Yoshinoya Beef Bowl

Gyuudon or Gyudon (牛丼) is a Japanese Beef Bowl. "Gyu" (牛) means beef and "don" (丼) is short for "donburi" which means food served on top of a bowl of rice. In Japan, the are actually several Gyudon and curry fast-shops found almost everywhere (Sukiya, Matsuya, Yoshinoya, and others) so if you want to grab a bite or a bowl of these heavenly beef bowl, it's actually just around the corner. This particular gyudon that I will be featuring is from Yoshinoya.

Gyudon has actually been my comfort food. Since it is served with hot steamed rice and a cup of hot tea, a gyudon is a great treat to yourself after a hard day's work or when the weather is cold. In shops like Yoshinoya, you can order these foods in these servings:  standard-serving (nami, or namimori, 並盛), large-serving (oomori, 大盛), or extra-large-serving (tokumori, 特盛). But of course, when it comes to me, it will never be namimori. ^_^ Just a tip, tokumori contains the same rice content with the oomori serving but it comes with twice more beef compared with the oomori.

But how can we make this bowl of beef even better? I suggest eating it with a hot tea or even with Miso Soup. Then for my personal preference, I usually sprinkle spices (and furikake) on top of the beef and some beni shoga (red pickled ginger) to heighten up the flavor.

When you guys can come to Japan, you should try to eat authentic Japanese Gyuudon. They are very accessible and will definitely be worth your while.

Affinity for Legacy - Artifacts Deck

To Affinity and Beyond.

This deck ranked 3rd Place at StarCityGames.com Legacy Open last December 8,2013.Wow, I am so happy to see my favorite legacy deck win. When I checked this list with my current Legacy Affinity list at home, there were just a few cards that I was missing and I felt like I should just complete the deck and bring it to the next Legacy event. It may not be a tier-1 deck anymore, but I like this deck so much and I am just comfortable playing this deck.

Affinity by Ian Anderson

Lands: 4 Ancient Den 4 Seat of the Synod 4 Vault of Whispers 4 Ancient Tomb 1 Academy Ruins Artifact Creatures: 4 Arcbound Ravager 4 Etched Champion 4 Memnite 4 Ornithopter 4 Signal Pest 4 Vault Skirge Artifacts: 4 Mox Opal 4 Springleaf Drum 4 Cranial Plating Sorceries: 4 Thoughtcast Planeswalkers: 3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

Sideboard: 4 Chalice of the Void 4 Ethersworn Canonist 4 Rest in Peace 3 Spell Pierce

I also ran an Affinity deck when I played in a Legacy event. But that was way back when Scars of Mirrodin block was still not printed, so I still had no access to Mox Opal, Vault Skirge, Signal Pest, Etched Champion and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. Back then, it was still Ravager Affinity where you can win by the Arcbound Ravager + Disciple of the Vault combo/synergy. You can check my list in this link. Although even until now, some players still opt for that version of affinity because it was still fun to play.

Yesterday, I was able to pick up these cards, and tadah! My deck is finally complete. While I was really happy seeing affinity in the top 8 of a legacy event, I also think there are interesting choices that Ian used in his version of the deck. There are also some cards in the list that I would have also changed.

The 17th Land

17 lands in affinity is more than what Affinity runs way back. There was even a time when 14 lands were run by Affinity. Although 17 lands may be the right number nowadays since this deck, for me, really can't afford to mulligan that much because it relies on the advantage of putting as many artifacts on the board as soon as possible. Although personally, I would like to run a singleton Island or any blue mana source just to give us additional chances of casting Thoughtcast(and Spell Pierce in the sideboard), I love the singleton Academy Ruins to recycle almost every card in this deck. Cranial Plating may be the number 1 target of the ruins since the plating usually forces a counterspell or the card will be the primary target of removals in the deck.

No Master of Etherium

Who won't love a card that with a body bigger than Tarmogoyf (most of the time in this deck) and gives +1/+1 to all artifact creatures you control? But I guess the lack of evasion of Master of Etherium makes it the odd man out these days as Etched Champion hit the spotlight and became a mainboard card rather than a sideboard card. I missed the Master, but Etched Champion works really well with Arcbound Ravager and the emergence of Signal Pest to pick up the slack of giving +1 power to all artifacts with a body that is a better target for Cranial Plating. They really pushed my favorite Master outside the 75.

Splash White or Red?

Splashing white allowed us to run Ethersworn Canonist, which can, by itself, just ruin a combo players' day without fail. This just really turns off the combo engines of storm and other combo decks. Plus, it's a 2/2 body for two mana and it adds to the artifact count. White also gives us access to Dispatch and Rest in Peace for the sideboard, but I would prefer an artifact graveyard hate card like Grafdigger's Cage or Tormod's Crypt just to increase the artifact count.

While splashing red will give us access to cards like Galvanic Blast and Pyroblast, I think against Goblins, Elves and other decks with small aggressive creatures, the red card that stands out the most for those matchups is Whipflare. Whipflare will simply clear the board on your opponent's side since all your creatures are artifact creatures.

But then again, splashing white or red really depends on the current metagame of your local tournaments. That's why I have my Ancient Dens and Great Furnaces ready to go depending on the decks of the people in my local game shop.

In my next Legacy event, I think I will not retain the mainboard of the deck. But if I would change some cards in the sideboard, this is what I will run.

Sideboard:
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Spell Pierce
1 Pithing Needle


And c'mon, who wouldn't love and have fun in playing a deck that lets you play your entire hand in the first turn? ^_^

I feel so blue...

With more or less 3 months of not playing Magic: the Gathering, I found myself browsing on my favorite websites about Magic. Wow, it has really been so long. Getting back 3 months ago, when Innistrad was rotating out and Theros was entering the standard scene, I got this opportunity to go to Japan. I really wanted the opportunity so I dedicated myself and really tried not to play magic during that time and studied Japanese in my weekends. Now that I am here, my 17 years of playing this game got back to me,  I find myself blue in my weekends or when I get home from work. And here I am running into this article of Travis Woo calling all Delverers out there. When UW Delver took standard right when Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic got banned from standard, I found myself winning and enjoying my tournaments with my UW Delver deck and so I was kind of summoned by Travis's calling to all Delver players and here I am getting back to Magic by simply playing through MTG cards through my computer.

Here is the Modern decklist that Travis posted. I tried running it and it was very fun and also considering that I have most of the cards in this deck aside from 2 Remands, 3 Disrupting Shoals and 2 Mutavaults. When I will have time to play big tournaments here in Japan and when it happens that the tournament will be Modern, I will definitely be sleeving up this deck, maybe just modify if a bit for personal preference.

Modern Ninja Bear Delver by Travis Woo

Lands: 18 Island 2 Mutavault Creatures: 4 Delver of Secrets 4 Phantasmal Bear 4 Snapcaster Mage 4 Ninja of the Deep Hours Instants: 4 Vapor Snag 4 Remand 4 Cryptic Command 4 Disrupting Shoal Sorceries: 4 Gitaxian Probe 4 Serum Visions

Okay, so far this article is not saying why I feel so blue but in my defense, I missed playing Magic, I missed playing blue and just recently, I found myself getting back to MTG.

February 2014 FNM Card - Elvish Mystic with Picture

February 2014's FNM promo foil card is Elvish Mystic. 

This is the Elvish Mystic art in the 2014 Magic Core Set (M14).

January 2014 FNM Card - Warleader's Helix with Picture

January 2014's FNM promo foil card is Warleader's Helix.

Here is a closer look in the cool art of the FNM promo version of Warleader's Helix art by Wesley Burt.

Now, you can compare this version to the original version that came out in Dragon's Maze. But for me I'd want to fo to a lot FNMs this January for this card.

December 2013 FNM Card - Sin Collector with Picture

December 2013's FNM promo foil card is Sin Collector.

Here is the Sin Collector version from Dragon's Maze.