It’s a wild trip around multiple formats in today’s column. You wouldn’t think a new base set would change that much, but it’s eaten enough important cards (Wrath of God, the painlands) and brought in new cards (Lightning Bolt, Honor of the Pure, and evidently Fog) that it’s actually providing a little shakeup to the Standard format. While we wait for this to fall out, I figured I’d give you a little window into what’s happening in my neck of the woods.
M2010 Second Thoughts
After both playing Sealed and drafting with M10 last weekend, I’ve decided that I really like the set in those environments. I think that, as with any Limited format, there are some bombs that greatly influence the game, but I think it’s minimized to some extent; they’ve put all of the really tough bombs up into Mythic (I’m thinking of Garruk, Chandra, Bogardan Hellkite, and Baneslayer Angel specifically) and this means you’ll see less of them over the course of a tournament. I think I was actually more afraid of some of the uncommons, like Serra Angel, Goblin Artillery, and Mind Control, than the rares.
But all those “complaints” about how Wizards has gutted out control don’t make too much of an impact in a format that’s already all about the creatures. I found in my draft that if I went turn 1 creature, turn 2 creature, turn 3 Oakenform, I was in good shape to win that game. So… I guess that’s the sterling advice I can give you: if you are drafting Green, take Oakenforms.
Yeah, I know, real strong advice. They don’t let me write the Drafting With series, and there’s a reason.
I will admit to trying to push my Sealed deck out to three colors. It’s a holdover from Alara block, where you practically HAD to run three colors, and four or five was completely doable. I still remember the Conflux pre-release, where it seemed like everyone was four or five colors, at the very least splashing in the basic lands to hit the domain spells at maximum force. It was either three colors, or play with some subpar guys, but I did run into some color problems, since there isn’t the same level of multicolor support in the set. It seems like everyone learned that pretty quickly, and I saw mostly two-color draft decks throughout the rest of the weekend.
Type 2 Boogaloo
I was peripherally watching what was going on in this, the first weekend of Standard under the new M10 regime. Cascade seems to still be in the forefront mechanically-speaking, but M10 newbie Elvish Archdruid seems to be powering a whole new evolution of the Elf combo deck, and Kithkin got their own Crusade in Honor of the Pure. And, of course, there’s that dang Faeries deck still hovering around.
The Elves deck looks like a real contender, winning Australia’s Nationals in the hands of Jamie Mackintosh, and putting five players into the Top 8 between Australia and Japan. This will no doubt push Elvish Archdruid up into one of the most-sought-after rares from M10… as if it wasn’t already. I mean, it’s no Bitterblossom or Cryptic Command, but if you think there’s any chance you might play Tribal Elves or Combo Elves in pretty much any format, these are must-grabs.
Thankfully, I don’t have a PTQ to head to until the end of August, so I can rest on my laurels a little bit. See what shakes out in the next couple of weeks before getting into the heavy work. In the meantime, M10 gave me back the namesake rare for one of my favorite pet decks, so you know what I’ll be playing at FNM for the next couple of weeks…
That’s Right, Warp World
As you may or may not remember (I mean, it’s not something that stays in most people’s consciousnesses), the original version of the deck was built in Ravnica block, which means it was able to run Bogardan Hellkite and bypass the whole “need an attack phase to win” problem that I’m sure is plaguing most current Warp World decks.
Well, no more!
Thanks to M10, we have Bogardan Hellkite back. Thanks to Time Spiral, the Hellkite is under $5 despite its new mythic rarity.
Here’s my current build:
Creatures (27)
- 4 Siege-Gang Commander
- 4 Bogardan Hellkite
- 4 Farhaven Elf
- 4 Kitchen Finks
- 1 Wort, the Raidmother
- 1 Nucklavee
- 3 Elvish Visionary
- 1 Hellkite Overlord
- 1 Madrush Cyclops
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
Lands (23)
Spells (10)
Rare Cost Summary:
Warp World ($0.99 x 4 = $3.96)
Siege-Gang Commander ($5.99 x 4 = $23.96)
Bogardan Hellkite ($4.99 x 4 = $19.96)
Madrush Cyclops ($0.99 x 1 = $0.99)
Wort, the Raidmother ($0.59 x 1 = $0.59)
Hellkite Overlord ($4.99 x 1 = $4.99)
Graven Cairns ($4.99 x 4 = $19.96)
Fire-Lit Thicket ($9.99 x 4 = $39.96)
It’s very likely that the manabase does not need the Graven Cairns or Savage Lands. The manabase has a heavier Black element because originally I had Anathemancers maindeck, but that seems like it’s less important. I will probably include some in the sideboard just as an uncounterable source of midgame damage. Rootbound Crag is of course a possible replacement, but I could just go with basic lands as well and I think we’d be in good shape. There are a fair number of color fixers in the deck, and it doesn’t seem like I’m ever thinking, “Man, I could use another specific color source I am missing.”
Makes it sound like I think in abstract awkward speech patterns. “Go my local sports franchise! Defeat that team from the neighboring village!”
I put it all together to take up to the Prerelease to do a little gunslinging, since we were graced with the presence of local celebrity and Pro Tour: Hawaii Top 8-er Conley Woods, but I didn’t really get a chance to play it against him. I did, however, get a chance to play the Warp World mirror match a little with Hugh Miller in between draft rounds on Sunday.
Yes, I realize that is not something that I should need to practice, but we thought it would produce some funny game states, and it did. Many of them revolved around Hugh’s Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund stealing a number of my Hellkites; Karrthus’s ability doesn’t end if he dies, so even if you point a bunch of damage at him, you still have to figure out how to deal with your Hellkites on the other side of the board. The deck probably needs Karrthus more than Hellkite Overlord, since now you have other dragons where the “all dragons are hasty” ability is actually relevant.
The singletons all serve a specific function that I don’t necessarily need to see every game. Playing multiple Warps in one turn is fun, but shouldn’t be necessary for victory — you should be well up on your opponent in terms of creatures after one Warp, and with Wrath of God out of the format, those creatures should be able to carry you to victory.
But I like the variance. Wort and Nucklavee serve the same purpose: play more than one Warp. Overlord gives you an immediate attacker, and now has Bloodbraid Elves to add some hasty firepower. It’s for that reason that I really like the singleton Madrush Cyclops. In one Warp, I ended up with two Hellkites and a Madrush Cyclops: 20!
The deck is a lot of fun to play. What else can you ask for in an FNM choice?
A Format With Only Commons … Sorta
One format that Rick Ashby and I did trick Conley into playing during his gunslinging stint was Mental Magic. It’s a great format for something like this, because you can take the packs you win from gunslinging and just add them into the stack. But by the same token, the games can take a while to play out, especially when someone (and I’m not naming any names, but his initials are Rick) seem determined to slow every game down by playing land destruction spells.
For those not familiar with the format, Mike Flores wrote a really good primer on the Mothership a number of years ago, but it’s still all relevant. Essentially you play with a stack of random cards, you both play from the same stack, and you can do one of two things with each card: one, play it as a basic land that produces every type of mana, or two, play it as any card that has the same casting cost. So a Naturalize can become a Tarmogoyf or a Sylvan Library; a Suicidal Charge becomes a Void or … I don’t know, a Twinstrike? (Don’t worry, we eventually figured out it should be Bituminous Blast.) Once a card has been played in the game, it’s off limits for the rest of the game.
It’s an interesting way to “play” with those expensive old cards, and can be done with pretty much any random stack of cards. It requires some decent knowledge of good cards, but after you play a few games with someone who knows those cards, you’ll start learning them pretty quickly, and develop a list of possible good cards for the casting costs you see. And as you play, you may find that you are missing some important casting costs – or that some casting costs come up a lot but you just don’t seem to have anything good to turn it into.
You also start learning how to re-use cards, be it with Flashback or Unearth, or Dredge – any of the mechanics that are active in your graveyard. Every once in a while you can find an opportunity to Capsize with Buyback, but then all you’ve got is a 1UU to Hinder or Cancel with.
I still haven’t Forecast anything, though.
By the way, Conley was pretty good at this format. As you would expect.
Next Week
We’ll have a better picture of the Standard format as results come in from the first round of PTQs, so it’s likely we’ll explore that. From a budget standpoint, Jund Cascade seems like it gives good results for the investment, and a look around the format will start to give us an idea of what’s in store for us for the next couple of months.
Until next week…
Dave
dave dot massive at gmail and now davemassive at twitter and facebook