My Magical month of May (Going Infinite)

As you can see, I didn't play a lot of limited in the beginning of the month. Once 5/23 came however, all bets were off due to the new Alara Reborn Set being released. I played the release events like I always do, but alas it's my worst format, and so I didn't do so great. However, things picked up in the last week of the month, where I not only won an Alara Block draft, but got a good grasp of the format as well. One thing to keep in mind above all else is to have 4-5 sources of mana fixing. If you have those then you can easily play 4, possibly even 5 color decks. 4 is the standard though, if you get less mana fixing, then it's probably best to limit your shards options. I've tried to draft the most prominent deck in the format, which is UW aggro. I've come across this deck many times, and it trounces me almost every time. The only way to beat them is to draw a tone of early removal.


Being that Extended season is over, I haven't played too much of it. I tried my friend Glenn's Kalidescope (new all multi-colored card format) deck, and it worked pretty good. Once Alara reborn came out, I tried the hypergenesis deck where you Cascade into Hypergenesis and summon a whole swath of creatures. It's a really fun deck, but it has a ton of holes.


Now we get to the action. Standard was actually getting kinda dull for me in the beginning of May. The new set was already out in the real world, but I still sat in the pre-Alara Reborn world in Magic Online. Once Alara Reborn came out, however I had some money saved up, and got all the cards I needed to compete in the new standard. After that I took a look at the Regionals decklist, and chose my favorites. I then tested them 5 times each (unless they lost 3 times in a row, then I skipped that deck). This led to my week of over 70 games of Magic in ONE WEEK between constructed and limited. The best deck by far was BW tokens, as it was the "Best Deck" going into the testing, and it proved itself, garnering itself the best record (4-1) of all the regional decks. However, it was not the ultimate victor. That title went to the Cascade Swans deck that started popping up right after GP Barcelona. The Swan deck just took victories out of no where, and it's currently the "Best Deck", dethroning BW Tokens after only two weeks in the top spot. In the last week of the month, I experimented with a cascade deck that is decidedly anti-swans. While it works against swans very well, it loses to pretty much anything else. So I'm still tweaking that for now.




Alara block was again mostly quiet in May, due to the format becoming increasingly stale. Basically it was that you play Naya, and you face mirrors. Whoever stuck Battlegrace Angel first basically won. After the the Week o Standard however, and with Alara Reborn giving the additions of terminate, Maelstrom Pulse, and Bloodbraid Elf, to Jund decks, allowing them to reclaim their former top position. The current Jund Cascade deck that my friend and I cobbled together works beautifully. It has a 10-4 record, and my friend even played it in the Season 2 championship. However he ran into some mana issues and rogue decks which cleaned his clock making him get a 2-4 record. It's working fine for me though, so I chock that up to bad luck.


Wow, I played over 100 constructed games of Magic in a month...Maybe I need to cut back a bit.



I think this is my greatest achievement. The fact that I spent over 150 dollars on tournaments this month, but I won all of it back, and even made a little profit. I'll definitely call that a good month.

So until next time...remember...all work and no play

"Going Infinite" results for the week of 4/25

So it was pretty much an all Block two weeks here in the Scott household.  After trying a grixis "anti-block deck" and an esper deck that I thought looked neat; I eventually returned to playing the Naya deck that Glenn and I built together.  The only difference between our builds is that I include Titanic Ultimatum for the mirror.

I can tell you one thing.  The other players rarely see this coming, and I've taken my fair share of wins because of it.  Glenn doesn't think it really gives me an edge, but I believe it gives me a "surprise Factor" that isn't in most Naya decks.  

Also, if you'll notice I didn't spend a dime this week, which is a great sign for my goal of "going infinite".  I'll be back next week with more news, and I hope more "non-spending" results.  

In other news, the Alara Reborn Pre-Release was this weekend, and the entire set is now spoiled.  It looks like this ALL GOLD set, the first of it's kind will really shake things up with it's powerful cards at low mana costs, and it's new keyword ability CASCADE, which looks primed to overthrow Storm as the most dangerous keyword in standard.

Stay tuned for more exciting Magic: The Gathering results and news.

And remember, all work and no play...  

No results this week

As a result of not playing Magic all week due to being very busy at work, there are no results to post. I'll be back next week with this week's worth of results. Also coming up is the Alara Reborn set-review which I'll be posting towards the end of the month.

"Going Infinite" results from the week of 4/11

Sorry this is a little late this week, easter weekend was CRAZY!

There are no limited results this week as I stuck mainly to std and block constructed

"Going Infinite" results from the week of 4/4

Trying something new this week folks. Let me know if you like it.




Man does it feel good to be playing Magic again. It really is a part of me, and I never want to go another month without it again. While this week's constructed record was sub-par, my excellent week in limited more then made up for it. I'm still in the positive, even with more losses then wins, which I think is very good. The losses numbers are skewed slightly cause if I win 1st round, and lose second I get a 1-1, so unless I win the whole event I'm always picking up a loss.

Well that's all for this week, until next time remember, all work and no play...

So where the HELL have I been?

My apologies for being away for a month. This happened because I was banned from Magic Online since March 2nd. Why I was banned, well I don't want to get into it. I explained it on my life blog, and I do not wish to repeat myself. Perhaps I should have posted here sooner, but honestly for about 2 weeks there I didn't know if I would get my account back at all. Since i didn't want to think about that possibility, I kind of withdrew from all Magic related activities, this blog included. However, after a 30 day suspension, I have been informed by Wizards of the Coast that my account has been reactivated.

Therefore, starting today, I will resume my Magic the Gathering Blog, and my quest to "go infinite"

Again, please forgive this momentary blink in content, and now back to our show!

Week ending 2/28 Magic results

MAGIC THE GATHERING ONLINE status at a glance: Week ending 2/28/09

Drafts and Sealed:
Drafts Played Triple Shards of Alara (4-3-2-2): 5
Drafts Played Triple Conflux (4-3-2-2):2
Drafts Played Shards shards conflux (4-3-2-2): 4
Match Record SOA(Draft): 2-5
Match Record CON (Draft):0-1
Match Record SOA/CON (Draft):5-7
Match Record SOA/CON (Sealed):1-6

Constructed:
Queues played this week: 19
4-player Constructed pauper 2player:1
4-player Constructed (Ala Block):52
4-player Constructed (Extended):14
4-player Constructed (Standard):15
100 card singleton:1
Daily events std: 2
2 player Constructed std: 8
2 player Constructed block:4
2 player Constructed extended:1
Total Queues played: 91
Overall Shards of Alara Match Record: 49-63
Conflux decks:
Match Record (extended White weenie): 1-2
Match Record (Red-White Block):0-1
Match Record (Domain Block):0-1
Match Record (BR aggro Block):3-3
Match Record (Naya ramp Block):5-3
Match Record (5 color control std):0-1
Match Record (5 color control std 2):0-1
Match Record (5 color planeswalker std):0-1
Match Record (blightning aggro std):0-1
Match Record (Dark Bant std):0-1
Match Record (esperlark std):3-1
Match Record (gw planeswalkers std):0-1
100 card singleton(white): 0-1
Overall Conflux Match Record: 9-18

Winnings:
Packs won this week: 19
Packs won total: 69
Tickets from packs this week: 47
Tickets from packs total: 250
Net ticket gain this week: -29
Net ticket gain total: +40
Money spent this week: 76
Money spent Overall (Started on 1/1/09): 210

So this week heralded the release of Conflux online. I've gotten all the Conflux cards I wanted thanks to an infusion of cash from my job giving us profit sharing(we actually made money last year). I have alot of new constructed decks to test out, but I've been mostly playing the new conflux limited format. As a rule, I am not that great of a limited player. I fully admit I need work, although I DO take pride in the fact that I have alone brought my limited rating from a 1386, it's low point during Ravnica draftr which I was utterly horrible at back up to 1600, where my current rating is. I once again demonstrated my horrible deckbuilding ability by going 1-6 in the 2 sealed tournaments I joined. The triple conflux drafts haven't gone much better. As you see, I entered 2, but only finished 1 game that I lost. That is because the Magic Online Servers were plagued with horrible lag this past weekend. The gameplay didn't suffer much, but trading, joining, and leaving games all were slow as shit. I think wizards need to put more game servers up for the next release, otherwise it's been a real blast playing magic.

In constructed, you'll see alot of 0-1 records. These are new decks that I am not familiar with, and just got stomped. Not being that familar with the deck it was hard to know what hands to keep against what decks. I will continue testing these decks in the coming weeks. The decks i did have some great luck with was the Naya ramp deck that my friend Darque built. It basically takes Noble heirarchs, Druid of the anima's, and gets to 6 mana on like turn 4 to cast Realm Razer and remove all the land. With the Noble's Exalted ability and Realm's decent stats, it is really hard for the opponent to come back. Pack in some Wooly Thoctars, a Battlegrace Angel or 4, splash removal, and you have yourself a kick ass block deck. Esperlark is the controlling version of Boat Brew, using reveillark to bring back great tempo and card advantage creatures instead of the aggro creatures Boat brew usies. Esperlark won the Richmond StarCityGames 5k, and it's proved great for me. Something that I really cannot get ahold of playing are the 5-color control decks. I know they are good, in fact the number (2) build above is the same as the one that won the recent Grand Prix. However I tend to either get horribly land flooded with these decks almost EVERY TIME. I mean I draw literally ten cards with various draw effects, and it's just land land land land land. This type of non help makes me lose whatever control I had on the game....which is really bad for a "control" deck. I'm going to try and "grow" as a player by playing these types of decks more, but just maybe in practice instead of tournament. So not off to a great start with Conflux, but it's just the beginning so stay tuned.

And until next time remember...all work and no play