Updates, constantly.

Click here, "Fox Murdoch on Twitter", and you'll have a round by round update of my progress today and tomorrow.

Saturday
+ 11am, Standard using mythic red.
+ 3pm, draft forcing red/white nonmetalcraft beats

Sunday
+ 9am registering for PTQ
+ 10am cracking and building [please crack bad, get passed good!]
+ 11am round 1
et al

Enjoy!

Preparing, constantly.

So, this is my quiet before the storm. Tomorrow Rony and Neil pick me up for some Standard action over at Mega Games in Penrith. 11am start, then at 3 we get to draft more SoM. I can't wait, especially because there's a girl who plays there who always drafts white. So much so the boys all avoid it like the plague, so it's free pickin's to anyone who wants to jump in.

Then after that I'll need a trip in to the city to sell some more cards to remake the money I've spent (3 times now) for the PTQ entry fee. $40 for 6+ boosters is alright, plus a day of entertainment. The annoying thing there is that I've had to make that money a few times over, despite putting it aside as far back as last last tuesday.

Drafting SoM a lot has helped to sculpt my view of which cards are good, how to build and what to aim for. red/white metalcraft all the way. I'm expecting it 80% in the second round assuming I win the first round. And the top 8 draft would be a splendid place to get my first 3-0, and what I'm aiming for.

Though right now I need to relax a bit, because I'm tired and sore in the shoulders and bored. We had chinese for tea (when I wanted KFC) and a beer that knocked me out harder then expected.

Best of luck, all.
Fox Murdoch.

Sealed pool, constantly.

Exactly what it sounds like, the below is a sealed pool for you practice.

WHITE
Seize the Initiative
Revoke Existance
Whitesun's Passage
Ghalma's Warden
Kemba's Skyguard
2 Soul Parry

BLUE
Vedalken Certarch
2 Turn Aside
2 Stoic Rebuttal
2 Disperse
Steady Progress
Sky-Eye School
Bonds of Quicksilver
Darkslick Drake
Riddlesmith

BLACK
2 Fume Spitter
Plague Stinger
Psychic Miasma
Bleak Coven Vampires
Moriok Reaver
Contagious Nim
Relic Putrescence
Grasp of Darkness
Tainted Strike
Corrupted Harvester
Necrogen Scudder

RED
Hoard-Smelter Dragon
3 Vulshok Heartstoker
3 Ferrovore
2 Goblin Gavaleer
Oxidda Daredevil
Assault Strobe
Scoria Elemental
Turn to Slag
Melt Terrain
Blade-Tribe Berserkers
Furnace Celebration
Bloodshot Trainee
Ogre Geargrabber
Barrage Ogre

GREEN
Genesis Wave
2 Wing Puncture
Ezuri's Archers
Cystbearer
Alpha Tyrranax
Carrion Call
Slice in Twain

ARTIFACT
Vulshok Replica
Throne of Geth
Trigon of Mending
Babed Battlegear
Rusted Relic
Trigon of Rage
2 Myr Galvanizer
Heavy Arbalest
Chimeric Mass
Grindclock
Myr Propogator
Platinum Emperion
Wall of Tanglecord
Leaden Myr
Bladed Pinions
2 Tumble Magnet
Iron Myr
Strider Harness
Golden Urn
Nihil Spellbomb
Silver Myr
Moriok Replica
Flight Spellbomb
Chrome Steed

I'll post my build later tonight, right now I'm watching the kid (my sisters).

Missing posts, constantly.

Have I been hacked? Am I not pressing the right button? I'm pretty sure I wrote an update the other day, which doesn't show up on my blog. Or it does, and I have yet again no idea what I'm doing.

Regardless after the tuesdays performance of 0-2 drop from a draft [my deck was BLUEwhite awful] I drafted again thursday, wound up red/white and managed to lose the first round to green/black poison, with them getting 2 Trigon's of Infestation - the card is a menace! He got two, did Johnny, and he was able to dump a 1/1 every turn. His Plague Stinger was joined by a token who had Bladed Pinion (I say it "pignon" as in champignon) so my ground dorks who were actual cards and not just "2 mana" were way outclassed.

Preparing for death I win the next two rounds and wind up a rosy coloured third. I'm happy with that, it means every single draft/sealed I've got red/white with has landed me 2-1 finishes. I'm set to going red/white at the sealed PTQ Paris this weekend, but if the colours don't show up...

I just figured it out. My link on good games forum is to a specific post. I gotta fix that.

SO YES! A few great articles I've read lately, all about Scars sealed. Finding articles can be hard but I just use my phone and it really culls the shite from the mango-y goodness. One inparticular had instructions for making your own Sealed pool Cube maker. I've done plenty of draft/sealed re-pack lots for up to 8 players, because I always have rares and things to try and do, so to see a formula to make it easier than "make every booster by hand" was awesome. The link is as follows: http://60cards.com/articles/scars-sealed/

As well as that it's just funny to see the wide range of articles on offer by so many writers. One article description reads thusly (kiddies avoid your eyes):

"So, I started an e-mail group about scars sealed pools, but since everyone on it is a useless shit, I'll just post the pools here as well"

The article (Click here) itself is also worth the read. Anything written will help you, whether you agree with the writer or not. It'll open your brain to new ideas, or new methods for old tricks, and the more you look at the better.

The pro vs amatuer argument suggests you could be elitest and only read the 'real content' of channel fireball etc etc but I find no matter what build you go with, you'll get people who agree and disagree no matter who you are, apart from the suck up trolls in the channel fireball comments sections. Not all of them, but certainly a visible percentage.

Brief news on my next article -- being christmas December I'm going to write about pride and how it affects the magic playing population. I figure it's a good follow up to Wisdom/Intelligence, and it has NOTHING to do with christmas, as opposed to some dinky red/white/green deck.

That may get posted here...

Failing, miserably.

Yes yes yes, slim readers. I drafted the other day for one last minute test before this sunday day, and the PTQ itself. You might call practising the DRAFT portion optimistic but I like that word. It was also a very good lesson for me, as I utterly stank at it.

Hoping red/white, I open Ezuri's 4/4 metalcraft 8/8 trample and pass it, taking the much less powerful, but certainly red/white something-or-other. I can't even remember. The rest of the draft continues until I can see white is coming, sparingly, and red is all but divorced of me. I don't know what to do. There seems to be some nice blue coming, so I move in to that.

Try not to do this at home, kids. We're not trained professionals and it didn't work for us. It won't work for anyone. The draft went with my deck being way to fat around the 3/4 cost mark, and I hardly got anything worthwhile in my 2 rounds.

Yes two rounds. I lost 0-2 0-2 both matches so I figured it was nicer on my rating to drop for the last round, giving Mr 7th a smug feeling of "mised it."

Of note was that the winning deck was indeed red/white.

Of extra was a friend of mine who drafted earlier then me had tried for mono-green poison, and went 0-3. This is a surprise to NO ONE.

Also an extra note to the Scars sealed practice that I ran the other day - the top two decks, mine and Tony's, were red/white. The other red/white deck came third, while a red/green was fourth and fifth was taken up by red/white yet again. Rony's immaculate self-destruction deck was 7th, at red/black/green.

This really enforces the idea that I'm going to force red/white on the day. I'll have a savagely good 65% chance to win against the non-red/whites, and if I don't get bombs my skills should help pull through against the better players, or I'll invoke some Irish luck so they don't draw their bombs while I do draw mine.

I foresee an X-2 finish, needed to top 8 with a group of maybe 40-60 players (PTQ Prague got 80 back in 200X) and I'm sure that'll quickly disolve into the competant players, and those who showed up for the flighty lottery pick of cards to "win a trip to France."

On the above work, "luck": I'm a great believed in luck when it comes to finding coins on the ground. I have no such belief with Magic. Your draft choices, deck building choices, mulligan choices and awareness-in-game really help to form a consistant approach to playing, and if other players don't have it then they're believing in luck, and throwing themself at it's mercy.

It's what you do with what you've got -- lemonade from lemons is still a nice drink.

Weekending, constantly.

Life first, Magic later. Skip ahead I dare you.

I've just done half an hour on the bike with my arms. The handles move back and forth so no I didn't just sit there and watch TV. Feels good.

This comes after yesterday, when I woke up and me + crew drove to Sydney to picnic, kick the soccerball around and try some frisbee, which was all really fun and awesome. As a super added bonus, I didn't burn anywhere apart from the tiniest part on my skull, and only just at that. With my physiology I'm scientifically set to start burning after 12 minutes, so thank you sunscreen.

The saturday before I woke up at Amy's, always nice, and joined her for a trip into the city where I saw her off at TAFE and then went back to her place. I fed the cats, dog, chickens, rabbit, guinea pigs and fish, then myself. I had the good luck of finding $3 in a cash vending machine as well, so I that was just golden.

The night before I'd stayed over Amy's and we finished off Deathnote. Now as far as anime's go, I'm not an automatic fan of anything made today. I was raised on Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ninja Scroll, Astroboy. Good things, that were actually DRAWN in the 80s 90s, and yes this includes Sailor Moon and Samurai Pizza Cats. Also Pokemon to the first few seasons.

Deathnote starts off interesting, gets really good when L is introduced (he's like the guy who's out to foil the main character, Light) and then... it's best described as it still ends awesome, but man why did they $$$^ @$%& & #$%% #$% #$% #$^^^? Onto Magic!

The sealed event went fine. I thought we had 4 people on the day, but everybody rang and showed up late. With 6, we cracked packs and built and played. Then at about 35 minutes we got a call so we had a 7th player. Easy, he gets a bye for round 1. Then our eighth calls, same thing. Alright, show up, build quickly and play off. They do and Josh loses, so his auto-win turns into a lose. He'd been outta it for a month so good on him.

The full list: me, Rony, Tony, Josh, Arnold, Jund-Kid (he's 13 and has no life apart from playing Magic with 26 years old, weird), H Y and Endicott. Round 1 myself, Tony, Arnold and HY win. Round 2 Rony and Josh lose so fight for the wooden spoon while I win as does Tony, so we play off for first.

He wins the first game and I win the second and the third one wins. We're both red/white but he had the control deck, and that meant I needed fast starts or for him to feck up and neither of those things happened. He had some nice combos, like Tempered Steel + Myr Propogator, as well as a Hippogriff to return anything dead.

Funnily enough I talk myself into losing as he plays the 'Griff and thinks about either Vulshok Replica or Rust Tick. I imagined Rust Tick for sure, he'd tap down my Glint Hawk Idol and then just win with a leisurely pace, but I say "Vulshok can bash and is quickler," so he takes it.

The game progresses until he's got bods out, I've got 2 active Smith's and am making 1/1s to block and ping him every turn but he swings with everybody and I block to be on one life and hopefully draw a solution in the form of Revoke Existance -- forgetting that on one life Vulshok Replica reads "1R: win the game."

Atleast it came down to the last game of the last match. I'm confident of my abilities at next weeks PTQ, but my inexperience with anything apart from RED/WHITE does make me a tiny bit apprehensive. I'll just open bombs, easy.

The draft I will practice for again on thursday. I get credit at Good Games in the city for the articles I write (not these things) so it's free and why the heck not? If you're thinking of attending PTQ Paris yourself, best of luck and hope you don't come against me.

Drafting, constantly.

Hello reader! This blog is to act as an instant-feed of all things Fox Murdoch, Magic-wise. Think of it like fivewithflores.com, only with Fox Murdoch instead. Yeah, we won't ask you to pay.

At the moment I'm finishing up an article about drafting red/white in Mirrodin. Not specifically metalcraft, but just red/white gray ogres. It's a surprisingly consistent deck. Glint Hawk Idol runs the attack, Galvanic Blast is a MUST but apart from that the deck just plays creatures and spells to go toe-to-toe with the opponent until you outpace them in the battlefield.

The latest news I'm excited about is both PTQ Paris coming up soon, and when Besieged comes in - I've got plans for both events. PTQ Paris is going to be hot simply because it's Paris. I've been twice, and will go a third time. To help myself and friends I'm running a sealed practice on saturday night at my mate Rony's. Rony's the equivalent of the most awesome person you know, mixed with me.

The plan is to star around 12, and everyone cracks the standard 6 packs, builds and then you play as many other people as you can. The ideal would be 3-5 rounds before we cut to a top 8 draft, but to do that I'd need more boosters then I have. If we don't get a full 8 players for it, we can use those packs and reconstruct some more.

One thing I want to point out - I asked good and bad players to come. A realistic PTQ isn't just the best players, it's everyone. And the benefit to playing good players if tightening your skills. The benefit to playing bad players is to learn how exactly you should duck and weave, and most importantly not go on auto-pilot. "Easy win" are the most famous last thoughts of many a would-be PTQ'er.

The other item of interest is Mirrodin Besieged, which means we're finally going to see Phyrexia's assault on Mirrodin. The exciting thing is the new draft format - now you'll start by opening the newest pack first. So it goes Besieged, Scars, Scars. This gives me, as a writer, plenty to write about, but I'm excited because I'll actually be able to watch a format change and mold into a new something -- and to actually care about it.

Previously I haven't had to as I didn't draft because I was crap. I'm suddenly vastly improved and hope to keep it that way. My thoughts at the moment are red/white may suffer, as there's less G Blasts and Glint Hawk Idols, and poison will only stand to improve, as Plague Stinger gets less bountiful but there's most poison on the way, and there's Vector Asp as the other common poison regardless (even if you have to pay for it's venom to work).

I'm also looking to trade two normal Vensers (signed by the artist) for a foil copy. I'm collecting a foil set of Mirrodin and so far have 2/15 mythics, and plenty of the rest. Donations accepted with mad props made as appropriate.