A Long Read With Two Games

I am the Naroom player on gEngine, eh? Oh, I don't mind. It just seems strange. I have decks for all twelve basic regions, not counting Universal. The first region I "mastered" was Cald. Would you believe that? I remember trying to learn Weave so much and failing that the next set was almost out when I found my own style of Weave—which did win me some games at that time. Nar I recall having trouble with until I finally traded for just enough arctic cards to get my creatures to actually freeze half of the time. Sands of d'Resh, um, that's a region not many see me play. I haven't built many decks for that region.... But, I do have one Sands of d'Resh deck and one mixed deck for d'Resh (Kybar's and Core, though mostly Kybar's).

Now, I do admit that I've been playing a lot of Naroom lately. I had the privilege and opportunity to design the Naroom cards for Twilight War. I know I am one of those card designers that was probably giving Novelty a headache. Very soft war theme. Card ideas that needed help. And, so forth. As such, I feel obligated to build some test decks and test out what I did once they are available on gEngine. That means I will be building anti-Underneath and anti-Core decks. In the process, I will also be building a Flood of Energy deck and Forest Hyren-Flying Hinko deck. So, I chose to play my Naroom decks a bit to establish a base on which to compare the new decks against. I have an anti-Core, Flood of Energy, and Flying Hinko-Forest Hyren deck. You can search this blog to see how the tests of those decks has gone so far.

Before I get into a late report on some games I played, I thought I would let others know that someone with the handle of "rizenagain," if I spelled that right, may be showing up on gEngine. I told my youngest brother that I played Magi-Nation online and gave him a link to the CCG Workshop. He said he registered, but I don't know whether he just signed into the forums or downloaded the gatlingEngine. He lives in Spokane, Washington, a few states away from myself.

On June 12, I played a partial game with Juno. I got dropped from the game and couldn't log back in. I posted my problem on the forums. What I didn't do was report on the game. Juno was playing a new deck that they had built. They had asked that I not use a broken deck. While I don't consider many of my decks as broken, I sort of figured that I would stay away from Arderial and Underneath. In the end, I actually chose my Arderial-Orothe "Storm Of Fishes" deck. It uses some of the strengths of such a mixed deck while being weak against decks with lots of creatures. We had gone several turns with just our first two magi. I was just running into my Cataclysms for card draw with Aula Mindseeker. So, yes, Aula was standing her ground. Assisting her was an Orathan Flyer. I wonder how the game would've turned out. Up to that point, the decks had seemed fairly evenly matched. I just wish I could find my note(s) so I could tell what magi and type of deck Juno had played. So, this game story is left lacking.... I'll try and make it up to you with this next one.

This past Sunday, I played another game. This time I played Frosty Ninja. There is at least one region I often forget that I have a deck for it. So, I chose Sands of d'Resh to go against their Naroom-Arderial deck.

Nahara started off the game for me. I played the two starters I pulled and ended the first turn. This gave me three cards in the discard pile and a Szhar in play. Delia tossed down a vellup swarm like I could hardly believe. Nahara put in a good fight, but all those vellups would be the doom of him. Nahara didn't last long, but he had done his job. There was a discard pile for me to work with and a couple extra cards in my hand. With a Sand Hyren and Darbok in my hand, Nashiq was looking good. Fetching her starting cards allowed her to use an Uban, and the Sand Hyren made the Darbok real cheap. This put into play one of my favorite burn combos for d'Resh. The Uban burned, a Darbok bounced that, and the other Darbok bounced the first Darbok. This would allow me to repeatedly do a cheap burn by simply swapping which Darbok got bounced back to the hand. The burn didn't get Delia on the first pass, but it certainly started turning up some serious heat. Once the burn had a second turns to get Delia solidly on the defense, it could be combined with attacks to finish off the Arderial magi. Now, Delia had been bouncing the Elder Vellups up to this point so they had searched well for the Arderial creatures Eidon would use. So, after Delia folded to the desert magi's burn, Eidon would toss down the Staff of Keepers. With Arderial creatures now gaining one extra energy and not costing him any extra, Eidon tossed down three Flying Hinkos, three Flutter Yups, and one Forest Hyren. With his own effect gaining him some energy, this alone was fairly impressive. Forest Hyren would beef up one of the Flutter Yups. It was quickly one very large Flutter Yup. For just having come into play, it was perhaps the biggest Flutter Yup I've seen given the circumstances. With the three Flying Hinko, Eidon found himself with enough energy to use Sorreah's Dream. This was used on the Forest Hyren. This should've made the hyren big enough to survive several turns to use its own power. With the Flying Hinkos triggering again, he ended the turn with the three energy they netted him. I had to look at my discard pile first. I used Nashiq's power to shuffle a copy of Crushing Sands into the deck. Now, I had to do something about the two monster creatures. I used Deceptive Dreams on the Flutter Yup. I actually chose to play the yup back out. Now that it was small, I wanted to "kill" it. I didn't think Deceptive Dreams would trigger either Eidon's effect or the Staff of Keepers since I think that although Frosty Ninja would control it, I think the spell sort of makes it so I am playing it out for them instead. Playing Crushing Sands for one energy is certainly a bargain in itself. This took the edge off the other yups and destroyed both a Flying Hinko directly and the replayed yup indirectly. Sand Hyren would attack to take out another Flying Hinko while a partially spent Darbok would attack to eliminate a Flutter Yup. Playing out another Darbok and an Uban would allow me to trigger a whole bunch of burn. This would eliminate the surviving Flying Hinko and Flutter Yup. Dessicate would destroy the Forest Hyren as a part of the burn, so Nashiq destroyed it all. This, however, only left Nashiq would six energy in creatures. Eidon energizes for six. So, when Eidon didn't play out any more creatures on the next turn, Nashiq would play out her Warrior Olum. Now she had enough energy in creatures to get Eidon. After my next turn, Niffer would flip over as the final magi in this Naroom-Arderial powerhouse. This time I saw a Weebo-Forest Hyren combo. It was soon very nasty again. Two large Naroom creatures that combine for repeated massive energy gains. So, how did I handle this small scale repeat of the mad energy combos I had been introduced to here? I used Nashiq's power to put Deceptive Dreams into the deck. Then, I used two copies from the hand to really mess things up. I could've played the Weebo back out with a Wasperine to leave things really desperate. However, I wanted to stretch just a little more than that. So, I chose both the K'teeb. How long did they last? Well, I burned one with creature powers and the other with Dessicate. This basically defeated Niffer in one turn. I told Frosty Ninja that they had played quite an impressive combo there with Eidon. It was quite amazing. The fact that I burned it all in one turn doesn't make it any less impressive.

There is a reason I forget that I have this deck. I rarely play it. Long ago now, as in shortly after d'Resh was released in Voice of the Storms, this deck was created in as a result of a colaboration with one of the top ten Magi-Nation players in Utah. And, no, I am not referring to myself. He still lives there. I don't. But when I did, I just made the mistake of telling my friend that Nashiq has so much potential but wouldn't it be great if I could just find a magi that started with Forgotten Tales. He found Nahara and told me about it. We both built our own versions of the deck. We tweaked our two decks a little, but found that we couldn't pick up any games in the local card shop unless we stated specifically that we were playing something else. I actually took my version apart but kept the decklist. I built from the basic mechanic a Kybar's-Core-d'Resh mixed deck. And while I told Frosty Ninja that I loved the d'Resh-Kybars mix, I don't think I mentioned that I used Nahara and Nashiq just like they had witnessed. The key was Kybar's creatures with the right mix of powers to go into the discard pile.... Whether to use the power with Nahara or to make cheap to play despite regional penalties with Nashiq.