Inside the Dimir courtrooms, justice is twisted and men are manipulated like puppets on strings. The steady trickling from ever present fountains dulls all sound, but fear, not vigor, fills the air. And from the great bench, the robed magistrate rises. Wearing a fox fur hat.
Oscar the Lawyer produces what may be his final set review ever, and has lots to say about the goodies that Ravnica may or may not have provided the Vintage community.
Oscar takes a peek at what Saviors has to offer Vintage players and finds three draw spells that might go overlooked.
After graduating Law School, Oscar Tan is back with his theoretical thoughts on the Theory of Interactivity (or something). In fact, Oscar and Stephen Menendian go head to head on this subject today in dueling theory articles, both designed to answer Master Magic Theorist Mike Flores. Peep both articles for yourselves and tell us who got the better of the debate in the forums!
Trinisphere wasn't broken, but it was restricted anyway for contributions of "making the game unfun." Is fun a viable reason to ban or restrict a card? Oscar Tan has his own opinion on this one and he'd like to hear yours: Did Wizards of the coast screw up when they restricted Trinisphere?
As Oscar wraps up his Vintage Betrayers set review today, he begins to despair at the quality of cards in the new set. Is there nothing playable in Vintage coming out of this middle set, ow will the Instants, Sorceries, and Lands provide a hidden gem that we'll be talking about in the years to come?
Oscar takes a look at Betrayers Artifacts and Enchantments today as well as continuing the replay of "Oscar's Greatest Misses." Is there anything in the new set that will make a dent on Vintage, or does the whole set whiff when it comes to playable new cards? Only the Oscar knows...
Oscar returns from the dead to take a look at the best creatures and creature enchantments that Betrayers of Kamigawa has to offer and, for the first time ever, covers some of his own greatest misses in set reviews.
Frankly, I'm surprised that none of the usual suspects commented on Type 1.5 at length here on StarCityGames.com, and it's been a while since the new Banned list was announced. Or rather, no one aside from Sebastian Smith, who managed to unseat me from my lofty perch as the indefatigable sourpuss of Vintage in just one article. Simply, I don't understand where all the negative energy about the "new 1.5" came from, but I'd like to examine what the new format provides not only Type 1.5 players, but Type 1 players as well.
When we talk about Kamigawa instants, we just have to start with Splice. On the surface, it's a card advantage ability that lets you pay an additional cost when you play a spell to sort of Buyback the Splice spell. This could be problematic, however, when you consider the Sneak Attack problem (see "Six Beginner's Delusions You Meet in Heaven") since you have to play a bunch of Arcane spells to make use of Splice. Moreover, last week (see "Championing Kamigawa"), we concluded that the Arcane sorceries aren't very appealing, with only Lava Spike and Eye of Nowhere priced below three mana.
Glimpse of Nature
If Cranial Extraction seems a broad, powerful card and you're not sure where you'd put it, Glimpse of Nature seems like it was tailor-made for Food Chain Goblins. Is this a new spell that will allow champions of the little Red men to take over the metagame, or is it just more Champions fool's gold?
After gauging the feedback from the last column, I decided to change the set review order slightly. As I said last time, Champions of Kamigawa was built to focus on its expanded legendary creature mix and gravitates around combat abilities and the like. You can take the hint when Oscar concludes the Lands might be the most titillating thing Champions has to offer...
Oscar is back from his break to tell you that there are never any good new cards printed for Type One, ever. Okay, that's not true... in fact, recent sets have been unprecedented in delivering strong new cards for Vintage play. Does Champions have any new creatures that will make Vintage players jump for joy? You'll have to check inside to find out.
All of us had to start somewhere. When you dig up old TheDojo.com files and find the scrub Pro Tour Qualifier reports sent in by randoms named Randy Buehler and Kai Budde, you don’t rock your head back and laugh at how dumb they used to be. Rather, if you set aside the forum flamer complex, you’ll probably find yourself smiling and realizing they used to be like you, not in the sense that they’re no longer ordinary young guys like anyone else, but in the sense that they once had to fumble through the game, too. Really, I think this “advanced scrub stage” is the most fun a player has.
Each June, I’ve taken to taking a step back and just assessing where I am, in column form. The column meter is now at 140, and this annual retreat into a written fortress of solitude has become very valuable. Though perhaps I find myself in the mood for something more mellow in 2004.
Our favorite Type One curmudgeon hasn't been heard from in weeks!
Oscar's continuing review of Fifth Dawn for Type 1, this time including such platinum hits as Night's Whisper, Serum Visions, and Bleiweissian mega-bomb All Suns' Dawn.
Many of you might wonder why I dwell on cards I don't think will see play in Type I, even if I end up with a list that rejects all the new cards. While the Johnnies in all of you might not like it, I want to impress the thought process upon the beginners and people like Steve Jarvis. Only after reading his Type I column am I fully reminded why it remains important to write about Eternal Witness for the teenager (or Nationals competitor) who's at the Prerelease and has a passing interest in Type I.
We went through the creatures last week, and now move to the artifacts. These are the most interesting permanents of the Mirrodin block, and we’ll tend to the"Does this card do something no past card ever did?" rule now.
Auriok Salvagers
Okay, Ben Bleiweiss told us that this is a stupendous two-card, infinite mana combo with Black Lotus (or Lion's Eye Diamond, actually), so we should get off our stagnant Type I asses and innovate up a Salvagers deck.
Oscar riffs on Bleiweiss, Knut, Vedalken Orrery, and why some cards belong together like chocolate and peanut butter, and why other cards, while seemingly a solid combo, are simply a bad idea.
The day before I left Manila, I was surprised to see that Kevin Cron’s daily thread posited that “The Deck” was drifting towards the Exalted Angel-centered aggro-control deck Eon Blue Apocalypse, or EBA. In fact, his message ended, “How many more changes before we start calling it Aggro Control?”
Since I publicly told Randy Buehler that Type I players still subscribe to the old joke about Green, designers have paid close attention to the color pie, and the popularity of each slice has changed quite a bit. Mono-Red, for example, has been reduced to the pseudo-combo Food Chain Goblins, with burn all but extinct (except Fire). Mono-Black has disappeared as well, with even its revitalized disruption unable to cope with real creatures, not to mention the hilarity of discard facing off against graveyard-intensive strategies. Somewhere in all this shifting lies the much-maligned Green...
Thus, “The Deck” is getting left behind, to the point that some distinguished voices have been using it as the straw man for trumpeting “the real metagame.” Last month, for example, JP Meyer half-sarcastically called it “the best control deck in Type 1 as long as there isn't another control deck that is more streamlined." More recently, Phil Stanton called it “nothing but metagame customization” compared to Hulk. Are these pundits correct, and if they are, what building blocks exist to go about rebuilding"The Deck" for today's Type One environment?
When a recent column of mine suffered a typo and got labeled, “You CAN Play Type II”, some wise guys joked it might be a “The Deck” against Ravager head to head. Talking about curious decks, though, Ravager actually heads the list of recent Type I novelties.
Today Oscar revisits the Keeper mirror match with legendary German deckbuilder Roland Bode.
More from the wild and wacky world of Keeper vs. Landstill!
"The Deck" is possibly compared to Baldur's Gate 2. It's the legendary control deck against which newcomers are judged, but it's undeniably showing its age. Control decks have streamlined a lot since the days they could just lean on Mana Draining into Braingeyser, but today's most modern ones have cheaper, more specialized engines. Today's Head to Head will look at one of the more popular and original control creations to come along: Landstill.
In 1998 Cathy Nicoloff quipped about the Death of Sligh in Type 2,"Red's primary problem is obvious. It has mucho death and no disruption. Any combo deck that can kill before red deals the final hammering can twiddle itself in peace for four turns without worrying." Who knew that she'd be speaking truly about the death of aggro in Type I six years hence?
Shunt
Okay, so
Deflection and
Misdirection should have been Red now? This pie business is sure confusing.
Anyway, Deflection was a chase card after Jester's Cap back in Ice Age days, but it was just too tempo inefficient. Barring a Fireball for twenty, Deflection didn't really do all that much for four mana, aside from having cute flavor text. Shunt, at three mana, isn't all that different in Type I. Remember, this effect truly took off with Misdirection's free cost.
Oscar continues to look at Darksteel for more bang for his buck. Is he going to find any Chasey Lain videos here, or is"Cinnamon Buns" going to strike out with the Darksteel sorceries? Click on the link to find out!
Geth's Grimoire
Lots of beginners who want to build Rack decks oooh and aaaah when they see
Megrim. Thing is, unloading your discard on the opponent is top priority, so your opponent has no hand by the time you have a moment to remember to play Megrim. At that point, a creature cleans up far better.
Geth suffers from the Megrim problem as well.
Incidentally, my goal here is not just to point out the top picks. I see the traditional set review as a beginners' intellectual exercise, and I'm more interested in the thought process, especially articulating why some hyped"Timmy" cards glitter but aren't quite gold.
As my habit goes, we start with the simplest category, creatures. Talking shadow price, we're mainly talking power-to-mana ratio (see"Counting Tempo, Part II"). Even if you're interested in the ability, you'll still prefer it come with a decent-sized warm body.
Although Hulk Smash and raw firepower was the top deck going into Vintage Champs, changes in the metagame made"The Deck" and its flexibility the Blue-based deck of choice once again. For example, the December 12, 2003 Dülmen saw three top German players-Oliver Daems, Roland Bode and Falk Bernhardt-Top 8 using"The Deck" with Isochrons, and it also featured prominently in January 2004 European tourneys. Since the notable event in this slice of time is mainly the release of Mirrodin, it's easier to understand the evolution on a card-by-card basis. I spent December finishing off my theory articles and January starting with my midterms so I haven't been able to really update my deck, either, but here's what's on my plate for reference...
"Card quality" is a mishmash of the possible interactions between all the resources in Magic - beyond just the cards and draw steps - and it's used in so many different senses you can't always be sure what the speaker means."Card quality" has become a piece of Magic space-filling jargon, the way some people say"mise","barn", and"f***" every other word and assume you understand whatever the hell they're talking about.
Don't worry, the formulas in this article aren't serious, I've had it with fancy math. Last week, I snuck into the cafeteria for a bite, and the only other person there was a grad student from the neighboring college, studying calculus models for a Macroeconomics midterm. Missing my Bachelor's in Economics days, I took the seat beside her, put on a big smile, and asked,"So, what's your favorite equation?"
More reader responses to the most ludicrous Card Advantage situations possible.
Last week, I said T.H.E.F.U.C.C. gives you faster results than Chasey Lain, and invited readers to send the most mind-boggling problems so we can see how far the formula goes.
My thanks to all you demanding readers, you tried your damnedest.
More Card Advantage Examples and Chasey Lain references. Honest.
Card Advantage is simpler and more visible than tempo, so the spectacular plays you associate with Type I are usually those that build incredible CA, from Stroke of Genius to Mind Twist. The most powerful card ever printed, Necropotence, is also the most powerful CA engine ever printed.
It's really very simple. If Restriction 1 says you only draw one card a turn, or your regular draw, then one way to win is by drawing more cards. However, spectacular plays aren't common. Normally, you have to choose between two average plays. Thus, you want a simple method to count CA, to help you decide... and that's what I'm going to provide.
When you read this, I'd like you to e-mail me the most confusing, perplexing, tooth-gnashing, ball-breaking card advantage conundrum you can think of. And I'll do my best to explain it to you in one stroke, using a very short checklist. In other words, I'd like you to help me write the next column.
If I can't - again, take note of the grain of common sense needed - then I admit defeat and will shut up.
Continued discussion of Card Advantage Theory, including cards headed to the graveyard, and a treasure from the Usenet archives.
To begin, I'd like to go back to something I glossed over in"Counting Card Advantage." A lot of the forum discussion touched on"virtual" card advantage, but I doubt all readers know exactly what this is. It was a term coined by Eric"Danger" Taylor in"Virtual Card Advantage in Urza's Block, a Sub-Category of Card Advantage Theory" (The Dojo, August 4, 1999). EDT's classic article actually discussed two specific sets of scenarios, and the first concluded:
You can't ignore tokens when counting card advantage.
Before anything else, you have to give him credit. I criticized - too violently, some said - Mark Rosewater’s column because it was just a cut-and-paste of an old column and was certainly unflattering, sounded patronizing in a number of areas, asked for Type I articles on topics that had already been debated to death on Star City and TheManaDrain, and focused on what they wouldn’t do without saying much about what they would.
Forget all that.
To paraphrase George Santayana, those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
If so, let's hope Mark Rosewater didn't get a life sentence.
More playtesting coverage from Oscar. Bea Arthur conversations are not included.
Today's feature demonstrates an updated but still skeletal version of Suicide Black, to illustrate how the"modern" deck plays. The only truly modern development incorporated at this point is the obvious substitution of Chalice of the Void for Null Rod, so we don't take in the changes all at once, and to better appreciate the latest post-Mirrodin tech.
"I don't trust R&D to make what they think are"Type I-specific" cards. No one there knows enough about Type I, and their little gift might prove more abusive than they realized. Then, we're stuck with it until DCI says something, and no one knows whether or not they're looking at the new mistake until they actually make a restriction."
The above text seems to suggest that you do not think Wizards can make cards for, or even designed with half an eye towards, Type 1. In fact, Wizards themselves have admitted they simply have not the time and resources to playtest Type 1 (a statement which, although I find it disappointing, I fully sympathize with), and they would probably agree with your assertion that no-one at Wizards knows enough about Type 1 to design cards for it. But, my question is, does anyone?
This week Oscar plays in a real life Type I tournament, writes about his performance, and goes in-depth on the Keeper versus Dragon match-up. Everyone who has ever complained that Oscar rarely writes about his losses needs to read this one...
Since the printing of Hymn to Tourach (and its eerie wolf-head art), Discard has been Black's most prominent mechanic. The reactive Blue counterspells can be used in both control and aggro-control deck structures, and the same goes for proactive Black Discard. You have to distinguish Black aggro-control, for example, from more control-oriented strategies such as Pox and Nether Void. In the same way, you distinguish the feel of Tempest-Urza's Saga-era Type II Suicide Black decks from what you called Type II Mono Black Control.
I'd like to begin my demonstration of Black-based aggro-control, however, with the original"old school" Suicide builds, the kind that was played against"The Deck" and mono Blue back when Fact or Fiction was still unrestricted. These decks featured the simple skeleton of beatdown, discard, and mana denial, and today's more complicated blends are best understood with the classic foundations.
You have to admit that War Elemental is one of the spoiler entries that immediately catches your eye. You're tempted to do some mental weighing. You can just attack with your first-turn creature or fire off an extra Lightning Bolt like a cumbersome Chain Lightning, then every other burn spell in your hand deals at least twice its damage. Normally, its triple-Red, three-mana cost would be enough to merit it just a passing comment, but things have changed with Chalice of the Void... So is War Elemental better and does it raise the value of the three-slot in Type I?
What I fail to understand is why people pooh-pooh Type I players who call for a brake on the format's still-unrestricted broken tempo cards and call them"casual" players, but not bat an eye when Kai Budde says:"I hate the format. Basically, if you want to win, you have to build a deck that wins on turn 2 or turn 3, and if you do that it always becomes really inconsistent." It's pretty much the same problem in Type I. But hey, I like being on the same side of the argument as Kai Budde.
Hulk Smash was the big story of the Vintage Championships last GenCon, but a lot of people forget about the finalist's deck: Vengeur Masque. Masque has since established itself as Type I's premier aggro deck. The philosophies behind The Funker and Stacker 2 merged somewhat into Benjamin Rott's Tools 'n' Tubbies, which was in turn supplanted by Vengeur. The two are very similar in spirit, with Survival of the Fittest providing the card advantage for both, but with Illusionary Mask playing the key tempo booster for Vengeur.
Again, what should we do? Innovate towards faster kills, meaning Turn 1? I think there's a point where you know where the metagame is taking you, and you should take the wheel from the driver already. I mean, we now have a format where a 2/1 for one mana has long since been too weak. My point is that Type I is too fast, and that proposing to slow it down is not a move to make Type I less competitive; it's a move to make Type I more realistic.
Well,
my last column opened a can of worms about Chalice of the Void and the future of Vintage - and letters are still coming in! Let me answer your questions and concerns.
Dear Oscar:
Suppose R&D wanted to make a card that"forces decks to change their spell mix," or their designers to think outside the box and not necessarily opt for all the broken cards on the restricted list simply by virtue of their brokenness. R&D wanted this card to essentially"fix" all their old blunders to some extent by making the very thing that is desirable about those spells (their inexpensive costs, out of proportion with their over-powered effects) less desirable. So what's wrong with that?
Last week, I said three artifacts stand out in Mirrodin: Chrome Mox should be restricted on principle because of the inherent danger of free artifact mana that evades the land drop restrictions. Chalice of the Void deserves to be banned (note, not necessarily"should be") because of how it cuts off entire decktypes or forces them to radically change their spell mix all by itself, irrespective of the deck that slips it in-or the intelligence of the player who does. Isochron Scepter? Well, that's a tougher nut to crack.
Putting all this together, Chalice of the Void:
- Hoses entire archetypes
- Can be played in any deck to shut down at least combo and weenie aggro
- Hoses budget archetypes worst and some powered archetypes least, by nature
These are three very weighty bullet points, and when you say"entire archetypes," you're talking about radical changes to the entire Type One metagame.
You might have drooled the first time you saw Platinum Angel. After all,"don't lose" was the cornerstone of the original"The Deck" philosophy. That is, by focusing on simply not losing, you can wear your opponent down and later outpace him in resources, and overwhelm him. That philosophy, however, isn't absolute gospel in today's far, far faster Type I. In many cases, the best way not to lose is to simply win first, especially when any single deck is hard-pressed to deal with all the many possible ways of losing. That leads us to the Angel's fundamental problem: It stops you from losing, but it doesn't help you win.
With all the excitement about artifacts this week, I decided to move up a feature of an artifact-based deck. Since fellow Paragon Steve Menendian already drew the Growing 'Tog feature and I couldn't find other notable Stax players like Matthieu Durand, I pulled a couple of very exciting games against someone you probably don't know. Today, we welcome Guillaume Cardin, a student from Montreal. While he enjoys Type I, his higher-profile achievements include piloting U/G Madness to the quarterfinals of the last Canadian Nationals....
In Part I, we recapped card advantage and summed up that drawing extra cards is like taking extra turns. However, this is put in context when you consider that an extra turn has other components aside from an extra card draw. In Part II, we went further and showed that you also maximize your mana in a particular turn by paying the lowest mana cost for a given effect. In 2003, however, I feel that even the concept"mana" as broadly discussed doesn't cover everything about tempo; today, we'll track tempo in the way that Rob Hahn did - attack phases.
One of your first steps out of scrubdom was the realization that Gray Ogre is mediocre even in Limited, Ironclaw Orcs is a placeholder in red decks when cheaper or better creatures aren't in the format, and Jackal Pup is still red's most important front-liner to date... Even though they all deal the same two damage. The simple explanation is that drawbacks don't matter; the original Sligh decks with Ironclaw Orcs didn't plan on blocking much, anyway. But this isn't the complete picture - and to understand tempo, you must understand why the Pups are dangerous.
My card advantage articles had to assume that only card advantage was important, so you could do the bean counting without getting too confused. However, it's painfully obvious that card advantage isn't always the most important thing:
For example, Force of Will trades two cards for an opponent's spell, yet it's one of the best blue cards ever printed. So why is Force of Will good? The answer lies in the frequently-misunderstood concept of Tempo.
Hey - what's Oscar doing in the fun section? Well, after all the serious debate on the strategy behind the Vintage Championships, Oscar decides to show three improbable routes to victory... Including the famed Invincible Counter-Troll face-off!
You might remember passing notes from the coverage about how Randy Buehler and some other people passed by the Type I Championships and watched a few matches. Players reported, however, that they weren't just watching idly. Rumor is some serious talking was done. Something about... Updating the Restricted list?
The Ferrett - and quite a number of people - called the World Championships this past weekend a comedy of errors. And the next time StarCityGame covers a big Type I tournament, I'll make sure to have a bottle of 80-proof brandy beside me before I read. A big bottle.
This week's installment is extremely special and personal, and something quite a few readers have made suggestions on. Last week marked the 100th column I've submitted to Star City in the last two years (not counting the Deck Parfait analysis that came before I was made a Featured Writer, and the Mark Rosewater spoof right before his Type I column). Instead of celebrating by spoofing the website, I decided to give in and talk a bit about myself and who the heck I am beyond the websites, forums, e-mails and mIRC channels the vast majority of readers encounter me in.... So meet Oscar Tan!
The sample vignettes continue with scenarios from Rector-Trix, Hulk Smash, and Mind's Desire!
GenCon is just around the corner, and there's less than a month to test the waters of the new metagame before the Type I tournament there. If I could accurately map out the metagame and give you a step-by-step idiot's guide on how to play against every expected archetype, I'd fly on over and try to win the thing myself... But what I can do is show you several game situations you might expect to see against each major deck, and show you the optimal play.
Oscar's article is so long today, it broke our format - so we had to break it into two parts. And speaking of broken, Oscar discusses Mind's Desire and how it's still warping the Type One metagame, even from beyond the grave of restrictions...
This year's GenCon will be held on July 23-26 at the Indianapolis Convention Center, and the Tenth Anniversary celebration will feature a Type I Championship sponsored by Wizards. As such, I think it's about time I discuss what The Deck will look like in a July environment... And discuss how stupid Mind's Desire still makes the environment.
Decree of Annihilation's cycle effect is incredibly powerful, but that makes you ask which deck it fits in. Obviously, it's not something aggro, aggro-control and combo need. As for control, Armageddon was used in Type II to keep an opponent's mana count down while a big creature beat down or an artifact-based lock held him tight. The 7-mana price tag attached to uncounterability precludes this. That leaves you with blue-based control decks with a red splash, but why would these mana-intensive decks want to wreck their own mana and hurt themselves more? Thus, I don't think you'll need to be sideboarding Stifles anytime soon.
When the Scourge spoilers first came out, people took a look at two cards. Mind's Desire was the first (and with good reason, if you caught Part II of this series), and Parallel Thoughts was the second. I thought too many people misread Parallel Thoughts, though. Again, if I'm talking about five mana, then I want something as gamebreaking as Morphling or Memory Jar - and many bombs cost less.
I answer more letters - this time from Aaron Forsythe asking about reprints, Wayne Alward bemoaning the sad fate of his created mechanic, and the most touching letter I ever received.
Each year, I put off the scheduled column for a week and sift through reader mail a second time. Today's the day. I'll answer questions on the Type One World Championships, defend my dislike of Back to Basics yet again, and try to calm Anthony Alongi the heck down.
Yes, we saw a handful of Legions cards in noncompetitive play and especially in theme decks. However, Carl Devos, a.k.a. Professor X, the Belgium chapter of the Paragons, is the only Type I player on the planet happy with the set, having used a few Morph triggers in his Vengeur Masque. (Apparently, some people see the silver lining in anything.) Anyway, Scourge is probably a more exciting set as third sets are wont to be
This article has been in the works with Stephen Menendian, a.k.a. Smmenen, the Paragons' other law student, for several weeks now, but I wasn't home mornings (evenings in the United States) because of my law internship. Then Gush got restricted - so hell, we did the games on the last day of my internship, at 2:30 a.m., and with me loaded with tequila from the mini-party with Joey, the other intern. Interesting? Definitely.
Certainly something was broken in Growing 'Tog, and it cannot be denied that the sheer size of its men made so many decks unplayable. If restricting Gush is your solution, though, you have to justify it due to synergy with other cards since it just isn't that powerful on its own. (The closest analogy is Frantic Search.) The problem, however, is that you have no other alternative except for Psychatog, unless you want to ban Fastbond, which is impossible because Tolarian Academy, Memory Jar and Yawgmoth's Bargain would have to go first... And it may well be that restricting Gush still doesn't stop the deck.
Dream Halls single-handedly demonstrated how easily a"without paying its mana cost" ability can be abused, as Zvi demonstrated in the old Type II with his infamous monstrosity. Now fast forward to 2003. Dream Halls has long since been restricted, thanks to crazy Time Spirals and other brokenness. In Type I, what can you do with a Dream Halls-esque Storm card and every zero-cost mana artifact and one-mana blue manipulation spell ever printed? You can stand a damn good chance of breaking the format.
We experienced a pure motherlode of Type I tech thanks to Legions and its creatures, so I'm sure you could hardly keep your pants on while awaiting Scourge. But seriously, there's one card in Scourge that I think is so good that it might have the potential to make it into"The Deck"... And today, I'm going to test it out to see how it works.
Today, we explore the most basic of all blue-based aggro-control decks. It's called Fish by default, but you also know it as Merfolk and Skies. Fish, as we noted last week, suffers from the classic weakness of having weenies that are pathetic in combat. If you're playing control or combo, however, that doesn't really help you, because you're not going to do a lot of that. Examining a game against Fish will help you analyze the more complex aggro-control decks we'll move on to later.
Win THREE Moxes at Virginia Vintage II... this Saturday in Richmond, VA! When a beginner sees creatures, especially weenies, he usually labels a deck"aggro." When he sees control elements, especially counterspells, he usually labels it"control." Aggro-control decks, however, have creatures and counterspells. The problem with misidentifying an archetype, as usual, is consequently not knowing how to play against it, much less sideboard.
I wrote last week's Back to Basics column because I thought I had to clarify a concept discussed in the previous week's column. Now, it turns out that I have to clarify the clarification, and people ribbed me that the beginner's article still went over the beginner's heads.
Magic has a small number of fundamental rules: One land per turn, one attack phase per turn, a certain maximum power-to-mana ratio for creatures, and one card drawn per turn. Breaking this last rule - one card per turn - is one of the most basic yet most powerful strategies in the game.
Taking a page from other blue-based decks from High Tide to Forbiddian, Roland added red to his deck in anticipation of the mirror, and went 7-0 at the last Dülmen, beating two other Growing 'Togs. To make room, he even removed Berserk, figuring he wouldn't need to slip past as many blockers. This is the deck that many people are now claiming is almost unbeatable. It proves, they claim, that Gush is broken.
Some less experienced players drop"mana curve" like a buzzword, but fail to truly grasp it. Some, for example, just clipped an old Beth Moursund"Deck Deconstruction" column from The Duelist, and the accompanying table for spells for each mana slot. The result is posts on the Wizards boards telling Type I Sligh builders that they need three- and four-mana spells to complete their mana curves, which would only slow the decks. Let me explain it to you.
Wizards pointed Type I players to Illusionary Mask when they introduced Morph trigger creatures. Building a deck around Mask, though, requires a bit of work, and you need to Mask out a really good creature to make all that worth it. So far, the standard is set by Phyrexian Dreadnought, and it's a very tough one.
I envisioned the Control Player's Bible as a detailed reference that beginners could look at without the sometimes-haughty intimidation they sometimes get in Type I websites. The problem is that as I covered the basic discussions and had to move on to more complicated details, I got feedback saying that some beginners who caught the Bible in the middle couldn't keep up. Somewhere there, I got the idea of starting another sub-column strictly focused on beginners again.
If there's a weenie that caught people's attention and even held some for quite a while, it's Caller of the Claw. The logic went like this: Four power for three mana is mediocre by Type I standards (look at Phyrexian Negator). Four power for three mana in green just doesn't cut it. But six power for three mana? Things start looking up.
If people complain about Mishra's Workshop, it's because they haven't read all the articles on how to play against TnT (or how to build tight decks in the first place). The more intelligent protesters, though, shout out against the deck's real power: Survival of the Fittest. DCI's reasoning on Entomb is as scary as it is senseless, because if you believe they're serious, then Survival should have been the target because it draws every turn with Squee.
In this age of instant opinion polls and online message boards, the single most dangerous thing in the world is an uninformed opinion. The DCI just proved it isn't immune, either.
The DCI stopped restricting cards in other formats and just bans them if it absolutely has to, because restrictions add an undue random factor. Many games might feel like topdecking a bomb in Onslaught Sealed, for example. Thing is, this actually makes Type I fun and different, which begs the question: Should we change the banned and restricted list, even if everything seems to be fine?
"Morph trigger" is actually Echo in reverse. You get the ability and a creature by paying a lot of mana spread over two turns. Now, compare Bone Shredder to Skinthinner. With the Urza's Legacy predecessor, you get the Terror ability you need up front, then decide if you can spare 2B for a puny 1/1 next turn. With the new Legions version, you have to pay for the 2/2 before you can pay 3BB for the Terror you really wanted.
Mark Rosewater recently discussed what slice of the pie White should get. Maybe this is a good week to talk about White Weenie. And let's face it: If Rosewater presents Marge Simpson as a color's mascot, we're not expecting much.
No one minds more readable card names. Bigger cart art is something we'd all like to see. Key information being more visible? I can't complain. The problem is that when all these little, sensible changes came together, we got nicer little trees, but lost the entire forest.
One build of Stompy, three builds of Sligh, all angry things up in your face. And, of course, the usual Raksian analysis!
When I saw Goblin Piledriver, I thought it was a strong card that nevertheless wouldn't work in Type I. It didn't occur to me that you could throw them all into a deck and see their individual drawbacks set aside by sheer weight of firepower.
TnT crushes The Deck. And all I had was five lands, a Brainstorm, and a Mana Drain, a very weak hand; my opponent had a God hand for a deck that should crush me. What did he do wrong? Also, for the first time ever on StarCity, the complete and unedited INVINCIBLE COUNTER-TROLL!
2002 was possibly the most eventful year in recent Type I history, and everything that people expected to happen in 2001 instead happened in 2002. How did it change the Vintage scene... And, of course, The Deck?
Last week, Oscar looked at twenty of the best Vintage decks to see whether he could afford to cut Vampiric Tutor; this week, turning towards Cunning Wish targets, he looks at all of the viable instants that can be fetched with Cunning Wish in an attempt to build his sideboard.
The Deck is changing thanks to the new Onslaught fetchlands... And now that an entire color has gone the way of the dodo, can Vampiric Tutor be far behind? Oscar looks at Vampiric Tutor's effectiveness against twenty decks in the Vintage metagame to see whether it makes the cut in the new Type One....
Over the last two months, a number of people e-mailed to ask about"budgetizing" Type I decks, especially"The Deck." Since Christmas is just around the corner and people may make some major purchases, this might be a good time to talk about it... And let me tell you, substituting the Power Nine, like Inquest suggested, is a terrible idea.
Several weeks ago, TnT went toe to toe against the best control players in Virginia and New York at the Virginia States Black Lotus tournament. Can Oscar do any better against a deck that can throw out threats as easily as you throw out excess Tahngarth's Glares? Watch and see!
"The Deck" players everywhere are looking at Polluted Delta and Flooded Strand and scratching their heads. It's not a question of whether or not to use the fetchlands, but how... And years' worth of mana-tuning intuition is suddenly out the window.
I saw an article on Mask decks last week, and I wanted to talk about it - strategies for dealing with Mask, a discussion on whether Mask is a combo deck, and alternate mana bases and color configurations for it.
The initial reactions in my mailbox were as varied as they were ecstatic. For multicolored control alone, Darren Di Battista posited that maybe they shouldn't be used because they might hurt colored mana development later on. What's the approach you need to take to the new Onslaught fetchlands?
Ah, yes."Draw X" always gets your attention, and Read The Runes caught my eye... But a small Read the Runes doesn't look very impressive; compare this to a small Braingeyser or a small Stroke. So we end up with the question,"Can combo use this to set up the end game?"
We begin with what was the most talked-about enchantment in Type I circles, obviously because this card has explosive potential.... But what deck does Future Sight belong in? With Future Sight in play, Academy can turn over Moxen and keep fueling cheap card drawers until it puts together the combo. But is it a good idea?
Blackmail is clearly a second-rate Duress. But is that bad? Well, actually it is - unless you can find a deck that wants four more discard slots. You know, though, that no deck wants all that discard, the simplest reason being it sucks to strip an empty hand while a weenie beats down on you. Discard is just disruption; you need other things to win you the game.
No deck that can handle the double-black mana cost has wanted a four-mana slot since Phyrexian Negator, anyway. Ben Bleiweiss called Grinning Demon"Juzam Djinns five through eight," and that sums it up nicely - albeit in exactly the opposite way Ben intended.
Take a look at what is probably the best Type I Morph in Onslaught: Dwarven Blastminer. Now compare it to its illustrious predecessor, Dwarven Miner. Let's play Spot the Differences.
At this point, you might expect me to burst your bubble and tell you why the KrOathan sideboarding plan is all hype and why it stinks. I won't. Simply put, it's one of the strongest transformational sideboard strategies seen in years.
There are two basic sideboarding options for an aggro deck. First, it can add threats and speed up; second, it can add control elements, moving towards aggro/control. The first option seems to be the most intuitive, but it's actually the most difficult to pull off.
How do you tweak"The Deck" against aggro? Oscar goes over your sideboarding options when playing Magic's most complex deck!
00:03:22 - -- Basti says: ''Go easy on me.''
00:03:22 - -- Rakso says: ''Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war''
00:04:02 - Rakso says:'keep'
00:04:05 - Basti says:'I am playing White Weenie!'
00:04:10 - Rakso says:'I accept your concession.'
Just how out of touch am I with the mainstream Magic world? It hit me when I finally found the time to click to the Worlds coverage: I couldn't relate to a single thing. And frankly, I blame the Sideboard.
The Funker is a psychotic deck that's has characteristics in common with The Deck, Zoo, and Stacker 2, but isn't really any of them. It's dangerous as all hell. And Oscar goes head-to-head with it in a lightsaber-clashin' battle to the finish!
you have to critically determine which games are won due to Shade and which are due to,"Hymn, Hymn, I win!" The variants are very close in terms of cards used, play the same strategy, and you have to base your judgment only in the games where the changes made an impact. Obviously, it'll take people a while to notice something... And even longer to decide if there's a problem.
Nantuko Shade - an autodrop into any Suicide Black deck, right? Certainly you're seeing it in most builds as a given. But that one card changes the whole nature of the deck... And Oscar tells you why.
If a player still needs Back to Basics after packing a deck full of the most efficient counters ever printed, the strongest card draw and manipulation selection in a single color, a smooth mana base, plus Morphling-wall and Powder Kegs... Well, he should go play Pokemon.
When a single card can get topdecked to win against practically all but half a dozen archetypes - never mind if it's in a good or a bad mono blue build - something has to be wrong.
I e-mailed MaRo half an hour after his column was posted, and I thanked him for a sober, realistic survey of Type I issues. It wasn't what some players wanted to read - did you really expect him to announce the venue of the next Type I Pro Tour? - but I don't think he could have done better.
Brace yourself - don't faint - but Oscar may have actually found a card made since 1997 that could be used in a Type One deck! And even more fascinatingly, it's NOT Seedtime! What could this annoying card be? Read on!
On July 15, 2002, Mark Rosewater is expected to post an article about Type I. Yes, a full article - not just another off-the-cuff, foot-in-mouth answer to a letter. Fortunately, a Wizards mole spilled the beans.
June 25th: Beyond Dominia finally dies - not with a bang, but with a whimper.
July 8th: Oscar Tan goes bang.
The usual slew of analyzing cards for the most ancient format - and some intriguing ideas that may change the slant of some classic T1 decks!
Mark Rosewater said that"an Extended deck (Miracle Gro) from the latest Extended season has gone on to have a huge influence on Type 1..." Why is he wrong and why does this deck (and Illusionary Mask) fail in the Format Of The Eldest Cards?
Anyway, after exams, work, and family tour guide time, I didn't even notice that I've been writing an article a week, nonstop, for one year now. I hereby declare the one-year anniversary mark - and my triumph in the Writer War - my day off!
Going into Judgment, again, since creatures are there mainly to tap and deal damage, we're going to be looking mainly at Rule #1. Since new creatures have to compete against everything printed since 1994, you understand it's an uphill fight - something like 85 degrees up.
Outside of mono green, a green creature has to be significantly better than the best another color has, simply because green can't contribute much to a multicolored deck aside from creatures. In other words, even if I rate Call of the Herd higher than Serendib Efreet, I may still go with the blue guy to avoid adding green.
Don't believe the hype! Everyone and his mom are telling you how Judgment's Wishes will break Type One in - but if you look closely, you'll see that what you have to give up might not be worth the wish...
Is it a dead archetype now? Oscar braves the wilds of the Zoo to find out, and throws a little misin' love in Mikey P's way.
Four games against Stompy are highlighted, and Oscar stomps the heck out of 'em with Pure Control. Hey, one game is even close!
Turn 1: Mountain, Mox Pearl, Mox Sapphire, Grim Monolith, Su-Chi. How does the Deck come back from a blazing start like that... Or can it?
You asked for it, you got it! Hot on the heels of Oscar's control on control matchup, the Tanster fights everyone's favorite cheap win generator... Innnn-troducing... In the left-hand corner... SLIGH!
So InQuest posted their latest Killer Deck... But this time, it's for Type One. And Oscar takes it real personal.
Good Lord - after sixteen articles on The Deck and how to play it and what the sideboard is and the mana base and yadda yadda, NOW he tells us it sucks? Hey, thanks, pal.
How do you swap out your duals and Moxen for other, cheaper cards? Well, you don't. Not really. But Oscar takes kind of a stab at it.
Mana bases aren't a flashy subject - but losing to mana screw isn't, either. How can you improve your draw?
Including a"wacky" deck that you might just play for fun if you had a thousand dollars in cards, and comin' up on the finish line with artifacts!
Sweet relief at last, a card from Torment may actually make its way into The Deck!
An extensive analysis of how you won't be using any of Torment in Type One. But hey, at least Oscar tells you why! (Okay, there's one. For Parfait. For the mirror match. Maybe.)
Will any of Torment's critters make it into the rarified air of Type One? Doubtful. And yet Oscar believes that one or two may be spongeworthy....
"The Deck" doesn't really use five colors. It uses a primary, a secondary, and two tertiary colors, and a couple of cards in the last color. Green just happens to be that off-color.
Last week, we talked about white as the"classic" tertiary color because it has a lot of staple silver bullets like Circle of Protection: Red. That leaves two colors, red and green.
CCGPrime's Writer War is a joke. Thing is, it's my name on that gag.
In the glorious tradition of Sol Malka humor, I'd like to devote some space to convince you why you should vote Tan... Oh yeah, and strategy. Gotta put in some strategy.
Oscar officially breaks Mowshowitz's record for"Most words devoted to a single deck!" Film at eleven. Pretty good strategy now.
When should you play Ancestral Recall? What was the second-best use for Fact or Fiction In Type One? Oscar answers all of these and rejoices in some fan mail.
"The Deck," the most difficult deck to play properly in Magic, has thirty-two core cards. What are they, and how do you play them?
Some variants of the hardest deck to play in Magic, and some thoughts on what to do now that Fact or Fiction is restricted.
The gunslingers stand on the street, their hands hovering over their guns... Then someone twitches. Watch a classic control-on-control battle in slow motion as Rakso provides commentary.
With Mirage came tutors, and The Deck was more broken than ever. And then Urza's came along, and it was broken in half.
How did the cards available in 1994 impact one of the most influential decks of all time - and how does that impact resound through to today's decks?
There's a deck in Type One, a deck that even Kai Budde is afraid to master.. And Rakso is happy to open its secrets up for you. Are you ready?
Technically, this is on Type One, and how it's possible to throw the most powerful cards created into a deck and have it not win. But the lessons learned are of interest to all.
Instants get the checkup this time - can you use Skeletal Scrying? Why are Tarnished Citadel and Petrified Field not as good as you think?
Are you getting tired of rehashes yet? Okay, nothing in Odyssey works in Type 1 according to Oscar, but at least he tells you why...
Mirari, Standstill, Holistic Wisdom... All overrated and overhyped. Trust me.
Type II gets a creature boost, but not Type I... But what did you expect, anyway?
Blinded by individual power cards, too many players end up forgetting the basics... Even Zvi. Well, sorta.
It sure is in Type 1, but why doesn't it work in Extended or IBC? A comprehensive analysis of mana and tempo.
I hung around on IRC, and caught the holiest of"Holy Pikula" moments. I actually saved the log - and though it might seem lighthearted now, I think we were still too shocked to notice.
Why didn't the pros, theoretically the best player in the world, run Wheel of Fortune in last year's Invitational decks? Rakso can't figure it out, either.
Type I Acc Blue seems to be the deck to hate of the moment, because more people are trying to hose it than play it.
Type I can accommodate your junk rares more easily than other formats... But you knew that, right?
You thought mono-green was simple? Think again.
Oscar looks at judging Apocalypse instants and sorceries for Type I play in the third part of this series.
Oscar checks the artifacts and enchantments in Apocalypse to see whether they can beat the current cards available!
In Type I, despite the much larger card pool, the rule is very simple: Is this card better than everything else?
StarCity's latest Featured Writer discusses some of the subtleties of Type One Play. Wow, aren't we high on T1 now?
