So, I think it’s been a week since I’ve posted anything new. You know what that means, I really need to play some more Magic. I just feel like I’ve been in a rut lately. There’s only so many times I can write about UB Fish vs. Ichorid without boring my readers and frustrating myself. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so.
Anyway, if you have any new ideas for me, feel free to share them. I write a lot better with some restrictions anyway, just like I build decks, ha ha.
On with today’s blog, though…
Two weekends ago my girlfriend and I took a road-trip to Boston to do some sightseeing and generally get away while staying overnight at the reduced rate of “free” with my cousin Mike. I’ve also been teaching my girlfriend how to play Magic in preparation of the upcoming Coldsnap prerelease, which we (by which I mostly mean I) hope will have some awesome two-headed giant events that we can absolutely own. As such, we actually played Magic three nights in a row.
Plus, for some reason, my girlfriend has really good luck when we play, so wherever she could get mana screwed or flooded, she just goes ahead and draws out of it, and whenever she needs a blocker, she’ll find one big enough to survive killing my creature.
Luck isn’t the only reason I want her to play at the prerelease with me, though. I also think it’s somewhat poetic that, even though we’re starting more than 10 years apart, we’ll both start playing during the Ice Age block. And since she’ll be moving to Washington D.C. at the end of the summer, I figure if she finds out how cool Magic is, she’ll let me stay with her when Starcity Richmond rolls around again.
Plus—and I mean this most sincerely—most importantly (especially if she ever reads this) it’s a great way for us to bond over something that I really enjoy. I mean, it says a lot to me that she’s even willing to try.
Things are going well so far. I haven’t introduced enchantments yet, or many of the more varied abilities, but she’s got a lot of the bigger timing issues down and struggles mainly with combat math and when its best to use fast effects. She’s actually a pretty good judge of cardboard in a Timmy sort of way, so where a lot of new players would be turned off by Serpent Warrior’s C.I.P. drawback, she understood that it was better than, say, Scathe Zombies because it’s slightly undercosted.
We’re playing a bit faster now than we were. She makes the decisions on her own and I point out any major things I would have done differently after the game. These are usually just different ways to block or attack in a given situation, since she’s smart enough to see what works and doesn’t work with spells on her own.
So far we’ve only been using some starter set cards, basic lands, and one- or two-color decks. The one-color decks are each 30 cards and if you shuffle two of them together, bam, two-color 60-card deck. It’s pretty much the same system that the Magic Online tutorial program uses. I built all of the decks with two goals in mind: first, that they would all be of somewhat equal strength, and second, that they would sort of showcase a color’s overall feel.
Green is probably the best of the five decks in the long run since it has a good curve of creatures balanced out by pretty much no removal at all. Red can have a good early game but ultimately starts dying once its creatures get outmatched. White is fairly balanced all around and has lost of utility weenies. Blue has flyers, bounce, counters, and card-drawing but not enough removal or significant creatures to hold of a sustained onslaught.
It may come as a surprise if you know my girlfriend to find out that black is probably her favorite deck so far, but it really does make sense. Black is a solid, balanced deck, but it has Wheel of Torture, which is pretty much broken in the format.
Did I mention that I included one artifact and one artifact creature in each of the colors?
Did I also mention that I neglected to included any artifact removal other than some blue bounce or countering?
Usually games consist of me and my girlfriend playing out our hands, her finding Wheel of Torture and playing it thereby effectively Time Walking me two to four turns as I try to fill my hand out of “I’d like to buy a bowel” range.
This is why it pays to hold onto your lands if you don’t think you’ll need them.
Anyway, like I said, things are going well, and will continue to go well as long as we continue to find time to play.
Actually, I think it might be about time to start progressing beyond the simpler decks and start using decks with a bit more focus. I have plenty of cards and can probably build five or six solid, competitive decks. Right now I’m considering a White Weenie and a RG Beats for the aggro side of things, Megrim Black Control and either Counter-Burn or Sleight Knight for control, and some as yet undetermined combo-ish sort of deck.
I think I can balance those fairly well. The problem will be combo. I mean, it’s not really quite like I can just give her some Tendrils-based Vintage deck and say go. If I still had Sneak Attacks, I would probably use that, but I don’t, so that’s out. Plus, Green is underrepresented in my archetypes, and I don’t want her thinking, like everyone else, that it’s just a support color.
If only I had Tooth and Nail or Protean Hulk.
Right now the best I can do is Elf-Ball, which might not be too heinous since I don’t have a lot of the Elf enablers like Champion or anything, just some Wellwishers and Priests of Titania. Seems like it’s either that or Sacred Mesa Elves, which is also good but doesn’t have that “combo” feel, more like aggro with a lot of Elf-based synergy.
So hopefully my girlfriend finds something she likes in those odd concoctions.
Either way, I’ll have tons of fun putting the decks together, old school style.
I’ll tell you how it goes.
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