Insert Column Name Here - Fireworks On The Fourth Of July

By the time you read this, it will be the day before my birthday. This is, traditionally, my excuse to be lazy.

See, July 3rd is the day I was born — and as someone who is not only an only child, but was the first and only grandson on both sides of the family for several years, I am convinced that My Birthday is the most important day of the whole year. I have told my bosses that they’d better fire me if they expect me to work on my birthday, because it’s the one day where it’s all about me.

Plus, I get fireworks. Oh, you may have thought that the fireworks are for the Fourth of July, but really? They’re for me. They must be. There’s always a celebration in every town I go to!

Now, traditionally, my celebration consisted of a day off from SCG. Back when I was the day-to-day editor of the site, I got the idea of just posting everything unedited to show you what SCG would be like without an editor at the helm. It was a rousing success, because not only did it save me the trouble of editing, but everyone got to see the actual work that an editor does around here. (You can see 2003 here.) It became a mild tradition, as Ted continued it for at least one year, but I don’t know that Craig’s ever done it.

But for the first time in a long time, it’s my birthday article. What can I do to make this special?

The obvious temptation is to do an unedited version of me, but I write extremely cleanly. I can write almost first-draft quality articles in about forty minutes, and what’s left would be the minor typos I didn’t catch in typing or on the spellcheck. Not only would it not save me any work, but it wouldn’t be that interesting.

So I considered doing something generic. You know, “Here are the cards I’d like to open up in a Time Spiral Sealed Card Pool on my birthday” article. But that’s kinda stupid; I mean, okay, everyone wants to open up the same damn cards. All I’d tell you strategywise is that hey, Errant Ephemeron is a good card in Sealed! And wow, wouldn’t that be interesting?

Then I thought about an article consisting entirely of MODO card shots. But not only would that be a lot like Mark Rosewater “All Pictures” article, but it would be — you guessed it — more work. And it’s my birthday!

Sadly, after three days of thinking — which seemed an awful lot like work — I couldn’t come up with something suitably clever and effortless. So here. Here’s a card pool.

Man, I wish I’d thought of something cooler.

Sealed Deck Pool

Ferrett Steinmetz

Test deck on 07-08-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (39)

Lands (2)

Spells (34)

White
Solid Playables: Castle Raptors, Flickering Spirit, Judge Unworthy, Saltblast

Some cards here that fall into interesting lines: For example, is Mana Tithe maindeck-includable? I’m on the cusp here; given that Sprout Swarm is often flat-out unstoppable if you don’t draw a counterspell stat (and it gets worse if they have Deathspore Thallid or Thallid Germinator), it’s nice to have something that stops it cold. And it’s nice for buying you some tempo in the early game. But for every time that works, there’s a time when he has two mana left open and you’re left hanging.

I’d consider it strongly, and sideboard it in a lot. But an automatic maindeck inclusion? That’s rough.

Likewise, Amrou Scout is great in decks that have Rebels. This does not have a Rebel to be found. And Plated Pegasus can help a lot against Red burny decks (and take the edge off a stray Tendrils of Corruption), but it’s too little to be maindeck-worthy on its own.

The strong cards here are strong; I love Raptors, Judge Unworthy is awesome, and Saltblast does a nice job as long as you’re not facing a White-heavy deck. But this is, at best, a support color.

Blue
Solid Playables: Cancel, Careful Consideration, Dreamscape Artist, Leaden Fists, Logic Knot, Riftwing Cloudskate, Spiketail Drakeling, Think Twice

Nice Blue, here. Leaden Fists is one of those cards I was worried about, but it definitely does the job more often than not; it’s got a drawback, but at instant-speed it’s often flexible, taking out something that’s going to hurt a lot more if it hits you twice. (Unfortunately, a mere Coral Trickster can ruin your day, as some folks found out this weekend.) However, it can also land the deathblow against an opponent who’s not expecting a Blue Giant Growth (sorry — Brute Force), and it lands nicely on blockers.

The only problem with this Blue pool is that, well, it needs a lot of Blue. Three double-Blue mana spells? Ugly. Definitely something we’ll probably be running, but the mana’s a consideration.

Black
Solid Playables: Melancholy, Gorgon Recluse, Haunting Hymn, Tendrils of Corruption

Light on Black here, baby. There are a bunch of kinda-playable cards, like Ridged Kusite and Grave Scrabbler… But Black’s strengths in this block are a) removal, b) cheap madness spells, and c) the occasional Black bomb. This has none of them.

That said, I don’t know if Muck Drubb is good. It’s the usual song and dance; I envision situations where Muck Drubb would save the day, stealing someone’s bomb enchantment or taking the hit for a creature that needs to live… And then I think, “Wow, five mana for a 3/3.” Yeah, I can Madness it out, but… I can’t depend on that.

I wanna like the Drubb. But having never seen it in action, I can’t say.

Incidentally, if you haven’t gotten the bulletin, Haunting Hymn is very very good in Sealed. Stripping your opponent’s four-card hand in a slower format that’s often more about dropping bombs than consistency? That works very well.

Red
Solid Playables: Blazing Blade Askari, Dead/Gone, Empty the Warrens, Fatal Attraction, Gathan Raiders, Keldon Halberdier, Norin the Wary, Orcish Cannonade, Wildfire Emissary

Okay, we have some strong removal here (three guys gone), and some solid creatures. If we go U/R, we have two Suspend spells (and some cheap spells) to work up a solid Empty the Warrens, and Wildfire Emissary’s protection against White comes in handier than you’d think in Sealed; it seems like I’m facing a lot of W/G and W/R decks these days.

Fatal Frenzy can be good. It can also sit in your hand when you’re facing a B/R deck and you can’t get a solid guy to stay on the board. It’s a finisher, but not one consistent enough for the main deck.

I also like Henchfiend of Ukor a lot, since its haste can cause all sorts of havoc on turn 5, but I’d have to play Black to go with it and I dislike the Black in this pool.

Green
Solid Playables: Healing Leaves, Might of Old Krosa, Petrified Plating, Havenwood Wurm, Nantuko Shaman, Nessian Courser, Scarwood Treefolk, Thrill of the Hunt, Uktabi Drake

Nice, but not great. We don’t have the usual assortment of fine Green creatures here — there’s one set of beef and a lot of creature enhancement. That’s not bad, since the creatures are solid, but there just aren’t that many of them.

To me, I’m thinking an ugly G/U at this point, but let’s see what the rest has to offer.

Artifacts, Land, Gold, and the Rest
Solid Playables: Coalition Relic, Paradise Plume, Lightning Angel, Stonebrow, Krosan Hero, Urza’s Factory, Weatherseed Treefolk

Um… Okay. Stonebrow is nice, but we only have two critters that trample natively, and they’re so high-end I don’t think we can get ‘em out at the same time (though I’d love to do a Weatherseed-and-Stonebrow combo). But…

…what’s that?

It’s my birthday?

Aw, hell. If it wasn’t my birthday, I’d probably seriously consider some sort of R/G mix with some other backup color, most likely White because the double-Blue spells are ugly… But it’s my Fourth of the Damn July article. And it must be a sign, because Lightning Angel is the traditional Red, White, and Blue creature!

Fireworks in the air? It’s like a message from God.

What did I run?

6 Island
1 Lightning Angel
6 Mountain
5 Plains
1 Blazing Blade Askari
1 Careful Consideration
1 Castle Raptors
1 Coalition Relic
1 Dead/Gone
1 Dreamscape Artist
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Fatal Attraction
1 Flickering Spirit
1 Gathan Raiders
1 Judge Unworthy
1 Keldon Halberdier
1 Leaden Fists
1 Logic Knot
1 Orcish Cannonade
1 Paradise Plume
1 Riftwing Cloudskate
1 Saltblast
1 Spiketail Drakeling
1 Think Twice
1 Whip-Spine Drake
1 Wildfire Emissary

There were a lot of hard cuts to be made here. I opted for Logic Knot over Cancel (or, even, both Logic Knot and Cancel) because the double-Blue was already hard enough to achieve even with the mana-fixers. That’s a debatable call, I agree, but I mistrust Counterspells in Sealed; one is fine, but if I get two then I have to keep so much mana banked that I don’t have the room to lay threats. And if I have to choose one in this deck, this one draws and discards a lot of cards, so I’m fine with the Knot.

Fortunately, I also have a ton of card-drawing to find what I need, and a fair amount of answers, so I’m not too concerned. What does concern me is the low creature count; at only twelve (and an Empty the Warrens), a R/B deck would probably chew me to bits. But I think I can work with this.

How’d It Do?
I went 4-1 in the League, and then played a lot more games for fun, and kept a similar record. Sure enough, as predicted, Black removal-heavy decks played havoc with me (I could usually protect my big threats against Red burn, but a Dark Withering was unstoppable barring a counterspell). The Logic Knot, in fact, worked very well when I got the mana for it; I probably could have dropped a Plains for an Island here.

Sideboarding was heavy in this deck; you had a lot of options in the form of Subterranean Shambler and Mana Tithe against Saproling-based decks, Bewilder and Cancel against Suspendy decks, and the Watcher Sliver against Slivery decks (as long as they didn’t have Pulmonic, who cares? All your best threats fly).

Lightning Angel was, indeed, entirely awesome. Thanks to the Coalition Relics/Dreamscape Artist shenanigans, if I had it I could usually lay it on turn 4, which was a strong play. And then, thanks to my tricks, I could protect it.

I only got to do the Leaden Fists/Lightning Angel trick once. But man, lemme tell you, it was a hoot.

My worst enemy? My mana. It was all over the damn place, and I often lost to aggressive mulligans to five that didn’t pan out. Coalition Relic helped, as if I could get to three mana I could usually pull it out, but sometimes that two-land, five-card hand never coughed up another mana. Bleah. But that’s, you know, Magic.

The Weekly Plug Bug
Over the past two weeks, Tanner’s been trying an audacious experiment: to learn to love the Transformers, he’s dressed himself up in Garanimals and eaten Sugar Smacks to try to figure out what the kids of yore liked about it. Unfortunately, the Transformers still sucked. But Izzy, Tanner’s girlfriend, has some thoughts on the topic…

Signing off,
The Ferrett
The BIRFDAY BOY!
TheFerrett@StarCityGames.com