Archive for the Magic: the Gathering Category

Winter is Coming

By on January 5, 2012

Oh wow, how annoying is a blog post that starts with “it’s been awhile since I last posted” or some such words.  Occupy is over, it’s finally freezing cold here in NYC, and the Modern PTQ Season is fast approaching.

While I haven’t been able to play much Magic at all lately, aside from consistently losing Innistrad drafts every Friday,  I’ve been testing a lot with what appears to be the best combo deck in the Modern format:

4  Island
1  Mountain
4  Scalding Tarn
4  Shivan Reef
1  Steam Vents
2  Sulfur Falls

4  Desperate Ravings
4  Desperate Ritual
2  Empty the Warrens
4  Gitaxian Probe
4  Grapeshot
4  Manamorphose
3  Past in Flames
4  Pyretic Ritual
3  Pyromancer Ascension
4  Seething Song
4  Serum Visions
4  Sleight of Hand

Sideboard
4  Leyline of Sanctity
3  Dispel
3  Echoing Truth
3  Lightning Bolt
1  Empty the Warrens
1  Telemin Performance

Combo is always my default choice for constructed, since you’re doing something that a lot of decks just can’t stop, at least game one.  Also, it plays to my natural inclination to avoid interacting with people.

This is basically card for card what everyone is playing on Magic Online, which is always a good starting place before I go changing cards and making it not work anymore.  I’ve found the deck to be surprisingly consistent for a turn four win, although you usually don’t need to do so.  A lot of times I’ll storm out with Manamorphoses and Probes a bit and Grapeshot their board in order to buy a bunch of turns to get a better hand.

One card I really want in the deck is Peer Through Depths.  Ravings can be pretty insane setting things up and stocking your graveyard, but I think with how far that card digs it’s likely just better.  It also makes beating sideboard cards much easier, since you’re more likely to find your Echoing Truth or Dispel in time for their Ethersworn Canonist or Mindbreak Trap.

Telemin Performance is hilarious tech for the mirror, and really makes me want to play Phage the Untouchable as the next level tech, which I haven’t seen in any lists, probably because it’s just not a good idea.  Stars have to align somewhat for you to live the dream, since they have to actually be playing Telemin, draw it (usually two of) and have you not draw your Phage.  Probably just playing a Snapcaster Mage would foil their Performance plan and still be useful to draw.  Still though, I can cast her off of double Manamorphose…

I hate Leylines, especially in a format without Brainstorm, and likely will not be playing them for real.  Blanking discard is nice and all, but I’m already down a card now, and want to kill myself every time I draw another Leyline.

All in all a pretty awesome deck, and one I’ll probably go 5-2 at every PTQ and get 9th on tiebreakers, as I’ve done three times in the past.  The deck seems insane, but it’s getting so much press lately that I’m not sure it’s a great choice.  The first PTQ is this month, the 21st in Brooklyn, so we shall see.

I have never seen a single episode of Game of Thrones.

This entry is filed under Magic: the Gathering, Uncategorized, Zac Hanson.

Occupy Starbucks

By on October 28, 2011

Meh.

Occupy Wallstreet has been an excellent source of free dinner and break dancing the last few weeks.  The first time I went I noticed a box of Clif bars that I assumed was up for grabs, so I took three.  Then I laughed at my own immediate abuse of a socialist system. I would have taken the whole box but I was hanging out with someone I didn’t know all that well.

I watched a bunch of guys play Yu-Gi-Oh there for awhile this week.  No wonder they’re angry, having spent all of that disposable income on Yu-Gi-Oh cards instead of a real game.  If only there were a few disgruntled Magic players down there I’d pitch a tent tomorrow.

the fuzz

"Just punchd a hippie in the face, lolz"

People seem really stoked to repeat what everyone says instead of investing in a megaphone.  One person says something really loud and inspiring, and then everyone within earshot repeats it, for the benefit of the rest.  This seems to be an excellent way to mix up your message, as anyone who has ever played telephone or talked to people before can tell you.  Maybe megaphone manufacturing is destroying the environment.

I even took my mom down there for lunch when she visited about a week ago.  When I brought my plastic fork back after eating I was informed that they were not, in fact, reusing them.  The poor girl serving food looked like I had just exposed something terrible.  ”Thanks for asking though” she said, and I chucked it right into the giant garbage bin beside her.

The police, for their part, seem to be pretty over it by now.  At least they’re not chucking tear gas canisters at people’s heads or anything.  During the Occupy protest on 42nd Street, which I happened through with my mom, I noticed a police officer conspicuously eyeing (like head going up and down tapping his buddies on the shoulders eyeing) a rather attractive women walking in front of me.  Our conversation went exactly as follows:

delicious

FREEdom food.

“What are you checking her out for?”
“She’s hot.”
“You’re a god damn police officer .”
“Yeah, well I’m a man too.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you are.”

And then he said something else to me while my mom was pulling on my arm trying to get me out of there.  This isn’t a comment on Occupy police officer behavior so much as it is on NYC police officers in general.  Rather unhelpful.

I’ll probably swing by again soon though.  At least once the shower soap I stocked up on from there runs out.  They were giving out razors too but you had to ask the guy at the booth, and I didn’t want to look like a freeloader.

This entry is filed under Magic: the Gathering, New York City, Politics, Zac Hanson.

Work in progress

By on October 5, 2011

This is probably the 239th time I’ve attempted to write a blog, so I’m skeptical of it actually sustaining my interest beyond the sea monster I just drew for the banner.  I agonized over whether a sea monster would actually be green.  It seems like it would be an evolutionary disadvantage, and it should just be blue for camouflage.  At the end of the three seconds of internal debate the idea of a blue sea monster amid a blue ocean was not aesthetically pleasing to me, but I admit that I did not actually draw one to confirm this.

I don’t have anything enlightening or interesting to say at the moment, but you should probably check back for more late night ramblings.  I just Googled “wordpress RSS plugin” and it seems like those exist, so I’ll have that set up soon, since I know I would subscribe to my website feed if I had one.

The main goal for this blog at the moment though is to get enough posts in for the tag cloud I plan to have posted at the right over there to look completely natural, but with “Zac Hanson” as the most used tag.  I’m not sure how many posts this will take to work, but this is post number two towards that aim.  Once the tag cloud looks good I’ll have to regroup to see what else I want to get out of this or if my blogging days are complete.

The tags I have created thus far are Brooklyn, New York City, Magic: the Gathering, Android, and of course, Zac Hanson, so I expect that if I continue to blog, those are the things I will likely write about, aside, honestly, from Zac Hanson.  I have to get a couple more tags in there for this tag cloud thing, so if anything else comes up I’ll throw another one out there, bit it all comes back to Zac Hanson.

I just reviewed this whole thing and deleted a bunch of the words “actually,” “admit,” and “but” because I had overused those.  I’m leaving the comments part open until I learn my lesson and this site gets overrun by spam bots posting links to viagra, so if anyone actually reads this keep that in mind.  Here is a picture from my walk to work in the morning:

Elbow Toe and I go way back

This entry is filed under Android, Brooklyn, Magic: the Gathering, New York City, Zac Hanson.