The early parts of this week, when I was going 0-2 and 1-2 over and over, were stressful but I believed in the grind. After box 3 yesterday, games became more fun. I built better and had only a few duds, with most attempts paying out. Made this my least expensive attempt by far.
I told myself if I got a 4th, that one would be to open and not store. Looking forward to a crap box :-D
V1 one is all about them bears.
Early game stuff was early game stuff, all to get me to burning trees and slamming bears. Bolg's Company seriously pulled its weight here, ramping me to the Giant very quickly one game and giving me extra stone throws another game.
I lost my second match and figured this was another promising pool that would end up being a nothingburger. Then I got to the cash-out point. Then advanced again. Took no victory for granted and the last two matches were me at 3 and 4 life playing with all the little skill I have.
Was still so out of it from yesterday that I forgot to take a shot of the deck. Orzhov, with Unexpected Party and a splash of blue for Bard's Company.
My win ratio for these is only acceptable because these boxes are insanely expensive.
I feel there was possibly a much better deck here, but I was quick to build a field with removal at the right time. And didn't keep any two-land hands not full of two drops. Took an embarrassing amount of attempts to get here, but still positive EV with how crazy the box prices are. This might be the first product I hold sealed.
My Arena direct box came in today! I was debating selling it sealed (which I knew would be more), but this is the first box I’ve won and my kids were excited to crack it as well.
I’m sure everyone is shocked that the box was bad. $250ish market low. Shang-Chi was in the final pack and was a welcome surprise.
My son and I topped the Lorwyn and Marvel 2HG prereleases at this store. Both were a surprise to us and we went in with the mindset that we were just there to have fun. When we showed up yesterday, people who recognized us jokingly asked if we were going to finish first again.
Opening our pool, we had some good red rares, some Rakdos uncommons, and almost all our removal was in Black or Red. I figured we’d try something unique for us: Instead of two balanced decks, I would go crazy with removal and my son could build an Azorius creature deck. As I laid out the removal, we had almost a full deck of just that. Then plenty of early creatures and mid-game goodness. Emphasizing that we were going to have fun, I proposed the idea that we split the Rakdos pool in a way that we were basically playing the same deck.
Well, clearing the enemies board every turn and building up our forces worked and we barely win again. There was another 3-0 team. Their tiebreaker score was 44.43 and ours was 44.44. I’m starting to feel a little embarrassed now. We’re really just there to have fun!
Son and I won our third two headed giant prerelease in a row. This time we had 70% identical decks.
Pretty happy with my pulls. A book cover, a mythic Smaug, and a Rebecca Guay surge. Only wish the Saruman was Tom Bombadil.
Hopefully Wizard’s staff is a desirable rare…
And then blown away by this play pack in the last slot
My heart sunk when my foil was a Norwood Priestess (which was only $10). The rest of the box was straight fire, though, so it all worked out.
This is super small beans, but shrinkflation hit my $4.99 packaged ceasar salad with no cheese.
From the current draft of my Khans of Tarkir Redux.
I'm attracted to the morph cards, since they'll fit anywhere and I like all of the effects. Probably going with Hooded Hydra to stake a claim on green.
I love Chaos draft. I love tinkering with cubes. What about a cube that is a collection of 15 card packs from various sets, with the packs curated with playables? Threw the above pack together as a proof-of-concept.
The goal would be to avoid over-parasitic mechanics while still highlighting unique traits of the set. Above, I have a few cards that deal with -1/-1 counters on their own, but nothing that doesn't function by itself. There's a goblin-tribal card that is also just a mana fixing draw spell if you didn't grab any goblins. Idea like that.
Lands can be the issue, so I will try to work two lands into each cube (a common and uncommon/rare cycle member). Once I have 24 packs created, I'll adjust which lands are includedi n the various packs to give the overall cube a balanced landbase.
The goal of the Khanish cube is to start with a triple-Khans baseline and then grow the power level as my local pod desires until reaching a level we're happy with.
The first draft began with 1x of each card in Khans of Tarkir plus an extra copy of each common and an additional copy of each basic dual land. Duplicates were replaced with other Tarkir cards of a close power level and function (sometimes switching costs with another replacement, keeping over overall curve around the same). Vanilla creatures wre also swapped out, out of personal preference.
Aesthetically, the first version of the cube will have standard, non-foil printings using the 2015- frame layout.
Got three buddies together tonight and did a draft of the Make Mine Marvel cube v1.
Decks:
Izzet Artifacts (me): 0-3
Boros: 2-1
Golgari Graveyard: 2-1
Grixis + The Thing: 2-1
One deck was the clear loser! I tried to pack the cube full of answers and, being both creatures and artifacts at once, was susceptible to all of the said removal.
Everyone had a good time and no threats felt unbeatable (a big goal of mine). But the general feeling was, "Eh, yeah, it was fun" on the cube itself. White was not the overwhelming powerhouse, only appearing in one deck, which was another goal of mine. Another Marvel loving player and I chatted about the fact that we hope to see bigger and better things as more sets come out. Also, we talked about stripping the "Equipment matters" theme fully out. Just didn't work.
I'll keep tweaking with the current built and draft it with the same group in the future at some point. But looking forward to hopefully balanced and powerful Marvel sets in the future.
I was fortunate enough to get copies of all five Marvel Super Heroes welcome deck this past week. Very much like JumpStart, these are 30 card decks you mash together and play. But I would like to mix these in with the actual Marvel jumpstart decks.
So far I have added a Thriving land to each deck and removed duplicates as well as excess basics. I would love thoughts on the additional removals:
MSH Welcome Deck - White - JumpStarted : needs three removals
MSH Welcome Deck - Blue - JumpStarted : needs two removals
MSH Welcome Deck - Black - JumpStarted : needs one removal
MSH Welcome Deck - Red - JumpStarted : needs three removals
MSH Welcome Deck - Green - JumpStarted : needs three removals
Doing a draft of the Make Mine Marvel cube v1 tonight. Hopefully boosting up other colors a bit through JumpStart, Commander, and Secret Lair inclusions. Four players, so we'll be doing a pick 2. What would your choices be?
Archetypes:
Azorius ETB - Enter the Battle field effects and ways to reuse them
Dimir Connive - Drawing, discarding, and getting +1/+1 counters
Rakdos Villain Discard - Villain spells matter + discard synergy
Gruul Power-Up Stompy - Big creatures and little creatures that turn big
Selesnya Token Life - 1) Make tokens 2) Gain life 3) Profit
Orzhov Equipment - Equipment matters. Attack-alone subtheme
Izzet Artifacts - Artifacts matter
Golgari Graveyard - Ways to get stuff in the yard and bonuses for having it
Boros Heroic Spells - Hero and Noncreature spells matter
Simic Counters - +1/+1 counters and the creatures who love them
