Entries Tagged 'Magic' ↓

Michael Jacob.

What can you say about him?

-Lan D. Ho

Master deck designer. Thought-provoking narrator of MTGO videos. Pro Tour Top 8 competitor. Star City Games Premium Columnist. National Champion.

And killjoy.

Before we integrated the Facebook comments on the blog itself, old MJ smothered our collective enthusiasm RE: Falkenrath Marauders with his stoic, Value RUG-Pod driven pragmatism on FB proper…

One might say that the man has a point.

Now on the subject of MJ — and even the echo of Demigod of Revenge dredged up during the Falkenrath Marauders discussion — I got to thinking about a bit of an older(er) school situation. Consider this deck, which Jacob used to make Top 8 of Grand Prix Seattle/Tacoma a couple of years back:

The Situation:
Your opponent is playing a B/R Blightning Beatdown deck. The action has been brutal, but you stabilized by blowing up all his guys with Jund Charm, up until he got in there with a Demigod of Revenge.

Lucky ducky, you had your Cruel Ultimatum to take care of it, and are now sitting pretty pretty.

Life Totals:

• You – six
• Him – six

Hands:

• You – Two cards: Cryptic Command and Bituminous Blast
• Him – No cards!

Battlefield:

• You – Eight assorted lands (you can cast whatever you want), and a lone Bloodbraid Elf
• Him – Ghitu Encampment and four assorted Black- and Red-producing lands.

Graveyards:

• You – Cruel Ultimatum, Jund Charm, Jund Charm; some guys you used to trade earlier.
• Him – Demigod of Revenge and some assorted other lands and spells

Your opponent draws his card for the turn, smiles, and plays it:

Demigod of Revenge!

So… How do you approach this turn?

You Make the Play!

LOVE
MIKE

P.S. Got some kind of weird results with the Facebook Social Plugin yesterday. Please excuse our clutter while we continue to upgrade Five (and by “we” I mean YT).

Following is an unedited screen capture from a well-known (in online marketing and measurement circles, anyway) service called COMPETE. Patrick Chapin* pointed it out to me and (last week) I passed it along to some of our overlords such as Steve Sadin and Mister Orange [guy] with the same question I am, asking you:

Now some of you might not quite grok what is going on in this screen capture, so I will put it another way; that is, “edited”:

(I greyed out last month on account of the data is not mature yet, so it would be worthless to talk about.)

This is a measurement of unique visitors to the beloved Star City Games site; NOT how often existing users use it, nor how much they “like it”, nor how long they sit there watching SCGLive videos of the charming Joey Pasco… It attempts to measure the actual, individual, humans… (and hopefully, ultimately paying customers of either Magic: The Gathering singles, Premium memberships, or like Squirrel-backed sleeves).

mise squirrel amiright?

Something happened.

Or, probably (and more likely), the clever marketing machine that is Star City Games proactively did something to dramatically reverse the declining course of their number of visitors.

“J-Curve” or “hockey stick” changes in performance don’t happen all by themselves. In theory we can attribute some amount of performance seasonally (there are many online retailers that do 50% of their sales, or more, in November and December). But we don’t see that here, and if we equate visitors and buyers (which we honestly can’t), the numbers are going the wrong way, anyway. These kinds of sharp and sustained directional improvements typically result from internal, that is organizationally-driven, process changes. For example, here is a directional Analytics screen shot of the day-by-day traffic of this here website, up to these past few days:

What internal process change did FiveWithFlores make in the last few days?

That something Star City did occurred / was done in January of 2011 that added (or perhaps encouraged the return of) literally tens of thousands of unique visitors to their our user base, and catapulted them Millionaire Playboy Pete Hoefling into an amazingly positive direction.

So… What do you think that was?

I SPENT AN HOUR YESTERDAY FIGURING OUT HOW TO ADD THE DAMN FACEBOOK SOCIAL PLUGIN LIKE MY STAR CITY MASTERS HAVE SO PLEASE USE IT, thanks 🙂

A couple of possibly useful observations:

My first [let’s be honest] second gut reaction was to credit SCGLive. However this different COMPETE shot seems to indicate that 1) the timing is off, and 2) the magnitude of SCGLive unique users cannot wholly account for the improvements (check the y-axis).

Certainly SCGLive is a super sticky service that keeps people on Star City there, and engaged (not to mention happy)… But at least according to COMPETE’s numbers, not enough new, different people to account for the hockey stick, and subsequent re-up. Anyway, I would guess that SCGLive aficionados cross over quite a bit with Star City’s “regular” user base… It’s not like if you took 10,000 from mommy and 5,000 from kiddo you would have 15,0000 uniques.

So…

Like the title asks: What awesome shenanigans did Stat City pull off?

LOVE
MIKE

* Yes, yes, we have our suspicions already 🙂

** Please leave a comment via the old or brand spanking new methods, please.

I don’t actually obsess over new set spoilers beyond what I actually have to know in order to write things that make half an ounce of sense, you know, professional-like. However I was visiting DailyMTG on September 15th in order to check the forum responses to ye olde Top Decks The Best Card Ever… Plus or Minus One, and I saw “Card of the Day” Falkenrath Marauders.

If you didn’t saunter over to the mother ship that day, here be it / them:

Falkenrath Marauders

I thought this was an interesting card, so I immediately checked the rarity… Yep, rare. This might do.

Flying, haste guy in Red, for five mana? It gets how big how quickly? What does this card make you think of?

For me, the answer was Demigod of Revenge, a creature so good it bent Standard mana bases all around itself, and grew into a key player in Extended’s All-in Red. Some of you are going to have the gut reaction that Falkenrath Marauders just isn’t as good as Demigod of Revenge and call it a day; I mean all things held equal, Falkenrath Marauders probably isn’t as good. It doesn’t re-buy on a cast, and it is 2/2 instead of 5/4. Check. Roses are red, water is wet, and Falkenrath Marauders ain’t no Demigod.

I agree!

And they — gasp — cost the same amount of mana. How dare Falkenrath Marauders even exist?

Irrelevant.

Huh?

Who cares if Falkenrath Marauders isn’t the equal to one of the best creatures of its kind ever printed? Is that a useful conclusion in the abstract? Does it mean we should never consider a Falkenrath Marauders? I mean a 2/2 for five… Who would ever consider playing one of those?

Falkenrath Marauders’s double-Dervish ability actually closes the Demigod of Revenge gap to a surprising degree… I mean, did you bother to do the math?

1. First hit in, Falkenrath Marauders is in for two, but becomes a 4/4 afterward.
2. Now a 4/4, Falkenrath Marauders is nigh-Demigod size, and ends combat a 6/6.
3. Third attack is for six, putting Falkenrath Marauders on 8/8.
4. Finally… Actually, look at this pretty simple spreadsheet comparison I set up:

Surprised?

No, F does not equal D. However, that doesn’t mean that F might not find a viable place in the universe.

Aesthetics:
While Falkenrath Marauders doesn’t have Demigod of Revenge’s resilience, and instead of being awesome against Counterspell it is actually poor against Mana Leak. It is also weak to removal… Even a humble Shock will knock it out of the sky on the first attack.

That just means you have to work a little harder to stick it.

I remember when Stupor appeared the first time, and the powers that be restricted Hymn to Tourach. I thought of Stupor as a more expensive, less powerful, Hymn. So for my first Pro Tour, I played the one Hymn to Tourach they let me play in a pretty non-strategic role… whereas eventual champion Paul McCabe embraced the opportunity to play both Hymn to Tourach and Stupor (and two Mind Warps) in his heavier Necropotene deck.

Eric Taylor later won a PTQ with a Mono-Black Stupor Necropotence deck, and I asked him about playing the substandard version. He explained that Stupor was more strategic. You could play for it because you had more discard. And while it wasn’t Hymn to Tourach, it certainly wasn’t a “bad” card. In fact, you could wait until the opponent had two or four cards, and then set him up with Demonic Consultation to empty his hand. Years later, Brian Hacker played one of my all-time favorite matches of Magic to watch, again with a Stupor Necropotence deck (this time in Extended).

Falkenrath Marauders might be Demigod of Revenge’s Stupor. It isn’t as good, you might have to work a little harder to stick it the first time, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to pay you back.

One thing to keep in mind: Demigod of Revenge is next-to-impossible to cast from a colors standpoint. Even Mono-Red decks of the Demigod era couldn’t play Mutavault!

On the other hand: It’s a vampire! Who knows what kind of bonuses that is going to get us?

Where can I see this fitting in?
I would guess this card would be the top end of a Mono-Red or G/R beatdown deck, presumably with some way to get small flyers out of the way. It is also possible that we could see some kind of Blightning Beatdown redux (minus the Blightnings, as far as I know)… If you empty the opponent’s hand before turn five, he isn’t going to have any way to stop your 2/2 the first time, and will have less of a chance to deal with your subsequent 4/4 or 6/6 versions.

Snap Judgment Rating: Role Player

No, I don’t think this is the best card in Innistrad or anything, but I did think it was interesting enough to spend ~800 words on; especially around the reality of how quickly Falkenrath Marauders can kill relative to good old Demigod.

LOVE
MIKE

This is a little out of order given I wrote about Day Two the other day, but I thought I would share this picture for those of you who didn’t see it in real-time on Twitter:

Force of Will

I have been home at least once a year, every year, since moving to New York, but for some reason I never thought to dig through my old Magic cards.

The above was the booty I obtained upon going through my first rediscovered drawer of Magic cards… That’s right ladies and germs! Thirteen lucky copies of Force of Will on the first pass!

That’s the good news…

The bad news is the same as what I told the Star City dealers when I tried to cash in some Wastelands last month: The only people with dozens of Wastelands (or apparently lots of copies of Force of Will) didn’t know — back when we were mising them for a dollar — that they were going to be worth $60 or whatever, which is why they are all beat up (-ish).

So most of this crop of Force of Will is in the played / heavily played category.

(that’s the bad news)

Also in the initial booty pile was a quartet of Icequakes that were officially beat to all hell (but I am pretty sure they were in the first deck I ever played to a PTQ win, so sentimental value there), and some additional sauce. You can see a couple of original Mishra’s Factories there, as well as a Beta Lightning Bolt and some other respectable Lightning Bolts. Do you know I actually shelled out $1 a piece for M11 Lightning Bolts at a tournament last year? For shame!

I also scooped up some random potential staples like Nomads en-Kor and Gaea’s Blessing.

I hit a bunch of Undiscovered Paradises and white-bordered Mishra’s Factories in the first drawer but I didn’t know to pull those, so I didn’t and never really went back.

Anyway, more good news around Day Three… But Day One wasn’t too bad.

I was obviously happy at finding Force of Will, but hopeful as I didn’t find any Wastelands.

More later.

LOVE
MIKE

So I say a lot of stuff.

I mean, I say pretty much whatever I am thinking at the time; and maybe unlike other people I change my mind about things fairly often (based on learning, new knowledge, and so on). For example I didn’t like Sensei’s Divining Top at the beginning… But after some soul-searching, later the same year Patrick Sullivan expressed disappointment in me that I had gone from “the premiere topless deck designer” to, whatever, another Top-jockey.

Unlike many other people I consider myself flexible and am willing to change my opinion on things, hopefully, in the effort of improving as a person.

So the one thing I wanted to point out is that in this Top 8 Magic Podcast I said that I made a deck that “beats everything” … Before getting into the meat of this blog post I wanted to address what I mean by that.

For sake of argument say you had a deck that has 55% win expectation against every deck in the field. From the position of who beats what, this deck technically “beats everything” … But what is the win expectation of a player in an eight-round tournament?

4-4

Does this deck have superior win expectation to, say, every other deck in the field?

I don’t know. CawBlade variants have an above average win expectation as well. This has nothing to do with the fact that the 55% deck does in fact “beat everything” (in a sense). And I’m not saying that the MWC deck that I was referencing has a 55% win expectation per se; just using that number to make a simple argument.

Now I said on the big Twits that I would post an 11^th-hour blog post before tomorrow’s National Qualifiers.

I wrote about my Mono-White Control deck in today’s Flores Friday on StarCityGames.com. Out of respect for Star City I am not going to reprint the deck list here; however I will address sideboarding with the MWC.

This is the sideboard I was playing with most recently in this week’s videos:

2 Contagion Clasp
1 Tumble Magnet
4 Baneslayer Angel
2 Celestial Purge
2 Day of Judgment
4 Kor Firewalker

That said, I pretty much just crammed in a bunch of cards that I liked that I couldn’t fit into the main deck and called that the sideboard. That is lazy sideboarding, though; so hopefully in the context of this blog post we can make some amount of incremental improvement.

If you want the MWC deck list (and to learn the frankly hilarious story behind it), I encourage you to pop the $.15 or whatever it costs to read over at Star City, here:

The approach we are going to take to refine the sideboard will be a bottom-up approach instead of a top-down. I asked the Indomitable Twitter Army to give me the five decks they were most interested in beating, and the answers are more-or-less these:

1. U/W CawBlade
2. DarkBlade
3. RUG
4. Valakut
5. RDW

U/W CawBlade

Summary: U/W CawBlade has the advantage of being able to play two different games. It has an initiative-based game based on Stoneforge Mystic + Sword of Feast and Famine, and can also win a long game with Jace, the Mind Sculptor + Gideon Jura.

MWC has the ability to keep even and trade during the first ten or so turns of the game, matching Stoneforge Mystic and Squadron Hawk. You can possibly win or lose the game at this stage mostly depending on whether or not you hit your lands. This is a point in the game where Preordain really shines; and MWC ain’t got no Preordain. Luckily you have a good number of lands.

Unfortunately I have relatively little experience playing against a Sword of Feast and Famine + Mortarpod configuration of CawBlade (tons against people who are just going and getting Swords), so I can’t speak to an opponent who is primarily using his guys to keep you from equipping Sword of Feast and Famine to a Squadron Hawk.

Presuming your opponent is primarily trying to hit you with a Sword, you can either chump (presuming you are doing something proactive going the other way) or trade (ideally), or lean on your artifacts. For example, getting your Contagion Clasp and / or Tumble Magnet is going to be desirable at this stage.

Let’s assume that you live past the first few turns, and the initial Royal Rumble of small creatures. The typical CawBlade deck only has eight dudes, and you can catch them with a big Day of Judgment or All is Dust to remove the opponent’s swordsmen, hampering their long-term with Sword of Feast and Famine. So let’s talk about the Planeswalker phase.

Basically you can attack their Planeswalkers to death or catch them with All is Dust. You have to be a bit wary about when you are tapping out. It is often desirable to sit back and let them ‘walk you in exchange for powering up Everflowing Chalice with Contagion Clasp so that you can pay 2, 3, or 5 mana on an All is Dust. Luckily, once you are out of the initial 1/1 and 1/2 battling, the opponent’s actual ability to close out games is not at hyperspeed.

What sucks?

Nothing sucks completely. All your cards have at least some utility.

I think there is tension around Wall of Omens and Survival Cache because those cards presumably draw you into lands. However they, along with Wurmcoil Engine, fall into a not-bad but not-optimal bucket.

One thing to consider about Wall of Omens is that a Wall of Omens will contain just a Stoneforge Mystic + Sword of Feast and Famine (i.e. there is no matching Squadron Hawk). Another thing to keep in mind is what your curve is at. If the opponent doesn’t have some kind of legitimate creature removal, Baneslayer Angel is actually quite a bit better than almost anything else, provided you aren’t being demolished by Tumble Magnets.

Consider:
-4 Survival Cache
-1 Wurmcoil Engine
+1 Tumble Magnet
+3 Baneslayer Angel
+1 Expedition Map

Expedition Map probably seems a bit odd as we are taking out a colorless creature, but you want another land (ideally for Eye of Ugin) as you are upping curve.

DarkBlade

Summary: Darkblade is actually just a better CawBlade against you. Your Tectonic Edges are a bit stronger and your special lands are a bit stronger as they have less Tectonic Edge action, but Inquisition of Kozilek is spectacular against you.

To be honest, despite a good record against CawBlade in aggregate, I have struggled more with DarkBlade with MWC.

Sideboarding:
-4 Survival Cache
+2 Contagion Clasp
+1 Tumble Magnet
+1 Expedition Map

I would leave in Wurmcoil Engine because it is quite good against Go for the Throat, and Baneslayer Angel isn’t. Contagion Clasp is pretty good here as Hawk suppression early, and of course the card is too good with Tumble Magnet.

RUG

Summary: RUG is a powerhouse cross-strategy deck. It includes explosive mana from Lotus Cobra, sheer power from Jace, the Mind Sculptor, an aggressive man-land, and equal Blue supplementation equal to CawBlade.

The most important thing is to keep from being blown out by Lotus Cobra. If you are playing a fair game, you are going to win. Tumble Magnet is good against Raging Ravine, and to a lesser extent, Inferno Titan… But honestly, who cares? You need to tap Primeval Titans but just taking damage isn’t a huge deal for you. Additional consideration is Precursor Golem, and Tumble Magnet is not very good against that card.

Obviously ever Contagion Clasp in your collection is in. Day of Judgment is arguably better than All is Dust in this matchup because of Precursor Golem. I would play to keep from getting blown out and try to win a long game, as if you can keep from auto losing to their Top 10 paradigm-warpers Jace and Lotus Cobra, your long game is actually superior.

-1 Tumble Magnet
-4 Survival Cache
+2 Contagion Clasp
+1 Expedition Map
+2 Day of Judgment

Survival Cache is iffy in this matchup due to being kind of awful as a mid-game topdeck against Inferno Titan or Avenger of Zendikar (and can even be goofy against Lotus Cobra + Lightning Bolt). You need the Expedition Map to make up for it.

Valakut

Summary: Valakut can be customized in any number of ways. There is a huge difference between playing a Summoning Trap deck with Lightning Bolts and even Pyroclasms main and a turbo turbo version with Green Sun’s Zenith, Lotus Cobra, and no creature suppression but Tumble Magnet; especially early game. The possibilities on blowouts are so swingy, and whether or not your little dudes survive (or you can sneak in with an Inkmoth Nexus) varies grandly. That said, the most important thing is to contain Primeval Titan. That’s it. That guy either beats you outright or finds a bunch of copies of Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and that onetime Top 10 card beats you. If you can contain Primeval Titan, you can fight Valakut heads up with Tectonic Edge, and again, your long game is simply superior.

This configuration presumes the Lotus Cobra version, which seems to be more popular (Contagion Clasp for Cobra, Tumble Magnet for Primeval Titan, Expedition Map for Tectonic Edge):

-4 Survival Cache
-1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
-1 Wurmcoil Engine
+2 Contagion Clasp
+1 Expedition Map
+1 Tumble Magnet
+2 Day of Judgment

RDW

Summary: Don’t die. This one is yours to win. Goblin Guide + Kabira Crossroads is a sick combo!

-4 All is Dust
-1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
-1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
-1 Eye of Ugin
-3 Stoneforge Mystic
+1 Tumble Magnet
+3 Baneslayer Angel
+2 Celestial Purge
+4 Kor Firewalker

Overall strat is to side out all the expensive cards, focus on cards you can cast as long as you are not manascrewed, and crush with color hosers and life gain.

Weird pull here (which you wouldn’t make against Boros, say) is Stoneforge Mystic. Swords are still gas, especially if you apply one to a Kor Firewalker, but spending a bunch of mana in the hopes of being blown out by a Searning Blaze is loose at best.

In sum, I think I’d cut a Baneslayer Angel for an Expedition Map.

LOVE
MIKE

Post Script: The “Modern” MichaelJ Model

The MWC deck is viable according to the “old” paradigm of deck design; that is, you should play it (if you are going to play it) because “it beats everything” (supposedly). However longtime readers (or should I say followers of this blog) know that my current paradigm, that is the paradigm I used to build Naya Lightsaber, qualify with Grixis Hits, and so on know that I currently build by trying to play the most Top 10 cards possible.

MWC has a fair number of Top 10 cards (overall #2 card Stoneforge Mystic, Squadron Hawk, Tectonic Edge, and arguably Tumble Magnet); but clearly it lags CawBlade’s Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Mana Leak; and Preordain.

If I don’t play MWC, I will play U/G Genesis Wave, as encouraged by Josh Ravitz and Brian David-Marshall. This would be my deck list:

4 Frost Titan
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Acidic Slime
4 Genesis Wave
4 Joraga Treespeaker
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Overgrown Battlement
4 Primeval Titan

6 Forest
4 Halimar Depths
4 Island
2 Khalni Garden
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Tectonic Edge
3 Verdant Catacombs

sb:
4 Tumble Magnet
3 Wall of Tanglecord
4 Spreading Seas
4 Obstinate Baloth

U/G Genesis Wave plays a fair number of Top 10 cards (certainly more than MWC)… Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Primeval Titan; Lotus Cobra; Tectonic Edge (and arguably Spreading Seas and Tumble Magnet). That said, it certainly gives up Mana Leak and Preordain.

The U/G Genesis Wave deck has plenty of very good cards but actually exists at a crossroads. It is a “modern” designed deck from one standpoint but also leans on MWC’s advantage (U/G is actually the best deck in the format both against other Jace decks and other Titan decks). On balance, MWC basically never loses to bad decks, whereas U/G is traditionally somewhat soft to Boros or Kuldotha Red (argh on that one).

So for those of you looking for the U/G Genesis Wave deck, that is the current listing.

Most of the time generalizations that start with “always” or “never” are to be avoided. There are very few true always and never situations in the real world.

As a general rule, though, I would suggest to aspiring Magic: The Gathering writers to never apologize for their work.

This comes as a reaction to the forums from World of Wefald – Kibler’s Extended Darling. Some forums denizens are complaining about Wefald’s latest article (a Frank Karsten-esque review of MTGO Extended performance). Personally, I quite liked it.

In particular I loved this quote, Wefald musing around the performance of certain tribal themed strategies:

“Really…? Elves and Faeries…? What’s this game coming to? Back in my time, we killed our opponents with Chuck Norris-caliber win conditions like Psychatog, Sutured Ghoul, and Bosh, Iron Golem. If the good people at Wizards continue along this path, I’m pretty sure that by 2014, I’ll be writing articles on Mono-Pink Control and Unicorn-Go, while being cuddled to death by Care Bear counters.”

In related news: “Death by Monkeys!” (from Toy Story 3 obv)

How evocative!

Hilarious!

Good writing, Wefald!

But per usual, certain forums denizens are all “I paid for this” one click in.

Obviously Star City Premium customers are allowed to voice their concerns over perceived article quality. They are, barring the occasional contest winner (including future Flores Rewards winners, once I am done with the cryptic but superlative OMG) paying customers. I am pretty sure the right to bitch and moan about the contrast on high definition television sets is the fourteenth point afforded by the Bill of Rights, just after the rarely-enforced freedom from long lines at the DMV lucky number thirteen.

Of course they should be allowed to voice concerns!

In fact, it is sometimes the case that a Premium article is not — gasp — very good!

However, my suggestion…

And this is one of those rare not-wrong always / never situations…

Is never, ever apologize for your writing.

Let me tell you. I have been doing this for over sixteen years now. A good number of my articles have been stinkers. Not good. On more than one occasion I have been wrong (believe it!) … Even some of the ones that I put a ton of effort into have things like “Compulsive Research is Constructed Unplayable” in them. For months I railed against Tooth and Nail being a good card to play! It’s okay to be wrong. When you put out a high volume of articles, they can’t all be great.

Kevin Love is one of the best players in the NBA. He is the greatest rebounder on the planet, even better than Orlando’s Mr. Howard this season. He can throw up the long ball and score from three. He does nothing but score 20 points and pull down 15 rebounds game atfer game.

Love misses over 50% of his field goal attempts.

Over the course of his career, Michael Jordan, not just the greatest basketball player ever, but arguably the greatest sportsman of all, missed 12,345 shots and 1,445 free throw attempts (Michael, the most unstoppable scorer in the history of the game, was a career sub-50% shooter). Shaquille O’Neal, iconic center of numerous contending NBA teams, finalist with Orlando, LA, and Miami, has missed over 5,000 free throw attempts!

At a high level of usage, you simply don’t hit them all.

It is possible that some articles should never have been published, never have been accepted, never have been turned in… Maybe never have been attempted. But the fact is, once they are out there in the universe, there is no point in apologizing for them. No point at all.

At this moment in my writing career I have no idea which articles are going to turn out to be favorites. There is little correlation between what I think is good and what the audience thinks is good. I still can’t get over the time when I revealed the U/G Genesis Wave deck (which turned out to be a pretty significant deck)… To mono-horrible reviews at TCGPlayer.

An even more stark contrast may have been my first article [back] at TCGPlayer. It would be hard to find a more poorly reviewed article. What I said was perceived to be so controversial / wrong that TCGPlayer.com readers doubted I wrote it at all!

But do you know how many of my predictions ended up being dead on? Like 80%.

Nobody picked up Goblin Outlander, and Liliana Vess + Emrakul, the Aeons Torn didn’t suddenly become the go-to combo in Standard, but everything from the fall of Path to Exile to the adoption of Oust to people hard-casting Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre all turned out to be dead-on.

Did I kind of get mixed up over which Eldrazi had which ability? Yeah, whatever. But the the real thrust of the article was right, the people who spent so much effort trying to tear down my ideas those months ago are all wrong (unsurprisingly)… But who cares? They don’t even use their real names or whatever.

Do you see my point?

There is just no engaging with this brand of criticism.

I wrote an update to the article because Chedy asked me to, but I would have been fine doing nothing. There is no point in apologizing.

That said, I am lucky in that every single week I get messages like this on Facebook, Twitter, and so on:

… I get them on the same articles where I have negative comments from other areas.

Master McLeer a-liked this one so much he wishes he could have “Liked” it… But on the Twitters, on the forums, in ye olde inbox people are all up in my disk drive terminology or criticizing the fact that I like nice things. Am I supposed to apologize to one reader for something that another reader, commenting in another area loves?

I do, honestly, appreciate constructive feedback, but for reasons I have described elsewhere and often, try to distance myself from forum discussions for the exact reason that I am producing this suggestion today: There isn’t any point. The article doesn’t suddenly get better when I post in the forum. Players who can’t wrap their heads around a concept don’t suddenly agree with you when you try to explain the same thing a second time. In the cases you are wrong (and again, I have been, and more than once), that doesn’t suddenly flip like pre-game quarter because some faceless someone complained about it.

Wefald shouldn’t have to apologize for his article. Like I said, I thought it was fine. Better than fine, it had some useful information bundled together with memorable writing. But even if it didn’t, he isn’t doing anyone any favors by engaging in this way.

… That’s my opinion, anyway.

Thoughts?

LOVE
MIKE

PS (not a suggestion)
PPS Be a pal and buy Deckade!

Concerning:

Bonehoard :: Lhurgoyf :: Inevitability
TDC Heat :: Sword of Feast and Famine :: … and Bonehoard

Bonehoard

I can’t believe I missed this one when initially, especially given my history.

Bonehoard is almost strictly better than a card that I considered a bomb in previous years, Lhurgoyf.

I played Lhurgoyf in my 1998 Northeast Regionals deck, TDC Heat (you may remember this deck from the pre-Psylum version of The Dojo, or perhaps from my writeup of Lord of Extinction two years ago). I think I testedmore for that Regionals than almost any other tournament I’ve ever played. The big decks at the time were Deadguy Red, Tradewind Rider decks, and Mono-Blue Control. TDC Heat, with its islandwalking River Boas, was extraordinarily effective against the Blue decks. Against the Red ones,  your creatures were simply better than theirs, you had Uktabi Orangutan to smash Cursed Scroll, and would trade one-for-one with everything else. Then, as the dust cleared, you would untap with a gigantic Lhurgoyf. Rawr.

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

Bonehoard, as I said, is almost strictly better than Lhurgoyf. For four mana, you tap for a [potentially] huge X/X… just one tiny toughness off of Lhurgoyf. The differences are:

• Bonehoard’s Living Weapon is Black, not Green. Black creatures don’t die to Doom Blade, and therefore are more resilient than Green creatures, all other things held equal.
• You don’t stop at just one.

I honestly don’t know how I missed this one. Not only is Bonehoard the stones by itself, but you can move it onto an evasion creature for a mere two mana. You can not just play — but continue to play — the attrition game. One problem with Lhurgoyf was that as big and powerful as it could be — including after a Wrath of God against a control player — it was still just one creature. Someone might kill it. You might be able to kill the Living Weapon, but the next guy, and the Next guy, and the NEXT guy after that would all be able to hit as hard.

Also, you might kill in one with Inkmoth Nexus 🙂

So… Bonehoard or Sword of Feast and Famine?

I am pretty sure — especially given Sword of Feast and Famine’s performance in Paris this week — that the latest Sword is the higher ranking piece of Mirrodin Besieged equipment, but there will probably be decks that want to play lots of Bonehoards. I can envision some future incarnation of Green or White creatures tapping and trading and playing Bonehoard after Bonehoard. “Just” creature elimination is not going to be able to deal with these beyond the Living Weapon. Even a puny Birds of Paradise will go lethal very quickly, given the right conditions.

Repeck.

Solid.

LOVE
MIKE

Currently Reading: The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time, Book 5)
Even Better Book: Michael J. Flores Deckade: 10 Years of Magic: The Gathering Strategy and Commentary (no shipping!)

I have been writing so much recently.

I don’t know if you understand what “so much” is, exactly. Almost all of it is hardcore Magic stuff (which is why I have been updating this blog a bit less, and a bit less about Magic, of recent). But “so much” is as much as 12,000 words in a day. Do you know how much 12,000 words is? It’s between six and eight Premium Magic articles. In a day.

Big brags, I know.

The weird thing is that so much of it is blending together. Today when I was polishing off Flores Friday, and then transitioning back into my larger project, I was getting confused where “Ten Rules of Reaction” ended and “One Rule: What Makes a Deck?” began, versus my longer project, versus my next project, which I am planning with BDM.

The amazing thing? I can’t believe how some of it is pretty good! 🙂

Okay, enough big brags.

Today I was watching DC Showcase: Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam on Netflix streaming. I don’t know if I’ve said a lot about Netflix streaming, but it is about the best five bucks you can spend per month. Anyway, I found this stream-able video, which actually includes four shorter animated films, all directed by the excellent Joaquim Dos Santos.

The Superman/Shazam! section is the longest of the four at 22 minutes.

I was a bit puzzled by this one. Its visual style is very reminiscent of Joshua Middleton. Middleton was the artist on a Superman/Shazam! limited series a few years back. If memory serves, production on “NYX” was so slow, Middleton’s Marvel exclusive ran out and he signed an exclusive with DC.

In case you don’t know who Joshua Middleton is, he is maybe the best artist in comics. I mean there are a lot of great artists in comics, but there is only one that my wife (who is not a comics fan, but who has to put up with my thousands of comics and graphic novels, and also has a fine eye for aesthetics) says is the best, and that is Middleton. Also, traditionally writers get top billing in comics credits, but when Middleton collaborated on “NYX” with Joe Quesada (the writer of the project, one of the biggest names in the game as the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel, and himself an accomplished illustrator), it was Middleton who got top billing. This is a pretty famous spread from “NYX”, colored and not:

Anyway, I found the visual style reminiscent of Middleton, which seemed appropriate based on the existence of the aforementioned limited series… which was a completely different story. This “makes sense” in that earlier DC direct-to-DVD releases aped the styles of the original comics artists (Ed McGuinness on Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Darwyn Cooke on New Frontier, and so on).

I have very little so say about this longest of the four other than that. It was only pretty good.

The next up was DC Showcase: The Spectre, which was stone awesome.

I was pretty surprised because the Spectre is not exactly one of my favorite characters, but the visual style was unbelievably cool. Despite being an animated short film, this chapter used a dramatic 1970s-esque noir visual style… It could have been Grindhouse or shot on a super 8.

The Spectre is a bit different than in the comic books, often animating stuff — from special effects dummies to flying cars — to take out villains. In the (spoilers!) final scene, Spectre kills Alyssa Milano’s (!) character in a tornado of paper cuts, animating hundreds of hundred dollar bills in a gruesome finale.

Awesome segment, up to and including the blacksploitation-esque music running during the closing credits.

DC Showcase: Green Arrow was also pretty fun. Another 12 minute, action-oriented short film, this time starring — you guessed it — Green Arrow.

This ep is just Green Arrow at an airport, stumbling onto an assassination attempt of a ten-year-old princess. It is dominated by tongue-in-cheek puns, so like LSV would like it.

(Stuck in traffic) “Come on! The arrow’s green!”

(Later) “Green light!”

In the final scene, an embattled Green Arrow is about to be defeated by a final enemy after taking down the ostensible End Boss, but is saved by longtime love, Black Canary. He proposes to her on the spot, and his new friend, the princess encourages Black Canary to say yes, because “Every queen needs a consort.”

“Yes,” concludes Green Arrow. “Every Queen does.”

I told you it was pun-ny! Green Arrow’s civilian name is Oliver Queen.

Finally is DC Showcase: Jonah Hex. I was pretty surprised they ended with this one. Obviously Superman is the most popular and starting with him makes sense. I would think that Green Arrow and Black Canary would be the second most popular; whereas I don’t give a hang about Spectre (which ended up stone awesome!) or Jonah Hex, who is a disfigured gunfighter. Why end with Jonah Hex?

Well, they pulled out all the stops on this 12-minute segment. The Jonah Hex ep included Thomas Jane (“Hung”) as Jonah Hex; Linda Hamilton (Terminator series) as a sexy, villainous, madam; and Michelle Trachtenberg (“Buffy: The Vampire Slayer” and “Gossip Girl”) as a barmaid / snitch. Basically, an unreal cast for such a seemingly small — 12-minute — project.

I loved the Jonah Hex segment as well, which is a combination of Old West prostitution and vicious fighting. In one particularly gruesome exchange, Hex hurls a thug face-first into scalding metal, scarring his face (a mirror of Jonah’s own disfigured visage). I physically winced at how horrible that would be for the character… But then realized there was no way he was getting out of this fight.

As a whole, the four were outstanding, and I am going to re-watch them again this week, probably.

LOVE
MIKE

Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam (DC Showcase) on Amazon
Currently Reading: The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time, Book 5)
please Please PLEASE: Michael J. Flores Deckade: 10 Years of Magic: The Gathering Strategy and Commentary (eBook on Amazon)

Concerning:

Thrun, the Last Troll :: Sun Titan :: The Rock
Young Justice :: Tom Martell :: … and Thrun, the Last Troll

If you watched the first couple of episodes of the new “Young Justice” cartoon, you know that Dick Grayson is wondering why no one is just whelmed. First Mr. Freeze is underwhelmed at Robin coming after him; then the future Young Justice kiddies are overwhelmed at the majesty of entering the Hall of Justice and seeing the gigantic statues of the League founders. Underwhelmed… overwhelmed… surely you grok at this point.

But as for Thrun, the Last Troll… I think I may fulfill Robin’s requested measure of whelmed-ness.

Thrun, the Last Troll

First, let me tell you a story.

Pro Tour LA (Antoine’s)… I am 1-0 after a haymaker-after-haymaker-exchanging brawl with Dragonstorm.

Second round Feature Match against Hall of Famer-to-be Raphael Levy. Raph was on B/G beatdown and I was playing B/W cycling. Sadly, the format was Extended. I felt like I had a heavy absolute advantage in the matchup with lots of creatures elimination and sweepers, but Raph had the edge in speed and skill, so I had relatively little margin for error. We split the first two games and were deep in the third.

Unsurprisingly, Levy has the early lead but I battle back with a lot of cycling… Undead Gladiator helping me hit my land drops and relevant removal spells; Eternal Dragon fueling Undead Gladiator (and obviously helping me hit my land drops). I get Raph to no cards in hand and tap for an Eternal Dragon to hold off his squad (headlined by a Troll Ascetic).

He topdecks Putrefy and smashes.

Raph’s mid-game topdecks are pretty lame, as he can basically draw Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves… and does.

I manage my life total and figure out how I am going to win. I need to get a little bit up in cards (Eternal Dragon for that), then use the bonus to bring back Undead Gladiator (cheaper to play), and chump his Troll for a couple of turns until I can play two Eternal Dragons and start attacking with one of them. Three turn clock, max, once those paps are online.

My plan is to just cycle up lands and pitch them into Gladiators. I have 10+ lands in play but I still need a couple more to be able to re-buy, chump, other re-buy, and hit double Dragons; I should have just enough cards to keep chumping, provided Levy doesn’t play another relevant threats (that is, something big enough to knock over a Dragon) in the next couple of turns. Over the course, Raph draws another Putrefy to get damage in through a Dragon, but I think I am okay (if armed with relatively little margin for error).

Then tragedy strikes.

I draw Haunting Echoes.

“Ooh,” I think. “New plan!”

I mean “maybe” new plan, right? New-ish. I can pitch a Haunting Echoes for an Undead Gladiator as easily as I can discard a Plains. Plus, if I topdeck a Wrath of God I can just go for the throat and win on the spot. So I hold Haunting Echoes as my card for the turn upon starting to set up my game plan.

Remember how Raph was topdecking irrelevant Birds of Paradise? Amazingly you can convert one of those into the Flashback on a Cabal Therapy. Sure, Raph missed the front side (I mean who else in this tournament was playing Eternal Dragon, Undead Gladiator, and Skeletal Scrying)… But the second time around?

Goodbye Haunting Echoes.

So now I no longer have the card I need for next turn’s Gladiator re-buy as I set up another Eternal Dragon. Had I held a Plains instead, he wouldn’t have been able to strip me of the required Gladiator re-buy. Plus, Raph has a Sword of Fire and Ice on his Troll Ascetic, so when I have to block with my Eternal Dragon, he flaps his wings sloppily into ye olde graveyard.

Uh-oh about that new plan.

Now I really have to mise up a new plan.

I vigorously cycle on my upkeep, needing Wrath of God. Then, with six maan remaining, Undead Gladiator answers my call.

Akroma’s Vengeance!

I have just enough to take out Levy’s Sword, plus sweep all his irrelevant little dudes alongside his Troll Ascetic.

I sit back in my chair, thanking God and library manipulation for my luck.

“Um… Regenerate?”

Regenerate!

No! Stupid Troll Ascetic!

Raph swings in for the kill.

The real story here is how I should have played with focus and follow through, but the immediate issue for the present case is that Trolls regenerate.

Thrun, the Last Troll is Troll Ascetic, ostensibly improved.

If the match were taking place in the present, I wouldn’t even have been able to cycle into Wrath of God for the win; because now Wrath of God — that is Day of Judgment — lets Trolls regenerate out.

The fact is, there are relatively few answers given our current Standard framework for Thrun. You can’t point a Mana Leak at it, and — at least the turn after the turn it hits — Thrun is difficult to remove with spells. Earlier this week I expressed underwhelmed-ness to some friends RE: Thrun… Sure, you can’t target him — but I kept forgetting that on top of all that other text, on top of the pretty resilient body, the last Troll also regenerates.

Aesthetics
Thrun, the Last Troll is reminiscent of Troll Ascetic, with an additional layer of defense against Blue permission spells. It costs one additional mana but gains hugely in power and toughness; a 4/4 for four mana considered highly efficient given the presence of three relevant abilities. The second one is in particular worth a mention given that Thrun should be a heck of a swordsman. If you improve it just a little bit via equipment, Thrun jumps the power curve more than most any other creature in Standard, combining superior size with essentially extraordinary resilience. Answering Thrun will often be a test balancing patience and timing.

I think Thrun is exactly as good as a creature has to be to be seriously considered at four. Its perceived over-the-top-ness in terms of power level relative to curve point is essentially necessary considering it is actually competing with cards like Oracle of Mul Daya or Garruk Wildspeaker, rather than combat creatures for space (given the marketplace).

My question, though, aesthetically… What is Tom Martell going to do in a world with no more Trolls?

Where can I see Thrun, the Last Troll fitting in?
I think that Thrun, the Last Troll will be very Tarmogoyf-ish… Played heavily by decks that capable of casting it, but not played everywhere. For example, Tarmogoyf was often passed over in more controlling versions of The Rock; it was more desirable for them to play Sakura-Tribe Elder and Kokusho the Evening Star, rather than the uber-two. Great card, cross-deck Staple… But not everywhere-played.

Now obviously the decks that can — or are willing to — pay 2GG for a creature are far less common than those that can pay 1G for probably a larger creature. That will cut into Thrun’s market share, but it will still probably be everywhere-played. I don’t know that Eldrazi Ramp decks would play Thrun, even though they can; same reason Death Cloud The Rock didn’t play Tarmogoyf. Eldrazi Green, though? Probably. Aggressive two-color decks with GG capabilities will likely make room in the curve, though it is unclear whether Thun gets played over, say, a Vengevine. My intuition is that decks that want a Vengevine will still want a Vengevine, but that there can be decks that want both; say… six fours.

The biggest question mark around Thrun (I mean other than what Tom is going to do with his time) is around its cost. It’s a bit of a sell, especially given its initial non-invulnerability. Is Thrun better than Vengevine? Do you play more fours? How does it intersect relative to Baneslayer Angel? A Titan? The answers are not obvious and I don’t know that the right deck yet exists.

Snap Judgment Rating – Staple (low, Standard; Role Player – low elsewhere)

LOVE
MIKE

Currently Reading: What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People

PS For more somewhat conflicted thoughts on mid-range-ness, consider Terrified of Sun Titan

Consecrated Sphinx

My general dislike of certain Sphinxes (Sphinx of Jwar Isle) and approval of other Sphinxes (Sphinx of Lost Truths) is fairly well known to readers of this blog.

With Consecrated Sphinx we have yet another Sphinx that I like better than Sphinx of Jwar Isle.

What is so cool about Consecrated Sphinx?

Its size isn’t remarkable for a modern Magical creature / fantastic beast / &c. A 4/6 is about as good as a 5/5… A turn off in terms of racing, but 5/5s and 4/6s bounce off of each other like superballs… We certainly can’t say that a 5/5 is strictly better than a 4/6 or vice versa. Mahamoti Djinn — once a premiere Big Blue flyer — was 5/6 for six, a bit better than Consecrated Sphinx’s 4/6… but then against Mahamoti Djinn lacked Consecrated Sphinx’s text box.

So how about that text box?

You tap out for Consecrated Sphinx; ka-boom… you draw two cards. (Pretty much.) You play a high toughness creature that probably isn’t going anywhere; your opponent untaps and draws the next turn: there are your two.

I mean if your opponent gets another draw, that’s going to be fantastic!

The first super cool thing I thought of when considering this card was Jace, the Mind Sculptor. I was like “how cool will it be to draw six cards?” Then I realized no one in his right mind would ever Brainstorm with Consecrated Sphinx in play. One card for six? That only happens in the movies.

Where can I see Consecrated Sphinx fitting in?

Obviously some kind of Blue control in Standard… Pretty much the only option. The issue here is that the six is extraordinarily competitive right now; there are Titans aplenty depending on whether the deck in question wants Frost Titan or one of the other Titans. Plus, there is Wurmcoil Engine, which seems like it will pick up in Standard popularity on the coattails of Treasure Mage. Drawing cards is super cool and all… I just don’t know if it will be good enough given the level of competition at the six.

The question is ultimately going to be about cards in hand v. battlefield, based on the metagame. When we were innovating tap-out in 2005, our desire was 100% driven by battlefield considerations. Keiga was a nightmare to get through, Meloku impregnable. Meloku in particular could close out games like lightning. I don’t get that read from Consecrated Sphinx… Even its 4/6 stats (already addressed) speak to a bit of a disconnect RE: this value.

However, it is possible that, given the grinding Planeswalkers and two-for-one-tastic cards, from Lead the Stampede to Treasure Mage, we are going to find ourselves in a Standard dominated by card advantage. If that is the case, by all means Consecrated Sphinx might be a hell of a grinder.

But it’s like Tsuyoshi used to say – “Depends on the metagame.”

Snap judgment rating – Role Player

Update!

This came in via beloved Unstoppable Twitter Army:

Great idea from Nico! Jace Beleren actually makes Consecrated Sphinx a good deal better than I originally thought. Provided you have battlefield control for the creatures that are too big for it to battle straight up, I think this may end up a premiere six.

Still sub-Staple IMO, but we’ll see.

LOVE
MIKE