“But, Romeo,” you say, since no one but my Momma calls me Chris,”I’m not gonna have any fun if I don’t win a few matches.” So, build a deck that has a great record against what you think the most prominent decks will be. In other words, as our Esteemed Editor wrote about in his last piece, create a metagame deck. “What’s a possible metagame deck look like,” you ask? Oh, I have theories, yes indeed…
This was the first great weekend of Spring for us down here in Tennessee. I know that meteorologically Spring was still two weeks away. Like most people, I don’t measure seasons by the calendar. When the signs of Spring appear, it’s Spring. And Spring can only mean one thing here at the offices of From Right Field: Spring cleaning. Oh yeah, and chicks in short shorts.
When I first saw the official spoiler for Darksteel, it didn’t take me long to find a card that excited me. In fact, I couldn’t stand up for several minutes after I first saw it. Kinda like seeing Laetitia Casta for the first time. It didn’t take long to find a card because the very first card alphabetically did it for me. Aether Vial is a damned sexy beast, if you ask me, and today we’re going to see if we can break it.
I’ve been toying with Centaur Glade ever since it popped up in Onslaught. Anyone who played against it or with it in Limited knows how good it can be. It never made a splash in Constructed, though. It was too slow. Boy, oh, boy, does it give control decks fits, though. If you can resolve one against a control deck, you can hold all of those spells in your hand and make them deal with uncounterable 3/3 Centaur tokens. That’s nothing to sneeze at. The question remained: How can I make this card work? The answer always eluded me… until now.
The first time I played against a Suicide Black deck, I figured the guy was an idiot. Sure, Carnophage was a 2/2 for one mana. If he wanted to attack with it, though, he’d have to lose a life every turn. Being new to the game, I figured I was golden. I dropped my Shadow creature on my second turn and passed. He paid his life, dropped Unholy Strength on the Carnophage, and put me at sixteen. Then, he dropped his second Carnophage. Gulp. When the game ended, he was at two life, and I was dead.
In the past few years, Suicide Black has fallen out of favor. Luckily, we got a few creatures in Darksteel that scream to be used in Suicide Black decks.
Over the past few weeks, my columns have included additional sections that tended to be about the laws of randomness and probability, what laymen (“Heh, he said ‘lay’ and ‘men.'”) call the law of averages. A lot of people seem to be confused about these topics. Others just wanted to know more. I’ve typically not gotten involved in these types of detailed columns about complicated theories that seem to exist in the Magic universe. However, it was suggested by one of my readers that given my background, I might, you know, get involved and write something that was both informative and enteratining on the subject…
Elves needed a better way to get reusable growth effects.
Enter Isochron Scepter. We all know the tricks that this cheap, uncommon artifact can do. We all dream of the draw where we get a Chrome Mox and an Island on the first turn so that we can drop the Scepter, imprinting Boomerang. Of course, some of us just dream of having four Chrome Mox. But that’s a different story.
The Scepter hasn’t been looked at through the minty fresh glasses of the Green mage, though…
Since I’ve been back, I’ve had ton of e-mails from cheap scrubs (like me!) asking how I would build a certain deck if I didn’t use any rares or only used a couple of rares. Well, I can answer that quite easily. These people know that I’m bad. Yet, they still want my advice. What can I do except give it to them? Last week’s deck, the cheap Goblin thing, was the first one that I tackled in that fashion. It seems that a lot of players feel the way I do.”Love Goblins. Hate that some of them cost twelve bucks now.” Interestingly, one of the more frequent requests involves Affinity. I find that interesting, because the typical Affinity deck runs many fewer rares than a lot of other high-profile decks…
Let’s say that a cheater makes the top 8 by winning a match that s/he shouldn’t have won. What if it was top four? What if it was the finals? In each case, depending on the prize structure at your place, that person has stolen from someone. Plain and simple. Stealing. That person cheated to get something s/he wouldn’t have gotten if s/he had played fair and square. It got taken away from someone who (hopefully) didn’t cheat. Heck, even if the cheater didn’t make the prize level, but knocked out someone who should have made it, they stole from that person.
The problem is that cheating is more rampant than even the most cynical of us would like to believe.
“So, you’re not playing Goblins right now just because they’re finally so good that people who wouldn’t normally even look at Goblins are playing them? You’re not being fair to yourself. You’ve always loved Goblins. It’s not like you’re jumping on the bandwagon. Heck, you were driving that bandwagon in the Summer of 2001 when you played that silly deck with Goblin Ringleader. Go on. Play Goblins. You know you want to.”
So, of course, I did…
I was so ready to regale you with tales of incredible victories with my latest deck. The problem is that I’d have to lie.
You see, this week, I tried to create a (mostly) Blue deck. I’m bad at that. I’m also bad at playing Blue decks. I feel very exposed. I get nervous sitting back and waiting. I’m always afraid that my opponent is going to overwhelm me with threats, which they often do. So, I counter everything I see early. Then, when the big threats hit, I have nothing left.
You’d think that, if I know this, I could do something about it…
For me, 2003 was probably the best year of my life so far. In May, I met my future wife. If I don’t scare her off, I’ll be married to her in 2004. If nothing else happened in all of 2003, that alone would have made it the best year ever.
Of course, this isn’t a web site for romance. If you’ve looked at our pictures, you’ll know why. No, this site is about Magic: The Gathering. So, let’s take a look back at 2003, MTG style. First, I want to revisit some predictions I made in my New Year’s Day column on this very site.
It’s probably no surprise that I felt that Bonesplitter needed to be in here. Nothing says”aggressive” like a spell that gives +2/+0 and keeps on giving even after the creature dies. I also wanted something cheap to stop other creatures. Pacifism had been my spell of choice ever since those impotent, slack-jawed cretins in R&D decided to drop Reprisal from 8th Edition. Why did you do that? Why? Why, dear, God, oh, why? What Rhodes Scholar decided that a White spell that costs 1W and only blows up creatures that are really big was too good?
I’m sorry, what were we talking about?
Of course, we headed right back down the yellow-brick road to my old stomping grounds in Louisiana. Yep, we headed to the Swamps. Looking down bayou way gave us access to creatures that allowed us to sacrifice that stolen critter. We had Carrion Feeder, Nantuko Husk, Fallen Angel, and Phyrexian Plaguelord. (Thank you, 8th Edition!) The great thing about those last two was that, while they’re rares, they’re rares that are cheap. Not cheap like a truck stop floozy. I mean, inexpensive to purchase.
Then, I started thinking to myself,”Self, we need to get back on track. We need to start showing people that they can indeed be competitive with a deck that doesn’t cost two hundred seventy-five dollars and that has cards that are unwanted and unloved.” Yes, I am King Scrubracer, ruler of The Island of Misfit Cards.
My column’s mandate, updated and improved, is to generate decks that you, the average player, can build and still be competitive with. Or rather, to be grammatically correct, with which you can be competitive. I’m also going to show you how I (and my crew) make the choices that we do.
