#i know i played it in my over the nexus red-eyes deck but that was mainly as a followup for inferno fire blast

[trident-dragion]

The funny thing about early structure decks to me is the central boss monster, the one depicted on the box, was almost NEVER worth playing. Like, Red-Eyes Darkness Dragon, Vampire Genesis, Infernal Flame Emperor, Ocean Dragon Lord - Neo-Daedalus, Gilford the Legend, and Dark Eradicator Warlock were all just worse than focusing on the secondary stuff and lower level monsters that actually made the deck work. Sure, some of them might be good if you can summon them, Neo-Daedalus is probably the most viable of these, but the effort and resources required are just... not worth it? Like compared to today where the cover card of a structure deck is usually incredibly strong, it's wild thinking about how back in the day the REAL build-around card of a structure deck was something like Armed Dragon LV5 or Raging Flame Sprite

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs,”The Nexus Falls.”

Sorry about the weird formatting. It was a hectic morning, but I hope you enjoy. 

The entire room blinked in unconcealed shock as the Commander turned off the monitor and returned to the captain’s chair. A completely different mad stood before them now. He could have been ten years older, eyes burning, back straight jaw set.

“Lieutenant, what do we know about the Burg weapons capabilities.”

“Well, sir, it doesn't look good for us. They have….. Some sort of heat gun that the GA has not yet been able to reverse engineer. If they hit us directly enough they could cook us all like sardines in a tin can.”

“Well, let’s make sure they don’t hit us.” He pointed across the room towards the systems specialist, “Call down to the engineers and tell them to pull power to the coolant system. I want it to be a winter wonderland in here by the time we are done. Let the crew know to wear gloves. Until the GA gets here with those extra shields, we are flying balls out naked, and I’m not a big fan of that picture.” 

He turned back to the original crew-member, “What are their shield capabilities.”

“GA database says they are at a level two, energy resistant, but….. Well look at this. They have no impact on projectile weapons.”

“What’s the point of having a shield in the first place if it can’t protect you against projectiles.” One of the crew members muttered.

The commander leaned back in his seat single eye flashing, “Because, projectile weapons are considered barbaric and out of date, all of the advanced GA weaponry runs on energy pulses. If they have those weapons it would act like an EMP to our ship and we would loose power. Don’t question the usefulness of their equipment.”

He tapped his fingers against the armrest, “After all, their equipment would be useful…. If they were fighting against anyone but humans. This levels the playing field,” he turned in his chair to the Comms officer, “Open comline to our other ships.

It didn’t take her more than a moment to do as told, and he spun in his chair back to face forward, “Commander, have the Burg surrendered, yet?” 

A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of the Commander’s mouth, “Not yet, but we are working on it. Captains Ho, Silva and Bassi, peel off to protect the plants defence nexus. The rest of us will stay here to take care of the burg fleet as much as we can until GA backup arrives. Use only projectile weapons, and not anything energy found that the GA may have given you. Make sure to up your coolant systems. They have a one charge heat ray that could potentially cooks us where we sit.”

“Commander, the burg ship is moving.”

“Get to work everyone!” The commander ordered, “Tell the pilots to launch, and start targeting their engines. Take care of any other ship that tries to do the same to us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The burg ship is targeting us, sir.”

“Sunny, Preprair lateral rail guns.”

“Yes sir.” The small blue Drev turned back to her console and began working furiously.

The commander grabbed the controls, which responded to his touch. The chair morphed around him giving him a place to insert his hands and his feet for better steering. 

A curved holo-projections dropped down over his eyes casting his skin into shades of blue and white.

“Sir, the Burg have almost reached lock… sir.”

“Remain calm.” The man ordered 

The new recruits stared out the front screen of the ship as the burg ship dropped into position. It was a massive thing all spikes and pincers painted in colors of black orange and red, dressed for war. And between two of those pincers, they watched as a bright purple light began to grow up, targeted right towards them.

“Commander, if we don’t move now there will be no TIME to move.” One of the crew members yelled in agitation.

“Thank you lieutenant, I am very aware of the movement capabilities of my ship now TRUST me to fly her. Sunny! Are the rail guns charged.”

“Yes sir.’ She shouted back 

The crew member paused mid argument, through they wriggled in their seat with panic. The bigger the flash of purple light grew the more agitated they became until everyone on the bridge crew was muttering and cursing to themselves. Outside a swarm of F-90 Darkfire jets rolled out from under their ship sweeping through the center of space.

Silently, little bolts of white light leaped across the intervening space, and little red explosions, like the blossoming of flowers appeared against the burg hull.

The large purple orb grew in power and strength

The bridge crew was in an uproar.

Commander Vir remained still and silent looking down the barrel of death without so much as flinching hands remaining relaxed around the controls.

The purple beam fired.

And suddenly, they were gone.

All around them the world warped caving in on itself imploding and then expanding in an instant. As soon as they appeared in space, nothing but a field of stars in their view, the commander pulled a hard left, slowly turning their hulking ship backwards.

There was a gap from the crew as the burg ship came back into focus though at a wildly different angle than before.

The commander had micro warped the ship BEHIND burg defenses, though they wouldn’t have this upper hand for long. Even now the burg ship was turning on its axis to face them.

“FIRE!” The commander ordered.

And sunny pulled the trigger.

All through the ship, they could felt the massive ca-chunk ca-chunk as two rail guns fired. The space was lit up between them, and then space was lit by a massive blossoming explosion of red and orange alone the left side of the burg ship completely snapping off a few of the pincers and sending space debris out in all directions.

Little fighter jets, like a swarm of bees around the head of a bear continued to harass the burg shi

“Contact!” Captain, it was a good hit

“But they will be prepared for it next time, he muttered. That maneuver won’t be so unpredictable.”

Just then a light blue holo-projection appeared to the side of the captain’s chair. Nairobi from engineering stood before him, “Captain, whatever you just did DON'T do it again, or you will overheat the warp core, and cook us all.

“Damned if I do damned if I don't.” THe man muttered, “Don’t worry, that was just giving us a bit of a head start.” Her projection disappeared and the captain tilted their ship slightly to the right, “Fire!

That same sound reverberated through the ship, rocking them in place as they sat. The burg ship was a little more prepared this time, pulling to the side managing to dodge one entirely while the other merely strafed their starboard side, though it still left a red hot gouge against their hull

“Burg targeting us again commander.” There was no purple light this time, which partially assured him they were not in danger of being cooked

Behind the Burg, the second UNSC ship had been pulling to a flanking maneuver, only to be blindsided by a second incoming burg ship

They watched as the purple beam cut across intervening space and caught her a glancing blow along the port side.

“Shit.” The commander muttered

“Check on captain Eklend.

“Charging again, commander.

The ship jolted to the side, just as a volley of red hot beams burst towards them. THe entire hull rocked and shook. The crew grabbed onto their seats crushing as the entire room rocked and thundered nearly throwing them out of their seats

“They hit, hull breach on cargo deck E, sir.

“Containment.

“In effect sir, though it won’t last for long.

“Casualties.

“No casualties, so far though four were injured.

“Commander, Captain Eklend is alright, through their core is dangerously close to overheating. He can’t take another hit like that, and his warp capabilities are disabled for the time being.

“Tell him to adjust course and put the Bur ship between him and their command ship, I have an idea or two that might just help us.

The crew looked on from where they sat, rigid in their seats while behind them, the commander relaxed back into his chair. Again his hands were steady on the controls, his single eye was sharp

And there was  a glimmer of something hungry in that bright green eye.

“Lieutenant, how long can we polarize the gravity field on the outer hull?”

“It would be dangerous sir, no more than a few seconds or risk pulling the ship apart, or pulling us apart

He closed his eyes for a moment searing mentally for Conn, who was preparing to exit the airlock

“I need you to do one last thing before you leave.” 

Their conversation was quick

 “ I just spoke with engineering, sir. It won’t be healthy for anyone, or for the ship but it can be done for a few seconds. How long do you need.”

“Long enough to deal with Newton's first law.”

***

“Your Glory our instruments are detecting a hull breach.

The burg commander hissed in pleasure, “Puny human ship will stand no chance at the rest of our attacks.” The human may have followed her once with that micro warp, but he wouldn't be able to do it again.

The ship shuddered and rocked as those tiny, pesky nits continued to batter their outer hull. One of her ships broke through and hurtled towards the human ship, catching it a glancing blow along its dorsal side before being blasted into oblivion

Didn’t matter to her, those ships were unmanned, and she always had more, “Charge the energy cannon.

“Yes your glory.

The human ship fired back not a moment later, and they were only just able to maneuver out of the way, sending a volley of rounds over their upper fins. One of their dorsal antenna was blown straight off, but it was a loss she could take. Warfare in space was slow especially between ships as big as theirs, though outside the nits rocketed past in groups of four or five.

The ship continued to rumble as ordinance battered against their hard outer shell

She ordered another volley, which seared through the void battering against the human hull. There were no breaches this time, as they were aimed towards center mass, but large portions of metal and siding came peeling off like shell peels off a corpse.”

In that intervening time, the humans had charged up their large opposing weapons and sent two more rounds straight for them. She tried pulling to the side to avoid them, but the human had maneuvered his ship in a sharp turn between the firing of the first and the firing of the second cannon, moving the trajectory of the second directly into her line of movement. There was an eruption on the deck below her, and she was almost thrown onto her face.

“We have a hull breach, your glory.

“Would you like a casualty report.

“I do not care about casualties.” She snapped gripping hard onto one of the ship’s interior rails, hooking around it with one of her pincers

She looked up at her screen, watching on radar as a second human ship rolled into position behind them. She was not worried though. Another one of the burg ships had maneuvered to cover her from the rear, and they seemed to be having marginally more success than she was

The human ship had taken multiple hits, including one from a heat beam, which seemed to have crippled it’s movement ability.

She was pleased, though not pleased enough about their current position against the main human ship.

“Fire energy cannon!” She ordered, but as she did the humans dropped some sort of volley of their own. A thousand lights burst into shape before the ship, like a million tiny sparks shed from a fire, they erupted around the hull and out into space catching the energy pulse mid flight.

The little dots of light erupted through it dispersed her energy shot.

She would have been angry for her plan being thwarted, if that had been her plan to begin with. As the night around them was lit up by a thousand tiny sparks obscuring her vision and that of their ship she roared, “Fire Central cannon.” 

The missile erupted from their dorsal side trailing gas and fire as it went.

***

His vision was partially obscured by smoke, and he had difficulty seeing the burg ship through the remains of their flares, though something in his gut told him not to rest easy. 

Which is why he, unlike everyone else, saw the sudden eruption of flame through the cloud of dying sparks sucked clean by the vacuum.

“Reverse polarity!” He ordered.

And in response, the lieutenant slammed her hand down on the button.

He felt the change as soon as it came. The entire ship squealed and groaned. Metal pulled against metal popping and cracking as rivets and screws snapped. He was thrown against his harness pulled in multiple directions at once as the outer hull’s gravity was polarized backwards into space.

Objects all across the ship exploded with the intense power of gravity being pulled in all directions.

Blood pooled stuck still in veins and hearts.

Movement became impossible.

And the burg missile soared from the cloud, before slowing, stopping, and then wildly reversing direction. Spurred by a pre programmed secondary explosion which sent a wave of compressed gas outwards to propel the thing faster before dissipating.

There was a loud SNAP. as the polarity was reversed back to normal. And the entire crew gasped.

A few people fell unconscious against their harnesses 

Commander Vir wiped his face on his sleeve, blood trickling down from one nostril.

“Conn? Conn are you there?”

“Yes commander, I am here. The doctor is safe, and so are your little pets. Be lucky, I just managed to get gravity belts to them in time. I wager to believe the doctors head might literally have exploded otherwise 

“Good work.”

“I’d say it’s my pleasure, but I honestly don’t care/” 

***

The burg commander crowded in delight. 

The human couldn't have seen that coming.

But behind her the shiplings squealed. She saw it before she could demand to know what was going on, watching as her own missile came soaring back at them from space. The shiplings reacted faster than she could have, and the ship jerked upwards narrowly missing the projectile as it roared past cutting under the lower side of the ship.

It felt as if they were safe for a moment, but then she looked up at the screen and watched as their second ship erupted.

She only had enough time to curse before the debris began pelting their ship tearing into metal, screeching and vibrating through the hull.

The human ship had known what was coming and maneuvered to dodge the debris.

“We’re flanked!”

***

“Got you now bitch.” 

Outside in the vastness of space, little blue dots began erupting against the star field.

“Captain, GA backup is arriving.” Their comms specialist said.

“Casualty report.”

“Three dead, sir.”

That was three two many, but he couldn’t focus on that now, he had to deal with what was at hand.

“Fire on the burg.”

“Sir, she’s retreating.”

“To where!” His question was answered as she dropped towards the ace of the planet. At some point, the three human ships had managed to get rid of most of the incoming Burg, though the defense nexus had been shredded.

“Sir, she’s heading planet side.”

“What good will that do her.” one of the crewmembers asked 

The Commander knew exactly what it meant, “We can’t use any of our weapons if they go planetside for fear of killing the civilians…. They are taking this war ground level because they know they cannot win in the sky.”

“That’s fine.”

“No its not, they could dig in, take hostages….. This is about to get a whole lot more complicated.” 

[frogtownhobbies]

Frogtown Hobbies in Rossford, Ohio hosted a Starcity Games Invitational Qualifier on December 14. The format: Pioneer, the number of players: 39, the unbanned cards: still Oko and Nexus of Fate, unfortunately. Let’s dive into the results and see what can be gleaned from a bit of analysis.

As a reminder, Pioneer is Magic’s newest non-formatting competitive format and includes all cards from Return to Ravnica (October, 2012) forward. An interesting dynamic is at play between today’s hyper-fast exchange of information on the internet and the constant upheaval of near-weekly banlist changes as the format grows. Accordingly, two months in to Pioneer I don’t think anyone is sure exactly how “solved” the format is. Let’s delve into this quagmire of uncertainty and see if we can find any beacons of truth.

Tentative truth #1: Simic in general and Oko, Thief of Crowns and Nexus of Fate specifically were too strong for the format. 

Two days after this tournament Wizards of the Coast saw fit to ban these two Simic cards. For Oko, WotC cited the “nearly 60% non-mirror win rate” and high number of 5-0 league finishes of the Simic Food Ramp deck as well as the presence of Oko in “several of the other strongest decks” as their banning rationale. For Nexus of Fate the high number of league finishes was also cited as well as their assertion that “Simic Food Ramp was one of the Simic Nexus deck's only unfavorable matchups among top decks”.

    Well our tournament saw five players sleeve up some number of these banned cards and their results do give credence to WotC’s arguments. The total win rate for these 5 decks against the rest of the field was a hair under 70% (16-7) and two of the five made top-8 with two more in 9th and 14th place. Leading the pack and splitting in the finals was Raymond Perez on Simic Nexus.

Perez did not lose a match on the day, going 4-0 into double ID and splitting in the finals. Along the way he beat GB midrange, UG Food, UW Control, Izzet Phoenix, UW Control again (quarterfinals) and Izzet Phoenix again (semifinals). 

    The other top-8 player on future-banned cards was Santiago Lizcano on Simic Stompy who lost in the other half of the semifinals.

Here we see Oko augmenting a large creature plan and ensuring that whatever your opponent plays its going to be a smaller creature (as a 3/3 Elk) than your creatures. Lizcano went with the slightly beefier version of this deck, opting for 2 Ghalta, Primal Hunter and 2 Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig in the maindeck. He also gambled a bit that his first turn mana dorks would live, running only 20 lands to go along with 11 such creatures. I also want to point out that Lizcano successfully came back from 0-1-1 to make top-8, which is definitely doing it on hard mode. He lost to UW Control in round 1 before drawing with Jeskai Fires in round 2. He then rattled off victories over Mono Black Aggro, UW Control, Abzan Aristocrats (!), Simic Ramp and Red Deck Wins (quarterfinals) before losing to UW Spirits (I’ll get to that).

The other two players on Oko decks to make the top-8 were Justin Krieg (9th place piloting my version of Bant Walkers that I loaned him) and Dominic Mayhew (14th place with Simic Food Ramp). Was Oko too strong for the format? Almost certainly yes. Was Nexus of Fate too strong for the format? Possibly, but it’s also super un-fun to play against and to watch on coverage so its leash was shorter. I bid both of these cards adieu.

Tentative Truth #2: UW Control and Red Deck Wins are both good choices going forward and their matchup may provide the backbone of the format going forward.

    I’m lumping these decks together because they were the two most played decks on Saturday (8 UW Control and 6 RDW), both faired poorly against the Simic decks, neither one loses anything in the bans and because nobody seems to agree on the right way to build either of them. On the other hand, despite each taking one player to the top-8 they did not have the same level of results across the board.

    UW control ended up with a 47% non-mirror match win percentage (17-19) when you include Keith Duncan’s Esper Control list in with them (he finished 2-2 in non-“mirrors”). While that’s obviously not great is does include a 2-6 record against decks with Oko or Nexus which will no longer be around to prey upon slow control decks. One might think that presence of a large number of mono-red decks also contributed to the losing record but in fact RDW and UW control split their 8 matches against each other 4-4. Here’s Dustin Klopping’s top 8 List, but like I said earlier, there is a lot of variability between the 8 UW Control lists played on Saturday:

The one big thing that sets Klopping’s list apart are the full set of 4 maindeck Detention Speres. Along the way to the top-8 he beat Mono-Black Vampires, UW Control, Esper Control, RDW and lost to Simic Food Ramp before drawing into the top-8 and losing to Simic Nexus.

    Mono-red decks had much better results than UW Control, winning nearly 56% of their non-mirror matches. Like the control deck they did not do well against the Simic decks (but in only 4 matches [1-3]). The builds of mono-red were even more variable then the UW Control lists. Here’s Ben Vasko’s top-8 list that was designed by Cory Brannon:

We’ll have to wait and see how mono-red decks settle into the new post-Oko world. Does Hazoret make the cut? Earthshaker Kenra? Cavalcade of Calamity, Legion Warboss and Chandra, Acolyte of Flame (All used by Matthew Stinehart to take 10th place)? I don’t know but I feel safe in assuming that I will have to play against some number of mono-red decks at my next Pioneer tournament.

Tentative Truth #3: You want some spice? You can play some spice!

Behold, the other deck that split in the finals, Jonathan Jackman’s UW Spirits:

Jackman went 2-0 against banned card decks, lost once to mono-red (Top-9 player Ben Vasko in round 3) and beat Abzan Midrange, Gruul Aggro and Jeskai Fires. If you like blue tempo decks, this is probably the way to go.

Maybe paying for your spicy spells isn’t really your thing. How about Jyrik Fields’ Jeskai Fires:

Like Santiago Lizcano, Jyrik Fields also made top-8 on hard mode, starting out with a loss against RDW (Ben Vasko again) and that unintentional draw against Simic Stompy. He then beat RDW, Boros Aggro, Esper Control and Izzet Tempo before bowing out in the quarterfinals against Jackman’s Spirits deck.

Brennan McAlear proved that getting 3-power hasty flyers into play just by casting your spells is still a real way to win in Pioneer, making top-8 with Izzet Phoenix:

Brennan only lost twice on the day, both times to the now-banned Nexus deck. Don’t count this deck out in the new format.

Last but not least, we have this piece de resistance by John Mezinko, 5c Niv to Light:

Do you want to use Teferi, Time Raveler to cast Bring to Light at the end of your opponent’s turn and put a Niv-Mizzet Reborn into play, netting 4 cards including another Bring to Light? How about on the next turn casting another Bring to Light during the attack step to play a Time Wipe, kill all your opponent’s stuff and get your Niv Mizzet back in hand to cast again the next turn? This deck does stuff like that, it’s glorious. Like Brennan McAlear, Mezinko only lost to one player on Saturday. In fact, it was actually McAlear who beat him, once in rd 3 and another time in the quarterfinals. He beat Mono-Red twice and UW Control once so this is another deck to keep an eye on. Its obviously very customizable as well so adapting to a new metagame is probably reasonable but it may need a settled field to really optimize the list.

Thank you for reading, hopefully we’ll see you all at Frogtown’s next Pioneer SCG IQ on January 25th. Keep brewing.

       -Stephen K Timmons

[hunnybadgerv]

It’s the Thought That Counts | Mass Effect: Andromeda

Summary: Cassie Ryder decides to share a special surprise with someone that has become quite dear to her.

a/n: Written as a gift for @vorchagirl who has been especially encouraging and sweet to me this year. Thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you better. Happy Holidays!

Links: AO3 | FFnet

It’s the Thought That Counts

-1-

Cassie Ryder stared at the image on her console, swiping it from side to side to inspect every curve, every angle for even the slightest imperfection. It was times like these when her perfectionism could be more a burden than a blessing. “This would be so much easier at the research station,” she mused to herself as her eyes narrowed at the screen.

With an exhausted sigh, she stood and stretched her arms above her head. “Of course, then you’ll also have to explain to the entire ship what you’re doing,” she added, continuing the conversation with herself. “And that would be far more sharing than I’d prefer to do just this moment.”

She walked back over to her desk and polished up a few flaws she thought she saw here and there. Of course, once it was complete, she waited until the Tempest’s night cycle, when the fewest members of her crew were awake and kicking around. It would limit the number of questions she had to answer. And the number of lies she might have to craft. Cassie really was the worst liar; it seemed her twin brother Poll was the only one of them to really have any skill in that arena. Pulling up the design on the main station in the heart of the ship, she gave it one more quick once over, wincing at a pointy bit here and a bump there. She took the extra time to smooth it all out.

“Pathfinder, I do believe that this would be considered a waste of Initiative resources,” SAM stated.

“Mmhmm,” she agreed. They’d already had this discussion once.

“Are you certain about this course of action?”

“What are you going to do SAM, taze me? Stop my heart, again? All for a little whimsy? Hmm?” she asked, the challenge clear in her voice.

She got no answer.

“Look, it’s not like I’m a huge waster of resources. But this—” Cassie sighed, resting her hands on the edge of the round table. “I can’t explain why, but it’s important, SAM. Even if only to me.”

A silence dragged on between them, it was kind of strange for the two of them. Cassie hoped it was because SAM might be considering what she said. “Is there some way I can assist?”

A smile tugged at her lips. “No, SAM. I think I got it. Besides … that’s at least half the point. Crafting it myself.”

It took almost no time for the simple, non-mechanical design to be produced by the machine. Once complete, Cassie put her real skills to the test and set to wiping the activity from the production log. Of course, she also knew that would raise questions about the supply levels when Vetra did her inventories.

“Another problem for another day,” the pathfinder told herself as she scampered back to her quarters.

The pyjak, Ella was sitting on the edge of her desk, playing with the strands of red fabric she’d cut from a shirt. “Those are not for you, miss.”

The primate just blinked at her. Since being sent to the Tempest, Ella had proven herself quite clever and ingenious; she also proved herself to be a quick learner. Sometimes it made Cassie wonder: if the 600-year journey allowed the krogan’s biology to work past the genophage, what kind of evolutionary changes had occurred with Ella and the other creatures brought along by the Initiative?

Cassie relented, stowing her small sculpture in a drawer. “Okay, fine. One,” she said, holding up a single finger.

Ella held one strand out to her and Cassie tied it around her wrist in a loose, yet decorative bow.

“Now, may I have the other one back.” The pathfinder held her hand out expectantly.

The space monkey looked from her wrist, to the ribbon in her other hand and then hopped off the desk with both and took off down the hall.

The pathfinder didn’t chase her, she just sighed and leaned back in her chair, glancing over at the space hamster, who had hidden aboard her ship somehow. “And this is why I cut extras,” she mumbled toward the cage as if he might have some thoughtful input.

At least, he didn’t seem to want to be festive as well. Taking the sculpture back out, she tied a red ribbon around the stem area. Then looped a longer piece through the eye in that same section.

“There,” she said, holding the other end of the longest ribbon, her creation dangled, turning slowly.

“Nexus in sight.” Kallo’s voice chimed through her quarters.

She knew that single announcement would enliven the entire ship. Her own heart beat faster at the proposition. She tucked her treasure away once more, wrapping it completely in a bit more of the red shirt she’d made the ribbons from.

-2-

The onmi-tool chime echoed through the medical bay. Dr. Harry Carlyle clamped a hand down on his wrist. He knew exactly what that sound meant. In a moment, he tried to pull up the schedule Cassie had given him and match the Tempest’s arrival to the alarm that just rang. Be it fatigue or just a hole in his memory, he could not reconcile it. Even still, he completed his task with attentive haste and completed the revival physical of a young engineer.

Just as Harry could be in his duties, Cassie was a creature of habit; she always stopped by the bridge to speak with Captain Dunn and ducked into SAM node before finding her way to the med bay or elsewhere. It was the latter where he hoped to catch her.

When his long-legged stride carried him through into main atrium of the habitation deck. A young, recently awoken crew member called out to him. “Dr. Carlyle. Doctor, over here.”

Harry smiled and nodded, crossing toward her and a group who seemed to be her friends.

“I just wanted to thank you again for all your help.”

“You’re very welcome,” he assured her. “You certainly seem to have found your equilibrium.”

With a smile, she nodded. “Indeed. You were right …”

A flash of a particular shade of aqua shimmered in his peripheral vision. Harry’s eyes darted from the young woman’s face toward that familiar splash of color that stood out against the grays and blues of the Hyperion’s interior. His eyes met a bright gaze, just a bit darker than her hair. Cassie peeked out from around a corner and flashed him the most inviting smile. She tipped her head and ducked out of sight. Her finger crooked in a come-hither motion he did not want to resist, before it too disappeared.

“I’m so glad to hear it,” he said, touching her shoulder lightly. Then he began to extract himself form the conversation. “If you’ll pardon me, I need to—” Harry couldn’t come up with proper excuse to explain his rapid social retreat, but slipped out of the conversation without another word anyway.

With a curious glance, he rounded the same corner where Cassie vanished. He barely entered the corridor that led to SAM Node when her hands twisted in his tunic and pulled him near. His eyes sank closed when the velvety softness of her pliant lips met his. He wrapped her up in his arms, holding her body against his.

In that instant, he couldn’t remember how long it had been since he held her like that. Of course, it didn’t matter either. With her in his arms, it felt like no time had passed at all. She kissed him with abandon, like she too had forgotten they were standing in an open corridor where anyone could happen upon them.

As biology and necessity demanded, the kiss broke; far too soon for his tastes. But then, separations of all sorts from her always came too soon for his liking.

“And hello to you as well, Pathfinder,” Harry said with a laugh as he looked down into her sparkling eyes.

“Hiya, Doc,” she replied, that engaging smile of hers widening a hair.

“I could stand to be greeted like that far more often.”

Her cheeks reddened, drawing a chuckle out of him. “Me, too.”

“You know there are people right over there,” he told her with a nudge of his head. Harry only just realized they’d both been whispering.

“I know. But …” Her gaze darted upward.

Harry’s followed. At first sight, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at, except that it was meant to resemble a plant of some kind. The oblong leaves contained small white and red berries as well. “What is that?” he asked.

Cassie poked him in the ribs, making him jerk away a bit. “It’s supposed to be mistletoe.”

That admonishment led his mind on a quick journey. “Is it?” he asked.

“It doesn’t look that bad to be unrecognizable,” she replied with a hint of a pout. And her inflection rose with a sort of unasked question.

It tugged at the corners of his mouth as he let out a soft chuckle. “No, I didn’t mean the mistletoe,” he said, stealing another quick kiss, since they were still standing beneath it. “Is it …” A part of him didn’t want to say it. One of the biggest selling points of the Andromeda Initiative had been the idea of starting over, starting anew, a fresh beginning in a new place where none of the old prejudices should hold. But of course, no one had explicitly said that the plan included sloughing off old traditions.

“Christmas,” she finished for him in a quieter murmur, nodding her head.

Harry cupped her cheek in one hand, guiding her lips to his once more, while pulling her body close to his once again in the process. “Well, then. Let me hope I’m the first to say Happy Christmas.”

Her arms snaked around him. The sensation carrying the practical doctor off into the role of the most impractical lover. He didn’t care that they stood in a barely secluded corner of a hallway kissing like teenagers between class bells. He clung to her. His lips only leaving hers in order to gasp in a breath here and there, which Cassie offered no argument to, nor did she discourage it in any way.

“This numbers among the most precious gifts I can ever recall,” he finally whispered against her lips, his gaze holding hers.

He felt her smile against his mouth. “Mine, too,” she agreed. Cassie pressed another tender kiss upon his lips.

[sneakyhomunculous]

RPT Phoenix Report: Back to Back!

Part 3: Crunch Time

So to recap I finished day 1 6-2

WWL WWLWW

This is a reasonably happy 6-2! 

You have the 

LLWWWWWW  Ecstatic 6-2

WWWWWWLL So tilted you may not even show up for day 2 6-2

Mine fell somewhere in the middle of the extremes.

But of course, 6-2 is 6-2. And my breakers should be pretty strong + the tournament is quite small compared to recent PTs. Multiple X-4s should make T8

Myself Jarvis Allen Knox and Mark have dinner at a nice Thai place. 

Unfortunately we waited like 90 minutes for a table, but in the end it was worth it as we just hung out at a bar next door. and the food ended up being really good.

We don’t get back to the house until pretty late, and we are greeted with Tom Ross laying out the UW Pioneer deck 

“To fix it up for the GP Tomorrow”

Instead of going to sleep I watch Tom cut multiple supreme verdicts, go up to 4 mystical disputes main, add a horribly awry to the main, sneak a tomik in the SB, along with many other hilarious changes.

He ended up registering 4 disputes main loooool IDK what his list was exactly but he ended up playing vs tons of aggro and still going 7-2. 

Not sure how he finished up day 2; some middling finish I think. Turns out mystical dispute is worse than supreme verdict against mono red and black.

I get to bed a bit late but wake up feeling good.

We get over the Breakfast Club earlier today with time to eat. 

I already know I’m in pod 3 with Oli2 Efro Cain Lauphiette Bloody Sadowsky and Murahashi.

We get to the site right at 9 again and I find myself in a decent seat. I have Oli 3 my left and Efro 4 away. I’m being fed by Joel Sadowsky with me feeding Bloody.

I don’t know a ton about these players preferences or limited abilities, but I do know that Oli and Efro are both very good and I am happy to be seated away from them.

This draft was a bit wild; I open Setessan Champion and take it over who cares i forgot.

I 2nd pick Alirios over some weaker cards i don’t remember, a pretty weak pack. I think there may have been like a red omen and something else but it was easy Alirios and I always want to be blue anyway.

3rd pick I happily take Mire’s Grasp over nothing

4th pick I am greeted with a Dryad of the Ilysian Grove. Not the best card or anything, but i have a setessan champion and love drafting 3-4 color UG decks so this got me excited.

I fill out this pack with an icthymorphosis, a satyr grovedancer, a late cling to dust, and i know a nexus wardens tabled. I also have a memory drain a brine giant and an altar of the pantheon to keep an eye on.

Going into pack 2 I’m not really sure if I’ll be UG or GB or some combo inbetween, but I really want to be green bc of Champion.

I open Thassa’s intervention in an otherwise unexciting pack so I take that. I like this card more than most people I imagine; I think it’s very good.

I am passed lots of really good cards, but I ignore them bc there is an illysian carytid.

I’ve drafted this deck enough to know how important carytid is; and my spidey senses just tell me that I need to be base green and stay as wide open as possible to playing the gooooods that I will be receiving much too late.

Unfortunately the rest of this pack is pretty weak. I pickup a nylea’s intervention like 5th and somewhere in here I get a riptide turtle a mystic repeal a relentless pursuit 2 omen of the hunts a hierophant a 2nd altar of the pantheon and a watcher of tomorrows. Nothing exciting but I’m realllllly set up to splash anything ever.

In pack 3 I open Eat to Extinction and nothing, easy pick.

I’m finally rewarded and passed Calix, Destiny’s Hand. I already have a ton of enchantments with a few of them being removal like ichthymorphosis and mire’s grasp.

Unfortunately the rest of the pack sort of fades, I get a late Drag to the underworld and tymaret, as well as a return to nature a 2nd relentless pursuit a Nyleas Huntmaster a 6/7 colossus and another brine giant.

When building my deck I end up waffling between a lot of different configurations, but in the end I realize to make my mana really good I need to cut tymaret and drag and just splash black. 

Bc I’m lacking esape and ways to deal with it I splash the cling to dust, one of my favorite cards in the set.

My final deck is like 7 forests 6 islands 2 swamps 1 plains 1 carytid 1 dryad 2 omens and nyleas intervention for fixing. I have thassas intervention, relentless pursuit, setessan champion, cling, Calix for card advantage, and then i have grasp icthymorphosis eat to extinction mystic repeal for removal. Round it out with alirios dryad wardens turtle and some big dumb creatures; I quite like my deck and I even have lots of playable sb options.

R9 Joel Sadowsky

This match was a real banger and I wish i could remember the details better.

Joel was feeding me and he has a pretty strong RG deck. He has multiple incendiary oracles and is quite aggressive overall.

He draws his Mythic Phoenix in all the games, and he also has Typhon and maybe chimera as well (i think it may have actually been rage hound not chimera) But anyway he is beating down and escaping.

In g1 I think I assemble ichthymorphosis on one of the escape creatures and I get Calix going while eat to extinctioning a different escape creature. I just survive at a low life total and bury him in Calix cards.

In g2 I feel like I am constantly fighting to get on equal footing but if I can just put my foot down I will be ahead. Unfortunately things just keep snowballing with phoenix and then wings of hubris and I ultimately can’t deploy my cards fast enough and am forced to make suboptimal plays and blocks and eventually die to the wings.

G3 was just great. 

There is a ton of back and forth and on the last turn I leave myself dead to phoenix with only a black up, and he has it and pumps it and goes to extend his hand to say GGs lol; but i cling a creature in his yard to stay at 1 life and untap and deal with phoenix. I have to fade wings for a turn or two but then I can cling again and on the last turn he ends up being able to put me to exactly 1 again after I cling for a 3rd time. 

Clinggggggoat

7-2

I’m feeling good and hoping to fade Oli2 and Efro. I find out Efro lost but Oli2 has a busted white pious wayfarer deck, thats bad news.

I see the pairings and am relieved to see it is Lauphiette and not Oli, but that relief is short lived as Lauphiette begins giving me the business.

R10 Lauphiette Kincey

G1 is a really back and forth affair where Lauphiette sticks a commanding presence on a flier for a turn, but I peel the land I need to Nylea’s intervention it away. He then lagona bands the presence back, but I am able to keep his fliers at bay mostly and he seems to be taking things slow. Turns out he has Shatter the Sky and has been sandbagging a bit.

Luckily I have too, and after drawing a card from Shatter and for my turn I rebuild quickly, and I am able to hold off his presence + leftovers.

G2 and 3 are just a lesson in what happens when your opponent knows how to sideboard and u are playing a 22 land deck or whatever.

Lauphiette boards in multiple memory drains to go with his thassas’ intervention/denial/denies and I just struggle to resolve any of my good cards.

I fight my best, but in g2 he has deny for my t3 champion and then I have pretty awkward mana and never really get much going.

In g3 we hilariously play draw go for like 8 turns when he breaks first casting a big thassas intervention, i respond with my own big intervention but he counters it. I untap and go for champion which he counters, but i stick Calix.

Unfortunately Calix is not jace the mind sculptor and he just easily beats it with a bunch of fliers. Ultimately my deck was just too much air and he has all vexing gulls and counterspells and despite me fighting like hell thru all of it; he is going to kill me with damage while I also have 0 cards in my library and nowhere close to killing him. 

7-3

I’m feeling a bit down after this loss as I know I can’t afford to lose again. It sucks that magic tie breakers work this way, but if I would’ve lost in like R12-13 instead I wouldn’t have felt as bad knowing I probably had another loss to give.

I regroup, convincing myself my deck is absolutely busted. (Deep down I know I just need to win this round bc I am not losing in constructed.)

R11 Brenton Murahashi

Brenton is also RG and his deck seems quite good as well, but it is a different kind of good. He is like multiple warbriars blessings and lots of escape creatures and he is just a RG removal plus large creatures deck. 

The lack of aggression helps me in this match as I’m able to win the 2 games I do somewhat trivially.

G1 I just have a really strong start and have Calix going on an empty board for way too long, and feel like i am 100% to win from t6 until I actually win t18.

G2 I feel ahead but I just draw a lot of timely basic lands in a row and succumb to some medium beats after losing my good cards to warbriars blessings.

G3 I feel really ahead, but he has some serious suprise burst damage with Phoenix and I think wings as well; deja vu. 

CLINGGGGOAT does not care.

As a matter of fact he actually has dreamstalker manticore with me at 3 life. Draws from no hand and smiles a bit and says go. I have cling in my hand but am just holding onto it for dear life always leaving up 5 mana and 2 black. In my upkeep he fires off an omen of the forge. I give a wince and he targets me with the dreamstalker trigger.

Trigger resolves, I am at 2. Omen resolves, targetting me. 

one second.......

CLINGGGGGOAT!

I clean up over a couple turns always leaving up cling.

8-3

I am obviously feeling really good here as I know I am just 7 wins away from the trophy and I have 6 teferi’s 3 dig thru times 4 wraths 26 lands and ~20 opts.

I am immediately suprised to see I am paired vs Sebastian Pozzo. He was in Pod 1 and I thought he was 8-0 overnight, but I was mistaken and he was 7-1 then 1-2 the draft.

R12 Sebastian Pozzo on Sultai Delerium

Sebastian’s list looks pretty stock (Similar to Joel Larson’s) and one thing I have going for me is that he cares way more about world’s and probably spent a lot of time testing standard instead of pioneer.

G1 is a real banger as he t2 scavenging ooze and I just chill out and counter lots of things that matter like a grisly salvage and some planeswalkers. But meanwhile he is exiling all my dig food and I am stuck with a dig in my hand and my life total somewhat dwindling down around 10.

I wrestle control of the game but promptly get emrakuled. The unfortunate thing is I timed a T3feri poorly and left him able to bounce his Emrakul. I don’t think I made any obvious mistakes and I was aware of emrakul and my teferi, but I couldn’t help but think I may have fucked it off somewhere as he is taking my turn.

Luckily he can’t devastate me too bad. He does get to spew some of my cards then go for a dig thru time grabbing 2 lands (He almost had to give me a spell! first 6 we flipped were 1 land and 5 bangers). And he bounces his emrakul and says go to my own turn.

I draw a supreme verdict and am able to + teferi and verdict his emrakul away on the way back down.

He can’t really do much with my turn and I am sort of home free. His deck still has 2 URO a Ballista a tracker another JVP and maybe 1-2 other relevant cards.

Over the next few turns I am just blasting castle tokens into play 2 at a time then eventually 3 at a time. I finally find a t5eferi after he has cracked 7 clues and cast 100 uro. I counted his deck at some point and he had 23 cards to my 19; but he was worried (I believe incorrectly) too much about me ultimating my t5eferi and he was just maximizing every clue and URO with no regards for milling. I never came close to ultimating t5eferi bc he resolved a ballista for 4 or so with 12ish lands. But my 15ish castle tokens were doing just fine protecting my already high life total. 

We fight over ballista with my t5eferi and other cards but he was still drawing with uro and trackers, until he finally counts his library and its 9 cards to my 12.

My deck still has 2 verdicts another t5eferi and t3feri (I have both of those in play as well with some reasonable amounts of loyalty but not really threatening ultimate t5feri bc his ballista still around with 3-4 counters)

Upon recounting his deck he gives me a big sense of relief by conceding. He checked the clock and it was getting around 15 minutes, and he knew he would just be wasting time trying to fight thru triple castle and all these tokens with no real good cards left in his deck.

I was pretty sure this was the case, but the way he had been playing really made me think I was missing something. I kept racking my brain for how he was going to get another emrakul or something but the 1 he had was already exiled to lantern and yeah, turns out he was drawing dead.

Open decklists are great, but when u are against a deck with a bunch of 1 ofs like sultai delerium, while also not having played the matchup that much, that 1 minute of review really shrivels up as u sit there wondering why the hell this man is drawing cards with NO REGARDS FOR HUMAN LIFE!

In SBing i try to go quickly as I don’t want Sebastian to feel I got him by wasting time in any way, and also bc if I get beat by a quick TS + Tracker/dispute draw I can fight to win g3 in 10 min or whatever.

G2 is quite interesting as well but the turns are complicated and despite time ticking sebastian is still having to take some time to think. The climax is with only a couple of minutes left he assembles the 4th type with fabled passage thru a lantern and is able to traverse for emrakul threatening to cast it next turn thru a castle garenbrig if he has a land. But i have a cycler plus a teferi in play and with my cycler i find a dig thru time which finds an ashiok and a counterspell and I know it’s over.

I ashiok his graveyard and he concedes (I would likely not be able to kill him in time this game, but I was up 1-0 and he just saved us all some time and conceded)

9-3

No breaks... Next round is up.

R13 Zachary Kiihne Rimrock RED

Zach is great. I don’t actually know him well, but we battled a lot on the ladder of Arena on the Mythic Invy qualifier month. He ended up making it I believe, while I couldn’t close and finished 13th. We played lots of my WW vs his GW tokens where he was inherently favored, but the games were always complex and large board states and he always played quickly and seemed to know where the games were going.

Keeping up that pace at the PT, Zach just fires everything right off!

in G1 I keep a sketchy hand and he has the exact start to punish me. He just plays creature creature creature shock and I do find my 4th land in time but the problem is I don’t have a verdict, and when i draw on t4 it is not verdict and i die. If it was verdict I would also likely die bc I was so low anyway. WTF M8??

Luckily Dream Trawler does not care what happens in g1

in G2 and G3 I use some 2 mana interaction to survive to trawler and I kill him with them. He did have to mulligan and keep a really land heavy hand in one of the games and it hurt him.

There was an interesting spot in g2 where i had both t3feri and t5feri and he had chandra torch of defiance, exiled a card and it was lightning strike. He lightning striked my t5eferi down, then plays another card. A Judge was nearby and came and stopped our game and informed us you can in fact NOT play magic cards exiled with chandra thru T3feri. What a dumb fucking card!

The judge decides we can just back up to the point of exiling, so instead I take 2. Either way I was casting Dig thru time end of turn and going to win trivially but this way I got to keep my t5eferi in play! Thanks Judge and T3feri!!

And yeah again g3 was just him flooding and me playing trawler at a really high life total.

10-3

I finally get a bit of a break as Zach played lightning speed and we got things over with quick. I get some food and get myself amped up for these next few crucial matches.

R14 Connor Cole

Connor is a local Texan who I actually met playing at I believe SCG Dallas recently. He won a PTQ and ended up joining our local Houston guys Slack team and then went on to crush the first 13 rounds of the PT!!!

Unfortunately he ran into the Buzz Saw here; and I had to show him what the last few rounds of a PT are like.

But no jokes aside, Connor is gas and plays really well. He ended up finishing 12-4 and tiebreaker stung into 9th :( But he qued for the final and I expect big things from him in the future.

Our match was a feature, but we were the backup and they had some audio issues.

I actually just threw away the first game being overconfident in my deck. It’s funny when playing a deck like UW control my instincts are to just man up and trust the shit out of my deck. By that I mean I maximize my mana and effeciency even if I am not getting the most out of my cards, bc i trust with all these teferi’s and digs and cyclers I will be able to gain some advantage/find what i need later so long as I am surviving and hitting lands.

My mistake was maximizing mana and a dig thru time where I exiled my elspeth. At the time I was at 9 life and I had already cast a dig hitting some weak sauce, so I figured I would find my absorb or 2 counters and lock the game, but instead i found opt and charm and i fluttered around with my t5eferi as well and could not beat his running burn spells putting me to exactly 0.

If I would’ve just taken 2 seconds to realize I am in no real rush (he was on E or maybe had 1 card) I should’ve just realized I was almost 0% to lose if I just didn’t exile my own Elspeth.

Moral of the story is don’t trust your stupid deck when you already have everything you need!!!

G2 is an absolute nailbiter as I play elspeth and think I’m cruising to Trawler, but chainwhirler eats it promptly.

I then have my 2nd elspeth but 2nd chainwhirler dashes that as well.

I still slam trawler and think It’s mostly very safe, as connor just has chainwhirler kari zev and soul scar mage with me at 9.

But he slams Chandra and minuses on my trawler. I count it up and thank the lord somehow he only has 8 damage. So i give my trawler hexproof keeping a dig thru time, and he puts me to 1. I untap and attack chandra draw and dig before damage, and I have a lot of combo’s that will keep me alive easily. Any  interaction should be good enough and I leave myself 5 mana. I find a verdict and something else gassy so I just go up to 6 from trawler, verdict and then untap with elspeths ready to come back from the yard and I gain 5 and am out of range and clean up shortly after.

G3 is a bit less scary. He does put up a fight but I feel miles ahead at all points having 2 mana interaction and then also hittings lands and playing cards before trawlering on 6 while still quite healthy.

11-3

Now I’m really feeling hyped as I know I have a win and in and I’m just 4 wins from the Trophy!!!

I refocus and am very confident I will win the next round.

R15 Raja Sulaiman WB Gideon Midrange

I don’t know my opponent, but I do know he has a sweet deck. I am looking at the list trying to figure out if I’m extremely happy or a bit sad and can’t really tell. I lean towards happy but could totally see getting annihilated as well.

Luckily the match is mostly uneventful. I lose g1 to double TS Heart History Gideon...

But again, 

Dream Trawler does not care what happens in g1.

12-3

We did it! Back to back PT T8s!! 

Unfortunately the next 20min were very unpleasant instead of happy, but that’s ok. 

The pairings for R16 makeup for it!

I’m at table 1, paired against my teammate Allen Wu who has enough wins to T8 this PT and the next!

I know Allen does not care much for any bullshit, so I am actually a bit worried he is going to want to play me. 

Yes we are teammates, but Allen cares [almost] solely about maximizing his chances of winning the tournaments. I respect him a lot, and I also respect this approach. 

One of 3 things happened; 

-Allen valued his time too much to battle me here for extremely minimal gains.

-Allen thinks there is some chance losing would make him the 2 seed while drawing just locks the 1 seed (I think he was locked 1 seed even if he played me and lost); 

-Allen thinks I/my deck suck and he wants me in the T8

I’m leaning towards some combination of all 3, but who cares he offered to draw and I ACCCCCCEPT!

The final standings shake out with Allen 1 Jacob 2 Me 3. I am playing the 6, Huey, and my teammate Tommy is 7 battling Jacob on my side of the bracket.

My other teammate Corey is battling PETERRR in the 4/5 match.

Our team has 4 people in the T8!!! I know we are like 7% of the tournament, but thats 50%!

Also shoutout to Mark who I believe lost a win and in R15 or so.

Our squad obviously had a really strong showing, with 4 in the T8 and Corey winning it all. But we also just had really solid winrates in limited and constructed despite playing lots of different decks.

This is getting obscenely long. 

This night was actually really annoying bc I spent it telling the same story over and over;

And also on twitter watching lots of people I’ve never met talk about how much of an asshole I am, or how much I cheat, or how bad I am, or whatever is getting the most likes.

I mostly shook it off. I got to tell the story to all the people I care about, and have dinner with a large portion of my team. I had already played my QF matchup post board a bit with Allen before the tournament, so I knew my plans.

Unfortunately it didn’t help me in the games.

I get to bed at a reasonable time and have to be at the site for like 9:15. I’m there before 9 and when I ask if I can go to starbucks I am told yes of course go ahead, but please stay around. And then immediately someone else tells me I won’t be playing until around 11 probably :0

I get starbucks and get back to battle Jacob some in his QF matchup. Mostly to just warmup and help him out, but also to get a feel for he and Tommy’s decks incase I beat Huey. 

We only get a few games in before finding out my match is actually 3rd not 4th, and these BO3 are going quick and I’m about to be up.

While the other match is finishing, we present and draw our hands and get ready to start right when the other match finishes.

I am greeted with 2 censor Opt Farmland Hallowed Fountain Glacial Fortress Supreme Verdict. Not quite the nuts, but a solid A. I’m on the play and Huey mulligans to 5.

We finally start our game and this one hurt. I opt t1 and hit a teferi and keep it, then immediately draw my 4th land so i say go with censor up ready to cycle farmland, huey goes for sylvan scrying before playing land after t1 grazer got him to 2, and i censor it and he says go missing a land drop with 3 cards in his hand.

From here I play teferi to get the jayemdae tomb one every 4 turns going; Huey draws a thespians stage but can’t muster anything else, so he now has 2 UG lands a stage and 3 cards vs my censor cycle land another land and teferi.

Over the next 3-4 turns I draw 2 cards with teferi cycle this farmland and another, opt and charm, and the only playable card I find is a mystical dispute. I draw seal away and all 4 of my verdicts lol.

Huey goes for Granted with 3 mana up, and i have no choice but to dispute and hope to censor after he pays 2 for 1ing myself. I can’t be granted for distortion without a t5eferi in play or any pressure at all.

He responds by cycling vizier to make a mana, and pays for dispute with 1 mana still up. This now means I have to cycle censor looking for a hard counter but i brick. He gets distortion.

The game weirdly goes on for like 8 more turns. He just keeps making more fields with stages but I amass narset elspeth t3feri t5feri. He finally has to go for it despite not having a way to kill me, so he goes for distortion into string strings last card granted for ugin to wipe my planeswalkers; but I’m able to make a 1/1 and chip ugin down to 2. Unfortunately I draw a land, he +s on my token and i make another then draw another land. ANd now I am dead to the fae coming into play, back to hand, finding Jace and having double walker going. I just got beat at my own game!!! He didn’t even breach me!

But yeah, I am feeling a bit frustrated to lose the game despite knowing how bad G1 is. 

When he mulled to 5 and got his scrying censored I believe I was a massive favorite, probably somewhere in the 70s or 80s at least and I just drew only the dead cards.

But now we board in 9-10 cards and regroup!

G2 was really great, and I made like 1 mistake a turn. 

I asked a lot of really good players what they would do on all these turns and almost all of them would make the same mistakes I did. 

Except for Allen; 

and Drunk Tom Ross!

Tom let me know how bad I fucked up, and I really appreciate that. 

Tom said many different things like “awww u really fucked up. U fucked it up bad. Damn u fucked it up”

The games are obviously on camera, but in G2 Huey goes for field + copy it with stage, I field of ruin the stage. 

So his board is forest untapped Lotus Field tapped with 4 cards in hand.

I have T5feri my 4th and 5th land, 2 mystical disputes and absorb.

I untap and draw Elspeth.

The question is should I play it?

Huey has 4 disenchants, 2 disputes, 1 ugin, 1 jace, 1 thought distortion and maybe 1 more card he could bring in.

For the most part his plan is still the same, build up his mana and try to find a window to either thought distortion me, or strings my lands/his lands to make sure he resolves his key card(s).

But I just felt with the 2 disputes and t5eferi I was going to be able to apply meaningful pressure fast enough to not risk tapping out here.

In my head he could just granted for distortion then sort of ignore elspeth for a few turns and fire a distortion then kill me, but that is so unrealistic. First he has to not board the distortion in (I was thinking he like 80% brings it in. Allen brought his in and we felt like that was just correct so I assumed Huey likely would) and then he also has to somehow have perfect mana to get to 6 and then distort me and kill me before dying to this SIX MACHINE elspeth? Its stupid and I shouldve just probably played elspeth.

Not doing so was playing scared/too safe. But it really isn’t that bad or that big of a deal. If huey has a natural 2nd stage into strings I can easily just be dead. But it’s really low % and this is a tough matchup of magic the gathering vs a great player where you can’t just tiptoe around making suboptimal plays bc it makes you feel safe.

Lots of people hesitated and said don’t play it. Tom would have blown like a .40 BAC minimum when I asked him, and he immediately said to play Elspeth.

Anyway Huey untaps and just plays a temple scryland and keeps the card on top, and says go.

So now he has forest lotus field untapped and 4 cards with a banger on top.

My turn.

I draw damping sphere!

I have t5eferi damping sphere elspeth 2 dispute absorb and my 5th land.

Now a a few things go thru my mind here. Huey has 2 disputes but the way he’s played this game make me feel like it’s somewhat unlikely he has one. 

However, if I go for t5feri and he does dispute it’s really ugly. I can go for elspeth with dispute up but that feels too weak.

My options I am actually considering are just jam sphere and counter a disenchant, or jam teferi and have double dispute up if he doesn’t have dispute.

I think it’s somewhat close, but in hindsight it’s actually just an easy T5feri. 

Unfortunately I go for damping sphere which is where Tom says nooooooo u fucked up bad, u really fucked it up.

And Huey immediately floats 3 GREEN? I say ok and he natural states my damping sphere.

Now this is a bit weird to me. I mean he floated 3 green immediately; but he has a forest up. And he has 2 disputes in his deck...

So now I am paranoid that he hasnt a 2nd disenchant. 

But it’s Huey, and it’s a PT T8. I start thinking maybe he is leveling me and trying to get me not to counter it bc he has no dispute and no 2nd disenchant.

Ultimately my plan when playing it was to just fire off a counterspell on disenchant bc if he does have a dispute or 2nd one he will only have 2 cards, and i can just untap t5feri with counterspell. But if he doesn’t successfully kill sphere I am just going to win easily.

So I absorb.

Huey bins the natural state and before he can cast his other one a judge intervenes.

There is a damping sphere in play when i absorb; so obviously I can’t do this bc it should cost 4. I just totally forgot that part of the card even existed. I haven’t cast it in the entire tournament, and in my mind it was just strip mine lotus fields to wastes. 

Even with the speed of everything and huey snap disenchanting I could have seen myself forgetting to count the sphere tax to itself, but I literally just forgot it even had that text for a second there.

Huey also forgot it. The judges stopped us and then asked me what I was thinking, so I just repeated a lot of what I just typed; all the shit I was thinking about him floating green instead of blue etc. then they came back and gave us warnings and said to carry on. Huey apologizes after the game bc he said he totally forgot himself but it looks bad bc he wanted me to absorb bc he had another disenchant.

Anyway, we backup and I have a dead damping sphere and 3 mana up with absorb Huey now knows about. I also have the 2 disputes.

Huey untaps and immediately taps field and forest and plays hidden strings. THen he looks at me lol. I say are you targetting your lands?? He says yes

So yeah, now I am looking at this absorb he knows about. He only has like what 3 cards behind this strings. It’s going to put him to 7 mana. What can he even do? There is no way he’s killing me thru 2 dispute. If he has breach natural i let it resolve, then i dispute strings. If he pays he has 0 mana left and i dispute again untap teferi + and have absorb gg yo

If he has the natural distortion then obviously I need to counter this. But he has ONE and i just showed him absorb. I am thinking to myself, dont be a fool! his hand is probably granteds and pore over the pages and hes trying to bait u into countering this stupid strings!

So I let it resolve, and I get distorted.

This was not a good play!

I could have just disputed the strings. This virtually counters it bc he only had 1 field. So while he couldve paid for dispute, it wouldve tapped him out, and strings resolves untapping only 4 mana. So from there i still have another dispute and he can’t reasonably do anything.

Instead I am empty handed and in dire straights. I do peel t5eferi immediately but i hit land off of it and draw only lands next turn as well, meanwhile huey sets up to kill me over 2 turns and does so.

what a tilting match :(

It really hurts to make such critical mistakes in these high stakes matches, but Magic is really hard and I forgive myself pretty quickly.

I had good reasons for making the plays that I did, but they were just a bit faulty; 

WRONG!

I feel like if I had more time to think things through, or if there were less pressure of the stakes I maybe would have just slammed T5eferi and even Elspeth t4. But i definitely don’t have a good excuse for not disputing strings. Just Huey being Huey and somehow levelling me into punting it all off after i showed him my absorb.

But yeah GG’s YO I ended up 6th for 10k bc Allen lost too :( and 18 points.

I have a really good shot at Rivals now so I am pumped for the PT final and next RPT!

Shoutout again to Corey for winning and all of team 5% for crushing and being gas.

Also shoutout to all the grinders out there still on the outside looking in. 

I see you!

Hopefully I’ll have more reports soon...

PT Finals Victory Report, RPT2 Victory Report...

Let’s get it!!!

[whirofinvention-blog]

My Brief Encounter With the Sun

It has been a while since I've posted here, at least relative to the rate I would like to be posting and to the events I would like to be attending. To start, I guess I should come clean and admit I didn't attend GP Portland. By now I've drafted three separate posts about my not attending, but they all sounded self-indulgent. Instead of a dedicated post, here's the bullet points:

- I did not know anyone playing in the main event. When I started this blog, I knew two people locked in to the event, but leading up to the event they all dropped out. This is not the end of the world, but it is nice to have friends around to celebrate and commiserate with.

- My deck choice was up in the air. As I have mentioned before, I own Hardened Scales and Lantern Control. My results leading up to the GP with Scales were middling at best. Lantern on the other hand has a better track record, but underperforms against skilled opponents. Plus both are faced with the daunting amount of sideboard hate present for KCI decks right now.

-Lastly, and most importantly, social anxiety was the big roadblock. This is something I have struggled with for awhile. It is far from crippling, but it is stifling at times. I get in my own head about it. Though the other two points were factors, they probably could have been ignored. My anxiety just let them become excuses.

There were still silver linings. I had a great time at the event site with friends playing EDH, and I bought and sold a lot of cardboard.

Plus, the Friday of the GP, I registered for Oakland. Maybe that little bit of disappointment in myself was the perfect push to get me to register for Oakland.

If you're reading this, it means you probably keep up with Magic pretty frequently and are already aware that I did not top 8 the GP this past weekend. It was the most successful weekend (in fact it was pretty heartbreaking), but I had a great time. Friday night I got into Oakland pretty late so did not have time to go to the convention center. Instead I went to the home of my friend David and his partner Kayla who graciously housed me this weekend. We ate some dinner and stayed up way too late drinking, catching up and playing games of Scales versus Mono-Red Phoenix.

Saturday, we got up and made our way to the hall for what was going to be a long day. Before Round 1, I got my beautiful full-art Bolt promo as well as my not-so-beautiful Tigtone playmat and sat down for my first round. Unfortunately for me, I got paired against a pretty rough matchup to start my tournament: UB Faeries. If you have never read the card Mistbind Clique, I would suggest giving it a look cause it is a very messed up card. We went to game 3, but ultimately, the tempo power of his deck combined with his suite of removal and counters proved to strong for my robots.

Round 2 can be described pretty easily. If you are playing against TitanShift and your opponent fails to ever draw a Primeval Titan or a Scapeshift, then their deck looks pretty atrocious.

The following round was the one that really hurt. Most of it is a blur besides the last turn. My opponent was on Grixis Death's Shadow and sitting at 5 life with a few cards, two shocks, a fetch, and a Gurmag and Death's Shadow. I had three lands (2 Nexus, 1 Citadel), a Hangarback on 4 counters with and activation up, a Mox, and a Ravager on three counters at 15 life. My opponent cantrips main phase, plays a second fetch, and goes to combat swinging with both. I know that if he has a Temur Battle Rage, and I don't block the Death's Shadow, I am dead, so I immediately block the Shadow. He then goes to 1 life by fetching a  shock and fetching a basic and TBR's the Shadow. I activate Hangarback and the Inkmoth and sacrifice all of my permanents besides the Welding Jar and a Thopter to the Ravager. We do the math. I have a 13/13 Ravager to his 12/12 Shadow. He tramples over for 11 and deals 5 with the Gurmag for lethal. There were two mistakes I made here. The first you may have noticed. If I was going to sac the Hangarback, why not block the Gurmag first. This one felt bad. The other was that I simply did the math wrong and thought the attack put me to 14.

This round spawned the quote of the weekend when I texted Dave: "I just punted my round 3 into the fucking sun." Unfortunately for Dave, he also made a round losing misplay this round, so we vented to each other which helped. Having a friend around can really help alleviate the anger/stress/sadness from moments like this.

Round 4 is where my tournament ended. My opponent was on Devoted Evolution. Game 1 I had a Hardened Scales and Ballista and was able to kill all his creatures easily. The other two games he assembled infinite mana and a mana dump with the first four turns. The only really relevant statistic I have is that all of the games where I resolved a Hardened Scales and was able to put a +1/+1 counter on a creature while it was out, I won easily. The deck felt extremely strong in those instances, and it won a couple games without the Enchantment. Overall, I can't be too disappointed given the amount of preparation I put into things and walked away proud of the fact that even though I scrubbed out early, I took my opponents to game 3 every time and had a nice time.

The rest of the weekend was side events which were super fun. I managed to play a couple Battlebond drafts with Dave which were great, but I want to quickly tell you about my ridiculous Ultimate Masters draft. 

The draft started with me taking a Demonic Tutor and getting passed an Unholy Hunger followed by a blue card. Pick 4 I saw a Spider Spawning and went all in. By the end of the draft I had an absolutely insane U/B/g self-mill deck that's win cons were pretty much just a Spider Spawning, Rise from the Tides and a Lab Man I picked up pack 3 pick 7. Round 1 I was paired against Dave, of course, and proceeded to slowly crush his U/W Heroic deck and killed him with Lab Man in 2 quick games. Round 2 didn't go as well. I got paired against the only other competent drafter at the table who was on G/W Heroic and made a 4/4 on turn 3 both games while holding up protection for it. After the games, my opponent told me that she thought my deck was the sweetest and probably the only other good deck in the pod which was nice.

There's not much else to say about the event, except it was a ton of fun, and I am already looking forward to the next one (GPLA in March maybe?).

Before I end things, I feel obligated to talk about the bannings announcement scheduled for two weeks from now. I know most of the world will never read this, but I want to stake a claim and call my shot now.

Modern has a problem that needs to be fixed: KCI. In a typical tournament 4 of the top 8 decks being the same archetype isn't the end of the world, but KCI has been showing a dominant performance in the modern metagame for months now. No matter how many copies of Stony Silence and Rest in Peace are running around, the deck still puts up amazing results. Plus the addition of Sai has made it so some games they just attack you to death. None of this even takes into account how the deck can have 10 minute turns and is a nightmare to sit down across at your local FNM.

As I see it there are a few different permutations for possible bans and unbans that may be on the horizon.

The first, and perhaps most vocalized ban, is Ancient Stirrings. This card is probably the best card draw spell in Modern and sees play in KCI, so it seems like the logical card to target with a ban. Unfortunately, I don't think banning it would actually do too much to KCI. If it were banned, I would expect the deck to just abandon green in favor of more blue sources to take advantage of Whir of Invention. Plus, if you ban Ancient Stirrings, then you are also hurting Tron, Amulet, Hardened Scales, and Lantern/4-Color Prison. Some people might say that it is for the good of the format to take the card out of it, but I have to ask, when is it good for a format to hurt 5 different decks with one banning?

The next most likely banning in my eyes is Faithless Looting. Much like Ancient Stirrings, this card is extremely powerful and is the only other card in the running for most powerful draw spell in the format (at least in my eyes). Looting is almost never used as a fair card and has shown how strong it can be in the recent resurgence of Dredge as well as the new Arclight Phoenix decks. The only reason I write about it here is I believe you cannot ban Ancient Stirrings without also banning Looting. If you get rid of Stirrings it will make the Looting decks stronger in the format. Now, if you ban both of them, you would be hurting a huge chunk of the format. Maybe this is what WotC wants. A fairer looking field of decks in modern. Personally, I don't want to play a format where the combo decks are Storm and CoCo with the other decks all being things like GBx, UW Control and Spirits. I cannot imagine a world where they ban just Looting and not Stirrings as well.

This brings me to the card that people have been asking about banning almost as much as Stirrings. Krark-Clan Ironworks. KCI as a deck obviously couldn't exist without the card KCI. The free sacrifice outlet is powerful and maybe is too powerful for Modern. It creates the mana to cast the spells. If WotC banned KCI, I think it would be a fine decision while only impacting one deck in the format. 

Still, I don't think banning KCI is the answer. The card has potential and provides a unique effect to the format, that could see other uses. Maybe people start turbo-ing out their Emrakuls or making giant Walking Ballistas with it. I don't know, but the options are there. Scrap Trawler on the other hand doesn't really seem to have the same potential and is the card I would most like to see banned. If KCI makes the mana, Scrap Trawler is the part that makes the loops actually happen. It gets you back the Spheres and Stars to draw the cards. Plus, it is hard for me to imagine this card ever doing anything other than degenerate interactions with egg-like artifacts. Just like with KCI, banning this would have no effect on the format other than hurting KCI, but I think KCI has more potential for fair things and for that reason should be left in the format. 

A few other thoughts I have on the current ban list. Though at this point in time it is pretty much a meme, I do believe Stoneforge Mystic would be a safe unban. It is rare that I find myself in a game where Stoneforge Mystic would be too good. Though it is a powerful card and will assuredly see play in fair decks, modern has become a strong enough format over the past few years that I doubt it would be an issue right now.

The other unbanning I could see happening, and actually want to happen more, is Preordain. Green and Red should not have the best one-mana cantrips in modern. Blue is the card draw color and blue deserves the best cantrip. There are a few worries with unbanning Preordain, specifically blue based combo decks like Storm would become oppressive. That may happen, but I believe that has more to do with storm being a bad mechanic than Preordain being too strong for the format. Plus, I think this might be the best solution to avoid having to ban Stirrings and Looting anytime soon. Maybe this would make the format too combo-centric, but this isn't Legacy where we have Ponder and Brainstorm. Fair blue decks would play Preordain and be better off for it.

Also, they should unban Punishing Fire just to see what the fuck happens.

Well, then. See ya soon I guess. Next time I will probably write about an EDH deck.

[thunderheadfred]

Kiss Prompt #14 - starting with a kiss meant to be gentle, ending up in passion

Hopefully, parts of this will end up heavily edited for In The Yellow Time Of Pollen. This got really long, still feels pretty unpolished, and also flirts with NSFW content near the end. BUT HEY! I wrote a thing! Huzzah!

It’s getting worse. All of it.

First, the sticky fingers. With Lexi’s help, Kallo masters control of his nuptial pads in the span of a few concentrated hours. He is able to resume his duties at the helm with no one the wiser.

The next morning when Suvi walks onto the bridge with her coffee, she telegraphs Kallo a friendly side-eye and asks about Ryder, but gives up when her third attempt at casual chatter meets a wall of silence. He almost feels bad about it. Almost.

No use spreading rumors. There’s nothing to spread. Nothing is going to happen. He’s not about to mire the Pathfinder in a swamp of uncomfortable biological inconveniences. She has much more important things to worry about. Rebuilding civilization takes precedence over the alarming and foreign developments in Kallo’s crotch. 

Salarian mating season: even he doesn’t want any part of it.

The season should last four weeks at least, eight at most. Hard to say. A few months of hell before Kallo can get back to normal. Lexi forwards more information than he knows what to do with. Terabytes of pamphlets and diagrams, one worrying link to a discreet manufacturer of plastic sheeting and other “interspecies play aides,” terrifying videos of adventurous (and well-compensated) asari maidens splashing around in pools with salarian partners.

Kallo can’t even make it past the video thumbnails, can barely look at those e-mails at all except to freeze in surprise and spend a few brief seconds obsessing over Sara’s body instead of his own. What she might really look like under all that pretense, the scuffed leather and showy grins…

He avoids the terminals after that. No. Thank you, but no. Too confusing.

So, he gets his hands back under control. Fabulous. Also, fruitless. Hours after that victory, his body begins to itch.

Everywhere, every inch of skin alive with pain as if Kallo is due for a terrifying biannual molt. He’s not, Lexi reassures him. His body is just flooding with hormones that are readjusting his natural excretions, he might notice some flare-ups. Nothing to worry about, the doctor coddles, Kallo is only preparing to transform from the outside-in, apparently.

Somehow that thought is less comforting than the somewhat more relatable prospect of shedding his epidermis whole like a snake.

So, he showers. Constantly. Sometimes twice a day, alternating hot and cold. Blessedly, the itching stops.

But then, of course, along comes something worse. His skin begins to… seep. Moisture beads out of every pore, covering him in something clear and slick and flavorless. He’d prefer not to call this newest development lubricant like Lexi does with a clarity and ease he refuses to understand, but he can’t seem to find a better name for it either.

One afternoon while Ryder is off punching lowlifes in Kadara port, Kallo paces across the galaxy map station, desperate for an occupation. Uncharacteristically out of his seat, standing because he can’t bear the pornographic mess that now constantly lines his suit, he grimaces and rubs his fingers together. He evaluates the ease of the slip.

Dammit, it’s lube. It’s definitely lube.

“You have the bridge, Suvi. I’m going to take a long shower,” he announces, bolting for the door.

Suvi jumps. As Kallo sprints aft, she turns to watch his retreat.

“Now? Right now?”

“Yes, right now!”

The doors close over her baffled reply and Kallo throws himself down the port crew ladder, rungs forgotten. He comes to a hard stop at the lower deck and realizes his hands have left a smear on the flawless chrome side rails. He yelps, staring at his palms with accusatory horror, then charges into the shower.

The shower, which is occupied.

By Ryder.

To her credit, Ryder barely flinches, but her face does look plenty startled. She’s not naked, which is a small miracle, but she’s close enough. Only a damp towel between Kallo’s imagination and the hair-covered madness of human anatomy. One of her legs is up on the waterproof bench outside the communal shower stall, and she’s picking at a bright red rash that covers a quarter of her calf.

“You. Kadara. On. Kadara. There. Kadara. Punching.”

Ryder stares at him, blinking with the slow awe of a sunbathing lizard.

Unforgivably, he doesn’t leave immediately. He can’t tear his eyes from the glittering hollow at the base of her neck. Why is she here? Oh just leave. He can’t leave. Her hair is wet. The room smells like her. The soaps she uses, Ryder’s signatures, invisible and private. He’d never realized it before. Of course, it’s the soap. Stop panicking. Leave. Leave.

She takes in a deep breath, apparently on his behalf as well as her own, then slowly says,

“I got some of that local hell water in my suit. Hurt like a bitch, so I called off the rest of the scouting. I needed a break from that place, a nice long shower. I told you that twenty minutes ago when I cleared decon…”

“You… did?”

He can’t remember, which fills him with terror like he’s never felt.

He should say something. Now. Explain. He wrings his slippery hands, wishing they were sticky again. Wishing any single part of his body would pick a setting and stay there for longer than half a day.

“Kallo, are you okay?”

She doesn’t touch him, she’s too polite, but there’s something in her posture that warns she’d prefer to be touching him if given the chance. Would that be so bad? Probably. Should he leave? Definitely. Yes definitely, he should leave. Why isn’t he leaving? 

Sara, fiddling with the top edge of her towel, which has loosened and drooped dangerously down her chest.

Sara, her hair pearled with moisture that drips to her shoulders in tiny droplets that Kallo can’t help but follow with his eyes. 

Sara, staring up at him with her quiet, parted lips, the rock in her throat bobbing as she swallows nervously beneath his unblinking scrutiny. 

Sara, suddenly closer, moving her face into his hand when some rogue internal force compels him to step further into a room he should be fleeing from and touch his fingers to her cheek.

“Your hand is wet,” she says, pushing herself further into his grip. No. Away. Move away.

“Sorry,” he breathes, forgetting other words like weird and foolish and mayday.

She asks carefully, “Did you need something from me?”

He feels his head slowly shaking back and forth no, though he can’t remember any such impulse leaving his brain.

She inches closer and rephrases.

“Do you want something from me?”

He stands there, unable to move forward or back, his only movement the slow horizontal surrendering of his head.

“Well fine," she gripes. "Be stubborn about it. I want something from you,”

Slow enough to grant him an easy escape, she brings her lips to his.

He’s never kissed anyone before. He thinks the event is strangely uneventful, considering all the fuss people make over it.

But, still…

Sara’s lips are pillowy, moistened by the sweat of the shower, and almost painfully warm. Her skin smells distinctly clean, like something uniquely expensive and well cultivated. He thinks of the hydroponics bay on the Nexus, then thinks he shouldn’t be thinking about that at all, then thinks he’s thinking too much to be any good at this and that he should probably stop.

She presses her face against his for a few quiet moments, her lips tightly closed, keeping herself still and careful. After a long pause, she tries to pull away.

She tries and fails: Kallo follows her when she retreats. He follows her so thoroughly that they wind up backed into the shower stall, forehead to forehead, mouth to mouth, arms in a tangle. When Sara’s back meets the wall, she breaks away to catch her breath.

He can’t stop staring at her mouth, the mouth that has just kissed him, the mouth of Sara Ryder, the woman he inexplicably wants to kiss again.

His hand finds her cheek once more, and his thumb trails toward her lips. He stares, enraptured by the automatic certainty of his own movements. A trail of glistening lubricant, his lubricant, tattooing her face with an indecent mystery streak. 

He shudders with disgust or fascination or something newer and more terrifying than both. In one halting breath, he sweeps his thumb over her lips, spreading the moisture across her mouth.

Without warning her tongue darts out, all pink curiosity. He watches her take a sample into her mouth, bold and foolhardy as ever. His fingers tighten on her face and his thumb drags forcefully along her bottom lip, smearing in wider, harder strokes.

Stupid, the both of them. What if he’s excreting poison? Does he care? Does she care? Lexi would have warned him if he was going to excrete poison. 

Maybe.

Sara’s eyelids droop with intoxication, but she doesn’t choke or die. She bites her lip, grazing the tip of his thumb in the process.

He’s wondering when his legs got so shaky. Have they always been this shaky? Sara holds him up, wrapping her arms around his waist and yanking him closer.

He closes what little gap remains, crashing into her open mouth. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with his tongue - if he’s even allowed to use it at all - but he knows he wants to explore the alien sweetness of her, a naked flavor newly salted with his own. In the end it’s little more than a benign mix of spit and skin.

But the feel of her mouth, lubricated and slippery. The press of her tongue. The scrape of her teeth biting his lower lip. The sound when she whines and nudges their hips together.

That… That is something else.

He drags his greased hands along her face, her neck, the wild territory of upper chest that peeks out above her towel. Her skin grows slicker with each grope, and the more freely she slides against him, the more excited she seems to get. He seems to get. They’re both very excited, and everything is slippery. He’s never been this excited. 

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s the excitement itself that is different.

Different, he decides, might not be entirely terrifying. At least with Sara.

AO3 | FFN

[trident-dragion]

Over the Nexus Deck Profile: Blue-Eyes White Dragon

"Yeah, and I'm a Blue-Eyes White Dragon." ~ Jack Atlas Alright, I've had my laugh, here's a REAL Blue-Eyes deck for ya. This one is the deck that I've worked on the longest, because it's an evolution of my story mode deck in Over the Nexus and I spent a long time tinkering with it to make it the strongest possible version. I don't know if I'm there yet, but this one is very strong and very fast. To achieve this strength and speed, this deck plays both the Red-Eyes and Dragunity engines I usually pair with Dragon Ravine, along with three each of Trade-In and Cards of Consonance to maximize draw power. Both Trade-In and Cards of Consonance are made very accessible with Dragon Ravine; if we have Trade-In, we can use Ravine to send The White Stone of Legend to the graveyard, which adds Blue-Eyes to hand, whereas if we have Cards of Consonance, we can use Ravine to add Dragunity Phalanax in hand. These are so reliable that, despite this deck putting a lot of monsters in grave, I don't actually think Pot of Avarice is necessary. The deck is kind of tight on space and we play three of all of our main deck monsters, plus most of our Synchros are Dragon-type so REDMD can bring them back if they go into the graveyard. Blue-Eyes White Dragon itself is huge, so powerful that it can enable an OTK... even if it can't attack. This deck can summon Blue-Eyes so consistently, that I'm running Burst Stream of Destruction, which is basically Raigeki with the downside of Blue-Eyes not being allowed to attack this turn. But we can ignore that by summoning Dragunity Phalanx and using it with Blue-Eyes after activating Burst Stream to Synchro Summon Trident Dragion, which has the same 3000 attack as Blue-Eyes White Dragon does, and more importantly can attack multiple times; if the opponent can't stop it, Burst Stream into Trident Dragion is instant lethal. The Dragunity engine is as always very good at summoning Synchros quickly, so even if Blue-Eyes or Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon aren't available, we can still establish board presence fast! But one of my favorite parts of this deck is it can actually take advantage of Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon; it doesn't cost as many cards to make as Five-Headed Dragon, and more importantly we can use Future Fusion, targeting Five-Headed Dragon to send three Blue-Eyes White Dragons, Red-Eyes Wyvern, and Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon, then follow up with Dragon's Mirror to immediately summon Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon while still leaving REDMD and Wyvern in the graveyard to get Darkness Metal into circulation! If you really want to feel like Seto Kaiba or otherwise overwhelm your opponent with some of the strongest dragons Over the Nexus has to offer, this deck is for you. MONSTERS (18): Blue-Eyes White Dragon x3 Dragunity Dux x3 Dragunity Phalanx x3 Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon x3 Red-Eyes Wyvern x3 The White Stone of Legend x3 SPELLS (21): Burst Stream of Destruction x2 Cards of Consonance x3 Dark Hole x1 Dragon Ravine x3 Dragon's Mirror x1 Future Fusion x1 Giant Trunade x1 Monster Reborn x1 Mystical Space Typhoon x2 Terraforming x3 Trade-In x3 TRAPS (1): Treacherous Trap Hole x1 EXTRA DECK: Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon x1 Five-Headed Dragon x1 Ally of Justice Catastor x1 Black Rose Dragon x1 Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier x1 Dragunity Knight - Vajrayana x3 Goyo Guardian x1 Red Dragon Archfiend x1 Red Nova Dragon x1 Scrap Dragon x1 Stardust Dragon x1 Trident Dragion x1 Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier x1

[trident-dragion]

Here are the ones I'm looking at so far: Light and Darkness Disaster: This one is just Light and Darkness Dragon turbo. I DO play LADD in my standard Disaster Dragon deck, but I think to put more emphasis on it would mean playing at least one more copy. To keep things interesting, I might make this into a Chaos Dragon variant, but with only Chaos Sorcerer and no Dragon Ravine I have doubts on if that's wise. May work better in Over the Nexus instead of Reverse of Arcadia. Frozen Ray: Whereas Horus is the FIRE version of the deck, this is the WATER version, centering around Blizzard Dragon and how it enables Gungnir, Dragon of the Ice Barrier. I'll of course include White Night Dragon, since my standard build plays it anyway, but to lean further into WATER I'll also play Deep Sea Diva and Spined Gillman. If I can freeze up the opponent's monster with Blizzard Dragon or otherwise keep it (or Red-Eyes Wyvern) on the field, I could then summon Deep Sea Diva, and with that either summon Spined Gillman for a quick Trishula, or another copy of itself to climb into a level 8 Synchro. As for the level 3 Tuner, I'm undecided currently, but if I go for Blackwing - Gale the Whirlwind, I may throw in some more DARK stuff to turn this into a DARK/WATER hybrid variant. If not, I may consider Spiritual Water Art - Aoi, because tributing a WATER Dragon to nab something out of my opponent's hand, only to then bring it back with Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon sounds pretty sick! Spirit Well: This build focuses on Yamata Dragon, and summoning it using Totem Dragon. I'm not really sure how much more I can do with it to make it interesting, but I might combine this with the Light and Darkness Disaster deck to make one tribute-focused Disaster Dragon build, or I could combine it with the following deck instead. Catastrophe Dragon: This build centers on Gandora, the Dragon of Destruction. Like LADD and Yamata Dragon, this one cannot be special summoned, and therefore Totem Dragon is the ideal way of accessing it. Under the right conditions this deck can easily OTK, but those conditions aren't easy to meet, so I think I might play D.D.R. - Different Dimension Reincarnation as a follow up, and maybe Dragon's Mirror to go with that. Considering how Gandora is a DARK and I'm thinking of using D.D.R. already, Allure of Darkness is probably worth considering, as are Dark Horus, Trade-In, and possibly even The Dark Creator. Egg Turbo: This is Blue-Eyes. I don't know why the Wikia and Yugipedia call it Egg Turbo. I mean, it's referring to The White Stone of Legend, but why call it Egg Turbo even considering that? Anyway, this deck is similar to the Blue-Eyes deck I posted for Over the Nexus, but without Dragon Ravine, the Dragunity component of the deck isn't nearly as good. Instead, I'm thinking of going for Totem Dragon and Debris Dragon instead, along with Masked Dragon to make these accessible, and maybe even Summoner's Art and/or Ancient Rules to ensure I have as much access to Blue-Eyes White Dragon as possible. I've considered an alternative build that utilizes The Creator, since both Blue-Eyes and The Creator are level 8 LIGHT monsters that can be summoned from the hand using a specific Warrior monster (Kaibaman and The Creator Incarnate respectively) but I don't know if that's really better than a more traditional Dragon approach. Assault and Disaster: This build focuses on Stardust Dragon/Assault Mode as its primary control option. I'm not entirely sure how to make this one work, as both of the Tuners suggested aren't in Reverse of Arcadia, but I'll figure something out since I want to find the optimal Synchro setup for Dragons available anyway. For Red Dragon Archfiend/Assault Mode, I think I'll try to figure out how to combine it with Yubel like I did in Over the Nexus, so I doubt that'll be a Disaster Dragon version.

I'm thinking once I've made a bit more progress towards my goals, I'll start experimenting with more Disaster Dragon variants besides the standard, Hopeless Dragon, and Horus versions I've been using. I'll start by using the ones listed on the Yugioh Wikia, but from there I'll see if I can come up with my own addition(s)!