Insert Column Name Here - Driving Cross-Country With A Turkey In My Trunk

This week’s article was a bit more difficult to write than many, because I didn’t have time. I was on the road for twenty-four hours over the course of four days, driving across the country to visit my daughters for Thanksgiving.

The ironic thing is that I was kind of hoping for an accident. Why? Because we had all the food.

For the first year, my daughter Erin is living on her own, and she wanted to host Thanksgiving in her apartment. And it was a nice enough apartment, but she’s no cook and has no supplies. So it was up to us, the brave Mommy and Stepdad, to drive seven hundred miles with a fully-charged Thanksgiving dinner in our trunk.

In the back, in a plastic tub, a defrosting turkey sloshed in a tank of ice-filled brine. The raw materials for a large tray of apple crisp were packed neatly away, including apples, a peeler, an apple corer, a packet of brown sugar, and a container of oats, all stored in the pan we’d bake it in. We had a metal bowl of Jell-O, and a sack of potatoes….

I felt like I was LARPing a game of Oregon Trail. My Oxen were going to die when I forded the stream, I just knew it.

All that food, though, was kind of cool. ‘Cause secretly, I wanted the car to turn over in a distant ditch where no one would discover us for five days. What would we care? We had a trunkload of food, and a sleeping bag we were bringing as a gift!

For the first time, I was ready for any survival. Alas, we got there in one piece, and proceeded to have a lovely Thanksgiving.

So how was your Turkey Day? (Assuming you had one. And even if you didn’t, you should have; Thanksgiving is a wonderful excuse to eat animals.)

Oh, yeah, the deck. Here we go.

Sealed Deck Pool

Ferrett Steinmetz

Test deck on 12-02-2007

Lorwyn Limited

Creatures (48)

Planeswalkers (1)

1 Jace Beleren

Lands (3)

White
Solid Playables: Avian Changeling, Cloudgoat Ranger, Galepowder Mage, Goldmeadow Harrier, Harpoon Sniper, Kinsbaile Balloonist, Neck Snap, Plover Knights, Pollen Lullaby, Surge of Thoughtweft

Well, that’s a little gift from Heaven, ain’t it? If the other colors are so strong they pull me out of this White, my deck could jello-wrestle Kenji Tsumura and Rich Hoaen in a pit of flaming shots and win without even breathing.

That bit of hyperbole aside, I gotta say I’m loving Galepowder Mage more and more the more I play with it. In this deck, being able to phase out Kithkin Harbinger to repeatedly drain my deck of all Kithkin is nice… But that’s not even the best trick. The best trick is, barring some need to attack now, repeatedly phasing out my Cloudgoat Ranger to give me infinite 1/1 tokens and then attack with Surge of Thoughtweft in my hand. Now that’s pretty sweet.

Oh, yeah, and I guess I could hit Mulldrifter. That could do something, too. If I had Mulldrifter. Which I do.

Pollen Lullaby is one of those cards that everyone seems to forget about, but I’ve used it to good effect, sometimes at my EOT. You’re tapping me down with your Goldmeadow Harrier? Well, assuming I’ve stacked the top of my deck properly with some harbinger (or just the experience of a previous Clash effect), you’re not going to be doing that next round.

Is Wellgabber Apothecary good? I mean, outside of a Merfolk deck? I dunno, man, someone tell me.

Blue
Solid Playables: Amoeboid Changeling, Jace Beleren, Merrow Harbinger, Mulldrifter, Paperfin Rascal, Scion of Oona, Sentinels of Glen Elendra, Silvergill Douser, Wings of Velis Vel

When, when you have two of the best Blue commons in the format waiting for you in your pool, you have to consider it… And lo, both Mulldrifter and Silvergill Douser are winking up at me happily.

Scion of Oona I love, because even in a non-Faerie deck she can still do mean tricks with Runed Stalactite and the like. Oh, you’re trying to target my guy in mid-combat? How’s about I Wings of Velis Vel and then Scion of Oona to make it both untargetable and a 5/5? Ooo, mean. I like it.

Paperfin Rascal is one of those cards I’ve grown to like as time goes by; he’s effectively stocking my hand on turn 3, even if he’s usually doing the same for my opponent, and there’s no down side to losing. That’s as painless as it gets.

Jace Beleren is pretty much assured to kill your opponent if it goes off with the ubereffect, but getting it there is the trick. You have to have a deck that’s heavy on defense, since charging him up without actually firing him just means you’ve handed your opponent a boatload of cards.

I still do not like Glimmerdust Nap, Sam-I-Am. Oh, I’ll side it in when I have to – which is, sadly, often – but it just seems like it’s a dead draw half the time, since you’re saving it for the big guy.

Black
Solid Playables: Dreamspoiler Witches, Eyeblight’s Ending, Makeshift Mannequin, Moonglove Winnower, Nath’s Buffoon, Peppersmoke, Warren Pilferers

Wow. More strong Black. But I should add that in general, I don’t like Mournwhelk (without some sort of booster like a Smokebraider, natch) – it’s expensive and clunky. It’s one of those cards I’ll side in a lot, but hate running main. Perhaps I am wrong.

That said, we have some strong removal here and some nice “get stuff back” splash candidates: Eyeblight’s Ending and Peppersmoke will help kill what you want, whereas Makeshift Mannequin is so good it’s even Standard-playable. We don’t have a heck of a lot of ways to abuse it, but it’s a consideration.

Aside from that, what we have here are a bunch of good cards with no theme. We don’t have a lot of Faeries or Elves, and the Dreamspoiler Witches are only good with a lot of instants. Do we have ‘em? Yeah, we do. Hmm.

Red
Solid Playables: Blades of Velis Vel, Incandescent Soulstoke, Inner-Flame Acolyte, Mudbutton Torchrunner, Smokebraider, Soulbright Flamekin

Last time I did this, I had a lot of Elemental enablers and no good Elementals… And whoops, here we go again. None of the good Incarnations, and we do have Mulldrifter but we can cast that without help. A shame, that.

Oh yeah, and we have no removal (aside from Mudbutt) and a bunch of teeny creatures. I’m not thrilled here.

Green
Solid Playables: Gilt-Leaf Ambush, Gilt-Leaf Seer, Guardian of Cloverdell, Nath’s Elite, Oakgnarl Warrior, Rootgrapple, Warren-Scourge Elf

I didn’t think I’d have to say this, but my God I’ve seen it happen twice this week alone. So let me just make this clear:

Unless your back’s so against the wall that you’re going to die this turn, do not activate the Gilt-Leaf Seer during your upkeep.

Seriously, dude. A 2/2 blocker might come in handy in, say, preventing me from attacking your face, and tapping it down and burning mana before you see your cards is just not good play. Oh, there are times you have to run it, natch, but it shouldn’t be a default.

What? The cards? They’re okay. Sadly, aside from the Gilt-Leaf Ambush, everything good in this card pool is pretty much a) a big stompy ugly thing, and b) five mana or over. This would be awesome if I had a deck that I could rely on getting to five mana, but in the meantime I’d die to Kithkin, and who wants that?

…And The Rest
Solid Playables: Runed Stalactite, Vivid Grove, Vivid Marsh, Wanderer’s Twig

This is the part where I as a writer am supposed to say something really neat about cards that are plainly decent. What can I add? Um, Vivid Grove helps fix your mana. That’s good, isn’t it?

The Deck
I thought about this for probably not enough time, but I eventually realized there was a good U/W/b deck to be had – something like this:

6 Island
7 Plains
3 Swamp
1 Avian Changeling
1 Cloudgoat Ranger
1 Dawnfluke
1 Dreamspoiler Witches
1 Eyeblight’s Ending
1 Galepowder Mage
1 Goldmeadow Harrier
1 Harpoon Sniper
1 Jace Beleren
1 Kinsbaile Balloonist
1 Kithkin Harbinger
1 Makeshift Mannequin
1 Mulldrifter
1 Neck Snap
1 Peppersmoke
1 Plover Knights
1 Pollen Lullaby
1 Runed Stalactite
1 Scion of Oona
1 Sentinels of Glen Elendra
1 Silvergill Douser
1 Surge of Thoughtweft
1 Vivid Marsh
1 Wanderer’s Twig
1 Wings of Velis Vel

…but that’s 41 cards, and I wasn’t sure what I’d cut. (Probably Dawnfluke.) Plus, it felt like getting greedy with the mana; I had a lot of stuff that needed White, and I was pretty sure I’d get mana-screwed a lot on this one. Instead, I opted for a more consistent, if less powerful, build that centered around Merfolk:

8 Island
9 Plains
1 Avian Changeling
1 Cloudgoat Ranger
1 Dawnfluke
1 Galepowder Mage
1 Goldmeadow Harrier
1 Harpoon Sniper
1 Jace Beleren
1 Kinsbaile Balloonist
1 Kithkin Harbinger
1 Merrow Harbinger
1 Mulldrifter
1 Neck Snap
2 Paperfin Rascal
1 Plover Knights
1 Pollen Lullaby
1 Runed Stalactite
1 Scattering Stroke
1 Scion of Oona
1 Silvergill Douser
1 Surge of Thoughtweft
1 Wanderer’s Twig

1 Wings of Velis Vel

How’d it do? Well, the deck let me down, going a horrendous 4-2. That might not be horrendous in other circumstances, but when you pull something this strong, that’s flames coming out of the engine, my friend.

When it worked, it worked well, and the three victories were pummellings, mainly thanks to the ugliness of Jace Beleren. Not that Jace was that strong, but what happened was a cutesy little two-step:

1) I win Game 1 with fast sKithkin beatings! Woop!

2) My opponent sides in a lot of beatdown prevention cards and critter control!

3) Jace comes out and wins the ground stall, and since my opponent is now equipped to handle the aggro deck I’m not actually using, I win.

But the third round was ugly because I wound up doing the thing I almost always do at least once a week:

1) First game, see a hand with two lands and mulligan it. The six-card hand is awful, and the five-card hand has two lands but fewer options.

2) Die horribly thanks to no mana.

3) In the second or third game, see a hand with two lands and go, “Crap, I just mulliganed that and I died. I’ll keep this.” Then I draw no more lands and die.

That’s right; it shouldn’t affect me, statistically speaking, but the earlier (and probably correct) mulligan decision lulls me into making an incorrect mulligan decision. Stupid, but true, and it’s what happened here.

The fifth match, however, was sheer frustration. I came out of the gates a-blazin’ against a Merfolk deck, getting him down to three life before he eventually rallied and came back on the strength of Sygg, River Guide and a Veteran of the Depths. I had both my active Harpoon Guide and a Neck Snap to cast, but they all bounced off thanks to Sygg. Grr.

Even worse, I could have won. At three life, when he turned ‘em sideways, if I’d won the clash on Pollen Lullaby, I would have been able to sneak through for the final damage with a Runed-up Merfolk Harbinger. But I lost the clash, and lost the game.

The second game was a close match. He had a lot of good cards, all the best Merfolk (in addition to the aforementioned Merfolk, he had Summon the School and Judge of Currents, as well as Benthicore and some other nasty tricks), as well as his own much more effective Harpoon Sniper. I squeaked this one out thanks to a) my wisely siding in Protective Bubble on my Plover Knights, which his Goldmeadow Harrier and Merfolk Sniper couldn’t touch, and b) the Islandwalking power of Merfolk Harbinger, which walked straight through not one but two potentially fatal Sniper activations thanks to first a Surge of Thoughtweft and then a Runed Stalactite/Scion combo.

The third game was a catastrophe where I died without having inflicted a single point of damage, and my opponent had the gall to complain. See, he’d drawn neither of the two Neck Snaps he had, and thought that he should have won the second game as well. He was a nice guy, but complaining to me that he had bad luck when he’d just stomped me seemed mean.

Signing off,
The Ferrett
TheFerrett@StarCityGames.com
The Here Edits This Here Site Guy

Insert Column Name Here – Driving Cross-Country With A Turkey In My Trunk

Creatures (48)

Planeswalkers (1)

Lands (3)

Spells (23)