Ah, the metagame. "Beyond or transcending the game." You are an elusive creature - and while we wish we knew your hidden little secrets, we do not. It's interesting that people use the phrase metagame to mean environment. Like, "Oh that's not good in the Type II metagame," or "the metagame is full of Tog," or "that winter's metagame was all about combo." To me, the metagame is the game played with the environment - the strategic cost-benefit analyses that one makes.

"Whoa; strategic-cost benefit analyses?" - you say.

Yeah, that's game theory. Also known as "Getting the most bang for your buck." Cost-benefit analysis, for example, tells me that if I have an identical 2/2 for 1B and 1G, the 1B card is better from a simple perspective - namely, that more things affect black positively, while fewer things target black negatively. Bad Moon, Terror, Ghastly Demise, and Slay are all better if it's a black creature... Whereas Pro-Black creatures are slim.

It's just a way to break the card down, to analyze it beyond a "This looks good, that looks bad" perspective.

I argued with Brian Kibler a few nights back. We talked game theory and four-drops, unbeknownst to many of the conversations' participants.

#apprentice on EfNet. A bit past midnight. Someone says, "Phantom Centaur is like the new Blastoderm." I say something like....

Me: "It's not that good."
Someone else: "Yes it is, it has Protection from Black, it's five-Power, it's a beast."
Me: "It's a four-drop. Four drops suck in the standard environment."
Some other guy: "Flametongue Kavu."
Me: "Flametongue is a card that says:"Do four damage to target creature and put a 4/2 creature into play." It's hardly a four-drop creature. It's like two spells."
Some other guy, named Kibler: "You don't know what you're talking about. I played Lightning Angel in Nationals and did quite well."

I scroll up, look at the name, and do a double take.

Wow, this Kibler guy - I hear he knows what he's talking about when it comes to deckbuilding. I go check out his Nationals placing, and... It's high.

I stop arguing my point.

Maybe Lightning Angel is good in Standard. Maybe it works in his "Miss America" deck that he posted on the Sideboard two days later.

Is Lightning Angel the same as Phantom Centaur, though? Nope. Lightning angel can swing for three flying when it comes into play and then block most creatures in the environment.

Phantom Centaur can be Innocent Blooded and Edicted... But I'm probably looking at it from the wrong perspective. If you've got a Centaur out, then you're probably running birds and elves, and you can always ditch one of those to an Edict instead. Or they've been Edicted or Blooded already.

I think the difference comes down to bounce. Centaur gets bounced to your hand before you can attack with it if it doesn't get countered or killed; the Angel has haste. It can be bounced, but it'll come out kicking again. Bounce is way less effective on it.

In a similar fashion, Blastoderm couldn't be bounced except by untargeted bounce. And how much of that was there during the time of Masques and Invasion Blocks?

So let's tie this back into game theory. We'll assign a simple preference relation to the three.

At the top is Blastoderm during its day in the sun. The thing was an absolute beast. A 5/5 for four that couldn't be targeted and stuck around for three turns. And what was its rarity, folks? Common. "Hi, my name is Blastoderm, and I'll be convincing you to draft Green today." It has all the benefits of Centaur minus its weakness to bounce. It might go away after a little while, but I'm okay with that.

Next is Lightning Angel in the current environment. Haste and flying are key here. They make it strictly better than Centaur, as there's less of a chance that the angel will get bounced away, since she just comes back kicking. Secondarily, Trenches can make the tokens necessary to soak up Edicts and Innocent Bloods. She fits well into her deck.

Phantom Centaur... Not so much. Bounce hurts it, black non-targeting creatures hurt it. It's good, but it's no 'Derm, and it's no Angel. Add to that that there's yet to be a deck made that supports this card effectively and you see my doubt.

It's not that no four-drop is good; I was wrong. Angel is quite good. It's just that Centaur's not the card in Constructed that the 'Derm was.

So after arguing the merits of four-drops over in my head, I build a deck with five-drops in it. Why?

Because Scalpelexis makes my pants feel funny.

And Haunting Echoes doubly so.

I put together a deck that looks much like a twelve-counter Tog deck, except that I take out the Togs and Upheavals and put in Echoes and Scalpelexis.

I run this idea past the peeps on #apprentice a few times over the course of several days.

"Scalpelexis and Haunting Echoes is a stupid combo. Scalpelexis removes the cards from the game, it doesn't put them in the graveyard."

"Scalpelexis is the bomb in Limited. It'll suck in Constructed."

"Traumatize and Haunting Echoes was supposed to be nasty, but it never went off."

So here's my beef:

Person A saw something with where I was going, but he saw it backwards. The Haunting Echoes makes the Plexis's job easier, not vice versa.

It plays like this.

Turn 1: Swamp, Duress; with luck, pull out a key card from your opponent's hand.

Turn 2: Solidify mana base, maybe drop some sexual chocolate, maybe don't.

Turns 3-6: Counter, Duress, Edict. Keep the board as clear as one can; if opponent taps out, then Fact or Fiction to get more cards (duh).

Wait, I might have a revelation soon.

So the goal is to get one or two of each spell in the graveyard, make them counter things to get counterspells in the graveyard, Edict out whatever creature they play... On Turn 7 you want to drop the first echoes (with counter back-up).

And then the fun starts. Their deck should be moderately gutted by this point, and for the most part you can use the contents of their in-play zone and their deck to figure out what they've got in their hand. Play accordingly.

By turn 8, if you haven't gotten a Scalpelexis out, get one out, and keep it alive for a little bit if you could. Then hit them once with it.

They'll likely have about twenty-plus cards in their deck post echoes. Most of those will be land - probably well over half, since you've pulled out thirty or so non-land cards. One hit from the Scalpelexis should kill them, maybe two if they're playing multiple colors.

The Scalpelexis takes over where the Echoes left off.

What's this deck good against? It's damn good against G/W monastery decks. These things need Threshold pretty badly, so the Echoes really handicaps them. They also don't have counterspells for your threats. Unless they get beatdown early and often, which generally hasn't happened against me so far, it's an easy win.

The deck is probably pretty weak.

I have one thing to say to that:

"Fight me all of you" - PTR

(That's such an eloquent phrase, don't you think?)

I'm like 5-0 or so with the deck. Netdecks I have beaten include the G/W build I mentioned earlier, as well as some kind of Psychatog build. I beat a couple rogue decks with it, most notably the Patron Wizard one that uses Cephalid Constable.

So I need to play it more.

Email me. We'll set up an appointment and you can beat the hell out of me.

I'm playing a Burning Bridges, Post-Judgement variant as well. Except I hold cards back with it. Burning Bridges, I think, isn't about going straight to the dome right away, or killing all the creatures they play. If they have a 6/6 out then I just have to have five cards in my hand, right?

Burning Bridges, if you're wondering, beats the living snot out of QuietRoar. I think I lost three life one game.

It was the last turn, my opponent was at eight and had three wurm tokens in play, I had no cards in hand. His only option was to flashback deep analysis aimed at me, lose six life in the process, and hope I didn't draw a single burn. So he conceded instead. And that was the game that he'd touched me.

But Bridges is awful against mono-black control decks. Burn can't keep up with "Corrupt you for six, Mind Sludge you for five, etc." I'm going to try and put together a sideboard with that in mind.

Sideboards: Is Wormfang Drake an acceptable sideboard against Tog? If I Drake my own creature, will that actually delay them from Upheavaling? I have no desire to play Tog, so if someone out there has any musing on this that they want to share. Feel free.

It's for the good of the group.