Magic the Gathering

This week's commander focuses on doing just that. With the proper amount of mana acceleration you can easily reduce an opponent's life total to a critically low level. Granted once he/she (the art and name are so ambiguous I'm not such which is correct) hits the table Maga is easily chump blocked by most anything and black has limited evasion modes available in color. Which means relying on easily destroyed artifacts to accomplish your mission.

Commander: Maga, Traitor to Mortals

Creatures: Nantuko Shade, Mirri the Cursed, Balthor the Defiled, Visara the Dreadful, Maralen of the Mornsong, Dunerider Outlaw, Doomed Necromancer, Nether Traitor, Helldozer, Skeletal Vampire, Scythe Specter, Artisan of Kozilek, Avatar of Woe, Nezumi Graverobber, Magus of the Coffers, Ink-Eyes, Servant of the Oni, Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, Nirkana Revenant, Chainer, Dementia Master

Instants: Smother

Sorceries: Perish, Consume Spirit, Sickening Dreams, Virtue's Ruin, Mutilate, Temporal Extortion, Plague Wind, Zombify, Damnation, Exsanguinate, Promise of Power, Nature's Ruin, Exhume

Enchanments: Dance of the Dead, Gravestorm, Breeding Pit, Bad Moon, Diabolic Servitude

Planeswalkers: Liliana Vess

Artifacts: Lashwrithe, Vault Skirge, Blightsteel Colossus, Darksteel Colossus, Leaden Myr, Lightning Greaves, Skullclamp, Psychosis Crawler, Bonehoard, Nuisance Engine, Solemn Simulacrum, Loxodon Warhammer, Thran Dynamo, Phyrexian Totem, Nim Deathmantle, Expedition Map, Spectral Searchlight, Sensei's Divining Top, Caged Sun, Extraplanar Lens, Gauntlet of Power, Sword of Fire and Ice, Everflowing Chalice, Sol Ring

Lands: (27) Swamp, Cabal Coffers, Crystal Vein, Temple of the False God, Vesuva, Spawning Pool, Polluted Mire, Ebon Stronghold, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Shizo, Death's Storehouse

As you can see the core of this deck focuses on artifact mana doublers (Caged Sun, Extraplanar Lens, Gauntlet of Power) that have the unfortunate effect of also doubling you opponents basic swamps and some fairly weak creatures and land that do essentially the same thing (Nirkana Revenant, Magus of the Coffers, Cabal Coffers). When you're able to get them all in play every swamp taps for 5 mana, plus doubling or tripling your mana with the coffers, making it easy to cast your general for a 20-30 life point swing. If Maga can stick around and carry a hammer or sword you can take out a player with one swing. 

The rest of the deck focuses on big threats that can be recurred from the graveyard fairly easily. After playing a few games with the deck I'm considering adding some sacrifice outlets like Nantuko Husk or Phyrexian Altar since at some point it makes more sense to sacrifice Maga and recast to further deplete life totals. 

Magic the Gathering

Here's the Decklist I came up with:

Commander: The Mimeoplasm

Creatures: Rune-Scarred Demon, Seizan, Perverter of Truth, Guiltfeeder, Genesis, Wrexial, the Risen Deep, Herald of Leshrac, Murkfiend Liege, Dreamborn Muse, Simic Sky Swallower, Seedborn Muse, Glissa Sunseeker, Hedron Crab, Chameleon Colossus, Platinum Angel, Nemesis of Reason, Krosan Cloudscraper, Experiment Kraj, Phantom Centaur, Viral Drake, Denizen of the Deep, Glissa, the Traitor, Riddlekeeper, Lich Lord of Unx, Ixidron, Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, Scalpelexis, Hydra Omnivore, Vigor, Phantom Nantuko

Sorceries: Syphon Mind, Life's Finale, Unnerve, Beacon of Unrest, Farseek, Damnation, Life from the Loam, Plague Wind, Weird Harvest, Creeping Mold, Traumatize, Bribery

Instants: Spell Crumple

Enchantments: Polluted Bonds, Lifegift, Heartbeat of Spring, Inexorable Tide, Memory Erosion, Centaur Glade

Artifacts: Sword of Body and Mind, Sword of Feast and Famine, Sword of Fire and Ice, Loxodon Warhammer, Blade of the Bloodchief, Mindcrank, Copper Myr, Keening Stone, Golgari Signet, Contagion Clasp, Sol Ring, Simic Signet, Dimir Signet, Darksteel Ingot, Silver Myr, Everflowing Chalice, Contagion Clasp, Sheild of Kaldra

Lands: Temple of the False God, Halimar Depths, Drowned Catacomb, Breeding Pool, Watery Grave, Bad River, Hinterland Harbor, Command Tower, Jwar Isle Refuge, Forbidden Orchard, Overgrown Tomb, Yavimaya Coast, Oran-Rief the Vastwood, Homeward Path, Grand Coliseum, Gilt-leaf Palace, Golgari Rot Farm, Dreadship Reef, Woodland Cemetery, Verdant Catacombs, Dimir Aqueduct, Flooded Grove, (3) Forest, (5) Swamp, (3) Island 

As you can see there is a minor Proliferate them going on here. Since The Mimeoplasm comes into play with +1/+1 counters on it, you can easily pump him up. Also in the deck are a few sources the have Infect, worst case scenario you should be able to squeek in a poison counter or two and then just Proliferate to add more. 

I also included a few cards (Polluted Bonds, Lifegift, Hedron Crab) that care about land drops, the seem innocuous enough by themselves, but over the course of a large multiplayer game the benefits really rack up, padding your life total for the end game. 

As you can see from the creature selection almost every choice has a relevant ability attached to it with a few huge fatties (Krosan Cloudscraper, Denizen of the Deep) to provide a second choice for the Mimeoplasm's +1/+1 ability. 

I've considered adding in Buried Alive and Entomb to make getting relevant creatures into the graveyard quicker, but I'm hesitant to telegraph my game play to early and in my play group those two spells seem to receive a good amount of hate once they've been played. 

Incursion

Players alternate turns based on a bidding system which also regulates the number of actions they can preform during a turn. Within the main rulebook are multiple scenarios that provide plenty of replayability. Combined with the ability to chose a different force each time you'll be able to get plenty of use out of the basic box. There is an expansion available for players that need more models and missions.

I did receive the German model set and hope to get them assembled soon. While the models are really cool and well detailed they aren't necessary to enjoy the game. They are a bit pricey if you can't find them on sale but, I feel like they will add to the overall experience and I've seen a few examples online of 3-dimensional boards that bring the game to a whole 'nother level. 

Essentially this plays very similar to a Weird War II version of Space Hulk, with the option of keeping the cost down by leaving the models out of the core game box. 

Magic the Gathering

Planeswalkers (2): Jace Beleren, Chandra Nalaar

Sorceries (6): Invoke the Firemind, Lava Spike, Trade Secrets, Bribery, Mind's Aglow, Reminisce

Instant (8): Grab the Reins, Lightning Bolt, Unsummon, Vision Skeins, Desperate Ritual, Fact or Fiction, Spin into Myth, Repulse

Enchanments (4): Freed from the Real, Charisma, Ophidian Eye, Curiosity

Artifacts (11): Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang, Scythe of the Wretched, Myr Turbine, Basilisk Collar, Spectral Searchlight, Tenza, Godo's Maul, Foriysian Totem, Izzet Signet, Heart Seeker, Howling Mine, Riptide Replicator,

Creatures (36): Ninja of the Deep Hours, Sharding Sphinx, Myr Battlesphere, Tidewater Minion, Man-o'-war, Cytoplast Manipulator, Gelectrode, Avalanche Riders, Draining Whelk, Torchling, Dragon Whelp, Razorfin Hunter, Vithian Stinger, Iron Myr, Silver Myr, Furnace Whelp, Goblin Sharpshooter, Prodigal Pyromancer, Hissing Iguanar, Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, Taurean Mauler, Merfolk Thaumaturgist, Dragonspeaker Shaman, Zuran Spellcaster, Rorix Bladewing, Flametongue Kavu, Izzet Guildmage, Akroma Angel of Fury, Vulshok Sorcerer, Anger, Rackling, Kumano, Master Yamabushi, Viseling, Eron the Relentless, Prodigal Sorcerer, Serra Sphinx

Lands (32): 10 Islands, 12 Mountains, Evolving Wilds, Lonely Sandbar, Remote Isle, Faerie Conclave, Command Tower, Forgotten Cave, Izzet Boilerworks, Steam Vents, Smoldering Crater, Valakut, the Molten Pinnnacle

Most of the deck revolves around creatures that can tap to do damage, carrying over the commanders theme. Within are a few little combos that can be devastating if they can go off: Desperate Ritual spliced on to Lava Spike can be replicated infinitely by the Izzet Guildmage; Tidewater Minion enchanted by Freed from the Real with a  Izzet Boilerworks can generate infinite mana for a giant  Invoke the Firemind or Mind's Aglow. Reminisce is in here to save you from milling yourself out completely. 

I'm considering replacing the creature bounce for more general permanent bounce as hexproof and shroud equipment seems to be the preferred method of protecting commanders. I'm also considering adding a Psychosis Crawler to the deck as he also works well with Niv.

Other cards under consideration are Whirlpool Warrior, works amazing if Niv or a crawler are on the table and helps to deal with opponents who spend the game crafting a perfect hand. Winds of Change if I can track one of these down it does the same thing as a sacrificed Whirlpool Warrior for a single red. Teferi's Puzzle Box can be amazing or terrible depending on how attached you are to your hand, however on the turn you go off it really doesn't matter. Consecrated Sphinx, Nin, the Pain Artist and Stuffy Doll are all also worth consideration.

Board Game Review

To start all the tiles are placed in the center of the table (subtract all animals of a type for smaller games) and players take turns drawing tiles and placing them face up on the delivery trucks. During a players turn they can do one of the following: draw a tile, spend coins to remodel or buy animals, or take a truck. Once a player takes a truck they can not do anything else until all the trucks are taken and than play continues as before. 

Once all the tiles are gone players total up their score based on how complete their zoo is and the winner is determined by the highest point total.

Sounds really simple right?

The basic mechanics of this game could be re-skinned with any type of theme and they'd still work just fine and provide an entertainingly simple yet challenging game. What makes this an entertaining family game is the colorful zoo animal art and universally appealing nature of cute animals to children of most any age.

We've played several times with various numbers of players and each time the game is very different. The first few times my daughter focused on collecting the animals she liked rather than what would fill her zoo and therefore lost. Soon she figured out the basic strategy and can be really hard to beat. Zooleretto has become her go to game when friends are over.

If you're looking for a family-friendly game that involves a bit of strategy I recommend picking this one up.

Magic the Gathering

Every Commander deck has to feature a general, this is a legendary creature and you can only include cards which match you general's color identity (the mana symbols on the card, in the cost or in the abilities) or are colorless. 

The first general I'd like to talk about are the Sen Triplets, a legendary creature for the Alara Reborn expansion. This commander falls into my favorite color combination and the deck began its life as a token machine with Ertai, the Corrupted at the helm. In practice he was a bit annoying as a commander since the threat of counter magic can slow down games and I rarely was able to keep him on the table. 

The deck primarily consists of my favorite cards in Blue, Black and White and is geared to deal with multiple threats. The general while fun isn't required to make the deck run and more or less acts as a surprise by taking threats from an opponents hand. What I like most about the Sen Triplets are the politics involved in using their abilities. Do you cast someones best creature, or use their board sweeper to mess with everyone? There's plenty of ways to use them without making the whole table angry.

Without further ado here's the list:

Commander: Sen Triplets

Creatures (25): Beloved Chaplain, Drift of Phantasms, Disciple of the Vault, Stormscape Familiar,
Silver Myr, Leaden Myr, Alloy Myr, Pride of the Clouds, Pulsemage Advocate, Teysa, Orzhov Scion,
Ambassador Laquatus, Mageta the Lion, Raven Guild Master, Abyssal Persecutor,
Phyrexian Metamorph, Arcum Dagsson, Mindleech Mass, Sharding Sphinx, Skeletal Vampire,
Memnarch, Stuffy Doll, Avatar of Woe, Sphinx Sovereign, Weathered Wayfarer, Wall of Souls

Planeswalkers (1): Jace Beleren

Instants (9): Smother, Unmake, Oblation, Hinder, Spin into Myth, Rend Flesh, Chain of Vapor,
Mortify, Essence Vortex

Sorceries (7): Wrath of God, Demonic Tutor, Life's Finale, Culling Sun, Phyrexian Rebirth,
Show and Tell, Bribery

Enchanments (7): Guilty Conscience, Celestial Dawn, Nevermore, Seal of Doom,
Declaration of Naught, Mobilization, Debtor's Knell

Artifacts (15): Proteus Staff, Orzhov Signet, Dimir Signet, Azorious Signet, Thopter Foundry,
Sol Ring, Witchbane Orb, Darksteel Forge, Mycosynth Lattice, Mask of Avacyn, Trepandation Blade,
Darksteel Plate, Umezawa's Jitte, Sword of the Meek, Bonehoard

Lands (35): Seat of Synod, Glacial Fortress, Volrath's Stronghold, Boreal Shelf, Jwar Isle Refuge, Drowned Catacomb, Azorius Chancery, Urza's Factory, Isolated Chapel, Creeping Tar Pit, Vault of Whispers, Orzhov Basilica, Academy Ruins, Command Tower, Sejiri Refuge, Arcane Sactum, Dromar's Cavern, Frost Marsh, Ghost Quarter, Bad River, Godless Shrine, Minamo, School at Water's Edge, Wanderwine Hub, Grand Coliseum, Ancient Den, Watery Grave, Hallowed Fountation, Dreadship Reef, Polluted Delta, (2) Island, (2) Swamp, (2) Plains 

The deck has an artifact theme that works to eventually turn everything I control into an indestructible machine. Once Arcum Daggson gets online with a token maker I'm able to fish out all the pieces to protect my permanents and wipe the board.

The amount of tuck spells (spells that put a card back into the library, really effective ways to get rid of annoying generals) is necessary due to my play groups meta. There are a few decks in our group that revolve so heavily on the general that I like to be able to eliminate that threat when cards get out of hand (Doran, the Siege Tower; Niv-Mizzet). 

Some of the better interactions in this deck are Stuffy Doll with Guilty Conscience, which is a great way to eliminate one player. I also like the Thopter Foundry, Sword of the Meek and Disciple of the Vault little combo, while it doesn't go infinite it is a nifty way to reduce a life total while padding your own.

There is also a minor milling theme, while it's not the best strategy against 99 card decks it is more painful given the singleton nature of the format. Trepandation Blade is a personal favorite as it triggers just by attacking, at the very least your mill out one card and get a slight bump, I have seen it go up to a +15 when a player is mana screwed though, which is funny when it happens. Raven Guild Master is nice because it exiles the cards which means no graveyard recursion shenanigans. Pulsemage Advocate works well with milling your opponent as you can give back those utility creatures that don't threaten your position but will wreck someone else at the table and bring back your own threat.

I've found Abyssal Persecutor to be a great choice as opponents who are in a bad spot like to keep you around for a bit longer as they can't lose while he's on the table. 

I'm considering adding in Grand Arbiter Augustin IV as he combos with several parts of my deck to reduce my mana costs and hinder my opponents. Potentially I'll cut the Sphinx Sovereign to add him in. So far the Sphinx has only attracted a ton of kill spells when he hits the table so I'm not sure if he's worth keeping in.

Magic the Gathering

The newest set Innistrad, peaked my interest as it has a Gothic Horror setting which I really enjoy. There are cards the evoke all the major archtypes of the genre including but not limited to werewolves, vampires, zombies and even the exorcist. While looking into this set I also came across Commander Decks, which are a fixed content product (win!) geared for multiplayer play (win again!). After picking one up and reading through the rules, it seemed pretty straightforward and fun. One of my biggest issues with Magic is needing to have four copies of a card to have it be useful in a deck, Commander is a singleton format which means you can only ever have one of any card (other than basic land) in your deck. So now the cost of acquiring something good for your deck has effectively been reduced by 75%, and those random "good" cards you open in a pack that's all you need.

After going over all this with my regular play group we busted out the boxes of cardboard gold we've had stored for a few years and started building decks. The first few iterations of said decks were utter crap and resulted in plenty of "mana screw" (being unable to play cards because of a lack of resources) and lucky drops in which one player won because no one at the table had an answer for their card. It felt much like it did when I first learned the game and players played what was fun for them rather than whatever the current overpowered combo was. The great thing was the banned list is really small so almost any card you own can be played which is cool, I hate owning things I can't use because of a rules change. 

We've started a small league to play commander games and I'll post updates on how it's going in the future as well as the ground rules our group is using.

If you're interested in learning more about the commander format these sites have some interesting tips:

Commandercast.com – Podcast and website with regular articles and good suggestions.

gatheringmagic.com – Website with daily articles dealing with multiple formats

It's been an interesting experience so far as my daughter is 12 so it's been a while since there's been a baby in the house. Luckily much like riding a bike you don't really forget what to do. Babies for the most part just sleep, eat and poop, the fun part is getting them to switch over to regular hours. For some reason they don't understand that nighttime is when you're supposed to sleep not during the day.

In hobby news I still have quite a few projects to complete and I hope to be able to get back to work on them soon. I received an airbrush for Christmas and I need to relearn how to use it. Once I get the hang of it again I'm going to focus on completing the downtown Malifaux board. I also got a vacuum chamber that I'm looking forward to using on molds, I'm hoping that by degassing the molds they'll stand up to more rigorous use.

I'm in the process of reading Black Crusade (newest Warhammer 40K roleplaying system) and will post up a full review once I've had a chance to try it out.

I'm still plugging away at the new Malifaux board and I hope to have an update within the next few weeks to show the progress. After experimenting with a few different ways to add buildings to the board I've settled on a solid solution. Each structure with be a solid block of foam which will form the facade of each building. I'll run balconies along the front of each to add additional elements that are accessible in game. I went back and forth with a few ideas and decided against doing interiors. While they are ultimately cool I feel like interiors will only serve to further complicate an already complex board. 

I also have a bunch of models in my painting que that need assembly and painting which I hope to get to as soon as things calm down a bit.

Last week I did have a chance to see the Muppets movie and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's a fun movie that breathes new life into a struggling franchise. The bit with the chickens covering Cee-lo's "f" you is enough to cover the price of admission.

Malifaux

To "convert" the Collete I didn't really want to do much as I really like the model. So I did a few minor alterations to the model, I drilled a bullet hole in her back with a pin vice and added a nasty gouge on her leg. Minor thing like this will add to the effect I hope to create with paint. I also twisted her arm and adjusted to hand to be holding a skull and spine. This seemed to be in line with a "magic trick" Seamus would like.

To paint I've been using the same technique as the other zombies I've been working on. A thinned down GX foundation base followed by a wash and highlights gets the models to tabletop quality quickly. From there I will add detail and smooth the transitions as time permits. My goal with any model I use in game is to get paint on it before I used it. While I might not actually finish the model for quite some time at least I have something that looks passable on the table rather than primer grey or bare metal.