Ah, a new year, a new StarCityGames.com format…
Apparently, I am one of the lucky ones to have shotgunned a position for a weekly in time to actually get one. While in many ways this is akin to saying, “I’m one of the lucky ones to have shotgunned a position in the eighth-annual Beale Street Bleach Drinking Extravaganza,” it does mean that at least until I resume my usual slacklerly tendencies (which will probably be in and around Tuesday of next week) I get to wax melodramatic about the present Extended season.
Now, there’s no way I can possibly Frank Karsten the metagame for that long, because both my attention span and my paycheck are too small to actually dissect every single list and mine the data looking for the statistical top performers. I’ll leave that to McKeown. What I will be trying to do is to give you updates on my personal playtesting results throughout the next few months while taking into account the inevitable metagame shifts. I’ll also be chiming in about Random Issues Magickal in order to meet my word limit liven up the conversation a little bit. By that I mean “I want a bunch of posts in the forums about some dumb topic like ‘Is Split Second good for Magic’ or ‘Rumor Has It You Finally Got A Haircut’ or ‘Tim Aten Lip Ring Sold On eBay For Twenty Five Hundred United States Dollars’ so that I can pretend to have a loyal and enthusiastic readership.” This last point is particularly important because apparently StarCityGames.com no longer has Daily Series, which are easily my favorite things to write and were also notably the only pieces that I ever turned in on schedule. Without those, I’m deathly afraid of fading into obscurity without my ugly and nubile mug on the front page of a high-traffic website. We can’t have that, now, can we?
That Storm deck really is good, by the way. Just saying. Though it needs a couple of Gargadons and Bogardan Hellkites in the board. I mean.
Today’s content consists of two lists, one related to Various Things and one related to Extended. I apologize to the three or four of you who may have just had a heart attack due to the shock of my attempting to produce actual content halfway through the first page of one of my articles. Rest assured: I won’t be making a trend out of this. Expect more tired tirades, irrelevant irreverence, and awfully annoying alliterative assonance in the future. Two pages of nonsense will continue to be the norm. But right now I’m at work, and in theory I’m supposed to be writing, you know, real world things.
Who am I kidding. “Real World.” I work at an alternative weekly. The gyre has already widened, and there is nowhere to go but down. If you see me on a street corner, just remember: once upon a time I was a good Team Draft partner. That’s got to be worth a nickel or two.
List The First:
1) If you have any idea how to get a hold of Shaheen Soorani, let me know. I am supposed to be rooming with him in Geneva, but I haven’t talked to him in a month. And make him write a Worlds report, since I can’t win a game against anything with his deck and feel like I therefore must be doing something wrong.
2) Thanks to whoever voted for me in the SCG awards earlier this month. Seeing as how I wrote an article in and around once every three months, I appreciate being mentioned at all. Unfortunately I feel like a professional wrestler thanking the “fans” for his shot at the Heavyweight Title, so I’ll move on before I start crying sniffle sniffle.
3) On a related note, congratulations to Mike Flores on his Writer of the Year win, and also a huge thumbs-up to Pat Chapin for taking 2006 by storm.
I know it’s become fashionable to bag on Mike – it’s one of my favorite hobbies, after all – but there really is nobody like him. The sheer volume he produces is honestly impressive in any field, and then there is the fact that he actually just never writes bad articles. This is especially impressive because there were hardly any Constructed-relevant PTQ seasons or Pro Tours last year, and those are obviously Mike’s specialty. Most writers – myself included – find it much easier just to shirk out on content during those dry spells. Mike’s volume, meanwhile, never diminishes.
Pat, meanwhile, has gone on a format-hopping tangent over the last several months. He’s run the gamut from Vintage to Standard and has redefined several commonly-accepted aspects of Magic theory in the process. Most impressively, he’s done it all in a vacuum. Come this summer, he’s a man I hope not to have to battle against.
4) Does anybody else wish there was one more Pro Tour on the yearly circuit? I mean, I know I sound a bit like my grandmother complaining about pain in her joints, because there is actually not a single thing that can be done about this. But I remember Canali’s year (I think it was) when there were like seven stops, and there was actually no point in the year when you couldn’t go out and play genuine competitive Magic. Now, there are probably one hundred million reasons why this could never ever happen again, most of them having to do with the economics of flying several hundred people across the globe one more time per year. Furthermore, apparently a lot of people actually like the reduced schedule because it means less travel, less diverse playtesting, et cetera.
But if you look at this past year, not all of those problems were remedied at all. For one, with the emphasis on “diverse locales” (which I am obviously all for) it’s less realistic that a PT will be within driving distance or even on the same continent, so adding one more Pro Tour in a less random but still moderately interesting location wouldn’t really up the schedule all that much. Secondly, the like five weeks between Prague and Charleston still carried with them the same “awkward rush playtesting problem” that happened when there were seven Pro Tours in a year. So it doesn’t seem like that’s solved everything. Our team’s best deck, for example, was made on Brandon Scheel’s Prague hotel room floor. I still contend that it was one of the best decks at that tournament.
The benefits of a slightly revised schedule, on the other hand, would be simply huge. For one thing, more events would even out the randomness. Look at all the Level 4 and 5 players from the 2005 season who didn’t even make the train this past year. It’s naturally much harder to do when one bad tournament – or two mulligans-to-five back to back in that tournament – cost you a huge chunk of your entire season. The corollary to that, of course, is that huge finishes matter a little less. Personally, I believe in rewarding consistency.
This would have the hugest impact, though, on the PTQ players. Now, a lot of Magic players are high-school or college-aged. Yet over this past winter break, there were exactly zero relevant tournaments to play in over that month-long span of time. This doesn’t seem to be a problem just for the players. For Wizards – and anyone can obviously correct me on this, because I have absolutely no idea what percentage of the market tournament players make up – this seems like a month of time that they could be making a ton of money somehow, whether on events or product or what-have-you. Qua?
Now, the scale-back on Pro Tours might correspond with the recent increase both in Pro Points and prize money on the Grand Prix circuit, except…
5) Where are all the GPs?
There are nowhere near the amount of Grand Prix tournaments listed on this year’s schedule that there were last year. If this is just a booking issue, and more GPs will be listed throughout the year, then point at me and call me stupid. But once again, more frequent tournaments equal more consistent results etc…
6) Does anyone else think that this block is just, um, really cool?
Like, I am not One Of Those People. I don’t envision myself wrapped in a silk cloak coaxing dragons from the Aether to bury my opponents in an avalanche of flame, or whatever. I think of the game numerically and strategically, and don’t really “get it” when people are like “Oh, isn’t that game kinda like Dungeons and Dragons.” But man, do I have fun playing Time Spiral. I dig all the nostalgia. I love all the reprints. And yes, I’ll begrudgingly admit, the entire universe being one messed-up screwball of sci-fi alternate-reality time-travel Philip-K-Dick-Acid-Trip nightmare is SO FANBOY TIGHT.
The set is really well-designed too, which helps. From what I’ve seen of Planar Chaos, they’ve done a great job “messing with the color wheel” while still maintaining loyalty to the flavor of the colors. I was somewhat afraid they would just arbitrarily start doing things for the hell of it – “dude, a Blue Stupor, that’s um neat.” But the variants on off-color abilities – the Blue draw-discard, the green Pacifism-sort-of – simultaneously maintain the colors’ present flavor while allowing a whole host of new possibilities. So kudos to Wizards on that.
7) Someone else might be covering for me next week, because I have to go to a (I can’t wait to see all the hell I am going to be catching for this) Mock Trial tournament in Los Angeles. In case you were wondering whether or not I was a tool – not that it’s difficult to guess – there you are.
8) Go see the film “The Blood Diamond,” if you have any sort of cinematic taste. In the trailer, the story looked tired and sympathetic. It’s not. In the trailer, Leonardo DiCaprio’s accent seemed like it would make me want to commit suicide. It didn’t. What the film did do was present a partially-fictitious but largely-accurate account of a part of the world that people need to hear about. Unlike, say, Hotel Rwanda, the film didn’t rest on the laurels of the emotive force the story and situation itself would inevitably generate. Rather, it attempted to be a good film and tell the tales of realistic individuals in the context of the Sierra Leone diamond trade situation – as opposed to making the situation itself the principal story and using the narrative to promote awareness of that situation. Yeah. Go see it. And stuff.
9) For the upcoming Pro Tour: I’d love to see the return of actual pro players in the commentary booth. I remember why this had to be discontinued in the first place, but I think it’s potentially time to go for it once again. Nothing was funnier than Osyp in Columbus. Pretty please?
List the Second, or, Bear All of This in Mind for Extended, Please God
1) Imagine that this text is in bold letters. Imagine again that said letters are the most offensive shade of fuscia ever imaginable. Now imagine finally that they are flashing at you tenaciously with Frankie Goes To Hollywood playing in the background in a heartbeat monotone that is slowly but steadily pressing you forward towards the brink of insanity. Are you ready yet? Okay, here goes:
MAKE SURE YOU OR AT LEAST ONE MEMBER OF YOUR PLAYTEST GROUP ACTUALLY KNOWS HOW TO PLAY BOROS.
Just because it’s the aggro deck doesn’t mean that Ralph Wiggum can win a Pro Tour with it. Remember: aggressive decks are the easiest decks to play passably but the hardest decks to play perfectly. The reason I say this is because everybody who builds a “rogue” deck over the next three months is going to say that it beats Boros. At least eighty percent of those people are going to be wrong, but will think they are right because they are creaming someone in their group who has no idea how to play the deck. Every land that is dropped, every creature that is played, every burn spell that is held, has to have a long-term purpose. You absolutely cannot go on autopilot. Every single season, people create a bunch of cute new machines that are very nice except for the small detail that they just can’t beat your run of the mill blunt instrument. Don’t fall into this trap.
2) I imagine that this could be a corollary to the first point, but when you’re sitting across the table from U/W Tron, don’t play directly into Remand or Condescend. We’ve all read the articles about maximizing your mana, but casting the wrong second-turn spell can cost you the game. Tron played first. You went land, Savannah Lions. They played land number two and shipped it. It’s your second turn. You swing, play a land, and have the following options:
Cast Silver Knight
Cast Isamaru, Hound of Konda
Cast Isamaru and Firebolt them
It’s reasonably likely that options one and three lose you the game, whereas option 2 makes it very difficult for them to win. If you drop Long John and they Remand it, you both did nothing with your turns except that they drew a card and you didn’t. If they Condescend it, they took care of one of your threats and set up a draw. Now, if you cast Isamaru instead, they’re probably not going to Remand it (even though they should) and they can’t Condescend it, so you’re going to pass the turn. No matter what they do, they’re going to pass it back, and you’re going to swing and do nothing else on their main phase except burn them when they tap mana. Even if the worst-case scenario happens—they play a signet and keep counter mana open—you have the same game plan. You’re making their countermagic dead and forcing them to look at fewer cards. You’ll never give them an opportunity to cast that Counterspell again. If you cast a Firebolt, though, you go ahead and lose the advantage you just created with option two. You miss out on two damage, trade with them card-for-card, and gave them something to do with their two mana, essentially passing up on a zero mana Time Walk for yourself.
Friends don’t let friends lose to Urzatron. Man, do I hate that deck. Even though I love Shaheen. And Fact or Fiction.
3) More about Boros Deck Wins: I strongly recommend the Kird Ape / eight Pro Red guys version with maindeck Jittes somewhere. That’s the only version that has even a chance (not a huge chance, but still a chance) at beating Nassif.dec. It also obviously has an edge in the mirror, particularly with Big Cloaksies. Char is also an interesting choice (though I can’t fully recommend it yet) as it (mostly) gets around Counterbalance and also screws with people’s burn math.
4) Levy’s deck is just the best deck. I would cut one maindeck Sins of the Past for either a Careful Study or a Chromatic Sphere. It’s also possible (but unlikely) that Nightscape Familiar deserves a place in the deck – not as a four-of but as a mana-ramping investment. I don’t really like that idea, necessarily, but it’s something to keep in mind.
5) Consequently, someone really needs to learn how to play that deck, too. Said someone needs to know when to cast Empty the Warrens because you don’t always have to straight up rawdog Go Off. Trickbind or Stifle are also incidentally very bad against the deck for game 2, so if that’s your sideboard plan then you really need to do some thinking.
6) With the ubiquitous presence of Meddling Mage, “threat diversity” is becoming less of a trend and more of a decent idea. Now, I’m not asking for everyone to go grape nuts and Jim Roy every single one of their decks. But I do mention that to say that if Echoing Decay, Smother, and Ghastly Demise (or whatever) all do the same thing, it’s probably not a terrible idea to consider including each of them separately. This same issue might potentially arise after the release of Planar Chaos and its forty-five Timeshifted pseudo-reprints. If you can play two copies of functionally equivalent cards as opposed to four copies of one, remember to do so!
7) That Billy Moreno goblin deck was not a fad. I’m going to get laughed at for saying this because it seems that basically everybody dismissed it, but I’m having excellent results with the deck. The key is to treat it, yes, like a combo deck – and mulligan with it like it’s a combo deck. I would probably cut one or two mana sources – Brightstone Ritual and land – for at least one Gempalm Incinerator (Meddling Mage on X) and one Siege-Gang Commander, even though I know Siege-Gang was cut for a reason. Mainly, I just draw too many mana sources, and the only way you ever really lose with Fecundity out is to draw two or three lands in a row without more Goblins. Incidentally, remember to use the sac-lands first. Those minor percentages add up.
8) Please God bear in mind post-sideboard configurations when you’re boarding. This always holds true, but again I see people doing things like boarding out all their Lightning Helices and Fire / Ices against U/W Tron and not bringing in Flametongue Kavu (with Nassif.dec obviously). They’re going to have Meddling Mages, and those Mages are going to be real annoying if you don’t do anything about them. Ditto for finding a way to combat TEPS when it has Duress and four Orim’s Chant. Sounds like somebody needs to start being proactive. Hint Hint.
9) If you’re a rogue deckbuilder, don’t straight up pack it to any of the following cards:
Counterbalance
Destructive Flow
Exalted Angel (a very good Mono-Green deck of mine had this problem)
Isochron Scepter
Lightning Helix (yes, there are decks that pack it to Lightning Helix)
Umezawa’s Jitte (this card does in fact still exist)
Pernicious Deed
Kataki, War’s Wage
Dwarven Blastminer
Solitary Confinement
10) DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT
Don’t.
Do. Not.
Base all of your metagame predictions on what people run on MTGO. This is the single biggest mistake I’ve seen yearly since Magic Online became popular. Wizards puts decklists from real tournaments up for a reason. That’s – by and large – what real people are playing. The MTGO metagame is largely much more sophisticated than the “paper” one. People in real life don’t have access to infinite product, infinite information, and infinite flexibility. You need to be prepared for the fad decks, because there are people like me who always play them. But you also need to recognize that somebody bought all the cards for, I don’t know, Gifts Rock at the beginning of the season and can by and large modify that deck to accommodate whatever happens. So if you’re trying to third-layer game theory the tournament and play mono-black Rack / Ravenous-Rat.dec to accommodate all the anti-anti-Ichorid players whose decks require a huge number of cards in hand to operate (or whatever), you’re probably going to be sorely disappointed. If I had a penny for every time someone obeyed this advice… I could probably, um, pay Scott Rosen back the $60 I’ve owed him for like two and a half years. Or, err, I’d at least come close.
All right. Join me next week (if I write,) or the week after (if I don’t), and we can frolic o’er the fields like the Scandinavians or whomever.
Yuh Roon. Jit-TAY. Naght-en.
Zac