Huntington Learning Center recommends encouraging reading in children by adding just a few new things to your family life:

• Mark your calendar for reading time. Designate a day and time where each family member in your household comes together for at least 30 minutes to take turns in reading something aloud.
• Bring reading into the kitchen. Find a recipe for your next family dinner and ask your child or teenager to help you read the recipe and prepare the meal. Children and young adults always love to help out in the kitchen and when it comes time to eat, he or she will be proud to say that he or she helped out!
• Take a library field trip. Not only do libraries offer a ton of books for you and your children to choose from, they have a myriad of activities for children and teenagers that promote reading. Check out your local library’s monthly calendar of events, and also make regular trips there with them to choose weekly or monthly reading materials.
• Ask for help. If you need assistance with encouraging your children to read, ask the librarian, your child’s teachers, or other education professionals for help.

How do you keep your kids reading?

So today the American Library Association announced that November 14th will be “National Gaming Day” in all libraries. They will offer people the chance to go to the library and play a game and learn more about the real stories that inspired them. There hasn’t been any study in the area of video games based off of history, but according to the Reuter’s article: “Michael Pachter, videogame analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities, estimates games incorporating history into their stories have made up about 10 percent of overall sales over the past year.”

I find it interesting that the ALA has taken notice of this and has decided to embrace and use video games as a learning tool and starting point to get more kids and young adults interested in learning more about history. I also really enjoy playing these games that have a basis in history or have you interact with key historical figures.

So I encourage you to take your younger siblings, children or even go yourself your local  library on the 14th to see what events they may be having!

Via Reuters

Okay, so let’s start. I’ve been debating for the past few days whether I wanted to focus on one of my favorite styles of play, Mill, and the fun things you can do with that, or do something completely insane. I decided to focus on mill strategies. First, mill is the term for when a player makes an opponent (or themselves, if they want to do that) discard cards straight from the top of their deck. A basic example of this is Tome Scour, which is for one Blue, where an opponent discards the top 5 cards! Cheap and effective.

Let me share one of my favorite secrets with you.

What you need:
-Archive Trap
-Path to Exile

Optional:
-Ravenous Trap

Archive Trap is great when you can activate it without paying the mana cost. Hey, look. Path to Exile. With this card you can remove target creature from the game, and yes, you are included as a potential target. It’s controller may search their library for a basic land card and play it. Normally you would target yourself and a token to get a land, but with Archive Trap, you can target an opponent and say: “Oh, by the way? When you’re done? Top 13 cards to the graveyard.” If you’re really mean and happen to be running 3-color mill like I am, you can throw down a Ravenous Trap in response to Archive Trap’s ability resolving. Not only do those 13 cards get removed, anything else you might have milled during the rest of the game does, too!

Ravenous Trap is especially useful against those opponents playing black with necromancy spells. I once had a game with a card called Valor. Valor says: “as long as Valor is in your graveyard and you control a plains, creatures you control have first strike.” Yeah, so most players would willingly kill that creature for the advantage. Well, they don’t get the advantage if it’s been removed from the game! A card like that, against a player that has it on the field, is a good thing to choose as your Path to Exile target.

This combo works well if you have everything. Trapmaker’s Snare is a good card to have, as it lets you search your library to find a trap card, which you reveal, and put into your hand. It’s a small drawback, but I’ve noticed most players don’t look at revealed cards.

Okay, on to something a little more fun. These aren’t really combos, but I’ve found that they are really strong in a mill-style deck that needs defense. These are creatures I chose because of their defense and abilities.

What they are:
-Hedron Crab
-Gomazoa
-Walls

Oh, Gomazoa… so fun to say and so useful! It may be a 0/3 for 3, but it has flying! A lot of times, people run into problems dealing with creatures with flying, but Gomazoa is a good way to work with it. Not only that, but it’s tap ability: “Put Gomazoa and each creature it’s blocking on top of their owners’ libraries, then those players shuffle their libraries.” There are spells that let you enchant creatures so they can block multiple attackers. This then shuffles those creatures into the deck, meaning it’s unlikely any player will have them back for awhile.

Hedron Crab is my personal favorite in a Mill deck as far as creatures go. Yes, it’s weak, but it’s not useless. Whenever a land comes into play under your control, target player puts the top three cards of their library into their graveyard. Yes, this ability stacks. I once had 3 of these babies on the field and a hand full of lands to play. Imagine this with, say, Terramorphic Expanse. With 4 Hedron Crabs, a Terramorphic Expanse can potentially mill 24 cards, if you tap and sacrifice it as soon as you play it.

The last card I chose is a really big wall with a nice ability. Whenever Wall of Frost blocks a creature, that creature doesn’t untap. So all of those big creatures you’ve been attacked with all game? Yeah, just block with this wall and you get a turn to not worry about it. Walls in general are great defense. There are flying walls, indestructible walls, giant walls, and others. They’re great defense, sure, but you can still pump their attack so they not only absorb damage, they can dish some out, too.

Hey everyone. It’s time for RenoChan’s Combos 101! This week I’m going to talk about some interesting combos that I’ve found. Let’s start with some fun things that you can do with blue cards. Keep in mind, these are just some options and can always be improved on! First up, the Mindlock Combo!

What you need:
-Maralen of the Mornsong
-Mindlock Orb

Optional:
-Colfenor’s Plans
-any/all hideaway lands

So first we have Mindlock Orb. For one Island and 3 of anything, you can completely keep anyone from searching libraries. Of course, that means you as well. Maralen’s a little cheaper for 2 Swamps and 1 of anything. With her on the field, players can’t draw cards. At the beginning of everyone’s (even your own) upkeep, they lose 3 life and can search their library for a card of their choice, shuffle the deck, and put that card into their hand. Sounds great so far. Yes, everyone loses three life. Yes, Mindlock Orb cancels the searching of libraries, but the life-loss still goes through. Most players with both of these cards can put this together. Granted you have to be sure to have both or all parts of this combo before you play Mindlock Orb, but tutors like Diabolic Tutor or even a certain Liliana Vess allow you, for a small price, to search for anything you want in your library.

But how do you keep from losing the life? How do you still get cards? Easy! Colfenor’s Plans! When Colfenor’s Plans come into play, you exile the top 7 cards of your library from the game, face down. You can look at and play these cards. You, yes you, skip your draw step. That means no life loss for you! Granted the downside is you can’t play more than one spell each turn, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play counter-spells or instants during your opponent’s turn! Another way is to use things like Shelldock Isle or the other lands with Hideaway. This lets you remove the top card of your library from game while you can still use it.

Robe of Mirrors or other enchantments that give creatures you control shroud are great protection for Maralen. For those who fancy a taste of green can try Aspect of the Mongoose. Gravedigger and Undertaker are good, cheap spells that let you bring back creatures from the graveyard, so if Maralen happens to end up there? Whoops, you can just bring her back. A few counter-spells in the deck like Cancel can prevent your Mindlock Orb and Colfenor’s Plans from being destroyed!

Isn’t that fun? Now, let’s take a look at another favorite: Traumatize. We all know this spell is great for one-time mill, but what if you can do more with it?

What you need:
-Traumatize

Optional:
-Twincast
-anything with replicate

As you can see, at a cost of 2 Islands, 3 of anything, Traumatize can be really mean if you are lucky enough to be running mono-blue and can pull out 5 lands by turn 5. A player of your choice, which includes yourself if you’re playing a Golgari-style unearth deck or rely on necromancy for your creatures, puts the top half of their library, rounded down, into their graveyard. Twincast, for 2 Islands, copies target instant or sorcery. Fancy that, Traumatize is a sorcery! What that means is for a grand total of 4 Islands, 3 of anything, a player can lose half then half-again of their library.

With the Zendikar set coming out and spoilers being released, a certain Ravenous Trap (if an opponent puts three or more cards into their graveyard, you may pay 0 instead of it’s mana cost: exile all cards in target player’s graveyard) can be very mean for dampening an unearth or necromancy deck. Granted, getting a hold of that trap might be hard since Zendikar releases in a week, but it’s an interesting plus to this combo.

Now, be sure to have one or two counter-spells available when you play this because the last thing you’d want is your only Traumatize to be cancelled or negated and nothing happen.

Now that we’ve gotten locking a player out of their deck and life-draining and near-perfect mill, let’s get on how to take care of those pesky creatures, eh? Here’s another old favorite: Royal Assassin.

What you need:
-Royal Assassin

Optional:
-Icy Manipulator

Royal Assassin on his own is pretty mean. Tap him and you can destroy any tapped creature that can be targeted. Most of the time, you can protect your Royal Assassins with, say, Robe of Mirrors or Aspect of Mongoose (like with Maralen above). Now, you’re thinking: “Well, if that’s on the field, then a lot of people wouldn’t attack at all.” Yes, that’s true, but that’s why things like Icy Manipulator exist! For 1 of anything and tap it, you can force-tap an artifact, creature, or land. Yep, so that pesky 10/10 trampler that’s been hitting you and making you waste tokens? Yeah, just tap it, then destroy it with Royal Assassin. Other cards that make can force opponents to attack are also good, because that doesn’t give your opponents a choice about attacking or not. Having your opponent’s creatures tap also leaves those creatures unable to block when or if you decide to attack with an arsenal you’ve been saving up since turn one.

So here you see 3 nice combos that are fairly easy to pull off. Granted, there’s always chances for even the best deck and combo to fail, but with things like this in your arsenal, prepare to step into a whole new realm of play!