Category Archives: Magic the Gathering

The Call that Never Came.

by

0

One of my favorite movies of all time, is EuroTrip. I watch it at least once a year and often more then that. It just is a thing.

One of my favorite podcasts is Papa’s Basement. I like talk radio and John is a funny guy for a Greek… Is that raciest? Nah. Hell are Greeks known for not being funny? He might be the only Greek i know other then the guy who made me a gyro like everyday i was in downtown Denver for a conference. Damn! I love me a good gyro…. Brb, lunch break!

And back. Anyway, he and his nerd friend Rich, started a new podcast the LSV Fanclub. This one is magic themed and practically licks LSV’s balls. And i think if Rich and John got the chance to take a man nibble they might if only for the story. But it is good and i think with some work it can be great.

Long story short, i have talked with John about being a guest on his show or on one of mine a few times but it is easy to promise but hard to follow through. Just ask my wife about favor repayments when sexy time rolls around.

But This weekend was the weekend. I would love to make this work. It could be great. They need a limited/standard guy, John loses co-hosts faster then then hot chicks in the middle east get stoned for showing too much ankle. So making some in roads seems like a no brainier if i want to widen my audience. He has a following that hasn’t yet come around to the glory that is my open hole. Ie my word maker, you sickos!

This weekend was it. I was hot of the Pre release here at the shop. I also happened to be fired up about some stuff that rocked the fun out of my weekend and a nice public venting is just what i needed. And then like that seen out of Eurotrip the girls never came.

There were some scheduling issues on their side and clearly we didn’t tape. Bummer, but it happens when one co-host lives in the same time zone or one over; let a lone 6. Rich is living in France at the moment. Guess he is into hairy chicks…. I don’t know.

I was hanging with my DDo peps blowing off steam, keeping an eye out in the event that their shit game together. Maybe next week.

Give it a shot if you are into magic or if you want to make sweet man love to LSV. They even say a little prayer to keep his beard full and lush. I like LSV a lot, he is one of my favorite pros hands down but a little prayer?

Fuck, why do i want to be on this show again? We all know that Conley Woods is where the real action is at! Oh god, i just downloaded Conley’s twitter photo to my desktop to use as the image for this post. Now my wife can mock me for being gay for Conley in new and exciting ways. Shout out Conley, one time in bed…

<3s

Soulfire Grand Master is a Myth Realized

by

0

Last week i wrote about a jeskai list i have been theorizing about here is a link to that write up. My actual list however is a few cards different, mostly to my access to the cards issues. Here is the latest version of the list.

2 Myth Realized
3 Soulfire Grand Master
4 Monastery Mentor
4 Ojutai Exemplars
1 Purphoros, God of the Forge
1 Dragonlord Ojutai
3 Magma Jet
2 Roast
2 Valorous Stance – Devouring Light
2 Stoke the Flames
2 Ojutai’s Command
2 End Hostilities
2 Treasure Cruise
2 Dig Through Time
1 Secure the Wastes
1 Crater’s Claws
2 Narset Transcendent

So far this is what i know. Devouring Light is amazing in this list and i am main decking them at the moment. If you ever buy back or rebound a Treasure Cruise or a Dig you feel unbeatable. But i am not even sure if i want blue spells in the deck now.

You could go deeper into red/white with Elspeth, Sun’s Champions and token makers to make the exemplars and the over all theme of the deck even stronger.

But i was looking through my binder and i noticed that Naya mana is very sweet right now with all the fetches and temples. A 8 fetch land 8 basic 8 temple mana base would be quite good and having access to Atarka’s Command and Dromoka’s Command might be just stronger then the blue cards.

I am not sure.

Think i will get a few more games in with this list as it is then try it with out the blue and see if i even need the card draw. I might not.

I do want to make Narset good though. And i can’t foresee something doing a better job of abusing her then the Cruise/Dig combo…

We all get to Vote, MtG Hall of Fame!

by

0

I had planed to go through a bit of an update of the Jeski list i have been working on for the last week or two, but then i saw the article on the “mothership” and i thought no brainier.

So my votes for the 2015 Class for the Pro Tour Hall of Fame

First off the easy one, Eric Froehlich. I have been a fan of Eric for a long time and he has been having an amazing year. Teaming up with Marshall Sutcliffe to do Constructed Resources was/is an amazing marketing idea putting him in the much deserved lime light.

Think my next vote would have to be for Gerard Fabiano. Gerard just lives outside the box the rest of the Magic world lives in and you can see that in his card evaluations and deck choices. I like that a lot so another easy vote.

Willy Edel, is G/B Magic. You might hear it said that he is Brazilian magic, and it is true. Looking at his stats i don’t know how he can’t be a shoe in this year.

If we are looking at records that make people a shoe in then Shouta Yasooka is just that. PT top eights, 2 including a win and second place. Something like 20 GP top 8s including a win and numerous second places finishes.

Then i want to wrap things up with a deck name i will always remember. Heezy Street, the name of the deck Mark Herberholz used to win Pro Tour Honolulu 2006. Ravnica/Kamigawa standard was an amazing time in magic’s history. And this was one of if not the first PT i remember watching live and being a huge fan boy. I am not a big sports fan, i don’t watch any sports on tv with any regularity. I do like a hockey game once and a while but for the most part, neigh. This was my first Super Bowl. And i remember being exited.

Bam! that was a fast five. I hope all Magic fans can take a moment and vote. Think this is the first year that us normal magic players get to vote people into the Hall and i would like to see it continue.

If you don’t know what i am talking about here is a link.

<3s

Magic Online or not to Online? That is a Fucked up Question…

by

0

Werds kids,

Day 2 of my write everyday and it is 11:54 Pm and i have a lot more to say then 6 mins will allow. But i want to talk about Magic Online aka Modo, it seems to be a hot topic at the moment. Not as hot as say ladies playing Magic which i am pro-more magic players. I don’t care if you have a vagina or not or are in the process of getting one if you dig Magic then play! Tell any haters to go to hell, and that includes me if i say something offensive. Was that more white privilege then i should have let out of the bag at one time? Nah….

No today i wanted to talk about me and Magic Online. Back in the day (Rav Block) i had my Modo account and i was rocking games. I was lucky enough to run into a few writers at the time and got a few brews written up by them and felt like a brew master. It was sweet. I was up all night playing Magic. Drafting/Constructed it didn’t matter i needed the fix. My constructed decks i was into were cheep to build and stole games off people with strange cards that no one else played. And 8 mans filled with ease. Life was good.

Then i got too deep. I was drafting more times a day then i could afford. But i was on the brink of going infinite, or at least i convinced myself that i was. But at the end of the night, selling to the bots, i was always a little short of the next fix. It was an addiction. About that time i decided that i needed to cut back and that is when i took a break. I switched to DDo. Another game i love (anther addiction) but had a fixed cost each month.

I saved money and fell off the planet to my “real life” friends. Now that i am not 100% locked in  DDo i can do things but my “real life” pals have a life and it is hard to break back in.

Now i want to play online again, if i work a draft or two in to the budget each month i could make things happen. But that is not the way to play online if you have the goal of breaking even or better. Now if i had the spare money to invest in both paper and Modo i would do so in an heart beat. And i might do a kickstarter or something i don’t know. If my schedule shifts the way i think it will here real soon i hope to have more time to stream different games and Modo would be a game i would want to stream for sure.

And while Modo, is great and i like it a lot in theory anyway i can’t give up paper Magic. At least not yet. If you listen to my tiny house podcast, i do with Tobril, TalkTiny2Me.com; I have said how my plan to get the tiny house going when the time comes is to cash out my paper collection at least the big dollar items. I can’t cash out my modo account and expect to build a house or even make a real dent in that cost. But my paper collection….. Maybe? The other day Tobril and i were talking about selling off his old games and whatnot and we started to talk about the value of some of his cards. And you know what he has 8 Force of Wills extra AT LEAST! Force is a little over a 100 bill right now. He has at least a thousand dollars in about 8-9 cards. You can’t expect to do that with Modo.

There are numerous good reasons to play Modo. The newest CONSTRUCTED RESOURCES, did a great job of outlining the pros and cons of doing so. But for me it would be a play both with paper and on Modo. I couldn’t just move to Modo 100%, it wouldn’t make sense for me with the way physical cards are being handled in the secondary markets. There is just too much free value in having those actual cards.

Also to their list i want to add a few things:

  • You can’t really sit down at the kitchen table with a few friends/family and play Modo over a few drinks and have a party. There will always be a box physical decks at my house that we can whip out at with but a moments notice. In my case i keep all the pre-made theme decks we buy together to battle when people don’t have a deck to play.
  • I can play with out power or an internet connection. Laugh but there has been more time in my life with out the internet then with it. And i know how easy it is for power to go down. A winter or two back some members of my family were with out power at their house for 2 weeks do to a bad ice storm. I live in Kansas shit happens here.
  • If Modo is so cheep to buy into how can you expect to cash out at a good rate?
  • And with physical cards i personally see generous people. A while back a local player won a win a box. And he sat down and opened said box while hanging out at the shop. He gave everyone his his circle at the time a pack to open to celebrate his victory. Then he gave away any of the cards he didn’t need for his collection (any card not just low value cards) to those that did have a use for those cards. That level of generosity is hard to come by in a digital only world. And that is not the only time i have seen one of our local players do something like that.

To any of my local magic players that read this far, i know some of you are thinking about the switch and if you are doing so please do not cash out of the physical cards completely. Keep your playsets or least the land base for any format/s you enjoy. Sure there are online events, but how often do you feel like playing away from the computer? There is a large group of people “fighting” to play Magic and be treated like any other player. See how i rounding back to the ladies playing Magic. Smooth. If you ask anyone that “quits” Magic and cashes out then comes back what their biggest Magic regret is I 100% know they will say is cashing out. Just sit on those cards. Maybe pair down. Sell things like extra copies or things that you feel will have a low rebuy in cost if you decide to return. For a minimum of at least for 2 years. After that if Modo is 100% all you need then God bless.

For me it is paper first.

<3s

The Death of June, Return of Updates

by

0

Morning everyone,

Some of you might have noticed that i took a little bit of a break from blogging for about the last month or so. I just needed to recharge, i felt like i was just pumping out the same decks or talking about the same things over and over.  That is MY problem being a brewer, some times a card just gets stuck in your head and you can’t find a deck at clears the cache as it where.

I am not going to make any promises on formats but i hope to write at least a little something each day again through July. I have enough going on in in my daily gaming world/life i hope to have enough to talk about.

Lets look at a few cards that have been rattling around in my head for a while and see if i can make some “Magic” happen.

Soulfire Grand Master
Monastery Mentor
Ojutai Exemplars

If you don’t know what a card does/is i linked you to their gatherer page. WoTC must not like letting people use their images for some reason.

So that is a pile of mythics, am i right or what?

Personally, i have loved Soulfire Grand Master since the moment i read the card. I just want play this on 2 and then lightingbolts forever! So lets do it!

I spent a little time looking for other decks that use the Soulmaster of Funk online and most of those lists are dull. And none of them are using Monastery Mentor or the Exemplars and both of these cards are insanely good.

4 Soulfire
4 Mentor
4 Exemplars
12

3 Magma Jet
2 Roast
2 Valorous Stance
1 Jeskai Charm
3 Stoke the Flames
2 Ojutai’s Command
2 End Hostilities
2 Treasure Cruise
2 Dig Through Time
1 Icy Blast
1 Secure the Wastes
1 Crater’s Claws

22
2 Narset Transcendent
2

The mana base for this deck should be simple.

4 Flooded Strand
3 Mystic Monastery
3 Evolving Wilds
3 Temple of Enlightenment
3 Temple of Triumph
2 Battlefield Forge
2 Plains
2 Island
2 Mountain

My thinking is just look at all the sweet cards no one is expecting. I wanted to over tax my opponent’s brain with “what can he have” and take advantage of that over thinking. Your removal is solid enough to handle everything, that loan Icy Blast is mostly for my son who is constantly using it to finish games in his artifact/blue rush deck he is loving in standard.

I kinda want more Narset also… SO many cuts. Can you guess that i had Mindswipe in the main? If you are crazy like me you could cut the charm, a dig and that icy for 3 in the main and then take them out during side boarding. My plan for side boarding at the moment is Anger of the Gods, Magma Spray, Glare of Heresy, Stubborn Denial, and more plainswalkers would be good.

Is it good? I am not sure. But i do know that those 3 dudes pack a ton of power that is not seeing a ton of standard play and i think it is because everyone has latched onto decks of old like Abzan (or however you spell is) and a deck like this would shake it up and i think whoop up on a lot of the current meta.

<3s

Magical Tuesday 6.2.2015

by

0

This past week/weekend was a bag of crazy and some of it had to do with magic.  Lets start things off the LGS (Local Game Store) i work part time for got broken in to Monday morning around 1am. Thanks to a weird happenstance the would be thief got nothing for his time, well not yet anyway. Once he is found he might get something… Anyway, that is why no Magic Monday, i was assisting with that fall out. But lets rewind to magic topics.

Thanks to changing my hours at my evening job i have been able to attend the last few FNM drafts. At these drafts i am 16-2 in games. 8-0 in matches. Not a bad record overall but what is nice to know is that the weeks before my shift change the FNM attendance had been falling. Part of my job is getting players in the store on Fridays as well as keeping them happy. My not being around effected that turn out a bit i believe but now that i am back things seem to be turning around again. Well for now anyway. We have a few of our area’s players leaving for greener pastures in the coming weeks some for the summer, some for a time unknown. I wish these players well as they are my friends but i can’t lie i will miss having them a in direct correlation to $$ spent at the LGS. Greedy i know.

Then on this last Saturday, we had a small 4 round win a box as a going away event for one of these guys and i was able to play as well as run the event.

Lost my first round mostly to the deck just not wanting to run issues. Mulled to 5 before finding a reasonable keep. And proceeded to flood out to an opponent (mulled to 6) with an aggressive open lion into boon stayer into deathmist into den protector. We were both at 7 when he was able to enchant the protector with the stayer for the win. Game 2, i kept a risky hand of red cards with black mana. I figured if i hit a red source in the first few draws i couldn’t loose. But it came a turn too late and my last out was one of my anger of the gods. It was the draw i would have drawn when he was able to push through with a 3/2 den protector.

I proceeded to win out to end on a record of 3-1. My first round opponent ended up playing in the finals and loosing, locking up second. I was in the top 4. Not too bad really.

There was an issue after the tournament was done. I am not in charge of figuring out prize product. We had 13 people at 15$ a head and gave out about a box and a half or 54 packs. The winner got a box and 2-3 split 18 packs between them. At our prices that gave the shop 33$ for running the event + the margins on the pack sales. Which we run VERY small margins on magic packs. I am not the accountant but i would assume after costs the shop might have made 10-15$ or so on the event.

For the record, If we used WoTC MSRP we would have giving out 48 packs. Or a box + 12 packs at MSRP that would be 57$ish dollars before costs. Or a much larger profit.

We have a very vocal player that feels that we should give out 100% of the entry fees in packs to the winners taking 100% of the profits out of the pack margins. Doing so with our current margins would have netted about 9$ before costs. Ie cost the shop money to hold events.

I told this player i would look at the numbers and see what i could do to address his concerns, but even after having talking with him about it, he still went on to bash the shop in front of other players about what he fills to be correct. And i did my best to counter this in the mind of those players in hear shot but he droned on. Including implying that he would talk to other people about his feelings even outside of the shop. People that i can not hope to reach out side of here or Facebook.

So if you are one of those people i hope you read to the end here and that this counters some of his argument. That said I AM looking at adjusting/creating a formula to assign winnings that is as favorable to the players as it is to the shop. If holding tournaments is not profitable then they will not be supported and that would be horrible.

Aside: This issue has been forefront in my mind since it happened. It just so happened that GP Las Vegas was this weekend. So i did some back of the napkin maths.

The base entry fee was 75$ and the attendance was over 7,100 players. I know there were more then that and i also know that all the different levels of the event were filled as well as a number of side events but i just want to use these numbers.

75*7100 is 532500

packs for 7100 for 2 days of a sealed is roughly 50000 or have a MSRP of 199500 or a cost of 13750 assuming that they didn’t get a better deal on packs for the GP.

I did the math on the prize support in cash on Sunday, so pardon if it is not 100% right but i remember it being just under 250000

Fees 532500
packs 137500
prize 250000
———–
145000 before paying staff and other fees.

Assuming about 100000 cost for this one event that is about 45000 profit for this one event. The largest tournament of all time. And that is not counting the side events, sells, booth rentals, concessions, etc…. And or 10$ on 195$ is a deal breaker????

I would love to hear peoples thoughts on this.

<3s

Magical Monday 5.18.2015

by

0

Welcome back, Once again it is time for another Magical Monday. This past weekend was a beating in the world of MtG.

First of all i was able to get sealed deck tournaments in the monthly Friday Night Magic rotation and last Friday was Sealed day and i missed it due to some BS at the other job. The whole ordeal was super disappointing. I thought i had an understanding with the boss about Fridays but i guess i will just have to stop going in altogether on Fridays sooner then i expected. I can’t do the things i need to do on Friday’s at the shop if i am working over at Old D until late. When i finally make it to the shop i learn that one of the pods didn’t even fire. That means that for the last 3 weeks we have had one of our events not fire. I wasn’t around to fire up the crowd or bolster the numbers. Not having events fire is a huge deal.

There was a little bit of good news on Friday however, we had a few new players to the shop. Even in it cost Remmie some packs. I guess the young man he was playing was not the most experienced PAPER MtG player. He is a Mtgo player however so things like going through the steps and timing his cards is controlled for him by the program. Also he was just slow over all. I sat with him for a game and helped with the steps and whatnot. Helping him put the match to 1 and 1 with about 5 minutes left on the clock. I asked another judge to watch the table so i could handle something up front and be impartial during the play. But as i got up Bilal, the person that brought and paid for Jeremy (think that is the right name), told him to concede if they went to time. Jeremy said okay and Bilal and i went up front. A few minutes later the other judge i asked to watch the table came up and reported 1-1-1. I asked what happened with that concession and was told that was how Remmie reported. Remmie ended up winning the rest of his rounds until he played the eventual winner but that draw was practically a loss for finial standings.

Saturday, was Graduation Day for my niece (Salutatorian btw) as well as the Store Vs Store at home vs the Wichita team.. When i arrived 2/3s of the Wichita team didn’t even show. To have something for those that made the trip we held a special Win a Box for a MM2 box at a heavily reduced price. The Wichita draft team wanted to draft, but a lot of my draft team bailed and i was left with some good drafters but not those that had signed up. So we were all on different plans. Seemed like the whole table was in black, i know i was due to opened bomb black rare and getting passed 3 or 4 great black rares then nothing. I was able to move into green which was fairly open and got a fairly solid deck out of the deal. But just had massive amounts of mana issues all day long, often ending on turn 10-13 not missing a land drop and lands in hand. It was just a beating. 0-4.

I was told after the games finished up that i punted real bad in my first match. My opponent, Nathan said I was up a game and was in the race game 2. I had a Return to the Earth and i used it to kill a Jeskai Runemark to knock Nathan’s creature out of the sky. I was informed that i could have killed his flier… He had a removal spell for my guy and was able to 7 me twice thanks to Artful Maneuver, as i drew lands. But i think he was confused. I remember his guy being a manifest from a Cloudform that he had battle shipped into a 5/x. I had to kill the Cloudform to have a shot at removing his guy. If i am right then i didn’t punt even if they play was not great. But even so i can’t help but feel bad.

Game 3, we were back and forth. He was down to his last guy 4/x and i attacked for game but he had a removal spell. I had one of the cards i had splashed red for in my hand and then drew my only other red spell with no red source to cast them. Had i drew any other spell or a mountain i would have won.

I did my best to be a good sport and take my lumps but i thought my 2 and 2 would be my worse record but i was wrong. Oh well, i still had fun and i guess i will just have to try and be more aggressive next time.

<3s

Magical Monday 5.11.2015

by

0

Greetings and Salutations, Hope you all are well and that you are finding inspiration in the current meta that is Standard. Wow, so many options….

If you have been watching this site you know that i have become obsessed with the card Assault Formation, more so now that i filled out my play-set. Pumping out list after list building around this card has become one of my mental exercises to help wake up in the morning. Now if i can just get my brain to shut up at night so i can get some sleep.

Long time readers might remember that not too long ago i was infatuated with constellation themed decks. Namely those using two key cards.

And i think i have at least the beginnings of a list combining the two key ideas.

4 Nyx-Fleece Ram
2 Underworld Coinsmith

4 Grim Guardian
3 Nyx Weaver
2 Pharika, God of Affliction
4 Courser of Kruphix

1 Erebos, God of the Dead

2 Doomwake Giant
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
2 Dragonlord Dromoka

4 Assault Formation
2 Kruphix’s Insight
2 Whip of Erebos

24 lands including 12 temples and 4 tri-lands….
Is this list good? I don’t really know. But it should be a lot of fun. I could even see pulling out the white all together for a Green/Black list.

4 Grim Guardian
2 Nyx Weaver
2 Pharika, God of Affliction
4 Courser of Kruphix
4 Master of the Feast

1 Fate Unraveler
1 Erebos, God of the Dead

2 Doomwake Giant
2 Sidisi, Undead Vizier

2 Strength of the Fallen
4 Commune with the Gods
4 Assault Formation
2 Collected Company
2 Whip of Erebos

I like this list a lot also even if we don’t have the super cheep beaters but sometimes it is nice to have a good plan B and C.

There are a lot of ways to build an Assault Formation deck. A friend of my just loves his G/W/B list, and that is the point. It is a card that empowers diversity. Not like that big nasty Rhino that happens to also be good with Assault Formation…

<3s