Normally, if your opponent plays Auriok Transfixer, Raise the Alarm, and then gets totally mana flooded, you’re in good shape. Well, that’s exactly what happened in my third match – except this little Standard also hit the board. Soon I was facing 3/3s, then 4/4s, and 5/5s. Leonin Sun Standard transformed the game and delivered the win to my opponent.
Considering how well you’ve got to pick your issues to use Molder Slug – or Glissa, Sunseeker or Creeping Mold or Deconstruct – I have to say that I really like the way this set’s anti-artifact options were designed. Players will have quite a few options to choose from, and those that best understand their deck’s strengths and needs are going to have significant advantage over those that don’t. In the past, there hasn’t often been this kind of functional overlap with so many cards. That kind of decision-making is very good for Constructed, and I hope we continue to see more of it in coming sets.
I want to imagine a world with Myr Incubator. In an artifact-heavy deck with possibly seventy-five artifacts or so, you can use the Incubator, get seventy or so 1/1 dudes, and win in the first combat phase where these dudes can attack. Yes, it costs twelve mana – but unlike Mindslaver, this is a winning condition on its own. Add Anger or Fires of Yavimaya and you can swing that turn. This has a fairly high potential.
There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding Shared Fate, but I’m just not convinced yet. The idea that a heavy control deck with plenty of multi-colored mana can cast this to stump an opponent while allowing you to cast their spells doesn’t make much sense to me, since your deck is going to provide them with the mana to cast your spells as they draw into the deck’s mana – so then it becomes a time issue. In fact, if you’re even a little behind on tempo this card could be fatal, since the opposing deck is less likely to have the answers you need. But along those lines, the real strength of the card may be as a kind of closer in a tempo deck….
The new set is out, and I actually got some time to play multiplayer games with the new cards… And I have enough experience with it to say that one card in Mirrodin is every bit as insane in multiplayer as it seemed when we first heard about it. I think it is the best multiplayer card ever printed. Period. No question. No quibbles. No exceptions. It’s way better than Verdant Force. It’s better than Pernicious Deed. Every multiplayer deck I can think of would be better with four of this in it. Every single one.
The reason this deck performs so well versus control – and the reason it is relatively immune to hate – is because it can blitz past both hate and control answers, winning before the blue mage gets UU up. Playing Long is unlike anything before. In the ADD format that characterizes Vintage, like the events in Dragonball Z, you play a massively decompressed game where so much happens in the space of one turn. For Long.dec, turn 3 is not only a long game, it is the late game.
With only a handful of weeks to go before we all wave goodbye to Wild Mongrel, Deep Analysis, and Mirari’s Wake, and say a very big”Hello” to Skyhunters, Bonesplitters, and Spikeshot Goblins, I’ve started to put a test gauntlet together for Champs. To help out, I’ve put a gauntlet together to test the new Mirrodin-based decks against.
Last weekend, Your Move Games ran the Boston Mirrodin Prerelease. The turnout was fantastic: With a total entry count of 1,262, this event was the largest prerelease ever held in the United States. But after discovering several player complaints on the StarCityGames forums, I decided to address their complaints publicly to help show people how I run these events, that I hear and care about their feedback, and that I am working to improve things for future events.
StarCityGames’ latest Featured Writer returns to her old stomping grounds to talk about Mirrodin Limited! Specifically, Laura wants you to know that Passing around that equipment – or, as she calls it -“playing musical equipment” – opens a world of strategy that will help you take control of a game. SO let her show you some examples of plays that can be won with careful attention to your equipment…
Putting all this together, Chalice of the Void:
I was planning to play a variant of Red Deck Wins for the upcoming Extended extravaganza. Then I saw the Chalice of the Void… First-turn Ancient Tomb, Chalice set on one? Cheers for playing. Red Deck Wins has almost thirty one-drops, and the Chalice shuts them all down. Yes, there’s Shatter, or Pillage, or Mogg Salvage in the board, but even so… The loss of the important early two or three turns is crippling. A second Chalice and it’s clobberin’ time.
One weekend evening, we were sitting around a table at a friend’s house playing multiplayer. And it hit me: Our metagame was predictable. We have the prototypical metagame – a white lifer here who plays Congregate and Soul Wardens, a big beefy green player there with elves and beasts. One player regularly pulls out an Obliterate-Jokulhaups deck that often features Phage the Untouchable with haste. Another player loves either white or black with Bad Moons, Crusades, and big black fliers. And a few players typically use large highlander Five Color decks. So what can I build to destroy this table?
The God Hand:
Turn 3: Forest, Deconstruct Cathodion. Tap Mountain. 3GGGR in pool. Cast Seething Song. 1RRRRRGG in pool. Cast Biorhythm with Birds of Paradise in play. Shake hands while she stares in disbelief, since she thought that she was safe tapping out on turn 3.
Recently, I’ve begun to fall in love with Magic’s Super Creatures again – oh, not Morphling, Masticore, and Spiritmonger. There’s too much pain associated with those three for real love. Besides, I still think decks with them lack imagination. No, I’m talking about Magic’s new Super Creature.
Mirrodin offers a very refreshing change of pace from other Sealed deck formats. The necessity of running artifact removal, the mana acceleration in every color, the powerful artifact creatures and the bonuses equipment add can all drastically alter the way the format of the game plays. There’s a huge depth of playable cards as well, and running three colors is rarely as punishing as it would be otherwise. You’re offered a lot of options – so let’s try to sort them out, shall we?
