Category Archives: Magic: The Gathering

Creating a Story from a Series of Random Events

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If you’re here for RPG-content and this might seem like an MtG article, just hang on. I’ll get there.

MtG is a game of high variance, but they also have a professional circuit, actually mostly run by Wizards of the Coast itself. Since the early days Brian David-Marshall is a commentator for their professional events and also the “Pro Tour historian”. Since early days, he has been a proponent of telling stories in these events.

Now, a professional player can be very good and still perform very poorly just because of bad luck. On the other hand, sometimes great stories just emerge. For example, just yesterday and today, there was a great one.

Reid Duke is a young professional player. He’s maybe 22 or something like that. Last year, he made it into the Player’s Championship (renamed World Championship this year), an invitational tournament with the top 16 players of the last season. He earned his invite by winning the online championship, but came in 16th at the invitational.

He was heartbroken. He went back to the hotel and went through all the things that went wrong. There’s a list which his testing partner last year, Owen Turtenwald, tweeted for everyone to see.

Reid Duke's cathartic list

Then Duke went on to earn himself an invitation again this year, this time by grinding through events, earning points here and there. He had a great year and definitely had learned over the year. After two days worth of matches, his record is 9-3, best on the field, going into the Sunday’s finals as the number one seat. We’ll how this story continues.

The key here is that Wizards has been tweaking their system over the years to let results like these happen. They are in a bad spot. They need stars for people to relate to, but the nature of the game is such, that they are hard to produce. Even the best players ever have win percentage of around 60% on Pro Tours. They do their best to keep the best on the “gravy train”, while they try to keep the door open to the younger newcomers. They do this by giving benefits to the best players, but anyone doing well enough at one Pro Tour has a chance to “get on the train”.

By understanding all the things that go on here, they have managed to make stars and they manage to form stories (sometimes good ones, sometimes not so much) at each event.

So, how does all this relate to GMing? This is what a good GM does. Many think good GMing is about making exact plans, predicting every angle players might be taking, picking the right music, maybe even dressing the part. No. Forget about that. If that is your thing, consider writing books, or making movies. A good game is the product of player interaction with some guidance and direction from the GM.

The most important skill, therefore, is identifying the things players have introduced, which will lead to other great things, and foster them, but leaving enough room for new ideas and possibilities. Those great stories will emerge.

You’re dealing with very random elements (dice, the players), but that’s an opportunity, not a risk. By stifling players, you risk losing all their creative input and thus selling the opportunities for comfort.

Guild Redemund M14 Core Set Sealed Report

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Just returned from a tournament victorious. Nothing big. Just a sealed tournament between people from this our guild. Its more or less a tradition when a new set comes out. I get a box of boosters and we play. It was close. One player had a same record as me and if a third player would have won his last game, I would have been third (out of six).

What was the secret of my success? Did I read through strategy guides and research possible archetypes? Did I plan my curve out perfectly and dig out every possible beneficial interaction between my cards?

Well, no. I had a [scryfall]Rise of the Dark Realms[/scryfall] and that was all I needed.

Admittedly, I had some great synergies within my deck. Besides the Rise, I had a [scryfall]Liliana’s Reaver[/scryfall], [scryfall]Doom Blade[/scryfall], [scryfall]Festering Newt[/scryfall], [scryfall]Quag Sickness[/scryfall] and so forth. As great as these were, the cards that did most work were [scryfall]Gnawing Zombie[/scryfall] and the true MVP of my deck, [scryfall]Blood Bairn[/scryfall]. Child labor for the win.

Why was Blood Bairn so good? If you’ve played the format, you might not be asking this. To me this was obvious: The majority of removal I saw were enchantments, such as [scryfall]Pacifism[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Claustrophobia[/scryfall]. With Blood Bairn (and Gnawing Zombie and the very underrated [scryfall]Altar’s Reap[/scryfall]), those creatures weren’t just lost. I could still use them to my advantage.

[scryfall]Molten Birth[/scryfall] sealed red as my secondary color. [scryfall]Shivan Dragon[/scryfall] helped too. Some removal and enchantments topped off the deck, which I liked very much.

List:
10 [scryfall]Swamps[/scryfall]
7 [scryfall]Mountains[/scryfall]

1 [scryfall]Accursed Spirit[/scryfall]
2 [scryfall]Blood Bairn[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Child of Night[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Deathgaze Cockatrice[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Festering Newt[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Goblin Shortcutter[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Gnawing Zombie[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Liliana’s Reaver[/scryfall]
2 [scryfall]Nightwing Shade[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Shivan Dragon[/scryfall]

2 [scryfall]Altar’s Reap[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Chandra’s Outrage[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Doom Blade[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Fireshrieker[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Haunted Plate Mail[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Lightning Talons[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Molten Birth[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Quag Sickness[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Rise of the Dark Realms[/scryfall]
1 [scryfall]Vile Rebirth[/scryfall]

The deck included all black cards in my pool, except for one [scryfall]Shadowborn Apostle[/scryfall]. I didn’t really sideboard anything. I did have some leeway with the red, but the only change was that at some point [scryfall]Dragon Hatchling[/scryfall] was in my deck, but I already had three other flying creature I could pump, so decided not to use it.

The curve is pretty good. [scryfall]Tenacious Dead[/scryfall] or a [scryfall]Young Pyromancer[/scryfall] would have made this absolutely insane, but this was fun and effective enough as it was.

I asked the other players for their favorite cards in their decks (mine being the Blood Bairn, which I adored).

Mikko, who came in second with the same record I had, liked his [scryfall]Ogre Battledriver[/scryfall]. As a self-admitted Timmy-player, Mikko probably enjoyed the way the Battledriver changes the game.

Henkka said he didn’t want to choose between his [scryfall]Young Pyromancer[/scryfall]s and [scryfall]Primeval Bounty[/scryfall]. Since my only match loss was to Henkka, I could see why he liked the Pyromancers. They just shut my bigger attackers down. I only saw Primeval Bounty in action for a second, but it seemed to do its job just fine.

Teemu said [scryfall]Woodborn Behemoth[/scryfall]. Since the games had a tendency to stall, seeing it as an 8/8 trampler was probably more common than the smaller form.

Timo said [scryfall]Banisher Priest[/scryfall]. Again, understandable. With all the slivers running around, Pacifisms and Claustrophobias just aren’t enough. Banisher Priest can at least remove the card from the game, where it isn’t giving whatever its giving to all the other slivers.

I didn’t get an answer form Peetu yet. Maybe I’ll add it into comments.

RopeCon 2013, part Sunday (MustaJumala)

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Ah, Sunday… Breakfast was mediocre again. I guess bacon tastes pretty good, even if it isn’t crisp, but there’s just this idea in the back of your head that it might not be edible, even though it clearly is cooked. I was thinking about going to a lecture, but turns out one of our party wasn’t feeling well for some peculiar reason, so I took over his GMing slot at the last minute (actually about 15 to 20 minutes late, but anyhow). The lecture was shit anyhow, according to Lauri, if we were talking about the same thing.

Again With the Quiet,
or
A Year of Religious Schism

The game I ran was the same game I participated in on Friday, The Quiet Year. This why I questioned the replayability. Yes, many things were very different, but often there were similar patterns, because the cards often take you into the same direction.

Not to fault the players. They were very patient with the hassle in the beginning and despite the cards pulling them into the same direction as the last group, they kept it interesting. Less fantastical, even with mutant dogs and dwarves living under a mountain kidnapping our kids, but still, less fantastical than the kraken. Again, religion had a major influence on the game. Throughout the year, the animistic and the Christian elements of the community fought over everything, but in the end, the animists slaughtered all the Christians, despite their own inner conflict between their leading figures known simply as the High Shaman and the Ugly Shawoman.

All in all, somewhat less raucous then the Friday game, but no less enjoyable, with a somewhat more coherent plot. Either way is fine and in both games people did seemed to learn during the game that although the community would fight for their survival the best they can, we as players shouldn’t be bothered about their survival, because they’ll just die in the end any how.

The Sealed Deck Challenge,
or
The Big Mess

While I was running the game, my friends had decided to get some booster packs of M14 and play a sealed game. Actually, one of them was sleeping on the lawn in front of the building where all this was happening. Poromagia was selling packs at a discounted price, so why not join them. Buying packs is generally not advisable, but playing limited (draft or sealed) is good value.

Not really knowing anything about possible archetypes in the format, I felt I had a weak pool. I went for a strategy of keeping the opponent at bay with plenty of green blockers on the battlefield and a few white fliers with some enchantments to back them up. Nice, in theory. I just didn’t draw any of the flier in any of the three games I played.

First game was a disaster for me. I had a pretty poor opening hand, with only a [scryfall]Gladecover Scout[/scryfall], some things to throw on it and land. Then things got worse, as I only drew land for the rest of the not very long game. I took out some of the manafixing, which I had left mistakenly, as I dropped my third color late in the process, and went back in.

Now, my opponent was completely manascrewed. He had two plains on the table, which let him slow me down considerably with three [scryfall]Pacifism[/scryfall]s. Still, it might have been slow, but my win was inevitable. Turned out my opponent had messed his mana and didn’t actually have much of it in his deck.

Well, after two disastrous games, the third one seemed to stall. Neither of us really got anywhere. This is the problem with sealed. I didn’t get any very good bombs (some pretty good ones, though), so I couldn’t really finish the game without grinding my opponent down with small steps. He, on the other hand, had a [scryfall]Millstone[/scryfall]. I did manage to win after his patience dried out.

That was the only match I played, as my ride was leaving.

Final Words

I had fun. The real hero of the Con was probably Buried without Ceremony, the company behind both The Quiet Year and MonsterHearts, but I feel I got pretty lucky with the games I played and the people I played with.

Hint: Avoid fantasy games, if you want good roleplay. I went to the Barbarians of Lemuria game only because I knew the GM and have trust in his ablities. Otherwise, just stay away from them.

The Beauty of Monocolored Decks

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Last weekend, during the Star City Games Standard Open (a professional MtG-tournament), there was a monogreen deck in the semifinals. Since there are a lot of great players in these tournaments, this is not insignificant.

You don’t often see monocolored decks in major tournaments. They are just so limited in their functionality. Since every color has its weaknesses, no color is good enough to have answers for everything (well, blue, maybe). Therefore, it only makes sense to play multiple colors in a tournament. After all, if you are going to try and win in a major tournament, you will face many different kinds of decks and although luck and skill are always factors, you can’t really rely on them. Going 15 rounds with room for only one or two match losses, you need to be able to answer a lot of things.

… or you need to find something others can’t answer.

Playing monocolored decks means digging deeper into the card pool than normal. How often do you see a [scryfall]Predator Ooze[/scryfall] in a tournament deck? Its a great card, but it requires three green mana, which is just too much for most decks. On the other hand, it can win games on its own. If your opponent doesn’t happen to have one of the few cards which can deal with it. (Actually, they are plentiful, but only a handful actually get any play.)

So, a monocolored deck can win. At least if the meta is right. My best result (4-0) in my new MtG-tournament career (limited to FNMs, Prereleases and Game Days at this point) was actually with a monogreen deck. Its also largely based on Predator Ooze, but with more creatures. With [scryfall]Rancor[/scryfall] on it, many decks are just helpless. Again, not all, but many.

So, personally I just prefer monocolored decks. In some ways, this is rationalizing something I was doing already for financial reasons (the manabase is often the costliest part of the deck), but I’ve also found that I enjoy the challenge. Finding enough playables in one color in a limited pool of cards is hard. So I do it for fun. I generally can’t win the best players around or the best deck(s) in the tournament, but I do have a win percentage pretty close to 50%. Since I don’t consider myself a great player, the deck has to do some of the work. So they can’t be that bad.

I’ve also played a monowhite humans deck with [scryfall]Boros Reckoner[/scryfall]s and [scryfall]Sublime Archangel[/scryfall]s, and a monored blitz deck to pretty good results.

Of course, these examples are all very aggressive decks. Sadly, this is the way it has to be. Since control decks need a lot of answers, they need a lot of colors (at least right now, in the past there have been great monoblack and monoblue control decks), whereas aggro just needs to be fast and not vulnerable to some random card like [scryfall]Augur of Bolas[/scryfall] and to dodge the midrange decks.

So, basically, if you want to win, don’t use a monocolored deck.

Zombies vs. Vampires

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Today, its the Vorthos in me talking.

Wizards is working on each color having their own “iconic” creatures. They have two approaches: tribes and big mythics. For the big ones, dragon for red is the oldest of these, but angels for white and demons for black have been around for a very long time. Lately, blue has been getting sphinxes and apparently, green is going to be getting hydras for a while now (which is fine with Theros coming up, but I don’t like them long term, unless they find new design space for them – which they probably will, my trust in MaRo is very high). For the tribes, red has had goblins since the beginning, green has had the elves, blue has merfolk, even if they sometimes disappear for lack of water, white has humans and black has zombies.

Well, apparently, black used to have zombies. Its not definite, but vampires are moving in. Now, I don’t really mind vampires. They are cool, if done right (note: not like they have been in different media recently, in MtG, they have been generally done right), but to me, they are better if they are kept special.

In Magic 2014, there are two common zombies (Minotaur Abomination and Zombie Minotaur, creatures closely related to each other) and two common vampires (Blood Bairn and Child of Night). All in all, zombies still win (five to four), but previously vampires were only seen here and there.

For me, Vampires shouldn’t be common. They should be rare. Maybe in some sets, such as Innistrad, where vampires are rampant, you can have a bunch of common vampires, but this isn’t supposed to be a poorly thought-out version of World of Darkness. I’d much rather have just Olivia Voldaren and Falkenrath Noble to show how vampires are powerful beings, who can completely take over the game.

Zombies, on the other hand, can very well be common. They have a tendency to proliferate and once the zombie infestation gets going, they are everywhere. At least that’s how zombies are perceived now.

Of course, it is possible that Wizards had a couple of abilities they wanted on the common level for black. These abilities just happened to feel vampiric, so they just put those abilities on vampires. Child of Night has been printed three times before anyway and Blood Bairn isn’t really new ground either, although it is a new card. Black does have access to plenty of things, which definitely aren’t ‘zombie’, so I guess there’s just a need for the vampires from a creative point of view.

Team Unified Standard

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The World Magic Cup (WMC) is just around the corner. For those who don’t know, its an annual competition between national teams. One team member (the captain) is the player in the country with most professional points. The other members are selected through World Magic Cup Qualifiers (WMCQ).

Of course team competition in a game designed to be played one-on-one is problematic. Last year they brought in the team sealed format where the teams receives twelve booster packs to put together three decks. There the team really does matter, even if the members play the matches as individuals. This year, they are bringing in a new team format: team standard.

Team standard is a format where you make standard decks, but you can only have four copies of a card between all three decks. All in all, an interesting idea, which I personally find appealing. Then again, I play monocolored decks in standard. This is just a personal preferance and is partly a budgetary issue. The deck I currently play looks pretty much like a monogreen Innistrad Block deck with full sets of Predator Oozes, Ulvenwald Trackers, Wolfir Avengers, Strangleroot Geists and Wolfir Avengers. So, for me, this is easy. Than again, I’m not the one playing in this event and for the team, I’d probably have to forget my personal inclinations.

However, since there is a limited number of cards which are considered worthy of using as a base for your deck, there are going to be clashes. I’d especially worry about dual lands. That would mean, no two decks can share more than one color. Clinging to this, most problems can be avoided.

I haven’t done the math and I’m not very familiar with all the archtypes currently played in the format, but seems to me that in a field where three color decks rule, finding the place where three players can comfortably play decks they want is not going to be easy.

The format in the WMCQ was standard. Obviously, this is a fine format when you want people who can play standard and know the card pool. However, being able to play standard is far from being able to do the preparations necessary for the team version. Why do we have WMCQs if they are not the way to choose the right people?

Of course, testing deck design skill is very hard. You’d have to have a set of cards not available before the event itself. Netdecking rules. If I was organizing this event, I’d be afraid people would too often come to the same conclusions, because the easy approach to this is to look at a bunch of good decks and find a combination with no overlaps. Also, because of the method of forming the team, in any country larger than Finland, the team is not going to be familiar with each other, so working together might prove to be too difficult for the purposes of this event.

Of course, some countries do have real professionals, who are experienced at working with teams, as captains. They will probably have a huge advantage. Also, they probably have access to people who can solve problems like this.

Or maybe [scryfall]Burning Earth[/scryfall] just changes the face of the format completely and everyone just plays monocolored decks.

Sorcery Speed and Other Subtle Teaching Tools

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For clarity: When I’m talking about discard in this context, I’m talking about effects where the target makes the selection, such as Disrupting Scepter, Raven’s Crime and such.

Ever wondered why discard is generally sorcery-speed? There are some exceptions (such as a couple of charms), but this seems to be the rule. It probably started as a safeguard back in the day, but the rule has remained.

Think about it this way: In most cases, you are better off using it on your turn, when the opponent has less choices. Assuming your opponent has four cards in hand. One of them is the worst card. If you let your opponent draw another card, that might be the worst card and he will discard that. If it’s better than the worst card, you’ve gained nothing. Only your opponent has something to gain here.

Of course, if your opponent has no cards in hand, it would be better to force him to discard during the draw phase, since that would deprive your opponent of his only card for the round, but that would be both unfun and it’s a not a common situation anyway.

I’m not saying discard effects are better at sorcery speed than they would be at instant speed. What I’m saying is that keeping these effects at sorcery speed helps newer players. Seems to me, this is not the only place where Wizards tries to help newer players.

Let’s take exalted, a mechanism most recently seen in M13. It’s not the best mechanism for this, but it encourages attacking. A problem with many less experienced players is that they will often play as defensively as possible. Perhaps they’ve seen a haste-creature once or twice and are willing to exchange doing a few points of damage to possibly evade a few points themselves. But exalted says, maybe you aren’t willing to go all out, but at least this one creature should attack. After all, most decks can’t win without being proactive. Although exalted doesn’t really change that much, it has a psychological effect which might make a difference for those who are not accustomed to thinking ahead and planning ahead to victory.

Of course, at some point, this kind of strong-arming into playing well becomes unnecessary, but I’m willing to bet most players have never thought about why using discard is better during your own turn. On the other hand, once you learn to attack, you’ll never go back (says the aggro-player in me).

Comments on LSV’s EDH Deck

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As of this writing Luis Scott-Vargas has 356 lifetime Pro Points (all-time 13th) and 43148 Planeswalker Points (all time 27th). He’s pretty much a shoe-in for the Pro Tour Hall of Fame this year, although his career is still in full swing with Platinum status. Some are predicting a 100% of the vote for him, but that is impossible, since the rules don’t allow him to vote himself. He is probably the best known of the current generation of pro players.

I have 140 lifetime Planeswalker Points.

… but this is the Internet, so I am going to criticize the deck of this legendary player.

Just to clarify: Obviously analyzing the work of someone else, who is clearly better than me, can only help my game and deck design. However, I probably do play EDH or Commander more than LSV does, so I might have (probably not) more insight into the format. Also, deck design is always impacted by meta, so anything I’m about to say might sound really stupid in some other context.

So, recently, LSV took over the Daily Decklist column on Daily MtG. His third list was his EDH deck, commanded by Dralnu, Lich Lord. You can find the full list either from the original source or my copy of the list on TappedOut for different and more interactive formatting.

I was really interested in his deck. It was the first EDH-deck from a pro-player of his stature I’d seen. Also, I really like the colors. I’m a fan of black and blue definitely holds possibilities that always intrigue me. Although I don’t really enjoy any of the “Dimir” commanders that much, with the exception of the very different Grimgrin, Dralnu is one I’ve been looking into myself lately. So, good job, Mr. Scott-Vargas. You had the full attention of at least one reader.

LSV clearly doesn’t subscribe to the idea of going big, which is often a guiding (and also often misguided) principle of EDH deck building. His deck isn’t completely devoid of big creatures, but there doesn’t seem to be those big splashy effects most EDH-players so thoroughly enjoy. He isn’t completely against drawing hate with cards like Memnarch, but even our favorite artifact wizard isn’t that fast.

Neither does he subscribe to the idea of staples. His deck does indeed include a Sol Ring, Strip Mine and a Wasteland, but that’s it for the general colorless package many players include automatically in their decks, including cards like Solemn Simulacrum, Lighning Greaves and Skullclamp.

Most puzzlingly, he uses cards, which would be deemed unplayable in EDH by most. Duress is cheap in mana, but exchanging a card for a single discard and some intelligence seems like a waste. Of course, with Dralnu, you can play it twice, thus messing with a combo. Remand seems like a strange decision. It is a great tempo card, but that kind of tempo advantage isn’t that important in EDH. At least I don’t think so. Of course, with the aforementioned Duress, you can get rid of the card, but that seems too narrow and unlikely. There might be some synergy with other cards I don’t quite see, or perhaps the low casting cost is the key. On the same note, Mana Leak seems very situational. Often opponents will have the three mana available.

On the other hand, he does have some cards in there which I wouldn’t have thought of, such as Mizzium Skin. I sort of knew the card existed, since I did a RtR-draft or two, but I didn’t really think to put it in a deck. It wasn’t even on my radar. It seems like a fine fit into a Dralnu-deck, although I don’t see that much direct damage in our meta.

There are some other cards, which must also be meta-based decisions, such as Triskelion and Ribbons of Night. They don’t seem to fit. Triskelion is a really good comboengine, but I don’t see any cards with that much synergy with it. Obviously, if the meta is such that small creatures are plentiful, these might be great cards.

Only one enchantment. This I fully endorse. In a format where plenty of players play enchantments, hating on them is also popular. Why draw the hate when you can let other players squander resources on each other?

Of course, I’m probably just overthinking the whole thing. Best clue: no Go for the Throat, which could be helpful with Dralnu, but the deck does include both Doom Blade and Terror, which can’t kill Dralnu if needed. All in all, I’m pretty sure this deck wasn’t a result of years of fine tuning. Based on what I’ve seen on some of his draft videos, he does often go for the cards he sees as fun to play. I especially remember his discussion with Ben Stark on the validity of picking Blast of Genius over pretty much anything, but he held to his guns, because Blast of Genius is entertaining and then picked it twice.

You can see LSV enjoys drawing and card selection. Who doesn’t? But again, he seems to be missing EDH-staples, such as Flow of Ideas and Recurring Insight, settling for cheaper cards with less variance. Of course this works very well with Dralnu.

That said, the deck is sorely missing High Market, Phyrexian Tower, Altar’s Reap…

In the end, I enjoy black more than blue, so my approach to Dralnu will probably be somewhat different with emphasis on cards like River Kelpie and Secrets of the Dead which give me just a little more bang for my buck with Dralnu and probably more toolboxing with plenty of tutoring.