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At long last, another edition of You Make the Play!

This time it’s an easy one… Do you keep this hand or not? Why or why not?

This is a seven card hand. You lost the flip so there are 53 cards in your deck and you are playing second. The deck list is the one we have been bandying about the past week or two — Jund Mana Ramp. 

So… Keep or no?

LOVE
MIKE 

Currently Reading: The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists (obviously a re-read), Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (actually I just lent it to @jonnymagic00)

PS Did you cats see that the great Luis Scott-Vargas (LSV) and long-lost RidiculousHat posted on Mis-assignment of Strategy = Options Amputation? Might want to check out the forums from the previous post!

I have gotten a flurry of questions about my opinion on Luis Scott-Vargas’s most recent article on ChannelFireball.com about mid-range decks and Jund Mana Ramp in particular. Luis is a player who for a long time came out of the tradition of The Rock. Even when he was not actually B/G on his colors, Luis played with Loxodon Hierarchs, hand destruction, incremental advantage in general.

Though Luis had a great deal of success with those strategies (US National Champion and all that), he did not enjoy the kind of colossal Pro Tour success that he is riding today until he changed from playing The Rock to combo decks. You will remember his Extended win was with a combo Elves deck; he has since played all manner of Swans, Storm, and so on with peerless results.

This is great for Luis! We have always liked him and wish him every fortune in the world.

The emails and Tweets, though, come from another angle. Luis says that mid-range is an intrinsically flawed strategy, and argues quite strenuously against the strategy that Will Price and I like the best today: Jund Mana Ramp.

To wit:

This is a classic example of the midrange non-blue control deck. It can’t compete with the Cryptic Commands and Cruel Ultimatums of 5-Color Control, and has to settle for running much worse stuff like Primal Command and Garruk Wildspeaker. You may consider this as a 5-CC deck that doesn’t lose to aggro Red, but in return for a better (and not necessarily even good) Red matchup you are so much worse against Faeries or Reveillark. I’m not even convinced that Jund Ramp (or any non-blue Ramp) even beats Token decks.

Well my reaction to this part — which is really the genesis as that is what readers have been asking about specifically — is that it must not apply to us. Let’s look again at our version of Jund Mana Ramp:

Jund Mana Ramp

3 Makeshift Mannequin
3 Shriekmaw

4 Broodmate Dragon
4 Kitchen Finks

4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Cloudthresher
4 Gift of the Gargantuan
4 Rampant Growth

4 Banefire
3 Volcanic Fallout

4 Fire-Lit Thicket
8 Forest
2 Mountain
4 Savage Land
1 Swamp
4 Treetop Village

sideboard:
4 Anathemancer
1 Shriekmaw
1 Terror
3 Caldera Hellion
1 Volcanic Fallout
4 Primal Command
1 Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund

I have for some time been a vocal opponent of the Garruk Wildspeaker version of Jund Mana Ramp as slow and clunky and overly vulnerable to Faeries. Heads up I am not convinced that Garruk does anything … Though it is obvious that the potential for a Violent Ultimatum fueled by the Fertile Ground + Garruk + seven drop draw that only occurs on daytime soap operas is quite the boogeyman. Before I get into details (and what today’s title means), I will address Luis’s paragraph on Jund Mana Ramp…

I would agree that this deck probably doesn’t want to get in a Cruel Ultimatum fight with Reflecting Pool Control. However that has not historically been a problem, and I anticipate it to be less of a problem this coming weekend. At New York States last year, I handily dispatched every Reflecting Pool + Cryptic Command deck I played in that tournament, albeit with the help of Mind Shatter + Gutteral Response (which was like the simpler, faster, Cruel Ultimatum). Point being, I respect the Ultimatum, but don’t anticipate the matchup as being a huge issue. In fact I would have been very happy to play Reflecting Pool Control all day at States; it was in fact the deck I tested against the most and I felt like I had a superb understanding of how to dominate.

For Regionals I am not sure how to consider the comparison. For one, I think that Reflecting Pool Control is a disaster. Not a disaster for Jund Mana Ramp… like it’s an unplayable time bomb waiting to blow up in the face of whoever has decided to play it. I don’t have Mind Shatter + Gutteral Response any more because I don’t plan to have to have those cards. If I did, I would commit the sideboard space. Instead I have a much improved main deck that can torch the opponent out at will and a sideboard that features the card that I believe should extinct the Reflecting Pool Control strategy: Anathemancer.

I already said I don’t like Garruk Wildspeaker… but I grandly disagree that Cryptic Command is in any way better than Primal Command. Remember I have included Primal Command as a four-of… but a sideboard four-of that only comes in when it is an appropriate tool. I have steadily increased the number of Primal Commands in my sideboard because I really want to draw them in these matchups where I want to draw them (beatdown decks, Sanity Grinding, and the mirror). When I played Blightning Beatdown, there was nothing I wanted to play against more than a deck with Cryptic Command, whether it was Reflecting Pool Control or Fae. In both cases I felt like I was a heavy favorite, and I got to play with Gutteral Response to force mana commitments while I still resolved my threats.

Perhaps in agreement with Luis, I actually don’t think Red Decks are that easy for at least my version of Jund Mana Ramp. I feel like I have a good chance, but I would much rather play Fae or Reflecting Pool Control or certainly G/W Tokens than a Red Deck. That is why I have Primal Command. I want to grind the Red Deck into the floor, and gaining seven life while loading up on Kitchen Finks and Broodmate Dragons is the most appropriate way to do that in this format. Against Sanity Grinding, a Primal Command is actual card advantage, trading for multiple spells the opponent has played, and hwen it resolves, demoralizing the Millstone strategy. And of course in the mirror Primal Command is arguably the single strongest card, setting the opponent back on a comes into play tapped land and putting Karrthus into my hand.

I don’t look forward to playing Reveillark, but I actually think Fae is a very easy matchup for this version of Jund Mana Ramp. I lost to Fae to miss Top 8 of States, but I think that that deck — and even more this deck — were and are heavy favorites against Faeries. In fact, I think that my version of Jund Mana Ramp is a nightmare for most Faeries players. I side into eight copies of Volcanic Fallout and Cloudthresher (seven starting) and I have very little dead weight (only Shriekmaw) and no obvious targets. The paths to losing are being manascrewed or the opponent drawing multiple uncontesed Mistbind Cliques. I respect the latter, though, and am considering playing a second Terror in the sideboard specifically to help deal with this draw.

But Tokens? In our testing B/W Tokens can be competitive but Jund is the favorite; I don’t think G/W Tokens has very much of a shot. Testing online (where admittedly G/W Tokens doesn’t have Dauntless Escort yet we have yet to drop a game. Will Dauntless Escort matter? Sure! It will have a non-zero impact but we don’t tend to rely on sweeping the opponent to win, more dominating with tempo plays until we can get the opponent to concede with Broodmate Dragons.

So we’ve already decided that Luis must have not been talking about us when he made his comment. After all, he invoked the name of Garruk Wildspeaker. But would he dislike our deck anyway? I think maybe not.

You see our version of Jund Mana Ramp isn’t a mid-range control deck. I think that that is the source of the misunderstanding. Jund Mana Ramp — ours anyway — is a Tinker deck (in the sense of “Finding the Tinker Deck”). This is a deck that is full of mana and bombs. It doesn’t really seek to interact with the opponent’s cards like most mid-range control decks so much as to dominate them. I don’t want to get a one-for-one on a Thoughtseize; I want you to commit four mana to your Wilt-Leaf Liege so that I can get a two-for-one on you with my Makeshift Mannequin. Once I hit turn five or six I am going to tap out for a card every turn, each copy being more dramatically powerful (not necessarily “better”) than any card in your deck.

That is not a “mid-range” strategy. That is a power strategy.

Is interesting because Luis’s passion in argumentation comes as someone who sees himself as having “recovered” from the plague of mid-range mediocrity. I would reiterate that I very much respect his opinion and recent accomplishments, but would argue that his stiff-backed model may ultimately lead down a path of inflexibility. Mid-range can be sub-optimal in some rooms (especially formats with good Extended options), but be the absolute best deck to play in other rooms. It might tend to be wrong, but removing mid-range from our palettes in its entirety teaches us essentially nothing. Magic is a game of options, and the players who preserve their options tend to be the most successful. Mid-range (even if the deck at hand is not necessarily mid-range) is just another tool to be used or left in the drawer. I see no reason to remove it entirely.

LOVE
MIKE

You probably know that Will Price (aka @sloppystack), Brian David-Marshall (aka BDM aka @Top8Games), and I did some playtesting with Jund Mana Ramp earlier this week. This post is going to be relatively detailed information on that testing, but you can get more information on what we have published so far by…

• Following me on Twitter,
• Listening to the most recent batch of Magic Podcasts at Top 8 Magic, or
• Checking on the Jund Mana Ramp post I made there yesterday or thereabouts

To make a long story short, I tested out a couple of different decks, including the more Cascade-centric Ramp deck I talked about here last week, Borderpost Tezzerator, and good old Reflecting Pool Control; Will liked the Jund Mana Ramp deck we talked about during the BBQ Podcasts from two weeks ago best and convinced me to spend more time on that deck, particularly as we were having a hard time going Ultimate on Tezzeret due to the cheap damage sources available in Standard.

That deck originally had Bloodbraid Elf… but I cut it the night before live / live Twitter testing after I had flipped one of the two main deck Banefires.

“Never again.”

Banefire was like the best card in the deck!

Ultimately, this was the list I ran in testing:

Jund Mana Ramp

3 Makeshift Mannequin
3 Shriekmaw

4 Broodmate Dragon
4 Kitchen Finks

4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Cloudthresher
4 Gift of the Gargantuan
4 Rampant Growth

4 Banefire
3 Volcanic Fallout

4 Fire-Lit Thicket
8 Forest
2 Mountain
4 Savage Land
1 Swamp
4 Treetop Village

We didn’t test sideboards, but if I were to play Regionals tomorrow, 1) I would definitely play this deck, and 2) this is the sideboard I would play:

4 Anathemancer
1 Shriekmaw
3 Caldera Hellion
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Terminate
4 Primal Command
1 Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund

I decided to play Primal Command over any Mind Shatters. With eight Cloudthreshers and Volcanic Fallouts, you simply don’t need to max out on Mind Shatter and Gutteral Response to beat Faeries like you had to for the States-era version of Jund Mana Ramp. Anathemancer does the same duty against Reflecting Pool Control. Anathemancer is simply irresistible in a long game, especially in concert with Banefire, another tool we did not have at States. Moreover you kind of need two Swamps to run Mind Shatter (I tested tonight on MTGO with no new cards to confirm this)… and I don’t really want to play another Swamp.

The bigger shift was to remove most of the Terminates in favor of Caldera Hellion. The reasons are twofold. First of all, while it is pretty easy to play Shriekmaw or Banefire, and you usually have the mana for Broodmate Dragon… Terminate under pressure is another matter entirely at BR. I might cut them all and play a Lash Out, Terror, or even Murderous Redcap (RR being pretty easy to play thanks to Fire-Lit Thicket). You can’t play a filter land to get BR because Graven Cairns doesn’t filter Green mana. Caldera Hellion is pretty exciting, and should help give the deck a nice lift against G/W Tokens.

Anyway, back to real-life testing.

The first matchup was me on Jund Mana Ramp, Will on B/W Tokens. I am not 100% sure on the version, but I believe it was either a deck that Luis Scott-Vargas posted or the PTQ winner from the first week of the current Standard season. In either case, the deck was an evolution from “regular old” B/W tokens to incorporate Ajani Goldmane + Persist (Murderous Redcap and Kitchen Finks).

For reference:

3 Glorious Anthem
3 Plains
1 Swamp
3 Zealous Persecution
3 Caves of Koilos
3 Path to Exile
4 Fetid Heath
3 Cloudgoat Ranger
2 Marsh Flitter
3 Ajani Goldmane
4 Windbrisk Heights
4 Bitterblossom
2 Mutavault
4 Knight of the White Orchid
4 Tidehollow Sculler
3 Arcane Sanctum
3 Kitchen Finks
4 Spectral Procession
4 Reflecting Pool

Sideboard
2 Wrath of God
2 Identity Crisis
3 Mark of Asylum
2 Celestial Purge
3 Thoughtseize
3 Wispmare

Will and I traded the first four games, with the player going first winning each one. I felt like I could have won either of the games that I didn’t win in the first four, and Will felt like he definitely should have won the first game I won (it was a lethal Banefire off the top). I eventually broke serve on a game where Will had both lands and spells but where B/W as a non-Blue, non-Green, yet reasonably mana-intensive deck (WWW, BB, etc.) showed one of its vulnerabilities… Will hit his first four land drops but did not do anything to make me care. Meanwhile I kept a one-land six-card hand on the draw, but with a Rampant Growth and two Civic Wayfinders. These cards vastly improved my board position (especially with Will doing nothing) until I was dropping Dragons. I won the other two games on the play in the first seven, and we called the match at 5-2 in favor of Jund Mana Ramp.

Why did we call it at 5-2? This is something I got from playtesting with Zvi for Worlds last year. This was a matchup where both of us were enamored of one of the decks, and where the opposite deck did nothing to shake our interest. Since we didn’t really care about the performance of B/W as it was not dramatic, it was more efficient to move on.

The B/W matchup is a pure “Trish” matchup. Basically from Jund side you want to survive and get lots of two-for-ones. Your cards are so vastly superior to the B/W cards that they can’t possibly win outside of early Stage Two unless they lock you with Ajani. So the goal is just to trade. Eventually you will crush them with Cloudthreshers and Broodmate Dragons and Banefire for nine. So basically it is a default for Jund to win. The two games Will won were:

1. Thoughtseize-into-Tidehollow Sculler: He correctly ignored my early game acceleration and just took my bombs. So when I got to six lands, I had nothing to do.
2. Double Tidehollow Sculler: He slowed me down and got super duper Spectral Processions. My Broodmate Dragons were too small!

My favorite kill was probably when Will took my Cloudthresher with Tidehollow Sculler, I drew and passed against his Cloudgoat Ranger and Spectral Procession tokens. He attacked with all and I revealed that I had drawn another Cloudthresher, cleared the board, and followed up with a big Banefire. This was particularly super awesome as I also neutered Ajani

The next matchup was against B/G Elves, which was a Top 8 finisher in the first PTQ; according to Will and his partner in crime @zielend B/G Elves is also one of the top finishers in big MTGO events.

For reference:

1 Swamp
4 Forest
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Lord of Extinction
4 Llanowar Wastes
3 Noble Hierarch
4 Twilight Mire
4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
3 Profane Command
2 Eyeblight’s Ending
2 Cloudthresher
4 Wren’s Run Vanquisher
2 Mutavault
3 Chameleon Colossus
4 Civic Wayfinder
3 Kitchen Finks
4 Wilt-Leaf Liege
4 Treetop Village

Sideboard
4 Shriekmaw
2 Primal Command
3 Avatar of Might
2 Necrogenesis
1 Kitchen Finks
3 Pithing Needle

The testing was kind of strange.

I won the first three games with B/G Elves.

We switched decks.

I won the next three games with Jund Mana Ramp.

We tried to analyze why this might be (I mean other than my being super awesome); but I actually won one of the B/G games on a mulligan to four, and I shipped to Paris five times in the three games I played from Jund side! This is actually quite telling as I realized what was going on from playing both sides and consistently shipped not just to land and spells, but any Shriekmaw. Basically if you draw a Shriekmaw it is quite easy to beat B/G Elves from Jund side.

From B/G Elves side I elected to play B/G as a singular big threat deck rather than as a swarming deck. That is, I would attack with one Chameleon Colossus or Lord of Extinction rather than exposing myself to getting blown out by Volcanic Fallout.

At this point BDM sat down with us and helped play Jund from Will’s side. The main contribution he made was to torch any and every mana accelerator I played; with Brian’s help Will won the last three games 2-1. This led to a 5-4 lead for Jund Mana Ramp over nine games, with essentially no pattern based on who went first. However from playing both sides I think that Jund should be the heavy favorite.

Just look at the sideboards. Jund gets the fourth Shriekmaw and as much removal as it likes. It would be a complete blowout if Jund actually got ahold of more Terminates, but you can only do what you can.

Tonight I played several matches with Jund (albeit with no new cards in the sideboard) and finished my session at 4-1 or 5-1 with the only loss being to Faeries. I might have won actually. I kept a one-land six-card hand on the draw in Game One and conceded in frustration when my opponent hit Bitterblossom, Jace Beleren and I still hadn’t played my second land. It turns out I had multiple lands and a Volcanic Fallout on top (I obviously kept a hand full of acceleration and two-for-ones)… I actually think I could have gotten out of it. I took Game Two, and lost Game Three on a judgment call. Basically my opponent passed with three mana up and I had six mana on my turn with Cloudthresher and Broodmate Dragon in hand. I was annoyed at his double Vendilion Clique draw, which had robbed me of a ‘Thresher and Makeshift Mannequin and thought I could resolve my ‘Thresher main. He had not shown me Broken Ambitions in the first two games, so I decided if he had Remove Soul there was nothing I could do about it. Of course my original plan was to test-spell the ‘Thresher at the end of his turn and untap into the Broodmate, but like I said, I hadn’t seen Broken Ambitions.

He had Broken Ambitions.

The game took a bit longer, and I was one turn off of winning with Banefire, but he ended up having me to -2 as I failed to draw either a third Cloudthresher or a Volcanic Fallout to stall. All that said, I feel like Faeries has to be a winnable matchup with the package we plan to present.

More before Regionals,

LOVE
MIKE

Is Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund playable in competitive Constructed formats? Mark Rosewater doesn’t seem to think so… But there might just be precedent to playing a seven mana Legendary Dragon who is only good against Dragons. Really!

I pay attention to a lot of the stuff Mark says.

I even follow him on Twitter at @maro254 even though the bastard doesn’t follow me back at @fivewithflores (hint: follow @fivewithflores and an angel will get her wings).

Anyway I found this to be a strange statement:

“I know the kind of responses a card like this can get from some people: a seven-mana Dragon that steals every other Dragon and gives them all haste? When is this situation going to come up exactly, where you’re still alive yet your opponent has Dragons just lying around waiting to be stolen? My response to these people is this: this card isn’t for you.

“While players understand that there exist other types of players, for some reason they forget this when they run across a card that doesn’t make sense to them. Why did Wizards print such a card? The answer is because we believed someone else would value it. Karrthus might not win any tournaments (even then, he is a 7/7 flier with haste for seven mana—hey, aesthetics popping up its head again), but I do know he’s going to go into a bunch of Dragon decks. I know that there will be players who rip him open and gape because in the circles they play, this is going to be an awesome card.

“Karrthus is fun. Maybe not for everyone, but definitely for the people the card was designed for.”

From “An Outside View”

It’s interesting because I and a couple of friends all had the same idea when we saw Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund: Wow! That seems pretty savage against Broodmate Dragon!

Here’s the thing: You probably wouldn’t play Karrthus in your main deck; you might not even think to sideboard him. But I asked Will Price this question last week:

You walk up to the first round pairings at Regionals. You haven’t turned in your deck list yet. You see that you are paired up against me first round… True or false, you swap one sideboard card for a single copy of Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund?

The answer was definitely, obviously, true.

Will and I will be live testing, podcasting and updating the universe “live” on Twitter tonight (check Top 8 Magic and Twitter* for details). Both of us like Jund Mana Ramp as one of our deck options right now. If you followed the awful-sounding BBQ podcasts from last week, you know why we find Mana Ramp to be so exciting. Here on Five With Flores I posted a Cascade-based ramp deck. One of the other decks I am considering is Reflecting Pool Control. What do all of these decks have in common?

They all play three or more Broodmate Dragons.

So especially in a deck that can muster seven mana, that can dig to a singleton copy of a particular game-breaking creature with Gift of the Gargantuan or Primal Command, why not play such an inexorable threat / threat-breaker?

Like I said, there is precedent.

Hydroblast is precedent.

Do you really think most Blue decks cared about blowing up individual Red cards? The Hydroblasts, in large part, were there to Counterspell the Pyroblasts to ensure that the Blue deck’s finale actually succeeded in closing the curtain; that is to keep the bad guy Stage Three non-interacting in Stage Three.

Ring of Gix is precedent (kind of**).

Back in the Napster v. Replenish days, Replenish really couldn’t beat a Stromgald Cabal. But Ring of Gix could tap it, allowing the bad guys (funny how the U/W deck is the bad guys in this example) to play their un-fun four mana White spells. Ring of Gix was notoriously difficult for Napster to deal with… Powder Keg did it, but along the way the good guys (funny how the Negator Black deck is the good guys in this example) would end up blowing up their Cabal, Skittering Horror, whatever gassy threes.

Or, Replenish could decelerate Napster into a point in Stage Two where Replenish could profitably interact and could work from to springboard into its true Stage Three.

Divert is precedent.

This is the best example I can think of because it is relatively recent… Extended PTQ season last year… Pre-season actually. The deck I was testing at the time was one of those U/W decks that Shaheen Soorani loves so much in Extended. The matchup against Red Deck Wins / Zoo was pretty good due to Spell Snares and Condemns. The trouble was in sideboarded games — especially when the Red Deck was on the play — and they could land a Molten Rain. The matchup was like 65/35 U/W if the Red Deck didn’t have Molten Rain and 20/80 if they did. The problem was that on the draw, there were no great cards to sideboard. You could play Remand but then they would just play it again. I found most of the permission spells in the format quite obnoxious and I really only liked Spell Snare and Cryptic Command, largely relying on Counterbalance to do my dirty work.

… But no way Counterblance could be accurately on-line at this stage of the game, especially on tne draw.

Enter Divert.

Divert was a card that was present purely to deal with Molten Rain. But deal it did. In addition to being pretty good against the mana tight Zoo decks at making them brain their own Tarmogoyfs with huge Tribal Flames, Divert could not only save one of my lands (and net me two life) but cripple the Red Deck at the same time.

In this case Red / Zoo was Stone Molten Raining U/W into a Stage One from which it could never recover. Using Divert, U/W could keep itself in a Stage Two where it could keep up its dukes and in fact turn the tables on the Stages.

I see Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund as kind of the same card, but with less pressure attached. Divert was pretty good, but you kind of had to have it the turn they had the Molten Rain. With Karrthus, though, you should be able to set up and dig for a few turns before you can start crushing with the opponent’s own gear.

Most of the time this will “merely” be an incredibly powerful Stage Two play that puts the opponent on a one turn clock, but sometimes… Stage Three here we come!

Tonight: Testing

LOVE
MIKE

If you want to follow along, ask us matchup questions, and so on, follow the Top 8 Magic team on Twitter!

michaelj
BDM
Will Price
Matt Wang

** It’s only “kind of” precedent because Napster typically started Stromgald Cabal, even though it smelled like a sideboard card.

That’s right FiveWithFlores fans… a possible payoff! Here comes a legitimately exciting Standard Tezzerator sketch featuring Tezzeret the Seeker plus new Alara Reborn weapons Fieldmist Borderpost and Mistvein Borderpost.

  

To begin with, here’s the deck:

Borderpost Tezzerator

4 Fieldmist Borderpost
4 Mind Stone
4 Mistvein Borderpost
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Rings of Brighthearth

4 Cryptic Command
4 Jace Beleren
4 Mulldrifter
3 Tezzeret the Seeker

4 Esper Charm

1 Ajani Goldmane
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3 Path to Exile
4 Wrath of God

4 Arcane Sanctum
9 Island
2 Mystic Gate
2 Plains
1 Swamp

sideboard:
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Scepter of Dominance
2 Negate
1 Plumeveil
2 Austere Command
1 Ajani Goldmane
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Oblivion Ring
1 Path to Exile
2 Wall of Reverence

The main deck still needs to be tuned (obviously… it’s 61 cards). I am a little skeptical of the Black component because there isn’t enough Black to support Scepter of Fugue, which is the best kind of card in this strategy for fighting decks like Jund Ramp or Reflecting Pool Control.

Right now the only Black is Esper Charm, which is admittedly a superb spell (though it could be replaced with some combination of Courier’s Capsules and Armillary Spheres. I am guessing that the Black will remain, though, because Mistvein Borderpost is an essential part of this deck and it would be a shame to waste that Black splash (though the mana would be improved going down to two colors and replacing some Arcane Sanctums with the last two Mystic Gates).

The idea of this deck came to me due to the Borderpost cycle. The Borderposts just give us more cheap, high utility, artifacts that can help add loyalty to Tezzeret the Seeker; previously the format really only had only Mind Stone. The Borderposts give us not acceleration but “power” mana once Tezzeret is already in play, plus “bodies” for Tezzeret’s ultimate ability. Hi-ya!

No one has produced a proven deck using the Borderposts yet so there is no great model on how to build a mana base. Remember the Borderposts aren’t lands. They function like Coastal Towers and Salt Marshes… but only when you have already got a basic land. So I loaded this deck with basic lands! The lucky side is that this deck seems relatively resilient against Anathemancer, which looks to be next to unique in the current format.

So how does this deck work?

The primary threats in Borderpost Tezzerator are the three of the four Planeswalkers. I have never ended a game with Jace’s ultimate ability, but there is no reason why you wouldn’t be able to (especially as this is a Rings of Brighthearth deck). Of course you can hassle with Elspeth’s microscopic army. The sexiest kill — especially when you’ve capitalized on Rings of Brighthearth — is an Avatar or double-Avatar strike set up by Ajani Goldmane.

But the most common kill is of course having four artifacts in play and killing the opponent with Tezzeret the Seeker. It’s pretty easy to have four artifacts out, and it’s not very difficult to get your guys through. Here are some kills you may not have seen at first glance:

• Any big kill – Cryptic Command the opponent’s creatures at the end of the opponent’s turn, untap and swing for the kill (easiest with Tezzeret kill, but fine with Ajani kill).
• Avatar kill – Pre-combat use Elspeth’s ultimate ability to make the Avatar(s) immortal. Wrath of God pre-combat… Your guy lives, the opponent dies.
• Avatar kill – Elspeth sends the Avatar “to the air” to circumvent blockers! Obvious?
• Tezzeret kill – Wrath of God pre-combat. This is kind of hideous… All of their guys die, your guys aren’t even guys yet when the Wrath goes off.. They probably die.

Card rundown…

Fieldmist Borderpost
Obviously a defining card of this deck; its existence is fundamental to the viability of the Tezzeret deck in Standard… In this deck it’s a decent land, but because it’s an artifact, it plays nicely with the most powerful Planeswalker.

Mind Stone
Basically the only sort of mana acceleration available in a deck like this in Standard. I ran it in some Grixis and Reflecting Pool Control decks pre-Conflux, but they were never good enough… This deck has a fair number of important four mana spells — Ajani Goldmane, Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Wrath of God — and Mind Stone can help put those cards out more quickly. Subtly, the card is also useful for playing cards like Jace Beleren because there are so many “lands” in Borderpost Tezzerator that come into play tapped (you know, like the Borderposts themselves). Mind Stone works pretty well with Tezzeret the Seeker and Rings of Brighthearth in long Stage Two games. You can use Tezzeret and Rings to search up two Mind Stones for “free” (you pay two mana but the Mind Stones in play); the Mind Stones provide not only a long term mana advantage, but with sufficient mana the above play is basically an Opportunity (with Rings of Brighthearth, each of the Mind Stones represents two cards).

Mistvein Borderpost
See Fieldmist Borderpost, above, except Mistvein Borderpost is less important to this deck in particular because Borderpost Tezzerator is a White deck and not really a Black deck.

Relic of Progenitus
Card number sixty-one. I always under-prepare for Reveillark decks. There also used to be a Pithing Needle.

Rings of Brighthearth
The deck doesn’t need the Rings in play to win; in a sense this is “win more” … but really it’s win way more. It seems pretty difficult to beat this deck if you let it play a few turns with Rings and any one of the Planeswalkers. Remember Mind Stone works well with Rings as well… I was thinking of adding Esper Panorama and maybe Mistveil Plains (which both have nice synergy with the Rings), but like I said before we have no real data on the Borderposts and I don’t just want to manascrew myself.

Cryptic Command
LOL.

Jace Beleren
This is the only four-of Planeswalker in the deck. Strictly a curve issue. You want to hit three, play Jace, draw some cards, get out and get going.

Mulldrifter
This deck actually started out as a B/U Mannequin hybrid deck! Shriekmaw, Soul Manipulation… Sexy, right? Mulldrifter is the only card that made the cuts; I felt like Planeswalkers was a more powerful theme than Mannequin. I don’t see ever cutting this card… It’s not a lot worse than Compulsive Research on three, and the five mana version can attack and block.

Tezzeret the Seeker
The crown jewel – The Borderposts make Tezzeret frankly playable in Standard; going even a little bit long, Tezzeret doesn’t offer the lockdown of the Extended version, but it is still a heck of a lot stronger than Garruk Wildspeaker!

Esper Charm
The only Black card in the deck at this point… See the above discussions.

Ajani Goldmane
I added this in about the third version in place of the third Elspeth. The games with this deck can sometimes go quite long even if you’re not getting killed… I was just drawing a lot of Elspeths when I was already working the board with Elspeth; I wanted something different that could also gain life as this deck has no main deck Wall of Reverence or Kitchen Finks.

Elspeth, Knight-Errant
One of the best cards in Standard. It’s basically Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker for half the mana 🙂

Path to Exile
Do I really have to explain this one?

Wrath of God
See “Path to Exile” above.

Sideboard cards…

I sketched out the initial version of the sideboard very loosely because of Meddling Mage.

2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Scepter of Dominance
2 Negate
1 Plumeveil
2 Austere Command
1 Ajani Goldmane
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Oblivion Ring
1 Path to Exile
2 Wall of Reverence

I really like Scepter of Dominance. If I cut Esper Charm I think I would play two Scepters. Remember Scepter of Dominance forces a creature deck to over-commit so that you can get extra value with Wrath of God. Against control decks it can also help you resolve your spells. Plus, you can screw up the opponent’s mana so it is harder for him to play a Broodmate Dragon, Cruel Ultimatum, you know.

Well, that’s the first look. I like this one.

LOVE
MIKE

In Part Two, we continue our thoughts on Captured Sunlight with more detailed discussions on longtime favorite Loxodon Hierarch!

First of all, great discussion from everyone. My favorite comment has to be from hudnall56:

Captured Sunlight into Kitchen Finks is the most mid-rangey thing I’ve heard of for a long, long time.

Which battles that of KZipple in a seething firestorm of violent controversy:

That isn’t nearly as midrangy as Foolkillers.

(If by “seething firestorm” we mean “soothing balm” given the subject matter).

So before we get into the specifics of what the most ridiculous thing that we can do with a Captured Sunlight is, I would just like to address the most mid-rangey thing hudnall56 could imagine:

So… four mana, six (really eight) life, and a 3/2 body… followed by a 2/1 body.

How does this compare to four mana for four life and a single 4/4 body?

This, my friends, sounds notoriously like a question of How Card Advantage Works.

Loxodon Hierarch and Card Advantage

On its face Loxodon Hierarch doesn’t generate any card advantage. Now if we move from on-its-face traditional counting to the more accurate world of interactive Magic, Loxodon sometimes generates card advantage. For example against a Black deck it isn’t going to generate any card advantage drawing a Terror, but against a Red Deck it can pickpocket an extra card when someone has to spend, say, a Tarfire and a Seal of Fire.

… Or is it just one more card?

The reason Red Decks hate Hierarchs is that they are fundamentally card advantage against Red Decks. Life gain is not advantageous in general, but against a Red Deck that has scads of different cards that do nothing but nug the brains for two… Life gain atually looks like card advantage; on top of any actual exchanges that take place on the board, a Loxodon Hierarch will undo a Red Deck’s next two Shocks.

Loxodon Hierarch… The Best Card or Constructed Unplayable?

At the time of the last Pro Tour Honolulu, chatter around the top of the game was that Loxodon Hierarch was the best card in Standard. A quick glance at the actual Top 8 decks from that tournament reveals… not a single Hierarch!

For the next Constructed Pro Tour that year, Charleston (the often discussed team Pro Tour), we approached the format with the notion that Loxodon Hierarch was the best card in the format. It was a warping card from our deck design perspective, more influential than any other single card in our crafting of our three individual decks. Interestingly, while almost every team played four Hierarchs… the winning team didn’t. Just sayin’.

Now recently Luis Scott-Vargas — a player who has recently transformed himself from a The Rock / Solar Flare kind of guy into a Pro Tour winner with Elves, then followed up with standout performances on the backs of decks like Swans and Storm, recently posted something I found quite controversial and thought provoking on his new site ChannelFireball.com:

I used to be a fan of Loxodon Hierarch type decks myself, and guess what? I didn’t win at the Pro Tour level. Midrange decks designed to pummel aggro may work during the Swiss at a PTQ, but you will usually meet your demise during the Top 8 to someone playing a real control deck. I learned my lesson the hard way, playing these sorts of midrange decks as recently as PT Hollywood in 2008. My Loxodon Warhammer plus Chameleon Colossus deck did well enough until I played against a bunch of Reveillark decks, which completely annihilated me. Turns out that a control deck with Cryptic Command and Reveillark is better than a control deck with Cloudthresher and Primal Command. I understand why people are drawn to decks like this, but all I can offer is my advice to put down the Finks and pick up Vendilion Cliques while there is still time.

As you can see, Luis writes almost like a religious convert!

The title of the piece?

Decks That Can’t Win Tournaments

Which poses the question… Do we even (ever?) want a Loxodon Hierarch?

My old Two-Headed Giant teammate Steve Sadin likes to talk about the time that he beat me in an Extended PTQ. Any kind of Magic friendships typically ultimately come down to bragging rights, but this was a special case (it’s not like he is still bragging about beating me in the finals of a mock tournament, Loam v. Haterator)… In the future PTQ he beat me Boros v. Haterator, in a matchup where I drew Loxodon Hierarch. The fact is, Steve won the flip, had the tempo, burned the right Birds, and minimized the awfulness of Loxodon Hierarch when it showed up. As a former Boros player myself, I can recall dozens of games where I just got by the Hierarchs with Manriki-Gusari, Boros Garrison, and Eight-And-A-Half-Tails… And that was Standard.

The point of Luis’s piece on ChannelFireball seems to be that we shouldn’t want to want Loxodon Hierarchs… Which is a different question than we are trying to answer when we talk about Captured Sunlight.

Because ultimately I think we can all agree that a Captured Sunlight into a Wooly Thoctar in Standard is probably pretty good (and generally better than a “real” Loxodon Hierarch). So what are some of the other scenarios we can project?

• Kitchen Finks – I have never done this yet. But according to hudnall56, this is quite mid-rangey
• Civic Wayfinder – This offers a fair amount of card advantage; I would not typically want to play an Exploding Borders… This effect is pretty similar (and probably generally better as you get a body out of it, and all things considered, gaining four life with no effect on the board is probably better than dealing four damage with no effect on the board). But like I said, I wouldn’t typically consider playing Exploding Borders.
• Rampant Growth – Kind of miserable, actually. Worse in almost every way than the previous.
• Lash Out – (and substitute any Terminates, Nameless Inversions, and so on that you like)… Could be pretty good depending on the board. If you have the only guy this is kind of miserable.

Most of the time this card seems underwhelming given its flip capability (I wouldn’t make the same statement talking about Bloodbraid Elf, which will often be flipping cards like Hell’s Thunder, Boggart Ram-Gang, and the like in an offensive haste deck. On balance, I have Captured Sunlight in a deck like this:

Four-color Cascade Ramp

4 Bituminous Blast
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Broodmate Dragon
4 Captured Sunlight
4 Enlisted Wurm
4 Kitchen Finks

4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Rampant Growth

4 Lash Out

3 Exotic Orchard
5 Forest
4 Jungle Shrine
2 Mountain
1 Plains
4 Reflecting Pool
4 Savage Lands
1 Swamp

sideboard:
4 Anathemancer
4 Cloudthresher
3 Path to Exile
4 Volcanic Fallout

Testing is super preliminary at this point, but the deck follows many of the same principles as previous Jund Ramp decks. Against Reflecting Pool control you have to rely on the extreme amount of card advantage to keep pace, then side in Anathemancer as a tremendous threat.

Faeries is a deck that seems like it has to be solved with the sideboard; those Volcanic Blowouts are also there for Boat Brew, B/W Tokens, and other decks that employ Spectral Procession.

… Which all together is a big chunk of the metagame.

That said, this deck can play pretty powerfully, the Standard Storm, kind of. I wasn’t initially a fan of Enlisted Wurm, but in this deck it can play like Mind’s Desire. The bonus on this card has been about 2.5 for me so far… You know, Enlisted Wurm flipping Bituminous Blast flipping Civic Wayfinder.

Just a jumping-off point, to be sure, but I think Loxodon Hierarch would be proud.

LOVE
MIKE

In which MichaelJ reacts to a controversial comment about Alara Reborn common Captured Sunlight.

So this one is from the Twitter files.

Michael Dean Conway (aka @mikeconway13) shipped an interesting couple of Tweets over the last couple of days. Based on some of our recent reviews on Alara Reborn in general, Cascade specifically, I wanted to share this one with you:

This of course got the gears moving.

First off I had to go and look up Captured Sunlight. I didn’t know off hand which one Captured Sunlight was (I just had a vague recollection that I only liked Bituminous Blast and Bloodbraid Elf and not really any of the other Cascade spells in the set). Turns out it is this one:

Now remember, on Twitter you only get 140 characters to express your thought; but in this case Mike is able to squeeze out a pair…

• Everyone is touting Bloodbraid Elf.
• He thinks Captured Sunlight will be the top Cascade spell in Standard.

As for the first, I can’t disagree. In fact, when I first blogged about Bituminous Blast, the first thing that happened was that people started telling me to look at Bloodbraid Elf. Like I said earlier, I only remembered liking the pair of those cards (and to go with the sentiment of Mike’s Tweet)… Bloodbraid Elf, BLOODBRAID ELF, BLOODBRAID ELF.

Now as to the second, Mike actually got me thinking about Captured Sunlight. I immediately disagreed… but that’s not ultimately the point. My perspective changed to…

What would make Captured Sunlight the best Cascade spell in Standard?

To an extent, that one is easy.

Is Bituminous Blast the best spell in Standard? No.
Is Bloodbraid Elf the best spell in Standard? No.

Yet early consensus is that one of these spells — neither of which is the best spell in Standard — is the best Cascade spell in Standard.

Which of them is better than Loxodon Hierarch?

That’s right!

But wait! Why do I ask?

The superficial connections between Captured Sunlight and Loxodon Hierarch should probably be pretty obvious. Both cards share the same mana cost at four; both cards help you gain four life immediately. Unlike Bituminous Blast and Bloodbraid Elf, Loxodon Hierarch was at one point the best card in Standard (more on that tomorrow). If I can make Captured Sunlight as good — or even better than — Loxodon Hierarch, then by default wouldn’t that make Captured Sunlight the best card in Standard?

Not in this Standard, unfortunately *cough* Bitterblossom *cough* … Though we might arguably pass the efficacy of one of the two assumed default-best Cascade spells in the format.

This part is surprisingly easy…

• Four mana – check.
• Four life – check.
• 4/4 body… versus random card on top.

To make a long story short, we can bias a deck to spit out things on the order of Wooly Thoctar. When we do that, we can potentially over-shoot even the bar on Loxodon Hierarch!

Okay, here are the caveats, though…

Ultimately, I don’t think we want to engage in precision deck design just to make Captured Sunlight good. It was an interesting mental exercise, but our deck probably needs things on the order of Rampant Growth or even Firespout that are going to make the card look silly sometimes.

However it’s nice to know that if we wanted to, we could actually pass Loxodon Hierarch in card power.

Why?

Because we might also pass “interesting” to practical (like Mike originally started to argue)… Albeit probably not main deck.

But I think I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

Thanks for the firestarter, Mike.

LOVE
MIKE
(Totally different Mikes, of course).

All Alara Reborn

The following post on Alara Reborn’s Dauntless Escort was inspired by Brian Kowal, Brian David-Marshall, and whoever else was commenting on my Facebook wall.

 

 

First came…

 

 

But more importantly*…

 

 

To Tim,

I suppose that for some people calling Dauntless Escort an Ironclaw Orcs is a bit of a stretch. After all one is a below average 2/2 for two mana and the other is an above average 3/3 for three mana. However what I was trying to get across in my article on the mother ship was that in either case the creature in question — Ironclaw Orcs or Dauntless Escort — might appear to be a problem, but probably isn’t ultimately the problem. It’s what that creature represents, be it hte packages of damage that will eventually fuel the Philosophy of Fire or the fact that the opponent’s plan simply might not work any more (can’t sweep)… In both cases these creatures are the threat equivalent of the opposite of what we in marketing call “be benefit of the benefit”. Grok?

To Brian, Brian, and everyone else…

Of course Dauntless Escort reminds us of a Gnarled Mass! Thanks for being proud of me Burger King (but no BDM, I don’t think it was implied at all). Normally when I go to the well for a Silt Crawler or Gnarled Mass it’s because I feel like I have to establish as a baseline that a 3/3 for three mana can be playable in Constructed and on top of that look at this cool ability… I didn’t think Dauntless Escort had that challenge up front. That’s all.

But if you insist, “Gnarled Mass” everyone!

Staple, etc.

LOVE
MIKE

All Alara Reborn

* See how I did that?

The latest in a long line of great two drops — in a game largely defined by great two drops — is Alara Reborn COMMON Putrid Leech!

 

Aesthetics:
Just want to shout out to @burgessm on Twitter (Matt Burgess) for ye ole Tweet:

Without it I may have overlooked Putrid Leech for immediate examination. Sure. How? Okay. Probably not.

Putrid Leech is one of the best [offensive?] two drops we have seen in some time!

The baseline stats are what we would typically expect for any two drop: 2/2 for two mana. But it plays like a 4/4… if you want it to.

One of the things that might not be immediately obvious (I know I had to go back and read the card a couple of times) is that Putrid Leech is a functional (optional) 4/4 on both your turn and the opponent’s turn (if you so desire). That is, it isn’t a “disadvantage” that you can use the pumping ability only once per turn. Don’t think of it as Firebreathing so much as a swap upgrade from 2/2 to 4/4 with no mana cost.

So if you want to attack and the opponent wants to put a 2/2 in front of your Putrid Leech, you can pay two life for his card. Or if you want to attack and he doesn’t do anything you have the option of a 2-to-0 or 4-to-2 life point delta (a two point differential in either case). Subtly when you are on the draw in a matchup where both players are running two drops (or say the opponent is planning on two drop followed by Jund Hackblade), you can just tap out for Putrid Leech on turn two and turn off his third turn, theoretically even an “optimal” offensive one in the abstract.

One card you may want to compare this to is Flesh Reaver. Many of you probably know that I was lucky enough to win an Extended PTQ a few years back with a beatdown deck featuring Flesh Reaver (designed by all time great Brian Schneider)… Putrid Leech is practically quite similar, and excepting the second color functionally superior to Flesh Reaver (you only need to pay two life to deal four damage); the corner case being that Flesh Reaver can “kill both players” but you will win because the opponent dies before the collateral trigger occurs (like I said, a corner case).

How much does it matter that Putrid Leech is a Zombie?

At this stage I don’t see it mattering very much. Most of the Zombie decks we have seen in the past have been straight Black or Black/Red… But that doesn’t mean that — especially with the greater variety of playable B/G dual lands — that we couldn’t see Putrid Leech in a Zombie deck; remember that Shepherd of Rot has seen non-zero Constructed adoption; in my snap judgment opinion Putrid Leech seems like the stronger individual card.

Where can I see this fitting in?
Putrid Leech seems like an awesome offensive card in a deck that can manage the mana. Maybe the same deck as Jund Hackblade or one of its cycle?

Putrid Leech also seems like it can be a decent flex card on two in a progressive board advantage deck (like it can be an offensive two drop or hold off the attack while you get further along to your Lord of Extinction and such.

We both know I always make decks like this one so here is a sketch that crosses my first pass Lord of Extinction deck from Top 8 Magic with my Bloodbraid Elf ideas, crossed with my Jund Ramp deck from 2008 States, inspired by my Charleston Batman deck:

2 Makeshift Mannequin
2 Shriekmaw

4 Bituminous Blast
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Broodmate Dragon
4 Lord of Extinction
4 Putrid Leech

4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Rampant Growth

4 Lash Out

6 Forest
1 Mountain
2 Reflecting Pool
4 Savage Lands
3 Swamp
4 Treetop Village
4 Vivid Grove

Sideboard:
3 Mind Shatter
4 Mournwhelk
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Cloudthresher

What I really want for this deck is a third Makeshift Mannequin and four currently non-existant copies of Gift of the Gargantuan… um and Volcanic Blowout as well. How greedy am I?

Bituminious Blast into Bloodbraid Elf into Gift of the Gargantuan? Ka-pow! I guess I’ll have to settle for Civic Wayfinder.

With all the stuff I want, it kind of marginalizes the topical Putrid Leech, huh? 🙂

The fact of the matter is that I got a lot of experience playing decks like Batman and This Girl, and with those decks, which are powerful creature decks that largely play their games on the board, you want to get something down as early as possible to start hassling control decks. On that note the eventual list may require a Banefire or four.

Let’s all get cracking!

Snap Judgment Rating: Role Player

LOVE
MIKE

All Alara Reborn

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

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

* Appropriately, I am aka @FiveWithFlores.