New Decks! Red Arti-Sack

My new card desk :)

So I got my box and a few extra packs of New Phyrexia this weekend, time to see what fun decks I can come up with! So far I've got about 4 or 5 new deck ideas that have stacks of cards waiting to be honed into their 60 card line-up. Two have more or less been constructed but still need play-testing to figure out how certain cards actually play out in real gameplay. The second deck I built, which still needs the most work, is a mono-green infect deck that focuses strictly on getting as many cheap infect creatures in play as possible. The key idea here is to have 20 lands, Lead the Stampede and Genesis Wave, and then nothing but infect creatures (8 different play-sets, 32 cards), but more on this in a different post (once I've worked on it a bit more).

Today I am much more excited about a deck I came up with when I started trying to use a combo my brother pointed out to me at one of the pre-release with Immolating Souleater and Assault Strobe. The basic idea here is to play the Souleater on turn 2, and then turn 3 cast Assault Strobe on it (using the remaining one or two mana to buff the Souleater once) and then pay between 14 and 16 life (depending on how much mana you had) to buff the Souleater that much more. Since it has Double Strike it will then deal 20 damage, which is a 3rd turn kill from a two card combo. While this is an amazing combo, it can be rather difficult to ensure that the Souleater will actually hit your opponent safely (no blockers and no creature destruction/burn spells), and since there is obviously a ton of extra room in the deck I had to fill out with ways to deal with my Souleater combo not working.

There are three apparent ways to handle this issue, two making the combo require an extra card, and one just adding more kill conditions. The first improvement can be placed in either of the other two since it doesn't require an extra color and is simple. Here we just add a way to make a creature (or two) unable to block by using Smoldering Spires and/or Panic Spellbomb, either of these can be easily used on third turn to prevent a single creature from blocking the Souleater, and still leaving room for lots of diversity.

Probably the most common way people will use to make this combo better will be to add blue in the deck. Most good players will try to splash blue in almost every deck they make if they can find any excuse at all to do so. The card that will entice everyone will be Distortion Strike, which is already used in blue-black infect, so everyone knows about it. This does not delay the third turn kill, it does require a blue mana and an extra card (but note that it still does not need more than 2 lands). This strategy enables the deck to contain blue control spells and other helpful cards.

The third strategy is what I am going with so far, and that is to add a bunch of artifacts with come into play or goes to graveyard effects and Ferrovore. Now I have a bunch of red/artifact control by using cards like Necropede and Perilous Myr, and card advantage with Ichor Wellspring. I also have a fairly strong secondary kill condition. I decided just having the Ferrovore wasn't enough to guarantee that I would be able to sacrifice artifacts when I needed to, so I added Piston Sledge since it just makes any creature I put it on better and I can always sacrifice it to Ferrovore if I needed to for some reason (if it wasn't equipped and I didn't have any other artifacts in play). Since I have so many artifacts going to the graveyard all the time in longer games I added Slag Fiend as a third kill condition.

I haven't had the chance to play-test my build against an actual deck yet since I've been busy all weekend moving into my new place, but from the solitaire hands I've played out it looks like it is very consistent and always has a lot of card draw and control on the board. I am playing with possibly adding Smoldering Spires and/or Panic Spellbomb to the deck to enhance the possible early game strategy with Souleater, but so far I haven't been able to justify it.

MTG: Play Formats

This weekend I will be attending two New Phyrexia Pre-Release, Sealed tournaments. These are a lot different than the normal FNM tournaments I go to. Today I am going to explain various types of MTG play formats, there are several main types, Vintage (Type 1), Legacy (Type 1.5), Extended (Type 1.x), and Standard (Type 2), there is a list of banned/restricted cards here. There are also some "fun" formats, like Peasant, where you're only allowed to have common (and sometimes uncommon) cards in your deck, Highlander (decks have to be exactly 100 cards, and all cards are restricted), as well as various combinations such as Peasant Highlander, and a special version of Highlander called Elder Dragon Legend (EDH), which has a lot of its own special playing rules.

Normal rulings for most all formats are you are allowed to have 4 of any card that is not a basic land (you can always have as many basic lands as you want/need) unless a card is banned or restricted. If a card is banned you obviously just aren't allowed to play with it, restricted means you can only have one copy of that card in your deck. In formats like Highlander and EDH where all cards except basic lands are restricted you can only ever have one of any card in your deck.

Standard and Extended are the two formats usually used for DCI sanctioned tournaments, this includes FNM and larger tournaments (such as Regionals and State). Usually Standard is used for FNM, and as of late Extended has been used in the bigger tournaments. Standard allows cards from the latest core set, the most recent block to be fully released, and the block that is currently being released (set blocks are usually made up of 3 sets, released in the Fall, Winter, and Spring). Each year when the new core set is printed the previous one becomes banned (except for cards that were reprinted in the new core set, which is very common), and when the first set of the next block is printed in the Fall the older of the two current blocks that are legal becomes banned. There is always one core set, one complete block, and between 1 and 3 sets from the currently printing block that are legal in Standard. Extended works the same way as Standard, except that it includes one extra core set, and an additional 5 blocks (backwards, chronologically, not just random sets/blocks).

"Coin Flip" decks: RDW

Flipping coins to win! There are actually decks that revolve around this, a friend of mine had a pretty fun one, they revolve around cards like Desperate Gambit, and as the name suggests, relies heavily on luck. There is a card that increases your chances with the flips, Krark's Thumb, but other than that it's pretty much just dumb luck. Regardless of the amount of fun flipping coins and hoping to win is, I didn't mean it quite that literally. I commented that I play a deck called "RDW" (Red Deck Wins), and sometimes it functions extremely like a coin flip deck. The difference comes on what you get lucky with, instead of flipping a coin you're relying on getting a good opening hand and having the next couple cards be helpful.

In an RDW deck (and somewhat with other fast-paced aggro decks) the idea is to win by turn 3 or 4, if you can't win by then you're probably going to lose. Now remember real "coin flip" decks had Krark's Thumb to increase their chances (effectively doubled exponentially for every Krark's Thumb in play actually), normal decks have another way of increasing their chances of winning their coin flip, have a simple win condition, and play lots of cards that do the same thing. With RDW in particular this is fairly easy since it only needs two things really, as many small creatures in play as possible, and a way to increase their effective attack power. OK, so one more thing, speed, everything must be very cheap to play (mana-wise). Well it's Red, so we automatically get cheap creatures, Goblins, so we're already off to a great start, then we can look at artifacts and we get Memnite and Ornithopter, those are FREE! Since we added some artifacts we get another bonus, Kuldotha Rebirth, now we can turn that Ornithopter into three 1/1 Goblins, all on turn one.

Alright, so we have fast cheap creatures, now we just need a way to increase their Power... it used to be the only real way we had to do this was with Goblin Bushwhacker, which is amazing, because those three 1/1 Goblins we had on turn one are now four Goblins that are all 2/1 and can attack on turn two! This isn't quite enough though, remember what I said about playing lots of the same card. Unfortunately there aren't any other cards that do the same thing as Goblin Bushwhacker, but we do get a new mechanic as of Mirrodin Besieged, Battle Cry. Battle Cry is a mechanic on creatures that says "when this creature attacks all other attacking creatures get +1/+0", so now we have something very similar to Goblin Bushwhacker on cards like Signal Pest and Goblin Wardriver.

So now we have 6 cards that you want play sets of, there's room for 4 more play sets, two go to Goblin Guide and Goblin Warchief. The other two should go to burn cards to keep your opponents board clear. (I use Lightning Bolt and Forked Bolt.) After that it's all about figuring out exactly how many lands you want and maybe having an extra creature or two.

I played my RDW deck at the last FNM, took 3rd place, someone else I know was playing a deck almost identical to mine, he lost almost every round. What it really comes down to is "shuffle shuffle shuffle - 'Did I get a good hand?!' - if you did, yay you win, if not, mulligan and hope for better luck, or just hope their deck is REALLY SLOW". A few games I let someone get up to 6 mana, yeah I lost.

MTG: ONLINE

I recently have started to play Magic Online (MTGO), which is basically just a digitized version of MTG. It cost me 10 bucks to get an account, and I bought one extra pack of cards, so I have invested about 15 dollars so far, which feels like a fairly low entry fee considering how much I've spent on physical cards. The client you play on allows you to buy cards from the main store, trade with other players, play casual games in various formats (I only play Standard), and join online tournaments.

When I first started playing I had to figure out what deck I was going to try and make, since cards essentially cost the same as their physical counterparts, and there's no realistic way to get digitized copies of cards I already own. So with the cards I started out with I began looking at trading bots that are run by players, when you start talking to one it is similar to downloading files from an IRC bot:

It took me quite awhile to hunt through a bunch of bots to find the cheapest versions of all the cards I need, but once I was done I had constructed a cheap version of my RDW deck that I talked about in my last post. (pretty much identical, just missing about 8 rare cards that I didn't want to spend the money on)

Once I had my deck constructed, I started joining casual games to test it out, below is a screen shot of the casual game finder window. One of the nice things about MTGO is there are hundreds of players online all the time, so it's really easy to play test a deck.

Once in a game you just click through the phases (playing cards and using abilities where needed) as the game progresses. Below are some pictures of me stomping on a random player pretty hard, and an example of my RDW deck winning on turn 3 (the fastest that it can win).

MTG: Mono-Black Infect

Well, I was feeling the urge to start back up with competitive play at FNM (Friday Night Magic) this week. My brother and I recently sold our bulk old/useless cards to the local card shop and I bought my second Skitheryx with my share of the money, which finished off my Mono-Black Infect deck, utility-wise anyway (I like to have promo art cards when I can, and there are a couple more that I need to top off this deck). So I took the deck in on Friday. It was fun and I did fairly well, tldr; I went 3/2, took 8th, and probably should have won my fifth round, but more on that later.

My first game was against... well I honestly don't remember, I know who I played and that he was playing White/Red/Green. I don't remember him playing anything of consequence though, because both games I played a Phyrexian Crusader on turn three, much to his dismay. Anyone that knows the card, or that clicked on that link and read what it does realizes that it has protection from Red and White, and just as a note for anyone not familiar with color stereotypes in MTG, Green doesn't really have any creature destruction spells. Needless-to-say, he couldn't do much about that alongside a cascade of temp-buff spells.

The next two rounds (the first of which I lost, barely) were both against another fast aggro deck of the same basic type "Red Deck Wins" (RDW). As the name suggests, it's Mono-Red, and it wins, a lot. The concept is to play free artifacts, like Memnite, and then use Kuldotha Rebirth to turn it into 3 goblins, then use cards like Goblin Bushwhacker and Goblin Chieftain to buff the goblins up and swing with them, it's one of the fastest decks in Type 2 competitive play currently, with a fairly regular third turn win. My infect deck sports a fairly regular fourth turn win, but that's as fast as it can win, so it's tough for me to compete with RDW, though not impossible.

Round four was against a very good player, playing a very good deck called "Caw-Go", which consists of playing small White flyers and using another creature to fetch very powerful equipment from their deck and equip them to the flyers. I ended up winning this round because of Phyrexian Crusader as well, but the funny thing about this round was my opponent. Next Friday will be the Top Eight tournament, which happens a few times a year. My opponent for round four was technically in position 9 or 10 (I forget, but he was really close) and he needed to beat me to get into top eight, so he practically begged me through the whole round to just concede. I told him no, simply (and truthfully) because I wanted to actually beat a Caw-Go deck (they're good decks!). Halfway through the round (after I was clearly winning) I told him I wasn't even going to be in town next weekend, and that I had just barely fallen out of top eight myself because of my bout of humorous decks I had been bringing. He was sad :( (but I beat Caw-Go!)

OK, so, other than my loss to an RDW deck, which is fairly cookie-cutter (disregarding that it's one of the three competitive decks that I play, heh), I had been doing pretty well. Round 5 made me mad, I got paired against a (good) Blue/White control deck (yuck) with a good player behind it (double yuck). Sure, I can accept a solid loss to a good control deck, but during the first game I made a VERY critical error, which cost me the chance at going to a third game, and a good chance to beat him.

What happened was he had me fairly low, low enough that I was going to be dead after the next two of his turns, and it was during my second main phase. He was at zero poison, I had a Plague Stinger I had just played with a Livewire Lash equipped to it, a Virulent Swipe, Vampire Bite, Virulent Wound, and a Sign in Blood in my hand, and I told him to go. Now, take note that Virulent Swipe has rebound on it and that just targeting an infect creature with a Livewire Lash on it enables me to do two infect to a target.

All I had to do was at some point during that turn or during his turn target my Plague Stinger with the Virulent Swipe and do two poison to him, and then during the next turn rebound the Virulent Swipe, cast Vampire Bite, and then swing at him, if he does nothing to prevent it that would be the original 2, plus 4 for the rebound and the Vampire Bite, and then the Plague Stinger would be attacking for 1(base)+2(livewire)+2(swipe)+3(bite)= 8, plus the original 6 is 14, way more than enough to kill him. He DID have something to deal with it, but it was just a Condemn, which targets the creature, so I get to direct 2 infect at him again cause of the Livewire Lash, so the creature would deal no combat damage, but he would still be at 8 poison. Remember I had the Virulent Wound in my hand, I could kill my own creature with it in response to him Condemning it, and the targeting effect from the Livewire Lash would activate and put him to 10 poison just from the Livewire Lash targeting effect.

Nope, I didn't do that, however, I had another chance to fix it! Remember I had a Sign in Blood in my hand, I had more than 2 health during the turn I would have been attacking, and I had quite a bit of mana (long games against control decks). If I had just used that, drawn the two cards, I would have found (I checked afterward) another Virulent Wound! I had a chance to win, missed it, then a chance to fix the mistake and still win, and MISSED THAT TOO! I was so irritated with myself... that player went on to take 4th :( as a note, the RDW deck I lost to won the tournament, maybe time I'll play that... maybe, I like my infect deck :)

NOTE: For those of you that like the idea of not playing cookie-cutter decks, please keep in mind that though I'm using a lot of important infect cards, Mono-Black Infect is NOT cookie-cutter, it's my own thing that I built, I get a lot of people at FNM telling me I should make it Blue/Black (my excuse is that I don't have the dual-lands to handle the mana issues multi-colored decks present). RDW is the only thing I really play that is cookie-cutter and even that is slightly tweaked to fit my own preferences, more on that in a different post.

Magic The Gathering: The Hilarity of Annoying Green Decks.

So one of my longest lasting hobbies is collecting and playing Magic The Gathering (MTG), I play weekly at a local shop for Friday Night Magic (FNM). I usually play fairly competitive Standard decks, but about a month ago I was starting to get angry with my decks not working the way they should (unlucky draws, etc), so I began making "fun" decks each week and have been playing them for the past three weeks.

For anyone that is unfamiliar with MTG, here is the Wikipedia article.

One of the easiest ways to make a simple/quick deck is with green cards, so the first two decks I made were both mono-green, and were basically just simple, sub-par, "aggro" decks (I make creatures, and then attack my opponent with them to do damage). I actually tried making both of the decks as a single deck to begin with, but it turned out there were two different ideas floating around, so I separated them by the two key cards that I thought made them funny decks, Primal Cocoon, and Timbermaw Larva, each of which never normally see play in competitive Standard.

The Primal Cocoon deck ended up revolving around Omnath, Locus of Mana, Sacred Wolf, Overwhelming Stampede, and a whole bunch of mana producing Elves. The idea was to get a Primal Cocoon or two on a Sacred Wolf and let it sit there for a few turns while I defended myself with Fog and a big Omnath, until I could cast a Stampede and have all my elves get +X/+X for the size of my then enlarged Sacred Wolf. The concept is actually really terrible, since most good control decks won't let me have such a narrow win condition, and good aggro decks are going to kill me before I can get very far. I ended up actually going 2/3 with the deck (I won 2 of 5 rounds), as it turns out, Omnath is very powerful by himself, since he just gets bigger and bigger, and you always have mana available to cast defensive spells, like Fog and Vines of Vastwood.

The second deck, based on Timbermaw Larva, was entirely Forest centric (green basic land). The whole idea was to use cards like Harrow and Cultivate to pull all of my Forests from my library into play, have a Timbermaw Larva in play with a Strata Scythe equipped to it. Then when I attack with the Larva it is huge, and if need be I had a few cards that could give it Trample, if they had creatures to block with. This deck ended up having an even more narrow kill condition, and it actually was a lot slower, since the creature base costed a lot more mana, I think I won a single round that night. I did however discover that Fog is hilarious, and no one likes playing against someone that can cast it over and over (I had started seeing this the previous week, and it really sunk in by this point in time). This got me to start working on the best and worst deck yet!

Last night I played something which was dubbed "Power Fog" by the end of the night by everyone that saw me playing it. Since the previous two weeks I had noticed everyone hated it when I prevented all combat damage they dealt multiple turns in a row, I decided to make a deck that... well, did nothing BUT prevent combat damage, on every single one of their turns. I came up with 7 different cards that prevented damage; Fog, Tanglesap, Blunt the Assault, Harmless Assault, Safe Passage, Haze Frog, and Soul Parry (only prevents from two creatures, but it's cheap). I ended up not running full play-sets of everything, cause there wasn't enough room in the deck, and I needed to actually have a kill condition still. I had originally intended to win purely with Haze Frog, just cause it was funny, but then someone suggested Luminarch Ascension, which was ingenious. I also found Goldenglow Moth, and since it gains you life when it blocks, and not when it takes damage (since you can declare blockers, and then prevent the combat damage with an instant), it is just a constant life-gain, which really helps prolong the game. Finally I got the deck together and started play testing with my roommate, where we immediately noticed that while I could prevent damage for quite awhile, my opponent would build up a massive army and eventually swarm me to death when I was finally out of prevention cards, so I had to add Day of Judgment. We also realized that I had very little way of dealing with direct damage and control decks, so I had to add in Leyline of Sanctity. Finally the deck was about as good as I was probably going to get it (it wasn't, there were a few changes I could've made that I found out about last night, but they were fairly minor). At the tournament I won a single game, not even a round, one game, however, everyone I played against and everyone that was around to watch each of my matches found every game to be hilarious. Mission accomplished.

The problem with the deck was I would eventually run out of cards, since I didn't have any means of gaining card advantage other than Day of Judgement, which isn't a draw spell, and the only possible kill condition was the Luminarch Ascension, which was fairly easy for people to not let me activate, or even have, often times. Still, probably one of the most fun nights I've had at a tournament in awhile :)