Playing Again, Finally!

I read a lot of Magic content on the web. In fact, I should probably recommend some sites to you, and will definitely do so in a future post. At the very least, for now you should be keeping up with the official Wizard's of the Coast site, which does daily articles, has downloadable wallpapers and other materials, is full of all the deck list and tournament info you could ever want, and plenty more where that came from. Here's the link, at magic.wizards.com/en/articles, and I love reading their stuff every day. Unfortunately, reading is about all I've been able to do recently.

For the last 2 or three months I've been working exactly the wrong schedule to pretty much ever get to play Magic. Not many people want to sling spells with me between the hours of 9am and 3pm, and I'm a little hesitant to start teaching my three-year-old daughter Magic. We're still working on Candyland and checkers, with Clue Jr. coming up on the horizon. My five-year-old shows a little more promise, but pulling her away from Legos and her new-found love of art is probably not the best course of action right now. So I've been reading, and reading and reading some more. Khans of Tarkir draft sounds awesome, but I have yet to experience it first hand. 

About a week ago, I got to hang out with a friend and play some one-on-one Commander, as well as pit my fledgling Burn-splash-Dig Through Time deck against his casual Zombie deck. His Jalira, Master Polymorphist Commander tore through my Kaalia of the Vast deck twice fairly soundly, but it was a lot of fun. I payed him back by igniting him and his Zombies a couple of times in fair retaliation.

She seems harmless. She's not.
It's a lie. A big, fat lie.

Standard, on the other hand, I got to play today.

Conspiracy draft

I love to draft. As a format I don't play it much for a variety of reasons, primarily two: I don't particularly care for Magic Online, and my work schedule for the last 8 months or so have been abominable for ever going to an event or FNM other than a pre-release. Magic Online would seem like the solution to my schedule woes, but I get wa-aay too distracted when I play Magic on the computer. I need to immerse myself in a game with people I can talk to easily, and Magic Online is missing the social aspect of the game that makes it fun for me.

Enter my playgroup. I have a great group of friends that I get together with far too infrequently to play Magic, again mostly due to scheduling issues. We did manage to schedule something a couple weeks ago, though, and it was a lot of fun. I had my Commander and Standard decks packed up, but I received a package that changed the course of the evening: a box of Conspiracy. Hallelujah!

No, not THAT Conspiracy, the other one! Oh, nevermind...

Every playgroup is different, but my group has a particular love for multiplayer games over 2 player duels. When you get together as often as we do, we want everyone to be playing as much as possible. So we really enjoy Commander, Two-Headed Giant and Emperor, as well as Planeschase and Archenemy variants so maximum mayhem will ensue. Also, most of my playgroup still has the aversion to drafting that many people do; namely, not getting to keep every card that you open.

My solution was to provide a box of Conspiracy, we draft the heck out of it, and then I keep the cards to go towards building a multiplayer cube. I'm slowly getting there with the Cube, but this was going to be our second draft of this wonderful set and I was really looking forward to it. For groups that like multiplayer and a little bit of chaos, I can't recommend it enough.

Updates galore!

Welcome back! Not that any of you went anywhere, of course, as I was definitely the one taking a bit of a vacation here. But because it's been a month and a LOT of Magic has happened since then, we've got some serious catching up to do. So hang on tight, because here we go!

Let's go back in time! (In unrelated news,
this card is amazing! More on this later.)

Khans of Tarkir Spoilers: I missed most of spoiler season for this one. We could say that I saw the majesty that was our two new planeswalker and passed out for the rest of it. Yeah, let's say that. I got ridiculously excited about Sarkhan, and the color red in general, and now I really want to play the "Jeskai Wins" deck that is running around out there.

Or should it be called "Sarkhan Wins!"
I really need to get my hands on this card...

Grand Prix Salt Lake City Report

Two or so years ago, not long after I started playing Magic again, I heard about a tournament that had just happened here in Salt Lake City. They'd had about a thousand players in the Salt Palace Convention Center downtown and all the players at my local game store kept talking about what they'd seen, or bought, or played. I'd never heard of a Grand Prix before, but I started keeping my eyes open for the next one. Well, this past weekend I had to work Saturday and Sunday afternoons and I couldn't get them off, but the tournament was back and I wasn't going to miss it again, at least not completely. So Saturday morning I drove out the the South Towne Expo Center and walked into Hall 1.

After a few very confusing moments of wondering where all the players were, and what the inflatables and kiddy swimming pools were doing at a Magic Tournament, and "hey, isn't he a little young to play Magic?" I exited the Autism Awareness convention and wandered down to Hall 5. This was a little more of what I was expecting.

More Magic players than I could shake a stick at! Not that I had a stick...

878 players recording their pools of just opened Sealed decks. I showed up about 40 minutes after the tournament was scheduled to start, and they lost no time in getting things going. Since I wasn't there to play in the main event, I wandered while the judges announced instructions and lots of people followed them. The sides of the hall were lined with vendors, probably 12 to 14 of them in all. Between them, you could find just about every Magic card you were looking for. I saw graded quality cards from Alpha and Beta expansions, foils of Commander, Modern and Legacy staples in multiple languages. I saw boxed sets from nearly every expansion for sale, and a set of Comic Con planeswalkers I really wanted but were so very out of my price range.

Khans Spoiler Week #1

It begins! Khans of Tarkir, the new set that releases on September 26th, is slowly leaking itself all over the internet! Well, actually not all over, you can catch most of it here, on the Wizards of the Coast website, or the mothership, as many Magic article authors call it. The spoilers started at the gaming convention PAX, at a party Wizards throws annually to celebrate the fall set. The first few cards spoiled are pretty exciting too, with both of the new set's Planeswalkers being made public at PAX. And here they are! (Guess which one I'm really excited for.)

A not-red walker, whose sword is pretty cool, I guess.
Vampires are cool too, maybe?

A mono-red planeswalker! Except when he's not,
 because he's beating your opponent's face in!

Alright, I pick on Sorin, but only because Sarkhan is awesome! A little background: storywise, neither of the characters is very new. Both have two previous cards and incarnations, and they've been around the multiverse a few times. Sarkhan is the focus of the set, as Tarkir is his home plane, so his inclusion is no real surprise. You always want the character the marketing is focused on the be awesome, and Sarkhan does not disappoint. While five mana is more expensive, it nets you an instant 4 damage on the turn it comes down, either at your opponent in the form of an un-killable dragon, or burning a creature of your choice. Mono-red is an interesting choice, since both of Sarkhan's previous cards have been multi-colored (red-green, and red-black). He does play nice with all 3 clans that include red though, so Sarkhan is definitely an awesome card no matter your flavor of red.

Sorin, on the other hand, hits the ground one turn sooner at four mana, and can also start at 5 loyalty with his plus one ability. At first blush he seems very similar to his last version, which was also black-white, but he's significantly stronger, particularly in multiplayer games. The wording on his plus one ability says "until your next turn", not the more expected "until the end of your turn", which means your boost can last quite a long time in a game of Commander. His vampire token are now flying 2/2s, and the ultimate is just gross, particularly in games with multiple opponents. 

Interestingly, both of these Planeswalkers can hit their ultimate ability on their third turn on the table. That's pretty fast, and both of their emblems are game changers. Putting yourself at three drawn cards per turn is huge in a mono-red deck, which focuses on low cost aggressive creatures or instant burns spells, and you should be able to end your game very quickly if you hit Sarkhan's ultimate. Sorin's is equally punishing, as you get to stay a whole creature ahead of your opponent every turn, regardless of abilities like indestructible or hexproof. Either way, hitting that final ability is going to be pretty sweet on both cards, but with Sorin costing one mana less, he may have the edge here, especially if you like your Magic games with more than one opponent.

There were quite a few other cards spoiled this week as well, on top of more information from the mothership about the clans themselves. If you're interested in the mechanics in detail, here's your stop. If you are interested in the story and world information behind some of the clans, this one's for you. Or read both, I won't stop you. If you don't want to read them though, it's okay. I'll summarize.