C’mon top deck!
A Concession
Sorry, but those of you looking forward to my Bounceland draft walkthrough are going to have to wait another day. I know, it’s torture for me too. At least I get the opportunity to tie up a few loose ends, as well as some that aren’t very loose at all.
Yep, this is one of those random, mixed-bag, kitchen-sink type articles all writers do once in a while when they’re struggling (except the good ones). Did I say struggling? I meant thriving!
In spite of all that, and the title, there is some content to be found in here. For example, notice how each section starts the same way. Why would I start each section like that, you ask? What does it have to do with anything, you ask? Isn’t it just some transparent gimmick designed to give some sort of shallow meaning to an otherwise unrelated jumble of topics? You ask?
Of course not! There’s something deeper going on behind it all. I swear.
A Continuation
League update!
Kinda. Actually, I’m as lost as I was before. Let me say first that your responses were all fantastic, and I went through the trouble of inputting each of your builds in Magic Online (and rejecting the lot of ’em!). Most of you went with a Green/Black/white build, as I assumed, but there were also some unique ideas presented. My favorite was Vyolynce’s Blue/Red/green deck, which, while it had its problems (not a big fan of Counterspells maindeck in Sealed; doesn’t abuse the more powerful multicolored spells), it made me completely re-evaluate the quality of my Red and Blue.
Nearly all of you agreed on a couple of things. One is that Sunforger is pretty playable even without the mana or the spells to fetch. I hadn’t even considered that! +3/+0 is pretty big in Limited regardless of how much you have to pay for it, and the card can even find Seeds of Strength off a Terrarion or a splashed Mountain. I definitely dropped the ball on Sunforger.
Apparently I also dropped the aforementioned ball on Chord of Calling. Maybe I was swayed by Flores’ set review some weeks back, or maybe I tend to over-value rares, but Chord certainly seems like it be pretty good in the deck (unless I went with less Green). It was absent from every single one of your builds, however, so that should probably tell me something.
I was a bit dismayed at how everybody got the impression that I was disgusted with my card pool. In retrospect, I’m slightly irritated that it’s rather narrow–the “best” build has to be G/B/w and there isn’t much room to maneuver around that fact. I don’t hate the pool, though. It’s short of bombs but it makes up for that in deep colors. It ought to be fun to play, I daresay. (Except that I probably won’t be playing it this week, and not because I’m holding out for better cards in Week 2. I don’t agree with that theory of league playing, as any one pack is as likely to make your deck worse instead of better.)
(Err. Okay, so that’s not true. Every new booster will make your deck better. However, the amount it improves could be a small one or a large one, and what matters is how yours stands in regards to every other deck in the league. So ideally I like to play all my week’s games in that week, but this week all my free time will be occupied by drafting and writing. And Everquest.)
A Confession
Truth be told, I had conceived this week of SCG Daily as something entirely different. Some weeks ago, I had become unduly excited about the Coldsnap announcement, and I decided to take it upon myself to do a five-part Fake Coldsnap Set Review. It probably wouldn’t have had Fake in the title, mind you.
Things got a little messy when I realized what that would entail. Ultimately, I never got much farther than this:
—excerpt—
Lim-Dûl’s Lightsaber
Maybe it’s just me, but something about this card gives me the impression it was not designed in 1996. The flavor seems a bit “off” as well.
Still, it’s nice to see a fixed Skullclamp. The additional mana and equip cost and the extra -1 toughness should ensure that this card doesn’t dominate Standard. Factor in all the pre-existing Jitte hate and you’ve got yourself a pretty fair and balanced card.
Constructed: ***
Limited: *** 1/2
—excerpt—
Can you imagine doing 164 more of those? I can’t. It’s a shame, though. Man, do I wish I hadn’t paid Yawgatog the $900 in advance.
A Confection
Um, I don’t know. Cotton candy?
A Contextualization
I’m not sure how this section heading has anything to do with yesterday’s article, but hopefully you won’t notice.
First off, some errata. I inadvertently left off a Strands of Undeath in the sample decklist. Auratouched Mage needs at least two enchantments not named Faith’s Fetters to fully realize its potential. Pretend Strands is in there, and pretend, oh, say, Cyclopean Snare isn’t. Please?
I’d also like to address some of the criticisms I received in the forums. One of the bigger concerns (hey! that starts with CON) was that with six bouncelands, the deck would get far too many opening hands that contained only bouncelands.
It’s true that this is expected to happen, and I wish I had the mathematical skills to calculate exactly how often an opening hand would contain two or three bouncelands and no other lands. (I’m pretty sure you can usually ignore cases where you get just the one bounceland and no basics, since a one-basic-land hand is a mulligan most of the time anyway. Though I suppose the deck can keep a Forest-Elf hand, so perhaps I’m wrong to so quickly dismiss those possibilities.)
Yet in my experience, I haven’t gotten a single hand like that, so I hope you can understand why I didn’t mention it in the article. This isn’t to say the archetype doesn’t attract more mulligans than usual. It does, and I’ve had at least two games where I’ve been forced to go below five cards. I think this has more to do with the lower land count than the higher bounceland count, however.
As I write this, wcbarksdale has posted a very cool analysis of ten random hands and how often he’s had to mulligan in the forum. Check it out; it sort of redeems me. It also inflates the forum’s hit count.
As for the deck’s other issues, they’ll all be covered tomorrow! I swear!
A Conjunction
And some more rejected Coldsnap cards:
Snow-Covered Smoldering Crater
Stromgald’s Balls
Cumulative Upkeep Man
Jester’s Fancy Shoes
Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Commons with Twelve Lines of Text
A Condemnation
Another article idea I kicked around for a while and eventually rejected was one about how awful the questions on the Ravnica Magic Online Beta application were. It’s not that they weren’t terrible – oh, they were terrible – but it was very difficult getting enough people to paste me theirs so I could collect ’em all (!). In addition, during the time the article would’ve been relevant, I might’ve jeopardized my entry into the Beta by posting the questions and mocking them so.
Still, they were pretty bad. A few samples:
Player One plays Glacial Ray with Evermind spliced onto it targeting Guma. Player One will draw a card. True/False
Player 1 equips Shuriken to Ninja of the Deep Hours. Player 2 has Goblin Piledriver (Protection from blue) and Goblin Skyraider in play. You may not target the Goblin Piledriver. You should be able to target Goblin Piledriver, because the source of the damage is the Shuriken not the Ninja of the Deep Hours. True/False
Player One plays One with Nothing. True/False
The first two questions both offer impossible situations in their premises, and I made the third one up. [He’s lying. I had the third one on my application. – Knut] Seriously, there wasn’t nearly enough meat to make an entire article out of this, and even if there were, it’d only be remotely interesting to rules junkies. Abort mission; mission a failure.
Besides, chances are you saw the questions for yourself anyway. Something like twenty million people signed up for that Beta.
(I still chuckle whenever I recall a particular question that referenced a card named Kagemaro, First to Fuffer. Heh. Fuffer.)
A Conclusion
Whew. Thanks for plodding through that mess with me. I promise tomorrow you’ll get a nice bouncy walkthrough with fewer crazy gimmicks. Wokka wokka!