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I’ve been playing an insane amount of Magic these days.

Thank God we live in the wondrous age of the Internet.

I’ve long loved the Golgari Guild, even before it was known as the Golgari. There was a deck in one of the first issues of Inquest called “Bayou Lightning” that as soon as I looked at it, my head exploded. I must have read the article explaining the functions of each card a dozen times. The issue is still upstairs in my closet, the disturbing cover art done by Anson Maddocks.

Online, I’ve tried my hand at the Golgari. I’ve had decks with Mindslicer and a ton of weenies. Decks with a boatload of Elves for powering out Sengir, Kokusho, and Kodama. The new Brothers Grimm, perhaps? One Green, one Black, and all Legend? All supported by the flexible Putrefy and Naturalize.

In the Tournament Practice room, they crush. Over and over. In the actual tournaments themselves? Yeah, not so good. I have no idea why.

In other news, I continue to try and make a workable weenie horde backed up by Hondens. A quick rush by mana producing elves and shamans… and if that doesn’t work, I finish them off with Hondens that produce infinite guys and infinite discard. When it works, its works amazingly. You play that second Honden against some guys, and you can see their crushed spirit from hundreds of miles away on the other side of the screen.

I have infinite guys and infinite discard! How can I lose?

“Bolt you. Bolt you. Bolt you.”
“Damnit!”
“Mana Leak your Honden.”
“Damnit!”
“Play Heartbeat of Spring. Search for a bunch of cards. Untap a bunch of lands. Kill you in one big turn.”
“*sigh*”

I can never get it consistent. Even with Tops and Wayfinders and Elders, something always goes wrong in the clutch games. Like — Countermagic. Or Kami of Ancient Law. Or that rare opponent playing his or her own Naturalize. Like being land screwed. The quest goes on. I love Hondens too much to ever give up on their late-game power.

Perhaps Guildpact will hold some piece of the puzzle the deck needs to become passable.

I’ve played fifty different and new versions of Joshie Green. I’ve got a deck that the tournament practice room I’ve dubbed “Hunted Loxodon” that I take particular glee in whipping out whenever I see someone beg for “Good decks only please.” Then I play a Loxodon Warhammer on turn 3 and a Hunted Troll on turn 4, and I can just see them sighing in dismay on the other side of the screen. And then… well, they crush me. Or leave and repeat their plea for GOOD DECKS ONLY!!!

Hunted Loxodon is a deck that should work amazingly well in theory. To be honest, it’s always has worked pretty well for me. I just can’t get by the jankiness of it to actually get around to tuning it to a razor edge. The thing that really makes it work is the fact that all the cards you need to make Hunted Troll work, are actually amazing all on their own.

If I’m playing against Aggro, they really hate Loxodon Warhammer on a Hunted Troll. If I’m playing against Control, they really hate the fast mana and anti flier tech. Blue just hates maindeck Matsu-Tribe Sniper, Trophy Hunter, and Arashi, the Sky Asunder.

Here’s a listing for giggles.

I don’t think it’s ever won a game in a tournament, but it tears up the Casual Room.

*sigh*

I lose a lot…

In annoyance with Green, and in desperation for some victories, I turned my gaze back to Black. Who can resist the siren call of the Phyrexian Arena? Who doesn’t want to tell their dreams of glory to a Dark Confidant? Who doesn’t want to Eradicate every overpowered Blue Legend off the face of the game?

I spent a couple of weeks trying to master Black, and had almost as much luck as I did with Hunted Loxodon.

Hey, let’s try some Drafts! Guildpact has been released and I bought sixty bucks in packs, and forty bucks in tickets to buy cards and to draft with. I went to the GGG Draft queues, because it’s a good way to have fun with the packs you bought, learn the cards, and draft the colors you want to play in Constructed. Honestly, it was the most fun I’ve had on Magic Online in months.

If you ever find yourself in a GGG draft, take my advice and draft G/R. Everyone is trying to draft B/W, and by going G/R you have free reign of the bombs.

Red is light on elimination, so unless there is a huge bomb, the two main cards you need are Wildsize and Pyromatics. You need some little guys that are unblockable in some way to make your Bloodthirst work.

Almost every deck I face is based on creatures that are tiny. Even a 3/3 is huge in this format.

The cards you want are:

Bombs

Savage Twister
Skarrg, the Rage Pits

Sorta Bombs

Wildsize
Pyromatics

Meat

Wild Cantor
Silhana Ledgewalker
Silhana Starfletcher
Skarrgan Pit-Skulk
Bloodscale Prowler (4/2 on turn 3 is some fat in this format.)
Scab-Clan Mauler (3/3 trampler for two mana.)
Streetbreaker Wurm
Ghor-Clan Savage

The cards you think you want but don’t are all the enchantments, Wreak Havoc, Battering Wurm, Dryad Sophisticate, Gatherer of Graces, Gruul Scrapper, Predatory Focus, Tin Street Hooligan (almost no artifacts, and none that matter), Burning-Tree Bloodscale, and Feral Animist.

Some of the huge fatties are actually worth it, as many times the game will go long. I have even had great success with both Skarrgan Skybreaker and Borborygmos. If you find yourself in an RRG draft, I have had good luck with G/W with a splash of Red… you can make plays like this —

10:24 Imreallybad plays Pollenbright Wings targeting Streetbreaker Wurm
10:24 Imreallybad plays triggered ability from Pollenbright Wings
10:24 Creating 6 tokens.

Can’t make that happen in a hundred years in Standard.

Of course, you can’t talk about a new set without mentioning how Wizards keeps trying to screw me on rares! Damn you, Wizards!

I bought sixty bucks in packs to draft. I made the finals about 2/3rds of the time, and that means I got three or four extra packs to draft every time I played.

I bet I opened a hundred boosters during the Release Weekend.

Number of Giant Solifuge – 0
Number of Rumbling Slum – 0
Number of Burning-Tree Shaman – 0.

Number of times I saw those cards on my opponent’s side – 0

I did get four dual lands. Which I sold. Because I’m poor and stupid.

Let’s do some book reviews.

As many of you know, my wife has been in and out of the hospital since October. While we have a hospital a mere five minutes away, for some reason we decided to have her operation – and subsequent thousand follow-ups – done at a bigger, supposedly better hospital, a mere hour and five minutes away. (There are other reasons, but hey, who cares? They have nothing to do with Magic.)

I made that drive every day, twice a day, for weeks on end. After about three days I knew I needed some entertainment. Something beyond the rare gem on NPR, or the one-in-five non-rap songs on the local radio that I might actually enjoy. The first thing I bought was “A Feast of Crows” on audio CD. Even though I had “read” the book already, I skipped over vast sections of it. I skipped the Samwell and Cersei chapters entirely, and speed-read through the Damphair chapters. They were too boring. I bought the audio book figuring it could fill me in on what I missed during the long drive.

It was torture.

If you thought the book was plodding in text, the audio book was worse. Read by a Shakespearean actor who never just read a line. It was either rushed through, or drawled at a glacial pace. I barely made it through the first disk, and considered returning it. Not that I needed the money back, but I wanted the company that let this guy read to know my displeasure.

Luckily, someone informed him of how bad he was after the first disk, and his pace improved just enough to be tolerable. But it was never enjoyable. I do now know what went on in the Samwell, Damphair, and Cersei chapters, though…

Nothing.

Sitting in the hospital, listening to audio books for a hundred and thirty minutes a day, you tend to learn some things. Like

1. Yellowstone National park is thirty thousand years late for a massive eruption that will kill everyone in the surrounding area, and blanket the Earth in ash.
2. Online Poker is pretty damn boring.
3. Once a gang of bullies urinates on you, that memory likes to resurface while being kicked out of casinos, winning millions of dollars, or just crossing the street.
4. Making a Honden deck that works is beyond my meager skills as a deck builder.
5. David Kushner needs a Thesaurus more than any “writer” I have ever read.
6. Cersei is a bitch. I know this because George R. R. Martin has told me so over four thousand times in a meager 811 pages.
7. Jon Finkel once made three million dollars in one year.

It’s been the longest half-year of my life, and it’s nowhere near completion. My wife is in chemotherapy as I type this. I’m sequester in a pizza shop across the street, paying my booth rent with a slice of pizza I don’t want, and a soda that sits unopened. Republican hate-radio is on the air around me bitching about, well, everything. I’m wearing my typical fat pant black jeans, having blown up thirty pounds this year, apparently finding all of the weight that my rail-thin wife has lost. It is long overdue for me to get an article in. And I have so much to tell you.

I guess I might as well start off with some Magic-related subject matter. Like Johnny Magic and the Card Shark Kids, “written” by David Kushner. Read by the author.

David does a passable job of reading, but his writing needs a great deal of work. For those of you interested in how you get to be a writer, the secret is to write. A lot. When I entered college, I had a seventh grade writing level, and my grammar has barely moved up from that level in all this time. When I started writing in college, my writing was still no prize. But hey, a million short stories, childhood recollections, critiques by your peers that tell you for three years that you suck, final thesis, and then a couple thousand pages on the internet, and voila: I feel like I can actually pass as a writer.

Kirchner seems to have spent all the time he should have been writing doing research. If his stories are to be believed, he did extensive research on Johnny Magic a.k.a. Jon Finkel.

The story, told within the book, is filled with stuff very few Magic players know about Jon Finkel. His early life, his discovery of Magic. What drugs he’s tried. His rise to stardom. His staggeringly powerful and unique brain. His forays into underground poker clubs at the tender age of seventeen. His blackjack card counting team, and why he has been banned from most casinos in Vegas. And the absolute mountain of cash he has made from poker, blackjack, and sports betting. An amount that dwarfs the money he has made on Magic.

Sadly, 90% of the writers on this site can form the written word better than the author.

Did you know Jon Finkel was fat? Because you’ll hear it repeated a couple hundred times in the book. After the first fifty times, we get it. He was a fat kid. Stop belaboring the point. Did you know when he was fat, he never ambled anywhere? Never strolled, never walked, never jogged, never moseyed? Nope. He just waddled. Anywhere he went, he waddled. At least, according to the author.

The subject matter is fascinating, but the way it is written is painful. After reading it, you can’t help but think to yourself. “I could to be good at Magic. Or poker. Probably poker. I can make a lot of money in poker. Especially since it’s alluded to in the book that anyone good at Magic is a natural for poker.”

Inspired by the book, I fired up my old Party Poker account and played some “play money” games to hone my skills. Putting to the test what the book had taught me. Mainly, that the way to win is to fold anything not gold, and then cash in big when you get a good pocket pair. And the secret to being really good at that is patience, and being able to remain calm on the times when you think you should win, but don’t.

After a couple hours of folding 90% of my hands I came to the same realization as Jon Finkel.

Online poker is boring.

For me, Hell is being bored. When I die – if I’ve been bad – I’m sure I’ll be set in a room with a checkerboard, books with no text, nothing to write with, and a television that gets nothing but expertly scrambled porn. To keep me company for all of eternity is a redneck. Who will want nothing more than to talk at me about the time he wrecked his snowmobile, almost got a deer, and how he told someone off. Usually his boss. He will tell me these stories endlessly, and ask incessantly if I want to play checkers. Which I don’t.

I’ll go out of my mind inside of five hours, and remain that way for most of eternity. When sanity breaks through every millennia or so – to see if its safe to come out – I’ll still be in that room, and the redneck won’t even notice I’ve gone insane. He’ll still be telling me those same stories, and I’ll quickly go out of my mind again.

That my friends, is my version of Hell.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, I was bored. Getting together with Josh and Podog and Titan and Bingham to talk trash, drink, and sling cards is way more fun than online poker. If playing online poker is the way to get better, enter the World Series of Poker, and become rich… I’d rather remain middle class.

That was about Magic, right? Okay, I now feel justified in doing a different book review.

“A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson.

Holy Lava!

So, I’ve moved on to the next store and paid my booth rent here by buying a cup of Hot and Sour Soup, served by a very hot hundred pound oriental girl. She has blue jeans with flowers embroidered on them, with long black hair tied in a ponytail on the back. She is about five foot nothing, with smiling eyes and pleasant demeanor.

I remember the days before I was married. And thin. I could chat up a girl like that, and in five minutes I could ask her out. But now I’m fat, and old, and married, and I know my place. I thank her politely for my soup.

I work the cover off, and the plastic container is floppy and malleable in my hand. My soup is as hot as lava. At any moment I expect that it will melt through its plastic container and spill all over my Quickpad and the floor.

I should probably get back to the book review, and then back to Magic, huh?

“A short History of Nearly Everything” is the book you wish you had in science and biology in high school. Instead of learning about how zygotes reproduce, you learn all the fascinating stuff you should know. Not just the successes of science, but the failures. Oh, the staggeringly funny failures!

Like the French team that went to Peru to measure one degree of Meridian, in hopes of finding out the circumference of the Earth. They were met with suspicion from the locals, and chased out of villages with stones. One of the scientists ran off with a thirteen-year-old girl, never to return. The expedition’s doctor was murdered over a misunderstanding involving a woman. Others died from fevers. Or long falls and a sudden stop. They were once delayed eight months while one of them went to Lima over a permit dispute. When they finally finished their work, Isaac Newton informed them they were wrong, and had worked out how big the Earth was in his lab. And had published his results already.

A second team of French scientists set out to prove Newton wrong. Newton was never wrong. In fact, after ten long years of climbing mountains, fording streams, and taking endless minute measurements, they discovered that Newton was right. All their work was for nothing.

They took separate ships home.

There is also a cosmic event known as the “Transits of Venus” which happens about a century apart, then again in eight years later… then there’s another century to wait. For some reason, this event is important to science.

Guillaume Le Gentil was one of many who set out to observe the event. He set out a year ahead of time to observe the event in India. Various setbacks delayed him, and at the time of the event he was on a ship at sea, where precise measurements are impossible due to the rolling tides. Determined to get his readings, he waited the next eight years for the next event, and erects a perfect viewing station. He tested and retested his instruments. On the day of the event, a cloud passed in front of the sun for almost the exact duration of the Transits of Venus: three hours, fourteen minutes, and seven seconds.

He packed up his equipment and headed home in failure. On the way he contacted dysentery and was laid up for a year. After that, while on a ship home, he was caught in a hurricane.

When he finally made it home, eleven years later, having accomplished nothing… he found his relatives had declared him dead, and robbed his estate blind.

The book is filled with fascinating facts like this. Failures, geniuses, eccentrics, and most startling of all, how close we are to dying. Every second of every day, that none of us are aware of. Thankfully, on an eternal timescale, huge changes happen slowly on the human timeline.

You know how Yellowstone has all those geysers, and molten mud pits, and all that stuff? Well, that means that Yellowstone is volcanic in nature. But in the 1960s, one scientist started to ask a question that everyone should have been asking all along… where is the caldera? You know, the symmetrical cone from where the lava comes pouring? Search though he might, he could not find it. No one ever had.

Luckily, NASA was taking pictures from some very high places right about then, and someone kindly thought to send some high-altitude pictures of Yellowstone to the park officials.

It was then he got his answer.

The entire forty miles across the park was the caldera.

All of Yellowstone is an active volcano.

Since then, they have discovered that Yellowstone Park is a Supervolcano. Beneath the surface is lava. Forty-five miles across, and eight miles deep. And people are pounding tent poles into the crust of it.

As Bill Bryson puts it…

“Imagine a pile of TNT about the size of Rhode Island and reaching eight miles into the sky.”

You would think that Yellowstone is one of those volcanoes that just smolders and releases pressure over the years. Nope. Yellowstone is one of those volcanoes that explodes.

So, you’re asking yourself — “But… It won’t ever erupt, will it? It won’t really kill everyone in a hundred mile radius, as well as blanket the Earth in ash… will it?”

You know what… Yellowstone does erupt. Since it formed some sixteen million years ago, it has violently exploded almost a hundred times. The last eruption was one thousand times greater than Mount St Helens.

Bill then goes on to detail for two pages the absolute horror that would happen in the US if this were to occur.

But don’t worry. Scientists estimate that it only erupts about once every 600,000 years.

The last time it erupted was 630,000 years ago.

It’s not just an active supervolcano; it’s a supervolcano that’s way past its eruption date.

If that doesn’t scare you enough, listen to this – In 1974, one end of a lake started to ominously bulge. Tipping the water out of the lake, as pressure beneath raised several dozen square miles three feet into the air. In 1985, it went down eight inches.

Today?

It’s rising again.

But enough on volcanoes…

The chapter on humans extinguishing animals is both eye-opening and sad.

Did you know there once were parrots in North America? They cared so much for members of their flock that you could shoot into a tree full of them and they would fly away, startled… and then realize one of their number had been hurt, and fly back to check on the wounded bird. Which of course, would let the hunter shoot more of them. Repeatedly.

Yeah, they’re extinct.

You ever wonder why there are so few giant animals left on the planet?

Since man arrived on the planet, and learned how to make a spear, thirty genera of giant animals have been extinguished.

Imagine Ground Sloths two stories high. Tortoises as large as a car. Lizards twenty feet long. On beaches, there used to be sea cows that would reach thirty feet in length and weigh ten tons. Hunted to extinction by 1770.

Humans just don’t play well with others.

If we did, there would be thirty more giant land animals alive in the world. Right now, we have four.

Back to Magic?

Well, I continue to play endless amounts of Magic. Every day, countless hours. As soon as I have a good deck, you folks will be the first to know. Right now, all of my decks and results have been totally random.

My favorite deck is “Reliable Elves.”

20 of the worst land in Magic
2 Genju of the Cedars
4 War on All [Llanowar Elves. — Craig]
4 Elves of the Deep Blackness
4 Silhana Ledgewalker
4 Elvish Warrior
4 Elvish Champion
2 Viridian Shaman
4 Moldervine Cloak
4 Umezawa’s Jitte
4 Naturalize
4 Giant Growth, Good Game

Sideboard
4 Wear Away
4 Leyline of Lifeforce
4 Iwamori of the Open Fist
3 Might of Oaks

I won an 8-man with this, beating Zoo, Urza/Izzet, and Ghazi Glare. Immediately entered another 8-man and lost in the first round to Gifts. I expect to lose to Gifts, so I suck it up. Tournament three is much like the second tournament… I have no chance versus Gifts. I suck it up. No worries.

Third tournament, third game, I have a Champion and five elves on the board. My opponent has forests. My Ledgewalker has a Moldervine Cloak on it.

In order to win, I need to attack twice without him getting life gain, or I need to top:

1. GG
2. Might of Oaks.
3. Moldervine.
4. Champion.

And win in one turn.

Instead, I draw Forest, Elf, Forest… while he tops Loxodon Hierarch, Loxodon Hierarch, and Loxodon Hierarch.

So, I can’t really recommend this deck to anyone.

Today I dominated the tournament practice room from 8am to noon with a GWR Wildfire Honden deck. Entered the Premier 4x Tournament, got manaflooded rounds 3 and 4, sucking all but eight land out of my deck, and continued to draw more… and dropped. It was naptime anyway.

Entered a Premier 2x Tournament at five in the evening, and lost in the first two rounds to:

1. Bad matchup.
2. Manascrew both games.

In conclusion — I hope you enjoyed the reviews and rambles, but I have no solid, consistent tech for you this week. The search for an amazing rogue deck continues. For now, it eludes me.

Good luck, and have fun.

Jamie