The Planeswalker's Stronghold

Last week we began what will continue to be a series of article centered around the concept of pre-con decks, and evolving them through out the block. For the basic concepts, and the beginning of the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Super block, please read last weeks post. Last week we took our $2 0 budget and attended the Lorwyn Prerelease event, and ended up with a very playable mono-green deck with a serious Elf centered play, and a splash-able black option. I really don't think we could have ask ed for a better group of cards from what w e started with, since we have only six cards which were unplayable in our collection (93% playable). This week we will attend the Morningtide Prerelease, and see if we can improve our collection. We will add the following Warrior's Code pre-con, the foil promo Door of Destinies from the event, and a random booster pack. The Deck and booster contents are listed below. We very lucky with this addition, because it ties in nicely with our existing elf theme,...

Submitted by-Nick (nicholas.g@gmail.com, nick on SciFi, dog_fish on MtGO) Allow me to introduce myself. None of you know me, and probably only one or two of you have ever met me. My name is Nick, I'm one of the few Legend of the Five Rings players atScifi Genre in Durham. I play board games, D&D, GURPS, Videogames, and I’m embarrassed to say it but I’ve even been known to LARP once in a while. There is a little known secret that I’m going to share with you all: I played magic as a wee-one from Beta through Fourth edition, stuck around for Ice Age and the last booster pack I ever purchased was from Alliances. Until now. Yes, I’m going to start magic again. The one question that I'm sure you could all answer is: Why did I quit playing Magic in the first place? Time Money Nobody to play with Time: Between all of my other hobbies, school, sports, jobs, wife, house, and who knows what else? There wasn’t time for Magic. Money: Playing Magic is super expensive especi...

Submitted by Jeff Darran (phfantom on Scifi Genre, jcdarran@gmail.com) Shoebox recently called me hardcore, something about playing 4 major tournaments in 3 weekends. Regionals on June 7 th , PTQ in Burlington on June 14 th , Grand Prix Indy on June 21 st , and PTQ in Indy on June 22 nd . Maybe its hardcore. Maybe its good planning and a love to play the game. My last article I posted my decklist for Kithkinweave. From that decklist to this week I made some changes. To view the original decklist click here . There were only 3 cards changed out from the original. I took out the Militia’s Pride, as most of the time, the card just sat there in my hand, being revealed for Goldmeadow Stalwarts. I also dropped a Goldmeadow Harrier count from 4 to 3. I added in 3 Ballynock Cohorts, because they are a fairly strong creature and it’s a turn 3 drop if I don’t have a Spectral Procession in hand or if my mana is 2 Plains and a Mutavault and I can’t cast the Spectral Procession. When you figure th...

It has been brought to my attention that I have not talked much lately about he state of casual at SciFi in some time, so please allow me to point out some things which have really developed recently. If you have not been out for Wednesday Night Casual in a while, things have really changed. Over the past few months our numbers have grown from the occasional 3-5 to over 12 consistently. Even Zac, one of our original founding fathers, has been making recent appearances. It is not unusual to see games of 6+ round table going, and the trading is as strong as ever, but i can't help but sense we need some sort of trading post. I would love to here any thoughts you guys have on organizing our trade potential. Not only do we have more players, but there really is a lot going on. The Anti/Stamped/Pooh League has started to dwindle, but it never fails. I still see people playing it every Wednesday night. There is already a lot of discussion of resetting the card pool when Shards of Alara h...

At the End of the Day: How Two Opponents Gifted Me 18 Packs -Jeff Darran (phantom on SciFi Genre , and jcdarran@gmail.com ) Today I will tell a story of the Magic powers-that-be simply giving me games despite myself. Let me start by saying that I was playing a deck that JohnnyK built from Justin's brain.... or something like that. I wasn't 100% familiar with the deck I just knew I was iritated at my own deck. This story is taken from a side event at the NC Regionals in Concord North Carolina. I started the day in the main event, but had an unspectacular 2-3-0 record and opted to drop. round 1 vs dragonstorm game one, I stomp face game 2 I get face stomped game 3, snatching from the jaws of epic fail. Opponent is at 1 life. I had gotten him down to 3. No cards in hand. I pass turn, he draws his 2 cards, taking his 2 damage from the spiteful visions I had on the board. I believe I started the turn at 15 or 17. Something like that and I had previously earwig squaded,...

Deck Evolution: Lorwyn Elvish Predation Over the last couple of weeks I have spoken with several people who are interested in re/entering the game, but wish to do so in a limited fashion, with minimal outlay of cash. The question always ends up, on what is the best way fro them to get the most fun out of meager resources. For the purposes of this article, I am going to work with a $20 budget, and ignore sales tax. I really consider this a bear minimum of entry, and feel confident that almost anyone can accommodate this amount. More often then not, I recommend they buy a pre-con, because at about $12 it fits almost any budget, has known fixed contents, and is d esigned for entry level players. The remaining $8 could be spent on 2 boosters, or a variety of singles. Then I got to thinking, could a player do better, and frankly I think they can. If you take this same budget, and participate in the open-dueling at the prerelease event, you would get a random pre-con, a booster pack, a f...