Bonjour mes amis! I am your writer here, giving you weekly tours into another area of casual land. From decks to card evaluations, casual formats to multiplayer strategy, I am your guide to the land of the casual.
Today I want to bring you one of those cuisinart articles where I have a bunch of topics to discuss. Most of these won’t take up too much time, but I wanted to get a chance to talk about a variety of things.
Not every topic can be something massive or grand or article-length. Therefore, let’s take a quick tour through casual land, and see what we can find.
Kaleidoscope
Online casual players know that recently a new format arrived on MTGO, which is totally awesome. This format has thee simple rules. First, only multicolor cards can be used. Second, Glittering Wish is banned. Third, it is Extended only.
Now, a little over a year ago, I wrote about an offline causal format called Chameleon. Unlike Kaleidoscope, Chameleon does not allow all multicolor cards, just gold cards. That means no to Invasion era split cards, and no to hybrid.
Since Wizards has added the format online, I’m fine that they changed it. Chameleon had been created years ago, and with Shadowmoor block’s heavy use of hybrid, it makes sense to allow it in your online format. I am on board.
I also agree that Glittering Wish would likely get out of hand quickly. Pre-banning it is fine by me. It also suits releasing this format now, with Alara Reborn and its 100% goldness. Everything looks great!
Well… Almost everything.
I am not a fan of having casual formats restricted. Casual formats should, by their very nature, be as open as possible. There is no reason to stop casual players from playing cards they have or want to play.
Obviously, you shouldn’t be able to play Nine-Ringed Bo, as it goes against the nature of the format. Instead, I am talking about multicolor cards. Since Kaleidoscope is a format where you play only lands and multicolored cards, shouldn’t you be able to play as many of the multicolor cards that you own?
The Extended restriction to the format feels unnecessary. Why can’t I play Ebony Treefolk or Recoil? Why not Fire Covenant or Wood Sage? This seems like a restriction that is arbitrary in nature. Therefore, I would suggest simply making it Online Classic instead of Extended.
As is it right now, people cannot play cards from the first multicolor block in the multicolor-only format. That doesn’t make sense. Let’s make sense and make the format better.
Why Have We Not Seen the Reprinting of Swords to Plowshares?
I seriously wonder this. Path to Exile is great. I’m glad it was printed because I can run it next to Swords to Plowshares. Let’s be honest though. The power level between STP and PTE is so minute, it makes barely any difference at all.
How far are we from getting STP reprinted? If Path to Exile is great, but not broken, why not go ahead and print the Swords? You’d probably want to wait until Path is moved out of Standard in a couple of years, but then you could totally reprint the best casual card of all time.
Yeah, I said it. Swords is the best card ever. Sure, Counterspell is tops, and there are new hotness cards like Harmonize, but Swords to Plowshares is the king. Give it some love!
The Card I’d Submit If I Were Ever Asked to Play in the Invitational
This is an idea I saw elsewhere, but I love it:
Abe’s Tutor
1B
If you spent U to play this, search your library for an instant. If you spent W, search for an artifact or enchantment. If you spent G, search for a creature, land or planeswalker. If you spent R, search for a sorcery. Reveal any chosen cards. Shuffle your library.
Fist of Suns loves this!
Top Ten Basic Land Pictures:
10. Forest — Euro Set Red: France: Kev Walker. I don’t know why it haunts me so. It’s just a beautiful picture. It reminds me of driving though tree tunnels back home in WV.
9. Island — Urza’s Saga #335: Donato Giancola. I love the lightning and the sea. The color of the sea makes this, because it just works beautifully.
8. Plains — Odyssey #333: Eric Peterson. Perhaps I just like storms, because this is a great one, with the lightning over the plains and the nomad standing under the tree (which is quite stupid, standing under a tree as an electrical storm approaches).
7. Mountain — Champions of Kamigawa #302: John Avon. Maybe I just like weather? The combination of snow and pretty mountains and that bridge/rock thing in the back makes me very happy. This is the only Mountain on my list, because I feel they get short changed. One of my art pet peeves is how almost every card features the relevant color in its art, so wizards are wearing blue robes, clerics white, etc. But trust me, as a guy who grew up in the mountains, they are a lot more colorful than red rock. Few artists really convey this well.
6. Island — Shards of Alara #236: chippy. Man I love this Island. The grid overlaying the sky or world or whatever is so Blue and so awesome. This is just one breathtaking land.
5. Island — Shadowmoor #287: Warren Mahy. I really enjoy how the purple is used menacingly in this piece. It makes the whole thing stand out and makes me all warm inside. Pretty.
4. Swamp — Lorwyn #291: Ron Spears. It’s the happy flowering Swamp! I love it. Swamps are actually pretty colorful places from what I’ve seen, but because Swamps are tied into EVIL BLACK RAR, they have to look menacing. That’s sad, because we often get just one view of Swamps over and over and over again, but not here! Don’t worry, this is not the only Swamp on the countdown.
3. Forest — Shards of Alara #248: Zoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai. Just breathtaking in its beauty, this Forest is one of several lands in Shards that are just really fetching. Two others Forests are really good too, making me quite happy to see them. The scenery, the vantage point, and the detail make this one of my favorite Basic Land arts of all time.
2. Forest — Ice Age (A): Pat Morrissey. I love the colors in this old school Forest. I’d put this up against all of the new lands for overall prettiness. In a day when a lot of Magic art was truly hit or miss, this was a strong strong hit.
1. Swamp – APAC Set Blue: Taiwan: Ron Spears. Everybody who plays with me knows that this is my favorite piece of Basic Land art. I call it the Fire Swamp. I love the spirit fireballs, the tombstones, and the twisted tree. This is truly a land classic, and I’m very happy to have one in Abe’s Deck of Happiness and Joy.
Honorable Mention to the Guru Island, Mirage Plains, Island from Portal II with a Drake, Ravnica Mountains, and more. I feel that often, Basic Lands have the best art in each set. I like them a lot, and the newer stuff, from Ravnica on, has just been really strong. I felt the Mirrodin basics were very yucky looking, and the Kamigawa stuff was hit and miss. Ravnica and on has had some strong entries. Good job!
Three Un- Cards I Would Make
If a third Un- set were ever made, and I don’t think that’s going to happen, there are three cards that I think would be really nice for casual players that I can think of. Here they are.
Bolt of Rules Lawyers
2RR
Instant
Deal 20 damage to target play if they are looking at the top card of their deck when they have no mechanic that allows them to do so.
No.
End. The. Turn.
4
Instant
End. The. Turn. is colorless.
Split Second
Play End. The. Turn. Only if target player has been taking more than 1 minute with their turn. They must end their turn within the next ten seconds or lose the game.
Can We Move to the Next Game Please?
URGWB
Sorcery
Play only sometime after the tenth turn is finished. Flip a coin. If you win, you win the game. If you lose, target opponent wins the game. This flip cannot be affected, added to or manipulated in any way.
Each of these does something nice. I have to admit, I regularly look at the top card or two of my deck when the multiplayer game gets slow, so Bolt of Rules Lawyers would work wonders on me.
The second card is really needed for multiplayer. A lot of players will start taking these slooow turns, and multiplayer connoisseurs know that you want to speed things up due to the natural tendency of the format to be slow. There are a lot of long turns being taken, and you can speed it up with End. The. Turn.
The third card is a way to honorably end those long drawn out boring games and move on the next one. No one wants to concede and lose, so everyone keeps playing long after the joy has been sucked out of it. I added the clause that should stop things like Goblin Bookie or Krark’s Thumb from working on it, but if the wording needed to be changed and whatnot, someone would have to spruce it up.
My Personal Favorites from Alara Reborn
In my review article, I spend so much time talking about the value of cards. Now that I have played with them, here are the ones that just really, really enchant me.
Wall of Denial — I have regularly touted the value of good cheap walls in my articles. In multiplayer, your opponent will rather attack someone with no creatures with their Grizzly Bear than you with your Wall of Blossoms. Blocking is good. Wall of Denial is just awesome at this. At 0/8 flying, it can survive even Akroma-sized threats and live. Shroud is a great addition because now an opponent cannot target it to take it out, if it becomes too annoying. For just three mana, you can easily drop this early. In multiplayer, this is an amazingly good tool.
Grizzled Leotau — See above, only it costs less, has a bigger backside than many two-drop walls, and can attack when needed.
Wargate — I can just think of tons of ways to use this, and it twinkles in the back of my mind with all sorts of subtle goodness. This will be a tool in my decks for years to come.
Madrush Cyclops — The Fires-esque deck I built in a previous deck is just the first thought. Fervor on a strong stick is simply an amazing card. There are tons of ways to use and abuse this in the long haul.
There are my top cards from the set. I love them all!
I named Steel Wall my #2 Common/Uncommon for multiplayer in an article because defense is simply that important. You see me rock Wall of Blossoms, Fog Bank, Steel Wall and more in my decks constantly. Wall of Denial just slides in perfectly.
Writing Articles
One of the problems with writing casual articles is that once you have a good idea, it is hard to redo it. For example, I did a four-article series on the Top 200 non-rare cards that didn’t get press. It was a fun series, but it is done now. If I go back and find another 200, their power and usefulness will be much diminished. Perhaps someday I’ll do an update for all sets printed since then, but for now that’s just seven sets, so again, the value might be a bit on the low side.
That’s probably why I wrote this article. It’s a lot easier to write a few paragraphs on various topics than it is to write a full-blown major article on something big. This is a good thing to write when the well dries up but you want to keep current.
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And with that, I’ve come to the end of another article. I hope you enjoyed this tour.
Until later…