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Magic Grab Bag #5 – Invading Judgment

Rivien has a crack at creating a precon deck, and comes up with a spicy mono-Green number capable of creating an army of unstoppable monsters! He also touches upon the cost of older cards on Magic Online, what it means to the online metagame, and urges everyone to make their voices of dissension heard!

Another week passes and Planar Chaos creeps ever closer to its online release, bringing its metagame-shaking goodness with it in the form of candy like Groundbreaker, Timbermare, and of course the infamous black-bordered $20 bill, Black Hole Sun. In the meantime, my thoughts drift to other formats than Standard; those of the past, and those not yet fully born. In fact, that brings up this week’s discussion topic.

The Burning Issue

On the horizon looms the next Extended rotation in 2008, taking with it the Invasion, Odyssey, and Onslaught blocks. What we’re going to discuss today is the online availability of these cards, and not only how it affects the current online Extended metagame, but more importantly for me, the future online Classic format, which will be our Legacy or Vintage, depending on how Wizards intends to handle it. Right now this format only includes a few sets outside of the current Extended metagame, but the rotation is going to move a lot of cards out of Extended and into Classic, not to mention that Wizards has stated they intend to release more older sets online following the release of Magic Online 3(.0, depending whom you ask). In other words, come 2008, the Classic format will finally gain its wings – and I believe preparations need to be made for it.

The availability of Invasion block, and to a lesser extent Odyssey block cards, online has been a long-standing issue amongst the online community, and I think that between now and the rotation it will come to a head. The price differentials between online and paper Invasion block cards can reach staggering differences. For example, let’s compare some cards:

Fact or Fiction: SCG price $6, MTGO price 25 tickets (approximate to a dollar).
Orim’s Chant: SCG price $25, MTGO price 100 tickets
Pernicious Deed: SCG price $15, MTGO price 80 tickets
Destructive Flow: SCG price $2.50, MTGO price 40-60(!!!) tickets
Terminate: SCG price $2, MTGO price 5 tickets
Vindicate: SCG price $17.50, MTGO price 60 tickets
Meddling Mage: SCG price $20, MTGO price 70 tickets
Mutilate: SCG price $6, MTGO price 10 tickets
Haunting Echoes: SCG price $12.50, MTGO price 22 tickets

These are some of the most extreme examples, but the differences are flat-out silly. As is, online players may never be able to play decks involving an arbitrarily large amount of actions (i.e. Life combo, Worldgorger Dragon combo, et cetera) competitively because there is no way to currently give MTGO a way to detect loops, and Wizards has said several times on their boards that they can’t or won’t include any way for it to do so, so online formats will probably always be one step away from their paper cousins. My question is; does Wizards need to support a ruinous economy that further removes the online formats from the paper ones?

Of course, Wizards has no direct control over the secondary market or the prices they set, but they do have control over the primary market. My hope here is to gather support for a temporary re-release of the Invasion and Odyssey blocks, just like they’re releasing any of the older, pre-Invasion era sets. Even just three months of access to these sets for people who never had access to them when they were first online when MTGO was in its infancy would dramatically assist the current Extended and future Classic formats, and make both more accessible to more players. For the record, I do in fact own several of the above cards and recognize that this will devalue them to some extent, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make in order for the general populace to be able to more cheaply acquire several key cards in both current and future formats.

Granted, there are no doubt many people in possession of many of these online equivalents of bars of gold who would object to such a re-issuing of such cards on a massive scale, and they might argue that Wizards would be cheating them on their investments, but to that I say; those responsible for the inflation of these particular cards made their own beds, and they can lie in them. They did have control over the prices they set (and thus, the prices they influenced others to charge), and they chose to gouge people. I don’t see Wizards as being morally responsible to protect the investments these people made, especially since such people obviously had low opinions of others’ investment in the same products.

I am also aware that Wizards has made some small efforts via events to increase the availability of Invasion block cards, but clearly the pace is nearly glacial, and I cannot see it as being anywhere near enough by the time that the format rotation occurs. Ultimately, it’s up to them, but if people could show more support for this, either here or on Wizards’ own Magic Online forums located here, then it might help the situation. Or it might not; maybe Wizards on some level enjoys there being major discrepancies between the online and paper variants of the game, and will strive to keep them different, but if so, I for one would appreciate them at least stating this officially so people can stop being frustrated about it.

In fact, their attempts to increase the availability of Invasion block cards so far have not impacted the economy in any noteworthy fashion, because the events that distribute them are rare and available only to a lucky few. So far, all they’ve managed to do is run some tournaments with very high value prizes – packs of Invasion block cards – that aren’t even guaranteed a high return. In fact, most of the winners are probably better off selling the packs for the twenty-plus tickets they command than actually opening them. In short, their current plans for increasing Invasion block availability are ze goggles – zey do nothing. If Wizards ever intends to make Classic a viable format, they need to step up production.

I understand that making the cards directly available for purchase again would go against the grain of how they normally handle things in this situation, but I would argue these are unique circumstances. Given how horribly unstable and painful MTGO was to use in its early days, they can’t hardly punish people, in my opinion, for not jumping on the boat. I cannot believe that whatever thanks they want to give to those who stuck it through exceeds the importance of the current and future health of the formats, both for the casual and competitive players. True, this may not be a really serious issue until next year, but I want them to be prepared when it is.

On to the deck

Now that we’ve had a nice, long discussion about things that are ridiculously expensive, let’s take a look at the other end of the budget spectrum – a deck built to the specifications of a preconstructed deck; that is to say 2 different rares, 13 uncommons, 23 commons, and the rest basic land (total 24 land). Usually there are at least two non-basic lands, counting as their normal rarities. Also, precons have a tendency towards one-ofs, and sometimes plain-awful cards, which I did a little to preserve. They veer away from four-ofs, unless more or less the entire deck is based around them, which I kept faithful to. For Time Spiral, decks also included a minimum of four Timeshifted cards (which I am counting at their original rarities), and one artifact. In other words, with just a precon and a few dollars or tickets and exchanging cards of roughly the same rarity, you should be able to play along at home and experience


What the deck does: The purpose of this deck is to sit behind a mess of defensive creatures (Scarwood Treefolk, Penumbra Spiders, Wall of Roots, and Durkwood Tracker as examples) while thinning your deck with Terramorphic Expanse, Search for Tomorrow, Yavimaya Dryad, Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, and Nantuko Shaman, so that you can find your Gauntlet of Power and Wurmcalling to bring home the bacon. There’s all sorts of neat side interactions along the way, though. For example, watch as either Aether Web or Gauntlet of Power turns your Spike Feeders or Phantom Wurms into immortals that shrug off damage like it ain’t no thang! Grin sadistically as Scryb Ranger allows your Clockwork Hydra to maintain their size while attacking every turn, or simply start loading up on counters – or teams up with Durkwood Tracker to slaughter attackers. Scryb Ranger is, of course, just fun for being a surprise blocker or evasive attacker, who can get larger thanks to Spike Feeder’s ability to move its counters. Similarly, Yavimaya Dryads can Forestwalk, making them another good candidate for Spike tokens – and don’t forget that they can also give an opponent one of your Forests if you need to squeeze just a little more damage in. Molder is included as a "just in case" card, and beyond that, if you’re playing other people with a preconstructed deck, they’re going to have at least one target for it.

Who the deck is for: This deck is mostly for someone who wants to try Green for a long game – while this deck could manage an early, mana-accelerated assault, I chose creatures which are more conducive to sitting back and waiting for the long game, where fatties like Havenwood Wurm and Durkwood Baloth can rule the battlefield, or perhaps immortal Phantom Wurms. Ultimately, it’s intended to win via Wurmcalling, but sometimes you just won’t draw it quickly enough to matter. So goes the drawback of a low rare count. This deck is not for people who want to win speedily, or who hate Green (although it might serve to convince someone to try Green – it’s a pretty fun deck overall). Note that I purposefully avoided any Thallids or Slivers – because they have their own preconstructed decks – although both Sporesower Thallid and Thallid Shell-Dweller would work nicely here if you wanted to tinker with the deck a bit. Replacing Scarwood Treefolk would be a good call in general; it’s in mostly as a homage to Wizards’ predilection towards including at least some totally awful cards in their precons.

What to watch out for: Teferi’s Moat, mass removal (of course), and general trickery that doesn’t involve attacking to win. While you have some limited lifegain potential via Molder and the Spike Feeders, it probably won’t be enough to save you from any kind of dedicated burn or combo kill. Thankfully you have at least some resilience to mass removal; Penumbra Spider will leave a buddy behind if he hasn’t already, and Wurmcalling means you can keep cranking out critters anyhow, if you’ve drawn it. Note that if you’re feeling especially clever and decide to tinker with the deck, replacing one Forest with a Mountain (which you have the Terramorphics and the Search for Tomorrows to find) you could swap out a common for Disintegrate – especially if you’re a paper player and might know someone who has original, common versions of it. This will give you a nice finisher that also works well with your massive amount of mana acceleration through both land fetch, and the Gauntlet of Almightiness – but all in all, that’s just a whole other can of wurms (groan). Also note for the record that this deck and all cards discussed here are strictly Time Spiral block cards – feel free to move the deck into Standard though. If you do, definitely consider Llanowar Elves or other such mana dorks for inclusion, since they work neatly with Scryb Ranger. Cute trick: Tap a Forest and an Elf, then use Scryb Ranger to return the Forest to your hand and untap the Elf. Tap the Elf again, and you can hardcast Nantuko Shaman and still get to draw a card, thanks to the clause on Shaman of controlling no tapped lands – since you just sent the only tapped land you control back to your hand, you now control no untapped lands. Hee.

Join us – well okay, just me – again next week as I cut down the mightiest tree in the forest wiiiiith… a herring! Or maybe just write another article, I suppose we’ll see about that. Depends if I can find a herring, or a forest for that matter.

Signing off,
Rivien Swanson
flawedparadigm a(aye Carumba!)t gmaSPAMSUCKSil d(.)ot co[And you smell funny, too.]m
Flawed Paradigm on MTGO (when I actually log in)