*It's the end of Ravnica as they know it, and I feel fiiiiiiiiiiine*
Maybe 'Shiny Happy People' should be the new clan theme song. But, seriously off the newest Lamb of God album, 'The Number Six' SERIOUSLY makes me think Dimir.
Also, I'm probably not going to boycott Theros as originally stated. The "Choose Your Path" Prerelease looks like crap-tons of fun. I'm probably picking The Philosopher as my Hero, being that it's the only control element of the 5. :2mana:, :symtap:: Tap Target creature. as opposd to the other 4 which :symtap:: prevent next 1 damage, deathtouch, Haste, or +1/+1 until end of turn. I will point out that the blue path is the ONLY hero that has a mana cost in the hero's activated ability. I'm telling you, either control players are going to get some bonkers new spell/s soon, other than a can't be countered Wrath, or Rosewater is Pushing control out of being viable. For Christ's sake, he implied that the game doesn't need Instants. If he had it his way 100%, they would be gone. Imagine every set being like Portal, wih Enchantments and some Artifacts and Planeswalkers.
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Avatar by DarkNightCavalier
You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
For Christ's sake, he implied that the game doesn't need Instants.
He's not totally wrong about that. We could easily turn each instant into a sorcery with flash.
Also, hero deathtouch costs 3, and the cards aren't explicitly coloured. Wait until we know what the prerelease event is about - and what the hero cards are going to be used for - before you complain.
For whatever reason, there are like thrifty single mom's next door to my Mother's. Yes, before you ask, I just got an invite because my Mother loves me and will watch my kids while I try to get my swerve on.
#SmoovFlavaDigi
LISTEN UP CHUMPS
The time for clan contest is upon us! PM me for the clan Quicktopic and I'll message you the URL. Remember to keep it a secret! We need everybody on board to make up for me bombing the CC Mafia - we still want to win this year, and if everyone puts in, we damn well will!
He's not totally wrong about that. We could easily turn each instant into a sorcery with flash.
Also, hero deathtouch costs 3, and the cards aren't explicitly coloured. Wait until we know what the prerelease event is about - and what the hero cards are going to be used for - before you complain.
Ok, I didn't see that. Point being, Dimir gets a downer again. And I don't know about anyone else, but not having anything to play, or even having to Quicken a Sorcery, makes me anxious. I built an Esper Unblockable Ethereal Armor Deck, I had plenty of removal, and it didn't help. It felt slow and boring. Strategy gets crappy and straight forward when every spell resolves. I don't like it.
@Digi Tell us if you have any luck! And yes, my team is Black Krakens.
Sidenote: Built and playtested first draft of Elite Arcanist U/W Control Deck. I've found two things.
1) There's no such thing as too much draw, or too much removal.
2) Silence on a Stick in Standard WILL win you the Game.
If you guys want to see my build, I'll post tomorrow.
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You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
@Nate, got.some numbers. There was an uggo all about me... but she was an uggo. Also, I can't get into girls without glasses. No matter what. Unless they have skin or something.
which league are you in?
Also, I'm probably not going to boycott Theros as originally stated. The "Choose Your Path" Prerelease looks like crap-tons of fun. I'm probably picking The Philosopher as my Hero, being that it's the only control element of the 5. :2mana:, :symtap:: Tap Target creature. as opposd to the other 4 which :symtap:: prevent next 1 damage, deathtouch, Haste, or +1/+1 until end of turn. I will point out that the blue path is the ONLY hero that has a mana cost in the hero's activated ability. I'm telling you, either control players are going to get some bonkers new spell/s soon, other than a can't be countered Wrath, or Rosewater is Pushing control out of being viable. For Christ's sake, he implied that the game doesn't need Instants. If he had it his way 100%, they would be gone. Imagine every set being like Portal, wih Enchantments and some Artifacts and Planeswalkers.
MaRo has NEVER said the game doesn't need instants. I'm assuming you're misunderstanding that he said Instants should be a subtype of sorceries.
I get absolutely sick of the "OMG MARO KILLING MAGIC" ignorance that spouts up ever so often. He is the #1 reason the game is popular and succeeds so greatly.
@Jivan, have you not been on the internet? Do you not see that no matter what, fanboys will find a way to hate? Seriously? I hate all kinds of people for all kinds of things. For example: JJ Abrams. I hate JJ Abrams because despite kind of resurrecting a franchise most would have considered dead, (not me, obviously. Enterprise is the ****), he has always said he enjoys that other franchise who has been dead for quite some time more. Now the bastard has jumped ship. Who the crap is going to direct my movie? If you say George Lucas, I'll throw up in my mouth.
Haters going to hate. Same with Maro. I personally have no problems with the stuff most people have problems with. There are certain members of WotC staff that I have gone on public tantrums about, though.
You should be happy your boy got some milf numbers.
@Digi: I'm fine with hating things. I hate a lot of things...seriously, most things are trash to me. What I'm NOT fine with is baseless hate that comes off as whining (not you in particular Nate but the general Anti-MaRo attitude). People assume MaRo has complete control with the direction of the game and will constantly attack his decisions and treat him like some kind of MtG-leper. Yet at the same time they absolutely refuse to give him credit for anything positive that has happened in the last 10 years. Things that include Ravnica and the Dimir.
Without MaRo I don't believe magic would be good. Of course he says stupid **** like "Fateseal is unfun" and that pisses me off. But I accept that his decisions are for the better of the game as a whole. But that's because I'm not selfish enough to assume Magic should be designed around my wants.
Who isn't recognizing the life MaRo has brought to the game? I wouldn't even consider debating someone with so little intelligence as that.
Speaking of little intelligence: Ke$ha is hot for not having glasses and being that hot mess.
Anyway... I see you in the League, Nate.
I'm more or less just ranting at this point. Anti-MaRo statements put me into a blind seething rage. The kind of which that can only be calmed by the playing of Azathoth's cosmic musicians or mint ice cream.
I'm more or less just ranting at this point. Anti-MaRo statements put me into a blind seething rage. The kind of which that can only be calmed by the playing of Azathoth's cosmic musicians or mint ice cream.
Well, what MaRo actually said is mainly in his DtW podcast about Portal. He spoke about how much fun it was having only Lands, Creatures, and Sorceries. In random podcasts and articles where he openly hates on control because "it's unfun, it might be fun to the control player, but it's not fun for the person playing against the control player" and "Counterspell is unfun and completely lacks interaction". I'm by far not saying MaRo is actively removing control from Magic, I am however saying that he implies that the game would be better without it. I am saying I, personally think new world order is making the game too easy for new players. The difficulty should stay at a certain level to. support competition. I think that the level of difficulty is bordering on being too low. I did not, however, mean to say I disagree with everything he's done, nor am I saying he has run a muck with his influence on design. With the current ease of the dual land situation, pretty much everything is viable right now. However, I feel like big nasty over priced and over powered creatures dominate the T2 format. While control players did get the likes of Geist and snapcaster in innistrad, and imo even. Aetherling, Aggro has gotten things like Craterhoof, Thragtusk, Voice of Resurgence, Kalonian Hydra, andArchangel of Thune (which is going to make G/W life gain, and/or white weenie annoying). All of that said Advocate of the beast it the same cmc, power, and toughness, and rarity as Riot Devils. Mean while Doom Blade is bumped up to uncommon and Supreme Verdict can be trumped by a Boros or Golgari Charm.
All that said, my point to highlight is this: Either control is going to get something bonkers soon(within 2 - 3 years even), or control is being pushed out of viability. I don't know which, but imo, it's one or the other.
@Digi Sorry about my lateness, good work showing that #SmoovFlavaDigi. I'm anxious to draft my players already!!! Let's gooooo! *crosses fingers hoping for August 11th*
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You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
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Mean while Doom Blade is bumped up to uncommon and Supreme Verdict can be trumped by a Boros or Golgari Charm.
Well, if you're fed up with T2, how about switching formats, then? I heard Legacy is very diverse and interesting, and allows you to play whatever archetype you like ...
As for the Advocate thing: would you prefer the Devils to read '2UU: Jumps up and down until end of turn'? The Advocate's ability is about as relevant and mainly serves to convey flavour. Okay, you get him to work in draft once in a while, but that's about it.
Well, if you're fed up with T2, how about switching formats, then? I heard Legacy is very diverse and interesting, and allows you to play whatever archetype you like ...
As for the Advocate thing: would you prefer the Devils to read '2UU: Jumps up and down until end of turn'? The Advocate's ability is about as relevant and mainly serves to convey flavour. Okay, you get him to work in draft once in a while, but that's about it.
@ Digi: George Lucas. You're welcome.
I'm not. fed up with T2, per se, more fed up with new design. I don't know, I get what you're saying, maybe I'll just hold out and see what Theros block provides. Journey Into Nyx sounds promising in name alone. Maybe end on a dark note(a la New Phyrexia) for a later return block for the heroes to prevail(a la Mirrodin Pure). Until then, I'll just sign my posts like this:
Sig By Rivenor
Avatar by DarkNightCavalier
You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
I saw your new avatar and thought, "Who is this new punk posting in our thread?"
I'm with Nate on this one. MaRo is quite openly hating control out of Standard. He can never take our Counterspells and our Force of Wills away, but he can make sure Standard is nice and boring.
I was wondering if I was going to be alone in this. And I was just thinking 'ajacobik would be in on this with me.'
I like some creatures Lifebane Zombie is a prime example. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be plenty of aggro, I mean if there's no viable aggro, what the hell am I supposed to control? But, it's as though Timmy and Johnny aren't just metaphors for types of players, it's like Timmy and Johnny were 2 of MaRo's friends growing up. Timmy, Johnny, and Mark were bullied by a kid everyone called Spike, especially Timmy. Never able to get even with their bully, Mark now gets his long sought after vengeance, by turning every little once-helpless-now-aggressor Timmy the world over into the alpha authority, pummelling every Spike, no matter what new tricks Spike might come up with to try to take 'control' of the situation. How does it feel when the shoe is on the other foot Spike, how does it feel?
Sig By Rivenor
Avatar by DarkNightCavalier
You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
@Nate and Aja: +1. I think MaRo's contributions outweigh my annoyances with him but I definitely am more of a reactive player and I agree with most of what you've said.
Disgruntled Downriver Dimirican
Also, any modern players here? I want some input on some things.
Ok I'm really bored so I'm going to write up my most recent FNM experience. Warning, wall of text ahead.
I don't really like keeping up with Standard as I'd rather spend my money going out and drinking on the weekends. I prefer Modern since it doesn't rotate and isn't hugely expensive to get into. My friend, however convinced me to do Standard this night so I finished up my Jund Varolz deck and went with him. As usual, we did a round-robin tourney. This LGS is pretty laid back so we just went with however many rounds people still wanted to play and ranked the winners based on highest #wins-#losses, only counting people with 4+ rounds played and giving tiebreakers to the player(s) with more games played.
We have a pretty consistent group of people that show up to this shop so a lot of us know each other and can talk pretty easily but it's still very clearly separated into a few groups. My group consists of me, Bill, the store owners son John, and on a rare occasion a random assortment of Bill's friends from college. John's dad has a personal collection I drool over. He collects a playset of every card from every set so John can literally play any deck he wants at any time. You'd think this would make him hard to gameplan against but he's not really smart enough to strategize so he just plays the most recent MTGO daily winners deck. Bill always has some crazy homebrew that comes out of left field but still can win a lot. Then there's this crazy hot girl named Sarah. Sarah's the local girl-next-door that every guy's in love with. She's insanely hot, she knows it, and she sure as hell uses it to her advantage. She usually shows up by herself but always has a crowd around her. Sarah and I are decent enough friends as far as friends who only see each other once a week go since I'm the only one who doesn't creep on her. The next group is about 6-7 really nerdy guys with poor hygiene. They almost always play similar decks only branching out a color or two so it's pretty easy to gameplan against half the meta. This group also looks at Sarah as some sort of goddess and it's pretty sad. The last group is a bunch of skater/punk rock dudes that are generally really nice. The same 2 guys always show up and bring a few new friends each week it seems. Some of these guys are mean and try to cheat but overall they're good dudes. Other than that we get a pretty decent showing of randoms that overall keep to themselves. Every now and then one tries to hit on Sarah and fails miserably and it's absolutely hilarious to watch.
So background out of the way, let's get into the games. As I said above I ran a really explosive Jund Varolz list that can still function late game. I started out testing Naya Blitz but scrapped it because it felt fragile and too all in to me.
Round 1 vs Bill:
He plays some weird deck that was part White Weenie/Humans and part Conjurer's Closet.dec. The deck could smash out an amazing early game and then generate huge amounts of advantage late game, but lacked all semblance of a mid game.
G1- I curved out near perfectly. T1 Vexing Devil. T2 Lotleth Troll discarding Gravecrawler. T3 Varolz. T4 Vexing Devil + scavenge = dead.
G2- Kept a hand of Dreadbore, Dreadbore, Lotleth Troll, Domri, Landx3. Killed his Champion, dropped Troll, killed his Mentor, dropped Domri and just destroyed him in the mid game.
1-0
Round 2 vs Skater:
This wasn't one of the regular skater dudes. I tried to make small talk but he just stared at me. He played reanimator.
G1- He got an early start with 2 Avacyn's Pilgrim but couldn't find much else after that and I killed him before he could do anything worthwhile.
G2- Longer game than I usually have. He killed some of my early dudes so I was struggling a bit. Late game I was able to scavenge onto Vamp Nighthawk safely and win from there.
2-0
Round 3 vs Sarah:
This girl is dirty! She will try everything she can think of to distract you. She shows up with low cut shirts, flirts with you, compliments you, bats her eyelashes, the whole shebang. Well it may work wonders on everyone else, but none of it works on me and it drives her NUTS. In the last few weeks we actually started talking outside of FNM's and hung out a few times. I know it makes all the nerdy guys jealous so I flirt with her and do all sorts of little things (putting my hand down on her back when I walk up, get up and hug her when she comes in, buy her drinks, etc), I've asked her if it was creepy but she says she likes it. I also call her on her crap all the time, even if I'm 4 tables away I'll yell it out. Lately she's been helping me out distracting my opponents for me (see round 4), it may not be the best game etiquette but it sure is fun. So anyway, she was playing a Junk token-y deck. As usual she had a few people following her around
G1- She played a few cute creatures that just got trampled over by a huge Lotleth Troll. After this game she started sideboarding while I just left my deck sitting, leaned back and just smirked at her a bit. One of the guys watching asked why I wasn't sideboarding and I just said that I didn't need to. A couple of the guys laughed but Sarah kicked me under the table.
G2- Both of our decks grinded against each other to a stalemate around turn 6, she had 4 small creatures and I had one Gravecrawler with 2 +1/+1 counters. I top decked a Domri and thought I had it won but she revealed a land. Sarah top decked a Gavony Township and it was over from there. After this game she went digging through her board while I just sat there again bringing on a few comments like, "Still think you don't need to sideboard." Sarah gave me a little smile and asked, "If I flash you will you give me game 3?" I told her I didn't need to drop games to get her naked. A few of the nerdy guys giggled like school girls, Bill just shook his head at me, and Sarah started laughing a lot and shrugged her shoulders at me.
G3- I won this easily, not much else to say. She pretended to be mad at me but gave me a hug.
3-0
Round 4 vs Nerd:
This kid was watching the last game and is notorious for texting and calling Sarah all the time. Before the game he looked around then leaned towards me and asked if Sarah and I were dating. I just smiled a bit and gave a small shrug. He was playing Naya Blitz. I may not have won this game if Sarah hadn't been standing behind me with her arm kind of around me the whole time, the guy made so many misplays and bad decisions because he was staring at her all game.
G1- He kept a poor hand. No T1 play for him into a T2 Burning-Tree Emissary that didn't lead to anything else basically spelled game over for him.
G2- He curved almost perfectly T1 Champion, T2 BTE into Mayor, T3 Frontline Medic. I was able to hold off with a Dreadbore and Lili OTV for a while. Midway through this game Sarah moved my arm and sat down on my lap so I just put my arms around her and kept playing. I almost cracked up seeing how much this distracted the guy. I asked her after the night was over and she said she did it because she knew I was in trouble there and wanted to try and help out. Eventually I didn't draw enough creatures and he pulled out the win.
G3- This was a complete race, we both hit curve but Experiment One into a BTE to a non-buffed Flinthoof Boar wasn't as impressive as his G2 draw and I was able to grind out a win behind a 6/7 Vamp Nighthawk. After this last game Sarah kissed me on the cheek and got up and walked away. I jumped up, ran after her, grabbed her and kissed her. I think a couple of the geeky guys clapped but I wasn't paying attention. NBD but we're going out now ;).
4-0
The store owner kept making jokes about how we aren't allowed to play as a couple anymore because it's too unfair. A couple of the skater dudes seemed a little sad that she was taken but I don't care sucks for them!
Round 5 vs Skater#2:
This guy tried to stare me down but I was way too happy and kept talking to him. He eventually started laughing and said he couldn't keep a straight face for that long. He was really nice and we exchanged numbers after so he'd let me know when he was going to FNM. He played Aristocrats.
G1- This was an Aristocrat vs Nighthawk game that I eventually won after I cast Domri and -2'ed, forcing him to sac his last creature so I could Dreadbore on his turn.
G2- Boarded in Lili OTV and rode her to victory.
5-0
At this point I wanted to call it quits but everyone was in for a few more rounds and I didn't want to risk someone going 6-1 and beating me so I kept going.
Round 6 vs Nerd#2:
B.O. almost won this game. He smelled so badly I didn't even want to be near him so I played a little too fast. He played Junk aggro.
G1- I dropped a Troll and a Varolz consecutively without guarding against removal and lost them both to a Tragic Slip and an Abrupt Decay. This game went way downhill after he dropped a Voice and was over when he dropped Sorin.
G2- I was far more prepared for his removal but I didn't need it, he had mulled to 4 and could never recover from being in top deck mode after turn 3.
G3- 2 Gravecrawlers into a Troll put on a lot of pressure early. Once Domri dropped he was done.
6-0
After here I was the only undefeated player with only one player remotely close. Sarah had gone 5-1 so everyone else called it quits but they begged us for a rematch that could potentially force a tie.
Round 7 vs Sarah:
To say that this was the main event of the night would be a huge understatement. The owner of the store offered 5 packs of Modern Masters to the winner. I jokingly made a big deal about how either way I couldn't lose so we should split if we tied overall but I was having fun so I didn't care.
G1- Lingering Souls and Township kept me at bay without a Lotleth Troll out but my 2 Gravecrawlers + Nighthawk were too much to handle for her and I hit for lethal while I was at 5 life.
G2- This one wasn't even close. I blew her out with T1 Devil, T2 Spike Jester, T3 Troll + Crawler, T4 Varolz, T5 Scavenge Devil and Jester.
7-0
I felt bad so I gave her 2 of the MM packs which she promptly gave back to me when she opened a Goyf and wouldn't be able enough to keep it in good conscience. I also opened an Aether Vial, Figure of Destiny, and the all-powerful Squee. Overall it was one of the best nights of my life.
Really long post I know but if you don't want to read all that, just read the Round 3&4 recaps, those are the most interesting parts. Seriously one of the most fun nights of my life though! Went 7-0, got a girlfriend, and opened a Goyf.
@Nate and Aja: +1. I think MaRo's contributions outweigh my annoyances with him but I definitely am more of a reactive player and I agree with most of what you've said.
Disgruntled Downriver Dimirican
Also, any modern players here? I want some input on some things.
Ok I'm really bored so I'm going to write up my most recent FNM experience. Warning, wall of text ahead.
I don't really like keeping up with Standard as I'd rather spend my money going out and drinking on the weekends. I prefer Modern since it doesn't rotate and isn't hugely expensive to get into. My friend, however convinced me to do Standard this night so I finished up my Jund Varolz deck and went with him. As usual, we did a round-robin tourney. This LGS is pretty laid back so we just went with however many rounds people still wanted to play and ranked the winners based on highest #wins-#losses, only counting people with 4+ rounds played and giving tiebreakers to the player(s) with more games played.
We have a pretty consistent group of people that show up to this shop so a lot of us know each other and can talk pretty easily but it's still very clearly separated into a few groups. My group consists of me, Bill, the store owners son John, and on a rare occasion a random assortment of Bill's friends from college. John's dad has a personal collection I drool over. He collects a playset of every card from every set so John can literally play any deck he wants at any time. You'd think this would make him hard to gameplan against but he's not really smart enough to strategize so he just plays the most recent MTGO daily winners deck. Bill always has some crazy homebrew that comes out of left field but still can win a lot. Then there's this crazy hot girl named Sarah. Sarah's the local girl-next-door that every guy's in love with. She's insanely hot, she knows it, and she sure as hell uses it to her advantage. She usually shows up by herself but always has a crowd around her. Sarah and I are decent enough friends as far as friends who only see each other once a week go since I'm the only one who doesn't creep on her. The next group is about 6-7 really nerdy guys with poor hygiene. They almost always play similar decks only branching out a color or two so it's pretty easy to gameplan against half the meta. This group also looks at Sarah as some sort of goddess and it's pretty sad. The last group is a bunch of skater/punk rock dudes that are generally really nice. The same 2 guys always show up and bring a few new friends each week it seems. Some of these guys are mean and try to cheat but overall they're good dudes. Other than that we get a pretty decent showing of randoms that overall keep to themselves. Every now and then one tries to hit on Sarah and fails miserably and it's absolutely hilarious to watch.
So background out of the way, let's get into the games. As I said above I ran a really explosive Jund Varolz list that can still function late game. I started out testing Naya Blitz but scrapped it because it felt fragile and too all in to me.
Round 1 vs Bill:
He plays some weird deck that was part White Weenie/Humans and part Conjurer's Closet.dec. The deck could smash out an amazing early game and then generate huge amounts of advantage late game, but lacked all semblance of a mid game.
G1- I curved out near perfectly. T1 Vexing Devil. T2 Lotleth Troll discarding Gravecrawler. T3 Varolz. T4 Vexing Devil + scavenge = dead.
G2- Kept a hand of Dreadbore, Dreadbore, Lotleth Troll, Domri, Landx3. Killed his Champion, dropped Troll, killed his Mentor, dropped Domri and just destroyed him in the mid game.
1-0
Round 2 vs Skater:
This wasn't one of the regular skater dudes. I tried to make small talk but he just stared at me. He played reanimator.
G1- He got an early start with 2 Avacyn's Pilgrim but couldn't find much else after that and I killed him before he could do anything worthwhile.
G2- Longer game than I usually have. He killed some of my early dudes so I was struggling a bit. Late game I was able to scavenge onto Vamp Nighthawk safely and win from there.
2-0
Round 3 vs Sarah:
This girl is dirty! She will try everything she can think of to distract you. She shows up with low cut shirts, flirts with you, compliments you, bats her eyelashes, the whole shebang. Well it may work wonders on everyone else, but none of it works on me and it drives her NUTS. In the last few weeks we actually started talking outside of FNM's and hung out a few times. I know it makes all the nerdy guys jealous so I flirt with her and do all sorts of little things (putting my hand down on her back when I walk up, get up and hug her when she comes in, buy her drinks, etc), I've asked her if it was creepy but she says she likes it. I also call her on her crap all the time, even if I'm 4 tables away I'll yell it out. Lately she's been helping me out distracting my opponents for me (see round 4), it may not be the best game etiquette but it sure is fun. So anyway, she was playing a Junk token-y deck. As usual she had a few people following her around
G1- She played a few cute creatures that just got trampled over by a huge Lotleth Troll. After this game she started sideboarding while I just left my deck sitting, leaned back and just smirked at her a bit. One of the guys watching asked why I wasn't sideboarding and I just said that I didn't need to. A couple of the guys laughed but Sarah kicked me under the table.
G2- Both of our decks grinded against each other to a stalemate around turn 6, she had 4 small creatures and I had one Gravecrawler with 2 +1/+1 counters. I top decked a Domri and thought I had it won but she revealed a land. Sarah top decked a Gavony Township and it was over from there. After this game she went digging through her board while I just sat there again bringing on a few comments like, "Still think you don't need to sideboard." Sarah gave me a little smile and asked, "If I flash you will you give me game 3?" I told her I didn't need to drop games to get her naked. A few of the nerdy guys giggled like school girls, Bill just shook his head at me, and Sarah started laughing a lot and shrugged her shoulders at me.
G3- I won this easily, not much else to say. She pretended to be mad at me but gave me a hug.
3-0
Round 4 vs Nerd:
This kid was watching the last game and is notorious for texting and calling Sarah all the time. Before the game he looked around then leaned towards me and asked if Sarah and I were dating. I just smiled a bit and gave a small shrug. He was playing Naya Blitz. I may not have won this game if Sarah hadn't been standing behind me with her arm kind of around me the whole time, the guy made so many misplays and bad decisions because he was staring at her all game.
G1- He kept a poor hand. No T1 play for him into a T2 Burning-Tree Emissary that didn't lead to anything else basically spelled game over for him.
G2- He curved almost perfectly T1 Champion, T2 BTE into Mayor, T3 Frontline Medic. I was able to hold off with a Dreadbore and Lili OTV for a while. Midway through this game Sarah moved my arm and sat down on my lap so I just put my arms around her and kept playing. I almost cracked up seeing how much this distracted the guy. I asked her after the night was over and she said she did it because she knew I was in trouble there and wanted to try and help out. Eventually I didn't draw enough creatures and he pulled out the win.
G3- This was a complete race, we both hit curve but Experiment One into a BTE to a non-buffed Flinthoof Boar wasn't as impressive as his G2 draw and I was able to grind out a win behind a 6/7 Vamp Nighthawk. After this last game Sarah kissed me on the cheek and got up and walked away. I jumped up, ran after her, grabbed her and kissed her. I think a couple of the geeky guys clapped but I wasn't paying attention. NBD but we're going out now ;).
4-0
The store owner kept making jokes about how we aren't allowed to play as a couple anymore because it's too unfair. A couple of the skater dudes seemed a little sad that she was taken but I don't care sucks for them!
Round 5 vs Skater#2:
This guy tried to stare me down but I was way too happy and kept talking to him. He eventually started laughing and said he couldn't keep a straight face for that long. He was really nice and we exchanged numbers after so he'd let me know when he was going to FNM. He played Aristocrats.
G1- This was an Aristocrat vs Nighthawk game that I eventually won after I cast Domri and -2'ed, forcing him to sac his last creature so I could Dreadbore on his turn.
G2- Boarded in Lili OTV and rode her to victory.
5-0
At this point I wanted to call it quits but everyone was in for a few more rounds and I didn't want to risk someone going 6-1 and beating me so I kept going.
Round 6 vs Nerd#2:
B.O. almost won this game. He smelled so badly I didn't even want to be near him so I played a little too fast. He played Junk aggro.
G1- I dropped a Troll and a Varolz consecutively without guarding against removal and lost them both to a Tragic Slip and an Abrupt Decay. This game went way downhill after he dropped a Voice and was over when he dropped Sorin.
G2- I was far more prepared for his removal but I didn't need it, he had mulled to 4 and could never recover from being in top deck mode after turn 3.
G3- 2 Gravecrawlers into a Troll put on a lot of pressure early. Once Domri dropped he was done.
6-0
After here I was the only undefeated player with only one player remotely close. Sarah had gone 5-1 so everyone else called it quits but they begged us for a rematch that could potentially force a tie.
Round 7 vs Sarah:
To say that this was the main event of the night would be a huge understatement. The owner of the store offered 5 packs of Modern Masters to the winner. I jokingly made a big deal about how either way I couldn't lose so we should split if we tied overall but I was having fun so I didn't care.
G1- Lingering Souls and Township kept me at bay without a Lotleth Troll out but my 2 Gravecrawlers + Nighthawk were too much to handle for her and I hit for lethal while I was at 5 life.
G2- This one wasn't even close. I blew her out with T1 Devil, T2 Spike Jester, T3 Troll + Crawler, T4 Varolz, T5 Scavenge Devil and Jester.
7-0
I felt bad so I gave her 2 of the MM packs which she promptly gave back to me when she opened a Goyf and wouldn't be able enough to keep it in good conscience. I also opened an Aether Vial, Figure of Destiny, and the all-powerful Squee. Overall it was one of the best nights of my life.
Really long post I know but if you don't want to read all that, just read the Round 3&4 recaps, those are the most interesting parts. Seriously one of the most fun nights of my life though! Went 7-0, got a girlfriend, and opened a Goyf.
Excellent story. Content was fun, humor was golden, happy for you picking up the most want chick there, and hooking up with Sarah in addition to The Goyf. All in all a great read, it rivals Tera's MM Draft stories, although I don't think Tera got that good of a haul. Thank you for supporting my debate. And last, as well as least, Domri is a boy.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sig By Rivenor
Avatar by DarkNightCavalier
You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
All in all a great read, it rivals Tera's MM Draft stories, although I don't think Tera got that good of a haul.
First-pick girlfriend hasn't happened yet, here. Awesome story, ash, and congrats!
Just dabbling into Modern. Got a Garga-Geddon deck together (had my Restore Balances signed at a GP, and felt like using them ...), but hadn't the opportunity to test it yet, as I tend to wear black and do deckchecks on Modern tournaments.
Right. I will rarely be online next week, as my sister is getting married and I got hired for the preparations. Party time!
@ avatar: we had a heat wave last week and I had to switch to something that doesn't remind me that it's 36°C hot. I'm more of a winter type, as I'm tolerant to cold and often still run around in a t-shirt when it's close to freezing.
So if anyone is up, holla at your boy.
Ex saw my daughter yesterday for the first time since she got the boot. This was unbeknownst to me until after. I'm reeling. Somebody shoot me a text or something.
@Nate and Aja: +1. I think MaRo's contributions outweigh my annoyances with him but I definitely am more of a reactive player and I agree with most of what you've said.
Disgruntled Downriver Dimirican
Also, any modern players here? I want some input on some things.
Ok I'm really bored so I'm going to write up my most recent FNM experience. Warning, wall of text ahead.
I don't really like keeping up with Standard as I'd rather spend my money going out and drinking on the weekends. I prefer Modern since it doesn't rotate and isn't hugely expensive to get into. My friend, however convinced me to do Standard this night so I finished up my Jund Varolz deck and went with him. As usual, we did a round-robin tourney. This LGS is pretty laid back so we just went with however many rounds people still wanted to play and ranked the winners based on highest #wins-#losses, only counting people with 4+ rounds played and giving tiebreakers to the player(s) with more games played.
We have a pretty consistent group of people that show up to this shop so a lot of us know each other and can talk pretty easily but it's still very clearly separated into a few groups. My group consists of me, Bill, the store owners son John, and on a rare occasion a random assortment of Bill's friends from college. John's dad has a personal collection I drool over. He collects a playset of every card from every set so John can literally play any deck he wants at any time. You'd think this would make him hard to gameplan against but he's not really smart enough to strategize so he just plays the most recent MTGO daily winners deck. Bill always has some crazy homebrew that comes out of left field but still can win a lot. Then there's this crazy hot girl named Sarah. Sarah's the local girl-next-door that every guy's in love with. She's insanely hot, she knows it, and she sure as hell uses it to her advantage. She usually shows up by herself but always has a crowd around her. Sarah and I are decent enough friends as far as friends who only see each other once a week go since I'm the only one who doesn't creep on her. The next group is about 6-7 really nerdy guys with poor hygiene. They almost always play similar decks only branching out a color or two so it's pretty easy to gameplan against half the meta. This group also looks at Sarah as some sort of goddess and it's pretty sad. The last group is a bunch of skater/punk rock dudes that are generally really nice. The same 2 guys always show up and bring a few new friends each week it seems. Some of these guys are mean and try to cheat but overall they're good dudes. Other than that we get a pretty decent showing of randoms that overall keep to themselves. Every now and then one tries to hit on Sarah and fails miserably and it's absolutely hilarious to watch.
So background out of the way, let's get into the games. As I said above I ran a really explosive Jund Varolz list that can still function late game. I started out testing Naya Blitz but scrapped it because it felt fragile and too all in to me.
Round 1 vs Bill:
He plays some weird deck that was part White Weenie/Humans and part Conjurer's Closet.dec. The deck could smash out an amazing early game and then generate huge amounts of advantage late game, but lacked all semblance of a mid game.
G1- I curved out near perfectly. T1 Vexing Devil. T2 Lotleth Troll discarding Gravecrawler. T3 Varolz. T4 Vexing Devil + scavenge = dead.
G2- Kept a hand of Dreadbore, Dreadbore, Lotleth Troll, Domri, Landx3. Killed his Champion, dropped Troll, killed his Mentor, dropped Domri and just destroyed him in the mid game.
1-0
Round 2 vs Skater:
This wasn't one of the regular skater dudes. I tried to make small talk but he just stared at me. He played reanimator.
G1- He got an early start with 2 Avacyn's Pilgrim but couldn't find much else after that and I killed him before he could do anything worthwhile.
G2- Longer game than I usually have. He killed some of my early dudes so I was struggling a bit. Late game I was able to scavenge onto Vamp Nighthawk safely and win from there.
2-0
Round 3 vs Sarah:
This girl is dirty! She will try everything she can think of to distract you. She shows up with low cut shirts, flirts with you, compliments you, bats her eyelashes, the whole shebang. Well it may work wonders on everyone else, but none of it works on me and it drives her NUTS. In the last few weeks we actually started talking outside of FNM's and hung out a few times. I know it makes all the nerdy guys jealous so I flirt with her and do all sorts of little things (putting my hand down on her back when I walk up, get up and hug her when she comes in, buy her drinks, etc), I've asked her if it was creepy but she says she likes it. I also call her on her crap all the time, even if I'm 4 tables away I'll yell it out. Lately she's been helping me out distracting my opponents for me (see round 4), it may not be the best game etiquette but it sure is fun. So anyway, she was playing a Junk token-y deck. As usual she had a few people following her around
G1- She played a few cute creatures that just got trampled over by a huge Lotleth Troll. After this game she started sideboarding while I just left my deck sitting, leaned back and just smirked at her a bit. One of the guys watching asked why I wasn't sideboarding and I just said that I didn't need to. A couple of the guys laughed but Sarah kicked me under the table.
G2- Both of our decks grinded against each other to a stalemate around turn 6, she had 4 small creatures and I had one Gravecrawler with 2 +1/+1 counters. I top decked a Domri and thought I had it won but she revealed a land. Sarah top decked a Gavony Township and it was over from there. After this game she went digging through her board while I just sat there again bringing on a few comments like, "Still think you don't need to sideboard." Sarah gave me a little smile and asked, "If I flash you will you give me game 3?" I told her I didn't need to drop games to get her naked. A few of the nerdy guys giggled like school girls, Bill just shook his head at me, and Sarah started laughing a lot and shrugged her shoulders at me.
G3- I won this easily, not much else to say. She pretended to be mad at me but gave me a hug.
3-0
Round 4 vs Nerd:
This kid was watching the last game and is notorious for texting and calling Sarah all the time. Before the game he looked around then leaned towards me and asked if Sarah and I were dating. I just smiled a bit and gave a small shrug. He was playing Naya Blitz. I may not have won this game if Sarah hadn't been standing behind me with her arm kind of around me the whole time, the guy made so many misplays and bad decisions because he was staring at her all game.
G1- He kept a poor hand. No T1 play for him into a T2 Burning-Tree Emissary that didn't lead to anything else basically spelled game over for him.
G2- He curved almost perfectly T1 Champion, T2 BTE into Mayor, T3 Frontline Medic. I was able to hold off with a Dreadbore and Lili OTV for a while. Midway through this game Sarah moved my arm and sat down on my lap so I just put my arms around her and kept playing. I almost cracked up seeing how much this distracted the guy. I asked her after the night was over and she said she did it because she knew I was in trouble there and wanted to try and help out. Eventually I didn't draw enough creatures and he pulled out the win.
G3- This was a complete race, we both hit curve but Experiment One into a BTE to a non-buffed Flinthoof Boar wasn't as impressive as his G2 draw and I was able to grind out a win behind a 6/7 Vamp Nighthawk. After this last game Sarah kissed me on the cheek and got up and walked away. I jumped up, ran after her, grabbed her and kissed her. I think a couple of the geeky guys clapped but I wasn't paying attention. NBD but we're going out now ;).
4-0
The store owner kept making jokes about how we aren't allowed to play as a couple anymore because it's too unfair. A couple of the skater dudes seemed a little sad that she was taken but I don't care sucks for them!
Round 5 vs Skater#2:
This guy tried to stare me down but I was way too happy and kept talking to him. He eventually started laughing and said he couldn't keep a straight face for that long. He was really nice and we exchanged numbers after so he'd let me know when he was going to FNM. He played Aristocrats.
G1- This was an Aristocrat vs Nighthawk game that I eventually won after I cast Domri and -2'ed, forcing him to sac his last creature so I could Dreadbore on his turn.
G2- Boarded in Lili OTV and rode her to victory.
5-0
At this point I wanted to call it quits but everyone was in for a few more rounds and I didn't want to risk someone going 6-1 and beating me so I kept going.
Round 6 vs Nerd#2:
B.O. almost won this game. He smelled so badly I didn't even want to be near him so I played a little too fast. He played Junk aggro.
G1- I dropped a Troll and a Varolz consecutively without guarding against removal and lost them both to a Tragic Slip and an Abrupt Decay. This game went way downhill after he dropped a Voice and was over when he dropped Sorin.
G2- I was far more prepared for his removal but I didn't need it, he had mulled to 4 and could never recover from being in top deck mode after turn 3.
G3- 2 Gravecrawlers into a Troll put on a lot of pressure early. Once Domri dropped he was done.
6-0
After here I was the only undefeated player with only one player remotely close. Sarah had gone 5-1 so everyone else called it quits but they begged us for a rematch that could potentially force a tie.
Round 7 vs Sarah:
To say that this was the main event of the night would be a huge understatement. The owner of the store offered 5 packs of Modern Masters to the winner. I jokingly made a big deal about how either way I couldn't lose so we should split if we tied overall but I was having fun so I didn't care.
G1- Lingering Souls and Township kept me at bay without a Lotleth Troll out but my 2 Gravecrawlers + Nighthawk were too much to handle for her and I hit for lethal while I was at 5 life.
G2- This one wasn't even close. I blew her out with T1 Devil, T2 Spike Jester, T3 Troll + Crawler, T4 Varolz, T5 Scavenge Devil and Jester.
7-0
I felt bad so I gave her 2 of the MM packs which she promptly gave back to me when she opened a Goyf and wouldn't be able enough to keep it in good conscience. I also opened an Aether Vial, Figure of Destiny, and the all-powerful Squee. Overall it was one of the best nights of my life.
Really long post I know but if you don't want to read all that, just read the Round 3&4 recaps, those are the most interesting parts. Seriously one of the most fun nights of my life though! Went 7-0, got a girlfriend, and opened a Goyf.
LUCKY! =p congrats on all the above. I wish I was there to see it all go down in person. =)
So if anyone is up, holla at your boy.
Ex saw my daughter yesterday for the first time since she got the boot. This was unbeknownst to me until after. I'm reeling. Somebody shoot me a text or something.
Right. I will rarely be online next week, as my sister is getting married and I got hired for the preparations. Party time!
@ avatar: we had a heat wave last week and I had to switch to something that doesn't remind me that it's 36°C hot. I'm more of a winter type, as I'm tolerant to cold and often still run around in a t-shirt when it's close to freezing.
Congrats to your sister! Have fun working on the preparations. I'm with you on enjoying the cold. Gingers hate sun and heat, and I'm no daywalker.
@Digi Sorry I'm late, got bombarded with chores that I've been neglecting. I trust you're fine, you're a strong father. If the Ex pisses you off, you can always fall back on a Nerve Pinch.
Sig By Rivenor
Avatar by DarkNightCavalier
You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
You look like the lead singer from R.E.M.
*It's the end of Ravnica as they know it, and I feel fiiiiiiiiiiine*
Maybe 'Shiny Happy People' should be the new clan theme song. But, seriously off the newest Lamb of God album, 'The Number Six' SERIOUSLY makes me think Dimir.
Also, I'm probably not going to boycott Theros as originally stated. The "Choose Your Path" Prerelease looks like crap-tons of fun. I'm probably picking The Philosopher as my Hero, being that it's the only control element of the 5. :2mana:, :symtap:: Tap Target creature. as opposd to the other 4 which :symtap:: prevent next 1 damage, deathtouch, Haste, or +1/+1 until end of turn. I will point out that the blue path is the ONLY hero that has a mana cost in the hero's activated ability. I'm telling you, either control players are going to get some bonkers new spell/s soon, other than a can't be countered Wrath, or Rosewater is Pushing control out of being viable. For Christ's sake, he implied that the game doesn't need Instants. If he had it his way 100%, they would be gone. Imagine every set being like Portal, wih Enchantments and some Artifacts and Planeswalkers.
Avatar by DarkNightCavalier
You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
He's not totally wrong about that. We could easily turn each instant into a sorcery with flash.
Also, hero deathtouch costs 3, and the cards aren't explicitly coloured. Wait until we know what the prerelease event is about - and what the hero cards are going to be used for - before you complain.
L1 Judge
For whatever reason, there are like thrifty single mom's next door to my Mother's. Yes, before you ask, I just got an invite because my Mother loves me and will watch my kids while I try to get my swerve on.
#SmoovFlavaDigi
@Theros, this looks awesome.
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
The time for clan contest is upon us! PM me for the clan Quicktopic and I'll message you the URL. Remember to keep it a secret! We need everybody on board to make up for me bombing the CC Mafia - we still want to win this year, and if everyone puts in, we damn well will!
I anxiously await your PMs!
Bloodflow Overseer
of House Dimir
@Nate, are you playing ff with us?
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
Ok, I didn't see that. Point being, Dimir gets a downer again. And I don't know about anyone else, but not having anything to play, or even having to Quicken a Sorcery, makes me anxious. I built an Esper Unblockable Ethereal Armor Deck, I had plenty of removal, and it didn't help. It felt slow and boring. Strategy gets crappy and straight forward when every spell resolves. I don't like it.
@Digi Tell us if you have any luck! And yes, my team is Black Krakens.
Sidenote: Built and playtested first draft of Elite Arcanist U/W Control Deck. I've found two things.
1) There's no such thing as too much draw, or too much removal.
2) Silence on a Stick in Standard WILL win you the Game.
If you guys want to see my build, I'll post tomorrow.
Avatar by DarkNightCavalier
You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
which league are you in?
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
MaRo has NEVER said the game doesn't need instants. I'm assuming you're misunderstanding that he said Instants should be a subtype of sorceries.
I get absolutely sick of the "OMG MARO KILLING MAGIC" ignorance that spouts up ever so often. He is the #1 reason the game is popular and succeeds so greatly.
Haters going to hate. Same with Maro. I personally have no problems with the stuff most people have problems with. There are certain members of WotC staff that I have gone on public tantrums about, though.
You should be happy your boy got some milf numbers.
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
Without MaRo I don't believe magic would be good. Of course he says stupid **** like "Fateseal is unfun" and that pisses me off. But I accept that his decisions are for the better of the game as a whole. But that's because I'm not selfish enough to assume Magic should be designed around my wants.
Speaking of little intelligence: Ke$ha is hot for not having glasses and being that hot mess.
Anyway... I see you in the League, Nate.
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
I'm more or less just ranting at this point. Anti-MaRo statements put me into a blind seething rage. The kind of which that can only be calmed by the playing of Azathoth's cosmic musicians or mint ice cream.
Well, what MaRo actually said is mainly in his DtW podcast about Portal. He spoke about how much fun it was having only Lands, Creatures, and Sorceries. In random podcasts and articles where he openly hates on control because "it's unfun, it might be fun to the control player, but it's not fun for the person playing against the control player" and "Counterspell is unfun and completely lacks interaction". I'm by far not saying MaRo is actively removing control from Magic, I am however saying that he implies that the game would be better without it. I am saying I, personally think new world order is making the game too easy for new players. The difficulty should stay at a certain level to. support competition. I think that the level of difficulty is bordering on being too low. I did not, however, mean to say I disagree with everything he's done, nor am I saying he has run a muck with his influence on design. With the current ease of the dual land situation, pretty much everything is viable right now. However, I feel like big nasty over priced and over powered creatures dominate the T2 format. While control players did get the likes of Geist and snapcaster in innistrad, and imo even. Aetherling, Aggro has gotten things like Craterhoof, Thragtusk, Voice of Resurgence, Kalonian Hydra, andArchangel of Thune (which is going to make G/W life gain, and/or white weenie annoying). All of that said Advocate of the beast it the same cmc, power, and toughness, and rarity as Riot Devils. Mean while Doom Blade is bumped up to uncommon and Supreme Verdict can be trumped by a Boros or Golgari Charm.
All that said, my point to highlight is this: Either control is going to get something bonkers soon(within 2 - 3 years even), or control is being pushed out of viability. I don't know which, but imo, it's one or the other.
@Digi Sorry about my lateness, good work showing that #SmoovFlavaDigi. I'm anxious to draft my players already!!! Let's gooooo! *crosses fingers hoping for August 11th*
Avatar by DarkNightCavalier
You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
Well, if you're fed up with T2, how about switching formats, then? I heard Legacy is very diverse and interesting, and allows you to play whatever archetype you like ...
As for the Advocate thing: would you prefer the Devils to read '2UU: Jumps up and down until end of turn'? The Advocate's ability is about as relevant and mainly serves to convey flavour. Okay, you get him to work in draft once in a while, but that's about it.
@ Digi: George Lucas. You're welcome.
L1 Judge
I'm not. fed up with T2, per se, more fed up with new design. I don't know, I get what you're saying, maybe I'll just hold out and see what Theros block provides. Journey Into Nyx sounds promising in name alone. Maybe end on a dark note(a la New Phyrexia) for a later return block for the heroes to prevail(a la Mirrodin Pure). Until then, I'll just sign my posts like this:
Avatar by DarkNightCavalier
You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
I was wondering if I was going to be alone in this. And I was just thinking 'ajacobik would be in on this with me.'
I like some creatures Lifebane Zombie is a prime example. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be plenty of aggro, I mean if there's no viable aggro, what the hell am I supposed to control? But, it's as though Timmy and Johnny aren't just metaphors for types of players, it's like Timmy and Johnny were 2 of MaRo's friends growing up. Timmy, Johnny, and Mark were bullied by a kid everyone called Spike, especially Timmy. Never able to get even with their bully, Mark now gets his long sought after vengeance, by turning every little once-helpless-now-aggressor Timmy the world over into the alpha authority, pummelling every Spike, no matter what new tricks Spike might come up with to try to take 'control' of the situation. How does it feel when the shoe is on the other foot Spike, how does it feel?
Disgruntled Downriver Dimirican
Avatar by DarkNightCavalier
You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
@Nate and Aja: +1. I think MaRo's contributions outweigh my annoyances with him but I definitely am more of a reactive player and I agree with most of what you've said.
Also, any modern players here? I want some input on some things.
Ok I'm really bored so I'm going to write up my most recent FNM experience. Warning, wall of text ahead.
I don't really like keeping up with Standard as I'd rather spend my money going out and drinking on the weekends. I prefer Modern since it doesn't rotate and isn't hugely expensive to get into. My friend, however convinced me to do Standard this night so I finished up my Jund Varolz deck and went with him. As usual, we did a round-robin tourney. This LGS is pretty laid back so we just went with however many rounds people still wanted to play and ranked the winners based on highest #wins-#losses, only counting people with 4+ rounds played and giving tiebreakers to the player(s) with more games played.
We have a pretty consistent group of people that show up to this shop so a lot of us know each other and can talk pretty easily but it's still very clearly separated into a few groups. My group consists of me, Bill, the store owners son John, and on a rare occasion a random assortment of Bill's friends from college. John's dad has a personal collection I drool over. He collects a playset of every card from every set so John can literally play any deck he wants at any time. You'd think this would make him hard to gameplan against but he's not really smart enough to strategize so he just plays the most recent MTGO daily winners deck. Bill always has some crazy homebrew that comes out of left field but still can win a lot. Then there's this crazy hot girl named Sarah. Sarah's the local girl-next-door that every guy's in love with. She's insanely hot, she knows it, and she sure as hell uses it to her advantage. She usually shows up by herself but always has a crowd around her. Sarah and I are decent enough friends as far as friends who only see each other once a week go since I'm the only one who doesn't creep on her. The next group is about 6-7 really nerdy guys with poor hygiene. They almost always play similar decks only branching out a color or two so it's pretty easy to gameplan against half the meta. This group also looks at Sarah as some sort of goddess and it's pretty sad. The last group is a bunch of skater/punk rock dudes that are generally really nice. The same 2 guys always show up and bring a few new friends each week it seems. Some of these guys are mean and try to cheat but overall they're good dudes. Other than that we get a pretty decent showing of randoms that overall keep to themselves. Every now and then one tries to hit on Sarah and fails miserably and it's absolutely hilarious to watch.
So background out of the way, let's get into the games. As I said above I ran a really explosive Jund Varolz list that can still function late game. I started out testing Naya Blitz but scrapped it because it felt fragile and too all in to me.
Round 1 vs Bill:
He plays some weird deck that was part White Weenie/Humans and part Conjurer's Closet.dec. The deck could smash out an amazing early game and then generate huge amounts of advantage late game, but lacked all semblance of a mid game.
G1- I curved out near perfectly. T1 Vexing Devil. T2 Lotleth Troll discarding Gravecrawler. T3 Varolz. T4 Vexing Devil + scavenge = dead.
G2- Kept a hand of Dreadbore, Dreadbore, Lotleth Troll, Domri, Landx3. Killed his Champion, dropped Troll, killed his Mentor, dropped Domri and just destroyed him in the mid game.
1-0
Round 2 vs Skater:
This wasn't one of the regular skater dudes. I tried to make small talk but he just stared at me. He played reanimator.
G1- He got an early start with 2 Avacyn's Pilgrim but couldn't find much else after that and I killed him before he could do anything worthwhile.
G2- Longer game than I usually have. He killed some of my early dudes so I was struggling a bit. Late game I was able to scavenge onto Vamp Nighthawk safely and win from there.
2-0
Round 3 vs Sarah:
This girl is dirty! She will try everything she can think of to distract you. She shows up with low cut shirts, flirts with you, compliments you, bats her eyelashes, the whole shebang. Well it may work wonders on everyone else, but none of it works on me and it drives her NUTS. In the last few weeks we actually started talking outside of FNM's and hung out a few times. I know it makes all the nerdy guys jealous so I flirt with her and do all sorts of little things (putting my hand down on her back when I walk up, get up and hug her when she comes in, buy her drinks, etc), I've asked her if it was creepy but she says she likes it. I also call her on her crap all the time, even if I'm 4 tables away I'll yell it out. Lately she's been helping me out distracting my opponents for me (see round 4), it may not be the best game etiquette but it sure is fun. So anyway, she was playing a Junk token-y deck. As usual she had a few people following her around
G1- She played a few cute creatures that just got trampled over by a huge Lotleth Troll. After this game she started sideboarding while I just left my deck sitting, leaned back and just smirked at her a bit. One of the guys watching asked why I wasn't sideboarding and I just said that I didn't need to. A couple of the guys laughed but Sarah kicked me under the table.
G2- Both of our decks grinded against each other to a stalemate around turn 6, she had 4 small creatures and I had one Gravecrawler with 2 +1/+1 counters. I top decked a Domri and thought I had it won but she revealed a land. Sarah top decked a Gavony Township and it was over from there. After this game she went digging through her board while I just sat there again bringing on a few comments like, "Still think you don't need to sideboard." Sarah gave me a little smile and asked, "If I flash you will you give me game 3?" I told her I didn't need to drop games to get her naked. A few of the nerdy guys giggled like school girls, Bill just shook his head at me, and Sarah started laughing a lot and shrugged her shoulders at me.
G3- I won this easily, not much else to say. She pretended to be mad at me but gave me a hug.
3-0
Round 4 vs Nerd:
This kid was watching the last game and is notorious for texting and calling Sarah all the time. Before the game he looked around then leaned towards me and asked if Sarah and I were dating. I just smiled a bit and gave a small shrug. He was playing Naya Blitz. I may not have won this game if Sarah hadn't been standing behind me with her arm kind of around me the whole time, the guy made so many misplays and bad decisions because he was staring at her all game.
G1- He kept a poor hand. No T1 play for him into a T2 Burning-Tree Emissary that didn't lead to anything else basically spelled game over for him.
G2- He curved almost perfectly T1 Champion, T2 BTE into Mayor, T3 Frontline Medic. I was able to hold off with a Dreadbore and Lili OTV for a while. Midway through this game Sarah moved my arm and sat down on my lap so I just put my arms around her and kept playing. I almost cracked up seeing how much this distracted the guy. I asked her after the night was over and she said she did it because she knew I was in trouble there and wanted to try and help out. Eventually I didn't draw enough creatures and he pulled out the win.
G3- This was a complete race, we both hit curve but Experiment One into a BTE to a non-buffed Flinthoof Boar wasn't as impressive as his G2 draw and I was able to grind out a win behind a 6/7 Vamp Nighthawk. After this last game Sarah kissed me on the cheek and got up and walked away. I jumped up, ran after her, grabbed her and kissed her. I think a couple of the geeky guys clapped but I wasn't paying attention. NBD but we're going out now ;).
4-0
The store owner kept making jokes about how we aren't allowed to play as a couple anymore because it's too unfair. A couple of the skater dudes seemed a little sad that she was taken but I don't care sucks for them!
Round 5 vs Skater#2:
This guy tried to stare me down but I was way too happy and kept talking to him. He eventually started laughing and said he couldn't keep a straight face for that long. He was really nice and we exchanged numbers after so he'd let me know when he was going to FNM. He played Aristocrats.
G1- This was an Aristocrat vs Nighthawk game that I eventually won after I cast Domri and -2'ed, forcing him to sac his last creature so I could Dreadbore on his turn.
G2- Boarded in Lili OTV and rode her to victory.
5-0
At this point I wanted to call it quits but everyone was in for a few more rounds and I didn't want to risk someone going 6-1 and beating me so I kept going.
Round 6 vs Nerd#2:
B.O. almost won this game. He smelled so badly I didn't even want to be near him so I played a little too fast. He played Junk aggro.
G1- I dropped a Troll and a Varolz consecutively without guarding against removal and lost them both to a Tragic Slip and an Abrupt Decay. This game went way downhill after he dropped a Voice and was over when he dropped Sorin.
G2- I was far more prepared for his removal but I didn't need it, he had mulled to 4 and could never recover from being in top deck mode after turn 3.
G3- 2 Gravecrawlers into a Troll put on a lot of pressure early. Once Domri dropped he was done.
6-0
After here I was the only undefeated player with only one player remotely close. Sarah had gone 5-1 so everyone else called it quits but they begged us for a rematch that could potentially force a tie.
Round 7 vs Sarah:
To say that this was the main event of the night would be a huge understatement. The owner of the store offered 5 packs of Modern Masters to the winner. I jokingly made a big deal about how either way I couldn't lose so we should split if we tied overall but I was having fun so I didn't care.
G1- Lingering Souls and Township kept me at bay without a Lotleth Troll out but my 2 Gravecrawlers + Nighthawk were too much to handle for her and I hit for lethal while I was at 5 life.
G2- This one wasn't even close. I blew her out with T1 Devil, T2 Spike Jester, T3 Troll + Crawler, T4 Varolz, T5 Scavenge Devil and Jester.
7-0
I felt bad so I gave her 2 of the MM packs which she promptly gave back to me when she opened a Goyf and wouldn't be able enough to keep it in good conscience. I also opened an Aether Vial, Figure of Destiny, and the all-powerful Squee. Overall it was one of the best nights of my life.
RIP Eggs
My Trade Thread
Excellent story. Content was fun, humor was golden, happy for you picking up the most want chick there, and hooking up with Sarah in addition to The Goyf. All in all a great read, it rivals Tera's MM Draft stories, although I don't think Tera got that good of a haul. Thank you for supporting my debate. And last, as well as least, Domri is a boy.
Avatar by DarkNightCavalier
You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
First-pick girlfriend hasn't happened yet, here. Awesome story, ash, and congrats!
Just dabbling into Modern. Got a Garga-Geddon deck together (had my Restore Balances signed at a GP, and felt like using them ...), but hadn't the opportunity to test it yet, as I tend to wear black and do deckchecks on Modern tournaments.
Right. I will rarely be online next week, as my sister is getting married and I got hired for the preparations. Party time!
@ avatar: we had a heat wave last week and I had to switch to something that doesn't remind me that it's 36°C hot. I'm more of a winter type, as I'm tolerant to cold and often still run around in a t-shirt when it's close to freezing.
L1 Judge
Ex saw my daughter yesterday for the first time since she got the boot. This was unbeknownst to me until after. I'm reeling. Somebody shoot me a text or something.
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
LUCKY! =p congrats on all the above. I wish I was there to see it all go down in person. =)
Got work, but stay strong my friend!
Executive Infiltrator of [House Dimir].
My Trade Thread
Current EDH Decks
Braids
Wrexial
Bruna
Marath
Vorel
Tariel WIP
Congrats to your sister! Have fun working on the preparations. I'm with you on enjoying the cold. Gingers hate sun and heat, and I'm no daywalker.
@Digi Sorry I'm late, got bombarded with chores that I've been neglecting. I trust you're fine, you're a strong father. If the Ex pisses you off, you can always fall back on a Nerve Pinch.
Avatar by DarkNightCavalier
You will not remember my face, your name, or your journey, but in the end...
You will accede my every command.
Bloodflow Overseer
of House Dimir