Friday 25 February 2011

My Fires Sapling – The Games

My Fires Sapling – The Games


These are a few of the games I’ve played with the deck this week.

4 man Sharuum, Sapling, Glissa, Treva

I have a mana flood start (sometimes keeping that all mana hand doesn’t work out!) and hide behind Sapling, poking my head out only to kill any infect creatures I can’t block as Glissa flies out of the blocks. Treva, despite having the numbers and an active Vedalken Anatomist, chooses not to block Glissa and eats Tainted Strike & a boost to get knocked out. Worst still he was poisoned to exactly 10 so using the Anatomist at any time during the attack would have left him at a precarious 9 but still alive. Tel-Jilad Fallen & boost did for Sharuum who had no removal in hand. I hit VT straight after Sharuum was eliminated which gave me a Damnation to clear the table. I proceeded to draw into Artisan of Kozilek -> E-Wit -> Nim Deathmantle and stalled Glissa’s short recovery for a couple of turns before I could DT for Ulamog. Glissa never really recovered from the Damnation and the Eldrazi finished everything at the bell.


3 Man Sapling, Treva, Rayne

On a mulligan to 5, I hit Sol Ring which allowed for a turn 4 Primeval Titan. Rayne had an extremely slow start and Treva didn’t find removal. Left to his own devices, PT ensured it got silly quickly. That one didn’t last very much longer.

3 Man Sapling, Treva, Sharuum

Rayne audibled into Sharuum and I kept a 2 lander with Sakura Tribe Elder and Cultivate. Right on queue I drew Primeval Titan. Treva had a tapper for a few turns to lock down Primeval Titan but it ended up dead to an evoked Shriekmaw and the game got out of hand after that.

Apparently an unanswered Primeval Titan is good. Who knew?


3 Man Sapling, Treva, Sharuum

I keep Stronghold, Swamp, Urborg, Coffers, Avenger of Zendikar, Cultivate, Damnation and, of course, didn’t find a Green source for a full 7 turns. Despite sticking Sapling out there, I was beaten down to 10 before finding a forest and stabilizing. There were a couple of dead turns where Sharuum could and should have forced the issue as he had Akroma’s Memorial in play.

My Cultivate allowed Acidic Slime on the Memorial. I follow that with Rampaging Baloths and drop Deserted Temple to make a 4/4 Beast token. A very lucky series of top-decks gave me Mosswort Bridge which hid away a Decree of Pain and made another Beast. The previous turn’s Deserted Temple untapped Bridge straight away to allow me to cast Decree directly, drawing 12 cards and leaving Sapling alone in play. In the 12 was Creeping Corrosion which crippled Sharuum and it snowballed from there into an eventual Genesis Wave for 24. Deserted Temple on Cabal Coffers with Urborg in play is slightly unfair.

Sharuum was really ticked off that he didn’t press when he could have. You snooze, you lose. ;op

5 man Sapling, Treva, Sharuum, Rayne, Merike Ri Berit

Rayne & Treva had sworn revenge on me for beatings the previous 2 days so I was forewarned. I mulliganed all spells keeping only 2 land (High Market, Overgrown Tomb) and drew Maelstrom Pulse, Cultivate, Shriekmaw and Mimic Vat. I decided to keep this as it’s a very good hand with just 1 additional land. Of course I didn’t draw that land right off.

I drew Praetor’s Council. I drew Ulamog which I discarded at EOT. I drew Oracle of Mul Daya & discarded Praetor’s Council. I drew Spiritmonger and discarded it. Merike is as mana screwed as I am but manages to fire off a turn 5 Balance to slow everyone else down to our level. I peel a Stronghold on turn 5 and get some land. Find and pay a Necrogenesis, then hung about for a bit clearing out some graveyards. Despite a very active Rhystic Study and a couple of turns with a Consecrated Sphinx backed up with Reliquary Tower, Rayne isn’t doing anything particularly impressive. Treva gets a slow start and refuses to play anything into my Shriekmaw/Mimic Vat. Sharuum keeps playing huge beasts and keeps losing them. It’s all very scattered. The game kind of limps on for a few minutes and time is called with no real loser (maybe Rayne as he’s got less than 30 cards in his library). I must have missed a pile of decent Mimic Vat triggers in all that time: Consecrated Sphinx, Primeval Titan, Clone, Emperium, Gilded Drake, Sun Titan. I got too focused on removing them with the Necrogenesis rather than putting them in the VAT. Worse still, I had enough mana to recur Shriekmaw with Stronghold to reset the vat and remove the offending creature with Necrogenesis afterwards. It was a thoroughly abysmal display on my part.


We’re done for the week so it’s time for some changes. I need more land and more coloured land so I'm going to increase both counts by 1:

Out:
1 Ulamog/Kozilek. (One Eldrazi is probably enough for all my Eldrazi needs.)
1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader. (It says Elf! ELF!!!!! :facepalm: )
1 of Wasteland/Stripmine (I only need one and I need coloured mana more.)
1 Mana Reflection (Yes, it’s excellent but my mana at the moment has more issues getting from 1 to 6 rather than from 6 to 12. It’s a necessary cut.)
In (the list is currently):
1 Forest/Swamp
1 Dual (Golgari Rot Farm? Reflecting Pool? Exotic Orchard? Pine Barrens? Just going on what I own, I’m not overly enamoured with the choices.)
1 Life from the Loam
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Black Sun’s Zenith (This could be a real bonus as I have no outs to Sharuum’s Darksteel Forge and he's mostly creature/combat based.)
1 Filth (This was in my first incarnation. It was cute though not sure I want it here. Thanks for the reminder Marcus, I’ll keep it in mind.)


This is the last in this particular series (initially intended to have been a single post but you know how it goes!) I'll post the final changes and any major issues in the comments and, as always, you're all very welcome to chime in. If you can think of a way to allow me to get around Darksteel Forge, I'd be happy to hear it.

Thursday 24 February 2011

Finalising Sapling

Cuts, Deck and Mana


Usually, when I'm building a deck, I have a very solid idea what I want to include in my land base. What I ended up doing in this case is picking a number of lands I wanted to use and fix the rest of the deck afterwards. I settled at a number between 37 and 40 as a starting figure to be rechecked after a few games. As I'm sure there will be a number of cards that don't produce coloured mana or, in a couple of cases, any mana at all, I'm likely to err on the large side on my mana base and increase this over the 40 mark. Well, that was the basic idea.

Let's get to the cuts first because, as expected, I went a little too large. Obvious things to go when the list got tight were the cards that I don't want to play with for irrational personal reasons:

1.) Blightsteel Colossus: I had a lot of fat in the deck and my sole copy of BSC was probably something that would eventually (quickly) become the "go to" creature of choice to end games. The problem with this is that it quickly becomes the only creature you Survival or Tooth and Nail for. If I have one single creature that becomes the default choice, the rest of the deck should probably just be junked in favour of some Sam Black-style, ultra focused deck that just zones in on getting one or two specific creatures into play again and again. I have kept the legal Legendary Eldrazi if I want to smash someone and shorten a game drastically but, as my default after BSC is probably Primeval Titan rather than those two, I'm probably ok for now. I'm a firm believer that it's the intent of players rather than the potential their deck holds that defines whether they are griefers or DBs. At some point I'm going to want to play an Eldrazi. I'm ok with that.

In the "Fat" category I've also cut Darksteel Colossus, It that Betrays and I suppose you could count Butcher of Malakir in there too. These were all simply a question of space over creatures that had more Oomph! or utility.


2.) Necropotence: As expected, I have cut Necropotence. This is a card I can't seem to use without feeling like a huge dick and it paints one of the largest targets on your head that you can have in multiplayer. Not only are you drawing an abhorrent number of cards, but you're also putting yourself closer to being knocked out in the process. In addition, if you want to counteract the life-loss you're skewing your deck around the Necro. I didn't want to do this and decided to cut the Skull.

It appears that I have issues with drawing cards as Promise of Power (expected) and Skeletal Scrying (surprising) also didn't make the list. I have the Scrying sleeved up in case I come to my senses and put it back in. The rule of thumb I have taken on this and a number of other cards is to just go with what seems more fun. The 8 mana Praetor's Council is currently in the slot of the much more playable, efficient XB spell. if/when the council goes off though, I expect a much more spectacular return. From the 4 games I've played since I initially sleeved it up, the deck relies on a lot of cards providing small incremental advantages (generally revolving around land development), a situation I'm more than happy with.


3.) Withered Wretch: One of the deck-building constants I have for EDH is the acceptance that your deck needs to be the dog to something. I don't believe in building the all dominant, all crushing behemoth (though I'll happily make an exception for a deck specifically built for Archenemy). Occasionally, that weakness will be inherent in the colours or the strategy you choose and, occasionally, you need to just accept that it's ok to skimp on certain aspects of your game either because everyone else has it covered or because space dictates that you need to make a choice and being weak to something isn't a bad thing in a regular playgroup. My choice in this deck was graveyards but specifically because I want to profit from them myself. When Sharuum is an active threat in your playgroup, that can be a bit risky though I've already made a change specifically to counter artifacts, more on that later.

Part of this approach to cards that interact with graveyards has led me to cut Buried Alive, Beacon of Unrest and Recollect. Buried Alive got in a fight with Corpse Connoisseur and the permanent, while slower, can provide a more measured, constant means of filling your graveyard. It can also attack, block and interact with Genesis, Volrath's Stronghold, Artisan of Kozilek among others. And who wants to steal a Corpse Connoisseur or exile it from your graveyard? Recollect became redundant with the volume of recursion staying in the deck and Beacon of Unrest was trumped by the twin threats of Puppeteer Clique and Geth. Why remove something with Withered Wretch when you can use it yourself? Lord of Extinction is also a fan of gutsy calls in this regard. Worst case scenario I have Necrogenesis, slightly more durable than a 2/2.


4.) Wild Pair, Worldly Tutor, Fierce Empath: The EDH philosopher Fugu once said:

"Man who cut tutor, play more varied game."
While there's a lot to be said about his grasp of English grammar, his may have a point. What does it behove a us to pack decks with a multitude of tutors just to do the same thing again and again? Surely we're in this for the variety. When it comes down to it, how many tutors do I really need? I can count these 3 that got cut and another 7 that didn't (including Expedition Map & Prime Time but excluding basic land "tutors"). There comes a point where you need to scale back and these are the initial ones I chose to leave out. I'm happy to take guidence from famous philosophers, though I may still be a step or two away from full enlightenment.

Wild Pair also didn't make the deck. I laid everything out and started to figure what could tutor up with what. After about 3 minutes trying to figure what I'd liketo get with X, Y or Z, I just decided to exclude it. I don't want to waste more time that I will already be doing with my land & creature tutors.


Let's look at the deck.

The creature suite can be divided into three catagories: "Fat", "What gets me to Fat" and "Disruption". While there's occasional overlap, this is pretty much all she wrote. Surprisingly (not,), my curve reflects this top-heavy approach, skimping on lower-end plays and glutting at 5-6cc before running all the way to 11cc.

2cc
Sakura-Tribe Elder

3cc
Krosan Tusker
Wood Elves
Yavimaya Elder
Ezuri, Renegade Leader
Eternal Witness

4cc
Solemn Simulacrum
Oracle of Mul Daya
Brooding Saurien

5cc
Sapling of Colfenor (General)
Lord of Extinction
Indrik Stomphowler
Acidic Slime
Puppeteer Clique
Shriekmaw
Corpse Connoisseur
Spiritmonger
Genesis
Seedborne Muse

6cc
Primeval Titan
Grave Titan
Geth, Lord of the Vault
Rampaging Baloths
Duplicant

7cc
Avenger of Zendikar

8cc
Terastodon
Woodfall Primus

9cc
Artisan of Kozilek

10cc
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth

11cc
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

As expected, Ezuri got the call over Kamahl purely on mana cost. I was unlikely to threaten one-sided Armageddons every time some presented a Wrath effect in any case so the choice was quite easy in the end.

The enchantments are next up and probably the area most likely to lose one or two representatives should I need the space.


1cc
Concordant Crossroads

2cc Survival of the Fittest
Necrogenesis

3cc
Pernicious Deed
Phyrexian Arena

4cc
Greater Good
Gravepact

6cc
Lurking Predators
Mana Reflection
One of the things you may notice here (and in their absence from the creatures list) is that the Bloodghast/Lotus Cobra/Perilious Forays combo didn't make the cut after the deck had been played a couple of times. I need a sacrifice outlet that doesn't cost mana, preferrably cheaper and with a more immediate benefit. The creatures were fragile and generally irrelevant. I also needed space and it was the cleanest cut I could make. Into their places went Ashnod's Altar which was left out initially, Harmonize which I had somehow overlooked and Creeping Corrosion. There's a pretty large volume of artifacts in my playgroup and it seems like it will be a pretty devestating play when it's needed.
Speaking of Artifacts:

1cc
Expedition Map
Sol Ring
Sensei's Divining Top

2cc
Nim Deathmantle
Lightning Greaves

3cc
Ashnod's Altar
Darksteel Ingot
Mimic Vat

Nothing has been added here since the first list was set up. Ashnod's Altar had been cut for Perilious Forays initially but once that was gone, the Altar came back in.
And, finally, the spells:
1cc
Vampiric Tutor

2cc
Regrowth
Demonic Tutor

3cc
Krosan Grip
Putrefy
Maelstron Pulse
Kodama's Reach
Cultivate

4cc
Harmonize
Creeping Corrosion
Damnation

5cc
Living Death

8cc
Praetor's Council
Decree of Pain

9cc
Tooth and Nail (Entwined)

Xcc
Genesis Wave
Green Sun's Zenith

The final card that didn't make the list, but is also sleeved up and waiting, was Black Sun's Zenith. I really want to play this and I want it to be great. For the moment, it's just not there.

Let’s finish up with the lands.

8 Forest
8 Swamp
Llanowar Wastes
Overgrown Tomb
Verdant Catacombs
Rupture Spire

I’d love to be able to list Bayou here but I don’t have one. I also don’t have Gilt-Leaf Palace, Twilight Mire or Tainted Wood. Definitely cards to pick up. In the meantime I have to make do. In terms of land that tap for colour but that do something else/additional:

Mosswort Bridge
Gaea’s Cradle
Bojuka Bog
Cabal Coffers
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Cradle and Coffers/Urborg are obvious though, at only 36 lands, they really need to be active whenever they are in play. I realize I’m cutting it tight here and I have no safety net if some is playing MLD (Mass Land Destruction). A more reasonable approach would probably have seen me cut three cards for, at a very minimum, Crucible of Worlds, Life from the Loam and an extra land. When I’ve learned my lesson the hard way, I’ll come back and revisit this.

One area where my mana base could be an issue is getting the right colours early on to get me going. I’m running 11 lands that produce colourless or nothing at all.

High Market
Deserted Temple
Tower of the Magistrate
Volrath’s Stronghold
Yavimaya Hollow
Strip Mine
Wasteland
Mystifying Maze
Maze of Ith
Temple of the False Gods
Vesuva

Upon mature reflection, at least one of Wasteland or Strip Mine should be coloured land #23. Our playgroup is noticeably light on non-basic lands worthy of their inclusion. If the LftL or Crucible ever do make it into the deck, they would make it possible to recur the necessary land should the rare eventually arise when I should ever need to use it more than once. In that event, I’ll cut one of those lands directly for either a dual of some sort or a basic.

A note on High Market, Deserted Temple and Tower of the Magistrate:
Miren, the Moaning Well didn’t make it into the deck because of the increased number of colourless lands getting a slot. I had to make a choice between the two and Miren got the axe. It will end up in Thada Adel when I get round to re-making her. High Market is essentially anti-Control Magic effect but occasionally the couple of life points can make a difference.

Deserted Temple is to give extra activations to Cradle, Coffers, Maze of Ith, Yavimaya Hollow, High Market, Tower and to allow me to use Mosswort Bridge the turn it comes into play. When you absolutely need an answer and you have the Bridge in your hand, the ability to flip it the same turn is often overlooked by your opponents. This play has already (and quite luckily) allowed me to play a Decree of Pain off the top and tying up a grand total of 3 other lands (Temple, Forest + colourless). My remaining mana went towards casting some of the 12 cards I drew off the Decree.

Tower of the Magistrate is another overlooked card. On top of the usual plays giving blockers protection and pushing through damage against Sharuum, who expects their Duplicant ability to fizzle or suddenly finds that their equipment has fallen off mid combat? It’s little plays like this that start to add up as the game goes on.

The land count ended up at 36 which is definitely too low. I'm going to leave it here and come back in a week or so to see how it went. I predict some changes will be needed.

Tuesday 22 February 2011

River Kelpie? Whoda thunk it?

This one has been brewing for a little while ever since Jeremiah gave it up on Commandercast towards the end of last season (If you don't listen to this podcast, you really should!) I’ve had a River Kelpie in my binder ever since it came out in Shadowmoor and I had honestly never looked at it until it came up in Episode 8


I could give some silly excuse about my copy being in French but the simple reason was that it just wasn’t on the radar in Standard at the time. It’s quite a pity because it would have been a wonderful singleton addition to provide an extra draw engine for my Reveillark combo deck of the time.


River Kelpie is a card designed specifically to benefit from block mechanics, namely Persist and Retrace. The creature itself has Persist which allows it to cantrip once it has died the first time, thus triggering its own ability. Add in the retrace and persist cards from the back end of Lorwyn /Shadowmoor block and you had yourself a deck.


Except that you didn’t. Instead you had Faeries, Reveillark & Elf combo and Kithkin. Block mechanics didn’t get a look-in except where strong individual cards complimented existing strategies. Then Shards of Alara rolled around and River Kelpie’s time was gone. It went into binders and junk rare boxes and stayed there because, let’s face it, who wants to add a booger to their deck?


I’ve spoken a little about how Ashling got her name, you’re about to get another lesson about the kelpie. The kelpie is a supernatural water horse from Celtic folklore that is believed to haunt the rivers and lochs of Scotland and Ireland. It’s a malevolent spirit that lures children to a watery death and, occasionally, was said to change into a beautiful, scantily clad woman in order to lure grown men to their death. (No doubt the preferred excuse that drunken friends of the drunken deceased used to his wife when they brought home her husband’s lifeless body after a poteen fuelled midnight swim: “It was the Kelpie what drowned him, ma’am! I swears it!”)


What’s interesting about the use of the description Kelpie and its artwork is that in the same block we also got “noggles” which is essentially the same supernatural being with a different regional title. In the artwork, however, Noggles are horse/donkey typed while Kelpies, traditionally capable of being majestic water-steeds or alluring sirens, get to look like something that was recently excavated from the nostrils of a particularly disgusting pre-teen.



Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty and look at what our slimy green friend can bring to our EDH/Commander experience:

3UU
Whenever River Kelpie or another permanent is put onto the battlefield from a graveyard, draw a card.
Whenever a player casts a spell from a graveyard, draw a card.
Persist
3/3

So, for a CMC of 5 we get a 3/3 and, if all goes according to plan, when it dies, we get a 2/2 and a card. Put all that together and we get 5/5 for a mana investment of 5 plus a card and likely you are trading with your opponent for cards, creatures or life in addition. Not a bad deal. It’s still a fragile creature but you can get some mileage out of it.


Before we go any further, I’m going to mention why this was never a standout card before in EDH: It’s not black. Keep that in mind as we go through those abilities.

Keep in mind also that this ability triggers for every player not just you so while you would do well to build around the Kelpie, don’t forget to benefit from the free card-drawing provided by your opponents.


1.) You get a card whenever a creature persist trigger resolves.
2.) You get a card whenever a player plays a spell from a graveyard.
3.) You get a card whenever an effect causes someone moves to move a permanent from the graveyard onto the battlefield.
4.) You get two cards whenever someone plays a permanent spell in your graveyard that moves it to the battlefield.


1.) Persist

There are 25 cards (incl. the Kelpie) which either have Persist or grant persist. While most of them are not worth mentioning there are some standouts in that group: Glen Elendra Archmage, Cauldron of Souls, Puppeteer Clique, Kitchen Finks, Murderous Redcap and Woodfall Primus. Four of these are in colours that like to bring cards back from the graveyard into hand or play; Green and Black.

2.) Playing spells from the graveyard

We have Retrace (12), Flashback or cards that interact with it (68) a count which includes Mystical Teachings and Dralnu, Lich Lord, Yawgmoth’s Agenda and Yawgmoth’s Will. While this list isn’t exactly brimming with huge bombs, Retraced Image and Wurm Harvest are still very respectable spells to be getting extra value out of, especially as they are likely drawing you more land under Kelpie to replay them. The largest issue is that, with the exception of the 3 cards here which do contain blue, the stars of “Kelpie + Mechanic” action will require you to run a second or third colour.


3.) You get a card whenever an effect causes someone moves to move a permanent from the graveyard onto the battlefield.

Here’s a fun category. Imagine you’re running a Momir Vig deck with River Kelpie and Crucible of Worlds in play. Now every fetch-land you play from your graveyard essentially reads “Pay 1 Life: Draw a card and put a basic into play.” Add some Azusa to that and play multiple lands from your graveyard, drawing a card each time. With Kelpie in play, your opponent’s Crucible of Worlds becomes the source of a lot of cards.
Switch colours for a moment and move into Black with Bloodghast, Nether Traitor and any Animate Dead effect such as Living Death. I suppose, with Black, you’d also have to include Sharuum which reanimates and draws a card.

Sharuum’s white reminds me that Reveillark, Karmic Guide and Sun Titan would be exceedingly saucy with the River Kelpie in play.

That’s all before we get into the Unearth mechanic.


4.) You get two cards whenever someone plays a permanent spell in your graveyard that moves it to the battlefield.

This is the corner-case bonus section that allows you to draw two cards if anyone runs Haakon or Karador as both abilities on the Kelpie would trigger. Court Hussar played from your graveyard with either Karador's or Haakon’s ability would allow you to draw 2 and then choose one of the next 3 cards to take into your hand essentially showing you the top 5 cards of your deck and drawing 3.

Thanks to Troacctid for picking up on this one. The official rule is:
If you cast another artifact, creature, enchantment, or planeswalker spell from a graveyard, only the second ability triggers. That's because the card is put onto the stack, not onto the battlefield.


But a lot of these suggestions, particularly the ones containing non-blue Legendary creatures keep coming back to the issue that he's Blue and not Black, a colour that would have a field day if he was he was costed at 3BB instead of 3UU!


These are just some teasers to get you looking at the big snot, em, I mean River Kelpie. I don’t have a decklist to share with you but hopefully I have sown the seeds for some ideas. Enjoy!

Thursday 17 February 2011

Sapling of Colfenor - Brainstorming BG Goodstuff


I recently broke apart Wrexial – Artifacts with the intention of rebuilding Thada Adel – Artifacts but never quite got to the point of finishing it. I used the black Wrexial cards to flesh out Balthor a little and I threw some artefacts into a GW Gaddock Teeg deck that just kind of fell together over the course of a couple of months when I started breaking up Rafiq.


I was intending to bring Teeg, Thada & Balthor to GP/PT Paris but, due to personal reasons, I missed work on Friday (Balthor was on my desk at work!) and didn’t have time to finish Thada so I was left holding Gaddock Teeg as my only complete and available deck to go have fun with at the Magic Weekend in Paris. Embarassing:

"Hi, I want to play Commander with you. I'm not a DB, I swear!"
[opponent looks at Teeg] "Yeah right!"


As I arrived late, I missed the GP but happily settled for gun-slinging. Gaddock got rolled by a Momir Vig, Simic Visionary deck that, had I not seen the general, could just have easily been a mono-G ramp deck. I don’t think Gis played a single blue spell as ramped through Primeval Titan up to Kozilek & Ulamog. I didn’t have very many permanents to start with and it was all over bar the pitiful sobbing by yours truly. I did score a Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas from the pack I won, so I’m not complaining too much.


On the table beside me, another Primeval Titan was tearing up things as well and, when I swung by later on to find no-one gun-slinging, I got to sit down again and destroyed things with my own Primeval Titan. This card is ripe for debate but it suffices to say for now that, if you have him, you should be playing him. He’s probably even better in Commander than the hype suggests.


I came back home with a hankering to sort out some decks. I wanted a new challenge but also something I’d not have to rack my brains too much about. New cards, getting into the Red Zone and having lots of fun was to be the order of the day. I decided on the colours first and that locked me into my general choice: I'd be revisiting my Sapling deck.


Sapling isn’t anything special in terms of its life gain ability but it is indestructible and costs only 5 mana. For a Green Black deck that is really nothing. Next step was deciding whether I’d try for Treefolk or just go straight to good-stuff. As I riffled through my folders I realised that I was missing a fair few Treefolk that I’d like to put into such a deck so good-stuff looked like the way to go.


There’s generally a clamour for things like Gift of the Deity or Worldslayer when you play Sapling as both clear the table pretty well. Of the two, Gift has a shot which I’ll decide when it comes down to the last few picks. Worldslayer on Sapling is just a move I don’t want to make in my playgroup.


So, we're down to a Green-Black deck that just wants to have fun. I have to warn you right from the off that there won’t be a particularly huge volume of innovation in this deck-list, maybe some kooky choices, but it’s unlikely I’ll be running cards you will need to look up on gatherer if you’ve been playing any length of time. If nothing else, this will probably end up being a free flowing ramble that illustrates how I go about building a deck that’s not constrained by flavour.

My best ever PTQ finish came off the back of a BGW extended Junk deck featuring Spiritmonger and Pernicious Deed so there was no chance I was going to miss out on those. Digging into the rest of my collection of gold/hybrid cards, I have:

Lord of Extinction
Maelstron Pulse
Necrogenesis
Pernicious Deed
Putrefy
Spiritmonger

That's some fun Magic right there! Two versitile pinpoint removal spells, a mass removal spell, some graveyard hate and a couple of cheap, fat bodies. I want to see a lot of fat (preferrably with benefits, sorry Doomgape!) hitting the field so it looks like adding some titans, an elephant and some plants to start with though I'll re-visit fat things in the list a little later:

Avenger of Zendikar
Primeval Titan
Grave Titan
Terastodon


K Tusker, E-Wit or Yav Elder:
Who is your #1?
 Primeval Titan makes me think about mana-fixing for this deck. Seeing as it’s going to be all the staples, here’s my basic list:

Darksteel Ingot
Sol Ring
Krosan Tusker
Yavimaya Elder
Wood Elves
Sakura Tribe Elder
Cultivate
Kodama’s Reach
Solemn Sim
Oracle of Mul Daya

This list gives me 8 colour fixers and another accelerator. While I’m not yet decided on the final list, it’s enough fixing to leave out Mana Vault, Golgari Signet and Colition Relic if I see the need to make space in this section. There will be ways to recur these creatures and spells so they aren’t 1-shot tricks:

Eternal Witness
Volrath’s Stronghold
Genesis
Living Death
Recollect
Regrowth


Now, I’m fairly sure you’re all pretty bored by now because, let’s face it, I haven’t named a single card that you guys don’t see in every singly other Green or Black deck every day of the week. I’ll try to switch that up now because I’ve been itching to try a particular combination for a while now and I’ve finally got the pieces to do so:

Lotus Cobra (though I’d really like to find an amulet of Vigor for the deck as well)
Bloodghast
Perilous Forays

The concept is pretty straight-forward: You play the enchantment and the Cobra and get Bloodghast into play with 1 mana open. You sacrifice the Bloodghast to the Forays and go find a basic land to put into play tapped. That triggers the landfall on the Cobra and the Bloodghast which leaves you back at square #1 except you have an extra (tapped) basic land in play. As this is something you can do as an instant, it’s best to try it at the end of the turn of the player to your right before untapping your huge board and drawing threats, spells and non-basics. Is it going to happen often? No, it’s not. The statistical chances of it going off is pretty low in a 100-card deck anyway and forewarned opponents aren’t likely to let you have simultaneous access to all the parts if they can help it.


In order to increase the chances of pulling it off, even once, we’re going to have to resort to tutors, which won’t hurt the rest of the deck either:

Demonic Tutor
Vampiric Tutor
Worldly Tutor
Corpse Connoisseur
Buried Alive
Green Sun’s Zenith
Tooth and Nail


So now we have a potential mana engine and ways to find it, we can work on improving it a little bit and using it to fuel some fun plays. I’m thinking of adding Mana Reflection to all that in order to fuel huge a Genesis Wave. In no particular order of preference, here’s some things I’d really like to hit with my huge Wave in addition to everything that’s gone before:

Artisan of Kozilek
Blightsteel Colossus
Darksteel Colossus
It that Betrays
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre


The jury’s still out on what exactly I’m going to include but if I’m true to the cheese, it’s unlikely that I’ll look past BSC & the 2 remaining legal Eldrazi legends. As Bribery and Acquire as well as multiple Control Magic-type cards are heavily played in my group, I have no real problem running these from a power standpoint. In a tamer enviornmant I'd be a little less gung-ho but I think my opponents can handle it. I’m going to stick a Brooding Saurian in for good measure because, well, I’d still prefer to be killed by their creatures rather than my own. I'm not a charity after all.


Backing up a little, there is a hidden advantage to running Perilous Forays in that it counts towards my necessary quota of sacrifice outlets. I generally include most of the following list when building a deck:

High Market
Mirren, the Moaning Well
Ashnod’s Altar
Greater Good

Depending on the land mix, I can now afford to skimp on something here. As an additional tool against having my hard-earned beasties stolen from me, sacrifice outlets really should be put into every deck along with ways to find them. The more ways you have to find them, the less you need to run. If I go for Crop Rotation and/or Sylvan Scrying on top of Primeval Titan, I can afford to snip another card off this list. What’s additionally impressive about sacrifice outlets is when you can get a window to run out a Living Death, you can sacrifice all your creatures to an outlet, wrath the table and get back the entirety of your own board, possibly with friends. That’s the sort of crushing play that ends games, especially if you’re bringing back Titans, Elephants or Plant-thingies.


Greater Good reminds me that I need to look at some more enchantments to add to the deck. I’ll probably forego Doubling Season given that it’s going to combo with so few cards and I’m prepared to make less zombies, elephants or plant tokens just to stick in a card that’s going to be relevant more often. Another card that’s not going to make the list, but for quite different reasons, is Sylvan Library. My sole copy is in my Cube and I’ve learned through long hours of cube building that it pays more to have an additional copy than to strip the Cube for any reason. I’m looking at the following enchantments:

Phyrexian Arena
Necropotence
Gravepact
Survival of the Fittest
Wild Pair (I’ll have to check my P/T’s though I doubt I will be short targets for this.)
Lurking Predators
Mana Reflection
Concordant Crossroads

I’ll probably end up cutting the Necropotence from the final list, though not necessarily for the negative press it will give me at the table, more for not wanting to jump through hoops to avoid the drawbacks. Despite the obvious power level there's a couple of things I don't like about the card: when I discard, I like it to go to the graveyard and I don’t like delayed card drawing. Needing to add more cards to make up for the life loss is also going to be an issue because I’m getting the feeling that the deck is starting to bloat a bit and this is a cut I’ll happily make for all those reasons.

The rest of the remaining picks are pretty straight forward B/G cards, only the Crossroads looks a bit strange. There will come a time when you want to drop your hand and kill someone now either because they will kill you before you untap for your next turn or there’s some effect on the board freezing you out of playing your hand. If you forget about the downsides of Concordant Crossroads and take it to read “G, Sorcery: Your creatures have haste. Make it count!”, then you can see how it can be a pretty potent tool in any deck that likes to get big quickly.


We will need some small amount of board control, to deal with creatures and artifacts mostly and here’s the bones of the suite I’m thinking of:

Black Sun’s Zenith
Damnation
Decree of Pain
Indrik Stomphowler
Krosan Grip
Acidic Slime
Shriekmaw
Woodfall Primus
Duplicant
Butcher of Malakir


And that's pretty much it for the specific non-land card groups. From here I'm essentially flipping pages of my folders and finding things I want to play for their utility or cool factor. Here's what I'm down to for the moment:

Black:
Geth, Lord of the Vault:  He's a huge house and a "must answer" for your opponents whenever he hits play. I plan to have a lot of mana to play with and if I can get him into play with Seedborn Muse, things will get out of hand very, very quickly.

Puppeteer Clique:  I can't keep calling everything a "house" but it's clear that certain cards are just great at what they do. This creature version of Gruesome Encore is another excellent tool at stealing a problematic creature from an opponent's graveyard and dealing with it in a permanent fashion after you've had your wicked way with it first. Unlike the [MBS] sorcery, however, the loophole to avoid the Exile effect is there so you have to be careful how you use this.

Withered Wretch:  I don't know if I want to run the Wretch because I want to be able to interact with opponent's graveyards but he's in the pile to be considered at any rate.

Beacon of Unrest:  Adding this I was thinking about which point I need to consider the deck as a whole in light of certain cards like Genesis Wave. If I'm not too pushed about what the Wave flips over then the Beacon is almost an auto-include but if I want to maximize my hits, at some point I'm going to have to consider the type of cards that get added. As I really want to play Genesis Wave, I'm more likely to fall on the side of permanents over spells if I need to cut out cards with similiar effects. Adding Geth & Clique but cutting Beacon won't disturb me in the slightest.

Promise of Power:  Here's a confession: I hate Promise of Power, but, like Necropotence, there is so much up-side that I feel a little silly leaving it out of any B/x deck. I've included it in the list to mention this but it's most likely one of the first cards getting cut if I go over 100. As to why I hate it, I suppose that it's the feeling I get of not "winning" on the cards I draw off it but that is probably as much a criticism of the decks I build than the card in itself. :o)

Skeletal Scrying:  Let's get picky here, sometimes you want to S-Scry for a lot but there's cards in your graveyard you just don't want to exile. Ok, I'm being overly pedantic, this is excellent.


Green:
Fierce Empath:  In a deck with a reduced number of fatties, the Empath is a king. I don't see that as being the case here and I have tagged a number or tutors to go into the deck already. Does it warrant a place over Worldy Tutor in order to increase the permanent count? We'll have to see though WT's ability to find useful weenies may push it over the edge and Genesis Wave be damned.

Kamahl, Fist of Krosa/Ezuri, Renegade Leader:  Here I have a little bit of a pickle because I'm very aware that the average CC of the deck, even with the ramping and fixing, is creeping up and up. Do I opt for a 2/2 for 1GG or a 4/3 for 4GG, both featuring the ability I want to have: Overrun on a stick? When it comes down to it, Ezuri's first ability is pretty much a non-issue so it's Kamahl's Animate Land ability fighting against Ezuri's cheaper cost. I'll probably go with Ezuri here as I'm unlikely to be using Kamahl's first ability very often anyway. Both are on the pile but only one can make the cut!!

Rampaging Baloths:  Silly with Genesis Wave, silly with Perilous Foray and silly with the additional ways I have of droping an extra land into play. I'm not sure that this Baloth isn't just flat out better than another, larger-but-dumber beater. In Azusa/Broccoli it was an auto-include as the entire deck was concepted around hitting multiple landfall triggers. This made the Baloths a 1-Beast army. I'm interested to see how I feel about him here come cut-time.

Seedborn Muse:  Benny Smith over on Star City games believes Seedborn Muse is ban-worthy in Commander. I'm not sure I share that sentiment exactly but that could be because I'm not building decks specifically to take advantage of her untap ability. Just the idea of having her and Geth in play together would be enough to get me to play her. The fact that she untaps my team after I attack is just gravy.

Praetor's Counsel:  Last on the green list is the Counsel. I want to play it but it's really hard to get a bead on how good it's going to be. I'll probably end up not playing it initially and subbing it in for a fatty that I don't feel like running after a few tries.


Artifacts:
Expedition Map:  We're going to be running a lot of fun & functional non-basics and the Map will find them all. It's probably likely that this will get the nod over Crop Rotation and Sylvan Scrying in the final list.

Lightning Greaves:  Not so much for my Commander, this, along with the Concordant Crossroads will help to give someone a very nasty surprise.

Mimic Vat:  Here's a bold claim: Mimic Vat may just be the best artifact in Commander. It's this close -> <- to being the uncontested best only by virtue of the fact that occasionally it won't have a decent target (or too many good targets) but that's like saying something like "Sol Ring turn 1 isn't as great if you don't have a 4-drop to play on turn 2." It may not be relevant turn 2, but it will be relevant turn 3. For Mimic Vat, in a format where, if you're playing a creature, it's generally something that's worth playing, it becomes a de-facto factory that spits out copies of some of the most useful or most efficient creatures in the history of the game. If there's nothing on the board now, there will be soon and it's a serious set of brakes for players who were planning to drop that bomb-creature soon after. Now any creature in play is potentially yours for the very convenient cost of killing it. Not only do you remove a direct threat, you can stop opponents reanimating it from the graveyard and you give yourself a shot at churning out multiple hasty clones. To make things even better, you can then kill your own Vat to permanently exile an imprinted threat, especially tasty when you have a way of getting the Mimic Vat back into play under your control. Sun Titan says "Hi!". This is one sick puppy and should make every Commander deck.

Nim Deathmantle:  Scars of Mirrodin also gave us this particular gem. It's essentially a hideously expensive anti-Wrath and sacrifice-combo engine. At 4 mana per creature heading to your graveyard, you're unlikely to save very many but sometimes there's an essential 1 or 2 that just need to stick around to have a little more fun. Mix this in with some sort of sacrifice effect (Ashnod's Altar is particularly sweet for the mana to help reduce the reanimate cost) and you can push through a few "goes to graveyard" and/or "comes into play" triggers. When you have a tapped creature, the mana for the Deathmantle and a useful sacrifice outlet, you're probably going to be able to block. It's very important to remember that the ability triggers even if the creature wasn't equipped in the first place because, often enough, your opponents will.

Sensei's Divining Top:  We know it's good, I'm playing it.

And that's about it! Let's do a quick count.
Ha! Just my list of additional cards here runs to 17 cards which equates to about 33% of an average EDH deck. Add to the 68 that I listed previously and we have a total 85 cards, only 2 of which are lands. We need to make that list of 83 non-land cards into something about 63-65 long.

Rather than keep going at this point (I still need to do lands), I'm actually going to finish editing this a little bit and start the cuts offline. I'll come back with the land and the "final" list in a few days but feel free to comment on what you'd like to see stay, go or anything I've overlooked altogether!

Saturday 5 February 2011

Sad Panda Time: Islands


We're all very happy about Consecrated Sphinx. Well, all of us who play Islands are happy about Consecrated Sphinx, those of you who hate that little drop of water probably loathe "Mind's Eye Sphinx". While everyone was looking at ways to draw silly amounts of cards with the Sphinx (Windfall, Wheel of Fortune etc.), others were pondering what would happen if two copies of Consecrated Sphinx were in play simultaniously under the control of two different players whether it be two original copies or some sort of Clone of the original.

What happens is this:
A player draws a card.This triggers the draw ability of both Player A & Player B's Sphinxes. Both draw 2 cards off his Sphinx's triggered ability. This, in turn, triggers the ability of the other conrtroler's Sphinx, who can draw up to 4 cards, and so on, and so on until one of the two players chooses to stop drawing cards. This will repeat every single time any player draws a card. Sad face for everyone else in the game.

Consecrated Sphinx is not the only offender for this sort of silly trickery. Imagine a similiar situation where the two players in question don't control Consecrated Sphinx but instead each has a fully levelled up copy of Lighthouse Chronologist.

Here we go again:

Chronologist A player takes his turn and announces that it's finished. Then Chronologist B player takes their extra turn. When that's finished, they pass the baton back to Player A, and so on, and so on until one wins the game.

The only little problem with both the double Chronologist and the double Sphinx situations is that they are both creatures and, as we all know, creatures are pretty fragile in EDH/Commander. That said, both situations are potentially very easy to set up and anyone looking to avoid these situations needs to keep their wits about them to avoid "EDH Mafia"-type situations developing.

Things that are harder to contend with are locks like Erayo, Soratami Ascendant and Arcane Lab and a new, nefarious lock featuring Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir and Knowledge Pool. I mentioned in my review of the Mirrodin Besieged artifacts that someone would probably find a way to break this otherwise annoying chaos card. Lo and behold, it's now officially broken.  


Here's a resume from Sinis on the MTGcommander.net boards:
1. Knowledge Pool exiles spells as they are cast from hand as a triggered ability.  Exiled spells do not resolve. This triggered ability is more involved than a mere exiling of spells cast, it allows you to cast a spell exiled by knowledge pool without paying it's cost.

2. If Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir is on the table, opponents of the Teferi controller can only cast spells when they could cast a sorcery. This means that you can only cast a spell when the stack is empty (i.e. there are no spells or abilities on the stack already, and it is your main phase).

3. The triggered ability from Knowledge Pool is still on the stack when you are selecting a spell to cast without paying its mana cost (after your initial spell from hand is exiled). Because that triggered ability from knowledge pool is still on the stack, Teferi expressly forbids casting a spell under these circumstances (the stack is not empty, no spells for you) unless you are the controller of Teferi. If you are not: Sad Panda Face.

All is not lost, there are outs: Ancient Grudge, Bash to Bits and Ray of Distortion, Ulamog, the infinite Gyre and a few others will help you but you need to be both running these and have them in the correct zone when you need them. The combo doesn't stop cycling, activated abilities, spells cast from the graveyard, Commander Zone or exiled (with rebound or suspend) but again you have to have all these in the right zone at the right time which makes your ability to respond to this combo quite narrow.

While this is not the straw that broke the camel's back, it is the third card in 3 non-core sets that gives Blue based Commander decks an extra tool and makes a mockery of interactivity. If we keep getting cards that slot too easily into blue-based decks, the oft joked about suggestion of banning Islands may gather pace.

What do you guys think?