My Students’ Lost Mine of Phandelver P.1
*Warning: there are spoilers if you haven’t ran the campaign Lost Mines of Phandelver before. As a DM, I also made some mistakes, forgetting information and improvising plot holes. I hope you enjoy. The following story is a recapitulation of my students’ version of the campaign. Players Kalista Crisilla Shadow Jace Lili
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*my deck list is at the end of the article
I worked diligently on an original mill deck in standard for the past year, before and after Oath of Gatewatch and Eldritch Moon rotated out, and for the first time, won first place at my local tabletop gaming store, displacing my opponents' entire library into their graveyard. Mill decks are difficult to pilot because the typical mill deck doesn’t interact with the opponent. The player either fogs until victory or completely focuses on milling out the opponent by turn five. I've heard from many players that a mill deck in standard wasn't competitive, that there weren't "enough cards" in the current format. But I truly believe a mill-deck can be one of the most powerful methods of winning in any format; and in this article, I focus on the standard, after all the sets before Kaladesh rotated out. Mill decks tend to be strong against control decks. A control player usually doesn’t have the victory in the opening hand, or at least, they don’t cast the winning card or combination until later in the game. To the control player, the pace of the game against a mill deck feels like a mirror match another control deck. He might feel his removal spells are dead cards, or when the player sees a mill card, he’ll overlook it as a threat and not waste a counterspell on it. I can cast Fraying Sanity turn six with enough mana to protect it with a counter or discard spell, but most player allow the enchantment to resolve. With a blue-and-black deck, my opponents are more worried about perils like Torrential Gearhulk and Scarab God. Because of this element of surprise, I tend to mill out a player in game one. Last month we received a hefty donation from two local players, Dustin and Tyler, on the island of Okinawa, Japan. Because a new semester had started, the teachers and students didn’t know whether or not club had also began. On Wednesday everyone came to E-class as usual after school, but no one brought their decks. It was the perfect time to introduce the donations to the students, and practice deck-building under time constraints.
*spoiler alert. I talk about the first plot point in Lost Mines of Phandelver
I came to the conclusion that it would be too hard to finish an entire campaign of D&D by the end of the school year with even only an hour a day, so I decided to teach my student Sakura how to accompany her friends to the end of Lost Mines of Phandelver. Of course her friends believed she could execute an epic tale. I wanted to train her by just playing the game. She hadn’t finished a campaign herself, but she had begun one last year. Unfortunately I couldn’t finish her campaign because the school had moved me into elementary to be the fifth and sixth grade homeroom instructor. But Sakura remembered some of the basic tenets of D&D: Do what your character would do, and roll some dice. “I always see these packs,” Gabriel pointed at my cards. “I always wanted to learn how to play.”
“Bring some cards you like,” I said, “and we can play.” The next day he procured three packs of Oath of Gatewatch and two packs of Shadows Over Innistrad. We ravaged and laid them out like car mechanics who just go their latest accessories. Unfortunately the school bell range for the students to take their first class. I wasn’t teaching him first period, so I advised him during break time in between classes to find cards that he liked. At lunchtime we would go over the cards to construct a deck. I've seen my students change tremendously at the gaming club at our school. I'm having trouble winning against them whether in orthodox and unorthodox ways. That morning I asked Rai if she had brought her cards so we could play in the afternoon. She said we could play at lunchtime. She owned an aggressive black and white zombie deck from Amonkhet. "Did you bring your mill deck," she asked me. Yes, I replied.
One afternoon two teachers, a science teacher and an English teacher, decided to take their students to the park because theirs students had asked. It was a cloudy morning. In the shade of another school the teachers were playing Magic the Gathering on a cement bench that was colored and designed into a wooden log. They laid out their cards on a one-hundred-yen towel. Curious onlookers stopped their own games to watch the two teachers. A giant copper robot was cast onto the battlefield, and in response, a saber tooth tiger appeared, canines large as combat knives, with green glyphs glowing on its rib cage, as it guards its master from behind. The giant robot nor his brother could ever catch the saber tooth tiger. The mythic abilities made him too agile. Sometimes the saber tooth tiger would appear in front of him. Sometimes it would appear behind him. It continued to play these tricks on the robot as the other forest creatures and icy elemental titans eluded combat, reaching the spell caster, and ultimately, ending him. "Who won?" a student, George, asked. "Mr. C," said the English teacher. "But Mr. Tang had a formidable robot," the science teacher said, and handed him the card. "That looks cool!" Flavor Text by John Tang |