International TableTop Day

The folks at Geek & Sundry decided to start a new gamer holiday, called International TableTop Day. I dutifully reported to my friendly local game shop, Wizard's Asylum of Norman, OK at the appointed hour and broke out some old favorites.

First, we played Castle Panic, which is a great introductory game for people you don't know or who aren't gamers. It's cooperative, simple to learn, and easy enough to strategize through without being too easy. It was the subject of this entertaining episode of TableTop:



After that, we played Pandemic. I actually had the presence of mind to get a few photos taken at this point:





I momentarily forgot that the expansion gave us the ability to play with 5 players, so I opted to sit out and play rules advisor while the others took on the game. Even so, I had a great time. I realized afterward that I have never had a bad time playing Pandemic. It's one of the most enjoyable games I own, and I think it has to be in my top 3 list for "games to recommend to others, especially non-gamers".

Then our group broke up and I joined the half that decided to play a game of Smallworld. This was also immortalized in digital film:



Surprisingly (to me), I wasn't very much into it this time around. I didn't enjoy it as much as I had been anticipating (I originally planned to take Smallworld by itself and no other games). I used to love Smallworld, and now I wonder if it's lost its appeal, or if I was just locked in that mid-afternoon lull where you really want to take a nap and get cranky if you can't.

The last game I played was my brand-spanking-new copy of X-Wing Miniatures. THIS game is AWESOME. I think we ran through it 3 times, and it was cool every time. It was so cool in fact that I think I'm going to get into it in detail in another post.

Brewer's Battle

Last night was the Brewer's Battle. I did all right, but was very much off my game due to a weekend head cold that was still rattling my senses. I've been working on (yet another) ramp brew, because I feel like I haven't fully explored the archetype yet.

This time, I decided to try a (mostly) mono black setup, since that would almost guarantee my ability to get Heartless Summoning on the board at will. I wanted some big bad creatures, and of course right now the biggest, baddest of the black is Griselbrand. I may eventually include him, but I just didn't feel like shelling out the $10 each that it would take to get some, and I felt sure that there were some cool underplayed cards I could use.

I started with the idea of getting something together with Xathrid Gorgon, since by some odd happenstance I have 4 of them. I didn't wind up going that route, but I have her in mind for a future deck, as a combo with Hellkite Tyrant.

Instead, I happened upon two guys that form the cornerstone of this deck: Harvester of Souls and Reaper from the Abyss. Reaper's morbid trigger is mandatory, meaning he could kill my own dudes if I'm not careful. So I started looking for demon creatures that weren't too hard on the downside. Desecration Demon was an obvious choice, and my top end turned into Lord of the Void.

Now this is a serious card. Mill decks just want to throw your library into your graveyard. Lord of the Void removes your library from the game, 7 cards at a time. Oh, and I get one of your dudes if I happen to like him.

That's where I wanted to go, now how do I live long enough to get there?

My first task was discouraging early attacks. I originally looked for cards that could survive the -1/-1 penalty on Heartless Summoning. Vampire Nighthawk was an easy choice, since he's a black staple in the 3-drop slot. But black creatures at 1 and 2 mana are generally pretty weak. I struggled with it for a time, until I realized that for the right creature, it wouldn't matter. Typhoid Rats has deathtouch, so anything it blocks it also kills. That makes folks think twice about charging in with their Champion of the Parish all loaded up with counters. Then I realized another cool interaction: drawing a Typhoid Rats later in the game wasn't a bad thing. Presumably I'd have a Harvester or Reaper on the field, and that turns the rats into a 1-drop draw a card/kill a creature spell.

For that reason I also added Blood Artist. Early in the game he gets me small life swings, and later he can turn into a draw/removal spell with a little added bonus. And if I draw into a Mutilate board wipe, the life swing can be quite massive against creature-heavy decks.

Speaking of Mutilate, that's where this deck really shines. Few creatures will survive it, and if I've got a Harvester of Souls in play, he'll draw me a card for every non-token creature that ate it. In testing, this worked especially well against Naya humans -- the board is wiped, your hand is empty, I've got a full hand ready to go into next turn. Against other decks, it still tends to produce a nice card advantage.

After adding some spot removal, I made a sideboard that complemented the main deck but dealt with specific threats, like Oblivion Ring and Detention Sphere, as well as control decks in general. I showed it to Planeswalker Asylum's Chris Allen and incorporated his suggestions, then this is what I had:

Creatures: 4 Typhoid Rats 3 Blood Artist 3 Vampire Nighthawk 3 Desecration Demon 4 Harvester of Souls 1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed 3 Reaper from the Abyss 1 Lord of the Void

Spells: 3 Tragic Slip 4 Heartless Summoning 3 Ultimate Price 4 Mutilate

Land: 4 Blood Crypt 2 Kessig Wolf Run 4 Overgrown Tomb 14 Swamp

Sideboard: 2 Cavern of Souls 3 Abrupt Decay 3 Dreadbore 1 Ultimate Price 4 Slaughter Games 1 Reaper from the Abyss 1 Lord of the Void

The two big guys are there for going against midrange decks, where there's not as much worry about getting blitzed, in which case I'd probably swap them in for a couple of my little dudes.

My first match I basically threw away due to not thinking clearly. I made so many mistakes that I lost track of them. I will say this: Legion Loyalist and Firemane Avenger are not cards you want to allow to live for very long. They will eat you alive.

My second match was a bye, and my third was against... ugh... my head is so foggy that I can't even remember. All I can recall is that my last two matches of the night were won pretty easily, despite a number of stupid derps on my part (mutilating after my dudes had combat damage, but expecting them to live, for example). The deck seems strong, and my opponents were complimentary about it. I hope to give it a better trial at FNM soon, but for some reason I have the jitters about it. Meh, the worst that could happen is I spend an evening playing Magic, right?

War Report

Last night I finally achieved a goal: I went 5-0 and took first place at Friday Night Magic.  I did so with a brew that was not my own, but it was still difficult and felt stressful regardless.  It does give me more confidence to try it with my own brews though, especially since my Naya Humans deck has done 4-1 on a couple of occasions.

The deck I played with was based on the one in Melissa De Tora's article, "Bashing Face with Monogreen".  She recommends a couple of changes to the original deck list, and I adopted some of hers (Kessig Wolf Run ftw) and put in some of my own.  My final deck list looked like this:

Creatures: 4 Arbor Elf 3 Dryad Militant 2 Ulvenwald Tracker 2 Primordial Hydra 4 Strangleroot Geist 4 Champion of Lambholt 4 Predator Ooze 3 Rubblebelt Raiders 4 Wolfir Silverheart

Spells: 2 Revenge of the Hunted 4 Rancor Planeswalkers: 1 Domri Rade

Land: 17 Forest 2 Kessig Wolf Run 4 Rootbound Crag

Sideboard: 3 Tormod's Crypt 2 Ranger's Guile 3 Plummet 3 Triumph of Ferocity 4 Acidic Slime

Melissa recommended a bunch of Garruk Relentless for the sideboard, but I don't own any and I wasn't inclined to buy them, so instead I tossed in my one copy of Domri Rade, some Triumph of Ferocity for the hell of it, and went to town. In retrospect, I probably should have taken her advice on Giant Growth over Revenge of the Hunted, but it didn't matter, because the deck just crushed the opposition.

Matches 1, 2, and 3 were all won at a walk, with the deck winning on autopilot in 2 games each match. One opponent managed to get me to 14 life, and that was the worst trouble I had.

Match 4 got interesting. My opponent was playing Jund, and in game 1 he managed to drop me to 6 life while hiding behind (and occasionally attacking with) a Vampire Nighthawk, which eventually became a pair of them. He lifelinked his way to 26 life, and I whittled him back to 20 before managing to land a Wolfir Silverheart that paired with my Champion of Lambholt (which already had Rancor on it). Next turn, I swung in with the two of them plus (I think) a Predator Ooze with some counters on it for exactly 20. Champion of Lambholt wins games, folks!

In game 2, I stumbled a little bit on the curve, and my opponent had perfect removal, so he blew me out without taking a single point of damage.

In game 3, I again took some beats to the face early on, which damaged my confidence a bit. I dropped a Primordial Hydra, then drew on my next turn before doubling his counters. My opponent stopped me as I was about to fix him, and called it a missed trigger. I believe that FNM is played with "casual rules enforcement", but since I aspire to compete someday, I agreed that it was a missed trigger, though I saw victory slipping from my fingers. My next turn I remembered to double the counters during upkeep. Then he attacked with his Thragtusk and used his own Kessig Wolf Run to do just enough damage to kill my blocking Hydra. My opponent was betting I didn't have a Giant Growth (I didn't), saving enough mana to end his turn by casting Olivia Voldaren, which I triumphantly nuked with the Plummet I'd been holding since my opening hand. After that it was pretty much over, and I later found the guy and thanked him for the good game and for smacking me down on the missed trigger, since that's what makes you a better player.

I was extremely stressed out for Match 5, and mostly coasted for Game 1, which I won. My opponent was playing Naya Humans (I think), and in Game 2 managed to get a huge Champion of the Parish paired with a Silverblade Paladin, which wrecked me in short order. Going into Game 2, I was having difficulty doing combat math in my head from all the stress, and took too long to make some plays, which earned me a slow play warning from the judge. We started Game 3 with me taking a big 7-point hit on turn 2 with the Burning-Tree Emissary combo, but I managed to rally back with Strangleroot Geist, followed by a short stalemate while I assembled (once again) the Champion of Lambholt/Wolfir Silverheart combo and swung for unblockable lethality.

The major lesson learned is that I need a system for the Untap/Upkeep/Draw portion of my turn, to do it all in the correct order, and to make sure I hit every card that needs its Upkeep step managed (like Primordial Hydra). I also need to work on a methodical habit of identifying and announcing attack triggers, as with Predator Ooze and Rubblebelt Raiders. And I desperately need to start working on getting the combat math done in my head. I used to be able to do calculus in my head (back in high school), but now for some reason simple math is astoundingly hard, particularly when under stress in a match. Unfortunately, I have no one with whom to practice this on a regular basis, so I might be in a bit of trouble with that.

All in all though, it was a good run, and in an odd way I feel less stress about getting to 5-0 with one of my own brews, since I've proven I can get to 5-0 as a player. I've got a deck idea in mind for Monday's Brewer's Battle, and it seems to be doing OK in testing, so we'll see how well it pans out.

Deviant Glee

One of my favorite things to do with Magic is brew decks. I like trying out different ideas, and nothing pleases me more than finding a disregarded card and making it useful. That's why the Wizard's Norman Brewer's Battles have my complete and undivided attention every time they come around. I like Friday Night Magic, but it usually feels like a competition of net decks with minor tweaks rather than a head-to-head battle of my deck-building and playing skills vs yours. That's not to say there aren't original brews floating around, just that they don't seem to be the rule, and once you normalize for playing skill it often devolves into a competition of wallets.

None of this should be taken to imply that I'm any great shakes as a player. I've got lots to learn, as recent matches have demonstrated. The point of this commentary is that for me, half the game of Magic is in brewing, and when I have to play net deck vs. net deck, I feel like we've started watching Star Wars at the trash compactor scene. That's what makes the Brewer's Battles so awesome -- we get to play the full game of Magic.

A couple of Brewer's Battles ago, I put together a couple of medium-strength decks and loaned them out to friends. One played a Selesnya populate-based deck with the added little bonus of splashing black for Pack Rat, since it turns out the easiest way to multiply rats is to get one token into play and then populate the heck out of it. I got to watch him play a hilarious game against GP San Antonio champ Tyler Lytle, who despite repeatedly casting Mutilate couldn't keep the tokens from spiraling out of control.

Couch Pirate Jake needed a last-minute deck, so I tossed him the Golgari brew I had been thinking about playing, with lots of Splinterfright and Lotleth Troll action. I never got to see it in action, and I don't remember how well he did, but he said the deck was good enough for a Brewer's Battle, so I'll take that as a win.

In the meantime, I played this crazy idea I'd had with Call to the Kindred and Worldspine Wurm. Naturally, I lost every match, and every game except one: the one where I successfully landed a Wurm and proceeded to bash face with it. It was the one moment that made the rest of the evening entirely worthwhile.

I'm no stranger to the fast, cheap aggro strategy. I have a (self-brewed, tyvm) Burning-Tree Emissary deck that I love and which tends to do very well. But there's something about dropping massive creatures on the board that really appeals to me. Dropping Champion of the Parish on turn 1 is good, but seeing an opponent's face after a "too expensive to be castable" creature hits the board is AWESOME.

I like Travis Woo's various ramp decks, and I like that some of them are putting poor unemployed rares like Tyrant of Discord back to work. I also like the fact that he doesn't refrain from doing something just because someone says it can't be done. Turns out Craterhoof Behemoth can get the job done. Who knew?

So with Travis as my inspiration, and Wizard's Norman's Joseph McKinney as my sounding board, I set out to build ramp decks for the sheer joy of it.

There are two main issues with ramp decks: getting the mana to cast your bombs, and surviving long enough to cast them. Green is the natural choice for ramp, and Farseek is by far the most popular spell. Other green options include Axebane Guardian, who when paired with Gatecreeper Vine tends to produce explosive mana (he landed my Worldspine Wurm). Gatecrash has dropped Verdant Haven and Greenside Watcher in our laps, and there are always the ever-popular "mana dorks", Avacyn's Pilgrim and Arbor Elf. In artifacts we have the various keyrunes, Chromatic Lantern, and Gilded Lotus.

These were the options I started with. My main desire was to see Armada Wurm hit the table, and I had picked up a set of Angel of Serenity on the cheap that also begged to be played. My playset of Thragtusk seemed like an easy choice, as with Restoration Angel to play bouncy-castle with Thraggy and Wurmy.

My main test competition was against my Naya Humans deck, which has gone 4-1 pretty consistently at FNM, with the losses more than likely being my fault as a player rather than a weakness in the deck. I figured if I couldn't beat a lightning fast aggro deck, it probably wasn't worth trying.

My first cut looked something like this:

Creatures: 4 Arbor Elf 4 Avacyn's Pilgrim 4 Restoration Angel 4 Thragtusk 4 Armada Wurm 4 Angel of Serenity

Spells: 3 Blind Obedience 3 Farseek 4 Oblivion Ring 2 Verdant Haven

Land: 7 Forest 2 Gavony Township 7 Plains 4 Sunpetal Grove 4 Temple Garden

Sideboard: 3 Cathedral Sanctifier 1 Farseek 3 Selesnya Keyrune 2 Sigarda, Host of Herons 3 Wasteland Viper 3 Young Wolf

I played it against Joseph's Naya something (humans?) build, and it struggled. Opponents tend to waste no time these days nuking mana dorks, and even if they don't you're generally reluctant to chump block with them, which gives the enemy free beats to your face. I went home a little disheartened, and almost went to the following FNM with my good old reliable Emissary build. Somewhere in the next 24 hours, I discovered my new favorite ramp spell: Heartless Summoning. Sure, it messes up your creatures a bit, but if you're playing with big enough dudes it probably doesn't matter, given that the field average seems to be about a 3/3 or smaller.

Throwing caution to the wind, I splashed black, tossed away my mana dorks, added some Centaur Healers for early blocks and lifegain, and loaded up on Heartless Summoning. The deck I took to FNM looked like this:

Creatures: 4 Centaur Healer 4 Restoration Angel 4 Thragtusk 4 Wolfir Silverheart 4 Angel of Serenity 2 Elderscale Wurm

Spells: 1 Tragic Slip 3 Farseek 3 Heartless Summoning 4 Oblivion Ring 3 Ultimate Price

Land: 2 Cavern of Souls 2 Forest 4 Overgrown Tomb 2 Plains 4 Sunpetal Grove 4 Temple Garden 2 Vault of the Archangel 4 Woodland Cemetery

Sideboard 3 Cathedral Sanctifier 1 Farseek 3 Selesnya Keyrune 2 Sigarda, Host of Herons 3 Wasteland Viper 3 Young Wolf

To be honest, I added in the Cavern of Souls out of habit. I'm not sure it was a good decision, but I've spent so many FNM's not being able to play at all due to counterspells that I'm gun-shy about it. Also, the sideboard is sloppy because I was in a hurry at the end.

The deck performed pretty well, and I was only stymied by one player who had an evil build around Zealous Conscripts with Cloudshift, though he missed the opportunity to perma-steal my creatures. I completely threw away a game vs Travis Woo's Black Wolf Run (piloted by Chris Allen) due to my own stupid failure as a player, and might possibly have been able to win that match had the event not completely rattled me.

What's best though, is that I had a lot of fun playing it. Dropping big creatures is a blast, and seeing people look a little confused when the "unplayable" card lands and messes up their plans is a great feeling. One opponent found himself frustrated by the fact that I refused to block while my Elderscale Wurm was sitting on the table, instead opting to just swing in the air over his dudes while casting Thragtusk after Thragtusk. And yeah, he was totally holding two Tragic Slip to nuke the Wurm had I killed one of his guys.

With those experiences under my belt, I came back to the drawing board and have been giving it another go. The options I see in other underplayed cards just look like too much fun to pass up, and I've already discovered some highly entertaining combos that I can't wait to try out on the unsuspecting.