Monday Magic - Let's Talk About Theros

Holy crap, I'm excited about Theros.

I was able to attend my local Friday Night Magic last week after missing both the Theros prerelease and release events, so it was my first opportunity to play with Magic's new Greek-themed set.  And I have to say - Theros made one hell of a first impression.

The Set
Sure, a lot of my excitement comes from the fact that I ended up winning the FNM draft (my first such win), but the set brings pretty sweet mechanics and feels incredibly well-balanced.  Although the Theros metagame certainly hasn't stablized, no single deck archetype appeared dominant.  Aggressive decks were a bit stronger than slower controlling decks, but I think that's just because the set is new and people don't quite know what they're doing.  In the coming weeks, I expect several dramatically different styles to emerge victorious as players get more comfortable with the set's powerful keywords.

In addition to being a surprisingly flavorful set (see Underworld Cerberus and Rescue from the Underworld) with some fabulous art, Theros is incredibly fun to play.  Each color has powerful common or uncommon removal capabilities (directly, like black's Sip of Hemlock, by fighting, like the green Time to Feed, or through combat tricks, like the uncharacteristically blue Triton Tactics), and there are a few big nasty creatures in each color, too.  As a result, it seems possible to build strong control decks and strong aggro decks in virtually any color combination; I think the metagame for Theros will be pretty exciting.

The real high points, however, are the awesome set mechanics.  Each is strong, and they all affect gameplay in significantly different ways, giving the Theros a very robust feel.

Scry is a returning mechanic that allows the player to look at the top N cards of his or her library.  After considering the options, the player is then able to put any number of those cards back on top of his or her library and the rest on the bottom.  Scry is a powerful tool for controlling the flow of the game, as it allows you to filter lands when you're looking for answers or a game-winning blow, or you can use it to guarantee land draws if you need to hit your next land drop.  It serves as pseudo card advantage, and it's a great weapon in any sort of deck.

The Mechanics
My favorite of Theros' mechanics is probably Bestow, which gives a number of creatures an interesting alternate ability.  Similar to Gatecrash's Bloodrush, Bestow lets you cast a creature as an Aura enchanting another creature.  It then grants that creature's abilities to the enchanted one, buffing the existing creature.  The biggest threat, however, is the fact that a creature cast using its Bestow cost will revert to a normal creature if its target disappears - destroying the enchanted creature leaves the Bestowed creature on the battlefield.

Following with the Greek theme of heroes, monsters, and gods, Monstrosity lets your big baddies get even bigger.  Paying the Monstrosity cost on a creature (which can be done at instant speed) will add some number of +1/+1 counters to that creature, providing some fearsome combat tricks or just a way to dump unused mana in the late game.  When many of these creatures become Monstrous, they also trigger further effects, like destroying a creature or preventing creatures from blocking for a turn.  Monstrosity turns some of your beefiest creatures into long-term investment plans, paying dividends well into the game.

To combat the set's monsters, the Heroic mechanic allows smaller creatures to engage in David and Goliath style combat.  Heroic triggers any time you cast a spell that targets one of these fearless creatures you control, and the ability provides some additional benefit, like +1/+1 counters or drawing a card.  These effects occur after any type of spell you cast, including a Bestowed creature, allowing you to draw ridiculous value from auras and battle tricks.

Finally, the gods of Theros are empowered by your Devotion to their color.  As a measure of your fidelity to a color, your Devotion is simply the number of times a mana symbol of that color appears in permanents you control.  Devotion has a number of powerful uses, from turning your otherwise passive but omnipresent gods  (like Nylea) into imposing creatures to gaining life (like Nylea's Disciple) or draining your opponent's life (as the Gray Merchant does).

Those five elements give Theros incredible depth and make it a fantastic set to play.

The Draft Deck
To give an idea of how Theros plays out, here's the deck that I ended up using at FNM:

Creatures:
1 Akroan Crusader
1 Blood-Toll Harpy
1 Cavern Lampad
1 Ember Swallower
1 Flamespeaker Adept
1 Fleshmad Steed
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 Minotaur Skullcleaver
2 Returned Centaur
1 Tymaret, the Murder King

Instants:
1 Hero's Downfall
2 Pharika's Cure
2 Spark Jolt
1 Titan's Strength

Sorceries:
2 Portent of Betrayal
1 Rage of Purphoros
1 Read the Bones

Enchantments:
1 Ordeal of Purphoros
1 Scourgemark

Lands:
7 Mountain
10 Swamp

It was a moderately aggressive deck, with many cheap creatures doing most of the work, but the bigger things like Ember Swallower give something to look forward to in the late game.  I used a little bit of everything in this deck, mostly allowing the various Scry spells to help me find the particular pieces I needed at any point in a game.  Read the Bones is unbelievably powerful, particularly while Flamespeaker Adept is on the board to take full advantage of the Scry.  Cavern Lampad did a lot of work, both while an aura and while a dude, and the Gray Merchant got me out of a couple tight spots.

All-in-all, I was able to dabble with all of the set's mechanics a bit and, with the exception of Monstrosity, I put them to good use.  I found that Scry is just an awesomely powerful mechanic, especially when attached to some basic removal spells.  I expect to see much more coherent decks as people get used to the set, though.  I'm looking forward to building decks that feature each of the other mechanics a bit more prominently in the coming weeks; it should be a great time.

The End
It seems like this set is all about getting tons of value out of your cards, and it's incredibly fun to play.  I highly recommend that everybody with the slightest interest in Magic give it a shot.

Dragon's Maze Release - A Magic Bender of Epic Proportions

Last week brought the release of the newest Magic set, Dragon's Maze.  As has become tradition, our group of casual players had a 12-hour Magic release marathon this weekend.  It featured a bunch of events (several drafts, a couple sealed, and a number of pack wars), but I'll focus on the drafting as (a) that's different from the sealed event that I did last week and (b) the drafts were the highlights of the night anyway.

I was initially a little worried about the official drafting order of Dragon's Maze/Gatecrash/Return to Ravnica, thinking that the more general set (Dragon's Maze) would be more useful once you've already settled in a few colors.  My opinion shifted rapidly during the first draft, as I realized opening with the more general set allowed you to take the best card in each pack without committing to a color strategy, which ultimately gives even more flexibility in the other packs.

In the end, I really like drafting in that order.

At some point I'd still like to draft three packs of Dragon's Maze (I think that would be nuts), but that'll require a number of other players to be on board.  Maybe I'll get a chance sometime before the next block starts up...

Anyway, here's what happened:

First Draft
My drafting strategy tends to revolve around just accepting my rares and building around them as much as possible.  It's effectively rare drafting, but in our casual formats, that's not much of a problem.  In the first draft, this strategy was tested pretty severely; my first pack contained two rares: Sire of Insanity, a potentially brutal game-ender for a super aggressive Rakdos deck, and Stomping Ground, the incredibly useful (and valuable) Gruul shock land.  Because I like the idea of Gruul in a draft (not because of Gruul itself, although the Bloodrush mechanic has been growing on me, but because it can easily combo with Boros, Simic, Rakdos, and Golgari, all of which I love), I went with Stomping Ground to try to force some Red-Green action.

The guy to my right handed me a pack containing Blood Scrivener, which immediately made me regret my opening pack decision.  The Scrivener's effect combined with the Sire's would grant awesome card advantage, which could easily have dominated limited matches.  I took the Scrivener anyway, as I was excited about the possibilities of a Gruul/Rakdos/Golgari deck (and black removal would be very useful).

The remainder of the drafting portion went in my favor, allowing me to grab a nice number of Rakdos and Golgari cards, plus some other aggressive creatures (like Legion Loyalist).  The Return to Ravnica pack really sealed the deal, with both Desecration Demon and Jarad's Orders coming my way.  The only real disappointment was that I didn't have any really good Scavenge targets for Jarad's Orders, but using it as a tutor for the Demon was pretty solid.

Here was my first draft deck in all its glory:

Creatures:
1 Basilica Screecher
1 Blood Scrivener
1 Bomber Corps
1 Desecration Demon
1 Grim Roustabout
1 Legion Loyalist
1 Rakdos Shred-Freak
1 Riot Piker
1 Rix Maadi Guildmage
1 Ruination Wurm
1 Slaughterhorn
1 Slitherhead
2 Spire Tracer
1 Zhur-Taa Druid
1 Zhur-Taa Swine

Instants:
1 Fatal Fumes
1 Punish the Enemy
1 Weapon Surge

Sorceries:
1 Act of Treason
1 Jarad's Orders
1 Traitorous Instinct

Enchantments:
1 Stab Wound

Lands:
5 Forest
4 Mountain
1 Stomping Ground
7 Swamp

The main focus was obviously aggression - get a bunch of creatures out quickly and attack as often as possible.  Act of Treason and Traitorous Instinct support that cause, removing a blocker and giving me another attacker, and things like Weapon Surge and Rix Maadi Guildmage (whose first ability is bonkers) make my constant attacks that much more effective.  This incredibly aggressive draft was really effective, dropping only one game in four total matches played.

Second Draft
The second draft was even worse for my rare drafting approach.  My first rare was the very awkward-in-limited Possibility Storm.  Although I think the card has the potential to be really sexy (combined with something like Curse of Exhaustion you can shut your opponent down completely), and it definitely makes for some crazy games, I just couldn't justify taking it off the bat.  Instead, I tried to draft into another aggressive deck, grabbing Gruul War Chant and Rot Farm Skeleton.

When Possibility Storm made its way around the table, though, I took it anyway, openly vowing to play it if I ever got the opportunity (a totally crazy game now and then is good).

The next couple packs also fit with my plan pretty well.  I had established a Golgari direction, as I'd grabbed a couple copies of Drown in Filth, and I managed to get several nice Scavengers when Return to Ravnica rolled around.  I had a couple Battalion and Bloodrush dudes, too, so I was set to play another aggressive deck.

My second draft deck:

Creatures:
1 Bomber Corps
1 Drainpipe Vermin
1 Golgari Decoy
1 Maze Behemoth
1 Maze Rusher
1 Nivmagus Elemental
1 Rot Farm Skeleton
1 Rubblebelt Maaka
1 Scab-Clan Giant
1 Scorchwalker
2 Sluiceway Scorpion
1 Terrus Wurm
2 Zhur-Taa Druid

Instants:
1 Annihilating Fire
1 Furious Resistance
1 Pit Fight
1 Showstopper

Sorceries:
2 Drown in Filth
1 Mugging

Enchantments:
1 Gruul War Chant
1 Possibility Storm

Lands:
5 Forest
6 Mountain
5 Swamp

Gruul War Chant can't be underestimated - even with only a couple small creatures on the board, that enchantment can start dealing decent damage in the early game, and it can make it impossible for your opponent to respond in the late game.  Combine that with a little bit of removal and you have a pretty strong deck.

This deck won all the games where Possibility Storm didn't get played (winning two matches in the process).  I had promised myself that I'd play Possibility Storm whenever possible (heh), and each time I did I got slaughtered.  Those were some crazy fun games, though, and I'm absolutely planning to build a deck around Possibility Storm at some point.

Third Draft
Our third and final (serious) draft was a bit different; instead of playing with at least six people, we only had four for this draft, so it was a little goofy.  The Dragon's Maze pack gave me some serious Dimir options, though, which made it exciting despite the small size.

My opening rare was Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker, which set me on the milling path immediately.  I was then able to take all the Dimir cards that were floating around (Haunter of Nightveil and Pilfered Plans being the big ones).  I continued that strategy into the other two packs, coming away with a solidly mill-oriented control deck.

My mill deck:

Creatures:
1 Balustrade Spy
1 Crosstown Courier
1 Dinrova Horror
1 Haunter of Nightveil
1 Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker
1 Nivix Guildmage
1 Rakdos Drake

Instants:
1 Essence Backlash
1 Mindstatic
1 Psychic Strike
1 Totally Lost
1 Ultimate Price

Sorceries:
1 Blast of Genius
2 Mind Rot
2 Paranoid Delusions
2 Pilfered Plans
1 Toil // Trouble
1 Voidwalk

Enchantments:
1 Way of the Thief

Artifacts:
2 Prophetic Prism

Lands:
1 Dimir Guildgate
6 Island
1 Izzet Guildgate
2 Mountain
6 Swamp

This deck also performed very well.  The combination of efficient milling and supreme card advantage (Mind Rot can be brutal when paired with card draw) allowed me to eke out a win in my first match.  I was then able to dominate my second opponent (although to be fair, we were all really tired at this point, so it's hard to say how much of that was due to mutual exhaustion), making me think that limited mill decks in Dragon's Maze are viable.

All-in-all, I'm really excited to see where the Maze takes me.  There are a bunch of awesome cards in the set, both to bolster existing decks (I'm definitely going to try to find a place for Mirko Vosk and Pilfered Plans in my mill deck), and there are some fun new cards that could be the basis for some silly decks (Possibility Storm).

I'll be doing lots of deck revisions in the next few weeks, always trying to find a good way to incorporate some nasty Dragon's Maze cards.  I can't wait to find out where I end up!

Monday Magic - This Weekend's Dragon's Maze Pre-Release Recap!

One of these days I'll be able to post my Magic blogs on Monday...

This weekend's Dragon's Maze Pre-Release brought a number of firsts for me: my first MTG pre-release event, my first formal sealed event, and my first official tournament.  It was quite an experience, so let me break it down.

A "sealed" event is a limited format where you build a deck after cracking open six booster packs.  You don't get the strategy of picking cards and reading signals that you would in a draft, and you don't get the benefit of your entire collection (and anything you're willing/able to drop the cash to acquire) like in constructed formats.  Sealed tournaments require a totally different skill set, so it was a completely new (and somewhat frustrating) experience.

Sealed competitions seem to be much more heavily influenced by luck.  If you open a terrible pack in a draft, you know that everyone is going to have to pick a card from that pack; in sealed, you're stuck with all the junk you might open.  Sure, the fact that you get six packs in sealed as opposed to three in a draft helps balance the odds, but particularly unlucky packs can knock you out of a sealed event before you even start to play.

The emphasis on multicolored cards from ten different guilds in Dragon's Maze exacerbates this problem.  The odds of having a random smattering of decent cards in each guild is pretty high, which makes running four colors much more likely.  Although there's a good amount of mana fixing in the set, a four-colored deck will need to be really tight and cohesive to make good use of the limited number of non-mana-fixing cards.  It  seems hard to pull off.

Being a special pre-release event, this sealed tournament had some added wrinkles.  Instead of grabbing six booster packs and bursting into deckbuilding, each player chose one of Ravnica's ten guilds and received a guild pack (containing 15 cards exclusively of that guild's colors), an allied guild pack (containing 15 cards for a single guild that shares one color with the chosen guild), and four Dragon's Maze packs.  Then we were tasked with building the best deck we could.

Pre-release goodies: Shiny Plains, Shiny Maze's End, guild button, and cards with two guild seals.

On top of a normal 32-player tournament (actually two, as a group of 64 players was split into separate brackets), the Ravnica guilds competed in an Implicit Maze.  Players represented their chosen guild in this additional competition (mine was Simic, as evidenced by my guild button), where a win in the tournament meant that their guild advanced one step closer to the Dragon's Maze.  It was cool to see how each of the guilds were doing between rounds (unsurprisingly, the more aggressive guilds, like Boros and Rakdos, tended to do better than the more passive guilds, like Dimir and Selesnya), even if there weren't tangible prizes for the most successful guilds.

The fact that we received a couple of guild packs helped mitigate the multicolored craziness of Dragon's Maze, as you're guaranteed 30 cards across three colors, but I still found it to be a little troublesome.  In particular, my Simic pack was virtually useless, aside from a Gyre Sage.  My Dragon's Maze packs were pretty heavy with Izzet and Rakdos, including Dragonshift, Breaking // Entering, and the brutal Master of Cruelties.  Conveniently, my fourth Dragon's Maze rare was Varolz, the Scar-Striped, which fit nicely into the Golgari side of my deck.

But I was faced with a tough choice: I had some decent Rakdos commons and uncommons (black-red), some decent Izzet cards (blue-red), some great Golgari cards (green-black), and a really lackluster selection of Simic cards (green-blue).  My pool had good support for an Izzet-Simic deck or a Golgari-Rakdos deck, but it didn't feel terribly cohesive in general.

My first match was a slaughter.  I tried to go for all four colors (everything but white), but I was spread too thinly to do much of anything.  At that point, I decided to be more focused, so I dropped blue completely, thereby abandoning my primary guild.  Match two went a bit better for me, but I was still schooled pretty handily.

The first two dramatic losses put me solidly at the bottom of my bracket, so round three gave me a bye.  On the plus side, getting a break allowed me to seriously rethink my strategies and develop a more coherent approach.  The result was good - both the fourth and fifth matches ended in 2-1 victories for me, giving me a final record of 3-2, enough to place in the upper half of the bracket and win two Dragon's Maze packs!

After a lot of tweaking, here's the deck I settled on for the last couple of matches:

Creatures:

1 Drudge Beetle

1 Greenside Watcher

1 Gyre Sage

1 Lotleth Troll

1 Master of Cruelties

1 Rakdos Drake

1 Rot Farm Skeleton

1 Rubblebelt Maaka

1 Sewer Shambler

1 Smelt-Ward Gatekeepers

1 Towering Indrik

1 Ubul Sar Gatekeepers

1 Varolz, the Scar-Striped

1 Zhur-Taa Druid

Instants:

1 Burst of Strength

2 Punish the Enemy

1 Savage Surge

1 Weapon Surge

Sorceries:

1 Blast of Genuis

1 Morgue Burst

Enchantments:

1 Stab Wound

Lands:

1 Dimir Guildgate

4 Forest

1 Golgari Guildgate

1 Gruul Guildgate

1 Island

5 Mountain

1 Simic Guildgate

4 Swamp

The MVPs in my Simic (???) deck.

Those last few games expanded my mind a bit.  I had never given Golgari much thought during Return to Ravnica's heyday, basically for the same reasons that I've never really loved Gruul (I'd generally prefer having creatures than sacrificing them to help my other creatures), but Scavenge can be brutal, especially when Varolz gives all your creatures Scavenge.  Throw in a little red removal and some Rakdos bombs and you have a pretty serious contender.

And that's how I ultimately how I got my wins.  With Varolz in play I could trade my cheap creatures with my opponent's, then use my dead dudes to buff whoever's left.  Whenever Master of Cruelties hit the board, he forced my opponent to respond, allowing me to build up for a Golgari assualt (or, in one case, the Master was able to end the game in conjunction with Zhur-Taa Druid, who pinged after combat for the win).  It was an awesomely fun deck to play, and I'm excited about building a pure Golgari deck at some point in the next few weeks.

That'll have to wait, though, because this weekend is the official release of Dragon's Maze, so there will be tons of new Magic to experience. It seems like it'll be an awesome set, so I have high hopes for this weekend.

Monday Magic - I Love the Smell of Simic in the Morning

After successfully drafting a pretty successful Simic deck, it seems like a good Simic constructed deck may be in order.

My goals with this deck were pretty simple: I want lots of ways to get +1/+1 counters on my creatures, and I'd like to be able to manipulate those counters for some useful purpose.  The big combo I was looking for was Ooze Flux; if you can get three smallish creatures with Evolve (and counters), Ooze Flux is suddenly 1G: get a 3/3 creature, as the ooze creature entering the battlefield can re-evolve all your dudes.  Another nice one is Zameck Guildmage, who can convert those counters into card advantage mighty quickly.

I also have a copy of Biomass Mutation, which is disgusting with counters - setting creatures to X/X happens without considering the counters on those creatures, so Biomass Mutation can get silly pretty fast with some decent board presence.  It's an instant, too, so it serves as a pretty nasty combat trick in a pinch; instead of being a 1/1 with 3 +1/+1 counters on it, my attacking Experiment One is now a 4/4 with all those counters!  Combine that with Ooze Flux's relatively easy way to generate a bunch of creatures, and Biomass Mutation is a brutal win condition.

Another nice combo is to use Ooze Flux or the Guildmage alongside creatures with Undying.  Continually throw an Undying creature at your opponent, then when it dies, you just remove the counter and keep at it.  As an added bonus, the Undying creature can trigger Evolve each time it returns from the dead, giving yet another near-endless supply of +1/+1 counters.

Here's the current form of the deck:

Creatures:
3 Cloudfin Raptor
3 Experiment One
1 Gyre Sage
2 Nimbus Swimmer
1 Primordial Hydra
1 Strangleroot Geist
1 Zameck Guildmage
3 Crocanura
2 Elusive Krasis
2 Crowned Ceratok
1 Fathom Mage
1 Vorapede
1 Sapphire Drake

Instants:
1 Biomass Mutation
2 Counterspell
3 Simic Charm
2 Mystic Genesis

Sorcery:
2 Increasing Savagery
1 Tezzeret's Gambit
1 Blessings of Nature

Enchantments:
2 Ooze Flux

Land:
1 Alchemist's Refuge
1 Breeding Pool
13 Forest
9 Island

Alchemist's Refuge is there to allow for some defensive Evolve tricks (Increasing Savagery is a fun one, too), and all the creatures are either good for generating counters or enhancing/manipulating those counters.

The biggest weakness of this deck is its general inability to deal with aggression.  There are a few Counterspells to keep big, nasty creatures away from the battlefield and the Simic Charms have a nice variety of uses, but the Charms are the only removal in this deck.  The goal is to overwhelm your opponent, so it's in trouble if they overwhelm you first.

Still, the few times that I've used this deck, it's a lot of fun.  The Evolve mechanic can get really annoying for your opponent, and it's one of my favorite mechanics to play with, so I really enjoy this deck.

Monday Magic - A Little Boros Draft

We had another casual Gatecrash draft over the weekend, and I ended up going the Boros route this time.  There were 11 people in this draft, so it was huge, which gave it a totally different feel.  You basically never saw the same pack twice, which was exciting in itself.  I don't know that I'd really want to do such a big draft again anytime soon, but the novelty of it was quite fun.

The rare in my first pack was Legion Loyalist, which has the potential for some nasty aggro. Raging Goblin's steroid-addicted older brother can get in some early damage, but he can also make an attack into a brutal stomping for one mana.  His crazy Battalion effect is almost like Bloodrush for the team, given his haste.  It was a natural pick for me.

As the packs came around, I was able to grab a bunch of pure red cards - Massive Raid, Skinbrand Goblin,  Firefist Striker.  None of the people to my right were drafting red, so I felt pretty confident in my starting pick.  By the end of pack one, I had several Boros cards on top of the pure red stuff (Martial Glory and Wojek Halberdiers), so I had definitely made up my mind.

Pack two settled the issue completely, as my rare was Angelic Skirmisher.  I kept grabbing red cards, trying my best to balance removal with a bunch of cheap creatures.  The guy to my left even passed another Legion Loyalist, so I felt like I was in pretty good position.

The third pack was initially a downer, as the rare was Biovisionary, a card that had absolutely no place anywhere near my deck.  I was kind of disappointed as that meant that my only real bomb was the Skirmisher, and I didn't have much aside from a bunch of 1- and 2-drops.  Then the guy to the right passed me a Hellkite Tyrant.  The Hellkite's artifact-related ability isn't much use, but as a 6/5 flier, he was an awesome addition to my deck.

In the end, I think I came away with a surprisingly focused Boros deck.  I was fortunate to be surrounded by people passing the red stuff, so there were many times that I was able to choose from 3 or 4 red cards.  It was a fantastic position to be in.

Anyway, here's the deck I came away with:

Creatures:
2 Legion Loyalist
2 Skinbrand Goblin
2 Firefist Striker
1 Wojek Halberdiers
1 Ember Beast
1 Assault Griffin
1 Cinder Elemental
1 Scorchwalker
1 Viashino Shanktail
1 Nav Squad Commandos
1 Towering Thunderfist
1 Angelic Skirmisher
1 Hellkite Tyrant

Instants:
2 Martial Glory
1 Pit Fight
2 Massive Raid

Sorceries:
1 Mugging
1 Act of Treason

Enchantments:
1 Madcap Skills

Lands:
1 Boros Guildgate
10 Mountain
5 Plains

A couple of notes:  I was only running 16 lands, which was a little risky, but I justified it by seeing that the majority of my spells required only 1 or 2 mana, so I was mostly interested in getting lots of little dudes into play.  I think my biggest problem was the removal - Massive Raid is really circumstantial (it only works if you have enough creatures), Pit Fight is similarly limited, and Mugging is just sorcery speed, so I couldn't use it for any tricks.

This deck didn't perform as well as I had hoped.  I went 2-2 in best-of-threes, readily defeating other aggressive decks, but losing the long game to stalling decks.  In those matches that progressed to the late game, I didn't have anything to build up.  If I could get the Hellkite or the Skirmisher into play, they'd just be removed with something like Angelic Edict, and I'd be back where I started.

Still, it was a lot of fun, and it gave me some ideas for a Boros constructed deck.  We'll see when I get that put together...

Monday Magic - Avacyn Revised

Over the weekend, I had a few opportunities to test the Avacyn-centric deck I discussed last week.  The biggest problem I encountered was not too unexpected: it's just too damn slow.  Far too often I found myself sitting on 4 or 5 lands and still being unable to play the cards in my hand, or I'd draw a decent number of angels and lands, but not get any early creatures to keep me alive.  Either way, it's a clear problem with the speed of the deck.

(To be fair, against one deck I got smacked around because my opponent hit my angels (from Entreat the Angels) with a Detention Sphere.  The Mystical Tutor into Entreat the Angels combo worked really well otherwise.)

I think there are a few changes that need to be made:

First, the Eldrazi Conscription win condition isn't worth the gamble.  If I can survive to 8 mana, it's certainly a beast to get on the board, but I haven't been able to survive that long.  The combo with Bruna is powerful, but I don't have enough copies of either to make it a decent bet.  Sitting on Conscription instead of another 4-or-less drop creature just isn't worth it.

Second, Champion of the Parish fits much more naturally in an aggressive deck, so it's probably worth exchanging him for something a little more appropriate for stalling.  Some cheap walls would likely be a good replacement.  Removing some Humans makes Angel of Glory's Rise somewhat less effective, so a cheaper alternative would be good.

Generally, more removal options would be better, too, so a few more Counterspells or Vapor Snags might be worthwhile.

Here's the (slightly) modified version:

Creature:
3 Doomed Traveler
2 Pride Guardian
2 Konda's Hatamoto
2 Tandem Lookout
2 Restoration Angel
2 Seraph of Dawn
1 Guardian of the Gateless
1 Angelic Skirmisher
2 Sunblast Angel
1 Angel of Serenity
1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope

Instant:
2 Mystical Tutor
2 Turn Aside
4 Vapor Snag
2 Counterspell
2 Mana Leak

Sorcery:
1 Entreat the Angels
1 Temporal Mastery

Enchantment:
1 Detention Sphere
1 Angelic Destiny
1 Call to the Kindred

Land:
9 Island
12 Plains
1 Seachrome Coast
2 Terramorphic Expanse

There's still some tweaking to be done, of course.  I'll need to play a few more matches to decide on other changes, but I think it's becoming something fearsome...

Or maybe not.  I guess we'll see upon the next iteration.

MTG Constructed: Avacyn-Led Angels

When it comes to building constructed Magic: The Gathering decks, I tend to prefer working with cards I already own, rather than designing the optimal deck and purchasing the cards I need.  I see it as a different kind of challenge - it's an optimization problem given the constraints of my decently-sized collection instead of the full set of MTG cards available.  Plus it has the added bonus of being cheaper and easier to put together, since I don't have to go searching for $20+ cards.

With that in mind, my decks end up being unique specimens.  They may not be the best, and they may not work for other players, but they satisfy my goals using what is readily at my disposal.  I also tend not to worry about standard or legacy or whatever rulings; I just like to build casual decks to sling at my friends.

Most of my deck ideas come from one of two sources.  The more common is that I'll open some bomb that will inspire me to build a deck around it.  That's what happened with the deck I'm presenting here, as you will shortly see.  The other source, less common but probably more effective, is based on a draft deck that works particularly well.  For example, I'm looking at putting together a Simic deck based on my first Gatecrash draft, and I made a zombie deck after using Call to the Grave pretty effectively in an M12 draft.

This deck happened because I opened Avacyn, Angel of Hope at one of our sealed Avacyn Restored nights.  I wanted to put her to good use immediately, but as I kept opening rare Angels, it seemed like an angel deck would be a good move.

But there were some considerations that needed addressing.  The first is that Avacyn is a costly investment, requiring 8 total mana to play.  Ideally, I'd want some way of cheating her onto the field, so that needs to be built into the deck.  Secondly, Angels in general are pretty expensive, so I'd either want some sort of mana ramping (so mixing with green might be a good choice) or some good way of stalling through the first several turns.  Thirdly, although Avacyn is definitely a win condition, it's a little risky to put all hopes into managing to get her into play, especially if I'm going to be using tricks that make it a 2+ card combo.  Instead, I'd like to have several decent plans for finishing my opponent.

It turns out that adding some blue can work towards solving all of those problems.  I have a copy of Call to the Kindred, which has the potential to sneak Avacyn onto the board three turns before I'd have the mana to hard cast her (and generally lets me get angels in play for free, which is awesome).  Including some cheap control can protect me during the early game, and I usually prefer that kind of thing to straight removal anyway.  And as other win conditions, Call to the Kindred is a pretty big deal if it lasts long enough to slide some angels into play, but I also opened Bruna, Light of Alabaster, which combined with some useful auras (like Eldrazi Conscription, which itself is a nasty win condition) can be brutal.

To fill out the rest of the deck, some Humans work well, particularly with something like Angel of Glory's Rise to add some synergy.  Plus they're pretty cheap, so they make the early game a little easier to survive.

What we have is a deck with a lot of power, assuming you can mulligan into a decent starting hand if needed.  It's pretty dependent on being able to play something on turns 2 and 3 so you can survive, but it can get pretty rough for your opponent if you can start dropping Angels.

Gideon's in trouble...

Creatures:
1 Champion of the Parish
3 Doomed Traveler
2 Konda's Hatamoto
2 Tandem Lookout
2 Restoration Angel
2 Seraph of Dawn
1 Guardian of the Gateless
1 Angelic Skirmisher
1 Bruna, Light of Alabaster
2 Sunblast Angel
1 Angel of Glory's Rise
1 Angel of Serenity
1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope

Instants:
2 Mystical Tutor
2 Turn Aside
2 Vapor Snag
2 Counterspell
2 Mana Leak

Enchantments:
1 Detention Sphere
1 Angelic Destiny
1 Call to the Kindred
1 Eldrazi Conscription

Sorceries:
1 Entreat the Angels
1 Temporal Mastery

Lands:
9 Island
13 Plains
1 Seachrome Coast
2 Terramorphic Expanse

The Mystical Tutors are there to ensure the shenaniganry of Entreat the Angels and Temporal Mastery, which add yet another possible win condition.  It's not the greatest deck in the world, but it is one that I've spent a lot of time tweaking.  There's certainly room for improvement, but as I'm determined to get a deck with Avacyn and Bruna to work, this deck seems to be heading in the right direction.

Casual Gatecrash Draft - Orzhov 'Till the Sun Comes Up!

In the spirit of continued casual Magicking, the crew from the recent Gatecrash bender got together last night to draft the set again.  There were only 7 people this time around, so there was a good chance that the guild of your choice wouldn't get nabbed by somebody else.  Unsurprisingly, nobody really went for Dimir, but whatever.

The rare in my first pack was Immortal Servitude.  Not exactly the bomb I was hoping to set the tone of my draft, but it gave me something worth using.  I was then passed a copy of Ooze Flux, which I grabbed in the hopes of shifting into a Simic deck (because I'd been so successful with Simic during our last draft).  I've been hoping to use Ooze Flux as a sort of perpetual-oozing machine, so I wanted to try to make that work.  Throughout the rest of that first pack, though, it became clear that both green and blue were being sucked up, so I pulled as many Extort creatures as I could.

In my second pack, the rare was Fathom Mage.  At this point, I was still hoping for Simic, so I got a couple more Evolvers, but it just wasn't sustainable.  I reluctantly shifted my focus to black and white... again.  This time it stuck, though, as I was able to get a fair number of Extort creatures and a decent amount of removal.  Whenever possible, I tried to get low-costing spells so I would have more Extort options, always prioritizing permanents with Extort over everything else.

Pack three brought a Watery Grave, which I would have rare drafted (for better or worse) even if it hadn't shared colors with some of what I'd accumulated to that point.  Fortunately, it gave me a nice option to splash blue for some of the Simic cards I'd hastily drafted, so it wasn't a terrible pick anyway.

In the end, I constructed a deck with just about everything I took that were black and/or white.  Despite not having anything particularly sexy, my deck did pretty well (confirming in my mind that Extort can be brutal).  Here's what it was:

2 Thrull Parasite
1 Death's Approach
1 Basilica Screecher
2 Gutter Skulk
2 Devour Flesh
1 Slate Street Ruffian
1 Deathcult Rogue

1 Dutiful Thrull
2 Shielded Passage
2 Syndic of Tithes
1 Court Street Denizen
1 Righteous Charge

1 Beckon Apparition
1 Vizkopa Guildmage
2 Kingpin's Pet
1 Immortal Servitude
2 Purge the Profane

8 Plains
8 Swamp

Since my basic strategy was to stall until I could Extort my opponent to death, I would always mulligan if my starting hand didn't have both an Extorter and the appropriate mana to play it.  I started most of my games with 6 cards in hand, but I was always able to start extorting by turn 3.  From that point on, the goal was just to stay alive; block with my non-Extort creatures and burn as much mana on Extort as I could.

With this modest little deck, I was able to win three best-of-threes, with a game record of 6-1 for the night.  My performance confirmed that Orzhov has a powerful limited presence, but I'm still not sure how it'll work in constructed matches.  I imagine that the slower, stalling play style will get obliterated by aggressive decks or decent removal, but I'm going to build a deck and what happens.

As a side bonus, we played a couple best-of-three Two-Headed Giant matches.  My team won both matches (we switched partners for the second), and it's pretty clear that Extort is God Mode for multiplayer-  draining life from each opponent hits twice in Two-Headed Giant, and coupling that with the Vizkopa Guildmage's second ability (any time you gain life this turn, each opponent loses that much life), a single Extort suddenly becomes an 8 life swing.  That's a pretty big deal.

Although Simic is still my favorite of the Gatecrash guilds, I think Orzhov just became a close second.

Glorious Gatecrash Bender

On the weekend of a new Magic: The Gathering set release, my friends generally have a big release party.  Between us, we spend several hundred dollars buying boxes of booster packs, and then play all night with various draft, sealed, and mini-masters matches.  Although we’re not terribly competitive, these casual Magic benders give a great opportunity to experience a set and think about awesome possibilities in constructed play.

Going into the new set (Gatecrash), I was pretty intrigued by a couple new mechanics, evolve and cipher, although I was also quite disappointed by the effects that were attached to cipher cards.  It seems like the dual effects of milling and encouraging dealing damage to a player were fundamentally at odds, and my experiences in the drafts didn’t prompt me to change my opinion.

Bloodrush sounds like a neat idea, but it feels a bit like a desperation move; I would usually prefer having a creature than a one-time, attacker-only Giant Growth, so it only seems relevant if you’re able to win on the turn you use it or if it buys you an extra turn or two from an opponent’s onslaught.  Extort has a lot of power and is a great way to burn extra mana when you don’t have extra spells to sling, but it’s not really my thing.  Battalion is nice, but the fact that it only triggers when you have three creatures attacking is tricky; you must have good board positioning to get it off, and your opponent will likely know that you’re building up to it, giving them plenty of time to apply some removal.

Anyway, my goal going into the first draft was to try to pull of a Simic (blue-green, that’s where the evolve mechanic lives) deck.  My first rare was Unexpected Results, which is in the right colors and has some interesting implications (getting to play a big creature for free and trigger evolve seemed really sexy to me), so I was off to a good start.  Here's the deck that I ended up constructing:

1 Cloudfin Raptor

2 Hands of Binding

1 Nightveil Specter

1 Last Thoughts

2 Experiment One

1 Disciple of the Old Ways

1 Greenside Watcher

1 Slaughterhorn

2 Verdant Haven

1 Adaptive Snapjaw

1 Skarrg Goliath

1 Prophetic Prism

1 Pit Fight

1 Simic Charm

1 Nimbus Swimmer

2 Drakewing Krasis

1 Elusive Krasis

2 Unexpected Results

1 Rubblehulk

1 Gruul Guildgate

1 Simic Guildgate

7 Forest

6 Island

1 Mountain

The basic strategy was to start the game with either Cloudfin Raptor or Experiment One on turn one, start pummelling my opponent as soon as possible, and evolve my creatures in the most intelligent way I can.  Hands of Binding and Last Thoughts get ciphered onto a creature with evasion (Elusive Krasis ideally, but Cloudfin Raptor was another good choice).  Pit Fight and Simic Charm are used as removal if absolutely necessary.  Rubblehulk is there as a great beneficiary of Unexpected Results, and Verdant Haven and Prophetic Prism are for mana-fixing to play or bloodrush him if desired.

All-in-all, this deck did pretty well.  I won all four of the best-of-threes that I played, dropping only two games in the process.  I found that evolve can be pretty nasty, as I expected.  Being able to extend the effectiveness of a one-drop creature well into the midgame is brutal; trading an Experiment One for a Guardian of the Gateless was one of my biggest triumphs.  In nearly every game I played, I was able to deal a few points of damage before my opponent got a creature on the board, and then I could effectively stall them with my continually growing creatures until I could outmaneuver them with the cipher spells or smash them with the big creatures.  Unexpected Results unexpectedly served as an awesome deck-thinner and mana ramper, making sure that I could use my Nimbus Swimmer to trigger evolve and have a beefy dude with evasion.  The game where I stole a couple of lands with Nightveil Specter wasn't too bad, either.

This first draft confirmed that Simic and evolve are beastly.  I'm excited to put together a constructed Simic deck, hoping to use the Ooze Fluxes I grabbed to great effect (have that with a few small evolve guys, and it basically becomes "1G: get a 4/4 creature").

The second draft didn't go quite as well for me.  There were murmurs from my friends about trying to build Simic decks after seeing how well mine was performing, so I though I'd have to change strategies to survive the drafting process.  In this one, my opening rare was Clan Defiance, which is a pretty rockin' removal/burn spell, so I thought I'd go the Gruul (red-green, home of bloodrush) route.  Here's my deck:

2 Spire Tracer

2 Burst of Strength

1 Gyre Sage

1 Disciple of the Old Ways

1 Crocanura

1 Slaughterhorn

1 Verdant Haven

1 Crowned Ceratok

2 Adaptive Snapjaw

1 Furious Resistance

1 Skinbrand Goblin

1 Firefist Striker

2 Ember Beast

1 Pit Fight

1 Skarrg Guildmage

1 Ground Assault

1 Clan Defiance

1 Zhur-Taa Swine

1 Ruination Wurm

1 Gruul Guildgate

8 Forest

7 Mountain

There were a few big problems with this draft: first, I was a little bit schizophrenic.  While trying to stay in color, I ended up pulling a bunch of evolve creatures and not much removal.  That hurt, particularly against an extort-heavy deck.

Second, my win conditions weren't nearly as robust as in my earlier deck.  I could hope for evolve to keep me going, but I didn't have any low-costing evolvers to start growing early (a single Experiment One may have changed this deck quite a bit).  Aside from that, I was basically ramping into the Ruination Wurm or Clan Defiance, but I never got either of them off.

Third, the most superficial of the problems was a general lack of rares.  I only had two in this deck, as opposed to the five I had in the Simic one, so I didn't have as many bombs to drop.  I also sacrificed a first pick during the draft; on the second pack, I rare-drafted a Duskmantle Seer, which did absolutely nothing for me when the games started.

The few games where I did find myself in a decent position, I made some bad (or unlucky) decisions: pressuring my opponent when he had tricks to crush me, holding back when he didn't.

Amid the drafts, we did a few games of mini-masters, which meant that I came away with a few other great cards (Angelic Skirmisher is a monster in limited, Blind Obedience is a good way to get yourself slaughtered in a team game, and I think Ooze Flux has a lot of constructed potential).

I really like Gatecrash.  Evolve is definitely my favorite new mechanic of the last few years, and I'm excited to see how the Simic cards in the next set play off it.  In the end, Gatecrash is a lot more interesting and fun than Return to Ravnica is, at least in limited.  I'm excited to see how they all tie together when we start drafting the whole block, but that's a bit down the road.