Eventide is upon us

Yes, that's right kids in 2 weeks' short time we will have our first opportunity to crack open some Eventide for the first time.

I have to say that I am impressed so far with the cards I have seen. I think the 2 new mechanics are going to be exciting as well. Well at least the one we haven't seen before is. Yes that's right another reprint from Future Sight is supposed to make an appearance in this set-Phosphorescent Feast with the mechanic named Chroma, an ability which counts the number of mana symbols in a certain zone. The other ability is Retrace, a variation on flashback that requires the mana cost to be paid along with a land to be discarded to cast the spell. Unlike flashback however, the card does not remove from game after you have retraced it. There are 2-1cc Retrace commons so far and I think they will have an impact.

Raven's Crime B
Sorcery
Target player discards a card
Retrace (You may play this card from your graveyard by discarding a land card in addition to paying its other costs.)

Flame Jab R
Sorcery
Flame Jab deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
Retrace (You may play this card from your graveyard by discarding a land card in addition to paying its other costs.)

They are also continuing the Liege cycle

The R/W was the first spolied so far:

Balefire Liege (2)( r/w)( r/w)( r/w)

Creature - Spirit Horror
Other red creatures you control get +1/+1. Other white creatures you control get +1/+1. Whenever you play a red spell, Balefire Liege deals 3 damage to target player. Whenever you play a white spell, you gain 3 life.

2/4

Wow, thats all I can say

They will fill out the rest of the Cairn lands as well to complete the set of 10

Until next time, I am excited to play some SHM-SHM-EVE drafts!

Hot Sauce

My SCG Premium is expiring

So, as I alluded to earlier, my SCG account is about to expire. I am pretty sure I am not going to renew it right now. You know why not? It's summertime, and I am not playing Magic at all. TS called me last night and he's all,

"You never play Magic anymore. I never play Magic anymore. The world is grey and lonely. I read Sylvia Plath poems all day long and search for houses in a down market!"

"Shadowmoor is some impressively cool shit. Call me in the fall when I will feel like drafting it. Also, new homes sales* fell again last month, by 16% if you look at year over year data. As much as I understand your desire to live in your own place, you are gonna kneecap yourselves if you don't wait for some miniscule sign of a recovery."

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Fugie has some impressive technology for Nationals. I am going to start playtesting it soon. Man if I can only get one match win, I can totally sandbag some poor innocent soul's rating.

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If you haven't responded to coyoe's thread on Wednesday, I highly recommend you do so. My numbers are the lowest, and it's not even close. I am the only one who has responded so far who admits to less than 50% match win percentage. As a matter of fact, my Constructed match win percentage is hovering around 1 in 3. That's technology. Strangely, my Vintage match win percentage is also 1 in 3, proving that you can't prop a shitty magic player up with proxies. I actually kind of want to play Goblins at Vintage Worlds, but the 3 pieces of power are pretty necessary, even if it's only three. The ability to occasionally mise a turn 1 Warchief is like, necessary.

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Gaudenis "I lost to CBG in the first round of a limited ptq" Vidugiris got second at the recent GP:Indianapolis. Congrats! Sorry about sandbagging your rating last year.

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I am thinking about playing some of the more situational haste cards in my Rakdos EDH. It seems like fun to play Accelerate in this format. Hitting someone with Rakdos is teh awesome. I love it when everyone lives in fear. Especially those fucking blue players.

*Actually, this might be existing home sales. I can't remember.

Looking back, looking forward

Well what a rousing success Shadowmoor was, or was it? Big sets in the spring are kind of a waste. I seem to find myself in a similar situation as CBG. Late April thru mid July is the busiest time of year for me at work & with all of the festivals in the early part of summer something has to give. The last few years it has been drafting. I don't remember the last time I went down to GU to draft or to CBGs for that matter either. I like to think that Shadowmoor was pretty decent for limited, but have missed several weeks of league play and have only drafted it once since the pre-release (little tear). I was initially using the excuse that I had D&D on Fridays, but we've been on hiatus for the last several weeks (that's what you get when half of your play group are Renaissance fair people). But mostly it is just laziness & a general disinterest to be inside playing Magic. I hope that I feel differently after the Eventide Pre-release, but I am not so certain this will be true, but I think I need to still hold out hope.

As far as looking forward, I am definitely looking forward to my first vacation since the infamous death of the fandango last October (sorry fugie, but I haven't had off a Saturday & Sunday since that weekend). I am also looking forward to heading to Memphis in December. I have become even more disillusioned with work over the past few months and will take the time off regardless of the results (I still don't have anyone trained to fill in for me, but alas NOT MY PROBLEM).

Well until next time, may the mana gods not hate you.

Forgot

Also forgot to ask, does anyone have a good list of Mirror Master (Kithkin with Mirrorweave) for block?

An Exercise Of Curiosity

So as I sit about my house at noon on Wednesday, I checked my rating (more on this later) after the failure that was GP: Indy. Of course it was a Pastimes event. Which obv means it was the worst run event I have ever attended.

First, they ran out of starters and had to turn an estimated 100 people away.

Second, after the player meeting, deck registration, and deck construction they had about 15 minutes of announcements that probably should have gone out to all players, not just those of use unfortunate enough to have zero byes.

Third, the sound system sucked which caused a lot of people to be unable to hear announcements. There were a lot of people that didn't hear the one where you were supposed to call a judge and have them confirm match results after completing a match but before turning in the slip. There was also a lot of confusion about getting the promo Call of the Herds.

Fourth, it took forever to turn around the rounds. The first four rounds took about two hours each.

Fifth, the only consolation was frequent trips across the street to see the hotel bar, and the sharing of things that make people not care how much the event sucks.

I ended up with an absolutely miserable deck. From the majority of the people I showed it to it was the concensus worst deck. There were rumblings of Paprocki possibly having a worse deck due to playing Zealous Guardian. I didn't actually see Paprocki's deck so I can't confirm this. My deck consisted of 19 dudes, of which only 2 had evasion. And five spells of which the best was Thoughtweft Gambit. I also had zero bombs.

Overall, I felt I played well. I punted one game because I just forgot the four drop in my hand on turn four. None of the games I played were particularly interesting. Due to the miserableness of playing the GP I dropped at 2-2 and went and saw a movie with Paprocki and Asshole Jason. Which was good times. Asshole Jason and I savaged the theater into only charging us Student Tickets. I found out the Asshole Jason refuses to sit throw previews. The first half of the Incredible Hulk was the suck and a nap though the rest of the movie quickly followed. Paprocki napped on and off throughout the movie and the parts he was awake for were also the suck. Asshole Jason managed the superhuman feat of staying awake throughout and said the entire movie was the suck. At this point, I realize I am sober for the first time since Wednesday and go to quickly rectify the problem.

Time for back story on the GP. Two friends and I got ditched at Longshots on Loomis Wednesday night and walked back to Eric's which is approximately a block from Rhyno's rents house (about a 10 minute walk from 76th and Rawson). Thursday, there was some drugs involved (yes they were legal... just more than the quantity recommend). There is a story here, but much more entertaining if told in person. Friday, the pills were still well in effect. Eventually we got to Indy after stopping to have a cig and reprogram Bagha's GPS after finding out I-65 was closed in Gary, IN.

Now that we are in Indy the story begins. Bagha and I arrive at the much fabled Kurt Hahn's house. While Kurt catches a quick nap. Bagha, Kur'ts roommate and Bagha watch the savage cheating of Mike Long in the 98 Nats video. And then we're off to the bar. Drinking ensues while we catch up with Kurt. Later, back at Kurt's, I lay on the floor to pass out and the world is spinning. So I sit up against the wall with my knees to my chest and pass out with my head on top of said knees. At some unknown point during the night I wake up and have to poop. Off to the bathroom and the taking care of the pooping. I feel like absolute shit. Sure enough, here comes the vomiting, followed by a quick nap on the bathroom floor. Then off to the recliner to sleep the rest of the night away. I manage to finish the night's sleep without futher incident.

At the point the story stays much cleaner. I commend you for continuing to read.

Kurt decides to show off his hookah before we leave to go to the convention center and we're off. Look above for coverage on what happened at the GP.

After the movie I run into some people that I know from Magic events. I don't really remember a ton of what happened from that point to the point Bagha, Kurt, two Chicago guys and I end up back at the bar. After two bar hops, Kurt gets an invite to go to a third bar to meet up with four very attractive female friends of Kurt's. Operation Get There is officially go. After some good times and a couple of drinks, Operation Get There has a very high probability of success given the invite back to their apartment for more herbs. There was apparently miscommunication at this point between Kurt and said Attractive Females on destination. We ended up at an after gathering behind the bar Kurt works at while they vanished into What Coulda Been Land.

It was a sizable gathering with approximately 15-20 people there in a parking lot surrounded by a chain link fence. There were a couple houses and a post office loading dock surrounding said fence and significantly, only one entrance/exit. After about 20 minutes I see a bike cop shining his flashlight over the fence. He yells out "Take one more hit then everyone clear out." Back at Kurt's there is some Tetris and then sleeping.

Sunday, there is some SSS drafting. Team Bagha, Pliska, me ends up winning a draft with dog shit for rares. After much effort and a pit stop to not sober land, we assemble -1 Morningtide pack for a LMS draft. We end up saying screw finding the last Morningtide pack, pick new teams and draft with one person using LLS. Four people stayed on the same teams. Another guy (I believe Pliska) and me essentially got traded. Obv my team won again. This time getting me a Mirrorweave and crap. Which I quickly trade my pile of crap to another guy on my team for a Rustic Clachan.

Kurt, a Chicago guy and me stepped outside for more not soberness. It started out just the three of us on the top of the convention center steps and quickly turned into 20 people standing around with the three of huddled in a corner minding our own business.

Bagha and I left quickly after.

The ride back was largely uneventful. Arby's was delicious and we didn't have money to pay for the toll to get into WI.

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So back to the Exercise Of Curiosity. I checked my rating today and saw there are quite a few people from the store with ratings in either Constructed or Limited that are in the ~1900+ range. A few months ago I was chatting with Edd and we were comparing our overall match win percentage from every sanctioned match we have ever played. At the time I believe mine was something like 47%. I figured what the hell. I went and figured it out again (Go to Ratings History and count every match that has a WIN. Ties don't count. Then go to Play Statistics and it will tell you how many total matches you have played then divide those two numbers.) I figure there should be some kind of competition for this (read: motivation for actually doing this) so aside from bragging rights, I will buy the winner of each (Limited and Constructed) into the respective event at a future GU tournament.

The mark to beat is:

Constructed: 50.444%
Limited: 50.769%

Could Game Universe Be Hosting a Prerelease This Fall?

Gentlemen. I have just returned from the Kalahari. It may not be Kgalagadi Africa, but what's left of Lake Delton sure looks lifeless enough.

You saw it here- swim at your own risk!

I wanted to give Fugie McWizard the first opportunity to speak on the topic (since he is way more in the know on this subject), but I have heard a few people talking about the idea that our local gaming store, Game Universe, might be able to host a Prerelease. The idea originated with this announcement by Wizards that it would be "recruiting locations" to bring "launch parties" (the new corporate tag for Release Tournaments) and (more to the point) Prerelease Tournaments "right to your door." Oh, also the Prerelease is being moved up to six days prior to the release. The announcement links to a page describing the criteria for running a Prerelease. Let's take a look at what it would take for GU to run one.

First, Wizards divides the opportunities for running sanctioned events into three tiers, Gateway, Core and Advanced. There are requirements that need to be met for each level. For the Gateway level, the only obstacle worth any mention is having access to a public venue. Prereleases require Core level support however, so the bar is higher. Here are the requirements and my analysis of Game Universe's capability of delivering on them.

1. "Must meet all Gateway level requirements." Like I stated earlier, the only real difficulty here would be access to a public venue, (and I guess maybe needing to "schedule at least one instance of play so that it can be displayed on our locator.") Since GU is public game store and already runs three weekly Magic nights, it has these issues covered, no problem.

2. "Must have scheduled, run, and reported a minimum of 4 tournaments in the preceding 12 months." See above. Man, GU runs four sanctioned tournaments in two weeks. Even if Wizards means Release level events when it says "tournaments," GU still has the requirement covered.

3. "Must have a delinquency rate in the last 12 months no greater than 20%." Okay, here's where it gets interesting. Uh, Fugie, what the hell does this mean? Does it mean delinquency of the TO reporting results to Wizards? I don't think this really makes sense, since most tournaments results aren't required to be reported, and DCI Reporter won't even pair the next round if you don't enter the match results for the last round. Does this mean players who have been playing at the store and have stopped coming? I don't know, and can't tell what GU's ability to meet this criteria.

4. "Must have issued 6 new DCI numbers in the last 12 months. " You can tell the new focus is on "acquisition," as the Suits say. I see at least one guy getting signed up at any given Release Tournament, so I would have to guess that this would be a slam dunk. At any rate, it wouldn't be hard to find half a dozen new folks if that was all that was standing between us and Milwaukee Prerelease, right guys?

5. "Both tournament organizer and location must not be currently suspended by the DCI ." Heh. I didn't even know the DCI could suspend an entire location.

6. "Must complete a Prerelease application and demonstrate sufficient play space." This criterion is interesting. I assume the application isn't Azorious-level bureaucratic red tape and can be completed. The play space is less certain. Last year (or was it two years ago now?) when GU was renting that space next door this would have been easy, but now- I don't know. Our only real hope is that Wizards expects venues to be smaller than past Prereleases, since there will inevitably be more of them in any given geographic area. Still, I know a Prerelease would be far more popular at the store than a Release, and GU can barely accommodate those. This is likely to be sticking point unless Game Universe takes steps to address the issue.

7. "Must have a permanent structure with bathroom facilities." I think we've got that covered, although I bet there'd be a line after lunch on a Prerelease.

8. "In addition, we recommend that your location have access to food within 1 mile (2 km)." Ding. Frogger anyone?

So there you have it. According to Wizards' new requirements, it looks like there might be two possible sticking points- whatever the hell the 20% delinquency rate is, and available space. Before we even saw these criteria common sense would have dictated that GU's lack of space was their big problem. This bodes well for Wizards (and their list of criteria), since the practical problems of running such an event need to be addressed prior to getting permission to run them. Any more enlightenment on this subject would be greatly appreciated, if people have it. Maybe we'll be busting Shards of Alara packs in Milwaukee on September 27th.

T

Ech

Not like you guys didn't know this already, but I played no Magic at all this week. I hardly read any of the articles. Something was announced but I can barely remember what it was.

I've decided I hate having a large set in the spring time. I haven't even drafted Shadowmoor enough to know if I like it or not. It seems like a pretty fun set, but my exploration of it has been less than minimal. Summer is here now, and the last thing I want to be doing is sitting around inside. I have been trimming hedges, going to baseball games, discovering rabbit nests in my backyard, playing softball and just generally enjoying summer. Magic is awesome, but it and the sun don't go together very well.

So who's up for Nationals? Woo! Fugie has sent me some cool lists. Maybe I should put those together and go play some Standard. I kind of have a inking to go play sanctioned and take my chances. I honestly stopped playing because my constructed rating was 1504 but now, I don't give a hoot. That's right, I said it. A hoot.

"Kill the guy with Islands"

I have to say that I agree with coyote about blue not being over powered (pause for shock & awe). It is definitely all about how we build our decks. Since our group started playing EDH earlier this year, I've been playing the same general the entire time (Dromar, the Banisher). My choice to play blue was not about abusing blue, but being able to play with Invasion dragons again (for those that don't know, I started playing around the time that Invasion came out and the set holds a special place in my heart).

As my deck has progressed, I have been the target of more hate for blue because I am playing islands. From the very beginning, I have been a target because I played with mostly basic lands, due to a lack of non-basics that make blue, black, or white in my collection (most notably I remember in four of the first five games that I played I lost no fewer than 6 or 7 lands to Sundering Titan). None the lest I pressed on.

Not long after that land destruction fell out of popularity, send in the take a million turns decks. Then it was, hey he's playing blue so he must be able to take a million turns and kill us all at his leggier. Get him (thanks Fugie). Again I persevere.

Send in the combo decks. Here comes Fugie's illustrious Red-white-green Sneak Attack, Sylvan Library, Abundance generate ridiculous card advantage I'm not the threat, go after the guy playing islands. Again I continue to take a beatings with my non-combo, can't take a million turns, can't generate huge card advantage deck, that is playing blue because my general happens to be white, blue, & black. I continue to persevere.

Now the most recent iteration is back to blue decks with combos that can kill everyone on the same turn. Now I continue to get beat on for playing blue. There seems to be no reason to continue to play a generalist deck that happens to include blue. It seems that I am left with with two choices.

1. Continue to play blue and be perceived as the threat. I am not really thrilled to continue to get my head kicked in with my current build. So, I would need to make some rather significant changes to make my deck into the threat that everyone seems to think it is or at least more resilient to unmitigated onslaught I will continue to see.

2. Abandon blue entirely. In order to due this I would likely end up building a deck that is unfun for everyone to play with. More than likely something that punishes everyone for sitting down at the table an makes me the target. Not for being the threat (i.e. the one who will likely win), but for being the obstacle to anyone winning. Not a very attractive option either.

I honestly don't know which road I will go down.

This Was Going to be Long

This was going to be a very long post today about a statement Fugie made. But due to lack of a computer for the next 2/3 weeks. I'm going to make it pretty short.

Fugie recently stated:

We have a psychological block against blue being bad because it's not aggressive. I play W/R/G and everyone goes panic button on me. I play U/R/b and I am mind twisting like a fiend.

This is why we don't send people to nats or the PT.

I completely disagree. The major reason we don't send people to Nats/PTs are completely unrelated to Magic in general. It has to do with choices people make outside of Magic. Out of all the "regulars" on this blog. I am the only one that regularly play tests "relevant" formats and attends events outside of GU. I am not saying this is a bad thing by any stretch. Simply that other people have different priorities. I have made a conscious decision to make Magic a major priority to me, TS to his wife, CBG to his family, SCG Winner Jamison Bryant to weddings and Type One, Fugie to work and EDH.

The other major reason is that the people on this blog are largely casual players. This point is pretty much pronounced by the fact that after FNM's people break up into EDH games. If people were serious about making it to Nats and the PT people would be play testing and working on current formats. Just go back and look though the history of this blog, it has gone from being mostly draft and sealed deck, to almost exclusively EDH content.

There are also a million other reasons that Fugies statement is wrong. I will be more than willing to go into them further if people would like me to.

Also if people are interested, I will make a longer post once I get my computer back.

EDH Announcements

Hey! Bennie Smith updates us all on a couple EDH changes. First, the EDH rules gurus have decided "no half off color hybrid." I agree this is good. The card pool is plenty big enough. You wanna play all kinds of crazy crap? Grab yrself a 5c general. There are a ton of good uns. The second point: Limited Resources is banned. Hey Limited Resources! Go fuck yourself!

--CBG

Eventide Previews? Not really.

In Monday's article Maro says:

"Shadowmoor's existence set up the expectation that Eventide would have enemy-color hybrids. We did that precisely so we could meet those expectations (as well as accomplish several other goals, such as giving each set its own feel). Delivering the expected can be very comforting. This isn't to say that we won't ever throw you all some curveballs, because we have done so and will continue to do so. Rather I'm saying that block evolution isn't relegated solely to curveballs. Sometimes the straight and narrow is just what the players expect and want."

Thank God for that! I know that some people like the mind bending experience of seeing cards they never expected could (or should) be printed, that kind of "Whaa-a-a?" experience when you see Mindslaver, or Time Stop, or even Char (for a different reason, obv) for the very first time. But for me, I actually prefer the expected. Let me explain. A major reason, perhaps THE major reason I have continued to play Magic is the structure, the order, inherent to the game's flavor. I LOVE the color pie. Shit, I make 20 page personality quizzes about it! There's something so appealing about being able to distill down into five discrete essences the whole of a universe. It's just so... orderly. Certainly nothing like our own, very unpredictable, and hopelessly complicated universe.
I loved Rav block for the same reason. Here the ten two-color combinations were all represented with different flavors. I loved the expectation before each set was released. What would a U/R guild feel like? What about a W/U? What role within society would each play? I don't even need to see specific cards to be excited. Just imagining the big picture philosophies of those guilds fired me up.
So now we are in the heart of Shadowmoor's dominance. We are experiencing allied color fun the likes of which haven't been seen since Invasion block. Shadowmoor lacks the rigidity of a guild based model, and as result is less exciting to me. But still, as Maro notes, I am someone who is excited by the expectation of Eventide. It will be, from a flavor perspective, like the perfect coda to Shadowmoor's chorus. The fact that this second mini-block mirrors the Lorwyn/Morningtide mini-block (check the yin/yang feel of the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor and Morngintide/Eventide expansion symbols for more evidence) is only gravy. I am ready for some enemy color love. There had better be enemy color Graven Cairn lands, enemy color Lieges, and enemy color Avatars (what up, Overbeing of Myth?). Putting a cycle of enemy color Shield of the Oversoul-style enchantments at common would make my day. I know this might sound strange, since pretty much half the set is already filled in once you complete all those tedious five card cycles, but I actually prefer daydreaming about HOW those cycles might be fulfilled to simply imagining random enemy color hybrid cards. Look at the as of yet unknown card Drain the Well, which was revealed in the Eventide booster pack. This is obviously a mirror to Poison the Well. But what would the ability be? Destroy target land, you gain two life? Destroy target artifact, Poison the Well deals 2 damage to that artifact's controller? Either could be viable. Or maybe it's something else entirely. The point is, I find it MORE enjoyable to think about Eventide because I know what to expect going in. We've seen the U/G Avatar, Overbeing of Myth. But what will the W/B Avatar looks like? And what will the name be? How many more ways can one connote the Divine? Actually, that might make a good name. Arch Divinatrix. Or something like that. What ability would such a creature have?

W/B W/B W/B W/B W/B, 5/5. Flying, First Strike, Deathtouch.

Or what about-

W/B W/B W/B W/B W/B W/B, 5/5. Flying , At the beginning of your upkeep, put target creature card in a graveyard into play under your control.

Debtors' Knell on a dude! How sweet would that be? Probably too sweet to print. But the idea is enjoyable. Here's hoping that you will look forward to the expected.

T

Aside to The Captain: See how I avoided mentioning anything scandalous about the party Saturday? I'm quiet as the grave over here. Heh.

Do I Have Fans?

Oh, yes I do!

So how was yr Regionals? Harry Potter didn't get there. Oh well. At least we all have a chance to win the car this year as Sam Black made top 4. Dude ripped it up in the sides last year. Actually, if I were him, I'd go do that again. He won like $30,000 worth of stuff last year. He's unlikely to do that well in the main event, given the dismal prize structure for Nationals. Unless they have improved the prizes this year?

I had fun. People were very confused by the whole "not playing" thing. I would have played either Reveillark or Merfolk. There was a ton of Merfolk and only one made it into the top 4. I was half right in my prediction as it was 2 Elves (GB midrange), 1 Faeries and 1 Merfolk getting the slots.

I finally got to vindicate something and woo lemme tell ya. That's some fun shit. Reaper King is pretty awesome in duel, I say . Not good, per se, but awesomely fun to play. In multiplayer, my prediction also proved true. He gets killed a lot. Hey, you know something else? Clockspinning doesn't remove RFG counters from yr general, because RFG counters aren't part of the game! Ass.

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So that pathetic excuse for an explanation of the Vintage bannings from last week did not stand. Turian and Lauer took a stab at it this week and I have to say, that's quite a bit better. Not only did they go into more detail on the Flash (uncontroversial), Merchant Scroll (uncontroversial), Gush (uncontroversial) and Brainstorm (mildly controversial) restrictions, but they dropped quite a few pixels on exploring the Ponder (what the fuck? Ponder? was the dominant BB theme over the last two weeks) execution. The relevant line is right at the end.

Having the most efficient unrestricted deck manipulation card left in the format be a sorcery would inherently power up combo decks (which don't mind tapping mana on their own turn) while hurting the control decks (which really don't want to tap mana on their own turn) that are important for keeping the overall health of the format in balance.

This is a line of argument I understand and can believe. Four Force of Will is supposedly the glue that holds the format together, which is a fancy way of saying control should have a seat at the table. Leaving Ponder out there (a less powerful spell due to it's timing) actually preferentially helps combo, an effect they are trying to avoid. Fine. So why did that take two weeks?

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Anybody got a Workshop list I can borrow?

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My most recent convo with DJTS:

TooSarcastic: Hey man. Do you like to party?

Captain Bondage Goth: It's Milwaukee in the summertime, man! Of course I like to party!

TS: We should party this weekend.

CBG: I am getting a cold.

TS: You fucking loser.

CBG: I know.

At least, that's all I remember through my sinus pressure induced haze.

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Happy Father's Day. I hope you all have fun out there. I was gonna have a draft at my house, but given my relationship with the weather right now (as in, I am feeling under it), I think I am gonna pass. You should build a new EDH in the meantime. And figure out a Grinders deck, will ya?

Waiting

So here I am... waiting for CBG to post... and I hate myself for it.

Chicago Regionals 2008!

What up fools? Well, Regionals 2008 is now behind us. And what fun it was! I was planning on doing some sort of exhaustive tourney report, but then I would need to explain why I went 4-4-1. Instead I will just lay it out for you; I don't normally play Standard, I play tested for about a total of four hours prior to showing up, and most all, I am bad at Magics. There you go.



Let's start with some photos. I hear people love the multimediaz. Thanks to Captain Bondage Goth for the ride down and the help taking these pics.

It's me, TooSarcastic, smiling gaily as I flaunt one of the pretty Faeries that will soon be merrily prancing into the red zone. Uh, actually I think that's a Mutavault.

Tabasco Tony here.

He piloted G/B Elves to a winning record, I believe. More about Hot Sauce and his Garruk exploits later.

The Captain.

Apparently he plays Limited, Vintage, AND Standard. Don't even get me started about the man's EDH decks.

Pseudonymous Drama Student. He played an awesome Zur deck that fetched all sorts of silver bullet enchantments. Rogue, I tells ya, rogue!

***

A Milwaukee native did actually make it in to Top 8. Harry Potter, young wizard and student at an all boys high school (Ha!) slid into 8th place playing G/B Elves to an astounding record of 7-1-1. Good form! He tweaked the maindeck to include the full quad of Garruks, going down to 3x Chameleon Colossus, and also chose basic Swamp over the fancier Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. There were definitely more Elves running around than at PT Hollywood. I don't know if he anticipated more mirror matches instead of Faerie matchups, but I think both changes helped him, since Garruk is a dog to the Fae, but is quite nice in the mirror. Maybe our young friend also got some advantage from his opponent's Urborgs while avoiding the dreaded "Wasteland your Legendary land" moment, I don't know. I'd like to have seen his sideboard, but didn't get the chance. I don't know if he got the Nationals Invite (it was very late and The Captain, Tabasco and I couldn't stay to watch the rubber match). Wizard's site doesn't yet say, and neither does the Pastimes website. If someone knows of young Potter's fate, comment.

***

Here's the quick and dirty of my less-than-glamorous Regionals. I promise I'll make it as painless as possible.

Round 1: Quick n' Toast. Draw. He played very slowly, and was nervous, but I saw soooo many Kitchen Finks and Firespouts. I hear they aren't good for little blue men.

Round 2: R/G Big Mana. He is also super slow (and I am not a fast player either) and I get game three on turn five after time is called. More Firespouts/Finks!

Round 3: Reveilark combo, sort of. Got there in two games. He did play a Red Akroma against me in game 2. That was scary, because I didn't have Terror in hand. He swung, I flashed in a Scion of Oona and blocked with three black Bitterblossom tokens. He didn't have the removal for my Scion, but he did pump his Akroma to 10/6, so I took 4, but got rid of the angry Angel. Let's say I didn't expect to be playing against THAT card this weekend.

Round 4: Faeries. I lose 0-2. I did not test the mirror matchup and played like ass in both games, but really the games were over turn 2. The first game I ran out a turn two Bitterblossom on the draw- right into his Rune Snag. Genius. And game 2 I play first, end up ripping an Ancestral Vision off the top turn 2, and suspend it instead of leaving Rune Snag mana up. Yep, his turn 2= Bitterblossom. GG.

Round 5: G/B Elves. Got there in 3, mostly because I drew 4 Damnations total between the post sideboard games.

Round 6: Zvi's Deus of Calamity G/R deck. I go on tilt from here on out. Although I'm not sure what exactly I am supposed to do about turn 2 Magus of the Moon. It's bad news when you die before your turn 1 Ancestral Visions unsuspends. She plays turn 1 Llanowar Elves, turn 2 Magus, turn 3 Chameleon Colossus, turn 4 Chameleon Colossus, turn 5 kill me. Game 2 I should have sided in Damnations instead of Thoughtseize. I didn't. I lost, even though I forced the Magus of the Moon to get discarded turn one, because Deus + Countryside Crusher = better than my Razormane Masticore.

Round 7: G/B Elves. Lost in 2. I didn't draw Damnation post-board.

Round 8: G/B Elves. Lost in 2. This build was bizarre, with Wolf Skull Shamans. I should have gotten this one, but I made many mistakes because I am bad at Magic.

Round 9: I played a small child with what looked like a Block Constructed Kithkin deck. I don't know what's worse, beating up on a kid, or losing to one. I got there, 2-0. Woo Hoo, I guess.



I should have dropped at 3-2-1. But single elim drafts are so pricey, and nobody wanted to EDH. I guess I could have done coverage.

***

MORE PICS!

Tabasco plays a G/W Elves deck. He literally spent six consecutive turns making a Beast token with Garruk to chump a Chameleon Colossus trying kill his planeswalker.

Here we see him about to win, with two Beast tokens, a Shriekmaw, Tarmogoyf and Garruk, still with one counter remaining. Tabasco used his Manlands to chump through the midgame until he out-drew his opponent late.

I don't know why I took so many pictures of Hot Sauce. Here he is facing an underage WI resident (who may not want to be named, I don't know), who is piloting Faeries. I think Faeries got there, but I don't know for certain.

***

My best play of the tournament: Round 2 I found myself in the draw bracket against an opponent who needed to read all my cards. We went to time, after which a bunch of his friends came over to watch. Finally a judge arrives as well. I was at 12 with two Bitterblossoms and three tokens in play. He was at 20 life, with some Elves in play. This is how it goes down:

Turn 0: On his upkeep I cast Mistbind Clique as time is called. He thinks for a long time, taps his land and says, "You got it." I champion a token. He draws his cards and passes.

Turn 1: My turn I beat with the Clique and two Bitterblossom tokens. He goes to 14.

Turn 2: On his upkeep, I cast Mistbind Clique, champion another token, and his friends groan. He thinks, swears, and then taps his lands. He draws his card and passes turn.

Turn 3: My turn I beat with both Cliques and three Bitterblossom tokens. He goes to 3.

Turn 4: On his upkeep, I stop him and say, "Hold on." He shouts "Fucking A!" and his friends yell profanities. Then I say, "Dude, I was just fucking with you. I don't have the third Clique. Go to draw step?" That got a laugh from everyone, even the judge. Yeah, I got the win on turn 5, but just watching him freak out at the thought of getting Timewalked for all his extra turns was the best thing that happened all day. He was a good sport, I probably would have been pissed off.

***

I got some good photos of Asshole Jason, who played a R/B token deck with Gargadon and Nantuko Husk, but I don't know if he would want me posting his mug online, so I won't. I'll leave you with a Magic: The Puzzling type situation. Asshole Jason's opponent is playing some kind of mono-black deck. This photo is shot from the opponent's perspective.

Yes those two lands facing the camera are Leechridden Swamps. The opponent also has a Bitterblossom, one token, one Demigod of Revenge (tapped, attacking) and six Snow-Covered Swamps. As you can see, he has only one card in hand. Now to Jason's side. He has two Faerie Macabre, two Kobold tokens, his own (shiny!) Demigod of Revenge, three Swamps, a Mountain, a Sulphurous Spring, and an untapped Kher Keep. If you squint you can see the life totals- Jason 4, his opponent 15. Jason's graveyard has; 2x Greater Gargadon, 2x Mogg War Marshal, a Mutavault, a Makeshift Mannequin, and a Nantuko Husk. Assume Jason has no hand. How does he win the game before those Leechridden Swamps kill him? I'll give you some space.

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Still no? That's because he fucking lost, suckers!

Ha!

T

Time for Regionals

I hope you all rip it up at Regionals. I will be there Vindicating things and maybe keeping tabs on one or two matches. I am gonna go out on a limb and say 2 Faeries, one GB midrange and one RG Aggro will get the slots. Not that it matters since I will be going to Nats to do sides and hang out anyway. I have to go pack because I am going down to suburban Chicago tonight.

Ta ta

Eventide booster pack

Yes it's that time again kids. Wizards has graced us with 15 of the new cards from the Eventide set to be released in July. Of course they show the rare: Click here

Yes enemy colors, hybrid ones at that. More 5 mana hybrid deities, I now need to change my pants, because the U/G hybrid is THAT good

Shadowmoor Sealed, Week 1

Quintuple black is a lot to ask for in a black red deck. It should be only a mistake that a noob should make, but alas I too have fallen victim to the delusion that I should play all of my bomb rares that are in any of the colors that I am playing.

Kind of a different intro than I usually do, but I am having a really hard time keeping my thoughts straight. Anyways, this past Tuesday we started over with a fresh sealed deck of Shadowmoor, and I am happy with what I am seeing. Amongst the Painter's Servant, Ghastlord of Fugue, foil Knollspine Dragon, & Dusk Urchins; I have the makings of a pretty solid red-black deck. Add a heaping helping of aggressive dudes, a splash of reasonably costed removal, and season to taste. If only it was that easy.

Well enough of my incoherent thoughts and on to the deck list.

Ashenmoor Cohort
Dusk Urchins
Sickle Ripper
Bloodmark Mentor
Boggart Arsonists
Knollspine Dragon (foil)
Rustrazor Butcher
Ghastlord of Fugue
Gravelgill Axeshark
Ashenmoor Gourger
Kulrath Knight
Murderous Redcap
Sootstoke Kindler
Painter's Servant
Scrapbasket
Tatterkite

Corrupt
Gloomlance
Burn Trail
Ember Gale
Puncture Bolt
Torper Dust
Blight Sickle

(10) Swamp
(7) Mountain

Well as you can see, I've managed to get a deck that wants to (an can reliably) get in there with a guy with both wither and first strike. Unfortunately, you need to actually draw the guys and not all of your removal and all of your lands (with the exception of my games against the Captain, I got mana flooded and failed to draw guys I could play with the mana I had. I managed to get to 11 mana against AJ and not be able to play the Knollspine Dragon in my hand because I only had one mountain in play). Well them's the breaks.

Looking forward to next week, here's what I opened.

Traitor'r Roar
Curse of Chains
Somnomancer
Rattleblaze Scarecrow
Devoted Druid
Smolder Initiate
Gloomwidow's Feast
Sinking Feeling
Goldenglow Moth
Smash to Smithereens
Tattermunge Maniac
*Incremental Blight
Dawnglow Infusion
*Ashenmoor Liege
*Burn Trail (foil)

I've marked with an * the three cards I'll try to include in next weeks deck. Well, until next time, may the mana gods not hate you.

DAMMIT

I KNEW you couldn't sacrifice Gilded Drake to Miren and still get the exchange.

Current Oracle Text

When Gilded Drake comes into play, choose one - sacrifice Gilded Drake; or exchange control of Gilded Drake and target creature an opponent controls. If you can't make the exchange, sacrifice Gilded Drake. This ability can't be countered. (This effect doesn't end at end of turn.)

From the Ask the Judge database

Q: If I put the ability of Gilded Drake into stack, targeting legal target and my opponent kills Gilded Drake with Terror, does the exchange still take place?

A: No. When the ability resolves, the things that will be exchanged need to be present. Otherwise, nothing happens.

Argh.

A Miss Mosh of Topics

Lots of diverse topics to write about tonight; I'll get right going.

Cube Draft!
To expand or not to expand? That is the question. I have had a few votes in favor and one "meh" (who stated that he actually enjoyed culling the weakest Cube cards from the cardboard herd). I am sorta kinda against it, but not in any real substantive way. My only arguments are that 1) The completist in me loves to know that we will have a full pool of awesome cards when we have an 8 man Cube draft, and 2) The elitist in me likes knowing that only the very most powerful 360 cards are deemed worthy of such an honor. Changing the number upward is fine, most notably if it gets people engaged in the Cube process again, which has been lacking since the increase in the number of expert level expansion releases this year. Also, I need to actually bring it along to Magic nights. And then there's EDH to blame too. God damnnit is EDH fun. It just wrecks other formats. But I digress! Here are questions that need answering if we want to expand ze Kube.
1) How do we decide the number of cards to add to the Cube?
We can do arbitrary, i.e. 100, or another 360 (not recommended, super duper power level drop off alert), or 140 (because that's the number that after much deliberation we estimate will provide the most delicious add-ins without a significant power drop off); OR we can just start tossing in good cards until we have a consensus moment when we say "stop." This would be something like, "Well, Armored Ascension is good enough but we need to draw the line at Silkbind Faerie." Or something like that. I would argue for some iteration of the former, not the latter, lest mass chaos erupt.
2) How do we decide which CARDS to add to the Cube?
Sounds kind of "obv" worthy, right? But the biggest argument for increasing Cube size has come because of the large amount of rad ass uncommons of Shadowmoor. True, there are many awesome potential includes in Shadowmoor, but we have also cut dozens of cards prior to this. Are those rejects now getting a new lease on Cube life? What about cards that were in other Cube lists that we rejected during building? Are they now too in the running? I guess my point is that thousands of cards may be competing for a scant 100 or so slots. Are we up to the challenge? Or will we provide some guidelines going in, like new cards have priority, or that we are only adding Shadowmoor cards? I really do come down egalitarian side of every card having an equal chance here. If we are expanding the Cube then all those mint Shadowmoor cards should have to compete with the dusty also-rans of yore. The Cube is about distilled power level, whatever else it is about. Adding cards is one thing, but not allowing all cards consideration for entry is ageist. Yeah I went there.

Regionals!
I will apparently be there! I have not tested at all, but might try to do so Wednesday eve. I am running the consensus "best deck" (duhr Faeries, duhr) because let's face it; me+ type 2 + no testing = Hope to be Lucksack McGee or 0-2 drop and EDH. I am leaning to the latter more than the former, but at least Faeries can just win sometimes. Here is a list of cards I need, should you be so kind to loan them.

1x Faerie Conclave
1x Underground River
1x Mutavault
2x Pendelhaven
3x Razormane Masticore
3x Thoughtseize
3x Ancestral Vision

And any sideboard/maindeck tech against Chameleon Colossus/Squall Line/Cloudthresher, and/or Kitchen Finks, because they all scare the hell out of me. Makes me want to play more counterspells out of the board or something. Lookit me, all pretending to know about Standard and shit!

Big Changes with Shards of Alara!
I am still processing this, but off the cuff it seems like having what amounts to super-duper rares is not an idea I can really support. I already spend way more money on this stupid hobby than I should. The realization that no one really learns the game through the Core Set seems like an open secret finally being publicly acknowledged. How many people watching a Magic game for the first time see people playing Xth edition cards? And we know that's how newbs learn, from watching non-newbs play. I personally am happy to see the number of cards printed per year go down. Learning Limited formats takes time, and I feel like I never really got enough play out of Lor/Lor/Mor draft before the switch. I KNOW I won't have drafted trips Shadowmoor more than 15 times before the new rotation, mostly because of new time constraints on my part. I guess the real problem here is the Wizards needs to give us more time between set releases, not fewer cards per release. Yes Rav/Guild/Diss was boring by the end, but at least we had time to "figure out" the format. And that was a format that turned out to really give players a lot of enjoyment for doing so. Now only the super die-hard drafters are going to "get" the current format before it rotates. You hear that? I'm not enough of a Limited player to keep up anymore! What the hell is this world coming to?


Geekerus Miscellaneous!
Fans of Wizards of the Coast and their business interests should note that Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition will be in stores this weekend. Wizards is a crafty company, and have recruited several behemoths of webcomicry to inaugurate this occasion. Penny-Arcade's Gabe and Tycho (or Jerry and Mike) and PVP's Scott Kurtz have agreed to do an adventure DMed by a Wizards employee familiar with the new 4E rules. The result a series of podcasts and comic panels, drawn by Mike and Scott. Because all of these men are hilarious the experience is worth a listen even for those hypocrites who decry paper and pencil Geekery. D&D players will glean some knowledge of the new system and have an opportunity to hear how the system works in real time.

DJ TooSarcastic!
New mix is up. Tracklist here. It is dark. Not much melody up in here. I was inspired by the kind of music that I most enjoy dancing to; rhythm-heavy techno. I ended leaning toward progressive house vibe as well. I thought I gave that sound up in college, but apparently I was not well-informed. It was a really easy mix to make, two takes, a few edits and that was that. I am much more used to mixing music like this, since this was what I enjoyed playing when I used to have proper gigs. I put this into my Itunes and it appears to have compressed the volume or something such that one or two tracks sound pretty fucking awful. I promise that if you listen to the MP3 file on its own it won't sound as terrible.
T

Shards of Alara

For Reference click here

Shards of Alara is the next block after Eventide is released to finish off Shadowmoor block

Well they have really changed things, Mythic Rares with Red expansion symbols.

New Gold Planeswalker(s).

Basic lands in every pack?

Now packs will have the following distribution: starting with Shards of Alara, every booster pack will have one rare (replaced occasionally by a mythic rare), three uncommons, ten commons, and one basic land. This new rarity distribution will be applied to every core set and expansion (large and small) moving forward.

OMG

Best thing to ever happen to T1!

Regionals

This year Regionals is going to be held at the new DuPage Expo Center:

Location

Dupage Expo Center 4050 East Main St St. Charles, IL 60174 Tel: 866-239-EXPO (3976) www.dupageexpo.com

Directions to the DuPage Expo center -Click here

taken from Pastimes.net