The only things certain in life...

I have not been a huge proponent of Modern. Since it came out, I've looked for just about every reason under the sun to not play it. I was invested into Standard. I was investing into Legacy. I didn't have time to play the decks that I had. I didn't know anyone else who played, or anywhere to play it.

Most importantly, the critical problem was the same one that I've had with dozens of other formats (especially certain eras of Standard). I just didn't like any of the decks.

Modern has always struck me as a format with a misguided principle. Wizards wanted it to be a haven for the best hits of Standard, but somehow managed to ban all of the decks that people would be most excited to duke it out with. There's plenty of argument to be had about the current ban list, what should be added to it, what should be removed, and I certainly have opinions on the topic (perhaps even opinions that I'll mention before Gatecrash's Ban and Restricted announcement is sent out) but that's a conversation for another day.

Today, the important thing is that I've found a deck in Modern, or at least an archetype. For those who have followed this blog for a while, I play a White/Black Aggro-Disruption deck in Legacy that's commonly known as Yards Pale Ale (a variation of Dead Guy Ale). It's a primarily spell-based deck backed up by a White-Weenie core. I love the deck. I think it is a magnificent creation. I couldn't be happier with it.

For those who have been reading for even longer, you may remember my Knights deck. The time was Caw-Blade era Standard, just when people were figuring out how good Stoneforge Mystic was in a deck with Swords, and adding Jace to it only made it stronger. This was before Dismember and Batterskull. The deck wasn't completely over the top yet – it was just strong – like Valakut.

Back in the day, I played a (in hindsight) awful brew built around Knight Exemplar. It utilized Student of Warfare, Hero of Bladehold, Mirran Crusader, and a couple of less pristine examples of awesomeness. See, I was remarkably bad at combat math – so I wanted all my creatures to either be First Strike, Indestructible, or better. Knights gave me a way to do all of them.

I added blue because it seemed like the only thing that would beat me was board wipes before I was established. Counterspells would fix that. Blue also gave me access to a number of clone effects for my exemplar, and preordain (a card I did not appreciate at the time, but now sorely miss.)

For being so rough, I loved that deck, and so when I saw that a White-Weenie strategy was doing well at a couple of events, with the nominal archetype name “Death and Taxes”, I was obviously interested.

Here is an example of a version of the deck that won two Daily Events on Magic Online on subsequent days. It gets to play a ton of cards that I'm excited to work with, and has a ton of lines of play that intrigue me.

Now, one of the major things that this list relies on is it's ability to land-lock an opponent. Between Mindcensor and Arbiter, they can seriously restrict the amount of searching that an opponent can do – turning off fetch lands and other search effects right as the game starts.

I'm not sure if I like this tactic, but it's certainly something to fool around with. Admittedly, it's a strong line of play, but I tend to like my games of magic to be interactive – and that normally means some level of letting them have the ability to cast spells. I'm sure that my more Spike minded friends will disagree, but there's a reason that the designers have scaled back on Land Destruction effects in recent years – it's not very fun to play against, and I like everyone at the table to have fun.

There's plenty else we can do with a deck like this though. While Stoneforge Mystic's ban removes the ability to tutor up a Batterskull (or Jitte, were it unbanned), there are plenty of other options for a Death and Taxes shell to take advantage of. You could skew towards a trickier deck, featuring Flickerwisp and Stonecloaker to rebuy some of your effects, providing grinding value. Alternatively, adding a second color is definitely possible.

The current list, running a plethora of plains, provides players with a preciously pristine land base, not prone to removal. Adding a second color would make it more unstable, at the benefit of some flexibility.

I've seen some people discuss the addition of Green for some powerful options out of the GW Hate Bears list that Kibler has been using – Smiters, Leiges, Gaddock Teeg, etc. I've also seen Blue discussed, favoring a counterspell package to strengthen the deck against Combo and add in some draw and selection spells.

Something that I haven't seen is Black, taking a page out of my Legacy deck's book and running powerful creatures like Dark Confidant and Tidehollow Sculler, backed up with black removal spells. This is likely the direction that I'm going to end up taking the deck, because the playstyle flows so nicely with the kind of gameplan that I enjoy.

As for those of you who are still skeptical on the Modern format, I'd implore you to at least look at the format, see past the field of Jund and into the deep seas of innovation behind it. Who knows, maybe we'll see a ban out of Jund – or an unban to break the format open again. Regardless, there's something for everyone in Modern, if you'll just look to find it.

I'd like to give one last quick word to THIS thread on Reddit – it provided the initial list that sparked my interest in Death and Taxes in Modern.

Until Thursday, may all your spells resolve.

Back In The Saddle - Esper Tokens for GP Atlantic City

It's been a while since I've addressed Standard in one of my blogs, and this upcoming weekend seems to provide me with the perfect time to talk about it. Since becoming a judge, my opportunities to play competitive magic have declined pretty significantly. It's not that I enjoy it less, it's just that opportunities to judge seem to keep cropping up, and I have only so many weekends that I can fill with Magic. Couple that with the holidays, and I haven't been at a Competitive REL tournament since November – and that wasn't even Standard. (It was a Legacy Tournament – which I am happy to report I Top 8'd, with much the same BW list that I've been running for some time now.)

Since the last time I'd checked in, Standard has changed a bunch. The last couple of FNM's that I'd gone to had been decidedly during the era of Jund. It was everywhere, and I was of the opinion that my former tokens list couldn't compete on the same level as it. Something needed to be done.

Luckily for me, the format shifted, then shifted again. Despite not playing, I still followed the scene, checking in with some of my favorite authors and noting the results from Star City Opens and GP's. I have to say, from the look of things, it seems dynamic and interesting, but I still can't quite muster the same level of enthusiasm that I had during the Scars-Innistrad Standard. Perhaps having a 'bad guy' in the format spurs me on to more deck building than normal. Maybe the relatively small subset of cards that sees play in every deck is irking me. I hadn't been able to really pinpoint what it was until recently.

When I sat down to write my New Years Resolutions, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to have a couple dedicated to Magic. I'd slacked off on quite a few projects – my Shard War decks, Illyria, and I'd been sitting on my hands regarding advancing as a judge. Most of all, I didn't have any decks (except my Legacy deck) that I really wanted to play all that much. I vowed to change that before the end of the year.

For those who have been reading this blog for the last few months, you know that I fell in love with BW Tokens, lovingly updating it week by week, and having a reasonable amount of success with it. I felt like I understood the deck on a fundamental level, and all it's match-ups. Unfortunately, the rotation was not kind to my poor spirit tokens.

People had been telling me for months before the rotation that the deck was strong, but would be much better once Ratchet Bomb and Elesh Norn were gone. Interestingly, none of those people kept saying it after Detention Sphere was printed, and that was only the start of the issue. Olivia becoming highly played provided a roadblock. Still, I could fight through those things. After all, the titans were gone, and the caliber of board wipe that remained in standard was a far cry from Ratchet Bomb and Sun Titan.

That said, Tokens was not without casualties. Specifically, two of our hardest hitting cards went by the wayside. Hero of Bladehold and Honor of the Pure both provided huge offensive boosts to my squad that were proving difficult to replace without serious reworks to the deck.

 

The inspiration for the update actually came from my friend (and deck building prodigy) Marshall. He'd been working on a Spirits tribal list for a while (and was actually working on a list extremely similar to John Finkel's Pro Tour Honolulu list as Finkel was winning with it). After the success of the deck, it was poorly positioned for a while, with the whole format devolving into creature mirrors between R/G, Naya, Pod decks, and Angel Delver. It also had some issues with an unstable mana base if you tried to add the black splash for Lingering Souls. With the rotation, Marshall felt it was time to give it another shot.

The addition of Hallowed Fountain did wonders for the land base, allowing him to cut into a third color for more than just a narrow splash. After seeing his list, utilizing Drogskol Captain, I realized that it had a remarkable resemblance to my tokens list, and decided to modify it:

As usual, I began with an existing deck. A lot of my card choices seem to mirror the briefly seen Esper Flash lists that were thrown around for a week or two. I'd played the Esper lists (as well as the UWr version) casually for a couple of test games before dismissing them. I didn't like how many turns I was spending just cycling through cards, and I didn't like how low my threat density was. With a the core of the tokens deck still intact (Midnight Haunting + Lingering Souls + Intangible Virtue), I felt that there was definitely a deck still there, and I searched for a way to intensify that.

In the meantime, on the back burner, I had a playset of Restoration Angels that I love fiercely. I wanted them to see more play, I just needed a deck to slot them into.

Once I decided to add blue to the deck in earnest, the question became “What can I gain?” Snapcaster seemed an obvious choice, but in testing, I found that the deck was already mana-hungry enough, and didn't often produce too many good targets for the Wizard. I cut down to two copies from four. Augur of Bolas, despite the occasional flub, served as a much better two drop for my Flash Tokens. Plus, it provided a great body to flicker with Restoration Angel. The breakthrough came later, with Favorable winds providing the redundant anthems that I'd always wanted.

Once I had favorable winds, all the formerly aggressive draws were out. I didn't want to lead Champion of the Parish into Gather the Townsfolk. There was too much spot removal in the format, and I couldn't follow it up as strongly without Honor of the Pure to provide consistency. On the other hand, I did have a powerful engine that allowed my flyers – token or not – to trump similar plays by other decks. My Restoration Angels could block (and kill!) opposing ones, and with spot removal on the rise, my swarms had never been more effective. Once I'd decided on the flyer emphasis, it naturally brought my curve a little higher – towards the 4 and 5 mana range. Geist Honored Monk started seeming like a great creature to play – with Restoration Angel being able to hit it for added value. A few counters, and a smattering of removal spells (or at least, what I could find given the color constraints) rounded out the list.

The final card was a single copy of Sorin, Lord of Innistrad. He was too slow for my previous list, but here, he seems just right. All of his abilities are relevant, and he comes at a point in the game when each could be the correct thing to do. I'm considering adding a second if I can get a hand on one.

The end result (sans sideboard) is this:

The deck has one main issue, right now: the insanely aggressive decks. Not the midrange-y zombies lists, which tries to kill you with 4 and 5 drops. Those we can deploy a wall of Spirits to block effectively. I'm talking more in the terms of Naya Humans, Mono-red, and things in that vein. Thalia still provides a major roadblock for the deck – serving to give a one sided cost bump to almost literally every card in the deck. I'm still working on a solution to some of those, but I'm confident in my ability to work it out in time for this weekend. While I don't love it the way I loved BW Tokens, it's at least a deck that I can feel comfortable playing for a long day. I've already got a room at Atlantic City with two of my good friends, as well as my girlfriend, and I'm planning on seeing if I can grind my way through 9 rounds to a 7-2 record, and a berth in Day 2.

What do you think about my list? Do you see any glaring omissions in it? Anything that you think could be improved, or significantly changed for the better? Feel free to leave a comment. Going to be at Grand Prix Atlantic City? Drop me a line if you want to catch up. I'm more than happy to chat with anyone.

May all your (and my) spells resolve.

Color War: A Multiplayer Magic Format

 Hello Everyone!  This is ‘Marshall’ guest writing for Andrew today.  No, this isn’t a hostile take over.  Yes, he’s fine...well mostly.  As many of you postulated by this point Andrew and I work together on several fronts, I help design different decks and we bounce ideas off each other.  Unlike Andrew, I don’t really participate in competitive Magic, I’m more of a ‘Kitchen Table’ kind of player.  I like tournament decks as much as any Spike, but that’s for their linear and powerful synergies.  For me deck building comes grew to a new height when I developed “Color War”, I specifically choose the word ‘develop’ because I am not the origin of the format, but instead have invested significant amount of time and resources into it.  Andrew asked me a few weeks ago to do a guest article pertaining to my favorite format: Color War.

Shall we get started?

I’ve been playing this wonderful little game for the better part of 20 years.   Through these years I’ve seen ups and downs of this game, from Fallen Empires, Homelands, and Champions of Kamigawa, to Invasion, Mirrodin, and Tempest (my personal vote for best all time set).  Through this time I’ve played in many different formats but one hit home more than others, because it answered this one question every magic player has thought of at least once (if not you’re about to):

“Why do the colors have specific allies and enemies?”

I’m not talking about why design has set it up that way, or the theory of why great Richard Garfield deemed it so on the 5th day of creation.  I’m talking about the simple truth we’ve all learned about this game:

Blue mages hate Red and Green mages.

In fairness, everyone hates Blue mages

This is something I learned early on, and I learned why through Color War.  An uncle of mine introduced the 5-way multiplayer format to me and it explained to me these color allegiances much like my body learned it needed oxygen to survive.  This my friends (and Andrew’s readers) is what I’m here to give you!  I’ll be explaining this in two parts: First, I’m going to discuss the basics and rules of the format, and then the decks that I've developed.

1. Color War is a 5 player format, wherein each deck is a single color.  (This is similar to Star, for those familiar with that format, this was just introduced to me prior to Star and I’m stubbornly keeping the name as Color War) [Editor's Note: Marshall is more stubborn than the Goat Tokens he loves so much.]  All 5 players sit in the order of the colors on the back of the Magic card (Go look! we’ll wait).  From here things begin to get complicated.
2. Turn order:  Now that everyone is seated in the correct order.  You should be seated next to your two allies and across from your two enemies.  Watch for dirty looks – they are EVIL. [Editor's Note: For example, Black is allied with Red and Blue, but enemies with Green and White. Think Alara shards, or the Core-Set-Dual-Lands to keep track of allies.] Unlike normal multiplayer matches, the actual turn order does not go in a circle, it follows a star pattern in clockwise order.  This is designed  to prevent two allies from having back to back turns (at least at the start of the game).  My suggestion is to call out the next color when you’re done your turn. Try “Black, you're up!” instead of “Pass” when you first start playing this format.  Turn order remains the same when a player dies, just skip over the eliminated position.
3. You only win when your two enemy colors are dead.  This may explain some of the targeting restrictions above.  Because not only can you win when your two enemy colors are dead, the same applies to your two allies.  Yes destroying their planeswalker or fogging when they go in for a kill, is something you can do as it will slow them down to allow YOU to win.  To answer your inevitable next question, Yes you can tie.  In fact it’s almost as common as normal  solo wins.
4. Targeting:  I encourage some additional targeting restrictions to help balance the format and encourage the format to play as intended. Your mileage may vary on these, but I think they're a good baseline.
• a. You can only attack your enemies
• b. You can only do direct damage to enemy players (EXCEPTION: you can target allies to kill allied planeswalkers).
• c. You can target allied permanents.

Multiplayer Magic...right? Call a Judge?

That’s it, the rest is normal fun multiplayer!

Right?

Andrew, I think I’m missing something here, because something tells me that left to their own devices people would make independent decks packed with color specific hate.

[Editor's Note: Muffled cries]

What’s that? You think so too? Hold on, let me take off the duct tape, I can’t understand what you’re telling me…..

The hard truth is in ever group of magic players there is at least one that takes the time and energy to find a card or two that gives them a significant edge over their friends. I'm sure you all know that guy – you may even BE that guy. Hey, this could be a good thing if it pushes everyone to continuously improve their decks and can provide a natural way to keep the group fresh with ideas.  Unfortunately, this idealism doesn’t really hold true though when it comes to formats with distinct limitations like Color War (and one could argue it doesn’t hold true in normal free for all either, but that’s an argument for a latter day).  The balance of Color War breaks down when cards like Mirran Crusader, Karma, Magnetic Mountain, Conversion, and even something as innocuous as Blue Elemental Blast (props to those that didn’t have to look up those cards.)  It becomes harder to balance when you load up a Black deck with so much removal that it wipes Green and White off the map.  So what is a multiplayer group to do?

The Color War was originally introduced to me with 5 premade 40-card decks, none were incredibly powerful, but they all contained some surprisingly strong iconic cards: Chain lighting and Vesuvan Doppleganger come to mind.  They were built with the idea that any of the 5 could win on any given day.  This was primarily controlled by the fact they were all built by the same person (my uncle.)  After I moved away, and I found a new group of fellow Magic junkies, I decided I wanted to introduce the format to them.  This was around the time of Invasion, and so I knew that I needed to build 5 decks of approximately the same strength.  Since then I’ve been continually tweaking and adding new cards to the lists., keeping them recognizable but still fresh. This is a deceivingly hard thing to do, you want to maintain several things:



1) Each deck should keep the flavor of the color.  When you play as the Green deck you should feel like a big old tree loving hippy with a really REALLY big stick to hit people with.  This also means that even though removal exists in White and Red Black should still be king of the hill with creature removal – it's needed to help balance out White and Green.

2) Each deck should have cards that hearken back to the history of the color, Shivan Dragon isn’t the best dragon in the deck (that probably goes to Thundermaw Hellkite – a recent addition) but every Red mage sees Shivan Dragon and smiles. Feel free to adjust this based on your group. If all of you started within the last two years, 'the History of Magic' probably means very different for you than it does for my group, who still remember a time when the Stack didn't exist.

3) In the same vein I choose to update decks with new cards too, it keeps the circle of friends interested and enjoying the format long past when it would otherwise have started to get stale.

4) I maintain that each deck needs to have cards that surprise the player “You have Rofellos in here??”  Due to the nature of the format resolving these cards or untapping with them isn’t necessarily guaranteed, but I feel that it’s important for players to look at their opening hands and be excited. It's hard to look at some of the best cards ever printed and not be thrilled to play a game with them  - in this way, I try to maintain a feel much like Cube Drafting has.

5) Above ALL ELSE balance trumps card selection.  I have been asked why certain cycles aren’t in the decks - and I'll admit some are due to availability (I’m looking at you, Primeval Titan), but 9 times out of 10 it’s because one member of the cycle is completely unbalancing in the format.  In very few circumstances should one card completely win the game for a color, and at times sacrificing a partial or complete cycle is the cost necessary for the health of the format.



A bit more on balance: Over the years I’ve noticed how difficult it is to keep these decks tuned properly.  When testing a deck individually it can seem the exact level of power you were shooting for, but it’s not until you see various global effects hit the field does the balance start to fall apart.  Probably the occurrence that highlights this so nicely is when Red had Mana Flare (a great ramp spell to help it get to it’s dragons and X spells), and Blue had Palinchron (which by itself is a great fat blue creature that has a way to save itself, very Blue).  Yeah for those that figured out the interaction of  those two cards... whoops?  Since then, I’ve had the benefit of being able to test more frequently with all 5 decks on the field. Below you’ll find the current incarnations of decks – recently updated to include some choice cards from Magic 2013.



When looking at them, keep in mind that these decks are not built to be tournament worthy, but instead to produce fun and exciting games that are difficult to predict.  Even now I keep notes to every game for future edits and balance questions, for example:

1) Gideon might be too good.
2) Switch Cockatrice with another spider
3) Add Vampire Nighthawk
4) Boost Red a little
5) Hapless Researcher

Combined with those is a running list of wins (and allied victories).  The thought is to collect sufficient data to warrant changes.  “Boost Red a little” for instance seems pretty straightforward, except that the process of boosting Red’s strength leads to White performing poorly next time, meriting improvements to white,  perhaps too far, which can cause Black to stumble. Yeah it’s not always that complicated and the occasional gift from a new set helps fill in the hole.



If you decide do go down this rabbit hole, learn from where I am, look at these decks, and use them.  I understand that several of the cards are not easily obtainable, and none are strictly required to build a color war deck. That said,  I hope when looking at them you’ll see the spirit of each and understand why:

Blue mages hate Red and Green mages.



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Hello everyone – Andrew here for an afterword. First, a great debt to Marshall for helping me with this post. Color War is one of the best formats I've ever played, and I think that it's a great way for a group of friends to get together and play multiplayer when their normal decks might not necessarily be on the same part of the power curve.

I'd also like to thank those of you who helped me out with the white commons in my post on Tuesday. While I didn't get quite the volume of specific feedback as I'd hoped, there was still a ton of great advice – so thanks again. I hope some of you are interested in the project, and will be hoping to play at GP Philadelphia in a couple months.

This weekend, I won't likely be playing much Magic, since I'll be moving to a new place with my lovely girlfriend. Nevertheless, this weekend also marks the PAX Magic party, and that's bound to be a blast for all of us F5'ing on our computers, waiting for spoilers. Personally, I can't wait. All three of the spoiled mechanics so far look to be good, innovative takes on the guilds, and I can't wait to see the rest of them. There's a good chance that I'll take a look at the mechanics on Tuesday's post, and talk about what I see each of them doing in the set.

Or hey, maybe I'll get an entirely different idea by morning – who knows! Check back in on Tuesday to see!

As Always, Sling Some Spells,
Andrew

Defending Against Cheating

This past weekend featured the first World Magic Cup, and the presentation was great. If you missed the coverage, I’d wholeheartedly encourage you to head over to the Wizards twitch.tv page (www.twitch.tv/magicprotour) and check out a couple of the matches. It’s a great tournament, with strong coverage segments, and the usual great casting team from Wizards.

That said, since the tournament ended, there have been some allegations thrown around. Some people, analyzing the video, think that a member of the Puerto Rican team cheated in the finals (and who knows how many other matches off-camera).  The video in question can be found here: Was Jorge Iraman Trying To Stack His Deck at the World Magic Cup?

Now, I’m positive that the DCI is investigating this at the moment – that is, after all, their job. So I’m not here to pass judgment or blame or even say if I think he actually did cheat or not. But one thing that this event does highlight is that players need to be careful. At competitive events with cash (or plane flights, or trophies) on the line, people will cheat, and we need to be prepared for it.

Today, we’re going to go into a couple of different ways that someone can try to cheat you, and some easy remedies for it. Note that I’m specifically talking about ‘things that will get him disqualified if a judge is watching.” This is not meant to address someone trying to Jedi-Mind-Trick you into using Esper Charm on yourself. Slimy play is an entirely different thing from cheating.

The methods that a cheater will use vary greatly. Go watch a few magicians (the ‘real’ kind, not the ones playing MtG – the guys who make stuff disappear, or manage to pull a royal flush out of a falling deck of cards [Source: Reddit, thanks /u/SlimGrim]) and you’ll see that their acts are likely very different. Same goes with MtG cheaters – the ways that they can cheat are as numerous as the stars, and there’s absolutely no way that you can be trained to identify and stop all of them.

A quick aside here on what you should do if you notice someone cheating. Immediately raise your hand and call for a judge. Ask to speak to him away from your opponent. The judge is trained in being able to investigate these situations. He will make inquiries into the situation and, if unsure, discuss things with the head judge (if the event is large enough to merit multiple judges). They will come to a conclusion and everyone can abide by it – one way or another. It is not your job to execute a punishment. It is not your job to determine guilt. Your job, as a player, is merely to bring the matter to the attention of a judge if you believe that something suspicious is going on.

Good, now that we’ve covered that, the first major ways that people are going to cheat happen before the game even starts. Our cheater sits down at the end of the last round and carefully stacks his deck to be perfectly spell-spell-land-spell-spell-land all the way through. This devious player is now guaranteed two or three lands in his opening hand, with a third land on the way quickly if he doesn’t have it. Of course, we all know that he has to shuffle before he actually presents, so he makes a great show of cutting the deck a few times in front of you before passing it over. You cut the deck and begin play. He doesn’t mulligan, because his deck is still stacked.

However did that happen?

This is called mana weaving, and it’s one of the oldest cheats in the book. By mana weaving, you make your spell-land density uniform across your deck. This is not randomized. It is important to know the difference between a completely randomized set and something that it uniformly distributed. In this case, they’ll even look similar to the naked eye. The couple of cuts that have gone into the deck will make minor inconsistencies in the perfect weave, but the vast majority of the deck will still be prearranged.

Similar things can happen with a variety of other cheats. Subtly moving a card to the bottom of the deck, then manipulating your shuffle to bring it to the top is not only possible, but extremely easy. Doing the same so that the card ends up in the middle of the deck, slightly off-kilter to encourage you to cut directly to the card, is also possible. It’s even possible to do this while nominally rifle shuffling the deck. There are dozens of variations on these cheats, but they all boil down to the same thing – deck stacking.

How can we stop things like this? Simple, actually. The number one defense against deck stacking, mana weaving, and any kind of nonsense is twofold, and actually required by the rules of Competitive REL tournaments.

He must present his deck to you to shuffle. You, as a cheating-conscious player, should pick up his deck and shuffle it. I don’t mean cut it. I mean shuffle. You are well within your rights to randomize the deck however you find sufficient as long as you don’t damage the cards. (I’d like to take an aside here and remind you to be gentle with your opponent’s deck. We’d like to think that our cards are important to us, and could even be worth a fair bit of cash. No reason to cause damage here. Just be a little gentle with them.)

Cheaters practice at what they do. There’s a good chance that you won’t notice it if they shuffle in a slightly shady manner. However, but shuffling the deck thoroughly – every time, even after he just searches the bottom five cards for a land off his T1 Evolving Wilds – will prevent any kind of weaving or searching or ordering of his deck.

Realize that – you can completely blunt an angle of cheating by playing fairly! That’s awesome.

Some other methods of cheating are a little more insidious and require us to actually pay attention to things. Periodically keep track of the opponent’s number of cards in hand – ask him if need be, and write the information down on your life pad. If it seems like he has more than he should, look back and make sure. If he has drawn an extra card at some point, call a judge – that’s a game loss for a good reason. For all you know, he could’ve subtly moved a Batterskull back to his hand after you Cliqued it away.

There’s one more kind of cheating that I’ve heard about – but admittedly never experienced myself. It’s most endemic at small store FNM’s, especially involving players that don’t necessarily have the best grasp of the rules, or if there’s no official judge present. It usually involves one player bullying the others into accepting ‘his ruling’. Often this player is just lying because he thinks he can get away with it and win the tournament as a result, but sometimes it’s accidental. As always, your best weapon is simply knowledge – know the game you are playing. I’m not saying that you need to be Judge-level-knowledgeable (though that certainly helps) but if you have a smart phone, there are plenty of apps that let you look up a rule if there’s a dispute. (I’d like to publically call out MTGJudge from the iTunes App Store on this one, because it is a *spectacular* resource that also provides a card lookup.) Don’t be afraid to bring the question to an outside party. Remember – your opponent has a vested interest in you losing! Don’t trust that his ruling is correct.

In conclusion, know your rules, and be willing to look them up if you’re uncertain. Shuffle your opponent’s deck. Make sure that you are clear in your declarations and actions during the game, and you’ll find that a healthy amount of cheating just isn’t possible against you anymore.

Personally, that’s worth the extra thirty seconds of shuffling to me. I bet the Taiwanese national team feels the same way, and are extremely happy that they didn’t just leave that Etched Champion on the top.

Also, congratulations to the Taiwanese team. They played some great magic throughout the weekend and provided quite a bit of quality entertainment for me and my friends. I’m already looking forward to the next segment of the year – complete with 2 GP’s, a couple of Star City Games events, and countless other opportunities for me personally– not to mention judging and some other projects I’m working on.

It’s a good time for Magic, cheaters or not. Let’s make the best of it.

Till Next Time,
Andrew

[Editor's Note: It has been brought to my attention that Mike Flores has written a few articles on this topic as well. Please find links to them if you'd like some additional reading:
The Miser's Guide To Savage Cheats
How To Cheat

Thanks to /u/0rangeSoda on Reddit for the tip! Enjoy!]

Bye Bye Bye - Why Planeswalker Points Are Important

Hey man! I haven't seen you around here in ages.

Yea, I've been pretty busy traveling.

So, you coming to Sunday drafts now?

Absolutely. I’m grinding for points. Didn’t you hear? There’s a GP in Philadelphia in October. Got to be ready.

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As some of you may know, this coming Sunday represents the end of the second Planeswalker Points season. For some of us, that makes this week a flurry of furious playing and grinding, with the hopes of gathering those last few points. For others, the entire idea of planeswalker points seems alien and obtuse.

Why are we seeking planeswalker points like they’re some finite resource? Why do some of us keep track of the number with post-its and bookmark the page in our browser to make sure that everything is up to date?

There’s a couple reasons for it, honestly, and to start, I’d like to tell you my story.

A few months ago, I decided that I was interested in joining the Magic Competitive Scene. Previously, this meant going to GP’s and PTQ’s, hoping to qualify and make it to the Pro Tour. Unfortunately, my level of skill at that point was nowhere near where it would need to be to have a chance at either of those events. I wasn’t thinking clearly about what I’d need to do to succeed. I was flush with success with a Top 8 at a 75 person GPT, and I thought I was one of the best players ever. Seriously. I actually thought that.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really have anything to work towards. There weren’t any GP’s in the area, so I just shrugged it  off and kept playing in GPT’s and SCG:IQ’s. The story could have ended here.

Then there was an announcement. A special tournament – held three places across America. The World Magic Cup Qualifier. All jokes about qualifying for a qualifier aside, I knew that this was an event I wanted to participate in – and it was fairly local: just past Baltimore, maybe a two hour drive. I checked the requirements and found that I needed 300 Planeswalker Points to get an invitation.

I fired up the handy website and took a look. The system is pretty simple – three points for a win, one for a draw, none for a loss, and then multiplied by the kind of event it was.

FNM – 7 points

FNM – 4 points

FNM – 7 points

This looked like it was going to take a while.

GPT Baltimore – 66 points.

Wait, what? Sixty six? Well, I suppose that the event was seven rounds of Swiss, where I went 6-1, and you get some points for participation…

 If you’re looking to grind points, events with a multiplier are where it’s at. There’s just no competition. You could win 9 rounds of FNM, and it’s likely worth less than winning three at a GPT – or just a little bit more than two at a PTQ. A single win at a GP is worth more than two flawless Friday victories at your local game shop.

But why do we want these points? Even ignoring the primal urge – present in every nerd – to make numbers go upwards. (Seriously, take a look at every RPG ever. That’s all we’re doing) Surely there are rewards for earning all these points! Well, luckily for us, there are – and the rewards are significant. Let’s take a look at some of the numbers to know for the current system.

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Byes:

By gaining planeswalker points in the current system, you can earn Byes at Grand Prix events. A bye is a free win in one of the early rounds, and any player can have up to three. Having them is an enormous advantage, and for many, these are the primary benefit of Planeswalker Points. These points accrue over the course of a season. The most recent season ran from April 2, 2012 – August 19, 2012. The next season, which begins on Monday, runs from August 20, 2012 – December 16, 2012. If you earn byes during a season, they will apply for the duration of that season and for the next one as well.

                -One Bye: 400 points

                -Two Byes: 750 points

                -Three Byes: 1500 points

Invitation to the World Magic Cup Qualifier:

 Where Grand Prix Byes count based on a single season, the World Magic Cup Qualifier tracks points over an entire year. The most recent World Magic Cup Qualifier season began on April 2, 2012, and will end on March 17, 2013. To be invited, you need to reach a threshold based on your country. These range from the USA – where you’d need 500 points within the year, to small countries like Peru, where the cutoff is a mere 100 points. You can find the list of thresholds HERE.

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For those of you wondering if a Bye is even worth anything to you, it’s a fairly simple question. If you are going to a GP, the bye is absolutely worth it. Compared to the FNM’s and other events that you’ve gone to, GP’s can be more likened to a marathon. With two days of play and thousands of dollars of prize on the line, you need to be at your best to have a chance, and that means giving yourself advantages before you walk in the door.

A normal GP plays 9 rounds on Day 1. To advance, you need to be 7-2 or better. Going 7-2 in a tournament is no mean feat, and even a single bad mulligan could spell the end of your tournament aspirations. With three byes under your belt, you mitigate that to a paltry 4-2 to make the second day of play (and put yourself in contention for a reasonable cash payout!) In addition, the three byes have the related side effect of making your tiebreakers markedly higher than those without byes. Because people playing since round one will have their tie breaks calculated off all their opponents, they account for the person who started off 0-1, 1-1, and 2-1. Your worst tiebreaker player is the person you hit in the fourth match, who (assuming you win) will be 3-1 at that point. This could buy you the crucial percentage points that elevate you into the “I won something!” arena.

This coming season, for example, I’m planning on attending two GP’s – one in Boston, and one in Philadelphia. Each Bye I earn puts me that much closer to Day 2. Because I played in GP Atlanta, as well as a number of other events, I’ve earned over 900 points, easily enough for my second bye, but still a far cry away from my third. With the addition of a second GP to my personal schedule in this coming season, it would be a reasonable thing for me to expect getting a third bye in the coming season. As my play gets more precise, I expect to earn more points for any given tournament. GP Atlanta earned me a cool 200 points, and I didn’t even make Day 2. If I had, it easily could have been a 350-400 point weekend.  I certainly wouldn’t have been as close as I was if not for the three byes I had.

This is more or less how GP Atlanta felt with three free wins..

This coming season, I’d encourage you to set yourself a goal – be it your first bye, in case you attend a GP early next year (the schedule should be announced soon!) or qualification for the World Magic Cup Qualifiers, or whatever you decide. Set yourself a goal, and then set out to attain it!

[Editor's Note: The Planeswalker Point website can be found HERE.]

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I hope that you guys enjoyed this look at the planeswalker point system, and what we can get out of it as a competitive player. Next post comes in Thursday, where I’ll talk a little bit about what I see in the format going forward.

A Respectable 6-3 at Star City Games: Washington DC

It’s interesting how things happen sometimes. You write something, yell up and down about the new thing that’s going to change it all, and then, forty eight hours later, you’re scrambling to put a deck together – your third in two days.

How did this happen?

Last weekend was the Star City Games: Washington DC event. By random luck, I was able to attend, because my job wanted me to go to Washington DC from Sunday till Tuesday. It meant that I wouldn’t be able to play in the Legacy Open on Sunday, but I was mostly alright with that, since my Legacy deck is still broadly ‘under construction’ – missing a Karakas, Urborg, four Wastelands, and three Bobs. (Plus some other assorted cards that have since been filled). That’s not exactly a small list, but still, we’re getting closer.

So, Standard Open was going to be my best bet – with hopes that I would make Top 8 and secure an invitation to one of the two remaining invitational’s of the year. That was the goal. To accomplish that, I’d most likely have to go x-1 or better, with the potential of a draw in the last round.

To this goal, I wrote an article about my Naya Aggro deck, which can be found Here. The decklist I ended up building to play in the event was as follows:

There was a lot of power in this deck, and it has the potential to run away with games that it was clearly losing. Hero of Bladehold and Gavony Township provide a strong top-end, and four Caverns give the deck a lot of game against Delver Style decks. With Restoration Angel to back up any assault, and Bonfire for the occasional blowout, the deck was strong.

And I hated it.

I played some test games with it, but it constantly felt like I was mulliganing into oblivion. I was never able to find the lands that I wanted, a dork, and some reasonable sequence of plays that didn’t depend entirely on “and then I’ll draw all the cards I need.” I found myself playing out my hand quickly against other similar aggro decks and lacking a way to go over the top to win, instead getting into a board stall and knowing that I really didn’t have many (if any) outs.

I called up Marshall on Thursday, after posting my counterpoint about Bonfire. A lot of the points that I’d made were festering in my mind – countermagic WAS strong against that kind of deck. Tokens did have a lot of recurring threats that made it viable against Naya style decks. Delver was still a flying Wild Nacatl for U that needed to be dealt with.

What if I merged the two decks?

I drove to Marshall’s that night and we spent the better part of four hours piecing together the deck that I’d be taking down to DC. Late night audibles rarely work, because you end up with little familiarity with the deck and not enough practice. I ignored this because I figured that it was just tokens with a support package instead of a Humans package. It looked strong. Plus, I got to sideboard Day of Judgment and go to town with that as tech against Naya and the Elf deck that BW is completely incapable of beating.

This deck looked like it had everything. A strong early game with Delver/Snapcaster/Vapor Snag, it had the late game with Anthems and Lingering Souls. We were able to find a mana base that worked (partially by being very careful to avoid double-colored spells), and enough removal to punch through the biggest offenders in the format. We were positive we were on to something here.

Unfortunately, we finished the deck at Dark O’Clock and didn’t have time to test it. I couldn’t go to FNM on Friday to test it because I was busy sleeping – since my train to DC left at 5am. Still, I felt confident that I’d be able to do well with the deck. I slept a healthy amount before the tournament, and we were ready to go.

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It’s 10:05. The tournament was scheduled to start five minutes ago, but there’s still a line out the door. I’m staring across the board at two Rancors on a Blighted Agent.

“This deck is pretty bad,” I admit – referring to mine, not the UG Infect deck that’s been tossing me around like a ragdoll for the last hour.

“It’s probably a bad matchup for you. Don’t worry.” That’s my friend Mark. I’ve seen him at a bunch of events, and he offered to play a few rounds to get each of us used to our decks. It isn’t going well. I’ve managed to squeak out a single win – he’s got more than half a dozen under his belt.

“It’s not that your deck is good,” I explain. “Well, I mean, it is. You’re really explosive, but my deck isn’t flowing the way it should. The mana feels fine, but I just don’t feel like I’m going to have the power to punch through and actually get a kill.”

“So, what’re you thinking?”

“I’ve still got all the cards that I’d need for BW Tokens…” I say, hesitantly. I could also audible to Delver – since I have that almost built as well, but that doesn’t put me in any better shape.

“I don’t think that’s smart.” Mark answers, and we keep playing. “Maybe you’re just getting bad hands.”

Five minutes later, one of Mark’s friends comes by and reports. “I’m seeing a ton of control decks in the field today – and a lot of Delver too. A lot of Pod, but not a lot of Naya Aggro or Humans.”

Mark taps some creature, probably an Ichorclaw Myr. “Four infect at you?” I try to remove it, and he casts apostle’s blessing in response. Two Wild Defiance Triggers go on the stack and I scoop it up.

“Last call for registration!” goes the shout. I take one last look at the deck and make the call.

“Help me unsleeve this.”

It’s 10:25 and I’m frantically writing on a deck registration sheet, putting back together a deck that I’d played in more than a dozen tournaments. If there wasn’t much Naya in the room, and the read was right, Tokens would cut through the control decks and the Delver decks – all I needed to do was dodge the Naya decks.

Round 1 – Chris with Bant Pod

Chanting “Not Naya” while I shuffled, my opponent leads with Razorverge Thicket into Birds of Paradise – because why not. Luckily for me, I’ve got the fast start, and he’s not really playing Naya at all. He’s on Bant Pod – a deck that I know exists, but not much more than that. I remember the older Bant Pod lists – flicker an acidic slime a bunch of times with Venser and lock you out of the game, or get a Stonehorn lock. I imagine that this deck plays out much the same.

Luckily, I have the Champion > Gather > Anthem > Anthem draw, and he goes down on turn five. Before he’s able to set anything up.

I play game two much more conservatively – unsure if he’s running Day of Judgment in his list. He almost gets a stonehorn lock on me, but I’ve got removal for the Venser to keep me on the right side of the matchup. I end up killing him while I’m on 31 life.

1-0   (2-0 in games)

Round 2 – Steve with Mono Black Control

Game one is agonizing. I get my beatdown on, dropping him down to three life over the opening turns of the game with a fairly aggressive start. I’m still on 20, and feeling great. He topdecks a Mutilate to wipe my board, but I’ve got a Gather the Townsfolk in reserve. This unfortunately does nothing when he drops a Wurmcoil Engine, and I quickly drop to two life as he beats me down with it (and removes my human tokens). He goes back up over twenty before I find a Gather the Townsfolk and a Hero of Bladehold to stop him. I’m poised to gain 20+ life the next turn and kill him off a vault of the archangel swing, but he topdecks a second mutilate and kills me with the Wurmcoil Tokens.

Ouch.

Luckily for me, his good luck breaks and he mulligans in the second game. Despite him activating mindslaver twice on me, he can’t quite get a lock on the game and I kill him through two pristine talismans that gained him 16 life over the course of the game.

Our third game is a classic Tokens vs Control matchup, with me always having more gas to stop his attempts to regain control. I slow roll every token maker, buying a board wipe from him every turn until he eventually runs out. Even his pair of pristine talismans can’t keep him up through two anthems and any creatures.

2-0   (4-1 in games)

Round 3 – Robert with GW Elves

Let me just go on record and say that I don’t know why this deck isn’t bigger. In game one, I remove his turn 2 Archdruid, and still die on turn 5 to a swing for 45 damage off a Craterhoof Behemoth that he green sun zenithed for. Shockingly, I almost survived. Almost doesn’t count.

I have no notes for game two. It went more poorly than game one.

2-1 (4-3 in games)

Round 4 – Brad Nelson on BW Zombie Pod

I read the pairings and I’m on fire. Brad Nelson, player of the year for 2010. This is the first game I’ve ever had against a player of his caliber, and I’m nervous as all hell. I sit down, and try to make some small talk – he seems pretty quiet. Understandable, since he’s already picked up a loss. We present our decks and I move to cut his, but my hand slips and flips a card.

Geralf’s Messenger.

Both of our hands shoot into the air and I get a warning for Looking At Extra Cards.

I apologize, and he nods. “It’s alright, just sucks because it’s a pretty big tell.”

That’s pretty fair, I think. I hope that he doesn’t think I did it deliberately, because I can see how it could be interpreted like that. Brad is one of my favorite writers, and I’d hate to think he had a negative opinion of me because of a mistake like that.

I’d like to tell you guys that I drew a hand that was marginal against Zombies and kept it because I was doing the honorable thing. Truthfully though, the hand was just all gas. He gets some quick hits in with a nighthawk before I land two heroes. He answers the first, but the second gets a combat step with Vault of the Archangel and start beating in for 24 point life swings. He goes down and we sideboard.

I love my zombies sideboard in this deck – it’s one of my favorite parts about playing it. To this day, I’ve only lost to zombies once with Tokens, and that was due almost entirely to a gigantic misplay on my part.

Today kept up that trend, and despite him getting the Restoration Angel/Geralf’s Messenger combo going, I beat him down and win the round.

3-1 (6-3 in games)

Round 5 – Gavin with RG Pod

I don’t have a lot of experience against this deck, and I keep a slower hand. He doesn’t seem interested in playniog that game, and crushes me in a quick game one.

Game two, he mulligans and we both stall out on the ground, unable to make a profitable move. The game comes down to me being able to draw flyers, and him never finding a bonfire to miracle.

Game three, I pull off a miracle’d Entreat the Angels for 1 on turn 4, and the angel went the distance to beat him down for the win.

4-1 (8-4 in games)

Round 6 – Andrew with Esper…well…

The round starts, and I win Game 1 without any real idea what he’s playing except Esper colors. He cast a lingering souls, a ponder, and a mana leak – which effectively means he could be any Esper archetype ever. He boards in a bunch of cards, but I’m hesitant, and end up presenting my original 60.

I think I actually stand by this decision. My sideboard cards for the Esper matchups are pretty weak overall, and I’d rather not dilute my deck with dead cards if I guess wrong. Unfortunately, I have a quick draw and he has the answers for it, stalling me out until his plan becomes obvious – as he copies a bunch of Sun Titans with the least fair clone creature ever printed.

To be honest, I’m positive that I could have won this one. I made a bad removal early on, sacrificing a creature to kill his doomed traveler clone – thinking that it would be sacrificed and not give him the token. This is 100% absurd – the only reason I thought it was because my opponent a few tournaments ago had missed his trigger, not because it doesn’t happen.

I got him to 1, and he killed me with triplicate Sun Titan attacks and Dead Weight and such. It was unpleasant.

Game three, I was forced to mulligan, and I couldn’t put out enough pressure. He stabilized at 8 life, and I never got to touch him again.

4-2 (8-6 in games)

Round 7 – Naya Pod

And here we go, folks. The matchup I feat more than anything – Naya. Cocked and ready to go with a quartet of Bonfires, we squared off. I lose the first game after he gains a ton of life off a Thragtusk to change the math on our race. Both of us sideboard, and we’re off into game two.

Game two was the best match of magic that I have played in a long time. I have a slower start, with a slew of anthems. After losing my board in the late game to a catastrophic Bonfire, he beats me down to 4 life – with him still on 20. Things look grim, but I topdeck a Gather the Townsfolk, putting 20 power and toughness onto the board with a vault – but one mana shy of using it. He had a single flyer – a restoration angel that dropped me to  1 life. I attack, and he first-strikes down one token, eating eight damage, and losing only a little bit of his ground force while we trade off creatures. I gain sixteen, going to seventeen and having more than lethal on the board. He draws, and finds no help, playing another Blade Splicer and hitting me for three in the air, I go to fourteen. I draw for the turn, attack, and pass after destroying a few more of his guys.

He topdecks a bonfire, and hitsme for five with it, wiping my board. The crowd (because we’ve drawn a crowd at this point) goes wild, and he turns his guys sideways for the win.

I drop Midnight Haunting, blocking his angel and a splicer token to go to six, and then counter swing to kill him the following turn.

 Game three was sadly a little anticlimactic, with him mulling to six and stumbling on lands. He still made a fight of it, but I manage to get an Angel of Jubilation out to turn off his Pod, and without the mana advantage, the threat of a bonfire was minimal. I killed him with a Pod rotting in hand, and a Bonfire that could never have killed anything.

5-2 (10-7 in games)

Round 8 – Ian on RG Aggro

In our first game, I manage to get the tempo advantage on him once I’ve got an anthem set up, and I run him over pretty handily. Our second game isn’t close, with him getting a turn 2 sword of war and peace and crushing me.

Our third game goes much the way of the first, with Vault fo the Archangel sealing the game once I get ahead. Ian reveals after the match that he runs four Sword of War and Peace main, as well as four bonfires that he never saw a miracle of. I was probably lucky to get out of this one.

6-2 (12-8 in games)

Round 9 – Russo with RG Aggro

I know Russo – he plays at the shop I used to go to all the time back in NY. He’s on RG Aggro, and while I’d love to say they were both close games, decided by the skill of both players, he crushed me in both with T2 Sword, and T2 Sword. I really don’t know if there’s a good answer to that card in white that doesn’t open you up to an insane blowout if they don’t have it.

6-3 (12-10 in games)

Aftermath

While the tournament was 10 rounds long, a quick look at the standings after the ninth round revealed that there was no way that I could make the top 64. It was unfortunate, and crushing, because up until then, I felt like I was doing fairly well in the tournament.

My losses were against Elves (which is a bad matchup – I’ll need to Sideboard some Day of Judgment in the future. The loss to Esper was avoidable – I think – if I had remembered my Phantasmal Image interaction better and not flubbed the second game.

The games against Russo were probably not winnable – as he had the nut draw in both games, but without Sword in the picture, I can’t imagine that he has a terribly good match against me. Both games were winnable if I had a turn or two to breathe, so maybe Gut Shot would have been all I needed to take the lead there.

Altogether, for the longest tournament I’ve ever played in (10 rounds is monumental, and kudos to the judges for keeping it running so smoothly) it went reasonably. I would have liked to have finished x-2, but then again, so would everyone else in the room. Next time, I will.

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This weekend, I’ll be attending (and judging) the Top Deck Games Summer Open. If you’re interested in going to GP Boston, this represents a great tournament with a robust prize, in addition to some spectacular side events that range from Standard Win-A-Box to Ravnica/Dissention/Guildpact drafts. You should absolutely come on down and check it out.

The facebook event can be found Here. I'll be one of the guys in the Judge Blacks.

Beat em or Join Em?: The Problem With Bonfire

Format Warping

There, I said it. I’ve played in quite a few tournaments since the release of Avacyn Restored, and one thing has started to become more and more clear over the last few days. Bonfire of the Damned is – and is going to - warp the format.

When Miracles first came out, many Magic writers took their fingers to keyboard and decided to write a bit about the issues with Miracle. What were they trying to do? What does the mechanic accomplish? Is the mechanic any good in reality?

Well, we have our answer. With the price of Bonfires reaching $35 at most online vendors and rising steadily, it looks like we’re going to be living in a world where Bonfire is the shadow looming large over the whole format. Whenever a player has Red in their deck, I cringe every time that their hand touches their deck for the draw. The primer for the Hallelujah deck that won the Pro Tour said it best – you need to play up your draws, make the opponent tilt every single time you touch your deck.

When I’ve got six 2/2 tokens in play, there are no safe top decks anymore if you have a mountain.

The word 'Boom' comes to mind.

 

I wasn’t sure how good it was myself. I kept playing BW Tokens, and I was shocked when my matchup against GR, which had previously been fairly close (if they didn’t blow me out with a Sword) was all of a sudden turned around by a crippling Bonfire at any stage of the game. I feel like you’d need to be playing 12 anthems to have a chance of ‘outrunning’ it. Naya, running Restoration Angel and Thalia, doesn’t even feel close. They just stone-wall me at every turn, keep me from casting anything of consequence, and crush me with a vastly superior creature base.

 I still didn’t believe it though. I kept playing events with BW Tokens, and every time someone cast Bonfire, I lost. It seemed normal though – it seemed fair. Lights didn’t go on in my head until my girlfriend and I were sorting through some Alara Block commons and uncommon (I’m working on the Shard Wars, and while she doesn’t play the game, she seems to really enjoy the art.) I was flipping through the Conflux section and I pulled out a card, instantly knowing the story behind it.

I'd be Bitterblossem if this was printed too.

 

“Oh hun, check this card out.”

“I like the movement in the picture. And the quote is pretty awesome too.”

“This card changed tournament magic. Remember that Faerie deck that I was telling you about?”

“Yea?”

“This card single handedly turned the tide on it. Once this card was printed, Faeries wasn’t the bad guy of the format anymore. It was to tailor built to kill Faeries that they just couldn’t compete.”

“That’s evolution for you.”

And then I stopped. I remembered every time I saw Bonfire get a four for one, or a six for one. I remembered seeing a field of creatures – twice lethal damage – during testing on Tuesday. I peeled the Bonfire, set X = 5, and killed him that turn from 20. The game wasn’t close – and then he lost it.

Let's be honest though. Cards warp formats all the time. Snapcaster has turned Unsummon from an unplayable card into a format staple. Jace caused Hero of Bladehold to be an actively terrible creature. The Eldrazi have made mill nonviable in EDH without bending over backwards to do it. That doesn't mean that we should call for bans, or complain. That means that it's time to innovate and figure out a solution to the problem. We have two choices here - we can either join the Bonfire crew (as I have at the moment with Naya) or fight against it (as I'm trying to do.) 

When that can happen, and you need to account for a one sided wrath of god for 3-4 mana, it’s going to change a format pretty significantly. You need to be on one of two sides in this format – for it or against it.

For Bonfire:

There’s a whole slew of decks that you can use to battle with Bonfire. There’s Naya in all its variations, R/G Aggro, we’ve got UR Delver, and even some zombie variants have the capability of running it. In the end, any deck with a reasonable board presence can and should run the card.

Reasonable board presence? Yes. Because if you’re not a deck that can capitalize on the “All your creatures are dead, but mine aren’t!” angle, you’d be better off with Slagstorm or Pyroclasm. Bonfire works very specifically when the effect is also a Falter for your whole team. This means that it’s best as the primary removal spell in an otherwise aggressive deck. Simple enough.

You should play Bonfire in any deck like this, because it’s frankly the highest impact card available for use. It does so much for it’s cost – even at standard cost, it’s just a slightly weaker, but more Flexible Flame Wave. That sounds like a reasonable card to me, and Bonfire is actually just better than that.

All hope is not lost for the rest of us though! There are options to be had if you don’t have the money to invest in cards that are more expensive than some fat packs.

Against Bonfire:

It seems like only yesterday that we were all trying to figure out a deck that could defeat Delver consistently, and rid us of the menace that was Delver, Mana Leak, Vapor Snag, and Snapcaster Mage. Fortunately, they appear to be on the decline, but it’s still a very reasonable deck. There are two main things that the deck does very well that allow it to combat Bonfire – a pro-active way and a reactive way.

Pro actively, Delver is able to deal a lot of damage with few cards. When your 1-drop is capable of being a lightning bolt every turn, you don’t generally need to overextend into the board to find your victory. Delver is very capable of killing you using only 2-3 cards, and using the rest as support. This minimizes the ability of the deck to expose itself to a Bonfire.

On the other hand, Delver has reactive answers to Bonfire. Restoration Angel, allows you to keep the offence going if a Bonfire does happen – letting you sneak a creature in ‘with haste’. Alternatively, you could use a mana leak/dissipate to remove the offending spell from contention. Bonfire is a fairly mana intensive spell, and with positive benefit for each added mana you use, so there’s a pretty decent chance that he’ll run it into your leak pretty hard.

The other option is a Ramp deck. Creatures scale upwards in toughness with mana cost – generally. You’re more likely to get a substantial body on a 6-7 mana creature than on a 2 mana guy. It seems obvious, but if you jump the curve with mana dorks or actual Ramp spells, then you’ll often be able to ‘outrun’ the Bonfire’s kill range. A turn 4 titan is way too fast for a bonfire player to deal with – by the time that he’s got 7 mana available, and can even potentially draw a Bonfire to kill it, the game is likely over. Elesh Norn fits into a similar area here, where her toughness makes her mostly-bonfire-proof. You also get the benefit of playing individual creatures that can win the game on their own.

In conclusion, the best ways to fight bonfire are the ways we’ve traditionally fought good sweepers – be bigger than them, be faster than them, or be able to stop them from casting it. Regardless, don’t you dare walk into a tournament right now without a plan, or you’ll end up on the receiving end of “Miracle Bonfire, X = 4, swing for lethal?”

It happens more than you’d think. This wekeend is Magic Game Day, and there will almost certainly be Bonfires in the room. Don't go in unprepared. Know your formats, sling some spells, come out on top.

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This weekend, I'll be at SCG: Washington DC on Saturday, spellslinging in the Standard Open. I don't have terribly high hopes for this tournament, but I'll be in the area, and it seems a waste to be in the city without participating. I've yet to decide what I'll actually be playing. It'll depend a lot on how I feel about the Naya mana base tomorrow, or if I'd rather just innovate BW Tokens to fight it. I'm hedging at the moment.

Deckbuilding 101: Play The Deck You Love

When playing Magic, there is often one choice that overrides all the others. This one singular choice colors every other one that you’ll make in the course of the game, and informs every decision that you’ll have. A poor choice at this juncture could lead to a series of disappointing 0-2 drops, while a good decision can do everything from giving you an advantage to handing you a Pro Tour on a platter.

I’m talking about Deck Choice, and it’s the most important thing that you can learn in Magic. We all hear about breakout decks. Sam Black recently pioneered a Zombie deck at GP Atlanta to significant success. A few years back, Dragonstorm took the Pro Tour by…well…Storm. Not a year ago, in a field of Solar Flare and Illusions, a deck called Wolf Run Ramp arrived from the shadows in a blaze of glory. Choosing the right deck is the kind of choice that sticks with you.

Hard Choices

Something to take into account here is the difficulty of actually assembling the deck in question. For the most part, building a deck requires an expense of time and money, and both of those are scarce quantities in the lives of many players. Many strategy websites have made their living off using their time to work out a decklist and deliver it to players who don’t have the time to analyze metagames and sift through available card pools. For the brewers among us, the provide a critical jumping off point.

Thing is, we can’t just build every deck. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m strained on time as-is, and adding a ton more decks to upkeep would start cutting into valuable sleep time. That might work alright if you’re a college student who doesn’t need to wake up till Noon because you have a Class Schedule handed down from the Divines, but for us working stiffs who need to be at work by 9, and need to actually cook our food when we arrive home, it’s less viable.

So, here’s the critical question – how do we decide what decks are worth building?

A Question of Style

There are a lot of people who would tell you that you should just find the ‘best’ deck in the format and play that. While that will certainly give you a reasonable chance to do well, it makes me leery because the nature of the ‘best deck’ is that people will be gunning for it, and they’ll likely have more experience playing against it than you do playing with it.

No, the best option for someone who wants to go to a tournament is a deck that they will love. Find a deck that suits their personal style and work on it. Iterate it until it’s the best it can be. If you know your deck well, you will win games that you otherwise would not be able to. This isn’t to say, of course, that you should play horrible decks with the justification that you know them, but you need only look at recent legacy tournament results to see the benefits. Goblins and Elves surging upwards where they hadn’t before, Patrick Sullivan wins the Legacy Open with Burn of all things, Junk takes one of them down. These aren’t the ‘best decks’ of the format, but they certainly are decks that their owners have played with for a while and see significant advantage from that.

Case Study: Marshall

I’m going to mention my friend Marshall here, because his deck building style is fairly pronounced. In general, if given a choice, Marshall prefers two things overwhelmingly in his decks. First, he loves Blue. He enjoys the cerebral aspect of it, and how much choice it gives him over the way that the game plays out. When he plays a non-blue color, the decks just feel inconsistent and constrained. He doesn’t enjoy it as much. The other thing that Marshall loves is a good build around card. He wants to build a deck around a central core that makes the deck borderline unfair.

Some decks that he’s worked on in the recent past include Spirits, UR Delver, Heartless Architect, and Zedruu the Greathearted EDH. Each of these decks incorporate aspects that Marshall loves, and all include Blue. For Spirits, the deck has a strong tribal component that calls to him. Delver asks for a high percentage of Instants and Sorceries that provide the backbone of this counter-burn deck. Heartless Architect, as I noted in a previous article here, takes a number of shells and melds them together into an incredible ramp deck that is capable of really explosive starts. Building Zedruu is an exercise in counterintuitive cards – turning otherwise unplayable cards into deck staples via donation effects.

Case Study: Me

A wise man once looked at a deck that I had sent him and sagely nodded before responding. “This deck suits you.” When I asked what he meant, he pointed at it and explained. “Well, it’s an aggro deck…sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“It can be an aggro deck, but you it has a twist.”

“I do that a lot?”

I hadn’t even realized the common strain holding my decks together until someone else pointed it out to me. I hated Combo – I knew that much. The playstyle doesn’t appeal to me, and playing both with and against Splinter Twin was miserable for me when it was in Standard. Control decks hold some allure, but I can never bring myself to pull the trigger and build one to actually bring to a tournament.

Then I look at an Aggro Deck, with its sleek lines of play and I fall in love. For those of you who don’t know me in real life, back during Zendikar-Scars, during the height of Caw-Blade, back when I was a much worse player than I am now, I built UW Stoneforge Knights. I saw Hero of Bladehold and Knight Exemplar and knew there was a deck there. Stoneforge Mystic came along for a ride, just on the merits of sheer power, but the knights were the core of the deck. Unfortunately crippled by a terrible Splinter Twin matchup, the deck had some moderate success for a rogue strategy, but was ultimately hamstrung by my own skills, which were still developing from their young idealistic state. (I mourn that I wasn’t playing the full 4 preordain in that deck, even now, and I devoted no sideboard cards to Splinter Twin because I just didn’t understand the matchup.)

When Knights rotated out (RIP Knight Exemplar and Student of Warfare), I turned towards Puresteel Paladin. Here was a build-around card that I could sink my teeth into. I got to cast awesome spells, and my deck had five swords in it. What other deck could say that? I built my own Progenitus using an Etched Champion and six different equipment at one point. I ran Valakut out of threats – his deck had no mountains left, and all his Primeval Titans were dead. I stood victorious, and it felt great. The problem with that deck was that it was too fragile. Without a Puresteel Paladin in play, I felt like I could get run over at any time. I didn’t devote anything to protecting him, and without the advantages offered by the Paladin, I couldn’t keep up.

The loss of Puresteel left me in a lurch for a bit, I played Red Deck Wins, and then Mono-Black infect. I wanted to attack with creatures for the win, but balls-out aggro wasn’t for me. I liked counting Shrine Triggers, and manipulating the board to win with a single 12 damage shot. I loved being able to carve someone’s hand and use a 1/1 or 2/2 to get there for the win.

Then I built Zombies, to some success, and then finally, I found what I was looking for – BW Tokens.

I love the idea of Tokens. I love the spells that make multiple creatures. I love the anthems that make it practically feel like I’m cheating. I love that white gives me versatile answers, and black gives me effective ones. I love that I can act at Instant speed, that Lingering Souls lets me play around counterspells. I love that I can have explosive starts involving putting them into single digits on Turn 3.

I like making them have the answer, not looking for it myself.

So, what have I learned about myself? I like decks that turn guys sideways, but I’m not happy with a single dimension. I want some extra angle that lets me interact with the format.

Marshall often said that playing with a deck that you know is the best play you can make in Legacy. The format is wide enough that there’s no way to prepare for the entire field unless you’ve just played your deck enough that you have experience there. When we set about building a deck for me for GP Atlanta, Marshall took this into account and built a deck that was deliberately similar to what he knew I loved – a deck that attacked with smaller creatures, backed up by disruption. Yards Pale Ale was very much designed with my play style in mind, and because of that – even with my relative inexperience with the deck, I was able to pilot it to a 6-2-1 record, and narrowly miss Day 2 due to tilting (which, again, the result of my inexperience). Someone should write an article on recognizing and managing tilt. (And when he does, I’ll be sure to link over to him – hint hint Wingman.)

Take It Away

So, what should you get out of this article? Simple. You will play better and see stronger lines of play when you are playing a deck that you enjoy and are comfortable with. If you’ve been building and rebuilding decks every week, I strongly encourage you to build one deck that you’re happy with, and play it for a while – perhaps a full three month rotation. Make small changes, keep it current, but stay with the same deck.

I did with Tokens, and I can proudly say that it’s done me well. I’ve had the best Magic finishes of my life with this deck, and not once did I wish I was playing Delver, or Wolf Run Ramp instead. They don’t fit me – and so I’ll always be stronger with one of my decks.

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Do you have a specific style of deck that you prefer? Why do you like it? What advantages do you see in that style? Let us know in the comments – here or on Reddit.

This Thursday, I’ll talk about the changes I’m making to BW Tokens in anticipation of this weekend’s Star City Super IQ at All-Star Collectables. I’m still not certain if I’ll be playing or judging, but either way, I will be there. If you’re in the general Pennsylvania/New Jersey Area, it’s going to be a great time and we’d love to have you there. More information can be found HERE.  As a bonus, Thursday will see the first draft of the Naya Deck that I’m working on, though it’s far from complete.