Pseudeo Newb and the Quick new thing I learned about Deathrite Shaman

Quick new thing I learned about Deathrite Shaman

Plus Pack Rat Tokens


Arrgh so much stuff - so far behind.

This last weekend was Thankgsiving. I've been playing a lot because I'm fully integrated into our college's gaming club. I've been playing a 20$ pack rats deck that is more fun than many, may things and then I realized I needed to make a Pack Rat's token that actually had the rules on it so that I didn't have to remember an extra thing on the board unnecessarily.

Here's my token - feel free to share internet. I'm playing Pack Rats because I love adorable rodents, I'm just happy that WotC made me a card so that I can play ALL the rats in standard at one time and have a usable deck.

*Newb Note - because Pack Rat Tokens are full copies of Pack Rat they also have all of the same card text abilities of the original card - I made these tokens to make sure that I didn't forget that.

Sometimes it's strategic to use a pack rat token instead of an actual Pack Rat card when you are choosing to attack or whatever maybe you have something that buffs up tokens or something else that needs a non-token creature and the original card isn't hanging around to read the text off it. My final copy is an .AI file that has the word token on it.

I need to do this more often for two reasons - 1 is that it means my tokens do exactly what I need them to during the game and 2 I get to make my own art and use it in game.

Ok so here's the thing I learned about Deathrite Shaman. 

I've put together a Green and Black deck that is different than a tournament deck that runs three colors. I wanted to experiment with a few ideas and I play decks to learn specific cards or strategies rather than some other competitive goals. This one is for using ramp, learning how to play Deathrite Shaman and seeing if I can get past overly focusing on my early game by playing a deck that really doesn't have an early aggro( aggressive attacking) strategy.

Rules text Mana Cost:

Converted Mana Cost:

1

Types:

Creature — Elf Shaman

Card Text:

: Exile target land card from a graveyard. Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.

, : Exile target instant or sorcery card from a graveyard. Each opponent loses 2 life.

, : Exile target creature card from a graveyard. You gain 2 life.

So the mana symbol is hybrid mana - which means you can cast it using either of the colors in the little circle. 

The abilities in the ability text box are all mana activated tap abilities even though the first ability mana cost = 0

Because they require the card to tap and the card is a creature card the abilities are subject to summoning sickness = you can't use it unless you controlled it from the beginning of the turn OR you have a special effect on your board that gives it haste, which will let you use a creature card right away on the same turn it's cast or in your control. 

So here's what I know from journaling - my particular weak points with this card are going to be 

• losing track of one of the abilities as an option because there are three instead of two, I almost always miss/forget one of them

• remembering that because it's a mana activated ability I can use it at instant speed(any turn, any legal turn phase) instead of sorcery speed ( only your own main phase)

• making sure I remember that it's ANY graveyard not just mine that I can target to feed the card exile requirements

I was correct, playing this card in my new deck today I made all those mistakes even though I was aware I would make them in advance but here is the cool new thing I learned:

If my opponent is also playing a Deathrite Shaman ( which can happen more often than you think) and he uses his to target something like a swamp in my graveyard to make himself some blue mana, if I have an untapped Deathrite Shaman then I can tap it to target the same card and create the mana of my choice for myself

I can do this even if I don't use the mana.

This works because my response at instant speed resolves on the stack ( the timing element they use to sort card effects) before the opponents' Deathrite does so in effect  I use up and exile the targeted card in the graveyard before the first Deathrite gets to.

That Deathrite picked something that is no longer a legal target and can't pick a new one so it stays tapped but has no effect.

What does that sound like in play?

Opp - I target your swamp in your graveyard and tap Deathrite Shaman to make one blue mana
Me - In response I tap my Deathrite Shaman to target that same swamp and make a green mana that i can't use. If I can't have that swamp nobody can and you should picture my Deathrite Shaman threatening to pack up his toys and go home.

What really Happened:

Opp - I target your swamp in your graveyard and tap Deathrite Shaman to make one blue mana
Me- OK

Shenanigans with the one blue mana ensue

Opp- Pass turn
Me ( as I start to untap lands for my untap phase)
Opp - you know you can use your Deathrite Shaman to tap the same land right?
Me - Urgh?

The Opponent who is Nick-that-is-not-Mike then shows me how to do that now that his turn is over, but before the game is over. We are playing casually in the cafeteria and he has to remember that although I play much better than many of our current club members I am still really a newb. He's way better at intricacies of the stack than I am and I'm not good enough to necessarily just "see" things that way yet.

About two turns later he tries it again ( knowing that my distractability is high it's a fair tactic) and I do remember and take the proper course of action complete with reference to the pouting.

But even using it that way I will later lose the game because I forget that the first tap effect will let me generate mana that I need.

But that means that I was right to put this deck together. I learned a bunch of other things that made it clear I've had some skill loss on remembering triggers. So I played it with a few more opponents but now I need to put it away for a day or add some Rancors.

It's here in the journal so I don't forget that I learned it. 

Pseudo Newb and Mogg Flunkies plus Are We Not Planeswalkers?

Rules that had to be asked about or looked up this weekend.

Mogg Flunkes actually has 7 judges tournament notes. The question was whether or not Mogg Flunkies needed to have a friend block the same critter or if it only needed the friend to be blocking SOME creature at the same time.

I thought it would be that as long as someone was blocking somewhere on your side Mogg Flunkies could do their collectivist bit.

That ended up being correct.

Are we not Planeswalkers?

Yeah, apparently as far as the mechanics go, no. No we are not.

It's too sad to write about yet so I'll just copy the tweets.

@DreamtimeDrinne

@CranialTweet does magmaquake effect the player Planeswalkers too or just the card based ones?(I will be sad if we're not Planeswalkers too)

Retweeted by Cranial Insertion

@CranialTweet

C) @DreamtimeDrinne In terms of game mechanics, players aren't planeswalkers, and vice versa. Magmaquake does not deal damage to players.

@DreamtimeDrinne

@CranialTweet while that makes the card strictly better it makes the flavor much sadder. Thanks.

@leon14344

@CranialTweet @DreamtimeDrinne And yet Wizards seems to love pushing that "You are a planeswalker!' line. Hurts their own rules...

 ‏@DreamtimeDrinne

@leon14344 @cranialtweet I will be adding it to my list of "why I hate Planeswalker cards and characters" : / ‪#SadVorthosInTheSnow‬

Cranial Insertion is run by two Level Two Judges and a Level Three Judge.

They are super good at explaining rules in a way that doesn't make you feel dumb or crazy 

http://www.cranialinsertion.com/info

Pseudo Newb and the Dark Abyss of June

Okay - This is the recap for all of June before I write up the pre-release weekend.


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

If you missed Red it's here

If you missed White it's here.

If you missed Blue it's here.

If you missed Black it's here

.

If you missed Green it's here

If you missed Other it's Here 

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 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

This was also the first draft where I started to be comfortable writing in a notebook during the draft. 

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 

Pseudo Newb - the Absolute Beginners Mana Cost Workbook

Watch this Space

I have created a learning module/workbook for teaching Mana Cost which is a little difficult for new players to work around. This is a learning concept that is somewhat different than a lot of the advice given for teaching new player where they are told "just play" but there's always so much information coming in from each new game that it's a bit overwhelming.

This module is specifically meant for people who enjoyed the game and have played through a basic hand but would like to understand or learn in a manner that is self paced and isolates information and then reintegrates it back into the game.

It was created for a teacher/coach or self study and is meant to take some of the burden off learning with a bunch of strangers, or finding that your friends are lovely, but aren't necessarily the best instructors in the world.

This is also broken up according to the ADDIE model, adult learning theory and made to be accessible for people who might be resistant to the math or have processing differences.

That's all a really fancy way of saying - this is a module for beginners who are frustrated because it's hard for long term players to break down basic concepts and they love their friends but would still like a nice book written by someone who isn't playing with them  . . .

I wrote it for a friend who's teaching in an educational setting and mana cost was her biggest barrier for the very basic level.

I consider it a work in progress and it would be better as the base for an interactive computer based learning program module.

I should probably point out that I'm not associated with WotC in anyway and this is just something to help people learn the game in a slightly different way than they have available.

Here's a link to the .pdf

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4uyj0qpdcbv9c6a/fOmeynWyXE/Mana%20Cost%20Learning%20Mod%20AReynolds.pdf

Feedback is welcome.

Here are some sample figures from the workbook :