But I have three events that I have to enter into this journal before that and if you stopped by because you were looking for the Avacyn Art Review it's off to the side but it's also at these links
And I've been working on data analysis for the whole review so that will be coming up soon Stats for Vorthos!
Now back to the issues at hand.
When I wrote my entries for June I ended up writing about some specific things but not the gameplay -
So in June the FNM I was writing about was actually probably the high point - I was shut out in both booster drafts I played in but sort of felt like I was beginning to understand the cards better. In both cases the decks I put together worked really well when they worked and when they didn't it was most likely because of misplays.
The first draft I ended up in Blue/Red using creatres with evasion and direct burn to back them up. I opened the Avacyn in the first pick of the third pack making it the first angel I actually opened in Avacyn even though I played in all the pre-releases and had purchased a full box. The nice thing about that was that it meant there was no pressure on me and I could concentrate on learning to play with burn tactically with evasion creatures. All three games matches were close and all three went to three games.
Creatures
2 Deadeye Navigator
2 Latch Seeker
1 Fettergeist
1 Wingcrafter
2 Raging Poltergeist
5 Scrapskin Drake
2 Gryff Vanguard
4 Kruin Striker
1 Somberwald Vigilante
1 Scalding Devil
Spells
1 Scalding Devil
1 Battle Hymn
1 Guise of Fire
1 Pillar of Flame
1 Spectral Prison
1 Outwit
1 Searchlight Geist
1 Peel from Reality
2 Thunderbolt
Sideboard
1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
1 Tyrant of Discord
1 Crypt Creeper
1 Dreadwaters
1 Malicious Intent
1 Diregraf Escort
1 Outwit
1 Thraben Valiant
1 Battle Hymn
1 Dangerous Wager
2 Demolish
1 Kruin Striker
1 Bower Passage
1 Rush of Blood
1 Gloom Surgeon
1 Midnight Duelist
The second Avacyn draft was much better for me as a player and exactly as disastrous for me as a competitor I played Greeen/White because I wanted to work with mana acceleration but I didn't read Abundant Growth properly and didn't realize it was just a color fixer not an additional land. I adjusted to that and I did end up using it for manafixing when I needed and didn't pull white. The Lair Delves were more helpful.
The main plan was to use Cathar's Crusade and other buffs and the big threat was diregraf captains soul bonding with Lumberknot and Pathbreaker Wurm as the backup condition the games were within 3 points of each other where I lost and blowouts where I won but the match record was still 0-3 however I really learned a lot more about running green which will become really relevant later as we will see. Angel's Tomb in a creature deck rocked.
1 Moorland Inquisitor
1 Natural End
1 Devout Chaplain
1 Moonlight Geist
1 Thraben Valiant
2 Borderland Ranger
1 Pathbreaker Wurm
1 Cathedral Sanctifier
1 Goldnight Commander
1 Flowering Lumberknot
3 Diregraf Escort
1 Builder's Blessing
1 Vanguard's Shield
1 Vessel of Endless Rest
1 Lair Delve
1 Wild Defiance
1 Terrifying Presence
2 Abundant Growth
1 Eaten by Spiders
1 Blessings of Nature
1 Cathars' Crusade
1 Angel's Tomb
Sideboard
1 Vexing Devil
2 Nettle Swine
1 Diregraf Escort
1 Yew Spirit
1 Spectral Gateguards
1 Angel's Mercy
1 Snare the Skies
1 Heirs of Stromkirk
1 Banners Raised
1 Dual Casting
1 Alchemist's Apprentice
1 Favorable Winds
1 Thraben Valiant
1 Somberwald Vigilante
1 Herald of War
The two FNMs of June I was playing a red/blue delver build with a splash of green for the sideboard - I like the deck but it was super weak against Lingering Souls.
I was playing tired on the second Friday but I was also out of the house with The Perfectly Normal Husband, who borrowed my white weenie deck. I won a single match ( and had difficulty with mana screw) and got paired up the rest of the evening it seemed but The Perfectly Normal Husband came in 4th even though he had never played FNM before. It was my second time out with my deck, I had put in some board sweep but I didn't do it as confidently as I would now that I used more red in the pre-release. I just realized that I don't have the decklists that I'm running stored in my DeckedBuilder archives so I'd better update them.
I was going to add the pre-release to this entry but I'm going to post it and update with the two decklists, the one I was playing and the one I gave the Perfectly Normal Husband. It was literally his first FNM, he'd had a very bad day at work and met me at the store. He's a very good strategy player for all sorts of other games but because he doesn't have ego invested in winning he doesn't consider himself "good" however he did come in 4th that night. I was really happy for him, but I would have been happier if I'd done well, not because I'm in competition with him, but at the back of my head is a little voice that whispers "great, now people with think you play because of him not the other way around" which is dumb, but it's there and it's a distraction.
What's not a distraction is that now that he's placed, he'll understand that when I really can only play standard with my kitchen table friends I might need some playtime with him when we can play and just have fun but with actual practice happening, because neither of our egos are invested in playing against each other we can play at a pretty high competitive level and help each other and just have fun, we never get into those strange fights or dominance contests I see other couples who play get caught in. I guess maybe the closest I've come is that little voice, but that little voice is stupid, almost everyone who plays there knows me at this point, and it wouldn't matter if they didn't as long as I was winning, I'm just over sensitive to it because it felt like I lost some skillsets and the "girl gamer" thing is raging every single day in new and shiny spaces.
I'm not even sure that I count as a "girl gamer" because seriously? WTF I hang out with a whole bunch of older ladies and when the 60-80 year olds do stuff they're still referred to as girls but "gamer girl" GIS brings you nothing but teens and 20somethings with their cleavage exposed. I am a "girl" but frankly I'm a little concerned that there's no space between supa young and very old which I sit squarely in the middle of. Most of the time I can just sit in a genderless formless void "outlier magic player" but when my actual sig other is there I have an insecurity I never had before based on gender in SF or gaming. Not that I'm uncomfortable with him or my femininity more like I feel that I have to "represent" for both age and gender. It's self imposed - no one is asking me to.
This is also a distraction, but only after the event not during it, it's more like a feeling of embarrassment or of letting other women gamers down by setting a low bar instead of busting through it. Real life side effect though is that it does increase my anxiety level enough that I might not be playing pick up games or going to new places to play because of fear of looking dumb. Starting to address that by going to Monday night causal magic at the store.
However that is June's Headspace - Apparently the problem might have been Avacyn Restored and I were not the best mix for each other because pre-release came and some of the work I had done where I was specifically using the drafts to practice strategies really paid off.
Next entry - Pre-Release
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