{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.}
In my non-Magic life, I am often accused of needing predictability or of wanting control over my life. People say this like (a) they thrive on unpredictability (“Excellent! Gravity’s not working today!”) and (b) they would gladly give up control over their lives. (“Please, put me in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison. A room with no windows, please!”) Of course, I need for my life to be predictable. When I turn on the water, I want water to come out. Not mud. Not apple juice. Not a Fog of Gnats. Water. I want to control the temperature of that water, and I do that by manipulating the hot and cold taps. The warmer I want the water, the more I open the hot tap. In this way, my hot chocolate is hot while my iced tea is cold. Still, people will giggle and make comments as if I’m the only one who has such an outrageous view of life.
I felt the same way when my “review” of Planar Chaos came out.
When Romeo Reviews
By the way, whenever I review a set, look for the humor and sarcasm. A lot of what I wrote obviously went over many heads because the comments in the forum and e-mails clearly indicated that the writers just missed my tone. That could be my fault, but I’d rather blame it on you.
No, I won’t point out which reviews were done just for humor. It’s up to you to read more carefully. Next time, though, I will lead my set “review” with a nice, big disclaimer for those who are humor-impaired.
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Bennie Smith, Bennie Smith
We now know, as if there was any doubt that Bennie Smith just loves, loves, loves Planar Chaos. He likes the new options and the decks he can build. Essentially, for the same reason that he loves it, I have serious issues with much of it. There is enough randomness built into the game without adding color pie chaos to the mix. Part of the reason that the game has thrived over the past eight years is that the color pie has become well defined. Being able to predict with some level of accuracy the options that your opponent has available to them actually helps the game. The lower that level of accuracy gets, the less likely that you are to bring new players to the game and the more likely that you are to lose older players. Lemme give you two examples.
When I first learned about Magic formats, I thought that it was a fantastic idea. I was introduced to the game by a guy who’d played since the beginning, pretty much. His decks included cards that I still haven’t seen outside of his house. Playing against his decks was very frustrating. Just when I thought I could reasonably predict what he might be able to play, another card that I had never heard of popped up. “Yeah, I just added that last night.” Me, I was stuck with my Urza’s Legacy cards, some stuff from Fifth Edition, and what I could find from Tempest Block (a.k.a. The Rath Cycle).
So, when I learned what Standard (called Type II at the time) was, I was hooked. I convinced John that, at least once per night, he’d only play Standard-legal decks against the rest of, players who, like me, only had access to cards from the newest sets. (Just so he wouldn’t feel picked on, we also played with pretty much everything a couple of times per night. To be fair, as time went on, we picked up some older cards from commons boxes, and he traded us a lot of older cards for newer ones since he pretty much stopped buying cards when Urza’s Block hit the shelves.) The games became more fun for all of us because we had a handle on possible options.
Now, look at Planar Chaos Standard. Hey, Planar Chaos is Constructed legal now! And it’s available online! Woo hoo! Let’s say that you’re facing a guy with three 1/1s on his side of the board. He has one Forest available. You have a 4/4 about to run headfirst into The Red Zone. You are most likely to fear a Giant Growth, Gather Courage, Might of Old Krosa, or some other Green “pump” spell, although I guess your opponent could cast Sprout, too.
By the way, if you post something along the lines of “No one plays <insert name of Green pump spell> in Standard,” your penis will fall off. Don’t even waste your energy trying to prove how smart you are on the subject. I’m only writing about examples that could occur at your local store where anyone is allowed to play. I’m not talking about the finals of Pro Tour: Hackensack, Lexus. If you think that you’re never gonna face a ten-year-old who’s packing Giant Growth, I can’t wait to see you cry when you lose.
You weigh your options. Have you seen Giant Growth or Might of Old Krosa yet? Does he seem like the kind of player who would pack that card? If you swing, you’re either getting a two-for-one trade (his 1/1 and a card for your 4/4), something better (could be a three-for-one if he puts up two 1/1s and used Might), or one-for-nothing as he chump blocks.
This time the same scenario except that all your opponent has is a Mountain. If he has Lightning Axe, swinging or not won’t matter. It can take out the 4/4 any time he wants (as long as he has a card to pitch). It could be Shock. If he uses that to take out the 4/4, he’s also going to have to lose two 1/1s. So, you get a three-for-one trade. Skred won’t do anything because he has no Snow permanents, while Weight of Spires would be useless because you have no nonbasic lands out.
So, you swing. He chump blocks. . . or so you think. He casts Brute Force on the 1/1. Ouch. You’ve just made a two-for-one trade when you were expecting either a three-for-one, a chump block, or no block at all.
Now, I know you’re gonna be a d*ckfor and say “Well, Romeo, Brute Force is legal, and you should be expecting it. If you don’t, you’re just an idiot.” Except for one thing, acne-back. Before the color cobbler, Red didn’t get +X/+X spells with Instant timing. Okay, maybe there was one somewhere ten years ago, before the color pie was well-established. Or maybe one that gave +X/+X but prevented the creature from being able to block. (I think that’s unofficially called the “rage” mechanic or something similar, named after Maniacal Rage.) There’s the “Flowstone” mechanic that gives a creature +X/-X, but you don’t worry about your opponent casting that on one of their 1/1s because it would kill the thing.
In other words, by creating this color cobbler, situations become too unpredictable. A little bit of unpredictability is fine. Magic is a game of incomplete information, and that’s part of its charm. Too much unpredictability, and people simply give up.
Chicken Little and Humpty Dumpty
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it before from smarter and better-looking people than you, people who love to spout meaningless platitudes and clichés that don’t really help anyone solve any problems. They’re great mental crutches for the intellectually inept. They don’t have to think! Just spout a cliché, and anyone who questions you is just silly. I mean, it’s a cliché! It must be right and true! Only a fool would question the wisdom of generations of inbred, uneducated cave dwellers compressed into a single, pithy sentence! So, I get a lot of clichés thrown at me in a situation like this. In fact, at least one of you desperately wants to write “Can’t never did anything!” That one looks especially cute when accompanied by a Family Circus cartoon. Or how about this one that people with MBAs like to spew out and which also looks quite at home accompanied by a Family Circus cartoon: “Problems are just opportunities in work clothes.” Please, just shoot me in the face now. “Mr. Johnson, you shouldn’t think about the inoperable brain tumor that’s going to kill you within six months as a ‘problem.’ Think of it as an ‘opportunity’ to finally be rid of your nagging wife and ungrateful children!”
I eschew the labels because I’m actually what’s called a Defensive Pessimist. I see a potential problem, but I also come up with a solution in advance of the problem ever happening. Then, if and when the problem comes up, while everyone else is running around like chickens (heh) with their heads cut off, I solve the problem. I also get to say “I told you so,” which is really sweet.
My big dilemma in this case is that I can’t implement the solution, and that’s really frustrating to me. You know, I have “control issues.” The solution is actually quite simple. Wizards needs to stop sticking their fat fingers in the color pie. No one wants to eat it after that. Of course, I can’t prevent the people who actually own the game from doing what they want to its rules.
I could predict how this will end badly for the game, but no one listens to me. I’m right about so much stuff and so often that you’d think that people would say “Hey, we need to pay attention to this guy.” Instead, they look at my one failing here and another there a few years ago and say “If he’s not right one-hundred percent of the time, we can’t trust him now.” Okay, so I was wrong about MTGO failing. On a different front, you should see the money I could have saved my employer… if only they’d listened to me. Backroom deals with a big agency that ended up costing us millions? I said not to do it. Special pricing arrangements that weren’t applied to everyone evenly? Yeah, I saw that lawsuit coming. Maybe another one, too, because of another program that does the same thing. Idiots.
My fellow phone jockeys aren’t much smarter. They keep complaining about how the “quality control” program changes so often that they can’t help but do badly every month. How can you do well when you don’t what the rules are today? I suggested unionizing. With a decent union, any program designed to judge the quality of your work wouldn’t be changing on an hourly or daily basis. Of course, no one wants to work with me on that. “They’d fire me.” Which would be a violation of Federal labor laws. Still, no one wants to join me.
The “official” writers from the “official” Magic site have, as one would expect, given us some great reasons behind this cobblering of the color pie. To read what they have writ, it all makes sense. “We’re just filling in design spaces between colors. It all makes perfect sense!”
Bullsh**.
They aren’t reasons; they’re excuses. They’re excuses for doing pretty much whatever they want with colors and abilities.
Look, folks, Magic’s color pie wasn’t well-defined in the beginning. Some would say that, even right before Time Spiral, it wasn’t done baking. It was darn close, though. No matter what state it was in before Time Spiral, I can justify pretty much anything if I look back into the corners of Magic history. I can give Blue Giant Growth because Giant Growth is a great trick and Blue’s the color of trickiness. I can give Black its own Confiscate because Black is a selfish color, the color of “Mine! Mine! Mine!”
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should do that thing.
Back in my cray-zay college days in New Orleans, I had a friend named Bob. Bob was his own kind of insane. One lazy Saturday in either the early Fall or late Spring, some of us boys were drinking on a balcony over some sleazy bar, watching girls walk by in halter tops and dolphin shorts. (Just so you know, Bob wasn’t blasted or anything. He was just Bob.) Bob spontaneously erupted with “I’m gonna jump from here! Think I can?” Yes, I think you can. I just don’t think it’s a good idea if you want your knees to continue operating properly. Bob jumped. Bob broke his fibula.
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should do that thing.
Quitters Never Whine, and Whiners Never Quit
(Yes, I know. It was inspired by a person on MTGO who was either a bad typist / speller or quite the funny guy.)
What’s a poor boy to do, then, when faced with badly executed color cobbler? Just play with the cards. There’s nothing else I can do. This week, I’m back to Rakdos. Cry all you want. I’m working Red and Black like Oprah working the post-show buffet table.
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count Your Braids.
There’s one reason, and one reason only to dislike the color combination of Red and Black. “They can’t handle Enchantments!” What a cotton-headed ninny-muggins you are? Who cares?
Wait a second? Where’s the Red and / or Black Enchantment destruction? Planar Chaos gave us White direct damage spells, Blue Instant-timed discard, and Black countermagic. Where’s my Red Enchantment kill? Sometimes the R&D guys are as useless as teats on a rooster or a urinal at a lesbian bar.
Regardless, this color combination just screams aggressive. It can kill creatures via damage or spells that say “destroy.” It can draw cards. It can, um, make creatures. Red creatures. Black creatures. Red and Black creatures. This is getting annoying. Lemme show you what I have now:
Creatures (16)
Lands (22)
Spells (22)
Tally of Non-Land Rares
4 Dark Confidant @ $10.00 each = $40.00
3 Phyrexian Arena @ $6.00 each = $18.00
In other words, other than lands, for less than sixty dollars worth of rares, this deck can be yours.
“What about using Demonfire instead of Blaze?”
Wow. You’re so smart. Yup, Demonfire’s better than Blaze. If you got ‘em, smoke ‘em. If not, save up to buy ‘em.
To be honest – and when haven’t I been honest with except when I said that I loved you and you alone? – I don’t really like calling this a Rakdos deck. Just because a deck’s Red and Black doesn’t make it a Rakdos deck. Also, not every Black and Green deck should be called The Rock.
“But this does have Rakdos Guildmage in it, Romeo. Doesn’t that make it a Rakdos deck?”
As much as buying a bra makes you a woman, Herbert. Not that you don’t need one. But it doesn’t really change the facts.
The Rakdos Guild’s main “mechanic” is Hellbent. That means you hand should be empty. This deck draws cards like Gilligan draws the short straw. Therefore, it’s not really a Rakdos deck; it’s just a R/B deck. On the other hand, I don’t feel like coming up with a better name.
Name the Deck Contest
So, in the forum (not in e-mails to me), post your best name for this deck. I will be the judge. The criteria are arbitrary, my tastes capricious. I can be bribed. The winner gets a card of my choice autographed by me. What have you got to lose? Other than your self-respect. I can’t do anything about that.
Just Tell Me How the Deck Works
The only major changes from previous versions are the addition of Keldon Marauders, Brute Force, and Blood Knight. Obviously, that means that I dropped three slots of something else. I can’t really remember what they were except that Brute Force took over for Shock. Ravenous Rats and Viashino Sandstalker, I think. Then again, it may have been Deathspore Thallid and Basalt Gargoyle. I’ve been doing a lot of drinking lately, and I just can’t remember that far back, “that far” being four or five days ago.
The deck does pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a weenie deck with card drawing and no hand disruption or countermagic. When it gets a fast start, almost nothing can stop it. The Blood Knight walks through the White guys as well as Condemn, Mortify, Temporal Isolation, Lightning Helix, and Faith’s Fetters.
What about Stromgald Crusader?
That’s it! One of the other guys was the Crusader! Dude, thanks so much. I’ve been racking my brains for that. I dropped the Crusader for Blood Knight. Thank you.
Why Drop the Crusader?
I know what you’re thinking. Like Blood Knight, Stromgald Crusader is also a two-power creature with Protection from White for the low cost of two mana of the same color. In addition, the Crusader can be made to fly and get pumped. Why drop the Crusader for the Blood Knight?
Those two cards just wrecked the Crusader. Again, lemme quash any flames on this. I know that two Darkblasts can kill the Blood Knight as can two activations of the Arrows. So, let’s make the other guy use two cards or two-thirds of a Serrated Arrows rather than one, shall we?
(Please, hold your whining to a minimum. If no one in your local metagame is running Darkblast or Serrated Arrows, even in the sideboard, feel free to use the Crusader. Also, let me know where your local metagame is so that I can bring my Stuffy Doll deck there are wreck the place.)
Decks with big, fast beef – and the only one that I can think of right now is R/G Beats with Burning-Tree Shaman, Rumbling Slum, and Giant Solifuge – are also trouble for this deck.
Other than those two types of decks, this thing cuts through the field like a hot knife through butter or Antonio Banderas through a crowd of menopausal women.
How Do You Know? Planar Chaos Isn’t on MTGO Yet?
You people just don’t read my articles, do you? What do you do with them? Do you just skim the things looking for stuff about which to argue and / or with which to fawningly agree? I specifically said that I’d use proxies to test when the cards weren’t out on MTGO yet. Since I had this deck ready to go except for the Marauders and Blood Knights, the proxying was easy. I just grabbed a Sharpie (their new motto: The Official Pen of Poor Magic Players Everywhere), four Ghitu Firebreathing, and four Flamecore Elementals, and I had a new deck for testing purposes.
Did You Try Shadow Guildmage?
I did, thanks for checking up on me. My friend Joe is very much hyped on the Shadow Guildmage. I tried it in the slot where Brute Force. The problem with the Shadow GM was too much loss of life. I was already losing it to the Dark Confidant and the Arena. Activating the Shadow GM’s ability was just too much. Of course, if you’re one of those folks who likes to say “He didn’t beat me. My deck beat me,” then, by all means, use the Shadow GM. I promise that no one will ever beat you.
Wait a Freakin’ Second… Brute Force?!?
Yup, I am indeed including Brute Force in the deck. Yup, I still hate that Red has such a spell. However, if I got it, I’m gonna use it. It’s a trick that people just don’t see coming and essentially ends up being a completely unexpected Lightning Bolt. You should see the look on a guy’s face when he swings his Kird ape into your Dark Confidant. You know that he’s thinking “He’s got one card in hand and only a Confidant to block. I either get two damage through, or I take out his Confidant and a Shock for a really good two-for-one trade.” The look is priceless when he realizes that it ends up being a one-for-one trade, and you’re keeping the much more impressive Dark Confidant.
Oh, and when they let a Keldon Marauders get through, six damage is more impressive than three. Twice as Impressive, actually.
Mistakes Versus Idiots
We all make mistakes. That’s part of being human (i.e. nobody’s perfect).
(Yes, I know that’s a cliché. It happens to be true. It’s “the exception that proves the rule.” Which is also a cliché, and one that, by its own wording, is not true.)
(Also, the more religious of you will point out Jesus, Mary, or some non-Christian icons to say that some people are indeed perfect. I am talking about the ones who may actually read this particular article.)
Everyone makes mistakes. Some people have children when they shouldn’t. Some people stay at a job so long that they can’t leave no matter how much they hate it or how horrible it is because they can’t get hired to do anything else anymore. *deep breath* Some people overextend and lose their board to Wrath of God. A philosopher-psychologist friend of mine had a saying that I still adore:
“People need to understand that there’s a big difference between making a mistake and being an idiot. Everyone makes mistakes. An idiot makes the same mistake over and over believing that this time the result will be different.”
I love it.
(Nota Bene: I will not respond to any post or e-mail that has anything like this in it: “I can’t believe that a psychologist would say such a thing! That’s so blah blah blah blah blah, and, moreover, it’s blah blah blah blah blah.” He was speaking in his philosopher mode when I first heard him say it. He may have also been at a Mardi Gras party at the time.)
I hope this has been insightful. I also hope that it’s gotten your dander up so that you’ll get out there and fight for your right to party. Red and Black are poised for a comeback, and it’s not just because of Shaft.
As usual, I am…
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-Comcast-dot-net
P.S. I just got a couple of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, and replaced a single Mountain and a single Swamp for them. All I can say is “wow.” You people who like playing Black-and-Any-Other-Color decks, need to get four of those pronto, before the costs goes from four bucks each to ten or twelve. It smoothes the mana like I could not believe. It also lets you tap Sulfurous Springs for Black mana without taking a point of damage. Wow. Just… wow.