Sorcery Speed Control

Not something I normally do. Nor am I going to talk about it, I'm just gonna drop the list and talk later. It's reminiscent of U/B(/r/x/x) TSP Block control, to me.

Well, here we go.

2 x Thawing Glaciers
3 x Mountain
6 x Swamp
6 x Island
2 x Dreadship Reef
1 x Molten Slagheap

4 x Prismatic Lens
2 x Coalition Relic

3 x Aeon Chronicler

2 x Chandra Nalaar
1 x Liliana Vess

2 x Thoughseize
3 x Duress
2 x Mind Twist
3 x Recoil
3 x Deep Analysis
4 x Accumulated Knowledge
4 x Fire // Ice
2 x Urza's Rage
2 x Pyroclasm
3 x Damnation

A lot of those numbers just feeeel right. Plus, most of my utility cards have a single color cost, so I can smooth out my draws and delay 'til I can fix my colors if I need to. And, as always, Thawing Glaciers will probably win my games for me. No joke. That card is amazing. I suggest casual control players around the world pick up at least 2. It's brilliant.

Anyways, this deck is designed to capitalize on 2+ for 1's. If it's pinpointed, like Duress, then it's really good at what it does. And it's weird... no counterspells to keep my mana open for. I get to play Big Sorceries... it feels funny. And yet, I don't even have my usual Big Sorceries in here, like Molten Disaster or Tidings. The original copy had Rune Snags in it, but those got cut for more Recoil and Mind Twists. Plus, a land went. I think it's a good change in the end, though. All cards at least break even, including the bounce! Whee. So, assuming I make the correct play 90% of the time, I should always have a greater than or equal to card situation than my opponent, which is always good.

Haha, Oh Wow!

So, Magic night this weekend was pretty cool. I got in some play the night before the first aid meet. Just played with some Merfolk and BGr Madness, then. But, Saturday night, we got, what, 7 people together? Everyone but Bijan. Also, I built two decks. The first one was rebulding an old idea that I had great success with, and only took it apart because it became too much of a target. Well, I also only had 1 Wrath of God then. And no Ghostly Prisons. You'll see what I mean.

21 x Plains

2 x Sundering Titan
4 x Sacred Mesa
1 x Debtors Knell

4 x Ghostly Prison
4 x Wrath of God
2 x Solar Tide
4 x Swords to Plowshares
2 x Condemn
1 x Seal of Cleansing
2 x Enlightened Tutor
4 x Oblivion Ring
3 x Loxodon Warhammer
3 x Bonesplitter
1 x Glorious Anthem
2 x Extraplanar Lens

Mhmm. Mono white control. Mono white Mesa! I love Sacred Mesa. It's just so versatile, it's hard to describe without cussin'. But it's nothing revolutionary for me. It's control, and it has mass removal, an it uses Swords to Plowshares and Ghostly Prison, and it kills with what Fidel has christened Sacred Gaysa. Nothing new.

But midrange? That's fairly revolutionary for me. I dream of it, but I never really built it 'til now. And let me tell you, that final product was, as always, nothing like how it started it out. This thing originally had white... 3 guesses as to what removal lured me into that.

Anyways, without further ado, something that I don't normally do. It has more creatures than removal... makes me itchy when I think about it.

3 x Tranquil Thicket
3 x Barren Moor
4 x Swamp
10 x Forest

3 x Scryb Ranger
4 x Eternal Witness
3 x Briarhorn
2 x Masked Admirers
2 x Juggernaut
4 x Shriekmaw
3 x Spectral Force
3 x Nacatl War-Pride
2 x Triskelion
1 x Tombstalker

2 x Terror
3 x Syphon Mind
3 x Cream of the Crop
2 x Footbottom Feast
3 x Loxodon Warhammer

Bam. Black Green midrange. For. The. Win. Cream of the Crop is awesome, and Feast rebuilds after Wrath. Everything else is efficient at what it does. Things I've found out I really like: leaving mana open on turn 4 with Briarhorn, then flashing it in and pumping itself. A neat little trick. Triskelion with a Warhammer also wards of about every attack on the ground. War-Pride is my Wrath of God for this deck, and every card that does beat provides CA. Good times.

On more important news, I got comments! And I just found this out, too. For silly reasons. I was taking paragraphs from my blog, then translating them from English to French to German to French to English in a crappy online translator (read: Altavista's Babelfish) and then laughing. Scrolling, when a number catches my eye. 1! 1 Comment! Freakin' sweet! And it's on multiple posts! That's freakin' awesome! Apparently someone followed my sig from the forums. Neat. :D

In short, THANK YOU. The comments make me actually pay attention to this. I now feel that I should have a daily effort payed! Sweet.

Time to post without proofreading or spell checking.

I'm not sayin',

But I'm just sayin'.

I'm not sure if anything in the Magic community bothers me more than whiny budget players. People using the terms Cashseize, Moneyvault and Dollargoyf annoy me to no end. I just wish I could shoot them through my USB port. I myself am a budget player, and I'm content with how I play the game. Yes, I do have chase rares and big-money playsets. I have a playset of Wraths, 9 pain lands, 3 Damnations, 2 Thoughtseizes, et. al. But get this: none of those cards are vital to any deck. Sure, they help out. But assuming that you're not on the way to a PTQ (in which case, quit your whining, the best deck does need money. Get over it, hobbies cost money, especially if you want to earn money, etc.) all of those are replaceable.

Arg. And even if you have budget constrictions, there are easy ways around it. It's really simple, and all upside: Play Limited! If you care about winning, getting better at limited pumps your DCI. Then, with your winnings, you can trade off for your money rares. That's basically how I did it. I win big, then traded big. Yes, I order singles. There's no reason for me not to, as the singles I order are within my budget. Also, people on budgets should realize the power in investing. You can usually see money rares coming from a mile away, and should gun for them at prerelease or release events. Also, buy things that you know will have stable value/use. Like the Pain Lands, for instance. They're perfectly reasonable, and they make any deck for them better.

And people who complain about stuff like this are basically scrubs. There is no reasonable argument you can give for whining about being on a budget, anyways. Magic is a freakin' hobby.

Hm, it seemed more elegant when I thought it up. I had better points, anyways.

I should get people to read this D:

The Winds of Change (Morphing pt. 2)

So where I left off, I was thinking of getting some damnations, and evolving it to be massively multiplayer friendly, sorta. I still had Fact or Fiction, where any information revealed to a player is enough to make you a target. And 'Tog was still finding it's way in there. Now, I'm going to use my artistic license and rewind the plot a bit. Brett and I were talking during one night, and eventually the whole group got involved. We were debating if we really needed to play by the B&R lists... which meant buying a set of FoF would not set me back once extended rotated. Sounded tasty, to me.

Anyways, to make this thing work for multiplayer, I needed two big changes. First of all, finishers and threat selection. Psychatog? He'll take out one or two characters, then leave me high and dry. Meloku will set me back versus a whole table. Tombstalker, if I delved him out, would make me a target. If I just hardcasted him, he'd be worse than the Akromas and Vampiric Dragons floated around. Secondly, my suite of removal. I could tempo out and handle early threats, but I had no way to last the long game with so many threats from so many different places. That being said, I still had gallons of mass removal, which is what woulda made this deck truly shine.

Well, the removal is solved easily. Throw in some Seal of Dooms, Propogandas, and Innocent Bloods. That'd tremendously boost the deck.

But the threat selection was something I'd need to definitely work on. Obviously there were multiplayer thugs like Kokusho and Spirit of the Night, but I had those not. Serra Sphinx leaves some to be desired... Inspiration struck just in time, though. I was reading invitational coverage again, more specifically, the Cube Draft (for other inspirations) and I saw exactly what I needed.

Palinchron! He left me open (the good kind) to protect myself. He could bounce himself. He swung for bajillions in the air! Everything that I would want in a finisher.

In he went. After that it was simply a matter of scrolling Gatherer and SCG spoilers to find dudes who bounced themselves. I settled on Ephemeron as nice back up. After all, I could discard Accumulated Knowledge or Rune Snag for a bonus, late game lands, and even tap out and fear naut but Sudden Death. Sweet.

The deck came back together.

4 x Palinchron
4 x Ephemeron

4 x FoF
3 x Damnation
3 x Evacuation
2 x Decree of Pain
4 x Rune Snag
4 x Counterspell
4 x Accumulated Knowledge
4 x Seal of Doom
4 x Propoganda
1 x Demonic Tu-

Wait, isn't that already too much? Especially for a control deck. And look at that mana! It's terrible. More cards with double B than single? That's living risky... especially when there's 9 - 10 black cards in the entire deck. That seemed wrong... And that Fact or Fiction still seemed so out of place! Plus, I didn't want to buy so much for the deck, despite the fact that I already want to buy Propogandas.

Then it dawned on me. I have Propoganda. In white. Take out the black! I have a 'set of WoG's, more than the 3 damnations, and there's pretty much no doubting that WoG effects are the single most powerful effects in multiplayer, probably second only to infinite combos. And Swords to Plowshares is so efficient! Oh, and I've wanted to solve things for W for so long, it's been a while since I played White based control. And boy, did thems FoF need replacing. I've always wanted to try out Spellbook/Rhystic Study/Feldon's Cane. It's got nice synergy with the Ephemerons. Maybe I could squeeze in Waterfront Bouncers to replace the Seals as another rattlesnake effect? Might as well take out the AK's, since the cane hoses them. Aww, hell, Akromas and Debtor's Knells want room, too. After much debate, and little attention payed to 1st period biology, I got to this finalized-but-untested list:

2 x Thawing Glaciers
4 x Calciform Pools
18 x Basics (4 Should be Mishra's Factories. Schade...)

4 x Palinchron
4 x Ephemeron

4 x Accumulated Knowledge
4 x Wrath of God
3 x Evacuation
4 x Swords to Plowshares
4 x Ghostly Prison
4 x Rhystic Study
2 x Reminisce
2 x Spell Book
1 x Feudkiller's Verdict

It can play bully when it wants to, and last until the late game, where the inevitability wins out. Yeah, inevitability still exists in multiplayer.

Urg, this took too long to type up. I was gonna play some Chrono Trigger. Whoops.

Morphing (Not the Mechanic), Pt. 1!

What began as a UB Turbo FactOrFiction deck is now UW Multiplayer Control. Here's the morphing, with approximate deck lists at each stage!

It all began when I was reading some Vintage articles, and BBS was brought up. For those of you who don't know what it is, BBS stands for Blue Bull Shit. It was basically Counter the Important stuff, and Back to Basics kept your opponents duals tapped down until Morphling came in and kicked some ass. Well, the particular article was based on a tournament of hypothetical decks with one key feature: their strongest card and, effectively, the key card, was all unrestricted. There was Burning Wish Long (which went undefeated, IIRC), The Balance Deck (Sucked), Trix with 4 Necro, etc. Well, one deck was BBS with 4 Fact or Fiction. As the win con. Sorta.

The tutorability and the CA crushed decks. EOTFOFYL finally made since in my eyes when Tog wasn't involved. I mean, I knew it was good, but I never cared to whip it up.

In the mean time, another vintage article talks about the return of BBS as a way to dodge the ever present Magus of the Moon, among things. This, coupled with some videos and decks I've seen, mentioned how Meloku was Blue's new It! creature, replacing Morphling. Also, during this time, I reexamined the Accumulated Knowledge draw engine. I always edged it out of decks to something that I felt showed immediate results with no set up, like Thirst for Knowledge. I did that this time, with FoF. This also came around a time that I felt instant speed mass removal was the bees knees. Evacuation and Decree of Pain for the win!

So I set out and made a list. Something like:

3 x Meloku
3 x Psychatog
2 x Tombstalker

1 x Damnation
3 x Evacuation
2 x Decree of Pain
4 x Fact or Fiction
4 x Sudden Death
3 x Wipe Away
4 x Mind Stone
4 x Dimir Signet
4 x Dark Ritual

Yeah. It conflicted with itself, I don't need to hear that... Anyways, that was the frame work that I set out with. I liked the card advantage factor that FOF presented, and I dreamed about filling my hand with Decree of Pain and then Togging for the win. Whatever. The deck is stuck on the back burner. It could hold its own in multiplayer with the split second and mass removal. Not too bad.

The Morningtide release comes around, and this deck has seem various faces with different win con configurations. Nothing too wild. Some have Snap and Propoganda and are more multiplayer friendly, some sport Wishes and Fact or Fictions and Thoughseizes to nuke a single player. Anyways, I open/win 2 Countryside Crushers and a Mutavault. This catches Matt's interest... and his Damnations catch mine. Hmm. Big Black control? Oh wait, isn't there that BU deck you have... yeah. Big Blue(black). Is it time for Big Black(blue)?

Thoughts flew everywhere.

And so does the time. Clock me out.

Cube Updating and, uh, more

First, things that I'm considering for the cube, and will most likely make it in:

Burrenton Bombardier
Swell of Courage

Mind Spring
Nevermaker
Disperse

Mind Shatter
Bitterblossom (Unfortunately, none usable in the group)

Titan's Revenge
Spitebellows

Fertillid
(Hunting Triad?)


At least of usable cards. Of course a Mutavault would be nice in there, but I'm definitely not putting mine (which won't be mine for long, anyways) in there.

Speaking of the Vault trade, I'm looking at doing these:

My:
Mutavault
Reveillark

Brett's:
Countryside Crusher
3 Thornbite Staff
Stuffs

Then, My:
3 Countryside Crusher

Matt's
2 Damnation
2 Shriekmaw
Stuffs

Yep.

Also, anyways, deck idea. This one's specifically multiplayer. It revolves around Taurean Mauler. Basically it's GR mid-range with some cool synergies.

4 x Taurean Mauler
4 x Magus of the Vineyard
4 x Flametongue Kavu
X x Scryb and Force?
Beats and Burn.
3 x Empty the Warrens!

I dunno. Just a core idea. Just a core idea... The UB big deck now has a new finisher set up. 3 Palinchron, 3 Tombstalker, 2 Meloku. I feel that's good. Palinchron is delicious in multiplayer. Leaves me open (the good kind, not vulnerable) and recurs (well, dodges basically all removal).

The Draft!

Yeah, remember how I said I'd document at least a few drafts? Well, couldn't do that. We had to cram in 4 drafts in ~7 hours. Yeah, we were short on time. Overall, I went 15 - 3. 2 of the losses were in the last draft, the one time I tried to go Rogues.

The first draft, I was drafting W/r, with a 7th pick Titan's Revenge (!!) and 4 Weight of Conscious. Ended up dropping red and went Mono White. Undefeated, easily. Gross Kithkin beats.

Second draft, I actually did go W/r. With a Titan's Revenge in the deck... with 3 Weight of Conscious and 2 Spite Bellows. Again, Undefeated, easily. 5 Burrenton Bombardiers. Dear, God. Mutavault!

Third draft I made a deck I call Fertilid Control. 3 Colors, basically the rock. I had a billion on color bombs, including FIVE WEIGHT OF CONSCIOUS YOU'D THINK PEOPLE WOULD LEARN. And Reveilark, Bitterblossom... arg!

Fourth draft was lame Rogues. Blech.

My pulls, though, were exciting. Between winnings in drafts and a half of a box I split, I got some very nice money rares, and a few things I wanted to use.

Money!:
1 Mutavault
2 Countryside Crusher
1 Bitterblossom (foil)

Stuff I like!:
3 Cream of the Crop
1 Taurean Mauler
1 Reveilark
1 Grimmoire Thief
2 Sigil Tracer
3 Leaf-Crowned Elder
1 Reach of Branches

And assorted Trade fodder that other people have interest in.
Also, I'm sick. No fun typing here.