Yes it is cold in here

Today Wizards announced the full detail of what is happening with Coldsnap. It's going to be long lost third set to Iceage block. Its going to get the full curent treatment, fatpack, theme decks etc.

I think it will be realy interesting to see what cards they put into the theme decks, as its a chance for Wizards to re-release some highly sort after cards like Force of Will and um foily Forces of Will. I think it will be well worth ordering 4 copies of the blue theme decks just incase the have Forces in them, as new bordered Forces will be a very hot item if they can only be found in theme decks.

I realy hope that they don't put Force of Will into a theme deck though as it would do terrible things to the price of the old ones, it won't increase the number of T1 decks running force, just the number of them that are available. But even if they do release them it'll only set Forces price back 3 years, which is no biggie

Brrrr, is it Cold in Here?

July 2006:

Coldsnap

From the frozen vaults deep below Wizards of the Coast, Coldsnap, the legendary Lost Third Set of the Ice Age Block is coming out at last. It's not part of Ravnica Block, it's not part of the block after that. But -- get this -- it will be tournament-legal!

Intrigued? Tune back in on Wednesday, when Randy Buehler will explain all.

So Coldsnap will be released during July next year will it. That's a bit of a surprise. It'll be interesting to see what they do with it, there are just so many odd things they can do.

Like the Fat Pack for it could have 50% snow-covered lands, which would be pretty cool (pun intended)

Victorian States

Firstly the customary deck list:
3x Last Gasp
4x Putrefy
4x Umezawa's Jitte
4x Moldervine Cloak
4x Birds of Paradise
3x Elves of Deep Shadow
4x Hypnotic Specter
4x Ravenous Rats
4x Nezumi Graverobber
3x Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni

4x Llanowar Wastes
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
7x Forest
9x Swamp

Sideboard:
4x Cranial Extraction
4x Naturalize
4x Nezumi Shortfang
3x Nekrataal

This was the version of tuned black/green agro that Bill thought was best, while I may not always agree with his deck building 100% I felt that any list handed by me by anyone who had done any testing had to be better than my rough draft of what such a deck should look like. Also it looked like it had a lot of game against everything I thought would be decent.

Round 1: Marcus Abbot with BGw Pile
I won the dice roll and elected to play. The early turns were uneventful with Marcus dropping such great creatures as Loxodon Hierarch and Kokusho, both of which I easily dispensed with, even though Marcus assumed my first Putrefy would target his Plague Boiler and not his Loxodon (silly boy, the Loxodon makes the Plague boiler one sided, a symmetrical effect (that I can probably counter with its ability on the stack with another Putrefy) is much less threatening that a 4/4 with an un-symmetrical effect). I then started taking out huge chunks of his life with something that I forget now, but the game was over fairly quickly with my only damage coming from his Kokushos leave play ability.

I did no sideboarding for the second game as I had no idea what to take out and only slightly an idea of bringing in Cranial extraction. I took some early damage in this game stabilising on 10 life against his 26, this didn't seam to be much of a problem though as he conceded at 14 life, there may have been a Jitte on my side of the table though to explain such a concession.

Now I was 1-0 (2-0 in games) and heading to table 101.

Round 2: Some Dude with Boros Weenies
My apologies to my opponent for not recording his name, will update this with it once dci's web site is back up with data about Victorian States.
I did loose game one, with the only changes to my opponents life total being 1 pain from a pain land, and then gaining 3 from a Helix. I'll blame this loss on muligans against agro decks being bad news, especially when they are on the play.

I sideboarded in the 3 Nekrataals, but I forget what I took out for them. He only managed to hit me twice with a Swiftblade before I stabilised and started to slap him around convincingly. Game 3 was the first interesting and tense game for the day. He was on the play again and got a very good opening despite his inability to draw a 3rd land. A Suntail Hawk, two Swiftblades and a Leonin Skyhunter threatening to make my life total 0 much to quickly for my liking. I forget what I did to stall the game out, but I'm pretty sure it was suiting a BoP with a Cloak and Jitte, he couldn't attack me, as I'd favorably block one creature and use the counters from the Jitte to kill one or two others. Once you can stabilise against a weenie deck with a decent way to gain life if needed (Jitte) there's not much they can do, even when they are splashing red.

Now I was 2-0 (4-1 in games) and just 1 win and 1 draw away from guaranteeing my self top8.

Round 3: James Ye with Gifts
Winning the die roll wasn't enough to overcome the disadvantage of having to mulligan twice. This game was interesting, with gifts resolving twice but with me being able to find a gifts split that would keep me in the game each time, main deck Graverobbers is a masterful answer for gifts decks. The first gifts was for: Ink-Eyes (I had one on the table), Hana Kami, soulless Revival and ethereal Haze. The first thing this gifts split told me was the James definitely had a reanimation spell in hand, Goryo's vengeance had been used early in the game and was already removed from the game with a now dead Graverobber (or two), so it was most likely death denied in hand. I gave him the Ink-Eyes and ethereal Haze, knowing that he'd play the Ink-Eyes that turn to kill mine and then I could cast the Graverobber and remove the engine from the game. This wasn't a bad play, but it definitely wasn't the correct play. The correct play would have been to give James the part of the engine with ethereal Haze, letting me cast Graverobber, keep Ink-Eyes in play and force him to use the engine and destroying it with my robber.
This sub optimal play set my tempo back far enough (having my Ink-Eyes put into the graveyard as a statebased effect) that I couldn't force through any damage for the next 20ish turns. This let James draw into a second Gifts, fetching up: Myojin of Nights Reach, Kokusho, Meloku and something that I couldn't give him. Figuring that Meloku would generate too many illusions for my point removal to cope with (he could have created ~15 illusions the same turn he cast Meloku by this point), so I had to give him the Myojin and the dragon.
eventually time was called with both of us on 5 life, neither of us could get any damage through in the 5 turns so we were forced to draw.

Now I was 2-0-1 (4-1-1 in games) and could only afford to loose one of the next two games. I was then paired up against the only player who was still undefeated, Mitheran.

Round 4: (Steven?) Mitheran with BGW control.
This was the deck that more than half of the Card Heaven regulars were playing. It played every good piece of black (green) removal in Ravnica along with WoG and the new Swords using Graveshell Scarab as its main win condition. Besides seaming to have great games against every deck in the field, Bill complained of loosing in the first round to a deck that he'd beaten 20-1 the night before, Mitheran was the only player who was managing to go well with it in the early rounds.
During the lunch break we had worked out that while Mitheran would do well to ID, I had to play for the win as a ID was just as bad as a loss when I needed another win to guarantee top 8 (2-1-2 wouldn't make top8 and 2-0-3, aka 3-0-0 in a 5 round tourney, seamed unlikely as well). During this time we also decided that it was a nearly un-winable matchup for me as well. So despite doing as well as I could, I lost in two relatively quick games, which were both very boring and error free.

Now sitting at 2-1-1 (4-3-1 in games) I just needed to win the last round to get into the top8.

Round 5: Nitzan Ron with Gifts
During our deck check (my second of the tourney) I we worked out that Nitzan may possibly miss out on top 8 if he won (although it was unlikely) so if the game was going to be a draw we would call it a win in my favor to guarantee one of us made top8.
Game 1 I won in very high style, it doesn't take long to win when swinging with a Ravenous Rat with 1 then 2 then 3 Moldervine Cloaks. The 3rd Cloak was preceded by a Jitte though :). From memory the game looked like this:
Turn 2: Ravenous Rats
Nitzan: Nothing
Turn 3: Cloak Rats swing (16)
Nitzan: Play Elder
Turn 4: Cloak Rats swing (chumped by elder)
Nitzan: Play Kokusho
Turn 5: Jitte, equip Rat blocked by Kokusho
blah blah blah, the score pad looked like this when I swung the final time:
M Nitzan
19 16
18 21
13 11
12 16
7 6
On the final swing Nitzan threw his whole hand at my rat: Shoal for -4/-4, Shoal for -6/-6, and my hungry rat was still 9/9 when it hit :)
The next two games didn't go so well, game 2 I only recorded 1 life change for Nitzan: 25, and the third just 2: 18 then 17.
Game 3 probably should have been mine though, shortly after a resolved Gifts that netted Nitzan a Kagemaro and an Ink-Eyes he attacked with the Kagemaro with Ink-Eyes still in hand and me itching to use the Putrefy in hand. For some reason I used the Putrefy before I'd let him Ninjitsu the Ink-Eyes in. I wasn't such a newb as to have done it after declare blockers, but I really should have waited for him to use the ninja and just blown that out of the water.

So that ended my second campain on the States trophy, and while I was so much closer for most of the tournament this year (last year I lost the first two rounds, and ended up 3-3) I still effectively ended up in the same position, not in the top8. My record of 2-2-1 was good enough to leave me in 11th place, which was ok, unlike the rares in my two prize packs.

Giant Fun Was Had

The event went off yesterday with about as little hassle as could be imagined. 10 teams ended up playing in the event, when 10.00 rolled past 2 teams were unaccounted for out of the 11 pre-registrations, with some of the teams having people get word to me that they weren’t going to turn up, but with those slots easily filled by people who just turned up. The 10th team turned up 10 minutes into deck construction, which was no issue.

I only got 2 or 3 rules questions the whole event, one being a Boros Fury Shield question about a double striking creature and how much damage would be dealt to the controller (it pretty clearly says it does damage equal to the creatures power, which obviously happens at the same time as the spell resolves Mr Saturday School). Another one of the rules questions was about what exactly ‘you’ refered to on a card, although I suspect that question was a test as it was coming from a judge who seamed to have some idea about the rules of Two Headed Giant.

All up we sold off the remaining product at cost price (that sure got snapped up fast, people like boosters at $4 each, even when they’re only 9th ed), leaving us with a small amount of money to give the church for the use of the facilities. The profit might just help ease the tention of destroying the monitor I borrowed out of the office, huge arcs within the case when plugging it into the wall is not a good thing™.

The Y fundraising of selling food also did well and raised ~$80 which is nice, although none of the members of that congregation actually turned up to help out :(. But that rant doesn’t belong here.

All up a great event and I can’t wait to plan another.

Mmmm Product

I currently have in my possession more un-opened product than I ever have before: over 4 displays of it. The biggest problem with it is that I'm not going to get to open much, if any, of it. Around 1/3rd of the people who have told me that they are coming have done so after the official cutoff date, but that is ok so far, because we had only just needed to got to 2 boxes of tournies and boosters, so now we have room left for just 1 team.

Now all I have to do is actually run the event.

Two Headed Giant Just 5 Days Away

This coming weekend is the Two Headed Giant tournament at my Church, so far we have 8 teams playing and have room left for 2 more teams if people are still interested. (email me at gareth@cerberos.id.au or phone Nigel at 9484 4788 to register or roll the dice and just turn up).

I'm looking forward to running the event and it is looking to be great fun.

15 Land?

Over on StarCityGames.com I was just reading about a 4 colour deck (two splash colours) that ran only 15 land and was contemplating only 14 (link). On Sunday at the Games Village Sneak Peak I ran a 3 colour deck (all three colours in equal numbers) and only ran 15 land in it and never had a single problem with only 3 extra mana producers. So just how low will land counts go?

9th ИЗДАНИЕ

I was looking into purchasing some 9th edition cases, but in Russian because it sounded like fun and I'd love black bordered pain lands, WOG's, Llanowar Elves, Jester's Caps, Hypnotic Specters, Verdant Forces, etc, etc, etc. To my absolute horror I found that boxes of 9th edition boosters are selling for between $USD150 and $USD220 on eBay and for numbers at the higher end of this scale on web sites. The same websites that are selling normal 9th boxes for $USD69.

I wish WotC would just sell Russian boxes (and all other languages) everywhere for the same price, sure have a larger lead time foreign product (like only stock the product in the countries its spoken in, all others you'll have to wait for WotC's next international shipment) but please sell it. The current environment where WotC frown on people selling boxes from the wrong country is annoying as it means the only people doing it are slightly shady. Buying 'contra-band' from shady people always carries with it an element of risk and a premium price tag.

Hopefully the current pricing is an abnormality due to not enough companies having partnerships with Russian companies to get the product from and that in the near future (2~3 months) prices will become more reasonable (If I can buy a 9th Ed Russian box for the same cost as a locally delivered one I'll buy 2 or 3 cases I think).

Friday Night Drafting at LURG

The slightly silly people at LURG (LaTrobe University Roleplay Group) brought too much Saviors of Kamigawa so we still have another 2 or 3 drafts of that left before we get around to playing any Ravnica drafts.  This is particularly annoying as we are playing triple Saviors drafts.  This is a particularly odd format and should never be touched.

Luckily last night though in the format of madness I opened and got passed some very nice cards, opened Brairknit Kami, passed Manriki-Gusari, passed Briarknit Kami and another Manriki-Gusari 4th.  I can’t think of a start to a triple Saviors draft that I would want more, playable semi-chase uncommons and limited bomb uncommons in the colour that I like to play most.  Unfortunately I messed up a bit when I looked at the first packs wort of picks, after the bomb opening I picked lots of solid red and black cards to build either of my two favourite decks (heavy spirit/arcane hand size matters) and then took 5 playable white cards last, including two Shinen of Stars’ Lights and some of the decent common flyers.

So from their on I drafted a very solid deck based around Nitzans favourite pick for worst colours ever to draft.  The second pack was very good to me too with such lovely bombs as Molting Skin. Unfortunately I went down in the second round to a deck that was slightly too fast for me to cope with, with anything less than my best opening curve. 3rd overall isn’t that bad though considering, picking me up a Spoon in the raredraft (silly LURG people allowing people to keep foils).