MTG: Kaladesh Sealed at Game On

I made the drive over to Game On in Midland to play in their Kaladesh sealed event this weekend.

This is the same store where I played in the Eldritch Moon sealed event a few months ago. This time, I didn't go alone - my friends Mike and Tim drove up from Owosso to play as well. (Neither had much success in terms of winning games, but both got some great cards - couple of Smuggler's Copters for Mike and a Torrential Gearhulk for Tim, among others.) Like last time, it was well attended, with a total of 34 people. Once again I was pleased with the way the folks at Game On ran the event. Nice play space, good group of players, solid organization and control by the organizers and judges.

My sealed pool was middling, with only one really great card: a Bristling Hydra. Also had a Wildest Dreams in green, though I didn't put it in the main deck. My other rares weren't playable, unfortunately - either too reliant on other cards that my pool was weak in (Depala, Syndicate Trafficker, Blooming Marsh) or just bad (Paradoxical Outcome). I had a good number of other green creatures, mostly notably two Longtusk Cubs, but no good green spells. My red removal was fairly decent: two Furious Reprisals, one Welding Sparks, one Chandra's Pyrohelix, and an Aethertorch Renegade. None of my other red creatures were great, but enough were playable to fill out the deck. Some good artifact creatures would have helped, but only two were worth playing: Sky Skiff and Weldfast Monitor. There were a couple of artifact removal spells for the sideboard - both Demolish and Creeping Mold helped out when I had to deal with some big vehicles. Outside of that Hydra and the Cubs, my creatures weren't good enough to take over a game, so the plan was to keep pressure on my opponent and hope the removal plus those three good creatures was enough to put me over the top.

That plan went nowhere in the first round, when I faced a red-white deck with several vehicles and plenty of tempo spells. I lost quickly in the first game to an onslaught of aggressive creatures, removal spells, and a couple of vehicles. In the second game, I was the one who drew aggressive creatures and removal spells to take a big early lead in the life totals, but didn't get any of my three finishing creatures until my opponent had clogged up his side of the board. That game took forever, almost taking up all the time in the round. In the end, I won since I had that early lead to work with and a higher creature total, just barely squeaking past his defenses with sheer numbers. Time was called before we could finish game three, so the first round was a draw.

The next three rounds went mostly according to plan. I won every game where I drew the Hydra, and several where I didn't but had a Cub and/or some good removal spells. I won all three rounds despite seeing some pretty good cards on the other side of the table. Noxious Gearhulk, for instance, and it's a good thing I'd sideboarded in that Demolish to deal with it. Two of those rounds were against opponents using three colors, and I'm pretty sure that helped me out quite a bit in those games. It's possible to play enough mana-fixing for three colors in this format, but it tends to slow you down and that's trouble if the opposition gets a good start.

To make the top eight, I needed to win one of the final two rounds. Sadly, it was not to be. I took both rounds to three games, so it was very close, but in the end the other players just got the better draws. My round five opponent had some amazing artifact/vehicle combinations that just overran me, with red and black removal to back them up. Chief of the Foundry plus Fleetwheel Cruiser is a real beating if you don't draw an answer right away. He got that Cruiser in all three games, and I was lucky to take one of the three. Round six was closer, against a green/white deck that had both large ground creatures and flyers. Lost the first game when I couldn't remove enough of his flyers, then won game two when I got the removal and kept a Cub alive long enough to win. Game three was close, but I couldn't keep up with his Skysovereign killing several of my creatures, a Durable Handicraft pumping up all his guys, and even a Wildest Dreams bringing back some of his creatures that I'd managed to kill.

End result, 3-2-1, just outside of the top eight. My one draw and two losses were all to players who made the top eight, and all three of those went to a third game. Any of those could have gone the other way with just a slightly better draw. Also, I only caught myself in one play mistake that actually mattered (forgetting to trigger energy gain off a Longtusk Cub, which later meant I couldn't give it a counter to save its life) and that turned out not to make a difference in the result of that particular game. Always feels better to know you played your best, even if the end result wasn't quite what you'd have liked. All in all, an enjoyable event, well worth the drive out and back.

MTG: Kaladesh Pre-Release (2HG)

After playing in an individual event on Saturday, Sunday was team day for Kaladesh pre-release weekend.

My friend Dan and I played in this two-headed giant limited format event for the last set release, and it was a lot of fun. So I was happy to do it again for Kaladesh. We played up at Big Kidz Games, and the turnout was great - 13 teams, 26 players.

Considering how heavy Kaladesh is with artifacts, our shared card pool didn't have very many of them that were useful. We only had about 5 vehicles between the two of us, very few useful artifact creatures, and our only mythic rare was Aetherworks Marvel. Could be an interesting combo card, but not that useful in limited. We ended up building a red-green deck for me, with fairly aggressive creatures and some removal, and a black-white deck for Dan, with a lot of fabricate creatures and several combat tricks.

Unfortunately, it didn't really matter much what was in our decks. That's because three of the four rounds we played were decided by land draws (or lack thereof) for one team or the other. Round 1, one opponent had to mulligan multiple times and still ended up with only one land for the whole game, so we won easily. Round 3, one opponent got stuck with a bunch of high-casting-cost stuff in his hand and never drew into enough lands, so again we won easily. Round 4, I kept a two-land hand with several two- and three-cost playables but never drew the third land, while Dan was flooded with all lands. Lost that one badly.

Only round two was a real game, and that one we lost as well. Both sides played a whole lot of ground creatures, resulting in a stand-off where neither team could attack. The only threat we managed to get on the board was a Sky Skiff, the only vehicle I had in my deck, but then they stole it with a Shrewd Negotiation. Then the better card quality of their pool showed up, with an Aethersquall Ancient and Wispweaver Angel on one side, and multiple graveyard recursion effects on the other. The game ended quickly from that point.

That put us at 2-2, firmly in the middle of the pack. Too bad about all the poor shuffles, and we didn't win any extra prizes, but that's all right. Still had a good time hanging out with Dan and the rest of the folks up at Big Kidz Games!

Hearthstone: One Night in Karazhan

The latest single-player adventure for Hearthstone, "One Night in Karazhan", has just recently released its final section.

The Hearthstone single player adventures all follow the same general format. There are several sections, each with a few boss fights (usually 3) to complete. A simple story links it all together, generally with amusing commentary from various characters. You can also replay some of the fights using pre-built class-specific decks. As you complete each fight and each of the sections, you gain cards for your collection that are related to the adventure.

The theme of "One Night in Karazhan" is a party thrown by the wizard Medivh, which isn't going quite according to plan. A demon lord is crashing the party, and pulls Medivh through a portal into his domain when the wizard tries to evict him. (That's the very first fight, which is available to anyone to play for free.) You have to make your way through the wizard's tower to the top, then rescue Medivh. It's fairly silly, but that's the idea with Hearthstone stories - light and fun, with plenty of humor to keep you entertained through the various battles.

After that intro fight, you have to purchase each of the four sections, either via a microtransaction or using in-game gold. I used gold since I have plenty from all the daily quests that I've done. Blizzard releases the sections one week at a time, but once they're all out then you can play through the whole thing at whatever pace you like. You get plenty for your money - the adventure itself, the class-specific challenges, and quite a few cards.

If you're really feeling adventurous, you can also try all the fights on heroic mode, which gives the bosses huge advantages that are very difficult to overcome. I've done some of those in the past, but not this one yet.

I had fun with "One Night in Karazhan", and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Hearthstone enough to play it regularly.

MTG: Conspiracy: Take the Crown

I visited a couple of local game stores this weekend to play in Conspiracy: Take the Crown events.

Competitive Magic: The Gathering is usually played one-on-one, but many of the more casual formats are multi-player. Commander, for example, is usually played with 3-5 people. Conspiracy is a casual draft format, where players are organized into pods of around 8 people to draft cards, then assigned to games with 3-5 players.

I wasn't playing when the original Conspiracy set was released, and had never really looked at the format. The release of this new set was a good opportunity to try it out, though. I went to one event at Big Kidz Games on Friday night, and another out at The Gaming Warehouse on Saturday afternoon.

The draft process for the Conspiracy format is different from normal MTG drafting in that some of the cards actually affect the draft process. Some let you look at what other people are drafting, some can affect the other cards that you draft, some have different power levels based on when you draft them (generally, better if taken late in the current pack). I enjoyed the process during these events, but I'm glad that all that added complexity is the exception, not the rule. It would get pretty tedious if every draft required all the extra bookkeeping that you need for a Conspiracy draft.

The signature mechanic of the Conspiracy format is the Conspiracy card type, which you put in play at the beginning of the game. The effects range from added abilities for a particular creature in your deck to changes in the basic game rules. One Conspiracy even turns deck construction on its head by prohibiting basic lands, instead allowing the player to sacrifice cards in hand to get special lands. This set added another signature mechanic, the Monarch, which is a title that moves from player to player as the game progresses and gives special abilities. Conspiracy cards are generally only used in the Conspiracy format, but the Monarch can be used in any format where the cards are legal - I expect Commander players in particular will get some use from it.

The actual gameplay in my two events felt very much like most free-for-all multiplayer MTG games. Everyone put out a bunch of creatures, but mostly didn't do much with them for fear that other players would take advantage of their lowered defenses. When one player got an obvious advantage - a big flyer, lots of card drawing, a powerful enchantment - the rest of the table ganged up on them. In both of my events, the players with the best early cards died first since they were seen as the early threats. The eventual winners started out more slowly, and eventually built up just a bit more power than the other remaining players. The Conspiracy format mechanics affected how the game was played, but not the way that these free-for-all multiplayer games generally play out.

I had a good time with these Conspiracy: Take the Crown events, but I don't know that I'd go out of my way to play more. A nice change of pace from normal drafting, but not something I'd want to do regularly.

Elder Scrolls: Legends

A digital TCG based in a major fantasy world that has its own MMO....where have I heard that one before?

Elder Scrolls: Legends entered its open beta phase recently, so I decided to give it a try. It has a whole lot of similarities to Hearthstone, as one would expect. There are enough differences for the game to be more than just a clone, though. There's the obvious difference in theme, using the Elder Scrolls world rather than Hearthstone's Warcraft, but also some significant gameplay innovations.

To introduce new players to the game, Elder Scrolls: Legends has a pretty extensive single-player campaign. The presentation is very polished, with plenty of pan-and-zoom semi-animation effects as the story is introduced in each chapter. There are even a few choices in the story for the player to make, which affect some of the cards you receive along the way. The single-player campaign won't be competing with any RPGs for story awards, but for a TCG, it's nicely done.

Mechanically, Elder Scrolls: Legends plays very much like Hearthstone, but there are some major differences. The similarities are many: your magicka (mana) starts at one and grows automatically each turn, there are creatures to summon and actions (spells) to cast, the goal is to reduce your opponent's health to zero, and so on. Just about all the same keywords exist, albeit with different names. As for the differences, there are three major (and a variety of minor) things:

• Deck Construction. There are no hero classes as in Hearthstone. Instead, cards are categorized into five attributes: strength, agility, intelligence, willpower, and endurance. Decks can use cards from any combination of two attributes (plus neutral). Minimum deck size is 50 cards, with a limit of 3 of any one card. Some powerful unique cards are limited to one per deck.
• Lanes. Creatures are summoned into one of two lanes, and creatures can only attack other creatures in the same lane. This adds a level of strategy, effectively creating two battlefields for attack and defense. Lanes can also have special effects that are applied to each creature placed there.
• Runes and Prophecy. In Hearthstone, your hero participates in the battle largely through the use of a specific hero power. In Elder Scrolls: Legends, there are no hero powers, but your player's avatar starts with five runes. At each 5-point damage threshold below your starting 30 health, a rune is destroyed and a card is drawn. If the card drawn has the Prophecy keyword, you can play it right away for free. This provides a bit more balance than in most TCGs, since the player losing the most life gets more cards and thus a better opportunity to recover.

There's an Arena mode in Elder Scrolls: Legends, again very similar to the same Hearthstone feature. You choose a set of two attributes, then pick one card at a time from a random selection of three, until your deck is complete. Then play games against random opponents until you've lost three - the more wins you get in the process, the better the rewards. The major difference from Hearthstone is that you can also play in solo mode, against a variety of AI-driven enemy decks, culminating in a boss battle. In fact, you must play through solo mode at least once before going up against other players.

I've only played for a few days, so I don't have a good feel for how well the free-to-play business model works yet, but my initial impression is favorable. There are quests each day to be completed, giving gold rewards that can be used to buy cards or enter Arena runs. I haven't seen any way to trade cards, but there's a crafting system to get rid of extra cards and fill gaps in your collection (again very similar to Hearthstone).

I'm looking forward to seeing how Elder Scrolls: Legends develops as they move the game forward out of beta. It's got plenty of potential!

MTG: Sealed Event at Game On

Yesterday I made the drive across the state to Game On in Midland to play in an Eldritch Moon sealed deck event.

The store location. I bet that Subway and Little Caesars get a ton of gamer business.

Game On is a well-organized little store in a strip mall in Midland. They have the usual wide variety of gaming items, from lots of card games to board games to video games. There's also a rack of disc golf stuff, and a wall full of movies. Right next to the store is a gaming area, in a second section of the strip mall, with room for around 60 people to sit at gaming tables. Our event had 38 people, and there was still plenty of room for a few other small groups of folks playing other games.

This event was a PPTQ, similar to the event a few weeks ago at Realms Games. The only real difference was the card sets. Now that Eldritch Moon is out, the card pool was four packs of that set and two of Shadows over Innistrad (rather than the 6 Shadows packs of the prior event). We still had to go through all the deck registration and other bookkeeping of a Pro Tour event, which was particularly annoying since one guy took forever registering his deck pool. But eventually the event got underway.

My card pool was pretty good, though not great. Three of my rares were wolves: Ulrich of the Kallenhorde, Spirit of the Hunt, and Silverfur Partisan. I had a reasonable number of green and red creatures, and four red damage spells that served as removal. Unfortunately I didn't have any of the good green removal spells, and enough of my creatures were non-wolves that I couldn't really play any wolf-specific boosts. My white cards were decent, mostly humans, with three removal spells. The other three rares were all black, but the rest of my black cards were pretty bad so they weren't really usable. In the end, I decided on red-green, with mostly wolves and some red removal, over white-green humans with a splash of red for Ulrich. The decision came down to two things: I had one more removal spell with red instead of white, and since I had no mana-fixing to speak of it seemed prudent to stay in two colors.

Round One: My opponent was a teenager playing in his first event other than pre-releases, using a red-white-blue deck with a lot of small creatures and spells. Very nice guy, seemed to be learning his way around the game quite well. He won the first game easily with a horde of quick attacks and pump spells, but in the second game I drew some removal and was able to keep his creatures off the board. The third game went my way because he didn't get any blue mana and had blue cards in hand - the dangers of playing three colors.

Round Two: When I sat down to this match, my opponent said something along the lines of "good to meet the only one here with a lower DCI number." I hadn't noticed before he said that, but it seems we were the only two with 6-digit DCI numbers (the new ones are all much longer) and mine was just slightly lower than his. These things happen when you've been playing (on and off) since the 1990s! I won two games fairly easily because his deck just never got rolling, with some poor draws.

Round Three: I hadn't seen Ulrich at all up until this point, but he came up big in this round. The opposing deck was white/black with some really good cards, including both Thalia, Heretic Cathar and Liliana, the Last Hope. I drew Ulrich in all three games and he did yeoman (yeowolf?) work in all three, beating up opposing creatures and pumping up my guys. I lost the middle game when I was unable to stop Liliana before her emblem came out and I was buried in zombies, but won the other two.

The play area. Yes, that's a baby in the foreground. She slept most of the time, while both parents were playing in the event.

Round Four: My opponent in this round was the guy who sat across from me during card pool registration, meaning that we both knew what the other had to work with. Knowing what was coming didn't help me much, as he just rolled over me with a white-green humans deck. He'd gotten all the human synergy cards and green removal spells that my pool was missing, and my deck never turned up any answers. Lost both games in short order.

Round Five: This was a bit of a strange round as my opponent played red-green in the first game, then swapped out half his deck and played black-green in the second. I suppose the idea is that he believed his black was stronger against my deck, but it didn't really work out that way. I won both games without too much trouble, largely due to getting good draws. In these events, simply having enough land and a good mix of creatures and spells can often lead to victories, and that was the case here.

There was a sixth round, but I didn't actually play it since both my opponent and I were guaranteed to get into the top eight with a draw. This being a Pro Tour-style event, the top eight players then did a booster draft and played a single-elimination playoff.

By the time it was all over, night had fallen and everyone else had gone home.

The draft went fairly well, although I must admit I'm not very good at judging my draft decks. I almost always feel like I've picked a pretty solid group of cards, but other people are doing the same thing! In this one, I went white-black, with a pretty solid group of smaller creatures and a few removal spells, plus several larger creatures that could bring back creatures from my graveyard (a pair of Midnight Scavengers and Bruna, the Fading Light). I also picked up Odric, Lunarch Marshal which paired up nicely with the lifelink, skulk, and flying abilities that were on quite a few of my creatures. I would have liked more removal, but I didn't see a whole lot, which turned out to be because five of the eight players were picking black cards. I hadn't realized it during the draft since there were so many good creatures coming my way, but it was pretty obvious once we started playing!

I won the first round, against an opponent playing green-black. His deck was pretty defensive, with a lot of high-toughness creatures. That included several spiders, not least of which was Ishkanah, Grafwidow. In the first game, we had a board stall going with a ton of creatures on both sides, until I drew Bruna, played her and retrieved Odric from my graveyard, giving my entire army flying (and lifelink, and skulk, with the other creatures I had) for the win. The second game looked exactly the same with an army on either side unable to do much damage, until Ishkanah made an appearance and whittled down my life total with her life-loss ability. After all that, the third game was a bit of an anti-climax when my opponent kept a two-land hand and didn't draw a third for several turns. That was enough time for me to get an insurmountable lead.

The second round of the draft had easily the closest games that I played all day, which is a fitting way to close out the event. My opponent was playing an aggressive red-black deck, with quick small creatures for early damage, and spell interactions with Thermo-Alchemist and Weaver of Lightning later on. I won the first game largely because I drew Faithbearer Paladin, and used that lifelink ability to gain just enough life to stay ahead of his damage. Eventually I got Odric and was able to get through his defenses. In the second game, his deck came together perfectly, dropping the Thermo-Alchemist and then playing a bunch of instant and sorcery spells to hit me repeatedly. The real killer in that game was 3 (!) Prying Questions, which cost me nine damage and three card draws. In the final game, we went back and forth until he was down around 5 life with no cards in hand. I attacked with flyers to knock him down to 1 life, with a sure lethal attack the next turn, and one blocker to stop his biggest guy so I could survive that long. He had one card draw to find an answer, and he did...a removal spell to kill my blocker, then attacked for exactly enough damage to finish me off. It doesn't get any closer than that!

So, in the end I lost in the semi-finals, putting me at 3rd/4th place. It's always nice to win, of course, but that last match was such a good one that I didn't mind the loss. The top 8 all got cash prizes, too, which was a first for me...usually the events that I play in give out product or store credit. Nice to get back my entry fee, plus enough to pay for another few events in the future! Thanks to Game On and the folks who ran the event, who did a great job - it's a long drive up to Midland, but I'll definitely consider it again at some point for another event.

MTG: Eldritch Moon Pre-Release (2HG)

After playing in a solo pre-release event for the newest Magic: The Gathering set, Eldritch Moon, I finished out pre-release weekend with a team event.

My friend Dan suggested that we play in this two-headed-giant format event. I don't remember ever playing in a formal limited team event before, though I'd played the format in casual games. Your team gets two pre-release packs, and you share the card pool to build two decks. The expanded card options means that you can generally build better decks this way than in a solo event, though of course your opposition has the same advantage. Then you play your games as a team, with a shared life pool starting at 30, against another team of two.

I quite like the team format, but it does have one major drawback - you only get to play one game in each round instead of the usual best-of-three. That only makes sense, as games take a lot longer with four people instead of two, but it doesn't give you much chance to recover from a poor draw in one game. Still, I think the fun of playing as a team makes up for it.

Dan and I didn't get any of the really big bomb rares in our card pool, but there was still plenty to work with. We ended up building an aggressive white-red deck for me, and a slower green-black deck for Dan. I'd put pressure on the opposition early, Dan's removal could clear the way for my attackers, and he'd bring out big creatures late for the finishing blow. That plan worked pretty well in a two of our matches, both of which we won. Our draws weren't so good in the other two matches, but we still managed to win one of those.

Round 1: Our opponents were a team of brothers, neither of which had played this format before, so they were learning as they went. Our decks cooperated and went pretty much according to plan, winning fairly easily. Afterward we helped out a bit with some deck construction advice for the brother team - I like the way these casual events allow more experienced players to help newer folks learn as they go along. Hopefully it'll be a good experience for them so they're likely to come back next time!

Round 2: We played a father-son team who had some pretty incredible cards, including both pieces of Brisela, Voice of Nightmares. (They'd pulled off that meld in their prior round.) We were pretty fortunate that our decks worked pretty much according to plan, so we were able to knock out Gisela, The Broken Blade before her sister showed up. Dan finished off the game by melding Chittering Host and coming across with all his menace-enabled creatures for the kill. Always nice to use the signature set mechanic for a cool play like that.

Round 3: Our good run of draws had to run out eventually, and here it was, against a couple of guys that both Dan and I have played against quite a bit in other store events. Both of us had to mulligan (fortunately, the first one is free in team formats), and I had to do it again to drop to six cards. Even then my draw was pretty slow, and Dan was short on lands. Fortunately, our opponents didn't have great draws either, so the game devolved into a standoff. We poked at each other a bit, but nothing major happened until our opponents dropped a Tree of Perdition. I then pulled Malevolent Whispers off the top of my deck - incredibly lucky! - stole the Tree, used it to knock them down to 13 and give the tree something like 27 toughness, before giving it back. That big blow was enough to let us whittle them down and eventually send in the Chittering Host for the kill, before they were able to build up a big enough force to overwhelm our side.

Round 4: Another set of poor draws, but this time the other side wasn't similarly afflicted. This was another father-son team, and they had a really good couple of decks: red-green wolves, and white-black with both removal and creature enhancements. They drew enough removal that our defenses were pretty weak, and got an Always Watching out so we had a hard time making good creature trades or mounting any kind of offense. The swarm of vigilance creatures and wolves finished us off without too much trouble.

That put us at 3-1, and ended up being good enough for third place out of ten teams. We got 12 packs to split up as a prize. I had a lot of fun with this event, and I'll definitely be interested in trying the team event again next time it comes around.

MTG: Eldritch Moon Pre-Release (Solo)

It's pre-release time again for Magic: The Gathering. The new set is called Eldritch Moon, the companion set to Shadows Over Innistrad.

Pre-releases are held officially on Saturday and Sunday, one week before the set is available for purchase. I usually find a tournament running on Saturday afternoon, like I did for Shadows Over Innistrad, but this time I had other plans for that time slot. I also was already committed to play on Sunday, in a 2-headed-giant team event (which I'll post about later). That only left one option for a solo pre-release event: midnight Friday night/Saturday morning. Normally I prefer to avoid those, as I make enough mistakes when I'm not tired, and it isn't great for your sleep schedule. But I made an exception in this case, and it turned out all right.

Even in a smaller city like Grand Rapids, there's a good number of stores holding pre-release events. For the midnight event, I went over to The Gaming Warehouse in Grandville, which at about a 20-minute drive is the closest to me that was holding an event at that time. The turnout was pretty good, 51 participants, although the guys running the event said that was a bit less than they'd expected. With that many people, we played six rounds over almost 8 hours...glad I got a nap in the day before!

Nice art featuring Lilliana on the pre-release pack. Very happy with my promo Ulrich!

I was fairly happy with my card pool. My promo was Ulrich of the Krallenhorde, the new Legendary Werewolf. Always nice to open up a card that I was hoping to get for theme deck play later on. When I also saw that I had Decimator of the Provinces and Flameblade Angel, with a reasonable number of other red and green creature, that pretty much locked up the deck I was going to play. I'd have liked some more removal - I only had one Fiery Temper plus Ulrich's ability - but none of my other color choices were any better. Even my black card pool only had two removal spells. So I built around my big red and green creatures, plus a few combat trick spells. I also splashed in black for a Rise from the Grave and Boon of Emrakul, which was workable since I had a Deathcap Cultivator and Foul Orchard. That put me in the minority, as most people were playing primarily white or black (or both) - the organizers even ran out of Swamps and Plains, and had to proxy some for the late-finishing deck builders.

My final record was four wins, one loss, and one tie. Three of those - two wins and the tie - were very close rounds that could have gone either way. The very first round was against a guy that I'd played before in booster drafts, but everyone else was a new acquaintance. I'd guess that only about a quarter of the people there were folks that I'd played with before, the majority being people who normally play at other places or only come out for pre-release events (much like me, up until a few months ago). Everyone was a good sport and the games were mostly fun, though there were the usual bad draws to contend with that made a few games less than enjoyable. Some of my opponents were a bit less talkative than I'm used to, but that's no surprise when everyone is sleep-deprived!

Round 1: White-Green deck, fairly aggressive with a few fliers. We split the first two games fairly quickly, but the third game took a while. I won it largely because my opponent was a little too aggressive, attacking with a Fiend Binder to allow his fliers to get through. I had just enough life to survive that attack, and my ground forces killed off the Fiend Binder. A few turns later I had built up enough creatures to get through his defenses for the win. I didn't draw any of my rares in this round, but the rest of the deck was strong enough...just barely.

Round 2: White-Blue deck. This opponent was just coming back to playing Magic after a long absence, much like I had recently, so we talked about that a bit as we played. I won two games in fairly short order, despite again never drawing my big rares, and even having a terrible draw that necessitated a mulligan to five cards in one game. The second was closer than I like when he hit me with Startled Awake - one more turn and he'd have been able to mill my deck out, but I had just enough damage to finish it off before that happened.

Event on-going. It was a bit of a tight squeeze with 50 people, but everyone had a place to play.

Round 3: White-Red and Blue-Black decks. I lost the first game in this round to a fairly aggressive White-Red assault, and a fairly poor draw from my own deck that forced another mulligan down to five cards. I was expecting to see the same again, but my opponent decided to switch his entire deck out for a slower Blue-Black build. I finally saw some of my rare cards in the next two games, and won both. I think the White-Red would have been a tougher match-up, but you never know - certainly my draw was a lot better in the second and third games, so I may have won anyway.

Round 4: Green-Black aggro-control. I was pretty heavily outmatched on card pool in this round! Both games were over very quickly, as my opponent drew some fairly small creatures and a whole lot of removal spells. I never really had a chance to go on the offensive at all, and the removal took out my defenses as quickly as I could play them. The final blow in the second game came at the hands of the first meld card that I saw played, a Chittering Host. After the games were over, my opponent showed me his deck, which had twice as much removal in his two colors than I had in my entire card pool. A bit frustrating, but you have to expect such match-ups occasionally in sealed deck events, and my opponent certainly did a good join with his deck-building and play to take advantage.

Round 5: White-Black with lots of tokens. This first game of this round was epic. Both of us built up large armies with no clear advantage: mine mostly wolves and werewolves, his mostly zombie and spirit tokens. I got Ulrich out and was able to use him to kill off a few individual threats (mainly fliers), but all the token creatures made an effective wall to keep me from getting through to his life total. He finally was able to keep a flyer on the board after killing off Ulrich, but then I drew the Rise from the Grave and brought him back to kill it. The stall continued until I finally drew Decimator of the Provinces, and that pumped up my army enough to roll over his wall of zombies. I lost the second game when he got an early flyer that I couldn't draw an answer for. Never got to the third game, as we ran out of time in the round since that first game had taken so long.

Round 6: White-Green aggro. I won this round purely by dumb luck. My opponent got terrible land draws in both games - only green-producing lands in the first game, and only three total lands in the second. I suppose that means he should have taken a mulligan, but from what he told me it sounded like the opening hands weren't too bad. In both cases he had an opening-hand Grapple with the Past that should have helped him get to the necessary lands, but it just didn't work out that way. I was fortunate to have no mana issues in either game, leading to the easy win.

Everyone who played got one additional pack as a door prize, and I was pretty happy to get a Tamiyo, Field Researcher out of it. My 4-1-1 record put me in sixth place, good enough for a prize payout of thirteen Eldritch Moon packs (which I haven't yet opened). I was fortunate to be at the top of the tiebreaker list for those with a 4-1-1 record, since prizes only went to the top eight finishers. My opponent from round 4 finished just ahead of me, which I'm sure helped my tiebreakers.

Prize packs.

The guys at Gaming Warehouse did a good job running the event, and despite everyone's lack of sleep, all the participants seemed to have a good time. I'd still rather play at a more normal hour, but I'm happy to have gone to this particular midnight event. It always helps when you win something, of course, but I was pretty happy with the cards I got even before the prize packs. Overall, a fun time that was worth losing a little sleep.

Infinity Wars

Infinity Wars is an online trading card game with some great ideas, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

I like a lot of the concepts behind Infinity Wars. For starters, the art is gorgeous. Most of the cards have simple animations that you see when zoomed in on a specific card, which is executed well enough that it's not distracting (at least, most of the time). There's also a nicely designed introductory campaign which does a good job of introducing new players to game concepts.

The gameplay uses the concept of simultaneous play, unlike most TCGs. Usually one player takes their turn, then play switches to the other player. In Infinity Wars, both players set up their planned actions, then the game resolves the actions simultaneously. This adds a bluffing aspect to the game that isn't present in the traditional turn format - should I send creatures to defend against my opponent, send them to the attack, or keep them back in the safer support area? Should I cast this ability card that only works on attackers against an opposing creature this turn, or do I expect my opponent will be using that creature on defense? The simultaneous resolution adds depth to the decision making that isn't present in many TCGs.

Another interesting gameplay mechanic is the use of "commanders," which are three cards that you choose to reveal at the start of the game and put in a special command zone. They're playable from there, and the identity of your commanders determine which factions you can use in your deck. Having three cards that are always available from the beginning of the game really influences how you construct and play a deck. It allows you to set up strategies that wouldn't be possible if you had to rely on the right cards coming up in the usual random draw. Of course, there are cards that allow your opponent to disrupt your plans for those commanders as well.

Infinity Wars has two major play modes, constructed games and a limited format called "Rift Runs." Constructed is pretty much the same as any online TCG, with casual and ranked play modes. The game provides several pre-constructed decks that newer players can use, which is a nice touch for those without extensive card collections. Those decks won't have much chance against experienced players, but they're generally fun to play and have coherent themes that a newer player can use as the basis for building their own future decks. The Rift Run format works by choosing one card at a time from random sets of three, until you have a full deck to play. You play games against other players' Rift decks until you've lost three times. Not much different from other online TCGs with similar formats, such as Hearthstone's Arena mode.

Like many online TCGs, Infinity Wars uses a free-to-play business model, but it's not very well implemented. There are two tiers of currency, one earned through play time and the other only available by spending money. Very little of any value is available via the free currency. Entering Rift Runs is about the only thing worth spending points on. The runs themselves can be fun, but the rewards are so paltry that you won't make much progress on a card collection. There are some minor daily rewards for logging in, but no daily or weekly quests to entice players into coming back regularly. If you do spend money in the store, the prices are high enough that you'll need to outlay a good amount to get a significant card collection. It's possible to play without spending much money, but only at the level of a couple of Rift Runs per week and very simple constructed play, and you don't feel like you're making any real progress toward a higher level of play.

There are quite a few technical problems with Infinity Wars. Simply logging in can take a good long time, both in making an initial connection to the server and waiting for it to process your information after logging in. It often takes several minutes of searching for an opponent to start a game (in either constructed or Rift mode). Since the game starts as soon as an opponent is finally matched up, you can't go do something else while the search is on, resulting a lot of time spent staring at the screen while waiting on the game to finally start. The Rift matchmaking is particularly bad, often pairing you with the same opponent in consecutive games, which is truly annoying if you just lost badly to that same deck. I've also had several disconnections in the middle of games, either causing game losses (if it was on my end) or causing me to have to wait for my opponent to time out (if it was on their end).

I like the concepts behind Infinity Wars, particularly the mechanics of the simultaneous turn planning. It's too bad the technical and business model aspects of the game aren't particularly well implemented.

Solforge Revisited

There's been a new Solforge client in the works for a good long time. It was released late in May, and it did not go well.

I've barely paid any attention to Solforge for several months, since I wrote about it last November. My feeling at the time was that the game had some interesting concepts in terms of gameplay, but had some technical problems (such as lack of turn timers). It also suffered from the usual TCG issues where the guy with the bigger collection has a huge advantage, and a few popular deck archetypes dominated the constructed play scene.

The Solforge team sent me an email when they released their new client, so I decided to check it out. It was completely unplayable right after release. Just about anything that could go wrong, did go wrong...slow server response, UI bugs in the client, you name it. Things were so bad that the game was put into a testing mode, where you could play basically for free, but no progress would be saved. That was eventually turned off and everyone's account was restored to the pre-testing state, but the fact that it was necessary gives you an idea of how messed up the new client release was.

They're still working on fixing problems, but the game is playable now. The client certainly looks different, with a cleaner user interface. There are still some interface issues, such as changes to cards made during play not always showing up in the UI, but it mostly works OK. I don't really see a major difference from the old client in terms of functionality, to be honest, but maybe I just don't play enough to see how it's better. I did notice that playing a game against the AI no longer counts as a win for daily reward quests, which is a major step backwards, if it's not a bug.

I was pleased to see that a turn timer is in place, although it's a weird implementation. The default timer is three minutes and forty-five seconds, for the whole game. You have 20 seconds to take each turn before it starts to count down. It seems unnecessarily complex to me, but it's better than nothing.

As far as gameplay, nothing seems to have changed. I tried a few constructed games and got destroyed, by opponents who played mostly a bunch of top-rarity heroic/legendary cards. Draft games were a lot closer, although it would take some practice to learn what strategies are actually good. A few cards seemed different from what I remember, so presumably some balance changes have been made since I last played, but I'd have to spend a lot more time to understand the differences.

I don't see anything in the updated Solforge client that gives me a reason to start playing regularly again, even if you leave aside the terrible launch. If the team is looking to improve the game, they need to get back to the drawing board.

MTG: Further Adventures with Soggy Brains

I've played the Soggy Brains deck a few more times since its first outing. To this point it's winning almost exactly half the time.

Between two more Friday Night Magic evenings and a few pickup games, I've played around a dozen matches with the deck. About half of those were wins. The losses have mostly been instructive, although a couple were just terrible draws...always have to deal with that when playing card games. And to be fair, a couple of the wins were due largely to terrible draws by my opponent, so it evens out.

A couple of the match losses were to Eldrazi decks, which are a pretty tough matchup. I've had losses to both an aggro Eldrazi deck and a ramp version. The aggro version was running creatures like Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher that are really tough to handle in a delay deck like Soggy Brains. Worse, it had Stratus Dancer to counter my Engulf the Shore. The ramp Eldrazi was pretty happy with all my delay tactics, since that just gave it a chance to ramp up to Ulamog, The Ceaseless Hunger and exile my Brain in a Jar and/or lands. I felt a lot better about that matchup once I sideboarded in some counterspells, but didn't get a great draw and lost the second game anyway.

Another loss was to a super-fast Elf deck, which just dumped about half a dozen Elves into play on the first 3-4 turns and then finished the job with Shaman of the Pack. Not much a blue deck can do about that short of countering the Shaman or bouncing all the other Elves when it's played, but my draw didn't support either option. That Elf deck has all kinds of trouble against other control decks, though, so I doubt it will show up too often.

And then there were the losses due to pilot error. Two of those stand out, both against mostly-red aggro decks. In one case, I chose to cast Engulf the Shore to bounce my opponent's creatures before he actually declared his attackers, which gave him opportunity to activate a Needle Spires and hit me for four. That one hit turned out to be the difference when he was able to just barely finish me off just before I got the zombies and Part the Waterveil out for the win. In the other case, my deck was refusing to turn up Rise from the Tides, but I had three Part the Waterveil and a ton of mana. So I used the awaken cost to make a 6/6 land and attacked with it for three turns...which adds up to 18 damage, not 20. Basic math fail. Would have won that if I'd just used the awaken option twice, which I could afford, but just didn't think about. Those losses are frustrating, but good learning experiences.

This isn't the only deck running around with waterlogged zombies. Another mono-blue version without the Brain in a Jar and a blue-black version with the Brain were played at Grand Prix Manchester. I'd considered the blue-black version myself, but without cards like Languish and Dark Petition it's not really feasible. Maybe if I find someone willing to trade them someday. Anyway, it's nice to see that the zombies-from-the-surf concoction has some viability even at high levels of competition.

MTG: Sealed Event at Realms Games

I went down to Realms Games in Elkhart, IN this weekend to play in a sealed deck event. It's about a 90 minute drive. Not something I'd want to do regularly, but as an occasional thing it's OK. I used to drive the same route just about every week, when I was working as a consultant for various companies in northern Indiana many years ago.

Realms Games is located in a strip mall, with room for probably 40 or so players at gaming tables and an overflow area next door. They have some video game machines set up in the rear, too. It looks a bit unfinished, with some bare walls and flooring, but everything necessary is in place and the area looks well-kept.

The event was a sealed deck PPTQ, which stands for Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifier. People hoping to play Magic professionally can start with these events, where the winner gets an invite to a Regional Pro Tour Qualifier. I'm not likely to qualify for the Pro Tour, and not sure I'd go even if I did, but I do like playing the sealed deck format. Outside of pre-release events, there's not a lot of other sealed deck events around.

This being a Pro Tour feeder event, there was a good amount of bookkeeping involved. Everyone pairs up, and each player watches the other open their packs (to ensure no one cheats by adding or removing cards). Then you have to write down all the cards on a tally sheet. Once your deck is built, you use the same sheet to indicate which ones you're using. It's a bit tedious, but it's good to have these kind of rules in pro events. We had a total of 26 players, and played 5 rounds.

My card pool was decent, but not great. I didn't have any "bombs" that were so obviously good that I'd have to play them. My biggest creature was The Gitrog Monster, but the rest of the green cards in the pool were terrible. The rest of my rares were serviceable, but not great. I ended up with a black/white deck, and a couple of green mana sources so I could run the monster.

The first two rounds went very well for me, both 2-1 wins. Only one of those games was decided by terrible land draws. I should have known that meant I was due for some bad luck on that front, and indeed I lost the next round 2-0 with not enough land in either game. Although it might not have mattered, since my opponent drew and played Archangel Avacyn in both games. I managed to kill her once, but without enough land I couldn't keep up with everything else coming at me.

In the fourth round, I made a mistake that cost me a chance at a top eight finish. My opponent was playing green/black, and he had a ton of creatures that were about to kill me. I could kill him next turn if I survived, but I didn't have enough blockers. Only after I'd already lost did I realize that I had a Dauntless Cathar in the graveyard, which I could have used on my prior turn to make one more blocker and survive long enough. I also lost the second game, which again was very close, although I don't think I made mistakes that time. In any event, had I not made that mistake, I'd at least have had a chance at a third game to win the match, which would have put me in top eight contention.

So no top eight, but I still had a good time. I didn't get to play in the fifth round since my opponent never showed up. He probably decided to drop but forgot to write it on his score sheet. That counts as a win, so I finished 12th out of 26. A reasonable showing, taking in account a fairly mediocre card pool and one big play mistake. I'd consider doing another event like this, if the opportunity presents itself.

MTG: Soggy Brains

It was probably inevitable that I'd eventually decide to play some Standard-format Magic: The Gathering. I haven't done so in years, but most of the recent booster drafts and Commander-format games that I've played have been fun, so Standard is the logical next step.

The main reason I haven't played much Standard is that I don't have the cards, and don't want to spend the money required to get them. So when I decided to build a Standard deck, my primary requirement was that it use cards I already had, or could get easily. The deck also had to have some kind of coherent theme, because it's just more fun that way.

From the booster drafts, I already had two Brain in a Jar and two Engulf the Shore. That's a good start toward this budget mono-blue deck. After the last booster draft that I won (or technically, tied for first), I used the store credit reward to buy most of the cards that I didn't have already. I was able to trade for the remaining rares, which included four Part the Waterveil, pretty easily.

So the cost wasn't an issue, and the deck certainly has a theme. There's lots of water, with all the blue spells - particularly Engulf the Shore, which keeps you alive by sending the opponent's creatures back to their hand. You have the Brain in the Jar, which is obviously a soggy brain. It's a pretty key part of the deck, letting you cast spells for free and at instant speed. (Plus, who doesn't like saying "I put a counter on my brain" every turn?) The deck wins by casting Rise from the Tides to create a whole bunch of (waterlogged) zombies. Usually this is followed by Part the Waterveil to take an extra turn, allowing the zombies to proceed to eat your opponent's brain. "Soggy Brains" all around.

My deck list is only slightly different from the one in the link. I use Compelling Deterrence instead of Disperse - same cost, same effect, but cooler zombie theme. Also I have Broken Concentration instead of Void Shatter simply because I had the former available but not the latter. I put a couple of those Broken Concentrations into the main deck instead of two Grip of the Roil, under the assumption that I was likely to need an occasional counterspell more than additional creature delay.

I took the Soggy Brains to Friday Night Magic over in Lowell recently. A fairly small turnout of just seven players, perfect for playing a budget theme deck. My first opponent had a blue/white Spirits deck, which really didn't have much of a chance against all the ways I had to bounce stuff back to his hand. He did get me down to 2 life in the second game, but it wasn't enough. I was able to cast Rise from the Tides for 10+ zombies in each game, followed by Part the Waterveil to take another turn and send them all after his brain.

The second round was much more of a challenge. My opponent was playing black/white, with a good amount of control and life gain. We only played two games due to time constraints, each winning one. In the first game, my deck was moving along, putting counters on a Brain in a Jar, until he got an Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim to get rid of it. I was still able to delay for several more turns, and finally had enough land to cast Rise from the Tides for 11 zombies plus a Part the Waterveil. I had to cast two more Part the Waterveil to do enough damage to overcome all the life he'd gained, plus the Archangel Avacyn he was using to block one zombie on each attack. The second game went his way after he drew a bunch of early hand destruction, causing me to discard a bunch of useful cards. Never was able to get going after that.

My third opponent was another black/white deck, but this one had much more control. Lots of hand and creature destruction, with planeswalkers and various useful creatures to do damage. He won the first game, with the big blow being an early Ob Nixilis Reignited that I wasn't able to answer. Hard to play a blue deck when you're losing life for every card draw! I won the second, in large part due to my sideboarding in a whole lot of counterspells. I never drew a Brain in a Jar, but with all the counters I was able to stall until I had enough mana to cast both Rise from the Tides and Part the Waterveil on the same turn. Mage-Ring Network helped a lot with that as well. The third game I won almost by default when he kept a two-land opening hand, and didn't draw a third land for several turns. That gave me an insurmountable lead in mana production that led to a whole lot of zombies a few turns later.

So all told, I played a total of seven games, winning five. I don't expect Soggy Brains will be giving any Pro Tour players nightmares, but it sure was fun to play in a casual Friday Night Magic setting.

Hearthstone: All Hail Yogg-Saron

Being a digital TCG, Hearthstone can implement random effects that a physical game would have a difficult time duplicating. Nothing demonstrates this better than Yogg-Saron, Hope's End.

I don't actually own a Yogg-Saron (at least, not yet) as he hasn't shown up in any of my packs, and I don't want to spend the dust crafting him when there's still other legendaries on my wish list. And yet, several of the most memorable games that I've played since the Whispers of the Old Gods release have featured old Hope's End.

Recently, I was playing my Warlock deck with Reno Jackson and C'Thun. I've mentioned before that I tend to play Arena more than constructed games, but every once in a while I get some interesting card in an Arena or Brawl award pack that just begs to be played. That happened here, when I pulled Lord Jaraxxus from a Brawl reward. So I built this deck, which has a whole lot of stall effects, killing the opponent's minions and staying alive until I can end the game. That usually happens via C'Thun or Lord Jaraxxus.

I was matched up against a Mage, and we had the most boring first few turns ever. Neither of us had a cheap minion to cast, and my hand was full of useless minion removal, as I assume my opponent's was. Eventually we each summoned a few minions, which were immediately demolished by the other side. Around turn 8, things turned up a notch with each of us playing Emperor Thaurissan (died immediately in both cases) and various other larger minions. They all died, but it was taking a toll on each of our hand sizes.

Then I had a few really good turns, which put me into a good position to win. Brann Bronzebeard plus Twin Emperor Vek'lor (that's three 4/6 taunt guys), the Mage countered by freezing them with Blizzard, then my C'Thun hit the table for a nice round 20 damage. A few turns later, the life-saving Mage secrets ran out, I had played Lord Jaraxxus, and my board was full of a horde of 6/6 infernal demons. And then...Yogg-Saron.

At this point, the game is a complete roll of the dice. The Mage had cast a ton of spells through the game, so Yogg-Saron was going to throw a ton of random effects. There are more spells that do damage to "opponent" than to "any target", so my side was going to take more damage...but I had more health and more minions. We sat through a good dozen random effects that killed minions, froze various targets, hit me several times....and then the dice went my way. A Mortal Strike hit my opponent and finished him off.

I got lucky that time, but I suspect that Mage wins more often than not when getting that deep into the game. If I hadn't already cleared out the various life-saving Mage secrets, I very likely would have ended up on the short end. I've seen several other similar Mage decks recently, as well as a Warrior version. Whoever wins, those kind of games stick in your memory.

After a long, drawn-out battle, when all looks to be lost...call on Yogg-Saron. He may not always be on your side, but the end will definitely be memorable.

MTG Commander

As I've mentioned in previous posts about booster drafting, I've been playing some more Magic: The Gathering lately. One game store where I've been playing is Big Kidz Games, and they host a Commander format game night each Thursday. I've attended the last few weeks.

The Commander format uses decks with exactly 100 cards (as opposed to the usual minimum-of-60), and it's a singleton format. That means you can only have one of each non-basic land card in the deck (as opposed to the usual limit of four). Each deck must have a "commander" legendary creature, and all the other cards in the deck have to share at least one of the commander's colors. You can use cards from the older sets, and very few cards are banned. Each player starts at 40 life (instead of 20), so quick damage isn't very reliable, allowing for more long-term strategies.

I really like the Commander format. It's tailor-made for a collection like mine: a bunch of cards from many different sets, usually with less than four of any particular card (especially rares). I can use my old cards which wouldn't be legal in a Standard or even Modern format event, and there's no disadvantage to having only one of a particular card. The commander-color restrictions encourage theme decks, which is one of my favorite things to do in deck construction anyhow. And the format is often played multiplayer, which adds some extra strategy (and chaos) to the way you play the game out.

My current favorite Commander deck is Gorgon themed. I used Sisters of the Stone Death as my original commander, though I've recently switched to Pharika, God of Affliction since it's much cheaper to play. Still fits the theme, though, which is lots of creatures with deathtouch, snakes, hydras, and of course gorgons. I even have a Gorgon life counter to go with it, from back in the Ravnica block days. The hydras are a bit of a stretch, but I ran out of gorgons and snakes to use, and I figure it's close enough. It's pretty terrible in a one-on-one matchup, but works great in multiplayer since no one wants to attack the guy with a bunch of poisonous snakes just waiting to kill anything sent their way.

The format has its drawbacks, of course. Most games take a long time to finish, particularly if there are more than four players. Shuffling your hundred-card deck can be a challenge, and you tend to do it often. Some commanders are a lot more powerful than others. The singleton format means you can't rely on drawing a particular card to disrupt the other players. And that can be a really bad thing when one player gets some kind of combo going.

Most of those issues are mitigated if you're playing with a good group of folks, though. Playing a long time isn't a big deal with good people. Super-powerful decks tend to be used once and then never again, since no one is interested in playing once they see it pop up again. And in multi-player, the chances are pretty good at least one person will be able to disrupt whatever crazy combo you're trying to pull off.

It's nice to play a format of MTG that doesn't require buying a whole bunch of new cards, lets me use my old stuff, and works well for multiplayer. And also tends to attract players looking more for an interesting game than just a quick win. Commander is great when I'm looking to play something outside of limited formats. 

Hearthstone: Arena of the Old Gods

Typically, I'll play only one or two of Hearthstone's Arena runs per week, focusing mostly on playing the right classes and deck types to complete daily quests. I've been doing more than usual for the last week or so, though, after the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion release.

Doing almost every daily quest for quite some time now has allowed me to build up quite a bit of gold (that's the in-game currency). I could spend a bunch of it on packs when a new set releases, but I generally prefer to do Arena runs instead. It costs 150 gold for the Arena run vs only 100 for a pack, but you're also guaranteed to get a pack at the end of your Arena run. And with the latest game update, that pack is always from the most recent expansion. So the net cost for an Arena run is only 50 gold, if you would have bought the Old Gods pack anyway.

I like the Arena format enough that it's worth the 50 gold just for the opportunity to play. Better yet, if you win enough games, the additional rewards will be enough to cover the cost. I'm not good enough (or possibly, lucky enough) to always win that much, but occasionally a good run will net quite a bit more. So on average, I generally come close.

I've played every class but Warrior at least once in the last week, and Shaman most often. 

Since the release, my results have been all over the place. Each run continues until you've lost 3 games, so winning less than 3 means you've lost more than you've won. Of the first 10 Arena runs I did after the expansion's release, 7 were 1 or 2 wins. That's a pretty terrible showing, even taking into consideration the learning curve with new cards. My last 5 attempts, though, have all been 5 or more wins. I'm sure some of that is experience helping, but I think the largest part of the difference is just dumb luck.

Said luck mostly revolves around which cards are offered during the deck-building phase. In my best two recent runs (Mage 8 wins, Shaman 9 wins), I was able to collect some of the best available cards for each deck. For the mage, some solid minions combined with removal like 2 Flamestrikes, 2 Flame Lances, Twilight Flamecaller, and Fireball - plenty to clear enemy minions out of the way for my own to attack. For the shaman, Lightning Storm, Forked Lightning, Hex, etc for removal, in combination with powerful minions like Fire Elemental, Flamewreathed Faceless, and Thing from Below. I still had to play the cards correctly during the games, of course, but a good portion of those wins were picked up in the building phase when the good cards came my way.

I still have quite a bit of gold stashed, so I'll likely keep playing multiple Arena runs for a while longer. I'm still getting mostly new cards in the Old Gods packs (well, not commons, but the higher rarities). Eventually I'll have most of the non-legendary Old Gods cards, and then it'll be time to cut back to focusing on quest completion again.

Additional Recent MTG Booster Drafts

I had a good time with the Magic: The Gathering booster drafts from a couple of weekends ago, so I've attended a few more.

These events were at two other stores in the area, different from the two in my previous post. Alpha Players runs drafts on Wednesdays, and they're closer to me than the other stores - only about 15 minutes away. They have an interesting mix of inventory: half the store is Magic and other card/board games, and half is disc golf. Plus a mix of collectibles, like diecast Nascar cars. On Friday nights, Big Kidz Games has drafts after their Friday Night Magic event ends. It doesn't even start until 10 PM, so the playing isn't usually done until around 2:30 AM. They still have good turnouts, though.

In the earlier drafts, I was pretty surprised to finish as high as I did, considering how little I play Magic in a competitive environment. So it's not too surprising that I haven't been doing as well in more recent events. In one session, I didn't win a single match in the three rounds that I played. It's not as bad as it sounds, though, because all three rounds were very close. Two games to one in two of the three matches, and at least one loss in all three cases could have gone either way, depending on what was drawn in the last two or three turns. Which says something about how close these events can be! I also tied for second in another draft, and took eighth (of twenty-five) in my most recent foray.

It's still been plenty of fun, though. Well, mostly. Occasionally you get a match where your deck just doesn't want to cooperate and your opponent just steamrolls you, and those aren't a lot of fun. Usually that happens when you get a terrible shuffle with too many/too few lands, and have to take the mulligan option on your opening hand several times. Fortunately that's pretty rare. Most of the time, at least one game in each round is interesting and requires some thought about how to play for the win.

And of course, there's the new cards obtained in the draft. I was fortunate to pull an Archangel Avacyn in one draft and Nahiri, the Harbinger in another, though I couldn't use either in the actual draft since my other cards weren't the right colors. Nice additions to the collection, though. And sometimes things work out to actually use the big cards, such as the Thing in the Ice from my most recent event. Fit nicely into the blue/black deck I was drafting, and it even won me a couple of games.

Out of all the places I've played in these booster draft events, I think I like Big Kidz Games best. There's a nice big play area, they have a lot of board games and such in addition to the Magic stock, and most of the folks that show up there are pretty laid back (as opposed to hyper-competitive). The late night draft times don't bother me too much, since sleeping in on Saturday morning isn't a problem. I probably won't go every week, but I'll likely be back a few times.