Hello everybody, I’m Evan Erwin and this is the Magic Show. Today we’re going to take a new approach – that’s right, we’re going episodic and it’s going to get interesting.
You ready for the first segment of today’s show? Let’s get this party started!
Nobody’s Watching (Music: “Here It Goes Again” by OK GO)
In response to my last article, Sean McKeown, resident number-crunching genius, revealed that he doesn’t have the bandwidth and / or ability to watch the show. He reads the transcripts, but cannot actually see the images you are seeing now or hear my voice. Of course, the Christmas Show in all its infamy may be enough to drive some away.
I requested he take a look at a show and tell me if it improved his opinion on it, upon which time I learned he didn’t have the bandwidth at home to watch. I implore you man, get thee to a Wifi spot and enjoy!
But seriously: Are there many transcript readers out there? Would you mind taking a look and telling me what you think? The show is meant to be watched, much like cereal can be eaten dry, but yearns for cow secretions to truly make it a meal.
So…yeah.
Extirpate Haterator (Music: “An Honest Mistake” by The Bravery)
Over at Top8Magic.com, the home of the most unnecessary flash interface ever, we hear the following on the podcast entitled “Planar Chaos Ordered Part 4.” The person speaking here is Mike Flores. I can’t identify the other speakers, but Mike gives us the goods. Take a listen:
11:00 “Extirpate is just Orson Wells on the radio.”
“You know what’s a really good way to find out who’s a moron and who’s like really smart at Magic analysis? ‘Extirpate look at how ninja this guy is it changes everything!’ It’s going to be in the quarter bin.”
16:45 — “It’s great against Firemane Angels it’s awesome against Golgari Grave-Trolls. It’s really good against Ichorid. I can’t imagine a better card against Martyr of Sands in Standard. But the thing is it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Extirpate Extirpates its prey.”
17:30 — “Loxodon Hierarch / Glare of Subdual? That’s really good against Budget Boros. But Julian and I played Budget Boros because by then nobody played Loxodon Hierarch in Standard anymore. We played against a total of two Loxodon Hierarchs, not Loxodon Hierarch decks, two Loxodon Hierarchs between 16 rounds between us. No one was playing it anymore. They were playing bad B/W Beatdown decks, and our deck was awesome against bad B/W Beatdown decks.”
17:55 — “Extirpate is a card that’s just, like, is going to scare people away, kill its own prey, then no one will ever play it again.”
Now while I’m not certain that dig was toward me, he certainly makes a point. Every environment is about trends, that’s what a metagame is. Finding and exploiting trends. So with Extirpate being insanely popular right now, commanding no less than $15 a pop, is this going to go the way of Infernal Tutor or Cranial Extraction? What constitutes its inclusion in decks after Dredge, Martyr and Firemane Angels go away?
I’ll tell you from personal experience, getting rid of a control player’s full set of Compulsive Researches while looking at their hand and keeping this uncounterable to boot is pretty damn good. It makes control players who love cards like Compulsive Research and Careful Consideration think twice before dumping their best cards in the bin, even if they can’t cast them anytime soon.
Again, the meta will shake out the winners and losers here. But just for example, Jeroen Remie threw out a Mono Black Control list for Standard and guess what 3-of was sitting in his sideboard?
Ninja baby, pure ninja.
Magic Online 3.0: Vaporware Edition (Music: “How To Disappear Completely” by Radiohead)
Meanwhile, also over at Brainburst, we have a new video of Magic Online 3.0 “gameplay” (quote unquote). Let’s take a look:
[[Video]] (Music: “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?” by Moby)
Okay, okay, that’s enough. I couldn’t possibly be more bored with what’s going on there.
I don’t know what it is about the MTGO developers that they are extremely obsessed with avatars. Guess what: I don’t care about avatars. I care about good gameplay. I don’t want the jerky, intermittent MTGO 2.0 interface. The ugly card images and the unaliased fonts.
The fact is, avatars are a very, very small subset of the game. You can’t walk around these avatars and see the games in progress, rather a few looped animations based on what’s going on at the time.
This is NOT FUN. Avatars are not gameplay. Just keep repeating that to yourself.
Dredge For Fun And Profit (“Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits)
So the foremost Dredge fan, Bennie Smith who Top 8’d Virginia Champs with a Dredge deck a few years ago, was back at it with a huge article that detailed several new Dredge-based archetypes. And it was cool, don’t get me wrong. But he forgot one little guy:
The guy whose namesake is so powerful that you will always always mulligan into it in Vintage, and who can do insanely unfair things with Dredge, as you’ll see by playing the deck.
So right now I’m going to unveil a new dredge build based on my own playtesting and a few dredge builds I’ve ran into using Magic Workstation. Why do I need to use Magic Workstation? Oh yeah, because Magic Online can’t get anywhere near the release of a cardboard product.
Here’s the list (Music: “Long Distance Call” by Phoenix):
Creatures (28)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Wood Elves
- 4 Thought Courier
- 4 Wall of Roots
- 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
- 4 Stinkweed Imp
- 4 Magus of the Bazaar
Lands (23)
Spells (9)
Now a few things about this build: First, it needs some more playtesting. I’ve not developed a sideboard yet, but feel free to add stuff like Sudden Death for Teferi and four Trickbind to take care of Tormod’s Crypt and decks like Goblin Combo and Dragonstorm.
Call of the Herd is a recent addition that gives you a good card in your opening hand and a spell to play from your graveyard. Speaking of Flashback spells, the secret tech in this deck is Traitor’s Clutch. Take a look at this bad boy. Not with the five mana cost, but rather the two mana Flashback cost. Now that’s a bargain! +1/+0 and Shadow is enough to finish off most opponents. Your Grave-Trolls and Svogthos’ are going to be massive in as little as five or six turns, and Traitor’s lets you slip by for the win.
Some of the many ways you’ll win with this deck:
Golgari Grave-Troll beats.
Svogthos beats (that recurs thanks to Life from the Loam)
Call of the Herd overrun (at which point they become Elephantes)
Traitor’s Clutch targeting a huge creature you control, usually Grave-Troll or Svogthos.
[Svothgos? What the hell is “Svothgos”…? – Craig, amused.]
Now this deck runs a lot of acceleration, with four Wall of Roots, four Birds of Paradise, and four Wood Elves. I’m guessing the Wood Elves may be a bit much, but they do help make sure you hit black mana for Svogthos, Darkblast and Traitor’s Clutch Flashback. Of course if you get Traitor’s Clutch stuck in your hand, it shouldn’t take long to get rid of it with four Magus of the Bazaar and four Thought Courier helping out.
Rather Be Greater Than Good (Music: “Bigger Than My Body” by John Mayer)
Next I’ll throw out my current build of Mono Green Aggro Greater Good, which is your average 19 land MGA deck with Greater Good kicking it up a notch thanks to the Lovely Mare and Groundbreaker. Might of Old Krosa gets pretty damn unfair with a Greater Good on the table, and with explosive openings such as Turn 2 Groundbreaker, Turn 3 Timbermare, you can get your opponent to an extremely low life total in a short amount of time.
Before I go on, let’s look at the list (Music: “Stinkfist” by Tool):
Creatures (28)
- 4 Llanowar Elves
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Boreal Druid
- 4 Scryb Ranger
- 4 Spectral Force
- 4 Groundbreaker
- 4 Timbermare
Lands (19)
- 1 Pendelhaven
- 18 Forest
Spells (13)
The question is: How do you finish your opponent off? As I and many of my colleagues and friends have noted, Mono Green Aggro has a horrible propensity of leaving the opponent at a ridiculously low life total but with no way of actually breaking through. This is the sort of thing that the Dredge deck got around with Traitor’s Clutch, but breaking stalemates isn’t always that easy.
However, resolving Greater Good and either Timbermare, Spectral Force or Groundbreaker is usually good game in my experience. The ability to draw that many cards at once is just too much for any deck, let alone one that hopes to counter your spells and get card advantage. Greater Good’s card advantage with these huge creatures overpowers every blue card draw spell in the format. This build needs work, but don’t they all? Feel free to report your own findings with it.
The Next Episode (Music: “Ain’t Nothin But A G Thang” by Dr. Dre)
And that does it for another edition of the Magic Show. For those who are forced to read instead of watch this for whatever reason, my heart goes out to you. May you one day get to hear my mad mispronunciation skills, know the first time I uttered the immortal words “Cap’n Tickles” and now introduce you to our newest cast of characters: Lieutenant Broccolihead.
Who is Lieutenant Broccolihead? Why, if you don’t watch you’ll never know!
Thanks for watching everybody,
Evan “misterorange” Erwin
dubya dubya dubya dot misterorange dot com
eerwin +at+ gmail +dot+ com