jack

I started feeling somewhat groggy, as I'd stayed up all night playing board games and drinking port at Risa and AJ's and at Relativity, and then got about four hours sleep, as I don't normally get up for things at 9 on Sunday. But I was fine all day.

I went to the new set release event in Inner Sanctum, and came fourth (out of about thirty). I was very pleasantly surprised as I've been playing magic casually for a while, but this was the first time I did much better than halfway at any event.

I felt a little guilty as I had a disproportionately strong pool to start with (both Molten-Tail Mastacore and Spikeshot Elder won several games all by themselves, and I had a lot of passable small creatures, decent big creatures, and a few bits of removal. Thanks to JJ for advice to splash for black removal, that was definitely the right call, though I haven't played competitively enough to have a good instinct for what's a good splash) and wasn't sure I was carrying my weight, but I managed to do enough things right that I won two matches easily, two after a very tense struggle when I made an early mistake (either "not having enough early blockers to stop being overrun by giant poison creatures" or "not paying upkeep on masticore"), and lost one.

I got a lot of the most interesting rares in the set from my card pool or prize booster packs, notably:

Molten-Tail Masticore (which seems ridiculously good, at least in limited)
Spikeshot Elder (1RR for repeatable burn was really, really, useful in limited even with almost no ways to boost its power. I imagine it'd be less reliable in constructed, but still, at worst it's a 1/1 for 1, which is not bad in an aggressive deck, and if you do have a reasonable way to boost the power, then a repeatable burn of 2 to 4 is insanely useful.)
Prototype Portal (The "all spells cast go into the pool, and you choose one to come out". An Eye-of-the-Storm like artifact.)
Thopter Assembly (OK, everyone got this for turning up)
Spine of Ish Sah (OK, 7 colorless is very expensive, but even if you don't have any good ways to recur it, it was great as a permanent answer to anything)
Semblance Anvil (reduce the cost of spells by 2 -- it's almost too obviously crying out for an insane artifact combo of some sort, although at a cost of two cards it's probably overpriced as pure acceleration)
Galvanoth (At the start of your upkeep, reveal the top card of your library. If it's an inst/sorc, cast it for free. Has to be good for all sorts of hilarious things although I'm not quite sure what)
Asceticism (You creatures have troll-shroud and regen for two. Not worth 3GG in most decks, but would be great in multiplayer if you want to make all your threats much less answerable)
Myr Welder (Acquires activated abilities of other artifact cards, one of the few ""acquire abilities" cards with a low enough mana cost to be plausibly abusable somehow or other)
Cryptoplasm (Cheap repeatable clone)
Green Sun's Zenith (For XG, a tutor only for green creatures, but it puts them right into play at the cost of only one extra mana, and at the benefit of not needing any coloured mana other than G. Entirely in flavour for green, but ridiculously good. It was only nice in my sealed deck as I had nice medium green creatures but no outstanding ones, but when you can tutor for any creature -- including five colour creatures -- it's ridiculous. There is always a trade-off between flexibility and power. That's why creatures which scale are useful, and are normally less powerful than creatures which don't for the same cost. But this has one of the smallest premiums ever, at the benefit of finding a creature with whatever interesting ability you want out of your deck.)
Red Sun's Zenith. (Very good in any red deck, but not outstandingly better than previous red X-burn spells, whereas the green one is really new).

I was never sure how to feel about my growing accumulation of magic cards; I still resist thinking of myself as a magic player :) I reluctantly came to the conclusion that unless I open one of the $60 cards, there's no point trying to sell $1 and £10 type cards, so unless there's something it's more useful to trade to friends playing competitive standard constructed, I should go ahead and use the cards to play with as they're most useful to me, and not worry if some would be more useful to someone else.

The blue-red "Play a red cantrip, ping for one," deck

I played a couple of casual games with this, and it was ever so fun. It would be overwhelmed by a deck playing aggressive creatures, or using a lot of removal and unpingable creatures, but it's ever so satisfying against a deck that plays creatures (or planeswalkers).

The basic plan is to play one or two Cinder Pyromancers or Gelectrodes, which ping for 1 and untap on red spells/instant and sorcery spells, and then turn every red cantrip into a ping for two, so build up a hand of cards, chain a couple together to make a ping for 2 or 4 whenever the opponent plays a creature and ping them if they don't, then get down a Wee Dragonaughts or Kiln Fiend, play out half-a-dozen cantrips, manamorphoses, card draw and fast mana, and attack for lots haste unblockable.

Mirrodin Beseiged Release Event

Mirrodin Beseiged Release Event

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