Free Pizza-Celestials' Season

I hit level 90 in Marvel Snap and this time I did it with a deck I built myself! I present: SwanBounce.

Obviously this is a derivative deck using the Bounce deck principles, and it is a little challenging to play. If there's a clear flex slot, it's probably Echo. It might seem like Werewolf could be cut but I'd be wary of doing so. That card can get up to 9 power pretty easily if you are playing wisely, and can almost (if not occasionally exceed) your three big dogs. That's really helpful when those cards decide to be the last three cards in your deck. 

That said; it suffers when there are locations like Central Park or Savage Lands that add small creatures to your board. Yes, you can bounce them but filling up your hand with garbage is a real risk. Drawing your hitters is important and getting the discounted Sasquatch to lead to a cheap Skaar is a big deal. And finding another cheap card to add in-Ant-Man might be good here, but there aren't many given how SwanBounce wants to play-isn't easy. 

It might be fun to try with Phastos, the newest card. Making everything here either cheaper or stronger seems neat! Forge, however, is probably the best substitute, especially if there is a lot of Killmonger running around. (And it seems there always is for me).

Anyway, that's what I've been rocking and it's been fun so far. Good luck to everyone for the rest of the month!

The Retired: Prisoner

I really wanted this to be a clever thing...

4 Frost Raptor
4 Mistfolk
3 Blinding Angel
4 Somnophore

4 Coalition Flag
3 Martial Law
2 Faith's Fetters

4 Mana Leak
3 Dismantling Blow

3 Boreal Shelf
9 Snow-Covered Island
5 Snow-Covered Plains
2 Flood Plain
4 Island

3 Ponder
3 Supreme Verdict

And I suppose it is? Using certain creatures to draw the opponent's removal spells with Coalition Flag then the abilities of those creatures-especially Mistfolk-to render that removal useless is clever.

The problem of course is that it isn't good. Sure, creatures matter far more than when I first built this deck, but so what? The plan to win is terrible-and by terrible I mean it's grindy without locking an opponent out, taking far, far too long without nearly enough disruption.

I can put the Flood Plains, Ponders, and Supreme Verdicts in a deck where they will be a lot more helpful. 

Sordid Mesh

It was on a long walk that I realized something very important about Zero Signal:

I didn't need to attack to win. Zero Signal wants to poison the opponent and Rotpriest never says anything about doing damage. 

So what to do? The answer hit me with both a good and bad idea. 

The good idea: Ensnaring Bridge. Most decks have to attack to win; I don't. Let's hamper that. 

The bad idea: transformational sideboard!!!

These things almost never work, but it's so stupid I feel I have to give it a go. So; the Phalanx Leader and Dragonsguard Elite to flip this deck from a more defensive one to one where I'm trying to attack with giant creatures. 

My first game with Matt taught me two very important lessons;

First; Chalice of the Void set to one is bad for me.

Second: I can win through it, because Venerated Rotpriest doesn't care if my spells resolve. 

I also got to play it again against Noah who was running a new Lands deck with Wight of the Reliquary, and the Ensnaring Bridge was key in keeping a Marit Lage off my back. I also ran a few games with Fuz-I split the games but had good showings in both. 

In neither case did I get to try the sideboard. But hey, that's alright. This deck has some legs and a shot at something. If I need to sideboard, then I can always do that. 

3 Ensnaring Bridge

4 Mavinda, Students' Advocate
4 Venerated Rotpriest
2 Saffi Eriksdotter
2 Eternal Witness
2 Ranger of Eos

4 Mutagenic Growth
4 Defiant Strike
3 Charge Through
2 Snakeskin Veil
2 Sejiri Shelter
2 Vastwood Fortification
3 Loran's Escape

2 Forest
1 Plains
4 Lush Portico
4 Branchloft Pathway
4 Wooded Bastion

3 Faerie Guidemother // Gift of the Fae
3 Green Sun's Zenith"
2 Gird for Battle

15 Sideboard
SB: 3 Lantern of the Lost
SB: 3 Phalanx Leader
SB: 4 Dragonsguard Elite
SB: 2 Grand Abolisher
SB: 3 Serenity

Watching Life Come All Undone

(Ed. note: this post was supposed to come BEFORE the last one. Sorry; but content is content and hopefully this will fill in the gaps as to why I continued with a G/W build.)

Adding Black to Zero Signal seemed obvious but aside from Entomb, there didn't appear to be any other cards that assist the deck! Even a card like Buried Alive meant taking an entire turn three off to cast a sorcery that might help but not really forward my position.

I began wondering if I'm doing this all wrong. What if the deck was relentless, instead of trying to just put the big creature into play? Could it still be G/W? That would solve a lot of mana issues. Plus, I could still run Lush Portico to add to the deck's theme.

But. Is it worth it?

I began to realize that a card like Reincarnation is at its best functioning in a Reanimator style deck, not an aggressive one. The idea I had to begin with was on the right track; sacrificing small creatures for big ones, or letting cards like Timbermare come back. 

That's when I realized that I already had a G/B deck that was doing reanimation things and never quite got there. 

Maybe Reincarnation goes there? 

But then what to do with this G/W deck? Retire it?

A Drowning Mind

Reincarnation goes well in Monster Man-the G/B reanimator deck I was thinking about. It took one set of games against Noah for him to see it too. 

So that's one problem sort of solved. The other came when I realized that with Reincarnation, I needed to bring back creatures that had an immediate impact on the board. As much as I love Sheoldred, Whispering One, it's just too damned slow. 

So I get to make some tweaks there: removing too-cute combos (Like  Archangel of Thune and Spike Feeder) for cards that are more direct in their path to victory. 

Nevertheless, after a few small tweaks, I got to play it against Matt, and it performed admirably in a VERY grindy game. There were a few creatures that were still the glory of cool things (looking at you, Archpriest of Shadows) but it's coming along better than I thought!

So where does that leave Zero Signal? I would still like to make an aggro deck of some sort I think. Maybe it's leftover brain gnawings from my Mavinda attempts, something I just can't let go of?

It was while this was on my mind that I came across Venerated Rotpriest. 

After a few swings at a decklist, this is what I've come up with:

4 Mavinda, Students' Advocate

3 Phalanx Leader

4 Venerated Rotpriest

2 Saffi Eriksdotter

2 Eternal Witness

2 Ranger of Eos

4 Mutagenic Growth

4 Defiant Strike

3 Charge Through

3 Legolas's Quick Reflexes

2 Snakeskin Veil

2 Sejiri Shelter

2 Vastwood Fortification

2 Forest

1 Plains

4 Lush Portico

4 Branchloft Pathway

4 Wooded Bastion

3 Faerie Guidemother // Gift of the Fae

3 Green Sun's Zenith

2 Gird for Battle

Sideboard

3 Lantern of the Lost

2 Serenity

2 Verdant Command

2 Abeyance

This one is an exercise in very tight manabases, but ones that I hope don't matter because the deck can just pop off. Also, currently I'm using Loran's Escape over Legolas's Quick Reflexes; they do very similar things and one costs significantly less. 

I do like the split second on LQR though and I wonder if there's a meaningful way to work that card into a deck. 

Zero Signal

 I fell in love with the card Reincarnation. 

4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Protean Hulk
3 Archon of Justice
3 Eternal Witness
2 Cloudthresher
2 Timbermare
2 Woodfall Primus
3 Twilight Shepherd
2 Saffi Eriksdotter
2 Weatherseed Treefolk

2 Serenity

4 Reincarnation

8 Forest
4 Wooded Bastion
6 Plains
4 Branchloft Pathway

4 Rout
3 Search for Tomorrow

The idea is fairly simple: with cards like Timbermare I can repeatedly loop for 5 points of damage per turn, or Woodfall Primus that I can use to take out important permanents. But Zero Signal wants to generate a ton of mana and then use Reincarnation, as opposed to the much more efficient idea of putting something huge in the graveyard and then bringing them out off the sacrifice of a Sakura-Tribe Elder. 

And what I'm really wondering here is: would this deck be better if I added Black for access to some kind of Entomb effect? I'm not trying to make a bad Nic Fit deck, I really want to make this a deck that can use Reincarnation to do nasty things. 

Let's see where we go.

The Retired: Sludge

 I had started a post with this deck back in 2011...and looks like I never followed up on it.  Not really anyway.  

2 Monstrous Hound

4 Benalish Emissary

2 Firebrand Ranger

3 Faultgrinder

3 Pangosaur

2 Thornscape Battlemage

3 Farhaven Elf

4 Limited Resources

3 Lash Out

3 Graceful Reprieve

3 Rith's Charm

2 Naya Charm

6 Plains

5 Mountain

3 Jungle Shrine

3 Naya Panorama

6 Forest

1 Decimate

2 Implode

It won't come as a surprise I'm taking this apart. This deck is a griefer deck and making people miserable while playing the game just isn't my style. For those who don't remember, Limited Resources is a card that combined with some land destruction, can squeeze the opponent out of the game. 

It's a long slow death and I never really like those. And the other cards are weak ones that are trying to be supported on the strength of one unpleasant one. 

So, let's retire it. 

Modern Horizons 3 Set Review

Alrighty, let's get ya hooked up with the official gallery and the readable one.

There's a lot of hype for MH3, and I get why: the last Modern Horizons sets have helped shift metagames across multiple formats. Making a dent in a format like Legacy or Vintage is difficult but the sets still did it, plus it's fun to see what happens when the designers decide to amp things up a bit. 

I see a little less of that, this time around. Don't get me wrong, there are some very powerful effects here! But I don't see cards with the same kind of obviously high power level that I did when the incarnation cycle from Modern Horizons 2 was printed, or Hogaak from the original. 

This might be due to the elevation of Eldrazi and all the things that the set is trying to do to make that work. Remember, this is still meant to be a draftable set! So if you open Kozilek, the Broken Reality, they want to give you the ability to play it. 

So sure, Emrakul, the World Anew is powerful but I doubt anyone's going to use the Madness ability to get that into play anytime soon.

Instead, one thing I'm seeing is a lot of flexibility in the cards being put out here: a lot of cards and mechanics with multiple options, and using energy to help restrain the power level so players can't just go big mana and make games drag out.

Of course, out in the bigger ecosystem of Magic who knows what kind of power is being unleashed. Is Pearl-Ear, Imperial Advisor going to create a deck akin to the Hammertime ones? Could Harbinger of the Sea make merfolk a legit powerhouse? 

It's certainly possible! I will say that there are exciting possibilities available; affinity decks getting some help from Black and Red, the Allied fetchlands, and a whole new suite of double faced spell/lands. 

The reprints seem solid, too, even for a player as entrenched in the game as I am, there are some good cards I never got ahold of, usually due to cost, as with K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth, but others just weren't in a play set, as with Nadier's Nightblade. 

So all in all I think this is one of the better sets: it is going to tilt the applecart but doesn't look like it's going to upend it, and offer players access to some cool reprints to boot!