Naming Vampire

Hi everybody!

Okay, it's been a few days, so a few things have happened since last I blog'd.

M14 prerelease! It's a thing that happened. I was originally slated to only judge that weekend, at three different events at Mox Mania, but I ended up just doing the Friday Midnight event, and the Sunday Two-Headed Giant. So, my unbroken string of playing in prereleases continues! I think. I dunno, I may have missed one somewhere, actually. Anyway, I got to play, yay!

The two events I judge'd at were pretty uneventful. We had a great turnout for the Friday one, I think 38 players. Which was more than we were expecting. So, yay! I was originally going to have another judge helping me out, but I allowed him to play instead. Which prompted a tsk tsk from the L2 who assigned him to me, informing me after the fact that the whole point was to get me used to having an underling. Oups. :( Well, next time.

But yeah, it went pretty smoothly. Nothing really weird happened. Players seemed happy. Planeswalkers and Mutavaults were cracked. Fun was had. Yay, Magic!

So I got to play in the Sunday Sealed event with about a dozen other players. It was a nice low-key event for the L0 to get experience with. I started opening my pool, and my rares were:

* (Lifelink Sliver)
* Xathrid Necromancer
* Liliana of the Dark Realms
* Scavenging Ooze
* (Green Mythic Enchantment)
* (Green Mythic Hydra)

Whatttttttttttttttt. So I played green/black. :) My gameplan was to ramp up into my bomb rares/mythics and WIN. I also had some supporting things too, like Sengir Vampire, some ramp, and a few value creatures (Corpse Hauler). But I had little in the way of early-game or removal, and it cost me. I ended up going 2-2, losing to a tempo-oriented Slivers deck, and a deck with the Mythic Dragon and Ajani (and I failed to draw green mana). I traded all that money stuff for a black-bordered Spanish Sylvan Library and a Strionic Resonator. Okay!

So I got to play some Standard this week, and that's got me pretty excited. I decided against the MURKA deck and ended up playing the black/red/white midrange deck, aka Blood Baron:

Lands (25):
2 Cavern of Souls
3 Godless Shrine
4 Isolated Chapel
4 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Clifftop Retreat

Creatures (17):
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Boros Reckoner
2 Olivia Voldaren
4 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
2 Obzedat, the Ghost Council
1 Aurelia, the Warleader

Spells (17):
3 Pillar of Flame
3 Searing Spear
2 Mizzium Mortars
2 Dreadbore
1 Rakdos Charm
1 Rolling Temblor
4 Warleader's Helix
1 Blasphemous Act
1 Toil // Trouble

Sideboard (15):
1 Pillar of Flame
1 Mizzium Mortars
1 Blasphemous Act
1 Rolling Temblor
2 Sin Collector
1 Rakdos's Return
1 Pithing Needle
1 Underworld Connections
2 Rest in Peace
1 Rhox Faithmender
2 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded

Yes! Tibalt is back. ^_^ I know, he's terrible, but I couldn't resist. Anyway, I was pretty excited to try out my playset of Blood Barons, and, well ... let's see what happened:

What.

Round 1: vs. Red/Black/White Homebrew.
So .. uh ... Strange deck this was. He opened on Jar of Eyeballs. Let that sink in for a minute: Jar of Eyeballs. It's a jar ... that has eyeballs in it. I think his next play was Assemble the Legion. Oh, and some Faithless Lootings, pitching Tragic Slips and maybe lands? I played some Vampires and stuff, which got Blasphemous Act'd, but Obzedat helped me recover and finish the job. I figured he was some kind of weird Stuffy Doll combo, so I planned for that. The next game was actually kinda like an Aristocrats variant, with a bunch of Doomed Travelers and Falkenrath Nobles (yes, Noble, not Aristocrat) and a Heartless Summoning (killing his own 1/1 creatures ... oups). He tried getting me with a Sire of Insanity, but Searing Spear put a stop to that particular shenanigan. Then I think he had another one, but I had a Blood Baron to finish quickly thereafter. Odd deck that probably had too much going on to be really competitive, but it looked like a lot of fun to play. It looked like a more combo-y version of The Aristocrats, with lots of death-trigger stuff (especially Morbid). Probably too many moving parts, but the guy was great to play with, and I always appreciate a good homebrew. Win, 2-0. Record: 1-0.

Mustard counters!

Round 2: vs. Jund Midrange.
Okay, a more typical deck. I don't remember exactly how game one went, but I seem to recall tossing around lots of burn and removal at his sundry Olivias, Garruks, and/or Thragtusks. I probably won with an Obzedat or something. I sided in Tibalt (yes!), Assemble the Legion, Mortars, and ... something else. Rakdos's Return? Sure. Anyway, he had me on the ropes for a while, hovering around 2-4 life, when Assemble the Legion pretty much single-handedly took over the game. He lacked a Wolf Run, so my musters chump blocked his Beasts for a few turns until I was able to start trading with them, and then start regaining life with ... something. Blood Baron, probably. Or Obzedat. Or both. Good times. I think I want a second Assemble in my board, because the card is rockin not unlike Dokken. Win, 2-0. Record: 2-0.

Counter target Blasphemous Act. Oh, and have a Human token, too.

Round 3: vs. Green/White Humans.
"Cavern, naming Human, Champion, go." "Oh. This deck." Well, it wasn't the Naya Blitz deck I thought it was. But regardless, I basically tossed burn at all of his creatures, and then Blood Barons took over. The second game was close, because he had a Rootborn Defenses for my Blasphemous Act. But he didn't have anything for the second one I also had. Then Blood Barons took over. Win, 2-0. Record: 3-0.

Round 4: Intentional Draw.
Well that was that! I never got a chance to actually play the guy, since we were both keen to get home to our respective significant others. Turns out the guy has only been playing again for a couple months or something like that, having not played since Unlimited (!). So yeah, it's pretty cool to get another old timer back into the game. :) Still really wish I'd have not tossed all my old cards. :/ Oh well. I got new cool cards now. :)

So yeah! This deck is pretty sweet. I had a blast playing it. It's basically 1/3 lands, 1/3 burn, and 1/3 Blood Barons. Cavern-Naming-Vampire was a common play, but I did get to name Advisor one time too. I kinda wanted to name something silly at some point (like Badger), but I never got that chance. Oh well, next time. Anyway! Some thoughts on the deck:

* Gameplan was straight-forward, yet effective: Burn early, Blood Barons late.
* Mizzium Mortars is a blowout if I can overload it. It's still fine if I "merely" 1-for-1 with it early, too. Sweet card.
* Warleader's Helix is pretty sweet. It hit planeswalkers, it hit midrange creatures, it hit players, and it games me 4 life! Card was very worthy of being a 4-of.
* Obzedat and Aurelia are kinda Blood Barons #5-7, but they each did their own thing pretty well. I only got Aurelia out once, and though she ended up dying to a Vampire Nighthawk, she did a good job of ushering Blood Baron in for a 16-point life swing to seal the game. Obzedat was great at closing out games, too.
* Holy crap Assemble the Legion did a lot of work in that Jund matchup. It turned a losing position into a "not dead yet" position into a "holy crap I'm stabilizing position" to a "huh, looks like you're outta creatures" position into a "overrun with mustard" position. That's one card. I gotta find room for another one. So much mustard.
* Boros Reckoner didn't really get much of a chance to do his thing. Most of the time, he was the first or second threat I deployed, so he was the first one to eat a removal spell. That's fine. That's one less removal for my vampires.

I'm not sure where to take this deck moving forward. M14 might add a few interesting things, like the color hosers, or Doom Blade. The Archangel of Thune sounds kinda sweet, I suspect that it'd be better if I had more creatures to put counters on. Maybe this isn't the deck for her. Fiendslayer Paladin could be good, especially if I get several of them (and/or Boros Reckoners) out. Lifebane Zombie could be good as an Appetite for Brains-on-a-stick kinda card to bring in against W/G fatty decks. Something to think about!

Not much is going on at the moment. I've got some Judge stuff coming up, working at a PTQ in Green Bay, and a SCG event in Milwaukee. That'll be fun, and great opportunity, too. I definitely want to get more Competitive experience in. I still don't feel 100% confident doing policy-related stuff quite yet, and the more I see and deal with stuff, the faster I'll learn. Fun!

Okay, well that's it for now. Thanks for reading!

Fiend Blood .. Winning!

Hi everybody!

So this card's terrible, rigth?

So I played at Mox's win-a-box thingy this week, but I didn't get a chance to throw together a UWR deck, so I just played my GRUUL SMASH deck. And a funny thing happened: I found a matchup to bring in Tibalt against! Jund/Midrange! They spend their first 4-5 turns just farting around and setting stuff up and sandbagging their sequence of big dorks. If they let Tibalt live, and I get him up to 6, I'll steal their big dorks and beat them with them.

So, I recklessly looted my own hand, ticking Tibalt up to 5, and then blew up my opponent's brain in his face! My opponent counted out his hand: 6 cards. 6 life. And I couldn't help but to laugh with maniacal (and perhaps slightly unsportsmanlike) glee. The rest of the store looked at me with a mixture of awe and pity. U MAD, MOX?

Unfortunately, the rest of the night didn't go quite so well. I won another match, and lost the other two, finishing just outside "the money" at 2-2 with mediocre tiebreakers (I'm pretty sure the guy who Tibalt burned out dropped after that humiliation).

Aurelia: guild leader in chief? I don't really know what that means.

So yeah, I think I'll put together that MURKA deck. Hey, yeah, it was the 4th yesterday, so ... MURKA!

MURKA.

Yay, Magic!

So, busy Magic weekend! I did a whole heck of a lot of Judging, and I loved every minute of it.

I don't remember if I mentioned this in my last post, but I got a regular weekly gig, judging FNM at Mox Mania. I'm pretty excited about that. It'll be lots of experience, and lots of fun. I'm getting to know more of the Mox regulars, and they're pretty great folks. So this Friday was the first time for me running it, and it was pretty cool. I got a few questions, and got to chat with a few of the players, a couple of things I love doing.

Saturday was a small, yet important rung on my rhetorical "Judge Ladder." I was a member of a team working the TCGplayer 5K this weekend. I was on the Deck Checks team, but of course I didn't spend 10 hours just doing that (after mid-round deck checks, we're free to roam the floor and take calls). Then, about halfway through the event, I got relegated to Side Events duty. That basically meant babysitting the pair of 8-person events, one DGR Block Draft and one Win-A-Box Standard. That basically meant just watching people play and making random small talk. I think I answered one or two actual game-related rules questions between both events. But hey, somebody's gotta do it, might as well be the new guy, amirite? :)

It occured to me as I was leaving the event: at that point, over the last 24 hours, I had been on Judge Duty more than not. I'm okay with that. :) My feet .. maybe not so much. :/

But it was lots of fun. I got to meet some other judges, and everyone I met was pretty great. I took a few calls, and only stumbled on a couple of small-ish things. I did have to intervene in one match when I witnessed a borderline Improperly Determining the Winner of a Match situation. Mr. Head Judge investigated, and let them off with a very stern Caution.

So yeah, quick soapbox mode:

Do not improperly determine the winner of a match! This means either you play it out, or just concede or intentionally draw. You can't roll a die, flip a coin, play rock-paper-scissors, play Mario Kart, flip over the top card of your library, etc. And don't make any offer of a draw or concession based on any kind of incentive. Splitting prizes is fine, drawing/conceding is fine, but they CANNOT be contingent on each other. The two must be strictly separate. "Wanna split prizes?" "Okay." "Wanna ID?" "Cool." This is perfectly acceptable. "I'll ID with you if we can split prizes" is not okay. If you have questions, call a judge. That's what we're here for!

Okay, speaking of which, has everybody seen this crazy card?

What??

Copy a triggered ability! So what the heck is a triggered ability? It's basically anything that looks like this: "When [some event occurs], [do some game action]." Both abilities of Thragtusk are triggered abilities ("When Thragtusk enters the battlefield ..." and "When Thragtusk leaves the battlefield ..."). Doubling Season is actually not a triggered ability .. it's a static ability that generates a replacement effect ("If [something would happen], [do something else] instead."). Avacyn's Pilgrim's ability isn't a triggered ability .. it's an activated ability (written "[Cost(s)]: [effect]".).

The fact that I had to spend a paragraph describing what a triggered ability is shows that I'm probably going to get asked quite a few questions about this card. To which I say, cool! I love answered rules questions. If I don't know the answer, I love finding out the answer. For example, how does this thing affect Isochron Scepter?

Uh....

Honestly, I didn't know at first. It was pretty clear to me that you could exile two cards with the two different Imprint abilities. But what happens when you activate its second ability? It says "copy the imprinted card" ... singular.

Turns out, the singular-ness of that wording is a red herring. The word "card" in this case is shorthand for "card or cards." So, you get both of em! It's similar to what happens when you get two Angel tokens from Geist of Saint Traft via Doubling Season. You exile both of them. A more precise wording would be "exile all tokens created by this ability"), but that's too wordy for an already-wordy ability. It's also confusing when the plural version would almost never matter in actual games. So, just "exile that token." Likewise, "copy the imprinted card" is shorthand for "copy all imprinted cards." I'm not sure it's even possible to Imprint two cards onto Isochron Scepter right now ...

Oh, I got to play this weekend too. I didn't have much going on Sunday afternoon, so I dusted off my Modern Delver deck, added a few new toys (Vendilion Clique in the main, Electrolyze and Spell Snare in the side), and gave it a whirl. I had a lot of fun playing and hanging out and watching others play. We actually got a fully-sanctioned event to fire, even! I think we had 11 players. I ended up going 3-1, losing to a Goblins deck. I can deal with a few of the pests biting my kneecaps, but not a whole bunch of them coming every single turn. D: But anyway. I also beat a Junk deck that got bad draws, a casual Simic Merfolk/Wizard deck, and a Scapeshift deck. And I got to answer rules questions. :) I love answering rules questions! :D I'm a nerd, I know ... But yeah, I also got to watch someone win through a fully active Urzatron engine with multiple Eldrazi out. It looked like he had a combo of Eternal Witness and Cryptic Command going to tap down his monsters and bounce his Witness. Fun! Reminds me of that weird deck that a Japanese pro player played last year. It looked like a lot of fun, and I wanna try playing something like that.

Yay, Magic! :)

Turn Em Sideways

Well, I went for a change of pace last week at Standard FNM. I played my Judge Duty Aggro deck, even though I wasn't actually on Judge Duty. I just felt like something different. Plus, I had lent out my playset of Voice of Resurgence, so .. yeah. Anyway, here's my list, give or take:

Lands (21):
4 Stomping Grounds
4 Rootbound Crag
2 Temple Garden
10 Mountain
1 Kessig Wolf Run

Doodz (28):
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Stromkirk Noble
4 Flinthoof Boar
4 Lightning Mauler
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Boros Reckoner
3 Hellrider
2 Ghor-Clan Rampager

Spells (10):
1 Rancor
4 Pillar of Flame
4 Searing Spear
1 Domri Rade

Sideboard (15):
3 Skullcrack
2 Domri Rade
1 Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded
3 Ash Zealot
3 Traitorous Blood
3 Reckless Waif

Okay, so I don't ever actually bring in Tibalt against anything. I wanted to bring him against Control, but nobody really plays Control anymore, and I have a few slots for them anyway (Waif, Domri).

Well anyway .. how did it go? Quite smashingly, in fact. I ended up 3-1. I lost to a Bant deck, maybe control, maybe midrange, maybe somewhere between the two? I thought he was on Midrange or Prime Speaker, so I overextended like a boss .. right into his Verdict. And he had all the Charms and 'Tusks and Angels and all the stuff that shuts down Aggro. That was pretty rough. I also had a close match against a W/U Humans deck that seemed to come down to who drew better

All in all, it was fun to play something different. I enjoy surprising people at the local shop with my abrupt changes in strategy.

What's next? Judging. And it's going to become a much more regular thing most likely. My L2 is stepping down from Judging FNM at Mox Mania, and it looks like I'm going to be taking that over. So .. cool, regular gig! :) I'm looking forward to it. Even if it means I lose a little flexibility in what I do on Fridays. But I spend just about every Friday at FNM somewhere anyway, so ... yeah. Then I'm also working the TCGplayer Open this weekend in Madison, and I'm hoping to get on staff for SCG Minneapolis coming up.

This weekend I also hope to try some more Modern. The fellow I lent my Voices to has expressed interest in trading for them. I'm hoping to be able to get some of the Modern staples that I need to play some kind of U/x Control deck (probably U/W/R). If not, I'll just toss in a Spell Snare and Electrolyze into my Delver deck and wing it. :) Fun!

Okay, that's it for now. Thanks for reading!

TIMMAH!!1

Hi everybody!

Yeah, so I've been waiting for a particular moment for about 4 years now since starting to play Magic again. Last night I finally achieved it. And ... I'll talk about it in a little bit.

Return to sender.

So! I played Junk Rites again at F and/or M last week. It was alright. I went 3-1. I don't remember the matches I won, but I remember losing to a B/G deck. It was .. kinda controlling? But it had some midrange capabilities, too, with Geralf's Messenger and Thragtusk. I don't remember what went wrong, but I think it was a combination of just enough disruption and steady pressure that did me in. Mostly Geralf's Messenger from what I remember. Jerk.

Also, Acidic Slime is good against the Maze's End deck.

I think I might be about ready to move on from this deck. I'm not sure what to do next. That U/W/R Control deck looks pretty sweet. I love most of the cards in that deck. Boros Reckoner, AEtherling, Sphinx's Revelation, Supreme Verdict, Turn // Burn, etc. We'll see. :)

Okay, so I did something last night I've been threatening to do for months. I finally had an impetus to do it. Namely, my new toy:

Foil, too!

Is this the ultimate Timmy/Johnny card or what? So what did I do with this stupid crazy card? Well, I played some multiplayer with friends last night, and I cast it on turn four in one game. Then I cast this on turn five:

Yummy!

Followed by this:

This one was foil, too!

... devouring a Goblin token, resulting in an 8/8. Cool! Next turn, I got eight Saproling tokens, and followed up with one of my favorite creature of all time:

TIMMAH!!!!1

Pass turn! :D Upkeep, trigger. Each babby dragon eats four Saprolings, and I end up with two 17/17 babby dragons. TIMMAH!!1 Then the next turn I get two more babbys (one of them eating a Goblin token to make it a 5/5, and the other one sadly going hungry). Then she got Terminate'd, and the larger of the babbys all got Angel of Serenity'd. And then I got killed before I could do much else. Frowning face.

Okay, I didn't really frowning face. I was so happy to finally play Doubling Season in my Devour deck. I've been eyeing that card ever since I discovered it 4 years ago when I first put together that Devour deck. But, you know .. $20 card (then $25, then $30). Couldn't really justify shelling out cash for a casual-only card. But  ... recently I just did it anyway. Heck with it. I want DOUBPLE TOKENZ and DOUBPLE COUNTERZZZ. And NOW I HAVE THEM.

*ahem*

Anyway. So what now? I'm taking Tuesday off this week. I don't have a huge burning desire to Standard. I'll play FNM because .. FNM. But I'm not in a hurry to do much right now. It appears that I'll be on staff for the upcoming TCGplayer.com $5K event in Madison, so I'll need to sharpen up my IPG knowledge. I'm also hoping to get on staff for an SCG event coming up in Minnesota. Fun!

Okay, well that's it for now .. Thanks for reading!

Better to Be Lucky than Good

Hey everybody ...

Yeah, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. I played some more Standard last night over at Misty Mountain on the east side of Madison. I mostly wanted to pick up my box of Modern Masters, but I also miss those guys over there sometimes.

So I'm still playing Junk Rites. Have I posted a decklist lately? Well, here it is:

Land (23):
2 Gavony Township
21 Other Lands

Doodz (26):
4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
4 Arbor Elf
3 Voice of Resurgence
2 Friend Hunter
4 Restoration Angel
4 Thragtusk
2 Acidic Slime
3 Angel of Serenity

Spells (11):
4 Grisly Salvage
3 Mulch
4 Unburial Rites

Sideboard (15):
2 Pithing Needle
2 Garruk Relentless
2 Deathrite Shaman
1 Voice of Resurgence
2 Acidic Slime
2 Abrupt Decay
3 Sin Collector
1 Sever the Bloodline

I feel like the creature count is off. I thought I was running 3 Friend Hunters, but then that would add up to 61 cards. And I'm not that tech. I don't know what the other cut would have been. Maybe I'm only running 3 Arbor Elves? Hmmm.... Anyway, here's how it went:

Populate THIS. Actually, please don't. D:

Round 1: vs. Selesnya.
I recognized my opponent, but for whatever reason I don't think I'd ever played him before. He needed to read a lot of the cards I played, and his mana base was less than perfect (using Guildgates and Evolving Wilds for fixing). But he had some good cards and put up a good fight. Sigarda came down both games, and he even got his Grove of the Guardian token out, and the Guildmage to populate it. But I was able to stay alive with Thragtusks and eventually grind him out. Win, 2-0. Match Record: 1-0.

Graveyard shenanigans AND Aristocrat shenanigans? D:

Round 2: vs. Junk Aristocrats/Immortal Servitude.
Is this a thing? Junk Aristocrats with the Immortal Servitude combo in the same deck? Well it seemed to be pretty effective. This is one of the matches where I got lucky. I had a near perfect draw the first game, including the turn-four Angel of Serenity. He got game two after Servitude'ing his Voices, Aristocrats, etc., and comboing me out with Blood Artist triggers. Owch. Third game, I landed a Pithing Needle to stop his Skirsdag High Priest. Unfortunately, I couldn't quite close it out. He had Bloodthrone Vampire and Cartel Aristocrat out to keep sacrificing his own things, and he got several rather large Elemental tokens out (via Voice). A rather sizeable Immortal Servitude made things worse. But he couldn't quite alpha strike without me being able to chump and then kill him on the crackback. If he would have gotten a Blood Artist down, I would have been dead. So what happened? I Mulched into a Friend Hunter and Restoration Angel. I Rites'd my Friend Hunter, exiling my Angel of Serenity. Then I Rites'd my Restoration Angel, blinking Friend Hunter, exiling four of his Elemental tokens. And he didn't have an answer to that. BTBLTG. Win, 2-1. Match Record: 2-0.

Yup, gettin sick of this card. D:

Round 3: vs. Naya Beatdown.
That's kind of a cool thing about Standard right now. There about 3-4 different flavors of Naya you could play right now, along the aggro-midrange spectrum. This one was right in the middle. Most of it was pretty aggressive, topping out with Advent of the Wurm and Thragtusk. Okay, so the critical moment of the match was this ... He had two Boros Reckoners attacking, with me at 13 life. I had a Thragtusk out, holding a Restoration Angel (with mana available to cast it), and an Angel of Serenity ready to cast the following turn. My plan was to just take it, blink the Thragtusk, and wipe his board. So I go to 7, and he passes turn. EOT, Angel. In response, Searing Spear, Boros Charm. D: Guess what I didn't do .. again. Respect the burn. I could have done just about anything else, and I would have lived. If I Resto before blockers, he would have Spear'd the 'tusk, but I would have still gotten a Beast, and I could have blocked the Reckoner with Resto, either trading it, or killing it and taking 3 to the dome. Or, I could have blocked with Thragtusk, then tried to blink it before damage. Either way, I don't die, and then I wrath his board the next turn. As Robert Fripp likes to say, the only mistake is the failure to learn from a mistake. Loss, 1-2. Match Record: 2-1.

Will you be my friend? :D

Round 4: vs. Naya Midrange.
Another Naya deck, this time with a bit more top end. Still plenty of Reckoners and things, but with a Dragon at the top end, with an option to overload Mizzium Mortars if it comes to that. Well, it was a pretty close match, but other than getting blown out in one game by the aforementioned overloaded Mortars, I feel like I'd probably win this match more often than not, depending on luck and how well I play. My opponent in this match is a pretty good player, and he usually beats me when we play. So I feel pretty good that I've been able to beat him the last couple weeks. Anyway, I don't remember exactly what happened, other than grinding him out with card advantage from Angels and Thragtusks and Rites and other such things. You know, what this deck does. I do seem to recall that I got lucky with a topdeck one game, though. I don't remember exactly what or how, though. Hmmmm. Win, 2-1. Match Record: 3-1.

So yeah, that was cool. I'm really enjoying the Friend Hunter interactions in the deck. Sometimes I exile something, and he just dies and they get it back, but I'm usually okay with the tempo loss. Plus, sometimes trading my 1/3 for their removal spell is fine. Plus, then I can usually Rites him back anyway. Plus, I love the shenanigans that he can pull off. I love shenanigans.

I'm still not sure about a few slots in the deck, though. Voice of Resurgence is rad, but I'm thinking about relegating some number of him back to the 'board, in favor of something else. Maybe a maindeck Sever the Bloodline? Another Friend Hunter? And I'm looking at my sideboard, and I'm wondering what I need Abrupt Decay for. Most of what I'd use it for, I can do with Friend Hunter, Voice, Garruk, and/or Slime. I'll probably take it out. I'll probably also put in a third Pithing Needle, because that card rocks in the right matchups (Aristocrats, AEtherling).

Suspend counters!! :/

Oh yeah, so Misty is doing a generous promotion where you can trade any 3 prize packs for a Modern Masters booster. So I did that. And I opened .... *drumroll* ....
Jhoira, and a foil Gargadon. Oh. Cool. Well at least they're worth a little something. Oh, and I think there was a Manamorphose, too. Yay.

Anyway, I think that's it for now. Thanks for tuning in. :)

Modern Masters .. or, Stupid Finks, Get Outta My Kitchen!

Hey!

So Modern Masters this last weekend. I typed up a report for a message board that I frequent, so I figured I'd take the lazy route and just copy & past and edit here.

Dang Finks! Oh wait... I'm the one who played this card this weekend. Cool.

Friday night I did a casual draft with some folks I know from around town. A guy bought a box and wanted to do some Rochester and Winston drafting. So we did that. Winston seemed to have too much variance to be any good, and everyone's deck was jank except mine. I had a siiiiiick deck with lots of ETB effects and recursion. One game, I think I Clique'd my opponent like 4 different times. I'd blink a Kitchen Finks or Cloudgoat Ranger, let them die, and then Death Denied them all back to my hand. The Rochester draft was much more "fair," except one guy's nutso Affinity deck, with all the Frogmites and flying artifact enablers .. and an Arcbound Ravager, because it wasn't good enough as it was. I think I had a B/W Rebels deck that had some good stuff, but not much big stuff to really go over the top. Still, lots of fun.

Whattttttttttttt

Sunday I was on Judge duty for the big store-capacity MM draft event. There wasn't really a whole lot to do, since most of the players were pretty experienced. Mostly stuff like forgetting Suspend counters. And pushing in lots of chairs and picking up lots of trash. One guy went 2-0 with a mono-red Storm deck (yes, it really works!). Lots of pretty sweet-looking decks.

Kill your Mulldrifter and Valkyrie it?

Then I got to play in one myself, with free entry as thanks for Judge duting. I first-picked a foil Adarkar Valkyrie and went W/B. I got passed a second (non-foil) Valkyrie in pack two, and I did get to loop them in one game (after which my opponent just scooped). So that's pretty cool. I passed a Glimmervoid for a Path in pack three, not realizing it's like a $15-20 card. That Path was totally worth it, though. Path'ing in response to the Dredge aura thingy, and Path'ing a Stinky Imp were pretty sweet. The rest of my deck was a mishmash of ETB effects and a few Rebels. Kitchen Finks, Cloudgoat Ranger, and Marsh Flitter were all-stars. And Path. :) The only match I lost was to a Tromp the Domains deck. Splashable Overrun. Card's fair. Not.

This is not a fair card in Pack Wars.

But yeah, I won two packs for my efforts. I played Pack Wars with my girlfriend . I had a Sword of Light and Shadow, and she didn't, so I won. The other pack had another Adarkar Valkyrie. So of all the MM I've opened, 3 of my 4 rares are Adarkar Valkyrie. Cool? But hey, the foil one seems to be like a $20 card, so ... yeah. And I got a Sword!

I'm debating what to do with the box I bought. I paid $250 (plus tax) for it, and I'm hesitant to crack it. I've heard horror stories of people cracking them and getting Dragons for mythics. But of course, there's always the 'goyf lottery. I'm thinking I'm gonna hold onto it and sell it on ebay next Modern season. Then take the proceeds and buy my Cryptics and Cliques and Bobs and whatnot.
So .. what's next? Standard tonight. Still planning on playing Junk Rites. Depending on how it goes this week, I may or may not switch it up for next week. We'll see.

Okay .. well, thanks for reading!