Brooligans

Magic the Gathering Brews, card discussion

[brooligans-blog]

My Fearless Magical Inventory

Sam Stoddard wrote this great piece on building a Fearless Magical Inventory, and as I find myself looking to improve my own Magic game, I found myself coming back to it.  What is a Fearless Magical Inventory and why do you make one?

Everyone makes mistakes but very few people own up to them. I wanted to stop lying to myself and stop lying to others. I wanted to take my ego out of the equation and focus on playing better Magic for myself not to impress others or to be thought of as good. I wanted to get start doing well again and a lot of that meant I was going to have to admit to myself that I was not the perfect player and that I had more than a little room to improve. I had already take the first step – admitting that I was not playing perfectly. The second step was to realize that I had the ability to change it. The third step was to make a conscious decision to improve my game and to stop pretending I was a better player than I really am. The fourth step was creating a fearless magical inventory. After some soul-searching I posted on both on the Internet. I knew that with the knowledge of my problems public I would no longer be able to deny them to myself or others. Remove your ego from the equation and you have room to improve your game.

It seems like such a great idea and I’ve never done it before.  So here is my Fearless Magical Inventory:

Taking too long to make decisions

Forgetting key abilities on cards

taking too long to do combat math

Countering the wrong things

Overall play is too slow -- I draw too much

Confusing strategy for technical play.

Getting anxious to make plays

Not playing to the big picture sometimes

Losing track of board state.

Get too afraid of what people might be playing.

I shuffle too slowly.

I take way too long to sideboard.

Not thinking enough about "what matters" -- I am thinking about possibilities and potential more than what presently is relevant to the match.

I theorize too much and play too little.

I lose my concentration at critical moments.

What does your Fearless Magical Inventory look like?

[brooligans-blog]

Revisiting Counterstorm: Card Concept vs Deep Concepts

First, let me tell you about my deck. :) I’ve been working on a Izzet Counterburn deck. The previous incarnation of the deck looks like this:

Counterstorm 

3 Lightning Axe 3 Anticipate 3 Negate 3 Tormenting Voice 3 Twin Bolt 2 Disperse 4 Exquisite Firecraft 3 Fiery Temper 3 Geistblast 3 Harness the Storm 2 Pyromancer's Assault 4 Epiphany at the Drownyard 2 Highland Lake 6 Island 8 Mountain 4 Shivan Reef 4 Wandering Fumarole

Sideboard

2 Dispel 3 Fevered Visions 1 Illusory Gains 2 Kozilek's Return 3 Rending Volley 3 Skywise Teachings 1 Sphinx of the Final Word

It now looks like this:

CounterGeist

3 Fiery Impulse 3 Lightning Axe 3 Clash of Wills 3 Tormenting Voice 4 Spell Shrivel 3 Fiery Temper 4 Exquisite Firecraft 3 Geistblast 2 Consuming Sinkhole 4 Epiphany at the Drownyard 3 Pyromancer's Goggles 1 Sphinx of the Final Word 4 Wandering Fumarole 4 Shivan Reef 2 Highland Lake 8 Mountain 6 Island

Sideboard

3 Invasive Surgery 2 Negate 2 Kozilek's Return 3 Fevered Visions 3 Goldnight Castigator 1 Jace, Unraveler of Secrets 1 Chandra, Flamecaller

(Link is on MTGGoldfish)

Lots of changes!  It seems like I am letting go of some big things here. This deck has run Jace's Sanctum and Harness the Storm and Pyromancer's Assault but now it runs a nice round 0 of each! Aren't these the cards that made the concept of the deck?

Yes and no. Something I think is important when brewing is separate concepts from cards. We acknowledge that certain concepts don't exist without certain cards -- you can't have "counterburn" without counters or burn -- but I those are what I call "card concepts". 

A card concept describes an effect and the expected interactions and results you expect to get from it. 

"This card does X, which will let me do Y, and do Z to push me towards winning."

But I think the appeal of Magic is that the game hides deeper concepts that have little to do with cards and more to do with strategic positioning within an environment.

"I want to play a strategy that implements so quickly that I win in the phase of the game where people are normally setting up."

"I want to implement a strategy that interacts with as little of the common cards in the environment as possible, rendering most of my opponent's strategy irrelevant to the match."

"I want to interact closely with everything my opponent does, answering his threats until her strategy runs out of gas, at which point I take over with threats she can't stop."

You can probably think of multiple decks that match each of these sample strategies.  Deep concepts are very high level approaches to deck design and strategy. They are the fundamentals, abstracted and unrelated to cards, of what is happening in a game of Magic.  

See, the strategic heart of Magic is that it is a game about opportunity cost. What do I do, and why do I take this opportunity rather than the other ones afforded to me at this stage in the game? Every turn of Magic is a fork of choices, which lead to new forks and new choices which lead to...

You get it.

Patrick Chapin once wrote about using mental shortcuts to improve your Magic, and to me a deep concept is really just another of these shortcuts, applied to strategy:  “I can win any way that I want - how do I choose to win?”

But it’s not so easy as deciding. A deep concept is a principle rooted in the timing and flow of the game of Magic.

If you are old like me, you likely remember the Schools of Magic.  If not, click the link and take a trip through the time machine! I feel that the underpinnings of how Magic: the Gathering is played can be found here.

Warning! A lot of this stuff no longer applies, particularly in Standard.  Land Disruption and Hand Disruption have been firmly designed towards sub-strategies at best. Creatures are very powerful.  Counters don't do...I don't know, *everything* (Looking at you, Mana Drain and Force of Will).

What fascinates me, and what keeps me coming back to the document decades later is this: a lot of the deep concepts expressed here still exist! They change form and cards, but those principles and strategic decisions -- “ I want to win this way and do these things” -- those stay relevant even today (with some exceptions I’ll note). "The Deck" from the Weissman school in current standard looks like UR Control... no Serra Angels in sight!

It is the expression of defense and not the exact card effects used that are most relevant. The UR deck, just like “The Deck” plays defense (and make no bones about it, that is job #1 -- even when it plays Hedron Archive it can tap it to remove creatures with Spatial Contortion) until it can play threats like Drowner and Ulamog, which in themselves provide powerful defense and powerful offense.

Deep concepts remain set after set, year after year in MTG. It basically takes redesign of the game's principles to alter deep concepts. For example, resource denial ("I want a strategy that makes it so my opponent can't play the game") is something WotC works hard to keep out of Standard at all costs, so it is a strategy you're unlikely find viable in that format. This deep concept does work in environments with older cards before WotC made these design decisions. So, back to my deck.  The original card concepts here were:

use cards that clone spells to clone burn and draw spells. (Geistblast, Harness the Storm)

use discard to feed spell cloning (Epiphany at the Drownyard, Tormenting Voice, Lightning Axe)

reduce the costs of spells cast more spells per turn (Jace's Sanctum)- blank the text on the my opponent's removal (only wandering fumaroles as creatures in the deck, orignally played with high # of enchantments to diminish Dromoka's Command)

finish with uncounterable burn (Exquisite Firecraft)

deal with troublesome permanents and spells with countermagic and bounce (disperse, spell shrivel, clash of wills)

In contrast, let's put the cards away. My high level goals, my deep concepts, were:

Implement a strategy that makes many of my opponent's answers to threats useless, creating advantage.

I want to my threats to be difficult for the opponent's threats to interact with

I want my answers to be maximally effective; I want to use them to be both threat and answer where possible.

I don't need to answer every threat. I just need to outpace my opponent. When I move to win, I want to turn that time advantage into a race and leverage the nature of my threats and answers to win that race consistently.

Those deep concepts drive just about every Counterburn deck ever. More importantly, those are the real objectives I was trying to serve.  What happens when you play a deck against other competitive decks is that you learn a lot about how card concepts match up.  Playing many games online and in person, I found that single target bounce is just terrible in standard.  There are too many ETB effects you don't want to repeat, and too many permanents that create multiple cards before bouncing (hi there Planeswalkers! Disperse called...it hates you??) for Disperse to work. 

In addition, after many games, some of which were awesome and many which were blech, I found out what was really wrong in this deck with my card concept using Harness the Storm:  Even when I maxed out to a full 4x of each spell, Harness didn’t pull me ahead fast enough.  I needed to turn my graveyard into a separate resource while trying to outpace my opponent enough to start that race, but rarely did it help me do that.

I played a lot of games though before I got to see that.  I resisted Pyromancer’s Goggles because It cost more (mana not $$) and I the brewer in me didn’t want to be some other deck... but the truth is that my deck doesn’t kill before 7th or 8th turn anyways, so Goggles fits and requires less investment of resources and time to serve my deep concepts.  

 One of my few positive traits as a brewer is that when I play games, I will cut out cards, even if they are pet cards.  I’ll try almost any card, but I won’t keep any card.  I had to sacrifice many card concepts, but in the end, I am serving the deep concept that, when I see it manifest, works just as well as when I played my first Baxter-book Counterburn deck almost two decades ago.

When you are brewing and designing, it’s important that you playtest (obviously), but even more important that you remember one thing:

Card concepts serve deep concepts, never the other way around.

Extending from that:  You should never sacrifice your deep concept to fit a card. It’s easy to do, and I see it all the time (and hey, I’m guilty of it too).  It’s fine to explore and play cards to see what they do -- I really encourage this! -- but sometimes you find that a card belongs in another strategy and not the one you’re building.  Switch to the other strategy if you want, but don’t try to fit your strategy into a card!

Harness the Storm looks like it might fit in a surge-based tempo-aggro deck, especially with some of the cards out of Eldritch Moon.  But in my deck, playtest showed me it didn’t align with what I was really trying to do.

In contrast, Geistblast is amazing. Even Consuming Sinkhole has worked consistently better than Harness the Storm did. But overall, I think you can look at the overall strategy I expressed and you can see how the cards in the current list are trying to serve those goals.  There’s still more testing and playing to do, but I find focusing my design on things other than just cards helps me build overall better decks.

[apocalypticvalraven]

Magic Format Idea- Guildhall

I really like the faction play that’s been emphasized in more recent sets, and thought I’d put together a format intended to focus on that. I looked at Quinn Murphy’s article on Wizards about making formats, and you can find full rules on his blog @brooligans.

Guildhall is broadly similar to Commander/EDH in that it focuses on a given card that sits in a new zone. It emphasizes faction decks, and draws heavily on Ravnica and Return to Ravnica. It is a Broad format, though, and intended for both dueling and multiplayer, and is more casual than competitive.

Guildhalls Begin making a Guildhall deck by choosing a Guildhall, this is a non-basic land which will begin the game in the Guildhall zone, where it can be used immediately and is indestructible. The Guildhall zone is “In-play” meaning that you can use your Guildhall exactly as if you had played it from your hand. Any Enters Play effects on your Guildhall trigger at the start of the game and persist until the end of your first turn.

Decks You deck must conform to the color identity of your Guildhall (ie, your deck cannot contain cards which have a mana symbol or color indicator anywhere on them which is not also present in your Guildhall’s text, or represented by it’s frame or textbox background.

Decks are a minimum of 60 cards, and may not contain more than one copy each of any rare or mythic rare (cards which have been printed at common or uncommon are subject to Magic’s usual rule of 4 copies, save for those which have been banned or restricted).

Every “tournament” of Guildhall will specify a plane it takes place on, typically Ravnica. 40% of the cards in your deck, not including basic lands, must have been printed in sets that took place on that plane (Ravnica and Return to Ravnica blocks for a Ravnica Guildhall tournament). Other settings for Guildhall are possible.

Garrisons and Occupation Guildhalls act as normal lands most of the time. However, they can also be garrisoned and occupied.

When a player plays a creature, they may cast it into the Guildhall zone. Anytime a player could play a sorcery, they may tap a creature they control and move it into or out of the Guildhall zone. Creatures in the Guildhall zone are Garrisoned, and gain the Defender ability.

When attacking, a player may choose to attack their opponent, a planeswalker their opponent controls, or their opponent’s Guildhall. In the former two cases, combat proceeds as usual. In the last case, however, the defender assigns blockers from creatures in their Guildhall zone (creatures outside the Guildhall zone cannot block creatures attacking the Guildhall). At the end of combat, if any attackers remain, and no Garrisoned creatures remain, the attacking player Occupies the defending player’s Guildhall. They gain control of the Guildhall, and may select any number of creatures which they just used to occupy it to remain as it’s Occupation. Until the beginning of the attacker’s next turn, the Guildhall is considered to have just entered play as if they had played it during their post-combat main phase.

If a Guildhall remains Occupied for five consecutive turns, it’s owner loses the game. A Guildhall with no Occupying creatures is considered Open, but does not return to it’s owner’s control until they move a creature into it.

I kind of want to add creature promotion to this, but this is probably a good starting point.

Let me know what you think.

[brooligans-blog]

Counterstorm deck list with prices for Magic the Gathering (MTG) and Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO).

Counterstorm deck v2 -- 100% less Jace's Sanctum!

I'm killing more people with Exquisite Firecraft cloned and chained then ever.

So I have been playing the deck more and more, and I really like it! Originally, I wanted a UR counterburn that used Sanctum to reduce costs of spells and increase spell throughput. In playing that I found that Harness benefited from that a lot.  After more playing I discovered I don't need the cost reduction on Jace's Sanctum. I cared about cloning spells. Geistblast and Harness the Storm with cheap spells give you a lot of redundancy per spell cast, in effect “scaling” your spells.  My first disperse is bounce a permanent for 2.  My next disperse is bounce two permanents for four.  My first Exquisite Firecraft is deal 4 for three, my next is deal 8 for 6. I wanted to keep a high number of enchantments, and found that Pyromancer's Assault combines really, really well. On it's own, it lets me do damage and kill creatures from my card draw and countermagic. Paired with Harness the Storm, it makes killing an opponent very easy, as all my spells start doubling themselves and dealing 2 points of damage in addition to whatever else they do. Anticipate end of turn, getting the best 2 out of 6 cards and dealing 2 points of damage for 4 mana is pretty good value.   The deck creates tons of dead cards in the current meta. Decks looking to kill creatures and planeswalkers get no rewards here, especially if I play it smart with Wandering Fumarole.

The goal with the deck is to burn and bounce long enough to set up a chain of burn big enough to nuke the opponent over 1-2 turns, ideally starting on their end-step. The deck can go into "kill mode" starting with 6-8 land, which is enough to cast and clone all the burn. Harness and Geistblast clone spells and Pyromancer's Assault tacks on two points of damage to chains. You can easily deal 10-18 points of damage with the right combination of spells and setup. When Firecraft is part of it, your opponent can't even do anything about it. Turns where you do 12 points of uncounterable damage are really fun. Epiphany at the Drownyard is one of the key spells to set these turns up. I found pieces of the puzzle to be a little too committed and slow in the deck, and Epiphany does what it does at instant speed. The fact that it's efficient (all your mana becomes cards because it's X+1) means that it benefits greatly from Geistblast as early as 7 mana. You cast Epiphany and then clone it with Geistblast and then you get to look at a total of 8 cards, keeping some number of them. Your discards seed Harness. "Why no Goggles? Why no Chandra?"

It's a budget deck concept

blast/harness/assault come down more quickly and 

blast/harness/assault synergize with all my spells anticipate 2x and dealing 2 damage EOT isn't something I can do with goggle.

I want to create as many dead cards as I possibly can, using card types people aren’t as prepared to stop.

Matchups

GW Tokens is so. annoying. I am trying to evolve a game plan that lets me overload any enchantment removal they include (dromoka's and maybe naturalize) while helping me build a board. Skywise Teachings is there for that, but I haven't tested it yet. This is the matchup I want to play and test the most...anyone running this on MTGO? I actually think this matchup is fixable, but I need to play it a lot more to understand what the matchup is really about. The Humans matchup has gotten better with the addition of fiery temper and lightning axes. I can deal with some of the early swarm effectively, then simply race them when I get my damage setup.

BW Control continues to be aggressively good for me. Shambling Vents were annoying before tempers and axes came in. In general the deck has a lot of dead cards and takes damage to get ahead which this deck exploits. Discard and planeswalkers run amok can be real problems, but in general fevered visions and counters really help me. I played just 1 rites deck with an earlier version of this.  It seems at this stage that if my spells line up with them early, I am open to take over later, but the match can rapidly spin out of control if they have a few open turns with their payouts on the board. Haven't played UR control yet, or Mono U prison. I think both might favor me as I use cards they don't protect themselves against actively in enchantments and I can hit them with a lot of uncounterable burn.

Decklist

3 Lightning Axe 3 Anticipate 3 Negate 3 Tormenting Voice 3 Twin Bolt 2 Disperse 4 Exquisite Firecraft 3 Fiery Temper 3 Geistblast 3 Harness the Storm 2 Pyromancer's Assault 4 Epiphany at the Drownyard 2 Highland Lake 6 Island 8 Mountain 4 Shivan Reef 4 Wandering Fumarole Sideboard 2 Dispel 3 Fevered Visions 1 Illusory Gains 2 Kozilek's Return 3 Rending Volley 3 Skywise Teachings 1 Sphinx of the Final Word

The deck is really fun to play and is actually getting semi-competitive with this new direction. GW Tokens is still a not-great matchup, but I'm still trying to find the proper strategy to fight it.

[anowon]

But remember from here on in, history has its eyes on you.

Art credits:

Chris Rahn // Winona Nelson //  Magali Villeneuve // Jason Felix // Chris Rallis

[brooligans-blog]

Hamilton and Magic, two of my favorite things!

[brooligans-blog]

Sorcerer v0.5 Rules and Decklist

I’m posting verstion 0.5 of the Sorcerer alpha here. I’ll also post more decklists as I get them and playtest reports if you have them!

“Sorcerer aims to be 70% casual, 30% Rube Goldberg device. Creatures are in limited supply and there should be plenty of room for people to try out different strategies and combinations within these constraints. It’s a one on one format, so we aim to be reasonably quick, while still letting players delve into the different corners of a wide pool of magic cards.”

Sorcerer Rules

[brooligans-blog]

Play swarms in the first few turns then use Drana and Hordechief as force multipliers to finish out the game. Unnatural Endurance helps you push through attackers and protect threats.

(Link has full decklist in Tappedout, but including text version here) 4 Reaver Drone 4 Bloodsoaked Champion 3 Brutal Hordechief 4 Despoiler of Souls 4 Drana, Liberator of Malakir 19 Swamp 3 Unnatural Endurance 3 Mardu Shadowspear 4 Grasp of Darkness 4 Bearer of Silence 1 Ruinous Path 1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet 2 Damnable Pact 4 Crumbling Vestige

Sideboard

2 Duress 2 Transgress the Mind 2 Erebos's Titan 3 Virulent Plague 3 Self-Inflicted Wound 1 Ruinous Path 1 Unnatural Endurance 1 Ultimate Price

A swarming Black aggro deck. We use a lot of 2 power 1 drops (mardu shadowspear is a virtual 2 power) to fill the board, and drana/hordechief amplify the power of playing a lot of small creatures. Hordechief in particular looks like Hellrider in this deck.  You can often kill opponents at the beginning of the attack step.  Unnatural endurance blanks a lot of removal, and the deck is designed to make much of what it doesn't blank look silly (oh , you crackling doomed one of 3-4 1 drops? OK). Endurance provides an answer to ult price, impulse/slash, and more. It also provides you answers to blockers (4c rally is often this decks bane as a 0/4 faithful or 2/3 sifter is hard to evade) in the early game.  

The deck uses bloodsaoked champion and despoiler of souls to give you options to out-attrition removal heavy decks. I think the environment will see lots of grasping darkness, but not only does this deck use it, the aforementioned regeneration package helps you win the "darkness" wars by giving you back certain cards hit by it.  

Bearer of Silence is the reason we have Crumbling Vestige. It does a few things. First (and least), it stops Reaver Drone from hurting you . Next, it's a 2 power with evasion, making it hard to block. Your opponent hates to see turn 2 bearer of silence into turn 3 drana, which brings pain unless stopped pronto. Last, and I think most importantly, it can be removal in the mid-late game. Bearer of Silence is one of my favorite cards from oath, and I personally think it will see lots of play.

First, a little bit about swarm theory. The basics is that you play a lot of cheap creature and then play force multipliers to make your early investment of creatures pay off. "Anthem" (named after Glorious Anthem) effects, which give a stock bonus to all creatures, are the most common way to get this multiplier, but a force multiplier can be anything that rewards you for having multiples of a card. You can think of it as a combo, but to me, what makes force multiplication different is that it is synergestic, exponential and incremental. What makes Gideon a force multiplier and Rally the Ancestors a combo piece is that, although a Rally deck can play regular, "fair" and incremental magic, Rally the Ancestors is looking for a *state* that allows it to hit and break an opponent down. Gideon's emblem is a force multiplier in my mind because it is giving a flat bonus that gets stronger with each piece. It rewards investment and pays you off for it.

Speaking of force multipliers, the original pre-Oath deck actually had Foul-Tongue Shriek. That card is sub-optimal because it only works as a force multiplier. It's terrible with 1 creature but back-breaking with 4 creatures (that's an 8 point life swing on the attack step). It is the type of card that works great when you can win with it, but then there is the rest of the time. Those are the times when it can't provide any payoff or protect the investment or help you come back at all. With Oath near, Unnatural Endurance is the clearer winner.

But what I like about this deck is that Drana and Brutal Hordechief are incredible force multipliers. We have two on curve force multipliers that work in their own right. I am contemplating diversifying mana just to turn on Hordechief's ability on, but love it without. In multiples the hordechief can break opponents down.  I've won multiple stalls by simply casting Hordechief into Hordechief then swinging for a 8-10 (and gaining 8-10!) in the attack step. Drana is must-kill threat in this deck so it often stresses opponent's removal. How many ultimate prices are you going to draw? Killing Drana often means Hordechief lives. That's not even taking into account that we can use Endurance to protect both of our force multiplier on the cheap. Holding Drana for four mana means we can play her with protection, forcing the opponent to have specific removal (Silkwrap, Crackling Doom, Utter End, Stasis Snare, etc) or invest multiple cards to get it.  

Damnable Pact is clearly a role-player in this deck. It can help us reload if we are in a pinch, but can also punch the last few damage we need when the game slows down. It should see more play I think, especially in aggressive black strategies.

Kalitas can help us race, but also synergizes with our removal to build us an army. Turning a Grasping Darkness into a 2 for 1 has to be good, I think. I might board in more, but need to play more with it.

Why play this deck? The deck is cheap, and has my favorite aspect of a budget deck: it plays cards that are good but simply out of favor at the moment. I am not playing weaker versions of cards, but rather playing cards that I feel are under-valued. Hordechief is really a back Hellrider, that unfortunately first appeared in an environment where it wasn't that strong. Drana is a strong card, but is strongest in a deck that is looking to play a lot of cheap black creatures, which simply has not been on people's radars. Bloodsoaked Champion and Despoiler of Souls are aggressive and resilient threats that just lack shells. People think about "budget" as "cheap replacement" but I advise folks to think about things a bit differently. Look at mythics and rares that aren't highly valued at the moment and think about it if they are being undervalued currently.

Cards are constantly undervalued! From a finance point of view, a willingness to play with and evaluate these cards pays off. Near misses are often of more value long-term than big hits. Many people are trying to price themselves in to the hot cards of the moment. These people are the ones constantly complaining about the cost of standard. I've found great value in learning to trust my own thoughts and investing conservatively in cards that others don't see the value in.

I've been playing this deck in the practice rooms of MTGO and it's been surprising me how well it performs. Is it the best deck in the format? At this point, definitely not, but it has enough room to find a place in a metagame. It has cards that work well independently but also synergistically. The deck lacks the 'burst' damage of Atarka Red (with or without combo), but trades it for increased resilience. It is fast enough to punish bad draws consistently (one reason you play fast decks in a tournament), without automatically losing when it meats removal and attrition. It's a $64/45 ticket deck that offers much more play value than you invest in it.

[brooligans-blog]

A very fast, highly synergistic deck. It looks weird but gets explosive starts. Because of the "opponent loses life when attacking" ability on many of the creatures. It is quite hard for many decks to block.

I’ve been spending a bunch of time testing this on MTGO, and have tweaked it to a point where I can see it’s potential to be a player in post-Oath Standard.

What makes the deck so great? Through use of life-loss cards like foul-tongue shriek, Mardu Shadowspear, Thornbow Archer, and Brutal Hordechief, the deck can defeat blocking by dealing tons of damage in the attack step. Double Hordechief on a clogged board can create victories out of nowhere by creating big life swings. Drana is a must kill as well, and often clears the way for Hordechief.  Archer and Shadowspear seem a lot worse until you realize that they deliver a virtual 2 points of damage.  They are better than bloodsoaked champion in that they a) can block and b) can deliver half their damage just by attacking. This makes it easier to push through damage when the opponent puts down blockers. Blood-chin Rager interacts well with the warriors in the deck, and a flow of Shadowspear -> Rager -> Drana -> Hordechief is pretty hard for decks to deal with. The weirdest card in the deck is Foul-tongue Shriek. It often gets moved from the sideboard for more removal or discard, but it is often great 1st game because it a) is often completely unexpected b) creates a big life swing for cheap, often netting 3-4 life and dealing 3-4 damage when played.  When oath comes in this card will become Unnatural Endurance, but for now this card is really good.

I’ll post the Oath version of this, which I think will be very near top-tier dependent on the meta game. This is suprisingly competitive as it stands and it gets some great tools soon.

[brooligans-blog]

Five decks for Sorcerer

Here are five decks from myself and others for Sorcerer, a new format I am looking to playtest and work with. Sliver Victory

Enter the Infinite

Mono Black Reanimator

Affinity Control

Scapertron What is Sorcerer? In short, it’s EDH with Sorceries as your Commander, but it’s much expanded upon that simple premise.  Take a peek at the early rules, make a decklist, try a game!

[brooligans-blog]

Sorcerer [Alpha] a casual duelling format Magic: the Gathering Welcome to the Sorceror playtest! Sorcerer is a casual playtest format where players play those who are *almost* planeswalkers. These sorcerers have power but lack the Spark of Planeswalkers. Sorcerers compete to prove their worth an...

I am working on a piece about Magic formats, so....I’m building formats! The first one could be simply described as “Commander with Sorceries” but we’re going even a little farther than that.  Check out the rules for spellcaches and note that you only get 5 creatures per deck! Instead of a Commander, you have a Sigil, which is a sorcery representing your most powerful and signature spell. Take a peek at these rules and then make a deck on TappedOut, then tell us about it here.

[brooligans-blog]

Deck: The Jungle Brothers

I love to do magic history.  I've been involved in the game a long time and I love it when something from the past gains a new context or remains relevant in the modern era. It's not all that common that it happens, and oftentimes you can only use vague principles that you learned in the past. Magic is so good now, but they build cards and sets so differently that trying to apply card logic across the years often doesn't do you much.

But certain things remain constant.  Ramp is ramp, for instance.  While Wizards won't be printing Rampant Growth any time soon, the basic principles of mana ramp have stayed constant throughout the games history, particularly green mana ramp.  A creature will typically help you make the crucial Turn 1, set up for three mana (mana critter, plus turn 2 land drop), or Turn 2, get four mana for the next turn (sylvan caryatid to Polukranos/Siege Rhino for example). Explosive Vegetation is pretty overlooked right now because it occupies a space that isn't often explored, which is Turn 4, setting up for 7 mana the next turn.  Even scarier you have the possibility to have the 7 mana on the 4th turn with an early mana critter!  It has made an impact on other Standard formats, so I wanted to revisit it and see what it might look like today.

Most people want that early jump to get as aggressive as possible and to move under countermagic/removal. But if we can hit a four, we get access to an even higher level of power that people will find extremely difficult to deal with.

Another nice thing about explosive vegetation is that it offers you mana fixing.  It lets you get any basic lands you want, so it actually affords you the ability to be rather ridiculous with your colored mana requirements.

The best way to see this I think is from this old article on Explosive Vegetation decks from many Standard formats ago: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=sideboard/ptven03/veg

I don't want to get too ridiculous with mana, but I do think that, but one thing using non-creature based acceleration gives you is the ability to run big creatures and sweepers. Normaly green decks give you mana but beg you not to clear the board, but what Explosive Vegetation doesn't ask you to do that.  

So let's play big creatures and big sweepers, shall we?

I want to go dragons, and I think two crazy good dragons at the moment are Dromoka and Atarka. Both dragonlords do huge damage to the other popular dragons at the moment.  Dromoka makes controls life harder on multiple levels, and Dragonlord Atarka is sweeper and a massive threat in one package.

We'll use Caryatids, knowing that they can be swept but knowing that we won't care. by the time we do.

For sweepers, lets use End Hostilities and Anger of the Gods because they are good sweepers in the colors of Dromoka and Atarka.

Going back to creatures, something that's solid and fits the parameter of large durable threat is the Silverback Ape.  It's a 6/5 that Regenerates for G.  We can cast it and wipe the board and keep it alive. It also stays alive against other removal so it becomes hard for control to remove it in time.

We need to include some cards with lower costs so we can play "fair" magic just as well.  Let's throw those in and look at something like this:

Creatures (16) 3 Dragonlord Dromoka 3 Dragonlord Atarka 4 Thunderbreak Regent 2 Silverback Ape 4 Sylvan Caryatid

Spells (19) 4 Explosive Vegetation 4 End Hostilities 4 Anger of the Gods 4 Lightning Strike 3 Valorous Stance

Lands (25) 4 Windswept Heath 4 Wooded Foothills 4 Forest 3 Mana Confluence 3 Mountain 3 Plains 2 Temple of Abandon 2 Temple of Plenty

This deck is what I'll be testing out shortly. I'll let you know how it goes.

[brooligans-blog]

A Tale of Bad Beats

There is no Failure, only Feedback: A Bad Beats Report.

It’s fun to write a report where everything goes right, isn’t it? Maybe everything doesn’t even go right; random things turn bad and throw obstacles in your path, but the tale of your tournament experience trends upward. The challenges you face along the way serve as spice for a grand tale.

What about when everything goes wrong?

Disclaimer: I love Magic. Ever since I first turned a hypnotic specter sideways, I’ve been enthralled by this card game. When Magic is good, it’s great. When it’s bad, it’s great. I sometimes think that a detached, aloof cynicism is the “cool” way to write a tournament report, but that’s not what I’m going to write. This tournament report is a love affair with Magic: the Gathering in all its “you lose and it’s still great” glory. You were warned!

I was psyched about the Preliminary Pro-Tour Qualifier at Harrison’s Comics in Nashua, NH. I didn’t have a ton of time to prepare, but I always like playing at the store and I want to support them so they get even more of these tournaments to do! One of my goals on 2015 is to get on the Pro Tour. I’ve spent a lot of time since I’ve been playing M:tG thinking about the game, and designing decks, but not enough playing. What I want is to take that time and turn it into something. Getting on the Pro Tour will mean grinding and getting in games, but more importantly it will mean committing myself to playing more Magic! It is something that really makes me happy and helps me relax. To play Magic seriously really means forcing myself to take more time to enjoy myself and enjoy my hobbies. It might seem odd to set such a high, work-oriented goal as my relaxation target, and I can’t really explain it other than to say playing competitive Magic makes me feel at peace. The problem I have is that I get so into meta-gaming and discussing the game that I sometimes don’t play. But playing the game is the point! Giving myself a concrete goal is giving myself an impetus to not talk about the game so much and to play it a lot more.

It was with this in mind that I traveled over to Harrison’s (where I spend a lot of time — thanks for making a great place to hang out Kris!). I was there early for pre-reg though the tournament didn’t start until 1:00 PM. I talked with the regulars, and even handed in my decklist early. I had prepared the night before assembling my decklist and got the registration sheet early. That morning a got a run in (on Week 2 of Couch to 5k), showered and spent some time with my family. They wished me luck (as did many of my twitter peeps!).

I took the following list to battle:

"Cruise Control"

4 Steam Augury

3 Treasure Control

2 Divination

2 Dissolve

2 Disdainful Stroke

1 Negate

3 Lightning Strike

2 Erase

3 Jeskai Charm

2 Prognostic Sphinx

2 Pearl Lake Ancient

3 Anger of Gods

3 End Hostilities

1 Aetherspouts

2 Fated Retribution Lands (25) 

4 Mystic Monastery

4 Flooded Strand 

2 Swiftwater Cliff 

2 Wind-scarred Crag 

2 Tranquil Cove 

2 Battlefield Forge 

1 Shivan Reef 

1 Temple of Epiphany 

3 Islands 

2 Plains 

2 Mountain

I will talk about the individual card choices and strategy later, but my thinking is that I run a ton of sweepers and card draw, putting pressure on aggro strategies and obliterating token strategies. It can be soft to discard strategies that follow with low curve threats, but I was banking on enough tokens being there to give me some game.

Game #1: Ben, Abzan Aggro

I’d played Ben at a Theros Pre-Release last year. I had a grossly unfair deck that was essentially Whip Reanimator and it was absurd. Ben is a really good player, and when I saw that first Temple of Malady hit the ground, I knew I was in trouble. I assumed he would be on Abzan Aggro, a match that I hadn’t had time to test so didn’t have a great gameplan for.

Game 1 went long but ultimately ended when he landed multiple Siege Rhinos in a row when my life total was low, and ran damage through my removal. Thinking back, made a huge mistake by letting a Pearl Lake Ancient die without bringing it back to my hand. It was just one of many, many mistakes I made that day.

In Game 2 my inexperience with the matchup showed. I sideboarded out my Lightning Strikes for Glare of Heresy thinking that I could hit anything important in his deck. A Rakhassa Deathdealer following a few Thoughtseizes beat my butt pretty quickly. Ouch! Even when I had removal for the Rakhsasa Deathdelaer ( a SB’ed in Sarkhan), he showed me the followup Rhino with me tapped out and it was time to sign the slip.

As I packed my stuff, the Judge came up to me and showed me my decklist. I had…no lands listed. He kindly asked me to list my lands ( I had them on my game notebook and somehow never wrote them). He gave me the good news: I could choose to play or draw next match! The bad news: I was taking a game loss. Ouch again!

Bad Beats. So far, this is my worst tournament start in some time.

One thing that I have been doing between matches at a tournament is to use one of my meditation apps (Calm) and meditate for five minutes. It clears the mind and helps you be centered no matter the outcome. It was definitely time to do that now. I got my mind focused and determined to do my best next game. It’s literally all I could do at that point, so it’s best to point the mind towards that.

Game #2: Zac, 5 color Midrange

I’ve played Zac before at an FNM. Zac runs a deck full of cards I hate, with a card that I can’t really deal with effectively: Sagu Mauler. 6/6 trample hexproof? Yeah….you can see my list has 6 cards that handle it effectively, which seems OK until you realize I have to deal with Anafenza, Butcher of the Horde and Siege Rhino. This deck overloads my sweepers and looks to and a Sagu Mauler which can smash me quickly.

And I get to play this 1 game down! Yay!

This was actually a good game. Zac played slow, and used his Abzan Charms as Sign in Blood to draw cards enough to keep up somewhat with my draw (though I haven’t seen anything that keeps up with my draw yet. The Steam Augury/ Treasure Cruise Synergy is crazy). I swept an early Anafenza and dropped some other threats. Zac played a morphed Sagu Mauler which I let resolve (I had a Dissolve in hand), which killed me. On my turn when I played Anger of God, he morphed it in response (Arrrrgh!) and blanked it. A few swings later, I was dead. I made a few other misplays beside that, but that last one really stung. I made on of several bad Steam Augury splits in this game, as well as not sequencing spells right.

Since I’d already had a game loss, that was it. Ugh. Zac and I chatted about the game afterwards, then it was time for me to meditate for real. I needed to channel that frustration at myself that I felt into increasing my focus.

Game Three: Ian: Mono-Blue Control

I sat down with Ian and he played an Island. and another Island. And another. And another. I thought that he was land-screwed until the 6th turn, patiently waiting for another color.

And then he cast a Chasm Skulker. I tried to kill it, and he countered it. OK, then! Fortunately I had lots of kill to deal with it. The problem was I didn’t have a lot of counter-magic in my deck, and also did not have a lot of threats. We had a few battles back and forth with countermagic, but ultimately I got to my very last threat in the deck with 11 cards left (a constant danger in this deck, actually) and scooped with 25 minutes left.

Second game I put in all my threats and all my countermagic, but he had just more countermagic than I had threats. A really fun interaction saw me trying to Treasure Cruise:

"Dissipate that." "Negate" "Dissolve" "Negate" "..it resolves."

And that felt good until I realized that I was drawing more spells that he could stop and I couldn’t stop something like, say, his Pearl Lake Ancient that he dropped a few turns later. We spent a long time dropping lands aftwerwards preparing for a counter war. I tried to cast more threats with each being countered. A Stormbreath Dragon landed just in time to get Aetherspouts when we were in turns. At that point, I just scooped. I was feeling a little dejected, but still chatted and had some laugh with Ian and his friends afterwards. You don’t have to spread your bad beats!

I dropped after this match, but I really took it as a good place to start from. The draw engine of the deck is really amazing, but it is clear that the rest of the deck needs some work. I think I need a few less sweepers and a bit more countermagic. I do really like the deck, so will continue to tweak it. The next goal is scheduling more time to play later in the week.

What I can tell you is that even losing, I just had a fun time playing and interacting with my opponents. I know that if you play Magic, every once in a while this just happens to you. It might happen to me the next few times I play! What I’m looking forward to is the gradual improvement as I play and improve.

[brooligans-blog]

MTG Deck: Mardu Control

Mardu control that uses planeswalkers and Ashcloud phoenix backed up by sweepers and discard to win games. Ashcloud Phoenix curves nicely into End Hostilities and plays well with it. It also forces your opponents into potential 2 for 1 situations to get rid of it. Tormenting Voices + Chandra is your main card advantage engine, while Liliana lets you tutor for mid-late games answers and finishers. Resolute Archangel looks really weird but is there to help you recover from early game life loss.

Mardu Phoenix Control!

[brooligans-blog]

Channel Fireball provides comprehensive content about Magic: the Gathering singles, strategy, cards, decks.

Love these statistical breakdowns that Frank does.

[brooligans-blog]

MTG Deck: Grixis Pits

A Grixis-based Empty the Pits control deck. Use discard/removal/counters to put the opponent behind, then use card draw to set up Empty the Pits. Tormenting voices and Steam Augury both provide cards and grave volume to give good casts of Empty the Pits.

[brooligans-blog]

Magic Christmasland, Magical Answerland: Towards a better evaluation of cards.

In college we knew a guy who was a real loudmouth. He thought he was god's gift to...well, everything.  Magic was only the first of his many gifts to the world. Every loss he took was a mere sidestep in his path to greatness, and every win the herald's trumpet announcing his arrival and ascendancy over mere mortals. 

One night we got bored, and assembled the most ridiculous turn 1 kill I think I've ever seen. It was never going to work in an actual match, but we stacked about ten cards in perfect sequence and then unleashed our trap. I wish I could remember the combo. All I could remember was the stunned silence of our "gifted" young Magic player. 

I think he blinked once in a few minutes.

Magic Christmasland is like this deck stacking. Magic Christmasland is that place where everything turns up correctly for you always.  You mana never gets screwed, you draw a perfect hand that allows you to do exactly what you want to get a turn-two kill every time.

If you want to be mocked, describe a pet deck or pet card only in terms of its Magic Christmasland hands.  Sure, your deck is unbeatable when everything just happens to work, but...

Magic doesn't work like that.  Variance is a thing.  You draw cards at random and sometimes that randomness breaks up your perfect god-draw.  It's important for strong decks to have god-draws, but you need decks that give you the tools to win when you don't get them.

On the other hand though, you get what I've dubbed Magic Answerland. It's when you try to describe a card and then people start describing all the ways that the card dies instantly and won't ever do anything. If you cast a Rabblemaster, it will immediately die to a Hero's Downfall.  If you have a counterspell, your opponent will have an uncounterable creature.  No matter what you envision your card doing, in Magic Answerland it will be shut down immediately.

The problem here is that Magic doesn't work like that, either.

Magical Christmasland is most common amongst the hardcore brewers. They get so busy seeing the possibilities in card pools that they are willing to envision perfect draws and unlikely scenarios to find the one scenario where the card drawing their attention this moment will work.

Magical Answerland is the favorite place for seasoned grinders to go. They are so busy with tactical plays and responding to cards that their mind immediately goes to ways to shut you down. You're going to make your card work, but their job is to not let it work.  They have a response ready for you.

But again, neither of these approaches is particularly useful for the first tier of card evaluations.  The first thing I think you should ask when evaluating a card is: Is This Worth Doing?

I'll talk more on that later.

[brooligans-blog]

MTG Deck: Abzan Reanimator

Another Azban deck! This one runs a reanimator game. Siege Rhino interacts powerfully with Rescue from the Underworld (ETB ftw!) and your big spells. Nyx Weaver lets you repeat effects. Necropolis Fiend can be brought out easily from hand or reanimated. It combos well with the weaver to give you a lot of creature control.

The brews keep coming!