For anyone who has never moved cross country; don’t! No matter how hard you may think it is to do this, it’s harder, much harder. I mean if it’s just you, your guitar and the Nissa Planeswalker deck, sure jump on a plane and go. But when it’s you, the wife, kid, dog, two cars, house full of furniture, and 20,000+ Magic cards it takes some extensive planning to make a 3500 mile move. You can look forward to my “Building a huge wooden crate to ship your Magic Cards in” article coming soon!

But enough about me, what is going on in the Magic world? Magic 2011 is heading our way in the next couple of weeks. Prerelease events are coming up this weekend, and it looks as if I’ll be playing in a prerelease instead of judging for this go round. With Magic 2011 we have some new rules. Let’s talk about those for a bit.

How many of you know what the “Infraction Procedure Guide” is? Let’s see a show of hands. That’s what I thought! The Infraction Procedure Guide, or IPG for short, is the document Magic judges use to determine the various offenses you can commit during a tournament and what to do about those offenses when they occur. Previously the IPG was split into three Rules Enforcement Levels: Regular, Competitive and Professional. For each offense we had a different penalty for each offense at each enforcement level.

It sounds complicated just trying to explain it, imagine trying to learn all those offenses and penalties! With the latest rules update, the IPG attempts to simplify all those offenses and penalties by combining all penalties at the Competitive and Professional RELs, making them the same, and creating a completely new document to handle everything at the Regular REL, appropriately named the Regular REL Guide to Fixing Common Errors (FCE). Check it out, read it, learn it, know it: http://www.wizards.com/dci/downloads/MTG_FCE_1Jul10_EN.pdf

The document is short and sweet, only 2 pages that everyone should take a glance at. The FCE doesn’t attempt to go into any great detail on what is required and expected of players at these smaller events, but merely gives simple fixes to the problems that occur. The majority of Regular REL events, like FNM, don’t even have a judge. They generally have some poor shopkeeper trying his best to keep up with the matches while simultaneously selling a play set of Wall of Omens and answering the phone. This document is intended to make it all a little more bearable for that poor shopkeeper. Be sure to mention the new Guide to Fixing Common Errors to your local shopkeeper, as he may have been so busy he missed it!

Wow, I go away for a month and everything changes! What does this mean for you? Besides now being much easier to pass that pesky judge test, it means FNM should now be a lot more fun. It also means your poor shopkeeper can read a 2 page guide rather than that monster IPG.

This weekend, be sure to attend your local or regional prerelease! From the spoilers I’ve seen so far M11 looks like it’s going to be crazy good! Until next week (Really next week this time) this is Dale Lovelace telling you there’s more than one way to play!

Notes:
This is sarcasm, I know it doesn’t come across well through the printed word, but trust me; this should be read with as much sarcasm as one could possibly convey.

We’ve heard a lot about altered Magic cards lately. I’m not here today to tell you when you can and can’t use them; I’m going to tell you how to alter your own cards. Seriously, you can do it! I altered my first card around 6 months ago, and was extremely surprised at how easy it really is. I realize you most likely don’t have any art supplies, so I’m going to show you how to alter cards for less than $10 in supplies. That’s right, I said ten dollars.

The first thing you need to do is make a trek to your local Michaels (or other craft) store. You can get almost everything you need either there, or lying around your house. Pick up a pack of paintbrushes, Michaels has a great pack for around $3.50 that has everything you’ll need, the Craft Smart Golden Taklon 4 Pc. Variety Set CS-204. This set contains a number 4 shader, a number 3 round, and a 3/0 liner. It also has a number 8 shader, that’s the widest brush in the set, just put that aside, as you won’t need that one for this project.

If your local Michaels doesn’t have that set in stock, no worries, you can just pick up individual brushes, or another set that is similar. Mostly you need a shader somewhere between a number 2 and number 4, and a liner that is very tiny, a 3/0, 5/0 or even the super tiny 10/0 will work. Don’t worry if you don’t know what a liner and shader are, the brushes are labeled!

Next you need some paint. Michaels has 2 ounce bottles of Craft Smart Acrylic paints for $.50 per bottle. You will want to get all the primary colors, Bright Red, Bright Yellow, and Bright Blue, plus Black, White, Brown and Green. Michaels has plenty of other paints in both tubes and bottles. I’ve found that for painting on cardboard the difference in the other paints in bottles are negligible, and the paints in tubes are far too thick for working on a canvas this small.

That is all you need from Michaels and we’re still well under our $10 budget, so grab a candy bar while you’re there :)

The other things you will need you most likely have lying around. You’ll need some newspaper, paper towels, two short plastic cups that you don’t mind trashing, dish or hand soap, toothpicks and scotch tape, and most importantly a Putrid Leech that you’re not real attached to.

First, fold a sheet of newspaper in half, roll up some scotch tape and put it all around the edges on the back of the Putrid Leech, and stick the card in the center of the newspaper. Taping the card not only holds it still while you’re painting, it also keeps the card up off the paper so any paint that should go over the edge won’t end up on the back of the card. Take another sheet of newspaper and fold it up into somewhere around a 8″ square, this is for mixing paints on, so it should be several layers of newspaper thick. Cardboard from a pizza box also works really well for this.

Fill one of your plastic cups with clean clear water. You will be mixing your paints with a lot of water. To avoid adding thickness to the card you will generally be mixing in 50% or more water into your paints.

-The other plastic cup you need to fill with soapy water. Soap water is the best way to clean acrylic paint from your brushes. Before you take a break or change colors wipe excess paint from the bristles of your brush with a paper towel, then swish the brush thoroughly in the soapy water, then wipe with the paper towel again. Before you stop painting with a brush for any period of time do this several times to get all the paint out. Your brush will love you for this! If you ever let paint dry in the brush, and especially if the paint gets up into the ferule, your brush will be forever useless.

When you squeeze paint out of the bottles just give it a little squeeze so the paint will come out one drop at a time. To mix water in the paint I will dip my finger into the cup of clean water, then hold my finger over the drops of paint and allow the water to mix in one drop at a time. Keep this in mind during this primer when I talk about drops of paint and drops of water.

You will start off with a base coat around the card. We want a very thin coat of paint around the entire border. We’ll really water the paint down for this coat; if you make it too thick it will really make the thickness of the card change and make the job look bad. You want to use 2 drops of black paint and mix it with 4 drops of water. You’ll be using your wide paint brush to paint the border, so stir the mixture up really well with that brush. You want to get a very thin layer of paint all the way around the border, staying outside the borders of the text box and the title box, but you want to paint just inside the borders of the art box, if you don’t go a little past the borders on the art box you’ll be able to tell when the card is finished. Don’t worry too much about staying outside the borders on the text and title boxes, you can clean up any places you went over the lines with a toothpick later. Also don’t worry about getting complete coverage right now, you just want to get some paint on the card, the paint may be translucent enough to see through it, but we’ll be applying a second coat that will cover.

You want to let that coat get good and dry. If you try to paint over almost dry paint it will “pull” and leave big holes in the coat of paint. It is best when covering large areas like this to let the paint dry very well before painting over it. I like to do a play set at a time so I can leave cards drying while I start on the next card.

Once the card is dry we want to mix up some more black, but more water for the second coat. Do one drop of black paint with 4 drops of water, mix it up well with your wide paintbrush and apply it to the border. We follow the same rules as the first coat, stay outside the lines for the text and title boxes and just across the lines for the art box. This extremely watered down coat should not add much thickness to the paint, but should cover any places that were translucent before.

Now we want to add in the weird sky. Put a drop of yellow and a drop of red next to each other on your mixing paper. Dip your wide brush in the red just a bit, and then mix that in with your drop of yellow. You’re not using the whole drop of red, we’re saving that for later. Add a drop of water and mix to get an orange color, this will be more orange than the color of the sky just below the title bar, don’t worry we’ll make it more red later. Paint in the sky up until the points where the vines are under the title bar, imagine those vines come up through the title bar and that will tell you where to stop the orange of the sky. Now add about 5 drops of water to the red you had let over and mix that in with the orange you have left over. The acrylic on your mixing paper will dry fast without adding water to it, so we add this water in to avoid that. Now let your sky dry.

Once the orange sky is dry add 2 more drops of water to your now redder than orange paint mix, it should be good and watery now. Go back over the sky with this redder mixture. The paint should be so watery it just gives a red tint and lets some of that orange come through. This very watery mixture also should not add much thickness to the paint. When you have the sky covered again wash out your wide brush really good as we won’t need it again.

Now I’m going to show you how to “cheat.” The black you are painting with is nowhere near as glossy as the original card. There are mixtures you can add to your paint to make it glossier, but it would still be difficult to exactly match the glossiness of the original. With your small liner, mix 2 drops of black paint with 4 drops of water. Now paint over the original card everywhere there is black that adjoins the border. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just get a little of this really watery mixture up on the original black to blend in with your much flatter border paint. While you are painting black go ahead and paint in the vines at the top and add the “hair” on the big vine on the right.

Now we fill in a lot of detail. Since the detail work doesn’t use a large amount of paint in a certain spot, we just want to put one drop each of white, green, yellow, red and black on our mixing paper, then mix one drop of water in with each, using the small liner brush. You want to extend all of the little juts that define the ground in the original art. You want to not only extend those juts but paint all the way over the original so it will all match. Look at the scan below and I’ll give you the colors I mixed for each little jut. For mixing small portions like this, just drip the tip of your liner paintbrush into each of the colors you want to mix then rub the paintbrush around a dry part of your mixing paper. Dip you paintbrush into clean water to water it down a little more.

Next use just a paintbrush tip of black with several paintbrush tips of green and water it down with a couple drops of water, then rub your brush on dry paper to dry it out. Use this almost dry brush to give the trees on each side of the leech some shape and continue up the vines. Since we painted black over them earlier they have lost all their texture and this really watered down paint on a nearly dry brush will allow you to put some of that texture back.

Now we have the top of the card looking pretty good. On the bottom half I’m going to add some slime, it looks like the leech is bathing in it, so it’s most likely spilling into the bottom of the card. For the text box mix some green and white with water so it will be translucent and paint in some falling slime. For the area outside the text box mix up some green with just a tiny bit of black and some water to draw in more falling slime.

Now break out your toothpick and scrape off any paint you need to clean up inside the title bar and text box, then use a little white paint and sign it. Congratulations, you’re an artist!

Once the card is good and dry it will be fine to play sleeved. The paint is a little delicate and can be scraped off, as you saw when you cleaned up with a toothpick. To make the paint much more resilient you can spray on a clear coat of acrylic, which will make the card almost bullet proof. I use Krylon Crystal Clear Gloss Acrylic Spray, which I pick up at Wal Mart in the home painting section, around $4.00 a can. I spray on two very light coats to prevent adding much thickness to the card.

I’m fairly impatient, so I prefer doing a play set of cards at a time so I can move from card to card rather than waiting for one to dry, so of course I was doing a play set as I wrote this article, here is the playset.

And in case you didn’t want to paint your own but like them, the play set in the picture is now available on Ebay (Shameless Plug!), you can see what I’ve got up at http://shop.ebay.com/dalelovelace/m.html

So I hope you enjoyed this primer on card painting. I selected a card that was fairly simple, but showed some of the tricks I know when altering. If you tried this I would love to see your results! Scan your card or take a picture of it and send it to dalelovelace@gmail.com and I’ll post it here in a future article. Until next week this is Dale Lovelace telling you there is more than none way to play!

That was the battle cry heard all weekend long by the attendees at Pro Tour San Juan, it never gets old. I’m just returning from 10 days on the wonderful island of Puerto Rico, culminating in a great Pro Tour San Juan. Big congrats to Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa! This was the first Pro Tour that I worked the early shift on Sunday, which enabled me to actually watch the finals. It was a real nail-biter going all the way to game 5 between Guillaume Matignon and Paulo.

My Puerto Rico Magical vacation started with snorkeling and attempts at surfing off the west coast of Puerto Rico at Desecheo Island, a mini boat tour of the east coast near Fajardo, then a Hiking trip in the Rainforest of Puerto Rico at El Yunque. Even after all that I managed to find time for a marathon 6 player EDH game at a San Juan beach house rented by a group of crazy judges headed up by L2 judge Simon Cooper. After being picked on by the mean mean judges -and my wife- I was second to be eliminated after I took out newly advanced L2 judge Sam Straus (Congrats Sam!) with a kicked Savage Beating and my general Thraximundar. L2 judge Barry Swan, who is secretly Alexis Denisof in disguise, ended up with the win after eliminating me, Simon Cooper, Dave Nunni and my lovely wife Kimberly.

If you were in attendance at Pro Tour San Juan, you might have noticed a cute little blonde walking around with a camera and a ManaNation press pass, which was my gorgeous wife Kimberly. She took over 3000 pictures throughout the three day weekend, which we’ll be getting up for public viewing in the near future. It takes a while to comb through and upload several thousand pics! Chances are there is a picture of you somewhere, so be patient and we’ll get it up for you to see.

At the end of day 2 of the Pro Tour the judges in attendance were lucky enough to play in a prerelease of the upcoming Archenemy multiplayer variant that will be released on June 18th. I had planned to give out some spoilers of the Scheme cards coming out and how they work today, but the powers that be have asked that the judges who were allowed to play not give out any spoilers, so you’ll just have to wait! Be a judge, see the world, and play Archenemy before anyone else…

Playing was quite interesting. The included decks are not great, there are not really any chase rares, and the M11 preview card in each deck is fairly underwhelming. The Scheme cards, that are necessary to play the game, are another story completely. These oversized cards are pretty darn awesome. The Scheme cards also have some seriously cool names. They’re even cooler when you hear L5 “king of the judges” Sheldon Menery reading each card in his most menacing voice! There are more than a few Scheme cards previewed here on mananation.com so you can take a look for yourself.

Basically you have an Archenemy, who is a team by himself, versus everyone else. The “everyone else” team takes their turn together like they’re playing Two-Headed Giant. The Archenemy gets to turn over a Scheme card every turn, which gives the Archenemy enough advantage to even out the many versus one disadvantage. The Archenemy always goes first, gets to draw on his first turn, and starts at 40 life. Everyone gets a free mulligan if they want, and the “everyone else” team each starts with 20 life.

Besides the judges Archenemy prerelease, the “Champions Challenge” (aka gunslinging) was allowing anyone to play Archenemy against former Pro’s or game designers from Wizards of the Coast, so I was able to talk to a lot of people that played over the weekend. The consensus seems to be that 2 on 1 the Archenemy has a big advantage, 3 on 1 seems to be close to fair, and 4 on 1 the Archenemy is at a big disadvantage. Of course, this was with the stock Archenemy decks, with some better decks who knows how it will play out. And I haven’t even begun to think about how cool Archenemy EDH will be!

All in all Archenemy is pretty cool. I can’t wait to get my hands on all the Scheme cards and try out some Archenemy EDH. Now I’ll have to start carrying around my set of Archenemy along with my set of Planechase cards! Can you say Archenemy-Planechase EDH? Now we’re talking!

This weekend I’ll be loading up everything I own and moving to Seattle. Tampa to Seattle, I just couldn’t move much further in the Continental US! I arrive in Seattle June 10, and I’m judging StarCityGames Seattle 10K weekend June 12… Who needs a break!

Until next time this is Dale Lovelace telling you, play Archenemy, it rules!

Hello again ManaNation.com readers! I’ve just returned from an excruciating trip to Atlanta judging the Georgia National Qualifiers. Yes, I’m currently a Florida resident, but Georgia is a bit light on judges right now, so myself and my good friend Andrew Hall made the trek to Atlanta to help out. It’s a 9 or so hour drive from Tampa to Atlanta, hence the excruciating part, not so much the tournament itself.

This week I would like to talk about some rules interactions that have been coming up a lot at tournaments I have been judging recently.

First of all, Rebound spells. Many players have begun placing the rebound spell card on top of their library to remind them to rebound it next turn. This has been discussed a lot on the Judge list, and is a no no.

While it isn’t necessary to have your exiled cards in a single pile like the graveyard, you must keep your zones distinct and separate. In fact the rules encourage you to keep exiled cards that may be returned in separate piles to help denote which linked ability the card was exiled by, which means it’s ok to put a card exiled by Oblivion Ring or Journey to Nowhere under the enchantment that exiled it, but you still can’t put that exiled rebound card on top of your library. It is ok to put a small reminder on top of your library, such as a die or a counter, however a card doesn’t count as small, and with multiple effects currently in Standard that keeps the top card of your library revealed, leaving a rebound card on top of your library can lead to confusing situations or opens you up to making mistakes with drawing or milling effects! Likely?

Next up is Oblivion Ring and/or Journey to Nowhere. These cards are very similar in that they are Enchantments that are not Auras, but sort of act like them. Most people play Oblivion Ring as if it were an Aura, i.e. I cast Oblivion Ring targeting Gideon Jura, but that’s not exactly how it works. When you cast Oblivion Ring you don’t name any targets, you merely cast it. When it resolves, it has a enters the battlefield trigger that requires you to name a target, which is then exiled. It’s fairly common practice to place the exiled card under the Oblivion Ring, just like Oblivion Ring was an Aura enchanting the permanent, but it’s not.

This distinction can be very important, because it’s the triggered ability that targets the permanent to be exiled, not the Oblivion Ring spell itself. A great example of why this is important is Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Emrakul has protection from colored spells. If Oblivion Ring were an Aura then it would not be possible to target Emrakul because Oblivion Ring is white, and therefore a colored spell. As it is, however, it’s not the spell Oblivion Ring that targets Emrakul, it’s the triggered enter the battlefield ability of Oblivion Ring that targets, so Oblivion Ring will exile an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn quite nicely. Same goes for Journey to Nowehere. Having said that, the triggered enter the battlefield ability of Oblivion Ring and Journey to Nowhere is still a white ability, which means this ability cannot target anything with protection from White, so neither can exile a Malakir Bloodwitch.

Long story short, Oblivion Ring and Journey to Nowhere both exile Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, but cannot exile a Malakir Bloodwitch…

And while we’re talking about Enchantments, how about Sovereigns of Lost Alara? This seems to be getting a lot of play lately. The “search your library for an Aura card that could enchant that creature, put it onto the battlefield attached to that creature” ability of Sovereigns of Lost Alara is somewhat unique, in that the Aura card you attach to your creature is not cast, therefore it never targets the creature. What does this mean? You are able to attach an aura to a creature with shroud this way. Should your opponent cast Vines of Vastwood targeting the creature that is about to receive that Aura it won’t affect the Sovereigns triggered ability at all. This will not, however, allow you to attach an Aura to a creature with protection from the Aura, whether that be protection from the color of the aura, protection from enchantments, or even protection from everything!

Got a rules question burning you up that none of your buddies can answer? Send me a note at dalelovelace@gmail.com and I’ll make sure you know the answer!

So that’s my first “judgey” article. These same questions have seemed to come up at every tournament I’ve judged since Rise hit the streets so I’ve passed along the answers to save you a bit of grief the next time you battle.

Thanks to everyone who said “Hi, I read your column” at the Georgia Nationals Qualifier last weekend. I was even asked to draw Domo on someone’s playmat like I was an artist or something! Apparently there are at least a few people that actually read this, besides my beautiful wife that is! Speaking of my beautiful wife, if you’re looking for the pictures she took in Atlanta you can find them here.

What do I have coming up this weekend? Absolutely nothing Magic related. I’ll be leaving for Puerto Rico on Friday to spend a nice relaxing week at various places around the island getting ready for Pro Tour San Juan! Starting with 3 days in Rincon for some surfing, then on to Eastern PR for a hike up El Yunque and swimming in the Bio Bay. Until next week this is Dale Lovelace telling you there’s more than one way to play!

Some of you may remember “Getting Messy with Paint” where I demonstrated some good tips on doing a borderless alter on a Putrid Leech. This time around I’m sticking with the Putrid Leech, but this time we’re doing a character drawing by replacing the gooey leech on the art with geek favorite: Domo Kun.

We’ll need a lot of the same supplies from my earlier painting article, plus a few more. You’ll need a pack of paint brushes; one of my favorites is the Craft Smart Golden Taklon 4 Pc. Variety Set CS-204, which you can pick up at any Michaels craft store. The set comes with a number 4 shader, a number 3 round, a 3/0 liner and a number 8 shader. If you can’t get this set, you can grab these individual brushes at most any craft store, and don’t worry if you don’t know the difference between a shader and a liner, all the brushes are labeled!

Next you need some paint. Michaels has 2 ounce bottles of Craft Smart Acrylic paints for $.50 per bottle. For this project you’ll only need white, black, brown and red. Domo is easy!

And you’ll need a Sharpie Pen. This is not your normal Sharpie, it will be labeled “Sharpie Pen”. A normal Sharpie uses a different kind of ink which doesn’t blend well with Acrylic paints, they run when you try to paint over then. You can pick one of these up as Michaels as well, or just about anywhere they sell school supplies.

Everything else we need you most likely have lying around. You’ll need some newspaper, paper towels, two short plastic cups that you don’t mind trashing, dish or hand soap, toothpicks and scotch tape, and most importantly a Putrid Leech that you’re not real attached to.

First, fold a sheet of newspaper in half, roll up some scotch tape and put it all around the edges on the back of the Putrid Leech, and stick the card in the center of the newspaper. Taping the card not only holds it still while you’re painting, it also keeps the card up off the paper so any paint that should go over the edge won’t end up on the back of the card. Take another sheet of newspaper and fold it up into somewhere around a 8” square, this is for mixing paints on, so it should be several layers of newspaper thick. Cardboard from a pizza box also works really well for this.

Fill one of your plastic cups with clean clear water. You will be mixing your paints with a lot of water. To avoid adding thickness to the card you will generally be mixing in 50% or more water into your paints.

The other plastic cup you need to fill with soapy water. Soap water is the best way to clean acrylic paint from your brushes. Before you take a break or change colors wipe excess paint from the bristles of your brush with a paper towel, then swish the brush thoroughly in the soapy water, then wipe with the paper towel again. Before you stop painting with a brush for any period of time do this several times to get all the paint out. Your brush will love you for this! If you ever let paint dry in the brush, and especially if the paint gets up into the ferule, your brush will be forever useless.

When you squeeze paint out of the bottles just give it a little squeeze so the paint will come out one drop at a time. To mix water in the paint I will dip my finger into the cup of clean water, then hold my finger over the drops of paint and allow the water to mix in one drop at a time. Keep this in mind during this primer when I talk about drops of paint and drops of water.

First you want to break out your Sharpie Pen and draw an outline of Domo. You can use the pic below as a guide. Here I’ve drawn the outline and ran back over it several times to make the line very dark and very thick. The Sharpie Pen can be erased with a normal pencil eraser until it has dried, which takes a good 15 minutes, so no worries if you mess up a little.

Next you want to mix 3 drops of brown with 1 drop of black, and then stir in 5 drops of water. Mix this watery paint up well with your number 8 shader and use it to fill in all of Domo. You’re painting on the raw card so you won’t get much coverage on the first coat, so don’t try putting the paint on really thick as this will cause the card to warp a lot later, you just want to get a little paint on the card, it will still be translucent, but we’ll be applying another coat. If the number 8 shader seems a little large for the edges and arms and legs feel free to switch to the number 3 round for those details.

When you have a little paint all over Domo wash those brushes out really well and let him dry for at least 20 minutes. I normally do a playset at one time so I can move to the next card while waiting for this one to dry.

After Domo is good and dry add two drops of water, a drop of black and a drop of brown to paint you already have mixed and apply another coat. This coat should cover completely without having to lay the paint on too thick. Now it’s starting look like Domo! Let this second coat dry for another 20 minutes.

Now you want to use your Sharpie Pen and draw in Domo’s mouth. If you mess up inside his mouth it’s ok since we’ll be covering that with more paint, if you mess up outside his mouth you can always just paint a little brown/black over it, so no worries!

Now mix one drop of red and one drop of water with your number 3 round brush. Fill in Domo’s mouth with the red paint. Red is a tough color to paint with, and doesn’t cover very well. You’ll need to put on three coats of red, allowing each coat to dry for 10 minutes, to get it looking ok.

Now break out your Sharpie Pen again and draw Domo some teeth. Domo has 4 evenly spaced teeth on top and bottom.

Use your 3/0 Liner to mix one drop of white and one drop of water to fill in Domo’s teeth. You can cover some of the black lines but just be careful not to go too far over the lines with the white paint. Let this white paint dry for 10 minutes.

Now use your 3/0 liner to mix one drop of black and one drop of water. Draw some orbs for eyes. The center of each eye should be in line with each side of Domo’s mouth and halfway between the top of his mouth and the top of his head. Continue with the 3/0 liner and go back over outlines of Domo’s mouth and teeth, and clean up any of the outline where you may have gotten some brown over the lines.

Put one drop of brown on your mixing paper, then a drop of white down a little ways from the brown. Dip your number 3 round into the white, then mix what’s on your paint brush into the drop of brown with a drop of water. Do the same with a drop of brown and a drop of black and a drop of water. We’ll use these mixtures for shadows and highlights. Imagine the light source is in the upper left of the picture, so all top and left surfaces will have the lighter highlight color and everything down and to the right will have the darker shadow color. When applying highlights you want your brush to be almost dry, so dip it in your mixture then rub it on clean paper to remove most of the paint. Shadows paint as normal. Use your 3/0 liner to put the highlights in Domo’s eyes.

And there you have it, Domo is comin’ at ya’! I’m not sure If he wants a hug or to smash you to death. Doesn’t really matter, it’s Domo!

If you are ever wondering what you can put Domo on, you can put Domo on ANYTHING!

That’s how to draw Domo!

If you tried this I would love to see your results! Scan your card or take a picture of it and send it to dalelovelace@gmail.com and I’ll post it here in a future article.

This weekend I’ll be in Atlanta judging the Georgia National Qualfiers, good luck to everyone trying to make it to Nat’s next weekend! After Nat Qualifiers I’ll be heading to San Juan Puerto Rico for almost 2 weeks ending in Pro Tour San Juan! Until next time, this is Dale Lovelace telling you there is more than one way to play!

And a great big shout out to some judges who almost made top 8. Omar Hamid was piloting the same Superpals deck that won the Standard Open to go 6-3 just missing top 8. CJ Crooks was busy judging the Standard Open Saturday, but came to play on Sunday to go 5-0 with Counter-Top, then missing on the last 3 matches knocking him out of the top 8. Better luck next time guys, I want to see a judge in Top 8!

So we have a great new set out, Rise of the Eldrazi, and with a new set comes the thrill of picking up some new boxes of Magic! You do, I do, we all love busting that plastic wrapper on a new box. What am I going to find? Please, please, please let me bust a Gideon Jura! As if the thrill of popping a new box wasn’t enough, there are some great ways to further enjoy that new box. Why not turn opening that box into a game? We buy those boxes because we like to play games, right?

Pack Wars

Pack wars is a great way for you and a friend to bust that box. For classic pack wars you and your opponent will each need an unopened pack and 15 basic lands, 3 of each type. Open the pack without looking at the cards, remove the tip card/token and shuffle in your basic lands. Roll a die to see who goes first and play Magic! Whoever doesn’t win goes first for the next pack. With an unopened box that’s 18 games of Magic!

Don’t have 30 basic lands lying around? Maybe you’re at the food court of the mall with your shiny new box and want to get in some pack wars. No problem, play no-lander pack wars. Each opponent busts a pack, shuffles it up and draws 3 cards. Decide who plays first, then play as normal except you have an unlimited amount of mana and you can play only one spell per turn. X spells have a max of 5 for X, and the same goes for multikicker. Land cards cycle for free, i.e. discard a land to draw a card. No-lander is my favorite pack war. Where else are you going see a first turn Emrakuul?

Dollars

Dollars is a game for judges, by judges, but I’m here to reveal the top secret judge game to the masses! After a long day judging a tournament the judges will normally receive a box of product as a gift from the tournament organizer for all their hard work. So the tough decisions begin, to pack war or to dollars. When you’ve been on your feet all day, playing pack wars may not be the most appealing way to spend your down time, so enter dollars.

Dollars is the most pointless, futile way to have fun opening your box. You can have as many players as you have boxes. Gather around a table, and everyone opens a pack, but don’t look at any of the cards. Check to see if you have a foil, which you will know by having a normal backed card as the last card in your pack as opposed to a token. Whoever has a foil reveals first. If no one has a foil, then decide who goes first by performing any manner of bodily functions, bribes, or just all reveal together. Whoever goes first, or simultaneously, you reveal the rare from your pack. Decide as a group who turned over the most valuable rare and congratulate that player. If it’s a tie look at the uncommons in the pack, maybe one of you has a dollar uncommon! Everyone open another pack and get ready to go again. Whoever had the best rare from the last pack reveals first, unless someone opened a foil, which trumps the best rare from last pack.

I told you, it’s pointless! But is really is a lot of fun, give it a try the next time you’re opening a box with your friends. If you don’t all have boxes just split yours up.

So those are my tips for creative box opening. Do you have a fun way to crack a box? I would love to hear about it, leave me a comment below!

That’s it for this week. I’ll be at the Ramada Inn Celebration in Orlando this weekend for a Pro Tour Qualifier, I’d love to see you come out and join us. I’ll be back next week with another painting lesson. Until then, this is Dale Lovelace telling you there is more than one way to play!

This deck starts out as a mono green Kaysa deck. In case you didn’t know, Kaysa’s creature type has been errata’ed to Elf Druid. The object of the deck is fairly straightforward, ramp into a lot of land, play a ton of Elves, then reload your hand and do it all again. Here is the list before any upgrades:

Lots and lots of Elves! Kaysa is nice enough to pump up all your Elves, and any other green creatures on the board, including herself!

You get plenty of great Elf abilities. Joraga Treespeaker can turn all your Elves into Fyndhorn Elder, but hey, he’s in there too! Is Fyndhorn Elder really George Carlin in disguise? No dirty words on the card, so I suppose not…

Farhaven Elf, Wood Elves, Civic Wayfinder, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Oracle of Mul Daya and Yavimaya Dryad all let you dig deeper for those lands!

Lys Alana Bowmaster, Wren’s Run Packmaster, Wren’s Run Vanquisher. Thornweald Archer, Nullmage Shepherd, and Glissa Sunseeker, provide some great removal on a stick, of various kinds.

But this is all before the upgrades! The first thing you want to do is upgrade your General.

Kaysa -> Eladamri, Lord of Leaves

Kaysa is neat, but Eladamri packs the punch. Not only are you putting your General on the Battlefield on turn two, but now all those Elves have Shroud and Forestwalk! Now you’ll be wanting to use the Yavimaya Dryad ability on your opponent…

Don’t throw Kaysa out, she’s still plenty useful! Take out a forest and slide her in its place. Now that your General only costs two you can afford to go with one less land.

Tribal Forcemage -> Garruk Wildspeaker

Strength of the Tajuru -> Nissa Revane

Next you’ll want to upgrade to some Planeswalkers. Garruk gives you a nice mana boost, or a 3/3 beast, until you give him enough counters for that overrun that can just end the game!

Nissa is the bomb in this deck. Put Nissa’s Chosen on the Battlefield, then either chump block with the Chosen every turn, or start gaining some life. Get to her ultimate, pray for no board sweepers, and just take your opponent down!

Hunting Triad -> Beacon of Creation

Recollect -> Regrowth

Explore -> Glimpse of Nature

Boar Umbra -> Coat of Arms

Relic Crush -> Gaea’s Anthem

Snake Umbra -> Sylvan Library

Now we start making some serious upgrades. Beacon of Creation can pump out some serious tokens. Regrowth is two, Recollect is three, you choose! Glimpses of Nature can reload your hand, and Coat of Arms can pump all your guys, and oh my should you get Gaea’s Anthem and Coat of Arms both on the board.

Forest -> Thawing Glaciers

Forest -> Pendelhaven

Forest -> Wirewood Lodge

We can also add a few non basic lands to the mix. Thawing Glaciers and help pull all the land out of the deck, and provide some serious card advantage when it gets going. Pendelhaven helps keep those teeny Elves buffed up until some pump effect gets them buffed anyway. Wirewood Lodge is your sneak attack that lets you untap that blocker you need, or untap Elvish Archdruid (upgraded below) to create some massive mana!

Creeping Mold -> Chameleon Colossus

Gempalm Strider -> Elvish Archdruid

Greatbow Doyen -> Genesis

Llanowar Elite -> Elvish Champion

Nullmage Shepherd -> Vigor

Quirion Elves -> Priest of Titania

Thornweald Archer -> Eternal Witness

Now time for some creature upgrades. Elvish Archdruid pumps all your Elves and gives you a huge Mana boost. Elvish Champion boosts your Elves as well, while Priest of Titania gives another big Mana boost.

Chameleon Colossus is just the best “Elf” ever! With all your mana ramp and mana boosts you can make this guy way too huge. Opponent playing Black? Good game!

Vigor protects all your dudes from damage, while pumping them with +1/+1 counters in the process.

Genesis and Eternal Witness provide you with some great Graveyard recursion. Playing this deck late game, you can set yourself up where you return Eternal Witness to your hand with the Genesis ability, cast Eternal Witness returning Elvish Visionary to your hand, then use the Masked Admirer’s ability to return it to your hand as well. Cast Elvish Visionary, draw a card. Cast Masked Admirer’s, draw another card. Chump block with your three Elves and do it all again next turn!

And the final upgrade:

Acidic Slime -> Emrakul, the Aeon’s Torn

Who needs to destroy an Artifact, Enchantment or Land when you can have Emrakul? This guy is totally the mack daddy of EDH now. With all that Mana ramp and Mana producers like Elvish Archdruid you can surely cast this guy. He’s not an Elf, but who cares! This guy on the board almost certainly says game over!

I’m attaching a spreadsheet with the decklist and the upgrades to make it a bit easier on you to track the upgrades.

I’ve played this deck in both the non-upgraded and upgraded form. It can definitely hold it’s on one on one in either form, but it’s considerably more fun upgraded!

So that’s my latest $50 EDH, with a little extra on the side. Did you build this deck? I would love to hear about it. Email me at dalelovelace@gmail.com and tell me what worked or didn’t work for you!

This weekend I’ll be in Atlanta for the Star City 10K weekend. If you’re there stop by and say hi. It constantly amazes me that people read these ramblings.

Until next week this is Dale Lovelace telling you there’s more than one way to play!

Yeah, I was enamored by Worldwake and pronounced it ‘EDH-Wake,’ but this set seems to be custom designed for some EDH beats. This set has it all, big creatures, 4 new mechanics, and even a hard counter that could be playable. I don’t know how this set is going to play out in Standard, but there are some definite new classics for EDH.

The Eldrazi

Many of the Eldrazi Creatures have a new game mechanic for RoE called Annihilator. Annihilator says “Whenever this creature attacks, defending player sacrifices X permanents.” Where X is the number equal to the value of Annihilator on that creature. This is a “when this creature attacks” ability, the creature doesn’t have to deal damage, or even survive, the sacrifice happens before the defending player even declares blockers!

All is Dust is a true gem in this set. One more board wipe that all the colors can share. Black can always use a way to get rid of enchantments, and at least some artifacts, ok not many artifacts, but Black can dream right?

Artisan of Kozilek is probably the worst of the Eldrazi. What do you think of a type where a 10/9 for 9 with Annihilator 2 and Regrowth built in is the worst card? At least this one can be animated, although without the Regrowth.

Eldrazi Conscription, +10/+10 Trample and Annihilator 2 for 8 seems good. Uril, the Miststalker called, he ordered three of these. Put it on a 0/1 Spawn Token, it’s still good. Team this up with Greater Auramancy and Sterling Grove and never be invited back to your local EDH game!

Eldrazi Temple not only gives you some extra mana for the Eldrazi that will undoubtedly be showing up in EDH decks everywhere, but also gives Karn, Silver Golem one more colorless producing land.

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is my choice for mack daddy of the Eldrazi. Can’t be countered, comes with a Time Walk, Protection from colored spells, Annihilator 6 and Reminisce when he goes to the yard. Why let a mere 15 colorless stand in the way of your way to EDH fortune and fame?

It That Betrays is a close second to Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. With all those permanents being sacrificed to your Annihilator abilities, why not just put them on your side of the battlefield instead of the yard? I’m sticking this guy into my Thraximundar deck post haste. Do I feel an all Vampire Anowon, the Ruin Sage deck in the making?

Kozilek, Butcher of Truth only lets you draw four cards when you cast him. Yeah, he gets Annihilator 4 as well, but not Trample, Flying or any other evasion. His relatively low casting cost makes him almost playable.

Not of This World is a colorless Instant, hurray! 7 for a hard counter is a bit much, but it is colorless, and has the possibility of being free. I’m on the fence on this one. Can you find a good use for this?

Skittering Invasion gives you 5 tokens for 7, and they can all be sacrificed for mana! This feels like a great fit in any token deck, or anywhere Doubling Season is run. Rhys, the Redeemed smiles.

Spawnsire of Ulamog would also be a good fit for token decks. Too bad his second activated ability does exactly nothing in EDH. Team him with Doubling Season and Essence Warden for infi life, or Doubling Season and Vicious Shadows for the win!

Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre comes with Desert Twister and is Indestructible, a 10/10 for 11 and Annihilator 4. If you’re looking to put just one Eldrazi in your EDH deck, which one? They are all so good it’ll be tough to decide!

Ulamog’s Crusher, oh what a vanilla Eldrazi! But hey, it’s a common; this one will cost you a quarter or less. I’m betting he ends up in a $50 EDH deck soon!

The Levelers

As I was walking around the prerelease at CoolStuffGames this past weekend, I was continually amazed by how many “Planeswalkers” were on the tables. At a glance these guys sure do look like a Planeswalker!

The Level Up creatures are good, really good. I could probably fill an article on nothing but Level Up creatures, but for today I’ll only mention the “really good” ones.

Coralhelm Commander starts as a 2/2 Merfolk for two, but with proper application of Mana he becomes superfish, as a 4/4 flier that pumps all the other fish. Seems good in a Sygg, of either variety, deck.

Echo Mage is auto include in almost anything Blue. If copying any Instant or Sorcery for UU is good, how about copying them twice?

Enclave Cryptologist should go into all those Azami decks we love, and is also auto include in the various Sygg fish decks. A Merfolk Wizard for U is good, being able to level up to tap: draw a card puts this one over the top.

Guul Draz Assasin is great removal on a stick. This guy gets around Totem Armor and Indestructible as well!

Joraga Treespeaker is just one more reason I love Elves. He is an Elf and A Druid, to help out Gilt-Leaf Archdruid, but he also can turn all your Elves into Fyndhorn Elder!

Kargan Dragonlord is a measly 2/2 for 2 to start, but look out, for 8 more he becomes an 8/8 Flying Trample with Firebreathing!

Lighthouse Chronologist should have a creature type of “EDH Sillyness” rather than Human Wizard. When I first saw this card I had to read it about 4 times before I believed it. Could this really exist? Read this aloud with me “At the beginning of each end step, if it’s not your turn, take an extra turn after this one.”

The Umbra’s

The Umbra’s introduce the new game mechanic “Totem Armor”. Totem Armor says “If enchanted creature would be destroyed, instead remove all damage from it and destroy this Aura”. Remember that this only prevents “destroy” effects, but will not prevent the creature from going to the yard from having 0 or less toughness, or being removed from the game with Swords to Plowshares.

Outside of Zur the Enchanter and Uril, the Miststalker decks, I don’t see the Umbra’s getting much EDH play. The Totem Armor mechanic can be cool, maybe throw one in my Mayael, the Anima deck for some Mayael protection?

Bear Umbra may be an exception, “Whenever this creature attacks, untap all lands you control sounds good.”

Crab Umbra could also see some play. Untapping an Azami Wizard for three to draw another card, or giving any of your big Eldrazi “Vigilance” (sort of) for three are just a few of the broken ways you could use this Umbra.

Rebound

Rebound is yet another new mechanic in RoE. Rebound says “Exile this spell as it resolves if you cast it from your hand. At the beginning of your next upkeep, you may cast that card from exile without paying its mana cost.” Important things to remember, if you forget, or choose not to cast the spell on your next upkeep it is exiled forever. If you do cast the spell on your next upkeep it goes into your graveyard. Multiple instances of Rebound are redundant, and don’t let you rebound twice.

Cast Through Time lets you give all your Instants and Sorceries Rebound. If Rebound seems good, then spread it around!

Consuming Vapors is another great sacrifice effect for any Thraximundar deck. It’s also a good way to get rid of those pesky Eldrazi, even the indestructible one.

Nomad’s Assembly is just stupid good. Have you noticed that I like token decks? Rhys, the Redeemed is very excited about this card!

Surreal Memoir is really good for red, those fire mages need a way to recur those Lightning Bolts and Incinerates!

World at War is another just silly good rebound card. Two combat phases for two turns for 5? The only problem I see is that you will become target number one during that turn World at War is exiled, since everyone will see that second attack phase coming…

And The Rest

Awakening Zone is one the cards I am most excited about in this set. A token generator for green, where the tokens can be sac’ed for mana! Use as mana accelerant, chump blockers, or add pumps like Gaea’s Anthem or Broodwarden for offensive pressure.

Deprive, a hard counter for 2, wait, are you kidding? The returning a land to your hand can be, of course, problematic, but hey, it’s a hard counter for 2! It’s also a common, stock up on these!

I’m building a Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief deck as we speak. I had intended it to be an Anowon, the Ruin Sage deck, but I’m going with Drana. All that removal built in, that also pumps. It’s going to be almost all Vampires, and Anowon will have a place, but Drana is my General.

Dreamstone Hedron is Mind Stone X 3. I like Mind Stone, I like this X 3!

Fissure Vent becomes an instant red staple, with some great utility destroying both a Land and an Artifact!

Mnemonic Wall becomes an instant classic, much the way Eternal Witness is in green. A 0/4 wall for 5 that lets you return an instant or sorcery to your hand from the yard seems good.

Realms Uncharted is my favorite card in the set. “Lands Ungiven” has so many possibilities in EDH. Team this up with Life From the Loam or Crucible of Worlds for some real fun!

Sphinx of Magosi is definitely one of the best creatures in the set. A 6/6 Flier for 6 would be playable, but add in the pay 3 draw a card and get a +1/+1 counter makes this guy a beast.

Vengevine is going to rage. Too bad he’s a mythic and pre-selling at over $25 since he’s sure to be awesome in Standard as well. This will be a great creature in any green beats deck.

So that’s it for my Rise of the Eldrazi review. Disagree, or think a card not mentioned is the Next Big Thing[tm]? Leave me a comment below, I love hearing from you guys.

Next weekend I’ll be in Orlando at the Rise of the Eldrazi Release at Cool Stuff Games. They’ll be opening the doors at 8AM on Friday with $10 RoE drafts all day, check out http://www.coolstuffgames.com/ for great events to be held all weekend.

Until next week, this is Dale Lovelace telling you there’s more than one way to play!

Since we have a new set coming out, if you’re like me you’ve probably obtained multiple boxes of Worldwake and Zendikar already, which means you have piles and piles of commons and uncommons that are basically useless. So what do you do with those thousands of commons and uncommons lying around? I have a 5000 count box I stuff all my extras in. When the box gets full, it’s time to build something! A few months ago I built an almost life size robot, Marvin the Paranoid Android. Marvin now lives at Anthem Games in Tampa, FL.

This time around I decided to build a Magic card castle, and take ManaNation.com readers along for the ride. For this do it yourself project the only materials you’ll need are 3000 Magic cards that can be trashed, and a little imagination.

That’s the completed castle, just throw all your cards together and make it look like this, end of article. Just kidding, let start at the beginning.

I’m building the castle with the back side of the cards out. I thought the castle would look better with a brown stone look rather than having the mish mash look of the front side of the cards.

First take two cards and hold them at a 90 degree angle to each other. You want to have about the same amount of overhang on each side of the cards and be sure they are fairly close to straight with one another.

Fold over the top of one of the cards using the other card as a guide.

Now finish by folding the other 3 sides ending with your cards looking like this. Now do this to about 3000 cards. Take your time, I’ll wait. Folding the cards takes longer than anything else.
Now we start making blocks.

Separate 6 cards, i.e. 3 pairs. Put 2 of the cards together like this.

Bring in the 3rd card over hanging the lips like so.

Now the 4th card in the block, you’re almost there!

And the 5th card slides in easily.

You’ll need to lift up on the lips to get that last card in. Now push the lips down on all 6 sides.

Look Ma, my first block! Nothing to it. Now just do that 480 more times, and you’ll have enough blocks to build this castle!
Now that we have some blocks, it’s time to make the blocks into something. First we build a square of blocks.

Start with 2 blocks; bend the lips out a bit to make it easier to link them.

You want to slip the lips of 3 corners together at once by twisting the two blocks together. You need to get this twisting action down, because once you get further into construction there are places where it will be impossible to get one of the corners linked unless you get this.

Since you have three of the corners linked, you lift up on the fourth corner to complete the link.

Now you have 2 blocks linked together. Continue linking boxes in this way to make a square with 3 blocks on each side. It’s all easy until you get to the final block, the “keystone”.

For the final corner of the square, you’ll need to link a block to 2 other blocks simultaneously. Start by hanging two lips of the keystone block to the bottom of an existing block, and then fold the keystone block downwards until you can slide the lips of the keystone into the bottom lips of the other existing block.

You should end up with 5 of the corners linked after sliding the keystone into place.

Link up the corners that didn’t slide together.

Now you have a complete square of blocks.

Connect 4 more blocks, one in each corner of the square, these are “spacer” blocks.

Now we build another square on top of the four spacers we just linked. The first two blocks are easy, for the third block we have to link a new way. Link two corners to the spacer below and spin the block out so we can spin the block back into the lips beside it. This will allow you to link that back corner that would be almost impossible any other way. Continue to link blocks like this until you get to the last block in the square.

For the last block bend the lips out on the bottom and slide the new block down onto those lips, leaving only the lips at the top which are easy to link.

Now we have a cube of blocks. Congratulations, you know all the tricks you need to know to build anything now!

Now we add 4 more spacers, but instead of the outside corners we add these spacers on the inside of the square.

Now, using the tricks we learned on the first cube of blocks, build another square on top one these inside spacers. We now have almost half of a tower. Go through all of these steps again, outside spacers, square, inside spacers, square, outside spacers, square, and we have a tower.

Add 4 more blocks at the top for the parapets and voila! We need 4 towers for the castle, so go ahead and throw those together real quick!

Now we need to build the body of the castle. Start out with a square just like when we started the tower, but this time we continue adding spacers and lines until the base is 9 blocks wide and 7 blocks deep.

On the back and the two sides add 2 spacers on every other block starting at the corners, then build a solid line of blocks on top of those spacers.

Do the same on the front, except you want to leave the middle three blocks open, this will eventually be the space left open by the drawbridge.

Finish up the area around the drawbridge opening. Put one spacer on each side of the opening, then a solid line of blocks followed by 2 spacers and another solid line.

Now add a single spacer the rest of the way around the castle, and follow with a solid line of blocks.

Now add a double row of spacers and a solid line of blocks to complete the body of the castle.

Now add the parapets at the top of the body of the castle.

To help hold the towers in the correct place on the corners of the castle, we want add 2 blocks for each tower. Place them on the 4th block up and 2nd block back on each corner. These blocks will slide into the opening left by the lower row of inside spacers on the towers. This will just make the towers all line up correctly.

Now assemble 10 more blocks to form the open drawbridge in the front and we have a castle!

For the finishing touch I cut out 4 Soldier Ally tokens and taped them between the parapets on the front!

Wow this castle is massive. I’ll be delivering it to the Wizards Cupboard in Seminole, FL this week. George, the owner, is building a shelf for this monstrosity. Stop by and see it the next time you’re in the Tampa Bay area!

If you used this article to build something from Magic cards I would love to hear about it! Send me a pic to dalelovelace@gmail.com and I’ll post it here for everyone to see!

In the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting my thoughts on Rise of the Eldrazi and EDH, and we’ll be seeing more Messy with Paint and another $50 EDH deck. Until then, this is Dale Lovelace telling you there is more than one way to play.

I’m just returning from Grand Prix Houston. Sunday night after the main event was over and the public events were winding down six very tired judges gathered in the lobby of the Hilton Americas to sling 100 cards. This is their story.

Since we had six players I decided that my Pheldagrif “Group Hug” deck would be a good choice. My good friend and fellow Tampa Bay judge CJ Crooks wanted to borrow a deck, so I loaned him my first ‘$50 EDH Deck?’ Mayael, the Anima from a previous mananation.com article. Andrew Hall, also hailing from Tampa Bay, laid down Thraximundar. Jacob Lowe brought Rith, the Awakener. Frank Tavern decided on Sliver Queen and Will Besant had Korlash. We ordered some pizza delivery, shuffled up, rolled a die and CJ played first.

After a turn of everyone playing a land, Will had the first spell of the game with a very exciting Sol Ring. Andrew matched Will’s colorless ramp with a Signet. Will then comes out of the gates with Korlash, trouble is brewing already!

CJ casts Elfhame Sanctuary and Andrew matched his enchantment with a Grave Pact. Keeping up the Enchantment theme Jacob cast Idyllic Tutor fetching Overabundance.

Frank casts Yavimaya Elder and announces him as “Kill Me Billy”.

Will gets down to business casting Sword of Fire and Ice and equips it to Korlash. Will doesn’t like the looks of the Grave Pact in play so attacks Andrew with his sworded up Korlash, and does the 2 damage from Sofi to Frank.

CJ casts Civic Wayfinder and fetches that land.

Andrew puts out High Market, which draws oohs and aahs from the group, then casts Pyre Zombie.

Jacob casts the Overabundance he tutored for last turn. No one is very happy about it!

Frank casts Skyshroud Claim and Viridian Zealot.

Will attacks Jacob with Korlash since he’s unhappy about the Overabundance in play. Andrew is still stinging from being attacked the previous turn so he sacks Pyre Zombie to take out Korlash. Frank decides that if Will doesn’t have a Korlash, he doesn’t need a Sofi either, and sacks Viridian Zealot targeting Sofi. Will’s left with a nearly empty board, so he casts Oblivion Stone and pops it. Goodbye to all those enchantments!

Now that we’ve had the first board sweep, I get in the action by casting Pheldagrif.

Jacob has the next play with Ageless Entity. Frank disapproves so Reprisal takes care of the Ageless Entity.

Frank must be afraid of Andrew with Pyre Zombie in the yard, so he casts Mind Twist for all the cards in Andrew’s hand.

Will wants to keep the board clean, so he casts Nevinyrral’s Disk.

I want to get the Group Hug going, so I cast Loxodon Peacekeeper.

CJ casts Acidic Slime targeting Disk with the CITP trigger, delaying the next board wipe for a while.

Andrew has no cards in hand, so he returns Pyre Zombie from the yard.

Jacob plays out his General, Rith, the Awakener.

Frank gets crazy on us casting Phyrexian Ranger and Wood Elves.

Will casts Fleshbag Marauder. Lucky I still had Loxodon Peacekeeper to sack rather than having to kill my happy hippo of love.

I top deck top, Sensei’s Divining Top that is, and cast it.

CJ Casts Sabretooth Nishoba, let the fatness begin!

Andrew is apparently drawing dead after the big Mind Twist, so casts his General Thraximundar. Andrew assigns all of us a number, and then rolls a die, appearing to be deciding who to attack with the hasty Thraximundar. The die lands on Jacob’s number, but it was all a farce because Andrew but holds Thraximundar back.

Jacob casts Citanel Flute.

Frank casts Bringer of the Blue Dawn and Oversold Cemetery.

Will casts Mutilate to sweep the board yet again. I pay a blue to return Pheldagrif to my hand and let Andrew draw a much needed card.

I decide the board looks far too empty, so I remedy that by casting Gate to the Aether!

CJ thinks it’s time for his General, and out comes Mayael, the Anima. CJ follows up with a Shield of the Oversoul for his General. Uh Oh!

Andrew puts a Kaleidoscope into play with the Gate to the Aether trigger.

Jacob uses his Aether trigger to put Sneak Attack into play.

Frank uses Oversold Cemetery to retrieve Yavimaya Elder from the yard and puts it into play, then casts Worldheart Phoenix.

Will makes us nervous with a Demonic Tutor, then plays out Chainer, Dementia Master.

I turn over Austere Command with my Gate to the Aether trigger, when CJ reminds me I have Top in play, so should be good to go on Aether triggers. Oops! I cast Pheldagrif from my hand.

Andrew gets a Malevolent Awakening off his Gate to the Aether trigger then casts Pyre Zombie.

Jacob uses Sneak Attack to put Solemn Simalcrum into play and fetches a land, then attacks me which I block with Pheldagrif and Jacob draws his Yens card. Jacob casts Angelic Force.

Frank reveals Enigma Sphinx with his Gate to the Aether trigger, but wisely decides to draw it.

Will gets a Sword of Light and Shadow with his Aether trigger, then casts Nightmare Lash. Will equips Sword of Light and Shadow to Chainer, Dementia Master. Jacob uses Sneak Attack to put Indrik Stomphowler into play destroying the Sword of Light and Shadow, then casts Path to Exile targeting Chainer, Dementia Master, which Will sacks targeting Yavimaya Elder.

After handing out goodies with Pheldagrif and the end of Will’s turn, I play a Mikikoro on my turn and activate it so we can all draw a card. At my EOT CJ uses Mayael’s ability and gets a Windbrisk Raptor.

CJ gets a Plated Slagwurm with his Aether trigger then attacks Jacob with Windbrisk Raptor.

Andrew gets a great Aether trigger with Avatar of Woe and casts Glen Elendra, Archmage.

Jacob gets a forest from his Aether trigger, and starts casting spells like a mad man, replenish brings back all his nifty enchantments, then he casts Tamanoa, Academy Rector and Enduring Renewal.

Frank gets a Spidersilk Armor with his Aether trigger and casts Sen Triplets. Everyone just loves Sen Triplets (NOT!).

Will casts Korlash and attaches Nightmare Lash. At Will’s EOT I return Pheldagrif to my hand, allowing Andrew to draw a card as he is still behind from Mind Twist.

I get a Noble Benefactor with my Aether trigger. I cast Austere Command choosing Artifacts and Enchantments. I take the pain from the Overabundance back in play due to Jacob’s Replenish. CJ apparently takes offence that Jacob is doing damage to Group Hug and swears revenge! I painlessly cast Pheldagrif from my hand yet again.

CJ follows through on his revenge and attacks Jacob with Hellkite Charger and Plated Slagwurm, then pays Hellkite Charger to do it all over again. Nasty! Andrew thinks attacking twice is too much, so destroys Hellkite Charger with Avatar of Woe this go round.

Andrew casts Phyrexian Arena.

I ask Jacob to attack me so I can block with Noble Benefactor, and he obliges. I get Anvil of Bogardan when Noble Benefactor goes to the yard.

Frank casts Living Death, I respond by using Pheldagrif to dole out lots of life, tokens and card draws all around, tapping myself out, and then return the love hippo to my hand. Noble Benefactor comes back into play, but so does Fleshbag Marauder, so I sack Noble Benefactor and everyone tutors again. I get Hive Mind with the Noble Benefactor trigger. Shenanigans are sure to ensue if I can cast Anvil of Bogardan and Hive Mind on my next turn!

Will casts Myojin of Nights Reach and removes the counter. It sucks especially hard since we all just tutored twice. I’m pretty sure I’ll have to start swinging at Will with Pheldagrif soon. Will casts Yagmoth’s Will playing a ton of random stuff from his yard, then casts Corrupt targeting Andrew to kill him. CJ promises to avenge him! This game would have turned out much differently if it weren’t for the mass mind twist… Sad Panda.

I cast Pheldagrif from my hand, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve paid for Pheldagrif now.

CJ has his Hellkite Charger and other fatties back from the Living Death, so attacks Will, then pays to do it all again, hitting Will for a total of 30.

Jacob casts Recoup so he can cast Replenish and get all those damn enchantments back, then casts Rith.

Frank casts an Overabundance of his own then brings out Sliver Queen.

Will attacks CJ with Myojin of Nights Reach, then casts Oblivion Stone and pops it. You probably know what I do, give out Pheldagrif goodies and return Pheldagrif to my hand.

I cast Pheldagrif from my hand yet again, and throw in a Liege of the Hollows.

CJ casts Mayael, the Anima.

Jacob casts Woodfall Primus killing something of Will’s. It’s 1AM now, so my notes are getting more and more fuzzy. CJ swears I was dozing off and snoring, but it’s all lies, all lies I tell you!

Franks casts Sliver Queen, Generals are just popping up everywhere.

Will casts Cruel Edict targeting Frank, who wisely creates a Sliver token to sack. Oops! Will casts Helm of Kaldra and Cruel Tutor.

I do absolutely nothing, but I swear I wasn’t asleep during this turn, it’s all lies!

CJ brings out Flameblast Dragon and throws enough mana into it to kill Will. He lasted a turn longer than I thought after his mass Mind Twist.

Jacob casts Rith and Well of Lost Dreams then attacks CJ with Woodfall Primus. CJ uses Mayael’s ability to put Oakgnarl Warrior into play. The honeymoon is over, it looks like we’re getting down to the nitty gritty now, and I decide to let this all play out and stop using my love hippo to dole out goodies. (not because I was asleep!)

Frank does notta, maybe he was asleep?

I am thinking we should get as many creatures into play as possible to get these life totals down, so I cast Hunted Wumpus. Only CJ has a creature to put into play, Twilight Shepherd.

CJ goes into full “take you out” mode and swings into Jacob for a Metric Ton.

Will swings at me with Woodfall Primus knowing I will block with Liege and he can get a lots and lots of blocking tokens.

Frank and I do nothing, but we’re not asleep!

CJ casts Hurricane for 24 taking us all down to a low life total. Jacob reminds us that CJ has now done damage to Group Hug!

Jacob attacks CJ with Woodfall Primus and Frank makes 11 Sliver tokens EOT.

Frank attacks Jacob with 20 Sliver Tokens, taking out Jacob, and then casts Phyrexian Splicer.

I may snore just a little bit here. But not much I swear!

CJ casts Insurrection and swings into Frank with everything he has thinking he can take Frank out. Frank has tricks and casts a fog effect to stay alive. Now CJ is tapped out and a sitting duck.

Frank swings into CJ with a bajillion Sliver tokens ending CJ’s evening, then hits me with the same on his next turn. CJ wakes me up and tells me I’m out.

And so ends our fairy tale of 6 judges, one small round table, and 600 cards. Two pizzas and a few adult beverages later we’re all beat and head back to our rooms for some much needed sleep!

Thanks to everyone who said “Hi” at the Grand Prix, it seems that people actually do read my ramblings! And a big big thanks to CJ, Andrew, Jacob, Frank and Will for letting me take note during the game since I desperately needed an article for today after two full weekends of judging…

Be sure to stop by ManaNation.com next week where I’ll be posting my first “Home Improvement” article, i.e. building stuff out of Magic Cards. Until then, this is Dale Lovelace telling you, there is more than one way to play!

Speaking of getting messy with paint, Dominic Martinelli from Carson City, Nevada sent in this:

So that’s awesome Dominic, I just love to see people doing something with their cards other than turning them sideways. If you do something cool with one my articles, I would love to hear about it and relay it to the Magic world here on ManaNation.com. Write me anytime at dalelovelace@gmail.com!

I am just getting back from judging the Star City 5K Standard in Orlando. Congratulations to Charles Gindy for getting there with Boss Naya. I was happy to see several EDH side events during the day. Most biggish events are glad to host EDH side events now, and that’s a good thing! If you ever want to check out a big event, but don’t want to play in the main event, there are always plenty of great side events to get involved in, including EDH.

I got in a few EDH games the night before the 5K. Judges love EDH, so if you’re ever around the night before a big event and want to get in some EDH, find a judge, chances are he’ll know where the EDH is. I was fortunate enough to get in a 5 player game with Ben “I’m not doing anything” McDole, Todd “Why does everyone pick on me” Palmer, Justin “The Golden Child” Turner, and Joseph “Why am I here Again” Klopchic.

I let Justin borrow my Thraximundar deck, while I pulled out the $50 Mayael, the Anima deck from last week’s article. Ben played his Progenitus deck, and Todd played Wrexial, the Risen Deep. I told everyone to go really easy on me, as I was playing a $50 deck. It seemed that everyone had read my article, so they all had my list. To my surprise, asking for everyone to go easy didn’t make me target number one, which was what I had actually expected. I don’t think they actually did go easy on me though.

Ben is an L2 judge and the rest of us are all L1’s, so for some reason we think we need to follow his lead, even in an EDH game. I don’t think a real play by play account is warranted here, but this is the way the game with Ben goes:

Any Player: “hmm, who should I attack?”

Ben: “I’m not doing anything, I only have Maelstrom Nexus and 4 Planeswalkers out, with Progenitus mana next turn, and you should attack someone else”

Any Player: “Yeah, you’re right, I will attack whoever is mana screwed and doesn’t have anything on the board, there take that!”

Ben: “Everyone get that guy”

Everyone except that guy: “ha, yeah, take that!!!”

Ben: “Let me top, um yeah that looks good, I play Progenitus, cascade from Maelstrom Nexus, into Obliterate, good game!”

And this EDH game was much the same. So let me give you all a tip, when Playing EDH with judges, always attack the highest level judge at the table, before his advanced knowledge of politics blows you all out of the game.

The $50 Mayael Deck did work out pretty well that night, even though it didn’t blow out the table. I had a nice streak of activating Mayael while she was suited up with Whispersilk Cloak and also had Elfhame Sanctuary on the board. Unfortunately, using Elfhame Sanctuary for many turns lead to me having a large percentage of my lands on the board when Obliterate put them all in the yard!

Some things I learned about playing the $50 Mayael deck, you are the number one Bribery/Control Magic/Sower of Temptation target, period, paragraph, get used to it. It would be nice to put cards back in the library, like a Scroll Rack, because you will often end up with a hand full of fatties and Mayael on the board, so you have to choose between casting a fattie from your hand, or taking a chance on a Mayael activation. You just can’t seem to get more than one fattie a turn, it takes so long to get to the fourteen plus mana you need to cast multiples. It could probably use a bit more spot removal, but I don’t know what to pull for it. But hey, for $50 the deck plays pretty well and was a lot of fun!

I’ll be heading to the great state of Texas to judge Grand Prix Houston this weekend, April 2-4. If you’re there stop by and say hi! I’ll be wearing one of those cool black DCI judge shirts, and we all have name tags, so you’ll be able to spot me. There should be plenty of judge EDH going on, and EDH side events galore during the event. If you’ve never been to a Grand Prix, they are HUGE, I mean really big, and even a bit bigger than that. I highly recommend checking one out if you ever have the chance.

So that’s it for this week. I’ll be back next week with tales of GP Houston, I hope to see some of you there! As always, this is Dale Lovelace, telling you there is more than one way to play!

Hello again and welcome to another star studded edition of “More than one way to play.” This week’s article started out as a “$20 EDH Deck”. I wanted to put together something anyone on a budget could build to get a feel for EDH, but not sink a whole lot of dough on, but that soon turned out to be impossible. I put together a few tries, but they just weren’t any fun. You could throw together 100 cards in the same colors for $20, as long as you used 40 basic lands, but nothing I tried played out very well. I decided to up my budget. “$50 EDH Deck” is much more achievable!

I decided on Mayael the Anima as my general. Naya is the “shard” of 5+ power creatures. While Mayael gives you a way to cheat in the big guys, she is prone to die a lot, so a lot of mana ramp is necessary to help cast your fatties without Mayael’s help when necessary. Big fatties with lots of ramp seemed like a good place to go, since both mana ramp, and huge fatties can be very inexpen$ive, while still very playable in EDH. Here’s the list I came up with.

Total price buying every card except for basic lands from www.coolstuffinc.com: $49.08.

I went with mostly basic lands. Most of our mana ramp depends on fetching basic lands anyway, so this serves both our budget theme and provides plenty of targets for our ramp. Seven non basic lands that can produce multiple colors, including 3 bounce lands, help smooth out our mana a bit. Two “fetch” lands go with our additional mana ramp fetchers to pull some of the basic land out of the deck. The other four non basic lands are a 4/4 First Strike man land, a way to give our fatties double strike, a chump blocker generator, and the one card that no EDH deck should be without, Reliquary Tower.

26 Mayael targets means that slightly more than 1 out of every 4 cards in the deck is a 5+ power creature. Since Mayael’s ability lets you look at the top 5 you should hit every time, right? Well in theory anyway! Do you know the difference between theory and practice? In theory they are the same, in practice they are not.

Most of our fatties are fairly self explanatory, fatness with great evasion like Flying and Trample or some other useful ability.

Krosan Tusker serves a dual purpose as both a Mayael Target, and mana fetch. Apply as needed.

Bull Ceredon, and most likely Cliffrunner Behemoth, are attacking right out of the gates with both fatness and haste. Throw in either Lifelink or Vigilance for a tasty beatdown treat.

Spearbreaker Behemoth loves to help out all of his fat friends by making them, and himself, indestructible at will. Vagrant Plowbeasts can achieve much the same result if Spearbreaker is busy. Paleoloth returns the favor by bringing back from the dead any of those fatties that Spearbreaker or Plowbeasts missed.

Arashi, the Sky Asunder, Flameblast Dragon, Mordant Dragon, Spitebellows and Hateflayer all serve as additional removal on a stick!

Meglonoth is just good old fashioned EDH goodness with his great “reverse Trample” effect.

Myojin of Infinite Rage is the finisher. Get a few fatties on the board and remove that counter! Hold back a couple lands and make sure the Darksteel Ingot is in play and you’re off to the races. Heaven forbid you actually have Elfhame Sanctuary out when this goes off!

Cream of the Crop is great to set up a continual Mayael stream of fatness. Get fatty number one into play, then use Cream of the Crop to setup your next fatty on top of your deck.

Weatherseed Treefolk and Greater Good set up a great pay 5, draw 5 discard 3 combo repeatable over and over. Mix in Paleoloth and you are drawing/returning mad numbers of cards to your hand.

Lurking Predators is just stupid in this deck. Combo this with Cream of the Crop and it just gets extremely stupid! You’ll be putting a fatty into play almost every time an opponent casts a spell!

Lightning Greaves, Shield of the Oversoul and Whispersilk Cloak are some great ways to give Mayael a little protection. Did I mention she dies a lot?

Should you ever get a little protection on Mayael you’ll pretty much stop playing spells and just Mayael over and over. Elfhame Sanctuary is great when this happens, you guarantee you won’t draw a fatty, and continually thin that deck out .

Besides all the removal on a stick, you get plenty of good targeted and non targeted removal. You should be able to get rid of, or neutralize, anything that’s too annoying.

Savage Beating is one of my all time favorite EDH cards. For only seven mana you can do an absolutely amazing amount of damage. This is probably one the most aptly named cards ever!
Titanic Ultimatum is big finisher number two. If Myojin doesn’t find his way onto the board, just a few fatties with +5/+5, First Strike, Trample and Lifelink should seal the deal.

So that’s my budget EDH deck. I actually have built this deck as listed and it’s totally not bad. It can hang in there with most anything. This would be a great deck to start with and add to over time. Some obvious additions would be some better lands like real dual lands, real fetches and shock lands. A scroll rack and/or Sensei’s Divining Top could help with priming Mayael’s ability, and even a Sylvan Library could help you get there. Genesis and Eternal Witness are always great additions to a green deck. Combine Genesis and Eternal Witness with Yosei, the Morning Star and lock someone out of the game with the help of Greater Good. You could also throw in some better fatties, both Akroma’s and Baneslayer could work. If you build this deck, or something like it, I would love to hear about, leave me a comment below!

Until next week this is Dale Lovelace telling you there is more than one way to play!

You need exactly 6 players for Emperor. You split up into teams of three, with one member of the team being the Emperor, and the other two members become generals. The Emperor sits in the middle with a general on each of his/her sides. Each player takes an individual turn, not like two headed giant where teams take turns simultaneously. Each player, not team, begins with 20 life, and the object of the game is to cause the opposing emperor to lose. Eliminating an opposing general only makes it possible to target and attack the opposing emperor.

The team who goes first starts with the Emperor for the team taking his/her turn, then turns pass to the left, which means the team who goes first only gets two turns, where the team who goes second gets all three. It’s usually best to go second in emperor!

Teams do not share life totals, mana, cards, or anything for that matter. You’re free to look at one another player’s hand and discuss strategy, but your turn is your turn. Should one of the generals be eliminated, any change of control effects like Control Magic end and control is passed back to the previous controller, then all of the eliminated players cards and spells are exiled. Anything the general controlled but did not own is exiled as well, such as a Bribery type effect.

The general’s job is to protect the emperor, and to eliminate the opposing general making it possible to eliminate the opposing emperor. Generals may only attack or target a player sitting immediately next to him/her, in other words generals have a limited range of influence 1. As a general you need to get rid of one of the opposing teams generals before you can attack or target the emperor, and you can only attack and target the general sitting next to you, so you can’t really help your teammate take out the general next to him/her.

The emperor’s job is to lend support to his/her generals by casting supportive spells and sending creatures to assist his/her generals. Emperors also may only attack the player sitting immediately next to him/her, so when the game starts, the emperors can’t attack anyone! An emperor, however, a can target not only the player next to the emperor and also the player next to him/her, i.e. limited range of influence 2 for you rules types out there.

Any player may help out a teammate by sending him/her a creature. This is called the deploy creatures option which says all creatures have “{T}: Target teammate gains control of this creature. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.” That just means that any creature able to tap can be sent to any of your teammates any time you could cast a sorcery. The emperor will most likely be doing this a lot, since as long as he/she has both generals he/she can’t attack anyone anyway!

With limited range of influence many of your spells won’t behave the way you might think. Wrath of God from a general will destroy all the creatures of both players to his/her left and right, along with his/her own. Wrath of God from an emperor will destroy the creatures of both his/her generals, and the players sitting next to those generals as well. If you have a effect that gives your creatures +1/+1 for all other creatures, that effect will only count the creatures in your range of influence, and not of those outside your range. Some cards may ask you to target an opponent; this can be any player on the opposing team that is within your range of influence.

Emperor, like EDH, now has a full set of rules in the Magic Comprehensive Rules; they’re in Section 807 if you feel like giving them a look see. The rules I’ve listed are, of course, only the default, and you’re free to add or change any of them your play group doesn’t like.

So the next time you have 6 players why not try out Emperor. Bonus points for playing Emperor EDH! Have you played Emperor lately? I would love to hear about it! Leave me a comment in the fields below so I can hear about your great time playing Emperor.

Next week I have a very special column coming your way. There has been a lot of talk lately about Magic cards that have had their art altered by aspiring artists, and their legality. I’m not going to go into the various legalities, but I am going to show you how you can become one of those aspiring artists and alter cards yourself. Until then this is Dale Lovelace telling you there is more than one way to play!

So as you can see, the object is to have as many players sacrifice as many creatures as possible, pump Thraximundar, and get in there for 21.

This land base is pretty darn good. Grixis has a wide variety of great lands that should keep you in your colors easily. You could add a few Shocks and Duals if you have them, or you could replace some of the more expensive lands with come into play tapped lands to go more budget. Don’t forget High Market and Phyrexian Tower, which have sacrifice effects to pump Thraximundar!

I add in 5 Artifact mana producers for a little acceleration, including the indestructible Darksteel Ingot, which can be important with Obliterate in the deck.

You have 5 Planeswalkers, which are always big time good stuff in EDH. Besides just being too awesome, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, also fits the deck them with his ultimate ability.

Blood Tyrant is -the- multiplayer card. I get this guy in any EDH deck where he fits the colors. He starts out as a 5/5 Flying Trampler, and just never stops getting bigger. He’s hard to remove being black and starting at 5 toughness. You just have to love a guy who grows every time a player loses the game!

Rhystic Study is one of my all time favorite EDH cards. The card advantage Rhystic Study can net you is incredible, and Enchantments are, of course, the hardest cards to remove.

Sengir Nosferatu wins the award for the most flavorful card in Magic. It’s a Vampire, which turns into a bat, which turns into a Vampire. It fits this deck so well since you can have infi blockers that fly, and continue that sacrifice effect over and over.

Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder, Skeletal Vampire, Promise of Power, Goblin Assault and Diamond Kaleidoscope are great token generators, which can give you extra creatures for all of those sacrifice effects.

Pestilence is just the best removal ever. While it’s not a sacrifice, so it’s not pumping Thraximundar, you can kill off pretty much everything over and over and over. Keep Thraximundar bigger than all the other creatures and you can keep everything off the board, leaving Thraximundar to continue his quest for 21 damage.

Vampire Hexmage is a great way to kill off a Planeswalker, pumping Thraximundar at the same time, yep, it’s a sacrifice effect!

Pyre Zombie is a superstar in the Thraximundar deck. Return it to your hand from the yard during your upkeep for {1}{B}{B}, play it out, then sacrifice it to do 2 damage to a player or creature, pumping Thraximundar at the same time.

Dimir Doppelganger and Withered Wretch should help you keep other graveyards empty of anything you don’t like. These guys are targeted and don’t mess with your graveyard unless you want them to. I dig these over Relic of Progenitus and the like.

Some important sacrifice effects that you may not have realized were sacrifice effects; Mulldrifter, the Evoke ability includes sacrificing the creature. Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder is sacrificed when control seven or more Thrulls. Greater Gargadon when suspended allows you to sacrifice any creature you control. Glen Elendra, Archmage’s counter noncreature spell effect is also a sacrifice.

Slave of Bolas and Grab the Reins allow you steal someone else’s creature then, you guessed it, sacrifice their creature!

Butcher of Malakir, Magus of the Abyss and Grave Pact are all great ways to continue forcing your opponents to sacrifice creatures. An actual Abyss would be great in this deck, but I don’t have one!

Savage Beating has won me a ton of games! Send Thraximundar in against anyone with only one creature in play. They sacrifice the creature making Thraximundar a 7/7. Before damage cast Savage Beating with Entwine. Now Thraximundar is double strike and does 14 General damage. Untap Thraximundar and do it all again, now you’ve done a total of 28 General damage. Good day sir!

An alternate win condition is an Obliterate with any Planeswalker in play, with the possible exception of Jace. Should you happen to have Darksteel Ingot and Sensei’s Divining Top in play when Obliterate goes off then you are looking really good! Liliana is best for this play, since you can play Liliana and use her to tutor for the Obliterate. Then your opponents have 5 turns to get rid of Liliana, or have all creatures in all graveyards go to you. After an Obliterate/Liliana play I will occasionally use her discard ability on myself if I have a fatty I can put in my yard, knowing it will be coming into play soon. Nicol Bolas is also pretty awesome after an Obliterate as well since you can blow up any lands that come into play.

Lots of good board sweepers and board control and a ton of sacrifice effects, all giving the Zombie Assassin the support he needs to get in for 21! Until next week, this is Dale Lovelace telling you there is more than one way to play!

Once we had 5 willing players, we drew from a stack of 5 basic lands to decide who played which color. The line up was:
Ken Pilcher: White
Marlana Moore: Blue
Dale Lovelace: Black
Simon Rostas: Red
Robert Heisler: Green

Ken mentioned that Marlana probably didn’t know how to play the Blue deck, and they should switch. The rest of us decided that Ken just wanted to play Blue and we should keep everything as is. Multiplayer… Sheesh.

We all sit down, shuffle up and draw 7. It’s Multiplayer, so you get one free mulligan, which Marlana, Rob, and Simon all take advantage of. Ken and I keep our 7. The first few turns are nothing but lands. I’m tracking the play by play on my laptop.

Rob casts the first creature of the game with a Whirling Dervish. That doesn’t look good for me!

After another round of lands for everyone, I cast Demonic Tutor and Ken tells Marlana she should cast Twincast on my Demonic Tutor, which she does. They are allies and Ken has decided to help Marlana with the tricksy tricksy Blue deck. I get Nevinyrral’s Disk with my Demonic Tutor, I need an answer to Whirling Dervish!

Rob attacks me with the Whirling Dervish and uses a Pendalhaven to make it a 2/3, I go to 18. Rob casts Elvish Archers.

Marlana casts a Jace Beleren, and everyone cheers as we all draw a card.

Simon plays a land and discards a land. He must not have anything to play?

Ken plays a land and follows it with a Mistmeadow Skulk.

I play a land and cast Nevinyrral’s Disk. Although it is currently tapped, I should have an answer to that darn Whirling Dervish now!

Rob feels the Disk coming and attacks me with Whirling Dervish and Elvish Archers taking me to 14.

Cheers erupt again as Marlana has Jace Beleren let everyone draw!

Simon eyes the Disk, laughs a bit and plays Squee, Goblin Nabob.

Ken swings his Mistmeadow Skulk at Simon, taking him to 19.

I just go ahead and pop the Disk, and discard Dakmor Salvage, that Jace draw isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!

With the Disk gone, everyone starts casting. Rob casts Wild Mongrel.

Marlana plays a Morphed creature.

Simon plays Lightning Dragon, I think he forgot that Squee was in the Yard.

Ken casts Preacher. Uh Oh…

Now we have my bonehead play of the day. I’m keeping notes on everything, so you would think I would know everything on the board, but I overlooked Rob’s Yavimaya Hollow. I cast Corrupt targeting Rob’s Wild Mongrel, but he simply regenerates it with the Yavimaya Hollow that I completely forgot about! I still gain the life so I am back to 20.

I don’t stay at 20 long though, and Rob swings in with Wild Mongrel at me taking me to 18. At the end of my turn, Simon realizes that with Lightning Dragon out Ken can take it away every turn with Preacher then give it back to him making him either pay the echo every turn or lose Lightning Dragon, so he casts Lightning Bolt targeting Preacher. Showing some ally helpfulness, Rob decides to regenerate Preacher with Yavimaya Hollow.

Marlana isn’t feeling quite so giving anymore as she draws herself with Jace Beleren, and casts Morphling.

Simon doesn’t pay the echo on Lightning Dragon, brings Squee back to his hand, casts Chandra Nalaar and shoots Preacher. He didn’t have enough mana to play Lightning Dragon’s echo and cast Chandra Nalaar.

Ken casts Faith’s Fetters targeting Chandra Nalaar taking Ken to 25 life.

I cast Lilliana Vess, use her discard ability targeting Rob and I cast Black Knight.

Rob attacks me with Wild Mongrel. I have a first striker to block with, so I wonder if Rob has tricks or is he just planning to discard to pump Wild Mongrel. I take a chance that he doesn’t have anything he wants discard to pump Wild Mongrel, and just forgot Black Knight was first strike as some karmic payback for me forgetting he had Yavimaya Hollow, so I block with Black Knight. It turns out Rob has no tricks, and doesn’t discard, but he does regenerate with Yavimaya Hollow. Rob plays Imperious Perfect.

Marlana thinks she has enough counters on Jace Beleren, so she takes the draw herself. Marlana attacks Rob with Morphling and adds 1 pump taking Rob to 16.

Simon casts Ball Lightning swinging it at Marlana taking her to 14 then casts Squee.

Ken does nothing. (I promised I would put this in every time someone did nothing)

I decide things could get out of hand now that creatures are hitting the board, so I use Liliana Vess to tutor for Decree of Pain. I cast Nekrataal and with his come into play ability target Imperious Perfect.

Rob casts Tarmogoyf. Rob attacks Lilliana Vess with Wild Mongrel, feeling a Decree of Pain coming I go ahead and block with Nekretaal, so Rob discards a forest to pump Wild Mongrel.

Marlana casts Capsize with buyback targeting ‘Goyf, then attacks Rob with Morphling taking Rob to 13. Marlana has Capsize and Morphling now, she’s looking pretty good.

Simon casts Shivan Dragon and Marlana counters it with Power Sink.

Ken once again does nothing. What is going on? He’s obviously not drawing only lands, or at least he makes us think he isn’t drawing all land since he’s not playing them…

I cast Decree of Pain and Marlana casts Capsize with Buyback targeting Morphling. I forget to use Liliana.

Rob casts Tarmogoyf. Why didn’t I hold onto Decree of Pain knowing Rob had Tarmogoyf?

Marlana now has the nuts, she draws Stasis. With Capsize already online she can sow this thing up. I ask her to hold onto Stasis and I’ll get rid of Tarmogoyf first, she obliges.

Simon casts Wheel of Fortune and Marlana counters it with Counterspell, She doesn’t want to discard Capsize and Stasis!

K: Once again does nothing!

I cast Word of Command targeting Rob, so he Regenerates Tarmogoyf in response. I force Rob to play Fog. I Dance of the Dead targeting Nekretaal and use his come into play trigger targeting Tarmogoyf. The earlier regeneration field takes effect, so I cast Dark Banishing targeting Tarmogoyf. Finally got rid of that beast!

Rob casts Weathered Treefolk, at the end of his turn Marlana casts Capsize with Buyback targeting Weathered Treefolk.

Marlana throws down the lock and casts Stasis. Boo Hiss.

Simon is tapped out, so he does nothing.

Ken has plenty of untapped lands since he has done nothing for several turns. He casts Beacon of Tomorrows taking his life total to 50.

Since I have Nekrataal in play with Dance of the Dead, I am able to pay 2 and untap it.. So I do!

Rob does nothing. At the end of his turn Marlana casts Capsize with Buyback targeting Stasis.

Marlana casts Brainstorm and thinks very hard about casting Stasis. I tell her that if she doesn’t play Stasis I believe I can take Rob out of the game, then she only has to eliminate Simon to win. Ken tells her she should play Stasis and he will help her take me Rob and Simon out and they can have a shared victory. She doesn’t play Stasis. Yay, we get to play Magic for one more turn!

Simon casts Squee, Goblin Nabob

Ken, upset that there is no Stasis, talks a lot then casts Cage of Hands targeting Nekrataal.

True to my word of attempting to take out Rob, I cast Nether Traitor and attack Rob with my hasty Shadow creature, then Ninjitsu in Ink-eyes, Servant of Oni, Taking Tarmogoyf from Rob’s yard then cast Recurring Nightmare

Rob casts Weathered Treefolk, which Marlana promptly Capsizes with Buyback.

Marlana Draws with Jace Beleren, casts Stasis and Merfolk Looter.

Simon casts Mogg Fanatic.

Ken plays a land. At least he’s doing something!

I attack Rob with Tarmogoyf which would take him out of the game, so Ken saves him by casting Exile targeting Tarmogoyf. Bye bye Goyf.

Rob does nothing and Marlana casts Capsize with Buyback targeting Stasis at the end of his turn.

Marlana plays a land and now has enough land to cast Morphling and Stasis and still have enough to Capsize Buyback Stasis.

Simon attacks Ken with Squee.

Ken casts Ajani Goldmane gaining more life.

I do nothing.

Rob plays a land, Marlana does the old familiar Capsize with Buyback targeting Stasis at the end of his turn.

Marlana casts Clone targeting Morphling. What? Now she has two! She casts Stasis, and attacks Rob with Morphling.

Simon, Ken, I and Rob all do nothing with, you guessed it, Marlana casting Capsize with Buyback targeting Stasis at the end of Rob’s turn.

Marlana attacks Simon with both of her Morphlings, and Rob just wants this game to be over since the winner is becoming painfully obvious, so he casts Berzerk targeting Morphling which makes it a 10/1 and leaves Simon at 1 life. Marlana casts Stasis yet again.

After another round of nothing followed by a Capsize Buyback on Stasis, Marlana swings at Simon with Merfolk Looter and at Rob with Morphling pumped enough to eliminate both of them and win the game!

So that is a pretty epic game of Pentagram. I would love to hear about anyone out there playing this great format, leave me a comment in the fields below. Until next week this is Dale Lovelace telling you there is more than one way to play.