A WEEK AT THE GEEK – 09/02/2015 TO 15/02/2015
Wednesday Night Gaming: Wednesday 11th February First up was Love Letter, the deduction game about sending a letter to the princess. The main game play consists of the simple draw a card, play a card but the main skill of the game comes from guessing what card your opponent has in hand. It is a great quick game that I would recommend everyone plays. Next up was the Wild West deception game, Bang, both the dice and card versions. One players given the role of the Sherriff and has the job of trying to find the outlaws who want him dead. He must do this without killing his deputies however, which is where the deception kicks in. The dice and card games both follow the same formula but are different enough to be worth playing and are enjoyable. Next in line was One Night Werewolf, but with the Kickstarter exclusive cards from the daybreak expansion. While its been a while since we last played this there is still enough about this game on the blog. The new character card though are pretty cool: The Prince who cannot be lynched, the Aura Seer who has a bit more information about what people did at night and another one which I cant remember, aren’t I professional. Friday Night Magic: Friday 13th February Tonight’s FNM is a Fate Reforged draft! Some pretty funky cards were getting passed around the table and I managed to get a look in at pod two, where a player was drafting four colour good stuff featuring Siege Rhino and Ankle Shanker (one of my favourites if you didn’t already know!) with a good amount of mana fixing and some crafty combat tricks. Pod one seemed to be all about GWx (or perhaps my eyes were deceiving me), with a Dromoka, the Eternal being the most solid card I caught a glance of with the usual suspects of Kill Shot and Defiant Strike lurking around too. A fairly stacked prize pool was also on offer with no fewer than four fetch lands! Congratulations to our winners, Pod One: Tim (1st) and Jon (2nd) and Pod Two: Connor (1st) and Daire (2nd)! Next week’s FNM format is 2HG Modern with a side event of Commander! See you there! Fate Reforged Games Day: Saturday 14th – Sunday 15th February The Games Day format is Standard Constructed and the winner will received a beautiful Ugin playmat! Round one: Temur Monsters. I knew a quick start would help me seal the victory in the first round, as ramping into huge creatures like Stormbreath Dragon and Polukranos, World Eater would really hinder my chance of victory. A perfect start of Bloodsoaked Champion into Chief of the Edge meant I was hitting through for three points of damage and threatening at least six on the next turn, whilst potentially clearing his Sylvan Caryatid’s away to restrict the ramping. Merciless Executioner seemed to be awesome in this match up as without the Sylvan Caryatids, the only threat my opponent could deploy was a Savage Knuckleblade so I was able to clear a path to get in all the damage I needed. Game two was pretty similar with a hasty Savage Knuckleblade swinging in early on with the swing back much in my favour. Merciless Executioner again got the threats out of the way and the Raid ability from Bloodsoaked Champion helped me to pile on the damage. Round two: Red Devotion. Word of the success of this deck was doing the rounds so I was intrigued to see how I would do against it. Having played a Red Devotion deck myself during RTR/THS standard, I knew how powerful it could really be once it got going. Life gain seemed pretty key in the match up here, so I was confident that all the life I was gaining through Mardu Woe-Reaper and Harsh Sustenance would slow my opponent down dramatically. Getting stuck on three lands, my opponent was unable to cast the huge powerhouses in his deck such as Purphoros, God of the Forge and Fanatic of Mogis, and things got even worse for him when his Flamewake Phoenix hit the graveyard with no ferocious trigger to bring him back. The lack of lands was evidently favourable for me, being able to cast all my one and two drops with ease and swing in for lethal damage by turn six. A complete opposite in game two where my opponent just completely flooded out, only drawing a couple of burn spells to remove a creature – nothing could really stop the power of my warriors and I swung in for the win fairly early on. Round three: Jeskai Ascendancy. This match up was great for me in game one but post board, I just lose to Arc Lightning. The majority of my warriors are even trades for tokens, but with a Jeskai Ascendancy in play my chances of survival are significantly less. Despite gaining enough life to cancel out the burn spells found in the deck, the buffs from one Jeskai Ascendancy are almost always going to prove more lethal. A really tricky match up for me and despite what I thought to be correct sideboarding, I was still unable to come out on top. A 2-0 loss put a huge dent in my hopes for victory but one poor round could only mean the next one would be better!
Round four: RB Midrange. I love a good homebrew, but felt slightly bad for my opponent as he got stuck on lands throughout the duration of game one and majorly flooded out in game two. My opponent failed to find many threats at all and was certainly unable to source any removal for the creatures slowly beating his life total down. Gurmag Swiftwing proved to be a very underwhelming blocker and a Soulflayer with nothing delved away didn’t prove to be much of a threat either. A pretty swift beat down, my warriors really put a shift in and took me to 3-1 for the day.
Round five: Jeskai Ascendancy. I feared the worst for this match due to my bad luck in round three, but I wasn’t going to let that put me off. I got off to a quick start as normal but Raise the Alarm and Hordeling Outburst just got in my way (again). Not being able to pump the toughness of my creatures was a real problem against these decks but if I elected to do so, the full on aggro plan perhaps wouldn’t work out in my favour. A turn three Arc Lightning wiped my board again and it was pretty much all downhill from there on in. The copies of Harsh Sustenance I was drawing were rendered useless and Merciless Executioner was only able to remove a token from the battlefield and even then, there were still four left to put a shift in and get my life total to zero in a flash. Top 8 play off: I was paired against mono-red aggro. Game one was a breeze, with Harsh Sustenance proving to be the key card in the match up; I was able to gain back enough life to negate the burn from my opponent and power through with my warriors for a hefty amount of damage. Games two and three weren’t to go my way though, as a key flaw in my decks’ mana base was exposed and left me in burn range on both occasions. No matter what play I made, I would’ve still been in burn range yet if the mana base was a little smoother then I could have perhaps survived an extra turn, gained some vital life points and swung in for the kill. If there’s anything you want to see included in the blog or if you’ve any suggestions for additional content then please e-mail me at [email protected]!