Last Minute April Showers

With April almost over, I was thinking that I wouldn't get in any games of Magi-Nation this month. Work has had me traveling far and wide. This just left me weekends, and I think I was logging in at all the wrong times. Fortunately, I tried a couple times this Sunday and was able to play a few games with CapAp.

For the first game, I chose to give my Flying Hinko deck a test run. While I haven't played Magi-Nation in a while, it has been a couple years since I played my only Forest Hyren deck. CapAp went first with Hok. They played out a single Giant Baldar plus a few relics. I would've loved to play a little bigger, but to get around Hok's effect, I played a single Giant Carillion from my hand and stomped the lonely Baldar. Tryn used her power, and that was my first turn. Tryn would keep the pressure on Hok using all the little tricks of Naroom, restoring the Giant Carillion with a Weebo. Tryn played one of the two Forest Hyren in the deck from the hand. Groll the Fallen would face off against Tryn next. Giant Carillion would be healed again, just enough to stomp the Baldar blessed by Groll's power. Nocturne would fetch the other Forest Hyren to try and start up some Forest Hyren energy gains between the two. Needless to say that Groll didn't last long at all. Ullig tossed out another Giant Baldar. Tryn was getting a little tired by the point, but still pushing strong. Another Nocturne retrieved a Giant Carillion which was healed up Naroom style and it stomped away the problem. However, Tryn would ultimately fall to Kybar's Gift. While Ullig was tight on the creatures, Poad would place out two Flying Hinkos, two Flame Rudwots, and a Leaf Hyren. By the time the turn was done, Poad had pretty much toasted the Baldar in play and had some rather healthy Naroom creatures to work with. Ullig didn't stand a chance.

CapAp asked for another game and so we both changed decks. This time I opted to go with my Flood of Energy deck. This time I went first with Chayla. She doesn't start all that strong usually, so I opted to go with just the Eebit. As it was, I would get a Rabbage in my starting hand anyways. I played both out and Bythan's Gifted the Eebit to leave one large Rabbage on the field. Eryss flipped over and pulled a good starting Bograth swarm. Yaki's Guantlets was looking very nice in my hand as soon as I saw Bograth. It would take a few turns, but Chayla got Eryss in the end. The real nice part was that the Bograth deck wasn't getting the Eebits in spells, powers, or effects, so the Eebits bounced nicely to the hand. With one Flood of Energy discarded to the gauntlets, I played my second copy shortly after defeating Eryss. This left me with some good size Eebits and a hefty Rabbage (not the same one I had played at first). On my second turn, I had played Orwin's Ring, so that was helping keep the energy levels high for Chayla. When Phlouk appeared and tossed down two Swamp Hyren, I was thinking that the Bograth deck had hit some serious pay dirt and things were going to get ugly for me. However, all Chayla had to do was attack some with her Eebits and both nasties went away quite nicely. My mistake was attacking a creature first before attacking the magi with my Stagadan (the gauntlets were still in play). As it was, this is when CapAp declared “gg,” and asked if we could play another game.

With the promise that I would be facing a better deck, and having just played against Bograth, I chose to play my Grahnna-Pyder deck. When I went first and flipped over Baa, CapAp told me that they had almost chosen a Naroom deck for this game. It would have been a humorous switch of roles from our previous game, and we both got a chuckle from this. Baa isn't really meant to last, just draw lots of cards. And, that is what Baa did, playing out all her energy for four Bograth creatures. I used Support, discarded the Trulb to its power and disposed of that one energy on Baa for effect once again. Slarnath drew a card. With a good roll on the Pool of Great Wisdom, Baa had an awesome opening turn. Harresh would toss down quite good and began tearing into Baa with some d'Resh style burning sands. Baa only lasted a couple turns, which was fine with me. Grahnna didn't have any Pyder's to work with, but all that card draw had netted a Swamp Hyren. Grahnna tossed down massively. With a Ooze Arboll, and another fetched with a Trulb, the d'Resh deck found its illusionary aide unable to stop all my powers in play. Between Grahnna's effect and one of the Ooze Arboll, Grahnna was doing very well. CapAp did play things well to get rid of both my annoying Treepsh using Unmake. While this would open my Bograth deck back up to d'Resh burn tactics, it didn't save Harresh. Ahron would Dessicate the Swamp Hyren, but Sand Strands had been used to come up with the energy and keep a good number of creatures in play to block me. However, I had Spirit Drain in hand. Eliminating the energy on Ahron meant I didn't have to take the hit on the illusion. When I attacked and defeated all the other creatures, Ahron went away and it was Dey's turn. Having two Jiles in play at this point was crucial. Although, I had no means to protect them. Fortunately, it seems Dey wouldn't be able to get them, or at least not both so CapAp didn't bother with them. Chill of Night got my N'kala, a piece of my energy gains that was making Grahnna a formidable foe. Still, without all the pieces of the Olum swarm combo, Dey was left unable to match the Bograth force. CapAp stated it was a bit embarrassing to lose three games in a row like that. Still, it was fun to play again, and I hope CapAp had fun too, even if they did lose the games.