{From Right Field is a column for Magic players on a budget or players who don’t want to play netdecks. The decks are designed to let the budget-conscious player be competitive in local, Saturday tournaments. They are not decks that will qualify a player for The Pro Tour. As such, the decks written about in this column are, almost by necessity, rogue decks. The author tries to limit the number of non-land rares as a way to limit the cost of the decks. When they do contain rares, those cards will either be cheap rares or staples of which new players should be trying to collect a set of four, such as Dark Confidant, Birds of Paradise, or Wrath of God. The decks are also tested by the author, who isn’t very good at playing Magic. He will never claim that a deck has an 85% winning percentage against the entire field. He will also let you know when the decks are just plain lousy. Readers should never consider these decks "set in stone" or "done." If you think you can change some cards to make them better, well, you probably can, and the author encourages you to do so.}
Prologue:
If you’re stationed overseas in the military and play Magic or know someone who is, please, let me know. A group of us had gotten a bunch of cards together to send to one soldier in Iraq, and we have many left over. There’s nothing awesome in the cards, no complete Pro Tour-winning decks or anything. There are, however, lotsa Magic cards.
Living in The Phantom Zone
This is always a weird day for me, the Tuesday after States or Regionals. My articles are due to be published only three days after Regionals (or States). Effectively it’s only two days, since those tourneys ends late on Saturday night, while my articles actually hit this here site here late Monday or early Tuesday. So I really only have Sunday and Monday. Given the facts that the Sunday following such events is always used for catching up on sleep and the leftover Saturday chores that my shift manager (a.k.a. my wife Luanne) reserved for me to do, there’s simply no time to write a recap article on Sunday. That means that I’d have to somehow write it all on Monday, a day on which I go to my soul-sucking job, and get it written so quickly that Craig would have time to edit it later that very same day! Craig needs more than fifteen minutes on a Monday night to get my stuff ready for public consumption. So I can’t actually get a Regionals report out in time to be published on the first Tuesday after Regionals. If my column came out on Thursday or Friday, I’d probably have enough lead-time. It doesn’t get posted on Thursday or Friday, though. It’s put up on Tuesday. As it stands, then, instead of being one of the first Regionals reports published, I end up being one of the last ones, ten days after Regionals. I still have a column due the Tuesday after the big tourney, though. So what do I do?
I do a kind of gumbo thing. A little bit o’ this, a little bit o’ that, and BAM!
Part 1: Romeo Predicts How He Will Do at a Tournament That’s Already Over
I’m pretty sure that I finished one match under .500 this year. I don’t know why I feel that I’ll do that, but I do. The deck is solid as a rock. I have mono-Black with just a dash of White so that I can Mortify stuff. Testing shows it to be solid, even against The Best Decks in the Format, thanks mostly to the heavy discard element in the sideboard.
I’ll bet it’s my sideboarding that will kill me. It always is. I often say that I’m not a good Magic player. People who know me won’t argue with that assessment. Some would even be harsher than that. They’d say that I suck. I’d try to argue with them, but I wouldn’t really have my heart in it.
Readers, though, often presume that this is just a writer’s trick. You know, like the hot chyk at school who says “I look awful today” so that you’ll say “No, you look great! I’d eat chili off of any part of you right now. Seriously. I’ll do it! Somebody, gimme some chili! Now!” In my case, though, I’m just being honest in my appraisal of my abilities. I’m a decent player, but I’m far from great. I miss a lot of plays. I make mistakes that I don’t see until and unless someone points them out. I misjudge situations and miscalculate odds. Essentially, I haven’t gotten much better since about my third year of playing this game.
Still, I win a lot of matches. Almost always, though, it’s because my maindeck outclasses the other guy’s starting sixty. I rarely win a match when I lose game 1. Why is that?
My sideboard design and implementation skills are as bad as Halle Berry is hot. More, even.
It’s not that I don’t understand what sideboards do. I do understand that part, at least in the abstract. (Or is it in the concrete?) They’re there to shore up your game against decks that give your deck trouble. Sideboards plug holes. For that reason, I have settled into being a 4-4-4-3 guy. That is I typically play four copies of four cards that plug holes against certain decks. Except that I can only have fifteen cards in the sideboard, not sixteen. So, I drop one copy of something that seems less useful to my deck than the others.
Half of you are nodding in complete understanding and agreement. The other half is laughing uproariously at me. That’s okay. I’m here to entertain.
I just don’t know what to do to make this better. I study the game, but it doesn’t click most of the time. I just sit back and say “Well, if two copies of that card make your deck better, why not bring in four?” Lemme give you a recent example.
At the end of one of his recent pieces (okay, almost two months ago), Zac Hill, a guy who’s only about eighteen-thousand times better at this game than I am, tossed off a B/u/r Time Spiral Block (TSP & PC only) Constructed deck that looked like this:
4 Stupor
4 Damnation
4 Aeon Chronicler
4 Bogardan Hellkite
4 Foriysian Totem
4 Sudden Death
3 Tendrils of Corruption
3 Void
4 Prismatic Lens
2 Urza’s Factory
1 Dreadship Reef
3 Molten Slagheap
4 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Island
1 Mountain
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
12 Swamp
Sideboard
4 Curse of the Cabal
3 Pull from Eternity
1 Plains
2 Enslave
2 Sengir Nosferatu
1 Void
2 Funeral Charm
Before anyone thinks I’m picking on Zac, please, stop now, and flush your head. I’m absolutely not making fun of, calling out, or otherwise trying to humiliate Mr. Hill. Quite the contrary. I really am trying to learn how to up my winning percentage in games 2 and 3. I figure a guy who’s that much better at the game than I am has something to offer me. So, my question is this:
Why is there only one Void in here? You can’t tutor for it. So, what good does it do? Obviously, if Chris Romeo thought Void would be good coming in from the sideboard, he’d run four (or three). Why only one in Zac Hill version, then? [One in the board, three main deck. – Craig, stating the obvious.]
Let’s look at another deck. Here’s Yuuya Watanabe’s GP: Kyoto-winning U/R Tron deck. The sideboard looks like this:
2 Serrated Arrows
3 Bottle Gnomes
2 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
4 Annex
1 Commandeer
1 Mystical Teachings
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1 Vesuva
Again, I see no tutoring in the maindeck. Why, then, all of the one-ofs and two-ofs in the sideboard? Why one Commandeer and one Mystical Teachings? Is the Teachings to search for the Commandeer? The deck only has two Black mana sources, though, in the Dimir Signets. That means that you may not be able to use the Flashback on the Teachings. And, really, are those two cards plugging a lot of holes? Please, teach me. I want to know.
Maybe it’s just control decks that I don’t understand. (“I doubt it,” my so-called friends will say. “You don’t understand any of them! Hah!”) Here, then, is Katsuhiro Ide’s Gruul Beats deck from the same tourney. It finished eighth, so it must be pretty good. The sideboard was:
2 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Sulfur Elemental
4 Blood Moon
1 Gaea’s Anthem
2 Moldervine Cloak
2 Krosan Grip
1 Call of the Herd
Just as with Void a couple of examples ago, there’s only one Call of the Herd in the sideboard because the maindeck already has three. But then I ask myself, why not have all four in the maindeck? Was he that worried about Extirpate? If so, I should be that worried, too?
What’s up with that one random Gaea’s Anthem, though? Again, you can’t tutor for it. Ditto the Moldervine Cloaks and Krosan Grips. Maybe the Grips are for extra artifact control when three Tin Street Hooligans aren’t enough. The thing is they’re also the only Enchantment control in the whole thing, too. I’d have thought you’d want more of that if they’re bad enough to worry about. And the Cloaks? I still can’t figure it out looking at that Top 8.
I could conceivably write a column that would rival Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) or David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) for length. The point of this column, though, is not to point out what I don’t understand. To paraphrase Tim Matheson’s Vice-President from The West Wing, “The sheer tonnage of what I don’t know could stop a Crash of Rhinos in their tracks.” (Yes, a “Crash” is the proper zoological term for a “herd” of Rhinoceroses. Cool, no? For more neat trivia on animal group names, check out this page on Enchanted Learning. A group of Bison is an Obstinacy? Neat-o!) It’s to say that I still need help learning to sideboard. If anyone ever wants to tutor me on sideboarding for the win, I’d be mighty happy.
Part 2: Unintentionally Funny People on MTGO
I had never read about or heard of this theory before, but over the past few months, my friend Joe has been mentioning how the “anonymity of the internet” allows and even encourages people to say things and act in ways that they wouldn’t normally. Kinda like the way a crowd will often behave en masse in ways that most of the members would never behave. (See, e.g., soccer hooliganism, and people who root for The Chicago Cubs even though management never really seems to be trying to win because they know that they’ll make money hand over fist no matter who they throw out onto the field.) He mentioned this because of certain forum posts that he’d read and behavior he’d seen on MTGO. I’d never thought about it like that since, of course, on MTGO and the StarCityGames.com fora (the only fora that I use), I myself am not anonymous. RightField is Chris Romeo, and, even if a particular person against whom I might like to spew doesn’t know that, I know that many, many, many people do. Not that I would be tossing off hate-filled rants if I knew that people wouldn’t know it was me. I’m pretty good at self-editing. One nice thing about writing is that it gives you a chance to think about the, um, oh, whadyacallit, the – uh – yeah, words that you want to use. As opposed to what just comes out of your mouth when you’re angry and saying whatever pops into your head. This is also good to practice when you’re in a relationship. Take a breath before you say “Oh, yeah?!? Well, last week, when I said that those pants don’t make you’re ass look fat what I meant was that you’re ass does a fine job of looking fat all by itself! … Hey! What are you doing?!? Put that down!!! Ahhhhhgggggggg…”
Of course, I like a well-thought-out and precisely-delivered rant probably more than the next guy, even if/when it’s attacking me or something I hold dear. (Don’t go after my family and friends, though. Then, you’re in trouble with me.) I mean, lordy, lordy, lordy, do I miss Geordie. If there’s one thing you could not say about that guy, you could never say that he wasn’t passionate. Give me a curmudgeon with a pen and paper or keyboard and pixels, and I’m probably going to laugh out loud.
One thing I’ve started doing on MTGO is copying and saving some of the chat window posts that I’ve seen. They tickle me to no end. Yeah, often, it’s because what they’re saying is ridiculous. Let’s be honest. Sometimes, ridiculous is as funny as all get out. One thing that all of these have in common, though, is passion. Take this one, for example:
“grandnaguszek forgets that i am 31m bodybuilding medical doctor, who owned a store, sold 4th through 7th editions on cardboard, threw hundreds of huge tournaments, taught thousands how to play, attempted to make one value disregarded creature swap, to make my veteran games more fun, what a snob indeed.”
Now, I don’t know exactly what prompted this response, but, from that last little bit, I gather that grandnaguszek called the poster a snob for whatever reason. The thing about this one that made me giggle was how much it sounded like a singles ad. “Hi! I’m a 31-year-old male. I’m a doctor and a bodybuilder. So, you know that I’m smart, rich, well-built, and humble. I’ve owned Magic stores, and love kids as evidenced by the fact that I’ve taught thousands how to play with cardboard crack. Is there room in your rares binder for a guy like me? If so, please, leave a message at the counter of The Dragon’s Playpen on Shooter Ave. They’re only open from 6pm to 6am. Hope to hear from you soon!”
How about this gem:
“ppl are so funny online – you’d think with access to all the deck building info you’d ever need, complaining would cease altogether…”
I love the naiveté obvious in this one. It doesn’t matter why he posted this, although it was because – you guessed it – there was another round of arguing over netdecks in the Casual Decks room. What matters is that he actually thinks that complaining could ever end. Ha! That’s like fighting a war against terror or drugs. As long as people can get scared, want to alter themselves chemically (including how much they weigh or how awake they are), or feel the least bit slighted, your wars on terror, drugs, and complaining will never end. Nice dream, though. If only… *sigh*
By the way, no, I’m not editing these for grammar and spelling. It’s not to humiliate anyone. It’s because (a) these are how the posts went out to the hundreds or even thousands of people who could see them and (b) I think that shows some of the passion behind the post. “Dadburnit, I don’t have time to check spelling! This has to get out there right now!!!” Like this one:
“ok guys look at this a ld card is part of this game you like this game so you like all parts of this game its put in for a reason 1 ld card can tip the saces between win or loss its the n00bs that play 1 to meny ld cards…”
I love the “logic” this guy uses. Such as saying that because you like the game, you like all parts of the game. Since land destruction is a part of the game, you like land destruction. Um, not really. This is what those of us who got a Phrase-a-Day calendar for Christmas would call a faulty syllogism. Essentially, you take a set of presumptions, usually containing one or more that’s too huge a leap of logic or just plain wrong, and follow them to an illogical conclusion. In this one, it’s that you must love all parts of the game because you love the game. Yeah, not quite. For example, I love my cat Mel. However, he has some intestinal issues that result in a house-clearing toxic level of stench when he goes number two in the kitty litter box. (His apparent inability to cover makes things doubly worse.) Because I love Mel, then, I must love his stink. Wrong. No one could love that smell. Therefore, no one could love land destruction. No, wait, I just did what he did. The faulty syllogism, not the stinky poo. The point is that you can love something (or someone) and not love all aspects of it (or them). So, yes, it’s possible to love Magic, and hate land destruction, countermagic, and/or any other aspect of the game.
Here’s one where misspelling is key:
“If you’re smart you don’t ,isspell ‘you’re’”
Like me, this guy must have a stick in his undies about people improperly switching “your” and “you’re.” “Your” is an adjective describing ownership. “This is my foil Serra Avenger. That is your foil Serra Avenger. Keep your dirty paws off of my foil Serra Avenger.” “You’re” is a contraction of “you are.” “You’re a jerk, you know that?” People are constantly messing that up either out of laziness or just plain ignorance, neither of which is excusable to me. What put this post over the top, though, is how the guy misspelled “misspell.” Clearly, he just hit the wrong key. The comma is right next to the “m” key. I do it all of the time, thanks to my fat, Italian fingers and lack of any proper typing training. (I still use The Old Testament Method: Seek, and ye shall find.) He really lost superiority points, though, when he didn’t catch it first. Unless he meant to do it on purpose.
(Also, introductory dependant clauses like “If you’re smart” should be set off by a comma. I’m a real stickler for that one since it let’s the reader know exactly where the dependant clause ends and the independent one begins. Usually, it won’t matter and will be obvious where one ends and the other begins. You don’t want to leave that stuff to chance, though, since the results could be unintentionally bad or funny or just plain confusing. For example, look at this sentence. “When Sarah left her boyfriend the waiter threw up.” Does that mean that, when Sarah left, her boyfriend, who is a waiter, threw up? Or does it mean that, when Sarah left her boyfriend, the waiter threw up?)
Here’s another that’s humorous precisely because we don’t know if the poster meant to be funny or not:
“No Counters, Slivers, Quitters, or illiterate people!”
All of you illiterate people who can read that sentence, please, send me an e-mail.
This last one is about a casual game – or so I thought – that I was playing with a player with the handle Gerrinson. The setup is this. We were playing Standard, and I was using my Enchantress deck. That means it has Yavimaya Enchantress, Verduran Enchantress, Mesa Enchantress, Auratog, Spirit Loop, Moldervine Cloak, and some other silliness. I’m constantly updating it, and Mesa Enchantress was a huge boon to the deck. Not that it does anything different, but having eight creatures that can draw me a card for casting an Enchantment is, like, twice as good as having four. Enchantress should utterly scream “Casual!” to most players.
Embarrassingly, I was unaware that Ben had done an Enchantress deck in his 10 Decks in 10 Weeks series. I obviously missed that week three months ago. Let’s be honest, though, if you’re playing an Enchantress deck in Standard, you only have three Enchantresses from which to choose. Auratog is a logical addition. Mine was G/W. No eight-hundred-dollar manabase to get a three- or four-color deck. Just the two colors of the Enchantresses. The deck can be explosive, and it’s six tons of fun. Like any other deck that relies on low-toughness creatures and Auras, though, it’s also incredible fragile. A well-timed Pyroclasm or Sulfurous Blast sets this thing back to the Stone Age.
On turn 6, after fighting through early countermagic and bounce, I dropped a Moldervine Cloak onto a Yavimaya Enchantress, and this ensued:
9:30 Gerrinson: great, so you can netdeck
9:30 Gerrinson: Good for you
9:30 Turn 6: Gerrinson.
9:30 Gerrinson plays triggered ability from Aeon Chronicler
9:30 Gerrinson: personally, I enjoy a game that might last past 7th turn
9:30 Gerrinson plays triggered ability from Aeon Chronicler
9:30 Gerrinson plays triggered ability from Aeon Chronicler
9:30 RightField: Really? This is a netdeck?
9:30 Gerrinson: hence the reason I play CASUAL.
9:30 Gerrinson: yes, it’s a VERY COMMON netdeck
9:30 RightField: I apologize. I didn’t know. I’ve not found any tourneys that it’s been in the Top 32.
9:30 RightField: Sorry.
9:30 RightField has conceded from the game.
I conceded to show that I truly was sorry for bringing what he though was a powerful netdeck to play against him. (Also, I didn’t want to play against him anymore.) I honestly don’t want to overpower the Casual Decks room. I get no joy from simply crushing new players with bad decks. I don’t think this guy was really playing a casual deck by his own definition, as you can see from the line “9:30 Gerrinson plays triggered ability from Aeon Chronicler[.]” Yup, if there’s a card that screams “casual” right now, it’s Aeon Chronicler. And Teferi. *sheesh*
Was I being a smartass to him? In all honesty, only a little. I really don’t ever want someone to feel like they’re being taken advantage of in the Casual Decks room. However, I also wanted to get him to comprehend that his idea of a “netdeck” might be a wee bit expansive. If you think a “netdeck” is any deck that people have talked about in an online forum or web article, your definition of “netdeck” might be too broad. If you think a “netdeck” is any deck that features spells that may have been used in a great deck of the past but aren’t used at high levels of play anymore, your definition of “netdeck” might be too broad.
Oh, and if you’re going to play a Mono-Blue deck with Cancel, Mana Leak, Remand, Teferi, and Aeon Chronicler, you might want to be a tad careful about getting incensed over someone else playing a “netdeck” against you.
Part 3: The Edge of Autumn Debate
When I reviewed Edge of Autumn, I said that I didn’t like it. It was a stunted Rampant Growth. The Cycling was a cute trick (e.g. you could Cycle one as a way to get down to the land limit that allowed you to play another or you could sacrifice a Flagstones or Trokair), but it wasn’t enough. Later that week, Rivien Swanson railed even more passionately against the card. In the fora, especially the one for his piece, we were chastised. Talen Lee joined Swanson and me in saying that he liked Rampant Growth more and saying it, as he often does, better than I could. "I’m no fan of Edge of Autumn, but that’s because I’m the kind of timmy who likes to accelerate up to six and seven mana, not four and five." Mr. Swanson and I “spoke” about this via the interweb, and came up with an idea to see if we were right. I mean, when pretty much the entire Magic world says that you’re wrong, you either just give in, or you check it out for yourself. Our idea was to test a deck that wanted to accelerate mana. The exact deck didn’t matter. All I’d do is build a deck that had Rampant Growth in it, see how it worked, and then switch out the Growth for Edge of Autumn.
I decided that I’d make it a Mono-Green deck. I didn’t want getting color hosed to be a problem. Obviously, if I hit Growth/Edge, getting the right color wouldn’t be a problem anyway. Thus, it should be clear that I wasn’t going to be playing Flagstones tricks. By the way, in case you don’t know exactly what I mean by that, the Flagstones trick is where you sacrifice a Flagstones to the Cycling ability of the Edge of Autumn. The Flagstones’ gone-to-the-‘yard ability gets you another land. Thus, the Edge essentially Cycles for free while still allowing you to smooth out your mana, the presumption being that you would get a Ravnica Block dual of some sort when the Flagstones gets sacrificed.
While this trick is nothing to sneeze at, the ability to smooth mana is, as Talen points out, not what I’m really looking for in that kind of card. I want acceleration. Moreover, as nice as the trick is, it only really works if you have a Flagstones that you want to get rid of. If you don’t, you’re just hindering your mana when you Cycle the Edge. Or are you? That’s what I needed to find out.
My first deck, as Mr. Lee says, wants to get up to six or seven mana.
The Green Monster
21 Forest
2 Desert
1 Pendelhaven
4 Boreal Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Wall of Roots
4 Spectral Force
4 Craw Giant
4 Rootbreaker Wurm
4 Rampant Growth
4 Moldervine Cloak
4 Chord of Calling
I didn’t want any non-creature mana acceleration in the deck other than Rampant Growth so that I could more easily judge how Growth worked versus Edge of Autumn. I think twelve mana bugs plus the Growth should tell me that. In order to use that mana, I picked some fairly beefy guys plus Chord of Calling. Remember, this was just to test the Rampant Growth/EoA. I wasn’t going for any sort of finely tuned deck. In fact, I picked the Craw Giant and Rootbreaker Wurm because, frankly, I was giddy when they got reprinted in Ninth Edition and I haven’t yet played with them. Yup, that’s why. Nothing deeper than that. Clearly, this was a casual deck, so off to the Casual Decks room on MTGO I went.
I played ten games with this version, and ten in which the Rampant Growth slot was Edge of Autumn. My conclusion was that Rampant Growth was better in a deck like this, one that wants to get large amounts of mana in order to cast huge fatties, or in order to bring them into play via Chord of Calling. For example, against one opponent, my second Growth got me to ten mana. That was enough to Chord up a Rootbreaker Wurm during his second combat phase after Growth number two. That surprise Wurm killed off his Plague Sliver and ended up swinging for the win when I got a Cloak on him next turn.
I wouldn’t have been able to do that with the Edge because I had too many lands in play to cast it. Sure, it’s possible that Cycling the Edge may have somehow gotten me to the same position. The fact of the matter is, though, the Rampant Growth got me there guaranteed.
I’ve purposely not mentioned winning percentages because the question wasn’t “could the deck win” but “which mana acceleration spell was better, if there was a difference.” Sometimes, the decks won or lost regardless of the Growth or Edge. For example, I won one game in which I saw no Rampant Growths but got to enough mana that I could Chord out a Spectral Force. Conversely, the one game in which I cast the Edge twice (second and third turns), I lost. Would it be fair to credit the Growth deck with a “good showing” when Growth never came up while showing the Edge deck to have “done badly” when the Edge did exactly what I wanted a mana acceleration spell to do? I just don’t think so.
The Edge just ended up costing me tempo in this deck. It’s a big mana deck and wants its mana spells to actually grab mana, not potentially cost it a land and draw something it can’t cast. Therefore, Rampant Growth is the winner of this one.
What about a different Mono-Green deck, though? What if I focused a deck so that it “only” wanted to get to five mana? Could Edge be better in that deck since I could use the Edge to get up to five mana and then Cycle away any extra lands after that? In addition, how many questions could I ask in a single paragraph? Could I go on like this forever? No.
Little Green Men
19 Forest
2 Desert
1 Pendelhaven
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Boreal Druid
4 Nantuko Shaman
4 Maro
3 Scragnoth
4 Spectral Force
4 Edge of Autumn
4 Moldervine Cloak
3 Harmonize
4 Resize
As with the last deck, not a whole lot of rhyme or reason behind the choices. I wanted to keep stuff below six mana. I wanted to play with Maro, something I don’t think I’ve ever done before except in a casual Singleton Fatty game (1000+ cards. No duplicates except for basic lands. No restrictions on Tutors because, well, it’s a thousand-card deck, and, if you can get to your Tutor, have a blast).
The results were not what I expected. Rampant Growth was fine, doing the job you expect of that spell: getting early mana while thinning the deck to maximize the power of later draws. The Edge was marginally better but was often used just like Rampant Growth. In other words, I cast it on the second, third, or fourth turns to grab mana. I played a few games forcing myself to keep the Edge for mere Cycling, but that bit me in the tushie. So, I played it as I got it. Once, it did a fantastic job of winning me the game. I had six mana and a Force on board. I Cycled into a Moldervine Cloak which won me the game. All in all, though, I was actually upset at the Edge. It was like Browbeat or Dash Hopes. It almost never did what I actually wanted it to do. When I wanted more land, I realized that I’d be diminishing my chances to get one that I could Cycle later. When I wanted to Cycle it, I often didn’t have enough lands to do that. *sigh*
Then, I asked myself, what if I put the two together in a deck? What if I ran the eight mana Elves, four each of Rampant Growth and Edge of Autumn, and tons of Green Weenies?
I did. I’m not going to give you the decklist because, well, it’s silly. It runs only fourteen lands. Yes, in a Standard deck. Yes, in a deck that wants to sacrifice lands to draw cards. It ran very well in the Casual Decks Room, but I have no delusions about it. Unless I got two Elvish Champions out, a single Pyroclasm could ruin the entire deck. Except for the one guy lucky enough to be wearing a Moldervine Cloak.
As far as I’m concerned, this is the way to go with Edge of Autumn. If you’re going to be Cycling it by sacrificing lands, you need another way to pull lands out of the deck as well as less of a need to rely on lands for mana.
Or I could be absolutely wrong.
Part 4: Bad Rare Blasphemy
Two weeks ago, I essentially wrote that I thought that we were getting too many bad and marginal rares, something that didn’t have to happen. When a casual player says the rares are getting bad, whoa. A forum poster by the handle of ParkerLewis wrote “omg. i can understand such uneducated things from the average guy ranting on a forum, but from a weekly columnist ? Seriously.” I asked him what he meant by “uneducated.” He replied:
“I used this specific word because it is a rather common subject for players ranting (and it is quite understandable for it to be one), and as such, has been discussed over and over and again, and more precisely has been explained in great detail in several Wizards’ columns. It’s basically a ‘closed & filed case’ to anyone having read the said columns because they do make a great job of explaining the reasons behind this (and their unavoidability for some). Hence, they’re basically part of the ‘knowledge base’ that everyone ‘seriously’ (i put this word in brackets because of its subjective nature) involved in the game is at some point supposed to be aware of. At the same level as ‘how mana screw is an important element of the game’.”
He then gave links to three Mark Rosewater columns on why we need bad rares and why Wizards prints them.
After ParkerLewis’ explanation, I got what he meant. He presumed that, since he knew of these articles and obviously agreed with them, my statements and my position meant that I hadn’t read the articles.
Except that I did know of those columns. I read them when they first hit. The difference between ParkerLewis and me is that I didn’t fall for Rosewater’s line of hog hooey. I remember reading Milton’s Paradise Lost in high school. Whether literature scholars agree with this or not, what I remember taking away from that opus is the philosophy that we can only know pleasure because we also know pain (or heaven and hell, or light and darkness, or whatever two contrasting things we’re talking about). Rosewater’s columns essentially say the same things to me. We only know great rares because we have bad ones to which we can compare them. Rejoice in bad rares, for, through them, you know how really good the great ones are.
Bullchips.
I can know pleasure without knowing pain. I can understand how pleasant something is through simple lack of it. I don’t need its polar opposite. Take, for example, the guy who hasn’t had sex in a year. Does he need to be hit in the face with a cricket bat to understand how pleasurable sex is? No. The simple lack of sex is enough, thank you very much, to remind him how nice it was to have it.
The same goes for bad rares. I don’t need bad rares to make me appreciate great ones. All I need is a lack of great rares. Let’s call these “just good” rares. To me, this is what made Ravnica Block such a wonderful block. There were very few rares that were just plain bad. There were awesome rares, great rares, good rares, and, fortunately, very few bad ones. So few, in fact, that I’m having trouble thinking of one right off of the top of my head. I’ll remember something later, I’m sure. Anyway, what Ravnica Block gave us were rares that could swing games and matches and even win Pro Tours, as well as rares that we casual players enjoyed trying to use without embarrassing ourselves. Protean Hulk or Stalking Vengeance, anybody?
Oh, I remembered a bad Rav Block rare. Light of Sanction. Although, that was fun to run in a R/W deck with Pyroclasm and such. I was going to say Concerted Effort, but that was a fun one, too. I guess I’ll just go with Haazda Shield Mate. I could never even bring myself to spend time to work it into a deck.
My point is that I just think Rosewater is shaking a tree full of dead leaves and telling me that it’s raining money. Wizards doesn’t need to print bad rares for us to appreciate the good and great ones. Well, for me to appreciate the good and great ones, anyway. If you buy Rosewater’s line, I’m happy for you. You’re obviously not going to be as upset when you keep pulling bad rare after bad rare from your packs. Me? I’m just not buying it.
As usual, you’ve been a great audience. Stay tuned next week for when I tell you how I went 4-5 or 5-4 at Regionals.
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-Comcast-dot-net