Magic Monday: Top 5 Born of the Gods Cards in Limited

Another Monday and another start in to a hopefully amazing week. I hope everyone had a great weekend. Today I would like to talk to you about the, in my opinion, top five cards of the Born of the Gods set for the limited format. Currently a draft will look like this: one pack of BotG, two packs of Theros. Since you get your first pick out of the BotG pack it is very important to know the biggest limited bombs in this set. My advice for any beginner, if you open up your first pack and see one of the following cards, grab it and hold on to it with your life! If you can manage to build a somewhat cohesive max. two color deck around them you should almost win every game you get them out on the table.

#5 Ephara, God of the Polis
 Well, she is a god which is always nice and it means she is a 6/5 indestructible creature if your devotion to white and blue is seven or higher. Her ability to get you additional card draw every turn (provided you played a creature the turn before) is awesome. Just make sure you get a decent bunch of white and blue creatures in your deck, get 'em out, turn them sideways and you should be fine.

 #4 Xenagos, God of Revels
 Same thing as Ephara, 6/5 indestructible as long as your devotion to green and red is at least seven. His ability to give one of your creatures +X/+X and haste at the beginning of your combat step were X is equal to the creatures power is insane. Load your deck up with some high power creatures and swing with them the turn they arrive for massive damage!

 #3 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
 Not a god but one awesome cat. He is a 3/4 with vigilance for three... Do I have to say anymore? Oh, and by the way every time you attack or block with him, he poops out a 1/1 cat token with vigilance. I hope you're not allergic!

#2 Kiora, the Crashing Wave
 Have you ever faced a 9/9 Kraken token? One alone would be horrifying but with her emblem you get one at the beginning of every one of your end steps. Remember you can not ever ever ever get rid of an emblem once it is on the table. If you pick her, your only job is to keep her save and +1 her until she can drop that emblem.
 

#1 Phenax, God of Deception
Blue and black, my two favorite colors in magic. He is another god (4/7, indestructible as long as your devotion to blue and black is at least seven) so he should be pretty good right? Wrong! He is in my opinion the best limited card in this format. If there is a mill mechanic in limited it is broken, and so is this one. Get him a couple of high toughness creatures, don't attack just mill the shit out of your opponent. Games should be over pretty quick once he hits the table. Remember limited decks are only 40 cards and he alone mills for seven every turn once he is a creature...

Just my two cents about the current limited format, if you have comments or disagree with me that is absolutely fine, just leave everything you have to say down in the comment section below.

J.D.

Steampunk Saturday: The Kodiak

Welcome to another Steampunk Saturday! I hope you all had a great week and I'm glad to see some of you return to this little showcase. Today I would like to show you the painted version of my Kodiak. I stuck to the standart Khador colors for him. It was a fairly quick paintjob because I was itching to finally try him out and only had like two days to get him assembled and painted.

In the game this is easily one of my favorite 'jacks. With his heavy boiler he is so focus efficient and fast, pathfinder increases his maneuverability even further and he has an amazing special attack. If he gets bogged down by infantry he can just use his vent steam ability. On top of that he sports two open fists which opens up an array of power attacks. I personally am a big fan of the two handed throw!

As I mentioned last week, he works exceptionally well with pButcher but really you can play this awesome piece of khadoran machinery with pretty much any caster you want. If I had to find a downside to him, it would be the lack of a ranged weapon but shooting is not what this beast is designed to do. When choosing a warjack you always have to ask: What role do I want this guy to fulfill? The Kodiak is gonna pummel the enemy into the ground, THAT is his job!

Well that's all for now. Hope to see you next week for another steampunk saturday!

J.D.

Warhammer Wednesday: Blood Angel Sanguinary Guard

For this first installment of Warhammer Wednesday I wanted to show off one of my all time favorite Blood Angel units. The Sanguinary Guard. Now, I don't use them as often as I would like in 6th edition but I still love the fluff and how these models look. With their ancient gold armor and their majestic wings inspired by their grand Primarch Sanguinius they take into battle... and lately in my case get shot down the turn they arrive by massive Tau interceptor fire.

 

I painted this squad about one to one and a half years ago, so they are pretty old, but I still really like them. As you can see I played around with my airbrush quite a bit on their power weapons which is now a staple in my Blood Angel force for all power and force weapons. The shoulder pads were also airbrushed to get a nice red gradient. I believe these models and my Dante were the first models I tried the Vallejo liquid metallic paints on. Since then I moved on to P3s Molten Bronze followed by Rhulic Gold which gives a very nice gold effect in my opinion.

If you deepstrike them, get them down in cover out of line of sight. Don't worry if they don't do anything the turn they arrive, keep 'em hidden. They are such a mobile unit that you just have to be close but not in their face once they come in and if you manage to shoot something down or get a charge in the turn after they will wreck face! Put Dante in the unit if you have the points for no scatter and you can just place them were you want them but beware they are kind of a bullet magnet, since no one seems to like such a powerful unit near their deployment zone.

Do you still see Sanguinary Guard if you play against Blood Angels or do you still use them in your games in 6th edition?

J. D.

Magic Monday: Limited (BotG/Th/Th) Deck Tech G/R Monsters

What a fine day to start into a new week. A new week of hobby related goodness. Could there be anything better? Probably not but let me try it anyway with the new, fresh, hot off the press Magic Monday! Today I will be showcasing my latest Magic: The Gathering draft (BotG/Th/Th) deck from Friday the 14th of March 2014. I took second place in the swiss style tournament and got to take home a couple of price boosters. Yay! :)

In my first pack, I didn't really get anything good so I decided to draft the Pheres-Band Tromper and quickly started down the road of a G/R monstersish kinda deck. I picked some fattys, got some premium limited burn in Fated Conflagration and was very lucky to get passed a couple of very important cards for my deck like Hammer of Purphoros and Mistcutter Hydra. I didn't get a single Voyaging Satyr or any other ramping creature which kinda sucked but it worked out quite well in the end anyways.

Below is the decklist I used. Note that I didn't play a single spell twice and that's mainly because I just didn't. :) I'm not the biggest Magic nerd out there and since it did work out, all is well on the plane of Theros.

8 Mountains
11 Forests

1 Sedge Scorpion
1 Nyxborn Rollicker

1 Akroan Crusader

1 Ordeal of Nylea
1 Mistcutter Hydra
1 Leafcrown Dryad
1 Rise to the Challenge
1 Deathbellow Raider

1 Shredding Winds
1 Hammer of Purphoros
1 Bolt of Keranos

1 Pheres-Band Tromper
1 Staunch-Hearted Warrior
1 Fanatic of Mogis
1 Lightning Volley
1 Fated Conflagration

1 Nessian Asp
1 Nessian Demolok
1 Pharagax Giant
1 Rage of Purphoros

1 Nemesis of Mortals

The MVP of the afternoon was definitely the Mistcutter Hydra. With its haste, pro blue and can't be countered rules it is already amazing but I got it out as a 5/5 and in another game as a 6/6 which ended both games pretty quickly. The Hydra was closely followed by the Hammer of Purphoros and Fated Conflagration. The Lightning Volley did jack shit, so I should have boarded it out but I just couldn't be bothered. A couple of my opponents were really surprised by the Shredding winds in the mainboard but let me tell you it had its uses!

To anyone who is new to Magic: The Gathering or has never tried it and just would like to, I can highly recommend going to your local gaming store and participating in the Friday Night Magic. It's a lot of fun and always remember that's what it's all about!

Anyway I'll see you next week for another Magic Monday!

J.D.

Steampunk Saturday: The Butcher of Khardov

Now, let's start things off right with a nice little bit of Warmachine. About three years ago I started out collecting a small Khador army and an even smaller Cygnar force. I very recently sold the blue guys and began to focus on supporting the khadoran war efforts in the Iron Kingdoms. Now my army is still pretty small since I mostly play 40k, but occaisonally I do really enjoy a nice little game with it. The thing about Warmachine I love the most is probably that just by switching out your warcaster you change the way your entire army works.

The first thing I bought was the battle box (two player starter set wasn't out yet), so I started playing pSorcha. She's all right in my opinion but, it wasn't really what I was looking for in play style. Too fragile, too flimsy and just not angry enough. I did some assassination shenanigans with her since there are, as most of you familiar with the game probably know, a couple of nice combos you can do with her feat and spells but that was about it. Soon after, I got Karchev who looked a lot more like the giant metal beast I wanted to throw down onto the table top. He did alright, paired up with my Behemoth (who I really love btw!) and was a real pleasure to play but he wasn't all that durable the way I threw him into the fire, basically like any another warjack in my arsenal. So my quest to find the ultimate khadoran warcaster continued but not for long because the next one I bought was... THE BUTCHER (pButcher that is) and that was most likely the best warmachine purchase I ever made. He is such a beast. I just love his feat turn were you can just obliterate the enemy forces. I played him the most out of the three that I had up to that point and loved every minute of it.

I usually run him with my Behemoth and a Kodiak in his battle group. The Kodiak is fairly focus efficient so I can pump up the big dude quite nicely. Butchers spells are great for supporting jacks (Fury/Full Throttle) and infantry alike (Iron flesh on my Winterguard with UA and Joe... HELL YEAH!!!) and if shit hits the fan he can dish out some serious pain himself with his MAT 9, P+S 16 Axe Lola and weaponmaster. Really good options for him are also Manhunters/Yuri and of course a trusty old Wardog.

Here is my painted version in all his glory swinging his beloved axe Lola (btw. I can highly recommend the ebook: The Butcher of Khardov it is pretty short but nevertheless a very good read and gives a little bit more backstory about this guy).

"Some say his manners and methods are crude

and shortsighted, but I ask you, would you deny

that he is the personification of vitory at any cost?

Has he ever failed us?"

- Queen Ayn Vanar XI

I also very recently picked up Harkevich and Black Ivan but hadn't had a chance to try them out yet, so I can't really say much about them (other than they look pretty bad ass!). Anyway this is just a little snippet of how I found my way through the thick bushes of the Thornwood forest into the heart of the motherland and to my favorite warcaster. To be continued...

Who is your favorite Khador warcaster and why? Please tell me down below in the comments. 

J.D.

Starting over again!

Wow…

It really has been a while. Almost two years ago I stopped posting on this blog but luckily I never really put down the paint brush which means I have a ton of new painted miniatures and I thought: “Hey, why don’t you start posting again?” And so here I am.

Here is a short overview of what’s coming in the near future:

- Weekly miniature/terrain showcases (Warhammer 40k, Warmachine, Infinity, …)
- Terrain tutorials
- Painting tutorials
- Tactica (Yes, I’m a pretty shitty player but I can still give my two cents about these oh so lovely games)
- Random stuff (Rants, News, Blogs I really like, …)
- Magic: The Gathering content (got back into it… and now I cant stop!)
   - Card/deck of the week
   - My current decks
- Lots and lots (a metric shit-ton!) of spelling mistakes!!! ;)

Now, I think that sounds pretty damn good and on top of that I will slowly give the entire blog a giant overhaul. I want it to be simple but still somewhat stylish. We’ll see how that goes.

Can’t wait to get into all of this again.

I’ll see you on the other side! :)