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.

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.

THEROS FAT PACK

       The official release of theros is finally here. It seemed like it took long enough to get here to mess around with the new cards and mechanics to enjoy. As most of the players know, the fat pack contains a book, a dice, 9 booster packs, and a pack of land cards. Plus the box it came it is also a card holder, just provide your own dividers.

Now I’ve opened up the fat pack and got my booster packs out, my land cards, two deck boxes, book manual, and finally the ever so cool looking dice. Here are my booster packs cards I’ve opened up, and I have to say theros have exceeded my expectation as far as how cool the cards are. I realized that i made a mistake on the booster numbers and i put 3 twice (it was really late and i was tired) and counted wrong the rest of the way, so from the second #3 on its supposed to be one up higher.

         I can say I had some nice pulls from the booster packs. Lots of defenders, enchant creatures, heroic, bestow type if creatures in the packs. I didn’t get any god type of cards, but hopefully in the future I will be able to get a few and hopefully will go with the decks I have made with the theros cards. But as of right now I’m not to worry about trying to get them, but it would be nice to have some of them.

What I love about some of the new cards in the set are the human soldier and Minotaur that are in the set. I was able to make a couple of nice decks out of those kinds of creatures. Of course they may still need to be worked on a little bit but I like how they work as of right now (I’m not saying they’re going to be the best decks ever made).

For the theros set, I have to give it thumbs up. If I had 99 hands I would have 99 thumbs up, that is just how much I like this set. The next few blogs will be about my new decks I made from the set.

Do you have the new theros? If so which ones did you buy? Booster box, Fat pack, Intro decks, or booster packs? And how do you like the cards you’ve gotten?

Thanks for reading my blog, please comment and share.

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.

DETAINED, BEATEN, AND LIFE GAIN. (The white and blue deck breakdown)

           This is a breakdown of my white and blue deck. It’s pretty much themed around detaining your creatures so it really can’t do much while I bring my creatures out to kill you and gaining some life while I’m at it. Granted it’s not a win by turn 5, 6, or 7 turn, but it’s a fun deck to play with. Also white and blue together tends to be slower than most decks than red and black, white and red, and red and green decks that are out there. Plus, it also depends on how you built the deck.

            Here is the deck list and then I’ll do the breakdown of some of the cards into why they are there and what purpose do they have to help in the game of Magic.

Creature
2x Ajani's Chosen
2x Angelic Wall
1x Azorius Arrester
2x Dawnstrike Paladin
2x Fencing Ace
1x Galerider Sliver
1x Imposing Sovereign
1x Judge's Familiar
1x Lyev Skyknight
2x Master of Diversion
2x Phantom Warrior
1x Sentinel Sliver
1x Sliver Construct
3x Soulmender
2x Suntail Hawk
1x Wall of Frost

Instant
2x Avenging Arrow
1x Dramatic Rescue
2x Essence Scatter
1x Gridlock

Land
12x Island
12x Plains

Enchantment
2x Claustrophobia
2x Divine Favor
1x Domestication

For starters, fencing ace is probably one of my favorite cards to play with. Even though it’s a 1/1 creature, it has double strike, which means it can do damage twice instead of just one. Let’s say I put a divine favor enchantment on fencing ace and give it a +1/+3, not only it would make the card a 2/4, it would do 4 damage with the double strike. Plus I also gain 3 lives to my life total just for bringing the enchantment into the battle field.

I used to not be a big fan of cards with defender ability on the card. I’ve always felt that they were a waste of a creature by just having them defending and not attacking.  I was always the players that want to do a bunch of damages and be done with it, but I kind of been changing my ways of playing the game.  Let’s talk about wall of frost. It’s a great card to be able to bring out on the third turn and it be a 0/7 defender, but here is where it gets pretty darn cool. It has the ability to tap the creature I block it with and it can’t be untapped during the next controller’s untap step. Which means if they got a creature that is powerful but not to powerful enough to kill my defender when I block, that creature that got blocked will stay tapped and can’t be used for anything for as long as the game goes on. Same goes for angelic wall with the difference of it’s a flying defender, doesn’t make any creatures be tapped when it’s block and it’s a 0/4.

Cards like Imposing Sovereign is good for making the opponent’s creatures come into the battle field tapped is a good help against creatures with haste so they can’t attack right away and prevent them from blocking with the new creature in the battlefield. Enchantments like claustrophobia enters the battlefield will enchant a target creature causing it to tap and stay tap until the enchantment is either destroyed or the game ended. Also cards like Azorius Arrester, Lyev Skyknight can detain creature until my next turn which leaves them open for attack.

       Then there’s the card Soulmender. It helps me gain life, not much, but it helps in some way shape or form. Sure I would be using up my mana and a creature card to get that life gain but if I have other creatures out that can be big hitters or big blockers, it’s ok to be using it in time of need. Also if I have Dawnstrike Paladin out on the battlefield I would gain 2 life for every time it has dealt damage, which in my case would be 4 life’s since I have 2 of the same card in the deck. Even with its high mana cost to cast, it seems pretty much worth it to pay the mana cost and put it out.

If you want to test out the deck it can be done here. CLICK HERE.

         Thanks for taking the time to read my blog, please leave me a comment about what would u do to make this deck better, and what are your favorite color decks? (Mono or multi-color).

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

M14 FAT PACK RELEASE WEEKEND

This past weekend was the official release of the new core set M14. I am very excited for this to come out mainly because I’m in hopes of getting enough slivers to make a decent or even a good deck with. But slivers aren’t really the only thing I am really looking forward to using, am looking forward to any other new cards, and planeswalkers, I never had before.

Upon opening the shrink wrap, I pulled out of the cardboard sleeve a deck holder box and a player’s guide. Out of the box holder comes with 2 60 card deck box you put together yourself, 9 booster packs, a deck of land cards, and a M14 D20. I am going to run a list of the cards I’ve gotten from the booster packs.

BOOSTER PACK 1

Plummet

Suntail Hawk

Zephyr charge

Undead Minotaur

Show of valor

Siege mastodon

Lava Axe

Archaeomancer

Minotaur abomination

Sensory deprivation

Wall of frost

Doom blade

Sengir vampire

Garruk’s horde

Mountain

BOOSTER PACK 2

Suntail hawk

Zephyr charge

Lightning talons

Brindle boar

Coral merfolk

Striking sliver

Seacoast drake

Solemn offering

Quag sickness

Divine favor

Voracious wurm

Blightcaster

Dragoness

Ratchet bomb

Swamp

BOOSTER PACK 3

Undead Minotaur

Pitchburn devil

Show of valor

Chandra’s outrage

Scroll thief

Quag sickness

Academy raider

Solemn offering

Predatory sliver

Merfolk spy

Opportunity

Windstorm

Blessing

Domestication

Island

BOOSTER PACK 4

Ranger’s guile

Pitchburn devil

Essence scatter

Lay of the land

Lava axe

Wring flesh

Brindle boar

Regathan firecat

Nightwing shade

Charging griffin

Briarpack alpha

Molten birth

Staff of the magus

Ratchet bomb

Swamp

BOOSTER PACK 5

Shadowborn apostle

Marauding maulhorn

Pay no heed

Armored cancix

Seacoast drake

Goblin shortcutter

Divine favor

Liturgy of blood

Mind rot

Woodburn behemoth

Diabolic Tutor

Stonehorn chanter

Into the wilds

Master of diversion

Island

BOOSTER PACK 6

Negate

Child of night

Lay of land

Capashen knight

Brindle boar

Vile rebirth

Wild guess

Pillarfield ox

Groundshaker sliver

Nightwing shade

Flames of the firebrand

Vial of poison

Trading post

Swamp

BOOSTER PACK 7

Frost breath

Plummet

Master of diversion

Shock

Chandra’s outrage

Regathan firecat

Rumbling Baloth

Archaeomancer

Auramancer

Spore mound

Encroaching wastes

Rod of ruin

Flesh pulper giant

Imposing sovereign

Plains

BOOSTER PACK 8

Capashen Knight

Essence scatter

Seismic stomp

Undead Minotaur

Vile rebirth

Dawn strike paladin

Nephalia Seakite

Dark favor

Griffin sentinel

Sensory deprivation

Bubbling cauldron

Vampire warlord

Barrage of expendables

Galerider sliver

Forest

BOOSTER PACK 9

Child of night

Lay of the land

Duress

Goblin shortcutter

Divine favor

Liturgy of blood

Mind rot

Deadly recluse

Striking sliver

Accorder’s shield

Manaweft sliver

Stonehorn chanter

Xathrid necromancer

Diabolic tutor

Island

   Eventually I am going to make decks out of these cards, not sure what color decks I am going to make as of yet, but I was thinking along the line of maybe a bant or jund deck, Or I might just make two colors decks. Although it may seem like the cards I opened aren’t as good as they look, but I am sure a decent deck can be made with them, even if I add them to the existing decks I have laying around. I didn’t get as many slivers as I hoped to get but I have no problem with buying them individualy to make myself a maybe sort of decent sliver deck. We will see when that time comes around, until then thanks for reading my blog and leave comments of what you would do with these cards to make a deck with? And if you yourself have gotten the core set of any kind (booster, fat pack, etc.) what cool cards did you get from them?

SLIVERS.....YEA OR NAY?

               Word has it that the slivers are being revived for the new M14 core set. Word also hasit that mostpeople are kinda upset about the fact that the slivers are coming back. Me on the one hand is pretty happy about the slivers making a comeback. The abilities they have are pretty good for what they are, not to mention having other slivers in the deck will become more powerful than they already are before they even reach your hand.
               

               I've some of the spoilers MTG has on their Facebook, website, and other spoiler pages. Some of them are pretty expensive mana cost to be bringing out, but is their abilities worth the extra mana cost to have in the deck? for some I do think it's worth it, but only for the ones that would make the other slivers more powerful. Ones with the ability to give other sliver vigilance doesnt seem all that worthy of the extra mana cost to bring it out, unless the mana cost is what the power and toughness eqals to, then it's ok (I guess). The ones that would give other slivers hatse or +2/+2 or something like that would be well worth the effort to give mana to get out.

              I've seen in the comments for the slivers on various pages all pretty much stating how much they hate the way the new slivers look. For me I like the way they look, I think they are pretty cool looking. It was the fact that people are hung up on how the slivers have 2 legs instead of one, this doesnt seem to bother me much as the next person. I really worry more about the abilities and power and toughness than the actual artwork. maybe when I have a bit much to drink or something I'll praise the artwork but even then not that much.

              It seems like from what I've seen from the spoilers there could be a good amount of red and white slivers to be able to pull off a nice red/white deck. It also looks like a all green sliver deck might show up as well. but I haven't seen any for black or blue yet, or if they are going to make one for those colors at all. If they do make them for those colors then they might want to surprise us or something (but highly doubt it would be of any kind of surprise at all).

               Before I sign off of here I just want to ask you readers if you like the whole sliver idea coming back or would you rather it stay away? and if you were ever into slivers in the past what color did you use for the deck and how fast can you get a win by?

           

Mediocre Chandra? Yea most of us thought so too.

So I've seen the new spoiler for the m14 Chandra. I'm not quite sure where they were heading with her or they got her confused with another planeswalker, but I'm saying I'm not to happy with the new Chandra. She's usually a burn kind of planeswalker, but this time around it seems to be the opposite of what she can normally do. 

As most of you seen before how happy I was to finally get Chandra the firebrand and she's one of my favorite planeswalker around. But this new one, I'm not looking forward to it too much, I mean if I happen to get her in a booster draft or something sure I might just keep her because she won't (or probably) be worth much to try and sell to a store or online. And maybe the fact that its Chandra. Who knows. 

Her new abilities seems kind of mediocre compared to what she use to do. Her second ability seems like the only abilities that's worth using just because it don't cost you anything on the dice to do it. If it were me I would just work it up to the ultimate ability and then just kill her (I know seems harsh don't it?) but at the same time I probably wouldn't even put her into a deck at all. I will probably put her in one of those hard sleeve and just store her away in one of my boxes or something. 

So here's the pic of the new m14 Chandra. Let me know in the comments of what your thoughts are about the new Chandra and which Chandra would you rather be using. While you are at it you can leave me a comment of who is your favorite planeswalker and why. 

Thanks for reading my blog and see you next time.