The Mr. Shipley Experience

(tldr; forgot my wallet at home, asked Lowe's staff if I could use mobile app for curbside pickup, used app to ring myself out and paypal to pay - web had unit listed for $80 cheaper than the store did) So I'm in this one bedroom loft situation, but like a real loft with an open bedroom above the living room/kitchen.  Not the "lofts" they offer in cities, which are basically closets-turned-apartments at 500 and less sq feet.  I'm very luck to have it!  It was constructed in the late 90s and at that time, someone had made a decision to install an air conditioner through the wall, so there's a cut-out in the wall for a unit.  Back in the late 90s, Sears and Kenmore were a good bet.  They'd installed a unit that could be purchased with a wall-mount cabinet or a window-mount kit.  It died sometime in 2019. So this year, I finally got around to removing the old unit so I could replace it. Well, it's not the current standard size as the cutout is 24" W ...

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.

Today, I went to a local store to Join the Maestros  play the Streets of New Capenna Prerelease event.  This being my first in-person hosted event ever, I was pretty excited.  In the event, you chose one of 5 families.  they gave you sealed booster packs plus some cards specific to that family and you were let loose to build your deck.  We had 4 rounds today and I went 2W-2L, which netted 2 extra booster packs.  I definitely chose the Maestros (UBR), for I have some experience playing Grixis (UBR) decks. I ended up with some really sweet cards, but some of the best I had were in Green/White.  Reading Twitter today, I was reading about how weak U (Blue) was turning out, and I agree at least with the cards I had.  I lost the worse to an Obscura (Esper) deck that had the Sanctuary Warden : With the Shield tokens it comes with, removal for me wasn't much of an option.  I had 2 removal spells that would work for most other creatures: Murder and M...

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...

I didn't have sour cream in order to make a banding stroganoff, and even after making this I prefer it made with sour cream.  However, this was a decent hack.  In the future, I think I'll be buying plain greek yogurt instead of flavored so I can sub that in for sour cream.  I also didn't have stew meat, which is my usual go to for stroganoff.  I did have a frozen bubba burger and some brussel sprouts.  So how did I do it?  A splash of vinegar gave it that sour taste, and using a roux thickened it up. Ingredients: Mashed potatoes (go look up how to make those, I'm not doing anything special, use instant if you want) 5 large brussel sprouts (double for two - I just sliced, oiled, salted, then roasted these for 15 minutes in my air fryer at 380 F) 1 medium onion, diced 1 tablespoon oil (i usually run with canola) 1 clove garlic, minced 1 frozen bubba burger (This was also in my air fryer, I took it out after 10 minutes because it was cooked partially and all d...

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...