Archive for April, 2010

This is the second game from the semifinals between Guillem and Marc. Vintage VS Legacy! Do you think the zoo player will be able to defeat Guillem and force a 3rd game? Watch it yourself!

LCV6 April 2010 Top4 Guillem Ragull VS Marc Bertolín G2

More videos comming soon! Stay tunned and enjoy the fun!

So, we’ve moved onto the semifinals! Guillem now is facing a Legacy player who came to try his luck in Vintage with his zoo deck. The video has the same features than the last one from quarterfinals: HD quality, subtitles, music, etc… Hope you guys enjoy it!

LCV6 April 2010 Top4 Guillem Ragull VS Marc Bertolín G1

Do you guys think Marc will be able to win Guillem on game 2? Stay tuned and you’ll know the answer!

This is the third game from the quarterfinals between Guillem Ragull and Xavier Hurtado at last LCV6 tournament in Berga. This game is shorter but intense!

Feel free to comment the games!

Tomorrow I’ll start with the games from the semifinals. Again, stay tuned!

This is the second game from the quarterfinals between Guillem Ragull and Xavier Hurtado at last LCV6 tournament in Berga. This time I uploaded the video in HD quality and added some subtitles to it to make it easier for you to follow. Hope you guys enjoy it!

LCV6 #4 Top8 – Guillem Ragull VS Xavi Hurtado G2

I should have the 3rd game ready for tomorrow. So, stay tunned!

I managed to record videos from the last Catalan Vintage League (LCV) in Berga. I’m doing some tests with the editing so I’d love to hear the suggestions, etc…

LCV6 #4 Top8 – Guillem Ragull VS Xavi Hurtado G1

I can advance you that Guillem reached the finals but lost to Israel Muñoz (to whom I lost as well in the swiss…).

As far as I can remember, in the top8 there were: 2 Workshops (1 MUD, 1 Blue Shops), 2 Tezzeret (1 Remora/Confidant, 1 with Welders), 1 Repeal Tendrils, 1 Zoo, 1 Iona/15-15 Oath, 1 Food-Chain Goblins.

The winner list was using Master of Etherium and Esperzoa main deck, as well as In the Eye of Chaos!

The Catalan Vintage League (LCV) will stop tomorrow by Berga (100km +or- north from Barcelona). Gerard Siles has prepared a wonderful Vintage party with the following prizes:

LCV6 – April 24th 2010

Where: Alberg de Berga, C/ Vila de Casserres, nº5. Berga, 08600 (Barcelona)
Sign in from 9 to 10 am
Tournament fee: 15€

Prizes:

• Winner – Mox Emerald + Mox Ruby
• Finalist – Mox Pearl
• 3rd – Depending on the turn out (Mana Drain o dual lands)
• 4th -  Depending on the turn out (Mana Drain o dual lands)
• 5th to 8th – 1 Dual or boosters, depending on the turn out.

Prizes are firm, regardless of assitance.

SIDE EVENT Rise of Eldrazi Launch party:

From 4pm there will be RoE booster drafts going on.

<hr>

Lately I’ve been testing hard and it seems like I’ve finally found a deck I like to play. JaceCast has performed excellent during my testing and proved to be a solid contender in the actual metagame. This is how the deck looks like:

The only changes I’ve made are on the sideboard: -1 Darkblast, -1 Diabolic Edict, +1 Claws of Gix, +1 Sundering Titan

So, last Wednesday I got to play 12 games against Iona Oath with a more than acceptable 6-6 result on games, (3-3 on rounds). We played 6 full rounds, as it would be in tournament. Claws of Gix rocked! Most of the games I lost weren’t due to his Oath, it was actually against Vault/Key…

Then I got to play against Remora Tendrils. Same list that has performed excellent in the last LCV tournaments with Top8′s from Alex Delgado and Rubén González (decklists here and here). Surprisingly, I managed to win 6-1 with absolutely no real opposition. JaceCast was so superior to Remora Tendrils that he couldn’t do much to stop me.

But I also tested the deck against the new MUD deck featuring Lodestone Golem and, even more surprisingly, it performed lot better than expected. Played 3 full rounds against Roger Riera and the results were: 2-0, 1-2, 2-0 for a total game score of 5-2. Null Rod wasn’t really an issue if you manage to play one or two Master of Etherium. Masters are lot bigger than Golems, so they end up blocking. On top of that if we add that we play 4 Spell Pierce + 4 Force of Will we can actually stop their early game quite well. If we manage to get the 4th producer, then the game is over.

And finally I tested JaceCast against Dark Tezzeret and “The Deck”, with even or slightly positive results against them.

So, I feel pretty confidant about the deck, the card choices and my possibilities. I didn’t get to try the deck against Noble Fish, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a very good match up. I guess I’ll have to protect my masters from his Swords and try Tinker for Leviathan asap. Adding Sower of Temptation and Pithing Needle from the sideboard will make games 2 and 3 lot easier.  Dispel has proved to be a real MVP against fish from other player’s experiences, as it protects all your bombs and can counter their bouncer/swords.

I’ll be probably recording the Top8 games on video, and if I get the time to edit them, I’ll upload them!

Wish me luck

There are only few who are gifted with the ability to do everything right at first try. If you are one of those gifted players then this article might not cheer you up. To the rest, this article is meant to convince ourselves of the importance of losing to become better players.

If you’re afraid to fail, you can’t be sure to succeed. Those who aren’t afraid of losing will probably win more games. Why?

To answer that question, I’d like you to start by watching this video from Steve Jobs‘ speech at 2005 Stanford Commencement. (If you don’t know Steve Jobs, then you better go google him before clicking play).

Hope you managed to watch the whole speech. I know it isn’t really MtG related, but it’ll work great to help me explain the concepts of this article.

Let’s start by analyzing this quote:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forwards. You can only connect them looking backwards.” – Steve Jobs

How can we relate “the dots” to our game? I like to think those dots as mistakes I’ve done during my

games. It’s really important to analyze our mistakes from past games, even if we won them. It’s almost compulsory to take notes during games if we want to be able to reconstruct them afterward. Once we’ve created our own map of the game, then we can say whether or  not those decisions we took were right or wrong. When losing, some games will give us that “Epic Fail” sensation after some bad game decisions, some other might seem like a “bad beat” or like our opponent was extremely lucky. Don’t blame the luck! I consider myself a lucky boy because I make enough mistakes to be constantly learning from them.

So, only by understanding our own mistakes or fails from the past, we will be able to understand who we are now as a MtG players. We might lose many finals before we actually get to win something (no matter at what level you play). Once we finally get to win and become something, then we’ll appreciate our path from the past. A path full with fails and losses.

For instance, let’s say you are an average player who plays regularly with your friends and go every Saturday to you local store to play their Legacy tournament. If the feeling you have after the playtest with your friends is that you always lose, try understand the nature of those losses. Why are they winning? Are you making the wrong choices? Is it because they have better decks? Or is it because you believe they are better players?

If the first rule to become a winner is to understand that you can lose, the second rule would be to think and act like a winner. I covered that second concept in my previous article “The Importance of Playing Competitive“.

Start by taking notes of all your games, hands, openings, etc… and review them after the day. If possible, run a blog where to write reports and share the games with other people. They’ll probably give you some advices too. If you are too lazy for a blog, try a forum for example.

What are the difference between these sentences?

The more you play, the more you fail.

If you are a more optimistic guy, you could also read the previous sentence as:

The more you play, the more you win.

If we said that losing = learning (Only if you care about your mistakes from the past), then we could also say:

The more you play, the more you learn.

And from this point, we could also say:

The more you lose, the more you learn.

The more you learn, the more you win.

I see absolutely no difference between the previously mentioned statements. All of them have the goal of making you understand why losing is positive and How it can help you become a better player. Don’t get too upset if you lose too much, try find the positive side to it and keep trying. One day you’ll be on top of the hill and will look backwards. Then, it will all make sense. That day, you’ll connect the dots!

“Stay hungry, stay foolish.” – Steve Jobs

The April tournament of the Third Catalan Legacy League (LCL3) was held in Badalona (town near Barcelona) with a turnout of 83 players (March was 98). As usual, Enric Luzán brings us some videos from the Top8.

Top 8 (winners in bold):

• Oscar Lozano (Pro Bant sin CB) – Felix Sánchez (aka Felix_SR) (Faestalker)
• Albert de la Vega (Ad Nauseam Tendrils) – Xavier Muntada (aka Brainstormer) (Reanimator)
• Juan Moreno (aka Drow) (Tarmo Merfolks) – Francisco Fernández (SuperGro con Wee Dragonauts)
• Toni Miranda (aka Dibenzopiceno) (Countertop Progenitus) – Adrià Bosch (Supreme Blue sin Firespout)

Top 4:

• Felix Sánchez (Faestalker) – Adrià Bosch (Supreme Blue sin Firespout)
• Xavier Muntada (aka Brainstormer) (Reanimator) – Juan Moreno (aka Drow) (Tarmo Merfolks)

Final:

• Adrià Bosch (Supreme Blue sin Firespout) - Juan Moreno (aka Drow) (Tarmo Merfolks)

Congratulations to Adrià!

Vídeos

Top 8: Oscar Lozano (Pro Bant without CB) – Felix Sánchez (aka Felix_SR) (Faestalker)

Top 8 LCL3 April – Oscar Lozano vs. Félix Sánchez G1

Top 8 LCL3 April – Oscar Lozano vs. Félix Sánchez G2

Top 4 LCL3 April – Juan Moreno vs. Xavier Muntada G1

Top 4 LCL3 April – Juan Moreno vs. Xavier Muntada G2

Top 4 LCL3 April – Juan Moreno vs. Xavier Muntada G3

I’ll update with more videos as soon as Enric releases them. Stay tunned!

We are proud to announce that Ken Meyer Jr. and Team Pataners have reached a deal to work together! Our intention is to promote the art from this amazing artist, and specially his alterations. At TP we’ve always promoted alterations from mtg artists, such as Terese Nielsen, Ron Spencer, Amy Weber and now Ken Meyer Jr. (KMJ). Ken is trying to get closer to his fans by promoting his alterations, so, what better place than the TP site?

Ken Meyer Jr. is well known by his MtG art. He’s painted mythic cards like Kird Ape, Erhnam Djinn, Dark Ritual or Mystic Remora among many other! You should check the complete list of cards painted by him at his Gatherer. He also owns a website where he posts his artwork, that goes from mtg to sport illustrations or comics. Have a look at his official website:

http://www.kenmeyerjr.com

But let’s focus now on his alterations. If you check his website, there’s a page where you’ll be able to see many of the alterations he’s done in the past. I love his style! It’s really fresh and with lots of colors.

(Click on the image to visit the Alteration Page from KMJ)

He loves painting characters from movies and comics. So, how about commissioning a playset of Dark Ritual or Kid Apes with your favorite movie characters? If you’d like to contact him, you can click on any of the banners we’ve placed at our site, his Facebook, or you can send him a mail to:

kenmeyerjr@comcast.net

His commissioned alterations cost something between $30 to $50 per card (depending on what you’d like), but you’ll be able to make a better deal if you commission a playset of cards! And make sure to refer to us when contacting him, he’ll be happy to know that our banners are working good for him.

These are some of my favorite ones I’ve seen so far:

Visit the full Star Wars Series

Visit the full Musicians/Celebrities Series

Visit the full 300 Series

If you decide to commission a playset of cards from KMJ, once you got them on your hands, please send us a mail with some pictures or scans because we’d love to publish them here, at Team Pataners.

When we went to Zaragoza, behind Dan Frazier desk there was this playmat being showed. The organization of the tournament had the rights over that playmat but in the end they thought it would be better to sell it to recover some of the cash they lost during that weekend. My friends Filippo and Angelo, managed to buy the playmat together. This is probably one of the nicest playmats (made by mtg artists) i’ve ever seen:

Douglas Shuler + Dan Frazier + Christopher Rush

AWESOME!

From time to time, eBay gives us some real candy! This time, a playset of Force of Will altered by Terese Nielsen in 2004 has been released. Even though the auction is for one card of your choice (not the playset), it says in the descriptión that he’s willing to sell the whole playset. This is how they look:

Click here to go to the eBay auction!

This alterations are part from the early series she did. It’s her very first jobs altering cards and they are definitely worth a lot. Remember the posters she used to do?

Click here to go to the eBay auction!

This is the story on How I met Dan Frazier, yesterday in Zaragoza (Where? Yes, Zaragoza). If you aren’t familiar with Dan Frazier, let me tell you that he’s the artist that drew the first Moxen. Well, he’s actually drawn lot more cards, including the 12% of the initial Alpha collection. You can check the full list of his artwork for WotC here and his website here.

So, everything started back in this year’s GP Madrid when we saw Jose “El Cubano” giving some fliers away. In those fliers it said something about a couple of tournaments and, surprisingly, that Dan Frazier was the guest artist at the event.

Arnau, Roger, Edu and I started to organize the trip to Zaragoza, and early in the morning our pimp ride started!

This was some of our stuff to be signed before we actually met Dan:

(Sorry for the bad quality of the picture)

It was really needed an Alpha/Beta P9 in order to get to travel with Arnau’s Mercedes

Anyways, once we arrived at Freakland Games in Zaragoza we discovered that Albert & Pedro and Paco and his girlfriend were faster than us, so we weren’t actually the first ones at the queue But that wasn’t the issue, as we had plenty of time to talk with Dan as there wasn’t that many people there in the end.

When Dan realized of Roger’s presence at the queue, his wife Cathy gave Roger a folder and when he opened it we were all impressed to find out that Dan Frazier had drawn a portrait of Roger wearing the harlequin hat from Jester’s Cap. Meet the IMPRESSIVE Roger’s Cap!

I can’t wait to see a full-res scan of the drawing!

This is my personal goodie bag for the day:

Let’s havea a closer look at everything

Hand drawn and dedicated playmat:

A closer look to the drawing:

The Lost and not so Lost Mox Diamond:

The 5 Moxen funky altered:

A closer look to each of the Moxen:

A few more pictures of the day:

Me and Dan Frazier

Me, Dan and his wife Cathy

Filippo, Jose and me

Dan signing some white border swamps… not pimp!

Dan and the Revised swamp attack!

While in Freakland we played some Vintage games, enjoyed the awesome environment and had fun, lots of fun!

Around 18:45 we decided to go back to Barcelona because we still had something very important to do: Watch the FC Barcelona vs Real Madrid game of the millenium! If you are a soccer fan, then I’m sure you know that the spanish soccer league is incredibly crazy right now. I just have a picture to illustrate how the game went:

I’ll remember this day my whole life, for being the day I met Dan Frazier, having an excellent day with my friends, and Barça winning 0-2 against Real Madrid. Hope you guys liked the report.

Thanks for reading!

Lately I’ve been tinkering ideas around Jace, the Mind Sculptor in order to abuse the amazing raw power of this card.

My first idea was to build a control deck capable of defeating MUD and Fish efficiently. To achieve that goal I had to understand that the key turns at those matchups are 0, 1 and 2. Blue has plenty of good cards but not all of them are made to win games at the early game. Cards like Gifts Ungiven, Fact or Fiction or even Tinker are pretty bad on your opening hand. The idea I had in mind was to minimize the dead draws in order to maximize the efficiency of your cards.

The first approach looked like this:

This list has a very strong mana base and the amount of plays you can do on your first turns is insane. Except from Force of Will, Inkwell Leviathan, Yawgmoth’s Will, Tinker and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, the rest of the deck has a CMC of 2 or less. This list reflects exactly what I had in mind: it’s awesome at the early game, it performs well at the mid game, but loses gas at the late game due to the lack of big bombs.

Then I thought: How could I improve the deck? If Dark Jace’s strengths were the early and mid games, then I should focus on those stages, and a card came to my mind: Mystic Remora. Remora plays as an excellent complement to this strategy and makes your opponent’s choices lot harder. I cut the Tinker/Robot plan and opted for the 4th Spell Snare since it’s incredibly good when playing controlish. Spell Pierce it’s incredibly good if you play aggressively but Dark Jace isn’t really like that.

So, the second list I put together looked like this:

I added a Mind Twist and Imperial Seal, and swapped Darkblast for Diabolic Edict. Mind Twist proved to be a very strong card at the mid/late game. I had the feeling that I needed a 2nd Jace in that deck, since every time it resolved equaled to win the game. It’s just plain awesome combined with Dark Confidant or Mystic Remora. With this deck I really felt having the control of the games, similar to playing Landstill in Legacy. The only change I would make now to that list main deck is -1 Imperial Seal + 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

The last deck I’ve tested, and I have to admit with surprisingly awesome results, is a total different deck. Well, its core it’s the same, but instead of playing control, you have to play aggro. The idea behind this new deck is to abuse, literally, the power of Mystic Remora while dropping bombs one after another.

Let me show you the list:

As you can see, JaceCast’s main deck is extremely aggressive. No bouncers, no Mana Drains and bombs, lots of bombs. Master of Etherium proved to be incredibly effective against Fish and Golems. It’s easily an early 5/5 when it comes alone and once you drop the 2nd Master you’re just giving your opponent one turn to kill you. You hit for 7 the turn you cast the 2nd Master, and then hit for 14 the next turn. If you combine them with the disruption/pressuring elements of the deck, such as Spell Pierce or Mystic Remora, it gives the feeling that you are playing a very solid deck.

The real problem of this deck is Null Rod, even though Master of Etherium solves somehow that issue. At the testing sessions, I had problems against Oath with Null Rod, because I couldn’t land my Master of Etherium.

All in all, JaceCast is a deck extremely fun to play with, that can easily surprise your opponents.

By the way, tomorrow I’m going to Zaragoza to meet Dan Frazier! Can’t wait to get my cards signed/altered!

In the past I used to write a monthly post with the review of what happened at the site during the past month. It’s always cool to see the site growing while remembering some of the experiences, reports, news, articles, etc…

It’s been 3 months already since the re-opening of the blog, and I can’t believe how good the blog is doing with just 3 months of life! This is the data provided by Google Analytics from March 2010:

• 14,317 Visits
• 29,096 Pageviews
• 2.03 Pages/Visit

The peeks belong to the release of articles

29K pageviews nearly makes it an average of 1000 pageviews/day, coming from 6999 unique visitors from 67 different countries. The top 3 countries are:

1. Spain
2. United States
3. Germany

Fear the world domination!

29 posts were published during March, making it almost 1 post/day. I believe this is a good pace to keep you guys entertained, but it’s never enough! My personal goal is to reach an average of 2 posts/day. Right now I can’t spend more time, but hopefully this is gonna change soon.

If you feel you could contribute the site somehow, you’d like your articles to be published or simply join the crew to write on a regular basis about eternal (news, reports, top8 decklists, etc…), feel free to contact us.

We started March with my epic report from GP Madrid (Parts I, II & III). That report created a lot of love/hate because it wasn’t simply a tournament report. It was more of a full weekend experience report that included a GP in it. You can find the Top8 decklists from GP Madrid here.

JACO delighted us with a series of articles about the reserved list and the problem of the cardboard’s price.

Thoughts on Breaking the Reserved List

Solutions to the High Price of Cardboard

He also wrote an EXCELLENT deck analysis for Legacy’s Ad Nauseam Doomsday Hybrid, where he shows us why this deck is probably the best deck in the format.

Focus on Legacy – Ad Nauseam Doomsday Hybrid

The guy(s) from ICBM (Ben Carp, aka The Guslinga) decided to play a Retro Vintage Tournament and JACO was there to witness how wonderful Vintage was back in the gush old days!

Of course, Team Pataners wouldn’t be Team Pataners without all its pimp. Few goodies landed in my hands and shared them with you. I believe I’m the only owner with 2 cards co-altered by Terese Nielsen and Ron Spencer. In Madrid I got my hands on this marvelous Yawgmoth’s Will.  I also got a couple more goodies for my decks, coming straight from Japan and signed by Anthony Francisco: Tezzeret & Leviathian Foil Japanese Signed!

We posted some cool alterations from Ron Spencer, first a couple of old Swamp playsets and then a Yawgmoth’s Will that went over the auction site. We also knew that Dan Frazier would visit Spain to sign cards! Great news for myself, who’s gonna be the proud owner of a beta P9 double signed (and altered)!

Tomorrow I’ll post this week’s What’s hot on eBay! So you don’t miss track of your favorite pimp stuff.

March has also been the month when WotC announced MANY things. First that Legacy would come to Magic Online, then March’s 2010 DCI Banned & Restricted list (nothing changed) and finally the most controversial announcement of the past years, The Official Reprint Policy & Revised  Reprint Policy. No matter how much you hate the collectors, here at Team Pataners decided to interview Favian Poh.

The Favian Poh’s Collecting Passion

Seriously, if you enjoy MtG, you can’t miss reading the interview to this passionate collector!

These were just few of the things that happened during March at www.team-pataners.com If you wish, you can browse the rest using the archives.

Anyways, we just wanted to thank you all for reading and for supporting this site!

Cheers!

Gus Schade, aka Yawg07 on most of the forum boards, keeps surprising us with his awesome alterations. It’s not the first time we’ve shown some “japanized” cards by Gus, you should check his previous jobs here. This time he’s commissioned some cards for Mike Solomossy. Awesome as usual!

And, as a bonus track:

Gratz Soly for your new cards!

Our japanese hero & Legacy combo player, Tomoharu Saito, has finally published his Top4 report at Grand Prix Madrid 2010.

Tomoharu Saito GP Madrid 2010 Top4 report @ChannelFireball.com

What I liked from his report is the previous analysis of the deck & card choices. Even though I might differ with some of his conclusions, I have to admit his done an excellent job! I totally recommend reading the report for any kind of player, not only from Legacy.

By the way, have you ever seen Saito shuffling?

We all know that Richard Ph.D. Garfield has always been very kind when it comes to sign your cards. If you are lucky enough to meet him once, he’ll be always up for some signing and, if you are brave enough, maybe some alterations.

What happens when one of the biggest collectors meets Mr. Garfield? In the following video, Daniel Chang asks Richard for some signatures and… check it by yourself!

Yeah, you better safe than sorry! Good job Daniel!

PS: 9.5 Lotuses are tooooo much for my eyes!

Once again, Terese Nielsen surprises us with her latest alteration. This time she’s altered a Force of Will with another movie character, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger from Terminator. If you want to get your hands on this card, you can bid on its eBay auction site.

Click the image to go to the eBay auction!

As a bonus track, Terese Nielsen on her personal blog has shown us another Arnold Schwarzenegger alteration featuring Connan!

Personally, I like a lot more the Terminator one. The details and the lights make it lot smoother to my sight.

So, don’t ask me how Evan Erwin, from Star City Games, has managed to get the list, but he’s spoiled all the cards that will come inside the FTV: Relics pack. The complete list is:

• Masticore
• Karn, Silver Golem
• Memory Jar
• Mox Diamond
• Akroma’s Memorial
• Feldon’s Cane
• Ivory Tower
• Ring of Gix
• Ornithopter
• Platinum Angel
• Lightning Greaves
• Oblivion Stone
• Legacy Weapon
• Sol Ring
• Oil of Psarl

All in all, it seems a pretty bad box, except for the Mox Diamond. The rest of the cards they either existed already in foil or they actually unplayable. Sure having Ivory Tower in foil is great… but it will never see play in today’s formats.

The spoiled card from Scars of Mirrodin will be the Oil of Psarl. They haven’t any information regarding its text, so we’ll have to wait a bit longer.

1st of April – 2010 (Better late than never!)