Weekend Update

This weekend was pretty tight. Went to FNM Friday and 4-0ed with Chapin's 5-color control. Deck was pretty tight. I just played the original maindeck with a Counsel of the Soratami over Courier's Capsule, though I think Courier's Capsule might be right now. The sideboard I ended up liking was:

2 Glen Elendra Archmage
3 Negate
2 Oblivion Ring
2 Firespout
2 Cloudthresher
1 Broodmate Dragon
3 Condemn

The Oblivion Rings were pretty nice against B/W tokens since they handle Bitterblossoms and Planeswalkers. Everything else is fairly standard.

Saturday I went to another random Standard tournament and won 3 more matches. Came home, played some poker, then logged onto AIM. Got an IM from a screenname I didn't know. Turned out it was Matt Hansen, a very good Magic player who I met at Nationals. I had heard that he quit Magic for poker. We got to talking and realized we are at about the same place as poker players, so we had some nice chats about hands and more. As feared as Matt was as a Magic player, it's exciting to have him on my side at the poker table.

Had a lazy Sunday, hung out with friends for awhile and found out about a new card game called Epic, which is set to have prereleases February 21 and 22, and release in stores March 1. We downloaded the free starters and played some games. It's deceptively simple, and was developed by Frank Karsten, Darwin Kastle, and Rob Dougherty, among others.

In a nutshell, here's how it works. First off, it's very simple to Magic. There are dudes ("champions"), counterspells/Stifles ("Stop" cards), action card that destroy other cards, and many keywords that have Magic equivalents. There are a couple of main differences: resource system and win condition. Instead of using lands or permanent incremental resources, you get one "action point" per turn, and every card costs either one or zero action points. This creates interesting situations and makes counterwars basically impossible. There are two main win conditions: taking your opponent from 30 to 0 or decking yourself. All the games I played with the starter decks were won on life though.

Another exciting thing about this game is that it has already been announced that there will be $5k tournaments for it, simliar to the Star City $5ks for Magic.

For more information, go to epictcg.com.