certain card you got excited about you already had multiple of? Not that it happened to me, but it happened to me last week.

Now you feel weird for getting excited about those cards you’ve gotten, as long as no one else knows and maybe you can come up with a story behind it which is somewhat true but not really, should anyone find out.

When you have a vast collection like most magic players do (if not all of them), you tend to forget some of the cards you have already in your collection. It happens to me all the time. It probably happens to other players too that has been playing since it came out in ’93 or recent years. Best thing to do is either sell off the many multiple you have or trade them for other cards you could really use in vintage, legacy, modern, EDH, or standard.

It’s a weird moment when you open your box of magic cards and (I don’t know if anyone else does this) go to where the manna cost order you need to put the card in, and find 4 or 5 or even 11 of the same card that you somehow forgot you have, simply because you have multiple decks with the same card and have no use for the ones sitting in your box. Like I said before, not that it happened to me, but it happened to me last week.

What’s the one card you got excited about and forgot you have multiple copies of the same card?

Please leave a comment and thanks for reading my blog.