Friday 18:48
Saturday 17:52

Easy straightforward Saturday with no assists. Felt like a Friday, and beat its time as well.



Labor Day weekend meant a low turnout for Friday Night Magic, so we only had six to draft. Normally, I'd first-pick Cloudkin Seer and go for Elementals, but with the lower number of players and packs, it's harder to put together, so I took Overcome. Overcome is pretty good in any green deck, although it's not the monster bomb Overrun was, especially in this format, where green's strength is in its already large creatures. The fact that I'd normally take a 2/1 flier over it (and I'm not alone) says a lot.

Still, if you do draft a lot of creatures and stay low to the ground, Overcome will win you games. I stuck mostly to green for the first pack, though random white cards came late because white is so bad, and Ajani was waiting for me in pack 2, then Vengeful Hydra in pack 3! I ended up with a life-gain heavy deck, including Bishop of Wings, 3 Dawning Angel, Angel of Vitality and 2 Daybreak Chaplain plus its best friend Gauntlets of Light. Ironroot Warlord was also strong.

What the deck didn't have was removal. No Pacifism, no Rabid Bite. Not even Vial of Dragonfire. I still won the first two matches without too much difficulty. A couple of Overcome finishes, and one time I got up to 35 life and used Ajani's ultimate to win. Alas, my deck did not cooperate in the third round, to the point where I had literally every 5-drop of the deck in my hand (nothing in the deck costs more) and was stuck on four lands. The turn before dying, I drew Blossoming Sands. If it were literally ANY OTHER LAND, I might have been able to stabilize with the three Dawning Angels in my hand, or for the previous three turns not only miss land drops, but draw the only uncastable spells as well? Such salt.

But, I did get to ultimate Ajani in limited, and that's pretty awesome. I have one in my EDH life gain deck as well, and I hope to execute that someday as well.

Sunday 49:21 (1 Google)

Slowest Sunday in months. I was a little distracted at times, but also times just staring at a clue for a full minute, totally flummoxed. Perhaps it's biorhythms, since yesterday was also slow-going. Google was inevitable. There are dead poets I know, and dead poets I know of. John Donne is the latter. In theory I read some of his poems in college, but damned if I can remember.

Saturday 30:35 (3ish Google)

One search was just a definition of a word in the clue (multimeter), not the clue itself, another was just to check the spelling of a clue I was pretty sure I had right, but wasn't fitting (wait, Wookiee has two Es and an I?) The third was direct. It was the video game character with the most magazine covers (it's Lara Croft, with apparently 1200+ according to Guinness). It's so specific, the top search result was the answer to 28-Across in the puzzle. I'd rather do a little more work than that. When I'm looking for an actor in a film, I search for the film, not "actor in Hatari."

Despite the help, the puzzle was very tough, and very good, full of great misdirection.

Unbelievable discovery in one's field: CROP CIRCLE
E-sharp?: TECH SAVVY
Opposite of a state of disbelief: THEOCRACY (❤️)

I just achieved platinum status in MTG Arena constructed, mostly on the back of Vampires. The deck has enemies, but even they stumble at times. Sure, Reid Duke can find paths to victory playing Golgari, but my opponents aren't Reid Duke. The Kethis deck went off on me while I smoked a bowl, but he played with his food a little too much, and was forced to pass after drawing his whole deck, unable to loop Oath of Kaya again. Jeez, people, put Jace in the main.

This deck is a little pricy to build in paper, plus the deck kinda disintegrates in a couple of months with the rotation, so I don't want to invest too much, but I'm having fun online, even if I'm wrecking my sleep cycle.