Tact or Friction — Broken Pieces

I bet real card players don’t have this problem.

Right now, I’m tapping my chin, watching Miranda endlessly trying to reconnect, waiting to see when

it decides to signal the return of the Internets. I’ve been reading fewer Magical Articles lately, for

an unpleasant triumvirate of reasons, which can be summarized roughly:

I’m a d*ck.
The Internet hates me.
I’m also poor.

I mean, there’s no real point in my case in reading a Stephen Menendian article. There’s less point

my reading a Flores article; these people are speaking to other people than me, and none of the

actual audience – you know, the relevant people – want to hear my secondary thoughts, the

echoes from where I stand. I also can’t get out and flop many cards either, since I haven’t bought a

physical card since Ravnica – though a friend, meaning well, bought me a Japanese Coldsnap

booster. That I have a Japanese Stromgald Crusader and Rimefeather Owl to go with my Snow-Covered

Plains feels kinda mean; like there’s some collector in this nation who’d really like those

cards if I could get them to him somehow.

Also, real cards don’t crash. Real cards don’t lock up the game because no beta tester opted to try

out how Augustin worked alongside Suspend cards when you didn’t have any mana available. Real cards

don’t go down at random times because of your server, or their server, or your

opponent’s server, or gods-only-know what minor problem might crop up in the interim distance.

I miss being able to flick my cards. I click and re-sort my cards while my opponents are making their

decisions, but it’s not the same. On the other hand, I haven’t had anyone tell me off about it, so

there’s something like an upside.

I’ve been playing with four different lists lately. All of them are bad, and I’m not sure what’s

missing. Last week, I voiced the idea that decks build around cores, and that now, people aren’t

fighting decks – specific fish in the reef with merely different plumage – but rather that the game’s

become more visceral in metagame composition. There’s a lot that’s different between decks.

Normally, the Internets are pretty robust on my end, so the only people I have on hand to complain

about are the hamsters who endlessly scurry to try and keep MTGO’s server operating. As March draws to

a close, we here in Australia move into Autumn from Summer, though we’re doing so at a pace that could

be compared in its speed to a glacier, but not in its actual nature. The heat’s still

annoyingly high, and for most of the state, rain is still something that parents tell their kids about,

promising that they’ll get to see it one day*. Of course, coastal towns still get rain: We get just

enough rain to make sure the evenings are humid and muggy.

With two hundred years of history, and an infrastructure smeared across the area of America with

the population of the state of Georgia, Australia suffers from a lot of its phone structure being in

places that aren’t… exactly the most sensible. Most of our copper wires are, while not exactly

exposed to the air, certainly in a position for easy maintenance access – which is a good thing,

because, of course, we have to send maintenance down there all the damn time because whenever

it rains in Sydney, the Internet down here goes out.

Oh, whoop, there goes the server again. Sigh, tut tut, etc.

What I find myself doing for this list, whenever I don’t have someone who’s a more renowned writer

annoying the hell out of me, is a kind of FNM-testing. Right now, Standard does not so much resemble a

battlefield as much as it does some kind of viscous substance, as it were, the Fleshy Part of Frut, and it’s our duty to strain

through it seeking the Bones.

I have a handful of bones today. Bits and pieces of decks that might have a full structure

if you can find them. Nuts and bolts, structures that I’ve been busy bashing against one another,

trying to find the right angle at which they become round pegs. Then, once I have properly-functioning

not-good-enough decks, I can waste my time trying to make them good enough to compete in metagame of

square holes.

Even without trying to scratch up to Standard decks, though, these decks… are just bad.

Necrosis
Chris Romeo went and stole my thunder this week, which goes to show that the habit of writers talking

to one another should be encouraged. As much as is permitted, at least. While Chris’s lists of

Black/White Slivers have been more oriented to a sort of controlling beatdown, I felt it best to go for

the throat and try to win by simply stripping away every permanent my opponent ever wanted to play,

ever again;

This was my first run attempt at the Necrotic Sliver Deck. Unfortunately, it gave me the clear

feeling that the Black/White Sliver deck is bad, lacking in efficient early game or remarkable late

game. You have a great god draw, but you just don’t have much you can do when you miss on your crucial

Sinew Sliver.

Ultimately, Wizards put a lot of interesting slivers in the pool this time around, but they were

very careful about it, and made sure that, for the most part, you can make very interesting

slivers, but not very effective slivers. While it was neat to see Mtenda Herder join a

different type of herd, there’s just no closing reach for the deck. Barring for Necrotic Sliver,

Sidewinder Sliver, and Sinew Sliver, these guys are embarrassing – and for every sliver

you don’t want in the deck, Sinew Sliver gets worse and worse.

Without the means to make an aggressive strategy work – like, say, a card-drawing engine that

doesn’t sit on the curve with vital creature plays, or just plain kick your ass – the B/W Sliver

Strategy is a bad version of Panda Connection, a deck that I find myself coming to like. It takes some

serious kind of odd to have a semi-aggressive deck that prefers Martyr of Ashes to Savannah Lions, and

I should look into playing it. With that in mind, I tried to make a B/W Sliver deck that could have

that “oops” factor in the late game – just stripping away every permanent your

opponents had, answering wrath and killing you, Baron Harkonnen style.

I tried, for a good while, to make this deck work without tutoring. Even with the tutoring I put in

there, it still sucks. I’m fairly sure the card I feel like I’m missing is Chord of Calling, but even

it can’t go get Enduring Renewal. It can go get Gleancrawler, which isn’t actually relevant to this

discussion, since there’s a better option for Slivers… and now I’m just repeating myself.

Heh, funny story: I got blown out by an opponent whose opening plays were Mindlash Sliver into

Sinew Sliver into Basal Sliver, then puked a Gleancrawler onto the table on turn 3. Wasn’t Red the

color for fast mana that involved burning resources? Oh well – nostalgia and all that. I’m sure

that Ritualing Out a first-turn Hypnotic Specter feels just like Thrulling out a third-turn

Derelor. As if.

The deck was made to exploit a combo I received from the forums following the teachings of the wise

Abe Sargent. I thought the entire structure was neat, because, of course, you’d want all the creatures

involved anyway, right?

Well, not so. Right now in Standard, there is one sliver who costs B, and that’s Mindlash. Mindlash

Sliver has no ability relevant to this deck beyond being a sliver who costs B, and that’s just not

enough. If you want to make Enduring Renewal on the fourth turn, you had better have your combo in your

hand. If you want your whole combo in your hand on turn 4, you’d either better have a hell of a lot of

card draw, or a really redundant combo.

This deck has neither. The back-up solution – which was to cut Enduring Renewal down to a

one-of to be tutored up by the Demonic Collusion when that blue-moon circumstance came up – has

proven to be better, but we’re still fighting for the title of Not Worst In Show. The problems, as best

I can see them are:

Neither Phyrexian Arena, nor Dark Confidant fit well in this deck. Bob isn’t a sliver, and the

Arena is Black-intensive on a turn where you know you want WB available.
There’s no cheap tutoring effect for your pieces; meaning you have to rely on drawing them and hope you

can win with what amounts to a draft deck otherwise.
There are other, reasonable options to do the same thing.

I’ve moved away from pure B/W, towards a more G/W/B list, but instead of trying for the

infinite-mana trick of blowing up your opponent’s entire board, a more stately kind of reservation;

Pulmonic Sliver taking the place of Enduring Renewal, and Green is offering me tools like Hibernation’s

End to try the trick out. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not expecting great things… but we could find

ourselves working with worse, we really could.

Hulk, Out
I don’t normally make lists like this; my decklists tend to be pretty tight, with a preference for

redundancy and focus – indeed, most often in my decks, I’ll have eight of the key card that

inspired me to make it. Either through tutors or card draw or just analogues to a card’s effects, I

will very rarely be running any crucial element as a one-of. So this deck is just a warm, fuzzy place

in my heart, flying against type and still doing almost everything I want.

The numbers aren’t perfect, in any situation. Yavimaya Dryads are tricky enough to cast, and I

would, of course, be using Yavimaya Coasts and more Breeding Pools had I the cards in my possession.

The rest, however, is almost spot-on. You can, with this deck, accelerate into a large man, preferably

a Stomphowler or a Protean Hulk – and then rule the board with it, using Greater Good to recharge

on cards if you need to, or to just benefit from an opponent’s removal. There’s always a lot going on

with a deck like this, or at least, there’s the temptation to make a lot go on, but I tried to keep

things simple, instead focusing on a key pair that were designed to seize control of the late game if

my accelerated-out fatties wouldn’t do it for me.

The combo is Sheltering Ancient + Cytoplast Manipulator; This combo was leaked a while ago by Chris

Millar (damn him), yet he didn’t mention the virtue of using Protean Hulk to go get both. Hulk does

something you really want in this situation – he keeps either element showing up without the

other. Every turn, you can use the Manipulator + Ancient combo to steal the best creature your opponent

has. Once upon a time, there were more Froglings in the deck, to protect both cards with more finesse,

but I wanted to test out other, more interesting options as well

Seedborn Muse and Indrik Stomphowler both fail to have a “combo” with anything else in

the deck; cashing in a Hulk for a Stomphowler is okay, but it leaves me with that sighing feeling of

“Couldn’t I have gone for something other than a backup Llanowar Elves?”

This is the deck as I left it alone during the Time Spiral period where I was ambivalent to it. As

Magic has moved on, I’ve grown more interested in it – especially now there’s no incredibly

simple, stupid way to manipulate the effect. OH WOW A DRAGON.

I recently penciled out a short list of cards I’d like to consider adding to the table – you

know, checking to see if I could expand on what the deck already did, cutting some slots to add others.

The almost universal response I got from my gut was to add White to the deck, and to make Bennie Smith

a happy man.

Right now, Gleancrawler fills the role to get back the Protean Hulk. Which it never does; the Hulk

never dies on my turn, because nobody’s stupid enough to block it. If I get a Greater Good and a Hulk,

I could try and just go for the throat, leaving it open to block, sacrificing it for a bunch of cards,

and go get a six-mana combination of cards that doesn’t just get me more of the same. That’d be

awesome. The Hulk, when I need to recycle him, is dying in times and in places that will make the

Gleancrawler just not-good-enough. Annoyingly. No, the solution is to grab another giant-assed wall,

except this one won’t make me feel like I’m wasting his presence in the deck by never attacking with

his tramply six power.

Oh yes, it’s time for the Exhumer Thrull.

Deadwood Treefolk comes in pairs, to eliminate the need for Gleancrawler. A pair of dancing

Deadwoods can happily stave off a fair few attacks and dig for more answers without any assistance at

all – buying turns and gaining multiple creatures as they come and go is a fine way for a

Treefolk to spend his time. Further, I don’t feel the need for the Stomphowlers as much as I just wish

I had a way to do things more cost effectively. Cutting the Stomphowlers mean that the Hulks alone

combo with Greater Good… and that prompts me to look for other sacrifice outlets.

The second version of the deck follows; it’s probably trying to do too many cute things, but it

fascinates me anyway. This Treefolk looks like it’s a lot better than anyone gave it credit, except, of

course, for Mr Smith.

Oh, and before anyone asks about the Izzet Boilerworks: There are only so many Blue-paying Karoos

you can fit in a deck.

Maybe I’ll get to spin this deck out sometime soon. Play around with it, see if it works better or

worse than the version with Greater Good. Maybe Hulks will wind up clogging my hand as I flee to the

giant, dead arms of the Treefolk as my cycling engine of choice. Perhaps not – but I know that

until something changes and the Internet becomes reliable again, I’m going to have to be stuck

speculating. Man, that sucks.

Illusions of Mediocrity
I saw the first glimpse of this list when I was – of course – reading the forums, sifting

through the pile of data that they presented. Someone pointed out Gossamer Phantasm and Krovikan Mist

made friends pretty readily (thanks, whoever you are), and that you could even assist them along with

other decent ground-holders, like Fathom Seer and Dream Stalker. The less-than stellar Shaper Parasite

showed up as well for a little bit, but was quietly shown the door as the deck’s problems became more

evident.

What killed this deck is that its support spells just don’t do the trick. You don’t have enough

redundancy of cheap, cost-effective fliers (what I would give for an illusion reprint of Flying Men)

that make the Krovikan Mist not that embarrassing. You can get some nice draws; Turn 1 Sleight, Turn 2

Krovikan, Turn 3 Krovikan-and-Sleight is nice. Too many of your spells, however, require two mana,

which means every odd turn, more or less, you’re leaving mana open that can’t do anything. You can’t

lay down a threat on turn 2 and ride him to victory, protecting him with your countermagic and bounce.

Heck, right now, you can’t even rely on being able to race – since White and Red both have split

second creatures, there are even some creatures you can’t counter. There’s also Scragnoth. Of course,

adding to all this, enemy decklists will happily feed off your Fathom Seers and the like, happily

flipping Vesuvan Shapeshifters to do unfairly what you actually paid land to do. Curses.

There’s this constant problem I have with Blue. I know about the Fish strategy, which involves

attacking with little, evasive men while you bounce, counter, or just annoy your opponent into

oblivion. I can see the men, but I can’t see how to make the deck work. More and more, I feel that the

strategy that makes Fish thrive in Vintage isn’t actually the non-existence of meaningful blockers,

it’s the existence of free spells. The ability to tap out for a threat and even have one

counterspell you can still use, one bounce spell you can still threaten, makes for a very

different game indeed. Other lists have had more countermagic, other lists have had more bounce… no

matter what the goal, I can’t seem to get that vital mix together that involves letting dorky little

dudes through for damage over twenty turns.

I really, really miss Ninja of the Deep Hours.

This is what I have right now. Magically speaking, there’s bits and pieces – indeed, I tried

to cram the Hulk deck and Necrosis decks together, to manage some kind of ugly mish-mosh of a G/B/W

deck, using Pulmonic Sliver in place of Enduring Renewal. I’ll let you know where I wind up, but I’m

not holding my breath at this point.

An element has recently been added to my testing of these decks, though, and that is of another

player. Two-Headed Giant has an awkward equalizing effect a lot of the time, allowing for gentler

mulligans, and the addition of an ally has made many awkward draws a lot smoother. This has me

suspicious that either my opponents are not nearly as good as my allies (it’s happened), or the

strategies I like (big, smashing fatties and huge board-disrupting effects) are better in multiplayer

environments.

It shows; I played a Grave-Troll in normal Standard recently, and he was only a 5/5. I remember

being disappointed.

I Did Notice
I will note that the Ferrett this week put up a list of fatties, based on statistics. I wish to make it

known to anyone who’s curious what I think about that list, that yes, I did notice it, and yes, I did

notice the thing that you’re going to mention to me about it. And yes, that really, really sucks.

But there’s nothing I can do about it. Good that you noticed, though, and I really am glad that you

wanted to tell me about it, and wanted to know what I think. At least right now, though, no rants. The

evidence is there, the people in charge, I assume, know, and things are under control. It’s just the

way things are. I’m too tired to try mustering up what it seems you want right now.

Hugs and Kisses
Talen Lee
talen at dodo dot com dot au

* I really am not kidding.