Legacy?~!

No draft last FNM... only 4 people showed up, including me. Blech. Oh well...

A buddy texted about a deck he was going to play at an upcoming event locally- Duel for Duals. (hosted by MTG First) Well, huh... ummmm, first place is 4 Revised Underground Seas... clocking in at a robust $1400 in value. The rest of the top slots go down in descending order of value for sets of duals. Several people could even win their entry fee back... (I hope you are sitting down for this) $60 per player.

YOUCH. $60.

Lets look at this way, I didn't plunk down $20 last week... I wasn't planning to go out next Friday... and if I don't go this week, there is the budget for FNM for entry fee. So there is that. Next is the time commitment... I'll comment on that later. Biggest problem was a tournament legal deck. Lol. Closest I have is about 18 cards away in Sneak and Show. Still missing the following VERY expensive cards:

3 Volcanic Island
2 City of Traitors
2 Flusterstorm
2 Omniscience
2 Sneak Attack
2 Emrakul, Aeons Torn
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Force of Will

Another friend said, if I wanted to play this deck- I could borrow his cards to round out the slots I needed. I'd have to sign a waiver that if anything happened to his cards I would have to sell a kidney though. Super huge bonus with having VERY kind friends willing to lend out over $1,000 in cardboard.

Needless to say, I have been spending the past 24 hours going back and forth if I should go or not... I really don't think I have much of a chance to win anything, but it would be a hell of a thing to go and take part. I am currently leaning towards going. Things are breaking my way at home to allow me to attend. Currently here is my debates on the deck list:

• Simian Spirit Guides? (likely not)
• Gitixan Probes? (likely, but not all 4)
• Sideboard slots?
• 4 Leyline of the Void for sure, I HATE graveyard as a resource
• Not using Leyline of Sanctuary, though it is very popular... going to fill those slots with some combination of- Defense Grid, Abrade, Kozilek'z Return/Pyroclasm
• There is a very interesting debate between the 3 converted mana cost of the last two there.

My biggest worry is that I won't be able to understand what the other deck is attempting to do and completely punt the critical cards to counter, or sideboard. I haven't played Legacy nearly that much recently. There looks to be a fairly large crowd for this event- like 100+ players. (I think MTG First is gonna do well)

I'm still not 100% committed to going but why not?

Rivals release party

I attended my local game store release party for Rivals of Ixalan. They typically do things different. No draft last night, sealed/constructed. We got 6 packs of Rivals, and have at it.

The highlight of my evening was pulling a foil Blood Sun... which, more than paid for my showing up. The shop owner also passed out Ghalta, Primal Hunger game day promos to everyone who showed up. Sweet!

Noteworthy pulls from Rivals release night.

I wound up going 2-2, which isn't awful... but my deck really didn't want to perform. Go figure... I've been dealing with that a lot recently where I have a decent deck then even mana flood or screw myself in to a loss. Also of note- I split 4 sleeves shuffling last night. Dragon Shield, wtf?!

I did open the one card I was hoping to play- Tetzimoc, Primal Death. I actually cast it ONCE in total. My primary reason for wanting to play it, was only for the mind games it would produce. "Do I cast a creature and hope he can't get Tetzimoc down, or hold it in the fear of losing it?" Out of the 9 games I played, I only ever had it in one opening hand, and only had one land for that hand.... I promptly mulligan'd. I did have too much removal in original deck makeup- swapped out blue for white, and recovered a bit.

I am slightly more encouraged for Rivals drafting than I was for Ixalan initially. Lots of power... gonna be interesting.

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I sold my pre-release promo card as quickly as I could, and felt good about it. Elenda, the Dusk Rose has been nose diving ever since. Sort of makes up for my previous prelease promo I sold and should have held on to. Oh well... that the finance side of Magic.

With the profits form the sales, I went out and bought about 20 Unlimited basic lands from TCG. Still working on replacing my revised basics for Unlimited. Gonna be sweet.

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I've been keeping up with DeckBox trading, but haven't done anything of note. Just filling out some smaller card needs... I think I am not going to actively seek out trades for a week or two. Pretty sure I can't find what I need for what I am offering right now.

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The on-line auction scene has been pretty dry for me. A few more popped up today, but most of it is way more bulk than I need to sort through. There is one that caught my eye, a binder of stuff. Gonna see what it might take to nail that down.

Speaking of on-line finds- anyone tempted to contact this guy? He wants BitCoins for "his brother's old Magic collection." Several dual lands, 3 beta Mox in super rough condition... odd, just odd.

Rivals pre-release

Its pre-release time! One of my favorite times of year... you can read about the set, you can faux draft/sealed the set, and can watch all sorts of videos on it. However, as I have found out, you NEVER know how it is actually going to play. For the pre-release constructed is a big gamble on the card pool. Even the best player will be hampered by a bad card pool.
As I watched the Loading Ready Run pre-pre-release, there was one deck that was just bonkers. It had two of the planeswalkers, just answers for days, and synergy. It was just amazing. That deck would completely wreck sealed anywhere.

In the end, I am just hoping to find some good synergy. Not even hoping for great pulls... just want to play some competitive games.


One of the, pointless, questions I had going in to this pre-release: which set of pre-sleeved lands to take along? The options are:

- Full art Zendikar and BFZ
- Beta basics
- Revised, all same picture

My experience with pre-releases has been 50% of the player base are not super regular players. They show up to these sorts of events with just fun in mind... they didn't read up on the mechanics, they don't know what mythics to expect, they likely not to have even drafted Magic in the past 3 months. They other 50% splits out in to somewhat regular and regular Magic players. The higher end expect to take home packs. If not go undefeated if things go well with their pool. They are grinders and Spikes. They might appreciate the Betas. They would also know I meant business, which is not my goal.
The other slice, where I fit in likely, is regular players but not super competitive. White bordered basics might cause them to laugh. That's a good thing.

However, I am likely going to take the Zendikar lands with me. They look nice, some are shiny/foil, and basically relay a certain "I care" about the land base I am using. The not regular Magic player might notice, the semi-serious would understand they are cool, and the spikes might consider them ok.


Honestly, if I didn't give a flying rats butt about any of this- I go out of my way to pre-sleeve random lands from all different sets.  That would be fun.


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Trade update- I finally found someone to help me downgrade my MM Force of Will to an Alliances version. Rather have the extra value out of the card than a newer version. Still not sure why one is worth about $9 more than the other... but whatever. Value is value

Too cold to draft?

I don't mean my results recently, I mean the temperature. Its freaking freezing Mr. Bigglesworth!

I still made it out, prepared to draft Battle for Zendikar. I even watched a few draft videos so I could at least understand the set again. I never drafted it when I got back in.

There was only 5 of us to play, so the owner said "Unstable" and "free" in the same sentence. We all cheered, and drafted for a free-for-all style game.

What is remarkable? I actually drafted a really good deck. My first pick? Infinity Elemental! From there I went to get a nice R/W deck. My entire goal for the game is to cast said Infinity Elemental. I had contraptions, and nice ones. However, not a ton of ways to get them out. I had the Elemental out there for many turns but not really doing any harm, 1/1 Squirrels were getting completely destroyed. I curved out wonderfully, and basically did all the things my deck does NOT do when playing one on one. I had defense, I had great abilities, and I had the biggest creature in the game. However, he couldn't do anything.

The downside? He died before I got out both contraptions that would have made me unstoppable:
Targeting Rocket
Goblin Slingshot

As it turned out, Slingshot was MY VERY NEXT CONTRAPTION after my Elemental got blown up by a Squirrel. Yes, a Squirrel. *sigh*


Turns out, one of the guys opened a really nice pull: Very Cryptic Command, foil, version A.
Playing for free and he pulls a $58 card. Dang!

I was just happy to get the lands.



I donated almost all my cards to the "cube draft" community box. I kept a couple foils, the lands, Very Cryptic Command, and my Infinity Elemental!