tigertoy

Armored Gopher Games, my friendly local game store where I've been spending my Friday nights playing magic for the last 5 years or so, is closed. Dave the owner was burned out. Things were supposed to be arranged to sell to the original owners, but the wheels came off the deal at the last minute. Right now we don't know if it can be salvaged, and I don't really know the details but it doesn't look very good.

I went to FNM at the other game store in town, Titan Games, for the first time yesterday. Titan's not a bad place but it didn't feel like home. I don't know if it can become that for me, or if I'm going to drop out of magic again. Playing magic helped me get through some tough times, but I haven't felt as much into it the past few months as I used to. But not having it in my life feels scary.

Thanks for all the good times, Dave. I hope things work out for you. I hope things work out for me.

The week before last was the last time out for Hardened Scales in Standard for me (because last Friday I was at Kittencon). I finally made a few tweaks, and I want to record the final version of the deck. I got second place, and half the field was playing some version of the deck.

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I played my Hardened Scales deck at FNM again. We had 12 people. I lost in the first round to the eventual winner (it was a close game), and then won the next three, getting second place on tiebreaks.

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There's a net deck that's trying to do the same things that's slightly different. It runs 4 Nissas (of which I own 0) and 4 Endless Ones (which I own 1). I haven't tried playing with either of those cards. A couple of copies of Nissa might be worth running, but I'm fairly certain that 4 is too many. I haven't tried Endless One, but it doesn't seem very good. It also runs more fetches, which is probably a good idea. (I keep drawing hands with only white mana, despite having only 7 Plains in the deck.) I'm really happy to see my deck talked about and played at big tournaments, but I'm afraid it may not do as well when it starts to be something that people are actually expecting.

WTF? I wrote this last night, but it didn't post, and I only noticed now.

I have returned from Capricon, where in spite of my initial feelings when I looked at the schedule, I was never without enjoyable ways to occupy my time.

Friday we arrived a little late and missed the beginning of billroper's Cafe set, but I got to hear several good songs. I realized while I was hearing those that 4:00 on Friday was a badly over scheduled chunk of time. I wanted to see beamjockey's presentation on Pluto, because pretty much all I know from the New Horizons mission is what made it onto the radio, which doesn't include actually seeing the pictures. After that ended, I walked through the dealer's room, where I found a few paperbacks I wanted to buy, and noticed that there were quite a few tables of authors hawking their apparently self-published books, which I think is a good trend in general, although between my slow reading speed and my limited budget, I generally keep my book habit satisfied with mass market paperbacks. I also got a quick run through the art show. At least there still is an art show. And there was some nice art in it. Hopefully the people who have money found some they liked. Then we went to dinner at Spear's which is just across the parking lot from the hotel, but that was quite far enough to go through the gale. Spear's is a gourmet $15 hamburger place, though they have a few things that aren't served on a bun. The food is good and the portions are reasonable; it's a bit expensive but everything is in Chicago. Friday open filk went pretty well, despite the fact that we never got the lights turned all the way on.

Saturday, after I got up and had a combined breakfast/lunch in the room, I went down to the game room for a bit. I sat at an empty table, stood my Splendor box up, and read my book, and just about the time I decided to go head to the cafe, a couple of people joined me for a game. It was a good game, but it ran longer than I expected and by the time it was done it was halfway through Sassafras' set in the cafe. So I decided to play the game that one of my Splendor players was there demoing, which has gone through a successful kickstarter and is apparently now in production. In a marketing failure, in spite of the fact that after playing a couple of games and geeking about game design, I walked away not actually remembering the name of the game. I think it's Legends of somethingorother. It seemed like a fairly well designed little game, there are several different strategies/ways to get points and they can all be valid. The theme is thin. The card art is decent. If I see it in the game store and I recognize it I might get it. Then I got to the last half of Mike Nixon's set in the cafe, which I have to confess I wasn't really paying attention to, and then Three Fifths' set, which was the high point of the weekend. Three Fifths are just getting better all the time, and they had sweetmusic_27 with them, doing her magic stuff which she claims she hasn't rehearsed, but she was sounding as wonderful as the others. Then we decided we didn't want to brave the elements so we went to dinner at Saranello's with filkart and ithiriel. Saranello's is a serious restaurant that people with expensive cars who aren't staying at the hotel frequent, and by those standards its prices aren't that high. (Pastas are about $15, fancier entrees like $25.) The food is quite good, and it's really convenient to be in the hotel. Note to self: next year, get Saturday's dinner organized on Friday and get a reservation. This might even allow closing down the cafe, getting dinner, and then getting to Space Time Theater, which we missed. After dinner, I dropped by the game room, and got another game of Splendor, which was a pretty good game. I was the last player, and I managed to sneak in with 15 points, with both of the other players ready to go to 18 if they had one more turn. Then open filk, where I was very tired but managed to enjoy the music for 3 hours or so before giving in to fatigue, where of course once I staggered into bed, I couldn't get to sleep for hours.

Sunday, we got our stuff to the car and went to Toast and Jam, which was pretty nice, and then we headed out into the growing storm, since tcgtrf had skipped out on his reading due to the weather forecast. There was a little snow on the roads, but it wasn't really a problem, except that birder2's windshield washer was not working, which made seeing the road a little iffy.

I'm also going to update on Magic. I didn't touch a Magic deck for the first two weeks of 2016. Friday at FNM, I played my Hardened Scales deck in standard, the last time before the new set becomes legal. I did awful, 1-3. It's a marginal deck that has to get lucky to do well against serious decks, and I just didn't.

This weekend was the prerelease for Oath of the Gatewatch. I went to the event today. My pool was lousy -- I didn't get much value and I didn't get cards that seemed to make much of a deck. I had far too little removal. Really, the only thing I had was bombs, so I ran what ramp I had and a bunch of high cost spells. After losing the first 2 rounds, I won the next 3, so I got one prize pack. My streak of winning the door prize lottery is also done -- I got sleeves.

I played my Hardened Scales deck again at FNM. Came in 3rd out of 8 players.

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I just played a game of Dominion which featured the most complete drubbing I've ever seen in a game of Dominion, so I'm going to record it for posterity. Since I recently got the Adventures expansion, we were playing with events. Specifically, Expedition, which allows you to pay 3 and get two extra cards for your next hand, and Inheritance, which allows you to pay 7 to turn all of your Estates into an action card (costing no more than 4). Also relevant in the mix were Worker's Village, Bridge, Bridge Troll, and Rabble. On the first two turns, I bought a Silver and Bridge. Then on turn 3, I drew 3 Copper and 2 Estates. I thought about it for a moment, and spent the 3 copper for Expedition. I drew my other 7 cards for my next turn, which were Silver, 5 Copper, and an Estate, for a total of 7, which I used to buy Inheritance, turning my Estates into Worker's Villages. A couple of turns later, I bought 3 Estates. A couple of turns after that, I had two Bridge effects in play, and bought all of the remaining Estates. I had won at this point, but we kept playing. I bought a couple more Rabbles, a couple of Cities, a Province, and a couple of Great Halls. I put together a turn where I played all 15 Estates, 3 Rabbles, 4 Bridges, a Bridge Troll, and a bunch of treasures. I had 20 extra buys and a discount of 5, so I proceeded to buy all 12 Duchies (emptying the second pile), and then just bought the three remaining Cities to end the game. I could have scored more points on my final turn, but why bother? I had 59 points, Yoshi had 3, and Ricardo had 1, because he'd Expanded away two of his Estates.

After a week off for OVFF, I was back at FNM with the same Hardened Scales deck as I had last time.

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We also had 10 people for after draft. I didn't lost a game and still came in second on tiebreaks, but a fourth round would have been a bad idea. Had a decent red and green ramp-into-bombs deck and didn't stumble on mana. And I opened a Scourge of the Throne, which is worth a few bucks.

I have a new standard deck. It's really fun. I came *this close* to winning FNM tonight.

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I played my Abzan deck again at FNM, with no changes since last week. 2-1-1, only lost to the overall winner, so not too bad.

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I know I said last week that this week would be my last chance to play this deck in Standard, but actually, I get to play it next week. I always forget that prerelease is after FNM, not instead of it.