GAME DAY RESULTS

As most of you players and friends know I went to game day Saturday august 9th 2014. Most of you know that I did pretty well and also use my sliver deck. It was kind of a last minute decision to use the deck, so I am glad I went with the deck because otherwise I don’t think I would’ve done as well, but yet again we would never know until I give it a try.

As first of the rounds gets started I played against a super nice girl (mind you everyone I played against and talked to were pretty darn awesome) with a black/white deck. As I put out my mana onto the battle field she noticed I’m playing tri colored deck and as soon as I put out belligerent sliver onto the battlefield, she gave me this look and said “a nylea sliver deck?” I respond nicely with a “yup” and a smile. She proceeds to letting me know how much she hates playing against slivers for the rest of the round we played. It was quite fun to play her, especially with the first win I made was with all my slivers I control can’t be blocked except by two or more creature’s, double strike, produce mana, and having +1/+1 counters added to them. She had attacked me last turn with one of two creatures she had out so with all my creatures swinging (for 18 points of damage by the way) she couldn’t even block one of them giving me the win. now with the second hand we played she had more creatures out trying to keep up with the belligerent sliver’s ability and swinging at me for small damage points but I end up blocking her creatures killing them before they do anything to my creatures. The second hand gave me the win by swinging for 24 points of damage, even when she was able to block one of my creatures she was still being hit with 20 points of damage hitting her 16 life total down to below zero. Round 1 win goes to me.

At this point I’m catching my breath, only because that’s a first win right out of the bat. Moving onto round two playing against a red/blue deck which was obvious just from the first land card he put out (a pain land). The player is fairly new to the game with only starting two weeks before m-15 came out. But he did put up a pretty good fight with his deck. First round pretty much destroyed him rather quickly, I killed him with a sorcery card Lava axe which deal 5 points of damage to him. The second round he did really well (me being mana screwed helped too) he put out three enchantments where it would deal one damage to my creatures when they attack (I can’t remember what the name of the card is to save my life) so with me forgetting about the enchantment card being there I kept killing my creatures, stupid move really but I couldn’t get anywhere with what I have coming out. So the second hand went to him. Now the third hand he was mana screwed and couldn’t get his guttersnipe out the quickly enough to do some excessive damage to me. So I have won round two with my slivers swinging for 13 getting his life total down below zero. Second round won by me.

Now the third round lasted like 10 minutes it seems because I was playing against and black and red aggro deck. Annihilated me in what seems like 2 moves. I couldn’t get my creature out quickly enough to do anything. Obviously the second round I lost. This is ok with me only because I’m now 2 wins and 1 loss. I knew I’m going against other people who done pretty well in the other rounds. But I was happy because that’s really the most wins I’ve ever done at an event at my LGS, or any other place I’ve attended events at.

Now it’s the fourth round. I’m playing against a guy I’ve seen at the shop a few time before and usually do pretty well when it comes to his deck. First hand ended rather quickly with him putting an artifact and then enchanting it with ensoul artifact making it a 5/5 indestructible creature swinging with it each turn until my life total ran out. The second and third hand took a little bit longer to finish. But I did win the second hand but I barely held on, it wouldn’t have lasted as long if I didn’t get my belligerent sliver and bonescythe sliver out there. The third round he had 2 dragons out and kept swinging with them. But I had enough creatures out to be able to take majority of his life total down but I t wasn’t enough to beat him.

That last lost gave me a 2 win 2 loss record and placed 5th place out of 12. I couldn’t be happier with the result of the day. I didn’t win any packs but I did get a top eight promo card and also a participation card. The top eight promo is a foil chief engineer, and the participation promo card is reclamation sage (with an awesome alternate art). If you want to see what my sliver deck looks like click here for the link to take you to the tapped-out page.

What deck did you end up using for your game day and how well or bad did you do?

Leave 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!

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.

TRADING FAITH

          Trading is a topic I have talked about before, but this one is different. Since the EXTRA!.....EXTRA! Blog has been posted I’ve been trading with other players, through pucatrade.com and the wonderful people at the Magic the gathering community board on Google +.

          Normally I don’t trade with other players other than my brother in law, just because I fear I might get ripped off, but I gave it a try. It’s mostly form the website and the community right now, still hasn’t done it at my LGS.  The players at my LGS seem friendly enough but looks are deceiving. 

          I’ve gotten a Planeswalker and some sliver cards so far, and few more still coming in the mail. The sliver cards I got from the person who sent it to me had put some extra sliver cards in the envelope  with the one I was asking for (in protective hard card sleeve of course). Found out from someone else about that it is pretty much normal for someone to do that, which I think is a really cool thing to do.

          This tells me that the magic communities are full of great people. It really opened me up some more to the idea of trading with other players in person. Thanks MTG Google+ community and pucatrade.com for opening me up some more to start getting rid of the extras or card I have no use for to other people who needs the cards more than me.

          How often do you trade? Do you trade by the need of the card or the value of the card?

          Thanks for reading my blog, please comment your thoughts.

If you are interested in my trade and want list I will post a link for it.

Card trade list ß----link

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