Magic deck: HaakonStorm

When Innistrad was first being spoiled, one card that caught my eye was Rooftop Storm. Reading the card, I thought it would be fun to pair it with Haakon, Stromgald Scourge...

Innistrad First Picks

After the last draft I did, I got one booster pack as a prize, and didn't have enough time to look through it last night, so will do so now. 


Interestingly, there are no white cards in the pack, but the other colours are fairly well represented. The top 4 cards are Unburial Rites, Rage Thrower, Mirror-Mad Phantasm and Mayor of Avabruck // Howlpack Alpha. 

Drafting the Laboratory Maniac deck

I did another draft last night and, while I didn't do well with blue last time, ended up playing blue again. I had been reading about an archetype where you mill yourself and make many spider tokens over and over again, but didn't want to go into the draft looking to play the deck, and just went with what I saw. As it turned out, I ended up going with a deck very similar anyway. 


When I opened the pack, the first card I picked was Skaab Ruinator. Massive creature, evasion; generally a great bomb. Meant I was going to be in blue again, but I had a win condition, whereas last time I just had ways to delay my inevitable defeat. It also meant I would have to be looking into playing cards that filled my graveyard, so kept that in mind. I can't remember what my next pick or two were, it might have been a Victim of Night. But my pick either 3 or 4 was Laboratory Maniac, which looked so fun I took it and decided to build my deck around it...

Halloween Game Day

Yesterday, on Halloween (Monday 31st October), I went to the Game Day that a nearby shop (Chaos City Comics) was running. It was a standard tournament, so I took along a deck I had already made: Mono-Black Infect [1]. 


I had updated it quite a bit since the last time, and was taking a few things of the  evolving metagame into consideration (when I first made the deck, it was mostly for fun, and the only thing to really play against was Caw-Blade). I had taken out the battlecry aspect because, although it had a nice synergy with the deck, wasn't always going to come together (as I would need a creature with infect in order to make the battlecry relevant, so I decided to instead focus on cards that are good or at least alright on their own, as well as with others). 

Innistrad draft

I got around to going to another Innistrad draft last night. I think the deck I drafted was very good, and I was doing well, but lost some close games in the finals. But it was fun to play regardless. 


My first pick was a Manor Gargoyle, passing Tribute to Hunger and Geistflame. The Tribute came round again so I took it late, which was handy as I had been taking a lot of black that pack. I had a few green cards and an Unburial Rites, so was looking into playing black with green/white as a splash. In the next few packs, I got more black cards and a few good green cards, but not too many white cards. I did also open a Gavony Township, so was thinking so splashing both green and white, even if only slightly, and looked for mana fixing some more. 

Innistrad First picks

I opened an interesting looking booster recently. Definatly something that has multiple good cards to consider for a first pick.  


This was the top 7 cards that there was in the pack. 

First experiences with Innistrad (and some first picks!)

Although I didn't make it to any of the official pre-releases and releases, I have been able to play some games now (including a draft!). 


So far I have done a practice sealed deck creating and playing with Liz, and started an Innistrad league, and done a draft at Hemel. Playing with Liz was the first time I used the double sided cards, and I tried both with sleeves and without using the checklist cards. I like the cards themselves, but so far think they are a bit awkward to play with. I didn't like them too much in sleeves because I wanted to be able to see the other side a bit easier when it was in play (and it would be a bit obvious what is in your hand if you try to look at the other side while in your hand). I didn't like the unsleeving it to transform it too much as it was a little awkward. Hopefully these issues will be lessened once I know what is on the other side of the card a bit better so I won't need to check the other side as much. Playing with the checklist cards was a bit better when they were in play because it was easier to check the other side, but I didn't like using the checklist cards while not in play too much. When I played a checklist card, I had an awkward moment when I didn't know what to do with the checklist card - I couldn't keep it in my hand as I had cast it, I didn't want to put it on the battlefield in case I mistook it for a token (I sometimes use the back of cards for tokens), so I ended up making an awkward pile away from my graveyard (again so I didn't mistake it for my graveyard pile). I also had the problem of not knowing exactly what the cards did by name when having checklist cards in my hand, with extra awkwardness when drawing multiples (image below is my hand from turn 2 or 3 when I was playing against Liz)

Summary: DFC's are a bit awkward