In which Prerelease weekend dawns upon us, and our diabolical villain works tirelessly around the clock to deprive small children of booster packs all across Manchester.
How many Magic tournaments can you play in one weekend?
Yes it’s Prerelease weekend time, and my first opportunity to get my sweaty mitts on the brand new Planar Chaos set.
“But you’re a Pro (allegedly!), what possible interest can you have in Prereleases? The prizes are only boosters after all, and a T-Shirt. We want information on the current Extended metagame. How do I improve…”
“Sod off! I’m off to smash face with Red Akroma and Dragons, yay! And maybe trade foil Damnations off small children for Orggs. ‘Shiny is worth less because it goes all bent, see.’ Ha-ha!”
“But…”
“Shut up. Go talk to Flores instead.”
“But…”
*Pulls lever to open up hidden trapdoor in floor. After a brief pause a splash is heard somewhere far below.*
“Don’t worry about the crocodiles. I fed them last week. Or did I?”
So where were we? Ah yeah, Planar Chaos and the Prerelease. I think somewhere in my column brief I’m supposed to talk about Pro-type stuff. Well even pros play the Prereleases… or rather, they should. While all the thousands of dollars is gravy, the real reason to play Magic is because it’s fun, and the Prerelease tournaments are the best fun of all because you get to play with cards no one has ever seen before.
Actually, Prereleases are also very important tournaments for serious players. The reason is that in recent years Limited Pro Tours have been moved closer to release dates for new sets. Often the only opportunity to get the boosters and practise for the next Pro Tour is to raid the nearest Prerelease.
In this case, Pro Tour: Geneva will be on most player’s minds. Despite evidence from Worlds to the contrary, I’m not bad at Time Spiral draft, and I’m very interested to see how the addition of Planar Chaos affects the format.
The big story for Planar Chaos is the addition of the Planeshifted cards. Time Spiral had Timeshifted cards. These were direct reprints from Magic’s dim and murky past. Sort of like a greatest hits collection. These cards came from anywhere up until the card face changed with Mirrodin. Now Time Spiral was all about the past, and Planar Chaos is all about the present, so logically the Timeshifted cards will be from recent expansions. You know, stuff like Skullclamp…
…………………………………………………………………….
Bzz-temporal anomaly detected-bzz….
Glkfosinsmdjmndmdnflksdbaivfusgldnmgmla! gaoAIDN
…………………………………………………………………….
Okay, so maybe not Skullclamp. There, there computer. I’m sorry. It’s all better now. The nasty card has gone away.
That was what everybody expected, with Future Sight probably containing cards they’ll probably reprint some time in the future.
Instead, Wizards threw us a curve ball. Planar Chaos does contain reprints, but with a slight twist: the cards are all in different colors. This means we get a Black Wrath, a Green Ball Lightning, and even a White Force Spike, plus a lot of cards that sort of look like cards that existed before, but with subtle changes.
Basically what it means is that the Color Pie is hanging off Mark Rosewater… erm… nether regions like that scene in American Pie (heh heh, you don’t know how many brownie points in hell I just earned for putting that scene in your mind).
This of course has led to all sorts of cries about the sky falling in and other such doom-laden predictions. Actually, I think it’s rather interesting. My biggest criticism of the color pie was that new sets didn’t really change the way the colors played. The components might have changed, but Blue still had the counter deck, Red the burn deck, and so on. By throwing old faves into new places they’ve opened up a lot of design space for deck builders to play with.
This has led to some arguments that Time Spiral is the “lazy” block in terms of design, as everything is just rehashed versions of old cards. I think this is a little unfair. How they’ve managed the flavor for this set has been fantastic (but then I’m an old bastard, and have fond memories of the original versions). While I think the “there’s nothing new” argument sort of misses the point, I also think Wizards will probably need to follow this block with something new that makes our collective jaws drop just to prove the creative juices haven’t run dry.
But enough random wittering, to the weekend we go!
Or rather the Friday night, and hour zero of our 24-hour Magic playing marathon. By the way, I’m not joking. I originally intended to go up on the Friday night, stop at Nick “TO supreme and level 3 judge” Sephton’s, and then play his Saturday Prerelease. At some point I had Neil Rigby’s 30th birthday bash, and then another Prerelease on Sunday. This was a fairly hectic schedule, but apparently not hectic enough for Rich “Mox Radio” Hagon.
“Right Prof. You’re going to go up to Nick’s (Bradford – a fair bit North of Manchester) as originally planned (train from Manchester to Bradford arriving at 17:30). I’m going to drive across from Scunthorpe (A fair bit North of Manchester and also on the other side of the country) to Bradford. We’ll play the FNM. Then I’m going to drive you down to Altrincham (South Manchester) for the Midnight Prerelease. We’ll play that. Then we’ll go back up to Bradford for their Prerelease. I’m judging that and you’ll be playing. Then we’ll head back with Keith to Oldham (North-west Manchester) for Neil’s surprise 30th party. Keith can stop at yours and then you can play the Sunday Prerelease in Altrincham.”
“Er Rich, when are we supposed to sleep?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
I suppose I could have done this as a spoof of 24, but sadly that was Rich’s idea and I imagine he’s cranking out some Jack Bauer-themed craziness for next month’s podcast right now. Apparently I’m a recurring villain that gets dispatched somewhere around three in the morning. But don’t fear, my sycophantic acolytes… diabolical super-villains never stay dead for very long.
First off we had an FNM in Bradford, and actually an interesting follow-up to my article last week. Basically I wanted to try out the Soggy Pickles deck, but couldn’t find enough Shapeshifters in time. This meant it was back to boring Dragonstorm. I didn’t really want to play it, and after mentioning this to Rich he suggested we swap decks.
“What is it?”
“You’ll find out.”
So I sat down to play round 1, and realised in a masterful stroke of pure evil Rich had given me a full-on Blue/White control deck.
I’m a good player, but giving me a full-on Blue/White control deck is like watching Bambi learn to walk after six cans of Special Brew.
In the first game against Gruul, with a mitt full of countermagic, I decided to let my opponent make a 1/1 Scab-Clan Mauler. It’s only a 1/1 and I have a Desert… sure, that guy’s okay.
Two Stonewood Invocation later…
Bambi. Learning to walk. On ice.
So of course I won the FNM. Mainly because I ripped Wrath to kill two Bogardan Hellkites against Rich in the last round, and then happened to have the one Commandeer in hand to steal his Seething Song when I had to tap out to Wrath away a Teferi. He wasn’t best pleased.
I know you’re not here to hear about my exploits at FNM, but it sort of ties in with my article last week. I don’t think the version I had was an optimal build, it only had one Teferi (all Rich owned) and I would have preferred to play storage lands over Karoos, but it turns out that sometimes a sub-optimal deck with Wrath is more suited to a local tournament than a razor-tuned (i.e. stolen from the net) version of Dralnu / Pickles that rolls over to Ledgewalker / Blanchwood Armor. This of course does trap certain players into the fallacy that control is where good players should be, mainly because they only play against people who throw main-phase burn spells at them.
But anyway, the clock now said ten. I had places to bomb, hostages to kill, governments to threaten, and of course a Prerelease to play in Altrincham. Tick, tick…
The addition of a new set brings inevitable changes to both the Standard and Limited formats. Standard seems very healthy at the moment, so basically I’m hoping there are no Jittes or Skullclamps waiting to ambush us. Zvi believes Damnation is a card that shouldn’t have been printed, and while I lean more towards the optimistic side, Zvi was too much of a deckbuilding master to be dismissed lightly. We’ll see in a few months, I guess.
As far as draft is concerned, I think I’d like Planar Chaos to knock Blue back a notch as it feels stronger than all the other colors combined in TTT. Black and Green could certainly do with a boost, and the format as a whole could do with slowing down. That’s the wish list, anyway… so how did the set actually turn out?
It was midnight deep in the heart of the Gaming Crypt. Somewhere a dog howled. In the fetid darkness foul smelling misshapen beings squatted in anticipation as the clock ticked inexorably towards midnight. As the final chime died away they tore feverishly at strange silver packs and…
… hey, I got Akroma!
The B*tch is Back, and she’s got a natty new hairdo. It’s always nice to kick off with a bomb, but after that things got a little lean. I really wanted to work in Dust Elemental as he’s enormous, evasive, got a neat ability, and has a bargain basement mana cost, but the rest of the White didn’t really stand up.
In the end I went for the default Blue/Red option, which looked like:
Creatures (19)
- 1 Orgg
- 1 Crookclaw Transmuter
- 1 Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician
- 1 Keldon Halberdier
- 1 Looter il-Kor
- 1 Riftwing Cloudskate
- 1 Slipstream Serpent
- 1 Thick-Skinned Goblin
- 1 Akroma, Angel of Fury
- 2 Aquamorph Entity
- 1 Blood Knight
- 1 Merfolk Thaumaturgist
- 1 Prodigal Pyromancer
- 1 Serendib Sorcerer
- 1 Skirk Shaman
- 1 Stingscourger
- 1 Timebender
- 1 Veiling Oddity
Lands (18)
Spells (4)
I used to have a java program that speeded up typing out card pools, but that’s kind of between version numbers at the moment. I could include card pools, but then I probably wouldn’t have this ready until the Future Sight Prerelease.
There really wasn’t much option with the card pool. Green had a Weatherseed Totem, Giant Dustwasp, and not a lot else. Nothing worth splashing. Black had a Nightshade Assassin, and obviously he’s not really candidate for splashing.
Overall I felt the deck was really lacking in power (with the exception of our brand new angry angel), and felt the best option was to go for consistency. The deck is really short on direct removal with only the Grapeshot, but I did have the comedy combo of Serendib Sorcerer (turn your guy into a 0/2) and Merfolk Thaumaturgist (switch your guy’s power and toughness. Whoopsie, I think I just killed him).
My fears about the lack of power turned out to be fairly accurate, as I managed a rather mediocre 3-2. Rich Hagon managed to avenge his earlier defeat. I tore him apart with a ridiculous tempo draw in one game, but his deck outclassed mine in the other two and I fell to dragon and Firemaw Kavu. The other loss was to Serra Sphinx followed by another red Akroma in the first game, and Bogardan Hellkite (they weren’t messing around when they made this guy – he’s an absolute back breaker when cast in Limited) in the second.
There are five new Dragons in Planar Chaos, plus some very powerful cards. You are going to lose to your opponent dropping a grotesquely overpowered card onto the table so you might as well prepare yourself for it now. Some people hate it when that happens, but fortunately for them there aren’t many high-level Sealed Deck tournaments in this format this year.
I think I probably played too many lands at 18. I play this number in draft because the format’s fast and you tend to die with cards in hand. Being able to lay lands for the first four turns is more important than a late-game flood you might never actually reach in any case.
However, in Sealed you get more time, and even though I wanted my deck to be consistent I could have probably got away with one less land.
Rich Hagon went 5-0 to win the tournament. His deck was Red/Green, with Blue for Intet, the Dreamer. The card that had really performed well for Rich was Essence Warden. Funny, I’m sure Soul Warden never seemed this good the first time it was around. 1/1 and life gain are not abilities I’d prize in a monster, but the little Warden is actually scarily good. If she comes out turn 1 and isn’t taken care of quickly, she’ll probably gain around 10 life and also probably nip in for the odd cheeky hit or two. Initially I wasn’t convinced, but I think she’ll have an important role in draft. If your opponent makes her on turn 1 and you can’t kill her immediately, then all of a sudden you are forced into the control role. With beatdown so important (in my eyes anyway) for triple Time Spiral draft, I think she has an important role as a “tempo buster.”
Anyway, it was back to my student flat for a couple of hours of sleep and then a mad dash back up to Bradford for the second Prerelease.
Creatures (17)
- 1 Eron the Relentless
- 1 Basalt Gargoyle
- 1 Flamecore Elemental
- 1 Gemhide Sliver
- 1 Havenwood Wurm
- 1 Wormwood Dryad
- 1 Akroma, Angel of Fury
- 1 Ana Battlemage
- 1 Citanul Woodreaders
- 1 Essence Warden
- 1 Hammerheim Deadeye
- 1 Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
- 1 Mire Boa
- 1 Skirk Shaman
- 2 Stingscourger
- 1 Timbermare
Lands (17)
Spells (6)
Hey look, I got another Akroma. Hopefully this time I might actually get a chance to unmorph her into something more than a Gray Ogre.
I wasn’t too impressed with this deck, to be honest. Big Dumb Green and Red is an apt description, and will you just look at all the echo costs. Unfortunately, when your Blue is nothing more than a Fathom Seer and Crookclaw Transmuter there isn’t a lot of choice. I played a lot of people playing White/Red, so I assume white does have good cards somewhere. The less said about Black, the better.
I did get to unmorph Akroma, but then I had some wobbly moments when my two-color deck decided it wanted to pretend to be mono-color for a while. After a draw in round 2 I went 1-0 down, and was looking on the rocks when I mulliganed to five. It should have been curtains, but the standard of play at Prereleases is always a little variable, and my opponent gave me just enough of a glimmer to pull back into the match.
Round 5 was hilarious when Ray Fawcett emptied my hand of everything (by everything I mean “three land and a Strangling Soot I couldn’t cast”) apart from a Havenwood Wurm. So I promptly top-decked Ana Guildmage and used Chromatic Star for the blue kicker to completely empty Ray’s hand. I mean c’mon, you shouldn’t be surprised by now. I’m the king of top decks, after all.
Ray did play Magus of the Tabernacle against me, and I’m surprised there hasn’t been more buzz about the card for Constructed. It feels like an absolute savaging for creature-based strategies. It’s pretty much Kataki against any deck reliant on Elves and Bops, and has an absolutely massive backside that no burn player is going to relish trying to Char through. We should probably be thankful Kormus Bell hasn’t been around for a while, as that plus Tomb of Yawgmoth is going to be fairly irritating for the kitchen tablers.
After that win there was only one round and one person that stood in the way of Prerelease glory. Unfortunately, that man was Craig “our editor” Stevenson, and a monstrosity of a deck complete with two dragons. The first game was an epic. I hit him hard early, and then held back an Ana Battlemage as he stabilized. At some point I’d knew he’d make a dragon, and at that point I’d use the Battlemage to six him to the dome (and empty his hand). Although it wasn’t enough it looked like it would still do the job, as a Skirk Shaman attack dropped him to one life. I had Strangling Soot in hand. Next turn I’d remove two blockers and be able to overlap for the single point of damage I needed. Point and click with the Soot, repeat, alpha-strike, he unmorphs the Parasite to kill my Shaman, no problem, was expecting that, now he’s tapped out and I still have a guy left over he can’t block. Hmm, why hasn’t he conceded?
Yeah, Craig had two cards in hand. One of which was Snapback, and the other was a Blue card.
Okay, so I lost, but you can’t fault a game that goes back and forth like that. This is what Magic is about, as far as I’m concerned (and yes, I probably would be whining about it like a bastard if it had been a PT and not a Prerelease, but that’s why playing Prereleases is a nice diversion. I get to talk about a good game of Magic instead).
The next game also jinked back and forth, but on this occasion, although Craig’s deck did outclass mine overall, I found the sweet spot that had both Jedit and Akroma, and he didn’t make any enormous 6/6 flying blimps.
After all that we finished up with a draw, which was fairly good for me as I was being battered six ways to Sunday as time was called in the third game, and it was only the shyness of Craig’s dragons that kept him from administering the final blow.
So overall I went 4-0-2 with the second deck, and Craig went off with the T-shirt and a box of Planar Chaos. I reckon we’ll see some square brackets right about here: [Hell, who am I to disappoint? The Snapback was legend. – Craig Not-Prof.]
But there’s no time. The clock is ticking. Those scheming government agents are closing in. Despite having brains filled with pink jello, one bright spark has unravelled my dastardly plan. Time to unleash the torch pigs!
Back down to Salford it was, with Keith running point in case we got lost. Which, rather predictably, happened. It didn’t really help that I was so tired I kept falling asleep while Keith was trying to give me directions on the phone.
Nothing several beers couldn’t cure anyway.
So Sunday dawned, and as my account wasn’t several million pounds fuller and Wales hadn’t fallen into the Irish Sea, I guessed my evil scheme had been thwarted. Curse you Hagonator and your foul-mouthed Kavu!
Oh well, I suppose I could always go to the Prerelease at the Wendover Pub in Altrincham.
Another Prerelease and no dragons for me. Goddamnit! I just wanted to smash face with a dragon!
This card pool looked like a nightmare. The closest thing I had to a bomb rare was Ixidron. White and Black were again deeply unexciting. The other colors looked to be lacking in ways to, well, kill people. In the end I was caught between a Red/Green deck that splashed Black for Vhati (making creatures have one toughness quite useful with two prods), but was otherwise quite high in filler; and Blue/x decks that were about five cards short.
In the end I took the gamble and went for the greedyish (I left the double-Red Shivan Meteor in the board) Blue/Green deck with a Red hippo-crash (like a splash but scaled upwards; think of dropping a fully grown male Hippopotamus into a swimming pool from a height of approximately ten meters).
And here we have it:
Creatures (17)
- 1 Coral Trickster
- 1 Dream Stalker
- 1 Havenwood Wurm
- 1 Ixidron
- 1 Looter il-Kor
- 1 Nantuko Shaman
- 1 Penumbra Spider
- 1 Riftwing Cloudskate
- 1 Spiketail Drakeling
- 2 Citanul Woodreaders
- 1 Giant Dustwasp
- 1 Kavu Predator
- 2 Prodigal Pyromancer
- 1 Shaper Parasite
- 1 Stingscourger
Lands (17)
Spells (6)
Of course, I moaned like buggery about how bad my deck was. It’s a tradition, and eminently justifiable if the person next to you opens two dragons and other assorted brokenness (I’m talking about you, Mr Ribchester).
So after all that moaning, I obviously won the whole thing.
The original plan was to play one game with the Blue deck and then board into G/R/b, mainly because I couldn’t decide which deck was better. After one game I realised it was the Blue deck. Yes, the mana is shifty and there aren’t any fixers, but by god there is an unholy amount of card drawing. Being short of heavy hitters isn’t so bad when you draw so many little guys.
I drew one game after my manabase imploded, but the deck played a lot better than I initially thought. Against my second round opponent I managed to kill Teneb, kill him again when he came back (Evolution Charm), survive through a Magus of the Tabernacle, and even win the second game despite my opponent untapping with Sengir Nosferatu in play (that was one scary deck). So yes, I think we can say the deck was a little better than I first thought.
In the last round I came up against another double dragon special, this time opened by Graham Ribchester. Fortunately he’d decided to go five-color for a laugh, and was unlucky enough to be caught without a Plains for crucial stretches of the match and couldn’t get Teneb going.
So the overall record for this deck was 5-0-1. (And I got a T-shirt, yippee!)
And the point of all this is….
I dunno. Prerelease, right. Fun.
The last Sealed Deck reminded me of how deceptively good Blue is. Making Blue the morph color is probably even more stupidly unbalancing than making it the big flying monster color. The reason being is that, until you know otherwise, every morph on the opposite side of the table is at least as good as the best common morph.
As an example, attacking into any morph with 2U open with two 2/2s is not an attractive proposition when it could unmorph into a Shaper Parasite and two-for-nil you. That’s quite some rattlesnake.
Basically, all of the Blue morphs unmorph to do tricky things… and worse, this information is hidden from you. This basically puts even the average Blue creatures so far ahead of the other colors’ average drops it’s ridiculous. If you do have any doubt while building your Sealed Deck, then a safe option is to default to Blue as the morph creatures give you a tremendous amount of options.
Despite Blue’s strengths, I think the real winner in Limited terms from Time Spiral is probably Red. Stingscourger is really good, and I was astonished at the amount of people I saw not playing it. It’s not a turn 2 play, but you don’t always have to pay echo either. Stuart Wright ideal Blue/White deck was one that went suspend a guy turn 1, make a bear on turn 2, make a morph turn 3 and then make two bears on turn 4. Replace one of those bears on turn 4 with Stingscourger and just imagine what it’s going to be like on the draw against that start.
With tempo so important, Dead / Gone is another quality common. Shock was important in the Onslaught morph wars, and we have it back here (although limited to creatures only) with the extra versatility of being able to clear a large blocker out of the way if needed.
Throw in a common pinger (Prodigal Pyromancer) and Giant Growth (Brute Force), and Red has four really good common picks. Skirk Shaman is also okay as a Gray Ogre with evasion.
For me, Green has further cemented itself as the control color in Draft. Essence Warden is going to be important for buying time against beatdown, and is another one-drop and obviously potentially abusable with Empty the Warrens.
Green also gets a couple of quality creatures, including Mire Boa and its own mini Errant Ephemeron in Giant Dustwasp. I also like the versatility of Citanul Woodreaders. Early on you can drop it to stymie early beats. Later on, when it is (presumably) less effective, you can still pay the kicker and draw two cards.
There are more Thallids, but they don’t excite me unfortunately. I’m maybe missing something there, I guess.
Uktabi Drake is a card I saw a lot of people playing, and I’m not totally convinced on it. The echo cost feels very high for what you actually get. I don’t want to beat it up too much, as I guess it’s probably okay in a deck where you can play it and another threat on the same turn. Then I guess it’s like a sensible implementation of the silly super-haste card from Unhinged (Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug or something similar, if my memory serves me correctly)
Utopia Vow is another card I’m not sure how to evaluate. Yeah, it sort of is Pacifism, but I really don’t like giving my opponent a free Bird of Paradise. White also has a ton of “rescue” creatures that return other creatures to hand. You really don’t want this card in your deck against anyone with Plains on the table. Personally I think I’d start it in the board and bring it in to handle Dragons and the like.
My wishes for Blue to be brought back a peg obviously went unheard, as it got an absolute monster of a morph in Shaper Parasite. It was pretty bad when you had to worry about “damage on, return two islands, my guy has three toughness and lives.” Now you have “damage on, pay 2U, my guy has three toughness and lives, and oh while we’re going about it, put that other guy in the bin as well.”
I’m not even sure this is the best common, as Dreamscape Artist just seems degenerate. This guy will fix your mana, ramp up your mana, and even thin all the lands out of your deck. Kill on sight.
Blue even got a removal spell in Erratic Mutation. Okay, so it’s probably not the most reliable of removal spells, but it should get the job done on most two-toughness guys.
I didn’t get a chance to see most of the White and Black spells in action, but it feels like Black is now really cemented into the ugly stepchild role of Time Spiral draft. The pickings feel really lean here. Blightspeaker does finally give Black/White some synergy with the rebel elements (and there are some good rebels in both colors), but there is a real absence of quality Black removal. Vampiric Link and Melancholy sort of get the job done, but they suffer from being in the same format as Whitemane Lion and Dream Stalker. As has already been pointed out, Cradle to Grave is strictly worse than Remove Soul, but I think it will still have a useful role similar to Premature Burial as an “anti-bear” in draft. Basically it gives you a turn 2 play, so long as you don’t mind what it kills.
White is a color I always find hard to evaluate. I can see Whitemane Lion being a lot of fun, and Sunlance is about a billion better times better than any common Black removal in the set (what exactly is Black’s role in Planar Chaos? The crap color with Wrath of God? Ahh…. I get the joke. Meet Black… the new White). Sinew Sliver is an auto-include for any sliver strategy (I did hear of triple Planar Chaos drafts decks ending up with seven of these, which just feels rude). Shade of Trokair is also probably pretty good, but then we’ve all learnt that the turn 1 suspend guys are good by now.
This leaves Aven Riftwatcher. I want to dislike this guy as it feels like you’re throwing away a card for a few points of life, but I suspect he’s better than that. He might also be another “tempo buster,” in that he trips up any deck focused on racing you to zero life. The vanishing is probably less of an issue, as there are plenty of ways to rescue him in White, plus as a rebel you can also recoup the card disadvantage by just searching him out of your deck.
As always I’ll finish with the caveat that I am English, and therefore any Limited advice is applied at the user’s own risk. Personally, Red/Blue looks pretty sexy to me at the moment.
Phew, that took longer than I expected, but I suppose it was a bit of a marathon weekend. Four tournaments, gotta love this game.
“PROF, THIS COLUMN IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT CONSTRUCTED, NOT LIMITED! I WANT TO SEE SOME DECKLISTS!”
Oh yeah… how about 2 x Nether Traitor + Hivestone + Basal Sliver, with a side helping of Necrotic Sliver. And possibly also Sarpadian Empires, Sinew Sliver, and maybe Pulmonic Sliver…?
But that’s for another week. If I can just get this doohickey working, I might be able to open a miniature black hole in the center of Los Angeles. Now where did I put my spanner…?
Until next week,
Prof.