Due to work, school, and, most importantly, family commitments, I was unable to play in the last Friday tournaments to which I have been accustomed. Although I don't have an actual tournament report, I do have some preliminary testing results for my punisher deck, as well as several random musings I've had this last week.

I have recently discovered that although I can play this game well, I really have little or no chance at success. Aside from the fact that I seem to insist on playing rather horrible decks of my own making, I also am lacking the tools with which to build the most successful decks. I feel like a beginner all over again.

As I have stated in previous columns, I returned to the game after a two-year self-imposed hiatus in the autumn of 2001. As I was not collecting during my break from the game, I was a little short as far as card availability goes. I purchased some cards and traded some of my older stuff for cards as well... But, alas, it appears that I have not improved my stock much. In fact, if I had been able to go to Regionals this year, it would have been pre-determined that I would have lost. And here's why:

I call it the Standard Power 8.

Call of the Herd, Urza's Rage, Nantuko Shade, Upheaval, Mutilate, Mystic Enforcer, Absorb, and Vindicate. Of these eight cards, I have one Shade... And nothing else. Why do I call these cards the Standard Power 8, you ask? Well, I went through one hundred thirty-four decks posted on the Sideboard site from Regionals. Of these decks, no less than one hundred five contained, at a minimum, at lest four of one of these cards. Additionally, greater than half of these decks contained as many as seven to twelve copies of various cards from the above list. So seventy-eight percent of the top decks were out of my humble reach. Of the remaining twenty-nine decks listed, I had the cards available to actually build fourteen. The last fifteen decks, although not containing the minimum four copies of one particular card on my Power list, either contained two or three copies of one of these particular cards, or contained other random rares that I do not have available in my collection.

Unfortunately, I can't justify shelling out almost four hundred clams for a fist full of cards to fill out a set of the Standard Power 8. Well, let me reiterate that point; given enough time, I am sure I could eventually talk myself into it, but, regardless of how sweet I coo in her ear, I doubt my lovely wife would understand any pathetic justification I could muster. Besides, for that kind of scratch, I could purchase five, maybe six, boxes of cards.

I understand that most of us do not have a complete play set of each card available in each particular format; that's life. In addition, I am not a member of a team. I am a free agent, so to speak. I also don't have a regular playtest group. I have my wife, and, occasionally, a few folks I practice with down at the store. That's it. As such, I don't really have the contacts to either trade for the cards, or borrow these cards from someone. Think about it: If you only knew someone from occasional contact through playing at a gaming store, would you be willing to lend them $152.00 worth of cards for their R/G Beats deck? (That would be four Call of the Herds and four Rages, currently valued at $22.00 and $16.00 bucks a pop, respectively, here at StarCity).

I guess the one thing to which I can look forward is that at least the Standard format is constantly changing. Half the cards out of these eight will rotate out come November. Maybe I should concentrate all my efforts on building pauper decks, with random rares tossed in for fits and giggles. Even so, I can't believe that would make me any more competitive... So I continue to plug along, trade when I can, buy packs, pick up the occasional reasonably priced rare, and dream about what I could accomplish. At least I can proxy cards.

Which, in all honesty, is exactly what I do when I want to test my ability. After reviewing the above deck lists, I tossed together six different decks, using real cards as much as I could, and using proxy cards for the remainder. I built R/G Beats, Star Spangled Slaughter, U/G Tempo, B/G Braids, Psychatog, and Mono Black Control, and headed down to one of the local stores to play.

Now, I would feel like a real jerk were I to take these decks (proxies and all) and go play against the local twelve-year-old who has his eighty card, twelve land, four of each of Craw Giant, Force of Nature, and Craw Wurm deck. I walk into the store, find someone, and have them pick a couple decks at random from the six I built. We each take one, and play. If I can come out with at least a sixty percent win percentage after a night of Magic, I feel I have at least justified my position that I am a decent player. Additionally, I try to play against several different people to help me validate whether I am good at this game or not.

I ended up with an eighteen and seven record, and had an opportunity to play all the decks against at least one of the others. Afterwards, I bust out Clifford v. 2.0 (a quick thanx to Ferrett...I dropped Skullscorch in v 2.0 for the Kavu you suggested), and play a few games with that. I win four and lose four with Clifford, playing against whatever decks the other players brought. Overall, I had a good time - and isn't that what this game is all about for a majority of us?

I got home from work the other morning, broke apart the decks, and went to bed. I awoke in time to get ready for class, and leave. Fortunately, I was on my weekend - so rather than going back into work after class, I get to go home and eat dinner. I eat, and sit with Angel and watch"The Little Mermaid." After the movie ends, I take Angel up to bed, give her a kiss goodnight, and head back to the front room.

Working nights has some disadvantages. For one, I just can't go to bed at night. So even on my weekend nights, I end up staying up till all hours of the night. Of course, it's not all bad, though. I get uninterrupted time to work on homework, read, build decks, and search the web. I also end up sleeping half the day away, and don't quite get as much accomplished as I should.

Mother's Day will be here in a couple days as I write this, and I still haven't had the chance to take the kids shopping. Looks like another Friday night is booked. Obviously, I need one of those cloning things, like in the movie Multiplicity. If I didn't have to actually work, or attend class and do homework, I'd have a hell of a lot more time available for family and games. That would have to be the only solution. I have lost all faith in the lottery ever providing me the substantial sum of money I desire that would allow me to sit on my fat ass all day and play with the kids. Hey, we've cloned a sheep, and a few other animals...Maybe by the year 2025, they'll actually be looking for humans to clone. I'm sure by that time, the ideal candidate will be an overweight, balding, fifty-something with one foot in the grave already.

Ever do something really, really foolish, and wish you could possibly take it back? A few months ago, I was reading the April edition of Inquest (you remember the one...it had the hot alternative Serra Angel art on the cover). Well, I was a little loopy from lack of sleep and a lot of homework, so when I stumbled across the end of the letters section where the managing editor asked for people to send them e-mail at their new e-mail address, I fired off a little half-assed message to them, referring to the cover art...

"Guys, all I can say is that after seeing the cover art on the seventh anniversary edition of InQuest (issue #84), your magazine wasn't the only thing growing this month. The price of Jergens lotion is gonna double in my town now, in accordance with the whole supply and demand curve. As far as the great work goes, keep it up....And with continuing cover art like that, I'll be doing the same on my side.

"Carl Wilt"

....and thought no more about it. The May issue came and the message I sent was not there. Since I assumed that my message to them was probably a little too raw for print, I wasn't expecting to see it either. Then the June issue came out:

I picked up the magazine, and brought it to work, intending to casually read it when I had the time. Well, about 5:30 a.m., I crack it open to the letters section to start reading. And, what to my bloodshot eyes would appear, but our buddy, Juzam Djinn, thanking me for increasing his profits from Viagra sales!! Of course, that little half-assed e-mail I sent was published in its entirety under the heading of"Just Spanky." After I quit laughing, I realized that maybe, just maybe, I should warn my better half about this. As she frequently checks my e-mail for me, I figured it's be better to let her know now, than to get blindsided later.

I got home from work that morning and called my wife at the office.

"Hey, hon, how's it going?"

"Fine. See you made it home this morning. What ya up to?"

"Not much. Getting ready to go to bed in a bit. Anything going on with Kelle after school?"

"She has homework club today. I'll pick her up on my way home."

"So how much you love me?"

"Why? What'd you do?" For some reason, that always seems to be my wife's response to that question.

"No reason, really. I had something printed."

"On Star City again?"

"Not quite...it was in Inquest."

"What the hell did you send in?" Apparently, she must have browsed a few old issues of the magazine that I have lying around, and immediately determined that the only way anything I wrote them would published was if it was not good.

I read her the letter, being sure to explain that I wasn't operating at full capacity when I sent it (although, there are many who would argue that I'm never at full capacity). Fortunately, she laughed at my immature hijinks. In the future, I believe I will keeps my comments safely here, at Star City, where the wise and learned Ferrett will review and edit anything I send in before it sees print.

Well, for those of you who don't remember or didn't read, my last article, I proxied together a mono-red Punisher deck. Here's the deck list:

24 Mountains
2 Dwarven Driller
4 Fledgling Dragon
2 Worldgorger Dragon
3 Price of Glory
4 Sonic Seizure
4 Fiery Temper
4 Firebolt
4 Flame Burst
4 Browbeat
3 Breaking Point
3 Skullscorch

Sideboard:
2 Goretusk Firebeast
3 Lava Blister
4 Molten Influence
2 Longhorn Firebeast
4 Magnivore

This deck was designed strictly for the OBC environment - although, with a few changes (namely, no Worldgorger Dragon), it might work to a small extent in Standard. I've been able to do some initial testing with this deck based on the top decks from Osaka. Here are some of the initial, albeit critical, conclusions I have made.

The huge Worldgorger Dragon has no place in the main deck. Every time I tried to play this beast, it seems that any deck running either Black or Blue had one of the"forbidden four" available, and ready to cast. In fact, I couldn't even get around the limitations of Toxic Stench or Ghastly Demise, as my opponent always seemed to have threshold by the time I was able to cast the Dragon. Still, I like the idea of having him available at least. I have pulled the Dragon from the main deck and stuck him in the sideboard in place of the Longhorn Firebeast. In its place, I added two Book Burnings, which will either mill my opponent, have them take damage, or give me threshold for my Fledgling Dragon. Plus, it lowers my main deck creature count, improving my chances against all the critter-hate that the Mono-Black Control decks pack.

I am undecided about the usefulness of Skullscorch. Generally, the opponent just takes the damage - which, I know, is the design of this deck anyway. Of course, it actually is great for the opponent when they have a hand consisting of Rootwallas and Wurms. Even with the random discard effect, they always net something. Additionally, it is completely useless in the late game, as its only purpose is to be that card waiting to be picked for Sonic Seizure. I guess nothing is ever completely useless if it can serve the purpose of a random discard without affecting me adversely.

The last deck change I need to make is to add Barbarian Rings. I know, I know.... A real deckbuilder would have been smart enough to add them in the first place. But, no, not a loser like me. I need to get my ass kicked using nothing bus basic land first before I decide to build something intelligently. So after testing, and realizing that I would eventually stall and not easily be able to get that last few points of damage done, I added those as well. Here's the current deck as it stands now:

20 Mountains
4 Barbarian Rings
2 Dwarven Driller
4 Fledgling Dragon
2 Book Burning
3 Price of Glory
4 Sonic Seizure
4 Fiery Temper
4 Firebolt
4 Flame Burst
4 Browbeat
3 Breaking Point
3 Skullscorch

Sideboard:
2 Goretusk Firebeast
3 Lava Blister
4 Molten Influence
2 Worldgorger Dragon
4 Magnivore

Early results, aside from the deck changes, at least appear decent. Depending on the Mono-Black build (creatureless/relatively creatureless, or relatively heavy creature), I either own it, or win better than sixty percent of the time - doing much better against the versions with few (if any) creatures. Given that these decks have so much creature hate, and my deck has so few creatures to start, I end up with an advantage. It still has some problems against the various versions of G/U. The madness version of G/U seems to do really well (wins about 70%), while the threshold version seems to win a little less frequently, although it's still ahead on the ledger.

I haven't been able to complete a tremendous amount of testing against Mono-Green, or G/W decks... But I say that the results against Mono-Green, at least preliminarily, have been good. G/W seems to pose more of a problem with the availability of red-hate and life gain.

I'm sure I'm going to have to change the sideboard to handle these two decks. Although I really like being able to morph into more of a creature based deck to take advantage of the creature-hate that other decks will be boarding out, I just can't afford an auto-loss condition to a common deck. I'll have to wait and see how Judgment affects things, though. Additionally, I haven't really sat down and given an honest attempt at improving any decks from Osaka, or creating a new G/W deck based on the new cards. But as it stands now, I'll tweak a little more, and test a bit more, and see how it goes.

Well, I know it's been a couple weeks, but that's all I can crank out this time. I'll send out more next week.

Peace...
Carl Wilt
Brownsfan56@hotmail.com

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