A few days ago I found out that a lot of collegues on my floor play or used to play Magic and since yesterday some of us have started playing it during lunch. Yesterday Mark and I played three duels but unfortunately his green deck had a little bit of a rough time coping with my black pride. Today Danthar joined us for some three player magic using my white Angel Command deck and Mark was also playing white with a bushido samurai deck. I again used my trusty black pride.
We rolled the dice to determine who could start. Danthar got to make the call and chose the starting player to be Mark. A wise choice in that situation (assuming round-robin) because you can still play before the last player and also have the luxury of drawing a card (which the starting player doesn’t get) during your first turn. Mark was able to play one of his Bushido samurai warriors but Danthar could only play a land.
At this point I was a little bit disappointed by the performance of my white deck which is usually able to supply you at least one creature that you can play on turn one. Maybe he did already have that Tragic Poet in his hand on turn one but decided to hold on to it for later. If that’s the case: good call. I was able to play one land and then used it to pay for another three mana of which I used two to cast my first shadow creature. The last mana I could not use so it burned at the end of my turn to cost me a life point.
The next turns Danthar suffered some samurai inflicted damage but played a Capashen Knight which offers some reasonable protection. I just played as much mana sources as I could to bringe a horde of shadow creatures into play. Mark removed one of my more valuable creatures from the game when it inflected damage to him and on turn three he suddenly started dealing damage to both me and Danthar at which point I realized we were playing chaos and not round-robin (in which you can only attack to your left).
Mark faithfully continued to play Bushido samurai and started to gather quite an impressive army although one of his soldiers could not attack or block because it suffered from a Pacifism spell cast by Danthar. I later got hit by Danthars beefed-up Capashen Knight which had turned into a formidable 6/6 monster thanks to an Empyrial Armor spell and five cards in his hand. I was at 12 life points at that time so on my turn I used a simple Dark Banishing to kill it. I then was able to get Mark’s life points down to one but after that I realized we’re playing chaos so Danthar would be able to kill Mark and get a single victory point easily should Mark decide to leave no blockers.
Mark indeed decided to leave no blockers – which is, I guess, a small oversight on his behalf – and so I thought a total victory was out of reach. Danthar then used the precious Tragic Poet to return the Empyrial Armor to his hand but fortunately for me forgot to play it on the Mesa Enchantress in order to finish Mark. He then played another soldier creature and brought my life count even further down. I was then able to finish Mark with a single attacker and got a valuable victory point. Danthar then played the Empyrial Armor and brought my life count down to one. On my turn though, four shadow creatures were able to deal seven damage to which nothing could be done. Game over and reluctantly back to work.