Exciting, Chaotic Times

Exciting times. This weekend is the first in what could be four straight weekends of Magic for me. There’s the prerelease in Columbus this weekend, a Mox tournament in Michigan next Sunday, a Mox tournament in Columbus the Sunday after, and a Mox tournament in Sandusky the Sunday after that.

That’s a lot of Magic! But it would be totally worth it because I’ve definitely been feening the cardboard since the holiday break.

Information on the Planar Chaos prerelease is here.

The Michigan tourney is for an Unlimited Mox Sapphire. I assume registration is $20, which will get you 10 proxies, but those are the things you should feel free to contact them about, because I don’t know. Anyway, check it out:

Sunday, January 28
Registration starts at noon; round one starts at 1 p.m.
If you have any further questions or concerns feel free to contact:

RIW Hobbies
29116 Five Mile Road
Livonia, MI 48154
(734) 261-7233

www.riwhobbies.net
email: pam at riwhobbies dot net

(As a side note, if anyone from Columbus wants to go to this, let me know.)

The Columbus tourney is for an Unlimited Mox Pearl:

Sunday, February 4
Registration starts at 12:30; round one starts at 1 p.m.
Don’t stop for food at Denny’s on the way down, because if you’re not there on time, they might start without you.

Registration is $15 and gets you unlimited proxies.

The Soldiery
4256 N. High St.
Columbus, Ohio 43214
(614) 267-1957

The Sandusky tourney is for an Unlimited Mox Ruby:

Sunday, February 11
Registration starts at noon; round one starts at 1 p.m.

Registration is $20 and gets you unlimited proxies.

The Gamers Lounge
127 E. Market St.
Sandusky, OH 44870
(419) 621-0282

Whoo! That’s a lot of Magic, and that makes my job so much easier since I can just write tournament reports rather than actually having to come up with topics.

Still, I live in the present, or at least the more immediate future...

Planar Chaos prereleases this weekend, whoo!

I’m really looking forward to this set. There’s a lot of cool stuff coming out, and most things are pretty novel. Actually, all of it is pretty novel unless you’ve played for a long time and remember the days before there was a color pie and, except for a few abilities like counterspells, all five colors shared just about everything.

For example: Blessing, Frozen Shade, Killer Bees, Shivan Dragon, Wall of Water. I know they’re not quite the same, but three of those wouldn’t have seen print before Time Spiral.

A few days ago I talked about Planar Chaos and how, unless Wizards does something completely butt-stupid, the color switching really won’t have much effect on Vintage. The most expansive (and most expensive unproxied) format has seen the originals of all of the Timeshifted cards and, for the most part, has seen versions of the other, non-Timeshifted cards as well. They don’t get played. And if they do, they’re not insane format breakers.

The card in each color I’m most looking forward to opening on Sunday:
White – Whitemane Lion
Blue – Erratic Mutation
Black – Cradle to Grave
Red – Dead & Gone
Green – Evolution Charm

And those are just the regular ol’ commons. I figure it’s best to not get greedy. There are a lot of things I’m looking forward to seeing, including some junk rares because they gravitate to me like custards to George Wendt.

The most hyped card from the new set has been Extirpate:

Extirpate
tr. v.
-pat·ed, -pat·ing, -pates.
1. To pull up by the roots.
2. To destroy totally; exterminate. See synonyms at abolish.
3. To remove by surgery.
[Latin exstirpare, exstirpat- : ex-, ex- + stirps, root.]

Sorry, I guess that’s the dictionary definition, not the spoiled card text. Extirpate is a word that I’d never heard before, so I looked it up. I like that Magic helps me expand my vocabulary and makes me feel smart.

I’ma go take a GRE now.

Anyway…

Extirpate
B
Instant
Split Second
Select target card, other than a basic land card, in a graveyard. Search its owner’s graveyard, library and hand for all cards with the same name and remove them from the game.

Format wrenching, no?

Well, probably not. When news of Extirpate came out, lots of people were excited about it, and with good reason. It does do a lot of things. First, if it starts to see a lot of play, Worldgorger Dragon combo might die forever. Second, Ichorid (both the mana and sans versions) takes a hit. Third, it can kick Gifts and combo in the nuts a little if they’re relying on using mana in the graveyard or finding more in their deck with draw.

As a resource-denying Fish player (and UB Fish, how convenient!), the biggest thing Extirpate does for me is hit non-basic lands. That means it hits Gifts’s colors (Underground Sea and Volcanic Island) or their ability to fetch (Polluted Delta and Flooded Strand). The same goes with taking Stax’s Wastelands or Workshops and opposing Fish’s duals. It’s not a big hit, clearly, but it could make things trickier. And when things are trickier, the games take longer. And when games take longer, Fish wins.

Long story short, Extirpate will be better than the naysayers say and worse than Duress.

I’m still looking forward to Planar Chaos.

Prerelease events start on Saturday with the sealed limited main event and continue on Sunday with the sealed limited Two-Headed Giant event. M:tG OG David P. Baum and I will be in Columbus on Sunday, tearing up the standings with off-color goodness. At least I hope.

I asked Dave if he wanted to partner up for this just after the Time Spiral prerelease in a quest to play prerelease 2HG with different people every time. Would I do better if I kept the same partner every time? Who cares? It’s a prerelease.

Actually, it’s a good thing I feel this way, I think. When I asked him, Dave warned me that he’s the worst Magic player ever. I’ve seen Dave play. It’s close, but I don’t think he’s the worst player ever. And it doesn’t matter because, if he really is the worst player ever, I’ll just make all the decisions and we’ll play all the games at my level. That might help a little.

Or we’ll get a terrible or confusing cardpool that I won’t know how to build from and we’ll lose anyway.

The secret is that I’m not that good either.

Anyway, it will be fun, because that’s what prereleases are. They’re like a slightly stricter form of casual. You throw a deck (or, in 2HG, two decks) together and try to beat everyone else’s bombs with your bombs. Matches take a long time because your opponents share a life total, and there’s a fairly high likelihood of decking somebody.

If you’ve never been to a prerelease before, or even if you have, I strongly encourage you to check local listings and try one out. They’re almost as much fun as launching a turn one Tendrils for 24.