Moving Into The Tropics

Waiting for parts from work, I logged on once again to check out the online Magi-Nation scene. There was four other people online. Considering the time of day, I was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps a number of them were in quite different time zones than myself, where it was approaching lunch time. Birdie21 was among them and offered to play a tournament game. I had to search a bit for a pen and paper first. I take notes as much as I can to write these blogs. It helps me remember. Now if I could just remember what I did with three note pads that used to be by the computer yesterday.

Anyways, birdie21 went first with Harresh. I was having flashbacks to my game the other day. When the only creature played was Xala, I was seriously debating not playing any creatures for a while and just using warp driven. Oh, yeah. I decided that if I had created a tropical deck as well, I might as well use it. Unlike my crystal creature deck, my tropical deck has the minimum of one quarter of the deck in tropical creatures, or 10 of my 40 cards. Arawan would start off with a Fog Hyren in the hand, so I used warp driven to get a second copy. I dream warped them both down. I was expecting Unmake and an attacking illusion, so I wanted to minimize my energy losses at first. So, my first turn was all about massive card draw. It was my best shot of matching Harresh in setting things up. The next turn went almost as anticipated. An Olum Digger would bring back further images of my matchup versus olums before. With the digger in play, I decided that ending my next turn with no energy on Arawan would be best. I would use warp driven for my last Fog Hyren and dreamwarp it up. Combined with a Tropical Jumbor and Tropical Plith, Arawan was left without energy. The idea was to make it so that for maximum damage that the digger would have to attack my creature directly. Ookami's Drums added an energy back to the Fog Hyren and beat down the Xala. I just forgot to add two energy to Tropical Jumbor at the end of my turn (just like I forgot when posting on the CCG Workshops forums that I had the jumbor too). If I had remembered, it might have changed things a little. Anyways, Arawan was defeated on the next turn by Harresh. The only surviving creature was the Xala by two energy, and it was the Xala that had attack the jumbor. Chill of Night had taken out the Fog Hyren, so that should give an idea of the cards I had been desperately drawing. When Ookami flipped over, I went nuts. First I dreamwarped down a Vine Hyren and then played out six more creatures, including three copies of Lahalou. I dreamwarped up and down all of them except the Tropical Vinoc, which doesn't dreamwarp. This made for a rather large hyren. As a side note, my deck almost qualifies as a hyren deck too, but I didn't want to drop any other cards to do it. The icing on the cake was Staff of Vines. Ookami's Drums would hit the Xala again and restore the Hardshell Weebo, after the weebo used the power from the Staff of Vines. Oh, it was nice that dreamwarp applies until the end of turn. After that, the weebo would've had a starting energy of one. With Ookami's effect, it was simply insane amounts of energy. Harresh would attack with the Xala, play a Szhar, and use Relic Stalkers on both my relics. So, it was back to Ookami, who continued to grow his creatures and attacked to wipe out Harresh. He did try to better my hand with the Tropical Vinoc and sacrificing an Equilibrate from my hand to use Stalk. At this point, Equilibrate was probably going to hurt me far more than be helpful at any point. Drajan flipped over next. He used Warrior's Boots to attack with a Warrior Olum. This wiped out my Hardshell Weebo. Than Uban took out what was left of the Tropical Vinoc and Chill of Night got one of the Lahalou. Drajan wouldn't last long. Ookami attacked, wiped out Drajan, and played out another Vine Hyren and a replacement Hardshell Weebo. Combined with my second copy of Staff of Vines, that was a massive swarm once again, and I made the Hardshell Weebo very big at about twelve energy. Dey was next. Another Warrior's Boots, but with Olum Digger this time, setup a nice move to remove energy from my magi and get the N'kala into crushing range. Then, the Olum swarm began. It was too little, too late. Still, Dey did some damage with Crushing Sands before Ookami took some very big little creatures and overwhelmed Dey in a single turn of attacks. However, if birdie21 had gotten past Ookami, my last magi would've been in a world of hurt. I ended the game with Tropical Hyren as the only creature in my hand.