MTG Decks on TappedOut

Years ago, I discovered TappedOut.net as a place to make magic decks.  I love the idea of building decks and wind up often enough buying cards to make decks, but I don’t really find the time to do so.  Occassionally, I’ll hop online and craft a deck on the site because I’ve since learned that I very rarely actually construct a deck in real life.

At first, I started making decks there to document the decks I owned, but I did a horrible job of keeping up with that, so I then deviated to just jotting down ideas.  Sometimes they turn into completed decklists and sometimes not.

Tappedout may not be the ideal place to store things like this, but it was what I found years ago, and so what I’ve used.  Every once in a while, I want to go back and look at a deck I’ve made, but their library feature for someone with a large number of decks isn’t ideal.  So, I figured I’d document the decks I’ve made to date so I can always go back and look at them when I need to.  Without any additional pomp, here goes:

Alternate Win Conditions

1. Maze’s End
2. Bug Tribal
3. Test of Endurance
4. Evolving Elocuters

Specific Cards

1. Don’t Everyone Hate Me at Once
2. Laboratory Maniac
3. Shapely Giant
4. Want a Cracker
5. Country’s Edge

Mechanics

1. {G} Devotion
2. {W} Devotion
3. {R} Devotion
4. {B} Devotion
5. {U} Devotion
6. R/W Jank
7. Pest for the Goblin Lord
8. Creature Tax
9. W/G Pangolins
10. Goyf
11. U/G Energy
12. Greenchantress
13. Nest of Scarabs
14. Spitemare
15. Green Auras
16. Toss Up
17. Morph-E-Us
18. G/W Populate
19. Life Gain
20. Arian Enchanted
21. Magus of the Library
22. Mortician Beetle

Tribal

1. U/G Hydra Walker
2. W/G Legends
3. Brion StoutWALLs
4. Oozing Tribal
5. B/R Pirates
6. Big Lizard in my Backyard
7. U/B Zombie Graveyard
8. Selesnya Alliance
9. Bully Goat
10. Ninjas Revisted
11. Cat Scratch Fever
12. Giants
13. Hard Day’s Knight
14. Dinobots
15. B/W Warriors
16. Spirit of the Law
17. Whomans
18. Clergy
19. Snakes
20. Elemtnary, My Dear
21. R/G Warriors
22. Archers
23. Soldier Tokens
24. Drooids
25. U/B Zombie Mill
26. Merfolk Mill
27. R/B Vamps
28. Illusions
29. Cry Wolf
30. Faeriely Casual
31. Relentless Rats
32. Wood
33. Awww Rats
34. Myrly Casual
35. Byrds

Other

1. Death by Lands
2. Flayer Husk is Real
3. Thought Gorger
4. Dark Artifacts
5. U/B Mill

Works in Progress

1. Biovisionaries
2. Oath of Superfriends
3. The Progeny
4. Life
5. R/U Heroic
6. ForestWalk
7. Vedalken Visions
8. Unholy Ogres
9. Beast Check
10. Greendrazi
11. Green Walls
12. Spirits
13. Rebels
14. Golum
15. Land’s End
16. OnlyLands
17. Blue Tims
18. Muraganda Petroglyphs
19. Aether Rift

MTG Draft Night: War of the Spark

We’ve been putting off MTG draft nights for too long, so last week we just put an ultimatum out: draft was going to happen that week for sure.

Because we had short notice, a number of the regular crew weren’t able to make it. That was, in essence, fine because we were going to try to limit it to 8 people anyway. As of late, the numbers have ballooned to as many as 12 people at a draft night, which makes logistics and seating in my house quite difficult. So, by limiting it to eight players, we figured to make it a little more reasonable.

We talked about how to equitably reduce the player count down to eight though, and came up with a number of possibilities. Do we draw names from a hat? Give priority to some players based upon pre-determined qualifications? Make it a free-for-all? After much deliberation, we opted for a combination of the latter two.

First, we gave prioritization to those who come to game nights at least somewhat regularly. Five of the most common people that play at draft nights come to game night as well. I like the idea of rewarding those who come on the regular, so we started there. For the last three spots, we had six people leftover (based upon who attended last time). To make it fair to all of them, I sent out an email blast and just made it first come, first serve.

To my surprise, a number of people just couldn’t make it on short notice. In fact, of the six people, only one was able to attend, leaving us with two extra spots to fill. I wound up opening it up to a former co-worker of mine, and his girlfriend, and the happily accepted. We also had a last minute cancellation the night of the draft, and absolutely scrambled to fill that spot. I personally asked at least half a dozen people, none of which were available. We ultimately found two people that could fill the spot, and settled on Sam’s friend: Dison.

MTG Draft Night: Unstable Edition (A Pangolin Tale)

We recently convened the latest edition of MTG: Draft Night at my place, wherein we unveiled Unstable upon the masses. Prior to going in, we tend to vote on what it is we want to do and then start knocking them out. One of the higher vote-getters last year was the latest UN-set, despite having a stable of some relatively competitive players. I think they were a little leery about the set in general, but majority rules, so that’s what we went with.

MTG Draft Night: Battlebond

This quarter’s installment of MTG Draft Night has been brought to you by Battlebond.

Unlike many of the previous events, this one was far less planned out. Granted, we set the time long in advance and still had surveys to help decide what to do, but it just didn’t feel well planned (which I can say because I’m the guy whose responsible for planning them). Frankly, I feel like I dropped the ball on it, and I think it showed in the end result.

I think it was largely to do with a lack of follow-up emails. Back in May we did a draft of Ixalan, and promptly sent out surveys to review what worked and what didn’t, along with setting tentative dates for the next event. We all (sort of) agreed on July 27th. By that, I mean that it was the only proposed date where nobody seemed to have any conflicts–though it’s worth noting that many a person checked the “I can probably make it, but check with me closer to the date.”

I didn’t bother checking until about two weeks prior, and that meant that a couple of folks had made other plans. So, rather than have the fourteen people show up that we did previously, we were scheduled to have eight.

MTG Ixalan Draft Night

I used to be so good about blogging. Rather than bemoan things that get in the way, how about I just get back on track?

Last month, we held another draft night (our second of the year, for those that are counting). Our draft covered Ixalan & Rivals of Ixalan based upon a community vote. It was the first draft where we had done more than just crack a box and open it, because we had two packs from each set to play with. It was also one of the first drafts where we expanded to include more than 8 players.

Changes to Scoring

Scoring worked a little differently because of the number of players. We had initially slotted it to 8 players, per usual, but then opened it up to a previous player who had attended draft nights before. That meant we had to invite a 10th player (to make things even), and eventually expanded the scope to include an 11th and 12th player as well.