It's the Magic: Goatnapper

Huh, That's Funny
Goatnapper.

Click through image for best card ruling ever.

Consider it for a moment.

...

It's terrible, right?

It does two things: exists as a 2/2 creature and steals a goat.

For a 2/2 red creature, Goatnapper is more expensive than you'd want. For those of you who don't play competitively, a creature's size is irrelevant if it's not cost-effective.

It's the Magic: Afterimage

Shiny!

Ever since last week, I've been excited about combining Glitterfang with Burning Inquiry. 

As my two favorite one-drops for red mana, I'm eager to make a card that does a bit of both. Not literally both of course, but a bit of each.

It has a scaled-back version of Burning Inquiry--in that everyone has to draw a card, then discard one at random--but with the swing of making Glitterfangs for each card specifically discarded this way.

It's the Magic: Phyrexian Jalapeno Paupers Pt II

Last week: Stuff.
This week: The rest of the stuff.


Gremlin Mine reminds me of the guy who has a truck and would—if called upon—provide emotional support in an hour of need. However, I don’t need his truck because I have a Blazer, and as far as emotional support, I have a Blazer! Gremlin Mine does one of two things, neither of which will ever do me much good. I still use it, just like I still hang with people in the absence of material and emotional gain, but it's not too common.

It's the Magic: Phyrexian Jalapeno Paupers

For the past three months, I’ve been collecting Scars of Mirrodin cards without having the time to do more than draft them. They’ve been sitting in their little Scars of Mirrodin ghetto while I get the time to properly integrate them into the rest of my decks or consign them to the purgatory that is my boxes of unused cards.

I finally, had the chance to do so, creating a number of decks heavily based on themes that Scars of Mirrodin introduced (Metalcraft, Infect, Proliferate, Infect, Sacrifice, Infect). As I flipped through my piles of SoM commons time after time in search of more Pristine Talismans, Grim Afflictions, and Remember the Fallens, I passed other commons and dismissed them with little thought.

It's the Magic: Saying Hello to Magic 2012

Old Times

“Hey, Merfolk Looter. Didn’t see you there. When did you get back into town?”

“Oh really? the 16th? Where’ve you—“

“…oh. I guess that answers my question about whether you want a drink or not.”

“…look, Mer, there’s something I wanted to say before you left; I’m sorry. I…I just wanted that deck to work so badly—“ 

7252-Favorites, Part 2

 

Tweets are great. My tweets are better. And these tweets are the best of the better.

Watching Apocalypse Now. Pretty good movie, actually. The Odessey plus Heart of Darkness and Vietnam.

2:16 PM Oct 1st, 2009 via txt

How messed up good is that movie? I didn't get to see the end of it, but I assume they left room for a 2012 Rambo/Willard team up movie versus zombie terrorist Sergeant Barnes.

Hodges is awesome.

1:31 PM Oct 18th, 2009 via txt

Seriously. Hodges. Awesome.

yay. working with dad. :(

7:50 AM Nov 7th, 2009 via txt

I like helping out my dad. However, that often means working with him on ambitious, but poorly conceived projects.

Baste & Switch (and mill)(and kill) finally won a game. Fear the Hedron Crabs! #mtg

10:42 PM Nov 8th, 2009 via web

While this deck no longer exists, it does mark my first Hedron Crab victory. Truly a momentous day.


Re: Trojan commercial: If they have blow-job machines, why are they selling condoms?!

November 21, 2009 11:16:07 PM via txt

Ah, self-checkout; the only place where your line moves slower than one run by Wal-Mart workers.

November 22, 2009 6:47:57 PM via txt

Another case of "Bad Idea, Worse Idea."

Huh. Victoria Hand is a lesbian. I knew there was a reason I liked her.

December 02, 2009 8:02:29 PM via txt

It's not like I like lesbians (I think my comment on record is "useless"), but for some reason, I like well-portrayed lesbians in comics.

Chekov's gun? New Port City is rapidly becoming Chekov's gun store!

December 03, 2009 7:37:42 AM via txt

Ah, New Port City. Your impenetrable labyrinth of history and interpersonal connections will forever be locked away from this mortal world. And it turns out "Chekov's Armory" is the phrase I'm looking for.

Last tweet of the day. I swear. American Dad referenced Rusted Root! :D

December 06, 2009 8:55:54 PM via txt

You guys just can't fathom how much I love 90's has-been band Rusted Root.

CSI ep "Say Uncle": 1 minute into fieldwork Hodges looks in a garbage can and finds the evidence. Hodges is awesome! #hodges

December 09, 2009 10:46:18 AM via web

Seriously.

It's the Magic: Rider on the Storm, or Eating Crow

 Huh, That’s Funny
You know what's funny? Storm Crow.

"Storm Crow has a sword next its power. Baneslayer Angel doesn't!
Sol Ring can't attack; Storm Crow can.
Storm Crow doesn't die to Krosan Grip like Black Lotus and the Mox.
Storm Crow has flying, Tarmygoyf doesn't!
Storm is OBVIOUSLY the best card in all of Magic. The proof is all there!! "
-Pinsir52, Portal printing

Sword in the Wrong Place-itis. Classic case. Totally incurable.

It's the Magic: Besiegement

New Hotness
Although Mirrodin Beseiged came out two weeks ago, it's not quite old news yet. I just played my first draft with it this week (A Scars-Scars-Beseiged draft with three friends who hadn't been keeping up with the spoilers and previews), and I learned a few things:

Infect is still potent. I don't mean that in that it's a strong offensive tool. It is (I was consistently threatening two of the other three players on the board with my Infect/Proliferate deck), but what I mean by that is that there are certain cards which radically change the way the game is played; bombs. Bombs demand an answer and quickly, pushing players into a strong attack (in this context meaning a counter spell or removal) or into a hunkering defense while they try to draw an answer. Once a player hits seven poison (give or take) anything with infect is, essentially, a bomb. That makes a forty-card deck of three-drop infect rats and proliferate something that demands more than a few answers; it demands you simply kill the source. That's why I died first. Okay, indiscriminate poison counter allocation is why I died first, but the underlying cause is the same; poison changes a game significantly.

It's the Magic: Constitutions

I mentioned last week that my Archive of Frustration/Koshi matchup wasn’t going to get its third tiebreaking game without a second player. After seeing both decks in action a few times, Jordan offered to play the black deck and help me settle the issue once and for all. 

As with the solo games, the match ran to the bitter end, with dramatic swings back and forth as what would have been finishers in any other game simply shifted the momentum to one camp or another. In the end, I was trying to kill him with a field of no creatures whatsoever while he, with a deck of about twelve cards left--all lands--played Phyrexian Arena so he could retrace Syphon Life quickly enough to kill me. A few turns later, I still had no creatures and he’d Syphon Lifed about nine times and I was down to three. Next turn, he would draw two of his last three cards, Syphon Life twice and the game would be over. I was dead, but as I am wont to do, I continued playing it through. 

My final card draw was as surprising as it was fortuitous: a lone Hedron Crab. Both of us were hard pressed to contain laughter as I played the crab, then a land, winning the game with the most perplexed of all one-drops.