Pseudo Newb and the Enlightment of FAQs when You Can't Sleep

Ok, so a few days ago I posted a question about Islandwalk and powering X's when the word on the text specifically says "Forests" instead of {G} which would be the Oracle programming text for Forest based manna.

While playing with another returning player he told me that it just looked for the mana symbol and didn't really mean "forests" it really meant "tree in a green circle". I didn't trust him but I accepted it at the casual kitchen table game thinking "another farking thing that they could have just actually used the symbol for instead of using an actual word that seems specific but apparently isn't" quickly followed by " why would they do that? what if he's wrong?"

See back in the day you had to actually parse the text - we used to call Magic "the Editor's Game", If the thing wanted to base stuff of forests you control it looked for forests, not green mana it would say "green mana sources" if it wanted to count that for X.

Then at the Local Gaming Store (LGS*) I was playing casually with a very different kind of returning player and he brought out something with Islandwalk while I was playing Drowned Catacombs and the question came up as to whether or not that was an Island - he called over a friend who played regularly ( and was the teacher who ran his school's competitve debate club) who looked at the board state and told us that no, it was not an Island, you needed a regular Island for Islandwalk. Well this is a guy that I'd seen around the LGS a bit and had been described as "practically a judge" and who was not returning but had been playing many of the years I wasn't. Certainly a "higher level of trust" than Deputy Dog.

It changed the next game completely - because I simply didn't use Islands, but did manage to get one blue manna out - I could have played the same strategy but I would have used more card searching to get out my Manalith when I found out the truth.

Which is this; Nearly-Judge-Debator Guy was wrong and Deputy Dog is at least correct for some of the cards. I found this out because I could not sleep and found everything I could read stressful, including the insider analysis of Worlds because it's not really written with anything other than insider fans in mind and usually served up with a nice slice of elitism, or just cluelessness that making pronouncements about general player tendencies and ranking them is inherently divisive and not understanding why they offended someone.

I am still looking for something that is literally newb friendly and written accessibly, maybe even with some actual instructional design applied to it . . . . but failing to find that I realized that there was an FAQ for Innistrad and found the page of all FAQs for Magic here:

http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/rules/faqs

And it was only by reading them one after the other that I realized how some of the rules actually worked - and that they were actually problematic rules because if they were intutive they wouldn't need to be in an FAQ now would they?

If I had looked up the rules notes on the cards themselves using my prefered method of the iPad app that holds all the tournament rules, each card was an individual case and I wouldn't necessarily assume that the rule carried over universally - after all it had a note on it right?

Well that was wrong - I found out about the Islandwalk rule because going throught the FAQ for 2012 and reading the FAQs for Innistrad helped me understand some really important things if I was going to be able to really use cards strategically. Like the card specific notes on this :

Fight is one of those things that confuse me when they're played against me - I'm never sure about how instants work and damage and healing and where the heck does it count in combat since it's a sorcery that I usually find cast on me after the main combat phase has resolved - but these magic words in the FAQ solved a whole bunch of that

701.10c The damage dealt when a creature fights isn't combat damage.

Oh I see - that's why "fight" is special - it's not combat - it's just a spell effect - with spell damage that happens to be defined by the power of two creatures.

* The damage is dealt simultaneously.

* The amount of damage each creature deals is equal to its power when the spell or ability that instructs the creatures to fight resolves.

* Five older cards will receive updated Oracle wordings to include the new term. (Several cards with similar effects won't be updated. Most of those cards involve potentially more than two creatures dealing damage or damage that is dealt sequentially rather than simultaneously.

So Wizards also knows it's not really a fantastic fit for the legacy cards either - I'm sure some of them thought it was flavorful or something - they're very enamored with themselves that way not realizing how arbitrary it looks when you're learning.

Ok - Cool. I learned something that clarified things maybe I should just read the FAQs! After all it won't be loaded with a whole bunch of other agendas it will just answer things they knew in advance would be confusing - No personalities, no matches or rankings or boosters or egos on the line - WooT!

Great what else can I learn? Well right underneath it is a dual land called Hinterland Harbor

Hinterland Harbor
Land
Hinterland Harbor enters the battlefield tapped unless you control a Forest or an Island.
: Add or to your mana pool.

• These lands check for lands you control with either of the two listed land types, not either of the two listed names. The lands they check for don't have to be basic lands. For example, if you control Stomping Ground (a nonbasic land with the land types Mountain and Forest), Hinterland Harbor will enter the battlefield untapped.

• As these lands are entering the battlefield, they check for lands that are already on the battlefield. They won't see lands that are entering the battlefield at the same time (due to Primeval Titan's ability, for example).

And that was the beginning of me wondering if that " checking for land with the two listed land types" was a common thing - for instance without looking at that FAQ just reading the cards while learning the game I would have assumed if all I had down were other Hinterland Harbors they all would come in tapped because I didn't have an Island or a Forest out.

And does that mean that Avacyn's Pilgrims or Llanowar elves count as Forests or Plains? Was it even a consistent rule for powerups? The answer wasn't really in the Innistrad FAQ it was in the Magic 2012 where another dual land used almost the exact same wording to describe the search. But the power up question was answered by Dungrove Elder

Dungrove Elder

Creature -- Treefolk
*/*
Hexproof (This creature can't be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control.)
Dungrove Elder's power and toughness are each equal to the number of Forests you control.

• Dungrove Elder's power and toughness are each equal to the number of lands you control with the land type Forest, not necessarily lands named Forest.

• Dungrove Elder's power and toughness will change as the number of Forests you control changes.

• Dungrove Elder's ability sets its power and toughness in all zones, not just the battlefield.

You see that part where it says "lands you control with the land type Forest, not necessarily lands named Forest." ?

When I was an RPGA judge we used to call a forced block of required text "boxed text". It usually was the thing that you needed to do to keep the game somewhere withing the timeframe or the tournament rules. That statement right there reads like box text, something created to be reusued in multiple situations regardless of how crazy those situations could get.

So far it looks like it might just be Lands that get this interpretation there are no "landwalk" cards in Innistrad but I knew there were in 2012 Core set so I looked to find if there was an FAQ version - this interpretation of the mechanic was going to be relevant. Found one - Harbor Serpent

Harbor Serpent

Creature -- Serpent
5/5
Islandwalk (This creature is unblockable as long as defending player controls an Island.)
Harbor Serpent can't attack unless there are five or more Islands on the battlefield.

• Harbor Serpent's abilities care about lands with the land type Island, not necessarily lands named Island.

• The second ability checks how many Islands are on the battlefield (regardless of who controls them) only as attackers are declared. Once Harbor Serpent is declared as an attacker, it will continue to attack even if the number of Islands on the battlefield falls below five.

Box text? Check. A slight variation but it's still "land types" vs "Island".

It was the only "walk" I found though.

I learned other little tidbits - Like Blood Seeker has a note "Life loss is not the same as damage. Blood Seeker's ability will not cause creatures with bloodthirst to enter the battlefield with +1/+1 counters. "

And I learned this from Elvish Archdruid "Elvish Archdruid's activated ability is a mana ability. It doesn't use the stack and players can't respond to it." Which tells me something about stacks, timin and mana abilities but I'm not fully sure I know exactly what yet.

But here, here is the little gem buried in the Ice Cage FAQ that finally allows me to understand what the FARK was going on with the mana leak/illusion question - why this isn't in the standard text explaining illusions is beyond me since it makes things so clear for Ice Cage

Ice Cage

Enchantment -- Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature can't attack or block, and its activated abilities can't be activated.
When enchanted creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, destroy Ice Cage.

If the enchanted creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, Ice Cage's ability triggers and is put on the stack on top of that spell or ability. Ice Cage's ability will resolve (causing Ice Cage to be destroyed) first.

Do you see that? The ability triggers at target and basically floats at the top of the stack so that it resolves regardless of response! So simple, so clear - so much better than any of the nonsense about what makes what happen based on two sets of interacting word searches - it's a rule! It's a reusable rule with a clear explanation. Trigger effects float!

Now, this means I am okay with the mana leak/illusion logic now but I think that if you're going to use "land type" instead of "lands named the thing the card text says it's looking for" you should use the circle/symbol instead of the word. It makes it a point of contention and it's not really clear because when you look up the rule

702.13c

A creature with landwalk is unblockable as long as the defending player controls at least one land with the specified subtype (as in "islandwalk"), with the specified supertype (as in "legendary landwalk"), without the specified supertype (as in "nonbasic landwalk"), or with both the specified supertype and the specified subtype (as in "snow swampwalk"). (See rule 509, "Declare Blockers Step.")

This would seem to indicate that nonbasic lands shouldn't count but I could be reading that wrong. I'll pseudocode it later to parse it

But it does also answer the other question about blocking creatures that also have the same landwalk

702.13d Landwalk abilities don't "cancel" one another.

Example: If a player controls a snow Forest, that player can't block an attacking creature with snow forestwalk even if he or she also controls a creature with snow forestwalk

Landwalk abilities don't "cancel" one another.

Example: If a player controls a snow Forest, that player can't block an attacking creature with snow forestwalk even if he or she also controls a creature with snow forestwalk

So Landwalk basically means if you have any land that has the compatible symbol on it this.creature = unblocakable and the limiting factor is over in the oponent's zone. Primarily it's a conditional evasion ability.

This brings me back to a rant I've been going on and on about in the real life world - which is that "learning from your community" for the slang, the rules, the strategies and tactics isn't really good for newbs. Who do you trust? How do you figure out who's a more reliable teacher, how do you not be really, really embarassed when you stand by a rules point that is flagrantly wrong to find out that "everyone knows" except the person who taught you the rule. (or possibly used it against you incorrectly) during an actual tournament. It's embarassing enough playing kitchen table.

This is why OP "teams" with actually ranked coaches, like the judges would make things much, much better for people who would like to play competitively but get turned off by so many of the barriers to entry - if we had teams with "practices" and coaches who were literally there to make us all consistent players to the best of our ability these things would be caught and corrected and STANDARDIZED before the competitive experience made it all worse and overwhelming. Your FNM opponent might be a nice guy but a bad teacher and more importantly he's there to win, not teach. He might want other people to play the game and be a spokesperson for it but there's no way for him to be able to raech out and make it accessible without some kind of actual support from Wizards or the LGS itself.

If Wizards and the DCI want to expand the OP base they really should look into a coaching program - I believe I shall flog this particular horse until someone hears me : )

* Hey look at that Magic Writers on blogs; I can use the full wording of a common slang acronym in parenthesis right afterwards once and all it does is let people know what I'm talking about if they stumble in from nowhere . . . you know just like they do in science abstracts, all government documents, every MLA formatted essay you had to write in school . . . . it's not so hard to be inclusive. I do realize that none of you will ever see this but I feel better now.

Psuedo Newb and the International Community

Well, for the last two days on facebook ( which has my real name) and Twitter (which also has my real name) I've been involved in conversations with two magic players, one competitive and currently really worried about the changes in Organized Play(OP) and the other one someone who misssed Magic and was thinking about playing again so I sent him a kind of "You really should!" tweet.

Oddly one player was I think from Norway and the other from Sweden.

Talking to them I realized two things ( as I pack up my magic cards to go up to my family's Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's). One, I really, really do like magic as a fun game just to play and wish it was more like mille bourne or uno where you could just break out a set of duel decks and play with anyone. Two, talking to the pro player the new Organized Play changes really do cut off smaller countries from competing at the same level as the US, but the US has coverage issues too. Gaming stores are pretty much where OP happens and if you live someplace without a gaming store or if you are not someone who has good players at the store there seems to be a serious gap in your acess to the game.

The Norway player thinks we should learn slang, strategy and rules from "our community" but I think that assumes there is a functional, voluntary, organic community to be learning from.

Now I am a grown woman walking into an FNM and I'm not a "natural" person for teenage boy and young 20-something men to want to explain insider information to. I can ask, but I promise you I will not be approached. Which means I have to ask. Some people just won't. Or be embarrased.

That's why thinking hard about it I realize that Magic OP really needs something more like a coaching system that feeds up into Pro Tour just like regular sports have. There are little leagues, chess clubs, bridge tournaments that have organized teams that are not money.

The new rules clarifications and strategies are more complex but in a way that's good, however things like timing and how to read a board state would be better learned with a real coach - the way a coach helps you with your golf swing.

I just gave out the link to this blog for the first time - it's really still just my journal of myself as a competitve player and a sort of diary of how I feel in competition - so it's long and wordy and wandery - I'm not sure if I'll do things differently now that I've let it out but it's still basically the way I break down thoughts and feelings and strengths and weaknesses to become a competitor.

It's a tool I learned to use in order be a better debator - if it sounds negative or down it doesn't necessarily mean I'm not enjoying myself, or that the game isn't fun, it means I'm using the game for something else while I'm having fun.

I taught my neice and nephew last time I was out at my mother's. I taught my brother-in-law so he could play with his son. The Boy's Girl will be up and hopefully play this weekend too.

Super casual - just a family game like trivial pursuit. Magic is fun like that too : )

But for the OP I wanna coach : P

Pseudo Newb and the Fishy Illusions Rule

Rules questions that came up in casual play on Saturday

If a creature has Islandwalk and an opposing creature has islandwalk can they block each other or is it assumed they are using different paths and they each have substandard intelligence teams while at war?

I have had people count dual producing lands like Seachrome coasts or glacial fortress in X = forests you control. ( or whichever basic land is named) However if you are playing a dual land that is not called or described as a forest or an island and is not triggered by the symbol of the type of mana shouldn’t those producers of mana not count, even though it has a forest symbol on it?

If a card says this.Creature gets flying this turn if you discard a card and there is no manna cost can you discard multiple cards even though the creature already gets powered once? And specifically that would mean that this card has a threshold of 7 cards in a graveyard – if you can you can dump cards from your hand in a single turn on the power of this card to activate it’s own threshold ability?

Thing I learned at Friday Night Magic ( we had to call over a judge).

The trigger to take down an illusion is the act of targeting it – once it becomes a target even manaleaking won’t make it no disappear so if someone doomblades your phantasmal dragon and you hit the doomblade with mana leak in real life it should seem like it resolves on the stack this way

Remembering that the stack resolves top down:

1. Mana leak makes your doomblade cost extra
2. Doomblade doesn’t have enough manna to resolve
3. Doomblade targets illusion
4. Illusion just sits there

What really seems to be happening according to the ruling is this

1. Mana leak targets Doomblade making it cost extra to cast
2. Doomblade doesn’t have enough mana to resolve IF the target is not an illusion do not destroy target
3. Doomblade is cast – mana is tapped and doomblade comes into play targeting illusion ( I don’t understand where the targeting is activating in the stack ) and doesn't resolve
4. Illusion gets sacrficed anyway

From a programming level it looks like even though the spell doesn’t resolve when the spell is cast you have to check on a word search to see if the target has the thext “when (this.card) is targeted then card is sacrificed” and you have to resolve it at the point of being targeted rather than the with the effect being resolved. You additionally have to program a second check because it still isn’t the English version of “targeted” since I asked the judge if this was the stack order and simply targeting a illusion kills it could you use a card that wouldn’t normally affect it but simply by targeting it destroy the illusion – he said no it had to be a legal target so that means the check on the stack looks something like this

1. Illusion is targeted
2. Check if effect/ability can legally target illusion
3. If check = legal then sacrfice illusion
4. Remove from stack
5. Return to stack
6. Effect ability is countered != resolution

There is also no legal target because when it tries to find out whether or not it can resolve the illusion is already sacrificed. So basically it means any legal targeting effect aimed at an illusion = “cannot be countered”.

The only constraint I see is that the mana has to be tapped or the initial ability has to be activated.

Thinking about it, there is still a possible strategic advantage to the mana leak on the doomblade if you want to make sure his mana is tapped out on your turn so you can’t really make the quality “uncounterable” – so I guess it’s going to have to be a subroutine when you mana leak something to keep it from resolving that still lets all the effects of both the original removal and the counter happen.

What this looks like when it isn't an illusion:

For Newbs playing at home when it’s a non illusion creature the stack resolution looks like this:

What it sounds like in real life:

“I’m casting DoomBlade on your Giant Spider for 1 black mana”

“OK, I’m casting Mana Leak on your Doomblade – are you going to pay the extra 3 mana”

“No – I only have two mana left”

“Great”

what it looks like on the stack rememebering that the top of the stack resolves first:

1. Mana leak makes doomblade cost +3 mana ( Doomblade is cast but never resolves anything that damaged the spider is basically “undone” which is the only reason that I can see for the illusion ruling working)
2. Doomblade is cast with 2 mana (theoretically destroying Giant Spider instantly when it resolves so theoretically they Giant Spder is destroyed)
3. Doomblade targets Giant Spider
4. Giant spider just sits there

So the next question I have is if mana leak is predicated on the spell being cast and an additional rule means Doomblade got cast and then mana added for resolution is it the same when a spell is countered like “cancel” or “unsummon”?

Because frankly this is damn close to saying I have a card in my hand and thinking hard about using it makes your illusion go away. It makes me wonder about the mechanic under Cancel – are you really countering the spell or are you erasing the effects of the spell and resetting the board? In a game relying on tempo this is really important.

Or is all of this only important because the word “sacrifice” is on the illusion card so it just forces the player with the illusion to take action regardless of the resolution of the card basically flavor wise “tricking you into suicide”?

I don’t care so much about the illusion being toast but I care a lot about the nature of what’s really happening when you use instants to counter spells – it’s super complicated anyway and the most competitive players can easily bully/intimidate/incorrectly explain newbs like me just by doing the magic equivalent of burying us in paperwork until we agree.

Why this stupid kind of thing might keep women and non- gamers out of Magic, but maybe former jocks and pharmaceutical reps, and mountain climbers should be introduced to the game:

I’m beginning to understand a little bit more of the barriers to entry on magic now.

I played two tournaments with back to back complete losses, I am not under any apprehension of being a good enough player but there is this nagging feeling that even when you understand a rule because it looks simple like “you didn’t really cast that spell because you didn’t have enough mana to pay for it” and then you use what you think is a pretty clear method to protect your board state you find out “OH NO my fine friend – even if you are smart enough to know about stack resolution AND you’re trying to do what everyone has been so helpfully coaching you with and play strategically with removal and instants . . . . SURPRISE there is a super secret special version of the application of this rule that is different and not keyworded and I’m going to use it and keep your mana tapped for being FOOLISH enough to think you understood”

So you’re in the process of losing your 8^th game of the night, you try to defend yourself, because you’re applying things you’ve learned by having your own stuff acted upon and it sounds like you’re being hustled – it FEELS like you’re being hustled and then you also kind of feel like the explanation means you can’t trust anything else you thought you understood.

You call over a judge because you really don’t understand why mana leak works differently just because the card is an illusion and then you really feel like perhaps there is no way you’ll ever be able to play in OP because apparently there’s a cabal of supersecret rules on the stack. You only find out about them if you call over a judge they aren’t close to intuitive and they’re not really good programming.

Now you just feel like a clueless idiot and a “problem child” because you called over a judge got a 10 minute lesson in sketchy object oriented design ( which you are painfully aware the 15 year old judge doesn’t know because he’s still too young to take AP Comp Sci) and you still feel scammed but it’s just legally scammed.

Occupy Magic.

I don’t actually know a lot of girls/women that would want to take a chance of feeling this way “for fun”. I don’t know a lot of guys who would participate in these things without a sense of being able to move forward or get something else out of it. The real problem is these things keep coming up towards the end of the tournament nights where the physical toll also kind of means that tournaments are ending for this newb with almost no accomplishments, being overtired, and inevitably feeling like I know less at the end of the night than I did at the beginning.

I personally really enjoy playing the game, I also think that I am not unusually emotional unless overtired, but I do think that the idea of feeling like a bitch because I needed to really understand a ruling or being hyperaware that the only girl actually playing in the tournament is losing 0-2 for three rounds also makes me feel like I’m feeding into the worst stereotypes. There is some pressure for me at least to look like I CAN learn the came and getting tripped up with something like this makes me wonder if it’s even worth it. Maybe by sucking so bad I'm making it harder for women who CAN play really well to be taken seriously. (Somehow this is something I don't think newb boys and men ever consider. )

In casual play the other problem is disagreements over this stuff bleed over for hours. And they cause friction in other areas because at heart my social circle is all rules lawyers but we all like to define the rules ( that’s in real life – forget the game) so if I’m bringing a rule home I want to have the closest thing possible to a definitive ruling.

Then on the other hand, you get the pretty steady abuse of things like counting green mana producers as forests and you sort of feel like “who’s really teaching me this game anyway” if it weren’t for Planeswalker Points being additive instead of the ELo system they were using I think I would be worried that I was being deliberately misinformed. Everyone has still been very nice, but I still feel like an idiot at the end of a tournament.

And we can now add the idea of a spell having an effect even if it doesn’t resolve to the list of things I think are stupid along with Planeswalkers and Infect.

Unlike Planeswalkers and Infect I would say this kind of thing would be the sort of thing that would have stopped me from playing if I hadn’t already played years ago and knew I liked the game. I just would have felt like it was arbitrary and contradictory and I would never be good enough to keep up with it all and I would have just played with my friends and told myself that I wasn’t smart enough to compete with them ( other people who are less inclined to self blame will say magic is stupid and the other people who play it are losers that have no lives and spend time either thinking this stuff up or learning it to screw people over).

I’m writing this here ( although no one will ever see it ) because I think it’s important to understand that treating it like tennis or figure skating or debate means I know that

• a. I’m a beginner ( but not enough of a beginner to write off this level of rules minutia)
• b. I’m going to have bad outcomes while I’m starting and sometimes the “fun” part won’t be enough to counterbalance the “I suck” part and like any competitive sport you work through them
• c. I want to be able to play at a higher level because it is more fun to sling cards with confidence and use them to the full advantage than it is to just enjoy the flavor.
• d. I have to remember that I’m choosing to do this to compete against myself – but frankly I’m not a “sunny attitude” kind of person so I need to feel like I’ve got some chance of being able to at least play without embarrassing myself and if I hadn’t had the experience of playing before I think I might be one more and done because it’s getting embarrassing

And even knowing all of those things it still made me feel like an idiot and a bitch and stupid for either actually being stupid or for being scammed.

If I feel this way when I really do like the game, the chances are it’s a turn off to people who aren’t treating it as anything other than “enjoyable hobby”.


I want it to be an enjoyable hobby too, I also would like to use it to keep my brain active, fight Alzheimer’s and give me something to reach for that isn’t life or death.

Because honestly almost everything else I do is. Magic shouldn’t make you feel bad. Luckily the next day at the store I played for a couple of hours at my local store with a really wonky but fun deck in casual. That’s where the islandwalk question came from. And the discard question I was playing Coulton’s Creepy Dolls against Gravebound.

Psuedo Newb and the Anti Infect Deck

I hate poison. It used to be an OK mechanic that had a little flavor to it but in the post Phyrexian victory it's a mechanic that now runs rampantly across the colors and takes a 20 point game and makes it a 10 point game.

My first standard deck tournament was two weeks ago, I was playing a slightly modified Innistrad event deck and the first round was against a very nice young man and his mono-black infect deck.

*Newb Note - mono black means it's all black cards and mono-black infect means that it tries to win through making sure the opponent dies from 10 poison counters instead the loss of 20 life points. It might have more ways to win than that.


It was my only shut out of that event. I had nothing to stop the swarm of tiny infect creatures and land and by the time I could do anything I was dead by round 4. I'm sure I could have delayed things a bit if I'd known how to play better but it was no fun to play against and the Steampunk Marchioness (My friend who started playing recently) tells me that it's not really fun to actually play the infect deck and win. It feels like cheating.

So I realize I still haven't explained my "Geek Origin Story" but I am a returning player but with a very different kind of appreciation and focus for the game than when I danced here the first time. There are two things that made me kind of dislike "new" magic; Planeswalkers and infect.

I dislike Planeswalkers on flavor grounds.

Planeswalkers are the designated hitters of Magic. The kind of cool thing before was you ARE the planeswalker, you're pitting your magic skills against your opponent who is also a planeswalker - you are not a glorified "character" coming in to "help" in someone else's novel nor are some fictional characters making guest appearances in your story like some sort of officially sanctioned Mary Sue Fanfic.

On a mechanic level the "loyalty counters" thing took me a long time to even begin to understand - they came in for free with X counters on them, they got additional counters out of thin air for doing things to you and when they spent the counters they could make just doing what they wanted to do they could cost you the game. Then on top of that they weren't creatures so most of your removal spells don't work on them. Combine this with the fact that acquiring any of the suckers was either near impossible or costly on the secondary market and it became pretty clear - the one who got the planeswalker out wins. Or if you're playing casual the one who owns a planes walker wins. In limited sealed deck set ups finding any of the two Innistrad planeswalkers is a win.

So it's not surprising that they were ripe for abuse. The first psuedo newb that played one against me ( whom I assumed knew the rules better than I did) used more than one ability in a turn making a card I was already biased against look worse. It took playing against one in a tournament for me to find out some of the limitations and a trip to the third floor to find out the rest.

Here are the limitations:

• They still count as a permanent - anything that affects permanants on the board affects planeswalkers.
• The are affected by the "legendary rule" you can't have more than one out at a time - if two show up they both go to the graveyard and they go by "subtype" not full name so Jace takes out Jace no matter which two Jaces are facing each other.
• They can only be activated once per turn on the main phase when you would cast a sorcerey and on the second main phase when you can also cast a sorcery. (I'm definately still working on learning how to use second main phases properly. )
• You can declare attackers directly even though the player with the planeswalker can use it's creatures to block
• The best way to fight a planeswalker it to get it out of the game as quickly as possible - Oblivion ring, bramblebush, blue counterspells so far are what I've used to make them go away. I hate the critters the way some women hate mice.

After some practice and the subsequent successful destruction of planeswalkers in FNM (Friday Night Magic Tournament) and casual games I now realize that they aren't unaswerable but I also realize that you have to take up at least 4 - 8 cardslots of removal to make sure you get rid of them - at least at my current level of play. If I hadn't been playing the event decks I might never have learned how to get rid of them.

I also notice that I have over 800 cards that I've been collecting since I started at the beginning of February and I have not opened a single planeswalker. I find it difficult to justify spending a bunch of money on a single card when as a newb building up a card collection I could by several boosters instead. On the other hand when I played constructed there wasn't a single matchup where I didn't have to answer a planeswalker. It might not be a "broken" mechanic, but it is a something.

They are banned at the kitchen table because it's really not fair until more than one person has a planeswalker and a player who's name on the blog shall now be Deputy Dog keeps playing his anyway. The other thing we all hate at the kitchen table is infect. I actually wouldn't mind it if there were a way to remove poison counters but you can't - and that's by design. You can't heal up from them you can only stop acquiring them. They get to float around in the ethersphere because they weren't doing much harn in the competitive tournament scene. The reason for that is everyone there tries to kill each other in 4 rounds or less - so in tournament trying to cut the game in half still makes it a "long-term" kind of strategy. But in multi-player infect still kills you in 10, in casual because there are no answers other than quickly killing your opponent or a swarm of creatures including flying to block them infect always wins. Always, always always. Unless you have the one card that stops poison - Melira the Outcast. There might be one or two other answers in everything else but anything that "removes counters" in legacy or vintage got rewritten to make sure it specifically excludes poison counters.

Needless to say that mono-black infect is currently the poor man's choice to win quickly in the metagame of standard right now. I knew as soon as I saw the article on Wizards that there would be more. I figured I'm not good enough to outpace a competitive mono-black infect deck - I need to understand Melira and if she would work.

So she's also a legendary creature which would give me practice for the day I'm deep enough into the dark side that I might have multiple designated hitters . . . . I mean planeswalkers of my own. I took apart my two white sealed deck Innistrad creations - neither of which performed well but both of which taught me something and tried to combine them with green to see if I could make an anti -infect deck.

The result ended up being something that might be the beginning of understanding how things work but I'm pretty sure isn't competitive

Creatures

4 Melira, Sylvok Outcast

4 Avacyn's Pilgrim

2 Doomed Traveler

2 Selfless Cathar

1 Champion of the Parish

1 Gideon's Lawkeeper

1 Grand Abolisher

1 Mayor of Avabruck

2 Geist-Honored Monk

1 Garruk's Horde

2 Unruly Mob

Spells & Artifacts

2 Sharpened Pitchfork

1 Doubling Chant

2 Oblivion Ring

1 Midnight Haunting

1 Demonmail Hauberk

1 Tower of Calamities

1 Accorder's Shield

2 Caravan Vigil

1 Angel of Flight Alabaster

2 Remember the Fallen

2 Mulch

1 Parallel Lives

1 Elixir of Immortality

Land

1 Sunpetal Grove

4 Gavony Township

9 Forest

9 Plains

Last night while keeping the Marchioness company because she needed help staying awake we tested it against the phyrexian Rot from Within event deck. The art of mulliganing became terribly important - even though it was kitchen table ( literally for a change!) we used the tournament mulligan rules. The first time we both mulliganed and went down to 6. I stayed put but shouldn't have, she stayed put and was sitting pretty. With a 2/2 infect creature and a removal card for the first thing I could put out she killed in in four turns with poison. My own management of my manna burned hand ( Newb Note* Mana burn is when you have to much land and not very much to do with it - thats because you used to take direct damage from untapped land on your own turn)

I was able to get Melira out in turn 3 and she hadn't managed to get a single creature that did damage out. Once Melira was in play the game went on for a really long time and I learned how to use a whole bunch of cards. I only had one plains and no white manna generators otherwise so the game went on for a really long time until the swarn strategy really won after the poison creatures either didn't show up or couldn't do anything.

I'll break down what I learned on the next entry. I also played the dragon deck from duel decks for the first time and played Knights for the first time since May and found out that there were cards I had never drawn in that deck!

Pseudo Newb and the Third Floor

Just the second I catch up with myself I will explain why I am on the Third Floor. Its where a couple of pro players hang out at my college and a collection of various tech and music geeks. They have taken it over as a hang out and bring in their own equipment, computers, televisions to game.

I am not traditionally college age. They do not usually know that until they realize it later. That's not really bragging. Average looking women who are not ugly enough to be noticed for that reason or pretty enough for everyone to be looking for the first signs of "work was done" tend to surprise simply by not being someone who looks like their mom or a movie star. It's an odd kind of fountain of youth - when you are average looking people assume you would age into their stereotype of whatever that average age is. I still look like me. I look roughly the same as when I was college age, and I figure that in a about 5 or 6 years it will all catch up with me and I'll look in the mirror and see someone who suddenly doesn't look like me.

So when I started gaming with the Third Floor they sort of knew I was older than them but it wasn't as much of a barrier to entry as if they had really known. Once they did, it was cool I'd developed my own credibility, I wasn't a special case or a girlfriend gamer so without a social slot they just kind of took me as another player who was interested in the game. The pros were just looking to encourage people to play magic as much as they could.

I have a pretty strict no real names on the internet policy because I work in a field where I would like to leave a light footprint - I will probably start mentioning my specific local gaming shop shortly when I've figured out how to balance my desire for privacy for my professional and personal life will balance out with my desire to promote my local bricks and mortar businesses.

Newb Note* on the various internet forums the short way they refer to local gaming shop is LGS - I will be starting an acronym list as I learn these things as a resource for other newbs and a way to figure out how long the lingo learning curve is.

So the way I handle the "no real names" on my primary blog is by using quaint 17th century influenced titles. But that might get long here in magic land. So for the moment I will call my oppenent on yesterday's Third Floor match Ginger K. because there is also a Dark Haired K of the same K name that plays. That will be the system for the moment.

Type of Game - a casual pickup game. I came up to the Third Floor to report that I'd played a draft and ask for some advice on both the etiquette when you act like a jerk the way I did and the problem if you are actually right but you still acted like a jerk.

Ginger K is trying out deck concepts and he wanted to playtest. I only brought duelist decks with me. When he asked I offered to play one of his own decks against him if he was looking for mechanics testing that way he would get better knowledge and I would get more practice with different cards.

Preparation - none.

Ginger K is a competitive player so his decks move at quick speed. He's not a pro, but playing me lets him try out his most complex combo concepts without being rushed. ( For other newbs you should know the guy who like to make decks out of complex combinations is called a "Johnny" type of player. Just because someone is a Johnny doesn't mean they are an expert - there are newb Johnny's just like there are every other kind of newb it's just what they like to play.) So Ginger K wanted to Johnny out.

He went to his car and brought back six decks. He offered whatever I would like but I asked him what he wanted to test against. He had a fast burn ( burn means the cards deal direct damage instead of fight with creature cards) mono-red deck. This is pretty much the dominant kind of deck in my current group of local players so I thought it would be good for me to play it and get familiar with it.

Comfort Level - pretty good.

This is where the pseudo part of the pseudo-newb name comes in. I played a lot many, many years ago but very differently than now. Of all the mechanics, burn deck mechanics changed the least. It's suggested that when you teach brand new players using red is a good way to keep the complexity down at first ( although there's still lots of complexity in an all red deck, you can give a first timer a good chance of winning) and I'm actually starting to get good at coldreading card mechanics in my hand. My understanding of deck building is improving so even if I don't know the deck, I can make some assumptions and play strategically. It's a little like being thrown in at the deep end but on the Third Floor I'd even chance this kind of cold reading of a friend's deck with blue - but I'd have a comfort level that would be a little more like "nervous WTF am I doing?"

Results 2-0 me

The games were competitive. They were about 9-12 turns

Take Aways

There were a number of specialized lands and self risking strategies in the Red deck. I learned how to use War Contested Land ( where if a creature gets direct damage on me as a player my opponent gets control of the land and it's benefits which include a buff ( a buff is something that improves the performance of other cards in play). I didn't lose control of the land and I did successfully use the land buff as a win condition on the second game.

I was able to strategically use instants to finish off opponent creatures that only took some damage from a blocker and was getting a little better with tempo.

The most advantageous thing in the deck that put the games in my favor was the presence of one or two zero cost artifact creatures in my first hand. I blew the opportunity to use a manna triggered buff when I was attacking allowing the game to continue two rounds longer. Even though I won that could easily have turned around since my opponent had many ways to suddenly gain life. He was playing artifact/green (which on the forums would look like this UG)

End result - at least I feel better about being shut out yesterday. And I know I can pilot a competitive red burn deck. Ginger K. knows that he has strong combos and an early game but he doesn't have enough early removal in his deck to deal with three creatures making it out on one manna in turn one.

I was also told that not everyone thinks you have to announce "moving into attacking phase" and that I play slowly enough that when I tapped the Voiceless Spirit at the draft it would have been considered an attacking creature at that point and he shouldn't have been able to use the Fear of Dread. However they also agreed with me that it was more important to get myself back to a point of good sportsmanship than resolve the argument because A. That's what I need to work on as a player and B. by the time you call a judge over that kind of thing is he said/she said. However I was advised that if I were ever in serious tournament contention not to be shy about calling the judge and taking the answer. Serious contention looks like it's still a bit away.

First Draft Event

Last night I went to my local store to either watch or participate in my first draft.

Preparation - I read several articles about signaling and how draft works and played with the widget that Wizards of the Coast provided.

Comfort Level - none - while I'm a little more confident about limited, draft requires you to find cards, keep a strategy in mind, build the deck based on your picks AND if you can strategically hate pick *(I hate the fact that I'm using slang already without defining it and I promise that after this entry is out of the way I'll either come back and make it better but these are notes I need to get here first - better intro after I've updated my regular blog)

Why I decided to enter: It might be the only open Monday or Wednesday night for the next few months, it looked like there might not be an even amount of players, and I will not get better if I don't play.

Results - I will also update this with the actual cards later but for right now

Unlike my other 1st tournaments I was not just 0-3 I was completely shut out. The good part is I was able to figure out what I was doing wrong and the weakness of the deck I was putting together the bad part is I couldn't seem to fix it.

Take- Aways

The first round I had a real problem with shuffling and the distribution of cards and land was not randomized. There are two things I can improve on - either making sure I have more buffer between shuffling and game start or asking not to move so fast so I can shuffle sufficiently 7 card pile twice and at least 3 bridge shuffles.

The second round I should have mulliganed when I was land heavy and didn't because I was worried about not pulling creatures.

I had a card that I kept looking at as though it was a sorcery but it was really a defender.

Rules we called a judge over for - damage resolution on a tap effect used as an instant - specifically tapping an attacking creature to prevent activation - of a battle effect. Not remembering the specific cards this next morning is the reason I'm starting this journal. I was trying to prevent an action with Feeling of Dread - but it ended up that the ability activated anyway.

I took advantage of the sideboard and switched two forests for creatures.

Third round - was most upset with myself for this round - I lost my temper through no fault of the person I was playing -he used a tap card on me to stop a declared attack on voiceless spirit with a trepanation blade. I know WotTC hated the word "interrupt" being different than instant but the reality is that sometime it would make things clearer. I should have just asked for a judge but in retrospect there were two problems - problem one is that I am not yet in the habit of announcing "attack phase" before declaring attackers so his response after I tapped an attacking creature could be considered a "rush" and the fact of the matter is I reacted by interrupting him saying "no" while he was trying to use "Feeling of Dread" because I had specifically had that card ruled against that usage in round two. When I realized I was reacting overemotionally due to frustration, overtiredness and the fact that I was still unable to break through my uncertainty about strategic timing in using some of the cards in my deck I walked back and let him have everything . It wouldn't have mattered to the game if I had been either correct or the play he made revoked, I lost focus, I wasn't in control of myself or the board and I knew that calling the judge over would resolve the rules question but it wouldn't help get me back to either focus or rationalism. It was more important that I disciplined myself rather than resolve the question.

This is the third time that I have competed and felt a physical toll in the last round ( but the first time it showed up as crankiness) I do not want to be THAT player.

End result - you can use Feeling of Dread to stop an attack by tapping the creatures it targets before they are declared as attackers but not after they have been tapped by their controller - so technically he was wrong, but in tournament rules I might have been considered "rushing" by not specifically saying I was moving into attack phase. This confusion ( since I had tapped the spirit) led to the seriously cranky part where I though the Trepanation Blade triggered ( which it would have if I had attacked). I should have asked for a judge but calmly, instead the lesson learned is that I'm going to have to practice announcing phases.

This post is the starting point for the blog/journal in a real sense I need to keep track of these things with words I understand instead of all the jargon that the forums are full of and centralize my references and resources. Origin stories next I guess.