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mtgsharzad · 6 years ago

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GRN Prerelease Notes

WeIt’s been a while since I’ve gone to a prerelease. I think since...BFZ? But with the free Arena sealed voucher and the return to return to Ravnica, Magic’s greatest setting, I schlepped my way to the game store (after swallowing two edibles). It’s a different store than the one I used to prerelease at. A narrow room is filled with one line of tables and barely enough space on either side of them to walk past. The counter stretches...6 metres? It’s a game store, like many and unlike many others. I showed up 3 minutes late and all the non-Izzet prerelease packs have been taken. Not much of a choice, izzet? God, kill me. I get a promo Firemind’s Insight and a really conflicted Sealed pool. I have three Selesnya rares, a Steam Vents, an Assassin’s Trophy (which I’m going to trade away) and the new 1R growing elemental guy. I have, like, no playable creatures, and end up reaching for two copies of Muse Drake just to be able to play more than 8 battle dumplings. I built into a grixis fliers/midrange deck, mostly anchored around my copious removal and my UUBB guy. I always forget how long we’re allowed for deckbuilding at these events. I’m usually a quick deckbuilder, but the drugs kick in and I find myself looking at the same 25 possible includes for a straight 15 minutes. I cut my second copy of the 1UB enchantment and grab basics, and proceed to have a really pleasant conversation with the guy diagonal from me about Legacy Pox. What a beautiful deck! He confessed to running the 1-of granddaddy Pox, as well as 4 Sinkhole, 4 Wasteland, 4 Smallpox, etc. Gotta love a man who plays the 1-of. He said he plays Percy as a finisher though, instead of the Nether Shadow recursion/beats strat - “make a percy, swing three times, you’re dead”, he explains. Sounds interesting! Round one. I’m up against a friendly Asian guy in his late 20s. He’s on BUG, and we have a good back-and-forth, but I take the series 2-1. Nothing really memorable or exceptional here; just some good old fashioned Sealed gameplay. I take game 3 with a reasonably-thrilling combo kill out of nohwere with Wee Dragonauts buffs and 6 points of burn going dome. Really great games, I say, and he agrees. I report the match win to the store owner, who I think gives me a little wink of approval. Who is this strange newcomer, who can win her first game? I imagine he’s saying. She must be a powerful sorceress. Round two. I deckbuilt across from this guy, so I know that he’s on Naya and has a foil Trostani (jealous). He had a bye R1, so I’m nervous, but I pretend I didn’t know this when he explains it to me. “So, you feeling good, then?” I ask, and he replies with something that’s music to my ears: He’s a total scrub! He has no idea how to play Magic, and is “usually the worst guy in the room”. I’m about 5% wary of some kind of hustle, but I don’t think I’m being hustled; this guy is earnest about how bad he is at Magic, so let’s just have some fun games! In game 1, I keep a risky hand with UR mana and two B spells. I never find a Swamp, and Sammy Scrub over here just develops a board and beats me down. The whole time, he’s table talking nervously about how this is the best it ever goes for him, and this is probably the best he’ll do all day. A turn before I’d die, I say gg and flop the hand, which now has 4 B spells and still no B mana. ”That explains a lot”, he says. In game 2, I take a dicy mull to 4 looking for lands. I’m sitting on Swamp, new Rupture Spire, Dinrova Horror, Goblin Cratermaker, which is at least an all-stars version of my shitty, shitty deck. I manage to do some nice stack trickery with Cratermaker that fizzles one of his Auras. After clarifying the difference between Auras and Equipment, I take game 2 easily.

This seems like an apt point to take a moment to take a personal stand: I hate the way he taps his mana. He keeps all his lands in a single pile, behind his library (and therefore more or less underneath his arm from my viewpoint). This game, he did this thing where he’d hold up 3 mana for like 4 turns, and I’d have to keep clarifying that he had mana up, with him even doing things like casting a Worldsoul Colossus with X=2 so he could hold up mana (I Dead Weighted it. 😭Brutal😭). Turns out he was holding onto a Plummet effect; when I slammed the Dinrova Horror, he said “oh, that has flying, right?” and tried to kill it. Damn, sorry dude, but it also has Hexproof... Anyway. The experience of playing against multiple people with really incoherent mana presentation made me resolve to be even better about my own land display. It’s something Magic Arena couldn’t possibly have reminded me about; the messiness and personal flair that goes into the way each player taps, plays, and manipulates their cards, all outside of the game itself. Game 3 also comes down to some board stall where I blunted his early assault and stabilized with Wee Dragonauts. Once I hit 6 mana I did the 4UR split card spell to search for an instant (the jumpstart draw 2) and a sorcery (the 3bb murder surveil 2). That was my endgame value chain, and he just couldn’t beat it. I played really forgivingly and walked him through my understandings of several combats in a way that I think made him a more equitable opponent to me, and so for that reason I think we had some really captivating fun games. I really liked this guy, and I hope he did well after we fought. We go to turns, so my idea to buy pizza before R3 is tragically dashed on the rocks. I still haven’t eaten (always take pills on an empty stomach, kids), and I’m starting to feel it.

My opponent this round is a happy looking fat kid, who the entrenched player cracking a box to my left apparently mentored in Magic’s rules. The moment we square up I realize he’s a “Real Opponent” in a way the round 2 guy simply wasn’t; he does the pro player card shuffling tic, announces every trigger, and his cards make the loud SLICK SLICK SLACK of a player who knows exactly which card he’s putting where, and who intends to waste no time doing so.

We both mull to 6. “Ooh, hope you didn’t keep a fast one, or I might need to go to 5″, I tease. He tells me he kept a fast one, I stay on 6, and true to his word, he grizzly bears me into the dust by turn 6. Brutal! I mire in self-abnegation. You IDIOT, I think. He said it was a fast one, I castigate. Oops! This is not the mindset of a champion. I reset quickly for game two. At this point we’re comfortable enough in the dance, two mature players (one a child) with cleanly-laid-out mana and creatures and full understanding of the Stack, and we’re bullshitting and talking Modern while we play. It’s a joyous experience, the best time I’ve had playing paper Magic recently. I take game 2 pretty cleanly when he’s stuck on two lands, and the land clump he hits on turn 5 is too little too late, even though he slams a locket as soon as he can play it. I misplay a little by forgetting some of his announced triggers during combat, and get a 1-for-1 on my Dinrova Horror instead of the 2-for-1 I’d planned on. Oops! I win handily, though. In game 3 I kept a risky 6 - 5 lands and a two-drop. I draw more lands and just can’t spend gas fast enough to keep up, and he curves me into the dust with his efficient little battle dumplings. RIP, really great games. The thrill of combat and the hot copper taste of blood (I think I bit my cheek accidentally?) fill my veins. In the pizza meta selection subgame, I walk in the door thinking Potato, but audibled to Feta and Sundried Tomatoes because I heard Boros had good chances against the field.

I walk back down the street to the LGS. The pizza did what it needed to and has loosened the feelings of self-doubt that come with your first tournament loss of the day. I am a champion. I am a queen. I’m beautiful. I visualize myself going 3-1. My opponent for the fourth and final round is another teen, but he’s way worse than the cute friendly pro-to-be. He’s really soft-spoken, which wouldn’t be a problem but Putative Pro is the other match on this table and he and I are still occasionally shooting the shit, much to Surly Kid’s annoyance. Sorry, dog! I would normally use your turns to plan strategy or whatever, but he takes such ponderous long turns I feel like I have no choice. He’s moaning that he’s had to mull to 5 5 times already. My heart goes out to the kid, but maybe he should learn to trust in the heart of the cards!~ He’s built a pretty solid GWr aggro deck, lots of lifegain and Mentor effects. Exactly the kind of deck I’m not built to answer! But it turns out that spot removal works okay against mentor if you can keep them from having two guys attack on any given turn. I bleed out before I can stabilize game 1, though. Game 2 I barely remember also, but I think I had a solid early curve and managed to discard his 1 answer in-hand. Hard to complain about that!

Game 3. Game 3 is scary. We both mull to 5 and have shaky starts. He hits me with early pressure and takes me down to like 5 real early, while I’ve managed to chip him down to like 16. FIVE TURNS, comes the booming announcement. Oh shit, I think. I have to take this. A 3-1 finish is so close, I can taste it. I end up stacking Wee Dragonauts and Electrostatic Wall triggers to find exact lethal on my last of the 5 extra turns. It’s incredibly, viscerally, beautifully satisfying. I feel electric, triumphant, and exultatory. This is my apotheosis.

I win...three packs! Oops. The kid who beat me in R3 came first (satisfying to only lose to the winner), but because of the byes, someone has a 3-0-1 record, and they get the 6 packs due to second. Still, it’s a delight to place. TRADES: traded away my Assassin’s Trophy for a K Command, new Niv, some cube cards / foils and some pocket change.

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dimensionalspades · 9 months ago

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DIMENSIONALSPADES ;; a selective indie multimuse featuring Sova of Valorant, as well as a variety of muses from video games and sci fi media. ⇘ about ⇗ rules ⇘ muses ⇗ interest tracker ⇘

#valorant rp #riot rp #video game rp #fps rp #multimuse rp #indie rp #sci fi rp #.shuffle the deck ; self promo.

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chronoscasuals · 6 years ago

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Sentinels of the Multiverse: Adelphophage’s Archives (part 7: pre-OblivAeon environment re-balances)

Welcome all to ChronosCasuals. I’m ChronosMysty and today I’ll go over the environment changes. Remember to find Adelphophage’s work here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0ByiShKnxkMCuRU5DMXJKYVFtMlk and here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1678967/adelphophages-archives. So let’s jump into it with The Block’s changes:

1 round of global 2 DR is more than enough, thank you very much.

Celestial Tribunal

NOTE: These Celestial Tribunal changes aren’t finalized, these are just the versions I have played with. Essentially, all the Trials no longer play a card when they’re destroyed but instead when they enter play if there are no Celestial Executioners out. The Celestial Chambers now ensures that there is at least 1 Celestial Executioner out at the end of the environment turn (giving you time to deal with it), and Representative of Earth has a redirection clause to help stop villains from killing the Representative of Earth. (It does not work against Celestial Executioners, though, so be careful.) Overall, there are much fewer random, arbitrary losses and I stamp this with my approval.

Dok’Thorath Capital

These two were moved to start of turn to reduce the massive flood of “end of turn, deal each non-[keyword] target”. The minions still deal their damage at end of turn, but they don’t become allied with anyone, so that’s fine.

Enclave of the Endlings

I asked about Hall of the Terminarch. The answer I got was “its only job is to spam decently high HP targets until you hit the one high HP target that makes them all harder to kill.” So it was changed to something that makes you care about the environment and makes it easier to kill. The Slamara change was pretty much requested by me due to how its old wording was fit for purpose only for solo villain mode. We were also having trouble figuring out “played vs enter play” on the villain promos, so I figured that the “strange case Slamara” could be errata’d to “play” to make things easier. technically, this change is now extremely unneeded (and even changes the purposes of the card slightly), but I still prefer the wording being clear on how it functions rather than “the villain deck and each hero deck”.

The Final Wasteland

The first two give their special buffs passively (at least in some respect) but now make a mini-game of keeping them around. Unforgiving Wasteland helps make the environment a bit more relevant and harder to ignore.

Freedom Tower

Entry Point was a strange card with a lot of weird rulings. This guts all of that and makes it a target that destroys all but 1 Room card. Was it the most necessary change? No. does it make this environment even easier? Probably. But given how the environment’s only method of cleaning itself up was a Room that could be covered AND had a hefty price to it, I can definitely see the appeal of making this a target. Ironclad maintenance Unit now has a proper purpose and works decently well with Caspit’s Playground, although with 4 Entry Points, having both out won’t last long.

Insula Primalis

These two changes help make these two cards a bit more fair. The environment probably shouldn’t destroy more of your stuff than the villain does, and now this environment doesn’t have to.

Madame Mittermeier’s Fantastical Festival of Conundrums and Curiosities

This deck got a rehaul in the form of Madame Mittermeier’s Byzantine Bazaar of Arcana and Attractions. This rehaul places Attractions in front of heroes and their effects now only directly affect that hero. The environment also self-regulates in the form of four Unstable Midway, a 7 HP target that deals each target 2 melee damage at the start of the environment turn (including itself) and will destroy all environment cards upon its own destruction.

Magmaria

Magmaria also got a rehaul in the form of Magmaria - Shifting Loyalties. Magmaria - Shifting Loyalties now starts off with the Magmarians being hostile to the humans, but by activating their Magma Crystal text (rather than using actual magma crystal cards), they proc a one-time hero supportive effect and then destroy themselves. This provides an interesting dilemma - do you destroy the magmarians now or wait until the opportunity to proc a magma crystal effect?

Megalopolis

Hostage Situation was a very powerful 1 turn stall and completed the trifecta of inability. Breaking the trifecta up and providing a different buff seemed to be a good way to go. Close Quarters Combat already covers the +1 damage shtick. Changing Rooftop Combat to something else seemed appropriate.

Mobile Defense Platform

For an environment hostile to the heroes, this environment doesn’t do much of anything. Now it gets a rehaul in Mobile Assault Platform. Mobile Assault Platform actually makes the environment more threatening., with increased damage, health, and abilities that matter. My main nitpick is that MAP Turbolift can cause an infinite loop with Bridge, a Minion(s), and the rest of the deck only being MAP Turbolifts. My other nitpick is that destroying both Bridge, Batallion Ambush, and all the environment targets, you can render the environment doing basically nothing, since the MAP Turbolifts shuffle themselves back. Personally, I’d remove the part where MAP Turbolifts shuffle themselves back, but given how cramped the wording is already, I understand why the wording is the way it is.

Omnitron IV

Similar to River of Lava, the environment probably shouldn’t be this good at destroying Equipment cards, at least without a secondary damage option. Giving mechani-accumulator that option seemed like a fairly decent move. Partial Omni-Drone’s damage was moved to start of Turn to slightly reduce the end of turn AOE damage presence, but now it starts off with more health, regains health (probably) slower at the end of the turn, and increases its damage with its health.

Pike Industrial Complex

The only problem with this card was that it was too sensitive to the damage-changing vats. Despite being a Trisolvent vat, sometimes gameplay has to take precedence over flavor.

Realm of Discord

If you didn’t have an app to keep track of these, it was really rough. The new Positive Energy field can be very well abused by some heroes, but the new Negative Energy Field will stop those heroes for an indeterminate amount of time, so it roughly evens out. I maybe would have kept these to magnitude 1 rather than magnitude 2 to keep said abuse down, but then they wouldn’t have done much of anything outside of said situations.

Rook City

Rook City was basically a second villain with how much it supported the villain. Now it has a rehaul in the form of Rook City - Old Town. Rook City - Old Town still has a villainous slant, but reducing the villainous-inclined cards to 0 or less HP provides rewards.

Ruins of Atlantis

The Pillars of Atlantis had a cool idea, but because it said “Each turn” for some reason, it more accurately read “the villain plays two extra cards and the first hero skips their turn”. This new wording does something similar to what seemed intended. These changes were just to make Toxic Seaweed less... well, toxic to gameplay.

Silver Gulch

Lost in the Past now operates like a self-destruct sequence with added interactivity but no abort sequence. Temporal Event had close to no purpose in the regular deck other than trying to push the whole Time Portal gig that wasn’t much fun to begin with. Now it’s completely reworked to be much more interactive and fun.

Temple of Zhu Long

For a deck built around a villain, it sure was far more helpful for the heroes. This card was repurposed to ensure that villains would feel at home here, giving Temple of Zhu Long a more neutral (or even villainous) feel rather than the hero slant it has but really shouldn’t.

Time Cataclysm

I certainly agree with how annoying the old version of the card is. I’m not sure I agree with how it was changed, but it functions well.

Tomb of Anubis

Making the Relics more worth getting and able to be destroyed and have to be earned again is a great direction for this deck.

Wagner Mars Base

Maintenance Level’s change is a thing. Making it a single-player thing means that heroes reliant on their trash aren’t screwed over. Ah, Meteor Storm, what makes this environment so easy - so long as the villain can’t destroy environment cards, you have as much time as you want to set up. Well, no more. Now it only works for one round and, if you didn’t destroy it, it will deal quite a bit of damage. Pervasive Red Dust was changed to not screw over hero setups with 1-2 equipment heavy decks and the rest not caring about equipment. Self-Destruct Sequence was especially cruel and was changed to just the Play Phase.

And that’s all I have for you today and for Adelphophage’s work. I would go over the hero promos I use, but I’ve collected so many of them and I’d feel bad if I didn’t list every person I found them from, which would be a lot of work. Maybe I’ll make that list in the future, but I have a vacation coming up and would much rather work on things I know won’t take too long (since I’m still not done preparing for my vacation). Next time, I’ll start on the Cauldron. I’ll see you all next time, and remember, keep it casual!

#Sentinels of the Multiverse #Adelphophage #Review

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chronoscasuals · 6 years ago

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Sentinels of the Multiverse: Adelphophage’s Archives (part 5: SotM-flavored custom decks)

Welcome all to Chronos Casuals, I’m ChronosMysty and today I’ll go over Adelphophage’s custom decks I have played with. Just as a disclaimer, I pretty much only use custom decks that look like they could come from SotM lore. Anyway, let’s jump straight into them.

The first one isn’t actually from Adelphophage but from johnny-guitar_watson. It’s called Comrade:

Comrade is a heroic Proletariat. Comrade puts his Duplicates into other areas, where, based on different cards, they do different things. Comrade can redirect the first non-hero target damage he would take to one of these Duplicates. (It’s unclear if he can do that once per Duplicate or just once in a turn.) However, he also deals himself psychic damage per Comrade at the start of his turn, so you must be careful. I classify him as a damage character with some support capabilities.

Anyway, now onto the real Adelphophage stuff:

The Pantheon

The Pantheon a heroic Ennead (with promo including Anubis). It is very unique both that it does not have a nemesis symbol (although this might be unintentional) and in that you must choose three Demigods and those Demigods will contribute slightly more than half the cards of your deck and all your choices of incapacitated abilities. • Anubis gains life and deals damage but is very particular about even and odd. • Atum is support through and through. • Geb deals a lot of damage and is particularly good against the environment. • Isis likes to do a lot of damage. • Nephthys likes to do damage and self-healing. • Nuit prefers shelling up and healing. • Osiris likes to disupt the villain in various ways. • Set likes to do a LOT of damage, but often at some price to the heroes. • Shu is there pretty much just to speed up the deck and make the other two more consistent. • Tefnut likes dealing damage multiple times in a row.

The other key mechanic is that your deigods start off regular, but you can empower them with cards or your power and, similarly, you can de-empower them with your other power using their power-like empowered texts or cards in your deck. It’s all about managing your demigods.

You can build a damage Pantheon, a survival Pantheon, a saboteur Pantheon designed to regulate the villain and environments, or even some kind of grab-bag Pantheon, making pantheon rather flexible in role and playstyle.

The Executor

The Executor is a heroic Operative, and it shows with her three play styles, each headed by one of three mutually exclusive Student cards: • Student of the Sensei focuses on her Strike cards, powerful cards that require shuffling cards from your trash back into your deck, by providing reliable self-milling (moving cards from deck to trash). • Student of the Tyrant focuses on her Ninjitsu cards, a fairly common type in her deck, by letting you play a second one when you play a first one each turn. • Student of the Dragon focuses on Poison cards, which weaken or outright destroy a target, by letting you put one from your hand into play next to a target you just damaged.

Part of mastering The Executor is knowing when to use each and whether it’s wise to use a Strike now, to wait for more impact, or if those cards in trash would be better put to use with another Strike.

Heretic

Hey, look, another health fake-out villain. I decided just to post the art because the entire character card would be a bit context-less without the deck. (That and I couldn’t find a convenient way to do both pictures conveniently.)

She hits like a truck, much like Iron Legacy, but has much higher health (50/70/90 to start, to be exact) and extra targets to kill. Her main gimmick is also similar to Adelphophage’s Iron Legacy promo in that she maintains at least 1 Pride and 1 Wrath in play at all times. She’s also nemesis to a team just like Iron Legacy.

I think the flavor fits decently well, as a Fanatic that believed Apostate’s lies and switched sides.

Legion

Legion is currently under reconstruction, so I won’t review it right now; I’ll wait until it’s reconstructed and probably make a post about it.

High Security Wing

Adelphophage does have four other “custom environment decks”, but I’ll review those in the ‘card alterations’ sections. High Security Wing has little to do with the Block’s mechanics (despite being in The Block) and is basically a whole new environment that references a familiar setting. Whereas The Block is about a war between the Inmates and the Agents, in the High Security Wing, the inmates are already running the asylum, so to speak.

Containing mostly criminals, the environment doesn’t get really interesting until you get a Task (of which there can only be 1 of out at once), which will generally require 1-3 rounds of at least partial effort to deal with but will provide quite a reward for doing so. Much of the envrionment damage is in chunks of H-2, so on higher H’s, tasks are easier to complete but the environment needs more attention, while on H=3 the environment does a pittance but completing tasks is notably difficult.

And that’s all I got for you today. I’ll see you all next time, and remember, keep it casual!

#Sentinels of the Multiverse #Adelphophage #Review

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