Karma - Chinese Tolarian Academy (Winner chosen!)

[RisingWater]

It's that time again!

Up for karma is this!



Now for the rules...

#1 - Post here saying you want it!

#2 - Be a registered member as of yesterday. (1/22/13)

#3 - Tell us a short bit about your kitchen table days and your first deck.  Like what was in it that you thought was awesome but really wasn't lol.  For me,  it was my Uncle Istvan! It was over if he hit the board lol.


I'll be picking a winner one week from today, Wednesday 1/30/13.

Good luck!

[Prospero]

As cool as that is, please don't include me in the drawing.  Wouldn't look good in the off chance that a staff member won.

Kitchen table Magic was the absolute best.  Back in the day I played an awful mono-white deck that had Abu Jafar (defense!), Swords to Plowshares, Spirit Link (more defense, with the added bonus of life gain on my men) and Serra Angels for the win.  Nothing was better than landing a Serra and following it with an Armageddon.  Kitchen table Magic gave witness to things like Control Magic on a Force of Nature (ouch!), some infinite mana/life/card draw combos, and more.  EDH is probably the closest thing to that nowadays, but it's gone, really.  I didn't fully understand how bad the cards I played with were.  I also didn't understand that I might want more than 20 lands, or that my deck should have been 60, and not 65 to 70 cards.

[the zeeker]

I want it!

Long time lurker, infrequent poster – but that card is too good to pass up…

I think my first deck that I actually thought about how it was put together (i.e. not a deck of all the cards I owned thrown together) was based on Northern Paladin and Sleight of Mind.  It was pretty much a U/W control deck that I played at about the time Ice Age was released.  I actual won a few local Type II tournaments with it – back when there was a Type I and II.  The deck was based on stalling long enough to land a Paladin and Sleight of Mind him to whatever color deck I was facing.  The best was whenever I went up against SUI black decks because I was pre-sideboarded!

[A.-1.]

I want it!

I was the ultimate Timmy when I first started playing. The first deck I could scrape together was a hodgepodge of cards from Revised through Ice Age? I believe. It was mono-green with almost nothing but big, over-costed dudes. I doubt there were even any non-creature spells, like Fog or Giant Growth, in the deck because that's how I rolled back then. Maybe there were some Wild Growths or mana Elves in there somewhere. More likely though, it was entirely Craw Wurms, Craw Giants, Scaled Wurms, Johtull Wurms, Durkwood Boars, Ironroot Treefolk, etc. I thought I couldn't lose with that much power! It was all about the two numbers in the bottom right for me. Instants, ramp, or a mana curve were not part of my game.

[BC]

Hell yeah I want that.

I played for a short time during high school, right around the time that Ice Age was coming out.  I always played red, one of my friends played white, one black, and one green.  Nobody played multicolored decks, nobody played blue.  My deck had a couple Sol Rings, a couple Shivan Dragons (which were game changers), but mostly I loved Goblins.  Goblin King, Goblin Balloon Brigade, Goblin Chirurgeon, Goblin Mutant, Goblin Caves, Goblin Shrine, etc.  My ultimate finishing card was Goblin Warrens.  If left undisturbed for 7-10 turns, it could really overwhelm the board (which happened from time to time).  I also remember the day my friend (who always played white) discovered Circles of Protection.  That was an unpleasant evening, filled with much arguing and name calling.  After that we all begrudgingly agreed to no color-specific hate.

[LennonMarx]

I want it!

Right about the time Lorwyn block came out, I used that as an excuse to build Giants for multiplayer. I used the giant that fetched equipment (stone-hewer giant?) to make my giant guys even better (they obviously needed the help in combat), but it could also get Sunforger which could then go get assorted instants for value. The only time I ever connected with a Worldslayer was with this deck. I tutored it up and attacked someone without blockers. One of the players specifically said "Man, I could kill it but I've never seen a Worldslayer hit" so I got in. Trigger on the stack I used Sunforger to go get Ghostway! I won that game and lots of laughs were had. Honestly, that is the best thing I remember about my kitchen table days; hanging out with my friends and playing wild games.

[Onslaught]

Oh baby I want that.

For Kitchen Table Magic, I can very vividly remember using B/R with four Rituals, Priest of Gix, Bog Witch, Howl from Beyond, Skulking Fugitives, Spineless Thugs, Soul Burns, and Incinerate (guess I didn't have/know about Lightning Bolt). I thought using mana ramp to pay into the X effects was so amazing. "Wow, I can practically empty my hand on turn three to do 10 damage!"

I remember seeing Rancor for the first time and thinking about how shitty my +X/0 pumps were...

[quicksilvervii]

I want it!

The best kitchen table deck always had deranged hermit.  And lifeline.
And ancient silverback.  Because when you don't know the rules, the squirrels get +1/+1 counters and the monkey can't die.
Thorn Elemental was also RoadHouse.

Also, gentleman's mulligan until you find your 1 and only Rofellos, because he is awesome and you don't have more than 1.

[hitman]

I want it!

My friends and I started playing with a box of Beatdown and went from there to mono-color theme or tribal decks.  I used to play mono-blue and my friend had elves.  At the time, we thought you could tap the creatures immediately for their tap abilities.  We used to sit on one of our porches and play into the night by the light of the streetlight.  Since we used to play outside so much, if we had foils and it was sunny, the glare would blind us.  To this day, I hate foils originally because of that.  I used to think Counterspell and Mahamoti Djinn was amazing.

[Thecheese]

I want it!

My friends and I were playing in 6/7/8 grade right around 4th edition and ice age. My favorite deck was the royal assassin Tim deck.....we would do huge ,unlit players and everybody had the same deck. We would get out like 4 royal assassin 5 Tim's and then someone would tap to kill a royal assassin and it was a chain reaction from there... Of course there was one guy at the tale who had a juzzamm djinn so of course he wold win.

I miss those days.

[GrandpaBelcher]

I want it too!

I started during Ice Age and Fourth Edition and could not understand why Goblin Snowman was trouncing me. The rares in my first starter were Aladdin's Ring, Kormus Bell, and Living Lands. I repeatedly built decks with Marton Stromgald and Keldon Warlord and regularly aimed Lightning Bolts at my opponents' heads on turn one. Tim Aten built my first tournament deck, which accelerated Mahamoti Djinn and Air Elemental with Mana Vaults and Llanowar Elves. I played another tournament with Icatian Moneychangers in my deck. My friends had a Thallid Deck and one based on Snake Basket; I built one around Aysen Crusader and the creature type Hero. My grandma once bought me magician's trick cards because she didn't understand that "Magic" was a proper noun. I was excited to open hundreds of packs of Chronicles but I never got a complete set of Urza Lands. I did buy enough packs of Homelands to get a complete set, and several dozen extra terrible commons. When buying singles, I consistently overrated cards that I hadn't seen before, especially giant, gold Legends and artifacts. An only child, I once spent an entire train ride from Cleveland to Chicago goldfishing my 72-card green-white-black mediocre-stuff deck. A friend and I once traded all of my white and black cards for all of his blue and red ones, straight up. Lastly, we were fueled by chicken flavor packets and orange soda.

[marcb]

I want it!

 First deck ever was mongreen like some that have been posted right around the release of 4th edition. It had big green creatures. The piece de resistance was Gaea's Liege. I remember wanting to desperately get my hands on hidden path from dark so I could give all my big dudes forestwalk after Liege gave them forests. The deck was terrible. I competed against a  monoblack disruption deck with sorceress queen, assassins, willows, hypnotic specter, sengir vamp, hymn to tourah and racks (my brother's deck) and a friend who played U/W control. I quickly traded this deck for a B/R/U underworld dreams deck that could deal hundreds of points of damage in a tun with winds of change, wheel of fortune, burn. Geting psi blasts for that deck was such a pain.

Marc

[TheProfessor]

I want it!

My kitchen tables magic days were filled with Goblins, Elves, and Dragons.  I had an Onslaught goblin precon deck that I upgraded with Goblin King and Goblin Grenade.  I also had a green/red dragon deck with 4 Elvish Piper's and what ever big dragons were laying around.  After Mirrodin released, I had a deck with Platinum Angel, Lightning Greaves, and Mindslaver.  Those were the days!

[iamfishman]

I want it!

My favorite story from back in the day happened playing on the living room floor against my brother.  Back then, Shivan Dragon was a big money card and my brother had one.  BTW...we played for ante.  I built a deck with major defense and after holding down the fort, I kept using Orcish Spy until the Dragon was on top of his deck.  I cast Demonic Attorney and after he anted the dragon, fireballed him for like 3o damage.  Long story short, I ended up with bruises and we were both grounded for a week.

[Bill Copes]

I want it!

I started playing about the time when you could buy Revised packs along side Unlimited ones.  Foolishly, I went for the cheaper ones.  Anyways, the first deck I had was based off Dark Rituals, Mana Vaults and Llanowar Elves to accelerate out my lone juggernaut, one of my two Sengir vampires, or if I was baller and drew it, Feral Thalid.  The deck was constructed using the 20/20/20 rule, so I had to improvise with some of the slots with weaker cards: Bog Imp, Nettling Imp, Bog Wraith, a few Thalids and perhaps a Wild Growth or three.  I lost to pretty much everybody, as they all played white and ran Balance, Plows, Geddon, Wrath and all sorts of stuff that just shat all over my dinner.

[rpf5029]

I want it! 

My first deck was given to me between Kamigawa block and Ravnica block.  I played other games at the time (mainly Yu-Gi-Oh! and Heroclix, but also some of the anime-licensed card games), and the store owner's son offered to build me a Magic deck.  So I bought a hundred sleeves and started talking to the shop owner about something or other while he and another kid at the shop sleeved it up.  After awhile, I remember looking over at the end after they announced they were "out of sleeves." 

"What's the minimum deck size?" I asked. 

"Sixty," he replied. 

I was like O.o 

Although it was in Kamigawa block, the deck he made me was full of stuff from Odyssey through Scourge.  There were a lot of big green fatties and some little helper dudes that did stuff -- y'know, like accelerated them out (Llanowar Elves), lured all the creatures away (Taunting Elf), and let me draw cards off my shiny Beasties (Wirewood Savage).  I remember the standouts in that deck being Treesparing Larian and Titanic Bulvox.  I learned how to play Magic the good old-fashioned way:  by turning big men sideways. 

I liked it, but the kid always kicked the crap out of me with his deck.  His deck was built around a little known tribe in Onslaught block that you might have heard of.  It used Coat of Arms to bring the pain, Joiner Adept to fix mana, and Intruder Alarm to do really FAIR things with a guy named Voice of the Woods.  This, my friends, was my introduction to the true power of little tiny green men -- the same green men who would one day win my a Mox Ruby and a Library of Alexandria. 

I kinda miss the old days because of the wonder that the game brought.  When seeing old cards was rare and special; when the "Power 9" were downright mythical.  I remember getting owned by another buddy playing Raven Guildmaster, or by battling with a slightly modified Samurai pre-con from Kamigawa. (As a die-hard anime fan at the time, having a whole block devoted to Feudal Japan was probably one of the things that sold me on Magic, to be honest.)  It was a simpler time. 

Now and days, I throw around Power like it's nothing.  It's not uncommon to spend hundreds of dollars on cards, and there are very few cards that I see that can shock me.  On the downside, so much of my brain is trained towards competition and optimal card choices that it's a tad bit harder to have fun these days....

Still, whenever you see me enter a card shop, you can rest assured that there's a deck of little green men on my person (albeit now much shinier) ready to do unfun things and battle the forces of evil.  (Mishra, I'm looking at you.)

[orgcandman]

I want it!

My first time playing at an actual kitchen table didn't happen until 2008, so I was well into competitive vintage. However, I started playing when revised and unlimited were available. I ran a deck with sengir vampire, royal assassin and nettling imps. It started b/r, with bolts rits and fireball. I ran that deck until kids at school played necro decks and counter burn. After that I became a blue Mage and never looked back.

[Oath of Happy]

That is a nice prize, I want it!

My cousin and I didn't really read cards unless the abilities were simple and good. My deck had well over 100 cards and featured cards like colossus if sardia, scaled wurm, deep spawn etc. a lot times I won after a few hours when he'd run out of cards after a stalemate of monsters on the board.

[Englishman_in_NH]

I want it!

I played Faeries before they were cool. Yes that would be mono green faeries with Instill Energy and Faerie Noble to pump all my guys. Willow Priestess to cheat extra faeries into play. That is what you get when Homelands is one of the first sets you open.

[Will]

I want it!

The first Magic cards that I got was the Starter 2000 Decks which I got when I was 8 years old which I supplemented with a pack or two of Starter 2000.  At about 11 or 12, two of my friends got a box of Onslaught for Christmas and split it up accordingly with one building a Goblin deck and the other an Elf deck.  Wellwisher became my worst enemy, though I had an answer or so I thought.  In hindsight, it's quite laughable as I did not understand the rules, but my best card was Archangel.  We played the card as it read, with attacking not causing it to tap which we thought meant that it could attack the opponent as many times as possible in a turn if they didn't have a blocker that could kill it.  Luckily for me, my Archangel equalized many a game in which my friend Dave got about ten elves into play and got up to 200+ life. 

Another fond memory was playing at a different friend's house in 2000 or 2001.  We split up the decks so he got the red deck with Trained Orgg and I got the Blue white deck with Vizzerdrix and Archangel.  Seeing as we were 8 or 9, Magic was a little bit boring especially when we didn't care about 2/2s or 1/1s, we wanted to cast 5/5s and 6/6s.  To solve this, we played with "Mana Drop" where you could play as many lands as you had in hand each turn.  Talk about exciting games, this was like Vintage except neither deck had any real removal and the gamebreaker was a Vizzerdrix or Trained Orgg. 

[policehq]

I opened up 2 Shivan Dragons in my first boosters purchase and immediately traded them for 2 Black Vise because I'd seen it in action.

The very very first time my friends and I played, we basically looked at Seasinger and said TLDR, then interpreted the "bury if you don't have islands" (paraphrase) as "if you don't have lands in your opening hand, use me as one!"

Aelopile was one of my favorite cards. 4 of it was in my 8 pump knights decks. Decks. I had one black deck with 8 pump knights and one white deck with 8 pump knights. Both decks had 4 Aeolopile. I still can't spell it or say it consistently (or perhaps correctly).

I want it!

[TheWhiteDragon]

I want it!

My first kitchen table deck was a RUW burn/counter/control deck.  It had Mahamoti Djinn, Shivan Dragon, Mana flares for ramp, and fireball.  Balance and disenchant and plow and bolt and wrath were removal effects.  Counterspell and remove soul were all I had for counters.  The awesome of awesomness though was running Ali from Cairo and Anti-Magic Aura.   That's right.  ANTI-MAGIC AURA!  Just had to grip a few counterspells to watch out for wrath of god and earthquake, but other than that I was golden.

[Nefarias]

I want it!

Technically my first deck was U/R, because it was the two colors I had the most of and could scrape together 60 (or probably more like 64, let's be serious) cards.

Within a few months, I had a monster mono red deck, to the point where I had to build another deck because the people who taught me how to play didn't want to play against it. The most broken play possible was powering out Maraxus of Keld via Scorched Ruins. Those Ruins were also awesome at beefing up Fireballs and Disintegrates.  The deck was pretty much like your typical first "giant stuff" green deck, except it was giant red monsters instead. I think I had one each of Balduvian Horde and Rathi Dragon. I remember liking that they were gigantic monsters, but obviously disliking the drawback. But I figured these cards must be good based on looking at a Duelist and seeing how expensive they were. So I kept them in the deck, but would hold off on playing the Horde until I had played all the other "good" cards in my hand first, and not play the Rathi Dragon until I had plenty of excess Mountains to sacrifice.

[LotusHead]

I want it!

In 1994, my roommates and I played lots and lots of Magic! In those days, we only had the rulebook to go by.
I realized that I had to really focus on making sure that I pass my classes in college, and had to find a way to limit myself of this fantastic pasttime.

My solution: Build a 40 card deck, and leave the rest of my cards at home with the folks. (there was no 60 card decks that we knew of. Book says minimum of 40, and we all played with 100+ card decks.

My deck was something like:

2 Channel
4 Fireball
3 Disintegrate
2 Lightning Bolt
5 Fog
3 Ornithopter
2 Tranquility
1 Regrowth
2 Sol Ring
1 Wheel of Fortune
8 Forest
8 Mountain

It was probably 42 cards or so, all multiplayer, and it ruled!

[PDM]

I want it!

My first deck was a terrible five color deck with every expensive revised era card in it. Force of Nature. Leviathan. Nicol Bolas (pre chronicles). Royal assassin. Shivan Dragon. Lord of the pit.

I'm pretty sure I usually started casting spells around turn eight and lost to any deck with any kind of focus as all.

[covetousrat]

I want it.

Back then my first deck was Green Stompy during Tempest etc era. Cheap stuff got the deck from a friend for like $5. We always thought the bigger a creature was the better. Force of nature anyone. Every player has only 1 deck. So its always Pure burn, Pure counterspell, Black knights, Green stompy etc. Playing Free for all with 8 players takes ages. Now looking back, everyone was so bad lol. There's no net decking. The only info we can get is through Inquest magazines which are awesome.

[zimagic]

I WANT IT!

Kurt, the mental Saints fan who showed me these kooky cards when we met over in Germany in 1996, gave me a box and said "Make yourself a deck!"
10 copies of Kjeldoran Dead and some Scathe Zombies later, I was well and truely hooked. Who's going to beat an Army of REGENERATING SKELETONS anyway? (Turns out quite a lot of people) Did you know that Trample works when you block too?

I still remember coming back home, finding some guys who knew about Magic and throwing down my undead army like a perfumed glove to a fop. Many humbling games later, I bowed to the inevitable and cut the Scathe Zombies.

One day we met people who had actually read and understood the rules. Huge bummer.

I still want it!

[Meddling Mike]

As cool as that is, please don't include me in the drawing.  Wouldn't look good in the off chance that a staff member won.

Well, now I'll look like a dick if I don't do the same. So I'll follow suit.

The first deck I built that actually had any conceivable plan to it was a W/R/B "Tim" deck featuring such hits as Prodigal Sorcerer, Razorfin Hunter, Quicksilver Dagger and Samite Archer. To keep opposing creatures back on D I tapped the awesome power of Powerstone Minefield. Even if it was bigger than a 2/2 I could easily finish it off with an activation from one of my pingers. TEH SYNERGY! Also, Meekstone would keep anything big enough to get by the minefield on lockdown. At the time the deck was standard legal (Type II back then). I was promptly lol-stomped by the Fires of Yavimaya R/G Deck that was dominant at the time.

[Killane]

I want it!

My first deck... well, I won't count my earliest days in grade 4 playing with Beta and unlimited(!) because i don;t remember ever having real decks or a cohearant plan.

I got back into the game in high school when a buddy gave me an awesome mono-b Hecatomb control deck to play with. Over a few weeks, I decided I really wanted a deck that allowed me to use my opponents stuff against them: so I brewed up a really fun RU creatureless control deck with Reins of Power, Goblin Bombardment, Altar of Dementia, Misdirection, Ray of Command and other such goodies. I had a bunch of moxen and a pair of Tolarian Academies in that deck - it was uber-fun and generally only lost to the Living Death guy when he went bonkers.

I've always remembered that deck with fondness. 85% of the people in my group played combat based creature decks - resolving a Reins of Power with a sac outlet against them was bananas - something like an 11 or 12 for 1 usually.

[Ten-Ten]

i want it

my first deck and kitchen table game was with a stack of cards i bought at a yard sale.

An Ice age tournament box caught my eye and so i asked how much..i got it for five bucks and the elderly couple brought out some more cards and said i could have them also, free of charge they had already sold the ones in the binder, the man told me

i would just take the stack of cards and split them with my brother and then split the lands between us, shuffle up and play

i still have them in a binder and never broke up our "deck" lol

here it is:

3 plains
6 swamp
15 mountain
15 forest
4 maze of shadows
4 ghost town

2 sand golem
2 telimtor's darts

4 spined wurm
1 king cheetah
2 barishi
3 arctic wolves
2 apes of wrath
4 skyshroud ranger
4 raging gorilla
4 mage il-vec
4 furnace brood
2 wild wurm
1 fleischfressende planze
4 blistering barrier
4 grizzled wolverine
4 goblin sappers
2 steinschlittenfahrer (at the time we assumed it had haste and trample and didnt untap after attacking or blocking. dont speak german)
4 maniacal rage
2 sonic burst
2 telim tor's edict
3 shauku's minion
3 kor's chant

later replaced this collection with pre-con Torment decks: "grave danger" (psychatog deck) and "insanity" (b/g madness deck with wild mongrel and arrogant wurm)
nobody wanted to play after that cuz i kept winning with psychatog
Since then I abandoned red/green and it was U/x from the on

good times