Entries Tagged 'Games' ↓

So would you have made this play?

Standard operating procedure for this kind of deck would obviously be Farseek (chain into Garruk Relentless with a Borderland Ranger + Rest in Peace follow-up, possibly via Cavern of Souls)… But I couldn’t resist the sweet, sweet justice of Rest in Peace against Moorland Haunt + Runechanter’s Pike on the second.

Very likely I am going to play a G/W-based Selesnya Ramp deck a la Caleb Durward at next week’s Standard Open in Edison, NJ… But Caleb says there is no reason not to play a third color… Figure I go with this guy girl fish:

Prime Speaker Zegana is a perfect follow-up to Thragtusk, a la Garruk, Primal Hunter… But potentially even more powerful. Also sweet with a Restoration Angel!

So… Would you have run out the Rest in Peace or played the usual Farseek? BTW easy 2-0 is easy.

LOVE
MIKE

As I have been saying everywhere anyone will listen to me for the past couple of weeks I am thoroughly excited by Return to Ravnica [Mythic] rare Rakdos’s Return.

Examples of such places:

• Returning Top 8 Magic Podcast
• Last week’s Top Decks on DailyMTG
• Last week’s Flores Friday on Star City Games

My current opinion is that the format is going to evolve — within a few weeks — where Rakdos’s Return becomes a major strategic tool in Standard. The tools we see right now seem like they will encourage a vector “up” in order to counteract a Level One vector “forward” (going bigger, eventually going over-the-top)… And I feel like Rakdos’s Return will make for a twofold potential over-the-top (regular decks do a bad job of interacting with big X-spells to the face) and a parity-breaker. If both players are just dumping dudes on the table or trading removal spells even a small amount of card advantage putting one into topdeck mode can help you into a great position of advantage (in particular if your deck is all two-for-one advantage cards to begin with).

Strategically, I think a critical mass of two-for-ones will be strong against blue control, give an edge against other creature decks by blunting beatdown, and in this case, Rakdos’s Return (the card at hand) can serve as a Mind Shatter or a finishing Blaze even when the opponent is empty.

I posted an earlier version of this deck on Flores Friday last week but once I saw the card Centaur Healer I knew I wanted to go in another direction. In particular, the curve of Centaur Healer into Huntmaster of the Fells into Thragtusk seemed like the dream disaster for attackers. And once you have white for Centaur Healer? Restoration Angel just seems like the most obvious tool in the world when you are playing a critical mass of 187 creatures.

The biggest shift I eventually resigned myself to was to cut Lotleth Troll — the most obvious card in the world for a creature deck that can make both black and green — to go mono-land-searching thug.

Here is my current build (which presumes a certain set of mana tools, and can therefore be impaired or improved depending on the reality of the format):

3 Abrupt Decay
3 Dreadbore
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Rakdos’s Return

4 Borderland Ranger
4 Farseek
4 Gatecreeper Vine
3 Thragtusk

4 Bonfire of the Damned

4 Restoration Angel

4 Blood Crypt
7 Forest
2 Gavony Township
1 Mountain
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Plains
1 Rakdos Guildgate
1 Selesnya Guildgate
1 Swamp
1 Temple Garden

sideboard:
2 Duress
4 Centaur Healer
2 Slaughter Games
1 Acidic Slime
1 Thragtusk
4 Pillar of Flame
1 Ray of Revelation

Gavony Township was Osyp Lebedowicz’s idea. I tried one, then two; and I kept cutting total lands… Turns out with all these Gatecreeper Vines and Borderland Rangers and Farseeks you don’t need to have a billion lands to act like you do. 23 is actually just fine, and the deck obviously mulligans well seeing as it has 8 cards main that go +1 card and actually fix your mana.

The sideboard is designed to either resolve Rakdos’s Return against blue control (soften them up with Duress or Slaughter Games) or go mono-beatown destroyer with 4 Pillar of Flame, 4 Centaur Healer, 4 Huntmaster of the Fells, and 4 Thragtusk. With Pillar of Flame containing Lotleth Troll, Gravecrawler, Geralf’s Messenger, and Strangleroot Geist; plus a chain of unending life gain (backed up by Restoration Angel) I feel like this deck should have some great beatdown defense tools.

I have been screwing around on MTGO with similar substitute cards (Sylvan Scrying for Gatecreeper Vine grabbing Elfhame Palace for instance) and the mana seems like it should work.

Just the first-ish pass

LOVE
MIKE

Don’t forget to buy TheOMG at Star City Games!

If you have been to StarCityGames.com recently you have probably seen something new, different, awesome at the top of the page; no — I don’t mean my handsome face (though that is certainly awesome) — I mean the banner for SolForge, Brian Kibler’s new game, currently being promoted up on Kickstarter.

I have not played any SolForge (yet) but I intend to; well, I guess I am going to be stuck doing so actually on account of I just got all these cool future SolForge bonuses as a backer. Anyway, like I was saying, I haven’t played SolForge yet so it’s not like I can tell you it is the greatest thing since sliced bread but besides the fact that I assume it will in fact be awesome (they had Richard mother effin’ Garfield on the squad!), but as you probably know about me, I admire people who put themselves out there and do things. Kibler et al put together an ambitious goal of $250,000 and they have less than a week to get there.

At the time of this writing, SolForge is just past $224,000.

They need circa $6,000 a day to finish it out… Come on cats! I would love to see these guys get there! I just threw a couple of #TheOMG dollars SolForge-way (aka “all the cool kids are doing it”).

Oh, and while you are in the generous / buying mood, The Official Miser’s Guide is going strong, but could certainly be going $37 stronger if you know what I mean

• Back SolForge on KickStarter!
• Check out the first chapter of The Official Miser’s Guide… Free! (I guarantee it will leave you smiling)

LOVE
MIKE

So, bad news first…

Today’s videos are also out-of-step in terms of audio and visuals.

Oh well, I assume you will forgive me.

Speaking of forgiveness, Huntmaster of the Fells really undoes a lot of goofball play. That is a good Magic: The Gathering Card.

In these videos you will see (but not really love the narration of) the battle between ye olde Huntmaster of the Fells and new kid on the block, Blood Artist. Blood Artist tries his best, but let’s be honest, one of these cards costs twice as much mana as the other one and won its debut PT with a mirror match finals.

Huntmaster of the Fells

Cool Blood Artist play:
At one point I smash my opponent with Bonfire of the Damned when he has Blood Artist equipped with Mortarpod. I mentally figure myself as taking four damage (one from the Mortarpod sacrifice, then three from the triggers on Blood Artist when his dudes die)… My opponent correctly (!) does not sacrifice the Blood Artist to Mortarpod. Why?

He wouldn’t have a Blood Artist in play to cash in the three one stack later!

So, I was wrong about taking four (took three instead). A more impulsive, greed motivated (but ultimately incorrect) opponent might accidentally just do one.

Cool Huntmaster of the Fells play:
It is pretty easy to leave back spells to flip over Huntmaster of the Fells. Even mana-tapping-greedy folk like me can do it! You can use your mana to sacrifice creatures to Birthing Pod, or just cast a Restoration Angel on the opponent’s turn (ideally locking fingers with your Ravager of the Fells to set up more Huntmaster of the Fells triggers).

Sorry again for some sub-optimal video content. New computer / haven’t done this for a year / whatever assorted excuses.

Game One: Naya Pod v. B/W Tokens

Game Two: Naya Pod v. B/W Tokens

LOVE
MIKE

What is #DesperateRavings?

So over the weekend I [presumably] melted yet another iMac hard drive by playing MTGO on Parallels.

This is possibly meaningless to you if you don’t own a Mac. Basically I slowed down / stopped making Magic videos about a year ago on account of it being cumbersome from a hardware standpoint. My wife, irate at the steaming slag heap that was once a glorious centerpiece of computing entertainment, instructed that I “get a PC and only play the Magic on it” … We are essentially a Mac household but I think it is no stretch at this point to say MTGO plays better on a PC than a Mac.

So I got this new laptop that I am reasonably happy with, and I decided to start taping MTGO videos again!

Yay!

My Star City fans will be so happy!

…

hmmm…

Long story short, I was a bit out of step in terms of audio and video on these vids, and didn’t realize until after I had “produced” like eight of them. Totally unsuitable for professional distribution, and way too much work for me to fix on the Mac (or force on Jesse Snyder or Jeremy Noell). So… In a fight between “sending the videos to the graveyard” or “throwing them up on YouTube so at least some of my good people will enjoy them” the latter prevailed.

So please take the next four or so blog posts in that light. In some wise these would have been good enough, I hope, but I am certainly not presenting them as such here and now, today.

Fair warning, a fair amount of these vids is just going to be out-of-sync voice-over of YT and a disembodied Hypercam dialog. To wit:

Big takeaways:

1. There will be at least four uncharacteristically content-rich blog updates here on FiveWithFlores and the FiveWithFlores YouTube page this week.
2. They will all be about Naya Pod.
3. I actually made an even clever-er deck that I am going to do an article on for Flores Friday.
4. There will be videos on the aforementioned deck-I-like-more-than-Naya-Pod circa Flores Friday or next Monday (Lauren’s pick / I guess it depends how fast I get them to her)

Today’s videos have this fellow featured quite prominently:

Hold on a sec… Is Zealous Conscripts a chick?

Game One, versus U/W Control
In which Zealous Conscripts struts her shenanigans all over Consecrated Sphinx.

Game Two, versus U/W Control
In which we encounter the hardest working Cavern of Souls in the history of Dominaria; and a U/W Venser, the Sojourner player learns who exactly has inevitability. Spoilers!

Hope you enjoyed these, again, for what they are.

LOVE
MIKE

At least before we have a lot of tangible tournament results, I am thinking there are two main interesting cards to think about for Standard with Avacyn Restored:

1. Delver of Secrets (surprise surprise), and
2. Cavern of Souls

Specifically, Cavern of Souls gives you another dual land to play first turn Delver of Secrets (and through a Mental Misstep, if that matters)… Plus you get to play Champion of the Parish for double the possible aggressive starts!

Now if you are trying to buff a Champion of the Parish you need to configure your deck list a little bit differently. The Delver deck is already chock full of Humans (Delver of Secrets and Snapcaster Mage, for instance, are both Humans)… But Geist of Saint Traft isn’t. I decided to go a little bit of a different direction and swap Geist of Saint Traft with Blade Splicer. Blade Splicer is a little bit weaker on offense (2 + 4, with the 4 evasive being a bit more damage than 1 + 3 and the 3 not evasive); but the 3 [Golem] striking first (and potentially generating a fine synergy with Intangible Virtue) makes for an elite defense.

Please keep in mind this is just a first pass:

Champion Delver with Avacyn Restored v.1

4 Delver of Secrets
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Mana Leak
4 Ponder
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Vapor Snag

2 Gut Shot

4 Blade Splicer
3 Gather the Townsfolk
4 Honor of the Pure
4 Champion of the Parish

4 Cavern of Souls
4 Glacial Fortress
6 Island
2 Moorland Haunt
1 Plains
4 Seachrome Coast

sb:
1 Batterskull
1 Consecrated Sphinx 
2 Dissipate
2 Mental Misstep
2 Negate
1 Gut Shot
2 Celestial Purge
1 Revoke Existence
3 Timely Reinforcements

Whether Intangible Virtue or Honor of the Pure is the right buffing enchantment is up for grabs, I think. It is a question of how much you care about Vigilance versus buffing Champion of the Parish; I have Honor of the Pure right now because this seems to be a bit of a “Champion” deck. I am sure you can see the hyper-aggressive starts like…

• Champion of the Parish –> Gather the Townsfolk…

Or better yet:

• Champion of the Parish –> Champion of the Parish + Delver of Secrets

I am not super satisfied with this pass right now. For one, I don’t even know which is the right two drop enchantment! Other things kind of up in the air…

2 Mana Leak + 2 Gut Shot… I am neither elite against G/R Ramp nor against other Delver decks in the main; when I was playing 2 Gut Shots in Baltimore I felt like a smart guy, but right now many Delver players are main decking three Gut Shots! I felt like Mana Leak was a compromise-able card based on my previous Cavern of Souls blog post (i.e. players like G3rryT and Jonny Magic are playing only two).

3 Blade Splicer or 3 Gather the Townsfolk? This one is pretty debatable. I went with 3 Gathers because we have shifted Cavern of Souls to a primary source of White mana… but it doesn’t actually cast a Gather the Townsfolk… Same reason I dropped the Moorland Haunt count by one (it doesn’t contribute to the Moorland Haunt activation). I guess you can cut a Gitaxian Probe… But that’s like my favorite card in Standard, so please don’t do that.

Obviously this version doesn’t have the “race you with an Invisible Stalker” functionality of the straight Delver deck; that said, I found Invisible Stalker to be the weakest card in straight Delver, worse than a Champion of the Parish, certainly, if you don’t have a Sword of War and Peace or a Pike.

The sideboard is medium-straightforward. The only weird card is Consecrated Sphinx. I actually kind of fell in love with that card in Delver playing a variation of Caleb Durward’s Delver list, whereas I give Jace, Memory Adept a rating of “uh… I guess it’s a card” in most situations.

I do think Mental Misstep is an absolute must for Delver, even though it is a bit weaker now that Cavern of Souls will be entering the Standard Arena… But if you watched Chi Hoi Yim work over Robbie Cordell in the finals of the Birmingham Open (and how could you not, with the attractive and charismatic Joey Pasco YT on the mic?) … You know what kind of havoc Mental Misstep can levy in the Delver mirror… Especially on the draw and when setting up Timely Reinforcements.

Speaking of which, a month or so ago I felt like the Delver mirror was my best matchup in Standard due to my figuring out Mental Misstep (and I know that is ironic as I finally lost the Delver mirror playing for Top 8, on camera)… and the truth is, my Invitational deck was nowhere near as prepared for other Delver decks as this one.

I think the tensions in Standard are going to be interesting. This version — whether you stay with Honor of the Pure or move [back] to Intangible Virtue — is pretty on-par with the “tokens” Delver decks in terms of tokens production + buffing (they are going to have some mix of Midnight Haunting and Lingering Souls instead of Gather the Townsfolk and Blade Splicer), but one Golem can rumble pretty adequately with multiple regular tokens, and you can use your Phyrexian mana to set up a favorable Gather, don’t forget. On balance you have much faster and more explosive mana, and you have literally twice the aggressive draws with Champion of the Parish to get in early damage and put the opponent (or any opponent) on his heels.

Again, just a first pass, but certainly adequate for… say… the first week’s FNM.

I am pretty sure if I were playing in the Rhode Island Open this weekend I would be playing four copies of each of Delver of Secrets, Champion of the Parish, and Cavern of Souls though… Those cards are too good and too fast to ignore, plus they are great together and make for wild synergies with token producers and everything else you want to do with the best deck since Caw-Blade Exarch Twin.

LOVE
MIKE

 

By now you have probably seen Restoration Angel.

If not, I will remind you by pasting it here:

Restoration Angel

My friends Hall of Famer Brian Kibler and future Hall of Famer Patrick Chapin had some interesting things to say about Restoration Angel last week. Patrick pointed out that Restoration Angel, at 3/4, is perfectly suited to mug a Delver of Secrets or Strangleroot Geist with its flash ability; moreover, its “Momentary Blink” will often be worth a card.

Patrick was surprised at how little hoopla and hype were surrounding Restoration Angel (at the time). I mean what if it said…

Flash
Flying
When Restoration Angel enters the battlefield, draw a card.

?

That would be un-ignore-ably bonkers, no?

Well, she kinda sorta says that now… And if you think back to how much I liked Simian Grunts back in the day (sadly I played Simian Grunts to a PT Day Two… in Extended… #BlameAdrianSullivan)… Restoration Angel has a lot of Simian Grunts to it, only without the echo (but with, you know, flying).

Kibler said Restoration Angel is his favorite card in the new set, and not to expect Daybreak Ranger prices.

So yeah Yeah YEAH Restoration Angel is a good card.

… None of that is what I want to talk about today. During my stint in the SCGLive booth this past weekend, Joey Pasco had Restoration Angel blown up on the big screen.

It was an eye-opening experience for YT, and one that catapulted Restoration Angel to new heights of something in my mind.

I actually stumbled on Johannes Voss’s DeviantArt page and found a great graphic that shows the artist’s process from start to finish. You should check it out. (BTW Voss’s Commander’s Authority is probably my favorite art in the set).

But for our purposes I am just going to excerpt from one of the early stage pre-pics:

I want to emphasize that I really like Voss’s stroke. You can see some mad light source skills in this earlier stage, and I feel like I can actually see the speed used to produce the strings holding together that blue bustier. Technique, I like. Here is a rare commentary from YT about the content of the piece.

So… As far as I can tell, this is a pic of a dude looking up the skirt of a winged blonde in full battle armor a Southern Belle nighty.

Discuss.

LOVE
MIKE

Hey everybody!

Sorry if I am a bit late to the game on this topic but I was busy all weekend doing this:

… So I hope y’all liked the ceiling-shattering commentary at SCGLive; so, point being, “I was busy.”

The card in question is Cavern of Souls:

Cavern of Souls

But what is interesting-interesting (or at least the subject of this here blog post) is Zac Hill’s preview article for it at the Mother Ship. And while it might seem a bit apropos in reaction to an article entitled “Gonna Hate” I want to make sure you know I hold Zac in pretty high regard. He made sure to jam a PT Top 8 before taking his gig in R&D, he has a super awesome educational background, and while the most mainstream-mainstream thing I’ve ever written for is a Cosmopolitan article entitled “Stupid Things Guys Do for Fashion” mighty Zac is a contributor to HuffPo (/jelly!).

… But I still disagree with lots of the stuff he wrote in the Cavern of Souls preview.

By the by, unlike certain other commentators (like heartthrob game designer Brian Kibler) I don’t really care about the “… can’t be countered” bit on Cavern of Souls feeling tacked-on. I come from a place of fundamental disagreement with the presuppositions that drove a perceived need around the card.

Here is a summary of the points I am going to hit with this post:

• [R&D] messed up with Snapcaster Mage.
• Mana Leak was almost as savage a culprit as good ol’ Tiago himself // Mana Leak is simply a much more powerful card than [R&D] would be comfortable printing under modern development rules.
• [R&D] would never print Signets nowadays.
• … creatures were too weak for most of Magic’s history

[R&D] messed up with Snapcaster Mage

Personally, as a fan of the game as well as ONE OF THE TOP 10 DECK DESIGNERS OF ALL TIME * my basic belief is that there is always a best card. Sometimes that best card — say in a Tier Two metagame — is a card like Loxodon Hierarch, Remand, or Skred. Loxodon Hierarch — which my team (which included PT Champions like Osyp Lebedowicz, Jon Finkel, and Steve OMS; plus off-team consultant Patrick Chapin) considered the runaway best card in Ravnica Block — was not even played by the winning squad at PT Charleston; I guess their own Top 10 deck designer Saito disagreed. Loxodon Hierarch and Remand — two cards from Ravnica — were at different points considered the best card in Standard… I didn’t even play Remand when I won States with This Girl and no one on any of our Charleston teams played it in Block. When I declared Skred to be the best card in Standard… I was right.

… Yet many players thought this was ludicrous (and probably believably so).

PT Champion Chris Lachmann eventually agreed… on the way to his X-0 performance at Worlds with G/R Snow ramp.

But these are the Best Cards of a Tier Two metagame.

What is the best card in modern Legacy? Force of Will? Brainstorm? Narcomoeba? I don’t know either.

There is always a best card, even in relatively flat metagames.

Today’s Standard is not a flat metagame. This is a metagame of battleships, haymakers, and star destroyers.

… And Snapcaster Mage isn’t even the best card in it.

I have Snapcaster Mage as probably the #2 card in Standard (after Delver of Secrets). I saw a recent rundown of the format’s best cards on ChannelFireball… that did not include Snapcaster Mage at all. (LOL)

Ultimately, I don’t think the presence of a best card is indicative of a mistake. I don’t mind the Titans. I think it’s cool that we have cards like Primeval Titan that have enabled so many interesting land combinations from Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle; to Kessig Wolf-Run; to motherlovin’ Glimmervoid or Cloudpost. How is that a bad thing? How can it be anything but awesome to build scenarios where Copper Myr is the right choice for a particular style of deck?

By the way, I don’t think it was the Titans that killed beloved Baneslayer Angel, rather it really was Mana Leak.

Yet…

Mana Leak was almost as savage a culprit as good ol’ Tiago himself // Mana Leak is simply a much more powerful card than [R&D] would be comfortable printing under modern development rules.

Zac’s asser