Drawing dead? No sir. My saliva and spit would split thread to fiber and bits. What can be deduced from that?
Bingo.
A lot has happened since we last talked. This is a good thing. While usually I’m the first in line for additional helpings of an uneventful, sedentary existence, it’s also true that a man only gets so much time on this earth before he turns down the wrong alley and a hobo with a Turkish razor unzips him like a pillowcase.
Sometimes it pays to do stuff before that window closes. Let me catch you up on what’s been going on.
1. I’m teaching my fiancée to play Magic: The Gathering.
I’m not using physical cards — we’re exclusively playing on Magic: Online. Since many of you reading likely have a significant other, dog, or robot who wishes to become a magician, let me tell you about my own experiences — so that you might hit the high notes without running afoul of the pitfalls.
Magic: Online has a pretty good learning tool for new players — they’re called “Planeswalker Decks” and you can buy the first deck pack, which is all you need, for $4.99 at the online store. To teach her the basics of the game, we started out by playing the green deck vs. the green deck.
The basic Green Planeswalker deck (and don’t be fooled by the name, these decks don’t have Planeswalkers in them — that’d be too complicated) is a deck with four good cards in it — two copies of Overrun and two copies of Troll Ascetic. The other fifty-six are low-powered cards that can be used to battle and learn the game without doing something unfun, like ending it instantly.
Like it was 1994, she learned about combat by swinging with Grizzly Bears, and learned about instants by playing Giant Growth.
Coolest card in the Green Planeswalker Deck: Troll Ascetic
Troll Ascetic is a challenging but ultimately rewarding card. Regeneration was a little difficult to understand at first, but she figured it out quickly. Within a couple of games, it became apparent to Michelle that Troll Ascetic was head-and-shoulders above something like Trained Armodon, which was also in the Green Planeswalker deck. Relative creature quality is important to learn.
Most miserable card in the Green Planeswalker Deck: Overrun
This card might as well have said “Okay, the fun’s over, stop playing.” The first couple of times I drew Overrun, it ended the game immediately. I found myself apologizing for drawing it. A few dozen games in, once Michelle had switched over to her Jund deck (I’ll tell you about that one in a second), whenever I would play the green deck against her, I’d find myself having conversations like this:
M: “Is it okay to attack?”
G: “Well, you have seventeen toughness worth of guys, I have three guys with a combined eleven power, and you’re at eight life. If draw Overrun, that would give me twenty power worth of guys, so you can safely attack with four toughness worth of guys. If I draw Overrun, you’d go to one life.”
M: “Oh…well, I’m just going to play it safe.”
G: “Well, if you let me sit around too long, then I’m going to draw more guys, and then eventually draw the Overrun anyway, so…”
M: “I like how this is complicated and not fun.” *
In the end, she wouldn’t attack and we’d just sit there staring at each other, like it was our first date and I just told her that I ask artists to draw dryads for a living.
“Is there a lot of money in that?”
“No.”
“Well, at least you don’t have your looks.”
Skill testers to remove from the Green Planeswalker deck: Wall of Wood, Natural Spring
It’s important to show your partner that these cards are awful while teaching them to play. I was able to do that fairly quickly, and about five games in she was already wrinkling her brow when she’d draw either card. She’d cast Natural Spring, we’d laugh about how it didn’t affect the board or really do anything at all, and we grew closer as a couple while relegating straight life gain spells to the joke status they deserve.
Luckily, Planeswalker decks come with a bunch of semi-useful cards you can swap in for your terrible ones once you figure out that they are indeed terrible. In the case of the green deck, when I remade it to play against her at a more advanced level, I removed the Natural Springs and Walls of Wood and added cards like Lys Alana Huntmaster, Roughshod Mentor, Immaculate Magistrate, and Elvish Warriors.
Of course, I didn’t want to restrict Michelle to playing nothing but green, despite that strategy’s Saladin-like track record. When I asked her which color she wanted to try next, she chose black.
Coolest card in the Black Planeswalker Deck: Terror
The deck had “cool” cards like Nightmare, but in the end it was Terror that made the biggest impact. I think as soon as I slapped Blanchwood Armor on a Grizzly Bear and turned it sideways, only to have it wiped from existence, she was a Terror fan. When I went back and remade the decks with better cards, in order to give her more of a challenge, Terror played a role in the following conversation, which I have already related via Twitter, but deserves a place in this article:
I played Vigor, a creature card with a lot of text on it, including a keyword and several replacement effects. (What it’s doing in the Planeswalker card pool at all, when it’s arguably more complicated than almost any other green six-drop, is a question for another time.)
Me: “Okay, this card is a bit complicated, honey. Give it a good read.”
At this point, Michelle read Vigor and went into the tank for five seconds. She then played Terror on it, punctuating the cast with the sort of expectant silence a question-answering student might reserve for a professor.
Me: “I guess it’s not that complicated.”
What else was there to say? A Terror killing some text-bloated, expensive monstrosity is Magic distilled down to its most crucial milligram.
After a large number of “educational” games with the various Planeswalker decks, it was time to introduce Michelle to the most addictive Magic: The Gathering experience — choosing “her” deck and tricking it out with her favorite cards. She chose the “Scales of Fury” deck and after three games replaced the Plague Beetles (“I don’t like these!”) with Ravenous Rats. My chest swelled with pride.
After a bunch more games, many of them hilarious, it was time to “take the training wheels off” and convert the decks over to actual cards so she could open her complimentary-with-account-purchase M11 booster and maybe find something useful.
We converted her deck over (it cost about six tickets on the bots — Hollowborn Barghest isn’t exactly burning up the charts) and she opened her booster to receive the absolute most confusing, text-loaded, and worthless rare for a new player possible, Necrotic Plague. Nice. It’s like starting your rock-climbing career with K2, except if K2 was made of feces and nobody wanted to climb it, even the poop sherpas.
Can anyone think of a worse card for a new player to pull out of an M11 booster? I thought about explaining to her that the card might have been good in a deck with Sprouting Thrinax, because of attrition, but I just said “Well, actually, if you read…” and then just gave up five words in.
We managed to make it past that speed bump, though, and continued down the road to playing. I introduced her to tutoring by buying her an Imperial Seal, introduced her to planeswalkers with a Liliana Vess, introduced her to sideboarding by putting together “20 counters, 4 Scroll Thief, Disks, Zuran Orb, Draining Whelk + Sphinx of Jwar Isle.dec” ** (this sent her scrambling for the Great Sable Stags and Pyroblast) and then introduced her to mana-screw and mana-flood by, well, letting nature take it’s course.
She’s coming along well. If you happen to be floating around the new player room and you see “Veralynne,” that’s her. Go ahead and challenge her to a game of Planeswalker — she needs practice if our children are going to win the 2031 Magic: The Gathering World Championships, held on the Moon.
I can’t wait for Rich Hagon virtual brain-tour of the Daedalus crater.
All in all, the process of teaching Michelle to play was fun and rewarding, and contained more amusing moments than I can relate here. It’s for this reason that I’m sure a large number of other “Magic learning” stories must exist. If you have a good anecdote, yarn, or full-fledged diatribe about teaching a friend or loved one to play Magic, make sure to chime in on the forums.
2. I won a Paris PTQ on Magic Online but scooped one phase before lethal, since I can’t attend.
Hi, I’m Geordie Tait, and I recently won a 361-man Scars Sealed Deck event on Magic: Online.
Just getting that out of the way — I tell this to everyone I meet, even the Chinese guy who runs the diner down the way. He looks at me like I’m crazy and hands over my orange chicken without comment.
Let me talk a little while about the tournament and the pool, and give you a mini report. I might even have a little advice about how to build decks, if you care to listen. Since, you know, I’m the biggest of deals now and clearly know everything about the Sealed Format.
In most pools, there are thirteen to fourteen cards that will go in the deck no matter what, and what you do with the other ten slots will depend on how you expect your deck to finish games.
In my Paris PTQ deck, the “sure things” were Razor Hippogriff, Hoard-Smelter Dragon, Golem Artisan, Glimmerpoint Stag, Oxidda Scrapmelter, Contagion Engine, Trigon of Corruption, Arc Trail, Shatter, Revoke Existence, Arrest, and Cerebral Eruption.
(With cards like these, I think we can agree that R/W was the call here — the other colors simply had nothing going.)
Whether my deck was playing first or drawing first, aggressive or defensive, I wanted those twelve cards in it, as they are all unconditionally good (of course, some of them are conditional, but I mean they are good both in aggressive and defensive decks).
I also had a Myrsmith, and I think it would pretty much take a miracle to have such an artifact-poor final build that Myrsmith wouldn’t be worth it in either an offensive or defensive role, so I included Myrsmith as another “sure thing” — that’s thirteen.
Sadly, only three (!!) of these cards were artifacts, leaving me with a lot of holes to fill.
What about the other ten cards? Well, that depends. Let’s look at some of the other cards to which I had access:
Abuna Acolyte
Auriok Replica
Bladed Pinions
Chrome Steed
Darksteel Myr
Neurok Replica (reasonable with or without an island, better with one)
Seize the Initiative
Sunspear Shikari
Sylvok Lifestaff
Sylvok Replica (would require adding a forest)
Trigon of Mending
Vulshok Replica
Wall of Tanglecord
So, how would I fill out the rest of the deck? Looking at the remaining cards, a pretty obvious build presented itself, and it certainly had nothing to do with beating down.
The final build was:
Creatures
Abuna Acolyte
Auriok Replica
Darksteel Myr
Glimmerpoint Stag
Golem Artisan
Hoard-Smelter Dragon
Myrsmith
Neurok Replica
Oxidda Scrapmelter
Razor Hippogriff
Sylvok Replica
Sunspear Shikari
Wall of Tanglecord
Spells
Arc Trail
Arrest
Bladed Pinions
Cerebral Eruption
Contagion Engine
Revoke Existence
Shatter
Trigon of Corruption
Trigon of Mending
Sylvok Lifestaff
Lands
8 Plains
7 Mountains
2 Forest
Yes, Chrome Steed and Vulshok Replica on the bench… or, as I like to call them, “More expensive, more fragile Scathe Zombies” and “Mr. 3/1 who can’t block anything and does three damage I won’t need while I’m killing all of their permanents every late game.”
For all my bombs, I wasn’t blessed with an abundance of useful sideboard cards. If I’d had a Liquimetal Coating, I might even have played it main.
Here’s something that might qualify as advice: every Sealed deck has to have a plan. The plan of my deck was simple — stall until a finisher shows up. It’s not often that you get a deck with two one-sided Wrath of God effects in Limited, but with Contagion Engine and Cerebral Eruption, that’s exactly what I had. I built pretty single-mindedly toward a control plan.
With no mana Myr, the deck wasn’t about accelerating into Hoard-Smelter Dragon. I’m actually glad about that, because most of the time in Sealed when you accelerate into some absurd bomb, they just use their first removal spell to take it out. I know that’s what I was doing to other people.
You know how it can be — turn 2 Myr, turn 3 Myr, turn 4 Hoard-Smelter Dragon…whoops, they cast Arrest, and you’re left with a Shatter, a land, and a Soliton in your hand to try to win the game. Sometimes you can… but something as simple as a Ghalma’s Warden leaves you searching the top of your deck for a Disperse or Liquimetal Coating. I think by having no mana Myr, I was actually blessed by a greater density of relevant cards.
This pool had one of the most powerful late-games in the entire field, so I just needed to get to those later turns and let the engine take over. I built it with three things in mind:
1. Make opponents commit to the board in order to deal any damage, then Wrath;
2. Set up a board where you can hold spot removal for the biggest threats;
3. Mop up once the big boys show up.
The early cards in the deck are awesome at accomplishing these goals. Imagine an opponent who blasts out of the gates with Sylvok Lifestaff, Iron Myr, Chrome Steed, Glint Hawk Idol, with a Galvanic Blast waiting in the wings.
If I played a Darksteel Myr on turn 3, and a Trigon of Mending turn 4 with R/W up, what would that hand even do? I’ll answer that — nothing. If they had Arrest instead of Galvanic Blast, maybe I had Revoke Existence for the Steed. If they had both, their hand still does nothing if I have the Revoke Existence.
Try to dream up an opening hand that can do significant damage through Darksteel Myr and Trigon of Mending — it’s not easy and will always involve Grasping, Clasping, or Arresting the Myr, plus some huge beater. People typically have to play out a thousand cards to do it… at which point the wrecking ball Contagion Engine comes off the top, or I hit on a Cerebral Eruption, or cast Oxidda Scrapmelter, Glimmerpoint Stag it, and win anyway.
Wall of Tanglecord + Darksteel Myr, Wall of Tanglecord + Myrsmith, Myrsmith + Trigon of Mending, Arc Trail + anything. All of these pretty much ensure you won’t get behind early.
In Scars Sealed, the defensive cards are better than the aggressive ones. That said, sometimes your deck’s plan is an obvious aggressive build and/or you’re Darwin Kastle, and it’s correct to go in that direction. Whatever you do, visualize how your late-game is going to work. If it trumps the other guy’s, stall. If it doesn’t, beat down!
Here’s a quick report.
Round 1 vs. extra medium (B/W/g, double-Loxodon Wayfarer)
I drew first every round with this deck, obviously.
Game 1, he played a turn 3 Loxodon Wayfarer. I’m sure it was probably just a poor card choice, but a card like Wayfarer is the sort that you play when you’re trying to protect yourself to win the late game where you perceive an advantage. Through the day I was always glad to see cards of that sort from my opponent — because with one exception, my late-game was pretty much unbeatable. If every opponent wanted to just draw all forty cards and see who came out on top, I was cool with that.
By turn 8, he’d played two threatening cards — Chimeric Mass and Molder Beast. Scrapmelter dealt with one (and soaked up a Grasp of Darkness) and Arc Trail plus Trigon dealt with the other.
The rest of his plays were defensive creatures like Fume Spitter and Loxodon Wayfarer, and Bladed Pinions. Again, that’s fine if there’s some absurd card you’re hoping to draw — but I guarantee my insane Sealed deck will topdeck better every time.
I drew Contagion Engine quickly, and the Engine + Trigon of Corruption beats his whole deck, as the double-proliferate could reload the Trigon counters and also kill whatever I put the counters on.
Game 2, I was sitting on Arrest, Cerebral Eruption, Scrapmelter, and Trigon of Corruption when turn 4 rolled around and his board was a Leaden Myr, and Ghalma’s Warden. I played the Trigon, but he Revoked it and played a 1/5. Wanting to get some defense on the table, I played Scrapmelter on his Myr, which turned out to be awkward when he then played a Chimeric Mass for 5. Luckily, I topdecked Sylvok Replica and had the green mana for it.
We both sat around on our butts forever, stalemated — his board was eventually like five creatures, including two Rust Ticks, while I had Darksteel Myr, random dudes, and Sylvok Lifestaff to gum up the ground. He was beginning to outcreature me and push damage through, I cast a semi-defensive Hoard-Smelter Dragon, and then and I finally reached that late-game, nothing-to-do-with-my-mana sweet spot where I could cast Cerebral Eruption into his billion toughness board just to see his next card and maybe mise. It hit Molder Beast for the one-sided Wrath + Lava Axe, and he conceded on the spot.
Round 2 vs. calvops311 (B/W)
Game 1 I saw Arc Trail, Darksteel Myr, Scrapmelter, Neurok Replica, Trigon of Mending in my early cards. Heck, if he managed to put pressure on me through that, I would have personally given him a (edited) (edited) (edited) with a (edited) (edited), (edited), cup the (edited), with a full (edited edited) Night Dealings.
He made his best effort, Clasping the Myr, playing Necrotic Ooze, and Grasping a Golem Artisan. I traded Oxidda Scrapmelter for Ichorclaw Myr because I didn’t want a poison counter with his Clasp in play (I could easily imagine drawing only removal, land and other non-kill-conditions for ten turns), but Trigon of Mending was working the whole time. Razor Hippogriff came off the top and suddenly I had Golem Artisan plus a 3/3 flier while he had a lot of two things — Jack and Sh**. And I just cast Shatter on Jack.
Game 2, I experimented with siding in double Corpse Cur for the recursion and “grind down,” factor and was somewhat vindicated when I drew one for the fourth turn against his Myrsmith draw instead of a useless Vulshok Replica. Of course, he was light on land and I was trying to be aggressive for the first time all tournament, so my attacks were a bit muddled. He was smart enough not to bother blocking the Cur (why was I attacking? He had nothing but Glint Hawk Idol besides his Myrsmith, and if he wanted to attack me with 1/1 Myr tokens instead of chumping, that was certainly more than fine) but he wasn’t able to do much when I just played my sixth land and cast Hoard-Smelter Dragon.
2-0
Round 3 vs. Corrupt Official (B/R)
Game 1, staring down his board of two Snapsail Gliders, an Iron Myr, and Culling Dais, I assumed we were in it for the long game and just Shattered the Dais instead of one of his Gliders. With the way my deck was grinding other decks down, it was basically like Shattering an Ancestral Recall — plus, with a Wall of Tanglecord on board (with green mana) and Trigon of Mending in my hand, I though I could afford to take a little damage now and save a lot of card advantage later.
He tapped low the next turn for Vulshok Replica and a Silver Myr, and even though I had other things to cast on my next turn, the potential upside of a Cerebral Eruption was too great to ignore. Confident I could recover from a whiff and sure I would win the game on the spot if I hit, I cast the Eruption and it revealed Skinrender, wiping out his entire board and letting me know that I should wait on casting Golem Artisan.
I beat down with a Lifestaffed Neurok Replica and used Trigon of Mending to get back above twenty. He eventually found Darksteel Sentinel and Precursor Golem, so I went for Hoard-Smelter Dragon when his hand was Skinrender and one mystery card. He couldn’t kill it, and thanks to the resilient Darksteel Sentinel, it flew over for seventeen the next turn.
Game 2, I had an opening playline of Abuna Acolyte, Darksteel Myr, and Glimmerpoint Stag. It seemed like the sort of hand that could stall to get some value out of the Glimmerpoint Stag (Razor Hippogriff, Scrapmelter, something like that) so I was feeling good. Sadly, his Embersmith threw a wrench into my plans.
I was hoping the Acolyte would help, but he cast Palladium Myr turn 3 and was quickly in a position to cast multiple artifacts in a turn. I was at a disadvantage heading into the mid-game. I held Revoke Existence nearly forever despite taking a few damage each turn, knowing the other shoe was going to drop. It eventually did in the form of Trigon of Corruption — but by the time I removed that, my Darksteel Myr was dead and the damage was done. He eventually ground me down as too many lands came off the top of my deck.
Game 3 would have gone a lot better if the creature that shouldn’t have been in the deck against Embersmith and Instill Infection, Abuna Acolyte, hadn’t both been hit by…Instill Infection. If he’d been something else (Chrome Steed even), I would have been at much more of an advantage.
As it was, my early hand featured Wall of Tanglecord, Trigon of Corruption, Arc Trail, Shatter, Razor Hippogriff, and Contagion Engine in addition to the Abuna Acolyte, so I couldn’t complain too much. I Contagion Engined his team and with Trigon/Engine killed everything he played for the rest of the game.
3-0
Round 4 vs. Kongasu (U/R)
Game 1 was a strange one. I kept a two-lander and was screwed, Revoking a Myr in order to avoid discarding, while he was mega-flooded + Scrapmelter. I discarded Auriok Replica while he just played lands and beat down with his Myr — and when I finally drew a third land, of course he cast Scrapmelter on my twenty-third card Neurok Replica just to get some pressure on the table. The next turn I tried to Arrest it and he cast Stoic Rebuttal, which pretty much screamed “I’ve got nothing! I have to kill you with this one guy!”
I drew a fourth land finally and got my own Scrapmelter out there, and we entered the mid-game with my five spells in hand to his three probable do-nothings. I got greedy and took three damage down to eleven because I wanted to Scrapmelter/Stag any artifact topdecks, and started feeling the heat when he topdecked Sky-Eel School instead. He bashed me to eighteen and played Riddlesmith. I Contagion Engined his team, but then he played Vulshok Replica and bashed me to six. I used Glimmerpoint Stag to blink my Engine, he knocked me to three, and then two the next turn.
Things were looking grim, but I drew…Trigon of Mending! Figuring the only way I could lose was to some shenanigans, I left my Golem Artisan back to block his 1/1 flier, just in case. He topdecked his own Artisan and…didn’t give it haste. Instead, he ran the “attack my School into your Golem Artisan, it dies, go.”
Perhaps it would have been worth his time to, at any point, read Golem Artisan.
Game 2 I did nothing in the early turns and he cast Sky-Eel School off of a Myr. With only Glimmerpoint Stag/Cerebral Eruption/Shatter in hand and nothing much to work with, I punted up a Cerebral Eruption while sitting on twenty life (the exact thing I’d been training myself not to do) hit a two-drop, and traded it for a Myr. Next turn he obviously played a 2/1 and a 3/1, Trigon of Corruptioned my Darksteel Myr, and it was over quickly.
If I was willing to wait to get value out of the Stag, to the extent of not raw-dogging it, why was I not willing to wait on the Eruption? Terrible. Easily my worst play all tournament.
Game 3, I Revoked an early Perilous Myr for value, since I was holding Sunspear Shikari and just drew Sylvok Lifestaff. I curved out with a three-drop instead of casting the Staff…. and of course he Halt Ordered it the next turn, bwah hah hah.
My hand was then essentially two Wraths and two Dragons, but I had only three mana. Meanwhile, he was dickering around with Spellbombs and taking Acolyte/Shikari beats, land-light himself.
We entered the midgame with him at nine and my board of dudes (Glimmerpoint Stag the largest) facing down his Argent Sphinx and Sky-Eel School. My hand was nothing but absurd bombs, but a man willing to play Halt Order certainly has Stoic Rebuttal(s) as well. I cast Golem Artisan while he was tapped down and he stole it with Volition Reins, trying to claw his way back into the game. He traded the Artisan for Glimmerpoint Stag and I used my window to cast Hoard-Smelter Dragon.
He simply untapped and said go. His two guys could block my Hoard-Smelter and kill it, which would leave me with an unimpressive board and slow/unreliable Wrath effects in hand, vulnerable to a big creature. I decided not to make the trade and cast Trigon of Corruption — sure enough, he countered it. He then cast Rust Tick and left 1UU up again. Rather than run a bomb into another counterspell, I just destroyed the Rust Tick and said “go.”
He drew and passed again, I tried Contagion Engine, and it was countered by his second Stoic Rebuttal. He cast Soliton as the last card out of his hand, I blew it up and decided to attack, he chumped the Dragon, and topdecked nothing of consequence
4-0
Round 5 vs. QuaCk QuaCk (B/G)
Remember how I said that every deck should have a plan? Well, my plan was sufficient to win against all manner of bombs:
· Myr Battlesphere? Contagion Engine the tokens and Shatter it.
· Hoard-Smelter Dragon? A little scarier, but I could Arrest it or race it with my own. And a combination of burn spells or -1/-1 counters could do the trick, as well.
· Sunblast Angel? Play around it or kill it with Contagion Engine/Trigon.
· Steel Hellkite? Any artifact is no problem — I have tons of removal.
· Contagion Engine? Even if they have a combination of some kind, my deck has the tools to take it apart.
There was one bomb, however, that my deck couldn’t beat. That was Carnifex Demon.
Carnifex Demon isn’t affected by artifact removal or small burn spells, it kills off everything else so you can’t really race it — and most importantly, can’t be beaten by the Contagion Engine/Trigon of Corruption combo that I was using to kill off every other creature in the late game.
I had one Arrest. His deck had two Slice in Twains and two Sylvok Replicas. It just wasn’t going to happen. The answer to winning this match was actually to board into a more aggressive deck and play first, but I failed to figure that out in time, and lost the match despite managing to win Game 1 through the Demon.
4-1
Round 6 vs. redsoxnumber1fan (B/R)
Or, alternatively, the original detective story:
“On The Case” With Robert Frowney and Garvas Elscott
I can’t tell you what I don’t know, Robert Frowney. The details are scarce. A player named
“redsoxnumber1fan”
was found X-2’d in a dumpster behind the Paris PTQ venue. Nobody knows what happened. We should go take a look- maybe we can aid the MODO police in their investigations.
Let’s just take a look around…
Well, if it isn’t Garvas Elscott, the MODO gumshoe!
I’m sorry, officer. We’re not trying to interfere with any MODO police proceedings here. It’s just that my associate Robert Frowney has considerable
experience with solving magical crimes — and he might be able to lend a hand to your investigation. Everyone is wondering what happened to
redsoxnumber1fan
, and we won’t be able to feel same in our beds until the murderer is brought to justice. If
redsoxnumber1fan
got X-2’d, any one of us could be next!
Excellent! Have you got any leads in the case?
The guy on top got X-2’d? He appears to be picture of health! Clearly some foul play was involved.
Fiendish. Well, you seem to have it all figured out, Detective. I trust that you’ll track down his scoundrel opponent and bring him to justice before a tribunal of ORCs —
Wow. You’ve done it again, Frowney. I guess that solves the case. This was no murder — it was a suicide!
What do you think, Garvas?
Roll the end credits!
Round 7
DIRECTED BY
Contagion Engine
Trigon of Corruption
Round 8
SPECIAL THANKS TO
Tim Aten
Round 9
STARRING
Contagion Engine
as
Agent Mack Tanner
Hoard-Smelter Dragon
as
Reginald “Reg” Carver
Oxidda Scrapmelter
as
DeQuan “Strings” Shabazz
Round 10
SUPPORTING CAST
Trigon of Mending
as
Nurse Elsa Glockensturmer
James Hong
as
Mr. Wong
AJ Sacher
as
Holden Caulfield
Round 11
CASTING DIRECTOR
Jeff Cunningham
Round 12
GOOD LUCK IN PARIS TO
Elmond, a.k.a. George Blankenship
Write you later, all.
Belated holiday wishes,
Geordie Tait
FP_GLyM on MODO
Geordie_Tait
on Twitter
* –
Actually a quote from Josh Bennett about the Vs. System TCG.
** – My favorite thing about this deck was that I got to pull Rainbow Efreet out of mothballs for it. I even ran a Vision Charm.
Bonus Music Section:
I’m a big fan of hip-hop/rap music, and many of my favorite tracks have served as inspiration for my articles. I thought I’d share my current playlist, which contains many of my favorites. Purists will note that I like a lot of songs that some would consider “over-produced,” however I can’t just fill up my MP3 player with Nas, Nas, and more Nas — I like to spread it around.
Some of these songs, however, are present for comedy/irony reasons.
Current playlist:
G’s & Soldiers
by Planet Asia
The Whole City Behind Us
by The Game, Kanye West, and Ludacris
Ante Up Remix
by Busta Rhymes
Run This Town
by Jay-Z
Checkmate
by Jadakiss
Back Wit’ Heat
by Canibus
Live Your Life
by T.I. ft Rihanna
Escape Artist
by Sage Francis
I Love College
by Asher Roth
California Love
by Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre
Ain’t Nuthin’ But A G Thang
by Snoop Dogg
It Ain’t Hard To Tell
by Nas
Stronger
by Kanye West
So Watcha Want?
by the Beastie Boys
Stomp
by Young Buck ft T.I. & Ludacris
Protect Ya Neck
by The Wu-Tang Clan
Gimme The Loot
by the Notorious B.I.G.
A C’mon
by Chuggo
When The Music Stops
by Eminem
Empire State of Mind
by Jay-Z
Boom! (Remix)
by Royce da 5’9″
Drug Ballad
by Eminem
Hell Yeah
by Dead Prez