I’ve been doing some thinking the past month.

Even though I didn’t manage to play as much as I wanted this past month, I did discuss a bit with fellow players and also had some time to think about various things. So, today, I’ll be wrapping up some loose threads, as the title suggests.

Brewing pixels and paper

I tend to play Magic offline. I boot up Arena whenever I remember, but that’s not that often. However, when one works on a new decklist, they spend a ton of time online before committing to buying the actual cards. Well, that’s how it works most of the time, that is. My Yennett deck was just me going through my binders, trying to find odd cards with odd mana cost. But that’s the exception.

So that got me thinking. How should I approach the brewing phase when it comes to the Challenge? Should I post and talk about a decklist I have somewhat decided before physically making the deck? I tried to get some help from the initial rules I set for the challenge. The only rule that is somewhat relevant is the one about having fun doing the challenge. I could interpret this by just doing whatever comes to mind. So one option would be to have a separate group of decks I find interesting and talk about those, as I slowly work on building the deck I like the most. I don’t know if that would work, but we’ll see.

Bant and Abzan slots

So, after having some thoughts about how to proceed with deck building, I started thinking about what I should do regarding the last two 3-coloured commanders, which are Band and Abzan.

There is one Abzan commander that I like as a card, and that’s Doran, the Siege Tower. First of all, it’s a Treefolk card, and I like Treefolk. Secondly, its ability shouts shenanigans from far, far away, but relatively table-friendly ones. This gives me a fair amount of certainty that I’ll build a deck with it. Now, the thing is that I think I have that card, but a quick search didn’t reveal it in my collection. But more on that in a bit.

Let’s go to Bant. Bant is a bit trickier. Rafiq of the Many is a card I like a ton, because it’s an Alara card. But the way to build this is by making a Voltron deck, and that’s already occupied by Dogmeat, Ever Loyal. So, I had to do some searching for this one. Another interesting card I found is Brenard, Ginger Sculptor. That’s an interesting token deck with a cute theme. But I haven’t decided yet.

Sorting my collection

I mentioned I couldn’t find Doran in my collection, but I’m not sure about it. That’s because my collection is currently in a state of chaos. However, I am very slowly working towards a less chaotic collection. I have gotten 2 metal chest drawers with 6 drawers from IKEA. That was step 1. Step 2 was gathering all commons and uncommons, separating them into colours, and putting each colour into a drawer. So, there is one drawer for white, black, blue, red, green, and colourless. The rest of the drawers store some rares and some loose decks. I am currently in step 3, which is sorting each colour by type and then alphabetically. So, each drawer will have cards separated by type, and each type will be sorted alphabetically. This will allow me to find my commons and uncommons really easily, hopefully.

As for rares and mythics, I have some binders, but they are not enough. So I have various deckboxes with assorted rares and no way to tell which card is where. That’s step 5. Why step 5? Because I forgot step 4. That is getting each sorted colour into Manabox using the app. At the moment, all my white commons and uncommons are sorted and in the Manabox collection. Well, most of my white cards. I have acquired more cards since I started this, and the new ones are floating all around the house.

Spider-meh?

Last Saturday was the Marvel’s Spider-Man pre-release. I decided not to attend. One reason was my budget, which is really tight. Another reason was the set itself. While I was thinking whether I should attend or not, I came across this video by Tolarian Community College.

I couldn’t agree more with what’s said in the video. This set wasn’t for me, because I am not a huge fan of Spider-Man, but also because I feel the set was a bit rushed. But that doesn’t mean others can’t enjoy the set, and also, I don’t have to get hate for not vibing with it.

Wrap up complete

I think that’s all the wrapping up I had to do for now. I’ll stop now because there is a lot of shuffling through cards I need to do, and also, a lot of writing, since we’re working on another D&D supplement.

And until next time, have fun!