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!

creatureless take over

Seth Manfield, with a white black control deck that he built at 1 am on Friday morning, has beaten the 2007 other players that showed up for the big apple’s Grand Prix New York 2016. In the finals he took on Louis-Samuel Deltour, a French player, with his 4 color cryptolith rite deck. Louis-Samuel had as much of an uphill battle as Scott Lipp had in the semi-finals before him, facing endless spot and mass removal. Who knew that making a last minute, creatureless, deck would afford such a coveted prize?

G/W tokens were pretty well used by players around the Grand Prix New York play area and made the top 8 decklist 3 times. Bant company deck did not make the top 8, even though a lot of players have used the deck.

The top prize payout for Seth Manfield was $10,000,with Louis-Samuel taking home $5,000 for coming in second place. That's a pretty nice payout for both guys, just for playing a good ol’ intense game of Magic: The gathering. Every player will get a stoneforge mystic promo just for participating at any Grand Prix event (while supplies last).

As always, thanks for reading my blog.

TOKEN VICTORY

The Shadows over Innistrad pro-tour came to an end on April 24, 2016. The winner? Steve Rubin with his G/W tokens deck, after three grueling and tiring days of trying to make it to the top. In the final match he took down Andrea Mengucci with his G/W/U Bant Company deck.

We all thought that the Bant Company deck was really the deck to beat. It had developed a reputation for knocking out the Eldrazi, which I am pretty sure we were all tired of seeing in tournaments. More recently, it seems to have had an unsuccessful run among some players; only a few have actually made it this far since the first time it appeared. That makes this Bant deck a stand-out performer, taking second place and a prize payout of $20,000, which is a pretty nice payout for second place!

The big question is, now that the tour has ended with a G/W tokens deck coming out on top, will we see more of this kind of deck showing up to your Friday night MtG and events with standard decks?

The answer: probably.  

I’m sure Magic players are running around trying to get all the cards they need to copy the winner’s deck, with the aim of winning events. It just so happens that the tour ended the weekend before Shadows over Innistrad game day weekend. There may be a chance that this deck will make its rounds during game day weekend at your local game shop.

The next pro tour will be happening in Sydney, Australia, from the 5th to the 7th of August, coinciding with the release of the Eldritch Moon set. The event will be standard and booster draft. I'm sure we'll be seeing Steve Rubin there playing.

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!

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!

KHANS ABILITY

With the new khans of tarkir set coming out September 26, 2014 (prerelease September 20-21, 2014) they comes with a new set of abilities and a returning ability, of course we all know about morph, lets talk about the other abilities that are featured on the new khans cards.

First ability is prowess, it’s whenever you cast a non-creature spell, the creature card with prowess gets a +1/+1 until end of turn.  This ability can work real well in a lot of different ways. It can be useful on both your and the opponent’s turn. I can see it being used more for blocking or saving the creature card from a burn spell, in tournaments and FNM. I don’t know about you but I think that’s a better way of using it.

The second ability is delve. This one is a neat one to mess around with. What it does is you exile cards from your graveyard and each card exiled this way pays for one colorless to cast the card with the ability on it. So with a creature that has the mana cost of 7 colorless and one swamp to cast can actually be one swamp to cast a pretty decent powerful card, providing you have at least 7 creatures in your graveyard to pay the casting cost.

Next ability we have is outlast. This ability allows you when the mana cost is paid to put a +1/+1 on that creature at sorcery speed. Some outlast ability will trigger other abilities stated on the card after you pay the outlast mana cost. Some will give you tokens or make other creatures has first strike. Nice card to mess with, but I don’t know how much play it would actually get in pro tours and such.

  What’s next is raid (no not the bug spray) ability. It triggers only when you have attacked on your turn. When the card enters the battlefield it can give you tokens or add more mana to you mana pool. This ability might be a little tricky to mess with considering the cards with the raid ability are expensive mana cost to cast.

Now lastly we have the ferocious ability. I think I like this ability a lot. Only because whenever you attack, not make damage, attack it does something cool. If you have this card out and if you control another card that has more power or toughness or if it has an ability it will give the card with ferocious a +1/+1 until end of turn. It just makes the card a little more powerful to deal damage with in an instant speed.

Which new ability is your favorite for the set?

Leave me comments 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.

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.

TRIBUTE, A WIN-WIN SITUATION

With the official release of born of the gods coming out February 7^th-9^th 2014, I figure I talk about one of the new mechanics for the set, Tribute. It’s a great mechanic to work with. The odd part is letting the other player decide either or not to pay the tribute. It could work to your advantage either way.

Tribute comes in different shape and form. Mostly with counters if the tribute is paid. Nessian wilds ravager (which is a hydra 6/6 creature with a 4 and two green mana to bring out) has tribute 6 mechanics. The opponent chooses if it would get 6 +1/+1 counters on it or if they don’t pay the tribute, the creature then fights another target creature. This could kill the other creature that is untapped from blocking you when you attack with the other creatures on the battlefield.

Other form of tribute can do things like cast and instant or sorcery without paying the mana cost, putting tokens out on the battlefield, gaining life, gain control of another creature, etc.  They have the tribute mechanic for each of the colors as well, not just certain ones.

I like the new mechanics that born of the gods has to offer. Not just the tribute. I’ve heard a lot of people aren’t too happy with the set; I seem to like it enough. But I just know that the 3^rd set in this block is just going to be epic, which is journey into nyx and it’s coming out in May of this year.

What is your favorite new mechanic?

Comment with your thoughts

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog.

SNOW DAY WITH MAGIC

AS I sit here on this snowy day of having about 8 inches worth of snow on the ground and still counting. I kind of had gotten bored with just sitting around and watch the snow storm news coverage where it talks about the same thing for hours on end. So I decided to get out my magic cards and see what I can do with them.

Needless to say I never realized how many cards I actually have (other than from putting together a trade list). Many are the same name or I forgot I had that certain card in my collection. With me finding those extra cards I would add them to the trade list or maybe try to put a deck together with some of them.

For example I noticed how many cards I have that have the battalion trigger ability on them so I made a red and white battalion deck, still need a few more of some of the creatures in the deck but it would make do for now. Then I remembered I was getting Xenagos, the reveler Planeswalker card in the mail soon. So I went ahead and picked out a bunch of cards to build a deck around the Planeswalker. Granted I picked out about 90 or so cards I thought would be helpful but I’m definitely going to cut it down to 60 cards and maybe have a sideboard with some of the cards I’m cutting out.

Then for the final part of the magic the gathering deck building is sleeving the cards in their nice white leather card sleeves. It’s a tedious job, but something’s got to protect my cards from those other players shuffling my cards. Plus it makes them look all shiny and nice looking and not mess up the card in any way shape or form.

What do or would you do for your boredom from staying in the house?

Please leave a comment.

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.

SLIVER AND THE BEAST (WITH HELP FROM THE ELVES) deck and break down

With recent release of the 2014 core set of magic the gathering card playing game. I’ve been buying up the booster packs and fat pack from the new set. Granted there aren’t any really super awesome cards in the set, but I can make a pretty decent deck out the set or have what’s standard cards mixed in with it.

Take my recent Sliver and Beast deck I made with the mixture of M14, gate crash, and return to ravnica. The deck is still a working progress, but it does quite OK for now. Here’s my deck I’ve been working, and then I will explain why some of the cards are in there for what purpose.

Creature

2x Adaptive Snapjaw

2x Advocate of the Beast

1x Brushstrider

2x Elvish Mystic

1x Kalonian Tusker

1x Manaweft Sliver

1x Marauding Maulhorn

2x Predatory Sliver

1x flames of the firbrand

2x Rumbling Baloth

1x Sliver Construct

2x Striking Sliver

1x Thorncaster Sliver

1x Battle Sliver

1x Slaughterhorn

Instant

3x Chandra's Outrage

2x Fog

3x Shock

Sorcery

2x Lava Axe

2x Seismic Stomp

Enchantment

2x Awaken the Ancient

2x Lightning Talons

Land

12x Forest

12 X Mountains

            The whole purpose behind the beast creatures (Adaptive Snapjaw, Brushstrider, Kalonian Tusker, Marauding Maulhorn, Rumbling Baloth) is to make them powerful than before with the help of Advocate of the Beast. What the card does, is it gives the beast creatures a +1/+1 counter at the end of my turn, which is helpful for blocking creatures attacking me or have them have more attacking and defensive power for my next turn (like a 3/3 beast creature will become a 4/4 creature my next turn and so on and on). With the enchantments like lightning talons that would give my creature a +3/+0 and have first strike (which give damage to the creature before they attack me) on the already powerful creature from putting a +1/+1 counter on the creature each turn can end the game much quicker.

           

            Let’s go onto the slivers in the deck. They too can help out other creatures too, as long as they are slivers. Slivers like the Manaweft sliver helps other slivers to get the ability to have extra land mana on the battlefield to help get more creatures and or spells out quickly, which the land mana goes away at the end of the turn. Predatory Sliver will help other slivers get a +1/+1 counter on them along with the ability to create land mana. Striking sliver will help other slivers get first strike; Thorncaster sliver will also give slivers the ability to deal extra damage if that sliver makes a combat damage. So if I have 4 slivers out and they have that ability, then if they make combat damage then the player is getting dealt that much extra damage. Battle Sliver also helps with slivers power by giving them a +2/+0.

            

            Last thing we should not forget about the elves. I know there isn’t many in the deck (like I said, it’s a working progress) but Elvish Mystic also help with getting one extra land mana onto the battlefield to help with the creature and spell casting needs. Although it may seem cruel they are also good for blocking creatures attacking me as well.

            

           Thanks for reading my blog, please leave a comment on what your suggestion for the deck would be or what kind of deck you have that the cards work with each other? Here's the link from tappedout.com ofthe deck if you want to test it out, SLIVER AND BEAST DECK