MTG - MBC Pauper

I wrote about two decks I wanted to take, a UG infect deck and an Izzet Blitz deck.  I couldn't find the cards for the Izzet Blitz deck and although I had the cards for the UG infect deck I decided not to bring it.  Instead I put together a Mono-Black Control deck (MBC) as I was more familiar with that style of deck than the UG Infect deck.

So I brought the following based on what I could cobble together the night before from my boxes of cards

• 3 Mind Rot
• 3 Grasp of Darkness
• 2 Victim of Night
• 4 Geth's Verdict
• 3 Liliana's Specter
• 2 Ravenous Rats
• 4 Disciple of Phenax
• 4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 3 Corrupt
• 4 Sign in Blood
• 4 Phyrexian Rager
• 2 Viper's Kiss
• 2 Bojuka Bog
• 20 Swamp
• Sideboard
• 1 Grasp of Darkness
• 4 Doom Blade
• 2 Shrivel
• 4 Duress
• 2 Viper's Kiss
• 2 Morbid Plunder

The deck is a little sub-par as it is missing some staples like Chittering Rats and Hymn to Tourach so I kind of had to make do with similar but not quite as powerful cards that I had in my collection.  I did start playing back in the Revised days so I knew the cards well but I periodically liquidate my collection so never have that many cards in the house.  In that respect I prefer MTGO as I don't have to physically store anything.  MTGO has a lot of other advantages for me but I can write about that later.

Unfortunately not enough people showed up to play.  Still I managed to play a few pauper games with people to see how my deck fared.  The people who did show up though only brought aggressive infect decks which my control deck kind of rolled over.  I just had too much removal for them to handle and although they came close to beating me several times, I was able to stabilize with all my removal and smart chump blocking to allow me to win.  I was really hoping to play against more people but I guess that will have to be another time.  In the meanwhile I guess I have MTGO if I want to play Pauper.

MTG - Local Pauper Tournament

Busy spring break for gaming events as I found out recently one of the local gaming stores is hosting an MTG Pauper tournament.  For those who don't know MTG Pauper is a format where only commons are allowed in your deck.  Lots of people online have come up with different types of Pauper formats like Modern Pauper or Standard Pauper but generally Pauper is a legacy format so commons from all sets are allowed.  As long as the card was common in one set it is allowed (so Rancor is allowed as it was common at one point)

I've played Pauper a lot on MTGO but never in a live event.  Most people here play either random legacy fun decks or standard.  Myself I've moved away from competitive MTG and mostly just cube with friends and the occasional pre-release tournament.  Seeing a Pauper tournament is kind of cool and I'm going to try and play in it.  The only problem is my live Pauper collection isn't nearly as big as my MTGO Pauper collection when it comes to having cards that will make an actual competitive deck.  I mean I have lots of commons (who doesn't, especially after having played for so long) but whether those commons can make a good deck is another matter.

There are two decks I want to try and bring.  One of them I have the cards for but isn't as fun to play in my opinion, while the other is super fun to play but I'm missing a fair amount of the key cards.

Warhammer 40k - FLGS 40k League!

Finally, a Warhammer 40k event going on at one of the FLGS in town.  Only took a few months.  Regardless, I am going to try and attend as it is an escalating league.

For those unfamiliar with an escalation league, it basically takes place over a period of X weeks and every week or two the points value of the games goes up.  This particular league will be done over 2 week intervals.  The first 2 weeks will be 600 point games (with a 50 point bonus if your army is painted!), the next 2 weeks will be 1200 point games (with a 100 point painting bonus) and the last 2 weeks will be 1800 points (with a 150 point painting bonus).  It will give me a reason to finish painting my unpainted Deathwing squads.

Now on to the first army list I plan on using!

Warhammer 40k - Imperial Knights

Since Orktoberfest 2013 I've been away from the Warhammer hobby but this model has made me want to maybe buy something from Games Workshop.  Mind you it's not so I can use it in a game as many wargamers in the area have moved away from the Warhammer universe.  The model brings back so many nostalgic memories of playing Epic: Titan Legions back in the 1990s.

A friend and I had split the Titan Legions box.  He got the Orks I got the Knights and Imperator Titan.  Lots of fun moving those guys around and playing on a massive scale compared to regular 40k.  We always thought it would be cool to see those models in 40k scale but that would require a lot of work (or money if you bought the old Armorcast models) so the giant walkers were just a pipe dream.

The release of this



has brought back a lot of the feelings of what made me get into this hobby in the first place:  the cool background and imagery of humanity standing against the tide of xenos.  For a moment I forgot all the money related issues surrounding my lack of enjoyment of the hobby and remembered all the cool stuff I liked about it.

I have no idea what the rules are for this thing but from what I've read it appears to be really expensive in game (~400 points) and can be used by any Imperial army.  It also appears to be a super heavy so might require the Escalation book.  That aside the kit's value isn't that bad from a $/points perspective compared to some other kits (I'm looking at you Imperial Guardsman).

Will I go and buy this kit or not?  Probably not any time soon.  After all it is $170 CDN and I could buy a lot more stuff with that (both hobby and non-hobby related), but this is the first thing that has come out from GW since last year's Dark Angels release (I still haven't bought the new Dark Angels codex) that has me wanting to buy from them and that's quite a change considering last year I was all but ready to give up on the company.