My first MTG post/article

[Warning! Mega Long Post!]

Alrighty. I know I haven't posted anything for super long. It's just that there hasn't been many things happening that's worth posting about. My life is boring. Anyway looking back at my first post, I realised that I had said I might post up some stuff on Magic the Gathering (you know, the card game). Up til now, I haven't made a single magic post yet. I don't like being a person who breaks promises, so here goes!

I've been meaning to put up this post for about a week, but procrastination and MapleStory grinding kinda delayed that. So last week, I met up my good buddies Shaun and Jeffrey, and we decided to have some fun. What could be more fun than playing a many hour long game of Magic? Really, it's exhausting but still fun. So we met for a short lunch and chit-chat session about random NS stories. And then, headed over to Jeff's place to play some EDH.

EDH or now more commonly and officially called Commander (official commander site), is put simply as a special format played with Magic cards. It's a casual multiplayer social game that allows for much fun and social interactions between players that you don't normally get in competitive tournament style Magic. Each player builds his/her custom 100 card deck and are allowed only 1 of each card, no multiple copies. This makes every game unique and random, which adds to the fun.

Without further ado, here's the deck I played:


100 card goodness.



I'll try to give a brief description of the deck before going over the madness that happened during the game. The deck has so many random cards that even I miss some of the interactions. But the base line is that it is an artifact deck based around Sharuum, my general. Every time I cast my general, she gets to bring back whatever I want from my graveyard, making it a nice toolbox. It started out as more of a control deck, but sort of morphed over time to just become an engine that generates card advantage that has a few counterspells to protect itself, until it eventually wins.

I started out by adding the standard EDH stuff you'd expect to see. Some mana acceleration, a few spot removal spells, a couple of tutor cards, some card draw, and of course the mass creature kill spells to stop you from dying too quick. There are a few counterspells, but not enough to keep spamming, only for emergency protection. My EDH deckbuilding philosophy, is to have as much recursive stuff as possible. Because of the fact that games tend to drag on long, small creatures are not favourable. The ability to recur your threats repeatedly, or to gain incremental advantages over the course of the game (what I like to call 'Engines'), makes all the difference.

The main package that plays around the general, are cards like Executioner's Capsule, Scourglass, Courier's Capsule, Armillary Sphere, or really just any dead artifact. If for some reason she's not around or I need a backup plan, Sanctum Gargoyle + Skeleton Shard does about the same effect. The usual play would be Sharuum reviving Sphinx Summoner, fetching a Magister Sphinx. Next turn, boom you are at 10, attack with the team to pull a win from nowhere.

As for the Card Advantage Engines, we have Jace, Bitterblossom, Mind's Eye, Serum Tank, the Blue and the White Hondens. I haven't got the chance to play with Mind's Eye or Serum Tank, but I can tell you that having 2 Hondens is pretty sweet. Having 5 would probably very hard for you to lose. It's like Exodia (from Yu-Gi-Oh) man! There are 2 sweet combos in the deck. One is Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek, that just wins the game for you. The other is Isochron Scepter + either a counterspell or a removal spell. Can you say Can't Touch This? Haha

Enough explaining. On to the game play:

In the middle of a long drawn game...

Before I begin, you may need to open up Gathrer in a new tab to search up cards as I mention them..

  

The first few turns (quite a few actually) started quite slowly, with me being stuck on mana and not drawing any land or acceleration. Jeffrey quickly started attacking us with his general: Cromat. Damage from generals work a little differently, and it only takes 21 to kill you, so we had to be really careful. I did my best to slow him down a couple of turns, but turns out the many abilities of Cromat make him a very easily recur-able general. A few more turns passed, and I was about to stabalise with my recursion engines going, but then IT happened. Shaun casted Jokulhaups out of nowhere and blew up the world.

Jeff and I lost everything, and Shaun had an enchantment left. And so the game sort of restarted, as we tried to build back up again. As a weird twist of fate, I started drawing all the mana I needed to get back into the game quickly. Turns out all those early turns of not drawing lands paid off? Shaun didn't seem to do much from then on, occasionally hitting a creature or two and attacking someone. Jeff on the other hand recovered quite quickly as well, and surprisingly with all 5 colours of mana too. He soon recasted his general and started attack again.

After a few turns and somehow staving off the attacks of Cromat, I had stabilised with 2 Hodens in play. That means drawing 3 cards and gaining 4 life a turn for free. Not a bad thing. I remember somewhere along that I casted a Martial Coup for 6 and had a bunch of tokens sitting there. Then, later equip with a Loxodon Warhammer and my life total just kept going up and down with each cycle of turns. I tried to tutor up and assemble the Thopter Foundry combo by transmuting my Muddle the Mixture, but a combined effort from the 2 of them destroyed both my pieces.

Being dangerously low on life totals, and in a life threatening situation in terms of general damage, I decided the combo was too slow anyway and didn't pursue that plan. Jeff had gained way too much life and would be really hard to kill at 30 something life. I had to play my Aces. And so came the Sharuum into Sphinx Summoner into Magister Sphinx win. So I finished off both of them with a couple of flying Sphinxes and all my loyal Soldier Tokens. Double Kill, a rather epic win it was. Technically I did the last hit by combat damage, but Shaun had to chip in the 2 damage from Seal of Fire for the game to end. If he did not, the game probably would have lasted a few more turns with Jeff and me duking it out. But as everyone was so tired already from the 4-5 hours game.... We just decided that it was best to finish it and move on. So we went to play DotA!


For all EDH/Commander fans, or heck even if you don't know how to play, they recently released a new product that can get anyone into the game quickly without investing too much. It's aptly named: Commander!




They didn't pay me to advertise this, but I just think it's a great new way for people who don't know how to build decks to start playing! It's so fun and enjoyable that I'm itching to play again. If you wanna play with me, you can just contact me anytime to arrange a game.

Enjoy!