GP London

When I heard about GP London, I thought I'd head along to play some Magic, making a change from only playing at prereleases. Not in the main event; I play seldomly enough that I have no idea if I have enough cards to make a half decent Standard deck, and certainly not a good one. Plus an incredibly long tournament didn't seem too appealing. 

Liz got the Friday off, arranged for the kids to be looked after by their grandparents while we were away, we were ready for our first weekend away from the children. We booked a hotel a couple of days before we went so we wouldn't have to travel far each day, staying at the Marriott which was very nice. 

It was about midday when we arrived at the Excel centre. We picked up our Infinity Challenge badges and wandered around a bit as we had some time until the first event we signed up for was going to start (2 Headed Giant Sealed). One of the Wizards people with a camera chatted to us, and we also did an interview with Dan who was videoing people there for a future GP London video. 

Modern Masters Draft 2

I was lucky enough to play another draft of modern masters the other week. Kaleb was being looked after, so both me and Liz could go which was nice. Also nice was seeing everyone from Hemel as we hadn't been for a while.

I started off the draft with a bit of OK blue cards, but also picked up some green, to keep my options open. In the second pack, I stopped seeing blue, but got some good black and green cards, including a Worm Harvest, so kept an eye out for other support cards. In the third pack, I continued on like this, picking up a couple of blue cards again.

While putting the deck together, I could just about do a two colour green/black deck, but would either have to play a bad 23rd card or an 18th land, or splash a third colour. I took the later option as some of the blue cards I wasn't playing were good even later on.

The deck looked a bit like this: Bonesplitter, Executioner's Capsule, Thallid, Peppersmoke, Mothdust Changeling, Rathi Trapper, Blightspeaker, Echoing Courage, Nacromeba, Death Denied, Stinkweed Imp, Moldervine Cloak, Mulldrifter, Kodama's Reach, Auntie's Snitch, Syphon Life, Nantuko Shaman, Greater Mossdog, Penumbra Spider, Worm Harvest, Giant Dustwasp, Riftwing Cloudskate, Sylvan Bounty, Tombstalker, Walker of the Grove, Dakmor Salvage, Vivid Grove, Terramorphic Expanse

A fairly small graveyard theme, but some fun cards nonetheless. I had more than enough fixing to support the blue splash too, which was nice.

I lost the first match playing against faeries plus Skeletal Vampire, and lost the second match to an aggressive black/red deck with a lot of goblins. Ended one game with Oona too.

I had really fun games in the last match. I got the worm harvest on the graveyard by dredging a stinkweed imp, and got to retrace it using a Dakmor Salvage, ready to retrace again. At one point, my opponent made all his lands, which were all forests into creatures to attack with, then playing Echoing Courage on them...

My main focus with drafting the set has been to play something I'd find fun. It's a shame the set is so hard to get as if I could draft it more, I would try out some of the other archetypes.

On the way home, I had a weird realisation with Liz. We were walking to our house from the train station and I realised that whenever I have walked that bit of road previously, it was either on my own, or with her and Kaleb - I had never walked that bit with just her, which I found novel for some reason.