Five With Flores

It’s a bit late to do a Shards of Alara Constructed review, but it’s never too late to speculate about cards that, you know, might get played. This is just a short list of musings on some Shards of Alara cards that would probably rank as low Role Players. But hey… Not many would have thought that Gnarled Mass or Tallowisp would be key centerpieces to competitive decks

Deathgreeter
Deathgreeter is an interesting card that I have seen in some Constructed decks recently (usually tokens decks, next to Nantuko Husk, &c.). Yeah, Deathgreeter certainly raises an eyebrow, but… The text on this card is pretty similar to another 1/1 for B: Disciple of the Vault.

So why was Disciple of the Vault ban-able in multiple formats whereas Deathgreeter is a corner case? Well, Deathgreeter is probably just less powerful in general than a card on the order of Soul Warden or Essence Warden… It’s a sequence thing, but the Warden sisters probably have more singular upside.

Additionally, there is a clear terminus to what Disciple of the Vault ever has to do: 20. Deathgreeter can be “effective” and at the same time have no appreciable effect on the game.

Still… something worth thinking about, especially in this color, at this cost.

Call to Heel
Call to Heel is very versatile. It seems like a card that you generally want to play on your own Mulldrifter, but that you can live with playing against your opponent’s oncoming threat (hopefully not a Nucklavee).

There is a lot of upside to this card when you play it on your own creature… kind of like a Momentary Blink, but you need to pay mana to re-play your creatures, which may or may not be relevant as a specific game develops. The beauty of the card is that you can play it against anybody, unlike a Momentary Blink (even if that seems like an ugly option most of the time).

Compare with Turn to Mist, a card that was a decent two-of sideboard card in some decks but never a four-of main deck card. Like Turn to Mist, Call to Heel has a lot of play to it, a lot of “maybe this will go right” even if it does not go in everywhere.

Call to Heel seems like it would be more effective when you are playing a matchup where the opponent can’t really disrupt your ability to generate incremental advantages, especially when the opponent is likely to tap out on his own turn.

Necrogenesis
Paul Jordan tried to get me to play this right before States. It is actually pretty good. Necrogenesis is absolutely insane against Makeshift Mannequin (obviously). One of these can take at least a little starch out of a Cruel Ultimatum, and it is no fun for Unearth-based strategies or any kind of reanimation. Best yet, Necrogenesis is pretty cheap to get into play.

Definitely something worth trying in the sideboard, depending on the metagame.

Steward of Valeron
How awkward is this?

Turn three, attack with my Steward. Post combat, Wilt-Leaf Liege.

Awk, am I right?

I’d play it for sure.

Corpse Connoisseur
Here is another card that Paul Jordan suggested to me recently. I dismissed Corpse Connoisseur initially, but I think I was overly harsh. This card is kind of Entomb-ish.

Think about sending Squee, Goblin Nabob into the graveyard with Corpse Connoisseur… It’s like free card advantage, sort of. Or, you can keep getting more and more Corpse Connoisseurs and Unearth cards. A couple of Sedraxis Specters main might actually be a party!

Just some ideas.

LOVE
MIKE

How can the world’s greatest tee shirt and Optimus Prime, iconic leader of the Autobots conspire to such an unmitigated disaster? This Black Friday, there is only one way to find out, sadly.

So I found the world’s greatest tee shirt.

When I say “THE WORLD’S GREATEST” tee shirt, I am not kidding.

I created some of the game’s most inventive strategies and sideboards — meaning I have a pretty decent imagination — and I can’t begin to imagine a tee shirt even one per cent as great as this one. It is nostalgia, inspiration, art, and coming-of-age all rolled into one piece of clothing.

Go ahead and look:

(You can click that and get one yourself… maybe.)

I mean there is so much stuff going on. Me, I can actually visualize Optimus cruising towards Autobot City, with the instrumental gearing up behind him as he starts rolling over hapless Decepticons. The first 20 minutes or so of Transformers: The Movie is one of my favorite cinematic experiences ever.

The sheer ridiculousness of Optimus with speakers behind him, axing an electric guitar is… Sublime. It truly transcends genre, goes beyond animation, speculative fiction, meta-fiction… can only exist on the greatest tee shirt of all time.

The vendor even says “If you feel like you’ve lost The Touch, this shirt might just be the way to regain it.” Yes! Please help me regain The Touch! Please let me buy this tee shirt!

So… disaster?

The disaster is that they are all sold out of my size. In fact, they are sold out of M, L, and XL… Though if you are a small, 2XL, &c. you can still get one (provided they are not all sold out of everything on account of it being Black Friday). Check here if you have any taste at all.

I think I am going to call the company and complain and / or ask them if they are going to print another large. This is an exclusive and therefore there is no other place to get this tee shirt!

If they reload, I will keep you updated.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Perhaps if you put on too many extra pounds, you can upgrade to a 2XL or thereabouts and obtain The Touch.

LOVE
MIKE

A roll down memory lane where Michael recalls playing creature enchantments, Erg Raiders, and Hill Giants to a PTQ Top 4… In Constructed.

I am getting on a plane to go back to my ancestral home of Gates Mills, Ohio in a few hours (and by “ancestral” I mean my parents moved when I was a senior in college) to give thanks for Thanksgiving.

Technically I started playing Magic living in Ohio, but I didn’t become a serious tournament player until I had been living in Philadelphia for a couple of years, so most of the Magic I played during my first tenure in the Buckeye State was kitchen table Magic — you know, where pumping tons of mana into a Killer Bees or playing a third turn Craw Wurm could make a body go all Timmy Power Gamer.

You may chuckle, but I am pretty fond of some of those long nights up, doing battle with decks I made myself, in a time of true available card scarcity.

However I did spend the better part of a year living back at home in between graduating college and first moving to New York to help run The Dojo in the spring and summer of 1999.

During that stretch I did relatively well at the local level, including a Limited PTQ Top 8, a Limited PTQ win, numerous Constructed PTQ Top 8s, a Constructed PTQ win, an invitation to US Nationals, an undefeated Grand Prix Day one (in games, not just matches), and of course my “virtual Top 8″ 9th on breakers US Nationals Top 8 in Ohio’s capital itself.

I am very fond of this time period in my life even though at the time I was actually quite miserable — no girl, lying in the fetal position crying about having no girl, spending 100% of my time trying to get on the Pro Tour (which, admittedly I did pretty well), eating three pound bags of M&Ms every night — what am I thinking?!? Why the aich ee double hockey sticks should I be fond of this? Never mind that bit.

Anyway, this is the deck that turned it all around for me:

“George” by Mike Donais

3 Capsize
4 Counterspell
4 Curiosity
3 Dominating Licid
4 Forbid
4 Hammerhead Sharks
4 Legacy’s Allure
4 Manta Riders
3 Thalakos Drifters
2 Thalakos Seer
3 Tradewind Rider

19 Island
3 Maze of Shadows

sideboard:
3 Bottle Gnomes
1 Helm of Possession
3 Portcullis
3 Mana Leak
2 Steal Enchantment
1 Thalakos Drifters
2 Stalking Stones

I didn’t do a tournament report for this one so I had to roll up the sleeves and find an article Mike Donais had written about it; this is a mashup between Mike’s article and Gary Krakower’s GP Austin-winning sideboard (but it is more or less the deck I used to get to the PTQ Top 4).

At the point that I made this Top 8 I had not qualified for a Constructed Pro Tour in going on two years (and remember, two years at that point was about 2/3 of the lifetime of the Pro Tour). I am sure a lot of you know how infinitely frustrating it was to put so much time and effort into my “hobby” and come up short time and again.

But George — even as a Top 8 / Top 4 and not actual PTQ win — showed me that I could do something and paved the way to all those subsequent Top 8s, PTQ wins, and so on for the rest of the year. In fact, I had a gigantic ratings advantage after this year in Ohio that I spent 1999-2000 qualified for every Pro Tour until New York 2000, where I embarassingly missed a PT in my own back yard (no, we don’t really have back yards in New York).

Yes, George was a very unusual deck — I mean Curiosity and Manta Riders in a format full of Survival of the Fittest, Living Death, and Mogg Fanatic — but was rewarding to play. One of the things I liked about it was how self-deprecating I could be thanks to the relatively low power of my individual spells, basically Goblin Baloon Brigade or a suped up Hill Giant. I could play all apologetic about the fact that I was summoning a Manta Riders. Meanwhile I knew it was going to kill the other guy, even when that other guy was a standout who taught me everything I knew, like Worth Wollpert.

I actually rolled undefeated through the tournament until my eventual loss to Jason Marks in the Top 4 (Jason is John Marks’s younger brother); including a Top 8 victory over my old Dallas rommate Worth and Swiss pairings with David “Tourless” Weitz (who would go on to be Ohio State Champion that year) and eventual Grand Prix superstar Trey Van Cleave.

The cards I liked best were Manta Riders (but only when enhanced by Curiosity) and Thalakos Drifters (which, combined with Curiosity made for a fair clock). The card that was least impressive for me was — believe it or not — Tradewind Riders. Tradewind was just a bit slow for this strategy, which was the beatdown in every matchup.

I actually beat Jason in Game One due to my Mike’s main deck Hammerhead Sharks (he had something like 14 Islands starting), but he came back to take the match with his Shard Phoenix, even though I had him on the ropes in Game Two (yeah, I probably gave it away). If memory serves, Jason took the PTQ (it was either him or Tourless Weitz, but as I recall Pro Tour Rome was the same day as Ohio States, and Weitz was in Ohio to win THAT tournament… but hey, it’s been ten years).

In addition to “turning around” a long stretch of non-finishes, I think this deck went a long way in shaping my outlook as a metagame player. Today R&D might just print a Blue Erg Raiders [that can block, I mean], but back then playing a card like Hammerhead Shark — with a significant crimp in overall flexibility — was a bit of a leap of faith. No, it wasn’t very good against the popular Survival of the Fittest decks, but Hammerhead Shark was a great beatdown creature against the Island-laden Shard Phoenix and Awakening decks, and a superb blocker against the Cursed Scroll-less Red Decks.

Thanks Mike.

Thanks George.

Thanks… giving?

LOVE
MIKE