Magical Mayhem: Venser Battles

Today, I made use of my free time (i.e. I procrastinated) by playing against my brother in Magic. Again. I used Venser's deck exclusively for the morning battles, so that I came to understand a few of the tricks. A couple of cards are extremely useful for doubling up on "when X enters the battlefield" abilities. There are also cards that are otherwise useless, where the special ability is a downfall rather than a way to trump your opponent. Given it's a deck for duelling, and could well be aimed at beginners, it's clear that the weaknesses - although exploitable if used correctly - are there for a reason.

For me, they were just annoying, until I learned not to play those cards for no reason at all.

Venser is a lot more strategic a deck than Koth. With two land variations, and some non-basic land cards, that makes it immediately more difficult to just build up the mana you need. Of course, some of the non-basics made playing Venser more fun. For instance, the deck comes with a couple of lands that grant 1 life point when played. Handy. Very handy. Others allow for scrying, or flying, and a few allow for choosing either Plain or Island mana, or, in one case, both. That helps for the battles, which can be manipulated to last longer with Venser, allowing for bonuses to add up.

A few of the creatures have abilities that come in handy just from an attacking point of view, like exiling, drawing a card, getting +1 power and toughness, and there are a handful of flyers - these are more than effective against Koth's deck, unless the player happens to have a couple of Koth's defenders out.

So, it was a fun deck to play with. I won't go into full detail on it, because that's not quite my style, but I found that when I won with Venser, it was a more enjoyable win than winning with Koth. It felt deserved, rather than just boastful. I don't just beat the living daylights out of my opponent: I do it with style.

We played eight games earlier, before we had to stop for lunch. In those eight games, my Venser deck beat the Koth deck (used by my brother) half the time, losing the other half. What interested me was that three our of four of my losses were a result of Koth actually being played. He's a much more formidable Planeswalker to fight against than I would have thought just by looking at his abilities.

Later in the day, I played games by myself. I controlled both decks, sought to play them both strategically, and two out of three of them Venser won. In the losing match, it turns out I broke the rules while making Koth's turns, so there's no way of telling if the deck should have won. I'm sceptical. I have two defenders that were virtually indestructible, and a planeswalker with 7 defence. My rule breaking got rid of them, but it shouldn't have. Oops!

So, overall, I think Venser is a better deck. At least, it suits me better than Koth does. At the same time, Koth is still fun for just beating people up with, and in playing against him, I picked up a few tricks to make my battles with him much more enjoyable from my end.

Tomorrow, I may be getting more cards. We'll see. I'm still hoping I can get Carnival of Blood.

Magical Mayhem: On First Gathering

There's this little game you can play with cards. It's called Magic: The Gathering. Maybe you've heard of it. If you're a 90s kid, think Pokemon or YuGiOh, but actually good.

My first ever experience with Magic was when my brother got a free booster pack in a magazine several years ago. And up until today, it was my only experience with the game. We never bought more cards, we never learned how to play.

Over the weekend, a friend of mine asked if I'd be interested in playing. Knowing that the game required an actual deck, some patience to learn the basics and money to buy even a cheap deck, I should have said, "It seems like too much work for me right now." But I thought back to the awesome artwork, and to my limited experience playing Dungeons and Dragons, and I agreed to play.

Today, I bought my first deck. Well, two. It was a duel deck pack, Vesner vs. Koth. Why? Because I was too shy to ask if they had any Carnival of Blood. Thankfully, Facebook means I don't have to ask sheepishly in person. I just messaged them, mid-writing this post, to ask.

My first reaction to playing the game: this is hard. Then I remembered my friend was a semi-experienced player, with three decks he knew how to use, and I had only just started. So when he beat me in two games, I wasn't too annoyed. Because another friend showed up, who had also played before, and I beat her. Quite viciously, too, I might add. Land cards don't like her.

I've only used Koth so far. It's not that I didn't like the look of Vesner, mind you. In fact, I preferred the look of him. But I recalled reading that blue cards are some of the hardest to use, and I wasn't about to get myself into that mess. So I used a good ol' red deck and got used to powering up creatures simply by having lands to play.

That was nerd talk for: I had lots of one type of card that made it so I could kick ass a little easier.

So, three matches in and I've already agreed to an idea posed by friend #1: we're going to have tournaments. Not big ones with lots of really experienced players, mind you. We're going to just have four players, a €1 entry fee and a booster pack as the prize. It's a simple way to get us all playing and to make it worth winning.

So, I'll probably be blogging about my experience with this, oh so wonderfully nerdy game, for a while. At least until that gets boring. (As if!)