Nope, Still On Break

 Look, Kaldheim previews aren't really a thing yet; everyone's on vacation. 

Games are hard to come by right now-so let's just start this up in January, alright?

Happy holidays

 Sorry for the late post, but I'm taking the holidays off, hope to have things next week. 

Cheers!

Only Take One

Well, the idea started out pretty good. The execution needs work.

My first time sideboarding against an aggro deck Lauriel was piloting, I made a pretty big mistake.

I swapped out the Vengeful Dreams for Wrath of God, thinking: Hey, I want more mass removal than single shots. 

I should've taken out Elspeth Conquers Death. As it was, now ALL my removal couldn't appear until turn four or later and that was just too little, too late.

It was a bummer of a lesson, since everything else felt pretty good. But I had a 'oh, I have fucked up' moment.

Still, lesson learned.

In other card tweaks, I really want to keep Devout Witness in the deck somehow, even if it's just a sideboard card. But my current metagame doesn't allow for it; Humility is control deck enchantment of choice and Witness doesn't help me there. 

And I am not holding on to things like that anymore. Witness can come back when Humility isn't worth it.

I'm also experimenting with Otherworldly Journey in the Blessed Breath slot, to see if there's enough mass removal in the games I'm playing to justify it. We'll see. 

A Pretty Good Plan

After last week's post, I did some further digging using the most popular White deck in Legacy, Death & Taxes as my guide. 

These cards came up as possible winners:

Spirit of the Labyrinth
Deafening Silence
Sanctum Prelate

Of these Sanctum Prelate seems to fit thematically, with an enters-the-battlefield ability that can be useful in multiple stages of the game and the one that could really put a hurt on Blue decks wanting to cast anything for one mana. 

Along those lines, Leonin Arbiter could be helpful, too since I don't have many search effects in my deck, similarly Hushwing Gryff could be good, turning off a lot of very good creatures but not many of mine.

I've currently adjusted my sideboard to read:

4 Tormod's Crypt

2 Wrath of God

3 each of Sanctum Prelate, Spirit of the Labyrinth, and Deafening Silence

We'll see how that takes.

Trve Kvlt

The marketing for Kaldheim has started and they decided to use both Nordic mythology and heavy metal as an inspiration.

Now, I'm not an expert in Nordic myth-I know what most people probably know, maybe a little more-and while I consider my knowledge of heavy metal to be reasonably good, it isn't as deep as someone who makes their living at BangerTV. 

But of course the "hot takes" are already out there about how this or that isn't 'metal' or how using censored swear words isn't 'hardcore' or whateversuch nonsense. 

Which is what it is. It's nonsense. This seems fun. The attitude seems fun. Corporate entities aren't supposed to tell their audience how fucking great something is because that alienates a portion of the audience. Ignoring this basic fact of marketing for whatever these people have in mind as 'real metal' is just a form of gatekeeping, saying that something we like isn't something YOU should get to be a part of. 

I hope this set has some fun with metal tropes as much as it plays with Nordic myth! Heavy metal is inherently silly and fans, of all people, should not take it too seriously.

On a more serious note; anyone with any kind of take on how Black or basically any non-white people don't belong in their Viking influenced Magic set can get the hell outta here. I have no time at all for that racism. 

Rough Around The Edges

I had the sophomore album blues with this deck. Great ideas working out! Getting whatever card I needed when I needed it! Never mana flood or screw! Let's focus this deck for even more consistency in round two!

Mmm...not so much. Even though I was able to put up a fight against an aggro deck, it was clear that removal was very important in those matchups-both spot and mass removal but paths to winning were there. So I still had some mojo. No, it wasn't the aggro decks that knocked me off.

It was the countermagic deck, of course, that took me off the high. 

Nothing against countermagic, but the truth is that a mono-W reanimator themed build doesn't have the tools to respond to that axis of play. 

That's a challenge, because versus anything that isn't about countermagic, this deck is a lot of fun. So what do I do? 

Sideboard options are a place to start; Tormod's Crypt is taking space because I don't want to annex my own graveyard, and that's what most of White's options do. The Crypt needs to be there, however, to take away all the graveyard shenanigans people do these days.

Fighting counterspells with countermagic of my own might be a possibility: Mana Tithe, Rebuff the Wicked and Lapse of Certainty are all...there. They aren't great options, but they are options. 

I may have to look at other mono White decks to see what they're using. As luck would have it, a mono White lifegain deck got some play at Coolstuffinc and cards like Daxos, Blessed by Sun or Skyclave Apparition could be good utility cards. But we shall see.

Maybe Eat Some Mushrooms

So I threw in the kitchen sink. Sun Titan, Ajani Adversary of Tyrants, Elspeth Conquers Death, God-Eternal Oketra, Emeria Shepherd, Elesh Norn, Linvala the Preserver.  To increase my discard options I added Vengeful Dreams and Seasoned Hallowblade. Just add in All The Things.

And then a funny thing happened.

The interaction between Emeria Shepherd and Elspeth Conquers Death became exploitable. Vengeful Dreams did a lot of work, Elesh Norn was a house, Ajani made the small creatures problem creatures. 

What the heck? What in the heck? 

Is this actually good?

Well. Let's temper some expectations. My very first matchup was against a mill deck. When my opponent's wants to help me do what I want to do, that's definitely a leg up for me. On the one hand, I got to see what this deck would do well and what conditions were required. Plus, I won, and that always is encouraging. On the other hand, there was a realization that when not against a milling deck, I needed to play this in a more cautious manner. Grinding the game out was relevant. 

But it's working? I don't know if I should have a Dr. Frankenstein reaction or a happy one. 

Nice Try, WotC

 You almost got me with this one. 

Almost.

Maybe.

Kids Came From Miles Around

Initial research:

First, I did a search for things White might have that fit the theme. Unfortunately for me, there were more than a few cards that wanted to focus on artifacts or enchantments but there are some cool (if expensive) cards that did want to play into Chillout Tent's strategy. 

Second, I ran the deck through the Deckstats analysis to see what my curve looked like. Mostly as one might expect for a reanimation deck; lots of low end stuff, then a pretty big gap, and then a bunch of 5+ mana stuff.

The real challenge started to present itself at this point, when I started looking for ways to make this deck more re-animatory. 

So, how to get creatures in my graveyard? White isn't known for milling or card draw strategies. I just have to discard expensive creatures into my graveyard and there are not many discard outlets in White, certainly not many good ones. 

The other quality I'm running up against is that White's reanimation suite tilts heavily towards returning small permanents: Sun Titan is probably the best example of what I'm talking about. It's worth reconsidering how this deck functions, retooling it to be a more aggressive deck with an attrition win for the late game. 

This would orient me towards cards like Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants but what I'm stymied by at this point is what 1, 2, and 3 drops are worth it? What am I bringing back over and over that my opponents are wishing I wouldn't?

I don't hate the idea, I just don't know where it ends. Heck, I don't even know where it starts. 

I think I'm in trouble. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 Trying to take the day to play a bunch of games, make good food and chill out. 

I hope you all have a safe, fun day. 

Chillout Tent

I build this deck many years ago with the weird notion of: what if we tried to use White for reanimate strategies? Named for the Hold Steady song mostly because I like the song. 

3 Oyobi, Who Split the Heavens
1 Patron of the Kitsune
3 Lantern Kami
1 Yosei, the Morning Star
3 Devout Witness
4 Patrol Hound
1 Mageta the Lion
3 Ghost-Lit Redeemer
2 Eternal Dragon
1 Noble Templar
3 Karmic Guide

3 Blessed Breath
3 Otherworldly Journey
2 Miraculous Recovery

1 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
22 Plains

1 Wrath of God
1 Kirtar's Wrath
2 Resurrection

It's a little weird, I know: at the time I built the deck there wasn't much in the color to support a typical reanimation take and I can't say that I know that's changed. But the newest card in this deck is probably Emeria, the Sky Ruin so there's a good chance that something has changed in the past 11 years. Some of those changes are undoubtedly creatures, but others might include a better curve, ways to get creatures into the graveyard, or...maybe this is a flameout deck and needs to be retired. 

The subtheme of trying to get Oyobi, Who Split the Heavens online is probably where this deck is taking its worst turn. Reanimator strategies rely on putting one game changing creature into play and winning; Oyobi wants to show up, get a few drinks, maybe you get to play some more spells?  

There's definitely a more streamlined, focused deck to be built, one that isn't constrained by Spirits and Arcane spells, so that's where I'm going to head.

Tournament of Legends!

 From the same people who brought you the Magic Bracket, for fans to vote on the best Magic card of all time, we have a new bracket: the best Legend printed! 

You'll have to register, in order to help keep the voting on the level, but you don't need to submit an email or anything; just username/password and you're set!

Into The Amplifier

This one is locked in. After solid performances against an aggressive B/W deck and a more resilient Zombie deck piloted by Fuz, I knew Rollin was on the right path.

A few more games with Lauriel and I'm confident that this deck has some game. I could put it into a perpetual cycle of refinement but I like where it's at. 

The sideboard is meant to reflect things I have to face; token decks, enchantment/artifact heavy decks, along with Duress for combo and Leyline of the Void for graveyard strategies. 

Disenchant is the slot most up for change against a Delver heavy field, but I've faced multiple decks with cards that simply break this deck along Humility lines and it's only a matter of time before someone tries to use Leyline of the Void on me, so I'm not sure there's a better choice. 

Nonetheless, I really like where this ended up. 

3 Soul Warden
3 Cabal Archon
1 Rotlung Reanimator
4 Cleric of Life's Bond
2 Orah, Skyclave Hierophant
3 Suture Priest
3 Drana's Emissary
2 Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose
3 Archfiend's Vessel

4 Grave Pact

6 Plains
1 Starlit Sanctum
3 Salt Flats
6 Swamp
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Brightclimb/Grimclimb Pathway

4 Living Death
4 Winds of Abandon

Sideboard

3 Orzhov Pontiff
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Disenchant
4 Duress

Late To The Party: Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order

I finished Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order recently and...it has issues.

First, the cut scenes are ugly. Humans have faces that are smoothed out like an Instagram filter put over them, and it skeeves me out.

Next; this game doesn't know what it wants to be, and thus it conveys its information poorly. Is it a Dark Souls clone, where the respawning enemies teach you combat better? Is it a God of War clone, where you have to string combat moves together to create lethal combos? Is this a Prince of Persia clone where exceptional timing skills come into play to thrillingly traverse dangerous environments?

This game doesn't know. It just wants to give you doses of Star Wars so you can feel that jolt.

The combat is incredibly pedantic. I didn't even know my abilities gave me extra moves until well over 2/3rds into the game and even then: I had virtually no use for them. The game didn't want to encourage me to learn the new thing. So combos don't matter and spamming the attack button is boring. Parry wasn't a well explained concept either, since you can just permanently hold a button to block, what encourages me to try to time my blocks out?

So there were difficulty spikes that I just hated because I didn't know I had abilities that might help me. Which means the learning curve and improved combat doesn't matter.

Worse, controls were muddy, so I would find myself on slides without precise control and falling to my death just because, or searching for the out to a room with little direction, or in puzzle rooms without clues, or worse, knowing the solution and being frustrated that the solution wasn't working.

So: not Dark Souls, not God of War, and not Prince of Persia. What is the primary gameplay loop this game can confidently rest it's code on? I can't tell you, and I don't think Jedi can either. 

On top of that, the UI is working against me. I have three bars I have to pay attention to: life, blocking stamina, and force.

The life bar is in the lower left. The other two are in the middle bottom. I have to look away from one critical resource to another in order to see what's happening.

So the integration of these playstyles don't mesh well and the game doesn't build the bridges between them. I don't know how this game got the positive press it did, but it does not execute well and I finished it more out of pandemic frustration than the thrill of seeing it play out.

The Mix Might Glow

Even though Rollin' has been working out well, there is still a point where I feel I have to ask: what if I'm just wrong? 

Edgewalker is a great card. Free or severely reduced costs are a great thing. 

But is it right for this deck?

Similarly, Order of Whiteclay is crowding the three mana slot, but with now six effects that bring creatures back, (I'm sticking with Orah) maybe something else should come to play.

Time to try out the Archfiend's Vessel! And while I'm going a little lower to the ground I can up the Cleric of Life's Bond to four, and maybe have a stronger threat count to deal with. 

The results have been very encouraging. Vessel's lifelink ability isn't irrelevant, and once it's in my graveyard, any reanimation effect gives me a 5/5 flyer. That's something people don't like to see. The Cleric can grow pretty big early, and still be a reasonable threat in the midgame. 

The other bonus of Archfiend's Vessel is that as a lifelinker, the card helps extend the game to the point where I can draw enough resources to overcome my opponent. Without card draw, I have to stack the odds in my favor to get a Winds of Abandon, Grave Pact, or Living Death and one way I can do that is to gain enough life to give me time.

It's been working so far, and I'm pretty happy about it!

Where I am still torn is on the Vito/Orah split, so I'm going to be keeping an eye on that in future games. 

 

 

Distracted Days

 There's Commander Legends stuff (so far, I'm a fan), I have some more games with Rollin' under my belt with a tweaked configuration that seems to be for the better, and a vote today that is so important, it will define the country-and maybe more-for a long time.

So I don't have anything prepared today. I just don't. 

Remember your 2020 rules:

Be nice.

Wear a mask.

Film the cops.

Wash your hands.

Tip well.

Vote.

Stay safe everyone. We'll resume on Thursday. 

The work goes on.

Go Vote

No game content today, beyond life's big game. But here: 10 reasons to vote right now. 

Y'all, I'm tired. Lots of us are. And while I've no intention to quit, I would like to be less tired. 

Go. Vote. Please. 

Slip It Up

"It dies to Humility, though," Matt told me a couple weeks ago.

"I'm not going to give up on a deck because of one card out of 20,000, man," I replied. (I was also aware that Overwhelming Splendor did this, but my statement still held).

Well. Jason was about to teach me a lesson. Both in the number of cards that blanks my deck, and the importance of having a sideboard.

Of the three decks Jason decided at random to throw against me one had Humility. That was a loss that I expected, and though I am running Disenchants in the sideboard, it was good practice to play without them, looking at mulligans, play paths, etc. 

The second deck was a creature focused one using the Exalted mechanic which I pulled wins out of, essentially through the attrition gameplan. 

But the third deck had Torpor Orb. I love that card. But also, that card is bad for me when staring down a Phyrexian Dreadnought.

So there is a third card that makes Rollin have a fit. Does this mean I should deviate from my deck? No, I'm definitely sure of that. In both of the games that I lost, a Disenchant would have likely turned the game in my favor. 

Another card that might've changed things? Duress. Which I am not running, because I thought that doubling down on graveyard hate would be better, adding Consecrate/Consume in my sideboard. However, Duress would be good both in the 'weird' matchups as well as any combo matches, trying to whittle at their resources. 

I'm pleased to say that Winds of Abandon has been solid, and the addition of Brightclimb Pathway was outstanding. The new Zendikar lands are, in my opinion, must-haves. 

You Gotta Go

 

I got some more games in with Fuz, using the same build. His deck used creatures with Undying and cool effects like Pongify in order to both get cheap damage in early but also go wide. Plus, it doubles as removal in case I get out creatures that are just too good.

These games taught me about the double edged sword that is Grave Pact. If I have creatures out, that means my opponent has to think much harder about the use of their removal. 

If I don't, then I spent a turn doing nothing. And I know this because it happened. That didn't feel good, even though I was able to make my way back into the game, but I also think that it's something I have to accept. My mana curve is low enough, and I have enough creatures, that this should be an exception rather than the rule. More often than not, my issue was that I couldn't find a Grave Pact! 

Fortunately, Grave Pact isn't key to Rollin' winning the game; Living Death is as far more important card. Even Living Death isn't critical but Rollin' does have a far better game when I draw that card than when I don't. 

Once more, I found myself playing a grindy game, and was able to stall long enough to make a heck of a comeback in game 3, with a Grave Pact on the board after a Living Death making combat problematic. 

So far, so good. 

The Hot Mind On

Well! This has gone way better than planned. 

Which is always pretty nice. 

I got some games in against a G/B counters deck and a Goblins build, as well as an old school Pickles deck (the Pickles deck wants to lock you out of untap steps). 

All of those matches went well-the only one I lost was against the Goblins build which was a great matchup. Living Death has problems with Sling-Gang Lieutenant. 

Despite that, the match was split 1-2 and that last game I came fairly close to pulling it off, but all my lifegain triggers went on the stack before my opponent's and that was that. 

It's a new deck so I'm sure that my use of Orah, Skyclave Hierophant was suboptimal, though it may be that the card is not what the deck can use. Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, however, was a rockstar. It wasn't quite a Hexdrinker rule situation, but Vito put a real hurt on. 

A card that I wasn't surprised about though was Drana's Emissary. Efficient and with a Vito in play is absolutely scary for opponents. 

Which means I'm off to a good start!

Tight Tension On

 I ran this deck through the Deckstats algo, and while I haven't felt that I was squeezed on black mana, it seems clear that I don't have enough black mana. So that'll be a tweak.

Fortunately for me, there's a whole new suite of really awesome lands that should take care of this, so I'm adding in four Brightclimb/Grimclimb Pathway. 

In addition, as fortune would have it, PowrDragn recently did a video of W/B Clerics. Sure, it's Standard and is tilted more aggressive, but there's still something to ponder here. Archfiend's Vessel and Speaker of the Heavens are cheap Clerics that could help give me time. Archfiend's Vessel plays well with Living Death, too.

However, for now there's been an overhaul of nearly 1/3rd of the deck:

-2 Plains
-2 Swamp
-1 Auriok Champion
-1 Ghost Council of Orzhova
-2 Orzhov Pontiff
-2 Headhunter
-1 Doubtless One
-4 Kor Sanctifiers
-3 Vile Deacon
-2 Skulltap

Replacing those cards we have:

4 Brightclimb/Grimclimb Pathway
4 Winds of Abandon
3 Cleric of Life's Bond
3 Suture Priest
2 Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose
2 Orah, Skyclave Hierophant
3 Drana's Emissary

There's a great deal of chip damage here, changing this deck's path to victory to a Living Death, you lose life, vs Living Death, now I attack plan. Along with the addition of Winds of Abandon to decrease my opponent's ability to make any gains off of a Living Death, in case the attack plan becomes necessary.

Cleric of Life's Bond, in addition to being cheaper than Vile Deacon, can have a more immediate impact on the board, even if it can't attack. Vito contributes to the chip damage and Orah might just be the Glory of Cool Things. But I want to give it a go and if doesn't work out, then slots open up for Archfiend's Vessel. 

Rollin

Named after the Soul Coughing song, this was my swing at a Cleric deck.

3 Soul Warden
1 Auriok Champion
1 Ghost Council of Orzhova
2 Orzhov Pontiff
3 Cabal Archon
3 Vile Deacon
2 Headhunter
1 Rotlung Reanimator
1 Doubtless One
2 Edgewalker
3 Order of Whiteclay
4 Kor Sanctifiers

4 Grave Pact

8 Plains
1 Starlit Sanctum
3 Salt Flats
8 Swamp
4 Caves of Koilos

2 Skulltap
4 Living Death

But really, it's a Living Death deck, right? You could probably stick a lot of tribal creatures in here and be happy. The Grave Pact is there to ensure that when I do cast Living Death, my opponent doesn't come out ahead. 

Still, it could be better; there's a lot of one-offs, there are likely mana issues, Vile Deacon is really expensive and I don't have any way to protect it, Skulltap can now be replaced with Village Rites, that sort of thing.

There's also the clear desire for this deck to have more copies of Rotlung Reanimator which butts up against my desire to not pay $10 for a single card. However, there are a lot more 'died' effects than there used to be, and new clerics from Zendikar Rising, so this is a prime time to do an upgrade!

Superion

I really want to like this. It's a sliver deck, who doesn't like sliver decks!?

3 Boomerang
3 Dismantling Blow
4 Accumulated Knowledge

3 Essence Sliver
3 Ward Sliver
3 Synapse Sliver
1 Shifting Sliver
4 Sinew Sliver
2 Crystalline Sliver
3 Talon Sliver
3 Winged Sliver
3 Opaline Sliver
1 Pulmonic Sliver

10 Island
10 Plains
4 Hallowed Fountain

And yet. Even when I tweaked the deck to this:

-3 Synapse Sliver
-1 Pulmonic Sliver
-1 Shifting Sliver
-3 Dismantling Blow

+2 Diffusion Sliver
+2 Winds of Abandon
+2 Jace, Architect of Thought
+2 Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants

I still wasn't having those moments when the sliver deck just clicks and 'bam' that's it, game is done. 

I will say Jace was better than I had thought and deserves a slot in a deck somewhere, but Ajani was not a great fit-Crystalline Sliver does not play nice with Ajani's +1, but Crystalline Sliver is one of the most important cards for the deck. 

However, the real problem is that this deck needs green. Muscle Sliver and Predatory Sliver make this tribe crushing, giving it that momentum to close games out. Otherwise what this deck presents are low-level threats on a loooong timeline. That gives opponents too much time to get their gameplan into motion. 

So as much as I hate to do it, I think this one becomes part of The Retired series.  

The Wrapup

The last two slots I opened up went to Soulblade Djinn. As a threat unto itself, I can use cheap spells to pump my team for offense or defense, and so I figure: maybe this card meets the Hexdrinker rule.

The games I played suggest that it does indeed! The Eliminator isn't perfect but I did find myself able to mount a solid control game. The sideboard is in need of some reset buttons, just to hold off against some ramp decks but aside from that, I like where this one is set. 

Here you go:

4 Lighthouse Chronologist
2 Psychosis Crawler
4 Faerie Vandal
1 Sower of Temptation
3 Hypnotic Sprite // Mesmeric Glare
2 Soulblade Djinn

3 Mana Leak
3 Opt
3 Polymorphist's Jest
3 Obsessive Search
3 Archmage's Charm

21 Island
2 Mystic Sanctuary

3 Jace, Cunning Castaway
3 Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer

Disappointment

So, if you're not up to speed on why Magic players are so unhappy, here's a pretty solid article on the subject. 

And this reaction is one I particularly like. Just because I can feel that take, right? Frustration and disappointment.

This game has leaned in hard on a pay-to-win model, with product that increasingly feels...bland. 

Powerful, sure. But boring. And that power is forcing ideas out of the sphere of playability. Why try something different if Uro, and Oko, (remember Oko? That card still sucks.) and Omnath run over everything, so your options are beat that deck, or play that deck. 

When essential game pieces, such as lands, cost over $10, that again, puts a barrier to entry for Magic. Want to do a cool thing? That'll be $120+ to start. That's your base. 

When the market is so flooded with product that consumers have difficulty telling what a Buy-a-Box promo is vs a Box Topper, there are multiple Commander decks released at different times, premium releases every month or more, and at least two different kinds of booster packs to purchase, you get a bewildered consumer base.

Look at how many friggin' product types there are for Zendikar Rising! That is a nearly 2,000 word essay just to explain the different kind of product available. At that rate, we've hit videogame pre-order levels of nonsense. 

While I do believe that 'there is no perfect sauce, there are only perfect sauces', there is a point where the number of options without true variance becomes overwhelming.      

We just want to play Magic in the formats available (deep breath): Draft, Sealed, Standard, Modern, Historic, Pioneer, Brawl, Commander, Vintage, Legacy, Oathbreaker, and casual kitchen-table Magic.

Did I miss anything? Spoiler: I did. The game is that expansive. And having that many formats is different than having that many products, because the products slot into almost all of those formats. I can ignore a format I don't find interesting, I don't get to ignore a product.

But increasingly, those formats feel as if they are being kept behind gates: gates of product, gates of complexity, and now, with the release of the Walking Dead Secret Lair, it is clear that gates of money are involved, too. Because I'm in agreement with The Professor's and PwrDragn's take (and other's); putting black boarder, unique cards into a Secret Lair is a bad thing, one that could have been easily avoided. 

Which is...just sad. It sucks away my desire to play Magic. There's nothing to try, there's just the best deck vs the deck that might beat the best deck, and the styles all feel very much the same. What's the point of playing if the most important thing required to do so is to have enough money to get the best thing? 

There's a feeling in the community that WotC is trying to shoehorn all formats of Magic into something Commander players love...I can't help but feel that they've got a point. 

It's not a good feeling, either. 

Late To The Party: Sekiro-Shadows Die Twice

 I finally quit playing Sekiro. 

I hate that. I do. I really feel like I shouldn't give up on things just because they are hard. And while I'm on the subject, thanks to YouTuber Fightin' Cowboy for their walkthrough of the game. I would not have made it as far or eked what fun I did out of that game, without your help. 

I got to the second Corrupted Monk battle, though and had had enough. Which is insanely far into a game for me to quit. That encounter forced me to admit something to myself, though. 

Sekiro wasn't fun. It just wasn't. The primary gameplay loop of sneaking around and eliminating mooks was enjoyable but every. single. boss battle. was a hard stop on that loop. I was now being asked to do something that required precise timing and I could never get it down. Ever. 

I had to look at multiple different strategies to get through every boss fight. Sometimes Cowboy's advice was good, but sometimes it just didn't help because honestly, he's just better at the game than I am. 

But that was the problem: I never got better. I had max health and max attack values and even with that buffer, I still couldn't make any headway on bosses. I always felt like I was doing what the game asked, and being punished anyway. I couldn't dodge or parry well enough. Every boss fight, I was looking for ways to cheese it out. I could never take them on the way the game had been teaching me to take every other enemy on. 

Which is the problem. 

So, I quit. No more sunk costs. 

One might ask; why did I persist for so long? Which is a reasonable question. The answer is: Bloodborne. That game is from the same company and is also incredibly difficult, but I finished it. I got the hang of how it played and I did well! Did it take awhile? Absolutely. But I did it, that game clicked. 

From that experience, I assumed that Sekiro would have a steep learning curve but I would, eventually, get the hang of it. 

I didn't, and now I feel bad because I quit and because I sunk a bunch of time into something that wasn't rewarding. 

Next up: Resident Evil 3. 

Eliminated

 I ended up going in a slightly different direction, when I discovered that Scion of Oona was going for nearly $10 a pop. I don't know that I want to spend $40 on a deck that is good but definitely mid-tier. 

What I do have, though, is a bunch of copies of Archmage's Charm. It counters, it draws, and in rare instances it can even steal a permanent so...why not?

This meant leaning into a more controlling element of play. 

So I did that; we've got a couple Mystic Sanctuary to reuse my spells, and now it's a matter of seeing how leaning into the control elements work.

The first run is pretty positive: up against Fuz's zombie deck, a deck that uses a lot of recursion to make control elements mostly worthless, I was able to put a 2-1 win. 

In the next set  of games vs Dinosaurs, I couldn't quite come up with as strong a showing.

Fuz suggested Dovin, Hand of Control over Kasmina and I had to admit, Kasmina was underperforming in this deck. Her abilities weren't playing into what I wanted to do at four mana.

So it looks like a little more research needs to be done to fill the last two slots.

Technical Difficulties

 The TL:DR is; I have to update my operating system and so I didn't get a post up yesterday. Enjoy this neat roundtable discussion on Legacy at MTGgoldfish!

Actual Blues

Not being able to play last week, coupled with the wildfires in Oregon making it a Very Bad Idea to go outside has sucked the wind out of me. 

I haven't been able to motivate myself to arrange for games with friends and I still can't quite work up the gumption to ask strangers to play. It feels bad, I'll tell you. In a year where things have felt pretty bad, more often than not, this has been a hard week. 

So here's a solid article evaluating the new double-faced lands, because I think those cards are going to have a massive impact on Magic. Cheers.

Zendikar Rising Overview

Zendikar Rising: fully spoiled. Release notes, if you want more details on cards. 

So let's talk 'bout it!

General mechanical stuff
Party; the limited mechanic for the set. Because if you have four creatures out in a constructed environment, you're likely already winning and don't need the bonus of the party mechanic. In limited though, the party bonuses are good ways to break stalemates.

So I think it's a novel way to encourage the themes of Zendikar and I dig it. Plus, I'm glad to see an emphasis on the class feature of cards, which offers a whole different field of places to play in; I'd like to see Warrior decks instead of Elves, for example. It feels like an opportunity that I hope WotC follows up on. That each class has its own theme suggests that they might build these things up, and I'm all for it.

Landfall: we know this, we love it. I don't think there was an attempt to do something different but that's OK. 

Kicker: see Landfall. Although I will say that they've taken the lessons from Amonkhet block and started to add cards that play off other cards that use kicker, like Vine Gecko. Another good choice.

Double faced cards: Modal version.
So, these I really like! Which may come as a surprise to long time readers of the blog (all 2 of you) who may recall that I have never liked the double faced cards for a lot of reasons, and the drawback of having to use a proxy card, well that's still there.

However, giving players the option to pick a side and then use only that side gives players real agency over those cards, in addition to making them less fiddly overall. The option to have spells or colors, depending on the card is incredibly important, because it helps solve one of the biggest issues of Magic: Mana flood and color screw, so I give WotC credit for clever design. This is how I hope DFCs are done in the future. Which they probably will be...until Innistrad: Werewolves (ugh).

Still, when you do good, we use the green pen. This is good.

Individual card stuff!

White
Angel of Destiny is a weird card. I'm always glad to see weird cards. I'm sure someone will attempt to break it as soon as they can but if that means weird decks? Good. 

Similarly, Farsight Adept is an interesting place for White card draw to go, and it's a very efficient creature. I do like where cards like Skyclave Apparition and Legion Angel are going. White's been underpowered for a bit, so cards like this make me hopeful that the color is going in a good direction.

Blue
Charix, the Raging Isle is a spicy meatball. Is it anything but a Commander beatstick? I don't know. 

Confounding Conundrum feels like a weird choice for this set; should the anti-lands card be in the 'lands matter' set? Feels like that card should've been in Core 2021, or maybe in the next set. 

Deliberate is going to be one of my new favorite cards. Sure, it's basically an Anticipate but now decks can have Anticipates 4-8!

Skyclave Squid is an odd thing-could it be part of an aggressive strategy? Good on turns 3-5 and then a chump blocker while fliers get the job done? And I wonder if Thieving Skydiver could make waves in Vintage: getting a 2/1 flier and stealing a mana rock for 3 mana is pretty sweet!

Black
Lithoform Blight is a take in Black I would not have expected to see. 

I do want to talk about Mind Carver for a moment, because both Blue and Black have cards that care about how many cards are in a graveyard. That's strange to see in a set that doesn't care about these things. Could these be hints for a future set? They haven't done a graveyard focused set in a bit-Theros: Beyond Death really isn't about the graveyard. Escape cards want to eliminate cards from the graveyard and don't care about the space aside from that. 

But, Kaldheim might care about the graveyard and there is no shortage of Norse and viking myths that care about the afterlife. Just speculating. 

Nullpriest of Oblivion is what I would call one of the ideal kicker cards: it's good early, but in the midgame should you hold it, or wait until you can use the kicker? Questions like that make for good gameplay. 

Taborax, Hope's Demise caught my eye because I have a cleric deck I want to freshen up-if I can. 

Red
OK, let's just admit that Expedition Champion has the dumbest sword this side of Final Fantasy 7.

Cleansing Wildfire, though: THAT is a card I am excited about. I really want WotC to push basic lands in this respect. 

Nahiri's Lithoforming is probably destined to be a Commander staple and Roiling Vortex a sideboard card but good cards to have. But...the color seems relatively straightforward, this set. 

Green
Why is Ashaya, Soul of the Wild so bad? It's a big, dumb creature that doesn't do anything and is at Mythic, for pete's sake. Not that I don't understand why it's a Mythic rare-it's complex so they don't want that kind of complexity screwing with new players. 

But it's so bad. 

Scute Swarm is a weird beast too. I am not convinced by it's ability, but I did read in a thread that it plays nice with the Mutate mechanic from Ikoria. So maybe I'm wrong.

Scale the Heights, though; that is as pretty dang good card. Three mana buys a LOT with that one and I figure it'll be a staple for Green decks. 

Multicolored
This is where I'm seeing a lot of support for the draft themes: B/G +1 counters, RW warriors, UB rogues, that sort of thing. Nothing terrible, nothing to get excited about...except why is Nissa black now? I wonder if the story explains that well. It's not as if we needed a BG Planeswalker; Vraska fits the bill pretty well and Garruk held that torch for awhile, too.

Artifacts & Lands
This trick with having equipment that attaches like Auras is...I get it. But I don't like it, because it eats away at what makes Auras interesting/good. However, gameplay matters more so I won't make a big thing.

Forsaken Monument does something nice; calls back in a neat way to Battle for Zendikar's themes. That gets a thumbs up, for sure.

The lands are fine: the double-faced ones are, I think, great and the ability to choose to either ramp or cast a spell is another very good gameplay tension. I think this is going to have big implications for how we evaluate manabases and I'm excited for it!

176

That's the current air quality number in Portland. It's up a good 40 points since this morning. 300 is life threatening. 

I was supposed to meet up with a buddy today, play my first paper games of Magic in 6 months. I'd taken today off so we could meet up somewhere with almost nobody inside, play while there were no crowds, leave before people showed up. Masks on, no touching cards, all the smart, sane stuff one can do.

Instead, the wildfires in Clackamas County have made it dangerous enough outside that people shouldn't leave if they don't have to. My roommate is feeling nauseous and has a headache. 

The pandemic has screwed up my ability to meet up with people, and climate change is fucking with our ability to breathe.

If politics is a game, are you playing it?

Fandom

 Looks like the first fan-made Transformers content has come up. Looks pretty neat!

The Top End

 I ended up adding both Faerie Formation and Psychosis Crawler to the deck to see if either one of them was clearly superior. 

But it turns out both of them fit the Hexdrinker rule* and neither one of them seemed to out Hexdrinker the other: my opponents didn't want me to have either card. 

*(If you're new, the Hexdrinker rule says that if I'm testing a card and when I play it, my opponents go 'oh no', then I should 100% keep that card).

I also retooled the low end threats to have a faeries bent. So now Faerie Vandal and Scion of Oona join Hypnotic Sprite. 

The Faerie Vandal could become a legit threat over time and since this deck does move to get to midgame, I'm hoping it'll pay off, but the initial tests haven't given me enough data. I'm going to keep running them for now, because I think the opportunity for them to get beefy relatively quickly is there and every threat needs an answer.

There was a game where my opponent played 5 board sweepers. She was running 7 total. There's not much I can do there. But most decks don't go that far, hell, most decks don't even run Wrath effects anymore. So I'm still feeling good about the direction I'm going in. 

Tuesday Hype

 So, the big announcements for 2021's sets are out! 

Short hot takes by me (We'll talk about Zendikar Rising when there's more to talk about):

VIKING WORLD! (I feel like it has to be in all caps due to vikings).

People have been asking for this for years so I'm not terribly surprised. As a result, I'm not excited for Kaldheim; we all knew it was coming eventually. Am I unhappy about it? Heck no! But with nothing more to go on than a name, a vague notion of setting and a set symbol, how pumped up can I get about something that I knew was going to happen?

(Also, UGH, the 'I'm not racist but no Black people in my fantasy viking set' comments are already out there. 

Fuck those people. Fuck them into the sun.)

Strixhaven: or Harry Potter made a ton of money and we'd like in on that, please.

Again, nothing wrong with this and frankly, the setting of this set suggests a more lighthearted direction for art, names, etc. A bit like Battlebond was-perhaps not quite a playful but still stepping out of the typical Magic themes. I can dig it, but unfortunately it seems like these sets are always a bit underrated. 

D&D??

Wow, alright. I suppose I should have known this was going to be a thing, but I'm genuinely surprised they pulled the trigger on this crossover. I think I'm happier for the people who wanted this and all the cool Easter Eggs they're going to get than I am that this is a thing. 

Not that I think Forgotten Realms is going to be bad; this is a very cool chance for Magic to offer some genuinely different takes on properties that a community knows. A little like changing a book into a movie means that some interpretation must be done. Lots of opportunities for lore here, which makes this a fantastic on-ramp for new players, many of whom get into Magic because of that. 

Innistrad The Innistradening II: we mean it. 

Pass. Boring. Don't care. The last take on Innistrad delved into cosmic horror, a unique and interesting turn after the fantastic gothic style of the original. 

This sounds like Underworld.

Look, it's a hot take, ok? 

Modern Horizons 2: The Gloves Are Off.

They're reprinting fetchlands. It practically doesn't matter what else is going on, we're getting a legit fetchland reprint. That's a huge deal for the community. I just hope they don't price the boosters out of the range of a kid who wants to play. 

I personally liked Modern Horizons-yes there were some obvious problems but overall I thought it was super cool. Two bad cards do not ruin a set. So I have high hopes for this one; we always get interesting cards when WotC decides to amp things up. 

Time Spiral...Remastered? 

I got nothin' here. This seems weird and confusing and I don't know why they're doing it.

It doesn't seem bad. It seems unnecessary. However, they are printing it as a paper set so that is maybe good? At least it seems like an way for new players to get older cards.

Maybe. The original Time Spiral was a bit messy; one can hope that the remaster cleans things up a bit. 

But again: hot take.

And that's what I've got for ya! Spicy, right?

OK, really just mild but it's only Tuesday. 

Topping Out

 

I'm on the right track, at least. 

That's my current takeaway from the recent batch of games, some three player matches and a few duels. The Eliminator has some resilience, which is very nice to see.

What it doesn't seem to have is that late game finishing quality and that's a shame, because The Eliminator wants to leverage those planeswalkers into the late game. My opponents agreed that Curator of Mysteries fit the deck, it just wasn't scary. 

Psychosis Crawler has been coming up for me: I've been able to make Mu Yanling's emblem happen more than once, which suggests that the Crawler could be the late game nasty I've been hoping for.

Another option has been to replace the creatures with a more faerie oriented suite, and consider Faerie Formation as a top end threat. 

Both are expensive, but both can really push an endgame strategy. The Formation is a lot more mana intensive, that's true but if opponents don't have an answer for it and I untap, that's likely game over. 

A little more testing, I suppose.

Backwards to forwards-and a Name!

I recently finished Turn The Ship Around by L. David Marquet: It's a book about leadership and how to improve organizations. 

One chapter talks about 'Starting at the end'. Essentially: You find out what your goal is, then you work your way from there to lay out the path. 

I find I have this issue with a lot of decks I build: I find a good card but I don't have a clear idea of how to get it to win. Even though I know what my end goal is (in most cases, reducing an opponent's life total to zero) I don't articulate it very well.

But thinking about that might help when I come across the problems I had last week, when I was looking for cards to fit in the high and low ends. 

Before I had that realization though, I just went looking for cards that would do one of two things: First, give me more time. Planeswalkers need time to do what they're going to do. 

Second, cards that would be useful off of a discard, since Jace activations meant discarding cards.

Here's what I came up with: 

Obsessive Search for Brainstorm. 

Lighthouse Chronologist for Lord of the Unreal.

Curator of Mysteries for Tezzeret.

I also came up with a name: The Eliminator, taken from the song by Maserati. 

However, let me circle back; why did I need the cards that I need?

Because the end goal of The Eliminator is to use the abilities of the planeswalkers to create an overwhelming advantage of cards and creatures. 

Obsessive Search draws a card and can be used for it's Madness cost to help mitigate any discard effects. 

Lighthouse Chronologist meets the Hexdrinker rule; when I play it, opponents don't like that and if I can get to extra turns, that helps the planeswalkers create advantages. 

Curator of Mysteries is a solid 4/4 threat with evasion and gives me a bonus scry whenever I have to discard. It's low end synergy but it is still synergy, along with a win condition. 

So with a new name and some clarity of purpose, here we go!

Highs and Lows

 So, the deck from last week has an issue at the top end and bottom end. 

On the top end, the sad truth is that Tezzeret, Artifice Master just doesn't do enough when it arrives. 

There's an old rule coined I believe by Zvi Moshowitz, that any card that costs five mana or more has to have an immediate impact on the board. Tezzeret doesn't have that impact with either of the first two abilities. It really needs to be in a different deck.

So that's two cards on the top end that need to be replaced. 

The other card I'm having trouble with is Brainstorm. Since I have a glut at 3 CMC, I need to focus on cards that allow me smoother early game plays. Unfortunately it's also pretty easy to cast Brainstorm and just have two dead draws coming up, especially on turn one. 

This can be mitigated through the use of Jace's first ability and Opt but this isn't reliable or ideal. 

Similarly, Lord of the Unreal is underperforming. Without the strong curve of cards like Phantasmal Bear to play on turn one, I think I need to look at something else.

I still like Krovikan Mist; as a flier that can get a boost from Jace's ability and Illusionary Servant, it seems useful whenever it shows up. 

Still, I have been looking into other creatures-pirates and spirits have come up as creature types with synergy with each other.

Lords, that is: I mean there are lord effects for those types that might be useful. Of them, spirits are most likely to have some kind of evasion. However, none of them have the same kind of raw power/toughness values. However, they do offer Spectral Sailor, a really solid one drop that could replace Brainstorm. 

There are also faeries and those have something to be said for them as well. 

But the lord is at the three spot (as are the others) and that area is so cluttered! 

Maybe I need to focus more on good stuff over synergies. I've got a decent start but it's still just a start.

The Retired-You Are Not An Astronaut

Another deck to set aside!

3 Simic Signet
1 Misers' Cage
1 Ebony Owl Netsuke
1 Skullcage

2 Viseling

4 Arcane Laboratory

4 Arcane Denial
4 Storm Seeker
3 Moment's Peace
3 Remand
2 Evacuation
8 Forest
3 Skyshroud Forest
10 Island
2 Hinterland Harbor

3 Prosperity
4 Temporal Spring
2 Turbulent Dreams

What's the goal here? To slow the game to a crawl via Arcane Laboratory, draw a bunch of cards with Prosperity, and then chip away at life totals with Viseling, Misers' Cage, Ebony Owl Netsuke and Skullcage before using the finishing blow of Storm Seeker.

So, why am I taking this apart? Because I have a RUG that is also doing something like this. And by 'this' I mean: it wants to win with some of the exact same cards. Which means I have two decks half-assing a win condition, instead of one deck whole-assing it.

And I like the RUG one a little more, in part because of the redundancy Red provides, so I'm stripping this one down, putting Arcane Laboratory and Remand into the RUG one (that combo is just so delightful), redistributing the lands into decks that need the color fixing and moving on.

One more deck that can hit the road.

Untitled

What if I took some Planeswalkers and tried to get a deck out of them?

I have felt that Jace, Cunning Castaway was underused: it's a three mana planeswalker that does stuff and maybe even gets to copy itself. That seems neat! 

I own these cards: Let's use some and build something.

4 Illusionary Servant
4 Lord of the Unreal
4 Krovikan Mist
3 Hypnotic Sprite

3 Brainstorm
3 Mana Leak
3 Opt
3 Polymorphist's Jest

23 Island

2 Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor
3 Jace, Cunning Castaway
3 Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer
2 Tezzeret, Artifice Master

I don't have a title for this deck, yet. It's brand new, and it doesn't feel like it has a theme to rally around. 

What I can tell you is that initially I was running more Kasmina and zero Polymorphist's Jest. Kasmina might be a card that I really want to work, but doesn't quite. The thinking is: she will help protect all of my relevant permanents, and can help me dig through the deck, which all seems like a win-win. 

Early tests though demonstrated that I needed ways to interact with the board. My creatures are generally 2/2s or bigger: why not just make everything 1/1s? 

That was the first change and there will undoubtedly be more, but this is a good place to start.

The Retired-Dead Battery

Named after a song by Pitchshifter, Dead Battery was my take on the Quirion Dryad combo decks of old. Effectively, the goal was to play a QD, then all the spells you can to make the Dryad huge-and swing for a lot of damage.

My update came after Shadowmoor block came out, giving me access to multicolor spells without needing all the multicolor mana. Remember: a card has all the qualities that the colors of mana you pay for it, so Gilder Bairn counts as a blue and a green spell. I thought this was pretty clever.

3 Lorescale Coatl
2 Karstoderm
3 Simic Guildmage
4 Quirion Dryad
2 Gilder Bairn
4 Safehold Elite
3 Leech Bonder
2 Trygon Predator 

3 Fate Transfer
4 Snakeform
4 Oona's Grace
2 Simic Charm 

7 Forest
4 Flooded Grove
8 Island
3 Botanical Sanctum 

2 Hunt the Weak

And here we are.

Why take this apart? Well, first it doesn't combo like it ought to. Second; it's too cute for its own good: Fate Transfer is a Glory of Cool Things idea-

Hey wait. Ikoria has all kinds of different counters now. I could totally use Fate Transfer to-

NOPE. See, that's how it starts, every time. Never with fundamentals, but with a pie in the sky idea. And those ideas can be a lot of fun to execute, I'm finding myself wanting to really hone in on those concepts one way or another so that they genuinely work, and aren't just hopes. 

Anyway; my point is that this deck couldn't construct those Turn X = you're dead. It was a middling aggro deck with a sometimes neat trick and that wasn't overwhelming, nor was it engaging the opponent either. Is there a good deck with good cards here? Yeah, somewhere. But this isn't it. 

Late To The Party: Control

As bad as the pandemic has been for my ability to get together to play games, it's been quite good at letting me sit on my couch and clear up a videogame backlog. 

Control is a 3rd person adventure game that I finished up recently and enjoyed quite a bit. It is as if an episode of the X-Files was imported into a videogame: mildly creepy story, slightly eccentric but likable characters, and really solid design add up to an experience that knows what it is about. 

And I'm all about that. 

Control falters a little bit in the combat arena: it doesn't have the snap that games like the Resident Evil remakes do and the enemies can get a bit repetitive. Control seems to like the; 'throw waves at you' measure of difficulty more than the 'work this out smartly' idea. 

But one place where I think it really shines is in the level design. 

Section after section of this government building manages to evoke both the mundane qualities I expected with the semi-unnerving tweaks of 'something has gone wrong, here'. That is a cool trick to pull off, making dull concrete and wood paneling start to seem warped and uncanny. And they do stick to more an unnerving feel, not a gory one-which is very fitting, thematically. 

They do a few things quietly, too-also fitting with the atmosphere. For example; when the main character, Jessie, enters the Federal Bureau of Control, you can see portraits of the Director hung on the walls. When the position is passed to Jessie (an event that happens early) those portraits suddenly have Jessie's image. There is no explanation for this. 

Control has little spices like that all over, which help bring it together in spaces where it occasionally bogs down. I enjoyed the heck out of Control and I'm glad I remembered to pick it up-I might even get the DLC, I enjoyed it enough. I'd definitely like to see a sequel.

Yeah, OK

The games felt better.

That was the first thing I noticed about the games I played with Lauriel, who agreed that I had a concept that worked-but was pretty clearly weak to aggressive strategies. 

Which is true; Propaganda is a turn 3 play, which means that on the draw, I could easily find myself within the reach of a burn deck.

But that's OK! Blot doesn't have to be perfect. 

It does push me in different directions, though: this deck rewards patience and required me to focus on my decisions. In a couple of games, I had Intruder Alarm out to help stymie attackers, building up counters on my creatures until other resources, such as Opposition or Propaganda could come online. 

Under normal circumstances, I would be concerned about Wrath of God effects but those seem to have fallen out of favor lately. I can't remember a 60 card matchup where sweeper spells have been run this year. In that case, I'd be looking for a card like Heroic Intervention at least in the sideboard. As a bonus, Heroic Intervention works as a Fog effect, in that it allows me to block without fear of losing my boardstate so it might be useful for some of the aggressive matches, too. 

With more copies of Propaganda in the sideboard, maybe even some copies of Lull, too, I think the matchup can shift towards me. (I cut the singleton Lull for a singleton Tamiyo, the Moon Sage because one card is clearly better to draw than the other.).

Anyway: here goes!

3 Thallid

4 Sporesower Thallid

3 Sporoloth Ancient

3 Thelonite Hermit

4 Utopia Mycon

2 Thrummingbird

3 Intruder Alarm

3 Opposition

2 Propaganda

4 Sprout Swarm

2 Steady Progress

4 Expel from Orazca

11 Forest

7 Island

4 Flooded Grove

1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

Evaluations

What to do, right? 

After last week's debacle of games, I sat down to take another look at Blot.

How does this deck actually win?

Fortunately, my one win last week told me: I generate infinite creatures with Intruder Alarm plus Sprout Swarm and attack with a bunch of saprolings. 

So what does this deck actually need?

It needs time. 

I found some Thrummingbirds to help accelerate the saproling growth process, and was messing around with Lull as a way to give me extra turns. Creature combat has become the primary path to victory, so my thinking was: hey, it's a free turn every time  I cast it.

With that came copies of Expel from Orazca, a card that I'm sure can be solid in the early game and a big tempo shift in the mid to late game. Denying someone a draw step is a heck of a trick and if used at the right time, you can mess with people's Brainstorms or fetch lands. 

Then serendipity stepped in, which is always nice. I was putting some cards away-specifically a Rolling Thunder-and I came across two copies of Propaganda in my binder. 

Well, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth, right? Because what's better than Lull giving me one turn? A perpetual cost that slows my opponent down for the entire game. 

Let's roll with that, and see where it takes me. 

Little Dabs

Oooooboy. 

This deck was terrible. It just never came even close to what I was hoping it would do: I played two matches with Fuz and lost 4 of 5 games. Not a very good showing. 

More than the record, though, is the feeling of how it was going-that is, did I have opportunities to turn things around?

I never felt that I had a chance-even when I got Opposition out, I didn't have the resources to follow through or worse, I was already so far behind that it didn't matter. 

I need to think about this deck as a tempo one, and look for cards that leverage tempo for me. Sadly, on that front cards like Thelon of Havenwood and Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor just didn't quite do what I hoped.

Basically, nothing is meeting the Hexdrinker rule, and given the power curve here, that's a problem. I found that when Steady Progress was played, that helped advance my board state-the proliferate is also why Sporesower Thallid and Sporoloth Ancient are in the game. 

Which makes me wonder: are there fungus I haven't considered? The creature base is solidly from Time Spiral block and I have, admittedly, failed to do further research into better creatures. 

A few clicks later; yeah, that's a bust. 

So, what next? How can I give myself a boost? 

On Endings

Well...crap. 

While I cannot say I am surprised by the news that support for the Transformers TCG is ending, it is still a bummer. I got to meet some new, cool people and the game is a lot of fun. 

However, the pandemic and the United States' collective failure to properly manage that pandemic, almost certainly killed this game. It's very hard to get people excited about playing when there is no way to play in person. 

There's a lot to unpack about the failure to manage the pandemic. One of the people I met through this game, Adam, has said to me "I am glad we live in interesting times, but I wish people didn't have to suffer for it."

And the thing is: we're always living in interesting times. The difference between the pandemic the Obama administration had to deal with-and there were two-and the one the Trump administration is dealing with comes down to how each views governance. 

We hired people (via elections, in this instance) to manage things so we could do other stuff, like play card games. In one instance, those managers did a pretty good job with the pandemic. 

It's a small, silly thing, to want to continue to play games under the circumstances. But that small, silly thing would probably have continued, if we had people who cared about the citizens of this country in charge right now, instead of enhancing their own pockets. 

Still, I'm sorry to see this game go: it really was a fantastic to play and I hope that the people I've met will still play games from time to time.

The online experiences aren't terrible but they also aren't amazing-OCTGN has a real issue with card art being far too small, and almost no one has a proper camera and lighting setup to make paper games visually adequate via an online meeting service. I don't blame Wizards for not having an online platform to play: the game was too new to invest that kind of resources.  

Still, this was a good thing to be a part of. Plus, I still have my "Six Heads" aggro deck to talk about! So that'll happen-I think I've got a pretty good beatstick there.

Cleanup

So, with the black out of the deck, that leaves me with this:

3 Thallid
4 Sporesower Thallid
3 Sporoloth Ancient
2 Thelon of Havenwood
3 Thelonite Hermit
4 Utopia Mycon

 

3 Intruder Alarm
3 Opposition
4 Paradox Haze

 

4 Sprout Swarm
2 Steady Progress

 

10 Forest
10 Island
2 Vivid Creek

Is it bad? No, but it is short a couple cards. 

I am going with Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor to fill in those slots for two reasons: first, it helps protect my other creatures and second, it will produce creatures that can be tapped with Opposition. The card draw is a bonus, since this deck seems to be a little short on card draw. 

So, time to give this a little rollout and see how it does. 

Blot

Let's revise this thing. Because; I mean...look at it.

3 Thallid
3 Deathspore Thallid
4 Sporesower Thallid
3 Sporoloth Ancient
2 Thelon of Havenwood
3 Thelonite Hermit
4 Utopia Mycon

 

3 Intruder Alarm
3 Opposition
4 Paradox Haze

 

4 Sprout Swarm
2 Steady Progress

 

2 Golgari Rot Farm
9 Forest
9 Island
2 Vivid Creek

The inclusion of Black in this deck is unnecessary: it's a combo-ish deck: make tokens, use Opposition to lock everyone down, and win. The inclusion of Deathspore Thallid is absolutely The Glory Of Cool Things, and it messes with the mana base on top of all that.

So let's quit messing around. I can tweak the mana base, improve my card selection and make this something a bit more reliable. 

Let's have at it.

This deck, named after the Transformer, wants to generate a lot of creatures over time, and use Opposition to stall the game while more creatures than my opponent can  handle appear. 

The goal, then, is to stall the game out. The good news; I have a guiding idea! The bad news; I don't know how to execute it. Yet. 

Minor Tweaks

It's been difficult, what with the pandemic and all, to get games going. So I've gone back and revamped a few older decks. 

First up: Push the Fader, a Wildfire deck using Parallax Tide to keep my lands in play.

The problem: Zuberas (Burning-Eye and Rushing-Tide, respectively).

The solution: Rekindling Phoenix and God-Eternal Kefnet.

The Phoenix comes back post Wildfire, the God doesn't die to Wildfire. They both meet the Hexdrinker rule, which is critical here.

3 Izzet Signet

2 Mind Stone

2 Covetous Dragon

3 Surveilling Sprite

3 Rekindling Phoenix

3 God-Eternal Kefnet

2 Wurmcoil Engine

4 Parallax Tide

3 Shock

3 Prophetic Bolt

1 Incinerate

2 Opt

1 Magma Jet

5 Island

2 Izzet Boilerworks

4 Cascade Bluffs

4 Seat of the Synod

5 Mountain

3 Great Furnace

4 Wildfire

1 Ponder

Really polishing it up would mean cutting Ponder and Magma Jet for a third Opt and second Incinerate, just for consistency. That might be wise, just to see if I can take advantage of God-Eternal Kefnet's ability more. But I do like where this deck is at now, far more than I did. 

Next up, Disposable Heroes. 

The problem: High CMC creatures (specifically Dawn Elemental) and no removal. 

The solution: Copies of Swallow Whole. 

2 Samurai of the Pale Curtain

3 Devoted Retainer

2 Elite Vanguard

2 Soltari Foot Soldier

1 Soltari Priest

4 Celestial Crusader

1 Paladin en-Vec

3 Order of the White Shield

2 White Knight

2 Mystic Crusader

2 Skyhunter Skirmisher

3 Benalish Marshal

4 Light from Within

4 Sheltering Light

3 Swallow Whole

4 New Benalia

18 Plains

I think Swallow Whole is an underrated removal spell: it's a better Devouring Light as far as I'm concerned. With the high volume of creatures in Disposable Heroes, the additional cost isn't a problem.

Noah suggested Benalish Hero and with the cards I have with protection from red or black, this could be remarkably beneficial. Heck, once I drop a Light from Within, distributing damage how I choose could be a huge trick.

Sheathe The Blackblade

(This meant to go up last Thursday. Whoops!)

The cards from Commander 2020 definitely have a place in this Dakkon deck. What I'm still not sure about is the mana base. 34 lands isn't much, yet I still seem to find myself mana flooded. 

That might just be bad luck, but it doesn't seem like it, since I have more cards than ever with cycling. 

I've also realized that I've overlooked some cards out of Onslaught block, which I can't believe I'd forgotten had cycling, until I saw Eternal Dragon as part of the current Commander deck with cycling as its theme. 

But there are much better cards to use now, even while I do not forget the spice of the previous cards. Decree of Silence seems SO good and yet...I just can't justify it.

Another task that I cannot believe I forgot until recently was that I had failed to recalibrate the color requirements for this deck after making changes. Turns out I need a lot more Swamps than I thought. 

So there's been more tweaks but play still was difficult. The deck just kept floundering, until I realized that I couldn't have a 'one turn I win' moment. I needed to pace my play out slower and play defense-meaning play out my creatures, and just wait it out. I have reanimation strategies so it really is in my interest to stall until I'm ready.  

So here's were I'm going to leave it, for now. There's some tutors, some resets and a nice combo finish if I can get there. 

Commander: Dakkon Blackblade

Instant 1 Batwing Brume 1 Ensnare 1 Gleam of Resistance 1 Forsake the Worldly 1 Hieroglyphic Illumination 1 Hampering Snare	Artifacts 1 Armillary Sphere 1 Obelisk of Esper 1 Fluctuator 1 Alhammarret's Archive 1 Commander's Sphere
Enchantment 1 Moonlit Wake 1 Cast Out 1 Faith of the Devoted 1 Lay Claim 1 Drake Haven 1 Dragon Wings	Sorcery 1 Incremental Blight 1 Living End 1 Forced March 1 Living Death 1 Absorb Vis 1 Call to Mind 1 Akroma's Vengeance 1 Razaketh's Rite 1 Wander in Death 1 Stir the Sands 1 Finale of Eternity 1 Dismantling Wave 1 Decree of Justice 1 Cleansing Nova
Lands 1 Barren Moor 1 Drifting Meadow 1 Remote Isle 1 Coastal Tower 12 Swamp 8 Island 7 Plains 1 Desert of the Glorified 1 Desert of the Mindful 1 Desert of the True Planeswalker Liliana Vess	Creatures 1 Jhessian Zombies 1 Esper Sojourners 1 Dromar, the Banisher 1 Sanctum Plowbeast 1 Glassdust Hulk 1 Twisted Abomination 1 Disciple of Malice 1 Scion of Darkness 1 Undead Gladiator 1 Viscera Dragger 1 Shoreline Ranger 1 Primoc Escapee 1 Pendrell Drake 1 Keeneye Aven 1 Yoked Plowbeast 1 Noble Templar 1 Disciple of Grace 1 Tribute Mage 1 Winged Shepherd 1 Oketra's Attendant 1 Angel of the God-Pharaoh 1 Vile Manifestation 1 Lurching Rotbeast 1 Striped Riverwinder 1 Wasteland Scorpion 1 Horror of the Broken Lands 1 Shimmerscale Drake 1 Curator of Mysteries 1 Herald of the Forgotten 1 Drannith Healer 1 Void Beckoner 1 Avian Oddity 1 Archfiend of Ifnir