Day 028

MTG Magic Scanner for android is an app that catalogues and prices cards using OCR technology. You can rapidly scan card names using the phone camera to build a list. It's great for trading or for documenting a deck. Prices are from TCGPlayer.com. Exporting lists is simple, I mostly email them back to myself.
It is able to read normal black and inverted (white) text. Pre-modern typeface however is not yet supported. I find I can scan most cards in normal lighting conditions. It has trouble locking onto some cards where contrast between text and background is low and also sleeved cards. It may guess the wrong printing, so you sometimes have to disable or enable the set library to get the correct price. I find I have to disable duplicates otherwise it tends to read cards more than once.
Some positives and negatives, but a great timesaver if you're sorting money cards out of bulk.

Day 27

When it comes to software it's often the case that what works for you is the most important factor.

I loved the SCG mobile app for reading articles when mobile, but that has been discontinued,

Having tried a number of apps on android I find I use MTG Familiar almost daily. The things I do most are:

• Lookup cards: I often want the oracle text for unfamiliar cards
• Lookup what set a card is in so I know which box in my collection to find it
• Search for cards to match a new deck idea
• Lookup prices: TCGPlayer.com average prices are a commonly accepted guide for trading
• Maintain my wish list
• Settle arguments using the card rulings

It has other functions such as game scoring, dice and so on, but I don't use those.

Day 008

Last night was commander 2015 decks with Kris and Jason. I bet they both were  sick of the number of triggers I missed. Overall it was a lesson in politics; when the decks may struggle to build a board presence, especially experience counters then I don't want to be giving the others reasons to kill my general. Sword of Selves on a Hunting Dragon was a LOL.

Day 026

If you're buying cards from magic cardmarket and you live in the UK then I have worked out the break even point between paypal and transferwise is about 20 quid. If you're paying less than that use paypal, more than that use transferwise (by about 3.8 pence in the pound). So you save 38 pence spending £30 over transferwise.

Transferwise charge £1.
Magic cardmarket add a paypal fee of 0.35 euros plus 5% of the transaction amount.

Update: I realise I am bad at maths. The equality point = 20 * exchange rate - 7.
So when exchange rate = 1.3099 then the equality is at 19.20. When the exchange rate is better Paypal gets better and Transferwise gets worse.

Day 003

I'm using more of my card collection than ever before, but I still have excess boxes full. Will try to halve it by year end. Chance of failure... 88%

Day 002

I'm into my second year of the local Commander group at the University of Warwick (Thursday evenings, come along, join the facebook group). To date I have built mono white (Kemba), mono red (Krenko) and colourless (Karn). I'm not fixated on letter K, my latest deck was five colour (Sliver Hivelord) and I also have pauper EDH (Underworld Coinsmith).

First EDH task for 2016 is to "embrace the chaos" and decide which of the three colour generals I tackle first. How to decide though? I've been going round and round on this. My first impulse was pick a non-white, non-red legend, but I really want to be in red and blue. I want to avoid repeating cards I'm already using and  Krenko being Goblin tribal leaves plenty of red design space in the cards I have in my collection. I am reserving my best black cards for Shadowborn Apostle, so that puts me in Temur (red, blue, green). The options then are Animar, Intet, Maelstrom Wanderer, Riku and Surrak Dragonclaw. I would like this to not be a linear or tribal deck like my others, so Animar and Surrak must be excluded. Intet represents the spirit of Elder Dragon Highlander best, however doesn't interest me much. Maelstrom Wanderer is the most interesting option, only someone else in the group uses it already, so I'll go with Riku.

This may be where I go against my habit and intentionally build in combo. Making arbitrary amounts of mana to sink into big X spells like Rolling Thunder is one path I can take. The green will provide ramp of course and maybe some fatties. I really have no idea where this is going yet, so I'll keep posting updates.

Day 001

To kick off my year in Magic the Gathering (MtG) I'll mention the Pauper format which is what I mainly play casually on Magic Online (MTGO). It used to have a more varied metagame. What with the introduction of sanctioned pauper tournaments, room reorganisation and the recent removal of standard pauper, prismatic and two-headed giant I now mainly see tier 1 competitive decks in the just-for-fun room. To avoid boredom I mainly use rogue decks, Dark Cogs being one of those. The brainchild of Cyrulean, it's a bit too slow to set up in today's faster metagame, but you can often grind out wins and have some fun.

Dark Cogs
4 Leonin Squire
4 Trinket Mage
4 Aven Riftwatcher
3 Mulldrifter
2 Sanctum Gargoyle
4 Titanic Bulvox
4 Skred
4 Momentary Blink
4 Cloudshift
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Æther Spellbomb
1 Relic of Progenitus
9 Snow-Covered Island
6 Snow-Covered Mountain
6 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Ancient Den
1 Great Furnace
1 Seat of the Synod

Sideboard
1 Viridian Longbow
1 Bonesplitter
3 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Sunbeam Spellbomb
2 Sylvok Lifestaff
4 Apostle's Blessing
3 Gitaxian Probe

If you know your magic cards you probably already know the aim is to control the game by means of reusing comes-into-the-battlefield (CITB) triggered abilities of creatures. You've got evasion going so you can sometimes grind out a very slow victory from your flyers, but the real win condition is the trampling green morpher Titanic Bulvox; look, no forests! Rules bit: permaments are exiled face-up, so 'blinking' a morphed Bulvox brings it back onto the battlefield as a 7 power trampler. Counting flashback there are 12 blinks in the deck. You also get value by blinking any of the other creatures to reuse their CITB effects.

The cogs don't look much, but trust me, they're great tools to have, and you can tutor them up using your Trinket Mages and Recollect them with the Leonin Squire or Sanctum Gargoyle, so you'll be getting a ton of value out of them. They're really adaptable too; you can bounce and shock your own or your opponents creatures at instant speed, shock the opponent to the face, draw cards and exile from graveyards. The three artifact lands may also be fetched if you need colour fixing. The sideboard gives you more cogs to shore up bad matchups. You can be the beatdown with the Bonesplitter/Lifestaff, gain (even more life), or shoot stuff with the bow.

Aven Riftwatcher can gain you ridiculous amounts of life, and Skred can eventually bring down the biggest threats, so no need to fear the likes of Tron and Mono Black Control.