Dinosaur Tribal – EDH MTG deck!

It’s been a long old year not really being able to play paper Magic, and it sucked! With places starting to open back up in the UK mid April, I’ve found this to be the perfect time to go through my EDH decks and re-familiarise myself with my cards before clashing against friends.

My absolute favourite EDH deck that I’ve made is my cherished Dinosaur Tribal deck. The aim of the game when playing this creature heavy deck is to ramp hard early game, get those big dinosaurs out and start swinging for the damage before others can. With some nice instant and sorcery cards sprinkled in too so there’s options for dealing with pesky blue players who don’t want us to have fun.

It’s by no means the most powerful deck that I’ve had the pleasure of making. Sometimes there are problems with card draw – I’ve been sat a few times thinking that okay I’ve got a 4 land hand start of the game I’ll keep, it’s bound to be work well for me to have more mana at the beginning! Wrong, wrong, wrong. I was sat there for many turns just not getting what I needed to get the ball rolling and I couldn’t ramp like I wanted to.

With this in mind, there have been quite a few changes since when this deck was first concocted, and I believe I’ve managed to squeeze in quite a few cards which have saved me from experiencing this frustration again.

So here it is, my beloved Dinosaurs! A full card deck list can be found here, but here is a quick snippet of the deck list.

My deck has the options of 2 commanders which I swap out depending on the kind of decks that I’m playing against (I’ll go into a bit more detail about the pros & cons below).

It also has:

• 24 creatures
• 15 sorcery cards
• 8 enchantments
• 1 planeswalker
• 7 artifiacts
• 10 instants
• and 33 lands

As indicated in these nifty pie charts, the deck is mostly in the green mana base, dipping toes in red and white as needed.

making a vampire MTG commander deck!

So I’ve been playing commander pretty consistently the past few months (even if it is just against my boyfriend), and although I love my cherished dinosaur boys it’s time to venture to something new, something… Bloody. This calls for vampires!

Since I’ve just started the construction of my new tribal vampire deck, I’ve been planning what I should include  to ensure maximum tomfoolery. My dinosaur deck was centered around getting lots of big creatures out fast and hitting hard, and although I’m pretty sure this approach to MTG will always be a favourite for it I still feel it’s good to mix things up a bit.

For my commander I’ve chosen Elenda, the Dusk Rose. She can really get that lifelink shenanigans going which is exactly the aim of the deck. And for such a cheap casting cost, I can’t really complain.

If you couldn’t tell, I’m going for the ol’ lifelink and counters approach for this one! Feeling confident with my choice of commander it was time to make Elenda an army.

Turns out through my hoarding of many cards that I actually acquired more vampire cards than I had expected. I counted to have roughly 120+ vampire related cards, so it seems my subconscious knew that the time would come to call upon them!

First things first. Let’s look at the mana curve with the current cards we’ve picked out. It goes without saying that 2 – 3 cost cards are the centre of attention for this deck, and I feel that I’m lacking in anything that costs over 6 mana. This is only a rough idea of my deck though, I still have many many cards which I still need to buy.

‘Fallen Empires’ 1994 booster pack opening!

Every now and then do you ever find yourself pursuing eBay, usually out of boredom, and you come across something which is…bizarre.
“What even is this…”

After some late-night shenanigans we find this really old looking MTG booster pack for sale. The eBay seller was a charity shop, and they said that this old pack had been donated to them and they thought that the best place to sell it was on eBay. For a starting bid of 4 quid, we thought why not, no skin of our nose if we don’t win it.

 

Lo and behold for an additional 20p, making this booster pack £4.20 (probably a bit more than market value) we won this Fallen Empires booster pack.

Since the pack is actually two years older than myself I was quite intrigued to find out what gold gems would be hiding in this pack!

Plus you see that cheesy slogan at the top of the booster? Must have Magic: The Gathering to play! Do really, you don’t say? I thought these were for Pokemon.

The pack also felt very strange to me to hold – I suppose I’m so used to 15 card booster packs that an 8 card booster feels so thin to me!

Why I don’t go to prereleases – MTG

Prereleases are an exciting time for Magic players – you can get your hands on the latest cards (or in Core 21’s case, the latest reprints) and get to dabble in creating a small, yet immensely fun deck.

I love the whole concept of prereleases, how it encourages players all to meet up to see what the new set is going to get and is a brilliant way for all levels of Magic players to come together. Whilst I appreciate that they are a fun and positive event for most, my one bad experience has ultimately made me apprehensive of going to my local game store for future pre-releases.

Flashback to 25th January 2019, 5 days before my birthday. Ravnica Allegiance is just about to come out and myself and my partner decide that after getting back into MTG a few months prior that we would go down to our local LGS and join the prerelease.

I will admit I was a little confused at first, I was new to the game and wasn’t 100% sure about card synergies, mana curves – I was just a very new player looking to learn how to play MTG properly. The first deck that I made was a Simic deck with the idea of getting lots of tokens on my creatures and being honest I thought the art on the Simic cards looked pretty cool!

Throne of Eldraine – Stories behind the cards

After spending too much time than I’d like to admit playing with the Eldraine set on MTG: Arena, I thought I’d have a nosy at what fairy tales and legends are represented on the cards (and boy there’s a lot of them).

Eldraine has everything from strange women in ponds distributing swords to giant beanstalk shenanigans – but mostly 3/3 elks.

Since there are so many references crammed into the set, I’m going to split this into multiple posts – starting with the Arthurian legends!
(p.s. a lot of these cards are open to interpretation! )

Ardenvale Paladin

We have to start off with one of the most famous knights from Arthurian legend – Lancelot! Ardenvale Paladin could be a reference to King Arthur’s greatest companion, with the flavour text showing just how loyal this knight is to the king.

 

Castle Ardenvale

Speaking of Lancelot, it’s only fair that we have Camelot because where else are the knights going to party?

Some keen-eyed internet user pointed out how the design of Castle Ardenvale resembles Minas Tirith, the capital of Gondor from The Lord of the Rings!  Pretty sweet!

MTG: Throne of Eldraine story (condensed!)

With the release of the new Magic: The Gathering set, Throne of Eldraine, comes more stories! Similar to my post condensing Huatli’s Ixalan story, I thought I’d give a try at condensing the story from Eldraine. The release of the Eldraine set was also accompanied by an ebook written by Kate Elliot called “Throne of Eldraine: The Wildered Quest”, which I have decided to condense! So here is my condensed version (2000 words-ish) of a basic summary of what is going off in this set!

A bit of background to the story first, though. Throne of Eldraine’s main conflicts lies between five knightly courts of the Realm (civilised society of the plane) vs. the magical creatures of the Wilds. The planeswalker, Oko, arrives at the plane and is ready to cause mischief in a series of events which could throw the power balance of the plane into chaos (if you want some more information on Oko, feel free to look at my previous post).

A warning for those who might not want spoilers… the post is chock full of them!

 

Chapter 1 – Oko is mean to Garruk.

The fey planeswalker, Oko, arrives on Eldraine and is ready to stir things up. He’s not the only planeswalker on the plane, as Garruk is also there on his mission to kill any planeswalkers he can find. The two meet, and Oko traps and brainwashes Garruk into being his servant who he kindly names “Dog”.

 

Chapter 2 – Meeting the Kenrith twins.

King Algenus Kenrith (who I will now refer to as King Algae) is ready to go on the Grand Procession where he will pop in for a cup of tea at all five courts in the Realm. His twin children, Will and Rowan, are a bit young to be coming along with them so they have to stay as attendants in the baggage train.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whilst messing around on their trip, Will sees a vision of foreign worlds which he sees in his ice magic. Unfortunately, playing with their magic made the twins late for the procession leaving, and are given a smack on the bum by their stepmother (who unlike most stepmothers in fairy tales is actually a nice lady) and says that they have to stay at home now. Now accepting bets for what they do next…

Meet Oko, The New Planeswalker for MTG!

Browsing on Facebook earlier, the Magic: The Gathering page came up on my newsfeed with news of the newest planeswalker for the upcoming set, Throne of Eldraine!

In an exclusive interview with Forbes writer Lauren Orsini, Wizards of the Coast’s Head of Story and Entertainment Nic Kelman spilt some beans on Oko.

The interview can be found on this link, but here’s a quick breakdown of what we’ve found out (along with some additional information from the MTG Wiki)

• Oko is a Fey (kinda like a fairy) and was born with the power to shapeshift. He can also heal people and has mind-control powers.

  

  ART BY CHRIS RALLIS

• Kelman described him as “charismatic” yet “mysterious, clever, and vain” – so I can see he’s going to be a bit of a dick.
• Oko’s home plane (not Eldraine) believe in a unified society, but ultimately one that is ruled by a higher class who think they know best. For this reason, the “natural mischievousness of the Fey” was kept under wraps which Oko disagrees with.
• He thinks of himself as someone who holds the mirror “to the hypocrisy of the world” which landed him in hot water with the higher-ups.
• The ruling class wanted to suppress those pesky powers Oko had and subjected him to magical procedures. Of course, they didn’t succeed. However, they did ignite Oko’s planeswalker spark.
• Because of this, Oko doesn’t really like people anymore and thus is quite mean in his “pranks” that include:
  – Ruining a wedding day
  – Stealing the spotlight at someone’s lifetime moment of triumph
  – Fooling a mother into believing her child has returned from a conflict
• Oko is a dick confirmed.
• He doesn’t like to play with other planeswalkers, but Kelman said maybe he’d get on with Chandra if he wasn’t a dick.
• He doesn’t stick around to see the consequences of his actions, as he usually just buggers off by planeswalking away.
• At some point, Oko gets stalked by Garruk. Oko goes ahead and traps Graruk in a net of thorn-laced vines, brainwashes him, and turns Garruk into a slave bodyguard which Oko unoriginally names Dog. 
• He’s apparently met Liliana according to the Wiki?? I can’t find anything to support this at the moment since he’s so new.

So, it’s pretty much confirmed Oko is going to be an arse, even if it is justified. I can see him being aligned with blue mana, purely because he sounds as annoying as people who play mono-blue decks in MTG Arena. But that’s just me!

This is only a snippet for what we know about Oko at the moment, with the ebook titled Throne of Eldraine: The Wildered Quest by Kate Elliott which comes out soon and will give us the juicy details for the lore of the new set. Hopefully, it’s an improvement from the War of the Spark book.

The reveal also helped give me a much-needed distraction to procrastinate on some university work. I guess now I should really get back to work…

MTG: Huatli’s Story (condensed!)

Huatli. Ixalan’s resident Warrior-Poet, dinosaur knight, vampire hunter, and overall badass.

Huatli is one of the many amazing things which came from the Ixalan storyline for Magic: The Gathering. Despite appearing in the War of the Spark on Ravnica earlier this year, we haven’t seen much more of her since the Ixalan sets. Me being me went and read through the flavour text for the cards and the official story on the Wizards website. After reading it all, I’m pretty sure Huatli is now up there as one of my favourite planeswalkers – and yes part of it is because she can communicate with dinosaurs.

Alison Luhrs blew me away with the writing for the Ixalan story. It was some of the most engaging and entertaining stuff that I’ve read since finishing Good Omens. That being said, I thought I’d try and condense the story for others who might not have the time to go trudging through the lore like I have. I’m going to keep all the juicy bits and hopefully provide an entry point for the MTG story – but if you want the full story, I definitely recommend the official story. Here goes!

 

Pride of Ixalan

Our story starts on the plane of Ixalan. This plane is covered head to toe in jungles and forests, and for the most part, has 5 main forces at play trying to assert their power over the others. We’ve got:
– Vampire Legion running about doing blood sucky things

– The River Heralds – funky merfolk that squirt water at things

– Pirates, including a crew run by the gorgon planeswalker Vraska (her story itself is inevitably going to get its own post)

– Dinosaurs (hell yeah)

– and the Sun Empire, who are based off the Aztec & Inca cultures and ruled by their Emperor, and it’s where our main girl Huatli is from.

Throne of Eldraine: what we know so far

Throne of Eldraine is MTG’s next standard expansion set, releasing on October 4th and pre-releases being held on September 28-29. So what do we know about this upcoming set?

I for one am extremely excited about this set. I saw the artwork shown by Wizards and fell in love. Why am I excited you ask? Well, as Mark Rosewater stated in his blog post this set will be a “high-fantasy medieval world killed with knights and castles along with Magic’s take on the genre of fairy tales”. Personally, I am a massive fan of fairy tales, and with Wizards taking inspiration from a range of European fairy tales I am pretty pumped to see how they are going to depict them.

I also think it’s going to be refreshing to get away from all the drama that’s been going off in Ravnica the last few sets.

Exploring a new plane is going to feel like a much-needed break before we inevitably see ol’ Bolas again.

The ‘pets’ of Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering is absolutely rammed pack with all kinds of weird and funky creatures.

That’s why for this post I’ve decided to write about the ‘pets’ of the multiverse. I use the term ‘pets’ loosely, as a lot of the cards I’m going to talk about aren’t technically pets but I still think they’d make pretty good companions.

To rate some of these creatures I’ve decided to use a ranking system which will be based on: cuteness, abilities, card design, and overall rating. There’s probably a lot more that I could rate them on but I thought best to keep it more condensed (and to control my habit of rambling too much).

Without further ado, let’s look at some of MTG’s best pets!

#1 Promise (or Gideon’s Promise) from War of the Spark.

Promise is a good ol’ boy who is ridden by Gideon Jura into battle against Nicol Bolas. The pegasus appears on two cards in this set (“Trusted Pegasus” was also reprinted for Core Set 20?? the only difference with the reprint is that the flavour text wasn’t included).
The flavour text on “Trusted Pegasus” is a really nice interaction between Gideon and Promise while hell is breaking loose on Ravnica. Gideon asks Promise “Would you give your life to save this world?”, a question which I think he is almost asking himself – is he ready to die to save this world?
Unfortunately, Promise gets shot down by the sneaky Oketra which ultimately answers Gideon’s question that yes, they were ready to give their life. Rest in peace good horse boy, Rakdos finished the job for you don’t worry!

Ratings 
Cuteness: 10/10 majestic as heck – look at the swanky armour!
Abilities: 9/10 for being a flying horse. It would have been 10 but they got shot down which is a bit of a problem. Otherwise very useful than your bog-standard horse!
Card design: 8/10. I like the art for both of the cards Promise appears on. However, something about the colours used on the “Divine Arrow” card doesn’t appeal that much to me.
Overall pet rating: 5/10 would have Promise as a pet if I didn’t have a fear of horses. Don’t judge me, those things are scary up close.