Monday Magic #18

With new and improved employment secured on Saturday it was going to be considered a good weekend regardless. Was it topped off with a crushing 3 nil draft win?
No it was not, I think I had a good deck, but a combination of it not cooperating and some awful play on my behalf meant I went 1-2.

Annalise popped in prior to draft which is always nice and I picked up a Myr Battle Sphere for my cube. We finally got to meet Felipe as he managed to wrangle some free time on a Sunday so the spirits were warmer than the weather which was friggin awful.

I won the first round even though I drew my deck in all the wrong order thanks to multiple fireball effects. In round 2 I lost the decider through a  combination of bad play and a lack of lands. Later I kicked myself over some pretty awful side boarding. I purposely took Tears of Valakut and Aligned Hedron Network as great sideboard options over low end playables and then didn't bring them in for a match up they would have been great in. On board mistakes as well as spell order mistakes were disappointing. I haven't played that bad in a while.
No explanation for it but I just wasn't feeling "on". Round 3 were two non games with a mull to five and a mull to six which should have been five. The matchup wasn't that great to begin with. This really stood out as an abnormal amount of bad luck  for me because my % of non games (on my side) feels so low overall. It happens. If I had of won the second round I wouldn't have even had to play the last round as there would have been a split. So in a way that bad luck could have been avoided by me not punting the second round.
It's totally illogical to think like this but I guess it's a plus to use up the bad luck when I am playing badly anyway.

Next week the shop looks to be hosting a W50,000 original Zendikar draft. I plan on passing on that so a break will probably be good and allow me to come back more keen and focussed. So far only 4 have signed up and the person bringing the box wants a guaranteed 8. The Korean players don't seem interested as at W50,000 it's not good value if you are looking for cards and you are really paying for the experience. The kind of decks that I remember drafting in Zendikar were mainly very quick beat down decks or blue based control decks (that double bounce spell comes to mind). Nothing really special that I need to relive and I think MTGO represents better value for flashback drafts than the high price of real life boxes.
I am still enjoying Oath of the Gatewatch drafts so if that is the format I probably will make it out there.

Magic Monday #17 How does my Dictate

Pro tour Oath is in the books and the decision to ban Splinter Twin looks a bit silly. My super secret Faeries tech of Dictate of Erebos for the new post twin meta looks ridiculous now.
I don't feel upset about recent events as my over riding feelings are relief at getting out of Modern. I am not keeping up with that shit show.

From a spectators point of view it's been a while since we have seen pros actually "break" a format, it was kind of exciting. Eldrazi Mimic of all cards. None of the armchair finance experts predicted it and the secondary market went bananas as a result. I really enjoyed watching it up until LSV got knocked out in the semi finals. Nothing against the deck but the players left were quite methodical (polite for slow) so it was time to grab some sleep.

It will be interesting how this all plays out at the next bunch of GP's and right now I am enjoying all the previously bulk Eldrazi rares in my binder getting a massive boost. I also found a foil Eldrazi Sky Spawner I had stored in a box of otherwise bulk. Nice.

This has added a little bit more spice to our Oath of the Gatewatch drafts. I am enjoying the format but opening valuable cards is a lot of the attraction for most people and thrilling for everyone but those with the coldest of hearts. I am on a bit of a run of getting decent cards in either the draft or my prize packs. This week I took home the big boy Kozilek to go with my Kozileks Return from last week. Flavour win.

I drafter a red blue deck this week but didn't really go in for any surge shenanigans, instead focussing on value. My biggest mistake was thinking I was the beat down because I picked up cheap goblins pack one. It turned out I was instead the deck with inevitability and after losing round 1 I won the next two fairly easily. Much the same story as last week though that time I was playing green red.To be honest I really enjoy red in this (and most) formats so I was happy to get a first pick Fall of the Titans and not have to pretend I am not drafting red.

I also got to draft my cube last weekend. I judge it a success as people couldn't stop talking about their decks, what they drafted and what they wanted to draft. Powered cube is great in small doses and it had been a while. I skipped the trip to Kindle the other foreigners were going on. With most of my valuable cards sold my main motivation for going was gone. Playing two headed giant sealed sounded fun but it's just so far away.
I do want to get there again though, if just to approach Min Yeong about writing articles, proper ones like I wrote for Paper-Gamer not the rants I put here, for his new website. My contract runs out at the end of this month and a new one isn't secured so the next few weeks are full on and not the best time to start making more promises but once things settle down I want to take a crack at trying to be the "Korean Magic coverage guy".

Pay to Play: Not much to report, my Magic coffers are overflowing after selling out of modern and I haven't been tempted to spend on anything more than our weekly draft.

Magic Monday #16

Mission accomplished in regards to trimming down my collection. I sold pretty much all my Modern cards that weren't in my Faeries deck and some that were (bye bye 1 mana discard spells).
I sold it all for 65% of the Card kingdom value which I felt was pretty fair and am still happy with. I was previously aiming for 70 - 75% but one person offered to buy the entire binder and I was saved a trip to Seoul so I think giving a discount was fair enough.

I am not sure what he plans to do with the cards, I expect him to turn it over for a profit or it may form part of the stock when the Suwon store finally launches singles. Collected Company spiked the next day so hopefully he will do well out of the transaction. He is better connected to the Korean Magic community, I consider him a friend and the timing was fantastic for me and my family so I genuinely want this to be a win win transaction. I am in that sticky part of the year where I only have one month of my contract left and new employment hasn't been locked in yet. This deal was a couple weeks worth of wages for me so a nice breather.

My binder now looks really barren and it's questionable if it is worth taking at all. It's at the point where it's time to add expensive uncommons like Young Pyromancer and Gitaxian Probe to fill it out. I kind of suspect those may move quicker anyway.

I am really enjoying the new set even though I am kind of struggling with it. Not  results wise (2-1 each time) but it's just hard. So much going on but aggro is much better than it was in triple Battle so I am happier. I wouldn't touch an ally with a 40ft barge pole before but I have taken my fair share this time. I even drafted green and didn't want to shoot myself.