This is one of my favorite decks! The premise behind it is that everything in the deck has a converted mana cost of 1. Originally a pure red deck, I decided to splash it black with some of the newer cards to enhance it a little bit.

The Unearths really add potency to the Mogg Fanatics, as well as any of the other creatures that use a sacrifice mechanism. It plays fast, but if I can't get the damage out by turn 5 or 6 it dies out and I get rolled over by the larger creatures. It could use some tweaking still I’ll refine it eventually.

Feel  free to comment on it.

Okay, let me get a few facts out there for you guys, some of you may know this already, but I want us all to be on the same playing field.

• I've been playing Magic: The Gathering off and on for about 13 years
• I've been playing MMORPG games for about 8 years
• My first MMORPG was Everquest
• I've tried to like WoW but I just can't, I just don't like it at all.

Okay, so now that that's over I’m going to talk to you about the WoW Collectable Card Game...

A group of my friends and I decided to try the game out. We all spent about 15 bucks to get a starter deck, and freely exchanged cards so that we could all have a playable deck. By playable I mean, follows the rules of deck building and, is legal for play. They weren't great decks by any means, but they worked.

Decks in WOWTCCG are all about your Hero card. The hero you select to use, dictates EVERYTHING else about your deck. The types of allies you can put in, the types of equipment and abilities you can use, and even some of the quests you can use as well.

My deck is lead by Dralor a Human Rogue fighting for the Alliance. I'm really enjoying my deck and starting to get a feel for how the rogue deck should play. This only makes me want to invest more into the game and make the deck even better. This works out well for Blizzard and Upper Deck, as I’ll want to buy more cards to fill my deck out. I may only get 2 or 3 cards that are even legal for my deck out of a 19 card booster pack. Meaning I would have to buy a LOT of cards to fill it out the way I want - or go to the secondary market and just pick up the cards I’m looking for.

Using the secondary market you miss out on one of the special little surprises of the WoW card game: Loot Cards. Loot cards are cards that you can use in the CCG as well as enter a little code on  them into the MMO of WoW and you get cool In-Game items. These cards are VERY rare, and VERY valuable, you can make a killing on E-Bay if you sold one there.

Over all I LOVE this game! It's so much fun! I like it better than Sony's game Legends of Norrath, partly because it’s a physical card game. I like how I'm starting to 'own' my deck and I want to tweak it and make it better and better.

This weekend I got together with some friends again and we did a 9 person Magic: The Gathering Draft Tournament. We were in Shadowmoor again (somebody had a box they wanted to open, and what better way than to draft it?) I ended up drafting White/Blue about half aggro and half control and a splash of black for some decent removal.

We played Swiss style with four rounds, best two out of three. Each turn the lowest record got a Bye which counted as a win.

Here's how I did:

Round 1
I started off each of my hands with a good opening hand having one of each of my colors of mana, and a decent set of creatures/spells to back it up. My opponent was playing a Red/Green stompy deck but wasn't quite aggro enough. Once I got a Silkbind Faerie out it pretty much locked down any defenders he had and I was able to walk thru to victory.

Notable Memory: Using Memory Plunder to cast Traitor's Roar on my opponent's Tattermange Duo that had Runes of the Deus on it. Then following it up with a Consign to dream... I'm such a jerk...
Round Score: 2-0
Record: 1-0

Round 2
My opponent in this game had a deck that I’m not even sure how to describe, I believe it was Green/White/Red.. but it could have been more colors. It was a hodgepodge of a deck, but it worked out well for him. He had some nice cards that really helped him out: Tatterkite, Mistmeadow Skulk, Oracle of Nectars. He pretty much had protection from all of my creatures, and made me fight hard to stay alive. He got some awesome draws against me that perfectly held me off both games.

Notable Memory: Tatterkite = Protection from Shadowmoor
Round Score: 0-2
Record: 1-1

Round 3
This round was pretty intense, I was up against another Blue/White control deck, and was doing quite well, until he had gotten a Pale Wayfarer into play which totally stopped my march on his face. We ended up holding each other off for a while, making our first game take 35 minutes of our 45 minute time limit per round. The next two games went quick, as my opponent got mana screwed twice in a row.

Notable Memory: I HATE Pale Wayfarer!
Round Score: 2-1
Record: 2-1

Round 4
My opponent was playing a Blue/Black deck and even had a Liege to back it up. It was no small feat to take out, but my creature removal really aided this time. I was able to keep him from keeping any blockers and was able to run him over twice.

Notable Memory: Incremental Blight is some awesome removal.
Round Score: 2-0
Record: 3-1


I ended up with a pretty decent record, placed 4th overall, tied for second 3-way. I didn't get a chance to go up against the winning deck, but it had a pretty nasty Kitchen Finks + Heart Mender combo that really rocked for him. We just played for fun, no prizes no rating on the line, But it was a good time for sure. Played some extra fun games at the end and got our caffeine on all night long. Another successful draft!

Okay, I finally got around to picking up a box of Shadowmoor boosters and I’ve decided to share the experience with you all. Well technically I bought a box of Shadowmoor Tournament Packs, but you get the same amount of cards as a box of boosters, but you get a butt-ton of land along side, and it costs the same. Ok, so here are the rare cards I pulled.

(F) denotes a foil card.

• Green
  • Prismatic Omen – x2
  • Spawnwrithe – x2
  • Witherscale Wurm
  • Woodfall Primus
• Red
  • Knollspine Dragon
  • Knollspine Invocation
  • Rage Reflection – x2
• Black
  • Plague of Vermin
  • Puppeteer Clique – x2
• Blue
  • Counterbore
  • Isleback Spawn
  • Savor the Moment
  • Thought Reflection
• Green/White
  • Heartmender – x2
  • Wheel of Sun and Moon
• Red/Green
  • Boartusk Liege
  • Rosheen Meanderer
  • Valleymaker
  • Vexing Susher (F)
  • Wort, the Raidmother
• Black/Red
  • Din of the Fireheard – x2 (1F)
  • Everlasting Torment
  • Tyrannize – x2
• Blue/Black
  • Dire Undercurrents
  • Ghastlord of Fugue
  • Glen Elendra Liege
• White/Blue
  • Godhead of Awe – x2
  • Swans of Bryn Argoll (F)
  • Worldpurge
• Land
  • Graven Carins
  • Sunken Ruins

Quite the list, a few pretty awesome cards in there, some will be taking the journey back to Hobbytown to see if I can get some nice swag in return.

All in all, I very pleased with the turnout of this box of cards, and I highly recommend that anybody that plays magic to pick up as much shadowmoor as they can. It’s definitely a very good set.

The folks over at Wizards made a pretty interesting announcement recently that discussed changes that are going to be coming in the next major set Shards of Alara. They make it sound like some major changes, but really it's not that big of a deal. A summary of the changes includes:

• New rarity category "Mythic Rare"
• Booster Packs will now be having at least one land card in it, replacing one of the commons
• Fat Packs will no longer come with a novel about the set, but instead a snippet of the current publishing mumbo-jumbo
• Fat Packs will now have eight booster packs instead of six
• Theme Decks will be replaced by "Intro Packs"
• Fewer number of cards in any given set

The only things that really affect me in this are the new rare type, and the land in boosters.

The new rare type I think is kind of cool, I'm a fan of change, and this seems like a good one, some may say is unnecessary, but I like it, couldn't tell you why, but I do. They reason out the change as being the "Industry Standard" as most other CCGs have 4 rarities. Since I’ve only ever played Magic, I have no idea if this is true or not, but really why do they think they need to give a reason for it. It's their game, we love the game, and adding the new rarity won't change the game at all, so as much as anybody dislikes the change, it's not going to cause them to stop playing. If the change makes it feel more familiar to new players, then by all means have at it, new players are always good.

Wizards marketing people know what they are doing, while people may complain a little about having to buy more cards to get what they want, or have to re-invest in a new set of books for the upcoming release of 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons, they still buy what they need to and continue playing.

The booster pack changes on the other hand make me sad inside. Why?! WHY!? why do they need to remove one of my commons to give me a random land?! It's so stupid.. It was bad enough to get a land as one of your foil cards in a booster currently. Now when I open a pack, I know I’m going to see at least one land... now I have the possibility to get TWO! My one guaranteed land AND the possible foil land grr...

Another change in the booster pack has to do with the new rarity. As of right now, about one out of every eight boosters will have a mythic rare in it, but it replaces the standard rare. This is okay, but not the best solution. Brandon Sanderson made a very good point saying that the mythic rare should replace the land instead of the normal rare. Which I think is a WAY better solution for everybody. New players get a chance for their random land (like one land helps) and existing players get their chance for a mythic, and nobody is out a rare. Win-Win

The other changes I don't really care about, more boosters in a fatpack is cool, but they will most likely up the price of the fat pack to $40 instead of the current $35 to compensate for the increase in cards. If they don't then that’s awesome.

All in all, I think the upcoming changes for Magic: The Gathering will be positive ones, and I hope it brings many new players as well as some players that have since left the game, vowing to never return.