Monday Night Magic (MNM) - October 24th

Hello all!

Since this is a blog about pieces of cardboard, I figured it would be apt to post about my Magic: The Gathering (MTG) hobby.

One thing I like about MTG is that you get to play with the cardboard. So you get the thrill and joy of opening wax associated with baseball cards and a fun and complex game that is challenging that you can play with friends. It's a lot harder to 1) find other people in my area that collect baseball cards and 2) do anything other than look at and sort and admire. And trade, I suppose, but MTG has that too!

Anyways, I also feel like you get more bang for your buck with MTG. So with my limited funds I can play in sealed events, have fun for the cost of a movie and potentially have it cost me nothing. That is, if I end up with a somewhat valuable card that I can then trade in or sell for the cost of the event, I essentially played for free.

Which brings me to my next point, I only play sealed events. So the two formats are Sealed and Booster Drafts. In Sealed, everyone gets 6 booster packs, and they build a deck of 40 cards (basic lands included) and duke it out to be the best. In a Booster Draft, everyone has 3 packs that you open one at a time, take a card, and pass it to the next person (and receive the pack from the person on the other side of you, sans the one card they took) for all 15 cards in the pack. Then the pod opens the next pack and passes the opposite direction, with the third pack going the original direction. This adds a great deal of strategy as to HOW to draft a competitive deck while being fun and unique with each iteration.

And if you win, typically you get prizes in the form of more booster packs. Yay.

Anyways, I'll probably start blogging about some of my MTG events so this blog isn't so darn empty (except with Gint-A-Cuffs...). In other words, I'm going to try and be a legitimate, bonafide blogger. Yikes.

So I found out a local place has Monday Night Magic drafts, which is perfect since the typical days (Friday/Saturday/Sunday) work very, very poorly for me. Mondays, however, usually nothing going on. Tuesdays in the morning... also equally not so much. And my generous, loving, benevolent wife recognizes my need to go away and do things occasionally and is willing to handle bed time, alone, once in awhile. Bless her. A lot.

In theory there are a few of us that occasionally play board games that would meet up there and play together, thus making it even more fun. But I sort of made some new... uh, acquaintances tonight that were perfectly amiable and pleasant to converse with. And it was great.

My deck wasn't particularly great. It was alright. Both of my matches had one game where I just got hosed on land (once being flooded and the other being short) and it was costly, but it was surprisingly competitive when it had mana. My mana curve was a little higher than I wanted, being mostly 4 cost with a handful of 3 cost and a whopping two 2 cost creatures. But I had a decent amount of removal (3x Welding Sparks, anyone?) with the following rares seen/acquired:

First Pack (but not a first pick... yuck): Midnight Oil. It's... an interesting card. But I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole unless I was committed to black and really wanted that draw advantage late in a game. I took a Welding Sparks instead, I believe.

Also in that round was Lost Legacy (taken roughly round 8) because hey, why not. It's an OK sideboard card but I was getting pretty heavy into Red/White as that was the signals I was reading.

Second Pack (first pick!) Fumigate. Who doesn't like mass removal with life gain? Taken with the seventh pick was Concealed Courtyard. I was still possibly going to splash black at this point, so it both made sense from a deck perspective and financially the fast lands are more valuable than your average run-of-the-mill rares. So I was happy with it.

Third Pack (first pick!) Skyship Stalker. Um, yes please. This card is an absolute monster in sealed events. 3/3 flyer for 4 mana with fire breathing, possibly first strike and possibly haste? Yes, yes, yes, and I'll take as many as I open and get passed. Since I was already committed to red, this was the kind of bomb-ish card that my deck was needing. Mid-pack I picked up an Inventor's Fair because... why not. It would have been more useful if I had gotten any artifacts. But I didn't. So I took it. Because the rest of the cards were garbage. And as the final card I got passed and had no choice but to take was Madcap Experiment. I would have passed on it a second time, but it was the last card. So I couldn't. Still, I'll be moderately happy with six drafted rares , two of which were definitely playable!

As for my matches, I go stomped pretty good. I did get a game with at least one of the losses in each match being a very close game. So they were good games to say the least! But sometimes winning just isn't in the cards. Tonight was no exception.

Thanks for the read, let me know if there's anything you'd like me to extol upon in future blog posts or if you like the rundown of events! Disagree with my draft with what little information I offered? Flame away! Until next time, keep it in the family!

-GG

(PS: Still waiting on my wife to finish opening the consolation box of Ginter... but I suspect it'll be about on par if not possibly worse than my Gint-A-Cuffs box. There was definitely a -3 point pack I opened. Are there more Yankees in this set than usual, or are they just being more plentiful for me than normal? Seriously.)

Goodness gracious me!

So that atrocious excuse for a box of Ginter landed me in dead last by 5 points. That's a whole lot of points, especially in this year's Gint-A-Cuffs. As I alluded, I knew the box was a doozie and hence why I put off the pain for so long. Then like a band-aid, I ripped it off and it stung. Ouch.

If any of the GAC VIII folks are interested in anything from the box, let me know and we can probably work out a trade or something.

As for the loser's box, I'll post the contents on here once it arrives and probably do some sort of giveaway depending. You may need to wait until after November 9th though for it, as I have a very large deadline due then. Speaking of deadlines, need to get back to it!

Keep it in the family,

-GG