Pure Love (Besieged Spoilers)

The following cards are pure love, truly...

Spine of Ish Sah
This card is going inside a new deck. Might become a proliferate deck, build around Throne of Geth, Steel Overseer and this card... Or an artifact deck which plays costly artifacts, and builds around this, cheap-ass cards   and the Kuldotha Forgemaster... Or perhaps a goblin burn deck, with Kuldotha Rebirth, a few Goblin Chieftains...
And have a look at Shape Anew, which might just turn insane because of this...
Also, Ichor Wellspring is a beauty as well, in these decks.

Knowledge Pool
Simply because it throws the whole game around. Check out the Daily MTG column by Noel deCordova. He describes the beauty that is this card in a beautiful, perhaps even slightly insane way...

Distant Memories
This one is great as well. "I'll just take this insane card here... no? Then I'll take three other (possibly even more insane) cards!" Just got to love it.

But still... the best spoiled card for me, remains the Consecrated Sphinx...

So, at this point I'm saying Phyrexia. Simply because of all the great cards in there, at the moment they're looking more spiced up than the Mirran cards. I'll just filter out the infect cards, try to build two decks out of eight boosters... And hope for those cards I badly desire!

Mirrodin vs. Phyrexia

In just over a week, the pre-release party of Mirrodin Besieged will commence. I'll be playing in 2-Headed Giant with a friend.

I'm especially vamped about the faction boosters, yet this makes things harder to decide - which side will we be playing for?

There are a few things to keep in mind here. Of course, you want to have the best chances at winning the tournament, but that doesn't mean a lot to me at this moment. I want to have fun, and play with the new mechanics. As I said before, I don't really like playing infect, but then there's this card... I've already set my eyes upon this card, and I cannot look away. It's a beauty, transforming many cards, which you would in the first place not use, or not to great extend, into really great cards. Theres loads of cards, like the Temple Bell or Mikokoro, Center of the Sea which will suddenly become overpowered.

But take a look at cards like Dream Fracture, or Vex, which have suddenly gone from unusable, to quite usable... Cards with such 'bad' side effects, are now double the fun to play.

Mill decks will also love this card, in combination with Jace's Erasure, and even Jace Beleren is looking nice all of the sudden.

So, Phyrexia then? But wait, didn't the Mirran side have all these cool effects as well? I have not forgotten: Battle Cry is still my favorite ability... A decision lie ahead...

More Besieged Spoilers

More spoilers were posted today (complete list). I especially like the virtually indestructible Thrun, the Last Troll, cannot be countered, has trollshroud, and for a mere two mana, it will not die...

The Viridian Corrupter, should your opponent not have any strong artifacts in play, could simply destroy your own Necropede in main phase 2, simply to be a pain in the ass...

Shimmer Myr can be great as well, there are some nice opportunities available there... Mitotic Manipulation can save your deck, by putting six bad cards on the bottom of your deck, revealing one great monster that's already there, or it could completely ruin everything. Might just work great with a few Scry cards, or decks that build around one single card.

Bonehoard will work lovely in a sacrifice deck, and is especially nice in multiplayer.

So, more excitement, and more on the way as Mirrodin Besieged approaches!

Player Types

I believe there are different kind of players. Of course, everyone has his own unique playing style, but I think there are are a number of rough outlines in which everyone fits. Of course you can be part of all kinds of player types, but each aspect of you fits into a few 'molds'.

I myself have gone through quite some phases in which I was more of the one than the other type, so let's have a look at that.

Casual
When I started playing Magic (I wasn't that good at it, didn't know and understand all the mechanics yet...), I was more of a casual player. I still like this aspect very much, playing casual formats is indeed very cool.
The true casual player does not really care all that much about winning, he/she plays for fun, though I was quite driven still. So perhaps I wasn't the 'perfect' casual type...

Driven
Of course, I also played to win. In a way, everyone does, but I used to be very driven about it. Nowadays, it differs if I'm playing at a tournament or at home. In the first I do play to win, I give it my all, I will not help my opponent remember to activate all his abilities... although I do like to play fair...

Fair
I have always been and hopefully always will be a fair player. This doesn't mean I will help my opponent remember he might want to gain life, but I will allow someone who remembers this a moment later to still gain life, or whatever is the case. I like playing fair, and not playing strictly to win, according to the game rules. Even if that means losing.

Of course there are a lot of other player types, though I think most players are either casual or driven - you play for the fun of it, or you play to win. Everyone must do either. Then there's the fairness.. of course, there are different kinds of 'fairness', different extents. You can be 'so' fair, you help your opponent. Then there's the fairness I'd like to think of as one of 'my' player types, and there's the fairness in which you do not cheat, but 'use' every possibility (like your opponent forgetting some key thing) to win.

Other player types are not so 'general' as these three, but I think I will post something about deck builders in the future, with a post on different kinds of decks.

Mirrodin Besieged Mechanics

Battle ready... let the siege begin!

Today an article was posted by Wizards of the Coast explaining the new mechanics in Mirrodin Besieged. Of course, Metalcraft returns, alongside with infect and proliferate. It doesn't look like there will be anti-infect cards.

But let's have a look at the new abilities. There's poisoned, probably my least favorite, since it is again boosting infect. Living Weapon looks sweet, I think there will be some combo's with this, perhaps the black germ tokens need not die in vain (or die at all... if a card like Ascendant Evincar or Bad Moon were to return in some form..).

But the coolest ability is Battle Cry, in my opinion. This could make for some unstoppable forces... If you could just give your creatures trample, you're done. This asks for a combination with some nice green forces, like Garruk Wildspeaker, or Overwhelming Stampede. Though maybe Wizards will surprise us with some new trample cards, like Ezuri, Renegade Leader, but then not elf-exclusive trample.

All in all I must say, I have high expectations from besieged and I'm really wondering how things will turn out...

Scars of Mirrodin: Infect

It stings.

Here are some of my thoughts on the latest Magic: The Gathering set, Scars of Mirrodin.


This actually was the first set I was looking forward to seeing: I'd never been this active with Magic, as I was back then, and am right now. Magic really grew onto me, like a long lost love. Since the Kamigawa block, I hadn't bought any new cards, now and then playing for a bit. Then, with M11, me and some friends decided we wanted to play again, and started with a little tournament over at my place. I ended up second, out of five players.

I pre-ordered a display with one of my friends, we split it in two halves and did a booster draft with my half. I kept the cards of course. The first cards that really sprung out for me were Spikeshot Elder and Myr Battlesphere. I built a burn deck and a Myr deck around these two, not a truly insane deck, but very fun to play with.

Scars brought a diversity of cards with it, that really appealed to me. I now have four scars-themed decks, each completely different from the other. There is the blue-white Tezzeret deck, which focuses on artifacts, my Myr deck and mono red burn deck are both Type-2, and there is my infect deck...

... I really hate infect. Yet when you have the cards, you can't come around it. With the right cards in hand, I have a turn three Plague Stinger killer - and it isn't even that unlikely. An average turn four fear/swampwalk kill isn't bad as well... this makes my fourth deck, an infect deck. It consists of only commons, and is standard save for Aphotic Whisps. Should I play against a deck playing swamps, I use Nighthaze instead.

Though I really do not like playing this deck, in fact, I'm an opponent of infect. It gives you an unfair advantage. Distortion Strike/Tainted Strike decks create unfair decks, alike my own common-infect-deck...

The unfair advantage of infect decks, in my opinion, is that poison counters can be removed by only one card (to my best knowledge): Leeches. Life can be restored, but poison really just can't be 'healed'. Let's hope Wizards implement this in Mirrodin Besieged or in Mirrodin Pure / New Phyrexia...

Magic: The Gathering Blog

Introductions are in order...

This post is little more than a quick "hello world, I'm a magic freak!". I've been playing magic for over ten years, though not always actively. My most played block was the Kamigawa block, though recently I've been gathering up a lot of Scars of Mirrodin cards. When the new sets arrive, the Mirrodin block will probably surpass the Kamigawa block.

So, that's me in a nutshell. Hope you'll enjoy my future posts.