Magic Day

I just got back from Old Town Hobby after a day of Magic: The Gathering. What a great game, what a fun time. It was just Shellah and Lance, Carson and me. Most of the games were really close in our round robin. We drafted the same as last time, except we switched out Darksteel for a pack of 8th Edition Core Set. With the first pack being 8th, a lot of really great cards were showing up early, and of course it's hardest to make those early decisions on what to draft. Nothing amazing caught my eye, but an early Dark Banishing was something I couldn't pass up on after last time. Big creatures didn't seem to be coming to me, but I saw a Pyroclasm early on. I ended up with mostly black and artifact with a splash of red and a smaller splash of blue. There was some decent green that I had to decide against using. We all noticed that lots of blue cards were not getting picked, and were the last to get drafted. My biggest creature was a 3/3 Serpent Warrior and my best artifact was a Crystal Shard. I had a lot of Equipment and creature removal too, but I wasn't feeling very confident at all about the deck, because I couldn't see anything cohesive about it, other than an overall fast profile with cheap creatures to be pumped by equipment and enchantments. No single standout card to get me excited, but hardly anything with a casting cost over 4. I can't think of when I've felt worse about a deck I was about to play in a tournament. Our pairings were up at noon.

First, I played Carson. He had the same kind of hodgepodge feeling about his deck as I had about mine, and there were some real similarities. Carson had a lot more creatures. He was playing 4-color from what I could tell, with a lot of green and black and blue, some white and a fair amount of artifacts. Game one was long, but my poor start (mana and creature short) eventually got the better of me. He had an Icy Manipulator that was really locking me down. I sideboarded more blue and more creatures in for game 2 and everything came up right and I won fairly quickly, then in game 3 the same thing happened for him, so I lost 1 game to 2.

Next up was Shellah, Lance's wife. She is a really good player, and I heard later about her success with a hasted Craw Wurm working really well in her red-green deck. The cards just seemed to come up right for me in game 1, though I think having a Diabolic Tutor and a couple of cards with Scrye helped a bit. That splash of blue for flyers and the Crystal Shard were good too. She had me down to 1 life in game two, but I came back and won thanks to the creature removal. Even though I came up as a 2-0 winner, the actual games were both a lot closer than that.

The final matchup of the round robin for me was our defending champion, Lance. He was ahead of me in the standings, and the only way for me to win the tournament today would be to beat him 2-0, which I doubted could happen. But I paid closer attention than I usually do to game play, especially late in a tournament. I discovered that with Crystal Shard and Ravenous Rats, I could make Lance discard a card every turn for 3 mana. Also, just from having played Lance a bit more in recent tournaments, I have been learning a bit more about how his mind works. He played a red-white deck with artifacts and some wonderful recursive removal in the form of the Minotaur Shaman, a goblin and some other new red guy. If he had had more Equipment, like John did last time, Lance would have made short work of me and my little creatures. But I had luckily drafted an Unholy Strength, and that, along with Cranial Plating and some of my other artifacts, made a difference. Another standout card for me was Somber Hoverguard. Each of the two games went back and forth, with a lot of removal from both sides, excellent defense from Lance's white creatures, bounce with the Crystal Shard, etc. At times there were fast effects and instants on the stack that went a bit deep and somewhat complicated, but when we got through those, stalemates were broken and the cards in play were a bit simplified. Not once today did my Blind Creeper (a 3/3 for 1B who gets -1/-1 until end of turn whenever a player playes a spell) go to the graveyard out of combat. The only artifact control I had was a Detonate, and I used it every time it came around. Anyway, when the dust settled, I had won 2-0. Bonesplitter, Magma Jet and Vicious Hunger were all helpful cards, but the stupid Serpent Warrior helped me the most today, along with the Ravenous Rats and what I consider to be the best card I used today, Crystal Shard, which let me chump block and bounce my creatures back to my hand.

After the tourney, Carson handed me all of his cards (what a guy!), and Richard gave me a couple packs for winning. It feels good to win, but I would have liked it a bit better if more people had made it today. Today was the 3rd of the three tournaments I planned. In the future, we might do a $5 draft tourney with 1 pack of the newest set and prizes (each player brings 30 nonbasic cards, commons recommended, to fill out the rest of the draft, with random start distribution of cards and seating order). Hey, it's a good idea, it could work!

Color Analysis for today: (8th, Mirrodin, Fifth Dawn draft 9/18/04)
Dave: Black/Red/Blue (1st), Lance: White/Red (2nd), Carson: Green/Blue/Black/White (3rd), Shellah: Red/Green (4th).

Vs. Bugs

Well, the Wednesday game included Rob & Alex, Mat & Ava, me, and Jon ran high-level Aarde (Phil couldn't make it). I'm going to have to cut back a character or have Phil play one, and that's okay. Tonight I left Glum in my book and played Sriko, Chantal and Gilgar. Over the course of the past week I updated them all to allow for the passage of time and experience since the party "retired" with the Fountain of Youth in their tower at Pavalos. Now that they're 20th level and have had some time, Sriko's many item creation feats are coming in pretty handy. I made a quick list of some useful items (lots of +5 weapons and armor, etc.) and passed it around the table. We are in the underdark on a quest to gain a favor from Moradin so he will forge an item for the party, and the quest entails getting holy symbols from a number of his enemies. Tonight, we had a big encounter with some very tough Formians and variants, basically a bunch of gigantic ant-people. I'm glad I levelled everybody up, and I'm also glad Sriko made those items. We didn't really have much to worry about though. Ava's mage got down to the low 40 range of hit points, and thought she was going to die, but we have plenty of high level clerics in the party. Sriko summoned an awesome celestial elephant and did a Holy Word, Chantal did a Fire Storm for 18d6, and rained arrows on bad guys, and Gilgar charged with her twin axes, then quick-drew her longbow and polished off the biggest enemy with 5d8 damage, each at +17 damage (counting one 3x critical). It was a faster moving session than last time, and we used miniatures, which was nice. Oh damn, I left my overhead projection markers. Ah well I'll pick them up next time.

I bought the new Scrye today and it seemed like Yu-Gi-Oh was all over it, but it has a lot of useful stuff about Magic:The Gathering, though I had hoped it would include more information about the new set, but it has some nice teasers and a poster. Saturday should be fun. I think I will do some more tournaments this winter, and maybe space them out January, February and... April, oh I don't know, 6 a year maybe. Anyway, 10 a.m. Saturday the 18th, Old Town Hobby, $10 for three booster packs and a day of draft fun. Hope I can find a sitter...

Yesterday

The Saturday group was pretty small yesterday (9/11/04), but we sure had a good game. It was just me, Roddy, Shane and Chaun, but Chaun wasn't there for the whole 12-6 session. We played upstairs at the kitchen table, and there was plenty of soda, chips and popcorn to go around with just the four of us. I ran Khadgar, Cedric and Kazalonian (Sorcerer, Druid, Cleric, all 20th level) and Gilgar (P.'s old 20th level dwarven fighter) through a short adventure involving the resurrection of Hurkendorn, a powerful enchanter bent on controlling Aarde through sheer charm, Geas, etc. Hurkendorn had managed to manipulate all the world leaders (including Lhevix, the city set up by the old characters in retirement) into signing trade treaties with his city state, Pavalos, along with military non-attack agreements. But the party learned of Hurkendorn's evil intentions. By 2:00 (and about half a round of combat) Khadgar had hit him with a Meteor Storm and Gilgar hit him on 4 out of 7 attacks, each at 1d8 + 17 damage. Cedric and Kazalonian didn't have to do anything, and Hurkendorn never had a chance, even though he was a high level character in his own right. It was fun to use characters from the old campaign, I'll have to do it again more regularly. It's nice that my new 3.5 DMG has Epic rules in it.

After that, we played in the newer, low-level campaign. My new villian is a powerful transmuter named Jaramon (the mad). Revan (Roddy's 4th level paladin) along with Shane's ranger and my NPCs (two fighters and a bard) rallied small armies of 80 lizardfolk and 80 dwarves to liberate a half-orc city from Jaramon's 200 mongrelmen, who had occupied it. Units of lizardfolk included 20 cavalry on giant lizards, 20 shortbow archers, 20 spearmen and 20 with hand weapons. The dwarves included a unit of 50 miners, and a special unit of 30 engineers with seige weapons such as catapault, balistae, battering rams, etc. Shane's ranger, Flegal, scouted ahead for the armies, and located the barracks building. The miners dug a trench in front of the seige weapons, and most of the units hid in it, while Revan joined the cavalry unit, who took cover behind a hillside. Once the seige weapons opened fire, small groups of mongrelmen poured out of the city gates to attack them, unaware of the units hidden in the trench, who overwhelmed them. After picking off mongrelmen from the city wall, the dwarven and lizardmen forces were able to liberate the half-orc city with only about 10% losses. The party then accompanied a small force to deal with a floating island with strange obelisks on it in the middle of the freshwater lake (the city's water supply, which was turning people into mongrelmen). The island was a giant floating eye, and the four obelisks were like eyelids, and the water, obelisks and eye somehow had the power to disfigure anyone who came near or failed a Fortitude save. People had the ears of cats, the "hand" of an elk, wood for hair, stone scales for skin, and one lizardman's buttocks was changed to that of a ferret. One dwarf's nose was changed into that of an elephant. There were a lot of changes, but eventually a lizardwoman shaman powerful enough to return everyone to normal was found, though it was a painful and lengthy process, and the stone scales are still grafted to Flegal's skin (reducing his charisma by 2 and raising his AC by 4). Everybody gained a level, treasure and magic were pretty good. It was a fun session, and next time I will try to remember to use the theatre-style popcorn maker with butter popcorn oil. :)

Remember, Magic booster draft tournament at 10 a.m.-4 p.m. next Saturday 9/18 at Old Town Hobby, 3 boosters and a day of fun for $10, not bad! It will be the last in a series of 3 booster draft tournaments, we'll pick up some more tournaments in the future.

9/1/04 Session at G's

Well, I packed up my player's handbook, character sheets for Gilgar, Sriko, Chantal and Glum, called Phil and we went to Jon's to play last night. Mat and Ava were there, as well as Rob and Alex. Jon ran the game, set in my old Aarde campaign world. It was strange that it wasn't more strange to be a player in my own campaign world for the first time, instead of running. Also, playing those familiar high-level characters really is pretty fun. Everybody was in good spirits, and we really did have a good time, with a lot of roleplaying and time in a dwarven lumberjack town in the middle of an oasis, where the characters bought a few magic items. Kalanas (Alex's mage/fighter) lightning bolted some shambling mounds, which pumped them up instead of hurting them. Glum (Steve's Lizardman fighter, played by Phil) drew his Hammer of Thunderbolts on some dwarves in a bar. Gilgar did enough damage to a bugbear to kill it about 20 times over. I had to leave before the end of the session, and even then I got home late. To just play instead of running the game was relaxing. It's a whole different pace. I need to update those characters and get a map to Jon in a couple of weeks. A week from Saturday I'll be running my game again and because it is an alternate version of "future Aarde" than the other future Aarde, it will be interesting input for ideas; Phil is the only player who has a character in both campaigns now. It's interesting, though it's also interesting to me that I almost stayed home and ran Phil through a solo adventure last night. I know I made the right decision, and Phil will become a better player for it.