Free Pizza: Arachnid Anarchy season

I have not been enjoying this season of Snap: by nerfing clog decks to make sure people are encouraged to play move, there has been a real lack of deck diversity in my games. Shadow King has become what feels like the sole tech card to make an impact. 

When the meta becomes stale, and they don't want you to use a bunch of tech cards to get out of your problems, what do you do?

Get weird.

This started off as something I had to use for bounties- that the auto-generator made of all things!- and became my ride or die for the season. Ghost was my piece of tech but at this point I think I'd rather have Shang Chi or Shadow King. 

The Red Shift/Agatha tech is pretty good but what shocked me was how reliable the deck was. You always have to run the numbers when playing Corvus Glaive, and sometimes you just don't make it-but like I said: I hit free pizza with it. That's not nothing. 

I'm going to take the rest of the week of: it's Thanksgiving and I hope everyone enjoys the holiday. Cheers! 

Design Insights

 My friend Sean has posted a fantastic article on things he's learned about TCG game design over the past thirty years and I recommend giving it a read. 

Plus, he opens it up to questions at the end, so if there's anything you were curious about game design-either board games or card games, here's a great opportunity to ask!

I'm Trying To Get Some Rest

 And so we have a brand new deck. 

4 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Cranial Ram

3 Disciple of the Vault
3 Junk Diver
3 Myr Retriever
1 Umbral Collar Zealot
4 Broadside Bombardiers
2 Rottenmouth Viper
2 Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender

4 Weapons Manufacturing

3 Shrapnel Blast
1 Deadly Dispute
2 Demand Answers
2 Fanatical Offering

4 Glimmervoid
3 Great Furnace
3 Swamp
4 Mountain
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Drossforge Bridge

It took awhile to get here-I went back and forth on the Rottenmouth Vipers, a card being used in the Standard builds of this deck. 

The effect IS powerful but I feel like I need some help setting it up. Plus it never really comes out before turn four, so I have kept the Vipers to two. If the game gets gummed up, a cheap Viper can help break things open. 

There were a few permutations; I trimmed on Umbral Collar Zealot because it  has no other real abilities aside from the sacrifice one, and my Deadly Disputes are in another deck, so I had to work around that. Turns out, Demand Answers can be REALLY helpful when I need to kickstart my hand but don't have any artifacts to sacrifice. 

No Thanks, I Hate This

The new B&R list went up yesterday and while the thing I expected to change for Standard did (the Vivi deck got cut out at the knees) they banned Entomb and...like...

They were perfectly willing to kill the Reanimator deck, coupled with feeble 'there are still decks to cheat big creatures out' as though anyone has played Sneak Attack or Natural Order???? seriously* in YEARS. 

*I mean, I play those cards but I know they aren't ideal decks. Sneak & Show is a legitimate deck but I don't see a lot of action there and banning Entomb isn't going to open up space for that deck. 

But you know what those Reanimator decks listed have in common? AND the Sneak & Show deck they're suggesting might take up the reigns? 

Four. Brainstorm.

I also think Daze is an issue, too but once again at the end of the day, it is the Blue Xerox package (Brainstorm, Ponder, Force of Will, Daze, Fetchlands) that is the shell for the problematic deck. 

What's even dumber is this line: "For multiple years, Dimir Reanimator has rested atop the Legacy metagame,..."

Yeah, so has U/x Delver decks, and hey guess what deck they cite as a problem for Nadu? UG. 

Which is also running...say the line, Bart...The Blue Xerox package. 

If the goal is to encourage deck diversity and we already know that every Blue deck  should start with the same 16 cards (now 20 due to Tamiyo), then something is wrong. 

Either they're lying about wanting deck diversity, or they're terrible about communicating what deck diversity MEANS. 

Look. I've been playing card games a long time and I know one thing for sure: drawing cards is the most powerful thing you can do. Until WotC decides to curb the card draw effect, they will always be chasing the next "problematic" card-people are already taking about The One Ring, Mystic Forge and Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student needing to go.  

What does that mean for me? 

Fuck it, I'm going to keep brewing things and playing stuff. I'm not taking apart MY reanimator deck just because THEY have their head up their ass. (Mine is RB and it's one of the first decks I built. I kinda love it and yes, it is kinda bad.)

Paranoid Android

 Alright, so I abandoned a deck because I said I had an idea. That idea starts with this deck, which wants to do some recursion things with artifacts and is named after a Radiohead song.

2 Chromatic Sphere
1 Dispeller's Capsule
2 Executioner's Capsule
4 Pyrite Spellbomb
2 Skeleton Shard

2 Extruder
4 Disciple of the Vault
2 Nova Cleric
3 Perilous Myr
3 Gorilla Shaman
2 Junk Diver
3 Myr Retriever
3 Salvage Titan

4 Shrapnel Blast

4 Ancient Den
4 Glimmervoid
4 Great Furnace
1 Swamp
4 Mountain
4 Vault of Whispers
2 Plains

First, we have the classic old me deckbuilding problems of trying to solve every problem: Nova Cleric, Executioner's Capsule, Gorilla Shaman. Next, for a three color manabase, there just isn't enough versatility there. Glimmervoid is a neat card, but there's just too much pressure on that card alone to solve all the mana issues. 

Now, obviously I think I can do much better than before--and it might all be due to Weapons Manufacturing. 

Thick As Thieves

I think I'm going to leave it here:

4 Tifa Lockhart
4 Veteran Explorer
3 Voice of Victory
3 Elvish Reclaimer
2 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Scythecat Cub
4 Dark Confidant

4 Crop Rotation
3 Berserk
3 Snakeskin Veil

1 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Forest
1 Plains
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Temple Garden
1 Bayou
1 Godless Shrine
1 Dark Depths
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Maze of Ith
1 Karakas
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Eumidian Hatchery

4 Cabal Therapy

15 Sideboard
SB: 4 Plague Engineer
SB: 1 Voice of Victory

SB: 4 Choke

SB: 1 Snakeskin Veil
SB: 3 Fatal Push
SB: 1 Swords to Plowshares

SB: 1 Bojuka Bog

The hidden piece was Eumidian Hatchery, as it turns out. A great card to get out early and a fantastic way to provide a way to the mid-late game. 

I also went for the Dark Depths combo: that is still in the consideration state. I've pulled it off once and it wasn't enough. It might just be better to cut that and the Stage for another Hatchery and an Indatha Triome. 

By moving the removal to the sideboard I was able to focus more on the combo aspect and add in Snakeskin Veil over the (admittedly great) Scale Up to protect my creatures. 

I also got a sharp lesson in protection when in testing I had removed Sejiri Steppe and then found I couldn't use Crop Rotation to protect my Tifa in response to a removal spell. Fixed that real quick. 

I'm not sure I can take this any further-and I highly doubt the current metagame is friendly to this deck. But it can be fun against a lot of things and I enjoy it!

Late To The Party: Titanfall 2

 Wooooo am I late to this one! Really timely, right? Who doesn't want to hear about a game released in 2016?

And yet, people have been talking about Titanfall 2 for years! Sure it's about how great the multiplayer is and I do not do multiplayer really, they still talk about a game that is nearly ten years old. They still compliment the developer-who has gone on to do work in the CoD series, I believe. So when I had the opportunity to play it for free, I took it. 

The verdict; everyone was right! The campaign is really good! The game plays well, the controls are really tight, and the story is just enough to hang a fun game on. 

Titanfall 2 was good enough to make me wish I enjoyed multiplayer games like this. While it took me a bit of time because I have shit to do, dedicated players could probably crank the campaign out in a weekend or two. And I say have at! It's fun!