The Casual Planeswalker

Tag: Damnation

Good to Great – “Jedi Mind Trick: The Bluff”

Being a casual player means quite a lot. One thing it means is that Magic isn’t your sole source of income and therefore probably isn’t something that you typically spend a significant portion of your income on. In the coming weeks we’ll have some great posts on budget Magic, but for now I’d like to offer one quick bit of advice on how to save yourself a buck.

Buying two or three boxes is probably not the easiest (or most financially efficient) way to improve your enjoyment of the game and your win record. Heck, if you’re only buying three (big timers frequently buy multiple cases, packages of six boxes, for each set), your return on investment probably isn’t going to be great.

There are lots of ways to improve on the “buy, crack, repeat” model. One easy way to draft. If you’re hanging out with one friend or ten, drafting WILL result in your getting better, or at least more cohesive, cards. Cardpooling within a playgroup is an even better way to go, but to do this takes a lot of trust and a real consensus that what is best for the group is best for everyone.

The easiest way and cheapest way to make Magic a more enjoyable experience, however, is to improve your own game.Just because you’re a self-proclaimed casual player, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t always be seeking to learn from your mistakes. Being willing to learn is the foundation of becoming a good, and even great, player. An easy way to improve your game quickly is to read our FREE booklet on Deckbuilding.

If you’ve got a regular playgroup, you know what spells are most likely to be in your opponents hand most of the time. You know that you’re racing to get out a Goblin horde before he top decks a Damnation
Damnationor a Day of Judgment
Day of Judgment. One way to turn this awareness into a serious asset is to begin watching your opponents mana – seeing what he leaves open at the end of his turn and acting accordingly.

Good players, casual or otherwise, take advantage of the power of Instants, learning to hold back their Mana Leak or Go For The Throat
Go For The Throat until the last possible moment, giving them the greatest chance of playing it effectively.

There’s nothing worse than Bolting someone’s Corpse Cur
Corpse Cur at the end of your turn, only to have him top deck and play a Putrefax
Putrefax. In this situation patience would have paid off almost immediately and likely changed the outcome of the game.

Once you’ve mastered the art of effectively employing the games most powerful (and often most common) Instants, you can begin to incorporate an additional strategy that will give you an even greater advantage in your playgroup: The Bluff. MTG is typically considered a social game in a way that highly competitive games like poker are not, but any psychological strategy that applies to Texas Hold ‘Em (or even physical team sports) can be effectively applied to Magic.

Just as you (and your opponents) begin to look for and anticipate any recurring combo or strategy in your playgroup, the broader Magic world from your local FNM to the Pro-Tour has built-in expectations regarding the most universally used cards.

Cards like Mana Leak, Giant Growth
Giant Growth, Lightning Bolt, Doom Blade
Doom Blade, and Day of Judgment
Day of Judgment appear in almost every deck with the appropriate mana to play them. This means that your opponent, if he is a player of any skill, will expect you to have access to these spells, even if you don’t. This fact will allow you to effectively bluff your way through a turn in which you really DON’T have an answer to your opponent’s play.

To put it directly: It is almost always more worthwhile to hold back two Islands, or a Mountain, or two Swamps, in order to make your opponent fear you have the answer to their play than to tap out on your turn and prove to them that they are entirely in the clear.

One way to make this bluff even more effective is to go out of your way to make it look like you’re saving the mana. In my Phyrexian Mana-based deck I will pay the two life to play a Porcelain Legionnaire
Porcelain Legionnaire on turn three in order to keep a Mountain untapped even if I don’t have the Lightning Bolt in my hand.

Of course, there are two sides to every bluff. The great thing about poker is that you can use your bluffs more effectively in situations where you won’t have to reveal your cards if your opponent calls. In Magic, however, only in a “scoop” situation are you actually going to get away without showing your opponent that you had no fitting response, so your opponents are likely to catch on if you repeatedly make bad bluffs.

One great way to continue to shake things up is to throw some one-cost Phyrexian mana Instants into your deck. Cards like Marrow Shards, Mutagenic Growth
Mutagenic Growth, and Gut Shot
Gut Shot are well worth the two life when your opponent sincerely thought he was going to cast a spell/attack/block while you were tapped out.

I hope this post got you thinking. Keep innovating and keep improving. Playing casual is a ton of fun, but if your playgroup or your playstyle becomes stagnant, your enjoyment of the game may suffer.

June 1, 2011
Mass Removal by Colors

Wrath of God
is a very intimidating card. Its text box contains few words but it is one of the strongest effects in Magic: “destroy all creatures”. They can’t even be regenerated! The effect is quite appropriate for white, clearing the battlefield and starting fresh. But there is more than one way to end the world and the concept of clearing the board has been altered by many cards in white as well as all other colors.

White

White usually wants to balance the odds with its mass removal. Cards like Day of Judgment
Day of Judgment, or even Final Judgment
Final Judgment, are similar to Wrath of God in that they destroy all creatures indiscriminately. There are no special rules in place that protect your creatures, they all suffer equally. The newest white piece of mass removal, Phyrexian Rebirth, seems a little unfair for your opponents. It may look odd, but I think it fits the Phyrexian ideology in white perfectly. The idea behind this bit of flavor is that it has not only a “Wrath” effect, but it takes the corpses of your opponents creatures for your own monstrosity, re-purposing them into a more perfect being. In this case it is equally destroying all creatures yours being, in the Phyrexian orthodoxy, also unfit to live. White allows you to totally clear the board and sometimes, if you’ve got the extra mana for it, get yourself a pretty big creature as well.

Blue

Blue is very different from many of the other colors with regard to mass removal. It isn’t a color that will destroy much of anything but instead uses trickery and deceit to outwit and outmaneuver threats. Frequently Blue uses spells which clear the way by returing creatures to their owners’ hands, the simplest example being Evacuation. Sure, opponents can try to recast those spells, but that’s no problem for blue. With Evacuation at instant speed, it can be played at the end of their turn when your opponent is tapped out and has turned play over to you, leaving them no chance to play anything new. Then you have the chance to recharge your mana for some handy counterspells against the most dangerous creatures you know are hiding in your opponents newly full hand – unless he has discarded them. You could have some of your own creatures reappear with handy abilities that trigger upon entering the battlefield like Mnemonic Wall
Mnemonic Wall which, incidentally, can bring back Evacuation to your hand, if you’d like. While blue doesn’t outright kill everything on the board, it makes your opponent re-cast spells, giving blue mages a chance to do what they do best – employ counter-magic.

Black

Black was the lucky recipient of a planeshifted Wrath of God, Damnation
Damnation. Black is the other color (along with white) that has a plethora of removal hardware, sporting a wide array of cards able to destroy, or at least permanently cripple, everything on the board. The thing is, however, black doesn’t like making the board equal again. It’s best when the mass removal ends up in the black mage’s favor. They are willing to pay a lot for this effect whether it is extra mana to destroy everybody else’s creatures with a Plague Wind
Plague Wind or extra life to destroy all the creatures one opponent controls through a Rain of Daggers
Rain of Daggers. The latest in these kinds of cards is Life’s Finale, which unfortunately destroys all creatures. However, this card isn’t content with leveling the playing field as white spells often do, it takes things a step further by ripping out the best cards your opponent was hoping to play from their library, perhaps the next victim of some of black’s many cards that tamper with the graveyard.

Red

Red is probably the first place many would look if they want a quick, cheap way to clear the board. It seems the perfect color to go on a rampage, destroying everything in it’s path – and, at times, it certainly can do that. The best way to destroy creatures with red is through damage. There are cards starting from Pyroclasm
Pyroclasm that can deal damage to each creature on the board. If you were looking to destroy more than creatures, red is definitely the best color for targeting lands, and one of the best for dealing with artifacts. If a red card says it destroys creatures outright, it probably also does the same for artifacts and creatures, like in Jokulhaups. Red, being unpredictable and impulsive in flavor, also has a number of mass removal spells that just ruin everyone’s plans without any clear advantage for the caster. Warp World
Warp World is a favorite of mine because after the mass removal it completely randomizes the board. It usually doesn’t end in my favor, but the shortsighted and random nature of cards like this make red’s mass removal a whole lot of fun.

Green

Green is the color that can produce the biggest, baddest creatures in the game with huge mana ramp. It is appropriate that green doesn’t have very many mass removal spells for creatures. What it does very well though is destroy artifacts and enchantments. Green has these in their most basic forms in Tranquility
Tranquilityand Creeping Corrosion, which simply destroys all enchantments or artifacts. While green excels in its ability to fill the board with hulking creatures, subtlety isn’t its strong suit, so artifacts and enchantments draw a lot of hate from this color. Green also has some trouble with flying creatures. While green is usually rich in creatures with reach, there are times when they can’t possibly block an attack by an entire swarm of birds or angels. To handle situations such as these there are cards like Whirlwind
Whirlwindor Corrosive GaleCorrosive Gale to destroy or deal damage to all flying creatures.

Colorless

Colorless cards have come to fill a unique role in Magic, as they are able to be used in any deck. There are a few mass removal artifacts like Nevinyrral’s Disk
Nevinyrral’s Disk that can be used in any deck, but recently colorless cards have emerged as a distinct category with a unique flavor and often the ability to do things no other color can. All is Dust
All is Dust was given to us in the last block and forces players to sacrifice their colored permanents. This is a strong card that can be put in any deck but it really only shines in a deck that is mostly colorless. It also can shut down the battlefield of an opponent without having to worry about regeneration or indestructability. In the latest set we received Karn as a planeswalker who is more friendly to decks that use colors. His is a very different form of mass removal that even removes the game you’re playing! These are some especially cool effects given to cards that have transcended the 5 colors of mana.

May 27, 2011
Replace or Double? – Considering Close Resemblances

There are many cards in Magic: The Gathering that are equivalents of cards that were printed in earlier sets or editions. These are typically called “functional reprints”, but I think that term falls short on account of the small (but significant) differences between the variations. There is also a long list of cards that are frequently updated/parodied/powered down to assure that as cards leave Standard there remains balance in your local Multiverse.

With the announcement today that Giant Spider beat out Giant Growth for the sole “Giant” spot in M12, I started thinking about how decks would change without GG and two other prominent, long-lasting spells in the Alpha “pay 1 for 3 _________” series: Dark Ritual and Lightning Bolt. As far as my decks are concerned, I think I could find a suitable substitute in Standard for Giant Growth, but what about Lightning Bolt? Surely we’re not going back to the days of Shock?

Take a look at the four cards below and let’s talk this out. Perhaps with some examples we can define our terms a little more exactly, and, if you’re willing to do some lateral thinking here, I’m sure that you can find some easy ways to improve your decks!

Now, let’s concentrate on Soul Warden and Soul’s Attendant first. Same exact card, right? Both are 1/1 creatures for one white mana, both are human clerics, both gain you one life every time a creature comes into play. Basically the same two cards, right? Wrong. There is one key difference between the two and it is the word “may”.

Soul Warden vs. Soul’s Attendant

“May” is something that is going to trip a lot of casual players up and it is something your play group should strive to call each other on if you really desire to improve as players. “May” means that this gaining of life is voluntary. It is something choose or choose not to do in response to a creature entering play. This means that if you forget to add the life when the creature pops and remember at the end of your turn, your opponent can point to that seemingly meaningless little word on Soul’s Attendant and say “sorry Charlie, I assumed you had a reason for choosing not to gain life”. Whereas, with Soul Warden the choice isn’t even there, it happens automatically.

So, Soul’s Attendant and Soul Warden are NEARLY equivalent, but to the forgetful player, or the person with a Transcendence
Transcendence in play that tiny, insignificant word could make a different. In the pure life-gain deck do you do a 2SA/2SW mix or go all out with four of each? The great thing about Magic is that there are circumstance in which every permutation would be the right thing to do, but the player who knows all their options will be able to build the better deck.

Soul Warden vs. Essence Warden

Like many other cards from the Planar Chaos expansion, Essence Warden is a word-for-word reprint of and earlier card, but transposed into a different color. Probably the coolest instance of such a reprinting was the black Wrath of God, Damnation.

I love the slight flavor-variation involved in porting a spell from one color to another. Wrath of God destroyed all creatures on account of righteous indignation – a characteristically white idea – while Damnation did the same thing, but to bring darkness rather than expunge it.

The slight difference between “soul” and “essence” indicates the similar, but not identical philosophies of green and white mages. “Soul” is a dogmatic, assertive statement about the metaphysical, whereas “Essence” is a more abstract, organic variation of the term. The righteous white mage rejoices in the addition of new persons to the world, while the mystic green mage sees their coming as the organic growth of the whole of nature.

Of course, this clever twisting of Soul Warden’s flavor isn’t what makes Essence Warden great – it’s the ability for her to do for your Saproling deck, what SW did for your Soldier deck. Also, she’s an Elf Shaman, rather than a Human Cleric, which should also provide some additional synergy in tribal decks.

Suture Priest vs. EVERYONE

With the introduction of Suture Priest in New Phyrexia the decision about which life-gaining woman-of-the-cloth to include in your latest Weenie deck becomes MUCH more complicated – as things tend to do when Phyrexians show up.

Suture Priest, though still a cleric, is no longer a human and has an additional cost of one generic mana. She also will only gain you life for creatures entering the battlefield under YOUR control. However, she has the additional ability to damage your opponent every time a creature pops on his side of the board. (NOTE: Here’s that pesky word “May” again. Know that your opponent certainly won’t be reminding you to chose whether or not he loses life.)

The Phyrexian’s nearly “compleat” domination of Mirrodin has had some interesting results, not the least of which is the twisting of Soul Warden’s classic ability.

For an extra mana, Suture Priest gives you some variety, but is a less reliable source of life and a totally unpredictable source of damage. Is she the right addition to your deck? Perhaps a worthy sideboard card? That’s what we’ll leave you to decide.

Meanwhile, I’ll be dreading the loss of Giant Growth and plotting what to do if (God forbid) Lightning Bolt leaves Standard…

This could go on for quite some time. Oh, and don’t even get me started on Counterspell(s)…

May 25, 2011