Magic:TheGathering - My Friday Night Magic Report #1

Hello, friends!

I have mentioned here and there About my Magic:TheGathering experience. I know @slobberchops, @daplanet, @anomadsoul, and @bogglemcgee play it. Any others around?

It is the first Trading Cards Game - it came out in 1992 and now has quite the popularity worldwide with yearly tournament prizes in the millions (USD).

The cards themselves cost quite a bit and as @steemmonsters fans here already know, rare and more powerful cards cost sometimes more than the pack they were in but they don't come often so there are tons of cheaper cards out there for each precious one. Lately, I have been forced to sell some of my cards (the earliest form of things similar to crypto assets that I had) so that I can keep my Steem instead. I do hope it was the right move. And I also prefer playing cheap creative decks. A Tier 1 Modern format deck costs sometimes more than $ 1000.

What you see on the picture is a sample of some of the cards in my deck of 60 main board cards and 15 side board cards which can substitute cards in your main board after game one in a best of three match. I played a Red-Blue-Green (Which kind of corresponds to the RUG - Red-blUe-Green nature of the dude on my playmat - a trophy from a Game Day won a few years ago)... so, Red-Blue_Green homebrew deck, Modern format for a friendly atmosphere Friday Night Magic weekly tournament at a local club in Sofia. (Good friends of mine own the club. It's called The Other Castle.)

To the left are stacks of my basic lands and nonbasic lands which produce the red, green and blue mana that I need in order to cast my spells. Basically, my strategy was to play a bunch of cheap to cast interactive spells on my turn or during opponent's turn and a few creatures who are triggered to do something by those multiple and cheap spells. Like Erayo, Soratami Ascendant from the Kamigawa Edition, who turns into a legendary enchantment countering the first spell of the opponent on each turn, or Thing in the Ice which grows and bounces other creatures out of the battlefield and into players' hands, clearing the way. Some control, some tempo, some burn... A balance of things that should work well together. Or just allow me to have fun, interacting a lot during each match.

My first match was relatively easy because G had chosen a casual Treefolk deck, playing walking trees who are sturdy, slow, give each other buffs... some quality removal but that's it. He still managed to take one game from me so I won 2:1 and advanced 1:0 to next round of our small 3-rounds tournament.

Next match was among a Tier 1 deck - Affinity (a lot of colorless artifacts who have awesome synergy together but no more affinity abilities... only the name remains out of tradition.) Lots of Aggro and lots of ways to kill you fast. Fortunately I was first on the play, which means I have the first turn and my opponent draws the first card after the initial hand of 7 (unless bad luck makes anybody go down to 6 or 5, taking mulligan to improve a terrible hand)... And fortunately I was able to kind of combo out Thing in the Ice plus some additional tricks to steal the first game. He was first next game and he won quickly with an unblockable protected from colors creature -Etched Champion - with a huge Cranial Plating bonus to its attacks (equals the numbers of artifacts in play). He took me out in three consequitive swings. I wasn't able to slow him down since he played a counterspell of sorts - Spell Pierce. Third game, though, I was first, I had a back up plan even for after his Spell Pierce and I won due to my awesome side boarded cards that should crush Artifacts in great numbers. I was able to reach five mana stage of the game, overload a Vandalblast and press forward for the win. Again 2:1 and 2:0 in the mini tournament.

Then I met some ultra cheap deck with only red aggressive cards which had awesome luck and I lost 1:2.

I finished the evening with 2 wins, 1 loss. I had fun. I would play a similar build of the deck again.

Are you familiar with the game? If you have questions, I would be glad to answer.

Good luck, have fun , and until next time!

Yours,

Manol