Diablo 3 finally launched!

Posted: May 19th, 2012

It’s been an insane week! First off, I was totally sick flat in bed Sunday night until about Thursday early morning. So the first few days after the game launched, I didn’t play much – 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there. The new style of starting/resuming/joining friends in different parts of the game is nice, but I don’t think it yields itself to a very casual playstyle. But small annoyances for a game that is so totally EPIC! My Demon Hunter is level 35 and I beat Normal mode late last night with a few friends. Great storyline, great graphics and amazing gameplay + replayability! I’m glad that I was able to keep the entire storyline and plot developments a secret and not be spoiled by stuff out on the internet.

I won’t spoil anything here either. Needless to say I am just stoked to keep playing this game, soloing nightmare start to finish and then doing it in Hell too. Inferno sounds like it is still a pretty big challenge for people and I’m stoked about that too! All around I’m very happy!

Playtesting Standard RB Bloodletting deck

Posted: May 9th, 2012

I am waiting on the dual lands to come in from ABU Games to ‘complete’ the deck, so in the meantime I threw in a bunch of just basic land to get some play-testing done with the deck. I can tell from the @Smi77y tweets and those talking to him on Twitter that his Kamikaze deck is having some success. I went in a slightly different direction with my deck, but I believe it will be effective. The Butcher Ghouls have some instant bounce-back with undying to allow them to sacrificed multiple times. In addition, the Soulcage Fiends also hurt my opponent pretty badly if there are a couple Blood Artists out on the boar at the time.

Early removal in the game is pretty easy to come by with a turn 1 Appetite for Brains to remove anything particularly nasty my opponent has in his hand. In addition, the Bone Splinters + Thatcher Revolt or Gather the Townsfolk combination lets me remove any early threats they get out while I’m trying to setup the board. Overall it should be a pretty fast-moving removal deck. I really do prefer to hit hard and fast!

My only concern right now is the mana curve — having three colors may be too much. If that is the case, I’ll need to evaluate what to replace the white with. I wanted Gravecrawler in the deck because of it’s ability to be brought back from the graveyard, however they are selling for nearly $10 per card. It’s getting harder and harder to justify the cost of singles when I keep building decks. Eventually I just have to say no.

Updated list is in my Deck Ideas link above and also below for quick reference.

Read More

Updating decks after Avacyn Restored launch

Posted: May 7th, 2012

Spent time today organizing all the cards I opened up Friday night (two booster boxes). I traded in a fair number of cards and got a TON of credit from ABU Games. So I traded those in for a bunch of singles I needed (older cards mostly) plus an entire booster box of Innistrad. I figure that will round out my collection nicely until fall when the next block gets launched.

I’m pretty impressed with the cards in Avacyn Restored. I redid my RG Werewolves deck and it went from Modern legal to Standard legal; it should be incredibly powerful now! In addition to modifying this deck, I am going to do some work on my Modern Mill deck and build a couple entirely new decks — Bloodartist, UW Angels deck w/rare angel and a UB Discard deck. I’m pretty stoked!

The new Werewolves deck can be seen after the break.

Read More

Avacyn Restored launched!

Posted: May 4th, 2012

First off, may the 4th be with you! Today is Star Wars day and my 8 year-old son is super excited to put all his Star Wars Legos together this afternoon and take a picture for the contest Lego is running.

Today is launch day and #FNM! I don’t know that I’ll be playing tonight, that kind of depends on when I find the time to open some cards. I have to stop by Blakfyre this afternoon and pick up the two booster boxes I purchased. Out of the whole set, I am most excited for putting together my Bloodletting deck! I’ll probably need to hunt down a couple Gravecrawler cards from the store, but I should have everything else needed to put it together. Then I just need to find an opportunity to play it. Based off what I am seeing on Twitter the past few days, people are having good success with the Blood Artist Kamikaze deck that @Smi77y came up with earlier in the week on Star City Games.

I’ll update thread later with highlights of the cards I manage to get from the two boxes. Hopefully there will be a couple Avacyn, Angel of Hope cards — I need at least one for my Singleton and then I have a great idea for a GW Angel deck.

A painful control deck

Posted: May 2nd, 2012

Brainstorming deck ideas while I wait for transatlantic file transfers run in the background has become my go-to activity at work the last week or two. My latest idea stemmed from playing casual games against my co-worker. The deck is a play on a mill deck, but not entirely. It prevents anything from going to the opponents graveyard, instead forcing them exile it. From there it is just a matter of whittling them down.

Full deck list and strategy thoughts after the break.

Read More