My Worlds state of Mind.

This is the email I have sent to Mark Rosewater

Greetings, Mark.

I have being playing magic for around 5 years. In this five years most of my friends that played when I started dropped it entirely, or just play occasionally.

Our local store closed, and the few resistant’s, me and another friend, made trips in a 2 week basis to the next closest store, which meant to do an 1 hour travel.

Then one of my friends started to do tournaments on various coffee places and we started playing weekly again, people returned.

Some time went by like this, eventually someone had to take his place and finally we got a local store again.

Since my friend picked the tournaments organization, I have helped the best I can and I still do with my local store. I have been criticized by players and friends; I even lost some other friends because of it, either by meaningless discussion or stupidity from both sides.

In the past years there was only a major change I still dislike, Mythic Rarity. While it’s true that they made possible for cheap playable rare they also introduced us to 50€ staple, if we are lucky that they don’t go higher.

I still prefer the old format where all decks had basically the same price. Nowadays we have very cheap decks or a deck with 4 to 12 cards that are worth 50€ each, in the best cases.

But, in all this time I never thought of dropping Magic: The Gathering, not even when my 500€ deck got stolen. That is, until now.

I will talk mostly about Portugal and my situation, since about everything else someone already made statements or can do better than me.
 

We lost PT spot’s, I’m not sure how many, but the biggest loss is the qualification for World’s.
 

I play magic for fun, but while I play it for fun it’s also true that I play it mostly because of Nationals and the dream of getting on the national team to attend Worlds. When that is removed from my horizons I don’t have any reason to buy cards.

To play with my friends, I can easily make a bunch of proxy’s and simply make the deck I like instead of investing money on it with barely any return to happen.
 

Because, no one from Portugal is going to get an invite from ranking with the new ranking system. Actually it’s very hard for someone that is not living in the USA to do so.

I was actually happy with the new ranking system. At least at a local level, it meant people wouldn’t sit on ranking to get into nationals they would start playing, if not weekly from time to time, instead of showing up weeks before nationals for testing.

With the last changes everything that was good about the new ranking system became irrelevant. No invites for worlds means most people won’t care about it. It doesn’t matter how big the prize is, since it will never be that big that is actually worth it. I would haply refuse a prize of 3000€ for an invite to worlds and the free trip along with it.

Then after all this you relocate all responsibility of tournaments to local authorities.

Sorry to say that this only gives me grief.

I have been playing since Betrayer’s of Kamigawa and I never saw our distributor doing anything else besides the very much minimum necessary.

For a game that as mostly survived due to players, to keep growing and advertised, the game will die, at least the game outside of the kitchen table.

Lisbon might be able to maintain an active community, but on the north it will die. Actually it’s already dying, but that’s understandable when the stores of the distributor have different entree fees for their 2 stores, a Prerelease in Porto is 26€ in Lisbon 22€, and when they block the entrance to players that have made a formal complain about their stores conditions, it becomes ridiculous.

So to end this, no I’m not happy with only hopping to be the National Champion. My dream was based on getting on the national team and do something noticeable at worlds, not by being recognized by our Magic community. Most of them have met me at least once anyway.

With that gone and so few PT’S and the only place to get extra GP’S being the USA I’m dropping from M:TG.

At best I won’t buy any cards and become a casual player, with proxies.

But not everything is bad, I will have finally more time for my other hobbies.

Sincerely, Rui Gomes.

Modern - Snapcaster Gifts

Well I have a Modern tournament this Saturday and decided that would be making a gift list to try, which ended being something like this.

Lands 26

4  Marsh Flats
1  Scalding Tarn
3  Hallowed Fountain

2 Watery Grave

1 Godless Shrine

1  Mystic Gate
1 Sunken Ruins
3 Island
2 Plains

2 Swamp

1 Snow-Covered Island

1 Tectonic Edge

1 Ghost Quarter
1 Academy Ruins
1 Celestial Collonade

1 Creeping Tar Pit

Creatures 7
3 Snapcaster Mage 
1  Phantasmal Image
2 Sun Titan
1 Wurmcoil

Draw  7

3  Gifts Ungiven
4 Forbidden Alchemy

Utility 3

2 Unburial Rites

1 Crucible of Worlds

Counters 8

4  Mana Leak

2  Cryptic Command

2  Spell Snare

Removal 9

3 Path to Exile
1 Dismenber

1 Go for the Throat

1 Doomblade

1 Damnation
1 Wrath of God

1 Day of Judgment

While I was looking for packages for gifts I got a peak at the sun titan package. With some playtesting in standard with Solar Flare I already know how good Unburial Rites into Sun titan is, running it also makes Forbidden Alchemy extremely good, and since you already run ways to drop spells into the graveyard Snapcaster Mage gets insanely good. Regarding the Wurmcoil, at first it was Grave Titan because it left something behind if he got it by Path into Exile but the fact that wurmcoil can be recurred by Academy Ruins.
The question is if the deck is able to keep up with the speed of Modern, I sure think and hope it does or I will be in trouble this weekend :) .

A new post omg :D and with a bug list o_O

Well lately , or rather for a long time, I didn't and I don't fell like writing for this blog.
Miranda, mostly gave up and with the starcitygames tournaments there's so little space to improve decks in standard that I had no reason to post anything. I have never been a fan of legacy and I don't even have much time or people to test.
So, and to have something going on this blog, I will post the lists I'm currently playing or testing.
So here his a BUG I'm having fun with in standard:

Ramp (12)
4 Rampant Growth
4 Viridian Emissary
4 Solem Simulacrum
Big guys (12)
4 Consecrated Sphinx
4 Wurmcoil
4 Grave Titan
Utility (10)

4 Ponder
4 Black Sun Zenith
2 Unburial Rites
Lands (26)
4 UG land
4 GB land
4 UB Land
6 Forest
5 Swamp
2 Island

1 Plains

 It's a pretty standard list that tries to ramp into 4th or 5th turn fatties.
It could run heartless summoning as a ramp tool but I ditched it since it made all my fatties vulnerable to dismember.
In my very limited testing it has been running well, and better than I expected against mono red thanks to wurmcoil and grave titan.

The Walker Madness

Standard nowadays is boring; I even consider it more boring than when faeries were around. 

Jace TMS turned to be the new Tarmogoyf, if someone’s plays blue they have to play Jace TMS, but there aren´t that many answers to planeswalkers as there are to creatures, since Shards of Alara rotated with M10 we went from Oblivion Ring, Pithing Needle, Maelstrom Pulse and Vampire Hexmage as answers to Walkers to only Vampire Hexmage, they gave us a creature with a pithing needle effect on Scars of Mirrodin but creatures are so easy to get rid of that I can’t even consider it an answer to walkers.

WB in a brand new field

It’s been a long time since I posted or have done something on the blog.

Between the improvements I wanted to add to the blog but never finished and a report from nationals that I never started, it got put on hold.

Anyway, the improvements will somehow find a way to get in but the report from nationals would be pretty much useless now.

Well, it was like I took a vacation from my blog.

Since my last post two editions were released, M11 and Scars of Mirrodin, and there was a rotation when Scars got released, which brought big changes to the metagame and a bunch of new decks. While this is a big step down for netdeckers it’s a new playground for people who like to explore the tools they have been given.

M11 Sketch

So here's the thing:

2 weeks now, I got a ptq. It's with M11. So no netdecking I think.

I expect the majority of the control decks to include things like condemn and mana leak, which, are good to stop Jund.

So, I am thinking in taking something like this:

// Lands

3 [SHM] Swamp (2)

3 [ON] Plains (1)

2 [MR] Island (4)

4 [ZEN] Marsh Flats

2 [M10] Glacial Fortress

3 [ALA] Arcane Sanctum

3 [WWK] Celestial Colonnade

3 [WWK] Creeping Tar Pit

2 [M10] Drowned Catacomb

// Creatures

4 [M11] Baneslayer Angel

4 [WWK] Abyssal Persecutor

4 [ROE] Wall of Omens

// Spells

3 [ALA] Elspeth, Knight-Errant

3 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor

2 [ROE] Gideon Jura

3 [M11] Day of Judgment

4 [MPR] Mana Leak

4 [MPR] Condemn

4 [ALA] Esper Charm

// Sideboard

SB: 3 [FNM] Oblivion Ring

SB: 4 [M11] Duress

SB: 2 [ARB] Identity Crisis

SB: 2 [CFX] Path to Exile

SB: 4 [ZEN] Spreading Seas

It's mainly the Conley Woods deck, but I dropped the spreading seas to the side, since they are there exclusively against jund. Besides, if I want to be mana leaking, I can't spend turns spreading the seas. Against jund, spreading seas is effectively a mana leak, since holds their next play.

The side is a bit random yet. So help needed.

Some tips for Nationals.

When you know that you are going to nationals, the first thing that most people ask themselves is which deck to pick.

Abyssal Jund

So, as I have seen yesterday's SCG 5k, one deck has caught my eye, Wescoe's Jund. I really like abyssal on the deck, since it provides great approach against Bant, Turboland and decks with Sphinx of Jwar Isle.

But I didn't like his side, so I will try as I write this post to merge my decklist with his, so I can get the best of the two worlds.

Leeching the format

So here I am, a little less than 2 weeks from the nationals. And the day will finally come, the day I will play Jund.
After struggling so much against it, the afterhours of a ptq fail with mythic were spent amusing myself on the dark side playing leeches and cascading into some blightnings.

Leveling up

So I am about 3 weeks to nationals.
The training sessions have begun, both draft as well constructed.
As for constructed I am currently playing the chapin bant, but the list is quite tight and I am not figuring much slots to improve the deck. As for one matchup that really bothers me, which is mirror.