Life at Number 12
Somewhere around 4:00 am, June, Lancaster 2009

"Don't you eyeball me sunshine!" Sean asserted, sternly pointing his finger at the thirty something Pakistani-Birmingham neighbour, leering at him over the three foot brick wall whilst his elderly mother and father huddled around. Through the front door of number twelve, Jon appeared out of no-where, revealing the open wound on his elbow.

"There's blood everywhere!" he croaked like some sort of demented hag out of a horror movie. The glassiness in his eyes brought about by the vast amounts of alcohol he'd consumed over the course of the evening. Acting as an emissary of neighbourly behaviour, Dan followed soon after his seemingly insane friend, chuckling to himself over the hilarity of the situation like an absolute loon.

"I'm sorry about this guys," the orange skinned DJ said to the fuming neighbours. "Come on you two.. get inside" he said to his other house mates. I'd been trying to usher his message without stepping out the front door. Beside me Jewface stood laughing and shaking his head in complete disbelief at the ridiculous nature of the situation.

Moments earlier, Jon had taken the decision that a crack in the window of the kitchen door should warrant him to smash the window with the point of his elbow. Desperately trying to hold onto my sensibility in the face of adversity, I had attempted to discourage him from this blatantly stupid act. Attempting to act as an angel whenever a silver tongued devil in the form of Sean was on the other shoulder was a futile endeavour. In his dismay at the fact the window hadn't broken in a clean smash, Jon wanted revenge upon the door itself. I once again attempted to incite some sense into my vandal friends but seeing Sean's foot puncture wood couldn't have made it any more clear that this attempt was as futile as the last. Realizing that the door had reached the point of no return, I opted to seek a piece of the action for myself. I hurried into the cellar and returned with a brick to hurl through the remaining failed window like I was rioting on the 12th of July. I was quite the little fallen angel.

It was not the first time that we had decided to trash an element of the house. After the first month there wasn't a bannister remained standing intact. The kitchen door was also the second door to have been eradicated, the living room had fallen casualty merely days before. It shall come as no surprise when I say that we regularly incensed the neighbours. I wasn't proud of it but by in the space of a year they had put their house on the market, sold and left. We weren't the first student household to have caused distress to the Patel's. It's much more likely that we were merely one of a long line of noise making, substance ingesting nut-jobs. When we were asked on the first nigh we moved in to keep the noise down, we tried to develop a healthy relationship with our Muslim neighbours. Initially this had a degree of success but this was not to last. On top of two pounding parties we had a multitude of minor gatherings, pot smoking happy hours, jam sessions and post clubbing house destruction that had created so much noise that we had received letters from the council threatening further action. Those aforementioned parties that we had thrown in the house had proven very difficult to keep under control. Both times had uninvited appearances from our neighbour demanding that we turn the volume down. Although we had did our best as residents of the house to turn it down at his request, our moves were usually undone by party attendees enjoying the face-meltingly good tunes within our music libraries. One could argue that this all this is a case against alcohol and drugs consumption but really they were more exacerbating what was already there. Remove substances from the situation and you still had four semi-professional musicians desperate to hone their instrument playing skills and a geek that yelled at the TV whenever he lost at an xbox game. It would be easier to argue a case that the walls between houses were too thin. After all, when I asked our neighbours on the other side about the noise they had heard nothing.

Those of you who know where I live will probably understand the irony within of the fact I lived in such chaos. In Belfast I live in a nice house that's right in the middle of student territory. My parents regularly attended resident meetings that would highlight the difficulties trying to carry out a normal life with drunken youths chanting songs at the top of their voice during the early hours of the morning. Had I not grown up aware of the stress that noisy students cause, I might have been a lot worse. I'm also well aware of the fact that looking back over it in later years, I might be filled with a sense of shame that I was part of such madness. No doubt that if and when I come to raise a family I'll have to march into a neighbour's house in order to turn the music down. Until then I know I'll have moments where I look back and miss the life I lived as a long haired stoner in number twelve. We may have had the ups, the downs and everything in between but that was our house.



Viva the legends of Blade Street

What is wrong with my subconscious?

So last night I had this dream - I was walking this girl I had a crush on in Lancaster home on a bright sunny afternoon. I turned to kiss her good bye This kiss turns into a full on "make out session" and her clothes come off in seconds. She has this ridiculously hot body.. curvy but not fat. Beautiful milky skin, wide hips and incredible round, full breasts.

I get to it and I'm eating her out, I look up to see if she's enjoying it and her head has turned into that of a stone eagle's. Odd I think, so I call her name
and her head goes back to that normal dark eyed, dark haired look, so I go back to munching whilst doing my patented fingering technique. Out of no where, this little puppy goes berserk jumps over the hedge and bites on my wrist and I'm wrestling him off kind of throw him over the hedge.

I turn round and she's gotten dressed again and says:

"Hey I really enjoyed that, I've kind of lost the mood though. Don't worry, I'm going to kill that fox if I see him again"



God damn imaginary puppies.

Random Thoughts from When I've been Wasted, Pt. 1 (week ending 03 October 2010)

Welcome to my (hopefully) weekly report of random bollocks that I have quipped upon or have joined in the random bollocks talking session.

After playing cards and having a drink with the Magic players I caught up with Kenny, Gav, Lemon, George, Lyndsey, Steven for a smoking sesh. A few things were brought up.

1) Sexy Sundays.
Where the phrase sexy Sundays came from will not be known however it soon evolved into a series of Club Nights in a bar. If you work in Club Promotion, consider naming days of the week in an erotic or rude fashion.
Sexy Sundays
Mating Mondays
Tasty Tuesdays
Wankered Wedensdays
Thrusting Thursdays
Fucking Fridays
Shagging Saturdays

It could go on with months but I shall leave you to your own devices about how to figure that one out.

2) The Crystal Meth Maze
Mix the glitz and glamour of the terrific 1990s Adventure Quiz Show with the grittiness of some low down dirty meth addicts. Tweeking team mates must complete challenges with the hope of winning crystal meth rocks. Before the end challenge involving the crystal dome, the team must smoke as much of the meth as possible before going into collect the gold and silver tickets. If they get more gold than silver then they will win their own meth lab.

3) Basil the Great Mouse Detective
Whilst Lindsey was talking of her real life I was bringing up Disney mystery solving classic Basil the Great Mouse Detective and asking her to explain why the two are relevant with each other. It became a joke that if anything said anything they would soon be silenced with the immortal line "What has this got to do with Basil the Great Mouse Detective."

Those were the gems of the week, sadly none of the other getting wasted sessions had too many statements that could be remembered. Saturday we reviewed Steven 1911's brilliant lines that he dished out a few months ago:


‎"You look like Chris Barrie on Es on Scrapheap challenge at 6 pm on a Sunday evening... You know the pilot episode actually consisted of Chris Barrie and a bunch of crackheads trying to build a plane out of a washing machine"

"I think there should be a reality TV show called "Face Melters" where they get a family of four to stick thei...r head into a microwave and turn it on to 800 degrees and film them living the rest of their life with a melted head."

After that, CJ, Joel and I caught up for a free styling session. Whilst the rap lines were terrific very little can be maintained in dome.

Scars of Mirrodin Pre-Release (A Fuck off non-Magic player Entry)

God damn I love pre-releases. There's something so nice about coming to a completely un-tested format. It's like opening a brand new computer game at the exact same time as your friends and having a race to figure out how to play it first. In fact, it's just like playing a whole new game. When I rocked up to Serenity games on Saturday I could feel everyone was thinking the same thing. The infrequent players who might have travelled from as far as Portadown just to play Magic were excited to play new cards whilst those who regularly atteneded the shop were eager to get to grips with something other than the slightly wearisome bomb heavy M11 limited.

I got into the shop at just the right time too. Whilst registration was due to close at 12, there's only so much space the shop can hold and with me walking in, it had hit max capacity. Niall Graham, the legendary shop manager had to drop out of the event just to fit me in. I have to say I really appreciated this.

Having only glimpsed at a few of the spoilers, I was looking forward to a few surprises, hopefully landing a few bombs along the way. Thankfully, my boosters were far from disappointing.

First booster: Elspeth Tirel
Second booster: Sunblast Angel
Me: Well I think I'm playing white then!

As for the second colour, a Hoard-Smelter Dragon made the decision for me. With a Myr Battlesphere and a Ratchet Bomb to add to the mix, this five rare packing deck was a monstrosity beyond words. A trained monkey could have taken this deck to top 8. Thankfully I like to think of myself just a tad better than a damn dirty ape.

Anyway, without further ado, here's the deck list:

9x Plains
8x Mountain

1x Iron Myr
1x Auriok Edgewright
2x Vulshok Replica
2x Blade-Tribe Berserkers
1x Glimmerpoint Stag
1x Razor Hippogriff
1x Darksteel Sentinel
1x Sunblast Angel
1x Hoardsmelter Dragon
1x Myr Battlesphere

3x Revoke Existence
1x Dispense Justice

2x Turn to Slag

1x Arrest


1x Elspeth Tirel

1x Contagion Clasp
1x Ratchet Bomb
1x Trigon of Rage

Whilst it may appear a bit slow, sealed is generally supposed to be a little show. Especially with this format. I had enough seven removal cards that dealt with either creatures or artifacts (some did both) whilst both the Ratchet Bomb and the Sunblast Angel punished opponents for over extending. On my sideboard I had another Trigon of Rage in the unlikely event my opponent was artifact or enchantment light enough to make a third Revoke Existence seem like overkill. Also I had a few mediocre equipment pieces and two Sunspear Shikaris if I was getting overrun by a weenie rush deck. Thankfully I never had to resort to this option because of said Ratchet Bomb and the trade forcing Vulshok Replica.

Match 1: Daniel
Youngling Daniel said he hadn't played in two years and to be frank, it showed. Whilst his deck wasn't too bad, he the wrong block on multiple occasions, regardless of what my mana situation or what else was on the table. I overrun him quickly in game one with my early drop creatures outclassing his. When he let a Double striking Auriok Edgewright through with my Trigon of Rage open in game 2, he declared "Oh snap!" as I did him exactly lethal.

Match 2: Greg McCausland
It goes without saying Greg is a better player than me. Except that is whenever he's drank his way through a bottle of Black Bush the night prior. Whilst he beat me in a tight game one, game two he drew dead with mana myrs popping up late game. In the early game this meant wasting a Contagion Clasp on one, whilst utilizing Glimmerpoint Stag's come into play ability to pop another. Towards the end of the game, I was wasting five mana removal spells on Myrs just because I could. In game three whilst I thought I was going to be put in a pretty nasty position due to Moltentail Masticore, blasting my critters to shreds and getting some swings in. However Greg would be kicking himself for tapping out on his sixth turn and failing to play around the Sunblast Angel which he knew I had. With no regeneration mana open, the Masticore would be saying hello to the KO pile. Since there are very few answers to a 5 toughness creature in the format, the Angel pretty much ended the game by itself.

Match 3: Chris Dodds
Chris didn't have a perfect pool, but he couldn't complain too much. His Green Black deck focused on piling on the poison counters and fast. With bombs such as Contagion Engine and Nim Deathmantle, he did quite a good job of that in game one. I'd offered him an ID prior to game one which he declined, feeling that it was much too early to risk not getting the needed four wins and a draw to top 8. In a heated second game, I returned a Vulshok Beserker to my hand using Razor Hippogriff's come into play ability, this was despite the fact that Doddsy had the black spell bomb with the mana open. He had forgotten to use it, I had forgotten he had it, thankfully this mistake on both sides paid off in my favour and I was able to recast it to finish him off after some swings with the Hippogriff and a Hoard Smelter Dragon. This was particularly close as he had me on eight poison counters and had shrunk the dragon down to a 2/2 with -1/-1 counters. He felt that he was going to win the game uhad I activated the dragon's ability targetting the contagion engine rather than spend my mana on recast the Vulshok that I shouldn't have had. However, I pointed out that he would not have been able to double proliferate the following turn if I had used the ability, meaning that he would still have to get rid of the Hippogriff that was coming right for him. Between the end of this game and the start of the third, then man with the expression filled face re-offered me the ID. I declined and went on to win Game 3, taking a gamble with a 5 land opening hand on the draw. Even holding the Sunblast Angel in my hand at the end of the game. I have to say though Chris impressed me somewhere in this match by proliferating the counters on my Ratchet Bomb to ensure it was out of range from destroying any of his permanents.



Match 4: Steve Tombs
Steve is a pretty casual player and as a result doesn't get enough play time in to ensure he's free from making bad mistakes. Despite this, I've been beaten by him before, he seems to have a similar ability to myself opening the best sealed pools possible. If he was sitting on three wins after three matches, I knew there was something up. When I heard he had Sunblast Angel and Elspeth Tirel, I told him I would ID with him if we were going 1-1 by the end of two games. This is something that might have even be a little bit risk for me as I suffered a loss in the first game, generally due to mana screw. He walked into a 3 for 1 with my Ratchet Bomb going off in game two and what I like to call "Predator Golem" (Darksteel Sentinel - Come on, look at the artwork.. it's a giant Steel Predator, it even has dreads), I was forcing Steve to scream "Get to the choppa!" in a bloody mess before I Myr Battlesphered him out of the game.



Game 3 was as I predicted. It came down to whoever drew Elspeth first won. Thankfully for Steve we had ID-d as I overrun him quickly with soldier tokens.

Match 4: Some Portugese guy
This guy had come down from Portadown and whilst he's not the worst player ever, he failed to realize that Carnifex Demon is a limited bomb and wasn't playing him in a deck that could have. His deck seemed to be one full of Green Fat and some other jank but it just couldn't compete with my own, in both games I was left with a mountain of cards still in my hand unplahttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6367786yed. Nice.

Match 6: Conor McVarnock
With four wins and an ID, I was automatically through for top 8. Here I could have lost and still got through but I ID out of courtesy and we play through the match anyway. I went 2-1, getting beaten by a poison counter beatdown, winning one game off the back of Elspeth and the third being a pretty close one that saw us both use our Myr Battlespheres, me killing him with the direct damage that the ability on the attack provides.


Top 8
With no problems making top 8, my abilities as a player begin to get tested. I draft a relatively mediocre U/W deck that's bomb free unless you can count Legendary Cat Cleric Kemba, Kha Regent. I don't because well.. she's crap unless you get an equipment n her and since Darksteel Axe just doesn't come around that often, you're left putting thing like the poor man's lightning greaves or Barbed Battlegear (which is good but quite expensive and shrinks the toughness. Glinthawk Warden, Razor Hippogriff and Ghalma's Warden were my MVPs.

Match 1: Daniel
Well Daniel San had somehow been scooped into top 8 by players that might have had grievances about beating a pre-adolescent. Thankfully I'm a cold heartless bastard and only took a slight pang of guilt as I beat him into the ground for a second time. He did win the first game as I failed to play around a Sunblast Angel, which I then destroyed only to be put in dire stress by the 4/4 mythic angel which gave all his guys shroud. Game 2 and 3, I played as if he had Sunblast Angel in his hand at all times - stalling out, building board position and trying to draw cards wherever possible off Trigon of Thought.

Match 2: Greg
Second rematch of the day. First game I beat Greg down pretty quickly because he's mana screwed for a particular colour (I think he lacks the swamps to make it a fair game), meanwhile I'm beating with a metalcraft affected 2/4 and everything is getting hastened up by said poor man's Lightning Greaves. Game 2 is an epicly long one, where I make a bit of a mistake. Instead of recurring a Necropede with the Hippogriff, I chose to bring back the white spellbomb, intent on drawing some other gas. If I had chosen the Necropede I could have dealt with the 2/1 unblockable blue guy a lot sooner. If Greg had let the attack go through continuously then I think the poison would have got to him. Either way, I did have a dispense justice that I kept holding back, thinking that any time Greg would attack with his 2 Sky-Eel Schools which I would have had no answer to deal with, other than block and trade with one using the Hippogriff and get crushed by the other. Greg however is a very patient player and puts me into the range of the drain life spell. It was quite a close one however. At one point, Greg Volition Reignsed the Hippogriff only for me to play Glimmerpoint Stag to put it back into my control and recurr the white spell bomb again. I also have to Remove from Existence his Contagion Engine before he wrecks my board. At another point, Greg is put into a position where he has to draw two removal spells to get rid of Scrapdiver Serpent.

Amusingly, halfway through this game I rang work to let them know I would be an hour and a half late as I was "helping my mum with something important". Well helping my mum I wasn't, but I felt it was much more important to play magic than to collect glasses in a pub.

In the third game, I get pounded into the dirt with style. Greg has a better board position going into turn six and seals my fate with the Contagion Engine. To work.

Pre-release 2
So, I went to work between the hours of 9.30 PM and 2 Am, then I went out drinking to a friend's gaff, guzzling beer, vodka and jaagermeister until 7 am. Not to mention I took more than a few drags on a certain kind of cigarette. Again my deck was bonkers. This time I played R/B and had Carnifex Demon, Hoard-Smelter Dragon, Nim's Deathmantle, Myr Propogator and the R/B dual land. On top of this I had 3x Shatters, Darksteel Axe and 2x Plague Stingers. This deck "ripped it hardcore like pornoflick bitches". Unfortuantely, whilst my memories of Saturday's pre-release are quite murky, I remember even less of Sunday's due to the four hours sleep I had the night prior and the liver abuse I dished out on Saturday night.

Match 1: DJ Carson
I'm pretty sure I wrecked DJ in the first game by 3-for-1-ing him with Carnifex Demon's infest ability. Game 2, he was in a much better position than I was but his poison counter count was pretty high and swung with a Plague Stinger. In response to the attack, DJ popped the blue spell bomb to give a 4/2 Golem flight. Unfortunately I had top decked a shatter and I apologized for being such a jammy son of a gun and salvaging victory from the jaws of defeat.

Match 2: Matt Tweedy
I'm pretty sure it was Matt I play in this match. I think I win the first game by dishing out poison counters ridiculously fast - Plague Stinger turn 2, followed by Painsmith and Darksteel Axe on turn 3. Better lucky than good. Game 2 ends up being one of those games where half the field seems to disappear due to removal and trades. Matt ends up in what seems like a particularly strong position with a creature equipped to Argentum Armour. Unfortunately whilst he is able to attack with it once, I flash in Darksteel Sentinel as a blocker and Matt has decided to target my R/B dual land rather than a seemingly irrelevant Contagion Clasp. On the turn following, I swing back and put him from 7 to 4 then play Bleak Coven Vampires in the post combat mainphase, the Contagion Clasp, not seeming so irrelevant now ensures that Metalcraft is online and the life suck finishes him.

Match 3: Simon Carmichael
Simon is always a pleasure to play, whether you win, lose or draw. After a good battle destroy him with Hoard-Smelter Dragon and using its ability multiple times targetting my own Darksteel Axe to give it +4 attack. If it weren't for my excessive mana though, Simon had me dead the following turn. I'm largely mana screwed for Game 2, whilst Simon hits a great draw and I'm forced to mulligan down to 5 in Game 3, sealing my fate.

Match 4: Dean Convery
I can't remember this one other than the fact I won. I think it was probably the Darksteel Axe that did it in one game, whilst Nim's Deathmantle that did it in another. Mmm good equipment.

Match 5: Steve Madden
We ID as we both have made top 8 and I can't remember what happens after that. I think we play two games and I win them both, with the back of Nim's Deathmantle, the other by generating umpteen Myr Propogator tokens.

Top 8
Another mediocre draft deck, I try to go for a blue heavy, red light artifact deck that has a few metal craft guys along with a load of bounce and big toughness guys.

Game 1: Drew Carmichael
I know Drew held a big grudge for me for a while because I was an ass in a draft game a few months ago and did a big takeback. I tell him I owe him a big takeback, pretty much suggesting he can have one big dirty cheat. He tells me not to worry about it as it hasn't bothered him and truth be told, he doesn't need it. Despite rare drafting, his R/G deck savages me. I almost win Game one with mediocre artifact creatures and holding off the 4/4 phoenix by bouncing it but Drew plays Cerebral Eruption and hopes for the luck shot. If I reveal a land or any card with cost less than 3, I have the game. Unfortunately I reveal Scrapdiver Serpent, a 7 mana creature whilst I'm on 7. I lose the game due to an incredible spell of bad luck, but don't mind, I kind of felt Simon's Brother deserved to win this one in spectacular fashion as my come uppance for being an ass. What I did mind was how stupid I was in the second game. I was put on 8 poison counters by an Untamed Might targetting his 2/2 infect artifact creature but managed to stabilize by building board position with artifact creatures and the Manic Vandal Ox. I even Bonds of Quicksilvered the Corpse Cur. Unfortunately, I walked into Tel-Jilad Fallen twice. Once by attacking into it with artifact creatures and secondly by tapping out, when I should have held the ox back, thinking I could tap it with the Tumble Magnet.

AWFUL AWFUL PLAY!!!!

Now don't get me wrong, had this been M11 draft and his creature have been a Black Knight and the Tumble Magnet been a Blinding Mage I would not have made the same mistake, I just didn't play the original Mirrodin to even take into account what Protection from Artifacts actually entailed. Terrible excuse for a random act of stupidity I know but I'd been playing pretty much perfectly up until this point all day, despite being hammered before I went to bed.

What annoyed me even more though was that Drew wouldn't give me a third game. For that I will hold a grudge for as I deem it to be cowardly and unsportsmanlike.

I forget to bring my pre-release pile of cards with me and head off to the pub to join Trent, Chris and Kerr bear who are mid session due to the Empire selling pints of Coors for £2 during the football match. With Sunday being Trent's last night, it's only fair that we give him a good send off. After the Empire we head to the Pavillion to watch Niall's band, "Sweet Taste" rock everyone's socks off. This is probably the best band in Belfast as all four band members are extremely talented, produce catchy but great tunes that don't faff about with some guitar fret fappage like some supposed technical mastery that you'd hear from some teenage metal group.

Even with my two highly notable mistakes, I really enjoyed the whole weekend.

Trent, I hope you realize how much you will be missed and I hope you don't mind that we got you absolutely steamboats by making you drink the most evil looking concoctions ever to be poured into shot glasses. Haha, USA! USA! USA! I think we all might owe Niall a pint for getting you to the airport the next day, or maybe we shouldn't as it could have been part of the plan to get Trent to get on the plane!

Now this should be my last FONMP section for a while, my regular fans will be screaming out for some stories of comedy, drinking and schmoozing.

- Big Nasty

FONMP - GP Gothenburg, PT Amsterdam

So if you read the last post, you'll know I had a bit of a messy ten days in mainland Europe. Good times, bad times, I had them all. I didn't go into depth about my latest scrub outs though which a lot of you Magic players might want to read about. Kind of an extended why I suck at Magic. I dropped a hundred DCI points in one month.

Day One, GP

Opening the sealed pool at the start of the day was the most disheartening thing. Inferno Titan, 3x Chandra's Outrages, 1x Sun Titan and considerable red and white cards to back the big guys up. Sadly, I was going to have to pass all of this to someone else. Someone who didn't utilize all this goodness to the full effect.

The pool that I was passed wasn't all that bad though. I build a U/G/b deck with two Mind Controls, Garruk Wildspeaker, Garruk's Packleader, Cultivate, Doom Blade, Assasinate and a few other pieces of fat. I can't really complain except for the fact it's a little slow. There's only two two drops and at the three slot there's a couple of cloud elementals and an aether adept. Whilst this is often not an issue in many sealed matches, it meant in a couple I took a harsh early beating.

Starting the day with three byes meant that I was going to have a lot of time on my hands. With most GPs there is a considerable amount of time doing nothing, waiting in between rounds for the next one to start. When you start a day with three byes, you're pretty much doubling the waiting time. Thankfully though it was annonced over the intercom that there would be a drafting happy hour - half price draft, 75SWK (about £7) for a draft, not bad. I build a fairly good U/W rush deck with two scroll thieves, stormfront pegasi and a couple of inspired charges. Win the first two rounds pretty quickly but draw dead in the third round, getting beaten down with a turn four conundrum sphynx both games. I was happy enough coming second, if I could go a ratio of two wins for every loss during the day, I'd make day two.

First match: Sami Valkamaa
So what beats double mind control.dec? Double acidic slime. This guy was running a vicious G/B build that was able to recurr the two acidic slimes he was running. In the match this just wrecked me. I got two-for-one-d all over the show. Not so good. We played a couple of games after and I was able to win, making me a question a few of my plays during the games. At one point in time, I was on 8 life and chose to block his Acidic Slime with my Azure Drake. Never a great trade but one I thought I was going to have to make to stabilize a particularly bad one whenever he is able to Nature's Spiral the Slime back to his hand. Knocking out one of my few sources of black mana. Doom Blade and Assasinate were virtually dead draws.

Second Match: Peter Floderus
At the begining of this match, my deck seemed to be 39 cards. Rather than risk getting DQed, I brought this to a judge's attention and got rewarded with a game loss for tardiness. As it turned out, two of the cards were stuck together. Stupid crap sleeves. If my deck list was ever checked I was bound to get a gameloss anyway for failing to write down that I had a Doom Blade in the deck. I go on to win game one against his aggressive U/R deck that looks to pair Goblin Tunneler with Fiery Hellhound. On top of that Chandra's Spitfires, Triskillion, Prodigal Pyromancers meant he was inflicting a lot of damage quickly. I was able to win the first game by dropping a mainboard harbour serpent and putting the island walk creature to its full potential. I lose the second getting beat down by a whispersilked fiery hellhound, during this game I make a major play mistake - mind controlling a prodigal pyromancer. 5 mana doom blade. Great. We play the third game that would have been and I lose anyway. Dead draw vs solid draw. Ah well. The guy goes on to beat Saito and makes day two.

Third Match: David Stenberg
I can't remember the exact nature of this match except that I won it, finally playing OK for a change. I apologize for knocking out of contention and he wishes me the best of luck for the rest of the tournament.


Fourth match: Fredrik Anesten
This guy was a nice guy but he was a little bit rusty, being a year out of the game he opts to play G/R as he thought it'd be easier to play. His deck isn't too bad being quite aggressive and good enough to give him three wins. He can't deal with the two mind controls and my deck just seems to wreck him. I look at his pool and see that he has bonkers U/W cards, advising him his deck could have taken him a lot further. We play a few games with the proposed deck and he beats me. Not bad.

Fifth match: Jan H. Ruess
I get a text from DJ telling me that I better have won this match or he'll kick my ass. The reason why? Ruess is a Dutch pro and it would have been a great victory. Unfortunately Ruess is packing double Blinding Mage, multiple Assassinates and a Royal Assassin. My flaws of my deck building appear - if I had put in two Yavimaya Wurms rather than two Harbour Serpents I could have won this. I drop a Harbour Serpent and whispersilk cloak it, if I can draw an island, he's on a clock. Unfortunately for me, Jan scrys into Solemn Offering using his Crystal Ball. At this point there's nothing I can do to take it. At this point I'm on slight tilt, I keep a slow hand and get punished for it. A turn one Elite Vanguard gets in for twelve damage and he gets his blinding mage royal assassin combo once again. My day two dreams are over but I decide to play the last match anyway for rating, experience and prizes.

Final Match: Paul Hodgson
Paul is an English guy that I have a laugh with as soon as I start playing. His deck is the nuts though, despite the fact he's playing the colours of mana screw (W/B), he wrecks me with Baneslayer Angel, with Visera Seer tech to make my mind controls useless. Double Mind Rot is harsh too. No prizes for me.

Paul and I go drinking in a mediocre bar and here is where I decide to play the PTQ the next day.

PTQ
My sealed pool does the exact same thing as it did for the GP. Double titan. This time though it's Frost Titan and Grave Titan with the blue/black stuff to back it up. I end up having to pass it and get back an intreguing pool. I build U/W/B. It's not the best deck ever, I'm running six two drops - 2x Ajani's Pridemate, 2x Augury Owl, 2x White Knight. I try to get further value from the Pridemates by running Tireless Missionaries and Ajani's Mantra. Whilst this is pretty good in the odd match, it's kind of a case of one mediocre card plus one mediocre card = two mediocre cards. I raise questions about the way I've built this deck later on. There's a Chandra Nalaar and a Magma Phoenix in my red cards with some mediocre stuff to back it up.

Match one: Robert J. van Medevoort
This is a solid Dutch player, he's build a good G/W aggro deck and nails me with a Baneslayer Angel. Ah well, I'll take the loss and win out from there, I hope. Later on in the week I see Robert playing in the Pro Tour. I don't mind getting beat by a pro.

Match two: Laertis Vaso
Ok, I probably shouldn't say this but there's something I don't like about this Italian guy. It doesn't help the fact that he beats me by a narrow margin. I have him on two life and he top decks mind control to steal my Vengeful Archon. I even clone the Archon but he packs the removal to deal with it. Crap. Game two I play like a dick. With a Serra Angel out, I decide not to Clone it, with the intention of saving it for the Vengeful Archon I have in hand. During one attack I'm pretty sure he's had a Diminish in hand for about four turns yet I push the Angel forward anyway and he 2 for 1s himself by blocking with an Augury Owl. Worth it, I'd say. If I'd cloned the Angel I'm sure I would have won this game and he packs two mana leaks to wreck my day, the second one shutting down my chance of a Vengeful Archon win.

I win Match three and four but I can't remember for the life of me how I did. I can't remember who I played or what they played. I'd say the euphoria from actually winning a few games wrecked my short term memory.

Match five: Santi Pettersson
I really shouldn't have lost this one but due to bad plays I do. After taking a vicious pounding from an Awakener Druid'd forest and some other green/red/white aggro cards, I manage to stabilize with a Vengeful Archon and Ajani's Mantra. After some nice combat trades and this guy failing to read Archon properly I'm in a decent position. If I'd cloned the archon, then attacked I would have won without doubt. Unfortunately he Condems the Archon. I scoop without playing the game out, half by accident, half because I'm on tilt. I get beat down Game two as well, probably due to my own damn mistakes.

Match six: Jake Guld
No chance of making top 8, I'm playing to get some prizes. Jake is an American fellow with a very odd U/R deck odd because he uses Reverberate in an odd way, copying his own Ingenuity. Triskillion + Chandra's Spitfire wreck me in one game, I have no idea how he wins in the other.

Match seven: Jan Von Ortloff
The guy gets mana screwed both games. I don't. 'Nuff said.

Match eight: Oliver Biessmann
This is a really well fought match and the guy holds me off for several turns in the second game by bluffing me into thinking he's got removal in his hand when the one card turns out to be a White Knight. This U/W match up contains a lot of Aerial Battles but is settled quite firmly by my Air Servant.

Match nine: Pontus Johansson
This is a very odd match. I wreck him with Vengeant Archon in game one and he returns the favour with Overwhelming Stampede game two. Judges get called on our third game several times, as he naturalizes my Ajani's Mantra during my upkeep and questions why I still get to gain life, failing to understand the begining of up keep trigger. Then the way clone works was called into question, I go to clone my serra angel and he doom blades it, I clone greater basilisk instead. I should have cast clone and declared the target on resolution but I didn't because I'm a dick. He thinks the clone should have fizzled. The judges learn. We also have a question about number of cards drawn so judges have to piece it together. I'm pretty sure I was still right and hadn't drawn for one turn but manage to win anyway. By the time the judge thing is settled, Pontus and I aren't too happy, it took them far too long to make their decisions and didn't act in a very professional manner. No real point complaining.

With a record of 5-4 I scrape into prizes and pick up three boosters. After almost twelve hours work it's kind of stupid but I established my "warrior's spirit". Rather than bitching and moaning, feeling sorry for myself like I did at national's qualifiers, I force myself to learn from every experience and keep on playing even if the payout is small.

I play an unsanctioned "chicken draft" with my Swedish friend, a kooky old English guy and six Serbian guys. The Serbian guys are great fun and I end up drafting the nuts. Red/white with Gladiator Cyclops, Brittle Effigy, Chandra Nalaar, Vengeful Archon. The commons/uncommons were great too, Assault Griffins, Infantry Veterans, Elite Vanguard, mmm aggressive.

I play a Generic GPT in Amsterdam and scrub, popping and passing another ridiculous sealed pool. With an aggressive R/W deck I play like an absolute hero in Match One, get beat by a fast and good U/W deck and something else. I got a bye then I got beat by a girl. I had her on two life but she top decks Inferno Titan, wrecks my board and prevents me from ever winning. Game two I side in celestial purge to take out the Inferno Titan. She follows up the Inferno Titan with a Sun Titan. That's just.. great. That was it for my big tournaments in Europe. I didn't want to pop a sealed pool for quite some time. I didn't want to get beat by the sealed pool that I should have been allowed to play ever again.

So I play one last draft on the Sunday and take my small victories. Drafting U/B, I somehow manage to rare draft two dual lands and a Primeval Titan, instantly making my money back. My slightly creature shy but still fairly impressive deck makes it to second place.

Overall I was happy enough playing the game over the ten days. I'm not happy with my performance but I think I was a little drained on the day of the GP by lack of sleep and a slight nervousness. I'll be back though and I'll drag my rating up whether it has to go up kicking and screaming.

A "Magic" Adventure - Legal Disclaimer: This is a fictional account of what happened. I never broke any law.

As some of you may know I just spent the last ten days in mainland Europe. I originally intended to spend much of my time playing Magic the Gathering but there were more than a few distractions in the end. This post is going to chronicle some of the finer elements of my journey and is in no way a "Fuck off non-magic player" section, that will come at later date.


Over the last few weeks I've had very few days off boozing like an alcoholic. It would appear that I'm not very good at going for "just one drink". "Just a couple" often ends up turning into a binge. Two Thursdays ago I decided to catch up with a friend for a couple of drinks before she went off to 2manyDJs, then I went to play some cards, intending to get some practice in. Then I went to catch up with a few more friends for a few more drinks, then a few more friends for a few more drinks then another friend for another few drinks. Basically it ended up like a one man pub crawl but knowing that I'd have buddies at each venue. It was no surprise then that I spent much of Friday with a hangover. Now hangovers as I'm sure you may be aware don't help too much when one has to do some flying. Especially if you have the breed of hangover that I have - one of those ones that start out fine then develop into a metric ball ache of badness. It meant I could sleep awkwardly on the plane between Belfast and London, then sit in a gelatinous like state in Stanstead before graduating on to the London to Gothenburg plane. The problem with that hangover was that I was carrying something on me that I really shouldn't have.

During the queue for security in Belfast city airport, I discovered a tiny bag of grass in my inside jean pocket. Just enough for a joint, nothing that I haven't been able to get through international airport security before and I figured, it was too late to turn out of the queue without looking deeply suspicious. I put all my belongings in the box, dumped my bag on the scanner belt and walked through the detector. *BEEP*

It's cool. I cracked a joke about swallowing a large lump of metal when I was a kid to the middle aged security guard. He laughed and explained that it was a random stop and search but my Transformers T-shirt was very cool and that he is a big fan of the movies. I agreed with this and put my arms out for the pat down. Nothing found. With one airport down, I figured the other two would be grand. Stanstead largely was. The last time that I had been through it my former friend set off a minor alert by forgetting that his "oregano" grinder was still in his luggage. It was only when I got to Gothenburg that it became a problem. The first thing that I saw soon when I got past the passport check was a sniffer dog Labrador. That was one smart looking labrador too, waiting for me with it's healthy golden fur and its bored looking trainers. I panic slightly, with the hangover in full swing, I'm just a tad paranoid. Nah fuck that, I'm sweating like a bitch in heat. I dive into the queue for the toilets which happen to be one cubicle unisex units, which is a long wait and a long time to look on edge and shifty right in front of the labradors and the Custom Agents. I finally get into the toilet, whip my dick out and start pissing, meanwhile unravelling the crap in my pocket to get the weed out and put it in the sanitary towel dispensary bin. Except I completely failed to do this, instead I dropped the weed in the toilet whilst I'm mid flow and have to reach in to swipe the baggie from the piss chamber before I can dispose of it. I washed my hands with a little extra soap and left to leave the airport.

"Excuse me sir, can you come with us?"

Hearing those words almost made me shit a brick. Nay, a high rise Singapore appartment complex. Where they allowed to put security cameras in toilets? I know it was an airport and all but surely we should be allowed some privacy.

I take a long drawn out but silent inhale through my nostrils to keep my composure and agree to the custom agent's demand. I'm asked about my reason for being in Sweden and they search my bag to verify whether or not I'm telling the truth. The cards confirm my reasons so they ask me for my passport. I check a few pockets and my mind begins to boggle. I'm now searching my entire inventory just for my passport. I run back into the toilet and grab it off the hand dryer.

"It was a good thing we stopped you sir, wasn't it?"

I nod and agree with a beaming smile and they let me go on my way.

I leave the airport, narrowly missing the bus into city centre. After that narrow escape I'm a little unphased, produce my book and wait for the next one.

"I think you have missed the last bus. Where are you going?"

I look up and it's the same two female custom agents that stopped me.

"City centre."

"Oh, that's where we are going, we can give you a lift into town"

I smile and hurry over to the car. They put the dog in the boot and I hop into the back seat. Minus one joint = plus one free taxi ride. Small fucking victories my friend.

When I get into town I have a little bit of difficulty navigating the way to my friend's house. Adam, who I've got to say is a fairly brave individual for putting up a random magic player who he'd only ever spoke to a couple of times on the phone after playing him at Magic over the internet gives me a perfectly good set of directions and I end up going the wrong direction. Eventually I rectify this issue and get there just in time to watch some channelfireball, play some proxied vintage magic (this is where the cards in the deck are worth hundreds, if not thousands of dollars so you print off copies of the cards and stick the picture to already existing, not as expensive cards), drink some Lipton ice tea and go to sleep. We head to the venue and have a long day of magic to get through.

Long story cut short with Magic (I'll explain what I got up to in a later post for the die hard followers of my Magic articles), I end up scrubbing out but making a few friends in the process. I gain a Serbian fan club over the two days and end up going drinking with a new found English friend. This generally just meant about four pints in a rather crap Gothenburg bar. I'm not really sure what proper Gothenburg night life is like but this place was a mediocre bar in terms of venue, speed of service and music played. On top of that we were supposed to pay 40 Swedish kroner (about £3.50) to get in but the guy at the door didn't have the change for a 50 kroner note so let me in anyway. I knock it on the head early as I don't really want to keep on spending money in a venue with a ratio of about 8 guys to 1 girl. Honestly we were both positive the place wasn't a Gay bar even with it's dumb name: Charlie's Anglars. So I knock it on the head and go to bed early so I can get up and play magic the next day. Sunday night I'm treated to a traditional Swedish meal by Adam's father of succulent roast pork and a vegetable mix that seems to comprise of carrot and turnip.

At this point in time, I'm reluctant to head home. Whilst I had a flight booked to return home on Monday, I wouldn't actually get home until about eight o'clock in the evening. Why bother flying back to Belfast only to have to fly out to Amsterdam on Thursday. It wasn't like I had anything important to do on Tuesday or Wednesday. I sit until about three o'clock in the morning on Adam's computer researching the alternatives to going home whilst leaving him in his room to sex talk his girlfriend over the phone in both Swedish and Spanish. After trying in vain to find alternatives to going home that don’t cost £140 I hit the hay. Despite setting an alarm, I do one of those half asleep “wake up and acknowledge I have to get up for something but chose to sleep in anyway” moments. When I’m finally up for real it’s 09:30 AM and I have half an hour to get from Adam’s house to the airport before check in closes. The hell I’m risking £30 for a taxi that might not even make it on time.

Adam and I book my next flight. Copenhagen to Amsterdam. We head into town and grab some sushi before I take the train from Sweden to Denmark and Adam heads to college.

The train between Goteborg and Copenhagen takes about four hours but it has to be done on a sunny day. Whilst admittedly I missed hours of sunshine on that journey and ended up getting into Denmark when it was pissing with rain, I got to see the beautiful Swedish countryside as it was coated in rays of gold.

When I got there, I got to catch up with Daniel, Josephine and Martin, smoke a joint and head off to make dinner. I spent the next two days with Martin, Jackob and Sigurd schmoking and drinking, getting my liver prepared for what was to be a tame by comparison Amsterdam.

This was genuinely an awesome experience, Freetown Christiania is the hippy commune I’ve spoke about in previous blogs that is as phenomenal the umpteenth time you visit it as it is the first time you visit it. Danish pilsner is as great as ever.

After a quick flight that I spent trying to chat up some average looking Dutch girl beside me whilst being fucked off my face on beer and weed, I rocked into Amsterdam, grabbed a slice of pizza and took the train into city centre. This bit all went pretty smoothly. I bought some blueberry in some average looking coffee shop, hit a bong then traversed the streets to the Italian restaurant where the Magic players resided. We topped up our beer levels then head off to see a sex show. This is one of those things that you know in your heart you will only ever do once.

I mean it’s 30 euros for two crap drinks and a chance to watch grown men go up on stage and eat banana’s out of a fat girl’s flange. Except it’s hilarious when its your friends that are those eating the banana out of that girl’s flange. Better still is whenever your mate has his shirt off and he’s lying on the stage with the girl writing ‘Bad boy’ using a pen protruding from her flaps. That is something that you have to see to believe.

Arguably the best thing about that sex show was that it gave me the opportunity for the most perfect one-liner. Right in the “live sex” portion of the show, the woman lay on her back with her legs around his head so he could have tongue to twat reach. Queue UFC reference

“And she catches him with a triangle choke hold! IT IS AAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL OVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEERRRRRR!”

After this we walked home, drinking tuborg and smoking joints along the way.

Thursday was largely spent being hung over, chomping on the breakfast buffet and having a nap. What followed was a spot of magic and a trip into town, drinking in a few bars. These were generally pretty sweet, I had a good eye for ones we could just chill out and grab a few pints of Bavaria. We even hit up a shisha bar with the fittest Scottish barmaid I’ve seen in quite some time. Whilst this was all cool and all, we kind of hit a little bit of a hurdle: most of the bars seemed to close at 1 and without knowledge of where the night clubs are, it’s quite easy to get distracted and put off partying for another night. You kind of end up just going back and guzzling the remainder of the beers purchased from the local supermarket. That’s kind of what happened for the remainder of our trip, we spent a lot of time getting pie-eyed in hotel rooms and seeing some bars. If not it was getting absolutely wankered at our hostel’s happy hour. 2 for 1 on pints of lager whilst we’re playing the best drunken foosball or mental magic we’ve ever engaged in.

A couple of the other guys had just that idea, taking a free tour of the zottay brewery, an 8% beer that tasted like it was about four. Not much to my liking, it kind of had a musty taste to it and when you’re filled with a hangover and ribs, you’re not going to be able to handle much in the way of musty beer.

We also went on the “Heiniken experience”, which wasn’t actually a tour of the brewery but a mueseum of Heiniken/a building of advertisement for the company. Whilst the people working here were pretty cool, I’d recommend hoofing a big bong before you even step foot in this building as fifteen Euros will only get you two free pints of Heiniken and that’s provided you answer the questions of the fit bar maids correctly. Hint: the head on Heiniken is designed to stop oxygen from getting and CO2 from getting out.

After the Heiniken trip, we had one little Sweedish problem. Outside the hostel, four of us were playing a card game called "9 Card Brag", basically a quick and easy to gamble on card game, that doesn't require any major skill. About half way through the game, a Swedish guy came and asked us about what we were playing. He seemed friendly enough but then he started into a rant about a Swedish card game that we should have been playing.

"Yes, it is called nigger and president"

Now I'd find this awkward at the best of times but there was a crowd of African students gathered by the picnic tables around us. Niall quite rightly suggested he didn't use that word and the guy dropped it. About three minutes later, he brings it up again.

"Yes, card game Nigger and President"

"Dude.."

"Yes, I know but I did not give the name to the game, it is a very popular game in Sweden, it is funny because the nigger can be the president at the same time.."

At this point we froze him out of our conversation. I'm inclined to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and say that the guy wasn't racist but I wasn't prepared to deal with his stupidity. You don't loudly say a word that is discriminatory around the group it is likely to offend.



My tolerance to stupidity can be pretty low.

To soothe the munchies, I would recommend all you can eat ribs for twelve euro, where you can get a plate “ribbed for your pleasure”. I can’t remember the name of the place in town that did this deal but it was an Argentinan restraunt. The service could have been a little better but I wasn’t going to kick up too much of a fuss when I was stuffing myself with their ribs. Pretty good I have to say.

Sunday though was the God of all days. After playing Magic semi-successfully I joined the other eleven Northern Irish magic players for the best activity known to man: boating on Amsterdam canals. For three hours we bombed around on motor boats barbequing, drinking beer and smoking thick pre-rolled joints. I think even the people in Amsterdam were slightly confused to see us gnashing huge chunks of chicken clean off the bone that was fresh cooked on foil instant barbeques. There were some hilarious moments on that boating expedition too. Take for instance the “Zattay drop” a competition where contestants have to set a bottle of zattay perfectly upright on an Amsterdam houseboat for maximum points or trying to schmooze attractive women who were in boats along side us. The boat rental guys didn’t look too happy with us when we returned the boats with a live and smoking barbeque still going.

Sadly whilst we were all finally in the mood for going out and sleazing on some Dutch girls, the old “no where is open past 1” conundrum really applies on a Sunday. We made up for the problem by chomping our way through some seriously good kebabs and I collapsed in my half assed made hostel bed covered in beer sweat.

I want to thank everyone who made this trip what it was, in particular, Adam for letting me stay in his beautiful family home, Martin for letting me stay in his gaff. Dog and Gar get a shout out for organizing the boat trip.



Ratings (out of 5)
Swedish hospitality: *****
Danish Hospitality: *****
Scrubbing out at magic: *** (At least I learned a few things and made a few friends)
Christiania: ****
Heiniken Experience: **
Eating ribs: ***
Beer: *****
Renting boats: ***********************************************************
Some idiot outside a hostel:

Inception

- Overrated, but not that bad.

I'm sure you were all thinking "Why doesn't he go and see Inception so he can tell me what he thought of it", well you might like what I have to say about it. If you have seen it then get ready to bicker with me, if you haven't seen it go to the £3 screening of it on a Tuesday. I'd be slightly adverse to paying full price for it.

Brief synopsis? Enter a world much like our own except a device was created by the military that allows people to "Dream Share". That is multiple people can experience the same dream and explore various levels of consciousness. Leonardo DiCaprio and his friends - some English guy, the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun and some random guy that gets taken away from everyone else earlier on in the film work as their own organized company of dream data protection. You know how big companies hire trained hackers to test their network security and find ways to improve it, well these guys pretty much do exactly that except they train CEOs, etc. do militarize their dreams so that if anyone illegally dream shares with them and tries to steal secrets and information kept in the subconscious, their efforts are foiled. DiCaprio as we learn pretty early on in the film is wanted for murder of his dead wife and desperately wants to get back to his kids. Ken Watanabe offers him the chance to return to America and see his kids undeterred by law enforcement if he has an inception. The movie title refers to going into someone's dream and carefully causing the dreamer to develop an idea. In this case Watanabe's character wants Cillian Murphy to disolve his father's company to avoid a superpower energy corporation from forming.

We are to believe this has never been done before or if it can be done it's very difficult. The first half of the film we see the team being assembled, it's like the scene is being set and we get to see the dynamics between each character. Because this is done so quickly, it's almost as if it's a little forced. "How can we show this guy knows his shit in a thirty second montage". Whilst all of the actors are good, I found it kind of difficult to see the characters as characters, more often we're seeing them as the actors or the characters they've been in previous films - "Oh look, there's Ken Watanabe, DiCaprio, Juno, the kid from 3rd rock from the son, Michael Caine, Scarecrow". That's partly because of such an all star cast being used, the fact that pretty much everybody has already been in a Christopher Nolan Batman film and because of the sound in this film. In true Nolan style there is an orchestral score going through pretty much all of this film. I don't remember anything other than strings, trumpets and bass. The latter led to such a wobble of the speakers sometimes it was a little off putting. Whilst it didn't mean the dialogue was hard to make out, it did however mean that you were slightly distracted by the music as the characters spoke. Meaning that their names were lost in the aether pretty early on.

As far as the story goes, it's quite good for a while. It's a pretty novel science fiction idea that Philip K. Dick probably should have thought up. It's got the sort of Existenz/Matrix/Ghost in the Shell plug yourself into another reality with the classic DesCartes message of "I think therefore I am" philosophy built in. The film also tries to work on multiple levels of the subconscious and "projections" appear - characters or places that are brain pieces together without our control. Leo's wife almost acts as an antagonist to the characters because she just pops up there causing him to act like a dick without him being able to stop her. Yes there's an emotional and sentimental reason as to why this happens but often enough I was just thinking "Would somebody just shoot the dumb bitch". The script is reasonably well written but at times it gives me a bit of a *sigh* moment. As if it was a little too laboured/maybe borderline pretentious. Partly that's because of the humourless nature of the entire film. When I go to see a big budget action movie, I like to at least have a chuckle from time to time. It's why the Arnie films are still good to watch. That's not to say you have to cover the thing with melted mozarella but throw a good one liner in the dialogue to mix it up. Tom Hardy almost grants a chuckle here and there but it's barely enough to even give a half smile. Nolan would do well to remember that Batman Begins had a great dynamic between Bruce and Alfred. If you're going to have Michael Caine in your film for little to no reason, you may as well have him use the word bloody.

The second half of the film when they're in the dream starts off pretty well. There's some gun fights, a car chase with a train in it and some mastery with a rocket launcher. There's a constant tension within the dream because of whats at stake if someone dies within the dream (I'll not spoil this bit) and the action is pretty good. The characters all have to go deeper than the dream itself, into several states of dream within dream. Some stay on some level, some on another. Whilst there is a strong level of intelligent script writing in doing this, at times the camera seems to constantly cut between the mutliple dreams, so we're constantly reminded of what's going on but it's almost setting out to be a mind fuck. Ever seen the "I'm the Juggernaut bitch!" voice over of the 90s x-men cartoon. This is what parts of these scenes reminded me of, I felt like yelling out "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS FALLIN?!". The slow-mo sequences at times became a little tedious. My friend sitting right next to me at times was yawning and laughing at things he shouldn't have been laughing at. The multiple dream idea also had an element of "Ok we've got three mediocre plotlines, what should we do with them? YES! I'VE GOT IT! COMPOUND THEM ALL TOGETHER! IT'S A MASTERPIECE!" I think what part of this film pulls it down is it's determination to explain everything in retrospect. You have a glimpse of something important and we're supposed to be wondering why so that we can have our questions answered somewhere later on in the film. It's kind of why I never got into Lost. Usually I have a curious and inquisitive nature but in certain circumstances it's just plain irritating to have this mandatory notion of intrigue.
Even right through to the end we have moments were the film tries to pull a Donnie Darko on us and go "I wonder what the hidden meaning behind this is? What's really happened?" In simple terms, it's an action film that's trying to force us to think. Is life just a dream?

There's a few thing it really delivered on. The effects were pretty good. A gravity shifting fight scene was very nice to watch. Yet a lot of the other effects will date really badly. Go back and watch the Matrix. A lot of it just doesn't seem as slick by today's standards, yet it was a huge milestone in the industry. Inception is going to suffer in the exact same way down the line, yet instead of having a wooden Reeves that we can laugh at we've got a super serial hench as fuck DiCaprio to endure.

It's arguably overly long too, which is kind of typical for a Nolan film. After a few times watching the Dark Knight, you kind of question "Do I really need to have another twist to add another thirty minutes to this plot line?", Inception does this from the start. From the moment you have time distortion explained within dreams, you know there is going to be a way to drag things out.

Lastly what really bugged me is why are the dreams so constipated? In the dreams that we wake up and remember, stupid shit happens. They're kind of like acid trips. Waking Life does this tremendously. Yes, it does go on a mutliple tangents about existentialism but with a blunt smoked you're prepared to go off on these tangents, questioning your own reality. At least if you had some sort of trippiness, you could have got the laughs in. "Why is the Queen of Spain in a hot air balloon?" "Whats with all these cartoon bears?" "The Blue meanies?! Noooooooo!"

Now I will have plenty of people prepared to argue with what I've said about this film but all I'm saying is, it's not perfect. Of course, it's a better film than the A-Team but it's not half as much fun and that to me is the film's problem. It's clever but it's not fun enough. The damn film almost made me cry too. Stupid talking to father on death bed scenes, that's not even fair. Cunts.

A History of Card Playing Failures

This entire article is FONMP (Fuck off non-Magic Player). There's no point reading it if you don't play Magic.

Anyone who knows me would say I'm pretty bad at a lot of things. Losing is one of them. Give the most talentless idiot the biggest competitive streak and you have a recipie for disaster right in front of you. I've been playing card games for years. I first got introduced to the scene back when I was twelve years old, with his head more in the world of Warhammer than in the "cool teenager" scene. Being a rare breed of socially inept character, I could talk to almost everyone but piss them off by talking whilst my head was lodged firmly up my ass. Meanwhile I had the co-ordination of a newborn Giraffe and the athleticism of a sloth. Couldn't run, couldn't catch, even rowing was an egg I couldn't hatch.

So off on and on I drifted through card games, roleplaying games, computer games and books. Like many teenage geeks, I was quite happy to escape the world of reality without needing any drugs*. Whilst my competitive experience of magic was fairly non-existant, I understood the game fairly well. When I came back to Belfast after three years of University, I had no intention of getting stuck into the game, just the odd draft. Within weeks the odd draft had turned into two drafts a week, I was playing on MODO too, sometimes even going on Workstation so I could test the decks to beat without shelling out insanely high prices for mythics. This was inbetween working, training in muay thai and attempting to help out at home. I have no doubt that in years to come I shall be filled with guilt about the latter of these things being skimped on in terms of time and effort invested.

Given time I was actually winning drafts, the odd occasion multiple drafts in a row. It was as if I had pushed through that barrier from casual player to someone who could actually do quite well. Or that's how it felt. You see where this is going; I got too big for my boots. This didn't help too much when I was basing part of my ego upon how good I perceived myself to be getting. Remember back in school and you had those guys far too arrogant for their own good, strutting around knowing that because they were so good at rugby the rest of the world were going to fall at their feet. I was getting that from doing well in Magic. Ridiculous I know - no-one outside of a comic shop is going to give a shit about your first pick first pack Sword of Vengeance or how you couldn't believe you were passed multiple Pelakka Wurms. Rugby will get a lot of guys laid. Magic.. not so much. If you've read any of my older posts, you'll know my views that geeks can get laid for being geeks but it's not by boring a woman to death or by her watching you make top eight in a Pre-release. Yet I was going out in clubs and bars thinking I was shit hot because I took home a foil fetchland for coming first in a triple Zendikar draft. Granted I wasn't bragging about it to random women, but I was carrying this unbelievably positive energy for being so chuffed with myself.

In my blog I haven't chatted much about the death of my father or how it has affected me. It's not something I've wanted to bring up too much because I feel I should write about it when I'm ready but since he has passed away, I haven't done too much. Worked a little bit in a bar, or doing the odd temp shift. I've also had a few trips to England and one to Denmark (more on that in another entry). What I'm trying to get at is my ridiculous obsession with magic. How it's kind of filled a void since I have no full time work. I played so much of it that it was as if I was gearing myself up in the back of my head to be a Pro. Now I do keep telling myself how ridiculous this notion is. To be a professional magic player is probably about as difficult as being a professional poker player. Nay, probably more so - once you get good at poker you can do it at a bare basic level, picking up just enough money to get by from a couple of good nights play a week in casinos in bars. Magic requires you to be sitting around waiting for Grand Prixs and pro-tours to appear. Doing well in those requires you to pit yourself up against hundreds of people who may be genetically brighter than you and better trained when it comes to the practice.

In fact what makes this more ridiculous is that even the guys who are really good at Magic in Ireland prioritize Magic as second to their full time employment. Our champions tend to be guys with multiple degrees in Pharmacy and Law. My single BA is probably not enough to cut the mustard in the academic skills required for excellent play. Now that's probably not really the reason I don't do well but I'm going to try and illustrate to you just how bad I am at the game and how supersilious I was getting.

Once a year though, every player has something to look forward to. The Irish Nationals. Bringing players from all thirty-two counties together for a weekend of playhing savage games of cards and drinking like fishes. You grow out of Christmas. As a magic player, you do not grow out of nationals.

In most counties, qualifying for nationals is a nightmare. The level of play skill is a whole nother level to the scrubs that rock up at the drafts or the FNMs with their Lorthos the Tidemaker combo decks. In fact fromn what I gather, anyone qualifying for their national event has probably done very well for themselves in just that feat. On our little emerald Isle, it's notoriously easy. You have little kids rocking up with unsleeved pre-con decks, with ill conceived notions of what they are actually likely to face. Anyone with half a brain and a few hundred quids worth of cards in their hands should make the grade no problem.

In the North of Ireland alone, we had 4 qualifiers. Each of those had about 30 people attending with 14 getting through. So basically, you just have to be better than half of the field? Yeah. That's it. In fact one of our qualifiers, yesterday had 16 people there. Ten made it through. I played 4 qualifiers and I couldn't get through any of them. I got beat consistently by people that I conceive to be worse than me. This isn't one of those gamer arrogance things either, this is half of the players in Northern Ireland wondering why I'm not qualified.

When I break down each qualifier, I see mistakes in most of them. I see my inability to deal with pressure and it's crushing.

People that most people around me were questioning how I got beat by them

Qualifier number one
After putting together the guts of Finest Hour Mythic the night before and running it with a few proxies in the FNM (we are allowed up to five proxies in our decks at FNM), I'm quite excited for this day. I mean, after all I won the FNM. The problem lies when I'm putting together the deck on the morning. No-one has the Baneslayers they can lend. The bigger problem lies within me getting the Finest Hours. No-one in Northern Ireland has even seen the mythic enchantment. It seemed like such an unlikely card to make a top deck it was ridiculous. Anyway, running Thornlings over Baneslayer Angels, I'm still thinking I can win enough. I come up against some junk in the first match. This guy is running Bladetusk Boars which whilst I really liked in Zendikar draft have limited reach even within a limited format. I win 2-0. Some other guy is playing some other junk for the second match. It doesn't make sense why he'd even bother showing up with his Lilianna Vess deck but I don't think anyone ever explained to him the notion of a good deck, poor guy, just needs a lot of practice. I soon get blown out of the water in the final three matches by decks packing 4 journey to nowhere's, oblivion rings and day of judgements. This mass control deck match up is too much for me to battle through, despite me and Niall singing a duet of "Touch too Much" by AC/DC, with me haven beaten him the night before with smart plays and proxies, he hoses me. Matt follows by by beating me with his mono-white jank control deck and at this point even if I win my next match, I still can't go through. I even try and be a dick by attempting to dream crush a friend. Pete beats me solidly with blue white control and can relax for the next few months.

After this I throw my first well known tantrum. The fucking tonka truck is hoofed right out of the pram. I'm slamming my deck on the table. Shit is bad. I'm for quitting Magic because I'm hit with the first slap of realizing I'm not as good as I think and my serious nature just doesn't cut it. After about two days of being pissed off, I come round to some realizations and pick up a few notions.

Lessons: Don't bring a half built deck to a qualifier. Play Jund.

Qualifier 2
At this point, Rise has been out for a month, I play Jund with Sarkhan in it and am coming up against decks that are likewise making the most of the format changes. Next level decks and decks throwing down Gideon. I play against Greg who's piloting a better version of Jund. Rather than my slightly cumbersome Savage Land heavy version of the G/R/B midrange, Greg throws down a Terramorphic Expanse, Lotus Cobra build that out-Junds me in the second game, five spells to my four. This I can handle, I've still got my hopes in it until a crushing third game. Turn two lotus cobra, turn 3 ruinblaster. Turn 4 ruinblaster. My hand extends and I shrug. All I have to do is win 3 matches out of the 4 remaning. My opponent for the second match would actually automatically be qualified on rating if he decided not to show up for that day. Anyway DJ is playing next level bant. He beats me first game, I beat him second. The third I play like a tool. I don't cast consuming vapours for no apparent reason. I don't cast Sarkhan the Mad for some other obscure reasonless piece of logic. Ok, ok, I'm paired down for the final three matches. Good start to the winning streak.. I hope. Round three is mono red. I win the first game by throwing the lightning bolts and terminates at the hell's thunders, goblin guides and lightning bolts before they have a chance to make an impact. Throw down two Sprouting Thrinaxs and blow him out by maelstrom pulsing the elemental tokens spawned by devastating summons. Game two I side in some more instant speed removal and suck some life up with a Malakir Bloodwitch. Unreal. I go to the pub to nab a drink before I go and play the next round. This time I'm facing down Mono Black Vampires. I don't fear it too much. Whilst Simon is a solid player, at that moment in time I didn't have a lot of belief in his deck archetype. He gets mana screwed in pretty much two games, I give him an apology and go for another pint to get me solidly relaxed for my final round. This time I'm playing off against a guy that isn't known for his technical ability and he is piloting his friend's Boros Bushwhacker. Whilst the deck wasn't that good, it had a pretty good match up against Jund and I get beaten horrendously 2-1, largely in part to an overwhelming God draw in the third game and my sheer stupidity. Yeah, despite Path to Exile being one of the most well used cards in standard, I completely forgot that it does more than just remove a creature from the game. It fixes my lands. Being able to cast Consuming Vapors on the third turn would have been pretty devasatating and might have given me a good chance but alas, I'm an idiot. Whilst I don't take it as badly as I did in the first qualifier as I know there are another two qualifiers, I end up getting incredibly drunk. So drunk in fact that after drinking for a solid seven hours, I try and steal a kebab, pee in a bin then I end up back at my friend's girlfriend's flat and I'm trying it on with her friend with such great lines as "Sarah? When are we going to bed?" Then hoovering the entire living room floor.

Lessons: Play Jund better. Remember what Path to Exile does. Just becauase you're drunk doesn't mean you're funny.

Qualifier 3
Ok this was just last Friday passed. I'm geared from the start for this format, I love limited and I've done fairly well in it in the past. I end up with the same sealed pool that I open as the sealed pool swap involes passing to the right then swapping with the person opposite you. I've got the weakest sealed pool at my table, with what seemed to be about five mythics, none of them mine but I should still be in a shot, playing big beats green and black, running two whispersilk cloaks to overpower my opponent with Spined Wurms. In match one this is exactly what I do, the guy has a similar pool to my own, but he's playing a splash of white which makes a sideboarded in Deathmark extremely potent in the third game. Round 2 I'm up against one of the top Southern players, the guy Fitz has the most broken U/W flyer pool since the one I opened at the pre-release. Sword of Vengeance, Air Servant, Serra Angel, Mind Control, Frost Titan, Angelic Arbiter. Games one he curves out pretty solidly as well, landing Stormfront Pegasus, Cloud Elemental, Assault Griffin and Serra Angel. There's just absolutely no way I can race that perfect curve whilst I'm dithering around casting spells like Sylvan Range and Cultivate to give me more lands in order to cast the green fatties. Game 2 I sideboard in a mountain to blast him with double combusts, but again he curves out and I never seem to draw my additional removal leaving me in a clustered mess. We play a few games after the match and I manage to win a few of them quite convincingly. I still think I can qualify seeing as that I got beaten by what seemed to be the most absurd deck in the room. Match 3 pits me against Michael Grough who I have a tendency to overwhelm in drafts. Game one I race him with a 4/4 steel overseeer and a Barony Vampire, making a huge problem for his Cloud Elemental with its unable to block non-flyers. Game two though the tables fully turn, he slaps down a White Knight turn 2 and has equipped a warlord's axe to it on turn 4. With a 5/3 first striking pro-black guy charging me down, I'm pretty much losing board just to avoid taking so much damage. He fireballs me out and it's over. Game 3 I face down much the same problem although it's not so much the white knight that is giving me jip, just about any creature with the warlord's axe equipped to it. Whilst I put in the combusts in for this match up I was quite tempted to put in white instead of red just to give me condem and solemn offering, something I really wish I had done. Despite eventually stabilizing, leaving him with one card in hand, no board and me having a whispersilk cloaked royal assassin, I get fireballed out for one more than lethal the turn after signing in blood into a Spined Wurm and an Overrun. I kind of had a hunch he had the fireball but I felt I had to draw the gas before he drew the last land. In fact we had a look at the deck and found he was two cards off the land. I wouldn't have had time to finish him off anyway. The fourth match I'm paired against an eight year old. My hopes are high, although I hear he has a solid deck, in fact he was at my table and was filled with glee as he opened a Grave Titan. Game one he hit me with an 8/8 flying Stone Golem. Game two he Diabolic Tutors for a Grave Titan, whilst I'm already on the backfoot hoping to draw the Plummet to the Armoured Ascensioned creature. At this point I scoop and try and prepare myself for the fourth and final qualifier.

Lessons: Learn to Sideboard better, don't get beat by eight year olds

Qualifier 4
This time it should have been too much of an issue at all but I'm already on tilt. Someone was for lending me a perfect RDW deck but I decide to opt for R/G tokens, a build that eventually won the very same nationals I was attempting to qualify for. Game one I face down Dave Glennon, the same guy who I beat in the first match of the sealed qualifiers. He's playing this G/W ramp deck that blasts out Overgrown Battlement, ramps into Summoner's Trap at the end of my turn 5, spitting out a Primeval Titan, tutoring for Eldrazi Temples that are activated by the turn 4 Garruk into an Emrakul. Game 2 goes much the same. Not to mention I draw dead for turn upon turn. Match 2 I'm facing off against some U/W control player. Now my deck usually has a good match up against it but I face off against Baneslayer in the first game with no monument to push the damage past. Game 2 there's a big hiccup in communication. Seeing that I'm massively on tilt I'm playing too fast and saying things I don't really mean, like "Go ahead" when I haven't taken my second turn, fail to realize my opponent has played his second turn when I'm going first and he thinks I'm onto my third. After picking up a game warning, I lose anyway, drawing nothing but lands turn after turn. In my third match I get trounced 2-1 by Pyromancer's Acenscion, drawing none of my sideboard cards ever (Acidic Slimes, Baloth). I shake hands and leave in silence only to run out the door and hoof a boot clean into the electrical cupboard, scaring two random passers by in the process. At this point I go to nail pints and spliffs to drown my sorrows and fight back the tears of rage and self loathing. Literally this thing fills me the whole way through the second day. It comes to me in the bath how I failed to learn any of my lessons from the previous four qualifiers.

Lessons: Always play Jund. Always. Don't tilt. Seriously, don't tilt. You're shit at magic. Nobody is going to feel sorry for you if you act like a douchebag higher than your station for the last four months. Magic is just a game, try and get a real career.

Enjoy yourself.

So there you have it. Playing magic occasionally puts life into perspective. I'm sure I could attempt to bring in tons of metaphors of magic in life like knowing the metagame of women in a bar. Like how some girls you need to be all passionate and Red Deck winsy with whilst others you need to be all showy offy with some retarded combo deck whilst others you just need to play it cool, not pay too much attention and U/W control them out of it by countering their spells (or knocking them down with insults). However this is would be largely contrived. Even more contrived would be for me to compare martial arts to decks too. Muay Thai might by R/G stompy by some stretch of the imagination, I'm sure.

*Until I discovered drugs

Movie Review: The A-Team

"They are the best and they specialize in the ridiculous"

Right from the trailer we know that this film will be nothing shy of over the top. Being that it was a remake of one of the most over the top television series that the 80s could spawn - the 80s being one of the most over the top decade ever. OTT summarizes the whole thing pretty damn well.

Whilst I wasn't around in the 80s to see the first run of the A-Team, I loved catching reruns on RTE during the 90s. As a kid it was great to see the MacGuyver routines of making bombs out of old fairy up liquid bottles and hundreds of blank rounds being fired without a single bad guy killed. Whilst a lot more bullets in their target in this modern update, we're still treated to seeing plans unfold with the use of scrap metal and stolen engines. In some respect this film appears to borrow a few elements from the Italian Job remake of 2003, with a side order of the Kansas City Shuffle idea implemented in Lucky Number Sleven but these are largely entertaining. Despite the fact many of the twists and turns of this film are predictable, we don't sigh whenever they appear - as an audience we end up smiling in agreement with the script writers in a "Aha, I see what you did thar" as the protagonists escape from sticky situations in ways we expect. From what I gather parts of the storyline are taken directly from the original 1980's episodes.

This is the film SWAT wished it was and the film Miami Vice should have tried to be. It doesn't bore the audience with boring dialogues about the drug trade, the wise cracking is done in the heat of battle. Anything we need to know about the characters, we are shown and not told. A lot of Superhero films could learn from this too. The origin story takes off at lightning pace, there are punches thrown within the first minute. We see why BA, an Airbourne Ranger has a phobia of flying and we see how he Pitys Fools. We bare witness to Face man's ability to seduce and the trouble it gets him into and Murdoch's craziness. There's even a slight philisophical slant with Hannibal's obssession with a good plan from the early stage. There's even some character development of BA in the middle of the film which almost parodies the no-killing ideology of the original series.

The cast is largely terrific. As a big fan of Rampage Jackson, I was glad to see he didn't act too badly. He's no where near Oscar winning level but lets face it, Mr T. was never heralded for his thespian slant either. Sharlto Copley's Murdoch shows a touch of the Jim Carey whackiness but we are able to appreciate Copley as a human more as there's a slightly vulnerability that allows us to have a bit more warmth towards him than the semi-obnoxious Carey along with arguably more comedic flare. Fans of The Hangover will appreciate Bradley Cooper in the role of the cool and seductive faceman. As for Neeson, he's been doing a good bit of kicking ass recently and we're intrigued by his wisdom and his intelligence throughout.

However, the film does have some considerable flaws. Most of the action scenes are relatively spot on but there are times it uses shakey camera work in the middle of fights which left me confused at their hecticness. Sequel makers take note that if you are going to have characters brag about their Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai skills it'd be nice to actually see how they apply them rather than give us a blur of limbs in a dark room. This is also one of those films where you just wish the bad guys would stop farting about and shoot the heroes when they have the chance rather than giving the "I win because I'm the evil villain" speech and ending up distracted by flying vehicles. It's also from a critic's point of view a film that is largely style over substance but that's to be expected from an action film. The Expendables out this Summer is likely to be largely the same. Lastly it's very much a big boy's film. Whilst there is an attempt to have Jessica Biel as a strong but beautiful female protagonist, she's frequently outclassed by her male counterpart in Face. I also don't think long faced Biel is that good looking and just about every other woman Cooper's character seduces in the film is far more attractive.

Despite these flaws, the A-Team delivers plenty of bang for the buck. In terms of films I've seen this year, I'd place it better than Iron Man 2 but a good bit behind the phenomenal Kick Ass.

***

Okay if you read the last entry, you'll know what a FONMP section is. This entire post is a Fuck off non-magic player bit. There is very little interest in this entry to anyone outside of the gaming hobby unless you like reading my reading that is.

M11 Pre-release weekend review

I love pre-release weekends. Without a doubt they are the most fun you can have in a sanctioned event. There's a lot of reasons why. Firstly you get to crack open fresh packs that haven't even been released in the shops. You get to see the artwork of cards up close rather than just on website previews. Then of course, loads of characters pop out of the woodwork to see some new cards and sling some spells. There are some people that only ever play at pre-releases because they know how fun they can be. It's always good to know how people are doing and know that they're still up for a bit of the game of kings err.. planeswalkers.

Booster draft Friday

Usually the store in Belfast (Serenity) has midnight drafts on the Friday night. These function as a lock in the same fashion that a pub would whenever its open only to its staff or its regulars. Although anyone is allowed the door is locked so as ne'erdowells don't wander in on the way home from a night out and asking stupid drunken questions such as "whats that do? whats this?". Although we do let Gary play in the shop despite these issues.

On that Friday night I ended up turning up to said booster draft. Although this was after having a few pints with an Australian girl on a failed date, a session of muay thai and a few more drinks. Magic, beer and talking shite - the cornerstone of a Northern player. Anyway in that draft I ended up drafting a bit of a mess of a deck. Having opened nantuko shade and being passed Captivating Vampire I did my best to draft a mostly black deck with a splash of red for Act of Treasons, goblin tunneler and a few red cards with Chandra's something in their title - a slightly more costly searing blaze and a 1/3 flyer for 3 with a kiln fiend style ability. Now apart from the fact I could make the shade unblockable or attack with the opponents creature only to fling them or sacrifice them to bloodthrone vampire, the deck wasn't particularly good. I got beat by Dave Robinson, currently number two in Northern Ireland for beating kids in FNM every week for the last five years (or so the rumours go). Dave beat me soundly for the two games of the match though in the games that we played after my deck seemed to largely outperform his. That could be largely down to the fact he had little or no answer to the powerhouse that is nantuko shade but it didn't worry me too much. Third place in the pod still hit prizes, everything was to play for and if I won out I got a couple of packs.

Match 2 I come up against Conor McVarnock packing some kind of G/W stompy build. His deck ramps up impressively first game landing two aciding slimes off the back of a bird of paradise. He sets me back a land with each of the slimes, wrecking my tempo and forcing me to trade unfavourably to avoid taking four points of damage a turn. His deck also seemed to have a number of pacifisms and other gems. Second game becomes much more of a battle and here I got a glimpse of what a core set draft is like: typically back and forth removal spells, often piquing with moments where both sides of the field have no actual threats leading to a stalemate broken by the first creature. This is kind of how the second game went although with me refusing one of Conor's takebacks that might have given him the game. It was quite strongly settled by me equipping my warlord's axe to a bloodthrone vampire and laying the beats. The third game largely involved better board positions and effeciencys of creatures with nantuko shade living up to its bomb potential.

Third match was up against the Prince of Persia himself Niall Graham. Aside from being the guy that runs the shop and doing a good job at it, Niall is one of those good players who have always been cheated out of victory at big events by some bad bit of luck. Things like having the deck that beats 80% of the field but being paired against the other not so favourable 20% three matches in a row. This was a great match up until the third game. We had both put a considerable amount of pressure on each other with Niall using his Squadron Hawks and Honor the Pure to swarm out. I'm not so sure if I'd be bothered trying to grab multiples of Squadron Hawks. Without the aid of mass creature pumps having a 1/1 flyer is largely underwhelming where the hill giant has been a staple of the core set format. That being said one can't complain too much about multiple 2/2 flyers for little card disadvantage. Game two had me using nantuko shade and goblin tunneler to carve up Niall's life total and finish him with a fling. Game 3 had us both mulliganing to 5 and me being stuck on one land despite the constant pile shuffling, rifling and redrawing. A second swamp should have set me up for a decent go of things as I was packing Sign in Blood. Unfortunately it never came and Niall landed with tempo, kicking my tar in in less than six turns.

Trent and I played a few games after this and he consistently kicked my tar in with his blue/black deck. We found Jace's Ingenuity to be an unsurprisingly phenomenal card in this format. Having drafted ZEN/ZEN/WWK only a few times I never really got to see how mysteries of the deep was. Whilst I assumed it would be pretty good, the fact it relied on landfall meant usually playing it as a sorcery to get its full effect was a pretty limiting factor, particularly as zendikar was such a fast format with most decks relying on packing multiple 2 drops. With almost every colour having good removal or bounce spells games can spin out almost as long as they do in straight ROE drafts.

Pre-release Saturday

Having packed it in about 4 am, I got about seven hours to sleep before I had to get up and get my stuff together for the pre-release ahead of me. If you read my last tournament report, you'll know that I took a less than stellar sealed pool through to the finish GPT. On this occasion I wasn't required to play average packs at all. This time I was given -the nuts-. Whenever we sit down to draft or play sealed we are given the opportunity to pick what pile of boosters we are going to be ours. In a gaming kind of superstition sometimes you get a good feel for a pile of boosters. In my case I had a good feeling about the pile with the dragon on the first booster. To this Niall laughed at but when I popped a Baneslayer Angel, a Vengeance Archon, Conundrum Sphynx, Dragonskull Summit, Foil Haunting Echoes and Stormtide Leviathan.

Not only that but my commons and uncommons for blue and white looked like they had been selected for a pre-con deck.

8x Islands
8x Plains
1x Mistifying Maze

1x Stormfront Pegasus
2x Aether Adept
1x Maritime Guard
1x Palace Guard
1x Roc Egg
1x Cloud Elemental
1x Assault Griffin
2x Azure Drake
1x Conundrum Sphynx
1x Serra Angel
1x Baneslayer Angel
1x Tireless Missionaries
1x Vengeful Archon

1x Mana Leak
1x Ice Cage
1x Inspired Charge
1x Sleep
1x Foresee
1x Mind Control

1x Crystal Ball

So other than a few other cards (arguably sideboard options) this deck was the nuts. About half the non-land cards were bombs and I can only complain about a few of these cards could I complain about. Maritime Guards is pretty underwhelming as a two drop, I think I'd much rather have a bear such as Silvercoat Lion. Palace Guards was also a bit bland, however it could be argued that this is because of the defensive nature of the card when my opponent was usually too busy having to deal with my absolutely absurd threats. Lastly Tireless Missionaries is a watered down version of Angel of Mercy. Having started in Portal Second Age, I'm slightly disappointed not to see another reprinting of the 3/3 flyer/healing salve for 5 however this is perhaps a decision by R+D to avoid making white too strong in limited when they were doing the set design.

As you can imagine it was pretty awful sitting with me. I was like blastoise kid opening Baneslayer Angel, having made the money of the sealed back in one card. When the rest of the cards showed themselves my only fear was the ridicule I would be on the end of if I scrubbed out due to constant misplays. Indeed, I made a few throughout the day but thankfully the deck was so good it didn't really matter.

Without further ado I'll give you the breakdown of the match ups.

Conor Holmes: U/W
I tried taking a picture of the former Irish champ but in his tired and hungover state he wasn't having any of it. Indeed taking pictures of the whole thing was a bit of a joke. Our good friend Sherlock wasn't too happy with his sealed pool, from what I could see of his deck his only bomb was triskillion, which only became an issue in the third game. By his own admission to win the match up he needed me to get mana screwed, unfortunately for him he was the one that suffered the mana screw in the first game. The second game seemed to be running smoothly for my deck, whilst both of us were building up board position and trading blows Conor surprised me with a Mighty Leap, Armoured Ascension blow out. This meant I felt like a complete fool as I was left with a sleep in hand. Nice. The third game involved a board build up again but with me landing Baneslayer Angel. Conor almost killed it by mighty leaping a Cloud Crusader and using his last triskelion counter to do the damage. I countered this with an Inspired Charge, pretty much ending the game from that moment on. No skill involved ladies and gentleman just mythic rares.

Inbetween match ups I fix a kid's G/B deck for him, show him why Dark Tutelage is good in limited and that Cudgel Troll and Acidic Slime or brilliant in a deck with two Llanowar elves.

Cubby - R/W/B
Jokingly trying to persuade me into an ID before the match, Mr. Walker bragged about his deck having 5 mind controls and 6 Pacifisms. Of course it had none of these things and instead was a bit of a mesh of three colours in order to use its two mythics: Chandra and Grave Titan. Whilst the first game went pretty swiftly to me curving out and winning with flyers, Cubby landed the red planeswalker in the second game. Between this and a blinding mage slowed me down considerably as I fought to keep him from getting eight loyalty counters on Chandra. It meant mind controlling a three drop just to have another attacker, whilst holding back bigger threats that he could destroy by removing x counters and dealing x damage. With the help of Crystal Ball I was able to stack my deck and draw enough smaller threats to swarm out. Without the scry mechanic Cubby found himself drawing an abundance of lands by comparison and had to keep his ready for tapping down Baneslayer. After building up a board Cubby can't really compete with I do the dirty and reveal sleep. Utter bomb.

Alan - U/W
Last time I came up against Alan he was the one who had opened the bomb mythics as his ROE pool included Gideon, Sarkhan and Consuming Vapours. We had an interesting match up as both decks shared a few cards in common: Mistifying Maze, Ice Cage. These two plus what seemed like three Pacifisms meant that the game was going to be going into eight or nine land territory as I was often forced to use my Aether Adept to bounce Sphynx with a Pacifism. Once he was out there he really was MVP. Combined with Crystal Ball he netted me an extra card per turn whilst often moving Alan's bombs to the bottom of his deck. Eventually I see Alan's Leviathan but I chose just to fly over it and finish up with an Inspired Charge. I sideboarded out Maritime Guard for my copy of Leviathan seeing as this game went so late. Unfortunately I never saw it as Alan lands a combo of Air Servant and Leviathan. During this game I make a pityful mistake, bouncing Air Servant one turn then Ice Caging Leviathan. With a number of ground attackers and an Inspired Charge it was totally the wrong play. My failure to read the "no activated abilities" it on Ice Cage acts as my downfall and despite having gained about twelve life from Alan using Mistifying Maze on my Tireless Missionaries early on in the game, Alan keeps me locked down with Air Servant and beats me to death. Third game I just plain draw better and Conundrum Sphynx prevents him from the same Air Servant win by sending the card to the bottom of his deck and my Baneslayer too. That seemed to fix his cockyness for a bit.

New Guy with Glasses - G/W
I do have to apologize to this guy as I have completely forgotten his name. This guy was playing a pretty good build of Green White stompy, with Fauna Shaman, multiple copies of Cudgel Troll and Serra Angel. Pretty impressive considering he hasn't been playing for too long. Unfortunately for him I took a Roc Egg start both games meaning that to push any damage through at all he would have to give me a 3/3 flyer token. Mean while I pushed on through with Azure Drakes and Cloud Elemental. Game two was much the same. This time showing how Sphynx was almost more of a game winner than Baneslayer.

Irish/American guy - U/B
With us both sitting on twelve points, we're only playing for a bit of pride, DCI points and me wanting to keep the OP of those that I had played. In fairness this guy has a pretty good deck. No rares, no mythics but it's well constructed and packs Two Air Servants, Multiple Lilliana's Specter, Gargoyle Sentinel and a pretty nice removal base in the form of Diminishs and Doom Blades. After a fairly lengthy Aerial Battle and me having to discard cards I really wish I got to play I cast Forsee and grab Vengeful Archon. After the turn after it attacks, he plays Sleep, intent on finishing me off but he makes the mistake of attacking into me whilst I have open mana for Archon's ability and I retaliate viciously. Game two sees him control the board successfully with Air Servant, something which is futile to put an Ice Cage on as he controls a Warlord's Axe. With no spot removal and no good ground threats he puts the beatdown with the 7/5 flyer and wraps the game up. Game three I'm mana screwed but not too concerned as I'm through to the top 8.

With the top 8 booster draft starting at about half four and my shift starting at six, I figured the only point in playing was to rare draft. And rare draft I did, I managed to pick up an Ajani Goldmane, my second Dragonskull Summit of the day, foil Silence, Birds of Paradise and Dark Tutelage. When I went about picking cards for the actual deck I originally was planning on some sort of green deck that could utilize the BOP. When I got passed a Jace's Ingenuity on the second pick, I figured DJ on the right of me was going to keep blue open for me so he could use whatever bomb rare he drafted. However Blue dried up and I began taking multiple cultivates and any random bits of green fat along the way. Late Garruk's Companions were great picks and I moved into Red as I got a fifth pick lightning bolt. What was in that pack I do not know but never one to look a gift horse in the mouth I took it and went into red. To be honest my draft felt like I was almost picking random cards. Random cards that I liked but I didn't expect the deck to be any good.

What was ironic about the top 8 was that apart from Conor everyone I played managed to make top 8. I'd like to think that's down to my near perfect OP but I don't want to brag about that, the deck was the one that did the work.

What I ended up with was a messy mesh of Green, Red and Blue.

3x Island
9x Forest
6x Mountain

1x Birds of Paradise
2x Garruk's Companion
2x Augury Owl
1x Awakener Druid
1x Manic Vandal
1x Brindle Boar
1x Giant Spider
1x Canyon Minotaur
1x Vulshok Beserker
1x Azure Drake
1x Garruk's Packleader
1x Yavimaya Wurm
1x Earth Servant

3x Cultivate
1x Lava Axe

1x Thunder Strike
1x Lightning Bolt
1x Unsummon

1x Volcanic Strength

As you can see it's not too great and whilst it was never a problem on the day there is little point having scry mechanics from cards such as Augury Owls when you are running multiple deck-shuffling Cultivates. I ran 41 cards for some strange reason and I possibly could have ran the Jace's Ingenuity but I thought it would be stretching myself thin. I'll have to learn to draft this for nationals, no doubt.

First game I come up against the father of the guy that came top of the Swiss after beating me. Seemed like a very intelligent man, a lecturer of English in the states apparently. Had a lot of respect for Lancaster University too. Good to know I didn't go to a useless hole after all. He was a little burned out by this point and had been surprised to make the top 8. He said his sealed deck was better than he played it and he hadn't drafted in years. Anyway, Game one I cultivate and play Garruk's Packmaster, followed by Yavimaya Wurm and Canyon Minotaur. He's playing R/W and his board is mostly made up of smaller critters, I quickly overrun him with the fatties and we go to game two. Game two seems like a pretty sure for me as I've built up an arsenal of big creatures again but he declares "If I get a land on my turn this could get interesting" and I point out he'd need to pop his terramorphic expanse on my end step so his basic isn't tapped the turn he needs it. Thanking me for my advice and chuckling about his oversight he does so, shuffles and draws his land. Boom. The board is wiped after he casts the new Wildfire: Destructive Force. Now if I had sacrificed the right lands I might still have stood a shot of taking the game but I sacrificed down to a forest and a mountain thinking that I wouldn't hit any more blue spells. Unfortunately the next card I drew was Azure Drake which would have been a perfect counter to the Silvercoat Lion he dropped the next turn. My six points of life total quickly disappeared and we went to game three. This game was going pretty much like the first game until Platinum Angel was cast on the other side of the table. With an Azure Drake and a Giant Spider under my control he wasn't attacking with his angel. I used Garruk's Packmaster and the multitude of power 3 or greater creatures in my deck to cycle through and grab the answer to the angel. Slapping a volcanic strength on Yavimaya Wurm meant that with a couple of swings, his life total was in the negative. Casting Manic Vandal got rid of that "Opponents can't win the game" clause pretty well.

With a shake of a hand it was onto a much quicker round two.

At this point I was dangerously close to being late for work and I decided I was going to feign ignorance as to when my shift was supposed to start and show up an hour late. Due to the fact it was the weekend of the twelfth and a ridiculous heavy bout of rain there were very few customers about. DJ was also trying to avoid being late for his bingo calling job so we shook hands shuffled and drew.

Game one consisted of me casting an early cultivate, following up with a Vulshok Beserker and a Canyon Minotaur consecutively. DJ also had to answer my Awakener Druid with a Bee Sting. I soon slapped a volcanic strength on the minotaur and went to town, ending the game with a Lava Axe. Game two went much the same though this time I'm playing Packmaster on turn 4. DJ answers this by attacking with the very gay looking Prized Unicorn, utilizing the allure ability and employing a Giant Growth to dispatch the Packmaster. I was slightly sad about this - Packmaster is an absolute beast of a card and I think will define

DJ tries to race with a Shiv's Embrace on an Ember Hauler but I Unsummon the Goblin in response to the aura. Minotaur + Volcanic Strength combo materializes and Lava Axe fixes the remaining five points after three swings of the minotaur. DJ goes to work and the final is on.

For the third match I'm paired up against the same guy who was on twelve at the end of the swiss. Before we play we agree to split the boosters with the winner getting the remaining booster, the t-shirt and pre-release champion title. Again he's playing U/B so there won't be any easy victories with Volcanic Strength. In fact for me there would be no victories at all. First game I kept an awful hand. At that point I couldn't really give a damn, I could hardly be bothered mulliganing. In the second game I create some problems with fat creatures such as Yavimaya Wurm and spend a turn Lava Axing with no other relevant plays. My big creatures quickly become irrelevant as he develops his board with two Azure Drakes. He also clones his Captivating Vampire and begins amassing an army of minions. As soon as he hits five that's pretty much game over, I scoop and he reveals a Doom Blade and an Unsummon. I was pretty happy with the shared booster pile and I get ready for work, looking like a sexy bastard in a white shirt black tie combo.

Moral of the story: U/B is pretty good in M11 limited and try and open a good sealed pool.