Mike's Occasional Blog

So I’m down here at the mall shopping for Christmas. And I came across a new box in the middle of the mall, and the premise is fairly simple. Dropping your used so phone and get cash. So I think this is probably a very dangerous thing to have around. Imagine a common thief, who can just spend it’s time walking up around the mall pickpocketing people’s cell phones. After punching a phone, he just drops it in the box and gets money. There is no accountability, no checking to see if the phone is stolen or not, and apparently no way to track down who sold the phone. This is really a bad idea. I hope that the people who are interested in deploying this kind of box will think twice about it.

So here’s a deck I’m trying to fill out:

Selesnya Aggro
Jackson Cunningham

Pro Tour Magic 2015
Type II

Main Deck:
3 Boon Satyr
4 Experiment One
4 Fleecemane Lion
3 Loxodon Smiter
3 Soldier of the Pantheon
2 Sunblade Elf
4 Voice of Resurgence

4 Advent of the Wurm
3 Banishing Light
3 Selesnya Charm

8 Forest
4 Mana Confluence
8 Plains
4 Temple Garden

Sideboard:
1 Ajani Steadfast
2 Ajani’s Presence
4 Setessan Tactics
4 Skylasher
4 Unflinching Courage

So far I’ve been to32 M:TG sources for cards and such: Target, Champion Sports and Game Kastle.

Today I’ve discovered the motherlode!

I bought my first cards as a boxed set from Target (2015 Core Set Deck Builder Toolkit). But, Target is Target, and so they really don’t cater to gamers. I think it was absolutely brilliant for Wizards to get them signed on as a distributor. They have just enough to whet your appetite.

Then by accident I came across Champion Sports at Tracy mall. They had moved from Stockton, and have a decent amount of single cards). I’d guesstimate around 2000.

I found Gaming Kastle here in Fremont from an internet search. They have some booster boxes and accoutrement, but a measly amount of single cards (maybe 300).

Today I found out that there is another local game store at Fremont mall. My jaw dropped when I walked in! Thousands of single cards, scads of boosters, and lots of Legacy stuff!

I wasn’t prepared to buy, and was actually quite intimidated by the sheer enormity of their selection. What made matters worse is the staff, who were really quite helpful, asked what I was looking for. D’oh!

Fortunately I had started a Need/Want list using on of the M:TG iphone apps and asked for a couple Kamigawa commons and uncommons. Then the staffer pointed me towards the higher quality cards!

316 uses current trading prices for their Collectibles, and fortunately I had an app that had tallied the low, average and high prices for cards. I found a Garruk Wildspeaker for $10, and though a tad over average, I was more excited to add my first Planeswalker to my collection! I also picked out a few cool CHK cards (Kamigawa), and rounded out my purchase with a couple more Dragon’s Maze boosters.

I fear this game could quickly become a hobby!

Welcome to my techie blog! I’ll use this mostly for documenting cool things I come across, mostly for my own consumption. However. This being the Internet of Things, everyone else who finds it can also follow along.
My name is Mike, and I’m an IT professional living in California. I’m a lead software engineer for a notoriously upstart computer company.