Hi all, here is my life story
I figure I should tell it all so you know if you want me or not, and also if anyone was ever to help me in the future, this will explain exactly where I'm at now
I have a friend who has played a while, and he got playing mtgo about 4 months ago (I never played the real life card game, although I'm a PC AD&D / RPG fan so it wasn't alien to me at all). I got a blue/white Shadowmoor deck which was ok but lost about half the time in casual standard. A really nice guy in game then helped me by giving me some tips and some cards, and I bought a few myself, and I ended up making a strong pure white kithkin deck. I think that deck probably won about 85% of the time and I played many games almost every day with that for a month or so. I learned a lot about the game playing that deck, partly because I played so much, and also because I knew it like the back of my hand so I could focus a lot on other people's decks.
It got a bit tiring playing the same deck over and over though, and I always felt it was a bit of a cheap victory when I would win so many games on less than turn 10, many on about turn 4 or 5. So I decided to buy a second deck and I wanted something completely new. I was wary of buying another standard deck because they go out of rotation so fast... so in the end I spent a lot of money and bought an extended deck, pure blue control, again, with the help of this friend I made online who I don't see very often but he is really helpful when I do see him and he is very experienced. The pure blue deck was expensive for me (about 75 tix) mainly because I bought 4 Cryptic Commands. I figured it would be worth it in the long term because they would make any blue deck I ever make really strong.
The blue deck is quite good, wins perhaps 70% of the time, but not more because there are some incredibly crazy strong extended decks!
I was going to tweak it to make it a bit better but then I came across some guy who made a standard legal warp world deck that I found really interesting. It was very weak and he was only winning about 40% of the time, but I felt like I understood it and I already owned a lot of cards that I thought would be better. So I ended up making a similar WW deck but with my own twist on it, and after spending a few more tix I ended up with a really killer WW deck which is now my regular deck. It's standard legal but only until the start of October
I think I win probably 85% of the time which is really good I think, but it's mainly because it's so varied that I love playing it, even when I lose.
Anyway, I get a bit peeved sometimes because I get killed by incredibly nasty decks. I've had someone kill me on turn 2 with an infinite mana deck, and people who use mind funeral or whatever that spell is which removes the top half of your deck, and then they use twin cast so it removes another half again... which in total is about 70% of my deck or something. I ended up running out of cards on about turn 10 or something. And then there is that planeswalker which stops my land from untapping and after just a few turns it destroys all your land. So I was chatting (whining?
) about it in chat when andymc1 came to my rescue. To be honest, I stand by my thoughts because I think there are so many interesting cards and combos in this game, I think it's a shame when there such powerful cards that end the game in so few turns. It's not like I can't match them because I could if I wanted to, but I just don't want to play games like that. I want games that last a while and everyone gets to play their well thought out combos.
Anyway, andymc1 suggested I try pauper, so I did. I just quickly made a pauper deck out of cards I already own. I played several games of it today and I really enjoyed it! I find the games to be a lot more balanced and a lot less... lame?
None of them smacked me down in a few turns, no infinite turn/mana decks, no overpowered planeswalkers, and no discarding my entire deck in just several turns. So I really enjoyed it! My pauper deck is quite weak though. I have some good cards and some land acceleration and I did win one or two games, but I don't have enough creatures and I just get swarmed by creatures and lose most games. I checked out the free bots and I got a few more cards and creatures to bolster the deck, although it's still really poor because I don't have any direction. It's just a mish mash really with only 1 or 2 very mediocre combos.
Anyway, I plan on focusing on it a lot more now. I'm not sure if I will play pauper exclusively, but I still don't know what I'm going to do come October 2nd (or 3rd?) when my current standard deck will be screwed. I think about 80% of my super WW standard deck is going to become extended or classic so I am waiting until then before I decide what I'm going to do next. I may spend a bit of cash and try to turn it in to a really strong extended deck. Or I may try to sell off my blue deck and make a new deck or something... I don't know. All I know is that I already spent too much money on this game so I don't want to spend much more at all, and focusing on pauper could be a really good option for me.
p.s. Anyway if you want me, my username is manalishi, all lower case like my username here. I live in the UK and I play sometimes in the day and often in the evenings.
Subject: Hi :) Hope you are a fast reader :P 
Thu Sep 24, 2009 5:52 pm
. Ok so you may not play pauper exclusively its not a problem as long as you like to take some active part in the clan maybe playing in our leagues or just hanging out in the clan room online . As you may have found out from playing against andy we're quite a friendly bunch feel free to add me to your buddy list i'm like andy and jmason (john our commonsense 2 captain ) also uk based so maybe our online times will overlap.