The Mr. Shipley Experience

 I played a little Pioneer today for a Degen Supporter Event.  I had a good time, got completely lost with renting a deck from cardhoarder.  But I got that completed, sadly they didn't have 4 cards I needed for the list I chose, so I made a last minute replacement and it didn't go so well: 0-3 so I dropped out after match 3.   I ended the night, after getting frustrated with a Bant Angels deck (not a lot of interaction with), I thought what the heck, I might be able to make an Explorer deck... I'm going to WAR! The deck kind of came to me as I recall reading some article about how Opt was a good mechanic in Explorer/Pioneer so I started there.  Then thought, What kind of cheaper CMC planeswalkers could I try?  Enter: Wizard's Aren't Reasonable (or WAR). This should have in no way grant me any sort of wins - so I'm not gonna be upset if I just lose 3, but I did really well in Standard Unranked matches.  So I thought, what the heck, I'll take it i...

So last night I decided I'd give a try to win a token to enter into the Arena Qualifier this weekend!  WOOO, let's get it!  The Qualifier Play-In was Best of 3 Streets of New Capenna Sealed Format.  OK, not bad - I don't normally practice sealed because it's very difficult to get rewarded, you have to win all your matchups to get your entry fee back.  Anyhow, I figured this time was worth it, and the rewards are a lot better on the Qualifier than they are in the regular sealed format. So yeah, I only lost 1 of all of my games, and won every match.  With this deck here: I was pretty stoked!  Nice draft, decent action in the games, many were very close.  I thought I might even get into Day 2 of the Arena Open!  I woke up early, fairly excited.  All up until I opened my packs.  I ended up with some pretty mediocre decks to be able to play, and the whole Arena Open play today was a total bust at 0-2!  It was demoralizing hahaha, a nice ...

The Reality Chip So I've been brewing up a fun deck for the Degen Supporter Event on May 1.  I've been calling it Reality Bender and my theme is that nothing is quite right with it.  There are ninja's, ravens, dragons, and demons.  Even a sketchy merchant or two.  Here's the deck I'm running, fairly proud of this brew.  It's doing well on the ladder.  I might want to call it something else - Maybe Nightmare Reality?  Or Reality is A Nightmare?  I haven't seen this in the meta, and it will only live for a couple days in it's current form until New Capenna is released, but I'm having a great time with it.

One of the things I've never participated in, mainly because I wasn't local to any large, active MTG communities when I was playing, is participating in team building.  Teams to practice with, brew with, and challenge other teams with.  Now that I've joined the streamer community, I'm eager to get started with this sort of activity. My thoughts around it are a team of streamers that will gather as schedules allow to do this type of activity.  Discord some screen shares, collaborate on deck building and analyzation, then make our own tweaks and test it in the ladder.  It would be great to have little mini tournaments with other teams as well, it helps to build our overall skills if we aren't stuck in an echo chamber, the more exposure we can have to other play styles improves our overall game. This builds content that's a little different than just solo streamer content and I believe not only viewers are interested in seeing this, but other streamers are interest...

So today I played my first tournament through the MTGMelee website, hosted by Degenerate Gaming and sponsored by Ultra Pro  (use checkout code  DEGEN  for 5% off).  It was open registration, had a low entry fee ($3 USD total) and was a well run event through the Degenerate Gaming discord server and the MTGMelee website. When I started the tournament, somehow my MTG Arena game client lost the deck I'd submitted!  Ouch!  Luckily, backend tournament support was able to help me by sending my my submitted decklist in a DM on Discord (shoutout to IcedYoshi  for being quick on the support)! All of my opponents were good-mannered players, which is always a bonus when playing MTG.  I ended up in spot 22/41 with 3W - 3L and while I was watching the coverage between tournament rounds, I was lucky enough to win a door prize as a player!  $25 gift card to Ultra Pro, which I may try to give away in my stream, I'll touch base with the Degen team to see if...