Today’s random rant is about playing at your local store and keeping your purchases with them. A few of you might have noticed from my biography that I am a game store employee. I actually work for fellow writer Dequan Watson. I have had the pleasure of working in a game store off and on for over six years. Thru the years of watching the internet become extremely popular and online purchasing become easier and easier, I have seen the effect it has had on the local game store. The reason I bring this up is the increase on the price of Magic the Gathering. I have listed below the prices.

The announcement was sent out to Magic premiere stores, and included the following price increases:

Boosters: $3.69, up from $3.29
Tournament decks: $11.29, up from $9.99
Theme decks: $11.29, up from $9.99

Now most of you know that this went into effect January 15^th, but for those who didn’t now you know and knowing is half the battle. Many people want to save as much money as possible when buying their magic cards and supplies. Rather than going to their local game store, many people have chosen to buy on the internet saving roughly 10 to 15%. Now I know that 10 to 15% may seem like a lot, but I believe that the 10 to 15% that would go to our local stores is basically the cost we pay for having a place to play. If I were to buy $100 in product from my local store in a given month, that would be $10 that I was paying to play in the store instead of purchasing it on the internet and having nowhere to play. In a week, that would be $2.50 and you can’t go to the movies on $2.50. Heck, you can barely rent a movie for $2.50. The other advantage of buying from your local game store is that it gives you the chance to meet other players, help the local economy and promote interest in the game in your area.

A lot of people make their livings through internet sales. A good example would be all the different card services, E-bay auctions and online game stores. Everyone has to make a living and I’m not saying that what they’re doing is a bad thing. We as consumers must remember to think about where our money is going. The local game store is a blessing, that if we don’t support it, could become a thing of the past. I have lived in many towns without a game store. I have also lived in towns like Dallas that have game stores but no play areas in those stores. The local game stores that sacrifice merchandise space for play space are a prime example of the kind of stores that we need to support. Even if you can only give them half of your purchases and give the rest to online stores, every little bit helps.

The internet can be cheap for purchasing your boxes of cards and your singles but it won’t provide you a place to play. But enough of my rant. It’s on to the deck fixing. What follows is an e-mail for a goblin deck fix that needs to be updated for current type two. So here we go…

"I play type2 tournaments and was wondering if you could help me improve my Goblin-Bidding deck. I'm going to include the side deck and if you have the time i would appreciate the feedback on that as well. The deck consist of:

4 Bloostained Mire
4 Shadowblood Ridge
4 Swamp
10 Mountain
1 Goblin Grappler
2 Goblin Sharpshooter
3 Gempalm Incinerator
3 Skirk Prospector
3 Goblin Taskmaster
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Sledder
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Sparksmith
3 Patriarch's Bidding
4 Smother
3 Sulfuric Vortex

SideDeck

2 Cabal Therapy
2 Dark Banishing
2 Flaring Pain
4 Starstorm
1 Sulfuric Vortex
4 Violent Eruption

--- 

What we have here is a previous type 2 deck that’s hasn’t been updated with the new Mirrodin cards and the removal of Odyssey block. The first thing I did was remove all the cards that were no longer type two.

-4 Shadowblood Ridge
-2 Cabal Therapy
-2 Flaring Pain
-4 Violent Eruption

I also changed the card count on the deck and reduced it to make it a 60 card deck.

-3 Goblin Taskmaster
-3 Sulfuric Vortex
-1 Sparksmith

This is the build that I used with the cards in the deck and updating it.

4 Skirk Prospector
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Sledder
4 Goblin war chief
3 Goblin Sharpshooter
4 Siege-Gang Commander
3 Sparksmith
2 Goblin Grappler
3 Gempalm Incinerator
3 Patriarchs Bidding
3 Dark Banishing
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 City of Brass
3 Swamps
13 Mountain

Sideboard

3 Sulfuric Vortex
3 Stabalizer
3 Shatter
3 Goblin Charbelcher
3 Pyrite Spellbomb

Additional decks

GOBLIN BIDDING

4 Clickslither

4 Gempalm Incinerator

4 Goblin Piledriver

4 Goblin Sledder

4 Goblin Warchief

4 Goblin Sharpshooter

4 Siege Gang Commander

4 Skirk Prospector

4 Patriarchs Bidding

4 Bloodstained Mire

4 Swamp

3 City of Brass

13 Mountain

STRAIGHT GOBLINS

3 Clickslither

4 Gempalm Incinerator

4 Goblin Warchief

4 Goblin Piledriver

4 Goblin Sledder

3 Goblin Sharpshooter

4 Siege Gang Commander

4 Skirk Prospector

4 Pyrite Spellbomb

3 Sulfuric Vortex

3 Shock

3 Goblin Burrows