what kind of planeswalker would you be?

    Ever wonder what it would be like to possess the power and mind of a planeswalker? I admit that often times I do when I play my favorite tabletop game Magic: the gathering, there are often time I think about it when I'm not playing the game.

   Now just imagine, creatures, mountain, forest, swamp, island, and plains at your disposal to fight off anything that is a threat. The goblins can be your servant to do whatever you ask them to do because they don't know anything better than to serve their masters.

  Just because you are a planeswalker doesn't mean you have to dress like them. You have your normal attire, unless otherwise you want differently. What you wear won’t help with what type of powers you would have as a planeswalker, although surkhan's clothes looks pretty darn intimidating.

Now that you are a planeswalker with its powers, what would you choose to do? Having all the color pie as your powers might be too powerful for you to handle unless you are a elder dragon like nicol bolas. For me I think I would have to go with the power of blue, white, and red, only because I like to control and burn things. Not in real life of course, although burning stuff can be fun. 

 

  Here are the reason why I chose the colors I picked. Let's start with the blue. Blue can help me when if I have argument with my wife I can just use the cancel spell to stop the argument like it never happened. If there's someplace you rather be at than the place where you are at can work good with the clone spell, you can clone yourself and let the clone do whatever it is you don't want to do and do what you really wanted to do. Such as playing the one game at the arcade you want to play or go play magic at your local game shop.  Blue has a lot of flying creatures also, so if you want to rescue a cat from a tree or fly away from people, that would be a good use.

  White has some really cool spells to use. Such as if there's someone you don't like or someone is messing with your family or love one you can exile them. It's really quite simple thing to do as long as you are on a plains and the sun is shining. It don't matter where they get exiled to just as long as they are not bothering you or anyone else anymore.

Then there's finally the red color. The color known for burns, flying dragons, and let's not forget lightning. It would be great to be able to cast lightning on something, like if you want to start a Bon fire or some sort, then boom lightning struck and you got fire. The only real problem with lightning is that it be quite loud when it strikes, so be sure those ears are covered up when the spell is being in use. As for the dragons, they can be your pet and you can use them them to scare off people. Just don't try and take them to the park to play fetch, they might try to eat the other pets more than want to play with you.

What type of planeswalker would you be?

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!

INSPIRED TO DO SOMETHING (THE GOOD AND THE BAD)

        Inspired is a unique mechanic that can be really useful or not. Like most creatures would normally do when they are tapped, is they become untapped and the inspired mechanic triggers.

       Some creatures with inspired can be triggered right when they become untapped, some you would have the choice to pay mana cost to trigger it, unlike bestowed enchantment creatures, the mana cost isn’t usually high to trigger the inspired mechanic. For example, let’s take Fellhide spiritbinder that is a 3 colorless and a red mountain to cast. After your turn is over and the opponent took his or her turn, now it’s time to do untapping of your creatures and mana. Now the Fellhide spiritbinder is untapped, you choose to do the inspired mechanic so you pay 1 colorless and a red mountain mana, then you put a token on the battlefield that is a copy of another creature except it’s an enchantment in addition to its other types. It also gains haste and you exile it at the beginning of the next end step.

       There are some creatures where you don’t have to pay mana cost to trigger its mechanic to do anything. You just untap the creature and the inspired mechanic triggers.  Some will give you life gain, a +2/+0 (till end of turn), tap target creature, put +1/+1 counters on it, ETC. there are different kinds of things that inspired does when it’s triggered. Some are ok and some are not ok, it depends on your style of playing.

Which inspired mechanic creature is your favorite?

Please leave a comment of your thoughts.

Thanks for reading my blog!

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.

VOICES…

December 19th 2013 I turned a very young age of 33 and for my birthday gift from my dad is a booster box of the dragons maze set. Looking through the 500 something cards I have opened up from the booster box I came across some pretty cool rare and mythic rare in the set. One in particular stood out.

Granted there are some really cool cards in the booster set I got but the one really stood out to me is the voice of resurgence card. Out of the 36 booster packs in the booster box I got voice of resurgence as an only card. Go figure that would happen right?

When you have voice of resurgence out, chances are the other player is not going to want to cast a spell that ends up killing voice just because of the token it would bring out. If you already have a whole bunch of tokens out along with creatures chances are the new token will have some crazy power and toughness.

I’m always for powerful creatures but I like to get done quickly. I like the card and it’s a great card too but I don’t have much interest in doing token decks, I feel they are too slow for me. I do have a token deck but I only use it a very few times. I might just keep it for the art work. Who knows, maybe someone really wants to the card and give me a good amount of money for it or trade for a couple of god cards or something.

What’s your favorite card in magic?

Thanks for reading my blog.

LANDS OF CONFUSION

      If you were anything like me when playing magic the gathering where you get mana screwed, then I know how you feel. You can build your deck and think it will be awesome to use and come to find two mana on the battlefield with the opposite color mana cost creatures and spells in your hand. Nothing can be more annoying than having that happen, well except for having to hear the gundam style song and seeing the dance constantly, and the opponent showing no mercy and destroys you in a few amount of turns.

     I decided to do some internet search on how to not get mana screwed, after a few dozen websites or so, I finally found it. It’s called the land formula. It seems pretty interesting to read and of course I had to read it a few times because I got easily confused on what it was telling me I should do. I realized there’s math involved, which anyone who knows me personally would think “oh crap”, yea true story. But I understood it a little better when I tried out the math problems on paper.

     I am going to use my Minotaur’s sword deck to use as an example for this formula.  First you separate the single and the multiple (such as RR) mana cost symbol and separate the color if you are playing more than one color deck. Take those single color mana cost symbol and count them up.

     First up are the red symbol cards:

1x Canyon Minotaur
2x Fanatic of Mogis
2x Minotaur Skullcleaver
2x Deathbellow Raider
1x Furious Resistance
2x Punish the Enemy
1x Thunder Strike
2x Madcap Skills

     There are 13 single red mana symbol in this deck, now let’s count up the multiple mana symbol of  the same color cards.

2x Borderland Minotaur
1x Rageblood Shaman
2x Rakdos Shred-Freak

      There are 5 multiple red symbols. Multiply it by 1.5, and get the total of 7.5. Add it to the already 13 to make it 20.5 to your total.  Let’s count up the black cards.

Black mana symbols:

2x Felhide Minotaur
3x Undead Minotaur
1x Doom Blade
2x Wring Flesh
3x Deviant Glee
1x Mark of the Vampire
2x Quag Sickness
2x Rakdos Shred-Freak

There are 16 single black symbol cards. Now for the multiple black symbol.

3x Minotaur Abomination
1x Hero's Downfall

    There are 4 multiple black symbols in this deck. Multiply the 4 with 1.5 to make it 6. Add that to the already 16 to make it 22 total.  To figure out the ratio you add the 20.5 with the 22 to get 42.5. Take the 42.5 and divide it with 20.5 to get 48.23% of your cards in your deck to produce red mana. Basically everyone wants to (or need to) have at least 24 mana in the deck. Because really any more than that would get you mana flooded unless you’re playing EDH, then it wouldn’t be a problem, right?

    Take the 48.23% and minus it with 24 and the answer will be 11.57. So round that down to make it 11 simply because there’s no way to put in .85 of a land, that can be quite difficult to do. The answer 11 is how much red mana you are going to need in the deck. Now I understand that Rakdos shred-freak is a hybrid red and black card since there are two in the deck you can divided them evenly by putting in 2 red mana and 2 black mana. You can divide the 22 black with the 42.5 and see what you can get out of the total, which is 51.76% and do the minus with the 24 and get 12 as your total. But if you are planning on a 24 land deck, you can figure that part out.

     It seems like when I do the math problem with the black cards, I come up with 23 lands total. So does that mean I add one more creature or spell in? Would that mess up the math I just did? It didn’t really explain that part of it. But they do say that having 20-23 lands are an aggro kind of decks. I will have to research it a little further to see if I can get a better understanding of this land formula. But whatever you do don’t do (as I did) the 20 land, 20 spells, and 20 creatures. It just doesn’t work very well in your favor as a new player to the game.

     As for the colorless lands you feel the need to put in, remember every two nonland source of mana lower the land count by one. But when adding trick colorless lands, add an extra land for every two colorless lands you put in.

Confusing right? Yea something to read into a little bit more.

     I hope that this will help with your mana troubles in a way. I know I might’ve not explained as well as I should, but I’m only writing this as I understood the article I read online. So don’t hate on me about it, which I know some of you might just do.

    What ways do you build you mana base around to make your deck work smoothly? Leave me your answers in the comments.

   Thanks for reading my blog; I hope it didn’t confuse you as much as it did to me.

WALLS OF LIFE

Today I am going to talk about my blue and white deck which I called “walls of life” yeah…still working on that tittle. The whole idea behind the deck is to keep the other player from doing too much or slow them down. With cards like claustrophobia, master of diversion, Imposing Sovereign, Lyev Skyknight, to help with the opponent’s creatures to unable to untap in the untapping step or detaining them till it's my turn again. Here’s my deck list and some explanation of why some of the cards are in the deck.

2x Ajani’s Chosen

2x Angelic Wall

2x Avenging Arrow

1x Azorius Arrester

1x Battlewise Hoplite

2x Claustrophobia

2x Dawnstrike Paladin

1x Daxos of Meletis

2x Divine Favor

1x Domestication

2x Essence Scatter

2x Fencing Ace

1x Gridlock

1x Imposing Sovereign

12x Island

1x Judge's Familiar

1x Lyev Skyknight

2x Master of Diversion

2x Phantom Warrior

12x Plains

3x Soulmender

2x Staff of the Mind Magus

2x Suntail Hawk

1x Wall of Frost

      I know as most of you noticed that Ajani’s chosen is in the deck. I know it don’t make much sense for the card to be in there because those two Ajani’s chosen are the only cards in the deck that does tokens. I figure with all the enchantments I have in the deck it would actually be helpful and get more creatures out onto the battlefield. The mana cost to get Ajani’s chosen out is a little bit high but it is well worth it if it will get more creatures in play with the enchantments coming out.

                As far as life gain goes I got cards like dawnstrike paladin, divine favor, Soulmender, staff of the mind magus to help with that. Dawnstrike paladin is a high cost creature to put out, no doubt. But with vigilance and life link on the ability part is a good addition. Not only I don’t have to tap to attack with it I can’t use it to block the other players creature when they’re attacking on their turn. If dawnstrike paladin causes damage to the other creature it’s blocking and the other creature dies, I gain life from that with the life link. If I do damage on my turn to the opponent’s life total I gain from that with the life link. Artifacts like staff of the mind magus are great to leave out on the battlefield, only because whenever I cast a blue spell, I gain one life from the artifact each time. Divine favor helps you get 3 life gain just for coming out plus it gives the creature a +1/+3. I know it don’t seem much, but for a 2 drop in mana cost, I say it’s a pretty darn good card to have. For a 1 drop creature you can gain 1 life by tapping Soulmender. I know you lose the chance to tackle the life total of the other player but gaining one life isn’t so bad when the creature is only a 1/1 power and toughness.

          How can I forget to mention Daxos of Meletis? Because I really did forget, until I was editing this blog the next day (its common). The great thing about this card is that he can’t be blocked by creatures with power of 3 or greater. Hopefully the smaller creatures would be dead when using Daxos to attack and they only have bigger creatures to block with. When Daxos deals damage I then exile the top card of that player’s library I can gain life from the cards mana cost, and then (or I may) cast that card for its mana cost as though it has any color of mana to cast it. Most people say Daxos is only good in EDH. But I feel he’s also a big deal to use in standard and or non-standard decks. You can do a lot for just a 3 drop mana cost card. Maybe more than most people realize.

          What is your favorite 2 color combination deck? And what does it do to help you stay alive? Leave me comments with your thoughts.

          Thanks for reading my blog.

MINOTAUR’S SWORD

Theros has done a good job of putting out a fair amount of Minotaur, well enough for me to make a deck with those kinds of creatures with the mix in of the M-14 core set.  Now I’ve made some changes to the deck from what it was previously listed as which works out good because I haven’t published it yet and no one knows what I had in it before (which also saves me the trouble of getting “why's that card there? That makes no sense” or that one douche bag who thinks that everyone else’s decks are trash, has something to say, which will probably say something anyway). Here’s my deck list/breakdown.

3x Deviant Glee
1x Furious Resistance
2x Wring Flesh
2x Madcap Skills
1x Hero’s Downfall
1x Doom Blade
1x Thunder Strike
2x Deathbellow Raider
2x Rakdos Shred-Freak
1x Rageblood Shaman
2x Quag Sickness
2x Minotaur Skullcleaver
3x Undead Minotaur
2x Fellhide Minotaur
1x Mark Of the Vampire
2x Fanatic of Mogis
1x Canyon Minotaur
2x Borderland Minotaur
2x Punish the Enemy
3x Minotaur Abomination
12x Swamp
12x Mountain

Granted that some of the Minotaur’s in this deck doesn’t have any abilities on them and I’m pretty sure most people wouldn’t put a bunch of cards in without any type of ability added to them. But it’s ok for me because a Minotaur deck is what I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Even though some of the cards have no abilities, that is where the enchantments come into play to pick up the lack of abilities. I am not building the decks for pro-tour or anything like that.

Deviant glee is a great enchantment to have for a one drop mana to attach to creatures. Deviant glee give the creatures a +2/+1 and if you tap a mountain it will give it trample till end of turn, which is a great thing to have added to the creature.

              Madcap skills is also a good enchantment because it gives the creature a +3/+0, I know the +0 doesn’t sound so great but the enchantment also provide that the enchanted creature can’t be block except for 2 or more creatures, in my opinion it’s a great card for a 2 drop manna cost.

Rageblood Shaman is a great 3 drop card for what it can do. It has trample and gives other Minotaur creatures I control a +1/+1 and trample. I know I only have one of Rageblood shaman in the deck but it’s the only one I have for the time being and I plan on getting at least 2 more for the deck. That way it can give my Minotaur’s 3 +1/+1’s.

Fanatic of Mogis is a pretty good card as well. It’s 3 of anything and a mountain to cast out onto the battlefield. When it enters the battlefield it deals damage to each opponent equal my devotion to red. That means each permanents that has a red symbol on it deals damage. So if you have 2 Deathbellow raider with madcap skills on each of them and 2 Rakdos Shred-Freak which means it would deal 6 damage right off the bat. If you wait just long enough and hold off on putting Fanatic of Mogis out by turn 4 and at the right time, it can be a good finisher card.

I also have some good instants and sorcery cards in the deck as well, like doom blade that can destroy a creature and the wring flesh card to give a minus 3 minus 1 onto a creature making it a little less powerful creature to attack you with or kill it. Let’s not forget punish the enemy; even though it a 5 drop card, it’s a good card for what it can do. It deals 3 damage to target creature and 3 damage to target player.

How big of a fan are you of Minotaurs?

Please comment and thanks for reading my blog

HUMAN SOLDIER (DECK BREAK DOWN)

          As the theros set has been released and set in stone, it was time to make some fun new standard decks. The greatest thing about theros is that it’s based around the Greek mythology. So being both my favorite things in one, who could blame me or anyone else to be excited about it? I will give you my first new deck list and I will do a little breakdown as to why the card was put in there.

12x Plains

12x mountain

2x soldier of pantheon

2x Titan’s strength

2x spark jolt

3x Akroan crusader

1x Truefire Paladin

1x Akroan hoplite

2x Battle wise valor

2x Ill-tempered Cyclops

2x Setessen Battle Priest

1x lightning strike

2x magma jet

3x phalanx leader

2x solemn offering

1x dauntless onslaught

4x two-headed Cerberus

1x Anax and Cymede

2x Observant Alseid

1x Spear of Heliod

2x decorated griffin

2x Fortress Cyclops

          The whole idea behind the deck is to try and make it as close to a human soldier deck as possible. The human soldiers part of the deck all help out in some way or another, granted all the creatures in this deck aren’t human soldier but I can only make the deck with what I got. If I could, I would buy the cards I would really need for the deck, but I kind of like having the Cerberus and the Cyclops in the deck. It makes it seem like they’re the sidekick for the humans. Until then this is what I have to deal with.

          One of the things I love about theros is the ability triggers they have. Like for the human soldiers in the deck have heroic which is where the creature gets targeted by a spell, it will do its ability. Some of those abilities will help other creatures by giving them a +1/+1, or put out a token creature or two, and ETC.

Phalanx leader heroic ability is triggered by a spell you cast that targets phalanx leader, when that happens, other creatures you control gets a +1/+1. The great thing about this ability trigger is, you can use instants, enchantments, and sorcery’s on the creature and it will do the ability. The +1/+1 counter doesn’t go away until the game’s over, not till end of turn like most abilities. Instants like titan’s strength that gives target creature a +3/+1 counter till end of turn would trigger Phalanx Leader heroic ability and give other creatures a +1/+1.

Another creature with heroic ability is Akroan Crusader. This creature heroic ability is whenever you cast a spell that targets Akroan crusader put a 1/1 red soldier creature token with haste onto the battle field. It does the same thing as phalanx leader only with tokens when you target Akroan crusader.

Cards like Setessen battle priest heroic ability lets you gain two lives when you target it with spells. It’s a great card to have if your life is in trouble and looking for a way to stay alive a little bit longer, or you just want to be ahead of the game and gain life early and give the other player that much more trouble trying to bring your life down to zero.

Remember this deck is still being tweaked out and I built this deck for fun, not competitive. What new triggers are your favorite from the new theros set?

Please leave your comments below. And thanks for reading my blog.

FLANKING, IT’S NOT A TREND

            Flanking is a trigger ability from the time spiral block. What the ability does is when a creature with flanking attacks and a creature without flanking block, the blocking creature gets a -1/-1 until end of turn. So if a 2/2 creature with flanking attacks and a 2/2 creature without flanking blocks, the blocking creature gets a -1/-1 so it becomes a 1/1 creature before any damage is dealt. Normally both creatures would die and be put into the graveyard but with the flanking, the blocking creature dies and the 2/2 stays alive and gets to hang out with its buddies on the battlefield a little bit longer.

            If there are multiple creature on the battlefield with  flanking are attacking and the other player blocks one of them, then the flanking trigger on all of the creatures attacking will trigger giving that blocking creature a -1/-1 for each creatures attacking with flanking. For example: there are five creatures with flanking out on the battlefield attacking and the other player blocks with a 4/4 creature without flanking. Then that 4/4 will be dealt with 5 -1/-1 counters on it, killing that 4/4 creature.

            Flanking hasn’t been around for quite some time now in the magic the gathering world. It would be awesome to have it back on the cards in one of the new series they would come out with in the future. I don’t know about anyone else but I certainly wouldn’t mind having it back.

            What’s your favorite trigger ability? Please leave me a comment and thanks for reading.