Fresh Swamp Stench

Today, I played a game with a new player. Unfortunately, it was not finished, nor did I write down their name before I was called off to dinner (which is why it was not finished). The game was saved, so hopefully we might have a chance to finish the game. From what I saw of their deck and gameplay, they weren't kidding about being a fresh player to Magi-Nation. Apparently they picked up a box locally for cheap and have since been playing online since they have had trouble picking up games otherwise.

My opening mistake was playing my Weave deck. Then, not knowing how good they might really be, I really didn't know that I should've skipped pulling Ahdar's starting Uwamar. The problem with Uwamar is that it gains energy when I play creatures, but to get the energy off the Uwamar I must keep a number of other creatures in play. This allows me to gradually kill off my own creature so that a less skilled player isn't facing a perpetual barrier in the form of a creature that cannot attack. What gets challenging is that to play another creature to remove energy from the Uwamar then triggers the Uwamar's effect and adds some more energy I must try to remove. Reweave on a couple Sagaweaves really helped Ahdar shrink his impressive creature. Wiep went down to Ahdar and Olabra took out Ahdar. By not weaving in attacks with Kesia, the game ended with Kesia taking a severe hit from Olabra, which is good. I was trying to keep the power level on my end way down as I sort of estimated the skill of the newbie. At the point to the game was saved, Kesia was not doing too well and my opponent was beginning to take more initiative and demonstrating a more aggressive style. This was good and all desirable in my book. It was a complete side bonus that my hand had been almost completely messed up in my efforts as well. This makes the game a little more fun since I wouldn't have to stretch as far any more to play not so well. In other words, I played a lot of my good cards poorly and they finally had attained a good position.