Just finished an exceptional Magic 2013 Planechase match against the first tier of CPU players... Talrand's pissy blue flying dragon deck, Garruk's obnoxious big green creature deck, and Ajani's shitastic cheap-as-fuck keep-gaining-goddamn-life white ass deck. I was playing my slightly-tuned red Goblin Gangland deck (I keep adjusting it back down to 60 cards after the game inserts new "unlocked" cards). SPOILER: I won. But how it played out was super cool.
First up, you have to realize that playing against three CPU opponents in Magic 2013 basically means all three are playing against you. In a game that is *supposed* to be a four player free-for-all. Talrand and Garruk let Ajani build his life up like idiots while they focused on whittling down my forces. Clowns.
This match had a funny start because the first planar card was that mountain whatever that ends up doing X damage to all creatures, with X going up every turn. I managed to be the only one to roll protection against it, so then the other guys stopped rolling entirely so as not to trigger the damage effect. After several turns, I rolled to trigger it, killing every creature on the board but mine. So that was a nice advantage for while.
However, this goblin deck has almost no flying defense, so Talrand was picking me off with some huge sphinx and some drakes. Then I managed to play Krenko, Mob Boss and start getting aggressive. Krenko is probably the best Magic card ever made, because he creates 1/1 goblin tokens for nothing. (Tap: summon X 1/1 goblins where X equals the number of creatures you have in play.) Both Ajani and Garruk had no flyers, so I knew that I could keep blocking them with stupid 1/1 chumps, as long as nobody showed up with trample damage. I had to take out Talrand. On the turn before the above screenshot, I cycled a Gempalm Incinerator to kill the sphinx, and used Shock to take down a drake. Then he put out some dumb flying wall, and I killed his second drake with the Ember Hauler.
Somewhere in there, Talrand knocked me down to 1 life, mainly because the dumb game did not let me give my Goblin Balloon Brigade flying AND choose him as a blocker. The big downfall to Magic 2013 is that there's no Undo, and also no friendly "oh jeez, buddy, I forgot to do this, so can we back up a sec?" The upside is, there's no friendly "oh jeez, buddy, I forgot to do this, so can we back up a sec?" from your opponents either.
Anyway, Talrand had one guy - the wall - and 9 life. I had about 13 1/1 goblins and some assorted marginally better goblins. I sent 10 of them at Talrand and another 6 at Garruk. Talrand was finished... and I played Relentless Assault to give myself another attack phase... and I had enough dudes to account for Garruk's three blocking creatures and put him out as well. Two opponents killed in one turn! I am a god.
Which left me at 1 life and Ajani at 55. Obviously I'm a precarious spot there, since any flyer or cheap direct damage would end me. He attacked me with his ground troops and I blocked with some of my joyously disposable goblins. I did 20-some damage to him, and he healed back 10 of it, because his deck is a piece of shit. We went through another turn where he tried to send ground guys at me and I just let blockers do their thing. Luckily he could not pull any flyers over his last few turns, although I was keeping my Balloon Brigade available should he field one.
Finally, I had about 50 1/1 goblins on the table. Then I pulled Goblin Bushwhacker, which gives all creatures +1/+0 for the turn. So a massive horde of 2/1 goblins took down mighty Ajani, Chief Pride-Lord of the Asscrap Healing Crapcraps.
So that was fun. I need to get some of these 2013 cards in real life. Particularly Krenko, Mob Boss.
Related: earlier tonight, Clark and I were playing that Mini Master variant where your deck is one blind booster plus some mana cards. And I just happened to get the Ajani planeswalker card in my booster. Clark likes to talk smack, so when I announced I was playing the card "Ajani, Caller of the Pride," he snorted and said "Heh, 'Johnny.'"
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