Well, now that Stijn (and me) have wasted precious seconds of your life with the ridiculous long title (Listed below, since it wouldn’t fit – The Ferrett), let’s take you into the land of one of my favorite multiplayer creatures – Mr. Veteran Explorer. After Stijn’s story, I’ll throw in a little story about Mr.”Kill me please!” But first, here’s Stijn’s story?
Writing for Wacky Wednesdays is an art, first and most probably last part, but you never know: How to get your Spirit of the Night into play in an exquisitely special way, or, the tale of the seemingly infinite number of Veteran Explorers, by Stijn van Dongen
As you may or may not have noticed, I’m doing some work on getting the”longest article title ever” award. Technically, this title would be getting shared between me and Gis, but hey, I’d rather have half a title in the résumé than ten of them not in my possession whatsoever. But assuming most of you have spent bandwidth and time on hoping to read some wacky plays instead of listening to my musings, I’ll just start explaining the entourage.
This is your classical seven-player chaos game, where the players worth noticing are me; my team member Werner with a fearsome Varchild’s Warriders deck (about which I still hope to write someday); cool guy Bas, with his long hair, Metallica sweater and Living Death deck; and last, and probably also least, Piet, who is a.k.a. Gert-Jan to insiders.
We always assumed Gert-Jan was a hockey player who frequently made out with his cheerleaders – since all Dutch upper-class rich boys get double names like that. But it turned out his mother just felt like calling him like that. We can’t blame him, but we can always try and cover up this sham by simply calling the guy Piet – which would equal, in American terms, naming a dude who’s actually called Carlton-Wayne something like Pete. Pete is, maybe coincidentally, pronounced in the same way as Piet. Piet was playing a 150-card highlander deck.
There also were three other players present, but they posed no threat to any of us.
Wow, am I cocky or what?
But face it: Is a deck whose best play is accelerating to a Thorn Elemental on turn 6 a threat to any deck I’ve ever written about? Is a Sligh deck with only Hill Giants and Kamahl’s Sledges any threat to some of the fine decks I try and build? If you’re still not convinced, think about this:
Did you ever doubt the United States would beat the Taliban?
There.
But the entire fun of this momente supreme in multiplayer got started when I was able to persuade one of these little guys to sacrifice his Mogg Fanatic to destroy Piet’s first-turn play, being a Veteran Explorer. This caused my third turn to be more mana rich than other first turns I’m used to, and I profited therefrom by playing a Drakeskull Cameo. This caused all other players to instantly know which deck I was playing – the Spirit of the Night (Destroyer of Souls) deck I wrote about once. But it didn’t matter, everybody was way too happy with his extra lands to start worrying about me.
Now, most Living Death decks use Birds of Paradise. Bas’ didn’t. He also played Veteran Explorers to speed up his deck… And we couldn’t mind less. He played one on his first turn, while also playing a fearsome Survival of the Fittest. Then one of the littler players also played an Explorer. Mana prospects were looking good, and on my next and second turn I played a Sengir Vampire. A beautiful Sengir Vampire with its Alpha picture. That one held the fort, blocking potentially incoming hostile creatures.
Bas’ next turn shouldn’t come as a surprise:”Hey you with the Veteran Explorer – I attack you with my own Explorer!””Okay, block, two dead.””All right, everybody – four more land for you to feast on,” said Bas.”And by the way, I’ll play a Living Death to kill Stijn’s Sengir and get back three Veteran Explorers at once!”
And there was much rejoicing (Yay!).
So when Werner plays a Wrath of God on his second turn, I will get to (three land from my hand + 1 Cameo + six times two explorer lands) sixteen mana on my third turn, right? Werner beautifully cooperates by actually playing his Wrath of God. I then cooperate by actually playing the third land from my hand. Now I remembered somebody killing my Vampire…
How often do you hear the following conversation during third turns of seven player chaos games:
“Bas, swing you for six.”
“Hmm, I’ll just Terminate your dude.”
“No can do, it has protexxxion from black.”
Piet tries to help:”I’ll STP it for you, Bas.”
Me again:”You dirty traitor! You shall know that my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee within a few turns! But for now, I’ll just Dismiss your puny spell. Still serving for six, Bassie.”
Stupid Spineless Collaborating little kid:”I also have a Swords! I’ll Plow your Spirit, Stijn!”
Me:”Grrr. Gain six.”
That’s not quite usual, is it? Luckily for me, I had another Spirit of the Night (Lord of the Seven Gates) in my hand, ready to take another go at it. So after going Dark Ritual/Sengir, I said go. Bassie died a few turns later, since due to some foolish play he lost his Survival of the Fittest. So he, mister Bond, lost his nasty habit of surviving.
Talking about habits: This guy at a Tolkien quiz being asked about Hobbits answers something like,”I always put my wallet in my left front pocket, and pick my nose sometimes.” My prognosis is that he will remain the laughing stock of his friends for a few months still to come.
But now it’s been a hard day’s night, and I’ve been working like a dog. I have no more to write and should be sleeping like a log.
Please keep sending Gis cool plays, he really tries his best to make something cool out of his column. And now for the Rosewater exit: May your first-turn Hippies always pick their Balances from their hands.
Next Week
Honestly it’s not on purpose, but next week I have a couple of stories about the #2 Red spell from the Multiplayer Hall of Fame. I’ll be a short a short story and some cool combo’s, but before I go I promised you how we hosed the landcollector. Here goes,
Another chaos game; three people only, though, but it was fun. Jan-Willem, Jaap, and me were playing (see Wacky Wednesdays 1 and 9). I have no recollection of the decks, other then that I had an Echo Chamber and both Jan-Willem and me had Veteran Explorers. I used the Chamber on his Explorer and, like Stijn, we searched out a lot of lands by turn 3. Jaap, who is an avid land collector always likes to use all his different cool lands, but this time he only had three basic lands in his deck. He was not a happy bunny, and the mana disadvantage surely lost him that game.
‘Til next week, have fun,
Gis