NACC, only two days away.

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:23:00 GMT

I finished finals last week and have been able to play test ever since. Luckily my grades were pretty sweet, 2 As and a C in a graduate level math class.
        The important thing is I've been able to play between 200 and 250 games of the Core format. Some of these games were pleasant, and some not (Workstation is always a struggle). I've played with and against dozens of different decks and have learned a lot from my friends.
One thing that is important to finding a good deck to play is having a good network; fortunately for me I have quite a few people I can talk to about what's good and what isn't.
      One thing that I have learned for sure is that Vorix Zorbuzz is the deck to beat. It's got solid match-ups for the most part and is definitely capable of winning against nearly every other deck. It's a little late for advice about this, but you need to be able to at least compete with Zorbuzz.
Another important thing is to have some sort of card advantage outside of Tuskarr Kite. A lot of decks are ready for kites nowadays and having something like Dimzer, Mana Sapphire, Innervate etc. are going to be really key in this format. This goes with Niles saying that the format is really grindy. You need to make each card get maximum value.
   This Vegas is going to be pretty insane for me as it will be the 2nd time I'm here being 21. Wednesday night we are going to be drinking at some sports book and watching the insanity that is the Canucks and Bruins.
       I hope that everyone going has an amazing time and that every tries to be safe and doesn't die. This weekend should be a great showing, and since the format is so defined, I feel that the best players are going to be making the top tables all weekend. My guess is that 2 of the Vegas crew top 8, 2 from NJ, 1 from SoCal (definitely don't think this can be me) and a few other ringers.
Good luck everyone and draw more kites than your opponent.
Daniel B.
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Introduction to Me

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:39:00 GMT

Hi everyone, my name is Daniel Betancourt and I like to game. I recently heard about this addition of blogs to the Daily Metagame and was extremely excited for it to go live. After constant pestering, my dream has finally come true. My goal with this is to bring good information to the masses.

For this first post I wanted to introduce myself and to hopefully get some feedback on what people are interested in.
Without further ado, here we go!

*flashback*
Daniel Betancourt was born in the February of 1990 and was a gamer from day 1. He quickly grew accustomed to playing card and board games at a young age and tore through all his competition. After beating his family at countless games of chess and war, he was no longer satisfied with savage beatings of his opponents. He was invincible and couldn't lose at his own house, so he had to venture elsewhere. Daniel approached his first would-be opponent, a modest looking boy roughly the same age as himself. "There is no way this kid can beat me, I am a master," said Daniel as he set up the chess board. Daniel thought and thought on the strategy he would use and was sure this poor boy would succumb to the sheer power of his plays. And then the unthinkable happened, Daniel lost, and in convincing fashion. The boy crushed his soul with only 4 moves! And so began Daniel's quest to never set himself up for disaster ever again.
*end flashback*

      I have been playing card games since the young age of 8. I was introduced to Pokemon when it was first released. After playing with all my friends, one had introduced me to magic when I was about 10 years old. At this point I would play Friday Night Magic/Saturday Morning Magic nearly every weekend for the next 6 years. I was obviously really bad in the beginning because the game was pretty hard for me at that age and I had yet to develop the killer instinct(which I might talk about in a future post) that I think it takes to be successful in the competitive scene. When I was 15, I started to understand what it took to win at Magic. I learned that there were articles online to learn how to play better and about what "metagaming", "tempo" and "card advantage" all meant. From that point onward, I would go on a tear and win FNM almost every week.
      Then something amazing happened; the World of Warcraft TCG was released. I was looking forward to it so much because I figured that I could be THE guy. You know like Jon Finkel or Kai Budde. After winning my release event quite easily, I figured I could do it. I could take my game to the next level with enough practice. I prepared with my Magic buddies for the first Darkmoon Faire at Gen Con Los Angeles (it's too bad they don't have this anymore). I planned on judging the event for some reason, but was convinced otherwise to play. So in a rush to make a deck, I put together Sen'zir from a friend's deck because we thought that deck was amazing (god I wish we made the Twig deck back then) proceeded to 5-2 into the top 8. I had a close match in the top 8 where I won game 3 after 3 Jaina Proodmores and then lost to Oliver Schmid in the top 4. "I had done it," I thought to myself as I top 4d the first major event for the game. I won a sweet 8 gigabyte iPod. I was almost satisfied with my result and thirsted for more. I had to continue to keep it up to be a big player.
     Since then I have done my best to play in all the DMF's that I can and regularly participate in Nationals and Worlds when it is close. I love to play the game at its highest level and have posted some consistent results. So far I've top 8d 2 DMFs and cashed worlds 2 out of 3 times.
     The point of this blog is to share my opinion on the game, the metagame, tell some stories, and talk about everything really. I would like to hopefully get some responses about what people are interested in hearing about. I feel like I can talk about a lot of different topics. Whether you need help with a deck, getting better, or trying to impress a girl(or man, I can do that too), I'll be your go to guy. Other things that I am looking to do is playing and recording games played on MWS with Mike Rosenberg, or anyone interested and posting them on Youtube. We have been planning on doing that for awhile now and I think that I finally have enough time with the school quarter being almost over.
     Just in case anyone was wondering, I am currently going to school at CSU: Bakersfield getting my degree in math. I'll be graduating next year and hopefully moving on to Grad school after that or finding a job. Unfortunately for all the ladies reading this, I am taken. I've been dating my awesome girlfriend for 10 months now. I also play Starcraft 2 a whole bunch so if anyone wants to play hit me up, send me a PM or something.
     I would love to get some replies from the community! Leave me a comment or send me a message, I promise I'll reply ASAP.

Thanks for reading,
<3 Daniel.

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Courtside Seats

NACC, only two days away.

Introduction to Me