Like so many other Magic players, I’ve been thinking about why the whole game is so messed up right now and what could be done about it. That lead me into thinking about all the analytics one could get from Arena.
I was reminded of this by Crim and The Professor: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/fire-it-2019-06-21
TL;DR: Last year they told us that they had decided to make Magic better by introducing a new design philosophy of F.I.R.E. I’m not feeling it.
Are sweepers fun? No.
It just feels like there’s no one at the wheel of Historic. They just print cards and add them with no consideration for the environment.
Recently I returned to the actual world of Commander after a hiatus of couple of years. After such a long time, what do you play? It’s sort of a special occasion and I also knew I wouldn’t be playing any more actively in the near future, so I knew I had to do something I would find especially enjoyable.
So, I went top-down. Well, most Commander decks are very much top-down with either the Commander itself or a tribal theme or something to similar to work down from. However, I decided to use a theme very specific to me: The art on my walls.
I’m not exactly rich, but I do have plenty of disposable income, as I don’t have dependents, my mortgage has been paid off and I’m paid pretty well. I used to spend a lot of money on MtG, but as of late, not so much.
Note: I am a very long time player, so if you are new, this might be the product for you. Me? No.
If you’ve been around older players, you’ve probably heard them discuss how big Craw Wurm was back in the day. I mean 6/4 with no drawbacks… we didn’t have many of those back in the day. And at common no less!
How far have we come from those days… Actually, not as far as one might think.
Honestly, my reason to do this is that Seth mentioned this idea on Commander Clash couple of episodes ago and I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, so I decided to do this before Seth could. Not that there’s that much to do here, as most of this stuff just writes itself, although I bet my approach is somewhat different from what anyone else would have done.
For some reason Chevill, Bane of Monsters reminded me of Sir Hammerlock from Borderlands franchise, so why not build a deck around that? This is a continuation on this.
I don’t think Hammerlock would actually be black, but don’t tell anyone. He is a hunter, but he has (at least in the beginning) naturalist motivations, as he is interested in conservation more than killing. It just so happens that these attempts don’t quite go as planned and these rare creatures just happen end up as trophies on his wall. Later on, the character is depicted more as a hunter, who is interested in learning about these exotic creatures. His method just happens to be to pay someone to kill them.