If I say the words "Modern Masters", you should know what I'm talking about. Unless of course you have either been living under a rock for the past year or do not play Magic (or know anyone who does). For the uninitiated, Modern Masters is a special set of Magic cards featuring cards legal for the Modern format. Like any set, there are some bad cards, some mediocre to average cards, some above average to good cards and some great cards. The kicker for this set was WotC announcing that it was a limited print run and giving it an MSRP of $6.99 per pack compared to $3.99 for a normal set.
Personally, I thought they should've printed this set at a normal print run. The uptick in MSRP is probably okay though a dollar or two less with a normal print run would work in my opinion. The reason I say this is due to what happened to the pre-sell price on booster boxes. Star City Games quickly ran the price up to $300 per box. Many retailers chose not to do this (including Atomic Empire and The Toy Factory which are the two stores I play most) and God bless 'em for it. If the purpose of Modern Masters is to make Modern a more accessible (and therefore more played) format, then the "cost of entry" can't become exorbitant as it is for other Eternal formats such as Vintage and Legacy. Now, some of you may start howling about the "investment" you have made in cards such as Tarmogoyf. I hear you, but frankly my response is that if you wanted to invest your money in something tangible that isn't likely to lose value and become more value in the long run, buy gold. WotC's focus should be on growing its product, not whether or not the secondary market for a particular card is significantly affected by a reprint decision. I ended up cracking 2 boxes of Masters. The first box provided some playables, but the best card I got was a foil Sword of Fire and Ice. Still, not a bad get and I've already had a trade offer on it. I ended up with a 2nd box after purchasing my 12 packs and the 12 packs my buddy David Caton was able to buy after we participated in Atomic Empire's 87 person draft. David left without playing and I left after going 1-2 and dropping. After a fun night of Pathfinder RPG, we broke the 24 packs up into 4 groups of 6 and had a miniature sealed event with David, Brandon Poole, Sebastine Bradley, and myself playing. It ws pretty late when we started so after building decks we only played 2 rounds. I went 1-0-1 as did David (we called our match a tie after 2 games that took close to an hour). Sebastine went 1-1 beating Brandon but losing to me. Brandon went 0-2 obviously losing his second match to David. We decided not to play a third round because, frankly, I was ready to go to bed. I'm going to put down deck lists and some brief commentary. Brandon (Red/Green) 9x Forest 9x Mountain 2x Epochrasite 1x Eternal Witness 1x Hammerheim Deadye 1x Jugan, the Rising Star 1x Masked Admirers 2x Stingscourger 1x Stinkdrinker Daredevil 1x Tarmogoyf 1x Thundercloud Shaman 1x Thundering Giant 2x Crush Underfoot 1x Desperate Ritual 1x Grapeshot 1x Incremental Growth 1x Lotus Bloom 1x Manamorphose 1x Moldervine Cloak 1x Torrent of Stone 1x Tromp the Domains Sebastine (Red/Green) 7x Forest 9x Mountain 1x Arcbound Stinger 1x Arcbound Worker 1x Citanul Woodreaders 1x Cold-Eyed Selkie 1x Mogg War Marshal 1x Myr Enforcer 1x Stingscourger 1x Chalice of the Void 1x Desperate Ritual 1x Empty the Warrens 1x Fury Charm 1x Glacial Ray 2x Kodama's Reach 3x Lava Spike 1x Manamorphose 2x Moldervine Cloak 2xRift Bolt 1x Shrapnel Blast 1x Sylvan Bounty So, Brandon and Sebastine had different takes on the red/green archetypes. Brandon had some fatties (and potential fatty Tarmogoyf) whereas Sebastine went creature light, but threatened you with 7 direct damage spells including Glacial Ray which found itself spliced multiple times per game. I didn't preserve the integrity of sideboards so not sure I would've done anything differently though I'm certain I'd have included more than 7 creatures in Sebastine's deck. He did manage to beat Brandon and to be honest he got me into single digits in both games before I stabilized the board. I think their games were close. David (Black/White) 8x Plains 6x Swamps 1x Vivid Meadow 1x Arcbound Stinger 1x Arcbound Worker 1x Avian Changeling 1x Cloudgoat Ranger 1x Divinity of Pride 1x Dreamspeaker Witches 1x Festering Goblin 1x Frogmite 1x Kitchen Finks 2x Kithkin Greatheart 1x Meadowboon 1x Rathi Trapper 1x Saltfield Recluse 1x Skyreach Manta 1x Street Wraith 1x Yosei, the Morning Star 1x Bound in Silence 1x Death Cloud 1x Extirpate 1x Horobi's Whisper 2x Test of Faith 2x Warren Weirding David went with a light mana build of 15 lands which I thought was risky. However, this format is pretty slow and gave him plenty of opportunity to draw into whatever mana he needed. Even with only the Vivid Meadow as "mana fixing". I'm not sure who would've won if we'd gone to 3 games though I did like my deck which I'll present now. Kenny (Black/Blue/White) 4x Island 5x Plains 5x Swamps 2x Terramorphic Expanse 1x Vivid Creek 2x Amrou Scout 1x Arcbound Ravager 1x Blightspeaker 2x Court Homunculus 1x Esperzoa 1x Faerie Mechanist 2x Frogmite 1x Myr Enforcer 1x Pestermite 1x Rathi Trapper 2x Sanctum Gargoyle 1x Stinkweed Imp 1x Aether Spellbomb 1x Drag Down 1x Executioner's Capsule 1x Path to Exile 1x Perilous Research 1x Petals of Insight 1x Slaughter Pact I really liked the synergies in this deck. Thanks to Esperzoa I had a chance to take advantage of EtB abilities on Faerie Mechanist and Sanctum Gargoyle. I normally would try and abuse the Gargoyle if I had something like Aether Spellbomb to bring back from the graveyard. I had a chance to beat David in game 2 I think, but the deck didn't give me the draws I needed when I needed them. That happens especially in limited where you often have only 1 of's in spells and occasionally some 2's. And a higher percentage of land. It was a fun way to finish off a Saturday evening and I look forward to doing something similar with M14 and Theros.
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A weekend playing Magic is always a good time. When there are major events to play, it can be a lot of fun whether you're playing or just attending. This weekend was one of those times where it was just fun to be a Magic player.
First off, I needed some fun. It has been a tough week. We've been working mandatory overtime which means no days off. That's tough. Add to that, a buddy of mine that I went to school with passed away after a severe car accident left him on life support over a week ago. That's pretty darned tough too. They say bad things come in 3's, so on Thursday the alternator died on my Explorer which basically wiped out my expendable money and rendered me unable to purchase my box of Modern Masters until pay day. Boo. So, to start off the weekend, I went to Toy Factory in Hillsborough, NC to draft Modern Masters. My buddy Phillip bought a pack and it had a foil Sword of Fire & Ice and a regular Sword of Light & Shadow. I still hate you Phil. Anyway, my draft deck ended up pretty bad but I managed to draft a Maelstrom Pulse, Engineered Explosives, Arcbound Ravager, and foil Meloku the Clouded Mirror. Had fun playing Magic and taking my mind off "life". Saturday, there was a PTQ for Pro Tour Theros at Atomic Empire in Durham. AE is a phenomenal place to play Magic. When I first started going there, they had a non-existent singles selection despite having a very health FNM which saw them squeeze a Standard constructed and Draft tournament into the small play space at their old Sci-Fi Genre location. My how things have changed. They can easily accommodate a 200+ person tournament in their store. They have a great selection of competent judges that work their events. They have arguably the strongest singles selection of a store not named Star City Games in this region of the country. The attendance for the PTQ was 168 players which is a very good turnout. Eight rounds of Swiss with a top 8 cut to win a trip to Dublin, Ireland in October. I was on Junk Aristocrats. Overall, the deck played poorly for me and I think was a bad meta decision for Saturday. Highlight of the day was managing to kill an Aetherling. I boarded in Pithing Needle vs. Bant Control. Got it and named Aetherling. My opponent then played his Aetherling. When he was able to attack with it, I chump blocked with a Spirit Token and then cast Tragic Slip on the Aetherling. I ended up losting anyway, but that was a fun play. I played all 8 rounds because they paid out to top 42 and even though I was 2-4 after 6 rounds, 4-4 theoretically could've snuck into the bottom of the prize pool. I dropped round 7 and round 8 which I played only because it seemed a waste not to finish it out at that point. Plus, I was getting practice with the deck. I decided I didn't want to play it on Sunday, but it is a deck I'll look at playing when I see some updated lists. Oh yeah, so after what was an amazing day of Magic on Saturday with a good PTQ turnout, AE hosted a Starcitygames.com Elite Invitational Qualifier which handed out 4 Invitational invites and $2000 in cash prizes to the top 16. I built a Naya Aggro deck for this tournament. The attendance for this event was just over 100 which put us on 7 rounds of Swiss with cut to the top 8. The Naya deck was fine, but I had some close misses and I'm not sure I always made the correct decisions on mulligans. I really only had one bad play mistake and that was in round 3 when I went up against Kenny Castor from Star City. He had board advantage with a Boros Reckoner in play. I topped a Bonfire of the Damned and proceeded to put it in with my hand completely flubbing the miracle trigger. I repeatedly commented that I was the worst Magic player ever and revealed to Kenny why I was saying that when I later had to hard cast the Bonfire for 3 after he got his 2nd Reckoner on board. Perhaps it didn't matter in the long run. It was likely I was losing that game 2 anyway. However, Kenny Castor is a good enough player that I shouldn't be helping him beat me via my play mistakes. I don't mind saying when I think someone is a better player than I and Castor is better. I can still win against guys like that, but I have to play at a high level and in game 2 I didn't. Anyway, the highlight of the day was Round 2 when I beat Charlotte Sealed Open champion, Josh Snyder, 2-0. Game 2, I had early advantage when Josh dropped a Thragtusk to move his life total back to 16 and try to stabilize. Unfortunately for Josh, I was holding a Boros Charm with Domri Rade and Boros Reckoner on the board. Domri's -2 ability + Charm on indestructibility mode took care of his 'tusk. After dealing 5 damage from the Reckoner trigger to the dome, I swung in with 3 indestructible creatures. Later in the game, another Boros Charm stopped an Abrupt Decay on my Reckoner and I got it from there. Josh ultimately finished around 20th which meant that I kept him out of top 16 and that saddened me a little because I ended up 3-4 on the day and killed his breakers. A nice guy though and I honestly didn't recognize him when we were playing and only realized it later in the event when we were talking about our game and the how the tournament was going. After Swiss was over, Michael Braverman was in the top 8 as the 3 seed and another Atomic reg, Jose Gaytan, had just missed on breakers taking 10th. I stood in the feature match room as Michael took down his quarterfinal opponent. I didn't watch the semi-final but Michael took that down as well. He then had to face Brad Nelson, a legit Magic pro, for the title. Michael had bested Brad earlier in Swiss, but often those rematches go the other way. Not so on this day as Michael won 2-0 in the finals with Junk Aristocrats beating Junk Aristocrats. The deck was much better positioned for Sunday though I'm sure there are some significant deck list changes in both builds than what was previously out there. Congrats Michael on defending the Atomic Empire turf against people who had come from other stores. So, not the greatest weekend as far as the wins-losses were concerned, but a weekend where I participated in 18 rounds of Magic over 3 days and played against 18 opponents without attitude problems and guys that enjoyed playing. That is a win in its own right. Shout outs: JJ Bedell and the staff at Atomic Empire for running an amazing pair of tournaments. I enjoyed it and am looking forward to when you can do something similar in the future. Brad Nelson, Glenn Jones, Chris Van Meter, Kenny Castor, etc. from Star City Games for a) coming to play both events, and b) pumping the events on Above the Curve on Starcitygames.com. They all seemed to have enjoyed the trip and liked the store. Also, a lot of thanks to the other people who showed up to play this weekend. Whether you were one of the Game Theory guys, made a trip up from Florida, or come from stores in the area, it was great to have you come and play in "our" events. |
AuthorKenny Walters is a gaming enthusiast from North Carolina. Interests include but are not limited to: World of Warcraft, Table top RPGs, Magic, Tolkien, Doctor Who and other fantasy/sci-fi literature and programming. Archives
May 2016
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