R/g Beats whaaaa?

This week at the shop I got some serious ass kicking done. I don’t really know how, or why considering the card pool, but I’ll tell you guys what I did anyway. We were drafting shadowmoor,shadowmoor, eventide (SSM from here on out). First pack I took a first pick Flame javelin. For most people out there they would think that I’m now set in red, but in all actuality Flame javelin is a first pick COLORLESS removal spell. Even though it costs a potential of six, if you can get a scuttlemut or something to produce a red mana you can play it for 5, or even less. Second pick, pack one: puncture bolt-NOW I’m set in red. I don’t normally draft red in any set because I don’t really like they way the color plays, but today things were looking up. Passing a power of fire was tough though, but I really do like the spell removal versus having to stick something on my guy with potential for him to get owned and die and me lose my removal. Scuzzback Marauders, Cultbrand Cinder, and runes of the deus were a few of my next picks. I got quite a few green creatures, and a couple enchantment and artifact removal spells. Las pack, first pick—I got a creekwood leige. What a great pick. Second pick Flame jab. I’m in the colors so I decide to pick up a tilling treefolk while I’m at it. Afterwards I put together my deck, and decide I have a high curve so I’ll cut an extra card to make room for another land so as to not miss land drops, plus it will help use retrace on flame jab. When I get to actually looking at my deck I realize I have 3 removal spells, and NO combat tricks. I began to think to myself, well this is looking bad. First round I play against a mono white deck, with lots of little guys. The first 3 creatures he played got flame jabbed because I kept a hand with jab and about 4 land, and kept on drawing land. Spectral procession had potential to be a threat, but again I just flame jabbed and puncture bolted his fliers. I played out some of my bigger dudes, and he kept drawing land and chump blockers but nothing really to seal the game. Game count 1-0 me. Game two went a little bit different, he had turn 3 procession, and I had NO removal whatsoever this time around. Enchanting one of his fliers up with armored ascensions and crushed me. Game 3 came down to the fact that my guys were bigger than his, and he ended up losing. I got a lucky break game 1 so this was good. Match count: 2-0 me. Moving on to round 2! This time playing against a long time friend of mine, so I didn’t really care who won this, though I would like the extra packs for winning! He was playing some 3 color contraption of red, gree, and white. I didn’t think much at first, but he had LOTS of removal, and some nifty tricks. Though all of his creatures were small, and mine were huge. No one expected this spell to come out of my deck, but it did-Call of the fire heard. He ended up having to sack 1 creature, and lost 3 lands; and for a 3 color deck that is a big ouch. He ended up scooping two turns later because he couldn’t play spells. Game count: 1-0 me. Game two came down to a ground war, and Creekwood leige making me 3/3 guys every turn just eventually out massed him. Victory! I would walk away the winner of the draft due to a concession in the final round. Great night for me! See you guys next week!

That time of year

The holidays mean fun and break time for most people. But not for me. Working retail all it means is more hours at work and trying to finish exams so that is one thing less on my plate. But this year things are different. The traffic in retail stores nationwide is down, and people are just not spending the money they normally do. The media is blowing things out of proportion as they are meant to do, but it is affecting more people than anticipated. Gas prices are on the move again, but this time in a positive direction! Positive for us, at least. With all that money in people’s pockets I wonder why no one is spending? I gather that people still don’t have the money they did last year, but they have enough to do their christmas shopping. They just want their dollar to go that extra mile this year so they don’t have to break the bank. People are waiting for a good deal, but buyers are out there and waiting. So stores, put up those sale signs!

The break time

I decided I was going to break from magic for a while. And during that week I actually did some homework, completed a class ( we turned in our projects and there is no exam) and began work for my other class finals. I also played a LOT of world of warcraft. But other than that this Friday I couldn’t help but go back to magic even if just for the night. I decided at about 5 pm that I was going to play that night, and that was it. I took whatever deck I had lying around and went. With hopes of crushing my opponents, round 1 was looking good. I dominated him, and moved on in the winner’s bracket to round 2. Followed by a loss,win,win,loss. According to the tie breakers I had no chance of making top 8 so I went home. Turns out someone lost, and someone else dropped allowing me to sneak in. Under the circumstances a friend called me and they allowed me to give the guy the win in order for some extra prize! Go me!

Work

Working is great, because everyone needs money right? I do enjoy the people I work with as well. But MAN does it make me dislike the holiday season. All that the holidays mean to me is that I’m going to get more hours, but not during any reasonable times. I’ll be working 4 ams, 7 ams on the weekends, and when the store starts to open at 7 am and close at 11 pm; I’ll be in for some trouble. Though it only lasts a month and a half, during that time it can feel like years have gone by. I just lose all sense of time, sometimes I don’t even know what day of the week it is. Though at least for half of that I don’t have school stacked on top of me, so that can relieve some of it. Anyone else out there crazy enough to decide to work retail….?

Back in action

Sorry guys, for the last week I’ve been out of commission. School projects and work took over my life for the Thanksgiving break. Also with the fam coming in town I was really stretched on how to spend my time. Working until 1 am the night before Thanksgiving, and having to be back there at 4 30 am the next morning was a bit intense! I ended up working 13 hours on Black Friday, and had to go back for 8 hours on Saturday right after that. Needless to say, I was a bit exhausted. Sorry if I’ve been a bit inactive on twitter, blogs, and facebook.

Turning 21

This week was my 21st birthday! Woohoo! Though I didn’t really celebrate on the day of ( due to a field trip the very next day at 8 am for my geology class!) Friday was pretty fun! I went out with some friends and had a few brewskies. Nothing insane; just enjoyed being able to buy a beer somewhere. The next night I went to an old friend’s birthday out in Denton, and that was a lot of fun as well. Also the new WoW expansion came out on my birthday ! I’m playing that all this week, while trying to keep up with final projects for my classes! Wish me luck ~!

The team draft..

This week instead of actually going to pay for drafts we used our previous weeks winnings to do a team draft at the house. These are practice events, but we all pool into a prize to keep things competitive. This way people are sure to be on top of their game and playing like they should, instead of trying stupid things. Normally this provides and edge for us at the tournaments we do go to. All except for me. I just have this mental block about drafting shards; I could draft shadowmoor just fine, but for some reason shards just won’t let me win. I’ve had flameblast dragon in 3 different drafts, and he hasn’t even won me a game. UGH. Maybe it’s just a stream of bad luck, who knows.

State Championship

This week my Magic story is about our testing for states. This tournament wasn’t around last year due to budget cuts for Wizards, but somehow they managed to bring it back this year. And the prize was better than ever! If you become your state’s champion, for the next YEAR you are entered into every tournament you go to sponsored by Wizards for FREE!! For most of the tournaments costing from 25-40$ a pop, and happening sometimes twice a month, that could mean some huge savings! So we began our testing on Wednesday. We bult every deck we expected to be there and played them against each other non stop, and wrote down the results. After a lot of playing, a ton of pizza and sodas, and quite a bit of heated debate; everyone figured out what they were playing. Then I got a call from work saying that we had a quarterly meeting on Saturday morning, and now I wasn’t going to be able to attend. They just came back last night, so I haven’t had a chance to see how they did yet, but since I didn’t get any phone calls, I’m assuming not well.

Election day in the real world

Election day for me was just that; a day. I voted early as I stated in a previous post for John Mccain. So I could have Tuesday to do things that I needed to get done. i went to my art class where we had the entire time to catch up on homwork or do extra credit assignments. I finished up some homework and chatted with some friends for a while. After that I went home for my break in between classes. My next class was another optional period so that everyone could get their voting done. I spent the rest of the day at a friends house playing games and not paying attention to the election. Right before we went to see Pineapple Express at the dollar theatre we found out that Obama had become our president. Nothing too special here, except my candidate lost, oh well.

Voting time!

I’m probably going to catch a lot of flak for this. But I voted for Mccain, and I don’t really know why. If I had to guess it would be because my family are a bunch of republicans and they must have subtly influenced me into voting that way. I really haven’t followed the election as well as I should, I’ve been busy doing other things. This has potential to be one of the biggest elections of all time, considering what is on the line with the war in Iraq, and our nation’s economy on the line. I think that either way we’re going to suffer as a nation for a while, so I figured might as well keep things at least a little consistant while we are suffering. I went to early voting even, because my parents were calling me non stop to make sure I cast my vote. All in all I’m a little opinionated about politics, but I have too much in common with both sides; and I generally don’t like to talk politics. This was my first election to vote in as well, so we will see how it turns out!

Some of the blogs I read…

http://blog.wired.com/games/

This blog generally provides info for me on whether or not I’m going to purchase a game. Sometimes the reviews can be a bit harsh, but most of the time they hit it spot on.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Article.aspx?x=magic/magiconline/iiilaunchblog

This is a blog on one of my favorite things to do. I love playing the table top game magic, and I get a lot of reading done on different things here and there.

http://geology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=geology&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.realclimate.org%2F

This blog I don’t check much. Most of the time after I finish watching modern marvels or something. It is nice for finding out information about climate control, seeding hurricanes and other fun stuff we do to try and control weather.

http://gizmodo.com/

Who does NOT go here? This place is great for 2 reasons. Gadgets and gizmos are cool, and I work at Best Buy, so this doubles as helping me with my job!

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

This blog is hilarious. And I read it solely for laughs. Sometimes I find some interesting synergies about myself I didn’t know about!