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...  

"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...

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

Back from Vacation and changes to Magic

First I'll post this weeks results, actually the last two weeks:

MAGIC THE GATHERING ONLINE status at a glance: Week ending 2/21/09

Drafts Shards of Alara (4-3-2-2): 5
Match Record (Draft): 2-5
Queues played this week: 7
Constructed pauper 2player:1
Constructed (Ala Block):46
Constructed (Extended):13
Constructed (Standard):15
100 card singleton:1
Daily events std: 2
2 player: 1
Total Queues played: 71
Match Record (pauper mono-red):0-1
Match Record (extended Death cloud):2-0
Match Record (extended Death cloud2):0-3
Match Record (extended Dragonstorm): 2-1
Match Record (extended UR Storm): 0-1
Match Record (extended Ad Naseum): 2-0
Match Record (extended Affinity): 5-3
Match Record (extended mono red ext): 0-2
Match Record extended Zoo):0-1
Match Record (Bant ext): 0-2
Match Record (Bant Block): 5-9
Match Record (Bant std): 1-1
Match Record (Glenn Jund Block):2-6
Match Record (Rich’s Jund Block):0-2
Match Record (Rich’s Naya/Jund Block):18-15
Match Record (Rich’s Naya Block):0-1
Match Record (Naya Block2):0-1
Match Record (Naya Block3):0-3
Match Record (Mono-White Block):
Match Record (Esper Block):0-1
Match Record (BR tokens std):1-4
Match Record (WR reveillark weenie std):2-4
Match Record (WR reveillark weenie std version 2):4-3
Match Record (Cruel control std):5-5
100 card singleton(white): 0-1
Overall Match Record: 49-63
Packs won this week: 11
Packs won total: 53
Tickets from packs this week: 51
Tickets from packs total: 203
Net ticket gain this week: +48
Net ticket gain total: +65
Money spent this week: 3
Money spent Overall (Started on 1/1/09): 139

WHOA! Do you see that! Positive 48 this week and positive 65 overall. It was a great two weeks tournament wise, but funny enough I generated all that profit on the last day. I didn't play any magic the week I was away because I was busy hanging out with my friends. The day I got back however, I managed to read about the comeback of affinity in the extended format and the lastest tech used in the deckbuilding. So I headed to the extended queues and played this new affinity deck:

4 Seat of the Synod
4 Tree of Tales
4 Great Furnace
3 Darksteel Citadel
3 Blinkmoth Nexus

4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Frogmite
4 Ornithopter
4 Delay
3 Myr Enforcer
3 Tarmogoyf

4 Chromatic Star
4 Springleaf Drum
4 Cranial Plating
4 Thoughtcast

Sideboard:
4 Ancient Grudge
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Trickbind
1 Tarmogoyf

The deck is very resilient to the common affinity hate. Tarmogoyf and Darksteel Citadel are in there as a non-artifact finisher and indestructible land source respectively. The Darksteel is especially nice when someone tries to Ancient grudge your land after sideboarding. Delay actually was the all-star card of the night. Even though I got criticized by one of my opponents for running it, the "bad" counterspell from future sight got me more then 1 or 2 wins. Just by intercepting that crucial Damnation or Hurkyl's Recall when I needed 1 or 2 more turns to secure the victory. While it's not a standard "affinity" card that the deck normally plays, it was a useful bit of tech. This deck was really good against the majority of the extended metagame. Oddly enough, I had the most trouble with the mirror. I chock this up mostly because I never drew my sideboard cards in either matchup. I'll continue to see if this or the Master of Etherium version is better, especially given that the extended environment just changed radically yesterday with the addition of conflux being made legal.

Ch-Ch-Ch-CHANGES!

Some changes have occured on Magic Online, this blog's structure, and with the core sets this week. There is change in the air, and I'm here to embrace it. First, Magic Online's constructed queues. 8-player queues, once the only queues available have now been replaced by 2 and 4 player queues. Now this comes as a very little surprise to me as I have been playing the 4-player queues almost exclusively almost since they came out. The reason? Value of course!

The prize structure worked out like this.

8-player:4-3-2-2 (6 tickets to enter)

4-player:2-1 (3 tickets to enter)

In 8-player queues, if you lost first round you were out 6 dollars, and if you won, you got 8 dollars off the packs that you won. So a profit of 2 dollars.

In 4-player queues, you only risked 3 dollars, and if you won the first round you made a 1 dollar profit. Here's the kicker though. If you played 2 4-player queues and only won the first round on both...then you make the same profit for the same money, but at a slightly less risky upfront cost. Once people figured this out, 8-player queues almost never fired. Wizards of the Coast noticed, and decided to change the format. The new constructed queues are:

4-player 4-2 (6 tickets to enter)

2-player 1 (2 tickets to enter)

I think that these queues are a better value in general. For 2 tickets now, I have the ability to get 4 dollars, so an upgrade from the previous 4-player queues. The four player queues improve on the 8-player by allowing 2 wins to equal a 10 dollar profit rather then a 6 dollar one. All in all I'm going to play alot more 2 player queues now, cause the value to risk ratio is just nuts. The 4-players aren't bad either, and I actually might play them more then I played the 8 player ones. So my verdict on the change is : IT'S GOOD!

Another change was that Wizards of the Coast announced yesterday that the format of the Core Set was changing. The bi-annual set was all reprints of past cards, and generally set the base and support cards for standard during it's "reign". Well, if you head over to www.magicthegathering.com, you can check out Aaron Forsythe's full article on the changes. I'll summarize them for you here, my reactions and comments will be in pararentheses.

-The Core set will no longer be called "Nth" edition, like the current 10th edition, but will be in a new yearly format. The next Set will be called Magic 2010 Edition or M10 for short.

-M10 will for the first time contain NEW never before seen cards. Almost half of the 229 non-land cards in the set are brand spanking new.(As a fan of the game I like this. As a collector that was finally at the level where the core set would contain almost everything I already had just with new art....I'm slightly peeved that I'll have to get new cards now. However, it is a smaller set, and new cards are always good.

-M10 will have more classic fantasy flavor to pull in newer players. Highly flavorful cards such as Serra Angel and Black Knight will return. (Yay, black knight is back, I hope it's part of a cycle or at least paired with white knight)

-M10 will have Mythic Rares for the first time. Of the 15 mythics, 6 will be new cards. Of the 9 reprints, 5 of them will be the Lorwyn Planeswalkers. (Oh good, they are sticking around another year. If i get the new ones in draft that would be neat, but I already have 4 of each, so no biggie)

-Core sets will now be yearly and will rotate out with the block that preceded them. What this means is that M10 will rotate out of standard with the Shards of Alara block, and for three months in the fall of 2010, both M10 and M11 (Magic core set 2011) will be legal at the same time. Another first. (I like this, 2 years was a bit too long, and I was not a fan of the "fourth sets" like coldsnap.)

-Of the 16 cards that have been in every core set...only half will be returning...will Wrath of God skip a year?

-The Core set will receive Pre-launch parties, and release events just like expansion sets.

-Some Tournaments will use M10 drafts

-There are new "pain-free" duel lands in M10. No fetch lands, painlands, or Ravnica Shocklands. (My guess is a cycle based on either Grove of the Burnwillows, Nimbus Maze, or River of tears from future sight. My money is on Grove. I also hope they aren't rare, as that will be sick on the wallet. Come to think of it, with all the land type things in alara block, we might be looking at a Grove/Mumuring Bosk hybrid)

New Format: Conflux has rotated in.

So the chief complaint I have had about the weekly results have been:

Having just the deck name doesn't reveal the build of the deck

So I will now link the builds I use to the deck names. Also, I have retired the shards of alara decks from the three major formats, and replaced them with Conflux era decks. I have retained the win/loss records from the previous block, and will hopefully give me a better view of the Magic Online metagame as it evolves. See you guys at the end of the week.

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

MAGIC THE GATHERING ONLINE status at a glance: Week ending 2/7/09
Drafts Shards of Alara (4-3-2-2): 5
Match Record (Draft): 2-5
Queues played this week: 8
Constructed pauper 2player:1
Constructed (Ala Block):43
Constructed (Extended):8
Constructed (Standard):12
100 card singleton:1
Daily events std: 2
2 player: 1
Total Queues played: 64
Match Record (pauper mono-red):0-1
Match Record (extended Death cloud):2-0
Match Record (extended Death cloud2):0-3
Match Record (extended Dragonstorm): 2-1
Match Record (extended UR Storm): 0-1
Match Record (extended Ad Naseum): 2-0
Match Record (extended mono red ext): 0-2
Match Record extended Zoo):0-1
Match Record (Bant ext): 0-2
Match Record (Bant Block): 5-9
Match Record (Bant std): 1-1
Match Record (Glenn Jund Block):2-6
Match Record (Rich’s Jund Block):0-2
Match Record (Rich’s Naya/Jund Block):15-13
Match Record (Rich’s Naya Block):0-1
Match Record (Naya Block2):0-2
Match Record (Mono-White Block):
Match Record (Esper Block):0-1
Match Record (BR tokens std):1-4
Match Record (WR reveillark weenie std):2-3
Match Record (WR reveillark weenie std version 2):4-2
Match Record (Cruel control std):4-4
100 card singleton(white): 0-1
Overall Match Record: 41-57
Packs won this week: 9
Packs won total: 42
Tickets from packs this week: 35
Tickets from packs total: 153
Net ticket gain this week: +14
Net ticket gain total: +17
Money spent this week: 21
Money spent Overall (Started on 1/1/09): 136

I had a really good week this week. The new R/W Reveillark deck really worked great, and the cruel control deck made a comeback. Also, I made the most profit then I ever have since I've been keeping records. Honestly, that just makes me feel good that this thing might be possible. I also found out that if you save up the packs until you have 3, then you get more tickets then if you sell them individually, so I am definitely going to keep doing that. Until next week, remember, all work and no play...