Still pretty drained from the flight back and baby waking up at godforsaken hours. So I *could* pack away the travel things, start a load of laundry before Momma Raptor returns, work to make the world a better place etc. Or–OR–I could fire up a draft.
Flew back from the east coast with the Baby Raptor in my carry-on luggage. Overall a good performance, though it started to fall apart for the latter third. She fell asleep right on schedule… but then woke up! We then proceeded to two hours of Delirious Baby as she would rapidly cycle between happy/sad/curious/fidgety in 5-15 minute segments. I had a saint of a seatmate who is a grandpa and was very willing to have the Raptor investigate his tattoos very closely. Then she woke up at 3:30am. So this draft happened during the rarely seen 7am nap. Yikes
Alright, fortified with a pre-release, half an episode of Lords of Limited (great LR 201, for when you run out of magic blogcasts on your commute), and–most importantly–a comatose baby, it’s time to run it back! Let’s draft it up!
For Christmas, my wife gave me a gift certificate for six-weeks of Aquatots lessons for the–presumably amphibious–Baby Raptor. I was overcome with awe by the sheer brilliance of this gift. Every Saturday morning I would spend probably a total of two hours out of house, wrestling with wet clothes and swim diapers. And my wife would be at brunch. Possibly multiple brunches. Well played.
But in all seriousness Aquatots (it’s important to say it like a little fanfare. A-qua-TAAAAWTS! Do-DO-duh-duh-doo) is a great deal of fun. You’re basically just splashing around with your child singing mildly off-key with them, getting them used to water. One of the biggest challenges is the backfloat. Apparently babies *hate* getting their ears wet. It’s a common reaction for I’m sure the best of reasons. The result is that the middle section of Aquatots generally consists of trying to backfloat the screaming babies while the parent desperately sings “I’m a little pancake nice and flat!” to them. It’s quite the tableaux.
The Baby Raptor is a fantastic backfloater.
She is deeply skeptical of it mind you; definitely staring me down letting me know that she could change her mind at a MOMENT’S notice. But that still puts her in the 95% percentile. So what do I do with this gift? I take full credit and show her off. We wander around the pool so she can “help” the other babies. But let’s be honest: I mostly want the other parents to admire this buoyant baby and–by extension–me.
Of course I am under no delusion that I had anything to do with this future Katie Ledecky. It’s blind luck that she has a mild reaction to the water ear coverage. But the parenting urge to take full credit for anything awesome (while of course blaming the child for anything negative) really is quite overwhelming. I can’t even give any advice on how to help your child float. And I love giving advice! It’s important for me to keep in mind a modicum of modesty when it comes to parenting. So much of it is just like the backfloat; not really up to you or your parenting tactics or the 500 pages of best practices of child-rearing.
Against my better judgment, I caved to peer pressure and went for the full, four-rounds of magic at Phoenix games instead of my usual ramen/coffee/Gamma Ray day on the town. The case against four-rounds is when you’re sitting at 1-2 (raises hand) you don’t really need a fourth round to drive home that your deck sucks. I get it. I was there for those previous three games too! However, Sam’s plea of “But MOAR MAGIC” carried the day.
Plus it turns out that they have coffee in that part of Cap Hill too. Bonuses all around.
I cracked my packs and then frantically searched for additional packs to open because I had very, very few creatures to speak of. Alarmingly few, even counting the sorceries that churn out Saprolings for you.
This is pretty much the most generic GB deck I think it’s possible to build. I had the removal.
Aaaaaand that was pretty much it! I ran 18 lands because I didn’t have a 23rd playable. And calling some of the spells I put in there “playable” was definitely reaching. But I could cast a few creatures, remove a few of theirs, and then sit at a board stall. And by god that’s what I did. Occasionally they had rude interruptions like “playing a creature with flying” that felt a little unsporting. So this deck limped to 2-2 (after falling to 1-2 first. Called it!) with minimal learnings. Some fun moments include:
Achievement unlocked! Drew made some good points how totally nonsensical the kicker cost is. 10 mana! But why not just say “win the game” instead of this annoying-to-manage formality of eight 2/2 zombies with menace? It just doesn’t seem very interesting. Contrast that to the ubiquitous green Saproling-maker.
This is actually offers an interesting decision between the two modes: two 1/1s for two mana or four 1/1s for six? If you topdeck it on turn four, what do you do? Also, this card is very good, so good that I think any green deck will be happy to run this. I wonder if this means that there won’t be enough fuel for Saproling build-arounds.
I would be remiss if i didn’t mention the sweet rares I opened in colors that I couldn’t even come close to supporting.
Some pretty sweet cards! Too bad that my white was comically thin and my blue not much better. Oh and not a single piece of fixing to be seen. The fun part was that I built my sealed pool without looking at my rares. Then once I have that assembled I flip them over one at a time (usually to the great entertainment of the rest of the table) and curse my mixed fortune. Sweet rares that may make my Brawl deck (more on that to come) isn’t too sad of a story. But still. That 23rd playable would have been nice.
I’m honored that official friend-of-the-blog and founding Benalish Daddy, Chris, submitted a report of his learnings, doings and transpirings at Grand Prix Seattle! Given how hitting up 3-4 days of a GP is the exactly the sort of Magic experience very difficult for a Benalish Dad to attend, I’m grateful for the on the ground reporting and vicarious thrills. With no further ados, take it away Chris!
GP Seattle was a four day whirlwind. A veritable
high fantasy carnival; Planeswalkers roamed the halls with staves alit, hopeful magi littered giant tables whispering of secret sideboard tech for the oncoming battle, elves goblins and artifacts adorned colorful banners put up by those who had brought them to life, and legendary warriors bolstering guild colors strode about striking awe into the eyes that befell them! Wanna go to the next one? Me too! But before you go clamoring for your sword and shield consider a few of these pitfalls so as not to find yourself looking up with a pike through your belly
Okay, I’m not going to lie. The pressure of drafting a P1p1 Tetzimoc and a P2p1 Chups is very, very real. If I can’t put together a 3-0 out of this then I should quit and ritually tear up my Chaos Orb just to make the urban legend come true.
Another nap… another draft! We’re going to try and practice our standard procedure of “best available card in the first 4-5 picks then settle in”. Also, let’s keep an eye out for where/when/how to get splash enabling cards, shall we? Seems like a hole in our game
http://magicprotools.com/draft/show?id=VOlqjn68Q-RDfOMZd8PqaVPBIh0
Well that was… very strange. I’m still baffled by a P1p2 Profane Procession being available but not NEARLY as confused by not being able to fight my way into black. White and blue were just so open… but my mana base is extremely shaky. Lots of double-blue and double-white (and a necessary black splash for the Profane Procession). And no real fixing to speak of. Ugly. Very ugly.
Somewhat ironically (spoiler), the one game I managed to cast & flip Profane Procession I didn’t win… but I was facing off against Tetzimoc. So I don’t feel too bad. Also, it was a goofy game where I managed to deck myself. So not really that common of an outcome.
Overall this felt like a very “fine” round of Magic. The draft was pretty straightforward, my seat was clear, and the gameplay was mostly fine. Eh, they can’t all be super memorable.
Time to put some “Dad” here into Benalish Dad. I’ve been dividing Baby Raptor’s first year into two-month chunks, roughly corresponding to when she makes various leaps. Our epochs so far:
0-60 Days: Survival. Seriously, the first two months are objectively terrible and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t really remember them. Kinda like the 60s, so I’m told.
61-120: Sleep & Travel. At two months we started structuring our sleep interventions a little more. Also, we did an overseas trip. It seemed crazy and overwhelming at the time but it’s honestly easier than trying to travel with an older baby that needs food, movement etc. If you’re going to have a baby strapped to you, might as well have it strapped to you in France!
121-180: Daycare & sleep training. We did serious sleep training as well as transitioned into day care as Momma Raptor (mental note: come up with better nickname) went back to work. This brings us to…
I freely admit that we were a little slow to start introducing solid foods. Again, it felt like we just hit a smooth plateau where we figured out how to *do* things. And now we have to create a brand new set of challenges! Fortunately we asked for some tips from our primary daycare teacher (another plus to daycare: the teachers there have literally seen everything 100 times before and give great advice. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel). She recommends a gradual procession of interacting near food, interacting with food, and gradually mucking around with it in her mouth.
So we stocked up on surprisingly delicious purees (I admire the parents that make their own but–honestly–fuck that.) and start jamming food into Baby Raptor.
We rapidly figured out that it’s not really possible to feed her and ourselves at the same time, so when we would eat “as a family” we would just give her something to gnaw on, like a chunk of carrot, apple, or nori (dried seaweed, like a sushi roll)! The nori is a big hit as it’s half-edible, half-entertaining, all-awesome!
The other big level-up is using a “bait sack” pacifier. Just like a crab pot, you stuff food into a tiny mesh sack, seal it shut, and then jam it into their mouth a la pacifier. It works *shockingly* well with her. It’s a great way to introduce new flavors, easy to clean.
So far the Baby Raptor has been doing great with all kinds of different food. Apparently there is a window before food averseness kicks in where you can jam all sorts of stuff into them. It’s pretty entertaining watching them grab a tart blackberry, eat it with a horrified expression, then repeat the cycle three seconds later. Different textures are also a great joy as I ambush them with stickier items to help them learn to chew.
It’s been a while since we’ve had to buy new stuff, but food demanded that we purchase some new infrastructure as well as making room for baby food storage.
High Chair: Oxo Spring Sprout. Not the cheapest high chair out there, but it is pretty much the only one we could find that didn’t look like a plastic piece of crap. Also it transforms into three different modes, like a Veritech, for different ages and hand-eye coordination. It’s held up well, cleanable, and I would recommend it.
Munchkin Fresh Food Pacifier. As mentioned above, easily one of the best ways to expose to multiple different foodstuffs.
Bibs/spoons/whatever. I think these are pretty interchangeable.
Food Jars/Pouches. We’ve been doing a mixture of “Peter Rabbit” pouches and the Earth’s Organic Jar of food. There’s an elaborate ‘stage 1’ and ‘stage 2’ levels that mix different flavors and fruits/veggies/whatever together. Whatever.
Benalish Dad 