Five With Flores

Channel your inner Aaron Forsythe with Alara Reborn uncommon Bloodbraid Elf!

Aesthetics:
Did you know that Worth Wollpert (aka @DJ__Nox)* and I used to play with Talruum Minotaur? Actually to be completely accurate I think that Jon Finkel (aka @Jonnymagic00)*, Worth Wollpert, and I used to play Talruum Minotaur. And by “play” I mean play properly, that is in 60 card decks!

If I remember it correctly I was visiting Worth’s parents’ house (they had just taken us to Outback Steak House — mise) and I was a stud and won the PTQ the next day, beating future friends Adam Katz in the round of 8 and the elusive Matt Wang (aka @MattWang97) for the Blue Envelope. Worth made me pay for all day parking, citing the “big winner” clause, plus his mommy and daddy had taken us to Outback the night before.

Worth didn’t actually have to play in the PTQ on account of being on the Gravy Train but he would stay up all night playing Apprentice with Jonny Magic; the deck Worth liked at the time was a U/R deck with Impulse, Force of Will, Man-o’-War… and then for some reason Fireblast and Talruum Minotaur. It was a super fun deck to play and I ran with it in all the side tournaments that I played in at that particular Pro Tour on account of not making day two (which included a couple of 8-man wins, including victories over such masters as A. Comer and T. Walamies). For his part Worth won the Ohio Valley Regional Championship that year with what can only be described as an Air theme deck including Wall of Air and Air Elemental… but also, you know, also Force of Will and Thawing Glaciers.

Ye olde Counter-Hammer deck:

3 Cloud Elemental
1 Diminishing Returns
4 Force of Will
4 Impulse
4 Man-o’-War

4 Frenetic Efreet

1 Earthquake
4 Fireblast
2 Hammer of Bogardan
4 Incinerate
4 Suq’ata Lancer
2 Talruum Minotaur

3 City of Brass
5 Island
11 Mountain
4 Thawing Glaciers

Sideboard:
3 Nevinyrral’s Disk
4 Hydroblast
2 Time Elemental
2 Earthquake
4 Pyroblast

This is neither here nor there except as a point of comparison. Brian Kowal recently wrote on my Facebook wall that he was proud of me that I didn’t write about Gnarled Mass in my Dauntless Escort preview on the mother ship. But here? Bloodbraid Elf is kind of like Talruum Minotaur-plus, right? You give up a point of toughness but get a free card and 1-3 mana on the bonus, which can almost be like another card. You probably can’t play Bloodbraid Elf in the kind of deck that Jonny, Worth, and I played it in on account of the multiple colors plus no Force of Will et al, but the Cascade mechanic makes this Blue-ish anyway!

And that’s ultimately what you get – a card that is marginal at best on the stats (but close to the playability line if we expand our horizons to include more haste), but with a significant enough cantrip / Tinker-ish bonus that we can more seriously consider playing it.

Where can I see this fitting in?
The teaser asked you to channel your inner Aaron Forsythe but the previous section spoke to Deadguys past. What about the CMU side of that original Voltron-ic super team?

Cards like this make me think about Aaron due to a deck design principle he taught me in 2000, when he was heavy up with Angry Hermit, the deck that he used to put two Team CMU players into the Top 8 of the US National Championships, which was also one of the highest win percentage decks of the Swiss format. Here is Aaron’s legendary deck:

3 Masticore

4 Birds of Paradise
4 Deranged Hermit
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Plow Under
2 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
3 Skyshroud Poacher
3 Yavimaya Elder

4 Arc Lightning
4 Avalanche Riders

11 Forest
2 Gaea’s Cradle
4 Karplusan Forest
2 Mountain
4 Rishadan Port
2 Treetop Village

Sideboard:
2 Ancient Hydra
4 Blastoderm
2 Boil
1 Masticore
1 Splinter
3 Thran Foundry
2 Uktabi Orangutan

From the Napster side I can say that this deck was an absolute terror. Regular Trinity Green was essentially a layup but Aaron’s deck, which could Arc Lightning our permanents was much more difficult to defeat. One of the default ways that Napster would beat Trinity was simply to ignore them and blow up their hand and creatures so that they simply couldn’t ever win, but Aaron built Angry Hermit with a new and different algorithm: Mana and Bombs.

What does “Mana and Bombs” mean?

Look at his deck – There is almost no fluff. The closest thing to filler is Arc Lightning, which is itself a two- if not three-for-one (given the most popular deck being Trinity); and maybe a four-for-one against Napster depending on the Phyrexian Negator situation. Everything else in his deck is a card that he can pull off the top, slam down onto the table, that matters, and matters now… That, or a piece of mana that lets him play faster, viz. Rofellos-into-Plow Under.

Mana and Bombs.

So what does this have to do with Bloodbraid Elf?

I think Bloodbraid Elf might have a nice place in the whole “Mana and Bombs” way of deck design. I was inspired in Bloodbraid Elf’s official preview by our friend Bill Stark:

Try these on for size:

Bloodbraid Elf flipping… Jace Beleren?

Bloodbraid Elf flipping… Sprouting Thrinax?

Bloodbraid Elf flipping… Glorious Anthem?

Bituminous Blast flipping Bloodbraid Elf flipping… Incinerate?

It was the last bit that got my brain moving. I think that Bituminous Blast is, with its slightly more powerful cantrip-Tinker a fine card to start a Cascade chain; these two cards — and possibly more cards in the new set, I make it a point not to comment about unofficial cards for the most part — could be the basis for an Aaron Forsythe-style G/R deck. But Incinerate? I think the deck would rather have something like a Lash Out to help set up even more Cascade goodness!

The tension with Mana and Bombs is obvious when we are talking about Cascade because you really never want to be flipping irrelevant 1/1s once you are in the five mana zone. Therefore I think that the low cost cards are going to be from the Mind Stone and Rampant Growth camp, which have some more long term usefulness, especially in a deck that is looking to top deck bombs.

There may in fact be some synergy between these cards and a Ramp idea I explored with Lord of Extinction over at Top 8 Magic.

Snap Judgment Rating: Playable… Depending on the deck it can range from Role Player to Puzzle Piece if not Flagship.

LOVE
MIKE

All Alara Reborn

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* Appropriately, I am aka @FiveWithFlores.

Unsurprisingly, michaelj loves a Bant Sojourners.

Aesthetics:
The crew and I sometimes joke that there was a point about four or five years ago when my brain broke. For a long time I was all about the most efficient paths to attack. I ran Suicide Black every tournament for three tournaments straight, winning a PTQ, scoring Top 4 at my Regionals, and then winning the eventual heartbreaker for 9th place at Nationals. I built TDC Heat which we talked about recently, a metagame-killing G/R beatdown deck. Then Napster, which for all its mid-range surgical power was a first turn Phyrexian Negator deck as well. And the summer I spent every week in the Top 8 of a PTQ I was attacking with Fresh Volunteers.

But right before the birth of my daughter my noggin broke and ever since I have been in love with Eternal Dragon and anything related to Eternal Dragon, viz. Decree of Justice.

As a person who has many times gladly cycled for one 1/1 for four mana, it should come as no surprise that I can easily see myself playing a Bant Sojourners. While it doesn’t have the mid-range trumping power of a Decree of Justice, it’s like you get a one mana discount on your Soldier token!

The interesting thing now is that I think I would feel cheated with such a discount; after all I could pay one more mana and get a full 2/4 chump out of it. Decisions, decisions!

Where can I see this fitting in?
In all seriousness the answer is probably 40-card decks.

Once you get over the initial “cool” rush it isn’t as easy to justify the space in a 60 card deck. The best fit would be some kind of high end Counterspell control deck, to keep the velocity going especially in games where you didn’t draw a Mulldrifter but that is a stretch. These decks are really into killing people with their Broodmate Dragons nowadays, so fake threats that can generate a little bit of card velocity (not even really card advantage) might just lack the power to matter. It is kind of like the theory of more-sies.

Back when the format was Jushi Blue, Heartbeat of Spring, et al more-sies was an issue (ditto on basically any format with a viable Battle of Wits deck); basically at the States where I came in second, I beat a Heartbeat deck in the Swiss. It was actually one of those classic Stage Two v. Stage Three fights were I completely owned him in Stage Two. I was stifling any and all comers with Remand and Mana Leak and Jushi Apprentice kept my cards coming. But I realized that I was eventually going to run out and die. How could I run out? I was out-drawing him two-to-one. The problem was that my cards were swiftly declining in relevance. Remand is worthless when he can just re-play the spell due to having enough mana; Mana Leak is quite leaky when they can pay. Even though I ostensibly had more cards in hand he had more-sies because of ultimately having access to more cards that mattered given sufficient time.

You already know the answer to this: Deny him that time!

Once I realized what was going to happen eventually I went tap-out mode and raced.

Anyway, more-sies for you.

One other cool idea I had was Reveillark. This creature sets itself up, and it is the right power to fit!

Snap Judgment Rating: Role Player (low)
Not unplayable per se… But I don’t see a lot of doors being banged down for Bant Sojourners in Constructed.

LOVE
MIKE

All Alara Reborn

How is Alara Reborn Mythic Rare Lord of Extinction an Elemental and not a Lhurgoyf? Plus: The story of the amazing disappearing Mortivore.

Aesthetics:
I think you’re supposed to be reminded of a Lhurgoyf on this one. It’s one more mana than the classic Lhurgoyf but Pow! … How many times more powerful than the original Lhurgoyf (which back in the day I loved by the way) is Lord of Extinction?

The main deck I played Lhurgoyf in was one of the few that actually played Lhurgoyf in the main deck. I had rarely been so confident in a deck as this one, which I had used to win two tournaments immediately prior to Regionals 1998:

TDC Heat

4 Giant Growth
4 Granger Guildmage
4 Jolrael’s Centaur
3 Lhurgoyf
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Muscle Sliver
4 Quirion Ranger
4 River Boa
3 Uktabi Orangutan

2 Fireball
4 Incinerate

9 Forest
2 Karplusan Forest
3 Mountain
4 Mountain Valley
2 Undiscovered Paradise

sb:

2 Simoon
4 Tranquil Domain
1 Uktabi Orangutan
2 Boil
3 Dwarven Miner
3 Pyroblast

I don’t know if that was my Regionals list (I actually think I played four Uktabi Orangutans main and cut a Centaur), but it was the more recent of the two tournament report deck lists that I found. Yeah, now that I think of it I played Hall of Gemstones which was like a City of Solitude against Blue and also foiled the main combo deck of the day (Cadaverous Bloom).

This deck was exceptional against the Red Decks and the Blue Draw-Go / Rainbow / Big Blue decks of the era, plus it always seemed to pull it out against Tradewind decks; weaker against Living Death and combo. So of course at Regionals I lost in the first round to Sligh, drawing two lands in two games (though to be fair my opponent correctly just killed all my Elves). Speaking of Lhurgoyf, I just remember drawing that alleged monster against Tradewind and doing nothing as there were no creatures in the graveyard. Lhurgoyf just sat there against — if you can believe it — Trained Armodon as I was eliminated from Top 8 contention with a deck that I had tested more than probably anything else in my life at that point.

The Lhurgoyf strategy resurfaced about five years later for Regionals 2003. Our weapon of choice was Mono-Black Control. The main deck was superb, being the favorite against basically every deck in the metagame (we had not tested against Wake for Regionals); the issue was Compost in sideboarded games. Osyp suggested we side in Mortivore, which would be very big in attrition games (like Lhurgoyf was against the Sligh decks back in 1998), hoping to circumvent the Compost card advantage.

I ran with Osyp’s idea and ultimately produced I think the best sideboard strategy of my career.

Mono-Black Control

1 Chainer’s Edict
4 Corrupt
4 Diabolic Tutor
4 Duress
1 Haunting Echoes
3 Innocent Blood
1 Mind Sludge
4 Mutilate
2 Skeletal Scrying
4 Smother
4 Undead Gladiator
2 Visara the Dreadful

2 Cabal Coffers
24 Swamp

sb:
2 Cabal Therapy
2 Chainer’s Edict
1 Engineered Plague
1 Haunting Echoes
2 Laquatus’s Champion
1 Mind Sludge
4 Nantuko Shade
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Visara the Dreadful

Osyp figured that having a large regenerating monster like Mortivore could simultaneously hold down the fort and make up for Compost card advantage; I realized that we could upgrade our regenerating creature with a little more mana and actually change how the game was played.

By changing our mindset and looking at our Black one-for-one removal as “Blue” “removal” (basically Unsummon et al) once a Compost was in play, we just used our one-for-ones to buy time while we set up a Black burn plan. Laquatus’s Champion was not just a regenerating creature set to hold down the fort but an efficient Fireball. With his 187 effect and one swing, we could easily “two-card-combo” the opposing G/R deck out with just one Corrupt, Compost or no.

I ultimately lost to Astral Slide playing for Top 8 (a nearly un-losable matchup, sadly), but to this day am very proud of the sideboard plan (especially given the Tutor nature of the deck), and consider this build, which put Paul, Josh, and myself all in prize position, even if none of us qualified, a triumph of deck design and metagaming.

Oh, but this blog post was supposed to be about Lord of Extinction, or Lhurgoyf 2K9.

Lord of Extinction is just plain awesome I don’t know what else to say. Yes he is a little bit more expensive than Lhurgoyf, but the upgrade to all cards in all graveyards rather than just creatures is huge, especially in Black. For instance you just keep killing guys with one-for-ones, you get +2/+2 with every Terror effect.

All that said, “aesthetically” I don’t get not just the not-Lhurgoyf thing, but given the name and power level, a not-Lord (or even not-Legend) byline.

Where can I see this card fitting in?
While I find Lord of Extinction to be a stronger card than Lhurgoyf, I also feel like it might be a little less applicable. A four mana spell can fit into a twenty land deck as we saw with TDC Heat, when that deck is poised either to win attrition wars with Red Decks or to “recover” when an opposing U/W deck taps out for Wrath of God; in both cases the G/R deck is supposing it will draw into sufficient lands to play its powerful four drop. This doesn’t really work for Lord of Extinction; the kinds of decks that can play it don’t really want to play Lhurgoyf as it was played in TDC Heat.

Instead, the card is just simply good. It should easily be 5/5 or greater on turn five, just from everyday actions. Therefore in addition to being a cleanup card, a Wrath of God recovery card, or the nail in the coffin of an attrition fight, it can just be played, as in Reflecting Pool Control. Can you play Lord of Extinction? That is, can you produce one Black and one Green mana? If so, it is probably pretty good.

The only question is if it is good enough, that is, will it take the place of a Broodmate Dragon, Chameleon Colossus, or Nath of the Gilt-Leaf?

The answer is, Sometimes Lord of Extinction will be, but not always.

Snap Judgment Rating: Role Player (high)

LOVE
MIKE

All Alara Reborn

P.S. Both of the TDC Heat tournament reports and my Mono-Black Regionals report which includes the arduous development of the Laquatus’s Champion sideboarding strategy are detailed in Deckade. These are tough reports to find (and in the Mono-Black report’s case, basically impossible unless you still have Brainburst Premium). But they and close to 700 more pages of great Magic strategy await you over at Top 8 Magic!