judyonthenet

Jeff was in town for spring break last week, and we all know what that means! No, we didn’t have pho… but we did have a get-together of my current coworkers (Mike, Ted, Hoang) and ex-workers (Jeff, Clarence, Bobby) to play some Magic! This time, Team MagiX + Kelvin (never worked at where I work now) + Robin (who works where I work but doesn’t play, she just dropped by hoping to witness the nerdfest) gathered at our apartment to draft Ted’s box of Morningtide, the latest MTG expansion.

A couple of the guys would be arriving late, so the rest of us chowed down on pizza as we waited. Mike arrived with pizza from one of MagiX’s approved pizza locations, A Slice of New York. To kill time, some of us played with our constructed decks while the rest fought Nazis and aliens in Metal Slug Anthology for the Wii. Eventually, everyone made it, but Robin had to jet so she missed out on seeing the actual draft.

I knew the set was small, but it was apparently REALLY small. We were seeing the same cards over and over again during draft. While you get sick of seeing the same cards passing by, it’s not as difficult to come up with a consistent deck. Some decks were really consistent; a couple guys had 6 or 7 of the same card in their 40 card decks. If I had paid more attention, I probably could have pulled this off also, but the most I got was 4 of a kind. The rare in my first deck was some giant warrior duo, and since this deck is all about tribes, I tried to find other giants or warriors. As I grabbed cards, I was seeing and taking a lot of elf warriors, and as a result, I ended up with another elf deck, but this time it was red-green. I had a few cards that used the kinship mechanic (plus some other stuff) with warriors. This basically summarizes my deck mechanic:

I did pretty decent for the night, with a 3-0-1 record. I first played Ted, who had a red-white-blue deck. Its primary gimmick, Stomping Slabs, was a major gamble, so I was managed a win. Mike had a bunch of annoying flying rogues with prowl, but he had a lot of helpful comments with how I was playing my deck. One of the most useful tips he gave me was to put Release the Ants in my deck, a card I took once, but not the second time since everybody seemed to think the card was dumb. (I know, I’m very easily influenced.) It was pretty much the only form of removal in my deck, and it turned out very handy against 1-toughness rogues in Mike’s deck. So handy, I actually ended up winning against him… crazy!

Next, I played Clarence, who also had a rogue/prowl deck. I don’t remember how it went, but I’m pretty sure I used Release the Ants again to my advantage. I eventually got another win, yay! My last opponent for MagiX was with Jeff, who had a white Kithkin/soldier deck. I lost one, then won one before we realized it was almost 1AM and had to call it a night, so that was a tie. After everybody left, I played against Kelvin (yet another rogue/prowl deck), and I was able to defeat him as well. I’m happy I had a fairly decent deck this time, and I picked the cards all by myself! Plus the get-together in general was a lot of fun; it was good to see everyone and play MTG with them. I deem it a success!

I think I might be encouraged enough to actually make that elf-deck I keep talking about. Though, I’m not sure how good I can do with constructed 60-card decks. The next day, Kelvin and I cleaned up the cards and went through Ted’s entire stash of Morningtide. We both grabbed more cards to make our respective draft decks into constructed decks. My new warrior deck ended up being owned pretty badly by Kelvin’s rogue deck. (Stupid fear/flying/prowl rogues.) Ah well, I guess it’s something I’ll have to work on.

New thing I learned today: Elvish Warrior is a reprinted card. It first appeared in Onslaught.

Once again, I actually left the house to do stuff this weekend, but I think I did enough lounging at home Friday and Saturday, so it wasn’t a total waste :)

Friday and Saturday consisted of video game playing and television watching. I haven’t had a chance to talk about the shows I’m watching, but in summary, everything was kinda meh this week. The rest of my free time was spent playing Fire Emblem, both GBA versions. I beat Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones, and then I decided to attempt finishing the original Fire Emblem (but got nowhere, so I’m still stuck on the same freaking stage). I’m still partial to the first Fire Emblem GBA game; but I still need to try out the after-beating-the-game play mode. However, Sacred Stones has spiders, which automatically makes it a worse game to the original Fire Emblem. I’m looking forward to trying the GameCube Fire Emblem and (eventually) its Wii sequel.

Sunday morning, Kelvin and I met up with my mother to check out my first wedding venue option: Hakone Gardens. It’s a privately maintained, but open to the public, Japanese garden in Saratoga. Reading the Yelp reviews, it seems like it used to cost $5 a car. Now it costs $5 a head! That seems way too much for a small park area; I don’t think it’s large or gorgeous enough to justify that cost. Luckily, I had arranged to check out the facility through appointment, which means I didn’t have to pay for admission. (Unfortunately for the engaged couple that walked in at the same time I did, they still had to pay since they didn’t make an appointment.) We were given pamphlets and a Here Comes the Guide guide, shown photos of weddings held there, and given a short tour of the facilities by Jeremy, the event coordinator substitute to Eric (the guy I was originally supposed to meet).

Walking around, it’s a nice and pretty garden, tho I think it looks better in pictures than in person. The pond was also looking extra muddy and algae-y. Of course, I’m not easily impressed by nature, so go figure. We did spend a good hour or so walking around; there’s a buncha small paths on the hillside next to the main garden to explore. Overall, I liked the place, and after seeing the prices other venues are asking in Here Comes the Guide, it doesn’t seem that expensive anymore. I need to go look at other places, but I do like Hakone for its Asian look. And since it’s the only place I’ve looked, it’s still my first choice. We’ll see. My mom seems to like this whole visiting-venues thing; she took 100+ pictures while we were at Hakone. (If I’m ever feeling not lazy, I might upload them in my gallery. Until then, you can check out the measly 15 pictures I took.)

After Hakone, we went to some Chinese food court thing in Saratoga where I got beef noodles (and later indigestion) before Kelvin and I headed to Mike’s place to draft Lorwyn. 10 people showed up, but only 8 drafted. I wasn’t too fond with Lorwyn previously, but after drafting and playing, it’s grown on me. The “tribes” in Lorwyn are like the “guilds” in Ravnica, but funnier with more goblins exploding, giants throwing, and goats being kidnapped… I certainly don’t remember the Boros guild being this entertaining. I drafted a black-green elf deck that had decent synergy, so now I want to do an elf deck. I lost one, won on against Clarence, and Ted and I lost a 2HG against him and Kelvin (which of course was long and exhausting). Best move of the 2HG game could be described with this picture:

(Edited 10/17 to add:)

Explanation: [spoiler]

Okay, not exactly what I asked Kelvin to draw, but entertaining image nonetheless. Basically, Clarence had this obnoxious 3/3 flyer with first strike that we couldn’t deal with initially, and we kept losing life to it for a few rounds. Even more annoying, it had +1/+1 from some equipment. Luckily, I finally had enough mana to cast my super-fast giant 7/7 flyer-blocker creature, so when they attacked, we block it with the giant creature. We have those stupid flying knights now, right? No! Kelvin has ONE mana open, just enough to kill his own pyro goblin with faerie dust, which causes it to explode and deal 3 damage to our giant green thing (just enough to kill it). Since those flying knights have first strike, our giant creature dies, and they STILL have their stupid flyer. Blast![/spoiler]

Ted had a counterspell for non-Faerie spells, but of course Peppersmoke is a Faerie spell. Stupid Faeries.

New thing I learned today: The next two-set block after Lorwyn (Lorwyn’s second set is called Morningtide) is called Shadowmoor.

Last night, we had another MagiX the Gathering (get it? heh heh) at my mom’s house since Jeff was back in town for a few days. Aside from Jeff, it was me, Kel, Chris, “the coworkers” (Mike, Bobby, Ted, and Clarence… tho he really is now an ex-coworker like Jeff), and Clarence’s friend Nate. The evening started off with four large Cicero’s pizzas: two “Bobby Yang specials”, a Hawaiian, and a pepperoni + mushroom. It ended with leftovers of Hawaiian and pepperoni + mushroom. Clarence jacked sodas from work, so thanks to Clarence’s work for providing beverages. Mike’s five cases of unopened sodas are now sitting at my apartment (actually, only four are… my mother jacked one for her party). btw, I think we all still owe Bobby and/or Mike for pizzas… at least me and Kelvin do.

Since Mike had to leave early, he didn’t draft or play, but acted as our own personal DCI judge, minus the dorky striped polo. He also acted as everybody’s draft-pick-consultant. As a result, I think everybody had fairly decent decks. Also, Mike sitting out left us with 8 people even, so with 4 pairs it was a good match setup.

My deck was green/white, giant green creatures with some green mana acceleration and white protection spells and weenie creatures. I played against Chris first, since we were both convinced our decks sucked. I won 2 out of 3 (lost 1). Chris’ deck was black-blue; his gimmick was to use Megrim and discard spells. It wasn’t enough to deal with Rhox (rare in my first pack) and his wurm buddies. After our three games, we observed other people’s epic battles (Clarence and Nate seemed particularly epic) until they finished and we could play more people.

I played Kelvin second. His deck was also green/white, so it was similar to mine. However, he had a heavy emphasis on elves, which I think made his deck a little faster. I lost two and won one, but the two I lost were really, really close, so I think our decks were comparable.

By the time Kelvin and I finished, Chris, Ted, and Mike had already went home, so there were six of us left. We decided to go for an epic-est battle of all epic battles with a 3-headed monster match. It was me, Jeff, and Bobby against Clarence, Kelvin, and Nate, with team simply based off the current seating arrangement at the dining room table. Tho Jeff and Bobby seemed to have decent decks, we came to the realization that perhaps they weren’t optimal for 3-headed giant. We made a rule to not allow any sideboarding, in the hopes that it would equalize the crappiness of our meant-for-1v1 decks. However, Bobby’s was still extra crappy, as a major mechanic of his deck was to draw and discard cards, which means his library was going to get burned quick. I forgot Jeff’s major mechanic, but my deck was plain and boring large creatures, which Kelvin also had. With Clarence’s damage heavy deck and Nate’s large library full of tricks (including a Millstone), I was pretty convinced we were going to get owned. However, with some luck and strategy, we somehow avoided it. Bobby describes how it went down more dramatically than I can in his blog. This picture (made by Kelvin) pretty much summarizes how we won:

Holy cow, though. 3-headed giant was such a freaking headache. I expected it to be long, but the amount of strategizing and team consulting and pondering of all the different potential outcomes every turn… along with how close the game got towards the end, I think I almost vomited several times. If I ever do that again, I’m going to need more soda. It was still very fun, but I think it took a toll on me.

The party was over with the end of 3-headed giant. Ted and I had split the box of cards, so Kelvin and I spent the rest of the night sorting cards, figuring out whose rares were whose. After surprisingly long time (like over an hour) figuring out incorrectly written down numbers in Ted’s group and weirdly written down pack lists from my group, we eventually got all the cards sorted.

Overall, I think the Magic get-together was pretty entertaining, so I declare it a success. I wasn’t frustrated this time around either. I was okay with the last draft, so I think tenth edition was a good choice for draft. No theme specific block mechanics means less awkward combos and more straightforward strategies. I’m feeling okay about MTG again; I think I even want to make decks! Just need to go sort my cards…

New thing I learned today: Rhox is originally from the Nemesis expansion and was some boring dinosaur looking thing. It wasn’t until Tenth Edition that it became some bad-ass double-horned bipedal rhino with a giant club.