I have been yearning to come back to Cebu this 2019 and it became a reality with my trip last weekend. I had been fond of visiting the city every year during the Regionals and for other Magic: the Gathering-related activities. Those trips were more of playing the game than seeing the world per se. This time, I have thought to be more of a tourist visiting the city.
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I have mentioned before to create a Black Red or Rakdos deck build once the complete Ravnica Allegiance Spoiler is up. It was released Friday last week but unfortunately I was on travel that time until the weekend Continue reading
It is going to be a fun-filled weekend for the Magic: the Gathering communities around the globe as it will be the Prerelease of the Ravnica Allegiance set. For the MTG Iloilo community, we are proud to share that we will be having three prerelease events at the three local game stores in the city. The store event schedules are the following:
Nth Dimension: Comics and Games – Saturday, January 19, 8:00am.
Pro Reis Place – Saturday, January 19, 1:00pm.
Critical Hit: Comics and Games – Sunday, January 20, 1:00pm.
Each store has its own registration fee amount and prize structure. Guild packs may be chosen beforehand or can be done first come, first serve. You can find the details at their respective Facebook pages. Rei has posted the reserve list on the MTG Iloilo groups which was based on the rankings of the recent Standard Showdown tournament.
I would suggest for the beginners to be part of this event as this will surely introduce to you the ambiance of the tournament as well as enjoy and improve your skills on Sealed deck building.
See y’all at the tournaments.
Red players are now celebrating, including me, on the revealing last night of the latest Red burn spell named Skewer the Critics. The card is the latest addition to the direct damage spells in Standard and today we will Continue reading
In today’s post, we start with my attempt to create a deck based on the card from the Ravnica Allegiance named Awaken the Erstwhile. This is a five-mana Sorcery that discards players’ hands and turns them into 2/2 Black Zombies. This card is sort of very interesting in terms of flavor and would take some Magical Christmasland scenarios to pull it off. Here below is its card image:
Upon checking on the Reddit discussions, there were a lot of suggestions posted. Deck archetype such as a discarder deck with Raiders’ Wake or ramping mana into Awaken plus Crafty Cutpurse and even the one with a Divine Visitation. One strategy that I have seen to be viable is the Experimental Frenzy/Treasure Map route wherein you still have your top cards on the deck as your pseudo-hand while building your unusable actual hand into a huge Awakening later on. I just have to find the right cards to include to be able to consistently pull off the main card strategy. The colors I have considered are Grixis or Black Blue and Red and here below is the initial decklist.
Grixis Awakening version 1.0
Creatures
4 Riverwise Augur
Instants and Sorceries
3 Anticipate
4 Awaken the Erstwhile
3 Cast Down
3 Golden Demise
2 Ritual of Soot
3 Thought Erasure
Artifacts and Enchantments
4 Treasure Map
4 Experimental Frenzy
4 Raiders’ Wake
2 Search for Azcanta
Total non-land: 36, Lands: 24
Let us discuss the card choices.
Awaken the Erstwhile, Treasure Map, Experimental Frenzy, Raiders’ Wake – These are the main combo components which the deck revolves around. The map fixes your draws while also ramping you to an early casting of Awaken the Erstwhile. Experimental Frenzy is your post-awakening card advantage while Raiders’ Wake is basically the one that will deal most of the damage on opponents. The only issue here is the opponent might be playing all of the top-decked cards after the hand was discarded.
Cast Down, Golden Demise, Ritual of Soot, Thought Erasure – These are the board and hand control. The demise works well on one-side removal once it ascended which can easily be achieved with the Zombies created from the Awakening and the Treasure Tokens.
Riverwise Augur, Anticipate, Search for Azcanta – This filters the draws to pull off the turn 4 Raiders’ Wake into turn 5 Awaken the Erstwhile as much as possible. Riverwise Augur’s Brainstorm ability gets the cards needed and you won’t discard back into the top of the deck, that which you can arrange to use later on or with the Experimental Frenzy in play.
Overall, the deck looks clunky with the four and five mana costs and chaining spells with the frenzy is near to impossible. Nevertheless, the important thing is to pull off the main cards combo while being consistent as a regular midrange deck.
This is again open for comments and suggestions so you just please post them in the comment box below. I’d like to hear your line of play on this card.
That is a wrap. Until the next blog post.
The current spoiler season is on its full swing and soon we will be completing the whole Ravnica Allegiance set. We still continue on the card discussions and rating its potential for Standard play. Continue reading