Category: Card Games

Bloomburrow Sealed Writeup

It’s been a while since I really did any physical Magic tourney events. As I said two years ago:

So in conclusion: I probably wouldn’t go to another physical prerelease. Magic: Arena and Magic as a physical card game are two competing ecosystems instead of a single synergistic one, and they’re both expensive.

Me, 2022

Note: When I say “physical magic” here, I’m mostly talking about the time involved in tournaments, or any longer form/multi-round events. No issues with kitchen-table or friendly commander at an LGS.

Welp, I’m writing this, so I obviously did end up going to another one. And no, no one was covering my entry fee. That said, I was going with friends.

Also, if you enjoy these writeups, you can do me a favor by following me on Twitter.

The one good card I got at this event. Art by Jeff Carpenter, and you can actually get prints of this on his stop!

Most of my general complaints about Magic as a physical thing remain. The last event I went to was Brothers War, and it went 5 hours. This event went just about 6 1/2 hours, going to 5 rounds, though there’s a reason for that. More on that later. But enough of that. Let’s talk about the deck!

And while I don’t want to spoil anything, I will say that while I did fairly poorly, the friend I went with finished second, and I’ll be looking at their deck as well.

The Cards

It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools, and as the poor craftsman that I am, it’s time for some tool blaming.

Here are the rares.

Maha, It's Feathers Night
Wick, the Whorled Mind
Lunar Convocation
Dawn's Truce
Finneas, Ace Archer
Salvation Swan
Thornvault Forager
Clement, the Worrywart

This actually doesn’t immediately look that bad, especially with Maha being a huge bomb that almost always trades 2 for 1 on cards even if it gets hit with a removal spell.

Except I did not get a single piece of Black removal. Adding insult to injury on that account, I did not get any of the changeling artifact creatures, and I only had a single rat. So while black looked promising at first, running it meant that I would have to have my other primary color carry the entire weight of dealing with threats.

And those other colors were not doing great either.

Black - Zero hard removal. 
White - 3 hard removal spells, and 4 damage blast
Green - A single Polliwallop, and a Pawpatch Formation
Blue - 3 Hand Bounce, 1 counterspell
Red - Two 6 Damage Bursts, and 1 4 damage spell.

So, with my truly incredible bomb ruled out by dint of just having the worst supporting set of cards in its color ever, I found myself in a bit of a rough place. The only two cards left to me that really had the potential to be bombs were Salvation Swan, and a single copy of Shrike Force. This combined with most of my good creatures being in Green led to deciding to go Green/White with a plan of grinding the game out and pushing through with pump spells and flyers.

Here’s a link to the list on Aetherhub.

1 Sunshower Druid
1 Brave-Kin Duo
1 Heirloom Epic 
2 Bark-Knuckle Boxer
1 Overprotect
1 Pawpatch Formation
1 Repel Calamity
1 Parting Gust
1 Sonar Strike
1 Intrepid Rabbit
1 Brambleguard Veteran
1 Shrike Force
1 Stickytongue Sentinel
1 Clifftop Lookout
1 Banishing Light
1 Heaped Harvest
1 Treetop Sentries
2 Rust-Shield Rampager
1 Junkblade Bruiser
1 Salvation Swan
1 Thornvault Forager
1 Uncharted Haven
1 Oakhollow Village
7 Forest
8 Plains

So. Not the finest thing. Not a terrible curve, but a real lack of actual big threats. I had a lot of expectations heading into Bloomburrow, and most of them were wrong. But I do think I was generally correct in my assessment that the general power/toughness of a lot of the creatures is much lower (or at least starts that way).

The Games

I did pretty badly, finishing with a 2-2 match record.

Match 1 was a pretty even slog into a Black/Green deck that I ended up going 2-1 on, though game 3 was much, much closer. The turning point came when my opponent dropped Ygra, Eater of All, and I ended up blocking it with everything.

We both completely missed that he could sacrificed his creatures to pump Ygra at instant speed before damage, but the miss went in my favor, and I managed to stabilize out despite having to trade most of my board.

Match 2 was weird. It ended with me winning game 1, and drawing game 2. Game 1 I managed to sweep through very quickly with Shrike Force. Game 2 however took a much more brutal turn, and probably would have been a loss had we not gone to time.

Match 3 was against the friend I came with. He stomped me game 1, and in desperation, I swapped all my white for red in game 2 to try to stem the tide. Tide status? Not stemmed.

Match 4 went poorly on two fronts for me. Game one I mana-flooded, game 2 I got mana-screwed. Regardless, my opponent’s aggressive red/black lizard deck meant that I think they would have had the advantage either way.

So, I did badly.

My friend did not.

The Part Where My Friend Cleaned House

This was my friend’s list.

Please note the fact that my deck was valued at $11. His is $65.
1 Lumra, Bellow of the Woods
1 Warren Warleader
1 Junkblade Bruiser
1 Muerra, Trash Tactician
1 Finneas, Ace Archer
1 Fountainport Bell
1 Heaped Harvest
2 Banishing Light
1 Polliwallop
1 Harnesser of Storms
2 Sunshower Druid
1 Seedglaive Mentor
2 Moonrise Cleric
1 Bark-Knuckle Boxer
1 Galewind Moose
1 Head of the Homestead
1 Overprotect
2 Intrepid Rabbit
6 Forest
8 Plains
1 Rockface Village
1 Mountain
2 Oakhollow Village
1 Pawpatch Formation

So, despite us both running similar colors, and many similar cards, he ended up going 4-0, going to top 2, and going 1-2 in the finals.

I think there’s a lot going on here, but having lost to him, I think it’s also very hard in limited to deal with your opponent dropping bomb after bomb, especially the Warren Warleader. Still, his choice to go into three colors and build a slightly more aggressive deck with a lot more 3 drops clearly paid off.

So. Somewhat different results between us.

Final Thoughts

One event isn’t enough to give opinions on the play-ability of a set, but it is a good chance to reflect on the general feel. I was concerned that Bloomburrow would either feel really fast due to the token creation, or very slow do the large grindy boards, and it ended up being neither.

I do think this is going to be one of friendliest sets for new and newer players that we’ve seen for a while. It has a very broad appeal with it’s woodland Redwall-esque aesthetic, and the mechanics feel pretty simple compared to Thunder Junction.

As the result of all of this, I’m really excited to see what Bloomburrow looks like as draft format, where it’ll be much easier to get a lot of the typal synergies online.

Will I be doing more physical magic?

Well, maybe in another 2 years.

Mottainai

I have mixed experiences with Carl Chudyk games. I quite liked Glory to Rome. My opinion on Aegean Sea was brief, concise, and not positive. (Aegean Seas remains to this day, the only board game I have ever ragequit.) So it’s good that Mottainai swings back in the other direction.

I’ve heard Mottainai described as Glory to Rome lite. I agree with some parts of that, and disagree others. For starters, Mottainai uses the same general structure of Glory to Rome. Every thing is card, and each card is everything. For example, a card is an action, crafting material, crafted item, and helper, but not at the same time.

While I won’t go into the full structure of the game, the general gist of Mottainai is as follows: you’re trying to get the most victory points, and you get victory points by crafting items and selling materials. On your turn, you play a card from your hand to take an action, and then copy other players’ actions. These actions can get you more cards, let you craft items for their abilities, or perhaps get helpers, or sell various things.

While this might look completely unparsable at first, after just a game or two, it’s easy to see that I have two clay in craft, a Clerk helper, a completed Fan, and I’m about to take a Monk action. Also there are some resources in the middle of the table.

I’m not sure there’s much value in trying to summarize Mottainai mechanically. It’s not quite an action selection game, but there is some action selection and follow-the-leader sorts of elements. It’s not entirely a tableau builder, but the items you build are both your main source of victory points, while offering additional capabilities.

In that sense, it’s like Glory to Rome. Let’s talk about the ways in which it isn’t.

Just like Aegean Sea, every card is unique. Unlike Aegean Sea, I’m actually happy to see all the unique cards. Here’s a small smattering.

Probably the biggest difference is that Mottainai takes 20-30 minutes to play, instead of the slog that Glory to Rome can turn into. It’s a much faster game, and while it uses similar structures, it can have a very different mindset to it. Glory to Rome has always felt like building an engine, whereas Mottainai feels much more like looking for lethal in a game of Magic.

Another thing that I find interesting about Mottainai is that as I’ve played more and more with the same few folks, the game has distinctly shifted. Early on, we played like it was necessary to take every action, but as we’ve played more, the pace of the game has slowed down.

Not enough to slow down play, of course. We’ve now played enough that we can resolve turns and actions quickly. But the tempo has shifted down as we’ve recognized that it’s not necessarily to always be firing on full cylinders. Especially because if you take a strong action, your opponents get to take it to… but if you choose to skip an action and just draw a card, your opponents get nothing.

If you liked (or wanted to like Glory To Rome) I highly recommend Mottainai. Or if you’re just curious. It has a bit of grit to it, but once you learn, it’s a fantastic quick game.

Should Paradox Engine be banned in Historic Brawl?

It seems like every few months, I see an argument about Paradox Engine in Brawl and Historic Brawl formats. Someone comes in, complains about the card, other people agree or push back, and then everything returns to normal.

Rinse, repeat.

Given how often this happens, I thought I’d take some time to lay out my view, so I stop typing it out every time this happens.

Paradox Engine art by Vincent Proce

As always, my sources for this are in the spreadsheet.

What gets a card banned in Historic Brawl?

There are several things that can get a card banned from Historic Brawl by WoTC. Some are very clear and easy to understand, while others are much more subjective.

Ban Gang 2024

The easiest category of bans to understand are cards that shutdown wide classes commanders. Examples include Sorcerous Spyglass and Chalice of the Void.

The second more subjective category are cards that are “too powerful.” This includes Channel, Demonic Tutor, Natural Order, Tainted Pact, and Oko, Thief of Crowns.

And then we have the the rest of them. Cards that are banned for reasons specific to the card themselves. Lutri, Agent of Treachery, Field of the Dead, Ugin the Spirit Dragon, and Nexus of Fate. We’ll call this group the “Weird Ones.”

So here’s my take: if you want to argue that a card should be banned from Historic Brawl, you need to argue that the card falls into one of these categories.

Does Paradox Engine do that?

Let’s go through the categories.

Category One: Shuts off a wide class of commanders
Paradox Engine doesn’t do this. Easy!

Category Two: Too powerful
This one’s a bit harder to quantify, but we can look at the results from the cHB Season 12 tourney for some info. While this event as a whole only had 33 players, across the top 8, there were zero copies of Paradox Engine played.

Maybe you’re not convinced. Lets go back a bit further.

SeasonCopies of Paradox Engine in Top 8
110
100
9(Couldn’t find data)
80
70, but one decklist was missing

Many of these decks do play The One Ring. Some play up to seven mana rocks. As far as I can tell, none of them play Paradox Engine, and Paradox Engine isn’t banned from the event. So, no. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence the card is “Too Powerful.”

Quick Note: The data only goes back so far, and notably, doesn’t include a point in time I mentally refer to as “Rusko Hell.” I’m open to the idea that maybe Paradox Engine was a bit much then, but the current state of things doesn’t indicate Paradox Engine needs a ban.

Category Three: The Weird Ones
And this is where things gets difficult, since we can no longer look at general usage, or card abilities to easily determine if something belongs here. Instead, we have to go through cards one by one. Do any of these cards offer parallels to Paradox Engine?

Lutri: Nope! Lutri is banned as a result of companion making him into an auto-include.
Field of the Dead: Field of the Dead was banned in multiple formats, mostly for power level. In Brawl, it was an auto-include that was a strong payoff for any deck running more then 6 different lands, with very little downside. As we’ve already noted, Paradox Engine doesn’t have a high play rate, so this doesn’t count either.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: Ugin was a strong colorless board-wipe that could be slotted into any deck, and there was very little reason to not do so. It was also called out for being overly prevalent in main decks. Again, no overlap in function.
Agent of Treachery: Agent of Treachery could go in either category two or three. I include it three because I think it’s less a direct factor of power-level, and more an issue of breaking color-identity and being overplayed. It was effectively permanent removal that could be used recursively. But again, no clear relationship with Paradox Engine.

This leaves just a single card left to try to use to justify a Paradox Engine ban in Brawl.

Nexus of Fate: The Most Complicated Ban in Arena History

Most bans get a line or two, or maybe a few sentences. Nexus of Fate gets six paragraphs.

The short version is that it’s banned for play disruption. Arena doesn’t allow easy combos/loops. WoTC decided that 30 minutes to have a game non-interactively resolve was a bit much. So it got banned.

This is the closest we get to a comparable card for Paradox Engine: a card that was banned for causing non-interactive, slow loops.

So now things can go either way.

Like Nexus of Fate, Paradox Engine can slow down games. It requires manually tapping all your non-land mana sources in the Arena client to use it optimally and try to go infinite, and it’s non-interactive. It can often end the game outright once it comes down, if you get lucky and have the right tools. And it’s very, very boring to play against.

But it’s also not a perfect match. Paradox Engine doesn’t perform an infinite loop based off luck to anywhere near the extent that Nexus of Fate does. Once Paradox Engine comes out, it either gets removed and the combo ends, or it sits there and continually provides resources for whoever played it until they win, or run out of actions to take.

My Take

Personally, I lean against banning Paradox Engine at the moment. It’s nowhere near widespread enough to make it a “necessary” ban, and its existence is a win-con for several decks. That doesn’t mean that it should never be banned, but the mild frustration it produces is outweighed by the neat decks it allows to exist.

Still, there are strong arguments both ways and (in theory) as more and more cards, and more and more mana rocks are added to Brawl, the scales (in theory) start to tip toward a ban.

But right now?

Paradox Engine doesn’t need to be banned.

PAX East – The Card Game Post

Card games? Card games! One of the great things about PAX East is that there are an incredible variety of new card games and weird TCG’s to play. In this post, I’ll be quickly going over what I saw, and what I enjoyed, and also what I didn’t.

The Good

These are all the games I recommend at least trying if you get a chance. Am I going to collect them myself? Not necessarily, but I do enjoy playing them, and would play them again.

Here Be Monsters

Here There Be Monsters is a placement and ability-driven head-to-head battler with a sort of wacky pirate theme. It was in Unpub, and unfinished, but was fun enough for me to play 3 games of it—which is rare for something in Unpub. The core mechanics felt like they were almost where they needed to be, but the cards themselves did have some balance issues.

I’m hopeful that I’ll get to see more of this game, though I’m not sure when. There’s a lot of promise here, and the core mechanics are fun.

Altered

It feels like we’re in a bit of a TCG gold rush at the moment. Altered raised over $7 million kickstarter. I didn’t back it for various reasons, but mostly a distaste of said gold rush.

That said, I will absolutely not turn down a chance to try to play new card games, so I did play it. It’s neat, and doing some fairly different stuff. There’s no direct combat; instead it’s effectively a series of cost checks, where you and your opponent try to have the most of a given value present at one of two locations. While what I played didn’t sell me on buying a case, it did convince me that it might not just be an attempt to cash in.

Star Wars: Unlimited

I actually rather like Star Wars: Unlimited. It’s just unfortunate that I’m not a Star Wars person; I actually find the Star Wars theming a bit of a turn off. But I’ve found the gameplay of all the demos I’ve played quite enjoyable. They’ve got a nice tension to them, and that’s enough to put it into the good category.

PAX is also a great opportunity to grab all the promos.

The Bad

Despite the title of this section, these aren’t necessarily bad games. They are, however, (based on what I played) games I will never demo or touch again unless I am paid cash to do so.

Flesh and Blood

I’d heard a lot of good things about Flesh and Blood over the years, and it’s one of the mid-level TCG’s that seems to have clawed itself a spot at various local game stores. So I’ve been curious about it for a while, and at one point even thought about picking up a starter set.

Holy crap, am I glad I didn’t. I hate this game. I pretty much just quit halfway through, and didn’t even grab the simple starter deck.

The short version is that I just found Flesh and Blood both boring and frustrating, and it felt more akin to playing a fighting game than a card game.

UniVersus

The best thing I can say about playing UniVersus is: UniVersus made it clear that I just don’t like the alternating turns of attack and defense pattern that both it and Flesh and Blood seem to be using.

It just never clicked, and I never had fun. I’m sure I’ll get plastered for this, but both of these demos felt random. They felt like I was missing much of the critical information I needed to make meaningful strategic choices. And the remaining choices—the tactical ones—were boring to me.

The Ugly

Welcome to the bad vibes section. It’s not even the mechanics for this one.

Gem Blenders

I wrote a bit about Gem Blenders a while back, and I was pleased to see they were still around, and had a booth. But I was somewhat dismayed to learn that with their switch to a full TCG model, they also switched their card backs. Meaning that if you purchased their earlier base set, the game is no longer compatible.

It just doesn’t feel great, y’know? Anyway, that lands them in ugly.

Final Fantasy TCG

Not good, not bad, just sorta there. Maybe this would have landed better another year, but I just didn’t get anything out of this one. Honestly, I felt a bit bad for the enforcer and 3 other folks total I saw playing the game over the con. It follows a weird version of MTG’s resource system that I found both very slow, and not too fun.

Skulls of Sedlec

Work has been incredibly busy lately. As such, this review, much like Skulls of Sedlec, is going to be incredibly compact.

Skulls of Sedlec is an 18-card pattern building, open drafting, and set collection game. Two of those three phrases I didn’t know until I went and looked them up on Board Game Geek, and I somewhat disagree with the third. It also has 12 expansions of which I will be reviewing zero. After all, the point of a Button Shy game is to make a micro-game that fits into a wallet, not one that you can go band for band with.

The full rules for Skulls of Sedlec are less than a page long, so I’m not going to spend too much time on the rules. The short version is that cards are divided up into piles, and on each player’s turn, that player takes one of three actions. You can:

  1. Flip two cards in piles face up, then take one of them into your hand
  2. Take a single face-up card from a pile into your hand
  3. Put a single card from your hand into a stack/tableau.

Board Game Geek calls this game a set collection game, but I disagree. After all, most cards don’t score based on being part of a set. Instead, they score based on their relation to other cards in the pyramid. Some, like the lovers do need to be in a set to score, but many like royals or clergy have their own unique scoring rules.

Overall, I quite enjoyed Skulls of Sedlec. It’s a very compact game, and I’m not sure I’d get more than 2-3 more plays out of it. But it’s quick enough that I feel I could teach it pretty easily, even to non-board gamers. I’ve seen a fair number of people note that they didn’t consider it worth playing without the expansions, but I found it quite enjoyable, even as a standalone.