Since I’ve really started playing Magic in earnest with Shards of Alara most of the cards I have are from that set so I’ve mainly been building block decks lately.  I really like the challenge of playing within a block and have built several janky decks.

I think my favorites right now are my Naya, Esper, and Bant decks.  I’m eternally grateful for the common panorama lands and the uncommon tri-color lands.  Without them it would be nearly impossible to play a good block deck and I hate using all my money on land.  Here’s how my Esper Deck is shaping up within block.

Creatures (20) 4 Glaze Fiend 2 Windwright Mage 2 Tower Gargoyle 3 Tidehollow Sculler 2 Tidehollow Strix 1 Esper Battlemage 1 Sharding Sphinx 1 Ethersworn Canonist 4 Sanctum Gargoyle Artifacts (12) 3 Executioners Capsule 4 Couriers Capsule 2 Protomatter Powder 2 Dispellers Capsule 1 Scourglass Other Spells (6) 3 Oblivion Ring 3 Esper Charm Lands (24) 2 Arcane Sanctum 7 Plains 6 Island 5 Swamp 4 Esper Panorama

I just did some tweeking after getting some more cards and haven’t gotten the chance to test it yet.  I still need 2 more Arcane Sanctum of course.  Protomatter Powder is in there mainly because of how well it works with Sanctum Gargoyle. O-Ring weng down to 3 because I had too many cards and hopefully the card draw will get me into one if I need it. Next post I’ll put up my Naya deck and analyze it a bit.

Tell me what you think of the Esper Deck so far.  I don’t really plan on purchasing Master of Etherium, but if I get some through other means he will go in, obviously.

So, I finally got what I would consider enough to scrape together a janky Esper deck.  I don’t have any Master of Etherium, but I’m liking it anyway.  I’m running 2-3 of each capsule and Glaze Fiend seems to be working really well.  I only have 1 Scourglass right now so I haven’t really seen enough of it to see if I like it a lot or not.  I think I may have to pursue some more cards for this deck with some of my $20 this weekend and see how the deck pans out.

So, for the last few weeks I’ve been playing Magic Online on a budget of $20 per week. Mainly I’ve invested in buying packs from Shards of Alara. I haven’t really done any trading to speak of, other than to get 3 Stoic Angels because I loved my Lightning Angel magic deck back in the day and the card has some solid potential.  I don’t have a lot of cards at this point.  Just a few packs from Eventide and a couple of precons plus the Alara cards I bought.  I didn’t get the Stoics until today so mainly this is an exalted deck that I put together and tossed the Stoic Angels in.  Here’s what I came up with.

Artifacts (3) 3 Obelisk of Bant Lands (26) 8 Forest 7 Island 6 Plains 4 Bant Panorama 1 Seaside Citadel Creatures (21) 2 Elvish Visionary 2 Sighted-Caste Sorcerer 3 Slippery Bogle 2 Deft Duelist 2 Sigiled Paladin 3 Rhox Charger 3 Rhox War Monk 3 Stoic Angel 1 Rafiq of the Many Other Spells (12) 2 Angelic Benediction 4 Oblivion Ring 2 Bant Charm 4 Resounding Silence

It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s fun.  I just got the Rafiq today in a pack and he is so many kinds of amazing if you can keep him around.  I still wish he was 3/4 like the spoilers orginally said though.  I really like the Deft Duelist and Slippery Bogle in this deck.  So many kinds of removal get screwed by them.  What do you all think of it?  I’d like to get some input.

So, I’ve finally worked out a way to control my addiction in a reasonable manner that my wife and I can agree on .  I will be spending no more than $20 per week on Magic.  That’s including any tournament fees.  I will be keeping track of how much I spend in a given week and any unused money will be carried over.  I’ve mostly been focusing on playing MTGO lately so I bought some Shards of Alara packs to get me started.  So far I’ve opened 10 packs and not gotten a lot that I like.  I did open an Ajani Vengeant and have been messing around with him in the R/W deck I already had from buying the Eventide precon.   He is pretty cool, but I think he really would need to start out at 4 loyalty or have his -2 ability be -1.

One card I’m liking quite a bit is Magma Spray.  It’s a shock that can remove things from the game.  Now if only it could hit players too.  I need to get a couple more Oblivion Rings and my deck will be a lot more solid.  I’m running Unwilling Recruit in there just because nobody expects red to steal their creatures and smack you with them.  It’s also fun to do that and then sacrifice them to Brion Stoutarm.  It’s a fun casual deck.  I really want to put together something fun from Shards of Alara soon.  I think next week I’ll do a draft of Alara so I can get some more cards that way.

While I was looking for things to read in the world of MtG the other day I stumbled across a spiffy Magic themed Webcomic. It’s called UB Madness. It’s not for people who are only casually into Magic, but for those of you who are hardcore players it’s really quite entertaining. There have been 2 posts a week for almost four and a half years, so if you want something to do for a while there you go. Here’s a sample comic for you.

My wife just found this awesome set of drinking glasses on Craftster!  They were handmade from Glade candle cups.  I would really love to have a set of these.  If you would too head on over to Craftster and read the post, she tells you in the comments how she made them.  If your not so crafty, like me, if you ask nicely maybe she will be able to make some for you.

Hand etched glass!!

Hand painted bottoms!

I haven’t been getting into Magic as much as I’d like and I think a good portion of that is because I don’t have any Magic friends yet.  The main reason I got so knowledgeable about Magic in the first place was because I had people to share it with.  Now I don’t really have that.  I’ve not been able to get my wife hooked yet, but I will eventually

I need people to point things out to me that they think are cool and people that understand me to show my deck ideas to.  It’s no fun showing to some random person who doesn’t understand your personality.  I don’t have a lot of time to go out to card stores and just wait for people to play with.  I need to find a good group of people that meet regularly that I can join.

I also need to get out and draft more regularly, but money is starting to be a concern again.  I think I’ll try to do another MTGO draft.  I still haven’t opened those two packs I won from my first draft.  Hopefully I’ll do well with this one and it will inspire me to play more.

Only four people showed up for my draft the other day, but we played anyway. My deck ended up being mediocre at best so I won’t bore you with the details. What I would like to talk about is good sportsmanship.

We played a two round swiss tournament and I lost my first match, so I played the other person that lost in round two. Apparently he was really pissy about having lost his first round and was really hostile seeming during our match. He apologized a couple of times, but I wasn’t even comfortable enough to really ask him what his cards were as I’m not that familiar with the sets. I felt shaky and nervous about doing anything during our two games.

I won the first game fairly easily and he let me win the second one easily, but it was absolutely no fun. My first match I was mana screwed both games and got stomped. I played two or three more games with my opponent while waiting for the round to end and didn’t win any of those either, but I still had more fun losing to him than I had winning with my second opponent.

I ended up getting second place because of the way the tie breakers went, but it was still tarnished by the shaky feelings my second opponent had caused. I had watched him play a couple of games against a kid with a silly combo deck prior to our draft and he behaved the same way. It’s people that behave like that, that ruin what should be a fun time, and it annoys the crap out of me. I sincerely hope he was just having a bad day like he kept professing because if he’s always like that I don’t know if I’ll want to draft with him again.

Magic is supposed to be fun people, try to keep it that way, win or lose. Being a total douchebag not only ruins any fun you could have had, but it ruins it for your opponent as well. Try to keep that in mind the next time you play and get raped, no matter the cause.

I’m going to do a paper draft today.  My first in a couple of months.  I haven’t even drafted paper Eventide before.  I imagine this will be a S-S-E draft.  Hell, I don’t even know if this is going to be elimination or swiss.  It’s a venue I haven’t drafted at before so I guess I’ll have to see what’s up when I get there.  I hope I like it because it fits best into my schedule.  I’ll let you all know how I did either this evening or tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

I played my first MTGO draft today and it was intense! Things didn’t start off so well for me as my first three picks were autopicked by the computer. There were only five people at the table when I joined so I thought I would have a minute to go to the bathroom. Needless to say the first few cards were total jank. Then I had a hard time dealing with the time limit they give you to pick your cards. I did an all Eventide draft and I don’t know the cards in the set all that well.

All of that was against me from the beginning and resulted in me playing an almost mono blue deck. It was weird as I’m not much of a blue player, but I did draft 3 Slippery Bogle’s and 2 Favor of the Overbeing that pretty much won me the first round. I also want to mention the 2 Oona’s grace that I played were awesome. I even used a Noggle Bridgebreaker to feed it. It was a pretty decent deck given my lack of experience with the speed of MTGO drafts.

My next round was not so much fun. I got harshly beaten by an awesome black white deck. In both games it managed to get the Nightsky Mimic flying immediately and consistently by dropping multiple Harvest Gwyllions on the board as well as Edge of Divinity. It wasn’t pretty and I lost 0-2. Ouch. That’s how I found out that it’s an elimination draft. I should have figured that from the beginning, but I was used to the local drafts that I’ve been doing and they were Swiss. At least it was a 4-3-2-2 draft so I did still get 2 packs. I think the guy that beat me ended up winning the draft too, so I didn’t feel so bad. I’m still debating as to whether I should open the packs or use them to enter another draft. I pretty much only have the precon I started with and a few cards I bought from bots with a couple of tix (event tickets. They double as currency in the game).

What do you think I should do with them?