Category: Blog

Watch as TCP fan and follower Josh Pearsall and friend play through games showcasing brews of Jund Aggro and Bant Control.

These guys have some good insights into playing these decks as well as some cool ideas for construction.

I’ve been playing quite a few M14 drafts lately, and I thought I’d drop in and give you guys some of the things I’ve noticed.

First off, if there were any set that I described as being “bomby,” this would definitely be one. There doesn’t seem to be that many ways to answer the bombs of the set. I’ve watched as multiple drafts have been won by simply casting Shivan Dragon.

Does that mean that the set is broken? Well, not exactly. It just means that you simply have to play limited with a different mindset than you may go into other sets with.

What I’m saying is that you’re going to find a very basic approach is going to be the best here- “back to basics” more namely. This means that you’re going to have to win this the way that classic sets were often won. How is that you might ask?

FLYING!!

Yes, simply flying over your enemy and having some basic removal is likely going to be the ticket in this set. I can’t say it’s not a viable strategy in nearly every core set, but this one in particular has very few other alternatives. You’re not going to get many crazy combos off here (not to say there aren’t any), and you’re definitely going to have a hard time drafting any sort of weenie deck.

In what I’ve found, nearly every uncommon and common 1, 2, or 3 drop is severely outclassed by almost any 4, 5, or 6 drop in the set. This has a few implications for tempo, and also whether or not you want to be on the play or the draw here. I’m not going to say that you definitely want to take the draw in this set yet, but I’m definitely starting to think that the draw might be the more opportune position without early game threats to worry about.

Going back to the only ability in this set that seems to have any influence, flying, I’m forced to say that blue has a clear advantage here. Having 90% of the flyers in the set plus having most of the removal and card advantage is, in my opinion, an advantage that no other color even compares to.

I’m noticing that blue is drying up more and more in recent drafts though (as other players are undoubtedly starting to notice), so splashing another color is becoming more and more important.

I have just been watching for signals from my side and trying to cut red whenever possible, but I haven’t really found a clear advantage in other colors yet. I just like red, and it’s a style that I can relate to (BURN BABY, BURN!!!!).

Just make sure that you’re pulling removal and flyers with as many cantrips as you can pull off. With this slower format, you’re going to want to start loading up on answers, and that means cards in hand.

Keep it casual

If somebody were to ask me what my 10 favorite magic cards of all time were right now, my reaction would be in 2 parts.

The first part would be a huge grin, as top 10 lists bring me a great deal of joy. In fact, on my top 10 greatest things of all time list, top 10 lists themselves are ranked at number 6, just behind my favorite sushi restaurant in Seattle, Musashi, and just ahead of hot showers on a cold day.

The second part would be a very lengthy dialogue with whoever asked me the question. So lengthy in fact, that they would probably try and shiv me to get away from the conversation. Even then I imagine I would keep going.

Some of the cards I would certainly list would be ChronozoaChronozoa, Grand ArchitectGrand Architect, Jhoira of the ghituJhoira of the Ghitu, and probably some broken artifact like Memory JarMemory Jar or something. That’s just a quick snapshot, but do you see any similarities between these cards?

You should.

They’re all too cute for their own good.

Aside from obvious things like color, they’re also cards that all require a great deal of steps and complicated interactions with other cards to be any good. Even Memory JarMemory Jar, which is ridiculously powerful, requires you to set it up, so that you don’t spend 5 mana and a turn to just play some random extra cards.

My entire life playing magic i’ve been fascinated by cards like these. I think it comes from wanting to play magic the way I want to play it, rather than the way it’s “supposed” to be played.

Kitchen table magic players will have an easy time relating to this, while tournament players are a bit more focused on playing “the best deck,” or at least the best cards irregardless of creativity. The interesting thing though, is that you can usually find a truly powerful deck that plays very similarly to whatever deck you wanted to play but found out wasn’t good enough to compete with.

I’ll give you an example;

Last winter the featured PTQ format was Modern, so my friends and I spent a great deal of time playing around with modern cards and brainstorming deck ideas for the tournaments. Here’s the list I started with:

Vial Mayor

Maindeck

4x Mayor of Avabruck
4x Aether Vial
4x Spellstutter Sprite
3x Voidmage Prodigy
3x Mothdust Changeling
4x Lightning Bolt
2x Cackling Counterpart
2x Forbidden Alchemy
2x Sword of War and Peace
3x Mana Leak
2x Spell Pierce
1x Disrupting Shoal
2x Vedalken Shackles
1x Mindbreak Trap
4x Mutavault
19 Other Land

Sidboard
Casual brewers Don’t worry about sidebaords. We rarely get that far.

If this list looks totally ridiculous to you that’s because it is. The interactions are very strange and ultimately very very cute and gimmicky.

Firstly, you have 3 relevant creature types here, between Faeries, Humans and Wizards. The Mothdust ChangelingMothdust Changeling’s are there to tie them all together and enable things like Spellstutter SpriteSpellstutter Sprite on turn two, or Mayor on turn two attacking for 2 with the changeling. He’s also there to sacrifice to a Voidmage ProdigyVoidmage Prodigy later in the game.

The heart of the deck is in the ability to play a turn one Aether VialAether Vial, and set up a strong turn 3, with the nut draw being Mayor of AvabruckMayor of Avabruck. Because he’s vialed in instead of being cast, he will flip immediately at the beginning of their upkeep.

The versatility of having Voidmage ProdigyVoidmage Prodigy on the same curve to flash in as a counter spell is pretty awesome too. The Cackling CounterpartCackling Counterparts are there to copy flipped Mayor’s, because if the token is a copy Howlpack AlphaHowlpack Alpha, it won’t ever flip back. It also work nicely with Spellstutter SpriteSpellstutter Sprite as an additional counterspell.

This was the first draft of the deck, and though I tweaked it and tested it extensively, it ended up as just as much of a train wreck as it looks like on paper. However, even now as I recall the deck in all it’s disappointing glory I get excited to try and make it work again!

This is just the sick nature of a casual brewer. We rarely ever let an idea go.

I did end up playing a deck with a similar feel at a PTQ that season, and next week i’m going to compare the 2 decks.

Can you guess what the deck I played was? Let me know in the comments.

Happy 4th of July, and until next time,

Take care and play magic

– Ben

Ben, the newest member of the Casual Planeswalker, introduced himself not too long ago with some great articles telling his story of how he got into Magic. It’s always great to hear how people learned about Magic and started playing and thought I would share my story as well. Judging by the stories I’ve heard from most of my friends, I started playing pretty late. I’ve played Magic Battlegrounds, a pretty neat video game, although it doesn’t really play at all like the card game. I first played the card game around Odyssey when my cousin’s neighbor brought some decks to play a couple games.

I was no stranger to card games before Magic. My cousin was interested in all sorts of them and my brother and I would usually be the ones to join him. We tried Dragonball Z, Duel Masters, and most of all, Yu-Gi-Oh. We were young and never were interested in looking deeply into the rules for these games, however confusing some of them might have been. We played a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh trying to use the rules of the show with pretty disastrous results. Nevertheless it was a pretty fun way to pass the time, until I played Magic.

One day a friend brought a few decks of Magic cards and we gave the game a try. They were pretty basic decks. We had some elves, some goblins, I played a white deck, none were much more than preconstructed decks. It was awesome. The rules are real easy to figure out and most of the cards have text that is easy to understand. The cards were so cool too. Suntail HawkSuntail Hawkwas a flying creature for just 1 mana! If they never got a flying creature they were toast, I thought, in just 20 turns. Some of my favorites back then were the Pilgrim of JusticePilgrim of Justice and Pilgrim of VirtuePilgrim of Virtue. The whole Protection mechanic seemed so powerful back then. Against a red deck the Pilgrim of Justice would be invincible! My first deck idea was one that would include a Pilgrim with Protection of each color. Obviously I wasn’t aware that only two Pilgrims existed and I’m glad that I have much more interesting deck ideas now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got a short taste of Magic in high school but I didn’t really get into Magic until College. I met the guys of the Casual Planeswalker through the Game Club on campus and they met to play Magic all the time. I had a playgroup. I had borrowed decks from friends for a few weeks but there comes that time when you want to build your own deck. I was looking around the time of Shards of Alara but those cards with the focus on three colors looked a little complicated at first. The fact that they were only 40 card decks didn’t help either. I decided to look back a set and picked up the Morningtide warrior deck on a friend’s recommendation.

That deck is a lot of fun to play and I still have it somewhere to use every so often. There’s something satisfying about a simple beatdown with quick-hitting warriors. The real star of that deck for me has definitely been Unstoppable AshUnstoppable Ash. It ended a bunch of games by allowing my creatures to attack without worrying about losing them to defenders. Even though I’ve built many more decks this is still one of my favorite. But from that deck I started to build my legacy as a Magic Planeswalker.

Unlike Ben, I was never interested in tournament play. I’ve played in a few prereleases and been to some FNM’s though. I’ve mostly just played with my regular college playgroup. Tournaments are great but nothing beats getting together with friends and slinging cardboard. For that reason I will always be a Casual Planeswalker.

My girlfriend went out of town on Saturday morning, leaving me home alone.

For the entire weekend.

I realize this sounds like the start of one of those movies where tons of partying and bad decisions end up happily ever after, but only after an incredibly efficient cleaning session takes place moments before the front door opens. One of my all time favorite movies is Risky Business, so I briefly considered just what it would take to organize and manage a brothel out of my 3 room duplex for a couple of days, but came to the conclusion that some things just work better in movies.

However, as you might imagine I did play some Magic the Gathering over the weekend.

My local store, Hi De Ho comics in Santa Monica runs a very relaxed legacy tournament every Sunday, but because I normally spend Sundays with my lady, I have never played in it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with legacy, it’s format that includes cards from every set all the way back to the beginning of magic’s history, making for some very powerful and diverse decks. I’ve also never played legacy before, and being that most of the decks i’d want to play retail somewhere in the $1,800.00 to $2,500.00 range, i’ve always just assumed i’d have to borrow some cards or sell off most of my cards to play at all. Even so, I figured it could be fun to put together a deck with the cards I had laying around and try it out. It’s not a competitive scene, so I figured I might be able to win a game or two unexpectedly.

DISCLAIMER:

If you’ve ever felt intimidated by not knowing a format, or not playing a “good” deck in a tournament, please take the time to read the rest of this article, as I promise you’ll find some value here.

Not every “tournament” is really that at all. The public ones with big money prizes like Pro Tour Qualifiers, Grand Prix, and SCG Open Series are going to be a bit more serious, but the local events often aren’t even in the same ballpark. Your local Friday Night Magic will be a much less serious field of players, and many of these 10 and 20 person weekly events feature a much lower level of competition.

The legacy event I mentioned that I played in last week had 11 players show up to it, with maybe half of those players playing decks of their own design. I spent about 30 minutes in the morning putting together a blue/red Delver of SecretsDelver of Secrets deck with the few cards I had available. I was missing all of the classic dual lands, as well as the Chain LightningChain Lightnings, Force of WillForce of Will’s, and probably about 50% of the other ideal cards for a deck like this.

My sideboard was nearly useless, with a bunch of singleton’s of cards due to availability. However, when I arrived people immediately started offering to let me borrow cards to fill out my deck. I only borrowed maybe 2 or 3 things, including my buddy Claude’s foil Thunderous WrathThunderous Wrath. I mean, why not. Winning with the foil had to be sweeter than with the non-foil right?

In the first match I was paired against the guy who organizes the Sunday tourney, Roger. He was playing a home brew b/r MindcrankMindcrank/Bloodchief AscensionBloodchief Ascension deck with Sinkholesinkholes, ThoughtseizeThoughtseize’s and Phyrexian ObliteratorPhyrexian Obliterator’s. I beat him in 3 games, despite having almost no answer to his Obliterator’s. He even got it into play in game 2 on the second turn with a Dark RitualDark Ritual. Holy Crap!

The second match I was paired against a nice guy named Kyle who was playing another brew. This time with Temporal SpringTemporal Spring, Plow UnderPlow Under, and Crystal ShardCrystal-Shard. He had a reasonable number of good creatures, between Troll AsceticTroll Ascetic and Eternal WitnessEternal Witness, but ultimately I beat him in 3 close games with a nail-biter finish to an epic game 3.

The final match I was paired up against my friend Kevin, who had actually lent me a couple cards for the afternoon. He was playing G/W Maverick, and a near perfect version of it at that. He told me he had been playing the deck for a year solid and told me he’d win because he knew how to play his deck better than I did.

Though I agreed he had an advantage, I wanted to play the games anyway, just for fun. We ended up going to 3 games and playing off the top of our decks at the end.

I was going to lose if I couldn’t draw a burn spell for the final 3 damage, and after he resolved ChokeChoke, I knew it was almost over. I activated my Desolate LighthouseDesolate Lighthouse for the last time i’d be able to with my available Islands and drew an ElectrolyzeElectrolyze I couldn’t even play anymore!

My next card was my single copy of Price of ProgressPrice of Progress and despite almost playing myself out of the win by not reading one of his cards close enough, I managed to narrowly win the match.

So there you have it.

First place at a casual legacy event, playing a 30 minute home brew, probably worth less than $200 matched up against a legitimate tier 1 deck in the finals.

If you have a fun idea for a deck, I recommend you build it. Build it, take it to your local game store and play it. I promise you, winning is more fun than just about every other part of magic, even if you have to lose for a while to find out.

Until next time.

Take care, and play magic.

– Ben Bateman

Today i’m back to finish talking about how to get better at losing. You can check out part of 1 of this article here

Whenever I lose a match, unless i’m in a particularly balanced moment, my default behavior is to become incredibly self reflective, and to try and engage my opponent while doing it. It will sound something like this;

ME: It may not have been correct to attack with the Hanweir LancerHanweir Lancer into your Soulcage FiendSoulcage Fiend on turn 6. I mean, I know he wasn’t paired, but I was just trying to push damage.

THEM: Yeah, I think that was a mistake.

ME (defensive): I guess I could have tried to top-deck another creature to pair, but it seemed like my only out against your deck was to stay aggressive.

THEM: I guess, yeah (not really agreeing, but not wanting to challenge).

Here’s a valuable piece of news for you.

Magic isn’t a game determined by variance more than a fairly marginal amount of the time. It’s a skill based game that rewards it players for playing more, and recognizing patterns as much as possible.

He had better cards? Maybe, but did he actually outplay you? Bad luck? It happens to me too, and the law of averages will punish us all equally, so don’t look to me for an excuse.

In my years of organized play, i’ve learned that if the same player beats you most of the time, it usually means he’s a stronger player for one reason or another. Don’t do the classic thing most of us do when we lose a game. The thing where we walk around repeating one rehearsed sound bite of an excuse, only really understandable to someone else who plays magic.

EXAMPLE: If I had just drawn that one Island I could have had him. Just one! OR. He got turn 2 Mayor both games. I can’t beat that.

The only excuse for losing is winning next time.

The only statement you should be making to the guys that beat you should end with a question mark. When you find yourself in that position after a loss it’s okay to engage the guy that beat you, but try asking questions and listening instead of telling him your reasoning and then defending it at all costs. Unless you’re part of that tiny percentage of us who never make mistakes (nobody), I promise you he doesn’t care how amazing your logic was if you lost with it.

That’s your ego getting the best of you. Set your ego aside for a moment and try to understand the choices you could have made differently all throughout the tournament.

Did you draft a clunky deck? Did you forget to sideboard in a relevant card after losing game 1? Did you mulligan too aggressively because you had too narrow an idea of how you were going to be able to win? In my experience with magic and with life, it’s very easy to become complacent and not push my decision making beyond the most obvious or seemingly most rewarding scenario. The easy choice is rarely good enough to be the answer, and often it’s thinking outside the box that does the most for me, no matter how difficult it is to see that reality sometimes.

Some of my greatest breakthrough’s in magic have come from simply listening to the advice of a better player, and putting that into practice over and over even if it seemed counter intuitive to me at the time. Understanding why it was better than what I was already doing comes later on, but unless I had learned to take advice irregardless of the state of my fragile ego, I would never have moved forward as a player and started winning anything.

I know that opening up to someone like this can seem intimidating at times, especially if you don’t know them, but being able to recognize your self confidence and your value in the real world enough to let your guard down in magic is the answer to improving. Trust me, i’ve been there.

Even if they’re too socially awkward to handle being engaged that directly, it’s much better that you try to bring them to your level, rather than come down to theirs. This is a good policy for life as well, not just magic.

All it takes to succeed at any strategy based game is practice, you just want to make sure you aren’t practicing things the wrong way. That will almost certainly doom you to failure.

Here’s a great suggestion for you to try next time you play; on your notepad you use to keep track of life totals (any piece of paper will do), make a note after making a play during a game that was difficult to decide on, whether or not it worked out. After the game, win or lose, bring it up with your opponent. Simply ask them what they would have done, or if they thought you misplayed or played correctly. You’d be amazed how often you miss something obvious when your doing difficult combat math in your head, or trying to plan for the next 3 turns.

That’s all for today guys. Feel free to let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to talk about, or that you’re curious about in the comments. As always, thanks for reading.

Until next time,

Take care, and play magic.

– Ben Bateman