MTG: Terra Terror

I want to share a deck I made a few years ago that I've just had the chance to revise. I call that deck Terra Terror! Mwahaha hahaha! It is the ultimate land control and decimation deck ever devised! Well, or so I hope. I actually haven't had a chance to really test it in a real game yet, but on paper it sounds brutal and cruel.

The previous incarnation of this deck focused solely on things that blew up lands which is the point, but it seemed to have a tough time keeping itself afloat in battle. I'd end up behind, or outnumbered, or out of cards and out of options. This new version should be much scarier! Fear it!

4 x Llanowar Elves - For the cheap ramp.
4 x Akki Blizzard Herder - For the cheap land destruction.
1 x Krosan Restorer - Helps get lands back.
1 x Dwarven Driller - Helps destroy even more lands!
2 x Countryside Crusher - Gets stronger and stronger.
2 x Terravore - Hey! I get stronger and stronger too!
1 x Mina and Denn, Wildborn - For the additional land play and trample.

4 x Winter Orb - Brrr, it sure is getting cold. ;) Slows things right down.
4 x Custody Battle - Just hand those creatures over.
3 x Crown of the Ages - And... now hand another creature over.
3 x Gruul Cluestone - More ramp.
3 x Harrow - Some more awesome ramp!
3 x Roiling Terrain - Bam! Damage! Ow!
1 x Price of Glory - Don't even think about using instants during my turn.

12 x Mountains
11 x Forests

First off, the biggest difference in this deck is now the inclusion of 4 Winter Orb's and the addition of ways for me to ramp despite my land situation. Winter's Orb slows the game to a screeching halt... if you don't have alternative ways of creating mana. The cluestone and elves help ramp it up and the fact that 90% of my deck can be cast with 3 or less mana definitely helps. I really wanted another one or two Krosan Restorers because once threshold is reached, and it will be with this deck, it can produce so much mana. Unfortunately, I only have one and everywhere I looked was out of stock.

Secondly, the deck now includes some Crown of the Ages to accompany the already present Custody Battles. They go together like peanut butter and jam and bread and it's oh so delicious. Opponents will either have to lose a land, or risk permanently losing a creature to my side. Crown of the Ages can move Custody Battle to other creatures, and the original creature would remain under my control. It's devious and deadly.

Third. I've got some potentially heavy hitters in the deck now. Previously I had next to nothing for this job and at some point you got to hit back. Terravore and Countryside Crusher are perfect for this deck. They should be big and bad in no time.

Finally, I've added a few other cards that could prove useful. Mina and Denn, Wildborn will let me play additional lands and give those heavy hitters some trample. Harrow will help me ramp. Price of Glory will protect and potentially destroy even more land. I do love Price of Glory.

All in all I believe it's a large improvement over the original incarnation. Terra Terror should be interesting to say the least!

The Great Note Archive Mission

I've been holding on to a huge couple of binders full of notes for years now. I have high school notes from all sorts of classes - math, physics, social studies, english, etc. I have post-secondary notes from the Art Institute of Vancouver. There's notes from my time in Kwantlen in the Drafting program. Basically, there's a lot of paper just sitting around taking up space. I'd like to change that!

Part of me thinks, "I'll never look at this stuff again so just chuck it out and move on." Well, the other part of me says, "WHAT IF I NEED IT ONE DAY?!"

So, to compromise I'll try to take all these notes, turn them into digital copies, and chuck the hard copies. It's a bit of an undertaking that's for sure. So here's what I'm going to do...

Here's my Note Picture Taking K'Nex Apparatus!

I've created an apparatus to place my phone in and take pictures of every page of notes. It's built out of K'Nex and will allow me to slide a page in, take a picture, pull the page out, and repeat. I've opted for this method as opposed to scanning as it should simply be much quicker to simply hit a button on my phone every couple of seconds. The scanner takes too long to move up and down the page and wait for me to drop it and push a couple of buttons. This, combined with the fact that I don't need the quality to be amazing, just good enough to read, means I really don't need to use the scanner.

Here's the skeleton of the apparatus. The papers were only there to help reflect light.

The photos will be uploaded automatically to Google's Google Photo cloud. From there I plan to download them (possibly crop them) and reupload them in an organized fashion to Google Drive. Google Photos are weird in that if you move them around in Google Drive they still relate back to Google Photos and I really don't know how else to break this connection other than by downloading them and then deleting them from Google Photos. This was they'll only be accessible in Google Drive and not turning my Google Photos page into a collection of notes. It should work.

By the end I'll hopefully gain a couple shelves of space! Goodbye clutter!