Crying infants in airplane cabins. The Nickelback song “Rock Star.” Single-ply toilet paper. Economic libertarians. Rush-hour horn-honkers. The traffic light at North Parkway and University that inexplicably makes you sit for literally ten minutes at two in the morning with absolutely no one on the road as you tick the seconds off your lifespan in a desperate attempt to turn left. Life*. I hate all of those things, but absolutely none of them rile my passions and inflame my innermost ire like the Champion trigger on a Mistbind Clique.
Hair spills out in mottled clumps, wrested from my scalp in desperate throes. Sweat trickles down my palms, a boiling osmosis, the tension swelling as my temples throb. I clamp my teeth down on my tongue to keep from screaming.
I am pretty sure there is actually nothing worse. I don’t want anyone to, you know, hammer nails into my skull to test that theory or anything, but for the last week I’ve been doing nothing but testing Faeries and I might actually go stand in traffic while drinking bleach if this goes on any further. There’s this phenomenal little game you play against Faeries during the combat phase that’s something like having to choose between either Lorena Bobbit or Tonya Harding as your wife. Do I cast this spell before I attack? Well, if I do, then they can counterspell it with Cryptic Command and tap or bounce my guys, and I feel like a mouthbreather for getting ahead of myself. On the other hand, if I don’t, then they just combat-step Clique me and make fun of me for having a grip full of creatures and electing not to deploy any of them to the table. Then the Clique kills one of my animals, flies over the top for like eight thousand damage, flips me the bird for value, and then makes out with my mother and my girlfriend at the same time just to spite.
Hollywood’s really going to be a fun Pro Tour!
If you’re dead-set on beating Faeries, I’m actually pretty sure the best way of going about doing so is to Riftsweeper their Ancestral Visions and not worry about packing maximum Squall Lines, but the better bet is to probably just run the good ol’ flower children with something absurd like maindeck Prodigal Sorcerer, Peppersmoke, or Mawcor to get an edge in the mirror**. You can Merfolk, I guess, but they run so many Banishings that I hardly even see the point in that – although Mirrorweave is pretty cute in that deck, I must say. Plus the Fae don’t even have all that many Islands to begin with, so all that work just might be in vain. There’s Red, I guess – and I like our Red decks – but Green is so good that they block all your guys, and then Primal Command happens and they might as well have just lobotomized all your burn spells and patted you on the head while saying, “aww that’s cute!”
I thought a way to go about getting there would be to just blow up every man-land in existence while trying to keep the Fae off Cryptic Command mana and deploying an early clock, so I came up with…
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Shriekmaw
4 Bitterblossom
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Fulminator Mage
4 Avalanche Riders
3 Grave Pact
3 Cauldron of Souls
2 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Graven Cairns
4 Sulfurous Springs
4 Auntie’s Hovel
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Pendelhaven
3 Swamp
1 Reflecting Pool
6 Mountain
Shockingly enough, the plan for beating Faeries didn’t exactly jibe well with trying to resolve five-mana sorcery-speed spells, so that was an ixnay. But my first-ever well-designed deck was a Lifeline-based Echo deck in Urza’s Block that featured Darwin (alongside Ghitu Slinger, Keldon Champion, and Keldon Vandals out of the board) that could just keep cycling through damage until the cows came home****.
O! the perils of originality.
For the astute among you, this pent-up frustration at Magic’s Public Enemy Number One should betray a yet-more-shocking truth: I’ve actually been gaming a lot this week! It’s unusual, I know. Who actually plays the game they get paid to write a column about? But between Hollywood testing and BDavis-related amusement I’ve fully remembered now why I love this game so much.
In particular, I can’t get enough of Shadowmoor draft. A format that I originally hated and decried as slow and underpowered I now realize to be every bit as innovative as its predecessor. I don’t know where to place Shadowmoor yet on the cross-block hierarchy – I view triple-Lorwyn and IPA as my favorite draft environments of all time, and it seems premature to say Shadowmoor’s up that high – but I do know that there’s tons of depth, tons of untapped potential.
To take a few examples, I remember being confused at the prerelease about whether or not color really mattered all that much. Sure there were a few cycles, but just how important was it, really, to be hybrid? Nine or so drafts later, I’ve reached a conclusion: it does matter. It’s incredibly important.
One of the most striking things I’ve observed about this environment (and really, about draft environments more generally) is that it only takes two or three commons in a triple-base-set-draft to give a certain theme or strategy a very real presence. Largely between Gilt-leaf Ambush and Lys Alana Huntmaster in LLL, for example, you could expect your average Elf deck to pump out a bunch of 1/1 tokens (with the help of some choice uncommons like Elvish Promenade and the mighty Imperious Perfect). Similarly, the enchantments, Duos, and Scarecrows all provide enough density in the common slot to make you actively want to manage your color choices carefully. Even in the article I wrote last week I didn’t fully appreciate the God enchantments. I’ve gone from thinking one or two were bombs, the other two were playable, and the R/B one was loose, to realizing that all five of them are basically insane. As much as it pains me to say it, Manaforge Cinder into Fists of the Demigod is almost unbeatable unless you can muster a removal spell right away. In my nine drafts of this set I have never lost a game where one of my enchantments stuck around on a multicolored creature. Their effects are just too dramatic. Even one hit from the U/W, B/U, and R/G enchantments puts you severely behind, and the Shield of the Oversoul ensures that (chances are) you’re going to be crushing in for much, much more than one single hit.
I think the secret’s out about the enchantments nowadays, but I also see the Scarecrows circling around the table entirely too late. Of the common color-matters Scarecrows, I’d consider the non-Green ones pretty ridiculous and the R/G one perfectly fine if you have both colors. The U/B is sick in Blue/Black and perfectly fine if you’re just blue, while the R/B and U/W ‘Crows I’d consider playable with either affiliation and completely idiotic with both. I also think that Scrapbasket really delivers as a roleplayer for precisely the same reasons as all the other scarecrows and God enchantments are powerful. He’s sort of like this set’s changeling, and he ups the value of your already-solid Cohort cycle along with everything else we’ve been discussing. I initially dismissed him as unplayable but am now perfectly fine with including him in my stack, even though I find him weaker than the Sootwalker cycle, each of which I’ve started to take fairly highly. Beyond the color-matters commons, of course, I think that Lurebound Scarecrow can be incredibly potent in the right deck – Black-Red being my favorite, as it needs some beef – and is a gamble I’m perfectly willing to take in almost every archetype. Tatterkite, too, keeps soaring up the ranks of my pick order because there’s just no good way to kill him in this format, and 2/1 fliers for three even with no other abilities are right on curve in your average environment. The Man, though, is the Wicker Warcrawler. In addition to being simply monstrous, he’s also an easy way to accumulate some counters to maximize cards like Fate Transfer that beg to have archetypes built around them. In that case, the Fate that usually gets Transferred is that of standing in front of an oncoming bus, because that is what it typically feels like to have this card cast against you by a deck that’s equipped to use it properly.
The Duos are also very good, but can be more ambiguous in their power level. Emberstrike Duo, for example, seems extremely weak but can fit nicely into the extremely aggressive B/R builds for exactly the same reason that Fists of the Demigod works well there: you need to get damage through as quickly as possible, and in the early game very few things stand up to a 2/2 first-striking creature. Safehold Duo didn’t excite me at first – 2/4 creatures for 4 are a staple of Sealed, not Draft, and attacking like a Hill Giant didn’t generate enough damage to make me pick him highly – but the more I’ve played with him the more I realized that I categorically underrate Vigilance as an ability. If you think about it, it’s sort of a combat-oriented form of card advantage, since (assuming your guy doesn’t die) you are essentially getting two creatures out of one card. I wouldn’t put it at a strict, unambiguous +1 on the card-advantage scale – and I wouldn’t really place much utility on such a scale in the first place – but I’m continually impressed with how much that ability contributes to my winning games. As far as the other three go, I’d rate them all about equally, with the Gravelgill probably being my favorite because it’s a perfect target for Helm of the Ghastlord (and fits nicely on the curve), and the Tattermunge probably being the best because of its initiative-gaining base power and toughness.
Alright, time to advertise the Brookings Institution. Gotta help promote good government, after all. Congratulations to me for having graduated this past Saturday – ::pats self on back:: – and here’s to FINALLY finding a way to beat those blasted Fae.
Zac
* Okay, not really – not at all – but I’ve been around BDavis all week, so forgive me.
** If the top eight of Hollywood features a maindeck Tim then I solemnly swear to sport Aten’s lip-ring in protest***.
*** If he’ll let me.
**** Which they eventually did about the eighth round of Grand Prix: Memphis.