Episode Archives

Pitt Imps Podcast #113 Bear with Imp Wings

Pitt Imps Pitt Imps, Podcasts 01:49:26

This week, we welcome Jon Celso onto the cast as our fourth host. While the departure from Tap’N”Sac has left him a bit upset, we are more than willing to give him a mic seat. We go over the SCG Invitational and Open. We take a few to cover the Gauntlet of Greatness, which figured out what the best Standard deck of all time is. Hint: do you like degenerately drawing cards? Yeah, it’s that.

(Important note for the gullible: this show was part of an April’s Fools Joke. Jon Celso is not a permanent host.)

Host Angelo   Twitter @ganksuou

Co-Host Jon   Twitter @BalduvianBears 

Co-Host  Mike  Twitter   @Huntmaster_Mike

Co-Host  Will   Facebook

Gauntlet of Greatness

Email  [email protected]

Pitt Imps is brought to you by our sponsors Brainstorm Brewery and Taitan Game Shop

Why Infect?

Max Perlmutter Articles

Why Infect?

Well to start off, I think Infect is currently one of the best decks in Modern and is in my opinion the best aggressive deck in the format at the moment. Bogles, Zoo, and Affinity can all struggle against [card]Lingering Souls[/card]. While each deck has the necessary tools to defeat those pesky spirit tokens, they are just not the cards you want to see or even sideboard in most matchups. Bogles, of course, does have [card]Spirit Mantle[/card], but they also get blown out by [card]Liliana of the Veil[/card] a majority of the time.  With all other aggressive options either out of favor or unappealing (Bogles), I decided to do a thing I haven’t done since I first started playing Magic: play pump spells on mediocre creatures.

Infect’s Place in the Metagame

In the current Modern metagame, Infect seems poised to do well. According to MTGTop8, Junk, Burn, and Twin make up 17, 14, and 16 percent of the metagame respectively. The great thing here is that the worst early play out of 47 percent of the meta is [card]Eidolon of the Great Revel[/card] cast at an early point in the game. I love these odds. Another fun matchup that is a byproduct of Junk being a large player in the metagame is that it is only a matter of time until Tron comes crawling out of the woodwork—and that matchup is incredibly good for Infect.

On the play, Infect can be the fastest deck in the format and a lot of slow draws end up with wins between turns four and six while the average aggressive draw can win on turn three or four pretty consistently.

The decks with the strongest matchup against it would be decks like my own Big Zoo list or Jund, but since those decks are both outclassed by Dr. Siegeman Rhinocerous, you’re not likely to face either of those decks.

The Cons of the Deck

I’ve talked about some of the great reasons to play the deck, but there are some critically bad components of the deck that must be taken under consideration before picking it up for a tournament.

This deck mulligans poorly. When you are playing 19 lands and 12 creatures that can kill your opponent, it can be very hard to find a strong opening hand. The blue mana in the deck is only a splash and you can easily win games without ever seeing it, so I consider these the key components to a strong opening hand:

  1. An infect creature.
  2. Two mana sources with at least one being green.
  3. A form of protection.

The most important pieces are the first two, while the third is very helpful as half of your maindeck protection doubles as pump spells and one quarter of it serves as evasion. I don’t include [card]Wild Defiance[/card] in the protection I look for unless I am playing versus [card]Splinter Twin[/card] or other [card]Lightning Bolt[/card] decks, because for the most part it serves as additional pump and gets sided out for the matchups you don’t need it.

Another big con is that [card]Spellskite[/card] is widely played and that card can be a big thorn in your side as an infect player. Wild Defiance is great against it though because it triggers when your creatures get targeted, and every pump spell is at least a [card]Giant Growth[/card], which is not the worst card, especially when your creatures have infect.

Where I’m At

I’ve updated my list, although I only changed one card. I decided to cut the [card]Piracy Charm[/card] from my sideboard so I could place a copy of [card]Distortion Strike[/card]. That way, I’ll have up to three of them in the [card]Lingering Souls[/card] matchup as well as against Affinity where there can be a bunch of blockers mucking up the ground and the air.

I plan to make an update to Zoo soon, too, and I have a fun Esper brew featuring [card]Monastery Mentor[/card] that is heavily influenced by [card]Time Warp[/card] Faeries, so if it proves to be good I hope to write about it soon, as well.

In the meantime, if you have any comments, you know what to do!

 

MTG After Hours #10 – Lost Cause

Brainstorm Brewery MtG After Hours, Podcasts 0:07:32

Brainstorm Brewery After Hours is a collection of outtakes and stories that aren’t fit for publication on respectable websites. While Brainstorm Brewery is a podcast that strives for a PG-13 rating, After Hours has no such aspirations.
This week on After Hours is a lost episode that never made it to be published. You’re welcome.

Cabe Riseau produced the intro and outro music for Brainstorm Brewery.

Contact Us!

Brainstorm Brewery – Website – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook – RSS – iTunes – Stitcher

Ryan Bushard – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook

Corbin Hosler – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook – QuietSpeculation

Jason E Alt – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook – QuietSpeculation

Marcel White – E-mail – Twitter

Three Hundred Sixty Five: Anthony Lowry

Amanda Stevens Podcasts

Anthony Lowry is a columnist for Star City Games. We chatted about his trip to SCG Dallas, his love of the game, and does he still play fighters.

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This is an interview that is part of my project called Three Hundred Sixty Five. A project where I try to complete 365 interviews in one year. If you want to know more about the project you can click on this link.

Privileged Perspective 19 – The Blind Side

Ross Lennon Articles

Have you ever watched kids play football? I remember hating it at recess; one kid would be “quarterback” and basically every play was a Hail Mary downfield. I would typically take one step across the line of scrimmage and appeal to the kid with the ball that if he just handed off to me, I’d be able to easily pick up a first down (and then some). To the other kids, the entire game of football was just “throw it deep enough times and hope you win.” That is an incredibly stupid game.

In Magic and football, it takes a lot of different elements to be successful. You don’t cast a [card]Fleecemane Lion[/card] on turn two and win the game, and you don’t chuck the ball 80 yards on every play. Both take a lot of interactions and exchanges to create a possibility for success. [card]Thoughtseize[/card] doesn’t kill your opponent, but is often responsible for helping you win the game several turns later. [card]Dromoka’s Command[/card] is not the star wide receiver diving into the end zone, but it is definitely the left tackle protecting the quarterback, giving him the time and protection he needs to make the play. Even though it wasn’t the game-winning move, you wouldn’t have won without it. Just like Jaguars great Tony Boselli.

TonyBoselli

Dromoka’s Command is Very Possibly the Best Card in Dragons of Tarkir

I’ve been building a lot of mediocre to terrible decks trying to get my sea legs in this new format. Every time I cast [card]Dromoka’s Command[/card], I end up winning the game. Not necessarily on that turn, but it is always setting up a key interaction or exchange of resources that throws off the opponent’s plan. Think about all of the things that a player has to track if they want to play around Dromoka’s Command:

  • +1/+1 counter on any creature can throw off math, letting a blocker survive or a smaller creature trade up.
  • Sacrificing an enchantment could mean killing an enchantment creature like [card]Courser of Kruphix[/card], [card]Doomwake Giant[/card], or [card]Eidolon of the Great Revel[/card]. Or an artifact creature like ummm… [card]Obsianus Golem[/card]?
  • Sacrificing an enchantment at instant speed is also dangerous in a world where [card]Chained to the Rocks[/card] and [card]Banishing Light[/card] are prevalent. If they suddenly have that creature back in play, does it influence attacking? What about their next attack step? What about “enters the battlefield” abilities?
  • Are there any prowess triggers to consider? Prowess resolves before the Command does, meaning that you can make a [card]Seeker of the Way[/card] a 4/4 lifelinker that fights one creature before blockers and blocks another. That’s up to eight life, and you killed up to two of their creatures. NICE RED DECK, NERD.
  • There are also a couple corner-case things to consider, like, does this attack still work if they destroy my [card]Outpost Siege[/card] (set to Dragons) or my [card]Whip of Erebos[/card] (lifelink)? Even though there is a very high amount of playable enchantments in this format, there are few decks that play a very high amount of the card type—it’s likely you’ll only have one in play early on.
  • Again, corner case, but there are a lot of different things that care about +1/+1 counters in this format.
  • Does the blocking player have a large enough creature to fight one attacking creature and live to block another? That is both with and without the possibility of a +1/+1 counter.
  • Dromoka’s Command can trigger heroic for up to two of your creatures at once, if that’s something you’re into.

All of this for two mana. Oh, and that was totally ignoring the first mode (which is also very good, but entirely dependent on them casting something first). I don’t see [card]Anger of the Gods[/card] making a comeback in Standard, but this is a strong answer to it (assuming, of course, you have the mana open).

The only reason I’m upset about preordering these is that I won’t have them in my hands on day one.

Evaluating the Commands

Dromoka’s Command is the best of the cycle, and very likely to be a major player in the format moving forward. How good are the other ones, and what can we expect from them?

Right away, I can tell you that [card]Silumgar’s Command[/card] is the worst, and that is predicated entirely on rate. With Dromoka’s Command, all of the modes are less impactful than Silumgar’s, and each is worth significantly less mana if they were printed on a card. However, at two mana (and only one card), you are always getting your “money’s worth,” and sometimes getting a great deal. With Silumgar’s Command, you are hoping to get your money’s worth, and typically paying a little extra for the benefit of both modes being on one card. The thing that scares me most about Silumgar’s Command is that it comes down too late in the aggro matchups to make the -3/-3 mode be a strong enough tempo play, and you’ll likely be wanting a [card]Crux of Fate[/card] at that point instead. Against the control decks, the [card]Negate[/card] mode is great, but requires holding up five mana—at that point, the stronger play may often be Dig and a Dissolve (or whatever three-mana counter you choose). Destroying a planeswalker is good, and you’ll always want some amount of that effect in a world where Ashiok is a factor, but again, five mana feels like a weird place for it. If you’re playing against Abzan Control and they are on the play, you can kill their Elspeth and… bounce a land? Or a Courser? I’m not sure, it just feels like the few times you get an awesome exchange out of it won’t justify the other times it is underwhelming and overpaid. I guess that makes it the Mike Wallace of Commands?

Ojutai’s Command is probably the best for control, but some of the modes feel disjointed. Getting a little guy back in UW is not typically as exciting as it is in RB, especially since it checks mana cost and not power. [card]Seeker of the Way[/card] is the first guy I think of getting back, but that’s not a strong enough play to take back a losing game. Drawing a card is of course always good, but it’s only at its best when coupled with a strong tempo play. “Gain 4 life, draw a card” is the type of card that you see in someone’s main deck at FNM that helps you realize you’re going to 2-0 them. Ultimately, this is [card]Remove Soul[/card] (or whatever it’s called now) with, “Draw a Card unless you REALLY need 4 life.”

Atarka’s Command already has four slots in my Modern RG Aggro deck. I expect it to do largely nothing in Standard. It costs [card]Burning-Tree Emissary[/card], so it has to be good!

Kolaghan’s Command will either be deceptively strong or deceptively bad. If it wasn’t an instant it would be costed at RB, but because you can force a player to discard during their draw step sometimes, it had to get pushed up an extra one mana. At RB, it’s extremely solid, especially against aggro, and at 2RB it’s stone unplayable. This one is going to require the most work. There are a lot of strong RB creatures in the set though, so maybe Rakdos aggro becomes a thing?

Obviously this is just a first look at everything, and we won’t have a better idea of how these cards look until we get a little more time with them. For now, here are my power rankings:

  1. Dromoka’s Command
  2. Atarka’s Command (Modern)
  3. Silumgar’s Command
  4. Atarka’s Command (Standard)
  5. Kolaghan’s Command
  6. Ojutai’s Command

Also, before we close out today, I want to let you know what my new writing schedule is going to be. From now on, my weekly finance writing will be over at MTGPrice.com, your home for the best finance content online. My occasional strategy thinkpieces and rye, folksy musings will still be here, but not weekly. Instead, I will only be here when the people need me the most, like Batman.

I am Batman.

Best,

Batman

Brainstorm Brewery #141 – Patreonic

Brainstorm Brewery Brainstorm Brewery, Podcasts 00:52:02

The gang is assembled and it’s a very Patreonic episode. New segments are launched, rants are initiated and vocabularies are expanded.What makes the episode Patreonic is the reading of a Patreon finance question and a Patreon pick of the week. Do you want your question addressed and your name mentioned on the cast? Support the Patreon for as little as $5 a month. Now sit back and put some finance in your head holes.

 

  • Finance 101 is all about the new rotation cycle
  • A Patreon supporter has a question
  • Pick of the Week is supplemented by a Patreon supporter pick
  • Ryan goes on a weird rant
  • Support our Patreon! DO IT. You know this cast makes you more than $1 a week
  • Need to contact us? Hit up [email protected]

 

Brainstorm Brewery is sponsored by MTGPrice.com

Cabe Riseau produced the intro and outro music for Brainstorm Brewery.

Contact Us!

Brainstorm Brewery – Website – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook – RSS – iTunes – Stitcher

Ryan Bushard – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook

Corbin Hosler – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook – QuietSpeculation

Jason E Alt – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook – QuietSpeculation

Marcel White – E-mail – Twitter

Weekend Magic: 3/27-3/29

Jared Yost Articles

Last weekend Star City Games brought us two major events: the Invitational and SCG Richmond. The Invitational featured Standard and Legacy action while Richmond featured Standard as the main event with a side of Modern and Legacy. Let’s take a look and see how Dragons of Tarkir has shaken up the format.

Star City Games Invitational (Richmond, USA)

Format – Standard, Legacy

Standard Top 8  Decklists

Deck Finish Player
Abzan Control 1st Jacob Wilson
Sultai Reanimator 2nd Reid Duke
Abzan Aggro 3rd Jason Coleman
G/W Devotion 4th Chris Andersen
Mono-Red Aggro 5th Michael Braverman
Jeskai Tokens 6th Todd Anderson
Abzan Control 7th Joe Bass
R/G Aggro 8th Ross Merriam

Legacy Top 8 Decklists

Deck Finish Player
Temur Delver 1st Jacob Wilson
Miracles 2nd Reid Duke
Lands 3rd Jason Coleman
Esper Thopter Foundry 4th Chris Andersen
Shardless Sultai 5th Michael Braverman
Infect 6th Todd Anderson
Miracles 7th Joe Bass
Sultai Delver 8th Ross Merriam

Standard Results

Jacob Wilson’s Standard deck featured two [card]Sidisi, Undead Vizier[/card] main deck. This new Sidisi seems pretty good in a control build. In Abzan, she can exploit Elspeth tokens and [card]Satyr Wayfinder[/card]s in order to find the particular card that the deck’s pilot needs at that moment. Also being a 4/6 with deathtouch means that she is really hard to deal with. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of Sidisi in Standard over the next few months, along with the all the action she is sure to see at the Commander tables.

Reid Duke’s Standard deck also featured two undead versions of Sidisi along with a single copy of [card]Dragonlord Silumgar[/card] in the main deck. [card]Sidisi, Brood Tyrant[/card] was one of the deck’s main card advantage engines and was a key component to Reid’s Standard success that weekend. Some other interesting cards from the deck included one [card]Torrent Elemental[/card] and one [card]Silumgar, the Drifting Death[/card].

Rounding out the rest of the Standard decks, some cards to to prepare to play against in future tournaments include:

  • [card]Dromoka’s Command[/card], which appeared in Abzan Aggro and G/W Devotion. This was the only command from Dragons of Tarkir to appear in the Top 8 decks.
  • [card]Deathmist Raptor[/card], which of course slotted nicely as a full playset into the G/W Devotion deck based around Mastery of the Unseen
  • [card]Zurgo Bellstriker[/card], which was featured a playset in Mono-Red Aggro despite being legendary.
    • [card]Eidolon of the Great Revel[/card] also made a Standard appearance in this deck as a playset.
    • I also didn’t think [card]Lightning Striker[/card] would get played, but the Dash ability on the creature can’t be underestimated. I’m sure there were plenty of random blowouts that happened when Berserker came down and stomped face.
  • [card]Anticipate[/card] saw play in Jeskai Tokens, to help the deck find [card]Jeskai Ascendancy[/card] faster
  • [card]ThunderBreak Regent[/card] and [card]Surrak, the Hunt Caller[/card] slotted nicely into R/G Aggro. [card]Crater’s Claws[/card] is still being played as a playset in this deck, and the two copies of [card]Draconic Roar[/card] can do a ton of work if you’re still holding dragons in your hand as you cast it.

Legacy Results

Dragons of Tarkir didn’t quite have the impact it made on Standard. In fact, there weren’t any cards from Dragons in the Legacy results. [card]Dig Through Time[/card] is now seeing plenty of play without [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] in the format anymore.

Temur Delve and Miracles are run-of-the-mill decks at this point, and Wilson’s and Duke’s lists aren’t innovative in any way. [card]Dig Through Time[/card] is now a three-of in Miracles in order to help sift through the deck faster to get the lockdown pieces.

Moving onto Lands, it is a unique deck but doesn’t have much in the way of innovation either. Some of the key cards to the deck include the [card]Thespian’s Stage[/card] / [card]Dark Depths[/card] combo and the [card]Grove the Burnwillows[/card] / [card]Punishing Fire[/card] synergy in order to control the board while you’re setting up the more deadly finisher.

Esper Thopter Foundry is a deck that has been seen before but hasn’t put up results in a while. Now that the format has slowed down a bit more after the post Cruise banning, more decks that can really take advantage of the card selection [card]Dig Through Time[/card] offers are popping up. This deck features a full playset of [card]Dig Through Time[/card] and plays enablers like [card]Mental Note[/card] and [card]Thought Scour[/card] to help cast the Dig’s quicker. At it’s heart, this deck is a control deck and wins by using the [card]Sword of the Meek[/card] / [card]Thopter Foundry[/card] combo to generate tons of 1/1 flyers and gain enough life survive until they can kill you. Certainly an interesting deck that harkens back to the old [card]Vampire Hexmage[/card] / [card]Dark Depths[/card] / [card]Thopter Foundry[/card] / [card]Sword of the Meek[/card] / [card]Gifts Ungiven[/card] extended deck.

The rest of the Legacy Top 8 doesn’t offer us anything new to the format. We still see [card]Tasigur, the Golden Fang[/card] making an appearance here and there in order to generate card advantage but nothing else of note.

Star City Games Open – Standard (Richmond, USA)

Decklists

Deck Finish Player Deck Finish Player
Jeskai Heroic 1st Joe Lossett R/G Aggro 9th Ryan Macedo
Abzan Aggro 2nd Hunter Nance Abzan Aggro 10th Drew Cranfill
R/G Aggro 3rd Dan Jessup G/R Devotion 11th Joseph Eckert
G/R Monsters 4th Chas Tanner Jeskai Tokens 12th Patrick Tierney
G/W Devotion 5th David Fulk Ascendancy Combo 13th Zach Jesse
Jeskai Tokens 6th Alex Bianchi G/W Devotion 14th Scott Robins
Jeskai Aggro 7th Noah Walker Jeskai Aggro 15th Derek Campbell
R/G Aggro 8th Trevor Bumgardner Mono-Red Aggro 16th Sean Handy

The Standard Open at Richmond continues to offer us insight into the new format. I’ve crunched the numbers from the Top 16 to see which cards, by rarity, are seeing the most play (at least at this event).

 

Mythic Rare12 [card]Whisperwood Elemental[/card]

12 [card]Polukranos, World Eater[/card]

9 [card]Soulfire Grand Master[/card]

8 [card]Stormbreath Dragon[/card]

7 [card]Anafenza, the Foremost[/card]

5 [card]Deathmist Raptor[/card]***

4 [card]Warden of the First Tree[/card]

4 [card]Brimaz, King of Oreskos[/card]

2 [card]Xenagos, the Reveler[/card]

2 [card]Wingmate Roc[/card]

2 [card]Ugin, the Spirit Dragon[/card]

2 [card]Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker[/card]

2 [card]Dragonlord Atarka[/card]***

1 [card]Soul of Theros[/card]

1 [card]Sorin, Solemn Visitor[/card]

1 [card]Nissa, Worldwaker[/card]

 Rare28 [card]Goblin Rabblemaster[/card]

25 [card]Mana Confluence[/card]

20 [card]Wooded Foothills[/card]

19 [card]Flooded Strand[/card]

16 [card]Windswept Heath[/card]

16 [card]Sylvan Caryatid[/card]

15 [card]Temple of Triumph[/card]

15 [card]Battlefield Forge[/card]

14 [card]Temple of Abandon[/card]

13 [card]Boon Satyr[/card]

12 [card]Shivan Reef[/card]

12 [card]Rattleclaw Mystic[/card]

12 [card]Nykthos, Shrine to Ny[/card]

12 [card]Jeskai Ascendancy[/card]

10 [card]Temple of Epiphany[/card]

9 [card]Temple of Plenty[/card]

8 [card]Thunderbreak Regent[/card]***

8 [card]Surrak, the Hunt Caller[/card]***

8 [card]Siege Rhino[/card]

8 [card]Rakshasa Deathdealer[/card]

8 [card]Mantis Rider[/card]

8 [card]Fleecemane Lion[/card]

8 [card]Dromoka’s Command[/card]***

8 [card]Crater’s Claws[/card]

8 [card]Courser of Kruphi[/card]

8 [card]Atarka’s Command[/card]***

7 [card]Zurgo Bellstriker[/card]***

7 [card]Mastery of the Unseen[/card]

7 [card]Hero’s Downfall[/card]

6 [card]Temple of Silence[/card]

6 [card]Temple of Enlightenment[/card]

6 [card]Genesis Hydra[/card]

6 [card]Dig Through Time[/card]

5 [card]Llanowar Wastes[/card]

5 [card]Den Protector[/card]***

5 [card]Caves of Koilos[/card]

4 [card]Outpost Siege[/card]

4 [card]Hero of Iroas[/card]

3 [card]Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth[/card]

3 [card]Twinflame[/card]

3 [card]Temple of Mystery[/card]

3 [card]Temple of Malady[/card]

3 [card]Secure the Wastes[/card]***

2 [card]Yavimaya Coast[/card]

2 [card]Thoughtseize[/card]

2 [card]End Hostilities[/card]

2 [card]Collected Company[/card]***

2 [card]Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit[/card]

1 [card]Tasigur, the Golden Fang[/card]

1 [card]Hornet Queen[/card]

1 [card]Hidden Dragonslayer[/card]***

1 [card]Haven of the Spirit Dragon[/card]***

1 [card]Firedrinker Satyr[/card]

 Uncommon28 [card]Stoke the Flames[/card]

21 [card]Wild Slash[/card]

17 [card]Mystic Monastery[/card]

16 [card]Hordeling Outburst[/card]

12 [card]Monastery Swiftspear[/card]

11 [card]Valorous Stance[/card]

11 [card]Seeker of the Way[/card]

8 [card]Sandsteppe Citadel[/card]

6 [card]Searing Blood[/card]

6 [card]Heir of the Wilds[/card]

4 [card]Ordeal of Thassa[/card]

4 [card]Favored Hoplite[/card]

4 [card]Draconic Roar[/card]***

4 [card]Battlewise Hoplite[/card]

3 [card]Frontier Bivouac[/card]

3 [card]Bile Blight[/card]

2 [card]Ultimate Price[/card]***

2 [card]Temur Sabertooth[/card]

2 [card]Roast[/card]***

2 [card]Ordeal of Heliod[/card]

2 [card]Lightning Berserker[/card]***

2 [card]Briber’s Purse[/card]

2 [card]Banishing Light[/card]

2 [card]Abzan Charm[/card]

1 [card]Murderous Cut[/card]

1 [card]Kiora’s Follower[/card]

1 [card]Jeskai Charm[/card]

1 [card]Frenzied Goblin[/card]
Common20 [card]Lightning Strike[/card]

20 [card]Elvish Mystic[/card]

13 [card]Anticipate[/card]***

12 [card]Foundry Street Denizen[/card]

12 [card]Dragon Fodder[/card]***

10 [card]Treasure Cruise[/card]

9 [card]Voyaging Satyr[/card]

6 [card]Raise the Alarm[/card]

5 [card]Mardu Scout[/card]

4 [card]Temur Battle Rage[/card]

4 [card]Retraction Helix[/card]

4 [card]Gods Willing[/card]

4 [card]Goblin Heelcutter[/card]

4 [card]Dragon Mantle[/card]

4 [card]Defiant Strike[/card]

3 [card]Commune with the Gods[/card]

3 [card]Collateral Damage[/card]

3 [card]Center Soul[/card]***

3 [card]Blossoming Sands[/card]

2 [card]Tormenting Voice[/card]

2 [card]Rugged Highlands[/card]

1 [card]Negate[/card]

1 [card]Lagonna-Band Trailblazer[/card]

 Sideboard15 [card]Glare of Heresy[/card]

14 [card]Roast[/card]***

13 [card]Disdainful Stroke[/card]

10 [card]Nissa, Worldwaker[/card]

8 [card]Wild Slash[/card]

8 [card]Valorous Stance[/card]

8 [card]Destructive Revelry[/card]

8 [card]Arc Lightning[/card]

7 [card]Xenagos, the Reveler[/card]

7 [card]Negate[/card]

7 [card]Hornet Nest[/card]

7 [card]Eidolon of the Great Revel[/card]

6 [card]Searing Blood[/card]

6 [card]Fleecemane Lion[/card]

5 [card]Thoughtseize[/card]

5 [card]Setessan Tactics[/card]

5 [card]Magmatic Chasm[/card]***

5 [card]Elspeth, Sun’s Champion[/card]

4 [card]Seismic Rupture[/card]***

4 [card]Brimaz, King of Oreskos[/card]

4 [card]Arbor Colossus[/card]

4 [card]Anger of the Gods[/card]

3 [card]Treasure Cruise[/card]

3 [card]Swan Song[/card]

3 [card]Sorin, Solemn Visitor[/card]

3 [card]Rending Volley[/card]***

3 [card]Reclamation Sage[/card]

3 [card]Ojutai Exemplars[/card]***

3 [card]Nylea’s Disciple[/card]

3 [card]Duress[/card]

3 [card]Drown in Sorrow[/card]

3 [card]Dragonlord Ojutai[/card]***

3 [card]Display of Dominance[/card]***

3 [card]Bile Blight[/card]

2 [card]Ultimate Price[/card]***

2 [card]Stubborn Denial[/card]

2 [card]Scouring Sands[/card]

2 [card]Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker[/card]

2 [card]Prognostic Sphinx[/card]

2 [card]Ordeal of Heliod[/card]

2 [card]Monastery Siege[/card]

2 [card]Mastery of the Unseen[/card]

2 [card]Magma Spray[/card]

2 [card]Hammer of Purphoros[/card]

2 [card]End Hostilities[/card]

2 [card]Cloudform[/card]

2 [card]Ainok Survivalist[/card]***

2 [card]Abzan Advantage[/card]

1 [card]Vaultbreaker[/card]

1 [card]Temple of Triumph[/card]

1 [card]Tasigur, the Golden Fang[/card]

1 [card]Outpost Siege[/card]

1 [card]Nylea, God of the Hunt[/card]

1 [card]Liliana Vess[/card]

1 [card]Lagonna-Band Trailblazer[/card]

1 [card]Kiora, the Crashing Wave[/card]

1 [card]Hornet Queen[/card]

1 [card]Hall of Triumph[/card]

1 [card]Goblin Heelcutter[/card]

1 [card]Erase[/card]

1 [card]Dromoka’s Command[/card]***

1 [card]Dig Through Time[/card]

1 [card]Den Protector[/card]***

As you can see, there are numerous cards that have taken up homes in Standard decks at this event. [card]Deathmist Raptor[/card] and [card]Dragonlord Atarka[/card] were the only mythics to be seen at the Top 16 in the main decks, while [card]Dragonlord Ojutai[/card] and [card]Ojutai’s Exemplars[/card] were mythics that were played in sideboards.

Looking at the rares, the most played new rares from the set include [card]Thunderbreak Regent[/card], [card]Surrak, the Hunt Caller[/card], [card]Dromoka’s Command[/card], and [card]Atarka’s Command[/card]. [card]Zurgo Bellstriker[/card] was seen in mono-red decks, and [card]Den Protector[/card] and [card]Secure the Wastes[/card] had brief appearances. Someone tried to make [card]Collected Company[/card] work marginally by including two copies in a deck but there was no breakout Collected Company deck totally centered around the card.

Roast was the breakout uncommon of the set, with sixteen copies appearing across main decks and sideboards. [card]Anticipate[/card] and [card]Dragon Fodder[/card] were the breakout commons, as was probably expected since they are both efficient cards for their mana cost.

All in all, there were definitely some shakeups but nothing too crazy. No new archetypes were formed. However, existing ones got a few boosts from the new cards.

Star City Games Premier IQ – Modern (Richmond, USA)

Decklists

Deck Finish Player Deck Finish Player
Affinity 1st Joseph Greer Abzan Midrange 9th Patrick Older
Infect 2nd Michael Allen Jund 10th Van Nguyen
U/W Tron 3rd Mike Kenney U/R Twin 11th Will Benton
Grixis Control 4th Dave Shiels U/R Twin 12th Jason Bennett
Jeskai Control 5th Travis Perlee Abzan Midrange 13th Michael Derczo
Merfolk 6th John Taylor Affinity 14th Betrix Ryan
Merfolk 7th Brandon Frey Esper Control 15th Christopher Mahaffey
Zoo 8th Jeff Szablak Jund 16th Joseph Herrera

Things seem have to shaken up in Modern, at least in Richmond. Outside of the finalists, the decks are ones that usually don’t see Top 8 appearances.

U/W Tron is one that seems to breaking out recently. Notable cards from the deck include one [card]Ugin, the Spirit Dragon[/card], four [card]Azorius Signet[/card], four [card]Gifts Ungiven[/card], and four [card]Thirst for Knowledge[/card]. This deck is interesting in that you can win with [card]Celestial Colonnade[/card] but also have a Gifts package to get whatever is needed at the moment. My suspicion is that this is a deck that you need to be intimately familiar with in order to pilot to success – there are several lines of play that this deck can go down, and knowing all of them takes a lot of practice. It’s good to see control being better in Modern, where just a month ago it seems that aggro, midrange, and combo were the only decks.

Speaking of which, another two control decks were in the Top 8. Grixis Control featured three [card]Tasigur, the Golden Fang[/card], two [card]Go for the Throat[/card], and a package of other counterspells and burn in order to control the game until you get a [card]Blood Moon[/card] or [card]Vedalken Shackles[/card] online. Jeskai Control featured [card]Gideon Jura[/card] as a wind condition along with [card]Anticipate[/card] from Dragons of Tarkir, a single [card]Logic Knot[/card], and splashing black for [card]Lingering Souls[/card] / [card]Mystical Teachings[/card] flashback.

Also, two Merfolk lists made the Top 8! Notables from Merfolk included [card]Master of Waves[/card], [card]Tidebinder Mage[/card], [card]Mutavault[/card], [card]Aether Vial[/card], and [card]Monastery Siege[/card] from Fate Reforged. Looks like Merfolk has really made ahem a splash in Modern now and we’ll be seeing it for some time to come since it is a pretty easy to pilot aggro/tempo deck.

Finally, [card]Collected Company[/card] made a nice debut in Modern Zoo, with the 8th place deck playing a full twenty-seven creatures and three [card]Collected Company[/card] to back them up. [card]Knight of the Reliquary[/card] is back in business folks and it’s pretty sick to rip that and, say, [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] off the top of your deck at instant speed. [card]Kessig Wolf Run[/card] is a cute addition too, as it allows you to completely blow someone out if they’re not expecting it. [card]Bonfire of the Damned[/card] out of the sideboard is an interesting choice, I guess it helps against token strategies?

Rounding out the rest of the Top 16 were some run of the mill decks like Jund, Twin, and Abzan Midrange. Esper Control was the only outlier here. This deck had a full playset of [card]Monastery Mentor[/card], along with [card]Murderous Cut[/card], [card]Slaughter Pact[/card], [card]Thought Scour[/card], and Tasigur in order to help recur spells back. [card]Creeping Tar Pit[/card] is also a nice finisher in the deck. Despite both [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] and [card]Dig Through Time[/card] being banned in Modern, Delve still seems to be a thing.

Star City Games Premier IQ – Legacy (Richmond, USA)

Decklists

Deck Finish Player Deck Finish Player
Reanimator 1st Nick Patnode Temur Delver 9th Zack Kanner
Infect 2nd Tom Ross Lands 10th Micah Greenbaum
Miracles 3rd Shawn French Death and Taxes 11th Christopher Calhoun
Miracles 4th Brian Braun-Duin Dredge 12th Andrew Shrout
Death & Taxes 5th Jessie Butler Temur Delver 13th Stephen Mann
Elves 6th Ryan Hare Omni-Tell 14th Collins Mullen
Jeskai Delver 7th Thomas Trovato Lands 15th Brandon Dempsey
Shardless Sultai 8th Chi Hoi Yim Death & Taxes 16th Jacob Eckert

Like I’ve mentioned in the Invitational section, Legacy hasn’t been shaken up much from the Dragons of Tarkir release. Elves is playing [card]Ruric Thar, the Unbowed[/card] as a nice finisher against control decks. That’s about all the innovation I see in the lists here. Legacy is still pretty much Legacy, even after Dragons has hit the shelves.

Whew, guess that’s it for this week. Keep checking back weekly for all the action that happened the previous weekend that you may have missed!

Quick Hit: Premier IQ Spotlighting

Max Perlmutter Articles

I was looking through the StarCity Games Premier Invitational Qualifier decklists from the Richmond Open and I came across a Zoo list played by Jeff Szablak to an eighth-place finish that looks really interesting to me.

Jeff Szablak 8th Place SCG Premier IQ

[Deck title=Jeff Szablak Zoo]
[creatures]
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Loxodon Smiter
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Qasali Pridemage
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Wild Nacatl
[/creatures]
[spells]
3 Collected Company
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile
[/spells]
[lands]
4 Arid Mesa
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
2 forest
2 plains
[/lands]
[sideboard]
1 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Kor Firewalker
3 Blood Moon
2 Choke
2 Stony Silence
2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Bonfire of the Damned
[/sideboard]
[/deck]

The reason I want to bring this deck up is because it uses [card]Collected Company[/card] as a powerful card advantage engine that adds directly to the board. This is definitely something I want to test out because it looks like a blast to play. I love the use of hatebears in the sideboard like [card]Thalia, Guardian of Thraben[/card] and I’m curious to try some other cards like [card]Aven Mindcensor[/card], [card]Gaddock Teeg[/card], or even something like [card]Magus of the Moon[/card] to try to attack people off of Collected Company.

As a Zoo enthusiast, I just wanted to bring this build to everyone’s attention. I plan on trying out [card]Collective Company[/card] Zoo in some of my next few local Modern events. I’ll let you know how it goes!

 

Important Announcement Regarding Tap N’ Sac Podcast

Danny Brown Articles

Brainstorm Brewery is excited to add Tap N Sac to the offerings on the site. For the details of this announcement, check out TNS’s explanation below.

Dear listeners of Tap N Sac Podcast, both new and long-time:

I am more than excited to announce that Tap N Sac Podcast, a podcast worth fetching for, will now be sponsored by Brainstorm Brewery!  Because of them, we can guarantee you episodes on a regular basis of the highest quality along with a steady stream of other Magic content, whether it may be articles, a Twitch stream, YouTube videos, etc.  Having the time to deliver Magic content as a result of this sponsorship to you, the listener, is seriously a dream come true.

However, I unfortunately don’t have purely good news to share.  As a result of obtaining this sponsorship, I had to make a seriously difficult decision. Jon Celso, co-host of the podcast and Twitter personality, will no longer join me on a regular basis. For Tap N Sac to grow in this new environment, the show needs to progress toward a similar, but new, direction.  Jon was kind enough to share some parting words:

Dear Tap N Sac listeners/Saclings,
There's never a good way to say goodbye.  I'm super excited that the podcast has achieved a sponsorshipafter Houston put in 2+ years of elbow grease into the podcast -- I'm nothing but excited for him.  I really wish I could be part of it going forward, but I don't want to drive a wedge between Houston and the podcast's growth.  I'm sure he'll find a replacement that also loves bacon, bears, bacon bears, pizza, sandwiches, and Magic.  I'll continue to support the podcast, as I'm sure you will, and I wish it the best of luck.
Sincerely,
Celso (@BalduvianBears)
P.S. Don't worry; I'm sure I'll find my way back on the airwaves in some form or fashion because I love talking about this amazing game.  So keep your eyes peeled!

I want to take the moment now to thank Jon for all the hard work he put into the podcast, and I wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.

In the meantime, I’ll be doing what Limited Resources has been known for: bringing on a series of guests.  If you’re interested in hopping on the mic, send me an email!

Until next time, see you, fuckers!

– Ginger Ale

Kitchen Table Magic: Brewing Dragons – Ojutai Advantage

David Beedy Articles

Hello. My name is Dave, and I am a Magiholic.

[Editor’s note: Hi, Dave!]

At almost 40 years old, I still collect and play with Magic cards. My relationship with Magic began over 20 years ago in high school, but I kicked it for four years, dumping all my Alpha and Beta cards in a garage sale. Sad, I know!

In college, I earned the wrong crowd’s favor and reentered a state of Magiholism, only this time I lived with a [card]mountain stronghold[/card] of guilt for letting my early and now extremely valuable collection go. I vowed never to feel that [card]chained to the rocks[/card] again. Here, I am freeing my [card]heart warden[/card] to intentionally spread my [card]exotic disease[/card]. Don’t listen to me. Save yourselves.

By the way, if you are getting rid of your collection, toss me a tweet; I know a guy.

Home Brews for Home

I am a kitchen-table Magic player. Ninety-nine percent of my play has been with two close friends and my brother. I play on MTGO from time to time, at FNM when I can, and I devour Magic-related media like Marshall Sutcliffe’s Limited and Constructed Resources podcasts, the Brainstorm Brewery podcast, and many columns and resources from across the Magic community. I don’t make any claims to being an expert deck builder or player, but I enjoy having fun with the game we all love, and I want to share that fun with the community.

For my first series I will create five decks based on the new mythic elder dragons. This week’s brew will be based on the blue and white [card]Dragonlord Ojutai[/card]. [card]Narset Transcendent[/card] has captured the attention of the entire Magic community. Patrick Chapin was high on the card during a recent Top Level Podcast. He mentioned an interaction with [card]Courser of Kruphix[/card] that got me thinking about Bant.

[deck title=Ojutai Advantage]
[Creatures]
*4 Elvish Mystic
*4 Sylvan Caryatid
*4 Courser of Kruphix
*1 Dragonlord Dromoka
*1 Silumgar, the Drifting Death
*4 Dragonlord Ojutai
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*4 Dig Through Time
*4 Dissolve
*4 Silumgar’s Scorn
*3 Valorous Stance
*2 Narset Transcendent
*1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
[/Spells]
[Lands]
*4 Flooded Strand
*4 Windswept Heath
*4 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
*4 Opulent Palace
*3 Mana Confluence
*2 Forest
*2 Island
*2 Plains
*1 Crucible of the Spirit Dragon
[/lands]
[Sideboard]
*3 End Hostilities
*3 Disdainful Stroke
*2 Murderous Cut
*2 Perilous Vault
*2 Reclamation Sage
*2 Dragonlord Dromoka
*1 Dragonlord Silumgar
[/sideboard]
[/deck]

Transcendent Courser

[card]Courser of Kruphix[/card] shows us the top card of our library. It is a handy interaction when deciding whether to use [card]Narset Transcendent[/card]’s +1 pseudo card-draw ability. If you see a land, you get to dig to the next card with the Courser. If it is a creature you don’t need, you can sacrifice that fetch, shuffle your library and try again. Combined with Courser and the right deck, Narset essentially says, “+1: Draw a card.”

Flying [card]Anticipate[/card] of Death

When I started brewing around the interaction between Narset and Courser, I spent some time looking through the new dragons and discovered [card]Dragonlord Ojutai[/card]. He is a 5/4, has flying, has hexproof on the turn he is played, and provides a free [card]Anticipate[/card] every time he connects with a player. All this for five mana. I love him. Sure, it is a little bit “win more,” but if I can survive long enough to get this guy on the table, protect him while attacking, and connect with him, I bet I will win.

Courser is green and already a little rampy. If we add in a little more green ramp to push Ojutai out on turn four, then we are really talking. The deck I have in mind acts like a rampy green deck until I get Ojutai on the board, then I switch to a control role, protecting him with [card]Silumgar’s Scorn[/card] and [card]Dissolve[/card], dealing five in the air, and [card]Anticipate[/card]ing each turn. Once [card]Dragonlord Ojutai[/card] is out, I can chump on the ground with my ramp creatures to keep myself alive long enough to win in the air.

Digging for Answers

Narset allows the pilot to dig for counters or sideboarded answers, and Courser just speeds up that searching. I’ve included [card]Silumgar, the Drifting Death[/card] and [card]Dragonlord Dromoka[/card] as additional and surprising win conditions that are either hard to deal with (hexproof) or get me out of [card]Stoke the Flames[/card] range (lifelink). I can use [card]Dig Through Time[/card] to find one or both of these threats, if needed.

Bottom line: there is a lot of card draw and selection in this build. The pilot has a lot of options for finding answers.

Strategy

Against a beatdown deck, getting the ramp out early to trade with their creatures is essential. Courser is great for stopping their early creatures and Caryatid is an untargetable blocker. Ramping out Ojutai is not essential against aggro. The best course of action is to trade creatures until Ojutai hits the board and then to have a counter up to protect the dragonlord from Stoke while attacking. Siding in another lifelinking dragon is a good plan as well as the [card]Disdainful Stroke[/card]s and [card]End Hostilities[/card]. If we can gain some life and knock out their ground force, this matchup should break in our favor.

When facing midrange, we don’t want to get overwhelmed. [card]Whisperwood Elemental[/card], [card]Siege Rhino[/card], [card]Genesis Hydra[/card], and [card]Tasigur, the Golden Fang[/card] are current, popular examples in this strategy. Manifest is a special enemy putting uncounterable bodies on the field every turn, but face-down [card]Genesis Hydra[/card]s don’t do your opponents much good, and flipping up a [card]Siege Rhino[/card] isn’t especially threatening. Your opponents need to cast these monsters from their hand for best value. In the early turns, get out some ramp and blockers to prevent their 2/2s from gaining ground. Once your opponent has five mana open, you need to have a counter ready. Don’t worry about their [card]Voyaging Satyr[/card]s and [card]Sylvan Caryatid[/card]s. Worry instead about their [card]Whisperwood Elemental[/card]s.  Side in the [card]Perilous Vault[/card]s and [card]End Hostilities[/card] to clear the board after they dump their hand to overwhelm you.

siege-rhino

For control match-ups, dump the Caryatids and double down with [card]Disdainful Stroke[/card] and [card]Reclamation Sage[/card]. Getting creatures out early and countering their removal targeting your dragons is key. Courser is especially useful here as it does damage and keeps lands out of your draw step. [card]Dragonlord Ojutai[/card] can be freely cast with a counter at the ready for mass removal. Use the sage to remove their vaults before they can activate them and to deal those last few points of damage. [card]Dragonlord Dromoka[/card] is a nice surprise: an uncounterable threat, but without countermagic at the ready, he won’t last long on the board.

If you like controlling the pace of the game, drawing cards, and playing dragons as much as I do, try out the Ojutai Advantage deck at your next kitchen table event. I promise it will, at the very least, be fun!

Pitt Imps Podcast #112 Back Pain

Pitt Imps Pitt Imps, Podcasts 01:08:13

This week, the Imps have prerelease stories. Not much else really happened in competitive Magic, so its a good thing we had these. We do go over the B&R Announcement as well as the Commander rule change. Keep in mind that none of us are hardcore Commander players so I don’t think we really understood all the outrage. Any who, this is our show. There are many like it but , this one is ours. Our show is our best friend. It is our life. We must master it like we must master our life. Without us our show is useless. Without our show we are useless. We must fire our show true. We must shoot straighter than the other casts that are trying to kill us. We must shoot them before they shoot us. We will. Before God we swear this creed. Our show and ourselves re defenders of this game. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of our lives. So be it, until there is no enemy, but peace, and men.

Host  Angelo   Twitter  @ganksuou

Co-Host   Will    Find him on Facebook

Co-Host     Mike   Twitter   @Huntmaster_Mike

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Email   [email protected]

Pitt Imps Podcast is brought to you each week by our proud sponsors.   Brainstorm Brewery and Taitan Game Shop

Analyzing and Deck Building: Featuring Outpost Siege

Jim Casale Articles

A common question people ask is: “How do I build a deck?”  It’s easy to say just get one from the internet and play it tons of times to become proficient, but some people really just have a passion for making a deck themselves.  In my opinion, iterative deckbuilding is the best way to build a deck.  As the name implies, each iteration of the deck should be slightly different from the last. Eventually, you’ll reach a point where the end result may not look much like what it started out as.

The Seed

outpost siege

The start of any deck is the seed or the initial concept.  Sometimes it’s a card and sometimes it’s an interaction.

For me, I chose to use [card]Outpost Siege[/card]. The first step to building from a seed is to truly analyze it and figure out what makes it good. [card]Outpost Siege[/card] is a card that is good in certain circumstances. It’s good when your opponent has no cards in hand, it’s good when the board is clear, and it’s good when you can play the extra card every turn.

The next step is to figure out when it’s bad and try to prevent those situations. Siege is pretty bad when your spells don’t do anything, it’s pretty bad when you’re dead, and it’s pretty bad when you’re behind.  Knowing the reasons why you want to build with a card helps to solidify the strengths and weaknesses of the idea.

Pros

1) It’s good when your opponent has no cards in hand: The most obvious thing to do is make them discard cards. That generally will accomplish the goal but it doesn’t help shore up the weaknesses of the card. If you’re making your opponent discard cards and they’re playing cards to the board, you will be behind. That’s not optimal. What can we do to run our opponent out of cards besides playing discards spells? We can play cards that require answers to empty our opponent’s hand. One-for-one cards like removal spells and big efficient creatures are the best way to do this.

2) It’s good when the board is clear: Kill everything!  This seems pretty evident that if we play threats that outclass most threats and remove ones that outclass ours, the board should be in our favor and we can push our advantage with [card]Outpost Siege[/card].

3) It’s good when we play our extra card every turn:  If we exile a land off of [card]Outpost Siege[/card] every turn, there is 100 percent chance we can play it. But what happens if we draw a spell and exile a spell?  If we don’t play both, then we may play a sub-optimal spell or lose out on a spell altogether. This deck needs to be able to double-spell fairly often and fairly consistently.

Cons

1) When our spells don’t do anything:  Exiling a counter spell is pretty bad. Exiling a one-mana 1/1 on turn 16 is usually pretty bad. Exiling cards we can’t cast is also pretty bad. Exiling cards our opponents don’t  care about is pretty bad. How do we fix this? Play flexible reactive spells and threats. There is no such thing as a bad threat, only a bad answer.

2) When you’re behind: When you get behind on the board, [card]Outpost Siege[/card] does nothing outright to get you back into the game.  If you’re at one life staring down 13 goblin tokens, this card will not help you. We need to include cards that help us get to the late game when the Siege can win the game for us.

3) When we’re dead: This goes without saying, but if you’re too slow or your mana is too painful and you die, well then, it didn’t do anything. Having a good amount of life gain and spells that generate “more turns” of gameplay are crucial to our plan.

So About the Deck Building…

Okay, now that we’ve got that settled, where do we start? Well, [card]Outpost Siege[/card] has already been featured in Jeskai and Boros decks to some success. We know how it works there so we need to try something else. My initial thought was a Jund-style deck.

Jund decks have been known to do a lot of the things we need. They play efficient threats, they play good removal to keep the board clear, they have some life gain to make the game take longer. Jund colors lend themselves to the grind pretty easily. The problem is that we don’t have a lot of really efficient mana-fixing for those colors. [card]Mana Confluence[/card] seems like a necessary evil, but it’s hard to say what else we really have for lands after that. Too many Temples makes the deck too slow to play two spells each turn and too many fetchlands may make it too painful and inconsistent.  Enter the engine:

cary satyrmurderous  tas

[card]Sylvan Caryatid[/card] and [card]Satyr Wayfinder[/card] are great mana fixers for a three-color deck. [card]Tasigur, the Golden Fang[/card] and [card]Murderous Cut[/card] are great ways to double spell faster (because we can frequently delve these cards down to one mana) and are also fueled by Wayfinders and the fetchlands we will probably end up playing.  Tasigur provides a big body for defense, and in the later game, more card advantage to help close things out.

courser

This card also helps a lot of our issues.  It lets us gain life to prolong the game, is pretty good at blocking, and provides more lands to let us reach critical mass of double-spelling.

What other cheap efficient removal spells can we play? [card]Murderous Cut[/card] alone will not solve all problemschained

[card]Chained to the Rocks[/card] is a pretty easy splash.  We are already playing [card]Mana Confluence[/card] and [card]Sylvan Caryatid[/card] for fixing, and with two different mountain fetchlands, we don’t need that many actual mountains to have a lot of “theoretical” mountains in our deck.

200143

Even if we have all of the removal in the world, we can’t win the game easily with Tasigur, Courser, and Wayfinder as our only threats.  [card]Stormbreath Dragon[/card] is extremely resilient and we’ve already committed to playing a lot of red sources for [card]Chained to the Rocks[/card], so it seems like a good inclusion.  [card]Siege Rhino[/card] similarly fills a lot of the same roles as Courser with a bigger body.  It only requires one white mana, so it shouldn’t be difficult to cast.

61 90 171

More ways to kill stuff.  We’re really stretching on the white splash because we can pretty much play [card]Sandsteppe Citadel[/card] for free.  This deck will be mainly green-black and will work to splash the other two colors.

Okay, so we throw all of these cards in a blender with some lands and what do we get? A mostly unplayable pile of hot garbage! The deck seems worse than Abzan control because it doesn’t have as good a mana base and doesn’t have [card]Abzan Charm[/card] to draw cards.  Casting RR, GG, BB, GWB, and RWB spells in the same deck proved to be non-trivial. I ended up cutting [card]Chained to the Rocks[/card] before even playing my first match because supporting enough mountains to cast it seemed impossible.

This is the first version of the deck I played:

[deck title=Hot Unplayable Pile of Outpost Siege]
[Creatures]
*4 Satyr Wayfinder
*4 Sylvan Caryatid
*4 Courser of Kruphix
*4 Siege Rhino
*2 Stormbreath Dragon
*4 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
[/Creatures]
[Planeswalkers]
*1 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
[/Planeswalkers]
[Non-Creature, Non-Planeswalker Spells]
*3 Bile Blight
*3 Crackling Doom
*2 Hero’s Downfall
*3 Murderous Cut
*3 Outpost Siege
[/Non-Creature, Non-Planeswalker Spells]
[Lands]
*2 Bloodstained Mire
*2 Forest
*2 Mana Confluence
*1 Mountain
*4 Sandsteppe Citadel
*2 Swamp
*1 Temple of Abandon
*1 Temple of Silence
*1 Temple of Malice
*3 Temple of Malady
*1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
*3 Wooded Foothills
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
*3 Thoughtseize
*4 Drown in Sorrow
*3 Read the Bones
*3 Reclamation Sage
*1 Liliana Vess
*1 Garruk, Apex Predator
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

Yep, this deck is rough and the mana looks horrendous, but there is potential!  When I had [card]Outpost Siege[/card] in play, it did what it was supposed to do when the conditions were right. The more I played, the more I realized that the mana was really causing too many problems and being more conservative with my card choices could go a long way. I realized the red cards were just under performing in so many situations. There is not a lot of difference between [card]Crackling Doom[/card], [card]Abzan Charm[/card], and [card]Hero’s Downfall[/card] in a lot of situations, except for the mana symbols on the cards.

I also had a lot of issues with too many lands coming into play tapped. I needed more untapped sources of mana and fewer red ones in general. Often I would find an opening hand with two red sources nearly unplayable because we need to cast GG and BB spells early to live.

But fear not! My experiment wasn’t done. I decided to borrow more cards from the existing Abzan control deck and morph it more to support [card]Outpost Siege[/card] than to make a red deck that supports G/B cards.

There were more iterations of the deck that included [card]Crater’s Claws[/card], [card]Xenagos, the Reveler[/card], and other nonsense like that. The more I played, the more I realized the only red card I really wanted was the Siege.

Version 3.0 of the deck:

[deck title=Abzan Siege]
[Creatures]
*3 Satyr Wayfinder
*4 Sylvan Caryatid
*4 Courser of Kruphix
*4 Siege Rhino
*3 Whisperwood Elemental
*3 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
[/Creatures]
[Planeswalkers]
*2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
[/Planeswalkers]
[Non-Creature Non-Planeswalker Spells]
*2 Bile Blight
*2 Abzan Charm
*2 Hero’s Downfall
*3 Murderous Cut
*3 Outpost Siege
*2 Thoughtseize
[/Non-Creature Non-Planeswalker Spells]
[Lands]
*1 Bloodstained Mire
*2 Forest
*2 Mana Confluence
*1 Mountain
*1 Plains
*4 Sandsteppe Citadel
*2 Swamp
*1 Temple of Abandon
*1 Temple of Malice
*3 Temple of Malady
*1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
*2 Wooded Foothills
*2 Windswept Heath
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
*2 Thoughtseize
*4 Drown in Sorrow
*3 Read the Bones
*3 Reclamation Sage
*1 Nissa, Worldwaker
*1 Liliana Vess
*1 Garruk, Apex Predator
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

What is the deck now?  Still pretty rough, but it’s tuned to beat some matchups pretty thoroughly.

The Abzan mirror match is a joke with an [card]Outpost Siege[/card] in play. Although we eschew [card]Elspeth, Sun’s Champion[/card], our combination of Tasigur and Siege generate enough resources to power through them.  [card]Whisperwood Elemental[/card] gives us great insurance versus Elspeth and [card]Ugin, the Spirit Dragon[/card].

Additionally, our sideboard helps out dealing with problematic cards like [card] Hornet Queen[/card], [card]Whip of Erebos[/card], [card]Perilous Vault[/card], etc.  I would even go so far as to say if you plan to play any version of Abzan, give this one a try. The first time your turn-five play is Tasigur and [card]Siege Rhino[/card] in the same turn, you will understand the power of the deck.

Let me know if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or success stories with this brew!

Brewing with Dragons of Tarkir

Josh Milliken Articles

Welcome back for Brewing with Dragons of Tarkir!

Today, I’ll go over eleven lists that I’ve come up with using some of the new cards from Dragons of Tarkir. These decks won’t have fully formed sideboards, since I don’t have time to test them all or complete knowledge of the metagame (the one exception being the Gruul Burn list, which I have had a chance to test). This was quite an exciting set for me as a brewer, and I’m sure you’ll be able to tell from the diverse array of decks I have for you today. But enough babble, let’s see some decks…

Gruul Burn

First up is Gruul Burn. [card]Atarka’s Command[/card] adds a lot of power to the deck, letting you pump your team while dealing three or even shutting down the life gain from those pesky [card]Siege Rhino[/card]s. Upgrading [card]Firedrinker Satyr[/card] into [card]Lightning Berserker[/card] was also a tremendous gain for this deck, allowing it to be more aggressive with its creatures. This will be the first deck I build when Dragons of Tarkir is legal, and with the results of my testing looking good so far, I don’t see me playing anything else unless the format drastically shifts.

[deck title= Gruul Burn]
[Creatures]
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Lightning Berserker
2 Zurgo Bellstriker
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Wild Slash
4 Magma Jet
4 Lightning Strike
4 Searing Blood
4 Atarka’s Command
4 Stoke the Flames
2 Become Immense
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Temple of Abandon
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Forest
9 Mountain
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
4 Roast
3 Destructive Revelry
2 Circle of Flame
3 Arc Lightning
3 Outpost Siege
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Mono-Green Aggro

When I saw [card]Avatar of the Resolute[/card] get spoiled, I got super excited to build this deck again. The biggest thing keeping me from playing this is its weakness to cards like [card]Drown in Sorrow[/card] and [card]Bile Blight[/card], which are seeing heavy play currently. But if the format shifts away from those, I may be on Mono-Green Aggro yet again.

[deck title= Mono-Green Aggro]
[Creatures]
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Servant of the Scale
4 Avatar of the Resolute
4 Swordwise Centaur
4 Boon Satyr
4 Reverent Hunter
3 Nylea, God of the Hunt
2 Polukranos, World Eater
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Aspect of Hydra
2 Bow of Nylea
2 Setessan Tactics
[/Spells]
[Land]
2 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
21 Forest
[/Land]
[/deck]

Sideboard Suggestions: [card]Hunt the Hunter[/card], [card]Nylea’s Disciple[/card], [card]Ranger’s Guile[/card], and [card]Reclamation Sage[/card].

Mono-Blue Devotion

While not quite as powerful as the old Mono-Blue Devotion decks, this deck will likely begin to pick up in popularity. It gained [card]Shorecrasher Elemental[/card] for the main deck, which should prove quite powerful. The biggest gain is probably [card]Encase in Ice[/card], which does a poor [card]Tidebinder Mage[/card] impersonation, but sometimes a poor impersonation is still good enough.

[deck title= Mono Blue Devotion]
[Creatures]
4 Dakra Mystic
4 Hypnotic Siren
4 Frost Walker
4 Stratus Dancer
4 Omenspeaker
4 Shorecrasher Elemental
4 Thassa, God of the Sea
4 Master of Waves
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
3 Military Intelligence
2 Bident of Thassa
[/Spells]
[Land]
3 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
20 Island
[/Land]
[/deck]

Sideboard Suggestions: [card]Disdainful Stroke[/card], [card]Dissolve[/card], [card]Encase in Ice[/card], and [card]Icy Blast[/card].

Mono-Black Aggro

This deck will do well at some point soon, but with so many [card]Drown in Sorrow[/card]s running around, it will have to work hard to do it. [card]Pitiless Horde[/card] seems like a very scary card, much like [card]Phyrexian Negator[/card] was in its heyday.

[deck title= Mono-Black Aggro]
[Creatures]
4 Bloodsoaked Champion
4 Gnarled Scarhide
4 Tormented Hero
4 Pain Seer
4 Silumgar Assassin
4 Herald of Torment
4 Mogis’s Marauder
4 Pitiless Horde
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Bile Blight
2 Hero’s Downfall
[/Spells]
[Land]
2 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
20 Swamp
[/Land]
[/deck]

Sideboard Suggestions: [card]Hero’s Downfall[/card], [card]Self-Inflicted Wound[/card], [card]Thoughtseize[/card], [card]Ultimate Price[/card].

White Weenie

This deck gained a lot with [card]Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit[/card] and [card]Dragon Hunter[/card], making its creatures go up a couple notches in power level. I don’t expect this deck in any kind of numbers, but I wouldn’t discount it from doing quite well.

[deck title= White Weenie]
[Creatures]
4 Dragon Hunter
4 Mardu Woe-Reaper
4 Soldier of the Pantheon
3 Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit
4 Phalanx Leader
4 Seeker of the Way
3 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Gods Willing
3 Launch the Fleet
2 Valorus Stance
3 Spear of Heliod
[/Spells]
[Land]
22 Plains
[/Land]
[/deck]

Sideboard Suggestions: [card]Erase[/card], [card]Banishing Light[/card], [card]Hushwing Gryff[/card], and [card]Surge of Righteousness[/card],

Red Deck Wins

We will see a lot of this style of Red Deck Wins in the coming months. Big gains were [card]Dragon Fodder[/card] to make cards like [card]Goblin Rabblemaster[/card] and [card]Collateral Damage[/card] even better and [card]Roast[/card] to take care of those problematic blockers. With such a mass of tokens, it will be no problem most games to cast [card]Outpost Siege[/card] naming Dragons to pretty much win on the spot.

[deck title= Red Deck Wins]
[Creatures]
4 Foundry Street Denizen
2 Lightning Berserker
2 Zurgo Bellstriker
4 Dragon Whisperer
4 Mardu Scout
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Collateral Damage
4 Dragon Fodder
4 Hordeling Outburst
4 Outpost Siege
4 Stoke the Flames
[/Spells]
[Land]
20 Mountain
[/Land]
[/deck]

Sideboard Suggestions: [card]Arc Lightning[/card], [card]Eidolon of the Great Revel[/card], [card]Frenzied Goblin[/card], and [card]Roast[/card].

Mono-Red Devotion

This deck just wants to go big as quickly as possible, but has plenty of early game to ensure that it doesn’t get run over by the hyper-aggressive decks. The cards [card]Dragon Whisperer[/card] and [card]Thunderbreak Regent[/card] added quite a bit to the deck’s staying power, allowing it to maintain control of the game against decks packing a lot of removal. I’ll be surprised if this deck doesn’t see a lot of play.

[deck title= Mono-Red Devotion]
[Creatures]
4 Dragon Whisperer
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
4 Prophetic Flamespeaker
4 Fanatic of Mogis
4 Thunderbreak Regent
4 Stormbreath Dragon
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
3 Crater’s Claws
2 Hammer of Purphoros
2 Chandra, Pyromaster
2 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
19 Mountain
[/Land]
[/deck]

Sideboard Suggestions: [card]Flamewake Phoenix[/card], [card]Harness by Force[/card], [card]Roast[/card], and [card]Torch Fiend[/card].

Esper Control

It seems like most of the cool toys in this set were geared towards making the blue control decks more viable. While that’s not what I typically play, it is quite tempting. Now that [card]Narset Transcendent[/card] has arrived to draw approximately all the cards, I expect to see control mages everywhere rejoicing. The big issue these decks face is not dying before they can gain control of the game, which will likely be a lot harder now that there are endless one-drop creatures.

[deck title= Esper Control]
[Spells]
2 Bile Blight
2 Ultimate Price
2 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
4 Dissolve
3 Hero’s Downfall
3 Narset Transcendent
3 Oujutai’s Command
1 Utter End
2 Crux of Fate
4 End Hostilities
2 Silumgar’s Command
3 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
4 Dig Through Time
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Temple of Enlightenment
2 Temple of Silence
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Island
3 Plains
2 Swamp
[/Land]
[/deck]

Sideboard Suggestions: [card]Self-Inflicted Wound[/card], [card]Surge of Righteousness[/card], [card]Thoughtseize[/card], [card]Virulent Plague[/card].

Azorius Control

With so many amazing cards for Azorius Control, it’s just a matter of combing the right ones. This deck benefited maybe a little too much from this set and could take a while before the optimal build is locked down, but it will be seeing a lot of play from day one.

[deck title= Azorius Control]
[Creatures]
3 Dragonlord Ojutai
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Anticipate
4 Silumgar’s Scorn
1 Banishing Light
4 Dissolve
3 Narset Transcendent
4 Ojutai’s Command
1 Aetherspouts
4 End Hostilities
3 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
4 Dig Through Time
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Temple of Enlightenment
4 Tranquil Cove
4 Flooded Strand
4 Radiant Fountain
6 Island
3 Plains
[/Land]
[/deck]

Sideboard Suggestions: [card]Encase in Ice[/card], [card]Glare of Heresy[/card], [card]Negate[/card], and [card]Surge of Righteousness[/card].

Dimir Control

Dimir Control got exactly what it wanted in Dragons of Tarkir, and we may all suffer because of it. This deck will be a major player this season, forcing out a lot of other decks that just can’t compete. It could even displace Abzan strategies from the top spot, now that it has access to [card]Self-Inflicted Wound[/card] and [card]Ultimate Price[/card] to clean up the board.

[deck title= Dimir Control]
[Creatures]
2 Dragonlord Silumgar
1 Silumgar, the Drifting Death
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Anticipate
1 Bile Blight
4 Silumgar’s Scorn
2 Ultimate Price
3 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
4 Dissolve
4 Hero’s Downfall
1 Perilous Vault
4 Crux of Fate
2 Silumgar’s Command
4 Dig Through Time
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Dismal Backwater
4 Polluted Delta
4 Radiant Fountain
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
5 Island
3 Swamp
[/Land]
[/deck]

Sideboard Suggestions: [card]Encase in Ice[/card], [card]Negate[/card], [card]Self-Inflicted Wound[/card], and [card]Thoughtseize[/card].

Orzhov Warriors

Finally, a critical mass of warriors have been printed to make this deck look very tempting. Now that it has sixteen one-drops, it may be able to race any deck in the format. The biggest issue it will face is [card]Drown in Sorrow[/card] being all over the place, but if it can find a way to deal with that, it should do quite well.

[deck title= Orzhov Warriors]
[Creatures]
4 Bloodsoaked Champion
4 Dragon Hunter
4 Mardu Woe-Reaper
4 Tormented Hero
4 Blood-Chin Rager
4 Chief of the Edge
4 Blood-Chin Fanatic
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Bile Blight
4 Harsh Sustenance
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Temple of Silence
4 Caves of Koilos
3 Mana Confluence
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Plains
6 Swamp
[/Land]
[/deck]

Sideboard Suggestions: [card]Erase[/card], [card]Hero’s Downfall[/card], [card]Self-Inflicted Wound[/card], and [card]Thoughtseize[/card].

All Players on Deck

That’s all I have for now. I’ll see you again for Brewing With Magic Origins. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below and I will do my best to answer them.

Thanks for reading,

Josh Milliken

@joshuamilliken on Twitter

Brainstorm Brewery #140 – Judge Dread

Brainstorm Brewery Brainstorm Brewery, Podcasts 1:08:07

All kinds of announcements this week and with Corbin out of commission with a debilitating migraine, it’s up to a very special guest to step in. Unfortunately, a very special guest could not be located and the gang was forced to resort to inviting Chris Lansdell (@lansdellicious) on the cast. Topics include new judge foils, the EDH ban list update (it’s probably not what you think) and Chris even comes correct with a pick of the week or two. Not bad, Lansdell. Not bad at all.

 

 

Brainstorm Brewery is sponsored by MTGPrice.com

Cabe Riseau produced the intro and outro music for Brainstorm Brewery.

Contact Us!

Brainstorm Brewery – Website – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook – RSS – iTunes – Stitcher

Ryan Bushard – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook

Corbin Hosler – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook – QuietSpeculation

Jason E Alt – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook – QuietSpeculation

Marcel White – E-mail – Twitter

It’s Time to Tuck the Rules Committee

Jason Rice Articles

This week, the EDH Rules Committee announced a change to the format that set my Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook feeds abuzz: players are no longer able to deal with pesky enemy commanders by shuffling them into the opponent’s deck. Any time an ability would cause a commander to return to a player’s hand or be “tucked” into their deck, there is a new replacement effect that allows players to simply return it to the safety of the command zone.

This change will have a pretty big impact on the format (not to mention the price of several cards) and its justly getting a lot of attention from the community. Most of the feedback is negative, and rightly so. The reasons the committee gave for the change are embarrassingly bad, poorly argued, and inconsistently applied. And as a game developer myself, this reeks to me of the kind of bad game design I witness studios make when they try to simplify a game for new players, but end up going about it all the wrong ways.

Bad Arguments

First, the Rules Committee posits that nothing feels worse than having your commander unavailable for the whole game. While I’d agree that having a commander tucked can be a feel-bad experience, I’d also say that I’ve had much worse feelings during an EDH game. Having my commander get tucked may be annoying, but at least I can keep playing the game. There are plenty of individual cards and broader interactions that force me to either concede or sit there and not play until someone else finds their win condition. So kicking off their justification with hyperbole is a pretty bad place to start.

armageddon

Second, they suggest that the threat of tuck leads players to run more tutors. This is an outright falsehood. Players run tutors because this is a singleton format. Period. Full stop. Conversation over. Players want access to their favorite cards and win conditions, so they run tutors. I’m aware that Sheldon has written about going tutorless in his own decks, but that’s not the reality for the majority of the players in the format. Tutors exist and they are used at all levels of power and competition. This change will not reduce tutor usage by any meaningful amount.

Third, the argument that tuck only exists in blue and white and thus potentially forces players to run those colors is just plain silly. Magic is a game about a color wheel with unevenly divided power and mechanics. Saying this needs to get banned because of the color wheel is like suggesting we should ban land ramp spells because they are only available in green. Do players feel like they must run green for mana? Or blue for draw spells? Or black for tutors? Each deck you build is bound by its color restrictions. That’s an essential feature of this format, not a problem for it. This argument is entirely a nonsequitor and sets a truly dangerous precedent.

Fourth, the idea that this clears up some rules fuzziness is perhaps the worst statement of all, especially if the Rules Committee is trying to make this game more accessible to new and casual players. There is now an entire class of cards that doesn’t do what the card actually says, including cards like [card]Spell Crumple[/card] that were designed specifically for the Commander format. [card]Terminus[/card] now reads something like, “Put all creatures except for commanders on the bottom of their owner’s libraries. Players may choose to put their commander onto the bottom of the library or into their command zone. The command tax applies for this return to the command zone.” [card]Chaos Warp[/card] is even more confusing, since you could cast it targeting your own commander and just put the top card of your library into play without the drawback of targeting your own creature.

 chaoswarp

Do we really believe this is easier for casual players to understand? Should we have to explain even more rules intricacies to these players for them to follow the rules of the format? I would argue this is absolutely not the case. One of my many playgroups is a trio of work friends who only play with preconstructed retail decks. They can already barely keep the stack straight when more than a few spells are cast on the same turn. Adding in more special rules will only make the game more obtuse to them. Oh, and this rule doesn’t clear up any fuzziness about commander identity anyways… because you can still choose to put your commander into your deck, right? So this fails, and only fails, to make the rules more simple.

Time for a Change

So this rules change is bad. It’s bad for new players and absolutely will not achieve its stated purpose for improving the format. It’s a terrible decision and its being thrust onto a massive, dedicated community of players that overwhelmingly didn’t want this change. All this only highlights a long-running problem and one that I’ve been meaning to write about for some time: the Rules Committee has outlived its ability to meaningfully manage this format.

misinformation

Yes, I’m suggesting that the Rules Committee shouldn’t be governing the format anymore. Yes, I’m saying the guys who had a hand in creating EDH and guiding it to become the format that we know and love today are the wrong ones to keep leading it. The issue is that this isn’t a niche format played in hotel rooms by judges and Magic insiders anymore. It’s gone commercial, it’s reached the masses, and it’s too big for the Rules Committee to keep effectively managing.

The Rules Committee has demonstrated repeatedly that it is not representing the majority of the players in the format by the way the members inconsistently apply their own guidelines when banning cards or making changes to the format. The committee suggests that their guiding principle is to “create games you’d love to remember, not the ones others would like to forget.” But the format is still host to any number of cards and strategies that throw that notion right out the window. [card]Sylvan Primordial[/card] could create a pretty unhappy board state if a player was fortunate enough to ramp into it quickly, but is that any less fun in those limited instances than a consistently powerful Stax deck locking down the table and playing solitaire? Or a Narset deck blowing up lands over and over while gradually eking out a victory through inevitable commander damage?

I don’t actually want to spill much ink arguing over one ban or another, though. Perhaps [card]Sylvan Primordial[/card] was the worst offender in the format at the time. Perhaps [card]Consecrated Sphinx[/card] doesn’t centralize the game around itself quite as much as [card]Primeval Titan[/card] did. That’s not really the point. The point is that a very small group of players, however intelligent and influential, are making very big decisions that impact tables all over the world, and they are doing it wildly inconsistently.

sylvanprimordial

The Big Delusion

The Rules Committee attempts to hand wave this issue in a few places in their statement on philosophy. First, they say that they attempt to avoid “cascading bans” because it leads to an unmanageable list. The idea here seems to be that they ban the worst offenders in any given category, but leave it up to the players to understand how these bans should guide their deck-making process to keep the format social, fun, and fair. This is smart-sounding way of saying, “We’re going to be inconsistent and we don’t care. We’re leaving it up to the masses to figure out.”

Piggy-backing on that idea, they point out that they believe “local groups” and the official rules can peacefully coexist. They encourage players to engage with the game how they want, being aware they may need to make adjustments when playing with different groups. This may have been a really great statement before Wizards of the Coast began printing official Commander products, but since then, the format has grown tremendously and it’s become increasingly hard to apply in reality.I play at my office, at two local card shops, a kitchen table game, and at various official Magic events like grands prix. Does the Rules Committee really expect me to manage a shifting ban list across all my decks to match the philosophy of each group? This is a painfully disingenuous statement at this point in the growth of EDH. We’re largely stuck with the official rules and they know it.

giftsungiven

The Solution

It’s time to hand the format over to Wizards and start applying more consistent, data-driven rules changes. The format is huge now and players are engaged in so much cross-group play that its no longer viable to hand-wave inconsistencies and expect people to just swallow them. Its unfair to the community to expect us to just roll with the changes determined by the whims of a tiny, semi-official group of players who think the social contract is a good enough solution for the format’s problems. There needs to be accountability in place that drives the format towards a more healthy balance and doesn’t result in ridiculously bad rule changes like this week’s announcement about tuck spells. That’s not going to happen as long as the Rules Committee continues to own the format.

As for the tuck change? I predict it ends up being reverted. It will not meaningfully change the number of tutors players run. It won’t change how players pick the colors for their decks. And it certainly isn’t going to make the format more accessible for new players. It’s only going to make strong commanders stronger, force players to run more removal instead of additional fun threats, and ultimately make for a less interesting format.

It’s unfortunate that we’re being forced to endure this experiment in bad game design until these things are made apparent. It’s inevitable that Wizards eventually takes over stewardship of the Commander format. It’s just too bad it didn’t happen before this week’s announcement.

Identity Crisis

Max Perlmutter Articles

Hey, everyone, it’s been awhile.

For the past few months, I’ve been having an identity crisis with Modern. As the writer of half a dozen articles on Zoo for this very website, saying that I’m considering not playing Zoo now sounds like insanity, but I feel like I have settled down with the deck. I know all of its lines and I can always find the one I need and once I had that mastered I got bored. My play became sloppy and I was not focusing on my matches as much as I should have been. I was going through the motions but I wasn’t getting the enjoyment from the deck that I once did. I needed a change.

Where I Started

Of course, when I think about Modern my first inclination is to play a big Zoo list. I initially started off with my traditional three-color Naya list as well as working through a five-color [card]Tribal Flames[/card] list featuring [card]Siege Rhino[/card] and [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card]. For those who don’t know me, I despise Siege Rhino and I feel that if it is allowed to run rampant, then [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] needs to come back to the format. That is an argument for a different article, though.

Siege-Rhino-Khans-of-Tarkir-Spoiler

[card]Lingering Souls[/card] ended up being too oppressive against the lists I was playing in local IQs and PPTQs, and I found if I changed my deck to make those matchups better, I would be too slow most of the time to fight decks like Tron, Scapeshift, and Splinter Twin. It was time to close down the Zoo.

Lets Watch The Pro Tour

While I was going through this process I was lucky to have some strong results from Pro Tour Fate Reforged to look at. I always take Modern pro tour results with a grain of salt, as the metagame can sometimes become inbred. I immediately latched onto what could be considered an inbred meta deck in Little-Kid Junk, which Jacob Wilson made top eight with and was built by Team Channel Face to Balls (Face to Face Games and Channel Fireball Prime worked together for the tournament).

Through testing I found the deck was pretty strong against the Modern metagame but I realized I wasn’t having fun. [card]Wilt-Leaf Liege[/card] and [card]Loxodon Smiter[/card] are some of my favorite cards but the deck didn’t grind the long games in a way I enjoy and it didn’t have some of the explosive opening I have grown to love with Wild Nacatl. I decided to shelve the deck and try something a little more off the beaten path.

WildNacatl

Playing an Old Favorite

One of my friends, when I first met him, was casting an insanely powerful card-advantage engine known as [card]Gifts Ungiven[/card]. I had been looking for a way to ignite the fun of Modern for me, and this felt right up my alley.

Casting Gifts for [card]Life from the Loam[/card], [card]Raven’s Crime[/card], [card]Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth[/card], and either [card]Ghost Quarter[/card] or [card]Tectonic Edge[/card], as well as ending games before they had even begun by casting Gifts for [card]Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite[/card] and [card]Unburial Rites[/card] was fun, but the mana base felt too inconsistent and it always felt like an uphill battle unless I could resolve Gifts to take control of the game.

giftsungiven

My Final Decision… For Now

After testing those decks, I decided I wanted to be more aggressive and more explosive. I have played with a few Zoo lists using [card]Steppe Lynx[/card] and other hyper-aggressive creatures, but those lists were too explosive to the point they would sometimes explode on you and give you no hope of winning.

I realized I owned all the expensive cards for Infect, so I decided to give it a shot. All I can say is this deck is bonkers. I have only played two events with it so far, and although they haven’t been the most successful, I have ended each tournament with a positive record and I feel most of the deck’s losses come from mulligan decisions. I find it amusing that a deck I used to prey upon with my Zoo list is now the deck that I am battling with, but I think it is one of the best decks in the format right now and I feel like I can win with it whenever I sit down across from my opponents.

blightedagent

For those interested, here is my current Infect list:

[Deck Title=GU Infect]
[Creatures]
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Glistener Elf
4 Blighted Agent
2 Spellskite
1 Ichorclaw Myr
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Mutagenic Growth
4 Might of old Krosa
4 Vines of Vastwood
4 Become Immense
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Distortion Strike
2 Wild Defiance
2 Apostle’s Blessing
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
2 Breeding Pool
2 Forest
4 Inkmoth Nexus
2 Pendelhaven
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
1 Piracy Charm
1 Wild Defiance
1 Dryad Arbor
2 Dispel
2 Spell Pierce
2 Twisted Image
2 Spellskite
4 Nature’s Claim
[/sideboard]
[/Deck]

I plan to start writing more frequently, and my next article will discuss some of the factors that lead to my current deck selection. Until next time, get out there and go have fun playing Modern.

Pitt Imps Podcast #111 GP Cleveland

Pitt Imps Pitt Imps, Podcasts 01:53:43

This week we go over the GP Auckland and GP Cleveland. The going over of Cleveland is a huge part of the show, since two of us were there. We talk about the change to 6-2-2-2 for any flashback drafts on MTGO. I give you guys the highlights of a two-hour sit-down interview that I got with the TO of GP Cleveland. Some things are good and some things are bad when we talk about the future of GPs. Then we do our Best of Dragons of Tarkir segment that we always do when a new set comes out. I’m sure we got most of them wrong but its so much fun. Then all the stories from the GP come out.

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Commander Spotlight: Eight Great Ways to End a Game of Commander

Jim Casale Articles

Most people who love Commander love it because you can play all sorts of wacky cards and sweet theme decks that you can’t play in Standard.  But unfortunately, sometimes this leads to huge board stalls where nobody wants to attack anybody and the game drags on for two hours or more.

To combat this, let’s go over my favorite eight cards to get the game moving toward a conclusion.  Personally, I find it a lot more fun to play four games in two hours rather than a single game in in that same amount of time.

Do you have your own favorite game-enders? Share them in the comments below!

8: [card]Avacyn, Angel of Hope[/card]

6

This is the only white card to make the list, because honestly, white doesn’t have a lot of good ways to end games. But boy, does it have a lot of ways to drag games out (I’m looking at you [card]Armageddon[/card], [card]Cataclysm[/card], and [card]Wrath of God[/card]).  Avacyn’s abilities make it very hard to kill your stuff and her stats force a conclusion to come sooner rather than later.

7. [card]Banefire[/card]

banefire

This card is mostly just a [card]Blaze[/card], but it’s uncounterability makes it the easiest to resolve and kill someone with.  There’s always a possibility that is gets [card]Redirect[/card]ed, but in that case, someone is still probably dying.  It doesn’t kill all of your opponents, which makes it much lower on the list than other cards.

6. [card]Cyclonic Rift[/card]

cyclonic

There have been almost too many games to count that I’ve ended with an end-step overloaded [card]Cyclonic Rift[/card] before my turn.  The card doesn’t outright kill anyone, but it should give you enough of a board lead to beat some players before another deadlock happens.

5. [card]Avatar of Slaughter[/card]

avatar

This card also doesn’t kill anyone outright.  But you know what it does do? Makes people attack and makes the game progress.  Without the ability to leave many creatures back on defense, it drives the game very quickly to a conclusion.  I recommend playing this in your second main phase so that you’re not the first one to make a move.

4. [card]Siege Behemoth[/card]

g2

This guy is big, he’s bad, and he’s not getting blocked. And neither is the rest of your team.  [card]Siege Behemoth[/card]’s hexproof body and ability to push through damage can make almost any player mince meat.

3. [card]Triumph of the Hordes[/card]

triumph

This card is one of the best win conditions against players gaining a ton of life or sitting behind multiplicative defenses like [card]Gisela, Blade of Goldnight[/card].  It’s also particularly effective in token strategies.  It’s not quite the best win condition available, because if you don’t do 10 or more poison damage to someone in one attack, it’s unlikely you will be able to do any more poison.

2. [card]Exsanguinate[/card]

ex

Bemoaned by many players in the EDH community, this is one of my favorite cards.  You know what it does?  It quickly kills a lot of people and makes it so the game doesn’t dragon… er, I mean, drag on.  With [card]Cabal Coffers[/card] and [card]Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth[/card], it’s not impossible to 40 everyone, but it’s likely when you can kill everyone the game has been going on too long anyway.

1. [card]Craterhoof Behemoth[/card]

crater

The big daddy of creature decks has got to be [card]Craterhoof Behemoth[/card]. It can be simply cast with a board of dudes and attack or turned into an intercontinental ballistic missile with [card]Tooth and Nail[/card] and [card]Avenger of Zendikar[/card].  The facts that it has haste, an enter the battlefield trigger, and isn’t subject to the “cast from hand” clause that a lot of similarly powerful creatures are, means this guy definitely takes the cake.

And eats it too.

Over your opponents’ bodies.

What are your favorite ways to end Commander games?

Brainstorm Brewery Episode 139 – Dragons of Tarkir Set Review

Brainstorm Brewery Brainstorm Brewery, Podcasts 01:56:10

It’s the Dragons of Tarkir Set Review. We review cards from Dragons of Tarkir. All of the rares and mythic rares. And Marcel pronounces things wrong and it’s funny.

 

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Weekend Magic: 3/13-3/15

Jared Yost Articles

Last weekend brought us Star City Games Dallas, which featured Standard as the main event with a side of Modern and Legacy. Let’s take a look at the results while also bearing in mind that Standard will yet again be shaken up by Dragons of Tarkir in just another week. We’ve got the full spoiler up, let’s see what opportunities the new cards might have in Standard.

Star City Games Dallas – Standard Open (Dallas, TX – USA)

Decklists

Deck Finish Player Deck Finish Player
Sultai Control 1st Michael Miller R/W Aggro 9th Aakash Barevadia
Jeskai Aggro 2nd Jim Davis Abzan Midrange 10th Jaxon Day
Sultai Control 3rd Dan Jessup Jeskai Aggro 11th Patrick Tierney
Jeskai Aggro 4th Dylan Lerch Abzan Aggro 12th matthew cooper
Abzan Midrange 5th Jacob Geeo R/W Aggro 13th Brock Mosley
Mono-Red Aggro 6th JB Milo Abzan Aggro 14th Gabriel Joglar
Sultai Reanimator 7th Masa Tokutome Jeskai Aggro 15th Nathan Blackmon
Jeskai Heroic 8th Jason Crone Abzan Midrange 16th Jake Peralez

Sultai Control took down the event, piloted by Michael Miller. [card]Satyr Wayfinder[/card] does a surprising amount of work in the deck. Not only does it fuel [card]Dig Through Time[/card], [card]Treasure Cruise[/card], and [card]Tasigur, the Golden Fang[/card] from the sideboard, but it also chump blocks early in the game against faster aggro decks. It seems strange to see the Satyr without [card]Whip of Erebos[/card], but the third place Sultai Control was also running the full playset of Satyrs without Whip. This clearly means its inclusion was well-merited.

What are possible inclusions from Dragons of Tarkir that might go in Sultai Control?

dragonscards1

I see all the above cards as having potential, with [card]Silumgar’s Command[/card] being the strongest candidate for inclusion. [card]Dragonlord Silumgar[/card] might be too much mana for the effect, while [card]Icefall Regent[/card] has the issue of only having three toughness. [card]Explosive Vegetation[/card] could be pretty sweet, as ramping up two lands in a single turn is quite powerful. By turn five, you have seven lands on the board and can more quickly deploy a threat like [card]Garruk, Apex Predator[/card] followed the next turn by [card]Ugin, the Spirit Dragon[/card].

Jeskai Aggro took second and fourth place. Which cards from Dragons could make the most impact in this build?

dragonscards2

Ojutai’s Exemplars is a card which could find a home in Jeskai Aggro. The deck’s curve tops out at four with [card]Outpost Siege[/card], so taking out a [card]Soulfire Grand Master[/card] or two for some copies of Exemplars might be good. There are just so many options on this card in addition to it being an efficient four-mana 4/4 creature. Even if it doesn’t find a home in aggro, I think we’ll be seeing this card pop up in decklists over the coming months due to its versatility.

Rouding out the top eight were Abzan Midrange, Mono-Red Aggro, Sultai Reanimator, and Jeskai Heroic. Mono-Red Aggro is getting some pretty nice cards in Dragons.

dragonscards3 dragonscards4

While [card]Commune with Lava[/card] and [card]Dragon Fodder[/card] might be stretching it, I definitely think that [card]Dragon Whisperer[/card], [card]Ire Shaman[/card], and [card]Zurgo Bellstriker[/card] all have a place in Mono-Red Aggro.

Whisperer gives the deck a nice end game that it’s currently lacking, while also being able to apply pressure in the early game. Ire Shaman is a great beatdown creature that can generate card advantage. Zurgo Bellstriker is an extremely efficient beater that can also be Dashed into play during the late game if you top deck him and need the extra two points of damage.

I like Commune with Lava because it generates a large amount of card advantage, though I admit that Mono-Red Aggro probably won’t play this but G/R Devotion might be able to include this card. Dragon Fodder into [card]Hordeling Outburst[/card] seems good to me; however, Dragon Fodder is significantly weaker than Hordeling Outburst in the late game. Also, the new enchantment that hoses tokens is an issue.

dragonscards5

Regardless, I like Dragon Fodder and think that it will have a home, if not in Mono-Red Aggro then in token strategies.

Rounding out the top eight: two R/W Aggro, two Abzan Midrange, two Jeskai Aggro, and two Abzan Aggro decks.

There aren’t any additional cards from Dragons that I’ve identified that would fit into the rest of top 16 (since it is so similar to the top eight), but I like the following cards for Standard and feel they will make an impact:

dragonscards6 dragonscards7 dragonscards8

Ojutai’s Command – This card slots nicely as a one-of or two of in Jeskai strategies or possibly a four-of in U/W Control.

Dragonlord Dromoka – It could possibly be included in Abzan strategies. It also could spawn a G/W deck along with other new cards from Dragons.

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit – Seems like a good inclusion in fast aggro decks. Might not have a home now but her future looks bright. Kind of stinks that we can’t use her in token strategies, but oh well.

Kolaghan’s Command, Atarka’s Command – Both commands are undercosted and have efficient effects. Though none of the effects are great singularly, combined together and with the mana cost they can be quite useful in many situations.

Secure the Wastes – This feels like a strong finisher card to me. I realize that it’s not [card]Decree of Justice[/card], but the effect is so similar that it still might see play in control lists.

Shorecrasher Elemental – Mono-Blue Devotion might be revived again due to this card, and it might even have implications beyond Standard (Modern Merfolk, maybe?).

Descent of the Dragons – This card could totally spawn a new archetype or bolster the power of current tokens decks. Either way, I’ll be excited the first time I see this cast on camera for a major blowout if it happens!

Deathmist Raptor – Very efficient green beater than can easily trade up into bigger targets in the late game. I like in G/R Devotion, which has some Morph creatures already that can take advantage of the recursion.

Collected Company – I feel that this card might spawn its own archetype as the effect is really powerful for only four mana. Yes, the creatures need to cost three or less, but if you build a deck around the odds of getting two creatures when you cast this then it becomes much better. The critic in me thinks that this card might just be a little bit too random to be great in Standard but you never know.

Star City Games Dallas – Modern IQ (Dallas, TX – USA)

Decklists

Deck Finish Player Deck Finish Player
Infect 1st Joel Heath U/R Twin 9th Dale Montgomery
Amulet Combo 2nd Mason Young Burn 10th Andres Hernandez
Sultai Control 3rd Cruz Hale U/R Twin 11th Jack Stewart
Abzan Midrange 4th Andres Campion Burn 12th Donovan Lachney
R/W Burn 5th Joshua Kendall Burn 12th Donovan Lachney
Affinity 6th Brandon Borowicz U/R Twin 14th Craig Goebel
U/R Delver 7th Eddie Solis Amulet Combo 15th Aaron Barich
Merfolk 8th David Gomez Infect 16th Minh Tran

Infect and Amulet Combo continue to do well after the Modern Pro Tour in DC. Taking first and second at this Modern IQ, they have established themselves as Modern archetypes that are here to stay.

Looking at the rest of the Top 8, the decks that stand out to me are Sultai Control, R/W Burn, and Merfolk.

One of these decks featured some sweet tech. Yes, that’s right folks: [card]Monastery Siege[/card] tech in the Merfolk list! Analyzing Monastery Siege, we can see why it’s such a great card in Modern. The second mode hoses Burn and decks that have tons of removal, while the first mode gives you card advantage in control matchups where you are the aggressor and need to finish the game quickly. All in all, an interesting Merfolk list that tells us Monastery Siege is Modern-playable.

Rounding out the rest of the top 16 were Burn, U/R Twin, Amulet Combo, and Infect. Nothing new to report in these decks.

Star City Games Dallas – Legacy IQ (Dallas, TX – USA)

Decklists

Deck Finish Player Deck Finish Player
Ad Nauseam 1st Caleb Scherer Burn 9th Trent Avera
Grixis Delver 2nd David Houghton Temur Delver 10th Simon Christie
Miracles 3rd Ken-Min Yeoh Merfolk 11th William Yowell
Reanimator 4th Noah Cohen Infect 12th Ben Wallace
Sultai Delver 5th Tom Nelson U/G Cloudpost 13th Alex Khanin
Reanimator 6th Aaron Segrest Temur Delver 14th Trevor Leinbach
Death and Taxes 7th Blake Donnan Show and Tell 15th Zach Taylor
Lands 8th Chris Cohen Infect 16th Tom Ross

Ad Nauseam took down the Legacy event, with Grixis Delver coming in at second place. Grixis Delver contained a one-of of [card]Gurmag Angler[/card] main deck. Ban [card]Treasure Cruise[/card]? Players will find some other one-mana nonsense to play. Delve is that good.

Not a ton of Legacy shakeups this week, but with Dragons of Tarkir on the horizon, there just might be some in the near future. Stay tuned.

Pitt Imps Podcast #110 Mushrooms

Pitt Imps Pitt Imps, Podcasts 01:27:56

Wow. This episode was riddled with tech problems. I almost called this episode “Train Wreck.” Anyway, I managed to make it kind of listenable. We go over everything from PAX East and the GPs, and had Judge Frank on to look closer at the mechanics of Dragon of Tarkir. I also left a bit of raw unedited footage at the end just so you guys can hear exactly how bad it can be.

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Guest   Frank

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Brainstorm Brewery #138 – Everybody Gets One

Brainstorm Brewery Brainstorm Brewery, Podcasts 01:21:02

Most of the set is spoiled. How do you not talk about cards? You HAVE to, right? There are so many spoiled cards that warrant discussion and the gang had to restrain themselves. You will hear them restrain themsleves when they say “OK, we will talk about spoilers, but everyone only do one card each” before they talk about like 20 cards. That’s how it goes.

  • Spoilers! But they happen at the end, so putting this at the beginning of the show notes is funny
  • Jason announces a moratorium on “the R word”
  • Picks of the Week happen!
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Privileged Perspective 18 – DTK Preview Edition!

Ross Lennon Articles

Sarkhan arose, wearily. He edged closer to the edge of the ravine, gazing into it with strain and apprehension. Ugin sprung to life from within the chasm, letting loose a cacophonous din that seemed to rend the very heavens. “What?” Sarkhan becked in reply, his voice coarse. Again, Ugin roared. Sarkhan seemed to this time take his meaning, and his brow furrowed. “Wait a minute. Doc, are you tellin’ me it’s 8:25? Damn, I’m late for school!”

Sarkhan BTTF

Welcome to another preview card edition of Privileged Perspective! We are going to talk about a couple different things today, but I want to begin with my latest preview card!

BRIEF HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: If you aren’t familiar with my current cold war with the people who hand out preview cards, make sure to check out the FRF edition.

Our last preview card was actually quite a doozy. Although it didn’t appear until recently at a premier level event, [card]Mardu Shadowspear[/card] narrowly missed a top-eight berth at the hands of Tomoharu Saito in Memphis. Being both a human and a warrior is pretty vital right now, especially with some of the new weapons coming out for both black and black/white aggro decks. But hey, that was then and this is now S.E. Hinton, so let’s get on with the show!

And now, without further au juis…

ROSS’S TOTALLY LEGIT DRAGONS OF TARKIR PREVIEW CARD THAT WAS FOR REAL GIVEN TO HIM BY WIZARDS BUT THEY MUST HAVE LIKE FORGOT OR SOMETHING

Introducing Scaleguard Sentinels!

Scaleguard Sentinels

There’s a lot to take in here. On the face, it seems like we have an [card]Elvish Warrior[/card] with upside. Human and soldier are both semi-relevant creature types in this format, although typically not in green decks. Of course, this card does have an upside, and after ruminating on it for a day, it’s actually pretty significant.

A 2/3 for GG is actually near optimal on rate (we’ve gotten a 3/3 for GG before, but that’s not a frequently printed card), but a 3/4 for GG is incredible. That fourth point of toughness allows the Sentinels to dodge [card]Lightning Strike[/card] and [card]Bile Blight[/card], two of the most commonly played removal spells in the early game. It still gets hit by [card]Chained to the Rocks[/card], of course, but if they’re Chaining your Sentinels, then you’re probably in good shape anyways.

Unfortunately, that +1/+1 counter is going to require some work. While our last preview card slid neatly into a previously existing archetype, Scaleguard Sentinels is currently a card without a home. In order to get our ideal value from this guy, we need a deck that can have GG on turn two, with a significantly high enough amount of dragons in the deck to be able to reveal one, and wants to play an attacker on turn two instead of a [card]Sylvan Caryatid[/card].

BRIEF MORGAN FREEMAN VOICEOVER ASIDE: I wish I could tell you that there was a [card]Nameless Inversion[/card] in this format and that Scaleguard Sentinels would trigger off of it. I wish I could tell you that. But Tarkir is no fairy tale world.

Realistically, we need to figure out what the best dragons in this format are. [card]Stormbreath Dragon[/card] is probably the odds-on favorite, just because it has an aggressive body and rate, as well as protection from one of the best colors in the format. It’s not impossible to imagine a G/r list that is able to cast efficient beaters early and then curve into a Stormbreath to close things out, but at best, that is four cards out of 60 that trigger our ability—and we need to essentially have it in our opening hand each time! While we don’t have the full set available as of this article, most of the dragons are six to seven mana (yes, there are some fives, but not all of them are green). I’m not entirely sure we want aggressive two-drops in the same deck as our game-ending sevens, or even how many of those sevens are going to be Constructed-viable.

BRIEF DRAGON ASIDE: So when I was discussing this set with my LGS owner and longtime pal Eric, I said that Dragons of Tarkir is basically the Dragon version of Avacyn Restored (which is to say “A large Spring set with a hook that is targetted at casual players and collectors—you cannot have too many sealed boxes of it”). In terms of card design, however, it is much easier to create angels more evenly distributed along the spectrum of converted mana cost than dragons. [card]Restoration Angel[/card], arguably the best constructed angel in Avacyn Restored, cost four. There is currently only one dragon spoiled that costs four, and none that cost less than that. While dragons may be more objectively powerful, you also won’t see any in the two to three range, outside of the occasional [card]Dragon Whelp[/card]-type creature.

So what if we ignore the upside on Scaleguard Sentinels entirely? Well, he’s not going to be beating [card]Fleecemane Lion[/card] or [card]Rakshasa Deathdealer[/card] for a roster spot, and he’s likely worse than [card]Heir of the Wilds[/card]. Scaleguard Sentinels has something that none of those creatures has, however [Editor’s note: IT’S YOUR PREVIEW CARD?!], and that’s a second green mana symbol in its casting cost [Editor’s note: Oh.]. While most of the Green Devotion decks have slowed down by a turn to take advantage of a stronger top end, there was once an aggressive version that took full advantage of [card]Aspect of Hydra[/card] to end games. Scaleguard Sentinels is currently the only GG creature that doesn’t die to [card]Drown in Sorrow[/card] (unless your [card]Avatar of the Resolute[/card] is coming down later than turn two). Maybe this is where we should be looking instead!

[Deck title=Literal GGs]

[Creatures]

*4 Sunblade Elf

*4 Elvish Mystic

*4 Hero of Leina Tower

*4 Scaleguard Sentinels

*4 Avatar of the Resolute

*4 Boon Satyr

*4 Reverent Hunter

*4 Nylea, God of the Hunt

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Aspect of Hydra

*4 Gather Courage

[/Spells]

[Lands]

*4 Windswept Heath

*4 Wooded Foothills

*8 Forest

*1 Plains

*3 Mana Confluence

[/Lands]

[/Deck]

It’s a rough draft, but I think it has some legs. It has critical redundancy at all of the points on the curve, and a potential game-breaker in Nylea. There may be a list that has more synergistic interactions, or there may just be enough pull from white to be able to support [card]Warden of the First Tree[/card] (which I considered).

Speaking of Warden of the First Tree, you know what deck is really good right now?

Abzan Aggro

Remember when I told you about that Abzan Aggro list that I really liked? I took it to a 5K and ended 7-2, just outside of top eight on breakers. Well, I gave the list to my friend Devin, and he took it all the way to a top 32 finish (28th!) at GP Miami, including a very strong 8-1 day one finish. His loss on day one was to Andrew Boswell in round nine, who was also on Abzan Aggro. You know, the archetype that everyone said was dead? Huh.

Here’s the list that I gave to Devin:

[Deck title = BoltTheBird Abzan Aggro]

[Creatures]

*4 Fleecemane Lion

*3 Heir of the Wilds

*3 Warden of the First Tree

*3 Anafenza the Foremost

*4 Siege Rhino

*3 Whisperwood Elemental

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Bile Blight

*1 Pharika’s Cure

*4 Hero’s Downfall

*4 Abzan Charm

*2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor

[/Spells]

[Lands]

*3 Windswept Heath

*1 Plains

*3 Forest

*3 Llanowar Wastes

*2 Caves of Koilos

*2 Mana Confluence

*4 Temple of Malady

*1 Temple of Silence

*4 Sandsteppe Citadel

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

*4 Thoughtseize

*3 Back To Nature

*3 Glare of Heresy

*3 Drown In Sorrow

*1 Whisperwood Elemental

*1 Mastery of the Unseen

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

This is a deck that is positioned to beat WR and other assorted aggro decks. The [card]Pharika’s Cure[/card] as a fifth Bile Blight (that is to say, a BB removal spell that you must have when Rabblemaster or Mentor comes out) is pretty big, and it is also nice game one against the assorted green ramp lists (although it eventually comes out). Abzan Charm isn’t great against the aggressive decks, but is tremendous against everything else. I haven’t gotten a chance to sit down with Devin and see what his impressions of the deck were, but I have a feeling we will both be playing it at FNM.

Let’s close this bad boy out with some…

Quick Hits

  • Since I came up with that green deck, the new Surrak was spoiled. He is a potential top end for that deck. If you try picking up a version of the list, let me know!
  • Wes asked me last week about supplemental products. We will be discussing them next week.
  • I still haven’t sold anything on TCGplayer.
  • Speaking of, I’m looking for TCGplayer points again. :)
  • The last week has been pretty insane for (American) football fans. Off-season indeed.
  • I realized the other day that GP Vegas could be 10,000 people and 15 rounds. Pass.
  • No DTK cards jump out at me yet except the RG Command (Atarka? Artarka? Atari?). I would like four foils right now, please.
  • If you are reading this and enjoyed my thoughts on Scaleguard Sentinels, please pass those feelings along to Trick and the other WOTC people who handle the front-facing aspects of the game (MaRo and Aaron are too busy). I think the Game Day Gimme Card has gotten no respect (no respect, no respect at all!), so I feel like the least they can do is give it to me.
  • Modern Masters is gonna have [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] in it (as well as [card]Karn Liberated[/card]). I would not be surprised if there are other major cards from MM1 in MM2.
  • Thanks as always for reading!

Conjured Currency #54: Draguncommons!

Douglas Johnson Articles

Welcome back, to another wonderful Thursday of learning how to make some spare change off of the card game known as Magic: The Gathering. During these next couple of weeks, there are going to be a lot of financial set reviews popping up. Should you sell this cool new mythic rare? Is $3 the correct price to preorder this other rare that you want for your EDH deck? What should you do with Narset upon release? Instead of doing one of those set reviews where I go through all of the rares and mythics of the set and predict what their price trends will be over a three, six, or twelve month period, I’m going to stick to one of my personal areas of expertise. I’m a lover of bulk commons and uncommons, and picking out the small treasures that end up being buylisted later for $.10, $.25, or even just given away to someone who is desperately looking for a set of a certain common at FNM. Keep in mind that these aren’t going to be listed on TCGplayer or eBay. We’re not making hundreds of dollars flipping these, because they’re the cards nobody else wants to deal with. These are the commons and uncommons that make us into my own version of an “FNM hero”, when the Spike grinder shows up with 73/75 cards for his Standard deck, and the LGS is completely out of stock of that last sideboarded uncommon.

While I’ve written about this subject before, it’s been a couple of months since I’ve touched on it. Dragons of Tarkir only has 88 out of 264 cards spoiled at the moment (according to mythicspoiler.com, my personal favorite site to keep up to date on the most recent spoilers), but there are a ton of common and uncommon picks in the set already that I can’t wait to scrounge out of discarded draft decks and pull from the large bulk lots that I enjoy buying. Let’s see what I’m going to be pulling these next few months!

Savage Ventmaw

savageventmaw1
Out of the five uncommon six-mana dragons, this one is the only one I’ll be pulling out and setting aside to buylist later. This fat lizard synergizes pretty well with [card]Aggravated Assault[/card] in EDH, and I have a feeling that people who like playing a lot of fat monsters also enjoy attacking with them more than once.

Surge of Righteousness

surgeofrighteousness
Encase in Ice

encaseinice
Self-Inflicted Wound

selfinflictedwound
Rending Volley

"Rending Volley cannot be countered by spells or abilities. Rending Volley deals 4 damage to target Blue or White creature."

“Rending Volley cannot be countered by spells or abilities.
Rending Volley deals 4 damage to target white or blue creature.”

Display of Dominance

displayofdominance
Every now and again, Wizards gives us a set of Standard sideboardable color hate cards. Think back to [card]Combust[/card], [card]Deathmark[/card], [card]Celestial Purge[/card], [card]Flashfreeze[/card], and [card]Autumn’s Veil[/card]. These all saw reasonable amounts of sideboard play during their times in Standard, and some of them even snuck into mainboards. Even if these only end up buylisting for a quarter apiece, it’s free money that you’re leaving on the table by not picking them. If you don’t buylist, treat them as a quarter a piece in trades in your binder, and grind up the value bit by bit.

Warbringer

warbringer
To be honest, I pick almost anything that reads “something something costs X less”. There will almost always be that one casual player who wants to make a “dash” deck, a “manifest” deck, or an “exploit” deck. Keywords are important for new players to latch onto and learn the concept of synergy, and you might be able to squeeze some value out of that by setting these aside for later. It’s not going to make it in Standard, but you’ll make someone’s day by having a playset of these at the ready.

Silumgar’s Scorn

silumgarsscorn
[card]Counterspell[/card] is back! Well, as long as you reveal a [card]Nameless Inversion[/card] or control a [card]Chameleon Colossus[/card]. That’s the hard part. But [card]COUNTERSPELL[/card] IS BACK!! Is it good enough for Modern or Standard? I’d hedge my bets on a no, but damn it all if people won’t try it out in the first few weeks. In my experience as someone who used to be a casual player and/or brewer, I wanted to break the meta in my own special snowflake way, and try out all of the weird synergies. Picking this loses you basically no money if you find it in bulk, on draft tables, or get it as a throw-in.

Draconic Roar

Instant As an additional cost to cast Draconic Roar, you may reveal a Dragon card from your hand. Draconic Roar deals 3 damage to target creature. If you revealed a Dragon card or controlled a Dragon as you cast Draconic Roar, Draconic Roar deals 3 damage to that creature's controller.

“Instant
As an additional cost to cast Draconic Roar, you may reveal a Dragon card from your hand.
Draconic Roar deals 3 damage to target creature. If you revealed a Dragon card or controlled a Dragon as you cast Draconic Roar, Draconic Roar deals 3 damage to that creature’s controller.”

Similarly, there will be Johnnys and Jennys who want to make Mono-Red Standard Dragons a thing. We’ve got Dragon Tempests, we’ve got a Sarkhan that turns into a dragon, we’ve got actual dragons everywhere. Even if [card]Searing Blood[/card] is better, this one has the word “Dragon” on the card at least four times. Pull it out.

Sarkhan’s Triumph

sarkhanstriumph

This is a great card to follow up Draconic Roar with, because it goes in the exact same deck, but also any deck playing a reasonable number of dragons. This goes into tribal dragon EDH decks, and is one of those uncommons that will be $3 a couple years down the road (unless they decide to reprint it to death like [card]Lingering Souls[/card]…). I think you’ll be able to get $.50 to $1 for these during the first few weeks after the set’s release. There’s a lot of dragons, and people want them in their hands (in game and in real life) now!

Anticipate

anticipate
Did you hear that? No? How about now? That was the sound of every hardened control mage at your LGS furiously scribbling down a decklist that started with “4x Ancicipate.” The fact that it’s a common kind of sucks for buylisting purposes, as there will be plenty on the market for $.25 from large retailers, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pick it out of bulk. Ship them as playsets on Pucatrade, and be the guy that has multiple playsets at the ready. If you can get $1 in trade for a playset, you’ll do fine.

Dragonlord’s Servant

dragonlordsservant
I was so happy when I saw this card. Not because I’m a fan of dragons (I’m not), not because the art is pretty silly (it is), and not because I’m going to sell an absolutely massive amount of these at $1 once I pull a bunch of them. Oh, wait, those are the reasons. There are multiple explanations as to why [card]Dragonspeaker Shaman[/card] is a $5 card, even with multiple printings. This thing is cheaper to cast and harder to kill. The biggest downside is that the obvious popularity will encourage more people to set them aside before their draft leavings or bulk lots ever reach my fingers. I don’t think this reaches $5, but $2 after rotation seems fine. Until then, I’ll keep them on my $.25 buylist for the competitive players in my area and wait.

End Step

Do you agree with my picks? Disagree? Has there been a sweet new card spoiled since this article went live that should get a special mention? While these aren’t the [card]Mastery of the Unseen[/card]s or the [card]Glittering Wish[/card]es of the finance world, they’re a lot easier to come across for a very low opportunity cost, and you have the ability to fill an important niche in your community by doing so. If you decide to buy a box of the new set, don’t just let the rares, mythics, and foils be the only cards you’re pulling out.

Have a great weekend!

Weekend Magic: 3/6-3/8

Jared Yost Articles

WOTC and Star City Games teamed up to host Grand Prix Miami this past weekend, which will further add to the Standard results we’ve been seeing since Fate Reforged was released. However, we also need to keep in mind that Dragons of Tarkir is right around corner and that Standard again is due for another shakeup. Let’s take a look at the top decks to see which cards performed well.

Grand Prix Miami (USA)

Format – Standard

Decklists

Deck Finish Player Deck Finish Player
G/W Devotion 1st Daniel Cecchetti Mardu Aggro 9th Osyp Lebedowicz
G/W Devotion 2nd Corey Baumeister W/U Heroic 10th Bradley Carpenter
Abzan Reanimator 3rd Chad Kastel Abzan Midrange 11th Jaelin Funk
Abzan Aggro 4th Ralph Betesh G/W Devotion 12th Brad Nelson
Mono-Red Aggro 5th Ryan Grodzinski Sultai Midrange 13th Yuanji Li
Mono-Red Aggro 6th Brian Lee Jeskai Aggro 14th Kevin Jones
Abzan Aggro 7th Andrew Boswell Abzan Aggro 15th Aaron Barich
Naya Aggro 8th Zan Syed G/R Devotion 16th Ruben Perez

G/W Devotion was the deck to beat that weekend, with two copies claiming the first and second spots in the tournament. Of course, we all know that Corey Baumeister might not have gotten second without his big brother Brad conceding to him in Round 15. What a great guy, right? Looks like his sacrifice paid off—even though Corey didn’t win the tournament, he still did fantastic.

Let’s quickly compare Daniel Cecchetti’s list to Baumeister’s. Cecchetti opted to play fewer [card]Fleecemane Lion[/card]s and instead focused on [card]Polukranos, World Eater[/card] and [card]Voyaging Satyr[/card], along with including a one-of [card]Temur Sabertooth[/card] for future value from [card]Genesis Hydra[/card]s or other creatures. Corey’s list was more straightforward. He decided not to go with Temur Sabertooth and instead put in an additional [card]Banishing Light[/card] along with the full playset of Fleecemane Lions to control the early game.

[card]Whisperwood Elemental[/card] should definitely be on everyone’s radar at this point. It started out at $4 in January and then spiked to $12 after results started coming in from the first Fate Reforged Standard events showcasing its power. Now, that power has been shown on camera at a GP final match for everyone to see. Whisperwood has proven that it is a Standard powerhouse that is capable of taking down a large tournament. I’m not sure how much more it can rise in the short term, but throughout the rest of its Standard life, there is a good chance it will continue to see play in green-based midrange strategies. Whisperwood is certainly a card to watch moving forward.

masteryoftheunseen

However, [card]Mastery of the Unseen[/card] was the real financial winner from this event. The TCGplayer median price on copies is now almost $5 when it could be had for low as $0.25 last week! If you were one to get in on Mastery of the Unseen before the GP, then you are doing quite well right now. This is definitely a short-term spike, so move any extra copies that you have before the price starts coming back down again. We need to keep in mind that Dragons of Tarkir is just around the corner, so even though G/W Devotion did incredibly well this weekend, that may not be the case another month or two from now. Take your profits and move along.

Rounding out the rest of the Top 8 were Abzan Reanimator, two Abzan Aggro, two Mono-Red Aggro, and Naya Aggro decks. Naya Aggro sounds pretty interesting to me so let’s take a look at that deck first.

One card to look out from Naya Aggro is [card]Shaman of the Great Hunt[/card]. It was played as a four-of in the deck, and could see an uptick of demand based on its various top 16 appearances. Again, we see [card]Outpost Siege[/card] playing a role as a finisher or a card advantage engine, along with [card]Chained to the Rocks[/card] as efficient removal for the best creatures in the format. I imagine Shaman was drawing plenty of cards off the back of pumped up [card]Goblin Rabblemaster[/card]s and [card]Stormbreath Dragon[/card]s. Another interesting inclusion was the [card]Mob Rule[/card] pair in the sideboard, which is great against both token strategies and decks that rely too heavily on gigantic creatures to finish the game for them.

Abzan Reanimator is a pretty stock list that utilizes [card]Tasigur, the Golden Fang[/card] to help create card advantage. There was a playset of [card]Rakshasa Deathdealer[/card] in both Abzan Aggro decks, which makes its price of $1 seem very appealing. A playset of [card]Warden of the First Tree[/card] was included in Boswell’s deck, which focused heavily on creatures. Surprisingly, [card]Wingmate Roc[/card] has gotten pretty cheap recently. It is now sitting around $7, its lowest price to date. Is there a chance that the Roc could back up in price over the rest of the year? I think so, considering how powerful it is if you can trigger the raid ability consistently. Gaining life is just icing on the cake.

Rounding out the rest of the Top 16 were Mardu Aggro, W/U Heroic, Abzan Midrange, another G/W Devotion, Sultai Midrange, Jeskai Aggro, another Abzan Aggro, and G/R Devotion.

Cards to watch include:

  • [card]Soulfire Grand Master[/card], [card]Outpost Siege[/card], and three [card]Wild Slash[/card] from Mardu Aggro.
  • Three [card]Rakshasa Deathdealer[/card], two [card]Torrent Elemental[/card] , and [card]Sidisi, Brood Tyrant[/card] out of Sultai Midrange.
  • [card]Mantis Rider[/card], two [card]Soulfire Grand Master[/card], and three [card]Dig Through Time[/card] out of Jeskai Aggro.
  • Three [card]Mardu Strike Leader[/card] out of Abzan Aggro.
  • [card]Rattleclaw Mystic[/card], thee [card]Shaman of the Great Hunt[/card], four [card]Whisperwood Elemental[/card], three [card]Xenagos, the Reveler[/card], and two [card]Crater’s Claws[/card] out of G/R Devotion.

That’s it for this weekend. Keep checking in for more updates every week of what happened and what cards you should watch based on results!

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