Commander-Sahili

I bought all the Commander decks from last year, but I haven't really played them or done a deep dive into them. I attribute this to feeling pretty unenthusiastic about these Commander decks for the first time, to the point where I outright took one apart; Lord Windgrace.

Well, it's time to change that. I know more people who like playing Commander right now, so this is as good a time as any to practice with and improve those decks from last year!

Let's start with Saheeli, the Gifted. The deck starts off like this:

Instant Chaos Warp Magmaquake  Into the Roil  Thirst for Knowledge	Artifacts Coveted Jewel Endless Atlas Retrofitter Foundry Blinkmoth Urn Mimic Vat Mirrorworks Prototype Portal Unwinding Clock Commander's Sphere Dreamstone Hedron Hedron Archive Izzet Signet Magnifying Glass Mind Stone Prismatic Lens Scrabbling Claws Sol Ring Swiftfoot Boots Unstable Obelisk Vessel of Endless Rest Worn Powerstone
Enchantment  Enchanter's Bane  Thopter Spy Network	Sorcery Saheeli's Artistry Echo Storm Saheeli's Directive Aether Gale Blasphemous Act Reverse Engineer Tidings
Lands 15 Island 12 Mountain Forge of Heroes Buried Ruin Command Tower Foundry of the Consuls Highland Lake Izzet Boilerworks Izzet Guildgate Swiftwater Cliffs Darksteel Citadel Great Furnace Seat of the Synod	Creatures Maverick Thopterist Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer Tawnos, Urza's Apprentice Vedalken Humiliator Treasure Nabber Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor Ancient Stone Idol Soul of New Phyrexia Inkwell Leviathan Sharding Sphinx Hellkite Igniter Bosh, Iron Golem Darksteel Juggernaut Duplicant Myr Battlesphere Psychosis Crawler Scuttling Doom Engine Steel Hellkite Thopter Assembly Loyal Drake Loyal Apprentice Geode Golem Etherium Sculptor Whirler Rogue Chief of the Foundry Pilgrim's Eye Thopter Engineer

 
Red/Blue artifact decks are relatively new to the Magic landscape so I'll be engaged in a deck that I haven't got much experience with, and I'm looking forward to it. I don't expect to turn this into a monster, but something that is more effective will work just fine.

A Wolf's Endeavor

I feel alright about this. We Bite is in a good spot with enough synergies and fire to pull off games even against some challenging counterspell decks like blue/black faeries.

Control matchups become an exercise in patience, saving burn spells for the opponent's turn in order to draw out counterspells vs trying to advance my own board as quickly as possible.

The suggestion of Whispersilk Cloak has been a huge boon to the deck too, increasing the number of cards opponents have to deal with. As with any deck, the goal is to run the opponent out of answers and win with the one thing they can't handle anymore.

And We Bite definitely has the kind of threat density that I am hoping for.

Sure, sometimes I try and live the dream and use an unprotected War Elemental to win...and well, that usually ends the way one might suppose. However, the sense I get when I play this deck is that I have improved the odds, cleared out some deadwood and made a better build. Time to move on.

3 Whispersilk Cloak

2 Stigma Lasher
3 Kris Mage
3 War Elemental
2 Blood Knight
2 Mogg Fanatic
3 Hazoret the Fervent
3 Stromkirk Occultist

4 Seal of Fire

4 Chain of Plasma
4 Fiery Temper
4 Fireblast

2 Forgotten Cave
21 Mountain

Basics, Again

Today I bring you another article that wants to emphasize a strategy card game concept: the fundamental turn.

It's a good time to revisit the basics-it almost always is-but in the case of the Transformers game, I think this concept is especially relevant.

The TFTCG is, I think, far more tempo based than other games. There aren't limiting factors like mana or life as restrictions, it's all about how many characters you have and how far you can go to maximize them/their abilities.

Hell, it's only been six months but someone has figured out a pretty solid deck that takes infinite turns. They did it by maxing out what happens whenever you give players a free thing-and then using that tempo boost from I Still Function and Peace Through Tyranny.

On the upside, WotC has said they're aware and know about this and I wouldn't be surprised if the card that fuels the deck, Swap Parts, is changed. But it just goes to show; when you have a game where the players don't have meaningful input on their opponent's decisions-that is, the pace of the game is that each player does things without interference from their opponent, and the tempo of the game belongs entirely to one player so long as it is their turn, learning how to maximize that can lead to some very powerful results!

Siege I

Woo-hoo, there's a third Transformers set coming!

Initial thoughts;

1) The Battle Masters are a pretty cool trick. Their size is understandable, since they become equipment and while that does take away from the cards you get, making sealed deck a little more challenging, the versatility may make up for it.

2) The Micro Masters are silly. The ONE instantly cool gimmick about the game (big transforming cards!) and they've just said 'yeah, but we never had to do that'. The tap abilities aren't a revelation (so far) and they take up a lot of stars from decks that want to send giant robots in to smash each other.

3) There will finally be a Soundwave card and people can quit complaining. About that.

4) There is a new action type that will allow for players to (occasionally, at least) take actions on their opponent's turn. This was bound to happen, because the options for engaging gameplay by incorporating actions you can take on your opponent's turn is too deep to ignore.

But so far, so good!

Gore And Blood

A conversation I recently had with Jason regarding the Optimus Maximus deck we're trying to build.

Me: I especially think you don't want to run Roll Out: dead cards are bad news. Matrix of Leadership makes more sense in that slot.

J: Roll Out is not a dead card! I serves a big role. You can't play it but combat flips are huge, plan is huge, swapping for a green is huge. Give up a card you can play or Roll Out?

Me: >Roll Out is not a dead card!

or

>You can't play it

---------------------------------------

In multiple games with We Bite, I found myself with an extra Hazoret, the Feverent or War Elemental in hand I could not play. Either because I had no way to rid myself of the extra cards in time (Hazoret) or War Elemental was my only card in hand after my battlefield had been swept away.

This is the challenge of doing weird decks; there are dead cards sometimes: I can build around the War Elemental all I want and sometimes the deck just won't help me out. Still, I want to stick with it but what it's meant is that instead of running four of each of those Cutting one of each of them has allowed for me to run the copies of Whispersilk Cloak that I need.

Part of me doesn't like doing this, I hear a voice saying "You're diluting the concept! What's the point if you don't stick to it?" and that's not wrong. 

But what's the point of executing the concept if the result is perpetual fail states? 

So, instead of insisting that either I keep the concept or ditch the whole thing, I'm going to fudge it a bit and water down the concept as little as possible, while opening up better windows to win.

I'm Out To Get You

"So...it's a War Elemental deck," I tell Noah.

"It sure is."

"And that's the problem. You can just chump block it, no matter how big it gets."

"Well...maybe there's a way around that."

"In red there aren't many effects that give me trample, so I'm not...wait a minute."

Archetype of Aggression.

So there it is! A problem solved, right?

Weeeeellllllll...

First, Archetype isn't always useful whenever it shows up. That's a challenge, because again, as a less optimized deck, I can't really afford to add in cards that are only good occasionally.

Second, it's a creature and as such, to be really good it needs either a protective aspect to it, or an aggressive one, because otherwise it exists to be killed by removal. Archetype has neither haste, protection, or defensive stats that would keep it alive.

It was Caitlin who suggested Whispersilk Cloak to me.

The first time I rode a Stigma Lasher equipped with a Cloak to victory, I knew I had a winner. However, I cannot leave good enough alone, and after a few games with Noah-ones where I had either War Elemental or Hazoret in hand and no way to make them useful-he suggested Key To The City to me. Why not, right? It feeds into the Madness themes, it makes a creature unblockable and I can use any extra mana I have to draw cards.

Two problems quickly became apparent: First, 'extra mana' is a laughable concept in a deck using Fireblast. Every turn that We Bite is functioning even reasonably close to optimal, I'm using up all my mana on everything else to forward my gameplan of damaging my opponent to death.

Second: unblockability is not as useful as shroud. War Elemental and, as it turns out, Stromkirk Occultist, present serious threats when they cannot be targeted by removal. So Whispersilk Cloak gets the nod.

The other option would be Swiftfoot Boots, which I think I'll test next, to see if haste and the reduced mana cost help. While not making things unblockable, haste is a pretty sweet ability and the reduced cost might be very important in a deck that is so tight on mana use.

Devastation

The designers of the Transformers TCG had a post on the design of the new Devastator pack that came out last Friday. There's some interesting detail that goes into how they approached making this pack and the challenges that it represented. It's a short post, so I don't feel the need to repeat anything said about that.

What I found really interesting though, was this tidbit:

We generally shoot for a game to conclude in 5-8 turns. Fast decks can make that more like 4, slower decks can push to 9 or 10.

Five to eight turns? That is not a lot of time! Having played just enough of the game, I think it's wise to conclude that this means in 5-8 turns per player. Still; that doesn't seem like much, does it? One of the things that the Transformers TCG does well is keep players involved even when it isn't their turn, so that engagement sticks around, so it feels like a longer game than maybe it is.

My takeaway from the Devastator article is that the Combiners themselves, at least for now, mine the 'glory of cool things' vein, more than they do winning strategies. I think that's why I've shied away from them so far.

Is it worth it to build the dedicated Predaking deck? It certainly doesn't look like it, so far. I think I should maybe spend some time trying to figure that out, mostly for the fun of it, but I haven't seen a large combiner team that will really be a force to reckon with. And I say that after having been beat down by an Aerialbots deck a couple weeks ago: I think that once I learn the matchup, it becomes one that is far more difficult for the combiner team than for me.

To that end, on Sunday I had a chance to play the Devastator deck, straight from the box, three times. It felt...clunky. Part of that was about my inexperience playing the deck but part of it had to do with the build.

The deck is action heavy (20 cards! That's half the deck.) and does not have a Brainstorm, which meant that my hand was clogged with cards I couldn't to anything with.

It also wants to reward slower play: Building your tower is a critical element of successful play and you want to hit 3 counters on it ASAP, so you can use Reclaim to get important upgrades and Heavy Landing to do extra damage. Builder's Tools is vital to the deck, in much the same way that Height Advantage helps the Metroplex deck. It's also important to transform Scrapper first so KO'd characters add to your tower and this puts an automatic limit on your first turn; there is zero point in transforming any other character. That isn't a killer but it does restrict my options.

That might have been a deliberate choice in order to make the deck more accessible to new and younger players: Devastator does have bunch of stuff going on. It was certainly a deliberate choice-Wizards of the Coast has been doing this for far too long to make thoughtless choices. And since it's a small drawback, along with the one where five of the six Constructicons have the same alt mode ability, they probably decided that the cool factor outweighed anything else. More play will tell me if that cool factor works.

Finally, while a Pretty Big Deal was made out of the card Work Overtime, it seemed underwhelming. While a card like that is vital to the Constructicons' game plan, so they can build their tower and second, usually I was casting it as a Pep Talk. And while that isn't terrible, it isn't bonkers either.

You know what might change that? Brainstorm.