A Magical Huffalump Resides Here: Return to Ravnica

Back to MTG or Magic the Gathering (or Tragic the gathering if you are a loved one or a fallout fan ;) )

I think I will join a pre-release. Here is seeking to join the Grand Prix in Jan. I will probably noob out as I always do. But hey! its sealed, so anything is possible =D

---------------------

I signed up for five flights!!!!

[120917 23:36]

I wrote a whole bunch and then chrome could not load. =(

It was.

infuriating.

Anyways it was just me whining about how the set is not very exciting.

To cut to the chase, some mechanics seem to be nerfed, specifically counterspells, discard, LD, combo. But to be fair they have been nerfed for a long time already =P Was hoping something special

I signed up for the folllowing:

1. Rakdos (midnight)
2. Azorius
3. Selesnya
4. Izzet
5. Golgari

The cost was 180 SGD (I heard some places were cheaper but thems the breaks I guess)

Anyways my friend bailed for the midnight and the thought of staying up for the 9:00 am flight made me follow suit (plus mom kicked up a big fuss). The fact that I skipped the Rakdos flight was ironic as that was the guild I really wanted to play. Ah well.

I don;t really have a favorite guild, in fact these days I think I am guildless. I can't really asssociate with any of the guilds. To be fair, I used to like or assocate with some guilds; namely : Selesnya, Golgari,Simic, Boros

With two of my more palatable guilds in RTR, you 'd think I would be happy =P Thing is I was'nt excited about Ravnica because of the guilds. I was excited because RTR CANNOT fail and I was looking forward to what wizards have to offer.

It is still early day to dismiss the set though, but off hand it does not feel very powerful. It has playable and shocklands, but thats kinda about it. It does help push some new mechanics, but they seem a little contrived at times.

What are some stuff I like? Armada Wurm, Sphinx Revelation, Rakdos, Lord of Riots, Rakdos Returns. i am actually trying to build a black red deck, but its looking tough =P

So which guild an I...? I did the dumb quiz thing and I am either Rakdos Selesnya or Boros. Well with the whole guild thing giving such a chaotic range, I chose Rakdos =P

So the plan was to meet with Samuel at SGCards and then play. Samuel played the first flight and dropped from the second, I think he was a little tired =) Then there was Samuel as well who was my student in RP who graduated 8 years ago. It has been a while! but it was fun to meet this way. Samuel (my friend) is planning to organise more playgroup stuff so we might do more MTG, who knows =)

My thoughts on the prerelease sealed:

It was kinda messy. Too many choices, so the important thing is to identify your best guilds and run with that. Unfortunately with the Guild pack you are kinda skewed one way. So if the other five packs skew another way, you are pretty screwed.

My decks were confused, I was confused. My Azorious deck was trying to play regular counters, but did not have enough counters. It made Detain as a mechanic look bad was there was'nt enough support cards. The only match I won was when I had a fistful of counters and it was mostly the Izzet side of things. I lamented that Azorious cannot counter for shit. And people agreed. Izzet is the counterspell guild I guess.

Another thing to remember is to read your cards (and have confidence that you are RIGHT). I was actually in a situation that I could haved finished off my oppoenent earlier but HE misread the card and I being a silly goat believed him. At least it was in consequential in the end he still lost that game (but not the match - my deck - and me - were oh so confused)

My Selesnyan deck was nice, very nice. I had TWO of the 8/8 but I misplayed a few times. I undevalued the spell that gives 2 +1/+1 counters. When everyone and their dog has a big FAT token, boosters are good stuff. I only played one match though as I had to leave, which was a pity as I thought I had a good pool and deck.

My Izzet deck was again. Oh so confused. The only time I won was when my 4/4 prerelease card came out unmolested and and I stuck the +2/+2 enchantment on a body at the same time. The problem was my Izzet deck was trying to be a Rakdos I believe. Unfortunately it was neither fast nor fat enough. It also did not have a finisher like a real Rakdos deck would. I did beat another Rakdos player though, but that was with my fat boys.

My final deck was a Golgari deck which was average but playable I think. But my opponent was a no show, and again I had to leave, so my deck was still virgin =)

All in all it was fun, but the many directions your deck could go can easily disorientate your choices. The best thing to do actually is to identify your two best colours and run with those and add in at most ONE splash colour.

Another problem was people were always waiting for your prerelease bomb, such that my prerelease card never survived =P

Anyways here are the spoils:

that is a stack of guild packs. On hind sight I should not have bought them, as I think there are no mythics

This is the entrance

This one is really strange. As I walked in the guy in front was waiting and holding the door, there was a bend and he was some way ahead of me, so he could'nt have known I was going there so it must have been the "look" Magic players have. I think we look a little geeky. =/

Players registering