Killer Joe
New member
Okay, it's been one month since I joind the MTGO community and I have grown to really like it. I still haven't bought any virtual cards yet and made one really wierd trade for that common artifact from Mirrodin where you pay {1} to sac it gain & 5 life draw a card. I traded away 1 forest and 1 Island for that. Weird but I did it.
When I log on I always stay in New Player mode b/c well, I dan't have a real deck. Oh sure, I put together a UWG Vanguard deck, I'm using Serra Angel where you gain 2 life for every spell you play but I always lose and that's okay. I love seeing the variety of non-tournament decks in the New Players room. The cards I use are the free Promotional Set I got when I signed up and used the Activation code; an $8.99 vaule I tell ya, not too bad fer nuthin'!
I actually spend 95% of my time in the Training Room where you can only use the 9E preconstructed decks. What's neat for me is that I actually HAVE all five decks in real cards. I love Core Set pre-cons and have all of them since 7E. So I pretty much know the card pool from memory.
The folks there are nice and "Sharks" hate to go there becuase no one is playing Standard, (he-he). But I am beginning to find out that many players there are, get this, women! Not girls but college age and Moms. I mention this because most places I have to play magic at brick and morter stores, there never any females very much. And most of the guys there are older, too. I really like how you can chit-chat during game play and that's pretty much what has sold me on the idea of playing MTGO. Yes, the Chit-Chat.
When I play against an opponent i always type in "Hi,..." after the mulligans are finished. 95% of the time I get an immediate "Hi" back. This is usually followed by "How long have you been playing?" or "This is my first online Magic game." The real honorable players always add to their greeting, "Good Luck"" and I my reply is always "u2". I used to hate abbrev. online like LOL, LMAO, or cutesy stuff like that but if you try to coreectly spell everything and/or use proper capitalization and puncuation you'd be there for a while, which I have been. The older folks (my age) can't help themselves and do use correct grammer and that's okay even if it does make for a Loooong game, which I like!
My avatar and play mat always reflects the decks I play; I'm currently Ehrnam Djinn and play the mono-green "Custom Creatures" deck. Two weeks ago I decided to pick a deck for the week, then I was Grinning Demon for the avatar and plaing "Dead Again" which has Nightmare and Underworld Dreams as it's rares. I did pretty well with this deck but it's nemesis is the best deck of all five; "Army of Justice". Everyone seems to play this deck which is why I don't play it too often. It's rares are Glorious Anthem and Holyness? It's the one that gives target blocking creature +7/+7 (OUCH!). A good player playing that deck would beat me more than 50% of the time. In the hands of a novice it's easy to clobber them with any of the five including the hardest deck to win with; the mono-blue deck. It's rares are Archivist and Mahamoti Djinn.
My next deck which I played last week WAS the Lofty Heights deck I really enjoy playing this one because it IS so hard to win with it. It's only two counter magic spells; Remove Soul and Mana Leak makes descisions really tough. But there are plenty of other control cards non-countermagic. Confiscate is awesome, I never liked it before but it's so versitile. Against the white deck I save it for their Glorious Anthem, boy, that really takes the wind out of that player's sails. When i play against black I use it for their Nightmare, not to use it but as a removal spell since it's p/t is based on how many swamps you control. Another good card is Puppeteer, this card combo's well with Archivist since it's ability gives you the choice of tapping or untapping target creature. Something to note: If you're ever playing in the Training Room and you need to use an ability during your opponent's pre-combat main phase, click on the Main phase icon in the bottom right corner and it'll turn the black dot to red. The program will yeild priority to you at that time instead of skipping to you opponent's attack mode from their main phase if they don't play a spell. I didn't know that until I asked
If I didn't mention it already my screen name is: Killer Joe CPA
Now, as for the red deck called World Aflame well let me just say you can pretty much tell how the game is going for you by turn three. If you don't play Stone Rain on turn three you have a good chance of being clobbered soon. I played this deck at the beginning of my adventure on MTGO and it can be a very mean deck. here's how:
Turn 1: Mountain followed by a 30 sec. wait time to yeild your turn.
Turn 2: Mountain, Volcanic Hammer to the face as fast as you can then yield as fast as you can.
Turn 3: Mountain, Stone Rain.
Turn 4: Mountain Either another Stone Rain or Demolish
Turn 5: Mountain, Anarchist targeting your Stone Rain or Demolish in your graveyard.
I've had some opponents write "gg" by that time, "gg" means Good Game in MTGO language. Okay more abbrev. "np" means No Problem, "brb" means Be Right Back, "std" this one is funny b/c if you're like me you grew up knowing this to mean Sexually Transmitted Disease but in MTGO language it means Standard as well as "ext" means Extended but neither of those are used in the traing room, I just thought I'd share.
...more later.
When I log on I always stay in New Player mode b/c well, I dan't have a real deck. Oh sure, I put together a UWG Vanguard deck, I'm using Serra Angel where you gain 2 life for every spell you play but I always lose and that's okay. I love seeing the variety of non-tournament decks in the New Players room. The cards I use are the free Promotional Set I got when I signed up and used the Activation code; an $8.99 vaule I tell ya, not too bad fer nuthin'!
I actually spend 95% of my time in the Training Room where you can only use the 9E preconstructed decks. What's neat for me is that I actually HAVE all five decks in real cards. I love Core Set pre-cons and have all of them since 7E. So I pretty much know the card pool from memory.
The folks there are nice and "Sharks" hate to go there becuase no one is playing Standard, (he-he). But I am beginning to find out that many players there are, get this, women! Not girls but college age and Moms. I mention this because most places I have to play magic at brick and morter stores, there never any females very much. And most of the guys there are older, too. I really like how you can chit-chat during game play and that's pretty much what has sold me on the idea of playing MTGO. Yes, the Chit-Chat.
When I play against an opponent i always type in "Hi,..." after the mulligans are finished. 95% of the time I get an immediate "Hi" back. This is usually followed by "How long have you been playing?" or "This is my first online Magic game." The real honorable players always add to their greeting, "Good Luck"" and I my reply is always "u2". I used to hate abbrev. online like LOL, LMAO, or cutesy stuff like that but if you try to coreectly spell everything and/or use proper capitalization and puncuation you'd be there for a while, which I have been. The older folks (my age) can't help themselves and do use correct grammer and that's okay even if it does make for a Loooong game, which I like!
My avatar and play mat always reflects the decks I play; I'm currently Ehrnam Djinn and play the mono-green "Custom Creatures" deck. Two weeks ago I decided to pick a deck for the week, then I was Grinning Demon for the avatar and plaing "Dead Again" which has Nightmare and Underworld Dreams as it's rares. I did pretty well with this deck but it's nemesis is the best deck of all five; "Army of Justice". Everyone seems to play this deck which is why I don't play it too often. It's rares are Glorious Anthem and Holyness? It's the one that gives target blocking creature +7/+7 (OUCH!). A good player playing that deck would beat me more than 50% of the time. In the hands of a novice it's easy to clobber them with any of the five including the hardest deck to win with; the mono-blue deck. It's rares are Archivist and Mahamoti Djinn.
My next deck which I played last week WAS the Lofty Heights deck I really enjoy playing this one because it IS so hard to win with it. It's only two counter magic spells; Remove Soul and Mana Leak makes descisions really tough. But there are plenty of other control cards non-countermagic. Confiscate is awesome, I never liked it before but it's so versitile. Against the white deck I save it for their Glorious Anthem, boy, that really takes the wind out of that player's sails. When i play against black I use it for their Nightmare, not to use it but as a removal spell since it's p/t is based on how many swamps you control. Another good card is Puppeteer, this card combo's well with Archivist since it's ability gives you the choice of tapping or untapping target creature. Something to note: If you're ever playing in the Training Room and you need to use an ability during your opponent's pre-combat main phase, click on the Main phase icon in the bottom right corner and it'll turn the black dot to red. The program will yeild priority to you at that time instead of skipping to you opponent's attack mode from their main phase if they don't play a spell. I didn't know that until I asked
If I didn't mention it already my screen name is: Killer Joe CPA
Now, as for the red deck called World Aflame well let me just say you can pretty much tell how the game is going for you by turn three. If you don't play Stone Rain on turn three you have a good chance of being clobbered soon. I played this deck at the beginning of my adventure on MTGO and it can be a very mean deck. here's how:
Turn 1: Mountain followed by a 30 sec. wait time to yeild your turn.
Turn 2: Mountain, Volcanic Hammer to the face as fast as you can then yield as fast as you can.
Turn 3: Mountain, Stone Rain.
Turn 4: Mountain Either another Stone Rain or Demolish
Turn 5: Mountain, Anarchist targeting your Stone Rain or Demolish in your graveyard.
I've had some opponents write "gg" by that time, "gg" means Good Game in MTGO language. Okay more abbrev. "np" means No Problem, "brb" means Be Right Back, "std" this one is funny b/c if you're like me you grew up knowing this to mean Sexually Transmitted Disease but in MTGO language it means Standard as well as "ext" means Extended but neither of those are used in the traing room, I just thought I'd share.
...more later.