Tuesday, October 25, 2011

NaNoWriMo 2012: Itches


I’m starting to get itchy.

I’m sure you know the feeling – when you get that spectacular idea and you know exactly where it’s going to go in the story, but you aren’t there yet, so you feel bad writing it. Specifically with NaNoWriMo, it happens a lot right around now, in the week leading up to NaNo.

So, I’m on the bus this morning. Listening to my iPod and congratulating myself for actually getting a seat on a bus at quarter after eight. This is rare, on the route I come from, so it’s a special treat. It takes a few minutes to find the right song – most of what is on my iPod’s shuffle is alternative rock and other genres that don’t lend themselves especially well to the story that I’m planning on writing.

Ashley Simpson, skip. Rise Against, skip. Taylor Swift, skip. God, who organized this iPod? A schizophrenic? Soundtrack from Bastion (great video game – look it up!). Fits, but I’m not feeling it. Skip.

The Catalyst – Linkin Park.

Now, I’ll wholeheartedly agree that I generally find Linkin Park’s older stuff much more conductive to writing than their newer stuff, but I actually like this song a lot. I leave it on, close my eyes and think for a minute.

It didn’t take half that long.

Yesterday, I made the reluctant decision to include some of the other ancients in my story this month. I’m not sold on the idea at all, but it was worth exploring, and I felt like the story that I was telling wouldn’t be able to go the distance to full-length novel. It needed a little more beef. Luthene’s plot was shaping up nicely, but it could have used a little more heft to it. Sadrach’s backstory could have been a novel, but his present was surprisingly lackluster. Hell, I didn’t even know how he felt about being the direct cause of the end-of-the-world-as-he-knew-it. He needed work, and so characters he could relate to were added into the story.

Today, I figured out the first scene with another ancient, and man, I can’t wait to write it. I’m writing furiously – not the scene itself, but notes for the scene. It’s not going to happen for at least two or three weeks yet. It might not even fit into the first 50k words for this one, so I need to make an outline so that I don’t forget it.

I’m starting to get a better feel for this world, and how everything fits together in it. What I originally gathered as independent concepts – geists, demons, ancients – it’s seeming more and more that they’re central to the story in a very VERY connected way. It’s a hint of mystery in a story that I didn’t expect, and that makes me feel like the genre that I’m writing is a real thing. Last week at this point, I wasn’t sure which story I was going to be telling this month. Now, I can’t wait for it to be November already so that I can just WRITE already!

Saturday, October 1, 2011

A Quick Update


Short post today everyone. Last night was a whirlwind of testing and figuring things out. We made a primarily draw-go deck that features a heavy-anti aggro mainboard including three Gideon Jura and three Day of Judgment. The deck is a monstrosity. Beat puresteel consistantly and well, as long as it could stick Gideon. Otherwise, Puresteel was able to put enough pressure on to win the day.

The deck can draw an absolutely absurd number of cards, and translates that card advantage into pure resource denial in the late game. I'm not happy with him not running at least one Moorland Haunt, but that's a minor quibble and doesn't hold a candle to the fact that the deck feels very consistent, albeit a little slow. As long as he can reach turn 4-5 with a reasonable life total, he should be in good position to take over the game.

We're headed out in a few minutes, first to go to this, then for some other fun nonsense at Marshall's house (maybe?). Tomorrow, we're all headed out to the Pennsylvania Ren Faire. If you're going to be there yourself, maybe I'll see you.

Obviously won't be writing another post until I get back Sunday night, which will likely be a tournament report for both decks (and actual decklists/sideboards for what both of us ended up playing at the end of the day.)

Till Next Time,
Andrew

Thursday, September 29, 2011

UW Draw-Go


 As I mentioned in my last two posts, this weekend represents the first time that Standard Mtg will be played with Innistrad. As a result, the internet is furiously buzzing with deck ideas, with everyone trying to get a leg up on the other. I am, of course, no different in this, and I've been furiously brewing for the last weeks (along with my comrades, who have come up with some pretty disgustingly good lists on their own.) From all counts, the format appears to be wide open, with there being no clear best deck, and more archetypes than I can count.

I expect that to narrow down over the next few weeks – especially after the first few Star City Games Open Tournaments. (First one is this weekend, in Indianapolis. If you live in the area and enjoy magic, you should stop by, even if you don't feel up to competing! Big gatherings like this are always a blast.) In the meantime, though, I'll be attending a local event at my shop. Personally, I'll be running the UW Puresteel list that I built and tested over the last two days, but I've also got a friend coming down from New York, and he...well, he loves his control decks.

He, as far as I know, doesn't have a list at the moment, so I took the evening to brew one. Admittedly, this is a little self-serving, since I hope to eventually run a UW draw-go style deck myself. So, consider this a preliminary deck.

A little bit of insight into my deckbuilding process. There's basically two points that I can start at, which depends entirely on if I'm building off an established archetype or not. In this case, UW Control has been theorycrafted to hell and back, twice, within the last block, so we've got a solid starting point. I'm personally using the U/W/x Control thread from MTGSalvation as a resource here. When in doubt, use more people.

Seriously. There's dozens of people on that thread, and most of the threads over there. They're all testing and theorycrafting and trying to find the same edge that you are. It's not cheating to use their answers – as long as you understand the answers. That's the flaw with netdecking. (For those who don't know, the process of grabbing a decklist from the internet and copying it wholesale) Netdecking doesn't give you the nuts and bolts knowledge that you need to play a deck at it's best. It's the kind of thing you only get after the fifth time you get blown out by an aggro deck in a row, or just can't quite get there with your last five damage before they land Gideon with counter backup and can't close out the match.

However, as you get more experience playing in general, you can kind of cheat a bit.

My friend has been playing magic for a long time. He remembers Mirrodin, the first time. As a result, he's got a ton of play experience below his belt, and he can leverage that into knowledge of an unknown format. There's tons of graveyard play? Flashback? I remember that mechanic from Time Spiral! Midnight Haunting is kind of like a less-good Spectral Procession, while the basics of control all stay fairly constant. Even Sword of Feast and Famine is vaguely reminiscent of the untap mechanic from Urza's block.

We have a frame of reference here, even if the picture itself is a little blurry.

I'll admit straightaway that I've never designed a pure control deck – much less a control deck in the draw-go style. The closest I've come is the draft deck I put together, and dozens upon dozens of games against Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Gideon Jura.

I hate those guys.

Here's what I came up with:


My first reaction is that of an aggro player. There aren't nearly enough threats in this deck. Even most of the control players from the last year are probably wincing more than a little – control over the last year has bowed it's head to the insane card advantage of Squadron Hawks and Swords. They'd be more properly be called Aggro-Control than anything else – true hybrids.

We're back to basics here, kids! We don't run threats! We stop threats.

Then drop one card that WILL win the game for us.

As long as we can get to that point intact, we can win.

Let's get there.

So, immediately, I'm going to say something – I'm leery of this strategy. Not because I don't think it'll work, but because I have no frame of reference to compare it to. By all logic, the things that I'm talking about doing – making blockers at instant speed, counterspelling, being able to board wipe, recurring all my cards twice – seems good. I just don't know if it's good in practice, and I sadly have hit the second snag of all players.

I don't have time to test this tonight.

Tomorrow, my friend arrives around 7-8pm. With any luck, we'll have the deck proxied up and testing it against some random decks before the night is out, and we'll have a list for him by the next morning, when we head out to All-Star's Collectables for some spell slinging.

That'll be tomorrow's article, by the way. Our two-man test bed, iterating on the deck, possibly even switching to a different archetype. I'll be documenting our thoughts as we go and posting lists when we've got a testable version.

Until then, sleep and work in the morning. Here's hoping that tomorrow's testing goes well.

-Andrew

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

UW Puresteel Testing - 9/28


I made a few edits to the deck since yesterday, taking the sideboard I'd built into account. I'm playing via MWS, and for those of you who don't know me personally, I'll admit to not being the world's best pilot. I usually do notice my mistakes in hindsight, so there's still hope for me, but I wouldn't take this as the gospel-truth of how the deck plays at extremely high end competition. I'm sure Caleb or someone could do much better with it.

Worthy of noting is that I ended up not including any counterspells in my 75. I don't like this, and I plan to change it at some point. Just need to figure out where the cuts are.

Here's the list I played:



Round 1 vs RB Army of the Dead Ramp

Game 1:

I probe him off the bat, seeing a ton of Red and Black – including a Black Sun. I also see a Warstorm Surge and a Spellskite, so I put him solidly on a rogue deck with a late game plan. Having kept a pretty good anti-aggro hand involving a puresteel and two mortarpods, I decide to play it fast and loose and trot the Paladin out on T2. Love the pressure you can put on if you get in an early probe and see no spot removal.

I probe him again around turn 3-4 and see an Army of the Damned. Oh. Hey. That makes sense. Cool combo.

My paladin goes unanswered for 3-4 turns and finally dies to a doom blade after I've drawn the second. By that point, I have a sword already in play, cast the second paladin, snap-equip him with everything and turn him into an 8/6. I swing for the win next turn, with an O-Ring as backup.

Admittedly, he was on 7 lands at the time, so, was getting a little worried there. 26 power of zombies is enough to kill you, no matter how you cut it.

SB: -2 Mentor of the Meek (too slow if 7 mana wins him the game.) , -1 Accorder's Shield, -1 Mortarpod, +4 Mirran Crusader (Push extra damage through.)

Alright, in hindsight, this was a shitty board. I've got 3 dead dispatches in the deck, could've brought Nevermore to name Army, could've done so many things better. Gotta get my head in this now before I hit an actual deck. (Also notable: I forgot to track my SB choices for the later matches, so, I'm pretty bad at this whole 'recording games' thing.)

Game 2:
I start off curving Flayer Husk > Puresteel > Mirran Crusader. He kills the paladin on end step, then casts Torpor Orb. I reach for the trinket mage...huh. Damn. I guess that Torpor Orb does stop something I'm playing. I play a lifestaff instead and equip it, beating him down for 7. He Black Sun's Zeniths to wipe the board. I play a moorland haunt and make a guy, and play a Sword of Feast and Famine. He plays a Bloodgift Demon to block. I Oblivion Ring it, then equip the Sword of Feast and Famine and Lifestaff, beat in to take him to 4. Out of cards in hand, he concedes.

Moorland Haunt felt like a champ in this game. Even though I had two creatures in hand, I found that the flying body it provided was absolutely incredible. This deck probably wasn't the most competitive opponent to start the night off with, but it did give me a feel for how this version runs, and I like it.

Victory 2-0

Round 2 vs.Solar Flare

Game 1:
Game was close. Having dispatched a grave titan and a sun titan in subsequent turns, he was running out of gas, but had board position when one of our internet's crapped out. Damn. That's disappointing. I wanted to test vs this deck...I'm marking it down as a draw because I had top decks that killed him, and if I didn't he'd have won the first game. Unfortunately, the client wouldn't let me draw to see if I had it, so, we'll never know.

Connection Issue 0-0-1

Round 3 vs RDW

Game 1
I keep a fairly defensive hand with a Mortarpod, which is lucky, because he trots out the turn 1 Arsonist on the play. I'm a little nervous here, because swinging with the arsonist to enable bloodthirst for a Stormblood Berserker is a little tough to deal with. I'm finding that 3/3's with relevant abilities seem to be about the size that we can't deal with early game. Even before rotation, Blade Splicers always gave me some trouble. He ends up not having the Berserker, and the game proceeds on. Eventually, I'm able to get metalcraft online and Etched Champion takes the day with a few clutch sword swings. Sword makes him Slagstorm-immune, so I mostly walk over him from there.

Game 2
He gets an early tempo advantage when he burns out my hex parasite that was chewing on his shrine. I tap out to eat the counters off it, and he extends into the board with a Phoenix. Long story short, he lands a Koth, alongside the Phoenix, while I'm on the backfoot because the shrine is ticking upwards to 6 and 7 now. I end up swinging at Koth to kill him, and I'm burned out the next turn. I think I misplayed the last turn though, and realized it right afterward. If I had hit him instead, I could have made him discard his last burn spell, preventing him from recurring back the phoenix, and then dispatched the mountain when he animated it, giving me board position, despite the Koth on 5.

Live and learn, I suppose. Don't tunnel vision, Andrew! You've got this.

Game 3
This was a great game. I start slow again (noticing a trend) and kept an iffy hand involving a bunch of 3 drops and 2 lands. Luckily, no turn 1 play from him gives me the breathing room I need to set up. I topdeck an invisible stalker, and play it, into a trinket mage finding the dagger. He wants to race – I can race with the best of them. It gets bad enough that I force him to slagstorm two of his own guys to reset the board, catching only the stalker and the trinket mage in the blast. I drop a puresteel paladin and Sword of Feast and Famine. No mana to activate my inkmoth though, so I can't equip this turn.. He plays out a Koth, and throws a mountain at me, taking me to 5. He's got a chandra's phoenix, but I've got a spirit to chump block it. Next turn I play Etched Champion, and equip/swing at him with the paladin to take him to 7 from 14. He incinerates me in response to save the burn spell from discard, taking me to two with a Koth on 5, and Chandra's Phoenix.

He swings in, I dispatch the phoenix, and block the mountain with Etched Champion. He reveals his topdeck – shrine of burning rage. I swing with paladin to take him down the last 7.

Victory 2-1

Round 4 vs. Josue's UG Hexblade

This is actually a deck I've been worried about, because of the hexproof issue. He was running Thrun, Dungrove, and Invisible Stalker and I felt like he blanked most of my removal. My friend runs a very similar list pre-rotation, so I know how annoying it is. This is one of the reasons for the 4 Mirran crusaders in the sideboard.

Game 1:
If this game has taught me one thing it's this: Invisible Stalker is TERRIBLE without a sword. I go t2 Puresteel into t3 Sword of Feast and Famine. He goes t2 invisible stalker, then he beast within's the sword during my attack, plays second stalker on his turn, and passes. I play a second sword and equip it. He hits me with a second beast within. I trinket for Dagger, and start swinging away. He plays a Garruk, makes a blocker, I cast Oblivion Ring at the walker. He finally finds a sword and hits me with it, untaps, and Green Sun's Zenith for Thrun. I make a flyer with Moorland Haunt on my end step, suit him up, and fly to victory.

Game 2:
Bird vs Flayer Husk. Stalker vs Mortarpod. I play a Mirran Crusader on 3.

Take that sideboard tech.

He copies it with Phantasmal Image. (That cheeky bastard!)

I kill his bird with my mortarpod, then equip Mirran Crusader with it and swing anyway. (Because pfft!)

Fun fact kids: Mortarpod does have uses outside of sacrificing guys to kill mana dorks! It also provides a toughness boost that wins stalemates and improves the value you get from your creatures.

Long game, involving me killing a Thrun with a double-equipped germ, and basically just getting there by forcing bad blocks because of two creatures with protection from Green. I kept up the pressure, and ultimately, killed him with no real chance to come back outside of a non-green miracle, which he never saw. I do get the kill a turn early via mortarpod shennanagins, so, that's probably notable, since he had a naturalize on his topdeck, but I think I could've sealed the game either way.

Of note: Moorland Haunt was dead this game because I never lost a real creature, just germs. Doesn't make it less awesome, but is something to note.

Victory 2-0

Round 5 vs Grand Architect

Game 1: He resolves a sword of body and mind on his vault skirge. I never see removal for it, or more than one thing that can block the air, despite drawing like 9 cards. Blah. I ask for game two, pretty confident that I can beat him because that's literally all he did all game, and he was already out of cards, but he drops instead.

Loss 0-1

Personally, I don't really count that. Single game matches aren't really that relevant, right?

OVERALL:

6 wins - 2 losses – 1 drop – one refused to play games 2 and 3.
Deck felt pretty strong on the overall. I can tell that this version has a bit more punch than the old one – probably stemming from the dagger, which seems to get there more than anything else in the deck. It's absurd how useful that thing is. I don't know if I agree with people saying to cut lifestaff. It didn't show up against RDW, but it's still a critical part of the anti-aggro match up.

4 Mirran Crusader in the sideboard felt very strong. I think it blanked a bunch of his removal options, and forced him to adopt a defensive posture. Didn't see any GY based decks to test the Nihil Spellbomb on. Hex parasite was lackluster, but this isn't really the match up I wanted to use it in. Nevermore felt like I never wanted to bring it in – but even without it, Gitaxian Probe was such a hero. Dispense Justice came in against the Hexproof deck, and I really like that interaction, noting a number of times when drawing it would have lead to a complete blowout. I might increase the count on those, especially since you can effectively use to to stop Geist of St. Traft, who appears to be gaining popularity in decks like this. I'd love to see them go t3 Geist, t4 angelic destiny, attack, and then Metalcraft Dispense them both (or use it before the trigger resolves if he has another creature!). I did find myself bringing the mortarpod in for some of the match ups. I still like the card a lot.

Mentor of the Meek draw a bunch of cards, but still felt slow overall. Two invisible stalkers seems like enough to make sure I see one when I want to, and don't when I don't. It's pretty awesome with the silver-etched dagger, and swords are obviously great.

If you liked this post, leave a comment, stumble me, retweet it to your magic friends, all that good social media stuff. Upvote on reddit, if you're feeling especially ambitious!

I plan to test more in the coming days, and I'm attending Innistrad's first Standard on Saturday. I'll obviously be in contact with you all via more posts here, and of course, the wonderful Puresteel Paladin thread over at MTGSalvation. (Link).

Wish me luck,
Andrew

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Puresteel Paladin for Innistrad Standard


As many of you may know, this coming Friday represents the yearly rotation for Standard in Magic the Gathering. As of 30 September 2011, Zendikar, Worldwake, and Rise of the Eldrazi are no longer permitted in decks, and is replaced by Innistrad. This change has wide ranging implications for the entire face of standard, as the majority of current strategies are no longer viable. Valakut and Splinter Twin, both decks that put a hard clock on the format, have rotated out. In addition, one of the two namesakes of the dreaded Caw-Blade is gone, freeing up 4 slots in almost every deck running white. Preordain is gone, as are the person-lands, and fetches.

If nothing else, Zendikar block brought a ton to the table, as far as format-defining blocks go. On the other hand, Innistrad brings a ton to the table in the way of graveyard interactions and spell efficiency. As is usual with a freshly rotated format though, the future of Standard is destined to be defined by the larger card pool – Scars of Mirrodin.

Today's deck list is an iteration of the deck that I'd been running for a few months. When I first saw Puresteel Paladin, he leapt out at me as a 'build around' card. At the time, Sword of Feast and Famine was already the powerhouse that's coming to dominate any deck with more than 17 creatures, and Batterskull was running roughshod over every deck not smart enough to run 4 JTMS and Stoneforge Mystic. Even then, the card had immense potential, and while it never quite got there during Zen-Som Standard, it's my hope that the deck, which has lost near nothing with the rotation, will be a powerhouse that could help define the format in the coming months.

Here's the list that I ran prior to rotation:


There are a few design philosophies in play here that should definitely be noted, to properly understand this deck. This deck is not aggro, nor is it control. It can't even properly be called midrange, because it certainly doesn't play the same way that Hero Blade does, or even Dungrove Green. The way that this deck was described to me was 'progressive card advantage.' None of the individual cards in the deck were suberb enough to win the game alone, but each of them got more than one card's worth of value out of the opponent – and more than that, each synergized with just about every other card in the deck.

Let's analyze that for a moment. Metalcraft means that all cards with that synergize with every artifact on the field. Each Living Weapon synergizes with all the creatures, as they provide their own value, and then survive to do more. Trinket made is a natural two-for-one, often more. Puresteel Paladin turns every equipment in the deck into a cantrip. Not every card in the deck follows this design paradigm, but those exceptions are few and far in between.

Preordain is a card filtering tool so powerful it was recently banned in Modern. Diggigng for whatever piece you needed was too potent to not include. Dispatch, likewise, was too good in a deck that can consistantly activate metalcraft. It's a no-downside Path to Exile, or Swords to Plowshares. Any time you can get that much value out of a single mana, it becomes difficult to justify other choices. Oblivion Ring was a late concession to the deck's weakness to planeswalkers – specifically Gideon.

I didn't list a sideboard here deliberately, because it shifted so often depending on my expected metagame that week. I brought a very different board to FNM than I did to PT Philadelphia. It generally focused pretty strongly on my matchups against Valakut and Twin, which I considered the weakest matchups for the deck. We just didn't have enough power to push that much damage through before they could safely go-off.

But those decks are gone now, and we've got a brave new world in Innistrad. Vampires and werewolves, spirits and humans.

What did the deck lose?

The first, and probably the most notable change, is that we no longer have Basilisk Collar. Regrettable as this is, since Mortarpod + Collar is removal second-to-none in the format, especially in a deck that creates so many bodies to use as fodder, it isn't nearly the deathknell that many are making it out to be. While Collar did win games for us, by itself at times, it wasn't the power that the deck was riding on – it was just more of the same – progressive card advantage.

At the Innistrad Prerelease, I aggressively traded for a few cards and managed to get the deck into a place that I like. Here's the list that I'll be playing at my first event:



The first change I made was filling the list. Squadron Hawks out, Mentor of the Meek in. Basilisk Collar out, Silver Etched Dagger in. Preordain out, Ponder in. Play with land totals and add in Moorland Haunts. Remove one Mortarpod to add a fourth Flayer Husk. Cut two Etched Champions, adding in Mirran Crusaders. By all accounts, this list should have been good, and so, with little more than theory to back it up, I took it to testing.

Around this time, the first results from the Magic-League Standard Trial popped up. The first two showed two decks far and ahead of the pack in early tests – an Esper Solar Flare list, and Red Deck Wins.

I made a few tweaks, expecting that metagame. I'm less worried about the solar-flare deck, because it focuses on stripping card advantage, and I've got that in spades. They shouldn't be able to run me dry, and I put on a healthy amount of pressure that I doubt they can handle. Plus, they're in the three colors least equipped to handle my artifacts. Liliana is concerning with her Edict effect, but she's so weak to start that I'm not afraid of her as much as I otherwise would be.

RDW, on the other hand, has long been a thorn in the side of Puresteel. I started my old sideboard with 4 Kor Firewalker – a choice I never regretted. They just have enough burn to keep you off of good blocks, and have enough pressure that you have trouble with setting up your engine.

I made some swaps, especting enough Red that I wanted to be sure of a solid game 1. I swapped the Mirran Crusaders back out, and picked my Etched Champions up again. Sword of Body and Mind got cut for a second Sword of War and Peace. Strongly considering re-adding the fourth mortarpod, because of how punishing it is to Reckless Waif and Stromkirk Noble, even ignoring how useful it is in every other matchup ever.

I sat down to test.

I was a little surprised what I found.

First, Mentor of the Meek was great, as I expected, but not quite as good as I had hoped. Puresteel is naturally a deck that gulps mana down, paying for equips while trying to play more of them, constantly drawing cards, playing out more equipment. No matter the situation, I always felt like I never had enough mana – and burning one to draw extra gas, while a great option to have, was one that did slow the deck down. It's safer, but at the same time, lets your opponant have more time to draw his Gideon.

I decided, with a little bit of a twinge, that I needed to cut at least one. I marked it down and moved on to other concerns.

I didn't miss Sword of Body and Mind, and began questioning it's inclusion in the sideboard. That's something to handle once we have a more solid idea of what we're facing though. I noticed that all my changes did make the deck a little higher on the mana curve, so the replacement for the cut mentors should be something that's a 2 drop or less. I ended up deciding on Invisible Stalker. The card has gotten some hype as the de-facto sword carrier in blue – being near impossible to stop, and nearly guaranteed to connect.

I didn't like him as a one-of, so I cut two mentors and added in two Invisible Stalkers.

That gives me the list that I'm currently running with. The only thing that's still significantly in the air is the actual count on Moorland Haunt. It didn't pop up too often in my testing, but I'm still not sure if I should be running two or three. My gut says two, but I'm open to being wrong on that count.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you UW Puresteel (SOM-ISD Standard).


Have any questions about the deck? Comments? Concerns? Leave them in the comments. Have another deck you'd like me to take a hand at brewing? Likewise, let me know. I'm actively looking for things to write about now that I've revitalized this blog, and the current list is kind of skimpy.

Open poll as well: What decks are you worried about in the new standard? What do you expect to do well? What decks do you think will take off, and which are going to have tons of hype and ultimately not deliver?

As for me, I think it's about time for bed.

-Andrew


Monday, September 26, 2011

Innistrad Pre-Release at All-Star Collectables

This weekend, I went to the pre-release for Innistrad, the fall release for Magic: The Gathering by Wizards of the Coast. As is customary, I attended and had a great time. Here's a brief tournament report.

The closest event to me was being held at Redcap's Corner, in Philadelphia, but because my friends and I do monthly gatherings to play Magic, DnD, and other wonderful games like that, I instead went to All-Stars Collectables at the Oxford Valley Mall, about 45 minutes away, near Trenton, NJ.

We walked in at the crack of dawn, almost. Forgive me the exaggeration, but it was a weekend, and I figured that starting at 10am was beginning to get a little insane. I was used to noon-starts, but since the shop owner was planning on running two events, he wanted to start a little earlier. I guess that's why he owns a store and I play at one, because he ended up being correct, in spades.

There were some technical issues with getting started, between making sure the printer was running and signing up the over 100 (!) people who wanted to play in the first event. Our wonderful Tournament Organizer George was on hand, with his beaituful wife providing support and acting as a salesperson. When I went over to buy my intro pack, she seemed like she was doing some pretty swift business. On the other side of the room, we had Joel and his crew, who were the official singles vendors for the event. I'm told they didn't do too badly either, and picked up a fair number of good transactions for the day.

First event started at around 11am, by the time everyone was seated and started cracking their packs. I opened my set of six and admittedly, I was a little disappointed. Not that opening a new set isn't exciting, but I was less than thrilled by what I had opened. From what I'd looked at in spoilers and such, I didn't feel like I wanted to be in green, but lo and behold, there it was. There were just too many good werewolves to ignore, and beyond that, I had about even choice between:

-Red with a good removal suite, but a pretty poor creature base
-Blue with not enough to make it work
-White, with 8 cards in total, most not playable
and the option I ended up going with – Black with some removal and a few evasive creatures.

Taking the evasion to creep some damage through after my green fatties clogged up the ground seemed like the best choice, so I sleeved up the deck and sat down for my first round.

Admittedly, I did not expect to be writing this post, so I didn't take any kind of significantly accurate notes on individual games and rounds. I'll just sum this one up as an overall feel.

First, werewolves are interesting. Since the duel-side cards are kind of the elephants in the room, my opinion is that they're very dynamic, and easy to keep track of. I never found myself missing triggers on them, and everyone I was playing with felt that they were a very intuitive answer to them. Some of my opponents used the checklist cards, though I opted to sleeve up the originals. The only issue that I noticed that was detrimental at all was having to de-sleeve and re-sleeve so often in more constructed situations. A full-on tribal werewolf deck seems like it would be a hassle to switch back every two or three turns. Other than that, however, they played wonderfully. It was an interesting mini-game to switch them how I wanted, but it was never insurmountable. Overall, I liked it.

Morbid played well too. I found myself actively refusing to block, taking the damage rather than risking activating morbid at an inopportune time. It made me afraid of death in the games, and that's a wonderful translation of flavor to game mechanics.

Hexproof also seemed to fit here very well, giving me a real feel for the inevitability of certain creatures. The removal all felt powerful, but conditional. Bomb rares still felt powerful, but less overwhelming than normal. Making the format slower than m12 meant that I could effectively hold removal for the 'real threats', which mitigated their effect once they hit the field.

My first four rounds went 4-0, putting me in a great place to get into the top-8. I needed to win one of the last two rounds to seal my spot. Unfortunately, I lost the fifth round to an onslaught of blue and white flyers, and the sixth round to Garruk. A sad end to the first round of the day, but my friend Marshall managed to make it into the top-8 despite his round 3 loss (to the person I faced in round 6, actually. He also made top-8.)

The second sealed started just as the top-8 was running, and I made sure to get my name on the list. I opened a fairly solid pool, where I could have chosen any color but red. I ultimately decided to go with White/Black on the strength of the evasive creatures, even though there was only a single rare in those colors – an Elite Inquisitor. I was rewarded with a 3-0 record, and then an intentional draw into the top-8.

This sealed had three rounds that were very memorable for me, so I'll recount them a bit.

In the first round, I was paired with someone who unfortunately didn't have nearly the grasp of the rules that I did. He pulled a Liliana, but he was misplaying left and right. Even though the games were incredibly one-sided, I tried to keep the mood light-hearted so he wouldn't be discouraged. We had a bunch of laughs, and I got a handshake and a smile at the end of the game.

Playing against someone who's worse than you is always tough. You want to win and advance, but you don't want to hurt someone's feelings – it is, after all, a game, even if there's 100 bucks worth of boosters on the line. That round left me feeling a bit somber.

Second round, however, was a bit of a wake-up. The first game was pretty routine, with me winning on the strength of my flyers. Game two, however, was normal until my opponent got a rather large looking treefolk ready to beat me in the face. I counted a bit, doing the math, and figured that I could kill him before he could break through and counterswing for lethal. I even had a counterspell for backup. I swing out, and proclaim “So, that's it?”

He blinks at me, confused. “I'm at four.”

I look down at the spindown on my side of the table. He's at two by my count. He missed the swing last turn for two damage, by my reckoning. That said, his spindown still read four, and I didn't really have any way to prove one way or another. I all of a sudden realize why so many competitive players count with a pad – because it takes priority over a simple die. Without any method of deciding who had the correct count, I consider calling over a judge. That's probably the correct move, but I don't understand if there's anything they can do to correct the issue. I look over at the clock, and see fifteen minutes left, then make the snap call.

“That's fine. You're at four.”

He looks a little penitant, and protests that he doesn't want to be a (bad word redacted), but I assure him that it's fine. On his turn, he gains fifteen life, putting him safely out of range of my flyer and kills me on the backswing.

It bothers me, but I know it's not HIS fault. He clearly didn't miss the damage deliberately. We go to game three quickly and continue playing. The game goes down to the wire, but I manage to push enough damage through to kill him with less than a minute before turns.

I don't quite know if I handled that situation how I should have. There was a disagreement, but I didn't want to seem like 'that guy' by calling the judge – who knows me and doesn't know the guy – and ask him to make a ruling on the matter. I know George would have been impartial, and probably would have ordered us replay the game. (Since there's no other way to find an equitable solution, that I can see, at least.)

I gave him the match because I was fairly sure of my ability to win the third match, but the whole thing still left a sour taste in my mouth. I'll be bringing a pad next time, to avoid something like that.

We have to evacuate the community room at this point, because it's after 9pm. We go back down to the shop proper and resume the third round, with the shopkeep calling out that the soda is on him for the rest of the night. Thanks Warren!

The third match was one of the most technical games of magic I've ever played. It involved staring down a Bloodline Keeper in three successive games, and managing to win out over it despite having nothing on the field that could directly answer it. It was a long game of trying to fight tempo games and not fall behind while still maintaining enough offensive pressure that I didn't lose to a transformed Keeper. Winning that round, and against someone I knew from FNM's as a great player, gave me a nice ego boost – and happy day, my opponent managed to get into Top-8 on the strength of his breaks, so good news all around.

Because it was after 10pm, the top-8 decided to split the prize fund amongst us, rather than playing it out. We split to 9 packs each, and the shop closes. Total of about 14 hours of magic, all said and done.

I also did a healthy amount of trading, picking up a bunch of the utility lands that I needed, as well as a playset of Mentor of the Meek. By the end of the day, I had half a play set of Stromkirk Nobles as well, which makes my RDW nearly complete, and my Puresteel Deck 'finished' and ready for testing to prepare for the next constructed tournament I'm able to make it to (which depends largely on free time, sadly, since my Saturdays are notoriously terrible for the rest of the month).

Innistrad is the first set to have me really excited for the mechnical side of things. Ironic that as a long time player, I was more interested in New Phyrexia from a lore standpoint, but Innistrad really has me sold on a blending of the mechanics with the flavor of the set.

Overall: Favorable impression. Would buy again.

Till Next Time Everyone,
-Andrew

Monday, June 20, 2011

WWW: Wow!

Robert J Sawyer is one of the most decorated science fiction writers in recent memory. Over the last few weeks, I picked up his most recent series, beginning with WWW: Wake, and have I got a recommendation for you!

This series is phenomenal. Here's why.

First off, the premise of the book is something that (to my knowledge) is extremely underrepresented in popular science fiction nowadays. The concept of AI's has become – as one of the characters notes in the second book of the trilogy – a foregone conclusion. You don't really get to make the argument that intelligent computers could possibly be benevolent, because popular media has inundated us with images of Skynet, and the Matrix, and HAL. Every computer that gains enough mental capacity to look at us, tries to kill us. This book takes an opposite stance – why does that necessarily have to be true? What would our societal reaction to an emerging AI be?

And while this question is an interesting one, Sawyer manages to keep it as a central theme while simultaneously addressing taboos, abortion rights, human rights, underage sex, and a couple dozen other topics in ancillary ways. They're not in depth treatments, but they provide the start to a number of conversations that we, as a society, should be having.

The characters are remarkably realized, from the 'main character' of Caitlin Decker – a blind girl given sight by a remarkable new technology – and her parents, to the character of the AI itself, which goes by the name Webmind. This AI, more than any other, impresses me, because it isn't this alien, omniscient force, but rather a personality and a character all to itself. Over the three books, Sawyer crosses between POV characters to track all the different plotlines he has interweaving, and makes each compelling even when the reason for the link to the 'main plot' isn't yet obvious.

More than anything though, the most impressive thing about Sawyer's writing is how colloquial he makes his writing sound. Caitlin feels like a real person, with a list of bookmarks on her web browser, and things she worries about, and those old issues she never really got over. She's real feeling, and experiential, and consistent. More over, she's likeable, but not perfect. I found myself interested in reading about her – even when she wasn't doing anything particularly interesting. Her banal, normal days were still interesting enough to grab me and keep me reading indefinitely.

Without trying to spoil the plot of the novels, suffice to say that the trilogy takes you through the entirety of the process of Webmind's development. I strongly recommend these books to anyone who has an interest in Science-Fiction, AI's, or even just philosophy and pop-culture.

Robert J Sawyer's personal website can be found here.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Being A Better Raider - Owning Up

If you've played World of Warcraft for long at the level cap, there's a decent chance that you've been curious about, or have participated in, raiding. That said, if you have, you've probably noticed that not all raiders are created equal. Some people appear to die even when there isn't any damage being dealt to them, others have a preternatural ability to survive no matter what's been thrown at them – up to and including a dragon sized kitchen sink. Some don't do any damage, despite that being their assigned role, and others seem to be carrying the group's damage output squarely on their backs.

There are some simple ways to make yourself better at this task. Some of them are fairly intuitive, while others wouldn't necessarily be something you'd pick. I've assembled this list from my own time as a raid leader, from what I valued in my raiders, and in conference with some of the people who are currently leading my guild's raid.

1) Be punctual.
This might not seem like the most important of things when you're looking at the damage meter, but it really does matter. If your raid leaders know that they can rely on you, then you will be treated as a trusted player. This doesn't just apply to being there on time, but letting your raid leaders know if you're not going to be there ahead of time. That lets them plan. I know it might not seem like it, but there's a ton of planning that goes on before every raid, often days in advance, and the more information that they have, the better off they'll be, and the better they'll see you.

2) Be Positive
Raiding can suck sometimes. We all know those nights when everything is going wrong, no one seems to be able to do anything right, and you're not in the mood to be there. You know what differentiates the good raiders from the bad? Being there – both physically and mentally. I know it sucks. Take five minutes, get a drink, come back refreshed and ready to bring your A game, no matter how much everyone else isn't. It'll be noticed that you aren't screwing up, and that others are.

3) Know your role.
This one is twofold. First, you've got to know your class. That means knowing both your rotation, your spec, glyphs, alterations to your rotation given different circumstances (moving vs standstill, single target vs AoE, things like that) but it also includes knowing your cooldowns, and what they do, and how to use them to maximum effect. Knowing your class in and out is only one part of the puzzle though. You need to know how that class, and those mechanics interact with each fight in the game. Knowing that you should save your defensives for here and here, as opposed to there. It involves knowing what's coming in the fight so you can plan how you're going to move and react to things when they happen. Are there special mechanics that you're uniquely qualified to do? Will you be called on to kite, or split off to take care of an add? Interrupt?

4) Be open to criticism
No one is out to make you the bad guy, but no one wants to wipe all night. If you're doing something wrong, expect your raid leader to say something. It could be low dps. It could be that you've died to the same slow-moving-wall-of-dumb that you've died to the last six weeks. One way or antother, if you raid long enough, you're gonna hit a personal wall when you're lagging behind the rest. It's important that you know that people are gonna talk to you about it. It's also important that you can talk back to them and explain what you're doing to fix the situation. Don't pass the buck - “Oh, I did all that.” isn't a reason, it's an excuse. Your screen skipped, you weren't standing in it, whatever the reason is, there's a reason you're being spoken to and not the others. Figure that reason out, and fix it as soon as possible.

5) Own up to your mistakes.
Related to taking criticism, after a wipe, own up to your screw ups. “Sorry for taking that cleave. I'll try to avoid that next time.” Constantly find your mistakes and seek to improve them. By doing this, you not only avoid the annoying post-fight analysis, but you also make active steps towards identifying weaknesses in your play. Run a damage meter that can analyze the last few seconds before your death, or a failbot, or something on those lines.

I know a lot of these sound like they're blaming you, but improvement is necessarily a self-critical process. You don't improve externally – save by getting gear, which is part of knowing your role. Aside from that, as fights increase in complexity over the course of an expansion, you need to step up your own personal game to make it the best possible experience for yourself and everyone else on the team.

Firelands comes out in two weeks, so this would be a great time to check up on any changes being made to your class. MMO-Champion.com is a great resource for this, as well as the World of Warcraft main site. So check it all out, and be ready when you log-in and your raid leader says that you'd better have your fire resist.

U/W Knights - Zen/SoM Standard

Knights has always been a pet deck of mine. I was building it and testing out lists since before it was even a glint in Standard's eye. The addition of Mirran Crusader in Mirrodin Besieged helped my cause. More notably, the strong presence of white in the Metagame, thanks to Stoneforge Mystic and Squadron Hawks, allowed me to play with the spine of the deck while keeping a core that had seen positive results consistently throughout this era of play.

Ultimately, the deck began as mono-white, and is splashing blue to take advantage of Celestial Colonnade, as well as the optional costs for Phyrexian Mana options. This strengthens the deck, and adds tons of sideboard potential in the form of counterspells being brought in against board wipes and Gideon, among other things.

U/W Knights

32 Creatures

5 Spells

23 Lands

Those of you who play standard probably see a ton of similarities to the original Caw-Blade, notably in the now ubiquitous Mystic Package. Any deck that runs white at this point is running 4 of the Mystic, and the usual 3 targets – two swords and a skull. Reinforcing this is the knights backbone – with a strong drop on 1, 3, and 4, Knights provides a solid midrange swing that can become extremely dangerous if left alone while still giving the player tons of flexibility on other fronts.

Student of Warfare is a solid card, and it doesn't take much to see why. Barring a great 2 drop, he levels twice and becomes a 3/3 first strike that puts an end to any aggro strategy, or begins swinging for effect. Otherwise, he's a 1 drop 1/1 knight that options for 'extreme threat' status if left alive. When fully leveled, Students are the second best equip target in the deck, since double strike is so potent with their effects, and a 32 point life swing with a Batterskull will end almost any game by itself.

Leonin Skyhunter might seem a strange choice to include, but when taken in the current metagame, it becomes obvious. Aside from being an on-cost creature (2/2 flying for 2), and a knight, the hidden benefit is that it's bigger than a hawk. When they're both equipped, Hawks die left and right to the aptly-named knight, and in the games I've played, that extra 1 toughness has been worth it's weight in gold.

Mirran Crusader is awesome for all the reasons that Student is, but at a slightly higher cost, and with some added protection from fairly relevant colors. A Crusader with a Sword of War and Peace has protection from everything except Into the Roil and Jace, effectively. It also has a good chance to just outright kill someone if it connects.

Hero of Bladehold is just good. She's better if she can swing with impuny, and both Exemplar and Ajani let her do that with some regularity. She's one of the best things to draw on a dead board to break a line, but her higher mana cost means I don't want to run the full suite of four.

Knight Exemplar is obviously the one that ties it all together. Knight lord is a huge boon for the rest of the deck, aside from being a solid creature itself.

Stoneforge Mystic is the best creature in standard, bar none. It shouldn't be a surprise that it's in here.

Spellskite and Phyrexian Metamorph are the two key pieces of tech in the deck. Spellskite does wonders to protect your knights – especially the ones that you've got equipped. Phyrexian Metamorph takes your existing board position and vastly improves it, no matter what's going on in the game. It's the single card in the deck that I've never wanted to not-draw. He's more of a house than anyone else realizes in the current standard, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him skyrocket in price soon.

Leonin Relic Warder are there because Stoneforge Mystic is the best creature in standard. It's nice to have a drop that improves your board position and takes away their biggest threat, while also being a competitively costed creature. A friend of mine suggested Kor Sanctifiers, but I think 4 mana is a little much to ask for artifact destruction.

The equipment in the deck is the normal Stoneforge package, so that shouldn't surprise anyone. The pair of Ajani Goldmane is there because he's (in this deck) an even better siege breaker than Gideon is, and at a 1 mana cheaper, you'd be hard pressed to find a better planeswalker outside of old Elspeth.

The general playstyle of Knights is that of a mid-range aggro deck, but it also feels like it has an aspect of combo to it. Each knight you play seems like it adds to the overall puzzle – not only adding itself to the board, but making everything else that much stronger. Exemplar, Hero, and to a lesser degree Crusader and Student all synergize extremely powerfully with the rest of the deck. The biggest risk with the deck is outlasting their board wipes – protecting your exemplar by doubling them up is a great way to do so, but otherwise, just outpacing their black sun with Ajani is a powerful tool.

There are a couple other cards I'd consider for the deck. If you don't like the Skyhunters, then Accorder Paladin is a solid replacement option. It's a little higher on the aggro end, and doesn't provide any defense against hawks in the deck at all. In the end, I preferred the slightly more defensive style given that this deck is also going to double-up for some multiplayer work.

As for a sideboard, I haven't built one, but I expect it'll include some creature options (white knight for pro-black, firewalker for anti-red), some anti-creature measures (either marrow shards or DoJ, haven't decided which), some dismember for dealing with threats like Splinter Twin, and possibly some tech for anti-control. I've heard that mental misstep is playable in standard, but that begs testing before it gets serious consideration. I'll probably also add the last sword or Sword of Vengeance for mirrors, to give me the edge against similar stoneforge decks. If there's extra room, given this meta, more artifact hate probably wouldn't be amiss. As for a specific list, we'll see.

As for now, I'll be signing off. Dunno what's coming up tomorrow. Possibly a look at the 4.2 patch notes for WoW, possibly a review of a book series I've read recently. Who knows!

~AR

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

SHOUTcraft Invitational: A Retrospective

If you spend any amount of time watching the professional Starcraft 2 scene, then there's a good chance that you've come across the name Total Biscuit. A commenter with an extremely vitriolic persona, he does tons of videos on his YouTube channel for a variety of games – most famously WoW and Starcraft, although he covers a number of indie titles as well during his WTF series.

I first came upon TotalBiscuit from his “I Suck At Starcraft 2” series, in which he chronicled his rise from a terrible player to a slightly less terrible player. Recently, Total has been responsible for a daily stream that attracts a number of viewers. Perhaps more notably, Totalbiscuit has, this past weekend, begun a tournament cast.

It's called the SHOUTcraft 1-day invitational, and contains a number of notable players in an 8-man, best of 5 tournament. It aired over a single day (though he has noted that he plans to hold this tournament on a monthly basis), and contained a number of high-caliber matches. I wanted to write a post about it simply to talk about the production quality of the live cast.

First thing that should be noted is the Hype. Something that is nearly always ignored by B-list tournys is the power of getting people excited about it. Totalbiscuit is notorious for his use of Twitter (@totalbiscuit). He maintained an active thread on TeamLiquid, a hub of Starcraft information for the foreign scene. He made people continue to visit the thread by announcing one of the participants each day leading up to the tournament. Getting that many people invested in the production before it even went live is likely a huge part of the 20k viewers that eventually tuned in. (Numbers taken from justin.tv during the cast.)

Hype, however, is only one part of the equation. I've been subjected to hundreds of tournaments and dozens of hype campaigns that ultimately failed to deliver, and that's where SHOUTcraft differentiated itself. When I turned the tournament on, I was initially shocked because of the quality of the video feed. I was able to full screen the video and read every number on the screen with crystal clarity. 720p makes a huge difference in viewability, and on that count, SHOUTcraft easily dominates even big-name tournaments like MLG (which is painful to watch at times.)

Finally, SHOUTcraft shows it knows where it's bread comes from. The tournament was cast on a Sunday, at 2pm BST, and 9am EST. The cast continued throughout the afternoon and into the evening in Europe, and lasted the duration of the afternoon for Americans. Both groups were easily able to watch without punishing themselves like they would if they wanted to watch the GSL live. Korean airtimes are crushing for a number of viewers, leading them to prefer VOD's of the events. TotalBiscuit placed his tournament on a traditional relaxation day, when people would be home and ready to watch some quality gaming. He did so at a time that people wouldn't mind watching.

For all the good that SHOUTcraft's maiden tourny did, there were still a few things that could be improved. Understandably, for an independent production, they did a phenomenal job, but watching the events unfold, I couldn't help but notice a few things missing.

First, and understand that this sounds nit-picky even to me, but I would have loved for them to either have a second caster, or a dedicated observer to handle the map movements. Biscuit does a great job by himself, but he'll occasionally miss a drop because of other interesting happenings on the map, and other such things. Anyone who watched the TSL probably noticed the absolutely great observing job that Hot_Bid did, and I think that it's within SHOUTcraft's reach to attain such a level of quality.

Second, player profiles. While Biscuit does a good job explaining who the players are, as well as some of their strengths and weaknesses, I would have loved a pre-match Bio on the players involved in the upcoming match. Again, I'll reference the TSL, which gave simple fact sheets on the players during the pre-match time, allowing me to quickly get some background on the players that I may not have heard of. (Us Americans are woefully under-informed with regards to good EU players who aren't Jinro, Thorzain, or White-Ra.)

Aside from those minor complaints, I was impressed overall by both the quality of play, and the quality of the production itself. As for the commenting style of TotalBiscuit himself, it appears that his bombastic, action focused style is either love it or hate it. My personal opinion is that TB generally casts better alongside someone with deep knowledge of game mechanics, such as Idra or Day[9]. Regardless of that, I must give congratulations to TotalBiscuit on a well-run event. Will tune in again next time there's a SHOUTcraft invitational.

VOD's from the event will be posted eventually at TotalBiscuit's Youtube account, which can be found HERE.

TotalBiscuit's website can be found at www.cynicalbrit.com

Have you ever watched professional Starcraft? Do you know TB and his casting style? What do you think about him? As usual, leave em in the comments!

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

I'm building an EDH deck.

Wizards of the Coast, in their vast wisdom, realized a while ago that there were all these people who weren't playing Magic: The Gathering by the official rules. They were doing this crazy format that involved having a general, and playing with a deck that had almost twice as many cards, but you couldn't have any doubles. More over, the format they were using had a strong multiplayer bent to it.

So, being a good business, they decided to capitalize on it.

EDH, or Elder Dragon Highlander, was the old name of the now-officially sanctioned Commander format. It's got a few rules, which you can read about HERE. Next weekend, the new official Commander preconstructed decks are being released, and I've been following the spoiler season pretty aggressively.

For those of you who don't know, I go down to Pennsylvania once a month for a Magic: The Gathering weeked. We chill and play cards, and DnD, and occasionally catch a movie and get drunk, and have singalongs, and it's generally a great time. My group of friends is planning, among other things for next weekend, to pick up the Commander preconstructed decks (2 of each, for the ~10 of us, depending on who can get off work and everything.) In addition, a bunch of us are working on building actual EDH decks of our own.

My first idea was a BW build involving Teysa, Orzov Scion. Unfortunately, one of my other friends informed me that not only had he already had the idea, he'd already built it.

What a loser. Stealing my ideas before I have them...

So I went to my general (pun intended!) fallback option. Knights.

I've always loved knights as a tribe. Ever since I saw Knight Exemplar and realized “This is the coolest Lord since...well...Vampire Nocturnus.” (That card only became cool when people around me started flipping their top card and going “It's night time.”) I've got Standard Knights. I've got a list made up for extended knights. I'm planning on building Knights again after Zendikar rotates, and I can stick a creature without it being bounced and taunted endlessly by some people. (but yes, I will miss you, Student of Warfare.)

So, step 1 of building an EDH deck – get a concept. Cool. Got that. Next step is a general. I headed over to Gatherer, typed in the relevant information. (Subtype: Knight. Legendary. Creature. Contains White.)


Well, that was easy. And he's pretty damn cool to boot. I like Bant Colors, ideologically. It's actually my favorite shard on Alara, so it was a pretty easy sell for me to pick that general as soon as I saw it. I've started writing a couple of things down in a notebook, as general guidelines and principles to help me build this deck. I've never done the EDH thing, so this is pretty much a collection of knowledge based on what I know of my multiplayer games, and how they would change if the decks were twice as big, less consistant, and all had big splashy generals, but twice as much health.

Well this should be fun.

Observation 1: We've got a lot more health.
Life Totals only matter at the start of games, in my experience. After a little while, the things being thrown around with a dozen mana on the table start to get stupid. Three Coat of Arms plus a Strata Scythe in a game where 5 people are playing white generally makes sure that no matter how much life you have, getting hit WILL kill you. That said, it takes the game a long time to ramp to those levels, and it's very very possible to be burst down early if you don't have any board presence (Especially if those who do have board presence think you've got a Wrath effect in hand.)
As a result of this, I'm thinking that early game should be focused primarily on establishing a solid position for the late game, either with recurring creatures, indestructible creatures, or enchantments and artifacts that will bolster your later creatures significantly. Actually trying to go for the kill early probably isn't a winning strategy, especially in the 4+ player games we're going to be doing. No aggro deck is going to be able to burst down 160+ life points before it runs out of steam.

Observation 2: That's a lot of people who don't want me to win.
It's a rule of multiplayer that there are generally more options being played with. There's a card drawn (or more than one) for each player, each turn. Single player, you get one draw, they get one draw. In multiplayer, you get one draw, and they get N, where N is the number of people who eventually want you dead. If you drop a 9/9 murderwyrm on the field (no, that's not a real card, relax.) and start pointing it at people, chances are that someone is going to object, and of those objecting parties, someone will have an answer to it.

As a result of this, I'm going to have to do some work to assure that my big guys stick on the field, or can try again if they don't stick the first time. Counter-counterspells are an option, since I'm in blue. (and there are some delicious GU and UW options for those) Green and white have a fair amount of graveyard play involved in them, so I'll probably play with those. Also, I'll probably throw in a healthy dose of card draw that will be a major advantage late in the game when I'm in need of more gas.

Observation 3: Some of the people I play with are assholes.

I don't mean this as a judgment, but it's true. At times, there are people who follow simple logic and play the game in as close to an ideal sense as possible. That said, there are also vindictive sons-of-bitches who play decks that maindeck 45 counterspells, or run 4 knowledge pools with the express purpose of making everyone want to kill themselves, not him. There are people who roll dice to decide attacks, and people who metagame our friendly gatherings into 8v1's that they intend to win via more table wiping than is found in even the most sanitary of places.

As a result, this deck is going to need to be fun to play, regardless of the nonsense happening elsewhere. Making sure I always have plays is an important part of that, and making my board as resistant as possible to “Oops, a bad thing just happened” is a significant step towards that. Counterspells and card draw are again, solid options here. Making sure that every creature I play is a threat also strikes me as important. No vanilla creatures here. They should all be worth something more to my overall board position.

Observation 4: That's a big card pool...

I don't play Legacy. I've only seriously played 5-6 sets. I do not have most of the cards that I am planning on using. As a result, crowd sourcing is going to be a good part of this deck building process. I've looked at some Rafiq builds, and I'm looking at more. EDH Knights decks, tribal decks in general, gatherer, EDH websites for deck building guidelines. Things like that. It's helping. I've got a 40-card list so far, and it's expanding rapidly.

But that's beyond the pall of this article. This was more of an intro. Next time, we're going to get into the nitty-gritty of the actual deck itself.

Suggestions for cards? Want to talk about your awesome deck? Interested about EDH? Drop em in the comments below! I'd be happy to hear from you all.

~AR

Monday, June 13, 2011

DC Comics Reboot - What does it mean for YOU?

Alright everyone, sit on down. I got's some talkin' to do. A couple of weeks ago, there was some talk from the Comics industry, specifically, one side of the aisle – the DC side, that is. In what I'm sure is a pretty unprecedented announcement, the entire DC universe is basically starting over at once.

Come September, 52 series will be relaunched at #1, and the old series will all phase out. In addition, all of DC's comics will be available in a direct-digital format, in addition to the old print format. This is a huge change, and when I sat down to think about it for a while, it became pretty obvious why DC is doing it.

In short, comics are a broken medium.

Some more about that, because I'm fairly certain you're not all 100% on board with that. Comics books aren't the most mainstream thing in the world. Sure, most people can recognize Superman, or Batman, but how many could pick Power Girl out of a lineup? Or Ravager? Or hell, how about Grifter? I used to follow comics, and I didn't even know who he was. The big issue is this. Action Comics (the series that introduced Superman, for those who aren't 'in the know') began it's first run in 1938. That was before most of us were born. Hell, that was before most of our parents were born.

Pause that thought. Think about television. You're reading this blog, so you probably watch some kind of serialized television. House, maybe? NCIS? Maybe you watched LOST? (Yea, you probably watched LOST, didn't you?) If you're of the age-impaired persuasion, maybe JAG or M*A*S*H? Well, if you've watched anything like that for an extended period of time, you probably noticed that there was a story, and eventually, that story became more and more dependant on what had come before. Plots move and evolve. Characters relate, get in relationships, and the plot continues. Three or four seasons later, someone comes back, and that's huge news for you, as a fan of the series.

Except that I, who wasn't watching that series, don't care. This character has no resonance for me. To suddenly reintroduce the main character's long-lost-love-interest does nothing for me, because I don't remember the first time. This provides a hurdle to cross if you want to get into any long running television show.

Back to comics now, because that's one of the issues they're having. It's an issue that they've been having for years and years. Crisis after crisis, reboot after reboot, they're fighting against the fact that they can not attract new readers who don't care about what happened five, ten, or twenty years ago. Forty years ago? Seventy?

That's a lot of back story to catch up on. Because of this, there's only a small portion of people who are interested in the genre, which of course means that it's a less-good business model than say, a summer blockbuster movie. (I'm looking at you, The Dark Knight.) Anyone can sit down in the theater this weekend and see Green Lantern. You don't need to know about 20 years of continuity to get that movie. It's marketed for people to be able to get it. That's the idea.

And that is the idea here too.

This whole reboot, renumbering, relaunch, rebrand thing. That's the idea. They're taking what they had, and transforming it into a slightly different thing, but packaging it in a really nifty way so that people on the outside (The Darkseid?) can get in on it.

So, for all you avid comic book readers? You get to be in on the ground floor. You get to look around the new house and go 'Hey, you changed the shades.' And for all of you, I ask you this: Do that. Talk about it. Tell your friends about how they changed things, and how everyone's on the same page. Give them the first issue, show them this cool new thing that they could start reading.

If you read comics once, like me, and you decided to stop for one reason or another. (Continuity, favorite series got canceled, money, whatever.) This is a perfect time for you. We're getting rid of all the baggage. If you lost track of comics, they've got a ready-made handhold for you to jump back in on. They've brought back a ton of the old things you might have loved. (Is that Batgirl? A red-haired Batgirl?)

If you've never read them? Just like those lapsed readers, this is the perfect time for you. You can jump in on things and start following the characters at the same time as everyone else. No need to worry about past continuity, or missing things, or any of the other problems with jumping on. Just head on down in September, to your friendly local comic shop, and pick up an issue that looks interesting.

Or you could check IGN's nifty list over here – DC Comics Relaunch Round-Up

If you're interested in more information, IGN is also keeping a very very handy list of relevant news articles as they come out, all in one place. Collecting All The News About DC's Upcoming Revamp

What do you guys think about the reboot? Which are you looking forward to reading most? If you don't read comics, is this going to make you pick one up? Talk to me about it down in the comments.