FNM Result 25th November

Get ready for a mini blogging splurge!  Rather than having one massive and convoluted post, I'm going to make 3 entries about different bits and pieces.  So here's Friday Night Magic to start with.

This week's FNM was pretty good, although a little bit messy to start with.  I took my adjusted vampire deck along with me this week, and I say 'adjusted' because it's no longer pure vampires.  It always had Grave Titan and Sheoldred in there anyway, but I added Skirsdag High Priest, Royal Assassin, and 2 Reaper of the Abyss just to see how they performed.  Sadly the Reapers never made an appearence, but the Royal Assassin did his job well.  The High Priest wasn't too bad, and I managed to activate his 5/5 Demon ability once, but he wasn't consistent enough to justify a future place in the deck.  Definitely a sideboard card though, but in the meantime he'll be dropping out in favour of another low-mana vampire.  It was also the first time I tried the deck with Witchbane Orbs and Norn's Annex, and both of those cards worked nicely.

The evening started messily seeing as I was given a Bye with the first round.  There were uneven numbers and it was just luck of the draw.  Then after I settled down someone else appeared and was told 'you might as well play Rob', so we had a couple of games.  What neither of us realised was that we'd been officially paired up, so we thought it was just a friendly game to pass the time.  As a result we weren't really keeping score, we were sitching decks, and basically not adhering to the rules of FNM at all.  We only found out what had happened when we were asked to record our score and we didn't have one, so it was chalked up as a draw for official purposes.

After that the evening went considerably downhill with a pair of straight 2-0 defeats.  The Vampires at least held their own, and managed to put up a good fight before being defeated.  Now it's been a long time since I left FNM with less than two victories, so having racked up two defeats and a draw from the first three games I was on the verge of my worst performance for months.  I needed two victories out of two, and my Vampires didn't disappoint.

Round 4 was a straight 2-0 win.  The vamps came out thick and fast, and the removal spells in the deck helped me to keep control until I'd got an unstoppable tide of creatures out.

Round 5 was a little more nervewracking, as I was playing against a specifically anti-vampire white deck.  The first game was a devastating loss, my poor little vamps being smashed mercilessly to bits.  But then in the second game they managed to pull together and just scrape a win.  And then in the third they well and truly got their revenge, with a clobbering victory over their human adversaries.

So all in all it was a decent evening.  The simple result breakdown being:

Game 1: Draw

Game 2: Lost 2-0 vs Blue Illusions

Game 3: Lost 2-0 vs Red/White Artifacts

Game 4: Won 2-0 vs Black Vampires

Game 5: Won 2-1 vs White Humans

Overall ranking 16th (out of 31)

I'll probably be taking Vampires again next Friday, but version 1.0 of my Zombie deck is now finished :) I need to playtest it a lot this week, but if it looks alright then I may give it a FNM baptism of fire next week instead.  I think it may be suffering a creature shortage though, so it may need some tweaking and some more low-mana zombies.

FNM Result 4th November

Yep, it's Friday Night Magic results time!  And last night was a little different because I finally played with my vampire deck instead of my usual elves.  They do work a little slower than my elf deck, but I have to say they're a lot more fun to use, and I did a lot better than normal with them!  Sorin Markov, Bloodlord of Vaasgoth, and Grave Titan all saw action, so I did quite well with the hands I drew.

There were two downsides to the evening though.  Firstly the traffic was ridiculous so I arrived over half an hour late.  I was given a bye (automatic win), but I'd have rather had a proper game even if there was a chance I would have lost.  And secondly at the end of the night I left early and forgot to stay for the random promo giveaway.  November's FNM promo is a Go For The Throat, which I really like so am a bit annoyed with myself for losing the chance to win one.

But aside from that, I had fun.  Like I said, the Vampires were fun, and even when they lost they certainly put up a fight.  So, the results in full...

Game 1 - Bye (Win 2-0)

Game 2 - Lost 2-0 vs White tokens

Game 3 - Lost 2-1 vs Artifacts

Game 4 - Won 2-0 vs White tokens

Game 5 - Won 2-1 vs Vampires

Game 6 - Won 2-1 vs Vampires

I'm using the Elves again in a tournament tomorrow, but I think they may have to go into a FNM timeshare with the Vampires :) I'll probably use Vampires all month at FNM to see how they do, but at the moment they do seem to be the more powerful deck.

Sorin Markov has arrived...

...and I can't wait to try out the finished Vampire deck with him in it.  Well, I say "finished" but it's not. This is more like version 2.0.  I'm completely certain that it will need a lot more work in coming weeks, but for now it's looking pretty decent.  The Bloodlord of Vaasgoths arrived today as well, so they're ready to slot into the deck tomorrow.  I'm a little worried about the mana-curve in this deck, so I've broken slightly from the Vampire theme and am looking at throwing in a pair of Diregraf Ghouls to give a couple of 1-drop creaturs to help give the deck some staying power until the more powerful creatures come out to play.  I really want to take it to FNM this week, but after the truly embarrasing Innistrad celebration yesterday I kinda want to go back to the Elves to give my confidence a bit of a boost.

So yup.  Vampire deck is now Planeswalkered up and ready to go :) Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a full lunch break at work and I can test it against my trusty Elves.

FNM Result 28th October

Wow, what a manic day it was yesterday!  Work was truly ridiculously busy, which meant that I didn't get any breaks at all and still finished 15 minutes late, so that put me struggling for time right from the offset.  So I had to scoot back from Lichfield to Sutton like a bat out of hell in order to pick up my sister, who was attending her first Friday Night Magic :) Then she hopped on the back of the bike, we scooted into Birmingham, and just made it in time for registration.  It's cool that she's getting into the game, at the moment she's using the vampire deck which I threw together for her, but she's started to buy a few of her own cards and is looking at getting a starter deck as well which she can chop and change.

The vampire deck's actually working pretty well.  I've ordered a set of 4 Bloodlord of Vaasgoths (which I plan to put 2 of into the deck), and a pair of Sorin Markovs to make it a bit tougher, so I'm looking forward to seeing those arrive.  I'm hoping that my sister gets her deck sorted soon, as I'm quite looking forward to trying this deck out myself at FNM!

So in the meantime I'm sticking with my elves.  It's been heavily overhauled since I last used it.  It used to be a pure elf deck, but now I've taken out a load of low-cost elves in order to put in 4 Darksteel Plates, 4 Platinum Emperions, and 4 Swiftfoot Boots.  After last night I've got to say the Plate and the Boots pulled their weight, but the Emperions didn't really do too much.  So I'm going to tweak it a little more today and take it in with me to the Innistrad celebration event this Sunday.

All in all, it was another average performance for the Elves, finishing 12th out of 19, and here was the breakdown:

Game 1 - Lost 2-0 vs White Creature Tokens

Game 2 - Won 2-1 vs Blue/White Control & Artifacts

Game 3 - Lost 2-0 vs Elves

Game 4 - Won 2-0 vs Red/Blue Flashback

Game 5 - Lost 2-1 vs Black/Red Vampires

My sister also won 2 and lost 3, so that was a good performance for a first FNM :) So, time to go Elf-adjusting, and I'll let you all know how they get on on Sunday!  ...unless my sister can't make it on Sunday, in which case I'll be playing vamps!

A Strange New World

It's been a quiet couple of days on the blogging front, so I thought I might as well do a quick entry before it's time to turn in for the night.

Well I'm past the half way point in the first week of my new job.  So far it's been pretty mind-fragging.  I may have worked at this place before, but I'm having to learn a whole new side of the job and it's a lot to take in.  On the plus side I feel like I'm picking it up quite quickly, I'm just going slowly when it comes to carrying out all of the new stuff.  Obviously I know that I'm going to be slow - everyone's always slow when they start a new job, speed comes with time - but I've always hated feeling like I'm holding everyone else up, and that's kind of how I've felt so far this week.

One thing which has been good is having a full lunch hour in which to play Magic :-D  I've been teaching my sister to play lately and she's been enjoying it, so I told her I'd put together a vampire deck for her to use.  It's not a refined deck in the slightest, but I just put together creatures and spells that felt right, and lo and behold!  I made a deck which I can't frikkin' beat lol  Even though she's just a beginner, nothing I do with my Elves seems to be able to beat these vapires!  There wasn't time for a lunch break today, but hopefully there will be tomorrow.  So I'm going to try my Illusions against the vampires, and if I still can't beat the damned things then I think I might have to take them to Friday Night Magic this week ;)

So yep, that's been about the extent of my week so far.  Lots of work, lots of brain-overload, and lots of Magic.  And now it's time for lots of sleep!