Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. This week we’re going to take a look at what’s new, what’s hot, and the lessons you could learn from players better than yourself. Along the way we’ll take a look at the absurdity of in-jokes and the wackiness that is Vintage Ichorid.
[The following is a transcript of the show. You miss a lot of funny when you just read.]
Percy Dredge
So this Monday Stephen Menendian dropped the Vintage metagame bomb with the new, fully rebuilt, and newly customized Manaless Ichorid. This is the balls-to-the-wall aggro deck that haunts Wizards’ dreams at night, the horrors of a first, second, or third turn kill possible in virtually every single match.
When you read statements like “This deck is utterly broken” from a man like Stephen, you know he’s not kidding around. And at the beginning of the next paragraph, he begins again: “Here’s the thing: this deck is really, really broken.”
For something to be “broken” in a format, it has to be really, really good. For something to be “broken” in Vintage? It’s like saying the sky is purple. Rarely does it happen, and when it does you’re probably hallucinating. But the forum replies are backing it up, personal testing is so off the charts it’s not even funny, and suddenly every Vintage player is finding their Leylines of the Void for the maindeck and thinking about putting Tormod’s Crypt main because of the horror.
And who is coming to the rescue, even in the “broken” Vintage format? Why it’s Yixlid Jailer, picking up the slack.
But the point is this: Bridge from Below was a card that Stephen specifically pointed out as one of those cards that people want as a two-of or three-of. But if it’s good enough for two or three slots, why not four? “I have seen arguments for three Bridges, but that doesn’t make sense to me. The advocate suggested that the fourth bridge is unnecessary because it produces “too many” men. To me, you can’t have too many men. You can always use these extra men to get damage in or feed your flashback spells. Bridge is most powerful in multiples.”
And you know what? He’s right as rain.
Dredge Domination
3 Ghost Quarter
4 Overgrown Tomb
2 Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
2 Swamp
2 Llanowar Wastes
2 Breeding Pool
5 Forest
1 Island
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Llanowar Mentor
4 Narcomoeba
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Street Wraith
3 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
3 Birds of Paradise
4 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below
2 Darkblast
2 Life from the Loam
1 Traitor’s Clutch
This is, of course, a raw and delicious list that is best dipped in wasabi and eaten at pompous places. It’s been played a few times and things are changing. What I do know is this:
Narcomoeba is free. I don’t know if you noticed that, but just in case. Free. Like, “put a 1/1 Blue flyer into play just for playing your deck” free. It’s weird. Llanowar Mentor is being dissed because you’ll miss land drops. However, by the same token you’ll get your Turn 3 Dread Return flashback on, along with the mana to actually cast that Golgari Grave-Troll you have in your hand. Also on turn 3. Did I mention turn 3 is usually a big turn for this deck?
Street Wraith is also free, but a different kind of free. It actually fuels the deck better than any other card currently in it.
But the star of this deck is Bridge from Below. Make no mistake: This is a huge, huge card. An impacting card. An impressive card. A card that will change your metagame no matter what format you play. You remember what my friend Joe said a few weeks ago about liking cards that punish players for playing mass removal? There’s nothing better than Bridge. Even if they get rid of the Bridge from Below with the Wrath of God, they’ll still be staring down 2/2 Zombie tokens as a result. Got two Bridge from Below in the graveyard? Sweet mother, it only gets more and more dangerous to play that mass removal spell!
Ladies and gentlemen, this has to be the undiscovered star of the set. It’s so damn good it caught the eye of Menendian. Granted, it works in the confines of a deck with four Bazaar of Baghdad, but when a set gives three cards – full sets of them, no less – to a new Tier 1 Vintage deck, you should take a damn hard look at those three cards. And they’re all awesome, and they’re all going to put Dredge on the scene for a long time.
And my God, what can you do with Bridge in Extended? Don’t think we’ve seen the last of this card, by any means.
You Could Learn A Lot From A Pro
In today’s title segment, we take a look at some of the Deck Tech footage from Pro Tour: Yokohama.
If you didn’t know or notice, in Brian David-Marshall article last week my work on the Pro Tour: Yokohama finals was featured. This isn’t to toot my own horn – much – but, nevertheless, if you haven’t watched ‘em, do so. If you like ‘em, tell Wizards. Comment on BDM’s article or the YouTube videos. If you want to keep this type of content coming, even if I don’t get to edit the next batch, you need to let Wizards know. Tell ‘em misterorange sent ya.
So first up is an important highlight from the Heezy himself, Mark Herberholz. In this video, listen to how he describes beating a R/G Stormbind deck with his undefeated at the time U/B/w Teferi Control.
((VIDEO FOOTAGE))
Hear that? That’s Billy Moreno words from a few weeks ago coming true again. He took damage until the point where he stopped taking damage (that is, by Disenchanting the Stormbind), and then he had enough spells, creatures, mana, and the wonderfully vague term of “advantage” to keep the other player from winning.
So when you Stormbind players think you’ve got it figured out by throwing down an early ‘Bind and killing them through random discard, Think Twice next time, all right?
Speaking of Stormbind, take a look at the current frontrunner in the Rookie of the Year race, Sebastian Thaler’s R/G list, and a curious thing that’s missing…
((VIDEO FOOTAGE))
Yup, the man has no use for a Stormbind in his deck. He’d rather play fatties or destroy your lands. With 24 lands and about a thousand mana sources, the deck was almost nothing but mana. He also had the incredible Blue-crushing idea of putting four of The Chronic in the sideboard, along with a single Island that would never be in danger of destruction.
In fact, despite his X-4 record at the time of this interview, Thaler won out and made Top 8. That’s what I call playing good Magic.
Up next is Raphael Levy and his Red Deck Wins goodness. The most important highlight of this Deck Tech video was about our old pal Browbeat…
((VIDEO FOOTAGE))
For the benefit of transcript readers, here’s the last sentence of the clip, via BDM:
“People have always talked about the punisher mechanic being a little…”
Awful? Horrible? Stupid? Oh yes, we’ve been there, I’ve been there, and hell, Mark Young wrote a whole article on why it sucked and why people who played it were just not “looking at the numbers.” He even named the article Brow Beaten!
Yeah, I’d say.
Anyway, let’s continue:
((VIDEO FOOTAGE))
You know, when I got back into Magic from my Extended Magic Break that everyone seems to take at least once or twice in their lives, I was looking through the old sets. One of the cards I thought was really great was Browbeat. But then I read the feedback and heard my friends bash it. “It never gives you what you want,” they told me. And it’s something I’ve said myself, on this show.
But sometimes, both options are what you want. So what does this do? Negate entire arguments? Prove a world of “bad players” right? Or does it change nothing because, as pundits like to say, “at this Pro Tour in this moment, the deck was good.” See also: This Girl. This Girl was a brilliant deck that just so happened to be awful. It’s that silver bullet that kills the werewolf moments before it rusts and then backfires through your eye socket.
This Girl and Browbeat were awesome in their respective arenas. But now that one’s definitely extinct, will Browbeat soon to become a Tier 1 card? Is Dash Hopes headed for winner circle? Can Nessian Courser possibly sound anymore like a foreign car?
Lastly, we have Will Lowry. He’s at his first Pro Tour, and expectedly excited. Let’s hear what he had to say about his Sliver deck.
((VIDEO FOOTAGE))
The power man, the powah! The raw powah! It is too great! The power of this deck to overpower the overpowering overpoweredness of…
This guy had 21 points when this video was taken. He finished the next day with 24. Maybe it’s not such a good PTQ deck idea right now.
Our last piece of video is from the finals of Pro Tour: Yokohama. Did I mention I edited them? That means I spent a lot of time watching these four games. And of all the games, there is a lesson most clearly seen and narrated in game 2.
It involves Kazuya Mitamura playing creatures as though he couldn’t remember what response he got from Wafo-Tapa in game 1. Let’s watch.
((VIDEO FOOTAGE))
Randy Buehler is spot-on here. In game 1, whenever he played something, Wafo-Tapa bent over backwards to kill it. There are only so many threats in Mitamura’s deck, and giving Wafo-Tapa an advantage like that was silly. Particularly after getting two-for-one’d the first time, he went for round 2. I understand the post-Wrath compulsion. It lives in us all. We’re sure that when our opponent Wraths, it’s the only Wrath in their hand. Not true.
And, again, Wafo-Tapa was trading Damnations one-for-one in game 1. Pay attention to how much removal your opponent has, but also how they use that removal in previous games to best judge how many risks to take.
This Week In Magic
Lastly I’ll run through a few stories circulating the Magic realm as of late.
First there was the love-fest article duo from Patrick Chapin and Mike Flores. Which was to say that two articles were so filled with in-jokes and bravado for each others’ abilities, the egos were blowin’ up. And the readers… were falling asleep.
Meanwhile Kyle Sanchez wrote… something… interesting. Um… yeah.
Next we have our own Craig Stevenson with a fun little gag that’s great for about five minutes. You know the kind. The gag is this: You know the feeling when a kid asks if some horrible rare is for trade? Craig does this, and follows it with “Aaaah!” … and this fills him with such glee that he does it over and over again.
Naturally he was called obnoxious, but I for one find it funny. It’s too bad you can’t really get the full effect online. Typing a-a-a-a-a-h versus “Aaaaah!” to some starry-eyed trader just isn’t the same.
Grand Prix: Columbus is looming, and I’m doing my best to attend. You guys hear that? The Magic Show on Location at the Grand Prix! Will I be grabbing interviews? You bet your ass. With the once-a-year Legacy goodness in full swing, I’m hoping to run into all kinds of Magic personalities. If you plan on going, be sure to pipe up in the feedback. The Magic Show needs a posse, yo.
My buddy Chris Romeo came all the way from Right Field to give me one of my favorite set reviews ever. Each card is a 10, or each card is a 1. Brilliant! Remember future set reviewers: The fun in reading them is, honestly, disagreeing with them. It’s fun to agree, but not as fun as it is to try to stick up for your favorite spell or creature.
Remember when we used to get weekly rants on how bad Green was? Give us some dissent, people!
Which has got me thinking… where are our villains? I’m afraid we’ve scared them off. I’m afraid that we’re so set on being ‘civil’ that we can’t let the loudmouths back in. Take Geordie Tait. There’s something about a guy who can invoke such emotion. A lot of times it’s uncomfortable. It’s painful. It’s true, and sometimes it’s fantasy. But no one catches my eye like Tait or Talen Lee in his prime.
People like to disagree. People derive pleasure from correcting or identifying with other people. So this cycle repeats itself. I want to hear from my detractors just as much as my fans. I love all you guys, and even when Talen Lee was bashing me for being unoriginal, not listening, not doing anything new, or what I could with the format, it was fascinating.
I miss those villains. We need villains because of their contrast. But there is a fine line between a villain and a troll. The best villains, as we know, are mislead. But still brilliant. Riddle me this: When Talen Lee was at his Talenest, Mark Rosewater himself personally asked him to write an article on Planar Chaos. Why? Because Talen got people talking, and because his opinions were so brash that it got everyone in on the conversation. Do we see such a set review or reaction for Future Sight?
And it kinda makes me sad.
The Answer
Well, I guess the answer to life, the universe, and everything isn’t “how many Magic Shows it takes to become rich.” Damn it.
So until next time, heroes and villains, this is Evan Erwin, tapping the cards so you don’t have to.
Evan “misterorange” Erwin
dubya dubya dubya dot misterorange dot com
eerwin +at+ gmail +dot+ com
Written while reeling from Grindhouse. God that movie was awful. (Trailers rocked, though)
Featuring the music of Erik Mongrain, Fountains of Wayne, and M. Ward.