Bombers (really rubbish) School of Magic

Session Report (without the fluff)


sealed deck, iOS, app built my deck and said it was "awesome". First campaign match is against Lilianas Death Freaks

suntail hawk
protean hydra
war priest of thune
sentinel sliver
deadly reclusex2
advocate of the beast
oakenform
charging griffinx2
pillarfield ox
prized unicorn
rumbling baloth x2
might of oaks
day of judgement
hunt the weak
dawnstrike paladin
silklash spider
garruks packleader
yavimaya wurm x2
duskdale wurm

7 plains
9 forest
terramorphic expanse


Opening Hand

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3 Forest, 1 Plains, Protean Hydra, Yaviyama Wurm

I feel like this could be a mulligan since the wurm is a 6-drop, and hydra is an X-drop geared to big X, but theres a lot of land there to drop down in the meantime, so as a noob I want to keep it

I mulligan to 7 new because it seems like its a good idea to have flexibility in card cost early on to avoid getting in a big mess early on

Forest, Plains, Terramorphic Expanse, Protean Hydra, Yaviyama Wurm, Charging Griffin, Rumbling Baloth

I won't mulligan down to 6, but I still have 4 cost before my first card, which I guess isnt ideal, but reducing my hand size when I dont know what Im doing feels a bit silly

Round 1 (Me: 20/ Lillian: 20)

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Lilliana starts
Swamp
Tormented Soul (1/1) cant block or be blocked

Me
Terramorphic expanse (I now realise you have to throw it away to get its ability, not just tap it)


(Draw War Priest of Thune 2/2)


Round 2 (Me: 20-0/ Lillian: 20-1) (the second number is effective mana)

---

Swamp
Attacks with Tormented Soul


Plains (gives me enough to get war priest out if I sacrifice terramorphic expanse, which I now also realise does NOT give me manna until I specifically sacrifice it, which I now do to get a forest in play. My plains card already qualifies me for the War Priest and Griffin, but i need 2 forests for the greens, and I have one in hand, so it seems obvious to get another green in now

Draw another Rumbling Baloth


Round 3 (Me: 19-2/ Lillian: 20-2)

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Swamp
Vampire Nighthawk (2/3, flying deathtouch, lifelink)
attacks with tormented soul

uh oh, here comes the problems, flying AND deathtouch AND lifelink AND 3 health which only my 4/4 and 6/4 stuff can kill.


Forest
with GGw I could put the war priest out, but whats the point, he has a destroy enchant ability when he comes in which I currently cant use, vampire can block him without being killed, and he cant even chump block vampire. So I hang on to him, right?

The only other option is to put out Protean Hydra with 2 1/1 counters, knowing that upon death I could put those onto eg war priest so he becomes strong enough to kill the vampire, but it feels like Hydra should be held onto until hes a bit stronger, right?


Round 4 (Me: 18/ Lillian: 20)

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(BBB)
Ravernous Rats, I have to discard, I had 2 rumbling baloths so I lose one of those (maybe I should have canned the priest)
she must not have had land, so she just attacks with the other 2

Forest (GGGW)
I seem to have Sentinel Sliver now, but decide to play Charging Griffin 2/2 with +1/+1 on attacks, which means if I send her in shes dealing 3, and if vampire blocks, at least thats killed off too. Shes dealing 4 damage now, so if she doesnt block, at least I am dealing 3 while I wait for more cards. if she does block, deathtouch vampire is gone and shes only dealing 2 per round
I send in the Peter Griffin.



Round 5 (Me: 15/ Lillian: 22)

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BBB
Murder!
ack, griffin binned, just like that. was I silly putting her out?
also why has she got 22 life now? I havent attacked her vampire, so where has that lifelink come from, oh hang on, its when she attacks, fuck thats not good, I need to get that vampire off the board but you see what happened to peter griffin
at least she seems to be stuck without land
she attacks

GGGW
I play another forest
I dont see what good the baloth 4/4 will do since it cant block vampire and if vampire blocks, it has flying so I assume baloth dies, vampire lives (or am I wrong, does the act of blocking by vampire bring it down to where baloth can hit it?)
anyway, I put out Sentinel Sliver and War Priest (thus not using his destroy enchatment), at least its two 2/2 creatures which hold off the two 1/1s she has without deathtouch (rats, torment). Still not helping vs vampire though
Oh, both of those needed White, so I only get to play Sliver, i COULD put a 2/2 hydra out, but it doesnt seem good still


Round 6 (Me: 11/ Lillian: 24)

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BBB
Swamp
Mark of the Vampire (enchant creature to give them +2/2, lifelink)
YES! My reserved War Priest might get a job to do! She puts it on ratty
Oh! putting Sliver out used up my white mana, otherwise I assume I could have war priested it right away, now it looks like super rat will get a hit in, with a total of 5 lifelink going her way

LOL I also forgot her torment is unblockable

totally futile so far, have I already completely messed this up?

she attacks for 6, 5 of them lifelink, ugh

GGGGW
I draw deadly recluse, reath and deathtouch 1/2 yes! surely this can deal with vampire britches

first I put out War Priest of Thune and he gets rid of the enchantment, no more vampire rat!
then I get deadly recluse out, ready for vampire girl
(I forgot to attack THEN summon but as sliver currently cant get past vampire, I wasnt attacking anyway)


Round 7 (Me: 5/ Lillian: 31) - this is getting a bit too close for comfort

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BBBB
Swamp
Bloodhunter Bat (flying, 2,2) +2 life to her, -2 to me uh oh

ha, now she darent attack with vampire so its just the 1 damage from tormented soul, the bad news is, Im down to 2 life
I also cant attack her because I need to keep my spiderman in reserve to block vampiregirl

GGGGW
Plains

OK, here is where I literally dont know what to do. I have hydra, baloth and wurm, none of them have reach or flying, all of them killed by vampire. Next turn she has 2 fliers to attack, I can only block one of them, Im down to 2 life.
I put out the 5/5 hydra, knowing theres nothing I can do here.
I attack with the priest and sliver anyway just to inflict a wound on her, priest of course is killed by vampires deathtouch

Round 8 (Me: 2/ Lillian: 31)

BBBBB
Rotting Legion (4/5, tapped). great

she attacks, I can only block 1 flier
I'm dead
it's over


what did I do wrong?

---

Yeah, I'm not sure that letting the app build your deck is a good thing. When it says awesome, it usually means lots of high mana shit. Problem with that is most of those worm things are too high mana for you to get on the table so you end up with a useless hand reliant on card draws. At a guess, I would say your deck is pretty slow to accumulate big dudes. Usually, you can get a better deck doing it yourself. Unfortunately, this means deck building, which can be a PITA (I hate this aspect of the game). It means you need to read a bit about mana distribution in built decks.

I don't know all these cards but at first glance it looks a little over weighted on high mana dudes. Others will be able to comment with more authority.

yeah, I thought as much, but I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing stuff that might have been better

Now I know what sort of stuff she throws out there, I can look for some cards that have first strike, invulnerable, some counter spells and the like, so hopefully it will be more fun than PITA, but soon I'll have those intro decks to just get out on the table with the missus where it wont matter if we dont play optimally for a while

I thought the deck actually looked pretty well built (when I saw it I knew it hadn't been built by a new player, for one), but I haven't seen what *wasn't* included, which is really the most important part. Also, part of the FUN of playing sealed-deck is that you make it yourself.

I want to annotate your game, but might not get to it till much later today. Reading up to round 3, I have one important comment so far, which is to read Protean Hydra more carefully (what you mention about putting the counters on the War Priest is impossible). Also, I'm very confused by your mulligan: the opening hand you have written down has 6 cards, and then you mulligan to 7????!?? Huh? I'm assuming that there's just a card you forgot to write down in the opening hand, and also that DotP gives everyone a "free" mulligan (which is not the case in normal Magic); is that correct?

Another rules misunderstanding in turn 6, you can only play creatures (and sorceries and enchantments and land and artifacts) on your own turn. Unless they have "Flash".

yes, I had 7 originally, I dont know why you mulligan to 7 but the next mulligan offers you 6, so i assumed it was cos I wasnt P1 maybe

yeah, I realised about the flash thing later also, I'll look up the hydra, but anyway, I think for fun I might try to build a deck that can do a bit better against these vampire clowns and see how they get on.

Also, round 5, yes, a flying creature blocking a non-flying creature doesn't make the flying creature immune or anything. Flying does one thing only: "flying creatures cannot be blocked by creatures without flying or reach". There is no mention of "flying creatures can't be damaged by non-flying creatures", because that rule *doesn't exist*. Take everything at complete face value.

Round 6, it sounds like she attacked with the Vampire Nighthawk...but for some reason you're still afraid of attacking with the Sentinel Sliver? Tapped creatures can't block.

Gah so hard to resist not responding fully...later. Much later. Got a lot of stuff to do this morning.

oh hang on, I definitely missed that! (I think I've not bothered attacking in several games when theres a flying blocker assuming i couldnt hit it for some reason!) (I will of course read the evergreen keyword list and have just printed out the condensed basic rules from Wizards as well).

doh!

Also note that deathtouch has no effect on Protean Hydra. That's pretty neat (and non-obvious without a careful reading the card).

Edit: In the Starcraft board game, isn't there a rule like that ground dudes can't hurt flying dudes? Maybe that's where that idea came from.

I totally misread that, or actually I think I used it in the other single player games and just remembered putting those tokens on it.

so for the 2/3 with deathtouch, all I need to do is put out the 3/3 hydra, if she did block with it, hydra would remove 2 counters and be 1/1 (with a counter left), vampire would be dead, deathtouch wouldnt work since damage wasnt applied, and then hydra would add those 2 counters back and be back to 3/3 in the next round

doh!

You got it! Actually, it would get FOUR counters back and be a 5/5 next round (for each "head" you cut off, 2 grow back)! Though if you put out a 3/3 hydra, it's more likely that the opponent would hold back enough dudes to block together and kill the hydra in one shot, rather than just chumping with the Nighthawk and giving you a gigantic creature.

Edit: and if all you're doing is attacking with a 3/3 when she's got a Tormented Soul and Vampire Nighthawk out, she probably won't block at all, because she's winning the race. You need to be doing 4 damage a turn to keep at the pace of the Vampire, and with the Tormented Soul out, you'd need to be doing 5 damage a turn...and even then, since your opponent's got a head start, she'd still win.

I finally beat her and didnt even get to use my destroy all creatures spell i saved!

The Matt loter unicorn thing with oaken form did the trick!

Now the anniversary kicked my ass, its a bit weird that you don't see their deck and have no idea beforehand what they have. Lots of immunity to creatures, lifeline, pacifism etc

It's a tough game!

Still planning on doing the annotation, but congrats!

If there are no deathtouch creatures around, then Prized Unicorn + Oakenform is siiiiiiiiiiick. A pumped up Prize Unicorn in general is sick; if you can manage to wipe their board with it with the first attack, then from there on out they can't play any creature smaller than a 5/5 unless they play multiple creatures at once, or else you'll just kill it with impunity.

Nope, don't get to see opponent's decklists. That's the fun, the surprise! However, in sealed deck play: there are about a hundred commons in each set, and once you know their colors it's much fewer than that, so those common cards are the ones you want to be trying to predict will be in their deck (no one can predict rares). And in constructed play, lots of the time someone will do well with a deck and then lots of people will copy that person's deck, so there tends to be a defined "metagame" of common recurring decks. This is why going "rogue" and making your own completely new deck at a tournament can be hugely advantageous even if your deck is "worse" than some more popular type of deck, because you have the element of surprise.

So in both Limited play and Constructed play, there is always a "metagame" of cards to be thinking about probably being in your opponent's deck even if you haven't seen them. Like, when I started reading your game writeup here, and you mentioned that you were debating about whether or not to cast your War Priest of Thune without any enchantments to kill, my first thought was "the enchantment to watch out for would be Mark of the Vampire"...and sure enough, he played Mark of the Vampire later. So there's a balance of surprise and predictability in opponents' decks.

ldsdbomber wrote: Session Report (without the fluff)


sealed deck, iOS, app built my deck and said it was "awesome". First campaign match is against Lilianas Death Freaks

suntail hawk
protean hydra
war priest of thune
sentinel sliver
deadly reclusex2
advocate of the beast
oakenform
charging griffinx2
pillarfield ox
prized unicorn
rumbling baloth x2
might of oaks
day of judgement
hunt the weak
dawnstrike paladin
silklash spider
garruks packleader
yavimaya wurm x2
duskdale wurm

7 plains
9 forest
terramorphic expanse


Opening Hand

---

3 Forest, 1 Plains, Protean Hydra, Yaviyama Wurm

I feel like this could be a mulligan since the wurm is a 6-drop, and hydra is an X-drop geared to big X, but theres a lot of land there to drop down in the meantime, so as a noob I want to keep it

I mulligan to 7 new because it seems like its a good idea to have flexibility in card cost early on to avoid getting in a big mess early on

Forest, Plains, Terramorphic Expanse, Protean Hydra, Yaviyama Wurm, Charging Griffin, Rumbling Baloth

I won't mulligan down to 6, but I still have 4 cost before my first card, which I guess isnt ideal, but reducing my hand size when I dont know what Im doing feels a bit silly

Love the formatting, btw.

Okay, as I said, I'm pretty confused by the numbers in these mulligans. Normally, you get a 7-card hand to start, and then every time you want to mulligan you go down by one card.

Without knowing what the 7th card is in that first hand, I'd agree that it's correct to take a mulligan there. However, it looks like your deck has very few creatures that cost less than 4, so you should be happy with any hand that has a 4-cost creature and a decent amount of mana.

ldsdbomber wrote: Round 1 (Me: 20/ Lillian: 20)

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Lilliana starts
Swamp
Tormented Soul (1/1) cant block or be blocked

Me
Terramorphic expanse (I now realise you have to throw it away to get its ability, not just tap it)


(Draw War Priest of Thune 2/2)

Yeah, so obviously you want to use the Expanse now (or at the end of the opponent's turn, if you want to keep your colors secret), because the land it fetches enters the battlefield tapped.

ldsdbomber wrote: Round 2 (Me: 20-0/ Lillian: 20-1) (the second number is effective mana)

---

Swamp
Attacks with Tormented Soul


Plains (gives me enough to get war priest out if I sacrifice terramorphic expanse, which I now also realise does NOT give me manna until I specifically sacrifice it, which I now do to get a forest in play. My plains card already qualifies me for the War Priest and Griffin, but i need 2 forests for the greens, and I have one in hand, so it seems obvious to get another green in now

Draw another Rumbling Baloth

Good choice to get a forest.

ldsdbomber wrote: Round 3 (Me: 19-2/ Lillian: 20-2)

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Swamp
Vampire Nighthawk (2/3, flying deathtouch, lifelink)
attacks with tormented soul

uh oh, here comes the problems, flying AND deathtouch AND lifelink AND 3 health which only my 4/4 and 6/4 stuff can kill.


Forest
with GGw I could put the war priest out, but whats the point, he has a destroy enchant ability when he comes in which I currently cant use, vampire can block him without being killed, and he cant even chump block vampire. So I hang on to him, right?

The only other option is to put out Protean Hydra with 2 1/1 counters, knowing that upon death I could put those onto eg war priest so he becomes strong enough to kill the vampire, but it feels like Hydra should be held onto until hes a bit stronger, right?

Vampire Nighthawk is a terrifying card, almost certainly one of the top 10 most independently powerful 3-mana creatures ever. I definitely had a "WTF??!?" response when the card was first printed.

I think I agree with holding back the War Priest, because of a fear of Mark the Vampire. However, you WOULD probably be doing 2 more damage to him every turn if you played it, because it is unlikely that he'd keep the Vampire Nighthawk back to block.

Agreed that casting Hydra as a 2/2 would suck. It would basically have *no* ability, unless you were lucky and somehow managed to do a damage to it. At 3/3 it's *much* better. 4/4 is even better, and I would *rather* not play it until I can play it as a 5/5. As discussed, you can't move Protean Hydra's counters to another creature.

ldsdbomber wrote: Round 4 (Me: 18/ Lillian: 20)

---

(BBB)
Ravernous Rats, I have to discard, I had 2 rumbling baloths so I lose one of those (maybe I should have canned the priest)
she must not have had land, so she just attacks with the other 2

Forest (GGGW)
I seem to have Sentinel Sliver now, but decide to play Charging Griffin 2/2 with +1/+1 on attacks, which means if I send her in shes dealing 3, and if vampire blocks, at least thats killed off too. Shes dealing 4 damage now, so if she doesnt block, at least I am dealing 3 while I wait for more cards. if she does block, deathtouch vampire is gone and shes only dealing 2 per round
I send in the Peter Griffin.

I'd probably have discarded the Priest here instead of the Baloth. If you're going to outrace your opponent and his flying and unblockable creatures, you need BEEF.

On the same note, I'd play the Baloth here instead of the Griffin. That way you're attacking with a 4/4 instead of a 3/3.

ldsdbomber wrote: Round 5 (Me: 15/ Lillian: 22)

---

BBB
Murder!
ack, griffin binned, just like that. was I silly putting her out?
also why has she got 22 life now? I havent attacked her vampire, so where has that lifelink come from, oh hang on, its when she attacks, fuck thats not good, I need to get that vampire off the board but you see what happened to peter griffin
at least she seems to be stuck without land
she attacks

GGGW
I play another forest
I dont see what good the baloth 4/4 will do since it cant block vampire and if vampire blocks, it has flying so I assume baloth dies, vampire lives (or am I wrong, does the act of blocking by vampire bring it down to where baloth can hit it?)
anyway, I put out Sentinel Sliver and War Priest (thus not using his destroy enchatment), at least its two 2/2 creatures which hold off the two 1/1s she has without deathtouch (rats, torment). Still not helping vs vampire though
Oh, both of those needed White, so I only get to play Sliver, i COULD put a 2/2 hydra out, but it doesnt seem good still

Just 'cause she Murdered your dude doesn't mean it was incorrect to play a dude. She's gotta Murder something, better that it's not something essential to your plan. In fact, as it turned out, I would argue that the fact that she had Murder made it correct to play your weaker Griffin before playing your Baloth!

As noted, if the Nighthawk blocks your Baloth, they'll trade, there's no rule about non-flying creatures being unable to hurt fliers, they just can't block them.

So I'd have played Baloth here instead of the two 2/2s: it puts the same amount of power on the board, and that way you've still got your War Priest in reserve to take care of enchantments.

Also, the next point is really important: you say that you lay down two creatures so that the opponent can't attack with her two 1/1s. I mean, first of all, as you notice later, Tormented Soul is unblockable. But more generally important: a SINGLE 2/2 essentially prevents LOTS of 1/1s from attacking. The opponent isn't going to attack with, say, four 1/1s if you have a 2/2, because then she'll lose one of her 1/1s every time she does so. The THREAT of blocking and killing a dude will hold off a LOT of dudes.

Oh, and now I see that you actually just played a single 2/2 instead of both 2/2s. This is so so so much worse than playing the Baloth for a bunch of reasons: first of all, you put less power on the board. The 2/2 is just weaker than the 4/4. Second of all, you're also wasting mana: *even if* Baloth were a 4-mana 2/2 and Sentinel Sliver were a 2-mana 2/2, if you're not going to USE the leftover mana, it's better to play the 4-mana card. That way, in a future turn, you can hopefully play the Sentinel Sliver AND some other cheap card.

ldsdbomber wrote: Round 6 (Me: 11/ Lillian: 24)

---

BBB
Swamp
Mark of the Vampire (enchant creature to give them +2/2, lifelink)
YES! My reserved War Priest might get a job to do! She puts it on ratty
Oh! putting Sliver out used up my white mana, otherwise I assume I could have war priested it right away, now it looks like super rat will get a hit in, with a total of 5 lifelink going her way

LOL I also forgot her torment is unblockable

totally futile so far, have I already completely messed this up?

she attacks for 6, 5 of them lifelink, ugh

GGGGW
I draw deadly recluse, reath and deathtouch 1/2 yes! surely this can deal with vampire britches

first I put out War Priest of Thune and he gets rid of the enchantment, no more vampire rat!
then I get deadly recluse out, ready for vampire girl
(I forgot to attack THEN summon but as sliver currently cant get past vampire, I wasnt attacking anyway)

As noted, can't play creatures on opponent's turn. Also, you should've attacked with Sliver because it sounds like your opponent has no creatures untapped to block with.

ldsdbomber wrote: Round 7 (Me: 5/ Lillian: 31) - this is getting a bit too close for comfort

---

BBBB
Swamp
Bloodhunter Bat (flying, 2,2) +2 life to her, -2 to me uh oh

ha, now she darent attack with vampire so its just the 1 damage from tormented soul, the bad news is, Im down to 2 life
I also cant attack her because I need to keep my spiderman in reserve to block vampiregirl

GGGGW
Plains

OK, here is where I literally dont know what to do. I have hydra, baloth and wurm, none of them have reach or flying, all of them killed by vampire. Next turn she has 2 fliers to attack, I can only block one of them, Im down to 2 life.
I put out the 5/5 hydra, knowing theres nothing I can do here.
I attack with the priest and sliver anyway just to inflict a wound on her, priest of course is killed by vampires deathtouch

Okay, first of all, attacking here is incorrect because you did *0* damage to your opponent (thanks to the lifelink) and just killed one of your creatures.

Okay, so here's an interesting and key concept: play to your outs. You're dead the FOLLOWING turn if you can't deal with both the Tormented Soul and a flier. Your job now is to play as IF you'll draw what you need to deal with them, because if you don't draw it, you can't win anyway. There are only two cards in your entire deck that can deal with the Tormented Soul: Hunt the Weak and Day of Judgment. Hunt the Weak is not enough to deal with both the Tormented Soul *and* the flier, so you need to play as if you're going to draw Day of Judgment (Hunt the Weak would also work IF you draw a Silklash Spider, Charging Griffin, or Deadly Recluse the turn before that; if those two things both happen, you're in good shape anyway without any setup necessary). If you draw Day of Judgment, you REALLY don't want to play your Hydra beforehand. So the correct thing is to play as if you're going to draw a Day of Judgment next turn and not play any creatures.

Edit: I misread your life total at the end here and changed the last paragraph to reflect that.

awesome! (I later won the scenario and even had Day of Judgement in hand on the ready!)

one point I didnt get here, the Vampire is 2/3, War Priest 2/2, so if I had attacked, how would I do 2 more damage every turn, the vampire just blocks once and priest is dead, at least thats how i figured it

I think I agree with holding back the War Priest, because of a fear of Mark the Vampire. However, you WOULD probably be doing 2 more damage to him every turn if you played it, because it is unlikely that he'd keep the Vampire Nighthawk back to block.