Drafting with Born of the Gods

First of all, I should say I had a blast drafting with Theros.  I figured out it was best to make a Heroic flavored deck, and that worked out really well for me.  So I figured Born of the Gods should be as fun to draft.

Not exactly this time.  Not that it was un-fun.  But I wasn't very lucky with my card pool.  This time I have grown as a player quite a bit, and was able to manage.

At the Tangled Web, there were 40 entrants into the release day draft.  Our draft consisted of one Theros booster, and two Born of the Gods boosters.  We opened the Theros booster pack first.

The rare in my Theros pack was Prophet of Kruphix.

This is a card that I owned one of already, but never played, not being a Green-Blue "Simic" player.  But I new this card was killer, and so I said to myself, "I guess I am going to make a green-blue deck."  I played blue the week prior in the sealed deck pre-release tournament, so I was sort of familiar with the new blue cards...I felt this would work in my advantage.  (I was right about that.)

My other rares were Whelming Wave and Tromokratis.  Not bad.  Two blue cards.  I drafted two Floodtide Serpents.  And almost every card I got the rest of the night was blue or green.  I drafted some chumps, including a couple of copies of Kiora's Follower.  Too bad I couldn't have a Kiora, The Crashing Wave.  I only hate-drafted 5 cards.  (drafted cards I couldn't use because I had to or because of value...not so much this time.  I did hate-draft Heroe's Podium...A rare but bad card for limited.)

I basically tried the strategy of bombing the board with Whelming Wave at the right time.  That was my plan.  If Floodtide Serpent or Tromokratis were out, basically that ensured victory.  The new twist wast the Prophet of Kruphix.  She allowed me to flash in my creatures, and was over-all a game changer.  Too bad she is so weak as a fighter.  (2/3)

The people in my 8-person pod in general didn't draw any gods or planeswalkers.  There was a lot of moaning and groaning about how bad our packs were!

I built a solid, good deck.  It just wasn't quite good enough.  The red and black decks were crazy, and white wasn't bad either.  I also played against one fringe player who built five colors in order to play the two gods he got, and the Chromanticore he got also.  (Lucky dog.)  At the end of the tournament I was ranked right in the middle at 20.  Not bad for my fifth time ever drafting!

Check my next post for how I feel about Born of the God's in general!

Theros Review

First of all, I must apologize for a little break in the blog action.  I have been a busy SpartanNerd...But I'm ultra-excited..The Tangled Web has a big sale coming up!

Theros has some cool new things!  The "god cards" are cool...They are jacked examples of enchantment-creatures...Like these...

I have Purphoros and Erebos, and am trying to get SpartanNerd #1 to trade me a Heliod. I like how the Wizards have riffed on the greek gods...Hades, Helios, and Hephaestus.  There is also a Thassa and a Nylea, which we don't have.

Each god card has a weapon, and emissary, and an ordeal card related to them.  So there are quite a few things to collect!  I would argue that the weapons are better than the gods themselves!  When I played Booster draft, Purphoros Emissary won a few matches for me.  It has a Bestow trick, where it can be either a crature or enchantment.  It is the kind of thing that you hang onto for awhile if you can and then use it to move in for the kill.

Then there are the "hero cards,"  My favorite is Fabled Hero....(Goes great with Fencing Ace...plus, check out that flavor text.  "You.  Poet.  Write this down."  Brilliant!)  Hero cards use the "heroic" mechanic, which means that you target something and it causes a trigger.  So Heroic works good with  Bestow.

Let's not forget the monsters!  Hundred Handed One is a good example...This card was obviously designed for those token generator decks.

So that is my review of the set.  Maybe this is why M14 was so boring...All the wizards good ideas were saved for Theros!

Dragon's Maze, Magic the Gathering Trading Card Game Review

I got my pre-order in for a Fat Pack of Magic The Gathering Dragon's Maze cards on Wednesday at Mad Max's Comics and Games, and picked it up after work on Friday, as I was permitted.  I also bought the pre-made Azorius deck that goes with Dragon Maze.  Me and my two boys played "Booster Draft" with the included 9 booster packs from the Fat Pack.  Last night I tweaked that Azorius deck.  Here are my thoughts.

Booster Drafting was kind of hard....we only had two "mythic rare" cards.  Also the "rare" cards were also scant.  Each pack come with a guild gate, and it seems that each of our packs also came with at least one "cluestone."  (Similar to the "keyrunes" in the previous two sets.  Basically throwaway cards.)
But after we got going, and pulled the cards we wanted, I can kind of see what is happening here.

You see, "Dragon's Maze" is a kind of set meant to overturn the applecart of the previous two sets.  For instance, in my experience, Azorius was kind of weak.  Detain was great, until, you couldn't detain.  Then you were screwed.  The creatures tend to be smaller and detain tends to trigger only when the creatures enter the battlefield.  So people playing against Azorius kind of knew what to expect.  So the Dragon Maze comes along, and adds more detain, and gives a few more larger creatures to play.  BAM.  Forget that janky three-color mess.  Azorius is strong enough on its on.

For Simic, evolve never really took off.  It was OK to add to your already working green deck, but didn't seem to be a strategy that worked on its own.  Dragon's maze is set to fix that.

Boros was too strong.  So in Dragon's Maze, most of the cards that are worth anything seem to be more expensive to cast.  Hence, a way that some other guilds might be able to get out front.

How about some other things of note....I believe the new "Maze's End" legendary land is rediculus.  Come on.  Really?  Control 10 gates with different names, you win the game.  Did anyone try and play "Hellkite Tyrant" in Gatecrash?  So you load your deck up with keyrunes and other artifacts, you might be able to build up to 20 if the other players play artifacts.  When you control 20 artifacts, you win the game.  Maybe this card will work in Commander?  Otherwise, there is just no way.  And that is my feeling with Maze's End, except that there are no legendary's (in my knowledge) that are five color.

So this card is there just so you can say you have one, I guess.

Also, this time each guild gets a legendary creature to run the maze.  We pulled exactly two of these out of the booster packs.  One kid got the Gruul one.  The other got the Izzet.  Neither seemed that great to me.  Maybe time will give a different answer.  Since I bought the Azorius deck, I have the foil Azorius legendary.  She detains creatures of four converted mana cost or less.  By the time you are on turn 5, which is the minimum for casting her, an opponent likely has a fatty out. So, it works good against the weak cards.....not the endgame cards.  At least she has protection from red!

Fuse is another different idea.  Now you can cast a split card as a single play.  "Turn" and "Burn" for instance.

I like it so far.  Of the three, "Return to Ravnica" "Gatecrash" and "Dragon's Maze," I would say that "Gatecrash" was the best.  It got me thinking more aggressively about the game, with Boros and the "battalion" ability finding synergy with "exalted" and "haste," and Grull with it's crazy aggro "bloodrush" ability.  I suppose "Dragon Maze" is so far my least favorite of the block.

"Chronic Flooding"  (It has rained gallons lately!)