Sunday March 7th, 2010

• MTGOAcademy — Best of Classified I — A humorous look at some funny posts on the MTGO Classifieds.
• MagicDeckVortex — Historical Deck Database — Not strictly an article, it’s an update. But if you are seeking deckbuilding inspiration, this list is a good place to start.
• Antonio Castellani — 7th Place at San Juan PTQ — A look at an interesting rogue Extended deck. I may not recommend the deck but it is an interesting idea.
• Turtle Power — BigHeadJoe discusses a deck around MaRo’s Convertible Turtle (Calcite Snapper)

Monday, March 8th, 2010

• XMTG — Unifying Theory #4
• Wizards — Party in the S.E.A. — Dave Guskin shares tales from his experience on Magic Cruise 2
• SCG — Nicol Bolas in Extended: Introducing Ultimecia — Gavin Verhey ultimated Nicol Bolas seven times as his last PTQ. Check out the deck that did it.

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

• ManaNation — Layer 1/layer 2 with a kick! — Ben McDole returns with discussion on his Layer 1/layer 2 deck
• ManaNation — More than one way to play — Dale discusses the Emperor Multiplayer format for Magic
• Wizards — Islandwalk or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Forgive the Counterspell — Adam Stryborski (@the_stybs) discusses how he overcame his revulsion of Blue in Magic.
• ChannelFireball — Crushing with Koros — Gerry T shares his Koros deck that came to light at the Midwest Master’s Series

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

• ManaNation — Multiplayer — Dan Eckstein explores the archetypes of multiplayer personalities and roles players take-on at the table.
• ManaNation — The Price of Standard: Part 3 — Russell Tassicker looks at the price for three top tier Standard decks
• T:apped — D:oomed
• SCG — The Extra Mile — Alex West discusses taking care of yourself for peak performance at events
• Powerless: a Mana on a Mission — Jonathan Medina explains his plan and mission to acquire Power. An entertaining read from a master trader.

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

• ManaNation — Jund vs Mythic, Jund Perspective — Lauren Lee sat down and playtested with Zvi Mowshowitz on the Mythic vs Jund matchup
• ManaNation — The Allure of Shiny Things — Kelly reid explores the draw of some Foil cards, what causes them to be such a valued commodity
• XMTG — 10 Places Not to Play Magic
• Wizards — Awakenings, Part 1 — The latest web comic follows Jace as he ventures into the mountains. While I was extrenely underwhelmed by the art, the story is interesting.
• SCG — Now and Then — Peter Jahn discusses how things used to be and where Magic has traveled from.
• ChannelFireball — Triggering Valakut for Fun and Profit — Fffreak aka Brad Nelson looks over Valakut and shares a few lists
• TCGPlayer — Koros and Grim Control — Josh Silvestri discusses the Koros deck and looks at Grim Control.

Friday, March 12th, 2010

• ManaNation — Planeswalker’s Spark — A fictionalized look at the Planeswalker’s spark.
• SCG — Pro tour San Diego Report Card Part One — Rich Hagon’s numbers analysis was interesting, while no real strategy for in game can be drawn from it I still enjoyed the read.
• TCGPlayer — A Tale of Two Halves — Conley Woods gives us some insight into a few decks, from ‘The Bant Wagon’ to ‘Denial Ramp’

Random

Magic History summarized — From a forum post on the Gathering Magic forums, it’s an excellent overview of the history within the game of Magic.

No! Stay here! I have need of you.

Slightly frightened by his powerful command, you turn back to the old man’s desk and sit on the obscured symbol etched into the rug. Hoping the old man just wants your help with another book, you silently wait for him to finish.

After what seems like hours, you chance a quick glance at the old man. His brow is creased with concentration, and his eyes move intently across the pages faster than a horse frightened by a mountain cat. You decide it may be a while, and begin to watch the candle flames dance atop their pedestals of wax.

Have you come for another story? I caution you against curiosity. I know the Multiverse is a tempting place filled with many kinds of adventures and adventurers, but don’t be getting ideas in that small head of yours. Without a spark, or one with it to aid you, you will never see anything beyond your own world.

You remain silent out of fear that the old man will take words as confirmation that you would believe his fatuous stories.

Ahh….The spark! How wondrous and rare it is. Did you know that among millions of beings, only one is born with a planeswalker’s spark? Even more miraculous, among millions of those born with a spark, only one will have it ignite sending them down a path of unlimited possibilities.

The old man’s eyes light up as he begins talking excitedly.

Any sentient being can have the spark, and not even know it. A minotaur, an elf, a dragon, even the boy who cleans the lanterns in the hall could have a planeswalker spark ignite and send him to new worlds. No one knows where the spark comes from. Some say it is bestowed upon those chosen as Gaea’s children. Others say that the spark is a small piece of the Blind Eternities through which everything is connected. Even others refuse to believe that there is an explanation, stating that it is chaotic and cannot be explained in such a way that sentient beings would understand.

Though very few people meet a person with a planeswalker’s spark in their lifetime, even less see the ascension of a planeswalker. The event is one you could never forget, watching a mere mortal come face to face with their greatest enemy, and survive to become something even more powerful, something beyond a mere wizard or mage could ever hope to reach. Unlike the most powerful sorcerers, planeswalkers are able to travel across worlds with a thought, conjure immense energy from nothing and unleash it in a fiery blast, and even summon creatures from other worlds to fight for their cause.

Though his eyes still hold a bright flame within, the old man’s voice grows slower and quieter.

Ahh, but times have changed. There was a time when planeswalkers were gods among the people. They didn’t require sleep nor food nor air to live. In fact, some even survived without bodies for many years. Over time, the Multiverse became unable to support these deities. During a period known as the Mending many planeswalkers sacrificed their sparks and lives to restore balance to the Multiverse.

In doing so, they altered the very nature of a planeswalker’s spark. They are no longer god-like beings, but require all the things you and I do in our daily lives. They are still beyond anything a mere wizard could achieve, but they are no longer immortals playing with the fabric of time and space.

Issar Roon’s body bends over the desk, causing him to look more like an old man than his usual fiery self.

Of course, there are those who believe the change is not permanent. Some planeswalkers seek their former glory among the planes, searching for some ancient power or artifact that can restore their immortality. Personally, I think they search in vain. The Multiverse now belongs to the younger planeswalkers, the ones who have only recently ascended to a position of possibility. They are the ones who will shape our future, and lead us down a path of their choosing. I just pray they take us to brighter days…

The old man stops his story and stares at nothing. His face is expressionless, but his eyes seem to focus on something in a distant dream. You wonder what use the old man had for you, and if you can fulfill it at another time when he is more aware of his surroundings. Slowly, you get up to leave. When the old man fails to react, you make your way out of the study, only pausing long enough to close the door behind you.

Card: Anything from 7th Edition
Motivation: These were the only core set printed in both foil and with the old card frames. In addition, although 7E was white-bordered, the foils were black-bordered. Some 7E cards had new art which can’t be found on any other set. 7E was also opened VERY infrequently.
Pricing: The 7E Birds of Paradise commands a $60 price tag, the Pain Lands are around $10-$15 because of EDH, Arcane Laboratory is in the double digits, City of Brass is $25, Counterspell and Duress are both above $10, as are just about every other playable rare in the set. Most importantly, the lowly Goblin Matron can fetch a $50 bill all day long. You can blame Legacy players pimping out their decks. Infernal Contract, the black card-draw spell, is $25 for the same reasons. Unsurprisingly, Wrath of God is also $50, but you could have guessed that.

Card: Goblin Welder
Motivation: Our dear friends Legacy and Vintage. Welder is a staple in Vintage, where he can recur all manner of horrible monsters.
Pricing: $80, compared to a regular $6. Legacy was the first set to feature foiling, and is sufficiently old enough to make the foils very rare. Most people know about the card and won’t put it into foil bulk boxes, but you may get lucky.

Card: Brainstorm, Mercadian Masques
Motivation: The card is a staple in Eternal, as many on this list will be. Masques was the only set to feature foiling and Brainstorm. Eternal players shy away from the FNM promo because the Masques version looks nicer and is harder to find, this making it “more pimp”.
Pricing: $30 for the Masques, $10 for the FNM promo.

Card: Counterbalance
Motivation: Coldsnap was not opened much, and considered a failure of a set. Oddly enough, two Coldsnap cards are at the center of two dominant decks in two formats. Failure, my ass. Most sets will only leave a legacy of 2–3 cards in tournament Magic, and Coldsnap has done so.
Pricing: $30

Card: Dark Ritual, Mercadian Masques
Motivation: See Brainstorm
Pricing: $30

Card: Lightning Bolt, Judge Promo
Motivation: These Bolts look just like black-bordered Revised/4th Edition Bolts, but with the old-style foiling process. They’re rare, they’re gorgeous, and they’re “vintage” — not in the sense that they’re used in the format, but they’re Standard playable with throw-back art.
Pricing: $30

Card: Memory Jar
Motivation: Insane in Vintage, especially with cards like Welder and Metalworker, Jar can enable some truly ridiculous combos. Like the aforementioned cards, Urza’s Legacy was not opened nearly as much, or as recently, as many other sets.
Pricing: $40. A non-foil only costs $5

Card: Metalworker
Motivation: See Memory Jar.
Pricing: $35

Card: Misdirection
Motivation: This is like another Force of Will in Legacy and Vintage decks. Often able to outright counter a targeted spell, and sometimes able to hijack an Ancestral Recall, the pitch spell is very, very powerful. It was only printed in Masques, thus foil copies remain rare.
Pricing: $60, $15 for a regular version.

Card: Radiant, Archangel
Motivation: .….….? Seriously, why is this expensive? The only reason I can see is for EDH and Casual appeal. Players love angels. Players love Legends. Players love foils. So players must love Legendary Angel Foils. Being from Urza’s Legacy, again, is worth a lot when it comes to foils.
Pricing: $50, and don’t you ask me why.

Card: Reya Dawnbringer, Invasion
Motivation: See above.
Pricing: $50, and at least she’s insane in EDH.

Card: Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Motivation: EDH, EDH, EDH. The guy makes a sick general. Since EDH players usually keep their cards for a long time like Eternal players, they tend to want to foil out their decks, and the General is no exception.
Pricing: $50

Card: Sensei’s Divining Top
Motivation: Just like its cohort Counterbalance, Top is essential to Legacy Counter-Top decks. It would only stand to reason that Top foils appeal to Legacy players.
Pricing: $30 for CHK, $15 for FTVE, $7 for regular

Card: Swords to Plowshares, Old-Style FNM Promo
Motivation: It’s freakin’ StP! You kids these days and your Path to Exile. In my day, we could remove creatures from the game and no one got a free land. Now, you have to give a guy an extra land in order to whack one of his goons.
Pricing: $35, for the old-bordered, old style foil Promo. Looks just like a Revised Plow but foil.

Card: Unmask
Motivation: Similar to Misdirection but less essential to the format, Unmask is a crucial “free” spell in Eternal formats.
Pricing: $35

Card: Wasteland, old-style Player Rewards Promo
Motivation: The card is already a format staple in Legacy, and this is the only way to get one in foil. What, you thought it’d be cheap?
Pricing: Actually, it’s not that bad at $40. Wouldn’t shock me to see this one go up.

There are certainly other expensive foils in Magic, but these are some of the really remarkable ones. It’s clear that the real driving force behind Foil prices are the Eternal formats, including EDH. Many players don’t like to foil out Standard decks since the cards rotate so quickly and decks fall in and out of favor almost weekly. In Legacy, however, decks can stay viable for years, and many of the same staple cards are shared between decks.

If you’re digging through a box of foils, pull out anything that catches your eye. It may not be rocket fuel like the cards on this list, but if they’re inexpensive, it’s often worth a gamble. I personally don’t recommend trading in foils, but there are many, like Jon Medina of MTG Metagame, who are just brilliant at it. If you have the knowledge and time to learn what trades well, and you have a regular outlet for these foils, then by all means, jump right in. They’re not good for newer traders, as the chance to get ripped off or stuck sitting on an expensive card for a while both exist.

With any hope, we’ll have some Rise of the Eldrazi spoilers to discuss soon. I’m not holding my breath but it would be nice to see some more by the end of the month ;)

For testing purposes, we decided to go with Simon Gortzen’s Jund build, which won Pro-Tour San Diego. As witnessed at recent tournaments like the Midwest Masters Series and the ChannelFireball 5K, many players have begun to conform to Gortzen’s build of Jund: more manlands, more lands in general, less removal spells in the maindeck, and Putrid Leech with a couple of mana accelerants.

Jund by Simon Gortzen

4 Savage Lands 4 Verdant Catacombs 4 Raging Ravine 2 Lavaclaw Reaches 2 Dragonskull Summit 1 Rootbound Crag 4 Forest 3 Mountain 3 Swamp 4 Lightning Bolt 2 Rampant Growth 3 Maelstrom Pulse 4 Blightning 2 Garruk Wildspeaker 4 Putrid Leech 4 Sprouting Thrinax 4 Bloodbraid Elf 3 Siege-Gang Commander 3 Broodmate Dragon Sideboard 4 Deathmark 4 Great Sable Stag 1 Maelstrom Pulse 3 Master of the Wild Hunt 1 Pithing Needle 2 Terminate

And the contender, Mythic. I’ve been testing with this deck myself recently, and I find it very fun to play. Although you do have to drop about $600 to fashion it from head-to-toe. This may prevent some players from picking it up. However, the principles behind the deck justify having so many expensive rares.

Mythic by Zvi Mowshowitz

4 Celestial Colonnade 3 Stirring Wildwood 6 Forest 2 Island 1 Plains 4 Misty Rainforest 4 Verdant Catacombs 2 Sunpetal Grove 1 Sejiri Steppe 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Noble Hierarch 4 Rhox War Monk 4 Knight of the Reliquary 3 Rafiq of the Many 4 Baneslayer Angel 1 Thornling 2 Rampaging Baloths 3 Finest Hour Sideboard 2 Admonition Angel 3 Bant Charm 1 Day of Judgment 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 4 Mind Control 3 Negate

Session 1: Ten Pre-Board Games

Gortzen certainly did a number of interesting things with his Jund build, some of which I still find hard to swallow. One of the issues I had was the complete absence of [cardTerminate[/card]s and Bituminous Blasts, while not using the full complement of Maelstrom Pulses (to make up for the resulting lack of removal). Despite the lack of answers to Baneslayer Angel, game one is certainly not unwinnable. The strategy is simply different pre– and post-board.

Game one is a Tempo game. Jund cannot act as the Control player as it simply does not have the resources to deal with all the Problems that Mythic poses. So you can’t just go shooting down creatures willy-nilly. However, if Jund tries to be all-in aggressive, that doesn’t work either, since the Mythic player is clearly in the Beatdown position. The damage it can deal quickly escalates from 3 or 4 to chunks of 8+ at a time.

You basically just end up chump blocking and getting in damage where you can until you can play some Siege-Gang Commanders or Broodmate Dragons and hope that that’s enough. It helps if you also cast a Maelstrom Pulse or two. Because of the lack of relevant spells, Cascading is a really desperate out. The chances of hitting what you need (probably Pulse) are really small.

It’s also important to always pay attention to what’s going on with the lands on the other side of the table. The manlands are always there to enter combat when summoned. Usually there’s at least one or two since the deck runs 7 total. On top of that, if they don’t have Forests or Plains, you know the Knight won’t be able to get activated – you can also try forcing the Knight to switch out the last Forest/Plains for a Sejiri Steppe, if you think that’s profitable.

We also tried the reverse, where Zvi piloted Jund, and I played Mythic. (Another ten games.) To ensure that a difference in play skill wasn’t affecting the results too much. I don’t remember the exact records, but the Jund deck pre-board probably can win around 3 games out of 10 against Mythic. So a pretty subpar record. Going first may have made a difference, but I don’t have the data to prove that.

When do you Bolt the turn-one Mana Dork?

In general, during the pre-board games, I always Bolted the Manadork on Turn one. This ensured that his second turn wouldn’t involve dropping a Rhox War Monk or a Knight of the Reliquary, either of which I probably couldn’t answer. (At least, not without spending my entire turn, and the manadork would likely just throw something else down that would give me more problems.) More problematic is the issue that, if I don’t use Bolt then, there may simply be no other good opportunity to use it.

The post-board games, I did things a bit differently. I preferred leaving the manadork out for a turn, to see what happened. This meant a one-drop led into a three-drop usually. Both of which I could then deal with using a combination of Bolt and Deathmark or something similar. If I had killed the manadork on turn one, this might have led to the opponent simply dishing out another manadork or a Lotus Cobra, which would pose the tougher question: should I kill this or not? By not killing the turn one dork, I could create the situation where I was using removal spells on the more legitimate threats and not wasting it all on manadorks. The game was no longer about slowing the opponent down, just about removing all their problematic creatures until they were left with nothing. (It’s possible that if the Mythic deck has a choice between playing another manadork on turn two and a three-drop, it should just play the second manadork as long as Pulse can’t take out both of them.)

Session 2: Ten Post-Board Games with Mind Controls

Zvi’s current sideboard plan, which he wrote extensively about in his StarCityGames Premium article, against Jund involves boarding in 3–4 Mind Control and removing some number of Finest Hour, Rafiq, or Rhox War Monk. The deck doesn’t have a lot of space for adjustment, so it’s often correct to just shave the numbers a little without removing all copies of a card.

Mostly the deck remained the same except for the added 4 Mind Controls.

However, the Jund deck changes entirely. Using Gortzen’s sideboard…

The number of answers to large creatures suddenly goes from 3 to 10, not including creature-based removal like Siege-Gang or Master.

Is the removal of Rampant Growth correct? Personally, I don’t think it’s one of those cards you never board out anyway. You probably board them out fairly often. In this particular matchup, I’m in no particular hurry to find my lands – I still have 27 of them to draw, and they’ll come eventually. I don’t have to play Bloodbraid Elf on turn 3, and I don’t need to ensure Siege-Gang drops on turn 5. Time is on my side now. And whiffing on a Cascade is very dangerous.

I left a couple Cascade “Whiffs” in the deck – namely the two Sprouting Thrinax. But Thrinax isn’t that terrible in the matchup since it provides a bunch of chump blockers.

Post-board, the games were more in my favor (it’s possible I could’ve mulliganed more aggressively into removal-heavy hands to make it more favorable). Anyway, ten hard removal spells is generally enough to control the board to a comfortable point. To be conservative with removal, I usually never touched Rhox War Monk. Although this netted him lots of life and time of his own. There was one time I had Broodmate Dragon out and didn’t leave one back to block, letting him continue to swing in with War Monks. This was a mistake since I was no longer dealing any real damage with my Dragons.

Master of the Wild Hunt also was a card that, when it got going, basically won the game by itself, if he didn’t have the Mind Control. If he did have Mind Control, I would need to find a Pulse to get it back or a way to kill it. Either way, the card itself proved to be a lot of trouble for the Mythic deck since generally it didn’t have an answer.

Session 3: Ten Post-Board Games with Alternative Sideboard

The alternative sideboard plan included using less Mind Controls and instead using threats that were inherently hard to deal with for Jund, like Thornling and Sphinx of Jwar Isle.

This made games a little more challenging, since Sphinx and Thornling were probably just game over if they landed. I simply had to try a little harder to keep the mana difficult and apply pressure. Or use Blightnings. This plan definitely seemed to even the matches up more.

For these games, I tried using Malakir over Master of the Wild Hunt because people tend to have one or the other, not both. Sphinx is interesting in that it gets around both Malakir and Master. Arguably Thornling can as well. I was happier with Masters, but Malakirs weren’t shabby.

Conclusion

Zvi came to the conclusion that the deck could probably just give up a couple slots in the mainboard to improve the Jund games (by maindecking Thornling or Sphinx). And if there were a tournament tomorrow, he’d probably still bring the Mythic deck since its matchup against Jund is winnable. Especially if people trended to Simon Gortzen’s build, which they are clearly doing.

As for myself, I still have to say Jund seems favored – even though game ones are terrible. As long as my opponents aren’t all Zvi Mowshowitz, I think winning against “average” Mythic players is probably a lot easier. (Besides that, I would not go into a tournament copying Gortzen’s build anyway.) After all that, 40 games in total, I am more familiar with the matchup and can just try to outplay my opponent and his or her sideboard plans.

That being said, the Mythic deck is a lot of fun to play and since I have it built, I might as well give it a whirl. The matchup against Jund is not nearly as bad as people are making it out to be, as long as you play well and know what’s important. I don’t even think the matchup against Boss Naya is all that bad either. Since the sideboard can easily answer the Cunning Sparkmage combo. And after that, all of Mythic’s creatures outclass the Naya deck.

I had a lot of fun testing the matchup. We concluded many things, but some questions are left in the air. Perhaps I can answer them in a future writeup. And hopefully I can test more using the Mythic deck myself, to see what its stance is in today’s metagame.

White Weenie

White Weenie is one of the most persistent archetypes in Magic for the simple reason that Wizards keep printing cheap, efficient white creatures. White Knight is the best example, first printed in Alpha and still playable today. White Weenie is rarely a tier-1 deck in standard as usually it has a lot of trouble with board sweepers, however the lack of sweepers played in standard at the moment and the particular strength of certain white Grizzly Bears against Jund has launched the deck into real contention.

Craig Wescoe’s top-8 deck is tailored to beat Jund, which is a fair strategy in the current standard metagame. White Knight and Kor Firewalker are the key to this plan as they require different answers – White Knight can’t be killed by Pulse, Terminate or Bituminous Blast while Firewalker can’t be killed by Terminate, Blast or Lightning Bolt. In addition Jund’s creature selection while high on raw power is very poor against Craig’s prot-bears. It’s hard to imagine a situation where Jund is happy attacking into either Knight or Firewalker, especially when white can use Stoneforge Mystics to tutor up Basilisk Collar. It is very possible for Bloodbraid Elf to cascade into a useless removal spell against whatever blocker the white deck is presenting.

Despite this focus against the largest metagame presence, Craig’s deck still has a decent amount of power against the field. Steppe Lynx and Skyfisher can rapidly knock down the opponent’s life total, especially when carrying some power-boosting equipment. Late game Elspeth gives you a great advantage in a topdeck war as she can single-handedly win the game. The major problem for the deck will be Malakir Bloodwitch, already heavily played in Vampires and occasionally in Jund. Craig chose a full four Dread Statuary maindeck to try and mitigate this problem as either they trade with your land (when you already have enough mana to play any spell in your deck) which lets you get in with your white creatures or they let you get through for 4. Statuaries also work well with the two maindeck Day of Judgments.

The deck is moderately expensive compared to the field, coming in well above Jund but much less than any of the GWx decks. Budgetizing the deck is not out of the question – Elspeth is the major expense, and she is not crucial to the deck’s game plan. @parakkum on twitter suggested Marshal’s Anthem as a budget alternative for filling the same role and I think it is definitely a reasonable swap. Late game, getting back one or two guys and antheming your team will be very hard to beat. The second big cost in the deck is the fetchlands and unfortunately they are important. Steppe Lynx is one of the strongest creatures available in the early game but despite being a common it comes with a lot of baggage. If you find a viable alternative for Steppe Lynx you could get the deck down to around $150, but I think the deck will be much weaker for it.

Mythic

GWx decks seem to be everywhere these days, between Naya, GWB (or ‘Junk’) and Bant they have every combination covered. They are all built around the same core or Noble Hierarch, Knight of the Reliquary, and Stirring Wildwood and somehow manage to be distinct decks. Zvi’s choice for San Diego was in Bant colours though it was quite different from most builds.

The distinct features of this deck are the threat density and the surfeit of mana generating cards. With 18 big creatures and 7 manlands, Mythic can overwhelm the opponent’s limited removal cards and sticking even one of Baneslayer Angel, Thornling, Rafiq or so on puts you way ahead against mediocre creatures like Kor Firewalker or Sprouting Thrinax. As well as this the Finest Hour and Rafiq turn the twelve mana dorks into actual threats, and if your opponent wastes their Terminate on your suddenly exalted double-striking Birds of Paradise they might just lose to the next turn’s Rhox War Monk.

The mana-ramping ability of this deck is rivalled only by RG Valakut, with over half the deck dedicated mana. Getting 5 mana on turn 3 is easy and the deck has a load of ways to employ it – an early Baneslayer or Thornling is very difficult to race. Unfortunately the deck seems to have a lot of really terrible topdecks on an empty board, but that is the price you pay for accelerating your mana and you do have seven manlands to activate late in the game.

Another peculiar feature is the distinct lack of removal, or any way to disrupt the opponent’s game plan. Without so much as a Path to Exile, Essence Scatter or Lightning Bolt in the maindeck Mythic is really relying on out-powering the opponent with better creatures. There are a number of removal spells in the sideboard but it is very odd to have none in the maindeck. Evidently the plan worked, propelling Gaudenis Vidugiris to 9–1.

What really brought this deck to my attention, though, is the exorbitant price tag. With a maindeck consisting of 14 mythic rares, 32 rares, 4 uncommons, 1 common and 9 basic lands it is hard to imagine a more expensive deck. The two Jace, the Mind Sculptors in the sideboard seem designed to jack up the price even further. Really, budgetizing this deck is a fool’s errand and if you want to play a cheap deck then Bant is not your archetype.

Vampires

Zendikar block constructed prior to Worldwake was essentially a Rock-Rock-Rock metagame. Even moreso than Jund in standard, Vampires completely warped the format to the point that only the deck itself or the anti-vampires white decks could compete. The deck gains few cards in the larger card pool in standard, but one of them is a real doozy.

The deck is quite similar to Jund in many ways. It plays a selection of mediocre bodies with inbuilt card advantage – Gatekeeper of Malakir is like a Bloodbraid Elf that always cascades into Cruel Edict, for example, and trading with Bloodghast is just as fruitless as trading with Sprouting Thrinax. Vampires also has some powerful tools against aggro – Tendrils of Corruption – and control, in the crippling Mind Sludge. If you’ve ever had a Mind Sludge resolved against you while you still had some cards in hand, you will know how difficult it is to win from there.

What turns these grizzly bears and goblin pikers into standard-worthy creatures is the M10 lord, Vampire Nocturnus. With a black card on top of your library – not a terribly difficult feat, with 8 fetches to shuffle it for you – all your creatures get +2/+1 and flying, essentially giving you a Windborne Charge all the time. Malakir Bloodwitch is also an extremely strong creature in its own right, especially given the prevalent removal spells in standard. Getting value from its first ability is just the icing on the cake.

The deck is reasonably economical. Most of the cards are common or uncommon, and the only rare lands are fetches, used for reasons other than mana-fixing. They are in the deck just to turn on Nocturnus more reliably, but since turning on Nocturnus is so absurdly powerful they are worth the cost just for that. Nocturnus himself is pretty pricey – I’ve chosen the promo version above as it is ten dollars cheaper than the regular version, largely due to the less appealing art. Some people have contemplated dropping Nocturnus entirely, but I don’t believe this is for the best as its effect is so swingy. If you were to cut Nocturnus and the fetches, upping each of the 3s to 4s and adding another 8 swamps, you’d have one of the cheapest decks in standard but it would be noticeably less effective.

That’s all the decks we have time for in this series. For the budget conscious planeswalker, I have to recommend Jund, or if you have an aversion to that deck one of the mono-coloured decks like white weenie, red deck wins or vampires. For those with a taste for the rogue RG Valakut is a tier-2 contender with a very low price tag, and for anyone with the foresight to pick up Hierarchs, Knights and Elspeths when they were cheap you have any number of GW based midrange decks to choose from. UW players, you just keep doing your thing. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the above decks or on any that missed out, and I’ll see you all again next week!

That’s the fun of Multiplayer games. They aren’t about just winning. Sure you want to survive but really that’s because you want to be involved with more card interactions. That is the real gem in Multiplayer games. Because there are more decks involved there are vastly more possible game scenarios and card interactions the game becomes more flavorful. It’s like putting on those cheesy Prism glasses when you were a kid. You know the ones with the lens that distorted the light to make everything look funny and full of color. 1 vs 1 Magic is like looking through regular glasses and multiplayer is like everything is magnified and amplified with those crazy shades.

The reason I bring this up is what may be some lost terminology. One of the players that got knocked out early was wondering why he was getting attacked so much. It was simply a case of him being a Gorilla. This confused him. You see we play in a town where the local universities mascot is the Gorilla (Go Pitt) and he told me that he went to a Junior College up the road. So I felt the need to explain the 6 types of decks/players in a multiplayer game and what that means.

I don’t know who started the classification of types but I do know that it has been evolving for quite some time now. I know it was pretty much classified when I started reading internet sources during Onslaught block.

Gorilla

The first type of deck we should look for is the Gorilla. Like its namesake, Gorilla decks are loud and proud. They play cards that force everyone to pay attention to them as they pound the chest and bellow above the din of the forest. Some Gorilla type cards are just huge face pounders like Woolly Thoctar and his Nayan cousins. They drop early a flex their huge muscles as often as possible.

These Gorillas are nothing to be feared in a true multiplayer format. One of the basic fundamentals in deck construction is the addition of some basic forms of removal. Now that Baneslayer Angel in the Gorillas deck must contend with multiple decks aiming their bombs at her.

The true Gorilla cards that I like to play in Multiplayer games are the ones that create some huge game changing effect. I call these cards the “Gorillas in the Mist.” Wrath of God is a card that leads to card advantage in many 1vs1 games, do the math in a multiplayer. It can easily be a 20 for 1 with enough players. Syphon Mind is another classic, for 4 mana I can restock my whole hand. Syphon Soul can theoretically double your life for just 3 mana.

Whether you’re into being the biggest dude at the table or like the surprise bombs Gorillas are the first threat and are often the first target because of the way they draw attention to themselves.

Spider

The next deck to fall last Friday was a Spider deck. Spiders like to bait and trap their opponents. Some do it by tricking their opponents into a misplay and then pouncing. The more their opponent struggles the more ensnared they become. All of the good Trap cards fit easily here. The Prowl and Ninjutsu mechanics are also the tools of the Spider. You make a bad decision of not blocking and BAM they hit you with some mega cool effect like stealing a critter. Thanks Ink Eyes, Servant of Oni.

But not all Spiders build webs. Some just trap their prey with quick reflexes and brutal poison. These decks are the combos. Most combos in 1 vs 1 Magic fall short in Multiplayer action since they are designed to go 20 and then say “Good game.” But there are some cool combos out there. My favorite is Tooth and Nail fetching and playing Iona and Painters Servant. If you plan on Carrying a Combo Spider Deck you need to beware of two things. First is that once the table is aware of your presence all of the pesticide available will be coming your way. And second is that no one invites Spiders into their house so if you get a reputation for being a Spider other players will shy away from playing with you.

Rattlesnake

Take a moment to picture a Rattler. He draws as much attention to himself as the Gorilla right? Only, with the Rattlesnake it’s defensive in nature. “As long as you don’t attack me I’ll leave you alone.” At my local store (Asylum Anime in Pittsburg, Kansas) we play that you can only attack one person away. If a Snake is on your left you turn your critters to the right.

Vampire Nighthawk in Multiplayer is probably the best Standard Snake card right now. Deathtouch basically means that anything you attack with will die. The Flying makes it able to block all and the Lifelink is just gravy. But the player controlling Nighthawk should leave it untapped 90% of the time since it’s only a 4 point life swing on the attack. Basilisk Collar plays the same but is actually a little more aggressive since you can attack with one critter and leave the other back to hold the rattle. Executioner’s Capsule also serves the Rattler role as long as long as you have the mana open. Basically you can sit there and do your best Dirty Harry. “Do you feel lucky punk? Well do ya?”

Cockroach

What is the roach and what do they do? These small little insects basically don’t die. Sure one or two may find the bottom of my shoe but how many thousands survive. They say that if there was a Nuclear Holocaust only roaches could survive in their current form. Cockroach decks are like that as well. They just don’t die. They’re also very quiet. Not causing any waves on the table and letting the attention go to the Gorillas of the table. My very first self built deck was a prime example of this. I had a bunch of black Regenerating creatures that would innocently live through combat and eventually pull me the win with a couple of Cabal Coffers and a Soul Burn to finish the job. Bloodghast is very cockroachey card. It seems that no matter how many ways you find to kill it, it just keeps coming back. Other cards like Grim Discovery can make powerful cards like Ob Nixilis, the Fallen a temporary cockroach as well.

Plankton

What? Did I say plankton? What abilities or talents does Plankton have that a Magic Player could want?

Plankton are basically the base of the food chain for the world. They feed everybody. Decks that play the Plankton style are full of cards that everyone benefits from. In the above mentioned Tooth and Nail deck I run a cool little enchantment called Heartbeat of Spring. Now everybody gets extra mana. What player in their right mind would want to knock me out of the game? Remember that if I die my enchantment goes with me. Also I am viewed to be as dangerous as plankton is. So I am considered to be no threat as well as a beneficial ally. Therefore I live long enough to play a couple of Early Harvest to get 9 mana and drop the Tooth and Nail. Voila, I just went from safe little plankton to a pouncing Spider as big as any Gorilla you can find.

Other cards that are Plankton like are Howling Mine and Font of Mythos. Since it was first Spoiled I placed Abyssal Persecutor in this category as well. Think about it. No one else on table can lose the game as long as you and your Persecutor live. That’s feeding the world. Put the Control mage beside you below zero and now he’ll protect you like his life depended on it. Because it does. Recently I have been told that supposedly you have to pick just one player to receive the benefit when play multiplayer. I don’t know if this is true and I’m waiting to see a ruling. Even if it’s true just make sure you pick the person that would be the best ally at the table.

Pigeon

Ever notice where Pigeons live? I really have no idea but I know the popular media puts them in the cities. The bigger the city the more likely you are to see Pigeons right. That’s mostly because Pigeons can live off of the discarded remains that Humans leave behind and the more people there are the more food we leave them. Pigeon style cards and decks are based on the same concept the more players there are in a game the better they become. Compare Diabolic Edict with Innocent Blood. In 1 vs 1 games Diabolic Edict is far superior but when there are more players Innocent Blood can almost equal a Wrath of God. Imagine these plays. Turn one Deathgreeter, at a table with 10 players 6 play a one drop and 1 other gets turn two before you and plays a critter. Your Turn play a Deathgreeter then an Innocent Blood. That’s a 7 for 2 card advantage gaining 8 life and Wrathing the board. Pretty cool. Very Pigeon.

Other Pigeon cards would include Verdant Force, Congregate, and Malakir Bloodwitch.

Homework

Well those are the types I know of. If you know of others feel free to post them. Your Homework is to post what your favorite type is and a favorite card in that aspect.

Next week I’ll reveal my secret Extended Tech that I’ll be carrying into the PTQ this weekend. Wish me luck there are a couple of matchups I really would like to avoid.

There’s the bell. Remember to check in next week even though it’s Spring Break.

You need exactly 6 players for Emperor. You split up into teams of three, with one member of the team being the Emperor, and the other two members become generals. The Emperor sits in the middle with a general on each of his/her sides. Each player takes an individual turn, not like two headed giant where teams take turns simultaneously. Each player, not team, begins with 20 life, and the object of the game is to cause the opposing emperor to lose. Eliminating an opposing general only makes it possible to target and attack the opposing emperor.

The team who goes first starts with the Emperor for the team taking his/her turn, then turns pass to the left, which means the team who goes first only gets two turns, where the team who goes second gets all three. It’s usually best to go second in emperor!

Teams do not share life totals, mana, cards, or anything for that matter. You’re free to look at one another player’s hand and discuss strategy, but your turn is your turn. Should one of the generals be eliminated, any change of control effects like Control Magic end and control is passed back to the previous controller, then all of the eliminated players cards and spells are exiled. Anything the general controlled but did not own is exiled as well, such as a Bribery type effect.

The general’s job is to protect the emperor, and to eliminate the opposing general making it possible to eliminate the opposing emperor. Generals may only attack or target a player sitting immediately next to him/her, in other words generals have a limited range of influence 1. As a general you need to get rid of one of the opposing teams generals before you can attack or target the emperor, and you can only attack and target the general sitting next to you, so you can’t really help your teammate take out the general next to him/her.

The emperor’s job is to lend support to his/her generals by casting supportive spells and sending creatures to assist his/her generals. Emperors also may only attack the player sitting immediately next to him/her, so when the game starts, the emperors can’t attack anyone! An emperor, however, a can target not only the player next to the emperor and also the player next to him/her, i.e. limited range of influence 2 for you rules types out there.

Any player may help out a teammate by sending him/her a creature. This is called the deploy creatures option which says all creatures have “{T}: Target teammate gains control of this creature. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.” That just means that any creature able to tap can be sent to any of your teammates any time you could cast a sorcery. The emperor will most likely be doing this a lot, since as long as he/she has both generals he/she can’t attack anyone anyway!

With limited range of influence many of your spells won’t behave the way you might think. Wrath of God from a general will destroy all the creatures of both players to his/her left and right, along with his/her own. Wrath of God from an emperor will destroy the creatures of both his/her generals, and the players sitting next to those generals as well. If you have a effect that gives your creatures +1/+1 for all other creatures, that effect will only count the creatures in your range of influence, and not of those outside your range. Some cards may ask you to target an opponent; this can be any player on the opposing team that is within your range of influence.

Emperor, like EDH, now has a full set of rules in the Magic Comprehensive Rules; they’re in Section 807 if you feel like giving them a look see. The rules I’ve listed are, of course, only the default, and you’re free to add or change any of them your play group doesn’t like.

So the next time you have 6 players why not try out Emperor. Bonus points for playing Emperor EDH! Have you played Emperor lately? I would love to hear about it! Leave me a comment in the fields below so I can hear about your great time playing Emperor.

Next week I have a very special column coming your way. There has been a lot of talk lately about Magic cards that have had their art altered by aspiring artists, and their legality. I’m not going to go into the various legalities, but I am going to show you how you can become one of those aspiring artists and alter cards yourself. Until then this is Dale Lovelace telling you there is more than one way to play!

While I like other formats well enough (I actually played in Armada Games-Games Day Tournament, yay textless Kalastria Highborn for me!), I typically find myself going back to the holy ground that is EDH. Much like Sonny’s Real Pit BBQ, EDH is my Graceland. That being said, I’ve been tweaking various lists here and there and I plan on showing off the changes to Progenitus and Maga in the near future. However, with my first article back I feel like it’s only fitting to debut the concept for a new deck!

After the Worldwake pre-release I found myself in a hotel room opening 5 boxes of Worldwake with my fellow Florida judges Todd “Jazzhands” Palmer and Matt “Soggybottom” Williams. I’ve read Dale’s recent review of Worldwake for EDH and my evaluation is not quite as sterling. I saw few cards that would fit into my current schemes. Fortunately there is not a long wait for Rise of the Eldrazi, which already looks saucy!

Perhaps more unfortunate than the lack of new cards for my decks is the lack of new legends to be generals. Anyone who reads my articles on a regular basis knows I love to make new decks with the frequency Tyler Perry cranks out god-awful movies (seriously Tyler, Why did I get married too?) Even worse, the majority of those generals are mono-colored. Mono-color is boring! Green already has a super competitive general (Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary) and even worse if Omnath, Locus of Mana dies during an inopportune time (i.e. not my main phase) then that mana is gone. Red and Black aren’t much better off, though I’d much rather just use Maga and red kind of has to cheat to win with a mono-colored build.

Blue is a little more interesting. Thada Adel, Acquisitor has a few good things going for him(or her, or whatever the hell you call a fish monster). There are a few problems I have with the deck. First, people see mono-blue and just decide that you should be taken out. Secondly, the body is so incredibly fragile that it almost never connects. Thirdly, which I’m almost sure is a real word, you actually have to pay the full cost of the artifact. A common misconception is that Thada Adel foots the bill for casting the card. That is not the case, Thada just gives you the option to cast the card, it doesn’t chip in on the payment.

With four of the five candidates eliminated we shine our harsh light of criticism on Wrexial, the Risen Deep. Another quick checklist: Cool looking picture, check. Kraken, check. Jazzhands opened a foil one, check. Looks like we have a winner! Oh yeah, Wrexial also has a pretty cool ability and he’s difficult to burn out and dodges most targeted removal. I guess those should probably make the checklist as well one of these days!

Now that we have a general we need to come up with some cards to use to take advantage of his awesome ability. Most players use graveyards as a storing grounds for later and I would like to use their graveyards for the same reason! Since I want players to have a full graveyard I figure this also opens mill up as a viable secondary win condition. It is important to remember that in a multiplayer game you need to have mill be universal. Single out a specific player and you ruin the game for someone, mill everyone and things at least seem a little fair. It’s important to remember that EDH needs to be a fun, social event (at least in our group!)

I think this is also a prime opportunity to mix in a little layer 1/layer 2 action. According to Trick that was one of the more popular articles and I can tell you from playing the deck it’s an amazingly fun deck to play. As fun as layer 1/layer 2 is, I think this deck gives us the opportunity to take things to the next level. We get all of the fun layer 1/layer 2 items with a little extra fun thrown in!

Jace Beleren

Bribery and Treachery are both hilarious and deserve a spot in every EDH deck I play. Additionally, Persuasion and Desertion have become mainstays and are great ways of dealing with problem generals. Mindslaver is the ultimate theft card and will always be in my EDH lists!

Layer 1/layer 2 also gives us a great group of tutoring effects. Mystical and Personal tutors help us dig up answers to problem permanents, or just general shenanigans. Though it’s technically not a tutor, Fact or Fiction always seems to dig up business as well! I also count Tezzeret as a tutor because of the saucy artifact array he brings to the table (I’m looking your direction Top, Scroll Rack.)

I can’t wait to jump into the new toys black brings us, but unfortunately I’m starting to ramble so I think I will finish off this list next week! In addition to my list I’ll hopefully be posting a list for Wrexial created by one Mr. Jazz Hands himself. I invite everyone to try both and see which you prefer! I don’t profess to be a masterful deck builder and there are some who prefer a more straightforward strategy which I hope Todd can offer.

Until then, this is Benjamin McDole giving you a hundred reasons to play magic!

The list focuses on free content, ignoring all premium articles, and also leaving out podcasts. I am attempting to work podcasts into my process but the system needs some work so they are not included in this week’s article.

Enough blabbering, here are this week’s articles, and at the end is the list of sites I read regularly.

Sunday, Feb. 28th, 2010

• Wizards — Muller Magical in Madrid — The coverage of the biggest Magic tournament ever was quite enjoyable.
• CF — When 45 Points Just Isn’t Enough Part 2 — LSV has, I think, become one of the best writers about Magic. His knowledge married to his writing creates a beautiful union.

Monday, Mar. 1st, 2010

• ManaNation — Episode 100 — Mike Turian — I interviewed Mike Turian at PT San Diego
• ManaNation — Accelerated Learning at the Pro Tour — Desmond Cresswell went from absolute noob to Pro Tour competitor in six months. Here’s his story.
• Wizards — The Secrets of the Eye — One of the biggest spoilers of all time.

Tuesday, Mar. 2nd, 2010

• XMTG — Format Barrier’s to Entry
• ManaNation — Thraximundar in EDH — Dale Lovelace discusses his Thraximundar EDH deck
• ManaNation — GP Oakland 37th Part 2 — Peter Knudson completes his GP Oakland report.
• ManaNation — Card’s That Don’t Suck Volume One — Guest author ‘Matt Barbato’ gives some humor and insight

Wednesday, Mar. 3rd, 2010

• T:apped — S:wamped
• ManaNation — Examining the Price of Standard Part 2 — Russell Tassicker breaks down the costs of Boss Naya and UW Control.
• ManaNation — Free Time = Test Time — Dan Eckstein shares an explosive landfall deck he’s been testing
• ManaNation — The Hulk gets Crabs Primer — Guest author Travis Hall shares his creation for Extended, the Hulk gets Crabs
• Wizards — Magic in the Connected Age — Doug Beyer discusses what today’s technology makes possible in the world of Magic.
• Wizards — The Valley of the Shadow of Death — Jacob van Lunen shows ‘Shadow sligh’ which runs Death’s Shadow / Ad Nauseam
• SCG — Grand Prix Oakland Report — 11th — Alexander West shares his Zoo list and his story of GP Oakland, despite his attempt to quit Magic.
• MTG film may not be confined to Fantasy Realms — Habro chief talks about the movie possibilities.

Thursday, Mar. 4th, 2010

• XMTG — Magic’s Levels of Evil
• ManaNation — Getting Your Girlfriend Into Magic — Lauren Lee shares some insight and expectations on getting your significant other into Magic.
• ManaNation — Eyes on the Prize — Kelly Reid shares his insights into the overvaluing of Eye of Ugin
• CF — Block is Back — Brad Nelson talks about Block as he begins prepping for PT San Juan
• Too Much of a Good Thing is Still Too Much — Discussing the new Eldrazi spell and what it could mean for the set.

Friday, Mar. 5th, 2010

• ManaNation — The Coalition — Issar Roon (written by Brenden Weisskotten) discusses the story behind the Coalition.
• SCG — The Richmond/Madrid Metagame — Doug Linn gives an excellent lightweight overview of the Legacy metagame. Without bogging down in decklists, he names archetypes and discusses them.
• SCG — Opening with New Knightfall — Bennie Smith shares two decks and his EDH Baron Sengir deck. A fun read and interesting decks.

The List

The list is my current collection of Magic sites that I read, admittedly some more than others, but still it has proven a valuable resource for others. It has a few limitations:

1. They must be regularly updated. Once a month goes without an update, I shelve it to the ‘Death Row’ section to be checked occasionally but not regularly. After three months, I remove them from my reading list.
2. They must be in English. There are countless excellent foreign websites for Magic, but as I sadly only can read English and Latin, they do me little good other than for pretty pictures.

I clumsily separate the sites into “Article Sites” and “Blogs.” The latter being a blurred area as some blogs do have guest writers, but they are not regular contributors or big enough to merit the feel of an Article site. No preference is given to the sites based on what category they fall into, it is solely for my own organization.

Article sites:

• Wizards Daily MTG
• StarCityGames.com
• ChannelFireball.com
• Magic.TCGPlayer.com
• MTG Salvation.com
• Black Border.com
• PureMTGO.com
• TheStarkingtonPost.com
• MTGO Academy.com

Blogs:

• 5ColorControl
• 99 Problems but a General Ain’t One
• Affinity for Islands
• Casual Magic
• Computer Programming and Magic: the Gathering
• Dragon Guardian.com
• Five with Flores.com
• Gathering Magic.com
• Gifts Ungiven.com
• Gwafa’s Bazaar
• Killing Gold Fish
• MagicDeckVortex.com
• Magic Lampoon
• Magic the Gathering — Malaysia
• MTG Color Pie.com
• MTG Metagame
• MTGWar
• MTG-Realm
• Mulldrifting
• Otherworldly Journey
• Planeswalker’s Stronghold
• Power9Pro.com
• Quiet Speculation
• Recoculous.com
• RobotViking.com
• ShadowSketched
• Wrongwaygoback.com

Death Row:

• Cube drafting.com
• Deathmarked
• The Elvish Piper
• Homebrew Magic
• MTGPlayer.wordpress.com
• Show us Your Noobs

Recently Dropped:

• TheJitte.com
• Mana Workshop
• MTG Deck Source
• MTGDrafter.com

Hmm… Perhaps it is time I take a short rest. Have you brought me any food? No? Well, I guess I will have to satisfy myself with conversation.

Excited to hear another of the old man’s stories, you look around the room as you sit on the now familiar stool. All of the candles are still lit and strong, and his desk remains isolated in the center of the room. In fact, you wonder if there are even more books stacked on top of his desk than before.

Ahh! Interested in my research, are you? I guess I could enlighten you with a few of the more common pieces of knowledge. The book currently on top, the beige one with scarlet lettering, is all about the Coalition.

The Coalition Flag

The Coalition was a gigantic alliance among the people and races of Dominaria, along with many from other planes, for the sole purpose of defeating Phrexia and its divine leader, Yawgmoth. The Dominarian group contained the Benalians, the living forest of Yavimaya, the elves of Llanowar, the Hurloon minotaurs, the Keldons, the Weatherlight, Urza’s genetically enhanced Metathran, and even Shivan dragons. Other races from beyond Dominaria made an allegiance with the Coalition as well. Serra Angels, despising Phrexia for the corruption of Serra’s plane, were part of the Coalition from the beginning. Skyshroud elves from Rath joined the battle when their homeworld merged with Dominaria. However, they would have all fought in vain if it were not for the many planeswalkers who also joined the Coalition. Such a union of planeswalkers has never been matched in the known history of the multiverse.

The old man pauses, taking a breath and letting the information sink in. His eyes sparkle in the candlelight, as if he is remembering a fond memory from the distant past.

So who was the creator and mastermind of such a titanic alliance? It was none other than Urza.

Issar Roon pauses for another breath and waves casually at the colossal book still lying on his desk.

After the Brothers War ended, he ascended, and became one of the most powerful planeswalkers in the multiverse. He swore vengeance upon Phrexia for its subversion of his brother. From then on, he worked tirelessly at creating the Coalition, and finding a way to destroy the artificial plane. He spent millennia uniting the people of Dominaria, and preparing for an inevitable invasion from Phrexia. However, he was merely the creator of the Coalition.

This time, the old man points to a leather book, decorated with red lettering.

If one could say the Coalition had a leader, it would be Gerrard Capashen. Though he was never the commander of armies, he became the commander of the all-important Weatherlight and its crew. He led many dangerous battles against the Phrexians, and probably caused them more grief than Urza himself. During the course of the war, Gerrard came in contact with almost every piece of the Coalition, and always left with respect.

Unknown to Gerrard, he was the final human in a long line of genetic breeding experiments by Urza.

The old man’s voice turns to sadness, but bitterness lies between his words as well.

Over the course of hundreds of years, Urza carefully manipulated bloodlines across Dominaria to find someone able to empower the Coalition’s most dangerous weapon, the Legacy Weapon.

The taint of bitterness leaves the old man’s voice, but the sadness thickens.

The Legacy Weapon was the Coalition’s only hope of permanently ending the Phrexian Invasion. Though they had some of the most powerful planeswalkers in the multiverse, dangerous artifacts, countless armies, and thousands of years to prepare, they could not compare to the horrors of Phrexia. Still, the Coalition contained numerous brave souls, and fought valiantly. For that, the planeswalker Freyalise created the Martyr’s Tomb, a place to remember all who died in the defense of Dominaria.

Issar Roon stops his story and turns back to his books, opening a slim orange volume. Thinking the man has decided to continue his research, you back out of the room. To avoid making any noise, you draw the door closed slowly.

Yes. Yes I do, and with any luck, so do you.

No one saw this coming. People speculating on Eyes were betting that they had at least another month or two before the first Rise of the Eldrazi card got spoiled. For whatever reason, Wizards decided to show us one big mother-loving Eldrazi. Despite the fact that, barring any further accelerants, he’s rather unplayable, people have gone nuts. Eye of Ugin is $10+ almost everywhere, and sold out most places. They’re around 6 tickets on MTG Online as well. The question is, what’s going to happen in the coming months?

There are a few mitigating factors leading me to think Eye of Ugin is currently overvalued, given what we know. If new information comes to light, all predictions are rendered null and void, but for now, we know very little. We know RoE is a large set. We know that Standard will be the PTQ season as soon as RoE is released. We know that Eye of Ugin is a legendary land. We can guess that most Eldrazi will cost 7 or more, based on the ability set on Eye of Ugin. Considering that almost no deck will run more than 2, simply based on the legendary status, it seems overpriced.

The card’s value will be derived from the tournament playability of the Eldrazi creatures (and spells, if there are any). A 10-mana creature with no protection is a pretty tough sell to the Spike crowd. It’s fair to say that Kozilek, Butcher of Truth is probably one of the larger Eldrazi, and since there have been rumors of some common and uncommon Eldrazi, we can likely expect a few smaller, less bombastic and more “generic” Eldrazi. My thought is that they’ll print Generic Filler Eldrazi, like a 7/7 for 8 with some unremarkable but relevant ability set. Even so, unless we start seeing some very inexpensive Eldrazi spells, Eye of Ugin won’t accelerate them out in any appreciable manner.

Where does that leave us? With the assumptions put forth above, Eye of Ugin should NOT be a $10 card. Cards run as a 2-of in what seem to be casual “Timmy” decks that don’t really do anything remarkable are not worthy of double-digits. It is my opinion that, given the information available to us and the projections we can make based on opinion and experience, that the card is being supported by hype alone and does not have long-term potential as an “expensive card”.

The Eldrazi Rares and Mythics will probably start high — sky high. They’re big, they’re splashy, they’re cool as hell. Unless some more cards like Everflowing Chalice come to print, they’re also going to be very hard to cast. Remember, they’re entering a Standard metagame filled with Jund and UW Control — two decks that love to stifle ‘one big spell’ strategies. PT San Juan is Block Constructed, so we may see decks that use Eldrazi spells there. It’s entirely too early to know what the Block format will look like, since we’re missing 2/5ths of the block, but we can make a few educated guesses. We can probably expect Vampires, which will be lacking the flagship Vampire Nocturnus. Hopefully a Lord appears in RoE. Bushwhacker decks might make a splash too, but it’s unknown if the block format will even be relevant to non-Pro Tour competitors.

The short version of a long story is that Eye of Ugin is probably a $5 Mythic, not a $10 Mythic. Sharp spikes are much more common than sharp declines, since the only time a card’s value truly takes a hit are upon its banning or rotation. Otherwise, people don’t really want to support the fact that their cards are losing value, thus they will resist a decline.

This is a good time to remind people how I like to sell off cards I’ve speculated upon. I’ve taken this principle from stock traders — I like to sell enough off to cover my initial investment. This ensures you rarely lose money, although you occasionally do not max out profit. Still, it’s better to miss a few dollars of profit while ensuring not losing money.

Another question I get a lot — “How much should I buy?” Well, this depends on a few things. Most importantly, your bankroll. Poker players understand bankroll management. They don’t sit down at a table that requires heavy bankroll commitment, because they know that natural variance will eventually cause then to run badly. There’s not a lot of luck involved in speculating, but there is some. Thus, minimizing the effects of variance helps to ensure profitability. If my MTGO account contains 300 tickets and no cards whatsoever, and I want to spend some amount on a speculation I’m very sure on, I still won’t put anywhere NEAR 300 tickets on that one speculation. I’m more inclined to spend, at most, 30 tickets. It’s not about the number of cards I buy — it’s about my expected return on investment. By only committing 10% of my total bankroll, I am under no pressure to sell off my speculation earlier than necessary, I ensure that I’m not risking all of my money on one call, and I ensure that I can control my risk very accurately.

If you have 10 dollars to speculate with, you can’t really get much work done. Instead of looking for a 10 dollar card to jump to 15 or 20, look for ways to trade that $10 for incremental value. For example, in my shop, Vampire Nocturnus is possibly the hardest card to find in Magic. If you traded around in my shop, and had a Nocturnus, you could easily get $15-$20 in trade for it especially right before FNM. That’s the crux of bankroll management — keep your assets diversified so you never have all your money on one theory. After all, we’re only human, and no matter how accurate my predictions or the predictions of anyone else may be, they can still be wrong. Your goal is to be more right than you’re wrong, and less wrong when you have to be. Hopefully that answers many of the questions I’ve been seeing in comments and emails!

Update: Replaced ‘undervalued’ with ‘overvalued’ in the fourth paragraph.

There are many incentives to try to get your girlfriend (or boyfriend) into Magic. The main reason is that it’s a fun way to spend time together. It can even be more productive than blowing away money on movie tickets or spending hours on a video game. Playing Magic can result in making new friends, winning prizes, making money by dealing cards, meeting people from all over the world, and traveling to new places. If you’re doing these things, but your Significant Other (SO) isn’t, then it’s understandable that you’d want to share your experiences instead of hogging them all to yourself. But how do you get someone interested in Magic in the first place? Especially someone who seems to adamantly refuse to try it?

It’s definitely more common for girls to refuse to participate in Magic. Although not unheard of for boys, like in the case of my boyfriend, who mostly just doesn’t have the time. But ignoring such edge cases, it’s just the girls that won’t get involved. What are some of the barriers preventing them from getting to know Magic like you and I do?

Negative Stereotypes and Lack of Real Information

What does the layman think about Magic if he or she just hears the phrase “Magic: the Gathering”? You may get associations with Dungeons and Dragons; they’re owned by the same people, after all. Many people may assume these games are very similar since they’re both fantasy-based. One might assume Magic is a game where you live vicariously through characters on cardboard. Magic also involves rolling dice, and there are a lot of numbers and statistics in Magic. These vague similarities might give people the wrong impression of what Magic is about. Unquestionably, Magic is just a hard game to explain without demonstration or a lot of words.

The next thought a typical person may have after hearing the word “Magic” is of geek and nerd culture. More than that, it’s the culture of not showering, acting like slobs, being socially inept, and creating an atmosphere women are allergic to. It’s part myth and part truth, but it’s one of the more permeating and harmful stereotypes of Magic culture. If your local player base makes this stereotype more truth than myth, you might have a serious problem getting your girlfriend to FNM. However, there are outs.

These are two major factors preventing new players (both men and women) from getting interested in Magic. As far as I can tell, Wizards isn’t doing anything to quell the myths and is relying mainly on its newer products to garner interest. It seems to be working, but the female to male ratio is still severely imbalanced.

Lack of Time and Money

Magic can hit the pocketbook pretty hard. And it’s hard for an outsider to understand why you would dish out big bucks for some piece of cardboard. It’s even hard for many players to understand why someone would spend $20+ on a card. However, you can definitely control how much you spend on the game, time and money-wise. But when your girlfriend sees you spending a lot of time and money on Magic, it could dissuade her from getting into Magic out of fear it would suck up too many resources. Part of overcoming this barrier is informing your girlfriend that it doesn’t have to take more time or money than she’s willing to spend.

Everyone Has to Start as a Noob

I think a lot of new players, or players that haven’t even started playing, get discouraged by the fact they start out as being “terrible” at Magic. It’s not a game that’s very forgiving to noobs. In games like Guitar Hero, you can start out on an easier difficulty level, and the only opponent you’re fighting is yourself. In Magic, if your opponent is even slightly better than you, you will taste defeat over and over again. It can be frustrating and difficult to see why you keep losing. Before you even start Magic, you can give the excuse, “But I’m terrible at Magic.” And just not play at all. People enjoy games that they know they can play moderately well before starting.

However, people wrongly overemphasize the complexities of the game. Any child can learn to play and win. Maybe not at very competitive levels of Magic, but your goal isn’t to win the Pro Tour, is it? You just want to spend an enjoyable time with your SO! Getting to the point where you are good enough to beat your friends or people at FNM isn’t really that hard. Learning the rules isn’t that hard. It’s a barrier, but it’s a relatively small one.

So what are some strategies to get your girlfriend into the game?

The Gateway Drugs

Pardon my terminology. But it isn’t uncommon to joke about Magic being like a drug in several respects. If there’s one thing that I believe to be true about Magic, however, is that you can’t START with Magic. Most people start with something else. Effectively, gateway drugs. I think these are some of the most effective ways to get new players cushioned to playing with real Magic cards.

1. Duels of the Planeswalkers
This is Gateway Drug Number One on the list because I think it is the BEST one out there. In fact, it IS just playing Magic. But it’s somewhat disguised as a video game. If you want your girlfriend to play Magic with you, get an XBox and a copy of this game, and just start playing.

It’s really nice that you can play cooperatively on the XBox. This is one of the features that appeals to me the most. You aren’t competing against your girlfriend; you’re on the same team! And you can collaborate on strategies and decisions because you can see each other’s hands. It also teaches you some of the rules while you play. The decks are very flavorful, and it’s sort of fun to watch the spells and interactions. Later, you can make fun of how bad the AI is.

The other nice thing is that you don’t have to own any cards. And you don’t need anyone else to start playing. It’s just you, your girlfriend, and a couple XBox controllers. It’s nice to skip out on all the messy business of buying cards, making decks, finding opponents. And it’s a pleasant way to spend an afternoon or evening together with your girlfriend, maybe if you’re both feeling too lazy to go out.

2. Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon
Well there’s always the next best thing to Magic – other TCGs. I personally played both of these games before ever touching a Magic card. And the reason I was drawn to Magic was that Yu-Gi-Oh left me wanting. But these games are also a lot easier to understand and to “get good at” as it were. And who doesn’t like Pokemon?

What’s nice about these TCGs is that you don’t have to own any of the cards to play them; there are tons of video games made for Yu-Gi-Oh, and there’s also a video game for playing the Pokemon TCG. If you can get your girlfriend to enjoy these games, it’s going to smooth the transition to Magic that much more. It clears up the concept of casting costs, playing with creatures that attack, life totals, abilities, graveyards, and libraries. Yu-Gi-Oh even uses the stack. More than that, it makes the concept of collecting cards a little more understandable – it’s a game where you have to buy the individual pieces to play, is all.

David Williams, Magic player turned Poker Pro

3. Poker, Playing Card Games
Is Magic just too nerdy for your girlfriend? Starting with something like poker can emphasize the similarities between Magic and more mainstream card games. I know lots of Magic players that also enjoy poker. If you and your friends play regularly, try to get in some games of a card game your girlfriend is willing to play, like Texas Hold’Em or Hearts or 80 Points or Presidents; or something. There are so many card games out there! Once your girlfriend gets used to seeing your Magic friends and having a good time with them, she probably would be more open to learning to play other games with them.

4. Games of Any Sort
Is your girlfriend just not that into games? This will prove much, much harder then! To enjoy Magic, it usually helps to enjoy gaming of some sort. Whether it be video games, board games, or card games. If your girlfriend doesn’t do any of these things, then it’s probably a good idea to introduce her to some of these other things before jumping into Magic. Baby steps!

The Approach

Getting your girlfriend into Magic will take finesse and dedication. You always have to remember some important things: a) your goal is for both of you to have a good time; if one of you isn’t having a good time, it’s time to quit; b) when teaching new players to play, the goal isn’t winning; it’s teaching; c) if she’s willing to learn and is trying to play, she’s doing you a favor; d) don’t act condescending or patronizing.

No doubt, being a good teacher is key to introducing Magic to ANY new player. Even when playing a video game like Duel of the Planeswalkers, where the game practically plays itself for you, you have to exhibit patience and understanding. Generally, it doesn’t help to mock your students as they’re learning, since it can sour the whole experience. If students are in a bad mood when learning to do something new, they won’t associate good things with doing whatever it is they’re learning. That by itself can shut off players from getting into Magic forever. Magic is about having fun, so it’s important that the learning process is fun.

Open communication is also important. That’s kind of a no-brainer, perhaps, but I know some people have problems with talking a lot, particularly while they game. But the more you explain in words, the better. Don’t pretend you’re playing real games of Magic, where you don’t want to give things away. Understanding comes first; winning comes second, if at all. It’s best to explain things to your pupil under a comfortable and relaxed setting, where winning is not a priority. This opens the doors for more questions

Some Suggestions

1. Show your girlfriend the social side of Magic, more so than the playtesting side or the PTQ scene
2. Let your girlfriend get a feel for the physical cards – what they look like, what they say
3. An extension of that is to gift your girlfriend with a binder or box full of her very own cards – the feeling of owning Magic cards is very special; don’t use these cards as an extension of your own set
4. Get your girlfriend some booster packs that she can open whenever she feels like it
5. Play 2-Headed-Giant together at tournaments
6. Use the T4 format to play games together
7. Plan an entire day to spend together and have Magic be just a small part of the whole program
8. Teach her how to draft
9. Let her use your cards and collection; don’t make her spend money on the game until she likes it enough
10. Get her an MTGO account, stocked with a draft set or two
11. Try not mentioning Magic for months at a time, bringing it up only every so often on special days

Depending on what kind of person your girlfriend is, some suggestions may work better than others. If she has a lot of competitive spirit, she may enjoy FNM or MTGO better. Or if she prefers a casual setting, maybe EDH or 250 is the format she’d find more fun. In any case, cater to her tastes and needs. Don’t make her play Magic the way you play Magic.

And if all fails, and she still refuses to play Magic, then give up! There’s not a lot of point in pressing the issue. I’m sure you’ll still find lots of things to do together that don’t involve slinging spells.

Luis Scott Vargas is undoubtedly one of the best, if not the best, player in the game today. He’s helped by his support crew of fellow pros who build and test together in the lead-up to major events, including Tom “The Boss” Ross who is the nick-namesake of the team’s San Diego deck, Boss Naya.

Boss Naya

Sharing a lot of cards with the Naya Lightsaber deck from Worlds, this RGW aggro strategy tries to play all the strongest cards available in those colours in a similar manner to the winning Jund deck. Switching black for white means very few cards are shared between the two decks, however – Bloodbraid Elf, Lightning Bolt, Raging Ravine and Rootbound Crag are the only choices appearing in both decks. The strong white cards that lured The Boss and LSV into this colour combination are a mix of the obvious – Baneslayer Angel, Knight of the Reliquary, Ajani Vengeant – and the not so obvious, like Worldwake newcomer Stoneforge Mystic.

Stoneforge Mystic is one of a number of exciting toolboxes this deck makes use of. At one mana cheaper than Trinket Mage the Mystic can find you any equipment card, and Boss Naya lets you choose between Basilisk Collar and Behemoth Sledge. Sledge is absurdly powerful and can turn any old dork, like the Mystic herself, into a miniature Baneslayer Angel. Collar is seemingly the better choice on the defensive as it grants deathtouch, killing your opponent’s best attacker, and lifelink which gives you a bit of a buffer. It is also handy for dealing with troublesome shroud creatures like Calcite Snapper and Sphinx of Jwar Isle. The other innovative use of this equipment is out of the sideboard — the full set of Cunning Sparkmages which, when combined with Collar, are deadly to any aggro opponent. Getting a hasty Avatar of Woe for 5 mana (3 to play Sparkmage, 2 to equip) is very cheap, though it’s funny that this sort of synergy has been present in standard for ages with Vithian Stinger and Gorgon Flail both languishing in bulk boxes.

The second toolbox is that fetched by the extremely versatile Knight of the Reliquary. Fixing your mana, countering removal, getting another threat, Stone Raining your opponent – this girl does it all while becoming an ever more sizeable finisher at the same time. Expect to see four of this card and a single Sejiri Steppe wedged into a lot of different aggro and midrange decks before October, and even beyond as the Knight is already heavily played in older formats. Finally we have the always solid Ranger of Eos who may be even stronger than Bloodbraid Elf in this deck. He can find the obvious Scute Mob or Wild Nacatls just to present extra threats, or the less obvious Birds of Paradise – if you need mana, or you want a flier to carry your Behemoth Sledge – as well as Noble Hierarch whose exalted ability is very strong, especially when combined with Baneslayer Angel or the Sledge.

To build this deck from scratch, however, you are going to have to shell out some serious dosh. With full sets of the Conflux BFFs Knight of the Reliquary and Noble Hierarch starting the creature list and two Baneslayers in the sideboard it is obvious that most of the cost comes from your creatures. Stoneforge Mystic’s price saw a huge rise on the back of this deck’s performance as did Basilisk Collar, and there is a miser’s Elspeth thrown in for good measure. At over $600 you have to be certain this is the deck you want to play before buying in. There is not really any way to budgetize this deck without mangling it – it is defined by its expensive, rare toolbox cards and while you could play Woolly Thoctar over Knight of the Reliquary and more Birds over Hierarchs, you really aren’t playing the same deck.

Now, let’s see what the great blue hope Jace can do in Patrick Chapin’s traditional UW control list.

Chapin’s UW Control

At the same time a very familiar and wildly different deck, this creation of ‘the last control player’ Mr. Chapin hearkens back to the roots of blue white control. With a mix of permission, board control and card draw Pat is looking to lock down the board to such an extent that he can mill the opponent out with Jace’s ultimate ability or beat down with manlands plus Iona. However this style of near creatureless blue deck was declared dead by many players not two months ago, and yet here it is with one of the winningest records in the standard portion of the Pro Tour.

The deck is very complicated and takes enormous skill and practice to play well, and I highly recommend Pat’s articles on the subject this week and last. It seems to me that the two cornerstones of the deck are Jace – of course – and Everflowing Chalice. Two cards are used due to their strong synergy with the Mind Sculptor, WWK fellows Halimar Depths and Treasure Hunt. Neither of these would be certain starters in a non-Jace based blue deck but here they are all stars, and between the three you should be able to craft the perfect hand for any situation. This enables the use of the variety of counterspells, as with foreknowledge of your opponent’s deck and likely plays you can be sure of having the right counter at the right time. Speaking of counters, one of the most hated cards of recent years has finally hit the big time. Cancel as a four of in a top 16 PT deck, who’d’a thunk it?

Everflowing Chalice’s power is a little less obvious than Jace’s, but it’s subtle influence improves the deck in several ways. Rather than playing it turn 2 to enable turn 3 Jace, it is better to play it turn 3 with counter mana open, and having this extra mana available means you can generally keep countering while playing your strong sorceries and permanents for the rest of the game. Additionally, the option to kick it up a notch and get a Chalice producing 2 or even 3 mana enables the big finishers of the deck, Iona and Martial Coup. Chalice also compensates for the Tectonic Edges in the manabase, which seem counterintuitive in a control deck that probably doesn’t want to sacrifice its own lands.

I really wasn’t sure if UW would be able to catch Naya in the cost stakes, but it has somehow managed it. Things were looking just rosy going down the list, until we hit that massive speed bump Jace, the Mind Sculptor. I should never have to calculate (4x $58.00) in a standard deck, but there you go! Fortunately most of the supporting spells such as Cancel and Chalice are commons and uncommons, but the Mythics in this deck seriously crank up the price. Triple Baneslayer and an Elspeth in the sideboard also do not help.

At $640.25 I can’t recommend setting out to build this deck from scratch, but I know that my warnings mean nothing to the legion of control players who have been dying for a deck just like this for four months now. Some people would pay anything to be able to counter some spells, destroy all creatures, and look at their top three cards; this deck is meant for them. You know who you are. You already preordered your Jaces back in January anyway, so you’re already halfway there.

That’s it for part two of ‘The Price of Standard’, including two very expensive decks. Next time we’ll see if the ominously named “Mythic” can outdo these two monsters, and if we can find a more budget option in the top 32. I have an extended PTQ on Saturday in Perth, so if any locals are reading please come and say hi! Depending on whether any good stories or lessons come out of that tournament, I may put off the next entry in this series for a week to talk about extended.

In the meantime I’d love to hear what you think of the price of these decks/cards in the comments. How much is too much? Is Jace fairly priced? How does cost affect your deck choices? Discuss!

This weekend we had a lot of time. Normally in competitive chess we play with a chess clock. Basically a chess clock is two different countdown timers. When it’s my turn my countdown is going while yours is on pause. At the end of my turn I click my pause button and start your count. We normally play where each player has 30 minutes but at State they allow for each player to use up to a whole hour. Needless to say most of my players keep the pace they’re use to and so we sit around between rounds.

This sit around time is why I started embracing Magic in the first place. As a coach I don’t feel that playing more chess between rounds is necessary. In fact I think it can serve to exhaust and burn out some average players. The better players who need more chess time will want it on their own. I also will never require a player to take more time at the board. If they don’t see the move they simply won’t see it. I’ve seen to many players sit at a losing table watching their clock burn just so they can tell their coach that they used all of their time up. So I like to have something for my kids to do between rounds and Magic is perfect for that. Besides I get a little playtesting army as well.

Add to that fact that State is an overnight trip we played more games than I had during the entire month of February. Most of the kids were into testing up their Standard concoctions versus the top 8 from San Diego with Chapin’s B/W build thrown in since it is a serious contender. We spent a lot of time trying figure out the Allies deck for quite a while but like the Japanese we scraped it. The most promising versions were a Grixis colored Allies looking to abuse Hagra Diabolist and Agadeem Occultist with mega removal spells and a Bant Colored Version that used Harabaz Druid to power out an early Clarion Ultimatum. The ultimatum can be truly sick when fetching a Shapeshifter and an Excavator.

I myself focused on Extended which is my next big thing. On March 13th I actually get to attend a PTQ. It’s rare for my life that the stars align and all non-Magic restrictions leave me an open weekend when there is actually a PTQ within 300 miles. I’ve been sitting on an idea that I think is really tech since Christmas day. All of my testing shows that my idea has legs. I haven’t shared it with you but I will in two weeks. Promise.

That’s a lot of time to sit on an idea and it’s almost an unhealthy fixation. All the time spent testing, tweaking, changing the gauntlet, testing, tweaking some more, and finalizing the deck means that I’m stuck with it. All that being said I almost changed decks this weekend. The deck that almost pulled me away? That’s what I’m going to share with you today.

It all starts with the interaction of two simple cards.

These two gems of old are a landfall machine. Imagine the following scenarios.

You have a Flagstones in play and play a second. Legendary Status check causes both to be destroyed triggering two other Plains into play. That’s three Landfall triggers.

You have a Flagstones in play and play a Ghost Quarter. Ghost Quarter alone is awesome versus Depths but if you want to be greedy you can tap the Ghost targeting the Flagstones. Flagstones gives you a tapped Plains and Ghost Quarter gives you any basic land untapped. Once again three landfall triggers.

Mix in a collection of Fetch lands and you have yourself a mana base that will create multiple landfall triggers each or your early turns.

This mixture of land is what Brozek was able to abuse at GP Oakland in his Brozek deck wins.

4 Goblin Guide 4 Plated Geopede 4 Steppe Lynx 4 Zektar Shrine Expedition 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Lightning Helix 2 Magma Jet 3 Path to Exile 4 Searing Blaze 3 Shard Volley 3 Mountain 1 Plains 4 Arid Mesa 4 Ghost Quarter 3 Sacred Foundry 4 Flagstones of Trokair

I absolutely love the explosiveness of this deck. But when it doesn’t explode it can have issues. Mostly from the fact that its creatures have no butt during you opponents turn when a Landfall trigger is more difficult to obtain. Also this deck has very little mid game and basically no late game play at all. One of my students set out to make this better and I think he has succeeded.

First he started to try to create a bigger explosion on the early turns. While staying in White and Red he was unsuccessful but by bringing in a Temple Garden and a Stomping Ground he was able to. What did he use the Green on? Khalni Heart Expedition. With the “Heart of the Cards” he can generate even larger and grosser landfall triggers in a single turn. I was on the receiving end of this little game.

Turn 1: Flagstone, Lynx
Turn 2: Arid Mesa into a Stomping Ground, Geopede, Attack with Lynx unblocked for 4. Putting me at 16 life.
Turn 3: Khalni Heart Expedition, Ghost Quarter, Sac Ghost to hit Flagstones netting Temple Garden and untapped Plains, Sac Heart netting 2 tapped mountains, Path to Exile my Dark Confidant. Attack with both Lynx and Geopede for 21.

With two landfall critters Khalni actually does more damage than Zektar and now we have both!!

So we really started thinking about mid game since our Zoo matches where turning into removal battles with Boros being a little easier of a target. Basically we could never get our critters to stick for more than one swing. By the time we got one online we were faced with to large of opposing forces or a lack of landfall options. Basically the only hitter we had was the Zektar token making us a glorified Burn deck. Sure we would still win games but without the Boom we love in the deck.

So we started searching Green options again. This time not for landfall triggered stuff but stuff that would help create landfall. A leading contender for awhile was Explore but it was the same as Khalni just more godly God hands. In the end we found inspiration from the Zoo deck we weren’t beating.

Knight does so many things for this deck. First with all the Fetch lands and Ghost Quarter shenanigans it comes into play with a butt that can survive almost all commonly played removal. Seeing the Knight as a 6/6 is not uncommon. Second it can help to create extra landfalls for our kittens and rolly pollies. The 1 landfall is obvious but with a Flagstones in play it can fetch another which then triggers two more Plains. Third it can do this at instant speed gaining a way survive those pesky Volcanic Fallouts that are becoming more prevalent since they combat both us and Elves!.

The rest of the deck stayed the same as Brozek masterfully designed. I really think you should try these adjustments. Like I said earlier I almost switched over myself after seeing it play. In the end the only reason I didn’t is because I feel I have some cool tech in my other deck and ego makes me want to play with my idea come hell or high water.

Here is the list we run right now.

Knight of the Boros

4 Plated Geopede 4 Steppe Lynx 4 Knight of the Reliquary 4 Zektar Shrine Expedition 4 Khalni Heart Expedition 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Lightning Helix 4 Path to Exile 4 Searing Blaze 2 Mountain 1 Forest 1 Plains 4 Arid Mesa 4 Ghost Quarter 2 Sacred Foundry 1 Temple Garden 1 Stomping Ground 2 Scalding Tarn 2 Marsh Flats 4 Flagstones of Trokair Sideboard 3 Oblivion Ring 3 Smash to Smithereens 3 Volcanic Fallout 3 Dead//Gone 3 Damping Matrix

There is the bell. Feel free to run with this one. It’s fun fun fun.

Update: Fixed the final deck list with a new copy sent to me from Dan. — Trick

It was with this attitude that I approached the current Extended season. Right now, Extended is like Shangri-La for Johnny. Combo is everywhere; you have Elves, All-In-Red, two different cascade decks, Dark Depths/Hexmage, Punishing Fires/Burnwillows, and Thopter/Sword. Hell, I would even consider Zoo a combo deck, using the age-old Creatures+Burn combo. I began to think about some of the more combo-rific cards in Extended right now. Kiki-Jiki… nah, saw that last season. Wild Pair… fun, but I’m not sure it’s even remotely viable. Protean Hulk… well, Through the Breach IS still legal.

I started trying to think about what the most degenerate plays possible could be. Hulk for three Virulent Slivers and the Shadow Sliver? Hulk for a bunch of Hada Freeblades and an Ondu Cleric? Finally my brain hit on going for four Hedron Crabs. Ah, a viable mill strategy, the Holy Grail of Johnny-dom. And then I remembered that Dryad Arbor was printed, and the math started running through my head, “4x4x3… wait, if I add a Sakura-Tribe Elder that’s 4x5x3… that’s 60. That’s the entire deck!” The deck seemed fun and interesting, so I made a couple posts about it on MTGSalvation and asked my friends (T3, or Team T-Town) to take a look. They liked it. They REALLY liked it. They liked it so much, they asked me to remove the posts so they could keep it on the quiet. That night, I built the deck and goldfished it privately online. I was shocked by how easy and fast the combo could be pulled off. In my first 20 games, I had a turn 1 win, three turn 2 wins, seven turn 3 wins, and five turn 4 wins. My average was around turn 3.8. I was very excited. So, throughout the rest of the week, I worked on the deck with Ryan Benford, Glenn Shoeman, and Will Besant to try and find the best cards for the deck and the fastest way to combo.

We named the deck, “The Hulk gets Crabs.” It’s a delicious double entendre, and it answers the question, “How does your deck win?” “The Hulk gets crabs.”

Here’s what we came up with and why:

4 Ponder
4 Peer through Depths
3 Magma Jet

These cards make the deck hum. Without them, I don’t think the deck can be optimal. I decided early on that actual card draw is horrible for this deck. You want to select your cards instead of drawing them, otherwise you wind up with a handful of Arbors or Crabs and the combo dies. Turn 1 Ponder sets you up for the turn 2 or 3 win so well that I can’t see running the deck without them. Peer Through Depths has been phenomenal. I would play 12 were it legal. When we saw how great the Peers were, we cut back on the number of actual Protean Hulks in the deck and upped the Summoner’s Pact, that way the Peers can grab either “piece” of the combo (something that teammate Glenn Shoeman first suggested). Magma Jet has been fantastic. It gives you some interaction with the board in the early game if you don’t have the combo (I used it to kill off Dark Confidants, early Wild Nacatls, and Steppe Lynx), it kills the “problem” creatures (Meddling Mage, Gaddock Teeg, Ethersworn Cannonist, Samurai of the Pale Curtain, Aven Mindscensor), AND it helps you find the combo.

4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Seething Song

The acceleration package. We initially ran Rite of Flame, but have since switched to Desperate Ritual for two reasons.

1. It ensures that the entire acceleration/combo can go off at instant speed, a good way to fight control decks.
2. It’s arcane, and Splicing Through the Breach on it gave us another way to fight control as well as slip in under a Gaddock Teeg.

4 Through the Breach
1 Eerie Procession
4 Summoner’s Pact
2 Protean Hulk

The Combo pieces.
4 Hedron Crab
4 Dryad Arbor
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder

The “kill” cards. A lot of criticism for the deck is “what happens if you draw the Crabs/Arbors?” Well, drawing the Crabs really isn’t that bad. You just run one out there and drop a land to get the milling going. If you manage to run a Crab out naked on turn 2 and drop a fetch, to mill them for 6, then you’ve pretty much negated the loss if they kill it. If they don’t kill it, then it works just as well if it’s already on the board when you go off. Drawing multiple Arbors is the worst (and I auto-mulligan any hand with 2 of them in it), but you have to mulligan aggressively and hope your card selection spells help out. You really only need 1 Elder, but we run it as a two-fer just in case you need to play one out early.

4 Scalding Tarn
3 Arid Mesa
4 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
1 Forest
1 Mountain
2 Island

The manabase. We wanted 2 “non-creature” sources of green mana in case we ever need to pay for the Pact.

Other cards we considered (or cards that made their way into the sideboard):

Vendillion Clique: I really loved the Clique (I played them in my sideboard), but I couldn’t find a cut I could make that would justify them in the main. They are great at shuffling your Arbors back into your deck, blocking a Marit Lage to buy you a turn, checking an opponent’s hand to make sure the coast is clear for your combo, or taking down a Wild Nacatl, but the main list was too tight.

Early Frost/Gigadrowse: In the control matchup we elected to play this deck like the old Standard Dragonstorm decks. Tap your opponent down at the end of their turn and go off on our turn. We went back and forth over which would be better, but ultimately decided that Early Frost gives you what you want without forcing you to make sub-optimal choices when fetching your mana.

Echoing Truth: To bounce tokens and Leyline of the Void.

Defense Grid: This may be the best way to fight counterspells and Path to Exile prior to turn 4.

Rampaging Baloths: We are still considering adding this as a 1-of win condition.

As far as matchups go:

Scapeshift: I never had a problem with this deck. The Hulk can get crabs faster than they can get Valakut to erupt.

Dredge: Another deck I had no problem with. All the Dredge decks I’ve played against were byes.

Elves: A flat-out race. Our combo can go off before theirs (and we really don’t care if they gain eleventy billion life), but theirs is just as consistent. Magma Jet and Echoing Truth are great in this matchup.

Dark Depths combo: This deck is the best in the format for a reason. It has early disruption that we don’t like, as well as a fast combo that’s pretty much a win. That said, this isn’t a horrible match-up. Thoughtseize sucks, but it doesn’t kill the deck. Finding a second piece of the puzzle can be done with little effort thanks to your card selection package. The only spells you have to be careful about are Path (if they splash white), Muddle the Mixture, and any bounce effect they may run. I’ve won quite a few matches where they tap out to make a 20/20 on turn 2/3 and you just untap and deck them.

Zoo: If they don’t draw Path, you should be able to outrace them pretty easily. If they do draw Path (and they haven’t tapped out to play dudes), the matchup can be much more difficult. I played three matches against Zoo last week. All three times, I won game 1, as they won’t know to hold mana for Path and just start dropping dudes. They may start playing slower in game 2.

How to fight the hate in general:

Path to Exile and Bant Charm are the only cards that really worry me. But, they are beatable. Pick your times to combo off. I won two games against Zoo where my first combo was Pathed, but since my opponent had always held back mana, he had slowed himself down enough that I could draw into the combo for a second time.

Counterspells can be problematic, but Splice is a great way to fight them. Splicing Through the Breach onto a Peer or a Ritual presents them with a “must counterspell” situation while leaving you with a through the Breach in hand to combo off again on your turn. Bringing in Early Frost or Defense Grids from the side can really help against counterspells.

Leyline of the Void: We run the Echoing Truths for this card.

Extirpate, Cranial Extraction, and Thought Hemorrhage: Depending on what combo piece they name, this can be difficult to beat. Fortunately, they cost 4 mana. It is with these cards in mind that we thought about adding Rampaging Baloths to the main or side.

Is this deck going to be a format wrecker? No. It has weaknesses like every other deck, and if determined, it can be disrupted. I think it has a couple good PTQ’s in it. An early one, while it’s still lightly regarded, and (if it is successful) a later one, when the hates died down. It’s like affinity in that regard. If the hates not there, it can prosper. I would unabashedly recommend this deck if you have a PTQ in the next two weeks, and you’re willing to put in a good 40+ matches testing it out. My losses in a recent PTQ were mainly due to playing on auto-pilot and being rusty (I hadn’t played in a constructed event in almost a year… I have 8-month-old twins). The best thing about this deck is that it is still “unknown” and a lot of people won’t know how to play against it. That, compounded with the fact that this deck can just steal wins on turn 1 or 2, makes this something to consider in the current PTQ season. I guarantee you will have a blast watching the Hulk get crabs.