Patriot Games

Monday 30 July 2012

Extending my confusion...

I sometimes have problems with linear time.  The seemingly natural process of one moment following another is occasionally an abstract concept for me and gets me very confused.  This blog is not really helping that too much.  It has a very logical progression in the fact that I blog each week about the deck that I will be playing next week.  However, I don’t actually write these blogs in that order so this blog is actually written after next weeks as I wrote that last week.  You can see how I get confused.  To add to this as I was growing up my Granddad had a number of daft sayings, his favourite being;

“Next Tuesday being Ash Wednesday, we are going to hold an open air meeting in the church to decide what colour too whitewash the walls…”

This series of conflicting statements is enough to get even the most sharp witted of us into a succession of frowns and raised eyebrows.  This is where I found myself when approaching this blog and discussing the deck I intend to play in extended at FNM Relax on 10th August 2012.  To add to my confusion I had intended to play extended Merfolk originally but will not have all of the cards I need by then so had to come up with a different extended deck.  This then takes me back to next week’s blog when I will be using the Krenko starter deck but not in a way that would immediately come to mind.



I like the idea of playing theme/tribal decks at FNM Relax – it seems a fun place to do that.  Don’t get me wrong tribal can be very effective, I hear the Zombie/Vampire combination has been a top tier deck since Dark Ascension, I may even have played a bit of Zombies myself.  On that topic I believe a very well done goes out to all of our guys that did so well at the PTQ this past weekend with Fabian Quinn making top 4 and Mike Readhead making the final with B/R Zombies.  Congratulations to Levi Mochan for winning (Levi is good friends with Mike Boon by the way) and good luck on the pro-tour.  Deck lists for the top 8 can be found here.  

Anyway back to the future and next weeks deck!  So with Merfolk not being a possibility I thought it would be a good idea to go the complete opposite and go Goblins! 



Goblins had it’s potential in standard last year with a number of great goblins in Zendikar and Scars blocks.  Extended gives you all of these and more, so here is the deck list:

10 Mountains
4 Copperline Gorge
4 Arid Mesa
3 Teetering Peaks
21 Land

4 Goblin Guide
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Chieftain
2 Warren Instigators
2 Krenko, Mob Boss
3 Signal Pests
2 Goblin Wardriver
2 Siege Gang Commander
2 Hero of Oxid Ridge
25 Creatures

4 Lightning Bolts
2 Krenko’s Command
2 Brimstone Volley
3 Faithless Looting
3 Shrine of Burning Rage
14 Spells

Sideboard

4 Cavern of Souls
1 Shrine of Burning Rage
2 Incinerate
4 Ancient Grudge
2 Naturalise
2 Bonfire of the Damned



This deck is pretty self explanatory – it makes lots of goblins, gives them buffs and charges into the red zone to reduce the opponents life total to zero as quickly as possible.  Lots of cheap red spells mean that the shrines power up quickly and become a finisher very quickly.



Before I go just a note that this weekend is games day at Patriot Sheffield with both standard/draft formats.  All participants get a Mwonvuli Beast Tracker promo and the top 8 get a full alternate art foil Magmaquake.  First place will receive a Nicol Bolas play mat which has “Games Day Champion” on it along with the Nicol Bolas artwork as seen on the new Deck Builders Toolkit.

Look forward to seeing you for Legacy this Friday, see you there…





Thursday 26 July 2012

So this is REAL Magic?


Legacy players will tell you that playing Legacy is “proper” Magic – a meta-game so vast as to be totally unpredictable from one tournament to another.  Some games can last as long as a normal standard game but many are over in 3 or 4 turns with a good opening hand.

I’m not a Legacy player – I feel I ought to be, but I used to play standard before there was such a thing and half the cards I used to play against in "standard" are banned in Legacy (Balance anyone).  Also to build a competitive Legacy deck will cost you a lot of money, the mana base alone will set you back £1,000!

Apparently these are expensive - especially if the border is black!

The traditional decks for legacy are quite different from those you will see every other month at FNM and have such titles as Stoneblade, Merfolk, Elves, Goblins, Dredge etc.  They play some of the most broken cards ever, Stone Forge Mystic, Sensei’s Divining Top, Force of Will, Wasteland, original dual lands and many more.  Each time a new set is produced each deck gets better and better toys to play with and gets tweaked accordingly.

So I can counter your s*!t with no mana on turn one - boy it sucks to be you...

So what has this got to do with FNM Relax I hear you ask?  When discussing the idea of FNM Relax with Jim Freeman there were two main goals I had in mind; to offer a genuine alternative to the current FNM (now FNM Elite) with regards of the diversity of formats and therefore chances to play cards and to make it as inclusive as possible.  People like playing with all the cards in their collection.  Legacy gives you the chance to do that.  Apart from the banned list everything goes, its Bob the Builder Magic – can you play it?  Yes you can!  It’s quite hard to get banned in Legacy, mainly as it is a format full to the brim with horribly broken cards already that a turn 2/3 Batterskull is not the end of the world (though might well be the end of the game).

Turn 2 seems fair, not!

Being FNM Relax I don’t expect to see people with full play sets of Wasteland or any of the dual lands or even a turn 3 combo which wins the game, the idea behind this format is for people to play the kind of decks that they play round the kitchen table without having to worry weather this card or that card is legal.

I have a deck.  I played it in standard up to rotation last October and it is really fun to play.  I’m not so sure it is always great fun to play against but it is great fun to watch it go off!  It involves the Eldrazi, and no it is not Eldrazi green although it does have green in it.  It also has 2 copies of Jace the Mind Sculptor in it. 

Nobody loves me - I'm so misunderstood!

As Mike Boon is so want to tell me Jace, TMS is not a “casual” card, I feel Mike thinks that casual is the same as "bad" - I disagree.  Just because you play casual or kitchen table magic does not mean that you want to play bad cards or that you don’t play any good ones.  Jace, TMS is one of the best cards that have ever been made in the history of MTG.  He has 4 abilities, 3 of which are really good effects that you want to use every turn especially his 0 ability to draw 3 put 2 back (Brainstorm) which is pretty much what I use him for exclusively in my deck. 

Great card - even better planeswalker ability!

Jace, TMS is a mythic rare and was banned for the last few months he was in standard because he was too good, as was Stone Forge Mystic.  Did I go out and pay £200 for a play set of Jace, TMS – no.  I was lucky enough to open him at the World Wake Pre-Release and then traded one off of my son (I owned half of it anyway in fact) for my share of 3 Vengevines. 

Vengie smash kill, have good time, no?

So my 2 copies of Jace, TMS come form trading and opening boosters – the 2 most common ways for casual players to get cards.  Casual players will happily play the most hideous of cards because they opened one in a booster, what they wont do is pay huge amounts of money for these cards either because they can’t afford it or they are just not that bothered.  Matthew played Ajani, Caller of the Pride in his Standard deck last week because it is a good card that he got in a booster.  Apparently making 39 2/2 cats against Esper mid range is good by the way...

How am I looking?  I'm looking good!

It may well be prudent at this point to actually look at the deck list and talk about what it does and how the cards in it have a strong synergy together.

Blue-Green Eldrazi Death Machine (Legacy)

This is actually a slightly earlier build of the deck...


4 Misty Rain forest
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Eye of Ugin
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Verdant Catacomb
5 Island
7 Forest
25 Lands

1 Kozilek, the Butcher of Truth
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Ulamog, The Infinite Gyre
4 Lotus Cobra
2 Primeval Titan
4 Birds Of Paradise
3 Fauna Shaman
3 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Djinn of Wishes
_________________________________________________________________________
20 Creatures

2 Jace The Mind Sulptor
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
2 Time Warp
1 Temporal Mastery
2 Lightning Greaves
2 Pre-ordain
3 Explore
1 Omniscience
1 Genesis Wave
_________________________________________________________________________
15 Spells

Sideboard

3 Spellskite
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Vengevine
1 Conundrum Sphinx
1 Time Reversal
1 Tamiyo, the moon sage
1 Temporal Mastery 
1 Genesis Wave
1 Jace's Archivist
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter

This deck can look quite odd until you see it in action and understand what it does.  It basically has no interaction with the opponent and attempts to ramp at high speed into hard casting Eldrazi which then win you the game (play Emrakul - win).  It is very different from the traditional Eldrazi Ramp decks that were popular before rotation and does not try to trick Emrakul into play using something like Show and Tell or through the breach.

Never was a flavour text so fitting!

It does actually need to protect itself from really aggressive decks which is why the spellskites are in the sideboard.  Tamiyo is also a great card for slowing your opponent down and buying you the time you need to play the big three. 

All your bases belong to us!


If you can get a couple of Lotus Cobra into play and get them to stay there it does this really neat trick with a genesis wave.

Do not be fooled - I am the mana dork of your dreams...

Each land you hit with genesis wave comes into play giving a landfall trigger to your Lotus Cobras and making you lots of mana.  Add that to the fact that sac-lands can be used to fetch more lands with more landfall triggers and an 8 point Genesis wave can easily net you 12 mana to play something else afterwards.  This deck is immense fun to play and is quite fun to watch as it takes 2 turns in a row and does lots during each of them.  FNM Relax is all about having fun and playing your cards so brew up something crazy and come play some slightly more chilled Legacy on Friday 3rd August 2012 at Patriot Games Sheffield.  See you there...

WAIT!  You can't have an article about Legacy without me!  I AM LEGACY!!!













Tuesday 24 July 2012

General Discussion

I woke up this morning and reached for my phone to be told that Mike Boon had made a new post in the Sheffield MTG Facebook group.  This is not actually a big deal as Mike makes lots of comments in the group (check it our here) but the fact that he had made the post 4 hours ago and it was now 7am made me wonder what the hell he had to say at 3am on a Tuesday morning – generally speaking “snore” and “fart” are the only noises I am known to make at 3am, but then I am an old man.

I was interested to read Mike’s deck list for his Azami deck, despite the idea of “EDH Elite style” being on a par with Mountaineering in Peterborough and 10 places in Barnsley you must visit before you die.  As my next scheduled blog is about next weeks format which is casual legacy (more mountaineering in Peterborough) I thought his worked as a good counterpoint to it.


Elder Dragon Highlander is a casual format but in a similar way to Legacy the number of cards available to it makes it potentially broken.  A lot of the more hideous cards are banned, yes that includes you Griselbrand, but that still leaves an awful lot of stuff to abuse out there.

"Sorry Mr Griselbrand you're not on the list..."

EDH can be really great fun and does tend to be the home of ridiculous combos.  Some older cards in Magic are still expensive solely because they are so good in EDH (Doubling Season would not be £16 if not for its ability to be abused in EDH, especially as it makes Planeswalkers come in with double loyalty counters).

However, Mike’s blog did start me thinking and has inspired me to reply with a casual guide to EDH.  I know some newer players are looking to get into EDH and thought that this might help a bit.

So what makes a good EDH deck?  What are the pitfalls?  What should be in every EDH deck?  How do I avoid the other 3 or more players beating the living tar out of me because I played Azami/Nath of the Gilt-Leaf/Gaddock Teeg/Zur the Enchanter as my general?


Let’s start with the pitfalls as this leads into what makes a good deck.  The first pitfall is that there are 100 cards in your deck and all of them, bar basic lands, are one of a kind making it mathematically unlikely that you will draw what you need.  This will lead you to putting a number of cards into your deck which have similar effects; many of these may be board wipes like Wrath of God or Akroma’s vengeance.  The high number of board wipes makes it difficult to consistently build up board presence and use any firm strategy with your deck.  It also leads to games that go on for 4 hours or more where nobody really does much.  Generals in EDH usually require 2 or more colours to play them.  It is real easy to get colour screwed in EDH and sit there as you opponent plays all his sweet spells while you draw into yet another swamp, knowing that you could actually be a part of this game if you only had a forest…

So cards that actively work against these restrictions (search and draw tech) are even better than usual in EDH.  This is one of the reasons Azami is so horrible because she is the draw engine from hell (now there is an idea for them at Wizards, new card for M14 – “Hell’s Draw Engine" – UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU Instant, Draw every card in your deck” the art work could have a picture of Azami being horribly tortured for all eternity).

This also means that mono colour decks are far more consistent than multi-colour, but I’m guessing you knew that right, while search/draw tech gives you the power to circumvent the whole idea of having a hundred card singleton deck. 

The fact that players have 40 life instead of 20 also means it is possible to play a slower game and not die on turn three.  However this also means that things that circumvent that restriction are incredibly good too.  This makes infect really horrible in EDH as you still die with 10 poison counters on you.  With the cards available in EDH you can be staring down a turn 2 Skithryx, the Blight Dragon with Haste! 



Here is a list of the cards to avoid if you want to have fun games of EDH:

Mind slaver – in combination with Academy Ruins means your opponent will never get to play in the game again, wow great…


Jokulhaups – blow up the world, make life miserable…


Obliterate – blow up the world, make life miserable and you can’t do anything about it…


Hive Mind – What!  You played an instant/sorcery spell!  Ho-Ho-Ho now everybody has a machine gun too!


Rhystic Study – Every time one of you guys plays a spell I draw a card unless you force spike yourself…


Disciple of the Vault – I blow up all my crappy artifacts and kill you in the process!


Contamination – cause everyone secretly wants to play mono black…


Magister Sphinx – hey you know you get 40 life in EDH, well you don’t now cause I just made yours 10!


Sheoldred, Whispering One – your creatures die mine keep coming back from the dead.  Got no creatures?  Play at least 2 a turn or they just die!


Felidar Sovereign – I trick this into play turn two and win as I have 40 life, good game…


Sorin Markov – So combining Magister Sphinx and Mind Slaver was a good idea to someone?


These cards are best avoided if you want to have fun games of EDH as are the generals I mentioned earlier.

So what can you play in your EDH deck?  Well pretty much anything you like that is not on the banned list.  The best way to approach EDH is find a general in the colours you like playing and then look for cards which have synergy with what your general does.  Playing cards that allow you and your opponent to draw cards are a good way to stay alive longer; “Oh I won’t kill him he’s not doing much and he is letting me draw cards.”  Avoid the horrible things listed above and make your combos smart rather than devastating – if people think it is a clever way you killed them they are less likely to gang up on you than if you kill them with an infinite mana fireball!

"Yay!  Everyone draw a card!"

For all of you who would like to give EDH a go but don’t have a deck I have arranged with Jim that we will have a “Give it a go day” for EDH this Sunday 29th July 2012 at Patriot Games Sheffield from 11am – 4pm.  I will have a selection of EDH decks for people to try as well as the store copies of the Wizards Commander decks that came out last year (and are amazingly good value). 

Come back for the next instalment on Thursday, entitled “So this is REAL Magic?” and I hope to see you down the shop on Friday and Sunday.



Monday 23 July 2012

Common Ground.

Last week I talked about some of the great commons that you can play in pauper but I didn’t actually admit as to what I would be playing this week at FNM Relax.  There were two reasons for this – one I wanted to look at a number of cards in the format rather than just the ones I would be playing and also I had not made my mind up exactly what I wanted to play so I didn’t have a deck list.

After much though I have decided to play Naya, which is green, white and red for those who don’t know and is named after one of the shards of Alara.  Naya has seen a lot of play recently – most notably in Brian Kibler's birthing pod decks where Naya gives you a formidable toolbox of creatures so you can just go and get the one you need via the birthing pod and win.

As birthing pod is a rare there will be none of them around, so my deck contains the following;

4 Evolving Wilds
2 Teramorphic Expanse
7 Forests
6 Plains
6 Mountains

25 Land

4 Steppe Lynx
4 Plated Geopede
4 Squadron Hawk
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim

16 Creatures

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Oblivion Ring
3 Khalni Heart Expedition
3 Travel Preparations
2 Rancor
3 Harrow

19 Other spells



This deck is all about being fast and killing your opponent with landfall creatures which become very big in the middle of combat sometimes – stick a Rancor on them and even if they are blocked the damage will find its way through. 


The ability to go turn 1 Forest, Avacyn’s Pilgrim.  Turn 2 Tap the pilgrim and the forest play Khalni Heart Expedition, play a plains put a counter on the expedition, play a Steppe Lynx.  Turn 3 play Evolving wilds, counter on Expedition landfall trigger on the lynx, crack the evolving wilds and get a mountain, counter on the expedition, landfall on the lynx, crack the expedition go get 2 lands, 2 landfall triggers on the lynx, tap the forest, plain and pilgrim play harrow, sacrifice a tap land, go get a mountain and a forest, 2 land fall triggers on the lynx, play Rancor with the forest on to the lynx and swing for 14 trample with my Steppe lynx…



Obviously this needs a perfect hand to go off like that but it is very possible to do something like this to win from nowhere.  Getting the landfall triggers on the  Lynx and the Geopede are key to this deck and give it fast and deadly creatures both on the attack and defence.

The sideboard looks like this;

2 Farseek
4 Kiln Fiend
3 Rangers Guile
2 Plummet
3 Naturalise
1 Erase



The Farseek comes in if my opponent is running enchantment hate and I can also use them to trigger the Kiln Fiend who interacts with the deck well already.  Rangers guild is great against removal and it pumps my guys.  Plummet for those heavy flying decks and Naturalise/Erase for artefacts and those pesky enchantments that aren’t mine!



The skill of this deck is knowing what hands to keep and what to send back.  If you are looking for inspiration for this Friday at Patriot Games Sheffield then have a look on the mother ship where they have just had a Modern GP over the weekend, full details can be found here.  

See you all Friday


Monday 16 July 2012

10 of the best!

Friday 27th July 2012 sees the debut of Modern Pauper at FNM relax.  We wanted to give people every chance to play the cards that they have bought in a relaxed environment and Modern Pauper does just that.

For those that don’t know Pauper is a very popular format from Magic the Gathering online (MTGO) and allows the playing of common cards only.  As it is modern pauper the cards need to have been printed in the modern card format with a black rarity symbol.  So if you have a common card in the modern format of MTG cards you can play it, the only exceptions being those commons on the modern banned list which are – Ponder, Preordain, Vault of Whispers, Seat of the Synod, Tree of Tales, Ancient Den, Rite of Flame and Wild Nacatl. 

Rather than look at the deck list I am going to play at this point I thought it would make a difference to look at the top ten common cards in the modern format to see if this helps give you ideas for a deck to play.  As all these cards are commons they should be easy enough to pick up even if you don’t already have them.

Lightning Bolt – Around since the first ever set of MTG this 3 damage to a creature or player for just one red mana is still the boss of all burn spells.  A cheap way to kill your opponent or get rid of that creature which is going to kill you, lightning bolt is a star in any format you can play it in.

    Blightning – This is not a fun card.  Under costed for it’s effects shooting your opponent for 3 and making them ditch 2 cards is not going to make you any friends.


     
    Mana Leak – Although no longer with us in M13 this card has been a staple of control decks since it first started to make people unhappy in Stronghold.

    Oblivion Ring – O-Ring as it is commonly known has been in both M12 and M13 as an Uncommon.  However, when it was printed in Lorwyn and Shards of Alara it was a mere common which qualifies it for this format.

    Hand of Emrakul – Ok there are loads of big creatures which are common in Magic and 9 mana for a 7/7 which doesn’t have trample may seem a little steep.   But, Hand of Emrakul has an alternate casting cost of sacrificing 4 Eldrazi Spawn which means you can do this – Turn 2 play Nest invader or Spawning Breath, Turn 3 play Brood Birthing for 3 more Eldrazi Spawn, sacrifice the four spawn and now I have a  Hand of Emrakul – ouch…

     Terminate – It kills anything for 1 red and 1 black mana and stops it from regenerating, what’s not to love?

    Sea Gate Oracle – A 1/3 guy for 3 mana is not the greatest ever but this one allows you to scry 2 and put one of the cards into your hand.  Never forget that the 3 best words in Magic are “Draw a Card” and adding them just makes things better.

     Squadron Hawk – It is rare that standard is dominated by a common card but Caw Blade with dear old Squady and his mates did just that for the best part of a year from M11 until Innistrad came out.  The sight of Squadron hawks wielding swords and even batterskulls was everywhere making what some think was the best deck ever.

     Rancor – usually creature enchantments are bad in constructed play because you give your opponent the chance to “2 for 1” you (they kill your creature with the enchantment on it for the cost of one card out of their hand).  Rancor makes it in on a technicality as it is currently an uncommon in M13 but has been printed in Planechase, Archenemy and Garruk Vs Liliana as a common in the modern card format.

    Explore – There are a number of “ramp” spells in green but this is my personal favourite.  If you have a land in your hand you get to play it (it doesn’t come in tapped) and it draws you a card, which we have already established is good.

    So there we go, that is mine and Robert’s selection of 10 great commons for modern pauper.  I look forward to being bashed in the face with Squadron Hawks and shot by lightning bolts.  Remember do unto others as they would do unto you, but...do it first!