"Friday" Night Magic

It's been a while (a week) that I decided to go to FNM at Cerny Rytir because it's the only place I could play t2 constructed before the rules changes take place.

This week was a tough one for me (finalizing projects and stuff). On Thursday I stayed in Prague with Squop even though I planned to go home and go to sleep. I had some vegetables as a lunch as I did not feel well and then we headed to Outpost. We also bought gel ball point pens so I could sign cards (which I completely forgot to do! hit me...)

After Squop left I was too tired to do anything. I stayed at Outpost going through few Duelist magazines and eating Hobit's soup in the meantime. In Duelists I was checking MaRo's and Garfields notes and comments about rules. Few sentences made me laugh ...especially this one.

"Richard Garfield initially hoped that Magic rules would be short - the cards themselves containing all necessary information. Players could learn the game details a bit at a time during play. Well, Magic didn't turn out that way."

Anyway this article was about creating a game that would appeal to general audience and would be simple to play ('how do you produce engaging games with short simple rules?'). Magic came out of it even though we all know the rules are not that simple. And in a few weeks time the rules will change to be more simple (damage not going on stack...and um mana burn eliminated and some other stuff).

After this I played Magic with some player there. He had all common WU control so I took my Esper nonsense to play against it. I managed to get 3 sculptors in play with 3 p. strixes and Esperzoa. Too bad that my opponent got 3 mulldrifters and 3 oblivion rings and 2 faith fetters. My removed from game and fettered creatures could not do anything against those few fish with wings^_^. It was quite fun.

A storm came at that time. I felt even worse than when I came to Outpost and decided to stay till the storm goes away. When I was on my way out Medik asked me if I go in the same direction as he does. I did not plan that but I decided to go with him. He told me that he goes to play FNM and I decided to join him under one condition - either I borrow a deck from his team or he gets me some lands so I could play with my deck. He got me a deck.... Faerie's control o_O.

At first I thought that it was just a bad joke. After registering myself and getting the deck in my hands I had to accept the fact I would really play a deck I have no idea how to play.

First round was a torture for me and probably for my opponent to as I took about twice as many rounds to kill him than was necessary. I did not even realize that um mutavault has shapeshifter (or changeling).

I ended up against a dredge deck. I gave up the first game even though I could have somehow killed both Magister Sphinx and the horror that got it to graveyard in the first place. I managed to win the other two games even though in the third one I thought I would lose at one point and would feel really bad about it as I surely had everything on my side to win.

The second match was against 5c deck. LOADS of removal and planeswalkers (Ajani the Vengeant and Nicol Bolas). In the first game my opponent got mana screwed so well after some time I killed him (with path to exiles, oblivion ring and terminate on his hand). In the second game I just couldn't do anything about the planeswalkers except return them to the players hands and try to counterspell them later. Did not really work...
In the last game I finally sided and managed to win (this time counterspelling the planeswalkers and one returning to hand was needed - I drew the right card so I could get rid of the last planeswalker too^_^).

The third round was a catastrophe compared to the first two ones. I managed to make a major mistake not realizing that the goddamn witter blossom is a faerie and lost the game because of it. I could have clearly won but I would have to use my brain in a better way for that. Because of this terrible mistake I gave up on thinking for the rest of the round...and it showed in my play.

I managed to use wrong counterspells that I was left without anything for Wrath of God. But well, that wasn't such a problem ... or such embarrassing situation as the ones I managed previously (laugh at me).

Also managed not to realize that I don't have access to 3 blue mana without biting myself so well um...even though I thought about trying to save myself with cryptic command I miscalculated the situation... anyway I rather not talk about this as I made another completely silly thing earlier.

One game all I could do was play cryptic command tapping opponents creatures. Infest did not decide to come in those 6 cards I managed to draw before I got overrun. Well, what I could do?

Last game was fine except the fact there was nothing I could do to win the game. I just enjoyed it, managed not to do mistakes but still lost.^_^.

Thanks for the tourney guys...
I ended up 8th out of 24. Not that it would say anything.