Pricing

Universes Beyond is...introducing some interesting things to the game. While I've decided to mostly ignore any of those sets- beyond individual cards that I find interesting- players can't ignore the impact. 

The latest interesting weight that UB is putting on the game comes in the form of prices, something that I've found disturbing myself. It feels like price gouging to charge more for Final Fantasy sets; the cards and effort are exactly the same, right?

Well...maybe. 

I can't help but feel concerned about the direction of the game. More expensive, less thematic, and clearly prioritizing style over substance. Edge of Eternities had better gameplay than I thought! But how long before rot creeps in?

It's a hard thing to think about, for a game I've put so much time into. I have less angst about leaving Marvel Snap behind (where enshittification is also setting in) because there's less community there. 

I suppose we shall see. 

There Is No Explanation for This Nonsense

 Here's a link to Chrome Mox, which as you'll note costs around $72.00 US.

Please note that you cannot play this card in any legal format of Magic. 

A copy of one that you can legally play-but is obviously used-is also selling around $80.00 US.

Thanks, I hate this. 

On the other hand, I am now 100% pro-proxy now. 

He's Right, You Know

So, Pleasant Kenobi has a long video about what the future of Magic will look like and at about 17 minutes in comes the prediction that made me sad.

The TL:DR is this-after creating waves of outrage (and attention) for what is frankly a product so greedy it is offensive, WotC will come back and say:

"Wait wait, we now have a NEW product for $500 for four packs instead of $1000."

It will work like a charm. People will have a point of comparison and that will make all the difference. The reaction to this new theoretical product that PK is talking about will be met with excitement and maybe even gratitude. 

How do I know this? 

Well, with the acknowledgement that I can't say for certain, I can tell you that I've read Predictably Irrational. That book is about how human beings make decisions and how marketers use that knowledge to influence how we choose. 

In this case, I can see a very clear path to manipulating the audience. 

Step one, make Magic 30. Here we are: the attention (predominantly negative but attention nonetheless!) to build hype, and the limitation to build FOMO. 

Because it's very clear that the product is desirable: it's merely being slagged because it's insultingly expensive and cruelly gatekept. However, for the past week that's been what the community has been talking about. I am not an exception!

Step two: The apology and new pricing. As PK points out we'll get a 'we did not expect this kind of pushback' statement or some such corpo-speak apology that doesn't mean shit. It will however come with a 'as a way to make it up to the community we're going to ______" where you fill in the blank with the new product being promoted. I'm going with a non-legal reprint of Revised (3rd Edition) because while being a bad set, was the last one where they reprinted dual lands. 

Why? Because this way no one can accuse WotC of undercutting the "value" of the Magic 30 release. But it still gives players something they want: the opportunity for lands they need to play older formats. 

Does it matter that 3rd Edition sucked? No. In the same way that it doesn't matter that the reproduced Magic 30 cards suck-Chaoslace isn't a card anyone wants, but it's still a rare being reprinted in Magic 30. (One thing to note here is that these sets were designed before draft was a thing. So while you could draft this set, your experience is likely to be awful.)

Because the other thing that WotC will do is price it less. So it'll be tiered now-"sure, you can have an opportunity for a Mox if you want to shell out $1000 but hey if you want a Tundra, we're only asking $500."

Still won't be a legal proxy for any format though. Can't do that!

However, because of the new price point, and they might (miiiiiiight, mind you) make it more widely available, people's brains will pull a trick on them-one illustrated in Predictably Irrational. The ability to compare products will get people to buy four packs for $500 because "it's a much better deal!"

It isn't. It won't be. But we'll have been duped into thinking it is. It's a marketing trick that once you see it, you can see being pulled over and over again. See also the recent Warhammer 40k Commander sets. 

Take a look at Card Kingdom's prices. The "Collector's Editions" are more than triple the cost of the regular ones. Do you think the manufacture cost triple? Or is it more likely that WotC can sell the premium product to wealthy people, and everyone else will look at a $60 price point and go: well hell, that's a value! 

Commander decks were $30 once upon a time. Again: has the cost of making Commander decks truly doubled, or do we just have price points that let us think we're getting a deal, because we have points of comparison?

That's the trick, an that's why I'm fairly certain PK is right. 

But also: Fuck all that.

$$$

 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is a $70 card. 

Urza's Saga is a $32 card.

Modern Horizons 2 hasn't even been out a week.

Now, I get that new cards are hyped and both of those cards are good. We have online play to show how good they are. 

But something is seriously wrong with the Magic economy, when card prices spike like this. 

I know the secondary market isn't something WotC has their hand on the tiller of, but these cards are being sold out of packs that are $11-12 (at least at my local game stores). That's double what packs normally cost. That price point should have a chilling effect on the volume of packs people are willing to purchase. Maybe not today, but eventually there's a ceiling and for a game that is marketed to 13yo kids, that ceiling is coming fast. 

 

Almost Ruled The World

This is, as always, more challenging than I thought.

More games, this time against Fuz and later Matt and each time, the swarms were the problem. Admittedly, Matt was playing a tuned version of Death and Taxes but so many creatures with so little toughness and I just couldn't do much about it all. Phyrexian Revoker, Thalia: I kept asking myself: I have 11 spells that do damage, why aren't they keeping the board clear?

I start talking about removing Fated Conflagration, since it costs 4 and using on my turn isn't really the best use of my time, except that I really want to use it then, to get the scry effect.

"Fiery Confluence?" Matt suggests. I tell him that I can't run that because the CMC is 5.

OK, so what else could work here? Off to the Gatherer!

(This is where I find out that I'm wrong about Fiery Confluence and it's only 4 mana, which is perfect-so let's see how much that card is!

$20.Oh, no.

My money > less of my money. )

It seemed obvious to try and put in a card like Anger of the Gods, but I thought I'd run a query through the search engine anyway. If I didn't have to kill the few creatures I run, I'd rather not, and options are good, because sometimes I get something cool-in this case, Savage Alliance strikes me as an excellent card with a lot of flexibility. I'd prefer it if one of those modes destroyed an artifact, but apparently one of the most obvious red things to do ever wasn't something that red should obviously do.

Still, it's a way to wipe out hordes and maybe even punish the cheap blocks that happen against my larger creatures. Since I can cast it from turn three on, this might just be a Very Big Deal.

I Need Help

(As with most deck-related posts, that's a line from the song, not a direct plea. Although help is always good).

I got a few games in with Knives and, though it grates on my weirdo sensibilities, I have to admit that it's pretty likely that Rite of Passage will have to come out.

This makes me sad. Making creatures bigger via what I want to do with Wave of Reckoning really seemed like the way to go. However, I'm not doing anything else with +1 counters so there is very much a "cool" factor happening. I'm not going to give up on it just yet but it's on the chopping block.

In contrast, I knew I wanted to cut Acridian because there's no need for the echo cost and I figured 2/4 creatures come in better flavors. I did a search though and it's hard to find a replacement. Most creatures have Defender or zero power or both, or just don't quite fit. Two mana isn't much and I suppose I'm asking for a lot.

I ended up with Druid of the Cowl as my replacement, because I kept seeing a logjam of cards at the 3 mana spot. Making sure I can cast those 3 drops seems like a solid idea, as well as potentially making Wev of Reckoning castable on turn four. Yes, I am aware that Noble Hierarch would be a perfect card for this deck but that card costs $65 despite being reprinted and I'm invoking the "my money > less of my money" rule.

The next thing I did was run this through deckstats.net and that's when I noticed the mana color problems. There just isn't enough blue. But at 42% lands I don't think I need to add more, just adjust the lands I do have to represent the colors I need. Fortunately that's an easy tweak, as I can adjust both my green and white mana without much impact on their availability.

Time to see if Rite of Passage really, truly sucks here...

The Overburden

Of the suggestions Matt proposed to me, Overburden was the one that I liked the most. As a bonus, I happened to own three copies which meant testing it wouldn't require a large outlay of money. And my money > less of my money.

Playing against Lauriel, though, the problem became pretty clear: This is a Humility deck and everything that isn't Humility and Orim's Prayer probably doesn't have the impact on the game that I want it to.

On the other hand, when I had Overburden out on turn 2, I got the reaction that you always want when you play a card that someone isn't familiar with: Oh, no.

And whenever that reaction comes up, that's a Good Thing. I want to play decks that do that, because I'm usually operating a little off the beaten path.

So I'll keep testing it but that card is on a short leash.

Revisiting: Die Die My Darling

You may remember this, if you've been reading for a long time. Thanks for that! If not, well I had an idea so I'd like to take a brief visit to an old deck.

Let me give you the updated decklist for good measure:

2 Confiscate
3 Persecute
2 Nantuko Husk
3 Conjurer's Ban
1 Enlightened Tutor
4 Academy Rector
4 Phyrexian Ghoul
3 Cabal Therapy
2 Faith's Fetters
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Aura of Silence
2 Nightmare Void
8 Plains
1 Salt Flats
2 Orzhov Basilica
8 Swamp
4 Marsh Flats
4 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Seal of Doom
2 Eldrazi Conscription
1 Debtors' Knell

Since then, there has been one enormous change to the Magic landscape: Omniscience. I haven't paid much attention to that card since it rapidly found its way into the Omni-Tell combo deck. It's a solved problem and it's an expensive friggin' card.

The gears turn slowly though and after seeing this deck in multiple articles I thought; why is everyone insisting on using Show and Tell as the default way to get Omniscience into play? Isn't there any other way to get this card into play cheaply?

Yes. Yes there is.

Now, will Omniscience help me? I don't know. But casting my spells for free sounds pretty good, so I think I'm going to give it a shot. Plus, with Theros available to provide some raw enchantment support a touch up might make this deck really interesting.

I am only purchasing one Omniscience: that card breaks the "my money" rule like Bruce Lee going against balsa wood. For now, the decklist will have the following change:

-1 Nightmare Void
+1 Omniscience

and I'll start the testing today!

Star Realms: Crisis

Two firsts happened this week: I got to play with the new Star Realms expansion cards and I got to play my first multiplayer game.

Multiplayer games still go pretty rapidly I'm glad to say, especially when everyone has a feel for the game. This is a nice change from epic Commander multiplayer games. The addition tactical decisions about where to spread your resources can make for an interesting dilemma, too.

After only a few games, here's what I can tell you about Crisis:

1) Heroes do not make their use immediately apparent. They're cheap to acquire, which is good, but they don't feel useful at first. Of the cards in this set, they are the ones that I think will need the most testing. I had two available to me at one point and I hesitated to use them. Noah had a similar situation and I think it's because Star Realms is about balancing when expend those scrapable resources. Some are obvious (Explorers) but bases or ships? This is harder to figure out and heroes fall under that category. Jury is still out.

2) Events are very cool. These are the impact cards, the ones that can sell the set. They're just random enough and the immediate impact feels pretty fair so nobody gets completely burnt.

3) The additional bases and ships don't suck but they don't light up the eyes. There are some interesting dimensions being added but at the moment they seem like 'win more'. For a first expansion, that seems about right. I don't need to get excited about what bases or ships do again, I'm already psyched.

4) This is absurdly expensive. $20 for 48 cards is pretty crazy when you can get the base game with 128 cards for $15. And of those, 110 are the ones you need to play the game-so what gives with this price point? If this doesn't balance out soon, I can see myself skipping out on future expansions. Because my money > less of my money.

I don't think you're gonna like the one you're gonna get

I have to confess, I'm pretty pleased with the decisions I made with Burner.

The first substitutions were to cut the Allay and Shatterstorm for Wear/Tear. I really love those cards but they are narrow and fit better in Commander formats, where multiple artifacts or enchantments will need to be destroyed. In 1v1 games, picking the right target at the right time is usually enough.

Then I decided I needed to replace Energy Bolt. I wanted a card that would do two things: 1) Not be a creature and 2) provide me with a way to forward my win condition.

This is where I run headfirst into the problems with modern Magic designs. Creatures matter and spells are less about where it's at, unless we're talking Planeswalkers. But even the planeswalkers in the colors I am running have a very strong creature focus: Nearly every iteration of Ajani has a +1 involving creatures. Elsbeth puts creatures into play. Gideon relies on creatures (creatures I want to destroy). Koth is for a mono-red deck, Tibalt is a bit too risky and the new flavor of Sarkhan (Sarkhan Lite!) I didn't even consider. Partly because he's so new but also because he's over $30 and I'm evoking the My Money rule.

Ajani Vengeant might have a place and the Chandras...maybe.

Truth be told I didn't consider the Planeswalkers because My Money > Less of My Money. Still, if it is necessary for a deck then those things can probably be acquired in time, assuming they don't break the bank.

If I am not going to spend a lot of money then what are my options? Straight out burn spells are frequently inefficient or too small to get the job done. White wants to give me creatures. I don't want creatures, because that gives my opponents options they didn't have before. What do I do?

Then I remembered stonethorn's victory condition: Assemble the Legion. I was reluctant to add it in at first, because of the creature path to victory but I wasn't coming up with any better ideas so I thought I'd give it a test.

Against stonethorn, Burner tested admirably. I didn't win those matchups but the games were tense and the Legion presented an avenue for pressure that squeezed stonethorn against the Pyrostatic Pillar/Spellshock cards.

He took a look at the deck and wondered if I had "too much cycling". I smiled because I know that drawing cards in an uncounterable way is Good Times, especially under my win conditions. But stonethorn agreed; the deck was a solid build, it just needed something to push it a little further. I decided to up the ante: cut Cave-In and Steam Blast for another Renewed Faith and a third Assemble the Legion. Awww yeah.

Mistakes and Decisions

I was able to play a few games on Cockatrice the other night; Thanks to SirTrae for letting me test Razorclaw more and take screenshots like this:

SirTrae is playing a Battle of Wits deck in that picture and I'm doing pretty well against it, using my Cream of the Crop to help filter up a steady stream of threats. Shortly after the screenshot, my board was wiped but I still have threats in hand (including the critical Wickerbough Elder) so that's OK.

The critical play comes when I have four lands in play and after casting Hound of Griselbrand, I see a Temple of Abandon and a Mountain. This is my thought process:

"If I take the Mountain, I'll be able to cast Elder AND activate its ability on the same turn, which is a solid warning sign to my opponent.

But Battle of Wits isn't out there and I have no idea if he has it so why worry? Temple let's me dig further into my deck if the next Cream of the Crop trigger reveals nothing helpful! Let's play Temple!"

I do, pass the turn, where SirTrae plays Battle of Wits and I lose.

Do you see the thought process that was my mistake? I exchanged the future for the present and lost because of it.

It can be very challenging to live in the now because Magic is so complicated. I often feel that I have to be looking at a hundred lines of play because so many can be shut down that re-routing the thought process quickly is an important skill.

Sometimes, though, choices are simple: Do I lose if my opponent does this?

If yes: don't let them do that. If no: continue hounding them.

In this instance, I didn't take my thought process far enough: If I take the Mountain, I'll be able to cast Elder AND activate its ability on the same turn, which means they cannot win via Battle of Wits until Elder is dealt with.

That would have told me everything I needed to know. But I thought that seeing another card would be more valuable, traded the future for the present and lost.

Next time: do better.

Also, I have discovered where my Temple of Abandons are! They are in Viceroy, which is the all-creature deck. Drat.

Now I have to make a choice: pull the Temples from Viceroy (which sorely needs every little bit it can get, due to the limitations of it's build), buy more Temples (which evokes the 'my money > less of my money' rule) or run another land that can provide Red and Green.

For now, I have plenty of Gruul Guildgates that need a home so they will do just fine.

Expenses

Found this via Reddit.

For those who don't want to click the link, it's a graphic comparing the cost of Jace the Mind Sculptor with Scalding Tarn, which apparently are about the same cost now in American Dollars: $106-ish.

Holy cow, right? To make a proper deck using Scalding Tarn, you'd need to spend over $420.This is completely unreasonable and WotC needs to be a bit more proactive in helping keep costs for basic materials like manabases within the reach of players. Jace being expensive is more acceptable, as it is a mythic rare and is for a specific class of decks. (Usually winning blue ones but I don't want to get diverted).

Scalding Tarn is required for any solid manabase that uses blue that a player wants to take to any serious event. Even a Friday Night Magic where they don't want to be laughed at requires the best manabase one can provide.

It's just that simple; you need it to get the deck functioning at its highest capacity. And if Wizards doesn't provide a reprint of the fetchlands (as they are known) either from Onslaught or Zendikar, not only will I be amazed, I'll be incredibly disappointed. Providing players with the tools they need to play is their job. And $400 for four lands is absolutely stupid.

So don't fuck it up, guys.

Moneydecks

How to do more with less?

The My Money philosophy has served me well: namely, it's prevented me from spending so much cash on Magic cards that I neglect to do things like purchase food or new underwear. You know how it is.

However: it cannot be denied that a key component to doing well at Magic is about money. The person who can purchase four Wurmcoil Engine, Deathrite Shaman and/or Jace, Architect of Thought has a much better chance of winning the match than someone who has only been able to acquire one or two of those through trade or luck. Hell, even someone who has the money to play draft and sealed often (something that can cost anywhere from $15-30 a pop) is going to have an understandable advantage over other players.

So I've spent a great deal of time trying to get decks to work with the expensive cards I happen to own (usually through random pack openings) or have purchased while they were cheap, because I like to gather up cheap rares and bend them into weird decks.

In the film Moneyball, a fiscally strapped baseball team uses mathematical metrics to get players who in aggregate, will hit the statistics that a team that makes the playoffs or wins the World Series would have. Similarly, I am trying to use cards that are undervalued or overlooked in order to create a deck with synergies that will produce wins. My hope is that with a deep cardpool (from a chronological perspective) and a willingness to experiment, I can pick up things that will pay off later, both in skills and cards. Lately, it hasn't quite been working out.

I don't mind losing but I seem to be doing it an awful lot, which suggests that I am not applying the lessons of my losses very well. I've also been ignoring some of my best (and expensive) cards in order to look at everything else in the name of innovating.

There isn't much point in letting a perfectly good Vraska sit in the binder though, when I have a deck that could use the power. I can still spend my money wisely and use overlooked cards while investing in some of the more expensive ones to help make my weird ideas work. I've been thinking about ways to make this happen, including changing some of my buying habits. Hopefully this will give me opportunities to pick up a few of the more expensive cards, while still absorbing copies of underused or overlooked cards and making them work for me.

Blightning Rod

I thought I had this posted on Thursday. Sorry everyone! We now join our story in progress...

Although I won games against Fuz with my original configuration of Shrapnel, I knew it was just luck. I needed to win games more decisively, which meant either a) speed or b) disruption.

Theros still isn't out (when I wrote this last Thursday), but the best 'faster' card that I thought would be helpful was Read the Bones. Lacking that, I've been using Lose Hope (over Festering March and Flame Javelin) as a way to provide disruption. I like Lose Hope, actually. The filtering is nice and I'm having to make some choices that I think I'm getting incorrect. Which is good, because that means I'm learning.

However, Lose Hope is also another creature killer and I have quite a bit of that, as I've seen in games against Noah and stonethorn. Too much of a good thing, perhaps, leaving me unable to finish the game.

And replacing Lose Hope with Read the Bones is risky, because I already want to go all-in on cards like Necrologia. I'm not sure I can take the life loss.

That's the questionable card, though. I had an 'Aha!' moment and removed Dread and Murderous Redcap for Blightning and that was an excellent decision. In all my games, whenever I cast Blightning, my opponents were unhappy with it. Always a good sign.

The other 'Aha!' moment I had was with the mana base. It's challenging to make a deck that has, as two of its key spells, RRR and BB in them. If I had more lands that could produce red or black, I would be in better shape (of course, right?)

So I went to ye olde binders and found two Dragonskull Summit which should make everything better. Not as good as Badlands but it's best to use the tools available, since purchase of a Badlands invokes the My Money rule. (My Money > less of My Money.)

However, I want to return to the Lose Hope conundrum. The redundancy they provide may not be reason enough to keep them but I do like the brainteaser of which cards to scry. Still, if I could add in something that created problems and contributed to speeding up my win condition, this might be a better thing. I'll have to keep my eye out. A card like Vampire Nighthawk could be exceptionally good for this deck, giving me time to set up my combo through lifegain against more aggressive decks, or be a win condition on its own against slower ones if I look for the turn 1 Swamp, Dark Ritual, Nighthawk play.

We'll put the Nighthawk on deck, if Lose Hope doesn't cut it.

Bulletproof

Modern Masters is out. It is, essentially, immune to criticism.

"They put weak cards in there!"

They have said it's a set that is meant to be drafted. Weak cards have to be put in draft sets because it is the only way to create the tension and balance required for good draft sets. Essentially, this is why you'll open up Feudkiller's Verdict instead of Flickewisp, Scion of Oona instead of Cryptic Command or Jugan the Rising Star instead of Tarmogoyf.

Insisting that there 'were better cards' is simply met with: Of course there are but we cannot balance the sealed environment with 100% better cards. Also; draft is where WotC makes the most money on product.

I should say that I don't resent them making a draftable environment here; I want them to make money. What I'm pointing out is that doing so means that they cannot be critiqued for including a host of weaker cards because the reply is simply 'imbalance' and customers pretty much have to accept that.

"They didn't print enough!"

They've said that they needed to do a limited print run in order to keep from flooding the secondary market. You still want local stores to play in, right? Then be quiet, citizen.

"The prices are all crazy!"

Yes, it's certainly not WotC's fault that boxes of MM contain less product yet cost over twice what a regular box does AT MSRP, nor that individual packs are suggested at $6.99-double the MSRP of a regular pack. Of course, the cost per pack will go up once the boxes arrive in stores; I've seen $10 for a pack-but I doubt it will stay there. Because every card is a good one! Culled from years of sets only to provide solid cards to help new players get into an Eternal format.

No, it's those filthy filthy retailers, and you, you horrible people ordering boxes for $300 a pop.

All in all I find this to be a pretty disgusting money grab, from WotC (who will make bank with Magic Online, on top of real world product) and the retailers, whom I can't entirely blame. The market has been deliberately shortened and the result is some Wild West bullshit, as far as I'm concerned. The limited print run seems to exacerbate the problem. Though the next month or so should clarify the picture, I am not hopeful.

What's worse is that I'd say about 90% of the hype for Modern Masters is about Tarmogoyf, a card that is apparently worth more than its weight in gold. And to make things ever darker for people on a budget, I don't think the prices are going to go down-or if they do, I don't think they will be reduced enough to create a reasonable price point for what is glorified cardboard. My money > less of my money rule invoked.

But you can't say anything bad about it that sticks. WotC is being gracious enough to reprint cards you love. Now go play the Tarmogoyf lottery.

I Need To Do Something New

I'm a little burnt out after all the Modern testing and I think I may be sick of decks running Black/White or Black/Green or Green/Red. Seriously. All that maximizing for value and hounding after the perfect play has left me a little worn out. Modern Masters is coming up, M14 is coming up and those are all very exciting but after the long stretch of writing and playing and work on Modern...I need more pizza and beer, at least short term.

On Modern Masters: I really hate that WotC is allowing this to be treated as some kind of money printing machine. $300+ for a single box of cards is extortion and leads me back to the my money > less of my money rule. To hell with paying that much for a box! That really is insane.

On M14, Slivers are back, yay! Wait, now they look different and dull. I got it and at first I was OK with it. Then it was pointed out to me that Slivers were just going to look humanoid...boo. I tend to agree with Evan Erwin's point on slivers here and there is a much more scathing overview of them here. And the more I think about it, the more I agree with those points.

Worse is the reason that Slivers have been changed, which is what I'm going to talk about. Because this kind of change has to be something that we should expect, is actually inevitable, I think, once we talk about the why, mechanically, this change had to be made: the need for everything to be all upside.

When I started the game and Juzam Djinn roamed the land, I remember staring at the card Armageddon and thinking, "Why would anyone play this?"

Then someone showed me (you add elves!) and it was a huge revelation! New pathways opened up in the game and new deck ideas, along with solid principles of deckbuilding were brought to light. Challenges to break symmetrical cards compelled genuine decisions about what was best for your deck and it was more difficult to throw in the kitchen sink.

Ditto with Slivers; how do I play a deck that helps my opponent, if they have Slivers? Well, you have to figure out a way to make your Slivers matter more than theirs. Then someone figured out how to make it work, (Muscle Sliver + Crystalline Sliver) and suddenly there was something interesting going on.

One of the ways that Sliver decks became balanced was that the benefit went for all of them, so if your opponents outplayed you with the same creatures, then you had a real brainbender to work out.

One of the reasons I play Magic is to problem solve. If Wizards continually gives players cards that are always good for you and just you then they are removing an element of problem solving from the game. I'm not suggesting that Armageddon should come back (which would be awesome to me but wreak havoc on newer players and likely return a UW control deck that I'm sick of, after nearly 20 years) I'm saying that they are limiting themselves and the game by insisting that every mechanic or idea that now comes to light, always and easily be beneficial for the player.

Sometimes, I think we, as players, deserve more difficulty. I'd like to see those more challenging cards or mechanics at least once every two years; not as a mandatory thing but as something that doesn't get rejected because it isn't new-player friendly enough. It's not as if Slivers were incredibly difficult to understand though: they just didn't fit in the new paradigm of "Every mechanic should obviously benefit the user and only the user."

That's sad and even worse, I believe it's restricting. If they can't occasionally give us mechanics that are challenging then how much of the game is being cut off in order to make sure it appeals to the most people? I'd argue that a vital area is being cast as "Here Be Monsters" and it's going to bite the game in the ass, eventually.

More importantly, I'd like to see some respect given to the past. Slivers have been one of the most popular tribes in Magic's history! They've gotten respect from pro players and love from casuals since they debuted in Tempest, but now, likely in the name of marketing, the history and iconic features of a beloved creature type is being cut away.

Now, add this to Erwin's point that the new Slivers should just be Allies, given how distinct they've become coupled with an artistic direction that obliterates their distinct look, and I believe you have a recipe for ruining the thing that made what was cool, cool.

Once More

Here we go again:

5 Swamp
7 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
3 Bojuka Bog
4 Twilight Mire

3 Duress
4 Putrefy
4 Rancor
3 Distress
4 Doom Blade

1 Thrun, the Last Troll
3 Troll Ascetic
4 Great Sable Stag
3 Thragtusk
3 Predator Ooze
2 Strangleroot Geist
3 Vault Skirge

SB: 3 Underworld Dreams
SB: 4 Torpor Orb
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
SB: 3 Sudden Spoiling
SB: 2 Rootgrapple

I don't want to give up on Predator Ooze but perhaps I should. It seems like anything that gets bigger and is damn near invulnerable would be good, right? But between Path to Exile and Karn, it just seems silly.

Then again, I am considering Massacre Wurm in my sideboard. This is an awful idea, merely because I have no reliable way to cast the card on turn six, which if I need it, I absolutely have to be able to do. One issue is that Rootgrapple just isn't cutting it at all. My thoughts for secret tech? Aether Snap. Stonethorn has been thinking that BW tokens is going to be big, while I keep running into planeswalkers. This kills both of those. The trick, as always, is getting those spells to resolve and I just don't know that I've got enough discard to ensure that happens.

This deck also might suffer from being a bit off theme. Hypnotic Specter fits in better than Vault Skirge, but Vault Skirge turn one, Rancor turn 2 is pretty amazing. Getting in early beats and gaining life is very important when facing aggressive decks, which I still believe will be out there.

I'm feeling desperate. Maybe that shows? I don't have the resources to play an 'established' deck, nor do I want to. I want to play a deck I like and am reasonably comfortable with, because I feel that those things might be the only edge I really have. And damnit, money shouldn't be the defining characteristic of a good Magic deck...but I accept it is part of the game.

While I have been practicing and testing and I feel my gameplay is getting better, I am not a pro Magic player. This is not to say that I'm going to just cut my losses, this is about being realistic about what I need to do to win.

And I would like to win. Stonethorn and I had a brief conversation about that last night, when he questioned running Ulamog, because it felt like 'win more'. I responded with: when it's just us playing, it's fine to be suboptimal. In the tournament, you're there to win, and you can cast Ulamog and win of him. Do it.

I fear I may be too attached to my 'ideas' to actually make those cutthroat decisions about card selection. But damnit, these things don't seem bad. I've had people choke on Predator Ooze because their removal wasn't enough. Plus, it blanks out most destroy effects. Same with Thragtusk: I run that because it creates such problems for anyone running removal. I love Blood Moon but as Noah pointed out: I don't want to run a deck that's 56 other cards that support Blood Moon. That's a terrible deck.

No deck can do everything though: that's impossible. My goal is to eliminate all the decks that I don't think will be played and focus on what will be played and how to beat that. Choose wisely, as they say.

Faster and Faster

Before this post starts up, I recommend everyone reading this article by Jim Davis at SCG. It emphasizes what I've been trying to hammer on about, not only in decks for myself but with friends who are playing as well. I cannot think of a better place to start, if you want to improve your game, than to ask: Why? Why make that choice? If I can answer that, even if it's a bad answer, I feel I'm much better off as a player.

Whenever I have a deck I'm writing about, I try to goldfish it a lot in my free time. I'm sure many players do: it's a nice way to get a feel for how a deck flows, what decisions seem to help/hinder the goals, etc. As a result, I have discovered why I just don't like Burning-Tree Shaman: it has no immediate board impact for the cost. The only other card in the deck that this can be said of is Radha, but Radha has the advantage of allowing me to cast spells at a discount whenever she attacks and like the saying goes, 'free is a very good price.'

So here are what I feel are my best alternatives:
2 Bestial Fury
2 Snake Umbra
2 Burning-Tree Emissary
2 Rancor
or Radha, Heir to Keld and Sudden Shock.

Radha and a fourth Sudden Shock is very attractive, because it will increase the consistency of the deck and it's inexpensive to implement. I have the Shock and Radha costs under a buck and my money > less of my money. Rancor is one of the best green cards ever printed, and is partly responsible for the shift away from UW decks in Standard, towards RBG decks. However, all my copies are currently in use, and getting more would cost me around $3 apiece. My money rule invoked.

On the other hand, when you're named after the fastest Autobot, acceleration matters which puts Burning-Tree Emissary at the door because free is a very good price. A turn 2 Emissary + Radha/Hackblade? A turn 4 Bloodbraid Elf into Emissary, into something cool I have in hand? The Glory of Cool Things is rising up here in a big way and it's very, very hard to resist.

Bestial Fury holds a great deal of attraction for me for a few reasons: 1) can be cast for free off Bloodbraid Elf, 2) Draws me a card, and 3) makes a tiny creature risky to block. A great deal of my creatures have a power of only 2 and it is only the use of boost effects that they become truly problematic. However, opponents will block to stop the bleeding if they have to: why not make them pay for it? Finally, it's an old, weird card that nobody cares about and as a result it holds more gravity for me.

Finally, Snake Umbra, which I like for some of the same reasons as Bestial Fury, but it also has the advantage of keeping something like a Boartusk Liege alive in the face of destruction. It also has a nice interaction with Wildsize, helping ensure I hit an opponent and get to draw a card, and Psychotic Fury, allowing me the potential to draw two cards.

Looking at my choices, I really want to try Snake Umbra and Bestial Fury so that's where I'll take the deck but I'll also admit that I may have enough card draw and Burning-Tree Emissary might be the best choice.

Hidden Fees

Even though I've been playing a long time, I still forget how certain abilities play out in a game. Testing the Name of the Game has been a reminder of what some cards actually cost, as opposed to the converted mana cost.

The offenders: Raven Familiar and Hystrodon.

In two matchups against stonethorn, I found myself unable to really do anything with Hystrodon: the card was coming out on turn three, being Vapor Snagged or worse, or chump-block material. Why? Because I'd try to play it as a morph, not being able to easily get to five mana, and the cost to play then morph the Hystrodon ate so much tempo that it didn't matter: That was two full turns of me not doing something.

Raven Familiar follows a similar arc but at least I'd get a card draw out of it and a flying blocker for a turn. That immediate payoff means that I am running a Ponder that blocks, instead of hoping for a 3/4 that may draw me a card after six mana and may pay off on turn 4 or later.

I've been keeping Hystrodon in the deck because I thought that would be my path around the Symbiotic Deployment, should I get stuck with it. But Patagia Viper costs only one more and gives me a flyer with two creatures I can tap for cards, if I need to. On top of that, those two tokens get huge from the Murkfiend Liege; that's a much better deal.

Finally, this deck is a bit mana shy. It doesn't really do much until turn 3 and that is just too late. So: Hystrodons are out.

The new deck will be:

4 Symbiotic Deployment
2 Verdant Embrace

3 Trygon Predator
4 Murkfiend Liege
3 Raven Familiar
3 Patagia Viper
3 Wirewood Elf

3 Temporal Spring
3 Ponder
3 Fallow Earth
3 Plow Under
3 Donate

11 Forest
11 Island

1 Simic Growth Chamber

Why Wirewood Elf? Because who is going to play that card otherwise?

OK, it's also because I own them and My Money > Less of My Money.

Frenzy

I give you, the evolution of a deck.

3 Sleight of Hand
3 Lava Spike
1 Seething Anger
3 Reckless Charge

3 Psychic Puppetry
4 Reach Through Mists
3 Consuming Vortex
4 Glacial Ray
3 Unnerving Assault
3 Lava Dart 

4 Wee Dragonauts
4 Gelectrode

4 Steam Vents
9 Mountain
9 Island

To keep you from having to look up all the cards, here's a quick overview:

Wee Dragonauts get +2/0 when I play a sorcery or instant, the Gelectrode untaps every time I play an instant or sorcery. So the idea is to swing with a flying insane-o-creature while having pinged with the Gelectrode three times, do it again and my opponent is dead.

The deck can be explosive as hell which is good and it can also sputter and die like last night's Taco Bell, which is less good. Still, I always think of  Groundskeeper Willie and the wee turtles when I play this deck so even if I lose, I get a laugh. There may even be some unwritten rule that says when you play with the Wee Dragonauts, the wee turtles must be referenced. Maybe a judge could look into that for me.

Whenever I build a deck like this, there's the core of fisty awesome that I'm trying to pad around with spikey goodness and sometimes I get that and sometimes I just run out of steam, which is what happened here. Damage; good, drawing; good, being able to reuse spells with Arcane; good but then there's that last section of cards that I don't know what to do with.

Unnerving Assault, I'm looking at you. In theory, this seems great, of course; blunt the opponent's creatures while sharpening your own but there are only eight creatures in this deck and four of them don't want to attack. The Assault really is there to help the Dragonauts or maybe blunt an opposing attack just a little. But spells have to do a lot of the dirty work here and somehow I understood that, which is why the Arcane mechanic matters in this deck. Being able to graft a spell onto another spell and then play the grafted spell means that it's possible to kill someone very, very quickly, if Gelectrode is out to tap thrice, Dragonauts is swinging for seven and the grafted spell is Glacial Ray, that's four more damage. So why bother with the Assault?

The question is, how can I get more mileage out of my spells?

This question has plagued the deck for awhile and even though the card came out two years ago, the answer finally struck me: Pyromancer Ascension. I've been bouncing that card around in my head since it came out because it's just the kind of card nobody cares about-which nobody did for nearly two years. I think that this deck might be a good match for Pyromancer Ascension though and is worth testing.

Aside: this is why players ought to look for cards that seem interesting to them. A year ago, Pyromancer Ascension was the kind of card you could pick up for fifty cents, now it's two dollars. My Money rule. Sure, we can't always have our foresight caps on and certainly not every card-most, as a matter of fact-don't have price jumps like that. When they do, however, and you've been playing with the card for awhile already, it's pretty gratifying to have the experience of using that card/strategy under your belt. /Aside

So I'm replacing Unnerving Assault with the Ascension; how do I make sure I can put counters on it? With the Proliferate mechanic and a lot of duplication. So here's the new list:

4 Wee Dragonauts
4 Gelectrode

4 Steam Vents
9 Mountain
9 Island

3 Psychic Puppetry
4 Reach Through Mists
3 Consuming Vortex
4 Glacial Ray
3 Lava Spike

New cards:
3 Seething Anger
3 Pyromancer Ascension
4 Volt Charge
3 Tezzeret's Gambit

The main plain is still the same: Wee Dragonauts and Gelectrode get bonuses when I play sorceries and instants, so play those spells and use the bonuses to win. Re-use those bonuses by using the Arcane mechanic to help give the deck both speed and reach.

But now, in order to focus on the reach aspect of this deck, I've added in Pyromancer Ascension so I can double my spells for free. To get the Pyromancer online, I've tried to use more of the same kind of spell and I've enlisted the Proliferate mechanic so that I don't have to work as hard in order to get my enchantment active.

The one spell that sticks out is Seething Anger because, like Unnerving Assault it affects creatures. I kept that in there for two reasons: first, it's cheap to cast. I can let it go without buyback and get a huge bonus on the Dragonauts or worst case, even the Gelectrodes. I can cast it with buyback and if I've got an active Ascension then help set up an even bigger bonus. If I don't have an active Ascension, the buyback means that the spell is reusable until I can get an active Ascension. Maybe that's the Glory of Cool Things but what the hell, I accept that TGoCT is a good reason to add a card to a deck.

So now it's time to test it out and see how it works.