The Weekly Guild Build: Why Aren't I At The Invitational?

There was a time when I had hoped to wrangle an invite to the Magic Invitational on the basis of my popularity, but that was way back in 2001. Back then, I was the best Magic writer on the Internet… Depending on where you put the italics.

See, if you said I was the best Magic writer, I was sunk. Clearly, there were far better Magic players than I running around the Internet in my glory days of 2001, and if you were to compare me on the basis of my skill slinging the cards, I was fairly pathetic. I couldn’t make the Pro Tour; heck, I barely could pull out wins in frosty Anchorage tournaments, miles away from the mainland, where the big rating was hovering over 1800.

But my weakness was my very strength.

Despite not having a scrap of advice to give anyone that might help them win a tournament, I had inadvertently become semi-famous in the Magic community by telling weirdo anecdotes, holding bizarre contests, and analyzing multiplayer politics. Judged on a ratio of accomplishments-to-audience, I was clearly in the lead as a Magic writer, since thousands of folks tuned in to listen to me speak on… Well, not much at all. I hadn’t won a PTQ, and yet I had a fairly loyal crowd of fans who wanted to hear what I had to say.*

That disturbed me, sometimes. I mean, there were players who’d made Top 8 at a Grand Prix, which was a capital-A accomplishment, and yet I had more name recognition than they did. Even as someone who was just beginning to comprehend the nature of the Pro circuit, that struck me as weirdly unfair. If you sought an audience, you could find it, and your Magic skill didn’t matter all that much.

What mattered was your ability to put things into words.

And ironically, if you were good at either extreme, you could do it. If you had no skill but you were a good writer, you could make a bad deck sound like a good idea, because that’s what writers do. And a pro writer had it even easier; I saw some name pros (not all, but some) churn out crap articles for the money, but because they were Name Pros, people assumed that the articles had to contain good content because they were by good players, giving them a pass.**

The equation was simple: If you wrote a lot, people knew who you were. And you could marshal that army of fans to do… What?

“Dude,” a friend of mine said, “You could totally be in the Invitational.”

And you know…. I could.

I laid my plans; the next time the Invitational rolled around, I thought I’d make a play for it, asking the people to vote for me, The Ferrett, because I’d be a hoot at the Invitational. I knew a lot of people would vote for me simply because I was an everyman, living the dream for them.

(I’m serious, too. When a big tax bill left me short on airfare to go to the one Pro Tour I won an invite to, I had a couple of offers from people who wanted to pay to fly me out from Alaska to Spain. As nice as it was, I couldn’t take them up on it.)

Now, those plans were short-lived, since the briefest scan of the Invitational process revealed that hey, you needed to be a Pro in order to get to the point where people could vote for you. I briefly considered trying to cause a big ruckus and change the rules, Schwarzenegger-style, to get dweebs like me into the Invitational… And I decided that would be not only staggeringly overblown and self-serving, but it would be really stupid. So I just let it drop.

In retrospect, I’m glad I did. There’s been a lot of fur flying around “Who should be in the Invitational?” recently, and for me, the answer is “The best of the best.” There are those who say that people should have twenty Pro Points before they’re even considered for it…

And you know what? I agree with ‘em. The Invitational has the ultimate prize — you get to design a Magic card, for Chrissakes — and that shouldn’t be left up to guys like me, who have coasted into the public eye on the basis of pure entertainment.

Or should it?

The problem with the Invitational is that it is, at its heart, a skewed format. The idea is to have absolutely whacky fun, with formats that are crazy and kooky! And every year, you hand them off to the world’s most efficient players, people who’ve gotten where they are because they don’t take chances, playing with a ruthless efficiency.

Why are you handing such fun formats to such un-fun guys?

Not that all pros are grim monoliths, of course — hello, Osyp! — but the problem with the Invitational is that you’re handing the goofiest games to the people who are least likely to shrug and say, “What the hell, let’s see what happens.” What happens is that you usually get a bunch of pros who don’t want to write articles about the event, and are mainly concerned with winning it for themselves as opposed to playing for the fun of the audience.

That’s not a bad thing, of course — winning tournaments is a fine goal — but Wizards needs to decide what the Invitational is.

If the Invitational is about rewarding play skill — as I think it should be — then Michael J. Flores should not be a part of it. Rosewater should retire his fun games and save them for elsewhere… Or at least he should create games that reward the most skill, as opposed to silly audience interactions. Throw the cards on the table, and let the best player win!

On the other hand, that’s every tournament, isn’t it?

So if the Invitational is all about personality and the joy of Magic, then yeah, you should put in writers. Ken Krouner has said that Flores was a shoo-in the moment he was put on the ballot, and Ken is absolutely right. As possibly the most high-profile Magic writer — and that’s with the accent on both halves — on the Internet, writing for both us and Magicthegathering.com, he was in a position to clean up in almost any vote you put him in.

And that’s fine. Flores is a great personality. Some people hate him, sure, but that’s the sign of someone who attracts attention. (When I took a poll in 2003 it turned out that our most-popular writer was John Rizzo, who was also our second most-hated writer.) If we’re trying to assemble a game that will entertain the maximum amount of people and make them pound on the table and lament, “God, I wish I was there for that tournament, ‘cause that sounds like good frickin’ times,” then Flores should be there, and Rizzo should be there, and the funniest players should be there. The Invitational should then not be an internal game of “Cards get played,” but rather “Who can entertain the Invitational audience the most?” and everything should be focused around that.

As such, the reward for playing in a personality-based Invitational should not be based on winning games, but on something else. I wouldn’t want it based on a straight vote, since that turns it into a popularity contest, and it should be a personality contest. But hey, Rosewater’s a designer, I’m sure he could come up with something.

And if someone goes, “God, I wish I was there,” then they should also have a shot at being there. Somehow. By a means other than x-0ing the Pro Tour.

But as it stands, we’ve got this weird mix of fish and fowl, and it’s inconsistent. Either it’s about the best players in the game, or about the most fun players in the game, but it really can’t be both and be satisfying.

Incidentally, even if we are going by personality, I should not be in the Invitational. Rizzo surpassed me as “the writer with the greatest audience-to-actual-Magic-skill gap” in 2003, fell from grace when Friggorid stormed the scene earlier this year, and now I’m going to give the crown to none other than Chris Romeo, who has an audience that’s probably double what mine is.

Now, a Chris Romeo in the Invitational? That could be interesting.

But I’d rather see a Craig Stevenson, ‘cause he’s editing me. You know many “Scouseboy Smasher” cards we’d sell at StarCityGames.com? We’d make a million.

The Weekly Guild Build
Oh, yeah. Cards. Do I have to write about that?

Unfortunately, this week was a little skewed because of the Guildpact release on Magic Online, so I accidentally entered into a three-pack tournament. Which isn’t quite what you’d get at a normal Sealed deck tournament, but what the hey. Same principles apply, even if you have more cards, amiright?

Sealed Deck

Ferrett Steinmetz

Test deck on 03-12-2006

Ravnica Limited

Creatures (51)

Lands (15)

Spells (37)

That pool is surely large. Now what cards in it make me go, “Wow, I gots ta play that color?”

Um….

Okay, not much. We have some mini-combos in Izzet Chronarch and Electrolyze, but aside from that we have no elbow-drop that lands us firmly in color X. Hence, we have to go and look at the individual colors.

White:
It’s not bad — not powerful, but fairly deep. We have the extreme playables of Courier Hawk (do not underestimate the power of the Hawk), Ghost Warden, Divebomber Griffin, and the ever-happy Faith’s Fetters.

I am rapidly coming to have a deep and enduring love affair with Shrieking Grotesque, which nabs a card and then beats for two. It’s actually altered my play; if I see White or Black in my opponent’s deck, I’ll sometimes hold back on laying a land I sorta-need just to toss to the Grotesque, and I’ve been right two times out of three.

Then there’s Sinstriker’s Will, which is a nice card against some decks. Blue? Forget it, it’s gonna get bounced. Black is going to kill your creature out from under you anyway. But against Red or Green (before Green sideboards in Sundering Vitae, anyway), it can be an absolute house. You don’t want to put it on a big attacking creature — you throw it on something with a big butt, like Belltower Sphinx, and then leave it back to absolutely play havoc with their combat math. It’s potential card disadvantage, of course, which is why I don’t run it main, but I’m coming to like the Will more and more.

And then there’s Ghostway. You know what I’d really like? A Blind Hunter. God dang, have I been losing games to Blind frickin’ Hunter. But sadly, we don’t have one, even though we are packing a Conclave Phalanx. But even without an abundance of “comes into play” effects to abuse, it’s an effect that can absolutely play havoc with someone’s combat math, encouraging your opponent to pile all sorts of spells to force a bad trade and then zipping them out of existence.

Green:
Yick.

Oh, don’t get me wrong — this pool has two nice cards in the form of Bioplasm (which I haven’t played with enough to verify that it’s as good or as bad as it looks), and Ghor-Clan Savage. But there’s nothing to ramp us up to those double-Green creatures except a paltry Wildsize and a Transluminant. And of course, the Nullmage Shepherd shows up in a deck with no token-producing abilities. Thanks, guys.

Red:
Once again, we have the most powerful card (Viashino Fangtail) with a double-cost, meaning we can’t splash. And aside from that, we have cards that require another color to work properly (Ogre Savant, Ordruun Commando). We’re not playing Red, that’s for sure.

Black:
Whoo, we have the same problem that we have here with Green — a lot of good double-mana cards, but not a whole lot of interim cards to get us through the long haul to five mana. Okay, I lie a little bit; we have Last Gasp, and Stinkweed Imp, and maybe Orzhov Euthanist.

But everything else is double-Black, forcing a fairly big commitment to Black to squeeze the absolute power out of it. Necroplasm is an absolute house against token-based strategies (which are still powerful in this environment). Sadly, I haven’t gotten a chance to play with (or against) a Smogsteed Rider, but I suspect he’s a great combat trick if you can get him to stick for a turn.

Time was I would have said that Sewerdreg was a marginal call since Green-based decks were ascendant, but everyone seems to have caught onto how good Orzhov is, and now I’d say it’s a must-include if you can handle the mana.

Blue:
People yelled at me last week for not using the powerful Blue in my card pool, wondering whether I had some sort of Blue fear. Well, this week, I have no fear.

This is a nice pool, with a lot of card drawing (Compulsive Research, Remand, Repeal, Train of Thought), solid flyers (Belltower Sphinx, Stratozeppelid, Drift of Phantasms, Snapping Drake, Torch Drake), and some solid tricks.

I personally have come to love Stratozeppelid in any R/G matchup, because he’s too big to burn out and they have nothing that can stop a 4/4 flyer from pounding them. Yeah, you can’t block with him, but that’s what your other creatures are for.

I also want to like Remand, since it’s all the rage in Constructed, but having played with decks that packed two Remands before, I don’t like it in Sealed. It just seems that when I’m countering something, I usually am doing so because crap, I’m going to lose if that sticks, and I can’t gain enough tempo to use that additional turn properly. Furthermore, Sealed games run longer, and so you find yourself in situations where you cast Remand when they have eight mana open and they shrug and then cast Galvanic Arc again.

I’d also like to like Runeboggle, and I know some people swear by it, but I’ve played Force Void too many times to be convinced. Okay, sure, it can play havoc in the early game, but that has to be a turn you’ve left open to not cast a threat. I don’t think that’s optimal Sealed strategy, and I don’t like trusting a situational card to show up when I need it.

Artifacts:
Bloodletter Quill? Thank you, yes.

Boros:
Our Red’s weak, and Boros ain’t enough to make up for it. Rally the Righteous and Thundersong Trumpeter are fine cards, but not enough to pull me into Boros on my own.

As for Searing Meditation, at Grand Prix: Richmond there was the rumor of the four-Benediction of Moons deck that someone had drafted on Day Two and then 3-0’d the table. How did that work? Because they’d picked up three Searing Meditations, and burned their opponents out. I love that. But we don’t have that.

Orzhov:
Last week, I said I wasn’t sold on the Agent of Masks… But man, the things actually playing with a card can do! I said that it read, “If I get into a stall, I’m winning it,” but underestimated how powerful that was. A four-point life swing definitely helps you squeeze out of situations you’d otherwise lose.

As for Castigate, though, I’m not sold on it yet. I’ve seen it completely wreck me, but my gut says that it’s usually a sideboard card. A double-Castigate might be the time to experiment, but we shall see.

Gruul:
Nothing that good here. Though I do like Burning-Tree Bloodscale, it’s a little mana-intensive for its cost, making it a solid card but not OMG EXCEPTIONAL.

Golgari:
Ooo! Guildmage? Lemme think about Green and Black again.

Izzet:
There’s the pre-built combo of the Chronarch and the Electrolyze, but our Red is weak. I don’t know if it’s enough to carry it, or even be worth splashing, even with the Izzet Boilerworks.

The bloom is fading from Petrahydrox for me. Yeah, it’s a nice 3/3, but if I’m playing Blue/Red I need larger things to cover my butt, and it always seems like other people can bounce it on command. I’m livin’ it, but I’m not lovin’ it.

Dimir:
The Dimir Guildmage is, obviously, a house, but I see a lot of bad players forgetting that it has the “Strip an opponent’s hand” clause. They’re so focused on getting card advantage that they forget to pick me clean while they can. Think carefully before you choose.

Lurking Informant is, as you know if you’ve been playing this format, one of the best cards… But take a lesson from an idiot who called me names. I was beating him down with six creatures to his three, and taking my time in case he had a trick that could wreck me. Every turn, he kept controlling my card quality, forgetting that I had stuff on the table that was killing him. I didn’t care if all I was drawing was lands, as long as I could keep what I had on the table.

He never thought once to Informant himself to try to draw some removal. And then he called me “gay” before he lost. What a charming ne’er-do-well, ay?

In any case, I think we have three serious options here:

Green/Blue/Red
This gets us the high-end Green creatures and the power of Blue, splashing for the Chronarch/Electrolyze combo. But as I said, Green is thin in the middle, which means that we’re effectively split; we want to last until the late game so we can cast our powerful spells, but we have no support if someone comes out of the gates a-starter. (Which is more likely with an additional pack of Guildpact to work with.)

How do I know this? I played this just to see whether my instincts were right, and it fell apart. The slightest early pressure left me on the back foot, an I couldn’t recover properly. Plus, I never drew my two-card combo, which wasn’t all that great in the first place.

Blue/Black/Green
This is clearly an attempt to harness the strength of the Golgari Guildmage… But again, it doesn’t work. The Green, once again, lets us down, which means that we either make it a major color — which we can’t really support — or splash it, in which case we’re splashing for the Uh-May-Zing power of Wildsize.

Plus, the double-Guildmage sounds like a good idea, but since the bulk of our cards are Blue, it backfires more often than you’d think. I know; once again, I took this one for a spin to see whether it would work, and no, it doesn’t.

Blue/White/Black
I know, I know; the traditional wisdom in Ravnica is to look to your Gold cards for power, and in this case we’d be looking for Gold cards from Dissension.

But think about it. Blue’s a house, and combined with White’s fliers we have a veritable Air Force. Splash in the best of the single-mana Black cards, and we have a deck that can absorb the early-game beats and then recover the lost life with Phalanx and Fetters. The lofty armada gives us a solid late game, too.

1 Agent of Masks
1 Belltower Sphinx
1 Bloodletter Quill
1 Compulsive Research
1 Conclave Phalanx
1 Convolute
1 Courier Hawk
1 Dimir Aqueduct
1 Dimir Guildmage
1 Divebomber Griffin
1 Drift of Phantasms
1 Faith’s Fetters
1 Ghost Warden
6 Island
1 Last Gasp
1 Lurking Informant
1 Orzhov Signet
1 Petrahydrox
5 Plains
1 Repeal
1 Shrieking Grotesque
1 Snapping Drake
1 Stinkweed Imp
1 Strands of Undeath
1 Stratozeppelid
4 Swamp
1 Terrarion
1 Train of Thought

I went 6-1 with this deck, losing only to a fast deck when I got a lot of manascrew… And I won against three opponents with 1850 Limited ratings who didn’t get manascrewed, so there was something there.

I’ll stand by this build. I played it, and I felt good about it. But you can debate me in the forums.

The Weekly Plug Bug
Before you forget (and really, have you?), yes, I have a Web comic. This week has no overarching storyline to tie everything together, just a series of three decent jokes that were easy to draw so that Roni (the artist) could get ahead — but hey, drop by and check it out at www.homeonthestrange.com.

Signing off,
The Ferrett
TheFerrett@StarCityGames.com
The Here Edits This Site Here Guy

* – It could be argued that Anthony Alongi was a man of equal talent. But Anthony Alongi can build decks. I can’t.

** – This is, for you wags, something we studiously try to avoid on StarCityGames.com Premium, and the guys I’m discussing here aren’t writing any more. You’d be surprised how many articles we’ve rejected from name pros, sending ‘em back with a note that says, “You gotta do better than that.” Some of ’em get mad, but most of them understand.