"Holy Angel tokens, Batman!"

Looking at my Google Analytics dashboard, I found that more than a couple people came onto my site looking for "brian kibler batmobile". Searching this, apparently this blog post of mine is the top search result when you Google that term.

Well, let the search end, I've found the picture:


You saw it here first on Incremental Growth... since the first time you saw that picture.

GPT Seattle, try 1

So I ran Kithkin at the GPT today at First Pick, more or less as a testing session, since A) I had an unoptimal sideboard with only 1 Elspeth, and 2) I hadn't tested and have no idea what to board in and out.

So here's my deck

1 Mutavault
4 Windbrisk Heights
4 Rugged Prairie
4 Battlefield Forge
2 Rustic Clachan
10 Plains

4 Figure of Destiny
4 Goldmeadow Stalwart
4 Wizened Cenn
4 Knight of Meadowgrain
4 Cloudgoat Ranger

4 Path to Exile
4 Spectral Procession
3 Glorious Anthem
4 Ajani Vengeant

Sideboard:
4 Reveillark
4 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Ranger of Eos
2 Martial Coup
2 Banefire
1 Elsepth, Knight-Errant

This GPT was like a small PTQ: 46 people, 6 rounder.

Round 1 vs. Swans
Game 1 I blow him out. Game 2 I leave a kill on the board because I was afraid of Terror but of course Swans doesn't play Terror. Game 3 I blow him out.
1-0

Round 2 vs. Alex West playing Red Deck
He mulligans to five both games. Not much.
2-0

Round 3 vs. Bill Stark playing Sanity Grinding
Game 1 he's on the play and has answers for everything and it's essentially a blowout. Game 2 I'm lucky enough for him to not see any board control cards. Game 3 I mull to 5 and keep 2 Rugged Prairies as my lands. Luckily I get a Plains, but he's already Boomeranged my first land drop.

Max McCall pointed out that on a clash I opted to keep Elspeth on my deck when I couldn't cast it and didn't really want Elspeth in the game, and then on another clash the next turn I opted to send Path to Exile to the bottom because, well, I wanted land to cast Elspeth. I proceeded to get blown out by Plumeveil. At least I got the testing I wanted out of this tournament :/
2-1

Round 4 vs. Chris Kelly playing Sligh
I didn't get very good draws either of the games we played and he blows me out of the water. I think Game 1 I made a bad play that made me lose a Knight of Meadowgrain unnecessarily. Game 2 he plays infinite Terrors on my guys and I flood for a while looking for Burrenton Forge-Tender and he has Deathmark too. Gross... I really don't think this is a bad matchup for me either. He wants to play Goblin Outlander but he also needs to play Volcanic Fallout, so Goblin Outlander on the board = time to overextended a little more, and no Goblin Outlander means Knight of Meadowgrain's going to town.
2-2 DROP

I think the deck's fine, but I'll definitely be trying to get some serious testing in, because I really don't understand what cards are bad and even what cards are good in each matchup.

Bryan, a good Magic playing friend from summer '07, came back to Magic yesterday, and T2'd today. Good for him, except the deck he was playing in the finalwas, well, something you wouldn't expect and something I wouldn't recommend without some tuning.

At least I'll gain a few points from this...

Actual paper Magic

I haven't played paper Magic since the last PTQ, and rather than sit at home and blow away dollars on 8-4's, I decided to actually get out, enjoy the unusually beautiful Seattle weather, and do a paper draft in Redmond.

I ended up 4-0'ing with a very odd Esper deck splashing Red for Blood Cultist and activating Vein Drinker. Here's what made the cut.

1x Grixis Illusionist
1x Zombie Outlander
1x Tidehollow Sculler
1x Esper Battlemage
1x Blood Cultist
1x Aven Windwatcher
1x Brackwater Elemental
1x Viscera Dragger
2x Fatestitcher
1x Tower Gargoyle
2x Dreg Reaver
1x Vein Drinker

1x Bone Splinters
1x Path to Exile
1x Courier's Capsule
1x Yoke of the Damned
1x Gleam of Resistance
2x Oblivion Ring
1x Resounding Wave
1x Kiss of the Amesha

1x Jund Panorama
1x Esper Panorama
1x Unstable Frontier
1x Mountain
4x Swamp
4x Plains
5x Island

(not sure about the mix of Swamps, Plains, and Island, but it was definitely 5-4-4)

So initially I thought the deck was pretty slow and would get blown out by a Bant deck pretty easily. Luckily, I did not play against a Bant deck, and against everything else the deck was pretty solid. I elected to draw every time I had the choice, since I was definitely a control deck and I thought my mana was atrocious, and the amount of removal I had, plus double Fatesticher + Esper Battlemage and Blood Cultist, made winning relatively easy in the late game, be it with Vein Drinker or Dreg Reaver.

A couple of notes about my actual play:

I started out writing down every card my opponent plays again, but then I noticed that as I was taking a note, my opponent would make a play and I'd instinctively say "Sure" without even considering the board and my hand. After that, I'd only write down cards when I truly had idle time, and then even only noted important cards like tricks and guys that actually change the board.

I'm still not finding the most correctly play fast enough. In my last game, I made a couple of not-so tight plays, but luckily my opponent didn't make me pay for them. Maybe I need to slow it down a little bit, but I think it was more a lack of concentration. I need to eliminate the number of times I say "Wait, that play was awful" immediately after I make plays. I do that a lot.

Anyway, for my efforts I got credit for at least three more drafts at Redmond, a sweet playmat, and foil Path to Exile #2. Magic is fun when you win. :)

How on earth is competitive Magic thriving?

Got this link from Slashdot to a New York Times article about professional gamers losing their sponsorships and entering the real world, with pro gaming circuits like Championship Gaming Series and Cyberathlete Professional League folding due to the economy sucking. Apparently Major League Gaming is turning a profit, though.

But I've always wondered about these leagues' business models. How can you spend $1-2 million total on your elite players, dish out prize cash, and put on extravagant tournaments that probably cost more than Pro Tours (I've never been to a PT, but these MLG tournaments have a lot more lights, seating, equipment, and booth babes) all off of sponsorship money? At least with Magic it makes sense: when people take the game more seriously, they buy more Magic cards and play in more FNMs, PTQs, and MODO drafts.

It's a little confusing, with such bad times financially, that we are breaking attendance records in North America for Grand Prixs and PTQs, and that tournament organizers can turn profits on $5k tournaments and cruises. Guess it just goes to show what a great product Magic is. I know I certainly don't get positive EV from playing Magic, and I don't know too many people in Seattle that do, but we're still flying to Grand Prixs and even PTQs. I guess you can't do that with Halo unless you pay some people to show up and beat up amateurs, since you get nearly the exact same experience sitting your living room on X-Box Live.

Maybe it's also a little justice in the world. Competitive gamers don't exactly contribute much to society, so they shouldn't make more money in the long run than, say, teachers or policemen.

Thinking, thinking, thinking - the beginning of GP Seattle prep...

In my estimation, here are the relevant decks in Standard:

BW Tokens
Five-Color Control
Kithkin
RW Cruise
Faeries
Esperlark
Bant strategies
Blightning (I think this deck's pretty bad right now, it only beats Faeries and Five-Color, and mostly old Five-Color lists at that)

Reveillark seems to be an extremely important card in this metagame. It's so hard to deal with that you either run it yourself, or you don't care about it. Generating lots of creatures also seems good, with Spectral Procession and Bitterblossom being awesome cards, which in turn makes Glorious Anthem another really important card for decks that go this route.

I think the beginning of this month I'll be running Kithkin. I know it's a favorite against Cruise, Faeries, and Red decks. It's certainly fast enough that it doesn't really care about Reveillark by the time it comes online. I also get to play Glorious Anthem and Spectral Procession, as well as other hits like Cloudgoat Ranger. The only deck I'm really worried about from the major decks is Five-Color Control, and at least there are tools to beat it. I'm also not sure how good I'd be against a T2 Rhox War Monk or Troll Ascetic.

The field seems like it will be fairly spread out, so tuning for the mirror past some sideboard cards seems unnecessary at this point. Stillmoon Cavalier seems like it'd be really good, but why isn't it in every Kithkin board?

Anyway, some initial thoughts I need to get down.

The end of a disappointing three months

So I went 1-3 drop at today's PTQ running the Robots. I'm so awful at Magic, and I don't think it was necessarily preparation...

Round 1 vs. Kyle Boddy (Affinity) - Game 1 I draw the nuts and he doesn't. Game 2 he mulligans and I draw my hate.

Round 2 vs. Domain Zoo - Game 1 a Jitte gets online but I'm still in the game some how. I get attacked down to 2 with him having a Kird Ape and Tarmogoyf left on the board and I have an Atog and a fairly large Arcbound Ravager. He's at 2 and I'm at 10. He uses all his Jitte counters to attempt to kill Atog and I decline to sac one more land to save it because I was thinking I'd like the land to cast a creature I draw off the top. Stupid me wasn't thinking that I had just been put to 2 and when I fail to draw a creature I lose to a simple crackback. Basically denied myself a draw phase and possibly a win because he was out of gas himself.

I blew him out Game 2, then Game 3 he mulligans to 6 but has the absolute nuts on the play. T1 Kird Ape, T2 Tarmogoyf, after my T1 Thopter + Drum, T2 tap out for Plating, T3 I decline to block and he Might of Alara and Flames me. I finally blow out my hand full of guys on the next turn but he flashes me a second Tribal Flames. That game doesn't happen if I don't throw away Game 3.

Round 3 vs. Faeries - Game 1 I blow him out. Game 2 I try a very deep mulligan (may have been 4 or even 3) and obviously don't get there. Game 3 I keep an okay hand, play a guy T1, get my Plating Snared on T2, then get my second Plating Mana Leaked. I'm out of gas at that point but he is very hosed on mana and colors. I manage to get him to 1 until a very late Ancestral resolves and he gets Green Mana for Ancient Grudge and Tarmogoyf and I lose.

Round 4 vs. Reveillark combo - Game 1 he mucks the board up with Selkie Hedge-Mage and Reveillark and I basically can't attack without him gaining way too much life. Eventually he Chords out a Mirror Entity, and apparently Mirror Entity activated a million times for 0 with a Body Double and Reveillark means infinite bouncing and life. Game 2 he plays Kataki and I'm never in it.

And that was my PTQ and possibly the end of Extended for me. I'm slightly entertaining the idea of flying/riding to Boise but I don't think it's worth it when right now I'm absolutely begging just to go X-2 at a PTQ, something I have never done.

I feel like I'm having problems concentrating on my play at the table. I'll start doing something for my turn, then after I commit I realize there is a much better plan. I'd hate to slow down and plan out even more because I'm already a terribly slow player. I'm also really concerned that I don't mulligan correctly... I think I err to throwing away too many hands, and I probably average close to a mulligan a match in Constructed.

So I'm starting to concentrate on Standard, and this time I really shouldn't have any excuse not to figure this format out, with the crazy stuff that was happening in December and January for me and my general apathy for the previous two PTQ's. After next weekend, there's serious Standard every weekend except a couple leading up to the Grand Prix. I think I have it in me to not be awful at Magic, so we'll see how it goes the next couple months going into the summer.

Brian Kibler's return to the Pro Tour

I was just looking at PTQ Top 8's and saw that the Dragonmaster himself and former commentator Brian Kibler took down a PTQ in Las Vegas. It reminded me of brianfanatic.com. (This archive doesn't have the really sweet background of a picture of him in the Batmobile after winning a VS System Pro Circuit.)

Start from the bottom and experience what it's like to be obsessed with a professional Magic player.

UPDATE: I found the picture :)