Magic: the Gathering Club

:3 Welcome, guys! (it was actually Colours posting in the fwee thread about his Jund deck that made me decide we probably have enough players floating around the forums that there should probably be a club by now)

I have a fondness for green even though I've been favoring my vampires at FNM lately (and obvs I like Jund because that's my EDH colors). My very, very first deck was actually white/green! They're good colors to start with, methinks. My boyfriend crafted it for me out of a mishmash of Zendikar block and Innistrad stuff, when Innistrad was new. It was shortly before we started dating so I think there were some ulterior motives involved, but that's fine. :B

Speaking of Innistrad, I'm surprised you two aren't all over that (or maybe you are and just didn't mention it)! It's full of dark spookies and things that go bump in the night. I dunno, it just seems like that'd be your cup of tea. :B Or at least Colours'.

(also Nissa is one of my favorite Planeswalkers, I never regretted buying her for my elf deck)

What would be fun some time is an Un set game using Cockatrice and Skype. I adore the Un sets, they're the funniest things, and the games with them get extremely silly. I have a White/Green Un Deck built around "Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made this Card to Have the Absolute Longest Card Name Ever Elemental" and Wordmail. :B

Also I do seem to have some Innistrad cards in a few of my decks (mostly the white one though), but I'll put that block next on my 'look at ALL the cards!' things I do when I'm trying to relax. From what I've seen it looks neat.

Ooh! I think an Unglued/Unhinged draft would be pretty fun. CCGDecks' drafter and sealed generator don't have those sets, but TappedOut's does. I'll edit into the first post for future reference.
Anyone else want to give that a go? (and any more input on the deckbuilding for newbie members idea)

Coloursfall said:

I play on Cockatrice! my username is, naturally, Coloursfall.

Click to expand...

Sunflower said:

Cockatrice name is shiny sunflower (no caps)

Click to expand...

oh, i has a name there too!

Kialga

Are you guys actually registered on their website? You don't have to be, but it allows you to change your avatar and in the chat box in a game it'll use the right gender (ie instead of always saying "X draws his initial hand" it will say she if you're a she; it always kinda bugged me). And you can store decks on their server, so you can access your decks from other computers!

That and I'm not 100% sure you can add unregistered users as buddies. But I'll add you guys anyway whenever you're all on :v I'm Alraune (surprise surprise)

Yeah, me and Sunny are registered UuU We should play sometime! Maybe a big free-for-all haha. That could get nuts.

Alraune said:

Are you guys actually registered on their website?

Click to expand...

Yeppers!

If anyone wants to add me, my name is Ven (oddly enough).

oh, hey, mtg is a thing.

... I mean, I haven't actually played in, like, uh, not-quite-arbitrarily-large units of time, and I haven't actually had cards for even longer, but hey. is a thing.

so okay, I'll just go and grab this cockatrice thing — ... what, what do you mean there are binaries for windows and osx but linux just gets a "At the moment, please compile the source code yourselves (see below)." not all of us a wizards, eh!

... also what the hell do you mean "see below", the part below contains information about the git repository and a "(see Documentation for instructions)."

anyway, why do I have no git on this thing — and that was a good few minutes or so.

anyway, documentation, eh? right. documentation. so, like, the documentation sucks. finding the right page takes a while, kind of annoying, that. compiling this thing is kind of non-trivial, but all we get is a pageful, eh? not helpful, we are not all wizards, eh!

and so anyway, ubuntu 11.04. okay, not overly problematic, at least I'm still running something debian-based, but what the hell, did I mention we are not all wizards? ... and anyway, those installations take a good quarter-hour or thereabouts.

... and then, eh, compilation is done via cmake, eh? why the hell, then, does it not mention that, eh, cmake needs to be installed? because it does. ... and what do you mean I have to make the build directory myself, you couldn't, say, stick it in a nice little build script? because that's what the computer is for, eh, relieving ourselves of repetitive tasks. why, what.

so then, eh, actually running cmake. so whee, running up against a missing dependency. what the hell, didn't I install a list of dependencies just now? that list was supposed to include your dependencies. why are things missing. ... that was another few minutes.

so finally, the cmake works — although it just barfs out my -DPREFIX which apparently isn't used — again, what, why would you not build in a reasonable way of changing install path, I had to go and mangle those makefiles, dammit, and that was kind of a pain. but okay.

but hey, now I have a cockatrice built. let's see if it works. if it does, I might put it somewhere or something, I guess.

and that's the story of how a res spent the past hour.

ed: but hey, it works, I stuck it on dropbox for whose linux happens to be able to run the executables I manage to build -- my uname -a spits out "Linux kirsten 3.2.0-23-lowlatency-pae #31-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Wed Apr 11 04:07:36 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux"; so it's probably pretty likely that it'll work, but eh. you might have to build it yourself anyway. I might throw up a build script or something at some point in the unforeseeable future.

sorry it was hard for you to get going, res :c Thanks for doing that, though. I think I'll add that to the resources list, if that's cool with you!

So FNM was a draft tonight. Pack one I got Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis... for the rest of pack one I was passed cool black stuff and more stuff with Exalted. Pack two had Sublime Archangel. I figured it would probably be a good idea to play WB Exalted (plus holy shit sublime archangel is like $25)
I got in the top 8 (the two rounds I lost were to the guy who drafted had like four Searing Spears and two Murders and Bladetusk Boar) and the rares I got from the packs I won were kind of crummy but I traded one of those crummy rares for a dragon I needed for my EDH deck.
So yeah tonight was a good night! Anybody else go to FNM?

Me and Sunny went but they only do Standard at our shop and like half my deck is from Conflux and Sunny has a load of Lorwyn cards, so we couldn't play :( it sucked.

Aw :< Bummer. Mtg.com has a Building on a Budget column that might be of interest (though definitely price check some of this stuff because the War Falcons article suggests a deck with 4 Bonfire of the Damned and holy shit that's expensive not to mention 4 Cavern of Souls and Gavony Townships how is that building on a budget)

My RG deck was originally based on A Dog Lover's Guide to Dark Ascension, and while I think a couple cards got more popular since the article was published (like, Hellrider), a modified version without the Heroes of Oxid Ridge or Urabrasks probably wouldn't be too expensive to throw together. Relatively.
Another thing I'd suggest doing instead is maybe saving up for the Return to Ravnica prerelease in... October, I think it is? Everybody will be sort of on the same playing field (it's Sealed so it's kinda based on how good your packs are, but everybody gets 5 packs and a sixth one based on what Ravnica guild you choose-it sounds like it'll be neat!!) and it'd be an okay start on getting caught up to Standard. If anything, if you don't pull stuff you like you can trade with people for different things.

Alraune said:

sorry it was hard for you to get going, res :c Thanks for doing that, though. I think I'll add that to the resources list, if that's cool with you!

Click to expand...

well, is not so much actual difficulty as, no, not all linux users are linux, and this sort of unsupportful is part of what drives unwizarden from linux; I mean, it would be totally fine if, eh, the actual process detailed in the documentation worked, but as-is, windows and osx get precompiled binaries that are pretty much extract-and-run and which work roughly similarly to installation of anything else, while linux is expected to actually compile the damn thing from source while reading the documentation-writer's mind. ... most of us aren't telepaths, either, not to my knowledge.

but anyway, sure, I don't mind — I mean, I wouldn't should make it publicly-accessible if I minded, eh? caveats, though;

Sure I'll join. I don't play tournaments (not even FNM), I only play with my playgroup so my decks are fairly non-competitive. Currently my favorite deck so far is a blue/white deck built around small flying vigilance guys like Hovermyrs and Serra Avengers backed up with removal (mainly Disenchant, Oblivion Ring, Path to exile, Journey to Nowhere) and Negate. My main enemy is a deck built almost entirely on red/black land destruction spells. I can kind of see why people dislike counter magic and land destruction, but I enjoy the challenge in playing against it. I enjoy the gameplay of magic as well as the lore, especially the pre-Time Spiral era stories.

I don't generally play online (although I do use cockatrice, but mainly for playtesting) but I'd be up for that. My username of course is adrianmalacoda. I do however use a program called Forge to play single player against AI opponents. It has a rules engine, which is cool, but no multiplayer or online play, which is not cool (I might try my hand at adding that in if I have free time).

If I had to align with colors it'd be green and white first, blue and white second. I don't yet play EDH but as soon as I find people to play with I know which general I want to start with (no, not Akroma).

Adrian Malacoda said:

Sure I'll join. I don't play tournaments (not even FNM), I only play with my playgroup so my decks are fairly non-competitive. Currently my favorite deck so far is a blue/white deck built around small flying vigilance guys like Hovermyrs and Serra Avengers backed up with removal (mainly Disenchant, Oblivion Ring, Path to exile, Journey to Nowhere) and Negate. My main enemy is a deck built almost entirely on red/black land destruction spells. I can kind of see why people dislike counter magic and land destruction, but I enjoy the challenge in playing against it. I enjoy the gameplay of magic as well as the lore, especially the pre-Time Spiral era stories.

Click to expand...

Ooh! Serra Avenger is really good. I pulled one last week, or some short time ago, I think. I'd like to have some more, because I think instead of the BG idea I want to make a standard-competent version of the WB deck I drafted last night. She'd be pretty great in it. Hovermyr is also cool.

I don't generally play online (although I do use cockatrice, but mainly for playtesting) but I'd be up for that. My username of course is adrianmalacoda. I do however use a program called Forge to play single player against AI opponents. It has a rules engine, which is cool, but no multiplayer or online play, which is not cool (I might try my hand at adding that in if I have free time).

Click to expand...

Hm! That's interesting. I think I'll add that to the Resource list~

If I had to align with colors it'd be green and white first, blue and white second. I don't yet play EDH but as soon as I find people to play with I know which general I want to start with (no, not Akroma).

Click to expand...

I always end up building Jund-y colors (red, green, black, any combination of those) but I always test as being white, and green second. But since people are much more complex than that I personally identify as Bant. :p

I've been playing around with a design for a WU aven planeswalker-sona because I'm an awful person

Also I'm pretty excited that a lot of you guys have a bunch of fun-sounding-but-not-standard decks. I have a lot of fun-decks I've built online but not IRL that I don't really have anyone to play against with because they're not fast enough for legacy or modern or any actual format if I were to play against strangers. I play 'em once or twice with my boyfriend and that's it. :B Like... WU griffins, mono red dwarves, Rebecca Guay-themed (because she's my fav artist)... maybe we should have, like, a Thursday Night Magic or something on Cockatrice for all our fun decks!

Serra Avenger is neat because she would ordinarily be costed at 2WW anyway (between Diving Griffin's 1WW and Serra Angel's 3WW). I actually ended up taking Diving Griffin and Serra Angel out of my deck so I could pack more removal and land in it, and it seems to work out fine. By turn 4 I'll be able to slam down 2 of them, or one and a spirit mantle, or just one and then negate the inevitable counter or doom blade.

My first deck ever was a green/white/blue (or "bant" if you rather) deck built around Captain Sisay, using her tutor ability to fetch various legends. Basically a 100-card toolbox deck. Time of Need, Eladamri's Call etc to get her or Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary out ASAP and then churn out mucho mana. Slam down Patron of the Orochi and Minamo, School at Water's Edge so I can untap and reuse Sisay and Rofellos an obscene amount of times. The best ending is when I drop Akroma's Memorial (of course) and then just start knocking players out of the game one by one... once I was at 1 life and I managed to save myself by throwing down the Memorial. My playgroup told me to put that deck away because they were tired of the constant tutoring. It wasn't the most efficient deck, I had to pack it with tutors to make it run consistently and that made it pretty slow.

When I start playing EDH I feel like my first deck will be a deck built around Volrath the Fallen and Relentless Rats. Black isn't my usual color so it'd be an interesting experience. The game plan would be to use Volraths discard ability to throw rats into the graveyard, reanimate them with Living Death or somesuch. Probably not the best of deck ideas but most decks using Volrath just pitch big eldrazi creatures or whatever to him.

I'd be down for playing with y'all online some time :)

Online "casual deck" nights sound fun! It'd be cool to try updating my old cleric deck with some of the new cards that have been released in recent years... that was my first ever "serious" deck (albeit still so terrible), so I'm rather fond of it.

I tend to build/play with all the colors almost equally, depending on my mood at the time. Red/green if I'm more of a "blow stuff up" kind of mood, blue/black if I'm feeling more "I laugh at your tears," etc. I'm personally blue/black splashing red, though, or maybe blue/red splashing black, so I'll be supporting Izzet and Dimir for RtR, naturally. I figured I would try to go to a prerelease to get back into the games a bit... hopefully it won't end up conflicting with the October VGC qualifier. >>

I've been meaning to start on this. But basically all I've got is a basic black/blue deck - I'll see how it works out when I join nerd club this school year...

Nice to see others playing Magic.

I've been playing since Fifth Dawn's release, about eight years ago now. Sporting a R/G beast precon from Onslaught. I've come a long way, after Zendikar's release I began giving tournaments a shot.

Casually, I don't have a lot of kitchen table decks left. Remaining are a w/b/G Thallids deck, a U/G snakes (but not the Kamigawa kind because snakes don't have limbs) deck, and possibly other stuff, but I haven't played casually outside of EDH much.

EDH. Heck of a format. I've got four decks, none of them particularly good, especially against some of my friends who have spent quite a bit of money on theirs, but fun to play.

Generals:
- Intet, the Dreamer: Ramp to the general and use her to hold and cast free spells. Packed with gigantic cards, instants, and cards to deal lethal general damage, netting more Intet activations in the process with double strike.
- Kaalia of the Vast: Beefed up version of the original precon. Same idea, but now has the lethal Oni of the Wild + Rakdos, the Defiler combo, tutors like Blood Speaker and Rune-Scarred Demon, and the remnants of a casual angels deck.
- Mayael the Anima: Nothing really special here, just scoop up the top five and pick a fatty.
- Merieke Ri Berit: A deck with cards that do nothing but steal stuff and wipe the board. The win condition is your deck, as a friend of mine put it.

Tournament stuff... Only have one Standard deck right now, G/W Humans. Previous Standard decks were usually cheap, simple, decks with an outside chance. Before this was Mono-White Knights. And before that I was running either Standard Enchantress or Runeflare Trap.

I used to play Legacy. My deck of choice was a bog standard Legacy Enchantress, which evolved into a more toolboxy build. For some time I ran a singleton Lignify, which was an endless source of giggling. Dark Confidant is now a tree! Iona is now... a tree! However, Legacy attendance was declining, my Legacy-loving friend swore off the format after Survival of the Fittest (his favorite card) got banned, and so I sadly sold the deck after going to a few final tournaments. On the bright side, I profited almost $140.

What else... I have a MODO account, but all I've done is a few drafts. I have never used Cockatrice, but plenty of people do, so I should jump on that eventually.

Ooh, I have a copy of Intet! I might build something around it someday. It seems pretty cool. And I discovered recently my boyfriend has a Mayael and I really want him to use her for something, since his colors are Naya. Then again, my first EDH deck is definitely not Bant, so. I can't really decide on a Bant general.

Also a friend of mine from uni had a WG humans deck that at the time was worth almost $200... but he never had the chance to go to FNM with it because he was a doormat and friends with this really controlling douchebag. It had like, so many Gavony Townships and Angelic Destinies and at least a couple Gideons. It was fun to play against in the upstairs lobby at least, because everything I played against it was usually pretty close.

edit: omg 2000th post wow took me long enough