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A strange experience. After the second pre-release, where I had a valuable but extremely difficult pool to build from (and went 2-2), I wasn’t sure I had a good handle on the format. Upon opening my packs, I felt a bit of dismay. Removal was nearly non-existant: red had no direct damage, and black was limited to a Corpse Lunge, Deadly Allure, and Farbog Boneflinger, outside of that it was slim and conditional. The creature curve was out of whack. I had a lot of vampires, but they started at three cost and went up from there. RB also lacked a comfortable amount of 1 and 2 drops, plus the lack of removal kneecapped the stalling game.

Ultimately I went with a WG build that I didn’t feel comfortable with. I ended up using all but two of my green cards from the pool just to make the deck (those two being Full Moon’s Rise and Feed the Pack). Final build

Creatures

2 Young Wolf, Avacynian Priest, Silverchase Fox, Unruly Mob, Thraben Heretic, Loyal Cathar/Unhallowed Cathar, Dawntreader Elk, Deranged Outcast, Scorned Villager/Moonscarred Werewolf, Elder Cathar, Fiend Hunter, Hollowhenge Spirit, Woodland Sleuth, Silverclaw Griffin, Grizzled Outcasts/Krallenhorde Wantons, Hollowhenge Beast

Artifacts

Blazing Torch

Sorceries

Prey Upon, Divine Reckoning

Instants

Moment of Heroism, 2 Rally the Peasants

Land

2 Evolving Wilds, 8 Plains, 6 Forests, 1 Mountains

How did it play?  A hell of a lot better than I expected. While it was aggro as all hell (10 1 and 2 drop creatures), it actually proved tricky to play in the format. There are a lot of surprises possible in INN/DKA sealed, so you can’t really take much for granted. I had a few tough games in rounds three and four where I had to eke out a lot of value against boards that were, on the whole, better set up than mine.

The rounds:

Round 1 vs Justin? Josh? I can’t remember.

He was playing GR. Nice guy and it was fun, but I noticed a few misplays on his part and some mistakes in his build. Typically after matches at prereleases and launch parties, I like to offer to suggest build changes, but I didn’t do that, here. I did offer that he had a few times he could have made some very strong plays against me with his flash creatures but didn’t that he should keep that in mind. He did mention he hadn’t played at all in 10 years, so was rusty. Hopefully he did well for the rest.

1-0 (2-0 in games)

Round 2 vs Jimmy playing Bant.

Jimmy’s a friend and he’s typically prone to making some build mistakes. That was apparent here. He was primarly GW with a splash of blue. After a quick 2-0 win (game 2 I had to mull to 5 just to get land, but managed to eke it out.) I checked out his deck and excised the blue from it. He had decided to try and play a bit of a control game by including three blue spirits… This was over some premium green creatures like Gatstaf Shepherd, Ulvenwald Bears, and Briarpack Alpha. There were some other things he included too that were subpar, so I suggested changes to make the deck much stronger. To be honest, if he’d had that build against me, I probably would have lost, absent play mistakes.

2-0 (4-0 in games)

Round 3 vs Chris playing GW.

Chris is the editor of one of the major magic sites, and a cool guy. Funnily enough we were sitting next to each other while building, and even played a quick game to see how our decks worked. I won that one, but this match was a grind. In game 1 he dropped a Trepenation Blade and managed to whittle me down while I was doing a slower hit against him. We actually got to the point where I had one card left in my deck, one life, and three creatures. He also had three creatures. I had a Rally in the graveyard ready to flash back, so I attacked. I needed him to block in a play mistake way such that I’d be able to wipe his board and still have one of my creatures survive (which was guaranteed, since I had first strike). Unfortunately he blocked correctly and kept a creature alive.

Game two was similarly epic, he had fliers and flash and deathtouch, but made one play mistake where he attacked into my griffin when I had blazing torch on the board to make up the difference in damage. The game went long, but I slowly managed to whittle his creatures down to where I could attack and profitably get the 22 points of damage needed to kill him, thanks to double Rally. (He was at 18 life with 4 points of lifelink.)

However we were short on time at this point and while we tried to push out game three, we went to time and neither of us could get through. I’m not sure how the game would have gone from there.

2-0-1 (4-1-1 in games)

Round 4 vs Tony playing UW.

Tony is a good player. He’s probably consistently one of the best at the shoppe. He won the previous launch party earlier in the day, and absolutely wrecked me in a pre-release with an awesome GW deck. In fact, I don’t think I’ve beaten Tony in any match we’ve played before. (I’ve won games, but he’s managed to overcome me in the end.

His deck had a lot of fliers (which I’m bad against), a lot of guys who die for value, and some tricks. I had to play super tricky to do anything against him. Making trades for value, accepting losses, and so forth. In game 1 he managed to get me down to 8 life and just dropped a Requiem Angel. I had a Loyal Cathar with 2 counters on it (thanks to the Elder Cathar), but nothing else that was super strong. Thankfully, I had the perfect play of Moment of Heroism followed by Prey Upon and then attack, getting me back up to 20 life and taking out his biggest worrisome advantage. From there I managed to continue eking out enough value to take the game away.

In game 2, I go to a board state of Loyal Cathar, Deranged Outcast and Unruly Mob. The correct play at one point turned out to be saccing the Cathard to pump the Mob up to a 4/4 and then productively letting other guys die until, eventually, I had a rather large mob (6/6 or so) and a Hollowhenge Spirit at 4/4. Despite being tremendously worried about his possible tricks, I was pretty far beyond his power at that point and managed to take the win. I found out afterward that he had triple Midnight Haunting, which would have been backbreaking to face, but he didn’t see a single one in either game. Lucky me.

3-0-1 (6-1-1 in games).

Overall a very happy result. Prey Upon is awesome, even with relatively small creatures. Rally the Peasants is amazing and I actually wasn’t going to play it at first. Chris was the one who suggested it to me, which is why I managed to win that game against him at all. It proved to be key in more than a few other games, as well. While I didn’t use it much except for that final game, Deranged Outcast is really strong, especially with a Mob in play. The Loyal Cathar is very strong, and probably worth the WW cost to cast it. The Hollowhenge Spirit, and flash creatures in general, are very impressive, too.

This mostly cements my belief that GW is the best combination for INN/DKA sealed. I’m more willing to look at a shallow one of those, especially green, if it can make the pool work. While I didn’t have a lot of creatures I would have liked (the spirit makers, flashy green stuffs) and lacked some of the great spells, like Travel Preparations, there are enough ways to make the archtype work.

If I was going to make one change for the deck (and one sideboard I should have made game 2 against Tony) it would be to take out Divine Reckoning in favor of something else. Probably a second Moment of Heroism, but possibly Break of Day or (in the case of the sideboard) One-Eyed Scarecrow.

Something I’ll be keeping an eye out for at the Grand Prix.

My record put me in 3rd place after tiebreakers (after Chris and another Chris who also went 3-0-1), but that’s effectively a tie for first for payout purposes. Got 7 packs. Between this and the two pre-releases, I’ve gone 8-3-1 (16-9-1 in games). Overall, I’m happy with that, but there’s room to improve.

I Remember Banding: Casual Corner: Arcane Denial

irememberbanding:

Even though I’m supposed to tell you stories about Arcane Denial, Alliances was the final set to have additional artwork for cards in the same set.

I kind of miss that. I know they did away with it to cut back on costs and because players wanted to “identify” the card by the art.

Dang…

Bar none, one of my favorite cards of all time.

Magic the Gathering!: Planeswalkers Unite!: A Tumblr Project

ihititwithmyaxe:

Listen up, those of you Magically inclined! A few of us are laying the groundwork for a large project, full of epic win. It’s something of a collaboration and a collective, a single, unified gathering place for MTG on Tumblr. Its functions are in the formative stages, and…

Sounds awesome. If someone could figure out an easy way that would give card linking without needing to URL each one manually, that would be fantastic.

On The Future of Legacy | ManaNation.com

I don’t think I can state any more simply than the entire concept of the reserve list is bullshit. And Aaron Forsythe’s defense that they would have changed it already if they could is likewise bullshit.

The existence of the list is increasingly stifling expansion of Magic play and it only does so to appease the small few (and a shrinking percentage) of the players who were stupid enough to assume that buying a game could be considered an investment. This is worse because it comes at a time when Wizards is pushing forward with a format that almost needs at least some presence of Legacy staples in Commander. Not just for the hot cards, but also for all the weird rares that can be amazing in the format but were printed pre-Masques so can be difficult to find, even if they aren’t all that expensive.

Kill the damn thing. And kill it hard.

However, since it seems that’s unlikely, at least in the near future, Wizards needs to do something. And, frankly, cutting Legacy off at the knees would be a nice start. Star City Games does enough work to support the format, Wizards doesn’t need to do any more work on that end of things.

Any complaints about why people don’t play Extended really comes down to one issue: Wizards doesn’t support it enough.

Right now, PTQs go through three seasons a year. You’ve got Sealed season, which starts around the time the new block is released and runs to the end of the year. You’ve got extended season, which runs about January through March. And then you’ve got six months of Standard season.

That’s it. Nothing else is supported in PTQs. Barring some major investment from a third party (SCG, Channel Fireball, TCG Player or some new upstart) this isn’t likely to change unless Wizards decides to step in.

The real solution would be for Wizards to switch things up. Do away with the entire “season”. Instead of having people go into a specific three or six month period knowing what to expect, and what the metagame is likely to be, they should rotate it all. Do Standard throughout the year. Do sealed at odd times. Give us more than three months of Extended. Perhaps even throw in oddball choices like Block Constructed (which, AFAIK, never shows up in PTQs, only in PTs) or perhaps something like Pauper. (Which could be limited by set: Standard Pauper and such.)

The advantages of this could be huge. Just think about the metagame that could develop for Extended in the late summer when you have not only the full cards from two blocks, but also from three or four basic sets? Contrast that with a Standard that hits right after block rotation, so you’re limited to five sets, and it becomes a much more skin-of-the-teeth thing, as a few cards from the new set could make or break the tournament.

Overall, the environment would become more exciting, more varied, and, ideally, more innovative. Magic right now is pretty stale. The metagame defines itself quickly and while there are changes, they aren’t especially rapid or surprising, except for those few moments after a set is released.

And then you do it for FNM, as well.

Option one: Destroy the Reserved List like the unholy piece of crap that it is.

Option two: Shuffle up the PTQ season so people have to think and adjust on the fly.

In either way, people will start thinking about formats besides Standard or Legacy all the damn time.

Been a good weekend for Magic.

Made a trade to get a sealed box of Worldwake. Would like to get a Zen box so I can do some sealed with my friends.

Also, my brother found a box with all his old Magic cards. Had a Maze of Ith in there, rather played, but still perfectly fine. Also a bunch of old Portal cards including Sylvan Tutor and Wrath of God.

mtgfan:

Flashback: wtfml:

She’s trying to distract him. What a cheater.

Oh, please. Magic has so many problems with gender imbalance. We really don’t need shaming women for their dress or appearance to just make it worse.

Do the right thing. Condemn such viewpoints when they happen.

Women and Magic: The Game’s Lost Tribe | ManaNation.com

Excellent article on what I would argue is the biggest problem Magic has: lack of player diversity.

I’m less willing to forgive Wizards in this, however. The article is correct that the female characters within Magic tend to be strong and positive (and well rounded), it feels like a bare minimum effort in many ways. The company shouldn’t be given cookies for doing what should be the baseline. It should be encouraged to do more.

The Game Design Challenge 2011: Bigger Than Jesus Panel at GDC 2011 (via gamespot)

Very interesting. Between the three presentations, there’s a lot of room to look at and explore what religion is.

I can understand why Rohrer’s won. It’s certainly the most conventional from a video game standpoint, which is a bit surprising given his very unconventional games. With all the brouhaha about ChainWorld, it’s a bit refreshing and interesting to look at the core idea. Once I do that, it seems to explode with possibility. I don’t know if it’s truly a religion, but the idea of… serial world development is really rich and interesting.

Now the cult of personality that has arisen around the game. I could argue that THAT is a religion. In this case, it’s less about the game and more that it’s become… a mystical text. What actually happens in the game is unimportant to the message. This is unfortunate, but I suppose not unforeseen.

I’d like to see other ChainWorld’s develop, particularly if they’re done in a platform besides MineCraft. (Nothing against MineCraft, but it would be nice to see if the concept can work elsewhere.) I’d also like to see if ChainWorld can survive without the associated personality cult.

On John Romero’s presentation, I thought that he was initially just doing a quick and dirty simulation of some religious elements. It’s possible he was, but upon consideration, I think there’s something deeper at play in Messiah6502.

It seems that while it IS a simulation of a religion (mostly Christianity in this case), we can fairly easily set up the rules of the game. Romero didn’t, as far as I can tell, but that’s actually acceptable in a sense. Actually, what the game needs are meta-rules.

I think they exist something like this:

1. The messiah defines the rules of the game.
2. The messiah runs the game.
3. Upon conclusion of the game, a new messiah is chosen.
4. Repeat.

And that’s basically it. What Romero did wasn’t the entire game, but just an iteration. In his final act of handing off the game to a new messiah, he allowed it to mutate into something new.

And in that sense, the religion can continue and grow. It’s an abstract game, to be sure, but I think it allows it to extend beyond a simple simulation.

I’d probably lump it into the realm of Nomic where the point of the game is, really, to define the game. 1000 Blank White Cards is also similar. The crux point for Messiah6502 is that it isn’t at all democratic. (At least not beyond the ability for people to choose not to take part.)

I kind of doubt anything will come of it, though. Being overshadowed by ChainWorld will do that.

Finally, Jenova Chen’s piece is interesting from a philosophical standpoint, but I’m less interested in the game applications. It seems more like gamification of a proposed religion than a game AS a religion.

Now, don’t get me wrong, his proposed idea is one I can get behind, since it seems, if not antithetical to consumerism and corporatism, at least has some possible positive results.

However, taking TED and turning it into Facebook for ideas feels a bit like a mishmash. Again, it would be interesting to see it develop, but it also has the most work to go into it.

One last thing I found interesting about all three is the lack of end state. None of these games are designed to be complete, even if they may end up complete for a single player. I suppose in a lot of ways, they don’t feel like very complete games. Although Rohrer’s does have a player end state and because it’s based on MineCraft, the gameplay is fairly complete.

Goblin Artisans: CCDD 031511—Benalish Throwback

Over on the Goblin Artisans design blog, there’s a running project to re-design Alpha, trying to fix some of the problems that existed back then.

Naturally, some of the discussion got onto Banding, an unholy conglomeration of abilities that is difficult to understand and hasn’t shown up in the game in ages.

It’s also one of my favorite abilities, since it’s got potential to be so damn powerful (honestly, it’s probably the absolute best combat ability.) So I made some suggestions to split it up, and now Jay Treat has taken those suggestions for the latest Cool Card Design of the Day.

A very minor bit of internet fame, I suppose.

Hoo, been a couple weeks.

I ended up skipping on the Extended PTQ, mostly because I woke up late, didn’t want to trek a mile+ in the rain to get to it, and didn’t have a sideboard for my deck to speak of. I did manage to play one game against a friend after he finished (he went 4-2-2). This was somewhat educational, as we found that my Soul Sisters blend absolutely destroys Boros. Also, Ajani’s Pridemate can get ridiculous in a hurry.

Besides that, I did manage to do a fair bit of trading. Probably let my Thoughtsiezes go a bit under value, but I did manage to get a fair number of Ravnica Duels, Shadowmoor filter lands, and a few other EDH possibles. Also managed to get myself set up fairly well for NEXT Extended season, when I’m really inclined to run a Master Transmuter deck. Nothing like planning ahead.

But enough about all that new stuff. On with the show.

White

• AEther Shockwave
• Araba Mothrider
• Blessed Breath
• Charge Across the Araba
• Heart of Light
• Hold the Line
• Indebted Samurai (x2)
• Kabuto Moth
• Kami of Tattered Shoji
• Kitsune Bonesetter
• Kitsune Dawnblade
• Kitsune Loreweaver
• Mothrider Samurai
• Oyobi, Who Split the Heavens
• Samurai Enforcers
• Silverstorm Samurai
• Terashi’s Cry
• Waxmane Baku

There’s two things that jump out here. On one hand, there are a lot of samurai, and I’ve kinda wanted to try building a samurai deck. On the other, is Oyobi, which seems like it can be one amazing game ending solution in short order. The downside for the latter is that there are only four spirits in white. Three of the four are very good (besides Oyobi, both the Kabuto Moth and Waxmane Baku are very solid. The moth is actually good enough to go in any deck. On the upside, none of the Spirit or Arcane spells require more than a single W, so if I go that route, it can almost be a splash color. I also rather like the utility cards here, which grant a number of possible game winners, either by tapping the opponent down and getting an attack in or allowing a lot of pump.

Blue

• Counsel of the Soratami
• Dampen Thought
• Descendant of Soramaro
• Eternal Dominion
• Freed from the Real
• Hisoka’s Guard
• Ideas Unbound
• Murmurs from Beyond
• Oppressive Will
• Phantom Wings
• Psychic Puppetry
• Quash
• Ribbons of the Reikai
• Secretkeeper
• Soratami Rainshaper
• Soratami Mirror-Guard
• Soratami Mirror-Mage
• Teardrop Kami
• Trusted Advisor
• Time Stop
• Veil of Secrecy

Card draw and control. I like both of those things, and it seems like there’s a lot of solid options to support another color. Unfortunately, the best way that works out is in a Spirit deck, and there are only two in the color. There are, however, a lot of playable arcane spells, which helps out the spirit deck. And the Soratami + Time Stop is some brutally good control. Eternal Dominion as a possible finisher?

Black

• Ashen-Skin Zubera
• Blessing of Leeches
• Crawling Filth
• Genju of the Fens
• Ghost-Lit Stalker
• Gnat Miser (x2)
• Neverending Torment
• Nezumi Ronin
• Okiba-Gang Shinobi
• Oni Possession
• Painwracker Oni
• Psychic Spear
• Ragged Veins
• Scuttling Death
• Sink into Takenuma (x2)
• Wicked Akuba

Kind of a thin selection from black this time around. There’s a stunning lack of removal, which really hampers the color. The discard control is very solid, however, but I don’t feel that’s enough to move into the color. I do wonder if double Gnat Miser might be a good early play against someone, though. Neverending Torment can be a great finisher, since it will probably only need a few turns at the most to deck someone in a limited format. Wicked Akuba could be a neat card, but it likely needs a lot of dedication to black in order to work, which I don’t think we can do here.

Red

• Akki Blizzard-Herder
• Battle-Mad Ronin
• First Volley
• Frostling
• Glitterfang
• Goblin Cohort
• Inner Fire
• Mannichi, the Fevered Dream
• Overblaze (x2)
• Sokenzan Bruiser
• Sokenzan Spellblade (x2)
• Soul of Magma
• Yamabushi’s Flame
• Yuki-Onna

Well, if I want to go with the Samurai deck, this seems to be the best second color. Three bodies, including double Spellblade, seems like a solid addition. Plus, there is a smattering of removal, which will probably play well in just about anything. On the spirit side, I actually like a lot of the possibilities here. Soul of Magma can get a lot of incremental advantage, or just ping the opponent to death. Glitterfang allows for repeated spirit casting tricks. I’m not quite sure if I have the cards to break Mannichi, but that seems like it would be good, as well.

Green

• Burr Grafter
• Child of Thorns
• Dosan’s Oldest Chant
• Elder Pine of Jukai
• Fiddlehead Kami
• Gnarled Mass
• Harbinger of Spring
• Joyous Respite
• Kodama’s Reach
• Nightsoil Kami
• Orbweaver Kumo
• Rending Vines
• Sakura-Tribe Springcaller
• Serpent Skin
• Vital Surge (x2)

Some really good spirit choices here. I like the sac for bonus guys and there’s a good amount of soulshift. Elder Pine can be great to sift the deck and to keep hand size up. Fiddlehead and Harbinger are both difficult to remove. Plus, Kodama’s Reach is very good for mana fixing. While that’s not enough to go into green by itself, it can support other strategies quite well.

Tough choices all around. I really see two deck possibilities, so I might as well look at them both.

Spirit Deck

• AEther Shockwave
• Blessed Breath
• Charge Across the Araba
• Kabuto Moth
• Kami of Tattered Shoji
• Oyobi, Who Split the Heavens
• Terashi’s Cry
• Waxmane Baku
• Counsel of the Soratami
• Hisoka’s Guard
• Oppressive Will
• Ribbons of the Reikai
• Secretkeeper
• Soratami Mirror-Mage
• Soratami Rainshaper
• Time Stop
• Burr Grafter
• Child of Thorns
• Elder Pine of Jukai
• Fiddlehead Kami
• Harbinger of Spring
• Kodama’s Reach
• 6 Plains
• 7 Islands
• 5 Forests

Samurai Deck

• AEther Shockwave
• Araba Mothrider
• Blessed Breath
• Charge Across the Araba
• Indebted Samurai (x2)
• Kabuto Moth
• Kitsune Dawnblade
• Mothrider Samurai
• Samurai Enforcers
• Silverstorm Samurai
• Terashi’s Cry
• Akki Blizzard-Herder
• Battle-Mad Ronin
• First Volley
• Frostling
• Glitterfang
• Goblin Cohort
• Overblaze
• Sokenzan Bruiser
• Sokenzan Spellblade (x2)
• Yamabushi’s Flame
• 9 Plains
• 8 Mountains

I think there are problems in both these builds. In both cases, I felt like I was scrounging to fill up the deck, so there are a few pieces in each I’d wish I didn’t have to play. In some ways, the spirit deck feels iffy, because it’s most heavily blue while the dominant strategy of the deck is in the other colors. I suppose it’s something to play control until you can assemble the pieces for the spirits to shine.

The samurai deck has a few non-samurai pieces. While that doesn’t bother me particularly (other than theme, there’s no reason to stick with the samurai here), those excess pieces feel pretty weak, especially Goblin Cohort and Sokenzan Bruiser.

I suppose it’s possible I’m building this entirely wrong and I should go with a RW combination of good samurai and spirits. Still, I really do like a lot of the control pieces in blue.