Don’t bother reading this post if you don’t know how to play Magic the Gathering. You won’t understand much. I had an epic battle on Xbox Live where I took a totally unleveled deck and battled four player free-for-all and pretty much “won”, even though their decks were leveled up.

So the way Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers on Xbox 360 works is that there are pre-built decks of around 60 cards, but you only gain access to around 45 of them at first. You have to grind through the single player campaign to “unlock” the last 15 or so cards of each deck. So if you don’t grind, your deck is playable, but often those 15 cards are the most powerful cards of the deck, and so you’re generally better off doing the grinding.

So I go online and do a ranked matched “any game”, and end up in a 4 player free for all. Note that I didn’t know the decks at the time, but now in retrospect I’m able to identify them. I was using a completely base “Ears of the Elves” (literally 0 cards unlocked), and played against 3 players, at least one of whom had fully unlocked his decks.

The guy to my left was playing a pure-white deck heavily based upon flying creatures, so probably it was “Wings of Light”. The guy across from me was using some sort of super-monster green deck, so I’m thinking it must have been “Teeth of the Predator”. He’s the one who had fully unlocked his deck. Finally, the guy to the right of me was playing a pure-red deck, though nothing stood out to me, so I’m guessing he was using “Hands of Flame”.

I’ll reiterate that although I played the single player campaign, this was the absolute first time I played online, and the first time I played with the deck I was using. I didn’t even know what kind of deck I had until maybe the 5 or 6th turn where I realized it was elf-themed (I didn’t bother reading the name of the deck). All I had noted was that it was a green + black, so I was expecting a swarm deck (due to green) with some sort of “sacrifice creature to do something cool” kind of thing (due to black). Turns out my deck was a pure swarm deck, but whatever.

So the first few turns we’re all bringing out our creatures, but nobody is attacking. The game starts to drag on, and it’s quickly becoming clear that no one is going to attack. I get the sense that a “cold-war” kind of vibe is coming up: Nobody wants to unleash the first strike, because then they’d receive retaliation.

With this realization, I take a look at the number of cards in each of our deck. This is developing into a game of attrition, and so whoever has the least number of cards is going to lose first. That turned out to be me (in retrospect, this was kind of obvious, since I had zero unlocks), so I knew I had to break the peace. The guy with the most amount of cards was the green deck across from me.

Unfortunately, that bastard had brought out three, I repeat, three fucking Wurm’s Tooth’s, and so he was getting 3 health every time someone cast a green spell. Add to the fact that he and I are both playing green decks, and he was currently at 50+ health. This guy had a strong chance of being the winner, which was both good and bad for him. It’s good because if this game of attrition went too long (i.e. if the other players were stupid), he can just coast to victory. It’s bad because his position was too visible. In other words, it was clear that he was way ahead of everyone else, which risked having the other players form an alliance against him. Then again, this being my first online Magic game, I wasn’t sure how easy it was to form an alliance. There was no text nor voice chat system, so I couldn’t ask the other players to rally with me.

Not 100% sure, but I think at this point, I could already see that themes of the green deck across from me was “giant creatures”. I forget what he had exactly, but we’re talking like 5/5s being his weakest, and maybe he had an 8/8 in there too. The white deck to my left, probably also clearly became a “flying deck”. He probably brought out a couple of weak flyers (1/1) early, but he I bet he had a 5/5 or two out by now. The red deck, on the other hand, I had no idea what the heck he was doing. He hard hardly brought anything out. He brought out a Raging Globin moderately early (not first turn, but before the green guy and possibly the white guy had any monsters), but he was too chicken shit to actually attack anyone with it.

On my side, I was spamming out elves. I brought out Gaea’s Herald (who, BTW, is considered an “elf”) early on the off chance that someone had counter spells (despite nobody playing blue) (and in the end, nobody had ever cast any counter spells the whole game). Then I had a couple of Elvish Warriors out (plain 2/3 monsters) and probably some other miscellaneous elf cards like Farhaven Elf and one Elven Riders. I got Lys Alana Huntmaster out pretty late unfortunately, so I think I ended up with only something like four or six 1/1 tokens.

This is where the game got interesting. Up until now, it was just a cold war build up. But then, the green bastard across from me brought out Verdant Force. At first, I thought this guy only created a 1/1 every time it was his upkeep, but it turns out it’s a 1/1 creature for every player’s upkeep, which meant that by the time the turn came back to him, he’d have four 1/1 creatures out. Definitely too fucking powerful. So I was the first one to go on the offense. I cast Eyeblight’s Ending taking out his Verdant Force, after it had spawned a 1/1.

I think I broke the ice here, because after my spell, the white guy on my left attacked with about half of his force, trying to hit the green guy. Since all of white’s creatures were flying, quite a few got through. Unfortunately, some were blocked, and this is what happened:

The green guy had Vigor out, and if you don’t know that card, you should definitely read it, because it is total bullshit. Vigor makes all your creatures invincible, and every time you try to damage them, instead they get a permanent +1/+1. Also, any time Vigor goes to the graveyard, he’s instead shuffled into your library. PURE BULLSHIT. Imagine a spawn deck + Vigor + Earthquake. Anyway, so one of green’s creatures got a permanent +1/+1.

While I’m at it, I might was well mentioned that green also had Elvish Piper which essentially let him cast any creature he wanted for 1 mana, which is just adding insult to injury, because by this point we all had like 10+ or 15+ lands.

The green guy got pissed off by this, and essentially sent a horde against white. Basically, at this point, white looked like he was screwed. If white did not block, you’re very easily looking at 20 damage this turn, AKA instant death. Probably he was doing 30 or 35 damage in fact. White could have blocked just fine (he certainly had enough creatures to do so), but because of Vigor, all of green’s blocked monster would not only take 0 damage, but they would gain a permanent +1/+1 due to the blocking.

I already knew what card I wanted to play… the only issue is I wasn’t sure when I wanted to play it. I was considering playing it last turn when white attacked, but I didn’t. But I saw here and now that if I didn’t play it, essentially green would completely overpower white, and no matter whether white blocks or not, I’m not sure red and I could have handled it alone. So I played my card.

I cast Eyeblight’s Ending on Vigor.

This instantly completely changed the whole battle. With Vigor out of the picture, white blocked the shit out of that force, devastating them. Then red did nothing, then the turn came back to me. I brought out Elvish Champion which gave all my creatures +1/+1, and best of all, forestwalk. I declared my attack phase, and the green player quit the game. I didn’t even have to actually tap any creatures for the attack. One down, two to go.

The red player tried to fuck me over here. He used some sort of creature ability on the white player (I forget what) and cast some sort of 3 damage instant on my Elvish Champion, trying to kill the 2/2 creature. I fucked him right back by doing Essence Drain on his creature, and then Giant Growth on the Elvish Champion. At this point, the red player said fuck it, and disconnected too.

Unfortunately, when the red player disconnected, the game ended, saying that the host has left the game. I’m sort of relieved that I didn’t have to fight the white player, because I had established a sort of camaraderie with him.

If the game had kept going, would I have won? It’s very hard to tell, not because we were evenly matched or anything, but because I couldn’t remember what my remaining cards were.

Basically, after the red guy, it’s my turn, then the white guy’s turn. And the white has all flying monsters, and I have zero flying monsters, so unless I can kill white this turn, he would kill me next turn.

I’m pretty sure that I had Overrun, so I definitely want to use the trample ability. But what I can’t remember is whether or not I had Coat of Arms. If I did, that’s an easy +10/+10 to all my creatures, combined with trample means I win (unless he had Wrath of God or something like that). If I didn’t have that card, then he could probably block enough to ensure that I don’t kill him, and then he’d kill me.