THE STACK, what is it used for?

The Stack is a game zone area where spells and abilities are played and wait to be resolved. Spells and abilities go to this area as the first step in play and are removed from it as the last step of playing. It’s also an area where other players can ‘respond to’ with their spells and/or abilities while it's still on the stack. The stack is played from the top to the bottom, where the ‘respond to’ spells are played first since it's on the top of the stack. The picture below depicts the stack and is the best representation I have found.

Actions that do not use the stack are as follows:

• Paying cost.
• Playing mana abilities.
• Turning a face down creature face up (Morph).
• Playing a land card

I’m sure most experienced players have a good idea of how the stack operates. To a new player, when we mention the stack, they probably think it means this:

Be sure to use the stack as often as you can, as correctly as you can, if you are in a Pro Tour or Grand Prix-like event, where they will have judge’s all over the place. Also, be sure to explain to the new players what the stack is and how to use it. Sure it will be confusing at first, but if they like the game enough they will learn about it quickly.

As always, thanks for reading my blog!

Modern Flashbacks

Hi fellow readers, I am back and refreshed from my vacation. I had a wonderful time hanging out with my family and playing magic with some of them.

I never knew about this before, but there is a flashback Modern tournament for the online community of Magic the Gathering players. The idea behind the year of Modern flashback is to give players, who haven't played Magic as long as some of the most experienced ones, a chance to play with sets they haven't played before. They started off with the oldest Modern legal set (8th edition) and moved forward each week with a different set, except for when pre-release and new standard sets are released.

As of right now they're on break for the Eldritch Moon set and will kick off again on August 17th, 2016 with Zendikar. All of the formats are draft, so event  tickets and play points are required to enter. Also note that instead of 14 Event Tickets or 140 Play Points like current drafts, these will allow you to enter with just 10 Event Tickets or 100 Play Points. If you have booster packs in your online collection for the particular set they are doing for that week, they will let you enter with those booster packs and 2 event tickets, only if you have 3 booster packs of that set.

The rounds are single elimination of 3 rounds with a 10 minute deck building time, each round being 50 minutes long. The prizes for each week are as follows: 1st place will get 200 play points, 2nd place will get 100 plays points and 3rd-4th place will get 50 play points.

As always, thanks for reading my blog!

Eldritch Moon release date

As we all know, all of the cards for the new set of Eldritch Moon have now been revealed. Pre-release for this set is the weekend of July 16th-17th, 2016, while the Magic online players get theirs at a later date on, the weekend of July 29th - August 1st, 2016. The official launch date for the paper players is on the weekend of July 22nd-24th, 2016. Magic online players will get their official release date of August 1, 2016.

Eldritch Moon is the second set in the Shadows Over Innistrad block. The new set will have 205 cards available for you to play your heart out. The pro-tour, which is in Sydney (Australia) on August 5-7, 2016, will be playing cards from both sets of the Shadows Over Innistrad block, using the draft format.


Good luck to all you players.

As always, thanks for reading my blog. 

Melding the moment

The Eldritch Moon spoilers are going pretty strong and they seem to be attracting positive feedback. The new game mechanics that are being featured are also receiving a lot of interest. One new mechanic is called "Meld", which is a new way of flipping cards over o reveal something very powerful. You require an additional card, specified by the card text, in order to flip to the other side.

Here’s an example of a card from the Mythic Spoilers webpage that involves Meld.

When Gisela, the Broken Blade's is summoned alongside Bruna, The Fading Light, you must Meld them into one creature, which is this card:

An Eldrazi Angel? What a beastly card for two Angels to turn into! Meld seems like a great ability to have in your deck, but it forces you to make a deck a certain way and it wouldn't mix well with other colors or different creature type decks. For these angel cards, it looks like there may be a lot of Human/Angel/Wizard decks flying around the Grand Prix, Pro-tour, or maybe even at the pre-release once the set comes out.

What are your feelings on the new meld ability?

As always, thanks for reading my blog!

ELDRITCH MOON SPOILERS!

June 20, 2016. First day of summer, longest day of the year (according to some scientist somewhere), school has ended or is going to end soon, beach-going season, amusement parks to visit and vacation plans with the family.

What else can make this day better?

How about a spoiler from the newest set: Eldritch Moon!

Around 8am PST, the Magic the Gathering Facebook page aired an episode detailing what's happening in Innistrad and where the storyline will go from here. It also showed a trailer for Eldritch Moon, which in my opinion is one of the best trailers I’ve seen Wizard of the Coast put out for MtG, click here to see the episode. It also reveals a card that will be in the new set. I think the card (pictured below) will be self explanatory. All I can say is: we found out what’s causing the madness in Innistrad.

For the next 3 weeks there will be new cards spoiled every day, except for the weekends; this might be the only time of the year you don't like the weekends. I know we all usually love the weekends (well... the people who don't have to work do, anyway). You can check the MYTHIC SPOILER WEBPAGE for the new and hopefully awesome cards being revealed.


As always thanks for reading my blog!

Grand Prix Costa Rica

The latest Grand Prix event took place in the beautiful Costa Rica. The winner? It is Seth Manfield once again, less than a month after he won the Grand Prix New York. He had a similar, yet somewhat different, type of deck this time around, focused on green-white tokens. He took the win with a 2-1 match.

His opponent was Brendon Fischer with his Naya tokens deck. Brendon Fischer has yet to win a Grand Prix trophy, but has been to multiple Grand Prix. His Naya tokens deck is the same as the one that he had used in the Grand Prix New York. It includes a Planeswalker that has not seen much use by other players at these types of events, Arlinn Kord.

The next event is on June 10-12, at two different places. One event will be at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus Ohio. The other event, taking place on the same dates, is at Výstaviště PVA Expo Praha in the Czech Republic. Both of these events will follow the Legacy format.

Good luck to all the players and, 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!

KHANS PRERELEASE RESULTS

       

       I went to the prerelease Sunday afternoon with my brother in law. I happen to pick mardu and he picked (I think) temur (only because they ran out of mardu.) the box is pretty cool, its got a sticker (which really doesn’t show the clan symbol which I thought was odd), a pin button, a d20 roll down dice, and of course the khans booster packs and the seeded pack.

I was really hoping to get the legendary creature for my clan but I didn’t, I really don’t know if anyone really got their legendary creature for their clans but the promos some people have were pretty darn cool. Mine was “Utter End”. It’s a 2 colorless and white and black to cast instant to exile target nonland permanent. Of course I used it in my deck, it was helpful against some big creatures or threats.

There were around 15 or 16 players that attended the prerelease, so we had four rounds to play with. First player I played was his first time playing in a tournament setting. He’s got a pretty decent deck but he doesn’t really play smart. First hand went pretty well, he had two creatures out and I had at least 5 creatures out. So I had two act of treason in my hand and took control of his creatures and swing in with everything for 14 points of combat damage, in this case he only had 14 life left so I won.

        Now for the second hand, it gets interesting. I don’t have as many creatures out this time around but he played a creature called meandering towershell, which is a 5/9 with island walk and whenever it attacks exile it. Return it under your control tapped and attacking at the beginning of declared attacking step on your next turn. Notice it said “your control” in the flavor text. So I act of treason it and it became mine for the rest of the game. And since he can’t block because he controls a island and meandering towershell has islandwalk. So the rest of the game was smooth sailing for the win.


       That was pretty much the play of the day for me, my deck didn’t play as good at the other three matches, so I went 1 win and 3 loss. Either way I had a good time and got some excellent cards. For the first time ever at a prerelease I pulled a Planeswalker card, Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker. Word got out about it and everyone wanted to be my friend.

      How did you do at your prerelease?

     What clan did you picked?

      Leave a comment 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!

MY JOURNEY EXPERIENCE

      Saturday evening, me and my brother in law entered All the King’s Men game shop in pitman, NJ for the journey into nyx prerelease sealed event. Upon entering the shop the shop owner announced that there are only a very few white left, 3 to be exact. Right away I shouted I’ll take one. The owner decided to step in and play due to small turn out, which is including the owner, 8 people. The owner decided that everyone would get a booster pack to the person in whatever place they are in, in other words, a pity pack. And do 3 rounds instead of 4.

      Now it’s time to sort through the cards and see what I got. This is one of those moments where I wish I had written down what cards I ended up using during the game. But first round didn’t do so well for me. My opponent beat me down pretty good with his black and red deck, destroying my creatures every turn. I was also doing ok with my second hand of round 1 got him down to 9 but he came out swinging for 13 with his creatures. 0-1.

      The next round I got paired up against the owner. My w/u against his mono white. First hand he got me good. The second hand took the longest of going back and forth. I manage to get my flyers out (one of them has double strike), enchanting them with +1/+1 counters and life link. He came out with a big creature with the power toughness of 5/6 and I casted nullify to counter his creature. He swings with his creatures he has out with 5. And then it was my turn to do stuff. Cast another flyer out on the battlefield and swung with all of my creatures killing him and I gained life. I gained enough life to get me up to 37 life total. Which he had me down pretty far before the life gaining happens. Then we were a draw as far as wins, but he decided to give me a win and drop out to go home and walk his dogs. He said that was such an amazing game he played with me.

       Then the last round was against my brother in law with his g/u. I’m just gonna cut it short and say he beat me both hands. Almost had him in the second hand but I made the mistake of attacking with all my creatures and have nothing to block. It wouldn’t have really matter either way because most of his creatures are hexproof and pretty much unblockable. He swung with a 6/6 with me having only 3 life left. And for the first time ever I walked out of an event with a win, 1-2.

I’m going to leave you with a few questions
1. What was your color for prerelease?
2. How did you do win/loss wise?
3. What good cards did you get?

Leave me a comment with your thoughts and thanks for reading my blog.

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.

MAGIC THE COPIER

          Ever go to your LGS for Friday night magic for some good ol’ fun playing with other players and find out that just about more than half of the player’s decks are copies of the top 8 decks? I haven’t experience anything of that nature at my LGS, but I’ve heard words floating around about it.

          I can understand copying the top 8 is one way of being sure you win whatever the prize payout may be at your LGS. But I always feel that making your own deck is your own creative idea to try and win into the top player of the night. It doesn’t seem to be very fair for people who really can’t afford all those high priced cards to be put into their decks; they can only work with what they have. I mean who wouldn’t want a deck full of rare and mythic rare in it?

          Making your own deck is fun to do, especially when you can do everything in your power to stay alive in the game or even win a round.  But for most people it’s kind of hard to do because they can only work with what they got and a lot of times they don’t have much to work with. Yea people at the LGS can suggest things to improve the deck but it’s usually always the cards that are high priced or cards they don’t have that they suggest. There’s always the choice of bring all the cards you own in with you and they can help you out but sometimes that can be a pain to do, only because you don’t know for sure if they would help you or they will make your deck crappy and get away with it.

          Which would you like better? Going against someone’s creative deck or someone who copies the top 8? 

Also what deck do you normally run for Friday night Magic or any event?

Leave me your thoughts in the comments.

Have a happy and safe thanksgiving.

Thanks for reading my blog.

FNM: DRAFT = FAIL

          On October 18th, I and my brother in law were meeting up to do Friday night magic: draft. Now my brother in law was running a little late because he’s coming from about 45 minutes away and his ride was late getting him. I got to shop early and there are only about four players including me and my brother in law. Problem is; they needed 8 players. So the shop waited to see if other players would show up. By this time my brother in law showed up and they announced that they were cancelling draft due to lack of players and closing shop soon for the night.
          So I and my brother in law had decided to buy a bunch of booster packs and do our own draft at my house. In my mind I wanted to do red and white deck if the cards were right, but I was open to anything I can get my hands on. So it turns out I was drafting red and green around destructive revelry instant rare card. So here’s my deck list I ended up with.

1x warrior lesson
3x spark jolt
1x messenger speed
1x sedge scorpion
1x savage surge
1x destructive revelry
1x satyr redonist
1x defend the hearth
1x voyaging satyr
1x Minotaur Skullcleaver
1x Rageblood shaman
3x two-headed Cerberus
1x time to feed
1x flamespeaker adept
1x demolish
1x fanatic of Mogis
1x nylea’s disciple
1x wild celebrants
1x arbor colossus
1x nessian asp
1x vulpine goliath
8x mountain
8x forest

I do have extras I drafted but they didn’t seem to fit in with the deck I was building. But they were perfect for other decks I have that can use some upgrading. My brother in law drafted black and blue. His deck was pretty good with spells like counters and such, but he had problems with getting creatures out to do a lot of anything since I can make my creatures powerful with the instants and sorcery I had.  On top of that he was mana screwed too, that helped out a lot. I got a win out of my first draft in 6 turns. Which I think is pretty darn good considering I just built the deck and never tested it out before.

Even though we only played one game of draft, my brother in law was really tired. He had just gotten off of work and headed straight up to my town to hang out. I was understandable about it, though I secretly wish we could’ve played some more, but he didn’t bring any of his cards with him so it didn’t happen.

The shop I normally play at is pretty slow at this time of the year and told me they usually pick up in November. This was the 2nd time that this has happened to me not being able to play due to lack of players. I put a note to myself to remind me to call ahead and see if there’s going to be enough players to play a few rounds before heading all the way over there and feel guilty into buying things there when I really shouldn’t be.

Two questions for this blog.
1. What was your worst experience at your local game shop?
2. What was your best deck you made in draft?

Please comment below and thanks for reading my blog.