You Lika The Juice? - Where’s Bibi?

Remember the Magic Invitational winner Antoine Ruel submitted card?

Bibi
GU
Legendary Creature — Human Baby
0/1
Whenever you draw a card, put a year counter on Bibi. At end of turn, if Bibi has two or more year counters on it, flip it.
///
Sleur
Legendary Creature — Human
3/3
If an opponent would shuffle his or her library, instead you may search that library for a card, that player shuffles the rest, you put the card on top of that library, then you draw a card.

Now take a look at this new card from Future Sight:

Aven Mindcensor
Creature – Bird Wizard
2/1
Flash (You may play this spell any time you could play an instant.)
Flying
If an opponent would search a library, that player searches the top four cards of that library instead.

Mindcensor seems incredibly close in functionality to the Sleur side of Ruel’s flip card, and when I first saw the spoiler I figured this must be his card, going back to uncommon like Darwin Kastle’s Avalanche Riders. Yet it’s obviously not Ruel in the artwork, not unless the artist buried his features in feathers. Not to mention there hasn’t been any fanfare announcement. Do you think Wizards nerfed Ruel’s originally submitted card, printed Mindcensor as a consolation prize, and asked that he submit a brand new card idea? Lastly, it seems odd that we’ve gone an entire block without a brand new card from the Invitational winner; did they push it back because Avalanche Riders and Shadowmage Infiltrator got Timeshifted into Time Spiral?

Inquiring minds want to know!

(Here’s hoping someone at Wizards is reading this and might address these questions either in the forums or in an upcoming column).

…

Now that I’ve hopefully gotten Wizards’ attention, I’d also like to make a pitch for bringing back Minotaurs. The other day my son went tearing through the house with his plush Minotaur (yes, it’s awesome), having it fly and doing karate chops and kicks. “Arrrrrggghhhh!!!!!” he cried. “All minotaurs are ninjas too!”

Of course, what popped into my head was hmm, a Minotaur with Ninjutsu…

Hurloon Shadowalker
2UU
Creature – Minotaur Ninja
2/3
Ninjutsu 1UU (2UU, Return an unblocked attacker you control to hand: Put this card into play from your hand tapped and attacking.) Whenever Hurloon Shadowalker deals combat damage to a player, you may tap target creature. That creature does not untap during that player’s next untap phase.

I took the Labyrinth Minotaur’s ability and turned it around to make it more aggressive to fit the Ninjutsu ability. How cool would this be? Pretty darn cool I think.

I used to have a Didgeridoo deck made way back in the day when Homelands came out; I found a post where I mentioned it over on Usenet back in ’97. Apparently it was a Red/Green Didgeridoo / Dense Foliage deck, which tells me I was sick of counterspells and creature removal. Surprised? Haha!

I’m fairly certain Didgeridoo was the inspiration for Aether Vial. The only reason Didgeridoo didn’t make as big a splash back in the day was… well, because it was restricted to popping out Minotaurs, and Minotaurs have generally sucked. And why exactly have they sucked?

The picture of Hurloon Minotaur was iconic Magic art, and yet the card itself is pretty well Limited chafe back when nobody played Limited. Why precisely would he be a lowly 2/3 critter? Minotaurs should be badasses! The only time Wizards made a Minotaur that was really nearly worthy of its image was when they gave us the legendary Tahngarth… but unfortunately they also made the ridiculous Flametongue Kavu that immediately became mandatory inclusion into any Red deck, and FTK happened to slap down Tahngarth quite handily.

Wizards has made Goblins badasses. Frickin’ goblins!? Can you imagine trying to explain that miscarriage of justice to Asterion of the Labyrinth? The fact that he’d double over laughing at the notion would give you a shot at trying to escape getting chopped down by his battleaxe.

And don’t even get me started on the plight of dwarves in Magic…

…

So what’s everybody think of the new Standard with Future Sight? It’s hard for me to gage the impact of Future Sight because I go nuts whenever a new set is released, making up all sorts of new decks that I’m eager to try. New cards are like bright, new shiny objects, and like a crow I get hypnotized and obsessed.

One thing that came to mind was how easily it would be to slot the Oriss, Samite Guardian / Undertaker combo into Project X, since you’re already playing White and Black. Something like this:

Project Y

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 05-06-2007

Standard

Creatures (29)

Lands (23)

Spells (8)

I’m not sure whether I want to run Summoner’s Pact or not, though it does fetch two of the three combo pieces. I’ve never been a big fan of Congregation at Dawn, but it seems a necessity for a deck that runs the Oriss combo. Obviously Plan A is still to go off with infinite life, but the Oriss lock isn’t a bad Plan B, and it also helps with Plan A if you need some cover from control’s counterspells or, worse, an Extirpate. Just use Oriss’s Grandeur ability before you start the combo.

Last week I put up a Wizard Jar deck built around abusing Jhoira and Magus of the Jar. I figured Jhoira wants the Urzatron to be able to really toss a bunch of cards into Suspendland… but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think perhaps you don’t need the Tron quite so much. All those Wizards are rather color intensive! What if we focus more on the card drawing Aeon Chronicler (suspend with Jhoira, it’s niiiice!) and Magus of the Jar, and add Niv-Mizzet into the mix? The curiously strong Niv-Mizzet happens to also be a Wizard you can wizardcycle for with Vedalken Aethermage.

Wizard Jarizzet

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 05-06-2007

Standard

Creatures (24)

Lands (24)

Spells (12)

There are actually some interesting Wizards you can think about for sideboard options, like Terraformer, Temporal Adept, Goblin Flectomancer, and even more copies of Magus of the Moon since it doesn’t hurt you nearly so much as it could other decks.

Last year for States I came very close to playing a Red/Black Greater Gargadon deck, but I had a tough time dealing with aggro decks, Boros in particular, so I shelved the idea. Boy, has Planar Chaos and Future Sight changed things around! While aggro isn’t nearly as prevalent, I can at least run Damnations in the board for uppity critter decks. Here’s what I’ve been kicking around these days:

Gee Gee

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 05-06-2007

Standard

Creatures (23)

Lands (24)

Spells (13)

I alluded to this deck last week when mentioning Sword of the Meek. Here’s how I can see things going – turn 1 suspend Gargadon, turn 2 Sword. Turn 3 sacrifice the Sword to the Gargadon (7), play Mogg War Marshal, stack the Marshal comes-into-play trigger with the Sword trigger to have the Sword pop into play, sacrifice it (6), resolve the CIP so another Goblin comes into play, the Sword pops back out, sacrifice it (5), then sacrifice the War Marshall (4), another Goblin pops out, the Sword pops back out. Sacrifice the Sword, the two Goblins, and a land, and come swinging with your 9/7 hasty beatdown machine, or just wait until the following turn and cast Delirium Skeins first. With all the crazy sacrificing you can get going with the deck, Bitter Ordeal seems to be a natural inclusion that can really strip the bite right out of Dragonstorm or Teferi decks.

I’ve also revamped my Story Time deck since last week:

Story Time

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 05-06-2007

Standard

Creatures (36)

Lands (24)

The big revelation came as I was thinking about how you’d want the turns to unfold once you had a Storyteller in play, especially if your opponent is unwilling to blink. Do you run your Plaxmanta or Mystic Snake out there just to get your beats on? The answer is, sometimes, and yet I couldn’t help but think your wily opponent would be waiting on just such a play to make his move. That’s when I realized that Llanowar Mentor would be a perfect addition to the deck, playing the role of a Kjeldoran Outpost. Even little 1/1 dudes can become threatening when you’re making one a turn. And with the Storyteller engine, you should have plenty of cards to fuel the Spellshaper. So if your opponent doesn’t blink, you don’t have to blink either, and can just make another dude.

I was going to post a Dredge deck update, but I’ve beaten that horse to death don’t you think? Sadly, I’ve come to the conclusion the Reanimator combo version is just flat out better than my preferred dedicated Dredge, since it at least has some game against Dragonstorm due to Delirium Skeins. Somebody even posted some crazy version that could “go off” with Bogardan Hellkites, Bridges from Below, and Dread Returns.

…

Hopefully soon I can get together with my buds and start doing some serious Regionals testing. This Saturday though I give Two-Headed Giant one more shot at the PTQ here in Richmond, Virginia. I have to say, while switching from 40 to 30 life certainly makes the tournament considerably shorter, I don’t like how it deflates the format more in line with regular Sealed deck, where cracking open good tempo and beatdown cards becomes much more important. Regular Sealed deck is my least favorite Magic format, and making 2HG more like regular Sealed soured me on 2HG considerably. Still, I’m willing to give it one more shot, so if you’re going to be there for the PTQ, or for the Legacy tournament, look me up and say hi! My partner for Champs this year, Jay Delazier, won’t be able to join me so I’m pairing up with my Team Jolly Green compadre from Champs last year, Josh Adams. With any luck we can recapture the magic that got us to 2nd place at Champs last year!

I was hoping to do another round of email 2HG drafts that I could talk about here, but our partners Amber and Justin are caught up in Hellweek at their college and as of this writing we haven’t even gotten to the Planar Chaos packs. I haven’t much clue how Future Sight shakes things up for 2HG outside of some astute observations by our own Sean McKeown, so if anyone has any late breaking thoughts on the new format, please let us know in the forums or drop me an email (bennie dot c dot smith at gmail dot com). I’m not too proud, I can use all the help I can get!

See you next week!

Bennie