Not a true story: One time a guy was watching another guy play. The dude playing was a Hollywood producer and liked the look of the observer, so he cast him in a bunch of commercials and everyone made millions, except the guy’s twin brother, who thought he was too good at Magic to watch other people, and was possibly getting high.
What does this have to do with becoming better at Magic? Enquiring minds want to know!
Greater Harvester
I was a huge fan of Braids, Cabal Minion and played Pirates and other Braids decks to some success while Psycho-B*tch was around. Greater Harvester might be even better. There’s a ton of things going for this card; as a 5/6 it’s got a huge threatening body that can put away a game quickly if it’s ability disrupts your opponent for a turn or two. And that disruption ability! Having your opponent sacrifice two permanents each time you hit them is amazing. The only hiccup is the fact that your opponent will likely want to chump block, trading his worst creature for your least-needed permanent.
Wait just a minute though – that’s not really a hiccup at all since Black is chock full of removal!
A new set is out, so it’s time for set reviews. Since I doubt Ted has seen enough of these so far, I’ll write one. However, I’m writing from the perspective of multiplayer and casual. That means I will simply skip all the cards aimed at limited, and many of the constructed-worthy but un-amazing cards. If I want a Blue flier for 2U in casual games, I will play Serendib Efreet or Skywing Aven before I consider Neurok Prodigy.
That does make the review a lot shorter, so I will flesh it out with some deck concepts, to make sure you get your money’s worth.
The big question I had about this deck was its ability to deal with Pernicious Deed. Like a lot of people probably assumed about my Threshold deck, I thought this deck would roll over to Deed. The thing is, the main deck that has Pernicious Deed – The Rock – has no plan against the central focus of this deck. I mean, what are they really going to do about a Troll Ascetic with Rancor? The Rock’s plan is to win with card advantage over a long game (which is why it is generally weak against combination decks, even with its compliment of six to eight hand destruction spells); it cannot execute this plan against Troll Ascetic as long as the Troll is big enough to knock over Ravenous Baloths and 0/4 walls.
Three players are convicted of the ultimate crime: liking casual! If the any player confesses to the crime, and helps the police convict his fellow players, then the police will look kindly upon him. In fact, a player who confesses and convicts their partners will get away without being charged. However, the players who are convicted will go away for ten years plus five probationary years. If all players happen to confess, each will receive three years of jail time. Of course, if none confess, then all players get off with six months of jail time and then go free.
What do you do?
Many Type One players scan new spoilers lists in eager anticipation as a young child might await Christmas morn. Some Type One players are patient; they prefer to wait for an accurate spoiler list in order to carefully read every card, analyzing how to break each new Type One playable. Other people, like myself, wait in apprehension. We want bombs and generally useful cards, but we don’t want cards like Mind’s Desire. But what exactly is Trinisphere you ask?
Me and my imaginary friend were having a heated conversation over this card. I said it sucks, that it’s too slow and would only be usable in a control-ish Mirrodin Limited deck, either B/x or U/x. Rodrigo, on the other hand, said it could be very powerful in a W/x weenie deck which doesn’t need more than three lands at any one time. I was winning the argument until Rodrigo pointed out that I originally called Broodstar “one of the worst cards ever printed,” at which point I brained him with a shovel.
I lose more imaginary friends that way.
Wirefly Hive – 3
Artifact (U)
3,T: Flip a coin. If you win the flip, put a 2/2 Wirefly creature token with flying into play. If you lose the flip sacrifice all Wireflies.
At long last another card to use with Krark’s Thumb. I’d rather use another appendage for this card, if you catch my drift.
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…
Now even though Tom was the genius of this testing session, as Napster’s mommy, I constantly voiced my opinion as to what I thought would be right. Jon kept telling me that he was trying to concentrate on testing with Tom, and at one point, even said”Mike, you make, on average, one mistake per turn! Please let me test with Tom!”
At that point, I did not understand what a mistake was, so I necessarily disagreed. The next game, Jon opened up with a strong anti-Angry Hermit draw of Dark Ritual, Skittering Horror, and was presented with any number of options for turn 2. I said”Why don’t you play Skittering Skirge to make this a three-turn clock [instead of a five-turn clock]?”
Honestly, I thought we’d seen the end of broken Mirrodin Limited uncommons with Loxodon Warhammer, Grab the Reins, and Crystal Shard. Skullclamp is likely as big a mistake as Wild Mongrel, even if it isn’t as obvious at first.
This week at CMU I was lucky enough to get shipped two copies of the degenerate piece of cardboard, right into my near mono-White deck. I didn’t come close to losing a game, and especially not those games where I dropped the Clamp. One game I drew sixteen additional cards by turn 6 off of my Raise the Alarms and 1/1 dorks.
You know one of the most amazing things about life? Everything is relative. +1/+1 doesn’t seem like much when compared to all 6000+ Magic cards. But you may want to compare it to just the 300+ cards in Mirrodin. Making your 2/3 a 3/4 or making your 4/4 a 5/5 can be absolutely devastating in this format. The one damage from Longbow, while also better in this format, doesn’t always help improve your board, and the extra equip cost tips the balance to the Scimitar.
Plus Patrick Sullivan is your Good Man of the Week.
Although Hulk Smash and raw firepower was the top deck going into Vintage Champs, changes in the metagame made”The Deck” and its flexibility the Blue-based deck of choice once again. For example, the December 12, 2003 Dülmen saw three top German players-Oliver Daems, Roland Bode and Falk Bernhardt-Top 8 using”The Deck” with Isochrons, and it also featured prominently in January 2004 European tourneys. Since the notable event in this slice of time is mainly the release of Mirrodin, it’s easier to understand the evolution on a card-by-card basis. I spent December finishing off my theory articles and January starting with my midterms so I haven’t been able to really update my deck, either, but here’s what’s on my plate for reference…
White’s most often reiterated themes have been lifegain, enchantment kill, protection-from, and sucking. If a card says”Counter target spell”, you could be pretty sure it’s Blue. If it says”pay X life to do something”, it’s probably Black. Is it a creature which produces mana? Most likely it’s a Green elf-type card. Does it blow things up good? Red. What themes are White? White has the lowest incidence of”look at this card and figure out what color it’s from” of any color in Magic. I take that back – chances are if the cards are bad en masse, they are easily White cards.
Thankfully, I’ve got some ideas on how to fix things…
I remembered the Tempest pre-release where Aaron Forsythe’s opponent was bitterly complaining about being mana screwed. When I asked him how many lands he was playing, he replied that he had thirteen lands and two Lotus Petals. I remember chuckling about that afterwards since everyone knew that you had to play at least seventeen land in Limited.
Now, I was that noob from the Tempest pre-release playing fourteen lands in decks that seemed as if they needed at least sixteen lands
