There Is No Explanation for This Nonsense

 Here's a link to Chrome Mox, which as you'll note costs around $72.00 US.

Please note that you cannot play this card in any legal format of Magic. 

A copy of one that you can legally play-but is obviously used-is also selling around $80.00 US.

Thanks, I hate this. 

On the other hand, I am now 100% pro-proxy now. 

The Cold Take

This has become my favorite videogame-related series of late. 

It's thoughtful, it's snobbish in a cool but not exclusionary way and I appreciate what Mr. Ruiz has to say on the matter of videogames. From a high minded-ish view, anyway.

Also, I still like Midnight Suns more than he did but I do agree that the writing gets in the way of itself a bit. But when Midnight Suns' story is good, it's really good. I've put in a lot of time into Midnight Suns at this point and I haven't even recruited all the heroes yet! So for me, clearly this game is more than the sum of its parts. 

Still, I like Cold Take and think it's worth the time.

The Third Place

Not long ago I read this piece on how cities have changed-and may need to adapt-because of the pandemic. How it's impacted our work, specifically has had a significant impact on our socialization.

We just don't need to be at the same places we were before. That is going to create a real shift in what we do and how we live. 

Then I read this comment at Reddit and something clicked. You may or may not be aware of the rise in the interest and play of boardgames but it's likely that isn't a new phenomena, given this blog's subject matter. The presence of Kickstarter has allowed a lot of people to create games that just wouldn't have seen daylight-for better or worse-and injected a slew of new people into the hobby. Magic has had their first billion dollar year. 

So, what are people doing? I wonder if they are going to game shops. Certainly they can have much of the criteria that are listed in the Reddit comment, because they encourage stretches of time for people to hang out. 

Not unlike pubs, which might be one other reason I like playing games at bars. 

But it's clear to me now that things aren't going back to the way they were. And we're going to have to be mindful about how we change going forward. It's a good time for that change, though.

 

0-2

Back into the breach with a BW Scam take. This time with upgrades from last time and a little more focus maindeck: Elite Spellbinders for their evasion, and Hymn to Tourach to help reinforce the Grief line of play.

Match 1 vs Dravyen on UR Delver

Game 1: I had a great curve with Thalia, Anguished Unmaking and then a kicked Tourach.

It didn’t matter: Brainstorm and Ponder did their thing, and before I was ready I was facing down a Delver and a DRC.

Game 2: I thought the plan was good: Spirit of the Labyrinth and Sudden Edict. The Spirit kept him in check, but I drew zero removal, and soon had a 5/5 Murktide to face down. Since I couldn't take the Murktide out, well....

In between games, the head judge offered to play a couple rounds with me-and hey, practice is good! So I said yes and matched against Jacob's Nic Fit deck.

I lost those games. But practice is still good! 

Match 2 vs Bill on UG Omnitell

Game 1: I had a Grief get countered and brought it back with Exhume. Then I was able to use Elite Spellbinder to keep him off his Show & Tell. I had him down to six, which was great! But he drew Uro and was able to climb out of range. Then he got enough mana to cast the Show & Tell, leading into an Emrakul and that was it.

Game 2: Very similar start, except I got the Spellbinder in off a Show & Tell and took the Dress Down instead of the Intuition. Because his reveal was Omnicience, leading to Emrakul which I Sudden Edict’d.

Huzza! My plan is working!

But his next turn had him top deck another Emrakul. So. Um…..

Yeah, I died.

Then I got the bye and I figured: this is the Universe telling you to go home. So I went home at 0-4. 

That was a pretty rough night for a couple reasons but most of them had to do with me being alone to sit with my losses each time. My opponents were all pleasant to nice and I can't say I had a bad time. 

But not winning even a game is hard. And I've lost every time I've gone. Under these circumstances, it can be challenging to remember that I'm playing untested, weird stuff and that comes with failing a bunch. That's OK! 

It also means that I need to take some time to take care of my own mental health under those circumstances, because I don't want to be miserable to play against. It is difficult to take a beating each time. That's just the facts. I'm signing up for the beating though so...well, it's on me.

However, it has me thinking about something else, which I'll get to next time.

Building One World

This is an awesome overview about how they built the upcoming Phyrexia: All Will Be One world. I particularly like the analogy to Dante's Inferno. 

All in all this set looks to shake things up in a big way for the overall Magic story, characters and multiverse. I'm into it!

1-3

I went with a new deck for Legacy nights last Friday and...well, here's how it went.

Round 1 vs John on UR Delver

Game 1: I thought I was hanging in there pretty well with a turn 1 Grief that I could Undying Evil.

And for a bit, I was…but eventually Delvers came down, Lightning Bolt did its thing and I regretted having Anointed Peacekeeper instead of Elite Spellbinder. 

Staring down a Murktide Regent (even after I Flickerwisp’d it) and two Delvers meant I was out. No removal to be found and their ability to churn through their deck for answers got me.

Game 2: A slower start but I got a turn 2 Thalia and was able to untap with it. I even managed to save it from Lightning Bold with an Undying Evil!

But this was not to last. He ground through the taxation and I couldn’t produce much pressure. My Mother of Runes was just not doing much here and I eventually fell to a Delver and two DRCs.

Rd 2 vs Trevor on U Affinity

Game 1: Starting on Thalia then Anointed Peacekeeper then kicked Tourach meant I got an advantage he couldn’t overcome.

Sideboarded in 4 Abolish that I wouldn't ever see.

Game 2: He used Urza’s Saga to make tokens and fetch Shadowspear. I was able to Solitude one for an attack but never saw another piece of removal. I conceded when facing 28 attacking power.

Game 3: Thought I had a solid start with a Toruach into Thalia. A Karn arrived and while I was able to attack it to 1, the constructs began to show up and shortly after that, the Liquimetal Coating arrived, leading to a Mycosynth Lattice and I conceded.

Match 3 vs Mike on Red prison

Game 1: The prison elements came out-chalice on zero, Trinisphere, and shortly after that, Goblin Rabblemaster. But I was able to weather it with a Thalia and an Anointed Peacekeeper, then a hard cast Solitude. At 7 life, I cast a was able to use a Flickerwisp to start taking away his tokens and whittle at his life total until I won.

Game 2: I’d sideboarded in the 4 Abolish and two Plague Engineers. Once again, a great start from Mike, with a early Trinisphere. But I cast an Engineer on Goblin on turn 3, which kept his creatures off the board, followed by a kicked Tourach which eliminated his sideboard card, FIrey Confluence. After that, I was able to keep the pressure up until I won.

Round 4 vs Jack on W Hammertime

Game 1: Well, I got run over by a heavily equipped Ornithopter.

Game 2: brought in 2 Plague Engineers and 4 Abolish. We traded back and forth for a bit but I made a critical error when I had mana untapped to Ephemerate my Grief, and didn’t do it in response to a Swords. 

I kinda started to tilt after that, thinking more about the mistake and less about the task at hand, and couldn’t pull things together. Eventually, I ran out of threats and he got a second Urza’s Saga (I’d Abolished the first) and that was that.

Sigh.

Here's the deck:

 Creature

4 Grief

4 Solitude

4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

3 Anointed Peacekeeper

3 Tourach, Dread Cantor

2 Flickerwisp

 Instant

2 Feign Death

3 Undying Evil

3 Ephemerate

2 Sudden Edict

3 Anguished Unmaking

 Land

3 Plains

3 Swamp

2 Phyrexian Tower

4 Scrubland

4 Marsh Flats

3 Godless Shrine

1 Volrath's Stronghold

 Sorcery

2 Exhume

3 Duress

1 Emeria's Call

1 Agadeem's Awakening

//  Sideboard

 2 Plague Engineer

 4 Faerie Macabre

 3 Mother of Runes

 4 Abolish

2 Hymn to Tourach

// 2 Land

SB: 1 Agadeem, the Undercrypt

SB: 1 Emeria, Shattered Skyclave

Matt had suggested the Mother of Runes but they didn't do much work for me. I had had Serenity in before Abolish but I removed it thinking I would never get to play it under any deck using Chalice of the Void. I also avoided cards like Loran of the Third Path because I thought people would be metagaming for Initiative decks and using cards like Torpor Orb to blank them. 

Turns out, nobody cares about the Initiative decks. At least, not yet. So the sideboard needs some tweaking and the manabase could possibly use Wasteland and/or Silent Clearing. But, it's a start.

I think I'm going to take next week off; there's been a lot of writing through the holidays and I could use a break! See y'all on the 17th.

Lessons From All That

 WHEW!

What a dive into the Warhammer world, right? 

So after 3 days and 4 nights of games, what did I learn?

Well, first and foremost this game really does rock. It's got a lot of interesting variety and decision points to make and kudos to the people at Apoka Team for making good decisions about the cards they produce. The new cards are well designed and expand on neglected areas of the game instead of just powerleveling the things that already existed. 

As far as the gameplay goes, I'd say that the biggest thing I learned is that it is better to build up to a big moment than it is to go all in early on something and then try to make your plan work from there. The former strategy allows for more flexibility and the potential to recover from mistakes, from RNG moments that don't break your way, or from battles where you're just blown out. 

The latter constricts you into a very brittle strategy and is, given my experiences, likely to crumble. If something doesn't go the way you're hoping, oof!

I've learned that there are some decidedly bad matchups in Conquest: I don't know how I could've made the Nahumekh vs Illuminor Szeras matchup work for Nahumekh. It's almost as if Illuminor was meant to punish what Nahumekh wants to do. 

But that is OK! Some warlords should be the weak point of others. But I hadn't seen it on display in Warhammer Conquest like this before. 

I suppose that's it. A fine way to spend several evenings, with enough gameplay to let me know which warlords need some attention, and hopefully a way to make them better. Good stuff!