“Mold levels continue to be off the charts!” — my local weatherman this morning
TV news people have a tough job; even when the news is bad, they still have to project a positive, sometimes even cheery demeanor. Day after day after day.
Bad news of the day: mold continues to kick my butt.
*cough*cough*hack*
When I was young and give and take and foolish said my fool awake, I expressed sympathy for my buddies who suffered allergies. Subconsciously though, I felt a sense of superiority, since my youthful body did not react violently against the environmental microscopic assault on our breathing apparatus.
I used to work at an alarm company in their monitoring station, and this middle-aged coworker complained constantly this time of year. A Yankee by birth, he informed me he never suffered allergies until he moved here. “If you don’t suffer allergies,” he says, “live in Virginia long enough and you will.”
I nodded in sympathy but didn’t really believe him.
Twenty years later, karmic payback is a bitch. Frickin’ mold…
*cough*cough*hack*
Legacy
I was working on an overview of Grand Prix: Columbus for Scrye magazine, when an interesting thought occurred to me. Seven of the Top 8 decks were either The Combo deck, or “Fish.”
Now, hear me out before you click over to the forums and call me an idiot.
Fish decks have evolved past their Merfolk roots so that you hardly ever see that creature type in decklists anymore, but in broad terms the style of deck consists of a mix of aggressive weenies backed with combo-hating disruption. Max Tietze 4th place deck is obviously a Fish deck with efficient beatdown creatures and plenty of disruption. He also makes the interesting inclusion of four Serum Visions, presumably to give him the best chance of having the right mix of land, pressure, and disruption.
Click here for the Top 8 decklists.
Now, check out the 6th place Threshold deck piloted by Paul Nicolo. It’s got the usual suspects like Werebear and Mental Note that has long distinguished Threshold decks. Of course, in Legacy you get to add Force of Will to the mix. Dual lands and fetch lands allow an easy Red splash for Lightning Bolts and the Red side of Fire / Ice too.
And check it out – Nicolo also makes use of four Serum Visions.
Threshold makes good use of the classic Fish strategy of efficient beatdown creatures backed by Counterspells as disruption, along with the combo-crushing Stifle.
Now let’s check out the two aggro Black decks. Efficient beatdown creatures? Check. Disruption? Oh yes, a metric truckload: Duresses, Hymns to Tourach, Unmasks, Extirpates, Leyline of the Void, Tormod’s Crypt. While the target combo deck is reeling trying to piece together its winning combination, a bunch of zombies and pump knights are clicking off the clock.
Weenies + Disruption = Fish, right? If you consider Goblins as a neo-combo deck, GP: Columbus can be boiled down to four combo decks and four combo-busting Fish-esque decks. Five decks packing Force of Will. Not exactly the surprising diversity as reported. I wish Richard Feldman awesome “TrinityRock” deck had busted into the Top 8 and stood the format on its ear.
Okay, now you can click over to the forums and call me an idiot.
Time Spiral Block Constructed
I finally got tired of getting my Wild Pair ass kicked over and over again by White Weenie decks on MTGO and was casting around for an alternative when I ran across Frank Karsten’s interesting Red/Blue Greater Gargadon concoction over on MagictheGathering.com. He named the deck “21” with the dream play of casting Word of Seizing on an opposing Teferi, cast Fatal Fury on Greater Gargadon (now uncounterable thanks to the borrowed Teferi), and attacking for 21 points of damage “out of nowhere.”
I love Greater Gargadon, and have been looking for an excuse to run it outside of silly aggro deck mirror match sideboard material.
I couldn’t make Frank’s version exactly as he posted, but I came pretty close. Here’s what I tested with initially.
Creatures (22)
- 4 Greater Gargadon
- 4 Mogg War Marshal
- 4 Riftwing Cloudskate
- 3 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
- 3 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
- 4 Sulfur Elemental
Lands (24)
Spells (14)
Sideboard
First off, after playing a while, the Riftwing Cloudskates felt clunky and awkward. The Teferi / Mystical Teachings element also felt off. Maybe I’m missing something, but the focus of this deck seemed to be getting a Gargadon out there (hopefully feeding it with something stolen by a Word of Seizing or three), and smashing through with Fatal Frenzy. Also, I hated not having creature removal since everybody and their brother appear to be running Magus of the Scroll and Blood Knights nowadays (which leads me to wonder if perhaps I need to go back to Wild Pair).
Since Frank said the deck wasn’t tuned and “you should view it more as a baseline that you can fiddle with,” I went ahead and… well, fiddled with the deck. Here’s what I finally settled on:
Creatures (21)
- 3 Fathom Seer
- 4 Greater Gargadon
- 3 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
- 4 Mogg War Marshal
- 3 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
- 4 Sulfur Elemental
Lands (24)
Spells (15)
To me, Word of Seizing and Greater Gargadon is the combo to shout home about, so I went ahead up to four Words. I also found myself siding in the Dead / Gones in almost every single match, so I figure why not put them in the maindeck if they were that handy? Fathom Seers just seemed broken alongside Vesuvan Shapeshifters, and they can be cast on turn 2 to stave off early Goblin or Blood Knight beatdown. Pendelhaven also does a good job at fending off those Blood Knights with your own Goblins.
At one point I moved Serrated Arrows to the maindeck – after all, once you burn up the arrow counters, you can sac off the artifact to feed your hungry Gargadon. Then I realized I was getting rather low on creatures, and stumbled across Jaya Ballard, Task Mage. Jaya doesn’t get much love in Constructed Magic due to the plethora of removal she dies to, but I’ve got quite a few creatures here that demand removal attention, so why not add her to the mix? If she sticks she can cause problems – she can even slap down Teferi for just one Red mana and a card! I even won one game by nuking the board and each player for six, sacrificing my doomed creatures to the Gargadon and charging across for 9 more.
I moved Teferi to the sideboard. Yes, he’s ridiculously good, but too many times I didn’t have the third Blue mana in time for him to hit the board as fast as I needed (those damn Blood Knight again). This configuration seems to fight Red decks, Blue/Green, and Red/Green decks fairly well. On the other hand, Teferi control decks beat me up fairly regularly despite the split second spells, so perhaps I need to rethink moving Teferi to the sideboard.
Also, it’s rather freaky how White Weenie is completely gone online now. Since I switched configuration, I’ve yet to see a Plains. Now, I see a metric truckload of Blood Knights.
Standard
Following up a bit from my column two weeks back, and the general discussion of Green, Blue, and the need for power balance, I was heartened to read the answer to yesterday’s Ask Wizards question, “Can you explain the new design rules and philosophy for the power of Green creatures?”
A: From Aaron Forsythe, Director of Magic R&D:
We’ve always believed that Green, as the “creature color,” should have the best creatures. Unfortunately, because most of the coolest abilities creatures can have belong to other colors (flying, ability to deal direct damage, haste, etc.), we need to find other ways to make Green creatures good.
Everything is currently in a state of minor flux, and we don’t have anything written down about exactly what Green should get at what mana cost. In general, I don’t like having rules like that set in stone anyway, as rules like that make it easy to stop ourselves from making powerful cards. A 4/4 for four is a good guideline, as is a 2G 3/3. We’re just going to keep trying stuff until Green ends up in the right spot in both Limited and Constructed.
Hmm… “We need to find other ways to make Green creatures good…” and “everything is currently in a state of minor flux,” eh? Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I can’t help but think perhaps the community discussion that kicked off across multiple columns and tons of forum response (and perhaps some level of sent emails) got the attention of the powers that be. What’s nice is that Mr. Forsythe has been known to have a fondness for Green creatures, and now that he’s the Director of Magic R&D, some positive changes in terms of power balance amongst the colors may be in the works. What’s not so nice is that what R&D is working on now won’t hit our booster packs for quite some time. Oh well, let’s see what happens.
So, touching on Standard… many of us are of course thinking of Regionals. My intentions were to load up my 1995 Dodge “Money Pit” Caravan with my buds and cruise up the road to Fairfax for the Mid Atlantic Regionals. Sadly, my Dodge Caravan had other ideas – limping into the mechanic’s shop, the front suspension is shot and requires something on the order of $900 for repairs.
If I had $900 handy, I’d probably play more Vintage.
Thankfully, I’ve been able to borrow a pick-up truck (yee-haw!) from my in-laws for a couple of weeks until we can cobble together the repair money. Since I can’t in good conscious take a borrowed truck on a road trip, I’ve gone from being The Transporter to needing to bum a ride to Regionals.
Amongst Magic players, there seem to be a lot more Bum-A-Ridesters than there are Transporters. Hopefully I can secure a seat with someone who’s not Jason Statham.
Anyway, I’m operating under the assumption that I won’t be home twiddling my thumbs come June 9th… and thus I need to start focusing in on what deck I’m going to play. The good news is that I’ve narrowed it down to three decks: a funky Project X variant, Dredge combo, and my new stylin’ Greater Gargadon deck. The bad news is that all three decks get hosed by some degree or another by graveyard hate. Are people going to play graveyard hate? Oh, most definitely.
Am I scared? Does The Fear have me quaking in my boots?
*puffs out chest*
Um…
*deflates*
Of course I’m petrified.
But I don’t think I’m going to let The Fear that I most definitely have stop me from fiddling with my graveyard. There is just too much fun to be had.
Okay, we’ve all seen several variants of the Dredge combo deck, and the one I’m leaning towards is similar to the one Sean McKeown posted in his most recent column, so if you haven’t seen it yet go check it out. It pisses me off that the best Dredge deck apparently doesn’t even need Green anymore! Though I have to say I might tinker around with running Gemstone Caverns and Simian Spirit Guides in my regular G/B Dredge deck – since cards in hand aren’t nearly so important as cards in the graveyard, I can see advantages in running these elements to speed the deck up a turn or two.
Here are the other two decks I’m in the midst of testing:
Creatures (26)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Wall of Roots
- 4 Dark Confidant
- 1 Loxodon Hierarch
- 3 Crypt Champion
- 1 Harmonic Sliver
- 4 Saffi Eriksdotter
- 4 Essence Warden
- 1 Teneb, the Harvester
Lands (20)
Spells (14)
Sideboard
Everyone and their brother have a Project X deck they’ve been kicking around; as I was finishing this column up, I noticed our own Mark Young posted his version this week. What distinguishes mine I think are Summoner’s Pact and especially Sprout Swarm. First the Pact – I know many other Project X fans have been drawn to Glittering Wish – it can be used to find Saffi for your combo, even if she’s had the unfortunate problem of being Extirpated. It can go search out Teysa if you’re looking to go ahead and win after gaining infinite life. And you can also set up a gold toolbox stocked with goodies like Glare of Subdual, Loxodon Hierarch, Putrefy, Mortify, and Giant Solifuge.
Still, I’ve been playing with Summoner’s Pact in several different decks of late and I find it simply amazing. It fetches two pieces of your combo, and if for some reason your combo gets hated by hateful and ugly graveyard hate, it can set up your plan B (which will typically revolve around Teneb the Harvester). If you go off and gain infinite life (or play a humongous dragon), you can certainly afford to make the mana payment next turn.
Sprout Swarm is an experiment that so far has been testing well. It’s a shame that it took a year and a half for another tournament-worthy Convoke spell to hit the scene, and it’s nice just how well they work together. I have found the Swarm early on helps speed your ability to Chord out your final combo piece, letting you combo out a turn or two earlier. Since the Swarm is instant speed, it can throw off your opponent’s math if he’s calculating how much time he has until you can go off and maybe taps down to cast Compulsive Research. Later on, Sprout Swarm can be a potent game-winning card all on its own – a Plan C if you need one. Against control decks you may very well need it.
I’ve been running with Bitter Ordeal as the finisher of choice since it doesn’t require an attack phase and can’t be effectively countered. Early versions of Project Z ran Utopia Mycons to both help fix mana by sacrificing Saprolings, and as a way to sacrifice several creatures if you needed to fire off an early Bitter Ordeal against Dragonstorm or preempt graveyard hate by removing it from their library. I may end up squeezing one Mycon into the decklist to search for, or I may end up abandoning Bitter Ordeal altogether. The jury’s still out on that one. What do you think?
Next up is my latest Greater Gargadon contraption, updated from the list I posted a month or so back. Here it is:
Creatures (21)
Lands (24)
Spells (15)
Sideboard
Featuring the maindeck combo of Leyline of the Void and Bridge from Below, this keeps your Bridges active even if your opponent’s creatures are dying, while conveniently hosing Dredge Bridge combo, Project X, and flashback Mystical Teachings.
I’m hoping between Ravenous Rats, Delirium Skeins, and Mindslicer that the deck offers enough disruption to have a shot against Dragonstorm. I’m also kicking around the idea of running Gemstone Caverns and Simian Spirit Guides in this deck too in order to speed it up, since the deck doesn’t mind living off the top of the library. I’ll let y’all know how the testing goes on these decks in the coming weeks!
‘Til next week… may your chest stay free of ridiculously high mold levels.
*cough*cough*hack*
Bennie