Some weeks when you write articles, you have an easy lead-in — some thematic, clever anecdote that will tie into the main thrust of your decks.
Other weeks are like this one.
Here’s My Deck
So! Once again, I have opened a deck online to get the hang of Ravnica Limited. Once again, it’s kind of a sucky deck — I’m not thrilled about Ravnica, because every once in awhile I like getting The Sign From God. You know, the kind of deck where you open it, and the rares and commons join up to sing out in a heavenly chorus, “These are your colors!”
Unfortunately, if Invasion frequently had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing out at me, Ravnica has all the singing talents of the Dead Kennedies. (And I like the Dead Kennedies.) Once again, I have a card pool with strong cards in each color, but nothing so amazing that it’s a no-brainer.
I’d like a no-brainer. It’d be a nice change of pace at this point. And yet we have what we have, so onwards!
Green:
1 Bramble Elemental
1 Centaur Safeguard
1 Elves of Deep Shadow
1 Dryad’s Caress
1 Elvish Skysweeper
1 Farseek
1 Fists of Ironwood
1 Ivy Dancer
1 Scatter the Seeds
1 Vinelasher Kudzu
Well, that’s a nice healthy green. I always love to open a Scatter and a Bramble Elemental, for I love big things choking up my five-slot. Plus, this is the first time I’ve opened up a Farseek, and I must admit it’s got me all giddy. Everyone else has been putting basic lands into play on turn 2, but I’ve had to settle for the slower Civic Wayfinder. Boo!
I’ve been maindecking Ivy Dancer a lot, and she’s never let me down… At least, not in the first round. (Read on if you’d like to see how League play changes as you go up the ladder.) And considering that we have a big 4/4 fatty that loves to walk through forests, I’m thinking green’s going to be a main color no matter what we do.
I also had visions of Vinelasher Kudzus growing to great heights (especially combined with my house-smashing mini-combo of Farseek), but that never actually happened. My little Vinelasher got as big as 4/4 before a Disembowel eviscerated him, or he was going to get to a 4/4 when a Last Gasp took him out, or some mean Blue mage cast Peel From Reality just as he was about to get truly impressive. I began to think of my Vinelasher as a “Summon Removal Spell,” which was kind of useful since his magnet-like method of attracting Galvanic Arcs cleared the way for other critters… But the Vinelasher never really worked as well as I thought he would.
Once I was skeptical of the Safeguard, but now I see him for what he is: He plays pilot while my other creatures play wingman.
The wingman, for those who aren’t sufficiently familiar with the bar scene (and I don’t know why I’d think Magic players wouldn’t be familiar with picking up women), is the guy who goes out and chats up the ugly girls so his friend — a.k.a. “The pilot” – can score with the cute one.
And Centaur Safeguard’s an ugly guy. Anything can kill him, and he’s a common, and he gains me three life… So nobody ever wants to trade their cool Guildmage for him. That means he almost always gets in a hit or two, since people just refuse to block him in the early game until they can find something that will survive the tussle. He also never draws removal, meaning that he hangs around as a blocker if I need him. In the late game, he’s a great damage soak (unless someone has a Fists out, of course) that buys me another turn. All the other creatures suck up Last Gasps and Brainspoils like they were going out of style, but the Centaur stays.
Nobody thinks he’s any good. Which makes him good.
White:
1 Bathe in Light
1 Benevolent Ancestor
1 Conclave Equenaut
1 Conclave’s Blessing
1 Courier Hawk
1 Dromad Purebred
1 Nightguard Patrol
1 Suppression Field
1 Veteran Armorer
This is a fairly shallow White, which makes it sound like I’m reviewing wines. But I’m not. There just isn’t enough beef here to start it as a maindeck color — aside from the Equenaut, I’d wind up trying to launch an assault on the back of a bunch of x/2s without significant evasion or removal, which isn’t the traditional way to win.
It’s tempting to splash white, but there’s a serious pull here; while there are a few staple commons in the form of Armorer, Patrol, Hawk, and Ancestor, none of them really break open the late game. Sure, yanking an Armorer or an Ancestor on turn 7 might help give you a defensive edge, but by turn 7 I don’t want to be on the defensive. Hence, it’s not really enough power to go, “I gots ta get me some of that!”
I should note that once again, Suppression Field rears its uncommon little head, and once again I feel like I should be able to use it for something but have yet to be able to do so. What a shame.
Blue:
1 Convolute
1 Dizzy Spell
1 Drift of Phantasms
1 Grayscaled Gharial
1 Grozoth
1 Lore Broker
1 Mnemonic Nexus
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Peel from Reality
1 Surveilling Sprite
1 Wizened Snitches
This is my fourth damn deck, and once again I’m not playing Blue. I feel guilty. Unlike many casual players, I like Blue. I want to Counterspell things. But for that, I need creatures, and this has sucktacular creatures.
Furthermore, there are two creatures I hate simply because of their names. “Grayscaled Gharial” is a great frickin’ name, but how the hell did it become attached to a vanilla 1/1? I mean, a 1/1 shouldn’t have any real description attached to it. It should just be a Gharial. Then the upgraded version, which is a 2/2 or a 3/3, would be the Grayscaled Gharial.
As it is, we can only assume there’s some kind of wussy Gharial out there that’s not Grayscaled, which means it’s probably a 0/0 that just dies from botox poisoning before it comes into play. How ridiculous.
Wizened Snitches, on the other hand, is a great name to say. I have a mild case of echoalia, so I love to repeat things over and over again, and this is a great name. “Wizened Snitches Wizened Snitches Wizened Snitches Wizened Snitches.” Say it fast, it sounds like a train chugging down the track. I keep saying it over and over again, and eventually I forget that I should be building a deck.
I have this vague terror that I’ll open one at the prerelease and, forgetting that I am among humans, I will mutter it in a Raymond Babbitt-style murmur, creeping people out. “Wizened Snitches,” I’ll croon. “I’m a very good driver Snitches!”
Thus, it’s a card that distracts me. But it’s so fun to yell! “Wizened Snitches!”
It’s almost as fun as…. Hundroog. But I’m not going there again.
Black:
1 Carrion Howler
1 Clinging Darkness
1 Disembowel
1 Infectious Host
1 Mortipede
1 Necromantic Thirst
1 Nightmare Void
1 Shred Memory
1 Stinkweed Imp
1 Strands of Undeath
Black ain’t bad, but it ain’t great either. I mean, Clinging Darkness and Disembowel are wonderful, and Stinkweed Imp will make the cut in almost any deck, but aside from that we’re reduced to Carrion Howler and Mortipede, and then there’s a big void.
A Nightmare Void, you might say.
Necromantic Thirst seems like it would be a great card, but I’ve never had it in a deck that’s had enough evasion that I’d feel comfortable running it. If I slap the Thirst on a creature, I want it to get through that turn, because otherwise it does nothing for me.
Maybe if I played Blue. But when is that going to happen?
(This is foreshadowing, by the way. Tune in next week.)
Red:
1 Coalhauler Swine
1 Fiery Conclusion
1 Goblin Fire Fiend
1 Hunted Dragon
1 Incite Hysteria
1 Indentured Oaf
1 Ordruun Commando
1 Rain of Embers
1 Sparkmage Apprentice
1 Torpid Moloch
I want you to note how this color just flat-out lied to me.
I mean, it does have some good stuff. But Red reached out from the MODO client, grabbed me by the neck, and said, “Hunted Dragon! Play me! Look how powerful I am!” And, dazed by the sheer mighty potential of a playable early-game 6/6 flier — something I haven’t seen since Invasion Block — I succumbed.
But the Dragon just ain’t that good. You see, the little drawback of 2/2 tokens is pretty significant, so you want to be able to use the Dragon as a finisher. But since there’s no trample on this sucker, even a Courier Hawk speedbump can leave you wide open… And let us not forget the omnipresent threat of that damned Stinkweed Imp. Thus, I wound up jockeying for a position where a 6/6 flier would kill in two turns, which didn’t happen nearly as much as I wanted it to.
It’s a good card. It’s even, dare I say, a strong card. But not that strong.
Aside from that, though, the Red’s pretty decent. You have the Oaf, which is always handy, and the Ordruun Commando which is fine even without White, and the Coalhauler Swine, which can single-handedly stop a big ground assault if you’re ahead on life.
It’s a fine color. But the Dragon can’t carry it on its own.
Also, I’d like to add that although you’d think that Fiery Conclusion should be able to do five damage to the dome, it doesn’t — as I discovered to my detriment in an earlier game not involving this deck. That was quite the surprise to me, since I’d been maneuvering the entire game around getting my opponent into Conclusion range, and suddenly I was at the Prerelease again.
You think Blue’s the tricky color, but Red lies. Really.
Boros:
1 Boros Swiftblade
1 Rally the Righteous
1 Razia’s Purification
1 Searing Meditation
1 Skyknight Legionnaire
1 Sunhome Enforcer
This isn’t bad, but it’s not good, either. In a deck with a lot of good white, I’d say this could make a fine bombtastic deck, but the White is slim on good cards to work with. Thus, you have the Rally and the Skyknight and the Sunhome — all excellent cards — but then you have Boros Swiftblade, which isn’t that strong. When I go into a Guild, I want it to be for a card that will smash a stalemate in half, not for a couple of support cards that will simply augment the usual critter assault.
I thought Razia’s Purification would be a great card, and I experimented, but it turned out to kind of suck. Why? Well, in a Red/White deck, you’re basically going for the massive quickie assault with weenies and whatnot, trying to overwhelm your opponent with speed. But what inevitably happens is that the opponent begins to stabilize, bringing out a fattie or two to clog your approach.
That’s not a problem if you’re weenie-tastic… But when you choose three weenies and he chooses a fattie and two weenies, it’s hard to achieve parity. I was able to cast this sucker four times, but not once was I in a situation where the three I chose would be significantly better than the three he chose. Those damn Green-based fatties were just too omnipresent. It may be better in a deck with an actual White end game, but in this particular deck that’s rife with White x/1s and x/2s, the Purification is a no-go.
Searing Meditation’s such a cool card. But I’m not Johnny enough to try to use it.
Dimir:
2 Dimir Infiltrator
1 Induce Paranoia
Not quite enough to make up for the weak Blue.
Golgari:
1 Putrefy
1 Shambling Shell
1 Woodwraith Strangler
Now, I like that. Who doesn’t like a Putrefy? And a Shambling Shell, well, the whole Dredge thing can be a drag, but it usually helps out somewhere.
All the cool kids tell me that Woodwraith Strangler sucks. I feel a little ashamed for giving into peer pressure so easily, but on the other hand the kids I have seen who play with Woodwraith Strangler were, shall I say, Not So Good. So I guess I’ll never know whether the Strangler would work for me.
Selesnya:
1 Selesnya Evangel
I love this card. Love love love love it.
Too bad she’s so alone.
Lands:
1 Boros Garrison
1 Dimir Aqueduct
1 Golgari Rot Farm
1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
…But wait! The City-Tree and the Evangel? Maybe that could be a whole farm of 1/1 tokens!
Not with this white, I don’t think. It’s vaguely tempting, though.
Artifacts:
1 Boros Signet
1 Dimir Signet
1 Golgari Signet
1 Grifter’s Blade
1 Peregrine Mask
1 Selesnya Signet
1 Spectral Searchlight
1 Terrarion
I am not in love with Terrarion, but I am seeing her on the side. It’s funny how much of a staple the Terrarion’s become in my decks, because in any three-color deck, the mana-fixing helps but the draw-a-card function is even better. Sure, you have to wait a turn, but that’s rarely an issue.
I should add that I see a lot of players always popping the Terrarion the turn afterwards. This is not always your best play, especially if you’re looking for a specific color and haven’t found it yet. The better players sometimes hold onto a Terrarion for three or four turns before casting some off-color monstrosity, or paying a blue for Ribbons of Night in a Green/Black deck.
Okay. You’ve seen the entire deck, and it is once again the standard Ravnica jumble; a lot of good cards, but without a strong pull into a set of colors. I’d rank this pool a solid middle-of-the-road 5, meaning that I wouldn’t hate opening it but I wouldn’t like it, either. Please let me know what you think this pool should be rated in the forums.
Here is the deck I went with:
1 Elves of Deep Shadow
1 Bramble Elemental
1 Centaur Safeguard
1 Elvish Skysweeper
1 Farseek
1 Fists of Ironwood
1 Ivy Dancer
1 Scatter the Seeds
1 Vinelasher Kudzu
1 Coalhauler Swine
1 Hunted Dragon
1 Indentured Oaf
1 Ordruun Commando
1 Rain of Embers
1 Sparkmage Apprentice
1 Stinkweed Imp
1 Clinging Darkness
1 Disembowel
1 Golgari Signet
1 Grifter’s Blade
1 Terrarion
1 Golgari Rot Farm
6 Forest
6 Mountain
4 Swamp
With all of the mana-fixing in this deck, I didn’t actually have a problem with the slightly rough mana base. So there.
The thing I quickly determined is that although this had a lot of removal, its creature-light nature actually hurt it… Because a lot of its power came from Hunted Dragon, and it wasn’t fast enough to close with a six-power flier, and it wasn’t invulnerable enough to endure six points of first-striking damage the next turn.
I built this deck on the strength of two rares — the Vinelasher and the Dragon — and when neither of them turned out to be the face-smashers I thought they were (as explained earlier), the rest of the deck suffered. It did okay, and I didn’t feel entirely out of my depth, but it wasn’t a great deck.
Strangely enough, however, the Rain of Embers worked wonders. I hadn’t played with it — and considering how many of my creatures were x/1s, I wondered whether it would hurt me more than it hurt my opponents — but since I always knew when it was coming, it took out Saprolings like there were no tomorrow, and helped clean up after combat. I definitely moved this one up a little on the list, though normally I’m not a huge fan of Tremor effects.
Honestly, I’m not sure if there is a better way to build the deck. Yeah, I know, the Boros-splashing-green is the other way to go, but that’s not optimal either. Your mana gets all mucked up, since White’s not powerful enough on its own, the Red cards need double-Red to function, and the Green cards are either double-Green (Bramble Elemental, Scatter) or need to be played early (Farseek, Vinelasher) in order to be effective.
Thus, you’d be pulled into a G/R/w configuration… But then there’s that problem that I mentioned where the Boros cards aren’t really that powerful. A late-game Sunhome Enforcer isn’t going to rock anyone’s socks. You can fix the mana any number of ways, of course, and having access to an Evangel and a City-Tree would be sweet – but if you go with the “infinite Saprolings” route, do yourself a favor and leave out the Razia’s Purification.
…or maybe I’m just wrong altogether. What do you think the build should be? Tell me in the forums, punkie. I wanna know.
What Would Readers Do?
Okay, I scrapped the Weekly Situation last week because I was running late, but it makes its triumphant return: here is a situation taken straight from a game, where I ask you to make the proper call.
I’m also renaming it to “What Would Readers Do?” instead of the mundane “The Weekly Situation,” since there’s nothing I like better than tweaking fundamentalists.
Here’s the sitch: It’s the second game, and your opponent is playing B/G/U. He’s rated 1650. It is his turn 4, and he has just attacked with a Shambling Shell and cast a Grifter’s Blade, making his board look like this:
Shambling Shell with Grifter’s Blade (tapped)
Forest
Swamp
Dimir Aqueduct
He currently has five cards in hand, one of which is a Forest. His deck has a lot of bounce (and a Darkblast he recurred a lot the last game) and a few counterspells, but relatively few creatures… At least that you saw. He did, however, have a Halcyon Glaze that was your undoing in the last game.
You, on the other hand, have nada. It’s your turn 4, and you have out only lands — two Forests, a Swamp, and a Mountain. But look at how full of goodness your hand is!
Bramble Elemental
Galvanic Arc
Disembowel
Mortipede
Sundering Vitae
Forest
Sewerdreg
What do you do? Do you cast the Mortipede, absorb the hit the next turn, and then try to Arc it up… Or do you cast the Mortipede as a blocker to take out the Shell? Do you Disembowel the Shell while you can, realizing that he’ll just Dredge it back anyway? Do you hold out for the bee-yoo-tiful Bramble/Arc combo, knowing that his deck’s all bouncetastic and the Bramble might well get bounced in response?
Tell me what you’d do. I’m curious.
Leagues: The Strengthening
I’ve been playing in Leagues to get my Limited skills back online, and largely that’s succeeding. My Spider-Senses are now back in line, and I can sense the Scatter or Devouring Light or Arc that’s lying in wait for me. That’s good.
But as the Leagues grow, I do better.
The interesting thing about a League is that every week, you add a new booster pack to your pool to build with, meaning that your style of play has to change every week. Here’s what happens as the weeks slide by:
1. The Decks Get Stronger.
You’d think this is a “duh,” but some of the people I’ve seen don’t get what that means. Under normal circumstances, blowing an early Disembowel on a Selenya Evangel is a fine play, but come Week Three you’re facing a deck whose colors have likely been chosen on the strength of its insane rares. You want to hold your removal until the last possible second, because you are almost guaranteed to see ridonkulous rares popping out of every crevice.
It is often the correct play to hold off on the Evangel, because when that Gleancrawler or Razia, Boros Archangel comes a-knockin’, you’ll have wished you were just facing down a horde of Saprolings.
2. Green Becomes Lessened
In the beginning, Green’s a very strong and consistent color, and you can expect to face Green in just about every deck that comes at you. As the weeks go by, though, you wind up with enough good Blue that the Dimir strategy of Draft decks starts to look good. As such, you see far fewer Forests and a lot more Blue trickiness.
It’s not that Green vanishes, but if you’re not prepared to deal with an Induce Paranoia, you will lose. Period. And if you’re planning an assault around Ivy Dancer, you may be disappointed; she’s definitely worth maindecking in the early weeks, but by the later weeks it’s a questionable call.
3. The Decks Become Dual-Color
You see fewer three-color decks as time goes on. And why not? By Week Four, only the weakest decks are splashing.
4. The Players Become Better…
…or you wind up facing bad players with such insane decks that the deck might as well be playing them. I mean, we’ve all opened the bad Sealed deck — the one where you put it down with a sigh of relief after you 0-x’d the tournament, happy to not have to struggle along with that pile of crap.
Now imagine someone said to you, “Hey. You know that deck you hate? For an extra four bucks, we’ll let you buy a booster for it. I’m sure those fifteen cards will patch up all of its problems!”
Most of you wouldn’t take it, of course…. which means that what’s left by Week Three are usually the decent decks. If you don’t have a decent deck, don’t bother to play seriously.
Anyway, that’s it. I gotta go see a man about a horse. See ya next week, and let me know what you would do in the forums!
Signing off,
The Ferrett
TheFerrett@StarCityGames.com
The Here Edits This Here Site Here Guy