Craig likes the occasional opinion article… Some of my previous editors tried to steer Featured Writers away from such articles, but not my new editor. (Can I still call him my “new editor” anymore? Is there a time limit to that appellation?) [Well, I’ve been here now for sixteen months… I’ll leave that judgment to you. — Craig, amused.]
I’m not the biggest fan of ye olde opinions. I was not hired to talk about how Green got hosed, or how Mike Long does not even belong in the conversation for the Hall of Fame. I was hired because I built decks, I had some casual articles, and I wrote about decks with regularity. In fact, The Ferrett claimed that I broke down my formats well in the e-mail he sent me telling me I was hired as a Featured Writer (those being Standard and Odyssey Block — ironically, the Casual Guy was hired, in part, due to his ability to write about tournament formats).
In that same e-mail, ol’ Mr. Steinmetz also told me no to op-ed articles. You don’t get hits that way, he claimed.
Still, there are some issues out there that casual writers need to chime in about. I do it sparingly. Occasionally you’ll see a mini-rant at the beginning of an article. Sometimes it’s in the forums. Rarely do you see me devote an entire article to a rant, but it’s not unknown. I’d rather write about decks and casual formats than write about my opinions on some random Magic topic.
Today I have several mini-rants in me. Instead of writing them up, and putting them at the front of each of my next several articles, I am going to just toss them all out here at once, and then we can move on. Everybody ready? Here we go.
I get that this is a good card in one sense of the word. I hear people decry this card as another example of a bad Timmy card, and I have to remind them that this card is certainly good from several viewpoints.
You can have Akroma-esque creatures inspired by her memorial with her abilities. That is very flavorful card. Taking this card merely from a flavor standpoint, I like it. The card’s art, title, picture, and abilities all work together relatively seamlessly. Most people get this, at least.
From a mana cost standpoint, it’s also very undercosted, and this is what I think people don’t see. Would you like to give all of your creatures haste? Fervor costs three mana. How about trample? Primal Rage costs two mana. First Strike? Knighthood costs three. Pro Red or Black? Absolute Law and Absolute Grace cost two each. Levitation costs four mana for flying. Serra’s Blessing gives you vigilance for two.
If you played all seven of these cards, you would play 10UUWWWWGR. That’s a lot of mana. Getting Mr. 10UUWWWWGR for just seven mana is a serious reduction in price. You go from a converted mana cost of eighteen to seven, a cut of over 50%. Akroma’s Memorial costs seven mana and gives seven abilities. That is not a ratio you will find elsewhere.
Why is it, then, that people do not like the Memorial? Where is their negative reaction coming from? After all, it’s obvious that the Memorial has no place in tournaments, but it obviously wasn’t designed to rock out the next Top 8.
I think that people want their Akroma’s Memorial to be really special… and its not. Akroma the First and Second are powerful creatures that sparkle the imagination. Yet the Memorial seems nothing more than a of bunch of junky enchantments that no one wanted to play originally. No matter how many keywords you give it, the 1/1 creature will always lose to the bigger creature (within reason, combine flanking with a high bushido and you might have a chance). Even if it gets the right abilities, it will just be unblocked and deal a mighty one damage, from your seven mana artifact.
It doesn’t hold up to the Akroma name. You want to make a real memorial for Akroma?
Memorial of Much Beatings
13
Legendary Artifact
Creatures you control have flying, first strike, vigilance, trample, haste, protection from black, and protection from red. They also get +6/+6.
You want to have a card that shows creatures getting inspired by Akroma, right? Then make them really inspired. Now that Birds of Paradise becomes a beater of significance and size. It’s been all Akroma’d up!
Another way to do it would be to word it like this:
Akromafication
13
Legendary Artifact
Creatures you control lose all abilities and then gain flying, first strike, vigilance, trample, haste, protection from black, and protection from red. They also become White, Angels, and 6/6.
Now that’s flavor, baby!
Take My Un, Please
If Wizards holds to their recent schedule, then next summer (2008), there should be another one-of set. Un #3?
I think that there was a lot of beauty in the Un sets. However, when you look at the current market price for Unhinged, you see one thing predominantly. Overproduction. Demand for Unhinged apparently was less than the supply, because the price is significantly below suggested retail.
I think that there were some serious hits in Unhinged. I love Blast from the Past and Who / What / When / Where / Why. These are two examples of great cards and ideas. Now, take a look a Who / What / When / Where / Why. What prevented this card from getting printed in a normal set?
Nothing.
What about Blast from the Past? Could it have been in Time Spiral Block a.k.a. Keyword City?
Absolutely.
Other cards like Uktabi Kong and Six-y Beast could also have been printed in a normal set (mechanically… names would change, obviously).
In my opinion, they regularly pushed the humor element on individual cards so much that the cards suffered. Un doesn’t work because it doesn’t appeal to all casual players, and even those who do like it find that it loses its appeal after a while. Unhinged becomes boring, with only a few stars.
I would like to see Wizards try a summer set that is inspired by the Un sets but leaves behind the problems. Here is how I would do that.
First of all, Wizards is smart to recognize that casual gamers are their largest market by far. Printing the occasional casual only set is a good idea! Unglued and Unhinged’s successes were in part because casual players don’t mind casual-only cards. Since casual players are the largest chunk of the cake, making cards specifically for them seems like a good marketing idea.
However, by pushing the humor element, they goofed. They made cards that cause players to laugh, or groan, or chuckle, or sigh. However, they made few cards that truly last. Last week I used __________ in one of my decks. This was not because he was funny, but because his mechanic worked well with grandeur. If Unhinged had more cards that were useful because they explored unmined territory, and less pure jokes, the set would be more successful.
Therefore, I advocate making a casual only set that it not trying to be funny. Instead, use it as an opportunity to experiment with mechanics that you could not put into tournament level sets. There’s a lot of space. Use the Chaos Orb mechanic, slap ante down on some cards, work with things like names of cards, Artists, and so forth. Mine the unminable.
The cards in Unhinged that worked (Super Secret Tech, Artful Looter, and yes, _________) work because they aren’t funny to the max, but instead do something new and interesting from a game mechanic perspective. Price Gleemax at a normal level and you have an interesting card.
We are often reading in articles by various Wizards people how ideas for cards and mechanics are regularly killed because they could not be done in a tournament setting. Here’s a set that you could put these great ideas we may never see on a card otherwise.
Call it something like the Mage’s Laboratory. You can use this as an experiment. When cards work well with translatable mechanics or design, use them in a later set. Don’t worry about getting stuck in a comedy rut like previous sets. Invent for the sake of invention.
We need fewer Latin Pigs and Bad Asses and more Rare-B-Gone and R&D’s Secret Lair. You could probably never print the Secret Lair in a normal set, years later, but there might come a time when you print cards that care about rarity. Trying it out first in a casual only serious set would be a great way to find out how it plays.
You could also use some of the mechanics that were experimented with in Future Sight. A lot of things in FS are supposed to never happen in normal Magic, but now you can print cards that make contraptions in your casual only set.
I think this would be a great boon to casual players, and a well-designed casual-only set would get a lot of praise… from my column, at least.
I’m sure I’m not the first to propose such a thing, but I want to lend my limited weight behind any other voices that are saying the same.
On Card Faces
I have three cards in front of me. One is a Chamber of Manipulation from Odyssey. The second is a Perplex from Ravnica. The third is a Grave Scrabbler from Future Sight.
I never liked the new look of the cards. The Chamber looks better to me than the Perplex. I am comfortable with them changing the card face. I am not one of those, “Nope, no change for me, thanks, no matter what,” people. You wouldn’t have seen me wondering if Armageddon is arriving if they had printed Purple in Planar Chaos.
Therefore, my problem from the Chamber of Manipulation to the Perplex isn’t that they made the change at all. I even like some aspects of the change. Having a slightly bigger art box sounds like a plus to me. They did some neat things with the line borders that I like. I am comfortable with more room for the power and toughness numbers — that’s fine.
My issue was that the card looked less like a fantasy card game, and more like just any old card game. The evocation of a sense of magic and medieval all mixed up largely left. The text at the top was less evocative and more like a paper title, the borders in art were largely dulled and less interesting, and the whole thing felt predominantly like a card out of any game, rather than a fantasy game.
Take a look at Perplex, for example. The middle area between art and the text, where the card type and expansion symbol go is just one blank area, with nothing in it. Now, take a like at Chamber of Manipulation. In that same area is the mystical blue swirling stone. It has all of the same information in all of the same places at the previous card face, only with less emotion. The same is true of the top area, where the card name and casting cost go. Perplex is virtually blank, while the Chamber has a lot of background.
That’s why I love Grave Scrabbler. Take a look at this card. Yes, the casting cost has been moved, but you know what? This looks and feels like a fantasy card. The clockwork wheel with the mana type line and its blending into the text box is great. The background of the text box has popped out a bit more, and you can feel it. The art continues below that middle line, and you can see the hands of the Zombie. It still has that annoying vacant font, but at least the top part has the continuation of the card frame with that oval shape continuing underneath the box.
The imagery of this card font is way better than the first change. I even like the symbols in the upper left corner.
With that said, here it goes. I am about to commit career suicide, because in one fell swoop I am going to annoy both the old school and the new.
This is the card face Wizards should have adopted several years ago. This is better than both of the previous card faces.
Why is it better than the first? Except for the better font, what does the original card face have going for it? A psychedelic blue swirl background that looks like it was made by some amateur at rendering? Maybe you prefer the smaller, blocky boxes that don’t give enough attention to the major points of information? The Scrabbler has a smoother, sleeker design by far.
It’s better than the first, while still keeping a fantasy feel (except for that font), and it’s better than the second by far, in large part because it keeps its fantasy feel.
Therefore, I suggest moving to the Timeshifted Future Sight cards with all due haste.
Which I know will never happen. Ah well.
The Uncommon Stock
We all have deck stock from which we make our cool decks. Boxes of commonly-used cards or binders bursting with the goods sit on our desks, shelves, or beds. Planar Chaos gave us good cards like Harmonize that we may never see again. I hope you acquired a bunch of them.
You don’t have to worry as much about commons. Just buy a handful of booster boxes and you’ll have plenty of common deck stock for years. That’s not a problem at all.
You also don’t have to worry about rares. You’ll seldom have more than a single deck worth of rares, if that. Sure, we might all want a bunch of Damnations, but once we acquire a playing set, we’ll spend our money elsewhere.
If you are like me, you are a casual player who likes to build a lot of decks. You might use different sleeves on each deck so you can tell them apart. You have decks from the entire spectrum of the Framework from Crazy Combo Man to Controlling the Board to No-Holds-Barred-Aggro and decks in between. You have decks built that you haven’t played in at least a month.
For these many decks, you want a good stock of uncommons. You need twenty Harmonizes because you want to slap so many in Green decks. If you need twenty of any common, like Lonely Sandbar, then you are fine. You have those twenty commons in the three Onslaught boxes you bought. You have resigned yourself to not having twenty Shadowmage Infiltrators, but you learn to cope, substituting in Ophidians.
However, uncommons are different. When you need a ton of an uncommon, you don’t get it just from a handful of boxes. I bought a case of Planar Chaos and only got around 12 Harmonizes.
Therefore, when a new set comes out, I think every casual player with the twenty decks should do two things:
1). Identify and target the uncommons that you know you’ll want as many as possible.
2). Then acquire them, from cheap bulk boxes at local stores, to getting them as throw-ins during trades.
As an example, let’s take a look at Future Sight:
Delay
You are going to want a ton of Delays for your decks. It’s a counter that doesn’t fully annoy the person who just got countered, in a splashable, cheap package. In multiplayer, you should play this, it will be amazing.
Tolaria West
Blue getting any land is amazing. You’ll rarely want a Tormod’s Crypt or something, instead you’ll use this to get a Tron piece or mana-fixing or Academy Ruins or Maze of Ith or something. Get these fast.
Over the weekend, a local store had cracked a bunch of Future Sight packs and were selling uncommons in a bulk box for $0.50 each. I grabbed all of the Tolaria Wests and Delays that I could, because even though I have four boxes coming in the mail (from StarCityGames, of course), I know that I will want as many of these bad boys as possible.
What do you know that you’ll want? Aven Mindcensor? Yixlid Jailer? Chronomantic Escape? Fleshwrither? Keldon Megaliths? Snake Cult Initiation? Mystic Speculation? Whatever you think you are going to run a bunch of in your decks, pick them up early and often. Getting quality uncommons in bulk is the hardest part of getting your deck stock to the point that you can build a ton of decks. Work it.
What’s the Deal With Lists, Anyway?
Why do people need lists to generate controversy? Why does “Top 10 Rock Ballads” cause controversy? It seems like any old list gets people riled up. With that said, here are some lists. Let’s see what happens:
My Top 5 Bands:
Depeche Mode
Pet Shop Boys
The Echoing Green
Chicago
Erasure
One of those things is not like the others. I like “70s era experimental Jazz Fusion Chicago” a lot, not “cheesy power ballads written by Diane Warren with horns 80s” Chicago.
My Top 10 Magic Cards — All Time
Scarwood Bandits
Goblin Bombardment
Impulse
Scroll Rack
Thornscape Battlemage
Orim’s Thunder
Tortured Existence
Shivan Dragon*
Moggcatcher
Fleetfoot Panther
Some of those cards make sense, some do not. Check out what * means in the next rant.
My Top 2 Favorite Novels
Lucifer’s Hammer
Dracula
Nothing else even charts. Discuss at your leisure.
My Favorite Movies
Donnie Darko
Saved!
The Lord of the Rings
Any Given Sunday
St. Elmo’s Fire
Ronin
The Americanization of Emily
Return of the Seacaucus 7
Hero
Starship Troopers
A lot of indie, a bit of action when it’s clever, some older movies. I really like large casts done well, and you can tell. (Saved!, LotR, Any Given Sunday, Fire, Seacaucus 7 all have large casts with a lot of people getting screentime). Oldest movie in my list is Americanization, newest is Saved!
My Favorite TV Shows
Babylon 5
Coupling
Doctor Who
Lost
The West Wing
SportsNight
Cold Feet
The Prisoner
The Bob Newhart Show
The Twilight Zone
Sci Fi and British shows for me! Only three shows on my Top 10 list do not qualify, and two of those are Aaron Sorkin shows. Three comedies and one sorta comedy sorta drama. I like intelligent comedy and intelligent drama. Other shows of note include Manchild, ER, The Wonder Years, Star Trek: The Original Series, As Time Goes By, The Cosby Show, and The Dick Van Dyke Show.
My Favorite Two Sports
Football
Football
This is not a duplicative post. I mean American football with the first and then the occasionally-called-soccer as my second. Even if you don’t like soccer, you should absolutely watch the Champions Final between Liverpool and AC Milan on the 23rd. This game will be amazing. [Yup. — Craig, Scouser.]
The Rebirth of a Classic
This is my final rant.
I’ve recently rediscovered Shivan Dragon.
About a month ago I took apart Abe’s Deck of Happiness and sorted through all of the cards. I found out what I needed and what I was missing. I added some countermagic, mana production, that sort of thing.
I also felt that I needed some big creatures. Enter Shivan Dragon. However, I wanted an iconic Shivan for my deck of foils and promos and old cards (Around 1250 cards by now, and that’s before the influx of FS).
I searched on eBay and found a black-bordered original artwork Asian Shivan Dragon. That was going to be my baby. I picked it up, and added it to my deck. Karma raised that card near the top of a large deck and I drew it later that night, winning with it easily.
Two weeks later I was looking for large creatures for an Elder Dragon Highlander deck I was building. I tossed in a Shivan, and promptly rolled another person with a Shivan.
Why did we ever leave behind Shivan Dragon?
Shivan Dragon is a 5/5 flyer for six mana with firebreathing. It’s Standard legal right this second. A quick search of the StarCityGames.com database shows exactly two decklists made using it, among our countless writers. I give you two guesses as to which writer wrote them both, and the first doesn’t count.
It works with Wildfire, staying alive, works with Dragonstorm, works with Imperial Hellkite, works with Bladewing the Risen, and that’s just combos. Why are we not playing this thing?
Shivan Dragon is my new cause du jour.
With a Standard environment that frequently plays Red, and often deals with slower times, where is Shivan? Wouldn’t a Shivan be a great way for a Red/Blue control deck to finish the game? Wouldn’t it be a great card to ramp up to on the fourth turn with Red/Green acceleration?
It seems to me that a lot of players have gotten a bit too snarky for their own good when it comes to older cards.
Serra Angel is amazing and cheap, and in an environment with control, you cannot tell me that no decks should be running the Angel. She doesn’t have a place anywhere in the current environment?
Want to know how many decks on StarCityGames.com even used the Angel? A Battle Royale deck with 25 tix to build something, a sample deck demonstrating how control works, an Angel theme deck, and then three times by me. That’s Rivien twice (he’s casual), me three times (I’m casual), and Craig once (for a duel with a limitation on it).
This is where the highly competitive tournament players will chime in on the forums talking about how Serra Angel or Shivan Dragon or Erhnam Djinn isn’t really all that good.
Years have not antiquated these cards. They are still good cards, they were then, and they are again today.
Hypnotic Specter got love. 163 decks of love on StarCityGames.com alone. To be fair, the Hippie was out of the game for a lot longer than the Angel of Serra, and the Shivan Dragon has never been out.
PLAY THESE CARDS.
The next time I see a deck that a Serra Angel or Shivan Dragon or… wait a second… what about… Clone?
Everybody is raving about Blue removal currently, but Blue already had removal in Standard and it’s called Clone. Only ten decks played around with it, and some of those are mine while others are casual decks (like JMS’s two decks, or another created for my column by Tyler Savoy). At least the Japanese saw some value in it. Three decks featuring Clone charting in the Top 8 at Championships in Japan last year. No one else sees any value in Clone? None at all?
To finish my sentence, the next time I see someone playing with a deck that can obviously use one of these older classic cards and does not, I am going to throw dice at it until it collapses. My playgroup has now been warned.
Play these things, will ya?
Until later,