The Magical Doack

Conflux Prerelease

2009-02-01T12:55:00.000-08:00

Well, yesterday was the Conflux Prerelease, which I was fortunate enough to go to. I got my packs and opened them, to discover:

SEALED POOL (84 cards)

WHITE (9)
1 Akrasan Squire
1 Angelic Benediction
1 Asha's Favor
1 Dispeller's Capsule
1 Gleam of Resistance
1 Lapse of Certainty
1 Scourglass
2 Soul's Grace

BLUE (15)
1 Cathartic Adept
1 Coma Veil
1 Constricting Tendrils
1 Courier's Capsule
1 Etherium Astrolabe
1 Etherium Sculptor
1 Faerie Mechanist
1 Frontline Sage
1 Grixis Illusionist
1 Jhessian Lookout
1 Outrider of Jhess
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Skill Borrower
1 Tortoise Formation
1 View from Above

BLACK (9)
1 Bone Splinters
1 Drag Down
1 Executioner's Capsule
1 Pestilent Kathari
1 Salvage Slasher
1 Sedraxis Alchemist
1 Skeletal Kathari
2 Voices from the Void

RED (10)
1 Dark Temper
1 Fiery Fall
1 Goblin Razerunners
1 Magma Spray
1 Soul's Fire
1 Thorn-Thrash Viashino
1 Toxic Iguanar
1 Viashino Skeleton
1 Vithian Stinger
1 Volcanic Fallout

GREEN (16)
1 Behemoth's Herald
1 Court Archers (foil)
1 Feral Hydra
1 Gift of the Gargantuan
1 Godtoucher
1 Matca Rioters
1 Mosstodon
1 Naya Battlemage
1 Jungle Weaver
2 Resounding Roar
1 Sacellum Archers
1 Scattershot Archer
1 Thornling (foil!)
2 Tukatongue Thallid

MULTICOLORED (18 by shard – 6 Bant, 3 Esper, 2 Grixis, 5 Jund, 1 Naya, 1 Conflux)
1 Bant Charm
2 Jhessian Balmgiver (1 foil)
1 Kiss of the Amesha
1 Steward of Valeron
1 Valeron Outlander

1 Sphinx Summoner
1 Vectis Agents
1 Vedalken Outlander

1 Elder Mastery
1 Fire-Field Ogre

1 Carrion Thrash
1 Charnelhoard Wurm
1 Goblin Outlander
1 Hellkite Hatchling
1 Jund Charm

1 Vagrant Plowbeasts

1 Exploding Borders

COLORLESS (7)
1 Armillary Sphere
2 Bone Saw
1 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Esper Panorama
1 Obelisk of Esper
1 Rupture Spire

It was immediately and abundantly clear that I would be playing Jund. I had a lot of blue, but it wasn't very good. I had FOUR bombs in Jund colors: Goblin Razerunners, Thornling, Feral Hydra, and Charnelhoard Wurm. My other rares were all Esper and none of them were great. At least, they certainly didn't compare to the Jund ones.

My deck was built rather quickly, since there wasn't much to think about. I just picked (what I thought to be) the best cards in my colors and threw them in. The result:

SEALED DECK (40 cards)

LAND (17)
1 Crumbling Necropolis
6 Forest
6 Mountain
4 Swamp

CREATURES (13)
1 Carrion Thrash
1 Charnelhoard Wurm
1 Feral Hydra
1 Goblin Razerunners
1 Hellkite Hatchling
1 Pestilent Kathari
1 Scattershot Archer
1 Skeletal Kathari
1 Thornling
1 Toxic Iguanar
2 Tukatongue Thallid
1 Vithian Stinger

OTHER SPELLS (10)

1 Bone Splinters
1 Dark Temper
1 Executioner's Capsule
1 Fiery Fall
1 Jund Charm
1 Magma Spray
2 Resounding Roar
1 Soul's Fire
1 Volcanic Fallout

In retrospect, running both Resounding Roars was probably not the greatest idea. I also forgot to throw in a Plains to support them, so they were just overcosted Giant Growths. They did occasionally save a guy, but I'm not sure if I would keep them in if I had to make the deck over again.

Anyway, I kept my deck that way the entire tournament, never sideboarding once. My first opponent was the legendary Adam Chambers, who was playing 5 colors. The first game I got owned by Paragon of the Amesha, which I couldn't remove until it was too late. I got several of my fatties out, but he kept removing them at just the right time. The second game he must have drawn poorly because he couldn't deal with my fatties. When he finally got his Sharuum the Hegemon out, I Bone Splinters'd it sacrificing my Tukatongue Thallid and he scooped. The third game was similar to the first in that I died. Still, beating Chambers in even one game was a nice ego boost. And I knew the second round would be easier, since my deck was actually good, and the Swiss format would pair me with another 0-1 player.

The second round I played a dude who had no idea what he was doing. His deck was 60 cards. He asked if artifacts have summoning sickness. It wasn't even a contest. I 2-0'd him, bringing me up to 1-1.

The third round I played someone who was also playing Jund, except that I owned him 2-0. I don't remember the details since it went by very quickly. I was now 2-1, and in position to place if I won in the final round.

The final round was a ballstorm. My opponent had a very dangerous Naya deck, and he kept getting Meglonoth and enchanting it with Asha's Favor, which I couldn't do anything about unless I drew the right removal. Luckily, my Pestilent Kathari kept it at bay, but I still couldn't attack into it, or play good spells while still keeping 2R open for the Kathari. The first game took forever because I kept having to make complicated decisions about how to pump my Thornling, but I lost eventually when he Soul's Fired his Meglonoth to my face. The second game I won, but I don't remember what happened. The third game I was on the verge of winning, but time was called since I had taken so long in the first game, and I was ONE POINT of damage away from killing him (and would definitely have won on the next turn). We then both ended up 2-1-1, so neither of us placed. In retrospect, I should have offered him half my prizes if he scooped, or something, but situations like that have never happened to me before, so it wasn't even on my mind. I was just focusing on the game. (Also, I thought that I COULD deal that one last point of damage, but I had miscalculated. Someone told me I could have won if I had done things a little differently, but whatever.)

After the tournament I did something unprecedented: TRADING. Nothing drastic, mind you. I heard a guy mention that he wanted a Hellkite Hatchling, and I don't really like the card much (as awesome as it was in my deck), so I traded mine to him for a Blood Cultist. Then, since I really don't care for Scourglass, and I'm never going to use Volcanic Fallout in a deck, I traded those, plus Fire-Field Ogre and a few other commons, for another Cultist, Esperzoa, and three other uncommons. Later on, another dude gave me a third Blood Cultist for free, plus a Vithian Stinger. It was good times.

So what did I learn about Conflux? Not that much. I had played a bunch of Conflux Sealed with my friend on Magic Workstation in preparation for the event, and I had seen the complete spoiler, so it wasn't like I was exploring undiscovered worlds (like the denizens of Alara). However, I did learn that Conflux decks tend to be either three-color shard-based decks, or five-color domain decks. The former are much like those in Shards of Alara; they use the shard mechanics, work well within the three colors, etc. The latter tend to be much more varied, either trying to squeeze in five-color and domain cards, or just trying to play all your best spells (usually a bit of both).

As for my own deck, personally my favorite card was Goblin Razerunners. It has the potential to get very fat, and it can either swing for massive damage or just stay back to block, and use its ability to ping your enemy to death. I almost actually got to use all three of Jund Charm's modes, too. The two +1/+1 counters mode is awesome on the Razerunners, and I used it that way once or twice. The 2 damage to each creature mode is of course very useful and I used it at least once. The remove graveyard from the game mode is usually the weakest, but there was a point where I actually would have used it if I had been paying attention. In my third game against Adam Chambers, he had Sharuum the Hegemon in his graveyard, and he played Sanctum Gargoyle. At that point, I should have cast Jund Charm to remove his graveyard from the game, but I just didn't think to. (I was pretty much screwed anyway, so I don't think it would have mattered, but it would have been a neat trick.) So that was neat. I also love Tukatongue Thallid, especially with Devour and Bone Splinters. And as a chump blocker. Such a useful 1-mana creature.

Well, that's about it. I signed up to do a Shards/Conflux draft on Valentine's Day, which should be awesome. Until then, time to work these new cards into some Standard decks! See you in two weeks.

Shards Draft 4

2009-01-10T13:27:00.001-08:00

I went down to Zombie Planet last night for another Shards draft. Unfortunately this one wasn't very interesting, but there were a few Moments Of Interest, as you'll see. Anyway…

My first pack contained an Empyrial Archangel, so it was pretty obvious I would be going Bant. Others at my table were going Bant, though, so I did have some trouble getting decent stuff. Usually my Bant decks have at least a few Rhox Chargers, for example, but not this time. I did get more rares than usual (many of them passed to me), though, which was kind of interesting. My deck ended up being:

40 Cards

17 Land
5 Forest
4 Island
7 Plains
1 Seaside Citadel

15 Creatures
2 Akrasan Squire
1 Algae Gharial
1 Bant Battlemage
1 Cloudheath Drake
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Empyrial Archangel
1 Jhessian Infiltrator
1 Kathari Screecher
1 Knight of the Skyward Eye
1 Knight of the White Orchid
1 Rhox War Monk
1 Sharding Sphinx
1 Sigiled Paladin
1 Waveskimmer Aven

8 Other Spells
1 Bant Charm
1 Covenant of Minds
1 Gift of the Gargantuan
2 Obelisk of Bant
1 Resounding Silence
2 Sigil Blessing

In-color sideboard cards, some of which I should probably have mainboarded
1 Angelic Benediction
1 Angelsong
1 Cradle of Vitality
1 Dispeller's Capsule
3 Etherium Sculptor (lulz)
1 Hindering Light
1 Minion Reflector
1 Naturalize
1 Outrider of Jhess
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Soul's Grace
1 Tortoise Formation

Meh. I probably should have kept Angelic Benediction in the deck, but it usually just gets killed, and I figured I'd rather have another creature. I never actually sideboarded anything in throughout the entire tournament, which may have been a mistake, but whatever. I also let myself be forced into Bant early, but saw very little removal that wasn't black, so I only ended up with only two real removal spells, which hurt me a fair bit. Here's how it went down:

First round I fought a dude with a Naya deck, which steamrolled me because his dudes were just so FAT. Mosstodon and Rhox Charger just punched my face open with their tramply goodness. I think I won one game, but I can't remember.

Second round I played a dude running four colors (all but white). He had some bad luck in his draws; the first game he got two Blightnings off early, but I somehow managed to squeeze out a win when he kept drawing land. The second game he got Vein Drinker out, and pinged one of my dudes with it, but I responded with Sigil Blessing. Not to be outdone, he Swerved it onto another dude. The next turn, he pinged again, and I responded with…another Sigil Blessing, which I had just topdecked. He died a little inside. Then I played Empyrial Archangel and he scooped.

Third round I played against another Naya deck. The first round I only got white and blue, and my green cards were all dead in my hand the entire game. I died. The second round, HE only got green and white, and he died. The third round, he only got green and red, and he died. It was basically mana screw wars the whole way through. Hilarious.

The final round I played against an Esper deck splashing green. There were a few moments where it was close, but his Metallurgeon and Excommunicate sealed my fate. I ended the tournament 2-2, with a win-loss record of 5-5. Not bad, for me anyway, and with such an uninteresting deck.

One person at the tournament managed to build a mill deck around Memory Erosion, which actually won a few times. Lulz.

At least I got a bunch of decent cards for my collection. Most of the rares and uncommons I got can be used in my decks. And, I signed up for the Conflux prerelease, Saturday the 31st! I am greatly looking forward to it. (There are two days, but at $30 a pop, I think I'll just do one. But I may also go to the release party the following weekend.) I will certainly have something interesting to talk about then. Until then…I don't have anything inspirational to say. Kbye.

Shards Casual Draft

2008-12-29T12:13:00.000-08:00

It's Christmastime, and that means that many of my friends are back in town for a few weeks. One of my friends, Greg, plays Magic, and has some friends who play too. So, we decided to set up a Shards draft. It occurred last night.

There were only four of us: me, Greg, Dave, and Eric. Greg and Dave had done Shards sealed once, and Eric had never seen Shards before, so I had a considerable experience advantage going into the draft, for what it's worth. I opened my packs, as usual, based on the art: first the Steward of Valeron pack, then Godsire, then Sedris, the Traitor King.

My first pack's rare was Mycoloth, but the pack also contained Bone Splinters and Oblivion Ring. There was hardly any white in the pack, though, so I decided not to take Oblivion ring, and instead took Bone Splinters. I figured, if I didn't take it, someone else would, and if one of us had Mycoloth and the other had Bone Splinters, I'd rather be the one with the Splinters. A good choice? I don't know. But we'll see.

I gradually edged my way into Grixis, taking lots and lots of removal early on, with hardly any creatures until the end of my second pack. My second pack's rare was Hellkite Overlord, which I obviously had to take, but I didn't want to splash green to play it, so it stayed in my sideboard, safely out of Greg's reach (he was playing Jund, and his first pick was Kresh the Bloodbraided). Greg was seated to my right, Eric playing Bant/Esper to my left, and Dave's Naya across from me. So there wasn't a huge amount of competition for cards.

I got a Cruel Ultimatum passed to me in the third pack. I knew how amazing the Ultimatum was, but they didn't, so they didn't hate-draft it before I could snatch it up in my grimy claws. There were a ton of Grixis uncommons, which was awesome for me. I also got a Covenant of Minds, and…well, here's my decklist:

40 Cards (I counted this time)

17 LANDS
1 Crumbling Necropolis
5 Island
5 Mountain
6 Swamp

15 CREATURES
1 Blood Cultist
2 Fatestitcher
1 Hissing Iguanar
1 Kathari Screecher
1 Kederekt Creeper
1 Rockslide Elemental
1 Scourge Devil
1 Shore Snapper
1 Skeletal Kathari
1 Tidehollow Strix
1 Undead Leotau
1 Viscera Dragger
2 Vithian Stinger

8 OTHER SPELLS
1 Bone Splinters
1 Call to Heel
1 Covenant of Minds
1 Cruel Ultimatum
2 Grixis Charm
1 Infest
1 Obelisk of Grixis

2 SIDEBOARD CARDS I USED
2 Swerve

Awesome. Now on to the games. With only four of us, we just did round robin, with victory going to whoever had the best record. I played Greg first.

Greg had a lot of 1 toughness dudes, which fell swiftly to my Blood Cultist. He didn't draw Kresh, but it would hardly have mattered – a Fatestitcher locked down all his good stuff while I attacked with my fliers and Creeper. Covenant of Minds proved to be awesome, and I used Grixis Charm's red mode (+2/+0 to all my creatures) more than the others. He didn't stand much of a chance.

The second game, I got to play Cruel Ultimatum. The outcome of that game should be obvious. I beat Greg 2-0.

Then I played Dave's aggressive Naya deck. Wild Nacatl beat me down quite a bit before I managed to get rid of it, and he kept playing threats, but eventually I played Cruel Ultimatum and, well, you know the rest.

The second game, I found out who had ended up with the Mycoloth. It was Dave. It was wrecking me until I finally managed to Infest all his Saprolings and then Call to Heel the Mycoloth. But he got more dudes and devoured them again, and I couldn't remove it. I died.

The third game, I drew Cruel Ultimatum again. I beat Dave 2-1.

Then I had to play Eric. Eric isn't a spectacular player, but he's a much better deckbuilder than Greg and Dave. The first game, his big Esper dudes (Cloudheath Drakes and Steelclad Serpents) plus his sneaky Deft Duelists cause me a lot of trouble, especially since he backed them up with a lot of good defense - Hindering Light, Resounding Wave, and Call to Heel. I kept trying to remove his Drakes, only to have him bounce them and play them again. And his Metallurgeon didn't make things any easier. I couldn't stop his swarm of fliers, and I died.

The second game was epic. My removal was a bit more effective, but this time I got some Vithian Stingers and Fatestitchers out. I kept tapping down his big guys and removing whoever I could, and then pinging him for one or two at the end of each of his turns. He couldn't attack into my Kederekt Creeper and Undead Leotau, and I kept removing any flier he'd play, or keeping it tapped with a Fatestitcher. I won that game by pinging him to death. I never attacked with a single creature.

The third game was much the same as the first. I died. Eric defeated me 2-1.

So my record was 5-3. Dave's was also 5-3, Eric's 4-3, and Greg's 1-6 (poor Greg). Dave and I played a tiebreaker game…during which I played Cruel Ultimatum. That card is truly a game-winner.

In retrospect, I should have kept Shore Snapper in my sideboard in favor of Swerve, because I had to keep switching the Snapper out whenever I played an opponent with no Islands (which was 2/3 of them). I never actually got to play Swerve, but it certainly would have been useful if I had had it in some of my game 1's. In the second game against Eric, I actually sideboarded Infest out, because his dudes were all bigger than mine, so it would rarely have been useful. Still, I was pretty happy with how my deck ended up. Fatestitcher is an insanely powerful card in limited, and I had two of them. Those guys and Cruel Ultimatum are probably what won me most of my games.

So anyway, I won (woohoo!), and the prizes at our little draft were to divvy up the rares. We all took the rares out of our decks and placed them on the table to pick which ones we wanted. The rares were:

Brilliant Ultimatum
Covenant of Minds
Cruel Ultimatum
Gather Specimens
Hellkite Overlord
Keeper of Progenitus
Knight-Captain of Eos
Kresh the Bloodbraided
Manaplasm
Minion Reflector
Mycoloth
Sharding Sphinx

I got to pick two first, so I took Cruel Ultimatum and Sharding Sphinx. I don't remember the exact order and picks of everyone, but I ended up with Mycoloth and Knight-Captain of Eos. Not bad. My Esper deck could use a second Sphinx, and I may now have enough cards to build a decent Grixis deck, or at least augment my new Jund deck.

We then played Greg's Battlestar Galactica board game, which was pretty funny. Greg kept throwing people in the Brig. The phrase "throw ___ in the BRIG!" was shouted many, many times. But the Cylons won, because Greg threw me in the Brig, but I wasn't actually a Cylon, so I was powerless to stop treacherous Cylon Dave from depleting all of our fuel. Jerk.

Greg and co. will be around for a while, and they enjoy drafts, so hopefully I'll get to draft some more in the coming weeks. Casual drafts are nice; no one yells at you if you say what card you picked, or if you look at your drafted cards during a round. No one shuffles your deck 2420934 times and counts your deck to see if it has 40 cards. And best of all, no one hate-drafts Cruel Ultimatum! :D

Shards Draft 3

2008-11-29T13:20:00.001-08:00

I haven't had a chance to draft in a while. Zombie Planet's Friday Night Magic drafts are only every other week, and two Fridays ago I was busy, and four Fridays ago was Halloween, so I hadn't had a chance to go for six whole weeks…UNTIL LAST NIGHT. Normally I teach until 5, so I wouldn't be able to make it down there in time to play, but it was Thanksgiving weekend, so there was no teaching. And OFF I WENT!

I got there early and there were only three people there, but eventually we got 15…quite a small number for a tournament, but doable. I was at the 7-player table, and as I opened up my first pack, I discovered…

Utter crap. The rare was Archdemon of Unx or Cradle of Vitality or Gather Specimens or Immortal Coil or Ooze Garden or something that I didn't really want, so I ended up taking an Arcane Sanctum. (Those rares I named are all ones I saw and passed at some point…I just don't remember in which order. I ended up grabbing Gather Specimens on its second time around, though.)

I kept getting passed junk, so I figured I'd start trying to work my way into Esper. I basically grabbed every artifact I could find, or good removal if it was available. My second pack was similarly unimpressive but I kept getting passed Esper dudes so I kept taking them. However, on my second pick, someone passed me a Quietus Spike (he must have seen a card he liked even better), so I snatched that up. I was lucky enough to get two Metallurgeons, the best card ever.

As I mentioned in a previous article, I like to arrange my packs in a certain order. My first pack had an illustration of Steward of Valeron, and lo and behold, there was one of them in the pack. But the token was a Homunculus…an excellent omen. My second pack depicted Broodmate Dragon, but I was not so lucky. I like to keep the pack with the biggest dude for last, and when I opened my Godsire pack I saw…Sharding Sphinx, the best card ever! My silly little superstition seems to pay off…that's at least the second time I've been heavily invested in a shard for the first two packs, only to open a relevant bomb in the third.

The Homunculus omen proved worthy, as I eventually got a Puppet Conjurer, the best card ever. At one point I hate-drafted a Naturalize, but almost all of my cards ended up being relevant and playable.

I ended up with:

39 Cards

15 LAND:
1 Arcane Sanctum
6 Island
4 Plains
4 Swamp

14 CREATURES:
1 Esper Battlemage
1 Etherium Sculptor
1 Glaze Fiend
2 Metallurgeon
1 Puppet Conjurer
1 Sanctum Gargoyle
1 Sharding Sphinx
3 Tidehollow Strix
1 Tower Gargoyle
1 Vectis Silencers
1 Windwright Mage

10 OTHER SPELLS:
1 Cancel
1 Courier's Capsule
1 Dispeller's Capsule
1 Etherium Astrolabe
1 Hindering Light
2 Obelisk of Esper
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Resounding Wave
1 Quietus Spike

"Wait," you are probably saying, "39 cards?" My reply: "WHAT OH SHIT!" When I was doing my land calculations, I knew I wanted 16 lands. I had Arcane Sanctum already, so I mentally started off with 5 Island, 5 Plains, 5 Swamp. Since I had more blue, I shifted it to 6 Island, 4 Plains, 4 Swamp…not realizing that it should have been 7 Island. A ridiculous and embarrassing calculation error.

However, I didn't notice this mistake until the fourth round. So I had been playing with an illegal deck for three rounds with no one noticing…and doing pretty well with it! The shame is unbearable. After writing this article I may be forced to commit seppuku.

But here's what happened. My first opponent was a guy who usually owns at Magic, but he had some mana troubles. He was playing Naya colors, and didn't get green for a long time. My legion of tiny dudes overwhelmed him. Twice. Illegally. :(

My second opponent was another veteran, also running Naya colors. However, he had grabbed THREE Hissing Iguanars and a Goblin Assault, a deadly combo. The first game he dropped one of his Iguanars, and I played Esper Battlemage, which would have destroyed his entire deck had he not burned it out with Naya Charm. So I lost. Then in game two, it was much closer. At one point, I had a ton of dudes, and was about to attack, but he played…Naya Charm to tap all my dudes. HOWEVER, I had been cleverly keeping my mana open, and I Canceled it. I dealt him a sound blow to the facebone. The next turn, I prepared to attack again, and he cast…Naya Charm. He tapped all my dudes, then attacked on his turn to finish me off. Bluh. He went on to win first place.

My third opponent was a dude who everyone seemed to hate, and I soon found out why. He was friendly at first, but whenever I played a spell, he would reel in his chair as though I had just played Black Lotus. It got a little out of hand, though…it made sense for Quietus Spike, but then I'd play some little dude that doesn't even do anything and he'd fall out of his chair and rip his hair out. I was afraid to even play a land for fear of him shooting himself right then and there.

But anyway, his real distastefulness was revealed more gradually. At one point, he had a Rockslide Elemental with one counter, and I had a Puppet Conjurer and Glaze Fiend. He attacked, and I made a Homunculus, pumping my Fiend, then blocked with the now 2/3 Fiend. Then he said something like "but damage is already on stack," and I was like "what," and we had a brief exchange by which it was clear he had not realized I could do that and was trying to weasel out of it. However, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and let him take back his attack. Another time, I attacked with a Tidehollow Strix equipped with Quietus Spike when he was at 15 life, and I'd say "ok that's 2, plus 7 more" and he put his life counter at 7, and I had to say "no it's 6." This happened several times. Either he was pretty dumb or pretty weaselly. I am convinced it is the latter. During the third game, a guy came over and watched, so I at least had someone else to keep him in line. He tried to play Resounding Roar on his Algae Gharial, but the dude watching pointed out that the Gharial has shroud, so I was grateful (since I hadn't noticed and would have let him do it). Anyway, I eventually beat him 2-1, which was satisfying since he was a douche. Too bad my deck was illegal.

During those games, though, I got to use some of the awesome interactions in my deck. Etherium Astrolabe + Puppet Conjurer/Sharding Sphinx = great source of cards. And of course, Metallurgeon worked very well with Tidehollow Strix, the best card ever.

So I was 2-1 so far, and the fourth and final round rolled around. My opponent this time had some sort of compulsive shuffling disorder where he would shuffle his own deck 1000 times in 6 different ways. Then when I presented my deck for him to cut, he shuffled MY deck 1000 times in 6 different ways. He remarked that it felt a bit light, and he counted it, revealing, to my VAST EMBARRASSMENT, that my deck was illegal! The judge ruled it as a game loss for me, and I realized what I had done and stuck in the final Swamp. He won the next game with his Bant dudes (we both had a lot of dudes but his were slightly bigger and more evasive). We played again for kicks, and I won, so I wonder what would have happened if he had not noticed. Or if I had been playing 40 from the start. Ah well.

Anyway, I ended up coming in 7th out of 15, which is not bad for a loathsome cheater. I used to always count my deck before playing to make sure it had the right number of cards, but then I got overconfident in my mathematical abilities and stopped doing that. From now on I will be sure to return to that habit :)

During one of the rounds, after I had finished my matches, I watched some other matches, and I saw one guy with a Puppet Conjurer. So after the tournament, I asked him if he would trade it, and he gave it to me for free. O FRABJOUS DAY! Unspeakable bliss.

When I got home, I used my new Esper fellows to augment my existing Esper deck, focusing on speed and numbers. I took out the clunky Sphinx Sovereign in favor of Sharding Sphinx, and basically packed the deck with awesome creatures. It's weak against mass removal (in testing, an Infest wiped out the entire board), but it is fast, and furious, and sharp as a tack. Metallurgeon + Tidehollow Strix, as I have mentioned previously, is a rock solid defense. Or, etherium solid. Actually etherium isn't very solid. OK WHATEVER.

So although I was embarrassed at my mistake, and at throwing off the results for players who care about stuff like that, I still had fun, and got some neat cards. That's all you can ask for, really. (Well, you can ask for victory, but I won't push my luck.) Two players were randomly selected at the end for a PROMO CARD from the PROMO CARD ENVELOPE, and I was one of them. There were Woolly Thoctars and Isochron Scepters and some other stuff. I was strongly advised to take a Thoctar (the other guy did) so I just went with that. The Scepter is a great card, and worth more, but it's also from Mirrodin, and cards from Mirrodin burn my skin when I touch them. It's like they're coated in some sort of evil artifact acid. So I'm happy with my Thoctar.

Until next time…whenever that may be! (Perhaps the day after Christmas! We'll see.)

Another Shards Draft

2008-10-18T19:41:00.001-07:00

WELL! I managed to go to another Shards of Alara draft! Hurray for me. Here are my tales.

There were 25 people, and we were going to be drafting at tables of 6/6/6/7, but some people wanted larger tables, so it ended up being 8/8/9, and I was at one of the 8. I'm not superstitious, but I like to pretend that I am, so I decide the order in which to open my packs based on the art. My three boosters had art of Hellkite Overlord, Godsire, and Sphinx Sovereign, which is the order I decided to open them. My decision turned out to be awesome.

My first pack contained nothing of real interest. I think I took Oblivion Ring. The second pack was also lame and I took Bull Cerodon. After a few more unexciting picks, I noticed that I kept getting passed a lot of Esper cards. So I thought, LET'S TRY IT. And I began to draft Esper.

I took pretty elementary staple Esper cards like Glaze Fiend and Sanctum Gargoyle, not getting many bombs. I did take Brilliant Ultimatum – two of them – but decided later not to play them. But in the second pack, I got passed a Battlegrace Angel on my second pick, so I snatched that up faster than a hobo grabs a bread crust off the sidewalk. I continued taking pretty-okay Esper cards until third pack, where I opened the booster with the art of Sphinx Sovereign discover…SPHINX SOVEREIGN. After barely avoiding crapping myself, I took it and continued getting more generic Esper stuff, and a few Bant cards such as Akrasan Squire and Call to Heel. I focused mostly on artifact-related stuff to make my deck as resilient and aggressive as possible.

After a bit of fiddling, I came up with a deck of which I am actually pretty proud.

17 Land:
1 Esper Panorama
5 Island
6 Plains
5 Swamp

16 Creatures:
1 Akrasan Squire
1 Battlegrace Angel
1 Blister Beetle
1 Filigree Sages
3 Glaze Fiend
2 Sanctum Gargoyle (one was foil)
1 Sphinx Sovereign
1 Sphinx's Herald
1 Steelclad Serpent
1 Tidehollow Sculler
1 Tidehollow Strix
1 Vectis Silencers
1 Windwright Mage

7 Other Spells:
1 Call to Heel
1 Courier's Capsule
1 Dispeller's Capsule
1 Executioner's Capsule
1 Hindering Light
1 Obelisk of Esper
1 Oblivion Ring

And now, the games. It was a five-round tournament, so one loss would mean that I would still have a chance at winning a prize, but I'm not the type who does things like winning or anything. Winning, pfft. Anyway. My first opponent had a powerful Jund deck splashing blue that would have totally crushed me if not for him getting horribly mana screwed the first game (he didn't get any black for a long time, and when he finally did, it was in the form of Obelisk of Grixis which I summarily owned with Dispeller's Capsule). I also kept topdecking exactly what I needed in every situation, which proved very irritating to him. The next game he got horribly mana flooded, drawing 14 land out of 20 cards. I've never seen anyone get so frustrated at mana problems, and insist so many times that it wasn't my fault. But he later made up his lost ground.

So I got off to a great start. My second match was against another Jund deck, but this one had no such mana problems. The first game, Vein Drinker killed my entire deck, and the second time, I got overwhelmed by massive number of tokens from Sprouting Thrinax and Jund Battlemage. I was now 1-1, out of the running for good prizes but still in the running for fifth place.

Then I faced a guy playing Bant. He clobbered me first game with a ton of exalted dudes that I couldn't get rid of. But the second game, I edged out a win with judicious use of being awesome, and the third game he got mana screwed. So now I was 2-1, though my wins could both be partly attributed to luck.

Then I faced an Esper deck, leaning heavily into Bant. That is, it was white-blue-black, but focused more on exalted than on artifacts. His mass of Akrasan Squires made me reluctant to waste my removal spells, and Deft Duelist didn't even give me the option. I got destroyed 0-2.

In the final round, I faced a Grixis deck played by a guy who does not embody Grixis at all because he was super nice. He realized I was kind of new, and when I played my Sculler, he gave me some advice as to which cards to remove (advice which was clearly not meant to sucker me). However, I once again got owned by superior removal. So I ended 2-3, with most of my wins being luck-based. A decent record, but not great, since I won 4 games but lost 7.

Whenever I got the Sphinx or the Angel out, I would usually have one turn of being able to use it before it got taken out by a Bone Splinters (in the former case) or Grixis Charm (in the latter). I definitely made some mistakes, a few of which probably lose me some games, but I had difficult choices to make, and of course I kind of suck. It was only my second Shards draft, after all. But I had fun, and it was neat to try a different shard, especially one I had railed against previously. But Esper used for aggro rather than control is plenty fun, and the few control spells I had were mostly defensive and relatively not obnoxious. One guy had FOUR Blightnings in his deck…I am glad I did not have to play him.

Some fun moments: Attacking with a Windwright Mage with Battlegrace Angel in play, giving him DOUBLE LIFELINK. (I have decided that lifelink is my favorite ability ever.) Trying to execute an elaborate method of getting my poorly played Oblivion Ring back by using Dispeller's Capsule and Sanctum Gargoyle, only to realize that I had already played Sanctum Gargoyle, and Oblivion Ring was of course not an artifact anyway. Using Hindering Light and Call to Heel to protect my dudes and draw more cards. Successfully using Sphinx's Herald to summon the Sovereign, only to lose it to a one-mana Bone Splinters. Trying to play a four-person multiplayer game in between rounds, three of us using Standard decks and one using an Elder Dragon Highlander deck because he didn't have anything else with him. (We got three turns in before the next round began.) Playing a Standard game between rounds against the nice Grixis guy who owns like twelve jillion cards and was playing Esper control, only to overpower him with my crappy red-green giant common dudes when he tapped out to play Scourglass, playing Soul's Fire on my Morselhoarder targeting his face as my coup de grace.

So that's the story of my second draft. I got only two real bombs, but I might be able to build an Esper deck now, and the Angel will definitely go into my exalted deck. As usual, I don't know how often I'll get to draft, but when I do, I'll be sure to post about it!

Shards draft!

2008-10-04T19:49:00.001-07:00

The shop that I've started going to didn't have a Shards of Alara release party, but instead, they turned last night's Friday Night Magic into a Shards of Alara booster draft, complete with promo Ajani Vengeants. (They actually do a booster draft every other FNM, which is great because I love Limited.) Anyway, I went to that draft last night, and HERE ARE MY TALES.

There were 25 players, seated at tables of 6, 6, 6, and 7. I was at one of the 6-player tables, and I was of course super excited. My excitement was immediately justified when my first pack contained an Emyprial Archangel. Bant is my favorite shard anyway, and I already have a decent amount of Bant cards (though not quite a deck's worth), so I was glad to grab the shiny Angel and immediately commit myself to Bant. Neither of the players next to me were playing Bant, so I kept getting passed a lot of Bant cards, which was awesome.

Another pack had Clarion Ultimatum, which is nigh useless in Limited, but I grabbed it for use in a deck later. I also picked up another Angel's Herald, which, it turned out, was also not especially useful. My second pack contained a foil Spearbreaker Behemoth and a Ranger of Eos. The Behemoth was just too awesome not to take, but the Ranger came back around to me, so I grabbed him too. (He too later proved useless, though.) I picked the Behemoth thinking "OH MAN I CAN MAKE MY EMPYRIAL ARCHANGEL INDESTRUCTIBLE AND PREVENT ALL DAMAGE TO ME EACH TURN FOR A MERE ONE MANA." But then when I went to actually do it in game, I noticed that the Angel had shroud. And I wept bitter tears.

There weren't any other really outstanding picks, but I grabbed a Minion Reflector for later use. Or rather, because it looked cool. I also got a bunch of repeats of cards I had from the Sealed tournament, which allowed me to make a shiny Bant deck afterward. Anyway, I of course mixed all my cards together again before recording any of them, and changed it between games, but here's the closest estimate of what my final deck looked like (and I actually managed to keep it to 40 cards after other players gave me stern looks when I told them my deck was 46):

16 LAND:
1 Bant Panorama
1 Esper Panorama
5 Forest
5 Island
7 Plains

14 CREATURES:
1 Akrasan Squire
1 Algae Gharial
1 Cylian Elf
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Empyrial Archangel
1 Jhessian Infiltrator
1 Qasali Ambusher
1 Rhox War Monk
1 Rockcaster Platoon
1 Sighted-Caste Sorcerer
1 Spearbreaker Behemoth
1 Sunseed Nurturer
2 Waveskimmer Aven

10 OTHER SPELLS:
1 Angelic Benediction
2 Courier's Capsule
1 Gift of the Gargantuan
1 Hindering Light
1 Obelisk of Bant
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Resounding Silence
1 Sigil Blessing
1 Soul's Grace

So that's what I had as of the third round. Now to recount the actual games...

My first opponent was also playing Bant, but he had a Battlegrace Angel as well as a Stoic Angel, which was very painful. Our first game went back and forth with life gain and Exalted, but I finally managed to turn the tides by using a Resounding Silence on his freaking Battlegrace Angel, and somehow I got enough damage through to win the first game. The second game was a different story, as he got the Battlegrace Angel out again but I couldn't stop it. The game dragged on even longer, and we even went into overtime with each of us having only 3 cards left in our decks. He won just in time, since his Knight-Captain of Eos was able to prevent too much of my damage, and so we drew 1-1 in the first round without even getting to game 3.

I then fiddled with my deck a little and faced a Grixis player. I hadn't faced a dedicated Grixis deck before, but he wore me down in small increments with Onyx Goblet and two Kederekt Creepers, spelling my doom. I lost 1-2.

Then I consulted another player, who made some recommendations for my deck, and I got it configured as you see above. My third opponent was playing what seemed like an Esper control deck, but he hardly played anything, so I never really found out what it was supposed to do. I won 2-0.

My final opponent was playing only two colors (white-blue), but had trouble getting his blue out. He had a TON of life gain (two Crystal Goblets as well as an Invincible Hymn), but he didn't have enough defense, and I had even MORE life gain with my Rhox War Monk attacking with Exalted. It took a while, but I won 2-0.

I don't know how I would have done if I had made the deck properly from the outset, but I was pretty happy with how I did. 6 wins and 3 losses is solid, even though I had no chance of winning a prize after the second round, but I definitely enjoyed myself. And now I have an Exalted deck! I may post the full decklist at some point, but it's not really necessary: it's just every Exalted card I have, plus a few others thrown in (Rhox War Monk!). I don't use Empyrial Archangel because, as awesome as it is, it's really not that useful to an Exalted deck, and its extremely high mana cost makes it much less playable in Constructed.

But I DID make a red-green Naya deck using some of the cards I got, plus a bunch of Shadowmoor cards, and even a few from Tenth Edition:

25 LAND:
14 Forest
11 Mountain

26 CREATURES:
1 Algae Gharial
1 Belligerent Hatchling
1 Briarhorn
1 Cragganwick Cremator
2 Devoted Druid
2 Elvish Visionary
1 Exuberant Firestoker
1 Farhaven Elf
1 Foxfire Oak
2 Incurable Ogre
2 Jungle Weaver
2 Loamdragger Giant
2 Morselhoarder
1 Oakgnarl Warrior
2 Roughshod Mentor
1 Scuzzback Marauders
1 Spearbreaker Behemoth
1 Stampeding Wildebeests
1 Tattermunge Witch

9 OTHER SPELLS:
1 Branching Bolt
1 Double Cleave
1 Gift of the Gargantuan
2 Mighty Emergence
2 Naturalize
1 Soul's Fire
1 Where Ancients Tread

I opted not to use white because I really don't have many good white cards that would fit in here, besides Rakeclaw Gargantuan. I left out Sarkhan Vol because he just doesn't do anything especially useful for Naya. Most of my creatures are going to be more concerned with attacking than blocking, often leaving him undefended, and his abilities just aren't that helpful to the deck. That said, let's look at some of the awesome parts.

Stampeding Wildebeests is really good. I didn't realize how awesome he was, but he has really great interactions with many of the other cards in this deck. He allows me to reuse my Elvish Visionaries and Farhaven Elf, and if I have Where Ancients Tread, I can return the Wildebeest himself and replay him for 5 more damage each turn. Many of the creatures here don't start out with 5 toughness, so they don't trigger the comes-into-play enchantments, but they still quickly get up to 5, which supports Exuberant Firestoker and allows them to be targeted by Spearbreaker Behemoth. It's slow to get going, but if it lasts long enough, it will finish the job quickly. I also like how it uses cards from a variety of sets despite being based on a Shards of Alara theme.

So there you have it. My first Shards of Alara draft, and a few decks that resulted from it. I hope to draft Shards again at some point, but I don't yet know when that might be. Comments and suggestions on my red-green deck are welcome :)

One final story: after one of the rounds where I finished early, I wandered around looking at other people's games. I found two guys locked in the most epic battle of all time. One had a Windwright Mage with 60 +1/+1 counters on it, made possible by a Cradle of Vitality. He also had a Metallurgeon and a Tidehollow Strix, making any attack against him very uninviting. He had 88 life. His opponent had a Feral Hydra with 19 +1/+1 counters on it. He was at 52 life. There were a bunch of other creatures out, but they didn't do much. The guy with the artifacts eventually won, but it was a very amusing battle. Seeing a 62/62 creature with flying and lifelink in Limited is just ridiculous. RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME.

Shards of Alara Prerelease: DONE

2008-09-30T19:38:00.000-07:00

I went to the Shards of Alara Prerelease on Sunday! It was awesome. To start off, I'll list my sealed pool. Some notes:
- At the end of the night, there were still 10 booster packs left, so the host gave them out randomly as a reward for those who stuck around till the bitter end. (A lot of players left early to preserve their rankings or some crap.) So I ended up with one of those, and when I got home, I mixed them all together. So I don't remember exactly which ones were in that booster and which were in my Sealed deck, but my list should be pretty accurate except for a few commons.
- There are 86 cards: 44 from Sealed (because one was a foil Plains) and 14 from each booster.
- I've organized the cards by shard, but I’m not 100% sure about which cards go in which shard. Most are easy to categorize, but some I just guessed.
Without further ado:

BANT
1x Angel's Herald
1x Angelic Benediction
1x Angelsong
1x Bant Charm
3x Bant Panorama
1x Clarion Ultimatum
1x Dawnray Archer (not sure about this one)
2x Excommunicate
2x Guardians of Akrasa
1x Knight of the White Orchid
1x Resounding Silence
2x Rhox Charger
1x Rhox War Monk
1x Seaside Citadel
1x Topan Ascetic
1x Waveskimmer Aven
2x Welkin Guide (one foil)

ESPER
1x Cloudheath Drake
1x Dispeller's Capsule
1x Etherium Sculptor
1x Filigree Sages
1x Obelisk of Esper
1x Oblivion Ring
1x Onyx Goblet (not sure about this one)
1x Punish Ignorance
1x Spell Snip
1x Steelclad Serpent
1x Thoughtcutter Agent
1x Tidehollow Strix
1x Tower Gargoyle
1x Vectis Silencers
1x Windwright Mage

GRIXIS
2x Banewasp Affliction
1x Blightning
1x Dreg Reaver
1x Fatestitcher
1x Grixis Panorama
2x Incurable Ogre
1x Kathari Screecher
1x Kederekt Creeper
1x Lightning Talson
1x Shadowfeed
3x Skeletal Kathari
1x Skeletonize
1x Undead Leotau

JUND
1x Branching Bolt
1x Carrion Thrash
1x Deathgreeter
1x Dragon Fodder
1x Goblin Deathraiders
1x Goblin Mountaineer
1x Hissing Iguanar
1x Magma Spray
1x Sarkhan Vol!!!
1x Tar Fiend
1x Thorn-Thrash Viashino
1x Thunder-Thrash Elder

NAYA
1x Cylian Elf
1x Exuberant Firestoker
1x Godtoucher (not sure about this one)
2x Gustrider Exuberant
2x Jungle Weaver
1x Lush Growth
1x Naya Charm
1x Obelisk of Naya
1x Qasali Ambusher
1x Rakeclaw Gargantuan
1x Resounding Roar
1x Savage Hunger
1x Soul's Fire
1x Soul's Grace
1x Soul's Might
1x Where Ancients Tread
1x Wild Nacatl

So as you can see, my pool was fairly heavily invested in green and white. Luckily, I love green and white, so my deck ended up being green-white-red splashing blue (for the three excellent tricolor Bant cards). Plus, almost all of my mana fixing was Bant, so I had to do SOMETHING with it. Also, I had to run red because of Sarkhan. With this deck…I got completely destroyed 0-2 against a green-white-red-black deck. Also, my deck was 50 cards because I just didn't have the heart to cut anything. Beginner's folly.

So then I said SCREW IT and completely redid my deck for the second round. I started with blue, and ended up with all 5 colors and another large deck of 46 or 47 cards. I went 1-1-1 with it (against a green-white-blue-black deck with Empyrial Archangel, which was not especially easy to deal with), though I probably would have won the last game but just barely. It was not a good deck since I could rarely play any of my spells until I had all 5 colors of mana out.

So then I said SCREW IT and was going to completely redo my deck but it was already time for the next round, so I lost 1-2 with my crappy 5 color deck again (against a solid Naya deck). But after THAT swift defeat, there was plenty of time to redo my deck over and over until I liked it. So I bit the bullet, chose a shard (Bant), and cut any card that was not ideal in a Bant deck, like Wild Nacatl and, sadly, Sarkhan Vol. The one time I had gotten to play him previously, I made a tactical error and stole a dude, but left my opponent with a flyer on his turn to finish off Sarkhan. However, my focus on Exalted made Sarkhan's abilities not especially useful, so cutting him wasn't really that painful. I managed to get my deck to 40 cards by running just 16 lands, but with no spells costing more than 5 mana. It worked pretty well, as I went 2-0 in the fourth round with it and 1-2 in the final round (though the 2-0 was against a guy who clearly was new). If I had made that deck for the first round, I might even have done respectably well. Oh well, at least I had fun with the new set!

I signed up for a Shards of Alara draft for this Friday. Drafting should be much different from Sealed, and I'm excited. I'm going to get crushed, but it will still be neat. I'm really hoping to get Elspeth, Knight-Errant since she is just SO AWESOME. Even with Jund. Free dragon food each turn! I will relate my drafting adventures next week.

As far as conclusions about the set go, I'm not really cut out for that sort of thing. I saw few dedicated Esper decks, but I suspect that will be a different story in a booster draft. I saw plenty of red and green, as Naya and Jund seemed to be popular in Sealed. As far as my personal tastes go, I am a fan of Bant, since Exalted is quite a powerful mechanic in Limited. With lots of defensive Exalted creatures (like Guardians of Akrasa) and a few evasive creatures, you can build up damage quickly without sacrificing defense. I really like Welkin Guide; at 4W, it's expensive for a 2/2 flier, but its comes-into-play ability can give another powerful creature evasion, and then become your evasive Exalted champion itself on subsequent turns. Sweet.

I also really like the interactions of the mechanics in the set – except for Esper, which is a jerk. Exalted works well with Naya cards that care about having a creature with power 5 or greater during combat or at end of turn, which is a fair number of them. Devour works well with anything involving creatures with power 5 or greater, since Devour creatures are often huge. And Devour also works with Unearth: Unearth a dude, attack with him, and if he's still alive, Devour him, since he's going to leave play anyway. But then there's Esper, which only cares about artifacts, which has nothing to do with anything else. You know what, Esper? BITE ME.

Well, that's all I have for now. Hopefully I'll have more to say next week after the draft. Until then, BANT RULES GRIXIS DROOLS KBYE.

Shards of Alara Prerelease

2008-09-23T10:31:00.001-07:00

OH MAN. I signed up for the Shards of Alara Prerelease! A nearby store (well, somewhat nearby) is having an event on Sunday. I haven't posted in a while, so I thought this would be a good enough reason to do so.

As of this moment, MTGSalvation.com has spoiled 183 out of the 249 cards in the set (which includes basic lands, so it's really 163/229), and BOY ARE THEY AWESOME. I'ma talk about some shards.

BANT. The best shard ever, because it is white-green-blue which is the best color trio ever. Bant is the classic knights-and-castles world, with griffins and stuff. Like Erathia. Their signature mechanic, Exalted, is based on attacking with just one dude each turn, but when you do, that dude is HUGE. This lets you stand back and defend with lots of dudes each turn while still packing a punch in your attack. However, this strategy is weak against chump blocking and removal, since they can just block or pop off the one guy who attacks. And unfortunately, Jund looooves tokens. So although Bant is cool, I don't know how awesome it will actually turn out to be mechanically.

JUND. Jund is the black-red-green shard. As I said, Jund likes tokens. Their mechanic is devour. When a creature with devour comes into play, it devours some of your other creatures to pump itself up. So if you have lots of tokens, you can easily sacrifice them to your devourers to make them huge. And some even give back to the community by making more tokens for future devourers. Jund also likes Dragons, and it likes them A LOT. There's even an enchantment that pumps dragons exclusively. And Sarkhan Vol's ultimate ability makes a game-winning array of dragon tokens. I like red and green, so I wouldn't mind playing Jund. I certainly won't pass up the chance to play Sarkhan himself.

NAYA. Naya is the red-green-white shard. Naya likes big dudes even more than Jund. Their mechanic is stuff-involving-creatures-with-power-5-or-greater, which is a lot of their creatures. Red-green is going to be great for anyone who likes giant dudes, because both Naya and Jund are going to have massive dudes in red and green. There's not that much to say about them other than that they are pretty neat I guess?

ESPER. Esper is the white-blue-black shard, and man do I hate it. But that may be because I hate blue-black. And artifacts. Their theme is artifacts, and all of their creatures are artifact creatures. I don't know exactly why I hate Esper, but I just do. Probably because it will be CONTROL CITY, and as you know, I do not much like control. If my sealed deck contains insane Esper cards, I'll grudgingly play it (because WINNING IS EVERYTHING) but otherwise I will be packing plenty of artifact destruction.

GRIXIS. Grixis is the blue-black-red shard, and is totally uninteresting to me. It's just standard evil demons and stuff. Their mechanic is Unearth, which lets you return a dude from your graveyard to play with haste one more time before removing him from the game. Yawn.

I know I've been a total douche about which shards I like. But that's because this article is about me and what I'm going to do, not an informative article about the block. There are plenty of those here. So anyway, I don't really know what I will be playing since I'm not the type to enter a tournament saying "GONNA PLAY MONO RED TODAY NO MATTER WHAT," but I will try to play whatever is strongest in my packs. I know I talked about how much I hate black and blue, but a tournament is different from casual play, and the chance to win twenty bajillion booster packs is not something one gets every day. Nevertheless, if all things are equal, I am more likely to play something with white or green in it than not. And if I do win prizes, I'll be sure to build some decks ASAP and mention them here! (Even if I don't win anything, I'll still have the tournament pack and 3 boosters worth of cards to work with.) Hurray!

Control

2008-08-31T17:04:00.000-07:00

Lots of people like to have control. Obviously, this is true in most aspects of life, not just Magic. But control can be a dangerous tool. Taking control of your own life is greatly empowering, but control of others often leads to corruption. And this relates to Magic.

Control decks can be any color or combination of colors, and can have any number of ways of exerting control. However, what they all have in common is just that: ways of exerting control. It's of course possible to have control over just yourself. This could take various forms: a deck whose mana curve is well-balanced, modal spells, tutors, card draw, etc. They give you flexibility to react, find what you need, and make the best of bad luck. But when people talk about control in Magic, they are usually talking about exerting control over the game, and over the opponent.

Many players love control - if you call the shots, victory is only a matter of time. But there's an inherent problem with control - it's annoying. Now, this is a fairly personal issue, and I am sure there are plenty of players who don't share my sentiments, but I definitely know some who do. As I've mentioned in a previous article, the friend who taught me Magic in the first place refuses to play against heavy control decks at all. And I often find myself agreeing with him. Here are his - and my - reasons.

First off, let's consider a situation. Smith is playing any ol' deck. Jones is playing a permission deck - a deck that has enough counters that it can decide what Smith can or can't play. Jones has buckets of fun - he giggles when Smith tries to play a powerful creature and counters it. But what is Smith feeling? He entered the game assuming he would get to play his spells. Now maybe he shouldn't have made that assumption, but I don't think it's an unfair one. Besides, there's already a restriction on playing spells - it's called mana cost. When Smith finally manages to build up the 11 mana required for his Darksteel Colossus, and Jones is able to tap a mere two mana and play Remove Soul or Mana Leak, I think Smith is right to become angry. If he can't rely on the possibility of playing his own spells, what CAN he rely on?

So counterspells are one way that control is irritating. And it's irritating to any player - Johnnies, Timmies, or Spikes. If Johnny has laboriously set up his nineteen card combo, only to have it ruined by a single Cancel, his heart is broken. If Timmy prepares to summon a massive Baloth, only to have it sputter and die before it's even born, his heart is broken. And if a Rewind stifles Spike's chance at victory, his heart is broken.

Counterspells are by far the most common control method, but there are certainly others that can be quite aggravating. One is lockdown, which is perhaps even worse. What I mean by "lockdown" is a deck that attempts to stifle the opponent's ability to do anything at all, but not by countering each spell individually - rather, by setting up some situation that will not give the opponent a chance to play anything in the first place. This often takes the form of preventing the opponent from generating mana, either by killing his lands, keeping them tapped, stealing them, or some even more wicked and devious scheme. Another way is to take extra turns. Another way is to play spells that have gamebreaking conditions like "creatures can't attack you" or "target player can't play spells this turn." In any case, the same problems apply here as in the case of counterspells: if you're not allowed to play your spells, where's the fun in playing?

Of course, it can be a fun challenge for some to weasel their way out of such situations. But this requires a flexible deck, or a deck specifically designed for such purposes. Not every deck is packed with defensive maneuvers, and I don't think it would be fair to demand it. For many decks, especially casual ones, a lockdown situation will immediately render the deck helpless.

There are other kinds of "control" that are less pernicious, and are usually more specific in their prevention. One example is anti-creature control, such as tapping creatures, destroying creatures, Pacifism effects, etc. But even though these can be devastating to creature-based decks, they only affect creatures, they don't prevent you from playing anything altogether. Even a few cards dedicated to protecting your creatures from such effects can save the day. But lockdown and counterspells are much harder to defend against without employing them yourself, or specifically planning against them with cards like Vexing Shusher.

This may all seem familiar. I made similar complaints when talking about combo decks, about how they reduce fun by reducing options. Does this mean I only like aggro decks? Not at all; just look at some of the decks I've posted in other articles. I have plenty of control and combo decks, and even the occasional lockdown deck. However, as I mentioned in the other article as well, it's often a matter of the environment. If you're playing to win, such as in a high-level tournament, letting your opponents have fun is not even a factor (one reason why I have no desire to get involved in tournament play). But if you're playing with friends, and you insist on using a lockdown deck every time you play, no one is going to play with you. Sure, try it out once to show them how fancy your pants are, but then unless they actively desire tackling it again with a mind to crack it, put it aside as a beautiful but delicate antique. Or just enter a tournament. If you share your winnings with me, I promise not to rant about control anymore...

Decks That Are Cool

2008-08-11T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have been a naughty boy. It's been almost two weeks since my last post, because I got tired of putting links to every single card I mentioned. But now I've figured out a way to do it easily, so I'm back – for now. I'm going to California for a week starting tomorrow. Owned.

For now, then, I'm just going to talk about some decks I've made recently. I spent several hours trying to figure out how to post decklists without having to do the whole thing manually, but I failed. So you'll just get the usual – a description of the deck's general function and important cards. The format I'll use for the deck names will be "Color Type Name," where T2 is Standard, T1 is Extended, and T0 is Legacy. (I know 1.5 and 1 are usually used for Extended and Legacy, but I am too cool for decimals.)

BG T2 Deathling
This deck is fairly slow to get going, but the idea is to attach a Thornbite Staff to a dude with Changeling, then give your Changelings deathtouch with Wren's Run Packmaster, since they'll all be wolves. (Moonglove Changeling doesn't even need the Packmaster, though he has to activate his deathtouch.) Then your dude has, essentially, "2: Destroy target creature." And that should be enough for victory. Gilt-Leaf Palace and Murmuring Bosk are nice because you'll very often be able to play them untapped.

BR T0 Goblin Game
This is a completely ridiculous deck based on the combination of Goblin Game and Wound Reflection. If you can play Goblin Game while you have a Wound Reflection in play, you can often pick a number of objects that will guarantee your opponent's doom. As long as you have one more than half your opponent's life, you can pick a number two below your life total and your opponent will die no matter what number he picks. Example: you have 14 life and your opponent has 20. You hide 12 objects. If your opponent hides 12 or fewer objects, he'll lose at least half his life, and Wound Reflection will kill him. If he hides more than 12 objects, he'll lose that much life…which is more than half his life, and Wound Reflection will kill him. You, on the other hand, will only lose at most 13 life, leaving you with 1. Of course, this deck is weak against almost everything, but Goblin Game is hilarious enough that it totally doesn't matter. Most of my "T0" decks sacrifice effectiveness for hilarity, and I regret nothing. In order to get the massive amounts of mana necessary to play both of these spells, the deck is packed with mana spells, as well as the awesome combo of Cathodion + Burnt Offering. The lifelink guys help you keep your life at least half as high as your opponent's so that you can use the main combo. A barrel of lulz.

GU T0 Pool Party
Another ineffective deck, this one is based around the mana pool. Upwelling is the main force behind the deck, allowing you to build up mana over time. Doubling Cube makes a large mana reserve into a nigh inexhaustible one. Pygmy Hippo can steal your enemy's mana, preventing them from abusing your own Upwelling. There are a bunch of buyback spells to give you control of the board, which lets you get your weak creatures through to slowly wear your opponent down to death. I've played this deck a few times, but it has never even come close to working. I love it.

UR T0 Stroke of Mirror Harvest
Another inane combo deck. This one is named for Stroke of Genius, Mirror Sheen, and Early Harvest. Once you have 6 mana (from at least 3 blue and 2 green sources) with Mirror Sheen in play, play Early Harvest. Copy it with Mirror Sheen, then let the copy resolve. Your lands magically untap! Then copy Early Harvest again, and float the rest of your mana. Repeat until you have infinite mana, then play Stroke of Genius on your opponent. Mind Spring and Dimir Guildmage can help you get Stroke of Genius, and various Elves help you get the required 6 mana to start the combo. Not wonderfully interesting, but I thought it was cool.

GU T1 Proteus Staff
OH MAN. I love this one, even if it is rather clunky. The main combo is Proteus Staff + Squirrel Nest. Make a Squirrel, then staff it. Whatever creature you end up getting (the only ones in the deck are various Elemental Incarnations and Darksteel Colossus), it will be totally awesome. Impromptu Raid is great since it lets you get more dudes out, and when all your guys have 6 or more power and trample/fear/flying, haste is great. And when you have to sacrifice a dude, he just gets shuffled back in. Cream of the Crop can help provide fresh targets for Impromptu Raid. You can Polymorph your Darksteel Colossus to get another dude easily. A few draw/discard spells let you get rid of the usually unplayable dudes in your hand and replace them with useful stuff. Although sometimes there is conflict between Cream of the Crop and the shuffling of dudes into your library, it is usually not a problem, especially as you get more pieces.

GW T0 Saffi
Another goofy combo deck. The main combo has three parts: Saffi Eriksdotter, Altar of Dementia or Blasting Station, and Karmic Guide. Get one of each of these on the board. Then, sacrifice Saffi to the artifact targeting the Guide. Then sacrifice the Guide, who comes back into play, bringing Saffi with him. Repeat until pwning has occurred. There's also another combo recommended by Brendan, consisting of one of the aforementioned artifacts plus Eternal Witness and Aluren. With one Witness in play and one in your hand, sacrifice the one in play to the artifact. Play the other for free, return the dead one to your hand, repeat until pwning has occurred.

R T1 Chargehead
The theme is charge counters, not surprisingly. Not much to say about this…it was originally based around Ion Storm as the main win condition, but Darksteel Reactor and Chimeric Egg can also do things. Most of the rest of the stuff is for producing charge counters, moving them around, or using them to get the main kill cards. It's cool, though.

U T0 Cryptic Rape
The title "Cryptic Rape" is perhaps misleading, because it does nothing of the sort. This deck was based on a cool premise, but is extremely clunky. The idea is to get Cryptic Gateway and two Changelings. Then you can play various awesome dudes for free, because they'll all share creature types with your Changelings. Shapesharer is nice because he can double as a Clone of one of your big dudes. If you get Grozoth, you can immediately tutor a ton of awesome dudes (such as Bringers). I took Intruder Alarm out of this deck despite its power to allow you to dump an entire deck's worth of creatures into play in one turn. I don't remember quite why. I think it was a bad choice.

U T1 Erayo
If you thought Cryptic Rape was bad…you were right. But this one is worse. The goal is to get a flipped Erayo, Soratami Ascendant and an Arcane Laboratory in play. Then, the first and only spell your opponent can play each turn will be countered, effectively preventing him from playing spells altogether (albeit with some exceptions, such as Replicate). One problem with this deck is that you have to be able to play four spells in a turn, but there are a bunch of 0-mana spells for that purpose. Still, it can take a while to set up. Another problem is that you can't play the Laboratory before Erayo, or you'll never be able to flip Erayo. Another is that even when you get them both active, your opponent might still have an army of creatures or a dangerous assortment of artifacts and enchantments. Azorius Aethermage is intended to take care of pesky activated abilities, and Boomerang to remove the threat of creatures, but it's tenuous. Also, the Aethermages are themselves the win condition, so if you lose them, you have no way to actually win, unless your opponent happens to be drawing more cards. A massive pile of suck, but maybe it has potential to turn into something almost palatable.

U T2 Islandwalk
Finally, a deck that can almost be considered "good." And what's more, it's Standard-legal. This deck was inspired by Cold-Eyed Selkie, and evolved into an Islandwalk-fest. It's a blue deck, but it splashes the tiniest bit of white for Sygg, River Guide. Most of the creatures have Islandwalk, and there are a few ways to ensure that it is useful. It is quite lucky (or perhaps sneaky on the part of the designers) that Stonybrook Banneret and Merrow Harbinger both have Islandwalk, because they are extremely useful to any Merfolk deck. With mass unblockability and card draw, this deck actually seems to be pretty decent.

UB T1 Underworld Dreams
This was originally an Underworld Dreams deck, but soon became a Megrim deck as well. With a mere one of each of these in play, Wistful Thinking deals TEN damage, as well as its rather powerful regular effect. The rest is basically just stuff to make your opponent draw and discard, but Mind's Eye is a nice addition, since you can trigger it using your own spells that force opponents to draw. It's a bit slow and fragile, but neat.

UR T0 Dream Halls
I absolutely LOVE this one. Dream Halls is of course the main card, but I am very proud of my discovery that the Eidolons could make this deck amazing. Dream Halls is blue, but there aren't any other spells that require another color; I chose red at first because it is awesome, but then I realized that I could do whatever color or colors I wanted, so I made three more variations of this deck with each of the other colors and blue. Anyway, the idea is to get Dream Halls and ideally two Eidolons in hand. Then you can play another spell for free discarding one Eidolon. When you play another spell for free discarding the second Eidolon, the first one returns to your hand, since pretty much all the spells are multicolored (since that's the whole point of using Eidolons in the first place). With two Eidolons, you can play any of your expensive and powerful spells for free. I chose spells that help you draw more cards as well as doing something awesome, and I threw in Kaervek the Merciless because he is just so awesome. And if you don't have two Eidolons, you can often play a spell with your regular mana (which would just go to waste anyway) and get your one Eidolon back, or hopefully draw one. Unfortunately Dream Halls might be very useful to your opponent, which can be dangerous. But hopefully, it will be more useful to you, and tempting enough to your opponent that he will think twice about Disenchanting it.

WB T1 Teysa
And finally, another one I really like. The main combo is Teysa, Orzhov Scion and Painter's Servant, naming black. Then all your white creatures are black, and any of them that die will give you white (and black) spirits. If you have three or more, you can use Teysa's first ability indefinitely, wiping the board for free. Spectral Procession helps to accomplish this. But that's not all. There is also a Sliver theme, using Hivestone and Necrotic Sliver plus Basal Sliver to make you a pwning machine. With those guys plus Teysa, the Servant, and one spirit, you can destroy ANY permanent for free. Sacrifice the spirit-Sliver using Basal Sliver's ability to get two mana...and a new spirit-Sliver. Repeat until you have, say, 6 mana, then sacrifice your spirit-Sliver using Necrotic Sliver's ability to destroy a pair of permanents. Oh, and Blasting Station can also be used to go infinite. Lots of components, but they work together nicely. Ward Sliver is a great help too.

Well, that was certainly a lot of decks (thirteen! holy crap!) but I hope it makes up for my long silence. I welcome comments, criticisms, advice, or any other form of feedback to help me improve my decks. Please?

Fun vs. Power

2008-07-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

Today, a shorter article! Hurray?

When I make decks, I label them by format and color. As someone with no interest in tournament play (a pure casual player), I don't attach any special meaning or importance to this process, but it's a helpful guideline for approximate power level. Maybe. When I first got Magic Workstation and began making decks, the only experience I had was with my own crappy collection of mostly commons. With the entire history of Magic at my fingertips, I was completely overwhelmed. I didn't know enough about any old cards to make an interesting deck. So I started out making only Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Block Constructed decks.

This worked okay for a while. I made some cool decks, using the mechanics from those sets. I learned the cards better, and got a feel for making decks. I gradually expanded to Standard, and threw in some Extended and Vintage. (Note: by "Extended" I mean "things that the Gatherer lists under Extended," and by "Vintage" I mean "all black-bordered cards ever.") If I made a combo deck, I'd try to keep the format as small as possible. For instance, if all the important combo pieces were in Mirrodin block, I'd try to keep the deck to Extended, even though there may have been some older cards that might have improved it.

But when I was playing some more games against mAc Chaos last night, I used some Vintage decks that include the Alpha dual lands. Whenever I have a deck that requires Vintage cards, I don't shy away from using these, because hey, they're legal in Vintage, aren't they? But he pointed out that they are unbalanced. And I realized my own hypocrisy.

Flash back to an earlier game I played against Brendan. He doesn't care about formats either, but he doesn't even try to restrict himself. All his decks have Alpha dual lands in them. And this is fine with me. But he uses Lightning Bolt. When he played Lightning Bolt, I got angry. Lightning Bolt and Shock are identical except that Lightning Bolt is better. Lightning bolt is JUST PLAIN OVERPOWERED, which is why Shock exists. If you choose Lightning Bolt over Shock, you're making a conscious decision to sacrifice fairness for power, and this is not a feature of casual play. So that's why I was upset.

As for Alpha dual lands, I justified using them because all they do is even out your mana base. It's no fun for anyone if someone can't get the right color of mana, and being able to play your spells isn't something that you should have to fight for. But when mAc made the comment about them, I recalled the Ravnica dual land cycle that is identical to the Alpha dual lands, except that they come into play tapped unless you pay 2 life. So the dual lands are no different from Lightning Bolt in this respect. And I am going to go through all my Vintage decks and take them out.

But this brings up a larger issue. What is the proper relation between fun and power in casual Magic? Is it fair to use Lightning Bolt in a casual deck? Is it fair to forbid it? There's no obvious answer to this question, but I think deckbuilders should at least be conscious of their opponents. My friend Jovan (who taught me Magic in the first place) won't even play against combo decks or control decks, so I have to be very careful when deciding which deck to play against him so that I don't ruin it for him. If mAc's fun is diminished by my using overpowered Alpha cards, then I'll take them out, because I'd rather be able to play all my Vintage decks without feeling like I'm cheating. And when I get upset at Brendan's lockdown decks or decks that make copious use of banned cards, he knows not to play them against me in the future.

Of course, you don't have to fuss over every deck you build to please every single possible opponent. Building ridiculously overpowered decks is fine - just be careful who you play them against.

Combos

2008-07-27T17:35:00.000-07:00

I have mixed feelings about combo decks in Magic. Basically, combo decks reduce the entire game down to a single yes-or-no question: can you get the combo off? If you do, you win. If you don't, you lose. (I know not everyone would define "combo deck" in this way, but this is the definition I'm going to use here.) But the real yes-or-no question is: are combo decks fun or not?

First, the pros. Part of the joy of Magic is finding unique interactions between cards. This often results in combos that are powerful enough to be worth building a deck around. The possibility of winning the game by playing just a few cards in a certain sequence is exciting, and it motivates deckbuilders (especially Johnny types) to look for new and interesting combos. Finding a good combo, and building a deck that will make it work, is certainly fun. They also require creativity and astuteness, so they act as a good mental exercise as well. But actually playing with combo decks can be a different story.

For most Johnnies (and I list myself among them), I would guess that the joy of actually playing combo decks is in showing them to your friends. When the opponent is oblivious, and you're secretly racing against the clock, trying to pretend that everything is perfectly normal as you scramble to assemble your combo, and you try to act calm and casual despite the mad thumping in your chest, and you draw the final piece of your combo and glance at it as disinterestedly as possible even though your heart has just leaped through the roof of your mouth...that's fun. When you have three of your four combo pieces in play, and the fourth in your hand, and your opponent is studying them with furrowed brow, and you're giggling to yourself because you know you're about to win and she has no idea whatsoever because she can't foresee your brilliant and carefully planned combo, and you slam down the final piece and leap up and dance around the table hooting like a maniac...that's fun. When your opponent looks at your combo pieces, each in turn, figuring out what could possibly make you cavort about like a madman, and it finally dawns on her, and she leans back and lets out a low whistle, eyes wide and brow raised, and rakes her fingers through her hair, and you knock over lamps this way and that in your crazed victory dance, shattering ancient Grecian relics willy-nilly, whirling like a cyclone through your living room...that's fun.

So basically, for a Johnny, the fun is in revealing your combo. If you then go to play a rematch, you'll probably be much less interested, if not outright bored. The fun was all in the surprise, and in demonstrating your brilliance. Once you've done it, the game is truly nothing more than a yes-or-no question. There are no secrets to keep, no traps to spring, no magnificent schemes to unveil. They've seen it, and now the cat's out of the bag, and the deck is nothing more than a conversation piece until you find your next victim. And this is the first vice of combo decks.

They're not replayable. Once you spring the combo, most of the fun is gone. The opponent might have more fun in a rematch trying to think of ways to stop your combo, but all you're doing is waiting. And waiting is no fun at all.

I should make a quick note at this point. I know that not all combo decks are all-or-nothing. Many have failsafes, or several different combos, or a number of alternate win conditions. But the true heart of a combo deck is the combo, and that's all I'm really concerned about. If you have three different combos in a deck, it may be fun to play it more than once per opponent, but it's still limiting. And if a deck has a ton of failsafes - enough that it doesn't really need the combo to win - then it's not strictly a combo deck by my definition. So there.

Moving on...the unreplayability of combo decks is one thing, but it's a problem that mostly affects the player of the combo deck. But what about the opponent? There are some decks, like Brendan's Mycosynth Lattice/Shattering Spree deck, which can lock down many casual decks, completely neutralizing them (at least, the ones I build). This type of combo deck is bad for the opponent because it is not an instant win, but as soon as you're locked down, you know there's nothing you can do, and you just have to wait and get killed. When this happens to me, I usually get angry, because waiting to die is no fun for anyone, but if I just scoop whenever I see a lockdown deck, it's no fun for the deckbuilder either, because they don't get to show off their cleverness. So combos can be dangerous - they might be fun to make and think about, but actually playing them could end in disaster.

But not all combo decks aim at neutralizing the opponent and then winning at leisure. Many focus on winning as soon as the final piece of the combo has been revealed: a certain sequence of spells and abilities is set off which leads to the opponent being eliminated. But this too can reduce the opponent's fun. If my opponent wins the game completely out of the blue with some obscure combo, it makes me question why I was even playing in the first place. What's the point in thinking so hard about which creature to play when his combo renders my decision meaningless? Now, this may just be my own immaturity, and this argument could apply to other types of deck as well, but I find it more often with combo decks, and it's at least something to think about.

And finally, combo decks often need ways to ensure the combo works, and often this means holding the opponent at arm's length while you prepare. This frequently takes the form of hand destruction, counters, and other control strategies that can be frustrating to casual players.

So, are combo decks fun? Obviously there's no right or wrong answer to this, since it depends a lot on the context. Combo decks might be effective in tournaments where winning is more important than fun, but in the casual arena, which is my primary area of concern, combo decks can create resentment and irritation - at least, they often have for me. I don't think casual players should avoid combo decks altogether, though. They're very fun the first time around, especially if they're highly narcissistic (as in, they're only interested in themselves - they focus on their own goals and spells, and do little to disrupt the opponent's). But they should generally not be played repeatedly, especially if they exert a great deal of control over other players. At least for myself, being controlled absolutely ruins the game, and I do not wish it on others.

Now that I've talked about combo decks in general, I'll mention some in specific. I myself have made many a combo deck, and played them against friends, but I usually only play them once (or until I actually get to show them the combo - many times they don't work, and I just die before I can activate it). I am more impressed by engine-based decks (which Brendan is quite skilled at - see my previous articles), and I would much rather be able to make effective engines than effective combos. But I do enjoy a good combo, if only for the fun of proving I can design it.

So here I'll mention some combos that I've come up with recently, because I think they're cool. NOTE: If you play Magic with me, and you like surprises, don't read the rest of this post.

Panoptic Mirror + Undying Flames, with support from Paradox Haze, Sigil Tracer, and Mischievous Quanar
This is a somewhat expensive and awkward combo, but a fun and amusing one. Imprint Undying Flames onto the Panoptic Mirror, hopefully while you have some or all of the support spells in play (let's suppose you have one Paradox Haze). Then, at the beginning of your next turn's first upkeep, the Mirror triggers, copying Undying Flames. You perform its effect, and you have one Epic copy of Undying Flames. During your second upkeep, the Mirror triggers again, making a second Epic copy, and your first Epic spell triggers, making a non-Epic copy. You'll get to use the ability three times in one turn, which can often be quite deadly to the opponent, especially since many of the deck's spells are expensive. Then on your next turn, you'll get three Flames during your first upkeep (one Epic one from the Mirror and two non-Epic from the previous Epic copies), and four during your second upkeep. This will keep adding up, generating more and more iterations of the spell each upkeep, until your opponent is roasted to a delicious golden brown. (Even without Paradox Haze, the flames will still accumulate, albeit more slowly.) Finally, Braids, Conjurer Adept can help you accelerate your victory even faster by getting around the Epic restriction.

Spellweaver Helix + Mystic Speculation + Time Stretch/Searing Flesh, with support from Merfolk Looter/Bonded Fetch
This one was inspired by an article I read on the Wizards website a while ago. It suggested imprinting a cheap sorcery and an expensive sorcery onto Spellweaver Helix, which seems fairly obvious now, but using Mystic Speculation (one of my favorite cards) as the cheap sorcery seemed to me the perfect use of it. Mystic Speculation also helps you find the combo pieces quickly, which makes it even more useful. The basic idea, if you haven't already guessed, is to get Mystic Speculation into your graveyard (easy: just play it), and either Time Stretch or Searing Flesh into your graveyard (using Merfolk Looter/Bonded Fetch), and then play the Helix, imprinting them both onto it. Then, once you have another Mystic Speculation (ideally you'll already have a second one before playing the Helix), you either have a repeatable 3-mana 7-damage burn, or infinite turns, either of which will quickly result in your victory. Hilarious.

Hell's Caretaker + Intruder Alarm + Merrow Witsniper/Infectious Host
This one I'm especially proud of because I thought it up All By Myself. Get Intruder Alarm, Hell's Caretaker, and at least one other creature into play, and Merrow Witsniper or Infectious Host in your graveyard. During your next upkeep, use the Caretaker to sacrifice the other creature, returning one of the dead guys to play. This causes Intruder Alarm to untap the Caretaker. Repeat until the opponent is dead or has no library. The fact that you want guys in your graveyard is also useful, since it allows you to chump block with your first few guys.

Jhoira of the Ghitu + Dragonstorm, with support from Jhoira's Timebug, Clockspinning, Paradox Haze, and a bunch of dragons
Usually, you can play Jhoira on turn 3, and suspend two things on turn 4. If you can suspend two Dragonstorms, then you are totally awesome. The goal is to get Dragonstorm to unsuspend at the same time as one or more other spells, so you can stack them in order to build up a storm count. Paradox Haze helps you get things into play faster, and the Timebug and Clockspinning can do so as well, but can also align other spells with Dragonstorm for storm count. It takes a few turns to get going, but is rather consistent, and dragons are sweet.

Kobolds of Kher Keep + Cloudstone Curio + Cinder Pyromancer/Grapeshot
This is a variation of one of my Grinning Ignus decks, but infinite. Play the Curio. Then either get the Pyromancer in play or the Grapeshot in your hand, plus two Kobolds in your hand (one can be in play, but it's more surprising if they're both in your hand). Play a Kobold, play another Kobold and bounce the first Kobold, and repeat as needed. Poof.

Mycosynth Lattice + March of the Machines + Hurkyl's Recall
I am uncertain about this deck because it is the pinnacle of douchemastery. If you play Mycosynth Lattice and March of the Machines, all lands are 0/0 artifact creatures and die immediately. (The deck has some Lumithread Fields to save your own lands.) Then, if your cast Hurkyl's Recall on your opponent, any permanents he has left over will get bounced. Any land he plays will die instantly, so unless he has enough Simian Spirit Guides to finish you off, he's probably not going to be able to do much. I would never want to play against this deck myself, so it's unlikely that I'll play it against my friends, except just to show it off.

So, those are a bunch of combo decks I've made recently. I think they're cool. The End.

Goats

2008-07-25T15:07:00.000-07:00

Today I am going to talk about goats. That is, I am going to talk about three games I played against my friend Brendan's white-blue goat deck. Here I goat!

The first game I'll discuss occurred two nights ago. However, I didn't know he was going to be playing goats, so I picked a Leyline of Singularity deck that I had made. Of course, this almost immediately ruined his entire deck, since the point of his deck is to mass goat tokens with Springjack Shepherd. But we played it out.

I didn't keep careful notes of the game, so I'll talk about the decks. My deck is based on Leyline of Singularity, and things that abuse it. There are a ton of Legendary creatures; since all my creatures are going to be legendary anyway, I might as well get good ones. I tried to keep to the singularity theme by focusing on legend-rule-based removal; no straight-up destroying or burning (unless you count Hero's Demise, and later, the devastating Tsabo Tavoc). My favorite method of removal is Shapesharer plus Unnatural Selection. As long as the enemy has two creatures, I can kill them both with just 4 mana. And if he only has one, it's usually not too dangerous. (Or if it is, I have Spitting Image to take care of it). I also have Copy Enchantment and Sculpting Steel for enchantment/artifact removal, and Hanna, Ship's Navigator allows me to do it repeatedly.

The rest of the deck is mostly just cool legendary creatures and equipment, but there are a few other neat tricks. Tsabo Tavoc (as mentioned above) can destroy any creature for 2 black mana and a tap, and Minamo, School at Water's Edge let's him do it repeatedly, or attack for an unblockable 7 on the same turn, or just stay untapped to block. Another neat trick is Forbidden Orchard, whose drawback is neutralized by Leyline of Singularity, giving me excellent mana control. (And I need it, since the deck has four colors.)

Brendan's deck, as I said, is based on goat tokens made from Springjack Shepherd (and, occasionally, Springjack Pasture). Basically, he has lots of excellent creatures with many white mana symbols such as Kitchen Finks and Knight of Meadowgrain. Then he plays the Shepherd to make lots of goats, and has things like Momentary Blink to do it again and again. His win condition is usually Mirrorweave or Fortify, overrunning his opponent with an army of beefed up goats.

As for the actual game between these two decks, it wasn't really a contest. Leyline utterly prevented him from making more than 1 goat token at a time, and I used Unnatural Selection to make even that one goat harmless, by turning it into a Fungus, Sponge, or whatever else I could come up with during each of his upkeeps. (After a while I ran out of obscure creature types and just picked fake ones like Bus, or Unicorn.) He kept playing Kitchen Finks, and then I'd finally get rid of them and he'd have another one in his hand, which was both hilarious and annoying. It bought him some time, but eventually I just got some big dudes out and smashed through for the win.

Then we played some other games, but they didn't have goats, so I won't deign to tell you about them. But then the goats returned.

This time, I was playing a straightforward green-blue +1/+1 counter deck, inspired by an article I had read mentioning that Lignify could make Vigean Hydropon into a 5/9 Treefolk attacker. He had trouble drawing though, and I had pretty much the perfect hand for my deck, so he didn't stand much of a chance. I also learned more about my deck; I have Mirrorweave in it, the idea being that I could cast it on the Hydropon (or any other 0/0 guy with a counter) for mass removal. But if I were to target Fungal Behemoth instead, I would get the removal PLUS all my guys getting (usually) much bigger. And that would be sweettacular.

The third game I played against the goatswarm was the most epic game of Magic in the history of the universe. It was so epic that I took a screenshot. But you should read about it first.

Things went pretty slowly at first. He played some dudes, I played some dudes. Not much happened...until turn [whatever number turn it was].

Here's what the board looked like: I had four Relentless Rats, just sitting back and biding their time. He had a Kitchen Finks, a Knight of Meadowgrain, and a Springjack Shepherd, plus six goat tokens. On my turn, I drew Diabolic Tutor. Ecstatic, I fetched the Ultimate Secret: Thrumming Stone. I played it. At this point, he revealed that he had a Mirrorweave in hand (which meant that he could Mirrorweave targeting the Rats, and overwhelm me with 14/14 attackers since he had 4 more creatures than me), but he was curious to see what I would do, so he held off. Instead, in preparation for the inevitably epic battle, he played Momentary Blink targeting his Springjack Shepherd, giving him six more goats...and then he played another Momentary Blink, giving him six MORE goats. He had now assembled an eighteen-goat army. Truly terrifying.

On my next turn, I played a Relentless Rats. Revealing the top four cards of my library produced...no Relentless Rats. On my next turn, I drew Relentless Rats (meaning I had been just one card away), and played it, producing...no Relentless Rats. On my NEXT turn, I drew Relentless Rats AGAIN (meaning I had been just one card away AGAIN), and played it. This time, I hit gold.

My Relentless Rats deck contains 150 cards, and 50 of those are Relentless Rats. On that fateful ripple, I got all the rest of my Relentless Rats into play, with eight more ripples on the stack. I had fifty rats, and all of them were 51/51. I passed the turn.

At the end of my turn, Brendan used Springjack Pasture sacrificing enough goats to give him 8 mana. He then cast Mirrorweave, targeting Kitchen Finks. Every goat (and Kithkin and rat) now had two white mana symbols in its mana cost. Then he flashed back Momentary Blink.

The result of this maneuver is indescribable in words. So I present it in visual form.

It was then his turn. He had 66 goats to my 50 rats. He cast Fortify and attacked. GG.

If anyone ever tells you that they have played the most epic game of Magic in the history of the universe, then that person is either me, Brendan, or a liar. And if anyone tells you otherwise, well, they have a right to hold that opinion, but I assure you, their opinion is wrong. Amen.

Chaos Theory

2008-07-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

Well, not really. I just couldn't think of another relevant-but-interesting title.

Anyway, it's time to talk about those games against mAc Chaos that I didn't talk about last time! There were seven of them.

This time, he wanted to play 2-out-of-3s rather than let me switch decks continuously, so he could get a better feel for his own decks and how they play in various matchups. So we did.

The first game, I took one of my favorite decks (green chroma), and he took an obnoxious black aggro deck. He gets two Stromgald Crusaders out quickly, along with two Bad Moons. This was rather troublesome because I didn't have much anti-flying. I played a Phosphorescent Feast, which gained me 14 life, but at the rate he was pounding me, that was only enough to buy me two turns. I even had some huge/awesome dudes, and I even got them into play, but there was nothing I could do to stop his fliers. So I died.

I was sad, because my deck is so awesome, but it has a lot of trouble against evasion and removal. I'll take a moment to describe its basic principle now. Basically, it has four Primalcrux, one of each green Demigod, and one of each green Liege. It also has a bunch of other powerful green guys with as many green mana symbols as possible. (Pretty much every card in the deck is rare. It would probably cost hundreds of dollars to make in real life. But that's the joy of Magic Workstation!) I use Devoted Druid, Bloom Tender, and Mana Reflection to be able to play my costly dudes as quickly as possible. However, none of my guys have flying or reach, so I have to get them out fast enough to pound the enemy to a pulp before he can do the same to me. I do have a lot of tramplers, but if my opponent's deck is too fast, there's not much I can do. I have a tendency to make slow decks that ramp up quickly in power once they get going.

Anyway, we played again, but I have the same problem and die before anything interesting even happens. Freakin' Soul Spike.

Since he had won 2-0, we switched decks. I decided to play a mono-white Equipment deck I had been meaning to try out, and he kept the same obnoxious aggro deck. In the first game, I had a bad opening hand but didn't mulligan, and I hardly even managed to get any guys into play before dying. It wasn't even noteworthy.

But the second game was better. I managed to equip a Loxodon Punisher with Sword of Light and Shadow, with a Serra's Blessing in play. With the life gain and virtual unblockability of this guy, I managed to win.

Then, in the third game, it was back to getting owned. Distress is an annoying card. Especially when he has two of them. Argh.

My Equipment deck needs a lot of work, but the basic components are pretty neat. Auriok Steelshaper allows me to equip things cheaply, and eventually for free, which sure comes in handy when I have Leonin Shikari. Stonehewer Giant lets me summon Equipment cheaply from my library, and Cloud Key lets me play it cheaply from my hand. Basically, the idea is to get these guys out, then equip them with insane Equipment, then own face. I have yet to see this actually come to fruition, though, which suggests that the deck may need some retooling.

Meanwhile, back in the arena of death, mAc and I both switched decks. I picked my Leaf-Crowned Elder deck (which I described previously), and he picked some other black deck whose purpose was not immediately obvious. All he did in the beginning was kill my dudes, but eventually I used up all his removal spells, and got the Elder out. He played Dread, which might have been troublesome, except for my two Timber Protectors. Then my engine just pumped out Treefolk after Treefolk, pummeling him to death. It was pretty sweet.

In the next game, things didn't go quite so smoothly. Persecute is brutally effective against mono-colored decks, and it made me cry. He played Gauntlet of Power, waited until he had 11 land, then Consumed my Spirit for an instant kill. Quite ridiculous. And by "waited until he had 11 land," I mean "killed everything I played until he had 11 land." It is not difficult to see why black is my least favorite color.

I didn't keep as good notes on these games as on the previous games, which is why my descriptions are shorter. They were also not wonderfully interesting games, nor wonderfully interesting decks, which made them less wonderfully interesting to talk about. But just you wait - I have several extremely cool decks to talk about for next time!

Switching Things Up

2008-07-22T12:03:00.000-07:00

Last night I played several more games against mAc Chaos. They were cool. However, my friend Brendan then wanted to play, so I played some games with him as well. Now, Brendan's deckbuilding tendencies are completely different from mAc's. Mac has played in tournaments, cares about formats, tries to hone one deck to perfection, prefers one color (black black black), and repeats a lot of spells in his decks. Brendan doesn't care about competitions, builds a lot of different decks, strives to make his decks unique, loves powerful engines and elaborate combos, and plays all five colors, even though he tends to prefer blue and black. I have played many times with him, and I often found his blue and back control/lockdown decks to be extremely annoying, so I asked him to make some less restrictive decks. So he did. And the result blew my mind.

So instead of continuing the mAc Chaos saga, I'll put that on hold and talk about my games with Brendan. The first game, I picked my Wild Pair/Grinning Ignus deck, and he used a vicious red aggro deck. The game was hardly even remarkable; I had asked him to make "aggro decks," and he did, killing me before I could even deal him damage, let along get out Wild Pair. My deck was just too slow.

But red aggro isn't that special. The next deck, however, was an ingenious masterpiece. Now maybe it just seemed that way since I have so little experience, but the engines Brendan manages to think up never fail to impress me. Anyway, he played a mono-green deck and I chose my mono-white Stuffy Doll deck.

I won't give a play-by-play of the game, since he never got his complete engine out (I managed to activate my combo and kill him before he could get it rolling), but I must certainly describe his deck. I didn't even see all of it, so I don't know how many other outlets there were for his particular engine, but it seemed to be a four-part system, with the four parts arranged in a square. What I mean is, the first part is related to the second and fourth parts, but not to the third part. So when I saw the first and third parts, I couldn't immediately see the connection. The first part was Helix Pinnacle. The third part was Thallids that produce lots of Saprolings. At first it seemed liked a Saproling deck with Helix Pinnacle as a backup card.

Then he played Doubling Season. This meant that Helix Pinnacle doubled in speed, and Saprolings quadrupled. (Normally, a single Sporoloth Ancient would get one spore counter per turn, allowing him to create a Saproling every other turn: 0.5 per turn. With Doubling Season, he gets two spore counters per turn, but when he removes them, Doubling Season also puts two Saprolings into play, giving him 2 per turn: four times as many.) This was totally awesome, but I still hadn't seen the key fourth piece that tied it all together.

I had won before he could get the final piece out, but he showed me what it was: Life and Limb. Then it all came together. His massive quantity of Saprolings, made possibly by Doubling Season, would all become Forests, allowing him to pump Helix Pinnacle like crazy, with Doubling Season speeding it up even more quickly. If he had gotten Life and Limb into play, with his current array of Thallids, he would have been able to complete his Helix Pinnacle in a short as two or three turns. Amazing.

This is exactly what I long to be able to do. Brendan's intimate knowledge of the cards allows him to see connections that I cannot; if I had been trying to make a Helix Pinnacle deck, I would have thought of Doubling Season, but I had never even heard of Life and Limb. The way he was able to make all the parts work together was just completely phenomenal. I was ashamed to have won with my retarded combo.

Anyway, we played again, and I switched to yet another combo deck that I had wanted to try out. He started out with a bunch of Thallids, and I played an Academy Rector. However, my deck had been shoddily constructed so that I myself had no way of getting rid of the Rector. My deck relies on getting rid of the Rector, so if my opponent doesn't do it, I literally can't win. Anyway, I explained this to him, basically forfeiting since he had a Utopia Mycon that could block my Rector forever, but he killed the Rector, probably just to see what would happen. I fetched Barren Glory, then cast Armageddon. I would have won, technically, but it didn't really count since I sort of tricked him into killing the Rector. Anyway, you can see why I needed the Rector to die: if he never did, Barren Glory would be useless, even if I played it another way. So if I decide to modify that deck at all, I'll either get rid of the Rector or add some way to kill it myself (probably just burns). I should probably just stop making retarded combo decks.

Anyway, he then switched to his third and final deck of the night, an extremely confusing black-green deck that made very little sense to me until my third game against it. I finally switched to a deck that wasn't based on inane combos: my Grinning Ignus/Cinder Pyromancer deck (the one with Flamekin Harbinger/Nova Chaser). I got a great opening hand: a Harbinger, two Smokebraiders, an Ignus, and three Mountains. I started out by fetching Nova Chaser to exploit it as much as possible, but he began dropping Imperious Perfects like there was no tomorrow, making me think his deck was a black-green Elf deck (which it was not). Anyway, he quickly got enough Perfects and Elf Warrior tokens to make my Nova Chaser useless, so I switched to the Pyromancer strategy. However, by that time it was too late. He already had a ton of Elves, and with three Perfects, they were all 4/4. I could have reduced him to 1 life, but he would have overrun my on the next turn. So I scooped.

Still thinking his deck was Elves, I switched to one of my new favorite decks: a mono-green Treefolk deck using Leaf-Crowned Elder and Cream of the Crop to spit out Treefolk en masse. Leaf-Crowned Elder is an amazing card as it is, but when I have Cream of the Crop, I can almost guarantee that Leaf-Crowned Elder will give me a free Treefolk each turn. And since Treefolk are so expensive and powerful, I'm often able to dump a dozen mana worth of Treefolk into play for free, EACH TURN. So it's really awesome.

In the previous game, Brendan had played a Nether Traitor, which was extremely confusing since I thought he was playing black-green Elves. This game, he played a Carrion Feeder, and I saw that the Traitor would be a good way to pump it up. But I still didn't see how it connected to the Elves. In any case, by the time he could do anything useful, I already had two Cream of the Crop and two Leaf-Crowned Elders, and my massive army of Treefolk just completely destroyed him.

Then we played one more game, and I switched to white-green-blue Slivers. I felt kind of bad playing Slivers, since Slivers are usually very fast and his deck seemed rather slow. But my guilt quickly dissipated as I saw what his deck was truly capable of. When he played Grave Pact, I saw that the Carrion Feeder/Nether Traitor combo had a far more sinister purpose. When he played the second Grave Pact, I just crapped myself. I had been hitting him hard with Slivers early on, and even had 8 poison counters on him, but with two Grave Pacts and a Spawning Pit, he just kept killing off my Slivers. To make matters worse, I kept drawing five-mana Slivers while stuck at four mana. Anyways, he then played The Bomb: Protean Hulk. Apparently that was the real reason for having green in the deck at all. He could sacrifice the Hulk to bring in Carrion Feeder and Nether Traitor (among others), and completely ruin any creature-based deck (such as my Slivers which had nothing BUT creatures). I died, but he showed me his other green trump card, which was Biorhythm. Hilarious. It would have been totally unnecessary against an all-creature deck such as Slivers, but quite useful against other types of decks. It turns out the Elves were just there as a cheap source of mass creatures to sacrifice, even though he was able to use them as his main force in the first game. His deck seemed a little clunky, but it was still a neat engine, albeit a frustrating one.

So that's what I did from 2 AM to 4 AM last night. I'll hold off on discussing my games against mAc Chaos for now, ~~so I can build up a buffer in case I run out of material~~ because the article would be too long. I hope, as I continue building decks, that I will one day be able to create engines like Brendan's Saprolings, and I've seen him play many other decks with equally terrifying engines. As I build more decks, play more games, and learn more cards, I'm gradually expanding my knowledge, and eventually, perhaps, I too will be an awesome deckbuilder. But until then, you'll have to put up with awkward combos and goofy themes.

The Chaos Continues

2008-07-21T12:44:00.000-07:00

Last night I played 6 more games against mAc Chaos, trying out a bunch of new decks. This time, I kept a brief journal of the games so that I would be able to recall them more accurately when writing this article. Hurray!

The first game, I tried out my Wild Pair/Grinning Ignus deck (see how much I like Grinning Ignus?) against his black Zombie deck. His deck seemed to be built around dangerous and evasive Zombies such as Stromgald Crusader and Nantuko Husk. My deck is based on getting out Wild Pair as soon as possible, then playing any creature (all of which have total power and toughness of four) to summon an Ignus. This allows me to summon tons of creatures for 1 mana each, popping the Ignus and replaying to trigger Wild Pair over and over. However, Wild Pair is 6 mana, so it takes a while to get rolling. I use Teferi's Puzzle Box to cycle through cards as fast as possible to get Wild Pair. Anyway, the game.

As expected, I got off to a slow start as he pummeled me with Stromgald Crusaders. Luckily for me, he was stuck at 3 mana, which gave me time to drop enough Murderous Redcaps to finish off his pesky fliers. Still with no Wild Pair or Puzzle Box in sight, I managed to win by playing two Goretusk Firebeasts from my hand. Even though I managed to win without even using the signature combo, it was somewhat of a hollow victory since he was so helplessly mana screwed the whole game.

So we had a rematch. This time my opening hand had just 1 land in it, so I mulliganed to a hand with 5 land and Jeska, Warrior Adept. I decided to keep it since my dudes are expensive anyway, and Jeska would be effective at picking off Stromgald Crusaders. However, I drew nothing but land the first few turns, giving him time to hurl dudes at my face. By the time I got a Teferi's Puzzle Box out, I was down to 11. The Box brought me a Wild Pair shortly after, and my deck exploded. I won with 2 life left, one Soul Spike away from doom. Quite a close game.

Then we switched decks. Actually, I'm not even sure if he switched, because this deck also had Nantuko Husk and Soul Spike. But since many of his decks have a lot of the same cards, it could have been the same one. I may never know!

I picked a deck based on Juniper Order Ranger and cards with persist (particularly resilient against black removal). I had heard about the combination from somewhere else, probably the Magic website, and decided to try it out. To support the Ranger, I have Cream of the Crop (useful with persist guys) and Llanowar Reborn (to protect the persist guys until I get a Ranger).

I got a Ranger quickly, but he immediately Soul Spiked it. Not that I was expecting much else, since the Ranger doesn't have persist himself and is easily removed. Meanwhile, Cream of the Crop is helpful for getting what I want, while he hits me with shadowy dudes. I eventually get him to sacrifice them to Nantuko Husk, and with Heartmender (a less effective but more resilient Ranger) and Scuzzback Marauders, I seal the deal. One particularly amusing moment was when he blocked my attacking Heartmender with his Nantuko Husk, intending to kill it while it had a counter on it, but when my Heartmender came back, I grafted onto it with Llanowar Reborn, eliciting a shriek of frustration from poor Mac. Juked.

So we switched decks again. He decided to try a black control deck, and I picked a blue-red control deck that I had seen a friend often dominate with. However, I didn't remember exactly what was in the blue-red deck, or the proportions of cards, so I just guessed, erring on the side of too many counters.

The game itself was absolutely hilarious. Neither of us played any spells for a while, except for my Izzet Signets and Compulsive Research (and other various mana artifacts and blue draw spells). Occasionally he would try to play a spell, and I'd Remand or Mana Leak it. But it was a long time before I got any creatures, so all I could do was wait. When I had a bunch of artifacts out, I cast Wildfire with no creatures in play, hoping to slow him down in case he had some huge spells or something. But as he built his land count back up, I still didn't draw many creatures. I knew my friend's version of my deck never had trouble finding creatures, so I was baffled. Anyway, I kept playing artifacts and destroying lands en masse until I drew Akroma, Angel of Fury. At this point I was sick of not doing anything useful, so I played her face down, and she died instantly.

This went on for some time until FINALLY I drew Aeon Chronicler and Triskelavus. With these two guys, I was able to start dealing some actual damage, but they still eventually died. After a while, he just gave up. Since I had kept destroying his lands, he never had enough mana to play anything dangerous (he discarded several Dreads - or maybe the same one several times - due to card overflow), so he figured it was hopeless. At that point he was at 11 and the only damage source I had was two Triskelavus tokens. I pointed out that I had 14 cards in my library, and he may have been able to win if he had just waited it out, but the agony of stagnation had apparently overwhelmed him. Moral of the story: don't play control vs. control.

I remembered right at the end of the game that I had in fact been several creatures short. I had forgotten about Teferi and the two Bogardan Hellkites that were supposed to be in my deck, which would have certainly been useful. Still, I don't know what the exact proportion of cards should be, but at least now I think I know all of the cards that were in it.

Since his black had lost him four games in a row, mAc decided to switch back to Astral Slide (see yesterday's article). I decided to try out my mono-white Stuffy Doll deck, based on enchanting Stuffy Doll with Guilty Conscience, then tapping him for an instant win. To keep the enemy at bay until I could get the combo out, I stuffed the deck with dudes en-Kor and things that provide protection, such as Mother of Runes. The idea was just to protect the Stuffy Doll, and to use the en-Kor to redirect damage to it as well, but the deck turned out to have some even more interesting uses that I discovered accidentally. I love when that happens.

Anyway, the game. I was somewhat mana screwed, but since all my creatures were 1 or 2 mana, I could still play a ton of them. Mac didn't draw his Lightning Rifts or Astral Slides immediately, but he got an Exalted Angel out much too early for comfort. The Angel pounded away and I pounded back with a ton of dudes, but his lifelink was too powerful. Eventually he DID get the enchantments out, and that's where I discovered some fun things.

I had three en-kor dudes, two Mother of Runes, and one Benevolent Bodyguard, all of them tapped from having attacked. He cycled Slice and Dice, hoping to kill off most of my guys in one shot. What I did then was totally awesome. I sacrificed the Bodyguard to give one Mother of Runes protection from red. Then I had all the en-kor dudes redirect their 1 damage to her. I only lost one Mother and the Bodyguard, rather than almost all my dudes. The revelation here is that the Mother and the en-Kor dudes, which I had intended for completely separate purposes, work together very well. If I had had a Mother untapped, I wouldn't even have had to use the Bodyguard. As long as I can give one creature protection, I can redirect all damage from en-Kor dudes to that creature and they'll all live. This of course works well against Astral Slide, which has lots of burns. However, he still had the flying lifelinking Angel and there was nothing preventing him from Lightning Rifting ME, so I died. But the discovery was an awesome one.

Since I hadn't drawn Stuffy Doll at all that game, I threw in some Teferi's Puzzle Boxes before the next game, since they worked so well in the Wild Pair deck. This time I managed to get Stuffy Doll out reasonably early...but I couldn't do anything with it. I couldn't stop his Exalted Angel, and he just threw Lightning Rift at my head. So I died. And then I went to bed.

Later, I tweaked the deck a lot to include Pariah, as well as Leonin Abunas and Privileged Position, just to protect the Doll from outside interference. He may be indestructible, but Astral Slide proved that he is quite vulnerable to a variety of effects. Hopefully, just making him completely safe from outside interference should be enough to get the job done. I haven't tested the new version yet, though.

So, that's what happened. I've made even more decks since then, and I hope to try them out when I get the chance. And of course, I'll let you know how they perform!

Seven Games of Chaos

2008-07-20T14:42:00.001-07:00

Last night, I played some Magic (over Magic Workstation) with my internet friend mAc Chaos. He had only learned MWS recently, and so he only had a few decks, but we played a total of seven games. Allow me to tell you about them!

For the first game, I chose an all-Eventide white-black hybrid deck that I had created by simply throwing a bunch of white-black hybrid cards together and calling it a deck. He played a version of Astral Slide, a famous deck which I had heard of but never seen.

I started out with Nip Gwyllion, immediately enchanting it with Edge of the Divinity. Since his deck was a little slower, I got quite a bit of damage through before he managed to get rid of it. However, by that time I had the advantage of momentum, and my Nightsky Mimics and Voracious Hatchlings gobbled him up.

In the next game, I wasn't so lucky. Everything I played got burned away before it could deal significant damage, and even though my Gwyllion Hedge-Mages seemed to disturb him, Astral Slide took care of the tokens with ease, and Lightning Rift finished off everything else. So I died.

Then for the next game, I switched to a Lorwyn/Shadowmoor all-Enchantment deck I had, hoping that my Runed Halos and Declarations of Naught would permanently protect me from his Lightning Rifts and Exalted Angels. However, since all he had done with most of his cycling cards in the previous games was cycle them, I hadn't really paid attention to what they actually DID. So when he Wiped me Clean, there wasn't much I could do. And with Astral Slide, I couldn't even make Hoofprints of the Stag tokens without them dying instantly. So I died.

Then after a break, we switched decks. He played black Clerics, and I played a white Cleric combo deck based on Nomads en-Kor, Daru Spiritualist, and Worthy Cause (with plenty of backups), plus Test of Endurance to seal the deal. This is a cheap (in the sense of low mana cost, but also, arguably, in the sense of lame) combo I learned from a friend. Here's how it works: the Nomads can use their redirection ability targeting the Spiritualist. Even though the ability won't necessarily do anything, the Spiritualist's ability still triggers, and he gains +0/+2. Since the Nomads' ability costs 0, I can continue doing this until the Spiritualist's toughness is arbitrarily high. Then I use Worthy Cause to sacrifice the Spiritualist, gaining however much life I feel like. Then, of course, if I can play Test of Endurance and keep it there for a turn, I just win. And if not, then hopefully the fact that my deck is 90 cards will keep me alive long enough to deck the opponent, since most of my creatures are not especially strong.

Anyway, I started off with a couple of Children of Korlis to protect me until I could get the combo out. Mac had various awesome Clerics like Withered Wretch, Cabal Archon, and Dark Supplicant. However, I eventually got the combo off, and he scooped.

I didn't want to play that deck again since it's not really that fun, and it's much less exciting when the opponent knows exactly what you're up to. So I switched to an experimental blue-red-black deck I had recently made that was based on Underworld Dreams plus Wheel of Fortune-type effects. However, I never drew Underworld Dreams, so I just sat there while he broke my face. I don't plan on playing that deck much in the future.

Then I switched once more, to a mono-red Elemental deck that can have a very fast start and has some quite potent synergies. As I played, I even discovered an awesome two-card combo (sort of): Flamekin Harbinger and Nova Chaser. Just champion the Harbinger with the Chaser, then charge, and when he dies, the Harbinger comes back into play, allowing you to summon up another Chaser. I only had 2 Nova Chasers in my deck at the time, so I couldn't make quite as good use of this combo as I had wanted to, but I later put two more Chasers in for the future. The deck also has Incandescent Soulstoke, Rite of Flame, and Smokebraider to get it going very quickly. But the real point of the deck was to combine one of my all-time favorite cards, Grinning Ignus, with guys like Cinder Pyromancer (conveniently also an Elemental) and Balefire Liege. With either of these in play, you can pop the Ignus repeatedly to hurl damage at your opponent's head without even having to attack. In the first game, though, Nova Chaser did most of the work, with Cinder Pyromancer just cleaning up.

The next game (a rematch) didn't go quite so well in my favor, but I managed to abuse my deck's synergies as ruthlessly as possible. Even his dreaded Scion of Darkness died before it could do any real damage. This game lasted a while with a lot of trading back and forth, and we both got down to 1 life, but I managed to draw more dudes and finish him off.

So that's my report. I really enjoy playing a wide variety of decks, and I got to play 5 different decks that night, so it was quite fun. It was also useful to learn what worked and what didn't in various decks; the Underworld Dreams deck turned out to be pretty much useless (since the card advantage it gives the opponent often vastly offsets the damage they're dealt), and I discovered new synergies in other decks that I hadn't noticed before (the Nova Chaser/Flamekin Harbinger one in particular). I won't bother with posting decklists, since I described the basic function and important cards of each deck. (Also, I don't have Mac's decklists, and we both modified our decks afterward, so any decklists I posted wouldn't even be complete or accurate.) I'm excited to play more, and I've already thrown together some new decks. I'll also try to make some more hilarious decks; my Cleric combo and all-Enchantment decks were intended to be hilarious, but one was just rather straightforward and the other got completely destroyed. But I have plenty more up my sleeve; and for that reason, I'm off to the tailor to get these rips in my sleeve mended.

Knowledge

2008-07-19T14:27:00.001-07:00

It's been almost a week since my last post. Before that, I was posting an article a day quite consistently. What's the deal? Where are the posts about Eventide's White-Black and Black-Green cards?

Well, I realized that I have nothing to say. All I can do in these Eventide posts is look at the cards and say "oh they're cool." I don't know anything about Standard. I don't know how well they'll do, and I don't immediately see interesting combos. I really just don't know.

Now, the Lorwyn articles were a little better. I did know something, because I backed it up with hard data. I made a few errors, sure, and I didn't know what the ultimate significance of my study was (again, a product of my lack of knowledge about the game), but I had information I wanted to share, and I succeeded. Those were good.

But this Eventide prediction stuff just isn't for me. I enjoy talking about cards, and even thinking about how they might interact, but you won't get much value out of it. Just the ramblings of a newbie. This thought occurred to me most profoundly when I was reading articles on MtG's very own website, some of which were, indeed, about Eventide cards and the impact of Eventide on Standard, etc. But when I mentally compared my own articles to theirs, I wasn't saying anything new. I was just saying that they were cool, whereas the professional writers of articles for Wizards' website said that they were cool AND were able to explain why.

Now, I want this blog to be about Magic. But I also want it to be about me. I want the articles to be about how I perceive the game, and about the aspects of it that I like, but there are limits to what this should mean. It's true that the Eventide articles expressed my own opinions, and for that reason, at least, they have some value. But my opinion was mixed with information, information which I was quite unqualified to analyze and interpret. So, although I would have continued the Eventide articles for the sake of expressing my own interests and talking about which cards I thought were cool, I'm not going to. I don't want my articles to be the musings of an amateur, passionate though I may be.

So that's why I haven't written anything for a while. When I thought, "hm, I should write a blog post," it was mixed with other thoughts, too: "but I don't really know what I'm talking about, which is unfair to my readers, few though they may be;" and "I don't really care that much about black-green, I'd just be half-heartedly finishing a cycle for the sake of closure." And those aren't good thoughts. So I'm not going to write those posts.

So now the question is: what next? Do I crank out more statistics? Do I talk only about cards I know? Do I just repeat the words of others? Or do I stop altogether?

Nope. If I have any more inspirations like the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor color/creature type study, I'll certainly pursue them, but I'm not going to go chasing after statistics about things I don't really care about. And I'm not going to stop altogether either. I've come this far; I'll think of something.

And I have! One thing I CAN write about with confidence and accuracy is my own experiences. As fun as it might be to spout predictions and evaluations, I have no experience with them, rendering them ultimately meaningless. But if I talk about things I have experienced, I can be sure to stay true to my purpose. So I'll talk about decks I've made (be they physical or online), and the decks I've played them against. And I can talk about the cards in them, and how they work in that deck, and if they don't, why not. I can talk about cool ideas for decks, or ones I've seen that I admired.

Now, this pushes the blog in another direction: decks. Before, I was talking about sets and cards; there is nary a mention of decks in my previous posts. So this will be a change. But even if I am terrible at deckbuilding, and my opponent is too, and we are both playing casually, I can still learn things about cards, and about deckbuilding, and I can pass on this knowledge. It may not be crucial knowledge, and it won't help aspiring Pro Tour players, but it will be fulfilling to me, and hopefully useful to casual players, new players, or just players who are looking for something new. So, for the next few articles, at least, I will probably be talking about decks. And that's all I have to say.

Eventide: Blue-Red

2008-07-13T20:22:00.001-07:00

Finally back to Eventide! Today I'll be talking about Eventide's blue-red cards. Blue-red is a difficult color pair to place, because they don't really have much holding them together. In Guildpact, of course, they found unity in the Izzet guild and Replicate, but in Eventide they're just a bunch of weird monsters. However, each Eventide color pair does have one or two clans or creature types that shows up more than once. For blue-red, these are the Noggles - strange, donkey-faced gremlins that are basically pretty silly. Still, blue and red overlap in so few places that their combination ends up being very weird indeed.

Despite being odd, blue-red has plenty of good cards. Their Avatar (Dominus of Fealty) is a 4/4 flying that steals things. That is, "at the beginning of your upkeep, you may gain control of target permanent until end of turn. If you do, untap it and it gains haste until end of turn." Not bad. This guy can steal not only creatures, but ANY permanent. If you have some sort of sacrificing outlet (Greater Gargadon being a popular one in Standard), you can basically just destroy one of anything each turn, for free. Of course, you can also use what you steal, either to smash the enemy's face in with his own dudes, or to snag a particularly useful enchantment (like Mana Reflection or Thought Reflection).

What's more, his Liege (Mindwrack Liege) has good synergy with him. The blue-red liege is actually more expensive than the Avatar, costing 6 mana. However, his ability is quite good, and combines well with the Dominus. For 4 blue/red mana, he allows you to put a red or blue creature into play. This means you can play the Dominus (or other Mindwrack Lieges) more cheaply, AND with flash. Pop in a Dominus at the end of an opponent's turn, and you get to use him immediately. There are also plenty of other red and/or blue creatures in Eventide and Shadowmoor that cost more than 4 mana.

The blue-red aura (Clout of the Dominus) is pretty sweet. It gives haste to red and shroud to blue, all for 1 mana. On creatures like blue-red's Hatchling (Shrewd Hatchling), this can be a deadly combination, giving you what amounts to a 6/6 with haste and shroud for 5 mana, with the potential to become an 8/8 unblockable with shroud. Not an easy guy for your opponents to deal with.

And speaking of unblockable, blue-red has several other (mostly) unblockable creatures as well. The blue-red Mimic (Riverfall Mimic) becomes a 3/3 unblockable whenever you play a blue-red spell, and Noggle Bandit can only be blocked by defenders (of which there are only a few in Eventide).

There is also a fair amount of flying in blue-red. The 1/1 Stream Hopper is a great way to get damage through early (and even more so with Clout of the Dominus), and Call the Skybreaker is a great way to get damage through late. The Dominus also has flying.

Blue-red has a bunch of other cards that are quite interesting, some of which are throwbacks to old Izzet cards. Unnerving Assault is like Schismotivate, but spread across the whole team, and Nucklavee hearkens back to Izzet Chronarch. Others incorporate some of the few effects that blue and red share (as Mark Rosewater mentions in a recent article), such as swapping power and toughness (Crag Puca, Inside Out) or copying spells (Mirror Sheen). Noggle Bridgebreaker makes you bounce your own land, but this could even be useful with Retrace.

But one of the coolest blue-red cards in Eventide is Crackleburr. This stretchy lightning-fox is the only card with both a tap and an untap ability. If you have any two other blue-red creatures, they can hook up with Crackleburr, do the Wave, and start seriously messing with the enemy's creature line, as long as you have the mana. Just four mana is enough to deal 3 damage to each of two creatures, and bounce two more. I urge anyone playing Crackleburr to bring some friends along so that they can do the Wave with you whenever you use both of his abilities in a row. Not only will your opponent's creatures go flying, but he will be intimidated by your strange ritual. Maybe do the Electric Slide too.

There are, of course, a few blue-red cards that I didn't mention, but they're not especially cool. (I don't like the Hedge-Mages, for instance. I just don't like them.) But I'll show them to you anyway: Noggle Hedge-Mage, Noggle Ransacker, and Talonrend (who is technically blue but has a blue-red ability). Discarding cards at random? No thanks. Talonrend is actually pretty cool, but rather expensive.

Anyway, that's it for blue-red. Although they don't really have much unity, they do seem to enjoy being unblockable, and switching power and toughness, and they have a stretchy lightning-fox, which has gotta be worth a lot. Right? ...Right...?

Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Block and Color: Merfolk, Goblins, and Kithkin

2008-07-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

And finally, I get to talk about the Little People: Merfolk, Goblins, and Kithkin. (Well, Merfolk might not be all that small, but I tend to think of them as small. They certainly don't have many 5/5s, at least.) These are the tribes that have changed the most over the course of Lorwyn and Shadowmoor. Each race gained a previously untouched (or very, very lightly touched) color in Lorwyn, then a second color in Shadowmoor, and a third in Eventide. Basically.

First, the Merfolk. Before Lorwyn, there were 54 blue Merfolk, plus four multicolored Merfolk from Invasion block that were blue/red, blue/green, blue/black, and blue/white. So every Merfolk printed before Lorwyn was blue, though a few brushed other colors very slightly. In Lorwyn block, there are 23 blue Merfolk, 6 white Merfolk, and the white/blue Sygg. Six isn't a very big number, but as I've said over and over again in these articles, it's still something new. So, Merfolk begin splashing white in Lorwyn.

In Shadowmoor (the set, not the block), there are 6 blue, 1 black, 7 blue-black, and 1 white-blue Merfolk. That's eight new Merfolk that can be played in mono-black decks. Again, a change. Then in Eventide, there are 5 blue, 1 black, and 3 green-blue Merfolk (the Selkies). Again, 3 isn't a big number, but it's the first time that the possibility of playing Merfolk in a mono-green deck (changelings aside) has been possible. So Merfolk have progressed from mono-blue to splashing white to splashing black to splashing green. Four color natures, as I mentioned previously.

Goblins follow much the same pattern (though of course with different colors). Before Lorwyn, there were 156 red Goblins, 2 black Goblins, an artifact Goblin, and 7 multicolor Goblins that were red plus one other color. They were decidedly red.

In Lorwyn, there are 14 red Goblins, 24 black Goblins, and a black/red Goblin Legend. TWENTY-FOUR BLACK GOBLINS. Not only is that a massive increased in Magic history's amount of black Goblins, but there are more black than red in Lorwyn! This situation can only be described as crazy-wack. Goblins had hardly even seen black before, and now they're drenched in it, like a Vermont farmboy falling into a puddle of oil. Okay, that may not be the most accurate or useful analogy, but it gets the point across.

Then in Shadowmoor, there are 6 red Goblins, 1 green Goblin, 1 black-red Goblin, and 10 red-green Goblins. That's 11 green Goblins - Spiderman's worst nightmare. And Peter Parker does in fact play Magic (scroll down to Monday, May 13). First black, now green - it's like some sort of crazy man has taken over Magic design! Oh wait, that's Mark Rosewater.

Now in Eventide, there are 2 red, 1 green, 2 red-white, and 1 blue-red Goblin. Ravnica had Boros Recruit (a hybrid red-white Goblin), the first Goblin playable in a mono-white deck (besides the artifact one), but now there are two more. PLUS, the first Goblin playable in a mono-blue deck. And to make matters worse, the green Goblin in Eventide has a green-blue activated ability. This is madness!

Madness? THIS IS EVENTIDE! Now I don't know how much of the decision to let Goblins run rampant down Rainbow Road was directly in the control of Mark Rosewater, but I don't doubt that he was heavily involved. He loves doing that stuff. He's like the Joker, teaming up with the Green Goblin, and...all right, my metaphors and analogies are getting a little out of hand. But anyway, Goblins have shifted from almost entirely red to heavily splashing black to modestly splashing green to splashing God-knows-what. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if Shards of Alara had orange/purple Goblins.

To tone down the drama a bit, let's take a look at the Kithkin. Their splashing is a bit less violent (their feet are smaller, you see), but it can still be felt by nearby color-frogs and color-fish. If this doesn't make sense, then that's good - you're still sane.

Before Lorwyn, there were hardly any Kithkin at all. There were only five, all of which were mono-white. In Lorwyn, there are 28 Kithkin, plus two green and a green/white Legend. It would be a stretch to say that Lorwyn has changed the face of the deeply entrenched Kithkin mythos, since there isn't a deeply entrenched Kithkin mythos. So although technically the Kithkin have gone from mono-white to white splashing green, their nature as mono-white was founded on a mere five cards, only one of which was even printed before Time Spiral.

In Shadowmoor, there are 8 white, 2 blue, and 7 white-blue Kithkin. Now this is slightly more surprising or significant or whatever you want to call it, because "previous Magic history" now includes Lorwyn, which DOES have a lot of Kithkin, solidly founding them as a white tribe splashing the tiniest bit of green. With nine new blue Kithkin, Shadowmoor is clearly changing the established norm, even if that norm had only been established recently.

Then in Eventide, we get 5 more white Kithkin and one solitary red-white guy: the first red Kithkin. However, there are two other red-white spells in Eventide which, while not Kithkin spells, depict Kithkin in their art. So it's safe to say that Kithkin have become just a tad angrier in Eventide, and are splashing into red, although more lightly even than Lorwyn's green.

So the Kithkin, with their tiny feet and flattened features, have progressed from mono-white to splashing a little green to splashing a lot of blue to splashing a little red. As a relatively young tribe (aside from old granddaddy Amrou Kithkin), and a rather small one (card-wise, at least), the Kithkin don't have much of a precedent to defy. But they still change over the course of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block, enough so that I included them in the same article as Merfolk and Goblins.

Finally, I have reached the end of this increasingly tedious analysis of color and creature type in Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block. Once again, I will remind you that I don't know what the significance of my "study" really is. It might mean that Mark Rosewater is off his rocker, or that Magic is opening up its design space, or just that Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block is weird. Or it could be meaningless and trite. (Again, I invite comments.) But I wanted to see what the patterns were, and I at least had fun relating them and trying to see how they fit together.

But now I can get back to talking about things that might be interesting: Eventide! I recently got Magic Workstation, and have since fiddled around with making Eventide sealed decks (from 5 Eventide boosters) and playing them against a (much more experienced) friend. So far, I'm liking what I'm seeing, and I hope to experiment more in the coming days. Eventide has been added to the Gatherer, and I expect the full Visual Spoiler will be up on Monday, which is very convenient, as well as totally awesome. So hopefully, in my next few articles about Eventide, I will be better informed. Already I'm learning new things, such as the power of Retrace (as my friend beat me down with Oona's Grace and Monstrify after I cut them both from my own deck like an idiot), so I look forward to being able to write articles where I almost - just maybe - might have some idea of what the hell I am talking about.

Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Block and Color: Elves and Giants

2008-07-11T13:23:00.001-07:00

Last time, I talked about Treefolk and Faeries, races which exhibit two color natures each: a pre-Lorwyn one, and a Lorwyn-Shadowmoor one. To explain, I'll use an example: Treefolk. The color nature of Treefolk before Lorwyn was green. Yes, there was one green/black one, but Treefolk were predominantly green. As of Eventide, the color nature of Treefolk is green splashing white and black. The splashing of white and black came about with Lorwyn block, and remained fairly consistent throughout Lorwyn and Shadowmoor. Thus, they had two color natures.

Today I'll be talking about two races which exhibit three color natures: Elves and Giants. The division here is pre-Lorwyn/Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. (Later I'll be talking about Merfolk, Goblins, and Kithkin, which each have four natures.) Taking a look at the numbers (once again), we find that prior to Lorwyn, there were 130 mono-green elves, and 21 elves that were not mono-green. Of those, 5 were non-green. Elves have made their way into all five colors, with (by my previous system) 7.5 white, 4 black, 4.5 blue, 2 red, and 1 artifact. (There have never been mono-blue or mono-red elves.) With such small numbers, calling Elves "diverse" would be much like calling a private college "diverse": hilarious.

In Lorwyn, Elves are green and black. The black doesn't represent anything really sinister, though - just pride, a fairly mild sin. In any case, Lorwyn block has 27.5 green Elves and 9.5 black Elves. With only 4 other black Elves in Magic's history (only 1 of which was mono-black), Lorwyn's 9 mono-black Elves certainly stand out. Of course, there are plenty of green elves (and many more green than black), but it's still a lot of black compared to what they've had before. So far, this discussion sounds a lot like the one about Treefolk.

But then there's Shadowmoor block. Shadowmoor block has 9, green, 2 white, and 10 green-white Elves. Since I count hybrids fully in both colors, that's 12 white Elves. This isn't as big a contrast as black - there have been 3 mono-white Elves printed before Lorwyn, and Shadowmoor only has 2 - but it's still a change, and certainly a change from Lorwyn. A quick note that will become more relevant in my next article: Eventide only has 4 Elves, and they are all mono-green.

So Elves have three color natures: heavily green, heavily green splashing black, and heavily green splashing white. The splashes are fairly small - like the Treefolk's - but they are noticeable. The difference between Lorwyn and Shadowmoor is explained by flavor - the Elves are now the "good guys" - but from a purely color perspective, it's still something rather new. And now on to Giants.

Before Lorwyn, there were 31 red Giants, 10.5 white Giants, 8 black Giants, and 5.5 green Giants (including multicolored cards). Giants have never touched blue (they are stupid). Giants are invested most heavily in red, but there are practically as many Giants of other colors as there are red ones. They're much more diverse than Elves, Treefolk, and even Faeries. Still, it's clear that they prefer red, and this theme carries over into Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block.

In Lorwyn block, there are 15.5 red Giants and 8.5 white Giants. This is not a huge difference compared to previous Magic history: a ratio of about 2:1 red:white, where previously it had been 3:1. Even so, that is a large number of Giants to add to the pool (24). Lorwyn block increases the total Magic Giant count by almost 50%. Now the thing is, when I started writing this article, I thought there were fewer non-red Giants, and when I went to do the research just now, I saw a lot more than I expected. So my initial statement about three natures is not quite accurate for Giants. And by not quite accurate I mean totally wrong. Read on.

In Shadowmoor block, there are 7 red and 1 white Giant, but also 2 green and 3 red-green ones. Now, five isn't a huge number (see my discussion of Treefolk previously), but...no, it's just not a big number. I was wrong. Damn.

So although Giants change between Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, they don't change completely (there's still a white one in Shadowmoor, even though he's a Spirit), and their changes are not particularly significant in light of previous Magic history. Nevertheless, Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block added a ton of Giants into the mix, giving them a tribal unity that was previously lacking.

Well, that's it for now. I guess I was somewhat off on my intuitions today; there were more off-color Elves and Giants that I had expected. But I have already done my research for the next article, and I assure you, it is infinitely more shocking.

Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Block and Color: Treefolk and Faeries

2008-07-10T13:54:00.000-07:00

As I got to thinking more about Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block and its new and unique interactions between creature type and color, I couldn't help myself from writing another post. I already talked about the elementals, but there are still seven other tribes in the block that I need to talk about. But don't worry, I don't need an entire post for each one - just half that many. The tribes can be grouped in certain ways that allow them to be discussed together. Merfolk, Kithkin, and Goblins share a certain pattern, Treefolk and Faeries have another, and Elves and Giants, a third. As you can read in my previous post, Elementals are one of the tribes that has changed a lot throughout the Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block, at least in terms of color. For now, I'll talk about two tribes that have changed relatively little: Treefolk and Faeries.

I don't want to get too bogged down in numbers, but they're a very useful measurement of change, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do. So I'll start with some numbers, and some Treefolk. Before Lorwyn, there were 25 Treefolk. 24 of them were green, and one was green/black. (As a point of terminology, when I say "green/black," I mean a green and black multicolored card, and when I say "green-black," I mean a green-black hybrid card.) Lorwyn block added 3 white, 4 black, and one white/green/black Treefolk (Doran, of course) to the mix. Treefolk had never had any connection with white before, and only half a card's connection with black. Printing 7 non-green Treefolk is certainly a change. However, 7 is not a tremendous number. Treefolk may not be as huge a tribe like Elves or Goblins, so 7 might seem like a fairly large number in proportion to the total Treefolk population, but in the face of the entire history of Magic, it is but the tiniest fraction. So it's not that huge a change.

Then there's Shadowmoor block. Shadowmoor block adds 5 green Treefolk, plus one green-white and two green-black. Aside from the fact that they're hybrid, these Treefolk have nothing new or unusual in the way of color. There are only 3 new Treefolk that aren't mono-green, and even those ones are all hybrid green. So although the Treefolks' flavor has changed a lot in Shadowmoor (what with the canker and all), they have not changed significantly in color. And with their color changes in Lorwyn being fairly minor, Treefolk are basically one of the least experimental tribes in the double-block. But I guess that fits with their personality, doesn't it?

The Faeries are slightly different. When I went to look up the stats on Faeries, there were a lot fewer than I thought. There have only been 13.5 blue faeries printed prior to Lorwyn! (See the previous article for my tallying conventions.) And what's more, there have been 11.5 green ones, a white one (well, two halves), and even half a red one (yay Wee Dragonauts)! So when I was thinking about faeries and assumed they had a long and deeply entrenched history of being mono-blue, I was sorely mistaken. However, almost all of the green faeries are from very old sets, which I have much less exposure to than the newer ones, so my mistake was perhaps understandable. I guess green faeries have fallen out of style.

But whether or not faeries are blue or green or purple, one thing that IS true about them is that prior to Lorwyn, they had never been black. Faeries aren't evil or death-dealing creatures, they're just playful. But in Lorwyn, where everything is a sunny meadow filled with happy bunnies, black IS playful. And so, Lorwyn's faeries are blue-black. There are 15 blue faeries in Lorwyn, 13 black ones, and a blue/black Legend. That means, with Lorwyn, the number of blue faeries has increased by over 100%, and the number of black ones by a percentage so large that it's mathematically undefined! That's a lot of percents. But the blue isn't that surprising; Lorwyn faeries are as tricksy as Hobbitses, and that's blue all over. But giving faeries black is completely new to Lorwyn and, like the Treefolks' new white and black dudes, of middling significance.

Then comes Shadowmoor block with its crazy hybrids, wacky mechanics, and obnoxious kids that won't get the hell off my lawn. Shadowmoor block gives us 6 more blue and 2 black faeries (not very many), plus 4 blue-black, 2 white-blue, and one green-blue. The blue-black theme of Lorwyn continues into Shadowmoor, but they also pick up the tiniest bit of white and green in three hybrid cards.

According to the flavor of Shadowmoor, the faeries are one of the races least affected by the Aurora. Colorwise, this remains mostly true. However, the faeries do change more than the Treefolk, who supposedly changed a lot with the Aurora, but I guess that just goes to show you that flavor and color are not so tightly bonded.

In conclusion, Treefolk and Faeries are two Lorwyn tribes that have a fairly minimal impact on the relation between color and creature type. Compared to Elementals, at least, the Treefolks' 11 and Faeries' 22 new color-deviant folks are a tiny ripple in the Magical ocean. Furthermore, neither tribe changed very much at all within the Shadowmoor block. This was also the case with Elementals; although they changed a lot more between Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, they stayed fairly solidly rooted in red-black in both Shadowmoor and Eventide. The Treefolk changed only insofar as they gained some black-green hybrids (which weren't available in Shadowmoor, but were consistent with Lorwyn), and the Faeries gained only one green-blue hybrid. But faeries have already seen their fair share of green, so even that one creature can barely be considered deviant. So yeah: Treefolk and Faeries? Not very color-deviant.

So that's all for now. Next time I'll look at Elves and Giants, two tribes which, compared to Treefolk and Faeries, changed color much more between Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, though they changed about the same amount between pre-Lorwyn and Lorwyn. I need to start making my sentences shorter.

What Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Block is Doing to Color

2008-07-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

I'm going to take a break from talking (exclusively) about Eventide to talk about Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block as a whole. But first, a few more quick comments about red-white in Eventide.

First of all, it seems that the red-white Avatar has flying and not haste. This means that although he is slower, he also has evasion, which is something red-white doesn't get much of, so it's welcome. I'm not sure whether it's strictly better or worse than haste for this card, but I don't think the overall effect on gameplay is significant enough to change my mind about whether or not I'd draft it. I still think it's a powerful card, it's just powerful in different ways now. The red-white aura is also a bit more useful on him when he has evasion, allowing you to hit the enemy for more direct damage (at least 7) and gain that much life. Pretty cool.

And now that the rest of the Eventide cards have finally been spoiled (though, as evidenced by the previous paragraph, they're not entirely definitive), I can talk about the final red-white card. It could have turned out to be some lame dude that doesn't do much, or another combat-based instant, but instead it's a nice little creature with an ability that fits right into the red-white theme of power pumping that I mentioned before. It's a 2/1 for 3 mana, but his 2-mana untap ability gives attacking creatures you control +1/+0 until end of turn. This means that he's basically a 3/1 with vigilance, and if he can be given first or double strike, all the better. A welcome addition to red-white's arsenal, to be sure.

And now I can get to what I actually wanted to talk about: Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block and color. This is mostly a set of observations; I'm not sure what to conclude. But I'll talk about that more later, and hopefully I can get some feedback.

Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block does things with color that break a lot of rules, conventions, or just patterns that have developed over the years of Magic, specifically with regard to creature type. Lorwyn is about creature type, and Shadowmoor is about color, and the way these two features interact is quite interesting in both miniblocks. I tend to think about it on a tribe-by-tribe basis, so that's how I'll explain it. I'll start with perhaps the most unique tribe in terms of color: elementals. (There's enough to say about elementals alone that I'll leave the other tribes for another time.)

Throughout Magic's history, elementals have basically been random magical dudes that do neat things, with little tribal cohesion. I did some research about elementals and color and drew up some numbers - the number of elementals of each color printed before Lorwyn. Since this is mostly a flavor issue, I ignored changelings. I considered "elemental" to be any card with the creature type Elemental, including Tribal cards. As for color, I counted multicolored "gold" cards as half a point for each color, and hybrid cards as a full point for each color. I ignored artifact creatures since there was only one.

So here's what I found: prior to Lorwyn, there were 3.5 black elementals, 9 white elementals, 25 blue elementals, 41 green elementals, and 47.5 red elementals. This broad range was somewhat interesting: black and white have hardly any, green and red have a ton, and blue has an amount somewhere in between. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, and it kind of makes sense: elementals are often made of fire (red) or are creations of nature (green) or intellect (blue). White tends to have a lot of humans and humanoid races with little interest in magical entities, and black has mostly zombies, undead, and things that smell bad. What's also interesting is that red and blue are both elemental colors - fire and water - and green is sort of a general "nature" color, also containing the element of wood. White and black, however, have no connection to elemental magicks; white is the color of light, and black is the color of death, neither of which is easily manifested into an elemental form. So it basically makes sense.

Then I counted the elementals in Lorwyn block. There are 6 black, 7 white, 8 blue, 6 green, and 5 red elementals, plus 20 red flamekin and Horde of Notions (which is all five colors). What's unique about Lorwyn elementals is that they have both one and five colors, unlike the other tribes, which either have a solid two colors, or have one main color and splash into one or two others. But elementals are split into two types: the classic random magical beasts, which are distributed evenly among the five colors, and the flamekin, which are all red. However, each of these categories diverges significantly from previous Magic history, and in quite different ways.

The flamekin are unique in that they are a cohesive tribe. Previously, elementals were just random magical dudes, but in Lorwyn, they have a consistent shape, color, and creature subtypes. Never (or rarely) before have elementals had sentience, tribal unity, OR subtypes. This makes the flamekin quite unique as elementals, but of course they fit right into Lorwyn, where that's the norm.

The other elementals are unique in the mere fact that they are evenly distributed among all five colors. There are more black elementals in Lorwyn block than in the entire history of Magic before that. This is partly because the elementals in Lorwyn have a certain unique Lorwynness that separates them from previous ones. They're weird combinations of animals, mostly, and a lot of them have Evoke. The black ones aren't manifestations of death, they're combinations of pigs and centipedes, snails and crabs, or...well, a lot of them are difficult even to identify. But they're NOT manifestations of death, even if some of them deal directly with it (Shriekmaw). They're just...weird...things.

So that's all right. Elementals now have a foothold in all five colors, and are pushing red even further ahead in the lead. But then there's Shadowmoor block.

In Shadowmoor, elementals gain black. This is part of the flavor and story of Shadowmoor - the red, fiery flamekin burn out and become the vicious, resentful cinders. Black is the color of decay and withering, so of course, flavorwise, it makes sense for them to shift into black. But when you look at the data, it is almost astonishing. In Shadowmoor block, there are a whopping 26 black elementals. That's more than SEVEN TIMES the number of black elementals printed before Lorwyn, and the number is still THREE TIMES as many if you include Lorwyn into the mix. Now, the number 26 includes red-black hybrid elementals (and other hybrids), but they are no less black for also being red (or other colors). You can still play them in a mono-black deck, and they definitely have aspects of blackness, so it is fair to count them on par with mono-black cards. This pushes the number of black elementals almost past blue in the grand total. Going from a black-to-blue count of 3.5-to-25 to 35.5-to-38 is a massive leap in proportion.

Of course, elementals are still red, too. There are 20 red elementals in Shadowmoor block (including hybrids of course), which brings red's grand total for elementals even further out in front. No big surprise there. And the other three colors each have a few more elementals of their own, several of which are hybrids, pushing those numbers up further as well.

So for a final bit of number crunching, I calculated the percentage that each color has increased their total elemental count since before Lorwyn, and the grand totals for each color as of Eventide. Black's elementals increased 914% for a total of 35.5, white's increased 156% to 23, red's increased 95% to 92.5, blue's increased 52% to 38, and green's increased 32% to 54. Red now has a huge lead over all the other colors, and black has surpassed white, leaving white at the bottom. Now here's the thing: I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS. Does this mean that Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block is ruining sacred traditions of Magic? Is it exploring and opening up new design space? Is this entire study irrelevant? If there's anyone out there who can answer this question - or who at least has SOME opinion on it - I would love to hear it.

Eventide: Green-Blue

2008-07-09T10:24:00.000-07:00

As of yesterday's post, six more cards have already been spoiled, one of which is red-white. So before getting into today's discussion, I'd like to mention the newest red-white card briefly.

This card reinforces what I mentioned in the last post: red-white's emphasis on first and double strike makes power boosts especially useful for them. Well, this new card is an enchantment that does two (completely separate) things. First of all, when it comes into play, you can pay X and put that many 1/1 red-white Goblin Soldier tokens into play. This gives you more dudes that can get pumped by Balefire Liege, or just chump block. But the second ability of the enchantment is amazing: pay r/w, and ALL red and/or white creatures you control get first strike until end of turn. For simply one mana a turn, most or all of your guys get first strike; and if you have stuff to pump their power, like Balefire Liege and Nobilis of War, you could have all your attacking guys be 5/3 first strikers, or bigger. Man I love red-white.

Anyway, today I'll be talking about the green-blue cards in Eventide. Green-blue is another color combination I especially like, and the one that I feel reflects my personality the best. (I might truthfully be closer to white-blue in some ways, but I prefer to distance myself from white-blue's cold and controlling nature.) Anyway, on to the cards!

Green-blue is hard to place flavor-wise. In Dissension, they were biologists and their unusual creations, but in Eventide, they're just various weird dudes such as Selkies. Some of them are cool, though. Their Avatar is basically Aeon Chronicler, but with the card drawing while it's in play. That is, its power and toughness are equal to the number of cards in your hand, and it lets you draw an extra card each draw step. This means that you have to be careful of what you play to avoid making it too small, but even if its potential for combat isn't fully utilized, its card drawing is still extremely powerful. That said, I would certainly be happy to get this guy in a draft or a sealed deck and would probably try to play him if I could.

His corresponding aura isn't especially synergistic with him, but it is a great aura for evasion. It gives vigilance for green (somewhat off-color) and flying for blue, which can be great for any meaty dude. Or, a dude like Cold-Eyed Selkie, which is a green-blue Eventide creature that lets you draw a card for each point of combat damage it deals to players. It's a 1/1 with Islandwalk for 3 mana, but if you give it +2/+2, flying, and vigilance, it can fairly reliably get 3 points of damage through AND let you draw THREE CARDS whenever it connects. This, in turn, pumps your Overbeing (the Avatar), allowing for significant quantities of ownage. So although the aura doesn't directly synergize with the Overbeing, it certainly can do so indirectly.

The green-blue Liege is pretty awesome too. It's a 4/4 for 5 mana, which on its own isn't even that bad, but it pumps all your other blue and green creatures, and allows you to UNTAP ALL OF THEM DURING OTHER PLAYERS' UPKEEPS. This means, essentially, that all your green and blue creatures have vigilance. Furthermore, they can use tap abilities twice as often. There aren't many green-blue creatures in Eventide with tap abilities (in fact, there aren't any, yet), but there are certainly green ones and blue ones, as well as those in Shadowmoor (such as Presence of Gond). Even so, just a simple equivalent of vigilance is great, especially for colors that don't usually have it. A tiny bit redundant with the aura, but it's not that big of a deal.

Now that I've covered the three main cycles (there are others - the Hedge-Mages, the Hatchlings, the Mimics - but they're not nearly as unique or interesting), there are several other green-blue cards that are definitely worth talking about. One extremely cool one is Gilder Bairn. He lets the untap symbol creep into green; by paying 2 and a green or blue and untapping him, he basically doubles the number of every counter of every type on target permanent. That's ANY type of counter: +1/+1, -1/-1, charge, age...what have you. He can make a Goblin Bomb go off many turns sooner; he can make your Solarion ridiculously huge; he can chip away at anyone with a -1/-1 counter; basically, he is super great. There's a green card in Eventide that would be ridiculously powerful with him, but it has shroud, so he can't target it. But that's for later.

Anyway, since there are plenty of -1/-1 counters in the Shadowmoor block, this guy will probably be used mostly for accelerated removal in Limited, but his applications in other formats will surely see much wider use. The number of possible hilarious combo decks with Gilder Bairn is quite large indeed. But enough about this guy. He's cool and all, but not as cool as Spitting Image.

Spitting Image does something green-blue did a lot in Dissension: make dudes into copies of dudes. However, this one doesn't just reshape other dudes, it CLONES them. Spitting Image is a green-blue sorcery for 6 mana (2 colored) that allows you to put a token into play that's a copy of target creature. This has many applications. You can clone dudes that are super cool to make them even cooler, like Primalcrux. You can kill any legendary creature. You can reuse a guy with a neat comes-into-play ability. There are lots of things. But best of all: IT HAS RETRACE. For the uninitiated, retrace allows you to replay the card from your graveyard by discarding a land in addition to paying its mana cost. By the time you have 6 mana, it's reasonable to imagine you might have some extra land in your hand that you don't especially need; so what better use than to make ANOTHER Primalcrux? Retrace isn't one of my favorite mechanics, but on expensive cards, it is nothing to sneeze at.

There's also a card that does something recognizably green-blue: a 3-mana instant that turns a dude into a 1/1 Snake with no abilities until end of turn, and you draw a card. Always useful, especially with the proliferation of abilities in Eventide, and rather dangerous ones at that. There's also a card that gives all your guys flying and grounds all the opponent's guys; a 2/1 faerie that doesn't fly but can become a 3/4 flying as long as your enemy has a creature with flying; a 6-mana enchantment that puts tokens into play whenever you play a green or blue spell; and one more card that has yet to be spoiled.

So in conclusion, although green-blue isn't especially aggressive or focused, it has some reasonably good evasion, some neat combat tricks, and a slew of unusual or surprising abilities that will trip up your opponents at worst, and overwhelm them at best. I can say that I am proud to have these guys representing me and my personality, and I would be equally proud to draft them. There are enough good and synergistic green cards in Eventide (like Primalcrux, and also Primalcrux, oh and did I mention Primalcrux?) that I might even recommend using many of these green-blue cards in a mono-green deck. For Primalcrux. Man that guy is awesome. But I'll talk about him another time. That's all for now!

Eventide: Red-White

2008-07-08T17:15:00.001-07:00

With the release of Eventide only a few weeks away, I'm getting excited. I've been following previews and spoilers like an obsessed stalker, taking gritty photos of them through their bedroom windows and going through their trash for toenail clippings. Well, not really, but I have been keeping a close eye on them. That said, IF YOU DON'T WANT ANY SPOILERS, DON'T READ THIS ARTICLE. You have been warned.

My primary sources of spoilage are Wizards' own Eventide Visual Spoiler and MTGSalvation's Eventide Spoiler. The former is of course more reliable and has pretty pictures, but the latter is far more comprehensive; right now there are only eleven of the set's 180 cards that are yet unknown (assuming MTGSalvation's spoilers are reliable, which they tend to be). With almost all of the set spoiled now, each of the colors and color pairs has taken shape, and it is rapidly becoming possible to consider how the cards will interact with each other and with Shadowmoor, and to begin to discuss each color pair's unique personality.

Of the enemy colored pairs, I think my own personality most closely matches green-blue, but as far as actually playing the game goes, red-white looks the coolest to me so far. So this first article will be about them: once the Boros Guild, now just a bunch of angry hobgoblins and disillusioned kithkin, red and white combine to create a passionate but organized military force.

There are still a few red-white cards that have yet to be revealed, but most of the cycles have been completed. Red-white is a very aggressive and combat-oriented pair, since both red and white love combat, and this is certainly reflected in Eventide cards. The red-white Avatar doesn't look especially impressive by itself: it's a 3/4 with haste that gives attacking creatures +2/+0. Alone, it's strictly weaker than the Demigod of Revenge and less interesting than most of the other Avatars. However, with red-white's penchant for first and double strike, additional attacking power can be quite useful.

The corresponding aura also seems somewhat unimpressive on its own; it grants a simple attack pump for red and lifelink for white. But again, with first strike and double strike, these become much more valuable. Since there are as many as 5 red-white creatures in Eventide with first or double strike, plus an instant that grants double strike to any creature, it's clear that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Red-white has its obligatory damage-to-attacking-or-blocking-creatures spells, but it also has Moonhold, a neat card that can prevent your opponent from playing lands and creatures for a turn. Something control-based like this doesn't seem very in-color for red and white, but given red-white's aggressiveness, something that slows down your opponent certainly makes sense for a color pair that wants to get damage through as fast as possible.

The red-white liege is quite powerful. A 2/4 for 5 mana, its special ability essentially casts Lightning Helix whenever you cast Lightning Helix. That is to say, "Whenever you play a red spell, Balefire Liege deals 3 damage to target player. Whenever you play a white spell, you gain 3 life." (I can already see Grinning Ignus being this guy's best friend.) This means that he causes a 6-point life swing whenever you play any red-white spell. And with 16 red-white spells in eventide, none of which (so far) cost more than 5 mana, this is just dandy. So that's awesome.

But there are a few other cool red-white cards to talk about. One is a guy that starts out as a little Kithkin soldier and blossoms into a gigantic spirit avatar warrior giant demon cyclops king lord. Well, just a Kithkin Spirit Warrior Avatar, but you get the idea. Basically, it comes into play as a regular old 1/1 Kithkin for 1, but you can "upgrade" it by paying various mana costs. 1 mana makes it into a 2/2, then 3 more makes it into a 4/4, and finally, 6 mana makes it into an 8/8 with flying and first strike. (You have to do each upgrade to get to the next, though; you can't jump right to 8/8.) So as long as you can keep it alive long enough to pump it to hugeness, it's an amazing card at any point during the game. If you play him early, you have a guy out early that you can make stronger and stronger throughout the game. And if you don't draw him until late game, you probably have enough mana to pump him up to full strength in only a few turns. It just seems too good to be true! (And maybe it is; again, I don't know how reliable the spoilers really are.)

Finally, I should talk about Spitemare. This guy is a 3/3 for 4 mana, but whenever he's dealt damage, he deals that much damage to target creature or player. With a 3/3 body, that can come quite in handy even if you only get to use it once. Plus, at 4 mana (2 of which are colored), he's quite reasonably priced. If your opponent has lots of 2/2s, this guy can take out two at a time. And of course, if you can pump him up (say, with the liege), he's even more dangerous.

So basically, red-white seems quite awesome, and there are still 2 more yet unspoiled red-white cards! I realize that I've left out some cards from my discussion, but I've tried to touch on the most remarkable and/or interesting and/or powerful ones. I'm really looking forward to Eventide, and hoping I'll be able to draft red-white when I get a chance. How about you?