Insert Column Name Here: Dropping Bombs Like The Air Force, Baby

As I write this, I am currently watching “Signs.” And I wonder:

Did Hollywood stars used to go this nuts?

Okay, we have Mel Gibson, who’s turned out to be a kind of blood-crazy anti-Semite guy. Tom Cruise is jumpin’ up and down on top of couches, and buns-deep in his crazy Xenu-fightin’ religion. Russell Crowe is throwing cell phones at people, and Kramer’s spewing racial invective that’s not particularly funny. And there’s Michael Jackson, who’s not quite a star, but he went nuts, too.

I don’t remember Humphrey Bogart pulling this crap. Sure, Greta Garbo wanted to be alone, but that was a joke. It wasn’t until Marlon Brando got all buttery in the 1980s that stars seemed to become unhinged on a regular basis.

Now, that could be for a couple of reasons. Maybe it’s that the Hollywood Machine was much tigher in those days, and if you stepped sufficiently out of line they stopped putting you in good films. (Remember, stars didn’t get to choose their roles back then!) Or maybe it was that the press was more genteel, and if someone got caught drunk driving, well hell, everyone drunk drove in the 1940s (and anti-Semitic rants were, sadly, a way of life for many back then).

Or maybe the stars were just less nuts back then. I don’t know. What do you think?

Huh? Oh yeah. You want Magic talk. Crap, well, I might as well do that, too.

Sealed Deck Pool

Ferrett Steinmetz

Test deck on 03-25-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (53)

Lands (2)

1 Dreadship Reef
1 Urza's Factory

Spells (20)

White
Solid Playables: Benalish Cavalry, Calciderm, Cloudchaser Kestrel, Gustcloak Cavalier, Momentary Blink, Temporal Isolation

This list omits two cards that I’m not entirely sure about. Is Ghost Tactician a solidly playable? The effect is nice, and he’s certainly a good blocker, but for five mana I’m not sure the global combat boost is worth the bang for my buck.

The definition of “Solidly playable” is “If I’m playing that color, I’d have to have a very special reason not to put him in.” And obviously, Ghost Tactician is a no-brainer in a W/G Saproling deck, or a deck that revolves around Empty the Warrens. But all too often I’ve faced down a Ghost Tactician when he was paired with only one other creature, and then his cost of a card for a +1/+1 boost wasn’t all that stellar — especially when one of my guys had evasion.

He may well move onto the list. But for now, I’m not sure.

Likewise, Rebuff the Wicked seems like it would be extremely handy, but I’ve never seen it played — which is danger sign #1 — and it also seems narrow, a Counterspell that’s good for one type of spell only. Admittedly, it’s really cheap, but “really cheap” and “really narrow” tend to travel in packs.

As it is, what we have here is decent white but not exceptional — it has a few very good cards (Blink, Calciderm, Isolation) and some scattershot cards that won’t necessarily work well if the deck isn’t a quick beatdown (Cavalry, Cavalier). We could go here, but we’d need some more backup.

Blue
Solid Playables: Draining Whelk, Errant Ephemeron, Think Twice, Veiling Oddity

I was surprised last week to find that some had a distinct affection for Aquamorph Entity, which I’ve found to be marginal at best. There may be more need for investigation here…. But not today, since this Blue isn’t quite strong enough. We have a lot of decent cards and a few solids, but 17th-slotters like Ophidian Eye and Reality Acid (sans Tolarian Sentinel) don’t make me comfortable moving into the embrace of the air.

That said — and this is just one of those little quirks of the randomness of Sealed — I’ve never actually played with Think Twice before. Every time I’ve gotten it I haven’t gone Blue. I always (dis)liked it when people were using it against me to search deeper for answers, and I suspected it was reasonably solid, but now I know.

So here’s a bulletin from 2006: Think Twice is, apparently, pretty darned okay. Thankew! Look here for future other obvious strategy bulletins!

Black
Solid Playables: Cradle to Grave, Enslave, Mirri the Cursed, Twisted Abomination, Urborg Syphon-Mage, Viscid Lemures

Yes, I’ve come around on Cradle to Grave. I know I questioned whether it was that good, and it’s still sometimes awkward, but it can serve one of two purposes:

Fixing a slow hand. So you’ve got an awesome hand when you reach turn 5, but nothing to fill the time between turns 2 and 5? Cradle to Grave can steal a bit of tempo, ruining your opponent’s three- or four-drop and giving you a turn or so while you set up the bomb.

Late-game protection. You have plenty of mana. Your opponent finally drops his b-b-b-bomb dude. Assuming it’s not black, you’re fine.

It’s narrow, but more useful than not. Thus, I’ll usually stick it in if I’m playing Black.

I should also mention that I like Viscid Lemures a little more in Sealed than I do in Draft…. Mainly because in the absence of you choosing your own colors, you tend to drift towards the colors featuring good removal. Which means that Black turns up a little more in Sealed than not, making Viscid Lemures more than just your average 4/3.

By the way, Mirri the Cursed still remains an insanely good creature, even if you can’t save her. And Enslave is expensive, but it generally shows up around the time your opponent decides to start dropping dragons. This is nice, even if the problem with Enslave is that you want to get greedy — I want to steal his biggest, bestest creature, and I hate dropping it on a measly Crookclaw Transmuter. But sometimes, ya gotta.

Red
Solid Playables: Bogardan Hellkite, Coal Stoker, Dead / Gone, Fury Charm, Orcish Cannonade, Reckless Wurm, Skirk Shaman, Subterranean Shambler, Viashino Bladescout

Let’s talk about a card that used to be marginal in certain matchups, and now sucks: Hello, Basalt Gargoyle.

See, there was a time I’d defend you. Sure, you sucked against Black and Blue, who’d bounce and kill you, but the Red butt-booster cost meant that you could sometimes lay one in the late game and have a decent blocker/attacker.

Stingscourger, however, changed all that. Now, Red has a way to not only kill, but bounce, your dude, ensuring that your echo cost gets burned again. I don’t like you, Basalt Gargoyle. Go away.

That said, Fury Charm’s raised up a couple of notches, because the ability to kill an artifact is particularly nice if you’re trying to screw an opponent out of color-fixing — the impact of destroying Prismatic Lens or a Totem is quite worthwhile. And if you can’t do that, a brief +1/+1 boost can sometimes be useful in combat.

Bogardan Hellkite is, obviously, crazy-good and crazy-expensive. Obviously, we’ll want to use him. And Dead / Gone kinda steers me heavily into Red.

Green
Solid Playables: Ashcoat Bear, Essence Warden, Gemhide Sliver, Giant Dustwasp, Greenseeker, Molder, Phantom Wurm, Primal Forcemage, Thallid Germinator

That’s some darned solid Green.

We’ll discuss this in a moment. But incidentally, Essence Warden and Giant Dustwasp have continued to be excellent cards.

And The Rest
Solid Playables: Nicol Bolas, Stuffy Doll, Urza’s Factory

Ouch.

Now, the Green is strong, but we have one of two methods we can go:

1) We can try to go with some sort of G/R beatdown hybrid, finishing up with Bogardan Hellkite and splashing some other good cards off of Gemhide Sliver, Evolution Charm, and possibly Paradise Plume. But doing that means we pretty much abandon the Black — oh, I guess we could hope that Evolution Charm and Twisted A-bomb mean that we can consistently get the double-Black for Enslave and Mirri, but is that even worth it? Only Enslave would really be dominating come turn 6.

2) We go for a Big Dumb Dragon build, attempting to stuff in Nicol Bolas and taking advantage of everything that Black/Red/Blue has to offer.

Personally, I think there’s more overall power in Black/Red/Blue. Yes, the mana’s a lot clunkier, but we get access to more bombs when we want them — Mirri the Cursed is awesome on turn 4, less so on turn 7. And we get access to a late-game, sided-in Draining Whelk if we decide that our opponent is slow enough that we can load our top end appropriately.

This was my deck — which, I should add, was flat-out wrong for one reason.

3 Island
6 Mountain
1 Nicol Bolas
6 Swamp
1 Twisted Abomination
1 Uthden Troll
1 Basalt Gargoyle
1 Bogardan Hellkite
1 Coal Stoker
1 Cradle to Grave
1 Dead / Gone
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Enslave
1 Errant Ephemeron
1 Fury Charm
1 Mindstab
1 Mirri the Cursed
1 Orcish Cannonade
1 Paradise Plume
1 Reckless Wurm
1 Skirk Shaman
1 Stuffy Doll
1 Subterranean Shambler
1 Think Twice
1 Urborg Syphon-Mage
1 Urza’s Factory
1 Viashino Bladescout
1 Viscid Lemures

The reason this deck is wrong is pretty simple to experienced players, even though I thought I could risk it: It has only seventeen land. And considering I have not one but two eight-mana creatures, putting eighteen land in should have been a no-brainer.

But I thought that between Paradise Plume and Twisted Abomination, I could risk it. This deck should have had an extra Island in it, taking out the — you guessed it — Basalt Gargoyle.

That said, this deck was extremely satisfying to play — so much so that I got bored one day while watching TV shows with my lovely daughter (she wanted to watch the whole of League of Gentlemen once we got started, bless her sweet eyes), and I played an astonishing 32 matches.

How’d it do? It won 21 of them.

Some of those matches were lost because, well, I was watching TV. Let’s be honest: there are two modes of playing, serious and not serious, and a lot of the time I was just casually throwing down cards and waiting for my bombs to save me. Others were lost because of my own mana — this is a mana-intensive deck, and the seventeen land hurt me a lot as I was struggling to draw to six or seven or eight mana to cast the big damn things in my hand.

And still others were lost because of the slowness. This deck is a juggernaut when it gets moving, but its early game is not particularly solid. It can get swarmed if you don’t draw Stuffy Doll or some other early blocker.

That said, Paradise Plume was golden in this style of deck; set to “Red,” it pretty much ensured that I’d be getting life — precious, precious life — to live longer to set up the bombs. There were a lot of games where I won from three or two life, and those life were given to me by the Plume.

Perhaps the G/R build would have been better. But this was good. And more importantly, ‘twas fun to play.

The Weekly Plug Bug
It’s been three months! But this week, the longest storyline that HotS has ever run — the “Beast” storyline — will finally end!

Izzy went on a date with Seth, and rejected his proposals because she realized she was in love with Tanner. Tanner got upset and drunk-dialed his ex-girlfriend, and he rejected her because he realized he needed to be more aggressive in his relationship.

Now Izzy has returned to find… well, you know. But you’ll find out how it ends. All in Home on the Strange.

Signing off,
The Ferrett
[email protected]
The Here Edits This Here Site Here Guy