Willy Wonka

(Note: I initially wrote the majority of this piece almost 1 full year ago after promising the guys at CommanderCast I'd do it. Then RL intervened and it, and the 8 or 9 other pieces I'd started, never got finished. Fuelled by an increasing desire to get it out there rather than dive back in to try to provide the most polished version possible, here it it in all its ugliness.)

You may not realise it, but this guy -> is probably sitting beside you at your Commander games.

He's definitely on the forums that you're reading. (No, I'm not talking about Joz, though the resemblance is uncanny!!)

It's certain that he'll appear in this post again without me needing to post the image. (It's kinda all about him and someone called Charlie but I'll get to that.)

What you don't know is that, for some of you, he is also the face that stares back at you when you're checking yourself out in any reflective surface you come across. Yes, my fellow EDH super-enthusiasts, we are fast becoming the principal consumers of green hair-dye, fake tanning cream and white dungarees and most of us never even realised it. In short, there's a lot of Oompa-Loompa's around.

Confused yet?

First off, what the hell is an Oompa-Loompa? Wize Wiki tells us:

Oompa-Loompas come from Loompaland, which is a region of Loompa, a small isolated island in the Atlantic Ocean. 

Ok, sure.

The Oompa-Loompa would end up being preyed upon or attacked by Whangdoodles, Hornswogglers and Snozzywangers, which also lived there. 

Typical really, I never trusted those Snozzywangers.

Wonka ended up inviting them to work at his factory and get away from their natural predators. As each bad child makes his/her exit, Oompa-Loompa sing moralising songs accompanied by a drum beat, and tend to speak in rhyme.

Or, to put it another way: they annoying, moralisizing little shits that live in a strange, enclosed world and speak funny.

This is the 99% true story of Charlie (some very slight artificial licence), the luckiest boy in the entire world, who won the golden ticket to play Elder Dragon Highlander Commander because he likes playing magic with his friends when his mom let's him out and he was given a Commander pre-con for his birthday. Like I said, lucky boy.


Charlie tinkered about with his Kaalia deck a little bit, adding a couple of cards, taking some away and decided he was going to hit his LGS the following Saturday. Candy filled dreams of crushing angel/dragon/demon victories rocked Charlie gently to sleep that night.

Roll around Saturday and Charlie is finally there, the mecca known as "Know When to Hold 'em Games", and, how lucky, there's a Commander game about to get under way. Could Charlie possibly join in?

But of course, toothy grins reply! Charlie, stars in his eyes, sits down with the sharks. Starting to his left we have Augustus playing GAA, IV; Veruca Salt playing Faeries; Violet playing Gaddock; and Mike, the resident Spike, playing Sharuum. 

The game draws a crowd. (I mean, a couple of chicks playing Magic, why wouldn't it?)

• Augustus gets greedy, overextends and bites it early.
• Violet, ignoring Sheldon's advice, knocks her soda over her deck and quits in a quite spectacular rage.
• Veruca tangles with some squirrels and ends up falling to an Overrun.
• Mike tries to go infinite infinite times and has to stop when he starts to bleed from his ears. 
• Charlie is left alone at the table, trying to get to 14 mana to replay his general.

And thoughout all this, everyone around has something to say about everthing transpiring in front of them: "Tunnel Vision is a DB move!", "Girls don't have the temperament to play Magic!", "You don't fuck with the squirrels!", "Don't bring a knife to a battlecruiser fight!" and, of course, " ".


Personally, as I watched from the counter, I felt sorry for Charlie.

We had a chat afterwards to get his back-story but he was essentially an onlooker in his first ever game of "unprotected" Commander. He was only ever attacked or targetted as an after-thought, it was almost as if he just wasn't worth considering until the other sharks were dealt with.


Unfortunatly, I made the mistake of asking to look through his deck before the other Oompa-Loompas had cleared away (of course I'm an Oompa-Loompa too!) and they flocked round to begin the real beatdown in ernest. There was not a single Oompa-Loompa who refrained from moralising Charlie about his choice of deck, cards or even opponents. It very quickly became Charlie's "fault" that he had choosen to sit at a table at which players with "tiered" & "tuned" decks resided. How the hell was he to know? The kid had never played Commander in the store before and this was his reward.

And, this is the kicker, no-one around was intentionally being mean or nasty to Charlie, they genuinely believed that they were good samaritans helping this lost soul, this Commander noob, tweak his deck, become a better Commander player, make better card selections.

I could see his face slowly melting from a sort of inner pride that he hadn't necessarily embarassed himself during the game to a hollow, pasty pallor of someone who's been had the rug pulled out from under them and were afraid they were going to get dumped on their ass again.

After waiting to see if there was anything really constructive in the offing, I stepped back in again and shooed the oompa-loompas away, to their huge annoyance. I put the decks to the side and we got to talking about games and movies and cards and stuff that's cool. We talked about Magic tournaments and "competitive" level play. Charlie admitted that he'd come to the store expecting to feel that special Commander comraderie he'd read so much about, an acceptance of what he finds "cool", but instead found he was being judged against much stricter standards. As of that moment, he didn't have any particular desire to come back to the store.

The moralists, perfectionists and "strictly better" crowd had managed, in a single afternoon, to put a new player off the format by "helping".

You see, the Willy Wonka Sweet Factory that is the Commander format is filled with a lot of great stuff but coming in from the outside with your pea-flicker and facing down the howitzers can be a harrowing experience. The store owner, Willy, offered to start up another game and sit down with the two us for something more convivial and suited to Charlie's current level, a 3 way Commander precon battle.

He had a blast, we all had a blast and, even though Charlie didn't ultimately win the game, he'll remember it for the laughs and swingy plays that are the hallmark of the format and he'll remember it for being an integral and important part of the game, not just an afterthought.We got up from the table with his promise to come back in to play again sometime and then he headed for the door.

There was an additional disappointing footnote to his afternoon in the shop though as another Oompa-Loompa (I swear that guy is part Whangdoodle!!), who had been watching the second game, started on what plays he should have made and what he should have dropped with Kaalia at what moment. Charlie mumbled his excuses and sidled out.

[Warning: here's my brief attempt at moralising!] At least Charlie got to go home with the keys to the factory, though, seeing how some people keep it, that's not necessarily always a good thing. I'd like to think me & Willy set him on the right path to enjoying the format, I'd like to think that he'll actually take some information and positives from the first game and the dissection he endured afterwards but I wasn't so sure about that at the time.

I actually met Charlie on the street about 2 weeks after first meeting him in the shop and he seemed quite up-beat about the format. He'd convinced his friends to play a game (though he'd made the decks and, of course, the one he kept for himself was better and Kaalia whupped them easily) and thought he could get them to play  more. He did admit that, had he left the shop before that second game he'd never have come back and he gets the idea about the relative levels of the decks at the initial table after inflicting similiar treatment on his own friends, albeit at a much scaled down level.

Now that it's a year on after starting this piece, I can say that he has been back to play, not often but still some, though I've never seen him come in with any other kids. Maybe he spiked it a little too hard with his friends (or maybe they're just not that into Magic?)

How we act at the table & after the table has a huge impact on young players coming into this game and an equally huge effect on players coming into the format. People with experience at Magic will be able to pick the format up easily enough however more inexperienced players will feel out of the loop in terms of card access, rules and interactions and general Magic knowledge.

While I don't want to say that it's our "duty" to help newer players out without moralising and lecturing, the future of the format and the overall enjoyment behoves us to encourage and nurture these players coming in.

This isn't exclusively for the under-prepared or card-shy players coming in to play with us as Charlie could easily have soaked up everything like a sponge from the first game and come back with the griefer deck to end all griefer decks, some sort of hybrid Azusa / Ad Nauseum nightmare-combo. That wouldn't have been very beneficial for him either as the general community (not represented by Violet, Veruca, Mike and Augustus or, for that matter, the Oompa-Loompas) wouldn't have taken kindly to yet another power gamer concentrating on the W and not the J (that's "Journey", btw)

So this is where I bring my rambling to a close. I suppose the message is that sometimes your good intentions are not received in the way it's intended and you need to be as careful about how you present them as when you sit down at a table across from someone new.

And, more importantly, stay away from the Whangdoodles, Hornswogglers and Snozzwangers!!

[SCD] Cornelian Choices with Bad Cards: Phyrexian Portal

Probably one of my favourite cards over time has been Invasion's Fact or Fiction. It rewards everything from correct piling and correct pile choosing to building your deck to take advantage of a lot of cards going into your graveyard. It even spawned an acronym to illustrate it's power in conjunction with the mighty Psychatog: EOTFOFYL (End of turn: Fact or Fiction. You lose!) Sometimes it spawned choices that meant you were damned irregardless of how you split your opponent's piles, there was essentially no good splits for you, just degrees of how bad it was going to get. The card spawned pages and pages of internet ink debating the ins and outs of the card on topics such as the benefits of the 1-4 split and when you should go 3-2.


My favourite part of the card, however, was not making the piles but forcing the choice on my opponents and then turning their choices into decisions that best reflected what I wanted at that time in the game. I'm often surprised at the extra importance some players give to certain cards: Why should I worry unduly about letting the 1-card Wrath of God pile disappear when the remaining cards will more easily win me the game? Sometimes with Fact or Fiction, the 1-card pile is the right answer because that's the one card that the opponent fears the most.  With Phyrexian Portal though, where they know the others aren't going to the graveyard, the choice for you is harder. The psychology of the presented piles is the game within the game.

Unfortunately, Fact or Fiction is not a Commander staple, though it does crop up from time to time. What does a one shot of this sort in a 100 cards deck serve you compared to the 3 or 4 copies that were de rigeur in 60 cards decks when it was legal? Some would argue "not much" though there are some compelling arguments for those who want to churn through cards and fill graveyards. Sadly, it's not a card that has seen much love and I miss it.
 
In its absence, I've been finding a lot of joy in a very (very) bad junk rare from alliances: Phyrexian Portal.

Now, don't make any mistake here, this is a bad card, you probably shouldn't ever play it. Some players, upon seeing it for the first time, immediately look for a way to get around the potentially crushing exile effect. As the exiled cards are exiled face up there are a couple of possibilities depending on your color mix: Riftsweeper and Pull from Eternity will both recover cards into your graveyard or library, however, unless you’re able to churn the Riftsweeper through some sort of loop, you’re probably not going to be able to rely on it. Add in that Riftsweeper itself it could be one of the cards that is unwittingly exiled in a face down pile and you may begin to see how unreliable such a solution is.

So yeah, bad card.

Before we go look at the what the card does, here's the Oracle Text:

3: If your library has ten or more cards in it, target opponent looks at the top ten cards of your library and separates them into two face-down piles. Exile one of those piles. Search the other pile for a card, put it into your hand, then shuffle the rest of that pile into your library.



What it doesn't do like Fact or Fiction:

•     It doesn't allow you to see both piles. You must make a blind choice based solely on the number of cards in each pile and your read of your opponent.

•     It doesn't put the un-chosen cards into the graveyard. One of the incidental strengths of Fact or Fiction was that the un-chosen pile was put into the graveyard. Occasionally, given the format, it mattered more what and how many cards you put into your graveyard than which cards you chose to take into your hand. Here the un-chosen cards are pretty much lost.

•     It allows you to activate the effect multiple times.

What it does like Fact or Fiction:

•     It forces your opponent to make a choice: into which of two groups of cards should they put a particular card. They must not only make this choice, but also make a decision on the size of each pile. Like Fact or Fiction, Phyrexian Portal doesn't stipulate the size of the splits and 1-9 splits are as possible as 0-5 Fact or Fiction splits. 0-10 splits are also possible, though I’m not sure why you’d want your opponent to have a choice of 10 unless you’re colluding with them to try to overcome a third player.

•     It forces you to make a choice. Now that you have seen the two face-down piles, which one do you take?

Essentially the entire fun behind the card is in these last two bullet-points: What is your opponent going to do and what are you going to do with whatever information you have gleaned from his process? If he splits it 1-9, is the 1 card so dominating right now that it will win you the game right there or is your opponent so good at mind games that he's just fucking with you and placing a basic land apart with signals that it's some über-spell? If you pass on the "1" pile, you're potentially missing out on the exact card you need to win the game right now. Potentially. Is it worth the risk of exiling the remaining 9 cards to find out?

I'd say that the answer is "No" 99% of the time. I think you can allow for yourself to get punked the once this actually crops up for better card selection in the remaining pile, even if that pile is 9 basic lands. Your chances of getting something worth playing are so much higher if you take the larger pile. Imagine that you're running this out on the third turn with no acceleration and play no land before activating on turn 4. You have drawn 11 cards from your 99, 3 of which are lands. Given the trend for about 40 mana sources in a deck, of the remaining 88 cards there's 37 mana sources and 51 spells if you have no other mana sources in hand. That gives you a rough ratio of 4 mana sources for every 10 cards revealed to your opponent off the Phyrexian Portal. Now, we all know that bad luck laughs in the face of statistics such as this and you can just as easily have a 10-spell reveal as a 10 mana-source reveal.

Now let's also assume that Phyrexian Portal is the worst card in your deck (shouldn't be hard really!). Every card revealed to your opponent that's not a mana source is now a spell worthy of having in your hand. As the opponent choosing, if there is the aforementioned 1 great card and lots of mana, the split is probably still better at something close to 5/5 than 9/1 as they are guaranteed to deprive you of at least 5 usable cards, even if they are only mana sources. Having 2 great cards and lots of mana make it easy to split with one in each pile. What do you do when it's 6 great cards and 4 mana sources?

If you split them straight down the middle, you cut out half of the great cards, as they will be exiled, but the remaining unchosen cards in the taken pile will get shuffled back in to the library. Are you willing to let that go? And, if so, which pile are you more willing to let go? Do you maybe shunt over an additional mana source into the "better" split to fake out your opponent into thinking that you don't care of they pick the bulkier pile? What about a full-on psych-out by stacking all the spells into the larger 6- or 7-card pile and keeping the mana sources in a smaller 3- or 4-card pile?

Don't forget that the person activating the Portal doesn't see the cards as they go into a pile as they would with a Fact or Fiction. You just see the back of 10 card sleeves split into two piles. How good are your Jedi mind tricks? And, in your multi-player group, knowing that it's closed information, which opponent do you choose: The guy who knows what he's doing or the guy who doesn't? If you pick a player who just randomly flips the cards into 2 separate piles of 5, it's really just a crap-shoot. You could be getting, and losing, anything. Someone who tries to choose "correctly" but has a weaker grasp of the cards he's looking at will be more inclined to make bad choices but you have to read that bad choice correctly. Someone who knows exactly what they are doing could play it straight up or try a bit of bluffing. You really need to know your playgroup well to the get the best out of this card.

Of course, Phyrexian Portal is not all bad. You do have cards that can help you decipher what is happening in the top ten cards of your library. Ancestral Knowledge is an obvious one, but tends to be a one-shot solution. Scroll Rack has much more promise as, with a large enough hand size, you get to look at most, if not all, of the cards you're putting on top of your library before your opponent looks at them. This way you can control some of what could be exiled, though I presume that most of the kind of players who would run something like Phyrexian Portal are not the types of players who really care that much what gets exiled!

Many thanks to Imshan for the rules spot that allows me to add in Mirror of Fate. For 5 mana, Mirror of Fate allows you to cherry pick from the exiled cards some of the more powerful ones that will help you win the game in short order. If you can get it up and running with some sort of artifact recursion support, there is potential there for a second or third shot at the prize. It seems like a pretty delicate balance that you’d need to strike between what you are exiling and what you’re bringing back, but I can see a situation where you get some choice cards into exile, pop the Mirror (which, very importantly, is not exiled with it’s own effect), recur the Mirror and pop it again to bring back the next pile of cards. 

This is probably something I’d use in a U/x deck rather than the Mono-R shell I’m currently using the Portal in as blue would give you access to Academy Ruins and a little more draw to churn through cards. I know people hate him, but I can see a very aggressive line of play with Mirror, Jin Gitaxis and Academy Ruins allowing you to both draw for the turn and draw 7 off Jin Gitaxis with each of the drawn cards being hand picked from your face-up exiled zone in addition to the Academy Ruins recurred Mirror of Fate. Of course, you can have this effect without the use of Phyrexian Portal, though planning for this eventuality allows you to tutor through the Portal with a lot less care for what gets exiled.

At worst, I suppose you could always run Labratory Maniac and hope for the best!

May your splits always be favourable and your Jedi mind tricks never fall on a Toydarian opponent!

Grafdigger's Cage: Metagaming made easy.

Sometimes I feel a deck can reach a critical point when any improvements on it are just trolling your playgroup. You move past the “hard to beat” descriptions and moving into “just being unfair” territory. While many players don’t like intentionally building in weaknesses, sometimes you just have to step back and say “Ok, We’re going to have to do this “Dr. Evil” style and not “Scott Evil” style or people will just think I’m a jerk.” Allowing your deck to contain a big glass jaw isn't too much of a problem in any case when your opponents just don't play to beat that strategy.

That's just not the way it's done, Scott!!

I reached that critical point just after the release of Dark Ascension with the Teneb deck I had tweaked from  Mr. Scotty Mac’s original “cheaty” build. His version was hell-bent on putting huge monsters into play for cheap or free but, while I kept some of the build as was originally intended, I tried to move the deck into a more comfortable territory for my playgroup.

Unfortunately, Wizards went and printed Mikaeus, the Unhallowed in Dark Ascension. Sometimes the temptation is too much.

Ok, my first impression was to be pretty impressed, both by the first look at the card and by the flavor. A legendary character in Innistrad killed off and zombified to come back in Dark Ascension? How cool is that?!

I lucked into a copy in a sealed event and put on my thinking cap as to what I could do with it. I could have just put it into my zombie deck, of course. The only other deck I have built with black is the aforementioned Teneb, a deck that really likes having things jump in and out of your graveyard. Hey! Mikaeus helps things jump right back out of my graveyard! Match made in ....eh, where-ever zombies and dragons and spirits all hang out together after the game.


Surely, if I put Mikaeus into Teneb, it would be nice and synergistic and not some broken-ass engine, right?

Surely.

Rolls eyes.

The following overreaction comes with the sad knowledge that your opponents have somehow allowed you to have Mikaeus, Greater Good and Reveillark together in play at the same time.

Things that I have learned from Mikaeus:

• Eternal Witness is Human, thankfully, as the card is nutty enough as it is. So is Academy Rector, though this is rather incidental as you were unlikely to ever resolve Undying anyway unless his race was blanked in some way (such as being flipped by Ixidron) and his remove ability wouldn’t have triggered in any case. Sadly, Yavimaya Elder is also Human.  I think I’m more bummed with that than the prospect of EWit not continually bouncing back.
  
• >> Insert some sort of infinite damage combo with Triskelion here <<
  
• Reveillark is probably a card that the RC should be looking at very closely. It's already pretty OP with things like Karmic Guide (Yay for the Judge Promo!!) or Saffi and it's positively bonkers with Mikaeus, as are pretty much all the evoke creatures, with possibly its high evoke cost the only thing keeping it from being stupid as opposed to just extremely good. Changing colours quickly to mention Mikaeus with Evoke, Mulldrifter becomes a 3/3 flyer, draw 4 for 2U with the Legend in play. That's fair, right?
  
• Grafdigger's Cage wasn't just a nice in-set foil for Undying and Flashback: It's a necessary tool for keeping some balance in standard and essential for ensuring that all colours in all other formats have a cheap means to stop recursion engines of every sort.

In a set that gives some nice flashback spells and a new graveyard based mechanic, it seems a little misplaced to find the Cage as it totally dominates those strategies. Currently in the Standard and block formats, in addition to getting your game in place, you must at all times and in all colours be able to remove the Cage. The flip side is that the cage is a blank card against you unless you need to use the graveyard as a resource.

Sideboarding for Dummies:
4 Grafdigger's Cage
11 Other Cards

Moving this into Commander, it's a bit trite to say that the sky is falling for recursion strategies as is being mentioned in Vintage, but this card is a kick in the teeth for Green-White (Sun Titan, Karmic Guide, Reveillark, Saffi among others), Black (where do I start?), Blue (Wrexial, Acquire, Bribery, Magus of the / Future / Sight), and even Red (Goblin Welder). So I guess that's a kick in the teeth for everyone. For one single, colourless mana, the Cage shouts "NO!!" for a very large portion of the format's favourite spells. It's cheap, tutorable with Trinket Mage and allows for very few work-arounds.

Essentially only effects that exile a card before it enters play from library or graveyard can side-step the Cage: Living Death (yay!), Tooth and Nail (Booo!) and Thada Adel (yay!) are a couple of more common examples but this list gets very short and unimpressive very, very quickly in comparison to all the cards that the Cage stops. The other work-around is just playing fair but we all know how unsuccessful that strategy is in Commander.

Something to remember: Grafdigger's Cage will swing from being a useless card to being the most dominant card in different games and at different points in games. Either way it's still essential and I'd go as far as to say is an auto-include (sorry!) for any deck that isn't intending to abuse graveyards or the top of their deck. It's also not a definitive answer. You will need something else to stop shennanigans so this should be part of a suite that looks at disrupting your opponent, not just a single card in a pile of 99. I've already had an opponent whine about being unable to stop Teneb despite having the Cage in his deck. Maybe he should have found the Cage with his Trinket Mage rather than Sensei's Divining Top, eh?

Enjoy your new toy, bring balance to the force and don’t call me Shirley.

Flashback! - The best of Knowledge Pool in 2011

The Knowledge Pool is a team of bloggers (authors of this blog including) who work hard to give you the best casual Magic: the Gathering content on the net.  Today I present you the highlights these guys produced in 2011 in an all-mighty Flashback.

"What is Casual"
by Daryl Bockett on Muse Vessel
The best definition and analysis of casual Magic: the Gathering so far.  Daryl tries to define what casual is about - and what not.
Other famous articles from Daryl include:  “Security Curve Theory” (Part I and Part II) and “Worst Rule in Commander”.

"Make your Own Rules"
and "Real Talk Redeux"
by Andy aka GHoooSTS on CommanderCast.com
These two podcast episodes feature Q&A with Alex Kenny aka Ban-ki-moon, a member of the MtG: Commander Rules Committee.  He explains many of the reasons why Commander is the way it is today.  He also gets across some motivations behind banning or not-banning certain cards.

“Trading In The Smartphone Age”
by Dominik Schönleben on CompletelyCasual.net
This article explains how trading Magiccards has changed recently through the diffusion of the smart phone.  Dominik explains how haggling and “the good deal” have been lost through technology.

“Politics, Complexity and Multiplayer Strategy” (Part I,  Part II and Finale)
by Daryl Bockett on Muse Vessel
A sweeping blow about the diverse angles of politics that can happen in MtG: Commander. He separates politics from strategy and gives an in depth analysis.
"The Battle to Defend the Peaks"
by Owen aka Zimagic on The Crazy 99
This little short story illustrates how an MtG: Commander game could look like when told from a narrative angle.  Owen uses his imagination to tell the story that lies behind any match.

“Life is Worth Living!”
and “Who Died and Made You F##king King of the Zombies!!!”
by C. R. Russell on Three To The Face!!!
If you like checking out decks for exotic Generals to get inspired, like us, C.R. Russel is your man.  These two pieces about [card]Daughter of Autumn[/card] and [card]Balthor the Defiled[/card] are his highlights from 2011.

From the “Generally Speaking” series: “Homura, Jedi Knight”
and “Erayo, Clockwater Ascendant”
by Imshan aka Sinis on CommanderCast.com
Comparing these two articles could not be more controversial.  In this article series Imshan normally surprises us with a wacky non-Magic related theme.  [card]Homura, Human Ascendant[/card] aka Obi-Wan Kenobi as a prime example for this, stands in stark contrast to his very competitive variants of [card]Erayo, Soratami Ascendant[/card].

“Horde Magic: A New Way to Play Magic and Survive Zombie Invasions”
by Peter Knudson on QuietSpeculation.com
After the Epic Design Fail form Kenneth Nagle in 2011, “Horde Magic” is taking over as the only viable one-vs-many variant Magic: the Gathering has to offer.  In this article Peter Knudson explains the basics of his newly developed variant and how to built your own Horde-Deck.

“If I Can Podcast, So Can You”
by Andy aka GHoooSTS on CommanderCast.com
You always thought CommanderCast is produced by a brilliant team of 20 professionals to be as awesome as it is - we have to disappoint you.  Here Andy, the hard working producer behind the best MtG: Commander podcast on the Internet, explains to you “how to make your own podcast”.  If you ever had the desire to get out there, follow his lead.

“I Hate Sol Ring and All that it Taps For”
by Brandon Isleib on Muse Vessel
Brandon does not like people who tell him what he has to play.  Staples like Sol Ring are no exception. Find out why the obvious choice is not always the right one.
Other famous articles from Brandon include:  “Decktagon” and “One Thing Leads to Another”

“Whiskey Identity”
by Sean Patchen on ManaDeprived.com
If you thought Magic: the Gathering and alcohol should not be combined, Sean proves you dead wrong. Sean, a true bon vivant, presents to you an exhaustive list of finer Whiskeys to go with each specific deck you have.

“Goblins and From the Vault: Legends”
by Cassidy Silver
This article relives a moment from Cassidy’s youth, where he had the one dream fulfilled every Magic: the Gathering player has (apart from winning the Pro Tour maybe): Meeting Richard Garfield, creator of the game we love. If you want to know why Richard Garfield first picked [card]Gobblin Digign Team[/card] in a Sixth Edition draft you must check out this piece.

“Call of the Nerd”
by Bruce Richard on Muse Vessel
No best-off list for 2011 would be complete without an response article to Alyssa Bereznak’s Gizmodo article about her date with World Champion Magic player Jon Finkel.  Bruce gets on his soapbox and speaks up for the “nerds” she disses.
Other famous articles from Bruce include:  “Standing Up for Sitting Back” and “Are you Done Yet?”

That’s it for Knowledge Pool in 2011.  I hope you liked being flashbacked.

Keep it also casual next year, though 2012 it might be the end of days.  

Yours Dominik Schönleben (Completelycasual.net)

Rules changes conundrum

Players other than the controller of a trigger are under no obligation to point out that a trigger has been missed, though they may do so if they wish.

Is it me or do the rules changes for triggers spell trouble for all levels of Magic play, not just the higher RELs? The recent update to the Infraction Procedure Guide allows for a different proceedure for missed triggers and defines exactly what optional and non-optional triggers are.

Why would I, casual Commander player, get my panties in a knot about this? These changes will be enforced from 01/01/12 and only in higher REL events. We avid followers of the Commander format know from long experience with the Commander RC that any statement from an official source, even with a pretty large caveat like "in your own group, you don't need to do it like this", will be taken as a de facto blanket change. After all, outside of the target events, there's no form of official enforcement to rule one way or another on any cases that come up. Whereas before, when there was one rule, it's either printed "may" on the card and thus skipped if forgotten, or it's printed "Do X", thus it's obligatory and it's everyone's responsbility to point it out.

What's annoying in addition is being required to re-learn new complex rules in an era when Wizards are purportedly looking to make the game easier to access. We can cite the recent move by Wizards to move away from "may" triggers as they are deemed to confusing as a clear and relevant example. This change is effectively a complete U-turn on that policy making a huge swath of previously obligatory triggers effectively optional if a player or both players aren't vigilant enough. Worse still, they have set down criteria as to which triggers are optional and which are not. You'll see why I say "worse" a little later.

I don't know about your playgroup, I can only comment on mine. We have a very casual playgroup but with time restraints. Our ongoing policy (now that Marc is gone!) is that "Go!" actually means "I've finished my turn and there's no take-backs." The triggered ability on a permanent that doesn't say "may" means that it will happen, even if it's initially missed by everybody and we need to rewind. This may seem a little strict for a very casual group but it's one of the best learning tools we can implement. No-one is afraid to dish out advice, detailed explainations are available before and after the fact and we're pretty honest as to what we consider douchy plays and, for the most part, we avoid inflicting them on our group. Outside of that, it's your responsability to know your deck and to pay attention. You snooze, you lose!

Where it gets sticky is when a player decides that the new policy applies to our group. It's in the IPG after all. Who cares that Wizards say it's only for high REL events? Johnny had to play with these rules at the PTQ, the Grand Prix, States and the National Qualifier, why should it be any different here? Why do we blindly stick to the Commander rules & banned list if we're going to pick and mix other policies?

To be honest, I think we'll manage to sort it out for our group though I'm not so sure that some of the more "competitive" commander groups will weather the changes so well. After all, who actually says, when they attack with Phage: "The ability triggers and you're dead"? No, they don't, they just attack and assume you're dead. I can see the scene already when Phage hits and the attacking player just plays a 2nd-Main-Phase land without announcing the resolution of the Phage's death trigger and is literally flummoxed when the player hit by Phage has the temerity to untap and draw as normal. Let's face it, everyone knows someone who, if they thought they could successfully argue their way out of leaving a game, they'd do it. Groups where the spirit of the rules is championed over rules lawyering should be able to resolve this without too much antagonism; other groups have just found an entirely new level of wrangling and there will be additional tension.

Here's an annotated version of the definition of what now constitutes an optional ability with additional commentary on the "exceptions" (i.e.: those that seem optional but are not) courtesy of Jason Wong's excellent article over on www.manadeprived.com.

An optional ability does one or more of the following things, and nothing else:

• Gains you life or causes an opponent to lose life. (Soul Warden)
• Puts cards from your library, graveyard, or exile zones into your hand or onto the battlefield. This includes drawing cards. (Elvish Visionary)
• Causes opponents to put objects from their hand or the battlefield into the library, graveyard or exile. (Ravenous Rats)
• Puts a permanent into play under your control or gives you control of a permanent. (Sower of Temptation)
• Puts +x/+x counters, or counters linked to a beneficial effect, on a permanent you control. (Shrine of Burning Rage)
• Gives +x/+x or a beneficial ability to a target creature you control. (Chasm Drake)
• Exiles, damages, destroys, taps, or gives -x/-x to an opponent’s target permanent. If the ability could target your own permanents, it is not optional unless that ability could target an opponent. (Kor Hookmaster is optional, Acidic Slime is not optional, Inferno Titan is optional)
• Gives you additional turns or phases. (Lighthouse Chronologist)
• Counters a spell or conditionally counters a spell, but only when cast by an opponent. (Chancellor of the Annex)

Abilities that trigger at the same point in each player’s turn and do something to “that player” (e.g. Howling Mine) are never optional.

Here are some abilities that you may think are optional, but are not:

• Frost Titan’s first ability – In the list of allowable actions for optional abilities, there is an entry that says “… conditionally counters a spell, but only when cast by an opponent.” Frost Titan’s ability does this when your opponent casts Doom Blade, but not when your opponent activates Royal Assassin. Since it is not optional sometimes, it is never optional.
• Dark Confidant – The ability puts a card into your hand, but it also does something else. Since it doesn’t fit into exactly into the options listed, it is not optional.
• Crypt Cobra – This follows the philosophy of optional abilities, but it is not covered in the list of acceptable actions.
• Morkrut Banshee – Like Acidic Slime, it can target permanents you control as well, while not being able to target your opponent.
• Manic Vandal when only your opponent controls artifacts – The “optionalness” of an ability is not influenced by the game state. In a vacuum, Manic Vandal could target an artifact you control. Even though you don’t control any artifacts, the ability is not optional.

Particularly confusing are the differences between effects like Inferno Titan and Acidic Slime/Manic Vandal. Why would damage be optional but destruction not be optional? Both are encompassed by the same definition but a difference is being made in the application of the definition. In the same definition, Manic Vandal is not optional because theoretically you could control artifacts even if you don't just right now. The issue I have with this is that all three cards are worded to say that it happens, not that you may choose. This was my "worse still": Complex game just got more complex.

How about the +X/+X rule with something that gives multiple creatures +1/+1 counters like Mayael's Aria? If you put counters on some of your creatures but not all you've obviously not missed the trigger. Does that allow you to go back and complete the process for a creature you may have forgotten?

Jason Wong went on to talk about how not to deck yourself with Jin-Gitaxias by "forgetting" as drawing cards from triggered abilities is now optional, irregardless of whether your opponent points it out. You're no longer required to draw 7 at the end of your turn with the Praetor and his "Draw 7" now technically reads "You may draw 7".

The other side of the coin is that, if for some reason you forgot to draw your 7 cards, you don't get to rewind now. How many Commander playgroups are going to want to continue to implement the old ruling (which, I suppose, is still the current ruling seeing as Commander isn't concerned by the REL changes) when you can choose to implement the new ruling and have the Jin-Gitaxias player skip drawing those cards?

I can say with some honesty: Not many.

As a good man once said about Jin-Gitaxias, he's a Knut!!

At least, I think that's what he said.

The Best Blue Creature in Commander?

Ok, here's a bold claim.

We've a couple of players that have been rocking a Time Spiral Rare over the last few months and it has iced games multiple times when it has hit the field.

While it's not exactly Primeval Titan level good, it's a great foil for the titan and any other non-vanilla creature, which is to say, pretty much the entire format. It's not Draining Whelk, it's not Deep-Sea Kraken nor, surprisingly enough, is it Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. My current top dog for best blue creatures in Commander is:

No direct damage to ping off that annoying creature that's just ruining your day? Ixidron

Some general just running away with the game thanks to their activated abilities? Ixidron

Lord of Extinction going to kill you next turn? Ixidron.

The "problem" of leaving a pile of faceless 2/2's sitting around should be mitigated somewhat by your own upturned dudes fending off similiar sized attackers allowing you to be the biggest dog on the block for a turn or two. And that's what a blue deck wants after all, isn't it? A few extra turns of not being milled, targetted or beaten down by the format's diverse set of creature abilities.

Oh and something else, death triggers don't trigger if something dies as a 2/2 morph. Suck it Reveillark!



Essentially the only ways players can get out of the Ixidron "lock" are:
1. Have their creatures die in some manner and bring them back.
2. Blink their creatures in some manner
3. Morph their creatures (Maindeck Break Open ftw!)


God forbid you managed to stick one onto a Mimic Vat. Everyone would be overpaying for vanilla 2/2s all over the place.

Artifacts in Balthor

Someone in my playgroup recently mentioned to me that I have a couple of funky artifacts in my Balthor deck and that, frankly, they both sucked.

He was only half right.

My Balthor deck gets added to and subtracted from pretty often so any given section is never nailed down. I get to make hard choices (If I add a Lake of the Dead, how many basic Swamps should I be running for it to be a hit every time?) and easy choices (Is Soulless One still worth it?*)


One of the places where I do the most tinkering is the artifact section. As my deck is a top-down, flavour-driven Zombie deck (rather than a "best of Black" with some zombies thrown in) I get to make choices based on whether a Door of Destinies should really be present in a Zombie scene. Since posting my last defined list back in January** I've completely overhauled the Artifacts section.

Things like Sensei's Divining Top are, flavourfully, very easy cuts to make because Zombies just aren't known for their divining or the ability to spin a top for that matter. Gameplay-wise this is a huge cut that, along with Vampiric Tutor, as effected my deck's ability to be consistent. Following on theme, that's an acceptable thing to happen though: zombies aren't always a full-on hoard from turn 2 or 3. It also forces me to play the deck differently as I'm not always going to the same outs. If this means that I'm losing more than usual, that's fine too.

Of the original list, only 3 cards have survived the cuts up to now: Lightning Greaves, Expedition Map & Skullclamp. All the boosts, exile abilities and recurring tricks have been cut and boosts have been taken care of by the full compliment of 4 lords available to Mono-B.

In their place, I have added in a couple of artifacts to help load the graveyards. A couple allow me to live the dream of a huge turn 3-4 zombie army but the statistical changes of that are ridiculously low. Here's the combo:

If you play a Mesmeric Orb and follow up with a Basalt Monolith, you can mill your entire deck just by tapping and untapping the Monolith. If you're lucky enough to have a Songs of the Damned or a Crypt of Agadeem (and the mana to use it, of course) you have enough mana to loop your Balthor to raise the Zombie Army you've always dreamed of. Of course, later in the game this is still a valid play allowing for the need to work around graveyard hates as that would seriously crimp your style.

In the meantime Mesmeric Orb is a huge pain in the rear for a lot of decks, not everyone wants to mill for 4-6 every turn.

The other artifacts I've added are Sol Ring, Charmed Pendant (an extremely dubious mana accellerant), Oblivion Stone/Nev's Disk (some necessary protection), and a Memory Jar. The Jar allows for some silly end of turn armies that you wouldn't otherwise be able to accellerate into.

Despite these additions, even more space is needed for the Grimoire of the Dead so I'll have to go back into the tank for that.

Space must be found

So, to sum up: Yes, Charmed Pendant sucks.

____________________________________________________________

* Sadly, no. He's the muscle who's become just too vanilla. We now have cheaper and better options. Goodbye, Soulless One, you are now "Friendless One".

** Coat of Arms, Door of Destinies, Brittle Effigy, Expedition Map, Sensei's Divining Top, Nim Death-Mantle, Skullclamp, Lightning Greaves

Goodbye, Daddy M.

This week a player left our playgroup. 

Our principal magic playgroup is at our place of work during our lunch-hour. That's pretty neat if you can accept the various constraints, such as the strict time limit and that you could be playing your direct superior any given afternoon. While the nature of the company and commander, our favoured format allow for a certain measure of familiarity, you can't just call your boss a douchbag when he pulls out a questionable play. Luckily, despite him being one of the 3 bosses who partake in our group, this was never the case with Marc anyway.

When he was called on to give his going-away speech, he covered the professional side pretty comprehensively but he skimped a bit on the gaming side so I’ve decided to list some of the Magic things that we’ll miss about Marc now that he’s gone.

Marc is a 40+ year old Timmy. There’s something really great about a guy who just loves his Timmy moments and really couldn’t give a damn what you think. It’s all about the full-on “Leerooooooooooyyy Jenkins!” and, now that he’s gone, we’re slowly realizing that he was pretty much the only full-on Timmy we had.

The profile of Timmy caring more about the EPIC wins rather than the quantity of wins was especially true for Marc and he notched up as many war stories for his epic blowouts as for being epically blown out himself because he waited just one turn too long. He just wanted to go big all the time.

One of the things that isn’t mentioned all that much about Timmys is their love for the red zone. For Marc, there was only one way to win: laying down the beats. So much so that the attack phase was renamed the “Yaaaarrrggghhhhhh” phase in his honor. Picture this jovial, middle-aged man up off his seat, turning his creatures, tokens, playmat and sandwiches sideways while shouting “Yaaaarrrggghhhhhh!!” often accompanied by diverse charging noises and other random battle sound effects while the rest of the company looks up from their lunch platter in bemusement. A full throated bellowing of The Flight of the Valkyeries a la Apocalypse Now was for those exceptional moments of face-smashery. That was Marc every day.

Of course, these epic calls to war wouldn’t be half as memorable if there weren’t equally copious examples of “yyyaaaaaarrrrgggghhhh…….oooooooohhhhHHHHHSSSHHIITTOHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT” mixed right in there too. The attack was the “moment”, the pinnacle of all his hard work. It just that the execution didn’t always match the vision. 

Still, on those occasions when when Rhys & Seedborn Muse both survive a full, mana-rich turn around the table to be boosted by Garruk & Overrun once it come back to Marc, there’s not a huge number of possible results: You either have the Fog (and he generally had it but no-one else did!) or there’s a lot of dead or critically wounded planeswalkers!

Of course, timing was never really one of Marc’s strong suits. Picture the scene: the turn passes to Marc. He draws his card and goes deep into the tank calculating his potential damage. He realizes that he has just enough to deal lethal with cards in hand if the opponent does block but he’s got to finish the job because he’s wide open for the counter-strike.

He thinks some more.

Finally he leans forward and gives us his patented “Yaaaarrrggghhhhhh!!” as he moves into his attack phase. The unlucky defending player(s) go into the tank and calculate damage and blockers and realize that, unless something funky happens, they will survive the turn and kill Marc when the turn comes round to them.

So much better like this.

“No blockers,” they announce.

“No blockers? Then….. [and here he’d pause, draw himself up majestically and shout]… OVERRUN!!”

…

Now, if this had happened once, maybe twice, it wouldn’t be interesting but it actually happened so often that it got to the point where we could tell if he had the Overrun and could stop him (or not, depending on our life totals) before he got into his attack phase. He even managed to accomplish this magnificent, speed-changing feat twice during the same game! Some humorous cad decided to print out a HD proxy of the card with “Sorcery” replaced by “Instant” and slide it into his deck just to mess with his head a bit and he was presented with a play set of these errata versions upon leaving the company. 

So, what do you get when you give a Timmy a Grand Arbiter Augustin IV and tell him to make a deck? 

A full on Stax prison lock? Noooooo! Counterspells? Sure, a couple. Leviathans? Of course! But a rapid Rhino beatdown was probably not what you expected. We gave Marc a GAAIV and he gave us this:

Turn 1: Land, Sol Ring, Pearl Medallion
Turn 2: Land, GAAIV
Turn 3: Land, Mirror Sigil Sergeant, go.

When your opponent starts with a second turn Grand Arbiter, you know you’re in for a rough ride. Add everyone’s early game mana development torpor to a prison effect and garnish with a self-replicating rhinoceros across the table from you and it all spells >ouch<.  Fastest table kill ever and he achieved it with just one creature.

What about putting Celestial Mantle on a Battlegrace Angel before equipping on a Lightning Greaves and sending it into battle? I think we stopped counting at 3000+ life. There are games when you really need your Wrath of God to resolve and games where you really need to kill someone with your general. We didn’t get there with either solution and Marc stayed above 3000 from there on. He eventually ended up taking it out of his deck after repeated 2-for-1s but that never took anything away from that one occasion when it got there in a big way. From then on any significantly high life total has been regarded with distain and a “Pffff! Well, it’s not 3000+, is it?” by the entire group.

It wasn’t all good times though; Marc could be frustrating to play with and against. His turns would often take the following form:

“Ok, em,  go!
No, wait! Land, go!
No, wait! Attack you for 15!
Eh…… NOW go!” 

When it happens once in a blue moon, you can let this kind of thing slide but when it’s every other turn, it gets to be frustrating very, very quickly. Towards the end, if it seemed like it was one of those days, the table would gently nudge him along with innocent suggestions like “How may lands do you have there, Marc?” or “Gee, that’s a lot of creatures you’ve got there!!” during his pre-combat main-phases. Those touched by the Beatdown Gods have their minds on higher matters and such minutia as phases and being aware of what's happening can often be beneath them. 

Picture Marc as some sort of Beatdown Buddah (but with a lot less inner peace) and you’re half-way to knowing him already. 

With such great and ponderous thoughts of beatdown also comes the ability to realise belatedly what's actually going on and lead to last minute changes of mind. Being the beatdown is a complicated business. Do this first or do that first? Attack him over here or attack him over there? The number of takebacks our playgroup allows is actually pretty low with the exception of Marc who was constantly stuck on “actually, no, I think I’ll do that instead” mode.

This, unfortunately, extended to stuff that uses the stack, which, in Magic, is quite a lot of stuff. Those dreaded words “In response….” engendered a flight instinct in Marc that Norin the Wary would have been proud of. The usual response to another player’s “In response….” was always “In that case, no, I think I’ll do that instead.” If you worked it enough, I’m sure you could achieve a state of perpetual take-backs even when holding only a hand full of land.

That is until he got fed up and just pounded your face into the ground with 475 trampling damage from the pick’n’mix of creatures he had summoned. I suppose the moral to that story is not to bait the bear, the bear has claws.

And we’ll miss you around the table, old bear!