{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.}
I hate weeks like this. I truly do. I was actually ahead of the game on my columns. The piece from last week (May 22nd) I actually turned in on about May 10th. I figured I was on vacation the next week, so I’d have plenty of time to relax and get my May 29th piece in.
I forgot that I have a wife who doesn’t know how to relax. We spent the first two days of our vacation – after a weekend trip out of town to visit her mom for Mother’s Day – refinishing a coffee table. Yes, the entire two days. We had to sand and strip. And then we had to work on the table! <rimshot.wav> In all seriousness, we did actually spend all of our waking hours that weren’t spent eating working on that table. We had to go back and forth to Home Depot and / or Lowe’s several times. The sanding was a long boring process. After two days, we still didn’t have the table looking like Luanne wanted it.
We took Wednesday off, since it was raining anyway. Apparently, rain isn’t conducive to refinishing wood. That day we spent watching movies with my brother. I finally saw Layer Cake, and Luanne finally saw The 13th Warrior.
Notice how we’re five days into my vacation, and I still haven’t mentioned Magic. To be sure, I popped onto Magic Online and played a few games here and there, but it was nothing serious, nothing that related to a new deck for an article. Of course, the Friday at the beginning of my vacation (May 11th), I went over to Charles’ house and helped him with his Regionals deck, but he said that I couldn’t tell anyone about it.
The next day (Thursday), we tried to finish the table. Turns out the water stains that we were trying to get out were actually some sort of chemical stain that the previous owners had covered with polyurethane finish. Great. Another day lost, and the table still wasn’t the way Luanne wanted it. We finished that day watching Sideways. By the way, how Thomas Hayden Church and Virginia Madsen got Oscar nominations out of that while Paul Giamatti didn’t is inexplicable to me. It’s not that Church and Madsen weren’t good. On the contrary, they were great. Giamatti was better, though. Just watch the scene after the wedding where he meets up with his ex-wife. Watch how subtle and, more important, how real his reactions are. A truly stunning performance. Oh, yeah, and the movie was very entertaining, too.
Friday, having given up on the table, Luanne decided that we needed to work on our plants. Now, you’d think that we wouldn’t have a lot of plant work to do, given that we live in a condominium. Au contraire, mon frer! Since no one involved with the condo association seems to care about taking care of the grounds beyond mowing the lawn, we owners have pretty much taken over the landscaping ourselves. Moreover, since one of our next-door neighbors doesn’t really care about doing anything with the small bits of land that she has, Luanne has gladly co-opted that patch of dirt, too. So, off to Stanley’s Greenhouse to get black peppers, begonias, geraniums, lamb’s ear, pansies, coleus, ferns, and, of course, garden soil. After much digging and “no, I think it looks better over there”-ing, I got to go to Sonic for a slab of fat-laden dead animal flesh and a peach iced tea. (That’s right. From Jamie Wakefield you get stories about homemade bread, fresh cheese, and fine wine in the most picturesque area in Western Europe. From me you get “I went to Sonic and got a burger and iced tea.” That is the difference between premium and free, folks.) Then, we watched Ocean’s 11. Still no Magic: The Gathering.
Ah, Saturday. That’s the day of the local tourneys! No, it’s the day of shopping! And other fun things that you can’t do without your husband! Again, I think I got in some really casual online play but nothing to write home about.
Well, except for the fact that I was working on a Time Spiral Block Constructed U/B rack deck that got some rave reviews. I had thought about trying to port the Standard Black Rack deck to TSP Block. Funeral Charm and Stupor probably aren’t enough discard by themselves to get a decent Rack deck going in TSP. Fortunately for us, Wizards decided to give discard to Blue! With Instant timing, no less! How sweet! (Insert sarcasm here.) Still, if they’re gonna give it to me, I’m gonna use it. Here’s what I ended up with:
Creatures (4)
Lands (23)
Spells (33)
A second version traded the Pilferer for three Wipe Aways. Both were quite tasty, not vicious or malicious, just de-lovely and delicious. Okay, so they were vicious and malicious to the other guy. I didn’t run Cancel simply because people tend to “lose the connection” when they see even one counterspell. It didn’t seem to matter much. With eleven discard spells with Instant timing…
Allow me to repeat myself:
With
Eleven
Discard spells with
Instant timing,
Not much was getting through anyway. Eight of those spells (the two Charms) also doubled as kill for the X/1 guys. Stupor, of course, was the big hit. No one wants their hand hit randomly. “Unless they’ve got a hand full of Madness spells.” Yes, very good, Cletus: unless they have a hand full of Madness spells. Topdecks were a wee bit of a problem, but Pongify and Sudden Death usually took car of any creatures that came up. Pongify sometimes even became the last three points of damage as a li’l ol’ 1/1 Looter became a 3/3 Ape at the end of the other guy’s turn.
That bit of silliness led me to this query. What about a mono-Blue Time Spiral–Planar Chaos deck? Obviously, it could be done, but would it be any good? Heck, it was already Saturday night. I wasn’t going to get any decent Regionals testing in with the guys. So, I figured I’d try. I called this one Pirates! Why? I dunno. I guess ‘cause it has Piracy Charm and a Looter and a Pilferer. Or because I was stoked to go see the new Pirates of the Care-a-bee-in movie.
Creatures (11)
Lands (23)
Spells (26)
Okay, so, it’s not perfectly mono-Blue. That’s simply because Sudden Death is just so very, very good. You’ve surely noticed – and I know that every other writer has mentioned it – but Time Spiral has tons of four-toughness-or-less creatures that simply must be killed or, for those of us below the Manson-Nixon line, “that need killin’.” Other than Willbender, whom I have conveniently included in this deck, there’s just nothing you can do about Sudden Death.
One card that I’ve thought about adding is Riftwing Cloudskate. Obviously, it’s a powerful spell. As I’ve said before, though, I wasn’t really tuning anything for an article. I mention this deck, though, because it was also winning all over the place, much to my surprise.
I also saw my first Saturn Aura on Sunday morning. All I could think was “I wonder if I could pay 2U, and swap that for a Dodge Magnum…”
At this point, it had turned to Sunday night. I had watched the season finales of The Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad, saddened both by the fact that I’d have to content myself with reruns for (at least) three months and that I had to go back to my soul-sucking job the next day. So, I checked my e-mail. In it was a challenge from a “friend” who knows that I can’t let challenges go. Darn him to heck! He asked me what I’d build if I had to build a Standard-legal, all-commons deck. “And no cheating on this. The card has to be a common as it’s printed in the current, Standard-legal sets. In other words, forget about Consume Spirit just because it was a common in Mirrodin. The set that makes it currently legal is 9th Edition, and it’s uncommon in that set.” Drats! Foiled by those meddling kids!
Of course, I was intrigued. I began by making a list of what I thought were the best commons in Standard (prior to Future Sight since it wasn’t online yet). Including the Signets and all of the common Guild lands from Ravnica Block, that list was more than two-hundred-twenty cards. As you’d expect from me, I was pretty liberal, but that’s because I was looking at the cards only as they compared to other commons.
Then, I remembered the PDC or Pauper Deck Challenge that some kind souls run on MTGO. I decided that, if I couldn’t cheat by using cards like Consume Spirit, I’d cheat by seeing if there was a database anywhere of PDC decks. Jackpot! Not only is there a website for this stuff, but they have a pretty extensive database, too. To answer my annoying friend’s question, I simply pointed him to that list of decks.
He must have been online because I got a quick response. “I didn’t ask what good decks there were. I asked what you would build.” I think I was insulted. I decided, though, that I’d play a White Weenie deck. White has some very good control spells in that common slot. Sunlance, Temporal Isolation, and Gelid Shackles just to name a few. How exactly would I build it? I hadn’t thought too much about that. Maybe later.
For now, I’d like to pick up on something that Talen Lee wrote about last week. I, too, have greatly curtailed my booster pack purchases, and it’s mostly because of crappy rares. Now, some folks will say that you should never buy booster packs just to bust them open. “It’s not cost efficient. You should only buy packs to draft.” We should also never get drunk, have sex with someone if we haven’t seen a recent blood test, or buy lottery tickets no matter what the jackpot. The fact of the matter is that we do. I love opening booster packs. Or at least I used to. Even though I make sure to get a set of four of each of the commons and uncommons of a set, there’s still nothing like the thrill of opening a booster pack. It is pristine. It is full of possibilities. It is those things mostly because of the rare card.
Over the past few years, I’ve lost that loving feeling, though. In the past four years, except for Ravnica Block, the rare slots have been, in my opinion, characterized by a few chase rares, a couple of fun ones around which guys like me might try to make a deck, and a bunch of bad cards meant to “test” us. By that, I gather they mean to test our patience.
Don’t misunderstand me. Unlike a lot of people, I’m not the kind of guy who wants every rare to be a Teferi-level bomb. Look at the last four blocks, though. Mirrodin? How many rares did even us casual guys want to see in there? Ditto for Kamigawa Block. Ravnica Block was fantastic, and I’ll miss it when it rotates out of Standard in a few months. There are still rares in those sets that I think have not seen their full potential. The fact that Protean Hulk is the centerpiece of a Legacy deck that can win on turn 0 just tickles me in places that would be illegal in most of the states I visit. Time Spiral Block has indeed looked to the past. It looked to the boring rares of Mirrodin and Kamigawa.
As I was writing this, I actually looked at how many Time Spiral packs I bought. I really did buy an awful lot of them. So, if the rares were so uninspiring, why did I do it? I realized that it was mostly the reprints that got me. I wanted Psionic Blast & Co. It had very little to do with the new rares. Sad, isn’t it?
Of course, there’s the practical side of me, the frugal, almost cheap side, that says “Hey, if they’re gonna print nothing but dollar rares, don’t knock it. You won’t ever have to buy boosters again.” That’s kinda true. I mean, if there aren’t but a handful of rares to chase in a set, I can easily save for those. Then, I can buy crap rares in bulk.
I don’t want to do that, though. I want my packs to grab me again. I want to open one, get to the back, and think “Neat. What can I do with that?” Lately, it’s been more like “Sh**. What the hell can I do with that?”
This next part isn’t really for us Magic players. It’s for Wizards, since, short of not buying cards, we can’t get them to change what they do.
An Open Letter to Wizards of the Coast
Dear Wizards Folks,
When you make a rare, it should have some sort of “wow” factor. Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop with the “skill testers” in the rare slot. Sometimes, when I open my packs, I feel like Pigpen in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
“What did you get?”
“I got a candy bar!”
“I got bubble gum!”
“… I got a rock…”
I hate being the guy who gets a rock in my trick-or-treat bag. And don’t tell me it’s that a particular card isn’t meant for me. They’re all meant for me. You know who they’re not meant for? The Pro Tour Players. You know why? You should. You have a column on your official site called “Ask the Pro,” and, at one point, your Pro admits that most Pros don’t even buy cards. So, that means that I’m buying the cards. But I won’t be if the ratio of crap rares to good rares keeps going up.
Don’t fall back on the whole “they can’t all be Pro Tour-worthy cards.” First of all, they don’t need to be. Rares just need to be more special than the commons and uncommons. Second of all, actually, yes, they can all be Pro Tour-worthy. You’d just have to try harder, that’s all.
Almost every pack that I opened in Ravnica Block held some sort of interesting rare. I wanted to get four of each just in case I came up with a wacky deck that could utilize those rares. Time Spiral Block hasn’t made me feel that way. I haven’t wanted to admit it, but I open Future Sight packs almost with trepidation. “Please, don’t let the rare suck too badly.” That just isn’t how you want me to feel. Because if I feel that way, just imagine how people with more discerning tastes feel.
Yours very truly,
The One that Got Away
The final deck that I tinkered with was one that had been rattling around in the back of my mind for about three months. Actually, it wasn’t even a whole deck. It was more like the germ of an idea. I wanted to play with Dichotomancy. I had initially dismissed the card as not even playable by From Right Field standards. That was because I forgot that you could tap down artifacts and enchantments. I also misread the card. If an opponent has two Serra Avengers out, you can tap both of them, and Dichotomancy grabs you a copy of each one.
I’ve always been a fan of cards that allow me to use my opponent’s resources, especially when I was sure that my opponent had better cards than I did. I played Bribery and Dominate a lot when Masques Block was legal. I loved ripping Morphlings out of decks and moving Masticores from their side of the table to mine. I knew that I might possibly maybe be able to kinda do the same thing with Dichotomancy.
There was one big problem, though. With that thing Suspended, no one was playing more non-land permanents. Yeah for me, except that I wanted them to play permanents. I needed to make sure that I could also cast Dichotomancy. In came Urza’s Power Grid, known to the newer players as Urzatron. The only other thing I needed was a way to tap enchantments and artifacts. Icy Manipulator can tap artifacts; Gigadrowse can hit both.
Creatures (8)
Lands (24)
Spells (28)
All I do with this is keep stuff tapped down until I can cast Dichotomancy for a lot of permanents. Interestingly, about half of the deck’s wins have come through Factory tokens. I guess no one wants to just give me their stuff, especially when it’s so good.
And that’s what I did on my vacation. I got not one step closer to figuring out what I was going to play at Regionals. I guess I’ll just play mono-Red Land Destruction with Detritivore.
As usual, you’ve been a great audience. Stay tuned.
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-Comcast-dot-net