New favorite cards

When I started this blog, I edited the ‘about me’-section to be relevant for Magic-players: instead of talking about myself, I talked about my favorite cards. With the most recent card being from Worldwake, I figured it was time for an update. These are my new favorite cards.

The triple Chandra

So last week I kinda teased you all with three different Chandra the Firebrand-decks for my friend Rick, as a part of his birthday present. This could only mean one thing for today: three different Chandra decks (I would build if it were up to me)! I even get to tease you throughout the article about what the birthday boy thought of them! Woohoow!

All about M12

Hi all, I hope you had a splendid prerelease this weekend, if you went to one (or two). I really had a great time with Rick and Robert. For today, I want to give a quick recap of the prerelease, including the most epic sequence of plays I have made in recent memory, and then go over the spoiler for some good gems in there. It’s not really a set to spring a lot of ideas, in my opinion, but there’s surely one nut in there that’s been really hard for me to crack. I cracked it a dozen times, only to find out it didn’t work. On to it!

A deckbuilder’s diary

Saturday, April 16th

Today, my latest article went up. I haven’t tested the Glissa-deck yet, so I hope it can hold its own. As always, I’m curious for reader feedback and comments. Luckily, after some goldfishing I got the idea that the deck is much better than the first version. While goldfishing doesn’t give you an idea how interaction with an opponent goes, it does help playing the deck. You get to know some little interactions and just get the general feel of the deck. Plus, you can draw conclusions just by looking at how the deck plays. I came to the conclusion that 4 Golgari Rot Farms was too much, and I removed two of those for a Swamp and a Forest.

Four tidbits

Working on some new decks, it’s funny how I subconsciously started thinking about a lot of the flashier cards I mentioned two times during Mirrodin Besieged-previews. Maybe writing about it did this, maybe it was a natural course of events. There’s the Tezzeret-deck with the singleton Spine of Ish Sah. In more recent developments, I can now write about Shimmer Myr, Galvanoth and Glissa, the Traitor in the context about both new and familiar decks.

More treasures ahead

The Tezzeret-deck I discussed in my last blog post looked good on paper. The newest version of the deck wasn’t played with after I put it together after I played Rick. It still needed to prove itself in the ultimate test: playing against a human goldfish. That turned out to be my good friend Robert. He has a couple of decks that, while singleton, are usually on a level a bit above most of my decks. Therefore I knew my deck had to put up a fight. Luckily, it did.

TezzeREDRUM

The usual performance of a new deck isn’t very good. As I build decks using theoretical elimination and selection, topped of with a goldfish, I am usually confronted with the reality of real life play and non-domesticated opponents. That is a fancy way of saying the decks are off to a slow start and get pounded on before reaching a level I’m happy with. Either that, or the deck is discarded. This weekend I was pleasantly surprised when my Tezzeret-deck (that I built with Robert and that you can read about here) held it’s own pretty good against Rick’s new deck. Tezzeret was out to kill. Tezzeredrum was born.

Tezzeret Dead Redemption

Wednesday last week I visited my good friend and aspiring shop owner Robert to help crack some Mirrodin Besieged packs. Twelve boxes of ’em, in fact. Cracking a lot of packs without taking any cards afterwards was surprisingly fun, although admittedly in good company. We did a Tezzeret-war, which ended in 3-3. We actually only opened ten boxes, so Robert got a bit above average with Tezzes. And then there was the hilarity of me cracking three Mirrorworks in a row, with Robert proclaiming “wouldn’t it be funny if I cracked one now?” – and he did. Robert rewarded my helpful efforts with a fresh-smelling Tezzeret. And so began my journey.

Mirrodin Besieged: Mawre Cards!

Hurray, the Mirrodin Besieged-spoiler is complete already! This is a continuing trend from recent sets, where the spoiler goes up on wednesday instead of the night before the prerelease. Anyhoo, I decided to round up my personal thoughts on the new set with giving the new cards a look. Just the cards that interest me, mind you. Let’s get to it. Oh yeah, you can find my first review here.

On Mirrodin Besieged

(If you don’t want to read about new cards from Mirrodin Besieged, you will want to skip this post. But come back after the prerelease, okay?)

One week from now I’ll be at the Mirrodin Besieged-prerelease defending the home turf from those Phyrexian nasties. While I fear that Phyrexia will submerge as the victor in the third part of the Scars of Mirrodin-trilogy, I’ll try to beat those vile poison counters using my favorite type of counters: charge counters. What I’m gonna do here is take a peek at the official visual spoiler and comment on the cards I could see myself sleeving up some time. No metagame talk or new secret tournament tech, just cards I enjoy. Gotta love having your own blog!