enjoying (relative) freedom
Hello all. I'm here with a brief update, since I'm now on the other side of my dissertation, and one of my exams. It sure is nice to be free of all of that. Even though I've still got 5 exams left to go I feel quite free having only revision to worry about. It's great.
On the day after my report was due I went out with my friends to a Sealife aquarium because they wanted to see the Animal Crossing promotion going on. It was quite fun. I haven't been to an aquarium in years and it was fun to observe so many creatures.
I took my 3DS with my hoping to Streepass some Animal Crossing fans, and I actually did get 2 Streetpasses - my fourth and fifth this year. It's not wholly dead! I ended up taking some fun low-res pictures with my 3DS camera, too.



In my free time I've also been making a new MTG deck. I've been building an Azorius flicker deck and it's such an interesting archetype! You can generate value in so many ways. Originally, my deck's idea was to use Venser, Shaper Savant as a flicker outlet by using instant speed fast flicker effects like Ephemerate to have a repeatable source of Counterspells (or, in this case, Unsubstantiates), but I've been having fun with building it to do much more than that. In particular I am enjoying being able to flicker creatures that tutor on entry. Micromancer is great in particular on merit of being able to fetch more flicker effects!

For the commander I've chosen Yorion, Sky Nomad. This is a card I've been interested in for a while, mostly because I think companions are cool (though this one can't be your companion in commander) and I think Yorion is pretty. But now I understand it's excellent with the same spells I want to be using on Venser, specifically instant speed fast flickers. It lets you respond to a board wipe by casting Ephemerate on Yorion to repeat its entry effect, allowing you to slow flicker the rest of your board to dodge the wipe. How cool is that! You can even save Yorion by scooping it up into your hand with something like a Dour Port Mage. The shenanigans this archetype are capable of have thoroughly enamoured me.
Beyond that, I don't really have too much news. I'm hanging in there, so, I'll see you in the next post, if I make it that far.