Easter Vacation.

We have a change in venue for the easter vacations, mainly because the Parkinson’s is unavailable for our activities at the moment. Not to worry one bit, an alternative venue is here and its just a stone’s throw away from the regular place. We will, of course, be drafting, though if your not wanting to draft, come down and have a casual game anyways, there will be people around with decks, trades and all sorts of other stuff that makes Magic, Magic. Its even a good time to bring down a friend to teach them the game!

If your unsure of how to get to us

Layout of the Union: [ http://www.luuonline.com/downloads/ ]
The first download will be a pdf handbook giving you directions into how to get to us. You shouldn’t have any problems getting into the University Union, though if there are, let them know that you are attending an event up in Meeting Room 3 in the A.R.C.

Layout of Leeds Univerity: [ http://webprod2.leeds.ac.uk/campusmap/index.asp ]

This one is a more general guide on how to get to the Union. Hope to see you guys around there!

Also, I do hope to put some society casual decks together. If anyone have thoughts on some standard decks that are based around a collection of commons and  and uncommons that revolve around a cool idea, do share, as it would probably help getting a few working decks together in time for our next tournament.

That’s all for now!

Jin.

 

Gelatinous Moose

QFTD -

“How many cards in your hand?”

“Enough to beat you.”

~ Matt Reynolds – in response to a kid. ~ Episode 3 of the Magic Schoolbus

 

Part of the MTGCast Network.

 

Welcome to MTGLeeds! Its the last day of term here in the University of Leeds, and a number of young mages are heading back home, taking the skills they honed during the hours of drafting, playing and having fun here. We hope to see them when they return, and perhaps they will have stories to share. Will I make them write about their easter vacation magic experience? Maybe. Foil for the best Article?

 

Anyways, this week, we ran two different formats, one Triple Morningtide and the other LRW/LRW/MOR, a first for us, and its interesting to see a number of people still interested in playing in Triple Morningtide. I myself stayed in the LRW/LRW/MOR format, though I wonder why, since Triple Morningtide seems much more interesting, and I wouldn’t have to end up in a pod where I had to play both Rick and Joe, both who hold perfect win records against me. Yes. I haven’t won a single limited game against Rick or Joe, and having a subpar deck running a combination of Kithkin and Treefolk.

 

Well. 2 Kithkin Healers and Battletide Alchemist along with a plethora of changlings seems like a good idea at the time, and why not have a couple of powerful treefolk such as the Guardian of Cloverdell (not to be confused with Cloverfield) when you are backed up with Fertile ground and Bosk Bannerts? Top it all off with Profane Command and nameless inversion, and it seems as if there is solid potential. First match was against Rick. Ink dissolver tore away Profane Command and Battletide Alchemist as well as a couple of key cards. And that was game one, though there was a few turning points. Game two saw me hunt around for my sideboard which I misplaced for a bit, (didn’t find it till after game 2). Thorntooth Witch made a showing, but didn’t stay long when cribswap struck. Galepowder Mage had to bounce a Mulldrifter, simply because it was a 6/6 flyer reinforced with Swell of Courage, a card which I regretted passing, but I’m somewhat certain I needed whatever it was I picked. There was a point where a Battletide Alchemist would have made things pretty annoying for the army of 2/2 flyers , but unfortunetly Stephen wasn’t around so my topdeck prowess failed me.

 

Second match was against Matt, and as he played a mid-range agro deck with numerous elves and an Imperious Perfect, and with Kithkin healer, manaaged to stall off enough damage to drop back to back Guardians of Cloverdell for full cost. Lignify didn’t help him much, since allowing me to retain blockers merely allow me to drop in gigantic bombs. Second game was along the same veins, this time with Galepowder mage with a potential to bounce a guardian or two for the sort of insane Kithkin generation. I wondered if I should have stuck in a Wizen Cenn. This is quite interesting actually. Picking up a lord or two as your first pick, (Rick picked up Cenn as well, Matt stole Perfect, and Jonathan took up Scion, but didn’t go into faeries…) seems weaker with the addition of Morningtide. Quite simply you can never get the second lord from the third Lorwyn pack, when people are finally decided in their tribes and colors instead of dithering over what they need to chose. As such, perhaps Harbingers become even more important in a specific tribe, as they allow you to find those lords you need.

 

Third match never happened. I did not get utterly torn apart by another giant deck Joe was piloting, with two thundercloud shamans and a harbinger to fetch them out, backed up with Wort, Tarfire/Nameless combo. Well, okay, maybe its pointless to deny it. In both games I ran into a stinkdrinker I couldn’t kill and had to face down at least 4-5 giants in the first five turns. Profane Command wasn’t even enough. I even brought in blue (Which might have been a bad choice…come to think of it) since the pure strength of a well tuned giant deck was hard to beat without something equally retarded in power. 1-0-2 isn’t really my best draft record by far and its always a tired feeling you get if its the sort of result you end up in the night, however…

 

Its not really the end of the world. I got to play with good friends and good people, whom I think I gave them just abit of a run for their money (Except for the second game against Joe…that was just a farce. Stinkdrinker, Giant, More giants, and giants and a hardcast Hamletback makes me wondered why I even bothered at times.) and while there were couple of shoddy mistakes I made, they are things to remember and hopefully never do again.

 

That’s my end of the room, however Mick Edwards, reports on the Triple Morningtide Draft from the other end of the room.

Draft Report – Mick Edwards – Triple Morningtide on 12th March.

March 12^th draft saw 2 pods, 6 in LLM and 6 including myself in triple morningtide.

It was good to see some people in the pod who I hadn’t seen in a while like Martin and Matt, and Christine, Coran and Jim made up the rest of the pod.

Drafting got underway quickly and first picking Violet Pall followed by a couple of Moonglove changelings saw me solidly in black. Unfortunately Martin (to my left) had also decided to go heavy black despite opening the complete bomb, Chameleon Colossus. Also against me was that fact that Jim was drafting rogues too, a tribe that I ended heavily in when I realised blue seemed pretty open, despite having sworn against ever playing rogues again, only the week before.

Christine managed to get a total of FIVE Gelatinous Moose (Editor’s note – We assume Game-trail Changling, though he easily could have meant Warspikes~Jin) (she must have been listening to my rants about how good it was) and also 3 Spitebellows. Unfortunately she didn’t end up doing to well which I can only guess was due to her top heavy curve (lol).

 

Draft Deck – Mick Edwards – March 12th MOR/MOR/MOR

 

Maindeck	Sideboard
Land (17): 9 Swamp 8 Island Creatures (18): 1 Festercreep 1 Nevermaker 3 Moonglove Changeling 1 Weirding Shaman 1 Sage Of Fables 2 Latchkey Faerie 1 Dewdrop Spy 2 Merrow Witsniper 2 Ink Dissolver 1 Fencer Clique 1 Weed Pruner Poplar 1 Moth Dust Changeling 1 Stinkdrinker Bandit Spells (5): 1 Morsel Theft 1 Door Of Destinies 1 Violet Pall 1 Stream Of Unconsciousness 1 Veterans Armaments	2 Weight Of Conscience 2 Shard Volley 3 Stonybrook Banneret 1 Floodchaser 2 Noggin Whack 1 Warren Weirding

Round1 Coran (Red/Green Elementals)

Coran played quite an interesting deck that aimed to get a high shaman count in the graveyard (with elementals such as Fertilid) for a high damage Sunflare Shaman. He was also playing powerful rares such as Boldwyr Heavyweights and Vengeful Firebrand.

Game one had him using Earthbrawn to get more use out of Fertilid and he eventually activated his Sunflare Shaman for 6 aimed at me, in response to my Weed-Pruner Poplar targeting it. This was not enough to stop my deck however, due to my ever growing Rogues (thanks to Door of Destinies).

 

Game two saw him playing turn 2 Sunflare Shaman, turn 3 Fire Juggler, turn 4 double Sunflare Shaman. This would have been a great aggressive start had I not played Festercreep turn 2 getting a 3 for 1 at the end of his fourth turn.

Door Of Destinies helped in both games keep my fragile 1 toughness rogues alive and sealed a 2-0 victory for me in the first round.

 

 

Round2 Matt (Mono-White Kithkin)

I was a little worried about the power Matt’s deck would have as not only was he the only Kithkin player at the table, but also the only player drafting white! I found out his deck contained 3 Weight of Conscience (would probably have been 5 if I hadn’t grabbed two) and multiple Coordinated Barrage. Combined with the bomb Swell of Courage, it’s no surprise he grabbed first place.

Game one saw me topdeck the only piece of removal (Violet Pall) at the very last moment to snatch a very lucky victory, as I was under pressure from a reinforced 4/4 flier for the whole game.

Game two saw a losing situation when he managed to get his Schoolmaster producing a lot of tokens (3 Weight of Conscience helped that). That losing situation soon became worse when Swell gave them all +2/+2 to swing in for a crazy amount of damage in one turn.

Game three was quite annoying for me. “Time on the round” was yelled but I had convinced myself that in the 3 turns I had I could go from an empty board to a victory with good play… unfortunately I got him down from 14 to 2 life in the last turn.

I can’t complain too much though as game one was won on a very lucky topdeck and all 3 games were very enjoyable indeed.

 

 

Round3 Martin (Black/Green Shaman)

Martin’s deck looked very solid and I knew my deck had no answers to Chameleon Colossus, should it find its way onto the table. Luckily I had a pretty insane draw in Game one and managed to be swinging in for 6 with Mothdust Changeling, Latchkey Faerie and Nevermaker as early as turn 5. With fliers being his deck’s main weakness, and me drawing almost every one from my deck, the game was over very fast in my favour. Regardless I decided to radically change my deck before the second game. Knowing I had 2 Weight of Conscience in my sideboard (a very valid way of dealing with the Colossus) I opted to bring in a white splash of 3 Plains and 2 Weight of Conscience for 2 Witsnipers, 2 Swamp and an Island. They didn’t have much impact though as Martin drew none of his major threats and oddly drew no forests or green spells for most of the game. After much stalling from both of us with Weirding Shaman (we both had one on the board), my card advantage from Sage of Fables allowed me to draw into the fliers I needed for the win.

Overall I finished 2-0-1 (7 Points), which put me at second, behind Matt on tiebreakers.

It seems there has been a change of plan, so me and Christine probably won’t see everyone next week. So hope everyone has a good Easter and maybe I’ll see some of you for Champs in Manchester (if I can get there).

MicK

We played a couple of games of standard later on that night, and Rick made me embarrass myself on the Internet by saying ‘Revilark doesn’t target!’ which it blatantly does, as well as a game of type four with Christine’s draft deck where we found out how retardly broken Diviner’s Wand and Infinite Mana can be.

Easter is Coming. There will be magic tournaments throughout the UK, I and Wei will be going to Champs in Bradford, some people might be going to the one in Manchester and we wish the best for Matt and Jim going to the ones in Cambridge. Recently, Cambridgeshire police have allowed over a dozen illegal immigrants to go free by giving them trainfare and being told to make their own way to the Immigration center. Perhaps Matt and Jim will end up having opponents on the same end of the intelligence spectrum. There will still be Wednesday Nights in Leeds, where there will be magic, so Join us! Bring some buddies and we’ll have an excellent time.

Until Next Week.

Jin.

 

 

Cobras! Apparently.

QFTD

“Congressman Felice: Then what is the reason for its high overall marks?

Mike Turian: That’s easy. It’s a giant bug.

Congressman Felice: This is your personal opinion.

Mike Turian: No. See, right here in the personal comments: “It’s a giant bug. Cool!”

- Extract from Transcripts recording “The Giant Scandal”

Welcome to MTG Leeds Cobras!

Wei has decided to be liberal tonight and named us WNM Cobras, which after much thought, was a quite catchy name, though to be honest, I’m not all too certain about. I’m not actually even sure why he chose this, or what brought this along, or really, WHY we needed to be identified as such (Perhaps he just watched too many episodes of G.I Joe…) but unless there is a mass protest of some sort, Cobras we are.

In anycase, Shadowmoor draws near, although in our mystical world of Lowryn, Shadowmoor is already a fact of life. Darkness has overwhelmed their sunny little world, and elemental nightmares begin to loom. The first taste of darkness is already on our site, the Demigod of Revenge coming forth to show us the potential havoc he could wreck. Phil pointed out an interesting timing rule regarding Demigod’s triggers, and I would like to remind everyone to be careful, especially if you are a control player.

Last Week, 13 players competed in two pods, I was in a Pod of 7 and in another pod of 8, Rob took home the prize with vicious amounts of Thundercloud shamans and an Austere Command. Wrath your board several times is in fact, usually good enough to win. I too had to face the Thundercloud shenanigans against Joe, who ran a goblin backup. Even sideboard tech against the Thundercloud, bringing in Forfend and Shields of Vielis Veil didn’t help, simply because I was using those key cards to keep my other keycards alive from all sorts of removal he had sported as well. We had IDed, however, simply because the pair of us were tired after breaking through the other decks in the pod, having to face off faeries and merfolk, both who were pretty hard, and might have done better that night if a bit of luck and a bit more foresight. Even Stephen managed to put together a powerful Treefolk deck, and Andy Hooper, one of our older veterans ran something along the lines of a blue/white Wizards, which seems unusual in the format. Christine was in our pod, which automatically made our pod better, ran her usual picks of Red Elementals, which usually just hurt, but I haven’t had a chance that night to examine that deck in more detail. We will however, point out that -1/-1 is not damage, and thus does not entitle Final Sting Faerie to finish off a creature.

Tonight, we will also give you a more detailed match report by Jonathan Slack, 2nd place in pod 1, coming victorious off two of our better players, Mick Edwards and Robertas, both whom recently experienced their first ever Extended PTQ.

MTGLeeds Cobras WNM Report, by Jonathan Slack.

Greetings everyone! This is Jonathan, bringing you a discussion about the draft night that earned me 2nd place in my pod (I would’ve won my first ever draft if not for residing on the negative end of tiebreakers, a point which to the time of writing I am still bitter about) I’ll be talking about what I felt were my most significant draft picks of the night, as well as the implications they may have had for deck construction and game play. Then I’ll cover whatever I can recall from my three matches (it has been five days since I thought about the matches and picks in any depth, hence the mind is foggy).

Having been placed in a pod with formidable opposition such as Mick and Robertas, the latter of which placing very well in a recent Pro-Tour qualifier, I was not left feeling confident. Wayne is a respectable player, although somewhat inconsistent in his performances, leaving me with hope for at least one win this night. Having never played against Chris or Rob, I couldn’t say whether a win or loss was in the cards should I be drawn against them.

After these mental considerations and some banter, the draft began, and I cracked open my first pack.

Constructed bomb and anti-wrather Gaddock Teeg presented itself to me in the first Lorwyn pack, and having never opened up or used the old advisor in any context whatsoever, I felt this was an ample opportunity to see if he has any applications in a limited format. He indeed proved to be useful, particularly in my match with Robertas, but I’ll talk about that later.

Amusingly enough I saw a Kithkin Harbinger in my next pack. Being able to tutor up the Teegmeister would, in my opinion, be a potential annoyance for my opponents and just plain cool for myself; I found this to be an opportunity too appealing to resist, and I snapped him up immediately. A questionable pick at such an early stage perhaps, yet it never proved to be regrettable.

Initial picks had landed me in the Kithkin. As a tribe they are solid enough provided the opponent does not interrupt whatever they plan on doing, often attacking. Packs came and went, my self picking up solid greens such as Wren’s Run Vanquisher, Oakgnarl Warrior, Leaf Gilder and Fertile Ground.

Picks of Cloudgoat Ranger and Lairwatch Giant also proved to be wise, given the abilities they have to stop aggro and flying creature decks respectively.

Something that had escaped my notice during the Lorwyn picks however, (and something that seemed to elude everybody else’s attention bar Rob as well) was that TWO Thundercloud Shamans came close to tabling. So far my picks had been solid, but to turn down the chance of wrathing the board TWICE in any one game would have been a rare opportunity thrown away. Coincidentally it turns out that Rob, placing first, ran the two giants AND an Austere Command in his deck. I have no idea if his games utilised the three wrath effects successfully (and I was very glad I didn’t have to find this out up front), although intuition would seem to indicate they served him well – his final match with Robertas did not last long…

Another point that had escaped my attention for much of the Lorwyn packs, a point personal to me only, was the lack of removal in my primary colours (green and white). I did see a Lignify although this did not warrant my consideration, given that it only has a positive effect on rare fatty bombs. On reflection I regret passing Lash Out to Robertas, and I felt this mistake when playing against him. I quickly realised that if I did not splash into another colour, I would be powerless to stop my opponents’ board from building power without over-committing to the attack step. And I certainly wasn’t going to be left with just Pulling Teeth and Peppersmoke for removal as with my first LLM draft. Relying on Morningtide picks to rescue me from my removal-less state (sorry, I couldn’t think of an alternative word) seemed unwise, so I was quite happy to be passed a Tarfire and Nameless Inversion, both of which made it into my final build.

And then Morningtide arrived. It arguably was this that led my deck to becoming the aggro, creature heavy beast it proved to be when playing.

Early on I was passed a Bramblewood Paragon. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had already drafted warriors in reasonable quantities. Warriors weren’t exactly a scarcity in Morningtide, so picking it up did not seem unreasonable.

That pick proved to be an excellent one, as I amassed two Ambassador Oaks and ANOTHER Paragon. Coupled with the warriors already amassed in terms of changelings, elves and giants, I knew I would have a formidable attacking deck on my hands. Late picks of Burrenton Shield Bearers and Kithkin Zephyrnaut provided an opportunity for good value fillers.

This is the deck I ended up with.

Draft Deck 5th March 2008

Maindeck	Sideboard
Creatures: 2 x Ambassador Oak 1 x Avian Changeling 2 x Bramblewood Paragon 1 x Burrenton Shield Bearers 1 x Changeling Sentinel 1 x Cloudgoat Ranger 1 x Elvish Warrior 1 x Gaddock Teeg 1 x Goldmeadow Dodger 1 x Judge of Currents 1 x Kithkin Harbinger 1 x Kithkin Zephyrnaut 1 x Lairwatch Giant 1 x Leaf Gilder 1 x Oakgnarl Warrior 1 x Wren’s Run Vanquisher Spells: 1 x Fertile Ground 1 x Fistful of Force 1 x Gilt-Leaf Ambush 1 x Nameless Inversion Land: 8 x Forest 6 x Plains 1 x Mountain 2 x Swamp	1 x Burrenton Shield Bearers 1 x Elvish Branchbender 1 x Elvish Promenade 1 x Howltooth Hollow 1 x Lammastide Weave 1 x Mournwhelk 1 x Pollen Lullaby 1 x Rootgrapple 1 x Reins of the Vinesteed 1 x Sentry Oak 1 x Shinewend 1 x Triclopean Sight

Quite a warrior friendly deck here, with a surprising number of synergistic combos going on, all centering around the Paragons. Add to that the general token production going on meant I could quickly build a dominating board of aggro creatures.

Splashing black and red so weakly was a necessity given the lack of decent removal passed in my colours (Coordinated Barrage did not make the cut). And should I have failed to see the Mountain and Swamps, Fertile Ground should have been good compensation.

I sometimes think that, given the presence of Leaf Gilder and Fertile Ground, I could have cut down to 16 lands, perhaps removing a forest or even one of the swamps. None of my cards put sufficient strain on my mana base, although the Ranger and Oakgnarl would prove to be more of a challenge to meet.

Now, the games… Please note that I can’t remember much about individual plays here, but you will learn about them where memory exists =P. And if you are one of the guys I played this night and can remember any significant plays or if there are any untruths in what I have writen, then please let me know =).

Match 1 : Mick – 2-1 WIN

I wasn’t happy to be drawn against somebody who placed 8th in a recent Pro-Tour Qualifier. He also hammered me in the first Lorwyn-Lorwyn-Morningtide draft I participated, so the initial outlook in my favour was pretty weak.
Game 1 saw me quickly build a dominating creature board that vastly outstripped his own creature numbers. Bramblewood saw play, making my Avian Changeling and Changeling Sentinel ever the more threatening. The win came quickly, and I didn’t even play any removal!
Game 2 swung more in Mick’s favour, being able to remove early threats like the Teeg, Harbinger and Changelings. I lost pace, and took more damage in the late game than I could deal back.
Game 3 was a complete whitewash, Mick never once playing a spell (so I believe), even with four mana, which was quite a shock. Any deck that doesn’t play spells gets run over quickly, especially given the nature of my own deck. I built my board up, twice managing to miss what would’ve been successful Kinship triggers with the Zephyrnaut, but the win came without any life loss on my part.
Somewhat surprised with my victory and with renewed confidence, I move to the next match.

Match 2 : Robertas – 1-1 DRAW

Past history with Robertas led me to believe that this match-up wasn’t going to end in my favour. He too was piloting a four colour deck, running lots of removal such as Lash Out, Whirlpool Whelm another Nameless (I think) and even a Cryptic Command. Unsurprisingly for Robertas he was running a multitude of faeries and merfolk. In this match I once almost succumbed to mass removal in the form of Final Revels, luckily having the Oakgnarl and drawing into Cloudgoat Ranger kept me healthy.
Game 1 went to me, as I repeat the same performance as in my first game with Mick. I experience a few annoyances with removal and Ringskipper, but I overwhelm the board and get the win.
Game 2 sees me eventually unable to cope with the battering of blue removal and flyers. Gaddock Teeg saw a prominent role in this game and the last, being able to shut down the blue command for one or two turns. Lash Out ended my hopes of preventing the blue behemoth of an instant from resolving. With no appropriate mana to play the inversion, and having the Paragon bounced in one turn and then destroyed in the next (preventing from pumping the changelings) I could not stop him from taking the game.
Game 3 was drawn out, myself gradually building a sizeable advantage in board and life terms. Harbiniging the Teeg put an unhappy look on Robertas’ face, indicating the presence of the blue command. At 2 life, Robertas was in a dangerous position. To his credit he was able to stop me from pushing through for major damage at all times, as well as stopping me pushing through for the final 2 in extra time, whelming the Oakgnarl and tapping me out with Stonybrook Angler. In the final turn of extra time I needed to topdeck Tarfire, sadly this did not happen having drawn Gilt-Leaf Ambush. I end the turn there and we draw.

Match 3 : Chris – 2-0 WIN

I had the unique experience of playing Chris, a newbie to the Magic scene here in Leeds. And boy, does he ever talk! We must have spent most of the game rambling or myself simply waiting for him to stop deliberating over his plays and, you know, ACTUALLY START PLAYING. Earlier in the night I picked up information that he had acquired Chandra Nalaar. Luckily I was running the Teeg for cards like that.
Game 1 ends up with Chris being mana screwed, four Swamps and a Shimmering Grotto proving to be not enough for the Chandra he revealed he had in hand for much of the game. He attempts trickery with Warren Weirding and Squeaking Pie Grubbfellows, but this doesn’t stop me overwhelming the board.
Game 2 progressed in a similar manner, in that I overwhelm the board. Wei had good reason to advise us to speed up. Of note, he forces the Weirding on me, myself questionably choosing the Teeg over Avian as flying seemed more relevant at the time, despite a possible Chandra threat. His Sunflare Shaman is removed by Tarfire, and another of his men is removed by the inversion. With two Ambassador Oaks and a Cloudgoat Ranger bolstering my creature numbers over time, there was nothing he could do.

So, two wins and a draw. I absolutely HAD to come AT LEAST second. Wei begins awarding prizes. “Third is Robertas”. “Second is Jonathan”. Well darn it. The Thundercloud Shaman (Aformentioned Rob, who also had austere command, I mean, come-on, who hands a guy /3/ wrath of gods? -Jin) collector wins the day on tiebreakers.

Thankfully, the boosters more than made up for my narrow denial of 1st place, opening up a foil Mutavault and a Chameleon Collossus… ha ha! No, I open up a Maralen of the Mornsong (as if we all didn’t have too much of her already) and a respectable Kinsbaile Cavalier. I also saw my third Bramblewood of the night in one pack too. GO WARRIORS!!!

Well, that’s all I have to say on last Wednesday’s draft experience, statistically my best draft performance yet. As I have mentioned, if you want to add things to my game descriptions or testify that some of what I have said is complete rubbish, then let me or Jin know and the problem will be rectified.

And as a final note… warriors rule. As do any draft decks running Vigor, Game Trail Changeling and Smokebraiders.

Hope you enjoyed reading my first draft report, and which hopefully will not be the last!

Jonathan.

Easter Looms closer, and teaching will soon stop in favor relaxation. I believe a number of us will be going home, and myself have own holiday plans. Arrangements will be made to continue running magic events over the easter holidays, so if your still around, come along and join us! Good night!

~Jin

Until Next Week.

 

PTQ Hollywood – Manchester Flashback

QFTD – When the border agent asked us where we were from, I wanted to reply “We’re from the internet. We’re here to post captions on your moose,” but I figured that might get me deported and then I’d never get to write today’s Cranial Insertion. Sigh, the sacrifices we make to bring you this article. – Eli Shiffrin – Cranial Insertion, Into the North or, Now I’m Back and it’s Way Too Warm

Today we’ll have a real cool tournament report as told by Mick Edwards, who managed 7th place out of 80 odd people who turned up that day. Alongside his report will be little annotations by me, mostly little comments about the deck archtypes Mick has listed out during his report. In anycase, Thanks Mick, and again, if anyone wants to submit things for either a deck-analysis or a report/article of their own, email me!

PTQ Hollywood: Manchester (by Mick Edwards)

The day started very very early (not my fault despite what Rick said) but spirits were high with talk of Magic! Rick was kind enough to not only drive Wei, Jin, Robertas and me to the event, but also to lend me the deck I had chosen to play.

Wei and Jin were going to judge. Rick was playing a Ischeron Sceptre/Countertop control deck, Robertas was playing Next Level Blue control, and I was playing a Domain Zoo deck. Similar decklists can probably found on http://www.wizards.com/magic/ (You can also check Domain Zoo or Next Level Blue) here in Mike Flores’s Articles. Here’s how the Magic went:

Match Reports:

Round One: Burn

(There’s not much about this deck to describe, other then it running incrediably powerful burn spells that stretch through over a dozen sets. Shrapnel Blast does /5/ damage for TWO freaking mana…And an artifact, but with things like chromatic stars around, who cares?)

This game was over VERY quickly, which was probably a good thing since I was sitting next to a radiator in a red hot room facing a red hot burn deck. My opponent (who was also from Wolverhampton!) was quick to point out that this was perhaps the worst match up for my deck, due to all shock/fetch land damage I would be taking from my own deck. Even so, I still thought I could win when in game two I set myself up for a turn 5 win with my opponent having not played a single spell. He burned me for 4 at the end of my turn 4, untapped, then double Shrapnel Blasted me! (I was not amused as I had taken 6 damage from my own lands, so 14 was enough to finish it.

Round Two: Affinity

(Affinity was one of the more dominating archtypes when it first came out, and it became even more deadly with the addition of springleaf drum. Affinity empties out their hand by at least the second or third turn, and swing in for huge amount of damage. As a hated Archtype, they do have alot of hate to wade through, and things like Kataki would seriously hurt this particular archtype.)

I got very lucky in this one. I had previously asked Rick if he could get lend me 3 Kataki for the sideboard, but unfortunately only one was available. It seemed that one was enough though as it found its way into my opening hand allowing me to play it turn two for a very speedy victory.

Round Three: Death Cloud

(Death Cloud became big with the addition of planeswalkers. Garruk and Liliana Vess, essentially untouchable by a rolling cloud of absolute destruction stand strong after a resolved Deathcloud, usually with nothing else on the board, and the plainswalkers having a heyday)

I don’t remember much of this game, only that I kept forgetting to sacrifice my fetch land at the end of his turn (not once, but twice). Crazily, this double misplay worked to my advantage as I drew Mogg Fanatic and Dark Confidant off the top that would have otherwise been shuffled away.

Round Four: Mirror Match

(We’ll have a little blurb about Domain Zoo here, since essentially that’s what Mick and this guy were playing. Nothing runs higher then converted manacost 3, which is Vindicate, and essentially runs sac-lands and dual-lands to do massive damage with cards like Tribal Flames and Gaea’s Might.)

With us both playing aggro decks it was very surprising to find Tarmogoyf come down on about turn 5 as a 2/3 with no creatures in graveyard! Vindicates played a very key role in these games as destroying lands at a crucial point can very easily swing games.

Round Five: Dredge

(Dredge is the other archtype that survived several years in the Extended Format. It drops most of the deck in the graveyard, and plays it from there, and with Bridge from Below and various reanimation targets, Dredge is one of the most hated archtypes in the format, and with good reason.)

I was slightly worried about facing this deck, having heard how ‘broken’ it is. Luckily I got the perfect opening hand against Dredge in game one, with Mogg Fanatic followed by Teeg. Game two was closer once he killed my side boarded in Yixlid Jailer, especially after I foolishly misplayed a second legendary Isamaru killing both but crazily allowing me to kill my own Lavamancer in response to him dredging into a Bridge From Below!

Round Six: Heartbeat

(Heartbeat belongs to the ‘You aren’t playing Magic, your doing a maths equation on the board, and I’m going to sleep while you try and work out the answer’ archtypes, at least, was my opinion after watching the deck take over 10 minutes to resolve his turn, half of it calculating mana. It uses Heartbeat of Spring, which allows land to be tapped for double the mana, and cards like Cunning Wish, Early Harvest and various other spells to be casted over and over again and again to build up a horrible storm count and kill you with a Brain Freeze)

He got unlucky to get stuck on two lands (no lands after I played double vindicate) so I had no idea what he was playing. I guessed at some form of control, so I took out a Gaddock Teeg (ironically the key card I needed to win the second game)

Round Seven:

After seeing the standings I was eager to get an intentional draw, though not as eager as my opponent who pretty much shook my hand then dashed out of the store in the direction of Subway. (Mick brought his own food. Which was one of the most important things you need to do when going to a tourney, and quite possibly one of the reasons he made top 8, by beating the half-starved zombies on the floor after round 4).

Quarter Finals: Rick’s Sceptre/Countertop/Lightning Angel deck

As much as I would like to give an in-depth report on this vital round we were just joking around for most of it. Probably the most serious game of the most serious Magic tournament I’ve ever been to and yet it seemed more casual a game than I’ve ever played.

Game one seemed to be going my way until he managed to get out the Sceptre/Chant lock out with him down to only 4 life. I needed to top deck 2 Lightning Helix for the win and amazingly I did. Even more amazingly, so did he, so he won that one.

Game two he looked to seal the deal until I quickly turned things around with a 10 life swing followed by Tribal Flames.

Game three I threw away, not wanting to take anything away from Rick who played brilliantly. but if I had killed his Exalted Angel as a morph when I should have, things could have been different. Maybe not though, as he followed it up with a Magus of the Tabernacle.

All in all it was a great day which i took much more than just 9 boosters away from.

See you on wednesday

Mick

Until next week!

 

First Shadowmoor spoiler!

Demigod of Revenge –
Flying, Haste
When you play Demigod of Revenge, return all cards named Demigod of Revenge from your graveyard to play.
5/4

Now we have some big news- the first Shadowmoor spoilered card, courtesy of MTGSalvation. It is a doozy. A ddooooozzzzyyy. 5 mana for a 5/4, flying, AND haste? What are you thinking, Wizards? On top of that, this guy is able to bring back all copies of itself should all previous attempts at getting his awesomeness out been met with untimely Psyonic Blasts.

“Wait!” you say. “Can’t you just counter all of them?”

To which I say, “Hah ha, ignorant friend, read the card: it says `When you play Demigod of Revenge`, which means even if you counter it, the trigger will still be on the stack, all previous copies will still be reanimated, ready to sink their hasty flying goodness into your blue-playing scum of an opponent!”

“well, what about Stifle?”

“yeah, yeah… sure. Shut up, you smart aleck.”

And there you have it. Some other cards are also spoiled for name, casting cost, and art- but you don’t care about those, right? Well, here they are anyway, at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic/preview/shmpack . It looks like hybrid mana is coming back, and in a big way. Of especial note is the pseudo artifact sorcery/instant (I assume, given the name) Beceech the Queen, which is black but can be played with only colourless mana. This is really exciting. Are you excited? I’m excited. And damn right, too.

 

Grinding Green(I)

QFTD – ” Yes, yes, I’m sure YOU first- or second-pick Briarhorn all the time, and your girlfriend can confirm this, except she’s from Canada, so we can’t actually meet her ever, etc. (unless you are Canadian, and then your girlfriend likely is from Canada, and will be subjected to cross examination on this issue later)” – Jon Becker, Limited Information – Underrated All Stars.

Today we have another writer for our little corner on the internet. Armed with nothing but a decklist and some insight into drafts, Phil gives us a draft deck review.

***Λ ***

So,during that Wednesday, we saw two LLM draft pods in the Parkinson, with Mick Edwards and Andrew Buchanan emerging the victors. For your enjoyment and strategic betterment, we now present to you Stephen Milway’s third place decklist from Andrew’s pod, with enlightening annotations to expand the mind.

Maindeck	Sideboard
Creatures 3*Elvish Eulogist 2*Kithkin Daggerdare 1*Leaf Gilder 1*Woodland Changeling 1*Elvish Warrior 2*Gilt Leaf Seer 1*Imperious Perfect 2*Lys Alana Bowmaster 2*Winnower Patrol 1*Ambassador Oak 1*Bog-Strider Ash 1*Changeling Titan 1*Everbark Shaman 1*Greatbow Doyen 1*Nath’s Elite Other Spells 1*Lace with Moonglove 1*Rootgrapple 1*Epic Proportions Land 15*Forest	Creatures 1*Merrow Witsniper 1*Mothdust Changeling 1*Elvish Branchbender 1*Oakgnarl Warrior 1*Hearthcage Giant Other Spells 1*Herbal Poultice 1*Aquitect’s Will 1*Kindled Fury 1*Cloak and Dagger 1*Deglamer 1*Graceful Reprieve 1*Lammastide Weave 1*Spring Cleaning 1*Heal the Scars 1*Protective Bubble 1*Roar of the Crowd 2*Sylvan Echoes 1*Scattering Stroke 1*Soaring Hope

Let’s start with the creatures. Kithkin Daggerdare is a really annoying card to play against. It can force through a combatant against a wall of much larger guys, and if they’ve got no answers you can expect to claim a healthy chunk of life. On the other hand, elves can often be quite a controlling deck, and the Daggerdare is more suited to aggressive strategies. This list seems fairly midrange, so maybe the Daggerdare doesn’t belong here.

Imperious Perfect is utterly ridiculous. Getting passed one early is a pretty good motivation to go elves. Really, the guy is a bomb, what more can be said?

A pair of Bowmasters is pretty nice here. Whilst they’re little more than Gray Ogres versus any non-fliers, they can really punish small flying men, which is pretty much the whole faerie tribe, amongst others. They’re better than normal here because of Greatbow Doyen further down the list. The Doyen is a little on the inefficient side, providing only two power for five mana, but the five toughness is nice in a deck like this one, which isn’t out-and-out aggressive. Barely any of Lorwyn’s ground-pounders will have the power to take down the Doyen, meaning she can often stabilise a board. She also beefs up her reach-enhanced Bowmaster brethren, to shut down the vast majority of evasive creatures too. Once that’s done, her second ability grants the pseudo-evasion that allows the deck to go on the offensive. There’s very few archers in Lorwyn, so going in to Morningtide, I don’t imagine anyone’s strategy involved taking them as a tribe, but Steve’s assembled quite a force; whilst the deck cries out for the bombtastic Jagged-Scar Archers, five archers make for a solid ‘class’ tribe, and Changeling Titan is just unfair when paired with the Doyen. The fact they’re all elves too is great.

(A brief aside here to comment on how awesome the minor tribe lords are in Morningtide. Personally I like Scarblade Elite.)

Nath’s Elite is another underrated card which I’ve seen table. It’s at the high end of the curve, it’s true, but in the right situation it can be a green wrath, and if they have no blockers it’s a four turn clock.

Gilt-Leaf Seer and Elvish Eulogist are somewhat questionable inclusions. The Eulogist does fit the deck’s midrange-controlling style, however, pushing the game long with lifegain.

Moving to the sideboard, the only creature I really want to flag up is the Branchbender. If you’re solidly in elves, play this guy. Often he’ll be conjuring a 3/3 or 4/4, and one that is immune to sorcery speed removal. Don’t dismiss him on the notion that you’re making your lands more vulnerable; you’re not forced to activate him, after all.
Of the non-creature spells, nothing jumps out. It seems like Steve was struggling to find removal, with Lace with Moonglove the only creature-killer present. Whilst I don’t have information on his picks, I have to wonder if Steve’s monogreen strategy might have cost him some of the great black kill spells like Nameless Inversion or Eyeblight’s Ending.

Epic Proportions is a fun card, although I think it’s vastly too expensive to be worthwhile. Like all auras, it’s asking for a two-for-one. Flash goes some way to making this better, as you can argue that it should at the least be a one shot instant pump if sprung in combat. On the other hand, Stonewood Invocation this is not. Still, it has a picture of an enormous cow on the front, so you can’t be that harsh.

In the sideboard, we find the card with the most appalling name in Morningtide, Cloak and Dagger, and… Not much else. Deglamer is a nice trick to come in against annoying artefacts and enchantments, and that’s about it. The rest seems largely off colour or last pick randomness.

Notable by their absence are green’s powerful token makers, like Gilt-Leaf ambush. Of course, such cards appeal to people even outside their tribal boundaries, so its entirely possible some splash-green player prevented Steve ever getting to see any.

Taking a look at the bigger picture, one thing that strikes me is that Steve’s deck, as a whole, is pretty consistent. He’s got lots of multiples for one thing. There’s also a strong tribal focus; rather than splash random ‘good stuff’ like odd elementals or guys from disparate tribes, he’s heavily elf-focussed. Going all-in on a tribe can be a variable strategy, depending on the tribe. Elementals, for example, are not a good tribe to force. Elves, on the other hand, benefit pretty well from concentrated drafting; they seem to have a greater number if ‘count me’ cards, so reaching critical mass can be potent, even if you’re passing raw power for weaker elves.

On top of that, the deck’s monogreen, and has a respectable curve. I didn’t see it in action, but I’d guess it performed consistently and without too many surprises. The one caveat here is the manabase. Whilst Steve hasn’t got to worry about colour screw, he’s still got to ensure he draws lands at all, and fifteen forests just seems too few. Personally I’ve had success with eighteen lands, or seventeen and an artifact or creature source, like Springleaf Drum. (The drum is extremely underrated in my experience. Whilst merfolk make best use of it, it’s great in any deck which isn’t amping up the pressure early.)

Overall, the deck seems to have a strong midrange focus. It weathers early beats from faeries and kithkin with above average fat (which needn’t be that big, Lorwyn is a plane of tiny creatures), before stabilising the board with archers or Perfect-boosted elves. From there, the fat becomes aggressive, and finishes off opponents with support from a horde of smaller guys. Its strength is its tight focus, maximising synergy between the cards, but I think there is a hole in its removal suite. A midrange deck needs removal to deal with opposing fat, and this deck lacks it. A dip into black might be what was required. On the other hand, third place is a respectable ranking, so there can’t have been too many problems.

That’s about it, so thanks to Steve for letting us have the list and I’ll see you around.

- Phil

 

Hostile Grounds.

Quote of The Day – , “…finding a good aggressive deck is hard to do… but the Goblin tribe is surprisingly resilient, able to solve practically any problem by just throwing more Goblins at it. ” – Sean McKnoew, Magical Hack – Goblin Lore

Hello again and Welcome once more to Magic The Gathering: Leeds! I been thinking for a while and wonder if we could do with a more catchy name instead of just plain ol’ MTG:Leeds, maybe a card name or a line of flavor text, though options at this point elude me. In any-case, I’m more then certain we don’t really want to be renamed to Herbal Poultice. Or some other unusual card name.

But Good God! Not write for a couple of days and a whole hoard of things catch up to you. I now actually have quite a few submitted articles that I would love to release, but for the fear of having way too much to read on one day, would release them one or two at a time. Don’t worry! your submissions will not go to waste. I am still aiming for a one-article-per-day on this blog and by the week after I believe I can achieve it, though any help getting articles up and about (Many thanks to those who have submitted so far) would be very appreciated.

First of all, Last week’s event! Constructed! Twelve mages turned up for the intense four rounds of Swiss, and we even have one or two spectators watching the exciting matchups where life totals go down from 20 to 0 in the span of heartbeats, or grueling attrition wars that lasted for the full forty minutes. The field was diverse, two versions of faeries, an elemental deck, a red burn deck which I myself piloted, goblins with gravepact and an unusual addition of bitterblossoms, UB teachings, Kithkin and one other deck which I never got to see because everything went past really really fast.

Pre-game as usual was hectic, this time however I didn’t have to assemble my deck from scratch, though there were a number of people who went about hunting down cards, building decks on the day or borrowing another player’s, to which we would like to thank Mick, Wayne and Wei for providing Robertas, Christopher, Me and Andrew with decks and cards. This is where the game goes beyond the cards you just own, where skill and instinct suddenly become very important as you try to navigate a deck which you have only heard about recently, or have never seen before.

Evidence of such became apparent as Rick totaled me in the first round, not because he possessed a better deck or have better cards, but because of my ineptitude of noticing what was going on in front of me, not able to capitalize on my advantages and me just being slightly ditzy. Since I was running a deck packing alot of burn spells, and splashing tarmogofy, I went through my whole hand relatively fast, taking Rick down as low as 2 before his card advantage in counterspells began to tell. It was going relatively well, until Teferi landed to spoil the fun, making a rift bolt and gargodon stuck forever in the ‘not in this game’ zone. At this point, he was on relatively low health, about 11, and a chain of burn spells could have finished him. They did as much as take him down to 3, with tarfires and a shard volley and incinerate resolving, though I think it might have been better if I blew apart Teferi instead.

A top deck Keldon Megaliths was one way to force through permission, however he dropped Tendrils on a Mogg War Marshal. Here was a key point, had I remembered that I could infact, sacrifice the Mogg War Marshal to the Greater Gargodon suspended, the Tendrils would have fizzled, keeping him to managable life levels that I might be able to take out. Clearly he had forgotten this as well. Instead, I sighed, and scooped up, not wanting to prolong the inevitable. Would it be inevitable? He had Teferi out, and had teachings in the graveyard which he could fetch back to play another tendrils, but there were two things here that would have made ‘delaying the inevitable’ worth it. He had to tendrils one of his own creatures, for one thing, or he could have been so broken by his own mistake that he would have made another one, such as forgetting he had teachings in the graveyard to flash back. Such is the power of mistakes, they will snowball if you let them. Under pressure, with only three life against a burn deck, not having adequate counter spells, could you have pulled it off? Maybe. Rick knew his deck better then I knew mine, but it doesn’t change the fact that the chance was there.

Game two was similarly choked with bad plays on my part, though how you can make a bad play with a burn deck requires alot of imagination, which sadly, I possess. With enough burn in my hand to take him down to 2 life before he manages to even get a creature out, you would think it would be the end of it.

He was forced to Hardcast an Aeon Chronicler out to stop the savage beatings a Mogg Fanatic was giving him, and was alarmed that I had Keldon Megaliths out. Earlier he had fetched an Urborg with Tolaria West, and played it, and as such I knew he had tendrils in hand. I had a Greater Gargodon I could bring in should I sacrifice a couple of lands and said Mogg Fanatic, forcing him to use tendrils, which I then can sac away to the second greater gargodon which I had suspended earlier, or force him to chump block with the Chronicler.

At this point, the too much imagination scenario kicks in, and I failed to notice, he was on two life, I had mogg fanatic and an active Keldon Megaliths. I could have killed him at best, or at worse, force him to tendrils his own creature, on his turn, and possibly bring in the Gargodon. It wasn’t so much as lack of thinking on the situation as the lack of awareness that he was on two life, too much fear of the tendrils and simply being a complete idiot. Not siding in the Pithing Needles to shut down his deserts and storage lands didn’t really help either, since he used the deserts to break the mogg marshal assault and storage lands to power out triple blue Cryptic Commands on relevant turns.

So after giving a quick smack to myself, I went ahead to win my next 3 matchups against a straightforward Kithkin deck, a Combo deck with Brian Stoutarm with Mirror Entity, which was quite close (And this time, I remembered to sideboard the Pithing needles, shutting down Mirror Entity. I would have been slightly at a disadvantage if he had decided to sideboard out the Mirror Entities for a more aggressive red combo) and quite possibly the closest match of the night against UB Faeries, which gave me the run of my life despite it only having /block/ cards. Even with my life total still above double digits, one wrong move will drop me litreally faster then you can say ‘Shock’. This gives me a 3-1 record and a respectable 4th place for the night’s events.

So who won? Robertas, on the back of an Elemental Deck Mick Edwards loaned him. He came around that day with no intention to play, picked up a deck and through courage, skill and tenacity pulled through to first place beating Rick on the back of tiebreakers. Don’t put up an excuse not to come down just because we are playing constructed, there are people about to talk to about the game you love, cards to trade and games to watch and the occasional side casual multi-player to take part in, and who knows? There might be a spare deck about which you can join in with and take the top prize!

But that’s only from my view of the game, let’s hear how Matt Kopas, our Canadian buddy (We don’t hold it against you, really) found his day in our constructed event.

 

Manchester 01/03 and 02/03 events!

I’ve already included the events in the general email. Here it is again:There will be a number of events going on this weekend at Fanboy3 in Manchester.

On Saturday 01/03 there will be a PTQ hollywood tournament. This will be Extended format and costs £5 to enter. The registration starts at 9am and first round is at 10am, so get there early or you will be disapointed.

on Sunday 02/03 there will be a GPT Brussels at Fanboy, which is sealed and costs £20. Registration starts at 10am and the event starts at 11am. Apparently all players will get a free draft, which just sounds really cool. There will also be £6 Morningtide Drafts in the evening.

Jin and I are going to Judge at the 01/03 event and are going by train, so if anyone is interested in coming along with us just email me on wei_rao@hotmail.com and we can sort something out.We are going to be there by 9am.

 

The First Pick.

The following is a draft walkthrough. On pod 1, I’m passing to Robertas on the Left and Phil to the Right.

Pack 1

1. Fallowsage over Gaddock Teeg

This is the traditional hard choice of picking a good card over a money rare that is also a somewhat good card. Gaddock Teeg requires two colors, generally bad for a good draft. Fallowsage is something that can be splashed and doesn’t require other merfolk to work, only a tap enabler that you can get in both Morningtide and in Lowryn.

2. Stonybrook Angler

Stonybrook Angler is also splashable and also work without merfolk, a brilliant utility creature and /also/ enables my Fallowsage. Over everything else in the pack, this seems strong.

3. Lashout over Deepthread Merrow

Lashout seems strong, while Deepthread Merrow requires a strong islandwalking strategy like Tideshaper Mystics, Aquatechs and their Wills, or in morningtide Floodchasers, there is a possibility for a blue/red splash.

4. Silvergill Douser over Inkfanthom Divers

Again, Inkfanthoms while provide powerful deck manipulations, is more effective with Islandwalking, and although the Douser is strong only with other merfolk, it is at this point I thought it was reasonably safe to move into Merfolk.

5. Inkfanthom Divers

Well. Merfolk Signal seems pretty strong.

6. Judge of Currents over Springleaf Drum

Judge seems an indication that Merfolk are rather open, and Tap effects are plentiful. The Springleaf Drum is a tap enabler that would probably be taken. On the very strong hindsight, the springleaf drum might have a much stronger pick for me, for one, it would allow me to splash for more colors. (The Red Lashout in particular)

7. Aethersnipe over Broken Ambitions

In a 6 man pod, seeing Aethersnipe isn’t all that strong a signal, but it is great in the blue deck that seems to be shaping up at this particular place in time.

8. Triclopian Sight over Wanderer’s Twig

Triclopian Sight is an excellent combat trick, and would allow me to attack with tap activated creatures. The wanderer’s twig, however, thins lands and color fixes. The Twig would probably be better, but I had a strong signals of White and Blue.

9. Nectar Faerie

10. Inner-flame Acolyte

11. Bogstrider Ash

12. Cauterwalling Boggart

13. Theiving Sprite

14. Hunt Down

15. Herbal Poultice.

Or at least. I thought I had a strong signal in merfolk, white or blue. Somewhere along pick 10, someone started picking out the mediocre blue cards like the deepthread merrow. I didn’t see an Aquitech’s will in this pack.

Pack 2.

16. Streambed Aquitechs

With several strong merfolk already in the deck, Aquitechs is a solid choice. Nothing else was really worth considering in this particular pack, and passing the techs mean giving away too strong a signal.

17. Pestermite

He’s good, even if you are only splashing blue.

18. Aethersnipe

Another snipe.

19. Streambed Aquitechs over Thoughtweft Trio

20. Streambed Aquitechs over Judge of Currents

Two streambead Aquitechs means that I can give the islandwalking strategy a try, which I have used before to much success. The Judge was somewhat a hard choice to pass, and I did hope it would table. It was only an unfortunate hindsight that the person I was passing to had picked up a first pick summon the school.

21. Ponder over Protective Bubble

It was at this point I wonder why I even considered protective bubble. Ponder is a generally useful card drawing spell, and worse comes to worse, give you a stronger chance to topdeck.

22. Familiar’s ruse

A relatively decent counterspell for the mere price of returning a creature. I was half considering using this with Pestermite for some tap-tap shennaigans, but it was my one out against things like the commands, point removal or board sweepers like Final Reveals.

23. Kinsbaile Balloonist

The Balloonist is a backup plan if Islandwalking doesn’t work out too well, bringing creatures Airborne instead of keeping them down. It shouldn’t be hard to splash white for the Balloonist at all.

24. Sure of thoughtweft

A decent combat trick, and its more then likely one or two Kithkins might find their way into my deck in the form of changelings.

25. Hillcomber Giant

26. Zephyr Net

27. Foil Forest

28. Springjack Knight

29. Spirtechaser Boggart

30. Hunt Down

Again, blue dried up, however at this point it was difficult to change tribes as the Merfolk that I had quite a strong potential. The only problem was that it is highly likely that the people feeding to me had most likely at some point had cut into Merfolk, and it would be a contest to see who makes better choices then the other.

Pack 3.

31. Stonybrook Bannert

The First Pick is strong, and it cannot be passed simply because there is still a chance that whomever is picking up Merfolk in the second pack might favor other spells if they didn’t have a bannert to power things out. It was a risk, as there could be other merfolk bannerts out there, but clearly we don’t want to give away any signals. Plus, it has islandwalk.

32. Distant Melody over Coordinated Barrage

Since I’m in a tribe, either would be good for me. On hindsight, the barrage would have been stronger then the melody as removal is powerful, but at this point I felt the card advantage might give me a better edge.

33. Mothdust Changeling

A tap enabler and a changling, it went into my hand before I even looked at other picks.

34. Research the Deeps

More card drawing, although at this point I was considering something else, but can’t remember what it was.

35. Cenn’s Tactician

A Tactician this late? Some of my merfolk are soldiers, and perhaps I could pick up a Soldier subtheme. If all fails, he goes with the balloonist and can pump himself too.

36. Latchkey Fairy

37. Disperse

38. Forfend

39. Burroten Bombardier

40. Kithkin Zephyrnaught

A Bombardier and a Zephyrnaught back to back. It was a great pity that the Kithkin in the Lowryn packs weren’t a bit stronger, otherwise it would have been great. As it stands, the Bombardier was picked because of the Reinforce, and the Zephyrnaught might find a space.

41. War-Spike Changeling

42. Orchard Warden

43. Festercreep

44. Fertilid

45. Reins of The Vinesteed

Nothing remarkable came, the only remarkable one is that the tabled Orchard Warden would have prove troublesome in other decks.

So what was my Final Deck?

1 x Fallowsage

1 x Stonybrook Angler

1 x Inkfathom Divers

1 x Judge of Currents

2 x Aethersnipes

1 x Pestermite

3 x Streambed Aquitechs

1 x Stonybrook Bannert

1 x Mothdust Changlings

1 x Latchkey Faerie

1 x Burroten Bombardier

1 x Cenn’s Tactician

1 x Kinsbaile Balloonist

1 x Springjack Knight

17 creatures

1 x Triclopian Sight

1 x Familiar’s Ruse

1 x Distant Melody

1 x Research the Depths

1 x Ponder

1 x Disperse

6 spells

12 Islands

5 plains

17 Lands.

Relevant Sideboard includes the Douser, Forfend and Surge of Thoughtweft, along Zephyr Net and the Zephyrnaught.

At first glance, it seems pretty strong, yes? Quite stable despite the lack of bomb cards like a Command, with a sport of 3 Aquitechs, decent combat tricks and quite a number of ways to draw cards. However, I didn’t actually have any strong finishers though the Aethersnipes would definately come close. So how did I fare?

Round One was against Phil, decent guy who was sporting a blue/white/black deck that featured a turn two bitterblossom, which got dispersed, followed by a slew of other faeries and creatures that completely outpaced me in game one. The most significant play here was running Inkfanthom divers straight into a Broken Ambitions, which gave him very strong tempo to put down more creatures, though Aethersnipe would send back Bitterblossom two more times before he finally overwhelmed me with his own Inkfanthom Divers. Time was called before we could finish game two, giving Phil a 1-0 win.
Round Two was against Mick, running monogreen elves featuring about three different Kinship triggers. In Game one I had to face down Leaf-Crowned Eldar, a Winnower Patrol AND a wolfskull shaman. If it wasn’t for the fact that he missed the Kinship triggers on all three several times, it would have been a much faster game before I scooped, having a somewhat desolate board. Game two involved Mick not actually doing anything until turn 4, where he dropped Ambassador Oak and a 1/1. My deck behaved for a bit as I cut down to 16 lands and sided in douser, getting the Mothdust, Douser, Aquitech, Fallowsage curve which was quite nice. Mothdust and Fallowsage kept my hand loaded, and Mick conceded shortly after I told Rick I had a good card in hand.

Round Three was against Chris, who ran a mix of goblins, merfolk, kithkin and elves. I wasn’t sure what else was in his deck, but after an overtly long, drawn out game one, (So long infact, we both thought it was actually game 2… I’m actually still not quite sure if it was game one or two.), we moved onto game two. Either It was me being tired or me being frustrated, I wasn’t sure, but I kept a hand consisting of a Judge of Currents and Distant Melody. I fought way too hard for way too long and end up getting run over by Boggart Foragers and a number of Merfolk tokens generated by a Stonybrook Schoolmaster when time was called, resulting in a 1-1 draw.

So relatively solid deck, drew against an absolutely insane deck, lost against a somewhat normal deck and drew against a deck consisting of half the Lowryn tribes. There wasn’t anything inherantly wrong with the deck other then the sideboard douser (as oppose to maindeck douser) but one opponent I had to fight viciously against was the clock.

We have 40 minutes to finish our matches. Its not actually that long, and several points during the game my board position was inevitably hopeless. Instead of trying to fight out of it, a quick concession would enable me more time and perhaps better luck on a game two or game three. The last round was the most obvious, he was overrunning me with a Schoolmaster and Springleaf Drum combo, I should have quickly conceded him the game and hope to have a quick, decisive game three, instead of banking on the belief that my deck, being stronger, can win out.

It is a very critical skill to know when to abandon the battle to win the war, quickly analyzing your chances, knowing what else you have in your deck, knowing what can be done or whether you should move on instead of stalling out the inevitable, because if you believe your deck is stronger, you can do a better 2nd or 3rd game after sideboarding, and still have time to pull off a win. If you think your opponent’s deck is weaker, knowing when to concede, retreat and regroup is even more critical, forcing your opponent’s great start into one that might not be as strong, or hide more information about your deck and moving onto sideboarding to deal with your opponent’s threats.

Such are the myriad paths of victory, where we must select our choices with care, and most importantly, consider them quickly enough to have enough time to pull them off. Hopefully next time I play, I will remember that ‘Time on the round?’ is an important question, instead of being caught offguard by having it yelled to you by the floor judge.

Tommorow we will feature an analysis of two elf decks that featured strongly in our pods. Mick’s Elf deck featuring Wolf-Skull Shaman and a bit of treefolk and a bit of warriors, taking 1st place, and Stephan’s Elf deck featuring Imperious Perfects and… Elven Eulogists…? Taking third place in Pod 2.

Until then.

~Jin.

 

So its Friday (II)

Hello and Welcome again to MTGLeeds! First off, our winner for best play, best pick contest… no, none of this nonsense of having to read through the /rest/ of the column to find out who won, (Because if that’s all your interested in, your skipping through the whole thing /anyways/) but right down to the money (or in this particular case, foil). After which we will go through a draft ‘tutorial’ so to speak, and also showcase some of the better decks that night.

A number of you posted up your best plays and picks, and certainly a number of them was quite impressive. A turn 3 Doran normally would be extremely powerful in the usual case, not normally so when there’s the guy holding a broken ambitions just waiting to send Doran to the graveyard instead of into play. However, tapping out all his lands to play a 3 colored gold creature instead of using the manafixing accelerant like the blightsoil druid fooled his opponent to think he had no mana free, and was thus able to force through those large, unbroken treefolk type ambitions to smash his opponent into utter pulp.

More powerful plays are afloat everywhere that night, it would seem, with smokebraider forcing out the massive Game Trail Changling followed by even a bigger elemental incarnation in the form of a Vigor. Smokebraider’s early power to force out multiple colors of elementals shone brilliantly here, allowing the double and triple green cost seem largely irrelevant. And what a dream it must have to be for the Plovar Knights to have a Cavailer backing them up, giving their first strike an extra second punch. And turn 4 Timber protector off fertile ground and bosk banneret? Only something Morningtide and Lowryn could have come up with.

These were certainly game winning and and powerful plays, and I thank all of you for posting them up for all to hear and share, the power aspect of the game is certainly thrilling, a main reason why extended is so popular with a feast of broken decks and first turn kills, and I hope by doing this, you took an active interest in your plays and most importantly, your opponent’s plays.

There is another type of good play though, which I didn’t see or hear much of, and while power plays make magic thrilling to play, sneaky plays make the game /interesting/, and these you see less of. Did Fistful of Force make an appearance in the upkeep after kinship to get a for sure +4/+4 and trample? Did someone slapped Lammastide Weave on a revealed Kinship or Clash card to gain some life to put them out of a danger zone and to deck the opponent’s better card instead of letting it go to his hand? Did someone finally, finally, finally make Herbal Poultice work?(Somehow? That would have been a play to remember).

Such a play that night did happen, as a 4/4(With 2 +1/1 counters from reinforce) fallowsage swung into the redzone, confident that the 1/1 blocker couldn’t possibly deal with it. Even if it did have pump spells, it either needed to be a successful Fistful of Force, multiple reinforce activations and even, with a silvergill douser as backup, the 1/1 surely can’t get big enough to trade or even significantly dent the 4/4. There wasn’t any burn to worry about and when Mick went ‘Damage on the Stack?’ I frankly thought that was the end of the issue. Not so, for that harmless little elf that couldn’t possibly trade with that 4/4 card advantage engine actually had deathtouch. Why was this a good play you ask?

He waited till damage was on the stack. If he had played Lace With Moonglove before that, I would have used the douser to make the 1/1 a 0/1, nulling the suddenly deathtouchy elf. As it stands, when damage resolves, it saw that the 1/1 elf has deathtouch, trades it off for much better fallowsage, and he gets to draw a card on top of everything else. Mick took full advantage of that single blink I made when he said ‘Damage on the stack?’ and killed the biggest creature on the board.

Which is why he wins the foil Scryb Ranger. Not for making the play mind you, but for reporting it (He sent an email). However, that doesn’t put any of you out of the running for a shiny prize, as there is still the foil land. You have said what your best picks were, and many of them were great picks, top of the line choices. Jim’s choice of hate drafting Wizened Cenn would probably incite many hateful yells by Matt Kopas, who was drafting Kithkin, is certainly an interesting choice, mainly because he chose that over something else to see if it would come back to him. It certainly is a valid strategic choice to make, denying an opponent one game winning card while at the same time analyzing how the rest of the draft is going. While the strength of the pick is debatable, Jim Marlow wins a foil Island for being so strategic about it. Other picks that have been submitted are Timber Protector, Doran, Garruk… Very strong picks, especially a second pick Doran, as the three color requirements often put you into a position that you are going to have to draft alot of color fixers before they are nabbed up to be able to play him.

Not the most elaborate of prizes, though despite wanting to give away a foil Mutavault, I’m not in the possession of one, and Martin will probably kill me if I gave one away to someone else other then him, and by this point, I hope most of you enjoy me being alive to write these lengthy reports Still, I enjoyed reading what you have to say about that night and come the next limited session, I would probably run another similar contest, perhaps with a larger choice of foils!

Now, with that suspense out of the way, I will present you with what I drafted that night. Keep in mind we were in two pods of 6, and as numbers change, so do strategy. In smaller pods, there are typically two tribes that would go underdrafted, and if you are lucky, you get to pick up which one is which.(Tune in over the weekend to see the next part of the Article.)