mtg Pack Rat Deck

One thing that's been annoying me about Theros so far is the complete lack of love for rodents, while the possibility of a Minotaur and Gorgon tribal decks is awesome the new block signals the end of the last. All in all I have lost eight cards (Ravenous Rats x4 and Prey upon x4), now the prey upon's can be replaced but it's the four extra furry bodies that i'm going to miss.

Rat cards can easily be slipped into any block really, as they can be found pretty much everywhere. as it stands the majority of my rat deck comes from the Return to Ravnica block and of course features everyone's favourite broken card, Pack Rat. With this deck I wanted to be making the most of those tokens and went Black/Green. this gave me access too three populate spells. Oddly a populate Pack Rat deck isn't something that I have seen much of, I favour it as it means not having to rely on discarding cards for more rats.

Lands

Swamp x10
Forest x9
Golgari Guildgate x4

Creatures

Pack Rat x4
Ravenous Rats x4
Drainpipe Vermin x4
Gutter Skulk x4
Ogre Slumlord x4
Sporemound x4

Other Spells

Druids Deliverance x4
Growing Ranks x2
Doom Blade x2
Mending Touch x2
Down/Dirty x1
Prey Upon x4

I usually sit back building rats until I can swing for lethal, or near to it. A quite mean tactic I like to use is swing big, but not quite big enough to kill, leaving myself open then run a Druids Deliverance on the ensuing counter attack, leaving me a win on the next turn. The Ogre Slumlords mix nicely with a few other cards in the deck, firstly the tokens you receive when a non token creature dies really boosts up the Pack Rats power, secondly giving all rats deathtouch makes Drainpipe Vermin terrifying. With this combo you can chump and kill most targets, pay the black and force a discard, then gain two 1/1 Rat Token's.

The Sporemound's are a big of an oddity, the main reason I am running them is to have another chance at getting tokens on the board in case I can't find Pack Rats or Slumlords.

Now a quick word on Token's, your going to need them. Lot's of them. Currently i'm using Rattatta and Patrat Pokemon cards as 1/1 rats and Dirty Wererats as my Pack Rats. The Pokemon cards won't get mixed up with the rest of the deck and the Dirty Wererat is decently vintage and very probably won't be seeing a reprint anytime soon. Some other Pack Rat token ideas I really like are these and these.

Also been playing alot of DOTP 2013 on my 360 after getting it free a while ago. Currently loving the krenko deck, Goblin Piledriver is awesome.

MTG Life counter

I've tried a couple free life counting apps over the last few months and rarely stuck with them for long. A lot of them just don't feel quite right or lack a easy UI. Then there are the amount of options that you can consider, how many players do you want it to support? Do you want poison counters?

A quick search for a MTG life in the app store shows 62 results, quite a lot to shift through, so I thought I would share with you one of my current favourites, MTG Life and Score (available on the app store for free).

Yes I named my opponent Loser, yes i'm Ten

Now while this app is not as complex as some, you can only show two players and it only keeps track of life. It is by far the nicest looking life counter I think I have ever seen. While being able to name players is a nice touch, its a shame that it doesn't remember names between sessions. 

It has the standard plus/minus 1 as well as the always welcome plus/minus 5, this makes it easy to add life totals although I did notice with play that it sometimes won't register button touches leaving you sometimes searching for the 'sweet spot' on the screen.

But I mean come on, it's just so pretty and nice. If your looking for an iOS life tracking app on your phone this is one of the best. 

Redakai Gold Pack Unboxing

Up for today's consideration is these super ultra rare redakai gold pack.
These bad boys are £96.00 at RRP but I managed to pick one up for £9.60 at this shop, yeah that is 90% off, it's obscene how cheap these cards are going for at the minute.

The sealed box, note the 90% off sticker.

Here we can see the full box in all its glory, its quite small and compact but feels reassuringly heavy. In the box you get 24 booster packs, each containing six cards. Totaling 144 for the whole box, two cards of each pack is a rare with a chance of being super rare (silver and gold respectively). I did quite well out of mine but it is worth mentioning that my friend also bought a box and only drew four or five Golds. In relation to the game, Gold cards are pretty mean, so if your serious about getting a competitive deck its worth picking up one of these and a few kairu tins (these will be covered in a unboxing in the next week or so). Pretty much all my current deck is Silver rarity upwards.

The box folded out for display

In a way it's a shame that this is now a discontinued game, the cards are pretty cool and the stacking mechanic is innovative and works very well. A few things don't work so well, such as the 'Metacharge' mechanic, while with some attacks it's pretty self explanatory on some cards it fails to make any sense. The other problem that arises from it being discontinued is the lack of future expansions, right now we only have the original release and the Metacharge release, meaning I have a good chance of owning all the cards in circulation, thrice over.

However I suppose on the other hand its good that this system is now dead as its really easy to now pick up and play. I'll leave you with a nice bit of geek porn,

Look at all the shiny booster packs, that's 48 rares right there..

Redakai Championship Set Unboxing

Picked up a Redakai Championship Set today, actually my second I did pick one up at the weekend but went straight to playing it and didn't have chance to document it (I'll be posting a review of the game tomorrow when i have a little more time).

OK so here we have the Championship set in it's unopened state, I bought it from Home Bargains for £3.00. It contains everything that you need to play, a forty card deck, three characters, deck box and stands for your hand and battlefield.

This is a close up from the back of the box, its lists the contents of the pack and shows off the mysterious gold pack. The gold pack is a special single card, in both my packs it was a creature card, usually pretty powerful with very useful abilities.






 




OK, so lets take a look inside the box.

Here we can see the contents, on the top we have the battlefield where your three characters will sit on the left we have our deck/draw box, the two gold objects are your power counters and lastly on the right we have our card screen/hand holder. This is one of the things I quite like about Redakai, the accessories that you get with it, having the battlefield and deckhand makes it a lot easier to play rather than relying on your hands and a tabletop.

Above is my Gold Pack X-Drive, this cheerful looking fellow is quite a beast, notice the three yellow bars in the top right? Those mean that he can heal any damage caused to a character card. His ability tho expensive is fantastic in a game where drawing cards is huge. 

One of the only problems i have with the championship set is that the cards don't come in booster packs, I tend to feel a little cheated when you don't get to tear apart the foil wrappers, another thing worth mentioning is that Spin Master, the company who produce the game, have also released a championship tin. Now this tin retails for more (ok, so its only two pounds more) and as far as i can work out all you get extra is the actual tin, it also appears that you lose out on the gold pack so I think the tin boxed set is worse as well as being more expensive.

Redakai starter set unboxing and quick review

I've been aware of the Redakai TCG for a while now and today I thought i'd give it a whirl and see what its like. I picked up two starter sets, each comes with a 'promo' card, two boosters and an 'X-drive' (think of it as a deck box and a card holder) each one costing .99p (apparently RRP £9.99) from a Home Bargains.

In each booster is eleven cards, giving each pack a total of 23 cards. These cards can be either a creature  character or an attack. The characters in the game represent you, in the full game you have three on the board, however in this starter pack you only need one (it uses a basic edition of the rule book), your creatures are essentially upgrades to your character, bolstering defenses and potentially healing wounds. Attacks are your win conditions, providing ways to try to wear down your opponent.

The game works on 'Kairu', this games mana/energy/etc... again in the starter edition this is discarded as you can just play cards as you draw them.

Sample Character

Sample Attack

Sample Creature

Ok, so gameplay wise the basic edition is pretty but also pretty dull, you start with your character out, deck shuffled and dice for first turn against your opponent. You then take turns drawing and playing cards until somebody is defeated.

Each character has three life points, an attack can take away one of these points however each character also has a defense value, meaning an attack has to be over this in order to get through. Attacks and defenses come in various colours, red/blue/green etc... a high red defense will see off all but the strongest red offense but is useless against a weak attack from a different colour. When a character loses all health points he is out of the game, if at the beginning of your turn if you cannot draw a card then you lose also.

All of the cards are printed on transparent plastic, leading to an interesting 'stacking' mechanic, you place your attacks over your opponent's character and it will cover the life points it takes. Certain creature cards will also 'recover' these points when you play them, covering over the attacks.

Whilst this is a nice way to play, having see through cards is a bit off a hassle when playing as its quite easy to hazard a guess as to what's coming up next. The 'X reader' solves this by covering all of the cards so you can draw blind.

Example of Cards stacking

All in all, i'm still unsure about Redakai, while I like the stacking mechanic and all the cool accessories you have, the basic control system is appalling  The fact that you just draw and play cards means that there is absolutely no thinking involved whats so ever. Later in the week I hope to pick up a championship boxset (£4.99) which comes with the full rule set so I think i'll reserve judgement till then.