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.

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

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.

Pre-release or release?

          I’ve come to notice that there’s a mix between people’s feelings about the pre-release weekend, as well as the release weekend. Some like doing the pre-release better and some like doing the release better. There even people that don’t like to go to either releases at all, they rather just get to booster box or whichever and just use it for Friday night magic or an event involving magic.

          I myself only been to 2 pre-releases and they weren’t all that bad. Even if you don’t win at what tournaments they have set up, you’re still leaving with a bunch of the new cards before it’s even out to the general public, to me that screams bragging rights. Sure in most cases you don’t get that absolute best card they have for the set, but still you can get some pretty decent cards out of it, maybe even a Planeswalker or a god card could be pulled.

          It don’t really matter which release I go to, I’m still walking away with a bunch of cards. I don’t know about everyone else’s LGS, but the one I go to do the same stuff in the release as they did in the pre-release. It’s still fun to go to and hang out with other players. Maybe even show a new player how to play, which is a lot of fun to do. In other words my preference is either one of the releases, which is if I can afford to go to one of them.

          Born of the gods the second set of the theros block pre-release is February  1-2, 2014. The official release weekend is February 7-9 (technically the 8^th considering it’s a midnight release on the 7^th) and game day is March 1-2, 2014. Hope everyone will enjoy the new set.

          What’s your preference? Pre-release or release? Please leave a comment of your thoughts.

          Thanks for reading my blog.

EXTRA!.....EXTRA!

There comes a time in a magic player’s life where they will have tons of extra cards of the same name. What would you do with the extras? Where would you put them? Probably by this point you would have multiple decks with those same name cards in it, what more can you do with it from there? Sideboard? Nah, they are full. Leave them in the deck box? Nah it’s taking up too much space. What to do? What to do?

One of the first things a player would do is either try to sell them their LGS or trade them with other players for one of their cards. Trading cards is a fun thing to do without spending any type of money. Saving money is better than spending it all, especially if you are broke, and unemployed. A lot of players go by value rather than what they really need for their decks. There are also players who trade just to get the cards they need for their decks. The trade is only good if both players walk away happy with their cards, unless one had second thoughts and would want the card back. Most cases once the player makes a trade, they won’t trade back.

Buying from other players is probably not a good idea. It’s always better to buy from your local game, at least then you be buying them for what they are worth, not the attachment value the player has with the cards. Buying from the local game shop is a better way to go because it helps the economy and gets more players to come to the shop because of a particular card some of the players sold to them.

Selling to your local game shop is also a good way to go, only because they will pay you as close to the price worth for the cards as they can. You can either get cash for them or store credit for them. Either way is good because most likely you know he shop well and the shop knows you, you’d go there often enough to use the store credits or anything in the store.

What do you do with your extra cards?

Thanks for reading my blog, please comment and share.

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.

Ral Zarek…party of one?

Sitting at my coffee table opening booster packs from M-14, dragons maze, and gatecrash. I would’ve had theros but they didn’t have any more of them at the store. As I am opening these booster packs, I was getting ok to pretty cool cards and most of the cards are what I already had in my collection, which is no big deal, more the better right? Some of the rare cards in the booster packs were pretty good, until I got to the last booster pack to open which was the dragons maze pack.

I write down my booster pack cards in my notebook, which is like an O.C.D. thing I have. As I write down the cards one by one, from the top to the bottom, I like to be surprised with what rare or mythic rare was in the pack. Now I am at the 2nd to last card in the pack. When I reveal the last card after writing down the card before it in my notebook, my jaw and my pen fell to the ground. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I thought I was either day dreaming or hallucinating; I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t sleeping and sure enough I was awake. I was hearing angel music in my head and the card seem like it had a nice glow of light animating from it. Then reality kicked in, there was no light or day dream or hallucinations. It was the real thing.

Ral Zarek, most people hate him and most people love him. Since the first time I’ve heard about the Planeswalker, I prayed to get him at some point in the future. Who knew that I would get him after theros came out, but since it’s still standard I can use him at a FNM event. Regardless of when I got the Planeswalker card, I was happy I didn’t have to spend over $10 for a single card and got him for the price of the booster pack.

What I like about Ral Zarek is that the mana cost to bring out isn’t high. It is two of anything and a blue and a red to bring out. It’s a great fourth turn card to bring out and start kicking it up with its abilities and hopefully don’t get killed in the time it is out on the battle field. To start right off the bat coming into the battlefield it gets a 4 loyalty counters and you can get started right away with the abilities listed on the card.

+1 on the loyalty counter gives him the ability to tap a target creature and untap a target creature.
-2 on the loyalty counter allows Ral Zarek to deal 3 damage to target creature or player
-7 on the royalty counter gives you extra turns for every 5 coins you flip that lands heads up.

For me I think the abilities are good to work with. The last ability on the card is what seems like what people really like. Let’s hope that you don’t have bad luck playing and get all tails, then you would not only lose your Planeswalker (if the loyalty counter was low enough to kill him) you lost your chance to do any extra damage. I think this Planeswalker would be good for a burn/control kind of deck, only because of the first two abilities listed on the card. It seems like the logical thing to do. As soon as I get a deck together I will post a deck list for it.

Aside from Chandra the firebrand and Ajani, caller of the pride Planeswalker cards, Ral Zarek is my favorite Planeswalker and now I own him.

Who is your favorite Planeswalker? Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Thanks for reading my blog.

MAGIC THE COPIER

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

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

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

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

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

Leave me your thoughts in the comments.

Have a happy and safe thanksgiving.

Thanks for reading my blog.

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.