FNM Report 2-24-2012

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

It is not very often that we stay for the full evening of Friday Night Magic as we unfortunately have some other obligations to attend to. Typically, we play the first two or perhaps three matches at our local WPN Games store, OMG! Games and Collectibles here in Barrie, Ontario and then have to take off. This last Friday was however an exception and we stayed until the bitter (approximately midnight) and took in the full 5 rounds of matches slinging our favourite new Magic the Gathering cards in our favourite format, standard constructed.

We are rather pleased that we did stay longer as not only did we finally get our paws on a Friday Night Magic foil promo card (this month is Despise) but also did not too badly in our matches against some of the club's very best players. We also collected an additional 15 Planeswalker Points for the evening. We went on to 5th place in a field of 32 players with 1 match loss and 4 wins with our W/B Token Deck.

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Our first match was against David N who won rather handily in two games with an Esper Control build. In both games, we were just trying to catch up after a series of counter spells. Having our 'anthem' enchantments blown up really did not help our cause at all either.

The second match was against Zach K, a new player who had just started playing. Zach was playing a Red Deck wins featuring Grim Lavamancer, Chandra's Phoenix, Stormblood Berserker, Volt Charge, Shrine of Burning Rage, andIncinerate. We were able to get past all the burn and field a small army of pumped up Human tokens thanks to Increasing Devotion which we also were able to cast again with flashback.

The third match, against Dan L was rather interesting. Dan is a great player and we love the home-brews he brings to game with. Unfortunately we can't really recall very well what he was playing but do think that after Dan fine tunes it, great things may be expected.

In the fourth match, we were pitted against Matt S who also fielded an Esper Control build. We did take the match in two but it was a very tight race in both games - the second one especially. We took the second game after we were able to stick four anthems (2 Intangible Virtues and 2 Honor of the Pures) in play followed by an Increasing Devotion.

For the fifth and last match, we were paired with Taylor W who had brought along a Mono-Green Aggro build featuring solid Mana-ramp, Young Wolf, Strangleroot Geist, Thrun, the Last Troll, and Vorapede. Taylor had just put the deck together earlier in the day and (thankfully) did not have an opportunity to tweak it against the ever evolving metagame. Had there been some Overrun trample spells in the mix we seriously think we would not have won.

Anwwhoos -stay tuned to MTG Realm - tomorrow, wel'll give a run down of the Esper Control archetype which are doing rather nicely at most casual and competitive circles.
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Also of note - Great news from MTG Mint Card - They have restocked singles on one of our favourite recent sets - CONFLUX ! This is the set which brought you such notable cards as Noble Hierarch, Knight of the Reliquary, Progenitus among others. Click on over before they sell out.
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Dark Ascension Wallpapers

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Happy Friday MTG Peeps,

It's been a while since we provided a round-up of the excellent wallpapers that Wizards of the Coast typically provide each Friday on the Mothership. Whether you want to rock out your work desktop, lap top, iPhone, iPad or other mobile device, nothing says cool more than a Magic the Gathering card art pimping that virtual space. Recently, the WoTc have started providing 851 x 315 px images for your Facebook covers as well. Make sure you drop by the Daily MTG Wallpaper of the Week archive and check these out.

For the last set, check out previous post providing links on some Innistrad Wallpapers. For now, here's the latest Magic the Gathering wallpaper featuring sweet Dark Ascension arts.

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Illustrated by Jana Schirmer & Johannes Voss

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Altar of the Lost
illustrated by Daarken

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Havengul Lich
illustrated by James Ryman

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Scorch the Fields
illustrated by Jaime Jones

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Bone to Ash
illustrated by Clint Cearley

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Helvault
illustrated by Jaime Jones

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Stromkirk Captain
illustrated by Jana Schirmer & Johannes Voss

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Winter's almost over, don't be a shut in - get out to your local game store. We'll be kicking butt and taking names (yah right) at OMG! Games & Collectibles here in Barrie, Ontario tonight at Friday Night Magic.
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Token Defence

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

For today's post, we wanted to yatter about what Magic the Gathering players may want to consider for inclusion in their standard constructed sideboards. More specifically, this post is really just us here at MTG Realm thinking aloud about what to do about the gaining popularity (at least in some casual / FNM circles) of white weenie or token-based decks.

Between Gather the Townsfolk / Increasing Devotion, Lingering Souls / Midnight Haunting, and other token generating spells, the skies (and ground) is anticipated to be filled with tokens. There will be Spirit, Human, Vampire, Wolf and Zombie tokens aplenty but players are likely to favour white based builds featuring tokens hoping to cash in on the double anthem effects of Intangible Virtue and Honor of the Pure. Sure, Sorin's first minus ability provides an unmoveable anthem effect curtesy of the emblem but the likely mix will be a black splash in an otherwise white deck.


Now, for the Haterade . . .

How to deal with this token mess is unpleasant, and even more so should they have mana open to activate the lifelink / deathtouch ability on their Vault of the Archangel. One way to deal with this that is already starting to see play is the use of Ratchet Bomb which will kill all tokens on the turn it comes down or Elesh Norn which will kill off anything they have with two toughness or less. Ms. Norn's buddy is the Innistrad curse, Curse of Death's Hold which may have a wider appeal as the same effect is not attached to a fragile and easily removed body.

Now since we're casual Magic the Gathering players here at MTG Realm, we will not baulk or take pause to consider some other fine and under appreciated cards to battle the token menance. Currently we're considering Choking Fumes to throw negative counters on their en masse alpha swing. Likewise, Marrow Shards and Corrosive Gale may prove of use. What we would really like to brew up is a strong effect with Arm with Aether while attempting to sneak several critters under the wire like Invisible Stalker or other unblockable / intimidate creatures. If you did not get this punchline, don't worry - tokens bounced back to their owner gets eaten by the same clothes dryer that has been eating our socks for years and will never come back. There of course is answers in red and we've been experimenting with a modified Tempered Steel build featuring Whipflare (I wip ma flare back 'n' forth). Lastly but certainly not exhaustively is Slagstorm, which if your are playing red should have in your side board at all times.


As the Token players start to adjust to these hater cards, they may become more reliant on those afore-mentioned anthem effects and hope to hold their token army together with toughness above Norn / Curse level. This is when you may want to consider Dark Ascension's Ray of Revelation. This two mana (one colourless and one white) instant will nerf any enchantment pumping their tokens and will come back for a flashback encore for just one green.

Anywhoos -
Tell us about your local meta-game - Has token decks taken off, and if so how are players defending against it ?
Use the comment thingy below.
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Also of note - the folks over at MTG Mint Card has cracked open a few more boxes of Innistrad and has now restocked. If you've been looking for that special hard-to-get sorcery or Planeswalker, drop by.
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DKA Spirit Aggro

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

We continue on today with developing some quirky and fun standard constructed builds with all the latest Magic the Gathering cards from Dark Ascension. Previously we had showed a B/W Token build with Sorin and Lingering Souls, next we derped around with a Delver Spirit build. (Check out our buddy Virgil's Magic Emporium on an excellent run down on U/W Spirit Delver). Today however, we want to dig deeper into all the decent spirit cards Dark Ascension has brought us.

Don't worry if you're not a fan of blue-white - we hope to make similar posts with the other Innistrad 'tribes' as well. More specifically, we want to make casual decks featuring Diregraf Captain with U/B Zombies, Stromkirk Captain with B/R Vampires and Immerwolf with R/G Wolves / Werewolves. Anywhoos - onto today's post Dark Ascenscion Spirit deck. The draft deck may be found electronically HERE at Tapped Out.


Post Dark Ascesnsion Sprits
Blue-White

38 Spells
4 x Doomed Traveler
4 x Spectral Rider
4 x Niblis of the Urn
4 x Honor of the Pure
4 x Intangible Virtue
4 x Midnight Haunting
4 x Lingering Souls
4 x Drogskol Captain
3 x Geist of Saint Traft
3 x Geist-Honored Monk

22 Lands
4 x Glacial Fortress
2 x Isolated Chapel
1 x Swamp
3 x Island
12 x Plains

Sideboard
3 x Revoke Existence
3 x Arm with Æther
3 x Divine Offering
3 x Oblivion Ring
3 x Feeling of Dread


First up - the mana base.
This may still require further tweaking. The idea however is to have just a splash of black for the flashblack cost of Lingering Souls, other than that, it's open season so fire off your recommendations in the comments below.

Doomed Traveler is the requisite one-drop followed by what we feel is an under rated card in Innistrad - Spectral Rider. For two white mana, you get a 2/2 with evasion (Intimidate) and with the meta-game as it is, loads of players are into red, green, and blue - so we're thinking we could do worse here. Honor of the Pure provides the anthem effect to the rider as well as most other creatures this build will play. Niblis of the Urn provides a decent tap down effect which hopefully will help land damage.

Midnight Haunting and Lingering souls are 'auto-includes' whose tokens will get pumped by the Honor but also Intangible Virtue. Speaking of pumps - Drogskol captain will provide another +1/+1 including hexproof to all your spirits.

Geist of Saint Traft is another spirit creature that already has hexproof and will produce a temporary 4/4 alpha-striking angel. Geist-Honored Monk will help you cash in on those tokens you've been creating and hopefully provide you with a monster to finish the game.

Again - we would love to hear your suggestions to take this build from the Kitchen table to FNM.
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Also of note - the folks over at MTG Mint Card has cracked open a few more boxes of Innistrad and has now restocked. If you've been looking for that special hard-to-get sorcery or Planeswalker, drop by.
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Post DKA MetaGame

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

First up - we want to let you know that our B/W Token build (featuring Sorin 2.0 and mad token generators) that we showed you in Thursday's post performed not too badly during the Friday Night Magic tournament at OMG! Games here in town. First match we won 2-0 against a black-red build, second match we won again 2-0 against a blue-red Delver variant, and in the third match we lost 2-1 against a Solar Flare build. We loved that the deck was not only fun to play but competitive as well.

Speaking of competitive, we should speak onto the big tournaments this past weekend - namely the StarCity Games Open Series in Cincinnati as well as the ProTour Dark Ascension in Honolulu. We realise that this is a casual Magic the Gathering blog with focus on standard constructed but one is well served to see what the 'Pros' are doing as their strategy and tech will show up in one form or another at the Games Store or at the Kitchen table. Anywhoos - let's have a look at the past weekend -

StarCity Games Open Series in Cincinnati, Ohio - Top 8 Breakdown -
4 U/W Delver, 2 Wolf Run Ramp, 1 U/B Heartless Control, 1 Tempered Steel

Nolen Lauren - SCG Champion - U/W Delver Standard Deck

23 Lands : 9 Island, 1 Plains, 4 Glacial Fortress, 3 Moorland Haunt, 4 Seachrome Coast

13 Creatures : 4 Delver of Secrets, 2 Dungeon Geists, 4 Snapcaster Mage, 3 Geist of Saint Traft

26 Other Spells : 1 Dismember, 2 Gut Shot, 4 Mana Leak, 1 Mutagenic Growth, 3 Thought Scour, 4 Vapor Snag, 4 Gitaxian Probe, 4 Ponder, 1 Runechanter's Pike, 2 Sword of War and Peace

Sideboard : 1 Timely Reinforcements, 2 Celestial Purge, 1 Dungeon Geists, 1 Faith's Shield, 2 Oblivion Ring, 2 Dissipate, 2 Divine Offering, 1 Sword of Feast and Famine, 2 Ratchet Bomb, 1 Revoke Existence

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Pro Tour Dark Ascension Honolulu - Top 8 breakdown -
4 U/W Delver, 3 Wolf Run Ramp, 1 Birthing Pod

Brian Kibler - Pro Tour DKA Champion - Standard Wolf Run Ramp

5 lands : 4 Copperline Gorge, 5 Forest, 4 Inkmoth Nexus, 2 Kessig Wolf Run, 6 Mountain, 4 Rootbound Crag

16 creatures : 1 Acidic Slime, 1 Birds of Paradise, 4 Huntmaster of the Fells, 2 Inferno Titan, 4 Primeval Titan, 3 Solemn Simulacrum, 1 Thrun, the Last Troll

19 other spells : 4 Galvanic Blast, 2 Green Sun's Zenith, 4 Rampant Growth, 4 Slagstorm, 4 Sphere of the Suns, 1 Whipflare

Sideboard : 2 Ancient Grudge, 1 Autumn's Veil, 2 Beast Within, 2 Combust, 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter, 2 Karn Liberated, 2 Naturalize, 2 Thrun, the Last Troll, 1 Whipflare

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Lastly, Valentine's Day is right around the corner . . .

and nothing says 'I wub U' more than getting that special someone some Magic Cards. Here's something interesting from the folks over at MTG Mint Card -

Roses are red, violets are blue, the perfect deck for Valentines day?
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Geist-Delver Spirits

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

If you are unable to get out to a Friday Night Magic this evening and get your Magic the Gathering fix, you will be pleased to know that you can still jump onto the interwebs and follow the SatrCity Games Open Series tournament in Cincinnati, Ohio or the Pro Tour Dark Ascension in Honolulu this weekend. From these two tournaments, we should expect to see what direction standard constructed will develop over the next few weeks and months.

As for us, we posted a B/W Token build yesterday and received from great comments already via eMail and post comment. We hope to refine and tweak this several times over the next while. You can keep up with the updates to this black white token build posted under 'Haunting Souls' at TappedOut.net.

For today, we wanted to take a crack at a post-Dark Ascension Delver build featuring spirits. The 'in work' decklist is posted here and is a bit more unrefined than the previous build. Again, we invite you to provide input and guidance on this. Let's have a look -

Geist-Delver Spirits

37 Spells
4 x Delver of Secrets
4 x Ponder
4 x Artful Dodge
4 x Vapor Snag
4 x Mindshrieker
3 x Runechanter's Pike
4 x Drogskol Captain
3 x Phantasmal Image
3 x Geist of Saint Traft
2 x Dungeon Geists
2 x Drogskol Reaver

23 Lands
3 x Moorland Haunt
4 x Glacial Fortress
5 x Plains
11 x Island

Sideboard
3 x Mana Leak
3 x Disperse
3 x Saving Grasp
3 x Feeling of Dread
3 x Oblivion Ring


The next day after we had compiled a rough list, we realised that we just wanted to build something with Geist of Saint Traft and Drogskol Captain and nothing too competitive. To this end, we think this will be kept at the kitchen table for fun and not taken to FNM. Having said that, should you have some great suggestions, we might must change our mind.

Anywhoos, we've yet to get any real games in with this yet but will keep you up to date on where this goes.
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DKA B-W Tokens

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

We have a series of posts over the next few days in which we provide a decklist of real Magic the Gathering cards the group has collected and present to you, the reader for a critical review. We hope to take said finished build and slay the local meta-game at the next FMN. Oh - When we say critical review, we mean constructive suggestions and not stuff like, yo dude - your dog is fugly - that sort of thingy.


Anywhooos - first build up for your review Elspeth Tirel, beautiful mysterious knight from Alara (and Mirrodin) goes on this date with Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, and the pair promptly has tokens, and loads of 'em. Righto - here's the first build - post Dark Ascension B/W Tokens -


38 Spells
4 x Doomed Traveler
3 x Shrine of Loyal Legions
4 x Intangible Virtue
4 x Gather the Townsfolk
3 x Go for the Throat
3 x Altar's Reap
4 x Lingering Souls
4 x Midnight Haunting
3 x Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
3 x Elspeth Tirel
2 x Sun Titan

23 Lands
2 x Vault of the Archangel
2 x Evolving Wilds
3 x Isolated Chapel
4 x Swamp
12 x Plains

Sideboard
3 x Tragic Slip
3 x Revoke Existence
3 x Oblivion Ring
3 x Divine Offering
3 x Dismember

Solid enough of a start but only one 1-drop. No Honor of the Pure here as we thought that Sorin's little 1/1 vampire tokens would not benefit as well as the Myr tokens from Shrine of Loyal Legions. Alter's Reap provides a cheap card draw and GftT is our spot removal. Best uncommon from DKA is Lingering Souls and we've paired this up with Midnight Haunting.

For the moment, we have 3 Elspeth and 3 Sorin in here. Following is Sun Titan which can and will bring back almost every card in the build. Vault of the Archangel is this deck's Gavony Township. The lands are continued to be tweaked to provide maximum effeciency.

UPDATE : Pop on over to our buddy Vergil's (Vergil's Magic Emporium) site for a very decent summary of this deck archetype he posted on the same day as us. He's been writing about MTG since 2010 and is much less derpy than us.

Righto, your turn.
We admit we are not the best brewer and given our love of the casual game, will often include cards because of righteous artwork. Your job, if you so choose, is to take this build and provide improvements so it's not sad panda time at FNM.

Lastly,

If your are looking to pimp up your deck beyond just having a number of foils and / or alternate art / promos in your stack, we suggest you check out MTG Mint Card which has excellent prices not only on foils but Chinese language cards - which looks Kung-Fu Kewl.
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