Magic: The Gathering

Stormtroper · 2020-09-30 05:11:07

I definitely should read Shadowverse at some point. Maybe the game is good?

Are these like Amulets from Shadowverse where they stay on the field and nerf you/boost the opponent until they're taken off the field?

More or less. It's an artifact, they don't do anything "on their own" the way creatures do, but lots of artifact and enchantments (tl;dr: same as artifacts but usually not colorless) have static effects that continuously buff/nerf players. In Forsaken Monument's case it makes their colorless creatures stronger and their colorless mana sources more powerful (and gives them life for casting colorless spells, but that's not what I'd call a continuous effect, maybe that's different from Shadowverse's Amulets?).

I don't know if it's really a thing or I just pay attention now but I see Magic decks pop up in my 'Recommended Items' on certain online stores more often nowadays.

Perhaps it has to do with Wizards being more eager to cash on other franchises lately?
In addition to the above there's also an upcoming set advertised in terms of a Twilight-esque vampires vs. werewolves thing, a set about a magic school with owls as symbol that may or may not be Harry Potter inspired, and a Dungeons and Dragons set, not a set inspired by D&D but an actual D&D setting (Forbidden Realms) with D&D elements as cards. Awkward indeed, but a lot of people have high hopes for that one.
Also, if there was hope that The Walking Dead cards would suck (in terms of power and interest) and go unused, that hope was dashed when Glenn~~magusharvey~~ was revealed, a kid with a very peculiar effect that you'd definitely want to build a Commander deck around (i.e. in a format involving decks built around a legendary creature).

29/09
In non-MTGA stuff I played two Zendikar Rising drafts (against the AI) in Forge. It should go without saying that there's not enough real-life drafting data available for the devs to have the AI make sensible picking choices, I tried to handicap myself by rare-drafting but clearly that wasn't enough. Despite that I think it was an useful exercise, I feel like I got the hang of the set's draft. Also language practice.
On the first draft I played BRG stuff with landfall and counters, though that was unintentional and I only realized that was what the deck was about as I played it. I won all games of all seven matches (best two of three).
Next I played UR wizards, I thought it was better but I didn't feel I was winning as smoothly as with the other deck, in fact I lost a game (or was it match?) out of three matches.
In MTGA, for questing purposes I made a quick Standard-legal monowhite lifegain deck. Maybe I'm imagining things but I get the impression I faced harder opponents than with the Modern version of my deck, despite the fact that more stuff is available in Modern. Regardless I went 2-2 with it.
With my usual deck I went 8-3:
Whoo, I beat the Treasure Find + Awaken the Erstwhile deck, I went land, land, Paraside Druid, land, Gnarlback Rhino, land, Season of Growth, Boulder Rush, attack with Rhino (6 damage), Rimrock Knight, land, attack with all (9 damage), Threat, at this point my opponent plays Awaken the Erstwhile, however they only had six cards in hand while I had IIRC 3 so it wasn't a huge advantage, and with Season of Growth's scry I could ensure I'd draw something good. My opponent then conceded. I think my opponent made a misplay, s/he played Treasure Find on turn 2, meaning s/he couldn't play Mikokoro, Center of the Sea to not be forced to discard. They only had to discard ~3 cards so it wouldn't have made a big difference, but still.
I beat a turn 4 Nissa, Who Shakes The World! I wasn't sure about whether it was worth to ~~bolt the bird~~ bite the elf before their third turn but I did the right thing and killed it, buying me enough time to cast the Spellgorger Weird I'd need later, when Nissa finally entered the battlefield I had two Paradise Druid, Dreadhorde Arcanist and the (2/2) Weird ,my opponent hand the 3/3 land from Nissa's ability and a 1/1 chump blocker, I pump the Arcanist with Sudden Spinnerets and that allowed me to cast Rabid Bite from the graveyard, killing the land. With Everything attacking Nissa I had just enough stuff so that she'd die regardless of how my opponent blocked. Now, I had to kill my almost intact opponent before the inevitable Ugin hit the board and deleted my stuff, fortunately I had played another Weird that was growing quickly, I also had another Spinnerets so that I could win even if my opponent casted something to block or killed one of my creatures or whatever. We raced, my creatures versus their ramping, eventually I killed them the turn before they'd (probaly) have enough mana for (probably) Ugin. So yeah, bolt the bird.
There were Order of Midnight card styles for sale at 50 gold (-98%), no way I wouldn't have bought that. Speaking of money, I have less money than I expected I'd have this close to the opening of Quick Draft, I won't have enough goldy for ten drafts, I need 15 to get all (time-limited) land styles that you get for participating, so I might have to spend gems instead if I am to get them all. Hmm... maybe I shouldn't.
I've been considering crafting a semi-competitive deck. I have little hope of having a tier 1 deck soon, but there are budget decklists on the 'net with cards within my reach. I'm particularly interested in this one, though it's become less useful as the same things people use to deal with Omnath decks is useful against it, or so I heard.

glennmagusharvey · 2020-09-30 06:39:09

wait is that an actual card

Stormtroper · 2020-09-30 10:49:58

Glenn, the Voice of Calm? It is, it's as much of a card as Birds of Paradise or Bitterblossom.

fourteenwings · 2020-09-30 13:00:26

Glenn~~magusharvey~~ was revealed

does not compute

I definitely should read Shadowverse at some point. Maybe the game is good?

Oh! The manga is Wizard's Soul ~Koi no Jihad~ (I'm not kidding, though it's more frequently translated as Koi no Seisen to avoid well, y'know).

Shadowverse is a separate card game anime that is nowhere near it in quality.

Stormtroper · 2020-10-01 02:17:31

Ah, alright, so Wizard's Soul it is.
I thought WotC could avoid a bunch of the drama by making them proxies, like the Godzilla proxies (that is, they're stand-ins for regular cards) but without the requirement that the original card exists, they'd just come up with some generic name that fits, then pretend that's the creature the character replaces (and maybe actually print it in the future). I just learned they already did that; Godzilla, King of the Monsters is a proxy for the unexistant Zilortha, Strength Incarnate.

30/09
I went 10/6.
I faced a GB version of my own deck, it had dudes with Deathtouch so that his/her small dudes could kill mine regardless of how small they were, also it had Lurrus as companion. Things got tense, each turn one of us would play creatures and cast lots of stuff on them to kill the other's while filling up our hands, then rinse and repeat, nonetheless I think my opponent got unlucky, at one point s/he had a large hand but apparently nothing to cast, so I won. Also I made a huge mistake by not killing one of their creatures in response to Season of Growth's ETB trigger, allowing them to cast sorcery-speed stuff on it to draw cards, it's something I should be aware of considering the same thing comes up with my deck.
I beat another Nissa, Who Shakes The World, though this time it was on turn five and I don't know what my opponent was expecting after playing her with only one creature to block, I killed the land and would've killed said blocker if I needed to, I just swung and she was dead. I did use some pump spells but there are loads of ways that could've ended in my favour. My opponent conceded shortly after.
I feel kinda bad for one of my opponents, it was UW lifegain (although I saw no blue) and while my hand wasn't that great (in fact, I had to mulligan once), it was the perfect hand for the occasion, I killed the stuff worth killing as soon as possible and always had backup stuff to keep my attackers in case anything went awry, which it never did. I did misplay once by letting Gideon's Company survive a turn, but even that turned in my favour as they only gained life once, cast On Serra's Wings on it, attacked and got blocked by my Sudden Spinneretsed Spellgorger Weird that was just large enough to kill it. Perhaps MTGA should have an "I got lucky" emote.

Edit: it occurred to me that, althought it's not what comes to mind when you think of crossovers with other fictitious works, Arabian Nights (the very first expansion) is just that. Regardless, all of it pales in oddity in comparison to Portal: Three Kingdoms, the one depicting real-life Chinese history circa Three Kingdoms era. Still, the Walking Dead...

Stormtroper · 2020-10-03 07:33:53

01/02
I went 11-...14? or was it 15?
I normally don't change my maindeck to put specific match-up cards on it (I'd change sideboard instead but that's not available on Play queue), however I thought I'd put Gaea's Blessing to make milling decks (which feel very common now, I guess because of Ruin Crab?) have a very high chance of resetting my "life". I guess having it around will make me think of other uses for it, so far I've realized it's also useful against Lurrus revival decks and Treasure Hunt decks. So far I've won three games against mill decks over that (although one of them I most likely would've won two of them anyways) and I feel has only been a dead card only once.
Speaking of Treasure Hunt, I've faced an unusually high amount of them lately. I want to use Gaea's Blessing to win against them at least once.

02/10
The FNM event was Singleton Standard, i.e. the most recent sets using at most one copy of each card (except basic lands). As I pretty much always do whenever I have to improvise a deck, it turned out into lifegain, I thought it was terrible but my opponents clearly had trouble deckbuilding too. I won the two games and that was it.
Besides that... Quick Draft is finally here!
The unpleasant surprise is that you don't get basic land styles for participating, despite the fact that it was announced that you'd get them for "a Zendikar Rising draft", as it was in Ikoria. Apparently it's not a bug or anything, so yeah, false advertising. Disappointing, those were the main reason I waited for Quick Draft rather than playing the other draft modes, and the reason I didn't buy the -10% draft token that was on sale some time ago.
Regardless, I did do one Quick Draft. Decklist:

So that's four rares, ~160 more to go.
I made some changes after losing once, not that I can remember what they were. I think my deck suffered from me thinking I could make use of the party mechanic, I had few warriors and one cleric, but neither them nor the party payoffs were good. Also that feel when you have to pass on a second Roost of Drakes so as to pick the rare instead.
As for the games:

GB - I stomped it, my opponent didn't play anything to stop the beatdown, only a Turntimber Ascetic that I bounced with a kicked Into The Roil.
GR with sizeable creatures, one fateful turn I lost several creatures over a mid-combat Might of Murasa, I was already having a hard time dealing with those creatures so there was no way I would recover from that.
GW very good party deck. That's a lot of green. The creatures were decent on their own, with all the party stuff it was only a matter of time until I got wrecked. At one point they had a full party, which they made good use of with a Strength of Solidarity. Also three Kabira Takedown.
UB rogues. I was aggressive at first but it was quickly made evident I should change gears. I was both getting hit and having my deck milled, though I had decent flyers so I could stand my ~~ground~~ air. It took a while, but bit by bit I succumbed, my opponent got to choose whether I'd lose over loss of life or getting decked, they chose the latter.

So yeah, 1-3. It's a good thing that score in Quick Draft is not that big of a deal. The lands thing tho. I gotta get a better sense of what picks are good, too.
Besides that, I went 4/5
One of those matches was against a monowhite lifegain deck with Light of Promise, my opponent cast that on a Healer's Hawk plus some +2/+2 aura and before long it was 12/12.
Another one was against WB lifegain with the Exquisite Blood and reverse-exquisite-blood (Vito, Marauding Blightpriest, etc.) infinite combo. I thought things were going well for me but suddenly I found myself one turn away from losing and failed to kill them first.
Finally, I got trounced by a deck with Colossus Hammer and Nahiri, Heir of the Ancients. I'm surprised I hadn't seen that combo before, looks simple and reliable.

Stormtroper · 2020-10-04 04:51:28

One effect of the fact that I've never played during Alara, Tarkir or any of the Ravnicas is that I call color combinations by the colors themselves, rather than the guild/shard/clan that represents them (i.e. "blue-black" rather than "Dimir" or "URG" rather than "Temur"). I sometimes have to stop for a second to remember which name correspond to which combination of colors.
Also I just realized that in my mind I've treated one-sided fight (e.g. Rabid Bite) the same as regular fight in that removing the creature in response to it will stop the damage from being dealt. I think I had that misconception from finding out the hard way that's how it works with fight but not why (it's a special clause) so to be safe I'd cast them assuming they could be dealt with with removal. Annoyingly, fight is AFAIK the only keyword mechanic that is explained in reminder text using rules text but that its effect is not said rules text.

Anyhows, I did another draft:

So RW Warriors it is, I was leaning towards making it party but eventually I bailed out of that idea, truly that's the realm of BR. I did keep two clerics and two wizards, though. There was an Emeria Captain and Kargan Warleader that I didn't pick, hoping it'd be passed back to me, but that didn't happen. They did pass around a Canyon Jerboa so that's nice.

So...

Monored Aggro, my opponent hit me early with Relic Robber, which created a "cursed" token that would damage me each turn. I got rid of the goblin then started playing several good creatures, I still had plenty of life but it was a race against time, the token and Spitfire Lagac's damage vs. my stuff, which kept getting burn. After a turn in which I went all-out my opponent refused to block, then next turn hit me for all they could and cast Kazuul's Fury, leaving me at one life, fortunately I had a Kazuul's Fury of my own that I could use to win the game in response to the Relic Robber's token's trigger.
GW something odd, I was probably a party deck but only got to play a Skyclave Cleric, a Paired Tactician (a warrior) and Relic Golem. Regardless, between Goma Fada Vanguard and Kargan Intimidator's abilities I had free pass in bringing my opponent down.
WB Clerics. This was a tough match, my opponent played Kor Celebrant then Scion of the Swarm which kept growing, eventually becoming 8/8. We both put lots of creatures in play but with that Scion there time wasn't on my side, I use the Intimidator and Canyon Jerboa to manipulate combat the best I could and barely managed to kill my opponent before the Scion killed me. Again I misplayed, this time by making Kor Celebrant unable to block (which was a sensible option) rather than their Malakir Blood-Priest (who being a potential blocker meant I shouldn't attack with the Intimidator).
WBR Party, Acquisition Expert, IIRC Thundering Sparkmage and Squad Commander and I'm in deep trouble trying to deal with lots of creature tokens, I kill the Commander then my opponent revives it, creating even more tokens. Then my opponent uses the tokens to feed a Skyclave Shadowcat, which keeps pounding me. I misplayed badly at the end in what I hoped would be a good turn for me, I played a haste'd Scorch Rider and attacked with all, forcing my opponent to block and the result to end in my opponent being unable to kill me before I get to attack again, unfortunately I didn't consider the fact that my opponent could just sacrifice its own creatures after blocking to still have a big enough cat to kill me. I should've kept a chump blocker, like a non-hasted Scorch Rider, and not paying its kicker cost meant I could use Kargan Intimidator's coward ability to get basically the same result).
WB Clerics, this time it was one-sided, Intimidator, Champion, one fateful turn I cast Kazuul's Fury to sacrifice my Nahiri's Binded Intimidator to kill the one blocker that could hinder my attacks. Everything was smooth sailing from there.
UG Kicker control. I saw very little in the way of kicker spells, and not much control for that matter, nonetheless I drew very few creatures so that was enough to keep them alive for a long time, and I got milled for half my library with Maddening Cacophony so I had my turns counted, fortunately for me it seemed my opponent had very little else in terms of milling. Eventually it came to me trying to get through the last 9 life while they had Verazol, the Split Current, but eventually Canyon Jerboa with Nahiri's tokens did the work and I won.
UR Party. They had a good start, Expedition Champion, Thundering Sparkmage, a timely Zulaport Duelist, but eventually I burnt the wizard and rogue with Molten Blast while Rockslide Sorcerer was in play, I then press the attack and trade creatures for several turns, my Shepherd of Heroes ensured my opponent would have a hard time blocking, and eventually Nahiri would ensure my victory.
BW clerics probably, I drew an insanely good hand; Kargan Intimidator, 2 Expedition Champion, Nahiri, Song-Mad Treachery and Kazuul's Fury (which I ended up using as a land) and my opponent only cast one good blocker (Marauding Blight-Priest) so I just kept attacking and won by turn 6 or so.

So... I won seven! I ended up 7-1, meaning I got as far as it goes, and earned the highest prize! (There's no difference between 7-1, 7-0 or 7-2) thus getting almost as many gems as the entry fee (plus two boosters plus getting to keep the deck I made), I guess it's not that big of a deal but of ccourse I'm very pleased, and that means I'll soon have enough gems to get the Mastery Pass and all the rewards that entails, too. Also I got into Limited Silver Rank.
I thought Nahiri would be the star of the show, and she did fine (I think it's telling of the power of planeswalker cards that you can put one based on equipments on a deck without equipments and still be good), however the real MVP was Kargan Intimidator, gosh how is that card so good, I suppose a creature not being able to block often means it may as well not exist.
That was thrilling. I get nervous when playing, even when things are going my way. I think that's exclusive to events with entry fees, though I'd do well in getting over it and play in a more relaxed manner.
Anyhows, I thought I'd celebrate by bringing the deck to Constructed, I chunked 20 more cards and entered the Play queue, I ended up 1-1, I was intending to play more but a (recent) glitch that causes the client to do some asset checks delayed it, and ehh, it's late.

Stormtroper · 2020-10-05 04:18:57

Wizards really killed it with Party, normally the tribal gimmick has the issue that it discourages mix-matching, so coming up with an elegant way to reward it greatly added a whole new dimension to it, you have to choose in which part of the Party-Tribal spectrum you'll be.
Hmm...
Horde (your horde consists of up to one each of Spirit, Zombie, Vampire or Werewolf.)
Menagerie (your menagerie consists of up to one each of Cat, Dog, Bird, Goat, Ox or Snake.)
Fellowship (your fellowship consists of up to one each of Kithkin, Merfolk, Goblin, Elf, Giant, Fairy or Elemental.)

04/10
The daily deal was gems, so I purchased them and had enough for the Mastery Pass (i.e. the thing that grants rewards per level), so I got it. I started using the Nahiri avatar reward, I considered also using a pet but ehh, the less things that lag the game, the better.
I didn't feel like drafting today, so I played some normal games, I went 2/3.
I played against the same UG Merfolks player twice in a row, or at least they had the same avatar, we each won/lost one.
It didn't take long for me to feel like drafting, so I did. My deck was:

I had real trouble picking colors for this deck. At first I thought I'd be playing blue/red, I got several good red stuff and whenever I didn't, white and sometimes black had decent stuff and blue none, so I slowly gravitated towards white, I kept blue in the back of my mind as a potential splash but that didn't happen. So RW warriors again... well, I'd say it's more party than just warriors, but same difference. With that in mind, in hindsight I shouldn't have passed that Shepherd of Heroes. Regardless of all that or upcomming matches, I got five rares so it's borderline already worth it.
I faced:

UB Control Rogues. The few significant threats I got to cast got countered, it took a while for my opponent to start playing creatures but s/he did and I succumbed
WUR something, my opponent played Umara Mystic, Spitfire Lagac and Pyroclastic Hellion, not the biggest of bombs but I had nothing to deal with them.
UBR something. My opponent got mana screwed, while I got mana flooded, however the draws were clearly on my side, they only got to play Merfolk Windrobber Rogue and Hagra Constrictor, while I got to play Sneaking Guide, Expedition Champion, Kabira Outrider and a superfluous Rockslide Sorcerer.
WBG lifegain (clerics?). Early in the game my opponent played two Expedition Healer, a Kazandu Nectarpot and a Marauding Blight-Priest which I promptly burnt. I had Kor Celebrant, Expedition Champion and Teeterpeak Ambusher, the game then went on a standstill, I was stuck at three lands but could do a lot with it. I think time was on my favour, it all depended on what my opponent had in hand, unfortunately there was a power drop at home (which is rare at that time of the day) so I lost my internet connection and could not reconnect in time, thus ending the Draft in a very disappointing way.

So 1-3. I've noticed Molten Blast is often not as useful as it seems, and it really is tricky getting the party mechanic right during deckbuilding. That said I don't think I made big mistakes this time in deckbuilding or in matches, so that's something.
I still had games to play for the day, I won 5 and lost 8. Yeah, definitely not a good day.
I faced a deck similar to the Treasure Hunt one, but instead the deck was almost entirely cards with cycling and New Perspective. With cycling free my opponent drew the entirety of his/her deck, searched/untapped some lands with the effects of some cycling cards, then won using Thassa's Oracle.
Also I tried the additional emotes from the Mastery Pass, I find them clunky to use, you click your avatar, then have to click arrows to change between categories (default, stickers (i.e. images) and what I think are flavor texts), and default is not the... default, despite being by far the most applicable emotes (perhaps that can be changed?).

fourteenwings · 2020-10-05 04:36:59

I've noticed Molten Blast is often not as useful as it seems

This sort of name feels exactly like it'd have this sort of result.

Is Menagerie inspired by the Town Musicians of Bremen?

(I almost called this Bremen March like it's called in Aikatsu! and apparently Zelda?)

Stormtroper · 2020-10-05 05:19:05

Is Menagerie inspired by the Town Musicians of Bremen?

Nopes, I just copied the "tribe grouping" from one of the sets (Magic 2021), like in Animal Sanctuary.
Same goes for Horde (Innistrad) and Fellowship (Lorwyn, except I forgot about Treefolks).

Stormtroper · 2020-10-08 04:37:09

Oh yeah, forgot to mention. I won three games against mill over Gaea's Blessing; one I was going to win anyways, one I was definitely going to lose otherwise (three Ruin Crabs) and one that could go either way. I also never had it as a dead card in my hand.
Also turn three Nissa, Who Shakes the World. I didn't win.

As for Wizard's Soul, it's making me want to play a ~~permission~~ control deck, it reminded me of how much better life is when you sell your soul to Necropotence. I want to record myself when I play control IRL, I bet my change in facial expression is similar to Manaka's.
Also, it's worth highlighting the most aptly-named permission spell around.

05/10
I went 8-2.
For some reason I played an unusually large amount of new players (hence the win-lose ratio), in terms of deck strength (playing with things close to what you start Arena with) or in terms of tactics (several weird misplays).
After being aware of that card for about 17 years, for the first time I read the "draw a card" part of Gaea's Blessing. Yeah, this one is going to remain in my deck.
I played against the first person who seemed to be aware that Sudden Spinnerets exists and who played around the possibility that I have it in my hand right when I need it, mainly by not attacking into a potential blocker.
I wish there post-game options, like show-my-hand or look-at-my-library, like in MtG: Online. In one really tight game my opponent lost over a misplay (attacking with Seraph of the Scales before giving it vigilance, tapping it and giving me free reign to attack and win next turn), I thought it'd be good if that player knew I had Rabid Bite in the top of my library (I knew from scrying) so that that misplay wasn't going to make a difference.

06/10
I went... 3-5? That's what's written in my post draft, but that can't be right, I'm pretty sure I played more than that.
Maaaaan, I almost beat goblins right after my opponent played Muxus, Goblin Grandee (tl;dr: one of those cards that wins the game on its own), the stars aligned such that I'd kill it (5/5) the turn it came into play with a Ram Through from a 5/5 Gnarlback rhino, which without Muxus would be able to survive the trigger from the goblin that hits damage equal to the number of creatures the controller controls, the result is that I was still in a very good position to beat my opponent. I would've been so proud of myself, however I can't read so I attacked into a Brash Taunter with a 8/8 Spellgorger Weird so I ended up nearly killing myself, next turn I'm a goner.
Other than that, those were some unremarkable games.

07/1
I went 9-7.
I faced an unusually high amount of discard decks, as well as an unusual amount of opponents who concede before the game start, as well as an unusual amount of Treasure Hunt decks. Also I've learned that one reason for conceding at the start is due to Treasure Hunt players who'll mulligan in an attempt to find Treasure Hunt, and if they fail to find it they will just save both players' time and give up.
Also, it occurs to me that Treasure Hunt players who use Treasure Hunt sleeves are giving out information that's very useful to their opponents, it'd help them if their opponents don't know until a few turns in that they're playing a deck that they should beat quickly and that won't stop them from having stuff.

fourteenwings · 2020-10-08 05:23:20

Didn't say please.

Those dark fairies look mean.

if they fail to find it they will just save both players' time and give up.

How cynical.

attacking with Seraph of the Scales before giving it vigilance, tapping it and giving me free reign to attack and win next turn

Related/unrelated; there's a new mechanic in Shadowverse where when you use the Amulet Card Seal of Woe, it creates a follower called a Shadow Knight at the start of every turn. If you defeat the Shadow Knight before any of your opponents other followers, it's Last Words allow it to possess a non-Shadow Knight follower and if that follower is destroyed that Shadow Knight will come back next turn.

Of course when the field is filled with like, three Shadow Knights, Hiiro decided his best move was to destroy a follower with Ignis Dragon whose effect is to do three damage to every other monster on the field when it attacks and that allowed all three Shadow Knights to possess the follower he intended on destroying... (he still won by hyper-overdoing like 21 damage* in one turn somehow)

*You only need to do 20 damage.

Stormtroper · 2020-10-09 05:52:15

tbh I probably make worse misplays daily.
Hmm...
Seal of Woe - 1WB
Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep or whenever a creature with a haunt counter on it dies, create a 1/1 Knight Spirit token with "when this creature dies, put a haunt token on target creature you control".

Those dark fairies look mean.

I see you haven't heard about Lorwyn/Shadowmoor faeries.

08/10
I went 9/9. At first I thought I wouldn't play much, but after performing unusually well I felt like keeping on.
For FNM (Standard) I decided to refrain from using yet another lifegain deck. I used the same WR warriors deck from the other day, got trounced as expected, then made a different WR warriors deck, it fared better but still not good enough, I decided to improve the WR deck you're given when you're a new player, accidentally started a match without switching decks, won anyways and so I finished my FNM appointment without using said deck.
It was bound to happen at some point, I got wrecked by the appropriately named Settle the Wreckage, a card that gets rid of all creatures attacking you and well known as the I-had-the-game-in-the-bag-and-then-I-lost card.
I played yet another version of Treasure Hunt, this time it won using Zenith Flare along with loads of lands with cycling.
And speaking of faeries above, I played against a faerie tribal deck, though I only saw Faerie Miscreant and Faerie Vandal plus some choose-a-creature-type artifact before my opponent conceded.
Edit: Also I faced an unusual amount of players playing UG ramping while using a Vannifar avatar (the master of the UG guild).

Stormtroper · 2020-10-10 07:41:54

Also I just realized that in my mind I've treated one-sided fight (e.g. Rabid Bite) the same as regular fight in that removing the creature in response to it will stop the damage from being dealt. I think I had that misconception from finding out the hard way that's how it works with fight but not why (it's a special clause) so to be safe I'd cast them assuming they could be dealt with with removal. Annoyingly, fight is AFAIK the only keyword mechanic that is explained in reminder text using rules text but that its effect is not said rules text.

My Ram Through failed to have my removed creature damage the other, so I had to look up the ruling:

If either creature is an illegal target as Ram Through tries to resolve, the creature you control won’t deal damage to any creature or player.

I don't understand, I'd have expected the damage to be dealt as with several other cards, most obviously with the "Sacrifice [this creature]: it deals n damage to any target." ones. It makes sense in terms of flavor that it doesn't, but ~~in terms of the game's rules I don't see why, I thought it'd just last-known information, as in similar cases.~~ Nevermind, I came to understand while writing that. Being that my creature becomes an illegal target, Ram Through no longer "sees" it and can't assign any damage (what number would that even be?) to be dealt to anybody. Seems obvious now.

09/10
First I played some unremarkable games, ended up 2-4. Then I drafted again:

So UG Kicker it is (tl;dr: spells that get stronger if I spend extra on them). I got several good cards for a kicker deck on pack 1, unfortunately I got almost nothing that rewards me from using spells with kicker, so that's a huge setback.
Also I got seven rares, I heard bots were very likely to pass on rares, but I didn't feel that way until now, perhaps I was just unlucky?
So the games:

Things didn't start well, my client crashed while I was on the queue and when I came back I had one defeat on me (for some reason, as I don't think it took me long enough to reconnect to get a game loss). I believe the problem was that I alt-tabbed, when a match is found there's invariably a hiccup that Windows can interpret as the program hanging.
A weird WURG party deck. I got the impression that my opponent was inexperienced, making some questionable decisions (most of all playing four colors) and taking very long for what seemed like easy (and when I kicked Taunting Arbormage, forced) decisions. Also having the default Ajani avatar. Nonetheless I played terribadly so although I won, it was far from one-sided.
GB counters with some party elements... or maybe GB party with some counter elements? Anyhows, my opponent played several fairly-sized creatures, I used my kicked spells as best as I could to hold them out, being forced to make several bad trades while at it, it took a while but eventually I succumbed.
UB Rogues, turn one Ruin Crab and I'm already on a timer, my deck plays the long-term so that's bad, we both take a while to play our stuff, I draw some cards with Sure-Footed Infiltrator, by turn 6 I use Cunning Geysermage to retrieve my milled Inscription of Abundance from the graveyard and next turn I use it to kill the crab, but it's already too late at two cards in my library (and more life than I started with) so that's the end.

So 1-3. Yeah, I'm not pleased with this, especially after that crash. I got the random chance for an extra pack so that's something.
Regardless, I drafted again:

So WRG Landfall (i.e. creatures with effects when I play lands). I have high hopes for this deck, plenty of decently-sized creatures with several cards to feed landfall, however I'm worried about the fact that I'm playing three colors, something I very rarely do in draft, I was seriously considering dropping green and do it RW, but I thought I'd give it a try anyways.

GB something, I don't know what it was, it hade some rogue stuff (suggesting rogues, obv), Marauding Blight-Priest (suggesting party) and Moss-Pit Skeleton (suggesting counters). My opponent did the best they could to deal with creatures slightly larger than theirs, but couldn't keep up with it and conceded.
WR Warrior, a very aggressive deck that pounded me with Paired Tactician and other goodies, we both did the best we could in attacking and trading creatures in combat, however one fateful turn my opponent left only one creature to chump-block, which I tapped with Makindi Ox's Landfall trigger from the land I had the luck of topdecking, and had just enough to finish my opponent off right there.
GB deck that didn't get to show what it was about, I got a very violent hand with Akoum Hellhound, both Canyon Jerboas and Mad-Song Treachery, plus other goodies in my hand that I didn't need to use, enough to trigger Landfall four times in one turn.
UW Party, I made the mistake of being aggressive and not trade with my opponent's creatures, in the end their hand had the upper... hand, when it came to aggro. On the final turn I attacked hoping that my opponent wouldn't block (my opponent wouldn't die unless I had something in hand, which I did) but they didn't fall for it. I still dealt as much damage as I could and emoted Good Game, which resulted in my opponent spamming Oops at me, either they believed I made a miscalculation and was mocking me for it or they were being a sore winner, either way they're a prat.
UG Kicker, my opponent ramped, allowing them to get good value out of their cards kind of early, unfortunately for them that was about the time I started undoing their defenses with one, then a second Makindi Ox, and Mad-Song Treachery that in the end wasn't necessary.
GB Landfall, a tough opponent who greatly hindered my attacks with Shadow Stinger (without deathtouch) and after started beating me with some decent creatures, however I kept at it until they were at 10 life, at which point I had just enough that I would win regardless of how they blocked (and didn't block the best they could anyways) by attacking with all and sacrificing my Makindi Ox to Kazuul's Fury,
WR Party. My opponent mulliganed to five and had a slow start, despite that their dudes started pounding me badly, in part because I refrained from blocking seemingly safe creatures to block, in case they had extra damage to finish them off, and I ended up at 6 life. In hindsight I was overconfident that I would still be able to beat them and skipped a beat at the last turn when I realized I didn't have enough mana to do all I wanted to do, nonetheless after some calculations I had just enough to be able to bring them to zero.
GW Party, maaan this was a tight, tough game, both of us played nothing but quality spells (including Tazri, Beacon of Unity, a party-oriented mythic rare), and it always seemed like each of us was one good play away from beating the other. Unfortunately for me I misplayed, I was not aware that Yasharn's ability prevented me from sacrificing my creatures to Kazuul's Fury, so after one bone-headed all-out attack my 6/5 and was unable to finish off my opponent. I was not dead but my opponent drew one of the several possible cards that would beat me. Also at an earlier turn I refrained from playing Tazeem Raptor since I'd need to drop a land to do so, forgetting the fact that I could return said land to my hand with said Raptor anyways, an attack from it would've made the difference.
UR Landfall. My opponent played turn two Ruin Crab, this immediately made me panic and went for an aggressive strategy, one fateful turn I put three lands in play, allowing me to attack with all and forcing my opponent to chump block with the crab and a would-be attacker. I was still seemingly safe, unfortunately for me next turn my opponent played three really unexpected Cleansing Wildfires, triggering Spitfire Lagac's Landfall four times and thus having just enough to finish me off right there.

So 6-3. Maaaaan, if I hadn't misplayed that time the end result would've most certainly be 7-1. Oh well, gotta keep improving.
I'm glad I did not drop green, I had no huge bombs but maaan, ramping is so useful, Landfall triggers really add up.
And Canyon Jerboa, how can a critter so cute be so nasty.

Stormtroper · 2020-10-11 07:10:43

It occurs to me that when things are going my way, I would do well in putting as much effort into thinking about how I could mess things up as I put into thinking about what to play next, so I can be more mindful into avoiding throwing games.

In more MtG news, I finished reading Wizard's Soul. The first half is definitely better than the second half, though overall I'd still say I liked it, and it teaches us all an important lesson that we should learn by heart: people who hate playing against control decks are scrubs who need to git gud
Though I do sometimes get that uneasy feeling of I'm-screwing-over-my-opponent-too-hard when my ~~Elixir of Immortality~~ Gaea's Blessing triggers against a mill deck, simply having two in the deck (I have one) is enough to completely shut down the archetype.
Also, all of that fun/not-fun business reminds me of this.
And I made what Manaka's deck would be if Wizard's Soul were a little bit more like MtG (Edit: What's with IJBM replacing the URL with a fitting link. It's this: tappedout.net/mtg-decks/11-10-20-permission/?share=0578f249ca6297a76225a91239f5c6fd ). lol that's awful, you aren't going to win anything with that unless you're a manga protagonist. I wanted to make it modern-legal but Insurrection is not in modern and it's one of the cards that's almost word-by-word in WS. Honorable mentions: Slave of Bolas, Slavery, Spinal Embrace, Remand and Spike, Tournament Grinder (lol fitting flavor text). Also I put Wall of Omens rather than Wall of Blossoms (for WS's Wall of Anemone) because colors.
I wonder what other works there are about card games that are more about the players than the game.

On the final turn I attacked hoping that my opponent wouldn't block (my opponent wouldn't die unless I had something in hand, which I did) but they didn't fall for it. I still dealt as much damage as I could and emoted Good Game, which resulted in my opponent spamming Oops at me, either they believed I made a miscalculation and was mocking me for it or they were being a sore winner, either way they're a prat.

In hindsight what I should've done is emote Good Game before attacking, making it more believable that not blocking wouldn't make them lose. Normally that sort of sportsmanship perfidy is more than what I'm willing to do to win, but ehh, they would've deserved it. ~~It'd have been an egg to the face if it didn't work, though.~~ No because I don't have to show the burn spell that would reveal my plan.

~~11/10~~ 10/10
So there was this Historic Artisan event (i.e. everything in Arena except rares and a couple banned cards), my deck is almost Historic Artisan already so I thought I'd fare better than usual. Yeah no, I got mana-screwed in three of these games (I guess the hand smoothing is turned off for these) and my opponents don't seem much more limited than elsewhere, I ended up 4/6. I made use of the opportunity to craft a few Llanowar Elves and Domri's Ambush that I was wary of spending resources on.

Stormtroper · 2020-10-13 03:25:27

11/10
I went 8/6.
Historic Artisan has been good for a change, I've seen a couple decks that I hadn't seen before, so games often get interesting for that reason alone. Also for some reason I've faced lots of opponents who concede very early, perhaps the lack of hand smoothing is showing up?

I wasn't intending to draft today, but after playing for a bit I felt like it. I have a draft pass token, I was thinking about using it for Premier Draft (it's twice as expensive as Quick Draft) before the land style offer ends, but I don't think I'm prepared to enter an event with a significant risk-reward ratio, so I did another Quick Draft instead:

(Or I could just paste it into TappedOut's Deck Builder.) (Edit: What's with Vanilla messing up links: tappedout.net/mtg-decks/draft-ubr-party-1/?share=fce5d086452f56a417f93e2ac684c122 )
Look at this pile, I'll consider a good result if I win at least one match. So UBR Party with emphasis on rogues it is. I had doubts about running three colors but from the WRG landfall deck the other day I felt like trying it again.

UW I'm not sure, it has some party stuff but lots of it that have nothing to do with party, regardless it had lots of draw spells and things that played well in the long term, I realized this and tried to beat them down before then, but was not able to to do so and ended up with a large board against me.
WB either party, clerics, or just random stuff. I got mana screwed, unable to draw blue mana sources or more than three mana sources, so there wasn't much I could do beyond the early turns.
UB Rogues, although again with a lack of focus. It was an even match throughout, perhaps somewhat one-sided in my favor. I milled and dealt damage from the get go, my opponent killed several stuff but I made good use of the equipment. One fateful turn I had to choose between bringing my opponent from 7 to 2 or kills Jace, Mirror Mage and its copy (with 10 cards in the library), after deliberation I killed the Jaces, but in hindsight it'd have been better to hit them in the face instead, nonetheless things kept going and I ended up decking them.
WUR Something, they only played Akoum Hellhound and Teeterpeak Ambusher, I just played some creatures, got an advantageous board position, milled some cards and dealt some damage before my opponent conceded. I should've checked the graveyard to see what their deck was about.
GW either party or landfall (or both). My opponent conceded very quickly after I killed two of their creatures using enter-the-battlefield triggers, I had a decent board position but nothing great in hand so I thought I'd have a hard time, perhaps they had a really bad hand?
UB Party. I mulliganed once and had to make the difficult choice of returning Ruin Crab or Agile Trapfinder (or perhaps one of my third land) while having drawn no islands, I returned the crab and I'm glad I did, Trapfinder did not fail to become unblockable each turn. I kept attacking my opponent and killed their stuff, which wasn't much, they did play some decent stuff near the end but at that point it was too late, I had a good enough board position that I would bring them to 0 soon enough.
RG Landfall, I got hit tough and through from the get go by an Akoum Hellhound that ended up shaving about half my life while they ramped, as soon as I started putting up a suitable defense they played two Spitfire Lagac that I could do next to nothing about.

So 4-3, a surprisingly good result, I think it's because I got paired with opponents with really bad decks (perhaps because it was during the weekend in the afternoon?), other than that last one they seemed all over the place. I had doubts about my weirdo rogues/party combination but I guess it's as I mentioned earlier, it's a spectrum, mix-matching something in-between is viable.
I'd say the deck's MVP was Mind Carver, it doesn't take much for it to start giving +3/+1, and with that thing every creature becomes at least decent at combat, including the Ruin Crab you used to feed it.
Again I did not feel I got screwed by running three colors, I did fail to draw Islands one game but that was not the only factor in me losing, it was definitely better than making worse picks.

In non-me-playing stuff, there was a new ban announcement. Fingers are pointing towards Omnath, Locus of Creation, a four-mana 4/4 with loads of landfall effects, with some good-faith thinking you can believe that Wizards thought it being four-colors would be a significant drawback, but clearly that's nothing for today's ramping. Back when Uro was banned and Omnath was not there was this worry that it would then dominate, and this fear came to pass as the latest big tournament resulted in most decks running it (either ramp decks or Adventure decks), six of them making it to top 8 and four of them making it to top 4, beating including decks built specifically to counter them.
Other candidates for banning are Lotus Cobra, a great source of mana for ramp decks, and Lucky Clover, an artifact that copies Adventure (non-creature) spells, an archetype that also dominated the tournament.
Anyhows, I took the risk again and crafted four Omnaths, I'll be severely set back in Mythic Wildcards if it's not banned but ehh, seems safe enough. I also considered crafting Lotus Cobra as I can probably make use of it, but better not push it. Another thing is that unlike Uro, these two are from Zendikar Rising which I intend to at least rare semi-complete, so there's a significant chance some of these craftings turn out to be innecessary.

I've been learning a bit about videogame addiction, and of course it's something to think about in how it relates to my MtG habits. I do not believe I spend much playing MTGA, but I gotta admit that I spend too much reading/thinking about the game, like a MtG version of those "I spent my time browsing whatever" IJBMer Updates post. I suppose I'd do myself good by dialing it back a bit.

12/10
Aaaaand Omnath is gone, in Standard, Historic and Brawl, i.e. all of Arena's formats, so there's no point in having it in your collection. Ehh, the collectionist in me is still glad to have crafted four of these.
Lucky Clover is also banned, which will be a huge hit to adventure decks.
It wasn't entirely unexpected but thought to be unlikely, Escape To The Wilds has been banned too, a five-mana sorcery that does something close to drawing five cards and is used in adventure decks, and I think some ramp decks too? It's one of the cards you get from Arena's preconstructed decks so most players got at least one rare wildcard out of nowhere, I had an extra one so that's two for me. (And two from Lucky Clover but those are measly uncommons).
Also, several players crafted Omnath, Locus of the Roil thinking they were crafting Omnath, Locus of Creation. Whoops.
As for me... well, I didn't feel like playing today, I did my four daily wins and didn't feel like playing much more. I didn't keep track of my losses, I think I lost about six times.

fourteenwings · 2020-10-13 15:31:39

In more MtG news, I finished reading Wizard's Soul. The first half is definitely better than the second half, though overall I'd still say I liked it,

Ah, yeah, agreed. The more card game anime it got, the less defined the direction became.

The chapters focusing on the woman from the sticks who found out that kids in the city played better was probably the most grating, but I guess they weren't too bad.

there was a new ban announcement.

It's starting to sound like they do this drip by drip to boost engagement.

but I gotta admit that I spend too much reading/thinking about the game

Well maybe this improves critical thinking or something!

I think video game addiction is very specific about playing more than you do other things, and MtG and other TCGs seem designed for like... what can I say; a "life take over?". You start thinking in it's terms, rather than your own (sort of like how I was and I'd say many others are with LEGO, I'd say).

Stormtroper · 2020-10-14 05:41:56

The chapters focusing on the woman from the sticks who found out that kids in the city played better was probably the most grating, but I guess they weren't too bad.

I thought that was okay, something about finding out you're not special, peer pressure, relatable stuff. My issue with it (and others') is that it's quite a bit of backstory for a not terribly important character, it didn't seem like it actually mattered.
Other than that I felt it got repetitive, and the ending was rushed. Also I find it odd that Kobayashi (the rival girl) just kind of disappeared at some point.
I'm not sure I would call it a flaw that this wasn't in but I was hoping to see what Manaka was like when her mother finally died.
That's not to say I didn't like the latter parts, though, at no point did I stop finding it relatable.

It's starting to sound like they do this drip by drip to boost engagement.

I think it's that Wizards was reluctant to ban Omnath earlier since it's one of the "faces" of the new set, something to sell packs with. They probably hoped Uro's ban would weaken those decks, which it did, but clearly that wasn't enough.
I guess it boosts engagement in that the metagame changes more often and it encourages keeping up with news, but even disregarding long-term issues (health of the game, loss of consumer confidence, etc.), having the competitive scene dominated by two similar decks kinda makes you not want to engage in it.
The game has not been in a very good state, WotC has been pushing the power level of cards quite a bit since the last year and a half, fortunately Zendikar Rising toned it down (Omnath being an outlier), hopefully the game will get better soon enough.
Speaking of all that, I just watched a video on what the game would be like with no bans. No wonder this mess happened, every other card looks sane when Oko, Thief of Crowns is legal.

I think video game addiction is very specific about playing more than you do other things, and MtG and other TCGs seem designed for like... what can I say; a "life take over?". You start thinking in it's terms, rather than your own (sort of like how I was and I'd say many others are with LEGO, I'd say).

You're right, it's something that's fun to think about even when not intending to play, like what to do in some situation or deckbuilding, kind of thinking about some work you just watched/read. I guess I should just spend less time reading r/MagicArena.

13/10
As for today, I went 4/3. Not much to say except that I'm growing increasingly impatient about the fact that I'm still using the same deck. I think I'll try to come up with something with the cards I've already got, otherwise I think I'll take the hit and craft some budget thing.
Edit: Clarity.

Stormtroper · 2020-10-20 01:32:15

This got huge, I wasn't intending to draw this out like this but with the nature of this weekend's events that's how it turned out. Thinking back it was kind of pointless for me to write a summary of each game, I thought each of them would be interesting but naturally it got old.

14/10
I went 4-6 or so.
I almost decked myself while playing against monowhite lifegain, after a rough start I had all four Season of Growth, but my opponent had been creating loads of tokens so it'd take several turns and some removal to be able to break through my opponent's blockers. Eventually after it became clear I wasn't going to win I intended to deck myself on purpose, but my opponent played Ajani, Strength of the Pride and I lost anyways.
I beat a shrines deck again! It played the white sanctuary on turn one and both red ones by turn four, I had them at five lives by turn five and I thought I wouldn't be able to keep up with that but my opponent simply conceded, I'm not sure why, I think even without good cards in hand, those three shrines would work for long enough to draw whatever.
I faced an unusually large amount of goblins today.

15/10
This FNM was Historic Brawl, AKA the closest thing Arena has to Commander/EDH, a beloved format based on decks built around a legendary creature that's always available to cast (at increasing costs). So...

Akiri, Fearless Voyager - My opponent's deck was based on party, however with few party payoffs that wasn't going to work out well. Nonetheless we spent a good time beating each other with creatures with lifelink, eventually I won out of my opponent being unable to block Haktos the Unscarred.
Vivien Reid - I got mana screwed, although I probably would've lost anyways due to being unable to deal with large creatures.
Lurrus of the Dream-Den - I got screwed out of red mana sources, nonetheless my opponent had Bounty Agent which along with Lurrus meant I couldn't make good use of all the legendary stuff I ended up drawing.
Klothys, God of Destiny - Creatures with deathtouch and some combat tricks, things were going fine until my opponent mutated a Porcuparrot onto a creature with deathtouch and suddenly I was unable to keep my stuff, I was hoping to be able to play Terror of the Peaks and Bonecrusher Giant in a single turn to get rid of it but by the time I had 7 lands in it was already clear I wasn't going to win.
Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy - Gosh I played so badly, I could've won simply by casting my haste'd Luminous Broodmoth and attacking, but I failed to see that and instead played a Glass Casket that I misread as exiling a creature of CMC 3 or more.
Krenko, Mob Boss - I got an aggressive hand with Goma Fada Vanguard, Akiri and Kargan Warleader, and I could follow with playing it safe with Luminous Broodmoth (which I did) or exiling Krenko which with my opponent suddenly having seven tokens on the battlefield was probably a better idea, nonetheless my opponent conceded.
Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma - I had no way to remove it when it came into play, which I didn't think that much about as I had a Terror of the Peaks for the longer term, but next thing I know I had loads of large creatures on me and I lost.
Jodah, Eternal Archmage - My opponent mulliganed once then conceded.

t'was fun while it lasted. With those plus two normal games, I went 4-6.

17/10
So there was this event about playing some Zendikar Rising preconstructed decks, something themed around tourism.

BW Knights (me) vs. Colorless (oppo) - I got an aggressive hand, while my opponent got mana screwed, at least for a few turns, so all I had to do was attack and that was it.
Colorless (me) vs GW something (oppo) - I thought I'd play this event by playing whatever my previous opponent played. This deck is kind of crazy, it ramps using mana stones and has good payoffs for ramping, in this case I swarmed the battlefield with copies of Sorcerer's Broom, all helped with Forsaken Monument.
GW Counters (me) vs. Colorless (oppo) alright, now I know it's a counters deck. It's actually quite solid, my previous opponent just got bad draws, I got a hard-hitting mid-range hand, unfortunately I got shown the power of Forsaken Monument. and couldn't keep up with all that lifegain and Ugin, the Ineffable's morphs.
Colorless (me) vs. GW Counters (oppo) - I drew Forsaken Monument just in time to cast it on curve. I copied Sorcerer's Broom a lot and still had lots of stuff to play, but my opponent made good use of combat tricks so I was actually behind on board position at several points, nonetheless with Forsaken Monument time was greatly in my favour and I won despite several dubious decisions on my part.
Colorless (me) vs. RW Party - (I forgot to change my deck.) I got a very rampy hand, so I cast Ugin, the Ineffable on turn four with plenty of stuff to protect him, my opponent only had Robber of the Rich and two Archpriest of Iona and then conceded.
RW Party (me) vs. Colorless (oppo) - Man I've gotten so much luckier than my opponents this whole event, two Archpriest of Iona on turns one and two, Grotag Night-Runner, Drannith Stinger and Hallowed Veteran, and so I accidentally triggered the Archpriests' full party abilities, something I had never seen before, let alone twice.
Colorless (me) vs UR drawing - an early Ominous Seas would normally cause me trouble, nonetheless with a turn four Forsaken Monument plus lots of tokens from Sorcerer's Broom I held on no problem, and got rid of Ominous Seas with unstable monument. Being that the UR deck has Storm's Wrath it's probably the only one that can deal withthe brooms, which it did, but at that point it was just a matter of playing gargoyles and attacking with the manland.

I went 6-1. I was intending to play only until four wins but that was lots of fun so I kept on. WotC did a good job in making these quirky decks feel nice to play. The colorless one needs to be toned down tho.
It's late, I'll continue tomorrow.

18/10

UR Draw (me) vs. colorless (oppo) - After seeing my opponent play this deck I thought it wouldn't be as fun as the others, but it was, I drew millions of cards and nearly decked myself. I was a turn away from victory (through Ominous Seas tokens) but unfortunately my opponent played Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and that was it.
Colorless (me) vs. GW counters (oppo) - I got a rather slow hand with few blockers, my opponent's wasn't that fast either but after putting counters on Kor Blademaster it was really adding up. I was one land draw away from being able to cast Ugin and that alone probably would've won me the game, but no luck.
Colorless (me) vs. UB something (oppo) - (I forgot to change deck again) I got a decent hand with Forsaken Monument, but not much to make good use of it. Nonetheless my opponent was unable to deal with a kicked Skyclave Sentinel and so I won.
UB graveyard (me) vs. Colorless (oppo) - Yeah, this deck seems to be the worst of the bunch. I got what looks like a good hand for it, with an early Acquisitions Expert and Glasspool Mimic, nonetheless I couldn't deal with the eventual insanity of Forsaken Monument (although I could delay it with Into the Roil) and so I eventually succumbed to copies of Sorcerer's Broom. Also, Agadeem's Awakening is incorrectly worded in French, missing that it works with creatures of total power of X or less.
Colorless (me) vs. WB Knights (oppo) - There was pretty much nothing my opponent could do once I began gaining life with Forsaken Monument, and that's with them having what I think was a good hand (although I have to question the idea of playing Curry Favor (Smitten Swordmaster's adventure) rather than Smitten Swordmaster itself.
WB Knights (me) vs. UB Graveyard (oppo) - I'm not sure I got a good hand, I had Murderous Rider with two Maul of the Skyclaves so in theory it was a good hand but it would be hard to come back after a timely Inscription of Ruin from my opponent.
UB Graveyard (me) vs. WB Knights (oppo) - Those two games couldn't be more different. I got a supper slow hand with nothing to kill their stuff and my creatures were just small enough that blocks wouldn't be favorable, so although their hand wasn't fast, the steady flow of creatures was more than I could keep up with.
WB Knights (me) vs. GW counters (oppo) - I got an okay hand while my opponent didn't get much to deal with blockers, I just played some stuff, attacked and won.
GR landfall (me) vs. RW Party (oppo) - I don't intend to play past four wins today and I may not play this event afterwards, so since I haven't seen this deck yet I thought I'd choose it. Seeing it in action I see why it's not as popular, it's ramping but doesn't have good payoffs for ramping, so I was there just fiddling around guessing what to do. Also I misplayed terribly by playing the wrong side of the RG Pathway, screwing myself out of 1RRR for Irencrag Feat.
RW Party (cycling?) (me) vs. colorless (oppo) - My opponent ramped quite a lot, I played a bunch of dudes and did a bit of damage, I had it in the bag provided my opponent didn't have Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, which of course they did and so I lost.
Colorless (me) vs. GW (oppo) - I had a somewhat rampy hand, but next to no blockers so I got dealt quite a bit of damage, nonetheless everything was fine provided I could eventually cast Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, which after some careful blocking I did, I got rid of my opponent's army and there was no recovery from that, my opponent tried to deal with it with Kogla, the Titan Ape but I got rid of it with Unstable Monument.

I went 4-7. It was interesting the first couple times around, but the fact that the colorless deck is so obviously based around four cards (1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and 3x Forsaken Monument) really makes it get old super fast.
The RG deck needs better late-game cards, it feels kind of pointless having all that mana and then not doing much with it besides burn.
The others are great though, the UB one is perhaps underpowered but it's certainly not unfun.

19/10
The event is still in, so I thought I'd play while I can.

GW Counters (me) vs. Colorless (oppo) - I got something that I wouldn't call fast hand but it allowed me to build up to hit them for 16 on turn five after fighting off the only blocker.
Colorless (me) vs. UR Draw (oppo) - I got a very rampy hand, however I did not draw any payoff for it, my opponent in turn got a very slow hand that didn't get to do its drawing thing until late game, nonetheless that was enough to do me in. I should've been more aggressive destroying Ominous Seas with Unstable Monument.
UR draw (me) vs. colorless (oppo) - This game went on for way too long, I had a bunch of drawing stuff but didn't get around to playing it, perhaps I should've been more eager to play draw payoffs. My opponent played Sorcerer's Broom early on but I killed it with Storm's Wrath, and didn't draw threats until much, much later.
Colorless (me) vs. GW counters (oppo) - I got a fairly rampy hand with all of the deck's payoffs, my opponent got a rather slow one. my opponent conceded after I cast Ugin, the Ineffable while also having Sorcerer's Broom and Forsaken Monument on the battlefield.
GW counters (me) vs. Colorless (oppo) - I got a hand that allowed me to keep attacking with Kor Blademaster while putting counters on it, while my opponent didn't get enough creatures to block my stuff or ramp cards to make me worry.
Colorless (me) vs. RG something (oppo) - I got a hand I considered mulliganning; several mana stones at >=4 cmc, a Forgotten Sentinel and Forsaken Monument, however my opponent got an underwhelming hand that although it was whooping me with a Zirda-infused Weaselback Redcap, on turn six I played four mana stones and a second golem that ended up almost resetting my entire health, and on turn 7 it was clear I was going to overwhelm the battlefield with broom copies, so my opponent conceded.

I went 4-2.
I realized that the matchmaking disallows mirror matches, and that almost every match involved one of us playing the colorless deck, so it's definitely not just me who thinks it's the best. I'd say the GW one is second, the third is either the WB or RW ones, fifth is the UR one (though it's likely I/my opponents just don't know how to make use of it), and the UB and RG ones are on the bottom.

fourteenwings · 2020-10-20 16:00:23

Are colorless decks all stuffed with colorless cards or can they feature other colors?

glennmagusharvey · 2020-10-20 16:39:39

Not sure if I'm jumping into this question without proper context, but...

I think the basic land cards all produce colored mana, but colorless mana costs can be paid with any mana color.

Some non-basic land cards and some other cards specifically produce colorless mana.

Also, it's generally just artifacts that are colorless; most other types of permanents generally have some sort of color, so it wouldn't be surprising to have colored cards in a deck designed to bring out colorless artifacts.

I tried designing an artifact-centered deck once and it ended up involving various blue and green cards.

Stormtroper · 2020-10-20 18:13:34

^^ Strictly speaking, decks have no color and every deck can have cards from any color (the exception is Commander/EDH, where your allowed colors depend on the card you choose as your commander). However, almost every coloured card requires paying for mana of that color to cast it, so if you're going to have sources of mana of that color you may as well include other cards of that color, which will typically be better than colorless ones. There's been (colorless) artifact decks over the years, but they've involved at least one actual color being well-represented.
Same goes for non-colorless decks, you can run cards from an extra color but you can end up screwing yourself out of the right mana sources if you aren't careful. A common exception are decks that one way or another avoid paying the mana cost of spells.
There was also Battle for Zendikar, a block which included lots of colorless non-artifacts, cards that require colorless mana to cast, a basic land that provides colorless mana, overall stuff that made "colorless" the closest thing MtG has had to a sixth color. Although from what I know even then "mono-colorless" wasn't a thing.
At any rate, the deck from that event is entirely colorless.

fourteenwings · 2020-10-21 12:45:00

Ah, so it's (exactly) like the Pokemon TCG rather than Buddyfight or Shadowverse.

Stormtroper · 2020-10-22 05:33:23

If I remember Pokémon TCG's rules right, yeah.
Turns out Quick Drafts are organized on week-based cycles, where for two weeks draft events are based around the most recent set and the following two weeks they're for two older Standard-legal sets each. If I'm being generous it's just to make all players be on the same page, but it's probably to limit the availability of events.
Anyhows, this week's (until Friday) it's Theros: Beyond Death, so it's less party shenanigans and hoping to draw your eight land, and more twiddling around with enchantments and helping (or was it hurting?) the gods of not-Greece. I've never drafted it (or even know most of the cards), but I'll probably end up drafting it while I can.
Speaking of Theros: Beyond Death and Pokémon, it's also the set with the Pokémon lands.

I don't know what it is about the Karn avatar but the proportion of players who use it being prats is abnormally high. On the plus I feel like people who use the Liliana avatar are worthy opponents, those who use the Vannifar are polite, and those who use Nicol Bolas' are merciless (but not disrespectful). I have similar psychological profile for others but those aren't as strong as these.
Also I've since learned that a lot of people interpret "Good Game" as sarcastic, especially if said by whoever is about to win. Maybe I should stop doing it when winning?
Online gaming is in a real bad shape if one has to second-guess gestures of basic sportsmanship.

20/10
I went 4-4, I wouldn't say any of the games were remarkable.
I had packs lying around, I had kept them thinking about some strategy for collecting that involves putting off opening them for as long as possible until I won't be expecting to get more cards of these sets from random rewards or drafts (unlike these, you're protected from pulling (mythic) rares that you already have more than the maximum you can use). Now that I understand more about this collecting thing I see it's not very realistic for me to expect to complete as much from older as to be able to benefit from said protection, so I may as well open them now, so after opening 3x Throne of Eldraine, 4xTheros: Beyond Death, 4x Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths and 13x Magic 2021 I got:

So 8 good rares, 3 mythics two of which are good, and two mythic wildcards, I'd say that was a good outcome.

21/10
I realized I'm not far from getting gold rank in limited, so I thought it an especially good chance to draft. So it's Theros: Beyond Death. After reading a guide I'm confident my skills, the kind of confidence only achievable by not knowing how much you don't know.
Anyhows, I got:

TappedOut link: tappedout.net/mtg-decks/wug-tbh-draft-1/?share=ec4df6d55671c5758a7d72e3c88ddbcc
Look at this pile... or maybe it's decent and I'm not able to properly evaluate decks. By the time I got to the second pack I regreted not having picked red or black. I was also unsure about playing white, up to the point of deckbuilding where I decided the Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and three Traveler's Amulet's were enough to fix mana. Gotta keep in mind that I can change my deck mid-way.
I got five rares and a couple stuff that is used in constructed so that sets a good lower limit on how badly a loss this can be. Anyhows, off I go:

UBG something - Turn three Setessan Champion with a turn four Hydra's Growth and this already seemed like it was going to snowball out of control, however I then played Omen of the Sun to both get tokens to chump-block it and have my Protean Thaumaturge copy the Champion (until then I hadn't realized it could copy other players' creatures), and as it turns out my deck makes much better use of the Champion than my opponent's, so as long as I kept it in check time was on my side, I did and eventually won, although I gotta say it was tense having to constantly make sure a huge dude couldn't hit me for the majority of my life total. Also Sleep of the Dead is not an aura as I had thought. And I'm Gold Rank now.
GW Enchanments - My opponent played a bunch of decent-hitting creatures including Renata, Called to the Hunt, but I put up a quick defense. After a while I copied Renata and in what will probably be the theme of this draft, my deck can make better use of her than my opponent's. After chunking several auras and one equip on the Renata's copy, there wasn't much my opponent could do.
Monoblack graveyard, probably - This was quick, I got mana flooded and only drew Callaphe, Sentinel's eyes and Hydra's Growth, I was trying to play around the likely possibility of my opponent having removal in hand, but after they escaped an Underworld Charger it was do or die, I cast my stuff on Callaphe, she got removed and that was the end.
Monowhite control - My opponent cast several good blockers, however all but one of them could block flyers and I got rid of it through Gift of Strength, so my opponent conceded around turn 7 while being two turns away from apparent defeat.
BR Sacrifice - Things started fast, we hit each other early on with our stuff. After a while I mounted a decent defense and it seemed like my flyers would be key to victory, but gradually they started getting picked off with removal and flyers of my opponent's own, things stalled and it then became clear that my opponent's deck was better suited than mine to get ahead in the long term. Also TIL Omen of the Sun has flash.
RG Aggro - I got trounced; I thought it'd be a breeze to deal with Underworld Rage-Hound, next thing I know with the use of auras/combat tricks the thing has been hitting me for half my life, killed my would-be blockers and is still there threatening to keep hitting me even if I kill it. It didn't help that I skipped a land drop. By then it was clear I wasn't going to win, but I got to see a few more decently-costed decently-sized creatures and Klothys, God of Destiny so yeah, that's probably a player that would end up reaching 7 wins.

So 3-3, I'd say it was well worth it. It could be an anomaly, but I noticed that deck archetypes are much less well-defined than in Zendikar Rising.
I didn't get the extra random pack, I opened the one I earned and got Tymaret Calls the Dead.
Although I got some stuff for constructed, other than the Soul-Guide Lanterns for sideboarding none of it is useful for the decks I had in mind (except Tymaret Calls the Dead, maybe?). Regardless, t'was fun. Next week's is Ikoria, I have some stuff from it I need from constructed but perhaps it's not worth drafting it for that reason alone?

I didn't play much more than that, just got my fourth win quickly. Gotta sleep.

Stormtroper · 2020-10-24 04:04:57

22/10
So there was this update, one with more bugs than a Scute Swarm deck late-gane. Today's FNM was Momir (play with all land decks, when playing a land you may pay X and get a random creature of that converted mana cost) and it was super easy to cause an exception on the server and force a draw, even by accident, so it got cancelled. Besides that there's been a million graphical bugs, some of which are serious. My favourite one is this: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicthecirclejerking/comments/jgl7zr/thats_got_to_be_the_best_pirate_ive_ever_seen/
So I got around to making the UR noncreatures deck, AKA Izzet Spells. The poor man's version anyways, that is, a version that involves cards I mostly already have. I did craft three Sprite Dragons, though.

So I took it to Play queue and proceeded to get trounced/disconnected five times in a row. I then won twice, with that morale uplift and me getting the hang of the deck, I proceeded to take it to ranked queue (best-of-one), and then I won twice. I noticed that unlike my previous forays into ranked, my opponent's decks weren't that more advanced. Maybe it's because of the day of the month? (Players' ranks are greatly reset at the beginning of each month/season, so in theory I'll be matched against better players early on.)
As luck would have it, I got a ZNR mythic rare reward that turned out to be Sea Gate Stormcaller, which fits nicely in this deck.
So I swapped some stuff. Here's with changes and not in French: tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ur-non-creatures-1/?share=d54d1b7092884d67d7fca54f908461fd
It's definitely a fun deck, I'll optimize it when I'm more courageous and/or start losing. I wish Lightning Strike were still Standard legal tho.

23/10
I learned about Settlers of Catan but it's MtG.
So when it came to playing best-of-one games I went 2-1, while on best-of-three I played two matches that ended up at 0/2 and 2/1. I thought best-of-three was going to work against me, being that my sideboard is kind of a mess and I don't really have stuff focused to specific matchups, but I think I like the "fairer" nature of Bo3, and simply replacing creature removal/bounce with whatever is useful in itself.

I wish Lightning Strike were still Standard legal tho.

I suppose that's why people use Roil Eruption on this thing.
I played next to nothing today, yet I spent much of my time just reading up stuff, which definitely wasn't worth it. Gotta keep my priorities in check.

fourteenwings · 2020-10-27 15:51:41

On this morning’s call with investors and analysts, Goldner noted that Magic: The Gathering Arena has racked up more than 2.8 billion played games, which means players are averaging 9 hours of gameplay each week.

Just thought it was relevant.

Stormtroper · 2020-10-28 02:20:35

Interesting indeed.
Something you see often on Reddit is people saying they got into MTGA and/or MTG over the pandemic.
Speaking of which, my interest in MTGA died abruptly. It takes me like half an hour to do the recommended four victories per day but having to actually remind myself to do it, opening the game and getting into a match now feels like a chore. I wonder why I changed my mind about the game so fast. I did purchase the Mastery Pass so I kinda have to keep playing if I want to make good use of it, sunken costs fallacy and all that.
I still do look forward towards drafting Zendikar Rising, tho.

24/10
So there was this event, just like last week. It's Singleton (i.e. no copies of cards, except basic lands) Cascade (i.e. the first spell each turn allows you to cast another more-or-less random spell of lesser cost from your library). I thought I'd participate. I figured a party deck would be useful, since I should be able to easily get a sizeable party to do stuff with. I made it WUR.
With that deck I went 3-11... yeaaah, this party thing doesn't work well outside drafts, it could be that I simply don't have enough decent party creatures or payoffs, but it still feels too hard to get a party going for ultimately too little. Also one of those three victories was because my opponent conceded right away.
I lost a very tense game after leaving my opponent at 1, not realizing that I had enough to kill them if I had equipped Crystal Slipper on one of my flyers instead of equipping it on some other creature for haste.
I noticed that lifegain decks were quite common, so I decided to stop losing and made one my self, I then went 2-2.

25/10
2-1 against UB Rogues, my opponent won the first one and immediately conceded the other two.
2-1 against UB mill.

26/10
Played a single unranked game and a best-of-three against GUR that I lost 2-1, and that's more than I felt like playing today.

27/10
1-2, I faced some odd UBR graveyard control deck or something, it failed to kill my Sprite Dragon and so it was only a matter of a few turns for it to snowball into a victory. Then I disconnected on game two and that was it.
Edit: For some reason I posted before I was done playing for the day, I also lost 1-2 to RB discard, and won 2-0 against a UB control deck that I didn't quite understand.

Stormtroper · 2020-11-01 04:22:00

28/10
0-2 against mill rogues.
1-2 against BW lifegain.
2-0 against monoblue mill.
2-1 against some monogreen creature-based deck that I didn't quite understand.

29/10
1-2 against mill rogues.
2-1 GB adventures/lifegain. On the first game my opponent emoted "Good game" twice on turns it kinda sorta seemed like I could win but not quite, I wonder if if missed some play that would've made me won (I lost) or if my opponent was just mistaken.

30/10
This week's FNM event is Super Standard, i.e. Standard but with the deck limit being 100 cards, up from the usual 60. I made the same UR non-creatures-matter deck I use normally but with the stuff I had left out.

Monowhite lifegain - This had nifty stuff like Yorion and lots of stuff with enter-the-battlefield abilities, especially lifegain ones that kept me away from victory. Also I just realized there's no drawback for having Yorion as companion.
WR Cycling - I played terribly and still won. My opponent only had three lands, which I'm not sure is enough for that deck. This time the companion was Lurrus, so I guess having a different companion is a reason to not have Yorion.
Monowhite lifegain - Same as is used elsewhere. I suppose with how much burn and bounce spells my deck has, I had the advantage.

I got an Emeria's Call and a Quartzwood Crasher.

Anyhows, Zendikar Rising Quick Drafts are back! So I did one:

As usual: tappedout.net/mtg-decks/30-10-20-vZn-deck/?share=35f64642c3263b8fb7f2c721aa951b17
I smiled when I got Nissa, though the rest of the picks weren't that flashy, especially since I only got two other rares. So GBR Landfall it is.

WR Warriors - I got trounced so hard, my opponent had a very good, fast hand/deck that kept piling good creatures on curve. I disconnected early, and am not certain that I didn't skip a turn while offline, that may have had to do with it, what's certain was that somehow I was missing almost half my life when I reconnected.
WB party - Again with creatures on curve, though not crazy good like earlier, still I got a slow hand, my opponent could've won by being aggressive but instead went safe and killed me slowly with with a Cliffhaven Kitesail equipped creature.
UR wizards with few wizards - I got a good hand with two Lagracs and a Dreadwurm that was the bulk of my damage. At one point my opponent got a few flyers that I couldn't block until I drew Nissa's Zendikon, I had trouble figuring out how to finish off my opponent until I topdecked Nissa, my opponent drew the creature they needed to block the would-be land but then I topdecked removal, talk about lucky.
WR something - I got what I thought was a promising hand, with Vanquish the weak, Roiling Regrowth and Nissa, I needed a way to protect Nissa, which I got in the form of Springmantle Cleric, then Dreadwurm, however my opponent got enough decently sized creatures to block my stuff, things got long and eventually they drew Leyline Tyrant, then two Skyclave Sentinel, I thought my opponent was intending to use the dragon to kill Nissa, time was against me so I attacked with two Dreadwurms, my opponent lets the dragon die and next thing I know it hits me for 11, next turn I'm dead. In hindsight I should've tried to win through Spitfire Lagac.

So 1-3. Yeh, this was disastrous. I opted for three colors again but this time it did affect me, I mulliganed like thrice that I wouldn't have if I had a more reliable mana base.

I played a few more games to get the fourth victory of the day, I ended up 1-2.

31/10
From the above draft and another one I saw, I got the hunch that the AI is now much less likely to pass on rares than two weeks ago, I checked and other people are also reporting much stingier bots than before. If that's true and is not a confirmation bias thing, that'd suck for completionist purposes. Though Quick Draft should still be worth it, right?

As usual: tappedout.net/mtg-decks/wbr-party-1/?share=d2440ab80f379e8c8ce8c958d703c2a6
So WBR Party it is, with emphasis on clerics. I pondered very hard very late as to whether to splash black, in the end I did, and good thing I did because I immediately got passed lots of black goodies, my regret is that I hadn't done so earlier, thus passing on a couple things I shouldn't have, like Feed the Swarm.

WB Party. I just played dudes on curve and ended up trouncing my opponent.
WGR landfall. Things were going fine at first but after me drawing five lands in a row things got into late game (which my deck is not fit for), I couldn't keep up with it, especially an increasingly large Prowling Felidar, and so I lost.
UB something. I got a nice assortment of party dudes, my opponent made several dubious choices, mostly by being too aggressive, and so I had too large a group to be stopped.
WB Clerics. I got trounced by Kor Celebrant + Marauding Blight-Priest while an Expedition Healer was pounding on me, bringing me to a point where a flyer could finish me off, in this case Shepherd of Heroes.
UR Wizards, I got dominated so badly by one little uncommon called Relic Amulet, over the course of the game starting on like turn 3 it killed Angelheart Protector, Ardent Electromancer, Kabira Outrider, Marauding Blight-Priest and Sneaking Guide in that order. I've passed it before when drafting decks that maybe it could fit in and I'm now wondering if that was a mistake.

So 2-3. I wouldn't say disastrous but it was nothing to write home about either. Again I was significantly affected by the fact that I played three colors, however I still believe splashing black was well worth it.
Let's see, three rares is a terrible deal for the cost of drafting, if I don't get the occassional fourth rare I don't think Quick Drafts will be worth it (in comparison to just buying packs) unless I have a good win-lose ratio. And I really like drafting. Dilemmas...
Maybe instead of trying to complete Zendikar Rising I should save my money and try to complete Kaldheim instead? It'll be released in January.

I played some more to get the four victories of the game, ending up 2-2.

Stormtroper · 2020-11-06 02:29:29

01/10
1-2 vs. Yorion.
1-2 vs. Some WUR aggro-control deck that seems based around cards that are simply good.
2-1 vs. GBR Ramp, it seems that my deck has the advantage against these.

30 packs make up 30 rares/mythic rares cards/wildcards (R) directly from opening them, plus four rare wildcards and one mythic rare wildcard from the wheel, valuing them all at 1 that's a value of 35 for 30k gold, or 1.166... R for 1k gold, 1.166... R per pack.

(I mistyped a value and got a bunch of stuff wrong) Per the script I made a while ago, the expected value of a Quick Draft's rewards (not counting the drafted deck) is ~~4.243.5~~ 3.575 R, that is, valuing the packs at 1.1667 R and gems at ~~1.667/200 R~~ 1.1667/200 R. Assuming bots pass no rares, that's ~~7.24~~ 6.575 R per draft, or ~~1.448~~ 1.315 R per 1k gold, or ~~1.93~~ 1.753 R per 200 gems if entry fee is paid in gems. That's... ~~a pretty good expected value, acually.~~ okay I guess.

I wonder if I can find a closed form expression for the expected value. Regardless, the cut-off constant win rate at which Quick Draft becomes better than opening boosters is about ~~27%~~ 43%, IIRC I've never went 0-3 so I pass (the >27% part). Of course, all this is assuming one values rares the same as mythic rares (which sounds fair), that one values wildcards the same as regular cards and that bots pass literally no rares (both of which are unfair but are so in different directions).

Looking at my past records (counting non-ZNR drafts) they're 1-3, 7-1, 1-3, 1-3, 6-3, 4-3, 3-3, 1-3, 2-3, for a total of 26-25. Not bad, but not good either. I also have to account for the fact that me and other players's ranks increase and get reset, as well as the fact that we're all continuously learning how to play this.

I did similar calculations for the Standard Events and got interesting results: 56% is the win rate at which you "go infinite", and even when valuing individual card rewards lowly (say, 12/250 gold per uncommon/rare ICR), a 50% win rate makes it well worth it.

02/10
This weekend's event was Mastermind, that is, play with some WUBRG preconstructed deck, with the ability to discard any card to create a land token that produces mana of any color. The deck is kind of all over the place, but I got to see cards I hadn't seen before.
1- I played some stuff opponent played some stuff too then conceded.
2- I got hit early on by a bunch of clerics, but eventually I created a zombie token from the zombie token dude, Champion of Lambholt and Basri's Acolyte and that was enough to win in the long term, especially after I cast Jace.
3- Things were going okay until my opponent played Ajani, Inspiring Leader in the process of figuring out the best way to deal with it I misunderstood Eutropia the Twice-Favored, thought it would get flying after playing an enchantment and attacked into a Veteran Adventurer. Then I conceded.
4- I got trounced. I got beat up by a bunch of small creatures while I didn't want to trade with the ones I had. Clearly at some point I had to start trading but I didn't and then it was too late.
5- My opponent was clearly concerned about my Library thief. Unfortunately for them I had Barrin, Tolarian Archmage to deal with the first blocker (that they had cast an aura on) and Embercleave for the second, then they conceded.
6- Another prat with a Karn avatar. I lost after several turns of dealing with Outlaw's Merriment's tokens, I had a Disenchant in my starting hand but I converted it into a land token, which I guess was a mistake.
7- A rare non-prat Karn. We both played an early Mikaeus the Lunarch, I killed theirs, my opponent then played the third Outlaw's Merriment of the day and Vizier of the Menagerie, I exiled the oracle with Ajani, who then was brought down, in hindsight perhaps I could've sacrificed my Mikaeus to let him survive. I then dealt with the Merriment with Broken Wings, I still had lots of creatures to deal with but after an eventful turn casting Banefire with Dualcaster Mage I was doing fine and it was only a matter of time that my increasingly large flyers would get rid of my opponent.

03/10
8- I made good use of Setessian Champion and ended up drawing three cards and dealt six damage before it got killed, that plus all the other good removal I head meant I won.
9- For some reason when I got into the game the client refused to show the turn timer, thus I was not aware that I had to choose quickly or lose my turn, I lost it and I couldn't keep up with the resulting loss of tempo.
10- After a somewhat aggressive start hitting my opponent with small dudes that my opponent was too busy removing. I eventually played Ajani while my opponent had nothing on board, he would ensure that any little creature I casted would become a serious threat and that none of his would stay long, and so I won.

So I finished the event and played some normal Standard Ranked games:
1-2 GW stuff with ETB abilities.
1-2 UB control.
2-0 GB food.

04/10
I thought sure I had something here on the post draft but apparently not. I remember I won six games.

05/10
Turns out at some point I got a second Riddleform. I crafted the remaining two and it noticeably improved my deck, it greatly helps so as to not get stuck without consistent damage sources when I fail to draw Sprite Dragon or Stormwing Entity or they get killed.

I played a fair bit of Ranked Standard today:
1-2 Some weird RW control deck that trounced me.
0-2 RB midrange
1-2 Red deck wins
2-1 RB Midrange
2-0 RG Adventures
1-2 RB Midrange

I also lost an unranked match against BW lifegain.

Stormtroper · 2020-11-08 06:55:02

06/11
The FNM event is (non-Historic) Brawl. I made another RW warriors deck with Haktos the Unscarred:
1- Cleric legend - My opponent's tiny creatures were unable to deal with Nahiri, Heir of the Ancients, after several turns in, with me dealing with their serious threats and chunking some damage with Embercleave'd tokens, my opponent conceded.
2- Heliod, Sun-Crowned - I was done for but my opponent misplayed at the very end, either they didn't know that Embercleave gave Trample or didn't know how it works with an indestructible blocker, but they died to an all-out attack when they could've survived with 1 life if they had sacrificed an extra unimportant creature to an Embercleave'd Bonecrusher Giant that had been blocked by Heliod, if they'd done that I'd have lost next turn, in fact I only hadn't conceded just in case of a misplay like that.
3- Jace, Mirror Mage - I got trounced by Wavebreak Hippocamp, it didn't fail to draw my opponent a card each of my turns while I drew nothing to deal with it, all the while I was also unable to get trough and finish off Jace by turn 7 or so.
4- Radha, Heart of Keld - After my opponent cast Radha, Garruk, Terror of the Peaks and Ancient Gargaroth in that order, there wasn't much I could do.
Besides that, I also played a few Ranked Standard matches:
2-0 against UGR ramp.
1-2 against WUB Doom Foretold, I got mana screwed the second game and mana flooded the third.
2-0 GB Scute Swarm, I got very good draws both games, in particular the second in which I won on turn five. My opponent didn't seem to have much removal in that deck.
2-1 WUB Doom Foretold. I found that as long as I can steer away from mass removal, I don't have too much trouble with this deck.

07/11
2-1 UBG Ramp
2-1 Mill Rogues

I thought it was over, but this weekend there was another Zendikar Rising event for the styles of creatures with Landfall, this time it was to play with decks using cards from the latest three sets (Zendikar, M21 and Ikoria). My deck is more-or-less the same without Eldraine or Theros so I opted (pun intended) to recreate it:
1. UG Kicker - I faced no resistance and won by turn five.
2. Monoblack - My opponent tried to cast Nighthawk Scavengers but between bounce and burn spells I could keep hitting them and won.
3. BG Counters - I got trounced being unable to deal with an increasingly large Drana, the Last Bloodchief.
4. Monogreen Counters - My opponent's deck seemed to be slow and unable to deal with flyers, so I just attacked and won.
5. Monored something - I mulliganed twice and drew terribly so it was only a matter of time that I'd be overrun by whatever my opponent had, in this case Terror of the Peaks.
6. UG Something - My opponent conceded after I burned their turn two and three Lotus Cobras.
7. BR Something - I burned I forgot what and after I got a board presence my opponent conceded.
8. UG Kicker - Unlike my first opponent, this one had a much faster hand and hit me for quite a bit early on, nonetheless I had a large assortment of attackers and I could deal with the few potential blockers they had and thus I won.

I've been reading (with time I should've spent elsewhere) a bunch about MtG translations.
The Spanish translators had been doing so well avoiding duplicate names, but they got sloppy (in addition to Shacklegeist having an incorrect translation). Normally they're good at avoiding that. ~~AFAIK fortunately there's no card with more than one Spanish name.~~ Well, technically...
I also learned worse cases in the Japanese translations with cards from the same block sharing names, or worse, from the same set.
Also the longest card name I've seen.
Also, I learned that blackguard does not mean black guard, and that English spearkers find the words "señor" and "loco" extremely funny.

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