Mistform Mondays: Pack Wars

A day late but like they say, it's the late wyrm that catches the bird that rises too early. Here we go!

Unfortunately, due to being busier and long distance from my good bud and blog partner in crime MGR, the Mistform Monday articles are going to be rather short as I can not meet with him to test different formats as often as I'd like. I'll still try to get a game in when I can but most of my articles will probably be on my thoughts of new formats I've learned about and want to try.

It's sort of the same. You do all get to ride a tank together while playing.

Today I'll talk about one of the more popular casual formats: Pack Wars. Well, there may be competitive pack wars players out there and maybe I'll join their ranks one day. GP Vegas had a single elim pack wars wherein you added an additional pack each time you won a game and kept going up the ladder until you were the last man (or woman!) standing with a bunch of Modern Masters packs and presumably a 300 card deck. It sounded like great fun for all involved. It was free so that was even better. Alas, I wasn't able to make the trip but I'm hoping this is a tradition that continues with GPs in the future. (Edit: just learned from MGR that GP Sacramento's site is up: http://www.gpsacramento.com/. Check it out! It features a nice Friday pack wars event for those who can make it.)

I'm not the best rules writer out there so here is the info copied directly from the MTG website:
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Mini-Master (also known as Pack Wars)

You and your friends have just bought some booster packs. You're going to open them to get to the good stuff inside. But wait—why not play some Magic as you're opening your packs?

Setting up for Mini-Master is very simple. Each player needs a single booster pack of Magic cards. Without looking at the contents, each player opens his or her pack and adds in three of each basic land (Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest). They then shuffle up and play a game of Magic just like normal. Because players don't know what cards are in their decks, Mini-Master offers up the same surprises players get when they open a fresh new pack of Magic cards. Is the rare you're hoping to open going to help you beat your opponent? Or will you lose the game but still walk away happy with the cards you managed to crack? Mini-Master is great for letting you play with new cards while still keeping the excitement of opening a new booster!

Many Mini-Master variants exist. A different way to do it is for each player to open a booster and have that entire booster become his or her opening hand! During each player's turn, that player may choose a basic land from outside the game and put it into play. Players play without libraries; effects that say to draw a card have no effect, and there is no penalty for being unable to draw.
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Seems pretty simple, right? Setup just involves 2 booster packs and 30 basic lands. I've been a big fan of this format ever since I've heard of it as you get to open that sweet booster for a hopefully sweet reward but also turn it from a solo booster opening experience (with maybe a friend or two viewing and cheering you on) into a cooperative expeirence with the friend that makes all those probably tossed away commons and uncommons (and the occasional Meletis Charlatan) usable! And sometimes, winning with the jank rare vs your opponent's foil Thoughtseize is worth having opened a junk rare to begin with.

I strongly recommend this format if you find yourself planning to pick up some packs or have just won some packs. It definitely beats going 1-2 in Swiss draft and thinking, "sweet I won a pack!" and then getting home and being welcomed home by this friendly sight:

You should have stayed in the shadows, man. But good to see you too.

I'll end this article by saying I've never seen a rare table a draft table so often and I may finally have a rare I can collect to fill one of those Ultra Pro binders. So far I've got a playset. Only 356 more to go!

Oh yes, random creature type of the week: Dragon.

Big mana! Doing devotion style permanent checks before it was cool.

How can you not like dragons? Without dragons, this format would not exist! While I may have enjoyed Elder Phelddagrif Highlander, even I am glad we didn't have a one deck format. So to dragons, I say thank you for being so old and awesome. I can see why dragon collectors are out there as their flashiness oozes cool, raw power. WotC knows this too and thus they made the first From the Vault star dragons. I'm also glad that despite forcing a dragon in every set*, they are at least pushing dragons to be more unique, if not just powerful enough to see play. Gone are the recent days of "vanilla" dragons who had some form of firebreathing and flying and 5/5 or so stats. Rather boring and made dragons feel less special and more like Vizzerdrix**.

He eagerly awaits his fated fight against Trained Orgg.

So a couple stories to share. The very first dragon I got was this beauty:

The last one non-modernized!

I got it back in high school from a random Invasion pack. Back then I didn't know it's power because there was no way I was able to make a 3 color deck work on my limited collection. I may have tried but I'm pretty sure it failed miserably. But wow, what a powerhouse it would have been! It may just be nostalgia goggles, but I still think it's decently powerful. Great against tokens (like the ones produced by Rhys and, less so, Prossh) and at worst, ou use it as a sorcery speed Evacuate if you ned to bounce an on color swarm of creatures. I ended up trading it and some other cards for an Avatar of Woe (which I still have!) and a couple random cards. I don't regret the trade but I do miss my very first dragon and want to pick it up again one day.

The second story was when FTV: Dragons was released. I stopped by the store late in the day to try and pick one up and it was then I found out how limited these things were. To give the store credit (Games of Berkeley FTW!), they handled it very well and held a raffle to pick who could buy it at MSRP. I think this is probably the fairest way to do things. Fortunately, all was not lost as many ears later, MGR gave me this other beauty:

Because sometimes you hit 16 mana in momir and want a guaranteed flier to desperately stop your opponent’s storm crow from dealing lethal.

And that's it for the super cool dragons!

*A decision I don't entirely agree with. I'd rather they put them in when they fit and when they've got a good design. Like Stormbreath Dragon being Typhon was something I never knew but was super cool to learn about.

**Yes, Vizzerdrix fans, I apologize for the comment. I'm sure Duel Decks: Dragons v Vizzerdrix will happen soon. Just keep on dreaming!

Mistform Monday: Commencing Operation Hungry Hungry Hydra

Hi again. We're back with my first impressions of the Face the Hydra deck released to the public from WotC this past Game Day. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend Game Day and play in both the standard and bonus hydra event but was very happy to hear that MGR did well. Inspired by his heroic success, I decided it was time to jump into standard with a deck of my own! This would have been the perfect time to mention Wizards marketing succeeded in getting me to purchase the Inspiring Heroics event deck (which is a strong starting UW list if you want to jump in with such a deck) but that was not meant to be. Instead, with MGR's help, I am building the monstrous shard deck known as Jund. Yes, his heroic actions have set into motion a series of events that will have him facing the monstrous Ember Swallower, Erebos and his friendly whip, and (so that I may help get revenge since MGR beat the Hydra event), even a hydra or two. I will avenge you fallen hydra friend! I am but one of your many loyal heads. So let's go a-head and get started on my first impressions!

This was a cool stand. Didn't come with the deck though. :(

MGR and I met up at a very nice local Starbucks to blog (so hip!) and to play a couple games against the hydra. All I had were a couple EDH decks with me so we tested out with those. First up was Daxos on normal difficulty. This meant the hydra started with three heads out. After some solid early damage from the hydra (it's quite good at this), I was able to stabilize then dominate with the fact that all of my blink creatures like Flickerwisp and Banisher Priest were ETB: own target hydra. Once I resolved an Isochron Scepter with Momentary blink to be able to kill a hydra head every turn, it was all over. I felt this ability to blink was too strong. Perhaps I read the rule wrong about if the hydra would leave play, it dies instead. In the future I believe we'll use blink effects to do what it normally does and blink the hydra heads. Which means it'll probably be completely useless, haha.

This powerful side effect of blinking the hydra heads to destroy them meant I was confident going into hard mode in which the hydra started with 4 heads. However, that smug confidence was quickly diminished as I saw how aggressive the hydra deck could get in dealing early damage. Flipping an early elite head with me lacking a blink effect usually meant game over and this is exactly what happened. I tried a second time but was destroyed. A worthy challenge!

I'm so elite, I lightning bolt at end of turn. Mmm charred heroes.

Next up, MGR piloted the Kaalia deck with her as a general but using normal mulligan rules. As we feared, the fact that Kaalia was a stock list and was a deck meant for multiplayer EDH meant it was a bit slow and if the hydra started aggressively enough with good flips, it quickly snowballed from there. There was one awesome game where Kaalia was able to come out early and start dropping bombs though.

After we built my new jund deck, we obviously decided to play test and see how it'd fare. Here are a couple of the more memorable details:

• Whip of Erebos + any solid creature = too much damage and life gaining capability for the hydra to recover from.
• Anger of the Gods is the perfect answer to a swarm of non-elite hydra heads. At one point it was used against 4 heads and only flipped over 3 heads so it was a gain. I hope to see the day when this backfires tragically and flips over 8 elite heads.
• This match was also one of the more interesting ones as the hydra flipped over back to back Strike the Weak Spot which let me, as the controller of the hydra deck, destroy an elite head to give it an extra turn. So in the end I took two turns in a row and hoped to bury MGR in many hydra bite marks. Alas, with each destroyed elite head, I did no flip over more heads and Jund won against my now no longer elite team.

All in all, it was a very fun experience. I haven't tried team play against the hydra yet but I look forward to it. And we'll play around with the rules of the deck to see if we can improve the experience such as maybe putting more hydra heads in or taking out cards like Neck Tangle which just owned the hydra. Very sad. Be better friends, heads! Purchased at our LGS for $12, I feel this was worth it for the hours of fun it already provided.

This was exactly what MGR and I envisioned when we defeated the hydra.

As a bonus, I'd also like to introduce another feature I'm going to have for Mistform Mondays. Since the mistform creatures can take on many types, I thought I'd do a feature called Random Creature type of the week. I'll use gatherer's random card button and whatever creature type appears (ignoring repeats and non-creatures), I'll write about. Today's creature type was: Thrull.

When I first started playing around Odyssey/Onslaught block, I believe I missed the majority of thruls printed so I don't have much experience with this dopey looking tribe. It is nice that more thrulls are appearing recently. Variety is good for the game. So while I didn't have much experience with them as a tribe, I did have experience with a particular thrull:

You've got to sacrifice!

 I have a friend who loved black's theme of sacrificing life and creatures for power and fell in love with this card. Blood Pet could ramp you in ways Llanowar Elves only dream of: through the awesome power of sacrifice! So he had a deck which had 3 or 4 of these in it and would laugh maniacally as he cast these then, a turn or two later, sacrifice them to cast some big probably also life draining or sacrifice inducing big black creature. It was pretty fun in those early days of Magic as we played less removal then and therefore an early bomb was very, very tough to deal with. Alas, as what happens over time as players become more focused on finding newer, better cards to put into decks, my friend found Dark Ritual was a card and used that instead. And we learned to play more removal at some point, I'm hoping. As my upcoming deck tech on Jund will show you, playing early bomby creatures is still a joy I share to this day.

 .........

...Oh I almost forgot one last thing. MGR and I were wondering what it'd be like to command our own hydra decks to battle each other. So before MGR went and bought a deck of his own, we split the hydra deck as evenly as possible and played. End of turn hydra damage would just be redirected to a head of our choice. Let's just say one game in this quickly convinced us that this was a terrible idea. Some of the sorceries were useless (at one point I'm sure I flipped lots of Neck Tangles. Sorcery speed fogs for the lose) and once an elite head landed for one side, it had far too much defense to be taken down by the 1 damage dealing regular heads. Maybe we can make this work one day but today is not that day. $12 saved! And probably transmuted into a bbq bacon burger of some sort.*

*See MGR's great review in his upcoming Sample Saturday article to see if he also heroically conquers this delicious task.