The magic continues

My Mirrodin fixation

People who know me will be quite aware of my love of the Mirrodin Plane in the Magic the gathering multiverse. 

With great artwork like this invoking the setting, you can see why i like these sets

Glissa, the Traitor

She is such an iconic part of the mirrodin plane i just had to have her in a green/black deck. I felt that with Glissa turning to the bad side i would follow suit and make a Infect deck around her. My attempt below.

Glissa's infected throne

So far i have only had mixed success most games i lose 2-1. its a mixture of the players i play not really knowing the older sets so and slightly unfamiliar with the infect mechanic so are unaware how dangerous it could be, with me needing to cause only ten poison counters to win.  


I have also made a quick deck based on Glissa before she turned evil when she was Glissa Sunseeker. Its a Green/white deck with lots of equip cards. This one is the deck i feel is not as well constructed but it seems to preform better. 

Good Glissa

Memnarch one of Glissa's  most deadly adversary, Planeswalker Karn's appointed guardian of Mirrodin. 
This as a Modern deck with cards dating back to the original Mirrodin block. The mana colours are Blue/Black with a fair bunch of colourless cards. The Theme here is artifact creatures and living weapons. Proliferate is more used in this deck allowing me to add more -1/-1 counters on my opponents. The deck has some cards from the original mirrodin sets (mirrodin, darksteel and fifth dawn)

Doom inevitable

With all of my Mirrodin decks i have kept to using only sets based on the Mirrodin plane. This is slightly restricing myself, but i an a total sucker for theme.






Being the Mirrodin nut that i am, i had to pick up the Duel deck : Venser vs Koth

Both of these Planeswalkers are fighting to save the doomed plane of Mirrodin , but they each have different methods.

The next set  in the return to ravnica block to be released. I'm currently taking part in a five week league with a forty card deck built from six gatecrash boosters. I would like to make a Boros/Orzhov deck using three colours (red, white and black)

So after opening the booster packs i decided the Simic guild (blue/green) would be best for me.

It really was an easy and only choice. You can view the  deck here 

Week one:

Game one: 

For my first game of the gatecrash league i came up against a Boros/Gruul deck (white,red and green). My opponent had trouble getting the mana in the colour combo that was needed. I used the card unexpected results to great effect giving me the mana and a creature. The other card that won me the last game was Way of the thief, I already had a guildgate in play and then attached it to my Drakewing Krasis.

Result a 2-1 Victory

Game two:

Game i  was up against a similar deck, but with a splash of red. So more of a Simic/Gruul deck.  The evolve mechanic really changed the game for me. Quite a lot of my creatures became quite powerful really fast. 

my Giant Adephage was an 11/11 creature with trample at one point . The Master 

biomancer adding three +1/+1 tokens to it and the Ivy lane denizen adding

 a further +1/+1 

Result a 2-1 Victory

Game three

My last game for the league i faced another Simic guild. I changed my deck slightly adding a few more guild gates. A Gruul and Dimir guildgate, so the Way of the thief card can be even more affective.

This card was used on me to keep my harder hitting creatures at bay. however i was able to counter it with Burst of strength

Result a 2-1 Victory

After all my games for the week had been completed i was now allowed to add an additional booster to my card pool for the league. The booster contained nothing really that i would add to my deck. i was kinda hoping for more Simic guildgates.

i did pick up a foil Thespian's stage

So now ...week two....

My First steps into Magic The Gathering

My First steps into Magic The Gathering

I had first started playing a few years ago with eighth edition but i didn't really play enough to really say that i knew the rules or even that i played the game. Also with not that many people in my social circle that played Mtg, the games stopped.

I'm no stranger to CCG's being a players of the original Yu-gi-oh! and Pokemon (along with other less known/popular games)

I tried last year to start Magic in getting myself a Commander deck from Highlander games one of Dundee's Local gaming stores, which the staff were more than helpful in getting me started and i really enjoyed playing, even picking up a Mirrodin besieged: Doom inevitable intro deck, but with work and home life i found it hard to get time to play at the LGS. so yet again Magic flickered out.

With the Opening of Major Arcana, a new LGS in Dundee by one of my friends most of the people i regularly played with started to pick up the game. This was great as i was able to play people on the same newbie gaming level as i was, playing with a standard sixty card deck. The other player were mostly using M13 starter sets and i got to use my Mirrodin besieged deck (blue/black) which played differently to how the other players were use to. Mainly things like Proliferate and living weapons. Unfortunately this didn't help me much against Krenko's goblin horde who was generating more tokens than i could kill or block. 

So after a good few games i decided to try a new deck and got myself the Slaughterhouse  deck from Avacyn restored. Its a red/black deck which if i am being honest i still really enjoy using. Blood artist being my favourite card in it.

The next step for me was to create my own deck from scratch

From this collection i started to build a Red/blue deck. It was a fairly simple burn deck but it lacked any really punch, with too many low mana cost cards. To help with redesigning the deck i registered with www.deckbox.org to help with keeping all of my cards in order and helping to visualise my Mana curve and a few Return to Ravnica cards. 

Here is the final result : Red/blue Millburn

I wanted to have both a Mill element (Throwing cards from their library to their graveyard) and a burn element (direct damage to either player or creature) so if one is cancelled or countered i could rely on the other. 

 The first game i tried it out on was against a Golgari deck which my milling actually helped my opponent who can salvage (cast creatures from their graveyard) and a well placed Stuffy doll.

I was eventually defeated, but my opponent was only one turn from losing all of the cards from their library making me win the game.

My First Draft:

At this point i had never been involved in a booster draft before and Major Arcana had never run one before. There was eight players in the pod and only one player had ever drafted before and even then it was only once before. The set we drafted was the Return to Ravnica set. 

After the first few cards i decided to go Rakdos guild (black/red) 

This being one of the first cards i drafted

The first Game i came up against an Azorius deck (blue/white). I won the first game but lost the other two.

The next Game was a less dedicated Azorius deck which i managed to defeat 2-0.

The final game was against a Golgari deck (green/black) which i lost 2-1 to a Stab wound and being mana starved. 

So i was happy with the games i managed to win at least one game against each opponent.

 I landed in fifth place out of eight. 

The Return to Ravnica set really got me wanting to try out some of the other guilds, so with the help of one of my friends i went about making a Selesnya populate deck.

In a booster pack i managed to get a Armada Wurm so that was my reasoning behind going selesnya as a next guild choice.

The deck can be seen here on deckbox and here on Tapped out

The Next draft

For this one i drafted a Selesnya guild deck.

The first Game i came up against an Rakdos deck (black/red). and i was soundly beaten 0-2 he was killing more creatures than i could produce, unleashed creatures turn really scary on the attack

The next Game was another Rakdos deck which i managed to defeat 2-0. Mainly due to my opponent becoming mana starved in the second game and the Selesnya keyrune

The final game was against an Izzet deck (red/blue) which i lost 2-1 to being denied with instants and Conjured Currency using my creatures against me

 The deck wasn't as strong as my first draft with the Rakdos, but i had fun and am happy with the results with a few games quite close. The Centaur healer became quite a good card for a low mana cost. The rares i managed to pick up were Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, Grove of the guardians and Growing ranks for my Selesnya deck.  

 I landed in joint fourth place out of fourteen. 

The next steps
I'm tempted to try and make a nice sixty card Standard deck for Rakdos.
I have also been quite fond of the Mirrodin artwork and when i happened across The Moons of Mirrodin novel i just had to pick it up.

Mirrodin Glissa Deck 
After reading the novel I'm wanting to make a deck up from all the Mirrodin sets based around Glissa Sunseeker and her companions and even some of the bad guys.

Well thats the story so far.... stay tuned for more.