Bum, Bum, Ba-Ba-Bum Bum, Ba-Ba-Ba-Bum (come on, sing it together)

Social nite at Juice’s place!  I really enjoy how the different Monday’s each have their own feel based on the host of the week. When we began this MNM venture, it gave me something to look forward after a depressing back the grind Monday of work. I still keep that feeling each week, but there is more now.

When we host I look forward to staying home, choosing the menu with Carin, and picking the week’s format.  On Juice weeks I look forward to seeing Santana, Daniel and whoever else is visiting them that week (Ollie? Moody?). Also, Carin gets a nice out in watching Bones with Santana if she’s not up to as many games that night. Ben’s place Is awesome because Marie is usuallly very gracious in cooking.  We had my favorite Slater meal last week, ratatouille and Home Brew. Evan has the best table setup for games in the dining room. Plus our usual Itallian order for dinner there means Carin can always find something she’ll eat. Something else about Evan’s place that’s foggy in my mind now is a nice point. I’ll let you know if I remember what it is.

So, after that nice tangent we’re back at Juice’s. Moody was there, Bones was on and pizza was served. With only the five of us there this week (no Steven, Joel or Daniel), we dropped the mini-tournament idea and got into casual play.  For everyone there, it meant trying out the new ROE decks.

I had a Large Eldrazi Ramp deck and level-up deck with me. Ben also had a ROE ramp deck to show off. Evan added some very nice ROE touches to his Allies and Indestructible Lands decks. The warm-up games were fast paced as everyone was anxious to try out their new toys.

Big game of the night was a star game – one of the most memorable ones in memory. Everyone was keeping someone else in check throughout the game. Ben was on great track to unleash the eldrazi by turn 5, so I kept smashing a wall per turn. This held up all my resources Ben, but made me valuable enough to my other opponent (Carin) to keep them from attacking or messing with my board.

Evan was keeping Juice’s Mirror Rhino deck under control with counterspells. All this let Carin build up to a luminarch ascension. Runner-up play of the night goes to Carin/Juice for their five spell stack. I don’t even remember the specific cards now, just that each of them turned around the stack twice. Later in the match, both Juice’s deck and Carin’s deck was producing mass amounts of 4/4 creatures.

Carin ended up with the victory just in time through an inspired decision to hold onto that disfigure instead of taking out an early small guy. Juice alpha striked her with just enough rhinos to do all 30 points of damage to take her out. By disfiguring one Rhino, she got out of there with 2 life. I had just taken out Ben for annihilation revenge and had an unblockable creature that would have finished Carin as well next turn.  Her army of angels had another idea and flew over Juice’s Rhinos and my levelers to win the game.

After stopping at Juice’s place for a couple of duels last night, I’m excited about my new Kiln Fiend deck. ROE has done some great things to the game. It’s not all that great for tournament constructed decks, extended legacy or standard.  But casual constructed has been a lot more varied and fair. The ROE decks seem to give many more possibilities and choices, as opposed to knowing if I’ll win based on my opening hand. Here’s to the new metagame – and to Evan’s place next week!