Category: MTG

Today, for the first time in about 18 months, I went to a Magic prerelease event. It was for the new core set, Magic 2015.

I was surprised to see that turnout was relatively low compared to the last event I attended: only 22 people turned up. I was the oldest in the room, and there were no familiar faces from the events I attended a couple of years back. I also seemed like the only person that was there on my own…

We had to choose a colour and were given a box with a booster of that colour (including a promo) as well as five more boosters and a few other goodies. Here is the box contents:

I chose white but amusingly ended up with more red and blue cards than white. I stubbornly committed to white anyway, and out together a 40 card white/black deck containing:
– 14 creatures (11 white, 3 black, 2 artifact)
– 10 spells (8 white enchantments, 2 black removal)
– 16 lands (9 white, 2 black)

I didn’t have a lot of confidence in the deck, but had a “what the hell” attitude and went with it.

My expectations were realized as I faced my first two opponents, both of which utterly defeated me 0-2. My deck seemed very weak, particularly against evasion, and my ‘bombs’ were hiding in the bottom. After 2 rounds, I was dead last of 22 players!

But then things started to look up, mostly because these three finally made an appearance:

My third opponent (a sweet girl who’d only been playing a few months) was destroyed by the mythic creature above, and I ended up handily beating her 2-0. It seems my luck had turned, since I then easily defeated opponents 4 and 5 2-0 as well. Every time I cast Soul of New Phyrexia I won the game. That ‘make permanents indestructible’ ability is crazy!

After five rounds I had 9 points total, but missed out on top 8 (and therefore a prize) by a mere point. Not a bad showing considering how badly i lost the first two rounds!

Magic 2015 seems like a fun set, and it was fun to see the cards interact. However I left with mixed feelings about the event itself. It was fun to make the deck and see how it turned out, but the truth is I don’t have as much fun at the prereleases as I used to back when I went with SFL. For me, magic is more fun when you’re playing with friends, and it may be a while before I attend another prerelease.

It’s been a while since an MTG post, so it’s time to give my reviews of two recent releases.

The first is Commander 2013, which was released back in November of last year:

This product remains a bit controversial since one of the five decks (Mind Sieze) was – and remains – much more difficult to find than the other four. Despite herculean attempts I never saw it in any store myself, and ended up paying probably too much to get it at a convention. Wizards would eventually reprint the series with a disproportionate amount of Mind Sieze decks and yet it still remains hard to find. This is all (as is usually the case in these products) due to one single card in this deck only being in great demand for players of legacy MTG. This is the card:

Dedicated MTG players buy four copies of the Mind Sieze deck just to get four copies of this card for their decks, making it much harder to find for everyone 🙂

At any rate I eventually got all four, and over several weeks played 20 games in total, matching each deck against the others. Here’s the score breakdown:

Evasive Maneuvers (W/U/G): 3 wins, 1 loss
Eternal Bargain (W/U/B): 3 wins, 1 loss
Power Hungry (B/R/G): 3 wins, 1 loss
Nature Of The Beast (W/R/G): 1 win, 3 losses
Mind Sieze (U/B/R): 0 wins, 4 losses

In essence, it was a tie since EM beat EB beat PH beat EM! Three of the decks seem well matched with the other two being poor competition. Mind Sieze in particular failed to deliver, but my feeling playing it was that it was much better suited to multi play than 1 vs 1 (as is natural for a Commander deck).

In terms of individual decks, I like Eternal Bargain the most. The commander in particular is fun to play, and makes me want to build a lifegain deck around him (shame he isn’t W/G/B instead though). Most of the time, this deck won a game with massive amounts of health remaining.

I’ll soon split the decks up picking out individual cards for self-designed decks and absorbing them into my larger collection. At $30 each for 100 cards, these are well worth it and every bit as good as the first commander series in my opinion.

The second new product I have recently played is the new duel deck: Jace vs Vraska

I really enjoyed the last duel deck, and thought they were the best matched yet in the series. Sadly, this one takes a step back in playability.

Of the five games I played, Jace won all five and usually won them quite handily. His mono-blue deck is a weird mix of cards, dipping its fingers in many pots (illusions, counters, mill) without seeming to commit to any. It takes only a moment to look at the decklist and theorize ways to improve it, and yet ill-focused as it is it had no trouble shutting down Vraska in every game. Her deck has a green/black removal focus, with most spells and creatures dedicated to killing other creatures or removing life. While on paper her deck seems more cohesive than Jaces (and therefore I assumed it would win more often), in practice – at least in the five games I played – it was always just a bit too slow to get the upper hand. Jace’s illusions in particular were extremely effective once on the board, and one thing I took away from this duel deck was the potential of an all-illusion deck.

So a shutout in terms of gameplay, with Jace winning every time. Even with his (new) bad art, he’s still a badass 😉

Last week I got the latest Magic duel deck, called Heroes vs Monsters:

According to what I read online, duel decks not based around Planeswalkers don’t sell as well, so this one needs to get by on strong deck design and perhaps the fact that it contains preview cards for the upcoming Theros set like this one:

My experience is that this set nails the design, and the two decks are better matched than in any other duel deck I have played. In fact, in 6 games played, the scores were evenly matched with 3 wins apiece.

The first of the two decks is mostly white with a splash of red. It is heavy on creatures, with a slight enchantment theme. As with most duel decks, some of the included cards are not what I would choose, and were I to tweak the deck I would start by making more of the creatures below 3 CMC to better enable the Sun Titan that is one of the big-hitters of the deck.

The second deck is a red/green big creature based deck with a token theme. The hydra up top is one of the biggest (and best) cards in the set, but victory with this deck was often too fast for such a card to be relevant.

In the many games I played the pattern seemed to be if red/green didn’t win in the first 5-8 turns, then white/red would be the victor. In all six games I only cast the hydra once (and immediately shut it down with Bonds of Faith) and never cast Sun Titan. Red/green often won on the backs of such cards as Blood Ogre and Volt Charge, and white/red via cards such as Freewind Equenaut and Bonds of Faith (which I always cast on an opponents non-human creature).

I very much enjoyed playing these two decks. As with others, they help give an appreciation for cards I may otherwise have overlooked. In addition, there are some very good cards in here ‘for the collection’. I think overall the product may have benefitted from slightly slower decks (or at least a longer mana curve for each) but overall this product gets two thumbs up 🙂