A Brief Pre – Dark Ascension Update

Well it's been a little while since I updated my blog but thought I would just give a brief rundown as to what I have been up to.

Cube

If you've been following my blog then I've recently talked about starting a cube. Well at the moment I'm about 100 cards into the setup and I'm slowly working to getting more. I found out that Glenn had updated his list. This was interesting enough for me to evaluate mine. Now I won't be acquiring the expensive cards straight away but I will be picking up some of them. Whilst I feel that proxying is a great idea, I think I definitely prefer owning the physical cards.

Even they are only one drops I will want to foil this at some point. I'll pick up the bargain foils straight away, and the more expensive ones, again, over time. I'm looking at this as a long term investment and project.

I will be trying to get it to 288 cards so that the 8 man draft is possible. This is with 3 lots of 12 card "packs" each to make 30 card decks. Even if the cube is this large, it can still be 2/4/6/8 player drafted. This is exactly what I want it to be.


 

EDH/Commander

With the mass of token generation around, I thought I would start looking at a second EDH deck. Someone in our play group also mentioned doing commons/uncommon and I thought that this strategy might work. Well this is the deck that I think I'll be working on:

With a ton of spirit/soldier token generators about I think that shall be my starting point. This will be a lengthy project but also something that I can expand into rare and mythic (Read Sorin).


 

Dark Ascension

With the new set on the horizon there is a lot of hype about a possible Black/White tokens deck. I think it will appear and I think it will be a contender. However, even though Dark Ascension is similar lay out to Worldwake in set size and the way that the 3^rd set of the block is drafted I don't feel that we are going to end up in a Jace style price range on this chase mythic of the set.

One other mythic I am interested in seeing how it will perform is the Huntmaster. This could potentially be a real enabler in pushing the werewolves into a real deck. It's hard to say without testing, which I get little chance to do, but I have my fingers crossed for a positive outcome on that one.

Now I'm not one to cry "Mono Black Control" is back, but I am considering up a non-infect zombie variant. I'd love to have phyrexian obliterators but I don't see them appearing in my collection anytime soon, but I'll work with what I've got and see where it takes me. Patrick Chapin wrote about the deck in a recent Star City article (Premium side so can't link to it L)


 
Anyway that's all from me at the moment, but I'll try and live tweet my progress on Saturday at the pre-release.


 
Laters

Adam

Weekinmtg@gmail.com

@weekinmtg (twitter)


 
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No FNM But still a magic Filled Week

Thursday 15^th December

So Today I had a brewing/deck construction day. I'm not much of a brewer, but I do look at decks from the bigger tournaments sleeve them up and then try and adapt from there. This usually depends on local meta, my play style and of course card availability.

I Started with This UW Illusions Build and A R/B Bloodhall Build. I had to make my own tweaks here and there, but fortunately they aren't major, and I also think that both these decks fit my style. I think that I will have to finally take the plunge and Pick up that 4^th snapcaster, as it seems to be a major player that I don't think will be going anywhere any time soon.

This brings me onto something that I have an interest in – Math! Now before I scare everyone else, I think that it's interesting! For all those that haven't noticed I personally feel that mana basses are particularly bad if you want to play anything that is not friendly colours and therefore 3+! So I'm in the process of building a Bant POD (Blue White green Birthing pod) with the basis being sent by a friend I made via Twitter. However he has left with me a little room for customisation for a few creatures and the mana base!

This led me to do a bit of a google search on articles and I stumbled across these:

This one is my Favorite but I also found this , this and this offering interesting outlooks on the topics. If this is of any sort of interest to you then I would recommend giving them a read.

I guess all this does is offer the amount of basics to play, the trickier part for me is selecting and playing the correct amount of Dual lands and scars fast lands.

So With 3 standard decks now out of the way, it was time to update my Modern deck. It is a very budget "Eggs" deck that I first saw many moons ago Here on the Building on a Budget Site. This deck was very in expensive to pick up so worked on it and ended up with this list. Now of course this was mid-August which was Pre Pro Tour Philadelphia. Since then the ban list has had an update. (I also believe that it's getting another update on 20th December). From said ban list I unfortunately lost 2 ponders and 4 Preordain! Gah. Oh well. From that I have taken those 6 cards out and replaced with 3 Locket of Yesterdays, and actually added 4 Creatures. A singleton Disciple of The Vault and 3 Riddlesmith. I used a list that appeared on Tcg Player, but is a natural evolution of the original deck.

I'm not sure if there are other Modern Players in Cornwall but I'm always up for a game and it can inspire me to build a sideboard. I'm always tempted to start working on a legacy deck. The beauty of the Eternal formats is that the cards don't rotate and, unless cards appear on the corresponding ban list, you will have a deck that is always playable.

 

Friday 16^th

Drinking and EDH, Do go on…..

So our shop owner was away for the weekend running a stall at a very large Yu-Gi-Oh Tournament, fortunately enough I had a friend Invite me and a few others round, for pizza, EDH and drinks. Awesome. We even managed to fit in a game of Settlers of Catan. It was only my second time playing it and I sucked hard.

EDH is a great open game. For me it lets you do very silly things, and ultimately play with cards you want to play with. I like to apply the theory "Go Big or Go Home".

I basically got banned from using the horrible combo of Hive Mind and the "Pacts" from the future sights set. It is a quality combo that lets me win, (In all honestly it's a cheapskate's way to play and win!). I do still have my one turn win combo which has won me some games with Hellkite Charger and Bear Umbra! Yeah!

All in all a solid fun night. I would heart fully recommend drinking and playing social casual games. It can help you unwind just relax whilst still playing a game you love!

Next time I hope to upload how my FNM went when running the Bant Pod list, and hopefully I'll get it up on Christmas eve but that might be a big ask. If you don't see me before that then I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays.


 
Adam


 
P.S Exsanguinate is a horrible card to be cast in a multiplayer EDH game.