A few weeks ago our hero headed off into the frozen wastes of Coldsnap in order to check out the latest expansion. Now, weeks later, his report has been found. There is no sign of a body. He may thaw out by Spring.
This was actually written a few days after the pre-release, and has been sitting around until I finally threatened to chop Craig into little pieces and bag him in my freezer for later consumption if he didn’t print it. Unfortunately there was a glut of similar articles around the same time, and as my resources don’t extend to removing the entire writing staff, this one doesn’t see the light of day until now.
Actually, it’s kind of interesting to go back and see how my initial perceptions have changed since the pre-release. Coldsnap is still relevant for people with upcoming Nationals (Don’t ask how mine went. Let’s just say the universe is in balance, and for every golden Lightning Helix there is indeed a price to pay) and will be of interest to the online brigade (at least for a couple of weeks anyway).
So off we go…
11th Jul 2006.
Far, far before I needed to head off north into the deep frozen wilderness of… erm… Bradford, there was another, possibly even more perilous, quest that needed to be completed. Pete couldn’t make it as he had work that weekend, and so I needed to find another taxi service. Andrew Clayton, a.k.a. Boomer, lived just up the road in Northwich. If I could get there I could get to Bradford.
There was a slight problem. I’m currently living in a black hole when it comes to public transportation. Northwich is only ten minutes up the road, yet takes about an hour and a half to get to on a train service that in all probability takes you on an entire tour of Cheshire. Fortunately, a thorough scan of the local bus routes had given a route and a time. I just needed to get to the bus stop. According to Google Maps it was around ten minutes as the catapulted puppy flies, but it wouldn’t be an easy journey. Oh no. To get to it I had to head into… Chav-town.
There was a palpable increase in tension as I crossed the road. Surly locals glared at me from the beer gardens of the Pig and Gristle as fat flies buzzed over their alco-pops. I kept my head down and try to look innocuous. I’d prepared carefully. No iPod or anything that looked like it might be valuable. The loss of the iPod hurt. Without it I had nothing to shut out the inarticulate grunted challenges from the menfolk, and the obscene propositions from underage girls.
I kept my head down and marched into the heart of the estates. Pebbledash walls confronted me on every turn, while laundry flapped on the wind. Somewhere through here lay the bus stop that was my goal.
I reached the railway line, shut off with a silver fence like prison bars. The bus stop was on the other side. There must be a way across. I followed the line down towards the station. There must be a way across, some underpass or bridge. Something.
But no. I followed the line down as far as I could and there was still no way across. It was so close, a punted kitten away, but my way was forever barred by the fence. I put my hands on the bars and howled my frustrations into the uncaring sky. There was no way through, which meant I had to head back. Through Chav-town.
The tension had grown. The locals were aware of me. I sensed furtive movement in the corner of my eye. The locals were moving, planning…
They made their move as I rounded the final bend. But fortunately I’m a homicidal killing machine when provoked and had prepared for this eventuality. I crossed the road just as the last body part hit the tarmac with a wet splat. Then I phoned Boomer and asked him if he could come pick me up, please.
So Coldsnap. Coldsnap is the “missing” Ice Age block set, or rather the “what-in-the-hell-will-we-release-as-the-4th-set, as-there-isn’t-a-Core-set-or-Un-set-this-year” set. Poor Coldsnap. It’s a child out of its time, an unwanted child no one really knows what to do with. I could go off in detail about the economics, and whether we even need it, but that’s probably another article in itself. Instead I’ll just give you this:
Coldsnap Pre-release Deck 1
3 Island
3 Plains
6 Swamp
1 Frost Marsh
1 Mouth of Ronom
1 Scrying Sheets
3 Snow-Covered Plains
2 Boreal Griffin
1 Ronom Unicorn
2 Squall Drifter
1 Swift Maneuver
1 White Shield Crusader
1 Adarkar Windform
1 Rimewind Taskmage
2 Chill to the Bone
2 Feast of Flesh
3 Rimebound Dead
1 Soul Spike
1 Tresserhorn Skyknight
1 Zombie Musher
Hah, bet you thought the preamble was finished, but no, I have yet more to talk about my epic journey into the frozen north.
Well, actually it isn’t much. TO Nick Sephton was having a bit of a ‘mare. He’d been moved from the usual venue within the Bradford Student Union. We were further up the road, which was slightly bad, as I had to embark on another epic quest to find a cash machine that was actually dispensing money (stupid student holidays). I returned to find the venue had been double-booked. The room we were scheduled to occupy was instead full of scantily-clad women performing keep fit exercises, and so we had to split between two smaller rooms. Personally I think a far more amicable solution would have been to divide the rooms half and half (not that I was salivating at the prospect of watching women’s… erm… bits bounce up and down…)
Oops, sorry Craig, I think I just lost the feminist audience.
Okay, so then it was time to register the product. To some it’s a hassle. To me it means I don’t get “beat” by the kiddie who was “lucky” enough to open two dragons and twelve Surging Flames. It’s one of the reasons I like going to Bradford, although the second no longer applied as changes in prize support meant the winner is no longer guaranteed a box.
An interesting thing about Coldsnap is that they’ve changed the colors of the expansion symbols. Predictably, registration was punctuated by various cries of “this booster has no rare”, or “this booster has eleven uncommons”. Commons have a white symbol, uncommons a sort of dark gray, and rares a sort of gold symbol, if you hold it under strong light and at the right angle.
And so the card pool:
Actually I’m going to hold off on that, for reasons that will become clear later.
Would this be because you’re embarrassed about the deck you built?
Erm… No comment.
Anyway, the deck I chose to play is listed above.
I was fairly blessed in that I managed to open three snow-colored lands in one of my main colors. Scrying Sheets seemed like it might be a bomb in that 18 of my 40 cards are snow. Rimebound Dead was originally consigned to the unplayables pile, as I don’t regard 1/1’s to be all that exciting. At this point I wanted to be Blue/White as the cards seemed quite good and fit a strong snow theme. Unfortunately the deck was far too many cards short, and as this isn’t Ravnica I didn’t want to risk the dreaded 6/6/6. Black didn’t feel very exciting, but the removal was as good as could be expected in this format, and about this time I remembered the Rimebound Dead. The deck presented itself. Rimebound Dead, in association with my tappers, would control my opponent’s men while I won through the air with my assorted fliers. With Scrying Sheets to outdraw my opponent in the mid-game, I felt my deck was fairly strong.
I was also under the impression that Coldsnap was the “Poisonbelly Ogre” set (i.e. full of 5 mana 3/3’s) and that it was better to draw. Amazingly, I labored under this misapprehension for virtually the entire day (Coldsnap Sealed is capable of some crazy-fast tempo draws and also has about a zillion bears).
So okay, off we go. As with my Dissension article, rather than present it as a series of reports, I’ll just highlight my thoughts on various cards.
As an additional bonus, a few of you might have noticed a card peculiarly named “Skred” and wondered what on Earth, if anything, “Skred” actually means. Never fear, as a PhD student in Computer Science with a slight splash of linguistics I can now reveal the answer to that little conundrum.
Skred
This is what happens when you stake someone out to a hill and run over them with a heavy iron bob-sled. Said person is said to have been “Skredded.”
Round 1: Theodore Araby-Kirkpatrick
Small child versus Pro Tour runner-up, so obviously I lost. Actually no, that just isn’t physically possible at pre-releases, even if he did manage to open Sunscour and Adarkar Valkyrie. The reason being the following piece of news:
Coldsnap features many cycles across all the colors and yes, White got the shaft again (Sun’s Bounty, Martyr of Sands)
Whenever there is a cycle of cards, you just know White is going to get the poison slice of the pie affectionately referred to as “life gain.” Sun’s Bounty has Recover and Martyr can gain a lot of life, but effectively you’re still throwing away cards that don’t affect the board state. The next time you think about putting a card like Sun’s Bounty in your deck, ask yourself a question: “Would you rather gain four life or would you rather make a random dork that blocks and kills their random dork, thus saving you the eight to ten life said random dork would have inflicted upon you over the next four or five turns?” I think we all know the answer to that.
Update: Sun’s Bounty is still terrible, but there is a theoretical draft deck that uses Martyr of Sands and Grim Harvest to gain more life than your opponent can deal damage.
Nasty skill test cards (Kjeldoran Javelineer)
Every time I see a card like this I inwardly weep, because I know I know at some point some small child is going to make it on turn 1 and then do nothing but pay the upkeep over the next five turns while I develop my board. I implore you Wizards, please end the corruption of the young and innocent and burn all copies of cards like these before they ever reach booster packs. Think of the children.
As an aside, not all skill test cards attain their final destiny as bookmarks or underneath table legs. A while back we used to mock the lowly Woodland Druid from Odyssey. It used to be that if your opponent made a Woodland Druid on turn 1, you knew it was safe to go and grab lunch as you obviously had a bye. But then we started to notice a disturbing trend. The lowly Woodland Druid was more than he seemed. Whenever the Druid appeared, he would soon be followed by Overrun.
At first it was funny to taunt friends, “Ha, you lost to Woodland Druid,” but then it would happen to you and it wasn’t so funny anymore.
Then we realized the dread truth. It wasn’t just a junky 1/2, it was the herald of Overrun… and it absolutely had to be killed on sight.
Kjeldoran Javelineer is just nest fodder for hamsters.
I’m old. I’ve played Ice Age sealed. Cumulative Upkeep was naff back then, too.
Update: Not necessarily hamster nest fodder. I’ve heard people talk about this as a late drop to try and push bears through in the aggressive White deck. I suppose it’s a possibility, but that would mean playing Plains. Not a good idea.
Anyone know what this card does, other than break judges?
My opponent made one against me and I called the head judge, Nick, over to find out what it actually did. After several hypothetical situations created using cards in both mine and my opponent’s graveyards, I had to stop, as Nick appeared to be lying on the floor and twitching in some form of fit.
(Apparently, the important thing to remember is that it isn’t like Flash Foliage and can’t create blocks that would be illegal).
After dispatching Ted in rapid fashion, I looked through his deck and noticed that the Gods of Sealed Deck had played the cruelest of tricks. They’d given him two bomb rares in white (Sunscour and Adarkar Valkyrie) and not a single other playable White card.
Nasty.
It might hurt, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and leave the star players on the bench.
Round 2: Kenneth Hall
I’m trying to think of ways to emboss this match except neither of us did anything much. I had the edge as my nothing much happened to fly.
Round 3: Richard Hagon
Rich Hagon should be a familiar voice to you all, as his dulcet tones now comment on all European Grand Prix as part of Mox Radio. I used to spank Rich something savage every time we played, but something must have rubbed off from the pro’s he’s interviewed of late, as he avenged several years of hurt by inflicting a fairly brutal drubbing on me.
Not ever being able to block (Goblin Rimerunner, Ohran Yeti)
Although it spoils the suspense, I’ll reveal now that Rich went on to win the tournament with a perfect 6-0 record. This came as a bit of a surprise, as at first glance his deck seemed fairly ordinary, no dragons or anything stupid. Playing against it was a different matter. The deck had a good curve and was utterly relentless. I couldn’t fend it off as the Rimerunner prevented a key creature from blocking, while the Ohran Yeti’s snow-activated first strike ability meant anything left couldn’t block without chumping.
Update: Both of these are really solid picks for Red. They’re both snow-covered also which means they also power up your Skreds.
He also had:
Not ever being able to block II (Zombie Musher)
Unblockable against 90-odd per cent of the decks, and unkillable by roughly the same margin. Not a lot more needs to be said about this guy. Don’t make it without snow mana open if you can help it, and if your opponent does, then terminate it with extreme prejudice.
Update: I think this guy might be a little over-rated in Draft. He is really good but I’ve found the aggressive Green/Red/White decks are too fast for him, and the Blue decks just tap him. Solid, but not something you should be getting excited about.
Rich also had this. I’ll come back to it later.
Realizing your deck is flawed (Rimebound Dead, Boreal Griffin, Squall Drifter)
After being bashed I spotted a very bad deficiency of the deck. In theory the plan seemed sound: Hold off their guys and win through the air. In practice it was a little too mana-hungry. The deck needed snow mana to regenerate the Dead or give the Boreal Griffin first strike and then White mana to tap a creature with the Drifter. Rich’s deck simply overloaded my ability to fend him off. Like a boxer with no footwork (think Frank Bruno, for those that can remember), all it did was take punch after punch and then fall over.
I think I was right in my initial assessment that 1/1 regenerators don’t really have any impact on the game.
On reflection, I should have probably switched out the Blue in this matchup for two Skred and a Surging Flames. The Serpents are too slow, and unlikely to block when I really need them.
What Skred?
Oh yeah, I haven’t showed you my card pool yet.
Skred
This is a little known form of defense used by a rare sect of monks in the Scottish highlands. Under threat from Viking raiding parties a volunteer would lure the party to caves at the base of a cliff with the promise of gold. The rest of the monastery would then bury the raiding party (and presumably the unfortunate volunteer) under a hail of small stone, or “skred.”
Round 4: Jonathan Wilkes
Never, ever, under any circumstances make your Ronom Serpent without first making a snow-covered land.
I think Jonathan Wilkes made a few other mistakes, but I’ll spare him the blushes of mentioning them here. To his credit he refused any attempts to let me allow him to take the mistakes back. This is good, as by allowing himself to be punished for his mistakes it creates a negative feedback association that should prevent him from making the mistake again in future (electroshock therapy helps as well).
On a completely unrelated note, does anyone else think the artist might have screwed up here? Looks awfully like a wurm to me, not a serpent.
Update: Really not a fan of this guy. He sort of has a role in being the giant wall to block up the ground while Frost Raptors and other fliers do the business, but he’s too expensive and doesn’t stop “that” Green guy.
This guy isn’t very good if you aren’t very good at drawing your snow-covered lands.
Update: and snow colored lands are fairly hard to get. Blue really wants them and so has to spend most of the creature deck slots and early picks on snow stuff and snow lands just to make the Taskmages work.
Round 5: Graham Ribchester
This was one of the most laughable excuses of a Magic game I’ve ever played. Ribbo had a solid deck and as he’s reasonably competent, and I’d started to realize my deck wasn’t up to much. I suspected I was probably going to get bashed. Game 1 I got horrifically screwed for Black mana. Game 2 I mulliganed to five and was very surprised to win after Ribbo drew about a million land. Game 3 I was screwed, but Ribbo appeared to be playing a 40 land deck so it didn’t matter. I think there might have been evidence of a Magic game in here somewhere if I looked hard enough.
Nope, still looking.
Juniper Order Ranger + Chill to the Bone
I was reliably informed this was a bomb over the course of the weekend. However, it is one of the few creatures in the set that isn’t snow and is therefore handily Iciclized by Chill to the Bone.
Chill to the Bone is sort of like Rend Flesh in that it only targets half the creatures within its set, but unlike Rend Flesh, at four mana it is unlikely to see much use in the potentially more vulnerable world outside.
Update: Still don’t know what to make of Chill to the Bone. On my Nationals draft pod there were tons of them going round. They do kill the Hulk, one of the few cards that can handle it, but they can also get stranded with nothing they can actually kill.
Round 6: Ray Fawcett
A win here and a loss for Rich Hagon would mean I’d still finish behind him on tie-breakers. So with all of a booster to play for, I put on my game face … and got splatted in about five minutes.
Giant Growth, wrecking combat math since 1994. This one is worse as it’s uncommon and so less expected. It also comes back.
Ronom Hulk (or rather Cumulative Upkeep isn’t as bad as you first thought)
I’d heard a lot of fearful whispers about this card all day, but didn’t really get to face one until the final round.
Didn’t seem so scary. I threw a Chill to the Bone at it and it went away.
Then Ray cast Grim Harvest and it came back. About this time I realized having 18 snow cards in my deck might not necessarily be a purely positive thing.
Protection from snow attached to a very big body means that the cumulative upkeep is largely irrelevant. Generally he kills you long before your opponent runs out of mana. Very, very nasty critter. It’s like a Blastoderm, except has the ability to hang around for longer.
Update: wasn’t far off on this. This hits the table on the other side and there often isn’t much better to do than weep. I’ve managed to pull games around through careful chump blocking but generally I get very afraid when Green decks hit five mana. I suspect they really should have made it uncommon, but as Coldsnap has so many other things wrong with it, quibbling over card commonalities seems a pointless exercise.
I think I probably still take Skred over it, but there isn’t much I don’t take Skred over.
Post Mortem Day One (where we get to rip things up after they’ve died)
What was the final conclusion:
My final finish was 4-2 and some luck with tiebreakers was able to push me up a prize bracket into 4th.
Two byes (sorry guys, we were all at that level once), two horrific mana draws on the part of my opponents, and two losses to players that were competent and had reasonable decks.
My deck didn’t really perform as well as I anticipated. After looking through my pool I didn’t think there was any way I could build it differently.
Dang, I got lumped with a pile again. I must be due a good Sealed Deck soon.
Now I show you the card pool.
Update: can we say dated. Never mind, enjoy it as a history lesson.
Coldsnap Pre-release Card Pool 1
1 Frost Marsh
1 Highland Weald
1 Mouth of Ronom
1 Scrying Sheets
3 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
2 Boreal Griffin
1 Jotun Grunt
1 Kjeldoran Javelineer
1 Kjeldoran War Cry
1 Martyr of Sands
1 Ronom Unicorn
2 Squall Drifter
1 Sun’s Bounty
1 Swift Maneuver
1 White Shield Crusader
1 Adarkar Windform
1 Arcuum Dagsson
1 Krovikan Mist
1 Martyr of Frost
1 Rimewind Cryomancer
1 Rimewind Taskmage
3 Ronom Serpent
1 Rune Snag
1 Surging Aether
1 Survivor of the Unseen
2 Chill to the Bone
2 Feast of Flesh
1 Gristle Grinner
2 Krovikan Scoundrel
1 Rime Transfusion
4 Rimebound Dead
1 Soul Spike
1 Tresserhorn Skyknight
1 Zombie Musher
1 Balduvian Rage
1 Fury of the Horde
2 Goblin Furrier
1 Goblin Rimerunner
1 Greater Stone Spirit
1 Icefall
1 Karplusan Wolverine
1 Martyr of Ashes
2 Orcish Bloodpainter
2 Skred
1 Surging Flames
1 Aurochs Herd
2 Boreal Druid
2 Bull Aurochs
1 Into the North
1 Karplusan Strider
1 Martyr of Spores
1 Resize
1 Shape of the Wiitigo
1 Simian Brawler
2 Sound the Call
The Green’s actually not too bad. I misread Sound the Call and tagged it as a three mana 1/1 (and dumped it in the forget-about-it pile) when it’s actually a Grey Ogre with the potential to get bigger. If I stretch to include the Martyr, all thirteen Green cards are potentially playable. After the multi-colored madness of Ravnica we’re back to normal Magic now, and really your Sealed Decks should be two-color with a splash. My Blue splash was a little too heavy and did give me mana problems.
Update: After being savaged by multiple decks with seven plus Sound the Call I can safely say with good grounds that I absolutely loathe the card. Every time I see one played on turn 3 I inwardly wince, as it means I’m probably going to be facing down three 5/5’s two turns later.
Yet another symptom of a badly diseased draft format.
With hindsight, I think I probably should have played this:
Coldsnap Pre-release Deck 1.01
3 Plains
7 Forest
1 Highland Weald
1 Mouth of Ronom
1 Scrying Sheets
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
3 Snow-Covered Plains
2 Boreal Griffin
1 Ronom Unicorn
2 Squall Drifter
1 Swift Maneuver
1 White Shield Crusader
2 Skred
1 Surging Flames
1 Aurochs Herd
2 Boreal Druid
2 Bull Aurochs
1 Into the North
1 Karplusan Strider
1 Martyr of Spores
1 Resize
1 Shape of the Wiitigo
1 Simian Brawler
2 Sound the Call
The Green provides a solid platform while White supports with creature control and evasion. The slight Red splash gives me removal.
Skred
The weapon of choice of an obscure Norwegian ninja cult, a Skred is a carefully carved icicle steeped in the blood of past victims.
Remembering all the special land is also snow land (Into the North + Scrying Sheets, Mouth of Ronom)
By not including the Green I missed a trick with Into the North. I looked at it and my immediate thought was Rampant Growth or Farseek. Actually it’s tutor for your special lands like the Mouth or Sheets. In Sealed Deck, tutoring for a removal land or card-drawing engine is probably very powerful, and I’m surprised I missed this. Oh well, even psychopathic geniuses that are destined to one day rule the world have their off days.
I did have mixed thoughts about the Scrying Sheets. Early on it was great, but I did have a sequence against Rich Hagon where I whiffed three times in a row. Basically you use it as a land early on, and only activate it when you’ve got nothing else to cast. At this stage of a game even something as simple as drawing one card in three might give you the game.
Drafting with Prof I – Mooooooooooooo!
After discovering one draft of RGD is going to be replaced with Coldsnap at Nats and that it was also going to be the Day 2 format for Malmo (Whyyyyyyyyyyyy?) I was determined to get some draft practice.
Not much to report here. I started with the intention of drafting a sensible Green-Red deck and instead ended up with a bunch of Aurochs and no spells. I got an ominous warning about how degenerate Ripple is in triple Coldsnap draft, as Ribbo flattened me with multiple Surging Mights and Surging Aether. I’ll come back to this near the end of the article, but I’ll say right now that I think R & D goofed up on this one.
I went back to Boomer’s with Ribbo and was indoctrinated into a strange internet world full of pink haired girls singing about cake and infinite variations on boulders chasing Indiana Jones and all kinds of computer game characters chasing a little black dude on a bike. Aah the Internet, providing proof that people have way too much spare time on their hands.
Off to Day 2:
Coldsnap Pre-release Card Pool 2
1 Frost Marsh
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Boreal Griffin
1 Darien, King of Kjeldor
1 Gelid Shackles
2 Kjeldoran Outrider
1 Martyr of Sands
2 Ronom Unicorn
1 Squall Drifter
2 Sun’s Bounty
1 Balduvian Frostwaker
1 Counterbalance
2 Frozen Solid
2 Rimewind Taskmage
3 Rune Snag
1 Surging Aether
1 Survivor of the Unseen
1 Chill to the Bone
2 Chilling Shade
1 Disciple of Tevesh-Szat
1 Feast of Flesh
1 Grim Harvest
1 Gristle Grinner
1 Gutless Ghoul
1 Krovikan Scoundrel
1 Martyr of Bones
2 Rime Transfusion
1 Rimebound Dead
1 Stromgald Crusader
1 Surging Dementia
1 Braid of Fire
1 Cryoclasm
1 Earthen Goo
1 Goblin Furrier
1 Goblin Rimerunner
1 Greater Stone Spirit
1 Ice Fall
1 Karplusan Wolverine
1 Lightning Storm
1 Magmatic Core
2 Ohran Yeti
2 Skred
1 Surging Flame
2 Aurochs Herd
2 Boreal Centaur
1 Bull Aurochs
2 Martyr of Spores
1 Mystic Melting
1 Ohran Viper
1 Panglacial Wurm
1 Resize
2 Simian Brawler
1 Sound the Call
1 Surging Might
1 Tamanoa
And my deck:
Coldsteel Pre-release Deck 2
6 Forest
5 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Frost Marsh
1 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Coldsteel Heart
1 Chill to the Bone
1 Grim Harvest
1 Earthen Goo
1 Goblin Rimerunner
1 Greater Stone Spirit
1 Karplusan Wolverine
1 Magmatic Core
2 Ohran Yeti
2 Skred
1 Surging Flame
2 Aurochs Herd
2 Boreal Centaur
1 Bull Aurochs
1 Ohran Viper
1 Panglacial Wurm
1 Resize
2 Simian Brawler
This was a fairly simple build. Throw the Green and Red cards together and make up the numbers with a light black splash. Rich Hagon, who registered the deck, thought I maybe should have been Black/Red, but that looked a little unexciting and the Viper looks like far too much fun too turn down (I got the chase rare, yay me). Darien also looked like he might be cool, but I only really had a few bears to back him up (as White got the shaft on the color cycles again).
Whose removal spell? (Lightning Storm)
The more observant among you might have noticed I left Lightning Storm in the board. This was an act of craven cowardice on my part, and I don’t have the faintest idea whether it’s correct. Basically if you aim a Lightning Storm at an opponent’s creature and it ever gets reflected back onto one of yours, I think you’ve probably just lost the game. I didn’t want to be in the situation of being afraid to play it for that reason. Yes, you can wait until you’re fairly sure they don’t have land, but how good is a removal spell that you can’t safely cast unless you have more land in hand than they have cards? I suspect players better skilled in the art of poker might be able to make more use of it. An interesting, if extremely dangerous, card.
Update: A rampant target for rules lawyering. Quentin Martin will love this card.
“Respond, pitch a land.”
“Hah, pitch another land. 7 to you!”
“Actually, I never resolved my ability. It’s still on the stack. Your effect resolves first, now I resolve mine, targeting you. How about you take 7 damage, sucker.”
Throw in the issues with forgetting Recover, Cumulative Upkeep and the slowtrips, and you have a set the judges don’t like much either.
Round 1: Graham Ribchester
Continuing the theme from yesterday we again failed to manage a single game of Magic. Ribbo was screwed in games 1 and 3, and I mulliganed to five in game 2. Yawn.
Skred
This is a punishment inflicted on traitors by Latvian pirates. Those found guilty of betraying their fellow crew members would be tied to the back of a dog team and dragged across the ice flats without a sled. This was referred to as a Skred-ride.
Round 2: Bryan Connolly
Bryan’s deck was like mine, except he had bigger guys (including those very irritating Ronom Hulk).
I said I’d come back to this. Yesterday Rich Hagon found it to be a bomb, but I found it to be a little too slow. I wanted to play it early to start going to town on my opponent’s forces. Then I had this odd game where my opponent was screwed for mana. The core killed an elf and then ran out of targets. All I’d achieved was to slow myself down and allow him time to recover from his mana difficulties.
It also dies to Ronom Unicorn, a lot.
Update: After more games with this on either side of the table, I think it might actually be a skill-test card. It really is too slow and not something that I’d rate as a high pick.
I thought Hibernation’s End might be the same, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I quite like it.
Being unable to block III (Greater Stone Spirit)
Combat with the walking mountain down becomes a serious headache. Unfortunately my mana draw was a little iffy, and Bryan made his first. He also had an unblockable Musher, so I wasn’t getting through that minefield of varied activations.
Round 3: Gavin Hepton
Back to the byes (sorry Gavin). His deck was a million bears and not a lot else. I couldn’t draw any Red mana in game 1, and so it was a little scary. I successfully read him for the Kjeldoran War Cry, but then still managed to block in a way that wrecked me.
The all-star player that wishes it could move to a better team (Ohran Viper)
Seriously, how good is this card? Basilisk, Ophidian, it does everything. I wasn’t sure whether it would be good for Limited as it never gets through, but the Basilisk ability pushes it well over the edge. Sometimes he nips through to draw some cards, but most of the time he can sit back and discourage their monster fatty from ever attacking.
Some other notes:
Don’t let it through when your opponent is screwed for his second color and desperate to find a mountain.
Don’t block it with only five power worth of monsters when you know your opponent has a Resize in hand.
As I said, bye (but don’t worry, we were all here once).
Round 4: Toby Archer
The Goo was the last card I added to the deck as I wasn’t sure how he’d play. He wasn’t that bad. He tends to go into the breach first, as you know your opponent has to deal with him at some point. He turned out to be very good, as I was flooded and only really had him and some removal to wreck gang-blocking. Still it was fairly close, and had Toby top-decked a snow land he’d have done me in with a Phyrexian Snowcrusher. This was mainly because of:
This guy is deceptively good for a number of reasons. The gain life ability really throws off combat math when racing, and also he’s a controlled sac effect. With so many recover cards around, this is quite important.
Update: And he’s also snow-covered.
Don’t cast this on turn 3 to inflict three extra damage, even if you can get it back later.
The attendance was under 32 players today, so it was only five rounds.
Round 5: Paul Graham
Paul Graham is my bogey opponent at pre-releases. If it’s not Jitte it’s something like Vinelasher Kudzu where I just can’t find the answer. Paul was happy with his deck today. This was surprising, as he was running four colors. Effectively he was Green-White with a splash of Blue for more fliers and Red for removal.
Skred
A mythical squid of colossal proportions that ravaged Bergen around 780 AD.
Game 1 he had mana problems. Games 2 and 3 I boarded in both Cryoclasm and Icefall, but this plan failed to work after I kept two land opening hands twice and failed to draw a third until I was too far behind.
Post Mortem Day Two (In which we get up to more rummaging in nice juicy guts)
So a 3-2. Again I got lucky with tiebreakers and was bumped up a prize bracket into 8th.
My deck was okay if unexciting. Bryan Connolly’s deck was very similar to mine, except his cards were better quality (2 Ronom Hulk) and he went on to win the tournament 5-0. The other loss was failing to make a third land on turn 3 in two games. Against some opponents you can pull back from that deficit, but Paul is good enough to make sure I wouldn’t get that chance.
Drafting with Prof II – Sentinels in Ashes
After seeing how effective Ripple had been in the last draft I wanted in on the action this round. Unfortunately I had Ribbo on my right, which meant I probably wasn’t going to get too many freebies. My first booster had nothing more exciting than Surging Sentinels and I ended up forcing those. I ended up with a very fast white weenie deck with six of the Ripple Knights and a Red splash for Skred. I also had the rare that pumped all knights, and four copies of the Kindle +1/+1 to all guys. As nothing cost more than three mana, I dropped the land count to 15.
Unfortunately this strategy gets completely destroyed by a single Red common: Martyr of Ashes. I also had comical luck with ripple, as I couldn’t ever hit another guy in my top 4 cards. Stupid mechanic.
The full messy autopsy (with extra gristle)
Sealed Deck seemed okay. There are plenty of reasonably-costed guys, and the snow mechanic is very well executed. However, the removal is a little on the weak side, and White feels like it’s been gyped again.
Constructed players won’t find much in Coldsnap, unfortunately. I wonder if this is deliberate, as I know there were some mutterings that another Standard legal set was starting to push things a little, especially with the high price of staples such as the shock lands. The Viper has obvious Constructed applications and is the best card in the set. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of this guy over the next few months.
After the Viper it gets pretty slim. Vexing Sphinx might be an interesting addition for fliers type decks and Haakon, Stromgald Scourge might spawn some interesting ideas with Dredge or Delirium Skeins. A card that may have fallen below some people’s radars is Rune Snag. This gives control and aggro control decks yet another Mana Leak.
Scrying Sheets and Snow-Covered lands could have some interesting applications. The Snow mechanic is so well thought out it’s a shame that it’s confined to Coldsnap. I think I would have liked to have seen it explored more fully in a full three-set block. As it stands there just aren’t enough snow permanents to really let it shine in Constructed (this might be a good thing, after seeing what artifact lands did with affinity).
Update: While Coldsnap is weak for Constructed, there is a little more there than I thought. Rather than being yet another Mana Leak, there is an argument that Rune Snag could be used instead of.
I think I’d quite like to build a snow deck also. Sheets and Mouth of Ronom double up as spells. I also neglected to mention the Ironfoot. As was pointed out to me at Malmo, this is a 3/4 that doesn’t tap to attack for 3 mana.
The big question mark is over the draft format. This is where Coldsnap’s intrusion may be the most resented, and I have to say I’m not a fan. The ripple cards in particular make the format seem way too swingy. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to let games of Magic decided by turning over the top four cards of a library should be flown off to Antarctica wearing nothing but swimwear and left to shiver. My biggest worry is that the successful draft decks will require players to declare “all-in” on a strategy very early, and give them no chance to recover if either boosters or player competition impact on that strategy. Following RGD draft was already going to be a hard act – actually cutting short RGD’s lifespan to make room for Coldsnap feels like a travesty. Hopefully, I’ll be proved wrong and the draft format will settle, but I’m currently not too excited by the prospect of triple Coldsnap draft in Nationals.
My overall mark is a rather low 3 out of 10 for the set. I like how they’ve revitalized the snow mechanic, but there doesn’t appear to be a lot for Constructed and I anticipate some resentment at replacing the popular RGD draft early with this.
Update: This is it, probably the main topic of controversy. So why did Wizards decide to curtail the popular RGD format to force the aberration that is Coldsnap on everyone? After Jeroen’s article I saw comments in the forums questioning if the people at Wizards knew what they were doing.
After seeing the frenzy of drafting both before GP: Malmo and my own Nationals, I would hazard that Wizards know exactly what they are doing. The general impression I got was that players were doing this more because they felt “forced to” in order to improve their chances for Nationals, rather than because they actually wanted to play it.
We all know that competitive play exists only to sell more cards, but I think we’d rather not have it rammed down our throats. The cynical inclusion of Coldsnap in premier tournaments does leave a bad taste in my mouth.
I was quite vocal on the British forums that we shouldn’t have Coldsnap at Nationals. There were a number of reasons why I felt it was a bad thing.
1. The MTGO Beta allowed triple Coldsnap drafts. Anyone on the Beta had a massive advantage. I thought this had been stopped. It also makes me very concerned about Pro Tour: Kobe, as it is very soon after the Time Spiral release. Is this going to be all about which players are fortunate enough to get on the Beta?
2. Recover, Cumulative Upkeep, and Slowtrips are just going to get people stupid game losses for forgetting. One match in Malmo saw both players get a game loss in the third game for forgetting Recover.
3. It isn’t a very good draft format. My thoughts on Coldsnap draft have oscillated between “oh my god this is the worst ever”, to “actually it might not be that bad.” The ripple and collect me’up stuff is plain terrible. Blowout games where you get flattened in the first few turns by cards you wouldn’t draft are not fun.
Although, fortunately, it doesn’t seem to happen that often. I’ve played quite a few drafts of Coldsnap where both players actually get to play Magic. I reckon about 3 out of 4 or 4 out of 5 drafts are probably okay. Unfortunately the remaining one, where it goes horribly wrong, makes you want to bang your head against the wall in frustration and wonder if they ever bothered testing the set
Coldsnap is fine for a change of pace, but it isn’t suitable for drafting in competitive play. Prestigious tournaments such as Nationals should not feature drafting with Un-sets, and basically Coldsnap is a glorified Un-set. By forcing Coldsnap on players this way my worry is that Wizards’s third set in the Ice Age block will be remembered with even less fondness than the expansion it replaced, Homelands.
Skred
Okay, I give up. I think it’s a Norwegian/Swedish/Danish/Finnish word, but I have no idea what it means. Hopefully one of our Scandinavian chums will enlighten us (and after that provide me translations for the various death/black/Viking metal albums I’ve got lying round).
Update: It’s the best common in the set. I’m happy to first-pick it even if I’m not Red, just to splash it. Kills most things stone dead for next to no mana. Unfortunately, most people realize this by now, and the only ones you get to see are the ones you actually open.
Thanks for reading
Craig Jones.