So What Else Is New?
This is my first post for the year 2008, which coincides with Magic: The Gathering's Morningtide pre-release event. This is just a few days after the weekend of said event.
I had pre-registered, and with the help of a good friend, I got into Pod A of the tournament, which meant I was among the first few people in the Philippines to open, see, touch, and play with Morningtide cards in a Wizards Of The Coast-sanctioned event. Yay!
While we were seated and waiting for the cards to be passed out, a lady came up on the stage and made an important announcement: we would not be receiving 1 Lorwyn tournament pack and 3 Morningtide boosters as we expected. Instead, we were to create our 40-card minimum decks with 6 Morningtide boosters! As one can imagine, this proclamation was greeted with mixed reactions. There were scattered cheers because it meant more cards from the newest set to be had, but when realization settled in, dismayed groans could be heard. I was one of those groaning when I realized that there wouldn't be a chance to get planeswalkers from the random card pool. Sigh.
Being part of the first pod meant that there was no deck swap. This meant that if you opened your packs and got a lot of mediocre, unexciting, or downright crappy cards you were stuck with them. If you had some nifty ones, you were golden. Unfortunately, not only did I draw no powerhouses, my selection of usable spells and creatures per color was disheartening to say the least. Worse still, I drafted a colors that, shall we say got beaten black and blue literally all throughout the day. I used a Red/Green/ Warrior deck, splashing white for some creature control.
Here is the decklist. I'm not going to break things down piece by piece like I did with my previous, M:TG-themed post, because every time I see the list I cringe. Look the cards up using Gatherer, an online card database, and if you don't know where Gatherer is, Google it.
Main Deck:
3 Brighthearth Banneret
1 Bramble Paragon
1 Fertilid
2 Lys Alana Bowmaster
2 Seething Pathblazer
3 Winnower Patrol
1 Changeling Sentinel
2 Game-Trail Changeling
1 Lunk Errant
1 Shard Volley
1 Obsidian Battle-Axe
3 Weight of Conscience
1 Roar of the Crowd
1 Hunting Triad
1 Reins of the Vinesteed
12 Forests, 5 Mountains, 3 Plains
Sideboard: 1 Pyroclast Consul
The funny thing is, the day after the event I went to my girlfriend's house to show her the new cards. While there, I asked if I could borrow some basic lands from her, Islands and Swamps, and tried to make a working deck out of the black and blue cards I didn't use, after which I gave her the deck and told her to play with it. Now, neither of us is a cardshark, world-level player in terms of skill, and she has just gotten around to being sneaky with instants (she can now play combat tricks and take me by surprise), but the newly-constructed Prowl deck I gave her, made up of Morningtide-only cards was monstrous against my temperamental Warrior deck. I never won a single game with her using my poor Warriors.
Do you realize what this means? It means that during the next pre-release I attend, after I make an initial deck, I take the cards left on the bench and force a deck out of that. Life is funny that way.
I had pre-registered, and with the help of a good friend, I got into Pod A of the tournament, which meant I was among the first few people in the Philippines to open, see, touch, and play with Morningtide cards in a Wizards Of The Coast-sanctioned event. Yay!
While we were seated and waiting for the cards to be passed out, a lady came up on the stage and made an important announcement: we would not be receiving 1 Lorwyn tournament pack and 3 Morningtide boosters as we expected. Instead, we were to create our 40-card minimum decks with 6 Morningtide boosters! As one can imagine, this proclamation was greeted with mixed reactions. There were scattered cheers because it meant more cards from the newest set to be had, but when realization settled in, dismayed groans could be heard. I was one of those groaning when I realized that there wouldn't be a chance to get planeswalkers from the random card pool. Sigh.
Being part of the first pod meant that there was no deck swap. This meant that if you opened your packs and got a lot of mediocre, unexciting, or downright crappy cards you were stuck with them. If you had some nifty ones, you were golden. Unfortunately, not only did I draw no powerhouses, my selection of usable spells and creatures per color was disheartening to say the least. Worse still, I drafted a colors that, shall we say got beaten black and blue literally all throughout the day. I used a Red/Green/ Warrior deck, splashing white for some creature control.
Here is the decklist. I'm not going to break things down piece by piece like I did with my previous, M:TG-themed post, because every time I see the list I cringe. Look the cards up using Gatherer, an online card database, and if you don't know where Gatherer is, Google it.
Main Deck:
3 Brighthearth Banneret
1 Bramble Paragon
1 Fertilid
2 Lys Alana Bowmaster
2 Seething Pathblazer
3 Winnower Patrol
1 Changeling Sentinel
2 Game-Trail Changeling
1 Lunk Errant
1 Shard Volley
1 Obsidian Battle-Axe
3 Weight of Conscience
1 Roar of the Crowd
1 Hunting Triad
1 Reins of the Vinesteed
12 Forests, 5 Mountains, 3 Plains
Sideboard: 1 Pyroclast Consul
The funny thing is, the day after the event I went to my girlfriend's house to show her the new cards. While there, I asked if I could borrow some basic lands from her, Islands and Swamps, and tried to make a working deck out of the black and blue cards I didn't use, after which I gave her the deck and told her to play with it. Now, neither of us is a cardshark, world-level player in terms of skill, and she has just gotten around to being sneaky with instants (she can now play combat tricks and take me by surprise), but the newly-constructed Prowl deck I gave her, made up of Morningtide-only cards was monstrous against my temperamental Warrior deck. I never won a single game with her using my poor Warriors.
Do you realize what this means? It means that during the next pre-release I attend, after I make an initial deck, I take the cards left on the bench and force a deck out of that. Life is funny that way.
