Category Archives: Magic: The Gathering

Theros Prerelease 22.9.2013

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I know I’ve written too much about MtG in the last few weeks. The problem is, our regular games are still trying to recover from the summer, whereas I play MtG regularly. Hopefully I’ll be putting out more diverse content in the near future.

So, I went to my local game stores Theros Prerelease yesterday. I went 4-0, which is always nice. That was second place as I lost on tie-breakers to another player with the same record, as I was paired down in the last round.

I chose red for now real reason. Actually, I didn’t know I was supposed to pick a color, so I just went with red, because that came to mind first. Well, I managed to rationalize the decision soon after, so I was happy. I was even happier once I opened a [scryfall]Stormbreath Dragon[/scryfall] in the seeded booster.

The whole pool:

[cardlist title=The Pool]
[White]
1 Cavalry Pegasus
1 Chosen by Heliod
3 Decorated Griffin
1 Ephara’s Warden
1 Favored Hoplite
1 Heliod’s Emissary
2 Hundred-Handed One
1 Lagonna-Band Elder
2 Last Breath
1 Ordeal of Heliod
2 Scholar of Athreos
1 Silent Artisan
1 Traveling Philosopher
1 Wingsteed Rider
[/White]
[Blue]
4 Crackling Triton
1 Dissolve
1 Griptide
1 Lost in the Labyrinth
1 Mnemonic Wall
1 Nimbus Naiad
1 Triton Shorethief
[/Blue]
[Black]
1 Cavern Lampad
1 Cutthroat Maneuver
1 Disciple of Phenax
1 Fellhide Minotaur
4 Fleshmad Steed
1 Lash of the Whip
1 Loathsome Catoblepas
2 March of the Returned
1 Pharika’s Cure
1 Read the Bones
2 Returned Phalanx
[/Black]
[Red]
1 Stormbreath Dragon
1 Ember Swallower
1 Labyrinth Champion
1 Minotaur Skullcleaver
1 Ill-Tempered Cyclops
1 Borderland Minotaur
1 Flamespeaker Adept
2 Akroan Crusader
1 Fanatic of Mogis
3 Lightning Strike
1 Spark Jolt
2 Ordeal of Purphoros
2 Portent of Betrayal
2 Wild Celebrants
1 Demolish
1 Rage of Purphoros
[/Red]
[Green]
2 Satyr Hedonist
1 Centaur Battlemaster
1 Savage Surge
1 Time to Feed
1 Feral Invocation
1 Reverent Hunter
1 Commune with the Gods
1 Shredding Wind
1 Hunt the Hunter
1 Satyr Piper
[/Green]
[Gold]
2 Horizon Chimera
1 Prophet of Kruphix
1 Spellheart Chimera
[/Gold]
[Colorless]
1 Burnished Hart
2 Unknown Shores
[/Colorless]
[/cardlist]

So… what to do? Red was pretty obvious. On top of the mythic rare dragon, I had the prerelease promo [scryfall]Ember Swallower[/scryfall] and three [scryfall]Lightning Strike[/scryfall]s. Actually, I was close to going with monored, but in the end decided I’d rather not play the [scryfall]Wild Celebrants[/scryfall]. I guess they were good enough, but I didn’t want to play two [scryfall]Akroan Crusader[/scryfall]s either and though I’d rather play the instant speed combat tricks then more than one [scryfall]Ordeal of Purphoros[/scryfall].

Also, two [scryfall]Satyr Hedonist[/scryfall]s means, you can play [scryfall]Stormbreath Dragon[/scryfall] on turn three quite often. I didn’t actually get to do that at any point, but I did manage activate the monstrosity a turn earlier, which was pretty nice. As my regular readers probably have noticed, I like fighting, so [scryfall]Time to Feed[/scryfall] was also a card for me.

With all the bestow and monstrosity in the format, I thought it would be pretty slow, so I tried to go over the other decks with my bombs and just keep the battlefield balanced until then. Pretty basic sealed strategy. Turned out, the format was much faster than I expected, but I was midrange enough to beat all the other decks, whereas the aggressive decks weren’t fast enough to kill me before I stabilized.

[cardlist title=The Final Deck]
[Creatures]
1 Stormbreath Dragon
1 Ember Swallower
1 Labyrinth Champion
1 Minotaur Skullcleaver
1 Ill-Tempered Cyclops
1 Borderland Minotaur
1 Flamespeaker Adept
1 Akroan Crusader
1 Fanatic of Mogis
2 Satyr Hedonist
1 Centaur Battlemaster
1 Burnished Hart
[/creatures]
[Spells]
3 Lightning Strike
1 Spark Jolt
1 Ordeal of Purphoros
2 Portent of Betrayal
1 Savage Surge
1 Time to Feed
1 Feral Invocation
[/Spells]
[Lands]
10 Mountain
7 Forest
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]

Apparently, red was the thing to play. All my opponents played it, even though as I was picking up my prerelease pack, I was the second to pick up red out of twenty or so people. This probably means people will play red in the future too, but you should probably try to next level it.

Monstrosity was great. With three monstrous creatures in the deck, I managed to slow down most of the games enough to trigger it. The most punishing activation came in the final game of the final round. I had a starting hand of five lands, [scryfall]Burnished Hart[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Ember Swallower[/scryfall]. It took me a minute to convince myself I should do it, but I decided to keep, since I hadn’t seen any removal from my opponent in the first two games. As you can imagine, that was very painful for my three-colored opponent. On the other hand, although [scryfall]Ill-Tempered Cyclops[/scryfall] is the least flashy of the three, its monstrosity had the biggest impact, because it just generally hit a couple of turns earlier.

Heroic was pretty good at times and pretty bad at others. I thought [scryfall]Labyrinth Champion[/scryfall] might be good, but I didn’t find a place to use it at all. I drew it a couple of times, but only cast it once and never triggered it. [scryfall]Akroan Crusader[/scryfall] was pretty bad too. I did manage to trigger it a couple of times, but that never amounted to anything.

[scryfall]Centaur Battlemaster[/scryfall] on the other hand was great. I [scryfall]Spark Jolt[/scryfall]et it a couple of times to grow it. Once from 11/11 to 14/14. To kill my opponent’s monstrous [scryfall]Hundred-Handed One[/scryfall] with an enchantment on it. That rocked. I even contemplated expending a [scryfall]Lightning Strike[/scryfall] on my on creature, but decided against it, because its generally better to remove chump blockers. It was tempting though.

Bestow was pretty good, although I didn’t use it myself. My opponents did and it seems like a good way to gain some benefit from flooding. They didn’t really win the game (well, against me anyway), but they were good value. Who doesn’t like value?

Devotion didn’t matter much…

I didn’t sideboard at all. I had some artifact hate ready, but I didn’t see anything worth that made me think I should put any in my deck.

All in all, I found this much more fun than the any other format I’ve played sealed in, with the exception of our own full Innistrad block sealed, which I enjoyed immensely. The flavor is great, but it doesn’t stop there. I just had fun playing with the cards. There weren’t many board stalls (actually only one in a game where both of us were manascrewed), which is a testament to a great design. Its hard to make dynamic, but balanced enviroment, but it feels like they’ve done it.

Frank Karsten, My New Hero

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Frank Karsten began writing for Channel Fireball pretty recently. He had been away from MtG for a while in order to write his thesis, but apparently he’s done with that and is making his return, including joining the Channel Fireball team itself (bringing their total number of hall of famers to six after BenS and LSV are inducted, still one less than Team SCG, even without Budde).

Personally, I’m sort of excited about this. After all, this is a guy who is a hall of famer, but has a totally different perspective on the game. He was known for designing decks based on statistical data taking a bunch of versions of a deck and calculating the best possible mix of cards. Later, he would go on to play highlander and monocolored decks for the for the hell of it in Pro Tours. Clearly, a man after my own heart.

And then there’s this: Frank Analysis – Finding the Optimal Aggro Deck via Computer Simulation. In short, Karsten simplifies aggro decks down to five different cards and tests each possible configuration by goldfishing. This way he found the optimal aggro deck in a vacuum.

Obviously, there are limits to the usefulness of this data, since generally we won’t have enough of really cheap and efficient creatures in a format, and it completely forgets about your opponent, who will generally want to do something during a game too. On the other hand, research like this isn’t done enough. Of course people do calculate odds and will make deck design decisions based on them, but they are still often based on intuition more than anything else. Since CFB already has limited specialists, innovators, honers, combospecialists and so forth, just like their competition, Karsten’s addition will bring them an edge, because no-one else is doing what Karsten does. At least not as visibly.

This is obviously still pretty preliminary research. Magic is a complicated game, so going deeper will be hard, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. Finding the right way to abstract the game (such as Karsten’s way of bringing it down to five cards) will be difficult, but it isn’t impossible. Hopefully we’ll see more from Karsten in the near future (and we probably will).

Maybe I should try it.

EDH Card Spotlight: Quicken

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Its not hard to come up with scenarios where you might want to save your spells in EDH to use them at the appropriate moment. After all, finding that just the right moment to cast your immense Exsanguinate with other players who are playing blue might be really hard.

Basically, what Quicken does is give you more windows. Lets say you are player A, and both players B and C are playing blue. Its B’s turn and C is tapped out. Now, normally C would untap and you would be unable to take advantage of C’s situation, but with Quicken, you have an additional opportunity right then and there to do it. Granted, it will expose you for the duration of C’s turn, if you can’t finish him, but the opportunity is still there.

The really good thing is that this opportunity doesn’t really cost you much. Only one mana. Granted, there are plenty of one mana cantrips out there, but this one has the additional benefit of not requiring a target, like so many of them do. I saw one standard deck, which put a full playset of Quickens into his main deck despite only having sorceries in the sideboard, and there weren’t that many of them either.

You can get up to all sort of shenanigans at end of turn with Quicken. Tooth and Nail. Rite of Replication, kicked. Instant speed Damnation right after your opponent Genesis Waved a bunch of creatures on the battlefield with Urabrask the Hidden among them. A huge Genesis Wave of your own. Even (relatively) early Time Warp will be better if you have your full mana available on the first of your two consecutive turns.

In short: Possibilities: Endless, cost: negligible.

So, use it. I don’t see any reason not to. Maybe if you don’t use any sorceries in a blue deck, you might want to use something else instead, but that’s not too common.

Standard Rotation 2013, part 5

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Just some more ideas. I’ve settled on the Red Tokens deck for now. I don’t really know if its viable, but its the sort of deck I’ll probably enjoy playing, which is important too. We’ll get back to that deck later. First some more discarded (for now) ideas.

New [scryfall]Jackal Pup[/scryfall]

Now that [scryfall]Thragtusk[/scryfall] is dead, maybe RDW is viable again. Actually, now that we have [scryfall]Firedrinker Satyr[/scryfall], maybe Sligh is viable. Sligh is all about using all your resources as efficiently as possible. the Satyr is something you can pump your mana into, if you have no other dumps. At the same time, it makes use of life as a resource more than red usually does, so it will have a lot of room to work. [scryfall]Hammer of Purphoros[/scryfall] also supports this strategy, as at least you won’t have dead land draws any longer.

Maybe we could abuse cards like [scryfall]Madcap Skills[/scryfall]. It would make [scryfall]Akroan Crusader[/scryfall]’s heroic trigger, make [scryfall]Two-Headed Cerberus[/scryfall]’ double strike really, really good, and so on. We’ll have to see if there are more heroic cards coming in the set. It still needs a lot to be linear enough to make up for all the weaknesses. Also, the aforementioned [scryfall]Firedrinker Satyr[/scryfall] into [scryfall]Madcap Skills[/scryfall] seems like an irresistable, maybe even with a [scryfall]Burning-Tree Emissary[/scryfall] in the middle.

Rats

How about a [scryfall]Pack Rat[/scryfall]? This is a bomb in sealed and draft, but hasn’t seen constructed play expect for a sideboard here and there. However, [scryfall]Erebos, God of the Dead[/scryfall] really, really likes the rats once they get going. After all, each copy also has the casting cost of the original, as they are complete copies. Maybe we could use the rats to keep the god going?

Being a great fan of black, this idea, coupled with the [scryfall]Whip of Erebos[/scryfall], seems pretty good. Especially if we can keep the game long. Whipping the Rat back into life doesn’t stop us form copying it and keeping the copy.

I just don’t know where to go with this. [scryfall]Desecration Demon[/scryfall] would be great, but I don’t think we enough great creature to go with this deck… Not sure though. Anyhow, since this is black, we’ll probably get back on this eventually.

Back to the Tokens

Ok, so, I introduced a deck last week. I’m going to try that build. I just dropped the [scryfall]Mutavault[/scryfall]s in favor of more mountains, just because I don’t won’t to pay 50 euros for a playset.

However, we were missing a sideboard. The thing is, I suck at this. I should be better. After all, unless you always win or lose in two games, you play more games sideboarded. I’m just not aware enough of the field to know what to prepare for. I’ll just go with pretty general strategies, so I’ll go with the following:

[cardlist title=Red Tokens sideboard]
2 Act of Treason
1 Anger of the Gods
2 Mindsparker
2 Mizzium Mortars
4 Possibility Storm
4 Vandalblast
[/cardlist]

So, for aggro, we have more [scryfall]Mizzium Mortars[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Anger of the Gods[/scryfall]. Hopefully they’ll be enough for some midrange decks as well.

[scryfall]Mindsparker[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Possibility Storm[/scryfall] are for control. After all, those decks will have a lot of problems answering it, while I don’t often mind going through my deck finding something else. My few cards with targets are versatile enough, although hitting legendary cards might cause problems. On the other hand, their cards will often miss and countering will become a crapshoot. Its understandably pricey, but just might be worth it. Especially, if the opponent relies on [scryfall]Negate[/scryfall]s and [scryfall]Essence Scatter[/scryfall]s. Or [scryfall]Sphinx’s Revelation[/scryfall].

[scryfall]Act of Treason[/scryfall]s are for mirrors, but I bet they’d be handy in plenty of situatons. [scryfall]Vandalblast[/scryfall] is pretty obvious, although I might have overdone them.

Demon Week: Seizan, Perverter of Truth Deck

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Normally I wouldn’t put EDH decks on here, because, well, they are quite long lists and there’s a lot of art to it, so this is going to be more about how I make a deck than about Seizan himself.

My favorite demon in MtG and one of my favorite commanders, [scryfall]Seizan, Perverter of Truth[/scryfall].

This card just works on so many levels. Its a 6/5 for five mana and therefore very affordable. It also has a very good ability. People are greedy and therefore they won’t touch Seizan. So, it generally stays on board, although often the player on my left will just kill it after getting the benefit himself. Anyhow, let’s design a deck with him as the commander.

Having researched this somewhat, it appears many people do this wrong. They attempt to control their opponents hands with discard, but that’s not what you want. You don’t want to work against yourself. I guess there’s some sort of intuitive jump which makes it feel attractive, but just don’t do it. Its generally not a powerful strategy in EDH anyhow and Seizan just makes it worse.

So, how do we proceed? Well, what I do is basically four steps. This is the usual order, but there are times I go with a different approach and start with some other step instead.

1. Choose a commander. Well, this time this has been done already. My usual process of doing this is quite arbitrary. I like to try out a new commander quite often (and I have tried over forty in just over a year), but I also like to go back to old ones now that my collection of cards has more depth.

2. Go through cards with a lot of synergy with the commander and dismiss nonbos. Also add cards which support our strategy. In this case, I’m going with making attacking me seem unattractive. For this purpose, I’ll put in [scryfall]Dread[/scryfall], [scryfall]No Mercy[/scryfall], [scryfall]Grave Pact[/scryfall], [scryfall]Butcher of Malakir[/scryfall], [scryfall]Oblivion Stone[/scryfall], [scryfall]Kokusho, the Evening Star[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Sudden Spoiling[/scryfall], although I don’t really advertise the last one, so its not as good in this regard.

Life gain is also nice in a Seizan deck, but I don’t like to use life gain just for that. Usually, the card needs to do something else too. [scryfall]Exsanguinate[/scryfall] is often considered a staple, but I don’t. In this deck it definitely has a place. [scryfall]Sorin Markov[/scryfall] is a card I’ve owned for a while now, but haven’t played yet. This is probably the deck for him. [scryfall]Sword of War and Peace[/scryfall] is great in this regard. Also protects [scryfall]Seizan[/scryfall] from many cards.

Punishing opponents for drawing cards is one more thing the deck likes to to. [scryfall]Underworld Dreams[/scryfall] is one choice, as well as [scryfall]Psychosis Crawler[/scryfall]. [scryfall]Temporal Extortion[/scryfall] is probably better than usual, as the other players will have better places to invest their life.

3. Put some staples and roleplayers in. Who can say no to [scryfall]Damnation[/scryfall]? In a black deck this generally means a suite of cards for tutoring, for sweeping the board, for spot removal, for ramp, for utility and so on. Also, grave hate package is important in our current meta. I was thinking [scryfall]Cremate[/scryfall] (a very underrated card in my opinion), [scryfall]Withered Wretch[/scryfall], [scryfall]Nihil Spellbomb[/scryfall], [scryfall]Leyline of the Void[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Vile Rebirth[/scryfall], but chose to change the last one into [scryfall]Crypt Incursion[/scryfall], which probably works better with Seizan despite higher casting cost.

This part also includes some generally good creatures, because you usually need some. This deck is lighter on creatures than most of my decks, but I did make room for the usual suspects.

4. Find some cards I’ve never used or haven’t used in a while and put them in the deck. Well, much of this was actually covered already, since I’ve never had some of the aforementioned cards in my deck before. Still, this feels like an important part of the process for me, since I like to learn new things. Finding ways to use these new cards is part of

First one to make it was [scryfall]Pontiff of Blight[/scryfall]. The deck might not have enough creatures to make him truly effective, but he does work well with Seizan (and thus probably should have been in the second category.

Second came [scryfall]Tendrils of Corruption[/scryfall]. This card should probably be in my decks quite often, but for some reason it hasn’t been. Ever. I do play a lot of monoblack, though, so maybe I should remember this card in the future. Also works great with Seizan as most players will have less life than usual.

[scryfall]Phthisis[/scryfall] is a card that’s been floating close to my decks for a while, but has never quite made it. The suspend is probably great for creating stalls as most people won’t be willing to put anything into play when this is ticking down, waiting.

[scryfall]Xathrid Gorgon[/scryfall] seems powerful, but for some reason not very popular.

So, the end result. The cmc is pretty high. The curve has a hole in the fifth column, but that’s not a problem, since I’ll often cast Seizan as soon as possible, taking that slot in the early game.

Sadly, only a couple of demons, horrors and clerics, so doesn’t really work thematically.

Demon Week: History of Demon in MtG

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What was the most sought after card in the early, early days of Magic? [scryfall]Black Lotus[/scryfall]? [scryfall]Ancestral Recall[/scryfall]? No. Who needs fast mana or extra cards if you have the raw power of [scryfall]Lord of the Pit[/scryfall]?

Richard Garfield wanted examples of all major fantasy tropes in the game, this included demons. Demons had a good start. On top of the good, ol’ Lord, we had [scryfall]Demonic Hordes[/scryfall], [scryfall]Demonic Tutor[/scryfall] and the ante cards, which had a great flavor of taking a risk for some short-term edge.

Obviously, since the cards aren’t very good and ante fell quickly out of favor, the initial interest didn’t last long and most of the cards have fallen into anonynimity, except for [scryfall]Demonic Tutor[/scryfall], which is still a staple in all formats where its legal.

There were demons in Antiquities, Legends and Ice Age, nothing really worth mentioning, like most of the creatures of this era, but then Wizards of the Coast just stopped doing them. Why?

Apparently, the thinking was that the game was nearing breaking through into mainstream and they were afraid of a possible backlash from religious organizations. After all, it happened to D&D when it was finding its mainstream footing about a decade earlier.

The thing is, people change and pop culture changes. In the late 90s, Buffy fought demons on TV regularly. Also, the boycotts… They never work. When the baptists decided to boycott Disney back in the day, Disney didn’t even bother acknowledging it, even though on paper, there were roughly 40 million baptists in the US at the time. So, while other creatures have been retroactively changed into demons from several sets, creatures with the type ‘demon’ weren’t printed between Ice Age (1995) and Onslaught (2002).

In Onslaught and Legions, they tested the waters with [scryfall]Grinning Demon[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Havoc Demon[/scryfall]. They had the hallmarks of the demons of old. They were big and powerful, but came with a drawback. However, compared to the original Lord, the drawbacks were minor.

Demons got their big break in Kamigawa, where they were worshipped by the ogres and released from their prison to destroy the world when everyone else was distracted by the Kami War. Their drawbacks ranged from very bad to manageable to great. In fact, my personal favorite, [scryfall]Seizan, Perverter of Truth[/scryfall], is from this set.

From there on, demons have become a fixture. They are now the marquee large creature of black and at least every core set includes one. Some recent blocks have included plenty. Innistrad’s gothic themes were a great place to insert several demons and Ravnica has its own demons, particularly in the Rakdos guild or cult, with their own demonic leader. [scryfall]Desecration Demon[/scryfall], [scryfall]Griselbrand[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Sire of Insanity[/scryfall] are seeing some constructed play.

Looking back, demons seem to be a great indicator on how certain aspects of Magic’s design have evolved. In the beginning, huge creatures with big drawbacks were the norm. If you wanted something good, you’d have to work for it or pay for it all the time. Then, over time, they have loosened. Now, you can get great creatures without having to sacrifice something or take unnecessary risks.

In a way, the game has lost something, but at the same time, the game has gained much more by making creatures more playable. No-one wants to feel stupid by playing something powerful and then losing because the opponent could exploit the drawback or something you played.

Now, even the demons often come with no drawbacks or they are mitigated. [scryfall]Shadowborn Demon[/scryfall] from M14 will be satiated at some point. [scryfall]Abhorrent Overlord[/scryfall] from Theros may come with a very similar drawback to Lord’s, but it brings with it its own fodder and instead of killing you, it will just go away. Some, like [scryfall]Desecration Demon[/scryfall] have much more innovative, interactive and interesting drawbacks.

From a broader viewpoint, its interesting to think that just twenty years ago, there was a feeling that some people will think even the concept and an image of a demon in a game would somehow be dangerous. Granted, there are still such people, but now the publishers understand they’ll never reach these people anyway and those people will grasp onto anything as evidence of something satanic, so to satisfy them, Magic would have to get rid of magic, which just wouldn’t work.

Demons are here to stay. They are important shortcut. Call something demonic, and we know what we are talking about, although in Magic, they have their own unique attributes, being beings of pure black mana (or red, in some rare cases).

Bonus bit of trivia:

I don’t know if this is true, but according to PVDDR, a famous Brazilian player, the original Portuguese version of Lord of the Pit demanded sacrifices in its honor.

Standard Rotation 2013, part 4

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So, I was thinking again, that I’m looking at the gods a bit wrong. Maybe I should try and look at them as enchantments, which can turn into creatures, rather than creatures that are sometimes hard to use.

There’s a school of thought known as Philosophy of Fire. The idea behind Philosophy of Fire is that you can put a life value on card. Then, if you figure that out, you only need to figure which cards you need to use to get above that value and kill the opponent with minimal amount of cards. This is the basis for burn decks. Maybe we can use this.

So, let’s forget for a minute that Purphoros is creature and see what we can do with that.

[scryfall]Purphoros, God of the Forge[/scryfall]
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God 6/5
Indestructible
As long as your devotion to red is less than five, Purphoros isn’t a creature.
Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, Purphoros deals 2 damage to each opponent.
2R: Creatures you control get +1/+0 until end of turn.

That’s great for a token strategy. Sadly, we won’t have cards like [scryfall]Krenko’s Command[/scryfall] or [scryfall]Thatcher Revolt[/scryfall], but we do have [scryfall]Molten Birth[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Goblin Rally[/scryfall], along [scryfall]Young Pyromancer[/scryfall] which should be great with those. Also, [scryfall]Hammer of Purphoros[/scryfall] can produce creatures and gives all my creatures haste.

Now, all we need is some support, such as [scryfall]Ogre Battledriver[/scryfall], maybe [scryfall]Wild Guess[/scryfall]es to let us put some redundancy in the deck without extra copies cluttering our hand.

[cardlist title=Red Tokens]
[Creatures]
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Ogre Battledriver
4 Purphoros, God of the Forge
[/Creatures]
[Other spells]
4 Molten Birth
4 Goblin Rally
4 Wild Guess
4 Hammer of Purphoros
4 Magma Jet
2 Mizzium Mortars
[/Other spells]
[Lands]
22 Mountain
4 Mutavault
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]

Other possible cards include [scryfall]Dynacharge[/scryfall] for alpha strikes, [scryfall]Chandra, Pyromaster[/scryfall] for extra card advantage and maybe even more looters (but we’ll lose most of those too in the rotation).

Reaching Devotion of five is going to be a rare occurance, but there’s a lot of synergy. It might be too slow, though. It could kill on turn five with a really good draw (turn one mountain, turn two mountain and [scryfall]Young Pyromancer[/scryfall], turn three mountain and [scryfall]Hammer of Purphoros[/scryfall], turn four mountain and [scryfall]Purphoros, God of the Forge[/scryfall] and turn five [scryfall]Goblin Rally[/scryfall]). Not much consistency, though, since there isn’t enough redundancy for all the cards needed. On the other hand, after that, we’d have all the chump blockers we’d ever need. Maybe this could work… maybe…

Standard Rotation 2013, part 3.1

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So, yesterday I did worse at a Modern FNM than I’ve done ever before. I went 0-4. My tournament history might not be very storied for a reason, but I’ve never went 0-X before. Not even when I went to my first draft back in the day not knowing anything about the format, or when I bought an Event Deck and went to a standard tournament with it (actually, it worked pretty well, I tried both RtR Event Decks and went 2-2 with both).

Well, I guess Modern isn’t my thing. Too many decks with little interaction. Not for me.

So, not be deterred, I decided to just focus on Standard (although I doubt this decision will last). Of the decklists I showed yesterday, I feel I like the [card Thassa, God of the Sea]Thassa[/scryfall] one most. Its not necessarily a choice based on actual playability, but rather I’d just like to try out a monoblue deck.

But, I’ve done some math since than. (Hooray?) Currently, the deck has 28 manasymbols, which can contribute to the Devotion. I’m not sure that’s enough. I need five on board (although Thassa is pretty good without being a creature), so I need to draw about 10 cards to be able to make her a creature. This isn’t hard, since that only means four turns on the play, but that also requires me to be able to keep those permanents in play. Also, some of the permanents are legendary and I won’t be able to keep more than one in play.

Therefore, we need to make a lot of changes to the deck. Some are easy. I want some card advantage. I had a couple of [card Opportunity]Opportunities[/scryfall] in the deck, but why not have [scryfall]Jace, Memory Adept[/scryfall] or [scryfall]Jace, Architect of Thought[/scryfall] instead. Its card advantage plus Devotion. I don’t really like [scryfall]Claustrophobia[/scryfall] since it keeps the gods in play and thus their abilities still work. Also, a god can be dismissed with another due to the new legendary rule, thus costing me two Devotion.

I would probably have to lose most of the instants and sorceries in the main deck. However, I think the deck would suck against most control, even if I would get to scry every upkeep. So, maybe I could make a transformative sideboard.

For those not familiar with the term, it means that you change your strategy completely by sideboarding. Lets say your opponent saw no creatures in game one. What does he do? He takes out removal, which lets you bring your creatures from the sideboard.

In this case, I’m thinking putting Thassa and her cohorts into the sideboard and bringing in [scryfall]Aetherling[/scryfall] and a bunch of disruption in the form of counters and some bouncespells. That might work.

Standard Rotation 2013, part 3

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Still three weeks to go. Some preliminary lists. Still missing sideboards, but I’ll get to them… someday.

[scryfall]Magma Jet[/scryfall] and Red

A great addition to a low curve RDW. Granted, its costlier than a [scryfall]Shock[/scryfall], but the card selection is great for keeping the momentum going. Also probably works in a Big Red.

Like so:

[cardlist title=”Big Red”][Creatures]
4 Stormbreath Dragon
3 Purphoros, God of the Forge
4 Young Pyromancer
2 Ember Swallower
4 Chandra’s Phoenix
[/Creatures]
[Planeswalkers]
3 Chandra, Pyromaster
[/Planeswalkers]
[Other spells]
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
4 Mizzium Mortars
2 Flames of the Firebrand
[/Other spells]
[Land]
4 Mutavault
22 Mountain[/Land][/cardlist]

Not sure about the [scryfall]Ember Swallower[/scryfall]s… or many of the other cards. Maybe [scryfall]Ogre Battledriver[/scryfall] instead.

Finding a good balance between permanents and spells is going to be hard, due to devotion.

Also, some big X spell with [scryfall]Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx[/scryfall] might work. Maybe.

[scryfall]Thoughtseize[/scryfall]

This alone makes me think about a monoblack deck. Back in the day, I played black a lot and a lot of monoblack, even before the glory of [scryfall]Necropotence[/scryfall]. These days I did try out a monoblack standard deck with lots of removal and a few creatures, keeping the game going until I could get a [scryfall]Griselbrand[/scryfall] online. Didn’t really work. I went 2-2 in the local FNM and that was mostly due to playing skills rather than the deck.

Now, we have some tools. [scryfall]Thoughtseize[/scryfall] is good protection for my creatures and there are some good cheap black creatures in M14 and RTR-block. [scryfall]Blood Scrivener[/scryfall] could work, maybe even [scryfall]Lifebane Zombie[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Liliana’s Reaver[/scryfall]… then there’s of course the [scryfall]Desecration Demon[/scryfall]. Curve would be awkward, but I think this might be workable.

[scryfall]Erebos, God of the Dead[/scryfall] seems pretty good, although its in the same part of the curve as pretty much everything else I might want to use.

I’d like to make a list of black and I did try, but I just wasn’t able to make one I liked. There’s just something missing. Maybe I should just lower my bar with removal. Still, black seems like a weak color, even if you can play a sort of suicidish game with plenty of paying life for cards.

[scryfall]Sylvan Caryatid[/scryfall]

I’d prefer [scryfall]Nature’s Lore[/scryfall] or similar, but this little beauty seems great. Ramping into third round four-drop requires a reliable manaproducing two drop. [scryfall]Sylvan Caryatid[/scryfall] fills this spot nicely. Of course, lands are more reliable, especially with [scryfall]Devour Flesh[/scryfall] in the format, but since I don’t think that card will be that big part of the environment I play in, [scryfall]Sylvan Caryatid[/scryfall] will probably be a great blocker as well. I’m personally expecting plenty of fast decks.

[cardlist title=Green Midrange][Creatures]
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Experiment One
4 Sylvan Caryatid
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Deadly Recluse
4 Slaughterhorn
3 Polukranos, World Eater
1 Nylea, God of the Hunt
2 Kalonian Hydra
1 Worldspine Wurm
[/Creatures]
[Planeswalkers]
4 Garruk, Caller of Beasts
[/Planeswalkers]
[Spells]
4 Pit Fight
2 Ranger’s Guile
[/Spells]
[Land]
20 Forest
4 Mutavault
[/Land]
[/cardlist]

I don’t really know about the [scryfall]Worldspine Wurm[/scryfall], but I just couldn’t fight the urge to put one into the deck. At first, it was actually four. I probably won’t ever be able to hardcast one, but that’s what [scryfall]Garruk, Caller of Beasts[/scryfall] is for… On top of being a great card otherwise as well.

Blue Beatdown

No real new cards here, although [scryfall]Master of Waves[/scryfall] seems possible, but on the other hand [scryfall]Curse of the Swine[/scryfall] is probably great. Especially since it can deal with the gods.

[cardlist title=Big Blue]
[Creatures]
4 Judge’s Familiar
4 Cloudfin Raptor
4 Frostburn Weird
4 Omenspeaker
4 Thassa, God of the Sea
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Bident of Thassa
4 Essence Scatter
2 Cyclonic Rift
1 Curse of the Swine
2 Aetherize
2 Opportunity
4 Quicken
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Mutavault
19 Island
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]

I’d like to get this to work. Not sure I can. Too little devotion to go around. Hopefully we’ll get something to help here.

Well, [scryfall]Quicken[/scryfall] might not be what I’m looking for, just because there aren’t any sorceries in the deck. I just wanted a cantrip in there, and that was the best one I could find. I’ll probably change that when I come up with a good substitute. Maybe even limited staples [scryfall]Stealer of Secrets[/scryfall] or [scryfall]Scroll Thief[/scryfall] would work with [card Thassa, God of the Sea]Thassa[/scryfall] and [card Bident of Thassa]Bident[/scryfall].

Games and Language

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A guildmember posted this survey on vocabulary our IRC channel recently: TestYourVocab. My results: http://testyourvocab.com/result?user=2985045.

If you read the whole thing, including the linked information, you’ll see that’s pretty damn good. Better than most native speakers and much, much better than non-natives. But I’m not alone. The results I’ve seen from other guildmembers seem to indicate that they too have pretty extensive vocabularies. Not necessarily as extensive as mine, but definitely noticeably better than most non-natives and on par with native speakers.

Where does this stem from?

I have the added advantage of having worked in the academia, but I believe a major contributor to my vocabulary is my gaming hobby. Many of the words in the survey are terms used in games. Not all, but many.

Now, although vocabulary doesn’t equal intelligence, there is some correlation. If you build something, you are going to be able to do it better, if you have the proper tools. In thinking, concepts are the tools we use. These concepts are then abtracted into words, which work as shortcuts in our thinking (see this post from Saturday).

The more of these shortcuts (or tools) we have, the more efficient our thinking becomes.