As I’m writing my column this week, big news is busting out all over pretty much demanding some sort of response, so before I get into the deck I played at FNM last week, I felt like I needed to touch on the big items first.
Clever Previews Whilst Rules Cleverness Takes a Beating
Wednesday, Wizards rolled out the big rules changes taking place with the release of Magic 2010, and while I’ll give my reaction to those changes a little further down, before that I wanted to talk about some new M10 cards they cleverly peppered throughout the Rules Changes explanation.
First, we now see what the new dual lands are going to be!
Glacial Fortress
Land
Glacial Fortress enters the battlefield tapped unless you control a Plains or an Island.
Tap: Add W or U to your mana pool.
Okay, Aaron Forsythe promised the new duals would be awesome, and I have to admit that they are pretty awesome. Now granted, they pretty much suck in the context of today’s non-basic dominance – they’re not going to be a big help to Reflecting Pool decks (though they do play nice with Murmuring Bosk or the Shadowmoor lands like Mistveil Plains). But they do help lay the groundwork for a solid manabase for two color decks, along with the Borderposts. Here’s hoping Terramorphic Expanse makes the core set transition, since it also plays nice with these new duals.
As an old-school player, I’m certainly looking forward to a time when players will routinely have more basic lands in their decks than the token 3-4 now for Path to Exile targets… Making it more difficult to splash the best cards in the format will lead to greater card variety, something the format is sorely lacking right now.
Acidic Slime
3GG
Creature — Ooze
Deathtouch
When Acidic Slime enters the battlefield, destroy target artifact, enchantment, or land.
2/2
This is kinda cool, though I imagine it doesn’t bode well for Creeping Mold making the M10 cut. So we get Creeping Mold and for one generic mana more we get a 2/2 deathtouch creature? Sounds like a two-for-one card to me – Sign me up!
Okay, so now… the Rules Changes!
By and large, I’m pretty happy with the changes. Magic survived through the massive overhaul that came with 6th Edition, and I’m sure the game will be fine with these changes. I’m also pretty confident R&D indeed did their homework and has good reasons to believe these changes will make the game much more accessible for new Magic players, and we all know the health of the game requires a steady supply of them.
Everybody mulligans at once — An excellent change! While it diminishes further any tiny advantage you have going second, I can totally buy into the desire to save shuffling time, especially as more and more players realize how important thorough shuffling is.
Mana burn gone — Fine with this too! While Wizards has been much stingier on big mana producers of late, I remember abusing the hell out of Gaea’s Cradle and trying to make sure I had mana-sinks available (which was annoying to have to worry about). I’m also looking forward to seeing what R&D cooks up in the new design space opened up where life totals can be used to trigger abilities now that you can’t manage it with mana burn.
Token ownership goes to the controller — Eh, not so thrilled, there are narrow corner cases where ownership was relevant that I thought made for some clever decks and clever plays; a big one was Brand, a nifty card that was fun to use to get back tokens from the Hunted creatures, or going back old school the tokens made from Varchild’s War Riders! I thought having a meaningful difference between owner and controller was a nice space for cleverness to percolate.
Battlefield, Exile — Excellent change, adds more flavor and rules clarity, thumbs up all around!
Wishes — I’m unhappy with making these sorts of cards unable to get stuff from Exile – I’m not sure why they didn’t just go ahead and let these spells get a card from either outside the game OR Exile? Would that have been too confusing or problematic? I don’t follow the logic in letting Wish-type cards become even narrower than they already are when some simple errata on a small handful of cards would have kept the functionality intact.
Removing combat damage from the stack – Ah, now here’s the stickiest wicket, the rules change that is sure to anger the vast majority of higher-level players (basically, anyone who plays competitively from FNM on up). I have to appreciate on one hand Wizards’ boldness in doing this, knowing full well the outrage it would bring. I also appreciate that having most everything in the game live (and die) on the stack made for some game play that seemed counterintuitive to those unfamiliar with how to use the stack. Yet, to me, “the stack” was an awesome development in Magic rules, and once you learned how the stack works so much of Magic’s rules complexity just snaps into place. 99% of the time, when you are confused about card interactions, if you simply walk through how everything gets added to and resolves from the stack it all works out fine. Ironically, my hunch is this desire to make this part of the game more intuitive will instead ultimately make the game a bit harder to suss out complex rules issues. It also makes a lot of creature abilities much worse than they used to be; I like creatures with abilities, so this makes me sad. In the long run, I don’t think this change is going to ruin the fun of Magic once we all get used to it, but I’m not convinced it was really necessary given how elegant the “most everything uses the stack” rule is now and strikes me as actually making the game a bit more complicated.
Deathtouch and Lifelink get nerfed — The big change in the way creature combat is handled pretty much mandated changes in the way these creature abilities worked, and not in a good way. Basically, they become redundant instead of cumulative, like first strike, so anything that grants deathtouch or lifelink becomes considerably worse. The big loser here in my mind is Battlegrace Angel, which I was just kicking around adding to my Bant deck sideboard to help race other aggressive decks; sorry, but no double-lifelink War Monk shenanigans for you! On the plus side (if I’m not mistaken) having a blocker with lifelink can actually keep you alive through an attack that would have otherwise killed you when lifelink used the stack. Ultimately, I don’t see this change as that big of a deal, mostly just a sad splash-damage casualty of the big combat rules change.
A New (Maelstrom Pulse-less) Deck for Standard
Okay, back to Standard. Last week I talked about three decks; one was a freaky new deck I was working on revolving around Lord of Extinction and Scapeshift. The other two were recent decks that had performed well at GP: Seattle (Yann Massicard’s 1st place Doran deck and Michael Jacob Top 8 Five-Color Blood deck). Since my creation was still in the experimental stage, I was going to run one of the proven decks that also looked like fun, and had pretty much decided on the 5CB when I realized my Maelstrom Pulses were missing. I’d lent them out for Regionals and did not remember ever getting them back. I checked with my friend whom I’d lent them to and he said he’d probably be able to run them by the game shop before the tournament.
Unfortunately, that “probably” was problematic, not least of which was because all three of my decks ran Maelstrom Pulses! So Friday afternoon I decided instead to run with Finest Hour Bant, which ran zero Maelstrom Pulses and was conveniently pretty much intact from Regionals.
Now, I liked the Finest Hour Bant deck, but after playing it quite a bit there were some elements I was not completely happy with. First, the Shorecrasher Mimics were incredibly inconsistent. Sometimes they were an absolute beating and gave some easy, bone crushing victories. But too often they were just 2/1 dorks that would trade with a creature if you were lucky or get swept aside by Volcanic Fallout or Infest along with all your numerous other weenies if you weren’t lucky. Second, I didn’t like the fact that your “fattie” was a 3/4. Granted, Rhox War Monk is a really good 3/4, but there are a lot of monsters out there and sometimes a 3/4 just won’t hold the fort. Lastly, I really didn’t like having to rely so much on the top of your deck delivering the goods; if you’re opponent was able to survive the initial onslaught from Finest Hour Bant, you often struggled to push through the last points of damage, especially if your topdecking skills were lax.
With these concerns in mind, Dr. Smith took the deck into surgery and emerged with this build:
Creatures (27)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Doran, the Siege Tower
- 3 Sygg, River Cutthroat
- 4 Jhessian Infiltrator
- 4 Rafiq of the Many
- 4 Rhox War Monk
- 4 Noble Hierarch
Lands (24)
Spells (10)
Sideboard
Adding Doran to the Bant frame is nothing new, though I think most builds stretch the manabase with Ancient Ziggurat which makes Finest Hour not an option. I love Ancient Ziggurat, but I also love Finest Hour, so I was torn. Ultimately, I decided to stretch the manabase just a wee bit to “splash” Doran and keep Finest Hour. Finest Hour is such a bomb and helps win games I’ve no business winning.
The biggest innovation here (if I may borrow that term from Chapin a moment) is adding Sygg to the deck. Now I’m sure many of you have been hearing a lot of Sygg lately since he’s been a big breakthrough for the 5 Color Blood decks, and I had pulled my three copies out when I had thought I was going to play that deck. As I pivoted to Bant, I realized that the Merfolk legend could do his fine work just as well in my deck, and he’d nicely solve my issue with living off the top deck. Between flying, trampling and the Infiltrator’s unblockability getting 3 damage through often enough shouldn’t be a problem. As an added bonus, a two-drop 1/3 can get in for 3 with Doran to activate his own bad self. He ended up working just as well as I’d hoped for.
Okay, here’s a brief recap of how Fishy Dark Bant performed:
Round 1 versus Daniel with G/R Warp World
As we shuffled up Daniel hinted that I’d like his deck choice, and when he played a turn 3 Keeper of Progenitus I knew I’d seen a deck with that guy in it before… but for some reason I couldn’t call it out for a couple turns until I realize — “Warp World!” I had a pretty aggressive draw that kept Daniel on the back foot the entire time, to the point where he had to chump block a Birds of Paradise with his Broodmother dragon (the Birds were attacking multiple times with Finest Hour). I dare say that was one of my Birds of Paradise’s “finest hours” for sure. Lucky for me I have the Negate for Daniel’s emergency Warp World, and finish the game at 53 life. Game 2 I come out fast again, but Dan accelerates manaramp style into a bunch of Siege Gang Commanders and I’m unable to steal away his last point of life before dying. The last game I again come out quickly and get Dan down to 2 life but he finally gets rid of Teeg and casts Warp World while I’m tapped out; he Warps into a ton of land and Auras and a couple Elvish Visionaries, and I Warp into 3 lands, a bunch of creatures (including just one copy of each of my legends) and Finest Hour. He draws into another Warp World and plays it, but since two of my lands are untapped and one produces blue mana, I’m able to Negate the second Warp to send the turn back to me for the win.
Win 2-1
Round 2 versus Bob with 5 Color Blood
After shuffling up I win the die roll and draw my hand, revealing my lone filter land as the only land in hand. I ship it back, shuffle real good, draw a six card hand and find one of my two Reflecting Pools as the only land in my hand. My five card hand has a Treetop as my only land, but I have a Bird of Paradise and a couple three drops so I give it a whirl. Bob nukes my Bird but it doesn’t matter as I don’t draw a second land in the five turns or so it takes for him to kill me with Boggart Ram Gang. The second game I look at my hand and find another one land hand, but it produces green mana and I’ve got a Birds, a Hierarch and an Infiltrator along with Rafiq so I give it a try. Turn 3 I’ve still not drawn a second land as Bob’s Volcanic Fallout sweeps away my 1 and 2 drops. Turn 4 I draw a Hierarch and play it. Turn 5 I draw another Hierarch and play it. Bob hits ‘em with a Maelstrom Pulse (of course he does!). Once I stop playing small creatures Bob starts dropping Ram Gangs and Bloodbraid Elves cascading into Sygg and more Ram Gangs.
Lose 0-2
What is it about this deck that I’m constantly getting land screwed; not color-screwed, I could see that, but land screwed. I’m running 24 lands!
Round 3 versus Jessica with Multi-Color Mid-Range
Jess and her boyfriend Michael Rooks cooked up this deck that sits somewhere between Cruel Control and 5CBlood. I wish I could remember more from the match… looking at my life total sheet, games 1 and 3 went my way fairly quickly, game 2 was a long, drawn-out affair with me gaining a lot of life from I-Hop but taking a pretty big beating in return by Broodmate Dragons. I get her down to 4 life but she rips Loxodon Warhammer to recoup and win the race.
Win 2-1
Round 4 versus Kevin with Merfolk
It’s dark Sygg versus the light! These games are pretty tight since Merfolk can get a pretty aggressive head of steam up backed with a blowout Cryptic Command. Luckily for me, I had pretty good acceleration myself backed with Negate each time he played Cryptic Command. Also luckily for me he didn’t draw many of his Sowers of Temptation; the one time he had to play it early because I had a turn 2 Infiltrator backed by two Hierarchs that had him on a pretty big clock, and once he played it I rolled out War Monk and Rafiq. I pulled it out in 3 games, but it certainly reminded me that I need to play more creature removal.
Win 2-1
Round 5 versus Michael with Mono-Green Elf Warriors
I have another good three game match with Michael, with both of us getting a good aggressive start in game 1 but War Monk helping me to come back and race. Game 2 he gets his nuts draw while I stumble a bit and he just runs me over with Bramblewood Paragon/Imperious Perfect boosted beatdown. The last game is a brutal throw down, I get a powerful offense going but I’m hurt by a heavy painland draw and Michael makes the double block sacrifice to take down my lone War Monk so my life total starts to drop as he gets his offense going. I’ve got some heavy hitters out, Doran and Rafiq, along with Sygg that’s been drawing me cards… I make a crucial mistake casting a creature off two Hierarchs to save me some pain, taking me down to 4 life but robbing me off two critical blockers and letting Michael swarm me with his manlands to deal exactly 4 to me. Michael pointed out that if I’d instead taken the pain to go down to 2 he couldn’t have killed me on his attack and would instead die to my counterattack, and I ask if we can play it out to see what happens. Of course, I end up winning and beat myself up over doing something so dumb to lose the game.
Lose 1-2
Finished up 3-2, with one loss possibly blamed on the most ridiculous case of bad luck land screw (though I could have lost to 5CBlood anyway), and 1 match loss that was mine to win if I didn’t throw it away… so I’m pleased with this new twist, especially the addition of Sygg, who drew me a good number of cards all evening. If your Bant deck has a fair number of evasion creatures give him a try.
Michael makes the cut to Top 4 undefeated, and goes on to win the tournament. In the interest of showing y’all a successful deck, I asked Michael to share his list:
Creatures (26)
- 3 Llanowar Elves
- 4 Imperious Perfect
- 4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
- 4 Bramblewood Paragon
- 4 Chameleon Colossus
- 3 Nettle Sentinel
- 4 Noble Hierarch
Lands (21)
Spells (13)
Sideboard
From Michael:
It’s a pretty straightforward beatdown deck. Ignore anything that isn’t going to kill you or stop you from killing them and turn guys sideways.
Try not to overextend into a Volcanic Fallout and if you are going to trade in your Wren’s Run Vanquishers make sure it’s for something good as they act as one of your few removal spells.
For the Richmond Comix metagame Hurricanes weren’t very good and I sided them out every match. No one played Faeries and not many people play B/W Tokens… I’d like to get the fourth Gift of the Gargantuan in there. It was great all night. Hitting a man-land and a creature is pretty good in a green deck without any real card-drawing. The man-lands really help in allowing you to not over-extend.
I’d also probably go to 3 Guttural Responses (and add a fourth Naturalize) in the SB. I find it difficult to side in all 4 of such a reactive card in a deck that wants to be on the offensive all game.
EDH Recommendation for the Week: Gaea’s Avenger
We’re having a big EDH event at Richmond Comix on Saturday; as of last week there was somewhere in the area of 15 or more players signed up, so we’re likely going to have at least two tables going. To mark the occasion I thought I’d toss out another EDH single recommendation that I think would go well in anyone’s collection.
It’s a classic – Gaea’s Avenger! I remember cracking this bad boy out of an Antiquities pack, and popped it immediately into my multiplayer deck. He’d occasionally rise to an 8/8 or 9/9 off the backs of people’s Ivory Towers and Jayemdae Tomes, but eventually he got squeezed out by more powerful and interesting (and consistently large) green creatures.
However, now that we have the full Alara block and tons and tons of cool Esper artifacts stuffing people’s EDH decks, I think it’s time for Avenger to make a comeback!
Okay, that’s it for this week. EDH fans, make sure to check in next week as I go over my deck choice for the big EDH game and run down how everything shook out in the end!
Take care!
Bennie
starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com