FNM & Gamestore Review

As part of my post-college real world social networking initiative, I dropped by my FLGS on Friday. (Game Parlor in Chantilly, if you're close enough to care.) They were playing Friday Night Magic, (their website lies) although apparently they don't always, and I picked up a foil Jace's Ingenuity by coming in 4th in a big messy EDH game -- played with a borrowed deck, since Game Parlor can't manage to keep the new Commander decks in stock, and I haven't had the time, inclination, or cards to put together one of my own. (Even if I do a home brew, I'll likely want one of the new decks for utility cards like Sol Ring, and just at the moment all my legendary critters are single color, which is okay but not optimal given the otherwise limited size of my card pool.)

I'm not entirely sure I'll be back. At least for a while. The staff was great -- friendly, helpful, enthusiastic even about games they didn't play themselves. The other players... well. They weren't bad guys. They weren't particularly unfriendly. But they were all guys, and I've played long enough in groups that had at the very least a significant minority of women that I'm not used to or particularly interested in being "the only girl at the table." I'm not quite good enough yet at Magic to deal with the problem through overwhelming mastery of the game at hand, which is my usual strategy, although I was several times able to take advantage of the not-nearly-enough-attention the rest of the group was paying me. ("Man, this deck usually runs way more cards than this." "Yeah, mine too." ::quietly sits at the end of the table with 8 cards in hand and a ton of discard effects in my graveyard::)

More importantly, they're not really on the same wavelength with me Magic-wise. Any group that plays big free-for-all games with Urza's Saga rares and seriously suggests signing up for a Worldwake draft and dropping out just to get the cards instead of, y'know, playing draft just isn't going to hold my attention for long. Bird Stomp is currently tuned for two-player Standard, and while getting to run it in said big free-for-all game before the actual "tournament" started was enlightening in the sense that it reminded me I desperately need to bring a set of d6s when I'm running something that has that many fiddly little bonuses, but the complexity of the social and play dynamics made it impossible for me to separate out play style and skill from the overall performance of the deck itself.

On the other hand, Elder Dragon Highlander, otherwise known as Commander, is damn fun. I think I'm going to push my playgroup (Dangerfox and my little brother at the moment, though I'm hopeful of adding a few more to the crew presently.) to adopt it, since I suspect the friends of mine who lack an interest in even low-level tournament-style play will have a lot more fun with its big creatures and big effects, and I've heard tell that once you have the basic shell of an EDH deck together, there's a lot less upkeep involved in keeping it "competitive," which would be a plus.

Still, I can play EDH on my own. That's not much of an argument in favor of the Game Parlor as my away-from-the-kitchen-table Magic destination. The place I went out to in May has a group that's somewhat more serious without being overbearing about it, and the store itself has a better selection of product to boot. They run Standard tournaments and my favorite format, and they've got a lot more players, which means more women. It's significantly further away, but I'm perfectly happy to drive the extra fifteen minutes once or twice a month if it means that I leave the store actually excited about Magic, instead of thinking, "Yeah, I guess that was fun?"

Deck: Bird Stomp

This deck is very much a work in progress, and very much shaped by the particular cards I have available in my (still quite small) pool at the moment. It's essentially my answer to the question, "What's the best deck I can build around Garruk Wildspeaker with what else I have available?" The concept is pretty simple: Dump a bunch of small, cheap creatures onto the table and chip away at the opponent's health until I can lay down a universal buff or other devastating single spell that clears the way for an overwhelming strike. Generally that means either a powered-up Garruk Wildspeaker or Inspired Charge, but I've won a few games with a Knight Exemplar/Day of Judgement combo. Between Beast Hunt and Squadron Hawk, I almost always have more cards and more creatures than my opponent, though that's partly because my playgroup hasn't discovered the wonders of removal yet.

I'd like to pick up some more copies of Knight Exemplar, as well as more of Mirrodin Besieged and New Phyrexia's often rather excellent knights. I'd also like a few more Beast Hunt-type effects, to keep up the card advantage. Mostly, though, it just needs more playtesting, and more competent playtesting. As I mentioned, the people I play with are fairly inexperienced and generally not as interested in deckbuilding as I am, and this deck pushes way past the limits of what their decks can deal with. Sometime soon I hope to take it by my local game store and see how it holds up there.

Creatures:

3 Accorder Paladin

1 Beast Hunt

2 Cloud Crusader

1 Day of Judgement

4 Kemba's Skyguard

1 Knight Exemplar

1 Leonin Relic-Warder

1 Mirran Crusader

1 Mitotic Slime

1 Roc Egg

4 Squadron Hawk

2 White Knight

Other spells:

1 Accorder's Shield

1 Arrest

1 Back to Nature

1 Flayer Husk

1 Garruk Wildspeaker

1 Giant Growth

2 Inspired Charge

2 Naturalize

1 Red Sun's Zenith

1 Sylvok Lifestaff

1 Trusty Machete

1 White Sun's Zenith

Lands:

1 Copperline Gorge

14 Plains

5 Forest

1 Mountain

1 Naya Panorama

1 Seaside Citadel

1 Secluded Steppe

Fashion is a CCG

I've finally acquired what might be described as a work wardrobe. Amusingly, after going through nearly a dozen stores (with Dangerfox, whose eyes lit up when I told him there was nothing wrong with wanting to "play dress-up" with his girlfriend as a canvas, and is dogged in his pursuit of my perfect hat) I ended up buying everything except the shoes from the Gap. I would have been utterly incapable of spending that much time looking for clothes a few years ago. My interest (or perhaps tolerance) for fashion has slowly been increasing for the past year or so, and it's been helped along by a rather silly realization: Fashion is built on the same principles as a CCG.

A new set comes out every so often, full of reprints and variations on old ideas as well as entirely new features. Every set focuses on a different aspect of the whole possibility space for the enterprise. If you want a very specific piece, you need to be willing to spend a lot of time shopping or spend a lot of money (and often, spending a lot of time shopping turns into spending a lot of money), and you might even have to wait until a certain style comes back into fashion if it's really unusual.

You'll need to update your collection periodically to remain current, but if you don't, that can be a statement in itself. Some people just look to the trend-setters for the "optimal builds," while others use their collections to build unique combinations that showcase their personal creativity. Others just want to be as shiny as possible. Kids tend to get into it when they're 10-13, and what they do with it tends to horrify their elders and embarrass themselves when they get older.

Draft!

Headed out to my friendly not-so-local gaming store on Friday (the closest one doesn't do Friday Night Magic) and came back with a deck that looks like this:

Creatures:

1 Blade-Tribe Berserkers
1 Ezuri's Archers
1 Goblin Gaveleer
1 Immolating Souleater
1 Kiln Walker
1 Molder Beast
1 Ogre Resister
1 Oxidda Scrapmelter
1 Spin Engine
1 Training Drone

Artifacts:
1 Accorder's Shield
1 Barbed Battlegear
1 Flayer Husk
1 Strider Harness
1 Horizon Spellbomb

Other Spells:
1 Act of Aggression
1 Beast Within
2 Burn the Impure

1 Concussive Bolt
1 Lead the Stampede
1 Whipflare

Lands:
1 Copperline Gorge
5 Forests
11 Mountains

Sideboard:
Apostle's Blessing
Evil Presence
Gitaxian Probe
Golem Foundry
Mental Misstep
Mirran Mettle
Mirran Spy
Mutagenic Growth
Phyresis
Rally the Forces
Ruthless Invasion
Shriekhorn
2 Victorious Destruction
Withstand Death

This actually isn't the deck exactly as I played it; at the end of the night I accidentally shuffled my side-board in and thus lost the original configuration. This version is actually rather better than the one that I actually ran, with which I did okay -- the first match I got completely rolled over twice, the second I won twice, and the third I lost one, won the second, and then lost the third.

This was the second draft I've been to and the first with the full New Phyrexia/Mirrodin Besieged/Scars of Mirrodin lineup (the first was all Mirrodin Besieged), so I got somewhat confused and overwhelmed and wasn't able to keep track of what I'd already picked and what I wanted to pick as well as I wanted to. I didn't pick up nearly enough creatures, and probably not enough artifacts/equipment considering the number of other cards that required them to work well. I also passed up a chance to pick up an Alpha Tyrannax halfway through the third pack, which was just silly. I don't even remember what I got instead.

I'll be heading out another one of these Friday's fairly soon, probably to check out the other FNM option within driving distance, and my plan then is to try out some manner of mixed infect strategy -- probably G/W, G/B, or G/U, depending on which color gets me the best infect creatures and removal, and whether I can get some good-with-infect-type support cards. Otherwise -- R/W aggro!

One odd thing I noticed was that no one I played against used Phyrexian mana the whole game. Neither did I. Act of Aggression showed up late in the game when it did show up (and I really hadn't gotten the hang of using it yet anyway), and that was really the one thing I was thinking of seriously using. I probably should have put Apostle's Blessing in my main deck, but I had enough low-cost cards as it was.

The Angriest Little Ornithopter

On Thursday night I played Magic: the Gathering. Learned a couple of things.

• If one guy starts calling them "articrafts," pretty soon everyone will be.
• If you have nine lands and Untamed Might in your hand, then clearly your only choice is to play it on your partner's Ornithopter. Hereby dubbed "The Angriest Little Ornithopter."
• Three teams of two players is a ridiculous format. The game was like two hours long, and at the end we got to that stupid point where everyone has like eight lands and two cards in their hands.
• My deck is way too defensive. Was running green/blue with big critters, mana accelerators and a lot of control to clear the way for those critters. I liked the idea and have even gotten it to work a couple of times, but in bringing the deck down from the 60 card limit I'd built it with and the 40 card limit I'd just found out I'd played it with, I took out too many of the high-cost cards and ended up with a deck that frustrated people until the endgame and then couldn't do much itself. No good.
• Deck building is hard. Absolutely the most interesting part of the game, but I'm still getting the hang of defensive/offensive balance, combos, and how to find the right mana curve for a given deck. Nevermind that I haven't yet actually played all that much Magic, so I'm really still getting a handle on how to judge the relative values of the cards themselves.
• For instance, I hadn't realized until tonight how useful Glint Hawks can be. I hadn't fully made the distinction between "discard" and "return to your hand" for some stupid reason, until one of the other teams used it to play Contagion Engine twice.
• I'm pretty sure infect isn't quite as good as this group thinks it is. It is good, but more importantly, it's a fairly straightforward strategy to assemble. It takes a little more thought to put together a non-infect deck that's equivalent to it. That might still be a big enough advantage to let it dominate casual play, but as far as I can tell the main use infect sees in tournament constructed is for creature removal, not as a serious attack on the player.
• Why the heck wasn't the rule "15 poison counters to win" in two-headed giant before Friday?