Sunday, October 31, 2010

T2 Mono-White Knights: A Casual MtG Deck

This post is a little late, but I'm still counting it for yesterday, for the record. This is going to be a quick little post about a casual friendly deck that I put together with a friend of mine. It's T2 legal, but probably won't win any major tournaments. In fact, it's pretty much just a fun theme deck. With that, the decklist for Zendikar-Scars Mono-White Knights.

Creatures:
4 Student of Warfare
4 White Knight
4 Knight Exemplar
4 Kemba's Skyguard
3 Sun Titan

Spells:
4 Brave the Elements
4 Honor of the Pure
4 Condemn
3 Day of Judgment

Planeswalkers:
3 Ajani Goldmane

Lands:
20 Plains
3 Emeria, The Sky Ruin

The foundation for this deck is powerful, fast creatures. The Students of Warfare are arguably one of the strongest 1-drops in the game. The ability to have a 3/3 first strike on turn two without much difficulty really helps the deck leap forward. Any spare mana can just get funneled into them, and they're fast enough to dodge most early removal like mana leaks and such. White Knights are solid two drops, and there only to help the deck deploy quicker. The Knight Exemplars are the centerpoint of the deck – both because they're lords (granting +1/+1 to almost every other creature in the deck, as well as indestructibility.) That said, Exemplars are everything bait. They'll get doom-bladed, they'll get hideous ended, they'll be the solitary target of almost every single removal spell your opponant has. That said, feel free to protect your guys early on with Brave the Elements. That's why they're there. Protect your guys early.

Kemba's Skyguards are solid 3 drops, despite their low P/T. They fly, and with the additional power from the Exemplars and Honor of the Pures, they can become significant threats. The additional life is just icing on the cake. I'm partially torn between the Skyguards and Cloud Crusaders, despite the increased mana cost. I'm going to want to playtest both to see how they do in practice.

Sun Titans, obviously, are your finishers. One of them can reanimate a surprising number of your creatures, including exemplars. Getting those lords back on the field can rapidly change the face of the matchup. Combined with the Emerias, which should be going live around the same time as your Titans, you can really start ramping up to a kill rapidly.

Condemn is to handle those pesky Wurmcoils and Primeval Titans and Baneslayers and other threats you can't quite handle. Honor of the Pure seems like a no-brainer, bolstering everything you have in a very creature heavy deck.

Day of Judgment was a controvercial choice when I was making the deck. It does provide a board clear, but only if you have an exemplar out. Once Emeria goes live though, or you have a Sun Titan ready to drop, it becomes extremely easy to repopulate your side of the field.

Ajani is just there to provide some stalling via life gain, possibly dropping the giant avatar on the board for a major threat, but most commonly, allowing you to swing without compromising your defense. If we were using blue, I'd likely replace it with Vencer for the unblockable alpha strike, but we're not.

The deck plays fun, if a little fragile. You need to be prepared to aggressively mulligan if you don't think you can hold board control with your initial draw. Losing one card is not a gigantic loss for the chance to get a much better hand.

Overall, I love this deck more for it's thematic coherency than for anything else. It won't beat the top-tier decklists, but it's enjoyable, especially in a multiplayer format where vigiliance from Ajani, Day of Judgment, and late-game play comes in especially handy.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Picks of the Week: Oct 25-29

 This week's Picks were interesting. Castle wasn't quite what I expected, Glee was something I wasn't looking forward to, and Caprica got cancelled before I could see the episode, so I went in knowing that this was the last hurrah. Without House and Bones, this post looks odd and awkward, but overall, I'm sure that we'll see them back soon.

Missing Out:
Still no Bones or House this week. I'm told they'll be returning during November, and I'm looking forward to one of those a lot, and one of those a bit. We'll see how they shape up.

Glee:
I expected Glee to be on the lower end of the spectrum this week, not because the episode was going to be bad, but because I've never seen Rocky Horror. I wasn't terribly off the ball with that, because a lot of what everyone loves about that music is missing. I don't even know what the original sounded like (one of my problems with all of Rachel and Kurt's songs. I don't know musicals terribly much.)
Nevertheless, the plot of the episode was solid. Stamos is still kicking ass, and I think that all the characters were scripted fairly well this time. No one said anything that struck me as terribly out of character, and while the humor wasn't hysterical (again, might've missed some RHPS-based jokes), I still found myself smiling along a good bit.
Glee didn't hit it out of the park this week, but they didn't strike out either. Not a bad job.

Caprica:
For those of you who missed the announcement, Caprica was canceled and pulled from the lineup on SyFy until later on in the year (Read: After November Sweeps). Because of this, the episode that just aired is the last we'll be hearing from Caprica for an awfully long time. With only five episodes left unaired, we have to address the fact that the show is really not going to wrap everything up in that time.
That said, about this week's episode. I thought that this was actually a remarkably good episode, as far as things go. I'm not going to rate it as a series finale – because it isn't. It is, however, a welcome return to some of the original premises in the series. The Zoe-robot-project takes center stage again, and I actually felt myself sympathizing with Dr. Greystone and Adama. The show has recently been lacking in sympathetic characters at all, so seeing someone I can feel for is a welcome change of pace.

Castle:
This week was incredible. They'd been hyping this one up a little bit (even I saw the advertisements, and I almost never watch television on TV), and the episode really delivered. The story didn't have any huge character revelations, but rather was a culimnation of everything that Castle had become so far, without quite as much humor as usual.
Put simply, this was just a great mystery story. The villains were villainous, the hooks were predictable, but not obvious. The subplot added a little bit of levity to an otherwise very serious episode, and most of all, we got to actually worry about our protagonists for once.
Castle is a show that made it's mark with humor. Casting Nathan Fillian in the lead role almost assured that the audience would be rolling. However, in this episode, he definitely earned his dramatic stripes as well as anyone had.
Well done, Castle

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Review: The Dresden Files: Aftermath

New stuff from the Dresden Files is always appreciated, especially with only one book coming out every year. As a result, the release of Side Jobs is a welcome reprieve from the long and grueling 364 days that I don't have a new Dresden book.

Side Jobs is a collection of mostly-already-published short stories. If you've been a good consumer and purchased everything with Butcher's name attached, you most likely have 75% of what Side Jobs has to offer. However, despite having about half of them, being able to collect them all in one compendium is a nice addition to my collection. (Plus, it goes aestetically with the rest of the hardcovers, rather than a bunch of softback anthologies. A definite plus for all you obsessive compulsives!)

I won't say an awful much about the older content that's contained within. Suffice to say that it's Dresden and it's good and you've probably already made up your mind by this point. This review is instead going to deal with the new content that we've gotten in this book, botably, the changes to the world – and the landscape of Chicago – following Changes.

Non-Spoiler Version: If you haven't read Changes, dear GOD do not read any further until you've read it. Go, read Changes. Avoid anything and everything Dresden Files until you've completed this. I'm being careful about the spoiling but others WILL NOT BE.

As for Aftermath, Non-spoilery, I can say this – it's a short story. It's more of a character portrait of Murphy and Billy than anything else. There isn't a whole lot of new plot developments, but it's something that's fun to read.

<><><>Everything beyond this point WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS. <><><>

Murphy and Billy track down a minor-talent smuggling ring. There's a fight, they win. That's basically the whole plot. There isn't an awful lot there except that Marcone is helping keep Chicago safe, Odin wants to hire Murphy, and Murph is holding the fort down for Dresden until he gets back in April. Honestly, I was a little disappointed in the advancement of the story, but I suppose I shouldn't be all that surprised. After all, this isn't technically part of the story as a whole.

That said, it does give us an interesting insight into Murphy as a character. She relies on body language a whole lot more than Dresden, and the mental intrusion from way-back-when is still hitting her pretty hard. Murphy is a lot more damaged than I was giving her credit for before this book, and I think that's interesting.

Basically, we hit all the major points that I'd expect to hit in a story like this, and spun our wheels a bit, but the main plot is still hovering out there like a Ghost, and this story knows it. Dresden, as much as Murphy doesn't want to admit it, is dead as a doornail – a spooky, ghost-y doornail. He haunts this story like a lost lover (fairly close to the truth, in Murph's case), with everything reminding Murphy of all he did.

Overall, I wouldn't say this is an expecially strong Dresden story, especially right after the Great Convergence of plots that we just had in Changes, but since it's just a short story to tide us over, and not really supposed to be a part of the overarching plot structure, I can take it for what it is – a fairly enjoyable one-off.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Seeking Shadows: Part 4 (Of Funerals and FUUUUU-)


The players arrived at the funeral ceremony, being held in the middle of the grounds in broad daylight. Calvieri is there herself, and appears to be leading the service in prayer. Drake’s appears unhappy, because he’d been betting that she was a vampire. He quickly revises his opinion – she’s either White Court, or a Faerie.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, which doesn’t last terribly long, Ms. Calvieri comes over and introduces herself to Drake. She explains that it means a lot that River and he are already integrating into the Institute’s family. She’s going to the cemetery with the caskets, and they’re welcome to come along, but most people were going to be staying on campus. They nod graciously, and say they’ll stay.

Victoria grabs River and pulls her aside, asking when she’s going to come by campus for another party. River asks when the next one is – because the last one was TONS of fun. (Drake’s Player:  Are we remembering the same party?) Victoria explains that there’s another party tonight, and that she should totally come for it.

Oh, and bring your cute friend too, she tells River, pointing at Eve.

The players got a kick out of that one. River’s player fistpumps. Eve calls Aya and gets permission to go to the party. They head home to get ready and stuff, because the party starts in the early evening.

In the mean time, back at the police station, Aya is running names furiously through the system. She finds out that Kryp, Julie, and Dimitri all go to Sunnydale South High School. There’s no mention of any Diane in that grade. Aya calls the school and finds out that Julie, Kryp, and Dimitri were all missing from class today. Christopher had graduated the year before. Again, Aya finds her suspicions rising, confirms that they’re all good friends, and proceeds to get addresses for all of them. She heads over to Kryp’s house, and finds out that he was feeling sick this morning, but has since started feeling better and went down to Christopher’s blacksmith job to help him out with some stuff.

Again, writes down the address, and goes there.

At the blacksmith, Christopher explains that Kryp has already gone. He was picking up a sword that he’d ordered a while ago. He made it as a side project. It was german style, would be functional if sharpened, but he didn’t sharpen it before handing it over. Claims to have no idea  about anything else. Without anything to link him to the crime, Aya leaves. As she leaves, she receives a blinding vision.

Among a bunch of other images, she sees pictures of Aztec ruins and the Sunnydale museum. When she gets back to the station, she calls up the museum and asks about special exhibits – finding out that there was a special on Aztec Killing Rites just last week. Aya curses loudly. Wanting more information, and running dangerously low on actionable leads, she calls the owner of the store, trying to locate the group of five kids.

The shop owner doesn’t know anything about Diane, but the other four have been staples of the local occult scene for ages. They come in and buy herbs and other trendy faux-Wicca things. They shop at the local Hot Topic a lot, and spend a lot of time at a local coffee house. Aya gives the man the description of Diane, and he suddenly changes his tune. He says that she showed up in town around 6 months ago, and seemed knowledgeable of things of Power. May have spoken to the other four a few times, but he didn’t know where she was from.

Aya stops, the blood freezing in her veins. She literally just put two and two together. Warden Steven Marcos comes to town six months ago, with a daughter who has an interest in the occult. Another girl, with an interest in the occult and knowledge of things like the Accords and Guest/Host relations, shows up and starts chatting up the local occult circles. Then, a major-league artifact goes missing from the local magic shop. None of the kids have been seen since, except Christopher.

Likely magic-enabled teen with access to lots of power and the knowledge to use it, with goons.

Shit.

Aya gets ready to go and start hitting Christopher up much more aggressively for information when she gets a phone call from Eve at the party at the Calvieri institute. One word.

“Help.”

The line dies.

Aya turns the car. Magic powered teens later. Daughter in danger now.

(Next time on Seeking Shadows: What the hell happened at that party? What is Diane planning? Where is she planning it? How the hell are they going to stop it?)

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Mastering the Game: Tips for A Beginning GM


It’s no surprise that most people who play DnD don’t have extensive experience running the game. For most games, actually, for every person running the game, there are four or five who are playing as characters. Even GMs need breaks though, and I know that I, personally, love playing in games occasionally as a change of pace.

But who’s to take over the group when the GM is player for a night? Usually, it’s one of the players, and they very often don’t have the slightest clue what they’re doing. So this article is going to be a little primer for some people who have little-to-no experience running a game.

1) Your players are evil.
                This might sound like strange advice, but it is something that you should keep paramount in your mind. No matter what you plan, no matter how meticulously you plan everything, and have a great scene in mind, your players will intercede and inject their own ideas of how a scene goes. Be ready for this, because nothing is worse than a GM looking at his players and going “Wait, you do what?”

2) You are allowed to cheat.
                This one is also fairly counter intuitive, however, if used correctly, it can make the encounters feel a whole lot more dynamic. Think this guy should be able to parry incoming attacks, but that’s not in the rules? Make a rule up. Hell, make it automatically activate on every other, or every third attack. Enemies can have overpowered things, because they won’t abuse them – because the one running the game is able to tell.

3) Your goal is to lose, barely.
                Some players prefer to stomp a dungeon flat with relatively little risk, but the real success for a GM comes when they could have died, but through their own skill and ingenuity (and a little luck) overcome the odds. Then the players feel like they beat the omnipotent GM at his own game and they are triumphant…which is what you wanted them to do the whole time. GMing is a large part of slight of hand. You want the players to feel good about beating you without them catching on that you’re letting them win!

4) Sacrifice for the Story
                This one might be a little tough for the beginners, but it really hits at the heart of good GMing. If the players do something that you don’t anticipate, run with it. If you’re planning the session as a story, not as a series of encounters, then you’ll find that you can just keep things on track in other ways. It makes the players feel like they have a lot more choice in the matter, when in reality, they’re just getting to the same point in a slightly different way.

5) Planning
                Nothing, absolutely nothing, is a replacement for good planning. You need to know your story ahead of time, and you won’t do that unless you’ve actually put the time in to prepare. That might mean something as simple as sketching down a few names, or a paragraph of the plot. I know GM’s who run with nearly no notes at all. I don’t run that way. I tend to write a page or so with all the relevant information for each major event in the plot.  This lets me keep things rolling, and lets me make sure that I didn’t forget something important. (No, I definitely mentioned the Orb of Plotty-plottiness last scene!)

6) Affected Omniscience
                Pretend you know it all. The players expect something of their GM, and it’s your job to give it to them! They want an overlord who will oversee their game seamlessly. If your players notice you in a lie, just nod, and pretend that it’s deliberate. “He missed on a 9 there, but hit on an 8 this time?” asks the number-cruncher of the group, to which the GM nodded and responds: “Yep. He does.”
                Does he actually hit? Probably not. But now this NPC has a miracle +2 from somewhere, and your players will probably try to figure out how to remove it. If they figure out something that sounds good, then hey, give them the +2.  It all comes down to what makes the players feel like they’re doing it right. If you act confident enough, then the majority of players will assume that you have some kind of eldritch knowledge behind the screen.


I hope that some of these tips proved useful. Have you ever GMed a game? Have any desire to? What system would you run? What kind of plot? Any advice from other experienced GM’s for the newbies? Answer any of these down below in the comments!

Monday, October 25, 2010

Picks of the Week: October 18-22

This week's Picks are a little slim. For some reason, Glee and Bones didn't have episodes this week, which I am a little miffed about. As a result, we've only got three on the chopping block this week, and of them, only one really fails. Here we go.

Caprica:
This week's Caprica had it's ups and downs. While the plot involving Zoe in New Cap City was, as always, the highlight of the episode, the rest of the plots seemed odd and disjointed. We have a lot of things happening in no really related way, which is making the whole series seem fragmented. Greystone 'murders' someone, and is in with the mob now, but I don't get how that relates at all to the STO movement. Overall, unless they start really flexing the writing muscles, I don't see how this can even be improved.
Caprica needs to get it's ducks in a row so that they're writing one plot line, not five.

Castle:
This week's Castle was amusing with a joking dig at medical procedurals and all the bed-hopping that goes on there. While the back-at-home plot of the week was fairly boring, it did manage to be heartwarming as ever. The 'criminals' in this case were amusing and really came alive. You almost couldn't help but be amused by their antics. This episode kept me smiling the whole time, and I approve of the episode in general.

House:
Speaking of medical procedurals, House seems like it's back in the swing of things with an episode that could have been incredibly procedural – the medical plot was as standard as they come – if not for the wacky hijinks that ensued when House started babysitting for Cuddy. Wilson shows up, and hilarity ensues. The entire episode is a simple foil for the running gag of Cuddy's daughter having swallowed a dime, and the entire thing is absolutely hysterical. From the outset, I knew that they'd hit a home run with the writing here, giving us an episode full of humor and laughs instead of the usual drama.

PvE Frost Mage: Welcome to The Future!


Over the last few days, I’ve been playing around on my alts a lot more than I usually would. I don’t know if it’s the lack of anything significant to do on Tarial – my Death Knight main (Frost/Blood), but regardless, it’s been happening.

Most recently, I’ve revisited a character that I’d dropped flat about a year ago. My mage, abandoned at level 72, when frost leveling was just starting to get annoying. I’ve always loved frost mages, but the relative annoyance of doing anything when your character (even with heirlooms) couldn’t really keep up was frustrating. With patch 4.0.1 coming out though, I decided to hop on and give it another shot.

Spec:
While I’m not 80, and hence can’t use a fully fleshed out spec, I didn’t feel like I was missing anything.  I began with the following spec:


I skipped the points in Frostfire Orb because I don’t have it yet, but I fully plan to drop the two points in Shattered Barrier to pick it up once I hit 81. Other than that, all of the talents seem fairly self-explanative. I like the way that all of the talents in the tree feel powerful, and I can see some choice on some of the tiers. It feels very solid. I plan on heading down the arcane tree, mostly because I’m a quick-trigger on interrupts, and I like that I’ll get a bonus for doing it. With heroics as current content, I feel like those points won’t be wasted. I’m also considering grabbing two points in piercing chill – because that appears like it’ll drastically improve my Fingers of Frost uptime.

Overall, the tree seems powerful, but not overpowered. Keep in mind that because of all the reworking to Frost – especially on a backend mechanics level – a lot of the theorycraft isn’t quite up to where it is for a lot of the other specs. Elitist Jerks, at the time of this writing, is still discovering things, specifically the exact benefit of Early Frost, which I had dismissed as useless, when it appears now to be a significant DPS increase.

Glyphs:
I could be wrong, but I’m under the impression that mage glyphs are borked. There’s very little in the way of choice for Prime Glyphs, while all the good ones seem to be Major. I believe I read something about a bunch of them being glitched, so, we’ll see how that plays out. I’m currently using the best of a bad bunch, which isn’t saying much.

Gameplay:
Here’s really where Frost shines. More than any other spec I’ve played, Frost benefits from Blizzard’s new built-in Power Auras. Being able to tell when Fingers of Frost procs is hugely useful. Same with Brain freeze. Allowing Fingers to stack to two charges was a masterstroke, and all of a sudden, the old boring gameplay that I remember from frost has been completely changed. Giving Water Elemental the ability to freeze while permanent also helps the spec out a ton. I’ve found that to be especially helpful when I’m hitting a dry spell as far as procs go.

From what I’ve gathered from online research, the spec won’t really kick it into high gear until I hit 81 and get frostfire orb, but as for right now, I find myself engaged in the rotation, but still with enough situational awareness to react to things (and pull a hero mode every so often.) It’s been performing well in heroics, either topping damage or coming close, often times despite being a little bit underleveled for the dungeon. I feel like I’m pulling appropriate numbers for my gear level, which is shocking because – again – I’m playing as Frost.

Overall:
I really enjoy the changes to Frost. I feel like it’s finally becoming the competitive PvE dps spec that I’ve always wanted it to be (despite many attempts at making it viable that failed.) I’m looking forward to leveling this alt up to 85 and using it to get some ridiculous PvE Shatter action going.

A Note On Scheduling


Hey everyone. You may have noticed the two-day absence of posts. (I know that the viewer numbers certainly haven’t been there the last few days.) I don’t really have an excuse for it except for a pair of very long days when I wasn’t home until very late. I plan on writing an extra post for the next two days to make up for it, alongside making up the excess writing I need to do to get back on the metaphorical horse. This weekend was rough on my resolutions.

This post, which isn’t going to count for purposes of anything, is basically just a scheduling notice. We’re back to 1-per-day, including November. I’m back down to 1 NaNo for the month (it wasn’t going to get done, and an unreachable goal wouldn’t motivate me).

Today (Monday) I’ll be writing on the new Frost Mage tree, as of 4.0.1, which I’ve been playing around with on my mage. In addition, I’m planning on writing last week’s Picks of the Week (which means watching Bones.)

Tomorrow (Tuesday), we’ll have a note about some tips for beginning DM’s, as well as the next post in Seeking Shadows (which I know that some of you have been anxiously anticipating!)

In addition, I might do a post about my planning for NaNoWriMo, and how I’m merging two stories I had come up with into the thing that I’ll actually be furiously writing this time next week.

So, that’s the plan. Time to execute.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Divide and Grow: T2 G/B Infect Deck


The picks of the week are going to be delayed for a few days on account of me not having time to watch Bones and give my opinion of it. I’ll get there. Don’t worry. Today, we’re going to talk Magic. Last weekend, I had the chance to spend the weekend at a friend’s house and we did quite a bit of deck building for T2. The results were pretty nifty, though admittedly, none of what I constructed was technically optimal. The deck I want to show off today is my take on a G/B Poison Aggro Deck.

(26 Creatures)
4 Plague Stinger
4 Ichorclaw Myr
4 Blight Mamba
4 Ichor Rats
4 Hand of the Praetors
3 Cystbearer
2 Necropede
1 Skithiryx the Blight Dragon

(6 Artifacts)
4 Bladed Pinions
2 Contagion Clasp

(8 Spells)
4 Vines of Vastwood
4 Giant Growth

-----
9 Forest
11 Swamp

Now, let me explain some of the design philosophy behind this deck. In general, infect is a quick deck, and it relies a lot on getting smaller creatures through. There are two effective ways to do this, in my opinion. The first is using creatures that the opponent cannot  block, via some evasion mechanic like shadow or flying. The second is using creatures that the opponent won’t block, such as first strike or regenerating. This deck takes both of those as two halves of a whole, and uses them to try and run as much damage past the opponent as possible.

Of the creatures in the deck, plague stingers are the icons of the “can’t block this” strategy, and will get the majority of the heavy lifting done. Even one well-timed Giant Growth or Vines can take an opponent halfway to dead. If your flyers are getting through, you’re golden. They’ll be dead soon. Unfortunately, most games don’t go quite that nicely, and so, being the good Phyrexians we are, we need to play dirty.

Ichorclaw Myr is a nightmare to block. So is Necropede. Blight Mambas are little better. Any of these creatures can play havoc with board position. No one wants to block them, because it just makes the situation worse than it was before. You’re either sapping your strength against the Mambas, dying to Ichorclaws, or giving the Phyrexian a 2-for-1 deal with necropede. Neither answer is correct. They’ll either compromise early board position for late-game infection, or let the early stuff through and just lose outright.

For mid-game threats, we have Ichor Rats, which, while small, do provide a solid punch by dropping poison upon cast. Hand of the Praetors are your seigebreakers. Not only do they let you bypass a defensive wall, but they give you the extra punch to just swing through for the kill. Skithiryx is the kill blow, in case everything else has fallen short. It also has the advantage of being regen-able. (Plus, how could you skip the Dragon? Look at it? Best card in the set, in my opinion, for pure aesthetics.)

While the meat of the deck is clearly creatures, we do have an array of support spells to aid our beatdown. I’m running 4 Bladed Pinions mostly because A) Evasion is good. (Anything with a set of those becomes an engine of destruction that’ll do some serious damage past almost any defense) and B) I don’t have Livewire Lash. In an ideal version of the deck, I’d be using those instead.

Contagion clasps are insurance against late-game control. If the board gets locked down somehow, either through a creature standoff, or because of excessive control spells, a well timed clasp can provide removal, and proliferation. I like them, but I think that 4 would be overkill.

The Vines of Vastwood provide two uses. First, they’re cheap protection. Since you’re relying on creatures for the kill, losing them is a terrible blow. Giving them protection is a great way to make them waste great removal, and if it’s not needed, kicking it for a monstrous growth effect is always good. Giant growth is just a solid buff to punish your opponent for trying to kill your creatures off with lightning bolts – or to add some extra punch when your annoying-to-block creatures get through.

The moral of the story here is just to HURT them for not blocking, or HURT them for doing it. Make it seem like there’s no right choice, and you’ll be turning those d10’s up to double digits for the win.

DIVIDE AND GROW, WARRIOR.

Notes: I’d like to note that there are two things I consider non-ideal in this deck. I’d like to have 4 livewire lashes, replacing the bladed pinions. I think they’re a much better threat card, and they punish people for trying to remove the creature. I’d also like to grab four fetch lands and insert them, which will allow me to play Groundswell in place of Giant Growth for an extra point of damage. Other than that, I consider this to be fairly close to ideal.  Still playing around with the land balance, and I think that 20 is a good number for this curve, since it’s so cheap.

What do you think? What T2 deck are you building/playing? How has Scars of Mirrodin been treating you?