Welcome back, my friends! This week, I’m going to take a look and a thought through an old format that’s getting a new twist here in the Springs, but first, I thought I’d update you all with some follow-up from the Front Range Magic Team Challenge that went down this weekend. Something a little more than my Facebook status updates, which I believe said things like “Some guys are having a push-up contest… At a Magic tourney? They stopped at 7” and “It’s probably good that there are no DCI points on the line in this tournament.”
A Quick Aside About the Team Challenge
I know you were hoping that this space would be filled with my victorious ramblings from the Front Range Magic Team Challenge this past weekend. I’m not gonna lie — I was too. Unfortunately, my exploits probably have no lessons to teach you, short of “mulligan again on two lands four four-mana cards against Kithkin.”
What I can do is tell you a little bit about the format, which was very interesting. Teams of four signed up for the tournament, but it was treated as a singles tournament until the very end. 102 people showed up, so we all were treated to eight rounds of Swiss. Individual prizes were awarded at the end of the Swiss, but this is also when the team portion of the tournament came into play. Team standings were based on the cumulative points of the team members, and the top two teams did a four-on-four Shards draft to find a single top team.
The individual winner was Fort Collins’ current superstar, Conley Woods, who followed up a big PTQ win in Albuquerque with a stunning 8-0 at the Team Challenge. His entire team played Swans and was fighting for the team portion for the entire tournament, but the eventual winners were a different team from Fort Collins named “On A Boat.”
So I guess Fort Collins is the center of Magic in Colorado. I think I’m gonna move there. Maybe it will improve my game from the abysmal 2-6 I ended up with.
I played Five-Color Planeswalker, similar to AJ Sacher list from Pro Tour: Kyoto – mostly because I really love Planeswalkers as a Magical element. They’re so powerful, yet mostly so elegant in design. And now that the Lorwyn ‘walkers will all stick around through the rotation, it’s an investment in a deck style that has endurance.
I actually went back and forth between Three-Color and Five-Color, which is (as you know) never a good idea. And similarly, my team was in flux up until the last minute, and it was a scramble not only to find a fourth team member (which ended up being Uriah Oxford, Sweet Hair! Guy from the Grand Prix: Denver coverage) but also a fourth deck (Blightning, to be played by his brother Stephen).
Still, it was a good time, as you would expect from not only playing in a Magic tournament, but one where you specifically are pulling for victories for a group of your friends. In a PTQ, you can be happy for your friends, so long as they aren’t standing in your way to the top.
The Star Of The Show
On the drive home, Stephen suggested a format that’s certainly been around dinner tables for as long as I can remember: the Star. The idea is fairly straightforward: Five players, each with one color, sit around a table and play multiplayer with the following win condition: Take out your enemy colors.
For example: If you’re Red, you are trying to take out the Blue and White players. Green is helping you take out Blue, but probably trying to keep you from taking out White before he takes out Black. Black, meanwhile, is backing you up against White, but might be trying to stop you from taking out Blue. The win condition provides for interesting situations that don’t crop up in regular tabletop multiplayer games, where it’s every man for itself.
Obviously you can’t allow color hosers in this format, because Black would have a very easy time with Green and White, two creature-based colors. Perish alone is ridiculously lopsided, and it gets worse if you allow Portal cards like Virtue’s Ruin. Conflux’s new double-action hosers like Celestial Purge are just too strong for this format.
In addition, Stephen’s particular challenge was for a budget version of the competition: No rares, only eight uncommons, and the rest commons.
That — is right up my alley.
The colors haven’t been doled out yet, so I’m thinking about all of them. That way, when I get my color, I’m already through the hard part. The hardest part is probably picking the eight uncommons that will no doubt be the focal point of these decks.
White: It’s easy to automatically say Swords to Plowshares and another removal spell like Condemn or Path to Exile for your uncommons, but I think that overlooks what White does best — the little guys. Against Black and Red, you’re gonna want a good creature base to break through the lines, and the good White guys are uncommon, like Longbow Archer or Knight of Meadowgrain. Then again, it’s not like Path of Peace is exactly an Sword To Plowshares replacement.
Blue: Countermagic doesn’t really stand up here when you’ve got two guys gunning for you. Besides, the best Counterspell is still a common. It’s probably better to go for some card drawing like Fact or Fiction or Tidings. Uncommon big creatures might not be a bad idea; you’re going to need a win condition, and Air Elemental might be hard to deal with effectively. It might even be possible to build a Merfolk deck with Merrow Reejerey in your uncommon slot.
Black: Having played Mono-Black Control for many many years, I’ve run the gamut of possible Black uncommons. Demonic Tutor has always been an uncommon, as have most of Black’s tutoring cards, like Diabolic Tutor and Beseech The Queen. Black has plenty of common removal, but some mass removal like Infest or Hideous Laughter may have a place. My favorite uncommon for this deck isn’t even Black, though, because I don’t think you can build a winning deck for this format without Cabal Coffers.
Red: You’re gonna need an X-spell in this slot, I can almost guarantee. Hrm, maybe not, Fireball was a common in the early printings, and you’ve got access to Rolling Thunder as well. I’d hate to just grab efficient burn spells as you’re never going to burn out TWO opponents, no matter how many Flame Javelins you’re running. With all the common burn, you could hold the uncommon slots for creatures like Goblin Lackey (if you want to go with the Goblin theme) or, if you’re not down with the Gobbos, how about a Dragon Whelp?
Green: I started out looking at Priest of Titania because it would be very easy to make an Elf deck that just churned out mana, but what would you use it for? Sure, you could use Hurricane (uncommon in Ice Age!), but I just can’t see that as a good win condition for this format. It may be better to use something with some staying power, like a token generator like Squirrel Nest or Centaur Glade.
I like the idea of Green using tokens. Overrun is another great Uncommon that’s right down this line of thinking.
4 Ambassador Oak
4 Llanowar Sentinel
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Imperious Perfect (U)
4 Sporoloth Ancient
4 Elvish Visionary
1 Priest of Titania (U)
4 Sprout Swarm
3 Overrun (U)
2 Thrive
2 Presence of Gond
2 Elvish Fury
22 Forest
I wanted to make sure I got Overrun and an uncommon token producer as my uncommons, which locked me out of Treetop Village, unfortunately. But I think Imperious Perfect certainly makes an argument for its place. The Perfect plumps up a number of the other creatures just by itself, plus it makes tokens, which is awesome. The one Priest of Titania should be able to push out a lot of mana when you find it, but I’d rather stick with the multiple Overruns than the mana surge. To complement the elves, I pulled in Green’s other great token race, the Saprolings. When you start churning out tokens, Sprout Swarm gets insane. Sporoloth Ancient is the accelerated version of the Thallids, as he gets a token every other turn rather than every three turns.
Yeah, I like that. I think it has a shot in a format like this. Maybe I’ll pull Green and already have my deck built. That would work for me.
What about you? What would you play in this format? Which are the power uncommons that are missing from my short lists? What kind of wacky idea would thrive in this format? Sound off in the forums.
Magic Set Gestation Period is SHORT
So it’s already time to start looking for Alara Reborn hints and previews. We already know that the set will be completely gold, but who knows what kind of things Wizards will be throwing our way? You know I get excited about new sets, and this one is no different. It’s all I can think about. So let’s start getting ready for Alara Reborn!
Until next week…
Dave
dave dot massive at gmail and facebook