M12 Pre-Release

Yay its finally here! Magic The Gathering Core Edition M12. That means M11 now goes away and M12 is put in its place in standard. The prelease event runs 1 week before the actual release so we still cant buy boxes or boosters. Still with the cards we get from the event we get a nice glimpse of things to come. Altho i have no doubt alot of players have already found out the entire list of the cards in the set. The Planeswalkers are super awesome especially Jace and Chandra. Ofc...i couldnt draw any X_X

Friday July 8 Midnight Event

So my gf was working Friday night so i decided to attend the midnight pre-release because i knew i wouldnt be able to go to the saturday events and i wasnt sure for today (Sunday). So first pre-release for me. I knew the basics of the format but i had no actual experiance so i was very excited about it. I arrived early - around 7 o`clock and had bunch of games with my vampire deck. I must say blade of the bloodchief is performing very well. Not to mention the deck overall gets more wins than loses. Im very eager to do so research later and build a strong legacy deck. Altho that might be very expensive to achieve.
So about 30 minutes before the event started i stopped playing and was just chilling on my laptop and actually managed to get 1 player to sign up as my sponsor in D2N :)- So now i got another Golden Boy distinction and i am the current N:1 on the oval office ranks.

Anyway i went to register and i was kinda worried how would i play because i used to have a DCI number like 8 years ago back in the old country. But i was not sure if it will be still active after all these years. But it was it took about 2 minutes for one of the Good Games employes to find it for me. So everything was well i was signed and i took my seat on 1 of the tables. Everybody got their 6 booster packs and the premium foil M12 card (Bloodlord of Vaasgoth).

I opened my boosters as quickly as possible and started checking out my cards. Almost from the start i realised i was drawing too many red spells so i knew my main color would be red for sure. I got couple of good green,black and white spells but not enough to really want to put them in my deck. The blue i got some decent drops in terms of : Mana Leak, Ponder and 2 other draw card spells. I had also Sphinx of Uthuun which i put in the deck as a nice end game finisher (tho i never got to play him).

I love dragons. And i got this one twice!

I had 21 red spells in my deck with my badass Flameblast Dragon and i also got Grim Lavamancer, Circle of Flames (that card was almost all the time in play for me hah) , Volcanic Dragon i had also some good removal in the face of incinerate, fling, shock, art trail and couple of other cards.
So yeah i went with a 43 card deck with 18 mana. Which now i know was a bad decision. Later i found out i didnt really need couple of spells and that it was much better to have a 40 cards deck to play with.
My first game i dominated and won 2-0 with big game finishes. First one my flame blast dragon smacked my oponent for 11. And 2nd game i dropped him with 10 but with other cards.
The 2nd round one of the guys who i played earlier with my vampire cards dropped out of the tournament so 1 player got to get a "BY" which means a free win. And by chance i got it. ^_^
3rd round i faced a green/white deck and this is where my mana problems started. Still it was a pretty close fight 2-1 loss. He managed to drop alot of his creatures and the big ones were a lil bit hard to burn with my limited removal. I needed a bit more luck to take that game.
4th I dont remember exactly how that played out. I remember i played against Alex but what exactly went down is a blur. I believe he had some very small creatures and was chipping me away and i had a bad draw or something....i cant recall.
Anyway at the end of the day i got a 2W-2L rating and turned out for each win you get you receive 2 free boosters. Something i was not aware of so it was a very pleasant surprise for me. So i got 4 boosters but didnt draw any super rares. I did get 2 mythical rares in the face of Sun Titan and Frost Titan but they are not that powerfull. Still nice addition for my collection :P

I learned alot and it was extreamly fun. Met alot of great players and generally everybody is sooooo friendly. I loved the athmosphere. Its interesting to note that most people use an app for their phones that keeps track of our lifes. And whats even more interesting is that everybody has a different version of it :D I find that very amusing.
During the event btw when i was not playing i was texting my gf alot and told her what i was doing. So she was kinda curious what exactly im playing and said she wants to see sometime. So today i called her and i gave her 2 choices:
-She comes with me to another pre-release event to see what im playing.
-Go chill in the park.
She picked the game even tho i warned her it might take 2+ hours. But on the other hand im so tired of separating my life because of others. If a girl cant handle my gaming side then she isnt exactly cut out to be my girlfriend in the first place. So i was like sweet lets see how she will react to the whole MtG thing :D And lets face it MtG is alot more geeky than PC gaming so if she didnt mind that ill be ok. And yeah she was okay with it. It was funny to her (obviously) but she was also kinda curious. She said i looked very happy while i was playing and i was so excited that she got hyped too, but she couldnt understand what we were doing. Still after 1 hour of watching she whipped out the iPhone and went to facebook. kewl i dont blame her. Anyway it was very cool of her to join me.

So for today`s report:
I opened my 6 boosters and again i had a very established set of cards. This time green was the main color and red the secondary. I got 3 green rares, 2 red an 1 artefact. Thinkin about the other people`s decks i got to say they seem more complex with just 1-2 small combos and stuff. But alot faster aswell. I decided to go with awhole lot of heavy creatures. Bucause on friday it was that fat monster on the field that got me killed.
So here my rares:

Adaptive Automaton

Flameblast Dragon (Yes AGAIN), Warstorm Surge (this is super strong :O)

Never got the chance to play this :(

Skinshifter and Primordial Hydra (Two of the best green cards i have ever seen and i never drew the Hydra to try it :X ), Doubling Chant (at first i thought this was a good idea but later i removed this from my deck).
So as you can see i got to use all my rares in the deck.
I also had 2x Volcanic Dragons and 2x Vastwoof Gorger and a Cudge Troll and 2x Act of Treason. And couple of other good cards. I made a mistake in putting too many fat creatures so i had almost nothing for early in the game and i payed for it.
1st Round vs Moon (or Mon)
A Korean guy beat me 2-1. I fucked up in the 3rd game when i started with 1 mana in my hand and thought ill be lucky enough to draw some more.
2nd Round vs Simon (very cheerfull fella btw)
Dominated him 2-0 . He got mana blocked at the first game and the second i just had a very strong starting hand and once we got to the mid game i unloaded alot of my heavy creatures.
3rd Round vs Mathew (He did something very interesting, he put his deck in Pokemon Sleeves X_X)
I lost 2-1 again. First game i smashed him witheout giving him any chance. 2nd one i could have won if not for 1 stupid flying creature that had hexproof. I actually needed just one of my dragons to stop it and turn the game around but alas fate decided to put the dragon 1 turn away from me and i lost.
the final game i had my mana and my big finishers but by the time i got to my 6th mana he had me dropped to 8 and after that it didnt matter his rush was too hard to handle. He had like 5 creatures on the board.
4th Round vs Anthony (The Pacifism guy X_X)
1st game he had no chance. Mana block at 2 the entire time he did manage to hold on for a bit because he had that tap knight that kept my attackers at bay for a bit but in the end there was no way for him to win after i had unloaded my mana and he discarded an awful lot of cards. The third game was super bitchy i had a decent draw but he just had all his best cards to counter mine and at the final turns he put the big Sphinx of Uthuun and killed me. Those pacifisms were just unbelievably well timed for him. Luck was on his side. So i lost again 2-1.
Total: 1W 3L

So to sum it all up i had a worse record than friday but on the other hand i never lost by 2 and all my 3rd games were pretty close. And all my wins were total domination. My decks were strong everybody said so but still could have been planned a little bit better. Switch couple of cards and put more lands. I learned alot. The best way to get better is practice so ill just keep playing. Ill do some drafts whenever available and hone my skills on limited formats. Friday i went with a very quick burn deck with unsufficient mana. And Today i went exactly 40 cards with enough mana but too many fat creatures. Even after replacing the wurms and removing the Chant i still didnt manage to squuze a victory but the fights were close. Next time hopefully ill do better. Ill have to pay more attention to what my oponents are playing and try to see what is the thinking behind their tactics.
I got 2 boosters from todays event and got:
Grand Abolisher and Goblin Chieftan both of which seem like very solid and good cards. Not sure if they are expensive tho.

It was very, very, very fun and if i was having any doubts (wherever ill be playing magic again or it was just another short lived whim of mine) they are all gone now. Azzy is back and will be kicking ass!!!! I even saw that there is a Grand Prix in Brisbane later this year. And if i have the cards and experiance ill probably team up with some players from the store and go there and give it a shot. Its still months away so ill have plenty of time to practice.