Theros Box and Packs

   So today those of us at MTG The Journey picked up our box we pre-ordered. We didn't happen to be in the top 30 who ordered a box, so we didn't get the "buy a box" Sylvan Caryatid promo, which was rather disappointing. But we did manage to get a few good pulls, and quite a few Mythics in our box. Just to name a few:

Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver 
Erebos, God of the Dead 
Stormbreath Dragon 
Underworld Cerberus 
Ashen Rider Thoughtseize 
Sylvan Caryatid 
Whip of Erebos 
Swan Song 

and many more, we played a few pack wars in the beginning, but after 5-6 rounds, just opened packs up and got excited at some of the pulls we had. We took an hour or so to do some sorting and get into our Xen mode of working through our cards. We then called it a night and said we'd sort through the commons later. All in all we got very close to $190 of worth out of our $95 box, so it was very worth our investment.

   The best part of the whole night was the packs we bought from Wal-Mart, that weren't even included in our case. We each bought one pack, just for the pure sake of getting one the day they came out. And sure enough, he pulled a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, worth $7 on the $4 he spent! And I pulled a Purphoros, God of the Forge, worth $28 on the $4 I spent! So well worth the investment! Never underestimate those random packs!

   Over the next few days, we will be waiting for our pre-orders to come in from MTG Madness and Coolstuffinc, and get ready to work on some new brews. Look forward to the Mono-Black deck we have coming up, as well as our All-American-Control brew we are working as well.

     Thanks for reading, and we hope to hear some input from you soon!

Theros BUG Reanimator Deck

Okay MTG Brewers, my friends and I on Tappedout brewed up a little BUG re-animator (yes, I know I am stuck on the re-animator thing) deck tonight and I think it warrants a look see.

Now it does have a bit of a slow get up and go, but man does it have all the tools it needs to survive. It hits hard and keeps getting stronger.

Here's the decklist so you can check it out for yourself

Creatures:(21)

2x Desecration Demon

2x Giant Adephage

2x Kalonian Hydra

4x Lotleth Troll

2x Prime Speaker Zegana

3x Reaper of the Wilds

2x Shadowborn Demon

4x Sylvan Caryatid


Instant(s):(10)

3x Abrupt Decay

3x Dissolve

4x Rescue from the Underworld


Enchantment(s):(5)

2x Bident of Thassa

3x Whip of Erebos


Land:(24)

4x Breeding Pool

4x Swamp

2x Forest

4x Overgrown Tomb

3x Temple of Deceit

3x Temple of Mystery

4x Watery Grave


So that's the deck. I think it's got a ton of potential. Early game you have the concept of feeding the larger creature to the Troll until you get established, dropping the Reaper early game (turn 3-4) for defense and then following with either of the Demons. Once your board presence is established, you Whip or Rescue your larger creatures from the graveyard for serious mid-game damage.
And you still have the counters and removal to deal with any serious threats, and the Bident for some card draw as well. Lots of weapons to use here.

Let us know what you think, and as always, thanks for reading and we hope you check out our other decks and articles. Including the one we just did reviewing MTG Madness, go check out their website and give our review of them a read! Until next time, keep brewing!

 Wizards of the Coast, Magic: The Gathering, the tap symbol (), the mana symbols (), and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. © 2009 Wizards. All Rights Reserved. MTG The Journey is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC. All use of card names, text & images are for journalistic and informational purposes only.

Checking out MTG Madness

So for those of you who may have seen ads for, or are thinking of checking out MTG Madness to put in some card orders, or to take advantage of those free $5 coupons or Booster Packs they advertise all the time, I am going to review their website, and offer some quick and easy info and feedback on how it goes.

So since Theros is getting ready to release this weekend, I think I am going to Pre-Order cards from the Theros set, to see if they quickly deliver on the cards that release.

Okay, so upon arrival at the site, there is already a $5 off coupon blinking at us to use. That's a good feature, if I decide to shop here, that can come in handy. Never hurts to get money off right from the beginning of the site. Second thing that catches my eye, they have articles that might be helpful for me in deciding what cards to buy. Let's check one out.
   So I clicked on Theros Spoiler: Second Impression and it seems to be some pretty sound breakdowns of some of the cards. If nothing else, it at least gives me an impression of what the cards might do, or take the place of in a deck that I might currently have.

Let's check out the Rewards section before we decide what to order. We might get more free stuff if we order a certain dollar amount of cards or something of the like.
   Hmm, so it seems like you do earn points for every dollar you spend, and those translate into emblems. And as you earn emblems, you can also trade those in for bigger emblems, which we can only assume will give us more discounts in the future. It seems a little confusing, but I guess if you spend $100 you will get $1 off of a future purchase, and those can be stacked up to 5 of those, and then you will jump from getting $4 to getting a $12.50 off an order once you hit the $500 spending mark. It seems like the points will go away if you are inactive on the site for a certain amount of time.
  I would say they could improve on this rewards system page by explaining the Emblem system slightly better. I had to give it a few minutes thought to figure it out. All they have for an explanation is a small graph in the bottom right hand corner. Still not a bad rewards system all in all, if you order a lot of cards for your brews, saving future money is a good plan.

  So without further ado, let's get into searching for some cards.

So looking up Temple of Deceit
, which I need for my BUG Re-Animator deck. Is going for $5.99 on here. In comparison to Coolstuffinc, it's exactly equal, it's also going for $5.99 there. So comparative pricing for Pre-Order there. So I added 2 of those and 2 Temple of Mystery
.
   Now one thing I do like is when you click the "Buy" button, you get a detailed message telling you how much your total is.  I like that because sometimes I think "Only $6 each, wow!" And then don't see til the end that a full playset of them is like $24

   So I also want to pick up another Prime Speaker Zegana
for my deck. I searched it out, and as it turns out, they don't have it in stock. That's okay. There's a few other things I need as well.
   As it turns out, they also don't have the Lord of the Void, Obzedat, Ghost Council
, Giant Adephage
or Desecration Demon
. I am pretty disappointed in that. Those are all staples I need to build my deck.
   They did, however, have the Breeding Pool
I needed. At $13.99, which is going for $11.99 on Coolstuff, not a huge difference, but on TCGplayer the average price is $10.09, still not awful though.
   And they had the full playset of Manaweft Sliver
I needed for $1.49 each. Which is once again, the same price as Coolstuff.
   Almost picked up the Shadowborn Demon
to placehold for a Lord of the Void
. They had it for $9.99 on there, but then I cross-checked prices (and anyone who orders cards online SHOULD do this BTW) and found it cheaper for $5.99, which is too far of a gap for me to justify.
    So I added a Dissolve
pre-order for $0.99, exactly the same as everywhere else. And I added in 3 Bident of Thassa
for $1.50 each, also dead on for price. I also picked up two copies of Jarad's Orders
for $0.49 each for that deck.

   So in the checkout page, it's very simple and straightforward, AND the totem thing is explained better here. You have the ability to redeem your points for a one time shot, or you can save them to use later for a bigger discount. The promo system is easy to use and works instantly. You have the option to ship in a bubble envelope for $1 extra (I took this option) always be safe when shipping your cards! I like the fact that this option is presented.

   You can either pay with a Visa, Mastercard, or PayPal, which I like, because PayPal is so easy to use, and can be filled by people of any age, who may not want or have the ability to use a credit card. Good points for them in my opinion here. However, I did take the time to notice, that any dollar amount that is discounted with a promo code will not be applied to your total spent at the site towards your points, which makes sense.
   So now I will wait, and the rest of this article will be finished as soon as I receive the cards in the mail, as I cannot finish the rest of the review until I can comment on how fast the cards arrived. And it will be after the 27th that the pre-ordered cards will ship.

So far, my assessment of the site is as follows on a scale from 1-10, with 10 being the best

8/10 - EASE OF USE:
For the most part I found the site very easy to use, and it flowed extremely well. I did notice that it is extremely hard to use the hover-over card feature on a cellphone to add cards. Hence I had to wait until I got to my house to use the site. Also the confusing thing with the points system from the Rewards page needs to be addressed.

SOLUTION: Having a manual feature below the card so you can add the cards to the cart and having the price featured there would be extremely helpful. Also adding a further explanation of the Rewards benefits I think would be great.

7/10 - PRICING :
A couple of the cards seemed a bit overpriced. The pre-release cards were dead-on what everywhere else was. Competitively, the pricing discount seems to even things out though. (Once again, it deems to be noted that this company is new on the scene, so their price margins can be expected to be a bit higher, due to not having as much stock and business flow as other sites and stores that have been established for longer.)

SOLUTION: Perhaps check out other sites and figure out who is offering cards at the lowest price, and match them a little closer. In the long term, I do not foresee this being an issue, because the longer they stay in business and the more customer base they build, the more even their prices will be. I would expect to see even prices along this whole new set, and better availability of product moving forward. 

6/10 - PRODUCT AVAILABILITY:
It should be noted that this site is very young, and more product will be available the longer they are around. However, I was extremely disappointed in the lack of cards that I wanted to buy being there from the RTR block. All the cards I wanted to pre-order from Theros were available, which was a plus. But the ability to get what I want when I want it is crucial to where I buy cards from. I don't mind having to spend a bit more, especially when I am getting rewards points for doing so, but I want a one stop shop. As long as Theros stays in stock, and has a high level of availability, I would raise my evaluation, but that remains to be seen moving forward.

SOLUTION: One thing I can see that will help this website resolve this issue, is giving users incentives for turning in their own cards for store credit. Plus it will help them with their inventory problem. And cards that they see as being really high in demand, or are on a WANTS list, they could offer just a touch more for them. Not, obviously, at market value, but say a card is worth $9, offer them $4 to turn it in, they still net a $5 profit, and get a card they need to inventory on the site. They could have a $10 minimum on the amount turned in or some such . . . I'm rambling, just an idea.

SHIPPING:  7/10 (Incomplete)

COST: Shipping seems a bit pricey, with the cheapest shipping being around $4. However, this company is located in Israel. So pretty much everything is international shipping for them. I feel that as their company grows, it will improve, and the cost of the shipping will go down.

SPEED: I recieved a notice on (9/29) that my cards had shipped. So 2 days after the release the cards were in the mail. That seems to be right on par if not a little earlier than I expected. I really wasn't expecting a shipping notice until Monday, the 30'th. They arrived in the country on 10/2, and arrived to me on 10/10 in good condition with the packaging intact and the cards safe. Due to the fact that this is internationally shipped I would say 10 total days isn't bad. .



   I will have more to come as soon as the cards arrive. Look forward to my full review and recommendation as soon as they get here! As always, thank you for reading and check back soon for more!

   So our package arrived on the 10'th, I checked with the website and they said it is not uncommon for things to get hung up in customs, so that was probably the reason for the delay. Either way, our cards arrived in the bubble envelope that we had the option to select in the shipping selections on the MTG Madness website for $1.

The Bubble Mailer

   So we opened up our package to find the cards bundled nicely in-between two top-loaders.

The Cards In-Between Top-Loaders

So we took the top-loaders apart, and they had them in two penny-sleeves to keep them safe.

The Cards In Penny Sleeves

And then we looked through the cards, and everything seems to have arrived safely and in order.

The Cards Arrived

   So in conclusion, we would definitely recommend this website as a place for you to give your business, as they are reliable, and do deliver what you order. My experience with the management was good, they responded to any questions I posed through e-mail within 24 hours and tried to be as patient and as courteous as possible.
    Even though they are a small company, they are trying to build their base and compete with some rather large established gaming companies. And while they do have room to grow, I do believe they will do so well, and fulfill a lot of the options that people are looking for in time.

    As always, thanks for reading, and we hope to see you soon!

Rant on Netdecks, just because.

   So Kevin on Roguedeckbuilder.com hit on a subject that is very near and dear to me, in the form of people who play Netdecks. But more specifically, how it seems that all the top decks in Standard are people who either play a variant of, or an exact copy of a Netdeck. There is just no originality. Nobody doing anything out of the norm or off the beaten path. It's seriously freakin annoying.
   And of course, you get excuses for why people do it too.

   "I'm no good at building my own decks."

   "I don't have the time do that much homework."

   "I'm just going to lose if I try to brew my own ideas."

You know what all that sounds like to me, you just don't want to put forth the effort to make something good on your own. And this is why every common and uncommon in a set never gets used. Or people say, "Oh, you know what would work better there, a (fill in rare that runs $30 a card)."

   I run G/W/B all the time, and the most common card I get recommended is Voice of Resurgence
and it is sure annoying. If I wanted to run Voice of Resurgence I would. I don't honestly see the card as being THAT good. Not to justify spending $50-$60 a card. I will find something like I like a LOT more than that to run. I even have stated on Tappedout before that I DON'T want to run VOR and people still try to convince me that a deck needs it.

Or like just recently, my new BWG Re-Animator deck, I just got comments that it will never see competative play because Scavenging Ooze
exists. Really? I would think that Rest in Peace
poses more of a threat than that! But both can be removed from the field with Abrupt Decay
without too much problem, and there are tons of other answers as well! The advice they gave was to make a more mid-rangey style deck that relied heavily on creatures and not so much on re-animator. IT'S A RE-ANIMATOR DECK!!!! If I can't do what I want with it, then why bother even trying? I mean, if your best advice is build a different deck, then save your opinions. That's not what I want. YOU build a different deck. I want to get mine to work or fail trying, but at least I'm not copying someone else's idea and winning like it's mine.

Okay, I'm done now. Just wanted to get that out of my system.

Theros Pre-Release 3-2-1

Well, as it was a midnight release and I had super long games, my ability to update was extremely limited. So from what I remember from round 3: My lifegain went off like crazy (I will post pictures and decklist later on today) in this match, with the Whip of Erebos playing a huge role. I went 1-2 against his blue white. The first game went 35 mins though and he came out on top after his Shipbreaker Kraken hit the field. The next two games went quickly though. Round 4: I played a R/G deck that I went 2-0 against. I had amazing hands and my Reaper of the Wilds and Grey Merchant of Asphodel played huge roles! There was so much synergy it was nasty. Round 5: This guy picked the Path of Ambition as well, and moved from W to a R splash, and played it well. I went 1-1-1 against this guy and it went to time with him at 3 life and me at 12. My opening hand two out of 3 games was just unreal though. I really could have used some trample here. Round 6: Played against a girl that had only been playing for around a month. She did well though and was playing R/G as well. I went 2-1 and only lost the second game due to horrible mana screw. The last game I had to mull down to 5 and then had all the right answers at the right times. I promise I will detail more later, but for right now, its time for the sleep. As always, thanks for reading and we'll see you soon

First Round Theros Pre-Release

Okay, so I picked black. The path of ambition. My rare for my seeded pack was Triad of the Fates, and my supporting color in my packs was by far green. I drew the Bow of Nylea and Reaper of the Wild with the Bow of Erebos in tow. Solid stuff to play with, lots of high mana cost tho. My first match I lost both games, against a guy playing a Minotaur Tribal deck. The first game I mana screwed big time and lost. Second game I played into my Reaper of the Wilds and completely misplayed 6th turn for the loss. We played a third game for fun and I was close, but misplayed a Nemesis of Mortals and lost again, but that game was much closer. My second match the guy dropped, so 2-0 by default. So at this point I am 1-1. Moving forward I am going to be playing much more carefully and hoping to have better matchups. (Live from Main Street Magic and Miniatures)

Welcome to Facebook Friends

I just created a Facebook page for MTG The Journey and just wanted to welcome anyone who ends up here from Facebook.

Here I try to give an honest opinion of the Magic The Gathering playing experience from just a normal everyday guy. I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. But I want to share my experiences and opinions as I learn more and grow in my skill with this game so that everyone else can reap the knowledge I might acquire.

I have a ton of fun doing this, and I hope we can learn a lot from each other on this journey through the game that is Magic The Gathering.